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*** trafficking – the trafficking and debasement of souls; Drug trafficking – the trafficking of substances that debase the body.  Here compared you will find the prevalence, impact, and rehabilitation processes associated with *** and shrug trafficking.  Respective clientele, demographics, and locales that these types of trafficking touch will be revealed in order enlighten you to their world-wide prevalence. The physical, emotional, spiritual, and psychological impact of lifestyles that result from these two types of trafficking will be detailed to etch vividly an image of just how far-reaching the impact of these two activities is. Light will be shed upon the rehab processes that lead to recovery from each.
                 According to UnoDC.org, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the use of illicit drugs has remained in a stable trend, with approximately the same number of people using illicit drugs each year. This trend has continued for a number of years. Upon examining the world drug report, written by UnoDC.org, production of several drugs exhibit particularly interesting trends. ***** production for example fell and spiked in a somewhat predictable patter from 1990 until 2010. When this data is graphed a reasonable medium appears for all the years, revealing that ***** production has stayed around an average production of roughly 200,000 hectares annually. Likewise, coca cultivation pictures an interesting trend. From 1990 to 2010 coca production appeared to be almost identical each year, and with little to no rise or fall in production, there is a similar trend in its being trafficked.  
Nefarious: Merchant of Souls is a documentary that was released in 2012 by Exodus Cry Its producers and researchers saw firsthand the atrocities of the *** trafficking industry. The film crew interviewed former pimps and prostitutes, spoke to traffickers, the families of the trafficked and to individuals still actively engaged in three sides of the *** trade referring to currently employed pimps and prostitutes as well as those who purchased ***. The researchers and producers interviewed eastern European gang members and took a trip to Amsterdam’s red-light district – home of legal prostitution. They journeyed to Los Angeles and saw the glamorized side of the dark issue of *** trade.
According to Nefarious, the number of humans trafficked for the purpose of providing ****** services is on a shockingly steep rise. In a matter of a few years, *** trafficking rose from the third largest criminal enterprise to the second. It is second only to drug trafficking and is vying for the position as top criminal enterprise in the world. It is encroaching upon that position far more speedily than any authority or decent human being would care to acknowledge.  A survey taken in 2010 by DART (the drug awareness resistance training program) revealed that 21.8 million people aged 12 and older had taken an illicit drug in the previous month. In 2010 it was estimated that between 153 and 300 million people had used an illicit drug at least once in the previous year. These statistics fail to take into account the impact that this usage has on the lives of the families of drug users. Neither do these statistics reveal the extent to which drug users lifestyles are impacted by drugs. However, nearly  every single human trafficked for ****** purposes is completely and utterly enveloped in the lifestyle of prostitution and the violent world of being prostituted. In Nefarious a shocking statistic is revealed. Approximately ten percent of the entire human population of earth has been trafficked. Both human and drug trafficking are prevalent across the globe. Human trafficking occurs in 161 of 192 countries. Illicit drugs are trafficked in every country that has laws that deem substances unlawful. There are little to no race, religion, ethnicity, or age restrictions on who can and is trafficked for use of ***, but drugs are far more limited by age and ethnicity in their use.
Drug trafficking, though similar to *** trafficking in many ways, is in no way as substantial a damaging force to the mind, soul, and spirit as the world of *** trafficking  is in terms of the critical and dangerous force it exhibits in the emotional, physical, psychological, and spiritual  impact it has on young girls. Both drugs and *** trafficking have some influence in all of these respective areas. The primary area in which people are affected by drug use is the physical. Drug users’ health declines, they become physically or psychologically dependent, and they may develop diseases from sharing of needles or lack of inhibitions that lead to *** with an infected individual. Drugs may, in some rare cases, lead to psychoses and mental disorders. They may cause brain damage, which is both physically and mentally damaging. Drugs may even set one’s heart and soul in a place that they are more susceptible to lies or truth. They alter spiritual state for some individuals, but only mildly. However, *** trafficking victims are impacted majorly and in their entirety as a person. In all aspects of the physical, mental, and spiritual, *** trafficking victims are consumed by *** trafficking. In Nefarious it is revealed that In order to “break” *** trafficking victims they are profusely beaten, and are psychologically toyed with to create a twisted trust and dependence on their various handlers. They are repeatedly *****, and are examined like cattle by those who wish to buy women. They are imprisoned in dark rooms and not allowed to leave unless told to do so. They are bedridden and forced to ******* themselves. After being broken in ways described above and sold to a ****, girls are forced every day to meet certain quotas of customers and cash flow. If they do not meet these they are beaten even more. They lay in bed sometimes a week at a time to recover physically enough to usefully return to their “job”.  Through this hellish ordeal, their soul, self-worth and identity are being attacked by circumstances that devalue them. They become like animals.
*** trafficking victims become dependent on their environment for normalcy. This is so true for some individuals that even though they have been rescued from the lifestyle, they return.  This is not because the *** trafficking victims enjoys the lifestyle of prostitution, and it is not because they want to. Instead, it is because they think they can be nothing more than a *******. The *** trafficking victim, in this case, believes that they need to settle into the numb and thoughtless mind state that they develop when broken. Returning to prostitution does not evidence an addiction. In contrast, it is the cry of a soul that is desperately trying to cope. They do this in order to feel as if they can survive.  
The rehab processes for *** and drug trafficking differ greatly in commitment and length, but are similar in that they both require physical and psychological rehabilitation.  Drug rehabilitation programs typically consist of twelve-step programs or something similar. They last a number of months, or occasionally a few years. They allow individuals counsel and encouragement, and they attempt to, by abstinence, exorcise an addicted individual’s addiction. *** trafficking rehabilitation requires the re-creation of an individual. Self-worth must be reconstructed. The spirit must be healed in order to allow for psychological healing. Prostitutes are not addicted to prostitution, but prostitution produces dependence in that the prostituted crave normalcy. This dependence must be killed. Successfully rehabilitating women from this forced lifestyle requires lifelong commitment and endless resources. It requires passionate fanatics, people who will pour their life into changing the lives of others, because only the incurable fanatic can wreak havoc on the tragedy of human trafficking. Any short-term effort to rehabilitate a *** trafficking victim is doomed to failure. The degree to which the brokenness of *** trafficking victims becomes ingrained in them is so extreme that it takes a lifetime to reshape their lives.
While researching *** trafficking in order to accurately produce Nefarious, the researchers and producers of Nefarious became convicted by facts that they collected. The evidence they collected speaks to the fact that *** trafficking does not just attack the body; it attacks the entire being, and in far worse ways than drugs ever could. Varied races and ages are prostituted and / or consume drugs. The impact of both of *** and drug trafficking is severe, but much more so severe in the case of human trafficking. The rehab process for human trafficking is much more in depth and is testament to the horror and degree of psychological, mental, and emotional disfigurement, as well as acclimation to a horrible situation to the point that horror becomes normal – a new definition of addiction. Human trafficking is an atrocity that is far more horrendous and prevalent than imaginable. It is far more destructive than drug trafficking. Drug trafficking is one of the most destructive forces in this generation.  Surely consuming drugs is one of the most horrid things we can do to our bodies, but what about consuming souls? *** trafficking consumes souls, hearts, minds and bodies. It splits, fragments, debases, brutalizes, obliterates, murders, rapes, molests, destroys, and dehumanizes the prostituted.  Drug trafficking attacks the body the soul, and sometimes the mind, but in much milder ways.
Aaron Knockovich Apr 2014
Fear is a wine-red chartreuse window.
Holding within the fantasies and myths of ones mind, body, and soul.
Ever present, it stays with you your entire journey.
To gaze from afar, brings you closer to your destruction.
However, the best place to cast the stone that obliterates it's well being,
Is the place where few tread.
Your time is now to play the role of David.
Your Goliath is fear.
And your stone,
Is you.
Russell Douglas Feb 2010
A Verse In Time: A Trickster’s Alchemical Approach to Memory in Three Waves

(Warning: The following collection contains depictions of three waves
of the psychedelic experience—particularly with God’s allies, Los Aliados, the mushrooms—and like the psychedelic experience each wave possesses its own waves within itself.  Ride with discretion.)

.

Wave I: The Allies’ Nursery Rhyme

The Allies
came to visit
and take me
on a trip.
No need for boat
or bus
or plane
or even rocket ship.
The galaxy, as they explained
resides inside your mind,
The portals to the universe
are windows you call eyes.
Instead of always looking out
you should try to look within.
The ending you have always feared
is exactly where you begin.

Yes, all the spans of time and space
exist in you behind your face
and yet you cannot understand
that nothing is a race.

Oh wait, please be careful with that mirror
when we are here and you draw nearer.
Don’t let the face of everyone replace your face with fear.
You are Horus, Mary, Jesus Christ, Cervantes, and Shakespeare,
and all the men from beast to mice, from oceans down to tears.

And so they pried behind my face
and pushed me on through outer space
and soon enough I understood
there never was a race.

It all exists right here, right now—
the past, the future, the grass, the cow,
the vast, the nature, the cash, the house,
the king and the savior
the beast and the mouse
are all your creation,
your relation,
your spouse,
your Path,
your Bible,
your ‘Gita,
your Tao.

It is all
of your moment,
It is all
of your now.

For you are the mystery
of that which you seek.
You invented the minutes, the hours, the weeks,
the deserts, the rivers, the valleys, and peaks,
your digits, extremities, elbows, and knees.
You created the cure, you invent the disease.
The labyrinth is you and
You defeat it with ease.
To master the Minotaur just follow the string
Discover the dinosaur, discover the king,
discover this grandiose song that you sing,
and uncover the truth of the message you bring
when you ring bells or

Stroke piano keys
and make the doctor sweat.
The pranksters shifting shapes again,
it’s time to make a bet.
With silly laws of threes and fives, this riddle I repeat, replies
that by the time the rhyme is over, the trickster will arrive.
Gliding up in cycles by, the prankster grins and winks his eye.
He fabricates a fluffy fix with fuzzy snow white lies
to bring the doctor to a six then down to four inside
and bring the tempest to a wave
on which the four can ride.

Do we glide?
Do we slide?
Do we fly really high?
Do we bobble and sink
with the rise of the tide?

I remember the brink
the cellular stride, the following leap,
the primitive mind
I remember the dirt, the water, the fire,
the wind and the ether,
the passion, desire.
I remember that art
can never expire.

Do we depart?
Do we retire?

The answer is yes,
The answer is no,
The answer’s the same wherever you go.
It’s never too fast,
it’s never too slow
and you are never the last to not really know.
For the sun always shines,
the moon always glows,
the old always die,
the young always grow,
The seeds that you plant
are the trees that you sow,
from the bees and the ants
to the bulls and
black holes.

It is all
in your stance.
It is all
in your
soul,

When you follow your dance
the bliss
takes control.
Take your place
in the play
and master
your role.
The Aum
is your home
it’s inside
of your dome,
Whatever
you wonder,
Wherever
you roam.

