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Mateuš Conrad Apr 2016
perchance an epic was necessary, to consolidate the scattered thinking, and indeed, once a certain life, and was lived with a cherishing heart, the heart broke, and life turned from adventures to a more studious approach, and in here, a comfort was found, never before imagined explorations - of course sometime a tourist in the arts does come, but such tourists quickly fade, and the pursuit becomes more enshrined - to levitated towards epics is perhaps the sole reason for the cherished memory of some - and how quickly all can revolve around a searched for theme, after many incorporations were minded - as one to have travelled the Mediterranean, another to have been eaten by the great mandarin silkworm of the library of Kangxi - heading along the silk route with spices - indeed the great mandarin silkworm of the library of emperor Kangxi; as i too needed a bearing - to inspect the trickster of lore and the godly blacksmith of the north.

by instruction - an accumulation of the the zephyrs
into a vector, headed north,
toward the gluttonous murk of ice, jesting
with aches to the bulging and mesmerised crescendo
of adrift stars captured in the tilting away -
to think of an epic, to keep out-of-time of
spontaneity and thistle like swiftness in the last
days of summer, that Mercury brings the new
tides of the tetravivaldis -
   brought by the λoγος of a γoλας -
for reasons that satisfy the suntan copper of
the ***** - the λoγος of a γoλας - yet not toward
Monte Carlo or any hideout of money well invested
and greedily spent for a charm -
no, north bids me welcome from afar -
this norðri fløkja, this    ᚾᛟᚱᛞᚱᛁ       ᚠᛚᚢᚲᛃᚨ -
by my estimate, i could not take the nonsense
of numerology of a certain specialisation,
i took what was necessary, i pillaged the temple
of Solomon, perhaps that the dome of the rock
might stand - with its glistening dome and
its sapphire mosaics - i don't belong among
palm trees and date trees - hence i turned to
deciphering and subsequently encrypting -
as i have already with *ᚱᚨᛒᛖ
:
the journey of an Æsir through a birch forest
on a horse.
                    with this method in mind:
(a) ᚾᛟᚱᛞᚱᛁ       (b) ᚠᛚᚢᚲᛃᚨ:

(a)
the need to acquire possessions accumulating
into an estate, is a journey encountered
day by day, although a journey on ice

(b)
cattle only thrive near water,
auruchs did not, and hence illuminated
their way to extinction,
         by way of the Æsirs' harvest
(to eat up diversity of life, and create
a godless world of man).

my escape route came from ᚠ - mirroring שִׂ
although the former standing, the latter sitting
down, although the former fathomable
to my pleasure, the latter unfathomable
to ascribe numbers to letters for patterns -
i seek no patterns, hence my sight turned to
the northern sights, and meanings amplified.
                
the greeks were intended to explore abstracts,
having stated a triangle
they invented the ² symbol and what not,
it was because
they didn't bother extracting a phonetic unit
from something definite,
they classified such endeavours barbarian,
what reasonable greek of 13% reason and
87% reality would extract alpha from
the sound you made when
saying ansur (ᚨᚾᛋᚢᚱ) - i.e. attention -
i.e. deriving a definite sound differentiation
for alphabetical rubrics from a definite thing
(in whatever classification that might be)?
the greeks used the alphabetical rubric of
crafting a definite sound from an indefinite thing,
so they said: acronym, aardvark, assumption,
                       α                 α      α     α,
then they said α² - there are no antonyms -
but indeed there were, hence the Trojan nation
settling in the boot, that's Italy,
the Romans escalated the greek theory
beyond taking out a definite sound distinguished
from other distinguishable sounds,
abstracting what the alphabetic sound assured
a list under alpha: assumption, advantage,
acorn, etc. -
the latins were the first atomist after the greeks,
the greeks believed in atoms, but had no
microscopes to prove atoms existed,
such scientific faith found no parallel;
the latins ensured this was true,
ending with castrato sing-along -
the latins furthered abstracting sounds from
definite orientation which the greeks did
working from ice into iota,
the latins just sang i, i, i -
of course chiral behaviourism of such dissection
emerged - hatch a plan, plan a chisel -
it's very piquant i mind to let you know -
the greeks abstracted nouns in order to create
the alphabet, the barbarians still used
proper nouns to speak proper, the greeks
thus created synonyms and antonyms to add
to the spice of life - after all,
not deriving definite alphas from
cursors that acknowledged points of origins
created diacritical stressing like comma and
semis of colon and macron, not deriving them
from definite things, shunning a helpful
vocabulary bank to an unhelpful vocabulary
banked: synonyms and antonyms the Gemini's
birth of rhetoric;
but the latins were rejected with their atomic theory
of pronunciation, since they became laden
with diacritics - punctuation marks of a different sort,
you can measure a man sprint one hundred metres,
but is that also measuring a man to say
mān or män or mán? i know that the slavic ó = u
given the scalpel opening the ensō to craft a parabola -
but it's not necessarily an accent debate
but a punctuation debate... the emergence of
the diacritic symbols above the letters is due
partly to their joy of the popes listening to
castrato operas and the fact that the romans
went too far... hence the chiral nature of certain
symbols when dittoing - the barbarians used
definite things to assert definite sounds -
the greeks used indefinite things to assert definite
sounds - mind you, if the romans became too
abstract with their little units that became engraved
with punctual accenting, then the greek letters
became laden with scientific constants as necessarily
fathered, unchanging in the pursuit of Heraclitus' flux -
for example... Pythagoras and the hypotenuse:
                            σ / κ² = α² + β² -
           or?
                             c² (ć) = a² (ą) + b² / š (bubble beep
                                                           bop barman backup hop
                                                           of shackled kakah
                                                           or systematic oscillation
                                                           for bzz via burp);
πρ² is still more stable
                                 than what the latin alphabet allows -
hence why greek phonetic encoding was used in
science, and latin phonetic encoding was used in music,
can't be one or the other - added to the fact that
latin encoding had too many spare holes with
the evolution of numbers, and greek didn't have them,
hence β-reduction in lambda calculus and F-dur and A#

the one variant of the grapheme (æ) they didn't include
among expressions: graphite and grapheme
was the variant - gravitating to an entombing
of the excess aesthetic - geresh stress -
somehow the twins match-up to a single womb:
àé vs. áè: V vs. Λ - Copernicus wrote over all
of this with the flat earth uselessness
in terms of navigation - flat earth is useless...
huh? flat earth is the only system that gave
Columbus the chance to explore the new world -
no flat earth no Columbus -
that satellite named Luna was no tool
in navigating across the Atlantic - believe me
i'm sure -
                  or that grapheme (æ) varied like statistics
or like the characters in the book of genesis
that famous adam und eve (kim and kanye):
chances came, chances went:
it was still a draw on the tongue tied decipher:
àè and áé proved another notation for plurality
was necessary, not at the beginning of the word,
but after, hence the possessive article 's,
we could have parallelism, there was a crux,
how once the chiselling of letters came about,
more economic to chisel in a V than a U,
both the same, much easier though...
almost barbaric i might say...
sigma (Σ) enigma rune e (ᛖ) - this compass
is a ******* berserker, god knows if it's
mount Everest or the Bermuda Δ

but one thing is for certain, never you mind how
a language is taught unless you mind it,
not that conversational athenian is really what
i'm aiming at - but a lesson is a lesson nonetheless,
out of interest something new,
richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi,
and what preceded him, namely pan-slavism,
just when the polish-lithuanian commonwealth
did a little Judaic trick of its own,
although snorkelling in the waters of not writing
history for less a time than israel -
you can't beat ~2000 under water - although
you could if your little tribe had an einstein
among them, or proust or spinoza, then
you could effectively become a whale, popping
an individual out from the rubble to say a polite
'hello' and 'when will the dessert be served?'
but indeed, learning a language on your own,
how to learn from scratch, the greek orthography,
and why omicron and not omega,
the give-away? sigma - purely aesthetic reason,
                             νoμισματων

                             nomismaton

omicron                                                 omega

                 you write omicron at the front
                 and omega at the back
                 pivot letter? two: σ     μ &
                 νoμι-                                -ατων
                      ­                     |
                 anything here  
                 will use o            and anything
                                              here uses ω

alike to sigma:
                          χωρας (choras, i.e. country)

sigma (ς) not sigma (σ), i.e. digitalising languages
without a clear connectivity of letters,
block-a-brick-block-a-brick-digit-digit-digit
you learn that handwriting is gone,
two options, your own aesthetic reasons now,
remember, some paired for the ease of handwritten
flow - digitalised language changes the aesthetics,
you make your own rules (considering exceptions
of oh mega mega, ergo revision -

                                       χoρας,

but still the sigma rule, others esp. o mega
you stamp on them like βλαττια, i.e. cockroaches -
κατσαρίδα                 not         κατςαρίδα

all perfectly clear when you explore plato's
dialogue from the book Θηαετητυς (as you might
have noticed, the epsilon-eta project is still
in the storage room of my imagination) -
but indeed in the dialogue, between socrates
and the "hero" of the book theaetetus -
a sample, without an essay on the theory
of knowledge -
socrates: ...'tell me theaetesus, what is Σ O?'
theaetetus: yes, my reply would be that it is
                    Σ and O.
socrates: so there's your account of the syllable,
                isn't it?
theaetetus: yes.
socrates: all right, then: tell me also what your
                  account of Σ is.
                                                             ­   (etc.
or as some might say, a shrug of the shoulders,
a hmmpf huff puff of hot air, impractical interests
and concerns - well, better the impractical
problems than practical problems, less feet
shuffling and nail-biting moments with your
tail between your legs and an army of
intellectuals working out what went wrong
and how history will solve everything by
the practical problems repeating themselves) -
you know that inane reaction - others would just say
Humphrey Bogart and nonetheless get on with it.

some would claim i was begot a second time,
not in the sixth month period of the aqua-flesh,
how did i actually related to the life aquatic,
for nine months i was taught to hold my breath,
however did this happen?
a miracle of birth? ah indeed the miracle of
a crutch for a woman - spinal deformities -
9 months, sort to speak, in water or some other
fluid - merman - a beastly innovation -
next you'll be telling me beyond this life
we turn into centaurs, given the Koran's promise -
you'd need the appetite of a breeding horse
to satiate the 72 - or thereabouts - martyr or
no martyr - 72? that's pushing it -
or as they say among children - a chance playground
without swings or sandpits, but very careless
gravitational pulling toward a certain direction;
nonetheless, they might have that i did indeed
settle of a sáttmáli                  ᛋᚨᛏᛏᛗᚨᛚᛁ
                  við         ­                  Vᛁᛞ
                  tann                         ᛏᚨᚾᚾ
                  djevul                      ᛞᛃᛖVᚢᛚ -
the hands you see, fidgety -
     hond handa grammur burtur    úr   steðgur
     ᚻᛟᚾᛞ  ᚻᚨᚾᛞᚨ  ᚷᚱᚨᛗᛗᚢᚱ   ᛒᚢᚱᛏᚢᚱ  ᚢᚱ   ᛋᛏᛖᛞᚷᚢᚱ
         the hands give an ardent pursuit
                                                 away from rest -
well not that my poems will ever reach
the islands in question - and indeed an
uneducated guess propels me - what does it matter,
λαλος babbler meant anything, indeed λαλος,
language as my own, is a language that i can
understand - and should anyone omit
disparities - a welcome revision would never tease
nor burn my eyes - but the phonetic omission
peeved me off: woad in water, ventricles in a
variety of entanglements - it's just not there -
and indeed, orthographically, if there are no more
optometric involvements of omicron's twin -
then the stance is with you to use whichever pleases,
i can't tell the difference, unless i was a pedantic
student, aged 70, with a granddaughter i wanted
to be wed teasing a millimetre's worth of
phonetic differentiation between the two -
POTATO PA'H'TAYTOE TOMATO TA'H'MAYTOE -
linguistically one's american and the other
is british, which looks like greek and latin
upside-down and in a mirror: pəˈteɪtəʊ, təˈmɑːtəʊ;
or as the spaghetti gobblers would put it:
the tetragrammaton is working on their
texan drawl (dwah! ripples in china) -
or the high-society new england ******* *******
coo with a cuckoo's load of clocks -
before being sent off to england for a respectable
education, something en route Sylvia Plath -
but not to ol' wee scoot land - ah nay - well
perhaps for a year and then talk of north european
barbarism of a deep friend pizza and mars bar.

and when descartes finished with christina
queen of sweden, she became an animate portrait
of feminine attempts at philosophising,
she was basically ostracised from society,
well, not society per se, she didn't become a stray
dog, but she forgot certain functions of
the upper tier - lazily modern man decides
to hide phenomena from understanding
individual instances, with the kantian guise
of a noumenon, hence cutting his efforts short -
indeed queen christina of sweden was ostracised
by society - only after descartes finished educating her;
and indeed to most people a little bit of sloth
equates to an amputation of some sort -
yet only with the x-files' season 2 episode 2
i've learned of the effects of prolonged alcohol
"misuse", that little boxing match in my liver?
it's not a pain as such, it's actually a hardening
of soft tissue - with prolonged alcohol exposure
soft tissue organs harden, notably the liver -
and it's not a pain, it's a hardening.
but indeed queen christina of sweden was ostracised
by her tier of socialites - i'm glad diogenes
didn't get to her, but then again a bit of cloth
goes a long way this far north -
yet unlike the encounter with napoleon by hegel
diogenes' encounter with alexander lasted longer -
which tells you the old method does no service
to a little bit of material accumulation -
but perhaps the acumen was briefer when you were
ably living in a barrel - and to think, as only
that being the sole expression, not so much
a body without organs as stated in the thesis
of anti-oedipus by deleuze and guattari -
a consideration for a body without limbs - prior
to a footprint an imprint on the mind -
carelessly now, a diarrhoea of narration -
how rare to find it - perhaps this idea of epic
poetry is a default of writing per se -
with this my whatever numbered entry i seize
to find escape in it - a lack of ambition -
a loss of spontaneity that's a demanded mechanisation -
by volume, by inaneness - to reach a single
technique accumulative zenith, and then back
into the ploughing, rustic scenery and the
never-bored animals - i rather forget such escapades -
and there i was dreaming of a grand
runic exploration - some imitable game -
some scenic routes - yet again -
You-will-not-lie, -bed-chambers-long,
For I, -am-coming-to-get, YOU!
Clawed-through-the-dirt, -up-the-roots,
I am here, -come-to-get, YOU!
Followed-tree-roots, -that-sweet-smelling-Earth!
Here now! -It's time-to-forget-YOUTH.

HALLOWEEN THIS! HALLOWEEN THAT!
HALLOWEEN THIS! HALLOWEEN THAT!
HALLOWEEN THIS! HALLOWEEN THAT!
Aha Ha Ha Ha,  -The Goblins Attack!!


Grab-you-and-cover-those-murmuring-cries.
Drag-you-away, I have got, YOU!
Hungry-I, watering-mouth-glistening-eyes!
Bundle-of-joy, I have got, YOU!
Jump-down-tunnel-for-you-are-my-prize.
Look-at-you-now, my-sweet-tasty-meat-PIE!

