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Nat Lipstadt Jun 2018
why I love certain men


it’s a raining and writing Saturday,
a washout for the beach visitors who chose their
calendar lottery tickets poorly

but hurrah and huzzah for the poet
in the no-sun-today-room with
steam collecting on his face from his 20 oz. Canadian mug,
the rest of him cozied neath a
wooly mohair knitted and tasseled blanket,
from a now naked and shivering alpaca goat in Turkey or Tibet

perhaps we’ll make a tiny dent
in the 1319 poems,
in the ‘sorta started to do’ list

****.
new one sneaks in demanding immediate satisfaction
and threatening my mind’s incarceration unless,
serviced and unleashed as the Frenchies say

Frites, immédiatement!: (french fries, now!)

I love most men; certain men more than others,
not because they are soft to the touch,
look great in thigh highs, can fix a backhoe,
lay hands on animals, just as they do upon their grandchildren,
or write better poetry than me,
because
they make me weep from zealous delight at
their capricious unprecedented constancy of their
honorable actions

they are soft to the core, which is itself
wrapped in a leather soldered steel,
which defines them by their self-questing constant,
asking themselves preface and postface,
doing it well, in between,

what is the honorable thing?

this honor idea of which writ previous
doesn’t dissolve - indeed grows crescendo stronger,
like the miracle of the Yom Kippurs rams horn
crying out to heavens at the concluding end  
on the holiest judgement day,
a shofar miracle for it inhumanly grows ever louder,
ceasing only when nightfall marks a new day begun,
reminding both sinners and saviour each,
to inquire of their colluding selves on this forgiveness-giving day,

what is the honorable thing?

some are borrowers and some lenders,
of anything, the substance or the whom matters not,
but the bonding bonfire from which the deal is done,
is of a uncharted organic chemical matter unrecognized
but millennium ancient


here I stop

the call to breakfast must be obeyed,
for it’s with lovely made, menu man-poet requested,
this is too an honorable thing to do,
and the 1319 half blood~half writs poking my eyes,
can be faced with new courage afterwards
on a perfect raining and writing Summer Saturday
for the next one hopefully and woefully

may not come till the September (Rosh Hashanah/Jewish New Year) when acorns fall

certain men will greet that fall Sabbath/ New Years Day,  
when Atonement begins, a ten day process to the final conclusion,
by asking of everything living and of every act human performed,
for the forgiveness requested inherent in the absolute bar setting of

what is the honorable thing?

which by the by,

is why I love certain women too...

and all who are honorable
will read this honorific and remain
clueless as to whom it is addressed...

oh god, I do so love that best!

what could signal honor even more...
Bouazizi’s heavy eyelids parted as the Muezzin recited the final call for the first Adhan of the day.

“As-salatu Khayrun Minan-nawm”
Prayer is better than sleep

Rising from the torment of another restless night, Bouazizi wiped the sleep from his droopy eyes as his feet touched the cold stone floor.

Throughout the frigid night, the devilish jinn did their work, eagerly jabbing away at Bouazizi with pointed sticks, tormenting his troubled conscience with the worry of his nagging indebtedness. All night the face of the man Bouazizi owed money to haunted him. Bouazizi could see the man’s greasy lips and brown teeth jawing away, inches from his face. He imagined chubby caffeine stained fingers reaching toward him to grab some dinars from Bouazizi’s money box.

Bouazizi turned all night like he was sleeping on a board of spikes. His prayers for a restful night again went unanswered. The pall of a blue fatigue would shadow Bouazizi for most of the day.

Bouazizi’s weariness was compounded by a gnawing hunger. By force of habit, he grudgingly opened the food cupboard with the foreknowledge that it was almost bare. Bouazizi’s premonition proved correct as he surveyed a meager handful of chickpeas, some eggs and a few sparse loaves. It was just enough to feed his dependant family; younger brothers and sisters, cousins and a terminally disabled uncle. That left nothing for Bouazizi but a quick jab to his empty gut. He would start this day without breakfast.

Bouazizi made a living as a street vendor. He hustles to survive. Bouazizi’s father died in a construction accident in Libya when he was three. Since the age of 10, Bouazizi had pushed a cart through the streets of Sidi Bouzid; selling fruit at the public market just a few blocks from the home that he has lived in for almost his entire life.

At 27 years of age, Bouazizi has wrestled the beast of deprivation since his birth. To date, he has bravely fought it to a standstill; but day after day the multi-headed hydra of life has snapped at him. He has squarely met the eyes of the beast with fortitude and resolve; but the sharp fangs of a hardscrabble life has sunken deep into Bouazizi’s spleen. The unjust rules of society are powerful claws that slash away at his flesh, bleeding him dry: while the spiked tendrils of poverty wrap Bouazizi’s neck, seeking to strangle him.

Bouazizi is a workingman hero; a skilled warrior in the fight for daily bread. He is accustomed to living a life of scarcity. His daily deliverance is the grace of another day of labor and the blessed wages of subsistence.

Though Allah has blessed this man with fortitude the acuteness of terminal want and the constant struggle to survive has its limits for any man; even for strong champions like Bouazizi.

This morning as Bouazizi washed he peered into a mirror, closely examining new wrinkles on his stubble strewn face. He fingered his deep black curls dashed with growing streaks of gray. He studied them through the gaze of heavy bloodshot eyes. He looked upward as if to implore Allah to salve the bruises of daily life.

Bouazizi braced himself with the splash of a cold water slap to his face. He wiped his cheeks clean with the tail of his shirt. He dipped his toothbrush into a box of baking powder and scoured an aching back molar in need of a root canal. Bouazizi should see a dentist but it is a luxury he cannot afford so he packed an aspirin on top of the infected tooth. The dissolving aspirin invaded his mouth coating his tongue with a bitter effervescence.

Bouazizi liked the taste and was grateful for the expectation of a dulled pain. He smiled into the mirror to check his chipped front tooth while pinching a cigarette **** from an ashtray. The roach had one hit left in it. He lit it with a long hard drag that consumed a good part of the filter. Bouazizi’s first smoke of the day was more filter then tobacco but it shocked his lungs into the coughing flow of another day.

Bouazizi put on his jacket, slipped into his knockoff NB sneakers and reached for a green apple on a nearby table. He took a big bite and began to chew away the pain of his toothache.

Bouazizi stepped into the street to catch the sun rising over the rooftops. He believed that seeing the sunrise was a good omen that augured well for that day’s business. A sunbeam braking over a far distant wall bathed Bouazizi in a golden light and illumined the alley where he parked his cart holding his remaining stock of week old apples. He lifted the handles and backed his cart out into the street being extra mindful of the cracks in the cobblestone road. Bouazizi sprained his ankle a week ago and it was still tender. Bouazizi had to be careful not to aggravate it with a careless step. Having successfully navigated his cart into the road, Bouazizi made a skillful U Turn and headed up the street limping toward the market.

A winter chill gripped Bouazizi prompting him to zip his jacket up to his neck. The zipper pinched his Adam’s Apple and a few droplets of blood stained his green corduroy jacket. Though it was cold, Bouazizi sensed that spring would arrive early this year triggering a replay of a recurring daydream. Bouazizi imagined himself behind the wheel of a new van on his way to the market. Fresh air and sunshine pouring through the open windows with the cargo space overflowing with fresh vegetables and fruits.

It was a lifelong ambition of Bouazizi to own a van. He dreamed of buying a six cylinder Dodge Caravan. It would be painted red and he would call it The Red Flame. The Red Flame would be fast and powerful and sport chrome spinners. The Red Flame would be filled with music from a Blaupunkt sound system with kick *** speakers. Power windows, air conditioning, leather seats, a moonroof and plenty of space in the back for his produce would complete Bouazizi’s ride.

The Red Flame would be the vehicle Bouazizi required to expand his business beyond the market square. Bouazizi would sell his produce out of the back of the van, moving from neighborhood to neighborhood. No longer would he have to wait for customers to come to his stand in the market. Bouazizi would go to his customers. Bouazizi and the Red Flame would be known in all the neighborhoods throughout the district. Bouazizi shook his head and smiled thinking about all the girls who would like to take rides in the Red Flame. Bouazizi and his Red Flame would be a sight to be noticed and a force to be reckoned with.

“EEEEEYOWWW” a Mercedes horn angrily honked; jarring Bouazizi from the reverie of his daydream. A guy whipping around the corner like a silver streak stuck his head out the window blasting with music yelling, “Hey Mnayek, watch where you push that *******.”

The music faded as the Mercedes roared away. “Barra nikk okhtek” Bouazizi yelled, raising his ******* in the direction of the vanished car. “The big guys in the fancy cars think the road belongs to them”, Bouazizi mumbled to himself.

The insult ****** Bouazizi off, but he was accustomed to them and as he limped along pushing his cart he distracted himself with the amusement of the ascending sun chasing the fleeting shadows of the night, sending them scurrying down narrow alleyways.

Bouazizi imaged himself a character from his favorite movie. He was a giant Transformer, chasing the black shadows of evil away from the city into the desert. After battling evil and conquering the bad guys, he would transform himself back into the regular Bouazizi; selling his produce to the people as he patrolled the highways of Tunisia in the Red Flame, the music blasting out the windows, the chrome spinners flashing in the sunlight. Bouazizi would remain vigilant, always ready to transform the Red Flame to fight the evil doers.

The bumps and potholes in the road jostled Bouazizi’s load of apples. A few fell out of the wooden baskets and were rolling around in the open spaces of the cart. Bouazizi didn’t want to risk bruising them. Damaged merchandise can’t be sold so he was careful to secure his goods and arrange his cart to appeal to women customers. He made sure to display his prized electronic scale in the corner of the cart for all to see.

Bouazizi had a reputation as a fair and generous dealer who always gave good value to his customers. Bouazizi was also known for his kindness. He would give apples to hungry children and families who could not pay. Bouazizi knew the pain of hunger and it brought him great satisfaction to be able to alleviate it in others.

As a man who valued fairness, Bouazizi was particularly proud of his electronic scale. Bouazizi was certain the new measuring device assured all customers that Bouazizi sold just and correct portions. The electronic scale was Bouazizi’s shining lamp. He trusted it. He hung it from the corner post of his cart like it was the beacon of a lighthouse guiding shoppers through the treachery of an unscrupulous market. It would attract all customers who valued fairness to the safe harbor of Bouazizi’s cart.

The electronic scale is Bouazizi’s assurance to his customers that the weights and measures of electronic calculation layed beyond any cloud of doubt. It is a fair, impartial and objective arbiter for any dispute.

