‘Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis
vidi in ampulla pendere, et *** illi pueri dicerent:
Sibylla ti theleis; respondebat illa: apothanein thelo.’

                For Ezra Pound
                il miglior fabbro


I. The Burial of the Dead

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony *******? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
            Frisch weht der Wind
            Der Heimat zu
            Mein Irisch Kind,
            Wo weilest du?
‘You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
‘They called me the hyacinth girl.’
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Oed’ und leer das Meer.

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying ‘Stetson!
‘You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
‘That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
‘Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
‘Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
‘Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
‘Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
‘You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!’

II. A Game of Chess

The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out
(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra
Reflecting light upon the table as
The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,
From satin cases poured in rich profusion;
In vials of ivory and coloured glass
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused
And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
That freshened from the window, these ascended
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
Huge sea-wood fed with copper
Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,
In which sad light a carved dolphin swam.
Above the antique mantel was displayed
As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
‘Jug Jug’ to ***** ears.
And other withered stumps of time
Were told upon the walls; staring forms
Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.
Footsteps shuffled on the stair.
Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair
Spread out in fiery points
Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.

‘My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
‘Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.
‘What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
‘I never know what you are thinking. Think.’

I think we are in rats’ alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.

‘What is that noise?
                          The wind under the door.
‘What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?’
                    Nothing again nothing.
                                                    ‘Do
‘You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
‘Nothing?’

    I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
‘Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?’
                                                     But
O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—
It’s so elegant
So intelligent
‘What shall I do now? What shall I do?’
I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
‘With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow?
‘What shall we ever do?’
                             The hot water at ten.
And if it rains, a closed car at four.
And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.

When Lil’s husband got demobbed, I said—
I didn’t mince my words, I said to her myself,
hurry up please its time
Now Albert’s coming back, make yourself a bit smart.
He’ll want to know what you done with that money he gave you
To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.
You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,
He said, I swear, I can’t bear to look at you.
And no more can’t I, I said, and think of poor Albert,
He’s been in the army four years, he wants a good time,
And if you don’t give it him, there’s others will, I said.
Oh is there, she said. Something o’ that, I said.
Then I’ll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.
hurry up please its time
If you don’t like it you can get on with it, I said.
Others can pick and choose if you can’t.
But if Albert makes off, it won’t be for lack of telling.
You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.
(And her only thirty-one.)
I can’t help it, she said, pulling a long face,
It’s them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
(She’s had five already, and nearly died of young George.)
The chemist said it would be alright, but I’ve never been the same.
You are a proper fool, I said.
Well, if Albert won’t leave you alone, there it is, I said,
What you get married for if you don’t want children?
hurry up please its time
Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,
And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot—
hurry up please its time
hurry up please its time
Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.
Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.

III. The Fire Sermon

The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors;
Departed, have left no addresses.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . .
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

A rat crept softly through the vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse
Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck
And on the king my father’s death before him.
White bodies naked on the low damp ground
And bones cast in a little low dry garret,
Rattled by the rat’s foot only, year to year.
But at my back from time to time I hear
The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter
They wash their feet in soda water
Et O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole!

Twit twit twit
Jug jug jug jug jug jug
So rudely forc’d.
Tereu

Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon
Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female *******, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays,
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—
I too awaited the expected guest.
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house agent’s clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .

She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
‘Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.’
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.

‘This music crept by me upon the waters’
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
O City city, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,
The pleasant whining of a mandoline
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.

      The river sweats
      Oil and tar
      The barges drift
      With the turning tide
      Red sails
      Wide
      To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
      The barges wash
      Drifting logs
      Down Greenwich reach
      Past the Isle of Dogs.
                  Weialala leia
                  Wallala leialala

      Elizabeth and Leicester
      Beating oars
      The stern was formed
      A gilded shell
      Red and gold
      The brisk swell
      Rippled both shores
      Southwest wind
      Carried down stream
      The peal of bells
      White towers
                  Weialala leia
                  Wallala leialala

‘Trams and dusty trees.
Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew
Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.’
‘My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart
Under my feet. After the event
He wept. He promised ‘a new start’.
I made no comment. What should I resent?’
‘On Margate Sands.
I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
The broken fingernails of ***** hands.
My people humble people who expect
Nothing.’
              la la

To Carthage then I came

Burning burning burning burning
O Lord Thou pluckest me out
O Lord Thou pluckest

burning

IV. Death by Water

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
                                A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
                               Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

V. What the Thunder Said

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock wi

She sits rather still, stitching her loom
shackled and bound to the whispering room
While the walls shutter speeches
she slouches then reaches,
her stitching resumed.

Threads of silk pool in spools
cast to the floor
Hushing the voices
as they pour

the voices repeat their crippling phrase
dancing the space
bound to their maze

What She Look Like?
  
…Like one
tenderly hushing
water in her lap
Elemental peace
No place to go
No more to be
…Like the ocean
in the background
of a photo on a warm spring day
belying
rage
and the random possible
thrash--

out!

at all guilty ******* in her path
Toss in the next sentient soul
who should happen to pass
within range
who should have seen
who should have known
what a storm could do….

Moody in the aftermath
and sorrier than rain
With the tide in retreat
grumbling excuses
Hiding out waist-deep in dusk’s Merlot
Waiting for night to sleep it off

to heal the rifts
cleanse the shame

Rising
yellow, bright— and

“What the hell happened, here?!”

____


Her hair
a winter’s tragedy of trees
upside down—
No wait— the wind has put her right
to ragged random branches
swaying, wet with intermittent hues
of dark and silver
caught in collar, flying inelegant and free
at the shoulders of the levee
tossed and softening shyly
sagging jaw and nose a stump of tree
All perspective changes…

if you watch a while—

She’ll raise her eyes
into the sunset
to catch an eagle
entering
flight

…and then you might…

___

She looks like—
a pudgy robin
querying grass
mud soaked
that hides the fire of her breast
tugging at a worm
more than half her length
“I will feed them, **** you!
Give it up, you son of a snake!”
_____

...Don’t miss her hour of music though
for anything
Encroaching darkness
from the rooftops
she listens to the hearts she breaks

Remember this in winter
she can give but she will take
it out on February
when you’re longing
for her

The bank account overdrawn,
the west coast -- naked, easy --
passenger seat and head resting on cold glass,
seeing the pines turn to ash to evergreen to redwoods to sand.

