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Trang Nguyen Sep 2013
Municipal Gum was written by Oodjeroo Noonecaal. Municipal Gum is about the changes in society and the tendency of people to want to control everything. Oodjeroo uses various techniques to convey this idea.

At the beginning of the poem Oodjeroo is addressing the tree. This immediately creates empathy for both the tree and her people. By the last line she has emphasised this with the pronoun “us” to show that they suffer a similar fate.

This poem expresses how life in Australia has changes especially for Aboriginal people. In the first half of the poem Oodjeroo is talking about how life was for her and others. It explores the changes in society and the displacement of the Aboriginal people from their land.

“Whose head hung…Its hopelessness”, the author uses this as further re-iteration of the immorality of the situation and by the use of analogy comparing the tree to her people to further emphasise the shame and lack control of that the Europeans have inflicted upon her and the environment.

Oodjeroo uses extended metaphor technique in the very first line of the poem ‘Hard bitumen around your feet’. This means that the gumtree has been placed in the city scape where it is suppressed and not allowed to spread out and be unique in its own way. This is clear and immanently direct link to the pain and suffering endured by the Aborigines post European settlement.

Oodjeroo uses vivid language to present these ideas. For example the use of the word castrated is very effective. The connotation of the word is very demeaning. With castration often comes a sense of a loss of pride and power. The word castration is symbolic of how Oodjeroo feels the European have treated Aboriginal people and the environment. Castration also refers to the fact that what is done is done. Nothing can undo what they did and the damaged they have caused.

Other symbolism includes the title “Municipal Gum”, municipal meaning community, implies that the gumtree belongs to the community. One of the vast differences between European and Aboriginal law is that Aboriginal people did not believe in the ownership of land or of animals and plants. Municipal Gum is a reference to the Europeans assumptions that everything is theirs to own and control.

The rhetorical question, “O fellow citizen, What have they done to us?” is the conclusion of the implications that have been made throughout the poem. Oodjeroo, is advocating for her people and all things wronged by the controlling behaviour of the Europeans. Rhetorical questions are used to provoke thought and to stimulate a pre-determined response. “What have they done to us?” They have “castrated, broken… strapped and buckled” and ultimately changed things to a point that they cannot be fixed.

In conclusion, Municipal Gum is a poem about the constrictions and change that the European invaders forced upon the Aboriginal community and the environment she believes that the Europeans have deemed themselves ever powerful and practice their power in a manner that is immoral.
This is not a poem but an analysis about the poem
Bouazizi’s heavy eyelids parted as the Muezzin recited the final call for the first Adhan of the day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aameen tossed him the lighter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A henchman overturned Bouazizi’s cart, scatter
Three years ago today Muhammad Bouazizi set himself on fire igniting the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia sparking the Arab Spring Uprisings of 2011.
by
Alexander K Opicho

(Eldoret, Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)

When I grow up I will seek permission
From my parents, my mother before my father
To travel to Russia the European land of dystopia
that has never known democracy in any tincture
I will beckon the tsar of Russia to open for me
Their classical cipher that Bogy visoky tsa dalyko
I will ask the daughters of Russia to oblivionize my dark skin
***** skin and make love to me the real pre-democratic love
Love that calls for ambers that will claw the fire of revolution,
I will ask my love from the land of Siberia to show me cradle of Rand
The European manger on which Ayn Rand was born during the Leninist census
I will exhume her umbilical cord plus the placenta to link me up
To her dystopian mind that germinated the vice
For shrugging the atlas for we the living ones,
In a full dint of my ***** libido I will ask her
With my African temerarious manner I will bother her
To show me the bronze statues of Alexander Pushkin
I hear it is at ******* of the city of Moscow; Petersburg
I will talk to my brother Pushkin, my fellow African born in Ethiopia
In the family of Godunov only taken to Europe in a slave raid
Ask the Frenchman Henri Troyat who stood with his ***** erected
As he watched an Ethiopian father fertilizing an Ethiopian mother
And child who was born was Dystopian Alexander Pushkin,
I will carry his remains; the bones, the skull and the skeleton in oily
Sisal threads made bag on my broad African shoulders back to Africa
I will re-bury him in the city of Omurate in southern Ethiopia at the buttocks
Of the fish venting beautiful summer waters of Lake Turkana,
I will ask Alexander Pushkin when in a sag on my back to sing for me
His famous poems in praise of thighs of women;

(I loved you: and, it may be, from my soul
The former love has never gone away,
But let it not recall to you my dole;
I wish not sadden you in any way.

I loved you silently, without hope, fully,
In diffidence, in jealousy, in pain;
I loved you so tenderly and truly,
As let you else be loved by any man.
I loved you because of your smooth thighs
They put my heart on fire like amber in gasoline)

I will leave the bronze statue of Alexander Pushkin in Moscow
For Lenin to look at, he will assign Mayakovski to guard it
Day and night as he sings for it the cacotopian
Poems of a slap in the face of public taste;

(I know the power of words, I know words' tocsin.
They're not the kind applauded by the boxes.
From words like these coffins burst from the earth
and on their own four oaken legs stride forth.
It happens they reject you, unpublished, unprinted.
But saddle-girths tightening words gallop ahead.
See how the centuries ring and trains crawl
to lick poetry's calloused hands.
I know the power of words. Seeming trifles that fall
like petals beneath the heel-taps of dance.
But man with his soul, his lips, his bones.)

I will come along to African city of Omurate
With the pedagogue of the thespic poet
The teacher of the poets, the teacher who taught
Alexander Sergeyvich Pushkin; I know his name
The name is Nikolai Vasileyvitch Gogol
I will caution him to carry only two books
From which he will teach the re-Africanized Pushkin
The first book is the Cloak and second book will be
The voluminous dead souls that have two sharp children of Russian dystopia;
The cactopia of Nosdrezv in his sadistic cult of betrayal
And utopia of Chichikov in his paranoid ownership of dead souls
Of the Russian peasants, muzhiks and serfs,
I will caution him not to carry the government inspector incognito
We don’t want the inspector general in the African city of Omurate
He will leave it behind for Lenin to read because he needs to know
What is to be done.
I don’t like the extreme badness of owning the dead souls
Let me run away to the city of Paris, where romance and poetry
Are utopian commanders of the dystopian orchestra
In which Victor Marie Hugo is haunted by
The ghost of Jean Val Jean; Le Miserable,
I will implore Hugo to take me to the Corsican Island
And chant for me one **** song of the French revolution;


       (  take heed of this small child of earth;
He is great; he hath in him God most high.
Children before their fleshly birth
Are lights alive in the blue sky.
  
In our light bitter world of wrong
They come; God gives us them awhile.
His speech is in their stammering tongue,
And his forgiveness in their smile.
  
Their sweet light rests upon our eyes.
Alas! their right to joy is plain.
If they are hungry Paradise
Weeps, and, if cold, Heaven thrills with pain.
  
The want that saps their sinless flower
Speaks judgment on sin's ministers.
Man holds an angel in his power.
Ah! deep in Heaven what thunder stirs,
  
When God seeks out these tender things
Whom in the shadow where we sleep
He sends us clothed about with wings,
And finds them ragged babes that we)

 From the Corsican I won’t go back to Paris
Because Napoleon Bonaparte and the proletariat
Has already taken over the municipal of Paris
I will dodge this city and maneuver my ways
Through Alsace and Lorraine
The Miginko islands of Europe
And cross the boundaries in to bundeslander
Into Germany, I will go to Berlin and beg the Gestapo
The State police not to shoot me as I climb the Berlin wall
I will balance dramatically on the top of Berlin wall
Like Eshu the Nigerian god of fate
With East Germany on my right; Die ossie
And West Germany on my left; Die wessie
Then like Jesus balancing and walking
On the waters of Lake Galilee
I will balance on Berlin wall
And call one of my faithful followers from Germany
The strong hearted Friedrich von Schiller
To climb the Berlin wall with me
So that we can sing his dystopic Cassandra as a duet
We shall sing and balance on the wall of Berlin
Schiller’s beauteous song of Cassandra;

(Mirth the halls of Troy was filling,
Ere its lofty ramparts fell;
From the golden lute so thrilling
Hymns of joy were heard to swell.
From the sad and tearful slaughter
All had laid their arms aside,
For Pelides Priam's daughter
Claimed then as his own fair bride.

Laurel branches with them bearing,
Troop on troop in bright array
To the temples were repairing,
Owning Thymbrius' sovereign sway.
Through the streets, with frantic measure,
Danced the bacchanal mad round,
And, amid the radiant pleasure,
Only one sad breast was found.

Joyless in the midst of gladness,
None to heed her, none to love,
Roamed Cassandra, plunged in sadness,
To Apollo's laurel grove.
To its dark and deep recesses
Swift the sorrowing priestess hied,
And from off her flowing tresses
Tore the sacred band, and cried:

"All around with joy is beaming,
Ev'ry heart is happy now,
And my sire is fondly dreaming,
Wreathed with flowers my sister's brow
I alone am doomed to wailing,
That sweet vision flies from me;
In my mind, these walls assailing,
Fierce destruction I can see."

"Though a torch I see all-glowing,
Yet 'tis not in *****'s hand;
Smoke across the skies is blowing,
Yet 'tis from no votive brand.
Yonder see I feasts entrancing,
But in my prophetic soul,
Hear I now the God advancing,
Who will steep in tears the bowl!"

"And they blame my lamentation,
And they laugh my grief to scorn;
To the haunts of desolation
I must bear my woes forlorn.
All who happy are, now shun me,
And my tears with laughter see;
Heavy lies thy hand upon me,
Cruel Pythian deity!"

"Thy divine decrees foretelling,
Wherefore hast thou thrown me here,
Where the ever-blind are dwelling,
With a mind, alas, too clear?
Wherefore hast thou power thus given,
What must needs occur to know?
Wrought must be the will of Heaven--
Onward come the hour of woe!"

"When impending fate strikes terror,
Why remove the covering?
Life we have alone in error,
Knowledge with it death must bring.
Take away this prescience tearful,
Take this sight of woe from me;
Of thy truths, alas! how fearful
'Tis the mouthpiece frail to be!"

"Veil my mind once more in slumbers
Let me heedlessly rejoice;
Never have I sung glad numbers
Since I've been thy chosen voice.
Knowledge of the future giving,
Thou hast stolen the present day,
Stolen the moment's joyous living,--
Take thy false gift, then, away!"

"Ne'er with bridal train around me,
Have I wreathed my radiant brow,
Since to serve thy fane I bound me--
Bound me with a solemn vow.
Evermore in grief I languish--
All my youth in tears was spent;
And with thoughts of bitter anguish
My too-feeling heart is rent."

"Joyously my friends are playing,
All around are blest and glad,
In the paths of pleasure straying,--
My poor heart alone is sad.
Spring in vain unfolds each treasure,
Filling all the earth with bliss;
Who in life can e'er take pleasure,
When is seen its dark abyss?"

"With her heart in vision burning,
Truly blest is Polyxene,
As a bride to clasp him yearning.
Him, the noblest, best Hellene!
And her breast with rapture swelling,
All its bliss can scarcely know;
E'en the Gods in heavenly dwelling
Envying not, when dreaming so."

"He to whom my heart is plighted
Stood before my ravished eye,
And his look, by passion lighted,
Toward me turned imploringly.
With the loved one, oh, how gladly
Homeward would I take my flight
But a Stygian shadow sadly
Steps between us every night."

"Cruel Proserpine is sending
All her spectres pale to me;
Ever on my steps attending
Those dread shadowy forms I see.
Though I seek, in mirth and laughter
Refuge from that ghastly train,
Still I see them hastening after,--
Ne'er shall I know joy again."

"And I see the death-steel glancing,
And the eye of ****** glare;
On, with hasty strides advancing,
Terror haunts me everywhere.
Vain I seek alleviation;--
Knowing, seeing, suffering all,
I must wait the consummation,
In a foreign land must fall."

While her solemn words are ringing,
Hark! a dull and wailing tone
From the temple's gate upspringing,--
Dead lies Thetis' mighty son!
Eris shakes her snake-locks hated,
Swiftly flies each deity,
And o'er Ilion's walls ill-fated
Thunder-clouds loom heavily!)

When the Gestapoes get impatient
We shall not climb down to walk on earth
Because by this time  of utopia
Thespis and Muse the gods of poetry
Would have given us the wings to fly
To fly high over England, I and schiller
We shall not land any where in London
Nor perch to any of the English tree
Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Thales
We shall not land there in these lands
The waters of river Thames we shall not drink
We shall fly higher over England
The queen of England we shall not commune
For she is my lender; has lend me the language
English language in which I am chanting
My dystopic songs, poor me! What a cacotopia!
If she takes her language away from
I will remain poetically dead
In the Universe of art and culture
I will form a huge palimpsest of African poetry
Friedrich son of schiller please understand me
Let us not land in England lest I loose
My borrowed tools of worker back to the owner,
But instead let us fly higher in to the azure
The zenith of the sky where the eagles never dare
And call the English bard
through  our high shrilled eagle’s contralto
William Shakespeare to come up
In the English sky; to our treat of poetic blitzkrieg
Please dear schiller we shall tell the bard of London
To come up with his three Luftwaffe
These will be; the deer he stole from the rich farmer
Once when he was a lad in the rural house of john the father,
Second in order is the Hamlet the price of Denmark
Thirdly is  his beautiful song of the **** of lucrece,
We shall ask the bard to return back the deer to the owner
Three of ourselves shall enjoy together dystopia in Hamlet
And ask Shakespeare to sing for us his song
In which he saw a man **** Lucrece; the **** of Lucrece;

( From the besieged Ardea all in post,
Borne by the trustless wings of false desire,
Lust-breathed Tarquin leaves the Roman host,
And to Collatium bears the lightless fire
Which, in pale embers hid, lurks to aspire
  And girdle with embracing flames the waist
  Of Collatine's fair love, Lucrece the chaste.

