Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
FIRST DAY

1.
Who wanted me
to go to Chicago
on January 6th?
I did!

The night before,
20 below zero
Fahrenheit
with the wind chill;
as the blizzard of 99
lay in mountains
of blackening snow.

I packed two coats,
two suits,
three sweaters,
multiple sets of long johns
and heavy white socks
for a two-day stay.

I left from Newark.
**** the denseness,
it confounds!

The 2nd City to whom?
2nd ain’t bad.
It’s pretty good.
If you consider
Peking and Prague,
Tokyo and Togo,
Manchester and Moscow,
Port Au Prince and Paris,
Athens and Amsterdam,
Buenos Aries and Johannesburg;
that’s pretty good.

What’s going on here today?
It’s friggin frozen.
To the bone!

But Chi Town is still cool.
Buddy Guy’s is open.
Bartenders mixing drinks,
cabbies jamming on their breaks,
honey dew waitresses serving sugar,
buildings swerving,
fire tongued preachers are preaching
and the farmers are measuring the moon.

The lake,
unlike Ontario
is in the midst of freezing.
Bones of ice
threaten to gel
into a solid mass
over the expanse
of the Michigan Lake.
If this keeps up,
you can walk
clear to Toronto
on a silver carpet.

Along the shore
the ice is permanent.
It’s the first big frost
of winter
after a long
Indian Summer.

Thank God
I caught a cab.
Outside I hear
The Hawk
nippin hard.
It’ll get your ear,
finger or toe.
Bite you on the nose too
if you ain’t careful.

Thank God,
I’m not walking
the Wabash tonight;
but if you do cover up,
wear layers.

Chicago,
could this be
Sandburg’s City?

I’m overwhelmed
and this is my tenth time here.

It’s almost better,
sometimes it is better,
a lot of times it is better
and denser then New York.

Ask any Bull’s fan.
I’m a Knickerbocker.
Yes Nueva York,
a city that has placed last
in the standings
for many years.
Except the last two.
Yanks are # 1!

But Chicago
is a dynasty,
as big as
Sammy Sosa’s heart,
rich and wide
as Michael Jordan’s grin.

Middle of a country,
center of a continent,
smack dab in the mean
of a hemisphere,
vortex to a world,
Chicago!

Kansas City,
Nashville,
St. Louis,
Detroit,
Cleveland,
Pittsburgh,
Denver,
New Orleans,
Dallas,
Cairo,
Singapore,
Auckland,
Baghdad,
Mexico City
and Montreal
salute her.



2.
Cities,
A collection of vanities?
Engineered complex utilitarianism?
The need for community a social necessity?
Ego one with the mass?
Civilization’s latest *******?
Chicago is more then that.

Jefferson’s yeoman farmer
is long gone
but this capitol
of the Great Plains
is still democratic.

The citizen’s of this city
would vote daily,
if they could.

Chicago,
Sandburg’s Chicago,
Could it be?

The namesake river
segments the city,
canals of commerce,
all perpendicular,
is rife throughout,
still guiding barges
to the Mississippi
and St. Laurence.

Now also
tourist attractions
for a cafe society.

Chicago is really jazzy,
swanky clubs,
big steaks,
juices and drinks.

You get the best
coffee from Seattle
and the finest teas
from China.

Great restaurants
serve liquid jazz
al la carte.

Jazz Jazz Jazz
All they serve is Jazz
Rock me steady
Keep the beat
Keep it flowin
Feel the heat!

Jazz Jazz Jazz
All they is, is Jazz
Fast cars will take ya
To the show
Round bout midnight
Where’d the time go?

Flows into the Mississippi,
the mother of America’s rivers,
an empires aorta.

Great Lakes wonder of water.
Niagara Falls
still her heart gushes forth.

Buffalo connected to this holy heart.
Finger Lakes and Adirondacks
are part of this watershed,
all the way down to the
Delaware and Chesapeake.

Sandburg’s Chicago?
Oh my my,
the wonder of him.
Who captured the imagination
of the wonders of rivers.

Down stream other holy cities
from the Mississippi delta
all mapped by him.

Its mouth our Dixie Trumpet
guarded by righteous Cajun brethren.

Midwest?
Midwest from where?
It’s north of Caracas and Los Angeles,
east of Fairbanks,
west of Dublin
and south of not much.

Him,
who spoke of honest men
and loving women.
Working men and mothers
bearing citizens to build a nation.
The New World’s
precocious adolescent
caught in a stream
of endless and exciting change,
much pain and sacrifice,
dedication and loss,
pride and tribulations.

From him we know
all the people’s faces.
All their stories are told.
Never defeating the
idea of Chicago.

Sandburg had the courage to say
what was in the heart of the people, who:

Defeated the Indians,
Mapped the terrain,
Aided slavers,
Fought a terrible civil war,
Hoisted the barges,
Grew the food,
Whacked the wheat,
Sang the songs,
Fought many wars of conquest,
Cleared the land,
Erected the bridges,
Trapped the game,
Netted the fish,
Mined the coal,
Forged the steel,
Laid the tracks,
Fired the tenders,
Cut the stone,
Mixed the mortar,
Plumbed the line,
And laid the bricks
Of this nation of cities!

Pardon the Marlboro Man shtick.
It’s a poor expostulation of
crass commercial symbolism.

Like I said, I’m a
Devil Fan from Jersey
and Madison Avenue
has done its work on me.

It’s a strange alchemy
that changes
a proud Nation of Blackhawks
into a merchandising bonanza
of hometown hockey shirts,
making the native seem alien,
and the interloper at home chillin out,
warming his feet atop a block of ice,
guzzling Old Style
with clicker in hand.

Give him his beer
and other diversions.
If he bowls with his buddy’s
on Tuesday night
I hope he bowls
a perfect game.

He’s earned it.
He works hard.
Hard work and faith
built this city.

And it’s not just the faith
that fills the cities
thousand churches,
temples and
mosques on the Sabbath.

3.
There is faith in everything in Chicago!

An alcoholic broker named Bill
lives the Twelve Steps
to banish fear and loathing
for one more day.
Bill believes in sobriety.

A tug captain named Moe
waits for the spring thaw
so he can get the barges up to Duluth.
Moe believes in the seasons.

A farmer named Tom
hopes he has reaped the last
of many bitter harvests.
Tom believes in a new start.

A homeless man named Earl
wills himself a cot and a hot
at the local shelter.
Earl believes in deliverance.

A Pullman porter
named George
works overtime
to get his first born
through medical school.
George believes in opportunity.

A folk singer named Woody
sings about his
countrymen inheritance
and implores them to take it.
Woody believes in people.

A Wobbly named Joe
organizes fellow steelworkers
to fight for a workers paradise
here on earth.
Joe believes in ideals.

A bookkeeper named Edith
is certain she’ll see the Cubs
win the World Series
in her lifetime.
Edith believes in miracles.

An electrician named ****
saves money
to bring his family over from Gdansk.
**** believes in America.

A banker named Leah
knows Ditka will return
and lead the Bears
to another Super Bowl.
Leah believes in nostalgia.

A cantor named Samuel
prays for another 20 years
so he can properly train
his Temple’s replacement.

Samuel believes in tradition.
A high school girl named Sally
refuses to get an abortion.
She knows she carries
something special within her.
Sally believes in life.

A city worker named Mazie
ceaselessly prays
for her incarcerated son
doing 10 years at Cook.
Mazie believes in redemption.

A jazzer named Bix
helps to invent a new art form
out of the mist.
Bix believes in creativity.

An architect named Frank
restores the Rookery.
Frank believes in space.

A soldier named Ike
fights wars for democracy.
Ike believes in peace.

A Rabbi named Jesse
sermonizes on Moses.
Jesse believes in liberation.

Somewhere in Chicago
a kid still believes in Shoeless Joe.
The kid believes in
the integrity of the game.

An Imam named Louis
is busy building a nation
within a nation.
Louis believes in
self-determination.

A teacher named Heidi
gives all she has to her students.
She has great expectations for them all.
Heidi believes in the future.

4.
Does Chicago have a future?

This city,
full of cowboys
and wildcatters
is predicated
on a future!

Bang, bang
Shoot em up
Stake the claim
It’s your terrain
Drill the hole
Strike it rich
Top it off
You’re the boss
Take a chance
Watch it wane
Try again
Heavenly gains

Chicago
city of futures
is a Holy Mecca
to all day traders.

Their skin is gray,
hair disheveled,
loud ties and
funny coats,
thumb through
slips of paper
held by nail
chewed hands.
Selling promises
with no derivative value
for out of the money calls
and in the money puts.
Strike is not a labor action
in this city of unionists,
but a speculators mark,
a capitalist wish,
a hedgers bet,
a public debt
and a farmers
fair return.

Indexes for everything.
Quantitative models
that could burst a kazoo.

You know the measure
of everything in Chicago.
But is it truly objective?
Have mathematics banished
subjective intentions,
routing it in fair practice
of market efficiencies,
a kind of scientific absolution?

I heard that there
is a dispute brewing
over the amount of snowfall
that fell on the 1st.

The mayor’s office,
using the official city ruler
measured 22”
of snow on the ground.

The National Weather Service
says it cannot detect more
then 17” of snow.

The mayor thinks
he’ll catch less heat
for the trains that don’t run
the buses that don’t arrive
and the schools that stand empty
with the addition of 5”.

The analysts say
it’s all about capturing liquidity.

Liquidity,
can you place a great lake
into an eyedropper?

Its 20 below
and all liquid things
are solid masses
or a gooey viscosity at best.

Water is frozen everywhere.
But Chi town is still liquid,
flowing faster
then the digital blips
flashing on the walls
of the CBOT.

Dreams
are never frozen in Chicago.
The exchanges trade
without missing a beat.

Trading wet dreams,
the crystallized vapor
of an IPO
pledging a billion points
of Internet access
or raiding the public treasuries
of a central bank’s
huge stores of gold
with currency swaps.

Using the tools
of butterfly spreads
and candlesticks
to achieve the goal.

Short the Russell
or buy the Dow,
go long the
CAC and DAX.
Are you trading in euro’s?
You better be
or soon will.
I know
you’re Chicago,
you’ll trade anything.
WEBS,
Spiders,
and Leaps
are traded here,
along with sweet crude,
North Sea Brent,
plywood and T-Bill futures;
and most importantly
the commodities,
the loam
that formed this city
of broad shoulders.

What about our wheat?
Still whacking and
breadbasket to the world.

Oil,
an important fossil fuel
denominated in
good ole greenbacks.

Porkbellies,
not just hogwash
on the Wabash,
but bacon, eggs
and flapjacks
are on the menu
of every diner in Jersey
as the “All American.”

Cotton,
our contribution
to the Golden Triangle,
once the global currency
used to enrich a
gentlemen class
of cultured
southern slavers,
now Tommy Hilfiger’s
preferred fabric.

I think he sends it
to Bangkok where
child slaves
spin it into
gold lame'.

Sorghum,
I think its hardy.

Soybeans,
the new age substitute
for hamburger
goes great with tofu lasagna.

Corn,
ADM creates ethanol,
they want us to drive cleaner cars.

Cattle,
once driven into this city’s
bloodhouses for slaughter,
now ground into
a billion Big Macs
every year.

When does a seed
become a commodity?
When does a commodity
become a future?
When does a future expire?

You can find the answers
to these questions in Chicago
and find a fortune in a hole in the floor.

Look down into the pits.
Hear the screams of anguish
and profitable delights.

Frenzied men
swarming like a mass
of epileptic ants
atop the worlds largest sugar cube
auger the worlds free markets.

The scene is
more chaotic then
100 Haymarket Square Riots
multiplied by 100
1968 Democratic Conventions.

Amidst inverted anthills,
they scurry forth and to
in distinguished
black and red coats.

Fighting each other
as counterparties
to a life and death transaction.

This is an efficient market
that crosses the globe.

Oil from the Sultan of Brunei,
Yen from the land of Hitachi,
Long Bonds from the Fed,
nickel from Quebec,
platinum and palladium
from Siberia,
FTSE’s from London
and crewel cane from Havana
circle these pits.

Tijuana,
Shanghai
and Istanbul's
best traders
are only half as good
as the average trader in Chicago.

Chicago,
this hog butcher to the world,
specializes in packaging and distribution.

Men in blood soaked smocks,
still count the heads
entering the gates of the city.

Their handiwork
is sent out on barges
and rail lines as frozen packages
of futures
waiting for delivery
to an anonymous counterparty
half a world away.

This nation’s hub
has grown into the
premier purveyor
to the world;
along all the rivers,
highways,
railways
and estuaries
it’s tentacles reach.

5.
Sandburg’s Chicago,
is a city of the world’s people.

Many striver rows compose
its many neighborhoods.

Nordic stoicism,
Eastern European orthodoxy
and Afro-American
calypso vibrations
are three of many cords
strumming the strings
of Chicago.

