He pulled and parked the supply red wagon,
then climbed the mast to the captain's cabin.
Captain Red is ready for adventure.
A quest to collect the world's best treasure.

His pirate crew is renowned far and wide.
They're rough and tough and they don't ever cry.
But none of them boys has the captain's stuff.
So don't mess with him, man, cause he don't bluff.

This motley crew has achieved many feats,
has never suffered a single defeat,
and has seen the most incredible things:
whales, whirlpools, storms, mermaids, krakens and kings.

"Set sail," squaws the boss as he munches lunch
and the Ocean Destroyer leaves port Wunche.
These rolling green hills are now ocean waves.
That blue sky, however, remains the same.
...
"Hey Benjamin!" beams the first mate Susanne.
Impeding the journey that just began.
"We already played this game. It's my turn!"
The first mate trumps the captain, Ben will learn.
...
Her spacesuit crew is renowned far and wide.
They're smart and nice and they don't ever lie.
But none of these girls has commander's stuff.
So don't mess with her, girl, cause she don't bluff.

This brainy crew has achieved many feats,
has never suffered a single defeat,
and has seen the most incredible things:
aliens, black holes, stars, and martian springs.

"Lift off!" beams the boss as she munches lunch
and the Star Chasing Rocket leaves base Wunche.
These rural backyards are now rocky space.
That blue sky, however, remains the same.
...
"Hey Susanne!" beams the pilot Benjamin.
Impeding the flight before it begins.
"We already played this game. It's my turn!"
The pilot trumps commander, Sue will learn.
...
Boys and girls grow up and out the front door.
Those children’s games evolve to adult chores;
those kiddy lawns to grandparent’s domain.
That blue sky, however, remains the same.

Poems about Flight, Flying, Flights of Fancy, Kites, Leaves, Butterflies, Birds and Bees



Flight
by Michael R. Burch

It is the nature of loveliness to vanish
as butterfly wings, batting against nothingness
seek transcendence...

Originally published by Hibiscus (India)



Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch

Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching embrace,
you climb, skittish kite...

What do you know of the world’s despair,
gliding in vast... solitariness... there,
so that all that remains is to
fall?

Only a little longer the wind invests its sighs;
you
stall,
spread-eagled, as the canvas snaps
and *****
its white rebellious wings,
and all
the houses watch with baffled eyes.



The Wonder Boys
by Michael R. Burch

(for Leslie Mellichamp, the late editor of The Lyric,
who was a friend and mentor to many poets, and
a fine poet in his own right)

The stars were always there, too-bright cliches:
scintillant truths the jaded world outgrew
as baffled poets winged keyed kites—amazed,
in dream of shocks that suddenly came true...

but came almost as static—background noise,
a song out of the cosmos no one hears,
or cares to hear. The poets, starstruck boys,
lay tuned in to their kite strings, saucer-eared.

They thought to feel the lightning’s brilliant sparks
electrify their nerves, their brains; the smoke
of words poured from their overheated hearts.
The kite string, knotted, made a nifty rope...

You will not find them here; they blew away—
in tumbling flight beyond nights’ stars. They clung
by fingertips to satellites. They strayed
too far to remain mortal. Elfin, young,

their words are with us still. Devout and fey,
they wink at us whenever skies are gray.

Originally published by The Lyric



American Eagle, Grounded
by Michael R. Burch

Her predatory eye,
the single feral iris,
scans.

Her raptor beak,
all jagged sharp-edged ******,
juts.

Her hard talon,
clenched in pinched expectation,
waits.

Her clipped wings,
preened against reality,
tremble.

Published as “Tremble” by The Lyric, Verses Magazine, Romantics Quarterly, Journeys, The Raintown Review, Poetic Ponderings, Poem Kingdom, The Fabric of a Vision, NPAC—Net Poetry and Art Competition, Poet’s Haven, Listening To The Birth Of Crystals (Anthology), Poetry Renewal, Inspirational Stories, Poetry Life & Times, MahMag (Iranian/Farsi), The Eclectic Muse (Canada)



Album
by Michael R. Burch

I caress them—trapped in brittle cellophane—
and I see how young they were, and how unwise;
and I remember their first flight—an old prop plane,
their blissful arc through alien blue skies...

And I touch them here through leaves which—tattered, frayed—
are also wings, but wings that never flew:
like insects’ wings—pinned, held. Here, time delayed,
their features never merged, remaining two...

And Grief, which lurked unseen beyond the lens
or in shadows where It crept on furtive claws
as It scritched Its way into their hearts, depends
on sorrows such as theirs, and works Its jaws...

and slavers for Its meat—those young, unwise,
who naively dare to dream, yet fail to see
how, lumbering sunward, Hope, ungainly, flies,
clutching to Her ruffled breast what must not be.



Springtime Prayer
by Michael R. Burch

They’ll have to grow like crazy,
the springtime baby geese,
if they’re to fly to balmier climes
when autumn dismembers the leaves...

And so I toss them loaves of bread,
then whisper an urgent prayer:
“Watch over these, my Angels,
if there’s anyone kind, up there.”

Originally published by The HyperTexts



Learning to Fly
by Michael R. Burch

We are learning to fly
every day...

learning to fly—
away, away...

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

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



In the Whispering Night
by Michael R. Burch

for George King

In the whispering night, when the stars bend low
till the hills ignite to a shining flame,
when a shower of meteors streaks the sky
while the lilies sigh in their beds, for shame,
we must steal our souls, as they once were stolen,
and gather our vigor, and all our intent.
We must heave our bodies to some famished ocean
and laugh as they vanish, and never repent.
We must dance in the darkness as stars dance before us,
soar, Soar! through the night on a butterfly's breeze...
blown high, upward-yearning, twin spirits returning
to the heights of awareness from which we were seized.

Published by Songs of Innocence, Romantics Quarterly, The Chained Muse and Poetry Life & Times. This is a poem I wrote for my favorite college English teacher, George King, about poetic kinship, brotherhood and romantic flights of fancy.



For a Palestinian Child, with Butterflies
by Michael R. Burch

Where does the butterfly go
when lightning rails,
when thunder howls,
when hailstones scream,
when winter scowls,
when nights compound dark frosts with snow...
Where does the butterfly go?

Where does the rose hide its bloom
when night descends oblique and chill
beyond the capacity of moonlight to fill?
When the only relief's a banked fire's glow,
where does the butterfly go?

And where shall the spirit flee
when life is harsh, too harsh to face,
and hope is lost without a trace?
Oh, when the light of life runs low,
where does the butterfly go?

Published by Tucumcari Literary Review, Romantics Quarterly, Poetry Life & Times, Victorian Violet Press (where it was nominated for a “Best of the Net”), The Contributor (a Nashville homeless newspaper), Siasat (Pakistan), and set to music as a part of the song cycle “The Children of Gaza” which has been performed in various European venues by the Palestinian soprano Dima Bawab



Earthbound, a Vision of Crazy Horse
by Michael R. Burch

Tashunka Witko, a Lakota Sioux better known as Crazy Horse, had a vision of a red-tailed hawk at Sylvan Lake, South Dakota. In his vision he saw himself riding a spirit horse, flying through a storm, as the hawk flew above him, shrieking. When he awoke, a red-tailed hawk was perched near his horse.

Earthbound,
and yet I now fly
through the clouds that are aimlessly drifting...
so high
that no sound
echoing by
below where the mountains are lifting
the sky
can be heard.

Like a bird,
but not meek,
like a hawk from a distance regarding its prey,
I will shriek,
not a word,
but a screech,
and my terrible clamor will turn them to clay—
the sheep,
the earthbound.

Published by American Indian Pride and Boston Poetry Magazine



Sioux Vision Quest
by Crazy Horse, Oglala Lakota Sioux (circa 1840-1877)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A man must pursue his Vision
as the eagle explores
the sky's deepest blues.

Published by Better Than Starbucks and A Hundred Voices



in-flight convergence
by Michael R. Burch

serene, almost angelic,
the lights of the city ——— extend ———
over lumbering behemoths
shrilly screeching displeasure;
they say
that nothing is certain,
that nothing man dreams or ordains
long endures his command

here the streetlights that flicker
and those blazing steadfast
seem one: from a distance;
descend,
they abruptly
part ———— ways,
so that nothing is one
which at times does not suddenly blend
into garish insignificance
in the familiar alleyways,
in the white neon flash
and the billboards of Convenience

and man seems the afterthought of his own Brilliance
as we thunder down the enlightened runways.

Originally published by The Aurorean and subsequently nominated for the Pushcart Prize



Flight 93
by Michael R. Burch

I held the switch in trembling fingers, asked
why existence felt so small, so purposeless,
like a minnow wriggling feebly in my grasp...

vibrations of huge engines thrummed my arms
as, glistening with sweat, I nudged the switch
to OFF... I heard the klaxon's shrill alarms

like vultures’ shriekings... earthward, in a stall...
we floated... earthward... wings outstretched, aghast
like Icarus... as through the void we fell...

till nothing was so beautiful, so blue...
so vivid as that moment... and I held
an image of your face, and dreamed I flew

into your arms. The earth rushed up. I knew
such comfort, in that moment, loving you.



Flight
by Michael R. Burch

Eagle, raven, blackbird, crow...
What you are I do not know.
Where you go I do not care.
I’m unconcerned whose meal you bear.
But as you mount the sunlit sky,
I only wish that I could fly.
I only wish that I could fly.

Robin, hawk or whippoorwill...
Should men care that you hunger still?
I do not wish to see your home.
I do not wonder where you roam.
But as you scale the sky's bright stairs,
I only wish that I were there.
I only wish that I were there.

Sparrow, lark or chickadee...
Your markings I disdain to see.
Where you fly concerns me not.
I scarcely give your flight a thought.
But as you wheel and arc and dive,
I, too, would feel so much alive.
I, too, would feel so much alive.

This is a poem I wrote in high school. I seem to remember the original poem being influenced by William Cullen Bryant's "To a Waterfowl."



Flying
by Michael R. Burch

I shall rise
and try the ****** wings of thought
ten thousand times
before I fly...

and then I'll sleep
and waste ten thousand nights
before I dream;

but when at last...
I soar the distant heights of undreamt skies
where never hawks nor eagles dared to go,
as I laugh among the meteors flashing by
somewhere beyond the bluest earth-bound seas...
if I'm not told
I’m just a man,
then I shall know
just what I am.

This is one of my early poems, written around age 16-17.



Stage Craft-y
by Michael R. Burch

There once was a dromedary
who befriended a crafty canary.
Budgie said, "You can’t sing,
but now, here’s the thing—
just think of the tunes you can carry!"



Clyde Lied!
by Michael R. Burch

There once was a mockingbird, Clyde,
who bragged of his prowess, but lied.
To his new wife he sighed,
"When again, gentle bride?"
"Nevermore!" bright-eyed Raven replied.



Less Heroic Couplets: ****** Most Fowl!
by Michael R. Burch

“****** most foul!”
cried the mouse to the owl.
“Friend, I’m no sinner;
you’re merely my dinner!”
the wise owl replied
as the tasty snack died.

Published by Lighten Up Online and in Potcake Chapbook #7.



Lance-Lot
by Michael R. Burch

Preposterous bird!
Inelegant! Absurd!
Until the great & mighty heron
brandishes his fearsome sword.



Kissin’ ’n’ buzzin’
by Michael R. Burch

Kissin’ ’n’ buzzin’ the bees rise
in a dizzy circle of two.
Oh, when I’m with you,
I feel like kissin’ ’n’ buzzin’ too.



Delicacy
by Michael R. Burch

for all good mothers

Your love is as delicate
as a butterfly cleaning its wings,
as soft as the predicate
the hummingbird sings
to itself, gently murmuring—
“Fly! Fly! Fly!”
Your love is the string
soaring kites untie.



Lone Wild Goose
by Du Fu (712-770)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The abandoned goose refuses food and drink;
he cries querulously for his companions.
Who feels kinship for that strange wraith
as he vanishes eerily into the heavens?
You watch it as it disappears;
its plaintive calls cut through you.
The indignant crows ignore you both:
the bickering, bantering multitudes.



The Red Cockatoo
by Po Chu-I (772-846)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A marvelous gift from Annam—
a red cockatoo,
bright as peach blossom,
fluent in men's language.

So they did what they always do
to the erudite and eloquent:
they created a thick-barred cage
and shut it up.



The Migrant Songbird
Li Qingzhao aka Li Ching-chao (c. 1084-1155)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The migrant songbird on the nearby yew
brings tears to my eyes with her melodious trills;
this fresh downpour reminds me of similar spills:
another spring gone, and still no word from you...



Lines from Laolao Ting Pavilion
by Li Bai (701-762)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The spring breeze knows partings are bitter;
The willow twig knows it will never be green again.



The Day after the Rain
Lin Huiyin (1904-1955)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I love the day after the rain
and the meadow's green expanses!
My heart endlessly rises with wind,
gusts with wind...
away the new-mown grasses and the fallen leaves...
away the clouds like smoke...
vanishing like smoke...



Untitled Translations

Cupid, if you incinerate my soul, touché!
For like you she has wings and can fly away!
—Meleager, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

As autumn deepens,
a butterfly sips
chrysanthemum dew.
—Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Come, butterfly,
it’s late
and we’ve a long way to go!
—Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Up and at ’em! The sky goes bright!
Let’***** the road again,
Companion Butterfly!
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Ah butterfly,
what dreams do you ply
with your beautiful wings?
—Chiyo-ni, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Oh, dreamlike winter butterfly:
a puff of white snow
cresting mountains
—Kakio Tomizawa, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Dry leaf flung awry:
bright butterfly,
goodbye!
—Michael R. Burch, original haiku

Will we remain parted forever?
Here at your grave:
two flowerlike butterflies
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

a soaring kite flits
into the heart of the sun?
Butterfly & Chrysanthemum
—Michael R. Burch, original haiku

The cheerful-chirping cricket
contends gray autumn's gay,
contemptuous of frost
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Whistle on, twilight whippoorwill,
solemn evangelist
of loneliness
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

The sea darkening,
the voices of the wild ducks:
my mysterious companions!
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Lightning
shatters the darkness—
the night heron's shriek
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

This snowy morning:
cries of the crow I despise
(ah, but so beautiful!)
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

A crow settles
on a leafless branch:
autumn nightfall.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Hush, cawing crows; what rackets you make!
Heaven's indignant messengers,
you remind me of wordsmiths!
—O no Yasumaro (circa 711), loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Higher than a skylark,
resting on the breast of heaven:
this mountain pass.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

An exciting struggle
with such a sad ending:
cormorant fishing.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Does my soul abide in heaven, or hell?
Only the sea gull
in his high, lonely circuits, may tell.
—Glaucus, translation by Michael R. Burch

The eagle sees farther
from its greater height—
our ancestors’ wisdom
—Michael R. Burch, original haiku

A kite floats
at the same place in the sky
where yesterday it floated...
—Yosa Buson, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Descent
by Michael R. Burch

I have listened to the rain all this morning
and it has a certain gravity,
as if it knows its destination,
perhaps even its particular destiny.
I do not believe mine is to be uplifted,
although I, too, may be flung precipitously
and from a great height.



Ultimate Sunset
by Michael R. Burch

for my father, Paul Ray Burch, Jr.

he now faces the Ultimate Sunset,
his body like the leaves that fray as they dry,
shedding their vital fluids (who knows why?)
till they’ve become even lighter than the covering sky,
ready to fly...



Free Fall
by Michael R. Burch

for my father, Paul Ray Burch, Jr.

I see the longing for departure gleam
in his still-keen eye,
and I understand his desire
to test this last wind, like those late autumn leaves
with nothing left to cling to...



Leaf Fall
by Michael R. Burch

Whatever winds encountered soon resolved
to swirling fragments, till chaotic heaps
of leaves lay pulsing by the backyard wall.
In lieu of rakes, our fingers sorted each
dry leaf into its place and built a high,
soft bastion against earth's gravitron—
a patchwork quilt, a trampoline, a bright
impediment to fling ourselves upon.
And nothing in our laughter as we fell
into those leaves was like the autumn's cry
of also falling. Nothing meant to die
could be so bright as we, so colorful—
clad in our plaids, oblivious to pain
we'd feel today, should we leaf-fall again.

Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea



The Folly of Wisdom
by Michael R. Burch

She is wise in the way that children are wise,
looking at me with such knowing, grave eyes
I must bend down to her to understand.
But she only smiles, and takes my hand.
We are walking somewhere that her feet know to go,
so I smile, and I follow...
And the years are dark creatures concealed in bright leaves
that flutter above us, and what she believes—
I can almost remember—goes something like this:
the prince is a horned toad, awaiting her kiss.
She wiggles and giggles, and all will be well
if only we find him! The woodpecker’s knell
as he hammers the coffin of some dying tree
that once was a fortress to someone like me
rings wildly above us. Some things that we know
we are meant to forget. Life is a bloodletting, maple-syrup-slow.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly



Kin
by Michael R. Burch

for Richard Moore

1.
Shrill gulls,
how like my thoughts
you, struggling, rise
to distant bliss—
the weightless blue of skies
that are not blue
in any atmosphere,
but closest here...

2.
You seek an air
so clear,
so rarified
the effort leaves you famished;
earthly tides
soon call you back—
one long, descending glide...

3.
Disgruntledly you ***** dirt shores for orts
you pull like mucous ropes
from shells’ bright forts...
You eye the teeming world
with nervous darts—
this way and that...
Contentious, shrewd, you scan—
the sky, in hope,
the earth, distrusting man.



Songstress
by Michael R. Burch

Within its starkwhite ribcage, how the heart
must flutter wildly, O, and always sing
against the pressing darkness: all it knows
until at last it feels the numbing sting
of death. Then life's brief vision swiftly passes,
imposing night on one who clearly saw.
Death held your bright heart tightly, till its maw–
envenomed, fanged–could swallow, whole, your Awe.
And yet it was not death so much as you
who sealed your doom; you could not help but sing
and not be silenced. Here, behold your tomb's
white alabaster cage: pale, wretched thing!
But you'll not be imprisoned here, wise wren!
Your words soar free; rise, sing, fly, live again.

A poet like Nadia Anjuman can be likened to a caged bird, deprived of flight, who somehow finds it within herself to sing of love and beauty.



Performing Art
by Michael R. Burch

Who teaches the wren
in its drab existence
to explode into song?
What parodies of irony
does the jay espouse
with its sharp-edged tongue?
What instinctual memories
lend stunning brightness
to the strange dreams
of the dull gray slug
—spinning its chrysalis,
gluing rough seams—
abiding in darkness
its transformation,
till, waving damp wings,
it applauds its performance?
I am done with irony.
Life itself sings.



Lean Harvests
by Michael R. Burch

for T.M.

the trees are shedding their leaves again:
another summer is over.
the Christians are praising their Maker again,
but not the disconsolate plover:
i hear him berate
the fate
of his mate;
he claims God is no body’s lover.

Published by The Rotary Dial and Angle



My Forty-Ninth Year
by Michael R. Burch

My forty-ninth year
and the dew remembers
how brightly it glistened
encrusting September,...
one frozen September
when hawks ruled the sky
and death fell on wings
with a shrill, keening cry.

My forty-ninth year,
and still I recall
the weavings and windings
of childhood, of fall...
of fall enigmatic,
resplendent, yet sere,...
though vibrant the herald
of death drawing near.

