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Tim Knight Oct 2016
I sit and try and be a lotus
after killing the third fly of the evening
with a pocket book of recipes and a
thirty centimetre ruler stolen
from bathroom **** measuring contests to our knees.

Young professionals tread these boards
and I watch, trying to paint them lotus.

I listen and learn like I was told to do
then clock watch, mop, cycle home to you;
I am still trying to be a lotus
even in wet shoes and no socks.

With less than five-hundred pounds to my various names,
an office-chair-***-clothes-horse, eight USB charging ports
and a future that stretches to Sunday’s last reluctant second,
I am sitting, trying to be lotus figuring out the professional path
David Attenborough heard in his gentleman’s class: that son of a-

- I walked into an army recruitment vault with dreams of being Gulliver,
though was asked to leave out the cat flap cathedral door back into war
as they’d got their laugh and didn’t applaud.

Perhaps I should’ve been better at maths
where apparently a career can be predicted on a scatter graph,
and the pigeons of today were the pigeons of next year and the months that’ll follow the century after that.

I am still trying to figure out the hoo-ha of *******
and ring fingers and collar sizes and the inner circles
of hyenas when the winter solstice splits the seasons.

There is no reason for this lotus procrastination
when what’s there to live for but a crooked world
and one bandage left.
timcsp
RAJ NANDY Jun 2017
Dear Poet Friends, the Sphinx remains shrouded in myth, legend, and History. Modern research by archaeologists and Egyptologists have revealed some of its hidden mysteries. My research has resulted in providing you with a short & a balanced view about the Sphinx, keeping in mind the short attention span of my readers. Unfortunately, I am not able to post the Illustrative photographs here which accompanies my Sphinx story. Hope you like this story, thanks, - Raj Nandy, New Delhi.
            
         THE MYSTERY OF THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX

INTRODUCTION
Towering over the Giza plateau facing the rising sun over the
River Nile,
The Sphinx stands defiant for over four millennia, braving the
vagaries of weather and marauding time!
With a lion’s body and a human head the Sphinx remains
shrouded in part myth, part legend, and ancient History.
While the date of its construction, and identity of its face
have intrigued scholars for many centuries.
Today I shall tell you about this monumental and magnificent
structure,
Which stands as an iconic symbol of Egyptian architecture!
Man fears Time since he forever remains as it’s bonded
prisoner in captivity.
However, only few hours of freedom are granted to him during
his earthly sojourn, to live and love life with impunity!
But Time fears the Pyramid and the Sphinx, as they stand
defiant with their raised head;
As miniature symbols of eternity which even Time dreads!

MYTHS AND LEGEND ABOUT THE SPHINX
Many controversies and theories abound as to the identity
of its builders during ancient times.
Some say it was built by the people who came from Plato’s
lost ‘Continent of Atlantis’, prior to the Egyptians, way back
in time!
Others say it was the ancient Zulus who had inhabited the
wet and rainy Giza region with its great lake.
Around 8000 BC, during the close of the Great Ice Age!
But with changing weather pattern the Giza region later became
a desolate and a deserted area.
Yet no records or hieroglyphs survive, to make things clear.
The name ‘Sphinx’ is said to have been given 2000 years later  
by the enterprising Greeks.
Since in Greek Mythology there is a Sphinx, but with a woman’s
face, a lion’s body and with eagle’s wings;
Which guarded the entrance to the ancient Greek City of Thebes.
To the Greeks we owe the ‘Riddle of the Sphinx’ which asked all
passing travelers the following question:
“What is it that has one voice, and walks with four legs in the
morning, with two during the day, and with three in the evening
time?”  - about which those travelers had no notion!
The Sphinx devoured all those who had failed to answer, till the
Greek Oedipus confronted the Sphinx and replied,
That the riddle had described the three stages of a Man’s life.  
Since he crawled on all four as a child, grew up to walk on two
legs.
But during old age used a stick which became his third leg.
Hearing the correct answer the Sphinx is said to have jumped
into an abyss killing itself!

THE  SPHINX PROPER  
Modern Egyptologists generally agree, that the Sphinx had been
carved out from a single mass of limestone mound, -
Which dominated the Giza plateau before 2540 BC.
Built by Pharaoh Kufu’s son Khafre of the Fourth Dynasty.
Khafre was the builder of the second largest pyramid standing
next to his father’s Great Pyramid of Giza.  
While the Sphinx stands on the eastern most boundary of the
Desert Sahara;
Six miles west of Cairo, on the edge of Giza plateau.
It is 240 feet in length and almost 70 feet in height, aligned to
the Pyramid of Khafre behind.
The Sphinx lies on its hunches guarding the vast ‘City of the Dead’.
Where pharaohs mummified bodies lie deep within the pyramids;
To facilitate journey of their soul to gain eternal life and be
resurrected,
To join the Happy Fields of Osiris the Egyptian God of after-life
and death.

Great conquerors like Alexander and Napoleon had stood
dwarfed before the mighty Sphinx.
But to Napoleon we remain grateful for our knowledge of
Egyptian civilisation among other things.
For it was his soldiers who had discovered the Rosetta Stone
in Egypt in 1799, with its  bilingual inscription.
Written in Egyptian hieroglyphs and Coptic Greek, resulting in
the decipherment of the Ancient Egyptian pictorial inscriptions!

EXCAVATIONS AND RESEARCH WORK
The Sphinx had been buried by the shifting sands of the desert
many a time during past centuries.
While periodic restoration work continues to preserve it for
posterity.
American archeologist Mark Lehner and his team during the 1970s,
had analysed the bedrock under the mighty Sphinx.
They found natural cracks and fissures, and also narrow passage
ways dug by early treasure seekers!
His team climbed all over the Sphinx like Lilliputians over Gulliver, -  while mapping its structure entire.
It was found the Sphinx had been subjected to five major restoration efforts since 1400 BC .
While Mark’s dedicated efforts earned him a Doctorate in Egyptology at the Yale University.

Mark’s research also concluded that the visage of the Sphinx was
once painted in red.
While traces of blue and golden yellow decorated the ‘nemes’, the
Pharaoh’s brightly stripped head dress.
Controversies rage even to this date, as to whose features the
Sphinx’s Negroid face did actually represent.
While the disfigured nose of the Sphinx has given rise to many
speculations.
Was it the Muslim Arab conquerors, or a fanatical Sufi Turk who had tried to destroyed it as a pagan symbol!
Today I recall that the mighty 1700 years’ old statue of the Bamiyan
Buddha in Central Afghanistan.
Which was destroyed during March 2001 as a pagan statue by the
fanatical Taliban!
  
Mark feels that in all likelihood the Sphinx’s face was that of Khafre, with whose pyramid the Sphinx stands aligned.
While those ancient architects had arranged the location of the three pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx in conformity with solar events, - while choosing their construction site.
A settlement bigger than 10 football fields at this site was excavated,
Where the Sphinx formed an integral part of Pharaoh Khafre’s building complex!
This ‘Lost City’ of Mark Lehner had barracks, workmen’s quarters and kitchenette.
While remnants of diets found suggested workers were perhaps
rendering national service, and were not slaves.
No iron or bronze tools were found, only crude stone hammers and
copper chisels lay buried beneath the ground.
These copper chisels had to be sharpened at the charcoal furnace
frequently, for executing chiseling  work with artistry.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE GIZA COMPLEX AREA
Mark Lehner and other Egyptologists felt that the pyramids, Sphinx, and the Temples Complex of Khafre was thoughtfully arranged,
For linking solar events and harnessing the power of the Sun God  
to resurrect the soul of the Pharaohs after their death!
This transformation not only guaranteed eternal life for their dead king,
But also sustained the universal national order, passing of seasons, the annual flooding of the Nile, and their people’s well being.
During sunset at March or September equinoxes when the sun appears to sink into the shoulder of the Sphinx, -
“At the very same moment the shadows of the Sphinx and the pyramids
both symbol of the king becomes merged silhouettes.
Sphinx representing Khafre as Horus the revered falcon god, offers with
his two paws to his father Khufu incarnated as Ra the sun god, who rises
and sets in that temple,” – as the ancient Egyptian’s thought.
Unfortunately  Kafre’s dream was not realised, since the Sphinx Temple remained unfinished as now we get to see,
As the Old Kingdom of Egypt finally broke apart around 2130 BC.
The desert sand began to gradually swallow up the Sphinx, till almost a thousand years later,
Thutmosis IV cleared the area, and introduced cult of Sphinx worship during the New Kingdom Era!
Rest is history, which has been already covered by me.

