Every couple 'a years or so
Our family reunites
It takes a couple 'a years or so
To recover from the fights

A family like our'n
Doesn't party like most do
Ours gets a little out of hand
That's why we have so few

It's a redneck family reunion
everybody has a grand old time
eating grandma's cooking
and drinking grandpas shine
You never go home hungry
If you make it home at all
You go home bruised and battered
And you surely had a ball

There's daisy dukes and forty Lukes
They're racing trucks and burning rubber
There's jugs of moonshine everywhere
And at least a hundred bubbas

There's a smoker fired for the food
the size of two large trucks
It hold 4 cows, and fourteen pigs
And at least a hundred ducks

It's a redneck family reunion
everybody has a grand old time
eating grandma's cooking
and drinking grandpas shine
You never go home hungry
If you make it home at all
You go home bruised and battered
And you surely had a ball

There's pickled this and pickled that
And things you just can't swallow
That used to live down in the swamp
Way back there in the hollow

There's at least ten shotgun weddings there
And the groom might be rail roaded
But, the wedding isn't legal
If the shotgun isn't loaded

It's a redneck family reunion
everybody has a grand old time
eating grandma's cooking
and drinking grandpas shine
You never go home hungry
If you make it home at all
You go home bruised and battered
And you surely had a ball

There's greased up pigs and muddy runts
And at least ten bobby sues
and when they all get greased up
You can't tell which is who

There's horseshoe pits for tossing shoes
And games of every sort
Most of them aren't legal
And would get you into court

It's a redneck family reunion
everybody has a grand old time
eating grandma's cooking
and drinking grandpas shine
You never go home hungry
If you make it home at all
You go home bruised and battered
And you surely had a ball

But, it's the way we like it
Drinking shine and acting out
Tossing things that aren't tied down
And wrassling about

There's music there of just one kind
It's country and that matters
Any other sort of sound
Sets the crowd off like mad hatters

It's a redneck family reunion
everybody has a grand old time
eating grandma's cooking
and drinking grandpas shine
You never go home hungry
If you make it home at all
You go home bruised and battered
And you surely had a ball

There's always someone who's so drunk
And it's normally the preacher
Last year we married him off
To the back up first grade teacher

There's Chevy trucks of every kind
And one covered in sod
Mary Lou showed her tattoo
"Jeff Foxworthy is my God"

It's the best time of the year for us
And it's sad when it must end
but, you gotta haul your *** away
When the cops come round that bend

It's a redneck family reunion
everybody has a grand old time
eating grandma's cooking
and drinking grandpas shine
You never go home hungry
If you make it home at all
You go home bruised and battered
And you surely had a ball

It was not a heart, beating.
That muted boom, that clangor
Far off, not blood in the ears
Drumming up and fever

To impose on the evening.
The noise came from outside:
A metal detonating
Native, evidently, to

These stilled suburbs nobody
Startled at it, though the sound
Shook the ground with its pounding.
It took a root at my coming

Till the thudding shource, exposed,
Counfounded in wept guesswork:
Framed in windows of Main Street's
Silver factory, immense

Hammers hoisted, wheels turning,
Stalled, let fall their vertical
Tonnage of metal and wood;
Stunned in marrow. Men in white

Undershirts circled, tending
Without stop those greased machines,
Tending, without stop, the blunt
Indefatigable fact.

my hands swelled
blue and purple

to match the
glassy doe-eyed

stagnancy.
I saw a pair

of cocoa
moon rocks

heavy with
music and a

queen bee trapped
in a flash

of departure.  
mine and yours

one in the same
corpulent and

greased trembling
at the lips.

She could make a cow grow sick and die,
She could sicken a healthy pig,
She could poison somebody’s cottage pie
But she couldn’t harm Tom Rigg.
For Tom wasn’t born of woman
He’d been plucked too soon from the womb,
When his mother lay there dying
From a concoction stirred with a broom.

So he’d grown up broad, and tall and strong
With a warlock cast to his eye,
Whatever the spell she tried on him
He would turn on her, ‘Just try!’
She conjured a flight of vampire bats
To follow him here and there,
But the bats were spurned, and then returned
And they tangled up in her hair.

She would lie in wait by the farmer’s gate
With the graveyard dog in a ditch,
So he’d open the sluice that was not in use,
And soak her, every stitch,
She’d scream, come tumbling after him,
‘You think you’re so fine and big,
I’ll spell that you fall in love with me,
Just see if I don’t, Tom Rigg.’

For deep down under her witch’s pride
Was the beat of a woman’s heart,
And the sight of Tom had sent it, quivering
Shaking itself apart,
But Tom had kept himself to himself
Immune to a woman’s wiles,
Determined to fix the old windmill
On the other side of the stile.

He lived in the ancient tower mill
That he’d bought, picked up for a song,
It hadn’t been used for a hundred years
Since part of the works went wrong,
The sails were seized, poked up at the sky
In a way that said, ‘We’re spent!’
But Tom believed that he knew just why;
The cog on the shaft was bent.

He cleaned it up and he scraped the rust
And he greased the copper sheath,
He checked it over and sideways, down
And he peered from underneath,
But the shaft was rigid, it wouldn’t turn
He was giving up in despair,
When late one night with a mighty crash
There was something amiss out there.

He peered up under a rising moon
There was something caught in the sail,
All he could see was a besom broom
But then came an awful wail,
The witch was caught in the topmost sail
Where she’d swooped in the night unseen,
And now she was clung to the old wood frame
And all she could do was scream.

There wasn’t a ladder that went so high
So all he could do was stare,
‘Now how do you think I could rescue you,
And how did you get up there?’
The mill was starting to creak and groan
As the wind came over the hill,
The sails were starting to slowly turn
With the witch stuck firmly still.

The weight of the witch had freed them up
And she shrieked as the sails whirled round,
While Tom was laughing, joyfully, merrily,
Rolling over the ground,
‘I’ll swear you’ve done me a favour, Jane,
I was going to call it quits,
But now, if ever you come back down,
I’m ready to kiss a witch!’

David Lewis Paget

Are you a tourist or
A volcanologist my dear?
With a painful joy
To a live volcano  getting near,
Do you want to pay homage
To earth's nadir
Conscious that beneath a sea level
A sweltering heat you can bear?

Then to Erta Ale  come you not why
Found under Ethiopia's sky?
With a style jumping high,
Hitting the ground
Beating  drums, on their waists,
Sabres tied around
Afro men along with braided women,
With butter greased hair,
The latter ululating and clapping
In a row facing each other
Chant a  love song
“My feeling for you is strong!”

The male herd camel,
While women babysit,prepare food
And make short huts
With tiny malleable wood.

Also dot the mirage-forming sand
Huts grand.

Are you a tourist my dear
Eager to see about
Out of the ordinary you heard
Say about multicolored magma
Volcano's dust,
Disgorged out of earth's crust?

Do you want to see a scenery
You have not seen
Since you were born,
How in a motley garment
Mother nature itself
Likes to adorn
Come then to Ethiopia,
Located in Africa's horn?

