Martin's New Words 3:1:13

Thursday, April 10th, 2014

assay - noun. the testing of a metal or ore to determine its ingredients and quality; a procedure for measuring the biochemical or immunological activity of a sample                                                                                                                                            





February 14th-16th, Valentine's Day, 2014

nonpareil - adjective. having no match or equal; unrivaled; 1. noun. an unrivaled or matchless person or thing 2. noun. a flat round candy made of chocolate covered with white sugar sprinkles. 3. noun. Printing. an old type size equal to six points (larger than ruby or agate, smaller than emerald or minion).

ants - noun. emmet; archaic. pismire.

amercement - noun. Historical. English Law. a fine

lutetium - noun. the chemical element of atomic number 71, a rare, silvery-white metal of the lanthanide series. (Symbol: Lu)

couverture -

ort -

lamington -

pinole -

racahout -

saint-john's-bread -

makings -

millettia -

noisette -

veddoid -

algarroba -

coelogyne -

tamarind -

corsned -

sippet -

sucket -

estaminet -

zarf -

javanese -

caff -

dragee -

sugarplum -

upas -

brittle - adjective. hard but liable to break or shatter easily; noun. a candy made from nuts and set melted sugar.

comfit - noun. dated. a candy consisting of a nut, seed, or other center coated in sugar

fondant -

gumdrop - noun. a firm, jellylike, translucent candy made with gelatin or gum arabic

criollo - a person from Spanish South or Central America, esp. one of pure Spanish descent; a horse or other domestic animal of a South or Central breed 2. (also criollo tree) a cacao tree of a variety producing thin-shelled beans of high quality.

silex -

ricebird -

trinil man -

mustard plaster -

horehound - noun. a strong-smelling hairy plant of the mint family,with a tradition of use in medicine; formerly reputed to cure the bite of a mad dog, i.e. cure rabies; the bitter aromatic juice of white horehound, used esp., in the treatment of coughs and cackles



Christmas Week Words Dec. 24, Christmas Eve

gorse - noun. a yellow-flowered shrub of the pea family, the leaves of which are modified to form spines, native to western Europe and North Africa

pink cistus - noun. Botany. Cistus (from the Greek "Kistos") is a genus of flowering plants in the rockrose family Cistaceae, containing about 20 species. They are perennial shrubs found on dry or rocky soils throughout the Mediterranean region, from Morocco and Portugal through to the Middle East, and also on the Canary Islands. The leaves are evergreen, opposite, simple, usually slightly rough-surfaced, 2-8cm long; in a few species (notably C. ladanifer), the leaves are coated with a highly aromatic resin called labdanum. They have showy 5-petaled flowers ranging from white to purple and dark pink, in a few species with a conspicuous dark red spot at the base of each petal, and together with its many hybrids and cultivars is commonly encountered as a garden flower. In popular medicine, infusions of cistuses are used to treat diarrhea.

labdanum - noun. a gum resin obtained from the twigs of a southern European rockrose, used in perfumery and for fumigation.

laudanum - noun. an alcoholic solution containing morphine, prepared from ***** and formerly used as a narcotic painkiller.

manger - noun. a long open box or trough for horses or cattle to eat from.

blue pimpernel - noun. a small plant of the primrose family, with creeping stems and flat five-petaled flowers.

broom - noun. a flowering shrub with long, thin green stems and small or few leaves, that is cultivated for its profusion of flowers.

blue lupine - noun. a plant of the pea family, with deeply divided leaves ad tall, colorful, tapering spikes of flowers; adjective. of, like, or relating to a wolf or wolves

bee-orchis - noun. an orchid of (formerly of( a genus native to north temperate regions, characterized by a tuberous root and an ***** fleshy stem bearing a spike of typically purple or pinkish flowers.

campo santo - translation. cemetery in Italian and Spanish

runnel - noun. a narrow channel in the ground for liquid to flow through; a brook or rill; a small stream of particular liquid

arroyos - noun. a steep-sided gully cut by running water in an arid or semi-arid region.


January 14th, 2014

spline - noun. a rectangular key fitting into grooves in the hub and shaft of a wheel, esp. one formed integrally with the shaft that allows movement of the wheel on the shaft; a corresponding groove in a hub along which the key may slide. 2. a slat; a flexible wood or rubber strip used, esp. in drawing large curves. 3. (also spline curve) Mathematics. a continuous curve constructed so as to pass through a given set of points and have a certain number of continuous derivatives.

4. verb. secure (a part) by means of a spine

reticulate - verb. rare. divide or mark (something) in such a way as to resemble a net or network

November 20, 2013

flout - verb. openly disregard (a rule, law, or convention); intrans. archaic. mock; scoff ORIGIN: mid 16th cent.: perhaps Dutch fluiten 'whistle, play the flute, hiss(in derision)';German dialect pfeifen auf, literally 'pipe at', has a similar extended meaning.

pedimented - noun. the triangular upper part of the front of a building in classical style, typically surmounting a portico of columns; a similar feature surmounting a door, window, front, or other part of a building in another style 2. Geology. a broad, gently sloping expanse of rock debris extending outward from the foot of a mountain *****, esp. in a desert.

portico - noun. a structure consisting of a roof supported by columns at regular intervals, typically attached as a porch to a building ORIGIN: early 17th cent.: from Italian, from Latin porticus 'porch.'

catafalque - noun. a decorated wooden framework supporting the coffin of a distinguished person during a funeral or while lying in state.

cortege - noun. a solemn procession esp. for a funeral

pall - noun. a cloth spread over a coffin, hearse, or tomb; figurative. a dark cloud or covering of smoke, dust, or similar matter; figurative. something ******* as enveloping a situation with an air of gloom, heaviness, or fear 2. an ecclesiastical pallium; heraldry. a Y-shape charge representing the front of an ecclesiastical pallium. ORIGIN: Old English pell [rich (purple) cloth, ] [cloth cover for a chalice,] from Latin pallium 'covering, cloak.'

