The Tragic True LOVE Story of Blanche Monnier

Just for falling in LOVE
With a commoner
Blanche Monnier was kept in attic
For 25 years
Blanche's True LOVE survived

The year was 1876

In midst of the Third Republic period in France
When the historical power struggle of royalist ******* and republican radicals were discussed in bourgeois socialites
That's the time when
In a small place called Poitiers
Four hours away from Paris
There lived:
Madam Louise Monnier
Wealthy and prominent
Member of CLASS society
Known in Parisian high society
For their charitable works
Who had received many community awards too

With her son
Marcel Monnier
A brilliant student
And a prominent lawyer
Well respected in Paris

And her daughter
Blanche
(Marcel's sister)
Twenty Five years old
Beautiful beyond words
Intelligent
Very gentle and good natured
A young socialite in rich circles

Lived happily in their
Monnier Estate

It was during this time
Blanche fell in LOVE with a suitor
Let us call him
James
Who lived in her neighborhood
Sadly he was not young
Nor was he from rich aristocrat family
He was elderly man,
Basically a commoner
And an unsuccessful penniless lawyer

Madam Louise Monnier - disapproved
Of such alliances for her daughter Blanche and
Insisted Blanche to marry a more suitable man
Of her own age, class and status

But in passion of her LOVE -
Blanche profusely disagreed
And Madame Monnier got angry
They quarreled and argued
One day Madame Monnier locked Blanche
In a dungeon attic ordering
"Until you would agree - you are imprisoned"

Years passed
But Blanche was stubborn
So much in deep LOVE with James
She did not relent to her Mother's wishes

So the story goes....
Nine years passed

On this side James - Blanche's suitor
The beau too died in 1885

It is said that
Blanche's brother Marcel apposed his mother
To at least set Blanche FREE now
But Madam Louise Monnier had absolute
Stronghold and control over the family
Thus Marcel aboded to his mother's decree
And Blanche was kept locked still after

In the eyes of society
Beautiful young Blanche had simply disappeared
Without a clue

Madame Monnier and Marcel mourned
In front of everyone
Stating Blanche ran away
And continued to live their lives
As normal as those rich aristocrat families live

No one gave much thought to this
Everyone went about their life
As if nothing had happened

With time - they say
Blanche was forgotten
From everyone's memory

For over 25 years,
Blanche remained in a attic dungeon
Tied to her bed
Waiting for her LOVE
To LOVE, to be LOVED by JAMES
But her mother Madam Louise,
And her brother Marcel
With their two servants
No one helped her to be FREE

Blanched was chained in a dark attic room
She was accompanied by rats and lice
Day after day
Living in dirt and darkness
Alone, isolated, in solitude
Blanche became insane
Drown in her own tears and
In company of
Rats, bugs and pests...
And rotten odor

Rumors say that it was one of the female servants
Who slipped the secret of
Monnier Estate's beautiful daughter Blanche
To her boyfriend
Who immediately wrote a letter to
The Attorney General

In 1901,
Attorney General of Paris
Received an anonymous note
Handwritten and unsigned

The content were disturbing
And The Attorney General
Sent his police team to investigate
The Police arrived to search Monnier Estate

At first,
Police couldn't find anything unusual
Until they came across strange odor
Coming from upper floors

When the Police went upstairs
Madam Louise Monnier sat
On the ground floor living hall
Calmly reading a book

When the Police approached
The attic room
From where the odor was coming
They saw that the room was padlocked

Realizing something amiss
Police smashed the lock and
Broke open the room

The horrors lay within

A pitch dark room
With only one window
Shut closed with black curtains

The stench of room was so over whelming
That immediately the window was broke open

With the light coming in
The police realized that the bad odor
Was because of rotting food
That littered all over the floor

And in a corner - there was a bed
Where an emaciated women was chained

She was our Blanche Monnier
Fifty years old now
Tied to the bed
It was over two decades
She had not even seen the sun
And she had lived
In her own excrements

That beauty of youth
That youthful LOVELY being
A divine, kind, pure hearted girl
Did not even resembled like a human

She was naked
Chained like animals to the bed
Lying on a straw mattress

She was completely
Frightened and delirious

She weighed just 50 pounds (22 kilograms)

Police covered Blanche in a white sheet
And took her to the hospital
Madam Louise Monnier - and Marcel were arrested
For this atrocious inhumane crime
Of imprisoning and treating Blanche
So badly
For what? -
for a natural act of LOVING

"We can not even comprehend
What a LOVER goes through
When subjected to such punishments"

Blanche was horrendously malnourished
In hospital she was lucid to be rescued and freed
She exclaimed...
"How lovely it is to breathe the fresh air"

When she was informed about James
She could not even remember
The reason for her current state -
Was "LOVE"
Her eyes were hollow, her face was blank

There was public out-cry all over France
It was loud and clear
Public out-raged was brimming
They wanted the mother and brother punished

And Madam Louise Monnier -
Who was seventy years old then
suffering from heart disease
Could not take the shock
Of such societal backlash
For the horrible crime she committed

It is accounted that
Madam Louise Monnier
Died in police custody
15 days after Blanche's rescue
Police say -
Probably of a heart attack

Brother Marcel was imprisoned for 15 months
He confessed of
Not being directly part of the crime
But just acting under pressure of his mother

The whole blame was put on Madam Louise Monnier
Brother Marcel was considered only an accomplice
And thus when Marcel pleaded innocent and sought pardon
He was acquitted and set FREE
Such were the laws of those days

Our LOVER - Blanche Monnier
Had suffered greatly
The mental trauma
Of LOVE longing had
Lasting psychological damage

There after
Blanche lived in a French Sanitarium
Till she died in 1913
Twelve year after she was liberated

People say - that at times
The nursing staff used to hear Blanche
Sing the songs of LOVE

And they used to see Blanche
Talking LOVINGLY with a non-existing person
Most probably that person was "James"
The man she LOVED more than her life

Thus is remembered
The story of Blanche's LOVE

She suffered but never relented
To her mother's wishes
"To forget her LOVER James"

It was impossible to survive for 25 years
Without proper food, light, sun, or any human company
In that tiny dark dungeon attic
But Blanche did miraculously survive
With the hope that one day
She will be FREE
She will meet James
And she will LOVE James
And she will say to James
"My Jamie, see I did truly LOVE YOU"

That's the power of TRUE LOVE

January Colours

In the winter garden
of the Villa del Parma
by the artist’s studio
green grass turns vert de terre
and the stone walls
a wet mouse’s back
grounding neutral – but calm,
soothing like calamine
in today’s mizzle,
a permanent dimpsey,
fine drenching drizzle,
almost invisible, yet
saturating skylights
with evidence of rain.

February Colours

In the kitchen’s borrowed light,
dear Grace makes bread  
on the mahogany table,
her palma gray dress
bringing the outside in.

Whilst next door, inside
Vanessa’s garden room
the French windows
firmly shut out this
season’s bitter weather.

There, in the stone jar
beside her desk,
branches of heather;
Erica for winter’s retreat,
Calluna for spring’s expectation.

Tea awaits in Duncan’s domain.
Set amongst the books and murals,
Spode’s best bone china  
turning a porcelain pink
as the hearth’s fire burns bright..

Today
in this house
a very Bloomsbury tone,
a truly Charleston Gray.

March Colours

Not quite daffodil
Not yet spring
Lancaster Yellow
Was Nancy’s shade

For the drawing room
Walls of Kelmarsh Hall
And its high plastered ceiling
Of blue ground blue.

Playing cat’s paw
Like the monkey she was
Two drab husbands paid
For the gardens she made,
For haphazard luxuriance.

Society decorator, partner
In paper and paint,
She’d walk the grounds
Of her Palladian gem
Conjuring for the catalogue
Such ingenious labels:

Brassica and Cooking Apple
Green to be seen
In gardens and orchards
Grown to be greens.

April Colours

It would be churlish
to expect, a folly to believe,
that green leaves would  
cover the trees just yet.

But blossom will:
clusters of flowers,
Damson white,
Cherry red,
Middleton pink,

And at the fields’ edge
Primroses dayroom yellow,
a convalescent colour
healing the hedgerows
of winter’s afflictions.

Clouds storm Salisbury Plain,
and as a skimming stone
on water, touch, rise, touch
and fall behind horizon’s rim.
Where it goes - no one knows.

Far (far) from the Madding Crowd
Hardy’s concordant cove at Lulworth
blue by the cold sea, clear in the crystal air,
still taut with spring.

May Colours

A spring day
In Suffield Green,
The sky is cook’s blue,
The clouds pointing white.

In this village near Norwich
Lives Marcel Manouna
Thawbed and babouched
With lemurs and llamas,
Leopards and duck,
And more . . .

This small menagerie
Is Marcel’s only luxury
A curious curiosity
In a Norfolk village
Near to Norwich.

So, on this
Blossoming
Spring day
Marcel’s blue grey
Parrot James
Perched on a gate
Squawks the refrain

Sumer is icumen in
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweþ sed and bloweþ med
And springþ þe wde nu,
Sing cuccu!

June

Thrownware
earth red
thrown off the ****
the Japanese way.
Inside hand does the work,
keeps it alive.
Outside hand holds the clay
and critically tweaks.
Touch, press, hold, release
Scooting, patting, spin!
Centering: the act
precedes all others
on the potter’s wheel.
Centering: the day
the sun climbs highest
in our hemisphere.
And then affix the glaze
in colours of summer:
Stone blue
Cabbage white
Print-room yellow
Saxon green
Rectory red
And fire!

July Colours

I see you
by the dix blue
asters in the Grey Walk
via the Pear Pond,
a circuit of surprises
past the Witches House,
the Radicchio View,
to the beautifully manicured
Orangery lawns, then the
East and West Rills of
Gertrude’s Great Plat.

And under that pea green hat
you wear, my mistress dear,
though your face may be April
there’s July in your eyes of such grace.

I see you wander at will
down the cinder rose path
‘neath the drawing-room blue sky.

August Colours

Out on the wet sand
Mark and Sarah
take their morning stroll.
He, barefoot in a blazer,
She, linen-light in a wide-brimmed straw,
Together they survey
their (very) elegant home,
Colonial British,
Classic traditional,
a retreat in Olive County, Florida:
white sandy beaches,
playful porpoises,
gentle manatees.

It’s an everfine August day
humid and hot
in the hurricane season.
But later they’ll picnic on
Brinjal Baigan Bharta
in the Chinese Blue sea-view
dining room fashioned
by doyen designer
Leta Austin Foster
who ‘loves to bring the ocean inside.
I adore the colour blue,’ she says,
‘though gray is my favourite.’

September

A perfect day
at the Castle of Mey
beckons.
Watching the rising sun
disperse the morning mists,
the Duchess sits
by the window
in the Breakfast Room.
Green leaves have yet to give way
to autumn colours but the air
is seasonably cool, September fresh.

William is fishing the Warriner’s Pool,
curling casts with a Highlander fly.
She waits; dressed in Power Blue
silk, Citron tights,
a shawl of India Yellow
draped over her shoulders.
But there he is, crossing the home beat,
Lucy, her pale hound at his heels,
a dead salmon in his bag.

