It was their first time, their first time ever. Of course neither would admit to it, and neither knew, about the other that is, that they had never done this before. Life had sheltered them, and they had sheltered from life.

Their biographies put them in their sixties. Never mind the Guardian magazine proclaiming sixty to be the new fifty. Albert and Sally were resolutely sixty – ish. To be fair, neither looked their age, but then they had led such sheltered lives, hadn’t they. He had a mother, she had a father, and that pretty much wrapped it up. They had spent respective lives being their parents’ companions, then carers, and now, suddenly this. This intimacy, and it being their first time.

When their contemporaries were befriending and marrying and procreating, and home-making and care-giving and child-minding, and developing their first career, being forced to start a second, overseeing teenagers and suddenly being parents again, but grandparents this time – with evenings and some weekends allowed – Albert and Sally had spent their time writing. They wrote poetry in their respective spaces, at respective tables, in almost solitude, Sally against the onslaught of TV noise as her father became deaf. Albert had the refuge of his childhood bedroom and the table he’d studied at – O levels, A levels, a degree and a further degree, and a little later on that PhD. Poetry had been his friend, his constant companion, rarely fickle, always there when needed. If Albert met a nice-looking woman in the library and lost his heart to her, he would write verse to quench not so much desire of a physical nature, but a desire to meet and to know and to love, and to live the dream of being a published poet.

Oh Sally, such a treasure; a kind heart, a sweet nature, a lovely disposition. Confused at just seventeen when suddenly she seemed to mature, properly, when school friends had been through all that at thirteen. She was passed over, and then suddenly, her body became something she could hardly deal with, and shyness enveloped her because her mother would say such things . . . but, but she had her bookshelf, her grandfather’s, and his books (Keats and Wordsworth saved from the skip) and then her books. Ted Hughes, Dylan Thomas (oh to have been Kaitlin, so wild and free and uninhibited and whose mother didn’t care), Stevie Smith, U.E. Fanthorpe, and then, having taken her OU degree, the lure of the small presses and the feminist canon, the subversive and the down-right weird.

Albert and Sally knew the comfort of settling ageing parents for the night and opening (and firmly closing) the respective doors of their own rooms, in Albert’s case his bedroom, with Sally, a box room in which her mother had once kept her sewing machine. Sally resolutely did not sew, nor did she knit. She wrote, constantly, in notebook after notebook, in old diaries, on discarded paper from the office of the charity she worked for. Always in conversation with herself as she moulded the poem, draft after draft after draft. And then? She went once to writers’ workshop at the local library, but never again. Who were these strange people who wrote only about themselves? Confessional poets. And she? Did she never write about herself? Well, occasionally, out of frustration sometimes, to remind herself she was a woman, who had not married, had not borne children, had only her father’s friends (who tried to force their unmarried sons on her). She did write a long sequence of poems (in bouts-rimés) about the man she imagined she would meet one day and how life might be, and of course would never be. No, Sally, mostly wrote about things, the mystery and beauty and wonder of things you could touch, see or hear, not imagine or feel for. She wrote about poppies in a field, penguins in a painting (Birmingham Art Gallery), the seashore (one glorious week in North Norfolk twenty years ago – and she could still close her eyes and be there on Holkham beach).  Publication? Her first collection went the rounds and was returned, or not, as is the wont of publishers. There was one comment: keep writing. She had kept writing.

Tide Marks

The sea had given its all to the land
and retreated to a far distant curve.
I stand where the waves once broke.

Only the marks remain of its coming,
its going. The underlying sand at my feet
is a desert of dunes seen from the air.

Beyond the wet strand lies, a vast mirror
to a sky laundered full of haze, full of blue,
rinsed distances and shining clouds.