Sandburg’s Chicago,
if you wrote forever
you would only scratch its surface.

People wait for trains
to enter the city from O’Hare.
Frozen tears
lock their eyes
onto distant skyscrapers,
solid chunks
of snot blocks their nose
and green icicles of slime
crust mustaches.
They fight to breathe.

Sandburg’s Chicago
is The Land of Lincoln,
Savior of the Union,
protector of the Republic.
Sent armies
of sons and daughters,
barges, boxcars,
gunboats, foodstuffs,
cannon and shot
to raze the south
and stamp out succession.

Old Abe’s biography
are still unknown volumes to me.
I must see and read the great words.
You can never learn enough;
but I’ve been to Washington
and seen the man’s memorial.
The Free World’s 8th wonder,
guarded by General Grant,
who still keeps an eye on Richmond
and a hand on his sword.

Through this American winter
Abe ponders.
The vista he surveys is dire and tragic.

Our sitting President
impeached
for lying about a *******.

Party partisans
in the senate are sworn and seated.
Our Chief Justice,
adorned with golden bars
will adjudicate the proceedings.
It is the perfect counterpoint
to an ageless Abe thinking
with malice toward none
and charity towards all,
will heal the wounds
of the nation.

Abe our granite angel,
Chicago goes on,
The Union is strong!


SECOND DAY

1.
Out my window
the sun has risen.

According to
the local forecast
its minus 9
going up to
6 today.

The lake,
a golden pillow of clouds
is frozen in time.

I marvel
at the ancients ones
resourcefulness
and how
they mastered
these extreme elements.

Past, present and future
has no meaning
in the Citadel
of the Prairie today.

I set my watch
to Central Standard Time.

Stepping into
the hotel lobby
the concierge
with oil smooth hair,
perfect tie
and English lilt
impeccably asks,
“Do you know where you are going Sir?
Can I give you a map?”

He hands me one of Chicago.
I see he recently had his nails done.
He paints a green line
along Whacker Drive and says,
“turn on Jackson, LaSalle, Wabash or Madison
and you’ll get to where you want to go.”
A walk of 14 or 15 blocks from Streeterville-
(I start at The Chicago White House.
They call it that because Hillary Rodham
stays here when she’s in town.
Its’ also alleged that Stedman
eats his breakfast here
but Opra
has never been seen
on the premises.
I wonder how I gained entry
into this place of elite’s?)
-down into the center of The Loop.

Stepping out of the hotel,
The Doorman
sporting the epaulets of a colonel
on his corporate winter coat
and furry Cossack hat
swaddling his round black face
accosts me.

The skin of his face
is flaking from
the subzero windburn.

He asks me
with a gapped toothy grin,
“Can I get you a cab?”
“No I think I’ll walk,” I answer.
“Good woolen hat,
thick gloves you should be alright.”
He winks and lets me pass.

I step outside.
The Windy City
flings stabbing cold spears
flying on wings of 30-mph gusts.
My outside hardens.
I can feel the freeze
deepen
into my internalness.
I can’t be sure
but inside
my heart still feels warm.
For how long
I cannot say.

I commence
my walk
among the spires
of this great city,
the vertical leaps
that anchor the great lake,
holding its place
against the historic
frigid assault.

The buildings’ sway,
modulating to the blows
of natures wicked blasts.

It’s a hard imposition
on a city and its people.

The gloves,
skullcap,
long underwear,
sweater,
jacket
and overcoat
not enough
to keep the cold
from penetrating
the person.

Like discerning
the layers of this city,
even many layers,
still not enough
to understand
the depth of meaning
of the heart
of this heartland city.

Sandburg knew the city well.
Set amidst groves of suburbs
that extend outward in every direction.
Concentric circles
surround the city.
After the burbs come farms,
Great Plains, and mountains.
Appalachians and Rockies
are but mere molehills
in the city’s back yard.
It’s terra firma
stops only at the sea.
Pt. Barrow to the Horn,
many capes extended.

On the periphery
its appendages,
its extremities,
its outward extremes.
All connected by the idea,
blown by the incessant wind
of this great nation.
The Windy City’s message
is sent to the world’s four corners.
It is a message of power.
English the worlds
common language
is spoken here,
along with Ebonics,
Espanol,
Mandarin,
Czech,
Russian,
Korean,
Arabic,
Hindi­,
German,
French,
electronics,
steel,
cars,
cartoons,
rap,
sports­,
movies,
capital,
wheat
and more.

Always more.
Much much more
in Chicago.

2.
Sandburg
spoke all the dialects.

He heard them all,
he understood
with great precision
to the finest tolerances
of a lathe workers micrometer.

Sandburg understood
what it meant to laugh
and be happy.

He understood
the working mans day,
the learned treatises
of university chairs,
the endless tomes
of the city’s
great libraries,
the lost languages
of the ancient ones,
the secret codes
of abstract art,
the impact of architecture,
the street dialects and idioms
of everymans expression of life.

All fighting for life,
trying to build a life,
a new life
in this modern world.

Walking across
the Michigan Avenue Bridge
I see the Wrigley Building
is neatly carved,
catty cornered on the plaza.

I wonder if Old Man Wrigley
watched his barges
loaded with spearmint
and double-mint
move out onto the lake
from one of those Gothic windows
perched high above the street.

Would he open a window
and shout to the men below
to quit slaking and work harder
or would he
between the snapping sound
he made with his mouth
full of his chewing gum
offer them tickets
to a ballgame at Wrigley Field
that afternoon?

Would the men below
be able to understand
the man communing
from such a great height?

I listen to a man
and woman conversing.
They are one step behind me
as we meander along Wacker Drive.

"You are in Chicago now.”
The man states with profundity.
“If I let you go
you will soon find your level
in this city.
Do you know what I mean?”

No I don’t.
I think to myself.
What level are you I wonder?
Are you perched atop
the transmission spire
of the Hancock Tower?

I wouldn’t think so
or your ears would melt
from the windburn.

I’m thinking.
Is she a kept woman?
She is majestically clothed
in fur hat and coat.
In animal pelts
not trapped like her,
but slaughtered
from farms
I’m sure.

What level
is he speaking of?

Many levels
are evident in this city;
many layers of cobbled stone,
Pennsylvania iron,
Hoosier Granite
and vertical drops.

I wonder
if I detect
condensation
in his voice?

What is
his intention?
Is it a warning
of a broken affair?
A pending pink slip?
Advise to an addict
refusing to adhere
to a recovery regimen?

What is his level anyway?
Is he so high and mighty,
Higher and mightier
then this great city
which we are all a part of,
which we all helped to build,
which we all need
in order to keep this nation
the thriving democratic
empire it is?

This seditious talk!

3.
The Loop’s El
still courses through
the main thoroughfares of the city.

People are transported
above the din of the street,
looking down
on the common pedestrians
like me.

Super CEO’s
populating the upper floors
of Romanesque,
Greek Revivalist,
New Bauhaus,
Art Deco
and Post Nouveau
Neo-Modern
Avant-Garde towers
are too far up
to see me
shivering on the street.

The cars, busses,
trains and trucks
are all covered
with the film
of rock salt.

Salt covers
my bootless feet
and smudges
my cloths as well.

The salt,
the primal element
of the earth
covers everything
in Chicago.

It is the true level
of this city.

The layer
beneath
all layers,
on which
everything
rests,
is built,
grows,
thrives
then dies.
To be
returned again
to the lower
layers
where it can
take root
again
and grow
out onto
the great plains.

Splashing
the nation,
anointing
its people
with its
blessing.

A blessing,
Chicago?

All rivers
come here.

All things
found its way here
through the canals
and back bays
of the world’s
greatest lakes.

All roads,
rails and
air routes
begin and
end here.

Mrs. O’Leary’s cow
got a *** rap.
It did not start the fire,
we did.

We lit the torch
that flamed
the city to cinders.
From a pile of ash
Chicago rose again.

Forever Chicago!
Forever the lamp
that burns bright
on a Great Lake’s
western shore!

Chicago
the beacon
sends the
message to the world
with its windy blasts,
on chugging barges,
clapping trains,
flying tandems,
T1 circuits
and roaring jets.

Sandburg knew
a Chicago
I will never know.

He knew
the rhythm of life
the people walked to.
The tools they used,
the dreams they dreamed
the songs they sang,
the things they built,
the things they loved,
the pains that hurt,
the motives that grew,
the actions that destroyed
the prayers they prayed,
the food they ate
their moments of death.

Sandburg knew
the layers of the city
to the depths
and windy heights
I cannot fathom.

The Blues
came to this city,
on the wing
of a chirping bird,
on the taps
of a rickety train,
on the blast
of an angry sax
rushing on the wind,
on the Westend blitz
of Pop's brash coronet,
on the tink of
a twinkling piano
on a paddle-wheel boat
and on the strings
of a lonely man’s guitar.

Walk into the clubs,
tenements,
row houses,
speakeasies
and you’ll hear the Blues
whispered like
a quiet prayer.

Tidewater Blues
from Virginia,
Delta Blues
from the lower
Mississippi,
Boogie Woogie
from Appalachia,
Texas Blues
from some Lone Star,
Big Band Blues
from Kansas City,
Blues from
Beal Street,
Jelly Roll’s Blues
from the Latin Quarter.

Hell even Chicago
got its own brand
of Blues.

Its all here.
It ended up here
and was sent away
on the winds of westerly blows
to the ear of an eager world
on strong jet streams
of simple melodies
and hard truths.

A broad
shouldered woman,
a single mother stands
on the street
with three crying babes.
Their cloths
are covered
in salt.
She pleads
for a break,
praying
for a new start.
Poor and
under-clothed
against the torrent
of frigid weather
she begs for help.
Her blond hair
and ****** features
suggests her
Scandinavian heritage.
I wonder if
she is related to Sandburg
as I walk past
her on the street.
Her feet
are bleeding
through her
canvass sneakers.
Her babes mouths
are zipped shut
with frozen drivel
and mucous.

The Blues live
on in Chicago.

The Blues
will forever live in her.
As I turn the corner
to walk the Miracle Mile
I see her engulfed
in a funnel cloud of salt,
snow and bits
of white paper,
swirling around her
and her children
in an angry
unforgiving
maelstrom.

The family
begins to
dissolve
like a snail
sprinkled with salt;
and a mother
and her children
just disappear
into the pavement
at the corner
of Dearborn,
in Chicago.

Music:

Robert Johnson
Sweet Home Chicago


jbm
Chicago
1/7/99
Added today to commemorate the birthday of Carl Sandburg
bill Hancock Jan 2021
A collection of poetic writings
Of questionable mastery

THE

FIRST TOME










There are many forms and styles
Of poetic expression that I am
Just beginning to be introduced to
And understand

A number were written prior to my joining the
All Poetry site and beginning my education

To me, poetry is rhyme and rhythm, but
It has form, as I have learnt.

This booklet will only allow 16 pages
Of which this is the second, so
The remaining 14 will carry a number of
Pre All Poetry, and post All Poetry
And hopefully you may perceive
An improvement









AMERICAN SUMMER

A Blackmans death, caused by police
Subsumes the brain, and reason kills
And primal animal contained, released
To the world displays their ills

Subsumes the brain, and reason kills
Property garners but scant regards
To the world displays their ills
Respect of any, is shattered shards

Property garners but scant regards
As need to possess, over rides all else
Respect of any, is shattered in shards
It’s take what you can, from any shelf

As need to possess, over rides all else
The reason for the riot is lost
Its take what you can from any shelf
The black man’s life

The reason for the riot is lost
As other feelings rule the mind
At looting time it’s free of cost
As Humanity leaves civilisation behind

As other feelings rule the mind
Mankind gone feral, no longer smart
As humanity leaves civilisation behind
A blackman’s dying, tore life apart








AGES OF MAN

A stage, they say a joke that is
A plank upon the ground
Players they say, the people is
They’ll beat you pound for pound

Their entrances and exits,
will keep unto themselves
and as for seven ages
that’s what this story tells

man begins all worm like
a kid a useless thing
poops, and pukes and whines a lot
and doesn’t earn a thing

Schoolboys next, Oh! God forbid
Why did we make this one
It must have been that point in time
When I did some stuff for fun

The lover , ah!, my ***** did melt
A poet he did try
The effect upon the mistress’s brow
Did make the eyebrow cry

The military man, so full of spit
And polish at the fore
Did play his part, with bearded kit
And veered the cannons gore

Age number six has changed the scope
To a lean and loudly man
Whose time is on the downward *****
And no longer in the van

Seven ages man will glory in
Not all we wish to recall
Love and home, and wondrous sin
As begun will finish small







Bedtime Story (Homework No 5 Pantoum

The child did love their bedtime read
With granddad sitting on the bed
The Knight & hero’s rearing steed
And in the story her childhood shed