October Colours

At Berrington
blue, clear skies,
chill mornings
before the first frosts
and the apples ripe for picking
(place a cupped hand under the fruit
and gently ‘clunch’).

Henry Holland’s hall -
just ‘the perfect place to live’.
From the Picture Gallery
redolent in portraits
and naval scenes,
the view looks beyond
Capability’s parkland
to Brecon’s Beacons.

At the fourteen-acre pool
trees, cane and reed
mirror in the still water
where Common Kingfishers,
blue green with fowler pink feet
vie with Grey Herons,
funereal grey,
to ruffle this autumn scene.

November Colours

In pigeon light
this damp day
settles itself
into lamp-room grey.

The trees intone
farewell farewell:
An autumnal valedictory
to reluctant leaves.

Yet a few remain
bold coloured

Porphry Pink
Fox Red
Fowler
Sudbury Yellow

hanging by a thread
they turn in the stillest air.

Then fall
Then fall

December Colours*

Green smoke* from damp leaves
float from gardens’ bonfires,
rise in the silver Blackened sky.

Close by the tall railings,
fast to lichened walls
we walk cold winter streets

to the warm world of home, where
shadows thrown by the parlour fire
dance on the wainscot, flicker from the hearth.

Hanging from our welcome door
see how incarnadine the berries are
on this hollyed wreath of polished leaves.

if i was a pearl i’d feel itchy scratchy stuck inside an oyster shell if i was a tree i’d  be a big fat redwood fantasizing about Julia Butterfly Hill living and peeing around me if i was a dog i’d be a Catahoula hound if i was Italian i’d be Sicilian if i was pasta i’d be spaghetti if i was Icelandic i’d be Bjork if i was a rock star i’d be Elvis Presley Bob Dylan Jimi Hendrix Jim Morrison John Lennon Bruce Spingsteen Maynard James Keenan if i was i writer i’d be Herman Melville Mark Twain James Joyce William Faulkner Thomas Bernhard Yukio Mishima Naguib Mahfouz Phillip K. **** Gabriel Garcia Marquez Annie Proulx Lydia Davis if i was a poet i’d be Walt Whitman Sylvia Plath Ted Hughes Gwendolyn Brooks Pablo Neruda  Heather McHugh Carl Sandburg Robert Frost Arthur Rimbaud Dante Alighieri Homer if i was a painter i’d be Leonardo Da Vinci Michelangelo da Caravaggio Johan Vermeer Rembrandt van Rijn Paul Cezanne Marcel Duchamp Jackson ******* Mark Rothko Ad Reinhardt Anselm Kiefer Susan Rothenberg if i was a photographer i’d be Man Ray Ansel Adams Edward Weston Diane Arbus Robert Mapplethorpe Sally Mann Helmut Newton Richard Avedon Annie Leibovitz if i was a philosopher i’d be Socrates Plato Aristotle Jean Jacques Rousseau Sören Kierkegaard Immanuel Kant Karl Marx Georg Hegel Friedrich Nietzsche Henry David Thoreau Ralph Waldo Emerson  Jean-Paul Sartre Jean Baudrillard Michel Foucault if i was a singer i’d be Woody Guthrie Otis Redding Grace Slick Bob Marley Joni Mitchell Marvin Gaye Johnny Cash Patsy Cline June Carter Patti Smith Chrissie Hinde Nick Cave P J Harvey Beyonce if i wa a band i’d be Velvet Underground Ramones *** Pistols Clash Cure Smiths Joy Division Uncle Tupelo Pixies Nirvana Nine Inch Nails Madrugada Sigur Ros White Stripes Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra Justice of the Unicorns if i was a boot i’d be Chippewa Frye Ariat Red Wing Tony Lama Wellington if i was a shoe i’d be Christian Louboutin Jimmy Choo Kedds Chaco Chuck Taylor p f flyer if i was a dress i’d be Channel Dolce & Gabbanna Giorgio Armani Marc Jacobs Comme des Garçons if i was a cowboy shirt i’d be H bar C Rockmount Temp Tex Karman Wrangler Levis Strauss Lee if i was a hat i’d be a Stetson Borsalino Stephen Jones if i was a fruit i’d be a mango apple banana blackberry if i was an scent i’d smell like fresh perspiration jasmine sandalwood ylang ylang the ocean if i was a doctor i’d be a gynecologist neurosurgeon if i was a flower i’d be a hibiscus rose orchard if i was a stone i’d be a sparkling ruby diamond opal if i was a knife i’d be a k-bar switch-blade machete if i was a gun i’d be a Remington Winchester Beretta Glock AK-47 if i was a car i’d be a Lamborghini Ferrari BMW Saab Volkswagen GTO Ford Mustang Dodge Challenger if i was a  TV show i’d be Law and Order if i was actor i’d be Charlie Chaplin Humphrey Bogart Steve McQueen Robert De Niro Ed Norton Shawn Penn if i was an actress i’d be Marlene Dietrich Ingrid Bergman Natalie Wood Audrey Hepburn Marilyn Monroe Helen Mirren  Meryil Streep Brigette Fonda Robin Wright Julianne Moore Angie Harmon if i was a female comedian i’d be Gilda Radner Lily Tomlin Nora Dunn Joan Cusack Sarah Silverman Tina Fey if i was a  football player i’d be Sid Luckman George Blanda Walter Payton **** Butkus Mike Singletary Joe Montana Jerry Rice Payton Manning LaDanian Tomlinson  Drew Breeze if i was a celebrity i’d be Charlotte Gainsbourg if i was a rapper i’d be Tupac Shakur if i was a movie director i’d be Sam Peckinpah Robert Altman Stanley Kubrick Roman Polanski Werner Herzog Rainer Fassbinder Louis Bunuel Alfred Hitchcock Jean-Luc Godard François Truffaut if i was a bird i’d be a eagle hawk sparrow bluebird if i was a fish i’d be a dolphin shark narwhal Charlie the tuna if i was breakfast i’d be a French toast pancake folded in half with 2 strips of bacon in between if i was a cold cereal i’d be snap crackle popping rice crispies shredded wheat cheerios oatmeal if i was tea i’d be Japanese green matcha Irish breakfast Tulsi Thai holy basil Lapsang souchong Luzianne Lipton if i was a soap i’d be French hand milled ayurvedic Avon Ivory Dove Pears Aveda  if i was a man i’d be a football basketball baseball tennis swimmer athlete if i was a woman i’d be a track star runner writer painter gardener doctor nurse yoga mom i'm just scratching the surface and the beat goes on lahdy dah dah

eph you see kay etouffee if you see Kay tell her a catawampus catahoula hound hog dog crossed bayou levee last night all right what did you say if you see Kay tell her a catawampus catahoula hog dog crossed the levee last night all right i heard what you said the first time why you got to repeat eph you see kay you ******* ****** **** what? what did you say you ******* ****** **** heard you the first time you **** a **** a ***** a ***** hello stop end begin believe conceive create no thank you i already ate what? what did you say begin believe conceive create no thank you i already ate quit ******* repeating yourself  you ******* ******* hello stop end begin believe conceive create eph you see kay etouffee if you see Kay tell her a catawampus catahoula hog dog crossed the levee last night all right

the renown physicist dressed in brown wool suit brown leather laced shoes white shirt burgundy knitted tie wild curly graying hair climbed the stairs walked across the stage stood at the lectern adjusted narrow support pole height reached down into brown leather briefcase retrieved his thesis concerning the relative theory of everything tapped microphone composed his posture made a guttural sound clearing his throat looked out at packed full auditorium it became evident to the distinguished audience the renown physicist’s fly was open and his ***** hanging out it was unanimously dismissed as a case of professorial absent-mindedness

all the creatures of the earth (excluding humans) convened for an emergency session the bigger creatures talked first grizzly bears stood upright explaining demand for gallbladders bile paws make us more valuable dead than alive sharks testified Asian fisherman cut off our fins for soup then throw us back into the sea to die elephants thumping heavy feet stepped forward yeah poachers **** us for our tusks rhinos concurred yes they **** us for our horns wild Mustang horses neighed about violent round-ups then slaughtered processed for cat food whales complained of going deaf from submarine sonar tests then sold for meat many dolphins sea turtles tuna swordfish sea bass smaller fish swam forward pleading about getting caught in long line nets barbed baited hooks over-fished colonies chimpanzees described nightmares of being stolen from their mom’s when they are very young then used in research labs for horrible tests song birds chirped about loss of their habitats land tortoises spoke in gentle voices about being wiped out for housing developments saguaro cactuses dropped their arms in discouragement masses of penguins solemnly marched in suicidal unison to edge of melting icebergs polar bears and seals wept honey bees buzzed colony collapse disorder bats flapped about white nose syndrome coyotes and wolves howled lonesome prairie laments the session grew gloomy with heart-wrenching unbearable sadness sobbing crying then a black mutt dog spoke up my greyhound brothers and sisters and all my family of creatures i sympathize with your hurt but it is important to realize there are people who care love us want to protect us not all humans are ravenous carnivores or heartless profiteers a calico cat crept alongside black dog and rubbed her head against his chest an old gray mare admitted her love for a race horse jockey who died years ago a bluebird sang a song suddenly lots more creatures advanced with stories of human kindness Captain Paul Watson Madeleine Pickens Jane Goodall a redwood tree named Luna testified about Julia Butterfly Hill the winds clouds sky discussed concerns by Al Gore lots and lots of other names were mentioned and the whole tone of the meeting changed every one agreed they needed to wait and see what the next generation of people would do whether humans would acknowledge the cruelties threats of extinction and learn grow figure out ways to sustain mother earth father sky then the meeting let out just as the sun was rising on a new day

there is a cemetery in Paris named Père Lachaise buried there are the remains of Jim Morrison Oscar Wilde Richard Wright Karl Appel Guillaume Apollinaire Honoré de Balzac Sarah Bernhardt the empty urn of Maria Callas Frédéric Chopin Colette Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot Nancy Clara Cunard Honoré Daumier Jacques-Louis David Eugène Delacroix Isadora Duncan Paul Éluard Max Ernst Suzanne Flon Loie Fuller Théodore Géricault Yvette Guilbert Jean Ingres Clarence Laughlin Pierre Levegh Jean-François Lyotard Marcel Marceau Amedeo Modigliani Molière Yves Montand Pascale Ogier Christine Pascal Édith Piaf Marcel Proust Georges Seurat Simone Signoret Gertrude Stein Louis Visconti Maria Countess Walewska and many other extraordinary souls it is rumored at late dusk their ghosts climb from graves gather drink fine brandy from costly crystal glasses smoke fragrant cigars and once a year on November 2 party hard all night culminating in deliriously promiscuous ****** **** it’s difficult to know what the truth is since the dead don’t talk or do they

The dance has exhausted,
the muscles pull
and become taut
and tense.

She remembers
Marcel’s taunt:
she could not dance
after such a night

of ***. She leans over,
ties tighter
her shoes, her
fingers fumbling,

her back aching,
limbs trembling.
She looks up,
sees the other

dancers in line,
pulling at dresses
and tights,
hair in place.

She rises, pulls
at her dress, tidies
her hair, stands
in line, trying

to focus, mind
on the now, not
last night, not on
the ***. ****,

maybe Marcel
was right.

