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RAJ NANDY Jul 2017
THE LEGEND OF HOLLYWOOD IN VERSE
Dear Readers, I have tried to cover the salient features of this True Story in free flowing verse mainly with end rhymes. If you read it loud, you can hear the chimes! Due to the short attention span of my readers I had to cut short this long story, and conclude with the
Golden Era of Hollywood by stretching it up to the 1950's only. When TV began to challenge the Big Screen Cinema seriously! I have used only a part of my notes here. Kindly read the entire poem and don't hesitate to know many interesting facts - which I also did not know! I wish there was a provision for posting a few interesting photographs for you here. Best wishes, - Raj Nandy, New Delhi.  

                 THE LEGEND OF HOLLYWOOD :
                        THE AMERICAN  DREAM
                             BY RAJ NANDY

           A SHORT  HISTORICAL  BACKGROUND
Since the earliest days, optical toys, shadow shows, and ‘magic
lanterns’, had created the illusion of motion.
This concept was first described by Mark Roget in 1824 as  
the 'persistent of vision'.
Giving impetus to the development of big screen cinema with its
close-ups, capturing all controlled and subtle expressions!
The actors were no longer required to shout out their parts with
exaggerated actions as on the Elizabethan Stage.
Now even a single tear drop could get noticed easily by the entire
movie audience!
With the best scene being included and edited after a few retakes.
To Thomas Edison and his able assistant William Rogers we owe the invention of Kinetoscope, the first movie camera.
On the grounds of his West Orange, New Jersey laboratory, Edison
built his first movie studio called the ‘Black Maria’.   (1893)
He also purchased a string of patents related to motion picture
Camera; forming the Edison Trust, - a cartel that took control of
the Film Industry entire!

Fort Lee, New Jersey:
On a small borough on the opposite bank of the Hudson River lay
the deserted Fort Lee.
Here scores of film production crews descended armed with picture Cameras, on this isolated part of New Jersey!
In 1907 Edison’s company came there to shoot a short silent film –
‘Rescue From an Eagle’s Nest’,
Which featured for the first time the actor and director DW Griffith.
The independent Chaplin Film Company built the first permanent
movie studio in 1910 in Fort Lee.
While some of the biggest Hollywood studios like the Universal,
MGM, and 20th Century Fox, had their roots in Fort Lee.
Some of the famous stars of the silent movie era included ‘Fatty’
Arbuckle, Will Rogers, Mary Pickford, Dorothy and Lillian Gish,
Lionel Barrymore, Rudolph Valentine and Pearl White.
In those days there were no reflectors and electric arch lights.
So movies were made on rooftops to capture the bright sunlight!
During unpredictable bad weather days, filming had to be stopped
despite the revolving stage which was made, -
To rotate and capture the sunlight before the lights atarted to fade!

Shift from New Jersey to West Coast California:
Now Edison who held the patents for the bulb, phonograph, and the Camera, had exhibited a near monopoly;
On the production, distribution, and exhibition of the movies which made this budding industry to shift to California from
New Jersey!
California with its natural scenery, its open range, mountains, desert, and snow country, had the basic ingredients for the movie industry.
But most importantly, California had bright Sunshine for almost
365 days of the year!
While eight miles away from Hollywood lay the port city of Los Angeles with its cheap labour.

                        THE RISE  OF  HOLLYWOOD
It was a real estate tycoon Harvey Wilcox and his wife Daeida from
Kansas, who during the 1880s founded ‘Hollywood’ as a community for like-minded temperate followers.
It is generally said that Daeida gave the name Hollywood perhaps
due to the areas abundant red-berried shrubs also known as
California Holly.
Spring blossoms around and above the Hollywood Hills with its rich variety,  gave it a touch of paradise for all to see !
Hollywood was incorporated as a municipality in 1903, and during
1910 unified with the city of Los Angeles.
While a year later, the first film studio had moved in from New
Jersey, to escape Thomas Edison’s monopoly!    (1911)

In 1913 Cecil B. De Mille and Jesse Lasky, had leased a barn with
studio facilities.
And directed the first feature length film ‘Squaw Man’ in 1914.
Today this studio is home to Hollywood Heritage Museum as we get to see.
The timeless symbol of Hollywood film industry that famous sign on top of Mount Lee, was put up by a real estate developer in 1923.  
This sign had read as ‘’HOLLY WOOD LAND’’ initially.
Despite decades of run-ins with vandals and pranksters, it managed to hang on to its prime location near the summit of the Hollywood Hills.
The last restoration work was carried out in 1978 initiated by Hugh
Hefner of the ******* Magazine.
Those nine white letters 45 feet tall now read ‘HOLLYWOOD’, and has become a landmark and America’s cultural icon, and an evocative symbol for ambition, glamour, and dream.
Forever enticing aspiring actors to flock to Hollywood, hypnotised
by lure of the big screen!

                     GOLDEN AGE OF HOLLYWOOD
The Silent Movie Era which began in 1895, ended in 1935 with the
production of ‘Dance of Virgins’, filmed entirely in the island of Bali.
The first Sound film ‘The Jazz Singer’ by Warner Bros. was made with a Vitaphone sound-on-disc technology.  (October 1927)
Despite the Great Depression of the 1930s, this decade along with the 1940s have been regarded by some as Hollywood’s Golden Age.
However, I think that this Golden Age includes the decades of the
1940s and the 1950s instead.
When the advent of Television began to challenge the Film Industry
itself !

First Academy Award:
On 16th May 1929 in the Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard,
the First Academy Award presentation was held.
Around 270 people were in attendance, and tickets were priced at
$5 per head.
When the best films of 1927 & 1928 were honored by the Academy
of Motion Production and Sciences, or the AMPS.
Emil Jennings became the best actor, and Janet Gaynor the best actress.
Special Award went to Charlie Chaplin for his contribution to the
silent movie era and for his silent film ‘The Circus’.
While Warren Brothers was commended for making the first talking picture ‘The Jazz Singer’, - also receiving a Special Award!
Now, the origin of the term ‘OSCAR’ has remained disputed.
The Academy adopted this name from 1939 onwards it is stated.
OSCAR award has now become “the stuff dreams are made of”!
It is a gold-plated statuette of a knight 13.5 inches in height, weighing 8.5 pounds, was designed by MGM’s art director Cedric Gibbons.
Annually awarded for honouring and encouraging excellence in all
facets of motion picture production.

Movies During the Great Depression Era (1929-1941):
Musicals and dance movies starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers provided escapism and good entertainment during this age.
“Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did. She just did it
backwards and in high heels,” - the Critics had said.
This compatible pair entertained the viewers for almost one and
a half decade.
During the ‘30s, gangster movies were popular starring James Cagey, Humphrey Bogart, and Edward G. Robinson.
While family movies had their popular child artist Shirley Temple.
Swashbuckler films of the Golden Age saw the sword fighting scenes of Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn.
Flynn got idolized playing ‘Robin Hood’, this film got released in
1938 on the big screen!
Story of the American Civil War got presented in the epic ‘Gone With The Wind’ (1939) with Clarke Gable and Vivian Leigh.
This movie received 8 Oscars including the award for the Best Film, - creating a landmark in motion picture’s history!
More serious movies like John Steinbeck’s ‘Grapes of Wrath’ and
John Ford’s  ‘How Green Was My Valley’, were released in 1940 and 1941 respectively.
While the viewers escaped that depressive age to the magical world
of  ‘Wizard of Oz’ with its actress Judy Garland most eagerly!
Let us not forget John Wayne the King of the Westerns, who began
his acting career in the 1930s with his movie ‘The Big Trail’;
He went on to complete 84 films before his career came to an end.
Beginning of the 40s also saw Bob Hope and the crooner Bing Crosby, who entertained the public and also the fighting troops.
For the Second World War (1939-45) had interrupted the Golden Age of Hollywood.
When actors like Henry Fonda, Clarke Gable, James Stewart and
Douglas Fairbanks joined the armed forces temporarily leaving
Hollywood.
Few propaganda movies supporting the war efforts were also made.
While landmark movies like ‘Philadelphia Story’, ‘Casablanca’, ‘Citizen Kane’,
‘The Best Years of Our Lives’, were some of the most successful movies of that decade.  (The 1940s)
Now I come towards the end of my Hollywood Story with the decade  of the 1950s, thereby extending the period of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Since having past the Great Depression and the Second World War,  the Hollywood movie industry truly matured and came of age.

                        HOLLYWOOD  OF  THE  1950s

BACKGROU­ND:
The decade of the ‘50s was known for its post-war affluence and
choice of leisure time activities.
It was a decade of middle-class values, fast-food restaurants, and
drive-in- movies;
Of ‘baby-boom’, all-electric home, the first credit cards, and new fast moving cars like the Ford, Plymouth, Buick, Hudson, and Chevrolet.
But not forgetting the white racist terrorism in the Southern States!
This era saw the beginning of Cold War, with Eisenhower
succeeding Harry S. Truman as the American President.
But for the film industry, most importantly, what really mattered  
was the advent of the Domestic TV.
When the older viewers preferred to stay at home instead of going
out to the movies.
By 1950, 10.5 million US homes had a television set, and on the
30th December 1953, the first Color TV went on sale!
Film industries used techniques such as Cinemascope, Vista Vision,
and gimmicks like 3-D techniques,
To get back their former movie audience back on their seats!
However, the big scene spectacle films did retain its charm and
fantasy.
Since fantasy epics like ‘The Story of Robin Hood’, and Biblical epics like ‘The Robe’, ‘Quo Vadis’, ‘The Ten Commandments’ and ‘Ben-Hur’, did retain its big screen visual appeal.
‘The Robe’ released on 16th September 1953, was the first film shot
and projected in Cinema Scope;
In which special lenses were used to compress a wide image into a
standard frame and then expanded it again during projection;
Resulting in an image almost two and a half times as high and also as wide, - captivating the viewers imagination!

DEMAND FOR NEW THEMES DURING THE 1950s :
The idealized portrayal of men and women since the Second World War,
Now failed to satisfy the youth who sought exciting symbols for rebellion.
So Hollywood responded with anti-heroes with stars like James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Paul Newman.
They replaced conventional actors like Tyron Power, Van Johnson, and Robert Taylor to a great extent, to meet the requirement of the age.
Anti-heroines included Ava Gardner, Kim Novak, and Marilyn Monroe with her vibrant *** appeal;
She provided excitement for the new generation with a change of scene.
Themes of rebellion against established authority was present in many Rock and Roll songs,
Including the 1954 Bill Hailey and His Comets’ ‘Rock Around the Clock’.
The era also saw rise to stardom of Elvis Presley the teen heartthrob.
Meeting the youthful aspirations with his songs like ‘Jailhouse Rock’!
I recall the lyrics of this 1957 film ‘Jailhouse Rock’ of my school days, which had featured the youth icon Elvis:
   “The Warden threw a party in the county jail,
     The prison band was there and they began to wail.
     The band was jumping and the joint began to sing,
     You should’ve heard them knocked-out jail bird sing.
     Let’s rock, everybody in the whole cell block……………
     Spider Murphy played the tenor saxophone,
     Little Joe was blowing the slide trombone.
     The drummer boy from Illinois went crash, boom, bang!
     The whole rhythm section was the Purple Gang,
      Let's rock,.................... (Lyrics of the song.)

Rock and Roll music began to tear down color barriers, and Afro-
American musicians like Chuck Berry and Little Richard became
very popular!
Now I must caution my readers that thousands of feature films got  released during this eventful decade in Hollywood.
To cover them all within this limited space becomes an impossible
task, which may kindly be understood !
However, I shall try to do so in a summarized form as best as I could.

BOX OFFICE HITS YEAR-WISE FROM 1950 To 1959 :
Top Ten Year-Wise hit films chronologically are: Cinderella (1950),
Quo Vadis, The Greatest Show on Earth, Peter Pan, Rear Window,
Lady and the *****, Ten Commandments, Bridge on the River
Kwai, South Pacific, and Ben-Hur of 1959.

However Taking The Entire Decade Of 1950s Collectively,
The Top Films Get Rated As Follows Respectively:
The Ten Commandments, followed by Lady and the *****, Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty, Bridge on the River Kwai, Around the World in Eighty Days, This is Cinerama, The Greatest Show on Earth, Rear Window, South Pacific, The Robe, Giant, Seven Wonders of the World, White Christmas, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Sayonara, Demetrius and the Gladiator, Peyton Place, Some Like It Hot, Quo Vadis, and Auntie Mame.

Film Debuts By Rising Stars During The 1950s :
The decade of the ‘50s saw a number of famous film stars making
their first appearance.
There was Peter Sellers in ‘The Black Rose’, Marlon Brando in
‘The Men’, and actress Sophia Loren in ‘Toto Tarzan’.
Following year saw Charles Bronson in ‘You Are in the Navy Now’,
Audrey Hepburn in ‘Our Wild Oats’, and Grace Kelly, the future
Princess of Monaco, in her first film ‘Fourteen Hours’. (1951)
While **** Brigitte Bardot appeared in 1952 movie ‘Crazy for Love’; and 1953 saw Steve Mc Queen in ‘******* The Run’.
Jack Lemon, Paul Newman, and Omar Sharif featured in films
during 1954.
The following year saw Clint Eastwood, Shirley Mc Lean, Walter
Matthau, and Jane Mansfield, all of whom the audience adored.
The British actor Michael Cain appeared in 1956; also Elvis Presley
the youth icon in ‘Love Me Tender’ and as the future Rock and Roll
King!
In 1957 came Sean Connery, followed by Jack Nicholson, Christopher Plummer, and Vanessa Redgrave.
While the closing decade of the ‘50s saw James Coburn, along with
director, script writer, and producer Steven Spielberg, make their
debut appearance.

Deaths During The 1950s: This decade also saw the death of actors
like Humphrey Bogart, Tyron Power and Errol Flynn.
Including the death of producer and director of epic movies the
renowned Cecil B. De Mille!
Though I have conclude the Golden Age of Hollywood with the 50’s Decade,
The glitz and glamour of its Oscar Awards continue even to this day.
With its red carpet and lighted marquee appeal and fashion display!

CONTINUING THE HOLLYWOOD STORY WITH FEW TITBITS :
From Fort Lee of New Jersey we have travelled west to Hollywood,
California.
From the silent movie days to the first ‘talking picture’ with Warren
Bros’ film ‘The Jazz Singer’.  (06 Oct 1927)
On 31st July 1928 for the first time the audience heard the MGM’s
mascot Leo’s mighty roar!
While in July 1929 Warren Bros’ first all-talking and all- Technicolor
Film appeared titled - ‘On With The Show’.
Austrian born Hedy Lamarr shocked the audience appearing **** in a Czechoslovak film ‘Ecstasy’!  (1933)
She fled from her husband to join MGM, becoming a star of the
‘40s and the ‘50s.
The ‘Private Life of Henry VII’ became the first British film to win the  American Academy Award.  (1933)
On 11Dec 1934, FOX released ‘Bright Eyes’ with Shirley Temple,
who became the first Child artist to win this Award!
While in 1937 Walt Disney released the first full animated feature
film titled - ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarf ‘.
The British film director Alfred Hitchcock who came to
Hollywood later;
Between 1940 and 1947, made great thrillers like 'Rebecca', ‘Notorious’, ‘Rear Window’, and ‘Dial M for ******’.
But he never won an Oscar as a Director!

THE GOLDEN GLOBE AWARD:
This award began in 1944 by the Foreign Correspondence Association at
the 20th Century Fox Studio.
To award critically acclaimed films and television shows, by awarding a
Scroll initially.
Later a Golden Globe was made on a pedestal, with a film strip around it.
In 1955 the Cecil B. De Mille Award was created, with De Mille as its first
recipient.

THE GRAMMY AWARD:
In 1959 The National Academy of Recording and Sciences sponsored the
First Grammy Award for music recorded during 1958.
When Frank Sinatra won for his album cover ‘Only The Lonely’, but he
did not sing.
Among the 28 other categories there was Ella Fitzgerald, and Count Basie
for his musical Dance Band Performance.
There was Kingston Trio’s song ‘Tom Dooly’, and the ‘Chipmunk Song’,
which brings back nostalgic memories of my school days!

CONCLUDING HOLLYWOOD STORY  WITH STUDIOS OF THE 1950s

Challenge Faced by the Movie Industry:
Now the challenge before the Movie Industry was how to adjust to the
rapidly changing conditions created by the growing TV Industry.
Resulting in loss of revenue, with viewers getting addicted to
their Domestic TV screen most conveniently!

The late 1950s saw two studios REPUBLIC and the RKO go out of business!
REPUBLIC from 1935- ‘59 based in Los Angeles, developed the careers of
John Wayne and Roy Rogers, and specializing in the Westerns.
RKO was one of the Big Five Studios of Hollywood along with Paramount,
MGM, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Brothers in those days.

RKO Studio which begun with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the ‘30s,
included actress Katherine Hepburn who holds the record for four Oscars
even to this day;
And later had Robert Mitchum and Carry Grant under an agreement.
But in 1948, RKO Studio came under the control Howard Hughes the
temperamental Industrialist.
Soon the scandal drive and litigation prone RKO Studio closed, while
other Big Four Studios had managed to remain afloat!


PARAMOUNT STUDIO:
Paramount Studio split into two separate companies in 1950.
Its Theatre chain later merged with ABC Radio & Television Network;
And they created an independent Production/Distribution Network.
Bing Crosby and Bob Hope had been Paramount’s two biggest stars.
Followed by actors like Alan Ladd, William Holden, Jerry Lewis, Dean
Martin, Charlton Heston, and Dorothy Lamour.
They also had the producer/director Cecil B. De Mille producing high-
grossing Epics like ‘Samson & Delilah’ and ‘The Ten Commandments’.
Also the movie maker Hal Wallis, who discovered Burt Lancaster and
Elvis Presley - two great talents!

20th CENTURY FOX:
Cinema Scope became FOX’s most successful technological innovation
with its hit film ‘The Robe’. (1953)
Its Darryl Zanuck had observed during the early ‘50s, that audience  
were more interested in escapist entertainments mainly.
So he turned to FOX to musicals, comedies, and adventure stories.
Biggest stars of FOX were Gregory Peck & Susan Hayward; also
stars like Victor Mature, Anne Baxter, and Richard Wind Mark.
Not forgetting Marilyn Monroe in her Cinema Scope Box Office hit
movie - ‘How to Marry a Millionaire’, which was also shown on
prime time TV, as a romantic comedy film of 1953.

WARREN BROTHERS:
During 1950 the studio was mainly a family managed company with
three brothers Harry, Albert, and Jack Warren.
To meet the challenges of that period, Warren Bros. released most of
its actors like James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Oliver de Havilland, -
Along with few others from their long-term contractual commitments;
Retaining only Errol Flynn, and Ronald Regan who went on to become
the future President.
Like 20th Century Fox, Warren Bros switched to musicals, comedies,
and adventure movies, with Doris Day as its biggest musical star.
The studio also entered into short term agreements with Gary Copper,
John Wayne, Gregory Peck, Patricia Neal, and Random Scott.
Warren Bros also became the first major studio to invest in 3-D
production of films, scoring a big hit with its 3-D  suspense thriller
‘House of Wax’ in 1953.

MINOR STUDIOS were mainly three, - United Artists, Columbia, and
The Universal.
They did not own any theatre chain, and specialized in low-budgeted
‘B’ Movies those days.
Now to cut a long story short it must be said, that Hollywood finally
did participate in the evolution of Television industry, which led to
their integration eventually.
Though strategies involving hardware development and ownership of
broadcast outlets remained unsuccessful unfortunately.
However, Hollywood did succeed through program supply like prime-
time series, and made-for-TV films for the growing TV market making
things more colorful!
Thus it could be said that the TV industry provided the film industry
with new opportunities,  laying the groundwork for its diversification
and concentration;
That characterized the entertainment industry during the latter half  
of our previous century.
I must now confess that I have not visited the movie theatre over the last
two decades!
I watch movies on my big screen TV and my Computer screen these days.
Old classical movies are all available on ‘You Tube’ for me, and I can watch
them any time whenever I am free!
Thanks for reading patiently, - Raj Nandy.
**ALL COPYRIGHTS ARE WITH THE AUTHOR RAJ NANDY OF NEW DELHI
Nigel Morgan Jun 2013
She sent it to me as a text message, that is an image of a quote in situ, a piece of interpretation in a gallery. Saturday morning and I was driving home from a week in a remote cottage on a mountain. I had stopped to take one last look at the sea, where I usually take one last look, and the phone bleeped. A text message, but no text.  Just a photo of some words. It made me smile, the impossibility of it. Epic poems and tapestry weaving. Of course there are connections, in that for centuries the epic subject has so often been the stuff of the tapestry weaver’s art. I say this glibly, but cannot name a particular tapestry where this might be so. Those vast Arthurian pieces by William Morris to pictures by Burne-Jones have an epic quality both in scale and in subject, but, to my shame, I can’t put a name to one.

These days the tapestry can be epic once more - in size and intention - thanks to the successful, moneyed contemporary artist and those communities of weavers at West Dean and at Edinburgh’s Dovecot. Think of Grayson Perry’s The Walthamstowe Tapestry, a vast 3 x 15 metres executed by Ghentian weavers, a veritable apocalyptic vision where ‘Everyman, spat out at birth in a pool of blood, is doomed and predestined to spend his life navigating a chaotic yet banal landscape of brands and consumerism’.  Gosh! Doesn’t that sound epic!

I was at the Dovecot a little while ago, but the public gallery was closed. The weavers were too busy finishing Victoria Crowe’s Large Tree Group to cope with visitors. You see, I do know a little about this world even though my tapestry weaving is the sum total of three weekends tuition, even though I have a very large loom once owned by Marta Rogoyska. It languishes next door in the room that was going to be where I was to weave, where I was going to become someone other than I am. This is what I feel - just sometimes - when I’m at my floor loom, if only for those brief spells when life languishes sufficiently for me be slow and calm enough to pick up the shuttles and find the right coloured yarns. But I digress. In fact putting together tapestry and epic poetry is a digression from the intention of the quote on the image from that text - (it was from a letter to Janey written in Iceland). Her husband, William Morris, reckoned one could (indeed should) be able to compose an epic poem and weave a tapestry.  

This notion, this idea that such a thing as being actively poetic and throwing a pick or two should go hand in hand, and, in Morris’ words, be a required skill (or ‘he’d better shut up’), seemed (and still does a day later) an absurdity. Would such a man (must be a man I suppose) ‘never do any good at all’ because he can’t weave and compose epic poetry simultaneously?  Clearly so.  But then Morris wove his tapestries very early in the morning - often on a loom in his bedroom. Janey, I imagine, as with ladies of her day - she wasn’t one, being a stableman’s daughter, but she became one reading fluently in French and Italian and playing Beethoven on the piano- she had her own bedroom.

Do you know there are nights when I wish for my own room, even when sleeping with the one I love, as so often I wake in the night, and I lie there afraid (because I love her dearly and care for her precious rest) to disturb her sleep with reading or making notes, both of which I do when I’m alone.
Yet how very seductive is the idea of joining my loved one in her own space, amongst her fallen clothes, her books and treasures, her archives and precious things, those many letters folded into her bedside bookcase, and the little black books full of tender poems and attempts at sketches her admirer has bequeathed her when distant and apart. Equally seductive is the possibility of the knock on the bedroom / workroom door, and there she’ll be there like the woman in Michael Donaghy’s poem, a poem I find every time I search for it in his Collected Works one of the most arousing and ravishing pieces of verse I know: it makes me smile and imagine.  . .  Her personal vanishing point, she said, came when she leant against his study door all warm and wet and whispered 'Paolo’. Only she’ll say something in a barely audible voice like ‘Can I disturb you?’ and with her sparkling smile come in, and bring with her two cats and the hint of a naked breast nestling in the gap of the fold of her yellow Chinese gown she holds close to herself - so when she kneels on my single bed this gown opens and her beauty falls before her, and I am wholly, utterly lost that such loveliness is and can be so . . .

