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jake aller Aug 2019
I don't get it
I don’t Get It 
Mr. Speaker
I admit I don’t get it

How does prayer
Stop gun violence?
Prayer did not work in Texas.

26 people were murdered
 while praying.

God if he exists
Obviously does not care
About the poor people
Who died in his church
Because a mad man

Got a gun
And no they were not praying
To be delivered from death
No one deserves to die like this

So my prayer to you
Is simply this

Get off your rear end
Rally the country
And do something

About gun violence

That’s a prayer
I hope works

Dear Speaker Ryan
I want to tell you something

The dead don’t want your prayers
The dead don’t care that you pray for them
They are dead after all

And you and your so-called Christians
Are to blame
You refuse to do anything
Anything at all

to stop the carnage
In our streets

The U.S. is flooded with guns
And more are sold every day
Millions of people don’t have health coverage
Millions are barely surviving

And your answer
Our dear great compassionate Speaker
Your answer 
Is Prayer works
Government action does not
You act as if the gun violence
Plaguing our country

Was like the weather
Beyond our control
So here’s my prayer for you

And your colleagues
When you die
I pray that God
Will send you

And your friends
Straight to hell
Where Satan and his demons
Will use you for target practice

That’s my prayer to you
And as you know
Prayer works
 
Mr. President
You are wrong once again

You said that the tragic events 
in Texas
And Las Vegas were not “gun situations”

But rather were mental health problems
And that in Texas
if there had been no gun controls
Perhaps fewer people would have died

Mr. President

I know you a smart man

The smartest man in the world


According to you
So please contemplate this fact

According to the latest findings

It is a gun situation

In fact, the reason the U.S.

Has so many gun deaths 

Is because we have so many guns

45% of the worlds guns in fact
And 33 percent of the world’s shooters

Are Americans killing other Americans
And most of them 

the majority of them

Are White men killing other people
Not Islamic terrorists


Most are in fact

Self-proclaimed Christians
So Mr. President

When will you come to your senses
And do what 90 percent of the public wants


Enact nation wide effective gun controls?
And tell the NRA
 
they can take their blood money elsewhere

When Mr. President

When will you act

When will you take charge
And become a President of the people
Instead of the President of the NRA?
 Like (0)  0   


← Previous1 2 345…75Next →
Virginia Beach Massacre Never Again
Virgina Beach 

In a night of horrific scumbagery violence

Rarely seen in this jaded age of ours

Gone in one hour
In a spasm of horrific scumbagery violence
I
In just a few short minutes


Nothing more than that
 
In just a few moments

All 12 victims were murdered
By a disgruntled employee


Every one he knew was shot

And killed for no reason
Caused by the demons

His soul was so infected

Murderous demonic voices

All in his head

Screaming **** them all 
**** them all


Screaming none stop violence in his head

All the time
Causing him to start shooting 
everyone he saw


Regardless of who they were 
or where they were

Everyone must die 
screamed the demonic voices in his head
No one can be left alive


Everyone must die

Virtually all must die 
in his internal video game

Everyone must die


Regardless of who they were 
or where they were
Again just another day

Gone horribly wrong


All across America
In
every town

No where is safe anymore
Virgina Beach massacre

Virgina Beach massacre

Just another
Average night in America

An Active Shooter
scumbagery violence

Rarely seen

in this jaded wild world
Gone in one hour
In a spasm of horrific
scumbagery
In just a less than 30 short minutes

Nothing more than
In just a few short 30 moments

All the victims
were murdered while at their daily 
work
wrong place wrong time

act of a demotic deranged madman
voices screaming ****
The voices scream
death to all humans


All must be killed
The voices scream over and over
All must die now

Just another night in America
Land of the Brave
Home of the free
More Guns for Everyone in the World

The NRA has decided

That the best solution to global problem

Of rampant violence and crime everywhere
Is for the rest of the world


To become like the U.S.

Where anyone can buy a gun

As an armed society is a polite society’

And so the President i
s about to announce

A global campaign against gun control restrictions


As these restrictions
are an undue burden

On the rights of the US arms manufactures
To sell their guns 
everywhere in the world


As everyone wants what we have to sell

The best weapons in the world
Instead of trying to limit the damage


That unrestricted gun sales

Have done to the U.S.
Our President, our great leader

Wants to sell more guns

Everywhere in the world

And there are eager buyers

Lining up around the world

Eager to buy the best guns

The world has ever seen

We want to export

The gun madness

That has infected our society


Leaving behind so many dead bodies
The dead were not consulted

For they remain dead


They do not vote
They have no voice
For the guns silenced them

For good
 just as the guns intended

Just doing their gun thing after all

Humanity has evolved
From stones to arrows
To guns
T o nuclear, biological weapons

And the U.S.
 While proclaiming itself
A champion of Human Rights

Remains nothing 
but a country 
Of gun runners
 Merchants of death
And destruction
NRA Please Stop Talking

Another day
Another mass shooting

Another incident
of domestic terrorism


another gun man
killing people
because just because
 he can
and he wants to **** people

The NRA 
And their stooges

Come out

Flood the airways
With their noxious
Poisonous weasel words


The NRA says
Mass shootings

Are like the weather

You can’t control them
You can’t predict them

And you can’t prevent them

Just have to accept

It is all god’s will

Guns don’t **** people
IF guns were outlawed

Only outlaws
 would have guns

Only solution 
Is more guns

For everyone

An armed society
they say 
Is a polite society


Support for gun control
I is
socialist/communist/fascist/anti-Am  erican/anti-Christian nonsense
The beginning of tyranny


If only the Jews had guns

The holocaust would not have happened

Jesus would want us all
 
to be armed 
with machine guns
To protect us against the evil doers

It is the Christian thing to do


To blow away evil doers
With heavy arms


In America
Land of the free

Home of the brave
We can’t do anything


At all
About the mass carnage

Unleashed by madmen with guns

Who walk among us

Searching for their next victims
Any restriction of the right


To bear arms

Is tyranny at its worst
The nanny state run amuck

Talking about gun control

After a tragic event
Is

just not the appropriate time

We only need prayers

and meaningless thoughts

Universal background checks

Too onerous
Registering guns

Too burdensome

Researching gun violence

waste of tax payer money
banning military style assault weapons
r

Restricts my right 
to blow 
away

Bambi the deer
with a M16

the NRA will keep talking

talking and talking

preventing anything

from being done

and we will have another

Mass shooting event

Before the day is out

So my plead

This day
To the NRA
A
and their stoogies

Talk is cheap

Your comments
Are not helping

If you can’t

Be a part of the solution
Just stop talking

Please stop talking


And let the rest
Of us  figure out

How to stop

The madness in the streets
And stop the carnage


So NRA

Please
 just
 stop
 talking
 Now

military assault weapons 
are locked up

yet in America

the land of the free

home of the brave
 
everyone and his cousin

must have their gun

guns for everyone

cries the NRA

that’s the solution

The president
a 
and his supporters

deny the obvious
guns **** people
That’s all they do


it is a gun thing

you would not understand
Guns just do
what guns gonna do
**** people

Mr. President

You can take your words

your empty platitudes
Your empty promises
Your prayers 

straight to hell

and back

where with any luck

Satan will use you

as target practice
Chief of Staff You are Absurd

the President’s chief of staff
said the other day

it was absurd

to suggest that the president’s words

had anything to do

with recent mass shootings

yet is it absurd

to see the lengths

to which the President’s supporters
will twist and turn

spinning awa
y
the inconvenient truth
President Trump 
is a racist bigot con man

who some how
 conned his way

to become President
he call immigrants criminals, vermin, animals

invaders infesting the country
the El Paseo shooter 

said that he went to the border

to shoot the invaders

and said
 that he was a big Trump fan
it is not absurd
 to connect these two huge dots
The President’s words
 
have real world consequences

Yes Mr. Trump is a racist pig
a
and his supporters
 are being absurd

to suggest otherwise

 
36
 Jake Aller


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Jake Aller
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https://theworldaccordingtocosmos.com

John (Jake) Cosmos Aller

Novelist, Poet, Foreign Service Officer 

Tel: 703-436-1402
Email: authorjakecosmosaller@gmail.com

John (“Jake” ) Cosmos Aller is a novelist, poet and former Foreign Service officer having served 27 years with the U.S. State Department in ten countries - Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada,  Korea, India, St Kitts, St Lucia,  St Vincent, Spain and Thailand. and traveled to 45 countries during his career.  Jake has been an aspiring novelist for several years and has completed two novels, (Giant **** Spiders, and the Great Divorce) and is pursuing publication.  He has been writing poetry all his life and has published his poetry in electronic poetry forums, including All Poetry, Moon Café and Duane’s Poetree. (under the name Jake Lee).  He is looking forward to transitioning to his third career – full-time novelist and poet after completing his second career as a Foreign Service officer, and his first career as an educator overseas for six years upon completion of his Peace Corps service in South Korea. 



He served in a wide variety of positions running from Consular management, Fraud investigation and managing the consular overseas computer support desk, to economic and political reporting positions, international labor diplomacy, commercial diplomacy - promoting American business overseas- international organization diplomacy serving as the deputy permanent representative to the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, to management positions including program management, evaluation and contracting management, and environmental and science diplomacy including promoting renewable energy solutions.  He taught courses at the Foreign Service Institute and overseas in Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Kathmandu on consular fraud and consular Systems issues.

Senior program evaluator overseeing the implementation of the Department's evaluation program enabling the Department to develop a robust program evaluation system.
Coordinated training program training over 200 people in three years
Launched community of practice (CoP) web page (word press) with over 300 participants, greatly expanding the ability of State program evaluators to conduct program evaluations.  
Conducted meta-evaluation of completed foreign assistance evaluations insuring that the Department’s evaluations provided critical program improvement data.

Deputy Political Economic chief, - Bridgetown, Barbados 

Served as the deputy political economic chief covering political, economic, labor , environment and science and commercial diplomacy efforts in the Eastern Caribbean. 
Received labor officer of the year award for work in setting up regional training programs in occupational safety issues, and meeting with labor leaders in all seven countries greatly expanding our labor diplomacy outreach; 
Initiated two American Chambers of Commerce organizations, 
Conducted fund raising in support of  Embassy’s July fourth celebrations, the first time held in multiple countries, raising $100,000 over a three year period; 
Conducted training programs in all seven countries demonstrating to hundreds of locals on how to access U.S. Government  export financing programs . 

CA/FPP Deputy Training Team Coordinator – Washington, DC,
Taught consular fraud prevention courses at the Foreign Service Institute, and in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, greatly increasing knowledge and skills in fraud detection. 
Launched Lexus Nexus public record database access for consular officers worldwide, therefore dramatically improving consular fraud prevention efforts, 
Initiated first interagency Fraud Working Group coordinating fraud efforts among Departments of Homeland Security, State, and Labor.  
Received Cash Award.
Deputy Consular Chief, - Mumbai, India
Oversaw American citizen services, immigration visas in fifth largest operation in the world and fraud prevention programs greatly improving management of each.  
Supervised and mentored 15 junior officers and 50 local staff resulting in each unit receiving group cash awards. 
Received two cash Meritorious Honor awards for my work helping American citizens facing crises including helping American citizens whose family members died in India, or were arrested. 
Organized task force that dealt with aftermath of worst earthquake in 50 years.  

Read more →
8 stories • 1 lists • 1 lists • 5 groups

My Poems (224)AutorankLinks
I don't get it
I don’t Get It
 

Mr. Speaker

I admit I don’t get it

How does praye

Stop gun violence?

Prayer did not work in Texas.

26 people were murdered
 while praying.
God if he exists

Obviously does not care

About the poor people

Who died in his church

Because a mad man

Got a gun
And no they were not praying

To be delivered from death

No one deserves to die like this

So my prayer to you

Is simply this
Get off your rear end

Rally the country
And do something


About gun violence
That’s a prayer
I hope works
© 2 hours ago, john Cosmos Aller      
Read more →
 Like (0)  0   

Dear Speaker Ryan

Dear Speaker Ryan
I want to tell you something

The dead don’t want your prayers

The dead don’t care that you pray for them

They are dead after all


And you and your so-called Christians

Are to blame

You refuse to do anything

Anything at all
to stop the carnage
In our streets

The U.S. is flooded with guns

And more are sold every day
Millions of people don’t have health coverage

Millions are barely surviving
And your answer


Our dear great compassionate Speaker
Your answer
 
Is Prayer works

Government action does not

You act as if the gun violence

Plaguing our country

Was like the weather

Beyond our control

So here’s my prayer for you

And your colleagues
When you die

I pray that God

Will send you
And your friends

Straight to hell
Where Satan and his demons

Will use you for target practice

That’s my prayer to you

And as you know
Prayer works
 
another gun poem © 2 hours ago, john Cosmos Aller      
Read more →
 Like (0)  0   

It’s a Gun Situation, Mr. President

Mr. President
You are wrong once again

You said that the tragic events 
in Texas
And Las Vegas were not “gun situations”

But rather were mental health problems
And that in Texas
if there had been no gun controls
Perhaps fewer people would have died

Mr. President

I know you a smart man

The smartest man in the world


According to you
So please contemplate this fact

According to the latest findings

It is a gun situation

In fact, the reason the U.S.

Has so many gun deaths 

Is because we have so many guns

45% of the worlds guns in fact
And 33 percent of the world’s shooters

Are Americans killing other Americans
And most of them 

the majority of them

Are White men killing other people
Not Islamic terrorists


Most are in fact

Self-proclaimed Christians
So Mr. President

When will you come to your senses
And do what 90 percent of the public wants


Enact nation wide effective gun controls?
And tell the NRA
 
they can take their blood money elsewhere

When Mr. President

When will you act

When will you take charge
And become a President of the people
Instead of the President of the NRA?
another gun poem © 2 hours ago, john Cosmos Aller      
 Like (0)  0   


← Previous1 2 345…75Next →
Virginia Beach Massacre Never Again
Virgina Beach 

In a night of horrific scumbagery violence

Rarely seen in this jaded age of ours

Gone in one hour
In a spasm of horrific scumbagery violence
I
In just a few short minutes


Nothing more than that
 
In just a few moments

All 12 victims were murdered
By a disgruntled employee


Every one he knew was shot

And killed for no reason
Caused by the demons

His soul was so infected

Murderous demonic voices

All in his head

Screaming **** them all 
**** them all


Screaming none stop violence in his head

All the time
Causing him to start shooting 
everyone he saw


Regardless of who they were 
or where they were

Everyone must die 
screamed the demonic voices in his head
No one can be left alive


Everyone must die

Virtually all must die 
in his internal video game

Everyone must die


Regardless of who they were 
or where they were
Again just another day

Gone horribly wrong


All across America
In
every town

No where is safe anymore
Virgina Beach massacre

Virgina Beach massacre

Just another
Average night in America

An Active Shooter
scumbagery violence

Rarely seen

in this jaded wild world
Gone in one hour
In a spasm of horrific
scumbagery
In just a less than 30 short minutes

Nothing more than
In just a few short 30 moments

All the victims

were murdered while at their daily 
work
wrong place wrong time
act of a demotic deranged madman

voices screaming ****
The voices scream
death to all humans


All must be killed
The voices scream over and over

All must die now

Just another night in America
Land of the Free

Home of the free
another gun poem © 2 hours ago, john Cosmos Aller      
 Like (0)  0   

More Guns for Everyone

More Guns for Everyone in the World

The NRA has decided

That the best solution to global problem

Of rampant violence and crime everywhere
Is for the rest of the world


To become like the U.S.

