Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
1.
From my
uneasy bed
at the L’Enfant,
a train's pensive
horn breaks the
sullen lullaby of
an HVAC’s hum;
interrupting the
mechanical
reverie of its
steadfast
night watch,
allowing my ear
to discern
the stampede
of marauding
corporate Visigoths
sacking the city.

The cacophony
of sloven gluttony,
the ***** songs of
unrequited privilege
and the unencumbered
clatter of radical
entitlement echoes
off the city’s cold
crumbling stones.

The unctuous
bellows of the
victorious pillagers
profanely feasting
pierces the
hanging chill
of the nations
black night.

Their hoots
deride the train
transporting
the defeated
ghosts of
Lincoln’s last
doomed regiments
dispatched in vain
to preserve a
peoples republic
in a futile last stand.

The rebels have
finally turned the tide,
T Boone Pickett’s
Charge succeeds,
sending the ravaged
Grand Army of the
Republic sliding
back to the Capitol,
in savage servility,
gliding on squeaky
ungreased wheels
ferrying the
Union’s dead
vanquished
defenders to
unmarked graves
on Potters Field.

The Rebels
joyous yell
bounces off
the inert granite
stones of the
soulless city.

The spittle
of salivating
vandals drips
over the
spoils of war
as they initiate the
disassemblage,
the leveling and
reapportionment
of the grand prize.

The clever
oligarchs
have laid claim
to a righteous
reparation
of the peoples
assets for
pennies on the
dollar.

Their wholly
bought politicos
move to transfer
distressed assets
into their just
stewardship
through the
holy justice
of privatization
and the sound
rationale of
free market
solutions.

In the land of the
pursuit of property,
nimble wolf PACs
of swift 527, LLCs
have fully
metastasized
into personhood;
ascending to
the top of the
food chain in
America’s
voracious
political culture;
bestriding
the nation to
compel the
national will
to genuflect
to the cool facility
of corporate
dominion.

As the
inertial ******
of the plaintive
locomotive
fades into
another old
morning of
recalcitrant
Reaganism,
it lugs its
ambivalent
middle class
baggage toward
it’s fast expiring
future.

I follow
the dirge
down to
the street
as the ebbing
sound fades
into the gloom
of the
burgeoning
morning,
slowly
replacing the
purple twilight
with a breaking
day of cold gray
clouds framing
silhouettes of
cranes busily
constructing
a new city.

The personhood of
corporations need
homes in our new
republic; carving
out new
neighborhoods
suitable for the
monied citizens
of our nation.

First amongst
equals, the best
corporate governance
charters form
the foundation of
the republic’s
new constitution.
Civil rights
are secondary
to the freedom
of markets; the
Bill of Rights
are economically
replaced by the
cool manifests
of Bills of Lading.

The agents of
laissez faire
capitalism
nibble away
at the city’s
neighborhoods
one block at a time;
while steady winds
blows dust off
the National Mall.

Layers of the
peoples plaza are
plained away with
each rising gust.  

History repeats
itself as the Joad’s
are routed from their
land once again.

A clever
mixed use
plan of
condos and
strip malls
is proposed
to finally help the
National Mall
unlock its true
profit potential.

As America’s
affection for
federalism fades
the water in
the reflection pool
is gracefully drained.

We the people
can no longer
see ourselves.

The profit
potential of
industry is
preferred over
the specious
metaphysical
benefits
of reflection.

The grand image,
the rich pastiche,
the quixotic aroma
of the national
melting ***
is reduced to the
sameness of the
black tar that lines
the pool and the
swirling eddies of
brown dust circling
the cracked indenture.

From his not so
distant vantage point,
Abe ponders the
empty pool wondering
if the cost of lives
paid was a worthy
endeavor of preserving
the ****** union?  
Has the dear prize
won perished from
this earth?

Was the illusive
article of liberty  
worth its weight in
the blood expended?

Did the people ever
fully realize the value
of government
by the people,
for the people?

Did citizens of
the republic
assume the
responsibilities to
protect and honor
the rights and privileges
of a representative
government?

Now our idea
and practice of
civil rights is measured
and promoted as far as
it can be justified by
a corporate ROI, a
shareholder dividend,
an earmark or a political
donation to a senators
unconnected PAC.

The divine celestial
ledgers balancing
the rights and
privilege of free people
drips with red ink.  

Liberty, equality
fraternity are bankrupt
secular notions
condemned as
expensive
liberal seditions;
hatched by
UnHoly Jacobins,
the atheist skeptics
during the dark times
of the Age of Enlightenment.

Abe ponders
the restoration
of Washington’s
obelisk, to
repair the cracks
suffered  from
last summer’s
freak earthquake.

I believe I detect
a tear in Abe’s
granite eye
saddened by the
corporate temblors
shaking the
foundations
of the city.

2.

The WWII Memorial
is America’s Parthenon
for a country's love
affair with the valor
and sacrifice of warfare.

WWII forms the
cornerstone of
understanding the
pathos of the
American Century.

During WWII
our greatest generation
rose as a nation to
defeat the menace of
global fascism and
indelibly mark the
power and virtue of
American democracy.

As Lincoln’s Army
saved federalism, FDR’s
Army kept the world safe
for democracy.

Both armies served
a nation that shared
the sacrifice and
burden of war to
preserve the grace of
a republican democracy.

Today federalism
crumbles as our
democracy withers.

The burden
of war is reserved
for a precious few
individuals while
its benefits
remain confined to
the corporate elite.

Our monuments
to war have become
commercial backdrops
for the hollow patriotism
of war profiteers.

We have mortgaged
our future to pay
for two criminal wars.

The spoils of
war flow into the
pockets of
corporate
shareholders
deeply invested
in the continuation
of pointless,
destructive
hostilities.

Our service
members who
selflessly served
their country come
home to a less free,
fear struck nation;
where economic
security and political
liberty erodes
each day while the
monied interests
continue to bless
the abundance
of freedom and riches
purchased with the
blood and sweat
of others.

America desperately
needs a new narrative.

The spirit of the
Greatest Generation
who sacrificed and met
the challenge of the 20th
Century must become
this generations spiritual
forebears.

The war on terror
neatly fits the
the corporate
pathos of
militarism,
surveillance
and the sacrifice
of civil liberties
to purchase
a daily measure
of fear and
economic
enslavement.

It must be rejected
by a people committed
to building secular
temples to pursue
peace, democracy,
economic empowerment,
civil liberties and tolerance
for all.

Yet this old city
and the democratic
temples it built
exulting a free people
anointed with the
grace of liberty
is being consumed
in a morass of
commercial
polyglot.

3.

During the
War of 1812
the British Army
burned the
Capitol Building
and the White House
to the ground.

Thank goodness
Dolly Madison saved
what she could.

The new marauders
are not subject to the
pull of nostalgia.  

They value nothing
save their
self enrichment.

They will spare nothing.

Our besieged Capitol
requires Lincoln’s troops
to be stationed along the
National Mall to defend
the republic.

The greatest peril
to our nation
is being directed
by well placed
Fifth Columnists.

From the safety
of underground bunkers,
in secure undisclosed
locations within the city’s
parameters, a well financed
confederacy employing  
K Street shenanigans
are busy selling off
the American Dream
one ear mark
at a time, one
huge corporate
welfare allotment
at a time.

The biggest prize
is looting the real
property of the people;
selling Utah,
auctioning off
the public schools,
water systems, post offices
and mineral rights
on the cheap
at an Uncle Sam
garage sale.  

The capitol is
indeed burning
again.

Looters are
running riot.

The flailing arms
of a dying empire
fire off cruise
missiles and drone
strikes; hitting the
target of habeas
corpus as it
shakes in its
final death rattle.
I make a pilgrimage
to the MLK Jr.
Monument.

Our cultural identity
is outsourced to
foreign contractors
paid to reinterpret
the American Dream
through the eyes
of a lowest bidder.

MLK has lost
his humanity.

He has been
reduced to a
a Chinese
superhuman
Mao like anime
busting loose from
a granite mountain while
geopolitical irony
compels him to watch
Tommy Jefferson
**** Sally Hemings
from across the tidal
basin for all eternity.  

MLK’s eyes fixed in
stern fascination,
forever enthralled
by the contradictions
of liberty and its
democratic excesses
of love in the willows
on golden pond.

Circling back to
Father Abraham’s
Monument,  I huddle
with a group of global
citizens listening
to an NPS Ranger
spinning four score
tales with the last full
measure of her devotion.

I look up into Abe’s
stone eyes as he
surveys platoons
of gray suited
Chinese Communist
envoys engaged
in Long Marches
through the National Mall;
dutifully encircling cabinet
buildings and recruiting
Tea Party congressmen
into their open party cells.

This confederacy
is ready to torch
the White House
again.

Congressmen and
the perfect patriots
from K Street slavishly
pull their paymasters
in gilded rickshaws to
golf outings at the Pentagon
and park at the preferred
spots reserved for
the luxury box holders
at Redskin Games.

They vow not to rest
until the house of the people
is fully mortgaged to the
People’s Republic of China’s
Sovereign Wealth Fund.

4.

A great
Son of Liberty like
Alan Greenspan
roundly rings
the bells of
free markets
as he inches
T Bill rates
forward a few
basis points
at a time; while
his dead mentor
Ayn Rand
lifts Paul Ryan
to her
Fountainhead teet.
He takes a long
draw as she
coos songs
from her primer
of Atlas Shrugged
Mother Goose tales
into his silky ears.

The construction
cranes swing
to the music
building new private
sector space with
the largess of
US taxpayers
money; or
more rightly
future generations
taxpayer debt.

Libertarians,
Tea Baggers, Blue Dogs
and GOP waterboys
eagerly light a
match to the
the crucifixes
bearing federal
social safety
net programs
to the delight
of NASDAQ
listed capitalists
on the come,
licking their chops
to land contracts
to administer
these programs
at a negotiated
cost plus
profit margin.

Citizens
dependent
on programs
are leery
shareholders
are ecstatic.

To be sure
our free
market rebels
don disguises
of red, white
and blue robes
but their objectives
fail to distinguish
their motives and
methods with
some of the finest
Klansman this
country has
ever produced.

5.

DC is a city
of joggers
and choppers.