When Albert entered his bedroom he drew the curtains, even on a summer’s evening when still light. He turned on his CD player choosing Mozart, or Bach, sometimes Debussy. Those three masters of the piano were his favoured companions in the act of writing. He would and did listen to other music, but he had to listen with attention, not have music ‘on’ as a background. That Mozart Rondo in A minor K511, usually the first piece he would listen to, was a recording of Andras Schiff from a concert at the Edinburgh Festival. You could hear the atmosphere of a capacity audience, such a quietness that the music seemed to feed and enter and then surround and become wondrous.

He’d had a history teacher in his VI form years who allowed him the run of his LP collection. It had been revelation after revelation, and that had been when the poetry began. They had listened to Tristan & Isolde into the early hours. It was late June, A levels over, a small celebration with Wagner, a bottle of champagne and a bowl of cherries. As the final disc ended they had sat in silence for – he could not remember how long, only from his deeply comfortable chair he had watched the sky turn and turn lighter over the tall pine trees outside. And then, his dear teacher, his one true friend, a young man only a few years out of Cambridge, rose and went to his record collection and chose The Third Symphony by Vaughan-Williams, his Pastoral Symphony, his farewell to those fallen in the Great War  – so many friends and music-makers. As the second movement began Albert wept, and left abruptly, without the thanks his teacher deserved. He went home, to the fury of his father who imagined Albert had been propositioned and assaulted by his kind teacher – and would personally see to it that he would never teach again. Albert was so shocked at this declaration he barely ever spoke to his father again. By eight o’clock that June morning he was a poet.

For Ralph

A sea voyage in the arms of Iseult
and now the bowl of cherries
is empty and the Perrier Jouet
just a stain on the glass.

Dawn is a mottled sky
resting above the dark pines.
Late June and roses glimmer
in a deep sea of green.

In the still near darkness,
and with the volume low,
we listen to an afterword:
a Pastoral Symphony for the fallen.

From its opening I know I belong
to this music and it belongs to me.
Wholly. It whelms me over
and my face is wet with tears.


There is so much to a name, Sally thought, Albert, a name from the Victorian era. In the 1950s whoever named their first born Albert? Now Sally, that was very fifties, comfortably post-war. It was a bright and breezy, summer holiday kind of name. Saying it made you smile (try it). But Light-foot (with a hyphen) she could do without, and had hoped to be without it one day. She was not light-footed despite being slim and well proportioned. Her feet were too big and she did not move gracefully. Clothes had always been such a nuisance; an indicator of uncertainty, of indecision. Clothes said who you were, and she was? a tallish woman who hid her still firm shape and good legs in loose tops and not quite right linen trousers (from M & S). Hair? Still a colour, not yet grey, she was a shale blond with grey eyes. She had felt Albert’s ‘look’ when they met in The Barton, when they had been gathered together like show dogs by the wonderful, bubbly (I know exactly what to wear – and say) Annabel. They had arrived at Totnes by the same train and had not given each other a second glance on the platform. Too apprehensive, scared really, of what was to come. But now, like show dogs, they looked each other over.

‘This is an experiment for us,’ said the festival director, ‘New voices, but from a generation so seldom represented here as ‘emerging’, don’t you think?’

You mean, thought Albert, it’s all a bit quaint this being published and winning prizes for the first time – in your sixties. Sally was somewhere else altogether, wondering if she really could bring off the vocal character of a Palestinian woman she was to give voice to in her poem about Ramallah.

Incredibly, Albert or Sally had never read their poems to an audience, and here they were, about to enter Dartington’s Great Hall, with its banners and vast fireplace, to read their work to ‘a capacity audience’ (according to Annabel – all the tickets went weeks ago). What were Carcanet thinking about asking them to be ‘visible’ at this seriously serious event? Annabel parroted on and on about who’d stood on this stage before them in previous years, and there was such interest in their work, both winning prizes The Forward and The Eliot. Yet these fledgling authors had remained stoically silent as approaches from literary journalists took them almost daily by surprise. Wanting to know their backstory. Why so long a wait for recognition? Neither had sought it. Neither had wanted it. Or rather they’d stopped hoping for it until . . . well that was a story all of its own, and not to be told here.