HALLOWEEN THIS! HALLOWEEN THAT!
HALLOWEEN THIS! HALLOWEEN THAT!
HALLOWEEN THIS! HALLOWEEN THAT!
Aha Ha Ha Ha,  -The Goblins Attack!!







Addendum: The name appears to be an amalgamation etymologically of roots from Greek, Sanskrit and Sumerian. If, of course, you choose to translate it that way. I assume Plato to be an authority on the Ancient Greek's tendency to combine the words of multiple mythologies sharing similar characters linguistically. The purpose of the hyphenation is to suggest the tempo and speed of the rhyme's cadence.

Kalikantzaroi
'The Demon's of Earth'
Kalikantzaroi came up through the earth from Hell climbing the Tree of Life's roots escaping for only three days and nights once each year when the Sun appeared to descend in the same place for said time. That period was Christmas and the children who were bad had a choice; leave a present(gifts) on their doorstep or be pulled down by the Goblins.
It is a Greek fairy tale.

The speed of the rhyme is as fast as you can say it with loud pauses for the Halloween stop phrase. It is a metered rhyme.
For those among us who lived by the rules,
Lived frugal lives of *****-scratching desperation;
For those who sustained a zombie-like state for 30 or 40 years,
For these few, our lucky few—
We bequeath an interactive Life-Alert emergency dog tag,
Or better still a dog, a colossal pet beast,
A humongous Harlequin Dane to feed,
For that matter, why not buy a few new cars before you die?
Your home mortgage is, after all, dead and buried.
We gave you senior-citizen rates for water, gas & electricity—
“The Big 3,” as they are known in certain Gasoline Alley-retro
Neighborhoods among us,
Our parishes and boroughs.
All this and more, had you lived small,
Had you played by the rules for Smurfs & Serfs.

We leave you the chance to treat your grandkids
Like Santa’s A-List clientele,
“Good ‘ol Grampa,” they’ll recollect fondly,
“Sweet Grammy Strunzo, they will sigh.
What more could you want in retirement?

You’ve enabled another generation of deadbeat grandparents,
And now you’re next in line for the ice floe,
To be taken away while still alive,
Still hunched over and wheezing,
On a midnight sleigh ride,
Your son, pulling the proverbial Eskimo sled,
Down to some random Arctic shore,
Placing you gently on the ice floe.
Your son; your boy--
A true chip off the igloo, so to speak.
He leaves you on the ice floe,
Remembering not to leave the sled,
The proverbial Sled of Abbandono,
The one never left behind,
As it would be needed again,
Why not a home in storage while we wait?
The family will surely need it sometime down the line.

A dignified death?
Who can afford one these days?
The question answers itself:
You are John Goodman in “The Big Lebowski.”
You opt for an empty 2-lb can of Folgers.
You know: "The best part of waking up, is Folger's in your cup!"
That useless mnemonic taught us by “Mad Men.”
Slogans and theme songs imbibe us.

Zombie accouterments,
Provided by America’s Ruling Class.
Thank you Lewis H. Lapham for giving it to us straight.
Why not go with the aluminum Folgers can?
Rather than spend the $300.00 that mook funeral director
Tries to shame you into coughing up,
For the economy-class “Legacy Urn.”
An old seduction:  Madison Avenue’s Gift of Shame.
Does your **** smell?” asks a sultry voice,
Igniting a carpet bomb across the 20-45 female cohort,
2 billion pathetically insecure women,
Spending collectively $10 billion each year—
Still a lot of money, unless it’s a 2013
Variation on an early 1930s Germany theme;
The future we’ve created;
The future we deserve.

Now a wheelbarrow load of paper currency,
Scarcely buy a loaf of bread.
Even if you’re lucky enough to make it,
Back to your cave alive,
After shopping to survive.
Women spend $10 billion a year for worry-free *****.
I don’t read The Wall Street Journal either,
But I’m pretty **** sure,
That “The Feminine Hygiene Division”
Continues to hold a corner office, at
Fear of Shame Corporate Headquarters.
Eventually, FDS will go the way of the weekly ******.
Meanwhile, in God & vaginal deodorant we trust,
Something you buy just to make sure,
Just in case the *** Gods send you a gift.
Some 30-year old **** buddy,
Some linguistically gifted man or woman,
Some he or she who actually enjoys eating your junk:
“Oh Woman, thy name is frailty.”
“Oh Man, thou art a Woman.”
“Oh Art is for Carney in “Harry & Tonto,”
Popping the question: “Dignity in Old Age?”
Will it too, go the way of the weekly ******?
It is pointless to speculate.
Mouthwash--Roll-on antiperspirants--Depends.
Things our primitive ancestors did without,
Playing it safe on the dry savannah,
Where the last 3 drops evaporate in an instant,
Rather than go down your pants,
No matter how much you wiggle & dance.
Think about it!

Think cemeteries, my Geezer friends.
Of course, your first thought is
How nice it would be, laid to rest
In the Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey.
Born a ******. Died a ******. Laid in the grave?
Or Père Lachaise,
Within a stone’s throw of Jim Morrison--
Lying impudently,
Embraced, held close by loving soil,
Caressed, held close by a Jack Daniels-laced mud pie.
Or, with Ulysses S. Grant, giving new life to the quandary:
Who else is buried in the freaking tomb?
Bury my heart with Abraham in Springfield.
Enshrine my body in the Taj Mahal,
Build for me a pyramid, says Busta Cheops.

Something simple, perhaps, like yourself.
Or, like our old partner in crime:
Lee Harvey, in death, achieving the soul of brevity,
Like Cher and Madonna a one-name celebrity,
A simple yet obscure grave stone carving:  OSWALD.
Perhaps a burial at sea? All the old salts like to go there.
Your corpse wrapped in white duct/duck tape,
Still frozen after months of West Pac naval maneuvers,
The CO complying with the Department of the Navy Operations Manual,
Offering this service on « An operations-permitting basis, »
About as much latitude given any would-be Ahab,
Shortlisted for Command-at-sea.
So your body is literally frozen stiff,
Frozen solid for six months packed,
Spooned between 50-lb sacks of green beans & carrots.
Deep down in the deep freeze,
Within the Deep Freeze :
The ship’s storekeeper has a cryogenic *******
Deep down in his private sanctuary,
Privacy in the bowels of the ship.
While up on deck you slide smoothly down the pine plank,
Old Glory billowing in the sea breeze,
Emptying you out into the great abyss of
Some random forlorn ocean.

Perhaps you are a ******* lunatic?
Maybe you likee—Shut the **** up, Queequeg !
Perhaps you want a variation on the burial-at-sea option ?
Here’s mine, as presently set down in print,
Lawyer-prepared, notarized and filed at the Court of the Grand Vizier,
Copies of same in safe deposit boxes,
One of many benefits Chase offers free to disabled Vets,
Demonstrating, again, my zombie-like allegiance to the rules.
But I digress.
« The true measure of one’s life »
Said most often by those we leave behind,
Is the wealth—if any—we leave behind.
The fact that we cling to bank accounts,
Bank safe deposit boxes,
Legal aide & real estate,
Insurance, and/or cash . . .
Just emphasizes the foregone conclusion,
For those who followed the rules.
Those of us living frugally,
Sustaining the zombie trance all these years.
You can jazz it up—go ahead, call it your « Work Ethic. »
But you might want to hesitate before you celebrate
Your unimpeachable character & patriotism.

What is the root of Max Weber’s WORK ETHIC concept?
‘Tis one’s grossly misplaced, misguided, & misspent neurosis.
Unmasked, shown vulnerably pink & naked, at last.
Truth is: The harder we work, the more we lay bare
The Third World Hunger in our souls.
But again, I digress.  Variation on a Theme :
At death my body is quick-frozen.
Then dismembered, then ground down
To the consistency of water-injected hamburger,
Meat further frozen and Fedex-ed to San Diego,
Home of our beloved Pacific Fleet.
Stowed in a floating Deep Freeze where glazed storekeepers
Sate the lecherous Commissary Officer,
Aboard some soon-to-be underway—
Underway: The Only Way
Echo the Old Salts, a moribund Greek Chorus
Goofing still on the burial-at-sea concept.

Underway to that sacred specific spot,
Let's call it The Golden Shellback,
Where the Equator intersects,
Crosses perpendicular,
The International Dateline,
Where my defrosted corpse nuggets,
Are now sprinkled over the sea,
While Ray Charles sings his snarky
Child Support & Alimony
His voice blasting out the 1MC,
She’s eating steak.  I’m eating baloney.
Ray is the voice of disgruntlement,
Palpable and snide in the trade winds,
Perhaps the lost chord everyone has been looking for:
Laughing till we cry at ourselves,
Our small corpse kernels, chum for sharks.

In a nutshell—being the crazy *******’ve come to love-
Chop me up and feed me to the Orcas,
Just do it ! NIKE!
That’s right, a $commercial right in the middle of a ******* poem!
Do it where the Equator crosses the Dateline :
A sailors’ sacred vortex: isn’t it ?
Wouldn’t you say, Shipmates, one and all?
I’m talking Conrad’s Marlow, here, man!
Call me Ishmael or Queequeg.
Thor Heyerdahl or Tristan Jones,
Bogart’s Queeq & Ensign Pulver,
Wayward sailors, one and all.
And me, of course, aboard the one ride I could not miss,
Even if it means my Amusement Park pass expires.
Ceremony at sea ?
Absolutely vital, I suppose,
Given the monotony and routine,
Of the ship’s relentlessly vacant seascape.
« There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea,
And I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates. «
So said James Russell Lowell,
One of the so-called Fireside Poets,
With Longfellow and Bryant,
Whittier, the Quaker and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.,
19th Century American hipsters, one and all.

Then there’s CREMATION,
A low-cost option unavailable to practicing Jews.
« Ashes to ashes »  remains its simplest definition.
LOW-COST remains its operant phrase & universal appeal.
No Deed to a 2by6by6 foot plot of real estate,
Paid for in advance for perpetuity—
Although I suggest reading the fine print—
Our grass--once maintained by Japanese gardeners--
Now a lost art in Southern California,
Now that little Tokyo's finest no longer
Cut, edge & manicure, transform our lawns
Into a Bonsai ornamental wonderland.
Today illegal/legal Mexicans employing
More of a subtropical slash & burn technique.

Cremation : no chunk of marble,
No sandstone, wood or cardboard marker,
Plus the cost of engraving and site installation.
Quoth the children: "****, you’re talking $30K to
Put the old ****** in the ground? Cheap **** never
Gave me $30K for college, let alone a house down payment.
What’s my low-cost, legitimate disposal going to run me?"

CREMATION : they burn your corpse in Auschwitz ovens.
You are reduced to a few pounds of cigar ash.
Now the funeral industry catches you with your **** out.
You must (1) pay to have your ashes stored,
Or (2) take them away in a gilded crate that,
Again, you must pay for.
So you slide into Walter Sobjak,
The Dude’s principal amigo,
And bowling partner in the
Brothers Coen masterpiece: The Big Lebowski.
You head to the nearest Safeway for a 2-lb can of Folgers.
And while we’re on the subject of cremation & the Jews,
Think for a moment on the horror of The Holocaust:
Dispossessed & utterly destroyed, one last indignity:
Corpses disposed of by cremation,
For Jews, an utterly unacceptable burial rite.
Now before we leave Mr. Sobjak,
Who is, as you know, a deeply disturbed Vietnam vet,
Who settles bowling alley protocol disputations,
By brandishing, by threatening the weak-minded,
With a loaded piece, the same piece John Turturro—
Stealing the movie as usual, this time as Jesus Quintana—
Bragging how he will stick it up Walter’s culo,
Pulling the trigger until it goes: Click-Click-Click!
Terrestrial burial or cremation?
For me:  Burial at Sea:
Slice me, dice me into shark food.

Or maybe something a la Werner von Braun:
Your dead meat shot out into space;
A personal space probe & voyager,
A trajectory of one’s own choosing?

Oh hell, why not skip right down to the nitty gritty bottom line?
Current technology: to wit, your entire life record,
Your body and history digitized & downloaded
To a Zip Drive the size of the average *******,
A data disc then Fedex-ed anywhere in the galaxy,
Including exotic burial alternatives,
Like some Martian Kilimanjaro,
Where the tiger stalks above the clouds,
Nary a one with a freaking clue that can explain
Just what the cat was doing up so high in the first place.
Or, better still, inside a Sherpa’s ***** pack,
A pocket imbued with the same Yak dung,
Tenzing Norgay massages daily into his *******,
Defending the Free World against Communism & crotch rot.
(Forgive me: I am a child of the Cold War.)
Why not? Your life & death moments
Zapped into a Zip Drive, bytes and bits,
Submicroscopic and sublime.
So easy to delete, should your genetic subgroup
Be targeted for elimination.
About now you begin to realize that
A two-pound aluminum Folgers can
Is not such a bad idea.
No matter; the future is unpersons,
The Ministry of Information will in charge.
The People of Fort Meade--those wacky surveillance folks--
Cloistered in the rolling hills of Anne Arundel County.
That’s who will be calling the shots,
Picking the spots from now on.
Welcome to Cyber Command.
Say hello to Big Brother.
Say “GOOD-BYE PRIVACY.”

Meanwhile, you’re spending most of your time
Fretting ‘bout your last rites--if any—
Burial plots on land and sea, & other options,
Such as whether or not to go with the
Concrete outer casket,
Whether or not you prefer a Joe Cocker,
Leon Russell or Ray Charles 3-D hologram
Singing at your memorial service.
While I am fish food for the Golden Shellbacks,
I am a fine young son of Neptune,
We are Old Salts, one and all,
Buried or burned or shot into space odysseys,
Or digitized on a data disc the size of
An average human *******.
Snap outta it, Einstein!
Like everyone else,
You’ve been fooled again.
Nat Lipstadt Nov 2013
Ethereal: A Commissioned Poem


This one knocked me askew! What do I know of
"an ethereal world created through the poetic imagination."

I am a flea of simplicity, a blunt and direct man, who scribes the small, cherishes the little, grabs the middle.
So many here are so far linguistically superior, when matters light, airy, and heavenly are involved.
Hell, I even call god, my buddy, by his first name when ****** stops by to make confession.
But first take nine minutes, patiently, to listen to this, all the way to the end.
http://youtu.be/xxTF2umRtqY
Then, and only then, read.

— ethereal (adjective)

light, airy, or tenuous; "an ethereal world created through the poetic imagination;" extremely delicate or refined: ethereal beauty; heavenly or celestial; gone to his ethereal home; of or pertaining to the upper regions of space.

My ethereal is:
Autumn leaves, piled,
wet and slimy,
stench rotted.

Human waste smeared,
in the the diaper
of the olden, enfeebled.

Burnt flesh,
the sulfuric acid kiss
from a rejected hand.

Cigarette smoke stains
yellow post-it's stuck
on human skin.

Men who live in cardboard boxes,
knowing this is
the all of their days
existence.

Scowling smiles, a
coin of death,
on the faces of those forced
to sell themselves for money.

Cursing accident traffic,
until you pass the overturned car,
see the car seats, teddy bears,
just litter now, amidst the
safety glass highway tree decorations.