With grandad sitting on the bed
The hero’s steed went racing past
And in the story her childhood shed
The royal queen she came at last

The hero’s steed went racing past
And stopped the dragon there and then
The royal queen she came at last
Helped herd the beast back to its pen

And stopped the dragon there and then
From having chook and pig repast
Helped herd the beast back to its pen
And granddad closed the book at last

From having chook and pig repast
The story ran down to the end
And granddad closed the book at last
The next book read, the child would lend

The story ran down to the end
No further words left to be said
The next book read the child would lend
With granddad sitting on the bed







Christmas Thought

We gather here on Christmas eve
to share part of the joy
2000 years ago this day
Mary would have a boy

that day affirmed mans place in life
the woman to her chores
and life upon this blissful earth
was governed by mans laws

years have past and times have changed
relationships are growing
of woman's emergence from the home
into the place of knowing

who knows what life would have been like
if Mary had, had a girl
would have have held his rightful place
or ended up a churl

no matter how it would have been
it is, as it is, to-day
kinds thoughts & joy to all mankind
with love on Christmas day

the feeling of love to all mankind
its stay is rather short
there is no place for thoughts like that
in a world where wars are fought

life's hard cruel lessons, shut us in
we dare not - extend or feel
until that time round Christmas eve
when we give thanks, as we pray and kneel

William Hancock penned: 20.12.82 (pre AP)


Faerie Symphony

brushing his fingers across the glistening crystals
produced a cacophony of harsh discordant notes
rebounding off the caverns walls and music thoughts did smote
Placing hands upon the crystals, calming down the thrum
fingers selecting differing lengths, did flex and start to drum
harmony like butterflies, did rise as motes in light
traversing down the caverns walls and drifting to the night
outside the valley trembled, uplifted, and it sighed
the gentle folk looked inwardly, but outwardly they cried
taking his fingers from the glistening crystals,
they died



LITTLE MISS MUFFET

Miss Muffet was a comely girl
and turned the heads of most
But wouldn't share her curds and whey
A really dreadful host

The field held an eight legged beast
Whose local name was schnider
He managed to get her curds and whey
when he went and sat beside her

It is better to share than to lose it all

Bill Hancock
07.04.2020


Fates Feast
watching his body, sink slowly into the tree
this I laughed is your, reward deserved for jilting me
laughed again, and watched his unmatched beauty fade
realised too late, the wastefulness of mistake I've made

the prince his body slowly turned, to timber light and fair
wondered sinking further in, I really thought she cared
I courted her with flowers and commented on her hair 
It seems I would have better luck, If I had spoken to the bear

Revenge the forest maiden, reeked on the prince in spades
now he was ever with her, part of the forest glade
her demands she thought were simple, leave all and live with me
and feast upon the passersby for dinner lunch and tea

the prince he was a vegan who tried to sway her round
made out greens were good for her, beat meat, by the pound
the maidens heart was broken, in tatters lay her dream
when he refused, ensorcelled him into the forest green

These days on paths less travelled, in the forest down the way
a magnificent tree stands from the rest, its beauty on display
Not many pass it anymore, as they say it's haunted still
By the soul of the forest maiden, who died lonely on the hill









Hiccup of the Mind

Have you ever tapped the keyboard
Then looked at what was written
accessing where the thoughts were stored
And found the rhyming process stricken

Panic doesn't quite occur
Between the ears, a blank
words to page no longer purr
Encyclopedic knowledge sank

leave the keyboard and the chair
a glass with ice and liquid gold
Sip and savour, ceiling stare
berate ones self and blank mind scold

From off left field, revelation comes
fingers keyboarding begins again
The words you're reading are the sum
For from out of mind, letters do rain

Bad Location

Do they consider me
I don't think so
Other wise they wouldn't
Stand where they stand

Think of what it means
to be a tree
try to imagine where 
my fingers are

The girl is standing on them
I choose this spot
For the solitude it promised
****** tourists



Macbeths Misadventure

(a parody of Bill Shakespeare’s Macbeth and the three witches brew a spell)

Macbeth whilst travelling stopped at the pub
A cauldron and three hats on the sign
Had heard from others how good was the grub
And entered with drink and a stew in mind

The cooks, three weathered crones did strive
To keep the patrons upright and live
this struggle you know was a hapless one
already knowing what went in the drum

Newt and frog and dog and bat
The first crone donned a pointed hat
Snake and adder worm and wing
The second crone donned the apron strings

Toad and venom, entrails too
The third crone added nightshade brew
Double trouble, don’t add no more
The broths near walking out the door

a steaming *** was served Macbeth
the sight of which removed his breath
The vapours turned his nose hairs green
His liver hid behind his spleen

A mouthful made his eyelids quiver
His entrails turned into a river
His mind did cartwheels in his head
Two mouthfuls and he’d be stone dead

Refusing nicely, he said had troubles
Left a tip, he paid them double
Listen not what others say
And live to see another day



The Musician

Resting her body on the chaired podium
And leaning slightly down to the left
Her fingers caressed the highly polished surface
Of the Cello

Left hand clasping the frets
And the right hand wielding the bow
She addressed the strings with a gentle wave
And made the music flow

Somber, sounds, moaned off the instrument
Quickening and they rose in tone and pitch
Wrapping around the chamber
In a haunting hugging melody

Rising, rushing, falling and softening
Harsh and hard, then silent, but wait
Hand twitches and the refrain returns
Only to die again, as the hand falls away

Returning the cello to its resting place
And the bow into its niche
Her hand runs gently over the polished timber
The caress of a lover and friend


The Book

A thing that comes in black and White
and some times in colours as well
with words and concepts, one can write
scenes and stories, in minds to dwell

it's such a simple seeming thing
two covers, some pages between
with words that have the authors ring
Fact or fiction the reader gleans

A simple start on bark or stick
or was it paint upon a wall
to carvings on stone walls and brick
waiting discovery, then tell all

today we progress further still
into the realm of digital times
where phone or tablet makes the ****
and hand held printed book declines

regardless of the current trend
hand held books are still much loved
and continue to be there to lend
for as long as man can use a pen



© a month ago, Bill Hancock











The Lizard Slithered

Crawling stealthy below the leaves
eyeing insects upon the trees
mosquito's winging with the breeze
the lizard slithered - tongue flicked free

eyeing insects upon the trees
climbing tree's to gain it's dinner
the lizard slithered - tongue flicked free
it must eat or grow much thinner

climbing tree's to gain its dinner
mosquito's high upon its list
it must eat or grow much thinner
though beetles added meaty grist

mosquito's high upon its list
the lizards belly filling fast
though beetles added meaty grist
none of its food was made to last

the lizards belly filling fast
cold air came calling in the breeze
none of its food was made to last
the lizard slithered - tongue flicked free


cm coli picture prompt lizard slithered 120 words © a month ago, Bill Hancock   rhyme










Wordsmiths Hey

Have you ever wondered of poets
And the things they do try to write
Does it take, five minutes of writing
Or four candles worth, into the night

does the theme come from somebody social
or seeps out from ones deep inner dark
or comments from words thrown out vocal
from jibes that like barbs hit their mark

the words from mind's vault, start to line up
some jumbled, some straight, others curved
with a headiness, like good wine that's supped
A poet's souls being readied to serve

After theme, then the style is selected
And if rhyme, then the rhythm as well
If the endings or rhymes not connected
It's the poets, equivalent of hell

If freestyle, I'm not sure what matters
If Haiku, it don't ring a bell
There's others I have no idea of
Is it write, to write or to sell

A poet is plagued as a wordsmith
as their thoughts, are constant, a stream
the ink on the page, like, a musicians riff
is the success, or failure of dreams




The Caretaker

astride the gentle steed of nature
the nymph did guide its sharp beak home
into the golden hued ambrosia
around the outskirts insects roamed

The summer lady adorned with flowers
kept a watchful eye on the little nymph
as she passed her special gift, her powers
to her assistants, the brownie, pixie and slyth

The brownie ran through the Forrest floor
her touch bringing the summer buds to bloom
knocking on the animals doors
their seed collection, a promised boon

the pixie sprang from branch and flower
spreading colour of many a hue
For such was the summer ladies power
and she touched and shared where it was due

the slyth began her eternal sigh
lifting the new seed into the air
to get it planted, before the cry
the Queen of winter, it's now her care

the four continued their epic task
for none of the seasons last for long
The plants only had so long to bask
As autumn commenced to croon its song

the seasons play their role in nature
not one does stand alone
each one portrays a different stature
if one fails, nothing grown

Contest PIC;Pixie astride hummingbird lady looking on
© 3 months ago, Bill Hancock



New Australian

They came into Australia
from places far and wide
where the system failed you
no further place to hide

sailed into, the North Head Bay
Quarantine, into they go
diseases of, they must be clean
The Physicers, make them so

Not all the migrants, survived the race
the souls, of expired bodies left
rooms and tunnels, claimed in place
which overtime, the live have left

Company, comes scarce these days
from haunting tourists, as they tread
the dark and errie, passageways
of the station, on north head


The quarantine station in SYDNEY Australia and New South Wales, was located on the bay inside the Northern Headland of the entrance into the Harbour

Immigrants (who became the New Australians) came with TB, Cholera Typhoid and the other known diseases of the late 1800 to early 1900's

The migrants had to spend time at the station until they showed to be symptom free. Sadly not all made it, and it is said that their souls / Spirits still occupy the tunnels, rooms and cottages of the old Quarantine  station to this present day - Ghost hunters regularly quest in there. It is also a tourist spot. © 12 minutes ago
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2018
.i'm pretty sure that someone like Mozart, composed, in total silence, didn't hum out a tune, given that he had to micromanage symphony, or rather, the latter stage of polyphony - synchronization of all subsequent parts... whereby music was more optical in its genesis than people might like to believe... of course auditory in its exodus from the godhead, but... i'm pretty sure the composition process for classical music, would never amount to the sort of fun impromptu of jazz... must be a black privilege sort of, "thing" to have found jazz lying around...

how did the beatniks even believe that
a cross-generational mongrel of an art
form, fusing poetry with jazz could ever work?
robert pinsky still has the dream -
but it's a bit like:
      you think you can smoke marijuana
and listen to blues?
              not drink a drop of the devil liquor
and take blues seriously?
       just like sonny clark would have
said: 'if you don't shoot it,
     you don't smoke it'...
         given that... this is not stoner rock
type of wasp hive droning, humming,
heavily repeated rhythm...
              nothing wacky like
thievery corporation doing a live
rendition of the forgotten people
                                             live on KEXP...
what's that phrase?
    i feel monged -
   i.e. so ****** that you don't know
if it's a brain or a jelly,
         a stomach or krāng...
an 8th of an ounce could last me a week...
never mind...
   but how could they even suppose
that, somehow... jazz would dissolve
into acid jazz...
   that ****** variant you don't hear
in a jazz club...
   sure... the one up in Edinburgh was
jazz by name only...
       instead?
   one night i heard the cover
of neil young's song old man...
yeah... very ******* jazzy...
                what's next, a banjo quartet?
first jazz song i ever heard was
art blakey & the jazz messangers'
      opening track from the album
   of the same name - moanin'...
          SOLD...
           had to stash on some of the records...
but did i really want to speak over
the music?
             did i want to contaminate
the music and produce some ****** mash-up
akin to the beatnik experiment?
     *******... high on dope...
              never bothered to call jazz...
the black man's equivalent status of
what white man's classical music is...
     and where's jazz now?
joshua redman isn't exactly a lifejacket
when a boat with 20 is sinking...
jazz has been neglected...
    relegated as posh black boy music
heading off to Yale... wap... or wrap it up...
talk with a mouth but forget playing
the ******* horns, the sax...
              can't exactly see a revival...
   but would i really want to speak to this music?
feels a bit like talking over an opera...
made sense back then, makes little or no sense
now...
                    beside the point...
      there's still a heatwave in england...
every morning i wake up in a furnace -
    or as if attired in a metallurgy suit working
raw metals...
       and i always ask myself the question...
to rehydrate...
   would i rather eat half a watermelon,
or drink a big glass of water?
                         it's always the first.
Voice Rejoice**
by Roger W Hancock

Victory Voice,
voicing calmly,
enunciating clearly,
slow deliberate talking,
battling the stuttering.
Fighting the stammering,
during my conversing,
when heard clearly,
spoken calmly,
Victory’s rejoice.

© 12-07-2011 Roger W Hancock, www.PoetPatriot.com
Roger W Hancock's webiste is PoetPatriot.com

More poetry on stuttering at PoetPatriot.com/poems-stutter.htm
It was hard in the Moonta Mines that year
For the miners, down in the pit,
It wasn’t a place for a weak man, but
The Cornish Miners had grit,
They burrowed deeper with every day
Extracting the copper ore,
And the skimps grew high in the heaps that piled
Not far from the Moonta shore.

