.
Lear wanders in stormy open, bares warring elements,
The heavens blister, crackle, night is balmy shroud,
Wretched monarch babbles in sprinkles of wind cold,
Arguments lost by ones own pouring perturbations
And raining sky said 'nothing will come from nothing.'

Howl, howls into blackness treed in lightning splits,
His outcast soul, reels, fleshed, cut to smithereens,
Tang of salt burns on the bluffs and the sea rages,
So entire and ceremonious is Lear's fall meted out,
Air spoke, 'nothing from nothings ever yet was born.'

Sky proclaimed to man child King, here is a reckoning,                           
Each mad choice was self infliction, now wind flays
And sweet Cordelia lies in her innocent **** grave,
Sky, in thralls of thundering asks, 'what say thee now,
King of highborn follies, even purple heaths are rags,

Yet black and above you and night shades, whine,
Unworthy King, done in by compounded effects,
The might of maelstroms in low butterflies wings,
How now, bare trees, knifing reeds, skeletal flashes,
To rains of night are ever your lanyards my lord,'

Sad Lear so near oblivion fell mute, sky went on,
'Howl and cry mad King your reaper calls beyond,
The icy brisk heavens await to brusque you away,
Your slipshod kingdom was mere and fools' dream,
Howl, til howls abrupt abate, for nothing now comes.'

The only natural poem I have consciously been involved in-
The site, not just the reporting-
was when I happened upon a sheep gazing at me
in a field immediately off a motorway in Norwich.

This was not planned, yet it was
disconcertingly poetic.

Life whispers it's potentialities, it's immovable eros
the way billboards make us aware of our melancholia.

"Your hair is flaxen"
No, your hair is just damp. "Flaxen" reminds
us of a language that according our reading of poetry
existed long before our ancestors could read.
It does, however, sound more complimentary,
therefore more sincere,
therefore more comforting
than "damp."

I wear all my pretentious vocabulary and sentimental heart-stirrings
like a cross dangling from my neck
pretty as the plastic emotions I express
Because of my dearth of enthusiasm as opposed to experience
Because of the transparency of my speaking without first attuning
to the spectre of blood which no longer clots my lungs Dominika
but now sullies my hands.

But I wash and wash, and am clean, cleaner than most.
And my cleanliness infuriates you Dominika,
it breaks your back to see me so elevated among the wrecks.
When you speak there is no air that leaves your lungs to pollute the air
there are all only words whose sounds make the other sounds commonplace.
Whereas I am all white, brilliant, brutal air.

I've calculated the effect this has on your sense of self
Dominika, of your progress, of your place in the narrative
and though you hate me for implying so if I explained
You wouldn't understand
Dominika
I made it that way.

Must it be a Test to Love without Cause
Like Dad's Clothes worn un-thinking of Perfection?
This be your Practice despite Facts beknown
Towards way-end your Silence ignores Diction
For One who speaks on-file, eager to Present
Once your Lights dim and return to Normal
Expect Reserved Silence to those you amend,
Played Jester with Clouds and thought you Mortal
Even ID's have Foot-Long Lanyards, Sir
Meaning regardless of Gold or Bronze frame
Remember this for all Intent and for Her
All primmed Apartments connect the same.
This you adjust, according to your need
Her she understands, whatever you please.

.
Lear wanders in stormy open, bares warring elements,
The heavens blister, crackle, night is balmy shroud,
Wretched monarch babbles in sprinkles of wind cold,
Arguments lost by ones own pouring perturbations
And raining sky said 'nothing will come from nothing.'

Howl, howls into blackness treed in lightning splits,
His outcast soul, reels, fleshed, cut to smithereens,
Tang of salt burns on the bluffs and the sea rages,
So entire and ceremonious is Lear's fall meted out,
Air spoke, 'nothing from nothings ever yet was born.'

