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Alexis J Meighan Oct 2012
A dads uniform
                          (Now my own)


           On any given day I saw the many faces of a man.
I watch him play his roles like they were well rehearsed scenes.
He was a star in his own actions, drama, thrillers and romance.

         He wore his soldiers uniform on sunday, torn jeans, white T-shirt with no sleeves and abrasions and scrapes gave stripes to his big arms.
He had oil on his hands and grease on his chin, barking orders as he worked on the car.
" Hand me that 3/4 standard and torque it to the 5th notch"
"What!? What the **** language was that?" I thought to myself as I awkwardly reached for the 1st thing my eyes spotted and held it up.
"That's a hammer Alex!" He said shaking his head as he smiled and walked toward me. He rarely had a disappointing tone. Later he explain the workings of a standard torque wrench Vs a metric wrench with converter. 10 years later I used that wrench to change my Edelbrock Electronic Carburetor 400 series twin stoker all by myself.

    I once saw him defend his honor. That day he wore  his heroes uniform as he leaped from person to person striking, grabbing, kicking, and throwing the 3 large men who underestimated his ferociousness. His tank top was ****** from the wound on his nose. His hat fell to the dirt next to the beaten, unconscious, and humiliated foes that once stood before him.
I could see that he intended to continue his lesson in respect but as he glanced over to see my wide open mouth and unmoved stare he quickly contained his aggression. He picked up his hat and shook it a few time to knock the dirt off. In that moment was another unexpected act. He help the worst of the men to a sitting position and asked him if he was ok. He was genuine in his concern that he may have been excessive in his judgment.
Later that night he explain to me that violence should never be the 1st choice for a solution and our actions should reflect the person we want people to see.
I would remember this 15 years later when sitting with the man I just choked unconscious, letting him drink my gatorade and catch his breath moments after he attempted to robbed me at knife point. In that few minutes I learned his life story. My friends said my actions were foolish.

            Duct tape and crazy glue are the tools of every street born medic.
T-shirt gauzes and boiled stones often made his grace when he wore his First aid uniform.
      
        As a kid I did DUMB very well, from gun powder soup, to a game of dart board hands. One of the more gruesome moments was my apple cutting malfunction. I severed my finger at the base pretty good. I cut right through the knuckle at the base of the index finger. It was the 1st time I fainted. Its still a debate weather it was the loss of blood or sight of it. Like a seasoned veteran he jumped into action. While most doctors would  use a coagulant like Lanxess, iodine and 22 gauge suture for this injury but not this man. He opted for all purpose flour, beer and duct tape to disinfect and seal the wound. Even though it was 3 hours before the emergency room would clean and repair the damage, I didn't shed another drop of blood while his homemade fix was in place.
I learned a lot of (what his friends called Ni**a rigging) first aid tips from him.
12 years later, while on a training exercise with  my CCC group in the forrest, a grade worker suffered a compound fracture from a slip and fall while hiking. I used a heated licorice root as antiseptic and 2 flat rock, my shoe in soles and a belt to mend and set his arm well enough to hike 2 miles back through the trail till we found help.

          When I write my poetry I never know what it is people see or interpret from it. I know the workings of romance and I know the power of its application. The day he wore his Casanova uniform I witnessed 1st hand the great reward a little effort can bring 2 people in love.
         On a normal day in the park us kids ran around yelling and screaming while him and mom sat on the grass watching us play. In the moments of a physical dilemma I sat next to him to catch my breath as he talk to her about random things. I knew my presence was interfering with whatever moment him and my mom were having but I was too intrigued by the task he was performing on the side to care.
On the reverse of a box top he drew a picture of a monkey sitting on a tree in the middle of the water. It was handing a flower to a mermaid sitting on a rock. I never forgot the joy on my moms face when he handed it to her and said "this is us."
I saw that picture everyday displayed on her mirror. Here I am 25 years later looking at my own art and words displayed across the walls of my home. My wife often looks at her description in the words and her name in the titles. Our own son invades our personal space as we sneak kisses and exchange affection through his predictable intrusions.

        My own uniforms hang in my closet waiting for interpretation from onlookers.
Suit up and be seen, or close your eyes and remember his many suits. Your in my thoughts. I hope this finds its way to you.
        Love
              -Alex J Meighan-
Mitchell May 2011
Assembly line broke down as the mirrors crashed and cracked.
"Angelina!!!" the crooked boss man yelled.
"Get in herre" the crook socks rang like bells.
Angelina poured sweat of the yellow blouse she had bought two days before for another interview in another office and another profession altogether. The room spun for her even though she would rather have it stay still.
"How much longer till this mechanism shifts and all of this stops altogether. Have their been madder women then me? Has there been madder men then me? Have their been madder times or are the times the same just with different tools and gears and nuts and bolts to tirelessly continue, heaving the corpses through the concrete cracked and littered streets?"
"Angelina!!!"
Another nail gun dropped to the floor, firing twenty rounds into fifty blue collared men's tie clips, deflecting them all to the near by wall which held the coats, the hats, the work shoes which the men were not allowed to wear due to "safety intrusions" and "labor union by lateral horizontal negative dairy laws". Another unfortunate fortune from the cracked mirror case but that, of course, is not the story, our story is...
"Angelina!!!"
Angy hurried up the hungry, empty metal n' holy stairs. She lost her high heels in a crack in the stairs but left them there due to the fear. 2011 had been a good year until she had been forced by her landlord, also her boyfriend, to get a real job rather then stuffing her knitted socks with her poetry and trying to haggle them to new age modern morons of the hip near sighters whom glasses were unintelligible but necessary. The mirrors of the conveyor belts reached the top of the platform but the door was shut. The mirrors bent and shattered leaving the splintered pattern of the world outside of them multiplied by the millions.
Noon was her lunch break and it was noon oh two. Angelina would be late with her lunch and the landlord, Nick, was planning to stop in with some home made sandwiches and home made potato chips.
"Nick will have to wait." Angelina thought to herself. "Nick hates to wait."
Angelina entered to stand in the wake of a shaking, sweating purse wearing, purse lipped boss boss. His hair was tossed to one side, struggling to hide his baldness. The subtelty of their relationship was difficult considering Angelina had slept with boss boss to get tossed this job. The act was actually enjoyable, Angelina thought him a good lay, but boss boss was not a fun person to be around, and he was a much worser boss.
"Angelina!!!"
"Hi."
"Your FIRED!"
"Bye then sir..."
"ANGELINA!!!"
"Yes sir?"
"AREN'T YOU GOING TO ASK WHY YOU WERE JUST SO HASTILY AND VIOLENTLY FIRED?"
"It is not my place to inquire why I was fired sir. If I was not doing my specific duty well enough I trust you, as my superior, to have thought what this subtraction would do to your company. If I had questioned you I would be questioning yourself as a boss and I would never want to do that...sir."
"VERY GOOD. DISMISSED!!!"

---

"So he just fired you, no explanation, nothing?"
"There was nothing really to say after the fact."
"You could have demanded an explanation."
"I was in a hurry to meet you. I know you hate to be late for our dates."
"That's sweet."
"And boss boss shouldn't have to explain himself, he IS a professional."
"He works in mirrors which doesn't make at all make him a ropes course supervisor."
"He's very handsome when He means what He says."
The home made potato chips had been burnt because Nick had fallen asleep while watching old re-runs of run marathons from the 80's. Nick had trained for the Olympics in 83' but while home after training and drinking an OK shake, Nick had stubbed his toe while drinking the OK shake and trying to get to a ringing telephone. Nick had collided so perfectly, so quickly and with such for that his right big toe had bent all the way back, his big toe fingernail touching the hairy patch on the top of his foot. The doctors said amputate the toe and save the foot or chop the entire thing off altogether. Nick, not being a dumb ****, opted for the entire foot. He never raced again.
"Are you going to try and get your job back?
"I don't know"
"Well. It's the 28th tomorrow and I need the rent either way. The insurance agency I'm with has been bugging me about percentages and utilities and...well, you don't want to hear about my worries."
"I don't mind sweety."
"Thanks doll. What're you gonna do?"
"Find more work I guess. I haven't written anything in a while, maybe it's a good time to get back on that train, see what comes up."
"I saw a help wanted sign at the mall nail salon."

---

Baby stroller wheels lined with pink and grey gum were lined up against the overwhelming glass wall enclosing the shops from the streets. Trees reflected green with the sun light lined across the clear wall. Birds flew at the top of the block near the ceiling crop, they wanted to come in but were confused how to do so. Children came through the valley with lollipops and balloon powder and strings lined with meats, they were headed to the capitalistic circus, a wonder land that only brought guilt from lovers and their future children's shame.
Angelina stood outside the electronic moment to moment receivers. She was afraid of not being allowed entry. Everyone entering entered easily, but what of she? Would she be accepted? Clicking her unpainted fingernail atop her leopard print clip purse and what was worse she had no cash to get her orange Julius or perhaps see a film if she couldn't conjure of the courage to stop off at the salon. That was why she had come here, right?
"Where had the salon been?" Angelina said aloud.
The mass of the mall was vibrating with a ferocious congruity. Through the fog of meaty torso's lay blank and content faces. Gripping their wares, their steaming quick food, some of it dropping to their foot only to be kicked around on the dirtied floor. At times a rat would scurry from underneath a traveling underwear salesmen to grab a piece of fried bread, half cooked meat, or small pieces of children's hair which floated softly down to the wet and mud streaked floor. Mall cops waved their sticks to each other, some kind of HAIL or CHEER that they were the one's in charge round' these parts and there wasn't nothing no one was going to do about it.
"Do I really want to work here?"
There was no choice though. Angelina needed to pay the rent or her landlord/boyfriend would kick her out on the street and from there, she had no clue where the blue sky would take her. Her parents, both dead thirteen years ago, would be a terrible place to set up camp, especially in a graveyard. Angelina's brother lived over seas working at a ***** clinic trying and failing to heal the weak and unwanted. He had tried to heal her through voodoo practices he gathered up drunk through his 6 month stay in New Orleans but it had only given her a bright blue and red rash for three to four weeks. She never longer trusted her brother with any kind of healing or "feel better" techniques and was no prepared to make the trek to Europe anytime soon, she was in a relationship at the moment anyway and she had a feeling she might be in love.
Angelina stepped through the glass exchanging doors in unison with a family that was entering at the same time. The door seemed to open for any body but was tentative if it would accept hers, this time, it seemed to.
Inside she made her way up "the miracle marbled stairs" which shined bright and blinded Angelina in certain parts of her eyes. They flashed bright red and greens and whites so visciously and fast Angelina thought she might have some kind of seizure. She planted her feet directly on each step as she walked up the 20 to 30 stairs, going very slow and gripping the handrail. People started to gather around behind her shouting "HURRY UP LADY" and "WE DON"T GOT ALL DAY" and giggling to themselves.
"Were they not seeing these lights?" Angelina thought to herself.
"Do you kind people know where the nail salon is?"
Angelina then realized that what she had just said made no sense. Her eyes were gripped shut, her hand tight around the shiny gold handrail, her feet pointed strictly out like some kind of paralyzed summer penguin. The people which had gathered behind her stood bare, jaw slacked, wondering who would step forth to help this poor helpless creature.
A little girl with red sparkled shoes and a orange bow atop her head stepped forth. She smiled even though she knew Angelina had her eyes tightly shut, maybe she would feel the warmth? The girl's mother reached for her so not to get to close to that "crazy lady" but the little girl pulled away, her father saying "If it's her time to go, it's her time to go".
"Miss lady with the tiger purse, I think the hardware nail pull on is on the 8th floor next to the people that sell bread with meat sticks inside."
The little girl stepped gingerly back as Angelina loosened her grip on the now stained golden handrail. She shook her hair out and ran her fingers through it, straightening herself up as if she were about to perform a song or late night poetry reading. Angelina opened her eyes and peered down at the girl.
"Thank you little girl. What's the best way to get there?"
The girl child said nothing. She pointed to a large metal box shooting up and down the length that looked like a rocket straight to heaven. People were gathered all around its foundation, oooing and ahhhing at the sight of the one's which entered. There was a sign over the line of tubes reading "A Shot at the Void".
"A shot at the Void..." Angelina tentaively breathed to herself.
Angelina stepped up the last couple glittering stairs and made her way through the thick crowd of stale clothes, cheap tricks, obsessed teeny boppers, hardware for wear, shoes with no laces, strips of bacon hanging from mouths, lettuce all shredded, soda cans with their lids torn clean off with small splatters of blood lined on the rim, and a perfectly painted fingernail was drawn on the number eight where the long lines and rows of numbers were there to guide the one's to the shot.
"Number eight. Easy enough"
Angelina pushed the button.

---

Inside the tube there was a slow light hum of jazz transfusion and children breathing. There were three little daughters gripping their mother's hands as they bit into their soda pop straws, ******* up the soda inside the plastic and cardboard cups. All three children stared up at her, maybe wondering what she was wondering, which was exactly what Angelina was wondering, a combination of mistaken telepathy, an accident of consciousness that would be never be talked about between the four of them but most surely existed between them.

Smooth as clay they drifted up the translucent clear glass tube, shooting skyward like a man made rocket shot from a man made gun. They passed shops hocking wears of angelic colors: clear pearl pastels shone through the clear blue glass shining into Angelina's eyes forcing Her to squint, dog barks could be heard through the whistling air begging for treats of black and brown, teriyaki chicken strips and duck heads spun absurdly fast with a rhythm that resembled the wave of a crowd at a baseball game waving wildly like children flying from swings never wanting to land in the sand; all this as the three and one flew higher and higher and higher.

---

Ding.

---

Angelina stepped forward, leaving the three children behind Her to fend for themselves. From the looks of the button they had pushed they were headed East. She gripped her bag and peeled Her eyes, twisted her hair in a tight knot to show her aggression, her vigor, her confidence and stepped into the rabid salmon like crowd.

She saw no signs of the nail salon. She saw only posters of rabbits holding artichoke legs and nail guns firing rockets of ice cream and corn bread. These were the mirrors of the supposed revolution but had nothing to do with her nail salon, she needed the cash and she needed it NOW! How hard were the numbers to acquire? How long must she wait before the envelope is sent and the letter read and thrown out? How long Lord, how long?

Questions for a time when the pay checks were easy coming and Her man was by her side. She passed by a little boy playing William Tell with her sister. An apple on the little tots head and in the boys a small, tight and silver ray gun. The boy pulled the trigger but only a small plume of smoke came from the top making the boy ball over crying and wailing and kicking and screaming, nearly catching Angelina in the shin, what a mess...The little girl stayed still in Her spot though because her brother told her "Now don't move a cinch." Wise move my girl, wise move...

At last! Angelina, reaching Her destination saw the brightly neon colored corner of her beloved Nail Salon. The windows shone with pure red glitter, miniatures of poodles lapping up puddles of ice water, women laying out on the sun to catch rays from the Earth, and husbands shaving their backs all in a circle and row.

"How beautiful..." Angelina breathed out.

She entered the store front. Greeted from every corner were beautiful young cupid like angels faces shining divine but with no torsos, floating heads of angels ***** but crying and smiling. Asking Angelina "What would you like today miss?" or "What are you after?", beckoning for her requests, begging for her touch of vulnerability and lack of knowledge of where she was or what she needed.

"Just an application...I heard you all were hiring?"

"Hiring!!!?" the cupid heads screamed in unison.

"You want to become one of us?"

"Yes, part-time...?" Angelina said hesitantly.

As soon as the words "part" had been uttered from Angelina's wise and brave mouth the many heads of cupid began spinning and spinning around Angelina's body. Faster and faster they spun until Angelina herself was spinning with them, unified in a quadruple hurricane stripping her of her former self and slowly manipulating her body, her hair, her other self into her new self.

As Angelina's torso lay in the corner of the store un-bloodied, clothes tattered as well as some scratches  on her elbows from the toss, Angelina's head was floating in the perfect center of the other three hovering cupid heads.

"How beautiful...how beautiful...how beautiful."

"Isn't it?" the three cupid heads answered.

"Yes, everything here is so beautiful," the four of them whispered.

And as soon as Angelina had entered, she just as soon had left.

END
Again,
And again.
A mind empty ,
Now full of dread.
Thoughts of confusion,
Moments in illusion.
Following an order
From strange intrusions.
My mind is chaotic
With harsh infusions.