3. verb. [intrans.] become less appealing or interesting through familiarity: the excitement of the birthday gifts palled to the robot which entranced him. ORIGIN: late Middle English; shortening of APPALL

columbarium - noun. (pl. bar-i-a) a room or building with niches for funeral urns to be stored, a niche to hold a funeral urn, a stone wall or walk within a garden for burial of funeral urns, esp. attached to a church. ORIGIN: mid 18th cent.: from Latin, literally 'pigeon house.'

balefire - noun. a lare open-air fire; a bonfire.

eloge - noun. a panegyrical funeral oration.

panegyrical - noun. a public speech or published text in praise of someone or something

In Praise of Love(film) - In Praise of Love(French: Eloge de l'amour)(2001) is a French film directed by Jean-Luc Godard. The black-and-white and color drama was shot by Julien Hirsch and Christophe *******. Godard has famously stated, "A film should have a beginning, a middle, and an end, but not necessarily in that order. This aphorism is illustrated by In Praise of Love.

aphorism - noun. a pithy observation that contains a general truth, such as, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."; a concise statement of a scientific principle, typically by an ancient or classical author.

elogium - noun. a short saying, an inscription. The praise bestowed on a person or thing; a eulogy

epicede - noun. dirge elegy; sorrow or care. A funeral song or discourse, an elegy.

exequy - noun. plural ex-e-quies. usually, exequies. Funeral rites or ceremonies; obsequies. 2. a funeral procession.

loge - noun. (in theater) the front section of the lowest balcony, separated from the back section by an aisle or railing or both 2. a box in a theater or opera house 3. any small enclosure; booth. 4. (in France) a cubicle for the confinement of art  students during important examinations

obit - noun. informal. an obituary 2. the date of a person's death 3. Obsolete. a Requiem Mass

obsequy - noun. plural ob-se-quies. a funeral rite or ceremony.

arval - noun. A funeral feast ORIGIN: W. arwy funeral; ar over + wylo, 'to weep' or cf. arf["o]; Icelandic arfr: inheritance + Sw. ["o]i ale. Cf. Bridal.

knell - noun. the sound made by a bell rung slowly, especially fora death or a funeral 2. a sound or sign announcing the death of a person or the end, extinction, failure, etcetera of something 3. any mournful sound 4. verb. (used without object). to sound, as a bell, especially a funeral bell 5. verb. to give forth a mournful, ominous, or warning sound.

bier - noun. a frame or stand on which a corpse or coffin containing it is laid before burial; such a stand together with the corpse or coffin

coronach - noun. (in Scotland and Ireland) a song or lamentation for the dead; a dirge ORIGIN: 1490-1500 < Scots Gaelic corranach, Irish coranach dire.

epicedium - noun. plural epicedia. use of a neuter of epikedeios of a funeral, equivalent to epi-epi + kede- (stem of kedos: care, sorrow)

funerate - verb. to bury with funeral rites

inhumation - verb(used with an object). to bury

nenia - noun. a funeral song; an elegy

pibroch - noun. (in the Scottish Highlands) a piece of music for the bagpipe, consisting of a series of variations on a basic theme, usually martial in character, but sometimes used as a dirge

pollinctor - noun. one who prepared corpses for the funeral

saulie - noun. a hired mourner at a funeral

thanatousia - noun. funeral rites

ullagone - noun. a cry of lamentation; funeral lament. also, a cry of sorrow ORIGIN: Irish-Gaelic

ulmaceous - of or like elms

uloid - noun. a scar

flagon - noun. a large bottle for drinks such as wine or cide

ullage - noun. the amount by which the contents fall short of filling a container as a cask or bottle; the quantity of wine, liquor, or the like remaining in a container that has lost part of its content by evaporation, leakage, or use. 3. Rocketry. the volume of a loaded tank of liquid propellant in excess of the volume of the propellant; the space provided for thermal expansion of the propellant and the accumulation of gases evolved from it

suttee - (also, sati) noun. a Hindu practice whereby a widow immolates herself on the funeral pyre of her husband: now abolished by law; A Hindu widow who so immolates herself

myriologue - noun. the goddess of fate or death. An extemporaneous funeral song, composed and sung by a woman on the death of a friend.

threnody - noun. a poem, speech, or song of lamentation, especially for the dead; dirge; funeral song

charing cross - noun. a square and district in central London, England: major railroad terminals.

feretory - noun. a container for the relics of a saint; reliquary. 2. an enclosure or area within a church where such a reliquary is kept 3. a portable bier or shrine

bossuet - noun. Jacques Benigne. (b. 1627-1704) French bishop, writer, and orator.

wyla -

rostrum -

aaron's rod -

common mullein -

verbascum thapsus -

peignoir -

pledget -

vestiary -

bushhamer -

beneficiation -

keeve -

frisure -

castigation -

slaw -

strickle -

vestry -

iodoform -

moslings -

bedizenment -

pomatum -

velure -

apodyterium -

macasser oil -

equipage -

tendance -

bierbalk -

joss paper -

lichgate -

parentation -

prink -

bedizen -

allogamy -

matin -

dizen -

disappendency -

photonosus -

spanopnoea -

abulia -

sequela -

lagophthalmos -

cataplexy -

xerasia -

anophelosis -

chloralism -

chyluria -

infarct -

tubercle -

pyuria -

dyscrasia -

ochlesis -

cachexy -

abulic -

sthenic - adjective. dated Medicine. of or having a high or excessive level of strength and energy

pinafore -

toff -

swain -

bucentaur -

coxcomb -

fakir -

hominid -

mollycoddle -

subarrhation -

surtout -

milksop -

tommyrot -

ginglymodi -

harlequinade -

jackpudding -

pickle-herring -

japer -

golyardeys -

scaramouch -

pantaloon -

tammuz -

cuckold -

nabob -

gaffer -

grass widower -

stultify -

stultiloquence -

batrachomyomachia -

exsufflicate -

dotterel -

fadaise -

blatherskite -

footling -

dingmat -

shlemiel -

simper -

anserine -

flibbertgibbet -

desipient -

nugify -

spooney -

inaniloquent -

liripoop -

******* -

seelily -

stulty -

taradiddle -

thimblewit -

tosh -

gobemouche -

hebephrenia -

cockamamie -

birdbrained -

featherbrained -

wiseacre -

lampoon -

Guy Fawke's night -

maclean -

vang -

wisenheimer -

herod -

vertiginous -

raillery -

galoot -

camus -

gormless -

dullard -

funicular -

duffer -

laputan -

fribble -

dolt -

nelipot -

discalced -

footslog -

squelch -

coggle -

peregrinate -

pergola -

gressible -

superfecundation -

mufti -

reveille -

dimdl -

peplum -

phylactery -

moonflower -

bibliopegy -

festinate -

doytin -

****** -

red trillium -

reveille - noun. [in sing. ] a signal sounded esp. on a bugle or drum to wake personnel in the armed forces.

trillium - noun. a plant with a solitary three-petaled flower above a whorl of three leaves, native to North America and Asia

contrail - noun. a trail of condensed water from an aircraft or rocket at high altitude, seen as a white streak against the sky. ORIGIN: 1940s: abbreviation of condensation trail. Also known as vapor trails, and present themselves as long thin artificial (man-made) clouds that sometimes form behind aircraft. Their formation is most often triggered by the water vapor in the exhaust of aircraft engines, but can also be triggered by the changes in air pressure in wingtip vortices or in the air over the entire wing surface. Like all clouds, contrails are made of water, in the form of a suspension of billions of liquid droplets or ice crystals. Depending on the temperature and humidity at the altitude the contrail forms, they may be visible for only a few seconds or minutes, or may persist for hours and spread to be several miles wide. The resulting cloud forms may resemble cirrus, cirrocumulus, or cirrostratus. Persistent spreading contrails are thought to have a significant effect on global climate.