Haply that name of chaste unhapp'ly set
This bateless edge on his keen appetite;
When Collatine unwisely did not let
To praise the clear unmatched red and white
Which triumph'd in that sky of his delight,
  Where mortal stars, as bright as heaven's beauties,
  With pure aspects did him peculiar duties.

For he the night before, in Tarquin's tent,
Unlock'd the treasure of his happy state;
What priceless wealth the heavens had him lent
In the possession of his beauteous mate;
Reckoning his fortune at such high-proud rate,
  That kings might be espoused to more fame,
  But king nor peer to such a peerless dame.

O happiness enjoy'd but of a few!
And, if possess'd, as soon decay'd and done
As is the morning's silver-melting dew
Against the golden splendour of the sun!
An expir'd date, cancell'd ere well begun:
  Honour and beauty, in the owner's arms,
  Are weakly fortress'd from a world of harms.

Beauty itself doth of itself persuade
The eyes of men without an orator;
What needeth then apologies be made,
To set forth that which is so singular?
Or why is Collatine the publisher
  Of that rich jewel he should keep unknown
  From thievish ears, because it is his own?

Perchance his boast of Lucrece' sovereignty
Suggested this proud issue of a king;
For by our ears our hearts oft tainted be:
Perchance that envy of so rich a thing,
Braving compare, disdainfully did sting
  His high-pitch'd thoughts, that meaner men should vaunt
  That golden hap which their superiors want)

  
I and Schiller we shall be the audience
When Shakespeare will echo
The enemies of beauty as
It is weakly protected in the arms of Othello.

I and Schiller we don’t know places in Greece
But Shakespeare’s mother comes from Greece
And Shakespeare’s wife comes from Athens
Shakespeare thus knows Greece like Pericles,
We shall not land anywhere on the way
But straight we shall be let
By Shakespeare to Greece
Into the inner chamber of calypso
Lest the Cyclopes eat us whole meal
We want to redeem Homer from the
Love detention camp of calypso
Where he has dallied nine years in the wilderness
Wilderness of love without reaching home
I will ask Homer to introduce me
To Muse, Clio and Thespis
The three spiritualities of poetry
That gave Homer powers to graft the epics
Of Iliad and Odyssey centerpieces of Greece dystopia
I will ask Homer to chant and sing for us the epical
Songs of love, Grecian cradle of utopia
Where Cyclopes thrive on heavyweight cacotopia
Please dear Homer kindly sing for us;
(Thus through the livelong day to the going down of the sun we
feasted our fill on meat and drink, but when the sun went down and
it came on dark, we camped upon the beach. When the child of
morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared, I bade my men on board and
loose the hawsers. Then they took their places and smote the grey
sea with their oars; so we sailed on with sorrow in our hearts, but
glad to have escaped death though we had lost our comrades)
                                  
From Greece to Africa the short route  is via India
The sub continent of India where humanity
Flocks like the oceans of women and men
The land in which Romesh Tulsi
Grafted Ramayana and Mahabharata
The handbook of slavery and caste prejudice
The land in which Gujarat Indian tongue
In the cheeks of Rabidranathe Tagore
Was awarded a Poetical honour
By Alfred Nobel minus any Nemesis
From the land of Scandinavia,
I will implore Tagore to sing for me
The poem which made Nobel to give him a prize
I will ask Tagore to sing in English
The cacotopia and utopia that made India
An oversized dystopia that man has ever seen,
Tagore sing please Tagore sing for me your beggarly heat;

(When the heart is hard and parched up,
come upon me with a shower of mercy.

When grace is lost from life,
come with a burst of song.

When tumultuous work raises its din on all sides shutting me out from
beyond, come to me, my lord of silence, with thy peace and rest.

When my beggarly heart sits crouched, shut up in a corner,
break open the door, my king, and come with the ceremony of a king.

When desire blinds the mind with delusion and dust, O thou holy one,
thou wakeful, come with thy light and thy thunder)



The heart of beggar must be
A hard heart for it to glorify in the art of begging,

I don’t like begging
This is knot my heart suffered
From my childhood experience
I saw my mother
Song one
This is a song about tarzanic love
That subsisted some years ago,
As a love duel between an English girl and an African ogre,
There was an English girl hailing along the banks of river Thames
She had stubbornly refused all offers for marriage,
From all the local English boys, both rich and poor
tall and short, weak or strong, ugly and comely in the eye,
the girl had refused and sternly refused the treats for love,
She was disciplined to her callous pursuit of her dream
to marry a mysterious,fantastic,lively,original and extra-ordinary man,
That no other woman in history of human marriage ever married,
She came from London, near the banks of river Thames,
Her name was Victoria Goodhamlet Lovehill, daughter of a peasant,
She came from a humble English family, which hustled often
For food, clothing, and other calls that make one an ordinary British,
She grew up without a local boy friend, anywhere in the English world,
She is the first English girl to knock the age of forty five while a ******,
She never got deflowered in her teens as other English girls usually do
She preserved her purse with maximal carefulness in her wait for a black man,
Her father, of course a peasant, his trade was human barber and horse shearer,
Often asked her what she wants in life before her marriage, which man she really wanted,
Her specification was an open eyesore to her father; no blinkers could stave the father’s pale
For she wanted a black tall man, strong and ruggedly dark in the skin, must own a kingdom,
Fables taken to her from Africa were that such an African man was only one but none else,
His glorious name was Akhatembete kho bwibo khakhalikha no bwoya,
When the English girl heard the chimerical name of her potential husband,
She felt a super bliss in her spine; she yearned for the day of her rendezvous,
She crashed into desperate burning for true English love
With a man with a wonderful name like Akhatembete kho bwibo khakhalikha no bwoya.


Song two

Rumours of this English despair and dilemma for love reached Africa, in the wrong ears,
Not the human ears, but unfortunately the ears of the ogres, seasoned in the evil art,
It was received and treated as classified information among the African ogress,
They prevented this news to leak to African humans at all at all
Lest humans enjoy their human status and enjoy most
The love in the offing from the English girl,
They thus swiftly plotted and ployed
To lure and win the ******
From royal land;
England.




Song three

Firstly, the African ogres recruited one of their own
The most handsome middle aged male ogre, more handsome than all in humanity,
And of course African ogres are beautiful and handsome than African humans, no match,
The ogres are more gifted in stature, physique, eugenics and general overtures
They always outplay African humans on matters of intelligence, they are shrewder,
Ogres are aggressive and swashbuckling in manners; fear is none of their domain
Craft and slyness is their breakfast, super is the result; success, whether pyrrhic or Byronic,
Is their sweetest dish, they then schemed to get the English girl at whatever cost,
They made a move to name one of their fellow ogres the name of dream man;
Akhatembete khobwibo khakhalikha no bwoya,
Which an English girl wanted,
By viciously naming one of their handsome middle-aged man this name.

Song four

Then they set off 0n foot, from Congo moving to the north towards Europe abode England,
Where the beautiful girl of the times, Victoria Goodhamlet Lovehill hail,
They were three of them, walking funnily in cyclopic steps of African ogres,
Keeping themselves humorously high by feigning how they will dupe the girl,
How they will slyly decoy the English village pumpkin of the girl in to their trap,
And effortlessly make her walk on foot from England to Africa, in pursuit of love
On this muse and sweet wistfulness they broke out into loud gewgaws of laughter,
In such emotional bliss they now jump up wildly forgetting about their tails
Which they initially stuffed inside white long trousers, tails now wag and flag crazily,
Feats of such wild emotions gave the ogres superhuman synergy to walk cyclopically,
A couple of their strides made them to cross Uganda, Kenya, Somali, Ethiopia and Egypt
Just but in few days, as sometimes they ran in violent stampedes
Singing in a cryptic language the funny ogres songs;

Dada wu ndolelee!
Dada wu ndolelee!
Kuyuni kwa mnja
Sa kwingile khundilila !

Ehe kuyuni Mulie!
Ehe kuyuni mulie!
Omukhana oyo
Kaloba khuja lilia !
They then laughed loudly, farted cacophonously and jumped wildly, as if possessed,
They used happiness and raucous joy as a strategy to walk miles and miles
Which you cover when moving on foot from Congo to England,
They finally crossed Morocco and walked into Europe,
They by-passed Italy and Spain walking piecemeal
into England, native land of the beautiful girl.

Song  five

When the three ogres reached England, they were all surprised
Every woman and man was white; people of England walked slowly and gently
They made minimum noise, no shouting publicly on the street,
a stark contrast to human behaviour and ogre culture in Africa, very rambunctious,
Before they acclimatized to disorderly life in England, an over-sighted upset befell them
Piling and piling menace of pressure to ****,
Gripped all the three ogre brothers the same time,
None of them had knowledge of municipal utilities,
They all wanted to micturated openly
Had it not been beautiful English girls
Ceaselessly thronging the streets.



Song six

They persevered and moved on in expectation of coming to the end,
Out-skirt of the strange English town so that they can get a woodlot,
From where they could hide behind to do open defecation
All was in vain; they never came to any end of the English town,
Neither did they come by a tumbled-down house
No cul de sac was in sight, only endless highway,
Sandwiched between tall skyscraping buildings,
One of the ogres came up with an idea, to drip the ****
Drop by drop in their *******, as they walk to their destiny,
They all laughed but not loudly, in controlled giggles
And executed the idea minus haste.

Song seven

They finally came down to the banks of river Thames,
Identified the home of Victoria Goodhamlet Lovehill
The home had neither main gate nor metallic doors,
They entered the home walking in humble majesty,
Typical of racketeering ogre, in a swindling act,
The home was silent, no one in sight to talk to
The ogres nudged one another, repressing the mirth,
Hunchbacked English lass surfaced, suddenly materialized
Looking with a sparkle in the eye, talking pristine English,
Like that one written by Geoffrey Chaucer, her words were as piffling
As speech of a mad woman at the fish market, ogres looked at her in askance.

Song eight

An ogre with name Akhatembete khobwibo khakhalikha nobwoya opened to talk,
Asked the girl where could be the latrine pits, for micturation only,
The hunchbacked lass gave them a direction to the toilets inside the house,
She did it in a full dint of English elegance and gentility,
But all the ogres were discombobulated to their peak
about the English latrine pit inside the house,
they all went into the toilet at the same time,
to the chagrin of the hunchbacked lass
she had never seen such in England
she struggled a lot
to repress her mirth
as the English
never get amused
at folly.




Song nine

It is a tradition among the ogres to ****,
Whenever they are ******* in the African bush,
But now the ogres are in a fix, a beautiful fix of their life
If at all they ****, the flatulent cacophony will be heard outside
By the curious eavesdroppers under the eaves of the house,
They murmured among themselves to tighten their **** muscles
So that they can micturated without usual African accomplice; the tweeee!
All succeeded to manage , other than Akhatembete khobwibo khakhalikha nobwoya,
Who urinated but with a low tziiiiiiii sound from his ***, they didn’t laugh
Ogres walked out of privities relaxed like a catholic faithful swallowing a sacrament,
The hunchback girl ushered them to where they were to sit, in the common room
They all sat with air of calm on their face, Akhatembete Khobwibo khakhalikha nobwoya,
led the conversation, by announcing to the girl that he is Victoria’s visitor from Africa,
To which the girl responded with caution that Victoria is at the barbershop,
Giving hand to her father in shearing the horses, and thus she is busy,
No one is allowed to meet her, at that particular hour of the day
But he pleaded to the hunchback girl only to pass tidings to Victoria,
That Akhatembete Khobwibo khakhalikha nobwoya from Africa
Has arrived and he is yearning to meet her today and now,
The girl went bananas on hearing the name
The hunch on her back visibly shook,
Is like she had heard the name often,
She then became prudent in her senses,
And asked the visitor not to make anything—
Near a cat’s paw out of her person,
She implored the visitor to confirm
if at all he was what he was saying
to which he confirmed in affirmation,
then she went out swiftly
like a tail of the snake,
to pass tidings
to her sister
Victoria.


Song ten
She went out shouting her sister’s name,
A rare case to happen in England,
One to make noise in the broad day light,
With no permission from the local leadership,
She called and ululated Victoria’ name for Victoria to hear
From wherever she was, of which she heard and responded;
What is the matter my dear little sister? What ails you?
Akhatembete Khobwibo khakhalikha nobwoya is around!
She responded back in voice disturbed by emotional uproar,
What! My sister why do you cheat me in such a day time?
Am not cheating you my sister, he is around sited in our father’s house,
Is he? Have you given him a drink, a sweet European brandy?
My sister I have not, I feared that I may mess up your visitors
With my hunched shoulders, I feared sister forbid,
Ok, I am coming, running there, tell him to be patient,
Let me tell him sister just right now,
And make sure you come before his patience is stretched.