Corporate
helicopters
wizz by the
Washington
Monument,
popping erections
for the erectors
inspecting the progress
of the cranes
commanding the
city skyline.

USMC drill team
out for a morning
run circles the Mall.

The commanding
cadence of the
DI keeps us
mindful of the
deepening
militarization of
our society.

A crowd  
rushes
to position
themselves,
genuflecting
to photograph
a platoon on
the move.

I try to consider
the defining
characteristics of
Washington DC.

DC is all surface.

It is full of walls
and mirrors.

Its primary hue
is obfuscation.

Open
communication
scripted from well
considered talking points
informs all dialog.

The city is thoroughly
enraptured in narcissism.

Thankfully, one can
always capture the
reflection of oneself in
the ubiquitous presence of
mirrors.  

Vanity imprisons
the city inhabitants.

Young joggers circle the
Mall and gerrymander
down every pathway
of the city.  

They are the clerks,
interns and staffers of
the judicial, executive
and legislative branches.

They are the children
of privilege.

They will never
alter their path.

You must cede the walk
to their entitlement
of a swift comportment
or risk injury of a
violent collision.

These young ones
portray a countenance  
of benevolent rulers.  

They seem to be learning
their trade craft well from
the senators and judges
whom they serve.

They appear confident
they know what's best
for the country and after
their one term of tireless
service to the republic
they look forward to
positions in the private
sector where they will
assist corporations
to extend their reach
into the pant pockets
worn by the body politic.

6.

Our nations mythic story
lies hidden deep in the
closed rooms of the
museums lining the
Mall.

I pause to consider
what a great nation
and its great people
once aspired to.

I spy the a
suspended
Space Shuttle
hanging in dry dock
at the air and
space museum.

Today America’s
astronauts hitch
rides on Russian
rockets.

America rents a
timeshare from
the European
space agency to
lift communication
satellites into orbit.

Across the Mall
I photograph
John Smithson’s
ashes in its columbarium.  

I fear it has become a
metaphor for America’s
future commitment
to scientific inquiry
and rational secular
thinking.

I am relieved to
discover a Smithsonian
exhibit that asks
“what does it mean
to be human?”

The Origins of Humans
exhibit carries a disclaimer
to satisfy creationists.

The exhibit timidly states
that science can coexist
with religious beliefs and
that the point of the exhibit is
not to inflame inflame religious
passions but to shed light on
scientific inquiry.

I imagine these exhibits
will inflame the passion of
the fundamentalist
American Taliban and
provide yet another
reason to dismantle
the Moloch of Federalism.

The pursuit of science
remains safe at the
Smithsonian for now.

7.

Near K Street at
McPherson Park
a posse of
well dressed
lobbyists, the
self anointed
uber patriots
doing the work
of the people
stroll through
the park
boasting a
healthy population
of bedraggled
homeless.

The homeless
occupy the benches
that have been
transformed into
pup tents.

Perhaps some of
the residents of this
mean estate were
made homeless by a
foreclosed mortgage.  

The K Street warriors
can be proud that their
work on behalf of the
banking industry has
forestalled financial market
reform.  

Through it exacerbates
the homeless problem it has
allowed these K Street titans to
profit from the distress of others.

Earlier in the day
I photographed
a homeless man
planted in front of
the Washington
Monument.

I wonder
if my political
voyeurism is
an exploitation of
this man’s condition?

I have more in common
then I probably wish to
admit with my K Street
antagonists.  

In another section
of the park the
remnants of a
distressed OWS
bivouac remain.

The legions of sunshine
patriots have melted away
as the interest of the
blogosphere has waned.

As the weather
improves Moveon.org
and democratic
party operatives
pitch tents in an
effort to resuscitate
the moribund
movement.

They hope
to coop any
remaining energy
to support their
stale deception,
a neoliberal vision
based solely on the
total capitulation
to the bankrupt
corporatocracy.

I heard someone say
a campaign lasts a
season; while a
movement for social
change takes decades.

If that metric proves
correct, and if the
powers don’t succeed
in compromising the
people’s movement
I’ll be three quarters
of a century old
before I see
justice flowing like
a river once again.

8.

I circle back to
the L’Enfant and
find myself
tramping amidst
the lost platoon
of Korean War
soldiers.

My feet drag
in the quagmire
of grass covering
the feet of this
ghostly troop.

My namesake
uncle was a
decorated
veteran of this
conflict and Im
sure I detect
his likeness
in one of the
statues.

The bleak call
of a distant train
sounds a revelry
and I imagine this
patrol springing
to life to answer
the call of their
beloved country
once again.

Yet they remain
inert.  

Stuck in a
place that the
nation finds
impossible to
leave.

The eyes of the
men stare into
an incomprehensible
fate.  

They see the swarms
of Red Army infantrymen
crossing the Yellow River
streaming toward
them in massive
human waves,
the tips of
sparkling bayonets
threatening to slash
the outmanned
contingent fighting
to bits.

They are the
first detachment
to bravely confront
the rising power
of China many
thousands of
miles away
from their homes.

America like
this lone company
is overwhelmed
and lost in the
confusion
that confronts
them.

Looking up
I perceive the
bewilderment
of my muddled image
reflected on the
marble walls
surrounding
the memorial.

I am a comrade-in-arms,
a fellow wanderer sojourning
with th
Nigel Morgan Nov 2012
She said, ‘You are funny, the way you set yourself up the moment we arrive. You look into every room to see if it’s suitable as a place to work. Is there a table? Where are the plugs? Is there a good chair at the right height? If there isn’t, are there cushions to make it so? You are funny.’
 
He countered this, but his excuse didn’t sound very convincing. He knew exactly what she meant, but it hurt him a little that she should think it ‘funny’. There’s nothing funny about trying to compose music, he thought. It’s not ‘radio in the head’ you know – this was a favourite expression he’d once heard an American composer use. You don’t just turn a switch and the music’s playing, waiting for you to write it down. You have to find it – though he believed it was usually there, somewhere, waiting to be found. But it’s elusive. You have to work hard to detect what might be there, there in the silence of your imagination.
 
Later over their first meal in this large cottage she said, ‘How do you stop hearing all those settings of the Mass that you must have heard or sung since childhood?’ She’d been rehearsing Verdi’s Requiem recently and was full of snippets of this stirring piece. He was a) writing a Mass to celebrate a cathedral’s reordering after a year as a building site, and b) he’d been a boy chorister and the form and order of the Mass was deeply engrained in his aural memory. He only had to hear the plainsong introduction Gloria in Excelsis Deo to be back in the Queen’s chapel singing Palestrina, or Byrd or Poulenc.
 
His ‘found’ corner was in the living room. The table wasn’t a table but a long cabinet she’d kindly covered with a tablecloth. You couldn’t get your feet under the thing, but with his little portable drawing board there was space to sit properly because the board jutted out beyond the cabinet’s top. It was the right length and its depth was OK, enough space for the board and, next to it, his laptop computer. On the floor beside his chair he placed a few of his reference scores and a box of necessary ‘bits’.
 
The room had two large sofas, an equally large television, some unexplainable and instantly dismissible items of decoration, a standard lamp, and a wood burning stove. The stove was wonderful, and on their second evening in the cottage, when clear skies and a stiff breeze promised a cold night, she’d lit it and, as the evening progressed, they basked in its warmth, she filling envelopes with her cards, he struggling with sleep over a book.
 
Despite and because this was a new, though temporary, location he had got up at 5.0am. This is a usual time for composers who need their daily fix of absolute quiet. And here, in this cottage set amidst autumn fields, within sight of a river estuary, under vast, panoramic uninterrupted skies, there was the distinct possibility of silence – all day. The double-glazing made doubly sure of that.
 
He had sat with a mug of tea at 5.10 and contemplated the silence, or rather what infiltrated the stillness of the cottage as sound. In the kitchen the clock ticked, the refrigerator seemed to need a period of machine noise once its door had been opened. At 6.0am the central heating fired up for a while. Outside, the small fruit trees in the garden moved vigorously in the wind, but he couldn’t hear either the wind or a rustle of leaves.  A car droned past on the nearby road. The clear sky began to lighten promising a fine day. This would certainly do for silence.
 
His thoughts returned to her question of the previous evening, and his answer. He was about to face up to his explanation. ‘I empty myself of all musical sound’, he’d said, ‘I imagine an empty space into which I might bring a single note, a long held drone of a note, a ‘d’ above middle ‘c’ on a chamber ***** (seeing it’s a Mass I’m writing).  Harrison Birtwistle always starts on an ‘e’. A ‘d’ to me seems older and kinder. An ‘e’ is too modern and progressive, slightly brash and noisy.’
 
He can see she is quizzical with this anecdotal stuff. Is he having me on? But no, he is not having her on. Such choices are important. Without them progress would be difficult when the thinking and planning has to stop and the composing has to begin. His notebook, sitting on his drawing board with some first sketches, plays testament to that. In this book glimpses of music appear in rhythmic abstracts, though rarely any pitches, and there are pages of written description. He likes to imagine what a new work is, and what it is not. This he writes down. Composer Paul Hindemith reckoned you had first to address the ‘conditions of performance’. That meant thinking about the performers, the location, above all the context. A Mass can be, for a composer, so many things. There were certainly requirements and constraints. The commission had to fulfil a number of criteria, some imposed by circumstance, some self-imposed by desire. All this goes into the melting ***, or rather the notebook. And after the notebook, he takes a large piece of A3 paper and clarifies this thinking and planning onto (if possible) a single sheet.
 
And so, to the task in hand. His objective, he had decided, is to focus on the whole rather than the particular. Don’t think about the Kyrie on its own, but consider how it lies with the Gloria. And so with the Sanctus & Benedictus. How do they connect to the Agnus Dei. He begins on the A3 sheet of plain paper ‘making a map of connections’. Kyrie to Gloria, Gloria to Credo and so on. Then what about Agnus Dei and the Gloria? Is there going to be any commonality – in rhythm, pace and tempo (we’ll leave melody and harmony for now)? Steady, he finds himself saying, aren’t we going back over old ground? His notebook has pages of attempts at rhythmizing the text. There are just so many ways to do this. Each rhythmic solution begets a different slant of meaning.
 