Feelings they urge me,
With wrong solutions.
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2022
i could tell you how certain stations on the London underground
smell, but i can't capture you this smell...
a bit like in that film Perfume: scents are lost over time,
with regards to places -
                            unlike the eternal pine forest...
or the zest of lemon...
                                         those are universal scents...
one could and humanity has: created a synthetic answer
and copied these scents... made synthetic tastes
a whole chemistry of a posteriori scents and tastes...
Kant and chemistry are a perfect combination...
given the classical schematic:

analytical                         analytical
a priori                             a posteriori
apples grow on               tomatoes:
trees and                          categorised as fruits          
carrots grow                    yet used as vegetables
in the earth                      the analysis being
since apples                     even though they grow
are a fruit                         on something: trees,
while carrots                    bushes, vines...
are a root vegetable,       analysis has found that
ergo?                                 they are better treated
all vegetables                   as vegetables rather than
grow in the earth            fruits, since one rarely cooks
while all fruits                 savoury meals with fruit
grow on trees                  yet the tomato is used
or shrubs                         plentifully in savoury cooking


synthetic                          synthetic
a priori                           a posteriori
■, ▲                                   in light of the given examples
(geometry)                        in the realm of the analytical
and the propositions       a priori: that fruits grow on
that come with                 trees or bushes
them:                                  there's the pineapple
e.g. c² = a² + b²                   anomaly:
or physics:                         pineapples grow on the ground
e = mc²                                (in the ground) like cabbage-heads
                                            grow in much the same fashion...

i always struggle with the a posteriori conceptualization...
in the original i wrote as can be seen above...
are tomatoes the byproduct of
analytical a posteriori knowledge?
i.e. they are fruits that are used as vegetables (used,
hell, even treated as such)... because you will not find
a tomato desert as such...
the classification of a tomato as a fruit:
given how it grows... would also invoke the cucumber
to be treated as a vegetable:
vegetables are not as juicy as fruits...
the flesh of the fruit is usually softer and certainly
more juicy... while the flesh of the vegetable
is more bulky and requires cooking and salt
to extract the juices oh a higher carbohydrate
concentrate of the fibrous nature...

pineapples... a fruit that grows like a vegetable
in the earth...
i like this "confusion" in my head...
i'm not going to clarify it...
            i leave this curiosity in my writing on purpose...
analytical a posteriori facts:
well... first having categorised the tomato as a fruit:
upon analysis... true: the tomato behaves like
a fruit... but upon analysis: after the fact:
it is better used as a vegetable...

         and the synthetic a posteriori truth about
the pineapple? then again: i know where i might be going wrong...
isn't synthetic a posteriori knowledge possible?
it's not as simple as the pineapple example
based on: fruits grow on trees while vegetables grow in
the earth... i can only find questions
on the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge...
ergo? of course synthetic a posteriori knowledge
is possible...
    it's ingrained in chemistry...
what does synthetic a posteriori knowledge look like?

a chemist tastes a lemon... and he tries to replicate
the taste of lemon using chemicals...
he breaks down the chemistry of the lemon...
and? with due course... replicates the taste of lemon
without actually using a lemon!
he breaks the lemon to the basic components
of citric acids and whatever else is needed to replicate
the taste of lemon and grind it into a powder:
chemistry is synthetic a posteriori knowledge...
isn't it?

the examples i cited with the pineapples:
it doesn't matter that the pineapple behaves like
a vegetable when it grows...
apart from that sick idea of a Hawaiian pizza toppings...
pineapple? ham?! you what?!
that's not synthetic a posteriori knowledge:
that's just a ******* whim of bad-taste...
there's no actual synthesis of the pineapple growing
as a vegetable and the "ingenuity" of treating
it like a bad idea for a pizza topping...
the tomato: however... is a pristine example
of analytical a posteriori knowledge:
sure... it's categorised as a vegetable...
because of the way it grows... compared to actual vegetables:
but? you wouldn't allow the tomato
to be bitten into like an apple... you wouldn't bake
a tomato cake as you might bake a banana cake...
the analysis concludes: our knowledge of fruits is this...
and we have this vegetable: the tomato
that's a fruit... but it would be better suited
in being used like a vegetable...

synthetic a posteriori does exist... it just doesn't apply
to pineapples for the simply reason that they
grow like vegetables... they're still going to be fruits...
synthetic a posteriori knowledge is chemistry...
it has to exist because a pineapple is
not a synthetic a priori "idea" of TASTE let alone
virtue or however Kant framed it...

ugh... my first day back at Craven Cottage...
little ****** steward: i hate these hierarchies...
it's a petty army of high-viz. jackets...
   i wasn't the supervisor but i had some colts under
my "supervision"... i tried to smooth things over:
i did... in the end i wanted to see Fulham play
Liverpool... i spread the word around:
this is *******... they should have put us inside
the stadium...
   but... the weather was the loveliest and the Thames
was tide-out... two seagulls arguing...
in the shade: this part of London is truly mesmerising...
i love the smell of the Thames with the tide out...
in the shade under these mammoth-esque splendours
of foliage...
hell... i even managed to spot my first KONIK
(little horse)... that's slang for... those ******* that buy
tickets at the regular price... then hang around the stadium
and try to push the tickets at a hyper-inflated price...
the ****** was selling the tickets for £250 for two!
and this was after the first half finished!
i told one of the guys with a radio:
call this in...
                          i had to repeat myself about 3 times
before the management agreed to my concern...
they sent two spare police officers to the person in question...
he almost sold those ******* tickets...
one minute i see him pretend to tie his shoelaces
(he wasn't pretending) - his black cap
disappearing under the bushes... next minute:
wh'ah where?! ****** did a runner...
so he wasn't tying his shoelaces "on a whim":
he was about to do a runner...

                  that's ******* exploitation...
that's like: stealing... capitalism at its worst...
the ingenuity of crime: oh... but it's innocent crime...
it's i buy something for £30 but...
i'll sell it for you for £250...
                             now... it's not antiques! it's not a *******
van Gogh painting that has been lying around
for quite some time... gaining a repertoire and a reputation
as something good, worthwhile:
it's a ******* football match ticket!
hyper-inflation like under the Weimar Republic...
money good as "gold": "gold" as in winter fuel,
timber the new platinum!

after all: there was no real synthetic a priori knowledge:
chemistry is hardly a question of appearance,
water is clear, but so is hydrochloric acid...
what else is clear? sodium hydroxide...
                 chemistry was born from synthetic a posteriori
knowledge...
how many chemical experiments came as a surprise
a sort of anti-Eureka of synthetic a priori knowledge?
champagne springs to mind... lysergic acid comes
to mind: no one was actually trying to find these things...
e.g. they did not come about through analytical
a posteriori knowledge: they arose from
a dimension of the synthetic a posteriori knowledge:
by chance: by accident...

sure... i might be doing a ******-low-skill job right
now: and it is... i'll admit...
it's super **** sometimes:
most of the time my coworkers are either
over-bearing ego-maniacs fixated on hierarchy,
or they're lazy Somali youths...
or just plain-sighted Nimrods...
i sometimes leave my mind to wander...
that when i get the jerks in the feet like
i'm about to fall over... like for bearskin hatted
soldiers on parade...
but i leave my mind to wander:
it's not an insult if it's true...
                  no: when i was a roofer and fiddling
with inanimate things there was more focus
on the work to be done... dealing with people
is a crass differentiation from perfecting how an inanimate
ought to behave under your hands...
to turn a roll of felt into a water-insulated roof
with a roll of fleece and enough tar...
people are different: i'm sort of studying people...
gearing myself to hover in on children in schools...

if Leibniz preferred the profession of librarian
and a private intellectual life of par excellence...
i wouldn't think twice about becoming a primary school
teacher than being a secondary school
teacher of chemistry...
**** me: if drag queen hour is about to be imported
from America: i best (better) step in...
i just imagine: well... unlike a barren woman...
who has no children...
who goes into a profession akin to primary school
teaching... but then i'd arrive...
i know the obvious stereotype to battle:
PEDOHPILE! ha ha...
           Ava Lauren: just my type... plump...
full-bodied... probably the age of my mum by now...
that's my type...
i need something rounded of:
a 5.9 = a 6... just an example...
                
             but i let my mind wander... when roofing
you couldn't leave your mind to wonder...
i could... tell you of the specific scents in certain
underground stations... Baker Street? is that the one
with the Victorian arches, a station under the bridge?
i don't remember...
Putney Bridge is a beautiful station...
but today i took the route:
Romford via train... got off at Stratford... waited for a minute
for the central line...
(i love meditating on the topic of tubes maps...
there are only two important lines
in London... why? based on how many times
they intersect... the Central Line and the Piccadilly
Line... they only intersect at Holborn)...
travelled to Holborn... not sitting...
at each carriage there are these half-seats...
you're leaning back... standing-sitting...
i felt so relaxed... i gave way to the momentum
of the tube...
i was moving backwards and forwards...
head nodding... shoulders doing the mr. plastic-fantastic...
i almost tried to remember the remaining
tension in my body... the grip i had on a bottle
of water and a packet of tortilla wraps...
the rest of me was: freed...

when it comes to scents... that's one thing:
everyone knows it's a stupid idea to change tube
lines at Bank... why? well... Bank it connected
to Monument...
it's a city within a city: a London 2.0... oh oh:
yes it ******* is... never change at Bank...
anyway... as i was relaxing having closed my eyes...
i can tell you where the best sounds of
machinery exist in London?
between Liverpool St. - Bank - and Chancery Lane...
mind you... i cycle the route from time to time...
what's above? is not, what's above...
compared to cycling... this route is like:
watching the original Dune movie...
i'm strapped to a ******* earthworm...
or: being digested by one while listening to
the clag glug and clamour iron biting iron...
i sometimes do the "twirl" of the tube above
ground... just after Aldgate...
i head towards Brick Lane... toward Liverpool St.
prior to reaching Bank St.:

all the Piccadilly Stations between Holborn and
Earl's Court have this sickly sweet stench
about them... it's sickly sweet... it's: sickly sweet...

i remember back in St. Augustine's we had one
female primary school teacher...
some ****** proverb speaks the words:
woe unto you for having to care for the children
of others...
while i'm thinking: that would be a worthwhile challenge...
i don't want any of my own:
the fear of ******* them up more than
i was ****** up wears me down...
at least with the genes of strangers
i can send in an auxiliary covert party of my psyche...
who would i send in? the usual suspects...
Kant, Heidegger, Newton, Ezra Pound...
oh... the list is pretty long...

most probably Rumi hanging around with
Zhuangzi... Ovid and Horace...
ooh... terrible idea to start drinking whiskey
after binge-eating a watermelon...
the burps i'm getting back:
******* postcards from Uan Muhuggiag (Libya)...
i'm seeing camels double the number of their humps!
not good... absolutely no good

burp... ooh... this watermelon will not go down
so good... while i worry about *******
myself come tomorrow morning...
unlike the Red Hot Chilly Peppers singing
the fames of California:
what do i have? i have the countryside of Essex
and the incursions in the concrete staccato
of London... i can mediate this...

              burp: well... at least it's whiskey mingling
with the juices of a watermelon...
i much prefer that to the half-digested acidic
meat of any sort...
                 that's healthy burping and healthy farting
for your...
hmm... investing in children... that's an idea...
i once remarked to a boy in a supermarket:
you know... how a while i thought animals
were incapable of seeing 3D objects
in a 2D canvas: i.e. why wouldn't animals
watch television with men?
today i had a "Fred" pester me for a bite
of my tortilla roll...
i would have given it to him freely:
i wasn't that hungry...
   so i asked his owner: so... what's his diet like?
oh... Fred has had pretty stomach upsets...
he spent the past three days eating mulberries
from a tree...
ooh! i love mulberries: who couldn't be more upset?
the dog or the mulberries?
ugh: these kind of people:
that have their dogs on a ******* vegan diet...
hey! Fred! bite into this tortilla wrap!
i have learned that the food man eats
if also eaten by a dog tastes better:
after it was eaten by man!

o.k., fair enough Fred... you have an owner that
deserves having you: but no children...
i'd put you in the same category as a child...
children, dogs, cats...
things that might stir in man the unusual:
certainly not Darwinistic / genetic investment
that might reduce a man's hormonal balance...
mate... you look at me that dumb-***** eyed way
one more time... let me pat you on the head
like i have... you're coming with me to the land
of eternal tortillas wrapping around chicken
and bacon: there's no "yes" as there's no "no"...

but that's London for you...
            and that's also Essex for you...
i spent an entire day in London?
where did i find those cheap-*** beauties of womanhood?
i didn't find them in London:
i had to travel back to Romford to find...
i sat down to eat a snack bucket in a chicken shop:
three spicy wings, some chips...
mayonnaise and some chilly sauce...
a 7up... £3.50... i enjoyed the meal
and thought about: nothing...
nothing is usually hard to "think" about...
you get into geometry: to prolong your time at pretending
to look "cool"... when eating alone...

i hopped on the bus... watched two hunchbacks
of an elderly couple "manage" their way own:
what cruel fate... the extension of mortality
via science... may i never see myself
that old... reduced to being the child of Atlas...
no... i don't care for the sensibility of secularism
and science...
old age transcends both of these:
it's the reality of old age...
prolonged old age is best renowned
and celebrated by lizards: turtles most in fact...
mammals look weird...
mammals look weird when their life is prolonged:
unnaturally: via the basis of science!

start giving out re-prescriptions to people
with a a faith in science but no hope in hope...
start selling them hopes of eternity...
this materialistic "eternal life": is drawing us closer
to no closure...
there comes a life: there coms a death of said life...
it's not fair to pretend that the inevitiable
is "not" going to happen: it will...
the tyranny of old age...
                  by the standards of the Benelux:
i'm more than willing to bow out...

who knows! i am not willing to simply live
for the awkward presence of strangers
on a basis of anomalies and non-intrusions
of some freaked-up formalities...
to hell with that: i have no evolutionary-existential
plight of  "conscience" that might make me suppose:
on racial grounds: that the human "effort"
will disappear: outright: completely:
sure... chances are... humanity will be governed
by more people willing to ***** cities of death via
the pyramid... people engage in the magic carpet
flights of Islam and pseudo-Islam from regions
akin to Somalia and Bangladesh:
my problem? i can't live forever! can i?

et scriptum est...
i like being toyed around as being the idiot...
it helps me grow...
and it was so written...
                ergo? ut necesse sit!
(and so it must be)
  ha ha! ah ha ha h ha ha!
vulnus ferrum:
                  sanguis respiratio
scratch of iron:
breathing blood!
            
mortuus est mori: the dead must die!
vivos debet mori /
vivos non sunt exceptio!

i work among people that make my intellect:
CLOWN!
   i entertain them... i must...
but their intellect is about as much:
grappling as... i don't know what!
i'm out of metaphors and aphorisms...

                        intelligence is discouraged when it comes
to a working environment...
           i'm like Leibniz... i'm unlike Newton...
my ambitions a "cowering" in a personal enterprise...
i like the individualism of m own enterprise:
i don't hope to solve or save the problems of
a common man... nope!
                
last time i heard? the train has arrived:
i also heard: the train is leaving...
well... i'm i geared up:
what do i care for the famines in Ethiopia?!
i don't care for claiming responsibilities for
people who don't take responsibilities for
themselves!
starve?! **** it... why not?"
oh right... one of the Somali types?!
pretend it's work by hiding behind the bushes?!
ergo? behind the bushes i pretend to shower you
with free bread and pork? don't like pork?
eat dirt instead!

i'm done: free-loaders: i'm done with them...
i'm so ******* with these Somalis that you can't even begin to comprehend!
Owen Phillips Jan 2011
I scribble on
With a half lobotomy;
A radar seeking Hell by looking up
And another dictionary
From another time and place;
An alternate timeline
Reaching right and left
As well as fore and aft;
The beard of a ******
And naïveté too;
Undiscovered depths of emotional manipulation
Unseeing, unthinking,
A new old structural familiarity
To abduct and probe
The time-honored, vacuum-sealed
Ineptitude of ideology
Whose meat is sweet
But suits the skeletons of standardized educational theories
Like a pair of jeans at age eleven that you expect to grow into;
In hope of justifying
Overuse of monetary resource
For the sake of bonus states of mind;
Scouring the depths of discarded everything
With hooks catching on to all the similarly forgotten names
Who live in fear of obscurity
Clinging, not unlike insects
To their sixteenth minute of fame;
Finding in myself no way but out
To understand that which lives inside;
With disregard for any thread which weaves past me and takes no hold,
And loathing for the ones that do but unravel before the eyes;
Lightheaded, ending any sense of continuity
When, prostrate in the comfort of another tapestry
I stand abruptly, let my dreams be drained from me through tendrils
Like the passing of a temporal existence;
Drinking in the dust and glue of crowded bookshops
In fear of losing inspiration
To the insatiable jaws of my consumerist natural state;
Rummaging in a bargain bin
In search of someone to tell me, “Stop!"
With heads in clouds and bodies in ice trays,
Stealing lines of logic and lyric,
Throwing down and hacking into
Elemental bits which fit into my own vernacular
Sacrificing beauty for originality and vice versa;
Choosing idols idly with the tides
Of knowledge and of art
Rising and falling without fail
Never apparent and never blurred by motion;
Searching for a style like an odd-numbered jean size;
Finding greater inspiration in waves of unopened mysteries;
Following examples laid by unsuccessful fictions;
Learning ethics only from the prologues of ****** novels,
Unsuspecting victims snuffed in interesting and lurid ways;
Letting technological distraction detract from the projections of psychological complexity
Which I, from atop the high horse of my own pretensions
Pretended to embrace;
Committing massive acts of thievery, fraud, and infinite lethargy
For the sake of juvenile, illegitimate art forms;
Seeking other seekers who exist autonomously
For the sake of personal independent credibility;
Leading unsuspecting, overreaching, overeating, understanding, undemanding,
Too forgiving, not forgetting,
Victims of domestic warfare
To a loveless watery grave
For the sake of my own loneliness;
Patronizing every segregated buffet
With courage enough only for a small taste of everything;
With the flavors of the day swirling around
For me to shoot them down
And pin their carcasses to elementary school walls
And Mormon tool sheds
And nature centers
And all the forgotten places of summers past
In the hope of rediscovering
Some old buried treasure
Be it wondrous or worthless;
With the uneasy insincerity of a rodent who pretends to understand a city;
With adopted methods
And repeated thoughts
And ideas which came to me in waking dreams of my own retirement;
Sharing, for a captive audience,
The formidable giants which
Inform our common denominator
Searching through myself for only the most indecipherable
With the fear of being understood
And the fear of being ridiculed
And pretensions of some preternatural predetermination for greatness;
With acceptance of predisposition for obscurity,
The cost of the inundation of the new airwaves.
The series of tubes that feed us intravenously
With information, information, information,
Having killed God and left material validation in His wake;
It could be that new gods are born in the minds of the innovators,
Those wonderfully wealthy
Whose social structuralism
Was a beacon to us all;
In the darkness of an architectural anomaly
Where lights extinguish as my body lies dormant
Alone and abandoned
Only by my own subversion;
Confined ever to a convolution of passages
While above me all my peers still carry on;
Overstaying welcomes
And letting emotionality
Color conversation
A sicklier green,
A green of a tree only just sprouted,
A green of a new recruit,
A green of an inexperienced schoolboy
Faced with the daunting and timeless act
Of copulation;
Somehow taking in the sights and sounds and smells
Of advanced mathematics
Even occupied, as I am,
With explaining my actions
Most eloquently;
Devoting myself to another cause,
Another, another, another
Always relaxing my grip by losing focus;
Desperately hoping not to let my fellow travelers
Lose their innocence
While I reluctantly, dogmatically
Keep mine on a leash;
Always keenly aware
Of the universe of worlds
Beyond my control,
And even my understanding;
On the increasingly frequent
Intrusions of risk
Into my significant reality
And the iota of explainable truth which guides the motion of my body but most frequently my mind;
Questioning the meaning of all words
Without thought or coordination;
Considering another restful journey
To clear my mind of human language
And in its place acquire thoughts and emotions from the street;
Without foreseeable direction,
Malice aforethought
Or noticeable signs of critical reaction
Giving birth to litter
Forgetting articles
And floating my sense of time up the Ganges;
Taking only seconds to counter the possibility of
Accepting more responsibility for myself;
Complicating matters with an interesting or bitter goodbye.
Title inspired by Mel Brooks' film *Young Frankenstein*
Mike T Minehan Oct 2012
The reason there aren't so many vampyres
around these days is they don't like TV hype
and the intrusions of TV news crews. It transpires
that vampyres prefer late hours and like low light levels
because they're egregarious and don't like to be seen inebrious
in the middle of their heinous, intravenous revels.
Also, unfavorable reviews about transfusions
and the confusion caused by AIDS, at this juncture,
has definitely reduced the appeal of being seduced
by some crazed and gurgling Transylvanian
bloodsucker lusting to puncture the jugular,
or any other available vein again,
especially when you don't know if they've disinfected their fangs
or only licked them after draining their last victim.