Bouazizi believed that the fairness of his scale would distinguish his stand from other produce vendors. Though its purchase put Bouazizi into deep debt, the scale was a source of pride for Bouazizi who believed that it would help his profits to increase and help him to achieve his goal of buying the Red Flame.

As Bouazizi pushed his cart toward the market, he mulled his plan over in his mind for the millionth time. He wasn't great in math but he was able to calculate his financial situation with a degree of precision. His estimations triggered worries that his growing debt to money lenders may be difficult to payoff.

Indebtedness pressed down on Bouazizi’s chest like a mounting pile of stones. It was the source of an ever present fear coercing Bouazizi to live in a constant state of anxiety. His business needed to grow for Bouazizi to get a measure of relief and ultimately prosper from all his hard work. Bouazizi was driven by urgency.

The morning roil of the street was coming alive. Bouazizi quickened his step to secure a good location for his cart at the market. Car horns, the spewing diesel from clunking trucks, the flatulent roar of accelerating buses mixed with the laughs and shrieks of children heading to school composed the rising crescendo of the city square.

As he pushed through the market, Bouazizi inhaled the aromatic eddies of roasting coffee floating on the air. It was a pleasantry Bouazizi looked forward to each morning. The delicious wafts of coffee mingling with the crisp aroma of baking bread instigated a growl from Bouazizi’s empty stomach. He needed to get something to eat. After he got money from his first sale he would by a coffee and some fried dough.

Activity in the market was vigorous, punctuated by the usual arguments of petty territorial disputes between vendors. The disagreements were always amicably resolved, burned away in rising billows of roasting meats and vegetables, the exchange of cigarettes and the plumes of tobacco smoke rising as emanations of peace.

Bouazizi skillfully maneuvered his cart through the market commotion. He slid into his usual space between Aaban and Aameen. His good friend Aaban sold candles, incense, oils and sometimes his wife would make cakes to sell. Aameen was the markets most notorious jokester. He sold hardware and just about anything else he could get his hands on.

Aaban was already burning a few sticks of jasmine incense. It helped to attract customers. The aroma defined the immediate space with the pleasant bouquet of a spring garden. Bouazizi liked the smell and appreciated the increased traffic it brought to his apple cart.

“Hey Basboosa#, do you have any cigarettes?“, Aameen asked as he pulled out a lighter. Bouazizi shook the tip of a Kent from an almost empty pack. Aameen grabbed the cigarette with his lips.

“That's three cartons of Kents you owe me, you cheap *******.” Bouazizi answered half jokingly. Aameen mumbled a laugh through a grin tightly gripping the **** as he exhaled smoke from his nose like a fire breathing dragon. Bouazizi also took out a cigarette for himself.

“Aameem, give me a light”, Bouazizi asked.

Aameen tossed him the lighter.

“Keep it Basboosa. I got others.” Aameen smiled as he showed off a newly opened box of disposable lighters to sell on his stand.

“Made in China, Basboosa. They make everything cheap and colorful. I can make some money with these.”

Bouazizi lit his next to last cigarette. He inhaled deeply. The smoke chased away the cool air in Bouazizi’s lungs with a shot of a hot nicotine rush.

“Merci Aameen” Bouazizi answered. He put the lighter into the almost empty cigarette pack and put it into his hip pocket. The lighter would protect his last cigarette from being crushed.

The laughter and shouts of the bazaar, the harangue of radio voices shouting anxious verses of Imam’s exhorting the masses to submit and the piecing ramble of nondescript AM music flinging piercing unintelligible static surrounded Bouazizi and his cart as he waited for his first customers of the day.

Bouazizi sensed a nervous commotion rise along the line of vendors. A crowd of tourists and locals milling about parted as if to avoid a slithering asp making its way through their midst. The hoots of vendors and the cackle of the crowd made its way to Bouazizi’s knowing ear. He knew what was coming. It was nothing more then another shakedown by city officials acting as bagmen for petty municipal bureaucrats. They claim to be checking vendor licences but they’re just making the rounds collecting protection money from the vendors. Pocketing bribes and payoffs is the municipal authorities idea of good government. They are skilled at using the power of their office to extort tribute from the working poor.

Bouazizi made the mistake of making eye contact with Madame Hamdi. As the municipal authority in charge of vendors and taxis Madame Hamdi held sway over the lives of the street vendors. She relished the power she had over the men who make a meager living selling goods in the square; and this morning she was moving through the market like a bloodhound hot on the trail of an escaped convict. Two burly henchmen lead the way before her. Bouazizi knew Madame Hamdi’s hounds were coming for him.

Bouazizi knew he was ******. Having just made a payment to his money lender, Bouazizi had no extra dinars to grease the palm of Madame Hamdi. He grabbed the handle bars of his cart to make an escape; but Madame Hamdi cut him off and got right into into Bouazizi’s face.

“Ah little Basboosa where are you going? she asked with the tone of playful contempt.

“I suppose you still have no license to sell, ah Basboosa?” Madame Hamdi questioned with the air of a soulless inquisitor.

“You know Madame Hamdi, cart vendors do not need a license.” Bouazizi feebly protested, not daring to look into her eyes.

“Basboosa, you know we can overlook your violations with a small fine for your laxity” a dismissive Madame Hamdi offered.

Bouazizi’s sense of guilt would not permit him to lift his eyes. His head remained bowed. Bouazizi stood convicted of being one of the impoverished.

“I have no spare dinars to offer Madame Hamdi, My pockets are empty, full of holes. My money falls into everyone’s palm but my own. I’m sorry Madame Hamdi. I’ll take my cart home”. He lifted the handlebars in an attempt to escape. One of Madame Hamdi’s henchmen stepped in front of his cart while the other pushed Bouazizi away from it.

“Either you pay me a vendor tax for a license or I will confiscate your goods Basboosa”, Madame Hamdi warned as she lifted Bouazizi’s scale off its hook.

“This will be the first to go”, she said grinning as she examined the scale. “We’ll just keep this.”
Like a mother lion protecting a defenseless cub from the snapping jaws of a pack of ravenous hyenas, Bouazizi lunged to retrieve his prized scale from the clutches of Madame Hamdi. Reaching for it, he touched the scale with his fingertips just as Madame Hamdi delivered a vicious slap to Bouazizi’s cheek. It halted him like a thunderbolt from Zeus.

A henchman overturned Bouazizi’s cart, scatter
Three years ago today Muhammad Bouazizi set himself on fire igniting the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia sparking the Arab Spring Uprisings of 2011.
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2018
.    like cardinal Leto remarked, having received news from Versailles... why is it always the ******* French?

perhaps in a less crude manner,
drinking wine,
while eating raw fruits -

  always a bad combination...
no *****, no meat?
   bad idea... wine, and raw fruit
akin to strawberries?
    irritable bowel movements...

- and that's because Einstein
didn't discover the concept of
gravity, in the format of: sideways?
in the form of orbits?
   expansive waves...
   that allowed for the elliptical interpretation?
like the old
              argument:
      (heliocentric) oval...
             contra the (geocentric) circular
"concern" for...
   whatever is up / down
            sideways in
      the Copernican terminology...
because there was ever a "shape"
concerning the universe,
  and not a medium,
            an extraction for the metaphor
for water,
   gas, liquid, solid...
              and the fourth aspect
of ancient elements:
   its existence in a vacuous "space"?

- but i can't fathom the French at this point...
once upon a time...
one Frenchman equated the motivation
for a "summa summarum"
    to be bound with a thinking,
and a curiosity...

            the current fashion of Latin
abbreviations...
   this... cogito ergo sum?
   it's nonsense...
    speak it long enough...
   and you'll find yourself inclined
to suppose that cogitans per se:
is a motivation, an impetus to exist...
yet... so much of thought it "wasted"
or, rather, to craft an impetus to
"doubt", within the confines of fiction...
but the motivation has lost its
origin within the confines of doubt,
and has been replaced by
the Freudian unconscious,
   a serialized phobia fest... notably
including a, clown...

originally, thought (per se) was
a secondary motivational outlet
that precipitated into being...
    first came... doubt...
   but... these days?
               doubt is a conspiracy theory,
no longer an emotional thrill
to prop-up thinking...
   and we have the French existentialists
to thank for this...
for they subverted their own
idea...

             negation has replaced doubt
as the origin, and motivation
for thinking...
        yet... this sort of "thinking",
has made, its materialization, so, so...
obscene...
    i can hardly find it surprising while
i took to propping two worthwhile
economic outlets...
   prostitution (since they will spend
the money i give them...
on things... i wouldn't even care
for propping up)...

    and... alcohol (scotch whiskey,
russian standard *****...
    shveedish cider...
                     german beer)...

but how can you even claim an existence,
if...
       there is no thrill...
of what is the secular expression of faith:
i.e. doubt?
  how can you replace doubt -
a motivation for thinking, materialized
into being... with negation?
  jean-paul Sartre attempted this inversion -

doubt has been replaced with negation
in his system...
             it's like that cliche of an English
1960s ***-joke / ***-like...
       this... frivolity over a blatant lie...
a lie so... bogus...
    so ineffectual in translating a hidden truth
that... you allow it...
   to care for the cheap comic aspect
of the execution...

but how can the French suddenly
feign to disbelieve their secularism -
   resorting to the antithesis,
namely:

  original

  doubt motivates thinking,
  which subsequently motivates
   being within the confines of reason,
or rather, reasonableness...