My forty-ninth year
and now often I've thought on
the course of a lifetime,
the meaning of autumn,
the cycle of autumn
with winter to come,
of aging and death
and rebirth... on and on.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly as “My Twenty-Ninth Year”



Myth
by Michael R. Burch

Here the recalcitrant wind
sighs with grievance and remorse
over fields of wayward gorse
and thistle-throttled lanes.
And she is the myth of the scythed wheat
hewn and sighing, complete,
waiting, lain in a low sheaf—
full of faith, full of grief.

Here the immaculate dawn
requires belief of the leafed earth
and she is the myth of the mown grain—
golden and humble in all its weary worth.



What Works
by Michael R. Burch

for David Gosselin

What works—
hewn stone;
the blush the iris shows the sun;
the lilac’s pale-remembered bloom.

The frenzied fly: mad-lively, gay,
as seconds tick his time away,
his sentence—one brief day in May,
a period. And then decay.

A frenzied rhyme’s mad tip-toed time,
a ballad’s languid as the sea,
seek, striving—immortality.

When gloss peels off, what works will shine.
When polish fades, what works will gleam.
When intellectual prattle pales,
the dying buzzing in the hive
of tedious incessant bees,
what works will soar and wheel and dive
and milk all honey, leap and thrive,
and teach the pallid poem to seethe.



Child of 9-11
by Michael R. Burch

a poem for Christina-Taylor Green, who
was born on September 11, 2001 and who
died at age nine, shot to death...

Child of 9-11, beloved,
I bring this lily, lay it down
here at your feet, and eiderdown,
and all soft things, for your gentle spirit.
I bring this psalm — I hope you hear it.

Much love I bring — I lay it down
here by your form, which is not you,
but what you left this shell-shocked world
to help us learn what we must do
to save another child like you.

Child of 9-11, I know
you are not here, but watch, afar
from distant stars, where angels rue
the evil things some mortals do.
I also watch; I also rue.

And so I make this pledge and vow:
though I may weep, I will not rest
nor will my pen fail heaven's test
till guns and wars and hate are banned
from every shore, from every land.

Child of 9-11, I grieve
your tender life, cut short... bereaved,
what can I do, but pledge my life
to saving lives like yours? Belief
in your sweet worth has led me here...
I give my all: my pen, this tear,
this lily and this eiderdown,
and all soft things my heart can bear;
I bring them to your final bier,
and leave them with my promise, here.

Originally published by The Flea



Desdemona
by Michael R. Burch

Though you possessed the moon and stars,
you are bound to fate and wed to chance.
Your lips deny they crave a kiss;
your feet deny they ache to dance.
Your heart imagines wild romance.

Though you cupped fire in your hands
and molded incandescent forms,
you are barren now, and—spent of flame—
the ashes that remain are borne
toward the sun upon a storm.

You, who demanded more, have less,
your heart within its cells of sighs
held fast by chains of misery,
confined till death for peddling lies—
imprisonment your sense denies.

You, who collected hearts like leaves
and pressed each once within your book,
forgot. None—winsome, bright or rare—
not one was worth a second look.
My heart, as others, you forsook.

But I, though I loved you from afar
through silent dawns, and gathered rue
from gardens where your footsteps left
cold paths among the asters, knew—
each moonless night the nettles grew
and strangled hope, where love dies too.

Published by Penny Dreadful, Carnelian, Romantics Quarterly, Grassroots Poetry and Poetry Life & Times



Transplant
by Michael R. Burch

You float, unearthly angel, clad in flesh
as strange to us who briefly knew your flame
as laughter to disease. And yet you laugh.
Behind your smile, the sun forfeits its claim
to earth, and floats forever now the same—
light captured at its moment of least height.
You laugh here always, welcoming the night,
and, just a photograph, still you can claim
bright rapture: like an angel, not of flesh—
but something more, made less. Your humanness
this moment of release becomes a name
and something else—a radiance, a strange
brief presence near our hearts. How can we stand
and chain you here to this nocturnal land
of burgeoning gray shadows? Fly, begone.
I give you back your soul, forfeit all claim
to radiance, and welcome grief’s dark night
that crushes all the laughter from us. Light
in someone Else’s hand, and sing at ease
some song of brightsome mirth through dawn-lit trees
to welcome morning’s sun. O daughter! these
are eyes too weak for laughter; for love’s sight,
I welcome darkness, overcome with light.



Reading between the lines
by Michael R. Burch

Who could have read so much, as we?
Having the time, but not the inclination,
TV has become our philosophy,
sheer boredom, our recreation.



Rilke Translations

Archaic Torso of Apollo
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We cannot know the beheaded god
nor his eyes' forfeited visions. But still
the figure's trunk glows with the strange vitality
of a lamp lit from within, while his composed will
emanates dynamism. Otherwise
the firmly muscled abdomen could not beguile us,
nor the centering ***** make us smile
at the thought of their generative animus.
Otherwise the stone might seem deficient,
unworthy of the broad shoulders, of the groin
projecting procreation's triangular spearhead upwards,
unworthy of the living impulse blazing wildly within
like an inchoate star—demanding our belief.
You must change your life.



Herbsttag ("Autumn Day")
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Lord, it is time. Let the immense summer go.
Lay your long shadows over the sundials
and over the meadows, let the free winds blow.
Command the late fruits to fatten and shine;
O, grant them another Mediterranean hour!
Urge them to completion, and with power
convey final sweetness to the heavy wine.
Who has no house now, never will build one.
Who's alone now, shall continue alone;
he'll wake, read, write long letters to friends,
and pace the tree-lined pathways up and down,
restlessly, as autumn leaves drift and descend.

Originally published by Measure



The Panther
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

His weary vision's so overwhelmed by iron bars,
his exhausted eyes see only blank Oblivion.
His world is not our world. It has no stars.
No light. Ten thousand bars. Nothing beyond.
Lithe, swinging with a rhythmic easy stride,
he circles, his small orbit tightening,
an electron losing power. Paralyzed,
soon regal Will stands stunned, an abject thing.
Only at times the pupils' curtains rise
silently, and then an image enters,
descends through arrested shoulders, plunges, centers
somewhere within his empty heart, and dies.



Come, You
by Ranier Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This was Rilke's last poem, written ten days before his death. He died open-eyed in the arms of his doctor on December 29, 1926, in the Valmont Sanatorium, of leukemia and its complications. I had a friend who died of leukemia and he was burning up with fever in the end. I believe that is what Rilke was describing here: he was literally burning alive.

Come, you—the last one I acknowledge; return—
incurable pain searing this physical mesh.
As I burned in the spirit once, so now I burn
with you; meanwhile, you consume my flesh.
This wood that long resisted your embrace
now nourishes you; I surrender to your fury
as my gentleness mutates to hellish rage—
uncaged, wild, primal, mindless, outré.
Completely free, no longer future's pawn,
I clambered up this crazy pyre of pain,
certain I'd never return—my heart's reserves gone—
to become death's nameless victim, purged by flame.
Now all I ever was must be denied.
I left my memories of my past elsewhere.
That life—my former life—remains outside.
Inside, I'm lost. Nobody knows me here.



Love Song
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

How can I withhold my soul so that it doesn't touch yours?
How can I lift mine gently to higher things, alone?
Oh, I would gladly find something lost in the dark
in that inert space that fails to resonate until you vibrate.
There everything that moves us, draws us together like a bow
enticing two taut strings to sing together with a simultaneous voice.
Whose instrument are we becoming together?
Whose, the hands that excite us?
Ah, sweet song!



The Beggar's Song
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I live outside your gates,
exposed to the rain, exposed to the sun;
sometimes I'll cradle my right ear
in my right palm;
then when I speak my voice sounds strange,
alien...
I'm unsure whose voice I'm hearing:
mine or yours.
I implore a trifle;
the poets cry for more.
Sometimes I cover both eyes
and my face disappears;
there it lies heavy in my hands
looking peaceful, instead,
so that no one would ever think
I have no place to lay my head.



Ivy
by Michael R. Burch

“Van trepando en mi viejo dolor como las yedras.” — Pablo Neruda
“They climb on my old suffering like ivy.”

Ivy winds around these sagging structures
from the flagstones
to the eave heights,
and, clinging, holds intact
what cannot be saved of their loose entrails.
Through long, blustery nights of dripping condensation,
cured in the humidors of innumerable forgotten summers,
waxy, unguent,
palely, indifferently fragrant, it climbs,
pausing at last to see
the alien sparkle of dew
beading delicate sparrowgrass.
Coarse saw grass, thin skunk grass, clumped mildewed yellow gorse
grow all around, and here remorse, things past,
watch ivy climb and bend,
and, in the end, we ask
if grief is worth the gaps it leaps to mend.



Joy in the Morning
by Michael R. Burch

for my grandparents George Edwin Hurt and Christine Ena Hurt

There will be joy in the morning
for now this long twilight is over
and their separation has ended.
For fourteen years, he had not seen her
whom he first befriended,
then courted and married.
Let there be joy, and no mourning,
for now in his arms she is carried
over a threshold vastly sweeter.
He never lost her; she only tarried
until he was able to meet her.



Prodigal
by Michael R. Burch

This poem is dedicated to Kevin Longinotti, who died four days short of graduation from Vanderbilt University, the victim of a tornado that struck Nashville on April 16, 1998.

You have graduated now,
to a higher plane
and your heart’s tenacity
teaches us not to go gently
though death intrudes.

For eighteen days
—jarring interludes
of respite and pain—
with life only faintly clinging,
like a cashmere snow,
testing the capacity
of the blood banks
with the unstaunched flow
of your severed veins,
in the collapsing declivity,
in the sanguine haze
where Death broods,
you struggled defiantly.

A city mourns its adopted son,
flown to the highest ranks
while each heart complains
at the harsh validity
of God’s ways.

On ponderous wings
the white clouds move
with your captured breath,
though just days before
they spawned the maelstrom’s
hellish rift.

Throw off this mortal coil,
this envelope of flesh,
this brief sheath
of inarticulate grief
and transient joy.

Forget the winds
which test belief,
which bear the parchment leaf
down life’s last sun-lit path.

We applaud your spirit, O Prodigal,
O Valiant One,
in its percussive flight into the sun,
winging on the heart’s last madrigal.



Breakings
by Michael R. Burch

I did it out of pity.
I did it out of love.
I did it not to break the heart of a tender, wounded dove.

But gods without compassion
ordained: Frail things must break!
Now what can I do for her shattered psyche’s sake?

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

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



The Quickening
by Michael R. Burch

I never meant to love you
when I held you in my arms
promising you sagely
wise, noncommittal charms.

And I never meant to need you
when I touched your tender lips
with kisses that intrigued my own—
such kisses I had never known,
nor a heartbeat in my fingertips!



It's Halloween!
by Michael R. Burch

If evening falls
on graveyard walls
far softer than a sigh;
if shadows fly
moon-sickled skies,
while children toss their heads
uneasy in their beds,
beware the witch's eye!

If goblins loom
within the gloom
till playful pups grow terse;
if birds give up their verse
to comfort chicks they nurse,
while children dream weird dreams
of ugly, wiggly things,
beware the serpent's curse!

If spirits scream
in haunted dreams
while ancient sibyls rise
to plague black nightmare skies
one night without disguise,
while children toss about
uneasy, full of doubt,
beware the devil's eyes...
it's Halloween!



An Illusion
by Michael R. Burch

The sky was as hushed as the breath of a bee
and the world was bathed in shades of palest gold
when I awoke.
She came to me with the sound of falling leaves
and the scent of new-mown grass;
I held out my arms to her and she passed
into oblivion...

This is one of my early poems, written around age 16 and published in my high school literary journal, The Lantern.



Describing You
by Michael R. Burch

How can I describe you?
The fragrance of morning rain
mingled with dew
reminds me of you;
the warmth of sunlight
stealing through a windowpane
brings you back to me again.

This is an early poem of mine, written as a teenager.



www.firesermon.com
by Michael R. Burch

your gods have become e-vegetation;
your saints—pale thumbnail icons; to enlarge
their images, right-click; it isn’t hard
to populate your web-site; not to mention
cool sound effects are nice; Sound Blaster cards
can liven up dull sermons, zing some fire;
your drives need added Zip; you must discard
your balky paternosters: ***!!! Desire!!!
these are the watchwords, catholic; you must
as Yahoo! did, employ a little lust
if you want great e-commerce; hire a bard
to spruce up ancient language, shed the dust
of centuries of sameness;
lameness *****;
your gods grew blurred; go 3D; scale; adjust.

Published by: Ironwood, Triplopia and Nisqually Delta Review



Her Grace Flows Freely
by Michael R. Burch

July 7, 2007

Her love is always chaste, and pure.
This I vow. This I aver.
If she shows me her grace, I will honor her.
This I vow. This I aver.
Her grace flows freely, like her hair.
This I vow. This I aver.
For her generousness, I would worship her.
This I vow. This I aver.
I will not **** her for what I bear
This I vow. This I aver.
like a most precious incense–desire for her,
This I vow. This I aver.
nor call her “*****” where I seek to repair.
This I vow. This I aver.
I will not wink, nor smirk, nor stare
This I vow. This I aver.
like a foolish child at the foot of a stair
This I vow. This I aver.
where I long to go, should another be there.
This I vow. This I aver.
I’ll rejoice in her freedom, and always dare
This I vow. This I aver.
the chance that she’ll flee me–my starling rare.
This I vow. This I aver.
And then, if she stays, without stays, I swear
This I vow. This I aver.
that I will joy in her grace beyond compare.
This I vow. This I aver.



Second Sight (II)
by Michael R. Burch

Newborns see best at a distance of 8 to 14 inches.
Wiser than we know, the newborn screams,
red-faced from breath, and wonders what life means
this close to death, amid the arctic glare
of warmthless lights above.
Beware! Beware!—
encrypted signals, codes? Or ciphers, noughts?
Interpretless, almost, as his own thoughts—
the brilliant lights, the brilliant lights exist.
Intruding faces ogle, gape, insist—
this madness, this soft-hissing breath, makes sense.
Why can he not float on, in dark suspense,
and dream of life? Why did they rip him out?
He frowns at them—small gnomish frowns, all doubt—
and with an ancient mien, O sorrowful!,
re-closes eyes that saw in darkness null
ecstatic sights, exceeding beautiful.



Incommunicado
by Michael R. Burch

All I need to know of life I learned
in the slap of a moment,
as my outward eye turned
toward a gauntlet of overhanging lights
which coldly burned, hissing—
"There is no way back!..."
As the ironic bright blood
trickled down my face,
I watched strange albino creatures twisting
my flesh into tight knots of separation
all the while tediously insisting—
“He's doing just fine!"



Letdown
by Michael R. Burch

Life has not lived up to its first bright vision—
the light overhead fluorescing, revealing
no blessing—bestowing its glaring assessments
impersonally (and no doubt carefully metered).
That first hard

SLAP

demanded my attention. Defiantly rigid,
I screamed at their backs as they, laughingly,

ripped

my mother’s pale flesh from my unripened shell,
snapped it in two like a pea pod, then dropped
it somewhere—in a dustbin or a furnace, perhaps.

And that was my clue

that some deadly, perplexing, unknowable task
lay, inexplicable, ahead in the white arctic maze
of unopenable doors, in the antiseptic gloom...



Recursion
by Michael R. Burch

In a dream I saw boys lying
under banners gaily flying
and I heard their mothers sighing
from some dark distant shore.

For I saw their sons essaying
into fields—gleeful, braying—
their bright armaments displaying;
such manly oaths they swore!

From their playfields, boys returning
full of honor’s white-hot burning
and desire’s restless yearning
sired new kids for the corps.

In a dream I saw boys dying
under banners gaily lying
and I heard their mothers crying
from some dark distant shore.



Poet to poet
by Michael R. Burch

I have a dream
pebbles in a sparkling sand
of wondrous things.
I see children
variations of the same man
playing together.
Black and yellow, red and white,
stone and flesh, a host of colors
together at last.
I see a time
each small child another's cousin
when freedom shall ring.
I hear a song
sweeter than the sea sings
of many voices.
I hear a jubilation
respect and love are the gifts we must bring
shaking the land.
I have a message,
sea shells echo, the melody rings
the message of God.
I have a dream
all pebbles are merely smooth fragments of stone
of many things.
I live in hope
all children are merely small fragments of One
that this dream shall come true.
I have a dream...
but when you're gone, won't the dream have to end?
Oh, no, not as long as you dream my dream too!
Here, hold out your hand, let's make it come true.
i can feel it begin
Lovers and dreamers are poets too.
poets are lovers and dreamers too



Life Sentence
by Michael R. Burch

... I swim, my Daddy’s princess, newly crowned,
toward a gurgly Maelstrom... if I drown
will Mommy stick the Toilet Plunger down
to **** me up?... She sits upon Her Throne,
Imperious (denying we were one),
and gazes down and whispers “precious son”...

... the Plunger worked; i’m two, and, if not blessed,
still Mommy got the Worst Stuff off Her Chest;
a Vacuum Pump, They say, will do the rest...

... i’m three; yay! whee! oh good! it’s time to play!
(oh no, I think there’s Others on the way;
i’d better pray)...

... i’m four; at night I hear the Banging Door;
She screams; sometimes there’s Puddles on the Floor;
She wants to **** us, or, She wants some More...

... it’s great to be alive if you are five (unless you’re me);
my Mommy says: “you’re WRONG! don’t disagree!
don’t make this HURT ME!”...

... i’m six; They say i’m tall, yet Time grows Short;
we have a thriving Family; Abort!;
a tadpole’s ripping Mommy’s Room apart...

... i’m seven; i’m in heaven; it feels strange;
I saw my life go gurgling down the Drain;
another Noah built a Mighty Ark;
God smiled, appeased, a Rainbow split the Dark;
... I saw Bright Colors also, when She slammed
my head against the Tub, and then I swam
toward the magic tunnel... last, I heard...
is that She feels Weird.



Beast 666
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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



America's Riches
by Michael R. Burch

Balboa's dream
was bitter folly—
no El Dorado near, nor far,
though seas beguiled
and rivers smiled
from beds of gold and silver ore.

Drake retreated
rich with plunder
as Incan fled Conquistador.
Aztecs died
when Spaniards lied,
then slew them for an ingot more.

The pilgrims came
and died or lived
in fealty to an oath they swore,
and bought with pain
the precious grain
that made them rich though they were poor.

Apache blood,
Comanche tears
were shed, and still they went to war;
they fought to be
unbowed and free—
such were Her riches, and still are.

Published by Poetic Reflections and Tucumcari Literary Review



Kindergarten
by Michael R. Burch

Will we be children as puzzled tomorrow—
our lessons still not learned?
Will we surrender over to sorrow?
How many times must our fingers be burned?
Will we be children sat in the corner,
paddled again and again?
How long must we linger, playing Jack Horner?
Will we ever learn, and when?
Will we be children wearing the dunce cap,
giggling and playing the fool,
re-learning our lessons forever and ever,
still failing the golden rule?



Photographs
by Michael R. Burch

Here are the effects of a life
and they might tell us a tale
(if only we had time to listen)
of how each imperiled tear would glisten,
remembered as brightness in her eyes,
and how each dawn’s dramatic skies
could never match such pale azure.