They wore their helmets deep in the mine
With a candle fixed to the brim,
And worked in the glow of the candlelight
While the pumps pumped out and in,
They pumped for water, they pumped for air
For the air in the mine was rank,
And water seeped at the lowest lode
Where the atmosphere was dank.

They built their cottages out of lime
And mud, with a building board,
On Sundays, that was the only time
Once they had prayed to the Lord,
The Cornish Miners were Methodists
Built numerous churches there,
And Cap’n Hancock had said, ‘Attend!
Or your job is gone – Beware!’

Those men of flint had hearts of gold
And they raised their children fine,
Sons would follow their fathers then
And go to work in the mine,
One Christmas Eve they were gathered there
By their hundreds, on the green,
A candle lit on their helmets each
Like a glittering starlit scene.

The wives and children were there as well
With their voices raised in praise,
The swelling sound of an angel choir
With their humble miners ways,
They called it Carols by Candlelight
And the movement grew apace,
It spread all over the world from this
The Moonta Miners grace.

David Lewis Paget
Rafael Torres Sep 2018
Small print
What a way
To cheat another day
History has taught
How to respond
And Play

There's nothing to fear
But fear itself
Knowing this is wealth
Theres one word
A join of two
Reveals theres nothing had to do

Loophole
Loophole

A hole of loops
Infinite
Every loophole has a loophole
How significant

Thats why its called
Loop
Hole

Endless DNA
Theres just one name
That keeps it sane
The name lives to this day

John Hancock
Sign that sh*t
Big and bold
No fear
Showing that
No cowardice
Is within
Is clear

Let the loopholes
Noose the necks
Of those with bad intent
Now thats enough
Wasting thought on this
My mind is not for rent

Just remember
Boomerang
Three little birds that sang
Killed by the bell
Welcome to hell
Theres no one else to blame.
Written Sept. 19. 2018 8:37 AM
brooke Nov 2014
robert slept in the back
enveloped in fresh cigarette
with his green sweater hung
over his face and in the front
where we smelled like lotion
and pumpkin hand sanitizer
we tried the lullabies that
were soaked in old lovers
and you invited me over
for dinner, it's so easy
to say that God has
sent me no one
so even if you
do move back
to New York, I
will be able to say
that yes, I made a friend
all on my own and found
that it is so easy to laugh, that
I can be easy to love.
(c) Brooke Otto 2014
Glenn McCrary May 2012
Fringed by putrescent dusk
Fingernails dig beneath graveyard wounds
Fostered by lexical warfare
Within the harrowing fiascos of tomorrow
Nothing but bated memories
Braided by skin, coffee, and cigarettes
Branded by concrete whispers
you arrived midwinter
into the loving embrace
of young able parents
eager to nurture and
prepare you for a
hard edged world
filled with trepidation
and uncertainty

boasting citizenship
of two great nations
your honored presence
fearlessly extends
the lineage of proud  
ancient clans

you are a favorite son
hailing from two continents
and a beloved descendant
of two joyous families

your face is a monument,
perfectly chiseled,
expressing the
bold features of
resilient ancestors
rich in the history
of struggle, conquests,
sorrows and countless joys

your blue streaked
eyes reflect the
gleaming vistas
of timeless
ancestral journeys
guided by high ideals
and noble aspirations

your suckling lips
bespeak smiles
of happiness
born from the
achievement of
a successful birth
and the warm embrace
from the ***** of  
parental love

your blithe hair exudes
the fragrance of
melodious Irish poetry

your gifted hands
appear eager
to grasp the promise
of fine Bavarian
craftsmanship

your strong legs
limbered by
Scottish Highland trails
stand ready to conquer
the grandest Alpine peaks

your nose is filled
with the briny snort of
great expectations
European immigrants
inhaled during intrepid
Transatlantic passages
making a way to a New World
marking a family presence
that bestrides the expanse
of a great ocean

in your infant heart beats
with the possibilities
of our family’s
greatest aspirations
and fondest hope

within your DNA
stirs the passion of artists
the fortitude of workers
the faithfulness of farmers
the courage of warriors
the prayers of POWs
the casualties of war
survivors of great wars
reconstructors of
ravaged cities and
masters of industry

as you commence
your earthly walk
we pledge our
help, heart and hope
during your blessed sojourn

we offer up
holy hosannas
that your heart
may fill with a
thirst for truth,
beauty and love

may it overflow
with compassion
to serve humanity
and to stand firm
in the light of justice

may you always walk
as an upright man,
keen of vision,
eager to meet
challenges and seize
opportunity when it arises

may you create
a wholesome place
for yourself and others
by generously sharing
your presence and
the fruits of an
abundant life  

may your mind discern
the right course of action

may you find
reward for your labor
and honor a hard day's work

may your soul
seek to affirm
the Holy Spirit in
all that you do

may you champion love
through a lifelong commitment
to the things you love

may you find
trusted friendship
in the companionship
with animals

may you walk softly
upon the earth and
be a conscientious
steward of its
miraculous provision

may you appreciate the
beauty of art, experience the
freedom of dance,  be inspired
by the revelation of music,
find rejuvenation in athletics,
maintain physical health
and find a long active life
in clean living

may you attempt
difficult things
and be endowed with
intelligence, courage
and fortitude to
steadfastly meet
the challenges of life
and achieve
personal growth

may you receive solace
and garner strength from
a fathomless faith

may God’s
abiding grace
empower you to
perceive the
many miracles
each day richly
confers upon you

may you find
a soul mate
and trust in the
freedom and
beauty of love

may you too
be blessed
with children and
pass on the
good things you
were given by
your parents
and loved ones

may you experience
unconditional love
and unconditionally love

and please remember,
you are the miraculous
expression of a perfect love
may your perfection
light good pathways
throughout your life
as you find your way
in this imperfect world

with joy, reverence
love , hope  and
deep gratitude
we welcome you
our dearest
Theo

God’s Blessing
be always with you
godspeed

Theodore James McCallum
February 5, 2016
In Ardua Tendit

Music Selection:

Wane Shorter: Infant Eyes
Herbie Hancock: Speak Like a Child
Thad Jones: A Child is Born
Claude Debussy: Children's Corner

Pops
Oakland
2/9/16
a poem to commemorate the arrival of my first grandchild
John F McCullagh Apr 2016
Sickles' corps had broken; the Rebels had them on the run.
Hancock foresaw disaster; perhaps a worse one than Bull Run
How could he plug the gap in the line and rally men to stand?
"What Regiment is this? " he asked of Colville, in command.
The First Minnesota volunteers- they were sorely undermanned.


They were Lincoln's first volunteers, staunch Union men in Blue
Hancock ordered them to charge; a death sentence, they knew.
With bayonets fixed they made their charge outnumbered twelve to Two.

The Rebel regiments were shocked, disbelieving what they saw;
The company sized regiment who'd come through three years of war.
Canister ripped through their lines; there was no time to weep.
Five minutes Hancock needed; for that long their grief would keep.


This field knows many heroes; so many fought and bled.
But let us pause and honor these brave Minnesota dead.
They bought time for the General; the Union held the Ridge.
We might not have a country had they not done what they did.
on 7/2/1863 the 262 men of the First Minnisota volunteers charged into history buying with their lives the five minutes General Hancock needed to reform the Union Center and repulse the Rebel advance.
Only 47 me3n were able to answer the roll call on the morning of the third. The title of the poem is the motto of the regiment
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2017
******* wanna tango... hell... let's tango! we'll be heading to Argentina to bag us a few nazis and then cruise to Nuremberg... trying to forget that Buenos Aires hot-tilt night of adventure... i ******* love celibacy... you get to take the **** out of so many people that they thankfully never mattered in their bedrooms, as what was the best method to keep them entertained; could they never keep it to themselves? so i'm writing! there's no other reason to counter their need to share that frolicking! it's inverse *******... these people actually needed a ******!

there's a me in an alternative reality,
screaming... *i'd rather be a bus-driver!
...
  apparently that's how
capitalists translate the joke
about someone... listening to the amazing
atheist... and not getting paid for it!
wait wait, that's what? beggar gotta squael?
eek! piggy farming for ****'s sake;
comedy, it really should return to
that silent movie period where ambiguity
was allowed... too much effort slurping clean
a chicken bone... it's like you're about
to perform an orchestra...
i give it to herbie hancock though...
    but what of sonny clark? ******, orverdose,
played a piano like a ******, dead before
he's 30... the only tragedy being,
i dare to remember him...
watching too much of that crap...
the watermelon joke had me...
and then in started listening to herbie hancock...
the ****'s up with these watermelons?
      and what's with herb and cantaloupe?
i bought that double-disk in russia...
   now i'm thinking: triple distillation,
and double that for standard...
   i'm not going to speak this sort of crap
at a street corner anyway...
         just hollywood and thieves of shadows...
the scary part is:
there aren't any nazis knocking on doors
these days,
     so why am i asking for a me in an alternative /
"what if"              reality?
    asking a question tell a joke...
      isn't that what english is resembled as
across the Atlantic?
        counter that, i moved to Sicily and lived to be
a century old...
     'cos' i really gave a ****.
last time i checked, jazz had no script,
thelonious monk could be questioned
writing scripts on the side...
       but it would never be impromptu...
  it could never be: snapping your fingers....
or what the head of hector spoke when achilles
decapitated it...
             the **** am i here for?!
plus hector is a better sounding name...
    not that the gods really matter,
what matters is: why did this whole freak show
go on for so long?
   and god... it will go on for so much longer...
given how frisky and kink prone we're becoming...
    thus as rare as to cite macbeth...
   and say: from this, we are to feel?
    is this the only kindness toward stating a genuine
human heart? from this?!
        then indeed it is from this,
outside the biblical spectrum of constipated imagery...
  but ah... aren't the lucky ones telling us apart,
and providing us with a quasi-gravity impetus,
that rather than unifying us... drives us apart;
for thus: we fake or at least accept:
     a sense of contempt, that is thus a mode of faking
the fakeness of contentment...
   what is man in his faking? a magician?
a chauvanist? something this that or the other?
         man is man set against the elemental...
mas is parasite set against manhood...
           a man can't be if another man thinks
nothing of thought beyond the realm of freedom,
to only implement the exercise of thought
toward slavery... i really could find more abhorrent
things to eat, beside pork, beside crab...
i could take my ego-tongue, and tell it to eat by
the digestion that's thought: islam...
i'm just starving and i've been drinking and i've
been listening to herbie hancock and
i resent the notion of real-time and a "care" for
an "audience"... and all that ******* that is *******...
and how you eventually replicate the apathetic mood
of what you see around you when you begin
investing something in a project, or art...
         i'll watch the oscar ceremony tomorrow
and could begin with: the way people said i sounded
like... but won't...
                because i'll thankfully say:
the world's too big, to distinguish a seagull from a flock
of seagulls.
                      this world exists, only via
a tired god; it really was born from an argument reaching
an end... the tired god said: boom!
    and from his tiresome effort,
                never bothered to be given an argument to exist;
unless you argued some quasi 3G...
   and got all that dough and ***** and B.F.G.;
20 hours fasting can really make you think the oddest ****
when you actually, just want to eat a curry....
or really go through that experiment of adding sourcrout
to kebab meat... with all the toppings... pickled chillies...
raw cabbage... cucumbers... tomatoes...
   what would a kebab with sourcrout and pickled chillies
and all the toppings taste like?
       probably like that david bowie blackstar song...
heaven heaven; speak to me of heaven as if i were eleven.
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2018
.Roger Moore!
  what? Roger Moore!
the definite Mishter Bond...
yeah yeah...
Sean Connery -
the, "original"....
  but Roger Moore had
Duran Duran to back him up!


First Name: Matthew
Surname: Elert
Address 1: 294 Havering Road
Address 2 (Rise Park) /  left blank
Town / City: Romford
Postcode: RM1 4TH
Tel: (+44) 01708 766 994
Email: m.k.elert@gmail.com
Date of Birth: 15      05       1985
Gender: Male.

Is this the first time you have bought Henry Westons Vintage cider?
No.

Where did you buy this bottle of Henry Westons Vintage cider?
Other.

Where do you do your main shop?
CO-OP on days when Russian Standard is on offer, given that CO-OP has your cider on a constant 3 for £5 all the time, otherwise Tesco, 15 minute walk, but still CO-OP for your cider.