I bit her ear and asked for her name,
in Before George's sanctuary,
blush, blushing -- finger to lips hushing,
drinking cognac and speaking in flaming coal
I saw the clouds behind the night sky,
I saw Jesus teach himself to fly,
and I hallelujah'd and amen'd and carried
her to the shore, Samantha, she said,
bulging mind,
anorexic action,
I bit her ear and asked her room number,
in the ocean's frontline,
hush, hushing -- backs of hands and blushing,
drinking cognac and speaking in simmering oil
I saw the night behind the clouded sky,
I saw a fly transfigure into Jesus,
and I hallelujah'd and amen'd and frayed
the remnants of grassroot and buttercup,
drunk high tide,
sober dry iced,

The bank account cleared its throat,
"Room 210 and I'd like a ***** and coke."

a home, above all else,
is familiar.
it does not have to be comfortable,
nor does it have to be full.
a home is probably a favorite place to be,
or maybe it houses some of the cruelest memories.

I like homes where I can drive quick and still avoid each upcoming pothole--
ones where old neighbors and new couples hunker down for their respectful chapters of life.
I like homes where I can walk around each obstacle in the kitchen with my eyes shut tight and only bang my shins a little bit.

a home is a sense, an intuition.
it is a place where you can dance while no one is watching.
you can fling your tears and regret at the walls and let them absorb your true feelings,
hushing you with their pillows and soft sounds and views.

a home is a home anywhere you choose it to be,
but above all else,
a home is familiar,
and that is a home to me.

I close my eyes.
I am there, when my body is not.
My surroundings are quite different,
But my mind leads me somewhere else.
Memories flood and my heart picks up pace.
I am on my way to my happy place.

A fan blowing icy air fills the room,
And it chills me,
But tight arms around me spills warmth into my body.
This feels right and perfect,
Nothing could ruin this moment.
Thunder booms in the rooms around us.
The arms pull me closer,
Threatening to pull me into his heart,
Completely engulfing me.
Sweet humming and a perfect heartbeat makes me want to cry,
I ask myself,
Why does this perfect being have to be put through so much pain?
But the night continues with inviting kisses and screaming whispers,
Hushing from a friend while happiness engulfs us.
The first “I love you.” Is received and responded.
“Be mine.” Is asked and answered with a kiss and a yes.
Drowsiness swallows us together, waking up to check on each other and pull closer.
Falling asleep in each other’s dreams, we beg not to have this end.

Then I snap back to reality and smile while my heart flutters,
Needing to go back to this or recreate.
Only one person can relate,
I go and talk to him and walk with him,
Fall again.
I’m his and always shall be.
Can’t he see?
He means the world to me.
He is my happy place.
His face,
And his voice.
I have no other choice.
His eyes are the prize,
My heart’s my disguise.
So to be apart would be bonkers,
He is the holder of my heart,
He is my happy place.

when i first found about will alexander, i immediately bought three of his books: kaleidoscopic omniscience, compression & purity, the sri lankan loxodrome - i saw the potential, rekindled surrealism - perhaps a second peacock on the stage, as in more peacock of vocabulary, rather than a peacock of historical quanta merging (E. Pound).