Curiosity had beckoned both of them to read each other’s work. Sally remembered Taking Heart arriving in its Amazon envelope. She brought it to her writing desk and carefully opened it.  On the back cover it said Albert Loosestrife is a lecturer in History at the University of Northumberland. Inside, there was a life, and Sally had learnt to read between the lines. Albert had seen Sally’s slim volume Surface and Depth in Blackwell’s. It seemed so slight, the poems so short, but when he got on the Metro to Whitesands Bay and opened the bag he read and became mesmerised.  Instead of going home he had walked down to the front, to his favourite bench with the lighthouse on his left and read it through, twice.

Standing in the dark hallway ready to be summoned to read Albert took out his running order from his jacket pocket, flawlessly typed on his Elite portable typewriter (a 21st birthday present from his mother). He saw the titles and wondered if his voice could give voice to these intensely personal poems: the horror of his mother’s illness and demise, his loneliness, his fear of being gay, the nastiness and bullying experienced in his minor university post, his observations of acquaintances and complete strangers, train rides to distant cities to ‘gather’ material, visit to galleries and museums, homages to authors, artists and composers he loved. His voice echoed in his head. Could he manage the microphone? Would the after-reading discussion be bearable? He looked at Sally thinking for a moment he could not be in better company. Her very name cheered him. Somehow names could do that. He imagined her walking on a beach with him, in conversation. Yes, he’d like that, and right now. He reckoned they might have much to share with each other, after they’d discussed poetry of course. He felt a warm glow and smiled his best smile as she in astonishing synchronicity smiled at him. The door opened and applause beckoned.