Song eleven

Victoria Goodhamlet Lovehill almost went berserk
On getting this good tidings about the watershed presence,
Of the long awaited suitor, her face exploded into vivacity,
Her heart palpitating on imagination of finally getting the husband,
She went out of the barber shop running and ululating,
Leaving her father behind, confounded and agape,
She came running towards her father’s main house
Where the suitor is sited, with the chaperons,
She came kicking her father’s animals to death,
Harvesting each and every fruit, for the suitor,
She did marvel before she reached where the suitor was;
Harvested ten bananas, mangoes and avocadoes,
Plums, pepper, watermelons, lemons and oranges,
She kicked dead five chicken, five goats, rams,
Swine, rabbits, rats, pigeons and hornbills,
When she reached the house, she inquired to know,
Who among them could be the one; Akhatembete Khobwibo
Khakhalikha no bwoya, But her English vocals were not guttural enough,
She instead asked, who among you is a key tempter go weevil car no lawyer?
The decoy ogre promptly responded; here I am the queen of my heart. He stood up,
Victoria took the ogre into her arms, whining; babie! Babie, babie, come!
Victoria carried the ogre swiftly in her arms, to her tidy bed room,
She placed the ogre on her bed, kissed one another at a rate of hundred,
Or more kisses per a minute, the kissing sent both of them crazy, but spiritual craft,
That gave the ogre a boon to maintain some sobriety, but libido of virginity held Victoria
In boonless state of ****** feat, defenseless and impaired in judgment
It extremely beclouded her judgment; she removed and pulled of their clothes,
Libidinous feat blurring her sight from seeing the scarlet tail projecting
From between the buttocks of the ogre, vestige of *******,
She forcefully took the ogre into her arms, putting the ogre between her legs,
The ogre’s uncircumcised ***** effectively penetrated Victoria’s ****** purse,
The ogre broke virginity of Victoria, making her to feel maximum warmth of pleasure
As it released its germinal seed into her body, ecstasy gripped her until she fainted,
The ogre erected more on its first *******; its ***** became more stiff and sharp,
It never pulled out its ***** from the purse of Victoria, instead it introduced further
Deeper and deeper into Victoria’s ******, reaching the ****** depth inside her with gusto,
Victoria screamed, wailed, farted, scratched, threw her neck, kissed crazily and ******,
On the rhythms of the ogre’s waist gyrations, it was maximum pleasure to Victoria,
She reached her second ****** before the ogre; it took further one hour before releasing,
Victoria was beaten; she thought she was not in England in her father’s house
She thought she was in Timbuktu riding on a mosquito to Eldorado,
Where she could not be found by her father whatsoever,
The ogre pulled Victoria up, helped her to dress up,
She begged that they go back to the common room,
Lest her father finds them here, he would quarrel,
They went back to the common room,
Found her father talking to other two ogres,
She shouted to her father before anyone else,
That ‘father I have been showing him around our house,’
‘He has fallen in love with our house; he is passionate about it,’
Akhatembete khobwibo khakhalikha nobwoya was shy,
He greeted the father and resumed his chair, with wryly dignity.


Song twelve
An impromptu festival took place,
Fully funded by the father of Victoria,
There was meat of all type from pork to chicken,
Greens were also there in plenty, pepper and watermelons,
Victoria’s mother remembered to prepare tripe of a goat
For the key visitant who was the suitor; Akhatembete,
Food was laid before the ogres to enjoy themselves,
As all others went to the other house for a brainstorming session,
But the hunched backed girl hid herself behind the door,
To admire the food which visitors were devouring,
As she also spied on the table manners of the visitors, for stories to be shared,
Perhaps between herself and her mother, when visitors are gone,
Some sub-human manners unfolded to her as she spied,
One of the ogres swallowed a spoon and a table fork,
And Akhatembete khobwibo khakhalikha nobwoya,
Uncontrollably unstuffed his scarlet tail from the trouser,
The chill crawled up the spine of hunchbacked girl,
She almost shouted from her hideout, but she restrained herself,
She swore to herself to tell her father that the visitors are not humans
They are superhuman, Tarzans or mermaids or the werewolves,
The ogre who swallowed the spoon remorsefully tried to puke it back,
Lest the hosts discover the missing spoon and cause brouhaha,
It was difficult to puke out the spoon; it had already flowed into the stomach,
Victoria, her father, her mother and her friend Anastasia,
Anastasia; another English girl from the neighborhood,
Whom Victoria had fished, to work for her as a best maid, as a chaperon,
Went back to the house where the ogres had already finished eating,
They found ogres sitting idle squirming and flitting in their chairs
As if no food had ever been presented to them in a short while ago,
One ogre even shamelessly yawned, blinking his eyes like a snake,
They all forgot to say thanks for the food, no thanks for lunch,
But instead Akhatembete announced on behalf of other ogres,
That they should be allowed to go as they are late for something,
A behaviour so sub-human, given they were suitors to an English family,
Victoria’s father was uneasy, was irritated but he had no otherwise,
For he was desperate to have her daughter Victoria get married,
He had nothing to say but only to ask his daughter, Victoria,
If she was going right-away with her suitor or not,
To which she violently answered yes I am going with him,
Victoria’s mother kept mum, she only shot miserable glances
From one corner of the house to another, to the ogres also,
She totally said nothing, as Victoria was predictably violent
To any gainsayer in relation to her occasion of the moment,
Victoria’s father wished them all well in their life,
And permitted Victoria to go and have good life,
With Akhatembete, her suitor she had yearned for with equanimity,
Victoria was so confused with joy; her day of marriage is beholden,
She hurriedly packed up as if being chased by a monster,
AROUND me the images of thirty years:
An ambush; pilgrims at the water-side;
Casement upon trial, half hidden by the bars,
Guarded; Griffith staring in hysterical pride;
Kevin O'Higgins' countenance that wears
A gentle questioning look that cannot hide
A soul incapable of remorse or rest;
A revolutionary soldier kneeling to be blessed;
An Abbot or Archbishop with an upraised hand
Blessing the Tricolour.  "This is not,' I say,
"The dead Ireland of my youth, but an Ireland
The poets have imagined, terrible and gay.'
Before a woman's portrait suddenly I stand,
Beautiful and gentle in her Venetian way.
I met her all but fifty years ago
For twenty minutes in some studio.

III
Heart-smitten with emotion I Sink down,
My heart recovering with covered eyes;
Wherever I had looked I had looked upon
My permanent or impermanent images:
Augusta Gregory's son; her sister's son,
Hugh Lane, "onlie begetter' of all these;
Hazel Lavery living and dying, that tale
As though some ballad-singer had sung it all;
Mancini's portrait of Augusta Gregory,
"Greatest since Rembrandt,' according to John Synge;
A great ebullient portrait certainly;
But where is the brush that could show anything
Of all that pride and that humility?
And I am in despair that time may bring
Approved patterns of women or of men
But not that selfsame excellence again.
My mediaeval knees lack health until they bend,
But in that woman, in that household where
Honour had lived so long, all lacking found.
Childless I thought, "My children may find here
Deep-rooted things,' but never foresaw its end,
And now that end has come I have not wept;
No fox can foul the lair the badger swept --

VI
(An image out of Spenser and the common tongue).
John Synge, I and Augusta Gregory, thought
All that we did, all that we said or sang
Must come from contact with the soil, from that
Contact everything Antaeus-like grew strong.
We three alone in modern times had brought
Everything down to that sole test again,
Dream of the noble and the beggar-man.

VII
And here's John Synge himself, that rooted man,
"Forgetting human words,' a grave deep face.
You that would judge me, do not judge alone
This book or that, come to this hallowed place
Where my friends' portraits hang and look thereon;
Ireland's history in their lineaments trace;
Think where man's glory most begins and ends,
And say my glory was I had such friends.
YOU gave, but will not give again
Until enough of paudeen's pence
By Biddy's halfpennies have lain
To be "some sort of evidence',
Before you'll put your guineas down,
That things it were a pride to give
Are what the blind and ignorant town
Imagines best to make it thrive.
What cared Duke Ercole, that bid
His mummers to the market-place,
What th' onion-sellers thought or did
So that his plautus set the pace
For the Italian comedies?
And Guidobaldo, when he made
That grammar school of courtesies
Where wit and beauty learned their trade
Upon Urbino's windy hill,
Had sent no runners to and fro
That he might learn the shepherds' will
And when they drove out Cosimo,
Indifferent how the rancour ran,
He gave the hours they had set free
To Michelozzo's latest plan
For the San Marco Library,
Whence turbulent Italy should draw
Delight in Art whoSe end is peace,
In logic and in natural law
By ******* at the dugs of Greece.
Your open hand but shows our loss,
For he knew better how to live.
Let paudeens play at pitch and toss,
Look up in the sun's eye and give
What the exultant heart calls good
That some new day may breed the best
Because you gave, not what they would,
But the right twigs for an eagle's nest!
December
Edna Sweetlove May 2015
"Dog's Longevity Due to Tobacco Habit"**

The staple diet of Sebastian, a pitbull-miniature poodle cross-breed owned by Mrs Emmie Snaggletooth of St John's Road, Little Tittington, Berkshire, is Bruno Extra Strength Old **** pipe tobacco. He consumes two ounces of it every week and his proud owner keeps it in his very own tin.

The procedure is as follows: Mrs Snaggletooth rolls a cigarette and puts it between her lips. Sebastian then leaps up onto her lap and removes the unlit cigarette from her lips and sits with it for several moments between his own lips.

His mistress, who is a pipe smoker herself, then lights up and, as she sits contentently smoking her twelve-inch ivory carved Meerschaum, Sebastian eats his cigarette, leaving only the filter tip which he normally spits out into the fireplace. He has twenty cigarettes a day and enjoys his tobacco best after he has eaten his evening meal of Pedigree Chum (Older Dogs Recipe).

Sebastian, who is now seventeen years old, discovered his penchant for tobacco when he found an open tin of Bruno Old **** and ate the lot. "He became very agitated and barked for three hours non stop", says Mrs Snaggletooth when she fondly recalls the incident, "And we have not been able to stop him since. He's become a bit of an addict and has appeared on TV twice as a result."

Emmie Snaggletooth has smoked a pipe for over seventy years; she keeps her treasured Meerschaum on a cord around her neck. Born in Stillfockin in the County Cork eighty-eight years ago, she went on stage with her sister Catriona as part of the renowned music hall act, the Fabulous Snaggletooth Girls. Emmie picked up the pipe-smoking habit when she had to smoke a traditional clay pipe whilst playing the principal boy in **** in Boots at the old Queen's Theatre in Reading, before it was pulled down to make way for the Pay-As-You-Go Municipal Car Park and Disabled-Access-Toilets.

"All this talk of smoking being bad for your health is a load of old *******", declares Mrs Snaggletooth through her few remaining blackened teeth. And it would seem that Emmie and Sebastian are living proof of this. Emmie sadly points to the fact that her sister Catriona, who never smoked at all, died aged only 25 after being run over by a runaway bus and she emphasies Sebastian is the longest surving member of his litter. "Sebby is the only one of his family who ever liked tobacco, I'm sure of that", she says, "Although his sister, Mary-Jean, was fond of a glass of stout with her biscuits."

Readers are invited to turn to page 24 to enter this week's competition to win a year's supply of Bruno Extra Strength Old **** tobacco and a free ****** examination from Hilary Clinton (Mrs).
1
Who will honor the city without a name
If so many are dead and others pan gold
Or sell arms in faraway countries?


What shepherd's horn swathed in the bark of birch
Will sound in the Ponary Hills the memory of the absent—
Vagabonds, Pathfinders, brethren of a dissolved lodge?


This spring, in a desert, beyond a campsite flagpole,
—In silence that stretched to the solid rock of yellow and red mountains—
I heard in a gray bush the buzzing of wild bees.


The current carried an echo and the timber of rafts.
A man in a visored cap and a woman in a kerchief
Pushed hard with their four hands at a heavy steering oar.


In the library, below a tower painted with the signs of the zodiac,
Kontrym would take a whiff from his snuffbox and smile
For despite Metternich all was not yet lost.


And on crooked lanes down the middle of a sandy highway
Jewish carts went their way while a black grouse hooted
Standing on a cuirassier's helmet, a relict of La Grande Armée.


2
In Death Valley I thought about styles of hairdo,
About a hand that shifted spotlights at the Student's Ball
In the city from which no voice could reach me.
Minerals did not sound the last trumpet.
There was only the rustle of a loosened grain of lava.


In Death Valley salt gleams from a dried-up lake bed.
Defend, defend yourself, says the tick-tock of the blood.
From the futility of solid rock, no wisdom.


In Death Valley no hawk or eagle against the sky.
The prediction of a Gypsy woman has come true.
In a lane under an arcade, then, I was reading a poem
Of someone who had lived next door, entitled 'An Hour of Thought.'


I looked long at the rearview mirror: there, the one man
Within three miles, an Indian, was walking a bicycle uphill.


3
With flutes, with torches
And a drum, boom, boom,
Look, the one who died in Istanbul, there, in the first row.
He walks arm in arm with his young lady,
And over them swallows fly.


They carry oars or staffs garlanded with leaves
And bunches of flowers from the shores of the Green Lakes,
As they came closer and closer, down Castle Street.
And then suddenly nothing, only a white puff of cloud
Over the Humanities Student Club,
Division of Creative Writing.