After all, vampyres were brought up in castles
when there weren't antiseptics for gargles
and they haven't been taught prophylactic criteria
against such apocalyptic viral bacteria.
And if you've ever seen vampyres with condoms
on their teeth, you'll know what I mean.  
It's a scream. Everyone finds them hilarious. It'd be easier
to die laughing than to go down with anemia.
Also, like everyone else, vampyres hate ridicule.
No-one likes being seen as the fool.
  
And the other reason vampyres are scarce now
is that there are so many genuine muggers, hoods, crims,
druggies, financial leeches, homicidal maniacs,
psychopathic liars and genocidal tendencies to conjure up real fears
out there, that there's not much room left for quaint old-fashioned vampyres, poor dears.  

But do you know something? Even though they were naughty,
I miss their occasional ****. I know it was gory,
but those kisses, oh boy. We got into the femoral artery inside the thigh. It was *****. But when AIDs came along,
that was it.  Definitely bye-bye. Nobody wanted to die.  
These are the facts.  
So these vampyres were starving and they reverted to bats.  
Did a midnight flit,
and that's the end of my story.
Mark Lecuona Feb 2012
Do you believe we are brain dead
Shallow Suburbanites with no street cred
Incapable of an original thought
Because we have all been bought?
While you with all of your spare time
Are able to protest in rhyme
Tempting our flock
And moving the hands on the clock
Do you think we are cold and callous
Living out here in our “palace”
Unfeeling and uncaring
Never thinking or sharing
Our supposed ill-gotten wealth
Acquired with sinister stealth
To be used to acquire more
While others face a locked door
But it is us that make it easy for you
Because it is all you think to do
Your mind is free to choose
With no constraints, you cannot lose
Your heroes are on the road
Howling about their load
Riding further with vocal riffs
Pretending you have many gifts
Experimenting with freedom of thought
Glorifying yourselves all for naught
Living with nothing to lose or gain
You are able to explore your brain
But how easy it must be for you
With no one to answer to
No small child to care about
You just existed without any doubt
About your pioneering ways of living
But it was about taking not giving
As you smugly changed our world
Our morals to be forever hurled
Into a corner to be abused
Painted as something of a ruse
To deprive you of your extremism
Or able to live in your Nihilism
While you bellow and memorize
The words of others more wise
So you take and take
And then regurgitate
Their thoughts with a twist
Trying to give us a gist
Of your genius in poetry
But you only master sophistry
As you speak in starts and stops
Attempting to fool us flops
By orchestrating obfuscation
You captured the eye of the nation
You live in self-congratulatory mode
While forever referring back to the road
A trip of useless hedonistic eruption
Masquerading as true revelation
And what did you reveal?
Something that you should conceal
A high-brow conceit steeped in intellectual
Pretension ultimately altogether ineffectual
In changing the world in your image
Playing God with words you scrimmage
With the minds of lost children
Left disillusioned and barren
Because they bought into your delusions
Not knowing you saw them as intrusions
Into your bubble of pretended insight
So you turned their day into night
They ran to the West Coast
But found nothing but a ghost
Of an enlightened age
With few people quite sage
But they were not fed or awakened
Only left on the street forsaken
While you accept the plaudits
Of other frauds matching wits
With one another for what?
Just so they could mentally strut
All about the place
Pretending to care just in case
They were called on their addictions
So they fought against contradictions
In the way they actually lived their life
And the caring they projected about strife
We who must care for our offspring
With no time for free living
Exist wondering about your fame
When it seems it was so much a game
About how much you could consume
And make us to be the loon
Because you knew of the conspiracy
While we believed any theory
Of a loving God and benevolent big brother
Because we are stupid, incapable of reading the weather
Of changing times and mores
You keep us down with your stories
Of not being controlled
By those who you say stole
The truth from all of us
And threw us under the bus
Well, we are not impressed
So you can remain undressed
As the Emperor who sees only himself
And believes in his own wealth
Of mind and enlightenment
Publishing only excrement
Useless to the poor
What else do you have in store?
We await, breath baited
Your words of how you hated
Society and its norms
Your people and their scorns
Will once again attack
The suburban brat pack
So we work each day
And in the morning pray
That our efforts are not useless
To those who do not live like us
With our many blessings
We give our offerings
Freely and with joy
Each girl and boy
To transfer that which God gave
Because that is how we are taught to behave*


Copyright 2010. All Rights Reserve. Mark Lecuona
Kind of a rant from a wannabe hippy about being put down because I live in a suburb.....
Rachel Dyer Oct 2014
I cannot compete with your jealousy, your anger, your insecurity.
My love has no where to rest, no place of purity.
You have tainted our love, our memories, our life, with your self made delusions.
Your mind has brought chaos with these insane intrusions.
I'll always love you, forever, or more
But you must set me free from this torture, this grief at my core.
I'll be here for you, when you need me, no matter what
But your accusations tear at me like the deepest cut.
My love is purely unconditional
Our love quite untraditional
But I'll be here
For you
Deep in your heart
Always
Forever
This is where I start
JR Rhine Oct 2016
You were draped across a girlfriend's bedroom wall
where a cross would be,
your arms held out loosely like an ambiguous invitation,
shielding your countenance from extraneous intrusions
under which she would sleep soundly
in the shroud of your incantation.

Your fallen angel wings beating back bad dreams
slain mercilessly
and falling at your feet.

Your lips slightly pouting, eyes dark,
obfuscating the madness and ***-crazed hallucinations
they harbor.

Hair purposefully unkempt,
disheveled sensuously atop your head,
tufts of hair brushed across your broad chest--

Bare muscles taut and taunting,
placed topographically on the poised temple--
those ready to worship bow their heads
in reverence to the sonic alchemist.

The modern adonis,
sculpted out of the Mississippi Delta Blues
and Dionysian wet dreams--
brought to life with the electric current pulsating through the microphone and its stand upon which you straddle with skin-tight leather pants--

Your left hand around its waist,
your right cupped over the phallus--
your lips part and your cataclysmal eyes
envelop the darkness before you--

Your image,
tormented and tantalizing
in an open invitation
to prostrate ourselves before you
and succumb to your hypnotic stare.

The door opens.
the criminal element is lost
have you fought with your boss
each day is fraught with challenges
but that's what makes you stronger
all along the water's edge
the waves break and connect
like threads of poetry
lines of beauty
curving at the moon
luminous intrusions
before we are fallen
dreams seethe
with colorful landscapes
and i am a blade of grass

threads of astral fire
aspire for the sun
my magic is beyond recognition
it ignites the silence
and burns bright as day
words are living
breathing entities
families of sounds
consonants and vowels
are relatively harmless
unless you dare
to speak them out loud
control your tone
and let aspiration resonate
this assonance is rather transient
so lets embrace our scansion
mansions of impermanence
lands of intransigent transients
its tragic really
how the lead of vehemence
can spread so rapidly

sentient powers stake their claim
in soil that remains dutiful
despite your shame
have we gone insane
its quite likely
or are we still the same
that remains to be questioned
better to drop this game
and keep up your crazy vision quest
Nigel Morgan Dec 2012
There's a passage in a story by John Buchan where a minor character explains how a good mystery story is created: take at least three random subjects or events and connect them together. Here goes.
 
A toothbrush
Covent Garden
Wildflowers*
 
Interesting to let the mind float free and subjects appear unbidden, thought Marcus. The moon had risen and out at sea its reflections caressed the swelling waves. Calm the night after such a day of being about.
 
Gregory had phoned him, early. Marcus had been lying in bed. Sylvia had just returned from the bathroom and had folded herself into his arms. Their collective feet had conversed amicably as early morning feet do. She was still tingling a little from the passion they had shared, stretching herself languorously like a cat coming into the warm after a cold night out.
 
'Marcus,' said Gregory, 'it's today.' And that was all. The line went dead, but that was all he needed to know.
 
He extricated himself from Sylvia who was intent either on sleep or further love-making. She was incorrigible, but so so desirable.
 
I'll just take a toothbrush he thought as he swiftly shaved. He picked a new pink one still in its packet and put it in his bag with the papers, a map, his camera . . .
 
He thought about Ripley as he steered the car onto the motorway. That character fascinated him and he wondered if its inventor Patricia Highsmith had ever known such a man; a nice good-looking man, but selfish and nasty. Marcus wondered if he was selfish and nasty. He reckoned he was.
 
When he reached Covent Garden, parking illegally in Jermine street, he wasted no time in walking directly to Turino's. There, amongst the tourists and the out of town shoppers was Greg.
 
'I have this little package for you. Don't open it until you reach Southwold. Park in front of the Lion Hotel. Do nothing until she appears, which she will do after her lunch with the doctor. Then follow her. We think she'll go to Ben's. If she does we want the pictures . . . and as explicit as possible. Leave the package.'
 
It's at least two and a half hours to this village on the Suffolk coast. Until Ipswich he scarcely regarded the early summer colours, the plaintive skies, fields stretching to woods, the occasional grandeur of parkland.
 
He stopped for coffee at a services and called Sylvia.
 
'Hi Sylvia it's me.'
'Where are you? I was hoping we'd spend the morning together.'
'Well Greg called . . . I'm on my way to the seaside.'
'Oh . . . no time for Sylvia today?'
'Not today'
'Tonight?'
'if all goes to plan'
' You journalists, you're all the same . .'
 
But he wasn't. He was different. He didn't just write, he could investigate, uncover things, hack into mobile phones, get the compromising images.
 
Yes, she was going to Ben's . North, on the Norwich road. No hesitation. She drove fast. He had to have his wits about him. When she turned off the main road to the mill he carried on, then doubled back and two miles further on parked within sight of the building.
 
Her red car was there the courtyard. He decided on getting in from the garden so left the road for an adjoining field. Waist high in a profusion of grasses and wildflowers Marcus made his way painstakingly towards a collection of outbuildings, the indoor swimming pool, garages, an office.
 
The pictures were good. Both of them, together. The architect and the broker. Lovers, conspirators, thieves. They deserved everything coming to them.
 
He had entered the mill briefly. There were voices upstairs, a little laughter and then silence. He left the package on the kitchen table propped up against a vase.
 
They'd been following her movements for months after he'd taken his suspicions to Fred. Yes, he'd been so lucky. A wine bar conversation, an aggrieved employee, a few leaked documents and it all came together. And now this . . . the ****** stuff the paper loved.
 
He decided not to go back to Sylvia tonight but walk by the sea, let the gentle whoosh of water on the pebbled strand sooth his ruffled conscience. He had done his job. There would be other intrusions. Investigations, revelations. Mr Nice but nasty like The Talented Mr Ripley, he thought.
sobroquet May 2013
䷇䷄䷂䷀䷊䷌䷼䷶䷩
Jupiter and the moon take most blows for us
a very nice  arrangement for blithering piles of pus
intelligent design or some grand coincidence
the phenomena that is life is no mere incident

64 hexagrams comprise  the I Ching
64 nucleotides in a DNA  string
anthropic  anthropomorphic antagonists
dripping and  drooling  with dread
that (what if)  God caused the thoughts that reside in our heads
the phenomena that is life is beyond your stead

Big bang
hot thing
can't explain
why the rain
brings gain
to the blamed and the sane

God isn't real, that's their deal
religion's exist   because you feel
pithy platforms of persistent intrusions
pulpits of platitudes feeding delusions
the phenomena that is life is no mere illusion

Church day, fey day
leave your questions at the door
harken hear the story
of God in all its glory
the grand and the gory
the mysterious phenomena that is life
䷇䷄䷂䷀䷊䷌䷼䷶䷩
Genetic Code  http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/C/Codons.html

I Ching   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Ching       ䷇䷄䷂䷀䷊䷌䷼䷶䷩

According to physics, space inside our universe is multidimensional.
There are 64 main dimensions and each dimension is further divided into many sub-dimensions. Since the inhabitants of earth can perceive three dimensions, their senses have no access to many other realms of universal reality.

It is said that through the ancient process of yoga (specifically kriya yoga) one can obtain access to many other dimensions. When a yogi obtains access to other dimensions, he can perform unusual activities.

A yogi can achieve 8 (eight) mystical perfections. Each perfection gives him access to 8 (eight) additional dimensions. Thus by achieving all eight perfections, a yogi obtains access to all the 64 (8x8) dimensions making his body unaffected by space time bound physical laws.  
the octave and well tempered system (Bach) solfege
Sri Gautama Buddha's Noble 8-fold path



Comparative Cosmology, Akif Manaf

The term 64-bit is a descriptor given to a generation of computers in which 64-bit processors are the norm. 64 bits is a word size that defines certain classes of computer architecture, buses, memory and CPUs, and by extension the software that runs on them. 64-bit CPUs have existed in supercomputers since the 1970s     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit_computing
64 squares to the chessboard
The '64 thousand dollar question' saying.
The planet Jupiter has 64 moons
PJ Poesy Oct 2018
As I am absorbed
in ol' buttermilk sky,
I stand ***** whilst my bare
feet skim neighbor's roof.
I'm pulled West, up. Setting sun
fans rays. Here, I am emitted
in nebulosity.

I care not what
hankerings loosened, let go,
drift back to earth,
to rosy, lilied yard
where chain link encumbered.
Clinical conclusion drawn
in misty misconception
no longer.
Intrinsic am I as air.

Spread my molecules
in scintilla of light. Yes,
even into gray of smog,
as I must admit,
to ***** parts. These
may rain acidic intrusions
in your backyard. Too
much to assimilate?

I never asked for
what rained in mine.
No impurities
have been intended.
Still, I must emit.
My sky awaits.
Catching next cloud out.
Andrew Rueter Sep 2017
Your intrusion
Is conducive
To my city burning down
So I defend from inside my castle
Civilian hordes
Wield swords
And I've gotta flail
In my chain mail

My city walls have been manned
So use your battering ram
And intrude on me
Muscle into my muscles
And burrow into my bones
By disarming my mob
While catapults lob
Incendiary boulders
That protect me from
Temporary shoulders
That have exploited my nation before
Mining the resources from it's core
Avoid all the blasts
So we can clash
In the arena of my mind
Where steel strikes time
And my defenses
Defend me from my life
So intrude on me
And shatter my protections
And shatter my conceptions
So intrude on me
And break my perceptions
But be careful
Intrusions have reflections
Sunset
by Michael R. Burch

Written for my grandfather, George Edwin Hurt Sr., on the day he departed this life.

Between the prophecies of morning
and twilight’s revelations of wonder,
the sky is ripped asunder.

The moon lurks in the clouds,
waiting, as if to plunder
the dusk of its lilac iridescence,

and in the bright-tentacled sunset
we imagine a presence
full of the fury of lost innocence.

What we find within strange whorls of drifting flame,
brief patterns mauling winds deform and maim,
we recognize at once, but cannot name.

Published by Contemporary Rhyme, New Lyre, The Chained Muse, Age of Muses, Poetry Life & Times, ArtVilla, Motherbird and Word Bird



Spring Was Delayed
by Michael R. Burch

Winter came early:
the driving snows,
the delicate frosts
that crystallize

all we forget
or refuse to know,
all we regret
that makes us wise.

Spring was delayed:
the nubile rose,
the tentative sun,
the wind’s soft sighs,

all we omit
or refuse to show,
whatever we shield
behind guarded eyes.

Originally published by Borderless Journal



Defenses
by Michael R. Burch

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

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



Polish
by Michael R. Burch

Your fingers end in talons—
the ones you trim to hide
the predator inside.

Ten thousand creatures sacrificed;
but really, what’s the loss?
Apply a splash of gloss.

You picked the perfect color
to mirror nature’s law:
red, like tooth and claw.