When I see a beautiful house, as I did last Thursday, far in the distance by an estuary-side, sheltering beneath wooded hills, and moor and rock-coloured mountains, with its long veranda, painted white, I imagine. I imagine our imaginary home where, when our many children are not staying in the summer months and work is impossible, we will live our ‘together yet apart’ lives. And there will be the joy of work. I will be like Ben Nicholson in that Italian villa his father-in-law bought, and have my workroom / bedroom facing a stark hillside with nothing but a carpenter’s table to lay out my scores. Whilst she, like Winifred, will work at a tidy table in her bedroom, a vase of spring flowers against the window with the estuary and the mountains beyond. Yes, her bedroom, not his, though their bed, their wonderful wooden 19C Swiss bed of oak, occupies this room and yes, in his room there is just a single affair, but robust, that he would sleep on when lunch had been late and friends had called, or they had been out calling and he wanted to give her the premise of having to go back to work – to be alone - when in fact he was going to sleep and dream, but she? She would work into the warm afternoons with the barest breeze tickling her bare feet, her body moving with the remembrance of his caresses as she woke him that morning from his deep, dark slumber. ‘Your brown eyes’, he would whisper, ‘your dear brown eyes the colour of an autumn leaf damp with dew’. And she would surround him with kisses and touch of her firm, long body and (before she cut her plaits) let her course long hair flow back and forward across his chest. And she did this because she knew he would later need the loneliness of his own space, need to put her aside, whereas she loved the scent of him in the room in which she worked, with his discarded clothes, the neck-tie on the door hanger he only reluctantly wore.

Back to epic poetry and its possibility. Even on its own, as a single, focused activity it seems to me, unadventurous poet that I am, an impossibility. But then, had I lived in the 1860s, it would probably not have seemed so difficult. There was no Radio 4 blathering on, no bleeb of arriving texts on the mobile. There were servants to see to supper, a nanny to keep the children at bay. At Kelmscott there was glorious Gloucestershire silence - only the roll and squeak of the wagon in the road and the rooks roosting. So, in the early mornings Morris could kneel at his vertical loom and, with a Burne-Jones cartoon to follow set behind the warp. With his yarns ready to hand, it would be like a modern child’s painting by numbers, his mind would be free to explore the fairy domain, the Icelandic sagas, the Welsh Mabinogion, the Kalevara from Finland, and write (in his head) an epic poem. These were often elaborations and retellings in his epic verse style of Norse and Icelandic sagas with titles like Sigurd the Volsung. Paul Thompson once said of Morris  ‘his method was to think out a poem in his head while he was busy at some other work.  He would sit at an easel, charcoal or brush in hand, working away at a design while he muttered to himself, 'bumble-beeing' as his family called it; then, when he thought he had got the lines, he would get up from the easel, prowl round the room still muttering, returning occasionally to add a touch to the design; then suddenly he would dash to the table and write out twenty or so lines.  As his pen slowed down, he would be looking around, and in a moment would be at work on another design.  Later, Morris would look at what he had written, and if he did not like it he would put it aside and try again.  But this way of working meant that he never submitted a draft to the painful evaluation which poetry requires’.

Let’s try a little of Sigurd

There was a dwelling of Kings ere the world was waxen old;
Dukes were the door-wards there, and the roofs were thatched with gold;
Earls were the wrights that wrought it, and silver nailed its doors;
Earls' wives were the weaving-women, queens' daughters strewed its floors,

And the masters of its song-craft were the mightiest men that cast
The sails of the storm of battle down the bickering blast.
There dwelt men merry-hearted, and in hope exceeding great
Met the good days and the evil as they went the way of fate:
There the Gods were unforgotten, yea whiles they walked with men,

Though e'en in that world's beginning rose a murmur now and again
Of the midward time and the fading and the last of the latter days,
And the entering in of the terror, and the death of the People's Praise.

Oh dear. And to think he sustained such poetry for another 340 lines, and that’s just book 1 of 4. So what dear reader, dear sender of that text image encouraging me to weave and write, just what would epic poetry be now? Where must one go for inspiration? Somewhere in the realms of sci-fi, something after Star-Wars or Ninja Warriors. It could be post-apocalyptic, a tale of mutants and a world damaged by chemicals or economic melt-down. Maybe a rich adventure of travel on a distant planet (with Sigourney Weaver of course), featuring brave deeds and the selfless heroism of saving companions from deadly encounters with amazing animals, monsters even. Or is ‘epic’ something else, something altogether beyond the Pixar Studios or James Cameron’s imagination? Is the  ‘epic’ now the province of AI boldly generating the computer game in 4D?  

And the epic poem? People once bought and read such published romances as they now buy and engage with on-line games. This is where the epic now belongs. On the tablet, PlayStation3, the X-Box. But, but . . . Poetry is so alive and well as a performance phenomenon, and with that oh so vigorous and relentless beat. Hell, look who won the T.S.Eliot prize this year! Story-telling lives and there are tales to be told, even if they are set in housing estates and not the ice caves of the frozen planet Golp. Just think of children’s literature, so rich and often so wild. This is word invention that revisits unashamedly those myths and sagas Morris loved, but in a different guise, with different names, in worlds that still bring together the incredible geographies of mountains and deserts and wilderness places, with fortresses and walled cities, and the startling, still unknown, yet to be discovered ocean depths.

                                    And so let my tale begin . . . My epic poem.

                                                 THE SEAGASP OF ENNLI.
       A TALE IN VERSE OF EARTHQUAKE, ISLAND FASTNESS, MALEVOLENT SPIRITS,
                                                AND REDEMPTIVE LOVE.
Nigel Morgan Dec 2012
He said I’m the wrong shape. I could do with putting on a few pounds and, almost as an after thought he said, you’ll have to cut your hair – yourself.  I know she was an artist, and a mother, and a gardener. I had to admit to him I didn’t know any painters. My cousin Julie’s a sculptor – same thing he said – but I had to tell him I hadn’t yet looked at her painting, only what he showed us in his presentation.  He then told me exactly where in the National Museum of Wales I could see one of her paintings – Gallery 14 – and its from this period, a Parisiene picture. He suggested I might go to Cambridge and spend a day at a place called Kettles Yard. There are more Winifreds there than anywhere else in the UK, and many pictures by her close friend Christopher Wood.
 
Oh dear. This is difficult. The only thing going for me seems I’m about the right age and I’ve have children, though mine are older than hers in the production. I was so surprised to get this part, but as Michael said over the phone, your profile fits. Except for the weight and the hair, and I know nothing about painting. Why should I? Jeff told me, the composer Morton Feldman once said if you haven’t got a friend whose a painter, you’re in trouble. I’m in trouble. But he has very kind eyes and when he touched me gently on the shoulder after Lizzie and I sung that shells duet I had to look away.
 
Reaching down arm-deep into bright water
I gathered on white sand under waves
Shells, drifted up on beaches where I alone
Inhabit a finite world of years and days.
I reached my arm down a myriad years
To gather treasure from the yester-millennial sea-floor,
Held in my fingers forms shaped on the day of creation….
 
They sleep on the ocean floor like humming-tops
Whose music is the mother-of-pearl octave of the rainbow,
Harmonious shells that whisper for ever in our ears,
‘The world that you inhabit has not yet been created’

 
Mind you, I don’t envy Lizzie being Kathleen Raine. Now that is a difficult part, even though she’s only in Act 2. Raine was definitely odd. He says I have to understand their friendship, because there was something about it that made them both more than they were. I don’t understand that.
 
Jane and the children are amazing already. Martin (my ‘other’ half Ben Nicholson) said they’d been rehearsing with Robert because his wife (Robert’s wife Debbie) is at WNO and they were scared about this one. I’ll say this for him he knows exactly how children interrupt, constantly. It’s clever the way he uses the interruptions to change direction of the dialogue. Conversations are often left unfinished. The bit when that ***** Barbara visits the apartment unexpectedly is brilliant. She’s completely demolished by these kids of her lover.
 
But those letters . . . he said, can you imagine your husband writing to you over a period of 40 years? Quite a thought that. David wrote to me a few times when I was in Madrid for Cosi just after we’d met, but it was all telephone calls after that. Why waste paper, time and a stamp. But I take his point – their letters are so beautiful – and they were separated for God’s sake. He’d gone off with another woman, and even brought her to Paris. And you could not have two totally different women – she ,slight, chain-smoking, work-a-holic, sharp-tongued with that Yorkshire edge, and me with ‘a quiet voice, trying always to be gentle and kind ‘– W would be called an earth-mother these days. She was a kind of hippie, only she had money – mind you most of those hippies of the 60s had money otherwise they couldn’t have done drugs (heard that on Radio 4 last week in a programme about Richard Brautigan). But they wrote to each other almost every day.
 
Dear Ben,.
            Do you know there are several kinds of happiness, and there is one sort which I have found. It is the sort that is within oneself, enjoying fresh promise, and taking all the experiences of life that one has been through, so-called sad ones and so-called happy ones, to make up understanding that is further on than joy or sorrow. I have been extremely lucky – I have had ten years of companionship with an ‘all-time’ painter, working in the medium of classic eternity and that has been better than a lifetime with any second-class person – isn’t it - I have found it so…
 
Best love Winifred

 
What’s clever about the letter sequences is the way the two-way correspondence is handled as a duet and right in the middle of it you’ll get a flashback – like Winifred suddenly remembering her first meeting with Ben.
 
I heard this voice
In the room next door
I couldn’t breath, I couldn’t move
I knew, I knew for certain
This was the man I would marry.
And when we were introduced
He seemed to know this too.

 
We gaily call this an opera, but it’s not. It’s something else. It simply doesn’t do what you think it’s going to do. Even when you do something for a second time the accompaniment doesn’t do what you expect and remembered. It’s this open-form business. Something else I know nothing about. He mentioned Umberto Eco – now I’ve read Name of the Rose. When Braque or Mondrian or Jan Eps visit unannounced I have no idea which one it’s going to be – these guys just used to turn up. Sometimes two at once. W didn’t invite them. They came for her English hospitality (home baking I think) and her beautiful apartment come studio – beautiful, because she made it so. Her French was appalling, and this is difficult because I speak quite well, and now I have to speak like an idiot. Bridget  (playing Cissy the Cumbrian nanny) having her French lesson is a hoot, and with the children correcting her all the time, it’s lovely.
 
He was very sweet when we broke for lunch. Sara, he said, as I collapsed into an auditorium seat to find my bag and mobile, Sara, we’ve got to find you a painter to spend a day with . . . so you’ll know how to stand in front of an easel.  I phoned Sarah Jane Brown who has a studio in Cardiff and she’d love to meet you. Here’s her number. She paints flowers and landscapes – as well as the abstract stuff - just like Winifred. Her tutor at the RCA actually knew Winifred. And with that he disappeared to a dark corner of the theatre and unwrapped his sandwiches. You can tell he’s not into break discussions with Julian or Michael. I think he’s terribly shy. He’s interested in the cast and so he picks them off one by one. Julian I know doesn’t like this. I think everything needs to go through me, he said at the end of yesterday’s rehearsal. Who does he think he is?! Lizzie reminded Julian he was the composer and what he doesn’t know about this whole period and its characters isn’t knowledge. Liz thinks he’s a sweetie – and she’s sung his Raine settings at Branwyn Hall last year – with Robert who was his MD with BBCNOW. Liz knows Julian hasn’t done his usual homework because he’s got this production in Birmingham on the boil. Unknown Colour is a distraction he can do without.
 
This afternoon it’s back to the mayhem of those ensemble scenes in Act 1. They’re quite crazy, but I’m already beginning to feel I can start to be someone other than me. Did you know I have this lovely song? It’s quite Sondheim . . .
 
*I like to have a picture in my room.
Without one, my room feels bare
however much furniture is there;
Pictures play so many roles.
My room has too much going on in it
for something extravagant.
In the morning it is a sanctuary,
in the daytime a factory,
in the evening a place of festivity,
and through the night a place of rest.
 
I want a window in it,  
And a focal point, something alive and silent.
A bunch of flowers on the window sill?
Yes, but they will wither.
A cat curled up on the hearth?
Yes, but it will go away and prowl upon the rooftops.
 
A picture will always be there.
It will make no sound. It will wait.
If it is true I shall never grow tired of it.
I shall see something fresh in it
when I glance at it tomorrow.
It will always be my friend.
RAJ NANDY Aug 2017
Dear Readers, I have tried to cover the salient features of this True Story in free flowing verse mainly with end rhymes. If you read it loud, you can hear the chimes! Due to the short attention span of my readers I had to cut short this long story, and conclude with the
Golden Era of Hollywood by stretching it up to the 1950s only. When TV began to challenge the Big Screen Cinema seriously! I have used only a part of my notes here. Kindly read the
entire composition during your Spare Time dear Readers. I wish there was a provision for posting a few interesting photographs for you here. Best wishes, - Raj Nandy, New Delhi.  

                THE LEGEND OF HOLLYWOOD :
                      THE AMERICAN  DREAM
                              BY RAJ NANDY

               A SHORT  HISTORICAL  BACKGROUND
Since the earliest days, optical toys, shadow shows, and ‘magic
lanterns’, had created the illusion of motion.
This concept was first described by Mark Roget in 1824 as  
the persistent of vision.
Giving impetus to the development of big screen cinema with its
close-ups, capturing all controlled and subtle expressions!
The actors were no longer required to shout out their parts with
exaggerated actions as on the Elizabethan Stage.
Now even a single tear drop could get noticed easily by the entire
movie audience!
With the best scene being included and edited after a few retakes.
To Thomas Edison and his able assistant William Rogers we owe the invention of Kinetoscope, the first movie camera.
On the grounds of his West Orange, New Jersey laboratory, Edison
built his first movie studio called the ‘Black Maria’.   (1893)
He also purchased a string of patents related to motion picture
Camera;
Forming the Edison Trust, - a cartel that took control of the Film
Industry entire!

Fort Lee, New Jersey:
On a small borough on the opposite bank of the Hudson River lay
the deserted Fort Lee.
Here scores of film production crews descended armed with picture Cameras, on this isolated part of New Jersey!
In 1907 Edison’s company came there to shoot a short silent film –
‘Rescue From an Eagle’s Nest’,
Which featured for the first time the actor and director DW Griffith.
The independent Chaplin Film Company built the first permanent
movie studio in 1910 in Fort Lee.
While some of the biggest Hollywood studios like the Universal,
MGM, and 20th Century Fox, had their roots in Fort Lee.
Some of the famous stars of the silent movie era included ‘Fatty’
Arbuckle, Will Rogers, Mary Pickford, Dorothy and Lillian Gish,
Lionel Barrymore, Rudolph Valentine and Pearl White.
In those days there were no reflectors and electric arch lights.
So movies were made on rooftops to capture the bright Sunlight!
During unpredictable bad weather days, filming had to be stopped
despite the revolving stage which was made, -
To rotate and capture the sunlight before the lights started to fade!

Shift from New Jersey to West Coast California:
Now Edison who held the patents for the bulb, phonograph, and the Camera, had exhibited a near monopoly;
On the production, distribution, and exhibition of the movies which made this budding industry to shift to California from New Jersey!
California with its natural scenery, its open range, mountains, desert, and snow country, had the basic ingredients for the movie industry.
But most importantly, California had bright Sunshine for almost 365 days of the year.
While eight miles away from Hollywood lay the port city of Los Angeles with its cheap labor.

                        THE  RISE  OF  HOLLYWOOD
It was a real estate tycoon Harvey Wilcox and his wife Daeida from
Kansas, who during the 1880s founded ‘Hollywood’ as a community for like-minded temperate followers.
It is generally said that Daeida gave the name Hollywood perhaps
due to the area's abundant red-berried shrubs - known as
California Holly!
Spring blossoms around and above the Hollywood Hills with its rich variety,  gave it a touch of paradise for all to see!
Hollywood was incorporated as a municipality in 1903, and during
1910 had unified with the city of Los Angeles.
While a year later, the first film studio had moved in from New
Jersey, to escape Thomas Edison’s monopoly!    (1911)

In 1913 Cecil B. De Mille and Jesse Lasky, had leased a barn with
studio facilities.
And directed the first feature length film ‘Squaw Man’ in 1914.
Today this studio is home to Hollywood Heritage Museum as we get to see.
The timeless symbol of Hollywood film industry that famous sign on top of Mount Lee, was put up by a real estate developer in 1923.  
This sign had read as ‘’HOLLY WOOD LAND’’ initially.
Despite decades of run-ins with vandals and pranksters, it managed to hang on to its prime location near the summit of the Hollywood Hills.
The last restoration work was carried out in 1978 initiated by Hugh
Hefner of the ******* Magazine.
Those nine white letters 45 feet tall now read ‘HOLLYWOOD’,  has become a landmark and America’s cultural icon,
And an evocative symbol for ambition, glamour, and dreams!
Forever enticing aspiring actors to flock to Hollywood, hypnotized by lure of the Big Screen!

                     GOLDEN AGE OF HOLLYWOOD
The Silent Movie Era which began in 1895, ended in 1935 with the
production of ‘Dance of Virgins’, filmed entirely in the island of Bali.
The first Sound film ‘The Jazz Singer’ by Warner Bros. was made with a Vitaphone sound-on-disc technology.  (October 1927)
Despite the Great Depression of the 1930s, this decade along with the 1940s have been regarded by some as Hollywood’s Golden Age.
However, I think that this Golden Age includes the decades of the
1940s and the 1950s instead.
When the advent of Television began to challenge the Film Industry
itself !

First Academy Award:
On 16th May 1929 in the Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard,
the First Academy Award presentation was held.
Around 270 people were in attendance, and tickets were priced at
$5 per head.
When the best films of 1927 & 1928 were honored by the Academy
of Motion Production and Sciences, or the AMPS.
Emil Jennings became the best actor, and Janet Gaynor the best actress.
Special Award went to Charlie Chaplin for his contribution to the
silent movie era and for his silent film ‘The Circus’.
While Warren Brothers was commended for making the first talking picture ‘The Jazz Singer’, - also receiving a Special Award!
Now, the origin of the term ‘OSCAR’ has remained disputed.
The Academy adopted this name from 1939 onwards it is stated.
OSCAR award has now become “the stuff dreams are made of”!
It is a gold-plated statuette of a knight 13.5 inches in height, weighing 8.5 pounds, was designed by MGM’s art director Cedric Gibbons.
Annually awarded for honoring and encouraging excellence in all
facets of motion picture productions.

Movies During the Great Depression Era (1929-1941):
Musicals and dance movies starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers provided escapism and good entertainment during this age.
“Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did. She just did it
backwards and in high heels,” - the critics had said.
This compatible pair entertained the viewers for almost one and
a half decade.
During the ‘30s, gangster movies were popular starring James Cagey, Humphrey Bogart, and Edward G. Robinson.
While family movies had their popular child artist Shirley Temple.
Swashbuckler films of the Golden Age saw the sword fighting scenes of Douglas Fairbank and Errol Flynn.
Flynn got idolized playing ‘Robin Hood’, this film was released in 1938 on the Big Screen.
Story of the American Civil War got presented in the epic ‘Gone With The Wind’ (1939) with Clarke Gable and Vivian Leigh.
This movie received 8 Oscars including the award for the Best Film, - creating a landmark in motion picture’s history!
More serious movies like John Steinbeck’s ‘Grapes of Wrath’ and John Ford’s  ‘How Green Was My Valley’, were released in 1940 and 1941 respectively.
While the viewers escaped that depressive age to the magical world
of  ‘Wizard of Oz’ with its actress Judy Garland most eagerly!
Let us not forget John Wayne the King of the Westerns, who began
his acting career in the 1930s with his movie ‘The Big Trail’;
He went on to complete 84 films before his career came to an end.
Beginning of the 40s also saw Bob Hope and the crooner Bing Crosby, who entertained the public and also the fighting troops.
For the Second World War (1939-45) had interrupted the Golden Age of Hollywood!
When actors like Henry Fonda, Clarke Gable, James Stewart and
Douglas Fairbanks joined the armed forces temporarily leaving
Hollywood.
Few propaganda movies supporting the war efforts were also made.
While landmark movies like ‘Philadelphia Story’, ‘Casablanca’, ‘Citizen Kane’, ‘The Best Years of Our Lives’, were some of the most successful movies of that decade.  (The 1940s)
Now I come towards the end of my Hollywood Story with the decade  of the 1950s, thereby extending the period of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Since having past the Great Depression and the Second World War,  
The Hollywood movie industry truly matured and came of age.

                        HOLLYWOOD  OF  THE  1950s
Backgroun­d:
The decade of the ‘50s was known for its post-war affluence and
choice of leisure time activities.
It was a decade of middle-class values, fast-food restaurants, and
drive-in- movies;
Of ‘baby-boom’, all-electric home, the first credit cards, and new fast moving cars like the Ford, Plymouth, Buick, Hudson, and Chevrolet.
But not forgetting the white racist terrorism in the Southern States!
This era saw the beginning of Cold War, with Dwight D. Eisenhower succeeding Harry S. Truman as the American President.
But for the film industry, most importantly, what really mattered  
was the advent of the Domestic TV.
When the older viewers preferred to stay at home instead of going
out to the movies.
By 1950, 10.5 million US homes had a television set, and on the
30th December 1953, the first Color TV went on sale!
Film industries used techniques such as Cinemascope, Vista Vision,
and gimmicks like 3-D techniques,
To get back their former movie audience back on their seats!
However, the big scene spectacle films did retain its charm and
fantasy.
Since fantasy epics like ‘The Story of Robin Hood’, and Biblical epics like ‘The Robe’, ‘Quo Vadis’, ‘The Ten Commandments’ and ‘Ben-Hur’, did retain its big screen visual appeal.
‘The Robe’ released on 16th September 1953, was the first film shot
and projected in Cinema Scope;
In which special lenses were used to compress a wide image into a
standard frame and then expanded it again during projection;
Resulting in an image almost two and a half times as high and also as wide, - captivating the viewers imagination!

Demand For New Themes During The 1950s :
The idealized portrayal of men and women since the Second World War,
Now failed to satisfy the youth who sought exciting symbols for rebellion.
So Hollywood responded with anti-heroes with stars like James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Paul Newman.
They replaced conventional actors like Tyron Power, Van Johnson, and Robert Taylor to a great extent, to meet the requirement of the age.
Anti-heroines included Ava Gardner, Kim Novak, and Marilyn Monroe with her vibrant *** appeal;
They provided excitement for the new generation with a change of scene.
Themes of rebellion against established authority was present in many Rock and Roll songs,
Including the 1954 Bill Hailey and His Comets’ ‘Rock Around the Clock’.
The era also saw rise to stardom of Elvis Presley the teen heartthrob!
Meeting the youthful aspirations with his songs like ‘Jailhouse Rock’!
I recall the lyrics of this 1957 film ‘Jailhouse Rock’ of my school days, which had featured the youth icon Elvis:
   “The Warden threw a party in the county jail,
     The prison band was there and they began to wail.
     The band was jumping and the joint began to sing,
     You should’ve heard them knocked-out jail bird sing.
     Let’s rock, everybody in the whole cell block……………
     Spider Murphy played the tenor saxophone,
     Little Joe was blowing the slide trombone.
     The drummer boy from Illinois went crash, boom, bang!
     The whole rhythm section was the Purple Gang, Let's rock...