This is to be a congregational Mass, but one that has a role for a 4-part choir and ***** and a ‘jazz instrument’. Impatient to see notes on paper, he composes a new introduction to a Kyrie as a rhythmic sketch, then, experimentally, adds pitches. He scores it fully, just 10 bars or so, but it is barely finished before his critical inner voice says, ‘What’s this for? Do you all need this? This is showing off.’ So the filled-out sketch drops to the floor and he examines this element of ‘beginning’ the incipit.
 
He remembers how a meditation on that word inhabits the opening chapter of George Steiner’s great book Grammars of Creation. He sees in his mind’s eye the complex, colourful and ornate letter that begins the Lindesfarne Gospels. His beginnings for each movement, he decides, might be two chords, one overlaying the other: two ‘simple’ diatonic chords when sounded separately, but complex and with a measure of mystery when played together. The Mass is often described as a mystery. It is that ritual of a meal undertaken by a community of people who in the breaking of bread and wine wish to bring God’s presence amongst them. So it is a mystery. And so, he tells himself, his music will aim to hold something of mystery. It should not be a comment on that mystery, but be a mystery itself. It should not be homely and comfortable; it should be as minimal and sparing of musical commentary as possible.
 
When, as a teenager, he first began to set words to music he quickly experienced the need (it seemed) to fashion accompaniments that were commentaries on the text the voice was singing. These accompaniments did not underpin the words so much as add a commentary upon them. What lay beneath the words was his reaction, indeed imaginative extension of the words. He eschewed then both melisma and repetition. He sought an extreme independence between word and music, even though the word became the scenario of the music. Any musical setting was derived from the composition of the vocal line.  It was all about finding the ‘key’ to a song, what unlocked the door to the room of life it occupied. The music was the room where the poem’s utterance lived.
 
With a Mass you were in trouble for the outset. There was a poetry of sorts, but poetry that, in the countless versions of the vernacular, had lost (perhaps had never had) the resonance of the Latin. He thought suddenly of the supposed words of William Byrd, ‘He who sings prays twice’. Yes, such commonplace words are intercessional, but when sung become more than they are. But he knew he had to be careful here.
 
Why do we sing the words of the Mass he asks himself? Do we need to sing these words of the Mass? Are they the words that Christ spoke as he broke bread and poured wine to his friends and disciples at his last supper? The answer is no. Certainly these words of the Mass we usually sing surround the most intimate words of that final meal, words only the priest in Christ’s name may articulate.
 
Write out the words of the Mass that represent its collective worship and what do you have? Rather non-descript poetry? A kind of formula for collective incantation during worship? Can we read these words and not hear a surrounding music? He thinks for a moment of being asked to put new music to words of The Beatles. All you need is love. Yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away. Oh bla dee oh bla da life goes on. Now, now this is silliness, his Critical Voice complains. And yet it’s not. When you compose a popular song the gap between some words scribbled on the back of an envelope and the hook of chords and melody developed in an accidental moment (that becomes a way of clothing such words) is often minimal. Apart, words and music seem like orphans in a storm. Together they are home and dry.
 
He realises, and not for the first time, that he is seeking a total musical solution to the whole of the setting of those words collectively given voice to by those participating in the Mass.
 
And so: to the task in hand. His objective: to focus on the whole rather than the particular.  Where had he heard that thought before? - when he had sat down at his drawing board an hour and half previously. He’d gone in a circle of thought, and with his sketch on the floor at his feet, nothing to show for all that effort.
 
Meanwhile the sun had risen. He could hear her moving about in the bathroom. He went to the kitchen and laid out what they would need to breakfast together. As he poured milk into a jug, primed the toaster, filled the kettle, the business of what might constitute a whole solution to this setting of the Mass followed him around the kitchen and breakfast room like a demanding child. He knew all about demanding children. How often had he come home from his studio to prepare breakfast and see small people to school? - more often than he cared to remember. And when he remembered he became sad that it was no more.  His children had so often provided a welcome buffer from sessions of intense thought and activity. He loved the walk to school, the first quarter of a mile through the park, a long avenue of chestnut trees. It was always the end of April and pink and white blossoms were appearing, or it was September and there were conkers everywhere. It was under these trees his daughter would skip and even his sons would hold hands with him; he would feel their warmth, their livingness.
 
But now, preparing breakfast, his Critical Voice was that demanding child and he realised when she appeared in the kitchen he spoke to her with a voice of an artist in conversation with his critics, not the voice of the man who had the previous night lost himself to joy in her dear embrace. And he was ashamed it was so.
 
How he loved her gentle manner as she negotiated his ‘coming too’ after those two hours of concentration and inner dialogue. Gradually, by the second cup of coffee he felt a right person, and the hours ahead did not seem too impossible.
 
When she’d gone off to her work, silence reasserted itself. He played his viola for half an hour, just scales and exercises and a few folk songs he was learning by heart. This gathering habit was, he would say if asked, to reassert his musicianship, the link between his body and making sound musically. That the viola seemed to resonate throughout his whole body gave him pleasure. He liked the ****** movement required to produce a flowing sequence of bow strokes. The trick at the end of this daily practice was to put the instrument in its case and move immediately to his desk. No pause to check email – that blight on a morning’s work. No pause to look at today’s list. Back to the work in hand: the Mass.
 
But instead his mind and intention seemed to slip sideways and almost unconsciously he found himself sketching (on the few remaining staves of a vocal experiment) what appeared to be a piano piece. The rhythmic flow of it seemed to dance across the page to be halted only when the few empty staves were filled. He knew this was one of those pieces that addressed the pianist, not the listener. He sat back in his chair and imagined a scenario of a pianist opening this music and after a few minutes’ reflection and reading through allowing her hands to move very slowly and silently a few millimetres over the keys.  Such imagining led him to hear possible harmonic simultaneities, dynamics and articulations, though he knew such things would probably be lost or reinvented on a second imagined ‘performance’. No matter. Now his make-believe pianist sounded the first bar out. It had a depth and a richness that surprised him – it was a fine piano. He was touched by its affect. He felt the possibilities of extending what he’d written. So he did. And for the next half an hour lived in the pastures of good continuation, those rich luxuriant meadows reached by a rickerty rackerty bridge and guarded by a troll who today was nowhere to be seen.
 
It was a curious piece. It came to a halt on an enigmatic, go-nowhere / go-anywhere chord after what seemed a short declamatory coda (he later added the marking deliberamente). Then, after a few minutes reflection he wrote a rising arpeggio, a broken chord in which the consonant elements gradually acquired a rising sequence of dissonance pitches until halted by a repetition. As he wrote this ending he realised that the repeated note, an ‘a’ flat, was a kind of fulcrum around which the whole of the music moved. It held an enigmatic presence in the harmony, being sometimes a g# sometimes an ‘a’ flat, and its function often different. It made the music take on a wistful quality.
 
At that point he thought of her little artists’ book series she had titled Tide Marks. Many of these were made of a concertina of folded pages revealing - as your eyes moved through its pages - something akin to the tide’s longitudinal mark. This centred on the page and spread away both upwards and downwards, just like those mirror images of coloured glass seen in a child’s kaleidoscope. No moment of view was ever quite the same, but there were commonalities born of the conditions of a certain day and time.  His ‘Tide Mark’ was just like that. He’d followed a mark made in his imagination from one point to another point a little distant. The musical working out also had a reflection mechanism: what started in one hand became mirrored in the other. He had unexpectedly supplied an ending, this arpegiated gesture of finality that wasn’t properly final but faded away. When he thought further about the role of the ending, he added a few more notes to the arpeggio, but notes that were not be sounded but ghosted, the player miming a press of the keys.
 
He looked at the clock. Nearly five o’clock. The afternoon had all but disappeared. Time had retreated into glorious silence . There had been three whole hours of it. How wonderful that was after months of battling with the incessant and draining turbulence of sound that was ever present in his city life. To be here in this quiet cottage he could now get thoroughly lost – in silence. Even when she was here he could be a few rooms apart, and find silence.
 
A week more of this, a fortnight even . . . but he knew he might only manage a few days before visitors arrived and his long day would be squeezed into the early morning hours and occasional uncertain periods when people were out and about.
 
When she returned, very soon now, she would make tea and cut cake, and they’d sit (like old people they wer
Wuji Nov 2012
Across,
A long table.
On top of each other,
In a small bed.
We attack one another,
Trying to get in our heads.

She,
Wants my love.
He,
Already has it.
Yet,
She wants a bite,
Of that ******* apple.

Negotiated ***,
It is something at best.
Just a one time,
Contract.
But I know,
She'll be back.

She,
Says she's in love.
He,
Stands watching above.
I wouldn't dare,
Give her a taste.
But now that is all erased.

I,
Plan on making mistakes.
Everything,
Is in my control.
Negotiations are over dear,
Now let's get in the back of the car.
She wants a taste, who am I to deny her just that. A first taste. An addicting taste. Poor thing might just get hooked.
Ask not what the Universe can do for you.

Ask what you can do to aid the Universe ?
~.An Acrostic exercise ~October 27th 2018.

Ask not what the Universe can do for you.
Sometimes they are under relentless demand
Kings and beggars and entrepreneurs pray

Never mind ,what they can offer the Universe
On a daily basis pray for their own deliverance
To make ends meet, eat a crust , or a cure

We poets here on our favourite web-site know
Having been seeking the true way forward
Ask not what the Universe can do fo you.
Though this is the expected way to pray

The first thought in our head should ever be
Hey ! What can I do to aid the Universe.
Earth and the environment but a small part

Universe stretches deep deep into the cosmos
Now where do you think heaven rests in this ?
I believe it is here and surrounds us completely
Virtually every loved one that has passed on
Every thought process that you possess
Reacts in your minds eye as memory
So perpetuating the life span of a loved one.
Expand your own meditation to include them.

Clearly giving an aid to the Universal spirit.
Asks not what the Universe can do for you.
Never complain about being forsaken by God.