20th century existentialists

negation "motifs" thinking,
   which subsequently motifs
"being" within the freedom of non-reason,
or rather, unreasonableness...

   and by negation,
   i don't mean the atomic conceived softening
blow...
   akin to: dis-ease...
    i.e. (as i explained it to one old man
in a park, walking his dog):
  a negation, or ease... a denial of...

how can the Cartesian model work,
when the 20th century French existentialists
began with the presupposition:

   i deny, i think, therefore i exist?
where is the original thrill of
the secular aspect of faith, within the boundaries
of doubt?
              gone... vanished!
****! a **** on the London tube,
during the rush hour,
  during the heatwave
                of the past month!

                   perhaps this only comes
as a method of assimilating an increased population,
within the confines of the Taoist maxim:
the best way to aid the world,
is to forget the world, and let the world
forget about you...

             perhaps... the Andy Warhol 15 minutes
analogy...
      that in order to encompass the individual,
the world, and the individual within it...
   the approach had to change
from the original, exciting, exploration
genesis of thought, bound to the genesis
of doubt...
             having to be replaced by
a genesis of denial...
      the second tier of a secular society...
    the zeitgeist of Herr Censor...
to filter through what we see so often,
faces, bodies...
  but would be much more comfortable
having been bound to Plato's cave,
         of complete shadow theater...

perhaps... but the original tier of
secular societies' alternative to church prescribed
articles of faith...
                     to have replaced
the thrill of doubt...
      with this... Byzantine pillar of denial
as motivational groundwork for
thinking impetus
   that becomes an article of being?
am i the only one to see the frustration,
how, people abhor their being,
being founded upon an act of denial,
rather than an act of doubt?

     the once thrilling maybe (gnostic):
   has become the stale, "i don't know"
    (agnostic) - as if... people can't tell you
whether zebras have stripes!
   where there was once an article
of secular faith (doubt) -
   now?
                        there's not even that!

p.s.
  there has to be a much needed new mantra,
all publicity: is bad publicity -
unless of course you're riding that
fame juggernaut and are paying
for your all-inclusive status akin
   to madonna: since fame dies off
and you, none-the-less invest in the momentum...

one day where i drink a bottle of wine,
half a liter of whiskey,
   and i'm apparently not "screaming" in
my sleep from the heat,
the whole, "apparently", as i retorted:
at 5:15am? i was alseep! i was asleep!
how can i stop screaming in my sleep
like a banshee:
the sleeper and the blind man both see
eye to eye regarding the future to come...

one day without engaging in internet
content: of my own accord,
next day? this... this... lethargy builds
up in me... i end up thinking:
i can't do this any more,
this insomnia culture globalism of
24h news reels is tirying me,
i pick up the sunday newspaper
which i found to be respecteable...
the sunday times,
  i peer into the magazines...
toxic masculinity,
    desire: what three women want...
i'm bored...
well more tired than bored,
bored-tired...
                 what women want:
what an exhausting question...
**** fantasy, beta-male provideer...
yada-yada-yada...
                    
    the only relaxing aspect of the day
(apart from the shade) is watching
england beat india in the cricket...
i always loved cricket sport terminology:
50 overs... innings...
wickets... 6 throws of the ball in an over...
the rest? i'm no atlas...
i don't like the world crashing in on
me with all its problems...
not because i don't have the right
advice to give,
but i remember the most modern secular
motto about giving advice borrowed
from Athos of the creation of alexandre dumas:

the best advice? to not give advice...
you cannot be held accountable
for giving bad advice: and people complaining,
or good advice and leaving
people in your sphere of influence...
asking for more - non verbatim... of course...

second categorical imperative?
tao...
              the best way you can help
the world: is to forget the world,
and let the world forget you...

                        you only need two absolute
maxim vectors to orientate yourself
in this world,
a third is nice, but: it can be kept loose...
at least two on a tight leash...

but one night spent drinking,
not writing anything:
and i am... spent!

                            the boogieman of england's
persistent complaints...
the muslims are not integrating,
the english: we should give them more
ground...
           o.k., o.k.... joe peshi in the role
leo getz in lethal weapon II...
            i too had to integrate!
i said: like **** if you think i'll give up
my native tongue when spoken in private...
you're not getting it...
i'll spreschen ihre zunge, no problem,
i'll even write you pwetty free verses to boot!
but, guess what?
  i will not force you to eat my
sauerkraut, my schnitzels,
                           my smoked sausages,
my raw herrings etc.,
                      integration does not work
within the confines of: pampering to a people
expected to meet you half-way...
what happened when the polonaise attempted
to meet the english half-way?
brexit...
oh come on guv'... is there a ******* tram
echoing its way out of my eye
when you peer into it while i attach
an index finger to the bottom lid to give
you a clearer picture?
           25 years in england: no englush girlfriend:
i guess all the english girls just love, just love love
being ***** by 9 pakistanis
daubed in gasoline...
                   hey: they **** thrill...

i'm tired of the weakness of the english,
the humpty-dumpty nature they are imposing,
self-cencorship,
    appeasing, like neville chamberlain...
bringing back the munich agreement...
not on a piece of paper,
instead... waving a scrap of a toilet roll...
so the english could wipe their own *****
on the promises of the germans...
if this really hurts the northern monkies...
guess how much it hurts the sourthern fairies...
(well... fairy, is a designated region surrounding
devon, bristol, hardly a ******* fairy in essex)...

   why am i foreigner and i share
the same nausea of the natives,
                     exhausted by the narratives?
i guess the english didn't like the polonaise:
but the polonaise are to blame...
came here with a list of benefits they could claim:
without having even lived 5 years among
the natives... housing benefits, child benefits...
believe me: the polonaise are the only
people in the world that hate each other...
to the extent of citing bitter criticisms...
whenever i pass through warsaw to see my grandparents
i am gripped with a sickness:
this homogeneity is too much for me...
shove me back into the east end of London...
too much of the same genetic material...
and that's when the language i am keeping
(seemingly for vanity reasons) fizzles out
into your basic encounter and that basic reminder
that circa 40 million speak it too,
better or worse, but they speak it...

of all the festivals? download...
                                   i wish...
    glastonbury?       not my thing...
kylie? i'll concede: slow? live, with instruments,
rather than the studio original...
wasn't that a cover of
   bowie's fashion?
                  sure as hell sounded similar...
but i heard the cure were playing...
so while writing my father's invoice
i made myself a paperclip bracelet...
   i figured... "let's just pretend to be there"...
and no, the 1980s weren't that bad when
it comes to music,
not now, by comparison...
the cure's kiss me, kiss me, kiss me (1987)
release?
one of those rare albums you can
listen to akin to reading a book...

                       but there's still that persisting
exhaustion... i came from under communism,
from under the iron curtain,
but at least there was the economic aspect
of communism involved...

   only today i watched the story
of the terrible inversion of english jursprudence,
i.e.: guilty until proven innocent...
the 1975 case of the silesian vampire...
an innocent man was hanged...
the original vampire?
    smashed his wive's head in,
then his childrens', then he set himself
on fire...
              then again: the tragedy of those
rare cases of being presumed guilty
rather than innocent...
then the reverse: presumed innocent rather
than guilty and getting away with it,
through the parody of death
and the non existent god...

   there could not be anything more exhausting
than communism without a communist
economic model...
this current state of affairs in the west:
cultural marxism and the yet to be discovered
antithesis of cultural darwinism...

i'll use the cartesian chirality for a moment:
sum ergo cogito...
i don't like using political terms...
but... liberal (classical) - i don't even know
what sort of thinking goes into the label -
in the east? the liberals are exhausted
by a resurgent nationalism within
   the newly acquired capitalist system...
in the west? the liberals are exhausted
by an insurgent communism within
an ageing capitalist system...

         on a side: seriously, why even bother
engaging in any sort of "public intellectual"
debates when the public are only
discussing two books: 1984 and brave new world...
**** it, might as well talk to a camel jockey
who only own and rides the waves of
time in this world only using one...
muhammad...
   whom Khadija **** Khuwaylid
would probably whip into his young
respectable shape...

                  and this is how Ezra Pound comes
into rememberance:
usura... at least the muslims do not
play into the game of usury:
of interest... borrow a quid,
pay back £2.33...
            that's the only way you can
gain respect of the muslims:
if they truly were the money lenders
of this world: which they aren't...
unless a newly blessed...

   among the philistines and the proselytes...
england is such a tiresome project,
even on the outskirts of London...
i'm being dragged down by this intervention
of marxism: on a whim,
on a whimsical projection...
of "adding" values...
            
           communism would have worked...
in exceptional circumstances...
poland... circa 1945 - 1990...
syria: the current year...
  to whatever year is demanded...
exceptional as in: war torn...
where was the marshall plan
   for poland, when there was one
for sweden (neutral) and switzerland
(also neutral)?!
        black youths bothered about
the summer holidays,
having to live in council flats,
  concrete goliaths...
           want to know what it feels like
when entire cities are like council
estates,
with only pockets of remaining
   free-standing houses among
overshadowing council flats?
                                    nee bother...
sure... in a country where:
the house is the castle and there's a labyrinth
of castles constituting outer suburbia...
balconies... that's what the soviet
models had... balconies...
where women could grow flowers...
concrete staccato gardens in the sky...
the blocks of flats in england
didn't have balconies (sky gardens,
          esp. the early ones, massive fault)...
i spent one summer reading
bertnard russell's history of western philosophy...
lying in my grandparent's balcony,
in the shade...
watching passerbys among
          the barking dogs of the neighbours...

one day, one ******* day!
   and i'm already exhausted from the castrato
english narrative...
pandering to the people you expected
to integrate...
  no! you're not changing your standards...
your standards are perfectly reasonable!
i'm tired of the english pandering
to the sort of people who, will, not,
integrate!
               i integrated in a way
of respecting both the english culture,
as well as hiding / preserving my own...
why don't i just do the following:
   pisać po polsku?
                      like some czesław miłosz?

ah... good point... at what point
is the standard of integration appreciated?
when nothing is preserved?
surely integration is supposed to
accommodate some variation
of preservation?
     i might add: that's a fine line...
preserve all? no integration...
preserve some? integration...
                    preserve none? no integration...
food is a cheap target to example
with...
                   it's a low hanging fruit...
given that even i find indian cuisine
   the most superior in the world...
food is a cheap target concerning integration...
but the niqab?
  when the local english authorities
are employing face-recognition
technology and when testing it...
are forcing people to uncover their faces,
subsequently arresting them out of protest...
but not the women wearing the niqab...
out of? out of what?
   a secular society shouldn't be allowed
to discriminate against any religion...
it should discriminate against: all religions!

                isn't that what the secular ideology
is all about? the... softcore version
of soviet atheism?
        secularism of the west (miltary-industrial
complex)...
"vs." soviet atheism of the east
  (scientific-industrial complex)...
           i'm still so ******* tired
               of this bogus trap of "necessary"
                       commentary.
Emanuel Martinez Mar 2013
Young people can you feel the suffering?

roca wear, gucci, apple, facebook, mcdonalds, apple bee's,
honda, lamborghini, harvard, Community College
american express, pnc bank, walmart

Wage Slaves, ceos, owners, lenders, renters, indebtedness
Structural dehumanization, systematic mechanization
Exploited labor feeding blood to your hungering consumerism

Young people you are embracing MISANTHROPY!