Rock and Roll music began to tear down color barriers, and Afro-
American musicians like Chuck Berry and Little Richard became
very popular!
Now I must caution my readers that thousands of feature films got  released during this eventful decade in Hollywood.
To cover them all within this limited space becomes an impossible
task, which may kindly be understood !
However, I shall try to do so in a summarized form as best as I could.

Box Office Hits Year-Wise From 1950 To 1959 :
Top Ten Year-Wise hit films chronologically are: Cinderella (1950),
Quo Vadis, The Greatest Show on Earth, Peter Pan, Rear Window,
Lady and the *****, Ten Commandments, Bridge on the River
Kwai, South Pacific, and Ben-Hur of 1959.

However Taking The Entire Decade Of 1950s Collectively,
The Top Films Get Rated As Follows Respectively:
The Ten Commandments, followed by Lady and the *****, Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty, Bridge on the River Kwai, Around the World in Eighty Days, This is Cinerama, The Greatest Show on Earth, Rear Window, South Pacific, The Robe, Giant, Seven Wonders of the World, White Christmas, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Sayonara, Demetrius and the Gladiator, Peyton Place, Some Like It Hot, Quo Vadis, and Auntie Mame.

Film Debuts By Rising Stars During The 1950s :
The decade of the ‘50s saw a number of famous film stars making
their first appearance.
There was Peter Sellers in ‘The Black Rose’, Marlon Brando in
‘The Men’, and actress Sophia Loren in ‘Toto Tarzan’.
Following year saw Charles Bronson in ‘You Are in the Navy Now’,
Audrey Hepburn in ‘Our Wild Oats’, and Grace Kelly, the future
Princess of Monaco, in her first film ‘Fourteen Hours’. (1951)
While **** Brigitte Bardot appeared in 1952 movie ‘Crazy for Love’; and 1953 saw Steve Mc Queen in ‘******* The Run’.
Jack Lemon, Paul Newman, and Omar Sharif featured in films
during 1954.
The following year saw Clint Eastwood, Shirley Mc Lean, Walter
Matthau, and Jane Mansfield, all of whom the audience adored.
The British actor Michael Cain appeared in 1956; also Elvis Presley
the youth icon in ‘Love Me Tender’ and as the future Rock and Roll
King!
In 1957 came Sean Connery, followed by Jack Nicholson, Christopher Plummer, and Vanessa Redgrave.
While the closing decade of the ‘50s saw James Coburn, along with
director, script writer, and producer Steven Spielberg, make their
debut appearance.

Death During The 1950s: This decade also saw the death of actors
like Humphrey Bogart, Tyron Power and Errol Flynn.
Including the death of producer and director of epic movies the
renowned Cecil B. De Mille!
Though I have conclude the Golden Age of Hollywood with the 50’s Decade,
The glitz and glamour of its Oscar Awards continue even to this day.
With its red carpet and lighted marquee appeal and fashion display!

CONTINUING THE HOLLYWOOD STORY  WITH  FEW TITBITS
From Fort Lee of New Jersey we have traveled west to Hollywood,
California.
From the silent movie days to the first ‘talking picture’ with Warren
Bros’ film ‘The Jazz Singer’.  (06 Oct 1927)
On 31st July 1928 for the first time the audience heard the MGM’s
mascot Leo’s mighty roar!
While in July 1929 Warren Bros’ first all-talking and all- Technicolor
Film appeared titled - ‘On With The Show’.
Austrian born Hedy Lamarr shocked the audience appearing **** in a Czechoslovak film ‘Ecstasy’!  (1933)
She fled from her husband to join MGM, becoming a star of the
‘40s and the ‘50s.
The ‘Private Life of Henry VII’ became the first British film to win the American Academy Award.  (1933)
On 11Dec 1934, FOX released ‘Bright Eyes’ with Shirley Temple, who  became the first Child artist to win this Award!
While in 1937 Walt Disney released the first full animated feature film titled - ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarf ‘.
The British film director Alfred Hitchcock who came to Hollywood later;
Between 1940 and 1947, made great thrillers like ‘Rebecca’, ‘Notorious’,‘Rear Window’, and ‘Dial M for ******’.
But he never won an Academy Award as a Director!

THE GOLDEN GLOBE AWARD:
This award began in 1944 by the Foreign Correspondence Association at
Nigel Morgan Nov 2012
1
 
Here’s a sunny card to cheer up your hospital room.
Kate’s Flowers c. 1936 by Winifred Nicholson
So glad you’ve got your own room
And can therefore do a bit more of what you want to.
Take it easy though!

 
This painting is not what it seems.
Taking the long long look
that Jeanette Winterson recommends
there’s this abundance of orange
and its close friend yellow:
plenty and laughter
joining hands with
wisdom and calm.
Sometimes known as Kate’s Bunch
It’s an oil on plywood,
painted in Paris.
Two vases, daffodils and lilies,
the latter’s petals fallen on
a polished table, mahogany possibly,
and spread about by a gust of wind,
or perhaps a passing child. Kate
her first born, her miracle child
just seven when this painting was made.
 
2
 
There, sitting in front of us
in the stalls in the Town Hall,
was Stockhausen himself,
resplendent in the orange jumper
he always seemed to wear
in the last years of his life.

Because he invariably wore
white shirts and white jeans
an orange jumper, scarf
and jacket seemed sensible
garb for an angel from Sirius,
particularly when working in his garden.
At a concert he’d been known
to sport a purple scarf.
Orange and purple:
two colours that defy rhyme
but clearly not the reason
of this genius from another planet.
  
3
 
This Orange is Ecstatic.
Its theme of six quick notes,
almost never leaves the music.

Composer Michael Torke
slows it down, smooths it out,
it’s so quick and catchy
momentum builds up quickly;
it simply sounds (almost) unstoppable.
It sure is! Such fun,
and so good to listen to
because you never loose the thread.
Ok, the tune cycles round your head
but the instruments change
and there’s lots of extra tunes
playing away like good buddies.
This is music you can’t help smiling to.
It’s Ecstatic and Orange.

4
 
Did you know there’s a Music of Colour?
It is so new that few people,
except those who are creating it,
are aware that it exists.

At all.
 
Colour has seven degrees
of depth intensity.
With Orange it's
Alabaster
Apricot
Fire
Fox
Copper
Tobacco
Black coffee
 
Colour has seven degrees
between the shade of its hue
to its neutralization.
With orange it's
flame
sand
ochre
bistre
fawn
dun
mud
 
Oh Winifred, have you any idea
of the song your colours sing?
How orange and yellow
and blue and white
and almost purple
with a little green
make music become a picture.
 
5
 
I bought some orange tights! X
Oh Gosh! X
I’m not wearing them though . . . X
There’s a time and place for orange tights . . .
wait for (poetic) instructions please . . . X
Curiouser and curiouser . . . X

 
You see I bought this frock
in a charity shop.
Folly green and Pointing white
it was pleasantly patterned,
though a small fourteen,
and knowing he’d like it
I put it on one night
before we went to bed.
And he said:
‘You know it would be just right
with a pair of orange tights.’
And so it is.
Just right.

6

Dearest,
don’t let me touch you
yet, above the knee
where this warm colour
flows towards that centre
of your movements’ grace,
where lower limbs join
to kiss and stroke each inner thigh,
those quiet smooth planes of softest skin
that inviting so the caress of a hand,
daring so the intimate touch of a cheek.
Let orange keep you close to the possibility of passion
to the glow of your beauty’s length and line
where the firmness of your standing self
will shine out and speak of purpose
and of love’s sweet gift.
Composers often use quotation and/or sampling. In these six poems I've used short extracts variously from a get well card, a newspaper article, an Internet review, an essay by an artist and a text exchange. These extracts are always marked in italics.
Nigel Morgan Dec 2012
‘This is a pleasure. A composer in our midst, and you’re seeing Plas Brondanw at its June best.’ Amabel strides across the lawn from house to the table Sally has laid for tea. Tea for three in the almost shade of the vast plain tree, and nearly the height of the house. Look up into its branches. It is convalescing after major surgery, ropes and bindings still in place.
 
Yes, I am certainly seeing this Welsh manor house, the home of the William-Ellis family for four hundred years, on a day of days. The mountains that ring this estate seem to take the sky blue into themselves. They look almost fragile in the heat.
 
‘Nigel, you’re here?’ Clough appears next. He sounds surprised, as though the journey across Snowdonia was trepidatious adventure. ‘Of course you are, and on this glorious day. Glorious, glorious. You’ve walked up from below perhaps? Of course, of course. Did you detour to the ruin? You must. We’ll walk down after tea.’
 
And he flicks the tails of his russet brown frock coat behind him and sits on the marble bench beside Amabel. She is a little frail at 85, but the twinkling eyes hardly leave my face. Clough is checking the garden for birds. A yellowhammer swoops up from the lower garden and is gone. He gestures as though miming its flight. There are curious bird-like calls from the house. Amabel turns house-ward.
 
‘Our parrots,’ she says with a girlish smile.
 
‘Your letter was so sweet you know.’ She continues. ‘Fancy composing a piece about our village. We’ve had a film, that TV series, so many books, and now music. So exciting. And when do we hear this?’
 
I explain that the BBC will be filming and recording next month, but tomorrow David will appear with his double bass, a cameraman and a sound recordist to ‘do’ the cadenzas in some of the more intriguing locations. And he will come here to see how it sounds in the ‘vale’.
 
‘Are we doing luncheon for the BBC men? They are all men I suppose? When we were on Gardeners’ World it was all gals with clipboards and dark glasses, and it was raining for heaven’s sake. They had no idea about the right shoes, except that Alys person who interviewed me and was so lovely about the topiary and the fireman’s room. Now she wore a sensible skirt and the kind of sandals I wear in the garden. Of course we had to go to Mary’s house to see the thing as you know Clough won’t have a television in the house.’
 
‘I loath the sound of it from a distance. There’s nothing worse that hearing disembodied voices and music. Why do they have to put music with everything? I won’t go near a shop if there’s that canned music about.’
 
‘But surely it was TV’s The Prisoner that put the place on the map,’ I venture to suggest.
 
‘Oh yes, yes, but the mess, and all those Japanese descending on us with questions we simply couldn’t answer. I have to this day no i------de-------a-------‘, he stretches this word like a piece of elastic as far as it might go before breaking in two, ‘ simply no I------de------a------ what the whole thing was about.’ He pauses to take a tea cup freshly poured by Amabel. ‘Patrick was a dear though, and stayed with us of course. He loved the light of the place and would get up before dawn to watch the sun rise over the mountains at the back of us.’
 
‘But I digress. Music, music, yes music . . . ‘ Amabel takes his lead
 
‘We’ve had concerts before at P. outside in the formal gardens by AJ’s studio.’ She has placed her hands on her green velvet skirt and leans forward purposefully. ‘He had musicians about all the time and used to play the piano himself vigorously in the early hours of the morning. Showing off to those models that used to appear. I remember walking past his studio early one morning and there he was asleep on the floor with two of them . . .’
 
Clough smiles and laughs, laughs and smiles at a memory from the late 1920s.
 
‘Everyone thought we were completely mad to do the village.’ He leans back against the gentle curve of the balustrade, and closes his eyes for a moment. ‘Completely mad.’
 
It’s cool under the tree, but where the sunlight strays through my hand seems to gather freckles by the minute. I am enjoying the second slice of Mary’s Bara Brith. ‘It’s the marmalade,’ says Amabel, realising my delight in the texture and taste, ‘Clough brought the recipe back from Ceylon and I’ve taught all my cooks to make it. Of course, Mary isn’t a cook, she’s everything. A wonder, but you’ll discover this later at dinner. You are staying? And you’re going to play too?’
 
I’m certainly going to play in the drawing room studio on the third floor. It’s distractingly full of paintings by ‘friends’ – Duncan Grant, Mondrian, Augustus John, Patrick Heron, Winifred Nicholson (she so loved the garden but would bring that awful Raine woman with her). There’s  Clough’s architectural watercolours (now collectors want these things I used to wiz off for clients – stupid prices – just wish I’d kept more behind before giving them to the AA – (The Architectural Association ed.) And so many books, first editions everywhere. Photographs of Amabel’s flying saucer investigations occupy a shelf along with her many books on fairy tales and four novels, a batch of biographies and pictures of the two girls Susan and Charlotte as teenagers. Susan’s pottery features prominently. There’s a Panda skin from Luchan under the piano.
 
These two eighty somethings have been working since 8.0am. ‘We don’t bother with lunch.’ Amabel is reviewing the latest Ursula le Guin. ‘I stayed with her in Oregon last May. A lovely little house by the sea. Such a darling, and what a gardener! She creates all the ideas for her books in her garden. I so wish I could, but there’s just too much to distract me. Gardening is a serious business because although Jane comes over from Corrieg and says no to this and no to that and I have to stand my corner,  I have to concentrate and go to my books. Did you know the RHS voted this one of the ten most significant gardens in the UK? But look, there’s no one here today except you!’
 
No one but me. And tea is over. ‘A little rest before your endeavours perhaps,’ says Clough, probably anxious to get back to letter to Kenzo Piano.
 
‘Now let’s go and say hello to the fireman,’ says Amabel who takes my arm. And so we walk through the topiary to her favourite ‘room’,  a water feature with the fireman on his column (mid pond). ‘In memory of the great fire, ‘ she says. ‘He keeps a keen eye on the building now.’ He is a two-foot cherub with a hose and wearing a fireman’s helmet.
 
The pond reflects the column and the fireman looks down on us as we gaze into the pool. ‘Health, ‘ she says, ‘We keep a keen eye on it.’
 
The parrots are singing wildly. I didn’t realise they sang. I thought they squawked.
 
‘Will they sing when I play?’ I ask.
 
‘Undoubtedly,’ Amabel says with her girlish smile and squeezes my arm.
This is a piece of fantasy. Clough and Amabel Williams-Ellis created the Italianate village of Portmeirion in North Wales. I visited their beautiful home and garden ten miles away at Brondanw in Snowdonia and found myself imagining this story. Such is the power of place to sometimes conjure up those who make it so.
Matloob Bokhari Oct 2014
THE LIGHT OF LIBERTY
Matloob Bokhari


Peace be upon you, O daughter of the Chief of prophets.
Peace be upon you, O daughter of God's friend.
Peace be upon you, O daughter of the lady of Jannah.
Peace be upon you, who inherited bravery, fluency from Ali.
Peace be upon you, who became a symbol of liberty.
Peace be upon you, who is the lady of knowledge, patience.
Peace be upon you, who practiced what she taught.
Peace be upon you, who spoke against despotic institutions.
Peace be upon you, who challenged miseries with a message.
Peace be upon you, who remained entangled in tribulations.
Peace be upon you, who was paraded from place to place.
Peace be upon you, who  completed  mission when  all were dead.
Peace be upon you, who un-masked Godless regime.
Peace be upon you, who sowed seeds of awareness.
Peace be upon you, who delivered sermons on freedom.
Peace be upon you, who rescued the spirit of Islam.
Peace be upon you, who criticized terror in courts.
Peace be upon you, who prayed;" Lord! Accept sacrifice."
Peace be upon you, who in the  sad night remained in   prayers.
Peace be upon you, whose speeches silenced crafty intriguers.
Peace be upon you, whose name will remain eternal in history
Peace be upon you, whose lifestyle inspires   generations.
Peace be upon you, who said "God's curse on tyrants"
Peace be upon you, who forced tyranny to take refuge.
Peace be upon you, who said, "Our memory will never die."
Peace be upon you, who won battle of human rights.
Peace be upon you, who is a sun in history of humanity.

Michele Vizzotti-White: Hazrat Zainab challenged miseries with a message, if only more people had this gift eh there is always tomorrow :She  is a sun in history of humanity, yea def.
God bless the smart, beautiful and brave spirits in the world. ( na na three cheers to Hazrat Zainab :)




Kevin M. Hibshman : You are a light, Matloob!

Isabelle Black Smith: I have read parts of Quran. I need to read more. The Quran is indeed a holy text, filled with much wisdom. Thank you for telling about Hazrat Zainab . It is most interesting. I love the study of
history. The story of where we have been as people is fascinating to me. I do feel that in order for us to be successful in our future and avoid
  repeating the mistakes of our past we must truly have an understanding of where it is that we have been. Such a courageous woman this Hazrat Zainab was to speak out so boldly against tyranny in her time. Truly inspiring! You've given me some more reading to find out more about this remarkable woman, I think. Thank you for the introduction of this lady .  And such a wonderful meditation in your poem. A fitting tribute to this holy and inspiring woman of justice and peace.




Neil Perry:  I'd never heard of Hazrat Zainab  before, but she seemed an interesting person who was against injustice.



Em Meilė : This is a beautiful story plucked from history...and you have paid great honor and homage to our brave predecessor Hazrat Zainab, with your wise and beautiful words.  I stand beside you, Matloob, as we plant the seeds together.




Satyender ParkashAas: Peace be upon you, who prayed, mindful,idealistic,inspiring the human fully. I love this too.


Tina Farnworth : I am an atheist but Hazrat Zainab  sounds like an interesting lady! A strong woman indeed!

Tod McNeal: Beautiful Matloob! Had a guy friend me and begin posting all kind of hateful spew against Muslims on my page. That sort of thing is divisive and not in Unity. There are Muslims who can't stand Christians and Christians who can't stand Muslims. Both are not living in the light of LOVE that both religions place at the highest order of importance. Sadly both Holy books associated with the respective religions have plenty of quotable fodder (and even more sadly actionable fodder) for those whom wish to be divisive and hateful to others. ONE LOVE is not just Christian to Christian or Muslim to Muslim...it is UNITY with all. That is how I feel.


Ann Carruth Donoghue: Very powerful write, bravo x
John Castellenas : I like your thoughts and the purpose of this poem.




Kristine Nicholson: Yes, it is the people with goodness in their hearts who make Spirit shine through the words & institutions of religion! Your Ode to Hazrat  Zainab is glorious! :) Ken


Flora Vasconcelos : Peace be upon the suffering flesh , the suffocated souls , the barbed-wired hearts , the walled eyes , the forbidden breath!





Kriston Scott:I didn't know this lady. It is enlightening. Thank you so much for telling  the story of Hazrat Zainab, Peace be upon her ~   inspiring and beautiful.


Sandra Delussu: Where are those bold people gone dwell?
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2015
the female cat got the nick’s name: the ballerina... the male cat got the name: hulk. but you see, original marxism didn't mention religion, it had atheism on its knee spanking martin luther... this neo-marxsim is scary... and capitalism is not really helping me to ease my mind... capitalism believes in god the same way these neo-marxists believe in god (capitalism just believes he doesn't exist)... capitalism will have to stop selling atheism as a trendy gucci bag as a way into cool intellectualism... it will have to face up to the responsibility of creating theological marxism... *******... thanks for creating the greatest guilt trip of all... at least with original marxism there was the safety-net of atheism working in the subconscious of what defined the idea as ego... now you've just woken up a lobster frying in the wok!*

i sometimes get a glimpse of the sort of drunk that fits the
debacle of america in the 1930s,
the mean drunk, the sort of drunk requiring psychiatric treatment,
i see him once in a blue moon,
and he’s a nasty character,
but probably due to a writer’s block...
i fixed the DELL laptop after a year or so
of typing in the wrong password for the internet connection,
so i managed to creep less at night, where i drink
in ninja-mode avoiding conversation with anyone
and only making meow sounds once in a while,
conversation gets me drunk anyway, so i avoid it,
i talk to cats... which helps since they have powerful
senses orientating them in the world perfectly...
but a rather crap say about it... meow...
so there’s god, and he figured out...
as many “dumb” things as possible on foot, hoof and wing...
and one thing, resembling a monkey...
talking a lot...
it worked... compared to the animals our senses
are dimmed... candles compared to neon lights...
it’s great knowing you’re on top of the foodchain...
almost blind and deaf like an ostrich in a jellyfish
while all the animals are given simplicity,
and man complication...
in order to ode a shakespeare for a quote...
and a granny for a zimmer-frame.
i dare you to get the sinai humour in here,
i hope theology will one day become stand-up comedy...
otherwise... get the *****-driver and a jigsaw... we’ll
sort this out pronto!
i have seen the mean drunk, the abusive father drunk...
but then i also found zen...
the art of drinking & sobering up thanks to writing...
if i start talking now, and i’ve only started my 70cl bottle of whiskey,
i might be a rolling stones back-up singer
doing zen to a hotel room...
so i write:
it’s the medium you see: whiskey-colours in autumn,
fine shade of vintage brown, single malt...
a bit of impressionism with a sniff & and gargle like mouthwash...
let’s face it... there were once cyclopses
in poland in the communist era who distilled from denatured alcohol (denaturat)
via a slice of bread to get the ivory indigo off the optic palette...
cyclopses i tell ye... 9ft10 in scaling...
spoke of nothing but chanel no. 5 after drinking the cocktail,
70cl a night will get me heart-throbbing to 40 in the existential roulette,
and i’m fine with that...
god i’ll miss the arthritis postcard... wish you were here... in the grave.
the girl cat is doing the jaws impression with her tail, circling me,
dog’s don’t laugh at the machine-gun clipping sounds of writing,
cats are fascinated... that’s why they sleep a lot,
apart from that, the wish-you-were-here bit,
i picked a fight using cartesian methodology...
i know that marcus aurelius was a stoic success...
i know that mikhail gorbachev was also a stoic success...
the soviet union imploded and we have no terrorists from kazakhstan,
but you can’t stop cognitive nagging...
biting of lips and grinding the teeth...
i think this has to be defined as a second tier of what’s being defined...
if it all began with socrates attacking the sophists and
eloquent speech, no wonder we are not allowed to speak
eloquently, with cognitive dyslexia being rife with new recruits
in that famous statement: DIE IN YOUR CONFUSION...
i would like to admire the stoics in their: keeping up of appearances...
but the cognitive aspect of stoicism is only effective
within the rank of emperor... or 1st comrade...
it’s really ineffective on any other tier of the pyramid...
a bit like one-way streets of charity...
there’s this~90 year old granny who committed suicide
because of oxfam...
true story...
i want two inputs...
there are two great shops in edinbrugh, both on nicholson st.,
one’s an oxfam book store where i purchased a. camus’ the stranger
to use in a french literature course getting a 1st (talk about
luck in choice) - and giving an almost ancient copy of
emerson’s collected essays...
and of course the barnardo’s book shop
where i purchased the anatomy of madness for ~£30,
that’s how real charity works...
the charity is a mediator, there are two selfless people
in the background...
one gives a possession of his away, another selfless person
buys it not wanting the selfishness of a mint 1st edition...
not like those ******* adverts with actors
asking you to turn into a milked cow...
just money money money...
to pay for the actor’s teary eyes and the administration...
of the £3 you give that way, you pay about a 2/3 if not more
to the charity itself... the poor beggars get a squid and
a sand-castle: something for something.
Robin Carretti May 2018
Vacation mission love 4 passion or to vacate is another reason six sense vision
  One season two mansions three reactions four smiles we try way too hard imperfection it takes  _ the _long way to get to perfection look at me when I am talking no communication pleasure me Tiki bar C- initial please me or only the lonely to vacate. What's all the C- rumors my stomach has tumors it's spreading my eyes like spinners. Whats love got to do with this vacation C- Clovers?What do we C in lovers fate shinning Jack Nicholson the writer redrum ******?

But time is
everything, nothing, something, everlasting never ending
God sending, C- Car fender ******, Yes we will be loved like the pretender. Now do U C?

So
terrific like a light-bulb
goes off tic tock the
chick a dee
Super honey bee
met General Lee
And we will C?