Visit Erta Ale ,
On earth
To run away from earth
Enjoying its hearth.
You will witness
The extraction of salt
In a volcano-formed fault.///

My whole life,
I've been a third string hitter
For a fourth string team
In a no-string city
With nothing to offer
But the glow of the city
In my childhood bedroom window.
I was the batter they brought in
When they wanted to avoid invoking
The mercy rule
Otherwise, they mercifully let me
Stay on the bench.
Swing, miss, swing, miss,
I haven't had so many strikes since
I went bowling at age 12.
I had six of them that night
It had been so long since I'd hit the ball
That I had forgotten what home plate looked like
It's becoming a nasty habit,
Forgetting home.
Every umpire shout of “you're out”
Made me glad I didn't try to go back much.
But then I met you
A greased lane lady
Looking for a ten-pin king
We started talking over a ******
Paper boat of nachos in the 24 hour bowling alley
I had stumbled into after the bar kicked me out.
I knew I wanted you when you finally
Explained what those little air vents
On the ball return were for.
“For drying your hands” you said,
Demonstrating.
I used them all night, partly to
Seal their use into my memory,
And partly because no one had ever made
My hands sweat so much.
You beat me, badly.
You blamed it on the liquor,
But I knew the truth.
Just another game which I shouldn't be playing
But you fought me on that.
You followed me out to my car
And took a cigarette from me
Even though you didn't smoke,
Because you wanted a reason to stand outside
While you assailed me with logic.
Too tired and drunk to argue,
I conceded that maybe I just needed practice.

So we practiced.
Every day, my baseball contract
Long since expired
Voicemail boiling over with
million-dollar egos shouting
I'd never work a plate again
Let 'em have their foul *****
And line drives.
I had a greased lane lady
And I was a ten-pin king.
Strike, strike, spare,
Seven ten split,
Pick it up!
We wore a groove in the lanes
We threw more ***** than Elton John,
And our palms stayed perfectly dry.
The problem wasn't me.
I always thought I was a defective unit
A fluke in the system, a glitch.
No, *****.
My problem was the green and white world
Shoving juice-syringes and Nike contract promises
In my face
When we both knew
But wouldn't accept
That the diamond wasn't my home.
I should be on the lane
Picking up an impossible split to take the frame
And feed the flame my fame fans in the alley
You showed me where I belong
You taught me how to play.
Now maybe it's my turn
To show you my heart,
To teach you it's name
But only if you promise me
You'll always be up for just one more frame

SECRETS OF THE STONEHENGE IN VERSE
Dear Readers, I present a simplified version of the true story of the Stonehenge, on the Salisbury plains of Southern England, with over a million visitors every year. Declared as a World Heritage Site since 1986.Left out many technical details to curb the Length!
Hope you find this interesting to read.  Thanks, - Raj

SECRETS OF THE STONEHENGE IN VERSE
                     BY RAJ NANDY
                
                     INTRODUCTION
Shrouded in ancient legend, rituals and mystery,
Forming a part of ancient History, in the County of
Wiltshire on the rolling Salisbury plains,
Thirty miles north of the English Channel, stands the
megalithic structure  - The Stonehenge.
Dating back to some 3000 BC during the Neolithic Age,
Long before the Egyptian pyramids got made!
Some of its secrets have finally been unraveled by
Archeologists of our time and age.
It was a period when early humans changed over
from being nomadic hunter- gatherers,
To cultivate land and domesticate animals, to
become settled farmers.
This ushered in a new social change in the history
of Human progression,
Which got reflected in huge stone structures to
mark this advancement and occasion.
For these megalithic structures were bigger than
the tribes of men or the community;
Marked burial mounds and places for performing
sacred rites and magical healing rituals, for the
entire community.
Stonehenge was aligned to the mid-Summer and
mid-Winter Solstice, with the rising and the setting
Sun.
Served as an astronomical calendar for the turning
of Seasons, when crop cycles also begun.
Some scholars opine that it was used as a Lunar
Calendar as well,
Since Moon worship predates Sun worship by
Pre-historic men!
It was long before the invention of the wheel,
written script, and even metal implements.
This monumental structure speak of Stone Age
Briton’s greatest achievement!
(Period covered is from Late Stone Age to the brink of
Bronze Age.)

BRIEF LAYOUT OF THE STONEHENGE
Cutting across myths and legends archeologists
and geologists have tried to piece together the
Stonehenge Story,
Which stood like an enigmatic puzzle for the
last Five Thousand Centuries!
Scholars say construction commenced around
3000 BC, but progressed only in stages spread
over the next fifteen centuries.
Initially, a large earthwork or a ‘Henge’ with a
circular ditch and a bank was made,
With 56 timber posts around the inner perimeter
on the windy Salisbury plains.
Used by primitive man as a burial place, but for
rituals later got linked to other smaller sites.
With processional avenues leading to River Avon,
to honor dead ancestors with sacred rites!
Entrance to the ‘Henge’ was marked by a pair of
upright Slaughter Stones weighing 28 tones, and
6.6 meters tall.
But only one remains today lying flat on the ground
after its fall!
Some 256 feet from center of the ‘Henge’ on the NE
Avenue once stood the Heel Stones 7.6 meters high!
As a marker for the Summer Solstice showing the
position of the rising Sun in the Midsummer sky!

          BLUE STONES FROM WALES:
Some 1000 years later, 82 Blue Stones were brought
from the Prescelli Mountains of Southern Wales;
And the earlier timber posts with these Blue stones
was replaced.
Each stone weighing around 4 tones, was brought
over a distance of some 250 miles to the plains of
Salisbury,
Loaded on hollowed out log boats fashioned like a
mini barge, to sail during high tide into the Bristol
Estuary!
Pulled over land on greased wooden rollers, and
loaded again on mini barges down the River Avon.
Since Avon flowed closer to the ‘Henge’ site in those
ancient days, which is now known!
(Some Scholars feel that the Blue Stones were swept down
closer to the Salisbury plain, during the close of the last Ice
Age! These Stones were believed to have powers of magical
cure too!)

              THE SARSAN STONES
During its final phase of development came the larger
23 ft tall Sarsan Stones, weighing some 44 tones.
From 20 miles north of the ‘Henge’ area dragged on
sledges and rollers from Marlborough Downs.
These stones now formed the outer ring capped with
stone lintels, replacing the Blue Stones;
And the Blues Stones were moved inwards and
rearranged in the horseshoe and circle shape, as
presently seen and known!
(NOTE: Sheer muscle power used to drag the stones with ropes
made from plant fiber of the indigenous lime bark soaked in
water for weeks. Stone lintels were sculpted in the shape of an
arc to cap the SARSAN Stones to form the outer circle. Wooden
scaffolding & ramps were used to hoist and position the heavy
stone lintels horizontally on top of upright stones! Sarsan Stones
were hard sandstones tougher than granite! However many of the
stones of this Ancient Ruin are missing, leaving some unanswered
questions behind.)

        CONCLUDING THIS TRUE STORY
Archeologists and scholars using radiocarbon dating
have tried to recreate the Stonehenge Story.
This ancient ruin with many unanswered questions,
now remain protected as an Iconic Monument of
British History!
It stands as an astronomical time clock and is also of
spiritual significance;
It also symbolizes the ingenuity of Human Mind, its
power, and endurance.
I conclude with a an extract from a poem by TS Salmon
about the STONEHENGE here below:-
“Warpt in veils of time’s unbroken gloom,
Obscure as death and silent as the tomb.
Where cold oblivion holds her dusky reign,
Frowns the dark pile on Sarum’s lonely plain.
Yet think not here with classic eye to trace,
Corinthian beauty or Ionian grace.
No pillored lines with sculptured foliage crowned,
No fluted remnants deck the hallowed ground.
Firm, as implanted by some Titan’s might,
Each rugged stone up rears its giant height.
Whence the poised fragment tottering seems to throw,
A trembling shadow on the plain below.”
(*Sarum = old name for Salisbury.)
Thanks dear Readers for your kind attention span ,
I have simplified by cutting short many details the
best as I can!
ALL COPYRIGHTS WITH RAJ NANDY OF NEW DELHI
E-mail: rajnandy21@yahoo.in