4
Books, we have written a whole library of them.
Lands, we have visited a great many of them.
Battles, we have lost a number of them.
Till we are no more, we and our Maryla.


5
Understanding and pity,
We value them highly.
What else?


Beauty and kisses,
Fame and its prizes,
Who cares?


Doctors and lawyers,
Well-turned-out majors,
Six feet of earth.


Rings, furs, and lashes,
Glances at Masses,
Rest in peace.


Sweet twin *******, good night.
Sleep through to the light,
Without spiders.


6
The sun goes down above the Zealous Lithuanian Lodge
And kindles fire on landscapes 'made from nature':
The Wilia winding among pines; black honey of the Żejmiana;
The Mereczanka washes berries near the Żegaryno village.
The valets had already brought in Theban candelabra
And pulled curtains, one after the other, slowly,
While, thinking I entered first, taking off my gloves,
I saw that all the eyes were fixed on me.


7
When I got rid of grieving
And the glory I was seeking,
Which I had no business doing,


I was carried by dragons
Over countries, bays, and mountains,
By fate, or by what happens.


Oh yes, I wanted to be me.
I toasted mirrors weepily
And learned my own stupidity.


From nails, mucous membrane,
Lungs, liver, bowels, and spleen
Whose house is made? Mine.


So what else is new?
I am not my own friend.
Time cuts me in two.


Monuments covered with snow,
Accept my gift. I wandered;
And where, I don't know.


8
Absent, burning, acrid, salty, sharp.
Thus the feast of Insubstantiality.
Under a gathering of clouds anywhere.
In a bay, on a plateau, in a dry arroyo.
No density. No harness of stone.
Even the Summa thins into straw and smoke.
And the angelic choirs fly over in a pomegranate seed
Sounding every few instants, not for us, their trumpets.


9
Light, universal, and yet it keeps changing.
For I love the light too, perhaps the light only.
Yet what is too dazzling and too high is not for me.
So when the clouds turn rosy, I think of light that is level
In the lands of birch and pine coated with crispy lichen,
Late in autumn, under the hoarfrost when the last milk caps
Rot under the firs and the hounds' barking echoes,
And jackdaws wheel over the tower of a Basilian church.


10
Unexpressed, untold.
But how?
The shortness of life,
the years quicker and quicker,
not remembering whether it happened in this or that autumn.
Retinues of homespun velveteen skirts,
giggles above a railing, pigtails askew,
sittings on chamberpots upstairs
when the sledge jingles under the columns of the porch
just before the moustachioed ones in wolf fur enter.
Female humanity,
children's snots, legs spread apart,
snarled hair, the milk boiling over,
stench, **** frozen into clods.
And those centuries,
conceiving in the herring smell of the middle of the night
instead of playing something like a game of chess
or dancing an intellectual ballet.
And palisades,
and pregnant sheep,
and pigs, fast eaters and poor eaters,
and cows cured by incantations.


11
Not the Last Judgment, just a kermess by a river.
Small whistles, clay chickens, candied hearts.
So we trudged through the slush of melting snow
To buy bagels from the district of Smorgonie.


A fortune-teller hawking: 'Your destiny, your planets.'
And a toy devil bobbing in a tube of crimson brine.
Another, a rubber one, expired in the air squeaking,
By the stand where you bought stories of King Otto and Melusine.


12
Why should that city, defenseless and pure as the wedding necklace of
a forgotten tribe, keep offering itself to me?
Like blue and red-brown seeds beaded in Tuzigoot in the copper desert
seven centuries ago.


Where ocher rubbed into stone still waits for the brow and cheekbone
it would adorn, though for all that time there has been no one.


What evil in me, what pity has made me deserve this offering?


It stands before me, ready, not even the smoke from one chimney is
lacking, not one echo, when I step across the rivers that separate us.


Perhaps Anna and Dora Drużyno have called to me, three hundred miles
inside Arizona, because except fo me no one else knows that they ever
lived.


They trot before me on Embankment Street, two hently born parakeets
from Samogitia, and at night they unravel their spinster tresses of gray
hair.


Here there is no earlier and no later; the seasons of the year and of the
day are simultaneous.


At dawn ****-wagons leave town in long rows and municipal employees
at the gate collect the turnpike toll in leather bags.


Rattling their wheels, 'Courier' and 'Speedy' move against the current
to Werki, and an oarsman shot down over England skiffs past, spread-
eagled by his oars.


At St. Peter and Paul's the angels lower their thick eyelids in a smile
over a nun who has indecent thoughts.


Bearded, in a wig, Mrs. Sora Klok sits at the ocunter, instructing her
twelve shopgirls.


And all of German Street tosses into the air unfurled bolts of fabric,
preparing itself for death and the conquest of Jerusalem.


Black and princely, an underground river knocks at cellars of the
cathedral under the tomb of St. Casimir the Young and under the
half-charred oak logs in the hearth.


Carrying her servant's-basket on her shoulder, Barbara, dressed in
mourning, returns from the Lithuanian Mass at St. Nicholas to the
Romers' house in Bakszta Street.


How it glitters! the snow on Three Crosses Hill and Bekiesz Hill, not
to be melted by the breath of these brief lives.


And what do I know now, when I turn into Arsenal Street and open
my eyes once more on a useless end of the world?


I was running, as the silks rustled, through room after room without
stopping, for I believed in the existence of a last door.


But the shape of lips and an apple and a flower pinned to a dress were
all that one was permitted to know and take away.


The Earth, neither compassionate nor evil, neither beautiful nor atro-
cious, persisted, innocent, open to pain and desire.


And the gift was useless, if, later on, in the flarings of distant nights,
there was not less bitterness but more.


If I cannot so exhaust my life and their life that the bygone crying is
transformed, at last, into harmony.


Like a Noble Jan Dęboróg in the Straszun's secondhand-book shop, I am
put to rest forever between tow familiar names.


The castle tower above the leafy tumulus grows small and there is still
a hardly audible—is it Mozart's Requiem?—music.


In the immobile light I move my lips and perhaps I am even glad not
to find the desired word.
Man May 2023
Civility for civilty's sake
Do you laugh to feel,
Work to wake?
Is there a person there real?
Or, are you too fake?
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
First Living Organism

Anyway, there is love and death and governance. With the birth of my sons, love was fulfilled. There is no romance left in love for me, women are another form of men. Perhaps their toes are painted rather than blood-encrusted, but blood runs from their bones, their eyes are friendly as camera lenses, muscles hungry. Death continues to be my every third thought, fittingly. Occasionally I feel strong, but when I don’t it’s death waiting. I think I know it’s a waste of time to imagine being dead, as if being dead were a form of living. It’s not, but last night I was reading about the efforts of astrobiologists to identify LUCA meaning Last Universal Common Ancestor and FLO, first living organism, and that gave me a calmer feeling. Bringing me to governance, how we manage together between birth and death. What can I say that hasn’t already been said by Aristotle and Plato, the Republicans and Democrats, Hamilton and Jefferson. To start, your daily discipline is a personal governance. There are many ways to know a person: by their god, by their fears and appetites, by how they spend their money or organize their time. Who is in authority, who is in command here? The one in authority is not necessarily our leader.


Patience

I live in a mountainous community about 140,000 strong. My irascible, aggressive temperament toward my fellow citizens has exiled or sidelined me to a peripheral almost insignificant role although when I arrived I was considered a problem solver, even a savior of the poor and the wealthy classes who feared for the future. Why mention this. He who knows patience knows peace. I have surely lost face often in my life. As a kid, lost most fights, as a man, chosen last to lead the squad or platoon. Only when every known leader had died did those in authority decide to use me. Someone must begin to write the federalist papers for the world. And, of course, it’s being done and heard. Books in print, blogs, debates. My vision is a world where you can fly from Madagascar to Mississippi and be greeted by a sign that says Welcome to our land. Go about your business, setting off no bombs, and fly home. Perhaps take a lover for one afternoon.


The Machine and the Season

The machine and the season are so far incompatible. The machine claims electrical problem. The house leaks from rain. The men who left the machine have started their own business. A new endeavor by which they will keep warm and purposeful. The junior partner, heavier, says the Grand Canyon’s not so grand. Jaded individual or one to set himself against the depths, abyss? Man’s systems. Man made the machine (and the town) from rocks mined next door. Some few men understand these invisible electrons moving the machine to perform. I still cannot imagine, i.e. my mind cannot move fast enough to know how so many particles can be sorted and split so quick to make words on a screen. My simplicity is terminal.


Saving Grace

Today it is fall, first day for long-sleeved shirts. The boys at school. I admonish Zach not to whine and complain about the work. Lately reading or practicing piano, prone to fits of frustration. To the point of claiming belly pain. Last night I dreamed I had pushed him to suicide. It is so important for a man to do no harm. This is what makes us crazy against Wolfowitz, willingness to **** to do good. Someone very sure of himself and shining, much wiser and more compassionate than me, has calculated for the world that more lives now for fewer later shall be sacrificed. The people he serves are cantankerous, disorderly, selfish and complaining. The same diverse, spoiled, unpatriotic revolutionaries as at the nation’s beginning. Their refusal to be more than the sum of themselves is their saving grace.


Politics

Politics can be an escape from the personal, the debates are of little interest to a man in hospice. Will the machines do their work? How will we make decisions together? Roger Johnson’s gravel pit must be killing his neighbors with the noise of boulders being pulverized to rock but Roger is certain his business is necessary for the public good. He knows he has a right to use his property as he sees fit. There is a noise ordinance, a state employee will travel out to measure the decibel level in your front yard as compared to the ambient noise level. There is a measurable amplitude beyond which the legislature has determined no citizen may be exposed or corporation go. It can be measured.


Measure for Measure

Measure for measure, all’s well that ends well during a midsummer night’s dream for the merry wives of Windsor. A million or more poets but only one Top Bard. How did he know so much about kings and fools and murderers? An Elizabethan and no Freedom of Information Act. Today it is fall. The legislature and president are at work and so are our machines. One by one and then in armies the leaves come down. It is not that someone must decide, we must decide how we will make decisions and where authority resides. What am I learning, sitting, watching the season turning? Content this morning to admire my sons’ photos, reread my own poems searching for the prize answer, and answer the phone. I seem to be alienating potential business partners with a take it or leave it comme-ci comme-ca attitude. All you can do, the best that can be done is to go to your daily discipline. Driving home or waking up at night I think I’m dying. Do the much-admired writers of our time die more content than that?


War All the Time

War all the time. I’ve been fond of saying what distinguishes America is its daily low intensity warfare. Endless but not fatal conflict. Chambers of commerce, municipal government, big corporations wrestle nearly naked and will lie as needed for what? I tire like an 80 year old man of the storm and worry. I remember my early years when I had no known skill to offer and elections occurred without my vote being solicited. I noticed no harm or good I did was noticed. Autumn was all mine, mine alone, I was alone in the world with autumn. My mind could not stand it. I cried out for comfort, someone to obey. I needed to grow up and know money.


The History That Surrounds Us

I’m not going anywhere, I chose to stay and hold my clod of soil in the landscape of community oh blah dah. I want like Shakespeare and other writers to discern the motivations of women, men, see through their lies to a humorous truth careless about success and able to explain why what happens today or on September 11th obtains. I was impressed by the critic who found that Shakespeare in Hamlet had tried to write about the thoughts of a man suspended between having decided to act and the act itself. Why bother he soliloquated why commit or submit to the great moment when mere men of bones and dust, disgusted with themselves and others are the actors of the moment, beheaders, rhymers, debtors. And, of course, the answer comes to one in the night like Chuang-tzu, or Lao, why not? The great moment is no greater than the small and the small no smaller than the great. You perform the history that surrounds you and go to your daily practice.


A Systems Guy

I’m something of a systems guy. I want the truth and death and worth to be independent of individual motives, paranoias, prejudice, peccadilloes, virginities, crucifixes, paradoxes, protons, protozoa or curses. I want pure human machinery, stainless steel, clear thinking, even handed, not a doubt that every doubt is wanted, needed, good to the last drop toward the ultimate ignition into outer space, colonization of diverse planets and immortality of the genome. Here’s what’s odd. While enduring ever more frequent panic attacks (and nudging toward survival and self-sufficiency my offspring) pounding and pinching my skin to stay sensate, maintain consciousness, I parabolate (always orbiting myself, eye on the tip of my *****) to another extreme, i.e. my belief mankind can escape the earth unlike Hamlet’s dad’s ghost. A system is a set of inputs–values, policies, objectives, procedures, data–organized and repeated to generate significant quantities of desired outcomes without redesigning the system for each individual outcome. I told John Russell from Amnesty International at Jack Shwartz’s daughter’s coming of age party about my plan to reorganize the U.N. so only the democracies can vote and no nation has a veto. He said the world’s not ready, with absolute certainty, knowledge and authority. I looked out the hotel window, this was shortly after 9/11, at dozens of American flags and a lone security guard. I’m always right I said to myself.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
Edna Sweetlove May 2015
This is a prose tale about the great superhero, SNOGGO
(as told in the first person by SNOGGO to his amanuensis, Edna)

*'You can't have "Jew",' I said.
'Why not? It's a perfectly good word. Are you anti-semitic or something?'
'Jew has a capital J,' I said.
'Not necessarily. I've used it before.'
'Not with me you haven't. There's the dictionary. Look it up.'