And so it flows behind my face
the universe of time and space
Now I understand that time
is invented as the race

Yes, you are Borges, and Buddha, and Krishna,
and Lorca, and Vishnu, Dickinson, Lennon,
Eliot, Gandhi, Marley, McKenna,
Campbell, Picasso, Alpha, Omega.
You are your enemy,
your stranger,
your neighbor.
You are the peasant,
the king,
and the savior,
the mandala man,
the cosmic *******.
You are the taste
You are the flavor
and you are
the wave
the unwavering
Creator

Even us
as they explained
merely extend from you
A mirror to the macrocosm
for you to gaze into.




So when you get lost
within your lies
and cannot find
your rhyme,
Gather inside with your
Allies
and master
the maze
of
time.


Wave II: Contemplating The Allies’ Advice

Thunderbolts of cackling giggles
shutter through your vitals, shaking shoulders
and squirting tears from squinting eyes.
Exciting when dimensions hidden creep into your line of vision,
morphing mapping iridescence with a fleeting fuzzy phosphorescent
undulating elfin presence following your every contemplation.

Concentrating on a caterpillar crawling up the wall
how curious, this furry beast has fingers not to fall.
He folds into his fuzzy form, a sleeping bag to keep him warm,
a little home as still as lead.  He hibernates and contemplates,
waits and waits and transmutates into a gilded butterfly
that flutters through my head.

Violet translucent landscapes bleed through grass and trees,
focus on a precise place of time and space and witness the birth of the human race.  Projections made in fuzzy fourth dimensions quickly fade
if your gaze should wander.  Positioned to ponder,
you plunge into prepubescent wonder as a shooting star splits the sky wide open revealing heaven and everything under the sun is tune and the sun is eclipsed by the moon.  And once again, the music comments chronologically on your moments, as if all these notes and lyrics were cataloged to sync with the scenes of your epic voyage.

Destroying contemplation again, the sea ***** the wind through the trees
and blows a blue marine breeze through your hair.
Do you dare take the time to recognize the punctuality of the gale?
Should your frail and fragile mind be dangled from a line
to flap and fluff and figure out the nature of the rhyme of our mother?
You are your brother, your keeper, and your lover.

All the lines align and oscillate in cadenced flow,
the more you see with your mind the more your mind will know.  
A ****** brain may strain and throw a fit
if faced with the tricky truth of the third eye
Surprise! Who knew that Jesus Christ could sprout from cow ****?
Can you believe it?  Wow, Bob, wow.
Where do you think we got: ******* and holy cow?
Heaven is the here and now
and every time you try to leave
you lose what you have found.

(* All words in italics come from    
   various songs, films, works of        
   literature, etc. and are not the words    
  of the author.)


Wave III: Los Aliados Wake

An apple carries a story deeper than the tree,
More nourishing than the luscious skin,
More central than the seed.
for the apple gave original sin
and knowledge from within
and fell upon the head, announcing gravity.
Have you ever heard the tale of Johnny Melon seed?
(The apple is global, so I wonder why,
what could be patriotic of pie?
Is it not just a strudel,
a pastry disguised?)

The colors we create
distort. manipulate.
The fools who follow fear
are doomed to find their fate
between their ears
where the colors seem
to blend and stream
and almost disappear.
To wonder why we’re here
all colors must appear
and merge into the blinding light
that obliterates our fear.

All your dreams, your fantasies, your symbols, and beliefs,
all a compass pointing you to endless mystery.
The treasure that you seek
resides inside the Self,
A jewel within the rock,
A book upon the shelf.


I bought the ticket,
I’m taking the ride.
I’m spiraling miles through the bowels of time.
I’m spinning and laughing
and losing my mind
and finding
it always returns
just in time.
It’s right where it left me,
so I’ll leave it behind
and return when
I’m ready
to relish the ride
with a bite
from the apple
of my
holy
third
eye.
Canaan Massie Oct 2012
Long days seem so much longer.
Distance does not make the heart grow fonder.
You’ve conquered the empire of my subconscious.
Your crusade so short,
Yet I hope your reign continues for eons.

We’re far past passive flatteries,
Instead, we fill each other’s hearts with vows.
You mean them now,
But what about a few months?
What if you decide I’m not what you want?

The torment I am slowly approaching,
Consumes my distant soul.
I can hear the sounds of futuristic loathing,
From when you decide this love has taken it’s toll.

So tell me.
How can I pay this inevitable toll?
How can I save us from Cupid’s malicious tyranny?

His arrow is too far lodged within me,
I cannot remove it.
I can only push it farther and farther
Into my heart until it falls out of my back.

But this arrow, trenchant.
Cupid, the sharpest of marksmen.
Yet colorblind, he is.
He sees not what colors his targets represent.
He draws his bow for the pure love of marksmanship.

Sometimes, yet not often,
He will hit the intended target.
But the odds are scarce.
His subjects are often punctured,
And connected to one whom reciprocated Fate’s desire.

Yet this time…
This time…
Cupid must have hit a target of Fate’s approval.
For thrice he has missed.
This time He and Fate are in sync.

This wound may stretch over time,
But the arrow shall remain firmly lodged within my *****,
***** and immovable.
Until you kick it through my backside.

But until then,
I can only endure.
I can only be woo wounded.
I can only survive,
Another ambush of the militant called Cupid.


But I will do it for you,
For by you,
I’ve been so divinely seduced.
Wooed by your lips.
Not by your kiss,
But by the music,
Which your mandibles so express.

I desire not to seal this wound,
But to evade its’ repercussions.
For I have endured a similar wound thrice.

He is winged as if an angel,
Yet Was Lucifer not once an angel as well?

Cupid is an impostor.
A spy of Agony, himself.
He prays on the young, the old, the strong, and the weak.
He cares not who he obliterates in his crusades.
He is a bloodthirsty heathen.
He makes scoundrels of Saints,
And Harlots of Housewives.
Saint Valentine is no Saint.
He is Satan’s nightmare.

At first, his arrows are ecstasy,

But like a cancer,
His poison-saturated arrows
Seep deep within every crevice of your body.
They consume you as if enriched with ******.
And eventually rot within your *****
Until it is nothing but dust and a memory.
One day I will assassinate Fate’s Malicious militant,
The one we call Cupid.
Marshal Gebbie Dec 2013
From blue tranquillity where turquoise waters wash white golden sand, where brilliant fish school in myriad colour and shape, where magnificent squadrons of sleek tarpon and barracuda dash in perfect formation, grazing schools of silver mackeral through diamond flecked deep green shallows, to plunge vertically down to the depths of the black abyss and security.

Calm tropical waters which shimmer like aqua blue glass in the mid day heat and turn to simmering,red fire at the setting of the enormous, ovate, orange sun.

Sea birds flock above wind blown waves, their sharp cries a symphony of the sea, to suddenly wheel and dive en mass, to dine amidst teeming schools of flashing, shiny minnows.

The idyllic picture of a calm blue infinity of ocean framed, in brilliant sunshine, by white sands and gracefully bowed coconut palms.....and suddenly, at the horizon, a thin black line appears, It approaches with steadily, mounting speed, the coastline surf recedes dramatically seaward leaving exposed coral, mountains of seaweed and frantic flapping, beached fish everywhere. A sudden, oppressive silence becomes a distant roar. The sea birds, as one, take panicked flight... and a massive wall of water rears up and rises like a giant beast, to rush headlong, raging, at the coastline.

What once was blue and serene is now a huge cascade of violent black death and destruction, gigantically it destroys the coast, snapping huge trees like twigs, surging ashore, a tsunami of unimaginable violence it obliterates, housing, streets, bridges, vehicles, shipping, aircraft and people, thousands of panicked, helpless, struggling people, killed in a titanic, black, swirling maelstrom of inexorable violence. The wave is followed by another...and another, extending right along the coastline and beyond. Each wave larger and more violent than the last...surging inland for miles  until defeated by the accident of gravity in rising land.

Those who have survived, on high land, on tall buildings, in treetops....cling to each other and look on in horror and utter helplessness. They can only wait, in fear, for the monster to retreat before venturing down to the devastation below to render help where ever they possibly can.

Twice in the space of the last forty thousand years the Kraken has awaken and risen from the depths of the Tasman Sea to the west of New Zealand. It has risen to gigantic proportions and driven right across the Auckland isthmus to the Pacific Ocean. It has twice flattened gigantic primeval Kauri forests laying them waste, all lying in one direction, each time beneath twenty feet of debris and black mud.

Born in innocence from a natural tectonic adjustment of the earth plates, the Kraken doth arise at any time, in any place to wreak it's dreadful work upon we, who reside in our comfortable, seemingly secure and beautiful coastal idylls.

Marshalg
Dedicated to all the coastal population exposed to the threat of inevitable tectonic induced tsunami.
JAPAN. WEST COAST, USA. WEST COAST, SOUTH AMERICA. ALL PACIFIC ISLANDS. NEW ZEALAND. INDONESIA. AUSTRALIA. SOUTH AFRICA. EAST COAST, CHINA. MALAYSIA.
KOREA. THAILAND. PAPUA NEW GUINEA, VIETNAM. PHILLIPINES. TAIWAN. BURMA.
Edward Coles Jan 2014
The veil lifted
from the mechanical slaughter
of the coastal engineers.

Waves crash in that soft,
whispering hiss. The sound that
is usually betrayed, contorted,
through terabytes of purchased bliss,
of a meditation wrought in sickness.

Freed of employment ties,
I stand at Earth's compromise.
Wavering boundaries broken,
conquered, and regained once more.

Cyclical, cynical, tempered battle.
War-torn property rolls in the throes
of the Moon, endless, gentle
discrepancies between land and sea.

I dip my hand in the brine. Long
written of, rarely encountered
in my daydream, salt unreal on the tongue,
only when spoken.

This roar, the old marginal sea,
it obliterates the pneumatic sounds of the
yellow-coated henchmen of progression.

Slaves, breaking backs to build roads
for the already-fallen pyramids,
already stolen marble coat and golden
spinning top,

we've dug it all out.

And the lighthouse winks. It winks
through the fast shadow of January's afternoon.
No land at the horizon, instead a sheet
of hostile, infertile water, and clouds
to stifle my lungs.

Oh, lighthouse; my childhood's end,
now but a lack of time taken to notice
you. You spindle-spin the light, powerful beacon.

You roll back the decades,
to times of ships and books;
of journeys born and placed
over profit's end.

This journey, this journey now so brief,
once dug by many, once an undertaking,
now one quiet train ride away.

Like a prophet, I strive. I strive
to notice Earth's balm,
the Mother and protector,
of all terrestrial innocence.

Bind me not in gravity, nor in debt.
Instead, let me scale the North Sea's
surface. To join the glamour of the
fairy-lit, tough Norwegian liners,
grey like Scottish shores.

Boundless power, opulent force
in a decaying town. City street lights
stretch up to bring the folk under the
dentistry light.

The groynes will hold this beach
like a girdle, as a holster of sand,
a harness for erosion, whilst the
traffic sounds signal lack of footfall;
mounted failure.