In a few words, what made you buy Henry Westons Vintage?
I feigned a desire to drink more Magners, or for what matter the Swedish ciders (Kopparberg, Rekorderlig, etc.) - it's actually genius how your cider, standing at a whopping 8.2% alcohol volume... can't be branded an alcoholic's wet-dream like Carlsberg's Export most assuredly could. What a pristine balance of combating the sugars, that, other ciders, don't allow... I mean, at surfacing just shy of 5% in the Swedish examples? Near suffocating over-sweetness, taking a dog for a walk that was adamant on pulling the leash and hanging itself in the horizontal canvas would be more enjoyable than, walking with a bottle of those ciders... not enough alcohol to equilobrate the sweetness of a cider, per se... simply perfecto! I've already made the same point  on https://tinyurl.com/y7eaweeg... so, suma summarum: nothing, exactly made me buy the cider, originally, perhaps the logo, or some plain boredom from the Magners' and Swedish standards... but on 2nd purchase? The ****** quality, that simply transcends this question, in terms of advertisement "concerns"; p.s. you don't need to expand into pear cider. Any chance of hearing some Sonny Clark or Herbie Hancock at the festival? What about Joshua Redman?

you never know...
i might have a chance of visiting America...
if i win the Westons' Cider lucky draw...
and head over to the New Orleans' Jazz festival...
i like jazz...
   more than classical music...
well... within the reasonable constraints
of ******* on Handel's conductor's wand...

    smoochy smoochy...
   a helium balloon...
   dipped in either honey
or vanilla extract...
        chasing it...
     while a baby in a tram,
by accident,
                       releases it.
Don Brenner Oct 2010
next to prime rib
is a miniature fir
or bush
lumberjacked at
the trunk
you press like a bobblehead
plugging nostrils with green
steam and shake and
nobody wants to spitspoil red meat
and everyone agrees
so you collect veggie trees
arrange them in a forest
and reenact little red riding hood
with a cherry tomato
you bite -

you ******* werewolf
vampire where were you
when the fetus
crowned like a tulip pistil
harnesses by an umbilical noose
and the nurse paused and said
she's dead
and cried
and she cried too
while I waited with her father
her mother
and mine
and three friends
and nine months of this
for that
you ******* ******

not even john hancock
can sign a birth certificate
and a death certificate
in a nightmare
let alone in one night
2009
Mateuš Conrad May 2016
i don't why, but it just happens sometimes,
one minute you're listening to Ryan Adams'
self-titled album with that pillar of
rock stay with me reading the Sunday Times
style magazine after having digested
the culture magazine and the Sunday Times
magazine, bobbing along to an article about
the singer Ariana Grande, seeing her almost
kissing a pooch on a skyscraper (*****,
that tongue's been up my ***, so said the pooch)
and you don't get Ryan Adams,
****'s a gridlock, a traffic jam, it doesn't
have a care for Pearl Jam and the wilderness of
Canada... so you switch listening material
to Herbie Hancock's cantaloupe island,
and suddenly you're in Philip Larkin territory...
it's funny to say that slavery of the africans
by the english to colonise the American continent
gave us fewer princes bored by Mozart
stating 'too many notes' - well jazz has enough
too many, notes, because there's this whole impromptu
going on; in my collection of the genre?
a decent list: sonny clark's complete works,
sonny clark's cool struttin',
cannonball aderley's somethin' else,
cedric 'im' brooks united africa,
booker t & the m.g.'s green onions (~jazz),
thelonious monk's monk's blues,
thelonious monk's criss-cross,
egberto gismonti's solo, eric dolphy's out to lunch,
donald byrd's royal flush, duke ellington's soul call,
terry callier's occasional rain, guru's jazzmatazz vol. 1,
miles davis' ******* brew / sketches of spain /
kind of blue / porgy and bess / the complete birth of the cool,
hurbie hancock's takin' off / my point of view,
steve kuhn trio's wisteria, joshua redman's back east,
freddie hubbard's hub-tones, john coltraine's blue train /
a love supreme, nina simone's nina simone at the village gate,
bobby mcferrin's spontaneous innovations,
chet baker's my funny valentine, dexter gordon's go!,
us3's hand on the torch, sonny rollins' ballads,
freddie hubbard's ready for freddie,
art blakey's moanin', kenny burrell's midnight blue,
chick corea's now he sings now he sobs,
mccoy tyner's the real mccoy, dianne reeve's i remember,
duke ellington's money jungle, horace silver's song
for my father, jimmy smith's back at the chicken shack,
wayne shorter's ju lu...
so with this mind, from bukowski the baton was
passed, don't get me wrong, i appreciate classical
music, but jazz is too much poetry,
not really the makings of coupling the two like
the Beats... just that they originate with a sentiment
best stated: 'what the **** was that?'
reverse aerodynamics: actually, no, proper
aerodynamics: you see the plane and then get the score
sheet... those European composers must have
been literally mad, so many instruments encoded,
pitches, larks, stresses of a violin's specific accenting
that wouldn't never sound like a nail scratching
blackboard... i know it's horrid to compliment
slavery... but hell... without it no jazz,
just stuck in a rut with classical whitey boys...
and no jazz no blues... no future rock or pop...
if there's anything to redeem the trade it's this music,
and, let me tell you, jazz is urbanity a soul of
frank o'hara's new york, it's amplified in
a suburban environment, never did suburbia
bordering on countryside feel so cosmopolitan,
but i'm adding this amplification to have been
aided by the number of birds i can spot, lazily
from my window...
and god, i love the fact that in jazz you can
have a specific bloom for each instrument used,
you can have a horn, a sax, a drum a bass solo
all in one go, so it's not as monochromatic as in
rock music (primarily occupied with
lead guitar solos, in the 1970s the drum solos
of john bonham) - all in one go i.e.
the tactful representation of each instrument,
the sort of football match analogy where every
player gets a touch of the ball / limelight.
there may be after effects
yet

nobody suggested a flock of pigeons

at 2pm that snowy afternoon

and that notes will be made

no one mentioned sleeping
later than usual

those chin tattoos
that come all beautiful
and trendy

noticed the birds several days ago
i do like the flocks even murmurations

which happen more mid wales
by the pier

you know
i haven’t been there in such a while

matt hancock

i have been staying at home now

11 months

in total
Ashwin Kumar Aug 2023
Dear Nithya
Wish you a very very happy birthday!!
I am sure this birthday will be that much more special
Given the momentous event that is going to happen
An event that will change your life for the better
Well, I've known you since I was a kid
Though we haven't met frequently
Nor have we spoken a lot
But I've always been fond of you
You are a very nice person
Very warm, friendly and jovial by nature
You bring a lot of cheer
To everyone around you
Not a single moment with you
Can ever be called "boring"
You are so witty
That the Sorting Hat will scream "Ravenclaw!!"
The moment it touches your head
Also, you are very sensitive
And care deeply about your family, cousins and friends
We've had some great times
Whether it be India, US or Ireland
Coming to Ireland, you were an excellent tour guide
The incredible views of the Pacific Ocean from the Cliffs of Moher
Continue to give me goosebumps to this day
And Glendalough Upper Lake was nothing less than Paradise on Earth!!
Finally, I shall never forget the moment
When we had the finest Irish beer, at Temple Bar
Then, as far as US was concerned
The cruise on Lake Michigan was absolutely unforgettable
As were the views from Hancock Tower
Not to mention, the picnic we had at the Chicago Bean!!
Anyway, coming back to you
I hope you have a day to remember
Wish you loads of love, happiness and merriment
And may the Lord bless you!!
Poem dedicated to my cousin Nithya on her birthday
B Woods Dec 2009
Uds. son muy tontos.
Les gusta cuando les doy los baños.
Les encantan mis padres porque por el desayuno,
Se lo doy cada día.
Les miro cuando juegan.
Louie, te gusta eschuchar
A música en mi hombro.
¿Lo escuchas, Louie?
Herbie Hancock y Louie Armstrong
Son tus favoritos.
b for short Apr 2014
I heard somewhere that
public schools are going to stop
teaching kids how to write
in cursive.

Guess that means we the dying breed of fancy, huh?

But seriously, America, let's get real.
Cursive is the unspoken *** of penmanship.
Its stops and starts are infrequent;
one neverending pleasure stroke of
ups and downs,
comely curves,
delectable edges,
all made in one fluid motion.
It's always somewhat satisfying to pen...
                   ...no matter how sloppy the technique.

See, children need to learn
how to make love on paper
before they grow up
and slip between the sheets.

It's important to teach them
that it's not a crime to take the time
to practice a little patience and appreciation.

After all, that's how love is maintained, right?

Forget e-signatures.
Forget convenience.
But don't forget the simple fact that
everyone needs a little John Hancock.
© Bitsy Sanders, April 2014
Catie Lien May 2010
I've got an invitation to the Boston Tea Party
I'm letting you know in case you want to come with me
I heard from some friends that it's going down in history
Don't think about it twice
Just say yes

Whoa! Uh oh!
No taxation without representation
Whoa! Uh oh!
These patriot's they know how to show a good time.
Whoa! Uh oh!
What Georgie gonna think when he wakes up in the morning?
Pass me the quill, dear Hancock.

Thomas Jefferson, he has got a way with words
He really makes you believe that this dream's gonna work
(Maybe if you forget that these Brits rule the world)
I'll sign the declaration
It's all I have left to believe in

Whoa! Uh oh!
Paul Revere he says the British are coming!
Whoa! Uh oh!
Can't you hear, the belfry's bells are ringing
Whoa! Uh oh!
Pick up guns we're off to Lexington
Hoofbeats are flying out to the night.

Wait.
Here I stand.
At this Battle of Bunker Hill.
Stop.
Close your eyes.

What happend to our sanity?
Civility?
Humanity?

(It went out the door with our freedom.)

Whoa! Uh oh!
We don't need a King we have our own voices
Whoa! Uh oh!
Life and Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
Whoa! Uh oh!
Save the date, July 4th 1776
US of A, it's independence.
I wrote these intentionally as lyrics to a rock song, but I felt that they were clever enough to be also considered as a poem.  I wrote this during the Revolutionary War portion of my history class.  I'm a real history nerd :D
Artistry Dec 2014
Hey when you see me salute cause all you see is the truth
Trying to hang me out to dry, the boy done slipped through the noose
Stick and move with the deuce
There’s
messing with me, I put the poos in the boots
Top of my class, when you thinking recruits
Another level with this
That’ll subdue your upper cranium
My element titanium
Titan in the game and his writing is the same
Now they biting off his style cause they liked him for a while
So I switch my game up so I can tighten up your brow
In arose, exposed from you throwing in the towel
It’s a guessing game wheel of fortune pick a vowel
Anytime you testing with me its double jeopardy
Mid-life crisis no matter what the price is
Poe- Ez ethics, Hancock, death wish
Via satellite so you all can get the message
Lethal weapon make you run it back, interception
Neutralize your top dog cause the broken down protection
Always find the hole like the end of an *******
I’m heating up now just igniting the fire
The shock that you absorb from the end of wire
Poetoftheway Apr 2019
extending thought and delving into intent
(where the poems come from)*


when I was younger, say five years ago,
the summer poems breezed by ripe for plucking,
airborne from the compost fat of
sun, water and soiled nature and its intersecting creatures

then winter poet soldiered on, past the easy season,
seeing rhymes-in-city-fireplaces snap cracking pops,
the wet dog smell of humans in overheated buses,
the seasonal wet sock torture that debated suicide alternately

and the early afternoon dark that closed doors,
a jailing of the populace; when by the glow of reruns,
we perform surgery upon ourselves and poems entitled
all sad words begin with a D get composed

now they don’t come that way

now, wait for you to ***** my eyes into seeing
what it’s that ails us all, what repeatedly fails us all,
and what makes living more than just mere presentable,
oh! your scrappy hints, chocolate covered mints and
oatmeal raisin clues

read now a word that exact interrupts


soloduo

and its timed arrival perfect, making my point too well,
the poems come from you and we transmigrate into a duo,
you are equally responsible for the fat places

in the messages and texts, in the storied themes
underlying all your writings, saying, see man, what the babies
can’t say outright or keep in the studio crevices artfully partially hidden,
the list so credibly lengthy, god sent B12 shots
of extra strong caffe inspiration

that’s why you co create the paintings we paint,
I, paint, you, hang them in the place where they can’t be missed,
in the exact spot when you walk in the door, or overhead,
in bed-overhead ceiling,
cursing that prayerful ******* you let slip

making you mark, verified your, Hancock signatory
in the lower corner

so many pins becoming dagger stories,
change is gonna come, and in every letter is the risk,
that what will be brought, what needing saying,
the penultimate penury,
when you can’t pay the bills with monthly unsocial  insecurity

for what is for the best, or worse, reliving the worst twice more,
it cannot be helped in prevented, only reverted,
what you tell me is the what, of the wherefore
and where the poems come from

so you force me to live in every season,
“breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit,
and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”
(Henry David Thoreau, Walden)


and its inhabitants that inhabit my every seeing,
which is why I am, is
where you are...