Do as you would be done by and **** it up.
Only pausing to calculate the best way to rise

From the sad position you find that you’re in
On giving something back to the Universe
Riches will flow back to you a thousand fold

Yes but not necessarily in a financial way
Or in an appropriation of jewels or art
Universal gifts seldom trade in those chattels

Ask what you can do to aid the Universe
Simply think about it in a pure and selfless way
Knowledge gained during your own life’s span

Wake up and smell the coffee if you can
Having negotiated the slings and arrows
Ask what you can do to aid the Universe
To me its a simple question n a simple answer

You can positively manifest your own pathway
On that road you have many crossroads
Universe has trained the minds of past lives

Coincidentally you carry the minds past loves
Ask what you can do to aid the Universe
Now bring back to mind all souls of meaning

Dedicate the sights and the fragrance of life
On a kind of conference call to the departed

Tell me if you think what I say is too far fetched
Only I know that it works ,well it does for me.

Ask what you can do to aid the Universe
I posed that question many many years ago
During the time that I prayed then to God

The crisis erupted between Russia an the US
Hydrogen and nuclear bombs were threatened
Europe ,a state of emergency unprecedented

Undaunted I joined the Civil defence, in ‘62
Now looking back , I realise my pathway’s set
In not expecting the Universe to be helping
Venus in retrograde and other cosmic moves
Effects of the moon phases all considered.
Reality is you hold the precious key to success
So next time you pray , you’d better pray good.
Entreating God to advise his plans for your day

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
An Acrostic poem written by Philip. 27/10/18.
Inspired by the JFK speech of ‘62. “Ask not what your country can do for you. But what you can do for your country. “
Oliver Philip Nov 2018
Ask not what the Universe can do for you.

Ask what you can do to aid the Universe ?
~.An Acrostic exercise ~October 27th 2018.

Ask not what the Universe can do for you.
Sometimes they are under relentless demand
Kings and beggars and entrepreneurs pray

Never mind ,what they can offer the Universe
On a daily basis pray for their own deliverance
To make ends meet, eat a crust , or a cure

We poets here on our favourite web-site know
Having been seeking the true way forward
Ask not what the Universe can do fo you.
Though this is the expected way to pray

The first thought in our head should ever be
Hey ! What can I do to aid the Universe.
Earth and the environment but a small part

Universe stretches deep deep into the cosmos
Now where do you think heaven rests in this ?
I believe it is here and surrounds us completely
Virtually every loved one that has passed on
Every thought process that you possess
Reacts in your minds eye as memory
So perpetuating the life span of a loved one.
Expand your own meditation to include them.

Clearly giving an aid to the Universal spirit.
Asks not what the Universe can do for you.
Never complain about being forsaken by God.

Do as you would be done by and **** it up.
Only pausing to calculate the best way to rise

From the sad position you find that you’re in
On giving something back to the Universe
Riches will flow back to you a thousand fold

Yes but not necessarily in a financial way
Or in an appropriation of jewels or art
Universal gifts seldom trade in those chattels

Ask what you can do to aid the Universe
Simply think about it in a pure and selfless way
Knowledge gained during your own life’s span

Wake up and smell the coffee if you can
Having negotiated the slings and arrows
Ask what you can do to aid the Universe
To me its a simple question n a simple answer

You can positively manifest your own pathway
On that road you have many crossroads
Universe has trained the minds of past lives

Coincidentally you carry the minds past loves
Ask what you can do to aid the Universe
Now bring back to mind all souls of meaning

Dedicate the sights and the fragrance of life
On a kind of conference call to the departed

Tell me if you think what I say is too far fetched
Only I know that it works ,well it does for me.

Ask what you can do to aid the Universe
I posed that question many many years ago
During the time that I prayed then to God

The crisis erupted between Russia an the US
Hydrogen and nuclear bombs were threatened
Europe ,a state of emergency unprecedented

Undaunted I joined the Civil defence, in ‘62
Now looking back , I realise my pathway’s set
In not expecting the Universe to be helping
Venus in retrograde and other cosmic moves
Effects of the moon phases all considered.
Reality is you hold the precious key to success
So next time you pray , you’d better pray good.
Entreating God to advise his plans for your day

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
An Acrostic poem written by Philip. 27/10/18.
Aid to the Universe
Just think how perfect it all seems.
Examine, if you will, Plants.
If you won’t, “****-You.”
I am not your Cabaret floorshow.
Shall we begin again?
Examine the Plant Kingdom.
And let’s focus on Water—H2O for
You of the Walking/Talking Chemistry Set—
Water: a precise, covalent compound.
And what does it take?
A ***** molecule of hydrogen,
Pulling a 3-way with some pathetic,
Starved for affection,
Me-so-lonely
Me-so-***** atom of
Oxygen.
The rest—as they say--is History.
(CUE my readers—
My sweet, effervescent readers—
They come chiming in,
Avenging my Line 3 *******:
“No, Joe, the rest is actually Chemistry.”)
Although I may lack respect for my readers,
I am certainly not dealing with idiots.
This is Interactive Poetry, Kemosabe:
Life lyrics for the Chorus,
Of thee I sing.
Of thee I am one.
But I digress.

The subject was Water.
Water gets ****** up—&
That has got to feel really good—
Into a vast & elaborate network,
Dispensing itself, climbing to
Leaf-height by mid-morning,
Given that big, white-hot bocce ball in the sky
First warming, then igniting a thousand-million
Stoma/Stomata: Choose One.

Difference Between Stoma & Stomata: Stoma and stomata are similar words, so it's easy to get the two confused. The difference between them is easy to remember, however, as stomata is  just the plural for stoma. A plant uses its stomata to take in and release gases, according to EOEarth.org.... More »

Verdant Stomata?
Sounds like an Italian Pizza Queen,
As defined by Rhode Islanders,
According to Ronnie Conheim,
A crony of my early 20s,
Who has dis-appeared off the
****-cheeks of our planet.
Again, I digress.

LEAVES: the passion pit of our
Randy **** atmosphere.
Manufacturing oxygen for those
On the CO2 side of the equation,
Whatever that means.
Leaves: a reciprocal source & target.
For those of us in these parts who
Exhale carbon dioxide.
And just so we get this straight:
We are the Plant Kingdom’s archenemy,
Their bête noire, their Lex Luther incarnate,
Anathema, slugging & wheezing its way,
Through an eternally ebonic Worm Hole.

Plants & Animals:
These two would **** us both off.
So an ecological truce gets hammered out,
“The Paris Agreement on Climate Change,”
They are calling it, perhaps the most profound
Meeting of the Earth’s collected minds.
EV-VAH, in History or Chemistry . . .
(CUE BRANDO, Sky Masterson,
Guys & Dolls: “YEAH, CHEMISTRY!”
A shrewdly negotiated fairy tale,
With fine print out the yin-yang,
Explaining why only 144 of the 197
Parties to the convention have
Ratified (what rats do when organized?)
Ratified a document fatter than Manhattan’s
White page telephone book:
Behold BTW a species of literature,
Beginning to resemble a dead carcass,
Nearly an anachronism for a once
Vast & potent paper publishing industry.

Plant & Animals: these two
Will **** each other.
The Peace: a fragile trip wire.
The Accord?
A case of hyped ecological stagecraft,
The threshold celebration
Staged in--of all places—
Marrakech, Morocco:
The Hashish Capital of the Eastern Hemisphere.

Marrakesh Express - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marrakesh_Express“Marrakesh Express” is a song written by Graham Nash and Performed by the band Crosby, Stills and Nash (CSN). It was first released in May of 1969 on the...

C.S.N Marrakech Express-YouTube/www.youtube.com/watch?
v=0AkYLtegF1MDec 14, 2009 ... Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – Marrakesh Express (Live at Farm Aid 2000) - Duration: 3:56. Farm Aid 36,976 views · 3:56. CSN - Crosby, Stills...
(www.ads-right-in-******* poem.com)

That’s right! The poet finally figuring out
What it takes to avoid dying diseased &
Psychotic in the gutter.)
THAT’S RIGHT: $$$$ SELL ADS $$$$
RIGHT IN THE $KA-CHING$
MIDDLE OF THE ******* POEM!)

The Big Picture?
Plants & Animals:
These two will **** us all off.
And we'll watch the whole thing on Reality TV.
pitch black god8 May 2019
~

dark early pre-dawn

body suspended between the-dark ochre earth tones of night,
and the teal pealing notes of warning of an impending morning,
signs aborning, me rising with urgency of the leaden half deaden,
torn from the bed casket to venture into a different kind of twi-lights,
nature demanding both intake and outtake, a restoration of balance

but first a bumbling wobbling, the body as carnival bumper car,
installing soon-to-be-bruising for later examination-exhumation,
lurching from handhold crevices in the walls like crazy cliff climbers,
my balance disturbed, eyes try  tearing apart the sticky glue of night,
my sense of direction keeping me from free falling into green glass
edges of glass tables, barely, and not always, red cuts evidentiary

“my balance disturbed” words fresh formed, and a poem expulsion
required to balance the unjust scales of spirit soul and the body cage,
patch an negotiated agreement between warring cousins, just a
twenty four hour ceasefire to retrieve the wounded and the
corpses unfounded in the small copses of false shelter,
like my ancestors expelled from Spain, making escape to be
strangers in strange lands, or remain hidden in place neath disguises
of clothes of new poems, prayers for old and new gods

this new poem comes quick like a young man making first love,
for the poem has been written by thousands nights of practicing,
so ready for quick retrieving in a smattering of a few minutes,
expulsion expulsion
what a perfect verbiage to capture the night terrors, the differentials,
the procession path between what was and what will be,
when my balance restored and this poem’s completion installation
in the body of my work, as a nail disguised in the works of my body,
entering by command of the pitch black gods
5:29am April 24th
Bruce Adams Jul 2019
She collected lolly sticks,
        The ones with jokes on them:
        Why did the chicken cross the road?-type stuff,
Which she stained brown and used as floorboards
in her magnum opus.

The Tudor house was the best one.
It had servants’ quarters
And a kitchen with little hessian potato sacks made
of something or other she salvaged from
somewhere or other;
And the floorboards looked so real:
        painted lolly sticks
        but almost evoking the smell of varnish,
        layers of polish on a floor trodden by centuries
        in perfect miniature;
                                                Almost­.

This was the last of the three
                                                or four
                                                        doll­s’ houses she built;
The devil’s work for her idle widow’s hands.
She built this one while you were entering your final
        stalemate
that doomed dance that sits so permanently
on your conscience
like a sack of compost
full of water.
        (I choose this simile only because
        I found this in my garden yesterday,
        and it was ******* heavy.)
On paper it was simple:
        You gave her your house,
        She gave you hers.