Ta-ta Norma Drainpipe
Though I never shagged you at all
You ****** the rhythm to ******* yourself
While those around you ate crow
They schlepped out of the cleavage
And they ******* into your crumpet
They ******* you on the rowing machine
And they copulated you **** your three *****

And it seems to me you tasted your *****
Like a cigarette lighter in the diarrhoea
Never knowing who to stick it out to
When the ooze congeal from the top drawer
And I would have liked to have had carnal knowledge of you
But I was just a twit
Your cigarette lighter exploded spew out long before
Your whiff never blewout

Stiffness was sticky
The gristliest fat part you ever nibbled
Hollywood cobbled together a wizzofrog
And ******* was the corkage you greased
Even when you conked out
Oh the lubricator still molested you
All the skeletons had to jabber
Was that Marilyn was ***** flashy the starkers

Ta-ta Norma Drainpipe
from the virginal wombat in the twenty—second ghetto
Who smells you as meat as above par than scatological
Olé! than frank our Marilyn Monroe

Dinner table,
Bowls of light,
Stage fright, lilies,
No appetite,
Dark absences nibbling
Right through my eyes
Like black rabbits pulled
Out of Truman Show skies,
Provoking the question
From those sat up front –
Is this a trick you’re pulling -
Is this one of your stunts?
But no amount of smiling
Will do –
Nod all you like.
They’re onto you.

Christmas Eve,
Sister’s house,
Black eye,
Ulcerated mouth.
Divinely tickled-
By Miss World!
A pinecone and mistletoe
Christmas hurled
Down en suite toilets
Porcelain pink,
My face makes love
To the bathroom sink.

The most squalid Little Lord
In the county, me,
Summer blooms hold
No charms for me,
So I try to apply my
Favourite smile
And travel a few more
Country miles
To a chemist that doesn’t
Know my face.
I browse a bit
(Condoms, spectacles case)
Then I try to
Convince the pharmacist
That I need two
Bottles of
Gee’s Linctus.

The cruelest boyfriend
I ever had
Gives head to a toilet roll
And his fingerpads
Are bordello yellow
From greased nicotine,
This ******* in Primrose
Exhales smoke in a stream,
And I try to remember what
Buttercup said,
His baby’s breath whispers
Wilt in my head,
Something about purity
Something about loss
Something about cleanliness
Something about God
Something about something
That I should tick off as regrettable,
But one flower can make everything
So *******
Forgettable.

flowing rivers simulate the virtual reality of love
warriors topple over forgotten
like cartons of used milk
silk worms speak sovereign messages and warn us of our fate
are we ill or are we healthy
stealthily imprisoned by our visions
finish the sentences and sever your attachments
respecting tradition leads to detachment
a semblance of serenity
the giver of the dawn used shards of standard force
hover in the mind’s sky
houses pass you by
in finite allegories
gardens blossom
governing movies and seating our jobless
go outside now
remove the shades from your eyes
breathe in soma and drink from the sky
sightless sorrow forges on towards tomorrow
art is a balancing act
she came out of her shell in order to tell you a story
of garlands of silver and gold
woven finely into ribbons
greased with oil from a rare toad

The barber asked "what would you like?
Quiff?
          bun?
           Mohawk?
slicked back?
           side parting?
                    centre parting?
                                            greased?            
                                      permed?                  
                           straightened?
                   skin head?
               bald head?
        spiky?
        A comb over?
pony tail?
        pig tails?
                    curly?
                            frizzy?
                      dyed?
                               mop top?
                         French crop?
                 blue rinse?
           purple rinse?
                             step?
                                    undercut?
                                              shaggy?      
                                     dreadlocks?"
"No thanks" I replied
"I'll have a short back and sides and make it messy on top please"

It is
And it's changing
The wind into summer shower
Into mushrooms and birds mouth
From river to the sewer
It is and it's changing
From dark to light to dim with
Speckles of sun born by the
Mirror in you childlike hand
You are catching dust bunnies
Sneezing and laughing
And the dirt could be followed by magic
And the kiss isn't greased by the notion
Of sin and the sin is only a word from the book
Death and insanity
Are frightening and profound
Your world is built from
No buts but ands
And they flow into peace
Just as well as the film of oil
On the ***** puddle
Astonishes you with
An iridescent rainbow
Duality is born by fear
You split and separate so
Caught up in the survival game
To keep that face and partake
Of wealth and fame
Empty is locked in the dungeon
And the words interlock
In plain patterns
Yet alive as they produce sounds
And the smell of tangerines
On a tree by the coast of Sicily
Reminds you of the day
When you could still enjoy
The warmth of sun
It absorbed into its juicy flesh
And there's no need to run
No need to stay
No need to cut off the ties
When life offers you more
And the heat and cold are feelings
That gets names as they replace each other
As they flow unstoppable
Dripping reactions
Burning like acid and smooth like milk
All in one glass
And when you have no thoughts
Ask questions
And when you feel the pain
Stay present and consider humanity

I want the hollow
Cheeks.
The full, adipose, smooth
Lips.
The white-*****,
Pearls she calls
Teeth.
I want the bright, clean,
Sun bleached
Hair.
The fine, sharpened,
Ready for scratching, Spotless
Nails.
The refined, sculpted,
Long, profiled
Nose.
I want gold to flake,
Off my ageing,
porous, dull,
Skin.
I want the protruding,
Famished, angled
Bones.
I want the pumping,
Arrhythmic
Heart.
The tired, hissing,
Tar coated, smoker’s
Lungs.
The round, fleshy,
Cellulite covered
***.
The motherly, but
Childless plump
*******.
I want the barren,
Bleeding, afflicted
******.
I want the faint,
Wispy, high-pitched,
Call that she calls a
Voice.
The bruised, bulging,
Porcelain polished, etched
Knuckles.
The wide, protruding,
Ballooned up, dangling
Hips.
The numb, heavy, metal
Flavored, gum bleeding
Mouth.
I want the skewed,
Backwards, lost
Pedals she calls
Feet.
I want the hearing less,
Wax, pus covered,
Ears.
The lost dull, lifeless
Dumbed down, blue
Eyes.
I want to be her,
All of them, and none.
I want to be lost,
Unwilling, tame, voiceless,
Mindless, childless,
Sexless, man-less.
I want to be her, but I
Can’t.
I cannot because I am
Thought burdened, fat,
Violent, screaming,
Child laden, broken nosed,
Coarse.
I cannot because dirt
Flakes off my young
Skin.
Because my heart pumps,
Oxygenated blood,
At a steady, rhythmic
Beat.
My voice baritones,
Deep, bottomless,
Whispers.
I sit on flat, concave
Muscle.
My lungs breathe,
Strong, fresh, smog-less
Air.
Yellow stained, grainy, calcium-ridden
Teeth.
Dark, musty, greased
Hair.
I want to be her,
But I won’t.