Embracing the hate of your own humanity! Why the hypocrisy?
Wealthy children, poor children
Trying for enlightenment through education

Parents garnering wealth through the oppression of their victims
Parents garnering debt through the oppression from economic inequality
Still you invest and promote the only legitimization of your being: CAPITALIST UTILITY

Capitalism engineering unrelenting misanthropy
Vicious economic system discarding humanity
Perfecting the concentration and accumulation of wealth
With the expansion of human alienation and murderous competition

Prostituting your body to labor exploitation and consumerism
Where does your wealth end up?
multinational companies? financial corporations? military arms contractors?
Loyalty lies in their pockets, backstabbing everyday tactics
Killing you through the exploitation of your body
Because they know the birth of another proletariat or bourgeoisie can replace you  

Entities, not human, how much have they bought you for so that you cannot see!!!
Beware of these misanthropic missionaries granting your body power and agency
When your body can no longer be plundered for profit you will taste tears and blood

Young people will you deliver your forefathers and fathers
From worshiping capitalist misanthropy?
March 8, 2013
zhuo Mar 2012
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Eshwara Prasad Sep 2022
I am now worthless because of your generosity.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2016
man leisured by the least obliging functioning
of what he terms “proper” manual endeavours of the biceps
will clearly resolve the matter being his last adventure that’s consumerism,
creating as many menial jobs as possible without the freedom
to enjoy hardish and the elements;
but of course man’s life will become easier,
but his adventure seeking will
simply become a zoology, a safari,
a safety netting - consumerism is hardly
an adventure, it’s a bicycle schematic:
one wheel produces, another wheel consumes;
most of the jobs under the hammer
were not menial, they became menial
only when heidegger’s hammer was involved
and the rebellion came when hammering nails
in turned into discussing philosophy;
it’s hard to commence an emergence of philosophy
window shopping, woman’s new kitchen area:
you know how many marriages i have seen fail
because of over-cooked pasta? too many.
you know how many glass houses i’ve seen constructed
by women peering into shop windows at mannequins?
too many. i sometimes think about sartre’s c.c.t.v. voyeurism
pervasive in english society alongside paedophilia,
and i guess the jigsaw parts fit... they do;
once dubbed the nation of shopkeepers,
now dubbed the nation of integrally ~foreign mortgage lenders
(nation of property developers / landlords... indeed,
once a nation of shopkeepers, now a nation of landlords):
or a nation re-evaluating communism
by importing slavs to talk of the ups and lows of communism
by trying to curb capitalistic egoism and turn it into a collective
without communism’s egoism father stalin:
                            or queen bee or queen ant china.
NickBlockOneLove Sep 2013
I smoke some green
I lift my soul
I don't give a **** about that gold
That was engrained
Deep into earth
That our mother
Left for us

To worship the stars

But now it's 1500 or so
What the **** is that
It's just a shiney metal
That glistens in the sun
These cats show it off to the moon
They think that they're true
They think that a dollar
Is all that they need to pursue
When in reality
They think a sort of misconstrue


Think of it like this
You hide everything in the blue
Somewhere deep in your mind
call it just your point of the view
Shake up the world
Separate from mankind
You go and break through
Get a million papers
And now what should you go and do


No offense to these cats
My Friends I do not mean to offend
I'm sorry if that is what I do
Its just a word to describe
I can tell you theres a difference

maybe add the letter A
take out the E and the R
and what do you have
a salutation to you
I know it does not offend
Add the E and the R
and now you change the game
I figured i'd explain
before you judge my next words

But they just had to make me do
Go and call them some *******
I just gotta stick to
My specific point of view
For these people go and buy up
Everything they don't need

Call it the gold and the diamonds
All the fancy cars
Lambo and porshs, Mercedes Benz
Maybe the maybach
Wait lemme change of the track
*** I ******* hate rick Ross, Rat?

Now I bounce back
Huge ******* castles
They always gotta buy

But what is the reason
They go to Brazil
South America
France, Amsterdam
They may buy American
But that's just a hassle
*** even the rich know
We should say ******* to
Bank of America, oh and comerica
I can't disclude all the others
Fannie may and Freddie Mac
Jp Morgan chase


You ruined all our lives
Somehow at a ridiculously freaky pace
You said we were safe
Under this corporate structure
But in reality
You just paid off the man
To carry out your schemes
Quote un quote unwritten scams


Look at the middle class
Man where did they go
You see my friends
They have gone and disappeared
But where do they hide
You crazy theory man?
They reside in the suburbs
The former white picket hustle
A dream perceived as escape from the struggle

But in the end
All these banks and these lenders
Created a little trouble

But my friends, by now
You should be all aware
Of the things that they've done
To cause this despair
I won't go on about it
I won't need to explain why


Listen to me and speak with your mind
For if you do
It will stand the test of time

A wiseman named nas
Once told me that
He is a rapper
I should say
He is one of the best
That ever lived

You should give him a shot
Illmatic is dope
You should start from right there
He speaks from his heart
And that's how he got there

back to the gold and the diamonds
all these minerals that keep us down
These other ******
Just talk about ****
******* and dope and money and gold
It's caused by the media
Corporations, now let me go on

We listen to this ****
Because of the dollar
Somehow it got popular
Now it's what we live under

20% is solid
While the rest of it is ****

There's people hidden out there
That are better than this
Support underground music
*** it's ten times better than what we currently have
While what the man thinks is the best
Now we can take back what's ours
The sounds that we hear
Promote your favorite artist

And then you will be in charge of everything that you hear
It's all you can do
Listen to me
Buddha the kid
*Now reread and try to actually comprehend me
Sean Flaherty Nov 2015
Put my name on the deed to a Rolls Royce. See a live elephant, before they all go extinct. Spend a year in New Orleans, with no one else's help. Win an Oscar. Own a Super Bowl Ring. 

Train my husky to walk my Boston terrier. Finally quit cigarettes. Never quit spliffs. Go hiking, every day. Drink less coffee. Get a better job. Get an even better job. Take less bathroom breaks. 

Fall for someone that helps me up. Have a talk with Fiona Apple. Write the screenplay we'd always refused. Ask relevant questions. Give accurate answers. Win a Peabody. Own a football stadium. 

Write the news my now doesn't know yet. Drink bourbon in Kentucky. Learn how to program. Make the best-sellers list. Fill dad with pride. Do laundry this week. 

Go see a chiropractor. Stay off the junk, would ya? Smell less-like I just smoked. Pay back your lenders. Keep close, your real friends. Let someone publish my work. Win a Pulitzer. 

Be punctual. Write something you'll want to read. Clean my room. Lower the volume of my voice (but not really). Earn my P.h.D. Adequately meld the personal and the real, the universally and the delusionally relevant. 

Make them pay me to do what I love. Spend it all on you. Get a bigger ferret cage. Live a greener lifestyle. Trash fewer K-Cups.  Let people be themselves, without worrying if they're sneaking around. Hug Tom Brady. Thank him. Explain what he means. 

Reconcile with the town of Webster. Pay the city of Brookline for those parking fines. Spend time in all 351. Read Infinite Jest, and all of Ulysses. Identify when a work is "Joycean." Interpret it, as such. 

Act. Tell a good joke. Become a falconer. Hug a chimpanzee. Dismantle a hate group. Put them all in their places. Cry easily. Stay happy. 

Revisit Paris. Discover Ireland. Stay awake. Talk to another wolf. Record the perfect song. Compile the perfect playlist. Want to go to work. Enjoy New York City. Maybe live there. 

Inspire society to care about poetry.  Re-certify my black belt. Center my self. Listen to it. Take photos that stop you. Draw pictures worth buying. Keep the gun in your waistband, in the small of your back, and never, ever, pull that **** out. Mean something, when you flash metal. 

Learn photoshop. Laugh at the all-encompassing parody. Love first. Haunt your dreams with a good story. Make you truly regret it. See the ****-good in everyone. Know the past, own the present, visualize the future. Catch a fist, dodge bullets.
List of goals
Sethnicity May 2015
I am the black sludge poured into morning mouths
The thickening blood like mucus oozing from the nose,
the failed vandal on the doorstep wringing
I felt this ick coming before, like bricks in the bell tower… Grimacing
I am the shifting surface of your beach front property
The wax of mudslide and sleep of glacier drift wiped away
You once tried to save me…,
But you should have saved yourselfrightchoseless… Sickening
I am the quite traveler giving ride to whomever
Provider of spectacles no testicales can compare
Hope you are ready for the next one cause my revolution’s in the air
Get the Mayans and the Call Lenders Cause I’m the blender you’re the pear!


Your thoughts fickled mine things
My water of youth your cesspool for fuel
The conduit of my poles peeled for golden rings
Have the nerve to say I’m not self-sustaining
Uninhabitable!   I’ve been more than hospitable!
What a virus that makes it self service unsuitable
To favor ill behavior for the sake of a savior
Your heads may bow to the east
But your *** still ***** none the least
Time after time provide I with a bountiful feast
So you Land on my Lover to satisfy your lust
Hover her then leave her collecting trophies, Moon Dust!?
Even the God of War has been fondled by your touch
They whisper, Oh how they want to flee me
They satellite and bend the light
And fore tell of my death
Well, Be Gone! And leave your clothes behind!
That flesh, My skin of desert and shore sand given.
The enchanted threads for your living experience
Be Gone! And don’t bother with packing up and cleaning
There will be no interrogation no exile from Eden

I’ll burn this wicked garden to the ground
Arrange my poles, and swish waters to cool it down
They are white clouds in my blackened blue atmosphere
Casting shadows on the crusted earth of my flesh
I frown a deep sound like bass clef
Their tall tale torn apart
The last vault too big to fail now broken Bonaparte
My molten core resurrecting to the surface
I smoke out for every hemp plant chopped and burned in vain
I offer fruit for Gods and you look pone it with distain  
These Human parasites stuck to my feet!
One whim of solar wind should cure me of their feverous heat


Ignore the Calendar your end will be what I vendor
NO refunds or replays back to binary Control Alt Delete’
You say the past will repeat yet look in a mirror, tongue and cheek
What is it that you seek? Have you forgotten My rule?
What you sew into me is what you reap
I’ve soaked in seeds of blood and tears now its harvest thyme to weep
Jhonhary Mayorga Dec 2015
In this life, I have seen the valley of broken dreams filled with the souls of taqueria entrepreneurs. I have seen gleaming grills, Hispanic frills, greasy thrills. I have seen spirit thrive in the eyes of men armed with bank loans and family recipes. I have eaten their food, delicious beyond necessity. I have experienced the magic of taquerias and restaurants.

And I have seen that magic die.

I've observed the life unfold, unfurl with a magic to behold. I have seen that magic served in a half-empty restaurant that Frontera has outsold. I have had the magic gone, replaced by payday lenders and takeout from Taiwan. I have seen empty storefronts and the straggling last days of taqueria entrepreneurs. And I grieve every time at the lost loans and lost hopes left behind. But tonight, there will be no grieving. Instead,

Let us eat magic in their memory, enjoy the grease that will surely send us to infirmaries. Let us celebrate the time they had, the tortas, tamales, and leftovers taken home in a bag. Let us celebrate the doomed Mexican restaurants.
Edward Coles Jul 2015
Blister packs  and Auld Lang Syne,
the rain-dance in the rain-forests
where no one keeps time;
the maypole, the bar stool,
the sunstroke pilgrimage;
the Superbowl commercial,
the secret raiding of the fridge-
all conforming to some routine
of half-comfortable bliss;
we stumble blindly through
our blueprint futures-
we borrow our happiness.