To whom it may concern,

     I am alone.  Although it may never quite seem that way, both night and day I am confined to solitude.  These past six years hitherto have been filled with nothing more than the fictional characters in my texts and the short pleasantries granted in passing by dismal men, women, and even children that occupy my days.  Each morning, as the dawn breaks, I wake up disgusted with myself in that same manner which sundry men and women have.  It is not the loneliness, however, that disgusts me.  No, I do believe I have grown quite fond of the residual silence.  Instead, I believe it to be the dull monotony of my routine that has left me truly disturbed.  The days have begun to fade in with each other, along with the nights---especially the nights.  I cannot say, for instance, whether or not it was last evening or that of a day three months afore that I was seated at my desk, much like I am now, finishing the latest draft of a poem in my journal.  Nor could I tell you the present date, although the heat of the day, still trapped in the rafters, is so persistent that I am obliged to say it must be one of those blue summer nights when children run, squealing, through the streets, like plump pigs to the trough.  I have become somewhat of a hermit, secluded in my small, run-down apartment above my bodega.  My mind has grown as wild as the violet petunias, bridging the gap over the narrow, brick walk which separates my garden--- as the myriad of dandelions that have invaded the surrounding lawn.
     Throughout the day I work the till in my shop, observing the assorted physiognomies that populate the three small isles.  As they walk up and down, deciding what they most desire, I, too, contemplate to myself, deciding the few whom I might admire should I get the chance.  I often attempt to strike up conversations with my customers, much to their dismay.  I comment on the weather, the soccer scores from a recent game, or perhaps a story from the local section of the Post & Courier, only to receive terse responses and short payments.  However, I never let these failed attempts at congenial conversation discourage me.  Day after day, I persist.
     The nights are easier.  Although I do not attend the boisterous bars spread out amongst the small restaurants and boutiques that line the narrow city streets as I once did, I often drink.  Seated alone, armed with a liter of Ri, two glasses, one with small cubes of ice and one without, and a pen; I waste my nights scribbling down nearly every thought that leaps into my inebriated mind.  My prose has yet to show any real promise, but my thirst to transcend from this pathetic, pseudo-intellectual literature student struggling with his thesis into something more drives me to ignore those basic desires, defined by Maslow as needs; venturing out and exploring the community that I inhabit or talking to another person as a friend.  So I sit, night after night, at the foot of this large bay window, looking out onto the tired faces of the busy street below.  I sit, night after night, tracing the streaks of red light from the tails of passing cars, imprinted in the backs of my eyelids like sand-spurs stuck in a heel.
     I can recall a time when my flat was not the dank, dimly lit hole in the wall that it has become today.  A time, not too distant, when the rich chestnut floorboards glistened beneath the fluorescent pendant lights, when champagne dripped like rain from the white coffers in the blue ceiling, and music shook the walls and rattled the windows.  Men and women alike would wander through the rooms, inoculated by my counterfeit Monet's and their glasses of box wine.  When not entertaining, I wrote.  At long length I sat beneath my window, proliferating prose or critiquing a classmate's from workshop, but those days have passed.  The floors no longer shine; instead they lay suffocating under piles of fetid clothes.  The halls no longer echo with the rhythmic chorus of an acoustic guitar or the symphonies of men and women's laughter;  the lights are burnt out, the paint is peeling off the walls, and the homages are concealed beneath vast fields of mildew and mold.  Puddles of whiskey sit unattended on the granite countertops around the bottoms of corks for weeks, allowing the strong scent to foster and waft freely through the air ducts into the store below.  The dilapidation that ensued after I stopped receiving visitors was not just of the home, however. Worse yet was the steady rot of my own mind.  Although I have often been referred to as "a bit eccentric," and often times folks would inquire if I had, "a ***** loose in [my] noggin," I have only recently begun to find myself walking about the neighborhood garden in the small hours of the morning more than occasionally.  Further still, it is only recently that I cannot remember how, or when, I came to be where I am. Whenever I do happen to roam the night, it appears as if I do it unbeknownst to myself, throughout the throes of my sleep.  Similarly, I have only just begun to notice that, often times while I attempt to write, I sit, talking feverishly---yelling at an empty bottle, until I find another to quench my thirst.  Luckily, there is always another bottle.
     Needless to say, these past few years have left me very tired, and, after much consideration, I have decided that it would be best if I were to "shuffle off this mortal coil."  However, much like Hamlet himself, I could never bring myself to act upon the feeling.  Though I often wonder about what awaits me after my last breath warms the winter of this world, the coward that I have become is in no hurry to find out.  Alors, I am left with one option: leave.  Though I am not yet brave enough to slip into that, the deepest of sleeps, I have gathered courage enough to walk throughout the day.
           Charon Solus

you were never an artist;
I'm sorry but it is true.
once, you sketched me
(sharpie on loose leaf, 2013)
and while I was touched by the gesture
[labor of love that it was]
it really looked more like your older brother.
now, your art is shared for mere
moments
(stylus on snapchat, 2014)
but you are still no artist.
you are an auteur, a lover, a curator,
finessing your homages to your youth
[pokemon, zelda, batman]
you may not be an artist
but I love you all the same.

Deep. The day wears the crown of untruthfulness
Up above the weather bears the trademark of deceit
shallow mind of a betrayal and they said

Run away run fast
don’t look back
short paths cannot be taken
narrow paths changed the plan of this traveller
No funds to pay for chariots

Run away run slowly but run fast
Words of My lover in the letter
Memories of affections
waves of distractions across the sea
debts of homages not paid

The old neighbours laughed last night of
Old jokes from the old man saying
Run away Run fast as you can because the fairy tales only comes when the full moon is out
If the moon won’t  come in full tonight I will wait till the morning when i will see the sunrise
I am not running from My destiny
I am not staying with my doubts
All i want to do is feed on the power of positivity .

i'm eighty pounds down and my skin is loose.  shales of empty casing hanging from my pelvis, upper arms.  

what will i do with it now?  

it is still excess, still too much, still my same old problem.  

hangs, folorn, from my frame, not sure how to be.



that summer i shop in stores that have never been mine to walk in to.  

it is entering a portal to a world i've only ever circumnavigated,

skimming round flesh-toned mannequins posed for the beach, the city.

wondering if pretty prints and flattering cuts can exist beyond a size 8.


bikinis on the rail threaten the illusion that i am slim and toned.  

their gaping homages to the idea that showing a little,
just a little
flesh, is the sexiest way a woman can exist, bring about a conundrum.

they will see.

they will see that i am still not it.

