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preservationman Sep 2015
Freedom to learn
A rewarding career that will help one to earn
Opportunities to explore
Given rights that no one should ignore
Academics focusing on one’s Civil Rights
The constitution of liberties that would excite
The whole concept is for nationalities of varying creeds that we all should unite
Lectures in one being that individual person
Theories having no specific conditions
Civil Rights College
A devoted Ed for short
Stimulate one’s mind with no abort
Civil Rights being a wake up from the norm
An educated advocate being an intellectual alumni
The order of the day of continued respect being the buckeye
Respect being the code with no question of why
Civil Rights College being an honest education
Not a Political vibe of one’s indication
Civil Rights College, a multitude of voices being with an educated right
The theory behind Civil Rights College encouraging the world not to be uptight
The motto of Civil Rights College, “Take charge of your career and let knowledge help you to preserver”.
When the weight lifts
I rise
Hope like sunshine fills
My eyes
With gentle certainty
Realize
All things change
Nothing dies

I'm not as smart
As I thought
I needed to be
Now I see
I never needed to be
As smart as that

I idolized the intellectual
Depression was my reward
For failing to meet that standard
But life gets hard as the years go by
Harder, harder, yet harder still
Death loses more of its sting
The older I get
Until I'm happy to go out
Like Kevin Spacey's character
In American Beauty
Lost in the portrait of better times
Distracted unaware of danger behind
For at this moment Heaven fills his mind
A camera shot the photograph in his hands
A hateful man shot a .45 slug into his head
With a smile on his face he fell to the floor dead
Life extinguished in the exact amount of time
It took for the flashbulb to illuminate the image
In the frame
Smiles all around, except for the executioner
He was miserable
Feeling the weight of pounds and pounds
Lowering onto his back

Never to lift, thrown into
Water
Drowned like unwarranted litter from the
Fat belly of a mangy dog
Sinking like the ******* twisted face
Of the unwanted feline
Ghost sends for the ropes
Ghoul fetched the heavy stones
Goblin tied the ropes to the animals feet
Gully dwarf secures the stone
And I'm the only one with the sense
To see what needs to be done

Weight has lifted
I'm not as smart as I thought I was
Slow down, read aloud
It's almost as relaxing as cannabis

But that don't mean
I ain't gettin no cannabis tomorrow
And I hope it's bomb sativa
Cuz I wanna fly
Kristen Nix Aug 2012
The king paces his bedchambers
Shivering as he pulls his soft brown robe tighter
He remembers a day from long ago
That peasant girl.
She once graced his majesty's hand
with but a simple kiss.
His heart stopped as their eyes met.
He beheld the love within her eyes
and she the pain and hope in his.
Each knowing that with that kiss,
something had changed in them both
From then on, they spent afternoons rolling around and playing in the grass
They went on strolls and had intellectual conversation
She fascinated him like no other creature could
That peasant girl with golden hair bright as the sun
He felt warm whenever she was near
Which brought him abruptly back to the reality of his cold room
His girl with mane of sunshine rays was nowhere to be found
She left only a trace of a memory

A kiss for a king
skaldspiller Jul 2014
Why I no longer lie or change:

I loved a strong man
he made me feel weak
He choked my songs
my voice ceased to sing
I loved a hero
but he zapped my strengths
Took my strong words
broke them beneath his feet
My words for him were love
his were hate
all my insecurities
he said he was trying to push away
until the day
he decided I had changed too much
Because I had changed too much
Changed by every word he said
He decided to break his promise
forget the ring I wore
And take another girl to bed.


There are no good memories of you:

I hate that I can remember being loved by you
The look in your eyes the first time we slept together
it was a January morning you wore a green sweater
I remember how you said our names all mixed together
I don’t know when we changed
but your oh ****, your ending phrase
your truth turned lie
blew back over everything
I have no good memories left of you
they are all tainted by hatred and pain
now I hate the way you said my name
how it was not as safe on your lips as I believed
And I hate what you had made of me
by the end
I hate what we could have been.
I do not hate that we are not
I am glad that you are gone
I only wish that you had thought
to leave my heart alone.


Your bookshelf was too small:

Though your suggestions were good, though you read every classic, though you knew every (over-spoken) line, you knew too narrow a scope. Though I agree that very little remains unspoken after the classic works. Your shelf of scarcely over seven books, and the fact I never saw you read one, should have conveyed to me a point of disaster that I somehow did not see coming. I have drunk in the words of others since I was a child. I have dived in bargain bins and raided library discards for one more book to read. You could have afforded a library beyond what I could have imagined, and your greatest concerns would have been what people thought of the books you kept and if their spines all matched. I have read almost every book on my shelves. I think they number in the hundreds and I have read so many more besides. And you, you disdained new work. Your pretentiousness and pseudo-intellectual paths fooled even me, until I believed that maybe you, with your little shelf, could offer me something I had not yet discovered. I think you thought so too. But my honest thoughts on you loving a writer are that you, with your little shelf and your boxes and your preconceived notions of what people should be, had no way of knowing how to love someone as open as a writer; someone who can turn their whims with the setting of the sun, who can live in worlds you have never seen and longs only to share them. You with your little boxes and your little shelf never deserved my mind or my stories in your life. I am glad my books never found homes on your shelves.
Noname Jul 2013
I don’t consider myself an intellectual.
And this is not one of my aims.
But I admire intellectual people.
I am a practitioner of madness this month
so bless your bravery to vex me
if you want to see intellectual slaughter
it will be a gift and pleasure for me
more the better, for fear I do not have
not in this month of madness

Come swine drink my vintage wine
it maybe warm but I know you like it
then like a ***** give me more
of your unfounded slanders you *******
come dine with me
in my month of madness


By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris
April Sep 2018
“Say what you mean and mean what what you you say child”

A Dear reverence from my 6th grade teacher. One I will never forget or admire more.
Mr. Murrey. Semper Fi
You will live on fore ever.
You placed me in a corner.  I learned, you inspired me..
In about 1868,
William Torrey Harris,
Wanted to teach the great.
He instituted early efforts in schools,
To reach his goal, now and forever,
To educate the gifted,
And make them even more clever.

In about 1901,
In Worcester, Massachusetts,
Teachers opened the first school,
Specifically for gifted students.

In about 1954,
Ann Isaacs was really not a bore.
It was under her leadership that it was founded,
An association that propounded.
The association was therefore called,
The National Association of Gifted Children, one and all.

In about 1972,
The Marland Report was issued to schools,
T’was the first formal meaning,
Of giftedness and it’s teaching.
Teachers were strongly encouraged,
To define it broadly, with courage.
With academic, intellectual, and leadership achieving,
Visual and performing,
Arts, creative and productive thinking,
Gifted people were diagnosed,
And the teachers became engrossed,
In teaching them the most.

In about 1974,
The Office of the Gifted and Talented was given a status,
Like never before.
Finally it was,
Made to be official,
The Office of G&T;,
Was now more beneficial.

In about 1988,
Congress passed,
The Jacob Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Act.
This was a rather large part,
Something that was just right smart,
Of the Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

In about 1990,
The National Research Center for Gifted and Talented,
Was established.
At the University of Connecticut it was located,
And it was also associated,
With the included researchers, none named Prinia,
At the Unis of Georgia, Yale, and Virginia,
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Should we invite the neighbors over for dinner?
Their politics so different from ours.
All the more reason. Combat anomie!
He's worried the town's losing population
but opposes immigration. I like immigrants
but hate passing people on my morning walk.

The whole mountainous western region of the state
is losing population at a rate of 1% per annum.
The young move out, the old stay put but
young artists priced out of big cities move in
looking for affordable studio space. How low
can the population go as long as rents stay low?

We did agree about the fire department expansion
being premature (him) or unnecessary (me).
He argued we should renovate the high school first
the roof is caving in and walls crumbling.
But you can teach under a spreading chestnut tree
or baobab and science needs the world for a laboratory.

I teach at the old 2nd St. jail in Pittsfield
a town that doesn't know if it's coming up or going down.
A few shootings last month, no deaths.
They're holding their breath but also trying to attract life
science businesses to the industrial park. The local bank's
expanding, buying smaller banks in neighboring civilizations.