But, for evermore, the waves sing to us.
They sing the truth: that they will remain
long since our passing, long since the stench
of fumes; long since we've given up
on the fall.

With this and lightened body, brought
to betterment through cannabis and
Astral Selves, I turn to my life
and remember it well, as a fraction
of the entire self.

Kiss blown to darkened waters,
the paternal, cooing waves and whispers
of ancient whale, I turn back to the sand dunes
and hardy grassland.

A hotel stands at a distance,
privileged guests with fluorescent luggage,
and half-filled parking spaces,
whilst the Romans still stand in ruin.

That lighthouse weeps its goodbyes,
the sand drags me back in my prints,
knowing me, identifying me – careful police.
They sing, “Oh former tenant, Northern heat,
gentle visitor, help us cleanse your feet!”

Clumsily, I stagger back to my lifetime's
worth of worries. Back to the conglomerate
of blackened, distorted figures, sculptured
rain-soaked children, standing with feet
indiscernible from the globe beneath,

locked out of motion.

To them, I understand their isolation,
their helpless gravity in a heavy world.
To them, I return to artificial light,
where will suffers, where lungs heave,

but for all this I am glad,
of the sweet ocean-side reprieve.
Sofia Chavez May 2016
Time doesn't steal anything from you,
it changes you.
It lets you watch your grandmother,
a strong woman, sturdy,
a force to be reckoned with:
shrivel,
become small.
Her size reminding you
of when you'd lay beside her
as a child.
Her back to you, watching her massive shoulders move
like calm waves on a shore with each
breath.
The presence of that giant
chased the nightmares away.
And you realize that it was the only time that feeling small
felt so good,
and being big now
felt so terrible.

Time doesn't steal anything from you.
It conspires with your brain
to help you perfectly
remember
the time the boy you loved gazed down from above you,
the moment
before a kiss.
The moment that will always feel longer
than any other in your life.
But time obliterates any words that were said
from memory.
Obliterates any useful information,
any conversations.
Does not allow you to remember
each
and every day.

The momentum of time allows you infinite moments
to live in your past
today.
Like living in the moment
that you woke up on your 5th birthday
to your mom who spent
all morning
blowing up hundreds
of balloons.
Time let's you remember that feeling
of opening your eyes
to magic.
Remember feeling more loved
than you will ever feel.
Time gives you this moment,
but takes away
the day.

Time is indifferent as you plummet into the future.
Dragging behind you the images and words of
an optimistic kid
that you hope to keep alive.
Time is indifferent
as it demands you wake up,
and start over
again
and
again.
Always for you.
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2018
.i can think of one cool job... a nighttime DJ on a radio station... anything more cool than being a DJ between the hours 12am through to 5am? honestly... can't think of a cooler job... all the song requests are gone from the classical.fm show between 3pm and 5pm... now one is telling you what to do... **** me... as a kid... either a veterinarian, or an owner of a music shop... now? an insomniac DJ... they would never play Christopher Young's Something to Think About in the afternoon... sorry... i'm a Hellraiser cult-follower of the first two movies... and that song? why? i just can't be bothered with listening to that Braveheart over-scratched Song of / for a Princess... it's good... once in a while... but, come, on!

just one of those nights...
having listened to the scoops
from the alternative...
worried your to hell
about not having *******
enough concerning
the previous day's load
which would make the pleasures
of **** *** look tame...
perched on a windowsill -
solving a sudoku -
   and listening to
Frank Zappa's occam's razor...
and wishing:
  making sure it was never
hot in the city
by Billy Idol,
or Kiss' crazy nights
to usher in the night,
          and the watchman...
why?
   it's not your standard
guitar solo...
it's a medley...
    big difference...
guitar solos are bound to
a strict return to the rhythm
section...
   they are caged beasts...
composed of a restricted
time constrain in a song...
but a guitar medley?
**** me...
     it's what obliterates
a need for vocals...
   the guitar medley is
the vocals substitute...
             and that aspect of music?
mm... gummy bears...
jelly in the knees...
           which is why i like
the fact that jazz is the antithesis
of classical music symphony...
sure... i get the Schubert / Schumann
piano duets...
   nice...
         but jazz?
the breakdown of the quintet?
****... let me count...
piano, drums...
        bass... horn... sax...
yep, a quintet...
          that moment in a jazz
song? where each instrument
player gets his solo?
genius!
            the same with a guitar medley...
neither solo,
  nor the rhythm section...
what a beautiful opening
to what i expect to be,
a beautiful night:
   as the watchman once said.
Man was made of social earth,
Child and brother from his birth;
Tethered by a liquid cord
Of blood through veins of kindred poured,
Next his heart the fireside band
Of mother, father, sister, stand;
Names from awful childhood heard,
Throbs of a wild religion stirred,
Their good was heaven, their harm was vice,
Till Beauty came to snap all ties,
The maid, abolishing the past,
With lotus-wine obliterates
Dear memory's stone-incarved traits,
And by herself supplants alone
Friends year by year more inly known.
When her calm eyes opened bright,
All were foreign in their light.
It was ever the self-same tale,
The old experience will not fail,—
Only two in the garden walked,
And with snake and seraph talked.

But God said;
I will have a purer gift,
There is smoke in the flame;
New flowerets bring, new prayers uplift,
And love without a name.
Fond children, ye desire
To please each other well;
Another round, a higher,
Ye shall climb on the heavenly stair,
And selfish preference forbear;
And in right deserving,
And without a swerving
Each from your proper state,
Weave roses for your mate.

Deep, deep are loving eyes,
Flowed with naphtha fiery sweet,
And the point is Paradise
Where their glances meet:
Their reach shall yet be more profound,
And a vision without bound:
The axis of those eyes sun-clear
Be the axis of the sphere;
Then shall the lights ye pour amain
Go without check or intervals,
Through from the empyrean walls,
Unto the same again.

Close, close to men,
Like undulating layer of air,
Right above their heads,
The potent plain of Dæmons spreads.
Stands to each human soul its own,
For watch, and ward, and furtherance
In the snares of nature's dance;
And the lustre and the grace
Which fascinate each human heart,
Beaming from another part,
Translucent through the mortal covers,
Is the Dæmon's form and face.
To and fro the Genius hies,
A gleam which plays and hovers
Over the maiden's head,
And dips sometimes as low as to her eyes.

Unknown, — albeit lying near, —
To men the path to the Dæmon sphere,
And they that swiftly come and go,
Leave no track on the heavenly snow.
Sometimes the airy synod bends,
And the mighty choir descends,
And the brains of men thenceforth,
In crowded and in still resorts,
Teem with unwonted thoughts.
As when a shower of meteors
Cross the orbit of the earth,
And, lit by fringent air,
Blaze near and far.
Mortals deem the planets bright
Have slipped their sacred bars,
And the lone ****** all the night
Sails astonished amid stars.

Beauty of a richer vein,
Graces of a subtler strain,
Unto men these moon-men lend,
And our shrinking sky extend.
So is man's narrow path
By strength and terror skirted,
Also (from the song the wrath
Of the Genii be averted!
The Muse the truth uncolored speaking),
The Dæmons are self-seeking;
Their fierce and limitary will
Draws men to their likeness still.

The erring painter made Love blind,
Highest Love who shines on all;
Him radiant, sharpest-sighted god
None can bewilder;
Whose eyes pierce
The Universe,
Path-finder, road-builder,
Mediator, royal giver,
Rightly-seeing, rightly-seen,
Of joyful and transparent mien.
'Tis a sparkle passing
From each to each, from me to thee,
Perpetually,
Sharing all, daring all,
Levelling, misplacing
Each obstruction, it unites
Equals remote, and seeming opposites.
And ever and forever Love
Delights to build a road;
Unheeded Danger near him strides,
Love laughs, and on a lion rides.
But Cupid wears another face
Born into Dæmons less divine,
His roses bleach apace,
His nectar smacks of wine.
The Dæmon ever builds a wall,
Himself incloses and includes,
Solitude in solitudes:
In like sort his love doth fall.
He is an oligarch,
He prizes wonder, fame, and mark,
He loveth crowns,
He scorneth drones;
He doth elect
The beautiful and fortunate,
And the sons of intellect,
And the souls of ample fate,
Who the Future's gates unbar,
Minions of the Morning Star.
In his prowess he exults,
And the multitude insults.
His impatient looks devour
Oft the humble and the poor,
And, seeing his eye glare,
They drop their few pale flowers
Gathered with hope to please
Along the mountain towers,
Lose courage, and despair.
He will never be gainsaid,
Pitiless, will not be stayed.
His hot tyranny
Burns up every other tie;
Therefore comes an hour from Jove
Which his ruthless will defies,
And the dogs of Fate unties.
Shiver the palaces of glass,
Shrivel the rainbow-colored walls
Where in bright art each god and sibyl dwelt
Secure as in the Zodiack's belt;
And the galleries and halls
Wherein every Siren sung,
Like a meteor pass.
For this fortune wanted root
In the core of God's abysm,
Was a **** of self and schism:
And ever the Dæmonic Love
Is the ancestor of wars,
And the parent of remorse.
desirable aliens Jun 2014
I'm in love.
I'm in love with the way grass smells after it's been mowed.
It has a certain smell that reminds me of summer days and childhood memories.

I'm in love with how that rain hits my window during a storm.
It's like it wants to come in so badly that tries to obliterate my window but only to realize that as soon as it hits the glass, the raindrop itself obliterates.

And I guess that's how I feel in love with you. You reminded me of summer nights and some childhood memories and I wanted to get into your heart so badly that I thought if I made myself fall you would catch me.

But, just like the raindrop, I obliterated on contact.
Chuck Jun 2013
Strange times are surrounding us
The baby bird is eating its mother
The rain ascends and fog descends
Strange times are surrounding us
Superfluous confusion dissolves concrete
Medicine sickens the the terminally ill
Strange times are surrounding us
The ambulance mutilates the patient
The moon obliterates the unsuspecting sun
Strange times are surrounding us
Lewis Bosworth Dec 2016
—Flash Forward—

A day of reckoning.
A small boat crosses
the Hudson River,
no warning horn.
Destination New Jersey,
of all places.
A. Burr isn’t warned
that Hamilton will not
fire his pistol.
Destiny predetermined.

“Death doesn’t discriminate
Between the sinners and the saints,
It takes and it takes and it takes.
History obliterates.”

*—Flashback—


General.
     Colonel.
           Aide-de-camp.    
                 Immigrant.

“Don’t engage, strike by night.
Remain relentless ‘til their troops take flight.”
“We escort their men out of Yorktown.
They stagger home single file.
Tens of thousands of people flood the streets.”
“Took up a collection just to send him to the
mainland.
‘Get your education. Don’t forget from whence
you came.’”

—Stepfather of the Union—

Treasury secretary, author of the Federalist Papers,
lawyer, speechwriter, confidante, opponent of slavery,
member of the Constitutional Convention.

“History has its eyes on you.”
“I’ve seen injustice in the world and I’ve
        corrected it.”
“The Federalist:  Addressed to the People
         of the State of New York.”
“Goes and proposes his own form
         of government.”