What did you expect,
some of your favorite things?

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages ******* with strings
Cream colored ponies and crisp apple streudels
Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings
Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes
Silver white winters that melt into springs


Ethereal is Sandy swollen-springs
drowning mother and child in their SUV.

Froze dead vagrants
under white pristine,
suffocating,
beneath lovely snowflakes
that ****,
no strudel for them.

Mean ones pouring punch
on white prom dresses,
ruining dreams,
such a big scream,
put it in the yearbook,
don't forget the smiley face,
*******.

State troopers ringing doorbells
with so sorry so sorry ma'am,
she is not coming home
any more.

Stop!
Why?
You all grown up, learn the real,
this ethereal is the real too.

Wipe that *** look off your face.

You want gossamer and lace?
Wrong poem.
Beat it.
Go whine about your heartbreak
to somebody else,

Ether is the aromatic odor and sweet, burning taste, derived from the action of sulfuric acid.
Look it up, disbeliever, if it matters, it is so
real.

If you gonna use a word,
then know it.
If you gonna claim
the title of human,
try being it,
earning it.

Ethereal is the orderly,
cleaning the *** of the helpless,
one more time,
softly singing.

Ethereal is a car seat, belt,
that saves a child, a teen.

Ethereal is soup,
not a folded twenty,
hot hot soup for the
lying on the sidewalk.

Ethereal is miles of flags
receiving our dead
from overseas.

Ethereal is writing a poem about
someone else's pain
in your words.
just once,
straying away from the word I.

Ethereal is saying,
hey, to the blind,
careful,
wet leaves ahead.

Ethereal is human justice,
most un-divine.

Ethereal is not a thing,
nor even an adjective.
But a way of seeing the world.

Part II

Went out into the night,
back to The Village,
Bleecker Street.
where I used to live (#308).

Heard voices. Human voices.
A Room Full of Teeth.
They sang a Partita.
"A simple piece.
Born of a love of surface and structure,
of the human voice,
of dancing and tired ligaments,
of music, and of our basic desire
to draw a line from one point to another."

It was ethereal.
As I wrote these words in my mind,
My ethereals did not battle but blend,
the ugly and the beauteous.
They coexisted in peace?
I think not.
They coexisted in humanity.

All that is delicate,
is only because there is rough.
All that is soft,
is only because there is hard,
Listen to the lines drawn from points on earth.
You cannot choose which points to connect.
For all point to
Ethereal.

Ethereal is not a thing,
nor even an adjective.
But a way of hearing the world.
Thabiso moshapo Oct 2013
AN EXPLANATION OF 1 CORINTHIANS 15:29

Otherwise, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why then are they baptized for them? (1 Corinthians 15:29).

The context of this passage is one in which Paul is arguing on behalf of the doctrine of the ****** resurrection. The Greeks as a rule did not hold to a ****** resurrection. It was a new concept to them. Their religion taught that the afterlife consisted of a disembodied existence. Throughout this chapter, Paul gives one argument after another showing that Christians legitimately believe in a resurrection.

Now his argument takes a new turn. This new turn is introduced in verse 29, but that is not a stand-alone verse. It must be read in its context.

Otherwise, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why then are they baptized for them? 30 Why are we also in danger every hour? 31 I protest, brethren, by the boasting in you, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily. 32 If from human motives I fought with wild beasts at Ephesus, what does it profit me? If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. (1 Corinthians 15:29-32).

We notice immediately that this verse appears in a context of suffering. There is are the following elements described:

Danger (15:30)

Dying (15:21)

Fighting wild beasts (15:32).

This is the language of persecution and martyrdom.

Here is the question. If there is no ****** resurrection, then why should I risk my life by holding onto my Christian faith? In Paul’s day, it was not healthy to be a Christian. Paul himself had suffered many things for the cause of Christ. He had been beaten with rods, ******, lashed and thrown into prison. He had come through hunger, thirst, exposure and sickness.

Now comes the question. Why is Paul doing this if there is no ****** resurrection when the only reason he is being persecuted is because he said that a certain dead Galilean got up and walked?

It is in this context that Paul asks, "What will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why then are they baptized for them?" The Mormons take this verse to indicate that it is possible for a person to be baptized on behalf of someone who has already died and thereby gain salvation for that person. They point to the phrase for the dead and point out that the Greek preposition can be translated, "in place of the dead." They are correct linguistically, but miss the point that the passage is written in a context of persecution and martyrdom.

Here is the question that Paul asks. Why do believers who are under persecution continue to hold to their faith in a resurrection that results in their being persecuted if there is no resurrection? And why do new converts rise up to be baptized in place of those who are being put to death if there is no resurrection of the dead? Why are new believers being baptized and filling up the ranks of the church in place of those who have died if there is no resurrection when it results in being in danger every hour and in daily danger of death ("I die daily")?

If Paul were to be thrown to the lions in the great stadium in Ephesus because of his stand for Christ, that would be of great benefit. But that is only true if there is a resurrection from the dead. If there is no resurrection of the dead, then it is silly for Paul to risk his life.

If there is no resurrection from the dead, then we have followed a lie. If this is the case, then we are not doing God’s will, but only the will of another group of men. If I am martyred only on the basis of some misguided men, what does it profit me?

The good news is that Christ HAS risen from the dead. And that is why people continue to believe in Him, filling up the ranks of those who have gone before us. And that is why YOU have been baptized in place of the dead.

Thus, the picture of being baptized in place of the dead is a picture of new converts coming to Christ and being baptized to replace those who have died in Christ. There is a sense that when you were baptized and brought into the body of Christ, you were baptized to take the place of those who had come before
Nat Lipstadt Nov 2013
Ethereal: A Commissioned Poem


This one knocked me Askew! What do I know of
"an ethereal world created through the poetic imagination."

I am a flea of simplicity, a blunt and direct man, who scribes the small, cherishes the little, grabs the middle.
So many here are so far linguistically superior, when matters light, airy, and heavenly are involved.
Hell, I even call god, my buddy, by his first name when ****** stops by to make confession.
But first take a nine minutes, patiently, to listen to this, all the way to the end.
http://youtu.be/xxTF2umRtqY
Then, and only then, read.

— ethereal (adjective)

light, airy, or tenuous; "an ethereal world created through the poetic imagination;" extremely delicate or refined: ethereal beauty; heavenly or celestial; gone to his ethereal home; of or pertaining to the upper regions of space.

My ethereal is:
Autumn leaves, piled, wet and slimy,
stench rotted.

Human waste smeared,
in the the diaper
of the olden, enfeebled.

Burnt flesh,
the sulfuric acid kiss
from a rejected hand.

Cigarette smoke stains
yellow post-it's stuck on human skin.

Men who live in cardboard boxes,
knowing this is
the all of their days
existence.

Scowling smiles, a
coin of death,
on the faces of those forced
to sell themselves for money.

Cursing accident traffic,
until you pass the overturned car,
see the car seats, teddy bears,
just litter now, amidst the
safety glass highway tree decorations.

What did you expect,
some of your favorite things?

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages ******* with strings
Cream colored ponies and crisp apple streudels
Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings
Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes
Silver white winters that melt into springs


Ethereal is Sandy swollen-springs
drowning mother and child in their SUV.

Froze dead vagrants
under white pristine,
suffocating,
beneath lovely snowflakes
that ****,
no strudel for them.

Mean ones pouring punch
on pristine prom dresses,
ruining dreams,
such a big scream,
put it in the yearbook,
don't forget the smiley face,
*******.

State troopers ringing doorbells
with so sorry sorry ma'am,
she is not coming home
any more.

Stop!
Why?
You all grown up, learn the real,
this ethereal is the real too.

Wipe that *** look off your face.

You want gossamer and lace?
Wrong poem.
Beat it.
Go whine about your heartbreak
to somebody else,

Ether is the aromatic odor and sweet, burning taste, derived from the action of sulfuric acid.
Look it up, disbeliever, if it matters, it is so
real.

If you gonna use a word,
then know it.
If you gonna claim
the title of human,
try being it,
earning it.

Ethereal is the orderly,
cleaning the *** of the helpless,
one more time,
softly singing.

Ethereal is a car seat
that saves a child, a teen.

Ethereal is soup,
hot hot soup for the
lying on the sidewalk.

Ethereal is miles of flags
receiving our dead
from overseas.

Ethereal is writing a poem about
someone else's pain
in your words.
just once,
straying away from the word I.

Ethereal is saying
hey to the blind,
careful,
wet leaves ahead.

Ethereal is human justice,
most un-divine.

Ethereal is not a thing,
nor even an adjective.
But a way of seeing the world.

Part II

Went out into the night,
back to The Village,
Bleecker Street.
where I used to live (#308).

Heard voices. Human voices.
A Room Full of Teeth.
They sang a Partita.
"A simple piece.
Born of a love of surface and structure,
of the human voice,
of dancing and tired ligaments,
of music, and of our basic desire
to draw a line from one point to another."

It was ethereal.
As I wrote these words in my mind,
My ethereals did not battle but blend,
the ugly and the beauteous.
They coexisted in peace?
I think not.
They coexisted in humanity
All that is delicate,
is only because there is rough.
All that is soft,
is only because there is hard,
Listen to the lines drawn from points on earth.
You cannot choose which points to connect.
For all point to
Ethereal.

Ethereal is not a thing,
nor even an adjective.
But a way of hearing the world.
Jenn Coke Jun 2016
(BACKGROUND)

Some insight into my life,
By academic "stage" and country:

British Kindergarten in England,
Swiss Elementary in Switzerland,
International MS in England,
French HS, then Int'l HS in Korea,
Undergraduate Studies in NJ, USA,
(3 month-residence in Korea),
(8-month residence in Hong Kong),
Graduate studies in QC, Canada.

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

I have shattered my identity.
Frequently. Involuntarily.

I have undergone assimilation.
Socially. Psychologically.

I have encountered discrimination.
Directly. Racially.

I have endured isolation.
Grievingly. Impotently.

I have ill-wished on others.
Subconsciously. Unintentionally.

HOWEVER –

I have learned to be human.
Individually. Collectively.

I have discovered empathy.
Emotionally. Compassionately.

I have gained knowledge.
Culturally. Geographically.

I have acquired expertise.
Intellectually. Linguistically.

I have become a citizen.
Locally. Globally.

Perhaps we who are born and meant to move,
Are intended to, and exist to locomote forever,
Walking lands, sailing oceans, mastering the world.
I am currently preparing my move to Montréal and, having moved around internationally so many times, for as long as I can remember, I reflected on the "formation" of "me." A good drifting experience, I must conclude.
SP Blackwell Jan 2015
II

Do not be afraid, my darling
I see you.
I see your tattered spirit
and stripped flesh
wandering in darkness.
Alas!
we are kindred,
you and I,
for I too have been
murdered.
I have died a hundred times
and I have lived a
hundred and one
We, who are dead
but still breathing,
are kindred.
I have been poisoned by
the nectar of lust. And
this nectar was
sweet and it was
intoxicating and it was
addictive and it was
******* lust.
It was fed to me by
a man posing as
a god and he kept
my goblet full and
I was paralyzed.
He was not a god
nor a man.
He was a snake,
a false prophet.
The nectar was
venomous and
my blood,
my body, and
mind were
laced with
paralytic venom
I could not move
and died waiting.
Alas!
We are kindred
you and I.
We who have died
waiting and paralyzed.
We who have been
murdered by false
prophets and snakes.
We are kindred with
Eve and the apples of
Eden, we who are
poisoned but  
still alive.
In this paralytic state
a surgeon came
and he said unto me
“I will let you be free”
and he cut into me.
He entered my chest
so delicately and
so eloquently he
whispered to me
“ Darling, if I cannot
keep you I can’t let
you be free.”
He wanted a
keepsake, a piece
of my heart.
Something which I
would never just
willingly part.
He took a small
piece though I
screamed to
his claim. This
was not my love,
just blood,
muscle, and veins.
Alas!
We are kindred
you and I.
We who walk around
with pieces that will
never be found.
We who have filled
the empty cavity with
other objects to
replace what can
never mended.
Do not fear, my darling
we are still pumping
blood and we
are still alive!
An artistic healer
found me wandering.
He said unto me,
“ My love, I see your
rough edges and you
are flawless to me
with all your perfect
imperfections.”
I was his canvas
that could be remade
to what he wanted
me to portray.
He molded me,
bent me,
folded me,
painted me.
He chiseled away
at places that
were already weak
places that were
untouched by people
like He. I was his
muse which he
misused, abused,
and attempted to
create and sculpt
art, which I was,
to his vision
of what I should be.
He coated me,
plastered me,
froze me in time but
paper machete is fragile
and I never asked to
be molded or painted.
Slowly I broke free
from thee. Death by
art was not meant
for me
Alas!
My darling,
do not be afraid.
We are kindred
you and I.
I see you in all
your molded glory
upon the altar
which he built
to display a creation
which he did not create.
I am the one
who chiseled
at the cement
and the plaster
and the paper
and the alter
so that we can
escape a different
type of cage.
I see you broken
but uncaged.
A builder of dreams
approached me and
he said unto me
“ You are a rarity
in a world full of
mediocrity. A rare
bird like you should
not be caged.”
He built me a castle
made of sand and
deafened me with
promises which
were lies. The tide
rolled in and castles
made of sand were
taken back to sea
and i was deaf
and I could not
hear the rumbling ,
the crumbling,
the mumbling as it
was all swept away.
I was asphyxiated by
the sand and sea
of empty promises
and lies
and expectations
that I found myself
chocking on.
Do not be afraid my darling.
Alas!
We are kindred
you and I.
We have
swallowed
and choked
and  inhaled
the dirt which
posed as sand.
We who have been
drowned in lies.
We who have
been buried and
have touched the
ocean floor at great
depths have come back
to the surface.
Alas!
We are still swimming.
We are the ones who
saw the shore and
returned to land
with our feet firmly
planted on sinking sand
and unsteady ground.
Hush my darling, and do
keep our secret safe.
Hush and never let them
know that we, who are
dead but living, are the
ones who created the shore.
We have a multitude of
little deaths. Deaths which
showed us life, joy, and
pain.
Alas!
My darling,
we are kindred
you and I.
We are the masochists.
We invite the murders in.
We who see the axe in his
hand as he knocks and
yet we still allow the
murderous aftermath
to begin with no regard
for the clean up.
My darling, we take with
us a piece of our killers
as they have taken a
keepsake from us.
Alas!
My darling
we have taken
we have learned
we have observed
we have seen their
surgical precision as
they have taken us
apart. We have
mended and
stitched and
sewn and
glued and
filled and
repaired
ourselves.
Oh my darling
do not fear for
we who are
still alive
still fighting
still breathing
still living
still pumping blood,
we have taken
their murderous
intent. We who
were victimized
by batting eyes
and lies that left
bitterness as an
aftertaste have
have learned to
lace honey with
arsenic. We are
kindred, you and I.
We are different
now. The stichting
and filling
and sewing
and gluing
has changed
us.
We are not afraid,
my darlings.
We see you.
You who have
caged and
trampled and
opened and
taken and
broken and
killed are no
longer feared.
Be afraid
my darlings.
Alas!
We see you.