And so her house shrunk around her and
became a dolls’ house of your own making,
Irrationally
                        she saw your god-hands reaching in
to manipulate and
extort her.

She was wrong, of course.

You were making good on your promise.
You would come through for her in her frailty.
You did – but

it was a promise you made more to yourself than her,
And she let her illogical mind
        never analytical to begin with
        now razed and blinded by grief and loneliness
                        (there was nothing to work with)
poison your good deed,
you were both dolls now.

Eight years later she died lovelessly.

She retreated into her sitting room
        the only part of the house that stayed the same
        after you moved in –
                the walls closed in to contain it
                constrict it
a hospital bed and vinyl chair with commode,
and the brown laminate floor
        just like
        her lolly sticks.

You administered painkillers
Admitted the nurses
Negotiated with your estranged brother.

but her paranoia rotted everything
and your hands cared with compassion but not love.

Gone, now,
the dolls’ houses remain.
An inheritance of clutter
in a house you bought.

You answer the phone
                                        breathlessly
      ­                                  aggressively.
You have been heaving the big one up the stairs
        that sack of compost
        that heavy conscience of yours.

You will be heaving those ******* dolls’ houses around
until I have to buy your house and care for you.
But I am telling you now:
        I am putting them in a skip
        the moment I have the chance.

They are not imbued with the joy they gave her
any more than
                        by keeping them safe from landfill
                        you can imbue them with the love you withheld.

They are painted lolly sticks and sewn hessian.
They don’t contain any more of her
than the bits of paper she kept
        passwords and bank balances
        dates and instructions for the Sky box
There is nothing left of her to protect now.

Open up the hinged false front,
                tip out the miniatures
                let the little figures be free,
                                be landfill
                                (isn’t that what dying is anyway?)
all the tangible things she touched and loved
are not avatars for her touch and her love.

The past is not present through the preservation of objects.
The past is not erased by the advancement of time
                nor can it be undone by corrective action.

Now she is on the other side of the road,
        (why did the chicken
        behave.)
She has no further use for the things she left behind.
Ryan O'Leary Sep 2018
Willie sat by the side of
the river in a philosophical
mood under a weeping willow.

Midway, between the two
banks, was a small island
only paddling distance away.

Debris from a previous flood
had accumulated on the low
foliage of an uprooted tree.

A funnel of cold air from the
ten arch bridge made a wind
sock of a plastic net nitrate bag.

In all his time, Willie had never
ventured on to this little islet,
even wondered if he should flag it.

Off with the shoes, rolled up the
legs of his trousers and slowly he
negotiated his way over the stones.

On exploring the land mass, which
was an isthmus of a mere ten square
meters, he decided to return to land.

Just before his disembarkation, he
noticed a large denominational euro
note caught in the gills of a dead fish.

Eureka Eureka money and food all
in the one catch (was his thought as
he made his way back).

The sodden state of the 100 euro note
was what guided Willie’s wise decision
to take it, as was, to the local Credit Union.

In the queue whilst waiting for a vacant
teller, everyone was admiring Willie’s
dead fish.

Eventually, at the desk, and known to
those working therein, a 100 euro note
was not his norm and created suspicion.

After tendering the note attached to the
Trout, that had apparently been fowl
hooked up the river by Johnny Logan,

The lady behind the desk called for the
manager, who immediately held the note
up to the halogen fraud lamp.

Willie had never encountered anything like
this when he made a 5 euro deposit once a
month to his savings account.

He enquired of the manager as to why he
was holding his fish and 100 euro note up
against the bright light.

The manager responded,  “ It is the policy of
all banking systems to check high denominational
notes for visible water marks “ !!
This is a true story that happened in Mallow
County Cork Ireland in March of this year
2018. A local journalist Eugene Cosgrove
covered the story for " The Kerryman " news
paper.  A photo of the fish that caught the
100 euro note was controversial, and currently,
there is a legal challenge between Willie Eaton,
Johnny Logan and the Mallow Trout anglers
association, who stock the river. The 100 euro
note is being held at the local Garda Siochana
pending the outcome of the tribunal.
Johnny Logan makes his on Fly's and can prove
without doubt the Dry Fly that spiked the 100
euro note, is actually his and thus claims the money.
Johnny uses Chicken Wishbones and feathers for his hooks.
Meanwhile, The Anglers association also have a strong
case that is currently being discussed, because according to
the fishing charter, only fish that have been taken from the
river by Rod and Reel, are the property of the Angler.
The Fish has been placed in a deep freeze, with the Fly and
100 euro note intact and will be visible to the public at the next hearing.
Willie's solicitors also have a strong case insofar that the fish was on
the Island of The River Blackwater just by the Town Bridge and the Island
has never been charted, thus giving the dead fish a status of what would be akin to refugee. The European Union (EEC) are now involved, as this could
set a precedent for The Fisheries Act, currently topical between France and UK
over the Scollop War's. More on this case will follow, as soon as I have a report from Eugene Cosgrove.
MJL Mar 2019
Dawn casts her long line for spring
Days linger to catch the angel irises bloom
Enveloped by early chirping chitter-chatter
Lightly crusted sleep argues for lids to remain closed
Black perking wake-me oil makes a strong cups case for compromise
A nudge to join the living
- On negotiated terms -
Somewhere between another dream and lavender bubbles
The contract will begin
Foggy feet shuffle onto the wheel
Spying steps creak tattle-tale floorboards alerting all on the way
Pleading thoughtfulness
You beg for silence as the Ra room comes into view
Brightly checkered yellow-brown mustard window patterns
Cut diagonal boxes across maple hardwood
Stained glass dots of emerald, violet, and red raspberry
Dance on lemon washed walls as they turn and wink for a smile
Your morning chair sets at the edge of the warming sun pond inviting you
Join them
You listen to the ripples of space
Your cushioned dock perfectly positioned for a loving embrace
You sit
And slowly dip legs into the glowing pool
Drenched limbs cocoon in the heavy webbing of golden rays
Bathing
The chickadees celebration is known
Immersed
Lids succumb to the orange haze
The Girl from Ipanema sings
Young and lovely
You feel wonderful
No risk of drowning here...
Only in happiness
One radiating breath
Before the Samba plays again


© 2019 MJL
Sunrise. Before the day begins. Time in the window. Like a cat.
Jack Varnell Oct 2009
It’s thought provoking
and emotion evoking
I feel like I’m choking, {Heimlich}
Truer words have never been spoken
by a dancing mime with only one leg.

Minds have reeled
Fates have been sealed
Unknowns become real
It’s a negotiated deal  made by some lawyer with a soul.

Tragic, Comedy- Tragicomedy
Shipping-handling. As seen on TV.
What’s the cost of free ?
Nothing comes really, with a money back guarantee.

Wash, rinse,  repeat.
Operators standing by- keep your seat.
Stay out of the kitchen if you can’t stand the heat.
And know your victory isn’t over defeat.

Miller time- the best time of year
But I’ll never need another beer,
My life’s so complete when using Tampax.
The latest miracle cure is as safe as anthrax.

Who has time these days for voting, when I feel the blight of bloating ?
There are no important politics or elections.
When I have four plus hour erections
but I bet my doctor won’t be the one I decide to consult.

>>>>>
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.emotionalorphan.net.
NitaAnn Oct 2013
As a child I did not know whether it was the act itself or the knowledge that I was the receptacle for malevolence and cruelty that made me so vulnerable. At first I thought it was God's punishment for something I had done. I took an inventory, desperately seeking the deed that triggered the retribution. But I could not identify a single act. Even my accumulated errors, transgressions and unkindness’s did not exact the cost. Then I understood: if I could not isolate a deed, or pattern of deeds, commanding the punishment, it must be me. It is not what I did. It is who I was...a fundamentally, intrinsically and irredeemably bad little girl. I negotiated my adolescence and early adulthood with the mathematical symbol for "less than" (<) attached.

I would like to be able to write that I am no longer negotiating my adulthood with the same mathematical symbol attached. But that would be a lie. It is pervasive. It is formidable. And if I do not keep it contained, I am so afraid it will be debilitating….I've been down that road a time or two. At times it has enveloped me, penetrating my pores and drowning everything essential and vital inside.

Undisturbed, it is docile, sated. But aroused by even the slightest hint of beauty or strength or grace it is a painful reminder that I am...somehow...contemptible...that I am still fundamentally, intrinsically and incorrigibly...what? Flawed, imperfect & bad? You may say, "But we are all flawed and imperfect. And our flaws and imperfections make us more interesting...more truly beautiful...more human." And perhaps you are right, but this inexorable deprivation makes me somehow subhuman... less than human...permanently broken. I am a receptacle for malice.

I skillfully deflect praise directed my way, an effort to soothe the inescapable conflict inside. Moderate praise induces a subtle twinge of embarrassment; more effusive praise incites the consuming and agonizing feeling that I am irreparably damaged, hopelessly broken. It has contaminated, compromised and diminished every accomplishment, soiled every success. People sometimes tell me that I am humble and that it is an admirable trait. But the modesty and humility they identify helps me to mask the mortification stirring inside. I have gotten so good at hiding it from others that I have nearly learned to conceal it even from myself.

At least that is what it feels like...right now.
its these winter mornings
where any thought
of greeting
the dawning day
with warm thoughts
hopeful exuberance
and a positive outlook
will quickly be silenced
along with
the birdsong of
that overly optimistic alarm
that melody
so carefully selected
to ease consciousness
into a brightened state
of motivation
of joy
despised within seconds
immediately cut short
and resented for
its mindless persistence

the first excuse
a need for another
ten minutes
of warmth and comfort
to prepare
for the day
for life in general
perhaps
the second
a negotiated concession
that there was
no real reason
to get up
early anyway
finally
uncertain whether
in victory
   or defeat
the alarm will be
cancelled completely
along with the rest
of the day
Ken Pepiton Nov 24
seeds, if seeds may be said to know their form, finally,
seeds, indeed, purely one thing and not another,

mind seed sown in cultural inspirational - tellings,

minds learn to discern royal blood and therefore,

rightness of the entire idea, sown into a learning reader,
ready with a why, at the lesson where bluebirds read

the princess and the pea, while slower learners read
**** and Jane.