Eventually our fire department got the vote they wanted,
just called another meeting and packed the auditorium.
The final winning argument was we can do the school,
the fire house and the police station all at once.
Don't accept defeat, limitations. Defeat anomie!
Anomie means lawlessness and purposeless in Greek

so that's not exactly what we're trying to defeat.
It's the mismatch between our aspirations and resources,
no, the dissonance between our tribe and nation,
the individual as ****** animal and intellectual,
the farmer and the banker, the loved one and the litter,
whatever happens to you after you die and belief in reincarnation.

For me, it always boils down to mortality
every conversation, which is why no one comes to dinner.
Whether the fire department buys an exorbitant parcel
at the expense of a future school renovation
in a town slightly losing population but still viable
with a college, bank, artists and a few working farms

is everything and nothing, as Borges says.
Deutsch says death ought to be curable.
The new high school or fire station, conditions like anomie
v. democracy, new life forms, self-conscious species
from the laboratory or the biome. How de body?
Today ok. Tomorrow I don't know. Potential

energy, lover, killer, anomie. Karl Popper
had such faith in the rational whereas Niebuhr
acknowledged man's ego is uncontrollable except
by force. Conflict is inevitable. But at dinner
we agree it doesn't always have to be violent or terminal.
We can do the fire department, police station, the school and anomie.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
Julian Mar 2020
In the most precise terms accessible to the vast repository of considered lexicon, this passage describes the finifugal destiny of infectious myopia that, when dredged through the rabble and bugaboo of sensationalism that outmodes the modular gravity of vogue chicaneries belonging to the catchpole of the watchtowers that sink into a hibernal abyss by the crafty subversive elegance of the magnetic pull predicated on the prolific disposition of the serenity of nature to overpower the lust for civilization and thereby provide the calm equipoise of the confident desert,even when famished, to overtake those inclined to urbane bustle with the eventual drought of a ****** kitsch world inured to pollution reverting because of an exaggerated hubris embalmed by a composite nurture into the freedom of a leveled compass of moral dignity found in nature, ultimately astounds itself because of peremptory pulchritude. This prophesies a tip-toed dance with extravagance that ultimately humbles even upright civilizations with the magnetism of the elementally pristine to bequeath a licentious freedom of extravagation that philanders on maidan territory--beyond the ******* of the reprisal of peevish cavils of recalcitrant cognomens and the despotic inclinations of civilized but brutish incursion upon the warped reversion of priorities that enthrones serenity above bustle of latitude over the prerogative to jostle the crowded quagmire of inventive but abortive spectacles of tributary happenstances of the newfangled ochlocracy--because the immediate convenience of civilization is destined to crumple by clockwork flaws inherent in machination what nature can carve effortlessly through inseminated rejuvenation.
    It is not because of the rantipole revelry of the noisy cacophony that we are starkly indifferent to the hum of the melliferous agency that leads to ecocentric governance, it is rather because the conflagrations of the crowded humdingers of our times have lapsed into the crevasse of unbounded lewdness of wretched ambsace that purports alienation more fundamental than civilization and thereby provokes a cutthroat collapse predicated on the creamy pettifoggery of saccharine sentiment that creates the rot of urbanity and goads participation in the renewal of the bionomic imperative to cherish the serenity and peace and freedom granted by nature that always conquers nurture by axiomatic consequence because to prepone filigrees of cosmopolitan bravery is contrary to the crass nature of the demur of deferred gravitas accorded not just by ceremony but by rehearsed gallantry that outlasts the sardonic reprisals of flayed anticipation.
      To the reader less lettered than enamored, I intend to remark as a pivotal linchpin of my rudimentary model of the universe that the epigenetic configuration of disorder inherent to the entelechy of physically mandated entropy is an overriding force that, through permutations of our sanitized history ,we discover as the direct autarky of the innate to trounce the willful volition of the artificial because the precedence of nature undermines the imperatives of a filipendulous swing of nurture to destroy itself because the clockwork upbraided thorns of society are more evident and incumbent than the circular irony of the circuitous wiredrawn windlass of feral proclivity to overwhelm the devices of one tragically supererogatory species that undercuts its own virility by sterilizing the future with the noisy cacophony of the epiphenomenal excess of profligate carnality accorded by Original Sin and later expounded and exploited into a titanic hubris that might eventually sink the prerogatives of the metropolis and favor the malingering peace of the remote frontier. I wonder often why aliens congregate in insular proximity to Native American tribes and propinquity to their shibboleths rather than abide by an enigmatic skullduggery to infiltrate lucrative metropolitan tracts and, with delicate entryism, seek to propitiate the inane aspects of population with the delicate poise of interposition and, when I ponder this deeply lugubrious question, I realize it is probably because the aliens themselves are byproducts of an overpolluted society famished eventually by its own adolescent excesses that eventually redound in the fulminations of subsequent dearth and therefore it cherishes the arid propinquity between the natural balance of nature with the composite symmetry of the evolved soluble valence of recycled treasuries of provincial benedictions rather than a global ploy of takeover and turnover because they fear the ultimate destiny of the thronging clangor and obviously prefer the surreptitious entrenchment in tribal allegiance rather than pushful attempts to proselytize an imperious solidarity geared for heroic redhibitions of human defect for ulterior conquest that vouchsafes a degree of ineradicable dominion. Ironically, in the fitful throes of sickness I have convalesced into a singular desultory equipoise with the serenity of pause rather than the drygulch of overmilked tactless celerity that taxes the limitations of even the petty simplicity of the most rudimentary concepts and, through deliberative subroutines, I conquer the articles of subaudition that lurk in remote corridors waiting for the marauding curiosity of unique proclivity to traverse a bypass of directional contingency and summit the immeasurable lengths of the incalculable by measured and sly blettonisms of profound wealth but dramatic appraisal of the rudimentary vineyard for both a pronounced variegation of hypostasized supersolid vagrancies and a selectively culled culinary harvest of slow piggybacks upon even the simplest countenance of endeavor rather than the unkempt rigid sustenance of the formal inculcation and the liberated bailiwick of how an unsung sorrow can elevate the fanfare of the loudest enchantments above the pother of kitsch debauchery.
  On a more relevant note, instinct is often the realm of finicky depredation and libidinous tabanids to oleaginous gimcracks exerted primarily by the geotaxis of regnant pedigree but fathomed more by imperative glorified brawn rather than a self-aware truculence of unalloyed volition exerted by the primitive kinship to violent boorish self-advancement that debases us because of the lurid savagery inherent to many evolved chicaneries ,that remains hidden to even the most glorified ommateum distorted by the glare of distant tantalization, distorts the invictive goals of the ergasia of intrepid lollops of the enantiodromia of entropy. And, because ambition convolutes and flanges the instinctual into importunate articulations that bypass necessity by gouging consequence into redoubled countenance--upon which we all abide to some degree in the maintenance of labile stature that often gets dredged by external impediments to pushful accomplishment to grace--is the stagecraft by histrionic leverage that is a direct byproduct of the ulterior composite of circumstance and precarious fluctuations of character. Essentially, genius manifests when the gluttony of metaphorical siderism that is sejungible from the seismic jostle of the ordinary outweighs the restraint of the ******* to immediacy to traipse above bamboozled tripwires and surmount the restive jealousy of common noemas of subtle verbigerations to heave from a recessive slumber of foothot dreams into the alchemy of inconspicuous levity beyond the admittedly aggrandized and glazed angular momentum of rhetoric to simmer with radiant efflorescence to pay homage to sedimentary notions rather than truckle to the imperial ambitions of predictable leaps to the great fanfare of the proper sabbatical from celerity for the conventicle of the extraordinary plane of the supersensible entelechy of all creation.