Like dreams of her, these ghosts endure
and they tell us a tale of impatient glory...
till a line appears—a trace of worry?—
or the wayward track of a wandering smile
which even now can charm, beguile?

We might find good cause to wonder
as we see her pause (to frown?, to ponder?):
what vexed her in her loveliness...
what weight, what crushing heaviness
turned her lustrous hair a frazzled gray,
and stole her youth before her day?

We might ask ourselves: did Time devour
the passion with the ravaged flower?
But here and there a smile will bloom
to light the leaden, shadowed gloom
that always seems to linger near...
And here we find a single tear:
it shimmers like translucent dew
and tells us Anguish touched her too,
and did not spare her for her hair
of copper, or her eyes' soft hue.

Published in Tucumcari Literary Review



Numbered
by Michael R. Burch

He desired an object to crave;
she came, and she altared his affection.
He asked her for something to save:
a memento for his collection.
But all that she had was her need;
what she needed, he knew not to give.
They compromised on a thing gone to seed
to complete the half lives they would live.
One in two, they were less than complete.
Two plus one, in their huge fractious home
left them two, the new one in the street,
then he, by himself, one, alone.
He awoke past his prime to new dawn
with superfluous dew all around,
in ten thousands bright beads on his lawn,
and he knew that, at last, he had found
a number of things he had missed:
things shining and bright, unencumbered
by their price, or their place on a list.
Then with joy and despair he remembered
and longed for the lips he had kissed
when his days were still evenly numbered.



Nucleotidings
by Michael R. Burch

“We will walk taller!” said Gupta,
sorta abrupta,
hand-in-hand with his mom,
eyeing the A-bomb.

“Who needs a mahatma
in the aftermath of NAFTA?
Now, that was a disaster,”
cried glib Punjab.

“After Y2k,
time will spin out of control anyway,”
flamed Vijay.

“My family is relatively heavy,
too big even for a pig-barn Chevy;
we need more space,”
spat What’s His Face.

“What does it matter,
dirge or mantra,”
sighed Serge.

“The world will wobble
in Hubble’s lens
till the tempest ends,”
wailed Mercedes.

“The world is going to hell in a bucket.
So **** it and get outta my face!
We own this place!
Me and my friends got more guns than ISIS,
so what’s the crisis?”
cried Bubba Billy Joe Bob Puckett.



All My Children
by Michael R. Burch

It is May now, gentle May,
and the sun shines pleasantly
upon the blousy flowers
of this backyard cemet'ry,
upon my children as they sleep.

Oh, there is Hank in the daisies now,
with a mound of earth for a pillow;
his face as hard as his monument,
but his voice as soft as the wind through the willows.

And there is Meg beside the spring
that sings her endless sleep.
Though it’s often said of stiller waters,
sometimes quicksilver streams run deep.

And there is Frankie, little Frankie,
tucked in safe at last,
a child who weakened and died too soon,
but whose heart was always steadfast.

And there is Mary by the bushes
where she hid so well,
her face as dark as their berries,
yet her eyes far darker still.

And Andy... there is Andy,
sleeping in the clover,
a child who never saw the sun
so soon his life was over.

And Em'ly, oh my Em'ly...
the prettiest of all...
now she's put aside her dreams
of lovers dark and tall
for dreams dreamed not at all.

It is May now, merry May
and the sun shines pleasantly
upon the green gardens,
on the graves of all my children...
But they never did depart;
they still live within my heart.

I wrote this poem around age 15-16.



Kingdom Freedom
by Michael R. Burch

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

LORD, let me not be over-worried
about the lack of “morality” around me.
Surround me,
not with law’s restrictive cage,
but with Your spirit, freer than the wind,
so that to breathe is to have freest life,
and not to fly to You, my only sin.



Birthday Poem to Myself
by Michael R. Burch

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



Litany
by Michael R. Burch

Will you take me with all my blemishes?
I will take you with all your blemishes, and show you mine. We’ll **** wine from cardboard boxes till our teeth and lips shine red like greedily gorging foxes’. We’ll swill our fill, then have *** for hours till our neglected guts at last rebel. At two in the morning, we’ll eat cold Krystals as our blood detoxes, and we will be in love.

And that’s it?
That’s it.

And can I go out with my friends and drink until dawn?
You can go out with your friends and drink until dawn, come home lipstick-collared, pass out by the pool, or stay at the bar till the new moon sets, because we'll be in love, and in love there's no room for remorse or regret. There is no right, no wrong, and no mistrust, only limb-numbing ***, hot-pistoning lust.

And that’s all?
That’s all.

That’s great!
But wait...

Wait? Why? What’s wrong?
I want to have your children.

Children?
Well, perhaps just one.

And what will happen when we have children?
The most incredible things will happen—you’ll change, stop acting so strangely, start paying more attention to me, start paying your bills on time, grow up and get rid of your horrible friends, and never come home at a-quarter-to-three drunk from a night of swilling, smelling like a lovesick skunk, stop acting so lewdly, start working incessantly so that we can afford a new house which I will decorate lavishly and then grow tired of in a year or two or three, start growing a paunch so that no other woman would ever have you, stop acting so boorishly, start growing a beard because you’re too tired to shave, or too afraid, thinking you might slit your worthless wrinkled throat...



Mending Glass
by Michael R. Burch

In the cobwebbed house—
lost in shadows
by the jagged mirror,
in the intricate silver face
cracked ten thousand times,
silently he watches,
and in the twisted light
sometimes he catches there
a familiar glimpse of revealing lace,
white stockings and garters,
a pale face pressed indiscreetly near
with a predatory leer,
the sheer flash of nylon,
an embrace, or a sharp slap,
... a sudden lurch of terror.

He finds bright slivers
—the hard sharp brittle shards,
the silver jags of memory
starkly impressed there—
and mends his error.



Shadowselves
by Michael R. Burch

In our hearts, knowing
fewer days—and milder—beckon,
how are we, now, to measure
that flame by which we reckon
the time we have remaining?

We are shadows
spawned by a blue spurt of candlelight.
Darkly, we watch ourselves flicker.

Where shall we go when the flame burns less bright?
When chill night steals our vigor?

Why are we less than ourselves? We are shadows.

Where is the fire of youth? We grow cold.

Why does our future loom dark? We are old.

Why do we shiver?

In our hearts, seeing
fewer days—and briefer—breaking,
now, even more, we treasure
the brittle leaf-like aching
that tells us we are living.



Pressure
by Michael R. Burch

Pressure is the plug of ice in the frozen hose,
the hiss of water within vinyl rigidly green and shining,
straining to writhe.

Pressure is the kettle’s lid ceaselessly tapping its tired dance,
the hot eye staring, its frantic issuance
unavailing.

Pressure is the bellow’s surge, the hard forged
metal shedding white heat, the beat of the clawed hammer
on cold anvil.

Pressure is a day’s work compressed into minutes,
frantic minute vessels constricted, straining and hissing,
unable to writhe,

the fingers drumming and tapping their tired dance,
eyes staring, cold and reptilian,
hooded and blind.

Pressure is the spirit sighing—reflective,
restrictive compression—an endless drumming—
the bellows’ echo before dying.

The cold eye—unblinking, staring.
The hot eye—sinking, uncaring.



Open Portal
by Michael R. Burch

“You already have zero privacy—get over it.”
Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems

While you’re at it—
don’t bother to wear clothes:
We all know what you’re concealing underneath.

Let the bathroom door swing open.
Let, O let Us peer in!
What you’re doing, We’ve determined, may be a sin!

When you visit your mother
and it’s time to brush your teeth,
it’s okay to openly spit.

And, while you’re at it,
go ahead—
take a long, noisy ****.

What the he|ll is your objection?
What on earth is all this fuss?
Just what is it, exactly, you would hide from US?



beMused
by Michael R. Burch

Perhaps at three
you'll come to tea,
to sip a cuppa here?

You'll just stop in
to drink dry gin?
I only have a beer.

To name the greats:
Pope, Dryden, mates?
The whole world knows their names.

Discuss the songs
of Emerson?
But these are children's games.

Give me rhythm
wild as Dylan!
Give me Bobbie Burns!

Give me Psalms,
or Hopkins’ poems,
Hart Crane’s, if he returns!

Or Langston railing!
Blake assailing!
Few others I desire.

Or go away,
yes, leave today:
your tepid poets tire.



The Century’s Wake
by Michael R. Burch

lines written at the close of the 20th century

Take me home. The party is over,
the century passed—no time for a lover.

And my heart grew heavy
as the fireworks hissed through the dark
over Central Park,
past high-towering spires to some backwoods levee,
hurtling banner-hung docks to the torchlit seas.
And my heart grew heavy;
I felt its disease—
its apathy,
wanting the bright, rhapsodic display
to last more than a single day.

If decay was its rite,
now it has learned to long
for something with more intensity,
more gaudy passion, more song—
like the huddled gay masses,
the wildly-cheering throng.

You ask me—
How can this be?

A little more flair,
or perhaps only a little more clarity.

I leave her tonight to the century’s wake;
she disappoints me.



Salve
by Michael R. Burch

for the victims and survivors of 9-11

The world is unsalvageable...
but as we lie here
in bed
stricken to the heart by love
despite war’s
flickering images,
sometimes we still touch,
laughing, amazed,
that our flesh
does not despair
of love
as we do,
that our bodies are wise
in ways we refuse
to comprehend,
still insisting we eat,
drink...
even multiply.

And so we touch...
touch, and only imagine
ourselves immune:
two among billions
in this night of wished-on stars,
caresses,
kisses,
and condolences.

We are not lovers of irony,
we
who imagine ourselves
beyond the redemption
of tears
because we have salvaged
so few
for ourselves...

and so we laugh
at our predicament,
fumbling for the ointment.



Stump
by Michael R. Burch

This used to be a poplar, oak or elm...
we forget the names of trees, but still its helm,
green-plumed, like some Greek warrior’s, nobly fringed,
with blossoms almond-white, but verdant-tinged,
this massive helm... this massive, nodding head
here contemplated life, and now is dead...

Perhaps it saw its future, furrow-browed,
and flung its limbs about, dejectedly.
Perhaps it only dreamed as, cloud by cloud,
the sun plod through the sky. Heroically,
perhaps it stood against the mindless plots
of concrete that replaced each flowered bed.
Perhaps it heard thick loggers draw odd lots
and could not flee, and so could only dread...

The last of all its kind? They left its stump
with timeworn strange inscriptions no one reads
(because a language lost is just a bump
impeding someone’s progress at mall speeds).

We leveled all such “speed bumps” long ago
just as our quainter cousins leveled trees.
Shall we, too, be consumed by what we know?
Once gods were merely warriors; august trees
were merely twigs, and man the least divine...
mere fables now, dust, compost, turpentine.



First Dance
by Michael R. Burch

for Sykes and Mary Harris

Beautiful ballerina—
so pert, pretty, poised and petite,
how lightly you dance for your waiting Beau
on those beautiful, elegant feet!

How palely he now awaits you, although
he’ll glow from the sparks when you meet!



Keep the Body Well
by Michael R. Burch

for William Sykes Harris III

Is the soul connected to the brain
by a slender silver thread,
so that when the thread is severed
we call the body “dead”
while the soul — released from fear and pain —
is finally able to rise
beyond earth’s binding gravity
to heaven’s welcoming skies?

If so — no need to quail at death,
but keep the body well,
for when the body suffers
the soul experiences hell.



On Looking into Curious George’s Mirrors
by Michael R. Burch

for Maya McManmon, granddaughter of the poet Jim McManmon

Maya was made in the image of God;
may the reflections she sees in those curious mirrors
always echo back Love.

Amen



Maya’s Beddy-Bye Poem
by Michael R. Burch

for Maya McManmon, granddaughter of the poet Jim McManmon

With a hatful of stars
and a stylish umbrella
and her hand in her Papa’s
(that remarkable fella!)
and with Winnie the Pooh
and Eeyore in tow,
may she dance in the rain
cheek-to-cheek, toe-to-toe
till each number’s rehearsed...
My, that last step’s a leap! —
the high flight into bed
when it’s past time to sleep!

Note: “Hatful of Stars” is a lovely song and image by Cyndi Lauper.



Chip Off the Block
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

In the fusion of poetry and drama,
Shakespeare rules! Jeremy’s a ham: a
chip off the block, like his father and mother.
Part poet? Part ham? Better run for cover!
Now he’s Benedick — most comical of lovers!

NOTE: Jeremy’s father is a poet and his mother is an actress; hence the fusion, or confusion, as the case may be.



Whose Woods
by Michael R. Burch

Whose woods these are, I think I know.
**** Cheney’s in the White House, though.
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his chip mills overflow.

My sterile horse must think it queer
To stop without a ’skeeter near
Beside this softly glowing “lake”
Of six-limbed frogs gone nuclear.

He gives his hairless tail a shake;
I fear he’s made his last mistake—
He took a sip of water blue
(Blue-slicked with oil and HazMat waste).

Get out your wallets; ****’s not through—
Enron’s defunct, the bill comes due...
Which he will send to me, and you.
Which he will send to me, and you.



1-800-HOT-LINE
by Michael R. Burch

“I don’t believe in psychics,” he said, “so convince me.”

When you were a child, the earth was a joy,
the sun a bright plaything, the moon a lit toy.
Now life’s minor distractions irk, frazzle, annoy.
When the crooked finger beckons, scythe-talons destroy.

“You’ll have to do better than that, to convince me.”

As you grew older, bright things lost their meaning.
You invested your hours in commodities, leaning
to things easily fleeced, to the convenient gleaning.
I see a pittance of dirt—untended, demeaning.

“Everyone knows that!” he said, “so convince me.”

Your first and last wives traded in golden bands
for vacations from the abuses of your cruel hands.
Where unwatered blooms line an arid plot of land,
the two come together, waving fans.

“Everyone knows that. Convince me.”

As your father left you, you left those you brought
to the doorstep of life as an afterthought.
Two sons and a daughter tap shoes, undistraught.
Their tears are contrived, their condolences bought.

“Everyone knows that. CONVINCE me.”

A moment, an instant... a life flashes by,
a tunnel appears, but not to the sky.
There is brightness, such brightness it sears the eye.
When a life grows too dull, it seems better to die.

“I could have told you that!” he shrieked, “I think I’ll **** myself!”

Originally published by Penny Dreadful



Lines for My Ascension
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

and know that my Spirit,
unvanquished, broods,
and cares naught for graves,
prayers, coffins, or roods.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Keywords/Tags: flight, flying, fancy, kites, leaves, birds, bees, butterflies, wings, heights, fall, falling

My mirror is covered in cracks and flaws, and some parts that make you look fatter, like a funhouse mirror, and it clings to dust and dirt and fingerprint smudges of oil.
But I don't replace it.
Because sometimes it's easier to spot the flaws in the mirror than to fixate on my flaw riddled body,
Flaws that aren't just skin deep,
The night is beautiful but deadly.
When you can't see, you have to find new flaws to detest,
It's addictive to beat yourself,
I'm in an abusive relationship where I don't mean to hurt me and I can't leave myself-
And there's some macabre satisfaction in the dependable breaking,
Like I know every night I will go to sleep hating the fact that I am still breathing,
There are memories haunting me from as young as ten,
Things that shouldn't still be repeating,
I can't work out how it just keeps accumulating,
Words spoken
And thoughts
And I don't know if anyone else feels sentences as deeply as I do,
And I'm running out of personality to stick pins into,
Trying to fix myself with voodoo
They say negative reinforcement is the quickest way to correct behaviour but I make the same mistakes
it's not okay that I constantly feel like I'm failing,
But life is more than a high-stakes game
And everyone's saying that all teenagers feel this way
But it's not reassuring to know that my generation is one of lost souls and hate.
And we're all really angry,
Whether it's because we'll be working till we're 90 or conflict left undated
Racism still exists and the Chancellor of Germany is getting called a ****
While anyone Asian is labelled Indian or ****
And eating disorders run rampant through the territory where anorexic girls get priority while the boy who binge eats is just called fatty.
And this is where I insert a statistic to convince you that we're unhappy but I refuse to be quantified just so I can mean something.
And it doesn't let up,
Compliments are uncomfortable and seeing good in yourself is arrogance, criticisms self pity
And you never know if they want to help you or just ensure that you understand the importance of conformity
It doesn't take much to convince someone you're okay.
There's not much you need to say
And if you can laugh then you're fine and we know no one checks the closets for skeletons because they're filled with people too afraid to come out of them
People accept 'fine' because they just need to know that they asked the question,
And besides, deeper questions get stuck beneath my skin.
And even when someone else compliments me I don't believe them,
Pushing away others cause I need distance,
Sometimes I feel sick from the level of enforced interaction but people only see the side they want to see.
When I told my friends about the time I struggled with suicidal thoughts they expressed their sympathies and it hasn't come up since.
Romanticising illnesses leaves me unsure if I am suffering or if I just want to be,
And part of me has to agree that diagnosis and its certainty would be better than the admission that life is just like this
You can't get better if it's something you can't fix
I don't think I'm broken but maybe I was made to the wrong specifications cause it feels like I am missing something but at the same time there is too much of me and not just physically
I am choking on the sheer volume of my past, present and impeding future
Trying to get it together
Told that it's okay if I don't know where I want to go
But in year 9 we picked our gcses which determined our a levels which determined our university courses which determine our career, if we even get there.
I keep finding new problems
I am still haunted by the old ones.
But I'll be okay,
Cause today
Someone told me to love myself.

The stereotype of the female type/ packing more than you give yourself credit for/
Spineless, backstabbing ******* in backless dresses fronting to impress dogs who are/
Barking at ******* that are easy to prey on/ hoping to get a good **** to sniff/
While your tail is out there waggin/ makin’ their tongues turn stiff/
There are many who live in that dog eat dog world/ And boy it can get pretty rough out there/ catch that innuendo?
You see, effing around is simple and it works like this; you F what you see/
Sometimes you find what you think to be ‘the one’ only to be deceived/
Because you believed what you saw and didn’t take the time to dig deep/
Next thing you know, your heart has been sunk in the pool of tears you weep/
You resort to a resolution to that’s easy to keep/ rectify to the erectified/
Yes, maybe some of this is harsh/ but if you cant handle the truth/
You wont know the difference between what’s right and wrong to do/
There’s a difference between a princess and a queen/
A princess who’s prince-less will settle for the frog/
While a queen knows how to stand on her own two feet/
Royalty is respected and they stand tough even when they’re rejected/
It’s hard to see something beautiful be used by a tool who’ll/
Only add her to the collection of his tool box/ then look for a new one/
But the reality of realism is/ reality can be pretty unreal sometimes/
And Miss Congeniality secretly believes the fallacy/ she wasn’t born to shine/
Selling herself at a price her mom would hate to see/
Giving out discounts because she can’t even count on herself/
The worst part is, it’s all manipulating her moral health/
And it’s demeaning her demeanor, being treated like Miss Demeanor/
But she didn’t mean for/ her life to turn to this/
She made three-left turns/ only to find the fourth right doesn’t exist/
Maybe a forthright person is all it takes to set her straight/
Boost her confidence/ make her feel great/ and tell her it’s never too late/
To find a new place to start over/ and get your mind in a better state/
That’s why this poem is called Tulip Teaser/ your own two lips are teasing you/
Impeding you from being you/ misleading you through your own garden/
But you’re better than that/ and there’s more to your garden than you think/
Just stick to your roots and let yourself grow to be the beautiful flower everyone likes to see/

Hey, past me from so close yet seeming long ago...