Vacuum
by Michael R. Burch

Over hushed quadrants
forever landlocked in snow,
time’s senseless winds blow ...

leaving odd relics of lives half-revealed,
if still mostly concealed ...
such are the things we are unable to know

that once intrigued us so.

Come then, let us quickly repent
of whatever truths we’d once determined to learn
but lost in these drifts at each unexpected turn.

There’s nothing left of us here; it’s time to go.



Less Heroic Couplets: Questionable Credentials
by Michael R. Burch

Poet? Critic? Dilettante?
Do you know what’s good, or do you merely flaunt?



Less Heroic Couplets: Less than Impressed
by Michael R. Burch

for T. M., regarding certain dispensers of lukewarm air

Their volume’s impressive, it’s true ...
but somehow it all seems “much ado.”



The Humpback
by Michael R. Burch

The humpback is a gullet
equipped with snarky fins.
It has a winning smile:
and when it Smiles, it wins
as miles and miles of herring
excite its fearsome grins.
So beware, unwary whalers,
lest you drown, sans feet and shins!

Published by Lighten Up Online



Don’t ever hug a lobster!
by Michael R. Burch

Don’t ever hug a lobster, if you meet one on the street!
If you hug a lobster to your breast, you’re apt to lose a ****!
If you hug a lobster lower down, it’ll snip away your privates!
If you hug a lobster higher up, it’ll leave your cheeks with wide vents!
So don’t ever hug a lobster, if you meet one on the street,
But run away and hope your frenzied feet are very fleet!



The Unregal Beagle vs. The Voracious Eagle
by Michael R. Burch

I’d rather see an eagle
than a beagle
because they’re so **** regal.

But when it’s time to wiggle
and to giggle,
I’d rather embrace an angel
than an evil.

And when it’s time to share the same small space,
I’d much rather have a beagle lick my face!



Resemblance
by Michael R. Burch

Take this geode with its rough exterior—
crude-skinned, brilliant-hearted ...

a diode of amethyst—wild, electric;
its sequined cavity—parted, revealing.

Find in its fire all brittle passion,
each jagged shard relentlessly aching.

Each spire inward—a fission startled;
in its shattered entrails—fractured light,

the heart ice breaking.



Less Heroic Couplets: Midnight Stairclimber
by Michael R. Burch

Procreation
is at first great sweaty recreation,
then—long, long after the *** dies—
the source of endless exercise.



Elemental
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

There is within her a welling forth
of love unfathomable.
She is not comfortable
with the thought of merely loving:
but she must give all.

At night, she heeds the storm's calamitous call;
nay, longs for it. Why?
O, if a man understood, he might get her.
But that never would do!
Beth, as you embrace the storm,

so I embrace elemental you.



What Immense Silence
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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

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

why is it God that they fear?

Published in The Bible of Hell



Lay Down Your Arms
by Michael R. Burch

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

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

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



Bittersight
by Michael R. Burch

for Abu al-Ala Al-Ma'arri

To be plagued with sight
in the Land of the Blind,
—to know birth is death
and that Death is kind—
is to be flogged like Eve
(stripped, sentenced and fined)
because evil is “good”
in some backwards mind.



Golden Rue
by Michael R. Burch

Love has the value
of gold, if it’s true;
if not, of rue.

“Golden Rue” is a pun on “golden rule” and the fact that rue (regret) is seldom seen as golden.



Why the Kid Gloves Came Off
by Michael R. Burch

for Lemuel Ibbotson

It's hard to be a man of taste
in such a waste:
hence the lambaste.



Siren Song
by Michael R. Burch

The Lorelei’s
soft cries
entreat mariners to save her ...

How can they resist
her seductive voice through the mist?

Soon she will savor
the flavor
of sweet human flesh.



Rounds
by Michael R. Burch

Solitude surrounds me
though nearby laughter sounds;
around me mingle men who think
to drink their demons down,
in rounds.

Now agony still hounds me
though elsewhere mirth abounds;
hidebound I stand and try to think,
not sink still further down,
spellbound.

Their ecstasy astounds me,
though drunkenness compounds
resounding laughter into joy;
alloy such glee with beer and see
bliss found.



Nothing Returns
by Michael R. Burch

A wave implodes,
impaled upon
impassive rocks . . .

this evening
the thunder of the sea
is a wild music filling my ear . . .

you are leaving
and the ungrieving
winds demur . . .

telling me
that nothing returns
as it was before,

here where you have left no mark
upon this dark
Heraclitean shore.



Musings at Giza
by Michael R. Burch

In deepening pools of shadows lies
the Sphinx, and men still fear his eyes.
Though centuries have passed, he waits.
Egyptians gather at the gates.

Great pyramids, the looted tombs
—how still and desolate their wombs!—
await sarcophagi of kings.
From eons past, a hammer rings.

Was Cleopatra's litter borne
along these streets now bleak, forlorn?
Did Pharaohs clad in purple ride
fierce stallions through a human tide?

Did Bocchoris here mete his law
from distant Kush to Saqqarah?
or Tutankhamen here once smile
upon the children of the Nile?

or Nefertiti ever rise
with wild abandon in her eyes
to gaze across this arid plain
and cry, “Great Isis, live again!”

Published by Golden Isis and The Eclectic Muse (Canada)



Leave Taking (I)
by Michael R. Burch

Brilliant leaves abandon
battered limbs
to waltz upon ecstatic winds
until they die.

But the barren and embittered trees
lament the frolic of the leaves
and curse the bleak
November sky.

Now, as I watch the leaves'
high flight
before the fading autumn light,
I think that, perhaps, at last I may

have learned what it means to say
goodbye.

Published by The Lyric, Borderless Journal (Singapore), Mindful of Poetry, Silver Stork Magazine, and There is Something in the Autumn (anthology)



Con Artistry
by Michael R. Burch

The trick of life is like the sleight of hand
of gamblers holding deuces by the glow
of veiled back rooms, or aces; soon we’ll know

who folds, who stands . . .

The trick of life is like the pool shark’s shot—
the wild massé across green velvet felt
that leaves the winner loser. No, it’s not

the rack, the hand that’s dealt . . .

The trick of life is knowing that the odds
are never in one’s favor, that to win
is only to delay the acts of gods

who’d ante death for sin . . .

and death for goodness, death for in-between.
The rules have never changed; the artist knows
the oldest con is life; the chips he blows

can’t be redeemed.



Self Reflection
by Michael R. Burch

for anyone struggling with self-image

She has a comely form
and a smile that brightens her dorm ...
but she’s grossly unthin
when seen from within;
soon a griefstricken campus will mourn.

Yet she’d never once criticize
a friend for the size of her thighs.
Do unto others—
sisters and brothers?
Yes, but also ourselves, likewise.



Ah! Sunflower
by Michael R. Burch

for and after William Blake

O little yellow flower
like a star ...
how beautiful,
how wonderful
we are!

Originally published by Borderless Journal (Singapore)



no foothold
by michael r. burch

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

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

as far as the i can see ...



brrExit
by Michael R. Burch

what would u give
to simply not exist—
for a painless exit?
he asked himself, uncertain.

then from behind
the hospital room curtain
a patient screamed—
"my life!"



fog
by michael r. burch

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



grave request
by michael r. burch

come to ur doom
in Tombstone;

the stars stark and chill
over Boot Hill

care nothing for ur desire;

                 still,

imagine they wish u no ill,
that u burn with the same antique fire;

for there’s nothing to life but the thrill
of living until u expire;

so come, spend ur last hardearned bill
on Tombstone.



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

for the Religious Right

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

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

Jesus will grok you? Ah, yes, I’m quite sure!
Your intentions were noble and ineluctably pure.
And what the hell does THE LORD care about Palestinians?
Certainly, Christians were right about serfs, slaves and Indians.
Scratch that. You’re one of the Devil’s minions.



thanksgiving prayer of the parasites
by michael r. burch

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

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

ah-men!

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



Sometimes the Dead
by Michael R. Burch

Sometimes we catch them out of the corners of our eyes—
     the pale dead.
          After they have fled
the gourds of their bodies, like escaping fragrances they rise.

Once they have become a cloud’s mist, sometimes like the rain
     they descend;
they appear, sometimes silver like laughter,
to gladden the hearts of men.

Sometimes like a pale gray fog, they drift
     unencumbered, yet lumbrously,
          as if over the sea
there was the lightest vapor even Atlas could not lift.

Sometimes they haunt our dreams like forgotten melodies
     only half-remembered.
          Though they lie dismembered
in black catacombs, sepulchers and dismal graves; although they have committed felonies,

yet they are us. Someday soon we will meet them in the graveyard dust
     blood-engorged, but never sated
          since Cain slew Abel.
But until we become them, let us steadfastly forget them, even as we know our children must ...



This poem was recited by Carla Maria Gnappi to her English literature class in Italy, along with other poems of mine, during a study of the poetry of William Blake.

Orpheus
by Michael R. Burch

for and after William Blake

I.
Many a sun
and many a moon
I walked the earth
and whistled a tune.

I did not whistle
as I worked:
the whistle was my work.
I shirked

nothing I saw
and made a rhyme
to children at play
and hard time.

II.
Among the prisoners
I saw
the leaden manacles
of Law,

the heavy ball and chain,
the quirt.
And yet I whistled
at my work.

III.
Among the children’s
daisy faces
and in the women’s
frowsy laces,

I saw redemption,
and I smiled.
Satanic millers,
unbeguiled,

were swayed by neither girl,
nor child,
nor any God of Love.
Yet mild

I whistled at my work,
and Song
broke out,
ere long.



Les Bijoux (“The Jewels”)
by Charles Baudelaire
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My lover **** and knowing my heart's whims
Wore nothing more than a few bright-flashing gems;
Her art was saving men despite their sins—
She ruled like harem girls crowned with diadems!

She danced for me with a gay but mocking air,
My world of stone and metal sparking bright;
I discovered in her the rapture of everything fair—
Nay, an excess of joy where the spirit and flesh unite!

Naked she lay and offered herself to me,
Parting her legs and smiling receptively,
As gentle and yet profound as the rising sea—
Till her surging tide encountered my cliff, abruptly.

A tigress tamed, her eyes met mine, intent ...
Intent on lust, content to purr and please!
Her breath, both languid and lascivious, lent
An odd charm to her metamorphoses.

Her limbs, her *****, her abdomen, her thighs,
Oiled alabaster, sinuous as a swan,
Writhed pale before my calm clairvoyant eyes;
Like clustered grapes her ******* and belly shone.

Skilled in more spells than evil imps can muster,
To break the peace which had possessed my heart,
She flashed her crystal rocks’ hypnotic luster
Till my quietude was shattered, blown apart.

Her waist awrithe, her ******* enormously
Out-******, and yet ... and yet, somehow, still coy ...
As if stout haunches of Antiope
Had been grafted to a boy ...

The room grew dark, the lamp had flickered out,
Till firelight, alone, lit each glowing stud;
Each time the fire sighed, as if in doubt,
It steeped her pale, rouged flesh in pools of blood.

Published by Lush Stories, The ****** Salon and loovebook



BeMused
by Michael R. Burch

You will find in her hair
a fragrance more severe
than camphor.
You will find in her dress
no hint of a sweet
distractedness.
You will find in her eyes
horn-owlish and wise
no metaphors
of love, but only reflections
of books, books, books.

If you like Her looks,

meet me in the long rows,
between Poetry and Prose,
where we’ll win Her favor
with jousts, and savor
the wine of Her hair,
the shimmery wantonness
of Her rich-satined dress;
where we’ll press
our good deeds upon Her, save Her
from every distress,
for the lovingkindness
of Her matchless eyes
and all the suns of Her tongues.

We were young,
once,
unlearned and unwise . . .
but, O, to be young
when love comes disguised
with the whisper of silks
and idolatry,
and even the childish tongue claims
the intimacy of Poetry.



Resurrecting Passion
by Michael R. Burch

Last night, while dawn was far away
and rain streaked gray, tumescent skies,
as thunder boomed and lightning railed,
I conjured words, where passion failed ...

But, oh, that you were mine tonight,
sprawled in this bed, held in these arms,
your ******* pale baubles in my hands,
our bodies bent to old demands ...

Such passions we might resurrect,
if only time and distance waned
and brought us back together;
                                                       now
I pray these things might be, somehow.

But time has left us twisted, torn,
and we are more apart than miles.
How have you come to be so far—
as distant as an unseen star?

So that, while dawn is far away,
my thoughts might not return to you,
I feed your portrait to banked flames,
but as they feast, I burn for you.



Progress
by Michael R. Burch

There is no sense of urgency
at the local Burger King.

Birds and squirrels squabble outside
for the last scraps of autumn:
remnants of buns,
goopy pulps of dill pickles,
mucousy lettuce,
sesame seeds.

Inside, the workers all move
with the same très-glamorous lethargy,
conserving their energy, one assumes,
for more pressing endeavors: concerts and proms,
pep rallies, keg parties,
reruns of Jenny McCarthy on MTV.

The manager, as usual, is on the phone,
talking to her boyfriend.
She gently smiles,
brushing back wisps of insouciant hair,
ready for the cover of Glamour or Vogue.

Through her filmy white blouse
an indiscreet strap
suspends a lace cup
through which somehow the ****** still shows.
Progress, we guess, ...

and wait patiently in line,
hoping the Pokémons hold out.



Poppy
by Michael R. Burch

“It is lonely to be born.” – Dannie Abse, “The Second Coming”

It is lonely to be born
between the intimate ears of corn . . .
the sunlit, flooded, shellshocked rows.

The scarecrow flutters, listens, knows . . .

Pale butterflies in staggering flight
ascend the gauntlet winds and light
before the scything harvester.

The winsome buds of cornflowers
prepare themselves to be airborne,
and it is lonely to be shorn,
decapitate, of eager life
so early in love’s blinding maze
of silks and tassels, goldened days
when life’s renewed, gone underground.

Sad confidante of worm and mound,
how little stands to be regained
of what is left.
A tiny cleft
now marks your birth, your reddening
among the amber waves. O, sing!

Another waits to be reborn
among bent thistle, down and thorn.
A hoofprint’s cleft, a ram’s curved horn
curled inward, turned against the heart,
a spoor like infamy. Depart.
You came too late, the signs are clear:
whose world this is, now watches, near.
There is no ****** for the heart.

Originally published by Borderless Journal



Child of 9-11
by Michael R. Burch

a poem for Christina-Taylor Green, who was born on September 11, 2001 and died at the age of 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 shellshocked 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 gentle 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.



Upon a Frozen Star
by Michael R. Burch

Oh, was it in this dark-Decembered world
we walked among the moonbeam-shadowed fields
and did not know ourselves for weight of snow
upon our laden parkas? White as sheets,
as spectral-white as ghosts, with clawlike hands
****** deep into our pockets, holding what
we thought were tickets home: what did we know
of anything that night? Were we deceived
by moonlight making shadows of gaunt trees
that loomed like fiends between us, by the songs
of owls like phantoms hooting: Who? Who? Who?

And if that night I looked and smiled at you
a little out of tenderness ... or kissed
the wet salt from your lips, or took your hand,
so cold inside your parka ... if I wished
upon a frozen star ... that I could give
you something of myself to keep you warm ...
yet something still not love ... if I embraced
the contours of your face with one stiff glove ...

How could I know the years would strip away
the soft flesh from your face, that time would flay
your heart of consolation, that my words
would break like ice between us, till the void
of words became eternal? Oh, my love,
I never knew. I never knew at all,
that anything so vast could curl so small.

“Upon a Frozen Star” was my first attempt at blank verse.



Of Civilization and Disenchantment
by Michael R. Burch

for Anais Vionet

Suddenly uncomfortable
to stay at my grandfather's house—
actually his third new wife's,
in her daughter's bedroom
—one interminable summer
with nothing to do,
all the meals served cold,
even beans and peas...

Lacking the words to describe
ah!, those pearl-luminous estuaries—
strange omens, incoherent nights.

Seeing the flares of the river barges
illuminating Memphis,
city of bluffs and dying splendors.

Drifting toward Alexandria,
Pharos, Rhakotis, Djoser's fertile delta,
lands at the beginning of a new time and "civilization."

Leaving behind sixty miles of unbroken cemetery,
Alexander's corpse floating seaward,
bobbing, milkwhite, in a jar of honey.

Memphis shall be waste and desolate,
without an inhabitant.
Or so the people dreamed, in chains.



An Obscenity Trial
by Michael R. Burch

The defendant was a poet held in many iron restraints
against whom several critics cited numerous complaints.
They accused him of trying to reach the "common crowd,"
and they said his poems incited recitals far too loud.

The prosecutor alleged himself most artful (and best-dressed);
it seems he’d never lost a case, nor really once been pressed.
He was known far and wide for intensely hating clarity;
twelve dilettantes at once declared the defendant another fatality.

The judge was an intellectual well-known for his great mind,
though not for being merciful, honest, sane or kind.
Clerics loved the "Hanging Judge" and the critics were his kin.
Bystanders said, "They'll crucify him!" The public was not let in.

The prosecutor began his case by spitting in the poet's face,
knowing the trial would be a farce.
"It is obscene," he screamed, "to expose the naked heart!"
The recorder (bewildered Society), well aware of his notoriety,
greeted this statement with applause.

"This man is no poet. Just look—his Hallmark shows it.
Why, see, he utilizes rhyme, symmetry and grammar! He speaks without a stammer!
His sense of rhythm is too fine!
He does not use recondite words or conjure ancient Latin verbs.
This man is an impostor!
I ask that his sentence be . . . the almost perceptible indignity
of removal from the Post-Modernistic roster!"

The jury left, in tears of joy, literally sequestered.

The defendant sighed in mild despair, "Might I not answer to my peers?"
But how His Honor giggled then,
seeing no poets were let in.