What’s new about Hipsters? It’s not that they're the first co-opted counter-culture, far from it. The Beats were co-opted. The Sentimentalists, over 200 years ago, were co-opted before capitalism was so industrious. It’s not even new that calling a ***** a ***** is offensive. “Hippies,” “Beatniks,” “Emos;” all insulting labels for youth that thought they were much more.

There it is, or some of it, perhaps. Does the current so-called counter-culture feel like they’re part of something much more? Even without labels, I don’t think they think of themselves as a counter-culture at all. The worst part about it is the Hipsters and  non-Hipsters are really much the same. Falling for a similar niche, but feeling like they ain’t.

We all like flannel, thick glasses, and good beers. We’re all killing Applebee’s. We’re the waitstaff there who laughs at ourselves, cause we’re just so low-down. Not the last, but toward the bottom rung of a ladder that once meant progress beyond our parents’ lives. We stand for nothing and everything, because a secure tomorrow seems unlikely and unwanted. Beget suburban kids like our parents did? Could I buy them as much as I had? A student loan on top of a mortgage, I think I’m better off paying exorbitant rent. Plus, it just feels more temporary, like everything else.

Late twenties, long passed the age my parents conceived, I’m getting old. Lack of full adult independence, still feel floated in embryonic fluid, trying not to give juvenile hopes up.  Qualified for that secure job, but is it open? Maybe I’ll have to move down South. Just like everyone else.

At least there’s always music. Nearly a century of recorded songs. Indie, Scene, and Emo; the last real counter-cultures associated with rock genres, and most practitioners scoffed at these labels. Why didn’t Punks or Metal Heads care?

More pressing, what is the newest rock genre? Emo faded nearly 10 years ago. Some formation of Americana seems sorta fitting now. Not far from that “Indie” umbrella,  it’s what Hipsters seem to like most, at least in the TV commercials. These more choral, sometimes bluesy bands. Some are good, but it’s nothing new.

Now, the algorithms anticipate evolution years in advance. All tastes like Styrofoam, so we spit it out fast. We keep skipping tracks to futility escape the same persistent hum. All the price for our growing clairvoyance. Telescopically, we are flying fast into a wall that ends originality. Too many citations needed. We enter them into software to manage. Our fear of plagiarism makes one uninfluenced instead of inspired. We just make homages. Turn anything creative into a list of allusions.

We forgot to forget
Suspend St. Anselm
patron of using rationality
to explain away one’s faith
in magic and mystery
God exists because
all we can imagine must exist
Your unicorns are but
a mind’s fusion of
horse and narwhal
and your culture is but
a culmination of has-been trends
So it’s all been done
Why try to change a thing?
Why try to be new?

This is the end. Not reflecting and absorbing past cultures with an eye to the future. But judging and consuming past cultures with with a carnal now. There are some niceties to be gained in solely present preoccupations. Yet, no Buddha abounds in these selfish meditations. We are no longer the bodhisattvas, suspending enlightenment to save all beings. “We’re woke, because we know we’re ******” Then we type a symbol for “laugh out loud,” while our mouths stayed closed. We take a morning slug and drive off to work. The complexity of our controllers v. the simple fleeting pleasures. What can I do? Why should I bat an eye at the way the world works?