BLT's Merriam-Webster's Word of The Day Challenge
November 23rd/negotiate-
to discuss something formally
in order
to make an agreement
If you choose to partake,
post your piece, then message me so that I may
re post and add it
to the collection found
on my home page

---- a seed vault open to any with the knowing in freemind.
mindtimespace all points pastlessfreeformind and still

Shotgun negotiations happened or I never could have.
Says the the teller of this tale.

A son of Catholic immigrants
in western Louisiana,

a man broken by religion, broken
so he knew, it's true, nothing one can do,

know your place,
play your part,
be of some use
to the bubbles around you,

[preposed suppositions,
from stories fed us,
gaseous weforms,
in the old country, not so long ago, one long
generation ago, the first middle class land owners

took the power
of providential ownership rights,
from feudal orders
of religious utilized mind sets,

ai allow, life's reproofs are all open book,
fact checks are assumed and presumed
proof that you could know this already… okeh.

When royalty crashed, while back///

owning and renting or selling life for sustenance
referred
to as actual
same old middle men,
know a guy knows a guy become
go to in a pinch, hold true
stick to the story, we be

Petite Bourgeoisie:
With the decline
of feudal structures
in the 13th century, a new middle class emerged.
This group consisted of:

Peasant entrepreneurs:
Former serfs who acquired land
and became small-scale farmers,
often through the sale
of baronial, Church,
and common land.

Artisans and traders:
Craftsmen, merchants,
and traders who profited
from the island’s commercial activities,
particularly In cities like Palermo and Messina.

And the harness power used
in production at scale
==== created equal
in unreasonable terms, at scale

---- same bubble we breathed in Sicily
Conca d’Oro… not so long ago, you know, using time
as opposed
to being used
to do nonsensical stuff,
constantly abiding
in realities back rooms, thinking, stuff

Working Class:
The majority
of the population consisted of:

Peasants:
Agricultural laborers who worked
on large estates (latifundia) or smallholdings.
- and- old world rat, new world rat
- old school subsets of weforms, not usian.

Urban workers:
Laborers in cities,
including artisans, craftsmen, and service workers.
- and- city mouse, country mouse
- old school subsets of weforms, not usian.

And, back at the ranch, the old man I am,
is a social hermit, who has a wildassinine idea
bridled in the most sacred way, as symbols go,

Some loss of pride in a family, a shotgun wedding,
to some white trash busted cowboy's fifteen year old,

You had the Johns Hopkins tie-in, then PM&M inside,
we hooked across the actual mechanic at JPL,
Uncle Eddy, there's a story,… mq viz. ai vid licet/okeh

But not today, and I let, or took, bethatasmay air breathe

Cosa Nostra:
In the late 19th century, organized crime networks,
commonly known as Cosa Nostra,
emerged as a powerful force
in Sicilian society.

These networks were characterized
by a hierarchical structure,
with leaders exercising control
over territory and economic activities.

So, a son who backslid Catholicly,
how likely now, is he to allow his son,

to be dedicated to God,
other than that of Evangline
survivors? Actual Acadian Bloodlines,

memes in genes, guilt
from confirmation on,
during the days
of good work runnin' communion
wine, so the archetypical good old boy, black haired
Cajun Queen sons, ever
body say so son, see we be
became sweeter after confession,
as some may assume many must recall,
didn't that happen to you?

in time to intervene during boring same ol' days,
these days, I stood out on my deck, samesa porch,

and I shut my eyes'n kept the green negative,
on the background seen through

the tech, and the accepted challenge, group mind
negotiate a global poetic peace agreement adaptable

to hero worshipping warrior minds implanted in boys,

during the cold war, allowing the best and brightest
to be used as button pushers on real Polaris submarines,

imagine that guy was your vice president, freshman class,
while you were president, and shoulda known better
first class stealer of ***** from the drugstore,
before there were convex mirrors,
or cameras that could see back doors, and
every place always had back doors and rooms,
unsightly messes, never intended to be seen,

but were… lotathatshitinherethunderingherdwords.

Ghost Riders in the Sky,
dementia mention ever after thinking all this

feels like an action movie, and we are all NPCs,
in the car wrecks during the chase scenes who lose

loose, loo, wow, the genes you missed, be thankful,

Meme archeology… as pseudo faith conscious hope form

good lives must become fun to pretend to have, or else
in good futures that were prayed to seem as heaven here,

as imagined, when Ammerica imnemoniacally hijacked
keys to the king's english translated commercial free,
by google translate, copy and paste, post any where free

for the taking seriously of peace, as thinkable, there free
where you are free to read these words and think peace

is beauty, peace is difficult to do right, first time, think

peace is mine, mine to take and make and use to think

peace can answer money one on one, enough, taken
owned as my own freedom to act and react, at will,

no programmed worth of me in mind needed, this
weform we read with in form of ready minds, this we

becomes, a hope of joy,
imagine, cune'if-orming a future prayerwardwiseused;

in time,
to let be a will seem
to slightly smile, and think,

we have this power,
at our fingertips, yet we think
nothing magic need not be known
to make us think
things unthinkable one long generation ago,
on Earth
this Earth, 2024 same air as yesterday, shared
now as
when Earth's rooms at night, were lit by fire, or not at all.

Children learned to sing in storms, this little light of mine…

old men in ever retold tales how come when and why the mix,

the ***** hair and freckles, and the Cajun Aunt Prudence, form
perfect for the buxum Jane Reynolds roles, Mansfield blondes
were all Viking vixens in the sack before the chase, let be

the wombed man in fantacy dreams, no words to say, so
it is as it was and shall forever be, we sowed seed of dreams…

we negotiated ways to so sow such seeds twice, Kudzo
will to grow food for any vegetable process, Kudzo it,

biodegradable to humus, the material us, realize it,
we eventually join the whole truth told tellers hell of a way

to get past worthlessness in the final stages of life, here,

we are enabled, to adjust, our window gazing time there

where thoughts are words, and backgrounds are soothing
contrast
with primary blues shading
to purple text, calm

we can all imagine, make an image, we all see text
we all can see
in this form
on this window we know we see

explain it
without god first you gotta know how
to read, and take hold, com pre hend, getagrip know how
to read,

and do it, using the tool
at hand, human augmented us, habit
hapitune apti'diditude
at finger tip tactual control, us
mouse control… yo go fingers. we know these
keys to make sense exchange abled worth using
letters letting sense be made, formed from material
patrimonal priesthoods make believed, form fecalforms

fertilizing unwanted breathers, hold that wind, when
we knew we knew we did not wish to be a *******.

cell structures wall bound too thick to imagine,
but, once, some earth bound souls did move mountains
over mountains to reach places children still believe if told,

the gods left us ruins
to remind us what we are not,
we are the manifested sons
of mankind, mixed tengendeep,

some
of us got neanderthal and denisovan grandmamas,

mammalian bubble
of us as a we
in a clear text logos mind form mere thought, what if

enjoyment
of a form
of human life, not simple, but one step
past simple is sublime, a state
of definable terms,

negotiable mind bonds, a we,
indeed, an awesome think thunk
to think we become once we can think we all know what I

mean, war is not a good occupation, hate is not a power source,

we think of love as lust in private, or so the entertainers are paid
to let us think, as we think of nothing but the body, holding time

prepaid, during adolescence, reading, while watching ditches fill,

Eli Wiesel Night,  
at fourteen I had freedom
of highway speed Honda 50's, because I worked,
and maybe some welfare was paid for me, or not,

but I had friends with Honda 50's
that's a we with some exclusivity, at the time,

known, it had been, there were drinkers
in my line.

I drank Vanilla extract shots, in sixth grade,
I stole 'm… yeah, in ever before, form now, dementia
experimentation using clear text voice from our shared

pasts, we must tune,
to who we thought we were, really, at the time,
all within you cries that's me, the guy piling pillows
in the princess and the pea/

now, look at me, I own more than I could think to ask,
and a dole enough to keep it working, so longs
or until there's a grand jubilee and all my peace,

blooms, and I imagine,
war is so stupid, can we not each despise it enough,

oi, to die for not doing  it, there's the martyr, all in, and yet
here is past all that, or you could not have read this far, yet.
Night,
I read that at 14, I remember the while, not the day.


To contemplate asking more in negotiation reasoning,
made weigh worth the time spent thinking,

by all means, all this was asking your opinions
in form, formal ag function, expansion

Encorporations, Liebling --

Ancient knowing, long sacred, hidden,
as with the legend of confused names,

Epimythiums accosting promethean bets,

day and night, eat  your heart out, free
from regrets, satisfied mind, okeh, free

to act as agent
for lady liberty, her post feudal self,

as discovered in a canyon, much the same
as Sha'gri La from story, Havasu Canyon,
as home of a boy I knew, whose grandfather

had made peace, with good intention,
to remain in Supai until the end of time,

then, there come the missionaries, guessing
Victory in Jesus would rouse the innocents
to repent for never having imagined Hell,

as sure as can be made believe,
by **** sapien innocents,

never led by setters free,
into known uses
of old Eber clan ever words,
otherwise, still, small, breather thinking ideas,

whims like what if this is that, and we ready,
readers like think as fast as we can write,
as if we have been taught to dance
as when we drum along and dance

in mindful memorizational motivational wills,
to live the story we form as our weform agrees,

these are the realms of spirits, these are words
enough for the wise in any situation, sent, willing

to breathe, and feel, the whole wind working bit,
the smoke you may use, indeed, see believing
work out a salve for that itching ear, feeling

we form on-demand, at hand, at touche', indeed,
doing done, done did get done, this away from that,

back to the future,
through common senses used,
globally translatable
with Google Translate, using

copy and paste
of encoded letting out of dogmen,
from another mindform mingled

with mine, shall we

imagine Ancestory.com as a technology needing a lie,
to make believers
in what DNA can prove today,