Later, the clashing symbols of their pronouncements drove him mad
and he admitted both rhyme and reason were bad.



Ann Rutledge’s Irregular Quilt

based on “Lincoln the Unknown” by Dale Carnegie

I.
Her fingers “plied the needle” with “unusual swiftness and art”
till Abe knelt down beside her: then her demoralized heart
set Eros’s dart a-quiver; thus a crazy quilt emerged:
strange stitches all a-kilter, all patterns lost.
                                                                ­      (Her host
kept her vicarious laughter barely submerged.)

II.
Years later she’d show off the quilt with its uncertain stitches
as evidence love undermines men’s plans and women’s strictures
(and a plethora of scriptures.)

III.

But O the sacred tenderness Ann’s reckless stitch contains
and all the world’s felicities: rich cloth, for love’s fine gains,
for sweethearts’ tremulous fingers and their bright, uncertain vows
and all love’s blithe, erratic hopes (like now’s).

IV.
Years later on a pilgrimage, by tenderness obsessed,
Dale Carnegie, drawn to her grave, found weeds in her place of rest
and mowed them back, revealing the spot of the Railsplitter’s joy and grief
(and his hope and his disbelief).

V.
For such is the tenderness of love, and such are its disappointments.
Love is a book of rhapsodic poems. Love is an grab bag of ointments.
Love is the finger poised, the smile, the Question — perhaps the Answer?
Love is the pain of betrayal, the two left feet of the dancer.

VI.
There were ladies of ill repute in his past. Or so he thought. Was it true?
And yet he loved them, Ann (sweet Ann!), as tenderly as he loved you.



The Celtic Cross at Île Grosse
by Michael R. Burch

“I actually visited the island and walked across those mass graves [of 30,000 Irish men, women and children], and I played a little tune on me whistle. I found it very peaceful, and there was relief there.” – Paddy Maloney of The Chieftains

There was relief there,
and release,
on Île Grosse
in the spreading gorse
and the cry of the wild geese . . .

There was relief there,
without remorse,
when the tin whistle lifted its voice
in a tune of artless grief,
piping achingly high and longingly of an island veiled in myth.

And the Celtic cross that stands here tells us, not of their grief,
but of their faith and belief—
like the last soft breath of evening lifting a fallen leaf.

When ravenous famine set all her demons loose,
driving men to the seas like lemmings,
they sought here the clemency of a better life, or death,
and their belief in God was their only wealth.

They were proud folk, with only their lives to owe,
who sought the liberation of this strange new land.
Now they lie here, ragged row on ragged row,
with only the shadows of their loved ones close at hand.

And each cross, their ancient burden and their glory,
reflects the death of sunlight on their story.

And their tale is sad—but, O, their faith was grand!



wild wild west-east-north-south-up-down
by michael r. burch

each day it resumes—the great struggle for survival.

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

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



I wrote this poem after discovering the poetry of e. e. cummings while reading poetry independently in high school. My “cummings period” started around 1974 at age 15-16. I believe this poem was the first of its genre. I seem to remember working on it my sophomore and junior years, making mostly minor revisions in 1975.

i (dedicated to u)

i.

i move within myself
i see beyond the sky
and fathom with full certainty:
this lifes a lethal lie

my teachers try to tell me
that they know more than i
(and well they may
but do they know
shrewd TIME is slipping by
and leaving us all to die?)

i shout within myself
i stand up to be seen
but only my eyes
watch as i rise
and i am left between
the nightmare of “REALITY”
and sleeps soothing scenes
and both are only dreams

i cry out to my “friends”
but none of them can hear
i weep in dark frustration
but they swim beyond my tears
i reach out to assist them
but they cannot find my hand
they all believe in “GOD”
yet all of them are ******

come, my self, come with me
move within your shell
cast aside such “enlightenment”
and let us leave this living hell

ii.

i watch the maidens play
their fickle games of love
and is this is what
life is of
then i have had enough

all my teachers tell me
to adjust to SOCIETY
yet none of them will venture
how (false) it came to be
this gaud, SOCIETY

i watch the maidens play
and though i want them much
i know the illusion of their purity
would shatter at my touch
leaving annihilated truth
to be pieced together to dispel
the lies that accompany youth

i watch the maidens play
and know that what i want
i cannot take because
then it would be gone

iii.

i watch the lovely maidens
i search their sightless eyes
i find that only darkness
lies behind each guise

i try to touch their feelings
but they have been replaced
by intelligence and manners
and tact and social grace

i want to make them love me
but they cannot love themselves
and though they seek love desperately
and care for little else
they stand little chance
of much more than romance
for a few days

i try to friend the men
but they have even less
for they want nothing more
than whatever seems “the best”
their hollow, burnt-out eyes
reveal their souls have flown
and all that loss has left
is a strange, sad fear of debt
and a love for things of gold

ive.

ive never seen a day break
but ive seen a life shatter
it was mine
and i suppose it still is:
all ten thousand pieces

id.

id like to put it together
(someONE please tell me how!)
for i am out of the glue
called u
that held my life together

i.e.

and i wish that u
and i were through
but whatever u do
dont say that we are!




Cycles
by Michael R. Burch

I see his eyes caress my daughter’s *******
through her thin cotton dress,
and how an indiscreet strap of her white bra
holds his bald fingers
in fumbling mammalian awe . . .

And I remember long cycles into the bruised dusk
of a distant park,
hot blushes,
wild, disembodied rushes of blood,
portentous intrusions of lips, tongues and fingers . . .

and now in him the memory of me lingers
like something thought rancid,
proved rotten.
I see Another again—hard, staring, and silent—
though long-ago forgotten . . .

And I remember conjectures of ***** lines,
brief flashes of white down bleacher stairs,
coarse patches of hair glimpsed in bathroom mirrors,
all the odd, questioning stares . . .

Yes, I remember it all now,
and I shoo them away,
willing them not to play too long or too hard
in the back yard—
with a long, ineffectual stare

that years from now, he may suddenly remember.



Sunset, at Laugharne
by Michael R. Burch

for Dylan Thomas

At Laugharne, in his thirty-fifth year,
he watched the starkeyed hawk career;
he felt the vested heron bless,

and larks and finches everywhere
sank with the sun, their missives west—
where faith is light; his nightjarred breast

watched passion dovetail to its rest.

*

He watched the gulls above green shires
flock shrieking, fleeing priested shores
with silver fishes stilled on spears.

He felt the pressing weight of years
in ways he never had before—
that gravity no brightness spares,

from sunken hills to unseen stars.
He saw his father’s face in waves
which gently lapped Wales’ gulled green bays.

He wrote as passion swelled to rage—
the dying light, the unturned page,
the unburned soul’s devoured sage.

*

The words he gathered clung together
till night—the jetted raven’s feather—
fell, fell . . . and all was as before . . .

till silence lapped Laugharne’s dark shore
diminished, where his footsteps shone
in pools of fading light—no more.



No One
by Michael R. Burch

No One hears the bells tonight;
they tell him something isn’t right.
But No One feels no need to rush:
he smiles from beds soft, green and lush
as far away a startled thrush
flees screeching owls in sinking flight.

No One hears the cannon’s roar
and muses that its voice means war
comes knocking on men’s doors tonight.
He sleeps outside in awed delight
beneath the enigmatic stars
and shivers in their cooling light.

No One knows the world will end,
that he’ll be lonely, without friend
or foe to conquer. All will be
once more, celestial harmony.
He’ll miss men’s voices, now and then,
but worlds can be remade again.



These Hallowed Halls
by Michael R. Burch

a young Romantic Poet mourns the passing of an age . . .

A final stereo fades into silence
and now there is seldom a murmur
to trouble the slumber of these ancient halls.
I stand by a window where others have watched
the passage of time—alone, not untouched.
And I am as they were—unsure,
                                                    for the days
stretch out ahead, a bewildering maze.

Ah, faithless lover—that I had never touched your breast,
nor felt the stirrings of my heart,
which until that moment had peacefully slept.
For now I have known the exhilaration
of a heart having leapt from the pinnacle of Love,
                  and the result of each such infatuation ...
the long freefall to earth, as the moon glides above.

These Hallowed Halls
by Michael R. Burch

a young Romantic Poet mourns the passing of an age . . .

I.

A final stereo fades into silence
and now there is seldom a murmur
to trouble the slumber
of these ancient halls.

I stand by a window where others have watched
the passage of time—alone,
not untouched.

And I am as they were
...unsure...
for the days
stretch out ahead,
a bewildering maze.

II.

Ah, faithless lover—
that I had never touched your breast,
nor felt the stirrings of my heart,
which until that moment had peacefully slept.

For now I have known the exhilaration
of a heart having vaulted the Pinnacle of Love,
             and the result of each such infatuation ...
the long freefall to earth, as the moon glides above.

III.

A solitary clock chimes the hour
from far above the campus,
but my peers,
returning from their dances,
heed it not.

And so it is
that we fail to gauge Time’s speed
because He moves so unobtrusively
about His task.

Still, when at last
we reckon His mark upon our lives,
we may well be surprised
at His thoroughness.

IV.

Ungentle maiden—
when Time has etched His little lines
so carelessly across your brow,
perhaps I will love you less than now.

And when cruel Time has stolen
your youth, as He certainly shall in course,
perhaps you will wish you had taken me
along with my broken heart,
even as He will take you with yours.

V.

A measureless rhythm rules the night—
few have heard it,
but I have shared it,
and its secret is mine.

To put it into words
is as to extract the sweetness from honey
and must be done as gently
as a butterfly cleans its wings.

But when it is captured, it is gone again;
its usefulness is only
that it lulls to sleep.

VI.

So sleep, my love, to the cadence of night,
to the moans of the moonlit hills’
bass chorus of frogs, while the deep valleys fill
with the nightjar’s strange bullfrog-like trills.

But I will not sleep this night, nor any;
how can I—when my dreams
are always of your perfect face
ringed by soft whorls of fretted lace,
and a tear upon your pillowcase? / framed by your rumpled pillowcase?

VII.

If I had been born when knights roamed the earth
and mad kings ruled savage lands,
I might have turned to the ministry,
to the solitude of a monastery.

But there are no monks or hermits today—
theirs is a lost occupation
carried on, if at all,
merely for sake of tradition.

For today man abhors solitude—
he craves companions, song and drink,
seldom seeking a quiet moment,
to sit alone, by himself, to think.

VIII.

And so I cannot shut myself
off from the rest of the world,
to spend my days in philosophy
and my nights in tears of self-sympathy.

No, I must continue as best I can,
and learn to keep my thoughts away
from those glorious, uproarious moments of youth,
centuries past though lost but a day.

IX.

Yes, I must discipline myself
and adjust to these lackluster days
when men display no chivalry
and romance is the "old-fashioned" way.

X.

A single stereo flares into song
and the first faint light of morning
has pierced the sky's black awning
once again.

XI.

This is a sacred place,
for those who leave,
leave better than they came.

But those who stay, while they are here,
add, with their sleepless nights and tears,
quaint sprigs of ivy to the walls
of these Hallowed Halls.



At the Natchez Trace
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

I.
Solitude surrounds me
though nearby laughter sounds;
around me mingle men who think
to drink their demons down,
in rounds.

Beside me stands a woman,
a stanza in the song
that plays so low and fluting
and bids me sing along.

Beside me stands a woman
whose eyes reveal her soul,
whose cheeks are soft as eiderdown,
whose hips and ******* are full.

Beside me stands a woman
who scarcely knows my name;
but I would have her know my heart
if only I knew where to start.

II.
Not every man is as he seems;
not all are prone to poems and dreams.
Not every man would take the time
to meter out his heart in rhyme.
But I am not as other men—
my heart is sentenced to this pen.

III.
Men speak of their "ambition"
but they only know its name . . .
I never say the word aloud,
but I have felt the Flame.

IV.
Now, standing here, I do not dare
to let her know that I might care;
I never learned the lines to use;
I never worked the wolves' bold ruse.
But if she looks my way again,
perhaps I will, if only then.

V.
How can a man have come so far
in searching after every star,
and yet today,
though years away,
look back upon the winding way,
and see himself as he was then,
a child of eight or nine or ten,
and not know more?

VI.
My life is not empty; I have my desire . . .
I write in a moment that few men can know,
when my nerves are on fire
and my heart does not tire
though it pounds at my breast—
wrenching blow after blow.

VII.
And in all I attempted, I also succeeded;
few men have more talent to do what I do.
But in one respect, I stand now defeated;
In love I could never make magic come true.

VIII.
If I had been born to be handsome and charming,
then love might have come to me easily as well.
But if had that been, then would I have written?
If not, I'd remain; **** that demon to hell!

IX.
Beside me stands a woman,
but others look her way
and in their eyes are eagerness . . .
for passion and a wild caress?
But who am I to say?

Beside me stands a woman;
she conjures up the night
and wraps itself around her
till others flit about her
like moths drawn to firelight.

X.
And I, myself, am just as they,
wondering when the light might fade,
yet knowing should it not dim soon
that I might fall and be consumed.

XI.
I write from despair
in the silence of morning
for want of a prayer
and the need of the mourning.
And loneliness grips my heart like a vise;
my anguish is harsher and colder than ice.
But poetry can bring my heart healing
and deaden the pain, or lessen the feeling.
And so I must write till at last sleep has called me
and hope at that moment my pen has not failed me.

XII.
Beside me stands a woman,
a mystery to me.
I long to hold her in my arms;
I also long to flee.

Beside me stands a woman;
how many has she known
more handsome, charming,
chic, alarming?
I hope I never know.

Beside me stands a woman;
how many has she known
who ever wrote her such a poem?
I know not even one.



“Sea Dreams” is one of my longer and more ambitious early poems, along with the full version of “Jessamyn’s Song.” To the best of my recollection, I wrote “Sea Dreams” around age 18 in high school my senior year, then worked on in college. It appeared in my poetry contest notebook and thus was substantially complete by 1978.

Sea Dreams
by Michael R. Burch

I.
In timeless days
I've crossed the waves
of seaways seldom seen ...

By the last low light of evening
the breakers that careen
then dive back to the deep
have rocked my ship to sleep,
and so I've known the peace
of a soul at last at ease
there where Time's waters run
in concert with the sun.

With restless waves
I've watched the days’
slow movements, as they hum
their antediluvian songs.

Sometimes I've sung along,
my voice as soft and low
as the sea's, while evening slowed
to waver at the dim
mysterious moonlit rim
of dreams no man has known.

In thoughtless flight,
I've scaled the heights
and soared a scudding breeze
over endless arcing seas
of waves ten miles high.

I've sheared the sable skies
on wings as soft as sighs
and stormed the sun-pricked pitch
of sunset’s scarlet-stitched,
ebullient dark demise.

I've climbed the sun-cleft clouds
ten thousand leagues or more
above the windswept shores
of seas no vessel’s sailed
— great seas as grand as hell's,
shores littered with the shells
of men's "immortal" souls —
and I've warred with dark sea-holes
whose open mouths implored
their depths to be explored.

And I've grown and grown and grown
till I thought myself the king
of every silver thing . . .

But sometimes late at night
when the sorrowing wavelets sing
sad songs of other times,
I taste the windborne rime
of a well-remembered day
on the whipping ocean spray,
and I bow my head to pray . . .

II.
It's been a long, hard day;
sometimes I think I work too hard.
Tonight I'd like to take a walk
down by the sea —
down by those salty waves
brined with the scent of Infinity,
down by that rocky shore,
down by those cliffs I’d so often climb
when the wind was **** with the tang of lime
and every dream was a sailor's dream.

Then small waves broke light,
all frothy and white,
over the reefs in the ramblings of night,
and the pounding sea
—a mariner’s dream—
was bound to stir a boy's delight
to such a pitch
that he couldn't desist,
but was bound to splash through the surf in the light
of ten thousand stars, all shining so bright!

Christ, those nights were fine,
like a well-seasoned wine,
yet more scalding than fire
with the marrow’s desire.

Then desire was a fire
burning wildly within my bones,
fiercer by far than the frantic foam . . .
and every wish was a moan.
Oh, for those days to come again!
Oh, for a sea and sailing men!
Oh, for a little time!

It's almost nine
and I must be back home by ten,
and then . . . what then?
I have less than an hour to stroll this beach,
less than an hour old dreams to reach . . .
And then, what then?

Tonight I'd like to play old games—
games that I used to play
with the somber, sinking waves.

When their wraithlike fists would reach for me,
I'd dance between them gleefully,
mocking their witless craze
—their eager, unchecked craze—
to batter me to death
with spray as light as breath.

Oh, tonight I'd like to sing old songs—
songs of the haunting moon
drawing the tides away,
songs of those sultry days
when the sun beat down
till it cracked the ground
and the sea gulls screamed
in their agony
to touch the cooling clouds.

The distant cooling clouds.

Then the sun shone bright
with a different light
over sprightlier lands,
and I was always a pirate in flight.

Oh, tonight I'd like to dream old dreams,
if only for a while,
and walk perhaps a mile
along this windswept shore,
a mile, perhaps, or more,
remembering those days,
safe in the soothing spray
of the thousand sparkling streams
that tumble into this sea.
I like to slumber in the caves
of a sailor's dark sea-dreams . . .
oh yes, I'd love to dream,
to dream
and dream
and dream.

“Sea Dreams” is one of my longer and more ambitious early poems, along with the full version of “Jessamyn’s Song.” For years I thought I had written “Sea Dreams” around age 19 or 20. But then I remembered a conversation I had with a friend about the poem in my freshman dorm, so the poem must have been started by age 18 or earlier. Dating my early poems has been a bit tricky, because I keep having little flashbacks that help me date them more accurately, but often I can only say, “I know this poem was written by about such-and-such a date, because ...”