     CONCLUDING THE SPHINX STORY
The ancient Sphinx as Egypt’s iconic art,
Has captured the onlookers mind and heart.
Buried deep within its shifting sand,
Lies many a secret still unknown to man!
The Sphinx still beckons out to me,
Perhaps one day I shall get to see.
Today the Sphinx stares out at a fast food restaurant.
As it now faces a full frontal urban assault!
The rising water level of the Nile, tourism, traffic, and
air pollution, along with many urban constructions;
Make the authorities to worry about its preservation!
The Sphinx beckons out to man from eons past,
What is that secret it wants to share with us?
Perhaps it is about Environmental Degradation;
And the urgent need for Global Preservation!
                                                   ­        -Raj Nandy
ALL COPYRIGHTS WITH THE AUTHOR ONLY
Robin Carretti Jun 2018
Computer Dog-gone it Bow Wow
Queen of Sheba and Shiba Inu
  The doggy treat paws ring
my bell ring my bell
Looking at my eyes of Apple
will always tell how many
times you're going to App me
Please I don't have time for
games outcrop me or
do not cop out
Paws of  digging some
INC. of Instagram

Uncle Sam took my stocks
and bonds Eyes to my map
diagram
Eyes of the Apple rotten mail
Webby Ms. Debby deleted it

One Nighty gown
Nighting Gale
He's always doing on eye story
(Spy Eye) July 4th  cheese and
******* male
Old news her Eyes Ms. Firecracker
New computer demands
A silence of the Lamb Hector -
Eyes at her doorway
Save my butterfly
The hacker has too many free time

Newsstands on the corner
Eyes of more crime
That computer trucker
Clicks away his I apple
CD covers
The computer I crown thee

Eyes to the doorway
CLICKS City Chicks
Don't want me anyway

All Commands
We know the game
money hands what
a commuter

The web of the eye’s
All we see are walnuts
and apple pies
The computer always on the rise
No computer wiz will get fired?
Like Jeopardy computer high
investment commodity
Steve Jobs the winner
Apples and techno cars
and comedians

Apple web got married gown
Kleinfeld's wed whites computer
to curve their enthusiasm
Jerry Seinfeld made a switch
Steven Universe webby podcast  
eyes crystal witchcraft

Macintosh gold rush floppy disk
Took  a big money crash risk

“New” invention thinking
All pluses
Einstein Web Star
Mass VIP pass
Too many copycats
Brownstone coffee
I pad happy Ireland lads
Ballerina no sleeping beauty
Pancake needed to get work done
Up in the Robin hood Penthouse
Apple Museum
International of excellence
She is so Apple Lisa
the picture with sad smiles of
Mona Lisa

Apple webby

2. SUNDAY bye STAR the news Steve Jobs
Gave a web forecast Hazy hackers
Eyes stormy computer crashes
Computer laptop Cafes surfing
and best beer hubs reading what
on the news with Steve Jobs
Apple I for an Eye
and his last patent Mac OSX Dock
was well granted the day of his death

The big Apple how he started it.
The city never Sleep’s.
I had you fooled?
On April Fools day 1976 Steve
Wozniak and Steve Jobs made history

So robotic computerized
Pixar Animation
studio environment
where excellence to
(Robotic Perfection)
Innovation on an
impossible mission

Hi, Sirprize to your husband bills
Apple web of desires chills
Going through a computer maze
graphically cool sin paired to win

Her brain shines eyes still clicking
Godly animation

Now you were rich
enough to take a vacation
Eyes went up to the heights
No more fighting interface and
Xerox his baby loaded up
like a Paradox my
cream cheese lox
Apple Jubilee coffee
she could soften anybody
Until you love the
Software apple
the product of computer sky?
Robin’s Risque eyes
deeply web- bye
Tower upload.

The best Apple eye reload
ferocious love suitcase of
computer products flight
Megababes Queen we
are the Champion
and hardware prowl like a
Smart crime no yellow tape
That sophisticated owl moon
computer ***** cried Wolfie
She was howling Apple selfie
eyes red fire has driven

Supermoon so blessed
caress nuanced
Word’s spat cheetah cat
Web milk me the succession
Apple Web goodbye never
Buying Xerox stocks forever
Macintosh Floppy Disk
New world tasks
“Love” 1/2 Grain “Orient Express”
she spoke like the speeding link.

He got hooked what a
((Chrome Apple))
Uncivilized phone silverized
or Clone senior citizen or exotic
black cheetah list
Hew-let Packard flavor
couldn’t resist what an enterprise.

It’s all in the Apple eyes

I Apple of her eyephone we
need earplugs (Adam and Eve)
have some nifty spark plugs
Hub purr personalities
eye’s “Software”
Cat’s Eye has nine lives
of responsibilities
Love of art computer theater

He’s Stocks her sweet candy
but he had the
  Einstein's eyes such mass and gravity
a good set of lungs webcomic

Her silk detailed blouse
got caught in his apple martini
Extra news story read all about it!
Carriage rider what a glider
took her baby-computer
traveler soft hand
met her Gulliver travel

He computerized her love clicks
Gave her new baby chicks
more living to do on Google
I rather have my Moms Kugel
Eyes better not be on a rotten apple this is the working world start clicking and these are the hot shots the Apple web, not a piece of cookies Lil Debs
Nigel Morgan Jan 2013
(after a watercolour by Mary Fedden OBE RA)
 
It is early morning, a Tuesday in June. It is May’s birthday. She likes to get up early on her birthday and join her husband on the beach. He has been up since five, fiddling about, making tea, reading a little, avoiding his desk. May thinks, when she watches him dress with a half an eye open feigning sleep, he looks so distinguished with his silver, nearly white hair and that beard (her suggestion). And today I am forty-five and he is . . . old enough to be my father. But he is my companion, my love, my watcher who stalks me still with his gaze of admiration, which I never tire of when we are alone, but I am sometimes embarrassed by when we are in company. He knows this, but he can’t help himself. He says he loves to watch me cross a room, stand still against a window, reach for a vase on a shelf, sit at my work table, intent.
 
May sees him far down the beach as she walks with purpose through the dunes that separate their cottage from the beach. Her short boots glisten with the heavy dew. She has pulled on her work dress over her striped nightshirt, a dress she wove in a grey Jura their first long winter. There he is in his stupid cap his grandson gave him when he acquired the boat. He’s carrying a fishing net to collect creatures from the rock pools further down the beach. She remembers when this ‘interest’ began. He had read to her one night a long extract from *Father and Son
by Edmund Gosse. It was a kind of threnody to a state that once existed, a veritable Garden of Eden, destroyed in two generations by a mid-Victorian passion for sea-shore collecting. ‘These rock-basins’ Gosse had written, ’fringed by corallines, filled with still water almost as pellucid as the upper air itself, thronged with beautiful sensitive forms of life, - they exist no longer, they are all profaned, and emptied and vulgarized. The fairy paradise has been violated, the exquisite product of the centuries of natural selection has been crushed under the rough paw of well-meaning curiosity.'
 
She loved to hear him read, knowing that he loved to read to her. The joy on his face sometimes; it was worth enduring all the strange things he found to read (she fell asleep so often as he read) just for those occasions when she felt pinned to her seat, grappled to her bed like Gulliver, wishing it would never stop, such words, his dear voice. How long had it been now?
 
He didn’t walk to meet her. He let her walk to him. He stood there waiting. When she drew close he stretched out his arms and arranged her body in front of him, walked back a little and smiled his admiring smile. There were almost tears in his eyes, as there so often were when he had no words. She knew on his desk there would be a poem, and like the poet Ted Hughes (who neither of them could deal with), a birthday letter waiting to be given to her at breakfast, with gifts she knew he had worried over.
 
She stood quite still and let the fresh September wind gather her now quite long hair and turning away from him, let it stream behind her. He had turned too, realising in saying nothing he had said too much. He remembered another birthday on a different shore, a day when she had surrounded him, captured him, loved him with a passion that had now tempered, was the stuff of his writing that now had found its way into a 100 Love Poems to Read before you Die. He had long since refused to speak these out loud, refused to be visible anymore, would not be interviewed; it was now the novel, the long, long journey of a novel, the months, years even (In Praise of Rust took three agonising years).
 
And now, standing in this sun-glinting bay, ignoring the lighthouse, May thought of Mrs Ramsey and that summer party on Skye, those earnest young men, those artistic young women, and her commanding husband who would not look at the lighthouse, who would not countenance a visit.
 
Her husband, strange to think this because she never felt herself his wife, never commanded anything. He made decisions, and then laid things gently aside. It was enough for him to have been decisive. What she did with that was up to her. He wanted her to be free, always free from any command. When they married, to him it was like the silent grace they ‘said’ at each meal. She knew it had meant so much to him: the silence of that moment. He had read to her the morning of their marriage a text from William Penn – she had remembered one phrase  ‘Between a man and his wife nothing ought to rule but love . . .’ And he yet had never commanded her. He seemed to admire her being her own self. She was not his. They were the dearest friends, weren’t they? He expected nothing from her (he had said this so often), no commitment, no promise; just gentleness, a peaceful nature, an understanding that he loved her with a passion she would never understand because she knew he did not understand it himself.
I want to understand the steep thing
that climbs ladders in your throat.
I can't make sense of you.
Everywhere I look you're there--
a vast landmark, a volcano
poking its head through the clouds,
Gulliver sprawled across Lilliput.