i really do distrust this division in what science speaks
and what poverty stricken humanism speaks of -
i distrust it because science sediments itself supposing
humanism the pauper - science and all its immediate solutions,
humanism and all its delayed problems -
the new priests look so innocent - but i'm bothered,
i don't understand their need for awe-on-purpose -
the old priests demanded kneeling and an agonising
penitence - not a concept of predestination, but
this sort of minority report: you've done nothing wrong,
but we'll assume you already have, better than a microchip
implant, the idea, we'll use that, pre everything
limit the pro of everything, and catch you in a fishnet of
omni, it was too much, all in one go, in defence it started
with a mediator impersonal, Cartesian later Spinoza's
substance - partly due to the omni-etc., a shortcut -
the easiest way out - sure, if i went to a progressive school
rather than a catholic school in an Irish neighbourhood of
far-beyond the East End locality, i might have written
you L.S.D. filled poems, instead i start off tipsy working my
way around vocabulary that's adequate - hushing out
all possible onomatopoeia static in crude tongue -
ridicule feeds the beast, ridicule my prime loathing -
criticism well and truly accepted... ridicule feeds the beast -
but i mean, this perpetuated awe of scientists,
modern philosophy anti-Aristotelian does not begin
with awe, but with a ridicule of it, a disgust -
when did humanism ever experience awe? a stranger's
kindness would be a start, but even then there's hardly
any awe in it - it soon fades, scientists have immersed themselves
as prophets of awe's preservation, one picks up
a stone and speaks of a mountain, one draws a circle and
howls out the moon - i don't know how they can fake their
awe with so many certainties - so many facts -
awe reminds me of my first bicycle lesson, attempting
balance, failing, bruising a knee, and awe when
the balance was mastered - very short-lived, then the
drudgery of re-, i distrust scientific awe, primarily because
we're slowly no longer stepping out into the unknown,
we're stopping into knows and denies - not many unknowns
out there - except as in the case of Iraq, and Donald Rumsfeld,
known knows and there are known unknowns -
now... that's awe... i don't know who was keeping check
on this, but that's more mesmerising that explaining
1,000 million years ago... in a nutshell... how long has
this pneumatic drill of Darwinism been pumping custard
into our brain? is this the part where you tell me we're experiencing
the Alaskan day in the summer months or Alaskan night
in the winter months? all this scientific awe-bashing
is no longer vogue, but they keep at it - oh amazing, ah,
stupefying - and all of it just becomes a regurgitation -
someone said in the 16th century that Aristotle was wrong,
the wrong in Aristotle is that he might have been wrong,
but he was still perplexed... we're no longer perplexed creatures,
not so much... well maybe a bit when it comes to social justice,
but it's not like: sigh and a tear in your eye... it's more like:
if a white boy was shot from a private school, the mothers
and fathers would come up to the police officers with guns
in their hands... you can see awe vanishing when the butterfly
feelings flutter away silently... it's now violent awe:
why is this still happening?! huh?! scientific awe is not
a cushion you can fall back on: we have ~100 years to live
(if you're lucky... or unlucky) and we're being told of life
in caves and trees - Darwinism has hijacked history, this is
where science in written form is like an atom bomb, it wipes
away the best part of humanism, that is: to make human
life itemised on the microscopic level - i don't care if you
go to church and **** out alms for the poor and put on
those ruby shoes and walk the yellow-brick road,
you can't relate to Judea 10 a.d. - not to save your life -
in that famous motto *carpe diem - but strained it's not
so much seize the day, but... relate to the days and those
around you who share them: pertineo diebus - or something
like that, imagine, going to a Catholic school and they
don't even have the manners to teach you a bit of Latin slang,
travesty; but that's how it is, we're no longer awe-stricken
in what the scientists are selling us, fair-dos to
the medicine men, shampoo men, cologne men,
but the awe-invoking men are a bit n'ah-ah to me -
given the timescale for one -  i'm a simple man and i want
to enjoy my beer thinking about last Friday,
my life... not the collective origin of life, and whether
i was too hairy back then - you don't need theology to
argue this point, just a little bit of common sense self-respect,
last Friday, not 1,000 million years ago when there was
no Friday, no Sunday, no March, no human imprint -
no: i can touch it, i can feel it, i can see it... i want it.
just like in my dream today - it's rather strange that i dream,
i rarely do, but sometimes i remember one or two -
and all i can say is that - i had the best *** in my life
last night, asleep - yeah, i was ******* in it -
but what bothers me is that it wasn't lucid in terms of
images, but sensations - i can thus say it wasn't completely
impotent in terms of colour, but then again it was -
i'm starting to believe that i'm a blind-man in my dreams,
i ~see sensations rather than actual images in reel -
i can remember leaning against a wall and moving my
tongue in her mouth and my middle-and-ring fingers
into the... what? cliche? anatomic? *****? you choose -
a strange parallelism - we can use the tongue for such
eloquent fragments, and yet reduce it to other atrocities
of equal eloquence - then the whole dream-world changed
and i felt sitting at the tipping point where the sea meets
the beach sands, sitting down awash the waves and her sitting
on me. it's what i felt, i didn't see anything vivid -
but the sensations presented themselves as such -
i associate that with delving into writing in my mother tongue -
email / diacritics "crossword" (un-ditto and apply a
non-misnomer, i.e. give it a proper name, cf. Aristotle).
to finish i guess i might as well write a short critique:
the over-burdening of man with nouns -
as in will alexander's index of the sri lankan...
a few examples: proxima centauri (nearest star to our sun),
hemiopia (loss of vision for one half of the binocular field),
dukkha (buddhist term for suffering),
nystagmus (involuntary jerky movements of the eye),
nosophobia (morbid dread of some particular disease),
telesto umbriel larissa (moons of saturn, uranus
and neptune, respectively),
karina (egyptian demonology, a familiar attached
to a child at birth),
pretas (ghosts) -                                  or as some people say
including Christian Guerrero - 'they're just words...'
oh yes, and words are not the cogs in the machine?
just words... just words?! a banker's bonus is just
an array of... just numbers... why is this nonchalance
to these fundamental units? first they teach us to read
and write an escape the sunny harvests of the fields,
the easy mental but demanding physical life -
after the demanding physical life went our supposed
"ease" mental life changed into a demanding mental
life and an easy physical life... that's the problem with
establishing a suitable vocabulary in yourself, you can
sometimes overdo it, meaning not many people will
understand it, globalisation didn't save us from
the babylon ambition rekindled (whether myth or whatever,
it doesn't matter, read a book literally and you'll end
up realising what could have possibly been mere myth)...
all the above cited words from the index, by god, impressive,
but why would i pain myself to use a word that i'd
have to write an index to? globalisation and words from
Iran - southern coastal to be exact home to afro-iranians -
but locally it's just a ******* shish kebab and nothing more -
or central scotoma (area of the retina that's blind) -
all this vocab wall building is amazing, it really is,
a fortress at Acre - admirable... but then a return to the dull
grey reality of everyday speech - the painful art of poetry
reduced to a personal involvement with certain words -
it's heart-breaking, well, not for me, for Will it must be,
but hey, bought three of his books, that must have counted
for a cheeseburger and a portion of fries at some point
in his life.

the portmanteau has eloquence,
evocative imbrication that
iced espressos & Italian romances are rosary complexities of constricted wants
hushing the bipartisans;
that
I theorize poinsettia's
on a careened need of "fermented" relief
while my nervousness is suggesting you to pick up the suitcase
and believe every word spilling from my mouth
you used to intricate/ scythe
and the interior now contrasting in
a winter tangerine
containment, "alleviate pheromone" to inhale
another vision that wasn't even close
to believing


- G

A Hug,
How underrated
Available in the avail of a kiss,
Or the escape of one.

At birth
My mother showed me loves worth
Calmed the loudest cries
Hushing me
Just by holding me
Keeping me warm
Through the coldest times

As I grew older
This demonstration became more familiar
With family
So many I managed to manifest
My mannerisms allowed
Long embraces
That mattered so much!
All from a simple touch

The first time…
The first time,
With the one I loved
******* lacked satisfaction
If after the contraction
We weren’t in each others arms…
Relaxin…

Chest to chest
You hold her
Can two hearts get any closer?

If my only love
Was to take her love away
In the most selfish absurd way
Spurned my love
She still wouldn’t be too stubborn to hug
Once the years have spun away

The best reconciliation

A Hug,
A gesture so benign
Even if I were to express
With my best friend, a canine
Or my only companion, a feline
People still wouldn’t see I
As constructed of *******
Alerting not a soul
Hearts become sole
Even when shared with animals.

Making Love,
Is not limited to ***,
Or a kiss,
Instead,
The same bliss
Can be met
With a Hug.

What’s Love, But a Hug?

I cant remember my dream.
I cant breathe.

Her thin painter hands open the door to the stairwell, the smell of fresh paint replaces that of a spring rain.  Skipping the clean stairs two at a time, she reaches the studio.  Walls of glass flank the empty white hallways that weave in and out, remains of torn masking tape shrivel on the walls like dying flowers.  The door looks like it belongs to a prison, too familiar.  

The sun barely moved, if at all, outside the window.
Tracing the outline of his body, she let the colors tell the story.


A stroke of shadow

Walking to the center of the room, limbic resonance.  A vaguely masculine figure melts into the painting.  It's silent as he dies.  

Her feet hit the pavement.  From the familiar soft dirt path through the woods, she crosses the courtyard to the doorway of the stairwell.  Memories flood her mind under the dull lamplight amidst the rustling dead leaves.  

Moving a stone from the crumbling wall of the school, she places her letters to you beneath the rubble.

Blinding white

I'm holding the keys but I can't find the right one
and the sun burned itself down,
the rain receded into the clouds

nothing is the same


He lies down in the stream
water rushing over him
relaxing, water replaces air

everything is different now.