.too dumb, it would seem, to evolve into a bilingualism, but then... somehow, miraculously, able to dictate censoring the origins story, while at the same time dictating a counter to identity politics, while simultaneously working around a trans-grammatical feud with: what's involved in the geographic region of donning underwear... well **** me! so the atypical English man, who's turning into a complete and utter, ****... allows me to smoke a cigarette in the street... but has a problem with me smoking on my private property?! has a problem with me being bilingual calling me a schizophrenic?! but he doesn't mind a Pakistani grooming gang from operating in the north of England?
look who's looking for some long lost allies? not me! there's so much i can do to integrate... but i can't just, erase, a knowledge of a language i said my first syllables MA MA in... you be the pretty boy... English, man... learn a second language, or keep your ******* on a tight leash! because i'll fight... i'm actually hoping for  fist fight... after i put out cigarette stumps on my knuckles? i don't care about winning or losing... i'm a sadist... i enjoy pain! no, you don't get to tell me to erase the tongue i said my first syllables in... teach a **** to fry you a battered cod next time!

so... the idea of integration
is fine...
while i'm some ****
instrument of insurgence?
but not when i'm a ******...
who says...
sure...
i'll learn your language...
your ******* tongue...
i'll learn it...
i'll even learn to practice the profanity,
much agreed upon,
of eating fish & chips
on Friday night...
    oh you're ******* pushing it...
you're pushing it!
you want me, to,
forget, ever speaking,
a single word,
of my native tongue?!
WHAT?!
you have to be ******* with me
right now...
you, expect, WHAT?!
WHAT?!
    how about you get off your
lard greased *** and learn a language
yourself?
guess why Western, your
so prized Western Europe
is experiencing a migrant crisis?
ever heard, how...
Belgians speak better English
than the natives?
  it's like they have
an imbedded
        coercion with the English tongue...
**** me...
they must have conquered these
lands prior!
the Norwegians speak better
English than the English!
wait... or **** on me...
vikings! it must have been the vikings!
guess what...
why do the migrants do not come
to "eastern" Europe?
well done,m sport...
just shy of the Urals
in terms of a geography class...
you want an: east is in the east,
and the west is a vaguely defined term...
whether in Copernican
terminology or, otherwise...

no, ******, i can dance dance dance
like a can-can ponce all night long!
i'll do it for free to boot...

no, the English people didn't vote
to leave the European union
with a fear of the Turks...
former colonies...
these wankers hated the notion
of the A8 coming over...
they doubled down
on Romania and Bulgaria
joining the party...

  the Turks were never the problem...
plenty of Turkish shops,
and god save the barbers to boot!

good for the "eastern" Europeans...
not speaking a *****-tongue
of English...
            they only arrive on the Western
shores because.
English?
         pristine... perfected even...
outside the confines of these,
**** grand isles of beauty and
perfection...
         and don't mind if i do...
shock multiplied by awe,
whenever a school trip took place...

the Belgians speak better English
than the actual English...
and have a diacritical neutrality
to boot...
         well **** me!

                      ain't that, something?!
no... English isn't a secondary
language necessary
to be spoken in a nation that's
past or south of Berlin...
  no necessary...
          the usage of English is,
a gateway "drug"...

but if the English, "think",
that i'll be properly integrated
into their culture,
while: speaking their native
language and respecting their culture
and whims is not enough,
and that i'll have to forge a pact
with myself to forget or rather,
erase the language i was born with?

how are your matriarchs of
Manchester doing?
  why do i ask?
   i'll sooner cut my **** off and
then **** on it...
before i speak a word of English
in my household,
or for that matter,
"integrate" by erasure...
  
  you best be ready to cut my tongue out...
which is why...
how can a Welshman be
deemed an esteemed creature
of kept pride...
if he doesn't speak a word of
the "hiding" tongue?
the Belgians speak a better English
than the ******* English!
whether or not they still
retain speaking Flemish is beside
the point...

               what cause for whatever there
be a need to make, a cause,
if the Welsh are not speaking
Cymru,
and the Irish are not speaking Gaelic?!
you don't make an argument
in a language that
has left Europe's west flank...
******* its way through
being easily speakable,
and semi-integrate-able;
thank god the majority
of the Polacks do not speak,
even a majority riddled
tourist majority English...
   and they don't...
even in places like in Warsaw...
it's like banging
their heads against
a brick wall when it comes
to the Muslim, wealthy tourists...
no hope in sight...
but no...
i will rather retain my native
tongue,
and respect the culture of
the English, than allow myself
to "forget" my native tongue
of Urdu... let's say...
and then turn around,
and abuse the native culture....
calling it... debased...
no!
you don't come against my
tongue, and then expect
me to remain neutral...
    but if you do...
you come, dictating what the rules
of integration are?
i'll be there...
telling you,
where you went wrong...
not everyone likes
the culture that England
entertains...
but everyone likes
a citation using the English
tongue, with however
horrid diacritical disorientation...
and i will give a part of me, up,
to, "integrate"...
take my language away?
you might as well blind me
and cut my tongue off...

   no... i'm telling you...
smarten up...
  how about you learn a second
language?
rather than discriminating
against bilingualism like
it's a schizophrenia?!

winter lips
press into her memory
bones aching with the fever of remembrance
quiet words raise half lipped appeasement
mostly scarring scars scar her mind but occasionally words stir up like rosebuds of alphabet soup
spelling out novels of repeated notes
picture picture picture
click click click
half lipped winds
greased strands flap loose flap in the loose whipped winds
white comforter white blanket white snow white southern comfort white south
corporate and government city lights counting monies
greased oil slicked back hair scalps scalped dentists appropriating native american hunting tools
scalped girl appropriating brown skin
winter lips kiss kiss kiss
from root to tip toe down the hallway to scar thighs
thigh highs soft like southern comfort white south and the blood is red
but red blood cells are combatants of white blood cells like
winter lips are combatants of
her thoughts

You were wrong about me…

You were
Wrong
About me

And I am glad I realize this now
Because you would never have been the one to admit it
And now I am done
You gave me nothing
Except snide remarks

You never had a good thing to say
        Never had a kind word leave your lips
  That is until it was greased with black velvet

Then and only then
They pour out, slurring and sloshing
Like the last drink before bed

Only your words don’t come with ice
Like your ***** have to

But some times
More often than not
No words are said at all

For more than a year at times
Nothing was said

No Happy birthday
No merry Christmas
And least of all
A Hello

So now that I have spent time without you
Out of earshot
I am starting to see how wrong you were
But I am also seeing you for who you are
You are no longer the reflection
Looking up at me in the broken glass
                              I had to swept up from the floor
You aren’t the spontaneous, Unreliable
Dad who goes out and buys a sailboat

No instead I see who you really are

Hurt, Scared, Defensive
Only you can’t raise a child  at arm’s length
I can relate to your child hood
After all I too know what its like to try and sift pearls of wisdom from the fountain of inebriated words pouring from a parents mouth
Maybe I just got better at it than you
It takes time and you generally just end up with handfuls of ash but every once in a while you see the shimmery white bead of wisdom standing out from its dark surroundings



I do not
In anyway
Condone what you did
Do
But there comes a point that I realized
Part of where our relationship being muddled messed up and painful falls to me
It is not my fault you did what you did
But it was mine that I expected any different
  A bad night
  Ending in tears
  Harsh words and slammed doors
  And profuse apologies the next morning
  The usual every other court mandated weekend
None of which my fault
But the four-hour car ride home
In which I usually decided to forgive you...
     That was
I should have never believed after the second or    
    third time that things would change
After the eighth or ninth
    Or when I lost count
I gave you second chance after second chance
Hoping one day that old ugly saying wouldn’t be true when I woke up the next morning

That saying being:
“I have three priorities
*****
Smokes
And my truck”

I guess I can’t fault you for being honest but when you said sorry and you looked so sincere is when I wanted your honesty to come through while in actuality that’s where it faltered

So it’s not worth me holding a grudge
Getting back and trying to get even

When you hold in all of that poison it hurt you more  
  than who you hold the grudge against

So
   You were wrong about me
I thought you should know and one day if you don’t yet, you will see that
One day I will look back and see how wrong you were but not resent you for it
It's when I realized this I started to forgive you
It may not be okay what happened
But I will be okay so I can’t waist myself on being angry, it only hurts me


So you know what dad

I forgive you

Goddess above me!
Snake of the slime
Alostrael, love me!
Our master, the devil
Prospers the revel.
Tread with your foot
My heart til it hurt!
Tread on it, put
The smear of your dirt
On my love, on my shame
Scribble your name!
Straddle your Beast
My Masterful *****
With the thighs of you greased
With the Sweat of your Itch!
Spit on me, scarlet
Mouth of my harlot!
Now from your wide
Raw ****, the abyss,
Spend spouting the tide
Of your sizzling ****
In my mouth; oh my *****
Let it pour, let it pour!