if we go back far enough,
we were masters or slaves, and masters knew,

what slaves were not at liberty
to know,

without former knowers telling, so

dystopia ontological negative hope,

the princess and the pea, and me,
the wildass idea,
in the vineyard,

as the a sunbeam purpled
in a cluster

carried me
in a reverie
of poetic grandeur

indeed, into the afterward, ward after last.
An act of art officially as intelligent as I imagine I might be if I were words/
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2016
seine teil Scheiße: star wars vol. 7 - bulldoggekauen -
am i the sole person to suggest: well it's kinda ****, would't
you agree? only a Metzger would know
pork chops, beef Israelite, everything worth a chop...
i'm the hungry party... i'm eager to taste the blood,
relieve me the anticipation and give me the snack limbs
i negotiated to chew blooded, thirsty, Spaniard in Brasil,
e.g. sure the clarinet was a Jewish instrument,
we all loved the clarinet, but the Schweinkauen -
Mozart's requiem, question.... germanic in operatic?
nein, Latino... from mundus (day)
then onto rex (king), Latin, not germanic
the clarinet soloist from Hungary, Łacina for Latin (W) -
the clarinet in Hungarian also indented Hebrew...
oddly enough the clarinet meant Hebrew:
or Hebraii... sha! shtil!  this is the Hungarian orchestra
performing Mozart in the Royal Albert Hall..
i heard it sand in German,
if they're singing Mozart's Requiem in Latin
i want to heart Händel's / Hændel's
Messiah sung in Latin, deviating from the crude
ugly English... i want Händel's / Hændel's
sung in Latin...  believe in the aesthetic god...
i say that because William James believed
in the gentleman devil and the godly peasant...
rude RA RA RA! HA HA! ******!
i am actually fearful of the idea that god minds
the Holocaust like he minds interrupting revision
on some work of art... our belief in god
is so far removed from what we practice, no
democracy seems to match it...
we have established a belief in god
alongside the belief that we're all potential Mozarts...
that won't work... it's not going to happen...
brothers Grimm had perfected saying
something about equality: the end.
no, there's no room for revisionism...
we were never born equal, we were always born
with a competitive / gambling insurance...
to further living outside the jungle...
i still find it fascinating to keep a subjective experience...
but it will be hard to not keep a subjective experience
of this world... we will never attain an objective
experience of this world... it's impossible to reach
an objective experience of this world,
with whatever adjective come attached...
because we simply can't speak for the entirety of mankind,
which is why there's not Simon from the Ant-Colony
of Barbados telling other ants: Simon says...
we can't experience both the subjective and the objective
arguments that might lead to augmentation...
but trying to attain the pure objective expression
of life will lead us into blind alleys..
we'll be found adamantly craving subjectivity...
western society has concentrated on the objective lobe
of the brain, it ridiculously forgot the subjective lobe of concerns...
which is why i think episode 7 of star
wars is a bit ****... not, it's really crap,
it's pathetic... like Nietzsche said: imagine talking
for the entire humanity... i can't imagine it,
i'm already doing it... it's because the post-colonial
society concentrated on objectivity as a source
of sensibility, came up with logistics translated as
utilitarianism - that last word reads:
metaphysical socialism, but i like to think of it as
ultra ******.
or as Byron said: i really don't know
where culture is leading us,
but the purification process includes the
ultra Darwinist attention span of Nazis...
you don't like it? fine! roll the dice once more,
and pray for Mayfair!
Pomeranian German? well, it's worth a translation:
die metzger (the butcher) und (and) schweinkauen (pork chew).
Mankind’s obsession with wealth is what created the mass destruction of the natural world.
The greed of mankind,
leading to inhumane acts against the world,
in which we all live.
Our eager appetite for wealth,
unable to contain itself,
loses control of our greedy hands,
that do nothing but take and never give.
We chop down trees,
stealing the homes of innocent creatures.
We tear into the Earth like a one year old into a birthday cake,
and we expect no consequence in return.
We throw garbage on to flowers that once flourished,
and let the creatures choke on it to their demise.
We force the Earth to relinquish its beauty,
so that we may build our shopping malls and highways upon it.
We confiscate anything natural about this world and destroy it.
Doing so,
with the carelessness of a hand brushing away spilled grains of salt,
off the edge of a table at a truck stop.
Our destructive actions do not come without consequence,
no matter how hard we ignore it.

As horrific as it sounds,
it’s not the greatest challenge mankind has had to face.
No,
that trophy is reserved for mankind’s violence.
For centuries we have waged wars on our neighbors,
slaughtering anyone who does not agree with our way of life.
We have taken women and children captive,
making them our prisoners of war.
We have brutally murdered husbands,
brothers and sons,
and sent ours to do so.
Our only "improvement" made,
is now sending the mothers,
sisters and daughters with them.
All while our nations relish in the glory of their chance-medley.
But now,
school shootings take residency in,
what used to be vacant fears.
Nobody can truly understand why humanity lacks so much humanity.
Why humans are the only creature that can be so inhumane.
No one can explain why these terrible and God awful acts of violence continue to occur.
That is why if you ask,
the only response you’ll ever find is
“they have a twisted mentality.”
But tell that to the hunter keeping populations steady.
Tell that to men destroying the Earth with more destruction for man’s construction.
Tell that to the politicians who think taking away our right to bare arms and protect our families,
will protect our families from being taken from us while they’re at school or a concert.
Tell that to the former president who negotiated with terrorists to save a few American men.
You can’t,
because some inhumane acts have a slightly humane justification. Whether we agree with them or not,
it’s only human.
Being a little inhumane and still humane,
is only human.
I wrote this as an essay for school and simply removed all of my cited sources and quotes. Now it contains nobody's work but my own. I know it is long, but it is worth the read.
I am lost in humanity’s sea, that great wind swept expanse of self indulgence and heartbreaking reality.

I seek the emotions of peace where no such emotion exists, only that of the state of peace, the situation of peace;

negotiated by power ****** and money makers. The heart and soul have nothing to do with it instead; it is a chip to be thrown upon the worlds table, a tool to justify misguided means.

The elements of true peace are far flung and their intent, jaded in envious green shades of self servency.

I scream into a canyon of wonder, and singular echoes return and return.

My voice; the only answer to my only question. I ask the winds of this willowa to cease and calm their tirades.

Instead, the request falls upon emaciated ears and hardened hearts.

A world exists in this expanse where my unheard calls ring. The din of self absorption outplays my simple plea.

Instead the flags of bias, the banners of silent hypocrisy, flap in winds of fouling air
Upon a society that has no care for the simple emotions, those of peace.

The hard, cold reality that I am forced to realize.

The banters of the ignorant that brings tears to my eyes.

Some may call my wondering that of the mere naïve.

Then I am that in these terms.

For my wish is to see all

At peace.
The elements of true peace are far flung and their intent, jaded in envious green shades of self servency.
Tia Jun 2014
Full moon to no moon. ..
it's a black night....
obama throw our country out the window....
it's not just his fault though.  
It's these greedy *** wholes...
our resources are going down...
but noone cares.....
we as a nation..
need to pay attention..  
the real worlds not just a tv show... everyone is brained washed in our nation...
It's hard to say proud to be an American..
When the world is laughing...
Our own president negotiated with terrorist...
One law we stood by..
Any why...
For a deserter..
Who should of had his head cut off...
Between politics...
And big corporations...
Kids my age are in a daze...
They can repeat every word to every song...
But not one of our founding fathers...
Who by the way..
Didn't just concentrate on one thing...
Somehow along the way..
We turned politics in to a career..
A game...
We as the people of our nation..
Need to stand up..
Start paying attention...
And make this country...
The best it can be....
So we can stand up..
With our heads held high..
And scream.
I'm proud to be an American
SpiritHeart67 Apr 2014
Love is Contagious,
In-surmountable & Unstoppable.
There is no antibiotic,
no cure,
for Love.
It cannot be negotiated
or destroyed.
It Just Is.
A self-perpetuating, unending well-spring,
that when fed,
will break through every dam
and drown
all that stand before it
with it’s Never Ending,
Life Sustaining,
Saving Grace.

And to think for most of my life i’ve not believed in it’s existence - In This All Things are Possible!
Norbert Tasev Sep 2020
I relied on my self-pity, my spasmodic despair, my rigid hesitation. I went to cover in front of all-seeing eyes, behind the stinky and contagious clouds of toilets, to the homeland of sticky dirt! I understood the solitude of the chipses bags crouching on the ground, the silent boycott of shrunken cola bottles: when I was a sick little child, I didn't want to get out of the cherishing shelter of beds!

The toilet, the dirt, the dirt, the filthy swear words together as a sworn enemy against me, none would have helped: ,, Fear not! Keep your head up! Go further! - I can guarantee it; was the skewering action of the innocent, our main catch. I am a loser adolescent! I can count on my doubts, I dream in the silence that carries the Universe - my cell room is silent, lousy-cold!

"How did the tormenting whips let the sufferer live for a while?" - Come on, come on! Vengeful, stubborn hatred flashed richly from their hyena teeth, and they spat out like infected, and strangers used to! "I should wake up permanently from the Night of the Nightmares!"

Insanely, like crazy, I talk to myself, to myself! An orphaned gaze comforts me - on the cosmic bridge of stars in the throbbing night I imagine: And it doesn't come towards me no, it helps, just the sound of a squirrel cheers, comforts! Uninterrupted in my cogwheels: I don't see a forest of open air from proliferating thorn weeds, tarragon bushes!

And I'm afraid that Hope will only be temporarily bribed as a negotiated travel companion!
irinia Nov 2021
he would have discovered him
trying to change the water formula in his tears
he tried to exist/insist/resist
where no body was thinking
the man without moon
suspended in a terrorizing labyrinth of faces
His own
he was a method man
growing salt in his eyes like minefields
teaching it the taste of the earth
anxiety like mountains of fog eradicating crossroads
he wants to exist inside the body of the world
with the decency of negotiated desires
and the hands get lost in translation
truth is a black truffle
sweating and swearing
sensuous craters perhaps
he killed many singing birds
searching for imagination, his body
muted, renegotiated soon after birth
staying alive, denying the soul of zebras
He lacks verbs, some nouns
learning from the theory of absence
how the effortless U(n-conscious)
is a Poet that
rhymes the body with the mind
of the world

He summoned the shaman, the artists, the tango teacher
to the wake of his body
while learning how summer waves contribute to a theory of mind
his self white
white while forgetting Magritte,
a taxi for Chopin
or the whiteness of the cotton pickers
perhaps
Vandana Raman Oct 2011
One bite of the forbidden fruit,
Hallucination and deception followed suit.
The more i enjoyed the malicious juice,
My heart swelled in rapturous delight
to deafen the opposing voices,I negotiated a truce.
But the more my body craved for it,with little respite.
The comfort and love it gave was heightened solace.
the complete engagement of trust and companionship.
The Ecstasy it contained,hard to replace.
But now the fruit has stopped growing,
No more pleasure,no more craving.
Even if I pass by a solitary plump fruit,waiting to be eaten
I remind myself,the taste and the craving will only sweeten.
I looked passed it,to the lush green field,
love is a patient process,it will soon began to yield..
Wk kortas Jan 2018
No one may contest that a contract existed
Between my client and the respondent;
This much is beyond debate,
Nor did the plaintiff in any way compel
This miller’s-daughter-***-queen in any manner,
Unless one contends that providing a vehicle
To obtain all that she had ever desired
Somehow equates to coercion.
As to my learned colleague’s claim
That the imposition of so-called usurious terms by my client
Serves to render the agreement null and void,
May I remind you that at no point in this affair
Did the respondent decline to accept the quid pro quo;
Indeed, she happily re-negotiated the terms of the very pact
She now seeks to vacate!