Blistering Blue

I can't remember my last dream.
Out of space, out of time.  Unnatural surroundings.  
Muffled screams float in from the hallway.
Golden seam of light from the doorway saturates illuminated stitches.
He couldn't remember the last time this had happened.   When he almost lost himself in the pain---
It's like seeing her for the first time, over and over.

Suddenly his hands were covered in their blood.

But I remember them,
telling me to be quiet, not to fight it.  


Blush of Crimson

I've lost concept of time,
time to be quiet
I need to schedule my time
need to go away
Ophelia covered in glass
veins like kite string
he breathed in the water
I never said goodbye.

You know that feeling like everything's the end of the world
Next to the campfire, stars carved into her upper thighs
crossed like constellations as she moved closer to the flame,
gaze drawn up
The flight before the fall

He hasn't yet hit the ground, green flannel still in suspension.  Dew collecting on the leaves slide down to the earth and surround his body.
His eyes are already closed, a moment of vulnerability.  Still on the surface, cold blue water saturates his cuts and seams.

For the touch of a vanished thought caressed the back of her mind, like birds balanced on a live power line.  Digital ripped walls, lights leading to the intervention of the other side of the ghost city, building brick school, and infinite nowhere.  She lit her candle in the studio, watching the wick burn down and melt the wax, a ring of liquid growing from the center.  Strange to drown in heat.  It seems there's a wall of glass between her mind and this supposed reality, without any sound but her breathing and the occasional crack from the slowly burning candle.  She mixes her paint and doesn't think about anything.  The sun sets and rises and sets and rises again.  Sitting in the same place, the candle frozen in perpetual burning.  The room was clean.  And she was painting.  And the birds on the wire gently cawed against a white sky.  The echo returned to the blank room.

I remember that night she stopped answering my calls.  She doesn't pick up anymore.  Curled up in the doorway scrawled with tick marks from when we grew extra inches overnight, phone clutched to my chest.  I looked up and saw old Chinese fortunes folded above the doorway, hot tears spilling down my cheeks.  A feeling of helplessness, guilt.  If she answered I would have driven up there, taken her home.
It was 2am when I left.  I grabbed the keys from the counter, my coat, some chocolate, and a book.  walking to the car, I could see my breath suspended in the air.  Frost coated the sides of the windshield but I didn't stop driving.  I forgot my mittens.  There was a foot more of snow as I ran towards the old door to her dorm, yanking the handle hard enough that the lock slipped and I didn't need an ID to get in.  Warm stale air enveloped me as I gazed over empty security desk under fluorescent light.

Muted Undertones

The painting took up a whole wall of the room.  There wasn' any money to frame it, so it would have to always stay here.
Sunlight leaked in from the window like a steading dripping faucet against a clogged drain.  Her hair was turning blonde again, like when they were younger.
Humming, she was
remembering his hands
as they gripped the wheel loosely
at 5am in the morning
reflective and
coated in glass
in the back of
his black pickup
the sun slowly
bled from behind the clouds
dripping like honey
illuminating blonde
eyelashes,
the dirt on
the windshield.
warm golden
air filled the truck
as he turned the heat on
one hand on
the wheel
the other
reaching backwards to
twisting metal,
broken limbs.
Connected below
the surface
of broken glass.

In between the falling leaves, she whispered 'see you' and kissed his eyelids as he fell asleep.

Neutral Tones

I knocked on her door.  Her roommate answered.  He hadn't seen her at all that day.  I've grown indifferent about my own problems.  So I walked in her room and picked up the scissors from the corner.  Put on her coat for her.  Walked her through the snow to the car.  Cecilia sat between the driver and passenger seat, hand in mine.  I wish I could heal her arm through our layers of jackets, taken some of the sadness away.   We didn't say anything as empty pavement and trees passed in every living moment.

I was thinking about him.

Occasionally we touch, but only in passing.  Shadows, we cover from the heat.  

Ridicule gnaws at these connection, scrapes paint strokes until the threat snaps, the pillars bow
And we take shelter in the cleansing water.  The clashes of flesh.   The segregation of interactions for fear of having ours be known by anyone at all.

(But still they talk, recite the script)
'Cecilia tried to **** herself and her clothes need to be washed'
(Look now, do you see it?)
'It looks like her soul
left her eyes'


Purple Haze

I knew it was a nightmare.  It's stuck to me.  These alien emotions; like a sickness or a burn, interdepartmental rhythms of my brain I'll never fully grasp... not artistic or poetic.  or anything fake and useful.  Just nebular, inhibiting, distressed.
I'm always trapped in something.  A heaviness.  A natural declining, dissipation, entropy.
A brutal and sterile resistance, inviolate and soft to the touch; a lapsing despondency.

He was the sea that he drowned in.  And he was the riverbed in the trees, too.
Swept in whirlpools and ripples and age rings, whispers of fallen leaves in the lucid water.  
Silenced by hushing rage of stone cut rapids.


Ultraviolet Love


He's not seeing normally.  Through the rippling surface her face is reflected into a million moving pieces.
Lines of tape surround his body, they shrivel in the heat of the sun.  This is not natural death.  There are no birds circling overhead, the stream continues to trickle over the rocks.

I drove her home from college started to run a bath.  The hot water faucet turned all the way.  I put my feet in, trying to avoid eye contact with the parallel lines.  Familiar to what i had stitched before.  Pale blue - green water kissed our skin as she closed her eyes.  

We are not creatures of visible light.