Where anyone can buy a gun

As an armed society is a polite society’

And so the President i
s about to announce

A global campaign against gun control restrictions


As these restrictions
are an undue burden

On the rights of the US arms manufactures
To sell their guns 
everywhere in the world


As everyone wants what we have to sell

The best weapons in the world
Instead of trying to limit the damage


That unrestricted gun sales

Have done to the U.S.
Our President, our great leader

Wants to sell more guns

Everywhere in the world

And there are eager buyers

Lining up around the world

Eager to buy the best guns

The world has ever seen

We want to export

The gun madness

That has infected our society


Leaving behind so many dead bodies
The dead were not consulted

For they remain dead


They do not vote
T
hey have no voice
For the guns silenced 
them
For good
 just as the guns intended


Just doing their gun thing after all
Humanity has evolved

From stones to arrows

To guns
T o nuclear, biological weapons

And the U.S.
 While proclaiming itself

A champion of Human Rights
Remains nothing 

but a country
 
Of gun runners
 Merchants of death

And destruction
another gun poem © 2 hours ago, john Cosmos Aller      
 Like (0)  0   

NRA Quit Talking

NRA Please Stop Talking

Another day
Another mass shooting

Another incident
of domestic terrorism


another gun man
killing people
because just because
 he can
and he wants to **** people

The NRA 
And their stooges

Come out

Flood the airways
With their noxious
Poisonous weasel words


The NRA says
Mass shootings

Are like the weather

You can’t control them
You can’t predict them

And you can’t prevent them

Just have to accept

It is all god’s will

Guns don’t **** people
IF guns were outlawed

Only outlaws
 would have guns

Only solution 
Is more guns

For everyone

An armed society
they say 
Is a polite society


Support for gun control
I is
socialist/communist/fascist/anti-Am  erican/anti-Christian nonsense
The beginning of tyranny


If only the Jews had guns

The holocaust would not have happened

Jesus would want us all
 
to be armed 
with machine guns
To protect us against the evil doers

It is the Christian thing to do


To blow away evil doers
With heavy arms


In America
Land of the free

Home of the brave
We can’t do anything


At all
About the mass carnage

Unleashed by madmen with guns

Who walk among us

Searching for their next victims
Any restriction of the right


To bear arms

Is tyranny at its worst
The nanny state run amuck

Talking about gun control

After a tragic event
Is

just not the appropriate time

We only need prayers

and meaningless thoughts

Universal background checks

Too onerous
Registering guns

Too burdensome

Researching gun violence

waste of tax payer money
banning military style assault weapons
r

Restricts my right 
to blow 
away

Bambi the deer
with a M16

the NRA will keep talking

talking and talking

preventing anything

from being done

and we will have another

Mass shooting event

Before the day is out

So my plead

This day
To the NRA
A
and their stoogies

Talk is cheap

Your comments
Are not helping

If you can’t

Be a part of the solution
Just stop talking

Please stop talking


And let the rest
Of us  figure out

How to stop

The madness in the streets
And stop the carnage


So NRA

Please
 just
 stop
 talking
 Now
another gun stop © 2 hours ago, john Cosmos Aller      
 Like (0)  0   


← Previous12 3 456…75Next →
guns **** People
Guns **** people
g
Guns do **** people
it is not mental illness

it is not video games
it is not a million other things

it is simply this
a gun is a weapon

a weapon designed to **** people

That is what guns do
guns don’t care

they do as they are told
If you pull the trigger
t
They will **** the victim

that is what guns do

that is why 
in a civilized society

military assault weapons 
are locked up

yet in America

the land of the free

home of the brave
 
everyone and his cousin

must have their gun

guns for everyone

cries the NRA

that’s the solution

The president
a 
and his supporters

deny the obvious
guns **** people
That’s all they do


it is a gun thing

you would not understand
Guns just do
what guns gonna do
**** people

Mr. President

You can take your words

your empty platitudes
Your empty promises
Your prayers 

straight to hell

and back

where with any luck

Satan will use you

as target practice
another gun poem © 2 hours ago, john Cosmos Aller      
 Like (0)  0   

Chief of Staff You are Absurd

the President’s chief of staff
said the other day

it was absurd

to suggest that the president’s words

had anything to do

with recent mass shootings

yet is it absurd

to see the lengths

to which the President’s supporters
will twist and turn

spinning awa
y
the inconvenient truth
President Trump 
is a racist bigot con man

who some how
 conned his way

to become President
he call immigrants criminals, vermin, animals

invaders infesting the country
the El Paseo shooter 

said that he went to the border

to shoot the invaders

and said
 that he was a big Trump fan
it is not absurd
 to connect these two huge dots
The President’s words
 
have real world consequences

Yes Mr. Trump is a racist pig
a
and his supporters
 are being absurd

to suggest otherwise
another gun poem © 2 hours ago, john Cosmos Aller      
 Like (1)  1   

Mr. President Words Matter

Mr. President Words Matter

Mr President

Words matter

your words matter

your words of hate

your words of division
your words 
calling fellow human beings 
****, vermin,

invaders, animals 
matter

they matter a lot

and is it little wonder

that people listen 

to the hate you sprew forth

and some deranged people

take action 
on your call 
for action
against the invaders 

on the border


they march to the border

to **** the invaders
your words matter

Mr. President


and your false words
of regret
fool no one

the damage has been done

the hate has been spread

just as you intended

and you 
have the gall 

to call yourself
A Christian
you are the anti-Christ

you are not a Christian

so please quite pretending

to be what you are not

please man up

accept your responsibility

set things right

apologize

the dead though

don’t need your prayers

they need action

they need leadership

and you are the president

so please start acting

like you give a ****

and if you do so

perhaps 
you will find

people will follow you
but please
 quite the words 
of hate


the words that hurt
and quit calling immigrants
 invaders 
and vermin
 

they are human beings

they are deserving of respect
this I ask of you 
In Jesus’s name
even though I am not a Christian
another day, another shooting

Another Day Another Shooting
another day in paradise
just another day in Americal
Land of the free
Home of the brave

and gunshots,
lots of gunshots
more guns for all
cries the NRA

yes another day
another gun battle
another white man
who just wants to ****

the President sends his condolences
Thanks the law enforcement 
for an incredible job well done
It was horrible

Hate has no place
in our country
and we will take of it 

and do what ever we can do
condolences 
nothing but false words
empty words 

lots of things to do
it is mental illness problem

but he fails to mention
the words gun at al
not at all
and tomorrow and tomorrow

but he at least finally 
said 
hate has no role in country
nothing but prime BS
in my humble opinion

he did not mention 
white supremacy
his rhetoric had nothing
nothing to do 
about this at all

and so tomorrow
I will turn on the TV
and we see
nothing at all

and the dead
will remain dead
the guns will fire again

nothing will be done
welcome to America
land of the free
home of the brave
poems about gun violence
Sound Of Rain Apr 2015
It shakes. Lives are lost. Cultural history is all in rubbles.

It shakes. There's nowhere to run.

It shakes. Leaves our minds and bodies shaking in fear.

Hope this passes soon.

Pray for Nepal.
judy smith Aug 2016
How you know him: Gurung’s label, established in 2009, reimagines traditional textiles with a sportswear attitude. January Jones, First Lady Michelle Obama, and Oprah Winfrey have taken memorable turns in his fiery red gowns.

What’s new: Gurung is teaming up with Toms this month with exclusive designs to raise funds for Nepal’s recovery from the 2015 earthquake. For each pair of shoes sold, $5 will go to Gurung’s Shikshya Foundation to support education and relief efforts.

What does heritage mean to you?

When I left Nepal and told people I wanted to be a fashion designer, they thought I was crazy. I didn’t know anyone here. But I still remember coming up to the Midtown Tunnel and seeing all the skyscrapers for the first time, and I finally felt that I was home. I became myself in America, but Nepal gave me my core. The reason I am grounded and pragmatic is simply that I was brought up this way.

What was your childhood like there?

I was born in Singapore and grew up in Nepal, where I went to an all-boys Catholic school. I was different and made aware of it. It was a challenging time, but I had an incredible relationship with my family that helped me. Trekking became a kind of escape, and I was always inspired by the Patan Museum, near my house. I still go back for the memories attached.

How is Nepal reflected in your designs for Toms, and also your foundation work?

The ikat pattern is called dhaka, a hand-loomed weave that I wanted to modernize as a digital print. Black, white, and red are very typical of Newari women [from Kathmandu Valley] and my favorite colors, which I used in my first collection. Five years ago, when I started getting all this attention, I started Shikshya with a focus on education as a way to give back. Since the 2015 earthquake, we have raised more than $1 million to help rebuild, but the process is slower than people think, and the world’s attention turns to someplace else. So it’s my job with everything I do to keep awareness alive.Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/long-formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/vintage-formal-dresses
Nat Lipstadt Nov 2013
Road Trip: Thinking it's about time (find yourself within II)

This particular poem was born as a one line response to a message.  But in many other forms, half written, it exists still, un, unfinished, waiting for the next burst energy, the next holiday time, to reach a new finish line.

This is a different but similar to a poem posted on June 2nd, "Poetry Round (find your self within)"

Any error of omission is unintentional, but know that this took many hours, until fatigue won. If you never told or revealed to me your location, know that you will be called out, to and unto me, in another poem, called "your banner is my flag."


Fact about me:  You design me.
-------------------------------------------------------

th­inking it's about time for a road trip.

create an excuse
(reasons, I got a plenty)
to stop by,
to show you another side of me,
for a drink, a meal,
and some kind
of exchange, of
form and fluids,
manner to be determined.

to come to Minneapolis,
watch you create a heated sensuality,
verbally, from melted snowdrifts,
a hot time to be had
by all the poets
of the mini-apple,
I want to meet
and celebrate ann victory.

travel to Thiruvananthapuram,
tour the treasures
of gold and diamonds,
from whence come
the bejeweled poems,
that have earned visits from
thousands upon thousands,
pilgrims, devotees, followers,
to partake at that, his,
special temple.

Gomer, Gomer,  & MJJ,
I am in your Florida,
no, sorry, not in Ocala,
near to your homer,
and I feel you springer
ten times in the
November sun rays,
that have me locked
in a full Nelson,
your productivity,
endless,
a sea of orange sunburnt words,

Tennessee,
The Carolinas,
Georgia,
The South,

I rise with it,
now, again,
that I will need a slow
sunny all lazy summer long to
learn y'alls ways,
see the wolves,
in your forests,
helm the riverboats,
navigate the quaint tides
of Charleston,
the special places
where they heal, le ville,
where the ashes of
burnt children,
retuned to be whole.

learn y'alls ways,
walk in your boots,
of seeing poems
using your special
southern saber words.

missed the original
Thrilla-in-Manila,
but rest easy, assured,
that hotbed of creativity,
where I check the
PH of the mc waters
to comprehend its
wisdom and now, it's sadness,
will be an illustrious destination
on my itinerant itinerary,
stopping by Makati City,
after all,
it is writ in the good book,
this island,
the PhilippineS,
is the birthplace
of the letter S,
Samples: samson, sally,
and So many others?

in Nevada City,
which is of course in
krazy California,
wager philosophy, romance,
be available for
succinctly seeing
works in progress,
from which I
will imbibe,
so **** deeply,
may have to
stay awhile for...

while I am there,
will need to do
a search and
Hug Mission,
to find a special man,
his unkempt prose,
his mortal rhymes
disguise not his holy worth,
even to the grassy
cal-stratosphere,
to the mesosphere,
will I high fly,
to find his sweetest spot,
then and thereafter
going looking
further on to
Humboldt County.

in Leeds, in West Yorkshire,
(Hamphshirians, Northamptontonians,
patience please)
built foundries and factories
over the magical forest of Loidis,
near to the river Aire,
yet still hides a
magical sorceress of words,
casting spells over
men and beast.
no one has seen full
her half-turned away face,
but when she summons,
do I have a choix
other than obey?
even if I get lost,
my sorceress,
you know,
I am on way too.

to get there,
will fly I must,
to Heathrow hell,
will do it,
just for you,
faithful friend,
a man da gotta do, what
a man gotta do...for you,
but first a stop off at the
London School of Economics,
Hampstead as well,
for a tutorial about sonnets,
or sams in wells,
even if I come
in my bare feet.

even in New York Upstate,
a man da gotta do,
what he mulls over in his heart,
be not surprised at a knock upon
your door, to make comparative notes,
about each other's tattoos.

in the South African veld,
hid in the highland grasses,
crouches the poetesses and tigresses,
waiting to ambush you
with words that must be seen
to be heard, to be well understood.
perhaps I'll come at ester time,
under blue indigo skies over,
a golden landscape,
seizing all the gems
that can be seen
only at 3:00am

leeward,
north to Canada,
must I, transgress,
country of my momma's birth,
fly from Montreal to Toronto, Calgary
then over to Vancouver.
Canada,
a dangerous place for me,
cause there are beautiful
souls up there,
and maybe even a
warrant to
repossess mine,
they want their
poets back.

double down by ferry,
me to Seattle,
to see a man about river,
in the Pacific Northwest,
where I have happily
drowned so many times,
that The Lord is complaining,
am hogging all the baptismal waters,
but when reminded that
nothing lasts forever,
here tomorrow,
gone today, walk on,
I add my tears
to that river,
before hitting the road.

on that river,
gonna drive me a kayak,
down Daytonway,
on the Yamill River,
see a gyreene marine,
watching me do a beach landing,
in Willamette Wine Park.
he will teach me to salute,
I will teach him how to
shake hands,
and learn from him,
it's ok,
to stand down.

man o' man
there are a lots of poets,
in these here parts,
this grand
Pacific North West,
looking for one in particular,
who will be quite easy to spot,
as he is my very own
soul brother.

will be easy to find,
though we have never met,
he will be on his kayak,
I on mine,
tho when he paddles,
somehow he manages
to hold
never letting go
of, his lovely bride,
his best half's hands.

this will a problem,
for I must teach him how to
shake two handed souls,
while hugging and paddling,
even bailing,
with an old dented pail
simultaneous.
but you can teach old dogs
new tricks, even the ones,
that can't spell
rhymers.

have mercie on me Ohio,
like a mother has to her daughter,
done a three year sentence in Cleveland,
but no jail can hold an NYC boy,
but if requested, yes I will return
to set fire to the *
Cuyahoga,
again! he he he...
but do not s mock me!
(now you know why the FBI loves
my poetry, my biggest institutional fan).

souls in torment,
where you be,
where you hide,
matters not where
you physical reside,
for we have found
each other
in each other words.