*       *        *          
Blinded by Stars

Bombastic

Becomes
Nomadic
All sacred
Vacation of two
So scared
Him from Mars
I will C--
He and she
The Alcove
Let them be
Smells of  
C-cloves
Not one familiar
place all different
loves

"Her face"
Didn't U C?
Delights the night
We will C-them
Vacation C- cave
Right over there to
be saved
Be brave nails bright

Neon march in like the
Lion
Guitar named Dion
Amazon the buying
trip perfect 2-C
What-lips
She lights the beacon

Electricity C
Presidential
C-Conventional
Abraham Lincoln
Like the Saints of
Strings
C-Clemintine
Sultry but soothing 
R- U- ready
Hold them
steady
 Plantronics
After the love
Before the Manic
or both platonic

Audio C
Reaction
C-communication

Like Robots
With no recognition
Move on stipulation
Better be smarter
to master the C
The Viking
C-conundrum
vacation

Needing a paramedic
b- negative blood type
Ripe me C cool
and collected
C-Climate vacation
I don't think so?
C-City to be charmed
Strutting her stuff
Soho so who

Out of time__ C
It ain't so Bee
Oh! No, I-C
Being alone 
With chicken
 Colonel Lee
Too vacate left with nothing
Being kind to the homeless
To vacate what is
truly fate

How did the rich people
become the best
hostess C- Caviar

With the most list
Filling her C- mug
On a snag
Oh! Christ (C)

The Dog pug
Big Bounty tug
Such a small world
country
Bigfoot little things
dainty
The tight "Bearhug
" C
Cozy
The tear diamond drop
Waiting for words @
the bus-stop lazy

World of belief the cops
went C-Crazy
I will be brief have no fear
Fire me up my Collection
got better I am feeling
save with my Fire(C)Cheif
Vacation time so sublime all in the right timing. Or things go wrong doing the time all for the wrong reasons the crime.You are still the silly goose rhymes. Let's get more serious life should be everything vacation relaxation precious enjoy the time you have. Please don't lose that feeling the love has so many meanings fun Goddess sun new world to find love begins
Robin Carretti Jun 2018
Jamming jellyfish
Top-Me 
((Giddy App Seahorse))
The horseradish on
my lap_

The jolly Jelly
Gefilte Fish
Little help from  my friends
How we click the laptop
One dent to Deceive me
The Rock and Rolling

Stomach his smoke went
Like (*** Cheese)
he leaves me
The spicy tongue map
Z-Top Zany Chilli Pepper

your # tap dance tap
Italian top of
the cheese designer skirt
The outskirts of Naples
Her sweet dimples, please
The Islands of Sicily
So many Cheese forms
Terms of Endearment

Mama Mia Murano-Positano
Her lips of Romano Cheese
(To Top Me) Challenge me
Cheese doesn't mix
with cappuccino,
she's the Capri
Ala Denti
Cheese Wiz chair
Mediterranean Wines
Bear men doing low
sips of time
the grisly(Z) pour

The car smelled like
Flight (Top Me) Swiss air
Meet Dominique

How it went La Cirque
Anti Christ Devil Red-bed
cheese mystique
SOS to their notes
PS the junk car in
Midas the makeover
Make-up artist counter
Clinique
I could paint over your hood
Creamy mind put at ease
He's so displeased

New castle disease
Mingling social disease
She's so infectious
ZZ- Top me rock me
Eyes bloodshot you got me

And nevertheless
With twelve and V
V- Vamps tramps
and 14 karats
The French Lieutenant
Mistress Brie with heavy
bite teeth like garnets

Cher turning back time
The burlesque striptease
Come back little Sheba
Z Top Queen of Sheba

I know it's coming soon
?

All Tight claustrophobic
The tight squeeze
Him speaking
Mandarin Oranges
The British Colony

Unique Chinese languages
Her hills, San Francisco
Jack Nicholson
Comedy of China town
The American Women
Smile cheese at the Disco
The food Cantonese
style
Z muscles Hercules
Joan Rivers
Fashion Police
The Cheese of Portuguese
Its the meat market
With his nifty thrifty Neice

All Socrates
(Gromet and Cheese)
Those Brooklyn
workers
The Falcon Matese
_*
More cheese Z-Top
Who could ever top
The string cheese
Silken strings became
to rest, I rest my cheese
What cheese fascinates you
Tell me?
This is about cheese wait no smiling yet you need to read my poem
Do you want some cheese so many spreads to choose? Oh! Ghezz
We don't have to be polite please donate this poem
Gregory K Nelson Nov 2016
I’m pretty sure there is no more alcohol in this house, I drank it dry, but I got plans to refill the coffers of the estate in a distant land some call the future when I am old, too old to do much but write checks, sign forms, ride on spaceships of my own design, my making, a phsy phi movie, with the masters, with Nash and Sendak, with Moratta and the Spells, with Shug Knight and his dynamite, with Tu Pac the moment that last bullet struck gold ...

The boundaries of who you are, how you act, start slipping away ever so slowly.  At first you just think you are in a better mood, and maybe that’s all you are.

Did I know I was in a manic episode?  How could I not know?  How could I not look for help instead of whatever insanity I let myself travel towards? How how how .... do I sound like an Indian? Does that question offend you?

Just me in the car. It had been just me for days.  Reaching out to social media occasionally to wave my crazy flag.

My stomach felt like water was boiling inside it.  Angry butterflies that would not stop their painful flutter.  The fear, the agitation, anxiety I usually call it, but its more like being perpetually ...

Sometimes I realize that my personality is basically the jail house ***** of perpetual introspection

Self involvement is probably more accurate. Introspection is the dumb self grasping at explanations of evolving memories as they pile up always too fast, always out of reach, always always always then you just ******* die one day.

And that's it isn't it. Whatever else happens that will be my story.

We can never understand what it is because it keeps changing them we all eventually die and that's it.

It's pretty ******* terrifying.


It will make you hide things.

Wishing for a better past is futile
self-torture
a form of the ultimate folly:
feeling sorry for yourself.
It makes you feel pathetic.
Especially if you actually are pathetic.
If your life is a failure of your own making
In cooperation with a mental illness
Which is making me feel so sad and pathetic
I can think of little else but how pathetic I am

But my present seems futile.
There is not much in my reality that is hopeful even when I’m in a better mood.
In short, my life seems hopeless.
I don’t have a job, or a mate, and I’m not likely to find either one any time soon.
I have barely any work experience
I’m 36 years old.  
I live with my parents.
I have a bad case of bipolar disorder and a bad case of ADHD and I know that makes it unlikely I will ever be able to succeed at anything.  Of course one of the illnesses might be right now telling me things are worse than they seem.

I am suicidal but afraid to **** myself.  I wonder if I’ll ever find the desperation or the courage.  As I get older my situation seems worse and worse.  I cant seem to get myself to act to change it.  I can’t ACT.  I can’t DO.  How is this possible?  how am I like this?  How? How? How?

Writing something seems like some kind of action.
Something productive, in theory.
This is what I come up with.
Bad poetry.
Worse than usual.

Just try to write something anything
feel the keys bounce
remember what its like to say something
taste it
let it flow
let it go
what?
what can’t I let go?
what blocks?
just bounce bounce bounce
no one will read this but I need to find that hidden somber knowing inner voice
no matter how fake it is
etch it out
send it out
to the world
let it fly

There has to be something to say hasn’t there?
Write about a manic episode … how to begin? What moment to draw out?

Gotta try not o ******* all day tomorrow
Gotta try
can’t promise anything
this is who I am
I hate myself, of course
how could I not

And on and on and on
Just writing anything
writing “writing”
like Jack Nicholson in The Shining
Jack is a dull boy
Jack is a dull boy
Jack is a dull boy
God help me
but he won’t
of course not
this is a warm fuzzy version of hell
not that bad
except the self-loathing
oh God why me the self-pity
typing typing typing
It would not surprise me
if I never really wrote anything
just a total loser
jerking off all day
not working
living with my parents
watching teenagers **** on the internet
why am I like this?
How can I change myself?
I want to change myself
I really do
God help me
but he won’t
just on and on
nothing gets done
I am nothing
I want to **** myself
but I don’t have the guts
I want to die
I want to die
I say it all the time its mostly about the shame of who I am I can’t stand it it goes on and on

everything bad starts out innocently enough
rock before the roll
this is not writing I can’t write
am I just too ******?
would I write anything sober?
I live my life in a hell not quite of my making
I want to die I want to die I want to die
I want to live I want to live I want to live
type type type
****!!!!!!!
this can’t be my life
I say that over and over to myself
because it is in a way hard to believe
but here it is
at least I’m typing typing typing
simple thoughts like
I don’t like my ******* life
maybe If I could just accept it the pain would dwindle
the loathing would subside
but how can I accept this ****
at least I’m typing typing
too ******
****** dumb
too dumb to think of anything worth writing
just a self hat clusterfuck
of a brain
I want to finally die of shame
mercy please
brickdumbsublime.blogspot.com
Matloob Bokhari Oct 2014
LINES WRITTEN WITH TEARS
Gp Capt Matloob Bokhari



In the midst of corpses without arms,
In the midst of corpses without heads,
In the midst of corpses, drenched in blood,
In the midst of corpses, without coffins,
In the midst of corpses, stood the pride of Islam.
On a corpse pierced with arrows, Zainab  screamed:
“I cannot identify, are  you  my brother Hussain?”
My friends, Have you read a tragedy  darker than this?
A sister unable to recognize her brother, so ruthlessly slain!


COMMENTS  :  LINES WRITTEN WITH TEARS

Farzana Altaf: Very touching indeed, a poet who can feel, taste, weep, laugh his poetry in his reader's heart and soul has accomplished much...
Kristine Nicholson: This is a poignant expression of sorrow, Matloob. War is always ugly. Sincerely,  Truth survives, although human life is ephemeral. Ken
Arkay Evans:This is truly beautiful; it reads as a river of tears begins - flowing and healing to the sea...I pray you are well, lifted and comforted on your journey. Blessings
Xpuaa : Indeed lines written with tears. Moving! and congrats this poem needs courage and sincerity to be written!!!!
Iulia Gherghei :very touching!!!!..that is the measure of humanity!!!
Kristen Scott: Zainab suffered and bore it with strength and dignity . it's amazing and heartfelt Matloob ~  K.
Sandra Delussu:  Matloob. you go on touching my heart..
Michael Edward Clearman: May the message of this poem water the earth with its truth.
Sandra Delussu: a knife in the heart! and it is but a drop in the ocean of suffering what we try to feel...  dear Matloob the figure of such a great woman comes shining in the souls of those who didn't know her! go on telling us! Enmity starts in frustration. frustration starts in ignorance! taking along pretending serving God's will!!!!...such blindness only can speak to blindness...but we're not blind!
Shareef Abdur-Rasheed: REEEEEAAALLLL!!!!This is no joke,WORLD!! This bloodshed, carnage got to stop!!How can the world turn their back and shut their eyes?? akhi This piece and others addressed to this critical issue are vital to raising awareness in a preoccupied world who are "Numb, deaf, dumb, blind to genocide until it knocks on their door! Jazak Allah Khair for raising consciousness!!
Alma Delacruz Gossman: We are not blind! We just simply refuse to really see! Excellent  your compassion and dignity are unshakable...and I so admire your conviction and belief in the greater good...we mustn't ever give up...and the messages of those who truly see, like you, must continue and we ALL need to hold that torch up high, as many remain in the dark by choice, often swayed in the wrong direction by those led by their ego, rather than their hearts and souls. Thank you for shedding your loving light and make so many aware that just refuse to see or who are shut off from the truth! Bravo! Thank you for writing the harsh reality, that many a man had truly blown it for far too many!  You create an awareness that truly needs to resonate in each of us! If only more would take their blinders off and really see!
Sophia Brownie :I CANT EVEN BEGIN TO IMAGINE SEEING THIS.
Shahzia Batool : though i always think that the best comment on any poem is "SPEECHLESS" ,but as i am the student and  teacher of poetry  so i always try to use words of appreciation and the just words...i read the poem twice and read the comments as well . it's a very consoling  and comforting thing that you have a strong voice ,and people listen to your voice...symbols  and allegory are your tools and you know how to weave images. You are loyal to the promise of existence...matloob sb  it is divinely ordained to expose the evil forces...by any substantial effort ! May you be blessed and heard !
Isabelle Black Smith:  Cannot even begin to imagine the depth of sorrow, loss and helplessness. You make us stop and think.
Maurin Alessandro :Good words my dear friend. So sad, but is a true history .. I am from Brazil and has a  musical group.  Can I sing this  awesome poem?
Gail Wolper :terribly sorrowful. I am sad.
Gary Leikas:  sounds like you were with Krishna and Arjuna at Kurukshetra .
Carole Semeniuk : NO.. I cannot imagine not being able to recognize my brother in life, or death............. very searing poem to the heart my friend . Your words cut through the heart... and make one appreciate the pain and agony of this moment................................... well done . Such a tender compassionate Soul you are!
Karyn Walker: Beautiful lines, Matloob  'Why good suffers and evil prospers?' It does for a reason Matloob. But you and I both have seen them fall. Sad part is that sometimes it takes so long. Evil provokes Evil that's a paradox in itself. That's why we pray so much because that is what it ends up taking: Prayer.
Jennifer Long: oh my..... So powerful the imagery and the punch of the rhythm, and the words. this is a great piece of writing!
Satyender ParkashAas:  Progressive, fine personification of darkness, cloud.  Matchless!
Lone-elisabeth Berg Jakobsen: I read it twice, and I love it so much I had tears in my eyes, I am very sensitive and it is very strong and beautiful.
Jeannette Mendoza Dalling : no words to describe the sadness this cause's me , that so many live like this .
Leo Riccio :sad. beyond words



Blessed-Heart - Hi my friend, may your day be filled with joy, peace, and much harmony. And your heart filled with love and kindness. Enjoy your rest of your day. Moved to read these moving lines!!!! Nancy
Martin Narrod Oct 2016
Hello morning, I have anticipated you since
I awoke to the small barking dog's tailored speak for food.

I want that Eddie should start preparing her own meals. I know that while I smoke this morning's cigarette, that French Bulldog inside contemplates the fifty dollar bag of high-grade kibble she has pushed me to buy her or instead enjoying her own ****. And all of my wives friends call her a lady.

I want to ride alone in our FJ Cruiser through Yellowstone at dawn, before the predators have gone to bed and the tourists make their queues, I want to beat morning until I have found the wolves, and the sun rise mocks me as I sit four hours in traffic for a cup of coffee as I round the shivering peaks of our Rocky Mountain backyard landscape, and the Tetons swell with last nights snow-fall and the warm autumn air sends plumes of frigid mist above the valley floor and into the skies above Jackson.

And I wish I could stand once more on the balcony of the 777 building and smoke the finest sativas with my friend Turtle while our significant others drink coffees and watch reruns of American Gladiators on a $14,000 couch waiting for us to come back inside.

I wish I could wait on the benches outside baggage claim at San Francisco International Airport smoking inside the white lines, waiting for a girl in a red sports car to pick me up and my friend Guy's absurd faces there to greet me amidst the fog and the out of place palm trees Inevwr expected to see so far North.

And it would be great to hear my grandfather play the ukulele once more while I excitedly fished off of my grandparents dock somewhere in New Jersey where my mother's accent insists she grew up. And my grandfather sings horrifically demeaning songs written in 1924 that offer little respect to women, but much adventure to young men.

I want to play tag with the neighborhood children again in the Summer of 1995. Even though I had come to find all of those playing tag had absconded to a game entitled The 'A' Game, which its only rules were to exclude me from joining. I want to throw scalding hot water once more into Simon Berman's face. Though I do not wish for him to block the water with a basketball and turn my face into Jack Nicholson's Joker.

In Chicago as an eighteen year old, I could count the chalk outlines of bodies as I drove down Fullerton Avenue through the Logan Square neighborhood. I wish I could remember those sounds the boricua made. I wish I could forget the burning runs I received from Lazo's burritos at some time 'o clock in the morning.

I've never been one for finding edible late-night eats. I only want the memory of being able to do so. I do wish that my wife's ex-best friend's boyfriend realizes that he's less the great Emeril of his kitchen and more or less is just an unemployed sous chef with a laundry list of felonies, rather than a wish list of awful entrees. At least in that memory, he's neither a chef nor my wife's ex-friend's boyfriend and instead he's just another hideous orcish ****** ringing the doorbells in some suburb of Seattle, announcing to each and every one of his neighbors that he's obligated to notify the community of his ****** offenses.

I just wish I was there to witness his humiliation, and enjoy the total collapse of ego amidst the long list of those decent people he has surely offended.

Perhaps in some future life I can enjoy watching as jungle rot solves my hatred, disposing of his evilness in small skin ***** of flesh that dot the sidewalk while his disease evolves.

I want more vegan eating options across the food desert we call America. I want to arrive home one evening and find my wife ancy to share a new study that American Journal of Medixibe has found on the benefits of providing non-reciprocated ******* to your partners. And I want to be the first to enjoy the benefits of such a study, that I'm encouraged by her to publish my findings while I attend a prestigious university I once wasn't allowed to attend because of my religious background.

I want to live in a world where violence is no longer a viable solution to resolving the in differences we as humans confuse each other trying to make sense of between ourselves.

I want to visit our local grocery store and find that my favorite $8 a pint vegan ice cream has been marked down to a more reasonable number and that there is still an abundance of flavors left for me to choose from.

I don't wish for much: to not have people ask me to speak louder, full-frontal ****** in made for television movies, and a decent blonde IPA for under $10 in glass bottles. Where in this world can a poet go and still receive the respect that was once given by the royal monarchy of The British Empire.

Now it seems those with the fine knowledge of words are cast into a class with less regard than street-drifters and the homeless.

When did our world lose major respect for the artisans of fine art, or the ability to render an opus?

28-integer news memos and 15-second clips of our cute dog eating its own **** attract more attention than a fine explanation of the human condition or the sultry and sophisticated sounds of my Argentinian friend Anna recite Garcia Lorca in her native Spanish tongue.

I just want to be gone before there is a consequence for finding joy in the human condition, and honesty and integrity are known as the recividism that takes down our nation.

We were once the leaders of a great country. We were compelled by our history to create and indoctrinate one another to achieve, conceive, and amend ourselves to thrive amidst the uncertainty of a mischievous and disgraceful society. Now I just wish to be in bed with my wife when this storm of stupidity comes. I wish I never had to be on the receiving end of a sermon set forth by business leaders instead of political achievers.

I want Eddie to make herself some breakfast so I can lay here in bed a few more moments. I want pancakes and fresh fruit juice for breakfast, a quiet room and a hard-covered notebook. I want to believe a great pen and a good friend could lead me through the exciting and anxiety-writhing times in this life, but I to know too sadly that we live in a world where we don't view it as a weakness as those around us may not be able to read or may not be able to write.
Virginia Nicholson

How To Build A House In N-Dimensions

1. Begin with lines, pencil to paper (if they could exist) drawing graphite arrangements, N-space reduced to one, a structure viewed in slices. Imagine the bathroom off the foyer, the den off the dining room, viewable only as inked lines, dit-dit-dah, a contractor’s Morse Code.

2. Progress to carpet squares, linoleum tiles, the coral paint pairs well with the eggshell trim.  Dit-dah-dit becomes something useful to the non-contractor, “door” or “Master Bedroom” or “x hundred feet of pipe.” Envision the imagined patterns hidden in the bathroom floor, the kitchen hardwood.

3. Move to volumes, solids, conic sections, height. One story, two stories, a basement, an attic?, take advantage of the introduction of 3D. Upgrade the closet to walk-in, needs more carpet squares. A snapshot of a family barbeque, Charlie’s height 1D penciled in to the 3D door, marring 2D eggshell paint.

4. Adding time, the house is built, ages, gets sold to new families with little Charlies of their own, new markings on the cupboard door, 3-foot-2, 3-foot-5, 4-foot-9. Grass fades from Kelly to sand to Kelly, saturation a cosine function with respect to time. The Zoysia starts in one, breaking ground in two, growing in three, a well-manicured 4D experience.

5-11.    Include the things invisible to us, objects on the order of 1 meter, orders of 10E-2 to 10E9 seconds. Five to eleven drip through leaky pipes, seep through porous flooring, get lost in iron-rich soil and oxygenated exhalations. Five to eleven stay hidden, wrapped up in Calabi-Yao manifolds smaller than graphite hills and valleys marking little Charlie’s height, stronger than the 2-by-4s and stone foundation keeping strong in 4D. Five to eleven circulate undetected, seven dimensions shrunk to sub-pinpoint size, keeping seven dimensions of unexplainables covered until their traces are seen in the blades of Zoysia.
Austin Heath Apr 2014
Welcome to the living room,
the bizarre state of all things comes to ******.
Psychic hurricanes and barbarian therapy;
Stab me in the back, stab me in the heart,
but in the end isn't it all the same bleeding?
And you swore they'd never figure out,
and you swore they'd never figure out
and you swore they never figure out.
Welcome to the living room,
the bizarre state of ALL things comes to ******.
Stab me in the back, stab me in the heart,
it's the same bleeding,
and you swore they'd never figure out
and you swore they'd never figure out
and you swore that they would never figure out
and you swore,
they would never figure out.
Sia Jane Dec 2013
I built a sand castle around myself
I spend hours on each intricate detail
I built the castle the way I dreamed as a child
I made sure it had all those hidden doors
The ones that weave intermittently from one wing to the next
In the tunnels are where I lose myself with my imagination
The castle keeps me safe from the bad guys
I always have a place to hide within these walls
As I lug myself about crawling on my knees
I drag a life time of sorrows worries and needs
They come in journals
Those hard backed limited editions
The beautiful ones you get scared to write in
Because you don't want to damage their perfection
You pick them up from the second hand book store
The Strand on the corner of East 12th Street
You, your journal and a months' worth of reading
You walk into Books of Wonder
From the days you were read to at night as a child
I always believed that stories last a life time
That even in those worn down books
Oh those beautiful ones where you find a love letter
From decades ago
And you carry that book and pass over
The $2 and the stories live on
And the stories of those who bought the book live on
My castle was built with my fair hands
It's weathered almost all storms
I let no one in and it wasn't until
The day that I did
That the ocean of emotion I carried within
Flooded out and drowned us all
Me, those innocent characters and the books
The precious precious books, soaked and blurred
Out to sea we went
Books floating
Hearts bleeding
Bodies freezing