—Family and Marriage—

The Schuyler Sisters – Eliza.
     Maria and James Reynolds – adultery and bribery.
          Philip Hamilton – successor son and victim.
                Philip Schuyler – father-in-law.

“And if this child
Shares a fraction of your smile
Or a fragment of your mind, look out, world!”
“I know you’re a man of honor,
I’m so sorry to bother you at home.”
“I’m only nineteen but my mind is older,
Gonna be my own man, like my father
     but bolder.”
“Grampa just lost his seat in the Senate.”


—Why, How, How long?—

Why not?, biography,
genius, rapid-fire rap,
hip-hop, historical vertigo,
Lin-Manuel Miranda at the White House,
a cast talented beyond measure,
the Great White Way,
2017-18 and forever….
“…13 percent of the population is foreign
born, which is near an all-time high;
that one day soon there will no longer
be majority and minority races, only a
vibrant mix of colors.”  
     ‒Jeremy McCarter, from Chapter I of
       Hamilton:  The Revolution

© Lewis Bosworth, 12/2016
    With credit to the book:

     Hamilton: The Revolution
noura Aug 2021
It is the mundanity of the act,
of envisioning your hand gently wrapped around the copper kettle.
Obstinately gripping the pen, while you wring a sheet of paper dry for the right words.
You, cupping my face as if you were holding something precious.
As if I might slip through your fingers.
It is this devastating simplicity that obliterates every shard of my being.
A brick wall, left at the mercy of a gleaming sledgehammer
that is determined to turn everything to dust.

I see your hands everywhere.
In the haze of steam and shower curtains,
the lines dragged in velvet throw pillows,
the cloudy smudges left on a glass of water.
They run faint paths through my hair, their touch ghosts against my eyelid.
If I stare long enough,
your palm is right there, pressing into mine.
Silver cuts through the air and delivers a redundant blow.
The dust scatters once more.

You did not leave a hole
the way everyone said you were bound to.
Empty space cannot exist without everything that surrounds it, yields to it, forgives it,
validates its gaping hollowness.
Empty space is a needle and thread on the dresser, a sellotape dispenser on the desk, a container of soup left on the doorstep with a get-well-soon scribbled on the lid.
Empty space is where you can see remnants of what once was whole.
The faith and conviction that bit by bit, you will put your fragmented pieces back together again.

The nothing you left was so thick and suffocating
that it permeated every room,
filled my lungs to bursting capacity and left me gasping for more.
Its sickly, bitter fragrance danced relentlessly in my nostrils,
as though my suffering was the sweetest symphony ever heard.
It waltzed until I could feel it rising in my throat and leaking from my eyes,
twirled until my head spun.
The nothing you left insisted on making its presence known my every waking moment
and then gleefully romped its way into my nightmares.

It was so quiet, though.
A resigned quiet, like that of the ****** swinging in the gallows,
when everybody holds their breath to watch the pendulum sway.
The crossbeam glistens with last night’s rain and
they trudge back home, muttering to themselves as the dust settles beneath their feet.
I sink into sheets creased by your fingers and watch it sway.
kbww Jan 2019
Head a hostile environment again
Emotion overthrows intelligence
Fragile skull accepts another beating
and indecency becomes preference

Absorbing black into gray matter
Meticulous infiltration;
Makes death a desire
and living a fear

Friendly fire
Mind battles disease, disease
obliterates mind to violence
collided with sharpened corners of myself
****** mess, wrong message

Swallowing hostile heavy medications,
contain my elation so that overjoy
doesn't morph into mania, or joy
Mass of electrons now inside
find nothing positive; thought paralyzed

Deviating cells that scare themselves
from the darkened sanguinary state.
wide eyed faces searching for a homeostasis
Far from stable since demon's rule

Constant epiphanies with no execution
turn to facts filed in brain catalogs
Fully aware solutions are there,
but the drawers are glued shut

~kb
Amitav Radiance Mar 2015
When harsh words
Exploit the delicate mind
They lose their meaning
Outcasts among words
To destroy a bond
Vulnerable are they
And weak to the core
Annihilates the integrity
And obliterates sanctity  
Of human gratitude
Harsh words a refuge
For the weak
Fizza Abbas Apr 2015
I want to learn everything; everything comprises of everything,
be it the knowledge of the nature or the horizons of the cosmos
I want to canvas over the universe, multiverses;
to paint my reality with a brush of joy.
But, it's tough for me, because I'm dementic
If I decline it while inclining towards a book
Dyslexia obliterates my desires and hurt me badly
If I ignore all this, ADHD comes forward to poke me
with a stick of astounds and pains of eventide
If I cut down the roots of ADHD, S.A.D greets me
and enter to my dark world and enhance its darkness
I'm confused, shattered; directionless in a myopic way
Highly myopic, no direction, but I do have vision
I want to crisscross my myopia to an extent
where it diminishes.
Meningitis, shut up, you *******,
Please have mercy on me, I don't deserve U at least,
But do I really need someone to have mercy on me?
I guess no, I can build my own world where
Dementia strengthens my spirits by saying,
Why just Embryology, what secrets do you want to find
Ova is not dependent on a ****** *****,
it is a complete YOU.
Edward Coles Aug 2013
I feel his eyes on me
Whenever I cross the room.
It is mostly when there are others
Present and we must share ourselves,
Expended over people

And places. The spaces
Before we fall into our wine stained
Non-marital bed. The grape blood reminds me
Of my own. On my own, fledgling ******* and acne,
Elaborately false *******

Where I would never have my fill.

A child-man I forgot.
Or remember only as a token,
Cardboard textured orange peel
In a breast pocket never worn. I forget
Most everyone

Now that he is
In my life. He obliterates
All else like light pollution.
Not of fluorescent neon or slogans
But an exploding star

That dims all else
In my peripheries. I am
Diminished also in his love,
Both wholesomely and then in a sense
Where I lose my ‘I’.

It is in his shadow
Where I live. Small comet
Hidden in the black of velvet,
Licked by the spit of his flames
That scald me

And bathe me
In equal measure.

I am more than this
I know. Or guess. His tailor hands
Though, are efficient and caring. They
Do not create me, but he threads himself
Into my sides

And drops a stitch
Only to adulate the rhythm
When he enters me. When he enters me
I become burgeoned and full and blood fills
The rusted roadways

That shine blue
Through my pasty prism.
He finishes. A gloom fills me. Not
A gloom, more of a nothing and he is
An obliterated star once more

And I his aftermath.
He has killed me with a kindness,
A ghost only when witnessed, kissed.
I have long since forgotten whether I have
Been taken prisoner

Or gave myself up.
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2017
it was once called a beyond "good" and "evil"... as if the two were confused... i think the actual confusion comes by calling it: "beyond" good and evil - clearly we have a distinct understanding of the two, in how we treat them in the most extreme cases (as antonyms), and how we can't seem to comprehend them as antonyms: one's a ******* square, the other is a ******* triangle... in that we create a synonym siamese of the two... and how the good men squabble for an argument to contend against their "crimes", and the justice served against them... or this much came from creating Ed Gein into a romance... a fetish for artistic inspiration from Rob Zombie and the Silence of the Lambs... but no one bothers... ah... what's his name... Ted Bundy... no one wrote a song about him... no, he was clearly evil... this is what i find bewildering: the suggested "beyond".

oh, but it's only a game... there no etymology involved,
there's no looking back at words created
from the alphabetical cornflake bowl...
where cornflake-a floats about with cornflake-b
through to c, d, e... m n... l  o      p... and finally
rests with zed.... this is another type of game...
i don't mean it as a craft of etymology,
scouting the tongue prior, to say something
about the word in the tongue, now...
   it could be a raving lunatic using the word
  *δαιμων
- and yes... before i make
the incission marks into the two syllables....
    i want to see how a "chiral"
aesthetic of: much the identical sound will give rise
to macron omicron ō = ω... just like like η = é,
   given the standard of epsilon
(ε) being the: quite distinct
measure of the sound suggested / intended.
but then, within a framework of bilingualism,
     made redundant as "schizophrenia" it's an absolutely
blunt statement to say: naturally, i am split mind...
i use two tongues... i can only imagine the horror
of being mono-lingual and having the symptom of
"hearing" "voices" in your case of dis- (negated)
-ease... that suffix needs not exfoliation...
but a game, there is, nonetheless! but it requires
the Caribbean tongue of patois... never know
why certain words sound better in the native tongue
than in the tongue acquired, but hell, they do...
    and to think my bilingualism became squandered on
    imitating a hellish encounter with schizophrenia...
   a condition so misunderstood and so exploited ("romanced")
that it makes no sense, unless if used in slandering someone:
not quiet 80, and actually in a degenerate state of having
lived a life... but i mean someone in their
20s, and embarking on a trip that completely obliterates
the boring tourist in them, along with the hope
of the father in them... and yes, if i wasn't bilingual
and merely monolingual i'd probably experience
the classic symptom: so many went down the route of
taking l.s.d. and so few never realised that the true
essence of horror is: music... people can't never fear what
they can or cannot see... it's what they hear,
or what others think that frightens the living-daylights out
of them! i mean: can you imagine a cultural
revolution when the drug made you
experience auditory-hallucinations
that's than optical variations in fluorescent
colours? i'd love to meet the man
who invented a drug that made you hallucinate
a Bach symphony... i really really would
love to meet such a man...
     meaning there's a bewilderment
about blind men and deaf men...
    sure, you can find them in
supermarket isle testifying that
   an elephant just ****** a donkey with
its trunk... while the donkey bellowed
out some jazzy impromptu...
  cos that **** would, just make sense.
how can anything make sense
when you already have five,
and given the sense of sight you turn
all revisionist and imagine things?
   it can't make sense, given the senses
are already given...
    it has to be the sense, turned into
a faculty: seeing-imagination
hearing-composure,
                           ­   poets are never compared
to musical composers...
my choice of vocab is a bit poor
at this moment...
             give me a tape recorder and i might
just be able to encrust my voice
like a cello in some symphony...
this isn't the game though...
i need patois and polish to play with
this word δαιμων...
     cut open: δαι-         / daj
  in polish means: give... a prompt, not: to give,
but: just give it, a basis of instruction...
   and now the patois... i.e. -μoν
    or man... aye aye mon, the drunken jammy-sailors
sung, drinking and swerving their dreads
    into puke-soaked sofas of the brothel...
so yes, we cheated a tad bit...
   we didn't write down: give me the moon,
we just said: give me man...
              and so pandemonium ruffled
a few feathers of man's peacock known as vanity...
and so the puppeteers said: enough
of strings! to the rook and bishop, pawn, king
queen and knight! suma summarum?
  only in england, could bilingualism ever be confused
with schizophrenia... oddly enough bilingualism
can deflate classical schizophrenic symptoms...
well: the symptom isn't exactly a pain...
     and they did suggest it to be a chemical imbalance...
which i found quiet funny...
given i have a chemistry degree from Edinburgh...
  i can't exactly state what a chemical imbalance is...
    not with the equilibrium theory...
   or any care to call phosphorus dipped in water
after having stored it oil to be an "imbalance"...
    surely we are talking about giving examples,
a bit like regurgitating facts...
but it would appear that there are no examples to
be given, as we are more interested in
simply regurgitating facts...
           i heard this one "dear" friend of mine call
my work a word salad... as if i hadn't heard that
phrase before... well great, coming from a man
who i remember unable to recite the ******* alphabet.
               god, how could i have become so
engrossed in these belittling narratives from past
or present, it's like i'm chewing on roast beef...
and i'm chewing, and i'm chewing, and i can never
even sniff the tulips of transcendence...
  every time i do, i just get dragged down onto
the plateau of being the common man...
             i just don't seem to value
will as my modus operandis -
    only a mere be - and **** me, with that there
are so many things optional...
                 i feel no river needing a travelling down
on in me, i feel no sea in need of
     a tide or a shipwreck...
               i feel no need for a mountain and
an avalanche...
            but whereas the will would guide me toward
overcoming the mountain,
  with each congestion of being bewildered by
a be injected into any thing real or imaginable,
along with that quasi-thing known as thought
that later becomes speech or writing or song,
      i can only state: without a will to overcome
a mountain, without a will to sail across a sea...
     i am both the mountain and the sea...
    in that i am being: set aside by both mountain
and sea in claiming a will over them,
           i am set aside by both mountain and sea:
for i know my own vanity,
            and as counter to res cogitans,
being a res vanus: i am of foremost concern to
fill that void with thought, rather than
   with sights of Eldorado across the sea...
    or a Tibetan monsestary, high in the mountains.
Caroline Grace Mar 2012
At an angle of ninety degrees,
two trees share the same plot.
This one grazes the eaves,
seeking vain attention in the window glass.