III

I am a serial killer.
I have ravaged
empty vessels
which once upon
a time were
filled with ideas
of what could be.
I am innocent!
I slay the murderers
who murdered me.
Those who murdered
we.
I and we have
perfected the craft
which you,
and you,
and you,
and you
have used as
weapons of
mass distraction,
mass destruction.
I am the one
who distracts
and destroys.  
I have ingested
sufficient venom
to become
arsenic laced
honey.
I have let a
man drink
from me ‘til
he could drink
no more. He
drank himself
to insanity.
Oh dear!
I fear I did
not warn him
of the venom
that’s within.
What once was
just plain honey
is now
poisonous
to him.
I am a serial killer.
The killer of
cervical slayers.
But again
I am innocent!
I once sheltered
a wretch and
he sought
sanctuary
inside of me.
He never looked
at my eyes.
Only prayed at
the church that
he made betwixt
my thighs.
Oh dear!
I fear
I did not mention
that this was not
his church. It was
my sanctuary which
was now covered
in his dirt.
Death by exertion
was his end.
I let him die *******
but I did not let
him win
A tragic death
for a stallion
like he. Because
I am small he
underestimated me.
Like Helen of Troy
I brought
destruction
upon thee.
I am a serial killer.
The killer of
psychological
terrorizers and
verbal mesmerizers.
I have linguistically
lobotomized men
who thought they
could philosophize
the origin of I.
I have sown the
seeds of doubt
within the halls of
confidence which
have lain within his
mind.
I have broken
fortress walls
that were built to
withstand the  
wrath that fell
upon *****
and Gomorrah.
We have cut out
the tongues of
our verbal
betrayers and
left them befuddled
in Babylon.  
Oh dear!
I fear I forgot
to mention that
Freud is my Father
and Jung is my
uncle.
Your mommy issues
do nothing for me.
I am not her!
I am a child of
psychology.
Rationally you are
weaker than me
mentally.
I am a serial killer.
The killer of
egotistical thrillers.
I have paralyzed
and anesthetized
men who have been
thrice the size of me.
My scalpel is sharp
and my steady hand
cuts as deep as my
verbal violations.
This is my body.
This is not your nation.
My dissection was but
a brief vacation to
your annihilation.
Your internal organs
were similar to an
egotistical colonoscopy.
You thought your
insides were different
from me.
You required proof
that we were the
same.
I said
“Let me cut first”
and you did not
complain.
Oh dear!
I fear I failed
to mention I’m
quite skilled and
I have killed before,
far better men and
even their ******.
I am a serial killer!
A killer of killers!
You are a cheap
thrill as I reap
and I sow.
I plant the seeds
that I know will
not grow.
You will stay frozen
and will get old.
I need not a keepsake.
I own your soul.

IV

We are naked.
Our flesh is worn
and our spirit torn.
The garments which
once kept us warm
are now just eaten
and tattered.
We have silently
walked
and waited
and paced ourselves
and learned hatred.
WE have come
back home where
board games and
Barbies wait.
I have broken
all my favorite toys
just like you
and you
and you
and the horse
you rode in on
have taken all
my simple joys.
You have all
taken away
a piece of pink
and replaced
with a piece of
grey. A piece
which will never
be the same.
Oh Darling!
Do not fear for me
do not fear for we.
We have become the
porcelain women
which watch
and wait.
Our pink colored
kingdom shall
never be invaded
because here we
are waiting.
Not even shoots
and ladders or even
the Madd Hatter
can lead you to
green pastures.
Oh my!
You failed to notice
the malicious
twinkle in
my eyes.
I fear this was
your fault
for you created
a steeple
betwixt my
thighs.
Silly rabbit,
we were never
yours.
I was always
mine.
This is
not revenge.
This is a warning
before the rhyme.
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2016
.english colonialism used to be passive-aggressive, english post-colonialism is a strange dynamic of former colonial nations playing the endgame of colonialism with non-affiliated nations of the british empire (affiliated by trade anyway, although not based upon origins of the ruling elite's extending arm), there's a hot topic in england between the irish and the polish, the irish are provoking the polish into racism so someone else can look smug with a pakistani friend on the london tube.

you know the amount of pain i see writing my father's
invoices of manual labour with the irish *****
apparently running
the show protecting northern
irish outputs of poetry and cigarette smuggling -
keeping us migrants "in check"?
god the loathing,
i try to improvise each invoice
with an excess knowledge
of the english tongue to break through,
but my sole considering comforter
is still death,
**** this *******, i rather die
than see my father's eyes eye me
hurtful hopeful of seeing my "bright new life"
when i was nearly murdered by
an egyptian school-friend / childhood friend
and later told: boy you better pretend you're
mad... boy my ***, your father is just
an x-ray technician... go back
to the northern africa of your
pretending to be a semite and build
another pyramid... *******, **** all of this,
days of casual pretentious squeaky clean
non-offensive poetry are over...
gentlemen - let's broaden our minds... swear a little
take up oaths with truth...
we were born to down a pint of concrete before
ireland was born, rushing out of pubs
when the call was made: concrete has arrived!
run, run run run! break legs and whatnot,
because in an irish pub talking to a homeless
person in akimbo giving him a cigarette
is cause for argument with an irish girl
trying to get, familiar;
unlike the sword, a stick has two ends...
you can smack someone with it,
but then someone can rebel and grasp the same
stick and smack you with it, for a suckling
taste of a kiss in memory of reprimanding manners.

- and i do remember the good stuff coming
out of h'america...
    i once owned a copy of blue valentine
by tom waits on c.d.: scratched that record
from over-playing it...
found a vinyl copy in the shop today...
splashed out a staggering £20 on it...
lucky for me the mp3 record comes free...
     £20 is a lot?
       well... better that £20 which played
in the background as i finished off decorating
the kitchen...
   rage 2 deluxe edition for ps4 -
      £44.99... so sure... i splashed out...
          thank god i'm not a gamer...
with games it's like with movies...
   notably? vikings season 1...
     i thought i could watch it a second time...
couldn't...
   a bit of a hit and miss...
    with games and movies...
      when the narrative gets exhausted...
and you're still honing in on the narrative
whether a passive spectstor or the role player
in the game...
but investing in an album?
       background background...
and an almost infinite array of the comeos
against the record...
   one cameo decorating a kitchen
another cameo finishing the day off with
some cider on a windowsill...
   but once upon: that's what h'america was
about... united we stand,
divided we fall... blah blah...
           and it looks like that right now...
the cultural export zenith peaked and it isn't
coming back...
   not for a while at least...
now we only look at not the united
         but the balkanized states of europe...
the states pulling at each other:
where once there was a cohesive collective
      export of pure cancan h'americana...
tom waits' blue valentine...
                          now i'll am getting
"culturally" is a bunch of vlogger content...
export of problems,
existential qualms without support on
existential pillars from continental thought
of 20th century europe...
   19th century doesn't count:
   not even nietzsche does: but kierkegaard
doesn't.

what are those lyrics from that vomito *****
song enemy of the state?
we shall send you, in ever increasing number:
ships, planes, tanks, guns: that is your purpose
and, our pledge
... (1941 state of the union speech
sample)

most americans are not aware that soon
the primary export of our national economy
won't be cars, or food, or microwaves.
instead we'll be exporting death.
instead will be exporting death.


   perhaps, once upon a time...
now the export is quiet different,
   at its cultural zenith of exported values...
it would seem h'america choked on
a bitter pill... h'america no longer provides
the sort of culture worth exporting,
notably in cinema in music...
                               in literature...

the behemoth lost all of its juggernaut
momentum... and stumbled into rehashing old
ideas... it's not plagiarizm as such:
more a plagiarizm ex per se...

norman davies: god's playground -
   1795 to the present:

the Belweder is a palace in Warsaw...
(belvedere: a beautiful view)
constructed in 1660 -
  the White House in Washington D.C.
constructed in circa 1796...
by god, what a similarity!

   polish emigration to the u.s.a.:
in social terms their educational and communal
organizations are less effective than those of
the ukranians,
   in political terms their problems
command less notice than those of the blacks,
chicans or amerindians...
in the vicious world of the american ethnic jungle,
the 'stupid and ignorant Pole' is a standard
stereotype... once the noble lord...
reasons no doubt exist: like the irish and
the sicilians... the greatest influx came from
Galicia containing a large number of
the 'wretched refuse': people so oppressed
by poverty and near-starvation:
supressed linguistically, religiously...
the instinct of mere survival...
accepted the most degrading forms of employment...
exploitation: 'industrial *******'...
they were the gangers of the great american
railway age...
a canadian textbook can be cited
(j. s. wordsworth, strangers within our gates,
toronto 1972):
'it is hard to think of the people of this
nationality other than in that vague class of
undesirable citizens' -
   very much like to today:
   to think of canadians being a people
beloning to the making of mankind -
    without the canadian concept of mankind
being: peoplekind...
even woodrow wilson (then) prof. at prince-ton
deemed the Poles to be 'inferior'.

- but who was to ever to keep grudges...
grand torino - the movie, starring and directed
by clint eastie-boy-sparking-wood...
waldermar kowalski... dumb pollack...
why do poles no integrate within a community
bias as such?
                   the proverb:
if you want to succeed within a framework
of immigration: steer away from your
fellow countrymen...

                     almost all other cultures that
come, but the host's nitty-picky:
oh look at our asian labradors...
why can't you lick our ***** like they can?
etc. one example out of the many...
some people, i guess: prefer to be in
the background...
post-colonial powers need tokens...
akin to a sadiq khan:
papa was an immigrant bus-driver -
quick step up from daddy being a bus driver
to the position of mayor of london...
browny points!

the english are smug like this:
you hear even today -
WE WON'T BE SORRY FOR OUR
FATHER'S AND FOREFATHER'S SINS...
not for our colonial past...
they say that consciously -
but subconsciously they are scoring
brownie points...
        i can't say they're doing this
unconsciously: since if they were:
there would be a unanimous concensus
and no: "diversity is our strength"
agenda...

             besides... you can't exactly
conquer an island...
the norman conquest of 1066? it wasn't really
a conquest: for a conquest to actually take
place you'd require the native population
to be displaced / replaced by the invading
force - akin to the saxon invasion...
'don't touch, their, women...
we don't breed with these people...
what sort of people would you think
that would breed? weak people... half people'
(king Cerdic from the film king arthur 2004)...
proof being?
when the normans invaded and "conquered"...
they simply replaced the ruling saxon elite...
hence? the domesday book...
the ruling elites were being replaced
and the new ruling elites wanted to have
an account of who they were going to rule...
it was less a conquest and more:
a change of guard... since...
            the locals were first investigated
and subsequently left to their own devices...
there was no conquest:
               as such...
                but you can get on with your
day-to-day life on an island with natural
fortifications (the ******* sea)...
and produce your little whizz-kids down
the years...
   but imagine being squeezed by:
prussia... russia, the ottomans,
                  the mongols...
                             the swedes...
                and subsequently by the austro-hungarians...
matka królów (the mother of kings),
i.e.: Elisabeth von Habsburg...

   in conclusion... oh to hell with the whole
"incel" label... you have to pay for something
in the end... why not skip the *******'s worth
of pleasantries: the dating masquerade
and not get into the nitty-gritty with a *******
in one smooth stroke of a count worth an hour?
no hard-on shyness that way...
no ****-teasing...
whatever is an erectile dysfunction outside
of the brothel... doesn't seem to bother
whittle wichy while in a brothel...
so go figure...
                and relating to the stories of incels...
hmm... maybe it's the fickle women...
last time i checked...
i picked up a thai bisexual in a park,
a random stranger...
                took her home,
some beer, some jazz...
                  ****** her in the garden...
        i don't even think it's the case of
"i can't get laid" with these incels...
     english women: nuns on the outside...
latex gimp suited **** black boot licking
*** fiends in the bedroom...
   the madonna-***** complex...
the only aspect of Freud that resonates with me...

you know what, never mind...
      i'm just happy i collect vinyls...
free mp3 copy to boot...
and instead of spending 40+ quid on a game
that will become exhausted after one sitting /
completion (these are not arcade games,
nor are they the "free" new wave of games,
the ones where you play "superior"
opponents with a handicap -
since you didn't pay any in-game updates,
patience is a virtue,
   and someone people invest real money
into these games, but are still **** at them,
plus, these new wave games never really end...
i'll be dead and i won't be able to finish them,
added bonus? there's no NPC dimension
to them, added strategy: with a complete loss
of narrative / story-telling, genius!)
plus... how much does a vinyl player cost?
you can get one for under 70 quid...
sometimes vinyl bargains: under a tenner...
this one though, for 20 quid...
1 vinyl worth 20 quid once every two months?
oh yeah... i really splashed out on this one!

woman is a grand idea though...
    there is so much of woman i would be able
to love, if only the practicality of woman
wouldn't be associated...
alas: reality bites...
                       regrets...
                                  aged 33 and i feel as if...
i have managed a good enough sample
where both sexes can coexist within the confines
of me entertaining them:
as if they were to never meet and "preserve"
the "fate" of "humanity"...
      i'm pretty sure there are plenty of people
who have been bullied into this trap
associated with the otherwise "intelligent"
dodo mentality...
                          besides, i'm about to find out,
whether or not, they sell liter bottles of whiskey...
using my braille tally:

            ⠁ ⠃ ⠇ ⠧ ⠷ (⠿)
            1  2  3   4  5  (6)
             a  b  l   v  à  (é)

                        from what i drank yesterday
for that lullaby... i'm starting to supect that:
what they label as a liter... is actually more -

    if after ⠷⠻ ⠷⠻ (i.e. 50ml  20x) i'm not left
with an empty bottle... well then i'm not left
with an empty bottle.
Nathan Millard Jan 2013
In ant populations
Worker ants are blind  
Follow one another by scent
Pheromones are released from their feet
Leaving a scent trail from the next to follow
A single file line
Blindly trusting pheromones

Sometimes an ant loses the scent though
And wanders off looking for the trail
Leading the others off behind him
And if he looks hard enough
He’ll find the end of his own line
And follow the tail of a train
He created
Subsequently creating what is scientifically known as
    a Death Spiral

For these blind ants are unaware
They are following the same path over and over
It does not lead anywhere
It does not lead home
Eventually they walk until
They walk no more…

Pheromone- “any chemical substance released by an animal that serves to influence the physiology or behavior of other members of the same species.”
Originates from the Greek phérein and that means to bear or bring and Hormone

Many people say that love
Is a chemical reaction
A perfect blend of pheromones
To produce attraction
Affection
And in the end reproduction
Love was
Scientifically disjointed
To fit better on a slide
Linguistically altered
To fit better on paper

But isn’t love just pheromones?
Like it is to the ants
Attractive footsteps
We blindly follow
Even if they lead us to no good

Most times Love leads us home
Leads us to prosper
Tells us where to go
What to do
To survive
Until it doesn’t…

Then our pheromone path
Leads us in circles
It leads around and around
Love can lead us in a death spiral
And if we are blind we will not step out
Step out of the path:
That winding circling path of doom
Made up of previous mistake we have made
That left attractive footsteps in their wake
Footsetps that when we go lost we again found
And now we choose to blindly repeat them
Over and over
In the pursuit of Love

Because of **Pheromones
Michael R Burch Mar 2021
SONG-POEMS

These are poems that were written as songs, or as potential song lyrics, or that could easily become songs if someone were to set them to music (hint! hint!) …


Ave Maria
by Michael R. Burch

Ave Maria,
Maiden mild,
listen to my earnest prayer.
Listen, O, and be beguiled.
Ave Maria.