A knot from my sweater's bow I regret tying despite how unkempt the ribbons look hanging by my sides because now it's digging into my back

The hair I can't decide if I want out where it's pretty and makes me look less like a generic nerd yet gets in my face and food and life

The jeans I insist upon wearing without a belt even though their slipping down my **** may actually outweigh the pain of loosening the belt

The tennis shoes I'm too attached to give up that emit a constant squeak, squeak, squeaking through the hallways whether it's caused by residual rain from outside or not

The glasses, fond of slipping down my nose at frequent intervals, covered in smudges I rarely notice till they get out of hand

The phone whose screen happened to crack at the most inopportune moment and takes forever to read my finger print

The jacket that should be a highlighter blue but rather presents itself as a canvas of the week's tomato stains

The face covered in acne-
The stomach with fat instead of muscle-
The arms lacking muscle-
The legs with too much hair-

I've always acknowledged that perfection is not possible, yet I have to at least try to strive

I think, as I sit at my desk, fingers typing fragmented sentences, attempting to convey thoughts speeding too fast to grasp

Yet, just a simple poem of reflection brings to light these numerous deficiencies, many of which I COULD fix were it not the invisible fiend upon whom I stamp the label-laziness

These deficiencies, many of which aren't even noticed by those around me, some of whom are better some are worse

But it's not as simple as that, I've known I can't just be "one of the people", I need to find something, some identity, some way out of my seemingly impossible to escape label of "just above average"

In academics, in extracurricular activities, EVERYTHING, I seem to be at a stagnant

I've done bad, I've done "just above average", but never above. What is the point if you get plenty of losses and plenty of "fine" but no victories?

It's something about me though, somehow I believe, subconsciously, I'm impeding myself. I'm holding myself back.




...



Why?

Of recent stories, i’m told our moon was the largest.  i denied fact as truth, as is so often used.  i wrote a report filled with errors only a universe could make and killed time for old time’s sake.

but the buried limousines have somehow grown into trees where crows drink wine, and talk of future times where their only worry will be which way to glide to empty their minds.

but talking to the doctor today, he was convinced of impeding biological holocaust - where bodies pile up as your vision is lost - and all along you were the fastest crook, spending money like time, and quicker than you took it.

my vagrancy knows of great discord, the kind my mind mutates into a reward but the last vision of a dead knights sword is the exterior of the universe after all our inner wars.

vapors collide in one last goodbye of both our love and time.  i breathe your lips for one last eclipse and forget all the reasons why.  we’ll meet again, on the run - towards the sun, but not with everyone.



my mind goes blank

   with every breath of mine

that you take

Sea of Trees crests at Mt Fuji's feet.
Thick forest of Japanese cypress, red pines
grow neck and neck with alder. Where when
trees fall, they don't: they cant. Rope-like
roots, stymied by volcanic rock, twist and turn,
tortured by ancient lava impeding their desire
to push deep within.

Some voices echo that the trees themselves,
fueled by juices full of malevolent energy
sap the resolve of ones who venture there.
Gnarled branches twisted, tortured
under deceiving feathery moss, rise
above intertwined cypress knees as if
the forest had gone for a stroll and then knelt
when a soul ventured near.

Jukai, of the breathtaking views
where hanging hemp ropes take breath forever away.
Living greens so dense, sounds are swallowed whole:
No one hears the screams in Aokigahara
and there is no one to see until
bleached bones lie in stark relief;
Death thrives next to the rotting.
Sunlight muted beneath canopy
where chilling beauty lies
in perpetual twilight
and the only movements are swinging ropes
where no breeze passes.

Here come the ones who have reached
the end
of their rope or choices: Hanging is
the death of choice in Aokigahara.
Yurei, Japanese spirits who yet cling
to Earthly realm flit between the trees--
white, shifting forms caught only in the
corner of your eye. Leading, perchance,
across cenotes or hollow tubes,
where hidden caves make up your mind
when you travel down the wrong path.

Colorful ribbons, blue, white, red
stream through the forest; strings,
tapes trail behind those who walk
in case they change their minds for
no compass works near volcanic iron.
I am reminded of gaily wrapped presents
but here, what is unwrapped is death--
here, there is only the past where
Theseus unwinds his ball of thread
in the labyrinth of the Minotaur,
in the labyrinth of Aokigahara.
Scavenger hunts lead only
to those scavenged by the forest gleaners.

Death lies in the mists,
in the midst of the living.
An Apollo butterfly
rests on a sign pleading for life--
Apollo, god of light, of plagues, of music
seems to have no place here
but for the plague of suicide
which runs rampant.

Repugnant skulls with hollow eyes
can no longer see their reflections
in the rounds of polished glass
that mirror anguished souls
at the train station in hope
that they will see that they are not
invisible and stay among the seen.
The station is last stop
before they walk the forest path.

Aokigahara, Sea of Trees
looks up to the sun glinting off Mount Fujiyama
but beneath the canopy
are only the fallen.

i know of Knausgård -  sure, and i share this concerns for
the art of taking to lumber and chopping,
  as novelists tend to do, write with an axe,
philosophise with a hammer...
          metaphor turned into imagery
counter-turned into literalism...
   i once imagined him not being there -
i once wrote ich kampf, stressing
that it was an indefinite expression
of expression, primarily due to the content
of the pronoun... and i was referring also
to the definite expression (much obliged,
atheism, a- without, and the- with,
or indefinite and definite articulation) -
the English eye sees one stance as definite,
and another as indefinite, and juxtaposes
the two interacting...
                          they duly interchange...
i can say ich kampf and say i internalise
verbs: a movement of the hand,
   a strutting or a waltzing circumstance
of owning a body... that's what it's indefinite...
that's why Sartre slithered in counter to
his expanse in philosophy: because i really loved
his novels...
                          but in terms of a mein or
a mit (including me) struggle i find not
ease... no one dares to devalue ****** as a human,
not talking about the past history in purely human
terms urges the postscript of a dictator,
it actually elevates him to a godly status...
           not realising the human is to make flaws
of what the en masse does: raises him to a godly status...
     Zeus had a beard... not a Charlie Chaplin moustache...
right now he's laughing in his grave...
                      old Aldous ******...
   and aren't dictators born because people find their
surnames a little bit funny? it starts so
innocently...          and then it morphs...
   and it becomes an unstoppable morphing...
    yes... i know of a certain number of fellow
      contemporaries... because i want to? no,
because i have to. like rewatching the 2015 film
android - some films you have to rewatch...
   what's being debated? autism and artificial intelligence...
   hyperactive autism, i grant you that...
        it dawned on me... at autistic person could
fake a normal human response treating it as
      artificial... artificial also means mimicked -
  it means that "smart" guy at a bar reciting poetry
he hasn't written... artificial intelligence or the study of it
or even creating it has nothing original about it...
it's not groundbreaking in the same sense that
discovering champagne or penicillin is...
or l.s.d., because these examples have the magic of
being discovered by chance... humanity has been
artificially simulating intelligence since time
immemorial... it's that natural consequence of not being
endowed with a peacock's array of feathers
   to create a soothing, and sickly gentle wind of a woman
resting in a hammock under the shade of a palm tree...
artificial intelligence was inherent in us...
       it's the unravelling of the historical noumenon of man,
the per se that has only crept up on us,
   and before the reality of such a foundation being
established... the humanities create the "prophetic"
citations of it being true: in the "near" / impeding future.
    if god is a noumenon, then man cannot be a
phenomenon... but he is and paradoxically the two
of mutually compatible on a basis of exclusive rather than
an inclusive naturalisation...
               we are talking nature:
  we are talking god naturalised by the medium
suggesting: for i am bound to create obstacles and test
the body, rather than the mind of man...
    as so is man, also naturalised by the medium
of the elements, saying: for i am bound by a body,
   and have to utilise the body first, to overcome the wind
and the snow and the furthermore, until i reach
the labyrinth of the mind...
  and man has done just that, he has bypassed the struggles
of the body, and created entertainment using
the body that once struggled against the elements...
   for he has created the god Minotaur: and the psychic
labyrinthe... as with the Titans whom the gods
usurped, so too comes the twilight of the gods...
but being usurped by demigods...
       Minotaur was a demigod... who usurped the gods
of the trinity that were Zeus, Poseidon and Hades...
        for only the Greeks could create a Judaic bewilderment
as to why a sign was given unto an infant...
           but that's getting technical...
the film, android (2015)? it supports the misconception,
the anguish of a highly functioning autism...
      whereby showing a woman's carelessness in the realm
of adaptability with what some would claim to be
the beginning point of: overcoming the elements...
sure the odd tsunami and earthquake...
   but there's also the tiger, and winter, and parasite,
   and diseases of so many variations...
              man has not been endowed with complete
control over his surrounding... but in becoming partially
overlord of the ones tamed, he has created a mental
labyrinth... a world of such complexity that will
inevitably produce instances of autistic genius...
                 artificial intelligence is already imbedded in us,
just as cloning and Islam has already existed
(Christianity is too schismatic to be considered a cloning
definition... and Judaism as a monotheistic principle
has a heresy embedded in its orthodoxy that it simply
ignores: reincarnation... the Malachi heresy...
  that a second Elijah comes... and god becomes a half)...
   we see artificial intelligence everywhere...
        if the myth goes that woman fed man the original
lie of Eden... then man has nothing else to do than
attempt to polymer that one single lie...
       and repeat it... a reverse intrusion to what "could"
have been an utopian splendour.
      we all see artificial intelligence rummaging about
in the choices people make... it's called lying
   to gain access to a ****** gratification...
  or as i like to call it: a way to compensate our falling short
of the norm, a norm that focuses upon creating
   the most complex startup a Silicon Valley genius
can't comprehend... a family.
    these times prescribe such a bewilderment...
              families are artefacts of what some believe
precipitated into barbarity so close to us: the 20th century...
        and all those arguments you hear that might
discourage the opposite ***, as in damning your parents
for a piece of seashore **** fest of the *****?
   probably came from a person born from a surrogate
mother... well... an incubator, a very expensive *****...
   homsexuality created the evolution of prostitution,
once bound to the genitals... now bound to the womb...
     i.v.f. kids calling natural kids ******...
   i never liked the matrix movies in all honest...
but we're seeing the reversal of the original idea...
                 in the matrix of knowledge... hearts become
piñata: chockies sweet, sensations abundant,
  the spectrum is yours.
                but this poem isn't really about that...
i can sip a whiskey and actually find these things when
i start to utilise these symbols... it sometimes happens
that they fall through... all i was really thinking about
is the "theoretical" score of 147...
                      i'll call them billiards rather than *****
to excuse a "he-he" Michael Jackson laugh at a chance
of "nuance"...
       yellow (2), green (3), brown (4), blue (5), pink (6), black (7)...
and plenty of red (1)... points in bracket respectively...
                  of course from childhood memory i sided with
ronnie... also from Romford... an obscure town in Essex
that oversees the shard and canary wharf from
a distance...                    but watching snooker as a child...
          not too bad at pub-snooker: i.e. pool...
and that game show when snooker was hot back in
the 1990s... big break, with jim davidson as host...
    and of course: john virgo as the rejuvenated
                         ghost of alex higgins... this whiskey
swiggly is on me al.
                 but this final... ****! at one point it was
a century after a century...
                     chess with mathematics, trigonometry
and Pythagoras in motion...
                                    the gods playing with saturn
and jupiter neptune planetary arrangements...
            i can't word it properly... but it'll definitely sound
better than a concussion after too much rugby and
the rough-stuff of "manhood" strutting with bulging
muscle tensions... rather than this Japanese warrior-monk
in a waistcoat and bow-tie swirling a stick in the air...
           i just thought of one thing...
15 wildebeests on an African savannah...
       out comes one lioness...
    and she nibbles at the pack... and she picks off
the weakest of the 15 wildebeests...
              she nibbles the pack before the pack breaks away...
         she looks left (red) and then looks right (yellow,
green, brown, blue, pink, black) -
                      and she picks at the pack, one by one
they fall... but there are two games going on...
   there's the no-man's land snooker where the game is
about entrenchment, and snookering the opponent
for a foul... and then there's the tsunami snooker...
which kinda looks like one person playing chess...
     with no opponent other than a chance mistake...
misjudgement on the case of instinct and how they ******
well know what angle to fudge the white lioness
                onto the billards... and with what force...
      tsunami snooker, or cascade snooker is basically
a monologue...
                             after seeing 3 centuries in a row
you get to crave classical snook -
                                       the mind games of safety shots...
   and teasing, and tempting, and teasing, and tempting,
before the Rubic cube unravels itself,
   and you find that light at the end of the tunnel...
                        and the black pops into...
i'll be honest, i haven't watched snooker for a long time...
        maybe that's why i feel so enthusiastic about it...
       it's sometimes good to be fed this mundane diet
of sport-fanaticism that football is in accordance with
religious dogma... it's a good thing...
             then you end up watching a game of snooker
and all these things start firing up your brain...
   and you end up saying:
      the Taj Mahal can be there for all i care...
the Grand Canyon can be there for all i care...
                    such things don't really require a photograph
with my gimp-face trying to make other people jealous
by actually being there: only to take a photograph,
rather than feed into the air and the thrill of being there...
        as they say... it's a small world after all...
better get used to it being much bigger inside your head.

When people say that life is full of surprises I thought I knew what they meant
Like instead of getting that new bike you get a scooter whose handle is bent
Or instead of marrying your high school crush you spend the rest of your days with you best friend.
Yeah he figured they meant just simple things like that.

But life is full of surprises
Ones that turns over your life
That changes
Everything

Life changes as fast as the tides
Something you struggle just to stay afloat instead of enjoying the ride
For years he struggled to stay afloat.
His mother once told him she will try her best to support whatever he handed his heart.
He was way ahead in planning for the future. He would have a wife whose presence would always put a smile on his face despite his day. He would have four kids just as his mother and father.
If he had done Lady Luck enough favors one of those sets would be twins. Two boys two girls, the perfect family for him.

But life is full of surprises
Ones that blind and *******
That changes
Everything

His small world was colored red. His favorite color, one he knew how to handle it. His love, whomever she was would come to him in the brightest of red, a crimson goddess at dusk.
His world was bathed in red and he loved it.

But life is full of surprises
Tumbling and shifting  tides
That changes
Everything

His eyes that only saw a familiar red now also saw an impeding menacing blue.
A blue whose existence only brought calamity
Whose existence he shunned and tried to bury; yet the more he tried the wilder it got.
It crept from his left eye up to his left brain even down to his left toes.
His world no longer painted only in his beloved red. Now he saw two sides to the world. His little world now had unexplored areas.

He thought they just meant simple things

But his life was no longer simple
He was taught that we should live with red
The red of the only son of God that was spilled.
But his red was tainted.
Confused and scared he prayed
Night after night
Hoping for his world to be purified
Weeks after weeks he prayed
Asking to rid himself of the impure blue
Months after months
He cried for a solution, a sign for who he should be
Years after years, his tears joined leagues with the Nile.
His blue was a sin he could not rid himself of.
His blue was a sin that made him the father's son
A sin that drew them together.
Again he prayed for a sign that he would still be accepted. With his blue and all.

Life is full of surprises
Ones that turns your world over
One that unknowingly
Reveal  who you are.

Surprises you can’t hide nor run from
Yes we are to live with red that he spilled for us, but we can also live with the blue that dripped down his mournful face.

The blue that was shed for him to come back when he drifted away.
His decision justified by the sign
The sign that has given him the courage to open his heart to the blue.
To his blue world.

He lives in a world bathed in red and blue, one world two sides
A world he has yet to share.
Whose secrets he has yet to uncover.
A world that doesn't give his heart a chance to rest.

He knows life is full of surprises
Ones that make you rethink how well you know yourself
Ones that bring storms
But after every storm there's a rainbow.

He learned to love whatever his tie dyed world throws at him.
His dreams still the same
Only difference are the characters who will be cast.
So he asked his mother once more
“Would truly love Whatever I give my heart to?”

Yes, mechanical leaf mover,
create the shrillest sounds known to man.
See if it doesn't just slowly make the world a ******* place
by taking away the joy of crunchy leafs,
which gradually become moist, squishy leafs,
then, after a long period, emerging from a snow covering
thaw and lie there, fully exposed, recumbent,
depriving the dormant seed of grass its sunlight, preventing grass,
freeing up water for infrastructure needs more urgent and rational
than supporting the most boring of decorative plants encompassing our lives.

I guess what I'm saying is that, not only are your sounds annoying,
they're just another of the short-sighted endeavors our present society insists on.
You are the "circumcision-for-hygiene-purposes" of our urban planning.

*******, leaf blower. ******* and the excruciating environmental ignorance you represent.

I SAID *******, LEAF BLOWER, YET YOU PERSIST!

You need to let that leafy-******* grow,
covering the shaft of ground.
Rid it of the pleasure-impeding growth of grass!
Let the earth cry out for the sensation of tiny points of pressure
moving delicately along its surface.
Let the ground erupt with wild flowers, or at the very least,
the trampled exuberance of plodded soil
and the desperate levels of human debris that would collect upon it.

Or are you trying to hide our wastefulness from us by removing something
which is nothing, a nothing, invisible barrier?

You've already succeeded in giving my apartment complex the ambience
of an industrial production complex
which I suppose it always was.
Maybe your attempt at concealment
has been a revelation.

Or maybe I just can't think straight,
because there's been a god-**** leaf blower
circling below my window all morning
and now a heavy, riding lawn mower is coming to cut the grass
that hasn't grown since September
but has been watered every day
even though it froze last night
and it's almost November.

O! nothing earthly save the ray
(Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty’s eye,
As in those gardens where the day
Springs from the gems of Circassy—
O! nothing earthly save the thrill
Of melody in woodland rill—
Or (music of the passion-hearted)
Joy’s voice so peacefully departed
That like the murmur in the shell,
Its echo dwelleth and will dwell—
O! nothing of the dross of ours—
Yet all the beauty—all the flowers
That list our Love, and deck our bowers—
Adorn yon world afar, afar—
The wandering star.

’Twas a sweet time for Nesace—for there
Her world lay lolling on the golden air,
Near four bright suns—a temporary rest—
An oasis in desert of the blest.
Away away—’mid seas of rays that roll
Empyrean splendor o’er th’ unchained soul—
The soul that scarce (the billows are so dense)
Can struggle to its destin’d eminence—
To distant spheres, from time to time, she rode,
And late to ours, the favour’d one of God—
But, now, the ruler of an anchor’d realm,
She throws aside the sceptre—leaves the helm,
And, amid incense and high spiritual hymns,
Laves in quadruple light her angel limbs.

Now happiest, loveliest in yon lovely Earth,
Whence sprang the “Idea of Beauty” into birth,
(Falling in wreaths thro’ many a startled star,
Like woman’s hair ’mid pearls, until, afar,
It lit on hills Achaian, and there dwelt),
She look’d into Infinity—and knelt.
Rich clouds, for canopies, about her curled—
Fit emblems of the model of her world—
Seen but in beauty—not impeding sight—
Of other beauty glittering thro’ the light—
A wreath that twined each starry form around,
And all the opal’d air in color bound.