Kisses
His lips
Stained red from cherry lip-gloss and his skin still damp from midnight lust.
Our arms and legs lay tangled beneath the stars.
These are the good nights
The, Nightmare, Night terror
Free nights.
Filled with burnt out cigarettes and hushed tones.
These are the nights
That push the cortisol from my mind to be replaced by a
Cheap serotonin fix.
These nights are my lullabies and goodnight
Kisses
His lips
Push their way against my squirming flesh, my tongue too tied to protest.
His hands caress,
My arms and legs. twisted behind locked doors.
These are the restless nights
Tossed and turned like mildewed clothes
Filled with empty cups and muffled moans.
These are the nights-- I’m sorry
The nights I pray for sunrise
Kisses.
Her lips
Find their way to my worried ear, stroking, Hushing.
“It’s okay baby girl mama’s here.”
Shhhhh.
These nights are long nights
When my legs are restless from running through my head,
Monsters,
Hiding underneath my bed.
These nights are filled with screams, they
Strangle my throat, and Chills prickle my spine but
These nights are saved
By her forehead
Kisses

Five-thirty AM.
Hustle 'n bustle
b e g i n s....
........footfalls
running  u p
and  d o w n
the  stairway
......stomping
.......catching
..........fidgety
elevat­or........
...........voices
...r o a r i n g
s h o u t i n g
...c u r s i n g
.....f a l l i n g
......wavering
....an endless
........series of
..........sounds
..........scaring
......escalating
scaring   even
more.......then
slowing down
hushing..........
fading.............
....filling hours
....til footsteps
...............start
........returning.
Night  comes,
g­reeted, with
Tchaikovsky's
c o n c e r t o ,
bright  lamps,
muted sounds 
.......of spoons
forks....knives
against plates
...tingling dies
giving  way to
tea cups, wine
...........glasses.
........and when
dinner's done.
:::::::::::::::::::::::
when all are in,
when  all have
settled   down.
::::::::::::::::::::::::
n o i s e s........
....are no more,
~~~~~~~~~~
swallowed, by 
the spreading
........Dark.......
:::::::::::::::::::::::
Late nights.....
.....p e a c e.....
a  soft  silence
wall lamps are
mellow-lighted,
...some voices
loud.....others
vaguely heard,
some....fading
into..the..night.
:::::::::::::::::::::::
:­::::::::::::::::::::::
Shortly...........
the rush shall
re commence.
Those   heavy,
loud  footfalls
will    a g a i n
.......t e r r i f y
the old  ones, 
with  t h e i r
......fear of.....
:t h u n d e r:

Up.......down,
down.......up,
........nonstop
shaking........­
floors...........
........ceilings
down..........
..........belo­w.
::::::::::::::::::::::
::::::::::::::::::::::
The HALLWAY
....is a straight
Path, a  world,
With  its   own
Moments.....of
b l u e..s k i e s
.l i g h t n i n g.
..........and........
...r o a r i n g...
:t h u n d e r s:
::::::::::::::::::::::::


Sally

Copyright 2014
Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan

I am staring at the red hand demanding stop
in a mostly silent rushing manner with any
urgent notice for the blind lost in the crushing banter.

And there is white hot anger in me
at the flamboyant capsules borne along to be seen
it is Soylent in essence proudly proclaiming to be green

I am flaring at the steady hand pandering
hot in a most heady hushing stammer.
Myths nay jerkingly, quoting for us
the signed history and sing lush slander.

And there is white hot anger in me
at the clairvoyant ape who is now born
chain-smoking and mean;
it is annoyance in adolescence rowdily
claiming to be clean.

Mr. Golden sun casting long shadows
Salty breeze hitting across
Acres of sand lying beneath our feet
Ups and downs like craters on the moon
Crows cawing, horses galloping and dogs basking in the sun
A straight line of ocean doodled below the empty sky
Gigantic ships appear like miniatures farther away
Hushing sound of waves
Four feet amidst frothy tides creating footprints
Carrying back some rustic soil on the toes
A little dirt never hurt
A bag of sea shells
Small, big, coloured and white, all with a coat of sand
A bag full of sea shells
The sun sets down
The radiant moon creates a guiding path in the dark shore
Following us back home
After a long evening at the beach
With my dear son

'Tis noon. At noon the Hebrew bowed the knee
And worshipped, while the husbandmen withdrew
From the scorched field, and the wayfaring man
Grew faint, and turned aside by bubbling fount,
Or rested in the shadow of the palm.

  I, too, amid the overflow of day,
Behold the power which wields and cherishes
The frame of Nature. From this brow of rock
That overlooks the Hudson's western marge,
I gaze upon the long array of groves,
The piles and gulfs of verdure drinking in
The grateful heats. They love the fiery sun;
Their broadening leaves grow glossier, and their sprays
Climb as he looks upon them. In the midst,
The swelling river, into his green gulfs,
Unshadowed save by passing sails above,
Takes the redundant glory, and enjoys
The summer in his chilly bed. Coy flowers,
That would not open in the early light,
Push back their plaited sheaths. The rivulet's pool,
That darkly quivered all the morning long
In the cool shade, now glimmers in the sun;
And o'er its surface shoots, and shoots again,
The glittering dragon-fly, and deep within
Run the brown water-beetles to and fro.

  A silence, the brief sabbath of an hour,
Reigns o'er the fields; the laborer sits within
His dwelling; he has left his steers awhile,
Unyoked, to bite the herbage, and his dog
Sleeps stretched beside the door-stone in the shade.
Now the grey marmot, with uplifted paws,
No more sits listening by his den, but steals
Abroad, in safety, to the clover field,
And crops its juicy blossoms. All the while
A ceaseless murmur from the populous town
Swells o'er these solitudes: a mingled sound
Of jarring wheels, and iron hoofs that clash
Upon the stony ways, and hammer-clang,
And creak of engines lifting ponderous bulks,
And calls and cries, and tread of eager feet,
Innumerable, hurrying to and fro.
Noon, in that mighty mart of nations, brings
No pause to toil and care. With early day
Began the tumult, and shall only cease
When midnight, hushing one by one the sounds
Of bustle, gathers the tired brood to rest.

  Thus, in this feverish time, when love of gain
And luxury possess the hearts of men,
Thus is it with the noon of human life.
We, in our fervid manhood, in our strength
Of reason, we, with hurry, noise, and care,
Plan, toil, and strife, and pause not to refresh
Our spirits with the calm and beautiful
Of God's harmonious universe, that won
Our youthful wonder; pause not to inquire
Why we are here; and what the reverence
Man owes to man, and what the mystery
That links us to the greater world, beside
Whose borders we but hover for a space.