You, who live in
your very own
personal hell,
I think we met there,
because
yours was
mine too,
tho not found
on any map.

maybe I will meet the
Empress Josephine Maria,
rowing on the canals of
the Netherlands,
no longer will she be
alone.

but then again, some
very special things,
like
the purest of love
are on no map,
they are everywhere.

while in India,
will seek the many musings of many lips
of aged rhyme men
and complicated charmers
so I may kiss them
with spiced humors
to pour and pour,
more and more,
upon this western soul,
mysteries of the east,
to Kashmir, Bangalore,
wherever I must,
even take a praDip in the Ganges,
I will go, find you,
un-hide you,
among the
teeming millions,
millions of
jokes and rhymes,
that make the
world spin brighter.

in Germany,
all the university students
speak English,
in Wiesbaden, they know
poetic beauty is not in the format,
some in Bamberg,
with a peculiar
Missouri accent,
which is nicht gut Englisch,
so study hard the real way,
speak the language
the new yorka way,
which will require
study abroad,
which is quite funny,
now that I think about it.

but in Mo.,
the native drums roll,
long and slow,
making words
I know
better, different,
in a way never saw before,
leaves me asking for,
mo', mo', please?

to get there, to Allemagne,
land of my forefathers,
a ship I will take,
from Southampton
across the Kiel Canal,
before I depart,
will have my hair cut,
my words reworked,
by her Ladyship,
whose keen eyes and
maternal instincts,
see the joy of life in every
Livvi little thing.

Watt am I going to do if
I need to find a Tecumseh,
taker of my naked poems,
and enlarger of them,
so truth by her,
all revealed,
we are all naked
at least,
twice a day?

In Nepal I will purr at the words
gleaned from the markets and
train stations where
voyages from Lalitpur to Katmandu,
start and end,
where there is a miracle almost
sixteen years young,
where they call their schools
future stars and little angels,
so why should poetic miracles not be
as common as its subtropical clime?

though I despise the
Dallas Cowboys,
not my  America's team,
nonetheless there is a young woman,
a true rose of Texas,
who waits and writes
so lovingly of her airman,
in Afghanistan, I have placed
their names first,
in my nighttime prayers,
hoping to be there,
schedule my visit,
to witness his safe return
and their
joyous reunification.

there are no Mayans in Maine,
but poets of similar name,
kould be, mae be,
Julia's in Jersey, new,
in Auckland,
there are poets
who don't know it,
and Down Under, too,
where getting high is easy,
getting high at
and on words
well marshaled ,
but **** sure I will be
peering and prring,
all the way.

Oregon,
don't be gone,
those wide eyes shut,
when I come by,
who knows when I
will pass this way again...
on my way to Phoenix,
where sunrayes bend to the
desires of dessert breezes.

Kentucky to Korea,
one long road to travel,
but middle son,
if you can do it,
so can I, and,
I will follow.

in a beautiful city,
unsurprisingly called
Belleville,
the leader of the band,
still leads us in belle 'noise'
and when he finishes
fall leafing us in song, he still,
rises up in the mid of dark,
prayerful haikus to write.

off to Rogers, Arkansas
to meet an Italian from Mexico
who specializes in skinny poems,
something one day I will be too.

maybe I will go to
places it snows,
there are so many,
but your photo,
and tattoo trail,
clues, will follow,
no matter how hard
you make it a mystery.

you, who live in just
the world,
don't even think,
that crazy dotted lines,
unstraight,
or huge plains,
are sufficient,
to hide your
moody dust trail
from me!

somewhere in the USA,
roses grow in ground
that needs the
watering of tears,
though this place
is hard to find,
ha, turn around,
that is me,
tapping you,
on the shoulder!

will find you,
as I am searching for
a lovely pair
of stockinged ankles,
each with a heart tattoo,
but I sure could use
a clue,
before this hobbit searches
all the shire,
derby hatted,
to find your
heart real, and the real you...

my mode of time travel?
why I am just
a dude on a rocket ship.

Wisconsin,
look for my ruby message
in the snow,
in the dust,
in the sand, the skies, the sea,
but will you answer me?

Pittsburgh,
patient, you've been,
you thought I forgot
all about you,
chimera  at the intersection
of three rivers,
all you need wonder,
upon which one
will my ship arrive
and why you still disbelieve
you are not a poetess!

ME oh my,
you too, a hidey hole got,
but, we are strange, we humans,
we would gladly bleed to please,
If we could but find
a combination of
new words that
would your heart gladden,
your eyes tear,
your lips wear,
a smile of pleasure
at our offerings poetic!
but still I know not,
the where!

Lagos,
where
I shall climb the tallest skyscraper,
calling out in Yoruba,
where is my Temitope?
where is mine,
worthy of thanksgiving
so I may carry my Popoola,
my pole of her of
written wealth?


Mombasa, Singapore,
Maryland, Rhode Island, Kentucky,
Huddersfield, Connecticut Joe, Ireland,
South Dakota,

where the merry elders
well ken somethings
about a moon and tattered clouds,
something about children and dogs,
and something about letting
tomorrow's wait.

Milwaukee, Atlanta,
chuck, in *PA.,
friend to all,
to all those scattered across these
United States of America.

can we dare not mention
"The Shaq" of Malaysia,
South Sudan, Pakistan,

of course not!

Suburbia,
beautiful, black San Diego, Detroit;

The BBB's -

British Columbia, Brazil, Breendonk, and
B'kara!
the goodness of *
Boston,
flipping out in Flipadelphia,

did you think I would forget ya?

those of you hiding among 64 stars,
the groves of L.A',
on the lanes,
the special land of I-sia-Bella,
fellow citizens of Neverland,
those of you 'at home,'
in the land of nightmares,
concrete boxes,
those who post without a doubt,
and in the box,
this who think your birth year
is an identifying mark, not,
you never fooled me,
will visit each and everyone.


even and especially,
the grays of crosstown
NYC,
the red writers of my hood,
the tylers too.

I am exhausted,
forgive me well,
if thy locale,
I did not explicate,
for the hour is very late.

yet thru subtle fissures
in the clouds,
look for a tired old man
on the wings of a
chariot drawn by angels,
bringing you a dictionary
full of new words,
a present for you,
but truly,
a present to himself
for from it,
your future poems
will come.

*but the sun has come up,
so now I sleep.
1.  What makes this poem special, if anything, is the trust and confidences we share with each other, that allowed me to perhaps catch just little bit something special of each of you, where I could.

2. Can anyone explain to me why the site labels this poem explicit?
Cyril Blythe Sep 2012
I followed him down the trail until we got to the mouth of the mines. The life and energy of the surrounding maples and birches seemed to come to a still and then die as we walked closer, closer. The air was cold and dark and damp and smelt of mold and moths. Delvos stepped into the darkness anyways.
“Well, girl, you coming or aren’t you?”
I could see his yellowed tobacco teeth form into a slimy smile as I stepped out of the sun. It was still inside. The canary chirped.
“This tunnel is just the mouth to over two hundred others exactly like it. Stay close. Last thing I need this month is National Geographic on my *** for losing one of their puppet girls.”
“Delvos, ****. I have two masters degrees.” He rolled his eyes.
“Spare me.” He trotted off around the corner to the left, whistling.
“I survived alone in the jungles of Bolivia alone for two months chasing an Azara’s Spinetail. I climbed the tallest mountain in Nepal shooting Satyr Tragopans along the cliff faces. In Peru I…” Suddenly I felt the weight of the darkness. In my blinding anger I lost track of his lantern. I stopped, my heartbeat picked up, and I tried to remind myself of what I did in Peru.
I followed a Diurnal Peruvian Pygmy-Owl across the gravel tops of the Andes Mountains, no light but the Southern Cross and waning moon above. I am not scared of darkness. I am not scared of darkness.
I stopped to listen. Somewhere in front of me the canary chirped.

When I first got the job in Vermont I couldn’t have been more frustrated. Mining canaries? Never had I ever ‘chased’ a more mundane bird. Nonetheless, when Jack Reynolds sends you on a shoot you don’t say no, so I packed up my camera bag and hoped on the next plane out of Washington.
“His name is John Delvos.” Jack said. He handed me the manila case envelope. “He’s lived in rural Vermont his entire life. Apparently his family bred the canaries for the miners of the Sheldon Quarry since the early twenties. When the accident happened the whole town basically shut down. There were no canaries in the mines the day the gas killed the miners. His mother died in a fire of some sort shortly after. The town blamed the Delvos family and ran them into the woods. His father built a cabin and once his father died, Delvos continued to breed the birds. He ships them to other mining towns across the country now. We want to run a piece about the inhumanity of breeding animals to die so humans won’t.” I stood in silence in front of his deep mahogany desk, suddenly aware of the lack of make-up on my face. He smiled, “You’re leaving on Tuesday.”
“Yes sir.”
“Don’t look so smug, Lila. This may not be the most exotic bird you’ve shot but the humanity of this piece has the potential to be a cover story. Get the shots, write the story.”

“Do you understand the darkness now, Ms. Rivers? Your prestigious masters degrees don’t mean **** down here.” Delvos reappeared behind the crack of his match in a side tunnel not twenty yards in front of me. He relit the oily lantern and turned his back without another word. I reluctantly followed deeper into the damp darkness.
“Why were there no canaries in the mine on, you know, that day?” The shadows of the lantern flickered against the iron canary cage chained on his hip and the yellow bird hopped inside.
“I was nine, Ms. Rivers. I didn’t understand much at the time.” We turned right into the next tunnel and our shoes crunched on jagged stones. All the stones were black.
“But surely you understand now?”
The canary chirped.

When I first got to Sheldon and began asking about the location of the Delvos’ cabin you would have thought I was asking where the first gate to hell was located. Mothers would smile and say, “Sorry, Miss, I can’t say,” and hurriedly flock their children in the opposite direction. After two hours of polite refusals I gave up. I spent the rest of the first day photographing the town square. It was quaint; old stone barbershops surrounded by oaks and black squirrels, a western themed whiskey bar, and a few greasy spoon restaurants interspersed in-between. I booked a room in the Walking Horse Motel for Wednesday night, determined to get a good nights sleep and defeat this towns fear of John Delvos tomorrow.
My room was a tiny one bed square with no TV. Surprise, surprise. At least I had my camera and computer to entertain myself. I reached into the side of my camera bag and pulled out my Turkish Golds and Macaw-beak yellow BIC. I stepped out onto the dirt in front of my door and lit up. I looked up and the stars stole all the oxygen surrounding me. They were dancing and smiling above me and I forgot Delvos, Jack, and all of Sheldon except it’s sky. Puffing away, I stepped farther and farther from my door and deeper into the darkness of night. The father into the darkness the more dizzying the stars dancing became.
“Ma’am? Everything okay?”
Startled, I dropped my cigarette on the ground and the ember fell off.
“I’m sorry, sir. I was just, um, the stars…” I snuffed out the orange glow in the dirt with my boot and extended my hand, “Lila Waters, and you are?”
“Ian Benet. I haven’t seen you around here before, Ms. Waters, are you new to town?”
“I’m here for work. I’m a bird photographer and journalist for National Geographic. I’m looking for John Delvos but I’m starting to think he’s going to be harder to track than a Magpie Robin.”
The stars tiptoed in their tiny circles above in the silence. Then, they disappeared with a spark as Ian lit up his wooden pipe. It was a light colored wood, stained with rich brown tobacco and ash. He passed me his matches, smiling.
“What do you want with that old *******? Don’t tell me National Geographic is interested in the Delvos canaries.”
I lit up another stick and took a drag. “Shocking, right?”
“Actually, it’s about time their story is told.” Benet walked to the wooden bench to our left and patted the seat beside him. I walked over. “The Delvos canaries saved hundreds of Sheldonian lives over the years. But the day a crew went into the mines without one, my father came out of the ground as cold as when we put him back into it in his coffin.”
I sat in silence, unsure what to say. “Mr. Benet, I’m so sorry…”
“Please, just Ian. My father was the last Mr. Benet.”
We sat on the wooden bench, heat leaving our bodies to warm the dead wood beneath our legs. I shivered; the stars dance suddenly colder and more violent.
“Delvos canaries are martyrs, Ms. Waters. This whole town indebted to those tiny yellow birds, but nobody cares to remember that anymore.”
“Can you tell me where I can find Mr. Delvos and his, erm, martyrs?” The ember of my second cigarette was close to my pinching fingertips.
“Follow me.” Ian stood up and walked to the edge of the woods in front of us. We crunched the cold dust beneath our feet, making me aware of how silent it was. Ian stopped at a large elm and pointed, “See that yellow notch?” Sure enough, there was a notch cut and dyed yellow at his finger’s end. “If you follow true north from this tree into the woods you’ll find this notch about every fifty yards or so. Follow the yellow and it’ll spit you out onto the Delvos property.”
“Thank you, Ian. I really can’t begin to tell you how thankful I am to find out where to find this elusive Mr. Delvos and his canaries.”
“You don’t have to,” he knocked the ash out of his pipe against the tree, “Just do those birds justice in your article. Remember, martyrs. Tell old Delvos Ian Benet sends his regards.” He turned and walked back to the motel and I stood and watched in silence. It was then I realized I hadn’t heard a single bird since I got to Sheldon. The stars dance was manic above me as I walked back to my room and shut the door.

The canary chirped and Delvos stopped.
“This is a good place to break out fast. Sit.”
I sat obediently, squirming around until the rocks formed a more comfortable nest around my bony hips. We left for the mines as the stars were fading in the vermillion Vermont sky this morning and had been walking for what seemed like an eternity. I was definitely ready to eat. He handed me a gallon Ziploc bag from his backpack filled with raisins, nuts, various dried fruits, and a stiff piece of bread. I attacked the food like a raven.
“I was the reason no canaries entered the mines that day, Ms. Waters.” Delvos broke a piece of his bread off and wrapped it around a dried piece of apricot, or maybe apple. I was suddenly aware of my every motion and swallowed, loudly. I crinkled into my Ziploc and crunched on the pecans I dug out, waiting.
“Aren’t you going to ask why?”
“I’m not a parrot, Mr. Delvos, I don’t answer expectedly on command. You’ll tell me if you want.” I hurriedly stuffed a fistful of dried pears into my mouth.
Delvos chuckled and my nerves eased, “You’ve got steel in you, Ms. Rivers, I’ll give you that much.”
I nodded and continued cramming pears in my mouth.
“I was only nine. The canaries were my pets, all of them. I hated when Dad would send them into the mines to die for men I couldn’t give two ***** about. It was my birthday and I asked for an afternoon of freedom with my pets and Dad obliged. I was in the aviary with pocketfuls of sunflower-seeds. Whenever I threw a handful into the air above me, the air came to life with flickering yellow brushes and songs of joy. It was the happiest I have ever been, wholly surrounded and protected by my friends. Around twelve thirty that afternoon the Sheriff pulled up, lights ablaze. The blue and red lights stilled my yellow sky to green again and that’s when I heard the shouting. He cuffed my Dad on the hood of the car and Mom was crying and pushing her fists into the sheriff’s chest. I didn’t understand at all. The Sheriff ended up putting Mom in the car too and they all left me in the aviary. I sat there until around four that afternoon before they sent anyone to come get me.”
Delvos took a small bite of his bread and chewed a moment. “No matter how many handfuls of seeds I threw in the air after that, the birds wouldn’t stir. They wouldn’t even sing. I think they knew what was happening.”
I was at a loss for words so of course I blurted, “I didn’t see an aviary at your house…”
Delvos laughed. “Someone burnt down the house I was raised in the next week while we were sleeping. Mom died that night. The whole dark was burning with screams and my yellow canaries were orange and hot against the black sky. That’s the only night I’ve seen black canaries and the only night I’ve heard them scream.”
I swallowed some mixed nuts and they rubbed against my dry throat.
“They never caught the person. A week later Dad took the remainder of the birds and we marched into the woods. We worked for months clearing the land and rebuilding our lives. We spent most of the time in silence, except for the canary cries. When the house was finally built and the birds little coops were as well, Dad finally talked. The only thing he could say was ‘Canaries are not the same as a Phoenix, John. Not the same at all.”
The canary chirped, still only visible by the lanterns flame. Not fully yellow, I realized, here in the mines, but not fully orange either.