The other, its grey ghost lazes
prostrate on the herb garden, reveling
in secrets of lemon balsm and thyme.

At night, the first becomes demonic,
obliterates the universe,
branches scraping the pane, scratching
like fingernails on slate,
its coppery leaves trying to get in.

Its partner slinks to earth,
seeking solace,
wringing conterminous roots till sunrise.

I've had my fill of these unrested moments
fighting the pillow, not settling.
There is no joy in seeking stolen stars.

My dilemma grows horns.

I half dream of ******,
at least amputation.

But even the dimmest light shines in the dark -
I consider its tormented destiny.

At daybreak, like a ****** I scale its gnarled branches
ridiculously one-handed,
the other a keen-toothed weapon.

I am an agile goat shinning upwards
feeding on dreams of peace.

Lost in the sky, I become sap,
melt into its arms,
(a vertiginous release)
I become a curved branch.

(There's someone standing in my elbow!)

Leaves helix down, settling on autumn crocus.
“Look!  Gold on gold!"

The grey ghost yawns, grows its shadow,
waves its arms demanding justice.

I wave back.

Suddenly terrified, I secrete an invisible scent.
The branches contract, tense as ligaments.

My heart plummets, rolls out recumbent,
presses heavily on the earth
listening to fleshy roots recede.

A few deft cuts......

Sun gutters through bereft spaces,
striking the window.
Both trees a shade lighter, a lighter shade.

Tonight I will dream under visible stars,
feel the moon's half-light slide over me.



copyright © Caroline Grace 2012
The wanderings of a corrupted saint
Leaves the ground bare
And brings life to the dead
Forgotten canvases on display
That were once blank
Now consume attention.
His air obliterates the unknown
Under his tread both destruction
And creation occur.
All through this pain,
this Lion races the wind.

Engulfed by fog
Separated by difference
Trudging through the broken glass
Burning what it longs to live
Learned by curiosity
Lost by the rules
Found by the enlightened
Sinner by the lost
Saint by the found
SøułSurvivør Aug 2017
"Though the mills
Of God grind slowly;
Yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience
He stands waiting,
With exactness grinds He all."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

The Mill

The grueling weight
of happenstance,
A millstone for to grind,
It deflates the ego
And shows us
Where we're blind,
It renders flesh a ruin
Obliterates the mind,
We leave our idols desolate
Leave the ties that bind.

Under painful hardship
We release the very things
Which put us in the circumstance
And caused the suffering
We leave behind our craving
For wealth and diamond rings
Everything exalted
All exalted above God...

That means
EVERYTHING

Whatever you adore
On this temporal earth
Whatever gives you pleasure
In which you find worth

These very things will shackle you!
You'll find out they're not free.
They are just the Golden Calf
Of base idolatry.

But the millstone slowly purges
Turning hour by hour
Turning the wheat kernels
Into useful flour.

And so I am refined
As I surely must
Put to naught my flesh
Make powder all my lusts
For I am as ashes

for I am as dust.*


SS  (C) 8/23/2017
I have troubles right now. God is putting me through the mill. I'm now almost completely bedridden. My father is in great pain and suffering. My mom is extremely upset due to all this. The entire family is in turmoil. We are ALL affected.

I'm not saying my problems are any worse than yours. We each have a cross to bear. It's simply how we HANDLE IT that matters! Are we going to get bitter? Or BETTER?!!!

I've been feeling very sorry for myself. And, due to my reaction to the stress, I hurt a friend. I can't tell you how badly this shook me! I (self-righteously) thought I was far beyond this sort of behavior! But the pressure grinds & shows us our idols & faults. I've decided to let go of a LOT of besetting iniquity. And it's HARD.

I haven't been on site much. I just want to pray and read my Bible. Study. This will help me heal. Please forgive my absence. I appreciate your support and understanding. I include all of you in my prayers...


♡ Catherine
mark soltero Aug 2021
rain falls on roof tops
acid desecrates energy in the air
rain falls onto us
sprinkling in your hair
we look perfect
skin soft
deflection corrupts meaning
but the acid obliterates any sign of fear
pain that we bear is nothing for vanity
gasping for a breath to see past depression
bear the burden of self awareness with me
move forward
lovely words to follow
we mean them dearly
insert our minds into perfect reality
Kagey Sage Oct 2015
Kali, Mother of Time & Change
obliterates superficial reality

creates black matter
to mold & form
Edward Coles Mar 2015
I have been singing for forgotten things,
beer bottles hidden in the hedgerows.
The opera singer, the strangled vibrato,
ash-filled cokes cans; the afterparty sunrise.

This recovery has been long, fickle.
Reckless optimism and the science of failure
collide into the colour
of a Daniel Johnston cartoon,
or a songwriter's sense of humour.

Disused pencils stand as monuments
to old dreams of grass-roots art,
the fragility of neurotic *******
drawn with innumerable straight lines
that composite a woman's naked body.

I have been drawing on memories
and hoping for a brand-new image;
dissolution of old borders - a strangled voice
in a room full of opened tongues.

The Hawaiian shirt made light of depression
in darkened hours and wax smiles.
Plastic cocktails, the pending brides;
desperate men - the post-work demise.
I have learned a lie ever since.

This recovery has been imperfect, a fraud.
Swollen truths to satisfy the concerned,
only myself left to fool.
I have found the early morning
but cannot reach a sober conclusion.

Redundant habits mildew my mind
with the backwater of yesterday,
familiar street names to mourn
those who became strangers,
the negative bias of my mind's eye.

I have been writing words of action
from the safety of my desk;
all that the desk-lamp can illuminate,
all of which words can make sense.

This half-lived recovery is bunk, irretrievable.
Working poverty and untied knots
are co-morbid in meaninglessness;
chains to hold me in Plato's Cave
whilst her skin freckles in the sun.

Disused and living outside of love,
morning curtains open to a sheet of light
that obliterates loneliness
in the presence of shared heat,
only for it to return again, come night.
C
Eiram Oct 2013
Sadness is dwelling in my mind
Anger is swelling in my heart
The thought of suicide sounds like a fantasy
Almost close enough to touch
But yet too dangerous to hold

As my heart melts into nothingness
and my desire to communicate diminishes
My walls of safety have been stripped from my soul
As my happiness begins to swiftly deteriorate

With every ******* blow of rejection bruises me more
screaming I punch the brick wall till my knuckles bleed
angry at myself
how could I be so **** stupid
My innocence and yearn for safety completely obliterates those thoughts of logical thinking
I am becoming this monster with open wounds that he keeps lashing at with his steel whip
As I whimper crawling towards him
But he keeps hitting harder
My body shaking, trembling
The wound deepens and gushes out blood at an intense rate
but I still am crawling as fast as I can to his arms
in hopes that he will hold me when I reach him

hoping he is satisfied that I took each intense beating and still crawled to him
hoping to be wrapped in his warm arms against his stone cold heart
Praying as hard as I possibly can that he does not drop me as he has done numerous times before. If he drops me that recurring painful crawl to him will begin once again.

Tears soaking my body and his black t shirt.
And when I look up his face, it is hard and emotionless, I push myself as close as I can into my creator. The one that turned me into something so vulnerable. Something so monstrous. But at this point there is no turning back he has every part of my mind controlled. With the snap of his fingers he can have me down on the floor begging for his attention.

My grip around his torso tightens as I feel his muscles twitch. As I look up to his eyes they begin to show the soul of the devil. As his head tilts down to mine and kisses my lips hard. With every part of my body coming alive for those brief moments, screaming with short lived happiness. He releases and looks into my eyes. For a moment, I see hope but then his eyes turn to hate, and he shoves me back to the floor, bruising not only my body but my soul, but the pain only makes me need him more. He runs towards me and at this point I think he is going to help me and hold me. No more crawling to him with open, ****** wounds. But just as he gets to me, he throws the steel whip into the darkness, and starts to batter my body with his fists. Breaking my bones and cracking my skull, blood gushing from places all over my body, but the pain is pushed away by my need for him.... but now he is leaving me ****** and broken and when he Is finished... I just crave him more.
The They Oct 2011
Piercing the shrouded sky
They fight against surrounding black:
Like flowers breaking through sidewalk cracks,
The light seeps through the darkness.
Between the leaves
The stars reach for the eyes…

But now thought reaches away:
I escape myself through abstraction
As the past violently asserts itself:
Remembrance induced by a careless focus
On a memory flowing from a present vision:
The tree
now
Clothed in leaves
Beckons forth remembrance:

Autumn leaves,
Trundling into legs only to move past
As they ride the restless winds
Whispering their own poems
Of meaning only experience could collect…
They rush
Through fallow ditches
And enclosing brush which
Form a pattern around
The tree that beckons forth
- With disrobed branches glistening
White under stars,
Dampened by the still-settling dew-
A Self-realization that obliterates all boundaries
And encompasses no thoughts,
but the One
which gives them:
The One which gives a breath
Held together by the moments
Which trail the first puff of white
that joins the airs that wrap themselves
around the tree reaching up to the stars
which do not reflect the one who sees them
but give the light
towards which thought now reaches.