I climb into your eyes, looking.
The pupils are black painted stage flats.
They can be pulled down like window shades.
I switch on a light in your iris.
Your brain ticks like a bomb.

In your offhand, mocking way
you've invited me into your chest.
Inside: the blur that poses as your heart.
I'm supposed to go in with a torch
or maybe hot water bottles
& defrost it by hand
as one defrosts an old refrigerator.
It will shudder & sigh
(the icebox to the insomniac).

Oh there's nothing like love between us.
You're the mountain, I am climbing you.
If I fall, you won't be all to blame,
but you'll wait years maybe
for the next doomed expedition.
I'll go along with the thought, 'work makes you strong' just as long as I can
but,
sometimes, I feel pooped and can't jump through the hoops and that's when the dreaming kicks in for this man.
I spin in the frame of life's arcade type game and I'm lost in the wheels,
it feels
like,
riding a bike and not watching the street but meeting the idols I'd most like to meet,
like,
Gulliver,Gilbert and Sullivan,Jimmy Durante,Popeye the sailor and the Tailor of Gloucester,
lost in the throng and unaware of time carrying on,I get older,no wiser,no miser am I,
I give my dreams freely to those I love dearly.
This arcade game plays on though the moment is lost, and reality arrives if only to remind me, that life goes along and in it you'll find me,playing the machines,winning more dreams,sailing through the streams of unconsciousness.
Andrew Name Dec 2015
to wound me with an arrow
take a lurid one
you're high on the barrow
watching how scare I run

burst out of usual shadows
like one-eyed albino ghoul
only to see changing weather
by unintelligible rules

sick of Gulliver's syndrome
from living in a wooden box
where's my abandoned kingdom
I'm fed up with these rocks

so try to aim, warden
I'm not that beast of burden
uhu
Yuvraj Jha Oct 2013
Give me back my soul
For the last trick in the book
After which I’m done
I’ll hang it on the hook

I don’t want your blood
Not even your round tears
Just keep away your smiles
And beneath hidden their fears

There is nothing you have done
That you apparently can
I sometimes wonder what you are
For it’s surely not a man

Just give me back my soul
For the last trick in the book
After which I’m done
I’ll hang it on the hook

Magic the unseen doorway
To the truth behind the lie
Your life’s about to crumble
And you about to cry

Let me put a soft spell
Upon your sleeping eyes
And preserve all your feelings
Before this night dies

Just give me back my soul
For the last quest in the book
After which I’ll be tired
And will hang it on the hook

What became of you Gulliver?
In your scarlet state of mind
To satisfy you pleasure
The poor torturously must die

All your travels have failed you
With all the world that you have seen
You haven’t changed one bit
From the monster you have been

Just give me back my soul
For the last trick in the book
After which I’m done
I’ll hang it on the hook

The high chaired men are fantasizing
Gold studded angels on their chest
After all their bullets have pierced
All those misguided young *******

The judge with his arrogance
Does seem to be unsure
He keeps wondering always
Is he a man or a *****?

Give me back my soul
To play the last trick in the book
After which I’m done
I’ll gladly hang it on the hook

I thought we wouldn’t crumble
Forever be at peace
But man over man does stumble
Like shadow over shadow in deep trees

The hour of knowledge shall not return
Never shall magic sway my heart
The promises of forever have burnt
Another animal must make man’s start

Just give me back my soul
For the last trick in the book
After which I’m done
I’ll hang it on the hook

I don’t want your money
And I don’t want your change
Just give me all your troubles
Before you go insane

Once stop on your footsteps
And look back on the footprints
Is that the path you wished for?
To misery when it hints

Give me back my soul
To play the last trick in the book
After which I’m done
I’ll hang it on the hook

I see the wind still blowing
In the direction whistling before
Our hearts shall never change
Or change the tune of the lore

Will decisions mark our graves?
Or graves decide our fate?
Let magic play its tricks
And love conquer hate

Just give me back my soul once
I’ll play the last trick in the book
And once that I’m satisfied
I’ll never turn and look

Reason escapes my senses
As reasons cry in blood
Must man forever **** man?
Or love instead he should?

Where is the book of knowledge?
Where is the hidden tree?
I don’t want all the answers
Just want answers to find me

So just give me back my soul
For its magic plays the trick
And once after it has played
It shall stand like a stick

Wish your palms weren’t slippery
Your heart would stick too
Though between the sea and devil
You’ll take your pick too

There is just one life
And none shall ever return
Here lies all our laughter
And after, just silence stern

So make all your choices
And be sure of what you choose
For the misery might just **** you
If not your heart left loose

Give me back my soul
I want it one last time
And then you can keep it
Until you get tired

Nothing has changed since man
It’s still the same old joke
As boring as it could ever be
The first trick in the book

No whiskey helps any more
No beer can play the trick
Nothing can replace the feeling
When eyes have changed to bricks

I beg you give my soul back
And I’ll show you a surprise
There is in it nothing
Except your hushed round eyes

Just give me back my soul once
And I’ll kiss you with my tricks
And whisper the magic answer
Into your swollen lips

Just give me back my soul
And I’ll teach you the last trick
For once I’m gone forever
You’ll need it with your stick

Just give me back my soul
For the last trick in the book
And once I’m done with it
I’ll surely hang it on the hook.
Nigel Morgan Oct 2015
Café for Cats

Take your shoes off
and close the child-gate
we don’t want the cats
out in the street please
thank you : our cats
your pleasure their purrs
together
make for a blissful moment
in a hectic world
on this busy street
don’t leave without
taking a cat on your lap
stroking their pedigree fur
all for you and coffee too


Street Art

Prevalent in these parts
the impromptu sketch
the wildly alternative mark
on arches grand designs on
construction-site hoardings
and take this side of a building
here untouched by windows
a canvas blank of brick where
Gulliver’s sister lies gagged
and bound in a Lilliput house
her knees poking through
the upstairs floor


tokyobike

in pastel-green apricot-pink
a lithe machine of delicate frame
and slim-line wheels
would look well in the hall
and out on the street
if properly socked with
your oh so short skirt
the gym-honed thighs
the custom rucksack
tight on your back


Whirl of Leaves

The breath that blows
these notes across the page
the murmuration of fingers
against those resonant strings
up and down to and fro
on music’s path go
the flute and the harp
pursuing the ground
into the autumn air
chasing the wind
until . . .
at a passing wall
they are stilled
into motionless
their rise and swirl
emptied of breath
no more to blow
or pluck these dancing
murmuring
wind-driven notes
but into fermata’s
grasp    

(where despite
a futile final flurry
a long bar’s rest
takes hold
till Spring)


St Paul’s by Night

From across the river
an unexpected view
not just that gracious dome
but the building below
substantially whole complete
for once not hidden by proximity
or an errant developer’s whim
the progress to the great south door
unimpeded when we walked
the well-tempered bridge
as high on the lofty cranes
bright red stars guided
our journey home


Askam Square

In this London square
the trees hold still
as sculptures in
the nothing air
no breeze to animate
their leaves except
a steady gaze might catch
a gentle oscillation
here and there

La Maison vert foncé

So very green this perfect Hoxton house
it could be in a petite ville Française
incongruous here – but such a treasure
geranium-filled window boxes
lace curtained attic rooms
just-have-to-have-a-look inside and see
the dress-maker’s table the library of books
the posters artists’ prints and all
a purposeful lady sits typing at her desk
costume directions for a Pirandello play


Daughter

Last year she’d bought a boat on the river
this year she’s in New York for the week
Keeping tabs on daughters can be wearisome
you hope for hug and to hear that certain voice
see eyes that haven’t changed their depth
since a child when you marvelled at their colour
so - it seems you won’t be seeing her this time around
but she’ll be in touch when she gets back she says
and ‘we’ll talk’ . . . she says.