When I first walked onto John Delvos’ property on Thursday morning he was scattering feed into the bird coops in the front of his cabin. Everything was made of wood and still wet with the morning’s dew.
“Mr. Delvos?” He spun around, startled, and walked up to me a little too fast.
“Why are you here? Who are you?”
“My name is Lila Waters, sir, I am a photographer and journalist for National Geographic Magazine and we are going to run an article on your canaries.”
“Not interested”
“Please, sir, can I ask you just a few quick questions as take a couple pictures of your, erm, martyrs?”
His eyes narrowed and he walked up to me, studying my face with an intense, glowering gaze. He spit a mouthful of dip onto the ground without breaking eye contact. I shifted my camera bag’s weight to the other shoulder.
“Who told you to call them that?”
“I met Ian Benet last night, he told me how important your birds are to this community, sir. He sends his regards.”
Delvos laughed and motioned for me to follow as he turned his back. “You can take pictures but I have to approve which ones you publish. That’s my rule.”
“Sir, it’s really not up to me, you see, my boss, Jack Reynolds, is one of the CEO’s for the magazine and he...”
“Those are my rules, Ms. Waters.” He turned and picked back up the bucket of seed and began to walk back to the birds. “You want to interview me then we do it in the mine. Be back here at four thirty in the morning.”
“Sir…?”
“Get some sleep, Ms. Waters. You’ll want to be rested for the mine.” He turned, walked up his wooden stairs, and closed the door to his cabin.
I was left alone in the woods and spent the next hour snapping pictures of the little, yellow canaries in their cages. I took a couple pictures of his house and the surrounding trees, packed up my camera and trekked back to my motel.

“You finished yet?” Delvos stood up and the memory of his green and brown wooded homestead fled from my memory as the mine again consumed my consciousness. Dark, quiet, and stagnant. I closed the Ziploc and stuffed the bag, mainly filled with the raisins I sifted through, into my pocket.
Delvos grunted and the canary flapped in its cage as he stood again and, swinging the lantern, rounded another corner. The path we were on began to take a noticeable ***** downward and the moisture on the walls and air multiplied.
The canary chirped.
The lantern flickered against the moist, black stones, sleek and piled in the corners we past. The path stopped ahead at a wall of solid black and brown Earth.
The canary chirped twice.
It smelt of clay and mildew and Delvos said, “Go on, touch it.”
I reached my hand out, camera uselessly hanging like a bat over my shoulder. The rock was cold and hard. It felt dead.
The Canary was flitting its wings in the cage now, chirping every few seconds.
“This is the last tunnel they were digging when the gas under our feet broke free from hell and killed those men.”
Delvos hoisted the lantern above our heads, illuminating the surrounding gloom. All was completely still and even my own vapor seemed to fall out of my mouth and simply die. The canary was dancing a frantic jig, now, similar to the mating dance of the Great Frigate Bird I shot in the Amazon jungle. As I watched the canary and listened to its small wings beat against the cold metal cage I begin to feel dizzy. The bird’s cries had transformed into a scream colder than fire and somehow more fierce.
The ability to fly is what always made me jealous of birds as a child, but as my temple throbbed and the canary danced I realized I was amiss. Screaming, yellow feathers whipped and the entire inside of the cage was instantaneously filled. It was beautiful until the very end. Dizzying, really.
Defeated, the canary sank to the floor, one beaten wing hanging out of the iron bars at a most unnatural angle. Its claws were opening and closing, grasping the tainted cave air, or, perhaps, trying to push it away. Delvos unclipped the cage and sat it on the floor in the space between us, lantern still held swaying above his head. The bird was aflame now, the silent red blood absorbing into the apologetic, yellow feathers. Orange, a living fire. I pulled out my camera as I sat on the ground beside the cage. I took a few shots, the camera’s clicks louder than the feeble chirps sounding out of the canary’s tattered, yellow beak. My head was spinning. Its coal-black eyes reflected the lantern’s flame above. I could see its tiny, red tongue in the bottom of its mouth.
Opening.
Closing.
Opening, wider, too wide, then,
Silence.


I felt dizzy. I remember feeling the darkness surround me; it felt warm.

“I vaguely remember Delvos helping me to my feet, but leaving the mine was a complete haze.” I told the panel back in D.C., “It wasn’t until we had crossed the stream on the way back to the cabin that I began to feel myself again. Even then, I felt like I was living a dream. When we got back to the cabin the sight of the lively yellow canaries in their coops made me cry. Delvos brought me a bottle of water and told me I needed to hit the trail because the sun set early in the winter, so I le
ERR Aug 2012
The nuns did not have much
But they valued all
And truer, fuller days filled with chores
Passed the sun-moon-suns
Some nights the mountains
Were cold, so they gave her hot coals
Their bodies thin and fragile, impossibly resilient
Winter; cup of animal fat
Thirteen years, cooking for twenty peers
In lessons learned foreign tongue
From her alien education, taught too

She passed her blue-star-blues
Painting sweetened hues
The elevation and scene in dripping sweeps of brush
Nepal became even more
Beautiful on paper
And behind thoughtful eyes

A tourist hands a wood carver
Several years salary, is this
Enough?
Masterpiece etched given free petty possessions
Empty handed back to hungry mouths
Fulfilled and satisfied

At night the unpolluted bright
Reflected off the lake; God smile
Rocky range round in isolation
The wind, for once
Whispered truth

She inhaled the honesty, and reunited art
With canvas
The Earth shook, no one else felt it
But she knew
And happy filled a forgotten face
In wise silence
Hal Loyd Denton Sep 2012
Purifying bath Katmandu Nepal

Yes come to these purifying waters join these ladies it will not perform the greater spiritual cleansing
But it provides a picture of glory with her lying on her back she is just slightly submerged in this grey
Clear water her face is beaming her shoulders are bare her hair flows around her neck on one side one
Arm is freely laid over her chest the other extends upward as a friend holds her by the wrist we all know
The bliss that water enriches us with her brown skin is truly purified and her personnel glory again
Beams with such peace soon the elements will converge to change her thoughts and feelings but they
Will not touch the conciseness that was altered in the river Baghmati during Reshi Panchmi a purifying
And Atonement day for women they bare extra burdens in foreign lands how great to see them
Experience such joy countless burdens are washed away at least momentarily water the friend and
Blessed comfort to matrons it provides one of the most picture perfect sights of a soul in repose you lie
Without care a dear friend holds you by the wrist they bottled water if only they could capture this
Special reality and provide it on demand there is nothing stopping anyone from acting this out it would
Change your day your whole perspective it would truly reenergize body and soul I thought I would just
Share a place in time a rite that provides concepts that ever so briefly will take you out of time fill you
With rapture make you devoid of care allow you to play in the courts of the extravagantly rich with out
Price or responsibility they say nothing is free it doesn’t get any more free or freeing than this I guess it
Cost nature the clouds way up in the Himalayas release the moist weight it falls as abundant rain the
River swells and flows gravity pulls it down to the lower valley and when you enter you luxuriate in
Water’s gift tell the tale Katmandu alone is renown but it has even greater layers of reward than the
normal expectations hope you enjoyed a refreshing
Kathmandu
a quaint, romantic name,
had wanted to go there now it is a dream.
Nepal, this small mountain country
often used a golf ball between big countries
for purely selfish reasons.
Thousands of people killed and classical
palaces are reduced dust covering
mountain tops
as a fog of sadness  
Cry my lovely I can only offer you friendship.
But for the tourists who evacuated on
Himalayas’ sacred top.
Filling valleys with empty cans of beef
and toilet paper flapping in the wind,
I have little empathy
rich tourists that had to bestride and befoul
a holy mountain.
Hal Loyd Denton Sep 2012
Purifying bath Katmandu Nepal

Yes come to these purifying waters join these ladies it will not perform the greater spiritual cleansing
But it provides a picture of glory with her lying on her back she is just slightly submerged in this grey
Clear water her face is beaming her shoulders are bare her hair flows around her neck on one side one
Arm is freely laid over her chest the other extends upward as a friend holds her by the wrist we all know
The bliss that water enriches us with her brown skin is truly purified and her personnel glory again
Beams with such peace soon the elements will converge to change her thoughts and feelings but they
Will not touch the conciseness that was altered in the river Baghmati during Reshi Panchmi a purifying
And Atonement day for women they bare extra burdens in foreign lands how great to see them
Experience such joy countless burdens are washed away at least momentarily water the friend and
Blessed comfort to matrons it provides one of the most picture perfect sights of a soul in repose you lie
Without care a dear friend holds you by the wrist they bottled water if only they could capture this
Special reality and provide it on demand there is nothing stopping anyone from acting this out it would
Change your day your whole perspective it would truly reenergize body and soul I thought I would just
Share a place in time a rite that provides concepts that ever so briefly will take you out of time fill you
With rapture make you devoid of care allow you to play in the courts of the extravagantly rich with out
Price or responsibility they say nothing is free it doesn’t get any more free or freeing than this I guess it
Cost nature the clouds way up in the Himalayas release the moist weight it falls as abundant rain the
River swells and flows gravity pulls it down to the lower valley and when you enter you luxuriate in
Water’s gift tell the tale Katmandu alone is renown but it has even greater layers of reward than the
normal expectations hope you enjoyed a refreshing
MV Blake Apr 2015
Lifeless stones in peace,

How many more tears to fall?

The mountain shudders.
To the many lives lost to the earth and mountain in Nepal, 25th and 26th April 2015.

Peace be with you all.
Cyril Blythe Nov 2012
I followed Delvos down the trail until we could see the mouth of the mine. The life and energy of the surrounding birches and sentential pines came to a still and then died as we left the trees shelter behind and walked closer, closer. The air was cold and dark and damp and smelled of mold and moths. Delvos stepped into the darkness anyways.
“Well, girl, you coming or aren’t you?”
I could see his yellowed tobacco teeth form into a smile as I stepped out of the sun. It was still inside. The canary chirped in its cage.
“This tunnel is just the mouth to over two hundred others exactly like it. Stay close. Last thing I need this month is National Geographic on my *** for losing one of their puppet girls.”
“Delvos, ****. I have two masters degrees.” I pulled my mousey hair up into a tight ponytail. “I’ve experienced far more fatal feats than following a canary in a cave.”
He rolled his eyes. “Spare me.” He trotted off around the corner to the left, whistling some Louis Armstrong song.
“I survived alone in the jungles of Bolivia alone for two months chasing an Azara’s Spinetail. I climbed the tallest mountain in Nepal shooting Satyr Tragopans along the cliff faces. In Peru I…” Suddenly I felt the weight of the darkness. I lost track of his lantern completely. I stopped, my heartbeat picked up, and I tried to remind myself of what I had done in Peru. The mine was quiet and cold. I wiped my clammy, calloused hands on my trail pants and took a depth breath.

In through the nose. Out through the mouth. This is nothing. I followed a Diurnal Peruvian Pygmy-Owl across the gravel tops of the Andes Mountains, no light but the Southern Cross and waning moon above. I am not scared of darkness. I am not scared of darkness.
I stopped to listen. Behind me I could hear the wind cooing at the mouth of the mine.
Taunting? No. Reminding me to go forward. Into the darkness.
I shifted my Nikon camera off my shoulder and raised the viewfinder to my eyes, sliding the lens cap into my vest pocket. This routine motion, by now, had become as fluid as walking. I stared readily through the dark black square until I saw reflections from the little red light on top that blinked, telling me the flash was charged. I snapped my finger down and white light filled the void in front of me. Then heavy dark returned. I blinked my eyes attempting to rid the memories of the flash etched, red, onto my retina. I clicked my short fingernails through buttons until the photo I took filled the camera screen. I learned early on that having short fingernails meant more precise control with the camera buttons. I zoomed in on the picture and scrolled to get my bearings of exactly what lay ahead in the narrow mine passageway. As I scrolled to the right I saw Delvos’ boot poking around the tunnel that forked to the left.
Gottcha.
I packed up the camera, licked my drying lips, and stepped confidently into the darkness.

When I first got the assignment in Vermont I couldn’t have been more frustrated. Mining canaries? Never had I ever ‘chased’ a more mundane bird. Nonetheless, when Jack Reynolds sends you on a shoot you don’t say no, so I packed up my camera bag and hoped on the next plane out of Washington.
“His name is John Delvos.” Jack had said as he handed me the manila case envelope. He smiled, “You’re leaving on Tuesday.”
“Yes sir.”
“Don’t look so smug, Lila. This may not be the most exotic bird you’ve shot but the humanity of this piece has the potential to be a cover story. Get the shots, write the story.”
I opened the envelope and read the assignment details in the comfort of my old pajamas back at my apartment later that night.
John Delvos has lived in rural Vermont his entire life. His family bred the canaries for the miners of the Sheldon Quarry since the early twenties. When “the accident” happened the whole town shut down and the mines never reopened. . There were no canaries in the mines the day the gas killed the miners. The town blamed the Delvos family and ran them into the woods. His mother died in a fire of some sort shortly before Delvos and his father retreated into the Vermont woods. His father built a cabin and once his father died, Delvos continued to breed the birds. He currently ships them to other mining towns across the country. The question of the inhumanity of breeding canaries for the sole purpose of dying in the mines so humans don’t has always been controversial. Find out Delvos’ story and opinions on the matter. Good luck, Lila.
I sighed, accepting my dull assignment and slipped into an apathetic sleep.


After stumbling through the passageway while keeping one hand on the wall to the left, I found the tunnel the picture had revealed Delvos to be luring in. Delvos reappeared behind the crack of his match in a side tunnel not twenty yards in front of me
“Do you understand the darkness now, Ms. Rivers?” He relit the oily lantern and picked back up the canary cage. “Your prestigious masters degrees don’t mean **** down here.”. He turned his back without another word. I followed deeper into the damp darkness.
“Why were there no canaries in the mine on, you know, that day?” The shadows of the lantern flickered against the iron canary cage chained on his hip and the yellow bird hopped inside.
“I was nine, Ms. Rivers. I didn’t understand much at the time.” We turned right into the next tunnel and our shoes crunched on jagged stones. All the stones were black.
“But surely you understand now?”
The canary chirped.