Jumbo grudgingly picked up the Shorter Oxford and looked up "Jew". He sniffed loudly, slammed the dictionary shut and removed the tiles from the board. His replacement word was a sodding disaster.

'That's twenty-four points you've cost me with your nit-picking, you *******,' he said through gritted yellow teeth, his flabby body shaking with rage. 'The J was on a triple letter score.'

I sneered derisively and laughed long and loud, making Jumbo froth at his ugly fat nostrils with anger.

'Watch this and weep, Jumbo,' I said, playing out all seven of my tiles onto the board to create a stunning word: UNZIPPED. 'The Z's on a double letter score and it's all on a triple word score, so that's 90, plus 50 for playing all my tiles, 140 in total and the end of the game,' I declared in triumph. Jumbo was caught with 14 in his hand (remember: he still had the J) and thus I, the great SNOGGO, became Greenwich Scrabble Champion for the 25th year running. Not only that: but 25 consecutive defeats in the final for Jumbo.

Jumbo roared in frustration as he saw his hopes of taking the coveted 24ct gold "Queen Anne" cup away from me, SNOGGO, dashed to the ground yet again. And, by centuries old tradition, 25 consecutive victories meant the priceless cup was now mine to keep for ever. Jumbo's scream of uncontrollable, incandescent rage could have been heard as far away as the Vanbrugh Hill Municipal Waste Disposal Centre.

'******* you for all ******* eternity,' he bellowed unsportingly as he waddled out of the cheering hall. In so doing he flouted the gentlemen's convention of always staying to take part in the closing ceremony. He missed seeing me, the great SNOGGO, receive the shining gold cup from the gnarled hands of the Lady Mayoress, the Hon. Mrs Snotte-Wragge, who whispered in my ear 'Fancy a quick **** later, back at the mayoral parlour, SNOGGO dear?' For the fifth year in a row I told her to go and get stuffed as I didn't go for ugly old bats with arses on them like a double-decker bus.

Later that evening, as I sat in the splendid Georgian surroundings of Snoggo Manor, cradling the gold cup and admiring the row of 25 Championship certificates on the walls of my elegant dining room, finishing off my second bottle of Bollinger Grand Cru '89 and stuffing my 18th oyster down my happy throat, I heard a knock on the door. Who could that possibly be at nearly midnight?

It was Jumbo, my fat defeated foe. He looked downcast. 'SNOGGO,' he said, 'I've come to offer my apologies for my inappropriate behaviour earlier. You deserved to win, you are the finest scrabbler in all of Greenwich. I have come to offer you the hand of friendship and to invite you to my humble home for a midnight snack to celebrate your stirring victory.'

'Jumbo,' I replied, 'that's uncommon civil of you, old man. And your timing is excellent, as I've just finished my apéritif and was on the verge of kicking Mrs SNOGGO, my new 17-year old Thai mail order wife, out of her hammock to make my supper. So what's on the menu, squire?'

'Well,' said Jumbo, 'I was thinking of pâte de foie gras - naturally made by Mrs Jumbo using our own force-fed geese, with a bottle of Château d'Yquem '78 to start with. Then perhaps a kilo of blood-red filet mignon avec pommes frites, washed down with a rather good magnum of Brouilly '99. Then there's Mrs Jumbo's famed cheeseboard with a tumbler full of vintage port, followed by a dozen crêpes suzettes, a few petits cafés, a monster Armagnac and a giant Havana each.'

I considered the proposed menu carefully before replying. 'Sounds quite good to me, Jumbo,' I declared, glancing over his shoulder at the Bentley waiting outside. I could just see the peaked chauffeur's cap of the diminutive Mrs Jumbo peering myopically over the leather-covered steering wheel.

And so, having told Mrs Snoggo to tidy up a bit whilst I was out, I went off to dinner with Jumbo. In all our 25 years of Scrabble rivalry I had never once set foot into his house, so I was eager to check out what sort of lifestyle he enjoyed. Once inside Jumbo Villa, I cast my eyes over the luxurious furnishings with an expert eye, evaluating their immense worth and rarity with incredible perspicacity and knowledge.

'Not a bad pad you've got here, Jumbo,' I conceded. 'Not in the same class as Snoggo Manor, of course, but still ****** impressive.' He was visibly flattered by my compliment.

'A glass of sherry while we wait for Mrs Jumbo to serve us?' queried Jumbo jovially. I sniffed at the huge portion of delicious amber nectar appreciatively. 'Lustau Amoroso Bodega Marquès de Mierda '42?' I guessed instinctively. Jumbo nodded. '******* spot on, SNOGGO,' he admitted in stunned amazement.

I took an enormous gulp and felt the alcohol hit me like a slam in the abdomen from Cassius Clay's butcher and more vicious brother. The room spun and I closed my eyes in resigned delight.

When I came to I found myself hanging unclothed in chains on the wall of a dank cellar. My head was pounding and I felt distinctly below par. I looked over my shoulder and beheld Jumbo standing there with a sjambok in his hand. He was stark ******* naked, naked as the day he was born, and I have never seen anything so repulsive in all my life (with the sole exception of that incredible day when, as a child, I caught my paternal grandparents bonking on the Persian rug in the Great Hall at Snoggo Manor on Christmas Eve). Jumbo’s huge pendulous ******* sagged over his bloated fat belly, which itself hung so low his genitals were mercifully hidden from my view. He was a ******* monstrosity.

The tiny Mrs Jumbo stood to the rear of the cellar, also naked, pallid and with her public hair died a shocking pink. She was a skinny freak, a vision of *** Hell. I noticed the tattoo on her belly. It showed a depiction of the crucifixion which I felt was in dubious taste, especially with Jesus sporting an enormous *******.

What I, the wonderful SNOGGO, suffered in the next few hours was truly indescribable, so I will only summarise it. After a seemingly endless whipping from Jumbo (assisted by Mrs Jumbo, but her puny lash strokes were almost pleasurable), accompanied by their combined frenzied cries of demented hatred and loathing, I was forced to suffer the supreme humiliation. Jumbo mounted a set of fine Regency library steps, positioned his Hellish lumpen body behind me and unceremoniously inserted his tiny ***** into my outraged ****. Oh the shame! Oh the shame!

‘O Jesus Christ help me!’ I yelled in rain and pain. And suddenly a voice spoke unto me. 'O great SNOGGO,' it intoned, 'thou needst not suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune so needlessly. Only have faith in me, the great loving Jesus, and I shall give thee strength to deal with thy ******* awful tribulations.'

It was a miracle! SNOGGO could and would be saved! Quickly I mumbled a couple of Ave Marias remembered from my youth as a leading mutual masturbator in the chapel choir, and I silently promised a quick twenty thousand quid to the local faggotty priest ******* fund, and my chains fell to the floor with a blast of heavenly thunder. Halle-*******-luliah!

'Right, Jumbo you fat ****,' I snapped, 'you have ******* had it.'

And with one mighty blow of my right arm I smashed him against the wall. His huge hideous body crumpled as he slid to the floor, blood oozing from his fat gob. I gave him a ****** good kicking in the face and in the heart region and shortly he went to meet his maker, with a sickening grunt and expulsion of *****.

Then I turned to the horrified naked ugly skinny tattooed Mrs Jumbo and said: 'OK, *******, where's my ******* supper?'

She shrugged and headed upstairs to prepare the meal I had been promised by Jumbo earlier, as I was seriously hungry by this stage. Little did she know I would be obliged to put her out of her misery later. Or if she were lucky, I might offer her a position as unpaid toilet cleanser chez moi.

Yes, it was yet another stunning victory for the fabulous SNOGGO, thanks to timely divine intervention for which I am very much obliged.

And don't forget my luscious 17-year old Thai mail bride would be waiting to give me a really good ******* once I got back to Snoggo Manor. Either that or I would give her a good belting and send her back to her grotty poverty-stricken village with a demand for a full refund, chop chop.
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e fields Nov 2018
Desired to be more attuned with idols
Their private lives gleaned from
Stills and moving images cutting swaths across
Skyscraping billboards, TV screens
The sides of passing buses
Subway cars headed deeper in,
Further in, beneath
Magazine spreads pulled out for
ad-hoc posters taped and tacked across
the plaster-sputtering suburban drywall paths
Like screams in arctic winds

Many, the young mean-spirited things
Wanting kinship with these enemies
Trying to plot a course to
**** diagonally-up across
their strident wildlife scenes

Attuned with idols riding their
phantom wavelengths with the
maverick assistance of Reds and
water-cut pints of irish whiskey
Then Father comes in proclaiming
to have saved our democracy on
the whim of a lever-pull upon
a municipal voting machine

No interruptions now please
I will direct the favors of my unborn
I am honed in on what really matters:
Hemingway hedonism.
Getting dead with generations
slinking in and out of frame
from before and after
me
Holly Salvatore Aug 2013
I. That summer the radio
Played nothing but Cat Stevens
While I hummed harmonies
In my first car
It was a wild world indeed
when kudzu overtook
The cornfields
All the ears were foreigners
The leaves basked in light
That dead-ended on route 15

II. That fall we spotted UFO's
Shining over the municipal
Park
We chased them across the
Ballfields
To the high school cross country course
A dirt track running
Through the woods
And when there was nothing
Alien lurking there
Our hopes fell
Faster than the stars

III. The following winter
Three inches of ice cut the powerlines
Impounded our school supplies
With the outtages
And the temperatures plummeting
Seventy percent of our hearts froze
All the parts that were water
Expanding our chests
Like balloons
Expanding our vision too
We thought this was the beginning
Of the end of St. Clair county
We though we'd all get out someday

IV. By spring the graveyard smelled
Like lilacs
And dead town elders
Came out to dance in the scent
We played capture the flag there
On school nights
And the cops could never catch us
Behind the headstones
Of our family plots
We wrote our own epitaphs
"I was water and I could have been
A fine wine"
*I fell asleep in sweet green clover to the sound of smalltown sirens...
eatmorewords Dec 2012
Time will tick by on a watch,
attached to a skinny wrist,
the hands rotate casting small shadows over roman numerals,
silhouetted behind bonsai tress with eyes that squint tight in this end of summer light.

Phones serve no purpose until they ring,
and in hospitals life support machines beep beep electronically
as people are feed through tubes that gurgle
and words get stuck in their throats as life constricts and
in these ***** municipal corridors death stalks dressed in a stained uniform.

Men in ties crunch numbers and say, ”There is no way to say this Mrs Smith, it would just be cheaper if your husband died.”
We can turn off the switch and you can take him home in the back of your car.
You don’t have a car?
That’s ok, a bus stops just outside.”

Leaves are falling early this season turning the floor brown.
Someone’s white golf ball
lies, abandoned
between moist grass and
desolate wanderers through
municipal courses
during Evening on
Father’s Day. Holding my pin, my quill
Frantically stitching point de capitons
between myself and the calm, fair way
I walk with conviction
alone, among firing-
flies toward all fathers
tonight, as swathing sprinklers gush, displacing
***** in-utero, past fences protecting
femme fatales whose unknown aspects
hang off tree rows
protruding from shoulders
sand-like limbs, flexed, stringy biceps
connect to its plastic dimples
through sturdy, wooden
fingers burrowed under grass and
swaying, pink clouds within
my eyes. Beyond hole
nines, red markers markers and ladies’
tee boxes
unacknowledged from
the green.

Rippling blades cede to setting-
star’s sacrimony in
vacant son-rooms, the
porches left of center, gurgling
traffically enveloped by laughter,
disinterested.

For this sight I cut my hair
inside my cozy, beige apartment
complex with a blue shower
curtain-wearing green, graphic
tease
printed by gray palm trees
swoops a hunting eagle, into the ebbing
stencil-tide of late day
orchestrated by man, this occurrence is
vagueary and seductive machinery
programmed by man
producing all, we are.

Waving tufts and leaves fall from
oaks wafting time past my nose with
rhythms out ciccadas, harmonies out
couples pulsating the sky,
ease pressure on vestigial nerves under
their atmospheres, droning vibrations, hollowed-
out and upholding
like arms do, Earth’s giant didgeridoo
We hum beside propulsive kangaroo
Tendons—see!
we’re becoming
taut on
empty bones holding-
black
birds with wings thrown desperately
toward others, panic
aloft in velvety
blue oxygen.

Picturing our streets’ concrete
burst asunder by
metesticized pipes watering formulaic
grounds
unearthing rock
and shrub
I passed the mangled corpses of adults
their kind, sighing.

I know it is as lifeless as his faint,
decomposing golf ball my dad
may have allowed me to
see. Our drowning star swoops
into the ocean
as eagles stamped on chests do,
unknown to time,
and loving shadows
untouched by yellow,
translucent lamp-
glare avoids the fallow structures
built with cement
inside the boudoir
of this day.
MMXII
My recitation here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1OBjxUlePo&feature;=youtu.be

An explanation of the name:
My father and I have in common, among other things, a middle name.
Sleeves of golf ***** have three and they are numbered 1-2-3.
I don't know where the other two went, but the ball I found on my walk that night
was titled "1," and I am not the first child but rather between two sisters.
Every year, my older sister bought my dad pistachios or something and I would often buy him golf ***** while my younger sister usually bought him candy for this special occasion.
We all love my father deeply and he has been very supportive, but I sometimes ignore
the fact that we did not start from nowhere and there must be some solid foundation into
which fertilizer is diseminated.