        In profound contemplation, what manifests relatively clearly is that the ruinous hesitation provoked by the incumbent din of uproar leads to the whiplash of warbled subliminal tilts in the axis of the chryselephantine machinations--even of the inquisitive--into the free-for-all of the acerbic displacement of the acquisitive to a scalding shipwreck that defies the cordial gravity of demarches of extenuation and further incites a dislodged frenzy of exacerbated priorities becoming jumbled to such a quizzical extent that the dash for jewels becomes the hegira from either afflicted incarcerations of panic or the conflagration of malignant opportunism. In these uncertain financial times, we henpeck—sometimes with extraordinary dalliance and otherwise with bodged exercises in profane self-sabotage—the surface endeavor by the agitprop that congeals, even in the most strident resourcefulness waged against it, to the folly of fulgurant pride in the fruitful bets against prosperity or the ennobled forbearance of the slumbered toil and toll of the taxation of capitalism upon itself that overhangs every specter or prospect for mammon without the overweening clarity of the disclaimer of labile liability because of lapsed conscientiousness. The spread of wizened ripples of the Jehus that dart with provident alacrity towards the myth of catalyzed proliferation without incidental pollution, endanger themselves by the fumes of their own arrogation of mercantile swoopstakes rather than by the contrary coexistence of debased timidity of the rigid priggishness of reluctance which is by far a greater enemy to the financial ecosystem than the outrecuidance of financial temerity because toxicity through accident leads to windfall by precedent because it is a primary mover rather than a flagitious inertia and therefore we should dwell on the immanent accessible treasury of the composite good for invictive truth. Returning to Isaiah, it is proclaimed that justice will dwell in the desert while the fruits of prosperity lurk both in vineyards of conquest and foreign forests of the unknown fertility of grace..because in a sense the vapid lifeless drawl of the beazed comportment of the husbandry of complacent but arid contentment is fashioned in a manner that relies on provident self-containment rather than the industrious bulldozer of calamity that besets dominions of heralded opportunity even when ripe times are precluded by the zeal of the epicurean demands of harvest that eventually famish rather than appease the diet of profane luxuriousness rather than a balance that leans on the notion of balance itself to predicate sustainability that laments its own dearth but never foments the outrage of volatile fortunes won or lost in the casino of opportunism.
    On a highly irrelevant note, the checkered figments of otosis are the ironic endearment of the expected to their expectancy and yet because of wrinkles of iterative doubts roaming the widely spelunked cavern of redoubled demerits subsuming self-contempt, the dregs of the self-important eventually sour into a cynicism that barks loudly at the locked corridor of pride but eventually trespass into the coherence of the incidental that spark the volitions of a self-gaslighted endeavor that creeps incumbent upon most scrutiny but less salient to the otiose obtuseness of the rankled hamshackle of perseverance in sublunary clarity.
   In the etiology of reiterative and normative catastrophe, the morale that severs the parturition of spunky audacity in favor of complacent staples of buoyant regimented alacrity vitiate the trim slaver of the luxuriant grovel into the alcoves of restive libido into the hegiras that hurdle over the conflations between necessity and want and transmute the furor of fitful windlass into a transcendent indelible ethos of ineradicable and endangered regalia of the swamp that, with bricolages of vigor, resorts to lopsided scrutiny of outcroppings of the profane rather than the self-aware poise of scacchic prevenance of ulterior action to the proper congruence of action to the composite reaction of the synectically impaired. In this vein, we must concede that a foundering vessel is often scuttled by self-infliction but ultimately salvaged by the modesty of resistance to plenipotentiary fictions of noisome crotaline tabanids and the recognition of the ramshackle facts of tentative triage in a wilderness vitiated by the alarming abundance of careworn exercises in hubris and overstated alacrity to the dimples of regress ultimately scars the geopolitics of specter and prospect to the extent that pernicious anomalies dart into prominence without castigation or that tremendous serendipities sink beneath the RADAR of the otherwise sturdy panopticon
   Thus, the polity of interwoven statesmanship by prospectus leads eventually to a culminated crux that is retrofugal more than finifugal and, in the absenteeism to the precedent that eventually provokes the unprecedented, we witness the folly of irrevocable design that, when sufficiently abridged by compendium, leads to a swift clarity that ponders vague traces of the superficially coherent into a suboptimal engrenage with contingent stipulations that often backfire because of the crude boorishness of statesmanship ratcheting into a vertiginous dance with instinctual donnism rather than appointing dignified salience the proctor of uncertain but sizable dubiety acknowledged and commanded into clairvoyant action rather than resigned acatalepsy.
  In the resulting vacuum of moral conundrum, it is not enough to predicate our bedrock on flourishing jackals in the wild nor the often lambasted sematic entrenchment of fixated designs of the impending perfidy inherent to every quagmire of bugaboo or foofaraw livid by smoldering embers of combustible and often deliberate begrudgement because the thriving industry of constative vacillations of pandered controversy are in itself ribald albatrosses of coarse conformity that derelicts the penumbra of consensus because of the firebrands of invictive bulldozing vigor to solve rather than to acknowledge the unsolvable to the extent that gridlock becomes an ayurnamat. This is why we witness a floundered perspective of slugabed deliberation contending with peremptory decisiveness verging on a saturnalia of syntax of cotqueans borrowing odium from plucky viragos because the snailed uncial crackjaw dynamics of the unfettered cyanotype for the dashpots of brittle absolution of the slowpoke substance of elevated debate provoke the ornery miscegenation of a hyped fluidity that stagnates rather than prolongs the integral linchpins of the maieutic capacity rather than the redress of incontinence only valorous by the ommateum of the owners of folly. So if outpaced by the cyprian flourish of cursory rhetoric carping on melodies of transparent rapture personified in an intellectual composite, I retain the art of flayed delamination clavigerous--only because of the heist of smoldered efflorescence—because the centered pivot of demegorics is a travesty of monument men relaying variable scaldabancos against modish artifice itself (often without even realizing the circular irony of such endeavors) because the fervor of snappy sizzle disembrangles the intorted ego from reckoning the drollery of the obtuse only to the mutiny of superlative acuity by surgical strokes to convalesce on dittology to reprove even the deftest articulations because of the prerogatives of the uncharted game that is never the behest of lifeless taxidermies of regelation.
    Ultimately the summit of the calculus of all human endeavor is outfoxed by the rapacity of erratic successive spurts of upheaval which can be forestalled by degrees of institutional prescience formed by cryptodynamic enigmas lurking in the troves of myth but the financial calamities we are witnessing are but the byproduct  of rabid scavengers feasting on restive panic rather than the inevitable degringolade of swollen tribunes steamy with an upbeat verve becoming vitiated by programmed incontinence. So what should we do with this crafty rejoinder to a variety of modern checkered quandaries and the skeumorphs of speculation? We should inquire to the utmost capacity to outlast the overhang of aleatory vicissitude and await optimal conditions stipulated by the constellation of veridical information rather than lean on inclement windlass of instinctive gambles predicated on specious fatalism or the contingent backfire of the ruinous roulette of exotic fanfare that shepherds the purblind into mundane degrees of perdition while the chary parlay their Ten Minas into a bonanza by decisive grit.
Joseph C Ogbonna Apr 2019
Nigeria my beloved home is under siege:
A death trap I see in her third mainland bridge.
The crying blood of the slain in the North-east
overwhelms vicious politicians with guilt.
Humans with hearts of beasts ravage her North-west,
outgunning her corrupt weakened armed forces.
Catacombs of mass graves quantify losses
incurred from incessant farmers-herders clash.
Darkness looms as stupendous amounts of cash
are cast in an energy sector like trash.
Her healing centres are no more than health morgues,
and her institutions breed intellectual dogs.
Her oligarchs of the six zones unify
to plunder, **** and line their pockets with filth.
With peanuts they entice poverty stricken
youths, just to have their sit-tight bids guaranteed them.
Indulgences from the gullible gratify
custodians of faith endowed with seducing lips.
My beloved Nigeria has failed to hearken
to the values of the elders before them.
With priorities misplaced, we go seeking
for stereotyped reputations in our trips
to foreign climes for filthy lucre to acquire.
Good Lord! When will values my mother-land require?
A poem depicting the author's concern for the deteriorating state of his mother-land
Brandon Halsey Jan 2012
Poems are useless
Though some people read them
They’re either trying to be romantic
Or pseudo-intellectual
Or they just like it
When words
Are formatted
Like
This

Words are useless
You can’t eat them
Or **** them
And despite what you may think
Words will not keep you company

Books are useless
Like clothes several sizes too big
You can only disappear into them
When you have given up on life
There will always be a good book
Lying around
alice Jun 2014
I sit here and type
while
the sounds of alcohol
dribble in
through the netting
of my screen.
The pseudo-intellectual noise
of the painfully stupid
absolutely
infiltrates.