When I first got to Sheldon and began asking about the location of the Delvos’ cabin you would have thought I was asking where the first gate to hell was located. Mothers would smile and say, “Sorry, Miss, I can’t say,” then hurriedly flock their children in the opposite direction. After two hours of polite refusals I gave up. I spent the rest of the first day photographing the town square. It was quaint; old stone barbershops surrounded by oaks and black squirrels, a western-themed whiskey bar, and a few greasy spoon restaurants. I booked a room in the Walking Horse Motel for Wednesday night, determined to get a good night’s sleep and defeat this town’s fear of John Delvos the following day.
My room was a tiny one bed square with no TV. Surprise, surprise. At least I had my camera and computer to entertain myself. I reached into the side of my camera bag, pulled out my Turkish Golds and Macaw-beak yellow BIC, and stepped out onto the dirt in front of my motel door and lit up. The stars above stole all the oxygen surrounding me. They were dancing and smiling above me and I forgot Delvos, Jack, and all of Sheldon except its sky. Puffing away, I stepped farther and farther from my door and deeper into the darkness of Vermont night. The father into the darkness the more dizzying the star’s dancing became.
“Ma’am? Everything okay?”
Startled, I dropped my cigarette on the ground and the ember fell off. “I’m sorry, sir. I was just, um, the stars…” I snuffed out the orange glow in the dirt with my boot and extended my hand, “Lila Rivers, and you are?”
“Ian Benet. I haven’t seen you around here before, Ms. Rivers. Are you new to town?” He traced his fingers over a thick, graying mustache as he stared at me.
“I’m here for work. I’m a bird photographer and journalist for National Geographic. I’m looking for John Delvos but I’m starting to think he’s going to be harder to track than a Magpie Robin.”
Ian smiled awkwardly, shivered, then began to fumble with his thick jacket’s zipper. I looked up at the night sky and watched the stars as they tiptoed their tiny circles in the pregnant silence. Then, they dimmed in the flick of a spark as Ian lit up his wooden pipe. It was a light-colored wood, stained with rich brown tobacco and ash. He passed me his matches, smiling.
“So, Delvos, eh?” He puffed out a cloud of leather smelling smoke toward the stars. “What do you want with that old *******? Don’t tell me National Geographic is interested in the Delvos canaries.”
I lit up another stick and took a drag. “Shocking, right?”
“Actually, it’s about time their story is told.” Benet walked to the wooden bench to our left and patted the seat beside him. I walked over. “The Delvos canaries saved hundreds of Sheldonian lives over the years. But the day a crew went into the mines without one, my father came out of the ground as cold as when we put him back into it in his coffin.”
I sat in silence, unsure what to say. “Mr. Benet, I’m so sorry…”
“Please, just Ian. My father was the last Mr. Benet.”
We sat on the wooden bench, heat leaving our bodies to warm the dead wood beneath our legs. I shivered; the star’s dance suddenly colder and more violent.
“Delvos canaries are martyrs, Ms. Rivers. This whole town indebted to those tiny yellow birds, but nobody cares to remember that anymore.”
“Can you tell me where I can find Mr. Delvos and his, erm, martyrs?” The ember of my second cigarette was close to my pinching fingertips.
“Follow me.” Ian stood up and walked to the edge of the woods in front of us. We crunched the dead pine needles beneath our feet, making me aware of how silent it was. Ian stopped at a large elm and pointed. “See that yellow notch?” he asked. Sure enough, there was a notch cut and dyed yellow at his finger’s end. “If you follow true north from this tree into the woods you’ll find this notch about every fifty yards or so. Follow the yellow and it’ll spit you out onto the Delvos property.”
“Thank you, Ian. I really can’t begin to tell you how grateful I am.
“You don’t have to.” He knocked the ash out of his pipe against the tree. “Just do those birds justice in your article. Remember, martyrs. Tell old Delvos Ian Benet sends his regards.” He turned and walked back to the motel and I stood and watched in silence. It was then I realized I hadn’t heard a single bird since I got to Sheldon. The star’s dance was manic above me as I walked back to my room and shut the door.

The canary’s wings and Delvos stopped. “This is a good place to break our fast. Sit.”
I sat obediently, squirming around until the rocks formed a more comfortable nest around my bony hips. We had left for the mines as the stars were fading in the vermillion Vermont sky that morning and had been walking for what seemed like an eternity. I was definitely ready to eat. He handed me a gallon Ziploc bag from his backpack filled with raisins, nuts, various dried fruits, and a stiff piece of bread. I attacked the food like a raven.
“I was the reason no canaries entered the mines that day, Ms. Rivers.”
Delvos broke a piece of his bread off and wrapped it around a dried piece of apricot, or maybe apple. I was suddenly aware of my every motion and swallowed, loudly. I crinkled into my Ziploc and crunched on the pecans I dug out, waiting.
“Aren’t you going to ask why?”
“I’m not a parrot, Mr. Delvos, I don’t answer expectedly on command. You’ll tell me if you want.” I stuffed a fistful of dried pears into my mouth.
Delvos chuckled and my nerves eased. “You’ve got steel in you, Ms. Rivers. I’ll give you that much.”
I nodded and continued cramming pears in my mouth.
“I was only nine. The canaries were my pets, all of them. I hated when Dad would send them into the mines to die for men I couldn’t give two ***** about. It was my birthday and I asked for an afternoon of freedom with my pets and Dad obliged. I was in the aviary with pocketfuls of sunflower-seeds. Whenever I threw a handful into the air above me, the air came to life with wings slashing yellow brushes and cawing songs of joy. It was the happiest I have ever been, wholly surrounded and protected by my friends. Around twelve thirty that afternoon the Sheriff pulled up, lights ablaze. The blue and red lights stilled my yellow sky to green again and that’s when I heard the shouting. He cuffed my Dad on the hood of the car and Mom was crying and pushing her fists into the sheriff’s chest. I didn’t understand at all. The Sheriff ended up putting Mom in the car too and they all left me in the aviary. I sat there until around four that afternoon before they sent anyone to come get me.”
Delvos took a small bite of his bread and chewed a moment. “No matter how many handfuls of seeds I threw in the air after that, the birds wouldn’t stir. They wouldn’t even sing. I think they knew what was happening.”
I was at a loss for words so and I blurted, “I didn’t see an aviary at your house…”
Delvos laughed. “Someone burnt down the house I was raised in the next week while we were sleeping. Mom died that night. The whole dark was burning with screams and my yellow canaries were orange and hot against the black sky. That’s the only night I’ve seen black canaries and the only night I’ve heard them scream.”
I swallowed some mixed nuts and they rubbed against my dry throat.
“They never caught the person. A week later Dad took the remainder of the birds and we marched into the woods. We worked for months clearing the land and rebuilding our lives. We spent most of the time in silence, except for the canary cries. When the house was finally built and the bird’s little coops were as well, Dad finally talked. The only thing he could say was “Canaries are not the same as a Phoenix, John. Not the same at all.”
We sat in silence and I found myself watching the canary flit about in its cage, still only visible by the lanterns flame. Not fully yellow, I realized, here in the mines but not fully orange either.

When I first walked onto John Delvos’ property on Thursday morning he was scattering feed into the bird coops in the front of his cabin. Everything was made of wood and still wet with the morning’s dew.
“Mr. Delvos?”
He spun around, startled, and walked up to me a little too fast. “Why are you here? Who are you?”
“My name is Lila Rivers, sir, I am a photographer and journalist for National Geographic Magazine and we are going to run an article on your canaries.”
“Not interested.”
“Please, sir, can I ask you just a few quick questions as take a couple pictures of your, erm, martyrs?”
His eyes narrowed and he walked up to me, studying my face with an intense, glowering gaze. He spit a mouthful of dip onto the ground without breaking eye contact. I shifted my camera bag’s weight to the other shoulder.
“Who told you to call them that?”
“I met Ian Benet last night, he told me how important your birds are to this community, sir. He sends his regards.”
Delvos laughed and motioned for me to follow as he turned his back. “You can take pictures but I have to approve which ones you publish. That’s my rule.”
“Sir, it’s really not up to me, you see, my boss, Jack Reynolds, is one of the editors for the magazine and he...”
“Those are my rules, Ms. Rivers.” He turned and picked back up the bucket of seed and began to walk back to the birds. “You want to interview me then we do it in the mine. Be back here at four thirty in the morning.”
“Sir…?”
“Get some sleep, Ms. Rivers. You’ll want to be rested for the mine.” He turned, walked up his wooden stairs, and closed the door to his cabin.
I was left alone in the woods and spent the next hour snapping pictures of the canaries in their cages. I took a couple pictures of his house and the surrounding trees, packed up my camera and trekked back to my motel.

“You finished yet?” Delvos stood up. The mine was dark, quiet, and stagnant. I closed the Ziploc and stuffed the bag, mainly filled with the raisins I had sifted through, into my pocket.
Delvos grunted and the canary flapped in its cage as he stood again and, swinging the lantern, rounded another corner. The path we were on began to take a noticeable ***** downward and the moisture on the walls and air multiplied.  
The lantern flickered against the moist, black stones, sleek and piled in the corners we past. The path stopped ahead at a wall of solid black and brown Earth.
The canary chirped twice.
It smelled of clay and mildew and Delvos said, “Go on, touch it.”
I reached my hand out, camera uselessly hanging like a bat over my shoulder. The rock was cold and hard. It felt dead.
The canary was fluttering its wings in the cage now, chirping every few seconds.
“This is the last tunnel they were digging when the gas under our feet broke free from hell and killed those men.”
Delvos hoisted the lantern above our heads, illuminatin
Max Neumann Dec 2019
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Why? Because people from all over the world have found something here: a place of belongingness.

Please note that I am just a poet on hellopoetry who loves this website sincerely. I am not affiliated or personally related to the founders of hellopoetry.

I rarely ask to get my poems reposted, but I would encourage everyone to spread the message, possibly even outside of hellopoetry, for new active users and possible contributors.

It would break a lot of hearts if hellopoetry wouldn't exist anymore.
iamtheavatar May 2015
You are not beaten
Your strength isn't broken
Your heart keeps beating

Have faith

When your ears start to get numb
By the sound of a thousand cries
And your knees can't lift you up

Look up

A glimpse of hope there is
When mountains fall around you
And the grounds below cut open
Nothing will shake your courage

Nothing will

This is something to remind you
When the earth forgets your name
At the roundabout of time

Look up

Behind the clouds where
The sun shines brightest
Streams of dreams endure  
At the top of the mountains