Archie was smart; at least he reckoned he was, because he had what he considered to be the good things in life: dosh in his wallet, a Cat in the garage, and a detach. in the green belt; all of which he had worked hard to acquire. Worked, is not exactly the word for it. Archie did deals. He reckoned he could always turn a fiver into a tenner an’ a tenner into a pony; a pony into a ton and a ton to a grand. He was one of the cash economy’s natural alchemists.  The folding stuff was the measure of a person, he reckoned. Archie never thought about anything; he reckoned everything, and nothing on God’s good earth was beyond reckoning, he reckoned. An ever-ready reckoner; that was Archie, and he loved himself for it. Only John Wayne did more reckoning than Archie, his old dad, bless him, used to say, thought Archie. In Archie’s world a grand was currency; less than that was just spare change. He reckoned he gave superior meaning to the expression ‘it’s a grand life’. The only blemish on Archie’s horizon as far as he could see was the lack of a class bird, or ‘ream sort’, as he preferred to say; hence this evening’s extravaganza at a posh French restaurant in the company of a beautiful lady. Archie only had two serious weaknesses in his existence: a fondness for the last word in a dispute about anything you care to mention, and his infatuation with his dining companion, the beautiful Carmela.


Carmela shared a common background with Archie. They grew up on the same council estate in the inner city. They were aware of each other’s existence as kids and teenagers, but they didn’t really know each other. Carmela was a quiet child and very singular; even in company she could be by herself. None but she was wise to her sense of solitude. She had three passions in life: knitting, sewing and weaving; the blessed trinity of her existence. Carmela interpreted the world by these three gifts. Here she was, she thought, weaving her way through an evening, in the company of three strangers. One she knew, herself, another she didn’t know at all, despite proximity and semi-shared origins. Then there was the complete stranger to the trinity: the waiter in his new and very polished shiny black shoes, “You can tell a lot about a person by their shoes”, Carmela’s mum used to say, she was thinking about that as the waiter appeared to almost pirouette into vision.


The waiter was a patient soul, it goes with the territory. The waiting game wasn’t something you should rush in to, he often told himself, in one of his more existentialist moments. He appreciated the irony of the comment in a Sartresque kind of fashion. He was from a steel town in the Rhonda Valley of South Wales. Iron was in his veins if not his appearance. A creature of paradoxes, that’s what he told himself he was. He liked that assessment of himself. It complimented his passion for all things French: French food, French wine, French philosophy, literature and art. He was learning the language at night school. Alas, his accent was as lyrically refined as the landscape that bred him He shovelled the words onto a conveyor belt of sound and meaning as best he could in the general direction of the person he was talking to, more in hope than in faith that they understood what was being said .The other passion in his life was tap dancing, and as luck would have it he could wear the same outfit for work and leisure, hence the very shiny shoes which allowed him to dance around the tables of the restaurant, practising his language skills on the clientele, His life work and leisure dovetailed with his ambition and he was pleased to wake up in the morning and set about the mortal trespass with a skip in his step. The waiter imagined himself to be a cosmopolitan and enlightened soul, in a very Fred Astaire kind of way, and life was a flight of stairs which he could ascend and descend in a Morse code type of style, just like Mr Bojangles.


The fare was fine. the wine was rare, but the conversation was spare until the cheese board arrived.” Good grub”, said Archie to the waiter. “We don’t do grub, sir, we only serve the finest Gallic cuisine in this establishment,” replied the waiter, in his usual mangled French, whilst smiling that smile that only waiters can manage when registering disapproval. Archie looked blank. It was Carmela who spoke: “C’était magnifique! Mes compliments au chef.” “Streuth! You speak better French than Marcel Proust here” said Archie.” I studied Fashion and Design in Paris for five years “replied Carmela.” “An’ I joined the Common Market many moons ago. It’s good for business” said Archie. The waiter was impressed: “Food, fashion, wine, Proust and Paris. This must be Nirvana” he said. “Great band, but a very dubious heaven.” replied Carmela, knitting together the threads whilst changing the pattern of the conversation in a very subtle fashion that was more to her liking.” “It’s only rock ’n’ roll” said Archie, an’ if you’ve ever heard French rock ’n’ roll it’s enough to make you believe in Foucault” “Foucault, my hero!” said the waiter, “a philosophical genius”. “According to Foucault, a knitting pattern is the hieroglyphic of a consumerist and decadent capitalist society.” intoned Carmela.” “And ‘A recipe is a critique of a cake’, said the great Structuralist philosopher,” interjected Archie, so if you serve the gateaux we may effect the collapse of western civilisation as we all know and love it”. “Allors, Let them eat cake” said the waiter, and everybody smiled at the irony of the comment.

The waiter bojangled his way into the night, tapping and clicking the pavement as he went.  Carmela and Archie got into a black cab. “That was a night to remember,” said Carmela, “very Proustian”. “A la recherche du temps perdu”, replied Archie, pleased as punch to have the last word. Carmela just smiled as she looked at Archie’s shoes.

two hearts

stampede through a china shoppe

like huge

huge like

looking up at the hoover dam

saying ****

****

is something that leaves my lips

when i can’t wrap my heart around

something impossible for my head

pronounced

probable

proust would say

“let us be grateful to people who make us happy

they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. “

pruned

blooming

watered and spoken to

fed from the pail from the leak in the roof

to marcel, warmth

the proof

(To Marcel Schwob in friendship and in admiration)

In a dim corner of my room for longer than
my fancy thinks
A beautiful and silent Sphinx has watched me
through the shifting gloom.

Inviolate and immobile she does not rise she
does not stir
For silver moons are naught to her and naught
to her the suns that reel.

Red follows grey across the air, the waves of
moonlight ebb and flow
But with the Dawn she does not go and in the
night-time she is there.

Dawn follows Dawn and Nights grow old and
all the while this curious cat
Lies couching on the Chinese mat with eyes of
satin rimmed with gold.

Upon the mat she lies and leers and on the
tawny throat of her
Flutters the soft and silky fur or ripples to her
pointed ears.

Come forth, my lovely seneschal! so somnolent,
so statuesque!
Come forth you exquisite grotesque! half woman
and half animal!

Come forth my lovely languorous Sphinx! and
put your head upon my knee!
And let me stroke your throat and see your
body spotted like the Lynx!

And let me touch those curving claws of yellow
ivory and grasp
The tail that like a monstrous Asp coils round
your heavy velvet paws!

A thousand weary centuries are thine
while I have hardly seen
Some twenty summers cast their green for
Autumn’s gaudy liveries.

But you can read the Hieroglyphs on the
great sandstone obelisks,
And you have talked with Basilisks, and you
have looked on Hippogriffs.

O tell me, were you standing by when Isis to
Osiris knelt?
And did you watch the Egyptian melt her union
for Antony

And drink the jewel-drunken wine and bend
her head in mimic awe
To see the huge proconsul draw the salted tunny
from the brine?

And did you mark the Cyprian kiss white Adon
on his catafalque?
And did you follow Amenalk, the God of
Heliopolis?

And did you talk with Thoth, and did you hear
the moon-horned Io weep?
And know the painted kings who sleep beneath
the wedge-shaped Pyramid?

Lift up your large black satin eyes which are
like cushions where one sinks!
Fawn at my feet, fantastic Sphinx! and sing me
all your memories!

Sing to me of the Jewish maid who wandered
with the Holy Child,
And how you led them through the wild, and
how they slept beneath your shade.

Sing to me of that odorous green eve when
crouching by the marge
You heard from Adrian’s gilded barge the
laughter of Antinous

And lapped the stream and fed your drouth and
watched with hot and hungry stare
The ivory body of that rare young slave with
his pomegranate mouth!

Sing to me of the Labyrinth in which the twi-
formed bull was stalled!
Sing to me of the night you crawled across the
temple’s granite plinth

When through the purple corridors the screaming
scarlet Ibis flew
In terror, and a horrid dew dripped from the
moaning Mandragores,

And the great torpid crocodile within the tank
shed slimy tears,
And tare the jewels from his ears and staggered
back into the Nile,

And the priests cursed you with shrill psalms as
in your claws you seized their snake
And crept away with it to slake your passion by
the shuddering palms.

Who were your lovers? who were they
who wrestled for you in the dust?
Which was the vessel of your Lust?  What
Leman had you, every day?

Did giant Lizards come and crouch before you
on the reedy banks?
Did Gryphons with great metal flanks leap on
you in your trampled couch?

Did monstrous hippopotami come sidling toward
you in the mist?
Did gilt-scaled dragons writhe and twist with
passion as you passed them by?

And from the brick-built Lycian tomb what
horrible Chimera came
With fearful heads and fearful flame to breed
new wonders from your womb?

Or had you shameful secret quests and did
you harry to your home
Some Nereid coiled in amber foam with curious
rock crystal *******?

Or did you treading through the froth call to
the brown Sidonian
For tidings of Leviathan, Leviathan or
Behemoth?

Or did you when the sun was set climb up the
cactus-covered *****
To meet your swarthy Ethiop whose body was
of polished jet?

Or did you while the earthen skiffs dropped
down the grey Nilotic flats
At twilight and the flickering bats flew round
the temple’s triple glyphs

Steal to the border of the bar and swim across
the silent lake
And slink into the vault and make the Pyramid
your lupanar

Till from each black sarcophagus rose up the
painted swathed dead?
Or did you lure unto your bed the ivory-horned
Tragelaphos?

Or did you love the god of flies who plagued
the Hebrews and was splashed
With wine unto the waist? or Pasht, who had
green beryls for her eyes?

Or that young god, the Tyrian, who was more
amorous than the dove
Of Ashtaroth? or did you love the god of the
Assyrian

Whose wings, like strange transparent talc, rose
high above his hawk-faced head,
Painted with silver and with red and ribbed with
rods of Oreichalch?

Or did huge Apis from his car leap down and
lay before your feet
Big blossoms of the honey-sweet and honey-
coloured nenuphar?

How subtle-secret is your smile!  Did you
love none then?  Nay, I know
Great Ammon was your bedfellow!  He lay with
you beside the Nile!

The river-horses in the slime trumpeted when
they saw him come
Odorous with Syrian galbanum and smeared with
spikenard and with thyme.

He came along the river bank like some tall
galley argent-sailed,
He strode across the waters, mailed in beauty,
and the waters sank.

He strode across the desert sand:  he reached
the valley where you lay:
He waited till the dawn of day:  then touched
your black ******* with his hand.

You kissed his mouth with mouths of flame:
you made the horned god your own:
You stood behind him on his throne:  you called
him by his secret name.

You whispered monstrous oracles into the
caverns of his ears:
With blood of goats and blood of steers you
taught him monstrous miracles.

White Ammon was your bedfellow!  Your
chamber was the steaming Nile!
And with your curved archaic smile you watched
his passion come and go.

With Syrian oils his brows were bright:
and wide-spread as a tent at noon
His marble limbs made pale the moon and lent
the day a larger light.

His long hair was nine cubits’ span and coloured
like that yellow gem
Which hidden in their garment’s hem the
merchants bring from Kurdistan.

His face was as the must that lies upon a vat of
new-made wine:
The seas could not insapphirine the perfect azure
of his eyes.

