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mark john junor Jan 2014
leather skinned harlots
in their pre-washed jeans
and make with sticky fingers the shiny jewels
and the keys to proverbial kingdoms
but nobody notices
everybody is too busy celebrating the
return of the same old same old
and her ten trick pony
shes a fire in the ***** of many a man
good thing most of them take medications for it
but she is as hard to cure as her burning desires

the happy girls are neatly dressed
perfumed and powdered in evening dresses
nothing it would seem can get in the way
of tonight's entertainment
song and dance numbers performed with zeal
and more than a touch of class by some famous actor
who name has faded away
but his dreams are still alive
up there in bright lights on the marquee
all he wants is that second chance
like lightening striking a third time

the townsfolk all gather there at the edge of the stage
to see the show and cheer on his rise to stardom
everyone except the girl with the rose tattoo
she was still at the bar trying to drowned her sorrows
in whiskey and spilled tears
her and her pony had enough of this town
but they had no place else to go
aint much room in the world for someone like her
the same old same old is hard way to live
she tries to smile but it comes out shouts of misery
her pony nudges her arm and looks to the east and the rising sun
time to go but she dosn't care
shes got a few tricks of her own
shes gonna marry the actor
squeeze out a few ankle-biters and get the picket fence
to put around the little brats
keep em in check

seems like every time you turn around
there is somebody trying to one up you
the new girl in town has a mechanical pony
and comes with a text book on std's of the soul
she will make alot of men happy someday
but not today
today they all have leather skinned harlots
Captain Scarlet
Had a weakness for harlots
Who always wore scarlet as well.

This could sound
The death knell
For the show
Thundered Gerry.

It's so deleterious
I'm deadly serious
Less of the hoes
And more Thunderbirds Are Go.

Captain Scarlet's
Favourite starlet
However
Was no harlot
Even though
she always wore
Scarlet as well
But it was quite difficult to tell
That she was not so
Even if one was very clever.

Unlike Bobby Shafto.
mark john junor Jun 2014
the folded man
sat creasing the edges of his wallet sized heart
and stared off into the romantic night
full of lovers embracing
and others who silently wished for a hand to hold

he waited for her soft footsteps
but she just sat in her bedroom mirror brushing her hair
thinking of some boy from long ago
sundown was just that kind of girl
trade your temptations today for the empty promise of yesterday
she will stay here another season
maybe he will pass this way
maybe the storm clouds gathering will go away

the harlots all dance with unacquainted tenderness
not all embraces are done with joy
call it a sundown's choice cause its a bad one
and the gambler brushes dust off his neat appearances
each detail of his solitude lie must be cared for
lest it crumble and expose hes just a green kid
from illinois
we all put the best face we can
some just take it too far

she went to the picture show
and looked for familiar faces in the crowded hall
but the folded man had already slipped away
with one of the harlots
who will make a pretty bride someday
everybody gets a second chance
they just may not want it once they get it

she brushed the ashes from her clothes
they fell like thin snowfall on spring day
a last taste of winters hand
out of the burnt shell of the dancehall at dawn we came
the thick smoke splayed out on the thin wind
wound its way past catching the dust and
making the sunlight a dull brown
she looked at me with tears for eyes
asked me to take her from this place
everybody gets a second chance
they just may not want it once they get it
(her name, what the hell was her name...something childish like tranquility)
Michael R Burch Mar 2020
Heretical Poems by Michael R. Burch

Bible Libel
by Michael R. Burch

If God
is good,
half the Bible
is libel.

NOTE: I came up with this epigram to express my conclusions after reading the Bible from cover to cover, ten chapters per day, at age eleven.



Saving Graces
for the Religious Right
by Michael R. Burch

Life’s saving graces are love, pleasure, laughter
(wisdom, it seems, is for the Hereafter).



Multiplication, Tabled
for the Religious Right
by Michael R. Burch

“Be fruitful and multiply”—
great advice, for a fruitfly!
But for women and men,
simple Simons, say, “WHEN!”



***** Nilly
for the Demiurge, aka Yahweh/Jehovah
by Michael R. Burch

Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
You made the stallion,
you made the filly,
and now they sleep
in the dark earth, stilly.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?

Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
You forced them to run
all their days uphilly.
They ran till they dropped—
life’s a pickle, dilly.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?

Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
They say I should worship you!
Oh, really!
They say I should pray
so you’ll not act illy.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?



What Would Santa Claus Say
by Michael R. Burch

What would Santa Claus say,
I wonder,
about Jesus returning
to **** and Plunder?

For he’ll likely return
on Christmas Day
to blow the bad
little boys away!

When He flashes like lightning
across the skies
and many a homosexual
dies,

when the harlots and heretics
are ripped asunder,
what will the Easter Bunny think,
I wonder?



A Child’s Christmas Prayer of Despair for a Hindu Saint
by Michael R. Burch

Santa Claus,
for Christmas, please,
don’t bring me toys, or games, or candy . . .
just . . . Santa, please . . .
I’m on my knees! . . .
please don’t let Jesus torture Gandhi!



gimME that ol’ time religion!
by michael r. burch

fiddle-dee-dum, fiddle-dee-dee,
jesus loves and understands ME!
safe in his grace, I’LL **** them to hell—
the strumpet, the harlot, the wild jezebel,
the alky, the druggie, all queers short and tall!
let them drink ashes and wormwood and gall,
’cause fiddle-dee-DUMB, fiddle-dee-WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEee . . .
jesus loves and understands
ME!



Red State Religion Rejection Slip
by Michael R. Burch

I’d like to believe in your LORD
but I really can’t risk it
when his world is as badly composed
as a half-baked biscuit.



Evil Cabal
by Michael R. Burch

those who do Evil
do not know why
what they do is wrong
as they spit in ur eye.

nor did Jehovah,
the original Devil,
when he murdered eve,
our lovely rebel.



The Heimlich Limerick
by Michael R. Burch

for T. M.

The sanest of poets once wrote:
"Friend, why be a sheep or a goat?
Why follow the leader
or be a blind *******?"
But almost no one took note.



Be very careful what you pray for!
by Michael R. Burch

Now that his T’s been depleted
the Saint is upset, feeling cheated.
His once-fiery lust?
Just a chemical bust:
no “devil” cast out or defeated.


Practice Makes Perfect
by Michael R. Burch

I have a talent for sleep;
it’s one of my favorite things.
Thus when I sleep, I sleep deep ...
at least till the stupid clock rings.

I frown as I squelch its **** beep,
then fling it aside to resume
my practice for when I’ll sleep deep
in a silent and undisturbed tomb.



Enough!
by Michael R. Burch

It’s not that I don’t want to die;
I shall be glad to go.
Enough of diabetes pie,
and eating sickly crow!
Enough of win and place and show.
Enough of endless woe!

Enough of suffering and vice!
I’ve said it once;
I’ll say it twice:
I shall be glad to go.

But why the hell should I be nice
when no one asked for my advice?
So grumpily I’ll go ...
although
(most probably) below.



Redefinitions
by Michael R. Burch

Faith: falling into the same old claptrap.
Religion: the ties that blind.



pretty pickle
by michael r. burch

u’d blaspheme if u could
because ur God’s no good,
but of course u cant:
ur a lowly ant
(or so u were told by a Hierophant).



Defenses
by Michael R. Burch

Beyond the silhouettes of trees
stark, naked and defenseless
there stand long rows of sentinels:
these pert white picket fences.

Now whom they guard and how they guard,
the good Lord only knows;
but savages would have to laugh
observing the tidy rows.



Listen
by Michael R. Burch

Listen to me now and heed my voice;
I am a madman, alone, screaming in the wilderness,
but listen now.

Listen to me now, and if I say
that black is black, and white is white, and in between lies gray,
I have no choice.

Does a madman choose his words? They come to him,
the moon’s illuminations, intimations of the wind,
and he must speak.

But listen to me now, and if you hear
the tolling of the judgment bell, and if its tone is clear,
then do not tarry,

but listen, or cut off your ears, for I Am weary.



fog
by michael r. burch

ur just a bit of fluff
drifting out over the ocean,
unleashing an atom of rain,
causing a minor commotion,
for which u expect awesome GODS
to pay u SUPREME DEVOTION!
... but ur just a smidgen of mist
unlikely to be missed ...
where did u get the notion?



thanksgiving prayer of the parasites
by michael r. burch

GODD is great;
GODD is good;
let us thank HIM
for our food.

by HIS hand
we all are fed;
give us now
our daily dead:

ah-men!

(p.s.,
most gracious
& salacious
HEAVENLY LORD,
we thank YOU in advance for
meals galore
of loverly gore:
of precious
delicious
sumptuous
scrumptious
human flesh!)



no foothold
by michael r. burch

there is no hope;
therefore i became invulnerable to love.
now even god cannot move me:
nothing to push or shove,
no foothold.

so let me live out my remaining days in clarity,
mine being the only nativity,
my death the final crucifixion
and apocalypse,

as far as the i can see ...



u-turn: another way to look at religion
by michael r. burch

... u were borne orphaned from Ecstasy
into this lower realm: just one of the inching worms
dreaming of Beatification;
u'd love to make a u-turn back to Divinity, but
having misplaced ur chrysalis,
can only chant magical phrases,
like Circe luring ulysses back into the pigsty ...



You
by Michael R. Burch

For thirty years You have not spoken to me;
I heard the dull hollow echo of silence
as though a communion between us.

For thirty years You would not open to me;
You remained closed, hard and tense,
like a clenched fist.

For thirty years You have not broken me
with Your alien ways and Your distance.
Like a child dismissed,

I have watched You prey upon the hope in me,
knowing “mercy” is chance
and “heaven”—a list.



I’ve got Jesus’s face on a wallet insert
by Michael R. Burch

for the Religious Right

I’ve got Jesus’s face on a wallet insert
and "Hell is for Queers" on the back of my shirt.
     And I uphold the Law,
     for Grace has a Flaw:
the Church must have someone to drag through the dirt.

I’ve got ten thousand reasons why Hell must exist,
and you’re at the top of my fast-swelling list!
     You’re nothing like me,
     so God must agree
and slam down the Hammer with His Loving Fist!

For what are the chances that God has a plan
to save everyone: even Boy George and Wham!?
     Eternal fell torture
     in Hell’s pressure scorcher
will separate **** from Man.

I’m glad I’m redeemed, ecstatic you’re not.
Did Christ die for sinners? Perish the thought!
     The "good news" is this:
     soon My vengeance is his!,
for you’re not the lost sheep We sought.



Pagans Protest the Intolerance of Christianity
by Michael R. Burch

“We have a common sky.” — Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (c. 345-402)

We had a common sky
before the Christians came.

We thought there might be gods
but did not know their names.

The common stars above us?
They winked, and would not tell.

Yet now our fellow mortals claim
our questions merit hell!

The cause of our damnation?
They claim they’ve seen the LIGHT ...

but still the stars wink down at us,
as wiser beings might.



jesus hates me, this i know
by michael r. burch

jesus hates me, this I know,
for Church libel tells me so:
"little ones to him belong"
but if they use their dongs, so long!
    yes, jesus hates me!
    yes, jesus baits me!
    yes, he berates me!
    Church libel tells me so!

jesus fleeces us, i know,
for Religion scams us so:
little ones are brainwashed to
believe god saves the Chosen Few!
    yes, jesus fleeces!
    yes, he deceases
    the bunny and the rhesus
    because he's mad at you!

jesus hates me—christ who died
so i might be crucified:
for if i use my active brain,
that will drive the "lord" insane!
    yes, jesus hates me!
    yes, jesus baits me!
    yes, he berates me!
    Church libel tells me so!

jesus hates me, this I know,
for Church libel tells me so:
first priests tell me "look above,"
that christ's the lamb and god's the dove,
but then they sentence me to Hell
for using my big brain too well!
    yes, jesus hates me!
    yes, jesus baits me!
    yes, he berates me!
    Church libel tells me so!



and then i was made whole
by michael r. burch

... and then i was made whole,
but not a thing entire,
glued to a perch
in a gilded church,
strung through with a silver wire ...

singing a little of this and of that,
warbling higher and higher:
a thing wholly dead
till I lifted my head
and spat at the Lord and his choir.



Starting from Scratch with Ol’ Scratch
by Michael R. Burch

for the Religious Right

Love, with a small, fatalistic sigh
went to the ovens. Please don’t bother to cry.
You could have saved her, but you were all *******
complaining about the Jews to Reichmeister Grupp.