All hurriedly she knelt upon a bed
Of flowers: of lilies such as rear’d the head
On the fair Capo Deucato, and sprang
So eagerly around about to hang
Upon the flying footsteps of—deep pride—
Of her who lov’d a mortal—and so died.
The Sephalica, budding with young bees,
Uprear’d its purple stem around her knees:
And gemmy flower, of Trebizond misnam’d—
Inmate of highest stars, where erst it sham’d
All other loveliness: its honied dew
(The fabled nectar that the heathen knew)
Deliriously sweet, was dropp’d from Heaven,
And fell on gardens of the unforgiven
In Trebizond—and on a sunny flower
So like its own above that, to this hour,
It still remaineth, torturing the bee
With madness, and unwonted reverie:
In Heaven, and all its environs, the leaf
And blossom of the fairy plant, in grief
Disconsolate linger—grief that hangs her head,
Repenting follies that full long have fled,
Heaving her white breast to the balmy air,
Like guilty beauty, chasten’d, and more fair:
Nyctanthes too, as sacred as the light
She fears to perfume, perfuming the night:
And Clytia pondering between many a sun,
While pettish tears adown her petals run:
And that aspiring flower that sprang on Earth—
And died, ere scarce exalted into birth,
Bursting its odorous heart in spirit to wing
Its way to Heaven, from garden of a king:
And Valisnerian lotus thither flown
From struggling with the waters of the Rhone:
And thy most lovely purple perfume, Zante!
Isola d’oro!—Fior di Levante!
And the Nelumbo bud that floats for ever
With Indian Cupid down the holy river—
Fair flowers, and fairy! to whose care is given
To bear the Goddess’ song, in odors, up to Heaven:

  “Spirit! that dwellest where,
    In the deep sky,
  The terrible and fair,
    In beauty vie!
  Beyond the line of blue—
    The boundary of the star
  Which turneth at the view
    Of thy barrier and thy bar—
  Of the barrier overgone
    By the comets who were cast
  From their pride, and from their throne
    To be drudges till the last—
  To be carriers of fire
    (The red fire of their heart)
  With speed that may not tire
    And with pain that shall not part—
  Who livest—that we know—
    In Eternity—we feel—
  But the shadow of whose brow
    What spirit shall reveal?
  Tho’ the beings whom thy Nesace,
    Thy messenger hath known
  Have dream’d for thy Infinity
    A model of their own—
  Thy will is done, O God!
    The star hath ridden high
  Thro’ many a tempest, but she rode
    Beneath thy burning eye;
  And here, in thought, to thee—
    In thought that can alone
  Ascend thy empire and so be
    A partner of thy throne—
  By winged Fantasy,
     My embassy is given,
  Till secrecy shall knowledge be
    In the environs of Heaven.”

She ceas’d—and buried then her burning cheek
Abash’d, amid the lilies there, to seek
A shelter from the fervor of His eye;
For the stars trembled at the Deity.
She stirr’d not—breath’d not—for a voice was there
How solemnly pervading the calm air!
A sound of silence on the startled ear
Which dreamy poets name “the music of the sphere.”
Ours is a world of words: Quiet we call
“Silence”—which is the merest word of all.

All Nature speaks, and ev’n ideal things
Flap shadowy sounds from the visionary wings—
But ah! not so when, thus, in realms on high
The eternal voice of God is passing by,
And the red winds are withering in the sky!
“What tho’ in worlds which sightless cycles run,
Link’d to a little system, and one sun—
Where all my love is folly, and the crowd
Still think my terrors but the thunder cloud,
The storm, the earthquake, and the ocean-wrath
(Ah! will they cross me in my angrier path?)
What tho’ in worlds which own a single sun
The sands of time grow dimmer as they run,
Yet thine is my resplendency, so given
To bear my secrets thro’ the upper Heaven.
Leave tenantless thy crystal home, and fly,
With all thy train, athwart the moony sky—
Apart—like fire-flies in Sicilian night,
And wing to other worlds another light!
Divulge the secrets of thy embassy
To the proud orbs that twinkle—and so be
To ev’ry heart a barrier and a ban
Lest the stars totter in the guilt of man!”

Up rose the maiden in the yellow night,
The single-mooned eve!-on earth we plight
Our faith to one love—and one moon adore—
The birth-place of young Beauty had no more.
As sprang that yellow star from downy hours,
Up rose the maiden from her shrine of flowers,
And bent o’er sheeny mountain and dim plain
Her way—but left not yet her Therasaean reign.

i find that the only time it's permissible to think
is at acute times, when something turns
heroism awry -
  we live in times when toiling in a field of
potatoes would be considered a heroism -
     because something has soured our attempts
at heroism...
    and i can't stress enough how modernity  
has nibbled at ancient feats of heroism
                       with such a bravado and inactivity,
    yes: tautology is the curse awaiting us all...
       what is revelatory about ontology?
some would say that oncology says much more
concerning man with a doubly impeding
temporality than ontology could ever fashion
a man with prescription: dogmatism -
    for one can only ask: can philosophy ever
contain a medical property?
can philosophy be medicine? i ask because i dare
not believe that writing per se is universally adequate
in being prescribed -
                      well... biology compared to medicine
is a feeble argument, its blunder was attracting
a theological posit for an argument to be practised
because: it found itself feeble before medicine.
the "thinkers" of biology attacked theology
after realising biology (a specified conglomerate
of words with the vector indicating a
                  depersonalisation of a biography) -
but both biology and theology are entrenched
with their respective vocabulary caging -
   no one would win the debate...
                     it became a comparative scenario of
first world war trench-warfare on the Belgian plateau...
    this was an attack on medicine...
    or what's useful given that biology can be rather
useless... i've never seen such desperation
               of a field of interest: that didn't simultaneously
argue from the perspective of jealousy...
         biology cannot replace theology -
   but that's beside the point... philosophy is more
akin to medicine than any -logy compound specifying
limits... auto-suggestive of the convenience that
says: man is born stupid, he dies stupid, and he "thinks"
   he knows everything that's happening in-between.
and no... i would never write a populist celebration
of war or Achilles... had i not engaged with an actual
conflict, i'd write nothing of this sort...
           and there is a crisis in heroism these days,
   hardly a reason to equate thinking as a heroic act...
  but compared with modern heroism,
namely what's defined by losing weight and gaining
protruding muscular patterns...
     what's nothing more than paying the gas bill
or simply: bringing home the bacon...
                 thinking has become a heroic act in a way,
eased to such a conclusion with
        stalinist obstruction of thought in the first place...
we call it political correctness and to be heroic
these days means: transcending what is but zoological
humanism...         because the counterpart of heroism
in the purely physical realm is but running a marathon,
rather than walking one...
       attracting bothersome flies of charity,
                 gluttony's reversal...
             what sort of heroics are these? what's to be
celebrated by such feats... if it all culminates into
nothing but a pat-on-the-back and not a statue?
            and by god... don't you think that people
who still rummage in language and can't see trilling
the R as unfashionable require a diacritical distinction
to be added to the letter? but of course, German
can sound soft too... but given the English hollowed-out
the R and lost the trill, or that the French hark the ******
letter... i'm thinking of how to represent the trill
   of the R... as the rolling and ravaging roulettes
                 embedded in the comparison of enacted
damage, with the stiletto shoe doing more damage than
an elephant's stomp.

My backyard fence was probably the most traversed place in my whole yard. To get to the fence, I had to squeeze through a narrow gap between a sharp evergreen and a pungent forsythia bush. As a child, this fence seemed like a great wall with an unknown force drawing me to the other side.
        Before my parents allowed me to climb over  my fence, I would sit under the yellow canopy of drooping forsythia branches and enjoy the sweet smelling flowers. I’d gaze through the chain link and imagine what great adventures I could have with the neighbor kids, if I could go over that fence. After school, both my neighbor and I would run home to our backyards to talk and pass sticks through the fence. To pass the time, we would spend hours trying to disentangle grape vines from the fence, stopping to snack on a few when they were ripe. We would weave crowns with the broken vines or wilted branches from the forsythia, and we would craft swords from fallen branches out of their maple tree. With these effects, we would wage grand battles through the fence until we were separated by the call for dinner. When I found a baseball in the school field, I could not wait to take it home to share with my neighbor. Together we wore the skin off that baseball playing catch, seeing who could throw it the highest or farthest, and trying to throw it through the diamonds between each link. The fence drew us together.
        My parents finally gave in to my ample requests and decided that I was officially "old enough to climb the fence." I rushed out of my house and darted between the evergreen and forsythia to tell my friend the great news. After getting consent from his parents, I clambered up the fence for the first time. The first time was a struggle. It was hard to get foot holds in the small openings. It seemed dizzyingly tall. Although it was one small step, I was thrilled when I set foot in the foreign land because I would finally be able to explore what I had observed through the fence and dreamed about for so long.
        His yard was full of wonders that mine did not have. He had a play set with two swings and a slide, a large plastic log cabin play house, and a deck, which was a novelty compared to the concrete slab my house had. I quickly looked past these things; why would I waste my time on a swing when I could run around and play games without a fence impeding me. When we played baseball, the section of the fence where our yards met was always home plate. At school all my other friends only talked about video games and television shows.  I tried the video games they talked about, but when I tried them I never understood the thrill of sitting on a couch and controlling an image. Being outside under my forsythia bush or running around with my neighbor appealed to me. It was where I felt the most natural and where I felt I could be myself.
        That section of fence behind the forsythia bush and evergreen tree impacts me still, even though I have moved away and have not laid eyes upon those yellow flowers in years. Whenever I am presented the option between watching a movie or going outside to walk or play catch, I will always opt for the latter. Something about a light breeze or a rustle of leaves or the song of a bird as it flies over helps relax me and ease away the day's tensions. I attribute this to the freedom I felt under the forsythia. Free from judging eyes, free from problems of the world, free from expectations.

i remember the meningitis scare:
   oh... it was very real...
i guess it was supposed to affect a niche
proportion of the population...

so much for the "scare":
they would vaccinate us in the schools:
since children were more prone
to succumb to: and inflammation of
the lining around your brain and spinal cord...

and all that: press a thumb against
a skin... and if the skin returns to its original
colouring: there's no blemish of applied
pressure... pressing glasses onto the skin too...

the aesthetics have changed so drastically:
what can **** you is so subtle these days...
it's hardly a case of leprosy...
or... eczema of the zombie plague:
or miniature lilal mushrooms growing
out from your armpits:
suddenly breaking into song:
  'steve told us to sing... so we have
sprouted: to sing!'
       no... celeriac sized warts... hell...
i haven't seen any pictures of covid-19...
as i never saw pictures of ebola...

            death has been given: an anonymity...
but what's still kept in reserve?
shingles...
     like: hyper-eczema...
                i'm having to consolidate myself
on the luck of being 30+ and still having...
a skin on my face that i can't peel:
but i'm sure that belzeebub took a dump on...

they're either dead maggots
or dead white blood-cells...
        i guess i have so many of the latter that...
my immune system is constantly
on a over-charge mode...
          
    where are the lilac mushrooms about to grow
out from out of my armpits:
when will death become visible again:
outside her womb:
without any anonymity to behold:
when will everything... "ev'fing"
  return to the obviousness of a guillotine...
a hangman...
      a... hanged, drawn and... quartered?

the improved aesthetics of the threat is hardly
be sitting in an armchair...
welcoming this: paranoia precursor...
there's no phosphorescent yellow-green phlegm
being shot through the air with a sneeze...

i'm quite disturbed about all this...
        "sterility"...
                      well thankfuly i know that
a schizophrenic can't beget a drone-replica:
dead'ed brain: "schizz"... zombie-cult-esque
   brain: riddled with parasites like...
a disciple of burrough's fever might provide:
subsequently... by...
   by caughing a splitting-headache that might:
somehow: "later": arrive at some variation
of bilingualism...
          but never will... perhaps it should...

because: right now: i want to wrong about everything...
i want to ****** with a hard-on of doubt...
and perhaps: tease negation a little...
or rub-rub-'er very much...
but i do: most honestly...
    want to be wrong about everything...
esp. when it comes to...
   the aesthetics of the "problem":
    it's a problem-solution: solution-problem
  quadratic...
           i mean: if it was truly cosmic... and original...
would it really care for much of aesthetics...
can viruses becomes stealth assassins?
   is a virus a misnomer of plague?
or is... a virus a former case of plague...
  that couldn't be: prior... weaponized?
   the rampant exfoliation of: the obliterated
concern for aesthetics...
   oh sure... it's clean cut...
           god knows what happened to those old
curiosities of medicine...

otherwise...

   what will 3 hours spent reading nothing but
Dickens do to you...
me? i "somehow" managed to miss / forget
about a sunset...
   came the night and... yeah: when meningitis
hit...
   and i guess after the mad-cow disease...
break-dancing limp feet cows...
drunk cows... morbidly drunk cows...

      there was always that postcard reference:
now?
you could obviously see the bubonic plague
from a mile away...
you could see eczema...
you can sure as **** see a shingles belt...
        would a virus even care...
to appease the aesthetic concerns of man?
how doesn't cancer do that...
well... i just start thinking about...
the botanical cancer... viscum...
hardly seen in western europe: tree-foundation
societies... etc.
   half an hour on the road outside of warsaw...
that's enough...

oh sure: because of covid-19:
who could, "somehow" forget about...
                  metastatic tumors!
oh the joys of... <cough cough> the carousel
or that ol' chestnut!
            come to think of it...
    would ingesting a tapeworm make thinks and things
more real?
what wouldn't be bad
about acquiring a symbiote these days?
     all: postulations of the mundane...
without yet within the science-fiction universe...
the facts will simply not stand the test
of time... or will... but will be shelved...
given to the bookworms and their placenta
worm-queen...

it's actually becoming a sieving tool for acquiring
nothing lost: of the old mundane...
the sterile aesthetics of the whole under-taking...
it's too: invisible: too pure...
to be... a freakish byproduct of nature...
sending us back in time...
as the original: single-cell organism
about to usurp the crown of creation...

    my list of conspiracy theories begins
with: catcher in the rye "coincidences" and...
that david copperfield sort of *******...
      because if it's not Pickwican...
it's certainly not an account of count
smorltork:
        peek - christian name
                weeks - surname; good, ver good...

otherwise these days:
the intellect has become a sponge...
and the supposed underlying:
because it is "supposed" and there's an
"underlying" aspect to all of this...
that there is a "dialectic" and...
otherwise: the bestest of the best kind
of...            soap...

is it a revival of an "empire"...
when at the height of its decline...
there was that motto:

     panem et circenses...

     what's underlying in Dickensian prose?
well... some of the words used...
i'd sit with a page and check the dictionary
3 times on average...
because there's still that underlying:
we, Britons, prior to the "english"...
the anglo-saxons... are the Afghanistan
oopsies of the ancient world...
there are so many words with direct
connection: etymologically "speaking"
with latin...

now: the bread is still "here"...
   of the 20th century... you could see a ****
coming way back in 1933...
and the communist... whenever that happened...
and you could subsequently trickle the "evil"
archetype into movies... into gaming...
and have people hooked on a bullseye of evil...

now? greyish blips and blobs of
Kantian bureaucracy...
    
o.k. panem et circenses...
looks to me...
like the circuses are long gone...
the bread is still here...
but... of all the seismic shifts this is...
hardly a ffffffffffff-ucking Pompeii!
riddle me this: riddle me that...
what can possibly become so... overly entertaining...
about eating a slice of bread?
why are the vermin: multiplying:
what's with all this: "huddling" at a distance?
need a cape with that: herr ubermensch?

last time i checked: rats do no operated
under herd scriptures...
there's not need for a shepherd...
there is: fire! scramble!
peep-squeak and more!
          
    an impeding confrontation with a pack of wolves...
a vegetarian lion convert...
                 the bubonic plague: lack of aesthetic...
and now this...
this supreme aesthetic of: when the ancient greeks
thirsted to conceive of the existence
of atoms...
          not that i require proof...
what so of circus: though...
      is, this?!

- yes folks... in the current climate of labyrinths...
the Minotaur isn't here...
and we're out of stock on smoke...
and... mirrors...

citations of a possible prediction to allign with
some variation of borrowed horrors:
to usurp the status quo and sentences us for:
there's no "third time lucky" therein...

all that's happened though:
mental people who would never allow
their minds to riddle them...
become claustrophobic by mere thought...
can you?
translate thinking into claustrophobia?
oh god... no... we haven't reached this nadir...
have we?
thought didn't imply θ(ought)!
that erotica of a would be pronoun:
the moral quest...
                  not because i did something bad
in the past...
but because:
i did what others didn't do prior to me...
i ride the wave of what a *******
said to me once:
after an ******:
this is only the second time it has happened
to me: hello ***** envy thrown out of the window!
hello sisters of mercy in some convent
in Limerick!
'allo! 'allo!

beside the moral conundrum of θ(ought): ought i?
this narrative of the ol' 'ed...
is... claustrophobic?
             spread this negation-of-ease further:
dear kin!
   dis- prefix that denotes negation...
ah... and -ease! the suffix that complete the circle:
no contemplation is necessary!

i'm still seeing bread, though...
oh mein gott! die zirkusse! die zirkusse!
what can be done about the circuses?!

people are coupling thinking with claustrophobia...
people are implored to read
for at least 3 hours a day!
a dickens! a tolstoy! a dumas!
and then relax from congesting paragraph strain
and explore the airy side of what was
written into prose and paragraph with
the aid of poetics: that non-exclusivity of rhyme:
always missing... best missing!

i too abhor this synonym:
poetry is what rhymes...
            a set list of: knock-knock jokes...
about as tasteful as...
               roast beef: done well done...
eating the bark of wood:
now that's an adventure!

            or what's... the adjective riddle / riddled...
of: now...
permanent - adjective... these days a host
of "calling scheitmeiser for all his worth"
and what not...      
                               now: the experimental
history of yesterday and "oops"
now: the cameo cinema of yesterday...
and god willing:
you have a "savings account"
of: memories that can...
suffocate the future: the imagining...
of and for the nought of nothing...
the "conundrum": of being...
such and such... and somehow...
retain: personhood...
rather than... a mere... citizentry "status"...
of the ebbing flow of cattle meat and dung:
itsy-bitsy spider teeth itching...
before the bone!
and... after the bones!

load of crock-**** Lombardy is not
Italy... mantra...
and those rites of rats from
the sinking ship that's Wenice...
much too... quasi-important...

      H - surd of a letter...
but the skeleton supposed to behind:
laughter...

the hibernian folk know it...
the english: eh... somewhat...
          bound to θ and bound to φ...
in t'ought... but not in: t'aught...
who needs the apostrophe?
no me: not "you"...
         third: or... θird:
or... ****... or τ(au) says: "herd"...
                             and what's "spezial"...
the surd worth of π (pi)
     in ψ...
                    or      'sychology...
              then there's "all that" with...
chrome: the χ that becomes a kappa (κ)...
but not... exactly the...
the...      ah!                   CHisel!
chasing dog's tails?