**iamthe_avatar ©2015
Pray for Nepal.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2017
that's 3 weeks without a keyboard,
that's 3 weeks on a dual-detox -
         that's that: roughly: antagonism
of: once upon a time...
           there can only be one Hans Andersen,
and as the story goes: ol' granny
   passed on the tales, without which:
no talk of posterity, and seances at
the theatre; alternatively: what if Kierkegård
opted for opera, rather than theatre?
    well: horrid is the task of dropping names,
as if being a village idiot, in that
capacity: giving directions... no such thing!
  nonetheless: a horrid task...
3 weeks... without this horrid world-entanglement...
amphetamines in the wild west,
                   and yet... everything slows down...
that's 3 weeks without such ''luxury''...
    and would you believe it?
3 weeks went by: in a blink of an eye.
             strange, or what 21st century writers
fail to recognise: the ******* canvas has changed!
any-single-one-of-them bothered to scrutinise
this new canvas? anyone?
     ah yes, it's still in its adolescence -
it's still: Dostoyevsky, scuttering in the grand
dungeon: that's the Moscow underground.
             the canvas! the canvas!
                             and indeed, if this be some
bellowing horn, from the depths of some forsaken
place... i'll go into the street, and sabotage
civilisation with graffiti...
                     then again: i have the least
expectations, such that capitalism works...
poetry... and what investment have you made?
nil, or almost nil... evidently: zilch!
      ah, but to have invested in canvases,
a studio, paints, brushes... see... no one sees
investment in poetry: primarily because the poet
has done the minimal...
            unless of course it turns out to ****
with a hot poker something once resembling
nations... which now resides in the insane asylum
(even though those, have been abolished)
                           , nation - ooh! what a ***** word!
the left irksome sometimes uses it:
in theory: the nation-state...
                        and then there's the resurgence of
ancient Greece... in a sing-along:
maybe 'cos i'm a Londoner... brother! brother!
Athenian! Athenian!
                                       but we are born into
a Spartan wedlock... no one really bothers to
**** our gob with Shakespeare...
    then again that is the schizophrenia (alias
dualism) in humanity... thus, to be frank,
psychiatry can be congratulated, it has provided
one useful term... and i will use it, over and over again,
in a non-symptomatic way, because, i find,
it stands, as if the Olympic Graeae (Zeus, Poseidon
and Hades) eating the carcass of some inhabitant
of Tartarus...
                               evidently: tartar steak...
doubly evident: tartars, or the remnants of mongols,
settled in crimea, and elsewhere in the Ukraine...
   tartar                      tra-ta-ta-ta... ku ku ryku!
a ja fu! krecha! a ja znow... fu!       radowitą
uprzejmość... skłaniam...  
    or what i call: rising spontaneously from the depths...
polymaths applauded, the tribunal resides in
bilingualism... trenches... history... perspectives
and current affairs... wicker man media...
                        so... an example of pedantry?
ó....               that's an orthographic dignitary -
        an aesthetic muddle... as is
c-ha                               contending with samo-ha...
     ch                            came from antagonism of
cz                                   which was later antagonised
by č               in česka.... say that: hen party
bound to Prague... in the Czech republic...
                                          ch      k..­.
i am, quiet frankly... standing at the feet of the tower
of babel... and i'm looking up, and i see
correlations, and i see decimal marks,
which, when given enough geography,
can seem like England and the isles,
       and central Europe...
    Iberia? phantom of Seneca...
  eureka! let's begin, once again...
  why is there a continuum beginning with
Plato and Aristotle?
                                           we could become
reasonable people... told to deal with madmen...
we could claim beginnings with Seneca...
and Cicero...
                      and why? the Romans loved poetry...
the Greeks antagonised Homer...
            the Romans loved Horace, Virgil,
                           Ovid... perhaps we should really forget
beginning with Plato and Aristotle...
       the former has become a church,
the latter a dentist's assistant (minus the ancients'
concept of a joke).
                      evidently i have to finish off reading
Seneca... his educational letters to Lucilius....
      moralising ******* that he was, thus, perhaps
a nibble at Cicero? but i must say:
                           it has to begin somewhere,
so not necessarily in stale-bread Athens...
                      and having such perspectives helps
in claiming casual conversation?
   assuredly - if it doesn't involve talking about
the weather...
                                which is always a great mystery
   if it's given enough aurora.
   onto the mystery of dialectics,
as discovered by Alfred Jarry in his Faustroll
Pataphysics contraband...
                                                nag­ging agreement...
nodding without approval... (chapter 10) -
beginning with αληθη λεγεις εφη
        (you speak the truth, he replies) -
   and ending with ως δoκεì
                              (how true that seems)...
and then some dub-step...
        know nothing dROP! boom! jiggy jiggy,
get the rhythm.
   as i always find it hard to look at
    diacritical arithmetic...
                                  given the following
represent a prolonging: hangman:
       å, ā and ä...
                             esp. in Finnish -
stratum: hedningarna täss on nainen.
                        rolling yarn, plateau, two dips;
and i will never say something profound...
i'll just say something no one else has said,
benefit of the doubt? somewhere, someone,
                                      kneels at the same altar.
  such are the distinction - invaders from the
north, and invaders from the south...
                                           even with
crusading Golgotha mann -
the times? many bats, supers, spiders,
but not enough readings of thomas mann...
                              easily befallen into prune-nosed
high-airs... it comes with the diet of literature...
   unfortunately.
                              and with yet another book:
i have burried yet another living person
i could have had a beer with, and conversed.
it always happens, every time i read a book
i have to attend a funeral... by reading a book
i have burried someone alive...
                          shame, in all frankness...
    i will sit in a congested train, touch a breathing
body, and consecrate the touch with
a warring genuflect - harbringer of a Teutonic
passion for initiation: a komtur's slap across the cheek.
   chequers played with passions...
           and some have to be approached like
caged animals, their vocabulary as cages,
                and the whole world before them:
cageless!
             some have indeed become so encrusted in
their daily: routine, that it would take a zoologist
(thrice oh, begs some sort of diacritical marking)
rather than a psychologist to understand them...
    like the darting dupes they are, enshrined in
20% gratis! smile! have a nice day! boxing day sales!
all but pleasantries, fathoming the grave.
   stiff vocab and all other kinds of perfume...
                           a king and his charlatan knights,
who are merely ditto-heads.
                  and not of this world, afresh -
among the nimble hands prior to birth -
surely there is: more grandeour in birth
   that entry via a ******...
                            the greatest pain of ****...
and when the ancient treaty was signed
under the name: Augustus Cesarean - or
recommended for a need of aristocracy -
    it was, for a time, the mana magnetism:
and such was the rule of poetry:
rather than a crown, donned the laurel leaves...
donned the laurel leaves...
    and such was the covenant from ancient
foes when trying to assimilate the Jew...
three kings from Babylon,
                         the child in Egypt...
          no good tides from Nazareth...
         a crown of myrrh - later overshadowed
by dogmatic sprechen, simpler: thorns...
yella things... or rzepak, Essex is filled with it...
rzepak... so why bother adding a dot above
the z, when you get capricious and use rz to
denote the same?! thus a science:
voiced retroflex fricative... Stalingrad!
                       can you really stomach this kind
of jargon? if it wasn't for science fiction:
science would be twice removed from gott ist tot,
*******' worth of pondering, given the close
proximity rhyme... nothing that rhymes should
ever be taken seriously, it should be hymnal!
                         Horatio! mein lyre!
   mein Guinness leier! rabbi krähe -
     and they deem that ****** white when talking:
thinking? i'd prefer Cezanne in real life -
   maggot wriggling and all...
                                          as much eroticism
as bound to a dog slobbering its testicles:
which means ****-all in an almighty stance
   for a dollop of halleluyah in Nepal.
well: pretty talk, pretty pretty pretty: i feel pretty,
oh so butter-fly-e.
                                    2 week stance,
***** in autumn... but so many Swiss hues
coming from the same concentration of decay!
shweet!  zeit-ser!        and that's me talking
kindergarten german: innovation begins with
a fork and a spoon, should the tongue come to it...
            i see a poem,
i see something worth bugging... c.i.a.,
f.b.i., hannibal's lecture in Florence, Venice for
the rats... bugging... shoving...
  shovelling... necro grounding, rattling...
    windy via north... Icelandic...
drums along incisors of abstract gallop:
violins... fringes of the mustang... airy airy...
all regresses toward the Vulgate...
         like ****, like said, and the only pristine
stress comes with vanilla ice-cream,
or a medium-rare beef ****! hmph!
                         fa fa fa excesses with that hurling
puff...
                      and i did finish Kant's
critique of pure reason... minus two calendars...
but, so help me god, the 2nd volume was hiding
under some corner...
                           thus, from transcendental methodology
came plump apricots, plums and pears...
             sweet decay fruit baron...
              and it's called sugars in the intricacy of pulp...
lazily grown, dangling on that caricature of
a formerly known: full crop of wheat-crude fringe.
    2 years... honest to god!
         but so many books in between...
i was given a recommendation...
i cited it already... kraszewski's magnum opus...
29 books...
                       although that's history fictionalised...
but nonetheless, it really was about
     the cossack uprising in the 17th century...
   and it was, as i once said, something i can forgive
sienkiewicz - the film version,
as in: i will not read a book once it has been adapted
to a movie... it's self-evident that too many
people have read a piece of work and are gagging
for a conversation... but where's the playground?
           ******* cherades!
  chinese whispers and a Manchurian candidate!
  i thought as much.
                          and whenever it's not a preplaned
escapade, what becomes of the day?
     was it always about a stance for carpe diem?
  syllables: di                em.
                            carpe is said with more lubricant.
corpus diem. well, that's an alternative, however
you care to think about it.
                and whenever you care to think about,
the proof is there: mishandling misnomers:
poets as tattoo artists... although no one sees the ink,
signatures on a reader's brian (purposively altered,
toward a Michael Jackon he-he, and other:
albino castratos the church venerates!)...
   that's 3 weeks in a catholic country...
  3 weeks... if only the football was better,
      i'd be called Juan Sanchez...
               but, evidently, the football is bad...
     so it's catholicism on par with a sleeping inquisition...
no one really expected Monty Python to conjure
that one... because it never really took place,
not until a trans-generational exodus
postscript 2004... once western brothels were exhausted,
and the Arab started ******* a hippo...
              then it was all about lakes and rivers
and Las Vegas 2.0 in Dubai!
                     you say quack... i say:
                                                    easy target.
and they did receive a blessing from Allah...
enough ink to write out Dante's revision of the Koran,
and some Al-Sha'ke'pir to write a play called:
the Merchant of Mecca.
  last time i heard, when the reformation was
plauging Christendom, no one invited the Arabs...
these days i think the little Lutherans of Islam
watched too many historical movies...
me? pick up a crucifix and march to Jerusalem?
  and is that going to translate into:
   blame the populists! blame the nationalists!
it's like watching a circus... why is the Islamic
reformation asking for third party associates?
                  i was happy listening to
the klinik... albums: eat your heart out...
time + plague...
                             once again: the world narrative
gags for enough people to conjure up
     a placebo solipsism... and that's placebo
with a squiggly prefix (meaning? how far
that ambiguity will take you) - ~placebo...
well: since existentialists were bores...
it's about time to head for Scandinavia
   and ask: is that " ''                 for passing on
an inheritance, or better still: ripe for
acknowledging ambiguity?
                          and if you can shove this
  into your daily narrative... you better be
a connaisseur of chinese antiques...
                frailty... then again, theres: ******;
well hell yeah *****'h, it's a murky underwold
after all.
                     and yes: that's called a petting word...
some say hombre, and we'll all be amigos
and muskateers at the end of the story.
                                    finally... i feel like i'm writing
a poem that i'll never end...
              why? it was supposed to be about
how John Casimir of Sweden championed
  the crown away from his brother Prince Charles
(volume 1)...
                      the bishop of Breslau...
a recluse... couldn't ride a horse...
    then again: nothing worthy imitation...
beginning with a donkey...
                               the transfiguration of palms
into whips... 2000 years later
talk of Hercules is madness... that other bit?
complete sanity.
                              well... if that be the case...
the book is there... i signed it, 2nd volume of
Kant's critique...
  
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | Y| | | |
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        an oak... in a forest of pine...
an oak in pine wood...

then onto the wood of sighs:

aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
          (somehow the surd escapes,
and later morphs into, but prior to)

a short script: variation on MW...

      pears' worth of blunting runes:
opulance s and ᛋ - versus z,
    congregation minor: the interchange, ß,
buttocks and *****, minus phantoms of erotica.
yet, taking into account trigonometry...
sine (genesis 0), and cosine (genesis 1),
or            M                                   W
(no Jew would dare believe the Latins have
the second 'alf of the proof: that loophole of all
things qab-cannibal-mystic - cravat donning
mystique - a flit's worth of sharpening,
or dental grit... flappy tongue,
flabby oyster, lazing for a crab's palette)...
so?

1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0

of course there's an
Basko Sep 2013
I rose, I saw
and I saw the flaw
of what i left my countrymen in
But I decided to rise
Despite my demise
thinking i was dead
but not fallen

But little had i know
that my bloodline would be cast away
and all my subjects go astray
Like the ash-dust in my silver ash tray
they lay contaminated as i blow
the smoke is ceaseless,
as it burns in the eyes of my subjects
But their conscience rejects

As my Royal Stature fell
to my weak heart i had which
i gave away 'till it went stale
and wounds were deeper to stitch
after years of my departure
But in this rupture
of my throne and of the crown
It's not my palace or town,
that is in debris
It is my kingdom
Tribute to King Mahendra of Nepal, after whose demise the country never witnessed lasting peace and order...I never saw him, because i wasnt even born then, but to hear the words of the then generation, the world lost their Last Asian Monarch
Marge Redelicia Dec 2013
I pull open the door
And hunt for food in the dim orange light.
"There's nothing inside"
Well, actually,
There is something:
Months old cream cheeses precariously stacked atop each other,
Several mysterious bottles of brown sauces,
Dried out leafy vegetables,
But nothing
This lazy *** can eat without preparing.

I push close the door,
Leaving my stomach rumbling and empty,
But filling my mind with
Dreams

Three-fourths of the dull gray door is covered
With colorful ceramic magnets
From my dad’s corporate adventures
To Batangas, Bohol, Bacolod, Davao,
Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Macau,
Nepal, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, China,
Dubai, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia
Sudan, Egypt, Ethiopia,
Canada, Greece, and Australia.

I examine each magnet’s contour and shine,
Letting its foreign dust seep into my fingers.
I dream that soon
I will return all those dusts to their lands
And bring home more magnets of my own.
I wrote this when I was in the 9th grade. And she would be really happy now because her dreams are starting to get fulfilled. I've added several cities in the States now to the family collection.
Poppy Perry May 2015
Today is Menstrual Hygiene Day
But I don't feel very clean
Because you can wash the outside
But even in 2015
Even in these realms of gender equality
And liberty on how to be sanitary
There's no solution for
internal Hygiene
And my blood that's not blood
This muddy flood more than ******
Is somehow still obscene

Today is Menstrual Hygiene Day
Today is a day I am 'on'
The switch is flicked
Blood engaged
And desirability gone
A secret leak, girls so meek
Whisper requests to friends
For dry bleached cotton to stuff and to mend
A recurring trend of defence and anxious bends
To stop the sprawling reddish brownish stain
Of the unexplained fertile woman shame

Today is Menstrual Hygiene Day
Girls in this world are dying and sick
This day promotes an unfortunate fix
Of our wealthy model that still prefers *****
That shows ***** on screens but never female produce
That allows 'I have a cold' but not 'I'm losing some ******'  
'feminine hygeine' aisles,
not 'period supplies' or 'Menstruals'
Disguised packets essential,
to store myself in,
Yet I've never glimpsed the contents of a sanitary bin,

It's Menstrual Hygeine Day
I hygienically ******* today
So I don't understand why this man
Will feel me on his chin and hands
But when the calendar strikes four
It doesn't do it anymore
I'm on and your off
I'm on and turning on stops  
Between my legs this mess
These dregs of last month make me less
Than my best or even a success
At being a woman despite my *******
And my fully functioning, leaking flesh
The appeal is repealed when you feel some real feels
And I continue to walk without showing pain  
To avoid any questions I cannot sustain

Today is Menstrual Hygiene Day
I take my pills for my mahogany strain
I didnt realise from my first stain
What was normal for bloodshed and symptoms and pain,
My packets talk in grams and the doctors in millilitres
My bedsheets spoke volumes and mattress screamed deeper
My knickers whispered ****** and my thighs of a foetus
Stressed and grievous
I don't live in Nepal, I'm lucky for my resources
And the understanding nature of modern social forces
You haven't  degradated or segrated this hateful female fate starting
But I'm far from delighted with the slight common sense parting
When I've seen these secret unfair truths
As normal until there's something compare to
Why do we teach shame and silence
For another simple act of natural violence?
Why will you handle dirt and dead meat,
But not a person alive and craving your heat
And I am sick of my flowers  and unclean until the even
Of my life and one quarter of my natural season

Today is Menstrual Hygiene Day
But I don't feel very clean
Because I've washed and washed the outside
But there's blood all down the seams
Kenn Rushworth Mar 2018
She sat by me, in her skirt, hand grenade green,
And an off-white blouse obscured by a jacket with dust in its seams,
Like leather, like elderly skin, like a crossword puzzle with half the letters filled in,
She sat by me and spilt her sentences and her tea:

She claimed her husband had been killed by a cabal of spiritualists,
Killed by a bull elephant in the streets of Nepal,
Killed by the seven plagues,
And never killed at all,

That he was once a number
Somehow both perfect and prime,
That he was Prime minister of the sea,
And independent of time,

That his bones were cracked marbles
Bought from a widow in Tennessee,
That his name continued to escape her,
But that he looked something like me,

Leaving I saw her wings drag her heavenward,
I saw her terrible wings,
As I stumbled and veered from concrete to tarmac
I heard the pavements start to sing:

“I was once a flowerbed,
My father was a field,
My mother was a source of light,
Before which all the people kneeled.”

Then lost in the eye of daytime and night,
Drawn to the moustache of a Spanish racketeer,
He was once abandoned by his books and his babies
In the boot of a broke-down cavalier,

His pasts and ideas caught up to him,
And gripped him by his belt and his teeth,
His pasts gripped him in quiet of his nightmares,
And slashed his arms in the street,

Visions shook me by the bleeding palm,
Her terrible wings now pinpricks for the moon,
Visions shook me as deities died,
With eyes like a card-trick and fingers like doom,

Then stuck in the endless space between words;
She sat by me, in her skirt, hand grenade green;
Stuck in the endless space between words;
And an off white blouse obscured by a jacket with dust in its seams...
Samantha Sep 2013
...
Today I have adopted
a new Dream Occupation:

No longer a Buddhist Monk
On a Mountain Peak in Nepal
but Henry Miller, I will Be
And shall dance the
Worlds Circumference
With no brain in skull but a pen in
between crooked-only-on-the-right teeth
Mark my words today in
pencil please
So tomorrow I will have a
reminder and in a fortnight I will have
an eraser;
Henry Miller never
Wrote drafts in ink
lmnsinner Nov 2017
she just shakes her head

she meets me on the street-corner, me from work, she from dance,
in the grayling dusk of a thank god it’s a freedom Friday night,
I greet her with words semi-adventurous -

“come with me, few errands to run, keep me in good company”

to the candy store we go for to purchase my weekend eve
lottery tickets and blow-pop lollipops, just in case some
kids appear, a surprise omen as they come
trick-or-treating just before Thanksgiving


the Bangladeshi candyman calls out a long prayer
in his native Bangla

she asks “what’s that he’s saying?”

“Oh, just wishing us a pleasant Sabbath and
may his gods smile upon our good lottery fortune”

she just shakes her head, from side to side

emerging from the store, walking home in the
now doubly ***** darkly dusk,
a set of white teeth from a passing shadow-man says to me
“you’re home late and have a great weekend,”

she asks, “who is that?”