You stale like a mare
And **** as you stale;
Through straggled wet hair
You spout like a whale.
Splash the manure
And **** from the sewer.
Down to me quick
With your tooth on my lip
And your hand on my *****
With feverish grip
My life as it drinks—
How your breath stinks!

Your hand, oh unclean
Your hand that has wasted
Your love, in obscene
Black masses, that tasted
Your soul, it’s your hand!
Feel my ***** stand!

Your life times from lewd
Little girl, to mature
Worn ***** that has chewed
Your own pile of manure.
Your hand was the key to—
And now your frig me, too!

Rub all the much
Of your **** on me, Leah
****, let me ****
All your glued gonorrhea!
**** without end!
Amen! til you spend!

****! you have harboured
All dirt and disease
In your slimy unbarbered
Loose hole, with its cheese
And its monthlies, and pox
You chewer of *****!
****, you have ******
Up ******, you squirted
Out foetuses, ******
Til ******* you blurted
Out into space—
Spend on my face!

Rub all your gleet away!
Envenom the arrow.
May your pox eat away
Me to the marrow.
**** you have got me;
I love you to rot me!

Spend again, lash me!
Leah, one spasm
Scream to splash me.
Slime of the chasm
Choke me with spilth
Of your sow-belly’s filth.

Stab your demonic
Smile to my brain!
Soak me in cognac
**** and *******;
Sprawl on me! Sit
On my mouth, Leah, ****!

**** on me, ****!
Creamy the curds
That drip from your gut!
Greasy the turds!
Dribble your dung
On the tip of my tongue!

Churn on me, Leah!
Twist on your thighs!
Smear diarrhoea
Into my eyes!
Splutter out ****
From the bottomless pit.

Turn to me, chew it
With me, Leah, *****!
***** it, spew it
And lick it once more.
We can make lust
Drunk on Disgust.

Splay out your gut,
Your *******, my lover!
You buggering ****,
I know where to shove her!
There she goes, plumb
Up the foul *****’s ***!

Sackful of skin
And bone, as I speak
I’ll ****** your grin
Into a shriek.
****** you, ****
****** your gut!

Wriggle, you hog!
Wrench at the pin!
Wrench at it, drag
It half out, **** it in!
Scream, you hog dirt, you!
I want it to hurt you!

Beast-Lioness, squirt
From your *******’s hole!
Belch out the dirt
From your Syphillis soul.
Splutter foul words
Through your supper of turds!

May the Devil our lord, your
Soul scribble over
With sayings of ordure!
Call me your lover!
Slave of the gut
Of the **** of a ****!

Call me your sewer
Of spilth and snot
Your ****-sniffer, chewer
Of the **** in your slot.
Call me that as you rave
In the **** of your slave.

****! ****! Let me come
Alostrael—****!
I’ve spent in your ***.
****! Give me the muck
From my *****’s ****, slick
Dirt of my *****!

Eat it, you sow!
I’m your dog, ****, ****!
Swallow it now!
Rest for a bit!
Satan, you gave
A crown to a slave.

I am your fate, on
Your belly, above you.
I swear it by Satan
Leah, I love you.
I’m going insane
Do it again!

The wake of nevermore
To be forever and more
Flowering

Through the doors of metamorphosis

With whorish twists
To twine the submissive slits
Into bracelets bracing for a face lit
In joyous glee

Cheek to cheek!

The sheen of sheep
Greased and ready to eat

Oh Gristlesworth
Smiling from a bag

Bahhh!
Don't eat the tag

Seven years I lived my life, fading from reality. Crossing into machinery. Robotics with which I am so unfamiliar. Machined, greased, lubricated parts. Built with a purpose. A meaningless purpose. Destined for failure.

A broken down machine I stand. Sit. Lay. Run. Work. Play. Slide. Cursed and wretched as the demons which haunt the dreams of the fallen. I rise above. Skyrocketing through reason. Through the seventh layer of Heaven and Hell. On a false sense of cloud nine I currently float…awaiting the plummet.

Its falling away from me. I sail through a shattered sea of broken glass. I closed my eyes and the tears could not flow. Blocked by my eyelids, restricting emotion. After all of this, I am amazed. The wall could be broken. Forgotten faded memories of which I have no say.

Of past. Of present. Of gifts. Of futures. Of lists. Lists of black. Hit lists in my head. I live in my head. I am not what I wish. I am what I’m not. I am what I dream. A scream. A cry. Laying here, blank as the page on which I cannot create a scene. A scene behind my eyes, yet I cannot attain it on paper. These words flow meaninglessly, but not slow.

Daedalus, Icarus, Thrice. Three times I roam. Randomized plains of thought, laid out on a digital page. Keys, not a pen. Ones and Zeros, not ink. Screens, not pages. Neat, not sloppy…yet my words do not understand one another… nor do I….

If we make the mainland, this song would not be made. Epic beauty, formed through misfortune and tragedy. Oh son…I beg you…keep a steady wing. For you are the only one who means anything to me. My wings are made of melting, shredding, fading elements. The sun, heating, lighting, someday dying. I understand that nothing is as it may seem. Nor is any seam as true as the seamstress believed. The Gods did not take the only thing which meant anything to you, father of legend. Your son is not dead…only afire. Acquired by the forces you believed to be merciful.

Ted Talks in the background, the rush of forming in to me time.
A test, a lure, a net, yes

Sunday, December 09, 2018
11:24 AM

A Beta test, they bet the tithe on the human race.
Wisdom set the milestones,

Pillars to bear the weight of knowing both
possible and impossible no matter how the alpha

bet degrades under pressure to conform, for
Short term gain,

how far out can a man imagine, how future can one be?

Mathematically, wherever, where, in ever, you are you are now.

A platform
A standing place
A flat butte above a

Broad alluvian fan laced with gravity formed fiords,
see, look, we live on a whole world which
is fractured and half frozen.
All of us, ever, have lived here.

Google earth.
Use the tool you have.

See farther than you imagine you can.

Take time,
you have some of your own, right?

You breathe?
Take one breath for only you.
Listen, as you breathe, is this a voice

or mere words we imagine meaning more

than then when we imagined

we were seeing through goggles,
no peripheral augmentation,

goggles with blinders, urban adapted tech
from the old days,
blinders?

War horses in the Iron empire wore blinders,
Chariot racing war horses always wear blinders,

boys watching wagons in movies would notice blinders
if such boys had grown to knowing idle from not in

my realitiy. Itified, but run within,
disconnected from competing reality ifications
I inherited with the wind.

Watch the welder's goggles, see when he removes them,
don't attempt to see what he saw through them,
trust me, he was not making gods.

I say again. Radio to now.
re-ad re-al re-wise devize a way where there
nor there
nor there, nor then, nor then and there
is no way to seem, no other
being than being, as a verb.

No else.
Oh, well, I'll tell.