I sit here and type
while
I wait
for the camel to burn.
For his blue feet
to go up in
small,
mighty embers.
Resisting their
ultimate
culmination.

I sit here and type
while
my cat blinks at the
iridescence of nothing;
glinting
in it's
all-encompassing
emergence.
The invisible fields;
designs of the
archaic.

I sit here and type
while
realities flatten
in lives
everywhere.
Tragedy unfolds
upon more
tragedy;
leaving no
survivors,
no triumph.

I sit here and type
while
the Oroboros
eat their own tails;
solidifying their
eternal return
and
cyclicality.
Serpents,
in movements
of blindness;
displaying their
ever-lasting existence.

I sit here and type
while
domesticated peoples
everywhere
bypass the phenomena
that is,
our humanity.
Giving in to
temporal compression;
eyes bandaged.

I sit here and type
while
nothing in particular happens.
The terminally mad
go mad,
the desperate prisoner
remains imprisoned,
the lipstick stains
the mouth
and we all
go on,
as if we weren't
the wiser.
Observations of some girl named Alice. She thinks she's clever.
He comes out of his house, off into his ****** limousine,
The pride and glory of American handicraft,
Drives away past his main gate, guarded by a Luhyia national,
The nation from which watchmen are mass manufactured,
The gate is banged closed with a sharp emblem dominating;
tafadahli umbwa kali, please fierce dogs are in don’t dare enter,
when no piece of a dog is in, hen pecking husbands perhaps,
He drives away in low spirit, like the tail of a snake,
Sharply contrasting his tiger thoraxed debates in the parliament,
In defence of state corruption; Anglo leasing and her sisters,
The wife has chased out our state officer, his sole Succor,
of the night and chilly loneliness so nameless ,in the streets of Nairobi,
Is the epiphanous street of koinange, after Mbiu Koinange
The colonial orchestrator of intellectual globalectics,
He sired political immorality that sired social depravement,
To rove his avenues as the state and money capitalist
Convert beautiful daughters of the poor peasants
Into defenseless protégés of class misfortune
Roaming the back streets minus
Any lingerie in their bosoms.
Jhilard Cruspero Jul 2013
All my quizes are low.
Because they teach so slow
Concentrating on stuff they don't know
Deliberately causing massive Brain damage
Exploding heads. anomalys
Fighting assigments they give us we try to survive.
Guns blazin on oral reports.blamin'
HipHop for the youths unacceptabe behaviour
Intellectual overdose causing nerve paralysis
Joking around ain't gonna help
Killing time, wont justify the
Lack of discipline in the
Minds of the
New generation
Out of place in time & space all we can do is catch up with the
Pace....
this poem is dedicated to those who think they faied their firstsem ahahahaha >.<
You like me
and I like you.
So there’s just one thing
to do–
or two,
or three.
It’s true we’re probably not compatible
as you’re not so much the intellectual
but the main point is that
we’re both heterosexual.
So come on over, I like the way you talk.
You like the way I jiggle.
I like the pic you sent me of your….
Make it sooner,
I don’t have much time.
And I know that you’ll never be mine.
But thinking of you makes me quiver.
I only hope I’m not promising more
than I can deliver.
Sometimes two people just start having ****** fantasies about each other at the same time...and age, social differences etc. seem like they just don't matter.

Songs for this:
Old Folks Boogie, by Little Feat
Dancing Barefoot, by Patti Smith
Danielle C Dec 2011
I’ve already shaped my life,
planned it as a single woman,
in my little Brooklyn apartment
with my Jersey degree.

But I’ll always want
an intellectual, creative, opinionated man
to come home to
to share my bed with
that knows how to dress, when to undress.
He was a man of many ideas
He brightened up even those in their darkest of times
By shining his whimsical offtimes and sometimes "outrageous ideas"
Now that he is gone, the "out" in the word describing his ideas
Now seem "in" and "new seas"
To try and sail partial paths of some of his intellectual "ideas"
To honor a "never ending" flame
By not allowing society's air blowing
To put my life's flame out.
In utter disbelief that he is now gone.
I know he is up above me and watching me.
"To see if I can make it?!" I shout
"That I can. For your honor, even more!"
I'll achieve my successes and let go of my crazy doubts.
"If you can make it this far, I shall go even further."
In your honor, my friend and spiritual brother, "to  victory and to the beyond"
"Thank you for entering my world...."
For one never sees another's true beauty until they pass.
Not this student.
All along, I have been the one who listened in class.
Dedicated to David Francis Schuler. 1974-2016. Blessings to you and your family.
SC May 2015
The perfect man for me
may look very plain to you...
However I see him as
tall, handsome, and so very intelligent.
He understands my weirdness-
how I find humor in things that really aren't so funny.
We will talk ... just talk - for hours.
He shares my intellectual curiosity -
such as wanting a working understanding of string theory.
He is strong and forceful -
not to be confused with being a bully.
He picks his battles, and understands when I pick mine.
When I over-react
he understands that is coming from a place of insecurity.
He respects that my experiences have reinforced that insecurity.
He handles it -
usually by saying "What the **** is the matter with you?"
That, for me - not necessarily any other woman,
is a conversation opener.
I know he really wants to know what is going on within me.
I know he cares enough to listen
to really hear
my pain.
He will dance,
maybe not so well but willing to give it his all.
He can laugh at the fact that he doesn't
dance so very well -  
that makes me so proud to be
the one whose feet he is stepping on.
He will love the beach, long walks, marathon NetFlicks
and my dogs, all three.
He will not be threatened by the love I have
for my sons.
He will respect that when it comes to my children-
I am a lioness.
I will protect them at all costs
while being 100% loyal to him.
He will listen to my opinion.
He will be strong enough to challenge my opinions-
He will tell me when I am wrong
and appreciate when I do the same for him.
Every night he will hold me until I fall asleep
the rhythmic breathing while he sleeps
fills me with a sense of belonging,
He will make me feel safe enough to love
and feel secure enough
to be loved.
Importantly - I will cherish
every moment with him-
and appreciate that
I am lucky enough to be
the one he loves.
A key thinker
An intellectual
One who practices philosophy
The pride of the world
Lover of wisdom
The dream of everyone
He thinks with clarity
The admiration of every academia and common man

Resolving existential problems is his focus
Human conditions are his concern
Bringing to light those in the dark is his major priority
Other disciplines, he studies for evaluation and certainty
The protection of human interest has been his basic goal
To all unanswered questions he provides answers
He makes clear the unclear through rationality and empiricism

Burdenous  are the misconceptions he faces
But it affects him not
Strong, agile and confident he stands when criticized
The best leader with zero mimesis
Good at addressing sociopolitical questions
He offers theories on profound questions
The idea of him as a king
Was born by a great thinker,
A mentor,
Plato the great
The dialogue in the republic has been his base

A ruler he is
Who possesses reliability
Living a simple and humble life willingly
Aims at discovering the ideal polis

Worthy is he, the king
An encapsulation of ideas he is
With confidence he defends them
His philosophical agility is beyond compare
Encouragement to the young minded he gives
Victory goes to the philosopher king
Congratulations!!!
Let the philosopher king rule
Daniel Magner Aug 2013
Stumbling and struggling
through an intellectual
upbringing
attending class but wasting
money
because a clear goal
is still escaping
a solid grasp.
I'm a binge student
and this is just another
relapse
Daniel Magner 2013
Jamie Rose Lewis May 2017
Every time I hear Leonard Nimoys' voice
I think to myself
Dammn
That guy
****
He was the Man!
Acting his way into a life's role
Intellectual
Empathic
******* hard
It brings up
Why
Do I think ******* are hard?!
Oh wait
No
It really brings up
Why
Can I see this Man with little
More
Than a cinema bio
And his makedup ears
Giving me emotional comfort
His voice offering insight
Without ever attending brunch
Together