Ave Maria,
Maiden mild,
be Mother now to every child
beset by earth’s thorned briars wild.
Ave Maria.

Ave Maria,
Maiden mild,
embrace us with your Love and Grace.
Let us look upon your Face.
Ave Maria.

Ave Maria,
Maiden mild,
please attend to our earnest call—
When will Love be All in All?
Ave Maria.

Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch



Faithless Lover
by Michael R. Burch

Well I met you darlin’ on a night like this;
the stars were fallin’ as I stole a kiss.

And I fell in love that very night,
as the moon above blessed us with its light.

But the moon was false, and your heart was, too.
Oh, I never dreamed you would be untrue.

'Cause you're a faithless lover, with a heart of stone.
One day you'll discover yourself all alone.

Well, we found a preacher and we said some words.
I should have noticed yours were well-rehearsed.

When I looked above, I saw the pale moon frown;
the sky burst open; I began to drown.

'Cause you're a faithless lover, with a heart of stone.
One day you'll discover yourself all alone.

Now, since that day, how you've run around.
You’ve been with every boy in town.

Well, I learned my lesson, and I learned it well:
how one night aflame left me cold as hell,
till my heart grew hard in its icy shell.

Now, I'm a faithless lover with a heart of stone.
I seek faceless lovers who leave with the dawn.

Copyright © 1991 by Michael R. Burch



Unlikely Mike
by Michael R. Burch

I married someone else’s fantasy;
she admired me despite my mutilations.

I loved her for her heart’s sake, and for mine.
I hid my face and changed its connotations.

And in the dark I danced—slight, Chaplinesque—
a metaphor myself. How could they know,
the undiscerning ones, that in the glow
of spotlights, sometimes love becomes burlesque?

Disfigured to my soul, I could not lose
or choose or name myself; I came to be
another of life’s odd dichotomies,
like Dickey’s Sheep Boy, Pan, or David Cruse:
as pale, as enigmatic. White, or black?
My color was a song, a changing track.

Copyright © 2001 by Michael R. Burch

Published by Bewildering Stories and selected as one of four short poems for the Review of issues 885-895



Through the fields of solitude
by Hermann Allmers
set to music by Johannes Brahms
translation by David B. Gosselin with Michael R. Burch

Peacefully, I rest in the tall green grass
For a long time only gazing as I lie,
Caught in the endless hymn of crickets,
And encircled by a wonderful blue sky.

And the lovely white clouds floating across
The depths of the heavens are like silky lace;
I feel as though my soul has long since fled,
Softly drifting with them through eternal space.

This poem was set to music by the German composer Johannes Brahms in what has been called its “the most sublime incarnation.” A celebrated recording of the song was made in 1958 by the baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau with Jörg Demus accompanying him on the piano.



The Pain of Love
by Michael R. Burch

for T. M.

The pain of love is this:
the parting after the kiss;

the train steaming from the station
whistling abnegation;

every highways’ broken white bar
that vanishes under your car;

each hour and flower and friend
that cannot be saved in the end;

dear things of immeasurable cost ...
now all irretrievably lost.

Copyright © 2013 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The HyperTexts

Note: The title “The Pain of Love” was suggested by an interview with Little Richard, then eighty years old, in Rolling Stone. He said that someone should create a song called “The Pain of Love.” I've written the lyrics, now can someone provide the music?



Will There Be Starlight
by Michael R. Burch

Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
damask
and lilac
and sweet-scented heathers?

And will she find flowers,
or will she find thorns
guarding the petals
of roses unborn?

Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
seashells
and mussels
and albatross feathers?

And will she find treasure
or will she find pain
at the end of this rainbow
of moonlight on rain?

Copyright © 2001 by Michael R. Burch
Published by The Word (UK), The Chained Muse, Famous Poets and Poems, Grassroots Poetry, The HyperTexts, Inspirational Stories, Jenion, Starlight Archives, TALESetc, Writ in Water, Grassroots Poetry and Poetry Webring



Indestructible, for Johnny Cash
by Michael R. Burch

What is a mountain, but stone?
Or a spire, but a trinket of steel?
Johnny Cash is gone,
black from his hair to his bootheels.

Can a man out-endure mountains’ stone
if his songs lift us closer to heaven?
Can the steel in his voice vibrate on
till his words are our manna and leaven?

Then sing, all you mountains of stone,
with the rasp of his voice, and the gravel.
Let the twang of thumbed steel lead us home
through these weary dark ways all men travel.

For what is a mountain, but stone?
Or a spire, but a trinket of steel?
Johnny Cash lives on—
black from his hair to his bootheels.

Copyright © 2006 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by Strong Verse



Flying
by Michael R. Burch


I shall rise
and try the ****** wings of thought
ten thousand times
before I fly ...

and then I'll sleep
and waste ten thousand nights
before I dream;
but when at last ...

I soar the distant heights of undreamt skies
where never hawks nor eagles dared to go,
as I laugh among the meteors flashing by
somewhere beyond the bluest earth-bound seas ...

if I'm not told
I’m just a man,
then I shall know
just what I am.

This is one of my very early poems, written around age 16-17. According to my notes, I may have revised the poem later, in 1978, but if so the changes were minor because the poem remains very close to the original.



Earthbound
by Michael R. Burch

Tashunka Witko, better known as Crazy Horse, had a vision of a red-tailed hawk at Sylvan Lake, South Dakota. In his vision he saw himself riding a floating and crazily-dancing spirit horse through a storm as the hawk flew above him, shrieking. When he awoke, a red-tailed hawk was perched near his horse.

Earthbound,
and yet I now fly
through the clouds that are aimlessly drifting ...
so high
that no sound
echoing by
below where the mountains are lifting
the sky
can be heard.

Like a bird,
but not meek,
like a hawk from a distance regarding its prey,
I will shriek,
not a word,
but a screech,
and my terrible clamor will turn them to clay—
the sheep,
the earthbound.

I believe I wrote this poem as a college sophomore, age 19 or 20. I did not know about the vision and naming of Crazy Horse at the time. But when I learned about the vision that gave Crazy Horse his name, it seemed to explain my poem and I changed the second line from "and yet I would fly" to "and yet I now fly." I believe that is the only revision I ever made to this poem.

Copyright © 1978 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The HyperTexts



Momentum! Momentum!
by Michael R. Burch

for the neo-Cons

Crossing the Rubicon, we come!
Momentum! Momentum! Furious hooves!
The Gauls we have slaughtered, no man disapproves.
War’s hawks shrieking-strident, white doves stricken dumb.

Coo us no cooings of pale-breasted peace!
Momentum! Momentum! Imperious hooves!
The blood of barbarians brightens our greaves.
Pompey’s head in a basket? We slumber at ease.

****** us again, great Bellona, dark queen!
Momentum! Momentum! Curious hooves
Now pound out strange questions, but what can they mean
As the great stallions rear and their riders careen?

Originally published by Bewildering Stories

NOTE: Bellona was the Roman goddess of war. The name "Bellona" derives from the Latin word for "war" (bellum), and is linguistically related to the English word "belligerent" (literally, "war-waging"). In earlier times she was called Duellona, that name being derived from a more ancient word for "battle."



Just Yesterday
by Michael R. Burch

Yesterday
she went a-way
and now I don’t know what to sa-ay,
'cause I loved her more than life
just yesterday.

[Descending notes: DUH Duh duh]

Yesterday
she held me tight
and our love lit up the night,
but then our flame was not as bright,
just yesterday.

[Descending notes: DUH Duh duh]

Yesterday
she left me a-lone
and now I don’t know what I wa-ant ...
I just listen to a song
called “Yesterday” ...

[Descending notes: DUH Duh duh]

Yesterday, oh Yesterday,
Yesterday, oh Yesterday,
I loved her more than life
just yesterday.

[Descending notes: DUH Duh duh]

Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The HyperTexts



Stay With Me Tonight
by Michael R. Burch


Stay with me tonight;
be gentle with me as the leaves are gentle
falling to the earth.
And whisper, O my love,
how that every bright thing, though scattered afar,
retains yet its worth.

Stay with me tonight;
be as a petal long-awaited blooming in my hand.
Lift your face to mine
and touch me with your lips
till I feel the warm benevolence of your breath’s
heady fragrance like wine.

That which we had
when pale and waning as the dying moon at dawn,
outshone the sun.
And so lead me back tonight
through bright waterfalls of light
to where we shine as one.

Copyright © 2019 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The Lyric



This Train
by Michael R. Burch

To be sung to the melody of "This Train is Bound For Glory" up-tempo.

This train is goin’ my way, this train.
This train is goin’ my way, this train.
This train is goin’ my way,
gonna take me back
to my baby,
This train is goin’ my way, this train.

This train is flyin’, flyin’, flyin’.
This train is flyin’, flyin’, flyin’.
This train is flyin’, flyin’,
and my heart is cryin’,
cryin’.
This train is flyin’, flyin’, flyin’.

This train is chuggin’ on down the tracks now.
This train is chuggin’ on down the tracks now.
This train’s chuggin’ down the tracks
and it’s gonna have to
take me back now.
This train is chuggin’ on down the tracks now.

This train is flyin’, flyin’, flyin’.
This train is flyin’, flyin’, flyin’.
This train is flyin’, flyin’,
and my heart is dyin’,
dyin’.
This train is flyin’, flyin’, flyin’.

This train is goin’ my way, this train.
This train is goin’ my way, this train.
This train is goin’ my way,
gonna take me back
to my baby,
This train is goin’ my way, this train.

This train must run a little longer.
Oh, this train must run a little longer.
And although I did her wrong, her
love is only gettin’ stronger.
This train must run a little longer.

Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The HyperTexts



The Vision of the Overseer’s Right Hand
by Michael R. Burch

“Dust to dust ...”

I stumbled, aghast,
into a valley of dust and bone
where all men become,
at last, the same color . . .

There a skeletal figure
groped through blonde sand
for a rigid right hand
lost long, long ago . . .

A hand now more white
than he had wielded before.
But he paused there, unsure,
for he could not tell

without the whip’s frenetic hiss
which savage white hand was his.

Copyright © 2001 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by Poetry Porch



When I Think of You, I Think of Love
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

When I think of you, I think of Love.
Oh, when I think of you, I think of Love
as magical as the moon and stars above.
And when I think of you, I think of Love.

When I think of you, I start to cry.
Yes, when I think of you, I start to cry.
And I think you know the reason why.
For when I think of you, I think of Love.

When I think of you, I start to smile.
Oh, when I think of you, I start to smile.
I think of you and, dreaming all the while,
when I think of you, I start to smile.

When I think of you, I have to laugh.
Yes, when I think of you, I have to laugh
because it’s certain: you’re my better half!
So when I think of you, I have to laugh.

I think of you as Eve, and at your feet
blooms everything that’s equally as sweet,
as magical as the moon and stars above.
And when I think of you, I think of Love.

I think of you with babies at your breast,
and does and fawns that come at your behest,
as magical as the moon and starts above.
And when I think of you, I think of Love.

I think of you and find myself at peace.
I feed the ducks, the turtles and the geese,
all as magical as the moon and stars above,
and when I think of you, I think of Love.

I think of you as Love, a Love that heals ...
the gentlest Dove that soars and flies and wheels
then looks down on the earth from high above.
And when I think of you, I think of Love.

Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The HyperTexts



Hill Down the Road
by Michael R. Burch

I imagine this song being sung to an upbeat tune like “Afternoon Delight” with an emphasis on the last word in each line. The song would come out as a sort of breathless rush — one long, run-on sentence.

There’s a hill down the road
where my babe and me would go
when the sun was sinking low
where the sparkling waters flow

and we’d sit there in the grass
and we’d watch the sunsets pass
and then I’d walk her home,
but we’d never walk too fast

and we’d sit there in the summer
when the sun was in the sky
and we’d talk of our tomorrows
and we’d watch the butterflies

and I loved her even then
although I was so young
and I’ll love her till the time
that my time on earth is done

I wrote this poem as an aspiring songwriter, around age 14. But alas, I was too shy to show my compositions to anyone!

Copyright © 1974 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The HyperTexts



Moon Lake
by Michael R. Burch

Starlit recorder of summer nights,
what magic spell bewitches you?
They say that all lovers love first in the dark . . .
Is it true?
Is it true?
Is it true?

Starry-eyed seer of all that appears
and all that has appeared—
What sights have you seen?
What dreams have you dreamed?
What rhetoric have you heard?

Is love an oration,
or is it a word?
Have you heard?
Have you heard?
Have you heard?

Copyright © 1976 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by Romantics Quarterly



Tomb Lake
by Michael R. Burch

Go down to the valley
where mockingbirds cry,
alone, ever lonely . . .
yes, go down to die.

And dream in your dying
you never shall wake.
Go down to the valley;
go down to Tomb Lake.

Tomb Lake is a cauldron
of souls such as yours —
mad souls without meaning,
frail souls without force.

Tomb Lake is a graveyard
reserved for the dead.
They lie in her shallows
and sleep in her bed.

I believe this poem and "Moon Lake" were companion poems, written around my senior year in high school, in 1976.

Copyright © 1976 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The HyperTexts



How Long the Night
(Anonymous Middle English Lyric, circa early 13th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

It is pleasant, indeed, while the summer lasts
with the mild pheasants' song ...
but now I feel the northern wind's blast—
its severe weather strong.
Alas! Alas! This night seems so long!
And I, because of my momentous wrong
now grieve, mourn and fast.

Copyright © 2013 by Michael R. Burch
Published by Measure, Setu (India), Poet’s Corner, Glass Facets of Poetry, Better Than Starbucks, Chanticleer, Poetry Brevet and Deviant Art



Sappho’s Lullaby
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

Hushed yet melodic, the hills and the valleys
sleep unaware of the nightingale's call
while the dew-laden lilies lie
listening,
glistening . . .
this is their night, the first night of fall.

Son, tonight, a woman awaits you;
she is more vibrant, more lovely than spring.
She'll meet you in moonlight,
soft and warm,
all alone . . .
then you'll know why the nightingale sings.

Just yesterday the stars were afire;
then how desire flashed through my veins!
But now I am older;
night has come,
I’m alone . . .
for you I will sing as the nightingale sings.

Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The HyperTexts



Lullaby
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

Cherubic laugh; sly, impish grin;
Angelic face; wild chimp within.

It does not matter; sleep awhile
As soft mirth tickles forth a smile.

Gray moths will hum a lullaby
Of feathery wings, then you and I

Will wake together, by and by.

Life’s not long; those days are best
Spent snuggled to a loving breast.