All these memories induce
The longing to feel the openness
No words could possibly posses
As slowly the months fade
Into the dissolving moments it takes
For the eyes to reach up to the light.
Originally from http://the-they.blogspot.com/
Sayer Jan 2014
drain it out,
drain it out

drain me of pollution in my burning soul
cloudy days destroy tattoos on people
stuck in my head
and to hear the cries of
people looking for rights(andwrongs)

i don't need a star and i don't need a connection
betweenotherworldythings
drain it out, everything
the doubt
the senses
the emotion
this background buzz obliterates
my eardrums
-----------------------------------------------------
i­nto the sea of people again
no one looks at me
you've ruined it
i sink into some sink,
down the hole- -
falling

i can't understand why you don't
want to drain me out of you
and why i can't drain you out of me
it's the nightmare that just keeps going
and going
and flashes of faces of your face
just eat the hole
just eat the whole lot
impressing the press and the hole
and ripping me apart (with your
eyes)
the rambling and the falling will stop one day,
(I think i'll just have a little taste)
I have pressed i have pressed I have pressed i have pressed
you down to your core as you have pressed me
but nothing has been drained out except my invisible energy-

that is the pleasure of life
Marshal Gebbie Mar 2020
Jottings from David Bagerow's "Quickie"

Shame on she, the selfless *****
Who caused your temperature to fire,
caressed your sandy, sweated brow
To rivers of desire,
Tho she fled at poignant time
To leave you in the lurch.
Best you weave your magic touch
And promise her, the church.
Then woo her and caress her
In your happy, carefree way
Then at that moment of exultance,
Laugh and run away.

David Lessar's "To an Unread Poet"

Dave, You are right ,of course, once committed you raise an expectation and once that expectation is released to the world you are obliged to maintain face...but that damnable thing called "Life" intervenes and totally stuffs up the programme. Take the current interlude of coronavirus...the whole world has been taken by the scruff of the neck and jammed, inconveniently and complaining, into seclusion, all systems ground to a halt, production lines vacated, malls and city centres deserted, blown newspaper cascading across the deserted pavement...a testament to mans ultimate frailty when his house of cards collapses, without a whimper.
So you see, as life intervenes...we are excused from maintaining face.
But fear not, like McArthur, we shall return.
Cheers mate M.

Fawn's "Happy Trails"

Were it not the touch profound
That doth caress my feathered ear
Would thou wish a thousandfold
That I should shed a tear?

A glistened tear suspended there
in iridescent light,
While you, my love, with parted lips
Await, the ruby night.

Victoria's "Wherefore Art Thou"

Strides, he does, through corridors of lust bound lessers,
through forests of small penised dwarfs, through canyons of would be's who could be.....just to countenance the promise within your words....Dear Vix!

Terry O'Leary's "Sweet Butterfly"

You enter the portals of entomology where bugs, flies,butterflies and moths are the true rulers of the planet.
A world vastly magnified by compound eyes, of lightening lifetimes and vivid, saturated colour. A world where life and death are synonomous with the culmination of a single ****** union and the reproduction of a batch of precious pearly eggs. Yea Brother thee hath entered the portal...rejoice!
M.

Fun with Terry O'Leary

"Buried in the Sand" by Terry O’Leary

A beggar clump adorns a dump, his pencil box in hand -
With sightless eyes upon the skies he’s lying there unmanned.

He’s fallen down in Shantytown, his knees too weak to stand,
With no relief and bitter grief too dark to understand.

The Bowery blight is hid from sight, it’s covered up and bland,
And Robin Hood and Brother Hood lie buried in the sand.

"A Rebuttal" by Marshalg

So Hood lied low, despite the show ensueing without help,
One would have thought a British sort would spring forth with a yelp!

Would spring ***** to help deflect contusions which occurred
When beggar Clump adorned the dump confusing all deferred.

Whilst sister Ant, attired in scant, ran forth on spindly legs
And brother Frog with shaggy dog said "****" and drank the dregs.

It all became too much, as such, a meelee did ensue,
So all called HALT and as one did BOLT...to the local for a brew!

Phew...that was FUN & hard work!
M.

Singing the Devil's Song*

There is no Makers formula
This life depends on chance,
The way you play your given cards
Depicts your daily dance.

Oh dogma flows in utterance
From pulpits far and wide
From those who claim to understand
Eternity's vast hide.
From those who hold damnation
As a weapon from on high,
From those who claim a judgement
As their finger points to sky.
The good, the bad are absolute,
The right bedevils wrong,
Redeemed shall live eternally
The bad shall singe for long.

Old men stand in pulpits
Across this Sunday's land
To threaten with damnation
If you should cross God's hand.
"Belief" is now their catchword
Abomination's wrong
Is to seek to proffer proof of claim
....to Sing the Devil's Song.

So gather all ye faithfull
Go listen to your man,
Sing the Gospel loud and long
And pay your tithe, as planned.
...But should you find you're dying
From cancer's frozen claw
And the the Godly fail to sweep you
To eternity's gold door?
Remember my clear message
Your life depends on chance,
You live within your own good sphere
....There is no Maker's Dance.

Marshalg
After an overdose of Pulpit hogwash.
10 March 2013

Singing the Song of Angels:
A Response to Marshal Gebbie's "Singing the Devil's Song"
By Luca Anselm
There’s a church in the city with pillars of stone
And windows like sea-glass, still and alone,
A fountain, and cloisters of ivy, away
From the noise of the street, and the hum of the day.
There my father would tell me of Christ, how he died
Surrounded by soldiers and thieves, crucified,
How he wept for the women, and fell in the sands,
And loved those who hammered the nails in his hands.  

Marshal, dear poet, you have heard the priests tell
Of a god who left heaven to walk into hell?
Of a god who wept softly for men he had known?
Of a god who dripped blood in a garden alone?
Of a god who sent men with book and with sword
With eyes bright as fire for love of their Lord,
With limbs dressed in black, on altars of stone
By windows of sea-glass, still and alone?

So they give up their lives for a lie, as we say,
And toiled for centuries, long as each day--
And our money built palaces, lofty and tall
With frescoes and candlesticks, gold on the wall--
They preach with words awful and deadly and free,
Of gorgons and hell-fire, worms and the sea,
Of the last day of judgment, and mankind amassed
By the wailing of angels and bright trumpet blasts…

But Marshal, they preach something sweeter and kind--
Of a mother’s soft love, of a father resigned,
Of a still, soft voice, that comes with a light,
And gives hope to the hopeless, and conquers the night.
Of charity, piety, sweetness and love
Like fiery ***-cakes, but soft as a dove,
Spicy as Christmas, solemn and grand--
(Like throne-rooms or magic or the roar of the strand)
Then you wake, and the house smells of peppermint-pine,
And a child is laid in the crèche, now a shrine.  

And all that I long for, dear Marshal, you see,
Are the gold-blooming gardens that soar by the sea,
The mountains and dragons, the prophets and kings
And Icarus falling with fire-fraught wings,
The grey-shifting sea-lanes, the flutter of sails,
Temples on mountaintops, graves in the vales,
And Dido who bleeds from her breast as she cries
For her Love, and stares helplessly into the skies.
But more than the shadows of worlds that might be
Of fairies or phantoms or rocks by the sea,
Dear Marshal, I long for who made me a man.
And would love and give glory as best as I can.

But these days oh! sad days, the loss and the shame
In which all of my loveliness falls into flame--
Where gardens have withered, and sails have been furled,
And kings plodded off in the dust of the world.
Our cities rise higher, and burn through the night
And rear into heaven with noise and with light,
The palisades echo with horns and sound
And the churches with voices and quarrels resound.
But the statues sit silent, and some say they cry
For the shame of the sins against children. Oh! My God, Why?

And those old men—well—they taught me the loveliest things
Of my gardens of gold, and the sunsets of things,
They told me of kindness, and honor, a way
That winds to the West, where the end of the day
Breaks bright like fresh bread, and crimson like wine,
And the sun sets to purple and green in the brine.

And still I remember their words and their songs
And the churches which taught me so well and so long--
Though I’ve turned my head, to the lands where the sun
Will rise again brighter when starlight is spun,
Somewhere fresher and pale, where the cold and the air
Spreads the dew like a lawn paved of crystal, and there,
In the meadows of silver, with light in my eyes,
I will honor my god in the dome of the skies.

Marshal Gebbie's poem "Singing the Devil's Song" inspired this. It's in anapestic tetrameter, for you metric buffs. If you haven't, you should absolutely check out Marshal's stuff--it's awesome and poetry-inspiring--seriously amazing. Thanks again, Marshal!

Sepia Sown

Sepia sown as best it can
Where you and I, as one, once ran
Across, beyond a savored sea
Where lust became reality.
Where spiraled lust, entwined, entrenched
Left you gasping, pale, en benched...
a figment of a thought, now lost
Forever..at what cost, what cost?
M.

Addenum to "obituary" by V

So no one notices, at all
When golden greys of aged fall?
Except perhaps, for those who stay
To blend with every ordinary day

Plus you and I as time flies by
And too, those starlings flocking high.
That old man loitering in street,
Who eyes the million passing feet.
And she too at corner store,
Toothless face and wrinkled maw,
Exchanging cigarettes for coin
(With surreptitious scratch of groin).
Mailman, fat, long, loop mustache
Complaining long and rather harsh,
That they, gone, without a word,
Should vanish into air...absurd!

Someone in their every day
Feels the absence in the way
Details don't fall into place
And warmth is absent from the face.
M.

The Kraken Arises

From blue tranquillity where turquoise waters wash white golden sand, where brilliant fish school in myriad colour and shape, where magnificent squadrons of sleek tarpon and barracuda dash in perfect formation, grazing schools of silver mackeral through diamond flecked deep green shallows, to plunge vertically down to the depths of the black abyss and security.

Calm tropical waters which shimmer like aqua blue glass in the mid day heat and turn to simmering,red fire at the setting of the enormous, ovate, orange sun.

Sea birds flock above wind blown waves, their sharp cries a symphony of the sea, to suddenly wheel and dive en mass, to dine amidst teeming schools of flashing, shiny minnows.

The idyllic picture of a calm blue infinity of ocean framed, in brilliant sunshine, by white sands and gracefully bowed coconut palms.....and suddenly, at the horizon, a thin black line appears, It approaches with steadily, mounting speed, the coastline surf recedes dramatically seaward leaving exposed coral, mountains of seaweed and frantic flapping, beached fish everywhere. A sudden, oppressive silence becomes a distant roar. The sea birds, as one, take panicked flight... and a massive wall of water rears up and rises like a giant beast, to rush headlong, raging, at the coastline.

What once was blue and serene is now a huge cascade of violent black death and destruction, gigantically it destroys the coast, snapping huge trees like twigs, surging ashore, a tsunami of unimaginable violence it obliterates, housing, streets, bridges, vehicles, shipping, aircraft and people, thousands of panicked, helpless, struggling people, killed in a titanic, black, swirling maelstrom of inexorable violence. The wave is followed by another...and another, extending right along the coastline and beyond. Each wave larger and more violent than the last...surging inland for miles  until defeated by the accident of gravity in rising land.