                            but a hardy: hibernian:
it's not an F... it's a T...
we have to expose the H-surd! primo
pronto!

    but ψ can afford...
          πσι in that...
                      either the π... or the π...
is treated as a surd..
cited: the whittle canyon of eta (Ηη)..
            ha: if it's a definite article in 'ebrew...
or ha: if... you need a consonant
skeleton... to breathe when laughing...

toes when marching: chin ching chatter...
otherwise "K / kappa" the matter...
taught to think it all but a massive:
****!
   or... a θurd... which is exfoliating in
the gaellic concept of: third...

i'm not from 'ere...
              mind you...
              this is all disneyland for m'eh et moi...
hello whittle atom me...
hello whittle atom you...
hello: hyvä aamu... susie 'ere...
       rakastaa... että ulvonta...
                 "unohti" haukkua:
fins... drawfs... and other whittle people...
eskimos of the "narrative":
   "kaikki alkaen apinamaa"!
    pωl pυt ***...
             and there's "3" of 'em!
exactly... what about the V'em...
             perhaps a F'ought...
      but: V'ere!
            V'em!
                            who the **** gets to
assure me: this language "ving" or "thin"...
sure hands... sure hands...
it's not all grafitti from chernobyll!

and what if... Joycean would 'ave to begin
its pilgrimage toward Dickensian?
this Ezra of ours: what of this...Ezra of
Fahrenheit of "ours"?

           my atom "versus" your... "atomized" man?
my spaghetti english
versus your... i'll sooner choke on ß...
or SuS...
         or SaS
                  SeS...          sayß...
h'american spaghetti english... *** riddled:
ghetto crown-tongue...


me and finding a juggling of chuckles
with: wit... hiding the ha ha...
when θ = τ...
hibernian...
poland the playground of god:
greek... the plaground of men...
esp. those as being cited:
with origin of the barbarian tinge...

  exatly! what of WH when TH are....
thought of "wen":
this grafitti phpneticism...
this barbarism...
no code of "conduct":
what should have:
and did "have": a happen to...
when it came to the ratio
of consonants to vowels...
  of the latter there was a supposed more...
or the latter a less...

    h.i.v. vampirism romances
would have to die...
  a death... most... closely associated with:
psychopaths: or...
the general pathology is: soul-quests...
all "things" considered...
there is no "grand-Σ"
        "past-participle":
of the unconscious-conscious liver...
does the part: actor... functions
of... i robot: you, not here...

the liver does what a liver does:
even if: i r woke...
and i r: sleepz...
               eyes only on when...
orientating myself around:
a failure of a distinct "individual":
moi foie premier...
   moi estomac premier...
and of "me" or... a me...
given that... there's no: "the me"...
            load of ******* and a chewing tube
of "worded"... "circumstances"...
as: "the alternative" to...
sorry... no other alternative...
was... or would ever... be given...
errror message 404 commences: as of: now!

- or... can you?
compensate a word like... draconian...
with a word... the periphery word...
akin to... byzantine?!
the kite's high up in the ******* air
my dear lad...
can you? "compensate" this...
marry of all other:
never-poppin' up 'ins?!

that's one way of minding:
a grey-ginger...
or an albino-masai...
for "good luck"... of all t'ings:
the lerprechaun 'ucking charm brigade!
that's just 'ucking necessary: that is!

as.... the people have already mentioned
their freedom: to cite and keep up to
the rigours of salutations...
they said and they said... and they:
sad but nonetheless: they sad-***-made-"truth"-of...
"it": 'ucking wombat
multiverse l.s.d.: me typing on an old... cranky...
soviet "qwerty" imitation...

the freedom prior to the plague:
i am yet to see...
the **** covid... and the leprechaun...
and the tarantula...
and the... leech...
   **** me: raining cats and dogs:
what a scenario!
     i was supposed to get...
               not leech: not *****...
those fidgeting terse quizzes...
          *****... no... leech... no...
leprechauns: double no...
             szarańcza... old mother-tongue:
ah yes... "these":
                                 locust!

the third of the lard off the herd of the most:
"likely"... nosense to me:
something for you:              up!
otherwise know as:
quiet a bollocking... wouldn't you,
somehow... please... stage:
an agreed to?
               ****'s sake...

  tyrd the triddle twiddle torn und
towing: dublin the sorry-eye: und sore...
you freckled maverick salt
burner you... and... it's a ginger:
stick-prone... keep y'er eager distance...

eh? that's true: is what's through...
**** paddy **** and a poor ******
walk into a bar...
and the bartender is... a kippah-don
of a rastafarian:
the jokes end...
and there was never a conversation
to begin with... ha ha!
now that's a joke... to wake up...
a frankenstein!

      ginger pleb: ginger poodle!
the new africa: the new eskimo...
or... the finnish gateway: etymologically speaking...
an alternative to... *** and...
              the leftover mongols
stranded by the waters
of the empire: receding...
          the...        no: not the croats...
the...
          a very much elongating concept
of pause....
              "d" or the "v" of: v'eh...: the...
the  immortal savages
of: crimea...
      ah yes!
                  those...            tar-tars!
like the tartare steak:
or what was forever available as
the alibi for: sushi!

        because tokyo is just one of those...
forever huan: new... beijing chicken shacks...
and "tokyo"...
or some other anime typo *******...

irish catholic intellectuals...
and... the none existence of whatever
would have required a magna carta:
believe it or... eat **** sort of
mentality...
            the russian doctors
are already abiding to be hunted
if not huddling in churches...
because: co-vex said: co-vid...
co-vid: sharing blockbuster intrusion
pokes was: that last resort to
mortality: and oh...

          this should have happened a long...
a long long time ago...
  transparency tourism...
where you going?
nowhere...
  and "where" is "going"... "nowhere"...
a bit like france... and the eiffel tower...
and there's no speaking french to have
to be resolved...
because like: "**** it" and what?

the ginger-ninja... the ginger-ninja...
the ginger-ninja and...
when the reality of *****...
reaches... an escalation "reality"
of: synonym with... oh god! beards!
ugh!           vot                          ven?!

yep... and the irish were always:
the horse-breeders..
they always were...
always the catholic-intellect juggernauts...
because the hey'talians and
the spoon-innards...
and... mon deu: zee: fwench!
forget the ****** cathos-pathos...
*******-of-os...

and in me:
the gravitas for a disconcerting ambivalence...
almost a compound:
misnomer... but no...
i like the spaghetti though...
yeah: it looks nice on paper...
and off paper...
and anything to cite: the godfather with...
because: boo is a ghost story
that a solo would sell... and ******* like
that...                   yup...
which is a word: to replace the ideal trajectory of:
would be: ghost limb...
james bond...
                          roulette...
you the actors "faking it": no of course...
dylan thomas bob dylan...
"faking it" i.e. stunt actors!
what's "bob": when there's a ******* roulette:
and a devil's dozen of rich, russian...
oligarchal chick... pretending plastic is not...
new world... ******: comb-over...
creaking chair... stlye-on... style-off...
plastico-supermanoh... dynamo-oh-oh...
those "soz" and "whatsevers"...
works well...
the times column...
when your parents are... conscripted...

             mammoth playdough oh oh oh...
irish is cheap...
catholic is cheap-oh...
******...
ha ha... let's not go there...
becauße that's like...
   goldberg variations: the bwv 988 aria...
   yeah: "soz"... but... i'll ******* eat you:
if i have to: for the purpose assigned
to a hard-on... most associated with...
sparrows...
and... the pirates of the confines...
the magpies...
          
             in every period of congregational
"sanity" there's that interlude into:
madness...
howl how! oh dear world of:
that lost appetite of surprise!
        you begin to wither... and die off:
by the slow culmination of hours...
like... a picture to entomb the perfecting
affair of a decaying pear... or apple...
               and...

            and....                 and...
trickling of sentiments...
and sounds...

                           and there are commentaries...
and there are... catholic bishops...
and protestant cardinals...
and ****** popes!             ah ha!
am i to.. truly... die... from laughter?!

Barrels of oil painted smooth in acryllic
fill up the cracks with a feeling
spit out the money to feed the machine

Fair if it's toiling kids
draped along spoiled villians
immersed to serve the version of a billionaire's dream

eat the rich

Try me after I've been taught
I could've bought my chain

I would've lost my name

I should've dropped my shame facade
to play the game

We grew the youthful breath of heaven from the clay beneath our bones
imbued and innervated

aided you and drew the oath to play within the zone

circle reverie treasury burdens
bury the feathery,
herding squarely to fame - put on a show

eat the rich
dare me

you and yours invaded
bated breath had sung belated effort, whistle "death has reared it's head
at our expense so grab a sword.
We can war this **** straight out of this ole ditch
and fix whatever ***** gone wrong with it
with grit and sense

and build a fence"

Forget the soil your roots are grown in,
if you want to.

bask in shadow
of the weight of trust and decency
impeding our advances to your winner's table
fabled robin hoods with internets

guess who's deft enough let you know through every filter
left for us we may upset your dinner guests

let em know what's on the menu

eat the rich

let em know

The irony in learning
how to burn the fuel that kills you
after all the warning signs were there
sound familiar? it's a slog

burnin up, they'll crawl around
and find a meal on common ground
try the light show one more time
maybe that'll work

"The serfs are like a herd you see
they can't be riled along without a sermon
Burden them with silks and styles
worry them toward money piles"

Remind them of the fire they've been turning

Analogies aside I must abide by me and mine
but I've still got my eye on anything
...concerning

eat the rich
with discretion I guess.

finally! that time of the year has come
when i'll be taking a 2 week hiatus to the "old country":
perched on a windowsill drinking
some Napoleon brandy
donning a baseball cap donned in
reverse: cool as a cucumber...
oddly enough: if baseball caps are anything
to go by: i could get used to a kippah...
sure as **** not to a monk's tonsure...
ah... the night... a time of solace...
ah... die nacht... ein zeit auf trost...
the "old country", monochromatic, among
"my fellow" countrymen:
none of this Loon'don Babylon of the world
congregating... a little ****** town that
once had ambitions to compete with
the metallurgical industry of Cracow...
collapsed... sold off...
from a population nearing 100,000...
reduced to... perhaps 40,000...
since everyone left once the economy collapsed:
how Europe exported its
metallurgical industry... it's production
to Asia... some "disappeared" else in this
native land... some left for Canada... England...
i love going back: even though my
dementia riddled grandfather isn't alive...
i'll still get to read some books...
on the to-do list...
finishing Knausgaard's vol. 4... taking a break
by: finally! reading some
Rousseau... letter to M. D'Alembert on spectacles
& the social contract...
lucky me i own a copy that has paired these
two books together...
i have reached a point of tedium
reading the genre of autobiography...
esp. autobiography that borrows so much
from memory...
of course i'll finish volumes 5 & 6...
but i need a break...
i need to get away from internet access...
i need to walk into a pine forest...
i need to sniff the air in Eastern Europe...
funny... i was in Russia for a month once:
never watched the t.v.:
we ******... she played video games...
i was either reading
a book of her choice: the Master & Margarita
or studying chemistry to resit
a failed exam...
i need to immerse myself in propaganda...
see what's happening in politics...
i'm way behind the culture...
i tried to keep up... last time i heard
bands like Lao Che & Żywiołak are not in
the mainstream... every time i turn on the radio:
no chance in hell...
it's like that conundrum of Iron Maiden's
Bring your Daughter to the Slaughter reaching
no. 1 in the charts... but... "for some reason"
BBC Radio 1 not giving it any play...

we used to walk around the graveyard and
talk about life and how:
death is the only true democracy...
among other things...
i dubbed us: the hyenas of the graveyard...
now i'm going to stand over his grave
and probably pull a smirk onto my face...
a sort of gleeful: i'm coming...
you shouldn't have had that tirade
of yours over your brother-in-law's early
death: how you boasted that
you were still living while he was already dead...
i think you were teasing death then
but i can accept the fact that you wanted
to be finally rid of that woman...
how you said:
old people should live more cordially
with each other: not this stereotypical
Hemingway: men without women array of
short stories...

do i still regret breaking up with that Siberian lass?
of course i do...
but if for your happiness me giving you
grandchildren: but being slapped in the face
for no reason other than her paranoia
while she was still in close contact with her ex?

that's the difference between
Catholic and Protestant nations...
while the protestants have their little Halloween
****** Doo thrills of dressing up...
some Catholic nations celebrate the day after
the 31st of October...
the feast day of All Saints...
a big ******* deal in Paul-and...
the people light candles at the graves...
whole graveyards start looking like
starry constellations: hell... more...
when spotted on the Maldives...

i like this approach more than the insurrection
of monsters... fake or real:
mostly fake... life's this one grand party...
i hardly think so...
if i'd be content with life i wouldn't
be inquisitive of it... or off it...
the necropolis beckons...
names etched into marble...
important dates...
oh not the dates of a person's birth
or a person's death:
all those important dates not written onto a grave
those in-between... written into the riddled flesh
of the living...
tattoos akin to... 2001... 2019...
  
but oh so welcome... this impeding break...
from... whatever this is...
a return to: this little ******-town that once
grew & grew & could have been something...
sold off...
sleepy little town... it would be rather
impossible to put Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski
on the map...
mind you: the mindset of the western folk is:
to put hardly anything on the map:
except for their bellybutton...
i don't mind: "we" sort of don't exist...
so far far away: further even than India...
further than the Americas... further than Spain...
or Italy... as a sort of wilderness "non-existent"
before you arrive in Russia...

watching two matches today: super Sunday, what?
even though West Ham only beat Tottenham Hotspurs
a meagre 1 - nil...
it was just as entertaining as watching
Liverpool thrash Manchester United 5 - nil...
sport is fun when you don't take sides...
when you're in it for the mere spectacle...
it's like automated chess... football...
please: don't get me wrong...
no... get me wrong... but American football
is a load of crap...
so many ******* interludes...
it's unlike rugby where there are clear rules...
the oval needs to be passed back...
the charge is forward...
what is it with H'american football...
you throw the oval forward...
you run off the field: STOP... let's realign...
the oval touches the ground: STOP... let's realign...
what a **** sport...
only two sports came out of north america:
hockey &... eh... but cricket is better
than baseball... period...
American "football" is ****...
it's the ******* sport imaginable...
too many interludes...
there's no fluidity! the game doesn't: FLOW...
**** ****, double ****... thrice ****... **** ****, ****...
how can you play a game
when it's only about a throw forward
and the game has to be restarted: reset
when some ****** runs off the field or drops the oval?
with all these interludes...
you could probably have about 2 cricket tea-breaks
for tea...
American sports: with the exception of basketball
& ice hockey: ***** MAJOR ***...
***** ***** MIDGIT ***...

but this kind of football is like: chess playing by itself...
i've come to appreciate good sport...
unlike the Olympics... although...
give me an hour watching some classic Greco-Turkish
wrestling & i'll tell you:
there's no need for boxing...
was boxing even remotely related to rhetoric?
was it? was it?

but sport per se is so much more fun when
you're not taking sides...
you're there for the spectacle:
i never understood these little pockets of tribalism...
how many football teams are playing
in the premier league: all from London?
7?
Chelsea, Arsenal, Crystal Palace, Watford...
West Ham... Tottenham...
Brentford! and how many are in the Championship?
Millwall... QPR... however many...
little nations within nations...
i was always from elsewhere and from elswhere
when i first came to England i supported
Manchester United... because of the moniker:
the red devils...
& because Eric Cantona was playing for them...
****** view from behind the goalposts
at the old Wembley when Manchester United
played Newcastle United at the 199- charity shield
match... ****** view at the old Wembley...

a welcome break from everything "western":
from the bellybutton crew:
from: if it happens in western europe
it: by default ought to happen everywhere else...
a break from the anglophonic claustrophobia
and sort-of solipsism...
a return to the Slavic barbarians:
imbeciles... etc. etc.
well... one man put the name of the town
on the map: a Witold Gombrowicz...
but then again... he was born into an aristocratic
family in a village shy of the "urban centre"
of this little ****-hole of a town...

thank god it's not exactly Warsaw...
or Cracow... or Danzig... it's a nowhere with
as much of everything to offer
as a "here" town...
on the map: distinguished...
a town of: ghosts & retired people...
2 weeks of splendour...
rustic scoops...
       2 weeks of this...
         rest my mind... read some Rousseau...
i don't think it would require
me to take a cruise...
give me the pines, the clouds, the night...
the scent of the graveyard...
the superstitious folk...
                 not that i'd want to feel superior:
just doubly distant from
the already narrowed-down distance
i feel when cycling through London.

.a very prominent interlude of bitterness - something that needs to be drank as an antidote of the aftertaste of a brothel... bourbon - sickly-sweet bourbon of a brothel... otherwise the best beer on these isles: the original stout: st. guinness - second, 13... hop house lager by the same culprit... i don't know about you but a regular IPA doesn't float my boat... stale pale ale of 3 day old sputnik ***** excavation of bio-matter living off of iron shrapnel and termite ****... let's not go over-board with the bitterness of fenugreek seeds added to a curry... but... a hop lager is not an indian pale ale... because? well: because of the excited circumstance of extra bubbles! once upon a time that horrid absinthe period... last time i checked i became the st. peter of the drug details... ***** tells you too many truths come the moral-hangover the next day... but ms. amber in her guise of adele bloch-bauer by klimt: take her for a whiskey, take her for a bourbon... a chanel no. 5... or a brandy or a cognac... please excuse me from drinking the ales... goldwasser: athens, sparta, venice... dan dan Danzig... i'd call the genesis of world war II to be... that envy of the city-state... the little cosmopolitan high-heavens of a concentrated locum... of affairs of both tourism and the subsequent merchant class... that Danzig didn't belong to anyone: not really... does it even matter now? the current city-state model is... don't bother filtering the excesses... it has to become diluted... you'll find pockets of concentration near them... yes... homogenous... therefore solaced by that fact alone... only teasing incorporating outside influences... it's not going to be a replica venice or danzig... for that you'd need a window... st. peter designated the window into europe as a capital with an access to the sea... not land locked... even though i'm pretty sure that moscow has a river running through it... jump-start the window: a capital by the sea... hey presto! a window: the baltic sea into europe... words that become apparent: microcongestion of undigested souls... a schrödinger's cat... one foot in limbo... another foot in reicarnation... lob it or nutmeg the footie: it's a particle when observed and a wave when not observed... an orbit for the schematic... but a cloud when getting into the nitty-gritty details: specifics oblong... misnomer... if my ******* into a tissue, subsequently flushed... then a baptism of a shower... is not a genocide? then... bullseye... the ***** that made it into the ****... it's an abortion mid-week... i'd count that ****** come a certain count of months... otherwise... well... there's that cat of his... one foot in limbo and one foot in reincarnation... wasn't it the western exhausted theological mind: from that god of the omni- litany looking toward the budding-ha-ha? abortion... prized ***** makes it to the egg... ah... ****** from the argument of effort... me and the basic schematics of genocide... otherwise: schrödinger's cat... one foot in limbo... one foot in reicarnation... better still... Farinelli! drop the ******* don a niqab! the muslims and an eye-fetish... mind you... i do have a hand-fetish... "fetish"... i can count five of hers and only four of mine... fingers! unless she is a proper Arab bride with roots of synonyms in the Ukraine... and she has butcher's hands... hot-dog fingers... and a kardashian thick-*** that is just readied for a 12" dung-digger of ******... while at the same time... breaking the floral patterns of a porcelain geisha's... "missing tongue O"...

manícorona: peanut-crown!

               in between the hype and...
in between the trough...
and the happy pigglets of prop
and grandour...

little charlie little dervish of
a dar: gift...
                        win-win scenario...
i'm worried about...
constipation...
           terribly bothered...
                    
         but there's also the fact that
i haven't seen a dentist for...
a donkey can count a decade:
at least that's my hope...

my tooth filling has become lose...
having finished with yesterday's
etc. i tried to fall to sleep...

the pain came as a blunt object
in need of sharpening...
it wasn't a sharp object per se:
to begin with...

the radio was off...
the dream of falling asleep to the sound
of rain like it might be
a song off the cure's disintegration
album: lost...

                 i concluded:
it must be a dream...
how else explain this trivial pain
of a tooth when all the bones lay
intact in a body in an impeding grave?

to have been lullabied by a trivial
pain of a loose filling...
                   i'll give it until monday
to check a dental clinic...
i'll wait... because:
god only knows i am bound
to learn something new from
this crazed - infuriating pain -

          but at least that has
constipation covered...
    fear not: ****** **** of the golem heights!
no chelsea smile up your alley:
any time soon...

        the crown virus...
sooner or later: yes my liege...
yes my sire...
i'm sure the africans will... jump the queue...
we've been raising money for
a malaria vaccine...
i'm sure they'll be quick-on-the-mark
to raise money for the crown-virus
epicenter! europe!

oh... come come... komme komme, meine liebe!
it's true!
the europeans will be fundraising
money for malaria...
while the africans will be fundraising
money for the peanut-crown virus...

or... i like that one quote i heard,
"somewhere"...
   a stewardess asks a mother whether
or not her son would like some peanuts...
the mother says... he's allergic to peanuts...
he's allergic to maize... air...
glutten... ******* haribo gelatin and all...
he's allergic to hiccups...