The earth will wait; a sun-filled sky
Will bronze lean muscle, by and by.

Soon you will sing, and I will sigh,
But sleep here, now, for you and I

Know nothing but this lullaby.

Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The HyperTexts



Let me sing you a lullaby
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy (written from his mother’s perspective)

Oh, let me sing you a lullaby
of a love that shall come to you by and by.

Oh, let me sing you a lullaby
of a love that shall come to you by and by.

Oh, my dear son, how you’re growing up!
You’re taller than me, now I’m looking up!

You’re a long tall drink and I’m half a cup!
And so let me sing you this lullaby.

Oh, my sweet son, as I watch you grow,
there are so many things that I want you to know.

Most importantly this: that I love you so.
And so let me sing you this lullaby.

Soon a tender bud will ****** forth and grow
after the winter’s long ****** snow;

and because there are things that you have to know ...
Oh, let me sing you this lullaby.

Soon, in a green garden a new rose will bloom
and fill all the world with its wild perfume.

And though it’s hard for me, I must give it room.
And so let me sing you this lullaby.

Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The HyperTexts



Swan Song
by Michael R. Burch

The breast you seek reserves all its compassion
for a child unborn. Soon meagerly she’ll ration
soft kisses and caresses—not for Him,
but you. Soon in the night, bright lights she’ll dim
and croon a soothing love hymn (not for you)
and vow to Him that she’ll always be true,
and never falter in her love. But now
she whispers falsehoods, meaning them, somehow,
still unable to foresee the fateful Wall
whose meaning’s clear: such words strange gods might scrawl
revealing what must come, stark-chiseled there:
Gaze on them, weep, ye mighty, and despair!
There’ll be no Jericho, no trumpet blast
imploding walls womb-strong; this song’s your last.

Copyright © 2006 by Michael R. Burch
Originally published by The HyperTexts



This is my translation of one of my favorite Dimash Kudaibergen songs, the French song "S.O.S." ...

S.O.S.
by Michel Berger
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Why do I live, why do I die?
Why do I laugh, why do I cry?

Voicing the S.O.S.
of an earthling in distress ...

I have never felt at home on the ground.

I'd rather be a bird;
this skin feels weird.

I'd like to see the world turned upside down.

It ever was more beautiful
seen from up above,
seen from up above.

I've always confused life with cartoons,
wishing to transform.

I feel something that draws me,
that draws me,
that draws me
UP!

In the great lotto of the universe
I didn't draw the right numbers.
I feel unwell in my own skin,
I don't want to be a machine
eating, working, sleeping.

Why do I live, why do I die?
Why do I laugh, why do I cry?

I feel I'm catching waves from another world.
I've never had both feet on the ground.
This skin feels weird.
I'd like to see the world turned upside down.
I'd rather be a bird.

Sleep, child, sleep ...



"Late Autumn" aka "Autumn Strong"
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
based on the version sung by Dimash Kudaibergen

Autumn ...

The feeling of late autumn ...

It feels like golden leaves falling
to those who are parting ...

A glass of wine
has stirred
so many emotions swirling in my mind ...

Such sad farewells ...

With the season's falling leaves,
so many sad farewells.

To see you so dispirited pains me more than I can say.

Holding your hands so tightly to my heart ...

... Remembering ...

I implore you to remember our unspoken vows ...

I dare bear this bitterness,
but not to see you broken-hearted!

All contentment vanishes like leaves in an autumn wind.

Meeting or parting, that's not up to me.
We can blame the wind for our destiny.

I do not fear my own despair
but your sorrow haunts me.

No one will know of our desolation.

Keywords/Tags: song, songs, songs of life, lyric, lyrics, music, rock, love, lover, lovers
Alyanne Cooper Jul 2014
I will never understand
How rocket science works,
How caterpillars become butterflies,
How languages evolve linguistically,
How genetics determine everything,
How faith is determined,
How hope is enduring,
How love is prevailing,
How any relationship works,
How I fit into my own life...
Stuff like that.

I will never understand
A lot of things,
But I'll be ******
If I don't make you think
I already do
Understand.
H Oct 2013
Ok so the new mac software has a dictation program. I let it run during an animal physiology lecture, it was so funny I sort of turned it into poetry with a few modifications. (I took out words that it actually got right and were super science-y like T cells and also words like LRP that aren’t things and I only then changed punctuation and physical layout)

Let me know if you can find some meaning or humour in these found poems.

Steve bring it by

the new proteins bars

euros



without some for you

and your music

and also had pasta



see you

so he hears that

you first

use a euro or so

and phone

by a little while

see what is CCR



Heintz hearts tires

in this to the signal

Mickey’s

was so many years over many years.



He uses Stevens now

she is seeing proteins

and we don’t mayor

this is something for me and Olivia



So honestly it was something going on inside

and so is he is always something

when you see

here is the Winterlochen



7 mm,

one of the major cities,

you




search process

which look, it recognizes us

and what is the function ?



start by punching

in short call with the show

in law class this is a law



bread, espressos

:any

isolated



using my own postulations

to hear that fossil

fossil tires, the possibilities…

and here is a hot spot

deep blue sea

response was you

can see you later

mostly out you are

shouldn’t

parsing parties

and seems that all times

so we burgesses to see

whether these fees

so we are you

so busy

with the police officer



so this is the name

off for you Lisa

so is this needed ?

to serve on, since it’s always interesting

and if there is no proof

what is the man ?



Dennis, is the report from 17%?

raise my house and Sivula .

the left sense is the other

10% to leave myself

seven you get his sister.



Or from prefrontal cortex

you were able to listen

else and if we

so this show

on specific salsa

and effective T cell receptor activation





to decrease the settings

so sure so you transfected

as we buy one

a little simple

were able to game

is at seven

and we have two songs

this nonsense

if we were in Gennessee



tires times

who are noticed

that it is the same as control

were able to rescue the response

so by cars seem to be

a long *** tease you





Silverset

remember to Silversun

So we don’t

House and it’s just something so this shows



That Hughes

that Tersini

seems to be downstream

cheated is this

please rewrite Oterson



times we’ve started

for further brothers

specifically incontinence

ball, doesn’t you know the rest ?



of all conferences

and finish eyes gazing

into Cancun East



it’s consecutively

it doesn’t Vermarle



any if you have time

is there any messages

sorry

I was in response

to slight chance



you can also

it’s seven

and consider

you get a little more pronounced

decrease in Austin

so we see here

just curious

to be through soon

does it sound ?

and whether holiday,

actually awesome?

this medicine!

maybe you

got our road shows

to snooze constantly

is your sisters control as low ?

son



linguistically

“ hi you can see some more”

intense

bad

there’s greater

when an awesome

when you
Nathan MacKrith Dec 2018
Or did the cliché use me? It infected my mind, stole my words, and left me linguistically bankrupt. Every dog has its day, and yesterday was most certainly not mine. But all’s well that ends well, unless the well is actually a drowning pool, or a rat graveyard. Only Time will tell-unless I cut out its tongue and use its guts for garters. But without Time we’re all Living on a Prayer seeking a Stairway to Heaven borne by our 99 Red Luft Balloons with nothing but Faith, like Major Tom we’re floating away. Will Another One Bite the Dust before the the finale of this Bohemian Rhapsody? Whatever will be will be, and I will set forth my Long and Lonely Hallelujah long locked in my Heart of Gold, because I’m getting old Under Pressure screaming “let me out”-STOP! Hammer Time!  I may be Lost in the Supermarket, but Great Scot! I’ll get my guaranteed personality because in Nana-Land Anything Goes!
~
NM
12/12/18
inspired by my Muse, Monica L.

presented as part of a Dawkins’-meme based poetrycollection at the 2019 “Trash Talkin’” literary Conference at the University of Regina, in Regina, SK, Canada
Nat Lipstadt Oct 2021
I read to find inspiration.
I write to restore candor to the mind.

N. Scott Momaday

                        <<<<<>>>>>>>>>

Find Inspiration:
a phrase that diodes light, a one-way current within,
making me a selectman, “of thee I sing, of thee I write,
of thee am I composed and fodder for thy dissection &
”my decomposition.

a phrase that reads me more than I read it,
jumps onto my ontological eyeballs, a great leap
forward, and I suppose humdrum you could call it,
inserted inspiration

Restoring Candor:
thus begins expiation+ excoriation+ exhumation;
a longish road to candor restoration, where plausible
deniability is denied, Jedi verbal mind tricks are
just in movies, and candor is really “can-do(r)!”
but
no one dare say that
for fear of being laughed at,
a cancelled jingo-lingo-patriot.
Wed.  Sep. 1, 3:28PM
found this in my scrap file, can’t recall if used but!
Laura Nyro asked me to rhapsodize and rap upon it.

Who could refuse her?
Ayaba Babe Feb 2013
I just want to put my lips on you.
I want you to feel what my kiss feels like against your skin.
You're beautiful on the out and you're
Beautiful on the in
Beautiful
Like a sun kissed beach in the dead of winter,
Like a leech
I will shed you of your skin and **** you down to the ocean and encourage you to swim
Dive in.
Like Trey Songz, but you're sexier.
The *** will be messier
-because I'm so attracted to you
Linguistically attached to you-
Borderline infatuated
Suspended in poetic serenity.
I just want to put my lips on you.
I want you to feel what my kiss feels like against your skin.
I want to worship you in places that God would surely tell me were unholy and forever-more my temple will be barricaded with sin
And I'll tell God,
Tonight, I am not Christian.
Tonight, I want to make devilishly passionate love to you
Tonight
You will feel my lips against your skin.
Am I worth using one?
Your diminishing stock of
Off-the market means of
Birth control?
How shall I love thee?
Let me digitize the ways.
Let me linguistically persuade.
******-the-Woman:
A sport I came late to.
Or early, such as it was so often.
Early, not late & soon, if you
Want your Wordsworth.
Why weren’t there courses?
Why didn’t we learn?
Why weren’t we taught?
Those junior high school
Curriculum directors sure
Missed the boat.
Nora Sayed May 2022
You have failed to accept the truth
Here you are following their semantic rules
Playing the role of a social robot
One that is being brainwashed non stop

It has become a form of art
That ripped your thoughts apart
Indulged you in its pratices
Wrapping you around its clutches

While you rest, they create your reality
Making their words your best rhapsody
When in fact, it's just a treading enemy
Reinforced linguistically and sanctioned culturally

You work hard towards the prosperity of the opressor
And to those who dare fight, you take extreme measures
You have a lopsided point of view of a rigid world
Yet you do nothing to change it and appear undisturbed

Isn't it time to emancipate yourself aginst such actions?
Form your own truth and make your own decisions?
Educate yourself and free your mind
Leave what you thought is the truth behind.
Kriti Gupta Oct 2017
Words are what own me
You string together those letters in a way that controls me

Waiting for phrases laced with clause
Falling victim to a precondition that I never saw

You speak in tangled tongue
Twisted vines of a past coming undone
Linguistically speaking
The damage is done
David W Clare Oct 2015
The Weapons of Mass Seduction    By: David Wayne Clare
(a message about global discrimination)


Imagine a World today with only love Where no one fights, pushes or shoves

Humans racing to share embrace The only thing worn is a smiling face

Working together in nature's land Linguistically silent so as to understand

No passports are needed to travel afar Always feel welcomed no matter who you are

People all happy, through peace we co-exist No war-time armies here for us to enlist

We reap what we sow, no one bears greed When nature provides us all that we need

All join hands together to end all the crime Let's learn from mistakes past now of our mankind

Knowledge is the key to all future instruction As we empower the weapons of mass seduction...

World Peace Now! Love Conquers Hatred! End Discrimination!


(The Anagram of ADOLPH ****** = HOT RAPID HELL
While the Anagram of ALBERT EINSTEIN = TEN ELITE BRAINS)


© In Perpetuity By: David Clare - All Rights Reserved
For my great uncle...Truman Clare

We can't help what we look like, be kind to all brothers and sisters...
Who would you rather be? ****** or Einstein? Life is all about choices...
The anagram is wise!
Ayeshah Mar 2011
I AIN'T EASY & IT TAKES A LOT TO PLEASE ME,
I DO WHAT I WANT & HOW I PLEASE,

PLEASE DON'T DICTATE TO ME,
DON'T TELL ME HOW I MUST BE,
I'M FIRE & ICE,

I'M-HEARTS BROKEN MENDING ON FENCES.....

I'M A LADY WHO KNOWS  JUST WHAT SHE WANTS
AND

ITS UP TO ME TO FULFILL MY DREAMS....
BE A REAL MAN OR LEAVE ME BE!

*DON'T WORRY ABOUT MY SULTRY WALK
OR
WHO MY LEGS PART FOR- IT'S RARE
AND HE MUST
LOVE ME MORE THAN LIFE IT SELF,


I'M NOT MEANT
TO SIT UP ON A SHELF.....

DON'T THROW ACCUSATIONS MY WAY
WITH OUT FACTUAL PROOF,

WHAT I DO IN MY OWN HOME
CAR & OR BED ROOM
DOESN'T CONCERN YOU!

LABEL ME BOLD BLACK SOULFUL
& OH SO PECAN PUERTO RICAN'LY BEAUTIFUL

IF YOU MUST LABEL
ME AT ALL!

DON'T ASK MY NEIGHBOR
CUZ
I'M NOT AFRAID
TO TALK OR FACE YOU.....

GOSSIPER
SPEAK UP
AND

NOT BEHIND MY BACK,
I WORKED FOR MY SHARE
AND
I DON'T HAVE TO
PUT ON AIRS OR AN ACT.


CALL ME A ****,

A ***** OR *****

HA HA HAA HAA....

THINK ABOUT ME .....

YEAH

YOU MUST
CUZ
YOUR LIVES SUCH A BORE!

DON'T WORRY ABOUT
WHAT MY KIDS ARE MIXED WITH
AND WHY  THEY GOT GOOD HAIR!!!!


IT AIN'T YOUR BUSINESS
IF THEIR PLAYING
ON THE LAWN,

LEAVE MY KIDS ALONE
OR YOU'D
BE ****** HARMED.

YOUR WATCHING
MY HOUSE

& WATCHING ME  LIKE A HAWK.....

STALKING ME FROM ACROSS
THE STREET,

IM SURE YOUR IN YOUR
WINDOW WATCHING
TRYING TO SEE....

IMAGING ME

AS YOU BEAT YA MEAT,
SHE'S
ACROSS FROM ME TOO
TRYING TO SEE-

ALL THE WHILE
PLAYING WITH

HER BULLET
VIBRATING TOOL....

SADLY YOUR HATING ME
BUT WISHING

YOU
WERE JUST LIKE ME!

A LINGUISTICALLY - LIONESS.....
BUT YOUR YOU
& I'M
IMPERFECTLY ME!

Always Me Ayeshah
Copyright © Ayeshah K.C.L.N 1977-Present YEAR(s)
All right reserved
Marshal Gebbie May 2015
Oh ye student of Gothic complication
How dost thou writhe in a sea of nightly scented jasmine?
How dost thou cast off the shackles of thy piteous life lost?
To effortlessly shed the ruckfall of protagonists
...in a double narrative of well travelled refinement?