“why,” I reply, “that is our very own personal postal carrier’

she says:
“he delivers mail to ten thousand people all in buildings tall,
yet knows your name, your face,
where you buy your lottery tickets,
your coming and going hours,
how came that to be”

but waits not for an answer
she just shakes her head, from side to side

I show her my secret entrance to our apartment house,
the fast route to collect our mail, dry cleaning in one fell swoop
a secret door, secret elevator taking us directly to our apartment

a secret elevator which is under the direction of
Bimal from Nepal,
who I greet in Nepalese, (my tutor)
I, asking after Brian and Bryce, his 100% American boys

now she says nothing, but before our door, as I go key digging,
she just shakes her head, from side to side

later she says:

“let’s order in, apprise me of  your expertise,
some exotic fare from Manhattans First Avenue,
known for its aphrodisiacal powers
afterwards,
you must tell me each dishes name,
in its tongue’s nativity,
but much, much later,”

and as she speaks, grinning,
she sticks out her tongue,
while she just shakes her head,
but this time,

up
and
down
11/17/18
nyc
mostly a true story, mostly
Olivia Kent Apr 2015
Somewhere out there, on the other side of our troubled world.
The sky fell in.
The snow rolled in, covered in it's unpleasant murderous icing coat.
As mountains collapsed the weight of the world landed on the heads and shoulders of the bold and truly brave, pray let the weight be lifted.
Brave souls and people true.
The Western world here,thinks of you.
May those lost.
Here ever after rest in peace.
(c)Livvi
Akhil Bhadwal May 2015
Epicentre of destruction, now Nepal
Chosen by destiny, very brutally
Terrains blew, and maps deformed
Lives lost, people slayed by almighty Lord

Not one, two, or three, plenty of them
Shot one after another, from below
Shaking and trembling, structures fall
Amassed devastation, no one can stop

In a time of need like this, for humanity
To help and console, Nepal community
Every soul prays for them
May all those are lost, rest in peace, Amen


|AB|
May all those have lost their lives in Nepal earthquakes, rest in peace. No rhyme scheme is followed.
Sprishya Sep 2013
The burning cigarette and a cup of coffee
My companions again
Gloomy day
Loud traffic
Not a single pretty girl in sight
Kathmandu afternoon at its finest
Nothing to do but smoke a joint
And write this poem
My attempt at creativity
With a mind under influence
Thoughts running wild
I could start a religion
But I'll just sleep instead.

(Kathmandu, Nepal 9/1/2013)
Dhaye Margaux Nov 2015
~~¤~~

I heard your cry Oh, Paris
From the hundred of bodies that fell on your ground
I heard the sobbing of your neighbors
I saw the tears of all the eyes watching you
You were trying to  move on from the tragic Charlie Hebdo Attack
But here you are again-
Broken and bruised
And my heart is breaking
My tears are rolling down my face
As I utter  a thousand why's

But...

I still hear the weeping from afar-
Palestine and Syria are still mourning for the death of their children,
India Heat Wave that killed more than two thousand,
The hundreds of migrants killed in sinking ship in the Mediterranean Sea,
The TransAsia Airways Flight 235 Crash in Taiwan,
The Germanwings Flight 9525 Crash into the French Alps,
The Earthquake in Nepal,
The Amtrak Train Derail in Philadelphia,
The Warehouse Explosion that killed a hundred in China,
The Reporter and Cameraman Killed live on TV,
The Refugee crisis,
The Hajj Pilgrimage Tragedy near Mecca
The series of calamities and tragedies in different parts of my dear Philippines-
The families of thousands of dead people are still in agony
These tragedies around the world
Gave those places the deepest cuts upon the bellies of the mothers
Wounds that connect to the hearts
And create scars that might be fresh until now

The world is in pain
And here are my tears again

I am praying for the world
Can we listen to those cries and open our hearts?

Let us  pray for you,  dear Paris
And for other places wich are still in misery

Let us pray for the world.

~~¤~~
Please don't misunderstand.  I am also praying for Paris.  But many places are still suffering.  Please include them in our prayers.
Nat Lipstadt Oct 2013
for Angelique, who found it (at) last,
and who, loved it best
--------------------------------------------


first, I read,
thus educated,
became addicted to
the musicality of word~notes,
enamored with
the artistry of
singing language,
the power to
lift, imagine,
evoke, touch
your skin,
so far away, yet
mine thru smoke,
scribed, now
mine to stroke.

explore, uncover,
the secret interiors of
what was placed
inside of
each of us,
at inception,
without exception.

the keys,
the word picks to
unlock the freedom
to be fearful,
yet courageous.

we, start, all of us,
at the same
starting line,
we, all feel
we, all believe in
the primacy,
the rightness of
I.

but then, one must
began to
observe others.
crossed over the boundary
of mine own
preemptive prepositions,
superseded the need to be
superman,
saw different truths
in the eyes
of others.

listened to the soul songs
of the R&B; breezes of
scented strange,
coming to open
ears, nostrils,
eager to learn how
wind chimes sound in
Nepal, Berlin and the Florida Keys.

standing up, stopped lying,
both up and down,
committed to be
uncommitted to the unjust
accursed ego,
rejected the sophistry of
solipsism.

then changed directions.

went back inside
to relish the passion of
pleasure of both
affection and hatred,
receptors on wavelengths
that varied, in sine,
in in side in in the
co of mr. me.

that the only way out,
to responsively accept,
that to close
the distances within,
to realize real synapses
of words,
there was only
the pathway of
the existence of
outward bound.

kindness, warmth
and generosity,
or
cruelty, inhumanity,
utmost selfishness.

needed to choose.

made my-choices.

thus provisioned and endowed,
voyaged to a place
where there was
no cover, no excuses,
only mirrors that exposed
what lay neath every artifice
conjured up by man to
mislead, deceive, and obfuscate.

There, this place,
where I was
neither the smartest,
bravest, saddest, or wisest,
I sat down and said,
said out loud
words directed to
give yourself away,
myself and anyone
who cared to listen:

”my tongue and my eyes are
one and the same,
my fingertips and my voice,
interchangeable,
my combination of words,
special even if not original,
they are as original to me
as the first prior writer and
the next,
who will create them
anew one more tme,
after he, like me,
leaned to
write them effortlessly,
and to
give yourself away...”


with out fear,
I selected a single word,
a solitary glance,
saw the poetry of an
open window's enchantment,
a head lifted momentarily
from a pillow,
then struggled mightily,  
wept for days with no
verbiage to effect,
make visions entrancing,
no skills,
butterfly net
to capture
the magic of
your loving
my signs.

disgusted by mine,
mine mediocrity,
with the greatest
of effort,
mine,
yet, yielded no results

except scraps of phrases,
that I retrieved
from crumpled sheets
that decorated the
wasteland of my first efforts.

took those phrases,
ran them over my tongue,
over and over again,
intrigued by
their lily lilt,
their unity,
the sensuous pleasure they gave.

how one word
coupled a tune,
the notes of this
new contiguous,
contagious alphabet
rang truer than most,
and moreover,
led me to another that
somehow phrased forward,
sallied forth in rhyme,
like those wind chimes,
now making perfect sense
with the one that followed,
from varied places
so distanced, but now one,
and a couplet was born.

of what did I write?
of what I knew.

no complexity,
nor trickery employed,

no matter that plain words
are my ordinary tools,
with them I scribed
the small,
the little,
what I saw.

grabbed the middle,
held onto the
gravity of the center.

simplicity my golden rule.
write they say,
about what you know best.

rely on and in the
diurnal motions,
the arc of
daily commotions,
in which
do we not all excel?

this poem flew
off my fingers,
twenty, thirty,
maybe sixty minutes,
in the skies above
these United States
of mine,
on American Airlines.

one of my
chiefest blessings
that luck threw onto
my punched ticket,
being born here.

was it effortless?

If you sat beside me,
what would u have seen?

flying fingers urgent unbidden,
neither struggling nor stopping
for the chimes were mine,
once I heard the first verse.
but first ringing was give
unto me by a reimer,
asking how,
I write so effortlessly?

the question innocuous sorta and
sorta knot,
a challenge to
my poetic essence.

I looked inward,
to look outward,
started where
all poems start,
in the quiet places
where you and
I think and thought.

unsure of the answer,
began to begin,
sing and sin,
my fingers,
simple secretaries,
transcribing lyrics
that those
selfsame wind chimes
tuned me up,
turned me on
simple thoughts,
simpler truths
herein recorded and
sworn before you,
most writ on this day that
the Americas have chosen
to recall another kind of
explorer, Columbus.

explore, explore
and then again
explore s'mores.
no matter if it is
covered ground,
covered it once more,
till you see that land
differently, colored so
no one has ever seen
them quite your way.

be an ocean pacific,
that cannot be pacified.

relish the chance,
relieve yourself
of that urge to burst,
put on paper,
gift to me and to
everyone else,
so someday,
we can say
together,
we saw *together,

through one
single set of eyes
upon a ship of
foolish words,
a real child born
in a mind!

new places re-discovered,
yet now storied stored,
living in our
Siamese chests,
to forever keep.

PostScript:

"With or without you,
I can't live,
And you give yourself away,
And you give yourself away....
Only to be with you,
But I still haven't found
what I'm looking for..."
U2.
Notes:
October 14th, 2013,
Taking the Northern route,
between the bear and the empired state,
between and over states where
coal is mined, automobiles built.

if you deem these words poetry swells,
I smile, for they are simple product of
waves of looking, seeing out, out,
an oval airplane window
what lay below,
preparing it
for storage
upon your
eyes.
jake aller Apr 2019
Seeing Ghosts

I walk around the streets
Of old Saigon
Seeing sensing the undead

The ghosts of the war
That haunted life
So many years ago

So many people died
For a war
That never should have been fought
For reasons that are still not clear

A great tragedy unfolded
In a land half away
Around the world

The ghosts smile at me
And then they disappear

Leaving me in the present
Life goes on

Old Ghosts  

Old ghosts wandering the streets of old Saigon
Lost spirits of the dead
Died during the endless wars  
Ghostly apparitions around every corner

Here was Kilroy
and his gang of soldiers
Over there were the Viet Cong
Waiting to **** them

Saigon is filled with memories like that
Terrible times were had here in Old Saigon
Silently the ghosts parade the city streets
As the tourists drink in the bars



Mastering the Saigon Shuffle

When I first visited Saigon
Learning the Saigon Shuffle
Was difficult

And now 24 years later
It all seems to be coming back

There is an art to crossing the street
Dodging the motor cyclists, the taxis, the private cars
The bikes and other pedestrians and the buses

The art consists of letting the big guys go first
Then walk between the motorcycles and cyclists
Trusting that they will get out of your way

And they being masters of the Saigon shuffle
Always find a way

In my two visits I was struck
By how it all flows together

Without a central authority
And with almost no planning
Lights or cops

Somehow it just is
And somehow it works

And it is still a mystery to me
24 years after first
Encountering the Saigon shuffle

Coffee Lady
Every morning
I have gone out for Vietnamese coffee
At a sidewalk café
Down the ally from our AIRBNB

The owner is a pleasant middle age woman
Who for some reason likes us
She smiles at us
Greets us in Vietnamese
She does  not understand English
Or Korean

And I wonder why
Why was there this connection
Between us

It dawned on me
Perhaps in a prior life
She knew an American or two
And I remind her of someone

Or perhaps she is found
Of Korean K drama
And Angela reminds her
Of her favorite K Drama star

Or perhaps it is both
Or another reason entirely

But I moved today
And will miss her

Might go back for a final cup
Of coffee

To say good bye
To my Vietnamese coffee lady

Mostly Harmless Old Lady in the Alley
There is an old Vietnamese lady
In the neighborhood
Obviously senile

But everyone knows her
And watches over her

To make sure
She stays out of traffic
And out of trouble

She talks to everyone
But no one seems to understand
What she is babbling on about
They smile at her
And she smiles back

Reminds me of the phrase
From the hitchiker’s guide to the galaxy
Mostly harmless

And she for some reason
She likes us
And like my Vietnamese Coffee lady

I wonder why
Why was there this connection
Between us

It dawned on me
Perhaps in a prior life
She knew an American or two
And I remind her of someone

Or perhaps she is found
Of Korean K drama
And Angela reminds her
Of her favorite K Drama star

Or perhaps it is both
Or another reason entirely

But in any event
I look forward
To seeing her smiling face
Every time I walk
Down my ally way

Avoiding the War Due to Two Birthdays

I avoided being drafted
Due to a fluke in my birth certificate
In 1974 the last draft was held
And some people were drafted

But no one went to Vietnam
The war was ending by then
I avoided the draft though
To no effort on my own

My number came up on the draft list
My real birthday was in the zone
But then my mother pointed out
That my legal birthday was different

When I was born at 4 am
The night clerk typed up
My birth certificate
With the wrong date

My father pointed that out
She said
Once I typed it
That is it

His birthday will be
What I typed
Get use to it
My father gave up

And so, 18 years later
That saved me
From the last draft
Never made it to Vietnam

Many years latter
I visited Vietnam
Right after we opened relations

Glad I finally got to see
The country
That so many Americans visited
so many decades ago

Buddha In Vietnam

In Saigon I saw the buddha
Buddha images are everywhere
Temples are scattered about
Here and there and everywhere

Buddha lives on
In the hearts and minds
Of the Vietnamese soul

The communists tried
To get rid of Buddhism
And other religious traditions

But they failed
And Buddhism has come back
Still speaks to the Vietnamese people

A different style
A different vibe
Than Korean Buddhism

But still Buddhist thought
Prevails in the tropical lands
Of the South


Mekong Dreams

Traveling along the Mekong
Back in time

Seeing the river
The people
Imagining life on the river
Imagining the war
The past in the Mekong delta

And the present tourist boom
Yet life goes on
With its own laid back rhythm

As we traversed the river
We were transported back
To an earlier time

Following the ancient rhythms
Of the Mekong Delta


Down and Out in Saigon

Southeast Asia, and Mexico
has always attracted
A certain type of westerner
The down and out
On a down word spiral

Why?
Relatively cheap to live
Lots of part time gigs
Teaching English
Or other things

*****, drugs, ***
Readily available
And cheap

Places to stay
Dirt cheap
And no one needs
To sleep out doors

Easy to disappear
Into the foreigners backpackers ghettos
And escape
From whatever you are running from

The locals are somewhat tolerant
The police usually look the other way
And there are lots of people
In your shoes

I was surprised to find
That Saigon has become
The latest place
For the down and outer crowd
To gather together

In Bangkok one sees them a lot
In Cambodia as well
In the Philippines
In Nepal

And south of the border
In Mexico as well

In India not so much
In Japan and Korea
Just too **** expensive
And too cold to be outdoors

Back in the day
I used to work
The citizen services gig
And saw lots of the down and outer set

The old song comes to mind
No one remembers you
When you are down and out

And in the States
Being down and out
Means living on the mean streets

As it is very difficult
To live with almost no money

And the various side hustles
Don’t give you much money
Unless you are dealing drugs

And teaching ESL
Is not an option

Food is expensive
Transportation is expensive
***** and drugs expensive
Rent is prohibitive
Commercial *** is expensive

And no one loves you
If you are down and out
No one knows your name
You are just another homeless ***

Invisible to all
As you try to make do

Much better to be down and out
In Southeast Asia
Than on the mean streets
Of the USA


Ghosts of Chu Chi

Crawling down the tunnels
Of Chu Chi
I could almost imagine
The Viet Kong guerillas

Hiding deep under the tunnels
As the land above is turned
Into a temporary dessert

With the vegetation burned off
By ****** and agent orange

The Viet Kong creep out at night
Stealing onto the bases
Stealing weapons, food, supplies
And occasionally killing soldiers

In their sleep
The US soldiers
Stay on base at night

Terrified of the mosquitos
And of the Viet Kong

the ghosts
Surround me
Telling me their stories
And at last I fled

Through the emergency escape tunnel
Declaring victory
Profoundly shaken up
By the ghosts of the Chu Chi tunnels


Saigon 2019

Saigon 2019

Vibrant, vivid, exciting
A city on the move
Becoming a world class city
Yet still with a Saigon swagger

Wandering the streets
Dodging the traffic
Admiring the women
Enjoying the food

Saigon enters my heart
And I know that I will be back
This city is growing on me
Reminds me of Korea back in the 1990’s

One hopes that as it develops
It will not become a carbon copy
Of other big Asian cities
Obliterating its past

In search of a false modern image
I hope it can retain
What makes Saigon Saigon
And not become another Gangnam

Hope it does it with Saigon style
And the people will evolve
The country will emerge
And become what it should be

The Paris of the East
This is my vision
Saigon 2019



Saigon 1995

Saigon 1995

In 1995
I was one of the first tourists
Allowed in to Vietnam
To freely wander about

Tourism was at its infancy
And Saigon was chaotic
Wild and crazy
Traffic was insane

There were few tourism sites
Few hotels
Few guest houses
And not too many restaurants

The food was good
We saw the war memorial
The re-unification palace
And the big market

But we felt we were being monitored
Beggars were everywhere
There were scams everywhere
And it was not that pleasant an experience

But Saigon grew up
Became a much more tourist-friendly place
And these problems we encountered
A thing of the place

Saigon is so much better
So much more developed
That it has captured our soul
And we will be back
poems inspired by my second trip to Saigon in 24 years
WordWerks Feb 2013
My red wagon, in my youth,
Kept things some thought quite uncouth,
Like fishing line, crawdad bait,
A model boat, old door plate,
Copper rupees from Nepal,
Ancient skull, an old softball,
And I still wish I had them all,
Those fine treasures of my youth.