A Montage of Homages:


I’m ever the devoted fool
Trusting dreams as love
I’m ever the stubborn child
Never repenting enough

I’m the lone wanderer of Nevsky Prospect
Trivial like the gadfly against the lofty sky
Overlooked as a dusty tattered Overcoat
Crushed like an ant beneath the Bronze Horseman

When the bright lingers beyond dusk
When the dark, at dawn, hesitant to depart
Am I ever awake through all of time
Or am I to sleep all white days and nights

All I am certain is, that
Only in dreams can we reunite
All I know is, that this
Is the Dreamer’s sole purpose of life




The Saint Petersburg Dreamer
Long for a love beyond common strive
Yet, only exists to slumber through life
To finally awake when the night is nigh

Upon the earth, he’s a mere dust
When the tide arrives, all will be lost

The Saint Petersburg Dreamer
You mustn't have noticed he’s still there
Upon each and every torn overcoat
Every patch resewn: his dreams and love

Yeah, right, those times when
you get involved in all those street fights
and you win them all
and all those fights are just to prove that
you're stronger
whereas your heart keeps on hollering in distraught
and suffocating in poignancy.

Yeah, right, there are those times,
you have always wanted to say,
"Dear mother and father, I have won this fight!"
after you actually conquered what the real fight is—
which is battling your fear in places where you feel unwanted.
And thus you said it with gleaming pride to the two souls who raised you.
But unfortunately when you come home they disowned you
for they have grown weary of all your shenanigans and juvenile delinquent brawls.

Even the place that raised you has eradicated your presence
and thus you have nowhere you find tranquil
and you keep on counting the next battles and fears.
And yeah, they feel privileged to call you anything,
be it a libertine with a ****** up life,
or the kid with the lowest rank of worth in the school of the heinous world.

Indeed, you can thrash the living **** out of them with your fists and guns.
But when they throw menacing words at you, you become weak
and all those fighting skills mean nothing to you now
for in all conscience you're weaker than broken branches
behind all those façades of the savage delinquent persona.

And your mother, her no-longer-precious young vine is out for war everyday,
but she keeps insisting that you're not fighting for anything at all.
And your father, his not-anymore shining crescent is now a forlorn and disoriented shipwreck,
but he keeps focusing on your rebellious surface rather than your shattered heart.
And your delinquent mates, they only used you because they think you're the strongest.
And the people who only know your surface, they're almost always out to haunt you everyday.

It's not about me, it's about you.
If one day you reach your limitation of strength
and you can no longer save yourself,
then who will do?
If there are plenty of kids who share the same fate of you
in this atrocity-ravaged world of seven billion,
then what can I do?
If lives keep on falling because all of us are weak but never get protected,
how dare I pretend that I'm unaware of it?

In the end, we all die.
Some die in contentment, some others in destruction.
Some die of fate, some others of choice.
But how would you feel
if the one who has always been in the front row of your gigs,
and the one whose artworks you have always adored,
and the one who always lights your circle with their vibes,
and the one who invincibly skates through high valleys,
and the one who sends you encouragement every night,
and the one who sends you to a real home when you're nowhere man,
are all the ones who die of choice?

Those conformist educational institutions give awards and homages to the ones
who are the smartest and brightest with scintillating future ahead of them.
But no one has ever given any awards to the strongest fighters
whose dark and distorted future is completely not their fault.

We didn't **** ourselves over shattered youth.
Those low-life swines murdered us after leaving us a shattered youth.
And thus I only have one single word;
Fight.
Not with fists, not with revolvers, not with explosives, not with submachine guns, not with daggers, not with ****** rifles, not with multiple launcher rocket systems.
Fight
with thy heart.

Bob Said These Words...
So... " OVER - Stand "... !!!

"You can't tell the woman, from the man ?"

And NOW These Words Are RARELY Heard...
Because The TRUTH Is Now IN VIEW...

Transgender Education...
For The Next Generation... !!!
While Peoples' Confusion...
Is Now... POLLUTING...
The World We're Using... !!!