Those who have survived, on high land, on tall buildings, in treetops....cling to each other and look on in horror and utter helplessness. They can only wait, in fear, for the monster to retreat before venturing down to the devastation below to render help where ever they possibly can.

Twice in the space of the last forty thousand years the Kraken has awaken and risen from the depths of the Tasman Sea to the west of New Zealand. It has risen to gigantic proportions and driven right across the Auckland isthmus to the Pacific Ocean. It has twice flattened gigantic primeval Kauri forests laying them waste, all lying in one direction, each time beneath twenty feet of debris and black mud.

Born in innocence from a natural tectonic adjustment of the earth plates, the Kraken doth arise at any time, in any place to wreak it's dreadful work upon we, who reside in our comfortable, seemingly secure and beautiful coastal idylls.

Marshalg
Dedicated to all the coastal population exposed to the threat of inevitable tectonic induced tsunami.
JAPAN. WEST COAST, USA. WEST COAST, SOUTH AMERICA. ALL PACIFIC ISLANDS. NEW ZEALAND. INDONESIA. AUSTRALIA. SOUTH AFRICA. EAST COAST, CHINA. MALAYSIA.
KOREA. THAILAND. PAPUA NEW GUINEA, VIETNAM. PHILIPPINES. TAIWAN. BURMA.

Part of My Job (A love Poem) by Nat Lipstadt

A little embarrassed by all the attention but great to hear from you Sweetheart...all fine and dandy, here...except for being forbidden to go to the beach and the park..and anywhere else except in cases of dire need..(And on punishment of prison time if caught out!)...but hey, I'm not really complaining...All for he common good, aint that right?
M.

Bridges Burnt....

Bridges burnt in Winter rain
Holds a saddened felt refrain,
Holds a touch of muted horn
Blown in passion unadorned.
Blown away in errant winds
Where no truthlessness rescinds,
Where a lie begat the night
Interceding lost love's plight.

Bridges burnt in Winter rain
Sacraments of loss remain,
Sacraments fragmented drift
Redemption clad in bloodied shift,
Redemption worn as wrong slays right
Till wrongfulness blots out the night,
Till no return this path can be
Until they torch eternity.

M.
SE Reimer's words float before me in his impassioned poem "Bridges"
allowing me to wallow in this, my own dark tangential refrain.
M.

Perchance, in a Bus Shelter

Here I sit amidst the ruin of a white winters' day
Convulsive rain and harsh wind outside, contribute tumult.
And in here, in this small shelter, there is a tension in the air.

We two sit apart, uncommunicative, remote and quite detached.
Not for any reason other than the fact that we are strangers,
We have never met, nor are we ever likely to.
She has an elegance and a stylish angularity whilst I am bald, bearded, unfashionable and somewhat overweight.
She is singularly indifferent to my presence, whilst I am uncomfortable with the circumstance that placed us in this small proximity.
We would, in truth, rather both be elsewhere.

I break the ice in throwing her a small smile and complain about the weather,
Her eyes flick across my face and immediately resume their distant focus on the rain,
She adjusts her seating to face,ever so slightly, askance.
Her choice of course, to assume an air of indifference or superiority...or adopt a measure of defense..or perhaps a combination of a bit all three.  
Regardless... I wipe my backside in exactly the same manner as does she, I  am definitely no less a person for my dumpy demeanor and friendly overture
And I really feel that I don't have to share my space with coldness and impertinence,
Better, I think, to be wet and content with my own company
..So, donning my cap and jacket, I stride out into the deluge to leave the remote and uncommunicative young woman alone and dry with her thoughts.

And then....
Howling rain and shards of wind
Pelt me as I walk
Along the foreshore wild and white
As hovered seagulls squark.
When all at once she's by my side
Walking pace for pace,
Her linen suit a sodden mess
Hair plastered to her face.

"Thought I ought to make it right"
She told me with a smile
I threw my coat upon her back
And walked another mile.
We called into a coffee shop
And sat down by the fire
And sipped a steaming latte
As she told her story dire,

"The cancer's all but killed me
My husband's left the home,
The baby's gone to mother
And I'm facing death alone."
We quietly spoke for ages
I held her hand in mine
Then suddenly she stood to leave
And thanked me for my time.

I sat there in a stupor
Recalling how it played
And felt the guilt impact on me
For judgements I had made.
Those callow, shallow judgements
Made in ignorance, my friend,
Will haunt me as she girds herself
To boldly meet her end.

Marshalg
On a bleak and blustery cold winters day.
Titirangi
5th September 2010

The Old Café by Steve Yocum

It's my go to place,
has been for years,
The Wildwood Café,
an eclectic tiny place
with a mix of old dinette
tables and mismatched chairs.
the cutlery also unmatched
and well used, old photos
and signs adorn the walls
and there is usually a line
of people waiting patiently
on benches outside.

Best of all there is this pleasant
girl, always wearing a welcoming
smile, who seems to know us all.
She knows my order by heart,
Ham and eggs over medium,
a half ration of potatoes, home baked
slice of bread, well toasted, well buttered,
home made salsa on the side, a cup of
"hot" Black English Tea. Tall water no ice.

If I arrive between the busy times, she may
sit down at my table and we talk a while,
It's not a big thing, just chitchat, I'm old
enough to be her grandfather, it's the
dessert before my meal served with genuine
friendliness and unforced civility, not often
encountered in these strange days and times, it's a slice of small town America at it's purest best, she and folks like her help sustain my belief that basic human decency is far from dead.

The food is always good, but it's the comforting embrace of familiarity and
simple warm kindness that assures my frequent return.
It's the little things in life that make living
wonderful, small moments in time felt and
recorded, this is but one of those.
written by Steve Yocum

It's the little things in life that make living
wonderful, small moments in time felt and
recorded, this is but one of those

Marshal Gebbie
  That old world touch suits you Stevo,
When I come visit your beautiful state of Oregon, We shall partake this delightful repast in the company of your fair maid.... and we shall tip her well!
M.

Scoot the Streak
One must believe in something be he misanthrope or gambler
In tomorrows omniscience or the future proof of God
The penance in a drunk's decay sets self destruct's imposer
Wether speaker phone's on disconnect or cellphone's in the bog.

Conveyance of a threat to adherents of St Selfwise
Show atheist's are proof here, in belief of disbelief,
Haunted by the images painting painful retribution
Picture sympathetic **** star's allocated hand relief.

A moments allocation of a syllogist abstraction
Shows perspective of the caliber we now reserve for Saints
A paradox regarded as autistic fascination
In a one act play of living disregarding all restraints.

Deliberately indicative of fraternal heat's expression
Notebook at the ready and deep frowning at the brow,
Question definition's collage of confusion's contribution
Do we sit it out pretending or just catch the late bus now?

Marshalg
13 February 2014
© 2014 Marshal Gebbie
Marshal Gebbie
Written by

victoria  Intriguing work...so I search the comments for help... Ah
0
Feb 2014
Terry O'Leary  Marshal, I kinda like this (I read it several times since yesterday)... but I'm still not sure what it says... maybe I'll down a shot tonight and try again... ;-)) Terry
0

3 replies

Feb 2014
Marshal Gebbie
Marshal Gebbie   A confession Terrance.. I was half cut when I wrote it!
I have no idea what it means.
Feb 2014
Terry O'Leary   :-)) Great... I'll be back in a bit... T
Feb 2014
Terry O'Leary   Well, in the meantime I've had a few shots... now I think I know what it means... hic°°.... hope I remember in the morning... ;-)) Terry
Feb 2014

Pradip Chattopadhyay
Residues
By the night one long dark road
the houses are deep in slumber.

Lucky I'm alive and awake,
can see the stars
in their vast magnitude of silence
gentle and not drunk
have love to count upon
filled with a will to live
feeling I'm almost done.

Having a life is a great reward
and with the residues
gets more valuable.

I won't cry over the lost years
would rather think
have been blessed with enough.

The stars grow blurry dots
as I slip into dreams.

I had a once upon place
and I'm grateful.

With dewy eyes
I hurry to the warmest space
beside her.

You slip into your years well, Pradip.
Your woman must relish your peace, your contentment.
Cheers mate
M.


Tony Grannell
Autumn's Sonneteer
Behold, upon yon ivy bunch, my darling blackbird sings;
I know not why nor shall I try to understand such things.
For born this morning on a song, pray hark, her sweet refrain;
to chance a sigh, oh, dare not I, for this is God's domain.

Out of the night the art of song in tuning in the day;
unknowed afore or evermore such music on display.
'Tis love begad, a lover's song, a diva, I declare,
in soaring o'er both vale and moor, this morning's love affair.

In wonder's charm, this precious bird in song to comfort me.
Alone I stroll, no proffered soul to share my company.
Yet rare this morn, in splendours all, true love like none afore;
let passions roll, in song extol, in verse the morn's rapport.

Be succour in such music found for autumn ails me so,
when summer's run, the harvest done, to rest my scythe and ***.
Of idle lands and nowt ado, to wait without employ.
Yet, hail the sun, my kingdom won, when sings that bird of joy.

Behold her charm and charmed, I am while autumn leaves still fall.
'Tis life anew, a sweeter brew when hear the songstress call.
Though winter’s nigh, with strength and will, we’ll bear our pain and fear;
'tis all to do, good hearts and true, sings autumn's sonneteer.

Written by
Tony Grannell  62/M/Spain

Marshal Gebbie  I stood out at the rock wall and gazed at the splendour of Autumn in Taranaki, as I read, aloud, your sonnet.
...and my heart sang.
M.

Dr Peter Lim
When?
When is the when
of when?  
rampant still is the ravage
which will not relent-

the claustrophobic shut-in
hearts toward gloomy moods they bend
no happy voices of kids heard outdoors
the green fields do not comfort lend-

the downcast look, the sinking feeling
are the joys and delights of yesterday years all spent?
the spectre of pain brings bitterest tears
in the faces of every continent-

oh, when is the when
of when?
such a wash-down
we could never comprehend.

Marshal Gebbie:  But isn't that the way, Dr Pete? Mankind builds his castles in the air, thrusts out his chest and proclaims himself, King of all!
...to be decimated, in an instant, by a microbe of infinitesimal stature. Oh! the fragility of it all.
Life cometh, life goeth....but somewhere, down the track, life shall come again.
M.


Al Drood
The Merman of Orford Ness

So long ago in King Hal’s time, our nets we cast upon the wave;
and drawing in did stand a-feared at what we’d caught in Orford Bay.

Entangled ‘midst our dripping catch, with eyes that stared all hellish green,
enscaléd like some creature deep, a Merman writhed as one obscene.

All webbéd were his hands and feet, his body dripped with ocean bile;
upon his head the ****-wrack grew, green-bearded was this demon vile.

Fast to the shore with awful haste we sped before the wind and tide;
Lord Glanville for to summon forth, the Merman’s fate all to decide.

Upon the quay his Lordship stood with men at arms and shriven priest,
and all did cross themselves in fear before this strange unholy beast.