Urban Fox**

dogs don’t have such a brush of a tail
a flattened skull or triangle-like ears
one was about to cross our path
thought better of it and retreated
behind a bush content to wait
till we’d passed on by
I
writing just the other day
about the fox of Chinese lore
remembered this celestial dog
had nine tails, four legs and a golden coat
served the Palace of Sun and Moon
transcended both the yin and yang
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2016
a Darwinist's wet-dream, a youth's depression... i'm not surprised why the two share the same phenomenological plateau: after the said school morphed into existentialism and hit a brick wall with English utilitarianism, it's no wonder it started drawing on parallels - in the 19th century you had the fable of premature dementia - in the 21st century you'll find it hard too curb the fable of premature depression... less schizoids take their own life than premature depressed - the phenomenon of Darwinism's inquiry of the sea-turtles as naturally and intrinsically worthy pity meant that teenagers suffering from premature (unnatural) depression were simply told: aw... you'll get better... we'll just keep looking at the cruelty of nature for inspiration in the realm of sympathy... like ******* will... pharaohs of the food chain... you produced the architectural pointlessness of pyramids... myriads of the crucifix, and the cult of the tombstones... my grandmother visiting the grave of my grandparents almost every, single, day; her son couldn't care less... attaching personalities to inanimate products like cars or planes or Toy Story didn't help, either... but finding Nemo was a bit like finding the great white shark - Darwinism and Disney shouldn't mingle - pity doesn't last outside of what's petted - dogs and cats - you pity an animal outside the realm of what's pitied, you might as well be worth sushi.*

if fame isn't clenched within mortality -
if fame exists in the realm
of posthumous affairs - it exists
for the immortals to judge whether
it out be resurrected -
to be minded in the daily affairs of
inhaled oxygen -
only because the Coliseum was never minded,
but the Caesar's thumb was...
when i see fame i see only c.c.t.v.
"metaphors" - what is fame anyway?
we have a culture of fame surrounding us!
but we can hardly fathom why so many
scientists are left anonymous with their
anaesthetics and antibiotics -
in this world, what's useful is left anonymous,
what's useless is best cited - and constantly
refreshed - what is fame?
what if not cloning? it's such a shame to
be productive in aiming for such goals
rather than attempting carpentry's prodigy son -
if fame is becoming near butcher's worth of
**** and the buttocks exposed -
then fame has became absolutely devalued -
just after the 20th century the game changed -
we have devalued fame... as we have devalued currency -
fame just becomes a Friday newspaper
on the underground train foot-printed with ink-smears
and that other running-mascara -
as with so many billionaires, so with to many
famous people - the last anarchic act before the
insignificance of insects at a picnic bundle of folded
napkins became apparent - we reached the insect
paradox - not lizard cold blooded essence,
but the phobia blooded essence of insects -
the easily replaced - Auschwitz replenished within
a free society... numbers... satellite navigation -
never had i seen Narcissus so petrified with a mirror -
given that someone stole his mirror and the mirror
was shared among so many... Narcissus, synonym of
solipsism, was never so petrified as he was now -
the insect number overcame the feline king's presence -
not much thought concerning the poachers -
the insect-like numbering less the feline king's
presence - the mane completely cinematographic, suited
only for an intro roar - nothing imitable -
it was all slightly less panicky than expected -
so easily squashed the insects were, as we played gods -
but in number we became the most resembling them -
as if by prerogative to prior life on this earth...
we thumb-pressed a fly to death... as we knew in our
waking-dream that something too awaited us to be minded
as the prime venture we gave our thumb to act upon...
that, cold, lizard-like insignificance -
long before our science fiction dreams became realistic -
we realised something counter our current projection
of interests - from the tier of the cold blooded,
to the tier of the hot blooded, into the tier of
the exoskeleton where blood is confused with mush and
bone, where porridge is both brain tissue and liver tissue -
where beings are more emotionally resilient toward
phonetic stresses, as in units of encoded sounds,
and there this sense of coherency -
we look at dinosaurs with superiority of that famous
example of a brain in a pickle jar that's an anaconda -
the snake - but we're also spied against with insects -
they're looking at us - let us speak in terms of Darwinism
as is loved by those citing adaptability and 1 millions years -
well... we have all the time in the world -
the serpent the most abstract remnant of the dinosaurs
is looking at us... and he's saying: look toward the termite
mounds, and the ants as if you were Solomon...
they are the last evolutionary caricatures readied to usurp
your laughter with seriousness... they are neither
cold nor hot blooded... but simply hard-skinned
and uniform in aquatic assemblage contained within -
as once was Mars inhabitable, when Earth wasn't -
given those millions of years - capturing the speed of light
reduced our note-keeping of history as an act of
derelict intelligence - thus from capturing the speed of
light, into a history of day-to-day-day-by-day -
the plagiarism of 20th century art in the 21st -
the speed of light and the expanse of Darwinism -
strobe light historical-science - flash blink flash blink;
what is fame if we're entertained by the paupers in this realm
these days? we're not watching fame worked for,
as something resurrected out of light of interest, selflessly
attired to be cruelly exploited for selfish reasons -
watching the television (my "metaphor" for Plato's Cave)
is like watching homeless people on the street -
i see paupers of fame being paid to be paupers of fame -
the exploits of c.c.t.v. paranoia - the beggars eating lice
or maggots to support their claim to fame...
just like homeless people... the t.v. is the technological
replication of the cave, shadows... shadows...
when Mars was inhabitable Earth was the prior Venus -
the inhabitants of Mars left... and isn't Darwinism dangerous
when it comes to history? imagine two minutes tomorrow
after two p.m. - is that possible with the given kaleidoscope
of interests? Earth was once inhabitable, purest volcanic -
sending probes to Mars has already unearthed our lack
of common sense unity - communism failed,
the sea lion had his harem - we're not built to communicate
with insects' inherent dictatorial precision - hence we're less
bound to succeed in the theory of evolution -
we evolve to be selfish - we don't evolve to be collectively
minded - esp. given money - insects do that...
we're not insects... unless only in our delusional or orbit of hope...
i just wonder what resemblance we will take
to have given the abstract dinosaur - the serpent -
watching the insects evolve from the Tales of Gulliver
into the green-skinned fables of our science-fiction fancy;
what i've written down just now, will not give me fame...
it has already outlived me... it is outside of human history -
just like what modern Darwinism encapsulates,
national history when trying to govern assimilation of
immigrants with the significance of the year 1066...
and then the canvas of: millions of years ago...
the second big bang... although this one being more
complicated than based upon atoms and sub-atomic particles...
too much colour... too much ready geometry of spheres...
NO ******* WONDER THE CHEMISTS WERE LIKE:
**** IT... LET'S BECOME ALCOHOLIC BACHELORS...
THESE PEOPLE LEFT TO RIGHT ARE TOO AWE-STRICKEN
THAT IT'S POINTLESS TO TELL A STORY OF A
SATURDAY NIGHT ****-UP IN GLASGOW.
Mary Pear Aug 2016
Deserted streets at dusk,
Grey skies and lowering cloud,
Trees and hedges shrunk like a model train landscape
And pylons that could snap their wires, tuck them under their arms
And walk away.

Lego houses with lids to lift
Releasing smells of Sunday lunch chicken
And tea time bath salts.

I could pluck the towers from the power station and roll
Them down the dual carriageway.
An Alice or a Gulliver.
A non- participant;
A reluctant participant;
A can't participant.

Roads and trees and factories and pubs
Retreat
And shrink.

God- like in stature only-
Clumsily stepping,
Not wanting
To crack the road
Or gouge out windows
With a misplaced elbow.
Mosaic Jun 2015
I found you sleeping with price tags
             like tea bags
little men inside the barcodes

Dragging you to the forest
I plant you by your shoes
Digging your heel into the Earth
  to feel its heartbeat

I told you this story once before
       The little men are trying to build a cage around you
But I won't let you be
no Gulliver's Travels
I send them scurrying like ants
to Noah's Ark
They set sail for Wall Street

Only one sprout comes from
          your veins
And waterfalls have hope for you yet
Alt. Titles
Reality Check pays the Bills
Morphine in the Bamboo Shoots
Paper Thin
Green not Green
Old Scars, New Carvings
Transcendental Reminisce
Henry David Thoreau the Oxygen Factory
Kodjo Deynoo Aug 2010
On an island in the west country,..
In the Queen's land, where Black-beard,..
Once played on, as a young child..
And called his home, among the contours...
Chained men and tobaccos..
Once brought fortune lust..


Bridges were built, and train tracks laid..
By the man Brunel, who wore as long a hat..
Ships and cathedrals, sugar factories..
Bansky's graffiti, treasured marks on walls..
And stone-henge laid a stone throw away..


Roman baths, in near by Bath..
And underground passage, of tunnels..
Laid for walks and rivers paths..
Horse mountain and Welsh borders..
Sat not far away on looks, across the channel..