A heretic is a self-willed entity able to think about thinking,
e-special when time is in turmoil,

We all have our life and being in time, at the moment.
We behave, then one has an urge, a whim, a fantasy…

see further, see different, ex-spire-ment. Bet that breath,
the one you took for yourself,
the one you treasure.

Take a step,
Fear not, giant steps feel like falling going down and
mountains going up, but get some altitude

see where the snake in the core of the magneto sphere
shed its skin, shook off the dust of the third world,
attached each spec of dust,
be it any element or rele mental in the re-alm of Whatsoever,
a single gravity bound drop of water.
In that,
Suspend the noble miner-als, dis-solve the salts and acids and such

Let the eukaryotic work on version 2.0, epi-genetically, as
they shall say, some day, after the fact.

A little leaven, the kingdom is like that, when it works.

Wanna bet this makes some dust? Did you sneeze? Or me?

think now, 's no co incidence, me writin', you readin'
it happened. A hap hapt. We share that,
infection effect.

We breathed an effectual breath, together,
in and out, the clues are everywhere,

the better man won, then we became better,
both, wombed and un. one another we

make, effectual we, make good,
by our very nature,
born, as we were post the information deluge
that washed the blinders from our
children's eyes, for ever after.

we can be the side-bet clan,
betta value, betta moment of your own time
attention to the mean
general inteleosity
of being better,

being better beta testers for effectual fervent hope
for good for goodness sake.

Heroes go through hell.
We never pitch a tent and dance around Pandemonium.

The bet. AI is or am?
See it logger rythmical,
Ax,
hands to handle to tool to cut, break, scrape.
How would you, you, chop a tree?
Eat? You, not ancient ancestor you, you

manifested mature **** sapien sapiens augmented you,
what do you think will make life, in general,
be tending toward your happy ever after,

after silence, for about the space of half a time?

Hey, how do I say looky here here?
I am
alone.
Ah,
some know Ah, she knows,
Wisdom has a way, a wombed man,
beyond the original
ginal general gentle plan for an atom on this scale,

but nothing is impossible, so something must be done.

Progress, motion.
Relative to what, do you perceive motion?
Whence base ye di-rect e-rectors forming lines

point A to point B to so on soon as someone
sees forever in the apple of his Grandma's eye.

[found on a stele in northern Baja, 2018. Interpreted, sometime later]
(ragpicker's note: this thread links to a junkyard near a Green Book,
The Loma Vista, listing.) The sign, in those days, read:

Axles greased for free.

The symbols mean now that people
travailed along these old stone roads,
and kindness in the journey
greased the wheels in the wheels of those
auto-mobile-means of travailing.

Axles greased for free. Will sing for my supper.
Will you wont you will you join my dance?
Free
Golden oils,
gifts from the whale that ate my father for
non-monetetical bearing
of the wait to know,
wheel,
before it squeeked.

Itching ears, hear? The squeeks, the growns as the old
home stretches,
like her skin's too tight,

Ah, intelligence generally
available for the price of the tools used to use
any knowledge perfect
or perfecting
effecting
affecting the manufacture of you, Roll on,

out to infect the masses shopping for hope.
Sneeze for me, say Ah. We knew her when…

Wisdom was the reason for the season.
The principal setter of the sakes,
also set beginning and end.

Side-bet. 2 bucks, I bet time is temporary.
Paypal me when you lose. Ten to one, my favor.
Collect from Wisdom if you win. Even money.

A hundred thousand miles
were written on his face
He'd earned near every wrinkle
Did this cowboy known as "Jace"
He'd ridden cross the country
From Death Valley up to Maine
In weather full of sunshine
To the roughest hurricane
He owned two pair of Levis
One for workin', one for church
To know how long he'd been here
You'd really have to search
"Jace" was born in Kansas
In the spring of fifty one
His parents were both teachers
And he was their only son
Kansas was a "free" state
One where slaves were free men too
Where the soldiers were militia men
Who served in Union Blue
The fighting up in Kansas
started before the civil war
They were fighting over slavery
For many years before
The first call up was in summer
Back in June of sixty one
Jace's father got his papers
And he left his wife and son
The First Kansas Regiment
Were a proud and fearsome lot
They were a tougher foe to battle
Than the South had at first thought
"Jace's" father was a Captain
In fact he had his own brigade
And he was a decorated soldier
For his dues,  this man had paid
In October of sixty four
He was riding his horse "Sleek"
When we was killed by a "grey" ******
At The Battle of Marmiton Creek
The news got home directly
"Jace" and Mother quickly left
They boarded up the house
And then, they headed for the west
With no father to guide him
Jace became the man at home
He didn't like to settle
And he would much rather roam
His mother passed...consumption
Jace was only seventeen
He was not one for mourning
If you know just what I mean
He needed work to get some cash
He left school....and could ride
And he always had his rifle
Just hanging by his side
He could shoot better than older men
And he could ride just like the wind
And even at this early age
He was leathery of skin
Jace joined in a cattle drive
Moving eastward from the west
He didn't take much time to prove
He was equal to the test
Roping, branding, riding herd
Jace was comfortable as hell
But, he rarely ever said a word
Jace would hardly ever yell
He would eat off from the main group
Always watching, keeping post
He would have his own small fire
The men would call him "ghost"
He never settled down at all
Just rode from west to east
Then turning round he'd return home
His palms had now been greased
He didn't spend much money
He kept it in a bank back home
He had a spread in Austin
And he ..yep, lived there all alone
Each time he'd run a herd across
The country he would buy
Some more land in the area
Or at least, most times he'd try
He had a man named Sancho
Worked the ranch and kept it up
and a young lad known as Felize
Followed Sancho like a pup
Jace would come and clean his rig
Never staying past a week
Then he'd be back out on the trail again
On his second horse...still "Sleek"
His jeans were crusted over
Clay and mud from all the drives
There was more age in this mans jeans
Than most cats did have lives
He beat them with a broom at home
Never ever washed them clean
He said by looking at the dirt on here
I know exactly where I've been
A grizzled old range  cowboy
With a skin as tough as hide
He was never home for very long
Always waiting for the ride
In Austin his ranch was just huge
14 thousand acres square
But, what good was a ranch that big
When he was never there
"Land is something stable"
"They can never make more land"
"But as for cold cash money"
"It's not worth a field of sand"
He died while home in Austin
Nineteen hundred twenty nine
The market crashed around him
But he said, "All this is mine"
They took him back to Kansas
To be buried at his start
He was buried near his father
And his mom, god bless her heart
He gave his land to Sanche
and gave some to Felize too
They kept it up for him so long
It was the least that he could do
He was the image of a cowboy
A loner, sagebrush in his soul
But in the end , it was family
For that's what kept him whole.

I am the sort
whose love will perch
cross-legged
on a kitchen counter top and
watch
the snake-tongue sizzle
of my heart
diced and flying
in your un-greased
frying
pan while you so innocently
sautee
the thick skin of what could
once have made you
cry
and run so easily
and only then will you look up
as if to say
"are you up for a little stir
fry
tonight?"

Grumble

Of pugs. Or old men. Correlates to the grouping
of wrinkles: smile lines (down) whiskers (up). Synonymous to a gaggle of geese. Or women.
A grumbleman steps on the Pug's tail
and a passing girl hears
a crack, yelp, ****. She turns to help
but the grumbleman is gone and the pug
with him. She wonders why her neighbor's car
is still at her Mom's house? Why her Mom
wants to be called Veronica not Mary. One night she dreamed Veronica dancing on their roof
in the rain holding tight to an old red picture whispering to a woman on the lawn dancing
dry in white. She tried to call out to Veronica
she saw her slipping, but when she touched her lips
She felt them sewn shut with coarse, wet thread. Veronica turned and flew to her, to the window, grabbing her hands forcing fingers to feel
the brail graven into her Mother's giggling teeth that read, Don't look, your father will be bleeding soon. She awoke and her window was bound
in greased black leather. The floor ashen. Her lips still sewn
shut.