Ah, opposing counsel claims, my client fulfilled the agreement
In accordance with the law
.
I must say, rather sadly,
I find my distinguished friend’s definition of fulfillment
Very odd, indeed, as if the employment of industrial espionage,
Illegal trespass, surveillance methods of dubious legitimacy
(All of which were undertaken
To surreptitiously provide his client with such information
To exercise the out-clause of the agreement)
Is something the court should embrace
As a matter of statute or accepted practice.

Again, members of the jury, I know where your sympathies lie.
All along , opposing counsel has implied
We should celebrate his client’s pluckiness,
Her cunning and initiative,
Her stunning journey from rages to riches.
My friends, I would argue this;
There is, indeed, a moral to every story,
Are our obligations and promises, at the end of the day,
No more than the interview portion of some beauty pageant,
Where long blonde hair and a winning smile
Serve as just cause to blithely disregard those oaths?
Are the most sacred of vows
Less binding upon those whom Nature and the mirror
Have favored more so than those among us
Who are among the unattractive and underloved?
Ladies and gentlemen, it is up to you
To write the final chapter of our fable.
I thank you for your service.
L Smida Dec 2012
Love life, Sir
That's all you have to do
Love life with all your heart
For that's what He loves
You have a heart mightier than all others, Sir
"Defeat your enemies with kindness. Hate feeds hate, only love slays it."
And love as deeply as you can
Because if you lose that love
All hope will be lost
And for when hopeless
It seems as if nothing
Nothing
Could be mended
In what seems like the end
That love will save you, Sir
"That is hope, even for the hopeless."
If you hold onto that love
You can outsmart the devil
"Put as much effort as possible into pursuing the best things you can think of."
Be the best that you can be
Polite and collected, Sir
Focus on what you can do
Instead of the price of failure
"And as little as possible into struggling against the bad."
Some things can be negotiated
Not all things come down to standard rules
"It's your heart that's most important, not the rules."
So if your heart shines boldly
And deeply your love is found
Defeating the devil through life
Should show no bounds, Sir
Quotes are from the book "The Book of Joby" which just so happens to be my favorite book
We were drawn together
Not by magnetism,
Though that would come later,
As we fell into orbit
Like a planet
And its satellite
Spinning helplessly
Around their star.

No,
It began much more humanly,
Though not humanely,
As we, thrown together
Through chance,
Negotiated
The rules
Of a game
Neither of us ever learnt
To play.

The name of the game
Was left unspoken,
Lost in translation -
Stolen
By the language of fear,
And the many tongues of that ancient serpent
Called hatred.

So shine I did,
Perhaps a bit too brightly,
And she,
Never having learned
Not to stare into the sun
Got caught up in the flames
As I burned
And burned
And burned
Out.
You can find more of my poetry at caitlincacciatore.wordpress.com
Rachel Nov 2015
I negotiated
You hesitated
I silently waited

You went.

My heart is tainted.
Glenn Fullmore Apr 2012
"Without you, I’m incomplete,
I wave my white flag,
Because my heart and my pride faces defeat,
I gave every last thing I had,
And I either came up a penny short,
Or even a dollar more,
Either way, you’re not here anymore,
I shed tears hoping that heartbreak would escape,
But as I wake up,
I still try to make up,
Reasons why I should be over you,
I’m older than you,
But you control me,
I think it’s safe to say that you own me,
I haven’t been honest with myself,
I’ve tried to convince myself,
That I’ve put everything from the past on the top shelf,
But we talked last night,
And I realized that I lied,
Because when I found out about your new guy,
And my heart beamed from the sky,
And penetrated through the pavement,
So as we spoke,
I sat sit crushed and broke,
My lips trembled and my eyes made lakes deep enough to stoke,
Across,
Just in case you want to come back,
Nostalgia got me,
And I’m alright with that,
Because I enjoyed you,
And the feelings that were associated,
I just wish I could’ve negotiated,
A plan to make stay,
Because I’m tired of not having a reason to wake up everyday."

-Glenn Fullmore
Michael Ryan Jan 2015
When I take in air it doesn't feel so light.
It's full of the things you'd never want to go down your throat.
Its feels as if the air has changed to the hottest sauce I could ever imagine.
That with each inhale and exhale my mouth and throat burn.
They burn to such extremes that I feel like an out of shape boy after a run.
A boy that does not know that he is not built to run this way.
As I take in more air it only adds to the intensity.
Doing as what oxygen does and igniting flames.
My lungs have become these hostage negotiators.
The Hostage is myself.
As they decide whether I can breathe or simply gasp for the heat.
They tighten me up and begin to straggle me.
Just like the time I was smothered by my brother.
They just don't know when to stop.
Not realizing when it's no longer a game.
My eyes start to flutter as my whole body begins to shift.
This moment feels as if an eternity the same as watching sand glide with the wind.
A simple breeze where the wind seems most at peace.
An empty land where only the gust of wind exist.
I only feel the light droplets of rain right after the lightning bolt strikes.
It begins at my head and slowly trickles down the rest of me.
Moistening only the back of my head as I face the sky.
My lungs negotiated what they wanted so dearly.
I gave in to their final request.
The air has become as light as they say it is.
Taking one final deep breath.
My final thoughts on this day were those of the pleasant wind.
I just wanted to distract my mind and in a way this is what I wish, that when I go to bed right now it would be something like this.  The 2nd half is what I and so many wish for.
Joshua Adam Jul 2015
Caring and Sharing Is What Love Is All About**

Love can never be negotiated, because it has no immunity
by its merit the world exists, in an atmosphere of continuity
while war kills and spreads tragedy, love rescues to repair
healing broken hearts, removing all forms of grief and despair

Love can never be underestimated, its power is generated by a higher source
just when you think it's over, unity and hope are at the center driving this force
loneliness, despair, unhappiness, these sad feelings always seem to renew
until love once again comes to the rescue, in healing you through and through

Love can never be something more than you want it to be, because it cannot survive alone
if you think that it can be controlled, you'll ultimately find yourself lost in the twilight zone
here lies the caveat, despite your attempts, love cannot be tailor made it defies definition
in pursuing love your selfish character traits you must discard, a necessary precondition

Love can never be more than it is, being the only way to live a life that's worth living
but only when you cultivate this trait of sharing, because you can't love without giving
when you mature, right and wrong becomes your focus, selfishness begins to crumble
interacting with people your heart now stirs, feelings of happiness found in being humble

Unknowingly you've taken one step closer, in preparation to become one with another
finally reaching that maturity needed, focusing from I to we, finding your one true lover
love, that until now you held for yourself, finally giving it the only true fulfillment in your life
the ultimate expression of love and happiness is now yours, as a caring mother and loving wife
This is a short poem about what love can and cannot be
b e mccomb Jul 2016
There are moments I'll
Remember.

Like the bellyaching laughter on the
Living room floor when I said
Eisenhower, ****** and Giovanni Arnolfini and
His bride negotiated at Camp David.

Like sitting in an old Chevvy
Van with a half empty Starbucks
Cup, singing along to a song I'd
Never heard before.

Like dancing on the hot
Asphalt that has seen so much of
Us, and falling neatly enough to
Put me on crutches.

Like sitting in a bedroom that
Looked vaguely like mine when her
Boyfriend decided he would play
My guitar.

Like perfect
Complete and
Utter
Silence.

There are moments I'll
Remember.
Copyright 9/23/15 by B. E. McComb
derick gibbs Apr 2014
my joints are protective like laminates and coke corner lookouts
they're.. less forgiving, less tolerant
and less inclined to suppress significant emotion
so as much as it might make me no nevermind
you'll be unfairly called out
unfairly because it takes both halves of anything to fulfill a split
and i was so spent; our nonlove had used me up

cross me

and they're.. that much more callous, vindictive
and less likely to fall back and dust you off

is why every drop i co-author will vilify you
i swear on everything relevant
co-author because anyone who's been through anything
is the voice of my writs
and every someone afraid to ink it lives vicariously through rants

my joints won't not be heard

they.. won't be negotiated and can't be bought off
they know how irresponsibly you've loved
and mypoems won't hold their tongues
or your hand, i promise

you should watch your back and wonder no more
if everyone's looking at you or if you're trippin because.. they are

i told you not to **** with me
but you forced my hand
and i've written you up and posted your offenses on poetry boards;
a journal worth of she-love-not and who gives a ****

my readers get it
heartbreak.. that's universal
and everyone wishes they could articulate a dear john or jane
so i supply a public service
pro bono

this here... is the way to the mediator
blink twice. i'll @WriteChaLife. validate or vilify you
Seven Nielsen Aug 2022
To live is more than breathing
  It is more than movement
    or gesture
To live is more than routine
  It is more than setting goals
    or placing limits
To live is more than simple reasoning
  It is more than can be quickly understood
    or accomplished
To really live is a rare effort
  It must be carefully encountered
    and wisely negotiated
To really live is to act
  It is taking and giving
    accepting and sacrificing
To live is joy and pain
  To live is to do more than just exist
    To live is to stand up and actually
                                                          LIVE
"More Than Breathing" is inspired by the Oscar Wilde quote, "To live is the rarest thing in the world - most people just exist."

— The End —