Linguistically intriguing it be. the richness therein enthralls.
A depiction of contemporary expression from a student of sleight of hand, wed in a rapture to the knowledge that whatever thou has written, shall flow through the fingers like a waterfall of soft white sand.
M.
Phantasisms after travelling Beryl Dov's "The Lonely Astronomer"
Jordan Resendes Dec 2013
Why do I feel so inclined to
Repeat what's on my mind?
I reiterate as if to narrate the
Tragic cruelties in life, coping with
Every emotional experience as if a
Rich man sharing his wealth with all
So that he can feel less empty inside.

Logic and reason take no place here
Astringent aspirations left behind
Mostly these sibilants and cacophonies take
Emotional, carnal nature and
No tongue can express correctly so
Thoughts linguistically link through superfluous paper and ink.
Ashley Thao Dam Aug 2016
In this day and age we have this reoccurring issue

Individuals of all generations advocating for a culture of language abuse

Instances of linguistically supported oppression

Whose only intention is to condemn its receivers into a depression

Toxic tongues with the intent to poison your thinking

Promoting all things vile, so fast, nearly blinking

Tell me why words like “****” offend you more

Then the degrading usage of the word “*****”

I’m sick of people using skin tone and gender to map out one’s prospects

Suggesting that not everyone deserves a chance to reach success

Institutionalized prejudice

Don’t stand for any of this

Every individual is beyond just a word

Strive to be the definition that they’ve never seen or heard

Become the human being that they could never be

Resist the forced oppression and strive to be free
#sj
I had a friend, a botanist by training,
A florist by design, who purchased
Two & a half relatively fertile,
Well-water irrigated acres in
Southern California.
(That’s about a hectare for you
Metric freaks.)
The land, Katie Scarlett:
Moreno Valley, Incorporated,
Part of the hilariously misnamed
“INLAND EMPIRE,” to wit:
Riverside and San Bernardino,
The latter county already this year’s
****** Capital of North America.
Last year’s too and the year before that.
ZAP! I am neuro-linguistically
(Thank you, Noam!)
Pre-coded to check the numbers:
The IRAs and bank accounts;
The living trusts; the Gary U.S. bonds.
My safe-deposit box, and right on time,
With a puff of smoke, a drum & cymbal smash,
The Confiscatory Duke appears.
The Duke-Duke-Duke of Earl,
The eternal, the infernal—
Internal Revenue Service:
THE I.R.S. hurdy-gurdy 1040 Man--in this
Case Men--stiffs in dark overcoats & fedoras,
Official 1040 Men, thank you very much,
With a tip of their green eyeshades,
Polite debt-collecting blokes,
No “Break-a yah face” guidos,
Just subtle government lawyers
Garnishing what’s left of your future.
Whoever came up with: “In this world,
Nothing can be said to be certain,
Except death and taxes.”

(Probably Benny C-Note
Go Fly a Kite himself,
Benjamin Franklin, one of
The so-called Founding Fathers—
Need I remind you all, who gave
Alexander Hamilton--an out-of-wedlock
West Indies *******--- Poor Richard’s blessing
To create the U.S. Department of the Treasury,
Which oversees the Revenue Bureau.)
Yeah, Death & Taxes--
Benny sure hit the nail’s head.

But I digress . . .
My friend Louie, the Botanist
Plants two & a half acres,
A hectare of flowers,
Broadcasting, strewing
Like alfalfa grass, many thousand
Bird of Paradise seeds,
Sal’s bird—if you catch my drift—
The Bird of Paradise,
Strange plant, N’est-ce-pas?
Looks like a punk rock
Woody the Woodpecker,
Day-Glo orange plumage,
A strangulation collar,
A ring around the collar of
****** blue hickeys, those freaky rings,
A veritable Sprezzatura!
Louie’s field of simple joy:
Mother Earth at her best.
Victoria Apr 2014
As the pain begins to fade
The words begin to stray

Was this a temporary fix?
to quell what has left me betwixt

The ache and anguish of a 'love' lost
Enabled me linguistically at a high cost

A price which I shall never again pay
I have learned to hold my heart at bay

I shall learn the lines of happier times
And leave the pain to it's demise

For I am the owner of my words
Not a sheep that follows amongst the herds
David W Clare Nov 2014
"W EAPONS OF MASS SEDUCTION" (a message about global discrimination)


Imagine a World today with only love Where no one fights, pushes or shoves

Humans racing to share embrace The only thing worn is a smiling face

Working together in nature's land Linguistically silent so as to understand

No passports are needed to travel afar Always feel welcomed no matter who you are

People all happy, through peace we co-exist No war-time armies here for us to enlist

We reap what we sow, no one bears greed When nature provides us all that we need

All join hands together to end all the crime Let's learn from mistakes past now of our mankind

Knowledge is the key to all future instruction As we empower the weapons of mass seduction...

World Peace Now! Love Conquers Hatred! End Discrimination!


(c) 2011 David John Clare - All Rights Reserved in Perpetuity ▶ S
For my great uncle...Truman Clare
I come with a deep stillness;
I was born with a great shyness, a long quiet, a demurity.
I feel it in the way a thousand notes play softly in an orchestra,
Yet I have no adequate speech to show my appreciation.
I sense it in the way the wind blows warmly in the springtime,
And I can not begin to describe the beauty linguistically, so I do not.
I’ll keep it within my mind, where it belongs.
I can tell it by the way I sit alone,
Writing bland, thoughtless poetry in the dark in late December,
So that even my fingers freeze in uncertainty:
To bring the thoughts from mind to pen- impossible.
I need to make up my mind, I’ve been told,
I need to speak out loud,
Show my heart,
Wear my pride,
Hide my silence-
Once in a while, anyway.
But I find it so hard,
Searching for my voice in the middle of the winter,
Like standing beneath a snowy tree, about to speak,
But you see your breath and so you stop and watch-
I just watch.
I feel that coldness, the quiet, the reserve.
When I’m boisterous, I regret it.
Being loud is fun, until you’re quite again.
I’ll speak tomorrow, I think, knowing I really won’t;
Maybe the next day, but probably not.
But tonight,
Tonight I come with a deep stillness,
And I revel in it.
I have no shame.
For deep stillness
Is mystery,
And mystery is intrigue,
Intrigue leads to complexity,
And complexity...
Is me.
1st Movement:

When I hear the knocks at my door I’m filled with hope. Hope that it’s my good old friend coming to see me again and fill me with his familiar presence. By equal measures, though, I feel fear. Fear that it’s my good old friend back again to fill me with that all too familiar darkness. They’re gentle knocks, sinister but as grating and aggressive as a great dog’s bark. The sound turns the air to a particular darkness which fills my lungs and heart. Fear interspersed with curiosity compels me to answer the door with haste and resignation to his behest, if only to refine this binary mixture of emotions to one or the other. Both are equally awful as each other, for this old friend is not the kind of friend one would willingly welcome. He’s the sort of friend who, when he wants to come in, he will, and I’ve learned over the years that it’s easier to let him. Let him in to wreak his worst on me and let him go again until his return. He always returns.

This ‘good old friend’ I speak of is the crafty external force which deceives me with my heart’s treachery to believe his bogus internality. He deceives me and he deceives my heart, my mind, my soul; my whole being, the whole world. The sooner I let him in and the more open and receptive I am to his abuse, the sooner he will leave. Leave me for a moment’s respite from his damning indictment which screams of anger at his own futility.

The figurative door barks only in my brain, but the definite door knocks gently, devoid of any disturbance. As I open the door the darkness dissipates making way to a bright clarity. My fallible heart was presuming the worst, yet not knowing it. Standing before me is my friend, my brother securely holding in his hands the words written that everything will be alright. Not now, and we know not when, but everything was, and will be again.

I put on a mask of happiness to fool my brother to altruistically manipulate his altruism toward me, but to my own detriment. My own success backfires. My brother, fooled in my eyes, serves the manipulation straight back to me. Facile happiness abounds us both driving enthusiasm with which to examine the words he holds, and to diligently extrapolate the truth from the book he bears quenching our thirst driven by our mutual love for truth.  As his eyes close to another world, another dimension, mine too close seeing only the questions asked in my imagination. What does he under his eye lids see? Where are his words going, and to whom other than me? These are the questions he is here to answer, unbeknownst to me. The questions I’ve been silently asking ever since I learned to question. The same questions every single person in existence, excluding none, asks all the time. Some ask with hope of an answer. Others, enveloped with contentiousness, ask to prove a nonexistent point and perpetually fail to succeed, mocking only themselves. But do they know they mock? The self ridicule is cloaked in self righteousness woven by this world with its daily, bite size propaganda fed through speakers and screens right into the deepest recesses of the mind. The dangling carrot promising satisfaction. Playing on our inherent knowledge that there is something better, something more resemblant of that originally intended perfection for which we all strive in our divinely uneducated way. There is something better than the devastation we witness encompassing our souls and poisoning our hearts, making us sick. A sickness self inflicted from the view of the original intender. A donkey won’t chase the dangling carrot without the hunger. The screens drip feed us hunger and, offering the unattainable antidote, it keeps us chasing.

My brother has come to help me use my mental tools to instil the abiding antidote from these words. Words with which to gradually alter my outlook on their beauty. My previous reverence for poetry changing like the tides, flowing and ebbing over and again, gently moulding the lands into more beauteous forms making known nature’s true name.

יהוה; quintessence of the words,
Of beauty to our ears.
Not love of mind nor fanciful sight,
Nor tenacity of breath of those who might,
Speak provocation of effusive tears.

Diversification of those whose diction,
Expansion was sought imploringly,
Displayed meek thirst,
For knowledge first;
They’ll be blessedly beset linguistically.

Longing rills of liquefied utterance,
Reverberating waves aplenty,
Bellowing whispers loud,
Heard from within a shroud,
Giving rise to a barrel never empty.

Roaring murmurs of ripples in thousands
Cascading to oceans below,
A fast falling downward demise,
Sounding white truth and that of black lies,
Of onomatopoeic H2O.

Not stringent is the string of letters,
Lax are the words to be strung.
Not sequentially,
But dulcetly,
Outward beauty will be rung.

With a patterned strike using one’s cerebella Mallet
On the gong of one’s cerebral stock,
Eloquence imbues,
The mind your ears use,
Curtailing the perpetual tick tock – tick tock.

Facile masks circle that face,
Consuming as they revolve.
Filched is elation,
Taken is creation.
Yet knowing the inevitable resolve.


We know now, consciously or not, with whom we originate. What stops us from connecting the dots. A dot-to-dot; something so easy to do, but where those dots continue to move, we fail to place the blame succeeding to rue. Frustration turns to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to he; The dot mover, the obstructer, the distractor, the decoy from truth, from love, justice, from every good thing. We know whose power the world lies within, yet choose ignorance over the truth which we already know in our hearts.

These realisations are made like Wordsworth’s frost at midnight. They perform their secret ministry through the air, over my body and penetrating my mind and heart, upheld by any wind from my or my brothers mouth. Each and every utterance supports any later rumination on the truth, the lie, and anything in between these extreme poles of all that’s known and that which is unknown, seen and unseen, loved and hated.

These reciprocal uplifting and upbuilding exchanges, each a divine gift, a string of gems to have and hold for time indefinite, aid an understanding of the one responsible for such. So little time we have left, yet such extravagant lengths of this most precious dimension is wasted arguing for and against, but never asking who or why? Surely only a fool argues a case about that which is unknown. The facts form irrefutability, yet the propensity to form too fast with a one sided judgement still wins while we dote on our own supposed intelligence.

Acknowledging the light seeping through the cracks in the still darkness, he rages with a concentrated anger at his self generated, perpetual, vindictive blindness. He is that getter in the way of things, the shadow caster, the adversary, שָׂטָן.

He is the darkness licking round the door frame, to my mind with all his might and yet crafty restraint. Not one of us can escape this darkness, not on our own. We can, though, shed light on it. Light will always win where both are present. Darkness may be the fundamental state, but where light is allowed, darkness is always destroyed.

But then it comes over me like a tidal wave. A darkness rushes at me like a sledgehammer for making this realisation. Past the point of no return do I give in. I give up. It’s too much. Only so much ducking and weaving can one man’s energy let him do till there is none left, and now it’s gone. I’ve run dry to doom, run into the ground. I’m broken.

Time rolls on filled with a single solid nothing. The weeks pass. The days, the hours go by sniggering and sneering. The clock’s face look down his nose and finds me. To us, time seems the highest of all dimensions, but as obscure as it is, by what does it run? A question we have not enough time to fully answer scientifically. Science by it’s very nature is the perpetuation of posing question after question until the answer lies beyond comprehension. Posing question after question to answer with evidence is categorically finite. Uncertainty is an underlying rule pervading science itself, though faith follows beyond the apparent end. One will never know just how much of a threat obtaining this faith can be to he, the adversary.

Life’s doorman presenting my open garment inviting me into the warm wrappings of my winter coat to deceptively soften the mourning of the summer we lost. That paradise on which we passed. Beaconing me into the warm wrapping only to send me astray, away, adrift from the truth to eternal ruth and regret of one day.

At this my brother departs for his own trials in his own house, thus leaving me to petition and plead for a helping hand out of the ill-lighted and lurid cavernous fog I find myself in. There’s a relentless pain pervading my whole soul, but the pane in the wall frames nature’s beauty which taunts me so. A picture plane presenting a small glimmer of the bliss meant to be. A hope of spiritual prosperity, assurance for which we have been given, though the reminders are not easy. The doorman’s world drives his crafty vehicle of dangling carrots with such ferocity to blind us. The speed blinds the minds of those who stopping, would realise there’s string and a stick. It’s a trick. A trick which has seen us plough through a vast array of food, a banquet, chasing the ever out of reach embellished single grain, though always the closest.

Try as he might to perpetuate this fight, us, his captives, continue to fight longer and harder with a never ending and unlimited supply of the best weapon known to man. Love. From where does it flow? To where does it go? First we have to know, and once harboured, we must direct its flow.

Five years have passed. Five summers with the length of five long winters, and again I hear these waters rolling from their mountain springs with soft in-land murmur.
(William Wordsworth - Lines Written at Tintern Abbey)

The mountain spring is where. A monumental spring of an historic scale from mount zion producing a never ending murmur of love to cascade over the ocean of a people lowering themselves to the strongest and most sturdy section of the mountain.

As the result of a string of mutations, always mutating and never improving, is always the same, such a long string will never become rope. An infinite number of monkeys given an infinite number of typewriters and infinity itself will rewrite the entire works of Shakespear. Those who read a Shakespear and surmise the existence of a lot of literate monkeys, are vacuous victims of international mind-numbing, but wilfully so.

Saturated with such a concentrated concoction of diverse threads erratically woven into a veil, a cloak of lies behind which their lack of faith is hiding, a falsity for their fallacy; the world frantically searches for truths using tools honed only by the world, on which the adversary hones his trident. Needles in haystacks the truths may be, but once found they’re overt, obviously. They are the flames that burn the darkness, a holocaust of murk, the Wally amongst the distracting cacophonous din of hustle-bustle of faceless herds trudging in binary directions to their fraudulent feed of false food disguised as noble inflections.