Matilda listens to make sure they’ve gone out knowing Mr Doozie the cat is licking his milk the slurping sound fills the now silent room but she has to be sure her aunt and uncle have gone she can’t allow Moses to come in by the backdoor until they’re long gone and in the town buying and selling their wares she places her hands on her head and closes her eyes to focus her listening to close out Mr Doozie’s sounds the saucer of milk being pushed across the floor the purring but she cannot hear them now cannot hear their voices can’t hear Auntie’s whines and Uncle’s bellows can’t smell Uncle’s pipe or the aroma of his farts or Auntie’s sour body odour and sniffs the air and puts one leg up on the chair and lets the skirt fall back revealing her fine thigh and underwear something for Moses to see and get excited about not that he needs any encouragement  especially after the last time he came around when her aunt and uncle had gone off for the day to market on the old bus and Moses had sneaked in the back door his eyes peering around the door and she saying They’ve gone out you can come in and he did and while Mr Doozie sat on the end of the bed watching disinterestedly Moses had kissed her all over her body and after games of foreplay he’d entered her with subtleness and moved in a slow motion so that the bed only moved and rattled slightly and did not disturbed Mr Doozie and they had only just dressed and was letting Moses out the back door when Auntie came in the front door followed by Uncle with his arms laden with shopping and moaning about the prices and the shop girls and how there is no manners anymore and she feeling Moses’ ***** easing down her thigh and stood there with her innocent stare but this time Moses would need to be quicker as they had only gone to town and wouldn’t be long and if they returned earlier and caught her and Moses undressed and ******* with Mr Doozie sitting watching she doesn’t know what they’d say or do although knowing Uncle he’d chase off Moses with his walking stick and tan her hide until she cried and cried but Moses hasn’t come and she listens out hushing Mr Doozie with a shush shush and scratches her thigh and strains her ears was that him? She sighs opening her eyes sitting up looking towards the door waiting anticipating feeling the body’s urge the body’s need wanting Moses to come through the door and hurry with her up the stairs followed no doubt by Mr Doozie and quickly ******* and into her bed and setting aside the kissing and messing get on with the ******* but the door remains closed the room is almost silent apart from Mr Doozie’s licking and purring and the soft tick tocking of the grandfather clock and her heart thumping boom boom boom boom like a small drum all around the room and inside her head and she disappointed frustrated with no *** with Moses just a small empty bed.

welcome to the courtroom where royal minds reside
and Memory records where no feelings can hide.
situation states the case at the stand
allowing Conscience the right to speak at hand.
a constant strife between Mental and Feel
for Choice to ultimately seal the deal.
Doubt gained its throne right next to Faith's;
as Faith needs Doubt to keep it in place
sadness silently hangs on the smile
weighing down brows and heavy eyelids
Sir Anger accuses all the while
but Sadness knows what Sir Anger did.
Inhibition fold arms in a hesitant state,
as fear keeps him from accepting debate.
Guilt scolds the Heart for hushing Conscience
"conscience gives righteous advice to all,
you should not allow your guard to fall!"
Pain demands to be felt by the Heart,
he's sent by Guilt to do his part.

welcome to the courtroom of the mind.

She smiles like a cat in a garden
A stare to the eye, keeps me flyin'
Sweet voice like a fairy singin'
Soft touch of her hands, How I wished this would never end
With the glimpse of her face, worth a thousand roses
Warm look like the divine ghost is

Just the way she spread her wings and fly
Takes my heart with her up and high
Makes me wild, Free, like a falcon in the sky
Yet, All this things happen within a blink of an eye
But every single second is a memory of a moment I'll cherish
In my heart, this memories will never vanish

How lucky is the knight that comes with a golden armor
He sings a song, melody of a victor
With swords and shield, meant to be a saviour
He grabbed the lovely maiden and showed romance more
They rode up the hill with artificially fragrant love
But I just watched, a gold coated cage, entered by a pure dove.

While I sit alone in this sorrowful grassland
With no one else, just the sun as a friend
She came back with a bleeding hand
And told me, crying, "He's not my man"
I turned back with a confused head
"Yes! He is", I jealously said

"No, He's not" with tears on her eye
"You're the one" she gave a reply
My heartbeat raced, it could make me die
Yet, I answered her with an outright but a bitter lie
"He is your man, He is your knight"
"I'll just be your moon, watching you at night"

Her tears touched the ground and so as her knees
The demons were happy, they were having a feast
I lifted her up and tried to deafeat the beast
with nothing but love as an armor and passion as fist
The word we spoke were like the summer wind hushing
I heard nothing, She bled and I watched her dying

It was too late for me, for everything
The wound of her soul just can't stop bleeding
All those love can't just turn to nothing
All those scenes left me alone and crying
I kissed her for the first time and that would've meant goodbye
Kissed her and whispered, I'll meet you soon, after I die

The bleeding stopped and her pale dry lips turned red
"True love, true love, true love" she silently said
"I felt true love only when I was dead"
She continued "I know it's you, in your heart I read"
Again, her wings turned white and bright
As we headed to the light through the sunshine of the night

As she held me with her love so warm
She embraced me with her loving arm
Those are the times when I felt away from harm
When I looked down, I saw where we came from, that old farm
I saw a couple, DEAD! Next to each other
I saw two lifeless body, but together forever

I’m not sure
But I feel like bridging the gap between you just to stand on the edge of it and jump off
But jumping off of it is something I want and don’t want to do
But you’re so different and I’m so tired
And we’re both bored kids during lonely winter nights
They call it ‘summer love’
But except for summer holidays and warm weather, there’s not much I enjoy about it
It’s odd, but I've never been drawn to the cold weather until this year
Even though the sweetest things have happened when snowflakes quietly blanket everything
Hushing the world to stop and rest
Weighing down the boughs of evergreens ever so slightly
When houses smell of gingerbread and vanilla and the shadows of candlelight flickers on the wall
It’s always been a romantic season, even if the weather outside is frightful
But it reminds me of the boy with the camera in his hands, taking pictures of everything so it wouldn't feel like we were miles away
And that boy with the camera is still just miles away
And the photographs are just photographs, and those have stopped for about a year or more
I’m trying to be patient, trying to calm this heart of mine
Because it’s fickle, and although it enjoys the glitter of the Christmas season
It shivers in the winter and will snuggle up to anyone except to me

calling out your name in the dark
It's become an excruciating custom now
An unquenchable thirst

daylight stings and moon hovers
dispassionately
over my head
heavy with laments over a fallen crest;

Still I imagine
still I dream
that you'll tune my painful screams
into a hushing lullaby,
with a promise of forever
you'd gift my gloomy tears a twinkling gleam;

But now I'm wearing this blindfold
refusing to see the light outshining this pathetic hope ;

You are not here yet,
Maybe you never will be,

But I'm not ready to move from you yet,
And I doubt that I'll ever will be free

From these painful lumps,
burning eyes
swollen throat
and prickled heart
emptying it's blood,
so slowly that years go by
And I can now feel the quitting of daylight
while my blindfold lets out a long sigh;
as if stating to end
this idiotic nonsense