Alien Nation
by Michael R. Burch

for J. S. S., a Christian poet who believes in “hell”

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

And his words fall as bright and as chill
as ice crystals on Kilimanjaro —
far colder than Jesus’s words
over the “fortunate” sparrow.

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

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

Note: The coinage “grok” appears in Robert Heinlein’s classic sci-fi novel Stranger in a Strange Land. The novel’s protagonist, Valentine Michael Smith, was raised on Mars by enlightened Martians, and he often feels out of sorts on Earth, where he struggles to grok (understand deeply and profoundly) earthlings and their primitive, often inhuman, ways.

Keywords/Tags: These Hallowed Halls, ivy, college, university, school, class, classmates, students, study
These are poems about sunsets, things in decline, loss and regrets.
Hal Loyd Denton Nov 2011
Life’s Dismay
Wide River within this great confluence of time and eternity the engine of the skiff pushes it ever so gently forward the water flows to each side of the bow your way marked and bordered on each side by this unending fence line of reeds. Still waters beneath the skin of this water bound traveler come up the length of your being time rolls forward and back along the tunnel where it was set in motion oh so long ago the minutes hours soon counted by centuries to retell the story this maritime log what stories of heroism lays along the linear line. Trafalgar’s glory passes in the viewing ships of timbers and mighty sails ply broad waters the waves climb in great walls glistening and with a roar they fall the master commanded they obeyed peace be still. The ship’s captain born of daring seed no mans word will he heed only the sea his master who can resist ports so fair in mighty England the Union Jack flows with such flair or Portugal no fairer land can be found than the land of the Portuguese. Trust not yourself to the shallows the mighty deep is where glory stands in regal defiance does a cobra bow freedoms head the king a fitting name king cobra it will hold you in its stare then strikes as waves of terror through your body convulse you forgot your place now death will be read in your face. Only the wisest survive in a land shared with scorpions and bleakest dunes of sand Lawrence of Arabia showed the way his sea was the Sahara with her endless wasteland voiding every prospect of mans intrusions only the finest line of life this strung out caravan men here are mere ghost figures they faintly pass leaving no indication of their passing. The sand swallows any marks of their existence but for ever has this been the adventures holy grail test yourself against the Himalayas or here where it seems even God’s voice didn’t reach. The stitches of time that so effectively marks progress and history sewn with deftness not evidenced here. If one was ever to be dispossessed of his inheritance this fits the bill damnation’s warning can be read in all directions. They say God speaks his love in a thousand ways this has to be another valuable expression a veritable object lesson. You have here what is the natural outcome of what the devil works at without end one of his names is even a destroyer how fitting an illustration wasteland if sorrow had a birthplace this would be it the devils rightful place. He works without tiring to make your life miserable as his and the saddest thing the majority of the world walks hand in hand with him. So to keep from doing the most needed thing which is to check your own evil nature because it will cost you eternal death in a place finally even worse than an earthen desert. While all along God says my grace is sufficient for you meaning you never are expected or left to fight the battle yourself no one can beat the devil or self. Look at the contrast God’s part land mast of unequaled wonder seas that will test your metal build you up you truly will become as strong as the ships chosen timber and all the sea does is season it to a greater finer quality. There is a story of a table that was made from one of these ships who can compare it even mahogany was out classed. You could sit and observe the grain darker deeper the evidence of the many storms she endured and kept all afloat and made each trip. Here in a sitting room the glory displayed your glory one day will reside in a mansion that’s What God is trying to do in your life.
Despondent Mar 2014
In the midst of nothingness
Searching through darkness
Embracing loneliness
Comprehending vagueness
Befriending uncertainties
Playing with vulnerabilities
Absorbing obscurities
Appreciating difficulties
Drudging malfunctions
Living with illusions
Addicted to intrusions
Slave of temptations

Colors of dark grey and black fill the world in which I live
No other feeling could possibly be worse than this
Where once was a room filled with laughter & Cheer
Now stands loneliness, emptiness and despair.
Memories of you seem to creep around the corners of my mind
Endless haunting images of your face that won't decline
An overwhelming of emotion that my body can't contain
Fills my soul with unbearable grief, sorrow, and pain
Oh, How I long to hold you in my arms just once more
And tell you that things will be again, as they were before
But, as reality sinks in, I know that will never be
For the choices that I've made in my life have sealed our destiny
No one could ever fathom how wretchedly my heart aches
And how I greatly regret that you've had to pay for my mistakes
If I could go back in time, and change only one wrong that I've done
I'd go back to the Hour, to the second, on the day I lost you.
Kerri Jun 2015
Glossy green waving in the wind
revealing a rainbow painting
and remarkable intrusions
like a plasma dream

A feathery grey is highlighted
with wisps of dusty orange
while a rain scented breeze grazes my body
like a fresh start

A silence is found
after the whispers of the storm
shooting through the atmosphere
like invisible arrows all around

Reminding us of Nature's power
as we soak in the quiet destruction
and the beautiful essence
that we can't help but feebly admire
Nat Lipstadt Nov 2017
one asks:

why do I not send my poems anymore,
have I seized up, ceased down, now but an engine rust requiem,
absent the needed viscous, numerous verbal oils running requires,
to commend to thee without hesitant reservation

I lie, and say because,
no one read them

write profusely, blouse tear-wet, hair ungelled, thoughts unglued,
this here secondary, truth birthing reply, outed post a time delay,
revealed, staggering reluctantly, like an akimbo drunk,
who imagines every step his, still straight-lined,
then, in shock, in a confessional, through a divide,
stumbling admits,
no, they are not

my poems can no longer be milkman delivered to your
morning doorstep porch coated in condensation-wet,
thick-heavy, lovely but-out-of-shaped, rotund glass bottles,
for both this charming old practice I remember,
it and my poems, are now time-wronged,
passed over by the courant new notion of a sell-by date,
for who dares to desire to live in the timeless paths
of risky tomorrows?

these times, when life is a continuous elegy,
simplicity is so complex,
when truths are hard to distinguish
harder to believe, why then,
insert any extra hardening, provision extra difficulties,
add poems that strain, needing patience and careful handling

so many people, me compris, pained out,
obsolescent, meteor victims of dinosaur extinctions,
now so common, remarkably recognized and remarked upon,
then quickly gone to a swamp burial ignominy unnoticed

my poems, complex and long, wordy and abstruse,
do fit your avoidance profile, why to make thee weep,
so many demanding your abbreviated attention span,
my intimate uncomfortable intrusions are your lowest priority,
and this, irony, was my masters thesis topic

so I lie

forsooth my poems are secret read by the Marrano thousands,
writ by a me-disguised, they're seeked and sought out
by those who require a personal pinpricking, a violin adagio daily,
tiny little irritant memory provocations and sooth sayings,
deemed inappropriate, for no predeterminant answers asked,
banished from today's new world symphony,
governed by a set of exclusionary convent rules,
that perforce demand a trigger warning:

place no peas neath my mattress, so I may sleep,
without the discomfiture, the unordered risk intensity of
dreaming without any restraint,
composing the future in the moment


11-13-17 1:31am
for Chris
Kelley A Vinal Jun 2015
She checks her wristwatch
Counterclockwise
Against her former expectations
Of the metal
Around her wrist
She checks her digital clock
The one on the stove
That flashes
Flash, flash, flash, flash
Like a silent metronome
When the power goes out
And comes back on
12:31
12:30
12:29
Calm
She is still calm
Breathing
Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale
Steady
Like the bobbing of a buoy, bouncing
Brazenly in open sea
You see
She sees
That time can be trickery
That conceptual thoughts
Provoke mystery
Illusions and delusions
Conclusions and intrusions
Seclusion
She has many things
About which
To think
Thanks for showing me my own reflection, in the water’s mirror
a solid infusion, insurmountable intrusions by authority figures.
Not knowing exactly what to do with these forms,
we usually choose to keep them just the same.
The mind says, some are more important than others,
anyway, some bear fruit and others bear colors.
You must wear warm clothes in the winter
and let the obtuse angles, shatter the unwelcome inclusions
of cold weather; diffusions of rectangular protrusions,
surprise, i am aligned again with spirit;
while you remain hidden, behind that dismal screen;
another abysmal refraction of technology, numbing us daily.
I choose movement; blindly, kindly or spontaneous,
on spindly legs, spiders spin their winding webs.
Self reflective and expecting more from this world,
than just tired images, rehashed so many times
that they are burnt to a crispy death.
Let's respect our relations, and our ancestors,
and no longer shall we need to get lost on our vacations,
but instead find the treasure, that demands our complete attention.
If our lack of respect is a sign of the times,
then our lack of pride is so much more attractive to the divine.
Loopholes everywhere, yet we pretend to get caught in our own webs,
made out of pens and paper; thank you for saving those articles
tossed in wastebaskets, all the empty drawers in offices
are still busy being born; the moment, morning comes around to save them...
yesterday's shift still aching in my bones
one more hour still isn't enough
unrequited energy, metaphysical
tumultuous intrusions echoing through my bones
home is an allusion to the beginning and end
feathering memories, a time capsule before you go
unconscious peace, finally good rest
lethargic upon wake, it will be indefinite.
Tired
S E L Jan 2014
Brimming with black steeds, green bowls overflow with walls of raining lava in ****** mode
Pinning down paradise beneath your brown thumb, see it wriggle away in mockery of your arty drivel
Only you can thrash on, as magically as a thought which pops in rude bursts
- - - then away it flies


In a silent harbour of study, all the imperfections of my breathing that the mirror glances back at me
I try hard not to swallow failure wholemeal, in the course of a day  - - -  I choke so many times
And angel wings brush by in shy embrace, but I shove its clemency flat on its face


And in vehement denial of anything beautiful - - -  it is not present, save through you
I can submerge so easily, if only to succumb to the silence and the peace
The muted bubbling around my head and throbbing against my ears and pressing on my arms
So comforting


Instead, there’s too regular clicking to the detriment of supple joints
And licking of lips and silent brooding in steeped corners
Any effort to siphon the stillness in the air is severed by intrusions


And the lake beckons me - - - my broken feet follow
Hal Loyd Denton Jan 2012
life's dismay these Unchartered waters
Life’s Dismay
Wide River within this great confluence of time and eternity the engine of the skiff pushes it ever so gently forward the water flows to each side of the bow your way marked and bordered on each side by this unending fence line of reeds. Still waters beneath the skin of this water bound traveler come up the length of your being time rolls forward and back along the tunnel where it was set in motion oh so long ago the minutes hours soon counted by centuries to retell the story this maritime log what stories of heroism lays along the linear line. Trafalgar’s glory passes in the viewing ships of timbers and mighty sails ply broad waters the waves climb in great walls glistening and with a roar they fall the master commanded they obeyed peace be still. The ship’s captain born of daring seed no mans word will he heed only the sea his master who can resist ports so fair in mighty England the Union Jack flows with such flair or Portugal no fairer land can be found than the land of the Portuguese. Trust not yourself to the shallows the mighty deep is where glory stands in regal defiance does a cobra bow freedoms head the king a fitting name king cobra it will hold you in its stare then strikes as waves of terror through your body convulse you forgot your place now death will be read in your face. Only the wisest survive in a land shared with scorpions and bleakest dunes of sand Lawrence of Arabia showed the way his sea was the Sahara with her endless wasteland voiding every prospect of mans intrusions only the finest line of life this strung out caravan men here are mere ghost figures they faintly pass leaving no indication of their passing. The sand swallows any marks of their existence but for ever has this been the adventures holy grail test yourself against the Himalayas or here where it seems even God’s voice didn’t reach. The stitches of time that so effectively marks progress and history sewn with deftness not evidenced here. If one was ever to be dispossessed of his inheritance this fits the bill damnation’s warning can be read in all directions. They say God speaks his love in a thousand ways this has to be another valuable expression a veritable object lesson. You have here what is the natural outcome of what the devil works at without end one of his names is even a destroyer how fitting an illustration wasteland if sorrow had a birthplace this would be it the devils rightful place. He works without tiring to make your life miserable as his and the saddest thing the majority of the world walks hand in hand with him. So to keep from doing the most needed thing which is to check your own evil nature because it will cost you eternal death in a place finally even worse than an earthen desert. While all along God says my grace is sufficient for you meaning you never are expected or left to fight the battle yourself no one can beat the devil or self. Look at the contrast God’s part land mast of unequaled wonder seas that will test your metal build you up you truly will become as strong as the ships chosen timber and all the sea does is season it to a greater finer quality. There is a story of a table that was made from one of these ships who can compare it even mahogany was out classed. You could sit and observe the grain darker deeper the evidence of the many storms she endured and kept all afloat and made each trip. Here in a sitting room the glory displayed your glory one day will reside in a mansion that’s What God is trying to do in your life.
jake aller Apr 2020
Saturday April 17

You are my Lode Star

in the morning dawning light
you are always there
you are my lode star
my sunshine, my moonshine
the love of my life, my wife
with your endless love
I will face the evil corrupted world
even walk through the shadow of death
as long as you by my side
I will fear no evil for you are with me
and I will love you
until death takes me
from your your loving embrace


another Nigerian spam found poem

the Nigerians keep sending me
and millions of others
delightedly creative spam messages
this is one of the nicer ones
I have received

Enjoy
but don’t send her any money!!!!!

Good day Child of God,

Calvary Greetings
in the name of the LORD Almighty
and Our LORD JESUS CHRIST
the giver of every good thing.

Good day and compliments of the seasons,
i know this letter
will definitely come to you
as a huge surprise,

I humbly
ask you to give me
your attention
and hear me,

i am writing this mail
to you
with heavy sorrow
in my heart,


but I implore you
to take the time
to go through it  carefully
as the decision you make


will go off a long way
to determine
my future
and continued existence.

I am Mrs. Esther Heidi
aging widow of 61 years old
suffering from long time illness.

I have some funds
I inherited from my late husband
, the sum of ($17 Million Dollars) a

And I needed a very honest
and God fearing  
who can withdraw this money
then use the funds for Charity works

I WISH TO GIVE THIS FUNDS
TO YOU FOR CHARITY WORKS.
I found your email address
from the internet

after honest prayers  
to the LORD
to bring me a helper

and i decided to contact you
if you may be willing
and interested to handle
these trust funds in good faith
before anything happens to me.

I accept this decision
because I do not have any child
who will inherit this money
after I die.

I want your urgent reply
to me so that I will give you
the deposit receipt
which the bank issued to me
as next of kin
for immediate transfer of the money

to your account in your country,
to start the good work of God,
I want you to use the 30/percent
of the total amount to help
yourself in doing the project.

I am desperately
in keen need of assistance
and I have summoned
up courage to contact you

for this task,
you must not fail me
and the millions of the poor people
in our todays WORLD.

This is no stolen money
and there are no dangers involved,
100% RISK FREE
with full legal proof.


Please if you would be able
to use the funds for the Charity
(Note: I would use the money
to invest in the Church of Jake)

I want you to
take 30 percent of the total money
for your personal use
while 70% of the money
will go to charity.

I will appreciate your utmost confidentiality
and trust in this matter to accomplish
my heart desire, as I don't want anything
that will jeopardize my last wish.

Please kindly
respond for further details.

Thanks and God bless you,

Regards

Mrs. Esther Heidi

comment: the sad reality
is that 10 percent
of people fall for these scams
and loose lots of money

whole towns in Nigeria
exist to exploit the world
they call themselves
the 404 army

if it is too good to be true
it is probably not true

end comment


Last Day of America

the last day of America
was the day we last voted
the last election we ever had

for on that day
a month before
the corona virus re-emerged

as the great re-opening
of the US economy
failed to stop the relentless spread
of the virus from hell

causing panic and mass confusion
fear kept Americans home

and Donald Trump
was re-elected

because his voters
believed that God
had told them to vote
for their new found king

the newly energized President Trump
declared a national emergency
martial law
and suspension of the constitution

Promising to restore democracy
when the time was right

he promised his followers
that he would restore Christian values
renaming the United States
the Christian States of America

on that date
we met our fate

Christian fascism
was here to stay
on the last day
of American

writers digest prompt - last blank




the Conqueror Worm Corona Sonnet

Lo, t’s a galla night
within the lonesome later years
when around the world
the dreaded corona virus showed its might
spending fear to those in their later years
that it might take them in the night
that before the sun came up
their time on earth would end up
DEATH IS COMING
TO US ALL
NONE CAN ESCAPE?WE?AWAIT
FATE

# content tracing: the Conqueror Worm By Edgar Allan Poe

writing.com corona sonnet form challenge



my Mother’s secret life as a mad poet   Not for publication - remove from Poetry soup etc



one day I discovered
an unpublished poem
that my mother
had written

when she was in the midst
of her madness
before dementia silenced
the voices in her head

she had typed it out
and hid it among her papers
I read it while going through her stuff
decided to kept it

and reflected up it
over the years

my mother was born
perhaps 40 years too soon
for she was a true free spirit
a truly original thinker

and I wished
she had published
her writings

in her story
she talked about
the endless blame
that she felt

besieged on all sides
by the demands
of her children
and her cold unfeeling husband
who just did not get her

her poem speaks for itself

A Mother's Blues

How much longer can I live
With the thin edge of hysteria
And constant paranoia?

The slightest misstep on my part
Unleashes a tirade of my past sins, real and imagined--because I am the enemy.

I can't be true to myself
Since if I disagree

Even in the friendliest manner
The 16-mm. guns are revved up for a full-scale counter attack.

I wonder that I am still functioning.
By now almost anyone known to me

Has been subjected to the most agonizing kind of torture
And my humiliation is almost complete.

The phone calls I have gotten
Asking if that is my real position?

Or even worse asking
What am I doing
To cause such unprecedented allegations
Of provoking suicide
Are almost unbelievable.