The truth is out there
if you look within:
the circadian rhythm,
the central nervous system;
the clamour of your mind
in the face of chronic stress.
The Lenders are out
in the crowds now,
with their placards of high-interest
amongst the indifference
of the street-meat vendors,
the numbered tables at the bar;
we spoil ourselves in the reach
of the so near's;
that we forsake all of the so far's.
c
Zoe Irvine Nov 2012
At approximately the first stroke of sunshine,
on the first day of this year,
I asked for Love.
I cried for it.
Silently prayed and wished and screamed
and sighed for it.

Beneath the glow of a golden golf-ball,
I sat and sniffed
and hoped the wish-granters were listening,
could catch a whiff of my wants
through the throng of a thousand million minds
making meaningful resolutions.

Were they?

Oh,
they were listening.

Love came calling,
crowding and mauling,
pounding at the doors of my heart
until the bell broke.

The warning signal in tatters,
it clattered in
uninvited,
unexpected,
bags in hand and
bursting with energy,
brimful of bridge-building advice.

It dumped its belongings
unceremoniously
in my chest
and went out on the town,
leaving me down on my knees,
clearing up the mess it had made
of a once-orderly woman.

It shone and danced,
spoke of joy and sorrow,
promised better tomorrows and,
like a fool,
I confused better
with ease.

There were days
when the world seemed manufactured for magnificence;
when wants were none,
hands were held,
affections yelled
and smiles seemed never-ending.
Suspending belief, I saw,
with Relief,
that Love was
heavenly.

Well.

If we are to flirt with Heaven....
what of Hell?

It was not as I expected it to be.
The visions,
in a head of romance,
see fires and demons
and dances with death, but
it’s the dance of Life
that’s desperate and mortifying if,
defying Reason and Opportunity,
you sit stiff
on the sidelines
and watch.

There were times,
of course,
when no amount of suppression
could contain the need for ecstatic expression
and the feet were flying,
arms announcing each new beat;
heated faces
framed by stars
formed moments of fantasy,
never before or since
would the world see this spectacle:
so simple.
So stunning.

Then...
that done,
everything I expected
was where I went wandering alone.

Imagination may be the key in artistry
and, in so much as life is art,
it may even set you free, but
to plant such a seed in the needs of relationship
is to skip reality,
lose the opportunity,
a head so far ahead
that what’s actually said is missed,
misconstrued and, eventually,
manipulated,
by a misguided wannabe Mrs,
into marriage and babies
and maybe more than a steady supply
of smiles and happiness.

Oh yes: I went there.
Too many times:
the temptation was always too exempt
from everything I’d tried to teach myself.

So.
A healthy dose of heartache later,
I arrived at pen and paper,
where I prepared to bare it all,
hoping to have a happy epiphany
or three
before committing it to computer screen
for all to see
and sigh about.

HA HA, ** ** and HEE HEE.

Poetic justice,
as always,
prevailed.
Thank prose for plying my punctured personality
with Reason and Rhyme.

They came so clear, so quickly,
that they caught Pain by its private parts,
spun it around,
turned it upside down
and emptied its pockets out
onto the patio floor.

As Hurt skulked and sulked by the door,
elbowing Ego
who was pacing
in a panic,
more than a little engrossed
with guessing when the game would be up
and it would be out on its ear......

As Pain -
poised and preparing to pounce
on its adversary,
ripping it to pieces
with words of sharded glass
and showing little mercy
- realised that Respect had it
by its respective receptacles
and was rearing its head in a way
no lesser emotion could hope to convey,
let alone disobey......

As Thought,
regarding the situation at hand and,
seeing that all was going quite as planned,
continued to concentrate on forming conclusions
about that most worthy opponent,
Life......

As the world whirled
and the cue queued,
almost at bursting point
and ready to take a stand......

Love tipped its hat,
took two paces
and gestured
in the direction of
my hand.

****** and ready to fight,
I saw
for the first time
a faint glow within and,
unfurling my fatigued fingers,
I found my fortune:
a gold coin,
shining and shimmering,
showering light
and understanding
into searching eyes.

Sisters,
it whispered,
with a smile.
Your wish was always granted,
you’d just planted the seed
of your affection
too deep to allow detection.

A grin crept into my gut
and kept on growing.
Sisters,
I repeated,
and defeated Disappointment
with a gentle tickle;
it fought at first
but couldn’t contain the calming caress of Release:
it curled up,
cat-like,
and purred contentedly.

The Love you wanted for
was with you all along,
in the women you walked with
(barefoot, do you remember?);
washed with,
wished with;
cooked with, sang with, smiled with:
all the while,
Love was there.

The women who watched
as tears sprang
un-bid;
who let them fall,
held your hand
in their hearts,
and un-did your despair.

The women who graced you
a permanent place in their thoughts;
who took you for tea
and took time
to be there.

Who cared for your fever,
fed you
and fastened you in,
that you might have a little security,
mid-spin.

The women who,
without warning,
could cause laughter
so heartfelt
it melted the moment
and, in minutes,
could mould misery
back into Joy.

It was never about a boy,
my Love.


And as Love shook
its magnificent, smiling head,
I got ready
to re-think the relationships;
re-examine my readiness
to relinquish Hope;
rest my pen and prepare
to put something to bed,
including myself.

But before I could act,
a deep growl grew
from the gut of the beast:
it stacked all its weight
on my door,
whacked it open,
unhinged it and me,
the coin fell to the floor....
...and I saw
what I’d almost left
undiscovered:
the other side.

Brothers! it cried.
Not the lovers you’d sought,
or the masters you imagined
you ought to bow down to!
Not the dramas
of passing pretenders;
not the lenders of hearts,
who drown you in lust
and then leave you
lost and unclear,
but dear, dear Brothers.

Who ask nothing from you
but affection;
perfection in one sweet-heart smile;
kisses that make no Mrs of you,
but instead grant your skin
the warmth of a day
in their company.

Men of honesty,
nature and pride,
who hide nothing,
having learnt long ago
that the meaning of self
is to be what’s inside,
and to sleep at night
is to face fears in the light of day,
so as to avoid the more frightening prospect
of dust-ridden dreams.

Brothers.

I cried.

My heart sang through the sobbing,
robbing my lungs of breath;
I hung my hopes out
to dry in the sun
and rested my head
in the hands of Relief:
it stroked my hair.
It winked at me
and I smiled with it,
and as I lay there
I thought of you all...

and I thought of you all...

and I thought of you all...

...with Love.
Derek Keck Mar 2014
The hermit-monk sat smoking.        the young boy,
having ridden long from the West     his spurs and armor
glistening the eyes of harems in Damascus     driving the
untouchables crazy near New Delhi     catching Guinevere    
naked, bathing in the Ohio (She blew him a kiss that ended
his world)    having conquered Eve    slain Lilith beneath the sheets of blue skies and seas
laid waste to Leviathan in a bar one night (he remembered
her naked scales,  peeling back each one until he uncovered the pink skin)
he snuck Helen from Troy  to see her golden locks blow over her *******
in the summer time,

but the egg of the world he was walking on would
not accept him entrance, and to **** the dirt sounded unthinkable
and got Uranus castrated,
so that was out

in Brittany, long a year had passed before the death of our  lord and our other king,

the cup would not accept his lips, and the lovely boy whom the cup accepted
first would not accept his lips either, and anyway, he crumbled up in ash flakes
and died, being carried to heaven  by the angels one night: his son dead, his king dead, and
the lord, there were no men to love and yet he remained the ghost of the night,
his blood-soaked (and blood-thirsty) sword slaying water-dragons for a time, the courage of defeat defied him
and would not put him to bed with his king and lord, so he wandered until death
would claim him, but it refused him, for a man without purpose does not die in
flesh but in soul

the hermit-monk with his great eyebrows and one eye sat staring, dirtily rolling cigarettes
his bath robe, bleached pink with holes        It was my day off, he said, turning over Lancelot with
his wise eye and wise tooth       What brings you this noon, when the cranes fly without love,
and the crows fly without ‘why?’

I love a woman who haunts me, he replied
Though that is long gone by
and for now and all time
she haunts me at night.
In the pale moon light
her ghosts come in shade
to bury me alive— in the living air.
Sometimes four or five images of her at a time.
She lives on though she dies.
She carries me through the night,
a golden calf with blond-ash hair.
We fly! Oh, how we fly! She refuses
to drop me and let me die
when we fly, fly, fly!
The perfect angel of death.
The death muse.
She has never been born, and she will
not die in my mind. She has never lived at all
so she cannot be killed and never will.
I want to die. I want to die. I cannot.
She is a perfect angel and no one can
be her.

the hermit-monk replied with his one blind eye     opening up his one
black patch, he showed the young man a hole—
a hole that was an abyss—
an abyss that was a heart—
a heart that was a kiss—
a kiss between two lovers that never
was    and   never
           were

And will it never be? asked the young man

Desire never is. Love never was in the heart of man. Maybe to conquer
her mountains for a time, that is what love is. Maybe it was to plant
your flag in her valley. To roll your lips over that spine and hips of
the earth. But time will fix you. Make you nothing more than the ghost you
seek—
the ghost that never is,
and so shall you never be.

and for a time, he rode on with this in mind, knowing to lie down and die
is what he had to do, but still she came at night, cloaked in white,
holding two flowers in each hand,
one a daisy of continuous clocks, the other,
not quite a rose and nothing like a rose
but what one might think a rose
around her head were thorns, like the thorns of Jesus Christ,
she held out her hand for a time, wanting him to come to her in the night
strip himself of his armor, so she could love him and **** him within a time

she wore the vessel of the lord around her neck, a gold chain held it,
wrapped it like a tube tied       in it was wine      in the wine was blood
the blood of a child        the child had been given to a mother by God
but God took that child and said, never mind.
that mother cried for she didn’t care about matters of state, or lenders in a
temple     she loved that child, and that child died, being crucified by the world—
a man taking the sacrifice of a woman for the world

in this vision Lancelot cried      God’s worst holy man       God’s best k(night).
and every night, pressed against her dead breast, he would cry,

I want to die! I want to die!