Sky proclaimed to man child King, here is a reckoning,                                    
Each mad choice was self infliction, now wind flays
And sweet Cordelia lies in her innocent **** grave,
Sky, in thralls of thundering asks, 'what say thee now,
King of highborn follies, even purple heaths are rags,

Yet black and above you and night shades, whine,
Unworthy King, done in by compounded effects,
The might of maelstroms in low butterflies wings,
How now, bare trees, knifing reeds, skeletal flashes,
To rains of night are ever your lanyards my lord,'

Sad Lear so near oblivion fell mute, sky went on,
'Howl and cry mad King your reaper calls beyond,
The icy brisk heavens await to brusque you away,
Your slipshod kingdom was mere and fools' dream,
Howl, til howls abrupt abate, for nothing now comes.'

I bought mascara and cantered through it-
stopping every so often to straighten up,
to relevé,
to turn exactly 1.8 pirouettes then stumble out
of amateur balance and click my tongue like a yiayia.

I dragged my fermenting body;
all wild eyes and heavy hair,
across four seasons while trying not to sigh too loud.

I dubbed 2014 the year of grit;
the year every day was a new texture of
gritty and I swelled my punches to match.

It was the year I cast my scars
out to sea on lines of poetry
I kept sequestered in my pockets
and reeled them back in published and
legitimate.

2014 gurgled into the year of stage lights,
highlighted scripts and talent lanyards
that stuck with sweat and raw, giddy nerves
from my neck across tripping tries.

It was the year I learned to dread the
third person. The year of one hundred word
bios I wrote over and over,
always baffled and unable to compose a few lines
describing myself.

It was a year of small stabs and big failures,
of getting recognized while buying yogurt.
It was thousands of miles in the Hundai Santa Fe
without ever really leaving.
It was the year of chasing without ever really catching.

2014 was a big collection of small moments that left
me with less certainties than months in the year.
They are simple. They are so very difficult to commit:
1.      Your emotions are valid. Please don’t defend them.
2.      The less you speak the more you say.
3.      Lipstain is never a good idea.
4.      Remember to check your email, dude. But actually.
5.      Your bones aren’t baby teeth. You don’t want them loose.
6.      The conversations you don’t have will haunt you.
7.      The places where you shed your skin then return to will haunt you more.
8.      A kiss is rarely just a kiss. Impossible with the threads of thought
you keep in your brain.
9.      Sweating means you’re trying.
10.  Feeling wanted is intoxicating, but be prepared for a hangover once the wanting stops.


It’s only a little. But it’s so much.
Walk tall with these bullets into 2015.
Be okay knowing you’ll laugh and squeal and feel beautiful and feel dead.
Know there will be moments you feel ethereal and there will be moments you will sit doubled over, pressing your arms into your stomach because it feels like that’s the only way to keep your guts from spilling out onto the floor for all to see.
There is not point but to make a point.
It’s just a year and the goal is the same: stay whole and grow.

( Sonnet )*

Good deer are gracing the trees,
Take communion in handed leaf,
Touch the soils with loving hoof,
In the tabernacles of the wood.

The owl cries for all souls eternal,
Deep in the shrouds of the vernal
That drape the newly born dying,
Beneath the solemn owls' crying.

And songbird has a psalm unread,
A parable in the twining branches,
Gifts of song foist lanyards of crop
Dear in old forest, this offered sup.

As blood seeping deep in the wood,
Sky washes away those who stood.

A Story of Scientology and the
Mental Health System Connection

THE BILLION YEAR CONTRACT

So I had this boyfriend. I don't really know *why I stayed with him. Except that he was fairly intelligent. He left scientology not longer after I left, I discovered later. But, truth be told, he was NOT attractive to me. He had a lisp. THAT wouldn't have bothered me so much, but he couldn't dance either.... LOL! That was, for some reason, important to me in a man. Always has been. He also had a jaw like a steamshovel and eyes like poached eggs. Oh, well...

Anyway,  he was very excited about a do that was happening up in Phoenix!  There was a brand new ORG!  Scientologese for organization, especially a high echelon one. This Org was the TOP at that time! The Flag Land Base! Located in a once-glamorous resort town, Clearwater, Florida. A place of sugar sand beaches and tropical beauty! There was an Orientation going on, and he wanted me to go with him...

That was the most Fateful night of my life. This FOT (Flag Orientation Tour) was actually a recruitment drive. For the infamous Sea Organization!