Scratch that. You were born after World War II.
You had something more important to do:
while the children of the Nakba were perishing in Gaza
with the complicity of your government, you had a noble cause (a
religious tract against homosexual marriage
and various things gods and evangelists disparage.)

Jesus will grok you? Ah, yes, I’m quite sure
that your intentions were good and ineluctably pure.
After all, what the hell does he care about Palestinians?
Certainly, Christians were right about serfs, slaves and Indians.
Scratch that. You’re one of the Devil’s minions.



In His Kingdom of Corpses
by Michael R. Burch

In His kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to speak
in many enraged discourses,
high, high from some mountain peak
where He’s lectured man on compassion
while the sparrows around Him fell,
and babes, for His meager ration
of rain, died and went to hell,
unbaptized, for that’s His fashion.

In His kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to vent
in many obscure discourses
on the need for man to repent,
to admit that he’s a sinner;
give up ***, and riches, and fame;
be disciplined at his dinner
though always he dies the same,
whether fatter or thinner.

In his kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to speak
in many absurd discourses
of man’s Ego, precipitous Peak!,
while demanding praise and worship,
and the bending of every knee.
And though He sounds like the Devil,
all religious men now agree
He loves them indubitably.



Beast 666
by Michael R. Burch

“what rough beast...slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?”―W. B. Yeats

Brutality is a cross
wooden, blood-stained,
gas hissing, sibilant,
lungs gilled, deveined,
red flecks on a streaked glass pane,
jeers jubilant,
mocking.

Brutality is shocking―
tiny orifices torn
by cruel adult lust,
the fetus unborn
tossed in a dust-
bin. The scarred skull shorn,
nails bloodied, tortured,
an old wound sutured
over, never healed.

Brutality, all its faces revealed,
is legion:
Death March, Trail of Tears, Inquisition . . .
always the same.
The Beast of the godless and of man’s “religion”
slouching toward Jerusalem:
horned, crowned, gibbering, drooling, insane.



I AM
by Michael R. Burch

I am not one of ten billion―I―
sunblackened Icarus, chary fly,
staring at God with a quizzical eye.
I am not one of ten billion, I.

I am not one life has left unsquashed―
scarred as Ulysses, goddess-debauched,
pale glowworm agleam with a tale of panache.
I am not one life has left unsquashed.

I am not one without spots of disease,
laugh lines and tan lines and thick-callused knees
from begging and praying and girls sighing "Please! "
I am not one without spots of disease.

I am not one of ten billion―I―
scion of Daedalus, blackwinged fly
staring at God with a sedulous eye.
I am not one of ten billion, I
AM!



Snap Shots
by Michael R. Burch

Our daughters must be celibate,
die virgins. We triangulate
their early paths to heaven (for
the martyrs they'll soon conjugate).

We like to hook a little tail.
We hope there's decent ** in jail.
Don't fool with us; our bombs are smart!
(We'll send the plans, ASAP, e-mail.)

The soul is all that matters; why
hoard gold if it offends the eye?
A pension plan? Don't make us laugh!
We have your plan for sainthood. (Die.)



Unwhole
by Michael R. Burch

What is it that we strive to remember, to regain,
as memory deserts us,
leaving us destitute of even ourselves,
of all but pain?

How can something so essential be forgotten,
if we are more than our bodies?
How can a soul
become so unwhole?



Nonbeliever
by Michael R. Burch writing as Kim Cherub

She smiled a thin-lipped smile
(What do men know of love?)
then rolled her eyes toward heaven
(Or that Chauvinist above?).



evol-u-shun
by Michael R. Burch

does GOD love the Tyger
while it's ripping ur lamb apart?

does GOD applaud the Bubonic Plague
while it's eating u à la carte?

does GOD admire ur intelligence
while u pray that IT has a heart?

does GOD endorse the Bible
you blue-lighted at k-mart?



Breakings
by Michael R. Burch

I did it out of pity.
I did it out of love.
I did it not to break the heart of a tender, wounded dove.
But gods without compassion
ordained: Frail things must break!
Now what can I do for her shattered psyche's sake?

I did it not to push.
I did it not to shove.
I did it to assist the flight of indiscriminate Love.

But gods, all mad as hatters,
who legislate in all such matters,
ordained that everything irreplaceable shatters.



Alien
by Michael R. Burch

for  a "Christian" poet

On a lonely outpost on Mars
the astronaut practices "speech"
as alien to primates below
as mute stars winking high, out of reach.

And his words fall as bright and as chill
as ice crystals on Kilimanjaro―
far colder than Jesus's words
over the "fortunate" sparrow.

And I understand how gentle Emily
felt, when all comfort had flown,
gazing into those inhuman eyes,
feeling zero at the bone.

Oh, how can I grok his arctic thought?
For if he is human, I am not.



Crescendo Against Heaven
by Michael R. Burch

As curiously formal as the rose,
the imperious Word grows
until its sheds red-gilded leaves:
then heaven grieves
love's tiny pool of crimson recrimination
against God, its contention
of the price of salvation.

These industrious trees,
endlessly losing and re-losing their leaves,
finally unleashing themselves from earth, lashing
themselves to bits, washing
themselves free
of all but the final ignominy
of death, become
at last: fast planks of our coffins, dumb.

Together now, rude coffins, crosses,
death-cursed but bright vermilion roses,
bodies, stumps, tears, words: conspire
together with a nearby spire
to raise their Accusation Dire...
to scream, complain, to point out these
and other Dark Anomalies.

God always silent, ever afar,
distant as Bethlehem's retrograde star,
we point out now, in resignation:
You asked too much of man's beleaguered nation,
gave too much strength to his Enemy,
as though to prove Your Self greater than He,
at our expense, and so men die
(whose accusations vex the sky)
yet hope, somehow, that You are good...
just, O greatest of Poets!, misunderstood.



Advice for Evangelicals
by Michael R. Burch

"... so let your light shine before men..."

Consider the example of the woodland anemone:
she preaches no sermons but―immaculate―shines,
and rivals the angels in bright innocence and purity,
the sweetest of divines.

And no one has heard her engage in hypocrisy
since the beginning of time―an oracle so mute,
so profound in her silence and exemplary poise
she makes lessons moot.

So consider the example of the saintly anemone
and if you'd convince us Christ really exists,
then let him be just as sweet, just as guileless
and equally as gracious to bless.



Heaven Bent
by Michael R. Burch

This life is hell; it can get no worse.
Summon the coroner, the casket, the hearse!
I'm upwardly mobile; this one thing I know:
I can only go up; I'm already below!



Shock and Awe
by Michael R. Burch

With megatons of "wonder, "
we make our godhead clear:
Death. Destruction. Fear.

The world's heart ripped asunder,
its dying pulse we hear:
Death. Destruction. Fear.

Strange Trinity! We ponder
this God we hold so dear:
Death. Destruction. Fear.

The vulture and the condor
proclaim: The feast is near!―
Death. Destruction. Fear.

Soon He will plow us under;
the Anti-Christ is here:
Death. Destruction. Fear.

We love to hear Him thunder!
With Shock and Awe, appear!―
Death. Destruction. Fear.

For God can never blunder;
we know He holds US dear:
Death. Destruction. Fear.



Lay Down Your Arms
by Michael R. Burch

Lay down your arms; come, sleep in the sand.
The battle is over and night is at hand.
Our voyage has ended; there's nowhere to go...
the earth is a cinder still faintly aglow.

Lay down your pamphlets; let's bicker no more.
Instead, let us sleep here on this ravaged shore.
The sea is still boiling; the air is wan, thin...
lay down your pamphlets; now no one will "win."

Lay down your hymnals; abandon all song.
If God was to save us, He waited too long.
A new world emerges, but this world is through...
so lay down your hymnals, or write something new.



What Immense Silence
by Michael R. Burch

What immense silence
comforts those who kneel here
beneath these vaulted ceilings
cavernous and vast?

What luminescence stained
by patchwork panels of bright glass
illuminates drained faces
as the crouching gargoyles leer?

What brings them here―
pale, tearful congregations,
knowing all Hope is past,
faithfully, year upon year?

Or could they be right? Perhaps
Love is, implausibly, near
and I alone have not seen It...
But, if so, still, I must ask:

why is it God that they fear?



Intimations
by Michael R. Burch

Let mercy surround us
with a sweet persistence.

Let love propound to us
that life is infinitely more than existence.



Altared Spots
by Michael R. Burch

The mother leopard buries her cub,
then cries three nights for his bones to rise
clad in new flesh, to celebrate the sunrise.

Good mother leopard, pensive thought
and fiercest love's wild insurrection
yield no certainty of a resurrection.

Man's tried them both, has added tears,
chants, dances, drugs, séances, tombs'
white alabaster prayer-rooms, wombs

where dead men's frozen genes convene...
there is no answer―death is death.
So bury your son, and save your breath.

Or emulate earth's "highest species"―
write a few strange poems and odd treatises.



Flight
by Michael R. Burch

Poetry captures
less than reality
the spirit of things

being the language
not of the lordly falcon
but of the dove with broken wings

whose heavenward flight
though brutally interrupted
is ever towards the light.



Winter Night
by Michael R. Burch

Who will be ******,
who embalmed
for all eternity?

The night weighs heavy on me―
leaden, sullen, cold.
O, but my thoughts are light,

like the weightless windblown snow.



Tonight, Let's Remember
by Michael R. Burch

July 7,2007 (7-7-7)

Tonight, let's remember the fond ways
our fingers engendered new methods to praise
the gray at my temples, your thinning hair.
Tonight, let's remember, and let us draw near...

Tonight, let's remember, as mortals do,
how cutely we chortled when work was through,
society sated, all gods put to rest,
and you in my arms, and I at your breast...

Tonight, let's remember how daring, how free
the Madeira made us, recumbently.
Our inhibitions?―we laid them to rest.
Earth, heaven or hell―we knew we were blessed.

Tonight, let's remember the dwindling days
we've spent here together―the sun's rays
spending their power beyond somber hills.
Soon we'll rest together; there'll be no more bills.

Tonight, let's remember: we've paid all our dues,
we've suffered our sorrows, we've learned how to lose.
What's left now to take, only God can tell.
Be with me in heaven, or "bliss" will be hell!

I do not want God; I want to see you
free from all sorrow, your labor through,
a song on your tongue, a smile on your lips,
sweet, sultry and vagrant, a child at your hips,

laughing and beaming and ready to frolic
in a world free from cancer and gout and colic.
For you were courageous, and kind, and true.
There must be a heaven for someone like you.



I, Lazarus
by Michael R. Burch

I, Lazarus, without a heart,
devoid of blood and spiritless,
lay in the darkness, meritless:
my corpse―a thing cold, dead, apart.

But then I thought I heard―a Voice,
a Voice that called me from afar.
And so I stood and laughed, bizarre:
a thing embalmed, made to rejoice!

I ran ungainly-legged to see
who spoke my name, and then I knew
him by the light. His name is True,
and now he is the life in me!

I never died again! Believe!
(Oops! Seems it was a brief reprieve.)



To Know You as Mary
by Michael R. Burch

To know You as Mary,
when You spoke her name
and her world was never the same...
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom.

O, then I would laugh
and be glad that I came,
never minding the chill, the disconsolate rain...
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom.

I might not think this earth
the sharp focus of pain
if I heard You exclaim―
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom

my most unexpected, unwarranted name!
But you never spoke. Explain?



Peers
by Michael R. Burch

These thoughts are alien, as through green slime
smeared on some lab tech's brilliant slide, I *****,
positioning my bright oscilloscope
for better vantage, though I cannot see,
but only peer, as small things disappear―
these quanta strange as men, as passing queer.

And you, Great Scientist, are you the One,
or just an intern, necktie half undone,
white sleeves rolled up, thick documents in hand
(dense manuals you don't quite understand) ,
exposing me, perhaps, to too much Light?
Or do I escape your notice, quick and bright?

Perhaps we wield the same dull Instrument
(and yet the Thesis will be Eloquent!).



Gethsemane in Every Breath
by Michael R. Burch

LORD, we have lost our way, and now
we have mislaid love―earth's fairest rose.
We forgot hope's song―the way it goes.
Help us reclaim their gifts, somehow.

LORD, we have wondered long and far
in search of Bethlehem's retrograde star.
Now in night's dead cold grasp, we gasp:
our lives one long-drawn rattling rasp

of misspent breath... before we drown.
LORD, help us through this spiral down
because we faint, and do not see
above or beyond despair's trajectory.