                           there's a winking match
involving imitation chess between
the very sick psychiatrists
and the mildly sick schizophrenics...
a bilingual comes along into their foray...
and asks: who's multiplying
and who's in charge of division?
all a splendid metaphor... wouldn't you agree?
there... metaphor...
already the focus is gone... splinters...
some go to metaphysics,
some go to metaphors...
some go to orthography...
some go to: telepathy...
        some go down the para-
hello, my name is Norman...

         it's natural then... darwinism in action...
hold a peanut to a crowd of
people allergic to peanuts...
the joy of cashews...
the joys of pecans...
   cashews, pecans, brazilians...
macademians... hazels and waldorff's...

no other feeling...
like a ripe hop lager in between
a bourbon's drip drip drip...
      
                   horrid breaking up an already
comfortable ideology... isn't it?
when something like this speaks for itself
and the "lamm von gott" is brought before
the altar...
                           darwinism sings!
sings! like the brian jonestown massacre...
this is my body... my peanut...
brought to a cult of peanut-allergy-riddled
anemics and haemophiliacs...
        
the darwinian ideology fizzles out...
when it's not longer looking up through
the telescope of a primate's ***...
but looking through the form most primodial...
i've been gardening for the past week...
i've watched an earthworm here...
an earthworm there...
        life without eyes without ears
without music... but this idiotic god-given
impetus, imperative, "will": "freedom"...
virus... crown virus...

sooner or later we'll all be kings and queens,
sneezing and waiting for the entire
small intestine to come out of our noses
like glue: glut and gelatin pieces
wobbling where once bones stood
to be later broken...

a beer in between these slugs of bourbon
will do just that...
all good when it concerns
of apes and men...
           the similarity greatly helps...
but of course we'll borrow from other
skeletons...
                  no one ever heard of a headache
from having "too much"...
i.e. od przybytku: głowa nie boli...
o ale boli boli boli...

      constipation...
            the peanut crown virus...
and a loose tooth filling...
                ***** blondes and "how many"
light-bulb jokes it would take
for a tsunami of bleached ***** hairs to turn
into a happy cousin itsy-bitsy:
a spider cravat... what else?

otherwise history...
   either a wet-dream or a castration...
              or the bull wrestled by the horns...
or a dog wrestled by either kicking it in
the ******* or wrestling with its mandible jaw...
echoes of warriors...
warriors and pirates... the lesser muscles
of a farmer? a blacksmith?
              either a wet-dream or a castration...
lost avenues of "heroes":
all leading to: up my ***... otherwise known
as my original churchill's V...
the welsh longbow men: ditto the fwench...

such a shame that so much of history
is to be filtered when the children learn of it...
and whenever returning to it...
it's as stale as an antique's roadshow...
or it's: skimmed over...
whatever natural selection gave...
i don't know whether it's natural
to witness this historiological selection...

some would say:
too much of a congested toilet: n'est-ce pas?
too many of the dead are still haunting us...
natural selection contra:
historiological selection...
                             the ape versus the virus...
it is over-inflated...
where are the boils, the blisters...
the glutton spew of ****?
                              
                     this is... it?
panic riddled neurotics?
   so... so... twiddle-thumb-twiddle-toe...
where are all the psychotic:
airing of the soul examples?
smoke and mirrors...
   if i see a *****?
   i'll let you know!
          we'll huddle and watch
tom hanks win an oscar for
Philadeplhia...
                          show me a *****
******* a zombie...
         this, this grand disguise as flu...
it's almost a precursor
to a greater joke...
       of... phantom limbs that
had grenades worth of champagne
bottles being uncorked as
the origin of the demise of...
if only they named the ship Prometheus...
Titanic is so general...
     Atlas... Hyperion...
                  Oceanus...
                                   you can't expect
to keep an adjective as a noun: afloat...
or could have... could you?

but about time you listen to all the darwinists...
when the seas are: a'rough...
ask them about not looking up from
that telescope via a monkey's ****...
about the darwinism of a...
very original... very basic: a first...
first in line end result...
that might have been us...

                 tough luck bringing
no wine and no bread...
to the congregation...
nut-allergy riddled whisperers and soon-enough
to be drop-off counts of: the sieve...
the peanut! crown - and:
if only it was as simple as a reconquista
of what the goths left behind having
stalled spain's worth
and having died off in north africa...

now's the time to stop looking through
a darwinistic: famous detail of:
the peeled banana on the inner-sleeve...
the root or yellow...
teasing you unpeeled for all that was
the velvet, the velvet and the underground...
a very pushy bladder...
i mean: fickle bladder little gremlin
with a yappy-yappy for a mouth...
and it's not the sort of mouth that echoes:
hungry! hungry!
the sort of mouth, though...
give it the plumber...
                          
        how very pedestrian of me.

some say it's called dart-eyes, a kaleidoscopic venture
that might leave you myopic, oddly enough i know
that people say a lot of far fetched things,
   and the excuses are usually metaphors,
there's the literal cardinal,
the literal spanish inquisition,
  and metaphors of demons in the bible -
          i still want to experience a fully
theocratic world: where man's words come
forth from man, and god's words come from
the mouth of god... again: poetry without
a god is like biology without chlorophyll,
   no one even suggested a kneeling process and
ardent prayer to be invoked,
     all it took was a spare thought away from
the daily commute and the daily invigoration
from some sort of ethic, oddly enough it always
ends up being an ethic of work...
   i guess that's why in the west everyone is
nearing an addiction thoroughly apparent that's
named workaholism... once the relationships
fail, the only saving string of hope is work,
an absurd work ethic, because wouldn't you
take a syringe filled with ink and do shifts in an
office beyond the norm, thus entering the world
of night shifts and anything else antisocial?
   people can't really be friends, we're fired up
toward formal relationships and what's guiding us
to these relationships is hierarchy...
              oddly enough the Aztec or Mayan
pyramids don't have that sort of feel to them,
they don't prescribe interpretations of hierarchy,
quite the opposite,
     ask someone who doesn't have a conquistador
heritage to explain that they are:
  the gallows... guillotines... the tyrant is not
buried within, these aren't caves to entombing a
tyrant with all his riches...
      there are no chambers in these structures...
they were intended as architectural symbols of
common law... those presumptions European
*******... human sacrifice? a myth...
these were sights of capital punishment,
you stepped out of line: you'd get your heart
carved out and your body would drop from
the execution altar down the steps for
           the scavenger mob to tear you apart
even further: had you transgressed communal
consent... justice has to become overpowering
but that does not mean we carve a mount
Rushmore akin to the statues of the valley of
the kings of enthroned pharaohs...
  much of ancient Egypt lingers in what we
call "modernity"... esp. in America...
             and the world is currently establishing
itself into cold war ii (i said that once,
can't remember when)... and until this is firmly
established, that it's clearly accepted that we're
dealing in a cold / intellectual war, then
we'll pass all that intelligence and engage in a hot war /
and emotional war, as characteristic overflowing
of populism, which at present times: has
all the coordinates, but no proper vector to
allow a congregational march toward impeding
dangers... but better a second cold war than
a third world war... so much of ancient Egypt
in America... the washington memorial for one...
what's the other name for it? ah... obelisk;
or what the pagans built to counter the fear of
impotence: well... we've established a bountiful
supply of humans... can we do a floral pattern
now? oddly enough we embraced tomb-pyramid
builders from the north-eastern side of
Africa's brain-dead region, and trusted
conquistadors wiping out a people that used
pyramids to stress the importance of law:
i can't see no reason to think that those pyramids
were intended for human sacrifice...
capital punishment? well, d'uh... because wasn't
Golgotha so unspectacular as to be less
than what it was? had they crucified him in private,
in some back-alleyway crucified to a door,
would history open its doors to the advent of
Christianity? don't think so.
what i'd really love to see is people with
necklaces of silver, and the thing dangling on them
would be a different torture mechanism...
an iron maiden... it's like prescribing pain is
necessary... it's a dogmatic ruling on a once upon
a time (even the briefest) chance of happiness...
but even then certain philosophers say:
why be happy, when you can be interesting?
how interesting do you have to be so many times over
to not even wish for a stillness of neither want
nor drive to go beyond what you already have?
i don't know if this is an adequate comparison,
but in terms of interesting...
   a movie (side effects, 2013) utilises only two songs
in its official title:
   the focal point of a ******
       is staged to a "sleepwalking" woman preparing
a dinner for three (only two people are in the apartment),
the song? thievery corporation's the forgotten people...
i knew the band prior, and i've seen the film
before... but i never bothered to watch the credits...
i remember the odd couple who'd sit in cinemas and
engage in watching the end-credits, always the one
odd bunch: as if saying thank you to all the people
involve... a quick stroll through a graveyard is probably
comparably akin....
   and the other song? Bach's
   orchestral suite no. 2 in B minor, bwv 1067 -
     but i can't remember whether it's actually featured
in the film, simply because there's no focal moment
in the film where it can be heard as prominently as
the first song... and then there's thomas newman in
between (no surprise);
but a film like that is a meditation...
             if only two songs are used, chances are
the dialogue will have many strengths, because there
will be a multiplicity of consistent reinterpretation,
a bit like talking into a Tate Modern and seeing
Rodin's the kiss statue (inspired by Dante's divine
comedy), sketching it from the northern perspective,
the southern, western and eastern perspectives...
    i've seen few films that accredit a very minimalistic
soundtrack... on that note, how songs could literally
be translated into film titles: side effects - the forgotten people,
  dead poets' society - carpe diem, american beauty -
any other name, are there others? there probably are.

but that's nothing compared to last night's antics...
   some people climb the Everest... clap clap clap...
some people design super-suction vacuum cleaners...
clap clap clap...
                    from time to time i solve sudoku drunk
(no clapping)... but there's a narrative involved,
the narrative goes when you try to map out solving
one of these 81 "rubic" squares... applause for
speed with these babies like applause for premature
*******... aren't they compatible?
   we all have limitations, mine came yesterday,
when i allocated superscript numbers to the journey,
quiet literally an optical tangle, i should have used
       things like ª ' “ ‘ ¨ † above the plotted line...
but it only takes one mistake to ground you
   and then you have to go back and make minute corrections,
as the notes themselves suggest (crazy eyed darting):

exhibit a.

0    0    0    0    0    2    7    0    0
0    0    0    0  ­  4    0    0    2    0
2    0    5    1    0    7    0    0    8
0    9    0    0    0 ­   0    2    0    1
7    0    0    8    0    0    0    6    0
0  ­  0    6    0    7    0    5    0    0
4    0    8    7    0    0­    1    0    0
0    1    0    0    0    5    0    0    0
0    0 ­   9    0    1    0    3    0    0

   exhibit b. html that doesn't allow subscript
            or superscript notation, hence the brackets
   denoting movement (pending)

9 (24)    0          3 (23)    0    8 (5)    2    7    1 (2)    0
1 (12)    8 (8)    7 (9)      0    4          0    0    2          0
2            0         5            1    0          7    0    3 (13)   8
8 (7)       9        4 (18)     0 5 (33) 0    2    7 (1)      1
7            5 (16) 1 (14)     8   2 (20)   0    0    6           3 (21)
3 (19)    2 (17)  6            0   7           1 (15)  5           8 (6)    0
4            3 (27)  8           7   0            0         1            5 (28)    2 (26)
6 (30)    1          2 (22)   4 (31)    3 (32)    5    8 (3)    0    7 (11)
5 (29)    7 (10)    9    2 (25)    1    8 (4)    3    0    0

      it is no surprise that the notation played a key part
in having failed to map out the route taken,
       when you're using numbers in a puzzle
  it's almost an inevitable path to failure,
since you're making superscript "bookmarks" at
high concentration, and without any distinction to
what the puzzle demands, hence you go "cross-eyed"
  in solving the puzzle, and superscripting your progress
using the same symbols that are required to solve it,
but given that the puzzle involves 81 slots
  with 9 x 9 identical components (only so rearranged
  to be not contradict the rule of the puzzle
i.e. 9 symbols in each square of the nine in total,
   with a 9 x 9 variation on all linear arrangements not
involving two similar symbols, i.e.
   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9, rather than 1 2 2 3 4 5 6 7 8) -
what became a hope to correct the mistake, but given
the intricacies of the progress, all the more harder to
recount steps and subsequently move forward with
   the spotted error...
hence a refresh, and the need for schematic,
given that there are 81 slots in total, with
     27 already in place, and given that there are 26
units of alphabet... how handy to actually persist in
using these characters, but adding diacritical variations
to make up 54 necessary, without invoking
      a 10 or a sz...

exhibit c.

0    0    0    0    0    2    7    1ą    0
0    0    0    0 ­   4    0    0    2    0
2    0    5    1    0    7    0    0    8
0    9    0    0    0 ­   0    2    7α    1
7    0    0    8    0    0    0    6    0
0 ­   0    6    0    7    0    5    0    0
4    0    8    7    0    ­0    1    0    0
0    1    0    0    0    5    0    0    0
0    0­    9    0    1    0    3    0    0

exhibit d.

nb. α = 1, ą (ogonek) = 2, á (acute) = 3, à (grave) = 4,
â (circumflex) = 5, ä (umlaut) = 6, cedilla missing,
   ã (tilde) = 7, b = 8, c = 9, ć = 10, č (caron) = 11,
ĉ (circumflex) = 12, ā (macron) = 13, ç (cedilla) = 14,
d = 15, e = 16, é = 17, è = 18, ê = 19, ě = 20, ë = 21,
f = 22, g = 23, ǧ = 24, ḡ = 25, ĝ = 26
         (now i figure, could have used Greek... d'uh!
ahh, i'll use it for the finishing touches),
        h = 27, i = 28, ı = 29, í = 30, î = 31, ï = 32, μ = 33
j = 34, δ = 35, k = 36, λ = 37, ł = 38, τ = 39, n = 40,
ń = 41, ñ = 42, o = 43, ō = 44, ø = 45, p = 46,
q = 47, r = 48, s = 49, γ = 50, φ = 51, χ = 52, ψ = 53, ω = 54.

before i begin the puzzle... there's a reason why a caron
g (ǧ) might exist, and why a grave z might not...
   and why there's a piquant difference between
an acute z (ź) and ż - depending on the aesthetician,
who decides to move away from the national linguistico-aesthetic
dogma... for example the name George,
orthodoxy states you must learn the aesthetic version
of Grze'gosz... but you would also be able to write
the alternative: Ǧegoš - given that rz is equivalent to ż,
    and given that there is no grave accenting of z,
but there is the acute (ź), perhaps you could consider
the dot a convergence point that could assimilate
sound, immediately over the caron g... of course none
of these remarks are intended for application: because
they would never reach a consideration in a learning
curriculum of any nation, a whimsical idea derived from
the remnants of the esperanto experiment...
  from what i can see, ǧ would equal grz, and
the reason that rz exists at all, and it equivalent to ż
is because a grave version of z is missing, and that
the acute z (ź) exists, and there is no point of balance
that otherwise is the foundation of the caron...
  i wouldn't have thought focusing on such "trivial"
signs above letters provided so much pecking-orders.

exhibit e. focal points in greek notation

9ǧ    4ñ    3g    6o    8â    2    7    1ą    5τ
1ĉ   ­ 8b    7c    5p    4    3q    6ń    2    9ł
2     6γ     5      1      9r    7    4n    3ā    8
8ã    9    4è    3s      5ψ   6ω    2    7α    1
7    5e    1ç    8      2ě    4ø    9ō    6    3ë
3ê    2é    6    9λ    7    1d      5    8ä    4k
4    3h     8    7     6χ    9φ    1    5i    2ĝ
6í    1    2f    4î     3ï      5     8á   9μ    7č
5ı    7ć    9    2ḡ    1     8à     3     4j     6δ

thus completed: there's a reason why the majority
of the narrative is done utilising diacritical marks,
i could have used many more distinct symbols,
but the point is: there are very few focal points
that can be ascribed distinct markings,
most of the puzzle is done on the basis of "crazy eyes",
i.e. darting eyes - focal points do emerge after
much darting about the squares, notably when
a linear sequence is completed, or whenever one of
the 9 squares is completed, or when all nine squares
contain nine 7s or 8s...
      or that's one way to go about not having any whiskey,
the rain pouring outside, and the night stretching
into a near eternity -
            
exhibit f. narrative of correction, actual excerpt

it began at h, i.e. labyrinth corner no. 27,
******* trainspotting! this is going to be like reading
the time for the next train to arrive at Waterloo!
  5(28), 5(33)?, 5(28),
  6(30), 4(31), 3(22), 5(33), 33? 9(38), 4(34),
  6(35), 4(36)...
6(41) < 4(40) < 5(39) < 9(38) < 9(37)....
       4(42) < 6(43) < 9(44) < 4(45) < 5(46) < 3(47) < 9(48) < 3(49) <...>
   6(58) > 9(51) < 6(52)...
        longest period spent on 3(13) / ā -
   and the notation that gave way to this spiral?
5(33), which actually ended up being 5(53) / ψ.

mothers of
               "β"-males;

and the whole world,
and all the world,

                        ⠃⠇⠊⠝⠙

          a civilised world...
                  
                      without a chance
to think!
               i just think of:
mothers of the beta-males...
         how sooner i am
to relinquish the act of
                        impeding death!

i die: but also make a relief
of having had a mother!

               as man...

                       loser loser loser
loser loser loser loser loser loser
loser loser loser loser loser loser
loser loser loser loser loser loser
loser loser loser loser loser loser
loser loser loser loser loser loser...

        the one word mantra starts
bugging...

                 loser with that sort of
quiff?! twitter addict?!
   president of the united
states of h'america?!
          now you're *******
joking...
                  you aren't?!
          no comment.
no comment.
      and? no comment.

i like thinking about
   β-males... in terms of feminism,
and in terms of β-males having mothers...
by beta, i mean you don't / didn't
have a mother...
                                  o.k.?

        now you know the answer
my father would give...
              the d.n.a. ******* ends here!
now!
              you have your little
existential tirade about:
           holding a car-boot boutique
in an essex field...
     you're fine... have it:
i'm happy as ego becoming
extinct...
               ******* snow fairies.