But for the one thing, that makes Brizz so special..
Is the sanctuary, it provides for lost souls..
This here laid land, a place like home..
Gulliver did be so proud, to call his home..
Away from home, as I do, away from home..
Briss Bristol  is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.poetrysoundbites.blogspot.com
Shilpa Shyam Jan 2014
Sometimes as I lay still, eyes closed,
Bathed in memories,
Of riveting detail,
I'm not unlike Gulliver, on an island , pinned down by the Liliputs.
Awake, but, I do not know where ,shackled as I am,in time and space,
by these snippets of reverie,staking claim
to my mind
And I am for now, a felled giant.
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2016
chlej (verb): to drink excessively
or chlaj: you do it,
  or even chlać (noun): to do so.

it's an aesthetic variation the acute
scalpel incision on the c: piquant -
the Ukrainians call the Poles: Lachy -
which is not the sound of witchy itchiness -
it's not the sound of cheap:
but something akin to a hark -
potency of how the French literally don't
trill or cartwheel their Ar (argon?)
           and thus say the literally Greek
rho (ρ) - thus the story of: chleje (i am drinking
to excess, but i'm not going to repent
for these antics, **** it: every single
psychopath in us to his gamble).

thus said: some say that diacritical marks
are also punctuation marks
that somehow became dislodged from
the linear function and entered the trigonometric
expression of tangens -
            offshoots into infinity -
or how the western niqab is a pair of sunglasses -
or how every autistic darty eyed celeb
dons them to hide those creepy eyes -
while psychiatrists only ask *two
questions:
a. are they biting their nails      and
b. what about eye-contact?

another funny word: ryło -
czerwone (red) and czerń (black)
           czerwone ryło: etymological
ambiguity: it's either gob or cheek
after being pinched by a set of knuckles with
a punch - no Victor Frost wasn't here with
a -40°C Siberian pecker of a smooch -

kot srający na pustyni: variation of a selfie pout
(a cat ******* on a desert) -
funny thing, Darwinism, that sound encoding
didn't evolve to utilise diacritical marks
      as duly (not dully) expressed in Joyce's
end of Ulysses where all punctuation is lost
and left to the dynamo of babel...

there are, truly, more fun moments in poetry
than rhyme - not to mention the anorexic variation
of prose with cutting short the paragraph:
yes, that famous mishandling of paragraph that
poetry truly is... due-lee and dolly -
then the peeps said: oh yeah, that clone sheep -
dolly in science-land, and hence the wonder.

but i do feel sick having watched aeroplanes
and birds, trees, the wind, and cats and all that
dynamic harmonica and never use that
reverse of a freemason handshake (could it be
plural possessive, i.e. ownership?)

****, i'm drinking and then comes the functioning
alcoholic doing the Apache thunder dance
with alchemic cooking up a pumpkin risotto -

o to historia z kantem, co podwujne ma dno,
gdyby napisał ją dante,
to nie tak by szło...

       and here lies power...

        ą (ogonek) my evolutionary step forward into
a tango - tailed-a - or me says me monkey
why Anglo without tailed-a?

    sz = sh = š        cz = ch = č
                    rz = ż = ž                       :
look at them, those humanists, they just as horrible
as scientists, they're doing their *******
electron travels like they might cite Gulliver's -
and they never tell you what's going on,
until someone places a skunk in a room full of them
and once attempting mutiny on the Mayflower,
are soon the horde of Mongolian rats
escalating into a fury of a furry tsunami as an attempt
to conquer the seas in the numbers...

but in all honesty, i feel ill if i spend a day not
using these phonetic encryptions -
i see too much colour, too many shapes,
too many shapes not governed by man's
     geometry - and only in this medium can i
rest my drunken head while "as if talking in my head".

now, i can accept the serious criticism of
philosophy against poetry -
            but when journalists are at it...
those gob-smacker-chatterers are in for a plum hue
under one of their eyes - that ambivalence of
my tongue actually waggling away into concern
  is the point where i use my hands more to
craft the dough of some who might be
victims of a Westminster ******* ring of
   aristocrats (italics sometimes implies sarcasm).
A misplaced youth*

My first original rhyme –
take a “truck” drop the head and add an eff –
was hand-me-down crude,
not clever,
but how clever can you be
at four years old?

The chilly blush of it still brings
out a ringing
sound of one hand clapping
against my cheek;
then comes the deflating bawl
from pouchy flesh instantly un-stuffed
of its squirrely giggles and glee.

It put me off cheap sing-song thrills
for decades.

Same age, different flaws:
Can you be too young to develop
a finely tuned sense of entitlement
and the firmest conviction
for redistributing misbegotten wealth?

If anyone deserved a raggedy toy –
don’t call it a doll –
mouse-eared and with cherry-red shorts
cheerily poking out
of a tinsel-topped Christmas stocking,
it was me, not her.

Maybe Santa was suffering
from dementia,
or forgot his reading glasses.

I wasn’t smart enough yet
to cover my tracks,
and I didn't know any fences;
it’s hard to deny a crime
when you’re hugging the goods.

Skip ahead a few years,
and after the regular Sunday
indoctrinations of an uncharitably
faith-based brand of hero-worship,
there are all the tell-tale signs
of a sleep-sick heart
with an over-simplified world view
married to a messiah complex.

Is it normal to dream
of oneself, small but magnificently armored,
supplanting Michael
as the head of that goodly Host
driving out the evil legions?

At least I knew how to side with a winner
back then.

I also dreamed Gulliver-like,
I had been roped down to my bed
by a clutch of creepy-crawly bugs,
and in a tiny voice I could barely make out,
their spokes-beetle cried up to me:
“There will come a time
when the time finally comes,
and when it does
you’ll smack its self-satisfied face
for keeping you
waiting so long.”

My hand's always poised above the clock.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Martin Narrod Jun 2015
To balance inside this world and yours isn't the easiest feat, while I cling to the insides of the jungle gym where we used to play hide and seek. Should I say, "You don't call, you don't write. It's been 3 years since I've had my muse?" All the anger strewn across my elbows makes me feel like gulliver unable to do all my traveling. I've dared. I've crossed. I've taken where signs said, "Stay Away!" But all for the chance for just a minute with you, alone in Half Moon Bay.
poetry poem apoemayear firstwrite in a long time for Britni of course. Museless and clueless.
gus Jan 2019
I lay bound like Gulliver,
with stakes of diplomacy,
and ropes of weakness,
yet defiant!  

I tense my body,
to feel the extent to which I'm held!
But not too much, less something breaks,
compliant!

These tiny multitudes of things,
that constantly attack my senses,
  have made me a bureaucratic “giant “
that must be brought to heal.