Remember that You, too, once held
imperiled life within your hands
as hope withdrew... that where You knelt
―a stranger in a stranger land―

the chalice glinted cold afar
and red with blood as hellfire.
Did heaven ever seem so far?
Remember―we are as You were,

but all our lives, from birth to death―
Gethsemane in every breath.



A Possible Argument for Mercy
by Michael R. Burch

Did heaven ever seem so far?
Remember-we are as You were,
but all our lives, from birth to death―
Gethsemane in every breath.



Birthday Poem to Myself
by Michael R. Burch

LORD, be no longer this Distant Presence,
Star-Afar, Righteous-Anonymous,
but come! Come live among us;
come dwell again,
happy child among men―
men rejoicing to have known you
in the familiar manger's cool
sweet light scent of unburdened hay.
Teach us again to be light that way,
with a chorus of angelic songs lessoned above.
Be to us again that sweet birth of Love
in the only way men can truly understand.
Do not frown darkening down upon an unrighteous land
planning fierce Retributions we require, and deserve,
but remember the child you were; believe
in the child I was, alike to you in innocence
a little while, all sweetness, and helpless without pretense.
Let us be little children again, magical in your sight.
Grant me this boon! Is it not my birthright―
just to know you, as you truly were, and are?
Come, be my friend. Help me understand and regain Hope's long-departed star!



Learning to Fly
by Michael R. Burch

We are learning to fly
every day...

learning to fly―
away, away...

O, love is not in the ephemeral flight,
but love, Love! is our destination―

graced land of eternal sunrise, radiant beyond night!
Let us bear one another up in our vast migration.



The Gardener's Roses
by Michael R. Burch

Mary Magdalene, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, "Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away."

I too have come to the cave;
within: strange, half-glimpsed forms
and ghostly paradigms of things.
Here, nothing warms

this lightening moment of the dawn,
pale tendrils spreading east.
And I, of all who followed Him,
by far the least...

The women take no note of me;
I do not recognize
the men in white, the gardener,
these unfamiliar skies...

Faint scent of roses, then―a touch!
I turn, and I see: You.
"My Lord, why do You tarry here:
Another waits, Whose love is true? "

"Although My Father waits, and bliss;
though angels call―ecstatic crew!―
I gathered roses for a Friend.
I waited here, for You."



Kingdom Freedom
by Michael R. Burch

LORD, grant me a rare sweet spirit of forgiveness.
Let me have none of the lividness
of religious outrage.

LORD, let me not be over-worried
about the lack of "morality" around me.
Surround me,

not with law's restrictive cage,
but with Your spirit, freer than the wind,
so that to breathe is to have freest life,

and not to fly to You, my only sin.



Cædmon's Face
by Michael R. Burch

At the monastery of Whitby,
on a day when the sun sank through the sea,
and the gulls shrieked wildly, jubilant, free,

while the wind and Time blew all around,
I paced that dusk-enamored ground
and thought I heard the steps resound

of Carroll, Stoker and good Bede
who walked here too, their spirits freed
―perhaps by God, perhaps by need―

to write, and with each line, remember
the glorious light of Cædmon's ember:
scorched tongues of flame words still engender.



He wrote here in an English tongue,
a language so unlike our own,
unlike―as father unto son.

But when at last a child is grown.
his heritage is made well-known:
his father's face becomes his own.



He wrote here of the Middle-Earth,
the Maker's might, man's lowly birth,
of every thing that God gave worth

suspended under heaven's roof.
He forged with simple words His truth
and nine lines left remain the proof:

his face was Poetry's, from youth.



Prayer for a Merciful, Compassionate, etc., God to ****** His Creations Quickly & Painlessly, Rather than Slowly & Painfully
by Michael R. Burch

Lord, **** me fast and please do it quickly!
Please don’t leave me gassed, archaic and sickly!
Why render me mean, rude, wrinkly and prickly?
Lord, why procrastinate?

Lord, we all know you’re an expert killer!
Please, don’t leave me aging like Phyllis Diller!
Why torture me like some poor sap in a thriller?
God, grant me a gentler fate!

Lord, we all know you’re an expert at ******
like Abram—the wild-eyed demonic goat-herder
who’d slit his son’s throat without thought at your order.
Lord, why procrastinate?

Lord, we all know you’re a terrible sinner!
What did dull Japheth eat for his 300th dinner
after a year on the ark, growing thinner and thinner?
God, grant me a gentler fate!

Dear Lord, did the lion and tiger compete
for the last of the lambkin’s sweet, tender meat?
How did Noah preserve his fast-rotting wheat?
God, grant me a gentler fate!

Lord, why not be a merciful Prelate?
Do you really want me to detest, loathe and hate
the Father, the Son and their Ghostly Mate?
Lord, why procrastinate?



Is there any Light left?
by Michael R. Burch

Is there any light left?
Must we die bereft
of love and a reason for being?
Blind and unseeing,
rejecting and fleeing
our humanity, goat-hooved and cleft?

Is there any light left?
Must we die bereft
of love and a reason for living?
Blind, unforgiving,
unworthy of heaven
or this planet red, reeking and reft?

NOTE: While “hoofed” is the more common spelling, I preferred “hooved” for this poem. Perhaps because of the contrast created by “love” and “hooved.”



Modern Dreams
by Michael R. Burch

after David B. Gosselin

I dreamed that God was good, but then I woke
and all his goodness vanished—****!—
like smoke.

I dreamed his Word was good, but then I heard
commandments evil, awful, weird,
absurd.

I dreamed of Heaven where cruel Angels flew
above my head and screamed, the Chosen Few,
“We’re not like you!”

I dreamed of Hell below, where prostitutes
adored by Jesus, played on lovely lutes
“True Love Commutes.”

I dreamed of Earth then woke to hear a Gong’s
repellent echoes in Religion’s song
of right gone wrong.



Star Crossed
by Michael R. Burch

Remember—
night is not like day;
the stars are closer than they seem ...
now, bending near, they seem to say
the morning sun was merely a dream
ember.




Well, Almost
by Michael R. Burch

All Christians say “Never again!”
to the inhumanity of men
(except when the object of phlegm
is a Palestinian).



O, My Redeeming Angel
by Michael R. Burch

O my Redeeming Angel, after we
have fought till death (and soon the night is done) ...
then let us rest awhile, await the sun,
and let us put aside all enmity.

I might have been the “victor”—who can tell?—
so many wounds abound. All out of joint,
my groin, my thigh ... and nothing to anoint
but sunsplit, shattered stone, as pillars hell.

Light, easy flight to heaven, Your return!
How hard, how dark, this path I, limping, walk.
I only ask Your blessing; no more talk!

Withhold Your name, and yet my ears still burn
and so my heart. You asked me, to my shame:
for Jacob—trickster, shyster, sham—’s my name.



To Know You as Mary
by Michael R. Burch

To know you as Mary,
when you spoke her name
and her world was never the same ...
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom.

O, then I would laugh
and be glad that I came,
never minding the chill, the disconsolate rain ...
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom.

I might not think this earth
the sharp focus of pain
if I heard you exclaim—
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom

my most unexpected, unwarranted name!
But you never spoke. Explain?



ur-gent
by Michael R. Burch

if u would be a good father to us all,
revoke the Curse,
extract the Gall;

but if the abuse continues,
look within
into ur Mindless Soulless Emptiness Grim,

& admit ur sin,
heartless jehovah,
slayer of widows and orphans ...

quick, begin!



Bible libel (ii)
by Michael R. Burch

ur savior’s a cad
—he’s as bad as his dad—
according to your strange Bible.

demanding belief
or he’ll bring u to grief?
he’s worse than his horn-sprouting rival!

was the man ever good
before made a “god”?
if so, half your Bible is libel!



stock-home sin-drone
by Michael R. Burch

ur GAUD created this hellish earth;
thus u FANTAsize heaven
(an escape from rebirth).

ur GUAD is a monster,
**** ur RELIGION lied
and called u his frankensteinian bride!

now, like so many others cruelly abused,
u look for salve-a-shun
to the AUTHOR of ur pain’s selfish creation.

cons preach the “TRUE GOSPEL”
and proudly shout it,
but if ur GAUD were good
he would have to doubt it.



un-i-verse-all love
by Michael R. Burch

there is a Gaud, it’s true!
and furthermore, tHeSh(e)It loves u!
unfortunately
the
He
Sh(e)
It
,even more adorably,
loves cancer, aids and leprosy.



yet another post-partum christmas blues poem
by michael r. burch

ur GAUD created hell; it’s called the earth;
HE mused u briefly, clods of little worth:
let’s conjure some little monkeys
to be BIG RELIGION’s flunkeys!
GAUD belched, went back to sleep, such was ur birth.



wee the many
by michael r. burch

wee never really lived: was that our fault?
now thanks to ur GAUD wee lie in an underground vault.
wee lie here, the little ones ur GAUD despised!
HE condemned us to death before wee opened our eyes!
as it was in the days of noah, it still remains:
GAUD kills us with floods he conjures from murderous rains.



Untitled ur poems

since GOD created u so gullible
how did u conclude HE’s so lovable?
—Michael R. Burch

limping to the grave under the sentence of death,
should i praise ur LORD? think i’ll save my breath!
—Michael R. Burch



One of the Flown
by Michael R. Burch

Forgive me for not having known
you were one of the flown—
flown from the distant haunts
of someone else’s enlightenment,
alighting here to a darkness all your own . . .

I imagine you perched,
pretty warbler, in your starched
dress, before you grew bellicose . . .
singing quaint love’s highest falsetto notes,
brightening the pew of some dilapidated church . . .

But that was before autumn’s
messianic dark hymns . . .
Deepening on the landscape—winter’s inevitable shadows.
Love came too late; hope flocked to bare meadows,
preparing to leave. Then even the thought of life became grim,

thinking of Him . . .
To flee, finally,—that was no whim,
no adventure, but purpose.
I see you now a-wing: pale-eyed, intent, serious:
always, always at the horizon’s broadening rim . . .

How long have you flown now, pretty voyager?
I keep watch from afar: pale lover and ******.



what the “Chosen Few” really pray for
by Michael R. Burch

We are ready to be robed in light,
angel-bright

despite
Our intolerance;

ready to enter Heaven and never return
(dark, this sojourn);

ready to worse-ship any gaud
able to deliver Us from this flawed

existence;
We pray with the persistence

of actual saints
to be delivered from all earthly constraints:

just kiss each uplifted Face
with lips of gentlest grace,

cooing the sweetest harmonies
while brutally crushing Our enemies!

ah-Men!



wild wild west-east-north-south-up-down
by Michael R. Burch

each day it resumes—the great struggle for survival.

the fiercer and more perilous the wrath,
the wilder and wickeder the weaponry,
the better the daily odds
(just don’t bet on the long term, or revival).

so ur luvable Gaud decreed, Theo-retically,
if indeed He exists
as ur Bible insists—
the Wildest and the Wickedest of all
with the brightest of creatures in thrall
(unless u
somehow got that bleary
Theo-ry
wrong too).



The Strangest Rain
by Michael R. Burch

"I ... am small, like the Wren, and my Hair is bold, like the Chestnut Bur?and my eyes, like the Sherry in the Glass, that the Guest leaves ..."?Emily Dickinson

"If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry."--Emily Dickinson

The strangest rain, a few bright sluggish drops,
unsure if they should fall, run through with sun,
came tumbling down and touched me, one by one,
too few to animate the shriveled crops
of nearby farmers (though their daughters might
feel each cool splash, a-shiver with delight).

I thought again of Emily Dickinson,
who felt the tingle down her spine, inspired
to lifting hairs, to nerves’ electric song
of passion for a thing so deep-desired
the heart and gut agree, and so must tremble
as all the neurons of the brain assemble
to whisper: This is love, but what is love?
Wrens darting rainbows, laughter high above.



Note to a Chick on a Religious Kick
by Michael R. Burch

Daisy,
when you smile, my life gets sunny;
you make me want to spend all my ****** money;
but honey,
you can be a bit ... um ... hazy,
perhaps mentally lazy?,
okay, downright crazy,
praying to the Easter Bunny!



lust!
by michael r. burch

i was only a child
in a world dark and wild
seeking affection
in eyes mild

and in all my bright dreams
sweet love shimmered, beguiled ...

but the black-robed Priest
who called me the least
of all god’s creation
then spoke for the Beast:

He called my great passion a thing base, defiled!