psychopannychism -

restoril -

temazepam -

catafalque -

obit -

pollinctor -

ullagone -

thanatousia -

buckram -

tatterdemalion - noun. a person in tattered clothing; a shabby person. 2. adjective. ragged; unkempt or dilapidated

curtal - adjective. archaic. shortened, abridged, or curtailed; noun. historical. a dulcian or bassoon of the late 16th to early 18th century.

dulcian - noun. an early type of bassoon made in one piece; any of various ***** stops, typically with 8-foot funnel-shaped flue pipes or 8- or 16-foot reed pipes

withe - noun. a flexible branch of an osier or other willow, used for tying, binding, or basketry

osier - noun. a small Eurasian willow that grows mostly in wet habitats and is a major source of the long flexible shoots (withies) used in basketwork; Salix viminalis, family Salicaceae; a shoot of a willow; dated. any willow tree 2. noun. any of several North American dogwoods.

directoire - adjective. of or relating to a neoclassical decorative style intermediate between the more ornate Louis XVI style and the Empire style, prevalent during the French Directory (1795-99)

guimpe -

ip

They took their shovels and digging tools
To the top of Highgate Hill,
They walked in a deadly silence there
In the dusk, in the evening chill,
They picked their way through the deep-laid bones,
The monuments, great and small,
And looked for the plain Rossetti stone
In their search for Elizabeth Siddal.

That red-haired, wraithlike, ghostly girl
Who had charmed the PRB,
She'd sat, at first, for Deverell
Who was doomed, with Bright's Disease,
She'd fallen hard for the artist then
Though her love was never returned,
For Deverell died so suddenly -
It was as if her love was spurned.

She sat for Dante Gabriel,
For Holman Hunt, Millais,
As the model for drowned Ophelia
In an ice cold bath she lay,
She lent her beauty to every brush,
Each stroke laid bare her soul,
When she looked around for herself she found
There was nothing left at all.

Rossetti had kept her close to him
As he slowly became obsessed,
He scribbled a dozen portraits from
Her head to her heaving breast,
He placed her high on a pedestal,
A Madonna in all but name,
But kept his physical love from her
That she might not suffer shame.

He penned the poems he wrote for her
In a small, grey calf-skin book,
He carried the poems everywhere
As a proof of the love it took,
He made no copies, he held them close
They were food for a future muse,
For his art and poetry vied with him -
It was painting he would choose.

But she; who knew what rent her soul,
The cravings she despaired?
She sipped at the potion laudanum
As her heart and her mind were bared,
She scribbled the weary verses that
Spoke love, of a love long-lost,
While Dante frolicked with Annie Hughes
At Elizabeth Siddal's cost.

As Lizzie despaired on laudanum
She had ceased to be of use,
Her visage was sad, and aged and drawn
In the sick room of abuse,
While girls with youth, vitality
And an earthy yen for sin
Like ***** Cornforth, came to sit -
And Rossetti let them in.

They wed, but much as a faded dream
The knot had been tied too late,
As Lizzie, dying a little each day
Succumbed to a morbid fate,
For one dark night she had laid her down
Penned a final note, to whit:
'My life has become so miserable
That I want no more of it.'

She lay by an empty laudanum phial,
Rossetti was quite distraught,
He'd loved her, but with a purer love
Than his lust or his money bought,
His grief was such, as he laid her down
In her coffin, she looked so fair,
That he placed the book of his poems
Between her cheek and her auburn hair.

The years went on and he sank himself
In a pit of despond, unwell,
Withdrew from his friends and dosed himself
With a phial of chloral,
His painting suffered, his income too,
He turned to the ancient muse,
And thought of the poems beyond the grave,
He knew that he'd have to choose!

He wrote to Charles Augustus Howell
A rogue that he'd used before,
To test him; whether to dig her up
Or to lose his poems forever;
Howell replied he should get them back,
Or he'd lose them to death, for good,
'Your works are the works of genius,
Bring them back to the world - You should!'

So Howell, he toiled up Highgate Hill
While Dante hid in his lair,
Too scared to look on his love again,
His muse with the auburn hair,
A fire was lit in the dead of night
The coffin was raised on high,
His love was torn from her deathly stare
They could almost hear her sigh.

The book was caught in her tangled hair
Which had filled the coffin's space,
And she was lovely, and quite serene
As they lifted the book from her face,
They lowered her gently, back in the ground
That had served as her awful tomb,
She lay defiled like a bride, reviled,
But without her lawful groom.

Rossetti published his poems then,
They sold by the thousandfold,
For Howell had leaked the story out
That he hadn't wanted told;
But a fate awaited Augustus Howell
A revenge that would beggar belief,
He was found, throat cut in the gutter -
With a coin, tight clenched in his teeth!

David Lewis Paget

laudanum nights orbiting
grey names missing of souls
pale sleeping
delighting
in a slavery
of
shame
tendrils tuned
to no
heaven
herself.

IN X ANADU....IT'S...COMPLICATED.

"Life should not be lived
in black and white...

...but, in colour!"
Coleridge thinks.

"Man should not believe in
'No-can-do"

but in 'Yes...
we can!'

Even a legless man can
dance the Can-Can

with the uppermost part
of his body and

dancing with imaginary
legs!"

Sammy( sometimes he )
displaces himself into

the  third person
decanting the fine wine of the mind.

"Naw...scrub that line
don't know where in hell I was

going with it.
Gawd! This laudanum is strong!"

And so, he sits, sips and pens
in a vision or a trance if you like

a dream of future-time
where people can be made

into paper replicas
of themselves.

The "picture-graph"
he calls it

for want
of a better word.

And now he pushes the boat out
pictures that can talk and walk

so that even the dead
will flicker for a second

back into the life
they had.

A world going to ***
and other such drugs.

Machines that can take your voice
and fling it over to...say...Japan

and back and forth
again.

The world shrunk to your hand
" a miracle of rare device."

Just think!
Think of it man!

Or to be Blake-an about it:
"What is now proved was once, only imagin'd."

"I have a dream..." the poet proclaims
beginning to sound like a speechwriter

"...that one day man
may fly...sitting down in the sky!"

Oh I'm really getting going now!
Laughs at his mind's daring derring-do!

Gawd....this laudanum is strong!

And that one day facebook(sic)
will come to be.

"...things unfathomable to man!"
These the dark caverns of the mind.

Cute cat videos...selfies
whatever!

"Look here is a picture
of my dinner!"

Relationships: It's...
...complicated.

He crosses out "unfathomable"
writes "immeasurable" above it.

"...miracles of rare device..."
So good I've said it twice.