His thick soft throat was white as milk and
threaded with thin veins of blue:
And curious pearls like frozen dew were
broidered on his flowing silk.

On pearl and porphyry pedestalled he was
too bright to look upon:
For on his ivory breast there shone the wondrous
ocean-emerald,

That mystic moonlit jewel which some diver of
the Colchian caves
Had found beneath the blackening waves and
carried to the Colchian witch.

Before his gilded galiot ran naked vine-wreathed
corybants,
And lines of swaying elephants knelt down to
draw his chariot,

And lines of swarthy Nubians bare up his litter
as he rode
Down the great granite-paven road between the
nodding peacock-fans.

The merchants brought him steatite from Sidon
in their painted ships:
The meanest cup that touched his lips was
fashioned from a chrysolite.

The merchants brought him cedar chests of rich
apparel bound with cords:
His train was borne by Memphian lords:  young
kings were glad to be his guests.

Ten hundred shaven priests did bow to Ammon’s
altar day and night,
Ten hundred lamps did wave their light through
Ammon’s carven house—and now

Foul snake and speckled adder with their young
ones crawl from stone to stone
For ruined is the house and prone the great
rose-marble monolith!

Wild *** or trotting jackal comes and couches
in the mouldering gates:
Wild satyrs call unto their mates across the
fallen fluted drums.

And on the summit of the pile the blue-faced
ape of Horus sits
And gibbers while the fig-tree splits the pillars
of the peristyle

The god is scattered here and there:  deep
hidden in the windy sand
I saw his giant granite hand still clenched in
impotent despair.

And many a wandering caravan of stately
negroes silken-shawled,
Crossing the desert, halts appalled before the
neck that none can span.

And many a bearded Bedouin draws back his
yellow-striped burnous
To gaze upon the Titan thews of him who was
thy paladin.

Go, seek his fragments on the moor and
wash them in the evening dew,
And from their pieces make anew thy mutilated
paramour!

Go, seek them where they lie alone and from
their broken pieces make
Thy bruised bedfellow!  And wake mad passions
in the senseless stone!

Charm his dull ear with Syrian hymns! he loved
your body! oh, be kind,
Pour spikenard on his hair, and wind soft rolls
of linen round his limbs!

Wind round his head the figured coins! stain
with red fruits those pallid lips!
Weave purple for his shrunken hips! and purple
for his barren *****!

Away to Egypt!  Have no fear.  Only one
God has ever died.
Only one God has let His side be wounded by a
soldier’s spear.

But these, thy lovers, are not dead.  Still by the
hundred-cubit gate
Dog-faced Anubis sits in state with lotus-lilies
for thy head.

Still from his chair of porphyry gaunt Memnon
strains his lidless eyes
Across the empty land, and cries each yellow
morning unto thee.

And Nilus with his broken horn lies in his black
and oozy bed
And till thy coming will not spread his waters on
the withering corn.

Your lovers are not dead, I know.  They will
rise up and hear your voice
And clash their cymbals and rejoice and run to
kiss your mouth!  And so,

Set wings upon your argosies!  Set horses to
your ebon car!
Back to your Nile!  Or if you are grown sick of
dead divinities

Follow some roving lion’s spoor across the copper-
coloured plain,
Reach out and hale him by the mane and bid
him be your paramour!

Couch by his side upon the grass and set your
white teeth in his throat
And when you hear his dying note lash your
long flanks of polished brass

And take a tiger for your mate, whose amber
sides are flecked with black,
And ride upon his gilded back in triumph
through the Theban gate,

And toy with him in amorous jests, and when
he turns, and snarls, and gnaws,
O smite him with your jasper claws! and bruise
him with your agate *******!

Why are you tarrying?  Get hence!  I
weary of your sullen ways,
I weary of your steadfast gaze, your somnolent
magnificence.

Your horrible and heavy breath makes the light
flicker in the lamp,
And on my brow I feel the damp and dreadful
dews of night and death.

Your eyes are like fantastic moons that shiver
in some stagnant lake,
Your tongue is like a scarlet snake that dances
to fantastic tunes,

Your pulse makes poisonous melodies, and your
black throat is like the hole
Left by some torch or burning coal on Saracenic
tapestries.

Away!  The sulphur-coloured stars are hurrying
through the Western gate!
Away!  Or it may be too late to climb their silent
silver cars!

See, the dawn shivers round the grey gilt-dialled
towers, and the rain
Streams down each diamonded pane and blurs
with tears the wannish day.

What snake-tressed fury fresh from Hell, with
uncouth gestures and unclean,
Stole from the poppy-drowsy queen and led you
to a student’s cell?

What songless tongueless ghost of sin crept
through the curtains of the night,
And saw my taper burning bright, and knocked,
and bade you enter in?

Are there not others more accursed, whiter with
leprosies than I?
Are Abana and Pharphar dry that you come here
to slake your thirst?

Get hence, you loathsome mystery!  Hideous
animal, get hence!
You wake in me each ******* sense, you make me
what I would not be.

You make my creed a barren sham, you wake
foul dreams of sensual life,
And Atys with his blood-stained knife were
better than the thing I am.

False Sphinx!  False Sphinx!  By reedy Styx
old Charon, leaning on his oar,
Waits for my coin.  Go thou before, and leave
me to my crucifix,

Whose pallid burden, sick with pain, watches
the world with wearied eyes,
And weeps for every soul that dies, and weeps
for every soul in vain.

I


Les prêtres avaient dit : « En ce temps-là, mes frères,

On a vu s'élever des docteurs téméraires,

Des dogmes de la foi censeurs audacieux :

Au fond du Saint des saints l'Arche s'est refermée,

Et le puits de l'abîme a vomi la fumée

Qui devait obscurcir la lumière des cieux.


L'Antéchrist est venu, qui parcourut la terre :

Tout à coup, soulevant un terrible mystère,

L'impie a remué de profanes débats ;

Il a dressé la tête : et des voix hérétiques

Ont outragé la Bible, et chanté les cantiques

Dans le langage impur qui se parle ici-bas.


Mais si le ciel permet que l'Église affligée

Gémisse pour un temps, et ne soit point vengée ;

S'il lui plaît de l'abattre et de l'humilier :

Si sa juste colère, un moment assoupie.

Dans sa gloire d'un jour laisse dormir l'impie,

Et livre ses élus au bras séculier ;


Quand les temps sont venus, le fort qui se relève

Soudain de la main droite a ressaisi le glaive :

Sur les débris épars qui gisaient sans honneur

Il rebâtit le Temple, et ses armes bénites

Abattent sous leurs coups les vils Madianites,

Comme fait les épis la faux du moissonneur.


Allez donc, secondant de pieuses vengeances,

Pour vous et vos parents gagner les indulgences ;

Fidèles, qui savez croire sans examen,

Noble race d'élus que le ciel a choisie,

Allez, et dans le sang étouffez l'hérésie !

Ou la messe, ou la mort !» - Le peuple dit : Amen.


II


A l'hôtel de Soissons, dans une tour mystique,

Catherine interroge avec des yeux émus

Des signes qu'imprima l'anneau cabalistique

Du grand Michel Nostradamus.

Elle a devant l'autel déposé sa couronne ;

A l'image de sa patronne,

En s'agenouillant pour prier.

Elle a dévotement promis une neuvaine,

Et tout haut, par trois fois, conjuré la verveine

Et la branche du coudrier.


« Les astres ont parlé : qui sait entendre, entende !

Ils ont nommé ce vieux Gaspard de Châtillon :

Ils veulent qu'en un jour ma vengeance s'étende

De l'Artois jusqu'au Roussillon.

Les pieux défenseurs de la foi chancelante

D'une guerre déjà trop lente

Ont assez couru les hasards :

A la cause du ciel unissons mon outrage.

Périssent, engloutis dans un même naufrage.

Les huguenots et les guisards ! »


III


C'était un samedi du mois d'août : c'était l'heure

Où l'on entend de ****, comme une voix qui pleure,

De l'angélus du soir les accents retentir :

Et le jour qui devait terminer la semaine

Était le jour voué, par l'Église romaine.

A saint Barthélémy, confesseur et martyr.


Quelle subite inquiétude

A cette heure ? quels nouveaux cris

Viennent troubler la solitude

Et le repos du vieux Paris ?

Pourquoi tous ces apprêts funèbres,

Pourquoi voit-on dans les ténèbres

Ces archers et ces lansquenets ?

Pourquoi ces pierres entassées,

Et ces chaînes de fer placées

Dans le quartier des Bourdonnais ?


On ne sait. Mais enfin, quelque chose d'étrange

Dans l'ombre de la nuit se prépare et s'arrange.

Les prévôts des marchands, Marcel et Jean Charron.

D'un projet ignoré mystérieux complices.

Ont à l'Hôtel-de-Ville assemblé les milices,

Qu'ils doivent haranguer debout sur le perron.


La ville, dit-on, est cernée

De soldats, les mousquets chargés ;

Et l'on a vu, l'après-dînée.

Arriver les chevau-légers :

Dans leurs mains le fer étincelle ;

Ils attendent le boute-selle.

Prêts au premier commandement ;

Et des cinq cantons catholiques,

Sur l'Évangile et les reliques,

Les Suisses ont prêté serment.


Auprès de chaque pont des troupes sont postées :

Sur la rive du nord les barques transportées ;

Par ordre de la cour, quittant leurs garnisons,

Des bandes de soldats dans Paris accourues

Passent, la hallebarde au bras, et dans les rues

Des gens ont été vus qui marquaient des maisons.


On vit, quand la nuit fut venue,

Des hommes portant sur le dos

Des choses de forme inconnue

Et de mystérieux fardeaux.

Et les passants se regardèrent :

Aucuns furent qui demandèrent :

- Où portes-tu, par l'ostensoir !

Ces fardeaux persans, je te prie ?

- Au Louvre, votre seigneurie.

Pour le bal qu'on donne ce soir.


IV


Il est temps ; tout est prêt : les gardes sont placés.

De l'hôtel Châtillon les portes sont forcées ;

Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois a sonné le tocsin :

Maudit de Rome, effroi du parti royaliste,

C'est le grand-amiral Coligni que la liste

Désigne le premier au poignard assassin.


- « Est-ce Coligni qu'on te nomme ? »

- « Tu l'as dit. Mais, en vérité,

Tu devrais respecter, jeune homme.

Mon âge et mon infirmité.

Va, mérite ta récompense ;

Mais, tu pouvais bien, que je pense,

T'épargner un pareil forfait

Pour le peu de jours qui m'attendent ! »

Ils hésitaient, quand ils entendent

Guise leur criant : « Est-ce fait ? »


Ils l'ont tué ! la tête est pour Rome. On espère

Que ce sera présent agréable au saint père.

Son cadavre est jeté par-dessus le balcon :

Catherine aux corbeaux l'a promis pour curée.

Et rira voir demain, de ses fils entourée,

Au gibet qu'elle a fait dresser à Montfaucon.


Messieurs de Nevers et de Guise,

Messieurs de Tavanne et de Retz,

Que le fer des poignards s'aiguise,

Que vos gentilshommes soient prêts.

Monsieur le duc d'Anjou, d'Entrague,

Bâtard d'Angoulême, Birague,

Faites armer tous vos valets !