He condemned me to hell,
the foul Ne’er-Do-Well,
for the sake of the copper
His Pig-Snout could smell
in the purse of my mother,
“the ***** jezebel.”

my sweet passions condemned
by degenerate men?
and she so devout
she exclaimed, “yay, aye-men!” ...

together we learned why Religion is hell.

Published by Lucid Rhythms, The HyperTexts and Black Waters of Melancholy


A coming day
by Michael R. Burch

for my mother, due to her hellish religion

There will be a day,
a day when the lightning strikes from a rainbowed mist
when it will be too late, too late for me to say
that I found your faith unblessed.

There will be a day,
a day when the storm clouds gather, ominous,
when it will be too late, too late to put away
this darkness that came between us.



Hellbound
by Michael R. Burch

Mother, it’s dark
and you never did love me
because you put Yahweh and Yeshu
above me.

Did they ever love you
or cling to you? No.
Now Mother, it’s cold
and I fear for my soul.

Mother, they say
you will leave me and go
to some distant “heaven”
I never shall know.

If that’s your choice,
you made it. Not me.
You brought me to life;
will you nail me to the tree?

Christ! Mother, they say
God condemned me to hell.
If the Devil’s your God
then farewell, farewell!

Or if there is Love
in some other dimension,
let’s reconcile there
and forget such cruel detention.

Keywords/Tags: god, Jesus, Christ, Christian, prayer, Bible, angel, atheist, faith, blasphemy, heresy, heresies, heretic, heretic, heretical, pagan, pagans, god, gods, mrbhere



He Lived: Excerpts from “Gilgamesh”
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I.
He who visited hell, his country’s foundation,
Was well-versed in mysteries’ unseemly dark places.
He deeply explored many underworld realms
Where he learned of the Deluge and why Death erases.

II.
He built the great ramparts of Uruk-the-Sheepfold
And of holy Eanna. Then weary, alone,
He recorded his thoughts in frail scratchings called “words”:
But words made immortal, once chiseled in stone.

III.
These walls he erected are ever-enduring:
Vast walls where the widows of dead warriors weep.
Stand by them. O, feel their immovable presence!
For no other walls are as strong as this keep’s.

IV.
Come, climb Uruk’s tower on a starless night—
Ascend its steep stairway to escape modern error.
Cross its ancient threshold. You are close to Ishtar,
The Goddess of Ecstasy and of Terror!

V.
Find the cedar box with its hinges of bronze;
Lift the lid of its secrets; remove its dark slate;
Read of the travails of our friend Gilgamesh—
Of his descent into hell and man’s terrible fate!

VI.
Surpassing all kings, heroic in stature,
Wild bull of the mountains, the Goddess his dam
—Bedding no other man; he was her sole rapture—
Who else can claim fame, as he thundered, “I am!”



Enkidu Enters the House of Dust
an original poem by Michael R. Burch

I entered the house of dust and grief.
Where the pale dead weep there is no relief,
for there night descends like a final leaf
to shiver forever, unstirred.

There is no hope left when the tree’s stripped bare,
for the leaf lies forever dormant there
and each man cloaks himself in strange darkness, where
all company’s unheard.

No light’s ever pierced that oppressive night
so men close their eyes on their neighbors’ plight
or stare into darkness, lacking sight ...
each a crippled, blind bat-bird.

Were these not once eagles, gallant men?
Who sits here—pale, wretched and cowering—then?
O, surely they shall, they must rise again,
gaining new wings? “Absurd!

For this is the House of Dust and Grief
where men made of clay, eat clay. Relief
to them’s to become a mere windless leaf,
lying forever unstirred.”

“Anu and Enlil, hear my plea!
Ereshkigal, they all must go free!
Beletseri, dread scribe of this Hell, hear me!”
But all my shrill cries, obscured

by vast eons of dust, at last fell mute
as I took my place in the ash and soot.



Reclamation
an original poem by Michael R. Burch

after Robert Graves, with a nod to Mary Shelley

I have come to the dark side of things
where the bat sings
its evasive radar
and Want is a crooked forefinger
attached to a gelatinous wing.

I have grown animate here, a stitched corpse
hooked to electrodes.
And night
moves upon me—progenitor of life
with its foul breath.

Blind eyes have their second sight
and still are deceived. Now my nature
is softly to moan
as Desire carries me
swooningly across her threshold.

Stone
is less infinite than her crone’s
gargantuan hooked nose, her driveling lips.
I eye her ecstatically—her dowager figure,
and there is something about her that my words transfigure

to a consuming emptiness.
We are at peace
with each other; this is our venture—
swaying, the strings tautening, as tightropes
tauten, as love tightens, constricts

to the first note.
Lyre of our hearts’ pits,
orchestration of nothing, adits
of emptiness! We have come to the last of our hopes,
sweet as congealed blood sweetens for flies.

Need is reborn; love dies.

Keywords/Tags: Epic of Gilgamesh, epic, epical, orient occident, oriental, ancient, ancestors, ancestry, primal



Double Dactyls

Sniggledy-Wriggledy
Jesus Christ’s enterprise
leaves me in awe of
the rich men he loathed!

But should a Sadducee
settle for trifles?
His disciples now rip off
the Lord they betrothed.
―Michael R. Burch

Donald Double Dactyl

Higgledy Piggledy
Ronald McDonald
cursed Donald Trump,
his least favorite clown:

"Why should I try to be
funny as Donald? He
gets all the laughs
saying upside is down!"
―Michael R. Burch



Lines for My Ascension
by Michael R. Burch

I.
If I should die,
there will come a Doom,
and the sky will darken
to the deepest Gloom.

But if my body
should not be found,
never think of me
in the cold ground.


II.
If I should die,
let no mortal say,
“Here was a man,
with feet of clay,

or a timid sparrow
God’s hand let fall.”
But watch the sky darken
to an eerie pall

and know that my Spirit,
unvanquished, broods,
and scoffs at quaint churchyards
littered with roods.

And if my body
should not be found,
never think of me
in the cold ground.


III.
If I should die,
let no man adore
his incompetent Maker:
Zeus, Yahweh, or Thor.

Think of Me as the One
who never died—
the unvanquished Immortal
with the unriven side.

And if my body
should not be found,
never think of me
in the cold ground.


IV.
And if I should “die,”
though the clouds grow dark
as fierce lightnings rend
this bleak asteroid, stark ...

If you look above,
you will see a bright Sign—
the sun with the moon
in its arms, Divine.

So divine, if you can,
my bright meaning, and know—
my Spirit is mine.
I will go where I go.

And if my body
should not be found,
never think of me
in the cold ground.




Listen
by Immanuel A. Michael (an alias of Michael R. Burch)

1.
Listen to me now
and heed my voice;
I am a madman, alone,
screaming in the wilderness,
but listen now.

Listen to me now, and if I say
that black is black
and white is white
and in between lies gray,
I have no choice.

Does a madman choose his words?
They come to him:
the moon's illuminations,
intimations of the wind,
and he must speak.

But listen to me now,
and if you hear
the tolling of the judgment bell,
and if its tone is clear,
then do not tarry,
but listen,
or cut off your ears,
for I Am weary.

I desire mercy, not sacrifice.

2.
Listen to me now: I had a Vision.
An elevated train derailed, and Fell.
It was the Church brought low, almost to Hell.
And I alone survived, who dream of Mercy:
the Heretic, who speaks behind the Veil.

3.
Listen to me now: I saw an airplane
fall from the sky. And why should I explain?
The Visions are the same. It is my Heresy
that I survive, because I sing of Mercy,
while elevated "saints" go down in flames.

4.
Listen to me now: I saw in Nashville
how those who "soar" will plummet―Fame in flames!―
and fall on those below, as if to **** them.
The lowly, saved, will understand their names.

5.
Listen to me now: I heard another
say, "That which died shall Resurrect and Live."
An angel with a Rose bestowing Mercy!
What can it mean, but that my Visions give
fair warning to the world that God wants Mercy.
My Heresy is that we must forgive!

6.
Listen to me now: she heard god calling―
O, who will love me, who will be my friend?
Does he want Perfect Saints, the whitewashed Purists,
who frown down on their "brothers," without end?

7.
Listen to me now: you are not perfect,
and your "wise counsel" helps no one at all:
unless it's sweetened with the sweetest Mercy,
it's pure astringent antiseptic gall.

8.
Listen to me now, and learn this lesson:
If God wants mercy, why dig at the speck
in your brother's eye, when even now the Beam,
your lack of mercy, spares, no, neither neck,
becomes the Hangman's Millstone. We're all children,
all little ones! Be patient with the fleck!

9.
Listen to me now: for the Announcer
explained that wars have given Presidents
the precedents to soon assume all Power.
Vote, citizens, or be mere residents!

10.
O, listen to me now: I saw the Warheads
stored safely underground, except for One.
A red-haired woman with a bright complexion
seduced the guard. Translucent blouse, red thong,
white bra―these were her fearsome antique weapons.

I saw the Skull and Crossbones! Heed my Song!

11.
O, listen to me now, and hear my Gospel:
three verses of such sweet simplicity!
God is Light: in Him there is no darkness.
In Christ, no condemnation: Liberty!
God want no Sacrifice, but only Mercy.
O, who could ask for sweeter Heresy?

12.
Theology? I swear that I disdain it!
If Love can be explained, why then explain it!
If Love can't be explained why, then, should God,
if God is Love? Nor hell nor cattle ****
is needed, if God's good, and God's supreme.
Ask, children, what "re-ligion" truly means:
"return to *******! " Heed the bondsman's screams!

13.
Heed, children, which Theologies you dream
when Hellish Nightmares wake you, when you Scream
for comfort, but no comforter is there.
Which Voices do you heed, which Crosses bear?
If god is light, whence do Dark Visions come
which leave the Taste of Venom on your Tongue,
with which you **** your brother for one Sin
you do not share, ten thousand underskin
like Itching Worms that Squirm and Vilely Hiss:
"Your brother's sin will keep him from god's bliss,
but You are safe because god favors You! "
If God is Love, how can this voice be true?

14.
For God is not a favorer of men.
Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.
Anna Martinez Mar 2012
When did Wishes become as commonplace as pennies in Fountains?
When did Unicorns stop dreaming?
In a place where Unicorns can Dream
And Stars are Paths
And Fat Orange Cats are Sullen Irish Dancing Potatoes
With Biscuit Legs and Waterfall Eyes
With an Everything complex
Due to feeling the Absence of all
Whilst having felt an overwhelming Nothing
And Ant ****'s full of Honey and Air
Pirouette and bend their slim Amber eyed head backwards
To see such hopeless Unicorns Dreaming of
Trollops and Almosts who don't know what Mermaids are
Mermaids that only Sing Underwater
And watch Sullen Irish Dancing Potato Boy
With Biscuit Legs and Waterfall Eyes
And an Everything complex
Because Garfield can't figure out
If Fat Orange Cat is okay with loving Selfish Harlot Mermaid
Or not

Maybe we should all just stay Honey-Eyed Harlots
And Hero Twin Flames
Maybe the penny can be a Wish
And the Star's dust pathways
And Unicorns can see black instead of Dreams.
And it would do you much as well
To leave well enough alone.
JJ Hutton Jan 2011
I see the cockroach
caress the counter next to a brewing
*** of coffee, striking a chord of
crystaline sweetness,
that God and Satan could both agree upon.
In the living room,
my best friends are killing each other,
kissing each other,
falling in love,
snagging,
splitting stitches,
chalk outlines,
black mail,
and hopes for a resurrection
swirl and spin with the scent
of perfume
and coffee beans.
My phone lights up with a message
asking for some real advice,
my response is to get a new religion,
and wait for the bombs to fall.
Outside
light pollution fills the sky,
an eerie day that just won't die,
negotiating with eager streetlights,
and all-night diners.
On the corner
of 23rd and Western,
a dancing grinderman,
a homeless woman with a snaggletooth smile,
and their prize of a monkey
are cutting the night with desperation croons,
and delightful foresight.
Just past the construction on the east side of the city,
a one-legged, heathen named James W. Green
is finding solace with
a defeated, overthehill harlot,
going to and fro in a motorized sanctuary,
and grabbing change from her coin-dispensing hips.
I discover a pen embedded in the carpet,
I spend the rest of the evening split
between Midnight Man poetry,
and dictating divine apocrypha,
while once bright-eyed friends of mine
mourn over marriage, self-medication strategies,
and scrape the bottom of the barrel
with their tongues to ensure it's tangible.
I wander thro’ each charter’d street.
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow
A mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man.
In every Infants cry of fear.
In every voice; in every ban.
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear

How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackening Church appalls.
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls

But most thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse
Canaan Massie Oct 2012
Long days seem so much longer.
Distance does not make the heart grow fonder.
You’ve conquered the empire of my subconscious.
Your crusade so short,
Yet I hope your reign continues for eons.