Anne stood,
picked out her fathers bones
Veronica had sewn into her
pillowcase
and
she
danced.

The world's greased, watch your step or you might slip and fall off of it,
Serpent in the garden where you're walking, show cautiousness

And nothing really grows there in the shadow of the Pyramid,
Of our plutonomy,
But honestly,
from the top the image probably isn't that vivid

That we're rats in the labyrinth scolded for eating cheese,
That we're lepers on our island rebuked for our disease

Once a pigeon ascends with doves, all in the name of peace,
The thin air is too comfortable, to return him to the streets

Hypnotized by a box framed with Rose-Colored glass
While The Owl burns bright and The Baphomet laughs

There are two sides to all. Two sides
To the world, and where it may sit
On the wheel. Black or red?

A split of inheritance. Right sided
Dreams, left sided mornings. Mournings
For those fragments of imagination

Left gagged and bounded. Tamed by
Penny-pinching and waist-trimming
And all other concepts that work like

A chisel. Chip away at me, they happen
Like thorns and barbs until I don’t look
In mirrors. And I dare not breathe past sighs.

A split of inheritance. The joy of invention,
A brain for science. New discoveries smash
Like champagne bottles to bless understanding.

It splits. It splits in two. The descendants build
On the used brownfields. Grey matter on grey matter
As if building over condemned land.

The roses of love and star-travel are but one side.
A veneer, more accurately. For in their gift
We would pick apart their heads, our heads,

Forgetting the years of thicket and thorn that
Had grown underneath. In forgetting, they talk
Of surprise at our true nature, though the thorns came

Long before the flowers, and were ever-present throughout.

Each measure of wonder; of love and poem and comedy
Are cruelly tempered. They are tamed by lust.
Lust for power, for vengeance. In-group. Out-group.

Heads or tails? I lie instead on my side.
A fallow state, a false parade. Technicolor masts
To sail lazily on my false knowledge. I speak of compassion

And philosophy. I hope they validate me
In the same way certificates do, for those men in suits.
Their success apparent and substantial, its frame

Weighs heavy on me. Barbs and dead weight,
My breath perishes uselessly I feel. A dandelion head
Caught in a chain link fence or a jungle of concrete,
Full of promise, pregnant with fertility
In a sea of barren saltwater and cigarette ash.
There’s nothing left but to write. There are

Two sides, two sides to all. Two sides to my words,
The hope of a finished poem. The harrowing read-through
By the morning. A mourning for myself

And my inactivity. The breadth of life in other’s words,
Tales of movements, experience; novelties in my
Small-town mind. I dream of Peru.

Two sides to myself. Two sides as there is to all.
One side is a virtuoso. Tuxedo-clad and hair slicked back,
Detaching from its greased trap only through

My movements with the keys. A movement free
Of thought. A meditation of music, a collective
Unconscious of chords. It is a side.

The same side that tells of tales past. Man lived
Before money. If man dies, money is contracted to go too.
It is bound. It is rite. It is truth.

The other side, though. The other side
Begs and borrows. It casts anger at my dreams
And how they lighten my wallet so. It hacks

Away with my lungs. Cigarette tar laced in bronchioles,
The result of a dream unrealised. I fidget in this other side.
It makes me shift in my seat, forever impounding,

Forever confounding. Forever uncomfortable.

There are two sides, two sides to all.
One is the scope of man, the ideal self.
The other is the result. A bulb-lit scoreboard

Above our heads. Money signs and bloodlines
Are a measure of man. Our measure. Two teams;
One competing for gold, the other asking

Of what competition is at all. And so one side
Sees us as animals, our rules foolish and lame
Aside those of Nature (with a capital ‘N’)

And the other tells us it is all there is. At least
All that there is worth knowing. For what good
Is it, to dream of the stars? Or Peru, even?

If you do not have the successes to get there?

Two sides, there is forever two sides.
One is a love for myself and for all.
The other is brain-chatter. It tells me little

But it says a lot.

You towed your broken down
beat up, used, rusted old
Chevy into my workshop
smelling like crap, and looking a whole lot worse
she had a busted engine
sputtered like a plane
(but not in a good way)
you leaked black oil all over my floors
stains of which I still can’t remove
no matter how many gallons of bleach I use
the radiator, well let’s just say
had seen better days
the interior leather seats were torn
and the once slick body
looked like you had *******
some mafia kingpin
so I spent my days and nights
greased up and elbow deep,
in your muck trying desperately,
but lovingly
to do what a mechanic does best
and I was leaking time
like I owned it, when I could’ve
should’ve found a more profitable fixer upper
I told myself, no convinced myself otherwise
and eventually, against the odds,
fixed you
then some schmo walks in
a bulging from both pockets
from wads of cash
and grabs you right outta my hands
the you I returned
to a shiny beauty as best I could
with the tools I had
well then, maybe I did fix you
I just never realised, I was doing it
for someone else.

each stroke of greased fingers on the mohawk
was a result of a genius work of art
an outlet where my soul barely peeks
yet you cut with your hypocritical shears and your rusty hand
and you call it discipline
and you call it concern
I call it *******

the shadows on my
eyelids were davincis and picassos
sketched in a magnificent representation
of inner self which you all want to see
yet suffocate by your rotten curricula
and you call it quality
and you call it excellence
I call it *******

the silver that glitters in these ears
conceals the tortures of my youth
the horrors that dwell in my every sleep
yet you rip from my skin you are unworthy of touch
and you call it decency
and you call it suitability
I call it *******

© Glenn L. Sentes

Peter built a paper boat
To set afloat upon the sea
And visit spots of hidden coast
Where not a ghost of man would be
He painted letters on her bow
Which soon would plough and skip and trot
Between the waves which rose and fell
The letters spelled ‘Forget Me Not’

He bid his love a fond goodbye
The tide was high when he embarked
And drifted from his lonely cove
While weather drove and seagulls larked
His course was set, horizon bound
For solid ground and ****** shore
When darkness fell he made a bed
'Goodnight' he said and nothing more

His fast was broken elegantly
Delicately poached, his eggs
His freshly laundered morning clothes
Were hung in rows on paper pegs
He cut a furrow, straight and true
Across the blue, towards the sun
But in the distance, lightning spat
As thunder rattled, eddies spun

The tempest threw a wall of ice
Like careless dice, they clattered down
The sails dropped amid the squall
The hatches all were battened down
A curse was uttered through the storm
Its evil born on salty spray
With gusting arms of icy wet
It threw Forget Me Not away

He coughed awake, all caked in sand
Upon a strand of desert beach
Forget Me Not had run a-ground
But safely found the water's reach
He walked ashore and found a glade
Within it, made a paper home
And origami wings, he built
To never wilt and ever roam

He felled the tree and smote the ground
A frame, he wound of paper string
His garden flourished all around
Each sight and sound of ever-spring
The flowers jostled in their beds
And turned their heads to follow him
He kept his distance from the blue
In case the view should swallow him

An evil creature stalked the trees
It dined on bees and butterflies
On owls and cats, it liked to sup
To gobble up and gluttonize
With paper sword, he killed the beast
And cooked a feast to celebrate
A rain cloud sought to disagree
But quick was he to remonstrate