Courez où le ciel vous ordonne,

Car voici le signal que donne

La Tour-de-l'horloge au Palais.


Par l'espoir du butin ces hordes animées.

Agitant à la main des torches allumées,

Au lugubre signal se hâtent d'accourir :

Ils vont. Ceux qui voudraient, d'une main impuissante,

Écarter des poignards la pointe menaçante.

Tombent ; ceux qui dormaient s'éveillent pour mourir.


Troupes au massacre aguerries,

Bedeaux, sacristains et curés,

Moines de toutes confréries.

Capucins, Carmes, Prémontrés,

Excitant la fureur civile,

En tout sens parcourent la ville

Armés d'un glaive et d'un missel.

Et vont plaçant des sentinelles

Du Louvre au palais des Tournelles

De Saint-Lazare à Saint-Marcel.


Parmi les tourbillons d'une épaisse fumée

Que répand en flots noirs la résine enflammée,

A la rouge clarté du feu des pistolets,

On voit courir des gens à sinistre visage,

Et comme des oiseaux de funeste présage,

Les clercs du Parlement et des deux Châtelets.


Invoquant les saints et les saintes,

Animés par les quarteniers,

Ils jettent les femmes enceintes

Par-dessus le Pont-aux-Meuniers.

Dans les cours, devant les portiques.

Maîtres, écuyers, domestiques.

Tous sont égorgés sans merci :

Heureux qui peut dans ce carnage,

Traversant la Seine à la nage.

Trouver la porte de Bussi !


C'est par là que, trompant leur fureur meurtrière,

Avertis à propos, le vidame Perrière,

De Fontenay, Caumont, et de Montgomery,

Pressés qu'ils sont de fuir, sans casque, sans cuirasse.

Échappent aux soldats qui courent sur leur trace

Jusque sous les remparts de Montfort-l'Amaury.


Et toi, dont la crédule enfance,

Jeune Henri le Navarrois.

S'endormit, faible et sans défense,

Sur la foi que donnaient les rois ;

L'espérance te soit rendue :

Une clémence inattendue

A pour toi suspendu l'arrêt ;

Vis pour remplir ta destinée,

Car ton heure n'est pas sonnée,

Et ton assassin n'est pas prêt !


Partout des toits rompus et des portes brisées,

Des cadavres sanglants jetés par les croisées,

A des corps mutilés des femmes insultant ;

De bourgeois, d'écoliers, des troupes meurtrières.

Des blasphèmes, des pleurs, des cris et des prières.

Et des hommes hideux qui s'en allaient chantant :


« Valois et Lorraine

Et la double croix !

L'hérétique apprenne

Le pape et ses droits !

Tombant sous le glaive.

Que l'impie élève

Un bras impuissant ;

Archers de Lausanne,

Que la pertuisane

S'abreuve de sang !


Croyez-en l'oracle

Des corbeaux passants,

Et le grand miracle

Des Saints-Innocents.

A nos cris de guerre

On a vu naguère,

Malgré les chaleurs,

Surgir une branche

D'aubépine franche

Couverte de fleurs !


Honni qui pardonne !

Allez sans effroi,

C'est Dieu qui l'ordonne,

C'est Dieu, c'est le roi !

Le crime s'expie ;

Plongez à l'impie

Le fer au côté

Jusqu'à la poignée ;

Saignez ! la saignée

Est bonne en été ! »


V


Aux fenêtres du Louvre, on voyait le roi. « Tue,

Par la mort Dieu ! que l'hydre enfin soit abattue !

Qu'est-ce ? Ils veulent gagner le faubourg Saint-Germain ?

J'y mets empêchement : et, si je ne m'abuse,

Ce coup est bien au droit. - George, une autre arquebuse,

Et tenez toujours prête une mèche à la main.


Allons, tout va bien : Tue ! - Ah. Cadet de Lorraine,

Allez-vous-en quérir les filles de la reine.

Voici Dupont, que vient d'abattre un Écossais :

Vous savez son affaire ? Aussi bien, par la messe,

Le cas était douteux, et je vous fais promesse

Qu'elles auront plaisir à juger le procès.


Je sais comment la meute en plaine est gouvernée ;

Comment il faut chasser, en quel temps de l'année.

Aux perdrix, aux faisans, aux geais, aux étourneaux ;

Comment on doit forcer la fauve en son repaire ;

Mais je n'ai point songé, par l'âme de mon père,

A mettre en mon traité la chasse aux huguenots ! »

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A lot of people think they can write or paint or draw or sing or make movies or what-have-you, but having an artistic temperament doth not make one an artist.


Even the great writers of our time have tried and failed and failed some more. Vladimir Nabokov received a harsh rejection letter from Knopf upon submitting ******, which would later go on to sell fifty million copies. Sylvia Plath’s first rejection letter for The Bell Jar read, “There certainly isn’t enough genuine talent for us to take notice.” Gertrude Stein received a cruel rejection letter that mocked her style. Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way earned him a sprawling rejection letter regarding the reasons he should simply give up writing all together. Tim Burton’s first illustrated book, The Giant Zlig, got the thumbs down from Walt Disney Productions, and even Jack Kerouac’s perennial On the Road received a particularly blunt rejection letter that simply read, “I don’t dig this one at all.”

So even if you’re an utterly fantastic writer who will be remembered for decades forthcoming, you’ll still most likely receive a large dollop of criticism, rejection, and perhaps even mockery before you get there. Having been through it all these great writers offer some writing tips without pulling punches. After all, if a publishing house is going to tear into your manuscript you might as well be prepared.

1. The first draft of everything is ****. -Ernest Hemingway
2. Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ***. -David Ogilvy
3. If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy. – Dorothy Parker
4. Notice how many of the Olympic athletes effusively thanked their mothers for their success? “She drove me to my practice at four in the morning,” etc. Writing is not figure skating or skiing. Your mother will not make you a writer. My advice to any young person who wants to write is: leave home. -Paul Theroux
5. I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide. — Harper Lee
6. You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. ― Jack London
7. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. — George Orwell
8. There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. ― W. Somerset Maugham
9. If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time — or the tools — to write. Simple as that. – Stephen King
10. Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong. – Neil Gaiman
11. Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die. – Anne Enright
12. If writing seems hard, it’s because it is hard. It’s one of the hardest things people do. – William Zinsser
13. Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college. – Kurt Vonnegut
14. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration. – Ernest Hemingway
15. Write drunk, edit sober. – Ernest Hemingway
16. Get through a draft as quickly as possible. Hard to know the shape of the thing until you have a draft. Literally, when I wrote the last page of my first draft of Lincoln’s Melancholy I thought, Oh, ****, now I get the shape of this. But I had wasted years, literally years, writing and re-writing the first third to first half. The old writer’s rule applies: Have the courage to write badly. – Joshua Wolf Shenk
17. Substitute ‘****’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. – Mark Twain
18. Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you and there’ll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing that — but you are the only you. ― Neil Gaiman
19. Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. – Oscar Wilde
20. You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. ― Ray Bradbury
21. Don’t take anyone’s writing advice too seriously. – Lev Grossman
image – christine zenino

oh hell, every time i write some embarrassing a day prior, i turn into honour killing from Pakistan enveloped by shame... 'what the hell did i write last night? i can't remember, but i know for sure that i didn't roll down the stairs or **** in a phonebox'. well, i could sit here romanticising like Marcel Schwob, or just dig into like Marquis the Sade... honestly and oddly enough the latter did give me an *******, and he was half-the-pervert that everyone deemed him to be, flashing his buttocks from the Bastille... his uncle abbé de Sadé (i love to put that accent in on purpose - sounds better to me, less boorish) - and yes, Creedence Clearwater Revival does more justice to the harmonica on graveyard train than Bob Dylan and **** Jagger put together... it's just there, and it ain't it's because it's there that makes it... ha ha... groovy - maybe that's why they spared him from the guillotine, in that he wrote more of his exploits as wished to be done, and of the actual exploits too many were hidden in his blabbering prose undone; ****** is by far his greatest work.

i told you the black and red Oranjeboom is a trip, they used to sell it at 8.5%, now they dropped it to 7.5... that beer can get you crazy in nanoseconds, quicker than a formula 1 crown jewel of a Mercedes-Benz, i'm serious, the ****'s lethal - you drink with me you'll be talking l.s.d., you'll end up a Mongol somewhere in Siberia, stark naked in minus forty saying the words: 'where's my umbrella? where's my umbrella?', indeed on repeat... 'and that yak? i was riding a yak... where's the yak?' we have European bisons to await you colonel... 'about time, i was waiting for a bison... isn't that the place where storks migrate to to make butter over the summer? and the Jews hid when the Black Plague was sweeping across Europe leaving them immune in the vicinity of Cracow?' yes it was, Herr Mascherschtic-Messerschmitt -
'who's on the oboe? and the soloist violinist?' we don't know, working it out, 'you better, because i don't really long for a drum-beat of knocking two stones together to spark anything but fire, rather, a conversation; 40 days in the desert with Jesus trying to relocate the Jews to Goa worked out so splendid that they moved North, started speaking riddle Hebrew that's Yiddish and followed suit with ****** being gassed, but instead of trenches, death chambers - people tend to forget he was himself gassed and dated Eva a Jewess... no far right assimilation, i spoke with a grandpa that asked for sweets from an SS-man and a great-grandmother who fed her daughter opiates to hush her on the eastern front so she wouldn't cry - sometimes stating a self-consciousness detached from thinking (the inhibitor of existence) is as random as a lottery - because it's just that, thought is an inhibitor of existence, being is an exhibitor of the (sic) stated - oh please don't read me if you're into ******, i'm with the bookworms and freaks, premature ejaculators and whatnot, go eat a ******* macaroon in Morocco or something - of all the admirable circumstances worthy a stage thinking isn't really allowed, it's not exactly glorified, in two sentences:
- *i thought about it             (how two pronouns
                                               interact without Freud,
                                               or meet, or are the proton i
                                               neutrons thought about
                                               and the electrons it)...
it's a permanent duality of expressing something and anything,
we need the first person, the eyes give it away,
but in the end we're either touching an axe to chop
down a tree or attaching ourselves to a detachment of
chopping the tree down for the Freudian third it -
it's no longer a game of 'you're it!' tagging of
the kindergarten game but a work of fiction, transitions
like that must be painful - third person narratives are
generally conceived from being lazy in the first person,
how many people do you actually need to **** the poet off?
film credits: and it's a long list, mind you.
oh yeah, that word: dzwiękać - it's about making 0.1% of
a Mozart symphony with two stones smacked against
each other for what the feet used to do, a drumbeat,
it's not exactly an act of Prometheus' Odyssey into
the first glimpses of chemistry -
alternatively?
- i am it / or some alternative to something even more alternative,
  in the French school of thought dubbed deconstructionism
  that's also a blah blah reduction,
  Bruce Springsteen and Frank Sinclair, a slum-dunk
  by the Lakers - it's still supposed to mean that i intended
  the phonetic encryption, i visualised nothing for
  you to follow-up on, sounds, poetry isn't cartoon,
  the harsh reality of having to read the Mandala of
  mouth expressions without, eye, eyebrows or cheeks
  or chin - ends up being dentistry when you want to
  say a but end up adding a            h     while
  the dentist inserts a blunt object into your mouth for
  an ah (be my guest, macron or umlaut depending
  on the volume of your lungs added to the a for reasons
  of reality's prolonging the seance of rotten teeth).
what i meant was the notion that thought is a different
type of being, or expression of out of every instance -
thinking too much won't grant you access to
people who say: 'are bored with their *** life. especially
gay men, who 'see *** as something you have to do
while on drugs'. so once **** no reassurance with
forever ****? **** it! could have given it a one-over
back when i didn't have a monkish demur.
well i can admit i'm jealous, but i just remember *******
before puberty and feeling the muscle sensation and
seeing no *****, aged 8 - the ******* help, and incubator
for all that raging monotheistic operatic harem wanton -
it's still a balancing act writing a sentence,
you are basically juggling two words, both are pronouns -
you throw a boomerang, you throw it as yourself
and expect it to come back as yourself,
pristine, juvenile, ******, intact with a pride of being
a person not influenced by others... the origin of
Columbus... it doesn't work like that,
the boomerang ends up like a windscreen with
several bugs attacked to it, bugs like Kant, like Heidegger,
whoever... whatever, free-love **** *** is overrated for me,
the ******* build-up and the flashing lights and whatnot,
i approach *** like a lumberjack a tree,
axe, tree, chop chop, tree falls... i'm out after an
hour having paid £110 for the pleasure... so you can take
your little feminism into the annals for these free-love
festivals (burning man in Nevada, killing kittens
in the hamptons etc.), preach there, leave me and my loser
****** high libido crew in the shadow of the crucifix -
judgemental ******* - i never expected so much stigma for
giving an ****** that i paid for to give, it's like an
Albert Camus novel, or worse, his life,
paid for a train ticket but decided to travel to the desired
destination by car, dead in a car-wreck - Irony with an ism.