(JL)
Max Neumann Dec 2020
god flew through my coffee this morning;
an intellectual crow entered my apartment,
and it guzzled a sip of the holy brew
me? i didn't take notice, just took notes

a blind writer who seeks the extraordinary,
distracted by a strayed quest for himself
left eye red, the right one black, wolfishly
a tribe of suicidals shattered my eye sight

they were dancing in trance
they were singing in kid's voices:

"we forgotten who we are; our skins crumbling
we don't want to live inside your body; no!
we won't be your voice anymore; we be leaving

golemland is our destination, shelter of letters"
then, the tribe of suicidals left, depriving me of words
Lauren Wood Sep 2016
To be quite honest this
Concept is strange to
Me I'm just
Myself but
To others my
Mind is abnormal
I ponder things other
Couldn't care less about
I understand concepts most
People ignore
And yet
I feel stupid quite often
Much of my mind is unexplored
I daren't venture into the
Cavernous chambers of
Scorn I have for myself and
Those who aren't intelligent because
Who am I to think myself
Superior to anyone?
i wrote this because i feel like an awful person
Lexy Day Aug 2012
i do not love you because
of your strong shoulders to carry me  
     or the long-wracked intellectual faculties that desert me
          or even your face – that launched the ship of my glass-bottle heart
and sent me crashing onto a burning shore camped by all my worst fears;

or because of the way my emptiness frames you
                                                    like the moon
       on the blank pages of my frostbitten heart
       (but as they say, what is a heart anyway?)

i do not love you because
    you love me
              besides,
                             – there is no evidence to support such an abstraction.

i do not even love you because
     you bring me my tea, and tuck my feet under the blanket in the winter times
     or because of that half-arsed smirk
                                                                   – the one that makes me want to punch your mouth
or because i should love you because you are, i suppose, my lover.

But,
there are small things
      the way your teeth show when you laugh
      and your yellow tee-shirt – ugly sandals
                   and the way you sweat when i run from you on gritty sand beaches
                                                                           12 (or so) kilometres from your white walls and
half-empty photo albums

that funny face you make
     and your rough, hardened fingers from miles of copper guitar strings
                                                   over miles of long dusty roads
     when we drive, minutes stuck between our polaroid past and
                             the wind-tossed hair at the end of the hot orange horizon
                                                                                    sun roof, sunglasses
not smiling because we are not obligated

how, when we lie together, your breaths rasping in the throat of your sleep
                          i steal your heat,
                                                        survive.
ESSAYS ON
LEADERSHIP FRONTIERS OF AFRICAN LITERATURE
By
Alexander   k   Opicho




Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya; aopicho@yahoo.com)

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents                                                                                                                Page
TABAN MAKITIYONG RENEKET LO LIYONG AND PREFECTURE OF AFRICAN LITERATURE 4
THE CURRENT EAST AFRICA IS NOT A LITERARY DESERT 27
AFRICAN WRITERS HAVE CULTURAL RIGHTS TO FORMULATE AND CREATE ENGLISH WORDS 31
LIKE PUSHKIN, AFRICAN WRITERS MUST CREATE THEIR OWN PROFFESSION OF LITERATURE 35
THERE IS POWER IN THE NAME ‘ALEXANDER’ 40
KENYAN COURTS AND PARLIAMENT ARE BETRAYERS OF HUMANE GOVERNANCE 47
AFRO-CHRISTIAN RESPONSE TO RADICAL LITERATURE IS GOOD AND SWAGGERISH 50
YUNUS’S SOCIAL BANKING IS A GOOD BENCHCMARK FOR THIRD WORLD ENTREPRENEURS 54
HEROISM IS NOT GREATNESS BUT HUMILITY IN SERVICE TO HUMANITY 57
KENYAN STUDENTS; YOUR MOBILE INTERNET CULTURE IS ANTI- ACADEMICS 61
WHAT IS THE MAGIC IN THE WORD ‘DRINKARD’ OF AMOS TUTUOLA 63
SOCIETIES IN AFRICA HAVE TO MENTOR BUT NOT CONDEMN THE LIKES OF JULIUS MALEMA 66
AMERICA WILL NOT WIN THE WAR ON GLOBAL TERRORISM 69
AFRICA CAN OVERCOME A MENACE OF **** IN EVERY 30 MINUTES 71
COMPARATIVE ROLES OF AFRICAN-BRAZILIAN LITERATURE IN THE POLITICS OF RACIAL AND GENDER DEMOCRACY 76
NEO-COLONIALISM IS NOT THE MAIN VICE TO THE GAMBIAN POLITICS 85
RELATIVE MEDIA OBJECTIVITY IS ACHIEVEABLE IN AFRICA AGAINST POWER CULTURE AND TYRANNIES OF TASTE 89
READING CULTURE IS GOOD FOR BOTH THE POOR AND THE RICH 96
VIOLENT DEATH IS THE BANE OF AFRICAN WRITERS AND ARTISTS 100
AFRICAN WRITTERS AND ARTISTS MUST ASPIRE BEYOND A NOBEL PRIZE 104
WHAT ARE CULTURAL RIGHTS OF AFRICAN ENGLISH SPEAKERS? 109
WHY IMPRISONMENT OF WRITERS CONTRIBUTED MOST TO AFRICAN LITERATURE 113
DORIS LESSING: A FEMINIST, POET, NOVELIST, WHITE-AFRICANIST AND NOBELITE UN-TIMELY PASSES ON 121
Amilcar Cabral: Beacon of revolutionary literature and social democracy 127
How the State of Israel is brutally dealing with African refugees 131
Historical glimpses of language dilemma in Afro-Arabic literature 146
THIS YEAR 2013; IS THE YEAR OF GREAT DEATHS 153
AFRICAN LITERATURE WITHOUT POETRY IS LIKE LOVE WITHOUT VAGINAL *** 156



















PROLOGOMENA
BARRACK OBAMA READS MOBY ****
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
American president is reading Moby ****
Ja-kogello is reading Moby ****
Ja-siaya is reading Moby ****
Ja-merica is reading Moby ****
Jadello is reading Moby ****
Ja-buonji is reading Moby ****
His lovely Oeuvre of Melville Herman
And what are you reading?

Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because untimely death took his father
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because untimely death took his mother
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because untimely death to his brother
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because untimely death took the grannies
His lovely Oeuvre of Melville Herman  
And what are you reading?

Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Baba Michelle is reading Moby ****
Baba Sasha is reading Moby ****
Baba Malia is reading Moby ****
Baba nya-dhin is reading Moby ****
Sarah’s sire is reading Moby ****
Ja-sharia is reading Moby ****
The ****** is reading Moby ****
His lovely Oeuvre of Melville Herman
And what are you reading?

Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because here ekes audacity of hope
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because here ekes dreams of fathers
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because here ekes yes we can
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because here ekes American dream
His lovely Oeuvre of Melville Herman
And what are you readings?

Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because American president is like whale hunting
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because Obama is a money making animal
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because hunting Osama is whale riding
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because hunting Gaddaffi is whale riding
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because coming to Kenya is whale riding
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because Guantanamo prison is a bay of whales
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because Snowden is a Russian whale
Because launching drones is whale riding
His lovely Oeuvre of Melville Herman
And what are you reading, Moby ****?