When I arrived I was impressed. It was in a conference room at a nice hotel. All the materials they handed me were slickly printed. The only thing that bugged me were the uniforms. The folk not in suit jackets even wore lanyards! That warning sign in my stomach should have told me.... RUN!!! AS FAST AND FAR AS YOU CAN!!! But did I listen? NO! And that was a mistake that cost me 24 precious years of my life. Golden years. Years I could have been in school. College and university. Instead I worked as a peon slave for that CULT. Then 20 years stolen by virulent targeting. TRAGIC!

I stayed. And I was lulled into a false sense of security. The speeches by the various "big-wigs" of FLB didn't start till 9 PM. And lasted till 10:30! Their voices were stern yet sonorous. Hypnotic. They told of the importance and "nobility" of the Sea Org. And the very PINNACLE of importance was the Flag Land Base! in balmy and beautiful Clearwater! Where the BEST and most RESPECTED "auditors" and "trainers" took the adherents of Scientology to the most advanced stage of spiritual growth... OT VIII. SCIENTOLOGY WORKS! YES! YOU, TOO, CAN REACH NIRVANA!

What a bunch of HORSESH-T!!!

Anyway. These guys and gals began to look glamorous to me! With their uniforms and scrambled eggs on their hats...

Then the real kicker. "THEY WERE OUT TO CLEAR THE PLANET. And little miss Cathy Jarvis could be a PART of this Noble Cause. That was it. I bought it. Hook. Line. And SINKER.

Even the hard, pockmarked face of the recruitment officer, nor her beady black eyes, could deter me. I was sleepy by that time, and hardly noticed the Contract I signed was for A BILLION YEARS...

I could LEAVE the "Podunk" town I lived in. Go first to spectacular LOS ANGELES... then to...

*... A NEW LIFE in balmy CLEARWATER FLORIDA!!!

.
Lear wanders in stormy open, bares warring elements,
The heavens blister, crackle, night is balmy shroud,
Wretched monarch babbles in sprinkles of wind cold,
Arguments lost by ones own pouring perturbations
And raining sky said 'nothing will come from nothing.'

Howl, howls into blackness treed in lightning splits,
His outcast soul, reels, fleshed, cut to smithereens,
Tang of salt burns on the bluffs and the sea rages,
So entire and ceremonious is Lear's fall meted out,
Air spoke, 'nothing from nothings ever yet was born.'

Sky proclaimed to man child King, here is a reckoning,                                    
Each mad choice was self infliction, now wind flays
And sweet Cordelia lies in her innocent **** grave,
Sky, in thralls of thundering asks, 'what say thee now,
King of highborn follies, even purple heaths are rags,

Yet black and above you and night shades, whine,
Unworthy King, done in by compounded effects,
The might of maelstroms in low butterflies wings,
How now, bare trees, knifing reeds, skeletal flashes,
To rains of night are ever your lanyards my lord,'

Sad Lear so near oblivion fell mute, sky went on,
'Howl and cry mad King your reaper calls beyond,
The icy brisk heavens await to brusque you away,
Your slipshod kingdom was mere and fools' dream,
Howl, til howls abrupt abate, for nothing now comes.'

.
Lear wanders in stormy open, bares warring elements,
The heavens blister, crackle, night is balmy shroud,
Wretched monarch babbles in sprinkles of wind cold,
Arguments lost by ones own pouring perturbations
And raining sky said 'nothing will come from nothing.'

Howl, howls into blackness treed in lightning splits,
His outcast soul, reels, fleshed, cut to smithereens,
Tang of salt burns on the bluffs and the sea rages,
So entire and ceremonious is Lear's fall meted out,
Air spoke, 'nothing from nothings ever yet was born.'

Sky proclaimed to man child King, here is a reckoning,                            
Each mad choice was self infliction, now wind flays
And sweet Cordelia lies in her innocent **** grave,
Sky, in thralls of thundering asks, 'what say thee now,
King of highborn follies, even purple heaths are rags,

Yet black and above you and night shades, whine,
Unworthy King, done in by compounded effects,
The might of maelstroms in low butterflies wings,
How now, bare trees, knifing reeds, skeletal flashes,
To rains of night are ever your lanyards my lord,'

Sad Lear so near oblivion fell mute, sky went on,
'Howl and cry mad King your reaper calls beyond,
The icy brisk heavens await to brusque you away,
Your slipshod kingdom was mere and fools' dream,
Howl, til howls abrupt abate, for nothing now comes.'
.