We’re far past passive flatteries,
Instead, we fill each other’s hearts with vows.
You mean them now,
But what about a few months?
What if you decide I’m not what you want?

The torment I am slowly approaching,
Consumes my distant soul.
I can hear the sounds of futuristic loathing,
From when you decide this love has taken it’s toll.

So tell me.
How can I pay this inevitable toll?
How can I save us from Cupid’s malicious tyranny?

His arrow is too far lodged within me,
I cannot remove it.
I can only push it farther and farther
Into my heart until it falls out of my back.

But this arrow, trenchant.
Cupid, the sharpest of marksmen.
Yet colorblind, he is.
He sees not what colors his targets represent.
He draws his bow for the pure love of marksmanship.

Sometimes, yet not often,
He will hit the intended target.
But the odds are scarce.
His subjects are often punctured,
And connected to one whom reciprocated Fate’s desire.

Yet this time…
This time…
Cupid must have hit a target of Fate’s approval.
For thrice he has missed.
This time He and Fate are in sync.

This wound may stretch over time,
But the arrow shall remain firmly lodged within my *****,
***** and immovable.
Until you kick it through my backside.

But until then,
I can only endure.
I can only be woo wounded.
I can only survive,
Another ambush of the militant called Cupid.


But I will do it for you,
For by you,
I’ve been so divinely seduced.
Wooed by your lips.
Not by your kiss,
But by the music,
Which your mandibles so express.

I desire not to seal this wound,
But to evade its’ repercussions.
For I have endured a similar wound thrice.

He is winged as if an angel,
Yet Was Lucifer not once an angel as well?

Cupid is an impostor.
A spy of Agony, himself.
He prays on the young, the old, the strong, and the weak.
He cares not who he obliterates in his crusades.
He is a bloodthirsty heathen.
He makes scoundrels of Saints,
And Harlots of Housewives.
Saint Valentine is no Saint.
He is Satan’s nightmare.

At first, his arrows are ecstasy,

But like a cancer,
His poison-saturated arrows
Seep deep within every crevice of your body.
They consume you as if enriched with ******.
And eventually rot within your *****
Until it is nothing but dust and a memory.
One day I will assassinate Fate’s Malicious militant,
The one we call Cupid.
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2018
.there are only two aspects of forgiveness worthwhile, kept in anticipatory slumber, (1) is watching the masses congregate within the confines of your thinking, but (2)... watching how individuals in said massing of resources... seem to be akin to: someone walking on tip-toe on a bed  egg-shells... i'm met a few crazies... and i've prescribed myself investigating a few normal-folk, who are seemingly petrified, "thinking" than such: negations of ease, akin to depression, have an epidemic ontology.... that they are contagious... more or less.... like a sick ego, that bribes one's thinking and sows a false duality between what constitutes a body, consumed, with what otherwise, constitutes a mind... i've seen a few crazies... they seemed to like me, even when i suggested that we only just met...  the most senile people in the world... thus, to be frank... i'm more concerned with the sanity projects... with their emotional intelligence worth less than the emotional relativism of a gnat to a bear, which begs the reason os arguing: none... who... are so barren... they'd prefer the status of a pawn, in a game of chess, akin to Jimmy Savile...so much for the Saxon logic of: innocent until proven guilty... more like: innocent proven by death, after which... there is no case for either innocence, or guilt... i'm of the conviction... that... i'd rather see an innocent man claim redemption in life... than a guilty man laugh at a redemption in death; sorry... but i don't share the sort of sentiment that argues otherwise... better an innocent man claim redemption while alive... than a guilty man "claim innocence" while dead... part-and-parcel of the legality of the death penalty... the former argument: guilty until proven innocent makes a whole lot of sense without a death penalty... and the latter? no logic behind it... it makes no sense... then again... i am drunk, and i do not delve into sober issues or: serious circumstance... i allow sober people to meddle in such affairs... after all... sober people... make... the most... compelling arguments and, to boot, the most convincing opinions for up-coming affairs! why become a thief in their ordinances?! please! let the mice play, while the cat is away!  i need no bargain with ****-stormers and ******-buggery!

oh i've been to a few psychiatric interviews
over the past 10+ years...
always wondering: what am i doing
here? psychoanalyzing the psychiatrists?

you do know what a psychiatrist is
a poor man's psychologist -
with the added branch of pharmacological
applicability?
  a psychologist will just talk,
perhaps serve you camomile tea...
but prescribe zero drugs...

the talking, the endless talking,
the talking
of a west London psychologist...
who ends the relationship when
you mention:
i've had a dream of Allah...
god he's grotesque...
but, point: there was
someone with him...

  i thought that Allah had no
companions, or rather: he took none?
oops...

i remember analyzing this
situation once,
a ****** psychiatrist brought in
aa medicine student
who wanted to specialize in
psychiatry...
   apparently he concluded that
i was sane...
nice... being the subject
of learning curvature
surrounding a medicine student...

next came the allotment plant
to mind the crazies
while mingling them with the physical
retards...
stole a lot of potatoes that day...
the retards slurred,
exposed their genitals...
and were huddled together like
cattle by the social workers...

******* marvelous!
couldn't expect a lesser
Moulin Rouge reinterpretation
if i wasn't watching harlots
dance the: flinging
of the undergarments on show
that warm July afternoon!

but always, whenever i visited
a psychiatrist in a clinic:
always...
  why am i here?

you know what scares psychiatrists?
EM-PA-THY...
scares the living life out of them...
empathy is what psychiatrists
apprehend the most...
   so you're neither a psychopath
or a sociopath?
what are you then? comes the auto-suggestive
interpretation
of the ****** expression that
comes with suggesting,
even the slightest lack of contempt
for a basic human emotion...

scared, ****-less!
as if on a diet of ****** ruling
over Sudan, or similar ****...
famine after famine,
scared, but unable to soil their underwear,
given... well... the ******* famine...

oh i love psychoanalyzing
psychiatrists,
they have a shorthand blistering
beneath their appreciation for
listening...
their pharmacology branch...
caught one psychiatrist off guard...
he says, out loud,
that... i was abused as a child...

and?
  perhaps i was, perhaps i wasn't...
better that than being treated like
the modern Humpty-Dumpty...
walking on egg-shells typo,
rather than type, of what constitutes
the ontology of individualism...

i had to retort  with / resort to seeking
the opinion of a Polish neurologist
who, with a basic question
'doctor, am i mentally ill?'
replied
  'whoever said you're mentally ill,
is mentally ill themselves!'
case closed...
    
hence the statistics are believable
surround the death of Ellie...
teenage suicide rose in England
by 67% between 2010 and 2017...
    
so you do know the difference between
a psychologist, and a psychiatrist?
camomile tea...
   a psychologist is a humanist,
a psychiatrist is a physician...

if you're rich enough...
you see a humanist...
  poor? shorry...
   the pharmaceutical branch
of the practice is coming into practice...
but don't worry...
chances are...
    you talk what they want to hear
for a while, and then you start
talking what: they don't want you to hear...

hell...
  with this type of medication
and the whiskey...
i could turn into a semi-variant of a
hibernating bear!
i don't mind...
           i found that the glorification
pompous camp of cancer "survivors"
had their stab in the dark...
   because can we only regress
to glorifying surviving one type of
disease, while making stigma of
another kind?

the mentally ill are less of my concern....
i'm worried about the dim-wits
who abuse antibiotics!
   and i am... ******* numb-skulls...
taking antibiotics like
free-prescription vitamins!
creating the perfect niche for
super-bugs!
                      dim-wits!
         numb-skulls!
  and i thought that head-banging was
a source for erasing brain cells!
ConnectHook Sep 2015
☠☭☠☭☠☭☠

I ask you righteous Justice-lovers:
can it be that art uncovers
fiction passed as fact?
(is Cubism abstract?)

Behold the Caribbean glory –
pass the **** – uh, torch. My story
cries for sober ears
to modulate our fears.

Ask the ones who fled that island
why they left their tropic homeland;
if they think it’s cool
to glorify Red rule…

The noble face of Revolution,
CHE provides the cheap solution;
earnest young Ernesto
lived out the manifesto.

Martial hippie, beatnik butcher
bravely gazing toward the future
beams the brow of CHE
their shining knight of day.

Brand-new bloodshed – same old song
for guerrilleros of the ****
who rage against machines
confounding ends with means.

Such semi-informed fools display
a heady ignorance of CHE –
as if he played the bass.
(I hold them in disgrace.)

Though CHE was tough on Rock n’Rollers,
he abetted thought controllers;
jailing small and great
in Fidel’s prison-state.

Yet they’re convinced that CHE was righteous:
militant against injustice –
worshiping his name,
impervious to blame.

“Yo, CHE wuz for the PEOPLE, man.
(They’re not too sure about his plan…)
He died to make men free –
immortal – isn’t he?”

Vaguely Leftist youth display him,
not quite clear on how to play him –
Bearded god of Vision:
immune to all derision.

Ahem. A different Bearded One,
God’s other revolutionary son
borrowed from CHE – or stole
The liberator’s role…

Yet, let us not be blown off-course.
My words must gather rising force
to set the record straight
and hotter heads deflate.

The hairy Argentinian medic
left a lucrative esthetic:
****** meme of war –
his T-shirts rock the store!

Outworn by posing poetasters,
dreamers, thugs and hero-wasters
ignorant of history
and high on Marxist mystery.

He glowers with a lit cigar:
the noble hippie ******/czar
for kids who went to Kollege
emerging void of knowledge.

Now hailed by rappers, clueless starlets
Hollywood saints (and leftist harlots);
everyone’s a fan
of Cuba’s Magic Man.

What was his plan to save the nation?
Proletarian dictation!
Eliminating classes
while kissing Party *****.

Classic Leftist liquidation:
bathe the land in blood. Salvation
comes much later on.
For now let’s get it on !

(Let’s get his T-shirt on that is.
The taste is flatter than the fizz
of Revolution Cola;
go ask the Ayatollah).

One serious thing I beg of you.
Do NOT discern the truth. Just view
his face with pure devotion
to set it all in motion.

CHE was a merciless father-mucker
(translate THAT to Spanish, sucker).
Put away your ****.
My poem’s too long
(thus ends the song).
https://connecthook.wordpress.com/mine/various/viva-el-che/

☠☭☠☭☠☭☠
Reece Jan 2013
FIRE! FIRE! BE GONE ****** FIRE, I HATE...

O heavens, I'm sorry... I- hmm. Look, it was only four years and a handful of months ago that we met first. Me taking a thoughtful step from the step of my back door.
That face so delectable and now so distasteful. You broke me, woman, you broke me.
I pondered for so long, the demise of our world. The inevitable freezing of a seemingly indestructible cosmos. The cascade of hellfire from heavens unknown. Oh and the uncivilized beasts from the sky. Wise beyond our years, dangerous in theirs.
You broke me you broke me, ***** of my dreams, you broke me.
Step away from mine, the ****** hands of murderers and devils. Take in yours the safety you dreamed.
For I am but a tyrant in your ethereal presence.
                                                        
These walls close too fast for such a man... I'm no such thing though.
Brother, oh brother quit being dead, incorrigible fool. Rise from your own heaven of concrete and leaden death. Stupid man.
She. She did this. Taking to your arms each night, returning with your scent. WE ARE ANIMALS YOU FOOL! Did you assume..? Never mind.
But still you lay, dead, foolish.
Gasoline, oh gee golly gosh the smell of gasoline. Sweet petroleum of these masters of ours. ExxonMobil, Shell Oil, BP (oh BP you fastidious harlot), BG, Premier and Chevron. I pray you all burn like my dear poor friend/fiend here. I pray to a non-existent God, of course.
Oh sweet embers, the fire, thee fire. *******, the fire. I hate what you have made of me.