CHAPTER ONE
TABAN MAKITIYONG RENEKET LO LIYONG AND PREFECTURE OF AFRICAN LITERATURE

I am writing this article from Kenya on this day of 23 September 2013 when the Al shabab, an Arabo-Islamic arm of the global terrorist group the Al gaeda have lynched siege on the shopping mall in Nairobi known as the West Gate where an average of forty people have been killed and a hundreds are held hostage. The media is full of horrendous and terrifying images. They have made me to hate this day. I hate terrorism, I hate American foreign policy on Arabs, I hate philosophy behind formation of the state of Israel and I equally hate religious fundamentalism. Also on this date, all the media and public talks in Kenya are full of intellectual and literary tearing of one Kenyan by another plus a retort in the equal measure as a result of the ripples in the African literature pool whose epicenter is the Professor Taban Lo Liyong .He is an epicenter because he had initially decried literary mediocrity among the African scholars and University professors, Wherein under the same juncture he also quipped that Kenya’s doyen of literature Ngugi wa Thiong’o never deserved a Nobel prize. Liyong’s stand has provoked intellectual reasons and offalities to fly like fireworks in the East African literary atmosphere among which the most glittering is Chris Wanjala’s contrasting position that; who made Liyong the prefect and ombudsman of African literature? This calls for answers. Both good answers and controversial responses. Digging deeper into the flesh of literature as often displayed by Lo Liyong.
Liyong is not a fresher in the realm of literary witticism. He is a seasoned hand .Especially when contributions of Liyong to east African literary journal during his student days in the fifties of the last century during which he declared east Africa a literary desert. In addition to his fantastic titles; Another ****** Dead and The Un-even Rips of Frantz Fanon, Professor Taban Lo Liyong also humorously called Amos Tutuola the son of Zinjathropus, what a farcical literary joke? I also want to appreciate this Liyong’s artfulness of language in this capacity and identify him in a literary sense as Taban Matiyong Lo   Liyong the son of Eshu. He is an ideological and literature descended of the great West African Eshu. Eshu the god of trouble which was dramatized by Obutunde Ijimere in the imprisonment of Obadala and also recounted by Achebe in the classical essays; Morning Yet of Creation Day. I call him Eshu because of his intellectual and literary ability to trigger the East and West Africans into active altercation of literary, cultural and political exchanges every other time he visits these regions. Whether in Lagos, Accra or Nairobi.
Now, in relation to Ngugi and intellectual quality of Kenyan University literature professors was Liyong right or wrong?  Does Liyong’s stand-point on Ngugi’s incompetence for Nobel recognition and mediocrity in literary scholarship among Kenyan Universities hold water. Are Liyong’s accusations of East Africa in these perspectives factually watertight and devoid of a fallacy of self-aggrandizement to African literary prefecture as Professor Chris Wanjala laments. Active literary involvement by anyone would obviously uncover that ;It is not Liyong Alone who has this intellectual bent towards East Africa, any literary common sense can easily ask a question that; Does Ngugi’s literary work really deserve or merit for Nobel recognition or not ? The answers are both yes and no. There are very many of those in Kenya who will readily cow from the debate to say yes. Like especially the community of alumni of the University of Nairobi who were Ngugi’s students in the department of English in which Ngugi was a Faculty during the mid of the last century. Also the general Kenyan masses who have been conditioned by warped political culture which always and obviously confine the Kenyan poor into a cocoonery of chauvinistic thought that Ngugi should or must win because he is one of us or Obama must win because he is one of us or Kemboi must win because he is the son of the Kenyan soil. These must also be the emotional tid-bits upon which the Kenyan Media has been based to be catapulted into Publicity feat that Ngugi will win the Nobel Prize without reporting to the same Kenyan populace the actual truths about other likely winners in the quarters from the overseas. I am in that Kenyan school thought comprising of those who genuinely argue that Ngugi’s literary work does not befit, nor merit, nor deserve recognition of Nobel Prize for literature. This position is eked on global status of the Nobel Prize in relation to Ngugi’s Kikuyu literary and writing philosophy. It is a universal truth that any and all prizes are awarded on the basis of Particular efforts displayed with peculiarity. Nobel Prize for literature is similarly awarded in recognition of unique literary effort displayed by the winner. It is not an exception when it comes to the question of formidability in a particular effort. However, the most basic literary virtue to be displayed as an overture of the writer is conversion of theory into practice. This was called by Karl Marx, Hegel, Antonio Gramsci and Paulo Freire, especially in Freire’s  pedagogy of the oppressed as praxis.History of literature and politics in their respective homogenous and comparative capacities has it that ;There has been eminent level of praxis by previous Nobelites.Right away from Rabitranathe Tagore to Wole Soyinka, From Dorriss Lessing to Wangari Mathai.Similar to JM Coatze ,Gao Tziaping,Alexander Vasleyvitch Solzhenystisn and Baraka Obama.This ideological stand of praxis is the one that made Alfred Nobel himself to to stick to his gun of intellectual  values and deny Leo Tolstoy the prize in 1907 because there was no clear connection between rudimentary Tolstoy in the nihilism and Feasible Tolstoy in the possible manner  of the times .In a similar stretch Ngugi wa Thiongo’s literary works and his ideological choices are full of ideological theory but devoid of ideological praxis. Evidence for justification in relation to this position is found back in the 70’s and 80’s of the last century, When Ngugi was an active communist theoretician of Kenya. His stature as a Kenyan communist ideologue could only get a parallel in the likes of Leon Trotsky and Gramsci. This ideological stature was displayed in Ngugi’s adoration of the North Korean communism under the auspice of the Korean leader Kim Yun Sung. This is so bare when you read Ngugi’s writers in politics, a communist pamphlet he published with the African red family. By that time this pamphlet was treated equally as Mao tse Tung’s collected works by the Kenya government which means that they were both illegal publications and if in any case you were found with them you would obviously serve nine months in prison. And of course when the late Brigadier Augustine Odongo was found with them he was jailed for nine months at Kodhiak maximum prison in Kisumu ,Kenya .O.K, the story of Odongo is preserved for another day. But remember that, this was Ngugi only at his rudimentary stage. But when Ngugi got an opportunity to get an ideological asylum, he did not go to Russia, nor East Germany, Nor Tanzania, nor China but instead he went to the USA , a country whose ideological civilization is in sharp contradiction with communism; a religion which Ngugi proffessess.In relation to this choices of Ngugi one can easily share with me these reflections; is one intellectually  honest if he argues that he is a socialist revolutionary when his or her employer is an American institution like the university of California in Irvine ?
Ngugi was not the only endangered communist ideologue of the time. There were also several others. Both in Kenya and without Kenya. They were the likes of; Raila Odinga, George Moset Anyona, ***** Mutunga and very many others from Kenya. But in Africa some to be mentioned were Walter Rodney, Yoweri Museven,Isa Shivji,Jacob Tzuma ,Robert Mugabe and others. The difference between Ngugi and all of these socialist contemporaries of him is that; Ngugi went to America and began accumulating private property just like any other capitalist. But these others remained in Africa both in freedom and detention to ensure that powers of political darkness which had bedeviled Africa during the last century must go. And indeed the powers somehow went. Raila has  been in Kenya most of the times,Anyona died in Kenya while in the struggle for second liberation of Kenyan people from the devilish fangs of Moi’s dark reign of terror and tyrany.Walter Rodney worked in Tanzania at Dare salaam University where he wrote his land mark book; How Europe underdeveloped Africa. Later on he went back to his country of birth in Africa, Guyana where he was assassinated while in the revolutionary struggle for political good of the Guyanese people. Yoweri Museven practically implemented socialism by fighting politics of sham and nonsense out of Uganda of which as per today Uganda is somehow admirable. Isa Shivji has ever remained in Dare salaam University, inspite of poverty. He is now the chair of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere school of Pan African studies. Jacob Tsuma and Robert Mugabe they are current presidents of South Africa and Zimbabwe respectively. The gist of this reference to African socialist revolutionaries as contemporaries to Ngugi wa Thiong’o is that a socialist revolutionary must and should not run away from the oppressor in to a zone of comfort. But instead must remain and relentlessly fight, just like in the words of Fidel Castro; fight and die in the battle field as long as it is a struggle against the enemy of the revolution. This view by Castro is pertinent as it’s a Revolutionary praxis which actually is redolent of practice of an ideology that has to be held for ever above ideological cosmentics.Ngugi scores badly on this. So if the Nobel academy looks at Ngugi in terms of defending human rights then it must be reminded that Ngugi have no marks on the same because he only ran away from the practical struggle. Anyway, Politics and ideology has its own fate. But let us now come back to literature. Ngugi and his books. As at  this time of writing this essay  Ngugi has published the following works; Weep not Child, The River Between, A Grain of Wheat, Black Hermit, Petals of Blood, Devils on the Cross,Matigari,Homecoming,Decolonizing the Mind, Writers in Politics, Ngugi Detained, Pen Points and Gun Points, Wizard of the Crow,Globalectics,Remeembering Africa, Dreams in Times of War and I Will Marry When I Want as well as the Trial of Dedan Kimathi which he wrote along with Micere Githae Mugo.Out of this list the only works with literary depth that call for intellectualized attention are ;A Grain of wheat, Wizard of the crow and Globalectics. The Grain of wheat is simply a post colonial reflection of Kenyan politics. Its themes, plot, lessons and entire synechedoche is also found in Wole Soyinka’s Season of Anomie as well as Achebe’s Anthills of the savannah. My argument dove-tails with those of Liyong’s stand that rewarding Ngugi’s Grain of wheat and forgetting Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah and A man of the people would be a literary ceremony devoid of literary justice. Wizard of the Crow is indeed a magnum opus. I am ready to call it Ngugi’s oeuv
All is not what it seems
Because I was an atheist
Long before I realized I was God,
But that was much, much later
Then, at that time, I succumbed
To the lurid but exciting depths
Of freedom, the joy of love and danger
Of searching and of knowledge,
Embracing every moment;
I surrendered to ungovernable impulses
That invoked within my very existence