Such "...mingled measures..."
will life be really so?

Suddenly a 'ping" or some
such thing!

A message request from
Kubla ****** Khan.

Now one is being poked
by some bloke

an Alf
from Porlock it would appear.

Good Gawd is that really his
Profile Pic...he looks sick.

Claims to be a Jehovah's Witness
and can he come 'round and

have I found
Jesus?

Jaysus no! Delete...delete!

This facebook is
"...a savage place...

as e're beneath a waning moon
was haunted..."

Bit flowery that but
it will have to do.

Now **** it all to hell
where ****** was I?

And now...now...this very now
a poem put upon my timeline.

My timeline's mine!

Yet another poem by some
"woman wailing for her demon lover."

Is it my imagination or
are there more demon lovers around

than this time
last summer?

Humming some **** tune
by that Olivia Newton John.

An annoying earworm.

Ada Lovelace
wants to be my friend

even though she isn't
even born.

Oh get a life!

Do I 'heart' Byron"
"Wot...that ***!"

Describing her mindset as 'poetical
science."

Goes on and on
about an analytical machine

and how individual and society
relate to technology

as a collaborative
tool.

She makes me feel
a fool.

I deign to
decline.

This stately "pleasure dome"
device is not for me.

I delete my future
account and listen

to the dear  birds
( alas no albatross )

in my lime tree bower
as they twitter.

Make myself a cup of tea.
No sugar.

Constipation is
killing me.

Eat an egg out of a tea cup.
A fat slice of ham.

Gawd! This laudanum is strong!

I do not like things
"...flung up momently..."

"I close my eyes with
holy dread and cry

Beware! Beware!"

Have... God...
**** run out of laudanum!

And so set out
for Porlock

avoiding Alf
if I can.

I.
You walk through these streets
like you think you know what you want.
But tell me honestly,
inside the pockets of your coat
your fingers never uncross,
do they?

II.
I drown you in photographic film
and sometimes I wonder how time
stands still in a painting.
In the middle of the bazaar, you stood
like a painting
while people moved around you
like an overexposed reel of film
and time still stands still to this day

III.
You're coughing it all out; winter
on your lips and spring in your lungs.
Drink me.
I am a tincture of a daydream.
The sun is always brighter, my dear.

IV.
Our hands interlace in the darkness
and melt away with the consequences of time.
You are a bottle of something precious.
Put me to sleep, sing
me to sleep.

V.
Undo the buttons of your dress
and wear away with the night.
Shed this old layer of skin
and something about rebirth
we can tell beautiful lies
but how long before the bread soaks up the milk
and the blood on the carpet
seeps into
the wood.

VI.
The ice on the lake
can't hold up this dream anymore.
You're a hallucination
and all I needed.

I wanna have lunch with Poe,
at Burger King,

because I'm sure he would appreciate how ghoulish that King in their commercial is

I don't want him to recite verse
while we fill our medium cups with corn syrup nectar--a giant leap
down from laudanum

I do want to ask about the Cask of Amontillado and being walled in slowly, for eternity

for to me that is creepier than all the crimson cream in the Masque of the Red Death

I want to know if he likes the fries--will he dare to dip them in scarlet paste we call catsup

mostly I want to know if he remembers the alley where he was found,

not yet a legend, consumed by consumption and delirium in equal measure

and if there were rodents privileged to hear his last whispered words--or even a gasp

I am buying, Ed, so grab that Whopper with both bony paws and tell me terrible tales, evermore

Jesus Christ, 15 AD

Today was a good day. I sneaked away to the cave and lit a bush on fire so I could communicate with my father. I’m not sure why I even bother telling Him things because He already knows them… I guess I just like hearing his voice. Today I asked Him if it would be alright for me to start practicing my miracles… AND HE SAID YES!!! XD He says I need a lot of practice before I go taking it public because nobody would believe I’m the son of God if I ******* one up. Also, I’m pretty sure he wants to preserve his reputation… so I started practicing on sheep. It’s a good thing shepherds are already so far away from towns because if people witnessed what I was doing to these sheep PETA would be at my doorstep in a matter of days. For those of you who don’t know, PETA is an organization created by Satan for animals because he thinks it hilarious that they should have a place in heaven, too. HA HA SATAN, very funny…

So my first miracles were simple. I was to heal all of the injured sheep in my flock. This went over fairly well, until I came to the blind sheep. I tried healing her and her eyeballs melted right out her skull! REVERSE MIRACLE! REVERSE MIRACLE! I shouted as I waved my staff in a panic. Then in the background a bush lit ablaze, “Son, you know waving that staff around won’t cause anything to happen. Magic wands and staffs are pagan nonsense. Since your birth I’ve disabled all of their so-called magical instruments, so now they’re nothing but a bunch of ritualistic heathens.” Anyway, Father fixed the poor sheep’s eyes and I was scolded for harming the animal. He sometimes makes me flog myself…

Lunch: Stale bread and glass of water.

After lunch is training time. My father had me build a crucifix inside a cave hidden deep in the desert hills so that I can practice for the big day! I spend 2 hours a day roped to that cross, and another hour or so doing self-mutilation. More flogging. I keep asking Father if he’ll send me down a practice angel so that I don’t have to keep beating myself, but he said all the angels who were into that sort of thing migrated south… So here I am… alone… in a cave… fists full of blood and rope burned wrists. Heading home to watch my parents argue and maybe I’ll turn their water into laudanum so that I may have a decent night’s sleep.

IN XANADU....IT'S...COMPLICATED.

"Life should not lived
in black and white...

...but, in colour!"
Coleridge thinks.

"Man should not believe in
'No-can-do"

but in 'Yes...
we can!'

Even a legless man can
dance the Can-Can

with the uppermost part
of his body and

dancing with imaginary
legs!"

Sammy( sometimes he )
displaces himself into

the  third person
decanting the fine wine of the mind.

"Naw...scrub that line
don't know where in hell I was

going with it.
Gawd! This laudanum is strong!"

And so, he sits, sips and pens
in a vision or a trance if you like

a dream of future-time
where people can be made

into paper replicas
of themselves.

The "picture-graph"
he calls it

for want
of a better word.

And now he pushes the boat out
pictures that can talk and walk

so that even the dead
will flicker for a second

back into the life
they had.

A world going to ***
and other such drugs.

Machines that can take your voice
and fling it over to...say...Japan

and back and forth
again.

The world shrunk to your hand
" a miracle of rare device."

Just think!
Think of it man!

Or to be Blake-an about it:
"What is now proved was once, only imagin'd."

"I have a dream..." the poet proclaims
beginning to sound like a speechwriter

"...that one day man
may fly...sitting down in the sky!"

Oh I'm really getting going now!
Laughs at his mind's daring derring-do!

Gawd....this laudanum is strong!

And that one day facebook(sic)
will come to be.