1:33 pm April 6, 2019
Jane Tricky Apr 2013
the power of signature confirmation
knowing that someone was there
to john hancock your existence
john henry your being

delivery affirmation runs a close race
but doesn't truly embrace
the majesty of humanity's contact
oh, how it feels to be wanted

who doesn't love the feel of receiving
delivered by hand  
im special, im desired
globe trotted to be mine

mystery
desire
suspense
intrigue

to hold the contents of life
mail to your destination of choice
even when sender is unknown
the recipient endures their decisions

return to sender will no longer work
because with you, this mail can no longer exist.
riot rhythm
vertical to vertical
we're all going up or down
there's no cross section
it gives me those jitters
where you're lurching fast forward
let's just fast forward
so we can waste time
regretting things
waiting for the dreaming hour
waiting to escape
always hunting for energy
that isn't manufactured anymore
it's when the layers are pulsing in your ears
that you remember the real life
long ago.

muscles spazzing with every
twitch of the clock
there's not enough space in the
world to occupy my heart's
beating motion.

the ambulance is going faster
when you're sinking into the earth
nothing's written in records
and Hancock never lived
nor did I.
buried in the ground is the
only positive pressure I've
ever befriended.

close to the ground
head under a table
deja vu
I wish I lived earlier
so I could feels the same
kind of emotions they did.
I think I do.

tears avalanching
onto the mountainside
below my eyes.

nothing catches my interest
or my eye
quite like a happy tune
with sad lyrics.
Christina Lau Dec 2015
I wonder, when John Hancock
signed the Declaration,
if he could feel time pulling apart
then back together,
taking the shape
of his America.

I wonder, when Lincoln
felt the cold bullet
enter the curls of his hair,
if he had enjoyed the play.

I wonder, when ****’s
burned ownerless toys
and 80-year marriage rings,
if they were shaken
by the screams of thousands.

I wonder, when the sailor
kissed that nurse
when the war had been won,
if he thought about bombs
or her soft lips.
still thinking about a title and adding extra parts
regular delivery
it arrived with the standard 8 vertices
rigid and battered
******* box

i kicked it around the house
oh bout two months
maybe three
till i got sick of lookin at it
it started kicking me back
hard as hell
and right where it counts
you know what im talking about
chunking it out the window
never worked
just re-delivered
i had to sign for that *******
every time
my john hancock is all over it now

i should open it
rip back the crumpled packing tape
and just peer in

and when i did
and that rip stopped echoing
in the cave that is my room
and the moldy ***** were pulled back
the cavity was exposed
a cool gust shot up
curled back my mustache
and made me grin
like i just saw a russian blue
do a back flip

funny too
it smelled like you
sweet perfume
and that ***** drawer whiskey
i gasped and tried to **** it all in
to ghost that hit of you

i stuck my head in
to get all of it
licked the inside of the cardboard
for each last scrap

i made each fold into origami
crane
dragon
turtle
rabbit
so on

and just before i knelt down
to pray for another breeze in a box
i opened a window
and sat with my feet dangling
grinning with you all over me
sure that a wind
would soon blow up from the south
warm and loving
fragrant and laughing
to smack me
just when i need it most
Listening to Dave Grusin,
"Mountain Dance," vintage 1979.
The thought strikes:
"Why is it that only the
Early Jazz Giants are deified?
Of course, we need Chet Baker and
Miles Davis in our pantheon, &
Gerry Mulligan & Charlie Parker
Not to mention (cue Soupy Sales:
"Smack. I told you not to mention that!")
Coltrane or Stan Getz.
And yet, we're all getting long teeth and
there's a lot more Smooth Jazz to come,
Post-1950s, take Grusin, for example, or
George Benson or Herbie Hancock, and
What about Earl Klugh & Larry Carlton?
Let's not forget Spyro Gira &
The Daves: Benoit and Koz.
And we would be remiss
To miss Chris, young Chris,
Chris - "The Whippersnapper" - Botti.
But I digress.
I blame it on the radio,
Hancock and the Navy Lark,
listened to quietly in the dark
but then along came the
TV and Looby Lou crashed right into me as
if she didn't know that she ruined my blame
on the radio show,
now it's 425 lines and the TV Times
and pics that flood over me, it's
like living but being buried alive out at sea.

What can I do but watch ****** Doo
and wish it weren't so, wish
I could blame
the radio.
425 lines, grainy pictures and static, a bit like what older age feels like, not that I'd know anything about that haha.j
Fidgety Midget Feb 2015
When I come to the end of my journey
And I travel my last weary mile
Just forget if you can, that I ever frowned
And remember only the smile
Forget unkind words I have spoken
Remember some good I have done
Forget that I ever had heartache
And remember I've had loads of fun
Forget that I've stumbled and blundered
And sometimes fell by the way
Remember I have fought some hard battles
And won, ere the close of the day
Then forget to grieve for my going
I would not have you sad for a day
But in summer just gather some flowers
And remember the place where I lay
And come in the shade of evening
When the sun paints the sky in the west
Stand for a few moments beside me
And remember only my best


Author:   Mrs Lyman (Abbie) Hancock
Ken Pepiton Feb 2023
You can say that again, later, it is -time
lace up the daily bag and pass it
for all private interpretation
removal, from the rumen, to the next
- gaseous we, Huxley called us, 1957

No, this ain't show business, this
is living, made in a made up mind,
being finished doing, just
living.

Making up reasons to dispute liars.

Maybe not a good living, but it's free.
Or paid for, any way.
Bought with a price
my grands won't be forced to pay.
- divided attention makes
- ads obliviate into the mercantile
- classification, in attention econ 101
It's free - this living
in the way well fed children do,
in America, outside the cities;

Joy pursued and grabbed in happy
fistfuls that fill laughing memory bubbles
to store for when these become
the olden days.

No, this ain't show business,
its sacred duty,
work of a thing,
made from a boy who looks
into flies eyes, gazing up
from the bottom of the cup,
a little glazed, perhaps,

owing the fly an easy escape, look away

Tricae,
tricae
"perplexities, hindrances, toys, tricks,"

The collections of thoughts,
the access to held thoughts, knotted
messages
to you
private moments,
time alone, as a mortal human being,
humus built, auto-repairing thing being

being, eh?
One-like, only, or
on-like, only going on and on and on,

becoming fruitful
becoming useful
becoming less and less useful, but
becoming more and more curious
becoming full enough to become superfluous.

Lay preachers can create cushions
for lazy wishers wishing to be comforted,
but the weighing of the worth of comfort,

lay preachers seldom do, to my knowledge.

Terminus gnosis, all I know, my bubble of knowns;
this is it…
a thousand stacks of sensible lines, atop precepts,

strewn beside the trail.
Heavy
heuristic heretical how-to do as I dones,
published by faith in the thousands, litter
the little hills the psalmist asked,
why they writhed and twisted,
as in a dance of anger wishing,

clear channel, me and the truth, today,
just/instance, this/ now.

Free am I, by the faith in me, but you
already
knew that,

don't you?
Don't you know, there is a musing mind,
we wear to bed, some nights,
we lay on memory foam, some nights.

Thinking sorted thoughts, untying lying links,
links to educated guesses fed you as new reasons

to be ever vigilant, ever ready to defend the faith,
the laughing faith of a child, leaping
into the sky

- my grandson, I just learned,
- asked for more math.

No class common man, that is what I am,
on the cusp of next, looking back,
at the mess I left, like a cyclone,
randomly distributing seeds of kindness, specs
by which an idle word can activate troves
of ancient autoresponders, each guessing
what if, what if not,
what if, what if not,
what if, what
if
not now, when. Pop.
Bubbles of been, leave go, go on, think it

through, and passed through, into
the now
where we formed, letters, letting words wait,
sit still, ready
for the reader, ready
to steady the quivering fearful thing,
lost in thought,
stuck in stacks of holy orders, hearer only,
only ordainded doers do the trick,
intricate, folding to make not a paper swan,

too, easy. Make a protein. With no model,
just the idea in the word applied to science,
proper pose, super knowing, proto-life-ish thing,
that is digestible using an infantile nourishing node.

What tricks do you know?, the magi aske Moshe.
Snake from a staff.

From the crozier of goatherd, sure,
we can all do that. What else?
---
Allusions to ever knowing, knowing as old
as knowledge given girls at their flowering,
as old a mystery as any orphaned mother may tell
her great grand daughters,
nobody told me any thing,

but I took it as normal,

As the patient potency prefecting
effectual
fervent
prayer, dramatized, made big as all
art
any
bubbled artifice holding essences,

essential bits of the daily grind to gloss
the leading intellect's reason for being
so shiny,
Klimt golden, as that one kiss I recall,

yes, a facsimile, a memory evocation,

a kiss, golden in that moment, infected
with a feeling
dramatized to be offered to all who see,
intricacies,
khipu twists and loops and bundles and beads,

accounting for dues,
instructing kaballah, pass it on

Excuse me, are you in the right realm,
we feel pluralized,
but you don't fit,
we are uniform,
uninformed,

excathedra, listen up, all eight billion now living, are destined
for certain death,
it is a matter of time, dying once,
can happen anytime,

and if there is a second death, so far,
I never saw any body do it twice,
once truth makes what I am free,
we stay free,
amen,
reception accepted kaballah, et al,
take that greasy grace, feel it,
as the oil ran down Aaron's beard,

and there were no poor denied
starship rations,
until the comet hit and all
but a single mind
blew, into this
a complete fiction,
or another compleat guide to fishing

Imagine the magic of the sailor's accounting book,
envision the magic of levers, and pulleys and cogged
wheels feeling the weight

ping
2023 Gravity driven or gravity powered, is it
one
or the other, when it come be to inspire
first fears
to frame wisdom pools,
at depths we learn
to believe,
prove each participant,
worthy of keeping,
the secret.
Salt of the earth, deep down dehr dat
Caribbean Sea,
shore line fracture,
follow the riverwise road,
any thing you think you must bear,
don't blame,
sometimes it pays, to bend.
Grasshopper Locust practice, for the mind
of an ant.

Wisdom harnessed the fear of God,
put it down,
in other words,
when there was nothing
but E, mass and time being assent
esse, sentient, in sentient and ex
insentience, sapient over lay,
- honeycomb tripe pattern, say
- why not ruminate enclosed
- in a beauteous inner digestive
- recluse-exclusive-sub-science con
ified, tied ligously, fi,
to witty means, and ways we prove
gravity is our friend, driven power for all life,
strong as earth itself, but, we are

in the burning phase,
let me bring you down,
cause being accused, does that
to a stranger
being
entertained, or entertaining, on an aitia
let me
reason,

have you come for more, or do we have
too much
of too many things
to make too much
sense
of any particular reader/writer ifery algorithm,
if then,
else is this, current, slow, nodding, flux,
capacitance
loading axially,
if each mind thinks right once,
today, we have enough,
let's save the world.
- that easy, eh?
global restoration, Christ, yes,
that is the plan.
As the planet was.
Prior to Peleg's days.
Intended to have a single
dry land mass,
Wisdom pushed
for plates meeting
and using ice
at the top
of the world, as seen polaris up,
spinning
in a slow wobble
through four
seasonal positional hot-cool-cold-warm
gyre drivers, saline liquid epicycles, sisters
of the four winds
as a flywheel effect
in the telling times… a little imbalence leaning helps
with the wobble,
in the event,
slim to none,
the odds, but,
Don't Look Up. It could
reoccur, and shall, if
Nietzsche's epicycle

has wheels. Graham Hancock, on clocks…cosmic

Mindspacetime, the elite flight,
secretshitistic, it is, most certain, it is
fantasmic imagining
E not equal any thing, mere words
-jello-timingoooisht
between me and thee,
no point, not one, between the we
we become,
in the final analysis, if you wish,

might
you wish,
long, lazy river readers, re-mind
their lost selves, how innocense felt.