Not yet, she would reply.
Not yet, she would reply.

but in his heart he knew she meant, not ever
for she was his mind     they belonged together—
as ghosts stalking the night, unable to die for the lord

This was his charge.

and some say at night, in the hither lands he rides
undead, undying, forever searching for the girl in his mind,
who haunts his nights with dreams of sleep, but still he awakes
every morning,
alive, unrested , undead
From the book: The Kitchen Sinks of Yesterday Morning: The ****** Cakes of Tomorrow © 2013 Derek Shane Keck

If you like these poems, Derek's book, The Kitchen Sinks of Yesterday Morning: The ****** Cakes of Tomorrow, is now available on Amazon and Lulu Bookstore.
ERR Aug 2013
The wood floors screeched and scraped
As she yanked her bed aside
In a crazed hunt, sweeping for
Scraps; anything would do
A pinch, a taste, a crumb
She plucked the dirt and dust from chemical gems
Pooling the fragments in mounds
Sweat poured down her wrinkled brow
The room steamy from summer and glowing screen
Full of jobs she would not get, and friends she could not call
And music that had lost its mystery
A world she could not follow
Drawn shades and stinking clothes

Stash spots scoured, links to lenders soured
Pocket and purse empty funded
She collected her meager treasure
And consumed
Mush minded marsh of good and guilt

It wasn’t
Enough, it was never enough
Unsteady and emaciated bag of lone bones
Dials never-call-Paul, desperate
Hey baby, trade you a
Hit for a hit
Modded whip picked her up with mechanical lion roar
Of engine souped
Drag king down to explore

He handed her a zip, and a piece
Do your thing
She choked it down water eyed
His hand, a scorpion on her thigh

What is this, she asked
Lights divided; kaleidosynchro swimmers and dancer faces
Sounds sludge oozing and brain train no conductor
She faded in and out
Half aware that he was
Taking his turn to the same rhythm
Car behind a dumpster

Paul gyrated brutally, from every angle
Raw skinned and full of disease
It’s ok, it’s just me
You wanted this, he panted
In the ear of a tangled pile of limbs
Whose name escaped him

Pants hiked and belt buckled, they moved
She was sore, and hit more
By the time they stopped again, cold napping

The racer rolled into his chop shop
And the swarm huddled
Mechanics, painters, draggers, part lifters, negotiators
Muscled, scarred, tattooed, and greedy eyed
He let the mob have their turn
And they plowed her on the hood
One, another, another, two
Stretched and wrecked and broken
Across the street, a neighbor puffed a camel
And watched

Who is she, anyways?
I don’t know, just
Some
*****

He carried her to her room, left her
Half alive but wide eyed
The rest is in your pocket, I gave you extra
Because I’m a nice guy

She crawled into the shower, where she leaked pink drops
And her tears were invisible
Sobbing, and rocking, and scrubbing
Exhaled her high from an empty bag
I can’t go on
John F McCullagh Nov 2011
To buy, or not to buy: That is the Question.

Whether it is better in the end to suffer

The moods and whims of some outrageous landlord

Or take loans. against your future earnings

And end up owning something? In hock, for years;



Pay rent? And by paying rent to say we end

The heart ache and the thousand natural shocks

Home ownership is heir to.  Reduced Consumption?

No Politician’s wish! To rent?    To lease?

To lease, perchance to own? Ay, that’s a thought

For in the grip of debt you’re paying bills

Till you have shuffled off this mortal coil



It gives one pause. That’s the aspect

That makes calamity of  adjusting rates

For who would bear the years and years of debt

Fine dining now reduced to happy meals,

Buyers remorse, and the long delays.

The Questionable title and the risk

Your credit rating doesn’t rate the loan.

When you yourself know if you lose your job

You’ll end up sleeping in your S.U.V.





To grunt and sweat under a heavy load

Under the threat of something worse than debt

The forced short sale, from which, once closed

No equity returns. It puzzles the will.

And makes us rather bear such debts we have

And, if necessary, refinance them still.



Compounding thus make cowards of us all.

And so our youthful promise and ambition

Is hobbled by the weight of student  loans

made by lenders judged too big to fail.

In this regard the risk is very real
we lose the house to auction.
What if Hamlet had to decide between buying and renting?
I followed her over the countryside,
I followed her near and far,
She said that she had to live her life
Alone, as a shooting star.
‘The world began when I came to be
Will be gone,’ she began to shout,
‘When I leave my trail, a silvery tail
And the Moon and the stars go out.’

‘But what about love,’ I called to her
As she shimmied by in the breeze,
Her eyes were fixed on the future as
I settled down on my knees.
‘I haven’t got time for love,’ she said
‘It fades, and swallows my life,
There’s more to living what I’ve been given
Than being somebody’s wife.’

‘The world out there is a lonely place
When you wander its wilds alone,
You’ll need somebody to hold your hand
In the dark, when you’re on your own.’
‘I don’t need someone to tie me down
I shall steer my course for me,
No man shall tug at my either hand
Or change my trajectory.’

‘My heart is full of my love for you,’
I said, but she didn’t care,
She laughed, and hurried away to find
What life had in store for her.
I caught a sight of her now and then
As she lived her life to the full,
With greedy lips at the brimming cup
As she drained the life from her soul.

The years were cruel as she partied on,
Her hair became iron grey,
Her skin was losing that youthful bloom
With the drugs that she took each day,
The money lenders were out in force
So she had to swallow her pride,
And sell herself when she had to pay,
But then she shrivelled inside.

She landed up on my doorstep only
Once, and I thought she’d fall,
She looked so ill that my heart went out
But my skin began to crawl,
‘So what became of the shooting star?’
I said - She began to pout,
Then tears welled up at her eyelids as
Her Moon and her stars went out.

David Lewis Paget
Raj Arumugam Feb 2014
Pessimists are good lenders -
because they know
I’ll never return what I borrow
and it’s not worth trying to get
me to return anything

Pessimists are honest
because they tell me I’m horrid
and worthless and have no talent –
whereas my wife tells me lies about how
unique and fantastic I am
and how I’m destined
for greatness and fame
the same lies my parents and teachers
and all the sugary people in my life
told me to believe in
and so brought me to grief and megalomania–
better a pessimist than incorrigible liars

Pessimists let me do what I want:
jump the queue, rob them in daylight
steal their cars and take what I like -
because they say, with a helpless shrug:
“That’s human nature – especially people of his kind!”

Pessimists tell me the world will end tomorrow
that I’m destined for hell and I’ll never come to good –
hey, that allows me reason never to try
enjoy life for the moment
and just cruise along and let everybody else
die of stress and work-addiction

*Pessimists I love
for they validate everything I do ;
truly, they were made for me,
for they make my every wrong right…bless ‘em pessimists
Homunculus Dec 2015
Here's one for all the suicidally depressed people.
First of all, if you're thinking about ending it,
Please know that I love you, and I really hope you don't
I've been there too, and sometimes all it takes is
One more day to think before you decide that it
Really isn't worth it... BUT: if you've thought long and hard
About it, and you decide to follow through: be creative.

Don't just say "goodbye cruel world" and swallow a
Bottle of sleeping pills, or slit your wrists in
The bathtub, so that your landlord finds you
A week later after wondering about the smell.
Instead, rent an exhibition space in a trendy art district,
Hire a PR team, and pour your investments into,
A highly publicized event, that will be billed as
"The Performance Art Piece of the Century".

Don't worry about how you'll afford it, either.
You can easily take out several loans from
Various banks and payday lenders,
Max out your credit card, bounce cheques etc. etc.
It's not like you'll ever have to repay them.
Once you follow through, you'll default by default!
Then, well, that's their problem, huh?
Meh, serves those greedy ****** right for
Crashing the whole **** global economy
every few years, like they seem to like to do.

Instead of a suicide note, write a manifesto,
Complete with a detailed statement of purpose,
Instructions for preserving your work, and
An incisive aesthetic critique which decries  
"The subversion of artistic autonomy by
The market society", and the uninspired
Throwaway commodity form
That art has become as a result.
Blame Andy Warhol, people will get it.

Then, when the big day comes, and
You're surrounded by those pretentious
Clove smoking, soy latte sipping, Prius driving,
Tofu eating, turtleneck wearing, Soho art district types,
Get a gun and put a canvas behind your head, so
That when you pull the trigger, it splatters an
Aleatoric masterpiece that even ******* would fawn over.
Now, for maximal effect, you're gonna wanna use
Hollow tips, dum-dums, or buckshot in a sawed-off.
If you really wanted to play on the chance operations thing,
You could line the cylinder of a revolver with both
Full metal slugs and hollow tips, so that there's an
Equal chance of the shot creating
a controlled burst or wide array splatter, but
These are just suggestions, It's your art, you decide

This spectacle would make headlines, for sure.
Then, instead of being just another statistic,
To be neatly lumped into a sheet of numbers,  
Stuffed into a folder, and quickly forgotten,
You'll be remembered for generations to come
As that tragic visionary, whose passion was so
Uncompromising, and whose artistic integrity,
Was so utterly unyielding, that you were
Even willing to give your life for it.

Now, one last point of contention, to
Add a bit of weight to the argument:
You remember Thich Quan Duc?
He was the monk who set himself
Ablaze, during the Vietnam War,
In an act of protest. Of course you do.

Nobody knew him the day before,
Except maybe his fellow monks, but
Now his image is immortalized, and
Immediately recognizable decades later, as
The picture that defined a generation.

...but,

Do you remember the man, who was
Fed up with his dead end job, and one
Day finally decided to end it all?
Which one? Who's that? Exactly.
Now, perhaps I've made my point.

Just a thought...
I was listening to George Carlin's bit on suicide from "Life is Worth Losing" and decided to have a go at the topic myself.
Francie Lynch Sep 2014
The World's Times* chronicled
Crusades and Fatawas,
Jihads and Inquisitions,
Coups and Genocides.
     Such resourcefulness

The Construct.

Another Cathedral rises
In a destitute country.
     Do-able

We're told
From the leader's lips
     We'll always have the poor.

Uh huh! The poor!
That's what was said.
We can always put them to work,
And there won't always be work.
They'll need membership cards,
And birthings and burials,
Like always.

     See the pyramids along the Nile
     You get up every morning from your alarm clock's warning

Another temple
Will grow from
Rice paddies;
A synagogue,
A mosque will
Cinch tiles
On the backs of peasants.

I've had enough
Laundering by recluse
Single mothers,
By crooks posing as shepherds,
And Holy Wars
     so oxymoronic
     cleanses too


Any Divines
Benefitting from
Our labour and wages;
Our drachma, denarius and shegel,
Aren't worth the worship.
Yet the lenders are good
At getting their pound.