There are sacred things and people to be respected. I love my parents and could not be alive
without them. So this is really a tribute to both of them.

Please bear with me as I indulge this incredibly personal sentiment for myself.
Alexander  K Opicho
   (Eldoret, Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)


Hi  dear companion in my helm of gusto
I don't know if you enjoy as I do
whatever you accompany me  to often
is the height of joy, safety or life
friend I don't know you do know
you accompanied me once  to a ****** ***
I ripped fruits  alone , you protected me still
from foe *** aka aids as later I lived alone
as I trashed  you to the  rotten garbage
for municipal nemesis in  fire raze of  you
pardon me Mr ****** for once forgive me
next we accompany I will pay you dear
Marshall Gass Apr 2014
Snaking through the cities roads into highways
that connect people from all suburbs
to a central spinal cord of lanes that
take you up and away from slum to slum.

The upmarket stores are full of bright lights
and little else that is elegant
its a cosmetic upbringing, mirage that
rises over the city's mist and clogs up the minds
magic as it swerves and rustles up the
the energies of other super cities
where commerce and hard labour have
equally sculpted a life of crime and distance.

Watch out for the airport which swings
in between the mountain of rubble
and municipal mania and parthenium ****
what finds every possible nook and cranny
to manifest itself. The politicians mumble and jumble
their way through manifestos and gimmicks
that endorse themselves as saviours of greed.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.
She was an old Mid-western woman.
She was a distinct type.
A stock-staple character,
Sort of half Beverly Hillbillies Granny,
Throw in a skosh Betty White,
Mixed in with a lot of that old lady
In Driving Miss Daisy.
Southern Indiana:
The Confederacy’s best kept secret.
But I digress.

She was my neighbor in Buckeye, Arizona,
A quaint agrarian township, way out
At the west end of Maricopa County, which is
An hour from the Phoenix airport, the so-called
Sky Harbor International Airport,
Which surely must be near the list’s top:
All-time most pretentious,
Hyperbolic Chamber of Commerce,
Municipal Boosterisms.

Wikipedia English - The Free Encyclopedia
Boosterism:  the act of "boosting" (or promoting) a town, city, or organization, with the goal of improving public perception of it. Boosting can be as simple as "talking up" the entity at a party or as elaborate as establishing a visitors' bureau. It has been somewhat associated with American small towns. Boosting is also done in political settings, especially in regard to disputed policies or controversial events.

So, without thinking,
Walking down the driveway
To pick up the morning paper,
I let it slip:
“How are you?”
She’s leaning over the hedge,
As I bend down,
Picking up the local Pravda.
35 minutes later she sums up:
“I had to go to the doctor last night.
Gave me some cream for my pud.”
A twinkle in her eye—
She, my lascivious,
Old lady neighbor
In Buckeye, Arizona.
She had that sweet Mid-western thing
Working for her, her regional mojo.
And I’m right there on her wavelength:
The apple not falling far from my tree,
Or something like that . . .
I am losing my train of thought, here.
Last poem of the day, I guess.
I heard someone whisper "he's such an arrogant *****" as I entered.
Those crooked sons of ******* don't have any idea,
I'm the kind you hardly ever come across except in winters,
when all the street rats are begging for heat.
I command attention at the head of the table,
I am the head of the table,
and sever the head to **** the municipal body.
The wigs and robes and gavels I accessorize command it too.
When I sign things I do it haughtily,
I carefully etch each and every ******* letter onto writs of demand.

I stand!
A hush lingers,
I catch the eyes of Walter Weiss, he lies with every breath
and did you know he is unfaithful to his wife? I heard.
the shudders are shut, my druthers. Oh, Walter!
notarize my forms of annexation, please.
and take down this:
To whom it may concern:

You have 7 days to remove yourself from the premises
as you are aware of the edict that preexists
and preempts your residence
and your squalor misrepresents
your laziness.
Signed: The holding powers, in eminence.

Oh Walter Weiss, address it to yourself!
I pride myself on tact.
And package with the writ this evidence form
sent to my office following a secret examination
conducted by the Department of Residential Safety and Heath.

Do not bother me with demoralizations, Walter!
Due to discourse with the Act of Discontinuation,
(which of course is subject to broad generalizations)
the lien sector of the Savings and Loan Association
have concluded you are found in violation of, through reasoning by generalization,
failing to pay duties on your mortgage issued by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Oh, Walter, how distressing!
Don't falter, acquiescing
is always the way.
Just never, ever forget to pay.
W A Marshall Apr 2014
by: William A. Marshall


I stepped off the world
today,
off the broken streets
that winter has damaged
and municipal assessments
off the political gluttons
and performative marks
off the know-it-alls
and wild dogs roving around
with their ****
noses in the air
it’s not pretty
they cover what they don’t know
so that they look good
I head back down the dark hallway
to get a more primitive angle
off of privileged confidence
they are vulnerable
basic caretakers pursuing opulent corsages
to free them from their anxious quotas
and ******* rules
telling me how to wipe my ***
and how to use baby wipes
jointly acting like they run things
from their phony utilitarian bus stop
and cutting-edge applications
their personal band plays a cheerful tune
in the background
as they search for a bigger
advantage and more likes
even though we all share the same horror
youth is about mistakes
and making money
and choices with one eye here and now
the other eye on prevalent professions
students and maintenance men
bureaucratic puppets and academics
farmers and auditors
sales greasers and coaches
writers and board members
somewhere they end up there
carrying a liability
and it creates a vibration in my foxhole
but right in here baby
deep down within me
inside my tomb
I transfer to a silent
place away from
rambling rotting fungus
I step off of it
not always methodically
and then back into faults
and louse packs
I can only assume my rock
that sits in my hole immobile
next to the ****** candy wipes
unless I push it up ontic peaks
nonbeing begins to doubt me
and grips part of you so don’t
think that it doesn’t
I cut it with my knife
obliquely
finding unfortunate contagions
and courage down in the vault of silence
it is there or it isn’t
it is what keeps my will interested
far from the ones moving rashly
without it you would leap from bridges
through minefields I remember
a certain detachment
an uneven and sick progression
paperwork and a number with
a D affixed to its file
the ceiling became the nightly norm
this plastic vacuum-packed
wedding gown made of white silk
made weird noises
in the back of my closet
like it was weeping
the kind of dress
only worn once
it smelled like her that closet
retelling me each time
I opened the private door
making fake crinkling sounds
an icon of pure young tenderness
love expense and faith
eventually cooked and burned  
but it is too early
those individuals that gloat in pictures
and dream about their prince
they are busy playing with
their hair and organic shoulder bags
driving around in furnished cars
the uncorrupted ones
constant courses to come and
subsequent interviews
nailed skintight dresses
soon to be colored sweet red
with danger competing
well you had better feel lucky
because when you plunge into
future swamplands
incompetence and repayment
of what to do with it
and how then to
fill up your cup
without spilling it
all over your soul
don’t tell me how
to live my **** life
now is your time
to reason and shake imperfection
interruptions
over and over
those that listen to your intrusiveness
false performances in chic coffee shops
it is not sustainable there
but you play the part to maintain
your chair in the cooperative
you will miss it
neglecting real evil
because you were talking too much
maintaining your image
Bradbury whispers
from the counter,
“You can't make people listen
they have to come round in
their own time wondering
what happened and why
the world blew up around them
it can't last.”
and numbness above nightly cocktails
distracted dub tracks
ultimately attending
hectic personnel meetings
in drenched swamps
spinning with heartless ***** jobs
unconcerned about safe comforts
two things balance them out
people and things
all part of it out there in the world
and they approach like a train
suffering shocks
unemotional images in chambers
some actually never return
from the beatings
but this isn’t the end
this is a commencement
for me
the forecast is water-resistant
they hurry snatching their
body spray and shower gel
on mirrored reflections
that scowl back at them
all alone there
in their glass steeple
family photos
thinking they have nurtured something
more than endless gossip
and ****** strains
much more important now
bent into independence
pausing with the approaching sunrise
as it splashes powerfully
inside their speculations
pride doesn’t care
if you think you are not puffed-up
at all you are
who in the hell are you kidding?
nothing to cling to
essential oilskins and manuscripts
credit problems
and autobiographical *** packed expressions
corner office windows
and diplomas
behind high-back chairs
trying to copy Sunday magazine’s
hottest statement
to fill up their life
a reminder just who the comics are
but it does not register
until that day
when it becomes intolerably vile
beneath wreckage
and burnt ruins
they find his
caring donation
clinched in the saviors grasp
jutting through burning garrisons
there is no truth more senior
than this truth here and now
but they can’t all be imparted
in this culturally planned folklore
I see them
when I am walking away
from the insulated bubble
down the street
like recruits in boot camp
and zealously rich parents
who send their youngsters
with luggage and loans
nearby like idols
salesman explaining things
as they nod like they are approving something
perhaps autonomy
from fathers and mothers
who stand with them astutely contemplating
the whole arrangement
they stare at the marble floor
I observe the run-through
the glittery entertainment
and documented departments
for happy pilgrims
who are insulated
for now
Harry J Baxter Jan 2014
A fist split the silence
the hard packing sound
followed by a liquid clogged choke
and Joe went under the water
limp in my arms
crimson red permeating through the cool blue salt water
of my parents’ pool
Nolan rubbing his hand - laughing
**** I didn’t mean to actually hit him
and we all laughed because it was a play fight
we were young, looking for answers which didn’t exist
so we filled the void like many of us did
with the seething, impotent aggression of youth
It went Gangsta rap
to punk rock
to heavy metal
and Joe and Nolan were in a band
and Joe and Nolan professed their love of Satan
because Satan never made them sit still and be quiet
they burned bibles and summoned demons
from an online version of the Necronomicon
and we went to shows
at fourteen and fifteen
drinking beer and whiskey in the alley out back
with all of the local rock stars
we hurled ourselves -
arms draped around each others’ shoulders -
into the swirling whirlwind of fists
and studded leather
and sweat and beer and blood
where grown men punched us in the face
and we gave back as good as we got
hugging afterwards in the warm glow of our pain
we were alive on the front lines
hanging from the edge that everybody else strayed from
domesticated wolves scared of electric fence flags
Nolan went crowd surfing at the Municipal Waste concert
only to be dropped into a stomping pile of ******* kids
his lips split open and I gave him my bandanna to soak up the blood
I still have that ***** rag around here somewhere
He needed six stitches inside his lower lip
but we didn’t leave until after the show
even when the fire marshals came to shut us down
when ceiling fans and trash cans were being thrown around like beach *****
we were just kids
confronted with the meaninglessness of everything we had been raised to hold on to
like life rafts
we were just kids to whom
destruction seemed far more important
than creation
if we were ever going to make anything for ourselves
in this concrete clad hell scape
Jonathan Pizarro Sep 2011
Define a modern day criminal
While hypocritical political beings run our land
Living in a critical pitiful painful physical caving roof
With a senseless empirical prototypical lost truth
Indivisible people with inimical minds destroy the parasitical

But we don’t dream
We don’t wish
And we fear

Impermissible values atypical to the nonphysical morals
Incorporated with subliminal messages conveying hypercritical cynical thoughts
That create a clinical stereotypical that cousins the excremental
Archetypical of hatred and malice of our digital kind
Visible scars traditional to the mental demons in our minds

But we take the beatings
We’re let down
And we disappoint

An occipital which lacks visual of the coincidental
Leading to a sentimental moment where the only desires are miracles
The minimal heart becomes gentle and suffers pain
A pain in the temple far from accidental that can offer supplemental guidance
Unconditional love and fundamental care

But we take for granted
We’re selfish
And we fail

An oriental vibe in the beat box’s instrumental welfare
Which adorns the continental flesh like a spring ornamental plant
Judgmental is the incidental human race, the municipal force of the universe
Oppose the parental control against the environmental curiosity of our infants
Because unlike rental we can’t take back our wagon of mishaps in a world so
hypocritical, cynical, stereotypical, digital, and just mental.

Jonathan Pizarro
Copyright 2011 ©
March 7th, 2011 5:42am
Edna Sweetlove Sep 2015
I can scarcely bring myself to tell the tale
of how yet another internet date
went tragically wrong thanks to
shameless deceit crueller than I can say.

I suffer so many sadnesses as I seek true love
via internet site
after internet site
but I really thought yes
this time yes this time yes
finally after so many ****-ups
of one sort or another
so I foolishly imagined I was onto a good thing
but would you believe it
another date went wrong
and my poor heart breaks.

I recall 'twas a a cool autumn evening
with a hint of hail in the sky
but we had agreed to meet
perhaps optimistically
at a secluded spot in the municipal gardens
down by the victorian fountain
where the queers congregate by night
leaving skidmarks on the paintwork
after deep **** love therapy.

I can still hear the tweety-birds singing
their oh-so-nice chirping song
in the trees where they perched
trying to **** on passers-by
especially the handicapped
(who could less easily dodge
their good luck messages
without toppling over).

I ran headlong down the path
and my little ***** wobbled
with eager anticipation of love
innocently carelessly naively perhaps
for I felt deep in my trusting heart
that at last with a bit of luck
I might score for a good hard poke
on our first date or at least a right deep feel-up
and a copious exchange of mouth fluids
at the very very least.