The worth of an unsold story, given
as a gift, as a poor artist might
attempt
a portrait
of their daughter's children

- "that little thing"
Done. As best he could, he believed,
at the time,
as it is
with
everything being as is when we arrive,
we adapt
or become the insane opposition,
to anything,
just
be the counter weight on the pendulum,

keep things swingin'

feel time slide
into the real deal,
at the crossroads
in the wayback seat,
sayin' honey, you ain't here
after what I'm here after,
y'gonna be there, after I'm gone, as  asong
that was
once a joke ended you gonnabe here
after I'm gone, but

seemsayin' eye
squint, see,
way back
when,
we were otherwise involved, affirming
sacred oathes, we swore as children learn
IT being life, whatever,
it don't mean
nothin'
is not a joke, it's ahint, to readers, ready
writing is key to reading,
vertical eyed
qwerty keying is learned,
phone wide,
natural, feels familiar
style adaptation
as cuneiform once was,
years of hearing the same words,
said and resaid, story after story stacked
in
time, measured by stargazers, called, by god,
eyes like eagles, these minds expand, and see
the order of the cosmos,
and the chaos of the collective sub-science

locked by a generational curse on oathes
under the God those kids had in mind,
September, 1954, first day of school,
all across the Wyatt Earp of Nations,
each child not religiously exempted,
stood, right
hand on heart and repeated, as a national
student body, K through 12, a pledge,
local time 9 a.m. nationwide,
not unlike
a true Tenant's pledge of fealty,
as recorded in
The Compleat English Copyholder:
Common and Statute LAW of
England, relating to Manors
and Lords of Manors Et c.
- buzz nod what instance… seven seconds
Sorry, Under God, was added to the pledge
that year, that affectionizes those exposed,
we meander under god, think it not strange.
It’s a legendary trait, we'll all be remembered a bit.
- default modemod is always beguiling temptation
- for temptation sake, win a game, get the rush.
of chasing hares
to where the conies hide,
feeble folk, but they live among big rocks,
reason enough,
use what you know is right,
hide from things that eat you,
that evolves
in nations
with no elders, constant defence mode
peace makers seem
feeble folk,
who knew,
and fell away, impossible to renew,

whoah, zeke play me that riddle,
'bout scrublands being humbly blissed
so long- wayback, anchoring the authority
17
that's me, I
fiddled around
and blew the clearwater revival
to kingdom come, Muddy Waters, aight
and there was hippies, ever whar, swanee,
so I do, I swan no no no no mo
lie like the devil for the sake of church heritage,
holy warrior sworn, heart torn, tears shed, tongues
spoken.
You know, when gravity is taken
in, your weight, sunk
into the reasoning
swung wide
in progress, no aim, past the cloud,
for crying out loud, this is louder than ever,
listen, no
silence
all that
noise, is natural
to persons genitivally, ok, cross
shadowed animus anima imitation,
in your cultural genes, cowgirl
seeing the world a yingyang thang,
with gravity and the E-magnetic shields
allowing systems to com-uni-cate locally,

scarey
indeed

too much,
the scope
of any thing one might think
or ask,
as in what was that rule
of LAW once?
I read
Compleat Fisherman's Guide U recall led
to , yes, The Compleat English Copyholder:
Common and Statute LAW of
England, relating to Manors
and Lords of Manors Et c.
is on Google books, masterfully typeset

Feel free to learn all you will, 'tis all in the Common.

as, by now is much that may have been, otherwise,
in needier times,
less riches, more sorrow,
less sorrows, more riches, peace.

Made that my after all battlefield task,
no mas win or lose.

My side, on the scalar models is gravity empowered,
heavyweight, ancient concept,
gradient slopes
with long lazy loops
on the downhill side,
listening
to kids make all the noise they wish,
two chalk walls away,
in the bubble we all breathe.

To this day, whatever it took, it worked.
Life gets as good as you can make up a mind

to accept, as
this is it,
this is my bit. My close up. To the exact point
where I breathed that bubblierised wedom-opinion

opinion opinion opinion okeh, settle years ago, okay
we all say okeh here, holy ground,
entire collection of recollection on that victory alone.

Okeh, is still the proto voice model, ok.
If you like it, I'd love if you shared it in whole or in part, it is a whole chapter in a novel form of literature, native to the internet age,
type set for vertical receivers
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2020
there should be easier ways to buy jazz records...
perhaps i should be more familiar
with black literature... perhaps will alexander
is not enough... oh god: i just stepped into
a reverse psychology faux pas...

  again...

there should be easier ways to buy jazz records...
but clearly there aren't...
for years and years i sat on the tube as it rolled
between leytonstone and leyton...
they now have a grand mount... for the new graves...
prior to... the graveyard stretched...
almost the entire distance from one station
of the central line to the next...

i did plan to go into london before
lying myself to sleep... once upon a time i would
go all the way... into tourist central...
i'd go and do the usual... tate modern...
tate national...
i even dressed myself for the occassion...
well... "dressed"...
does a dog change its fur...
i had to capture the sensation of wearing
the same clothes for long enough...
washing, personal hygiene -
change of t-shirts... of course...
but today i was going to buy myself some
jazz records...

i couldn't just hop on the bus (when was
the last time i used a bus -
rather the centipede of my own legs?
you never forget to swim or ride a bicycle -
when was the the last time
i used the tube?) -  and just head to the shop...

that would be so boring...
and i'm not a female to window-shop either...
what ensured a diversion?
immaculate timing...
   walking up to the bus stop...
a girl... probably 16... sitting and waiting...
bus pulls up... i gesticulate: ladies first...
and she gives me a smile...

that decided... winter! it's winter!
and Freya's daughter took a needle's eye
and brought me before the altar of my original
whim...
jumped on the 66 bus and then on
the central line... newbury park,
gants hill, redbridge, wanstead,
leytonstone... leyton... and onto st. patrick's
roman catholic cemetary...

just before spring comes...
to find the absolute nadir of winter -
perhaps autumn is when romance novels
are written about death...
but i much prefer graveyard in winter...
i would have gone further into london:
but those jazz vinyls are not going
to buy themselves...
plus... i find graveyards... well...
hardly morbid... i like them because...
esp. the roman catholic ones...
have statues... and...
well... who wouldn't want to see
a museum of statues: al fresco!

reiteration - because i can't mumble
or metaphor myself or make this succinct...
graveyards are museums al fresco...
whoever was the sculptor... of the crude stone...
the second artist... the weatherer has also
done his bit... coy wind... a splattering
of "paint" with rain...
the... basking in the sun...
the drop in temperature...
i like to see the "other" artist at work...
give me this one life's span a peek into
the deeds of this almost eternal sculpture
baron...

whether god or: death personified...
               the theological god can return to his
origins story... the sun the moon the stars
the: what came first the chicken or the egg...
what came first... the spiderweb or the spider?
pointless hamsterwheel questions:
a priori this... a posteriori that...
museums are stuffy... they might hold
under their roof... in pristine vacuum...
the Elgin marbles... but i want to visit a museum
that breathes! these gravestone statues...
breathe! if you're not careful enough...
you might see a wandering eye...
as if someone transcendent has touched them...

graveyards: museums al fresco...
and in winter? and it's your typical sodden...
overcast... london clepsydra of drool and dire
and the scent of wet dog fair...
and there is no chance to intoxicate yourself
with the decomposition of autumn's fall:
banquet of leaves... and that sickly sweet
botanical scent of decay...
it's winter and raindrops become piercing
needles of sensation...
you wouldn't even dare... to blink.
                    
- of course i had to take a few photographs...
it would be weird if i didn't...
once upon a time even death was due
man's concern for beauty...
in these grave statues... whether it's a 1000th
jesus or some obscure saint...
whatever it was... it was certainly worth...
imitating a ******... getting all wet with
goosebumps on the ******* sack tickling you...
no hard-on... whenever you'd want
to gasp and spew some variation whale
sonar: morse onomatopoeia: coy cooing an ooh...

so back on the tube and to the record store...
****... need to ****...
to the pub and half a pint of guinness...
again: a woman's smile is so up-lifting...
and that surprise as you're only there for half
a pint... up the stairs to the toilet and...
out the pub...

the thing about buying jazz records...
why would i buy a gramaphone...
if i didn't intend to only buy jazz records for it?
why buy, modern vinyl?
the thing about buying jazz records...
you need to know a few names...
you always look at the... "starring"...
i know there's another term for what i'm
looking for... "starring" is easy...
and it's in no way related to the word:
repetroire... but it is french etymologically:
although mutated from: ensemble...

i'm pretty sure there is an english equivalent
to ensemble: which is not "starring"...
accompanied by...
                 that sort of mid-way introductory
statement by the vocalist...
on the piano we have...
on the guitar we have... and each band member
does a little accent impromptu:
accent impromptu: which is not a full-on
hair-metal solo 2 hour slow bbq **** chicken
strutting send-off into the stratosphere...

never mind... can't a white guy just appreciate
jazz... i'm tired of the sycophants of classical music...
including charles bukowski...
the japanese have covered this sycophancy
and elevated it to virtuosity of the drum-kit
monkey... fair play...
but jazz never allows you to... over-think...
anything... a head without thought
and all that sea of feel...
logic is over-rated... i like my cushion of
the antithesis of descartes: res cogitans in that
i find pleasure... in res vanus...
- and classical music is over-thought...
to me at least... it's a falling piano of notes
and no breather... no feel for bass drums or pause...
for an accent of sorts...
no real idiosyncracy - beside the idiosyncracy
of the oeuvre...

jazz says to me: i don't want to over-think:
not-thinking...
it's as simple as that... i hardly think a cat
allows that onomatopoeia: meow...
i hardly think a dog allows that onomatopoeia:
bark / woof... to enter and govern his mind...
this imitation of being: surrounded
by beings with complex prompts and
a car-wreck of sounding verbiage...
hardly a woof or a meow to be "deconstructed"
in those furry-heads of theirs...
how does a sax sound in my head...
when i can't hear a sax outside of it...
i'm not a composer... letters would congest
the sponge... soapy water instead
of live-young evian... pristine cool and crisp...

drums and all their ambience...
when there's the intro by the horn...
before the protagonist sax takes over...
sly little horn...
jazz... i don't like to over-think not-thinking...
classical music?
i tend to over-think not-thinking...
with jazz i can never over-think not-thinking...
because: feelz... and what-not...
it's hardly an armchair of apathy...
it's hardly a sofa of tolerance...
it's a cushion for a head that sometimes
feels like a tonne of lead...
and the air doesn't become water: "magically"
to even wish for a sinking sensation...
blurps of bubbles no...
there's only the almighty fall or an explosion...

feelz... (this will be addressed...
the Z... in german... that i do promise...)

- again, not again, again... i can't buy the same old
stale **** narrative behind the slave trade...
there's a jack of spades in here somewhere...
no blacks in h'america: no jazz...
it's that simple... god forbid where i'd be at if
i were to still praise the suffocating confines
of classical music...
this is classical music to me...
this is... everything that's suffocating about
Bach's innovative polyphony...
polyphony sure... but what jazz allows and
what classical music doesn't...
it's hardly called a solo if only the piano gets
it... a chopin or a liszt...
any... famous violinists sharing the stage
with the pianists... the piano is the only instrument
that's allowed a solo: proper...
but in jazz... you can get all the instruments
in the ensemble given a fair share...
no africans coming over to h'america...
no jazz... instead:
       pirouettes in corsets and crinolines!
ugh...
               liberated into: chain-smoking
and giggling why pulling an imaginary chain
saying: choo! choo! this train has nowhere
to stop... beside a tomorrow...
and should tomorrow come...
                                      that's still only a gamble!

jazz because there is no singing...
            well... 'my funny valentine'... chet baker...
better known on screen as ethan hawke...
astronaut... thespian... at large chameleon...
dat dere: the disappointment from
having chamelon leather shoes...
that will riddle... should ever a pair be made...
no fluorescence no change in the weather...
just at the time of the killing...
would the pigment remain: "thus desired"?
well... i don't know what the muslims
and the yids have against pork...
i'm pretty sure most standards of belts
and shoes are... made from pork skin...
which is... well... leather...
perhaps they should don the orthodox ***
yom kippur statement of running
into the synagogue wearing sneakers!

just saying... porky pink and whitey sneaked
in with a guitar and a piano...
sonny clark also tip-toed on the black
and white cascade...
                                  interludes from absence...
or the myth of the custard -
               it boils like a voice unearthed from
mud... tinged with surprises of a canary...
gloating glutton of the stove...
               jazz in the kitchen,
jazz in the bedroom... jazz in the living room...
jazz sitting up, jazz sitting down,
jazz drinking a hop-heavy lager...
jazz sober...
                                        it's not jazz:
because i live in new york and i have a feel
for the romance with frank o'hara and all things
gay and otherwise cosmopolitan...
romford is probably like hull...
and i'm the antithesis of phil larkin...
my verse is more scribbles and scrabble than
his neat: your parents ****** you...

jazz is a rebellion akin to 'my parents ****** me'
when they fed me a classical music diet
as a child... rock guns 'n' roses grunge and punk
were minor rebellions: teasing pop...
but nothing to match to the diet of classical music
ingested early on in life...
                          jazz was and is, though...

- when buy a jazz record... you have to look for
the usual suspects...
sometimes you look what the lead protagonist
is playing... after hearing Grachan Moncur III's
avant-garde... i'm not convinced...
but there is a list of the usual suspects...
evolution just reminded me of everything
i didn't like about eric dolphy's out to lunch...
but there's a list of usual suspects...

'i can't believe i almost bought a vinyl of a c.d.
i already own... money jungle by duke ellington...
good that i didn't...'

the usual suspects of an ensemble alternating:
eric dolphy, paul chambers, freddie hubbard,
sonny clark, joe chambers, herbie hancock,
john coltraine, sonny rollins, kenny burnell,
art blakey...            wayne shorter...
what would probably become equivalent to...
sitting through a ****** movie...
but otherwise finding the end-credits more
entertaining... the ******-movie of what's not
remembered as that golden fleece of mid-20th
century nostalgia...
i once placed my nostalgia in h'american
hippy culture... come to think of it...
i guess my nostalgia is: the coming out of
1950s america and no quiet going the full mile
into beatnik poetry recitations with jazz
in the background...
no one would **** the poets:
instead the jazz musicians...
                     somewhere cowering under
an umbrella sown together from moth wings...
assuring himself a lightbulb was
the sun... evidently no formality of language
genesis: dear sir / madam
exodus: yours sincerely / yours faithfully...
and all of this... in between?