The window was open in the dream
In the house I built from all the perfect sentences
The things more worthy to worship
Than clothesline windstorms and
Curtain-rod jousts between
Closet clowns and the nights they hid from.
These stolen wings are an easy veil to wear.
Would you believe me if I told you I had seen a unicorn?


I left a prayer in the south of France
In a church I called upon to swallow a sinner
I went back for it
The day when forgiveness meant
Switching the soles of my boots and body
the room was filled with every person I ever wanted to meet
I pulled a snake out of my throat and let it slither down the aisle
This was never a confession


My father was a carpenter
He built pews for a chapel he could not enter
I can count the fingers on his right hand
With the fingers on my left
The aurora borealis in my leftover love said
“You were Marcel Ayme the day we decided
That he was better at beginnings than at endings”


Rachel took a rosary to her wrist
I caught her blood because my heart couldn’t pump fast enough
To satisfy the ones asking
We cannot be tied to this desert
I’m getting slow motion sickness on the speed train to someday
Somewhere along the way we stopped shoveling coal into these engines
Started using the bodies people left along the tracks
“it’s okay,” they say,
“We’re recycling.”


A Panamanian child born on neither side of the canal
Wants this holiday hate crime
To be something other than a compass rose riddle
I need a weather balloon catapult to launch my words into orbit
So they can work weightlessness to their advantage
There were never enough chairs.
Every person at the table sat alone.

This forced perspective spills arrows from my coronet
All the things meant to ornament justified distaste
Is the sky any more magnificent when you have a God to shove inside it?
Is the sea any more deep?
Is this body any more powerful if I believe it was made in the image of someone greater?
I can see so much more with my eyes open
My hands are open on every rooftop
I can catch every raindrop


This story is a work in progress
Someday this patchwork of scattered significance
Will become subject to the needle of retrospect
But for the moment I can but introspect
On a night that belongs to the words I cannot say
And to the person I cannot say them to.
I never again thought I would breathe golden.
Teach me to make blue of enslaved fortune.


Teach me how to cry in a world that will not feast upon my insecurity
I am learning to trust though I see only the shadow of the moon.
I am learning not to hate this inherited flesh
The unwoven threads that fail to shelter these shoulders
The guilt in my gait that I cannot seem to shake
The unwanted wit that tears at the seams of sobriety.
It’s amazing how many words you wrote in my genetic code that can carry just four letters.
I was never brave enough to break.
I have no merit for mercy

to kindness, to knowledge,
we make promises only; pain we obey.
Marcel Proust

I was born into this world
of people without
guardian angels but
loveless pockets
no body to see how
pain was incessantly
turned into tombstones
a carousel of masks and
defeated laughter
blinded by deceitful colours.
triumphant sidewalks not afraid
to be crushed by the weight of
humiliated bodies.
-he was secretly dreaming
how vanilla ice-cream would taste
on her lips-
people got used to bringing their thoughts
to the drug stores
as if walking their pets
weeping was incomprehensible
forbidden by law.
-she was secretly dreaming
of him smelling like tobacco,
white musk and cedarwood -


this world survived because of
all the hidden dimensions,
perhaps.
I was handed over a disembodied world
to dream of but
the metaphors were of
no use
to moonless people
their hands paralyzed.
oh, can anybody see?
the unspoken terror
that time stood still.
-I was secretly dreaming of destroying
this world with fresh words, with
the craziness of feeling alive-

I inherited the secret passion
of some unknown promises and
never-whispered desires
the only teacher I could find -
my manic heart
unbearable the pains of
growing a mind.

they wanted to keep it simple:
to cry, to speak, to fall in love.
muted seagulls
loveless alphabets
into this world
waiting for the sun to shed
its hidden self
of blindness

It’s February, 2015, a Saturday and here I ‘yam.
Back in sunny California again:
The sun shining brightly again
On My Old Hemetucky Home,
Another mutant Stephen Foster tune.
Hemet: Riverside County,
Southern California,
The so-called Inland Empire,
According to the hyperbolic parlance,
Of sharkskin-suited land speculators,
Truly, the last of the
Patent medicine, liniments &
Snake oil hucksters.
Hemet: little oversight & lax policing
Yield a thriving, local
Medical-marijuana industry.
You are comfortably tucked . . .  
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(THAT’S RIGHT, *******: A ******* COMMERCIAL RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ******* POEM!  GIUSEPPI MARTINO BUONAIUTO--SURELY NOBODY”S FOOL—FINALLY FIGURING OUT HOW TO MAKE POETRY PAY, THEREFORE AVOIDING THE DIED-IN-THE-GUTTER BIT.)
You are safely tucked behind the impenetrable
(www.tucks.com)
Wackenhut G4S Security-
(www.wackenhut.com)
Policed & Patrolled walls,
Of your typical over-55 gated lunatic asylum.
“For Active Adults,” reads the sign,
Whatever that means.
I’ve been thinking about the adventurous young.
What is it these bright,
Wander-lusting whippersnappers
Fixate and obsess about.
Like dropping out & coasting for a while.
Dropping out & coasting:
Not as easy to pull off for 20-somethings these days,
As it was in the late sixties/early seventies,
Flush times for Guns & Butter.
Where is it cheap to live?
Where on . . .
“This blessed plot, this earth,
This realm, this England . . .”
Where on this ozone-depleted,
Global fondue fungus ***,
Can I go to just sit still?
To think:  to make sense of it all?
It’s leisure, Kemosabe.
Leisure cultivates philosophy.
LEISURE:
The very stuff of curiosity and
REACH—
As in: “One’s grasp should exceed one’s reach”—
Idleness leads us,
Gifts us with understanding &
Self-awareness.
You are 21 again, and restless.
You are unwilling to just settle in.
So, where do you go?
Where can you live on savings?
To not work,
But not go hungry?
To just sit still,
Contemplating the state of the wicket,
Be it wicked or sticky.
Today it’s Prague and Berlin—
Or, for the truly decadent: Bangkok.
For us it was Florence or Paris—
Or, for the truly frugal,
Driving our cars to Mecca: Montreal,
"La Métropole du Québec"
Sanctified are the places we’ve chilled.
Shrines & vortexes; each holy latitude,
As Han Solo drolly reminds us:
“It’s not the years; it’s the miles.”
The amount of ground covered,
A blessing devoutly to be wished in Old Age:
But I digress.
Just the thought of hanging out
Some place really cool,
Yet relatively inexpensive--
In a parlance acquired
Over the years and the miles,
Tactfulness learned,
Manipulating the language
For fun & profit.
Common sense is aged in the barrel
And the bottle, rephrased.
Vernacular Viniculture.
Which proves my point:
If you live long enough &
Read enough of the right stuff,
Eventually you’ll discover
A precise, more exact vocabulary,
Appropriate for Old Age inner monolog.
Would Old Age be tedious?
Boring, for those who
Never went anywhere?
Both physically & spiritually speaking.
Are memories our only revenge on Old Age?
And for those hiding behind the barriers,
Safe. Ignorant. Jolly. Dull.
A fast track toward senility &
Evanescence.
Does Alzheimer’s seek out & destroy the
Most cloistered among us?
While those bold & beautiful,
Experienced, still spinning,
Still weaving a tapestry in 3-D Technicolor.
Remembrances of things past . . .
(Get back in your hole, Marcel . . .)
And as the AARP crowd knows so well:
We Baby Boomers really had it pretty soft.
Boom economics,
Conspicuous consumption,
Coonskin hats, Betsy Wetsies & Hula Hoops!
By and large:
FUN TIMES!
No Great Depression,
No chocolate rationing.
A jungle war pretty much optional,
For most of us of the
American bourgeoisie.
We’ve got a lot to remember.
We’ve much to be grateful for.
Electronic media changed everything for us.
Television and movie theaters gave us
Alternative dimensions,
Parallel lives,
Multiple identities.
Experience so real that
To see it on the screen
Was to live it, oneself.
Perhaps those video downloads
Might prove useful one day.
Comforts out on Golden Pond.
Will you still need me?
Will you still feed me?
When I'm sixty-four?
Grazie, Sir Paulie.