I read through the print-out
from the new internet site
where serendipity had brought us
together like lost souls in a storm
(www.******-poking.com since you ask)
and I felt your comment
'I love *******, ******* and more'
was probably good sign
all in all
bearing in mind its implications.

I thought you might be quite a looker
from the photo you had posted
especially since I could
just about partially see
the wicked grin on your face
whilst you were ******* on
two obese men's knobs
(in the photo I mean)
and then you appeared
with your huge mongoloid skull
peeping excitedly out
of the filthy rags you wore
oh dear jesus I cried out in joy
I could smell your ****-drenched ******
from seventy-five yards away
and one of the swans on the lake
drowned itself to escape the pong.

I stared at the diarrhoea oozing from your pants
in romantic dollops
we strolled through the park
(well I strolled but you hobbled)
chattering away the way lovers do
when they are up for it
against all the ******* odds
and as I have observed on other occasions
love isn’t just a matter of aesthetics
after all animal attraction has a lot going for it
but you have to draw the line
somewhere
and you were way out of order
so very reluctantly
(but firmly and resolutely)
I gave you a gentle push
toppling you into the swollen stream
as it exited the decorative lake
and believe me when I say
that I will always remember the sound
of your aquatic scream
as the fast-moving current
took you away from my sad eyes
down to the millrace
and merciful release
from a life of disappointment.
John Milligan Jan 2015
******* found dead the papers said
Wounds to the genitals breast and head
Cast aside in a corner dark
Of the municipal park
Like some ******* in a bag
Just some *****? Some little ****?

Or a teenage girl all alone
Who’d a baby daughter of her own
Who was big sis to her little brother
A much loved child of a single mother
Used, abused then thrown aside
In terror and loneliness when she died

If we don’t look behind headline
Move on quickly, we’ll be fine
Otherwise we may feel grief
Or, god forbid, change a fixed belief
She was just some ***** who got hers
But, perhaps a mention in our prayers?

We may feel brief pity, heave a sigh
There, but for the grace of God, go I
Then turn the page, find the sport
**** happens when you’re born that sort
It’s just society nothing more
And, after all, she was just a *****

(Wasn't she?)
So many of life's tragedies played out every day,
Catch our attention briefly then simply slip away.
Jonathan Pizarro Sep 2011
Define a modern day criminal
While hypocritical political beings run our land
Living in a critical pitiful painful physical caving roof
With a senseless empirical prototypical lost truth
Indivisible people with inimical minds destroy the parasitical

But we don’t dream
We don’t wish
And we fear

Impermissible values atypical to the nonphysical morals
Incorporated with subliminal messages conveying hypercritical cynical thoughts
That create a clinical stereotypical that cousins the excremental
Archetypical of hatred and malice of our digital kind
Visible scars traditional to the mental demons in our minds

But we take the beatings
We’re let down
And we disappoint

An occipital which lacks visual of the coincidental
Leading to a sentimental moment where the only desires are miracles
The minimal heart becomes gentle and suffers pain
A pain in the temple far from accidental that can offer supplemental guidance
Unconditional love and fundamental care

But we take for granted
We’re selfish
And we fail

An oriental vibe in the beat box’s instrumental welfare
Which adorns the continental flesh like a spring ornamental plant
Judgmental is the incidental human race, the municipal force of the universe
Oppose the parental control against the environmental curiosity of our infants
Because unlike rental we can’t take back our wagon of mishaps in a world so
hypocritical, cynical, stereotypical, digital, and just mental.

Jonathan Pizarro
Copyright 2011 ©
March 7th, 2011 5:42am
Thousand years ago, the world somewhere began
an escape, a thousand years later still trying to get to the end, but my body becomes a decorative piece, becomes of a number one digital romano ... that turns into flames cinch and dressing this base disencounter ; that is my physical, on an all, regardless of who will manage and the rule ... "

... I find it hard to breathe ... i do not know if i can continue what i have proposed ....
there is so much to say. i never wanted to write about it. and now i am here, changing the paper by words.
   better...... so nobody will remember anything, thanks to the evanescence. I have nothing to leave, no one for whom to stay here. i just hope to leave my soul in peace ...
   ... tonight i die.

**** dreamer who i am! i never got anywhere by myself. i never got to be what it was if it had not been for someone else.
   my days, my whole life governed by feelings ... they left me?
  
Inserts 1 - full moon in three shooting lights threshold pierced window shades sea view. there were three golden stingrays. they went to his room versailles, with some electricity that flowed from their bodies corps plans were roots electro-magnetic. upon entering threshold, their bodies pressed proportion to the input capability, but yes, each tidily came one after other. snipf believed to be asleep yet, but ***** it finding that was very real., many thought to pray, the saint who heard his confession had derived dimensional elsewhere.

Each stood before him. they looked with your eyes ldeep blue, relighted one in your iris reddish tint. your long antennas your heads caressed her room like recognizing them. snifp raised his arms as if embracing them, but put them over his head like imitating them, so began to turn, as if he were at the bottom of the ocean. this way, began to rowing with his arms in the room. the four members looked at each other, until snifp stood in between them, restarting your memories and confession to your new species of visitors. - no doubt their gods were they who visited because they were the ones that helped him in difficult and conflicting tasks. they must be highlighted; no le imposed a religiousness, only you your matches proposed delayed stages,

Four together, sit finally, focus on one thought as he took him to snipf arm for lease gate reality. aso these blankets emit a high-pitched noise that made snipf his new travelers to dream where would be the master sea and land beside them.

Romanticism is only rain emotions between winter skies sweetened; it is the cessation of rain from storms deaf. those deaf people who never believed in sentiment. Perhaps they have died without discovering it, and so poor and eager to continue living. instead i say goodbye to my land, my things, my memories. i'm so overjoyed without missing anything because what i miss is dead.

Insert 2 - feel distant sounds thunders and lightnings - some cats stumbled after feeling loud noise.

   I was born in 1832, dressed in beautiful costumes me, but i was on saturday mornings bathe with my blankets friends, all that leave very soon because every day stuttered more, and i found it hard to beat in my talk. They moved me with all my belongings to higher school, even only place to hear the bells of the cathedral, filled me with hearing loss and mortuary pain inside me was a place that then fled, over time i graduated from journalist, without anyone in my family believed in me. they never could understand my lack of realism. some call me naive, not without reason, i must admit.

   It's curious. whatever it is that one wants in life, always have obstacles from the people closest. from them comes the pain of misunderstanding and apathy. of them come from the larger wounds heals any ointment. Until i met a fisherman near a marina rivera long in a bar, then he told me his adventures and i became the eager boy children's stories. that night made me drink and drink until you drop at the side of a fishing terminal on the deck of a great ship.

Insert 3 - sleep - my in between growth stingrays, they were flying at night over my house, and sometimes brought me messages about the new season climate. interrupted my homework prepared, and most important, including, the most important; me included among the best, to sail with them. some among their ranks, me and took me taught to fly, although i always kept my body cold, completely oblivious to provide me own will enough heat. they gave me when stuttered or epileptic seizures, they did me your riding world where no disturbance physics i was afraid. But my blankets, me covering, me had in his pilgrimages slitting sea, sea to own and only, just for me. noises in them moderated my ears oversensitive, and for the first time vi from the sea depth rain fell as planting the ocean, as vast brightening the room he shared alongside them.

Insert end -

my life was empty without a firm helm, but ... god!
   she was several years younger than me. a beautiful creature in sight and confined to good feelings. i met a rainy night. she was with hat, with umbrella. we were heading to the same place where there was no one, because the activity had been suspended. after waiting and exchanging timid and nervous words we decided that we would be together forever.

   I do not mean it was love at first sight. rather, it was like finding my soul mate. and although we knew that the road would be hard and painful, we launched into a destination built by us and our struggles.

it's beautiful outside, with the moon through the trees can they see me sitting here or your mind round inside me?
   All of me are gone, even the children we never had. they left me in the cold. she will not sit in front of my fire more, because now she is snow.
    Is dark outside, trees writhe can they wait or live without me?
   but his fingerprints are still marked, marked in the snow left in me. everything is so white that hides the traces of tears that you never saw. everything is a blanket of snow falling on the memories you used to have. But even heart aches as before, i can not help feeling that someday come back from the dead to take your hand.
  
it's warm outside; the trees are gone. my soul took another turn. he never appeared someone like her. if your fingerprints are still, and i can see them in the snow! Everything is so white that covers the trails that she was not allowed to continue. everything is nothing, that clouds the movements that made me.
   But my heart is still suffering as he did. you followed the path that never again will bring.

I am confined to my bed in a dark room. i have a window overlooking the sea from the east, and another that puts me in front of the forest. i left on my bed a wooden box with yellowed leaves are the letters we sent her and i for so many years. yet i keep them all ... no, it's not true, many were lost in the fire flash - she will walk through the park until a curtain falls separating both. - pauses then your thinking and strongly bites pencil in her mouth was.

But no matter, i have the words engraved in my memory. and that will continue.The branches of the tree, which adjoins east window of small ones are ways to my walking, like war heroes. further, on stretchers, bring my faithful subjects in about trust management mi. but to raise my head like a big diving, they come see some maimed, come without it, come without his presence, bring only pieces of his body.
    
Our whole life, a very short time we were together, and not that we would not be, but there was always something that separated us. first the family, then the distance. We were separated and had to go in your search. at that time i was studying and trips were long, tedious and very damaging to my career, by the way, my family did not look favorably upon our union, rather than being recognized by men had communed in the sky ...
  
How i detest this ancient time! it is not day nor night, and i am not a man more educated to think more than this ... i hate to see the sun when i pray to the west, but someday she will take my dreams where the stars shine, where all they talk with their hands, without anguish nor grief, where all secretly want to go where the beauty sing constantly.

[ellipsis n 1]  

Adulthood - in the municipal choir - snifp came with his briefcase wondering if had kept all their material header, then trying to put his hand to pocket inner his coat, pulls out a key, this will be falling from his hands, and could realize there was a leaf on the floor, announcing a performance coral group in the premises of the municipality.
[end ellipsis 1]

[ellipsis 2]

Children age - in the conservatory - this brings another memory your memory with air fire, a dense air, movement of people, unable to help each other. it was toward the end of his second childhood, with his mother ran near a school where she thought enroll for classes theater.  mourn strongly but his mother, asking what was wrong? she said nothing for you not to worry. small but was snifp intuited by the uncertainty of their economic resources. he hugs her and says he has talent, that will come after all. snifp for a moment lets his mother and a photo seen in someone like his father, leaving the building and walks cobblestones wetted by the ***** of a vil exploited horse, and suddenly caresses their hands caress end the cabinet of the lord of the book store. and see i was like his father, but this time had the pipe on the left hand and lenses in the right hand. then, scare away horse and scared snifp trying to crossing the street leading the news to his mother. Her, i had signed up for next season.

[end ellipsis 2]  

After his assistant will take a reactant concoction snipf felt memories of those rejuvenated, making faces on the wall of his room. some of them were very funny and some not. but suddenly crossing the fingers tightening strongly and fix your clothes. buckle his belt. to sing is arranged, to shout and satiated to see if it really true the spirit that motivated him aires to be acquired new life. gets, fell knee, runs open window. try to touch everything with his hands, then kick chair to sit down and write. for each paragraph writing was setting and take off  lenses. for every paragraph, she took a sip of boiling concoction that was with him at that time

   Many of these letters were written thought in poetry. some might object letters "form", but the content, our feelings ... they can not be judged by anyone. I can not symbolize things. for me a bottle is a bottle. i need to reach a level of abstraction, because i recognize that everything beautiful i've seen i remember; because i know that to forget, everything will fly in the wind. so i can not symbolize anything. on the other hand, i know that everything that meant something to me, i could never do completely reach your heart. i hope to be wrong.
- get your consultant with tray in his hands unite.
snipf lord, your medicine. remember that leave this excerpt stingray than recommended by your doctor. You and your advisor and the look before opening the door thinking it would the last time i'd see him, then snipf recommences his speech ._
... i consider myself a failure fledged. some of those past failures are transmuted into fertilizers for ephemeral successes, lost in the sound of the wind beneath me accommodating my feet to tie them to my chair inquisitor.  TO  BE CONTINUED
SCREENPLAY ONIRIC POEMS - MAIN CHARACTER SNIFP  THE STINGRAY - under edition
decir que esa mujer era dos mujeres es decir poquito
debía tener unas 12.397 mujeres en su mujer
era difícil saber con quién trataba uno
en ese pueblo de mujeres  / ejemplo:

yacíamos en un lecho de amor /
ella era un alba de algas fosforescentes /
cuando la fui a abrazar
se convirtió en singapur llena de perros que aullaban / recuerdo
cuando se apareció envuelta en rosas de aghadir /
parecía una constelación en la tierra /
parecía que la cruz del sur había bajado a la tierra /
esa mujer brillaba como la luna de su voz derecha /

como el sol que se ponía en su voz /
en las rosas estaban escritos todos los nombres de esa mujer menos uno /
y cuando se dio vuelta / su nuca era el plan económico /
tenía miles de cifras y la balanza de muertes favorable a la dictadura militar / o sea

nunca sabía uno adónde iba a parar esa mujer /
yo estaba ligeramente desconcertado / una noche
le golpié el hombro para ver con quién era
y vi en sus ojos desiertos un camello / a veces

esa mujer era la banda municipal de mi pueblo   /
tocaba dulces valses hasta que el trombón empezaba a desafinar /
y los demás desafinaban con él /
esa mujer tenía la memoria desafinada /

usté podía amarla hasta el delirio /
hacerle crecer días del **** tembloroso /
hacerla volar como pajarito de sábana /
al día siguiente se despertaba hablando de malevíc /

la memoria le andaba como un reloj con rabia /
a las tres de la tarde se acordaba del mulo
que le pateó la infancia una noche del ser /
ellaba mucho esa mujer y era una banda municipal /

la devoraron todos los fantasmas que pudo
alimentar con sus miles de mujeres /
y era una banda municipal desafinada
yéndose por las sombras de la placita de mi pueblo /

yo / compañeros / una noche como ésta que
nos empapan los rostros que a lo mejor morimos /
monté en el camellito que esperaba en sus ojos
y me fui de las costas tibias de esa mujer /

callado como un niño bajo los gordos buitres
que me comen de todo /  menos el pensamiento
de cuando ella se unía como un ramo
de dulzura y lo tiraba en la tarde /
K Balachandran Jan 2012
Like those green hills
in an undaunted meditative silence
in front of the house
i was brought up

               my secrets are pretty open,

i am still a gun with full of bullets
if i spill the beans
i'll be compromised, some one pointed out
so what?

yes, i did fornicate a bit
most unforgettable one
was with an intellectual type
under the 'wisdom tree'
highlighted as a tourist attraction
in the municipal park,
on a full moon day,
that was a condition she put,
i found  no problem to agree.

this was the time when we were wild
smoked joints, did theater,
and went about aimlessly
but read a lot, as if our lives
would come to a grinding
halt the very next day;
so we had to finish all that.
it was as if we are mad.