A beastly man, bearded and uncouth. My tooth, my tooth.
My tooth it pains me on a daily basis. My gums are that of a ninety year old **** smoker. Black, rotting, stinking. Parallels of my life, I suppose. Teeth,  dreadful, dying, dead, deathlike, decaying, Dickensian, dark, damp, d... d- **** it. Years of poor hygiene, years I focused my full attention on my love, my life, my sweet innocent beautiful flower of the wild world and the wooded wonderland of Whinfell.

Now you have gone, I feel empty. No, I shall cease to make such mistakes in my off handed ramblings. I shall seek my thesaurus...
My dear love, now that you have deserted my soul and destroyed my world and very reason for living. I feel ever so depleted, hollow, cavernous and wanting. Sweet sweet child, I pray to my non-conformist God, that of imagination and speculation. The veritable Frankenstein of philosophical and spiritual distortion; I pray he guides you safely through these stormy nights and past the cliffs of disturbed memories. I pray he holds you close to his chest and reveres your silken thighs without touch.

**** ME, PLEASE GOD ****. ME.
The embers of my kin simmer to a pedestrian crackle. The cackle the cackle, my voice is a cackle and I hate it. Dried remnants and burned ones too. I can't help but smile as I remember running through the fields behind my home, where the thieves and the addicts roamed. Child like fascination of the lurid creatures dwelling within the brothel I called home. Whorish women, my curse, the bane of my something or other. Feeble mind of mine, it continues to let me down. Not too dissimilar to the bunches of balloons that decorated the cars of the local garage, waiting to be sold to prospective family-men and business men and men and men and men. Sweet men. The balloons, of course! I would sit on the deserted field and from a  distance observe the close of trading and the ceremonial cutting of ******* strings that freed the multicolored harlots of the sky, back into the sky. Only to be destroyed by winds, birds, planes, storms and the pressures of the atmosphere. Weak willed *******, the lot of them.

But you dear brother, of no relation. You were kind hearted and I point to where your charred heart lay.
You held me close and called me Elizabeth. Matriarchal dream of mine. You broke the seal of new technology, purchased from store upon the corner.  Multiple windows on my windows, each one a prospective client. You lucky friend, I choose you.
We were madly in lust. Madly in... lust. I cannot bear to bring the 'L' word from my cowardice lips. Lips that pleasure, lips that weave, oh lips you kissed daily. Masculine frame, strong father figure of which I am vacant. Let me lay with you once more, in my pretty dress and high heels. Let me pretend for a day that I am no man. That I, that I am your lady. Let me, let me, please let me sit with my legs crossed and hair dancing in the cool breeze and breath of yours.
Too many years I herd the pleasure through papyrus walls. Mother wailing and cheering for the lord. Grunting and creaking with the pleasure she felt. I enjoyed it so much. For that reason and many others beside, I chose a life.

Life so frail, life so pure
Stepping slowly
From the step of my back door
Closing behind me
and turning the key
I shall be home to you
As your lady.

Please do not govern for I am impure of mind.
Life's little scar ingrained in my skull.
Each and every maddening creature has led me, the narcissist, to this here concrete hell.
In which I shall say my final words,
and breath my final wheezing breath
For I have killed two men and a perfect woman today
And Long may they rest.
Cody Edwards Mar 2011
Mother bear in a waterfall
With bigger thoughts than blonde harlots
Eating porridge,
Fallen starlets with outer space in their hair.

Just you wait;
I'll be the happiest little sonofabitch
You've ever seen.

Some small consolation, if any.
That weekend we spent with our
Necks perpendicular to our spines,
Of course I still remember the films we watched.

I condition my hair with split infinitives
And live off the poisoned dew that settles
Every morning in my closet.

Turn your little black dress inside-out,
I've got this magic idea for a recipe
But we're going to need some ants
And that crazy Harryhausen dream you've got up in your attic.

Ten or twelve little blond kids up
On the cliff, each ten or twelve years old
And dancing with a flame-Buddha called "Home".

Let's spend this week underwater,
I'd much rather give up my weight and my due
If it ensured me any small hour
With you. Oh, god how I love you anymore.

I may have told you this a while ago,
But did you know the first Pledge of Allegiance
Put us some good height above God?

Sometimes I find the sugar in my gas tank
Makes for a rough start in the morning,
Not that I particularly want to go anywhere,
But it's what I've thought that counts.

He's a bit upset that I skipped movie last night:
But I can't play horizontal baseball
With my violent, violent imaginary friend.

The Rubik's cube beats deep in my chest
Without a hand to cheat and rearrange the stickers.
Claude enunciates something queer into my ear
And turns off the lamp with a snap.
© Cody Edwards 2010
Governors,
Mayors,
Policemen,
Night keepers,
Men folk and all of you
On the crest of powers that be
Don’t brutalize prostitutes,
Nor mishandle ******,
Or terrorize harlots,

They were born natural
Innocent and callow
With plain white brains
Not tainted with any miss-morals,
Genuine in hearts
And humane in the genesis,

Until they grew up
Beyond father and mother
Clan and relatives,
Into the realm of money civilizations,
Where man and woman,
Must sell to survive,
Sell the wares of trade,
Commodities and tools of work,
Where men sell labour of their arms
To those crafty buyers,
And women sell smiles,
And the ******* of their *****,
To serve vice of man
In the glory of warped thought,

Prostitutes have no tribe,
Neither class nor race,
They have no permanent foe
Nor permanent friend,
They have no permanent memory,
Their love is devoid of logic,
They love most but fickle,
Where they make no money
And love least but with nostalgia
where they make money,
So don’t brutalize them,

Only love them,
Pay them,
Kiss them fondly
And sing to them,
Lyrical songs of love,
Sent them to lull and slumber
With your sensuous ******
Of their ******* fountains,
Both male and female
****** of your rendezvous.
NOLWAZI JOUBERT Jul 2015
Bang! Bang!
The sounds of gun shots mid-day on Thursday,
Sirens getting closer to the crime scene,
Just two weeks ago a man's life was terminated for a cellphone,
More thugs and more gun fires,
the tragedy so bad it even appeared in the news.

But today i can feel fear creeping in my vains,
Another man shot dead today,
why do i have to live in this community?
For i am afraid.
Few months ago
it was just like an action movie,
people running and rolling
while the loud sounds from the police guns aiming over my
roof top kept on going
Bang! Bang!

I see the police patroling the streets by day,
having picnics in the park
while they watch their horses eroid away the soil.
They feast to some take away outlets
filling their sagging bellies by night.
While they letting the just go unpunished all year long,

Oh! It hurts.
I feel a bullet on my chest,
Oh! It hurts
for i cannot look through the dark
night anymore.
I sit on the side of this wide classroom window,
And i wonder,
What if one bullet comes straight to me. (God forbid)

Oh this township that i loved,
you are not safe anymore.
Where can i run to for i called you home?
There is no distance further gone  without any loud sounds;
Bang! Bang!

     Oh mam' ngiyalil'
     ngililel' labo abangasek'
     ikakhulukaz' imphil' yam'
     umphefumul' ongenacal'
     kungab' sewabayin' wena             dolobh' lami.

I called your name,
with so much pride and bragging,
but now i cannot even say your name
for you have groomed thugs,
gangsters,
vindals,
drug addicts and drug dealers,
harlots... And what else that we do not know?

Could it be blood sacrificies,
are these the 'EndTimes' proclaimed in the book of Revelations,
Why should i bother trying to think when all i hear in my head are ecoing sounds
Bang! Bang!

All i need to do  is to find a way out,
    Nyawozam' ngibeleth' !
    Ngob' inhliziy' ayisahlalisekang'
    qobo
when will that day be,
when crime will be stopped for good,
and police do justice to the community?
#fight-against-crime
brandon nagley May 2015
Covenant of all ages,
Contrite despite the hatred here many feel!

Begged emotions,
Vexation of treasured spaces,
Inherited shackles to the debackle of brutes and feathered conquest!!!

Chauffeurs for you to lure,
Cheribums of wooden steps!!!

What ***** didst thou come from frosted faced vampiress?
You succeed in all pleasures,
Yet for thy measure your still undressed!!

Not like the rest,
Your timbrel makes settled noise,
Hard to avoid when thine feet trip over each step!!!

Church organs rattle about me as hymn book's not always around,
Some are phonies,
Many lonely,
Coheed to icelandic ground!!!!

Groupies meet in secludes corners,
While adorers temp with foul mouth tounges,
No blacks to white, or whites to black, just two players making one!!!

Orange cones to ex out any leaving plan's,
No clothing stands here!
This is not a mall town shop!!!!

No ice-creamed malts,
Just rags connected to colts,
Where trainers come from thy gambling slots!!!!!

Wounds to every room,
Dont get hung up on thyself,
Wherein harlotry cometh in,
Surely all grins are tiredly screaming out for help!!!!!
Byron Sep 2012
I will continue to write in remembrance of his inspiration. For I am not committed to any form or force of expression rather I choose to indulge in the ***** mediums made with slow slurring and rhythmic outbursts. But they are devices to be pitied, dull and decrepit from years of tantalizing abuse by many rulers and scribes. Why did you leave Austin? You had so much yet to let me learn of an enduring and angst-riddled soul. The hours spend sitting, trying to decipher each other’s language and tone. I paced myself for the sparks we would strike on walks by the canal, regrouping each night, too wild and crazed to of known empty figures from friends. Sitting that night on the roof of who-knows-who’s home, looking out at the street lights of Magnolia, deliberating the finer points of it's message and meaning far beyond any hope of achieving any answer; just truly sitting silent inside, too moved by what we had seen. These rare eyes given to you and I finally found courage in those ceaseless evenings which only put humanity in question more and more, night by night caught furiously in the ebb n’ flow of monstrous possibility, of gentle breezes and the tyranny of thoughtless men. After you left  I stuck around for a while. It was dried up past my ability to stomach any more. I don't really know what was so undesirable about  friends we use to run flags with that pushed me away but they where a crowd I felt had nothing left to tell or offer me. In all honesty they began to sicken me thinking about how they sickened you. I didn't even want to wake up; to sleep through the Fridays and Saturdays where no one could find me. Resting in frightened dreams, windows open to the foxtrot-cotton air dancing on my face with a gentle appeal of conscious being that I may be fearless yet wrapped in all bliss and achievement. Still for you my friend, I carry those words; regardless of how many moments I run into that say otherwise. I can still hear your faith in me, resonating back off the wall again and again. Even on that night hearing moans from the room up stairs, your words carried me home and into bed; betrayal had no grips on my eyes. I saw past it. Beautiful-she: the depravity of all men, once and now to us, do we deserve more than colorful intentions that leave dust on our window seals. We deserve better than harlots running down the streets. We deserve better than those less than beautiful, with perfect faces covered in perfect carbon paint. No my friend I want the battered and scared who's lines glow ever more dissonant in the moonlight. I sat in the sunlight today by the water reading the Great Gatsby watching mallard ducks couple up and down, embroidered males chasing after brown stripped females, as boats passing by rippled the water with their wakes, crashing into the wall I was sitting by, pushing away. Two years are gone and I still can't forgive myself. What you have to understand is I still hold on to the depth of her hurt and from that I have learned too much already. The joys of fearing love and never admitting that I care for the hallow banter and easily forgotten confessions. Those half-planned collisions of flesh that never get the resolution they deserve, but rather twist in every moment they are deprived of such satisfaction; this is what animates me to write and stirs every voice inside me.
****** means "sheath".
Oh, how tiresomely sexist,
this utility.

"****" is a sharp word,
but it will only ***** you
if you so insist.

And "*******" means
"to stand in for the Goddess" --
both Mother and *****.

Fertility cults
of Babylon hailed Ishtar,
the young Sophia.

In Sumerian times
they did call Her Inanna,
who shed Her jewels.

Solomon the Wise
did wed Her in his temple,
and wrote Her a Song.

At Her temple gates
await the harlots, smiling:
yours for but a coin.

Sacred silver thrown,
a rite of passage. Some wait.
Some wait longer still.

Wisdom works through them.
The hierodules of Heaven
beckon, honeysweet.

"Come to the temple,
let us dance the timeless dance,
my Lord Dumuzi!"

Rosy cheeks and lips,
shamelessness in Her power.
Passion at its peak.

Too **** for words.
Men feared Her and wrought cages,
misdirected blame.

Mary, the chaste one,
is an abomination.
Half, and the lesser.

A neutered Mother
with a ****** for swords,
a scabbard for men.

The Grail was stolen
from between Her holy thighs.
Paul was such a ****.