That’s why I am staked down,
all bar one arm of course!
For how else could I employ,
the stake and rope I feel?
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2016
some would say that Ashley Montagu was mad..
actually everyone would, eating Chomsky,
then again the English forgot to trill ρ -
for a row row - it's pronounced hollow -
an evolutionary step in the wrong direction -
my learning of English as a language was
incubated by learning history, when i returned
from incubating it, i had no novel,
three years in Edinburgh (said Eden borough)
and i never went to the fringe festival...
nights when i prefer drinking than writing,
my mother is a housewife, i'm guessing
your mother is an aspiring sociologist,
for you the world is a treadmill on max speed,
for me every day means i am kept counting snails...
it's slow... they never bothered the man
where feminism never encouraged perpetuation...
i said i needed cushions, you said i needed stones...
here's a stone with Magdalene, throw it...
throw it at your will... i never had ******* dysfunctions
with ******... THINK ABOUT IT!
why didn't i have ******* dysfunction with ******
but i had them with you? actually, don't think about it...
you might hurt yourself... you probably will.
i swear on the zenith of mount Sinai...
this woman is an Everest... let her freeze to death,
i will not clamour a house to such heights
establishing her as a worthwhile continuum -
the English made the R glutton, forgot to trill it,
the French harked it, rhapsody became hark
po see - we call it the phlegm lettering -
so why did the English on purpose drop the trill
of the tongue rattling? the French kept the harking,
but the English forgot to trill the trrrrrrrrr illion words
unsaid, why? one of those days when drinking is
more pleasurable than writing,.. i kept the narrator
in the laboratory under tight inspection...
he said no characters deviated...
well, there were characters, but nothing
compared to Ivan, Achilles, generic types ready
to start families... the fortunate without none types...
that trilled r is not imagery of bouncing,
it's a case for a drum-roll pendulum...
now i know why i feel so alien in London,
London is an alien entity in England, compared
to Newcastle, or Hull... it's a hallucination...
it's not there... three years and i never went to the Fringe...
theatre land *******... my mother is a housewife,
time's slow slow for me, i don't have the
attachment of keeping up, halfway between
homeless and a monk... i really don't think about
a life like Rousseau's... i prefer the drink...
i just minded the fact that the English once
trilled their rho, then lost it...
that that French still hark their rhos like
rhapsodic fugitives fighting asthma...
it really doesn't matter...
atheism is not that crucial, it's not even that
severing in severance of follow-up engagements...
atheism isn't scary... it's pretty pointless
when you take up a fight against both God
and solipsism.. popularising atheism is a fight
more in the care to erase solipsism than it is to
erase god... atheism meaning an: en-grouping
is more a case of involving an individual
in its affairs, that it is to take affairs with god...
obviously militant atheism failed,
there's no consensus agreed upon to involve
anything but the crowd, the crowd is unnecessary...
politics knows this, the crowd is subterfuge...
the eloquent measure of saying things as they are:
sabotage... this night in particular?
not a lively night, not an inspirational night...
just a night for heavy drinking.
they're looking as much for the solipsist as they are
seeking god... the Gemini of artefacts,
twins introspective that constantly mingle
and never leave a still-life concern for a canvas and a
brush stroke... a second later another baby is born,
we get to keep the shapes, and we get to keep
reminding ourselves that: there are fewer and fewer
stories to tell... replaced by paparazzi epilepsy
of the flash... text when it was once narrative-form...
we forgot the bonfire narrative...
we replaced it with images, flashing images...
for a minute there i was sure we could maintain
encoding sounds, however cryptic and difficult
in the arrangements of letters...
but as i am assured there days, this wasn't to be:
we favoured images, ideograms without skeletons,
and slowly, but surely, we started to speak less
and less, or if speaking we started to experience
the attack of dementia on rhetoric...
there was a meteorite in us... we dampened
intelligence to a chop of the guillotine...
we really did undermine encoding sounds,
we really did undermine encoding sounds...
we really did undermine encoding sounds,
our undermining of encoding sounds created
the parallel of phonetic encoding that gave way
to digital acronyms and :)... this is the desecration
of the temple that would have been built...
this                                     "
is but a butterfly... but a butterfly in a tornado...
when we speak of a lack of painting on canvas,
when we speak of copyrights of handwriting
digital with us universally trapped in
Times New Roman, we speak of what's being defiled...
you can draw a moustache on a Mona Lisa...
it doesn't matter, the Mona Lisa will smile
through it more empowered... but when you desecrate
encoding sounds, not having applied diacritical
acuteness / sharpening the chisel... you have
simply allowed for a wholly immune form of former
escapades into the Caribbean scythe of harvesting trade...
soon the post-office will oblige its status of former
use as neccessary redundency,
soon the serpent eating its own tail will come into view
like a tumble-**** of where competition leaves us:
the last rat begins to gnaw at its own flesh,
the N.H.S. is gone via the Japanese oops,
old age is a problem of advancing sciences,
humanism got ***** for being too human
and not centimetre wide-enough for journalistic
sensibility that kinda wished for dictators even
though it criticised them...
sooner or later our world will become more
two-dimensional that what our immediate
ancestors experienced: a three-dimensional world...
that three-dimensional world will be no more...
reading futurism of the 20th century is like
soft-core ****... 21st realism is so far removed from
these prophets it's like watching communism reinvented,
only worse... the dogma of fierce competition and
enforced individualisation has not prepared us for
nations the size of China, or India...
at least in India street children can meet their Gulliver Oliver
for adventure among the Delhi slums:
put the rich under the microscope, and the poor
under the telescope... you'll hardly find a savanna's worth
of antelopes grazing on the workings of Patchwork Armstrong.
as any working man said: feminism is boring,
well, it's not exactly boring, i come home and my wife
is arguing with me, she says she earns more than me
and that i can't transition into being a house-husband
because the professional historians are restoring knowledge
of the Ice Age that doesn't fit into our Monday to Friday
work pattern paying the rent... no landlords in the stone
ages... evolutionary conscripts we were, by the mammalian
glands were actually insect glands...
in this metropolis few would claim a mammal to be hot blooded...
scurvy lizard tongues worshipping the Idol Babel;
it was never necessarily an architectural feat...
it culminated in what we talked about,
how we sang... you could out-build the pyramids
with the Eiffel... any time you wanted...
but given the wrist-mirror of Chinese ideograms
in matchstick translation... what came was not only
the height of the Dubai sky-scrappers...
but also the tongue that spoke... wheelchair bound
with two tonsils worth of wheels...
it sorta forgot rhyming, and rhymed to
yeah, mm, yeah... gotta ***** my *****
to get a score...
   yeah, mm, yeah... i'd love to endear that masochism
of white girls getting even with their fathers as
to why the black man tilled the cotton fields...
but i'm sorta like... got mouth-***** by the Prussians...
got **** treatment by the Russians...
cut off my genitals cut off by the Austro-Hungarians...
mm, ye'ha! cowboy in the sand gotta make a
camel cry.
I.

À présent que c'est fait, dans l'avilissement
Arrangeons-nous chacun notre compartiment
Marchons d'un air auguste et fier ; la honte est bue.
Que tout à composer cette cour contribue,
Tout, excepté l'honneur, tout, hormis les vertus.
Faites vivre, animez, envoyez vos foetus
Et vos nains monstrueux, bocaux d'anatomie
Donne ton crocodile et donne ta momie,
Vieille Égypte ; donnez, tapis-francs, vos filous ;
Shakespeare, ton Falstaff ; noires forêts, vos loups ;
Donne, ô bon Rabelais, ton Grandgousier qui mange ;
Donne ton diable, Hoffmann ; Veuillot, donne ton ange ;
Scapin, apporte-nous Géronte dans ton sac ;
Beaumarchais, prête-nous Bridoison ; que Balzac
Donne Vautrin ; Dumas, la Carconte ; Voltaire,
Son Frélon que l'argent fait parler et fait taire ;
Mabile, les beautés de ton jardin d'hiver ;
Le Sage, cède-nous Gil Blas ; que Gulliver
Donne tout Lilliput dont l'aigre est une mouche,
Et Scarron Bruscambille, et Callot Scaramouche.
Il nous faut un dévot dans ce tripot payen ;
Molière, donne-nous Montalembert. C'est bien,
L'ombre à l'horreur s'accouple, et le mauvais au pire.
Tacite, nous avons de quoi faire l'empire ;
Juvénal, nous avons de quoi faire un sénat.

II.

Ô Ducos le gascon, ô Rouher l'auvergnat,
Et vous, juifs, Fould Shylock, Sibour Iscariote,
Toi Parieu, toi Bertrand, horreur du patriote,
Bauchart, bourreau douceâtre et proscripteur plaintif,
Baroche, dont le nom n'est plus qu'un vomitif,
Ô valets solennels, ô majestueux fourbes,
Travaillant votre échine à produire des courbes,
Bas, hautains, ravissant les Daumiers enchantés
Par vos convexités et vos concavités,
Convenez avec moi, vous tous qu'ici je nomme,
Que Dieu dans sa sagesse a fait exprès cet homme
Pour régner sur la France, ou bien sur Haïti.
Et vous autres, créés pour grossir son parti,
Philosophes gênés de cuissons à l'épaule,
Et vous, viveurs râpés, frais sortis de la geôle,
Saluez l'être unique et providentiel,
Ce gouvernant tombé d'une trappe du ciel,
Ce césar moustachu, gardé par cent guérites,
Qui sait apprécier les gens et les mérites,
Et qui, prince admirable et grand homme en effet,
Fait Poissy sénateur et Clichy sous-préfet.

III.

Après quoi l'on ajuste au fait la théorie
« A bas les mots ! à bas loi, liberté, patrie !
Plus on s'aplatira, plus ou prospérera.
Jetons au feu tribune et presse, et cætera.

Depuis quatre-vingt-neuf les nations sont ivres.
Les faiseurs de discours et les faiseurs de livres
Perdent tout ; le poëte est un fou dangereux ;
Le progrès ment, le ciel est vide, l'art est creux,
Le monde est mort. Le peuple ? un âne qui se cabre !
La force, c'est le droit. Courbons-nous. Gloire au sabre !
À bas les Washington ! vivent les Attila ! »
On a des gens d'esprit pour soutenir cela.

Oui, qu'ils viennent tous ceux qui n'ont ni cœur ni flamme,
Qui boitent de l'honneur et qui louchent de l'âme ;
Oui, leur soleil se lève et leur messie est né.
C'est décrété, c'est fait, c'est dit, c'est canonné
La France est mitraillée, escroquée et sauvée.
Le hibou Trahison pond gaîment sa couvée.

IV.

Et partout le néant prévaut ; pour déchirer
Notre histoire, nos lois, nos droits, pour dévorer
L'avenir de nos fils et les os de nos pères,
Les bêtes de la nuit sortent de leurs repaires
Sophistes et soudards resserrent leur réseau
Les Radetzky flairant le gibet du museau,
Les Giulay, poil tigré, les Buol, face verte,
Les Haynau, les Bomba, rôdent, la gueule ouverte,
Autour du genre humain qui, pâle et garrotté,
Lutte pour la justice et pour la vérité ;
Et de Paris à Pesth, du Tibre aux monts Carpathes,
Sur nos débris sanglants rampent ces mille-pattes.

V.

Du lourd dictionnaire où Beauzée et Batteux
Ont versé les trésors de leur bon sens goutteux,
Il faut, grâce aux vainqueurs, refaire chaque lettre.
Ame de l'homme, ils ont trouvé moyen de mettre
Sur tes vieilles laideurs un tas de mots nouveaux,
Leurs noms. L'hypocrisie aux yeux bas et dévots
À nom Menjaud, et vend Jésus dans sa chapelle ;
On a débaptisé la honte, elle s'appelle
Sibour ; la trahison, Maupas ; l'assassinat
Sous le nom de Magnan est membre du Sénat ;
Quant à la lâcheté, c'est Hardouin qu'on la nomme ;
Riancey, c'est le mensonge, il arrive de Rome
Et tient la vérité renfermée en son puits ;
La platitude a nom Montlaville-Chapuis ;
La prostitution, ingénue, est princesse ;
La férocité, c'est Carrelet ; la bassesse
Signe Rouher, avec Delangle pour greffier.
Ô muse, inscris ces noms. Veux-tu qualifier
La justice vénale, atroce, abjecte et fausse ?
Commence à Partarieu pour finir par Lafosse.
J'appelle Saint-Arnaud, le meurtre dit : c'est moi.
Et, pour tout compléter par le deuil et l'effroi,
Le vieux calendrier remplace sur sa carte
La Saint-Barthélemy par la Saint-Bonaparte.