Oh! not to forget the Ashram
over looking a lake
where one learned few things
on life and other matters of interest,
how can i forget the fiery  poet,
who got there to get
enlightened if possible in a week
we slept and created a lovely scandal
(you should forgive me for all that,
quite coincidental, not at all intentional)
noted in my diary thus--
'poets are no less hot than other mortals'

Once in drunken stupor
i went to swim in the lake across the Ashram
with full of crocodiles that relished
eating people's limbs
not all, but one at a time,
the girl who found me floating
inviting attention of crocs
dragged me  out, took me to her room
in the Ashram, and at that night
she said:"how romantic!
let's go to bed together
your punch drunk meat
would have been eaten
by crocs by now..so celebrate"
she was so much better than crocodiles
in heat, left me in a state of dazzle
Yes now it can be told; one of my secrets is this
I believe in eclectic wisdom,
as ephemeral life has  
wisdom alone offers salvation.

i have no great secrets,
no Swiss bank accounts,
affairs with  enchanting courtesans
in any Maharaja's court.
The last and only Maharaja i met face to face
had retired long back
and during my interview with him
addressed me "Sir"
how could one tell a Maharaja
though he is a paper tiger that
one is averse to colonial manners!

                                        About certain secrets to be unearthed:
                                         I will recount this in a later date.
Plaza de Armas, plaza de musicales nidos,
frente a frente del rudo y enano soportal;
plaza en que se confunden un obstinado aroma
lírico y una cierta prosa municipal;
plaza frente a la cárcel lóbrega y frente al lúcido
hogar en que nacieron y murieron los míos;
he aquí que te interroga un discípulo, fiel
a tus fuentes cantantes y tus prados umbríos.
¿Qué se hizo, Plaza de Armas, el coro de chiquillas
que conmigo llegaban en la tarde de asueto
del sábado, a tu kiosko, y que eran actrices
de muñeca excesiva y de exiguo alfabeto?
¿Qué fue de aquellas dulces colegas que rieron
para mí, desde un marco de verdor y de rosas?
¿Qué de las camaradas de los juegos impúberes?
¿Son vírgenes intactas o madres dolorosas?
Es verdad, sé el destino casto de aquella pobre
pálida, cuyo rostro, como una indulgencia
plenaria, miré ayer tras un vidrio lloroso;
me ha inundado en recuerdos pueriles la presencia
de Ana, que al tutearme decía el «tú» de antaño
como una obra maestra, y que hoy me habló con
ceremonia forzada; he visto a Catalina,
exangüe, al exhibir su maternal fortuna
cuando en un cochecillo de blondas y de raso
lleva el fruto cruel y suave de su idilio
por los enarenados senderos...
                                                          Más no sé
de todas las demás que viven en exilio.
Y por todas quiero. He de saber de todas
las pequeñas torcaces que me dieron el gusto
de la voz de mujer. ¡Torcaces que cantaban
para mí, en la mañana de un día claro y justo!
Dime, plaza de nidos musicales, de las
actrices que impacientes por salir a la escena
del mundo, chuscamente fingían gozosos líos
de noviazgos y negros episodios de pena.
Dime, Plaza de Armas, de las párvulas lindas
y bobas, que vertieron con su mano inconsciente
un perfume amistoso en el umbral del alma
y una gota del filtro del amor en mi frente.
Mas la plaza está muda, y su silencio trágico
se va agravando en mí con el mismo dolor
del bisoño escolar que sale a vacaciones
pensando en la benévola acogida de Abel,
y halla muerto, en la sala, al hermano menor.
Bob Sterry Jul 2014
That short wispy haired lady
Fighting her way against the wind
Up the London Road
Is my Mother.
Lips pursed she is returning
From the hairdressers, the post office
And has yet to pick up steak and kidney
For the pie she will make
For the boy who is coming home
For her son who will soon be there
For the man who loves the pie
For her child who loves her.
Her lips are pursed in determination
Against all the obstacles
Real and imagined that stalk her.
Lately that climb past the church
Made her puff.
Tiredness, her weakened heart
Struggling to keep up.
Perhaps the thought of another winter
Another wet and windy struggle
Up and down the village
Up and down the London Road.
Discretely her body decided
To give up.
No more struggling
No more tiredness
No more puffing and halting
For my shy timid Mother.
No more making tea
No more cleaning
No more washing
No more worrying
For my Mum.
Her three sons
Middle aged and modern
Stand miserably with their Father
Standing in suits in the municipal crematorium.
Rain and wind, my Mothers enemies
Howl and lash outside
Lost without their old victim
Inside aging relatives
Exchange scared glances
Wondering who is next.
Alin May 2015
Bloom had a gravid heart last night
She could not relate but meditate with leaves up

Bloom received a thicket from the moon
While she froze in a posture of  
‘a gift to be presented to ... but for whom?'

Fitted well in length on both of her parabolic curves
as if a newborn glume

a galaxy made of a wood flower
a heap which once a cycle blossomed
same color as the fragrance of a lover's desire
in a deepest clearing at the heart of hearts
at a holy spot where a ray shone
Just one night falling on one cycle  
to awaken a moonflower

She sings the magic wood's tune
to matchmake destined lovers
living in such mirrored cycles

....

The golden  bunch which she then gently grasped
until a fist would became its skin and pulsate
in mindful rhythm

reintegrating the nature of nodes within

reanimating the beat from and through the leaves

delivering health to All its unitless dimensions

The nourisher and the rejuvenated
the heart of joy
a flow
to  find its way this way
along the equifying particles
on one smiling body

she dreamt of

....

Next morning I got up early
seeing the municipal cars aside
with stacks of healthy roots inside
all to be planted in a day
to grow trees
in front of her little house  

and yes she could relate this time

first with bewildered eyes
then with bewildered mind
then with a breathing belly
then with a full heart
she smiled

....

*She was a mystery studying  facts only
Ken Pepiton Apr 2019
(Subtitled, when all that burns is burnt)
So many firstlines went by before the machine started
Humming such a small sound it may have been
vibration of tiny hummingbirdish harps strings
-----Tuned too high for most folks
-----To hear.  here.

----- we're.
----- now all we ever caused is behind us
----- becausing, not the future changes
----------Nor the past,
But now.

----- Scene: Cottonwood Arizona municipal court, circa 1969 --

So you are saying all that has happened is an acto'god?
(like a urge t'bedone) Demi-urgic maybe, but
not magic, jest miraculess right use, right time rhyme.

-----Yah, yer honor, I we be saying that action
-----that was gloryfying, yah, tha's wha'twas.

Was that agreement?

-----Aye, no, 't'was not'ing.

String theory?

-----What? No.
-----Not not knot, you know, know things
-----caused before are gone.
-----They are not. Nottings.
For good?

-----Aye,yah, glorybe tha's truenuff

----
Many ways angle away from here
No one knows which goes where
Everyone knows at least one goes to ultimate good empty of evil
But liars all say they better be believed or everyone is lost
I do not believe that
I believe those liars all really live in imaginary realities where everyone
Is made to be some thing or other and
to make his/er/its own path
Where no man has gone before
Lots of liars do believe what they say
they cling on
To old ideology ever learning, never the truth

In the universe
they think they live in
on the wee tiniest bits of reality things are never the same.
Totally unpredictable, Heisenbergish but impossible,
to see, so they lie
Saying there was nothing, then everything,
then bang
we be here now and that's how
You do

bettab'lieve tha's'its'the law, man,
made to keep order.
You never get a say, in the universe they think of as reality.
Verily, us,
We think not.

Twixt times….


But the gas and oil the fossil fuels of every ilk be gone gone gone
Your idea of god done that?

-----S'mam did and done deed.

How?

-----Tectonic slippage magnified the magma tide rising to set all that fuel on fire at once.
-----Blood and fire and vapor o'smoke, smog, ye' know.
-----Like old LA or Nue Beijing

Why?

-----Near earth fly by, not inside the limit, but close enough for higher than before
-----Tidal tugs on all earthy fluids. Seems the fossil fuel fields were really the world's,
-----All one layer of detritus, clumping in an ebbing flood every where at once.
-----
-----Wood and rot and defunctus of all the flora and fauna that floated up from before times, as the water receded from the earth. Days of Noah, post-deluvial.

So it was that when  
the mountains and valleys rolled like sweepers head high at Malibu,
Cracks big as four or more Marianas trenches,  
Magma fountains burned through  
Carboniferous stratum on both sides of the new rift valleys
And burned like hell
feeding on all the compacted flotsum covered by new alluvial plains.
-----
Late news:
It has now been confirmed,
By corporate funded sources,
that all the oil and coal were made at once of former living things that were
Covered by the finest particles of rocks and lava
when moraine dams failed
and floods of failing ancient ice rivers pushed past to the sea
alluvially covering all the world's stored up sunshine.
With mud, to rot,
All around the world.
At one time. And it's all connected actually part of a whole bigger thing still.

Or was, before

And now it is gone. Even frakking, gone.

-----'S'mam ferever burned gone so it is glory be.
Supposed possible fictional reasonable sticky
Wk kortas Dec 2017
That little girl was up here a few weeks ago,
She says with as much enthusiasm
As the hourly ad hoc ambassador
For her small, unremarkable corner can muster,
And she laughs, I mean she played that little girl--
Zuzu, that's the name-- in the movie.
Poor thing moves pretty slow now,
Had to tromp around with a cane and all.

I smile, not much less weary myself,
(Not quite halfway from Toledo to Boston,
Miles to go before I sleep and all that)
Having pulled off the Thruway in the hope
The village supported something
Which might be open on Christmas Eve.
She chatters on, noting she pulled this shift
As a favor to a younger counterpart,
Since her children were old enough to stay on their own,
(Not to mention old enough to refrain from bouncing out of bed
Before sunrise on Christmas morning),
Mentioning that Capra visited here once and only once,
But was somehow moved enough to center his tale here
(To be fair, the place is quaint enough,
But no more so than any number of burghs just like it)
And so the village fathers have tried to make hay
While the snow flies, as it were,
The town's main street done uo in the spitting image of the movie, Although it seems different, even mildly unsettling,
When the tableau is not in two dimensionial black-and-white
The waitress and I, all but marooned alone
In this small-town Upstate bar and grill,
Exchange pleasantries (More coffee, Hon?
Visitin' family out in Boston?
)
And I pay at the register (cash only here,
And I make it a point to tip very merrily, indeed)
Then stroll the couple of blocks to the municipal lot,
The bridge that may have launched
A thousand angels clearly visible in the distance,
Passing by a large, gray-brick building
Which have been George Bailey's mixed blessing
Now bearing the logo of a large multi-national financial leviathan
Based in Hong Kong.
Besides being the home of the women's suffrage movement in the U.S., Seneca Falls lays claim to being the inspiration for Frank Capra's Bedford Falls.
Richard Riddle Feb 2015
(1) "Gimme" cap(billed cap with a manufacturers name on it-
        found at truck stops" everywhere.)
(1) Pair of bibbed, denim, overalls (with enough pockets to carry who knows what!)
(1) Folding Buck Knife with 3" razor-sharp blade
(1) Pair of scruffed boots(with steel toe - in event the knife is dropped)
(1) Batch(more than three) hardwood tree limbs(pre-trimmed)18" long
(1) Park Bench(seats at least three)-Strategically placed in front of the
      county courthouse, or other municipal facility
(1) Bottomless bag of stories, tales, yarns, opinions, etc.

Blend together, stir frequently, START WHITTL'N! ENJOY the DAY!!
(Weather is not a factor)

copyright: richard riddle-February 09, 2015
I posted this on Facebook, along with a photo of the retirement resort where I would like to move to, if I ever retire.

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