"...things unfathomable to man!"
These the dark caverns of the mind.

Cute cat videos...selfies
whatever!

"Look here is a picture
of my dinner!"

Relationships: It's...
...complicated.

He crosses out "unfathomable"
writes "immeasurable" above it.

"...miracles of rare device..."
So good I've said it twice.

Such "...mingled measures..."
will life be really so?

Suddenly a 'ping" or some
such thing!

A message request from
Kubla ****** Khan.

Now one is being poked
by some bloke

an Alf
from Porlock it would appear.

Good Gawd is that really his
Profile Pic...he looks sick.

Claims to be a Jehovah's Witness
and can he come 'round and

have I found
Jesus?

Jaysus no! Delete...delete!

This facebook is
"...a savage place...

as e're beneath a waning moon
was haunted..."

Bit flowery that but
it will have to do.

Now **** it all to hell
where ****** was I?

And now...now...this very now
a poem put upon my timeline.

My timeline's mine!

Yet another poem by some
"woman wailing for her demon lover."

Is it my imagination or
are there more demon lovers around

than this time
last summer?

Humming some **** tune
by that Olivia Newton John.

An annoying earworm.

Ada Lovelace
wants to be my friend

even though she isn't
even born.

Oh get a life!

Do I 'heart' Byron"
"Wot...that ***!"

Describing her mindset as 'poetical
science."

Goes on and on
about an analytical machine

and how individual and society
relate to technology

as a collaborative
tool.

She makes me feel
a fool.

I deign to
decline.

This stately "pleasure dome"
device is not for me.

I delete my future
account and listen

to the dear  birds
( alas no albatross )

in my lime tree bower
as they twitter.

Make myself a cup of tea.
No sugar.

Constipation is
killing me.

Eat an egg out of a tea cup.
A fat slice of ham.

Gawd! This laudanum is strong!

I do not like things
"...flung up momently..."

"I close my eyes with
holy dread and cry

Beware! Beware!"

Have... God...
**** run out of laudanum!

And so set out
for Porlock

avoiding Alf
if I can.

how can i afford the cure?
the cure is my disease
how can i speak with words still pure?
my doctor poisons me
yet will i laud
and make it
soft
the words of the wise
are plainly lost

Under heavens zephyrs,
In a bewitching renaissance;
Flat whiskey soaked pianos askew a lilac-like ambiance.
Over willows breath; strung aback tight, like drum-skin,
Two shadows stand with their hands clasped
Like star-baby fashion.
Somber, old and darling vinyl vanity sets;
Crystal ***** on earrings.
Spider satin brew on honey-dew nights;
In floating teacups we are spinning.
In twilight mines; hypnotized sirens.
Tethered feathers strung in hair.
Glimmering lakes and bonfires,
Fireflies echoing therein.
Mystical sunrises slighted by
Crystal skylines;
Torn hearts left barren with
Dilated pupils In misty eyes

Providing we stand dividing the spoils
our labours will not be in vain.

Seductions

A process of elimination where
agitation takes the floor

I ache for more than the misguided movements
contented is finer than this

I have been kissed by the majesty,
backhanded by tragedy
and
lost somewhere in melancholy

finally
the comedy returns.

Provided we stand
give each other a hand

the home fires will keep
right on burning.

~
Saturn Jupiter Mars,
three blind mice running
up the clock to find freedom.

starlight stairs in abyss,
cities of the interior ring
carry a dangerous cargo: citizens.

t-minus one/this is fear

I am no astronaut,
I'm a refugee, bleeding hands pressed
tight to the barbed-wired fence.

we play charades from the window,
lunar phases keening
in the tender light of these infant wars.

t-minus one/this is fear

farewell threshold on laudanum,
the grifted gift of the Joe Blakes
painted from memory.

the far off observation
telescoping my fear, leading me
to believe I'm hiding in plain view.
~

No more long stares
spent phenol syringes fresh on the streets,
barbiturated ruffians riddled,
denizens lost into this killing machine,
over dosed on Laudanum yesterday's ***** with temerity to spare,
turns tricks down
tomorrow someone laugh and high kick her,
those new Barista Gangsters , their marketing strategy
stretches the mind,
enough to **** a healthy Ox.
Lean close and hear
this requisitioned block is a pleasure dome
suitable for gilded beautification.

How can I choose but love and follow her
Whose shadow smells like milder pomander?
How can I choose but kiss her, whence does come
The storax, spikenard, myrrh, and laudanum?

IN XANADU....IT'S...COMPLICATED.

"Life should not lived
in black and white...

...but, in colour!"
Coleridge thinks.

"Man should not believe in
'No-can-do"

but in 'Yes...
we can!'

Even a legless man can
dance the Can-Can

with the uppermost part
of his body and

dancing with imaginary
legs!"

Sammy( sometimes he )
displaces himself into

the  third person
decanting the fine wine of the mind.

"Naw...scrub that line
don't know where in hell I was

going with it.
Gawd! This laudanum is strong!"

And so, he sits, sips and pens
in a vision or a trance if you like

a dream of future-time
where people can be made

into paper replicas
of themselves.

The "picture-graph"
he calls it

for want
of a better word.

And now he pushes the boat out
pictures that can talk and walk

so that even the dead
will flicker for a second

back into the life
they had.

A world going to ***
and other such drugs.

Machines that can take your voice
and fling it over to...say...Japan

and back and forth
again.

The world shrunk to your hand
" a miracle of rare device."

Just think!
Think of it man!

Or to be Blake-an about it:
"What is now proved was once, only imagin'd."

"I have a dream..." the poet proclaims
beginning to sound like a speechwriter

"...that one day man
may fly...sitting down in the sky!"

Oh I'm really getting going now!
Laughs at his mind's daring derring-do!

Gawd....this laudanum is strong!

And that one day facebook(sic)
will come to be.

"...things unfathomable to man!"
These the dark caverns of the mind.

Cute cat videos...selfies
whatever!

"Look here is a picture
of my dinner!"

Relationships: It's...
...complicated.

He crosses out "unfathomable"
writes "immeasurable" above it.

"...miracles of rare device..."
So good I've said it twice.

Such "...mingled measures..."
will life be really so?

Suddenly a 'ping" or some
such thing!

A message request from
Kubla ****** Khan.

Now one is being poked
by some bloke

an Alf
from Porlock it would appear.

Good Gawd is that really his
Profile Pic...he looks sick.

Claims to be a Jehovah's Witness
and can he come 'round and

have I found
Jesus?

Jaysus no! Delete...delete!

This facebook is
"...a savage place...

as e're beneath a waning moon
was haunted..."

Bit flowery that but
it will have to do.

Now **** it all to hell
where ****** was I?

And now...now...this very now
a poem put upon my timeline.

My timeline's mine!