© Sia Jane

---

“We read to know that we are not alone.”
William Nicholson
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2017
get your ***** ******* grubs off of me,
i am not going to bargain
a cartesian dualism with the notion
that the body can overcome the mind
with exercise gimmicks:
you, *******, guinea nimwit!
        i used to slap my grandfather's
sheen on a bold, but otherwise
bald cranium for jokes,
  and flick his remaining hairs into
the air to reveal a hidden jack
nicholson, i also called the police
and had him institutionalised with
psychiatric aid, for throwing my
grandmother through a glass door and
breaking her arm...
       me?! you'll get more
apologetic "nuance" about drinking
from a priest than from, me!
         i turn ugly, silently,
       i just abhore this antique deal
with descartes,
               i don't know why why that
the body can overcome the mind...
or why blankety-blank trivia is to solve
the matter...
or whether pumping iron helps...
      by this point i''m not writing:
i'm coal-mining, i'm digging...
               the body, however perfect
will not unravel the problems of the mind,
attaining body antics perfected only
stalls the otherwise still present:
problems of the mind.
                       toxicology reports read:
adrenaline *****.
             sebastian mc'queer miss-match
between a cocktail waitress,
  a ******* bunny and a bartender named:
shteeve.
                 ******* waste of time
by my rubric of arithmetic...
  but at least ben affleck wasn't the worst
batman,
      we all know that george clooney was.
we have finally arrived at a loss
of mind-body dualism,
   we have achieved a dichotomy,
finally!
       we can, for the first time,
fathom clear segregating posits,
indicators,
                    membranes!
whatever noun you use -
                 the joke about schizophrenia,
is that it's not a joke concerning
        premature depression -
premature depression is more unusual
than premature dementia -
      there's the bicimeral theory
to begin with...
           unless of course you're dealing
with snowflakes who want languaage
as rigid as possible,
      readied for the acceptance of it,
like any type of i.k.e.a. put it together,
yourself, manual...
the mundane aspect of the whole affair
only breeds a gagging effect,
like choking on a 12" **** with your nose
pinched-shut,
  ******* disgusting;
  if i really wanted to draw a straight line
i wouldn't necessarily obligate language
to latex ******* *******...
           i'd be the one
adding oil to the fire, and wanting
unadulterated chaos,
  before the hell-fire focus of: inferno...
for language is just that:
   i abhor the term poet,
i prefer the term...
                               pyrotechnician...
i do not write poetry:
   i cement myself in pyrotechnics.
    i abhor this dualism -
            this notion that a sick mind can
be mended by being worked on by
a invigorated body,
      or that a sick body can be mended by
being worked on by an
invigorated mind...
   odd... to have such vehement emotions
surrounds a mere idea...
that there is no mind-body dualism,
but that there's a mind-body dichotomy...
and that there's only a mind-mind dualism
that, given the cartesian concept brideges
upon the res extensa: the extended thing,
whereby the mind-mind dualism
disintegrates when the notion of a, soul,
is involved / invested in,
perhaps as concrete rubric, or perhaps
as a mere cognitive, hobby...
  let us simply add:
   there are those who bow and pray and
pay due diligence to a god...
  while others, neither procrastinate themselves,
nor day allegiance to a, deity -
for there is so much more involvement in
entertaining the thought of a...
deity...
             and these cognitive
acrobatics never allow for a yawn
to be present, in their ritualistic endeavours,
with due need, or due, cause.

p.s. i think people really underestimate
schizophrenics, the abnormality of it
is fascinating...
      as is the case with the endeavour of
finding a soul, or as i like to call it:
the osmosis of psyche overpowering the mind,
and creating a mind-body dichotomy
rather than enforcing a mind-body "dualism"...
psychosis.
                   it's a shame how people
under-appreciate a mind-mind dualism...
a dualism, split, yet nonetheless whole...
     cf. julian jaynes...
                      but what isn't fascinating
is premature depression...
   that's just plain ******* tragic...
i can understand depression in old people,
who have actually accomplished something
in their lives...
but when it concerns youngsters?
completely unfathomable and
                    uninteresting to me,
on the basis that it's so abnormal that
it's suicidal and completely averted to
the otherwise schizoid exploratory tendency
of reintegrating a disintegrating form
of language structure... perhaps that's
a post-modernist statement...
but the "sane" always cite
being perplexed by language that's:
   non-instructive; b'aah b'aah...
******* herds, do we always have to whip
them into submission and cohort?
  yes, yes, the open end hyphen grammar
   -cohort-, that's transcendental grammar,
it's not supposed to be a noun,
rather, an adjective by-and-of-itself
revealing of the submissive character of
strict, military, discipline!
my ambition was never to write
a ******* i.k.e.a. manual for a: do it yourself
take on a folding chair!
“That next January, she will be considered cured! These are words we never expected to hear, especially since her first oncologist told her she had little chance of surviving...”
“In 2001 my wife was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Because of poor health, I had only been able to work occasionally and we were very low on financial funds. Also we did not have insurance. We tried to get assistance, but were turned down everywhere we went.
We got a recommendation from an employee at a clinic to try the department of children and family services, adult division, for our state. But again the door was closed on us.
At this point, things got so bad we had to do our grocery shopping at a railroad salvage store. My greatest fear was that after my wife finished her chemo and radiation the medicines she would need would not be anything we could afford. Someone told me about alternative medicine and that it is used around the world, but that most doctors frown on this practice.
We started researching the internet for anything that would help and be something we could afford. When my wife was diagnosed with cancer, the doctor used a CA125 blood test. The doctor told us that a count under 35 is acceptable.
My wife's count was “365” confirming the cancer.
My wife has NOT has not had ANY form of medication for her cancer! The “ONLY” thing she is using is Apricot Seeds or Kernels.
Her last CA125 test was taken 9 days ago and her count was at “10”, well below the established number of 35. No one can tell us that the Apricot Seeds are not doing even more then we had hoped for on her.
Last doctor's visit, the doctor told my wife that if she had made it past the first 2 years without problems, she was now in a group that has less than a 10% chance of reoccurrence and that next January, she will be considered cured!
These are words we never expected to hear, especially since her first oncologist told her she had little chance of surviving.”
Dorothy & Robert Halun
Lakeland, FL




WEB: "My doctor said if I did not have the scars on my body they could never prove that I had Cancer. It's all because I took Raw Apricot Kernels..."
I was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer in 2001. The first oncologist told me the tumor was too large to operate and that he must shrink the tumor through chemo prior to surgery.
He said that if I would have come to him a couple of years earlier that it would be an automatic death sentence, however, he had this new protocol - Stem Cell Therapy - which could save my live at a cost of about $100,000 more than what my insurance would pay...I got a second opinion.
My 2nd oncologist, after pondering the proposed surgery for the weekend said that even though the tumor was large, he thought he could do the surgery prior to starting chemo. I started researching my options.
After surgery, I REFUSED CHEMOTHERAPY AND RADIATION. My doctor said I would die if I did not at least to Chemo. I told him "My life, my decision...if I am wrong in a year, I will listen to you then".
When my one year CA125 test was taken, I was a perfect 10. My doctor said if I did not have the scars on my body they could never prove that I had Cancer. It's all because I took Raw Apricot Kernels (6 per day). I am now cancer free for 5 years and counting.
Babette Garfield, Age 57
Las Vegas, NV



“I learned about Amygdalin (B17) and started taking it right away and all of my symptoms began to regress...”
“I have been dealing with Indolent Lymphoma since 1996. I knew I was pretty much on my own with this. About 5 years ago, I learned about Amygdalin (B17) and started taking it right away and all of my symptoms began to regress.
If I am stupid and eat sugar or stuff I shouldn't, I begin to get my symptoms back, but as soon as I tighten up my diet, they go away. I have a lot of energy now and I am starting a new business and I am 61. I used to be exhausted but no more.
I am very grateful for Amygdalin (B17) and the Apricot Seeds.”
Nancy Pratt, Age 61
Montclair, VA


“GET PEOPLE TO TRY THIS - it works…”
Here is my testimonial.
Let me begin by saying I am not affiliated in any way with this product I am suggesting you try. I have bought it & used it myself on several (really severe) sun spots/skin lesions with total & successful removal with consistent use. I thought for sure I would have to go to a surgeon, but bought this cream instead. The first one I removed was on my leg, I had watched it getting bigger for a couple of years. It was pretty deep, too. It was a bit uncomfortable at first after I applied the cream but then it began to work.
I next removed one on my left shoulder that had become quite large as well. I then used it on one near my left temple. It was one of those big brown lesions you see on old people. It took a bit longer. It had to be gently peeled off a couple of times, but then one day, the last layer came right off. I also got rid of 2 smaller ones on my face & a really bad one on my right ear.
You have to be consistent. Apply it ONLY to the spot a couple of times a day in the beginning. The area will get a bit red, sometimes it gets itchy, but that means it is working. Eventually you will be able to cut it back to once a day. Every couple days put a dab of antibacterial cream on it. After about a week or so, you should be able to gently start peeling off a little bit at a time and then when the final layer comes off it will be just healthy skin underneath.
- Nanci


“She has been CANCER FREE for 6 years…
“6 years ago we noticed that our 100lb Golden Retriever, Cassie, had a tumor on her back paw. The vet suggested that we have them remove the tumor and have it analyzed. Thus, St Pat's day 2000 Cassie had the operation. All went well. When we got the results back, they said it was a mast cell tumor type 2. They recommended chemotherapy. Knowing that God made provision for Noah and the animals, we prayed and felt that the Lord was directing us in a different way.
First, we checked the dog food we were giving her. We found that Sci Diet had carcinogens in it. We studied and switched to Innova, a natural dog food. We also recently had heard from the Christian Brothers about raw apricot seeds and their properties that would help the body fight cancer.

We also started giving Cassie Barley Green, a powdered barley leaf that would help make her body alkaline. Cancer can not exist in an alkaline environment. Twice a day we would give Cassie her seeds etc. Her paw healed nicely and the vet was pleasantly surprised. Then, as each year Cassie would go for her spring check up the vet would say how lucky we were. We would usually agree we are blessed.
Cassie had one other small tumor removed from her back about 2 years ago. It was not cancerous. She has been CANCER FREE for 6 years. As you can tell from her picture, she has gotten the raccoon look around her eyes as she has aged. Yet, she still likes to play.
We give credit for her long healthy life from Jesus directing all of our steps-in changes in food, supplements, exercise and B17. Thank you for making your products available.”
Karen Olsen
Elmhurst, IL





“This is when I prayed and asked God to show me another way because I knew the chemo was so painful...
“Hi, my name is Tina Brock and my mother Fanida Caudelle (Faye) has battled cancer for a long time. Twelve years ago she had breast cancer. In 2004 she was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer. She took chemo and the cancer stayed away for a year. It came back in her spleen, abdomen, and pelvic areas. This is when I prayed and asked God to show me another way because I knew the chemo was so painful. I began researching and found B-17. Thank God! I ordered her a bottle and she took it while taking the chemo and we were all impressed with how well her blood counts were each time. She is still using B-17 today and February 14, 2006 my mom turned 74 years old. I would like to thank you for making B-17 available.”
Fanida Caudelle, Age 74
Nicholson, Georgia





“Before taking the apricot seeds, I could feel a couple of small lumps in my *******. Within a couple of months the lumps were all gone and have not returned…
“I have been using Apricot Seeds for a little more than 2 years and believe they have made a big difference in my health. Before taking the apricot seeds, I could feel a couple of small lumps in my *******. Within a couple of months the lumps were all gone and have not returned.
I continue to take the apricot seeds every day and believe they along with whole grains, fruits, vegetables, avoiding red meat and seafood without fins and scales, and eating as organically as possible is responsible for the change in my body.
Edgar Casey had a vision of what he believed were almonds and that they prevented cancer. I believe Casey actually saw apricot seeds and mistook them for almonds because they look similar.”
Carol Loguisto
Nassau, New York




“I tell everyone that I talk to about the natural cure for cancer, which is Apricot seeds, just another gift of God...
“In 2004 I went to my Dr. and had skin cancer removed from my face and back. The cancer on my face was determined to be basil cell but the one on my back came out to be melonomia. Since that time they have returned and the Dr. wanted to do more removal but I decided to try natural remedies.
In September of 2005 I found information about Apricot seeds and Vitamin B17. I started eating the seed and taking Vitamin B17. The cancer on my face was red and sore but today the redness is gone and also the soreness.
The most remarkable part is the melonomia on my back is getting smaller. Once I decided to use Apricot seeds and Vitamin B17, I also started reading my Bible more and using the Bible versed that were given me. My health has improved and my worries about cancer were given to God.
I tell everyone that I talk to about the natural cure for cancer, which is Apricot seeds, just another gift of God.”
Fred Davidson, Age 62
Independence, MO


“The Doctor could only scratch his head and wonder. I have also used it on a dog who had miraculous results…
“I have used the seeds as a preventive for a few years and never have had any side affects. My mother-in-law was diagnosed with colon cancer the size of a grapefruit. A few months and less than $500 dollars worth of seeds and pills and it was reduced to a small mass the size of a grape.
The Doctor could only scratch his head and wonder. I have also used it on a dog who had miraculous results. Read the book "World Without Cancer" so you don't have to watch your loved ones die in vain.”
Steve Strasburg
Arkport, NY
“I believe that the B-17 blocked the spread of the cancer, and saved her life…
“My sister had been diagnosed with Thyroid cancer last year. I immediately started her on 500 mg of B-17 twice a day. She had her thyroid removed, as it was aggressive, and fast moving. The Endocrinologist were amazed that that there was NO spreading to the neighboring lymphatic system as is usually the case.
I believe that the B-17 blocked the spread of the cancer, and saved her life.”
Patrick Harris-Worthington
Minneapolis, MN





“The doctors don't understand how this could happened and finally we told them in March, 2006 that I had taken B-17…”
“In 2004 I contracted liver cancer. My doctor said chemo was the next step in my progressing liver cancer. I had been taking all the right healthy vitamins and eating right and now "cancer". When we were told there were NO guarantees that the chemo would work, my wife and I decided to try the B-17!
It was scary because we were not sure of how much to take on a daily basis but started with 100mg 2xday. We worked up to 500mg 2xday for about 5 months and then down to 100mg 2xday at present. I did take zinc and B-12 for 2 weeks before starting the B-17.
The cancer mass went from a 8cm to 6cm in less than a yr. It did not spread and it had shrunk. The drs. don't understand how this could happened and finally we told them in March, 2006 that I had taken B-17. My blood tests came back "normal" last month and all the friends and family are amazed and we are happy.
PS...the dr. called and gave us a phone # of a girl who was suffering as I was and could we call her and tell her what we did? My doctor said chemo was the next step in my progressing liver cancer. So, we did and she is now starting her regiment...”
Dennis Montgomery
Arcadia, CA

“I finally talked him into B17. He did however try it and was doing much better then with the chemo…”
“I lost my husband 10 months ago to cancer. He chose to take the doctors advice and have chemotherapy and radiation for his cancer which started in his colon and ******. Needless to say after 2 and 1/2 years of treatment he lost his fight with cancer.
When he died it was in his liver, lungs and stomach. It was too late when I finally talked him into B17. He did however try it and was doing much better then with the chemo. Although he lost his fight his cancer was just too far advanced to stop or prolong his life.
I have been on B17 since his death and will continue to stay on it for the rest of my life. I am doing it to prevent cancer because my father also died with colon cancer and it has been known to travel in families. I am cancer free and hope to remain that way that is why I choose to take B17.
I am 49 years old and I tell everyone that will listen that the chemotherapy and radiation killed my husband, not the cancer. It was his life and I had to respect his decision to... “
Gloria Snow-Lambert
Mercer, PA


"I was diagnosed with breast cancer a year and a half ago. I went through some Chemo and Radiation treatments...
I was diagnosed with breast cancer a year and a half ago. I went through some Chemo and Radiation treatments. I began researching cancer and alternative treatments and found a website on apricot seeds and B17.
I remember hearing about this being a possible cure for cancer many years ago, but had not heard any studies since then. I thank the Lord that I found this site. I have been taking the apricot seeds ever since I found out about them.
I started taking tamoxifen about a year ago and recently stopped due to the toxic effects it has on the body. I continue to take the apricot seeds and so far all is well.
I tell everyone I come in contact with who has had or has cancer about them. Thank you, thank you for making them available to purchase and at reasonable prices! I will be taking them for the rest of my life.
Carol Richards
Pittsburgh, PA
Brycical Oct 2011
many nights,
it takes every molecule in my body
to not scream myself to sleep.

You see,
i have nightmares about the future.
i'm afraid upon awakening one morning,
i’ll discover i'm some grotesque & fat
pizza fried chicken bread bowl American
as massive layers of fat
fold around my body making it almost impossible to breathe
and lost all interest in everything
except cheap fast food & money to spend on the various brethren of the dollar menu.

I'm afraid that on the one night i sleep
with my back to the bedroom door
is the night a group of burglers,
possibly in union with supernatural shadows
from the darkest corner of my room
team up to beat me to death
like Jack Nicholson's character from Easy Rider.

I’m afraid the nightmares about my teeth falling out
will actually happen,
causing me to never find a job
to pay off all the debts i owe.  

Some nightmares are more fantastical;
like the one where i'm leading human civilization
in an Alamo last stand against a hostile alien race
only to find myself fighting alone
as the rest of the surviving nations argue
over who gets most of the credit.

My nightmares make me afraid
to step on the floor until morning—
for my anxiety tells me during this darkness
the floor is spewing with cockroaches and spiders.

As I type this,
i realize this is only delaying the inevitable
until my eyes can no longer function,
until my body forces my brain into a state of drowsiness—
then i can begin my nightmare lullabies
that always begin with an internal scream.
not sure about the title.
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2016
some of the poems i read i'm afraid of, someone crude would call them mediocre, but i don't have a heart for such words, i'm afraid of them for a simple reason: they're so fragile - it's like handling porcelain with these miner's doughnut hands and thick hotdog fingers, you really don't know what to do with such poems, it's the body undressed, covered in goosebumps and very little else.

sure, you can experience love, the love that's
you and her back in Eden,
maddened, raw, you can experience that,
but such love exists between a boy who
has two years past the teens, and a girl
in her teens, the boy had to invest almost
the same amounts of slush puppy **** as she,
music wise, literature wise, ideals upon ideals,
love is idealised, *** is perfected,
you'll end up gravitating to other people's
expression whether true or fictional,
akin to *kisses sweeter than wine
,
stop draggin' my heart around,
fade to black, it's all there, bloodhound
soppy eyes - a variation of some sort of psychic
awakening in alter-psychosis - the variation of
a juggernaut moving about, it's love pristine,
not the love we call petting and paying the bills,
it's a butterfly's wing caressing your ear
while it flutters - it doesn't last once truths
enter and realities condense to custard -
the paint dries on the wall, the Antarctic tundra
freezes and polar bears start hunting (well, you
could call them loan sharks if you wanted) -
when Adam's tonic turns into Sioux's anodyne -
Apache Sioux knew the deal, while others
use the anodyne for parties and uninhibited social
interactions, others sedate - a good enough
reason to forget that ol' wives tale of: better have
love and lost than not have loved at all -
yes, it's there, a bit like first impressions of
a poem for dada day at the place, april 1, 1958,
poems tell a different story, novels tell a different story,
movies tell a different story, asylum Hollywood
captures the imagination, but not necessarily the memory,
music tells a different story - and all converge and
diverge within geometry of circa - so love, mm,
barefooted going to the mosque for curry at the height,
scuttling like a **** head down Nicholson St. (Edinburgh),
past the music shop where once it was all smiles
and approving gestures while buying an album,
what was it? reggae k.k.k., ah right, steel pulse!
handsworth revolution - the same shop months later,
the same attendant of the pulse of music - the words
'if you want to find love, go to Germany', me guess that's
'cos of the accent, he Scot and me chameleon -
Heraclitus knew this flux, changes and changes -
all that and the creeping to the zenith before tumbling
into Milton's opening of satanic inquiry via
fleetwood mac's the chain - bass guitar the real star,
mirage of former glories of solo guitars - bass guitar
the conductor of rhythm - and in so writing, a fly
attracted to my "idle" hands - as they say, the devil
makes work of idle hands - the bass sets the rhythm,
the drums hush for a moment so the bass can be
protruding - great admiration for bands that allow
the bass a ray of sunshine - tool, schism; so yeah,
you can experience this fable of ancient greek
hierarchy - lovers poets prophets - but you have to
invest prior, and by way of chance you might -
slush puppy pop and ideals and ideals and ideals -
i could have went to Bristol, Warwick, Cardiff or Brighton,
instead, thanks to Mr. Thomas Boon'tss (wet snare tss,
sweat from a drummer, instigator of poet in me,
the observer, the shut-up guy, played a jailor in an adaptation
of the Merchant of Venice - skylock shy, frozen in
the reminder on v.h.s.) off to Haggis-land we went,
and found love there, and found inspiration,
and found an iron maiden for our head there too,
and found madness with a keen eye for tomorrow.
Mateuš Conrad May 2022
the day's almost finished and i'm sitting with a glass
of a whiskey and pepsi: sharpshooter...
   what's a sharpshooter? three parts whiskey
one part pepsi... that's called a sharpshooter...
by that i mean: the alcohol will not creep up on me
esp. like they serve it in bars... three parts pepsi
one part whiskey... no: better the whiskey be apparent...

and i'm rereading my first encounter with
Charles Bukowski: i remember the first time i came
across him... i was having a psychotic meltdown
back in 2007... running up and down Glasgow in
the sun... i don't know what was more mad:
me or the weather in Glasgow... usually western
Scotland is bound to perpetual rain...
                 but it was sunny that day...
                   well... i don't know how many trips
i made between London, Edinburgh and Glasgow...
running aimlessly: most probably from my shadow,
whether it was that day or the other
i booked a hotel room... i ran out of it after about
5 minutes in panic mode... leaving everything
behind, except for my wallet which i had in my trousers,
but my passport? i don't know why i had
it on me... i only got it back from the Glasgow police
station after a year or so...
                      long story: bad memories...

but i remember that first encounter with Bukowski...
what matters most is how well you walk
through the fire
: in the bookshop i stood there in awe....
because the first poem i read was,
oddly enough insanity

    sometimes there's a crazy one in the street.
    he lifts his feet carefully as he walks.
    he ponders the mystery of his own ****...

    ...sometimes there's a crazy one walking in the street.
       he slips past with a black crowd on this shoulder

obviously i had to buy that book...
back then i was buying books like mad...
i bought that book and the Brothers Karamazov...
oddly enough: i have read it...
to be frank i'm starting to suspect that i'm
pretty well read - but that doesn't surprise me:
after all, reading saved my sanity...
as much as insanity was "fun" i wanted to return
to structures...

            it's not much fun compulsively thinking
about the "secret" meaning of car registration
plates... i'm serious: in my head it was THAT bad
at one point... my entire world view disintegrated
into... a large **** on a pile of spaghetti Bolognese
looks better...

          obviously i'm... sure... i'd recommend going
mad... lucky for me: i wasn't taking to any mental hospital...
maybe that's why i was so introverted for
most of my 20s... hell... i lost all my youth to psychosis...
not all my youth: the youth where you could have
all the ****** fun... but from what i heard:
most men haven't had that sort of luxury...
   what with the advent of social media and dating apps...

but that's the great thing about marijuana (skunk,
it's different in England, the marijuana is illegal
and it's usually spiced with some ****** chemicals)
                                                       psychosis...

at first: oh my god, the greatest drug... i stopped drinking...
i waited for the weekend to smoke...
   i'd sit and write Beatnik ******* poetry...
listen to music... when the stuff was good...
a minute turned into ten minutes...
   ten minutes turned into thirty minutes...
thirty minutes turned into two hours...
literally: time stopped... that's how i came up with
the antonym of Descartes' res cogitans...
   i smoked and i lost my ego...
                it was nowhere to be found...
ergo? res vanus... an empty thing...
              i think it takes a lot of thinking to finally
conquer thought per se...
              to able to merely sense without that cloudy
overlay of thought / narrative has its bonuses...
right now? i have a clog in my head...
before i could tell you something akin to:
i can hear myself think...
    "hear": i was so engrossed in something resembling
solipsism... thought came before the senses...
that's why i missed so many opportunities
with women...

            also: i remember this remark i made...
i remember saying: i can't hear silence...
         guess what's in my head?
                that exact remark... it's almost as if i have
lost my prior "sense" of a soul...
i think i'm soulless... i think my soul has already
left my body... which makes it easier
to coordinate the body... i have this great silence
in my head...

   a moment also came when my vision sharpened...
i started seeing more clearly...

another thing about going mad early on...
oh i did see psychiatrists... i was put on antipsychotic
medication... i used to weigh in 78kg at one point...
6ft2 and 78kg? i was a lean colt...
i put on... over the years... let's say i weighed in
at 120kg at one point...
                   i might have drank back then...
i'm still drinking... but: to think that this sort of medication
doesn't have a metabolic effect would be delusional...

but like i must have already mentioned:
that's the good thing about going mad early on in life,
or rather with madness itself:
you can't go mad twice...
         what's that famous saying?
those whom the gods want to destroy: first drive them
mad...

   about 6 psychiatrists tried to figure me out...
one ******* tried to implant in me the idea of regression:
he insinuated that i was abused as a child...
false memory implants... sadistic little Indian ******...
why do i bring ethnicity into the equation?
oh... reminded of a novel by Will Self...
no: not the quantitative theory of insanity...
   that other one... Dr. Mukti...