.
Lear wanders in stormy open, bares warring elements,
The heavens blister, crackle, night is balmy shroud,
Wretched monarch babbles in sprinkles of wind cold,
Arguments lost by ones own pouring perturbations
And raining sky said 'nothing will come from nothing.'

Howl, howls into blackness treed in lightning splits,
His outcast soul, reels, fleshed, cut to smithereens,
Tang of salt burns on the bluffs and the sea rages,
So entire and ceremonious is Lear's fall meted out,
Air spoke, 'nothing from nothings ever yet was born.'

Sky proclaimed to man child King, here is a reckoning,
Each mad choice was self infliction, now wind flays
And sweet Cordelia lies in her innocent **** grave,
Sky, in thralls of thundering asks, 'what say thee now,
King of highborn follies, even purple heaths are rags,

Yet black and above you and night shades, whine,
Unworthy King, done in by compounded effects,
The might of maelstroms in low butterflies wings,
How now, bare trees, knifing reeds, skeletal flashes,
To rains of night are ever your lanyards my lord,'

Sad Lear so near oblivion fell mute, sky went on,
'Howl and cry mad King your reaper calls beyond,
The icy brisk heavens await to brusque you away,
Your slipshod kingdom was mere and fools' dream,
Howl, til howls abrupt abate, for nothing now comes.'

( Sonnet )

Good deer are gracing the trees,
Take communion in handed leaf,
Touch the soils with loving hoof,
In the tabernacles of the wood.

The owl cries for all souls eternal,
Deep in the shrouds of the vernal
That drape the newly born dying,
Beneath the solemn owls' crying.

And songbird has a psalm unread,
A parable in the twining branches,
Gifts of song foist lanyards of crop
Dear in old forest, this offered sup.

As blood seeping deep in the wood,
Sky washes away those who stood.
.

Big brother; surveilled; rat runs of pounds;
Instaweb orbs, tendrils confound,
Face timely chats across coded binary,
Clocked on, logged in let it begin;

Around and around the wheels about town,
The daily homage to tubes underground,
Whistlestop lunches, lanyards and passes,
Payslip available labour force saleable.

PIN, Password, Face recognition,
Upload, drawn down, robotic volition,
Subdural naked forced aspirations,
Chasing dragons of faked motivation.

Push and chug and push and chug,

The relentless surge of more from above,
Steady inbound for disembarkation,
Life's sourjourn of self realisation.

hold fast to the lanyard
for if hold failed
life is a fall to water
a drop to sea

hold fast to the lanyards
this life will go
life is a strong grip
of healing heart.

How grey the slippery pathways lie
on days like this when affluent rain
falls heavy on the thirsty land.

See how the  watery rays of  light
turned silver plated in the mist
reflect upon the heath topped hills
which dip their feet in shining seas
where  silk white stallions dance.

Listen to the  keening winds
as lanyards tap and squawking gulls
skim low across the paynes grey waves.

During a time like this we cannot help but thank the people stood there

Helping us, caring for us and sacrificing for us,

Heroes do not have to wear a cape

Because our heroes wear lanyards, badges and masks.

The key-workers of our community

Deserve more than just a cheer

More than just a clap

They deserve more than what they get.

The list of the people putting their lives in danger for us is endless .

But they  should not  be forgotten

Always remember who was there for you in the time of your needs.

All the key- workers from hospitals, public services to supermarkets and delivery drivers.

Should never be erased from your memory, looked down upon considered unskilled

Or pushed away to seem invisible neither undervalued as their worth is more then you can count,

The question is will you be there for them like they were there for you?

Fight for them, value them, a simple thank you could do for them.

Always remember when lives are disintegrating like the wind in the sky

These key- workers still work for your everyday wants and needs.