of tucking heartbreak and love
under these lyrical verse;

you may be entitled to a cash settlement you know when you walk passed another person you say hi then they say hi as you go by you realize you wish you could know more about that person perhaps wish you had said more (could’ve should’ve would’ve if only)

April is the cruelest month breeding out of lifeless land mixing memory desire stirring dull roots with spring rain

i’ve always had a problem taking my existence the world too seriously i’m way too sensitive way too longing dreaming praying hoping wishing

winter kept us warm covering earth in forgetful snow feeding little life with dried seed summer surprised us coming over rain showers we stopped in walkway went on in sunlight into the garden drank coffee talked for hours

a strong metal material which can morph shape based on heat cold transference

a pill that makes you smart brilliant genius a pill that makes you eye-catching handsome gorgeous a pill that makes you strong slim sinewy a pill that makes you young a pill that makes you rich successful powerful a pill that makes you loved respected imitated a pill that makes you godlike a pill that makes you disappear

a new form of *** more wild mysterious ***** sensual intensive explosive gratifying than current ***

a painting that changes colors forms images yet remains intriguing unsolved pushing the viewer to make up imagine answers outcomes possibilities

a song that joyfully melts the heart of every person in the world causing each to blissfully dance deeply bow in reverence build a sustainable bridge of appreciation

and still she cried and still the world pursues jug jug to ***** ears and other withered stumps of time we’re told upon the walls staring forms leaned out leaning hushing the room enclosed

a neighborhood where white males between ages 21 to 40 are given carte blanche all other men discarded based on age ethnicity income a street where females are rendered undesirable after age 45 a town where no one reads books discusses psychology sociology philosophy ideas dreams war a wall with no windows door that never opens ceiling that inches downward

my nerves are bad tonight yes bad stay with me talk with me why do you never speak? speak what are you thinking about what thinking what i never know what you are thinking think

i think we are in rats' alley where dead men lost their bones

the smell sight sound taste feel acknowledgment of dying

what is that noise wind under door what is that noise now what is the wind doing nothing again nothing do you know nothing do you see nothing do you remember nothing i remember pearls that are your eyes are you alive or not is there nothing in your head

shattered casualties along the road people who once believed they would be successful winners making difference in this world another drink another smoke another night week month year gone another life envisioned planned strived for lost job lost house lost another baby born

twit twit twit jug jug jug jug jug jug so rudely forced river sweats oil barges drift with turning tide red sails wide to leeward swing on heavy spar barges wash drifting logs down reach past isle of dogs weialala leia wallala leialala

A breath that that bled through days
Seeping between our bodies,
Hushing my skin to fire
And laced with smoke.
When did air stand so solid
Between intimacies of another?
Lightly greased with desire,
A soap bubble barrier.

Oily futures chase each other
Across violet hues.
It is only so briefly whole, untouched.
Your breath caught
And me with it.

ah... the sparrow is such a beautiful bird, a mandarin bird, only the pope's Samael, the robin, could box the sparrow ugly - i.e. the robin always visits the pope's windowsill to tell him of immanent death.

i never understood why rhetoric (that persuasive art)
should exist outside a courtroom
and in the chamber of the commons - in parliament,
but then you read the law supplement on a thursday
and entertain such facts that:
a. Abe Lincoln was a former lawyer
b. Richie Nixon, also a former lawyer
c. Davy Lollipop George was a solicitor
d. Maggie Stitch-Me-Up Fatty Chi a barrister...
(e. well Tonne Blair was a barrister too)...
it seems natural to them, these peeps export rhetoric
from the one effective "safe space" where rhetoric
matters, adversary and defence,
i don't know why they export rhetoric from
Nepal and throw it into the cauldron of
politics that's Iraq... that's when their conscience
suddenly disappears, magic... abracadabra
and there's Houdini choking when his stomach
was punched in... rhetoric, i believe is best used
to spare lives, like the case of the defence lawyer
Clarence Darrow, the jury found the
African translated into American *not guilty
after he fired a shot at a mob of the Ku Klux ****
inspired mob on his premises...
now that's a truthful utility of rhetoric -
but take a lawyer out of a courtroom and shove
him into the sausage parlour of other
missing ******* condoms, and you have rhetoric
of a different nature... not to spare lives,
but to sacrifice them, like the plea of Hortensia
in 42 BC... incitement to war... many shady investors
in the background... i'm not saying lawyers are bad
people... i'm saying they're no longer people
once they become politico-lawyers... they become
investment brokers for the economics of arms trade...
they suddenly become zombie-like self-mutilating
cannibals... they come in with a brown crop of hair,
they leave their office of power like gorilla silver-backs,
having attired themselves in false-grey wisdom...
Tony and Obama sitting in a tree,
one said Iraq, the other said Arabia in a shopping spree,
well, -ing, numb that ****** ending, i.e. spring.
Tony and Obama sitting in a tree, the latter got
a Nobel peace prize, the former got diplomatic immunity.
so yeah, free speech... not offending people...
i got there just in time, and got out just in time too...
safe-spaces... i can just see the protesting lining up
like blonde ****** wives of billionaires for silicon
implants to live it out in the valley... coyote ug-...
something or other, Satan's Clause: sit on my lee e e lease!
that's how rhetoric becomes a migrating bird, a stork,
summers in Poland and the myth of the European bison,
winters in former Hittite territory or Pharaoh land...
it's dangerous exporting rhetoric from its intended
confinement of the courtroom, and importing it into
a parliamentary chamber, whichever, house of lords
or house of commons... rhetoric exported into a political
realm becomes less a saviour and more a guillotine,
as in: in a courtroom the judge presides with cool calm
precision that people do not step out of line...
but in the political realm Mr. Speaker just jokes about
hushing the banter of insults exchanged by two parties...
the lost privy, and the dirt and smudge of faeces
where once such men would paint their faces with blue woad.

I was told told this was the place.  
Here you'll find your destiny.
Between these desert brown sheets.
In an effort to find who I am
I leveled myself down,
digging through the sand.
Unaware the sand was sinking,
hushing my thoughts for over thinking.
I performed the sacred desert dance,
in the name of romance.
Still searching for who I am,
digging deeper into the sand.
The faster my body moves,
the more the ground begins to ****.
My conjured romance,
Is just another ****.

The summer dawn came over-soon,
The earth was like hot iron at noon
         In Nazareth;
There fell no rain to ease the heat,
And dusk drew on with tired feet