The casting of light in our eyes, as pennies of an historic value drop, irradiates the notion that our eyeballs have been boring into truths and truth has been peering back for all time past. Have we not seen because the want to see was lacking, or did we not see because our ability was cracking? Were the lights on with nobody home, or were they residing in darkness? The utterance of my brother came inspired, “If we focus on misfortune, we will reap what we sow. Focus on the truth and let everyone know”.

Asking is merely making known one’s requirement for information. Prior to this we must attest the intent of receiving such. Though, the truth has been granted devoid of request, negate it has not our silent behest. Do we need to know the truths we now see in plain sight, to live our lives in harmony?

In a world without compassion, where the hungry are starved, the thirsty desiccated, the poor deprived, and the weak expended; does the supposed prime driver really give two hoots about the starving, desiccated, deprived and expendable; me, you, us? Ostensibly not.

Surely a world of war where we’re sick and we suffer will have been founded by not one whit related to love, but a halfwit wilfully innate and cognate to hate. Paying heed to words written with the elusive love we seek, I see the distinction from consent and cause. Trudging through Satan’s cesspit with consent from whom we cannot blame for causing the sewage in which we wade.

I know there is to do, but what to do, how to do, where to do and when. Knowing why is too little to do by. Answers are only information and information is worthless until actions are born. A gift unappreciated lies stagnant and not used. A gift gratefully received produces infectious joy.
2nd Movement to be posted upon completion.
Xanadu; quintessence of the words,
Of beauty to our ears.
Not love of mind nor fanciful sight,
Nor tenacity of breath of those who might,
Speak provocation of effusive tears.

Diversification of those whose diction,
Expansion was sought imploringly,
Displayed meek thirst,
For knowledge first;
They’ll be blessedly beset linguistically.

Longing rills of liquefied utterance,
Reverberating waves aplenty,
Bellowing whispers loud,
Heard from within a shroud,
Giving rise to a barrel never empty.

Roaring murmurs of ripples in thousands
Cascading to oceans below,
A fast falling downward demise,
Sounding white truth and that of black lies,
Of onomatopoeic H2O.

Not stringent is the string of letters,
Lax are the words to be strung.
Not sequentially,
But dulcetly,
Outward beauty will be rung.

With a patterned strike using one’s cerebella Mallet
On the gong of one’s cerebral stock,
Eloquence imbues,
The mind your ears use,
Curtailing the perpetual tick tock – tick tock.

Facile masks circle that face,
Consuming as they revolve.
Filched is elation,
Taken is creation.
Yet knowing the inevitable resolve.
Poetic T May 2017
Every sunset is one that bleeds within
my perception, I don't no why its
just like seeing my syllables dissipate
into a  hue of clarity. I'm a pill away from
ending it, to find its different in my mind.

My collected conciseness that rises luminous,
but then dissolving as its brightness
falls into a void of white stones descending
into the nothingness inside of me.  
I'm close to something beyond my perception.

I'm not linguistically challenged,
but I'm one pill away from ending
it. I've collected my memories upon
this discoloured white, and its just
a button from fading to nullity.
Don't worry just slight venting :)
Ottar Dec 2014
You talk trash like a doorman,
who treats others like doormats,
thinking you have that right, cause,
you fired first!

did you get lost on your way to a poetry
slam, and so you have no where to compete?

as self appointed (shr)editor,
you stir the *** and leave the room,
leaving your P.I.E.D. in plain sight,
just waiting for it to go off.

do you unto others as you would have do unto you,
somehow you forgot it is true, and I am sorry,
but no worry, I have even liked some of your
real
poetry,

What Was I Thinking?,

Observe life and report in rhyme or prose,
But rhyme with hurtful slime, uglier than my
ugliest of toes, might be poetry but stirs woe in me,
dress it up in classic forms,
who let you create a standard of norms?

take us on fanciful journeys, tell us of loves lost
and loves won, but instead you
load your keyboard with angry
words, waiting for the sound you like,
the sound of your own voice, PULL!

to achieve release...

who died and left you in charge,
or are you sitting sad and alone,
on one of the google barges?

cute trick to hide in hash tags,
not very original, gotta hand it
to you,............................................... you are the best dressed word
bully around. linguistically pure,
of that I am sure, for no human,
would c\ut a/nother's .............................artistic creation
down, unless perfection was in the D.N.A.

what did the others word-
hunters go on vacation and
you got stuck taking turns?
What a way to waste a holiday?
So be a good gourmand, and
get back to excessive feasting,
on food, and
not people's
works.

KTWK
P.I.E.D. - polemic incendiary english device
D.N.A - really?
KTWK- ha ha you will figure it out, eventually
I try to ignore some who pick and target other poets, see I did not even put your name in this rant...or did I?
Mark Lecuona Apr 2015
Boulevard royalty mingling with animals in open cages
Instances become signposts for alleged tolerance
But it’s time to go back to the gates of where we’re from
To tell of speculative social forays to an adoring audience

Seamless air pockets provoking thought, constructing
miniature crosses piercing walls where painful paintings were hung
But you decided being a crow was better than being a rooster
There is no difference but black is the color of the song being sung

Passionately significant but intellectually deficient
Sensitive jealousies masquerading polemic tendencies
Dreads worn for life not for the fears of who would notice
An intrusive memory loss was all that could save their enemies

As ludicrous as foot stools for wheels or sleep when morning breaks
Social dynamics treated reservedly by contemporaneous mocking birds
Philistine rounder’s no more or less competent than square faced priests
Believe me, the time we forget is only because we cannot say the words

The story ended before the introduction did because they never met
The pre-text may be questioned but the post mortem changes nothing
The only evil that is selected are outrages that inoculate us from shock
Warm friendliness does not sink the rocky rapids that are no longer asking

Confounding lines of judgment and reckless carriages await their turn
Canon or pulp; equally intriguing depending on which way towards the sun
Systematic folding chairs gaze at danger but in the manner a priest would
He swallows before telling the congregation he is not a man or the one

The reconstruction of peace begins with a soft breeze and earth tones
Necessary or essential, it is all the same for the time it takes to be sane
Within the sacrament principle we beg pain to restrict our movements
Linguistically inexperienced emotionally spent will we ever be the same

Dreams of flying with leaves under wires calmly watching man fall short
Incantation pastoral discovery of what aspect we could never know
Until you feel nothing between lovers except what is written on the heart
The one who walked away will never know the one who told them so
Meagan Moore Jan 2014
I tend
Like ambling child
To erector construction
Jamming thought in quip
Undoing linguistically threaded intersection
Hopefully without catch

I cogitate
I need supervision
Or I might gobble up the apparatus
Choking on a plastic word
Poetic T Jul 2016
I am in a collision of dominos I fell on to
the dislike of one, words were etched known
truths but like puppets they suspended me on
the ropes of what was warned now I am
holding my own on a cascade of eventual obscurity

whims of singularity that delegate to the masses
fall on me with much weight but I am not of subtle
innuendoes, I care not for those doors shut for you
only impede yourselves of not reading my verses.

When one is the voice of many and all fall into the
oblivion of there words, I do not hear them drop,
I heed not there linguistically challenged sense.
Saying a true that you are not the master of me I will
ink more words. I don't care what ill winds you spread.
The dominos fall I was banned for rightful words now others follow a false profit, well I`m a non believer so ***** you and your sheep to the slaughter of word, cry me a river cos ill not swim it ill **** in it, forgetting your immaturity and you can swim in your own words
Kenya83 Nov 2017
I guess I’d say I’m lucky, it all comes down to luck,
Historically, I’m born to a time of not giving a ****

Geographically I’m free, in a nation filled with greed
But in the greater scheme of things,
I’ve never known hunger or planted a seed

Racially I’m privileged, or so that’s what they say,
Though my gripe with my lack of exotic is a vain and ignorant betray
I’ve never endured or felt insecure by the lack of melanin that came my way

Despite the socialistic statistics, I see realistic logistic
Surviving ballistics, Linguistically twisted,
Academically average, emotionally insecure, certainly unsure
What emotions are for

Yes my parents loved me and sure they also ******* up
However, I still had to make my choices
Of getting high in a garage block, or getting up
Cin Nov 2012
Awaiting the arrival of a new day, emotions fluctuating ceaselessly. Cross legged on my fortress, I smile and stretch as my mind is full of linguistically witty poetry of Mr. Ohara.
Perhaps tomorrow shall  be a brighter day with new promises and feelings that will bring me temporary relief.
Temporary relief seeing as nothing is ever permanent. It's the darnedest thing, isn't it?
The uncertainty of it all.
We learn to accept.
We learn to keep going on.
2011
zebra Nov 2021
I’ve been reading a lot of poetry for quite a few years and maybe this is just me, as in some quirky bias I suffer, or misapprehension about poetry, but much of what I read doesn’t feel much like poetry at all. Now, one can rightfully argue that poetry can be anything, and that’s okay because if we take a look at poetry’s history what we see is a continuum of thesis and antithesis, flagging us who read the stuff that anything goes. So where does that leave us? I might argue that since there are so many distinct kinds of poems that a definition alludes us all together and when we hear the noun p o e t r y, we can only assign the familiar poetic shape as its definitive territory, meaning a few words in a line that are stacked up on each other, which we generally think of as verse with multiplied stacks fulfilling our expectation of poem. I’m thinking if we want to go with that poetry digresses to a linguistic charmless flat land characteristic of prose, relative to at least some of the poetic writing that is highly lyrical, sonically potent, novel, intonated, linguistically muscular, and dynamically connective to the reader. Poetry can take creative liberties that prose customarily does not or cannot take. Poetry may have different linguistic needs like different kinds of English. For example, articles may be absent towards a more concentrated synthesis for phrasing, a lyrical lilt, stream of consciousness boarding on the abstract et al.
Being a poet is born of a feeling that a face may be a liquid surface. That time is malleable, and that there is always something going on in-between the lines gleaned from inexplicable moments of inner disjuncture or a hesitating breath.
Poetry may facilitate that mind may emerge from the concrete objective into the mirrors of the marvelous or uncanny like a burped half avocado and fish head at 2 am in the morning transmuting into a torrent of dormice and angels in delirious avenues of falling stars and looking glasses.
Poetry may address intersectional dimensionality populated by visions and voices of primordial undercurrents, that stories may not lend themselves to. Poetry may be metalinguistic and a fragment of the inner life both collective and individuated. Poetry may work from the inside out without referencing the temporal, locational, and name it and claim it nouns and pronouns typical of prose. So, here’s the poetry problem. Why is it that 99% of the poetry I read here and places like it remain basically written just like prose, linguistically and sonically vacuous, largely bereft of similes, metaphors and all the other strategic devices that can make poetry progressive, inventive and deeply resonate, except of course that they are stacked and columned giving the appearance of poems?
~~~~~
EXAMPLES OF POEMS THAT CAN BE CALLED POETRY
Ballad in A
BY CATHY PARK HONG
A Kansan plays cards, calls Marshall
a crawdad, that barb lands that rascal a slap;
that Kansan ******* scats,
camps back at caballada ranch.
Hangs kack, ax, and camp hat.
Kansan’s nag mad and rants can’t bask,
can’t bacchanal and garland a lass,
can’t at last brag can crack Law’s *****,
Kansan’s cantata rang at that ramada ranch,
Mañana, Kansan snarls, I’ll have an armada
and thwart Law’s brawn,
slam Law a **** mass war path.
Marshall’s a marksman, maps Kansan’s track,
calm as a shaman, sharp as a hawk,
Says: That dastard Kansan’s had
and gnaws lamb fatback.
At dawn, Marshall stalks that ranch,
packs a gat and blasts Kansan’s ***
and Kansan gasps, blasts back.
A flag ***** at half-mast.~~~~~
Ocean of Earth

BY GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE
TRANSLATED BY RON PADGETT
To G. de Chirico
I have built a house in the middle of the Ocean
Its windows are the rivers flowing from my eyes
Octopi are crawling all over where the walls are
Hear their triple hearts beat and their beaks peck against the windowpanes
House of dampness
House of burning
Season’s fastness
Season singing
The airplanes are laying eggs
Watch out for the dropping of the anchor
Watch out for the shooting black ichor
It would be good if you were to come from the sky
The sky’s honeysuckle is climbing
The earthly octopi are throbbing
And so very many of us have become our own gravediggers
Pale octopi of the chalky waves O octopi with pale beaks
Around the house is this ocean that you know well
And is never still
Translated from the French
Source: Poetry (October 2015)~~~~~

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
BY OCEAN VUONG
i
Tell me it was for the hunger
& nothing less. For hunger is to give
the body what it knows
it cannot keep. That this amber light
whittled down by another war
is all that pins my hand
to your chest.
i
You, drowning
between my arms —
stay.
You, pushing your body
into the river
only to be left
with yourself —
stay.
i
I’ll tell you how we’re wrong enough to be forgiven. How one night, after
backhanding
mother, then taking a chainsaw to the kitchen table, my father went to kneel
in the bathroom until we heard his muffled cries through the walls.
And so I learned that a man, in ******, was the closest thing
to surrender.
i
Say surrender. Say alabaster. Switchblade.
Honeysuckle. Goldenrod. Say autumn.
Say autumn despite the green
in your eyes. Beauty despite
daylight. Say you’d **** for it. Unbreakable dawn
mounting in your throat.
My thrashing beneath you
like a sparrow stunned
with falling.
i
Dusk: a blade of honey between our shadows, draining.
i
I wanted to disappear — so I opened the door to a stranger’s car. He was divorced. He was still alive. He was sobbing into his hands (hands that tasted like rust). The pink breast cancer ribbon on his keychain swayed in the ignition. Don’t we touch each other just to prove we are still here? I was still here once. The moon, distant & flickering, trapped itself in beads of sweat on my neck. I let the fog spill through the cracked window & cover my fangs. When I left, the Buick kept sitting there, a dumb bull in pasture, its eyes searing my shadow onto the side of suburban houses. At home, I threw myself on the bed like a torch & watched the flames gnaw through my mother’s house until the sky appeared, bloodshot & massive. How I wanted to be that sky — to hold every flying & falling at once.
i
Say amen. Say amend.
Say yes. Say yes
anyway.
i
In the shower, sweating under cold water, I scrubbed & scrubbed.
i
In the life before this one, you could tell
two people were in love
because when they drove the pickup
over the bridge, their wings
would grow back just in time.
Some days I am still inside the pickup.
Some days I keep waiting.
i
It’s not too late. Our heads haloed
with gnats & summer too early
to leave any marks.
Your hand under my shirt as static
intensifies on the radio.
Your other hand pointing
your daddy’s revolver
to the sky. Stars falling one
by one in the cross hairs.
This means I won’t be
afraid if we’re already
here. Already more
than skin can hold. That a body
beside a body
must make a field
full of ticking. That your name
is only the sound of clocks
being set back another hour
& morning
finds our clothes
on your mother’s front porch, shed
like week-old lilies.
Source: Poetry (December 2014)
~~~~~
SOMETIMES WE’VE GOT TO READ IT TO KNOW WHAT IT IS.

— The End —