And yet I have to listen,
In no way say or do anything that would even suggest
That anyone else than myself is the cause

And that the correction must come from me.

The reason is that when I am able
I do not want to let anyone else think differently

Since I persist
In the notion
That this is private
And there should be no intrusions.

But then late at night
When I am exhausted
And with no more defenses
My vulnerability is so effectively exploited.

I turn the other cheek, I change the subject
But then I get cornered

Because there is the screaming insult,
The statement of fact that is not fact

The bitter charges, the assertion of a position
That is they condemned
In the non-stop monologue,

The immediate challenge to get out,
And the endless litany
Of the deepest kind of hatred.

Am I the one to run--I have to no avail.

Am I the one to fight back

I have but to no consequence.

Can I ask for the common decency?
Of being able to sleep for a few hours

So that I can stumble
Through the routine of earning some money
Which goes to support my continued torture.

Do I have the option of fighting all night,
Sleeping all day and then returning to the fray?

Do I even have the right of insisting
The ledger is not all that one-sided?

No, I'm there to assault.

Money in unimportant
And so I don't need to work.
Because when it is all lost the avenger
Will then ride to the rescue
By taking in the laundry.

Do my dreams matter?
No, they are false and of no consequence.
Or, worse they are wrong.
Or, even worse they should be stamped out.

And now my final abjection.  Exhausted, desperately striving for the moment of quiet that precedes a restful sleep a son arrives asking for a chat. I try but I don't want to give advice, as I have none really to give. But my avenging angel swoops in saying why listen to that creep--he's a two-time loser. Did you know all the crimes he has committed?  Once again I could not remain detached and listen to the skill of the assault or the spilling of the hatred so long denied its vengeance.

I fight back and my humiliation is now complete.  Do I have any person left with whom I can feel whole? I am being reduced to a hunted animal.

If I have a kind word for anyone that person is at risk.  Can I fight back?  No, because there is the ultimate blackmail of the constant threat of suicide--I live daily with the fear that my reactions will trigger this.  After all, when the world is tired of hearing how bad I am what can prove it.

Should I finally admit this inevitability and take the only step that can forestall it and that is to move first.  What do I have to lose? NOTHING.  The anguish and hopelessness would finally be at an end.

My twenty-year struggle to do right would be at the end.

My god, how I have suffered but no one has asked since it was the suffering of others that was all that mattered.

How much larger must my burden of guilt become?  When, on when, can I have a reprieve?  Can my debts, real or imagined, ever be paid?


the poem spoke to me
for I was perhaps
her favorite son

for of her children
perhaps I was the only one
that ever got her

and I miss her
every day

and wished
I had told her
that before
dementia took her from us
and took her life

poetry superhighway prompt to write a letter based on your mother’s writings


Plane, Train or Automobile - none of us can escape our fate


in these dark and dire times
we find ourselves living
we often fear that the times
are infected with death

and so we are afraid
deathly afraid
that if we take a plane
we will find  General Corona
among the passengers

and we afraid
deadly afraid
that the subways
are incubators
of death and destruction

the virus spreads
fear and death
in its wake

many of us
retreating to our homes
and venturing out
in our cars

only to find
death is stalking us
as traffic piles up
traffic accidents
still killing more people
that the dreaded General Corona

the grim reaper smiles
his work is done
Satan thanks General. Corona
for a job well done

writing com daily dew drop in prompt


packages

they say
that God works in mysterious ways
his wonders to perform

every day it seems
that more and more
of what we buy
and consume

comes in packages
sent from here and there
as people
continue to practice
social distancing

and going to the store
becomes an exercise
fraught with peril
and danger

so we order
on line
and we get our packages
sent from here and there

one day we received
a gift package
of clams
delicious fresh clams

as I ate them
I thought of the workers
who had labored unseen
for me to enjoy
this bounty from the sea

and I gave thanks
to the gods
for making it happen

in this day and age
we should thank
those who are still
laboring to feed the world

they are the unsung heroes
of this war fought by nature
under the direction
of General Corona


tweeter speak poetry prompt April 16 Packages



computer madness sonnet


computer madness infects my soul
every day when I turn on my PC
and encounter endless  haiku error messages
constant crashing, constant eating my files
at times like this it seems to me
that my mad as a hatter crazed computer
is plotting against me and only me
it wants to drive me quite insane
sending me right around the bend
as I scream at my machine
it beeps at me this **** machine
smiling as I threaten once again
to shoot the hell bound machine

sonnet all poetry computer frustration contest
You have always been my sunshine

You have always been my sunshine
my moonshine, my load star
that guides me in the night
for your sunshine kissed my soul
the day that you walked
out of my dreams
into my life
and became my wife
for 38 years and counting
every morning I see you sleeping
your smile is like the sunshine
that wakes my soul
and banishes the nightmares
back to the dark corners of my mind

love sonnet for all poetry contest on prompt line Sunshine Kissed


Saturday April 18, 2020

Korean Blues Crown of Sonnets

I have been dealing with Things Korean
for almost 40 years now
dealing with a once exotic land
’now my second homeland?
first came to Korea?
in the Peace Corps in Korea?
went to Korea to find the woman
in search of the woman
who haunted my dreams
met the woman
Fell in love with the woman
From Korea who walked out my dreams
In an land still exotic

In a land still exotic
It was a very exotic different land
and even now decades later a new land
remains for most Americans
still a strange land exotic
but much more known land
in the US
due to K drama, K Pop,
Koreans have become globally cool but still exotic
Many of my fellow Americans
may know a few people from Korea
and some have served or lived in Korea
but to most of the us Americans
it remains over there still exotic
a strange Asian exotic land
A strange Asian Exotic land
I fell in love with that exotic land
now I spend half my time living Korean time
half in the U.S. time
and due to the corona time
will be here for some time
and well Korea
no longer an exotic land
as I am now just living in Korea
my thoughts half Korean
and even dream in Korean
so be it near the end of my time
I am back where I began
Writer digest prompt write an exotic poem wrote my first crown of sonnet form too, and it mostly rhymes! go figure




Cosmic Debris  Corona Sonnet


use as sample for remaining corona sonnet

the Conqueror Worm Corona Sonnet

Lo, t’s a galla night
within the lonesome later years
when around the world
the dreaded corona virus showed its might
spending fear to those in their later years
that it might take them in the night
that before the sun came up
their time on earth would end up
DEATH IS COMING
TO US ALL
WE  
WAIT
LATE
FATE


# content tracing: the Conqueror Worm By Edgar Allan Poe

writing.com corona sonnet form challenge



for Posting 2.  Cosmic Debris Corona sonnet 2

I received a mysterious email package
followed by a phone call offering me a magical mask
a mask that they claim would prevent me
from the dreaded General Corona
hey there
who you jiving with that cosmic debris
a mask that they did not want me
me to know about
TOP SECRET CODE 2 LEVEL  STUFF
MUST    ACT   NOW
SEND MONEY  ASAP
BUY
IT
NOW

# content tracing-  “Cosmic Debris by Frank Zappa”
with apologies to Frank Zappa




No More Ties for Me!

When I retired
I made three vows
to myself

first, I would spend
my remaining life
loving my wife

second, i would never wear a tie again
unless it was a real special occasion
as I hated wearing ties and suits

wore a suit and tie
almost every day
of my life

as a teacher
later as a foreign service officer
all over the world

last year of my job
I only wore a tie
on "tie worthy occasions"

since then I have been
tie free
except for a wedding

and I love it
hated suits and ties
just not Berkeley enough

for my free spirit
too **** corporate
and I don’t care anymore

and in Oregon, where I lived
no one wore a tie,
not the Oregon way

oh the last thing
I shave twice a month now
used to hate shaving

but I also don't like
a full shaggy itchy beard

and I shaved every day

for years and years
except when I was in the hospital
for a year

and I grew to love
having a beard
back then

back to the office
started shaving again
every **** day

now I do my thing
no office for me
and no more daily shaving

and a beard is also
very Northern Cal/Northwest
Oregonian Chic

so once every two weeks
is a good compromise
my beard is now a poet’s face

and so I hope to keep
these three vows
until my time is done

writing com Daily Dew Drop Inn prompt to write a poem about a piece of clothing





Corona Consumes Me  Corona Sonnet  3

I am consumed by the corona virus
and I am slowly being taken over
as the virus infects my mind
taking me over turning me
into a wild raving zombie man
Let there be light
will I become the first
ZOMBIE APOLYCAPASE LOOMS
WILL WE ALL DIE
CORONA
KILLS
ME

content tracing - Let there be light from Bible and the entire Zombie Apocalypse genre where the Zombie flu started usually in China as a flu and then morphs into the zombie disease



Sunday April 19, 2020

for posting General Corona Leads His Troops Into Battle, crown of sonnets

General Corona leads his forces across the world
riding on a black horse
from out of the Apocalypse  ride the four horsemen
which are let loose upon the world
He leads his forces across the world
into battle as the leader of his evil forces
The enemy of humanity
General Corona he does not care
nor does his virus minions care
about your nationality he does not care
about your politics he does not care
or your wealth or who you are
for all you are nothing but humanity
the corona general sees humanity
the corona general sees humanity
as nothing but hosts for his virus army

as nothing but hosts for his virus army
chanting death to humanity
until his evil army
sweeps throughout the world
throughout the world
and millions must die
it is the will of the general all must die
and it is the end of the world
or perhaps the beginning of a new world
filled with hope and love through out the world
humanity comes alive throughout the world
fighting back against the virus army
peace, love and compassion defeats the army
and general corona will finally himself die




Voice Message for God

dialing 202-346-5666  Beep
You have reached GOD
Press 1 for English, Press 2 for Spanish
leave a message or prayer
and maybe an angel will call you
will get back to you Beep
Hey GOD someone sent me your number
and well I hope I’ve reached your number
I don’t know where to start that’s the point
GOD I am scared of you
all the time is my point
I am so afraid, so scared
of the dreaded General Corona
and his invisible army is my point

and his invisible army is my point
forcing me to stay at home
and I am sacred
that you anointed the wrong man  
to be our leader, that makes me sacred
not to second guess you man
your will be done and all of that man
but GOD, can’t you do better job my man
of anointing our leaders to serve under GOD
of all the people in the U.S. dear God
this is the best you can do?, man?
I mean you picked perhaps the one man
in the world who could be the anti-chris, God
Seriously GOD what is wrong with you? man

Seriously, GOD, what is wrong with you? man
was this all sort of a cosmic joke?
well it ain’t funny any more ain’t no joke
Please GOD make it all go away, man
Please GOD for the love of GOD
and all that is holly and good, man
just make it all go away, GOD
and anoint someone else, man
a real leader for a change, GOD
and let him lead us to the promised land  
this I pray in Jesus’s name, my man
and if I don’t make it, GOD
We have a lot to talk about GOD
See you on the other side, my man

writer digest prompt write a “message Poem” so this is a voice mail to GOD




Every Day I go Back in Time to when she came to Me

every day I go back in time
to the two events that changed my life
to the dream that haunted my life
and the day she walked into my life
and became my wife
I can never forget the dream
falling asleep in the physics class
as the teacher was going on and on
and as I nodded off
I saw here there
standing there
speaking to me
the most beautiful woman
in the entire world

in the entire world
she was speaking to me
and disappeared from my dreams
and I knew that i would be
meeting her some day she would come to me
and so I eventually went to Korea other side of the world
in the Peace corps hoping she would come to me
then one day i had the last and final dream
she said don’t worry she would soon come to me
and then she walked out of my dreams
and there she was she came to me
and so she walked out of my dreams
into my life, became my wife
when she came to me

Poetry Superhighway prompt to write a poem about time travel to your past or your future
poems for April 17 to April 19
Here I stand,
Today and now,
At the centre,
Of the middle of somewhere,
A very dark, dead and fearful darkness,
Having paid one of its regular intrusions,
On an unsuspecting African village,
Giving birth,
To a complete demise of activity,
Save for the stubborn nature,
A strong cold wind blows,
Rattling leaves off trees,
My heart thuds,
At the thought of a ghost,
Making enough noise,
To scare me,
Like a bare-footed traditional dancer,
Pouncing the earth,
My skin crawls on my bones,
At the thought,
Of callous and faceless wizards,
This is their time,
And this is their rush hour,
I could be standing,
On the roof,
Of some departed's house,
At a distance,
I hear a drum beating,
And a strong roar,
Of an ancestral spirit coming home,
Strong enough to shake mountains,
Strong enough to shake the earth like a quake,
Strong enough to spill rivers,
Lakes, seas and oceans,
A dog barks drowsily,
A snake hisses,
A squirrel quirks lackadaisically,
In the wonders of an African village.
Lilly Gibbons Feb 2015
There was a place where a light wind blew
And swished away the leaves,
Pushing past the great, exposing the new,
Meandering through the trees.
A place where many trod but few could see.
Where all had been and come to pass
But more than often leave.
Considered by none, walked on by many,
This place was no ones first time,
A venue so guilty of mass interception,
Now a place that is momentarily mine.
Fingers sweetly stained, ripe for a licking,
Bushes bow to greet, the artist who is picking.
Carefully placed signs to protect outsider intrusions,
No handprints or footprints in sight.
All access not granted, made more appealing
By the unmasked blanket of night.
Bowed branches hung slightly,
Not tampered, cut or blown.
This dwelling reserved for nobodies pleasure,
Leaving the lost be unknown.
Maria Monaghan Aug 2018
I saw my first lesbians when I was 6.
She was short with spiky hair,
She was tall with curly hair.
They held each other tenderly,
Floating blissfully in the swimming pool,
Absorbed in each other and unaware of

The shaking head of my father
And his outstretched arm
As he shielded his children from the happy couple.

When I was little, I held weddings for my Barbie dolls
And I couldn’t understand why my parents made me stop.
It wasn’t until they bought me a shiny new Ken doll
That the weddings could start again.

A few months ago
Mum discovered her friends were lesbians
And I beheld in her eyes the mixture of wonder and disgust.
Wild-eyed recounts of intrusions on quiet embraces
And the fear of the unknown heavy in every word.

How disappointed they would be now!
To know that I dream of my head between a woman’s thighs.
That I remember with fondness
The feminine lips that have pressed against mine.

I am what you fear.
The hell-bound filthy sinner
Bent on destruction and lust.
Sneaking into your society, poisoning your children.
I am the monster you hate, the wretch you pity.

But maybe you would understand
If you saw how sweet this ******* is.
If you knew how it feels
To see sweet contentment and bliss
In the arms of a woman.
Ma Cherie Oct 2016
You asked me why I write,
why I daily hope again to fight,
as I ignite it takes my sight,
like lovers in the heated night,
& nothin' but a pure delight,
musta  been a true birthright

It covers me & smothers me,
engulfing me in flames
a place for me to point some blame,
& bury me unwanted shame,
I know that this is not a game,
& not for fame
& not for fate,
I already gotta a real full plate,

& hey they say it's not too late,
I am banging on the waiting gate,
let out the angry angels
& let out the long forgotten hate,
it's a crazy little bit of spate,

I took a pill, was feeling ill,
& went along against my will
it takes my heart and runs
it shakes apart, in booming guns

It's a hiding cluster
& I'm a wordsmith hustler
guess a real crime buster,
yeah I think I trust her,
ya know that shiny luster,

Hope is dope, grab a rope,
the drugs, the thugs,
the tiny little budding nugs,
the tipping back of happy mugs,
giving you a little hug,
a white hot plug,
electrifying baby
an aiming slug,
try to get me maybe,
a stinging bug,

Ouch that hurt!
while rubbing in a little dirt,

It bites & bites,
& then I writes,
again, again, again
again,
yes its true my poet friend,

My hands they move to a different beat,
& down a different funky street
with moving feet,
it's groovy, neat,
& this is sounding really sweet
it repeats, repeats, repeats,

Awaiting  dictating
sometimes  frustrating,
enticing & slicing
my hands always dicing
& giving me pricing
sweet just like icing,

Skating through life,
finding creating,
all the press is still waiting,
and me it is bating,
I'm hating the dating,
'cept while we are mating,
sweet, sweet loving
& good turtle doving
is soooo satiating ; )

Sometimes I'm grieving,
but always believing
& ever retrieving,

There is a voice
it's not a choice,

I hear it now
they tell me how,
a sense of humor
I heard a rumor
a cancer's tumor,

In the radio
the tower on the mountain
my pens leaky fountain,
signaling changes in the weather,
calling me birds of another feather
when that lone whistle blows,
wherever my shoes may go
as high as any flower grows,
leaves of fall & winter snow,
what the tallest cedar knows,

What about the crescent  moon
& how those lovers kiss & swoon,
this could be such a boon,
like incandescent bulbs
come
May in  bloom,
& hearts with maybe too much room,

Aggravating spirits

A fever spikes,
so I must take
a farther hike,
a stronger bike
peddling & meddling,
shining & pining
sometimes I'm whining,
in the brilliant ink
it's the deepest well,
the very deepest sink,
I'm in the drink, I shouldn't blink,
Nevermind to stop and think

Like lidocane I am tot'ly  numb
my mind alive & feeling dumb,
it's sticking like a piece of gum
as I come all done,
I know I'm not the only one,
captured by the guilty sun

Metaphors the seep my veins
taking with them tired chains
my chest can breath without the pain

Ahhhh so sublime,
it's why I rhyme & rhyme
why my voice it chimes,

Say what you mean
and mean what you say
because the Sun is gonna
rise on some other day,
& anyway
as a coloring book streaks
& takes away the ugly bleak,
to seal up the finding leak
I must write if I can't speak,

In the deepest midnight skies
I think I heard an angel sigh,
she saw a falling passerby,