          *Don't drop a coin
          In a wishing well,
          Pay cash for a mass
          Where they'll ring your bell.
          Choose a charity,
          There's so many,
          That need a
          Pauper's Penny.
Sounds familiar? I had to edit and re-post.
Lyrics by The Duprees (*Nile*) and Randy Bachman (*Taking Care of Business*)
Bard Dec 2018
Follow lights the will-o-wisps
To red lights onto pillow slips
Walk under streetlight to pink lips

Everyone after green glow
Even if it means being a ***
J.Gatsby's after the afterglow

Peddlin their product, street vendors
Dealin in meat and being tender
****** in a backseat, body lenders

Crafting blissfull afterglow and after glow
Some call it sinful so callow although
Most aren't so shallow, chill in a bordello

Red lights swimmin in the air
Sanctity dyin without care
For sale tittys and derriere
Seán Mac Falls Oct 2012
Pious predators,
Faith lenders, needle-eyed blind,
Kneeling, nailed to cross.
J Colin Feb 2011
Ego is top priority
if it isn't for me
then its for the fakes
the one who blast their stereos
and fluff their noses
whiffin' on a whim
better learn how to swim

learn to catch their falls
in a continuous call
back home is where they run
because no life starts with fun
Mama screamin in agony
just to push you out
so you can deliver her joy
but is it for her, or is it for me?
I know it seems shallow
but your too blind to not see

The plastic thoughts
that make up my forehead
gathered and strung out
like a stream of city lights
sitting below as I look down on
all the ones who float around
seemingly lost in the world we took over

Its the human species who is the virus
the ones who hone in and take with out asking
Is this mine? money is the answer
if you got no dinero
then you got **** for answers

Everyone has ****, too bad its not tender
yours is so bad it could knock out the lenders
but again, **** is not the answer
so you better save up
and buy all the world up
and drink it all from a shiny cup
and then throw it all up
and do it again and again
for we all are alcoholics
winning a race
against ourselves

in a sin of thought
its you who bought
that necklace
that pretty dress
that watch
that new phone
that mansion in the hills
that ugly ******* poodle

But what does it boil down to?
the classy environment
we are all accustomed to?
Try and wonder what is truly rich
for its heavier than gold cinder blocks
and large jewelry rocks

Its what you have deep in your mind
I have one, now you try to find
if you adjust the lifestyles
the lavish everydays
than maybe you can be rich
without working a single day

I really don't work
and I'm pretty happy
but give me diamonds
and then we'll see whose truly happy
Irwin Shishko Sep 2016
Ode to My Hero (Me)
           to be sung by Donald Trump
    with apologies to Gilbert & Sullivan's
                   H.M.S Pinafore

As a callow youth I served a term
as Senior VP  of  my Daddy's firm
His moxie and his money so suited me
that now I am the ruler of the Trump fam'ly

When asked a question,  my Golden Rule
is to bluster loud and flaunt my cool,    
And this evasion so well suits me
that I've become the master of chicanery.

With legal suits, I've made so free
that all my smitten lenders bow down to me
For I pay my lawyers so liberally
that I never lose a dollar on a bankruptcy.

If now and then my luck runs out
I've buckets of money from my TV route,
And since my ******* up name is Gold
the money keeps a 'comin from the young  and old.

For my great fame they pay and pay
and their paltry savings they fling away
on Trump U studies  they're sure to find, will empty their wallets, not fill their mind.

So listen and learn from my Trumpery
and join white men who hate Hillary
They holler hosannas for their hero DonT, though for Trump adulation they can't beat me!

My heads not troubled by policy woes
'cause I learn all I want at beauty shows
I've put up very well with my three wives,
my yachts & my mansions & my gambling dives.


I've exalted myself unsparingly
and tossed off little lies with impunity
Let fey foes fault me as vain & mean,
their rightful envy leaves me quite serene.

With my big mouth and red regal head
I've clobbered all my rivals until they bled
With frank contempt I dissed Jeb B
bashed Carson & Kasich and Ted's lady.

There's hardly a Republican left to fight
and,  in wimpy Dems,  I inspire fright
while fearful folks seek my mighty arm
to shield them all from ISIS  harm.

Now I've come to the end of this very fine Ode
to march with pride on the Presidential Road
For my boundless bluster's so elevated me
that now I am the ruler of the GOP.

If another Trump you aspire to be,
you must never, never fret about decency.
Just stiff the losers and brag like me,
and you may be the Grand Old Party's nominee.
Tripping on the fumes from an oxygen tank
Loaned out from the local lenders bank
Grass lit dreams of focused thought
Drifting off, apparently, on the spot

Confidential whispers while waiting
Reverse synesthesia heard in a painting

Chivalrous misconceptions of past life holdings
Spruced up to latch onto misplaced moorings
The intake pulsed with the remnants of entombed regrets
Final draw, for a flattened pack of cigarettes
Adam Childs Jul 2014
Have our Scottish hearts
Shrunk in the fields
Of foreign rule
Are we not greater
Than the fears
****** on us
Have we become mice
That scurry and hide
Only tempted out by cheese
Laid in many traps
Are we content
To live in the shadows
Of our neighbors ambition

I am not saying
Lets bury our minds
And drown in an
Optimistic ignorance
For we are all grown up
And know the risks
Are our abilities so short
And our hearts so weak
That we may be bold
Over so easily
Can we not find the strength
To fill our wobbly knees
Yes we all carry fear
Like all free men
But like William Wallace
We are not defined by our fear
For we stand tall and proud
And our honest hearts
Speak to us of Scottish potential
Much greater than fear

Do we not under estimate ourselves
Have we forgotten our heights and depths
As Scottish potential lies
Imprinted in the skies
By the Scottish highlands
And our emotional depths
And resources remain hidden
Undiscovered  in our many
Silent locks scattered
Throughout our land
And is not our toughness with an
Almost stubborn hardiness not found
Abundantly within our  heather
While golden eagles glide
A silent over seeing eye
Who breaths a Scottish clarity    

For I cry as rich men
Still seek to steal
Our many golden eggs
From the governor of the sky
Our most gracious Golden Eagle
So let all protect
All that is precious in Scotland
And let us cleanse our
Minds in the clear highland air
As we purge our hearts
With Scottish beauty
And release the stags
That will drive out  the
Many money lenders
That stifle our being

So let us all join together
As we are bound in the eternal
And not by pen or sword
And as we rediscover ourselves
We find our united voice
Of Scottish freedom
My last poem I think for Scottish independence
We are the pit men,the pony men,the downtrodden,unshod men,and it's us against them,
and them men are the fat men,the fast gabbers,the land grabbers,the takers,the fakers, the usurers and money lenders,
**** them men,
I'm tendering my resignation and going off to look for something more,
a new celebration of a life within this whirlwind of a railway station.
Platform four,
train leaves at five
if I'm still alive
I'll be on it.
News feeds and nose bleeds,

staring back through the screen,

shouting, and screaming,

everyone is doing fine if you catch my meaning,

photographers and band members,

but the poet, no one remembers,

singers are showing their songs,

and painters are filling their bongs,

messengers going on benders,

but the poet, no one remembers,

they are burning up the page,

with their eyes filled with ambitious rage,

saying things that have meanings to another,

everyone likes,

everyone acts like future lenders,

but the poet, no one remembers,

everything is great,

in the pictures they take,

doing something that matters to the rest of the Earth,

people heralding what they have done since their birth,

born into ambition,

showing another used up rendition,

to them, it is but just the beginning of soon to be embers,

but the poet, no one remembers
This is my usual format so if you look at my other poems not like this you can get a better idea of what they should look like
Minuscule Ego Jan 2016
Liberians, US blenders
Always known to portray the best things
Yet are nothing like those other big lenders
But are always assume to hold the worst things
Is that the reason why they are always the big spenders
Always the ones to portrayed the best of the worst things.

"Liberians portray nothing to hold the big things."
Liberia- Tis not much, but tis wholeheartedly true.
We are sick with sin
We're like adults with dysfunctional bowels  treat Gods grace like depends
We say only through God but  dabble in the occult.
Finding our identity  in astrology and direction from horoscopes.
Divination is sin
So many Christians
Are blind to that fact
So  Satan has crept in.
We say we're Christians but to each one of us,
Face to face Christ could say I never knew you.
Tarot cards  and palm readings  are  extensions of darkness  just like Voodoo.
Either we're aligned with the light or get swallowed by the dark
That ***** is deceitfully wicked believe me God knows the heart
So why do we  masquerade as Satan
When we supposed to be draped in Christ
Covered by his blood
To neglect that is to be naked
Exposed to the woes of the world
Like a ship with a broken mast as the winds blows we're tossed to and fro
Oh there's a new car lets me buy on credit
Make sure our voices are heard in the presidential election
Even if it means picking the lesser of two evils
When did patriotism take precedence of God's message
Slaves to the image of American living contrary to scripture
We are not be the borrower but the lenders
We are to be bond servants to Christ only
Delight in the beast that we are suppose to have Dominion over
Until we find ourselves swallowed whole  in the pit of its  belly like Jonah
We wait until we are at what seems to be a end before following God
Pressured  by the popular patterns penetrating the pace of population
Finding ourselves at a fork in the road
Aware of   one of  two routes the board or the narrow
Try to walk down the middle the appeasement of two masters
Luke warm living leads to impeding disaster
Ignoring the warning signs that say beware of a dead end
Living a life of sin as a Christian is like watching the film  Titanic
Already knowing there's death at the ending
Don't get it twisted that's where the similarities end
Turn to revelation we'll see there's no frigid waters mentioned
But there's a lake of fire, burning sulfur to be exact
Where uncovered souls enter with  no way of turning back
Where's it's dark as hell is hot
A torment with no shelf life it never stop
The destination of those destined to experience the second  and final death
For all those whoever walked the earth and lived by the flesh
Where there's no grace or mercy left
One result of the white throne judgement
But the events look different for those who lived life covered
Covered by the blood of the lamb
For those the second death gets passover
After giving an account get let in the city their passover
It floats do from Heaven out of the hands of God as a gift
A city so great, It's measure 1400 miles in height, width and length
With walls that are 216 ft thick
Jasper and Gold crafted not stacked brick
12 precious foundational stones and 12 gates of Pearl
Yet some how we're still enticed by the world
A new earth and new heaven is what God has in store
It's clear what will happen if we can only endure
To the end,
No longer sick, that will be it for sin
Death-throws Oct 2015
It never matters wether i sothe and grove or if i even bother to move.
Selfless youth.
Complaining of missing a tooth
Your not telling the truth
Ive seen you kissing,
wishing that what you hear is not the case
That your envy has gone to waste.
Homless soul lender on a weekend ******
Lenders ready for splender
Though you took my  soul
And hacked away at my feet.
No souls
Ill tie my shoes around my neck
And dangle from street poles
**** this
John F McCullagh Apr 2019
Debt be not proud, though lenders label thee
useful and powerful, for thou art not so.
For those poor souls who take your ready dough
Pay not Principal, just interest and the fees.
Unlike cash wealth and true liquidity
Which, in sum, denote prosperity,
Your burden would enthrall them where they go
And collection agents nightly tell them so.
Your rates are slave to a data dependent Fed,
and you are a poison consigning men to Hell.
Cash wages are what we need to slumber well,
Free of this debt incurred with the stroke of a pen.
One more loan payment and we 'll eschew your fee.
Then Debt shall be no more. We’ll be debt Free.
With apologies to John Donne and Holy Sonnet X and to all those who are still trying to pay off student loans.
Helen Aug 2015
in darkness, a world disintegrates
in hell, hope lenders feed the fire
interestingly, as you lay next to me
I'm burning beneath such desire
a little voice whispered wishes
that fell beneath shallow cracks
next to warmth, cloaking subterfuge
bruises appear on uncovered backs
in silence you sleep with the dead
in awareness you fear familiarity
your own cancerous consciousness
finds no utterable, plausible clarity
I'm stable upon the mountaintop
you created from a demons desire
when I descend to the depth of life
will you follow?
or be swallowed by the fire?
it's been another black week... how many times is it possible to rise from the ashes?
Ken Pepiton Mar 2021
Only now are we empowered to connect
word to word with tech-magic
atom-ated, granulated,
crystaline lines on of in over though
cracked ice…
William
Gibson's Ice. The gates on all the data we
need to know what we think,
sttatistically, stutter-ring at
what's trending replacing some quest
on the map to meaning supplied
with the ads on tv, the ones
that sorted us in to simple
us
and them, sets of like minds, measured
at the checkout line,
by which magazines were sold, yes, there's data.
By 1937,
Bernays knew the be habits were we driven,
far more effectually than mere I wishes, we we we,
sells, better'n'***.