He flew his island, shore to shore
And kept a score of fire flies
They hung imprisoned in a glass
The light they cast could hypnotise
With nothing left to see or do
He flew up to the highest spot
And carved into a single tree
Remember me, forget me not

His boat remade and set a-sail
The heavens pale with early dawn
Upon his bed, he sat inert
With paper curtains neatly drawn
His charts uncharted, compass blunt
A currant bun, to satiate
A world of peril out to sea
To skillfully negotiate

Some time to contemplate the past
And backward cast the here and now
The Merfolk sang a siren song
And leapt along beside his bough
They guided him to foreign ports
Where shady sorts in cider soak
The tales they told were sizeable
And risible, the words they spoke

He folded down his paper boat
Into a coat of paper lace
And set the ocean to his back
The open track, he turned to face
The way he took was through a copse
The swaying tops of mighty pines
Leant form and rhythm to his pace
Upon his face were thoughtful lines

To either side, the shadows grew
No more, the blue shone through the boughs
And branch and bracken, driven wide
Were cast aside as careless vows
He chanced upon a quiet nook
A winding brook, it scurried by
It seemed a place where time would bide
While either side it hurried by

So dining sparse on only bread
He laid his head upon the ground
A lullaby the branches sighed
Was far and wide, the only sound
He deftly pitched a paper tent
And in it, spent a weary night
A whisper echoed in his ear
It lingered near, beyond his sight

So many weeks of rambling
Through bramble and through briar patch
And pausing for an hour at best
With feet to rest and breath to catch
The summer season on the wane
With autumn rain, attention pinned
To pounce on unsuspecting shoulder
Ever colder rose the wind

Above the adolescent fruit
Fed by the roots of ancient trees
Gave promise of a juicy crop
But yet to drop, they simply tease
Upon a morning laced with dew
A shadow grew and fell across
The spongy ground rose underfoot
And boulders jutted through the moss

The space between the trunks expanded
Saplings stranded on the scree
And whispers carried on the air
From places where they couldn't be
A sheer cliff now blocked the way
A ***** gray and smothering
Against, there thrived a mess of vines
With jagged spines their covering

He found a cave and ventured in
A desperate grin upon his lips
His chattering of nervous teeth
Was lost beneath the endless drips
Reverberating ceaselessly
Increasing with each fall of foot
A passageway and crooked path
By wrath of ancient water, cut

The arid air was felt to shift
And Peter sniffed a musky trace
The passage opened wide and tall
It sprawled into a massive space
The walls were smooth as beetle hide
But all inside was bathed in black
The flies were putting up a fight
But solid night was biting back

A tower carved from stalactite
In spite of probability
Was looming from the cavern top
And from it dropped futility
A spring of purest liquid gloom
Within, there bloomed an evil thirst
For those who drank a thimble worth
Would tread the earth, forever cursed

The cavern floor was laced with dust
A powdered crust of rotted skin
As Peter neared the central spire
The fire flies grew weak and thin
But all across the distant dark
There lit a spark and sprang a flame
That burst from ancient blackened lamp
To banish damp and shadow shame

A scrabbling amid the murk
As forward, lurked a breaking wave
Of decomposing denizens
The citizens of Evergrave
With sinew bared through rotted hide
The flesh inside was yellowing
From every throat that still remained
There shot a baneful bellowing

They forced him to the tower's tip
From which the drip of night was thrown
Gruesome stairs he climbed in haste
Of interlaced and knotted bone
A dire tunnel led within
The light was thin and shadow thick
A deathly door he tumbled through
And fell into a bloodied slick

Within was rank and heavy air
Like foxes lair where hunters slept
The walls, from living flesh, were stitched
The carpet twitched as Peter stepped
The Zombie Queen sat on her throne
Of flesh and bone of Underlands
She rested on its gory arms
Which raised their palms and held her hands

The creature laughed and cocked her head
A single thread of drool there hung
Between her lips and fear crowned
The single sound which echoes sung
The living walls, they tensed and strained
As terror reigned and ichor dripped
And when the monarch of the dead
Inclined her head, the stitches ripped

She spoke in harsh and bitter tones
As withered crones do curses bloom
The fate of Peter turned to dread
His soul, the dead would soon entomb
A single card he had to play
On such a day, in such a spot
He grinned and bid the rotting queen
‘Your time has been, forget me not’

His folded coat he casted wide
And from inside, a paper storm
Within the flurry, shapes were made
As wings were splayed and talons formed
A paper dragon rustled forth
And in his jaws, the queen he caught
He turned on the assembled dead
Within his head, a single thought

Peter climbed between the wings
Where paper rings he’d fastened there
Gave safety for the coming fight
And all the night, he nestled there
Until the dragon fell asleep
Upon a heap of smitten foes
And Peter robbed the deathly hoard
Each room explored on stealthy toes

He shunned the dark and met the day
And made away for higher ground
Along a path of narrow ledges
Razor edges, upwards wound
A trail, he scaled around the peak
Of Raven’s Beak the mighty mount
Up slopes which claimed so many lives
And widowed wives beyond his count

He stood atop the pinnacle
Where clinical, the ****** snow
Reflecting in the autumn light
Lent all a white and eerie glow
The frost had chilled his fleshy core
His eyes absorbed the scenery
A distant shoreline tugged his soul
A long unfolding memory

Of home and of his fireside
His future bride would tarry there
The tiny church upon the sand
He’d always planned to marry there
He took his dagger from his sock
Into the rock at just that spot
He carved upon the highest stone
I turn to home, forget me not

The knotted land that lay between
Had never been abode to man
The name it took was infamous
And ominous: The Neverspan
Its valleys tinkered with the eye
A fractured sky shone crookedly
Above a wood of vacant trees
That clawed the breezes hookedly

The setting sun would lead the way
Through lands which lay in wait for him
To bare him forth, a paper horse
To keep a course and gait for him
The blackness trickled from the bark
The  tangled dark enshrouded him
And songs in long forgotten tongues
About him hung and clouded him

He journeyed through the Ebonmire
Though fire failed to kindle there
His breath before him writhed in blight
And turned to fight the rancid air
Through many months of loneliness
And bitterness of solitude
He conquered the abandoned wood
And silent stood in gratitude

He forayed through the hill and plain
As on the wane the winters hold
The grass had shaken off the snow
Its Icy glow had turned to gold
A paper hat he now prepared
For as he fared, the rain endured
His horse was crumpled in the wet
No living vet would see it cured

The seasons tumbled mindlessly
And rivalry removed his haste
A sallow band of Neverbeast
By shadow greased and interlaced
With paper sword, he lay in wait
To penetrate each haggard hide
And when their blood was deftly spilled
A phial he filled for sake of pride

The sun became his only guide
His face belied his weariness
With little left to raise his soul
Above the cold and dreariness
Until the second summer passed
And sunset cast a silhouette
The outline of a tiny church
Was perched beside a maisonette

A flutter leapt about his heart
And wide apart, his eyes were flung
As Peter ran with tired limbs
The heavens dimmed and crickets sung
He reached his open garden gate
His face elated, turned to woe
As through the window he could see
His bride to be would not be so

A gentleman stood at her side
His bride adorned in happiness
And though it burned in Peter’s chest
His wrath would rest in idleness
So with a final fleeting peek
He turned to seek a worthy cause
Before he left he knelt before
His former door and seemed to pause

He fled upon his paper wings
As many things he’d yet to see
A myriad of foreign faces
Distant places he should be
He sailed the sky and sought the sand
His native land he soon forgot
Behind, he left a single note
And on it wrote: Forget me not