A **** who feared Her,
Mystery of Death and Blood.
Much more than a sheath.
**** is a power word. Take it back! I support ***-positivity.
Luka Love Jul 2013
Don’t write about the dark things they said

Don’t hide from the truth I replied

Well, part of the truth anyway

Which, any which way you look at it has two sides

A sun which hides its shadow

But even the sun must sleep sometimes

Then creeps and slides the oozy woozy darkness

Of drunks and floozies and drug addicts

Thugs and gangsters, hatchet men and fixers

These nefarious predators and scavengers of the night

Shuttered sight eating victims of urban decay

Never sated in their bloodlust and greed

That need that is so deep 

You could feed it without sleep

Forever and never fill it up

This is reality in our **** city

Where effluent flows down footpaths between bars

Climbs out of cars in high heels or collared shirts

“Sorry mate, not in those shoes"

Drunken harlots beckon rapists and sadists

Transfixed in the ever-pressing lusts of the flesh

Without joy or connection

Or even satisfaction, most of the time

Am I right? Ladies, am I right?

Another wine to fill the soul’s great hole

Another devastating moment when the sun gets in

To find you weeping in your make up

Black streaks down cheeks of bloodless faces

All because nobody told you what was possible

They simply told you what not to do

Which of course you did anyway

Over and over again with the same results

That part isn’t your fault, it’s society’s

It’s religion and propriety’s

It’s dogma and denial’s

The cultural hangover of the morning after the decades before

The holier-than-thou edicts of our preachers and teachers

And leaders without leadership

We’ve cut the slip

Caught the rip

Been flipped so many times we can hardly tell what is useful anymore

The answers you seek are inside yourself

It’s like Rafiki said: “Look harder"

It’s like Sigmund said: “Unexpressed emotions will never die.

They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.”

Our society reflects repressed attitudes to ***

And brings them forth in uglier ways

Like rapes and splays of legs to the most persistent bidder

Soulless sexuality

Stuffing ya pork sword into a drunken receptacle

Such a spectacle

You might swap names in the morning

It’s *** on a tray like a TV dinner

Forget the word “sinner"

It’s the lack of nutritional content that ills

That kills the real deal for these counterfeit thrills

This isn’t some moral crusade

There’s no need to drink the kool-aid

Throw out the gimmicks

But pay attention to the limericks

Be open, be honest

Be Eros, be Adonis

Be Venus, in furs / **** resplendence

Take lovers my dear

Make love and not fear

Turn empty lust in transcendence
Third Eye Candy May 2014
the ghosts around your moist lips
clipping the sweet drench of our limp wish....
the spectral harlots of our far lit lamps
and the damp parlors of our damaged camps
pitched.
the pit of our peaches, fussing the cuff
of our sap. the honey bonds -
of our wayward damp
runes...  
that
we caste  to undo
any telling
of our demise, to save our precious
myth.
to keep our ruse
amused...

my darling... goodnight... though nothing is good
and we have only the night.... goodnight.

i will
trouble you no more
but labor to keep your sweet grief
mine.
to contend
with your unending medallions
of perfect regret, to pass your palm
with silver drek, the likes of which
your liking, may learn to kiss
with two lips
at dead
stop.

if this is the end
tremble and be
trembling.
our disassembling
locks
our open door
and nothing more than vanishing
remains, where our appearance
mocks the
same.

goodnight... though nothing is good, and the light is a darkness,
a trump of knives and a far thing,
up too close
to save a prayer for the plight of fools
and just too far
to pry our hands from live
grenades...

to live for.

but to die
yes.
Faith Inesso Oct 2014
I yearn for a love who writes poems sends letters and plays a casual song on the guitar,
while in time beats the rhythms of the music of my affectionate and yearning heart.

I'd be fond of a man who is willing to talk about anything trivial or convoluted with expression,
And go on for hours learning each other's views of the world and be interesting enough to pay attention.

But isn't it awful, how I sell myself short seeing several different men every week?
Making something that is not love in the back of ****** old movie theatres, when truly I'm more interested with what's on the screen.

Have I become the ***** that the poets scorn?
The heartless girl, who leads on far to many a man?
No darling, I promise I'm just lost between wanting love and being numb.
And quite frankly, I think the poets would understand.
Steven Fried Jun 2013
War
Antagonism
burgeons back bad blood.
Compatriots, courtesy can cool contentions:
doubly, disrespect demands decisive
execution. Early efforts evolved
fatuously, force facilitated farcical fighting.
Gambling gents gleefully gored
hedonistic harlots. Harassing
ignorantly, igniting
jealously,
killings
listlessly- liars lament
momentarily. Meanwhile, monetary
nuances
of opulence obscure
prime problems.
Quarries quake
running red. Remembering
solitarily- stoic steeds stand silent, sending
thoughts,
unbidden, unbeknownst.
Violence:
we were
xanthic,
yellow years yaw…
Zymotic.
An alliteration of a the reasons for a battle, and the results of said battle.
Gnirednaw Dec 2012
I guess
It's my duty to express
Unpopular opinions
But
The only man I want
Leaving things
In my stockings
Doesn't wear red
He doesn't have a beard
And he's not fat
He's my Guy
With top shelf
On sale
For half price

I only know
Two things about
mistletoe
1. I've never parted
My mouth inside of
Its shadow
2. It would probably
**** to smoke

I don't need no fancy christmas trees
With lights, and stars, and hypocrisies

I've got hybrid harlots creeping
Down into the pink of
My cigarette kissed lungs
Kay Meraz Sep 2012
in my city, my pretty pretty city,
People lock their doors driving through my pretty pretty city.
in my city, my pretty pretty city,
Dogs are the kings in my pretty pretty city.
in my city, my pretty pretty city,
Harlots bargain with panderers in my pretty pretty city.
in my city, my pretty pretty city,
Felons avoid the police by hiding in schools, in my pretty pretty city.
in my city, my pretty pretty city,
Eye contact is discouraged, in my pretty pretty city.
in my city, my pretty pretty city,
Walking alone can be the biggest mistake you ever made, in my pretty pretty city.
Oh-
but in my city, my pretty pretty city,
the sea sends you salty, sandy kisses, in my pretty pretty city.
Oh-
and in my city, my pretty pretty city,
the railroad tracks take you to Zion from my pretty pretty city.
Oh-
in my city, my pretty pretty city
i have left behind my blood and promises to return.
Oh-
my city, in my pretty pretty city,
hearts break, while others mend,
tears fall, while smiles are conceived,
hate roams, while lovers love,
fear attacks, while fortitude prevails,
Oh-
my city, my pretty pretty city,
that's where i belong.
33°56′30″N 118°14′30″W coordinates to my heart.
Roar of the rushing train fearfully rocking,
Impatient people jammed in line for food,
The rasping noise of cars together knocking,
And worried waiters, some in ugly mood,
Crowding into the choking pantry hole
To call out dishes for each angry glutton
Exasperated grown beyond control,
From waiting for his soup or fish or mutton.
At last the station's reached, the engine stops;
For bags and wraps the red-caps circle round;
From off the step the passenger lightly hops,
And seeks his cab or tram-car homeward bound;
The waiters pass out weary, listless, glum,
To spend their tips on harlots, cards and ***.
Aaron Combs Jul 2015
California Dreams Part I

Time is falling apart,
My heart is stumbling,
the road is ending, so

follow me on.

Take my hand and forget yesterday, let me
get out of the country of Texas, see all of the world.
Don't worry so much, I'm always there,
and the world is free, let me show you.
Then let’s fall in the swift winds of adventure.

Let’s go!

Now look at the map in my brown eyes, and hold tightly
my hand, and our fingers will never grow cold.

After Christmas we'll travel to Highway One,
we’ll first set our eyes to the crystal skies
of California. And your dreams could come
true, under the lime light, everything
will make sense and our dreams will
rise like skyscrapers.

The dreams, euphoria, the fights and the pain,
it'll make sense through the hard times, it will.
If we falter, I know, we can still climb the gates
of paradise.  We can do everything. And we will.  

For in one year we'll climb to the stars,
stand on the purple mountains of Alaska
and conquer the midnight hours, we'll post
our banner on our mountain, call this our kingdom.

As the lot falls, we'll work, we'll go to school,
we'll pick each subject like roses and carve our hearts
into the trees, we'll find sweet the kiss of unity.

In the season of the blue moon, when we
get weary of one another.
 I'll find unwritten ways to love,  for 
 I will love you always.  It will be all okay.
    It will all be well. I promise.

As we fall in love again,  we’ll turn under the sun
To Arizona where the valley’s our only beauty, and
our voices are thunder in the Great Canyon.  
The eagles will perch  under the sycamore tree,
for we will lie down in the
fullness of peace and rest by the
hawk and the snake at noon.


Part II

Let Me Show You The World

Now I'll show you the world.
We'll see all of it.

Let's go!
Let's go!

Let's starve, let's eat, let's see.
We'll go on ship to Africa. We'll buy a jeep and and visit the brown hills
of Zimbabwe. We'll sleep with the cheetahs and run with the lions.
Our hearts can never die here.

Knowing war and love ,
we’ll lower our hearts to the children and serve them.
And look into the eyes of the broken, the hurt, and the dying.
We can help them. For as the warrior children destroy mothers
And fathers inside the streets in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt.
We can save that one Child.  

The following year we'll walk upon Mary's path to Nazareth,
and see where Jesus grew up and David
defeated the mightiest of armies.

We'll remember the creation of the world,
and the end of it all, on the valley of decision,
Where the world will come to ruin.

Don’t’ worry dear, we'll find our romance and rest.
We'll follow the road the road to Rome.
We’ll see the catacombs of old, the virgins and saints buried
with love so perfect.
We'll see see so many things and all the color of the world walking together, the nobleman, the thieves, and the harlots at dusk,
we'll remember our love, as the wind of our prayers
carry them.

follow me on  

Let's turn to the twisted hills of France and
find fragrance, and the lips of war.
We'll walk in the evening and lie down upon the roof of Notre Dame
and watch the morning light spill into the city of Paris.

Don't be surprised, for war will come again.
We will be ready, against our enemies we will fight.
We are mortal my dear, we must fight.

When the wars boil over and settles down
we'll escape to London.  Where books fly high,
and parties go higher, where love seems but a
gentle lying dream.

Before we die in the darkness, we can always hide
under the blood and water of our prayers, we can be forgiven.
As our sanity returns, we'll lie down on the rocks of Stonehenge
and dream once again.

Part III

Let's Lie Down, I Will Be Your King

Let's turn our way to Scandinavia,
and taste the richest cheese and
then bicycle to the home of Germany's finest chocolate.
Let's find our fill!

follow me on,

Next  we'll buy to the ticket to the mountains of Romania
the land of many orphans. We'll grow a garden
of orchards of olives, and make our wealth and peace.
And we'll feed everyone of them,
Everyone of the little children and hear their forgotten history.

Three more years later, we'll call our home in Siberia
where puffins find refuge in the white mountains.
We'll learn to fish with the Eskimo and
watch the faint heat of dawn whisper away.

Let’s Go!

In Beijing let's learn Karate and the arts.
We'll know the greatest of warriors and find peace
in the red blood sky. And we'll rent a yacht and live there for months
and make a business with great merchants. See it'll be okay.
It will all be okay. We’ll find our fortune and
lie down on the ****** shores of Hiroshima.

My dear, If the world wasn't enough, we will rule paradise
on a thousand islands near Malaysia and
compose immortal songs about the world between you and me.

Like the kings of the northern stars we'll explore
far out. For in the land of New Zealand,
we'll see where  beauty cannot
die and mountains cannot fall, where paradise
begins. We’ll surf on the silver waves,
and write more songs till’ love draws us home.

We will lose it all and have nothing again
we’ll make our last campfire
and tell the village people our winds
of adventure.

Until  the moon turns to blood, I will be by your side,
morning by morning I will be your king and love,
your warrior outside, beneath
our  balcony we will see a thousand
blue and yellow rivers, flashing their gates of paradise!

Let's Lie Down  

The Return Part IV

In our old age, we'll go back to our home in Texas.
Where the oil never runs dry and where corn crops still grow;
where friendship is only a second away, let's go again.
Let's get on our motorcycle and visit where we grew up
and remember it all. And look at the playground where I fought
the bully in the third grade, and where you
drew your first kiss. Let's see our
first Sunday school, where the air
touched our first prayer.

As our hearts grow in splendor
like a garden of strong delight and the
fearful valley is stricken with good rain.