So MANY ABUSING In Institutions...
Where It's CLEAR They Are CONFUSING...

Their Actions of... COLLUSION...
With Those of... AMUSEMENT... !?!

... " Midnight Types "...

Work In The... SPOTLIGHT... !!!
Cos' They Like To Moonlight...
AWAY From....................... "sight".....

You Have To Wonder...
What's In Their Minds...
As They Put ASUNDER...
What's Wrong From Right...

Marley Used MUSIC...
Like These People Use FUSES...
To... IGNITE Midnight...
With Light Personified...
As Confusion In The Heads...
of The... " Midnight Types "...

The FREAKS Who COME OUT...
In The... Middle of The Night... !!!

Because of Who They Be...
When They Look INTO The Light... !!!

The LIGHT That Resides...
In CONFUSED POLLUTED Minds... !!!!

The... " Midnight Types "...
Who Ride Like Knights...
Who Have NO SIGHT...
And Have NO TIME...

To ENERGISE... And FREE Themselves...
of The Passengers They FIGHT... !!!!!

The PASSENGERS They CANNOT Quell...
When DARKNESS Meets Their Light...

Within These Simple Messages...
Are HOMAGES In Rhymes...
To One of Our GREAT Messengers...

... " Bob Marley "...
" Truth and Rights "... !!!

These Words Are Simply...

....... " Vestiges ".......

of What He Saw In Life...
The... " Midnight Ravers "...

Doing Things...
That CLEARLY BLEW HIS MIND... !!!!!!
So Now I'm On... " The Ride "...
THIS One That We Call... " LIFE "...

These Days I Don't Feel Strong...
But Just Like Bob Said In His Song...

I Say...

"People RIDE ON...
That's Right People, RIDE ON...."

Because My Words May Not Be Heard...
But THIS I MUST... Pass On...............

Marley Was A LEGEND...
As Were Bunny And Tosh... !!!

Ravers With Those Flavours...
That Made People... " RIDE ON "...

So As I End This Piece of Verse...
THINK of The Wailers Song... !!!
And REMEMBER My Poetic Vibes...
That Now Speak On These......

... " Midnight Types "...

So YES People RIDE ON...
YES YES People RIDE ON...................

flaming torches in scattered line held high
crowd shouted back behind a safety line
celebrants, ministers officiate in stripes


dressed darkly to intimidate memories of war
red suited stranger rides along devil's tails
splitting ****** for laffs and noise spitting
arc light ahead of spent charred bullet case



screams evoked. stifles laughter as the smoke
evokes the War in mud so here : sticks are rifles.
over amplified comes over as cod eulogy flashes
the ears while sincerity plays out the church gate

we stand flickering eyed



"Feed the World ..."

murders silence

saviours hurry

"Turn it off, Harry"



Peace after a slowed to halt drum
Torches squared parafin trickle
air with smokey wax and uncertain
light that makes black to meet
the dark


poppies burn by the church gate


plans broken into an atrocious
conflict of split fuses sputtering
orange stars into painted skulls


burning splints takes cordite's place
making the air like thick magasines
filled with dum-dum bullets. homages
to horror waiting for the drum .


march.

the parade moves starkly on

cowboys

then

pearls

and

Devils tail.

Rock-still by the eroding river,
reed-still in the dance of the tide,
who eyes this world in mercy?
Shameful deeds now holy for
warriors of God. Outcast of ages
from steads by night, trek through
land where shadows upturned,
curses fain down from skies
in return for the homages in fire.
Emotion of the void that sighted
the exploding stars of hoary ages,
rock-still, reed-eyed friend of man
is there such a one indeed as this?