         And stifled breath.

The shop was low and hot and square,
And fresh-cut wood made sharp the air,
         While all day long
The saw went tearing thru the oak
That moaned as tho’ the tree’s heart broke
         Beneath its wrong.

The narrow street was full of cries,
Of bickering and snarling lies
         In many keys—
The tongues of Egypt and of Rome
And lands beyond the shifting foam
         Of windy seas.

Sometimes a ruler riding fast
Scattered the dark crowds as he passed,
         And drove them close
In doorways, drawing broken breath
Lest they be trampled to their death
         Where the dust rose.

There in the gathering night and noise
A group of Galilean boys
         Crowding to see
Gray Joseph toiling with his son,
Saw Jesus, when the task was done,
         Turn wearily.

He passed them by with hurried tread
Silently, nor raised his head,
         He who looked up
Drinking all beauty from his birth
Out of the heaven and the earth
         As from a cup.

And Mary, who was growing old,
Knew that the pottage would be cold
         When he returned;
He hungered only for the night,
And westward, bending sharp and bright,
         The thin moon burned.

He reached the open western gate
Where whining halt and ***** wait,
         And came at last
To the blue desert, where the deep
Great seas of twilight lay asleep,
         Windless and vast.

With shining eyes the stars awoke,
The dew lay heavy on his cloak,
         The world was dim;
And in the stillness he could hear
His secret thoughts draw very near
         And call to him.

Faint voices lifted shrill with pain
And multitudinous as rain;
         From all the lands
And all the villages thereof
Men crying for the gift of love
         With outstretched hands.

Voices that called with ceaseless crying,
The broken and the blind, the dying,
         And those grown dumb
Beneath oppression, and he heard
Upon their lips a single word,
         “Come!”

Their cries engulfed him like the night,
The moon put out her placid light
         And black and low
Nearer the heavy thunder drew,
Hushing the voices . . . yet he knew
         That he would go.

A quick-spun thread of lightning burns,
And for a flash the day returns—
         He only hears
Joseph, an old man bent and white
Toiling alone from morn till night
         Thru all the years.

Swift clouds make all the heavens blind,
A storm is running on the wind—
         He only sees
How Mary will stretch out her hands
Sobbing, who never understands
         Voices like these.

The way you lived
Everyday
Living in fear
Of somebody seeing you loving me

Cause that alley had eyes hidden in the bricks
That parking lot had lights hitting our lips
And you were hushing me
We were always walking on a tightrope that was too many years old
I wonder where you went too when you wouldn’t show up for the 5 minutes you were supposed to

The way you lived
Everyday
Living in fear
Of somebody seeing you loving me

Cause people were noticing me love you
That school had monstrous eyes
That window of your truck had my breath melting the ice
It had the smell of me, my missing earring

The way I lived
Everyday
Living In fear that no one would see me love you

Cause I was the most prized secret
Perfectly kept on tight sealed lips
Losing myself in you
I still remember the weight of you
I still remember the first taste of you
And I remember your stories of the boy you once were and I remember wishing I was born in the 70’s just so I had a chance to be chosen by you

The way I lived
Everyday
Living In fear that no one would see me love you

Everyday for me was like a 10 mile race
I tried with everything I had to be the woman in your frame
But I sunk down deep and lost the game
There I was chasing you like you owed me
Cause I never accepted the fact that you were bad for me

The way you lived
Everyday
Living in fear that somebody would see you loving me

Cause I thought you wanted longevity and I was overtaken by our chemistry
I had dreams about the silly things like your jeans and the way you would smirk at me
I bet you dreamt about mornings with me
But all we ever had was foggy evenings
I had a feeling you were going to make me blue
With your name on me, a blue tattoo
Instead the colors of me are a pinwheel of hues

The way I lived
Everyday
Living In fear that no one would know I love you

But I tell myself that art is meant for periods of time
You made me into a heaven and you made me into a hell
Tell me how do you get the sun to set on you
All I ever have is the moon
And I know that time will pass over and over but I am stained with you
all over my body you lay
After the 8 hour school days of staring at you I can’t unsee you

And I know I was never good at accepting
But you accepted that I was a broken young
And you chose to make me anew  
Did it **** you too?
Tell me did it enlighten you?
Did the first time for me overtake you?

Every day
I was there

You were there

Every day
I was there..

The way you lived
Everyday
Living In fear
Of someone finding out you love me..
I’ll never relate too..

The fuzzy hug that never loosens its grasp
Clutching as a barbed wire hugs and puppies cuddle and love,
whiskers and noses nuzzling, the straitjacket loves your mind,
wishes it could just squeeze the nightmares out and streaming as juices from an orange,
but its might only pressurizes, the more you fight the more you hurt,
bruising our precious straitjacket heart, he’s here to help us
take the tasks of fettering hands
just to hug and coil about us
Learn to love them, the society blanket,
the crazy snuggler, the bunny constrictor
Crazy’s not useful and our little straitjacket cures our woes
strangling us within linen cotton folds
simmer our fires
breaking our bronc
hushing our tantrum cry
It’s the mother we Learn to love
Kin that keeps us in heavenly grip
The Straitjacket’s here for all our insanists

I keep trying to write letters
but they never turn out right

you taught me that home was never truly a place

it is blue eyes that I could get lost in for hours
pushing and pulling like the tides of the sea

it is strong hands that built things up but also
tore them down
and still managed to leave goosebumps down my spine

it is whispered 'I love you's that sound like a rainy august night
hushing me to sleep

it is long cold winter nights wrapped in your arms
listening to our heartbeats synchronized

it is the thought of our apartment

it is the holidays we spent together

it is the way you used to look at me

it is the promises we meant to keep

I am still in love with you. You are still my home. This hurts a lot less then I expected, but the pain is
constant and shoots down my veins. I am addicted to you. I feel alive with you.

I told you from the first time we kissed by the library that we would end up this way.

every second I was with you, I knew I would end up trying to write you heartbroken letters that would
never end up sounding right.

I do not speak in sombre tones
Not for me the gentle echo
Hushing through hallowed halls
I shall growl my way to the grave
Be ****** to the insignificant
And to hell with the indifferent
There are no rules or rulers
There are only fools and foolers

I need no-one else's straight lines
I have imagination enough to swerve
And spite enough to spin
Snapping snarling and seditious
Spitting venomous and vicious
Flamed by the world's injustice
And humanity's indifference
Not until I am dead burned and scattered
Shall I rest assured

                                By Phil Roberts