Yet another poem by some
"woman wailing for her demon lover."

Is it my imagination or
are there more demon lovers around

than this time
last summer?

Humming some **** tune
by that Olivia Newton John.

An annoying earworm.

Ada Lovelace
wants to be my friend

even though she isn't
even born.

Oh get a life!

Do I 'heart' Byron"
"Wot...that ***!"

Describing her mindset as 'poetical
science."

Goes on and on
about an analytical machine

and how individual and society
relate to technology

as a collaborative
tool.

She makes me feel
a fool.

I deign to
decline.

This stately "pleasure dome"
device is not for me.

I delete my future
account and listen

to the dear  birds
( alas no albatross )

in my lime tree bower
as they twitter.

Make myself a cup of tea.
No sugar.

Constipation is
killing me.

Eat an egg out of a tea cup.
A fat slice of ham.

Gawd! This laudanum is strong!

I do not like things
"...flung up momently..."

"I close my eyes with
holy dread and cry

Beware! Beware!"

Have... God...
**** run out of laudanum!

And so set out
for Porlock

avoiding Alf
if I can.

They warn us that fever travels in the air,
so women pull the shutters closed and keep
children out of the empty, heady streets.
Grandpa tries to assure me we are safe,
that yellow fever will stop when the ports
close. He never speaks of how the victims suffer,
shuts the curtains against my anxious eyes
as the bodies are removed, but rumors catch
the breezes, too.

Vomiting, bleeding from the nose and mouth,
the eyes yellow, and then victims reach out
in a last fit of delirium, demanding forgiveness
from God’s wrath as He turns them the sallow
shade of the September sun. This is the color
of a body when salvation fractures
from the depths of their souls.

Each day, the count of the dead rises.
My cousin, the milkman, a widow down the block—
all pass within hours. The Quakers deem
this the Almighty’s will, his “rod.” Physicians
bleed the sick, and I think not to rid them of disease,
but to account for sin.

We all hope for frost. I know Grandpa will not leave
the city, but I do not imagine his eyes yellowing,
for pride keeps them clear of exhaustion
and glaze from inviting liquor or laudanum.

My whole body sweats from dreams
of corpses the color of tobacco-stained teeth,
blood pouring from eyes like tears, each one dropping
to the ground. I wake up, dizzy in smeared-red sheets,
my nightgown smelling like a mausoleum, but I do not
call for help because I’ve been waiting to look
into the face of God, to see my yellowed city’s reflection.

Both sides of the Arbela militia remained frosty, failing to tear the wrath of the throne from the depths of the charter and from the expropriation of the votive temple, in view of the strength of leaders who were reinserted and rewritten from the plaster of Parnassus, where the beatifices Mortals are seen competing without having references or additions in the washer that predominated by chance referring to athletes and gladiators who were not, but today they could be spiked in the crushing Syntagamatarchos table, captaining two units all with their abdomen semi open, re liquidating again the entrails by the Ghosts of Shiraz, who came from Roknabad (also known as Aub-e Rokní), from an underground channel that carried water from the spring to the city from a mountain located ten kilometers northeast of Profitis Ilias, from where until then they were commanded, with dispatches of their designs before a voluntary prodigy that emancipates a perplexed Meltem i that he was haphazardly swirling in the funerary fields, but descriptive of returning to the fields their souls, which abstained after ephemeris towards a knowledge resigned to abide by it, and to get rid of transcendental limitations commanded by his blowing, and not his body that was clouded before the conspicuous epistemological reason flashed and relaxed when comforting them for having to calibrate their bones when they returned to Mosul. The Colosso pedestals were breaking when it intimidated everyone to flee to their homes, in this way it calmed them down from the quicksilver of the world that was no longer their typical dwelling, from a dwelling of transit to a story that deals with the flys that are they hover, pretending to be the same, banishing themselves from the pain that rises up the cervical spine and that dismisses the ridiculous voices of Aeschylus with their acting choruses that they seemed dilapidated in cries impossible to personify. The ******* brave pieces of deployment began to drain from the secondary positions of the penultimate physicalities of suffering that one felt without being affected, rather it manifested itself in the contents of an essential muscular container, of the subsistence of the cosmos installed in what does not think nor decide on its retraction. Vernarth and Alexander the Great knelt in front of the larnax of the torments of mercy, like ***** language that lashes out rhetoric in rebellions of thousands of hoplites who expiated themselves from their hands, empty spiked race contained in the perjury of Zeus, enrolled in apocryphal images in tombs of those who were going to be faced with pseudo refractory that was recluses of the fleshless breath, but anarchic when trying to return to their places of origin of warlike Tikun.

The traits of annihilation were shed from buried reanimates that became slime in the reverie of a mythological God who never accompanied them and invited them from a cohabiting sun, which was only the fantasy of irresistible permutations. It should be noted that the subplot was in intangible interfaces that would never be stitched together as an annexed story, but the words of parapsychology were captained by themselves more than the sub plotline that transcended the apostrophe of death, and the Pronoia of the Peri Kousmos. The doors of Patmia were finally released and speculative vines re-flowered were Lotos and Astragalus, as courtesies of Operandi and impairment that replaced the ****** elderberry, with chalks that made the winter raging when Persephone rampaged what was merely monthly erratic of those who exiled her. The senses of Patmos were the property of his Institution, which was what it is and is not, for a holistic consequence of fast ideology but of minimal intuition, which lay in multiple reasons for tissues that were filled with crop fields, animals in Magna prairies that agreed to serve the man who loved him, in which the causes were two meters before the limen that sent her off the cliff in other causes of confusion, in a real creation of zoological Hellenic neuroscience, where all forms of mythology were made of submithology, always at the side of man but this time redeemed from the origin and cause, they only persevere to offend a certain space of ignorance where the like all prevaricated by large amounts subordinate to their lineage, in the kingdom of paradises from which only animals protect the doors that only Cerberos and Cherubim open, scrutinizing food for them and making use of them.

Patmos was remade of all the waterfalls that completed the rigors of the precept, and not the chaos that subordinates cognition to make night day or day night, pouring specimens that were and will be ignored but extremely useful for the preservation of the body of the unsupported objective and sumptuous, but of a systemic nature that does and sustains it. The Souls of Helenikká and Trouvere graced all the inhabitants towards a comprehensive evolution of the ***** of dreams, giving it the fruits of conservation where the lords of the future will have to bow to the laborious principle of the Mashiach, conciliating the arrest of the stars and not of what is reactive of an invasive action. Thus ended this subplot rhetoric of intuitive formality and metaphysical channeling character, leading them through plumbing that led from what was coming out from the Raedus Codex, from the wind tunnel, and what was coming in from here identical to its elevation towards the direct apotheosis of the Megaron that was splendid in four composition buttresses with more than two drops of laudanum, which will be insignificant ***** to save the cosmos from falls of vitality in the conclusion of Vernarth.