I wake up in the morning, defeated by my dreams.
You pull my heart apart, you rip me at the seams.
I try so hard to be happy, I try not to care.
But loneliness seeps in, all alone, no ones there.

I put on my mask and continue with my day,
Pretending that I'm happy, it's easier this way.
I try to clear my mind, push out all despair,
Yet loneliness seeps in, all alone, no ones there.

Shuffle through the motions, don't pay attention to what I do,
I cannot force mind to stop thinking about you.
Yes I know that you don't want me, of this I am aware.
So loneliness seeps in, all alone, no ones there.

I lay in bed, to rest for the night,
Tear sting my eyes, impeding my sight.
A hallowed soul, into the darkness I stare,
As loneliness seeps in, all alone, no ones there.

my god, you embody admirable beauty
you replenish all the good when my world is crashing
with waves so persistent these rocks must remember
the importance they leave when the tide begins to fall
i'm dying to know, has this sand always been so white?
i find peace in the piles my car is collecting

i beam at the worlds these rocks are collecting
communal homes, no fighting; just beauty
my pale limbs get lost in sand so white
shortly revealing themselves as waves come crashing
sometimes i stand on that rugged pier and i fall
awaiting the swallow of the sea, forgetting what i shouldn't remember

here, the wind is always changing, it will never remember
these impeding worries I've been collecting
it may not be strong enough to catch my fall
but it floods my lungs with beauty
for a moment i feel this high is crashing
a seagull grooms his messy feathers, searching for the white

i tell the gull he's beautiful, despite his lack of white
he distracts me from what i shouldn't remember
in taking flight, i envy his crashing
colliding with the water at such height, i grasp the shells I've been collecting
i notice the tide receding from its path, revealing more beauty
tripping over sand, i race to the pier for one last fall

i attempt to leave but the oceans current begs for another fall
the powdery sand on shore grabs me by the ankles and i'm glowing white
i am flattered by this playful behavior, i'm grateful for its beauty
with you, my dear, my peace of mind is all you must remember
rest assured i will never abandon the memories we are collecting
for it is you, i run to when my world is crashing

i swiftly dodge the sudden rain so violently crashing
in a dreamy state, i observe the drops as they fall
still, my shoes are soaked from where water insisted on collecting
in my rear view i see the sand converts to mud and is no longer white
it doesn't matter though, its not the way i'll remember
a storm could never retract genuine beauty

recounting the days moments, drenched in beauty, i feel my body crashing
time is limited when trying to remember as my eyelids fall
white sand is all i see and i'm buried beneath the pillows I've been collecting

"Love, Love is a verb. Love is a doing word.
Fearless on my breath. Gentle impulsion
Shakes me, makes me lighter."
                ~~~
Snipping, mechanical apparatus of air
pushes around, the slightest elements of sound
unknown torment, blowing
leafs strewn through the corridor.
A reverse vacuum, no bag
only the earth
which perpetually maintains
the forceful stream of words
like
"snip" and "blow;"
they are verbs,
just like "love"
only harsher.

Your decisions don't merely impede the flow of days
relocating things that would like to stay
like crunchy leaves, unacknowledged beneath feet
until cries of ecstasy are heard by neighbors
who have nothing to step on.

Those discarded vestigial coverings would,
with a gentler blowing
have turned tepid, flaccid and freed.
Emerging from a snow covering
thawing and lying there, unashamed of their repose
shriveled and fully reclosed, recumbent.
Protecting from rough, sodden clothing, parts that can’t be hidden any other way--
diverging water toward infrastructure needs more urgent and vital
fallen leafs would not only **** grass, but let flowers grow
flowers of intimacy and exuberance
touching the hands of young women.

The sounds escaping mouths of leaf blowers are a demand--
they are a type of love lacking tenderness
myopic utterances of planning committees
who don’t know love is a doing word,
like snip and blow, an impulse, only gentler.
Ordinances are the "circumcision-for-hygiene-purposes" of urban planning,
never seeing that leaving things concealed by Fall
is the best way to see Spring
and experience the joy of new awakening.
They should let each leafy-******* grow,
covering our shaft, our ground.
Prevent the pleasure-impeding growth of grass!
And the earth will continue to cry
out!
Tiny sensations of pressure
moving delicately along its surface,
cause soil to writhe with lost control
then erupt with wild flowers and shrubs.
And if not these, then at the very least,
trampled torsion of plodded soil
covered by desperate human debris, collecting upon it
showing what we try to hide:
our wastefulness and discarding of things we really need
ripping off our closeness sheath
and replacing it with dark, green, translucent barriers
of grass
and blowing machines with blades
their maintenance demands.

Our apartment complexes have ambient
tones of industrial malls
when your procedures are taking place
you cut and snip and blow.
Maybe your attempt at concealment
has been a revelation.
But the fearlessness of love
I feel
is something you thought you could snip
and blow.

only today i learned ø denotes
        an encoding of diameter,
and it's Scandinavian,
                     or how the globe is
past the equator,
         and the lob-sided earth,
winters in Australia in the Summer months
in Europe.

    high philosophy begins with Beijing
dialectical highs,
    but take the route of lower philosophy
and encounter diacritics rather than dialectics,
because that matters, too,
        θought, a moral ought,
   and φilosoφy - and missing ought -
          and the two being irreversibly twins
in said... or θought an immoral ought,
                 sure, tubes, mistook ø74 for something
akin to φ...
    high philosophy never acquires a diacritical
dilemma...
                  or why local don't do anything
but actuate automatic application
   and those immigrant, or bilingual troops question...
    ø = diameter, not to be confused with the θ;
             higher philosophy begins with dialectical
beginnings,
               "lower" philosophy also begins with
dialectics, but it ends with diacritical application,
rather than utopian: nowhere from nothing.

what am i going to say next? *machado de assis's
philosopher or dog? introduction.

          ........................................­..................................
..............................­......................................................
..........­.................................................................­.........
.......................................................­.............................
...................................­.................................................
...............­.................................................................­....
............................................................­...........
(or a paragraph on the pleasure of drinking,
    or how to save you an optometrist appointment,
or how to take an interlude,
   to do the opposite of the Andy Warhol stipend
for making enough buggers hearing your
opinion, unchallenged,
                    but never having a diacritic concern).
hence the pending, or what everyone seems to
desire these days, circa 100 years later,
     how to provoke an interlude, how to hunger
for interludes rather than fame,
           i also drew a sketch before starting,
       shat -
                  and hey presto!
           ****!
                   yuck in orange in florescent.
yellow (florescent), F, pretty pretty pretty,
          in pink the bit about diameters and phi,
           again in yuck orange: swigs and the wiggle...
a paged concern for graffiti.
                  again, pending, yet to be hottie
and poster boy of a poem,
        again the impromptu break worth of fame that
actually isn't fame, but a chance to compare
                   how much whiskey makes up for the
Niagara continuum.
        again, (pending):
............................................... (how the hell do you
write pending ~15 minutes later?!)

the concept of Monday is greatly undermined
by Darwinism,
    as is Tuesday through to Sunday,
generally the function-able week desists the idea
of an Iron Age, as does the pantomime
of all that's worth celebrating -
generally speaking Darwinism is anti-history,
theology has nothing to ask of Darwinism
to argue against,
                             theology isn't a history,
but Darwinism is the purest variation
of history, variance of how we define logic
and its applicability, whether it's
i + think            /             1 + 1
    and have the moral attraction toward a 2
         or variate a moral action into a 3:
cos Radiohead simply sang 2 + 2 = 5 in a song:
cheat! matchstick principle regarding counting!
machado de assis? Darwinism is peppered with
overt imagery than salted with:
you get to sneeze a lot...
             a writer's voice: irony, mockery,
         consolidating the lessened counter-productiveness...
Flaubert, Dickens, Zola, Balzac, etc.,
                    homie, rap that **** out, condense it,
i thought Brazil was half the way America should have
endeared you? i had problems with Prussia
Austria and Russia... guess i was wrong how thuggish
i had to be with the Orpheus *******...
       cos the lyre was dumbo blunt deaf and therefore
cacka...
     higher philosophy begins with dialectics,
"lower" philosophy begins with diacritics -
     a return to the source, a debate with Ivory scales
concerning the Rosetta - a neo-formatting of
what's quiete
                           right: Sophia: hence anew: Rosetta.
and all for the pear that's woman and whether Satan
chose the fruit prudently according to Milton.
or the progress of a drunk:
centipedes and Fitzgeralds, Hemingways,
lust and last said...
                           the cf. of every apparent transitory
made to provoke the quasi and quack,
              ducking the Donald and the *****,
in agreement,
                     a happiness toward the tiresome
encrusting of what's worth being stated,
and then the deviatory,
                              as marketed a deviation
from a Louis Napoleon -
                                    because no Belarus was
to be chequered by an impeding force...
                      hence the cha cha cha...
                                    and hence the stanzas of
Argentinian tango...
              juicy and later the cruelty choking
of what some might make of Macbeath's habitual thinking
                                       worthy of a classroom
                audience; and that too is
exposable in return for being disposable.
higher philosophy is regarded as such with
dialectics,
                        but "lower" philosophy is
yet to be regarded as such with diacritics -
     not a case of what's to be said, and thus bedded,
but a case of how's something said,
                                and thus given a freedom
of: bedded, wedded, pimped, or whimpered into
                                     surviving writing a poem about;
also achieved by Humphrey and that chuckle of
revising Casablanca for an unnecessary quote dynamic /
diatribe when Hiroshima said
                 much more than the above certified:
boom! 1 million ******* dead.
       that's an overt-quote that gropes the many
amens among the citations of Marilyn, and still gets away
with                     a memory of J.F.K.,
           because that ****-honing masterpiece
was needing my memory rather
                                   than a b. b. q.    scewing.
          i find people rather forgetting:
jeopardy battered boundless gym orientational
                     thoughtless two shots of tequilas
            and three paraphrases of sours in biting a lemon
to upkeep a trough of a suntan with the H-He:
boom boom, higher tier laughter,
             ingesting that inflation of prop
                    boom boom, v bomber,
                     squeeze...
                    lob-side lo & behold,
                                       'n'        - squiggly extra thus born.

The cursed clouds decide to stay
Through this blacked out phase
So I proceed to play
During darkened days

Swirling black
In a sky of flak
The courage I lack
To counterattack

Bombs explode
Smoke blocks the sun
Now that I know
Dying can be fun
To the finish line I run
After I feel I am done

The sky gets darker
By permanent markers
The sun hides
The dude abides

I am under a curse
Of things getting worse
I look for a nurse
Out the back of my hearse

Love can be found
And unwound
No one is bound
So they leave town

The days used to be bright
Until I found reasons to fight
And the grass died
When my *** lied

I can't retrieve the light
When I am blinded
I'm unable to use sight
So I cannot find it

Darkened days
Block the sun's rays
I can't see through the haze
Of these darkened days

Time passes
Like lightning flashes
And depleting drug stashes
Impeding love's crashes
When I'm burnt to ashes

I don't know if I'm romantic
Or in an existential crisis
But as I become tantric
I feel I must fight this
So I wield a sword
Of tears that poured
For those I adored
Until they brought darkness
Despite my praise
When they act heartless
I live darkened days

i actually did own a doberman pinscher called axl... yes: no e in the same. ****** was mad, what do you expect? his ears were sliced so he could look like some urukai orc of isengard... try trimming the ears of a human being: to then pretend "think" they'll be wiser... that part where they chop of the tail of a doberman? i wasn't around when that happened, i can clearly picture the plastic surgery on my axl... so what am i going to say about circumcision? makes the ******* mad! they're sending ****-picks to people... how about i just watch you smile? is circumcision the ideal motivation for preserving life? like you need the complete vuvla to be attracted by it? ******* surely isn't fun with that revision... just as much as saying: a billion ching changs... or we could do away with the lips and call these people the todkompflächeln; personally? i'd begin the aesthetic surgery on the ears, maybe making a few "elves" would help the situation... otherwise m.g.m. gets no mention, because those ******* don't even know what ******* with one feels like: i can peel mine back for *******... but you can't cloak with one during the grand practice of: taking a ****.

billions... it's starting to look very much like a *****,
given the character names... i mean: wags?
next season is bound to invoke the nick
*****... it has become an existential prison,
since the moon landing: bye bye
the brothers grimm and the fairytale...
i know this because someone has already
made the same conclusion...
billions? who'd i like to doppelgänger?
   mike wagner... scalp him, skin him, whatever,
i am trying to believe that i don't have
that wry smile of his when writing this,
the cheaky chappy type of smile,
what i can tell you is what happened yesterday
after my drinking session ended...
spring's impeding, *******, i'm going to
watch more television since i'll be sad having
moved from, what could be best described
as alaskan funfair... night by the 5pm mark...
i sometimes get the shakes...
but only out of anger, that boils down to
my neighbour complaining that i sometimes
lose the plot and say things aloud...
the boundaries i'm crossing is equivalent to a bird
singing in the night...
    but last night, was, spectacular...
   i forgot what chess even was...
   i had heidegger's *ponderings ii - vi
(in hardback) on the windowsill...
                       i had a crescent version and a complete
version of amitriptyline (25mg)...
       nurse! scalpel i'm getting a headache!
    ami-tri-pty-line (ptee line? or pti lean?
yes, lean, no fat on it;
   so as i was about to get the sucker punch
i was playing imaginary dominos
even if just that, or throwing invisible dice,
exchanging positions of these two pills
            and four swan (brand) filter tips...
i do remember saying something into the night,
what it was? i don't know.
            so it was either dominos or "throwing"
dice on a book on the windowsill,
moving the one complete pill and the other
bitten off crescent (what's that? about 13mg?)...
and the filter tips...
                and it was on a hardcover surface
of a book on a windowsill...
             i knew i would take the plunge at
some point, the question was when that would happen;
i don't know what i had to even cherish
the grace of thought at that moment...
the next oddity came with an empty glass
and trying to balance it on the parapet ledge...
it turned out to be a case of fractions...
     the tipping point stood at: two thirds...
it would never be done in halves, and certainly not
quarters...
              see... mm... money is fascinating
as a concept, how it was arrived at;
  i can know the man who invented the lightbulb
(jefferson, right? ol' tommy)... money?
   no clue... who could have "blinded" the greeks
to the extent where we stand now?
      the more i drink the more i think that this
cann't lead to any sort of accomplishment other than
the stated words...
    i do really retract into speaking verse that
i never write down... it's there one minute, gone the next;
but that domino / dice thing with 1.5 sleeping pills
and 4 cigarette tips (yes, i can roll a cigarette
like a machine, so the tips were not ***** by tokes
to remind people of marmite / vegemite of australia
colouring): i smoke cigarettes thinking about a sun-tan.
why was i doing this?
don't know, what's the point of playing domino
or throwing dice to gamble?
                     there is a chiral point to be made,
or at least a parallel point...
         a chiral-parallelism, as is the case with concept
of parallel per se...
such that title suggests i stole "something" that actually
steals...          hollywood and cuckoos...
      there are always two ways of saying the same
thing: moving forward, however dichotomous those
sayings are...
                  since that approach later turns into
a dualism that then eats at psychologism and morphs
into monism and: we're back at square one.

i keep looking at people become serious diarists, like Paulo Coelho writing the alchemist, which can be an odd experience... i've got ants in my pants and i'm a dog's bone away from playing dead, sitting in mantra of: load off visiting Singapore and never getting the hangover joke of Bangkok... sinus gaping pore? it's all ******* feathery anyway... flusters of rouge should fantasy come to life.

learn to cackle, thus said: invoke a magpie, to learn laugher -
ha ha (etc.), as can easily be turned into a cackle,
only magpies cackle and even funnier,
applicability of diacritical markings,
as if stealing letters of silver spoons...
Scōtlānd: meiné skoot,
overt
           lá                           -nd...
spacing for the macron -
          and hence the acute without spacing...
                          truth to the tooth
and elsewhere bone-shattering governing the rattle
of the ribs... a canary's song least that of worth
with a woad's pigmentation...
               or said ivory to turqouise...
azure, and vented in lavender...
           but the cackle came
with *Scōtlānd: learn the linguistic
arithmetic! the macron und umlaut
synonym... if applying it learn it,
if not applying it: learn Bulgarian,
Oristice the peacocking accents...
        turquoise though:
Eurydice... Orestes... synonym of acne...
so few do, in that the diacritical indication
is a higher-tier arithmetic...
            such that the less implied is
governed by the impeding peacock variation
that suggests Da, in all prevailing -isms,
                   as saying raw, to a Tartar
over a horse limb steak galloping toward Ukraine...
         but here we are: adorning tartan
of chequers and navy that mingles blue & purple...
                       and here we are abiding to
the Faroe Isle recluse...   spelled aisle    said
i'll...      and that i dare not wallow in it much further...
haggis neeps and tatties... wanking over
a cow's testicular dangly... truant to all truth...
        and all truth to the truant rodins....
  thus to laugh excessively is to cackle like a magpie,
   and hark a phlegmish soar with the raven...
                and end all tragedies without
a Hebraic definition of ha as
      the: direct article... for good manners suggest
that no clue be justified in cradling the sigma
of either the zenith of the Babylonian tower
or the spiral of condescending might twirling into
an imploding tornado over Egypt and all things
                  extravagantly Pythagorean...
  or as Balaam said: i rode a donkey out of Yerusalem:
sprechen yiddish.            
               three years among them...
  and i can say with much demand: Scōtlānd...
scootlaand...     if i ever learned to cleanse,
i also learned to adapt... a circumstance of thinking
myself adequately counter-inept to share
   the Baltic with Lapland skiers, as synonymous
and congregational in being translated into Ęglish
          for what already is: a truancy when cultural
criticism isn't enough... because the culture makes
one truant from engaging with it... because there
is no culture to be critical of...
                   a hermit foretold and with clasped hands
   gave alms, and later: with a slow clapping
          made hands orate what the tongue made shoelace-
                                                       ­         (op+. -spaghetti)       .

Clouds go through my flesh,
As I feel my mind elevate high into the atmosphere
Steering clear of rain clouds
All the negative energy gets me down,
This smoke is thick and its loud
Inspires laughs like a clown
I can feel the vibration of life
When I’m on the ground.
In the air there’s not a care in a world for me
No untimely emergences impeding on my life
Like a burglary, stealing my time and my essence
At times my presence is a blessing
When I get with Mary Jane the game changes
She’s no regular Dame she invades my body
And promotes changes
Can even make me forget my name
Insignificant is my pain in her eyes
When she blows my mind
My problems whisk away in the wind
She heals my mental and physical ill’s
Without me popping a pill filled with poison
She is part of the Earth so for what it worth
I try to preserve the dirt, that’s where I will go
And that’s where she will be
So one day in her seeds I’ll be
And maybe someone will get high off me.