                         shoes shoes...
two jazz records is hardly an extravagance...
these days...
oliver nelson - the blues and the abstract truth...
sonny rollins - the bridge (jim hall on guitar)...
well... because sonny rollins and: colossus...
24 quid...
                why am i supposed to remember
the slave trade... am i a native of these parts?
i thought i was the "dumb ******" industrial n-----
joke? don't shoot the messanger...
do i look like i've just killed your grandma'
by playing a ******* harmonica?
not everyone is going to be listening to rap...
what jazz gave rap... isn't gonna give
that easily for me to ingest... *****-nilly...
sonny rollins... looks like a well attired man...
even if it is 1963... perhaps my own ambitions are lax...
i'm the son that wouldn't become
his father... and he was always the son
that was going to overshadow his father...
and that leaves me with my paternal grandfather...
all that remains to be said...
by my maternal grandfather: we has a hard worker...
well... stick that as an epitaph for
anyone without an epitaph on their grave...
i'm sure those dates will look like
candy dripping from a ******* rainbow
any day soon!

thighs, legs in total, comic sanskirt of the brains
between the gallows of *******....
and hands: all those geisha hands...
are the erotica canvas for my no-thrills
genocide *****-and-tic canvas work of a tissue...
because... even if i "cant get any"...
any is just as plenty...
i shared a moment in a supermarket with
a guy who was buying...
wine and bread... honest to god...
he was buying wine and bread...
i missed the last supper and that magic
of a philosopher's stone of:
the wood of all metaphors...
that great driftwood of history...
the postage stamp of contemp. african
get-togethers in europe...

                       an eric dolphy or an bobby hutcherson
on cymbals... "vibes"
   ("vibes" could also be made synonymous
with a prog rock artifact...
a Hammond E-112 ***** too)
                            could work...
the cymbals or the xylophone or whatever
that elevator muzak attache is...
could work... in synch...
on something like grant green's idle moments...
as forrest gump would have said it...
the gi(t)ar is in symbiosis...
but please no horns no sax...
well... sax ever so slightly...
just below the drums...
most certainly beneath the bass...
keep it clean with the guitar and the piano...
only then... some sort of equilibrium...

otherwise what's 120 quid?
something my hands can touch and the sort
of money that i would never spend:
how much vinyl can a man eat
before he realises... this **** isn't liquorice!
from pocket to pocket...
from hand to hand...
                  i never gave that money 10 quid
short with a box of chocolates or a bunch
of flowers... so i guess...
that's money best swept under the rug
of daily needs... flowers wither and chocolate...
eh... chocolate...
                                it's not the thought
of liquorice when playing a vinyl record on
a gramophone... anise amber anise amber anise...
cinnamon and...
and and and and... the raven hair of
bulgarian prostitutes... fingertips...
if only the tongue could read braille...

       i'd ensure that if i went into a brothel
i'd spend a good ten minutes moving my fingertips
ferocious against a brickwall...
some might say: i wanted to experience
of feeling oysters under my fingertips...
when caressing the otherwise sandpaper of skin...
and time...

beer becomes an elevated circumstance
of some leftover whiskey...
and this... cameo cinema of my memories...
yes... rubbing my fingertips against
a brickwall... before walking into
a brothel...

- the germans have been lying!
they have another "secret" letter in their arsenal...
although they will not outright admit it!
perhaps the ß (eszet) is interchangeable in
younger brother ßaß (saxon) english...
surprise: surpriße!
                
             most of the arabs flock around
the nationalflaggehandelsflaggeparteiflagge...

perhaps there was an S-to-Z-to-S-to-Z
interchange bound to the ß...
aber...

wo alle straßen enden...
                     hört unser weg nicht auf,
wohin wir uns auch wenden,
die Zeit nimmt ihren lauf...

         yep... that german "z"... which is more like...
a "russian" c... a ****** c... most certainly
a wet snare sizzle of... a ... Ц...

   das herц, verbrannt...
                   im schmerц, verbannt...
so цiehen wir verloren durch gas graue
niemandsland.

              then again... that all depends which german
dialect you're talking about...
and that russian spy ц is most certainly missing
upon a: schwarzdeutsche
             richtigerdepflugdeutsche rendition of:
zu...

and that's the compensation dynamic...
i'll reach into the zenith of jazz...
but come into the nadir of german army songs...
i'll squeeze a horn but then
come and drop a stone dipped in honey
into a hornet's nest...

              perhaps i haven't been the best
tourist when it comes to the concentration camps...
but i have visited the mass graves of the germans
from the first world war around Ypres...
and i have been to the graveyards of the allies...
a sparrow or a robin always seems
to sing each individual german soldier's lot
in the graveyards of the sleeping en masse...
the silence always breaks...
seeing how they were piled up...
                 compared to the individual graves
of the allied soldiers?
it's almost like going to see the end product
of the contracetion camps...
              a heap of bodies readied for a mass grave...

let's not riddle a liking for folk songs into this...
folk songs are non-negotiable details in all of this...
a black man can call another black man
a n-----... well...
i might as well call another white man...
carelessly and with ridicule... a ****...
sorry... hehe... "oops"... a... naцi...
                                                                a нaци...
         beware the german Z given the ß und Ц...
eh... don't mind the S... it's hardly a caron (š) S...
you'd need to compound -sch- into the whole affair...
and still the east germans would write
ich... их... but... somehow make-out to say:
isch... iś... which is not a caron (š) S...
nor saшa...            it's... somewhere "in between":
                                 š   ś
                     via rammstein's ich will...
well... it's not french... so there's no grave S
          to compliment... so... das ist das... yener...
                    
so much for a friday night...
              before the altar of Moloch...
and his resurrection... busy body demon deity
of the abortion clinic...
and these are the old gods united
under the single Mammon facade of the semites...
Moloch is alive and well...
perhaps the babies sacrificed to him
are not still-born or otherwise...
perhaps the strain of the argument from
the conservatives whispered a retort for me
to utter: that each ******* if a microcosm
genocide... i will not utter the name...
call it an elevated sort of superstition...
or rather... i don't have to say the racial
slur... because... i'm pandering to
                                   porцellanmenшen -
that's two russians "spies" in already...
                                       regarding the иɐzᴉ...
at what point...
                                     under what authority...
it's a **** good metaphor though...
"metaphor"...
          that Moloch is awake once more...
as a deity in his own right -
no longer the "fallen angel" in the pantheon
of semitic gods brought to heed...
before ha-shem.
the
Joseph Sinclair Aug 2015
I view the future with much equanimity
And try not to rely on consanguinity.
My loss of blood to NHS phlebotomists
Whose hides are thicker than hippopotomists
Or, if you prefer it, hippopotami
Exacerbates  a lot of my
Concerns with the diminution of supply,
Reminiscent of Hancock and his cry:
A pint of blood!  You must be mad!
That’s almost an armful.  It’s really bad
If I do not have enough
Left to fill the smallest coffee cup.

But do not grieve excessively,
I’ve left a glorious legacy.
A double pocketful of books
Into which no one ever looks;
As well as countless music scores
That it seems everyone abhors,
Regarded by equal abhorrence
As evidenced by non-performance.
But one we greet with jubilation
Refrigerated Transportation
Beloved by transport chiefs galore,
Who hide it in their frozen store.
deanena tierney Apr 2023
Here is what I do know now,
A few things learned from you,
Fairy tales do not exist;
Though our love is so true.
There will not be a rider
On a steed so very white
No kiss to resurrect me
Even though this feels so right.
No prince to make me royalty
No savior when I fall
No one surrenders anymore
No. No one, not at all.
Practicality now says
Two can not just become one
We must now sign a contract
Before any merger's done.
So true love now is jaded
While reason wins yet again
No exchange of any vows
Save for paper and a pen.
Zoe Roberts Mar 2020
(with apologies to Gil Scott-Heron)

You will have to stay home, sister.
You will charge up, tune in, drop out of all activities.
You will scroll through memes, trawl the news,
Skip the tea, you're running low.

The epidemic will be endlessly televised.

The epidemic will be brought to you in a trillion parts,
With declining commercial interruption.

The epidemic will show you pictures of Trump and Boris blithering,
Dreaming of fried chicken at the end of televisation,
"Oka-a-ay...".
"You are a terrible reporter!"

NHS-badged Hancock will look the part,
But cannot answer the question
Should I look after my sick self-isolated seventyish neighbour?

Fauci facepalms
And is gone.

Watch out, guys.
The epidemic will be televised.

The Epidemic (starring Tom Hanks) will not be brought to you on the big screen.
There will be no big screen.
The Epidemic will not play Glasto
Lit by 300,000 Androids.

The epidemic will be brought to you by friends and strangers.
The epidemic will be televised.

The epidemic will not inject fat into your posterior.
You will not need to shave or deodorise.
As it turns out, you are not worth that expensive holiday.
The epidemic will make you a bedroom star
Vlogging your incarceration to ten followers.

The epidemic will be televised.

There will be pictures of coughing queues at supermarkets
Toilet roll riots, thermometer wars.
There will be pictures of you and your best mate
Pushing that cart down the block,
Packed with Branston Pickle baked beans
Though you posted fifty times online about hoarding.
You will not have dressed for the occasion.

You will not care who wins Love Island.
You will not care who wins The Great British Bake Off.
Eastenders will be cancelled
After 35 years of continuous drama.

You will dodge the police for a quiet walk
On a brighter day.

The epidemic will be televised.

Reporters will cough.
Ministers will be replaced
Suddenly
Parliament will be suspended.
Politics will cease to be televised.

The epidemic will be right back, after a message.

You will have to worry about a germ in your bathroom,
Your food supply, the tiger in your tank, your loved ones,
Whether, if you cease to breathe, there will be a ventilator.

You will consider getting in the driver's seat.
Where to go?

Would you like to see your mother?
Would you like to cross a border?

The Caravan Park is occupied
By the Military.

Slowly, slowly
The screens will darken.

The epidemic will no longer be televised.

The Epidemic is not a game.  You cannot return to a previous Save.

The epidemic is live.
John F McCullagh Aug 2015
Half obscured by powder smoke, the long Grey line comes on.
“Double canister and hard shot, pour it on them boys!”
They dress the line and still they come, inexorably, like fate.
We are in need of some support, but will it come too late?
A high wood fence disrupts their charge, like clotting blood they mass.
As many a dying Virginian boy wishes for his cup to pass.
“For Fredericksburg!” “For Fredericksburg!” Alonzo Cushing cried.
We worked our guns and gave them hell for all our friends who’d died.
Our blood is up and still they come, over the parapet.
We are all determined this is as far as they will get.
A breath of air, a cooling drink, a lover’s soft embrace;
Strange things crowd into your mind when in a hellish place.
A company of New Yorkers, coming on the double quick,
Have piled into the Rebel mass where the fighting was most thick.
Back you go, proud Virginians, back over the low stone wall.
Not so many as started out, no longer proud and tall.
A rebel of some prominence sits, dying, near my gun.
He asks for General Hancock, strange to hear that name upon his tongue.
My friend, Alonzo Cushing, lies beside the caisson where
He bleeds profusely from his wounds. He is too far gone to care.
He will not live to see the Sun rise in the East again,
Or live to hear a nation’s thanks for what he did for them.
Lt Alonzo Cushing was posthumously awarded the Congressional medal of Honor for his actions at the Copse of Trees on 7/3/1863, The battle of Gettysburg, the third day.
Graham Hancock - The War on Consciousness:

".. and I stand here invoking the hard-won right of freedom of speech to call for and demand another right to be recognized, and that is the right of Adult Sovereignty over Consciousness.

There is a war on Consciousness in our society, and if we, as Adults, are not allowed to make sovereign decisions about what to experience  with our own Consciousness while doing no harm to others- including the decision to use, responsibly, ancient and sacred visionary plants, then we cannot claim to be free in any way, and it is useless for our society to go around the world imposing our form of democracy on others while we nourish this rot at the heart of society and we do not allow individual freedom over Consciousness.

It may even be that we are denying ourselves the next vital step in our own evolution by allowing this state of affairs to continue, and, who knows, perhaps our immortal destiny, as well."*



Please watch or at least listen to the whole speech. It's only 19 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0c5nIvJH7w
what a waste Jul 2016
My life's an anagram
scrambled on the daily
by the toddler tendencies
of a **** drunk humanity
Single handedly scribbling lines
into the sands of my sanity
like a sapling wrathfully
thumbing it's hancock
through the dew drops
atop my glass canopy

— The End —