Though years have past since that day,
I, again, still lug that dray,
But I often can recall,
All the stuff I used to haul.
Though no longer filled with junk;
I don't use it like a trunk.
This lesson I didn't flunk.
It's filled with my kids at play.
Nat Lipstadt Sep 2014
je pense bien à toi
(i think well of you)

Have not chatted in awhile,
me rutted in NYC,
a city of constant tear down
and sometimes flashy urban human
renewal...

While you,
you getting on with life,
growing up, growing down,
buying clothes for a new school season,
or growing children,
or boxing up now grandchildren memories of memories...
falling in love, writing poetry all about it...

You,
in Nepal, Malaysia, India,
Seattle, Portland, and the Florida's panhandle,
the US Midwest sainted hinterlands,
the South, that makes one love water,
water that has travelled from the faraway,
island continent of professorial Australia,
Did I forget the Philippines?

worse sin committed,
is that in
your poetry
I have not toe dipped,
quite the long erstwhile,
after loving it with
obsession devotion...

so just a Saturday afternoon
note penned just to you
and you alone...

je pense bien à toi
(i think well of you)

So by way of apology,
craft a poem for you exclusive,
more than each word, letter,
every syllable, tongue tasted
for conjuctivity,
breadth and thus discovered
notes of red soil, raspberry, lemon,
even a hint of sweet masquerading as a
salty kindness in our veins,
our unique vintage of connectivity

Your hand to my lips raised,
grasped twice, by mine both,
slow lifting with stature, affection and respect,
kiss it and whisper just enough for
we two to hear...

je pense bien à toi
(i think well of you)

even this seems weakly insufficient,
but care taken nowadays,
a new economy of words,
write less, think more, and
give up the truly deserved words only
as a mark of my fondness and respect

these come on no schedule,
often months in the making,
so forgive-me-not my unsweetened silences,
accept them with easy knowing that

je pense bien à toi
(i think well of you)

the summer man wintered in discontent,
his journey now disrupted by forces exogenous,
stealing his vision, jailing him in between
walls of indecision, knocking down
his own twin towers,
but carelessly not making provision
to tell you well and often enough

je pense bien à toi
(i think well of you)*

Sept. 13, 2014
Thank you SALLY for reminding me of this long ago poem 6/21/18
JC Lucas Oct 2013
Motion makes me homesick, home makes me motion-sick.

I've seen some **** you wouldn't believe in the past month of my young life
I'm happy.
Makes me want more.
I want Guatemala
I want Nepal
I want the States by trains and motorcycles.
I want to make something tall enough to shake hands with god and strong enough to last to the ends of the earth
Or longer.
I want to give the world back all I've taken from it and all the damage I've done.
And then I want to do more.
I want to start a revolution,
live on a farm,
paint a mural,
play a symphony,
shake hands with the Dalai Lama,
write a book,
and be home in time for dinner.
I want to fold a thousand and one oragami cranes and set them free from space and while they float down to Mauritania and Portugal, to Argentina and Cambodia
I want to wish for a reset button.
Not to use right away, but just in case **** gets out of hand.
So we've got a backup plan.
I want to sit in my old age looking down that darkened tunnel and see my own birth pass before my eyes.
I want to embrace infinity without soreness or shortcomings,
without excuses or refusals
I want to watch the universe collapse back in on itself and be part of everything at once.
I want more than I can handle.

I guess that means I'm young.
I wrote this on a train near Stuttgart, Deutschland during a three-month backpacking trip last summer. It details my love of travel but mixed feelings about distance from home, something every long-term traveler has to deal with. we are all so very, very young.
Marshal Gebbie Apr 2015
In the shadow of Everest people are dying
Crushed in a chaos embirthed from beneath,
Emerged as destructor of temple and Taos,
Emerged as an innocent killer... bequeathed.
History crumbles as heavens roar mightily
Ghorka is dead in an avalanche of rock,
Beggars and potentates crushed  in the brickfall
Dharahara’s fall leaves men gaping in shock.
Shuddering mountains in avalanche of free fall
Wails of the stricken as quaking defiles,
Gold topped pagodas and statue of ancients,
Sculpture of lions now a rubble in piles.
Khathmandu in the clasp of calamity
Nightmarish forces arisen from deep,
Grasping the earth in their grip of profanity
Monstrously tearing the bedrock from sleep.
A techtonic ****** of Asia by India
Nepal’s Himalayas ****** to the sky,
Inconsequential, this plight of humanity
Nature proceeds as poor Nepalese die.**

M.
ANZAC Day 25 April 2015
Nat Lipstadt Nov 2013
In Lalitpur, a small city,
a poem in
and of itself,
near to the capital city,
Kathmandu,
in the magic
word-world of
Nepal.

Who in the world is Simrik?

Girl, 15, apologetic,
with the heart of a deer.
who unlike most
kindly requests your criticism.

Ok, here is my criticism.

Your writes are a shotgun blast.
It cannot be that fifteen years
has been granted
a simple eloquence
that writes and feeds
tastes of visions
of a spiced life
far away, but
close by.

winding roads
and the trees,
the train station,
train tracks,
jeeps for taxis.
the market at night.
a few bookstores i wanted
to enter but couldn't/didn't
benches at chowrasta,
aloo chat.
penang momo,
the "aum sweet aum" poster
they had there.
pretty girls in chowrasta.
so well-dressed.


at fifteen I could not
see so well, see so fine.
not I.

i have fallen for boys, and i have fallen for men.
i don't know if it'd still be falling if i only ever
fell for pieces of them. and as for you, you were no
exception. my eyes never knew the ridges on
your body as soft as icing on a cake, or the
veins in your arms and they've only read
your words, your tastes, in pixels, but i
fell anyway, briefly. the heart is a muscle
the size of a fist, an ***** that has nothing to
grow and fit into. you never really know where
exactly in your chest it really is or if it's the right size.
there'll be growing pains in your ventricles and
dislocation to your spine or your stomach to tell you
of that before the cardiologist, and when you find the
cure or place it back to where it was, you'll have
stories written like prescription notes.


One time, when I was fifteen,
(For I have been
fifteen
many times),
I knew that
I didn't know
how to express
the potpourri
of what
was inside
of me,
the desire was
compelling,
the skills lacking,
for I lived in amidst a
family of writers, critics, historians,
and saw the birthmark of my incapabilities
embarrassed rosy red on my face every morning.

my incapabilities.

not Simrik.
oh no.

here's blood clotting where i got bit by a leech at a
monastery, from after the day i told you we needed to drop
to being friends from lovers. deserved it, totally. you had
blisters on your knees, from the day i sent you back.


you said i still had your heart with me.
when i reach the sea in 12 days,
i'll return with the crevices on them
mended with the pieces of
toughest seashells i can find,
wrapped in a sheet of prayer flag
i tore from the monastery,
so that when you place it back
between your ribs,
you'll have prayers
and the sound of the sea
flowing in your veins.


At fifteen, I read Camus
and the sport pages.
At fifteen, I peeked  
at my neighbor's *******
dreamt blonde dreams.
what I knew
was
what I did not know.

so here is my criticism.

you remind me now, this day,
of what
I still do not know
nor can ever hope
to capture as well
as you.
PostScript:

Dear God,
Pray explain to this child, this, baby,
her blessing is that she has the spine of a poet, blood heated by
wisdom and composure.
Remind her daily that her gift is copper colored words that will rust well over time, as she soldiers on in this world, bringing the beauty of words into this world.
NML
Nigel Morgan Feb 2014
It was just after four and he had been at his desk since early morning. He would stop every so often, turn away from his desk and think of her. They had spoken, as so often, before the day had got properly underway. It seemed necessary to know what each other had planned on their respective lists or calendars. But he had hidden from her an unexpected weariness, a fatigue that had already plagued the day. He felt beaten down by it, and had struggled to keep his concentration and application on the editing that he had decided to tackle today, so he was clear from it for tomorrow.

Tomorrow was to be a different day, a day away, a day of being visible as the composer whose persona he now felt increasingly uncomfortable in maintaining. He would take the train to Birmingham and it would be a short walk to the Conservatoire.  He would stop at the City Art Gallery and view the Penguins – or Dominicans in Feathers by Alfred Stacey Marks , and then upstairs to the small but exquisite collection of ukiyo-e. He would avoid lunch at the Conservatoire offered by a former colleague who he felt had only made the gesture out of politeness. They had never had anything significant to say to one another. He had admired her scholarship and the intensity of her musicianship: she was a fine singer. But she was a person who had shown no interest in his music, only his knowledge and relationship with composers in her research area, composers he had worked with and for. He doubted she would attend the workshop on his music during the afternoon.

He was often full of sadness that he could share so little with the young woman spoken with on the phone that morning, and who he loved beyond any reason he felt in control of. Last night he had gone to sleep, he knew, with her name on his lips, as so often. He would imagine her with him in that particular embrace, an arrangement of limbs that marked the lovingness and intimacy of their friendship, that companionship of affection that, just occasionally and wonderfully, turned itself in a passion that still startled him: that she could be so transformed by his kiss and touch.

He was afraid he might be becoming unwell, his head did not feel entirely right. He was a little cold though his room was warm enough. It had been such a struggle today to deal with being needfully critical, and maintaining accuracy with his decisions and final edits. He had had to stand his ground over the modern interpretation of ornaments knowing that there existed such confusion here, the mordent being the arch-culprit.

He stopped twice for a break, and during these 20-minute periods had turned his attention to gratefully to his latest writing project: The Language of Leaves. He had already written a short introduction, a poem about the way leaves dance to and in the wind of different seasons. At the weekend he had spent time over a book of images of leaves from across the world. He had read the final chapter of Darwin’s book The Powerful Movement of Plants, the final chapter because after publication Darwin suggested to a friend that this chapter was really the only worthwhile part of the book! He had then read an academic paper about the history of botanical thought in regard to the personification of plants, starting with Aristotle and ending with the generation after Darwin.

But his thoughts today were on writing a poem, if he could, and would once his editing task for the day had reached a realistic full stop. After leaves dancing he could only think of their stillness, and that was just a short jump to thoughts of the conservatory. Should he ever gain an extravagance of riches he would acquire a house with a veranda (for the woman he loved), outbuildings (for her studios – he reckoned she’d need more than one before long) and a conservatory (for them both to enjoy as the sun set in the North Norfolk skies below which he imagined his imagined house would be). And suddenly, at half past four, after his thinking time with this lovely young woman who occupied far more than his dreams ever could, he turned to his note book and wrote:  while leaves may dance . . .  And he was away, as so often the first line begetting a train of thought, of association, a fluency of one word following another word, and often effortlessly. A whole verse appeared, which he then took apart and rearranged, but the essence was there.

And so he thought of a conservatory, a place of a very particular stillness where the leaves of plants and ornamental trees were just as still as can be. Where only the leaves of mimosa pudica would move if touched, or the temperature or light changed. It was a magical plant whose leaves would fold in such extraordinary ways, and so find sleep. His imagined conservatory was Victorian, and in the time-slip that poetry affords it was time for tea and Lucy the maid would open the door and carry her tray to the table beside the chair in which his beautiful wife sat, who ahead of the fashion of the time wore her artist’s smock like a child’s pinafore, an indigo-dyed linen smock with deep pockets. She had joined him after a day in her studio (and he in his study), to drink the Jasmine tea her brother had brought back from his expedition to Nepal. She would then retire to her bedroom to write the numerous letters that each day required of her. And later, she would dress for dinner in her simple, but lovely way her husband so admired.
petuniawhiskey Dec 2013
Sweet baby,
split-pea soup.
croissant carbs,
sliced tomato,
onion crisp, and
spinach greens-
ooh avocado,
please!

look out the
kitchen window,
my dog's head in
the compost pit!
"LIBBBBBYY!"
homemade soup on the back-burner

******, scratch it,
there ain't even any
tomatos or onion to
throw on this french
bread!
ohh, but mama,
let's get real,
since when was
there ever any
money for all these
S.Pellegrinos!?

I'm not complaining,
and I know ain't
isn't a word,
but for Christ Sake!
Being home is always
wild.

To sit by the fire,
or to be a free-running
child?

I can't even make lunch
without getting excited,
and documenting my odd
life.

Could have made that Bumble-Bee-
solid white albacore,
or Skippy,
squeeze that Skippy-
it's the skippy you squeeze!
Figured I'd go a little
more home-made today.

How long will it be
'till Mama starts asking
for rent?

All those Doctor bills,
wild insurance-
you slay me!
Mental health,
Hunterdon and Rutland,
you really did me deep.
And to keep paying those
Doctor's with those degrees,
sheesh!

Rode my bike to the TDBank,
to take out the last of what I
had, for Mama.
Talk about hell on two wheels!

So now my choices can be narrowed-
Do I hit the restaurants and do
the night shifts, waitressing in
that filthy grease?
Do I get a portfolio and try to model,
without Mama's approval?
I sure do have one impressive
resume, but this state wants to
take my license away.

My student loans are
in over my head, here
at least there's a futon
and a warm bed.
Chicago means an air mattress and
Vegas screams something I can't really
be too sure about.

I guess it's true, home
is where the heart is.
Home is where my toes
are warm and where my lunch date,
Libby, never leaves my side.

This U-turn situation,
it's not so bad. Yeah, sure,
I was supposed to be in Utah,
canyoneering. And this New Year's,
I would have, should be, could have been
backpacking through Nepal-
a dream.
Sometime I just get a little sad.

So I'll read some books,
watch some films,
give Libby her beef-flavored
pain-killer pills,
and pray for a pretty little
white-christmas miracle.

— The End —