Turn it up,
till death comes again
sometimes it comes, a long lost friend
one my pen it will defend,
my heart it might be on the mend,
when pain to me, it looks real pretty,
& getting kinda nitty gritty,
and scars bleed too
from me & you,
we bleed our truth,
in wisdom of our years and youth,

In deep crevasses of beauty
it's a poets certain duty,
the bones we bury deep
in messages they seep,
& tiptoe 'round and creep,

I dream, I hope
I hold on a rope,
I'm dizzied by the angles dope,
in a hurry and in our worry,
we want to be saved
calling from a darkened grave,
watching shadows dance,
as they kiss in sweet romance
hoping for another chance,

Don't wanna be played,
in death to be slayed,
plunging a sticking blade,
& down my enemy is quickly laid,

Rescue me poet
you are, you are & you know it too,

Sleep peacefully at night,
live your life & say it right,
you keep the lid on way to tight,
open it, let it out
just scream & shout
but never doubt,
hey you got clout,
releasing the way
in every word you speak and say,

Listen intendedly
& contentedly
find a beat,
& take a seat
have a treat
just grab a pen,
& say it again, again,
a heart you know you must defend,

I hold teardrops in my hands
I hold them out & as they land,
release me in the said demands,
a clench my fist,
& I slit a wrist,
bleeding & needing,
just keep reading
love is breeding,

I tighten up,
I take a sup,

I reach you & as you teach me
as every one of you beseech me,
as minds are racing
and hands retracing,
as I'm embracing,
the poet's calling,
again, again I'm always falling
falling,
in love with life,

Like lightning in a bottle
I'm a genie,
& holding on the throttle,
my heart BEATS like the rain
I feel it's endless painted pain ,
it's electric & hectic,
I'm a gentle bird
a voice I hope is duly heard,
can be wounded easily
though strong in storms,
I fly again,
& can't be warned,

I'll never fly too far
I must reach the closest star,
touching souls,
drifting & sifting
words I'm grifting,
I'll never go without saying so
no matter where a poet goes
or what the traveling picture shows,

A hazy start
an aiming dart
a broken down ol' heart
a silly **** (haha)
a nice full grocery cart,
I'm acting kinda smart,
a glowing celestial chart,
cuz ya know
I think that this is art
especially when we drift apart
and even more when we depart,

Note taking for granted
as my feet are planted,
words they are slanted
& dark art is chanted,

If words cut deeper than a knife
Just write me out and bring me back to life

There is always a compelling story
one of histories honored glory,
& even if it's kinda gory,
I gotta a suitcase to pack
a train to get on back track,
pick up the slack
sometimes derailed by life,
divorced from reality,
as once I was a loving wife,

To tell & share
a way to find, a way to care,
& yes we must, we must dare,
words can't bring me down
hey, I love that endless sound,
fall & crash back to the ground,

I am beautiful
& you are too,
I know these things,
I know it's true
skies above they are so blue
a color that looks good on you

I hear a rap repeating tap
leavings of  unwanted scrap,
a song that I still can sing
I hear a voice, my voice it rings
another soul,
a bell it dings,
a dance left to dance
a chance of romance,
a hand left to hold,
the shiniest gold
treasure for seekers,
for look at life peepers,
I hope it's a keeper,
I'm delirious but serious,

Game changers & rearrangers,
in infection & detection
not won in a election
a sugary confection
in delusions & illusions
& constant intrusions,
the magic is tragic,
ecstatic & fanatic
this curse could be worse,
you could be me
as I bleed ink
& quickly blink,
can't stop to think
or ever take a tiny drink

Kick the ceiling
minds are reeling & keep feeling
just touch it
just do it to it,
come in undo it,

It's a really deep well,
so I gotta tell it
& I try to sell it,
close my eyes & try smell it
wave a wand & even spell it,

I want to take a sip
so hear my families battle yip,
my heart it just skips & skips
a wandering blip
just take a little skinny dip,
here's a little helpful tip,

We gotta spill it,
need to **** it
because they drill it  
way down deep,
in veins they seep,
Oh my ****
I think I'm struck
& now I'm stuck
by luck or fate
in love and hate,
it's been a date,
I had to wait,
it's been real great,
I can rate & keep it straight
Pick up the weight,

I can avoid or be annoyed,
I tell,  I yell
my soul, I'd sell,
say in a way you understand,
so poet here's the perfect plan, Stan
I want to dive
so we survive,
& feel alive,
live vicariously through my words,
know your voice, it too is heard,

As water & gasoline
is touching my skin
as I reach out, to be new again
reaching out to find a friend
I'm burning down
& hit the ground
a violent sound,
I turn around,

I swim inside the glistening wet,
to clean my life from sins & sweat,
& anything I might regret,

Carbon Copy

If there is a God,
in him I say, I'm truly awed,
I'll find out too,
I'm humming right along with you,
we cannot undo
the sticky glue & residue,
words we pray
& ones we say, & where we lay
or head to pray,

Say what I think
stand at the brink,
& take nice long lasting drink,
let the indigo ink,
just let it flow,
write it down as you go,
& let a shining spirit glow,

Earths angels
party hard, & learn harder
we work just a little smarter,
get it down
get it right
as it hits the ground,
I'm kicked around,
poetic sounds
as ears they pound,

Sometimes the rain
in tears and sun
sometimes a battle
or a war we won
sometimes I cry, inside I sigh,
or walking in a dessert dry,
my pen will tell & never lie
protect me as I wait to die,
painting words in pictured skies,
so many left unsure goodbyes,
diamonds fall from tears they cry,
I sometimes think that I,

I can't go on
until I hear a poignant song,
please won't you come along,

Sometimes my feet are on the run
those setting tangerine skies
the blistering hot & sweltering sun,
illuminating my darkest ink,
& every thought I try to think,
a Titanic ship can sink,
when you need help
I'll beg & steal
try my best
to make you feel
when you are suffering
& life not buffering,

I'll believe
in tomorrow
find time we can borrow
a bottle to drown out every sorrow
I'll love you when you're gone
this is a place where I belong
together we can sing along,
a crutch for a rugged heart
a gift of life,
a brand new start,
so don't be crude or ever rude,

I am human too
just like them, just like you,
a drum don't stop beating
or keep on repeating,
Keep me up,
give me a cup,
keep me going,
& ever knowing,

My heart it never does take rest
after the most grueling test,
it beats & it heats,
in the pain &  the rain
I can't stop this ugly vain
raised it from its darkened bed,
now it demands, I hear it said,
every single word
that anyone
has ever said, I heard,
crashing burning
I am ever learning,
& always yearning
a day I'm earning,
to get a chance,
just one last dance
before its over
to kiss the clover,
my starry rover,
an Australian drover,

To be rendered useless
if my words are fruitless,
if said in vain,
against the grain,
it doesn't matter
as tears they shatter
the sky it sets
but you can almost always bet
I'll be writing of you
& love that's true,

& everything that's beautiful
trapped in Autumn's wind
with tombstone eyes,
caught  again in sad goodbyes,
please baby don't you cry
stupid cupid,

The bittersweetness
of our yesterday's
I feel it in the touch
one you want so very much
again come tomorrow's light
again I will take another flight,
again I bleed the poets plight,
I pray for vision
hope & sight
listen & get it write,
I know I will win the fight
burning lamps into the night

Add, edit, do that again
hold a hand & be a friend,
be a lover and a mother,
celebrate & graduate,
follow & lead
ask of us  & beg & plead,
I will not be afraid,
filling every heart it's need
drowning out the sounds of greed

There is nothing to fear but fear itself,
no truer statement
could have ever been uttered
  whispered,  or muttered,
like sweet Fred that stuttered
warm wheat bread that's buttered,

It's why we rhyme,
we are chasing after time,
yup, your words & mine,

I go unafraid into darkened night
and even with my blinded sight,
lit by scars & brilliant stars,
candles snuffed out too soon
caught by the tail of the crescent moon,

I'm mesmerized I can't move my feet
unless I hear that haunting beat,
as demons flee in sweet defeat,
at times I carry the weight of the world
& that of my children,
that they too are heard
ancestors calling as I,
I am,
I am always
falling,

Afraid to close my eyes,
& look at the skies,
afraid of that surprise,
and each day I awake,
grateful for what I take,

I rise up,
a phoenix from ashes
& blinking eyelashes,
while I can still see
sight please find a plan,
left upon a grain a sand,
I'm made of glass & paper
I got a pass  hey what a caper,

Wake it up & take it up
just make it up
it'll be just fine,

I must go unafraid into the long night
an endless spinning soulful top
one that I hope won't soon stop
I am like an aurasma
my own Galaxy
past the Milky Way
Listen close to what I say,

As demons flee & I can see
in every lovely memory,
please say you'll remember me
& our history,
kicked around & on the ground
I still hear that painful sound
I think I'll  even maybe drown,

I might be a muse
that the heavens abuse
or my words that they want to use,
intentions are everything,
listening & glistening

Watch me burn,
ya know I never learn,
don't put me out,
or even pout
we can't doubt,
hear me fry,
Cuz I,

I just keep swimming
as waters are brimming,
& stones are we are skimming
tredding in cold waters,
waves pull me under,
fires grow hotter,
a thinking blotter,
cleaving bones I am asunder
& broke apart by rampant thunder,

Breathless & gasping
my hands are grasping
in desperation & despair
cannot pretend that I don't care,
something that I must share,
I see a shore,
& I've seen it before,
just beyond the waiting door,

A mascara smudge
but please don't judge,
or hold a silly hateful grudge
I'm through the wading of the sludge
I just wouldn't budge,
it just took a nudge,

Because a beautiful mind
one so very, very kind,
protected by the hands of time
a precious thing
a voice, I sing
heard in my poetic choice,
undiluted  not refuted
undisclosed, many ohhh's
a twitching nose,
teaching all in what we know
to be silent is a terrible wasted gift
to not hear that sound,
bring a voice around,
the voices ring,
I've had a taste,
my shoes are laced
I can keep the pace,

To not write,
to seal the vain,
relief from pain,
would be a terrible waste
of a divinely inspired pen. ❤

Cherie Nolan© 2016
Why I write, some of it. I've been asked this question by a few so hope that answers some questions : )
Arsalan Kouser Jun 2014
Gaze upon nature,
How it is so mature,
A ever-changing fixture,
And an enticing lure.

Viewing its splendor,
Its eternal glamor,
Its undying resilience,
And its constant resistance,
We will never conquer Mother Earth.

Beaten down, yet never giving in,
Always resisting to all, always sharing its treasures regardless,
Nature is the beautiful pure maiden,
Ruined countless times by man's intrusions, yet forevermore retaining her piety.
Shruti Atri Jul 2014
They say we are Different;
But how can that be true?
When all I see,
Is me and you.


Earth is but a ball of dirt,
Devoid of man's treaties;
Still, it sustains within itself
Thousands of different species.

So why by them were these
Distinct separations made?
Why were colours distinguished,
And Humanity left to fade?

What is their purpose
Of praying to God above,
When his creation of a Heart,
They condemn without Love?

They walk the same soil;
They breathe the same air;
They drink the same water,
Then why do they despair?--


It's not Faith as they call it;
It's Vile Hyprocrisy redefined,
That leaks Doubt and Angst
Into a perfectly Tolerant mind.

For they frown at our Choices,
They mock at our Bruise;
They scorn at our Differences,
But our Similarities they refuse!--


It's a matter of the mind,
That plays forth illusions;
*Differences are evasive maneuvers
Against mental intrusions!
Differences are labels born from one's craving for familiarity, and act as shelters to run and hide from the alienness of progress.
Randi B Mar 2011
They say knowledge is power yet I feel weak.
When strength is in numbers and no one knows,
then how shall the earth go to the meek?

Power is the knowledge that people will agree
when no other option is addressed
and the media controls what we see.

The tele-images flash black and blue
beating our minds to a ****** pulp
and delivering news that’s untrue.

Television tells us lies
Through reporter spies
who invade our lives.

And only the truly informed will fight
for the rights of the freethinking brain
so the rest can sleep well at night.

We believe the clockwork illusions
drawing miserable conclusions.
Yet no one stops to decipher these cerebral intrusions
or question these mass delusions.

What, now, does our youth stand for?
What is it that makes us tick?
What kind of truth do we bring forth?

We have bludgeoned the idea of originality,
We've killed individuality, embraced naivete
and wasted opportunity.

So where shall we end up?
When will we stand up?

Our generation will shape the next,
yet we, ourselves, are misshapen.
When communication is reduced to text,
when will our youth awaken?

* This is Generation X
JR Rhine Feb 2016
Is a man
who acquiesces to love's embrace
ever sinless? (never a lamb)
always libidinous? (perpetually the wolf)  

I pondered this (stigmatic) question
as I entered the densely-wooded trail,
to seek my analogous answers
in the enchanting mystery of the naked forest--

Much as I had before,
seeking truth and solace in love's embrace;
tucked within her ample *****,
where I had once lain my head
gently flowing with the rise and fall
of her chest--

much like the advances and retreats
of aching waves on the beleaguered shore.

I traveled the woods, taking it all in--
as I, the woods,
and the woods, my love,
and the earth, my foundation,
and the sky:
My god.

I heard avian sprites dance in the thickets and brush,
scampering away from my intrusions.

These birds; be they so timid in my presence?
Or, in their sprite-like visage,
do they simply mirror such intrinsically motivated ambulations;
their impalpable purposes impervious to Man's prodding.  

I feel I seek their fleeting company in my mind's eye,
who wanders incessantly in its dreadful musings,
while my earthly senses
merely soak in what is to be seen.

And I see the naked overturned tree--
victim of the vitriolic hurricane's rages;
who lies ashamed before my queried glances,
silently panning from empty branches
protruding from a battered trunk,
down to her meandering roots--
who look meaningless in their desperate search
for earthly riches.

I almost feel guilty enough to cast my eyes from her sight--
and she is left to only rot in the foliage
that once entertained her life;

and her in turn having once contributed
to the beauty
I precede,

in the impending vernal equinox
alluded by the returning chansonettes
of those dainty birds--
who sing and dance among those branches sturdier than hers.

I felt her woes accumulating in her shameful exposure
to wicked love's throes and I wept alongside her.

(Pitiful, unspoken empathy.)

---

I finally make it to the overlook,
and the rugged solitary picnic table--
where I sit and gaze over the cove,
and the shore that lurks beneath
my commanding earthly footing.

Sighing at the merrymakers perched atop their aquatic vessels--
their cries and screams of elation reaching me,
like mocking phantoms lurking in the woods,
echoing off the hollow shells

(and I write this all with numbing fingers
and tearing eyes, blinking furiously
in frigid but calm winds never hiding their presence)
--

I see them, closer now as I make my way to the beach;
but how is it I am the one sinking,
when my feet are the ones planted firmly on the shore?

My shoe'd feet seep into the wet sand--
a dull orange, so lifeless and cold;

Infinitely malleable.

As I once was,

in love's embrace.

---

In the sand:
the lukewarm tracks of man and beast--
traveling side by side,
their destinations a mystery to me,
but their paths encapsulated in the gritty earth
where I once again sense the duality of my soul.

Man and beast imprinted in the malleable confines
of my innermost being, where
the ceaseless waves crash onto the shore
of my battered conscience,

and I feel sinking atop my muddy thoughts
the footprints of man and beast--
the biped and the quadruped--
stepping in tune to nature's melodies.

When I acquiesced to love,
man and beast did not step harmoniously
in the sand,
and the waves of lust crashed over my conscience
like the perfect storm.

In utter torment,
I shied from its ceaseless beatings,
but I foolishly dug my withering tendrils into the mutable sand,
and the wind's booming voice furiously knocked me onto my back--

and though her advancing body had suddenly lain atop mine,
with kisses like icy daggers and eyes like amorphous storm clouds--
her words and my conscience
lay heavier on me still;

On the shore,
and in the woods:
Where I lay naked and exposed,
where I lay shameful and remorseful,
where I lay hopeless and tasteless,
where I lay to this day--

rotting in the foliage that once gave me life,
and I in turn,

beauty.
To men who have been sexually assaulted:
You are not alone.
And also, to women who have been sexually assaulted:
You are not alone.
My prayer is that in our shame and anguish we may still reach out to those who love us, because believe me; they are there.
You are dearly loved, child.
(This poem does not seek to elevate the atrocities of the ****** assaults of men above that of women, but merely to address the stigma that is seemingly associated with men being sexually assaulted.
As I know personally, it is a shameful experience that you feel is not true because you are a man and men love ***--so we are told--so therefore how could a man ever be sexually assaulted? My heart goes out to all victims of ****** assault.)
Lily Marx Jan 2013
There are two worlds where one cannot escape
They’re captivating just like illusions.
They disorient one as they take shape,
They seize your mind through subtle intrusions.


In one world your reality grows numb,
Your sanity dies as light expires.
Your fear emerges as the monsters come.
To wreak havoc is a Nightmare’s desire.


In another, faeries dance with the stars;
They welcome you like the moon does the night.
This mystical dreamland is quite bizarre,
Where magical creatures are drunk with delight.


Nightmares consume the dreamer’s sanity,
Daydreams conceive the dreamer’s fantasy.
Marx Jun 2016
The moment is present, the heat is on
Any word uttered will be a knife piercing through the flesh
Instantly killing the moment and vibe

It is better to dwell in your own thoughts in this moment
No thoughts or intrusions from the outer world
For these intrusions will disrupt your assessment and thoughts
Of what has just occurred

Words and actions tends to make these
Silently loud moments occur
Your ears my not hear anything
But your mind is raging in a room full of loud thoughts
Your senses are more alive as you make look around and make eye contact
The noise in your head gets louder

These moments leave our minds isolated in thought in a crowded room
These are the moments we avoid
Because we don't want our minds to be left alone

— The End —