“I have loved you so much that I believe I understand you a little.”
Marcel Proust

we are wearing our glowing skins
full of unwoven whispers
or au contraire
we’ll have worn them
-who knows
in poetry, not in theory,
anything is possible-

one of us could say
“take this animal
out of my eyes, teeth, bones
for wild flowers
to grow in my sockets”
and I’ll say:
“for my eyelids to rest
in the shadow of your breath
and my vertigo, indigo
in the nest of your palm"

-words are just riverbeds-

see you - the sea in me
at the echo point
of blood

I’ll wear rivers
lipstick
bluebirds

in this poem of touching
every cell is spinning
its nucleus of *numinosum
while the day breaks open
into the heart of trees

-words are stones of silence,
unintelligible altars-

I was in love
with a vertigo man
last time I checked

blood has its madness

go to a brothel, you won't feel anything about what's considered the teenage atypical damning of events that make violins of us all.

now i know why i prefer bourbon to whiskey,
my usual stock went missing today
at the supermarket, i was thinking prior
recycling a plastic bottle of coca cola and a glass
bottle of whiskey... three Buds on offer for
£5 and then a bottle of Scots' Club at £11 (and
a bottle of coke): for the extra walk to buy
£5.99 Chesterfields at the Bangladeshi outlet?
hmm, that's a tough one... solved, Scots' Club
dried up, they've been watching my predictable
pattern on c.c.t.v., either that or i honed
on ant-mentality - which is far worse than
what Nietzsche described as herd mentality -
post-Nietzsche post-religion existentialism?
ants... not oxen, not sheep, not wildebeest -
simple, ants... compactness perfectó!
the antonym of deus ex machina, i.e.
the deus in machina - we all have our roles,
plumber electrician poet... cashier drill sergeant
bus driver... with me i imagine a Michelin star
kitchen... yes chef... yes chef... what is this ****?!
throw that under-cooked scallop away!
if it ain't perfect throw it away!
most would beg to cry and run out of the tense
environment - ooh look at me, bourbon makes
me rosy cheeked - the smell of it makes me summon
the gluttonous honey thickness of a prostitutes
lubricated **** - in Amsterdam with the laws
being lenient they call them sanitation workers
from Bolivia, this plump one told me her life story,
****** into bucket in front of me, told her
child minion to get beers for me, laughed
when i wanted to lick her out - opened the window
to fish the punters into her abode - true story -
i have absolutely no imagination, experience
counts - Amsterdam is fun - you should go there
some time... it's so much freer without
this Victorian-like theatre of courtship in England,
20 years in England, never ****** a swan -
she's too into her feminism away from the "naughty parts" -
darling... and what does your lover call you during
******* while you're drooling on the Ajax?
hmm? sloppy Samantha... or just ****?
***** words during arousal makes the geek take
the noble toilet paper given to them by the maidens...
(psst... they think it's a hanky)...
and with all that space, poets have a phobia with
punctuation, hence verses, hence missing colon (or alter
italics), semi-colon - maybe a full-stop along the way...
and the most annoying part, thus examples:
Prose writers speak a lot,
They draw the matchsticks by the lot - (oh hell, forget the hyphen,
that's reserved for Oxford acceptance of new words
requiring agility and optometry's rediscovery of origin:
Saxons in Istanbul running a sausage stand -
no no, ****'s Halal, we promise!)
But when they speak, they speak to the grey matter -
Never quiet the sparkler parts of the brain...
CAPITAL WITH EACH NEW LINE...
toss-up between learning punctuation and not using it -
i doesn't matter if poetry is the opposite of the claustrophobia
of prose's skeletal rigidity of a paragraph -
poets could become less tedious by using punctuation,
i'd begin with an exercise - count to one-hundred -
ensuring the space between one and ninety-nine
is uniform, i.e. a second apart - can't happen
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
| | | | | | | | | |
   11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
    |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
         22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
          |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |;
when in Edinburgh i had a mental implant, the compass,
mostly thanks to the locality, and the Firth of Forth -
i knew my west and my east, esp. looking at Prince's
Street (scoot-ish Manhattan - squares and linear
and diagonals, picture perfect) from just off the Royal
Mile - honestly, from the old city i could see America
don't below. but bourbon really does have a brothels'
perfumery feel about it - it really hits the cheeks and
warms them up... whiskey oddly enough doesn't...
that's what ****** her off... high-brow ******* -
a boy a girl a ******* - not romantic Marcel Schwob's
Monelle* - harsh realism of de Sadé (who also
wore the t-shirt with the slogan: I'M A FEMINIST!
while cursing from his cell window in the Bastille) -
the Saudi oil billionaires will run out at some point,
last days of the **** - i know, i prefer de Sadé -
adds a bit of spice - and if i'm going to be brutally
honest as his critics are, well, i'll be honest
about one of his works - ****** - crispy mint.
debates on the Man Booker prize - old guard and new
guard - that's the problem with the English...
they pretend to read on their Summer holiday...
who the hell reads in summer? they spend
their Winters in front of the television - i thought
that winter suited reading as it does writing?
the long nights, esp. the long nights -
the Russians said: our future is in your reading public -
the Americans said: our future is in the pulverise(d)
by images public - iconoclasm of words, trademark
logos (telegrams from time to time) - just recently
an advert at a bus-stop by some Asian car manufacturer -
no nuance, but definitely nuanced: GO FUN YOURSELF -
also called the state of literacy rates in England,
a girl writes her G.C.S.E. English exam paper
in text acronym (UR v. you're); so they locked up the Marquis
for obscenity, but Anaïs Nin walked free to everyone's
applause - the part where you tell me Kierkegaard
made a meal from the tree of good and evil
with his work either / or attached to Nietzsche's
beyond... muddles muddles and pumpernickel troubles;
sure, call it word salad - but i hardly think you're
a vegetarian; going to a brothel makes all this
****** warfare seem rather obsolete - esp. when it's prompt
for books and debates and serious action -
all the prostitutes of France came out in protest when
the government wanted to punish the pundits -
hey! do a Jesus! side with the "filth"!
these girls aren't going to be nuns, the feminists won't
save them, not one of them will be a star in a real-life
adaptation of pretty woman - and not, a, single, one
will buy the feminist arguments of the bourgeoisie actresses -
me? i will not ever have a girlfriend who experiments
with her child niece in a theme park imagining me in a
daddy role... or reads me a questionnaire about complimenting
differences from a Cosmopolitan magazine.

the people look like flowers at last, and i guess
what matters most is how well you walk through the fire*
worth the palette, and the eyes - it's the beef tongue honesty
as cited in the poem of the same name -
never mind the 1930s poem -
i too wish i could have written the 1980s
(Poland) - but the communist years
are marred and budding in China while
people bemoan the two years under Martial
Law - and queues, endless queues for
provisions, and stamps for rationed food,
and shops filled with empty shelves or
white vinegar (a childhood friend's mother
was rumoured to have committed suicide
by drinking white vinegar) -
in all honesty i guess before the borders opened
and products started pouring in we could
have claimed a happy childhood,
but for us back then it was the call of the wild -
and the fact that we were together as kids,
even though the steel plant was being undermined
for profit and people were either forced to
leave to somewhere else in the country or
abroad - a thriving beehive of a town reduced to
what became know as the pensioner town -
supermarkets sprouted like churches, the city
centre once a trading hot spot was now the bank
square - nothing but banks; growing up i used to
travel for summer holidays - a fit child i became
hooked on the coca cola dream - between 16 and 17
i lost 30 kilograms on my bike back home, doing
50 kilometres a day - once the fat kid at the back
of the class, now the pomegranate munching hippy -
but that didn't matter: aged 21... god... jealousy
is so horrible, it transcends the healthy competitive
streak of sports and capitalism - now, each waking
hour i wait for the evening so i can numb the pain
riddling my brain - it's like being perpetually nibbled
on my an electric chair - and i can't do anything about
the sizzling of blood on this organic sponge -
headphones sometimes provide an equilibrium
and i jack-in and the pain is reduced - but try talking
to someone when you can't hear them - god, jealousy
is so horrible - i remember times when i'd go with
the guy to Reagent's Park mosque and sit there on
the minimalist floor and just absorb this grand
poly-chromatic social experiment - born into a monochromatic
culture i was fond of the diversity - but times have
changed for the worse, and i'm proof of it -
as i already mentioned the other great schism (not
in religion but) in medicine - what insanity overcomes
them treating physical damage with metaphysical
promises of a chemical imbalance? they treat the brain
as some ******* chicken soup - thankfully i was well
aware of everything - but that's beside the point,
why i survived i attribute to what happened to Sisyphus -
i'm not going to be as bombastic as the original version
depicts Sisyphus, son of Atlas (both of them the boulder
men) - well, i don't see Sisyphus as an absurd hero
like Camus - i very much see him akin to Loki (the trickster),
but it's not about that - for me Sisyphus had a near-death
experience, and was condemned by the gods to
that boulder of his and the ***** and the rolling back
and forth as punishment for that Sisyphus had no insight
from his near-death experience - he didn't become a poet,
and he certainly didn't become a philosopher -
nor a ***, rebellious in the sense that what Sisyphus
did do is return to business as usual - he had no insight
into death, he didn't befriend it, he didn't akin to
Marcel Proust or Tristan Tzara gain "a new way of seeing";
not many people have near-death experiences in all
honesty - and from the myth as stated, few can return
with insight - most come back with cliches, the unimaginative
white light at the end of the tunnel -
Sisyphus was condemned to the boulder for his lack
of inspiration - then again, any madman talking about
the next world with promises is doing a handstand while
attempting to outperform someone running the hundred
metres - circus Olympics - what's keeping me motivated
is what others would call the Cartesian extension -
my brain can't craft a fluid cognitive narrative with ease
as it once was able to do - these are snippets of what reminds
me of the ease that the brain once hosted -
which contradictory if Descartes was about -
a thinking thing is un-extended - if that were true
he wouldn't have out-poured his thinking onto a blank
page - matter extends but does not think - unless of course
you get into a debate about god (i don't see the point
ascribing atheism all the perks - i'm also referring to an
impersonal entity, not a personal entity that might require
praying five times a day for personal gains and repressed
grievances - you know, god of the airy fairy and the casual
phrasing of the word that is usually censored by
Jews - g- -d - which i find as absurd as western censorship
of oath words). so coming back to this Descartes point,
it's true that physical corruption (damage) would qualify
me as a non-thinking entity, pure matter, and therefore
purely extending onto this digital pixel white -
but the counter argument is... there's a distinction between
thought and narrative - and given the casual standard
of philosophy is more akin to narration than abstraction
of either 2 + 2       in mathematics, or μ + ω
in phonetic encoding or whether ω could be encoded
to a more aesthetically pleasing macron-omicron (ō) -
because if we're going to follow Descartes prescription
(they are like doctors, those philosophers, or that's
how i treat them, every key idea they regurgitate out
from their predecessors - a priori - and is new
and challenging i treat it like i'd treat a prescription from
a doctor - Heidegger, for example, prescribed me
the equivalent of sleeping pills for my insomnia) we
don't have to necessarily accept it as the gold standard,
holy, a sword in a stone - but i'm not going to fall
for the rigidity of their vocabulary, the part where using
imagery would refer to a monkey pushing cubes
through a canvas of squares to the other side of something -
or that great table tennis match of philosophical
narration - how did something, nothing, everything,
anything are categorised as pronouns akin to
i, you, me, he etc. - i don't like their concentration on
either nothing or the basic self - that always bothered me -
but i guess it adds to the fluidity of language -
now i'm lost in my own labyrinth - and there's
the Minotaur on my heels breathing pungent hot-snot
from his snout - which can only mean one thing -
a trap to get into fixations and the stability of words
as one-dimensional, non-deviating from a unitary meaning,
rigidity of the non-existence of synonyms -
basically burning the Thesaurus Rex - which also means
no oil for cooking or butter for bread, or anti-ageing
creams - if ever anyone wanted one-dimensional
words, rigid language, a stability of some sort,
safe ~chemistry experiments read from a primer and
never new, black is black, white is white -
well... but i guess there's a preference for such an
approach to language, rather than the antonym of
such use of it, with negations in politics, in jurisprudence,
lies and corruptions, nuances, games and injured
hearts;
            Sisyphus ibin Atlas was punished because after
a near-death experience he didn't come back with
any insight - he just returned to his day job, and didn't
gamble on something beautiful - however
scrambled eggs it looked like.