Still to realise the true extent of this
It's perhaps best to start before the beginning
Before the earth embalmed me
A time when Cyparisse had not
Yet set root in my belly
Nor made sap of my blood
A time when it was possible to speak
To Panza's donkey when I thought of Zanzibar
A time when the vagrancy of my soul
Had not yet embarked
On its erratic itinerary
Plunging me eventually
Into the bright light
Of tainted and squalid reality

Like oscillating libraries, noise oppressed,
Contradictions of dreams
Suddenly I took flight,
With violent wrenches of imagination
In Persia being worshipped
Beneath the moon by Gods;
Caressed by those impetuous charms
A dazzling vision
I thought of death the only sister of charity
Whose dark night has no malevolence;
Black and white, silences that migrated
In sonorous symbolism took control
Shimmering like a painting of a sorrow

Streaked with unashamed colours
A single tear from a promethean candle
I would move to lick the stain of destiny
That pillar inhaling its black perfumes
Like a communicant on his knees.
Exiled in reality, I saw what I had never saw
Or only thought I saw now condemned
To see what has never been seen

Words corralled themselves in my mind
Writhing maggots on a corpse
Wriggling for position waiting to be pronounced
How they flew, taking wings
Hovering for an instant above the page
Hunting out the detritus of man
To feast upon the putrid flesh of misery
I too went searching
For my ancient feast; for Zanzibar

However hideous pages
From the note book of the ******
Imprisoned the words, stampeded the search
Scattering it in many directions
Shattering blue-white eyes
A castrated country, century, impotent, impure
Like politics, the ******* that can be purchased by coin
Like so much bread in the market,
A thousand profanities became the popular song
But silence is the real language of the fool

For he alone bears witness to what he feels
Misfortunes not understood, weeping the popular ballad
Morality and law, parades of red robed Judges
Carcasses, a circus for carrion crows
Yet like a cannibal the dead were still buried in my belly
The gloss of reason hiding madness
Like so many veneered fronts in a proud precinct

Paraded in full view, silence is demanded and got
The words wither, fake time continues,
To count the unrelieved falsehood the chimera of life;
Reason did not imprison me
My life being not heavy enough
Was allowed to take flight
To float above the reasoned realm
Revelations of the truth realised only by detachment
Devoured my mind increased my errorless purpose
The search for Zanzibar

Accepted values; valued only;
Because of this acceptance
Are accepted as value
Thus accepted in silence
The fools resign themselves
To a false reality
One that nails them to a poisoned cross

In the gardens of the dead
Like rowed tulips that
Gardeners know how to match
I found myself, among those who had gone
Remembered yet forgotten
Whose edifice unlike their lives
Reached not upwards but down.
I smelt the scent of unknown things
The perfumes of eternity that histories bind;
Intensity, a murmur; gurgle, as in a child
Yet extreme its aberrations
Like celluloid hand that
Had never known toil
Or wiped sweat from a brow
Laughed yet grimaced
Its smile a crimson smear
The sorrow that it felt
A burnished hand upon its nakedness
To see its enshrouded presence in such a garden
One well stocked and growing
Caressed my being with its glee
To turn white feel the touch
Of its venomous fingers upon my flesh;
Its purpose, to prevent any search for Zanzibar

The stench of death
Then cast its' new
Yet antediluvian gaze
Upon its purpose
Odour of grave
Faraway nonexistent
Yet it is perfume to those
Who feast upon its scent
Moistures mingling with the air
Its common purpose
Floating like un-forgiveness
Its atmosphere ozone sans holes
Its meaning ever present
Its' outcome to halt
The search for Zanzibar

And so the stencils of oriental scribes
Like black shadows overpowered my reason
Floating high above, adrift on an expanse of darkness
However, presently that azure ink
Raised its curtain before my very eyes
Revealing the stage, the illuminated stage
On which I was to set my drama
Where the phantoms of my imagination
Would enact their mysterious mysteries;
A poetic alchemy

Then a golden spark of pure
Nocturnal light blinded me
In an instant I saw, observed
The sun drown in its deathly sea
Its healing wings spread
Fear would see it rise again
Still searching for that fatal flaw, happiness
How many lives do I need?
How many existences will it take?
Incarnations a hundred times
Searching for Zanzibar.
Awakening to continue to
Live the saddest of my dreams

Furtive footsteps through Cimmerian landscapes
Ah such enchantment, do you understand?
Ah such a charm, listen to its undying echo
Feel its charge, that siren call
Cosmic summons, the vagrancy of mind
That caresses the imagination
Whose tender touch can place you
At the apex of the universe
Can lead to Zanzibar.


And so the subtle and foolish tortures
Inflicted upon me by I, my quest began
One that would ascertain, take centre stage
Make an unheard appearance of a philosophy
That, I am everyone and everyone else is me
Eventually at some point
In time and space we are all one
All linked, for we are condemned
Yes condemned to live these lives
This is why the dead have dreams
Dreams about the tyrants and demons
Of other lives of who they were;
Who they have yet to become.
Nourished on half truths,
Forever pulling at the thread
The rotted rags of reason
Those tattered twines
Unravelling the stitching of reality
Of hallucinations, empty illusions
And tarnished dreams create a constant struggle


Therefore for every conscious thing
That happens in the world
There must be a responding reverberation
Within the human soul
Let us put a halt to the calls
For the death of imagination
And demands for imagination to be silent
Such absurdities
For imagination is the true door to reality
For only in imagination
Can there be a bearable act
Of self examination
It is memory that hurts
More than the imagination
Always prefer the imaginary to the real
Imagination is neither an exit
From our nightmares nor
An escape from reality
But the place we are all trying to get to,
Zanzibar its shared images
Its story, its own life a new reality.


Mysteriously in the midst of unknown
Mazagran landscapes I feel
The full impact of fleeting visions
Without the limitations of space or time
Feel the act of experiencing their reality
This requires no explanation, no proof
Either together or separate
Because simply they are,
Judgement, condemnation
Punishments are gone
There is no cleansing a world
Without consciousness
Landscape devoid of people
'La Lune' growling in the orchard of the sea
Calypso again one or ten
Eucharis, tempest or temptress
Take both the meaning and the experience
Taste the tear drops of the sun
Telemachus searching, searching
Zanzibar

The idol, tentacles undulating
Vibrations of collective knowledge
The blank face, featureless
Touching around the domain of Atlas
Speaking in a thousand different tongues
Moving but still, blocks my path
Disturbs the line of imagination
Makes reality quiver
Dream flowers sway in its cosmic wind.
Yet Alhazers' iridescent arch allows
The steerage of my passage
Without pious pilgrimages to empty silences that
Contain an eternity of tears
Who graciously offers coverage
For the echo of footsteps
Allowing the magic moments to come


Robbed of sunlight, artificial night shines
Its deception attempting to secure knowledge
Of a future unknown, winning only it's unattainably
Offering instead knowledge of the past
Master of silence, offers only knowledge
Of invaded consciousness
Bedlam of paradise where Eros and Pan
In congress sleep, close at Zanzibar.