Quant au peuple, il admire et vote ; on est suspect
D'en douter, et Paris écoute avec respect
Sibour et ses sermons, Trolong et ses troplongues.
Les deux Napoléon s'unissent en diphthongues,
Et Berger entrelace en un chiffre hardi
Le boulevard Montmartre entre Arcole et Lodi.
Spartacus agonise en un bagne fétide ;
On chasse Thémistocle, on expulse Aristide,
On jette Daniel dans la fosse aux lions ;
Et maintenant ouvrons le ventre aux millions !

Jersey, novembre 1852.
Owen Dec 2020
These four walls
will be the death of me.
Squeezing, constricting
til theres no more breath in me.
Overthinking, thoughts rebounding from the corners
like that screensaver.
Im so capable,
yet unable
to leave.
Frozen as the air outside.
Limbs pinned,
tied like Gulliver.
Guilt and sadness and regret
leak
from eyes
fixed open
unblinking in the dark.
Dolores Feb 1
Over Your body the clouds go
High, high and icily
And a little flat, as if they

Floated on a glass that was invisible.
Unlike swans,
Having no reflections;

Unlike You,
With no strings attached.
All cool, all blue. Unlike You

You, there on Your back,
Eyes to the sky.
The spider-man have caught You.

Winding and twining their petty fetters,
Their bribes-
So many silks.

How they hate You.
They conserve in the valley of Your fingers, they are inchworms.
They would have You sleep in their cabinets,

This toe, and that toe, a relic.
Step off!
Step off seven leagues, like those distances

That revolve in Crivelli, untouchable.
Let this eye be an eagle
The shadow of this lip, an abyss.

~ Sylvia Plath
My favorite from the one and only Sylvia Plath❁
JP Nov 2017
Financial crises
entered like a Gulliver
we pinned him down
Change to live contented life
cautiously feed expenses
slowly
one fine day
Gulliver escaped from us
and we breathe happiness...
Zywa Mar 2023
As a child I crawled invisibly
away in the lower house
under the veranda
to see the rats
potter among woodlice

I felt big and strong
I pressed my lips together
against the little weak creepy cushions
and let their hard tails
whip my Gulliver body

I liked being their Atlas
under the adult world
upon my shoulders
which I separated from the earth
to keep it as it is
Collection "Ifless"
Robert L Jun 2018
O mighty, tiny heart,
One thousand blessed beats a minute,
beating time, beating gravity, beating death
O mortal metronome
ticking seconds into that certain future
Little wonder Aztec gods bow,
and Nazca lines testify to your
glorious, thirsting, bursting
hummmmmmmmmmmmmmm of life

now still

An opening closed you could not see.
Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmm

O purple thud
O feathery fall from grace
cradling leaf and Gulliver’s hand,
hourglass of heartbeats run out,
lived and gone as never was
Are we responsible for the things that die
because of things they cannot see
things we cannot see
things we cannot

(The Nazca Lines  are a series of large ancient geoglyphs stretching for miles in the Nazca Desert, in southern Peru. One portrays a hummingbird.)
Yenson Aug 2019
Gulliver laid supine
as the little people toiled around
weaving their spider web ropes here and there
to them an inch like a mile, a climb up his arm
like a journey up the Andes, a slight shake an earthquake
but they huffed and puffed to tie him down

Gulliver looked on with a smile
glad to lay and relax and watch these little people
sweating like pigs in the noon day sun
He couldn't help but laugh out loud when he thought
how disappointed they would all be
when he rises up showing them what little fools
they have all been....toiling, huffing and puffing

all to no avail, little will always be little......
hahahah...hahaha......hahaha.....hahaha..........
Ciel Noir Apr 2018
he drats and tolchocks till he viddies the
malenky merzky grazhny grazzy nazz
and shives from guttiwuts to gulliver
the poogly plenny all razrez razrez

tree cheenas itty up to govoreet
with dva vecks when the bolshy britva's done
one slooshies slovos without shilarny
the other skorry sobirats each one

prestoopniks plot, chelloveck and ptitsa
crast dva nozhes, tolchock the collocol
the ptitsa privodeets pyahnitsas
with krovvy on her rookers after all

glazzy for glazzy, zooby for zooby
to oobivat prestoopniks nadmenny
the rozz becomes so deep steeped in krovvy
he goes o'er a prestoopnik, a plenny

the zheena's sneeting cheesting nachinats
jeezny and krovvy are so dorogoy
a veck can kopet but cannot kupet
to crast brings britva, bitva, doubtful joy
Ken Pepiton Apr 2020
Whereas, hereafter, here

is relative, meaning related, as in linked,
en-tangled,
tied
to you there now.

Here, we arrive on a time, as all fine stories do.

We step lively, where no angel fears to tread, ever,
as you must know, by now,
ever
is a word's own being manifested in meaning
all the same
to you
dear, as in worth the effort to look for and hold, in the having
state, of meaning,
dear reader, we made history blink.

Missle warfare, in our culture, came before the giant fell.

Shepherds and irrigators used slings, and other throwing
ob jects, sub ject e ject

juxtapose sup-positive positioning, do we think we

or be we? Wu, woo way, woo.

You up for this. It is live, this thread we walk along up
right un aware of wind or rain or storm,

no dry nib scratch, no drip of black on the illumination,
no breeze to blow plains of gold one atom thick

as a leaf, gold leaf, who'dathunk that?

A teller of tales talking to a peacock feather from a carcass
coyotes left by the road.

Ed Teller told me, some things called quantum and strange,
are simple has human beings,
there's the humus part, and the being part.

Art and science, sorta.

The trope is no differnt than when Gulliver was breathed
into our earth wide disneyfied minds,

give peace a chance,
alls, we are saying, is give peace a chance.

And when the boomers are taken down a knotch or two,
a tic, tic, re calibrate

focus
thumbnail, zoom in on the eye in the thumbnail

to the gleem in the eye,

reflecting a Pepsi being poured into a Coke, with a Real Thing,

Giant sticker stuck stickily can't shake it take it oooo

no just any
body, don't you want some body to love? Roar or

was that a flash,
that was a genuine pshahdelic flash back on an out of zone
experience,
who knew? Boundaries are the best parts of bubbles.
If it was fun, you are in fected with a sorta sick humor.
My poetic side COSMOFUNNEL
wordsmith thanks tumblr in his noggin
ofttimes triggering babbling brook
to swell after deluge
becoming stream of consciousness runnel
carving, gouging, and liquidating topography
qua zee mow toe natural formed tunnel.

Digitally remastered and revised
since original version rejected, thus
writer released,  purposely leaked,
and flooded mass media
courtesy the following
self branded watershed vaunted unabridged
sprawling questionable and deplorable
creation loosed upon unassuming readers.

Analogously linkedin with
once upon a time
one doodling dandy Yankee slender man,
whose yang upended, overshadowed,
and eclipsed mine yin,
nevertheless, now yours truly self anointed
as an elder statesman - ha
gifted with unwanted
inxs of abdominal adipose tissue
(attributed to agent provocateur of aging,

which affects my metabolism
and/or courtesy
unwanted side effect reaction
from one or more
of the eight medications
nurse practitioner
at Penn Psychiatric Center
Phoenixville, Pennsylvania location
Elizabeth Clark prescribes),
which gained weight foments tussle

a fight to the death, I can never win
and alternately titled: arm ugh gut tin
yours truly loathes to mensch shin
one alien looking pear shaped
humanoid with redskin
liposuction advised courtesy Doctor Quinn
(a fictional character and magician,
I took poetic license
created above to help eradicate body dysmorphia),
she waved her wand and ****
transformed me into a puffin.