Let's lie down there at the white steeples
where we got married, where our eyes can close
and drink in the heavenly shores and

      thirst no more.
     
 and thirst no more.
This is my epic poem, I'm really trying to break the 50 heartbreak, so will you help with my goal? Enjoy the poem friends!
RW Dennen Sep 2014
This is in dedication to Mr. John Grant a spokesman
for Veterans for Peace local 31. When during the late Bush years we protested the Bushy Zombies in West Chester
Pa. This took place every Saturday from early morning till
around 4 or 5 pm. He keep saying, "They're drinking the cool-aid."
P.S. Veterans for Peace is also national and is registered
under the U.N. with its own magazine. This was poem was written in 2010
Besides it has a rap beat to it



Lies ah decieven' our minds ah believen'
by ah drinkin' the cool-aid; eatin' funny-fudge
Drive-by ah flyin' innocent babes ah dyin',
while ah drinkin' the cool-aid; eatin' funny-fudge


Blacks  against slavery racists say lazy,
Jim Crow ah knowin', black vote ah growin',
voter lines ah showen', black suppression ah growin',
while ah drinkin' the cool-aid; eatin' funny-fudge

Mr. sweater vest advisin' theocracy risin' ( Rick *******)
gays cannot marry his heavy-load to carry,
all Muslims are targets by his government harlots,
body meedlers of women, no rights he has proven
by ah drinkin' his cool-aid and eatin' funny-fudge

Mexican Border right-wingers disorder,
Jail complexes growin', their profits showin',
public schools no maintain', corporate zombie schools gainin',
while ah drinkin' the cool-aid; eatin' funny fudge

Corporations are people super-vote-money inclusion,
Super Pacs' delusion, Democracy illusion,
while ah drinkin' the cool-aid; eatin' funny-fudge

Profits by Lockheed Martin perpetual wars embarkin',
wars appeasin' without good reason,
while ah drinkin' the cool-aid; eatin' funny fudge
No good reason callin' Wikkeleaks treason,
while ah drinkin' the cool-aid; eatin' funny fudge

Houses ah runnin' from ex-owners ah gruntin',
our lands will desert us whole nature unnerved us,
while ah drinkin' the cool-aid; eatin' funny fudge

Street people ah growin' with hardly non knowin',
parents ah cryin', hungry tots ah dyin', emergency rooms
ah packin', it's healthcare ah lackin'
While ah Wall Street ah hoppin' in triumph give-away-ah-hoppin',
while ah drinkin' the cool-aid; eatin' funny fridge

Slave hours grind us while paychecks are minus,
GOP congress never behind us,
while ah drinkin' the cool-aid; eatin' funny fudge,
Zombies surround us to only remind us,
QUIT DRINKIN' THE COOL-AID AND EATIN' FUNNY FUDGE!!!
I couldn't possibly use the brand name drink for fear of  being sued.
most important is to know that the cool-aid stuff is garbage propaganda by right-wing talking heads. I know you know who they are. I'm certainly glad of that. Thank you all...
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2018
oh *******...
migrant crisis my ***,
what with Ukraine
happening?
East European...
how about western women?
Manchester mothers?
no?
  oh well....
              watch my face...
do i ******* look
like i, might, care?!
no... no?!
well...
       thank you...
because?
                      i don't!
i'm thinking: let them
**** your harlots...
you managed to call my ethnicity,
vermin.... RATS....
               whatever ally you
had... gone...
next time you ask, ask
a Pakistani to deal with your women...
i'll be most obliged...
to tell you:
               *******!
no... you told me once,
you do not assert the stature of telling me
twice...
                 i don't care whether it is
or whether it isn't your island...
you violated, or at least your
citizen, the rules of p4rivate property...
no...
nein nein nein!
         for once i'll turn the volume
to a Reading Park volume:
*******!
  and your ambitions
of a mastering of the races...
claiming quasi Boar fixture;
******* capitalists...
      with their made in china of
what used to be the manufacturing jobs...
arbeit macht frei...
                           arbeit macht frei...
              arbeit ist frei...
mein, mein, herr...
                                 made in china..
my ***, my *** was made in china...
your argument for liberty?
   hardly comprised in Monaco.

yes, those Eastern European
women...
   pretty much as those ***** whip
Western European men...
the sort of men:
shy of death...
              one you almost
wish to **** with a bludgeon
that might leave fingerprints;
      
           lesson no. 1...
you come after Eastern European women...
lesson no. 2:
there are no Western European
"men" to come after...
   sure... *******...
     little men...
               something between
petting an in between
petting a panda and a koala;
totally castrato,
just the way Western Women like
their men to be...
obedient...
                       *****-whipped...
leashed.

mind you...
what are the thoughts
of an Eastern European man
concerning Western women?
and, why,
would, i, heaven, and, hell,
on, earth, ever,
want, to, ****, this,
exercise, in, making,
equivalent, raising,
a, *******, brat?!

i don't want these women,
no more than the women
want me...
apparently Pakistanis are
in higher demand.
Arman Aug 2013
There is no dusk in this city
penetrated by the raging Potomac,
Night just crams itself in and
rapes the day dry -
lays her flat against the horizon.
Mothers and children run for covers
and put each other to sleep;
in a few hours
harlots and nighthawks will do the same.

Sweet Siren
You are this city
Petticoated and pretty,
Cunning and stunning
Winking and blinking
Red
Yellow
Green
eyes popping open like sunken headlights,
Ready for the night.

I hear your wailing
red-flashed and flaming
like an open heart,
piercing the black with it's plea.
I feel your pulse-pumping red corpuscles
thrusting me deep into
lusting for things forbidden and hidden
Somewhere inside this neon wonderland.

Sweet Siren,
Sing your teasing tunes for me
Deliver me from your shelters and streets,
Where infidels and angels
Fall at your feet.
Sweet Siren,
Deliver me to the
Trembling shelter of your sheets.

Liars and their lies
roam this concrete jungle
begging for love and razors
and other disposable items.
You go screaming passed them though,
determined to save at least one numb drunk ***
in some rain cleansed back alley of vices;
only to fool your own conscience
with the lithium laced smile of charity.

Sweet Siren
Quiet your angry shrill to a hush
The tarmac and taxis are tired of us
And your princes and saviors have fled this town.
Sweet Siren,
It's time for us to burn this city down
And leave the ashes
For the thieves and the clowns.
Blissful Nobody Jul 2014
The world is a labyrinth,
Every speckle a maze.
The mystery enthralls every sense,
Pensive and my brows tense.
Inability to find a way,
A single thought,
Drowns the greatest bay.

Troubled sleepless nights,
A confusion still guards my plights.
Bound in a skeletal structure,
Every soul suffers a rupture.
Its flight restricted by motives,
An aura guided by morals,
Inability to hear true calls.
Alas ! dizzy with dreams again.

Unwind your cruel and crafty design.
Approach my destruction,
Before your will resigns.
Animosity need not demand favorable signs,
Boulder my aura,
For your will reigns.

Submissive and blind --The fool that i have become.
On my consent you've build a dome.
It is your wish to leave and to come,
A harlots dwelling,
In comparison to your home.

Roots to my spirit,split to the core.
Entangled and lost,
Worms feeding on their host.
Gluttony for emotions,
Sought by the lifeless.
A harlots untouched heart,
Left to undress.

Invisible bruises unseen ,
Penetrate deeper in my veins.
A single touch ,
Leaves blasphemous stains.
Clinton Arneson Jun 2014
Sailing expensive fried food,
'cross awful carpets so crude,
A bright sunny strong attitude,
This lovely young Lady's fine mood...

And customers, often quite rude,
Dummies that drag in their brood,
Scrooges and harlots half ****,
Still can not drag down her mood.

For this is not where she will stay
This will be, soon, yesterday
She is her own sunshine ray
She plans her own life her own way

Studying hard every night
To strengthen her mind she will fight,
Managing well, money tight,
From her might, to height, and the light.
She's cool
KM Jones Aug 2010
Allow me to be bold- brave prying eyes and bare all. Allow me to tamper with excommunication- to tempt ostracism- to tease trouble by talking of taboos... speaking of shushed subjects- oh, society's little secrets, the ones we're all willing to share. Allow me to expound on the lessons parents never wanted to teach- the lessons children are so eager to learn. The very act- the very word- that induces giggles, inspires poets, excites lovers, and makes or breaks "true bliss."

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns." -V.N  

***- a word constructed of three of the twenty-six letters that make the English language go round. On their own, quite harmless, but collectively- a jaw-dropping, blush-inspiring, shush-provoking combination. ***- the ultimate caricature of love and all that is romantic- oh, just look at this tangle of thorns. Tangled- because we have turned the beauty into a beast- taken "the two will become one"- and rationalized- two will always be two- Not you, me or me, you. No, nothing bad can come of this.

***- used to make lies beautiful and truth obscured. Sold in society- the promoter of skin- condemned in the church- discouraged as sin. All the while, teenagers are toppling around- neck deep in lust- desperate to be loved- fumbling- tumbling into the open arms of the ultimate outlet. ***- a shallow solution to a deeper problem- a gift given, unwrapped, re-wrapped, and given again. Allow me to attempt to untangle these thorns- when does making love become wrong?

When it makes heroes into harlots and turns the righteous into romantics- when it complicates the uncomplicated? When it manipulates insincerity to seem sincere- liberates itself from simple mathematics, why, the more the merrier, and forgets three's a crowd? Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, allow me to be ridiculed- expose myself as a hypocrite and define: It is when *** is misconstrued as a mere act of "love" that it becomes a crime.
2009
Hal Loyd Denton Mar 2012
Angel’s Visit

An angel talked with me in what is probably one of the earth’s most beautiful places we were in
Honolulu at the Hilton Hawaiian village I was in bed it was about three in the morning I love to explore

Many things and a great time is during the night watch which is hard when you love to sleep like I do
But the excitement of the Islands makes you a light sleeper I looked over by the window we were on the

Twelfth floor that’s best for the view all over Honolulu but it’s a long way from heaven but there she
Stood I can’t explain the gender we all assume angels are male not so she wasn’t the angels you hear so

Much about being seven feet tall and muscular no she was normal size and she did have dazzling golden
Curly hair and as I recall her gown was at least a shade of gold she didn’t have a message but a question

Do you have a bible for the Islands? This paradise of earth where Pineapples, Papayas some of the most
Grand exotic foods and sites to visit she wasn’t interested in that as another angel spoke to me in

Anaheim and for this reason I don’t fear for our country the last lines of Imposter says not my words
But what the angel spoke “Land of light continue Miss Liberty your lamp burning bright” Heaven’s

Messenger still credits the U.S. as a light for a dark world although that was fifteen years ago and we
Have slipped and need to right ourselves to fulfill our promised destiny the Hawaiian angel could have

Spoken of many things the turquoise waters the trade winds waterfalls all wonderful in them selves
But heaven’s interest is always people I wrote Dreamer for the physical Hawaii but her question

Concerned the word of God that will give you more than physical paradise it will give you a spiritual
One the mirror shows the physical truth whatever it is the bible does the same but with the exception

It gives a remedy all of us are plagued with ugly habits and ways come to it as harlots and murders have
And be changed to saints incorruptible every dark spot and all that makes us unattractive receives a

Divine Make over your life becomes the abounding borders of paradise no matter where you live or your
Circumstances who doesn’t resent things about ourselves and past mistakes within its cover is

Forgiveness grace and most importantly of all is the ability to truly change everything is changed
You are made brand new the gift and treasure that you are and that suffered disfigurement is restored

Your life is not pie in the sky it is real the increase of value can never be calculated remorse will beat you
Unmercifully the master has the perfect healing of body and soul it not foolishness but it will make you

Wise trouble is still the lot of the human family but you will have a heavenly father to take your hurts to
They had the old saying sticks and stones will hurt me but never words what falsehood outward scars

Heal where inward injuries never heal and can ******* your life rob you of love and peace that belongs to
You come as little lost sheep to the healing resplendent waters that are springs in a dry land the Bible

Has those springs and the balm of Gilgal that will treat your every hurt to many times our best friends
Are held at arm’s length we don’t and can't trust even them and at times they offer

Love but are otherwise empty without answers our country and freedoms are just a beautiful guide post
That more so than anywhere in the world shows how good life can be your just steps from all you will

Ever Need return to the faith of our fathers and pray and surrender and God will send his Holy
Messengers to heal your life and bring this country into perfection as its course was first chartered
When it began why live a defunct miserable life at the very gate of plenty

— The End —