Lifeless beauty that lives everlasting
Time that reason cannot change, only help.
O enchanted torture you have stolen
The taste from my mouth
Masked I against the spectre of reality
Proclaimed the age of 'hasashin'
The creator of recollections, maker of memories
Possessor of impulse giver of echo
That rings in the ear
Cloud cast its surroccoian shadow
Air tinged with the aftermath of fire
Floating in an Asian wind, so subtle
Like a breath suddenly the sound of song
Of dance rents the solitude
Silence is slashed like a canvass screen
Happiness pours forth unconfined
Unfettered, both faces of Kandinsky as one
I extinguish the light, turn to the wall
Gazing upon its Janis face
My eyes behold the giver of pleasure.

Then I found myself in an extraordinary place
Whose skies where made of crystal glass
Water of the enchanted land was blue-grey
Bridges zig-zagged its shimmering domes
I stared as masts and parapets came to life
Its people, musicians sporting
Tangerine and white livery danced
The air filled with the sound of their music
Then as if from nowhere a light hit my eyes
Blinking, this apparition was gone
Can I not always believe what I see
Just because I see what I believe
The inhabitants at once became spectres
Engulfed in thick clouds of smoke and sulphur
Erinyies roamed, inflicting madness
A circus of the macabre sped past
Its symbols of death fluttering frantically
Around this false and fragile world
Suggested children, like creatures in an imagination
Were made ready for their rebirth
By the touch of the poets pen
A thousand Cheribino

In another, swirling sonorous scenes
Stormed the citadels of my mind
Marched through my imagination
Mab engulfed the long closed
Cemeteries of my thought allowing me
To see the dreams of others
Like precious pearls prised from their shells
Their visualisation so intense
Joy overcame me at once
Then a swarm of kisses descended upon me
Like a regiment of famished men
Feasting for the first time
I freely gave myself as the main course
In the most beautiful of banquets
In another, yielding to these seductions
I was enraptured by portraits of beautiful young men
Which appeared to be on the point of speaking
They were most mysterious their intrinsic
Charm so beautiful, stimulated desire
Whose assuagement was so pleasurable
That it might be called pure ecstasy
A perfect pleasure which had never before existed
Entirely individual and new

Thus upon the horizons of my mind
Had been shed a mysterious light
In which I now saw everything bathed
I was summoned by the Prince
Knowing dreams have no limits
I obeyed his call
For a long time failing to set
Foot on the shores of reality
Drinking from the wells of magic
While angels danced on grassy slopes
Disturbed by flames
The stars shot out their fragrance

Sweet smelling; blue abyss
On I went to the court, the court of the Prince of
Poets, a visitor to life
There I spat out the bit of liberty
Embraced the Prince
Courtesans mocked me, ridiculed
Laughed and taunted me
Their jibes merely part of
Their own deluded reality, not of mine
They did not serve my purpose
Dressed as they were
In meaningless words
Clothed in phrases of falsehood
They tried to make me compromise
There was fire burning in my eyes
Vivid dreams were eating up my mind
They wouldn't let me be
There were dead men lying
By the sides of the road
With daylight in their eyes
I saw villages under the sea
I stood at Galactic central point
Watched the earth burn
They did not know
The way to Zanzibar
Could the Prince show me?

However each morning I awoke
I found myself in a purgatorial fog
I roamed lost the alternative harbour
For my soul still distant
The Prince, I discovered, existed
In a twilight world of mysterious ailments
He denied his feelings
Such denial only immersed him
In maintaining the world of external restraints
It created emptiness, a vacancy
Filled by material concerns
I pleaded with him
The emerald gene came down
Soon the leaves of grass
Whispered another order of existence
Strangeness of sensation
Intoxication of vision
Unhinged for mortals
And as the sound increased one cannot
Describe what else it is that has been
I viewed a world transparent
Devoid of illumination within which
Was never a sea or land
Then the prophets were ******
For they were all liars
And I saw the most beautiful flower
Unfolding out of its own roots
For such a flower cannot
Unfold other than it does
I stood on the threshold of Orcus
I met Abbas Effendi the Gene without a name
Bab, Upanishads spilled music in my ears
Called to me in the most spectacular of colours
It was wonderful for the colours
Were like my dreams, red, black and green
I witnessed the three, sometimes as one
Other times as two, again and again
The self eternal and inseparable sons
Of Shakyamuni caressed me with their thoughts
Their music and colour moved about me
In ecstatic rhythm like the peaceful
Waves of the ocean as upon a shore
I read the sentences of silence
Breathed the perfume of never fading flowers
Walked in cherry blossom snow
Heard Hafiz reciting in the night
I saw for the first time
The unfinished likeness of others.

Then one day the Prince
With a sweeping theatrical and
So to speak, allegorical flourish bowed
Called me an exiled angel
Said the time had come to travel
To leave the images of naked heels
Imprinted in the clay
We wondered
Then as if by magic, suddenly the shadows
Of houses, halls, and a church
Emerged like enchanted islands in a fairy tale
The spiritualised forms of civilisation
I was approached by a graceful youth
Draped in cobweb lawn
He was pale, delicately beautiful
Spanish looking, but his name was Alexis Sonyeuse
Whose family it was said was
Related to the French Emperor Napoleon
It was also rumoured that he had
Had a tempestuous affair with the Bishop of Monaco
And once slept with his half brother Julian Apollinaire
When he spoke he was at once original
Delicious, moving, droll and discreetly melancholy
Listening to him was like breathing
The perfume of wondrous flowers
But the scent of datura hung about him
Paralleling his every movement
  Another youth, Edmond also greeted me
He was a young man with aristocratic features
A complexion pink, like a girls
And a bearing at once charmingly gracious
And audaciously insolent
His shirt was strange, the lining
A peculiarly orange colour
A flame coloured taffeta
Like the petticoats of a *****



They looked at me
Furtive glances emanated from their eyes
Training a profound stare upon my person
The two youths took me to 18 Avenue de Friedland
There two boy servants
Adoum and Outhman greeted us
Spinario's lay about its confines
Frezans caressing them
As they touched their feet
A hundred echansons moved
With dazzling delicacy dispensing dreams
In drops from crystalline cups
Here I witnessed the tragic faces of the population
Urnings, cleaning in the midst of anarchist trials
The room a fiery red, stained with light
The caress of forgotten thought
Like the thickness of a sorrow
Musicians playing on broken strings
Crimson ******, who defied the King of Naples
We moved past wretches
Like Virgil, but Danteian
Saw the usurers heard the rustling
Of lute strings the clinking of grey paper
Observed in this Minatare's lair
The purchase of a twelve penny dagger
Liberty of speech meeting its great reckoning
In a little room, Ingram the poltergeist
Of misfortune was there
Dead Scythian, who ever loved you
Loved you as you might, loved you at first sight.

This was a new and exciting world
Whose environs were populated
By the most mysterious and colourful of people
I was introduced by the two youths
To a suicidal young painter who
Was rebelling against his class
He was a somewhat forced intellectual
With an over quixotic passion for equality
Still he was warm, kind and impulsive
Poetry, he made it known
Had opened his mind to the invisible
Beside him was a painting
Exemplifying a new kind of observation
In a style absolutely faultless
Each structure clear, each brush stroke
Falling exactly into place
Inscribed in the top left
Corner were the words
"Quod me nutrit me destruit"
An introduction to himself of a tall youth
Whose eyes possessed a constant
Vagrancy of desire
Who seemed at once, for one so
K Balachandran Jan 2014
Little speckled bird,
quirky nerd, owl eyes-
gleaming behind the glasses,
often you zoom inwards
and land in that never never land
beyond the reach of most,
yet I am in love with your
ingeniousness that defies words.
bit strange it may sound
but I am one who explores
the hidden spaces beyond
my desired comfort zones.
they warn me saying a nerd
is a killjoy, nothing else
Swimming against the tide
I hear your excited chirps inside
making me restless with anticipation,
my intellectual slant
received your approval,
many times,I am hopeful
growing my beard long
I'll wait here, till you return
completing your mission.

— The End —