                            they couldn't figure me out
yet they still prescribed this ****** medication...
           the medication was making it worse...
                             alcohol? makes it better...
       well... because by the 5th and 6th nutty-professor
i was already well verse in Nietzsche,
Kierkegaard, Heidegger and by the 6th Kant!
why would i need to talk **** over?
   none of them could help me with:
    oh you know, herr doktor... i encountered
a choir in a church that descended, invisible...
then... while in a panic... running around in the church
a great wind descended and dispersed the choir...
well... **** me... if marijuana can give you that
sort of auditory hallucinations:
     i'll wait until i'm dementia prone...
    then i'll go to Amsterdam and jack-up my brain
with some mushrooms... maybe i'll see "things" better...

come to think of it... back in the day it was what
it was... i was in so much distress but internalized it so well
that: i was 12 shadows behind a flimsy veneer...
but i pulled through: right now i think i have:
esp. since my reclusion sort of gave me a spring-like-elasticity...
i jumped back into extroversion with a snap
of the fingers... i was never an extrovert-extrovert:
those annoying *****...
i've learned to be more measured...

  but i pulled through: and not thanks to anyone
except for me... and... necromancy...
which is not some magic... just reading the works
of the people already dead...
    
another saying: music soothes even the savage beast...
tell that to one of my Maine *****...
go on... play her some punk... she's doing a runner...
she is a savage beast... domesticated...
but still savage...
     only recently she scratched the face of a baby...
the baby was: the baby of my mother's manicurist /
pedicurist...
    why did she scratch the baby's face?
     my mother's manicurist / pedicurist brought her
friend along... who in turn brought her son along...
annoying little ****: i was fermenting upstairs in bed
with a massive hang-over... just heard the annoying little
****...
                  
      ADHD+... literally...
            he kept annoying my cat... kept touching her too
"offensively"... she hissed... she started spitting evil eyes...
but he kept on annoying her...
   my mother apparently told him to stop...
the boy's mother stopped being a mother at that point...
he ****** off somewhere to draw, i don't know...
******* circles in the air... when the baby approached...
bam! scratches on the face...
    mind you: no problems prior... babies and animals
mingle quiet well... they did... i was there some other
times... but... all it takes is one silly little **** of a boy
to **** of a cat for the cat to rebel... like a predator...
on something that's weaker: weakest...
     it's a ******* cat... a bonsai tiger...
        
           that's why i never understood man's fascination
with predators, animal predators...
seems like their life just might be interesting...
translate that to predators within men...
            eh... blue oyster cult... something sort of eerie
itch by itch by the end it just becomes disgusting...
no argument: when it comes to the behaviour of cats...
the cat was in the right...
      the cat was in the right... the baby was simply collateral
damage: isn't that the common phrase in modern
warfare? collateral damage?

while Tony Blaire et al. are the ADHD+ **** of a boy
walking away scot free...
            
well... i gave the mother mother's manicurist so many
CDs to copy after i introduced her to Wooden Shjips...
she obviously has a new manicurist...
her friend was supposedly into Viking looking blokes...
but... i've recently saw a brutally honest
video by a woman, she admits to:
having nothing to offer a man... except for ***...
she's a single mum... all the women in my vicinity
are single mothers...

       and she's right... i work... i cook... i clean...
i can iron a shirt... blah blah... if i'm going to be second
best after she panders to her Rugrats...
what am i left with?
   it so much simpler with prostitutes...
although... the one i'm currently seeing sort of crossed
the mark... i think she's fallen for me...
she keeps sending me Selfies while i keep sending her
pictures of trees... flowers... cats... sunrises
and sunsets...

if i were to be stuck with someone like a Denise Royle...
oh **** that... ****: THAT...
     because i would be just that...
a push-over a comb-over...
        recently i watched a movie starring Lara Flynn Boyle...
a film from back in 2002...
   recent pictures? either Jack Nicholson
is the Spartan 300... i don't know...
                    i'm going to grace: if i get to old age...
probably less stressed out...
         like this one ****** i saw today...
the petulant husband... chocolates for the children,
wine for the honey-dubby-dubby-gum-bear...
he might: just get a sniff of the wine...
otherwise! WHIP!
              back on overtime come tomorrow's
Bank Holiday! ha-chi! whimp 'em boy!

existentialism never got along with Darwinism...
for what? my genes?! what about my "soul"?!
i rather find that than pass on some biological fuss
of a glue... someone else will pass something else
on... it's not like the human species will go extinct
because i haven't capitulated to reproductive
"needs"... being a grandfather with grandchildren
or... an old man and death's darling: euthanasia...
always the latter...
god bless the Benelux alliance: reasonable people...
benevolent people... sensible creatures...

****... i knew this was going to happen once i got stuck
into defrosting... "defrosting":
i was trying to get some ice for a whiskey pepsi
sharpshooter refill... a block of ice... no ice cubes...
take out the ice cube container hack at the block
of ice with a knife... fiddly procedure...
take some ice... put the excess ice on the shelf...
hello cleaned ice-cube container...

            i have lost the plot... i digressed too much...
i take it from my English teacher...
a Thomas Bunce... Glaswegian... loved his jazz and his
poetry... he always digressed...
he never taught us... not grammar: only on a must...
once... maybe twice... what did he used to call Shakespeare?
Shaky? Shaken Pear?
   he always digressed... he just told stories...
he wasn't a teacher... you might as well have
lit a ******* fire in the classroom and we'd all huddle
and listen to him ramble...

i've lost it... the day is almost over and i'm sitting
here drinking a whiskey and listening to...
my new found "hobby"... i.e. gothic post punk alternative
darkwave music... rubric!

i've always tried to escape the dichotomy of
the Cure vs. Depeche Mode...

the soft moon... oh... that band is a banger...
2013 release: from the album the soft moon...
songs like: circles,
                     parallels, we are we,
                                            sewer sickness...

there's still so much good music "floating" about...
it's just... so much harder to find...
it wasn't... back in 2016 when the internet still had
some sanity about it...

rubric! where's my rubric?!

the downward path - more than i should
give my remains to broadway - dumpster baby
c z a r i n a - wonderland
morosinthe - nihilism
love of consolation - memory
man + machine & emke - room to cry
ill humans - dramatica
dechakhal - always die
              ciern - the emperor rx
     grey gallows - chains
                       locust revival - no funeral
               two one six - heat
                   the isolators - concentrate on us
                house of breath - make sense of it all
q-7 three times - t-3
                       into her final sleep - heressence...

**** me, now that i come to think of it...
every single shift i worked at Fulham's Craven Cottage
whenever i was placed in Bishop's Park
with a women... i wasn't working...
i was on a first date...
we talked about each other...
Jeminah was the best... even though she kept
talking about her failed relationships...
but we walked into the cemetery and inspect the dates
on graves... my god... she looked so ****
back before she stabbed herself in the back
with rumours about me...

while... in my full view... started swiping left?
right? which one is rejection?
in front of me, indicating: you have no chance
mate... i have these many options... loser...
any of the others make their own wine?
bake? make dogs affectionate enough to lick
your wounds till you bleed and not feel
the pain?
               just saying: ******* pie in the sky!
mash potatoes floating in the lake...

what was i going to write?
   ****... i almost forgot... the day is almost over...
18 minute past midnight... time for closure...
i'm sitting with a whiskey + pepsi sharpshooter...
listening to some underground music...
thinking about trimming my ***** hair
because i need to see Khedra... girl's feeling anxious...

oh... right... i woke up nice an early... 8am...
looked at my phone... ****... no ingress pass for West Ham
vs. Arsenal... what's up?
so i text the manager... where's my ingress pass?
i'm pretty sure that i've booked myself in for this event...

text back... you haven't booked in, mate...

oh crap... crap and no crap: to be honest...
if i haven't booked in... i can't be late...
but i swear i booked in for this match...
the original date was the 28th of May...
that date was moved because West Ham progressed
in the Europa League... so Tuesday was them vs.
Frankfurt... i thought that if i booked in for
the original date of the match-up for the derby
i'd be automatically booked in for today...

while i worked Oxford on the 28th...
   it's not like i "forgot": i just wasn't messaged...
about today... ****** ******* diary keeping...
on my behalf? hardly... i woke up ready to shine...
geared up to do the shift...
arbeit macht frei is my new number one motto...
Wembley shifts... ooh... a blessing...
sometimes going above 12 hours... or thereabouts...

can't you squeeze me in?
   just in case someone blows-out?
  
no... sorry mate... can't print your accreditation
on a whim...
  
   but i already texted him saying: i know what NO
means... fair enough...

****... a whole day to myself... what the hell am i going
to do?!
    i ask dearest... what's for dinner?!
roast beef... ugh... not that crap...
no no... i love roast beef... when it's done proper...
done medium rare in the middle...
but...

    i've mentioned this before...
this recipe... it's a Turkish recipe...
i never thought that beef could be so well coupled
with rosemary... eye-opening...
you'd think on lamb goes with rosemary...
no... beef works just as well... if not better...
i guess the use of rosemary is a way to get
rid of lamb stink... why oh why lamb is sacred
to the Nomads while... pork... the most...
scentless meat in town is given so much
critique: didn't "god" create pork?!
why would god despise anything he created?!
it's counter intuitive...
and i once thought that the Welsh were
sheep *******... no... the Arabs and Muslims
in general have that award covered...
ugly... stinking meat...
  sheep... IT... STINKS!

                        at least pork doesn't... LAMB: STINKS!
maybe that's why their cuisine requires so many
spices... they need to drown the stench of lamb...
pork on the other hand? pristine chops...

tried rosemary: made it worse...
but i like rosemary... as much as i like thyme...
thyme and chicken...
but you wouldn't expect beef to be coupled
with beef...

           this recipe though... oh you know...
some Turkish cook... REFIKA...
hammered beef:

400 gr beef fillet steak
4 cloves of garlic, peeled
2 sprigs of rosemary
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
4 tablespoons olive oil
200 gr kolot - mild cheddar is better
2 dried hot chilli peppers
1 tsp of Korean chilly flakes
1 teaspoon black peppercorns (whole)
1 teaspoon sea salt

i woke up and... gaining knowledge that i wasn't
going to do the West Ham shift...
there's much better things to do with a cut of beef
than merely butcher it a second time via
a roast... ugh... roast vegetables and roast
potatoes... such an European "thing"...

wait a tick... i haven't done my 60km+
       bicycles sessions in a while...
                        want to see the Houses of Parliament
on the 1st of May?!
****... why not... via the usual route... past Forest Gate...
past Stratford... down Regents Street...
past Trafalgar Sq.? back past the... it was hide tide...
the Thames is not a river! it's an overstretched lake!
what river has a tide-in and a tide-out?!
it's not a river... unless: all rivers are like this on
an island! the Thames doesn't have a flow!
it... bubbles... it's an irritated piece of water!
it's not a river!

on purpose... i shoved down those black intestines
with barley and bacon and onions for breakfast...
with some rye bread...
ironed some bed sheets, t-shirts and a shirt...
and my work trousers...

it's best to count within the confines of 0s...
after all... a person's wealth is not measured impirically...
British Empire bound...
can you translate 6 billion in... what would be
the weight of geld... back then?

i'm done with post punk alternative music....
i'm coming back to the altar of Germanic Crusader
songs... Palästinalied...
i hear the music... i turn to proud airs..
mein gott: ich auch haben ein gesichichte!

jetzt?! alles ist bergwerk!

i am yet to eat a more łakomą feast!
a more greedy feast!
  
LAMB STINKS... perfect match up between
the Muslims and the Velsh...
perfecto! plush! mush! plush! mhuah!
finger-licking good!

why? why my disapproval?!
some elder ****- spitting on "my" pavement...
i don't like that...
disrespect the road others have to walk on...
sure... perhaprs in Pakistan you have
******* donkeys to grind a road to apply
to your obedience... by the stammer
of a donkey's hoofs...
over here... du brauchen asphalt...
    you goat loving spitting camel jockey
of a ****-...
                                     what?!

tomorrow's tired... let's have it... right now!
you ******* nonces....
you ******* fading chocolate copper-necks...
pseudo-predators...

i woke up with this great feeling of cycling for 60+ kms...
i did...
i stopped like a Dervish taking a brake...
at a shop that sold...
Turkish bread... packaged from...
the AL-BAHIJ bakery... somewhere...
near Wembley...
       it's not Naan ******* curry type of Jaapati
type of ****...
wholesome...
      
   i tell you... 60km+ backwards and forwards...
a meal like this will make you greedy...
beef + rosemary...
there's actually a difference between
freshly ground black pepper and readily
available ground pepper...
crushed rosemary... another "case" to implode...

unser liebe fraue...
    von kalten bronnen...
    bescher uns armen landsknecht...
   eine warme sonnen!

die trommeln! die trommeln!
               lälarm! lälarm! lälarm!

           alles güt, ja? wenn ein ist deutsche...
nein?!
   dann ist: partei-zeit!
        gütfühlen!
       ficken du: Hessen-Schwäbisch:
   schweinefleischislamischliebhaber-seltsam...
like.... wie... du was?"

oh man... that Turkish hammered beef...
with the red onion Sumac salad...
with the Sumac... with the red chilly flakes...
with the rosemary... the garlic...
the sea salt... the fresh real, whole... peppercorns...
U-BOATS man! Zeppelins!
               olive oil... lemon juice... pomegranate molasses!

hmm... i stopped over between Forrest Gate and Ilford
at this Turkish supermarket...
it wasn't the usual take on Lavash bread...
but it wasn't a ***(p)at(t)i either...
    the bakery? Al-Bahij... NW10... Miverva Rd...
  
i'm greedy for this dish... i'm always greedy for this dish...
do 60+km on a bicycle: you too would be...
you too would relax listening to Germanic
war songs...
            because... there's nothing better to listen
to when you're that much pumped up...
         nichtsenglischgesprochen!
nichtsenglischgesprochen!
         zu vergessenheit wir märz mit herz!
mit spatzen zum die nur schar!
                               unser: hohl von diese gräber!
Dear Dr. Krebs. Thank you for giving me another birthday (May 17). Please, again, remember November 15, 1979, when my doctor and four other urologists gave me a maximum of four months to live with my prostate cancer, and they set up appointments for radiation and chemotherapy, which I knew would **** me if the cancer didn't, and I refused their treatment. Then on a Sunday afternoon I contacted you by telephone and went with your simple program. I am 71 years old and am on my 13th year [of survival]. Three of the four urologists have died with prostate cancer, and forty or fifty people are alive today and doing well because they followed my "Krebs" simple program. Thanks again for giving me back my life. Your friend, H.M. "Bud" Robinson

15th March 1999
All I can tell you is that I had a growth about the size of a pea on my eyelid for two years and nothing would change it. The eye doctor said he thought it was cancerous but I did not have any tests. After 4 months of taking one b17 tablet per day and 15 apricot seeds per day the growth has totally disappeared.
Al Bresciani
abb642@aol.com 407-426-5832

“This is when I prayed and asked God to show me another way because I knew the chemo was so painful...
“Hi, my name is Tina Brock and my mother Fanida Caudelle (Faye) has battled cancer for a long time. Twelve years ago she had breast cancer. In 2004 she was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer. She took chemo and the cancer stayed away for a year. It came back in her spleen, abdomen, and pelvic areas. This is when I prayed and asked God to show me another way because I knew the chemo was so painful. I began researching and found B-17. Thank God! I ordered her a bottle and she took it while taking the chemo and we were all impressed with how well her blood counts were each time. She is still using B-17 today and February 14, 2006 my mom turned 74 years old. I would like to thank you for making B-17 available.”
Fanida Caudelle, Age 74
Nicholson, Georgia

“Before taking the apricot seeds, I could feel a couple of small lumps in my *******. Within a couple of months the lumps were all gone and have not returned…
“I have been using Apricot Seeds for a little more than 2 years and believe they have made a big difference in my health. Before taking the apricot seeds, I could feel a couple of small lumps in my *******. Within a couple of months the lumps were all gone and have not returned.
I continue to take the apricot seeds every day and believe they along with whole grains, fruits, vegetables, avoiding red meat and seafood without fins and scales, and eating as organically as possible is responsible for the change in my body.
Edgar Casey had a vision of what he believed were almonds and that they prevented cancer. I believe Casey actually saw apricot seeds and mistook them for almonds because they look similar.”
Carol Loguisto
Nassau, New York
“B17 still continues to save his life every day...
“We were skeptical when our holistic vet advised B17 therapy to our German Shepherd Baron, who was diagnosed with advanced hemangiosarcoma or blood cancer and given two weeks to live. It's now been 7 months and he's still with us. B17 still continues to save his life every day.”
Mary Smith
Oakland, CA

“I tell everyone that I talk to about the natural cure for cancer, which is Apricot seeds, just another gift of God...
“In 2004 I went to my Dr. and had skin cancer removed from my face and back. The cancer on my face was determined to be basil cell but the one on my back came out to be melanoma. Since that time they have returned and the Dr. wanted to do more removal but I decided to try natural remedies.
In September of 2005 I found information about Apricot seeds and Vitamin B17. I started eating the seed and taking Vitamin B17. The cancer on my face was red and sore but today the redness is gone and also the soreness.
The most remarkable part is the melanoma on my back is getting smaller. Once I decided to use Apricot seeds and Vitamin B17, I also started reading my Bible more and using the Bible versed that were given me. My health has improved and my worries about cancer were given to God.
I tell everyone that I talk to about the natural cure for cancer, which is Apricot seeds, just another gift of God.”
Fred Davidson, Age 62
Independence, MO

“The Doctor could only scratch his head and wonder. I have also used it on a dog who had miraculous results…
“I have used the seeds as a preventive for a few years and never have had any side affects. My mother-in-law was diagnosed with colon cancer the size of a grapefruit. A few months and less than $500 dollars worth of seeds and pills and it was reduced to a small mass the size of a grape.
The Doctor could only scratch his head and wonder. I have also used it on a dog who had miraculous results. Read the book "World Without Cancer" so you don't have to watch your loved ones die in vain.”
Steve Strasburg
Arkport, NY

“I believe that the B-17 blocked the spread of the cancer, and saved her life…
“My sister had been diagnosed with Thyroid cancer last year. I immediately started her on 500 mg of B-17 twice a day. She had her thyroid removed, as it was aggressive, and fast moving. The Endocrinologist were amazed that that there was NO spreading to the neighboring lymphatic system as is usually the case.
I believe that the B-17 blocked the spread of the cancer, and saved her life.”
Patrick Harris-Worthington
Minneapolis, MN

“The doctors don't understand how this could happened and finally we told them in March, 2006 that I had taken B-17…”
“In 2004 I contracted liver cancer. My doctor said chemo was the next step in my progressing liver cancer. I had been taking all the right healthy vitamins and eating right and now "cancer". When we were told there were NO guarantees that the chemo would work, my wife and I decided to try the B-17!
It was scary because we were not sure of how much to take on a daily basis but started with 100mg 2xday. We worked up to 500mg 2xday for about 5 months and then down to 100mg 2xday at present. I did take zinc and B-12 for 2 weeks before starting the B-17.
The cancer mass went from a 8cm to 6cm in less than a yr. It did not spread and it had shrunk. The drs. don't understand how this could happened and finally we told them in March, 2006 that I had taken B-17. My blood tests came back "normal" last month and all the friends and family are amazed and we are happy.
PS...the dr. called and gave us a phone # of a girl who was suffering as I was and could we call her and tell her what we did? My doctor said chemo was the next step in my progressing liver cancer. So, we did and she is now starting her regiment...”
Dennis Montgomery
Arcadia, CA

"I was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer in both ******* in December 2003 and had an operation to remove 2 lumps, some lymph glands and some nerves. Thankfully, I heard about B17 and did not proceed any further with another operation for a half mastectomy, chemo, radiation and tamoxifen.
I am pleased to say that I am doing very well. The doctors at the hospital have ignored me since February 2005. I had requested that they continue to monitor my progress with ultrasound. They insisted that I see a particular radiographer because they wanted to see the results they wanted, whom I knew was a particularly rude and rough ultrasound scanner. So I requested to see another radiographer. They kept sending me appointments for the same radiographer and I kept phoning the Ultrasound Department to change to another radiographer. Each time they said that the consultants refused! This went on for months and from February 2005, I have not heard a word from them.
They were not happy that I had refused their barbaric ways of practising medicine! They told me that if I continued to use alternative medicine, my condition would worsen and I would be back to go on conventional medicine, by which time "it would be too late"! I did offer to give them information on all the supplements and about B17 but they flatly refused saying that they didn't care about what I was doing because it won't work!!! They kept saying that as I was in my late 30s the cancer would advance at a great speed and I should think about my daughter!
That's my story in a nutshell! Keep up the good work." - Laila T, London, UK

Dear Angel,
I don't know if you still remember me. I wrote to you early 2003 about my dog, Life, she's got cancer in her spleen, and was undergoing chemotherapy with the vets. Well, I think you do remember haha. Anyway, just to update on what happened - her chemo finished May 2003, and I've been giving her 3-4 apricot kernels a day ever since. She is now still alive and well. I take her back to the vet every 3 months to do blood counts, and all her white blood cells are within the normal range. So, it has been 1 year and 4 months since her last chemo session, and the vets are very very surprised! Because out of all the vet's chemo patients, Life is the only one alive and still under good condition - which is totally out of their prediction!
Oh well, just want to thank you for the apricot supplies. At that time I really didn't know where to find them. You've opened the door of hope! And now I'm ready to order some more! Annie, Australia

To The BBC
"Sirs. On the 6 o'clock news tonight a medical professor was stated as saying that it was dangerous to try to cure cancer by 'untried' and 'unscientific' alternatives to the usual methods applied in hospitals.

May I say briefly that I have been cured by one of the horrors he mentioned, namely 'eating apricot kernels.'

Some years ago a nasty oozing swelling on my right ear would not respond to any treatment, but just grew in size. It was painful, it messed up my pillow each night and caused me emotional worry. Eventually I was sent to the Lincoln Hospital by my GP. They took a biopsy, and a specialist told me that I had a squamous cell carcinoma and that I would have to have a certain percentage of my ear removed. This was not good news. I deferred having treatment. I said I wanted time to think it over.

As it happened, I soon got to hear about apricot kernels, and began taking about ten each day, together with a generous helping of pineapple plus supplements. Within a couple of weeks I began to notice an arresting of the ulcer, and then it gradually began to decrease in size until finally, after a few months, I was left with nothing but fresh pink skin. The specialist was very interested, and took photographs, and said he would confer with other specialists in the hospital. He asked to see me on a regular basis, in case the cancer had spread to glands in the neck. But after twelve months he declared that I had been healed, and didn't need to attend the clinic any more. Strangely, he didn't seem inclined to discuss the matter further. As I understand it, the medical profession is not willing to accept 'anecdotal evidence.' Let me say this. I am not a medical man but a physicist. Even if Newton's apple is apocryphal, he certainly knew about things falling to the ground, and using his keen mental acuity, formulated the theory of gravitation. Astronomers knew all about the peculiar motion of the orbit of Mercury, but it took the mind of Einstein to provide us with the reason via relativity. These 'anecdotes' were the stuff of scientific method and advancement. If I (and apparently quite a number of others) are finding that skin cancers respond quite quickly to the eating of apricot kernels, the medical profession should be asking why, and coming to a scientific solution, rather than denouncing the anecdotes as 'unscientific', and the apricot kernels as 'dangerous.' Arthur E., Alford, UK

My introduction to apricot kernels was through a friend who lives in New South Wales. She visited my house in September of 2000 and was very sad as she had been diagnosed with metasised bone cancer and had spots on her rib, spine and hip. She previously had had breast cancer some six years before this diagnosis. I know she thought her life expectancy was doomed and I felt quite shattered as I also had breast cancer 18 months before this and had used my friend as a benchmark of how I was going to progress.
When speaking to her some months later to check on her health, she informed me she was eating apricot kernels, and in huge quantities each day. I believe it was around 30. This intrigued me as I had no idea there was any value in the kernel of this fruit but decided to start searching the internet for information and this is when I started to come across Phillip Day and other sites which endorsed this cancer strategy. My friend is now cancer free according to her professor/specialist and a hair test, she has a lavender farm which she works from the bush to the end product and also has alpachas...hard work......what an inspiration she is.