KEY OF HEAVEN

Here amongst Milton's
Lycidas...a cowslip's

skeleton
pressed between its pages

blossomed back in 1922
its ghost haunting the book

its head bent over the line
"Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil."

staining the word "Fame"
with its own lost shadow

the unknown woman in
the photographs laughs

at my discovering her
dressed in black and white in black and white

hands stuck in pockets
defiantly staring back at me

she more real
than me

the only other photo
she has removed her hands

from her pockets
producing them like a magic trick

they lay on her lap
like limpid rabbits

curiously alive
somehow

a sheen of sunlight
catches her Marcel wave

Petrella
the photograph names her

in writing as elegant
as she

early spring
1922.

*

Key of Heaven is only one of the names for the common cowslip( Primula Veris ). It travels under other names such as cuy lippe, herb peter, paigle, peggle, key flower, fairy cups, petty mulleins, crewel, buckles, palsywort, plumrocks and tittypines.

There was also a recipe for a delicious sparkling cowslip wine. Alas the book was too expensive for my means and I was more interested in the cowslip dying between Milton's lines and the woman who was Petrella back in the days of the year 19 and 22!

I no longer remember how to make cowslip wine and I never did.

We the oppressed have our tyrants where we want them.
We **** steer for their filet mignon,
We **** Earth for their McMansions,
We deplete our every resource
to replete their satisfaction.
Why should we comply?
If they need us to make them,
we can make better without them.
Stop catering to those who take
the very breath of your existence,
tear them down instead.
We are all phoenixes waiting
to be lit ablaze, rulers in the making
bound for now by cracking chains.

"Chess can be described as the movement of pieces eating one another."*
-Marcel Duchamp

Relics and old wives
telling tales for telling.
Reminds me of living
in America, dying.

I think about America
when I see a sidewalk
cracked, clean spider webb'd.
There are so many cracks here.

In the dark, America
looks like any other jar
of ink. You could walk
forever without noticing the blood on your feet.

The day the bombs
drop I'll be sleeping. Oh
what a horror when you
wake up and realize where you've heard that sound before.

Con ciudades y autores frecuentadosVenecia / Guanajuato / Maupassant /
Leningrado / Sousándrade / Berlín /
Cortázar / Bioy Casares / Medellín /
Lisboa / Sartre / Oslo / Valle Inclán / 

Kafka / Managua / Faulkner / Paul Celan /
Ítalo Svevo / Quito / Bergamín /
Buenos Aires / La Habana / Graham Greene /
Copenhague / Quiroga / Thomas Mann /

Onetti / Siena / Shakespeare / Anatole 
France / Saramago / Atenas / Heinrich Böll /
Cádiz / Martí / Gonzalo de Berceo /

París / Vallejo / Alberti / Santa Cruz
de Tenerife / Roma / Marcel Proust /
Pessoa / Baudelaire / Montevideo

Sitting on that Bowery curb,
Jackie Coogan,
Years shy of Uncle Festus and
The Addams Family,
Clasping his hands on one knee,
Wearing blue denim overalls &
A raggedy, red
Turtleneck sweater,
Jackie: the kid in "The Kid."
And Charlie’s inimitable face,
Inhaling his ****** moustache.
Nobody squeezed more out of a
****** expression than Charlie,
Back in the day when
Actors told their stories physically.
The Silent Era:
A Marcel Marceau world back then,
Economical when it came to words.

Neighbor: "Hey, what did you get Amber for her birthday?"

BF: I gave her a blank CD and told her it was a rare, pirated copy
      titled "Marcel Marceau's Greatest Hits."

Neighbor: "And?"

BF: "She liked it."

Neighbor: That's scary!


copyright: richard riddle 04-12-15

Ariel
sits across
opposite
from myself

looking plump
and balding

we're talking
of Tolstoy
(Ariel's
favourite
novelist)

he creates
the largest
fictional
canvases
Ariel
informs me

his large eyes
focusing
on his class
of real ale

now and then
looking at
a table
quite near us
where young girls
talk and laugh

their laughter
echoing
in the warm
evening
summer air

I prefer
Marcel Proust
I tell him

watching how
his eyes scan
the young girls

less manly
Ariel
says to me
don't like Proust
no substance
just gossip
from parties
he went to
you know he
was a queer

yes I know

wrote in bed

yes I know

he gazes
at the girls
taking in
their laughter
their bodies
their brightness

all his thoughts
of Tolstoy
put aside

I sip beer
wondering
what Tolstoy
would say here
seeing this
this canvas

intellect
dissolved in
human lust
words silent

write again
another
War and Peace
in English
now I trust.

I entered school at Blaisdon Hall,
when everybody seemed so tall:
but when I finished being taught,
all my chums in height were short.

The invention of a former cook,
fed the progress of my build and look,
along with spuds - best of Stud Farm crop,
and regular pudding known as "FLOP"

Wilfred Higginbotham was his name:
t'was from Manchester that he came.
Before him the chef was Mr. Higgins:
toupee-topped, nicknamed “Wiggins.”

Very wobbly on a pushbike:
Wilfred was (as they say today) "like"
sort of fat.  Yet, tha' knows
very light upon his toes.

If in the mood and no kerfuffle,
he'd do a lively soft shoe shuffle.
Opera trained - Wilfred was a singer:
for a famous Welsh tenor a dead ringer...

By the serving hatch, his apron gravy stained,
melodious, cheerful, unrestrained
he'd make the pots and kettles ring
as from the repertoire he'd gaily sing..

....selections de La Traviatta, La Boheme,
in his opinion "la crème de la crème"
and other classic arias with aplomb
in the style of Harry Secombe.

Now Wilfred’s "FLOP" a sort of madeira cake:
from the kitchen hatch the server would take
a warmish, deep presenting tray,
where puffed up inviting, there it lay.

Father "Bulldog" Wilson then would cut a slice,
take a bite - declare it “Nice!”
Alas! his knife released the air,
that wily Wilf had mixed in there.

Like a balloon pricked by a pin,
silently within the cooling tin
the cake collapsed. What a ****!
Wilf (t'was said) had used a stirrup pump.

Wilfred - as a baker- didn't cut the mustard,
but he was a dab hand when it came to custard!
A portion of his added magic yellow liquor
made the deflated "Flop!" taste thicker.

What was served up, had a fleeting taste
and was scoffed down in a fitful haste,
thus pleased I am to here relate,
not a trace of "FLOP!" was left upon the plate.

Whatever came of Wilf, I'll never know:
back up North, to ailing mum he had to go.
But still his pudding can invoke
such sensual sentiments all beyond a joke.

Early on in life Marcel Proust's nibbled madelaine,
a lifetime later, when dipped in tea,
and tasted once again, had power to regain
lost time and illuminate his memory.

So it is with me and as I thought
of cher Marcel, an evocative poem was wrought:
"FLOP"!" inspires the 1950s when I recall,
those schoolboy meals in Blaisdon Hall.

TOBIAS

Summer recess had come
and she sat with you
out in the field
over looking her house

and the railway
was not far off
where the occasional train
puffed by sending

a sprouting of white smoke
as it went by
and she looked at it passing
and spoke of after school days

when she would begin
her adult life and settle down
and have children
but you were thinking

of a train trip with your parents
years before
to some seaside place
and you watched

the scenery go by
and the steam go by
the window
and the smell

and the sight excited you
and stuck itself
inside your head
and Judith said

what do you think?
and you said
about what?
and she said

about children's names?
what names
would you choose?
your brain struggled

to the surface
and whirled through
a list of names
that came to mind

boy or girl?
you asked
she sighed
either

haven't you been
listening to me?
sorry got distracted
by the train smoke

had a Proustian moment
you said
a what?
she said

a Proustian moment
you replied
what the heck is that?
she said

pulling her skirt
over her knees
where it had risen up
as she moved  

Marcel Proust wrote
that eating a certain cake
took him back
to a certain moment

of his life
but you
haven't been eating cake
Judith said

her hand rested
on her knees
her eyes focusing on you
no it's just an example

you said
about how things
can remind you
of other things

or places or times
do you recall
the first time we kissed?
she asked

yes
you said
of course I do
it was near Christmas

and we were carol singing
and it was dark
and the moon was out
and the stars were bright

and your lips pressed
onto mine
ok ok
she said laughing

at least you remember
and as she moved forward
the buttons
of her white blouse

parted briefly
to reveal a hint
of fleshy *******
so what names

do you like?
she asked
none come to mind
you said

she shook her head
what about Rachel or David?
she said
fine

you said
nice religious names
although David
brings to mind

a kid with a catapult
and a girl I once knew
with buckteeth who smelt
of old socks

she looked skywards
and sighed
and lay back
on to the grass

and you lay beside her
both of you  
gazing up
at the expanse

of blue and white
her hand reaching out
for yours
in that one moment

of life
in the great
out of doors.

He told what he thought, a funny joke
She got mad with that Uncle Sam bloke

His sense of humor was awry
So she smacked him in the eye

Jesting lies in the art of delivery
To get it right Sam needed smart livery

But smart these days doesn't seem to be the way
In America or any other place on the planet's lay

For Sam's joke to translate well to her funny bone
He should've employed a Marcel Marceau megaphone

But what occurred instead was the sound of thunder
From the bad joke from America to the land down under

Laughs didn't abound in a generous supply
Her tempest did storm with an endless cranky cry

But in the end it all turned out right
Poets through it all and friends in a genial light

I play a game of chess with Marcel Duchamp
Stripped bare totally but with looks still in the mood
I make a final move to rook him into my moan
'You know I want to be the darkest queen of your dreams'
He lifts calm his queen as his eyebrows but without really looking at me
picks up my rook contiguously
deepens some of his penetrating basses and whispers playfully:
' You already are my sweet Rose Sélavy and shall stay so eternally but …
you know … for now...'
and that 'but...for' mutes my **** mount line
highlights a grin of an ingenious rhyme and briefs a victory
on every strategic corner he knows to reach so well to
at once turn me on at an endgame pattern of check
to mate
'... c'est la vie sweet Monsieur S' he whispers
' I want to be the lone king for my queen'
and pushes solid his queen towards my defenseless territory.

Proust kept a log of his  untidy mind
inviting readers in to sink, or swim
some find their thoughts are much of the same kind
some feel it's all particular to him
great literature ought to resonate
but still meets a diversity of taste
those hawthorn blossoms of his endless prate
some readers find a shapeless verbose waste
a shorter form fits my attention span
of seventy iambs in rhyming verse
within a reader's mind I dare hope can
evoke a self-consistent universe
a monument to years spent pent in bed
Marcel's rich life was mostly in his head

In an Irish pub last night I met
a man, Ryan Patrick Sheehan.
His eyes were brown, his lips were soft,
his heart was heavy with reason.

To me, he quoted an early Yeats
as if he were Yeats himself.
"The Cold Heaven" danced from his tongue
to rest on my heart's bookshelf.

He spoke of Goethe and Marcel Proust;
two hundred pages that described Combrayan
eye for detail that bordered insane.
he proceeded then to quote Swann's Way.

Of mystery and shadows his silence spoke.
His words, like kisses quite unplanned.
God speed and hope be in your heart
My brief, Ryan Patrick Sheehan.