The day he walked in that door
was the day he was destined to die.
He lay his foot inside the door
and the other one concurrently came out.
He transposed his clothes
but they ceased to cover his body.
The scarlet coat was left hanging
in the closet with his soul.
Indicted with crimes
that he must not have been penalized for.
And bashed by society
with their spiteful words like arrows.
Met his lover
but was parted by the injudicious laws.
Left skint and lacerated
with the epithet of an outcast.
Alien tears fill for him
and outcasts pay their homages.
No statue of air was this man
yet hard labor was all he was given to build it out of stone.
His teacher later delineated him as a blot on their tutorship.
For he was but a tutor.
De Profundis
spoke of his anguished journey.
Victorian times
disagreed with his originality and frolic.
He told
platonic love was all he was guilty of.
Yet,
he was charged with crimes.
Drowned in cries of shame;
and incarcerated to rip him off his passion.
Something was dead in him,
and what was dead was hope.
Hope died first
and then gradually died the passion.
In exile,
his love for writing too deceased.
The daemon inside him
ceased to inspire.
God sent the lord of death
The lord of death
didn’t move around pompously like him.
But came announced,
for it had been accepted.
The wallpaper moaned
upon his untimely death.
For it desired to die
instead of the then mincing man.
He left the earthly plains
for the good have fewer days.
The good die young
as did the revered outcast.
Herodotus the father of history
unerringly expressed the good ones’ misery.
He repudiated to deny his soul
and lived nonchalantly.
He desired all the fruits of the world
so he lived.
Exile ruined him
and rent his ardor.
His meetings with his lover
were interdicted by his family.
He was pardoned
but a century too late.
Along with the outcasts
that lived in throbbing pain.
The outcast deceased when young
but lived indefinitely.
Infinite existence is promised
for the ***** was silver-tongued.
He died young
and roams the immortal planes.
Just like Alan Turing,
Bhagat Singh, JFK, and countless more.
God wanted them
for they wanted to augment their heavens.

Good Evening Officer,

My name is Phillip Pringle
I am a male, who has chosen to like females and my favorite cereal is Lucky Charms. I come from a time where math class had actual numbers and I know that cause me and Smart Guy would solve problems every Sunday. A time where no one needed to worry for their future because a friend named Phil already lived there and if he did not visit then Raven Simone could tell me the next time I'd see him. In elementary school I was made fun of for having a squeaky voice, in middle school I would yell at my teachers and the only mistake I made in high school was not being an emotionally abusive 6 foot 4 light skin.

In the mornings, I turn off my alarm- sleep for ten more minutes and show up late to class, at nights I position my sheets to cover my feet because it just feels safer. When I was four, my mother taught me how to tie my shoes, when I was eight my sister laughed when I told her about my crush when I was 10 my father taught me how to change a tire, I am now 18 and my mother will still beat me if I come home with a cigarette in my mouth.

I am a 6 feet tall, 119 pounds, and I continue to fall off my skateboard. I have an iPhone, I can't afford a pair of Jordan's and I have yet to Netflix and Chill. My favorite rapper is J.Cole, I struggled in my science class and the food I eat on campus is disgusting. But despite how much I humanize myself you will still shoot me like the monster you are.

Officer I have learned in the span of the last three years that your executions are not executions, and your guns are not guns. But your homicides are homages. And your murders are offerings. The Miranda warning is preaching, your orders are teaching, your spirit is pride and our bloodshed is tithe. Officer I've learned that my mother's cry is just a hymn waiting to be written- and every morning from 7 to 5 you drive in the church with your 9 millimeter bible and evangelize. So before I become one of your martyrs-- let me bless you with my final words.

People like me..

Before we are born, We intertangle with the moon, I know that because twilight leaves it's patterns all over our skin. And despite each constant oscillation with the sun and the northern stars, we are still bounded to earth like soldiers to a battlefield.

Marching.
Marching.

And because of that our children will take our gravestones to the final objective- we will tell them that they were not expected to excellence but make peace with mediocrity.

Battles and heroes

of the past are homages –


to ******, shameless.