My cancer was bad, aggressive, two tumours in the left breast and 14 of 17 lymph nodes cancerous. I had a mastectomy of the left breast, undertook 4 intense doses of chemo and 6 standard doses, spaced 3 weeks apart. I also had 6 weeks of radiation therapy. I knew I had a fight on my hands as the specialist was very clear to explain that their belief was the cancer would be elsewhere.
I made a decision to take other vitamin supplements, including selenium at the very beginning of my diagnosis and then when I heard about apricot kernels, I thought maintenance and prevention was my next option. With experimentation I had the kernels daily but found I had reflux so interpreted that my body was telling me I did not need to have these so frequently and have now taken them twice weekly...the equivalent of a flat teaspoon of crushed kernels each time. My five year extensive check up happened in March of this year and all my tests are great. I am very well, feel terrific and know I have lots of energy to enjoy a wonderful life with my precious family and friends. My health is my wealth and the help and joy I give to others, who are embarking on a journey with cancer, is a wonderful reward for being a survivor.
Thank you again.
Regards
Judy


In 1987 a sun spot of many on my scalp developed into a malignant cancerous tumour which grew for ten months. For only the last three of those months I began eating apricot kernels daily, but the tumour had already grown to considerable size; invasion of the bone (skull) was suspected. I finally agreed to operation to remove the squamous cell carcinoma on 28/6/1988. The plastic surgeon was puzzled as to how the cancer by then had not spread to other areas.
Over the following year a new tumour started slowly next to the skin graft area whilst I continued to ingest the kernels (Vitamin B17), three times a day before meals. The new tumour was excised without skin grafting on 2/5/89. I declined to undergo follow-up radiotherapy after the operation in spite of dire warnings from medical staff that the cancer would almost certainly spread.
Many years later no cancer has developed so far. I have continued to eat one handful of kernels a day before meals, drinking some water before chewing them to reduce saliva contact. Doctors at Royal Perth Hospital expressed surprise that their predictions had not been realised. I continue also to concentrate on a high fibre and low fat diet. Combination with selenium is said to enhance the process.
The theory of the above is that the cyanide content of fruit kernels (mainly apricots) penetrates and attacks the cancer cells but leaves the healthy cells unaffected. The medical profession, who pour scorn on this theory, and government have caused the sale of the kernels to be banned in the shops and elsewhere. Consequently I have to obtain my own supply of stones and then have the dreary task of hulling them with a mallet. I suffer no ill-effects eating them. Incidentally I have found the kernels are
freely for sale in the United Kingdom! - D.B. Wundowie, Australia

Dear **Just a short line to thank you for all you done for us and all the help you gave us.
we got a phone call from Dorothy's brother George this morning. He went for an x-ray yesterday and got his results this morning. Apparently the lung cancer has gone completely but they still want him to finish his chemotherapy.
We think it is a combination of all the therapies he has been taking, but mainly the B17 as
Chapter 30: This Ain’t No Country Club

He stared longingly out the back window of his Dad’s

car. He was headed off to the country club again, missing

the nightly ‘Wiffle-Ball’ game with the guys.

The playground was not a country club. There was no price of admission, or exclusive standards necessary to be admitted. You could be black, white, red or yellow. It didn’t matter. What did matter was how you played, and how you fit into the group. You may have been a social outcast or juvenile delinquent outside the playground, and yes we had a few, but what really mattered was how you acted inside the fence.

In 1958 my parents joined the local country club. Being a young, upwardly mobile couple, and enjoying the success of my father's growing business, my parents decided that this was one way in which they could celebrate. I hated it! Not because I didn’t like the people there or didn’t want to learn to play golf. It was because it took time away from my favorite place — the playground.

After dinner in the summers, my parents would hurry up and clear the table and then head to the ‘club’ with us kids in tow to get in nine holes. This of course meant that I had to miss the nightly ‘Wiffle-Ball’ game in the street. I would then have to suffer through the entire next day hearing who hit twelve home runs and who threw who out trying to make it home. It just wasn’t fair. How could a country club ever compare to a ‘Wiffle-Ball’ game or the playground? It couldn’t. Not then, and not now. The country club was stuffy to a ten-year old, and the country club had strange rules. Most of them seemed to be about what you couldn’t do.

A Direct Opposite From The Playground

How we go from the inclusive nature of our nation's playgrounds to the exclusive practices of our golf, tennis and yacht clubs is probably the subject for another book and another writer. I am just so grateful that my earliest experiences were on a grass field surrounded by a chain link fence. It was inside that fence that I felt the playground wrap its four-acre arms around me and, through its spirit of free-play, teach me the greatest lessons I would ever learn.

How we develop the later prejudices of black/white, democrat/republican, or any choice at the exclusion of another is not something we learned there. At the playground, in the absence of parents and adults, we had to fit in and find a way to adapt to one another. The weather and the big guys called all the shots. That’s the way it was, and that was A-OK with us. It worked, because at different ages, and at different times, we all got to be squirts, then decent players, and finally the big guys.

It Was Fair Even When It Was Unfair

If that doesn’t make sense to you, then you probably didn’t grow up on a playground, where the whole truly was greater than the sum of its parts. There were no polo ponies or alligators on our shirts symbolizing our dreams. We lived them every day, and we lived them together!


Chapter 31: Violent But Not With You

The stare-down was over. Joe took the first punch but

delivered the second, then five more. To his credit,

Bobby was still on his feet, but the fight was over.

The playground’s resident tough guy could be violent, but he almost never directed that towards you. Not unless you were dumb enough to challenge his honor by publicly embarrassing him or making him look like a fool in front of the other guys. Then, the punishment was swift, like being shown the door after making your company look bad because of a dumb comment you made at the quarterly board-meeting. Nothing was more fundamental or learned earlier than the recognition of power.

The young neighborhood girls sensed this more than anyone, and it harkened back to Robert Bly’s ‘Iron John’. “Men are attractive because of their fierceness”. The Playground took on an aura proportional to its ‘tough guy status, not unlike many corporations. The tough guy’s roles were limited but invaluable when called upon. He was the playground’s last line of defense, even though his role was mostly one of deterrence. Similar to many companies, the tough guy’s role was usually passed down from the resident champion to his heir apparent, sometimes willingly, and sometimes not.

The mechanics of this process were mostly known only to the tough guys, but it gave the playground the stability and the security it needed. In the movie ‘A Few Good Men’, Jack Nicholson, while under interrogation from Tom Cruise says: “Somewhere in places you don’t admit, you want me on that wall, where four thousand Cubans try to **** me before breakfast”. He then finishes it with the immortal line: “You want the truth, you can’t handle the truth”. In our playground, the truth was governed by principles based on natural selection and the Law of the Jungle. Bobby Gross was our resident Tarzan.

Bobby was from the poor side of our town and was almost sixteen in the eighth grade. He had been ruling our four-acre domain for as long as anyone could remember. Bobby always seemed so much bigger and older than we were. It wasn’t only his age that made him the resident tough guy. Bobby earned and retained this title due to the several times when he had successfully defended his crown. These events though seldom, were major occurrences in the playground and were attended like a championship bout. They almost never happened by accident and were full of anticipation and bravado. The challenge usually came from another playground, and we were all extremely proud of Bobby when he successfully defended our honor.

Bobby almost retired undefeated. At sixteen, just about everyone leaves the playground for the world of cars and girls. I say almost because of Joe Church. Joe was a Navy brat whose Dad was an Admiral at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. They had just moved up from Norfolk Virginia, and one gray Thursday afternoon Joe showed up on the Playground for the first time. No words had to be exchanged, or threats made, it was just something you knew. Bobby and Joe knew it better than anyone. There could only be one playground number one, and today there would be a changing of the guard.

Like Bobby, but even more so, Joe was advanced physically for his age. He was very athletic and muscular. He had an air of quiet defiance, bred by years of moving from one Navy town to the next having to defend his honor at every stop. No one quite remembers exactly how the fight started. Someone heard the word ‘punk’ shouted and it began. It was over almost as quickly as it began. After taking Bobby's best shot, Joe pinned Bobby up against the chain link backstop and beat him to a pulp with less than six punches. This kid could really fight. It’s funny though; with Joe there was no bravado or posturing, just a raging controlled fury that you hoped would never be directed toward you. Joe was later highly decorated in Vietnam, and all of us who shared our waning years on the playground with him were very proud— including Bobby Gross.

Another Playground Legend Was Made!

Most corporations have their resident tough guy, or gal. You can only hope that they got their training, and cut their teeth, on the grass and asphalt of a distant playground. That way you can be sure that their lessons were true. If not, you may have to suffer the rants and tirades of some William Agee or Jack Welch wannabee. The real tough guys pass their strength along in the form of confidence and security to those working under them, just like Bobby and Joe did for us. This creates an atmosphere of stability and confidence that allows everyone to thrive and prosper and comes from lessons truly learned and paid for. The god’s of the playground instilled this in all. They entered your soul on the fields and courts of adolescence ...

And Never Left.
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2020
from under the iron curtain... not quite though:
in a study of the form of: immediacy...
a spare 30 years (circa)...
    from under the iron curtain thrown
under: the silicon curtain...

                 what science fiction ambitions:
what new worlds: new species of interest?
          concerning some "here"... and
                                obviously some "there"...
glued together, by -
                        the already mentioned study
of the form of: immediacy -
            i.e. more broadly known as the word
being...
          more broadly known as the word:
                                                           being...
for what is... and in that: the suspicious
utterance of "what" in conjunction with: is...

but it's hardly a book burning...
        i once cited a myself in transit...
        i once cited my self:
                            in the reflective sence...
not compounded in the reflexive immediacy
of myself... that...
    writing is not an invitation to speak...
it is an extension of thinking -
            i too have... had... avenues closed off...
for a while...
        as long as the substance is tame...
         but writing was never an invitation
to speak... it was always an extension of thought...
i privy the wanting ****** to entertain
his or her: caged tongue...
to labour with insane dignity to...
have that freedom of breath:
   without a single word being uttered:
   a feast for the eyes...

    of freedom of speech though:
  is... speeking freely... an invitation to... think?
what "book burning"?
             video-mash-up and a ******
variation of "*****": misnomer alley...
           no rigid lexicon for a... stalemate...
some grand unmoveable object of the tongue
to lick...
   to write is to extend thinking:
it is never to script someone...
   however... to speak doesn't invite me to
think... i would be too gullible for that
to be true... too forcefed a bulimic "rhetoric" /
and question to tow...

i have yet to find that speaking freely
allowed a chiral complexity of thinking freely...
as a reply... antonym...
     book burning: audio book... burning?
for the privacy of the eyes...
less this... feeding of echo... and more... echo...
speaking freely is not an invitation
to think freely...
                     i hope writing has
enshrined this facet of distinction...
                    it's such: oh such a "minor" technicality...

but i've used this phrase before...
from under the iron curtain we came...
and enjoyed the remains of the free world...
for a circa of 30 years...
                from under the iron curtain ******
under... the silicon curtain...
                  
/ / / / / interlude... of a soft-core existential nature:

  well the absolute joy of... shaving...
i perhaps did that once...
concerning as most would have called it:
on the face of a late-teen and early 20s colt...
***-fluff...

       as one had to... since the hairs resembled
the crop of cranium...
and weren't stiff enough: ***** enough...
for the guillotine of all ******* drops...
to form a beard...

   oh i had ambitions! i had ambitions
like you've never seen!
to add to a full crown of hair... allowed
to grow long enough and gear up for...
a 14 year old girl's wet-dream in school
of a french braid...
          i had such ambitions for a beard
so long... so long... it would...
tease the length of the whole torso...
from chin down and down to...
the bellybutton!
    in a thick iraqi braid...
       i wasn't so lucky on the face as i was
on the 'ed...
     bets are in... chances of me...
going bald?
   chances of me... having hair on my...
stomach region... my chest...
and patches of my back?
         bets are on... the horses are funny...
sorta running... mildly giggling and
playing: goof... shimmering...
the size of their teeth... as big as their *******
hoofs!

my idea of a haircut?
                      grow it to about bearable...
a comb to the left... a cut on the side...
to comb (hand brush) to the sides...
  and then... cut it down to a bare minimum...
not a skinhead...
   my head isn't best shaped for a king skin...
as one girl told me in high school...
i don't have the...
    well formed pariental / occipital coupling...
one of these bones is diminished in:
curves...
   i curious observation...
i guess that's called an invitation to:
pressure...
        a side-project of the occipital bone
being less protruding...
                          a schlawic shorta shin-diggy-oh...
girl spoke like a confirmed:
proselyte of the soul...
                       of language i can confirm...
it didn't matter it was...
a roman catholic school... in england...
some... confirmation... bias?
then i'd have a confirmation name
to boot with my two already given and a surf-name
surprise!
but i'm still: e = mc...
                     a horrid acronym...
                         eschlert = matthias ck-on-rad...
oh... god! yes!
i love the sound of my own voice so much...
i'm a gifted orator... frequently...
at... some ****-poor party revival
once a year... at... Nuremberg...
    yeah... i love my voice so much...
    i've ejected it from imitation thinking:
internal "monologue" and "air"...
i like it so much: i like it most when
it shuts the **** up...

itchy fingers and pervert eyes...
and domineering eyes...
the kind of eyes that... see...
your and you're...
       the apostrophe and the A like a halo...
hovering above: giggling...
infantile joys...
   never to be revised... but such...
pitiable domineering affairs...
no wonder i never advanced into
the realm of b.d.s.m. of adult joys and
advanced cinematic arena hard-ons:
        
  this one time i can don a hugo boss...
adventure... im grau oder schwarz     (ц)...
                                             (ш)...

all the other letters are kosher...
     but that dream... of a beard... as long...
as the king's hair...
gone... in an instact...
it takes about a month...
  before... everything return to: shabby...
the unkept beard... the irritating moustasche...
and then...
a miracle of having sat at a turkish barber's
with my eyes closed: as one does...
before a mirror... when someone is being
invasive...
      and feeling each and every snippet...
i should have taken
a before & after of my... "vlad the impaler"
deeds with every contort: matter...
a sense of making a rhombus into a sq.
or a sq. into a rhombus...
     oh... hair is easy... cut to a minimum...
a month passes... some jelly is used
in the last 3 weeks of extension...
and then... back to canvas (a) exhibit (0)...

       no point asked for a barber...
the man can cook, the man can bake...
the man has enough fudge muscle to shift
2 tonnes of soil in under 4 hours...
enough leg for 14sqm of experimental golf green
addition to a garden...
otherwise littered with patch-works of
gravel and project: drainage... another tonne
of shingles and pebbles...

    couple that with... a keen insight into...
the barber project... and arrivederci
                                migliore "tenuta"
    correttezza / bellezza: "mississippi"...
          cappoh: cchinno...
                           marble... cake...
                      gas-tap: top-off: shh!
                                      it's a lean...
              a leen in a lean in a: gwan-pazzio!
sounds sounds... suoni! su'oni!
                                      sounds sounds...
there is a morbid sense of meaning... but...
it's all lost to the interlude!

                 there is nothing more gratifying...
than being able to curate your own beard...
and find the sort of cranium crop top
to count the months in a year...
                       never working from:
                                       pelzkopf...
a dream of... roman brush... mochicans...
dipped in... woad blue / purple... / / / / /              

in the democracy of poets...
        in the republic of philosophers...
it has always been like so...
that philosophers dictated a republic...
that the poets... would have to...
somehow... dictate... a democracy...

i have in my possession...
a very strange book... "strange" that it is...
or was part...
of a 20th century curriculum...
a standard of pedagogy from 1967...
   O-level standards...
             we were taught latin: once...
cicero was a go to... beginning
with latin grammar...
first came latin grammar...
then... anglo-saxon shrapnel: "grammar"...
evne the term...

asyndenton... definition?
               this is the absence of conjunctions
between co-ordinate clauses, phrases,
     or "words"... the precise connection
              being inferred from the order of words
and the general sense....

      cicero's "modus operandi" of style...
      -que / et or....         and / and...
              or? speedy gonzales:
   que: what / and...

                   this the "copulative" sense of...
"missing" in-and-between...
                          nouns, adjectives, verbs...
   "words"... synonym pirrouete peacock fest
of grammar "technicality"...
        a "word" for a philologist
                    is a "thing" for a philosopher...

i will not... equip myself with...
what latin grammar i might have...
learned... to have studied such a book...
and its zenith of the year 1967... in a catholic school...
at least a catholic school said:
perhaps - "perhaps" insinuated back then...
latin grammar first...
christian dogma... second!

                adversarities: conjunctions:
                     sed, autem, vero...
example?
                   no example... contrasting clauses...

what of the conjunction: qua - i.e. as being?
or quo?
              privy: quid pro quo...
and one wonders...
the notion of "ego": had to became...
elaborated... isolated...
     given the asyndenton(s) of descartes...
i.e. (ego) cogito ergo (ego) sum...
well then! so much free room and reins!
to isolate the supposed "abstract" he-oi!oi!oink!
"says" so!

we pretend to move forward within cicero's
confines... back in 1967... this was standard
pedagogy!
latin grammar... what am i working with:
said the plastic surgeon to
the jack nicholson joker in that: Dt: fat...
Boatman: a tool a crude scalpel
of grafitti...               ahoy! ahoy! spare island!
Fwyday! vitch iz Velsh! i say!
oi oi!     hell-oooooooooooh!

             almost a sanskrit word...
so it must be!
    hendiadys and the asyndenton...
         the first... in sanskrit...
      please...
                हएनदऌअदईस
           ­       HENDIADYS...
that's as far as i will ever get...
no amount of diacritical marker excavations
will keep track of this:
experiment B'ah-Bel...
              yes... a drying up on the first
conjunction: the natives still speak:
Bay-Bel...
            B'ah-Bel'...

  the pashtun language... afghan women...
landay... something beside the ebb
of the strict skeleton of syllable
count of of a haiku...
or... i'm still token best **** in town
when it comes to:
misnomer: freely open noun usage...

the use of the pronoun IS
implies... there's no pronoun associate
worth a gender neutrality...
          IS is a pronoun...
              how can... IT... also a pronoun...
be... made... double neutral:
when "it" is already facing a neutrality
focus of quiz?

       an abstract noun... though?
to a cicero... an abstract noun...
with... hindsight... would be...
a... microscope...
   an adjective prefix...
   and a bypass of nouns into the verb...
prefix dear verb...
when will that suffix become
a noun and not a doubling of a verb?
of what? of scope!

     to denote an act rather than engage
in it!
          ******* scissor sisters grammar
of the modern age...
they should have taught me latin grammar
than given me
abortion conundrums to begin with:
failure! best kept secret!
aged 16... would make the vatican
proud!
      it's not that i own a baseball cap
that i can flirt with a "noah"
of n.e.w.s. with...
              it's not that...
so much for education...
in 1967 a catholic school would do...
the nun's project proud...
2004? what nun?!

                solitudo erat ea quam voluerasmus...
there was just that seclusion we had wanted...

an "antecedent" noun...
                    i much prefer an "antecedent" verb...
a variation of hammering...
or ******* in "fixes"...
   when there was once...
a turmoil of the jist of knee-armed...
and then... electric: sorrow-sowing of...
the nearby: "fix"...

          this language is best be forgotten...
the otherwise fictive rigour of teaching...
barbarians... a quick-and-easy...
acquisition of... latin: my dear... sir...
because... the english are the afghani sort...
first served: first come... though... last
to topple... anything... worth remembering
a past with 'em: therein!

i call sir! my immediacy...
funny thing... calling "my" in a borrowed...
body... which you... also... cling to...
with a tongue of transcendence...
and... a body's worth of an anchor:
and so! in reverse!
this body of no transcendence!
the old empire...
and this... jailor quizz...
the "asyndenton" of the hebrew...
in... how niqab is your...
                                             niqqud?!
ah!
               שׁ (š)... translated:
                             szkoda: shame...

and שׂ (ś)...       ślizg: slide...

that the hebrews... kept the ancient latin...
play on an asyndenton...
but kept it: vowel primo-intact...
   beside... a mere play on conjunction words...

i giggle... what have i to add?
beside a... ha ha?!
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2021
chopper: chop-off-chew; a 502 bad gateway bypass cheat code...

i know what i'll spend my money earned on, in what priority, i'll spend them on a brothel, i'll spend them on a *******: after all... she will spend that earned money on trivial matters, she will buy a pair of shoes: i'll buy a pair of shoes when the ones i'm wearing will become worn... i hope i can write this without an inkling toward spite... i'm happy to be childless, i'm happy to not be married... how best to decipher my feeling, at present... FAUN... WAINAMOINEN... i will not trust the leftist cosmopolitan brigade to break up this... resurgence of a folkish spirit among the Hyperboreans... making a resurgence in song, in wording... covert... under the radar... seemingly sleeping... even Heidegger mentions this... of the people is very much distinct to: of the folk... people inhabit cities and the make-shift constructs of nations... the folk? they inhabit the land! why should an African feel welcome among the winters and the crows... when i... giggle like a child... foreign among the lost seasons at the equator with the macaque monkeys?! these people are not here to belong... they know it themselves... however many safety-nets are placed for our liberal liking & their comfort... they are unnaturally "here"... our own worst enemies... white "liberal elites"... one cocktail after a second... after... no more water to churn out alcohol... these people have come for a reason... i don't know what the reason is... better living is hardly requesting more complications from technology... when life can be simplified from the closest of the most close connections... hier: hoch norden?! alle er tabt! tysk er æsten dansk...
deutsch ist fast dänisch! we might have fought wars among each other... but at least we belonged, together, even i... liberal as i were, for so long... it's not like i can't be... leaving a route for allowance for other cultures, other races... but... i'm... becoming more... detached from reality... detached from purpose... from the geography... from the forest... language is my last defence... these people shouldn't be here because they shouldn't be here: they shouldn't be here because... there's no need for me to be among their culture! their people! if i don't need to be somewhere, why should someone "think" it necessary to be among "my", people? mongrel ******* mongrel gives us this... ****** culture! hardly any tourism... i can be a tourist in Africa... would i want to live in Africa? no! so... why the ****... thank you Russia... WE, HAVE, NO, SHARED, STORIES... JUST... THESE... SOCIAL-JUSTICE ARGUMENTATIVE POINTS... EVERYTHING IS POLITICAL: HARDLY NARRATIVE... SUFFERING FROM MEMORY EROSION... IN THE IMMEDIACY OF JOURNALISTIC *******... i bemoan this sudden quest of man: because... i believe in its failure... a failure most gross... my heart prays for this ****** experiment to fail! fail it must! scheitern es muss! svigte det skal! lethargy kicks in... being too pleasing... too pleasant... my mind retorts: almost automatically... i'm QUITS! why? looking at children... i don't want them to suffer this mental diarrhoea in future years... i want them to look at faces most familiar... i'm SLEPT... i'm QUITS... ******* SAVVY?!