Aye dread getting undressed
and/or getting washed
even without spectacles
thar haint no mo' six pack ab,
which nearly rock ribbed
mid equatorial zone shape shifted
into corpuscular blubbery
ancillary physiognomy
where aye wanna bab
bull posttraumatic stressed out

middle age battle of the bulge
in summer re: a waisted effort
squarely (er rather roundly) testing
the elasticity of extra large sweatpants,
when straining to hide expanding girth
definitely producing undesirable effect,
(especially when floating in briny deep,
I squarely, honestly and closely resemble
the Chinese brother
who swallowed the sea  

strongly urging, necessitating,
and exhorting mister crab
to clamp down with pincers,
viz primitive liposuction,
whence rustling scupper
will efface this fleshed out
human bloviated ruggedly handsome
man of the webbed wide world
a bit heavy around the equator
over self indulgent fleshpot

unable, uneager, unready,
and unwilling to maneuver
his portly ill proportioned body
inducing unprovoked stares,
and tears for fears
eyes tracking billowing supersize shirt
resembling trireme sails being trimmed,
where fleshly freighted sloop
displaces entire watery expanse
stranding, stinging and starving an a ray

of underwater species,
now prolonging requisite inhalation;
I seek desperate sticktoitiveness
guidance courtesy Younan Nowzaradan
with steely mettle
hie trite to iron out flab
thus tis part and parcel of senescence,
yet auxiliary buttressed dermis
effect forming gorged girth
giving "love handles" grab

reigniting reign of terror
viz prepubescent anorexia nervosa,
boot strapped now - wen
remembrance of things past frankly
zapped distorted self-image
evoked holocaust images repugnant;
buttery rolls of fat insta jab
stubborn thoughts of self-loathing
entice me to become a lab
bore a tory guinea pig/
scapegoat role to restore

prime of life build when five foot ten
obviously me no Lemuel Gulliver
alignment could now perchance nab
first place in a slick couture magazine
from the neck down,
cuz face mottled with
nine inch nails clawing skin
wrought unsightly scab
taut torso bearing
fashion model and
senior citizen idol, where
every place I go receiving
venue offers free tab.

To stand stock still until shutterfly
would SnapChat
rippled tummy, could
fill my hungry wallet with inxs of cash
now, aye haint so gorge ***,
WhatsApp with
faux pregnant protuberance,
though thankfully
derriere still rather dash
shing, which palmolive pilot sized buttocks

doth newt offset sorry to report
lost battle of the bulge,
where diet tribes furloughed in a flash
abandoning their respective stations,
gnome hatter sinusoidal
parabolic frontispiece finds me to gnash
my toothless mouth for lack of means
to stave of the depredations
of slump pin proletariat
allowing me a hash

sheesh priceline tag
with hefty weight, acquiescing
this Pillsbury doughboy blivet
to subject himself to the sharp
stings of a cool whip lash
bearing the snap against
raw skin as due process
and supplication for atlas shrug
gin his broad shoulders
at the fountainhead naming me mash
shew Scott in regard to oblate inflation
insulation fiberglass around midsection, and

how ma late mum
(an avid fan of doctor Carleton Fredericks,
who preceded Mehmet Oz), would quash
the love she showered on this sole heir -
resorting to exhaustive palliatives -
even ear rash
shun null gambits,
and as last ditch effort
putting this offspring
on par with an albatross -
vamoose get out with the trash
unless everything (pertaining to
indelible stubborn blubber
comes out at the whoosh she wash
Diet of worms.
The dream state is not one of those American states.

I looked under rocks, frocks and umbrellas for it, but
no joy,
could be the dream state is a decoy
only there to pique your interest.

England's in some state
but you won't find it on any map.

Now in my sixties and still believing in elfins and pixies
and wondering about hobgoblins, my only regret is that
I haven't yet met Sinbad, met Popeye though, met Oliver,
Gulliver, Crusoe and Ahab, really want to meet Sinbad,

One can always dream.
Anna Banasiak Dec 2018
I’m four feet tall
in the Japanese dress
I climb the trees
chase butterflies
I walk the turtle Winnie
score goals
watch fairies on the wall
about Bear Fąfeluszek about The Snow Queen
I do not want to grow up
I listen to Gulliver’s Travels and Eskimo tales
I slip into a well without a bottom
everything happens too fast
time is rushing like a train set
in a playroom
All across the webbed wide esse Scott's wold
emerald green Trifolium
carpets harbor untold
burrows of tiny Leprechauns clover
(leaf) ways grant trifold

wishes if captured might
divulge *** of gold
at rainbow's end, and e'en mend
yar shoes, whence re: souled,
thence tread softly beneath subthreshold

of audibility, cuz unseen universe
hapts tubby microscopically rolled
with subterranean inhabited by Lilliputian
mischievous beings (about bajillion holed
up could fill the Taj Mahal) even donned with

heavy coat protecting them
(usually men) against cold
yet frolic with reel delight jiggling
with inborn instinct exhibit twofold
talent to dance with modesty

downplaying (while fiddling)
averse tubby extolled,
nonetheless, their popular
doth soar, and grievously scold
persistent myth anchored with toehold,

and thus do not indulge
pruriently with pixies considerably dulled,
since libido practically nonexistent told
me (under oath of
confidentiality), one Grunwald

trusted yours truly, the secrete
will not leak out,
nor spread like slime mold,
this descendant of Lemuel Gulliver
(ironically my height

only about threefold
larger than full grown imp possible
to see non elfish (pressed) lee ping auld
timers cavorting with
itty bitty whippersnappers,

averse to any outliers, whether hirsute or bald
an honest to goodness painstaking effort
initially stymied friendship proffered, a cold
reception eventually (while sharing diet of worms)
deep under verdantly festooned knolls of Eire land.
As told once upon time helloo
from me matt chew
most previous poem ugh goo,
viz freak accident found ninety
degree angled desk corner (ewe
might not bull heave)

rammed, impaled, fricasseed
smack dab skew
whirred spitting out
fluid on rotisserie
preparatory for stew
right side rib cage

quite agonizing boo boo
intermittent pain analogous
to dull stabbing
finds yours truly nsync with moo
wing cow word le lion hoo
ping to schedule medical appointment

come thee morrow,
this klutz he did brew,
or maybe ghastly conspiracy
courtesy Spiro Agnew
hmm... possibly global warming
ha... puff... imagine dragon

retracting dagger type,
claws, and opening jaws of steel
eyeing thyself as main course on menu
damning self, aye packed
especially when standing askew
(hunched over tying laces re: shoe)

struck by poison arrow unleashed
no Inca ling how
indigenous people of Peru
found their way linkedin
with this Yahoo,
he swiftly strayed

outside Gulliver's travels
into good n plenti boulevard
of broken dreams
essentially, one direction avenue
mixed within gibberish goulash stew
wing conglomeration

******* courtesy "fake" parvenue
he haint goat noah idea nary a blues clue
for aforementioned stream
of consciousness and drew
whatever came to his mind - toodle loo.

Adieu... from mister Magoo
Buy this and get that for free!
I see,
what if I only want that and I don't want this
is that still free?

No, it isn't because it never was
and most probably
never will be.

this is how stores hoodwink the gullible
and the world is full of the gullible
not to be confused with Gulliver
who wasn't gullible
he was only lost.
A long time graduate courtesy
Hard Knocks alum,
once again yours truly
posts reasonable rhyme
about shortest day of the year.

Two o'clock Ante Meridiem
nostri Jesu Christi
hour hand clock
sprung forward sixty minutes
round about same of month
every year, what a ***
er, an inconvenient truth
diverged from this chum
purposelessly manipulating a hold over
sans yesteryear doth drum

a sensation of jet lag
(with earth in the balance)
as if flying within time machine
at warp speed from
this station, where bumpy ride
invariably finds me
feeling a bit ticked off and glum
and in no mood to rhyme,
nor be leer re: cull
juiced barely tantamount
to gather scattered wits
sin tide, and express mood as *** hum

fortunate, this chronological
seismic shift nada wide, ah assume
nonetheless, mein kampf
cerebral hemispheric plate tectonics
comb pluck hated off jangling
black keys helplessly boom

fancifully drifting and boring
into quick ribald sand trap doom
ming an inducement for
emergency convoy, when pitched from
sea to figurative shining sea –
gram ma mother earth glum,
where live yik yak
(paddy whacked) wired vanguard

trulia tried optimism to hum
nonetheless, swallowed down
cream mated behavioral sink
her inert ashes boxed for mo urn eternity
like talcum powder went – me mum
bling bloviation, once
worth matchless peerage,
now pitched comfortably numb

lee into morass of temporary
confusion, where plumb
line delineating circadian rhythm offset,
when athwart pilot ***
man strait ting and bickering with
Gulliver's swiftly traveling
Lilliputians slum
bring within islets
of langerhans defiantly thumb

ming nose, where body, mind & soul
vampire weeknd viz a bully did cower
hence mister clock, who got
hijacked 3600 seconds per hour
experienced head, thorax and abdomen
diminishing in min (ute) power

wrought indistinguishable
Whitsuntide as sour
grapes imposing ill fitting sea legs,
which folded like a faulty tower
crumbling skeletal carapace,
resoundingly grudgingly surrendered,
and back slid vis a vis American express
hiz fashionably late opinion
regarding space/time
continuum did devour

hypothetically yours truly
wallows, pinwheels, flails...
doubling over into singularity
attaining infinite mass
enroute to encounter blessed cosmic lord.

Black hole event horizon indeed
kept lock step as das joint mill hoard
sucker punched the REO bandwagon
of father time, whose riffs a silent chord
nsync with atomic fractional second bored
quirky shenanigans toying with chronometers
counter point of view shifted
to oppose this minute accord.

— The End —