seeds of dreams yield reality, one generation removed.
-------------
Like cousins you can make babies with,
this idea is O positive, trans
any gap - canyon cañon - self reflecting conflict threads,

threads of unfinished any thing
sing it
call it prayers who cares, if nobody knows
what you imagined
everybody knows, so you said nothing, and they all died.
No, they lived,
but they believed the lie I told you earlier.

I forgot the exact one, but it was covered.
I knew not what I did.
Same Yesterday Today Forever thread, pulled

chainstitch holds the weight, what's a needle threaded with
that can
hold that thought?

idea virii
ready for a reader to write up as news,
as a known, dripped from the
tree, mated in the origin story,
with life, sci-psy-psi,
you and I
-- oops matter anti oops not again
got it in one,
time is nothing like we once could not imagine.
what happens is
the two sides being in and out
originally no word held any thought,
so numbers could not matter then
pi - per haps - pi, but a never ending
sequence, hallelujah,
pi is an infinite idea, it may be the very one,
we need to roll
with….
what was was thought,
what was not thought was

not… and if you knew one thing,
like I am,
you know that much,
then you know not is not where now
came from, not was not the last word,
it could have been,
but there was a way, overlooking the edge of never,
just inside impossible,
quite probably
this
exact idea, was involved in your being
in the reader role,
at that point. You made the difference. It all works now.
Watch.

be patient.

While hearing modern bluegrass songs about olden ways.
- sorta got m'dander up,
- some old lies left told as good old wise.
Reward pride at your peril, people.
Come, listen,
gentle, easy good,
quiet watching, in the night,
the poor being kept safe enough
to send their best to war for gentlemen owners
of the only means of making a wage,
that was in the olden days
- t's the law, man don't work, don't eat
- don't eat means don't live, after while
- so swearing a liege a firstborn child
- seemed a good enough way
- to stay safe, fed, some little warm, time t'time

Life's that way today, no worse.

Who taught your child to respect the law?
Who gave ultimate power to compound interest?

These are those interesting times, the interests feared.
All the poor can read,
and information has burst from the gates,
sluice gates,
dams, *****, yes… grand cataracts of secret
sacred
old theories long proven wrong,
but by faith,
held true, somewhere, there, there in
the heart
of any one of us, individ-ity bit of the whole
human being biomass on earth,
they say each
one of us has the right of unreason. I trow not,
as I heard say,
I call on common sense,
set the spirit of our time to after
everybody knows
this is the only biosphere near as good
being as would be
heaven, as all believers pray it may be,
done, this is it,
in any way shape or form you might fit in.
This ain't bad, with a little luck and a good eye.
This is a special place.
-- but some folks think they ought to **** wrong thinkers,
and thus **** the wrong ideas.
There is no hell beyond mortality,
that idea never dies.
Say the preachers, no no no, not those guys, too wise
by half… the truth of a preacher's worth is in the fear of god.
Teacher, rebbi, guru do we gotta all be weird as you?

You gotta know how things work.
Ignoring the nature of spaceship earth,

how long are the proud boys allowed to be formed
in towns where the only employer
makes tools used for killing enemies essential
to our nation's economy, we **** enemies,
every child knows
being a hero is something few live through.

That story never ends in peace… this one does, I bet,
and I got the last word to start with, so

is there really magic in the code, that runs you?
-----------------

{earth - real media terrane earth - zoom in}

High Chaparral, less tame than most forests,
due to the dwarfish reach
of manzanita and chaparro and yucca and sage,
that grow through el Niño and la Niña,
year after year, sometimes a century,
building fuel for a fine fire from
a whim of a wind and a cloud, rubbing
ozone on the granite, to paint
a flash of all God's power,
as a map I asked for, for
trails
are few
for upright walkers, too old to crawl.
Such trails less traveled by are
shared by bigger beasts,
the kind good to eat and the kind that can
eat
a kid, who is small enough to crawl
where nothing bigger fits,
I hear,
come and see,
I can't,
I say,
but I can imagine it's a special place,
related to all the special places,
where kids are free to feel
safe, as this universe,
this
special place.


--------------

If I think too hard about what I do not know,
but could,
it aches, in my chest…
if I was to live
for no other reason,
but to learn what I don't know;

if I think too hard about that,
I forget to remember what I learned
about time
and patience and mortal instances of insight,
from time to time,

when I got nothing particular on my mind.

----------------

I do despise some things, I despise
my own
propensity
to insist on knowing wholly
the truth in what I say
while immersed in wisdom folk found
in the ads
on the six o'clock news… that is one
of my despised things,
I mean
my pointy head has angels dancing in
a frantic insist-dance that I
verified,
all agree it was me who imagined
as many angels as can be
digitized into a single message bhering word,
since sanskrit,
such words held many messengers.
Judge the angels words,
have them give account, find
the diamond was of no worth
until the first broken one caught light,
a gleam, eye apple angel,
many fit the pin head I have in mind

-------------------

I drove to the village,
to check for mail of the paper and ink variety,
old news, old pleas for attention
to pleas for money, interesting, those
from the casinos,
they never seem sincere.

Waning wishes wax feeble in folk who
believe it, if its on all the news,
sometimes, if its only in their facebook feed,
as suggested, by a friend,
from
ever ago… hmmm, mebbe I should
reach out

nah. What was I thinkin'? I'm a hermit,
by nature, a grandpa by choice,
a sower of discord among brethern by knowing
the preachers all lie about knowing
and believing being one inseparable
immaterial
does not matter any way thing.

I thought that made nonsense where sense
feels
something's not right in this idea
forbidden knowledge, being known, but secret,
right from the tree knowing good,
and thereby knowing no-good,
with use
of the knowing good, sapien sapien, v.2.0

-- that's good -- why is that how men go to hell?
What man can conceive, he can achieve.
Swallow the lie that says that's wild, by nature.
Do as you wish, child,

experience proves evil
can be made of lies I tell you to trust me on.

Here's a point. We can stop,
consider if consideration ever really meant
with star im-put weight on right's side,
as if only with the least bit of
consideration we may lean
right in a celestial realm of cooperative attention
given and taken
for granted, as a child.
----------------

When you wished upon that star,
was it a cricket singing?
You know, "makes no difference who you are"
Is there not a legend about a cricket's song
living long, exceeding long, long active
lives, in performance
some where,
every second of each dark diurnal sequence,
signaling soon we feel it real
hear comes the chorus
after the hallelujah
at the morning's third crow, also signaling
the sufficiency of evil,
be not deceived,
the war is won and no games change
the hour of your death,
ready set
go with your will to do the good you find to do.
go with your will to do no evil, ignorantly.
------------------------

Days may package themselves in lessons
learned long before
any hearing ear may think these words
as thoughts a reader hears aloud,
angelic, not tremble and bow, but

wow, truth has a voice.
No lie can hide the echo, that has always
been key, qi, chi

cheeky. Cheapshot bullseye.
Wanna see it again.

Been there, done that.
You remember, it was your idea, but you
let it go.

--------------

been a long cold winter,
but we've been warm,
by no means of our own;
things just
happened this way.

I should reprove myself,
lazy *** is much the truth
of what I am,
I live on the waste of the world,
that some folk count as dung,
-- dung has had great worth in olden time

at the rate of the fourth part of a qab of dove's dung
for five
pieces of silver in some money current with the lenders.
[2 Kings 6:25 - that ended in peace, it seems,
that was the moral of the story, not the chariots of fire]

-------------------
For those who enjoy what I enjoy. I think I can imagine for ever at this rate.
AnonEMouse Apr 2018
the misinterpretation of words
stuttered benign thoughts
of weighty inquisition
insistant upon
explaining themselves
to a lenders ear
but for a moment
The Fable of Jesus

Jesus was skeptical of his tribe, as a trainee carpenter
so lousy couldn't even make a bookshelf, they kidded him
for that and Jesus took umbrage and criticized
the priests who served the Romans.
He took to hanging out with a group of radicals of the day
and since he was good with words, became their leader.
They had groupies too, one of them was Magdalena and
Jesus took a shine to her without saying so, but them all
knew from the way he looked at her.
Being admired by his flock, Jesus thought he could take
on the establishment, like when he chased money lenders
out of the temple; he was wrong.
When the Romans mocked him and crowded him a king,
he thought the people would come to save him, no such
a thing happened, he was strung up (Crucified).
The women came to his rescue, healed his wounds and
sent him to France where he took the name of Pierre,
married Magdalena had seven children and was
a much-respected Goldsmith

— The End —