i've been a hermit for so long,
shunning human contact with only minor
outbursts of contact with strangers,
old men on park benches
talking about their grandchildren
and sons-in-law,
Rayleigh bicycles, seasonal diets
(not buying watery strawberries from
Spain in the winter months,
eating more vegetables - in general -
binging on local, seasonal fruit
from local farms),
prostitutes in the brothel, talking...
*******...
but always in concentrated outbursts
of interaction...
someone in London around Whitechapel
stopping me while he implored me
to fix his breaks...
hands up... listen: if i had some tools...
i'd try...
this spurned me on to now ride around
with some tools... i only need about three...
obviously i'm not going to take a *******
pump with me too... there's a reasonable
point of what i am willing to do for strangers...
so i gave him some advice...
it's the back break, that's faulty?
remember... take longer to break...
since the front break is only working you
might go forward by breaking too heavily...
and if you're going to break heavily...
stand up on your breaks...
and leverage yourself on the handlebars...
put extra pressure on them: top down...
homeless men...
once i ******* this woman for sitting
down on the pavement with this homeless man
i knew who migrated from Romford
to Seven Kings...
gave him a cigarette and laughed a while...
with some fwends... some autistic guy from
school who... got into drinking...
blah blah...
     so she starts attacking me with...
YOU! YOU! i just waved my hand and told her:
i'm not going to argue with you...
i suppose she was implying i was supposed
to be talking up women...
i was there for a Guinness...
later that same night i went to the brothel
for some love... or as i like to call it:
cuddle & giggles...
- that one time this crazy Rastafarian started
talking to me about the Hebrew deity
deformity (in his Rastafarian way)
we started talking from Romford
he dragged me to... Hackney... of all places
to distribute pamphlets to black Baptist churches
i had a "date" with a few fwends to watch
some boxing on t.v.,
- i won't even mention that one black guy
who took me on a carousel of his crack *******
addiction... that was a long time ago...
the two of us were strapped to the insides of
a phone-box while he took up a crack-*******
glass doo-di (what would you call it?
a glass smoking pipe?)
******* madman... that's also at the same time
i was having my first psychotic breakdown
from... smoking marijuana and fasting...
and walking around London...
so many more isolated instances of "dealing"...
interacting with... people...
now this... from my period of isolation...
social hibernation... where i threw myself at writing
so heavily hearted...
graveyards, forests... at night...
there was this one funny instance...
a car parked in Bower Wood...
took a while to take a **** on the grass...
owl... check... fox... check... rabbits... check...
deer... check... something cracked some
branches while i sat on a log bare-chested...
i actually opened my mouth and uttered
the words: that's not a human... is it, are you?!
walking almost blind screaming at the top
of my voice, growling... snarling...
through havering county park... climbing past
a barbwire fence to get up close to
the horses grazing in the field...
in the dark putting my hand against a horse's mouth...
i can forgive the horse...
it thought i might have something in my hand...
like a sugar cube or an apple to nibble on...
it started nibbling on my fingers...
bucktooth ****** turned around and his hoof
almost skimmed my forehead...
i still wonder what it might feel like
to be kicked in the head by a horse's hind legs...
i tried it once... punched myself several times
in the face until i gave myself a black eye...
i still have marks on my knuckles from the time
i took pleasure from putting out
cigarettes on them...
i guess i don't dream much...
i need to be closest to reality through...
the only best available a medium that most
resonates: pain...
- or perhaps a quote from Pablo Coelho...
the alchemist...
as a teenager i was planning on travelling to India...
India came to London,
****'s sake... the whole world came to London!
why would i leave (Greater) London?
if i were to travel across the Thames...
i'd be in a completely different country...
i once cycled from Romford to Greenwich...
already the difference were visible...
the north is like... what's the right comparison?
BUDA...
the south of London? PESHT...
less underground, more trains...
trams of Croydon, for ****'s sake: i thought that
trams were a Berlin / Warsaw "thing"...
if i wanted to: i'd ******* to Edinburgh and...
find the old place i was staying at
in my third year... Montague St.
just off Nicholson St.,
i'd go back to the mosque near Appleton Tower
for a curry... i'd perhaps do some bouldering
on the Crags... if i were to find my mountain
climbing shoes...
i am still, yet, to eat a deep-fried Mars bar...
or a deep-fried pizza...
like **** i am ever going to...
just today i ate a revelation...
usually... smoked salmon... well... obviously
on a bagel... with some fresh cucumber and dill
with a decent dollop of mayo...
today?
soft white cheese... the smoked salmon
& some lemon juice...
wow...
- finding work outside the family business...
i.e. not working with my father has become...
refreshing...
he... he could "abuse" me verbally as best he could...
you're doing this wrong, you're doing
that wrong... strangers? no chance...
but this own son: he treated the harshest...
i said to myself: **** it... i'm not putting up with
this sort of UBERSCHEISSE!
i haven't worked in... has it been a decade?
"worked" worked... i wrote... investing in
people not yet born!
the people, my contemporaries: sure, i care...
but... i'm not writing a Dan Brown novel:
am i? i'm looking for... longevity...
i'm looking for immortality...
to hell with not being paid...
to hell with spending money in ways that makes
you regret it: you will never find yourself
earning money: but you will regret... spending it
in ways that deviate from a "pattern" of
well-kept endeavours...
i don't mind spending anything on my bicycle...
why? cycling is my last outlet
of... aloneness "tourism"... to hell with going
on a cruise... i take up cycling to...
Thurrock... or deeper into Essex...
hell... i'll cycle into central London...
ah... sigh of relief... i'm alone...
i like dodging traffic... i like the added thrill of large
objects that might **** me...
but at the same time i adore the abundant emptiness
of the countryside...
well... it's not: "empty"... but writing makes it out
as it is... no ******* Wordsworth's worth
of ode to nature here...
perhaps some... die grenzwacht hielt im osten...
folk songs in, esp. in die deutschezunge...
- i think i know why, why i find this language
so endearing... it's all about the infiltration process...
i could... wholeheartedly... abandon it...
with even having to wear shoes...
i feel so much for it: yet at the same time...
if i were recalled to the mutterzungen needs...
i think i might... how i can hold twin-allegiances
i will never know...

uns ander'n brach die kraft...
und heute noch und immer
    den weg nach osten zeigt...

so far away from people... yet so close...
to put into writing...
i would have loved joining the army...
chemical engineer? ZYKLON B...
rings a bell...
now... reengaging with people...
on a minor scale of what an army cohort
looks like...
i still feel ****** getting a chemistry
degree: not leaving school at 15 and joining the army...
then again... i really don't know what
i'd do with too much money:
you can always have too much money:
even if you earn... £15,000 a year...
i remember my student years back
in 2004 circa 2007 (circa, ergo, no hyphen +/-1
a year in the "bracket")
beside the student fee...
£3000 could easily cover the rent,
the food... the odd spontaneous going to
the cinema... the gym fee...
well, fair enough... as students... we weren't paying
council tax... but £3000 could cover a lot of things...
if we're talking earning... £15000...
and you take a Paulo Coelho approach
akin to: there's nothing to ******* find when
you get to the Giza pyramids... when you *******
to Brazil... you seen the world doesn't actually mean:
a local crack-head took you on
one of his ******* shimmy run...

i don't belong no more in Kenya than
a Kenyan belongs among the Hyperboreans...
sure... if he feels suicidal...
and abhors his people so much...
but look where Brexit left us...
all the Polacks suddenly didn't feel welcome...
not part of the multicultural project
of the implosive Empire as they might have
felt...
what English soldier ever fought
on the lands of Poland during the second world
war... yet... how many ****** pilots
fought for Britain?!
huh?! huh?!
history implies: people keep on forgetting...
the labour of love for us that love
to remember... like...
the world offers us rubrics borrowed from
school...
i don't mind an African trying to live
in Europe... but **** me:
you won't find me living in Africa
any time soon!
sure... the macaques are cute...
to hell with the heat!
no time soon!
i, need, seasons!
i need, eating, bland!
what, rosemary & rhyme not good enough,
for you, ******?!

smoked salmon managed to bench press
my liking for raw herring...
miss the raw cucumber, the dill, the mayo...
add some soft white cheese...
some lemon juice... keep the bagel...
now we have ourselves a sport!

the Polacks have left the shores...
hello tourists... your anti-racist rhetoric has
paid off!
i'm hardly native...
weren't your own natives...
your own fathers supposed
to bemoan the fate of your own daughters?!
you don't...
and... i'm... somehow... supposed to?
i'm much more invested in the men...
i need... rigidity... structure...
women always tend to **** it up: anyways...
some... amnesia principle...

FAUN:  WAINAMOINEN...
unplugged... "v"...
  NIRVANA's unplugged sessions...
choke... shotgun shot to the head..
Christine Chubbuck vs. the Court of Courting Blind...
rich Russian girls taking  picture of the pitch...
i'm standing in the middle...
i guess there's also me involved...

- from my hermit phase... being engaged with so many
people... esp. the children... oh god... i love the children...
for someone who enjoyed their absence from
society...
to be so, greedily... reengaged.... like a snap....
almost weird...
but... almost like: I: WANT: IT!
sure... i'm but a pawn in this role...
but... here's my excuse... i'm also anders-wo...
here's my antithesis of da-sein...
anders-wo...          am-ich?!

tid: til begynde! ja: nu! kvik!
tabt en time
tabt løs "næsten" alt...

         fanden du:                     ord så blød

KURWA MAĆ!
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2021
i truly must have had one of those, very, very memorable nights, that i somehow also want to forget, so implant myself with false memories, oh, i've seen this done in a clinical environment, in psychiatry: it's called regression - a psychiatrist will call you up, he or she might have a handy student overseeing the "interview"... then he / she might insert a sort of: on the whim / "by the way" a speaking out-loud, referring to you in third person... e.g. oh... he was abused as a child... again.. to reiterate, today i woke up thinking i was screaming into the deafness of the night, not screaming via de profundis... more like... vitriol energy screaming: you ******* idiots! but i have proof... a nice, plum of an eye-sore... no mascara could do it justice... so it must've been a decent drinking session... my father just asked me... who gave you that LIMO... slang in ****** for a black-eye... LI-MO... thrill! i can find that in katakana: look at me go! ****... on L in Japanese... no trilling of the R either... WONG, WONG WONG.... let's see...  ha ha... oh but there is... you just have to be a rat, scuttle around the "palace" for a while... リ゜
                       モ
so when asked: who gave you the black-eye? i replied...
i was having issues with my shadow, who else?
i was punching myself in the head so hard, hey presto!
plum! ha ha...i always blame the shadow, we're always wrestling, no drinking session without a proper, fighting antagonism, the day  my shadow stops punching me, i, imagine, is the day some woman will come round and: ha ha... "kiss it all better"... for the time being... i like punching myself, i like... putting out cigarettes on my knuckles... masochistic little art of pseudo-algebra: X here, XXXX in total... it's always a good drinking session when i loose control, it usually happens when something is infuse... some minor biopic concerning Ted Bundy will do it... the erotica: YA-WN... i'm still trying to get paid... capitalism: sure... for some... i'm waiting... if they only pay me, properly... self-employed or PAYE (pay as you earn)... no one has bothered to clarify this with me... capitalism for some... i'll work, **** it... but the idea of bungee-jumping from some high building... no... not too alien... i can stomach the gravity, the thrill... i know that upon impact i'll meet sigma... alias of soul... my body's rent to begin with... no worries... i think i punched myself in the face since tomorrow i'm doing a stewarding shift up in Oxford... **** know's who's playing... i just want the supervisors to see my face... my whittle plum sore... if asked obviously i won't be telling them: i had an argument with my shadow... got in a fight, in a pub, self-defence... blah blah... oh no no... this metaphysical paradise belongs to me, to me: alone!

i almost feel terrible drinking this litre of bourbon,
you can't get better bourbon than ol' Jacky-boy'oh...
every time i open a bottle of bourbon
i'm reminded of the sort of perfumery you'd
most associate with a brothel -
bourbon scents = brothel scents...
bourbon is most certainly better than whiskey...
wait... no it's not...
bourbon is sweet whiskey...
i'm not much of a Laphroaig sort of guy...
come to think of it: on the spot...
i'd prefer a smoky whiskey... a Scotch whiskey
than this... sickly sweet bourbon...
perhaps i shouldn't have done
the no. 1, 2 & 3 (****, ****, *******)
& the no. 4 (the "baptism") prior...
sometimes you start drinking & absolutely nothing
feels right... i think my socks are stinking...
pregnant woman sensitivity to scents,
to tastes? do i really want to eat some cappers
or some gherkins to reach a counter balance
to this... sweetness...
i still haven't checked my newly set up bank
account regarding whether i've been paid
for my stewarding at stadiums...
o.k., o.k., think about going to the brothel...
let me just hope
i can sooth my disgruntled little self
with some decent d.i.y. music choices...
               or... if i get enough in... it really will
not matter what i'll be drinking by the end
of it...
Laphroaig... well... it's a bit like Marmite...
you either love it, or hate it...
i'm undecided... like i'm undecided about
bourbon... any other day i'd be loving it...
today... i'm undecided...
  perhaps i'm just used to drinking cheap whiskey,
cheap generic stuff...
i elevate the drinking experience by romancing
it: fraulein bernstein (ms. amber)
& mr. whiskers... etc.

- it really just takes a cigarette break & looking up
at the night sky... oi! baldy! where's that
old ******! never mind, but a night sky without
the moon is always an ugly night...
now i know what's up...

why did i watch no man of god today?
i had company when watching this movie...
but... how many more, how many more *******
movies about Ted Bundy? sure...
the movie was more about the FBI profiler
Bill Hagmaier... but still...
do we really need yet another movie about
Ted Bundy?! o.k. i know a little...
his mother had him out of wedlock,
he was raised on a lie: his mother was his "sister"
while his grandmother was his "mother"...
i dated a Russian girl for a while...
when i met the goons, sorry, her family...
way back in 2007... in St. Petersburg...
i was given the Ted Bundy introduction...
her mother was her sister...
her grandmother was her mother...
         what a freak of a woman: great ****...
tattoos and piercings...
she did this one number on me...
all scabs on her lips...
imitating the singer from hed(pe)...
wait... i'll look him up... jared gnome-head...
no offense: jared gomes...
all scabby... i implored her... take them out...
i implored her... cut those ******* dreads...
she complied to the point of...
proposing to me... she even chose
the ******* engagement ring...
she wanted me to get a tattoo... i refused...
even though she was this upstart tattoo artist
in the making...
she wanted me to get dreadlocks:
again... i refused...
thank **** that i disappeared from Edinburgh
and headed back down to London...
Ilona: thank you for introducing me to
BULGAKOV... i really enjoyed that book...
esp. reading parts of if
on my wait from St. Petersburg through
to London with a stay at Warsaw...
eh... as much as i love Dostoyevsky...
how he belittles Polacks every time he gets...
not to my taste...

2007... a pivotal year...
to cite Jung from the Answer to Job...
perhaps there are some female readers
in my audience, perhaps the Zodiac is to be minded...
this quote...
Luciferi vires accendit Aquarius acres -
Aquarius sets aflame Lucifer's harsh forces...

a lot has happened since... 2007... don't you think?
oh, look-look... she was an Aquarius,
i am still a Taurus... but that break-up...
my god... what a harsh trip...
i remember walking up to her apartment armed
with a guitar... about to play her a serenade...
REJECTED: ha ha...
pushed back by her ex-boyfriend she was
******* and her ex-boyfriend's friend...
a Russian... ha ha... oddly enough:
called: GERMAN...

it's so almost yesterday... i can sigh a sort of relief
from this memory...
it's good to remember...
i never sought out that quality of forgetfulness...
i want to remember... i cherish memory
above thought... it's theatre...
i want to... remember... select...
what... i want to remember...
so that it can have a recurrent presence in my mind
like... that drill "sergeant" of
pedagogy that instilled 2 + 2 = 4 into me...
the ******* alphabet...

now i know why i have this bad taste
in my mouth from drinking bourbon...
it's not that i'm drinking bourbon...
i love bourbon...
when the Scots took the smoky route...
the Irish took the mellow route...
arriving at bourbon years later:
and on a different continent...
                                     do, i, look, bothered?!
i hope i do: i (might) also hope that you might
"think" i do... but... you're not, you don't
(seem to be)...
so? back to sq. 1: 'ere we go...

mighty fun playing the ******* or are least
pretending to be one...
akin to... pseudo Jack Nicholson
in that cameo role of his as
enrolled by: actor playing actor playing
an actor: Keith Allen...
Bodies... Dr. Tony Whitman...

me, you...Joseph Roth &
the doppelgänger, right & "who" else?!

now i know... that cigarette break really helped...
the bad taste in my mouth...
of course! i must be drinking h'american liquor...
i knew something was up...
couple h'american liquor with watching
no man of god i.e.
not another Ted Bundy flick... o.k.
women are attracted to psychopaths...
wannabe cannibals... fair, *******: enough...

black culture is superior to white culture...
sure... white people are ******* gagging
to incorporate it...
inter-sectionality always existed within
the confines of religion: religion was
always post-modernist... given the current trend
of "thinking": it always... incorporated
outside influences to create a cohesive:
snowball effect... what's ******* new?
discovering the continent of America in a tin
of ******* sardines?!

there's no tree, there's no dog barking...
you're just asking for a a wrong type of a mental
gymnast to make some, weirdly allocated,
point, of ref....
i'm not doing it... god help anyone...
no... not even the ******* devil would get into
this much... anti-fascinating sort of "juice"...
i wouldn't...

o.k. now i know...
i was drinking this most, bountiful of a fully-bodied
red wine yesterday...
a south african 2020 shiraz...
by the name of arabella (name sounds familiar...
an arctic monkey's song?!)
origin: western cape...

i think i must have mentioned
smoky whiskey vs. bourbon...
well... this glass of red was so good...
i had to breathe some nicotine smoke
into the glass... let's go... full out theatrical
on this: "blood"...

to reiterate... why so many movies about Ted Bundy?!
modern ******* is so...
******* ugly... even in the brothel i would never
want to **** women like the women ******
in *******... ****?! come on...
******* with the addition of choking?!

as a child i had a categorical dislike for liver,
pork liver... semi-goulash
with onions... with the addition of mash
& gherkins... or pickled beetroots...
this sort of material, this sort of ***...
puts me off...
i scratch my head and think:
Abel... because H'america was built on
the CULT of CAIN... their fascination
their celebration of serial killers...

prior to mentioned...
America is a CULT OF CAIN...
i'm with the Iranians on this...
     three names congregate...
Kurt Cobain... shot himself in the head using
a shotgun... sure... that's one way to go...
but... shooting yourself in the head...
doesn't simply "solve" the matter...
recall...
   Chrstine Chubbuck *** Adndrei Chikatilo...
bullet to the head...
for both...
a quote from Bane... a Batman fictional character:
perhaps he's wondering:
why someone might throw a man...
out of a plane... before shooting him in the head?!
why would you shoot someone
in the head... in an empty prison cell?!
if you were not expecting them to rot?!
best explored with the added tenderness added
to the attempted suicide attempt of the incel
that Ms. Chubbuck became?

why not make more movies about
the Zodiac killer... anyone?!
oh, sure... here's me readied to ******* to little
Wisconsin... or... **** knows where!

i was having some d.i.y. d.j. issues...
thought experiments... undogmatic & kernfeld...
"issues": yeah, i couldn't remember the song's name...
no, wait, the artists...

last came... the origins of the niqab hebrew
vowels...
the: hmm...
come to think of it... there's more...
such is the nature of hidden things...

Adam Kadmon [tetragrammaton(s)] apex...
Atzilut (nearness)
Beriyah (creation)
Yetzirah (formation)
Asiyah (making)...

vowels like diacritical markers...
caron, tail... umlaut...
well... for the Hebrews...
   A - kametz...
    E - tzere -
    I - chirek
   O - cholem
   U - Kibbutz... some others... i will miss...

the study of vowels, though...
since they are hidden...
the entire concepts of vowels in Hebrew...
the niqqud...
i ask... looking down at the chiromancy...
of, my... right, hand...
did not the vowels arrive in "our" consciousness
via the Sefirot root / branch of...
the Malkhut?!

    Adonoy... you know... when the current people
perform *** & it's so ******* off-putting:
primarily because... they talk...
during *******...
&... i don't want to be talking during ***:
why invoke / invite "god"?!
they can't... Niqqut / Malkhut the deed...
o.k.... not that i'm ******...
just... mildly annoyed...

      you don't need to **** & speak at the same
******* ****'s sake time!

Europe... some weird ******* funnel for
the world to congregate around...
white women... white women and their *******
sado-masochism...
the cult of cain in america...
white women and their afro-****-boys...
cry wolf while i go around arming myself
with Thai surprises& Turkish delights...

i oust my shadow from my presence
with a few drop-dead plums in search for "light"...
imagine me punching a woman silly to
later reason wth me...
oh... but no one is going to say anything about
me punching myself silly "SOY"..
been my: bean my baby?!

      now' the time i hark, now's the time i bark...
now's the time i fill the night with a stomach's
worth of...              GRUNT..
indigestion...

       die stücke, bewegen sich!
schach, ja?! nein?
                       was ist die alternative?!
hund?! leine?!
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2018
.i've seen cover songs
                 being overplayed:
t.a.t.u.,
              snake river conspiracy...
of the smiths': how soon is now?
mind you... do you feel that
chernobyll itch? do you?

i like this quote:
the loudest applauses
craft the most silent encores...
who was it? i guess it must haven been
me,
if it wasn't me, then...
we have a problem.....

well thank you,
the danes found out...
the warsaw pact attempted to keep
it hush hush....
                  i am:
the sleeping diatribe
...

such a spectacular disobedience
to having fathomed
the obedience
to the last remaining iota
of a purpose....

              friend to boyo fiend,
and the jargon buste (adjunct)....
while toying with
being enemy to the squish
  and the tentacle lover
            of lost
& last concerns...
serves you a: counter sushi
masterpirece with a worth
of herrigs....
to mind a counter with...

                   you know how "god" abhors
"original" sin..
what becomes "sin"?
well... "unoriginality"...
      i too hate  & abhor the platitude
of plagiarism;
i'm a blatant Evangelist
at this point...
             i'd rather die...
before i'm reborn...
then again... i'd slso act
like Jack Nicholson....
but then again my demands
are worth are shutters squat...
to mind...
          what becomes a Led Zeppelin
"original" sin...
           tobacco shutters...
taping-course:
wet tobacco...
not chewed, rather, smoked...
whatever...
people will never believe the victim...
they will, when there's
a dead body... otherwise...
dead wise no war no death sold...
apparently the dead
are "wise" when there's no war....
then again...
when war...
the "wise" also claim:
there are no casualties....
who needs them?
no one can recognize them, anyway...
mother death justice earth:
who can blindly recognize either!
the twin justice,
that justifies encompassing both...
the joy that originates
from wet.... tobacco;
i don't care who's to blame...
all i care about is that...
someone is actually claimed,
as requested
for being made to claim blame.

now god, now no god,
now the infantile man
with a belief in a god,
now a memorable
  now a seriously acclaimed man
of concrete disbelief...
that... pristine atheist...
i too hold my claims
to be of barren wastelands
in order to have them
be made for the worth of them
being cherished.
Losing lost in the loneliness
Feeling for hope and for bliss
******* I miss being missed
And the euphoria of a close kiss
Even if it felt like another mis-take
***** smash cuts, his take he takes
Awake for the departed, 3am’s too late
Plus Jack Nicholson said he's already made
But I don't know,  just can’t believe em’
They said I was the anti, another demon
I guess now I have something to believe in
Plus the thought of you can’t keep me from cheesing
So I fiend for heaven but also for another release
Knowing one way or another that I'll soon be at peace

— The End —