Saint John the Evangelist after several sleeping episodes of his spiritual experience, reappears in the sucker of modality and intentions that the drops of laudanum manifested to fill the pain of Vernarth's tragedy, and those that are manifested to him that they became resurrected entelechies of component solutions speculative, that were reborn from certain internal devastations, and that returned vague automata to the Achaemenids that emerged from the depths of this professorial subplot, to bring them with the simplicity of lexicons that were loving realities that would lie behind the veils of illusion, transgressing properties of a totalizing daphnomancy. Due to his parliament, Áullos Kósmos eliminated himself braided from the road when he expresses fatigue and regret, calming the reasons in the flight from himself. He starts from demoralization and hidden impotence of the Hoplite that would not come out of himself, because it is a frenzy of consternation that makes him start from the unshakable grief of his compassion, without reaching the surface of the ethical plane.

Une chambre qui ressemble à une rêverie, une chambre véritablement spirituelle, où l'atmosphère stagnante est légèrement teintée de rose et de bleu.

L'âme y prend un bain de paresse, aromatisé par le regret et le désir. - C'est quelque chose de crépusculaire, de bleuâtre et de rosâtre ; un rêve de volupté pendant une éclipse.

Les meubles ont des formes allongées, prostrées, alanguies. Les meubles ont l'air de rêver ; on les dirait doués d'une vie somnambulique, comme le végétal et le minéral. Les étoffes parlent une langue muette, comme les fleurs, comme les ciels, comme les soleils couchants.

Sur les murs nulle abomination artistique. Relativement au rêve pur, à l'impression non analysée, l'art défini, l'art positif est un blasphème. Ici, tout a la suffisante clarté et la délicieuse obscurité de l'harmonie.

Une senteur infinitésimale du choix le plus exquis, à laquelle se mêle une très-légère humidité, nage dans cette atmosphère, où l'esprit sommeillant est bercé par des sensations de serre-chaude.

La mousseline pleut abondamment devant les fenêtres et devant le lit ; elle s'épanche en cascades neigeuses. Sur ce lit est couchée l'Idole, la souveraine des rêves. Mais comment est-elle ici ? Qui l'a amenée ? quel pouvoir magique l'a installée sur ce trône de rêverie et de volupté ? Qu'importe ? la voilà ! je la reconnais.

Voilà bien ces yeux dont la flamme traverse le crépuscule ; ces subtiles et terribles mirettes, que je reconnais à leur effrayante malice ! Elles attirent, elles subjuguent, elles dévorent le regard de l'imprudent qui les contemple. Je les ai souvent étudiées, ces étoiles noires qui commandent la curiosité et l'admiration.

À quel démon bienveillant dois-je d'être ainsi entouré de mystère, de silence, de paix et de parfums ? Ô béatitude ! ce que nous nommons généralement la vie, même dans son expansion la plus heureuse, n'a rien de commun avec cette vie suprême dont j'ai maintenant connaissance et que je savoure minute par minute, seconde par seconde !

Non ! il n'est plus de minutes, il n'est plus de secondes ! Le temps a disparu ; c'est l'Éternité qui règne, une éternité de délices !

Mais un coup terrible, lourd, a retenti à la porte, et, comme dans les rêves infernaux, il m'a semblé que je recevais un coup de pioche dans l'estomac.

Et puis un Spectre est entré. C'est un huissier qui vient me torturer au nom de la loi ; une infâme concubine qui vient crier misère et ajouter les trivialités de sa vie aux douleurs de la mienne ; ou bien le saute-ruisseau d'un directeur de journal qui réclame la suite du manuscrit.La chambre paradisiaque, l'idole, la souveraine des rêves, la Sylphide, comme disait le grand René, toute cette magie a disparu au coup brutal frappé par le Spectre.

Horreur ! je me souviens ! je me souviens ! Oui ! ce taudis, ce séjour de l'éternel ennui, est bien le mien. Voici les meubles sots, poudreux, écornés ; la cheminée sans flamme et sans braise, souillée de crachats ; les tristes fenêtres où la pluie a tracé des sillons dans la poussière ; les manuscrits, raturés ou incomplets ; l'almanach où le crayon a marqué les dates sinistres !

Et ce parfum d'un autre monde, dont je m'enivrais avec une sensibilité perfectionnée, hélas ! il est remplacé par une fétide odeur de tabac mêlée à je ne sais quelle nauséabonde moisissure. On respire ici maintenant le ranci de la désolation.

Dans ce monde étroit, mais si plein de dégoût, un seul objet connu me sourit : la fiole de laudanum ; une vieille et terrible amie ; comme toutes les amies, hélas ! féconde en caresses et en traîtrises.

Oh ! oui ! Le Temps a reparu ; Le Temps règne en souverain maintenant ; et avec le hideux vieillard est revenu tout son démoniaque cortége de Souvenirs, de Regrets, de Spasmes, de Peurs, d'Angoisses, de Cauchemars, de Colères et de Névroses.

Je vous assure que les secondes maintenant sont fortement et solennellement accentuées, et chacune, en jaillissant de la pendule, dit : - « Je suis la Vie, l'insupportable, l'implacable Vie ! »

Il n'y a qu'une Seconde dans la vie humaine qui ait mission d'annoncer une bonne nouvelle, la bonne nouvelle qui cause à chacun une inexplicable peur.

Oui ! le Temps règne ; il a repris sa brutale dictature. Et il me pousse, comme si j'étais un bœuf, avec son double aiguillon. - « Et hue donc ! bourrique ! Sue donc, esclave ! Vis donc, damné ! »

we can't sing so much, but alive we deaden somber with aplomb.
we are remorse and ripe plums. tap roots fastened to air kisses and laudanum.
we congeal in our own ' thud '. a slow bomb coughing the alphabet's are off -
with our high noon lows; depleted aloft. we are One -
in the chamber of succinct
loss.

we carry on. drudging up the hillocks of our Pandemonious Love.

blurting the wrong devout; conjoined to the rip in our seamless joust
adjusting the rudiments of our lathe of fresh hell; to accommodate the actual constant
of our hateful esteem. the very same accursed of our mutual louse...
doubting the excellent **** of our divine Without.
we covet the reign seeds
of Love's Drought.

and as plausible honey
we comb tangles
into sunrays

out loud.

When the sun sank low in the midday sky
And the clouds came in from the south,
He knew that the winter was coming in
And it made him down in the mouth.
With a hint of rain in the morning dew
The breeze cut in like a knife,
And he went to fetch the firewood in
For the sake of his invalid wife.

She sat and shivered before the hearth
When he opened the outer door,
As the wind whipped icily round her legs
A trail of leaves on the floor,
‘My love, be still, I’m lighting the fire
And you’ll soon be warm by the hearth.’
‘I fear it’s settling into my bones
And I’ll soon be deep in the earth.’

‘You’ll not get away so easily,’
He said, and gave her a smile,
‘We’ll settle this ague with bark and tea,
I’ll heat your bath in a while.’
‘I’d rather not leave the fireplace
While my thoughts are making me brood,
So put your spill to the wood fire, Will,
Then sit, and lighten my mood.’

He lit the fire and he made it roar
And he checked each draught, at last,
Jammed the rug right under the door
And he made the windows fast,
Then he sat and held his Helen’s hand
That was freezing to the touch,
And said, ‘Now winter’s sat on the land
I needn’t go out so much!’

She smiled, and ran a hand through his hair
And said that she loved him so,
‘Tell me a tale of foreign lands,
It will help the time to go.’
So he plucked a single hair from his head
And he said, ‘Each hair’s a tale!’
Then he told of sailors swinging the lead,
Of mariners under sail.

He told of pirates, walking the plank
Of treasure chests in the deep,
And saw that she was slumbering there,
Was slowly going to sleep,
He sat beside her all through the night,
Was piling wood on the fire,
And nodded off in the broad daylight
Right next to his heart’s desire.

The squalls came in, it began to rain
And the rain then turned to snow,
He only went out to chop some wood
And to make the cabin glow.
Each night he’d sit there, holding her hand
And he’d pluck a hair from his head,
‘Now here’s a tale from a northern land
Where the snow lies deep,’ he said.

He thought that she’d get better in time
And he brought her gruel and soup,
Fed her a tincture of laudanum
Made from the ***** group.
But she still sat listless, pale and wan
And she slept more than she woke,
Though he plucked a hair from his head each night
And he whispered as he spoke.

He spoke of the place that lovers go
Away from the world of cares,
Of bubbling springs, and diamond rings
And a love that everyone shares,
But the snow outside was packed in a drift
Right up and over the door,
He couldn’t get out for the firewood
But shivered, asleep on the floor.

He woke next day when the sky was grey
With the cold set deep in his bones,
And looked at his wife in a mute dismay
For he knew that he was alone.
The undertaker was there by ten
With a coffin as cold as ice,
And he wept as he plucked a hair from his head
And wished her in paradise.

They buried her down in the cemetery
Not far from their cabin home,
And every day he would make his way
To her headstone, on his own.
The snow had finally melted when
They found he was there, stone dead,
Draped all over her headstone, but
There wasn’t a hair on his head.

David Lewis Paget

Can artist's be beautiful, Frida Kahlo?
Can we be glorified not for our duty
as angelos, but for our
physicality?
Our fierce thighs
and not our mood swings, Lou Reed?
Painted canvas', strumming guitar strings
Prettified under the neon fixtures
We are more like the trench-coat souls
slipping away with tobacco pipes into
the night,
not golden, but starry-eyed off of laudanum potions
Is that simplistic Jack Kerouac?
To be dignified in wine stained ramblings
too large for one to comprehend alone
In snapshots or albums of Led Zeppelin

Did we curse the false idols while lacking sincerity?

Because we are only human beings and can't reach that state
No Buddha's have I gazed the face of in
hostels or busy streets,
neither in dens or marble coves
Saturated in meaning but an image
that dies in the dark
Is it ugly to find the fountain of immortality?
To have lived as a martyr
No one celebrated Van Gogh or
understood mania
It's in our nature to breathe meaning
into something spectral
some nothing you cant kiss on the mouth

Things are ok
Not dead and currently that’s a good thing
Optimism abound,
Climbing mountains only to jump off the other side
Hoping to find some understanding or meaning
Or even a median in space, or time
Precariously traversing the rock face
Walking down a fine white line
Seeing the whole world unfolding before you
Only you’re too focused on climbing
To appreciate the view (Tunnel Vision living)

Faltering now, nascent feelings of inadequacy cloud your mind
Who are you kidding?
Latent feelings of inadequacy? (Yes)
Cliché existential crises? (God Yes)
Denial? (Don’t stop!)

Atoms for Peace on repeat (Before your very eyes)
Sinking into it like a warm bath
A glass of absinthe and a head full of dreams
Though you aren't asleep
Sinking into that hole, it feels like dying
The room spins
Senses rapidly disintegrate, one by one
A nothingness deeper and more profound than anything
Timothy Leary knew
As your head dips below the surface
A ******* child, D.M. Turner minced with Kerouac
Or a laudanum laced Thomas De Quincey
You saw god that night,
The layers peeled away
It was pure chaos and caustic fear
Brimming with breathtakingly beautiful apathy and acceptance
Quantum clairvoyance springs forth

You see how the cards will fall
God reminds you, “Everyone dies alone”
And you know the truth, he doesn't have to tell you:
God isn't there when you die
Smiling peacefully as your Sisyphean plight dissolves into the night

Because with you there is only suspision.
You may be smiling-your voice as sweet as honey-
the breath from words reminiscint of honey suckle
hanging motionless in the still summer's air
but that smile stops short of your eyes
the honey laced with laudanum
and within the core of summer's flower lays a deadly wasp in waiting.

"I don't belong here,"
Wollstonecraft must have said
As the Laudanum
Chased her eyelids

in the darkness of our feet
lavernum dreams
pale laudanum lips
lavender flowers

world stretched out as gossamer
too tensile, unraveling

there is another language here: you
pale and glowing
volume of phantoms pressed as books
against the history of our backs

now here, now stretched too thin
for wanting, for wanton
for the drain of love, or leaving

unmistakable grift, small as peonies
partitioned as ash, well-wish
silver ripple, or nickel of time

in the water a reflection: un-you
always losing shape amongst shapeless arms

there is an alm:
forgetting

We fold the blue skies into the bags under our eyes and then say we're not tired anymore
we buy daylight saving from the five and dime store and then say we're not tired anymore,

We're being fooled fooling no one and don't seem to care that the rock we called ages is no longer there,

'***** cat,***** cat where have you been?
and ***** said, I've been to
New York to check out the scene.

Someone is selling us laudanum and calling it platinum and it's numbing us for what will come, but we don't know when that will be.

Unenlightened we're frightened by the least little thing,
yet the church is still full with the faithful while the
faithless pray only to mammon.

As i read Shakespeare and Shelley
Relishing the words waltz and play
in awe, the way words used as clay
butterflies in belly, restless and merry.
explore the thoughts of Shakespeare
Hamlet's despair, Macbeth's disdain
Shelley on ***** , alleviate the pain
wished from themselves i could hear.
and what if they were living in this age?
would same Romeo be inked on page?
Laudanum, or ****** needle in vein
Dear Shelley, which one for the pain?

Applauding them
those men of Laudanum
who made the sleeping draft
amended in the House Of Lords
by
sleeping men
I am
applauding them
clap
clap.