“Enchain it,” cried Lord Glanville loud, “then to God’s Kirk with all good speed!”
The shriven priest prayed long and hard as to the church we did proceed.

With Holy Water, cross of gold, with candle and with testament,
the priest then exorcised the beast, who knew not what was done nor meant.

To all’s dismay he would not bow before the Host on bended knee;
and so to dungeon was he dragged to dwell upon his blasphemy!

The silent Merman beaten was, and hung in chains in for seven weeks,
and fed was he on fish and shells, yet never did he sleep nor speak.

And so at length his Lordship said, “Across the harbour tie a net,
and we shall see how he shall swim, but by his ankles chainéd, yet!”

The net a-fixed, the village folk came down to see the Merman’s plight;
into the sea they threw him then, with foam and wavelet flashing white.

He vanished ‘neath the waters like some seabird in pursuit of prey,
then surfaced laughing, chain in hand, and to his Lordship he did say;

“You thought to make me such as you, who walk in blindness o’er the land!
You’d punish me for difference!  You thought to treat me like a Man!”

So long ago in King Hal’s time our nets we cast upon the wave;
and drawing in did stand a-feared at what we’d caught in Orford Bay.
Al Drood
Written by
Al Drood  M/North Yorkshire

Marshal Gebbie:  Tones here of the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.
An original work in time honoured rhyme and metre.
I devoured every syllable..Bravo!
M.

G Alan Johnson
Kafka's Bug

When I shed the last skin
last year
there was left a hardened shell
protecting a patched up heart
and a petrified husk
of a soul.

You can throw your bombs
if you wish
and they will hurt inside
but I will just eat them
and **** them out
flushed and forgotten.

Sometimes my antennae
come out in a social setting
and people look at me
with an odd expression
or look off into space
a kind of awkward acceptance,
(the ones that know me).

My mandibles will at times
spit out a divine stupidity
a slacker kind of opinion
and no amount of saliva
can dissolve it
so it sits in the heavy air
stinking like a butterfly corpse.

It was an attempt
at transformation
that failed
(I'm too weak with ego),
and I'm glad that I tried
otherwise I would always wonder.

Vincent Price in a cheap suit
and a lost puppy daydream
a world full of flies, wasps and failed caterpillars
patient spiders and polished leeches...
and all I can do is write.
Written by
G Alan Johnson  65/M/USA

Response by Marshal Gebbie

Pelting rain adheres to soil
As spiders sprint and earthworms roil,
World in turmoil stinkbugs, stink
And Satan beetles disgorge ink
But thee, my budding, sodden flea,
Hath entertained quiescent....me.
M.

Nat Lipstadt
Pandemic Poems: Unclaimed bodies, There’s ain’t no anonymity in heaven.

There are more poems inside me, but I intuit it is longer fair to impose on you by sharing more.  The deep seeded infection of my spirit waxes and wanes, and there is no antidote, and unlike the virus itself, there never will be, a future cure, an inexpensive replacement cost for the spirit spent, the time and futures spirited away.

Perhaps you recall I was one mile away from Ground Zero on September 11th.  Rarely do I walk there.

The coronavirus poetry inserts itself unaided, never asking permission, a like minded, but a contra-cousin to the coronavirus.

I live in New York City, the epicenter where now, close to 800 die daily.

Normally, about 25 bodies a week are interred on Hart island, mostly for people whose families can't afford a funeral, or who go unclaimed by relatives.  In recent days, though, burial operations have increased from one day a week to five days a week, with around 24 burials each day.^^

Each dies with no last words, no Kaddish recited, Last Rites, too late, no Ṣalāt al-Janāzah or Om Namo Narayanaya.  Each one, a numbered pine coffin, and each one will have at the very least, a poem of their own, so help me god.

Buried side by side in large trench, room plenty for new arrivals,
I hear the banging, protesting, resisting, this is not the way, I was promised, my ears left pounding!  Hillel, the great scholar in this dream, reminds that “the time is short, and the work is great.”          

He paraphrases, though, “the bodies many, the poems too few.”

There ain’t no anonymity in heaven, but I’ll reconfirm that with you later.

Written by
Nat Lipstadt

Marshal Gebbie
God! It's harrowing to feel the raw spirit in a New York City man's soul.

You speak for the dead, the ailing and the fearful.

You speak for beggar in the street, the broker, quaking in his plenty, imprisoned on the 14th floor.

You speak for the cop, in face mask, on 24th and Vine, doing, as always what he must, with authority.

And you speak for the White Clad Angels who carry the dead to Hart Island and who forgive you, your fear and safer seclusion.

You speak also for we, who watch and sorrow from afar your agony, in our own fear and seclusion.
M.

Nat Lipstadt
raw is the word, oft need to lie down midday to escape the the viral infection of every outlet we use to pass these days. don’t know when i’ll go outside again, because the virus kills and wounds in horrible ways... thank u MG for the kind appreciation natty

Sally A Bayan
Conduits
In distance and in proximity...in despair
and joy...in existing and in dying...in the
bliss of love reciprocated, and in the pain
of love unrequitted...verses dance and call,
awaiting......

poetry has its own pulse, its own heartbeat,
it calls, taps the shoulders any moment,
awake, or adrift, it just can't be ignored...
even in a tangled, or weird circumstance,
it sparks like a bulb or a comet, curving
in a rainbow...riotous some days, teasing, fleeing,
then, turning up at unexpected times and places.

in every bit and breath of life, in every seed,
in every drop of dew, in every ember burning,
there is poetry birthing, growing...

deep within us flows green, purple, red,
glum gray, darkened inspirations...fleeting,
but, when time is ripe, they linger long,
giving us time to capture them all
.............................................
we sense them...we give space
we speak them, or we write them,
:::::::we are conduits:::::::


Sally

©Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
February 11, 2020

Marshal Gebbie

  A touch, so light,
So sensitively slight
As to be caress,
In dead of night


Don Bouchard
And then
We become old men
And old women, and

We look back wistfully, and
We look forward hopefully, and

We wonder....


Written by
Don Bouchard  60/M/Minnesota

Marshal Gebbie
  Slipped betwixt the then and now
Methinks, with finger on the brow,
Thee needs a shot of earthy ***
And a wanton ****, to rub your tum.
Thee needs a cheery pick me up,
Some hairy mates to help you sup
Elixir from the joy of life
To salve tomorrows' threat of strife.
Cheers mate M.
0
Tommy Randell
From a young man's parlance, tripping from an old man's tongue; Right On, brother, Right On!
Yenson Aug 2018
Is there a place somewhere known and yet unknown
where humans keep or lose their guilts
Is there a dumping hole or a snug
or a fierce incinerator blazing
That destroys or obliterates
human guilts

Is it a known some guilts carry comfortably and alone
just another thing for the holdall satchel bag or arm
Someday its worryingly heavy on the shoulders
other times it's just small and weightless
An accessory as any others
imperceptibly light

Is the heavy guilt or tons heavy ones like granite stone
a weary toil left in a storage or thrown over a cliff
What ever done guilts come with a personal receipt
bearing owners name time and number
Attached to owner and carried 24/7
marked as 'Non-Transferable'

Is your guilt or guilts  bearable or carry-able like your phone
have you stored, hidden it or pushed down a crevice
What about the indelible receipt on your person
that which is there and rests on you
Does it flare like an incindaries
or just simmer quietly

Is your guilt a bedfellow that clings to your chest in a zone
whispering in tone foreboding and chills persistent
Or one that wades in and recedes like shore waves
perhaps it's a type like a central rigid statue
An unmovable edifice of horror
coated in fear and alarm

Is your guilt light and niggly, a Bonsai with no tall grown
did you amend paying a due and penanced did leave
And though the attached receipt still haunts you
least you know it will gradually fade away
Leaving truly tutoring imprints
Never to be repeated

Is your guilt a stranger yet unmet and your spirit happy flown
do you walk in salient steps with no recourse to remorse
And greet each morn with pleasantries to I, me and self
enthralled no rent paid for secret storage or a crevice
Just the one that stands before man and Creation
Held aloof by a Conscience unstained



Copyright@Laurence14th Aug2018.all rights reserved.
Mercury Chap Jun 2017
It isn't just a flame
Burning within me
(cannot extinguish with your loving words)
It isn't only the rotten smell of overcooked thoughts
(I'd still love to eat their bitterness away)
Although it is...

It is me and my love for thee,
You who makes me a poet,
Who makes me feel enough to feel human
Whether it's sadness, happiness, hatred or jealousy
(oh that silly stinging heart of mine)  

No... It's a contagious forest fire
Combusting my sanity towards those
Near you; Lived and living or loving
(how readily my tears want to burn them)

It's known it's not healthy
But you don't see it's my love anyway
Even when I am angry with you
(nothing that you're responsible for)
And mime my thoughts out to you
So you never understand.

By the time this forest obliterates,
It's all just too late to tell you,
And again,
The ash is buried inside,
Waiting to reignite,
Soon.
Hal Loyd Denton Apr 2012
Death Knows Not a Stranger

This is the sheild Jesus gave me to protect Addy
but it will fit you if you have suffered loss


Dear Addy you will never read these words hurting one this is the war of darkness and its pall
That is a great slab it is made from turgid raw material the awful density the core of a quagmire

We are far in distance and time from Pacific Grove High School for you and Kathleen for me
Army life where we are is of no consequence death hunts its prey we were unaware then the

Deep black waves pushed against all visible light instantly we were in great depths disfigurement it
Obliterates all that was sharp and clear with warring powers it reduced our postulations to

Nonexistence we were assured they were built on bedrock Bethlehem steel stone quarried from
Surest granite the front to our fortress showcase was of impeccable marble how awed spectators

Were our security unquestioned and then the hand of death with ease dissolved our house as it were
Paper the beam the central support gave way in the night outward storm not the cause but inner

Cisterns wore thin and cracked the spirit no longer could be held and contained though it was made
Of thoughts mined from deep interests that was the stalwart reserves of economy and wisdom that

Form the primary pillars of a successful life these are hard won but are required when time limitations
Have been reached and must be forfeited so as if a secret war was fought and lost we stand in utter

Disbelief and can’t grasp the magnitude of our loss we fall against walls of splendor in these courts
Where so much was shared with the departed joy edged with laughter hung as sheer silk with

Designs of beauty that can only be from sharing at deep levels they seemed rigid because they
Were in essence the combined strength of our two souls what could move them cut them asunder

What enemy could surmount such habitations of love that a sister can have for another only the darkest
Blackened heart could invade but this intruder is hated by God himself but within the very folds of

His tragic existence there is seen and heard the fluttering of the whitest dove in her wings springtime
Of the soul is announced against the harsh back drop of a coffin fresh turned earth and marble stone

That bears her name on this wise alone immortality is birthed all that was loved is now indescribable
To human tongue our eyes were made for earthy climes only by the eyes of faith can you see

The shimmering bright new creation that left a life of limitation to be a jewel crusted in His royal
Crown by this be comforted hurting one
Third Eye Candy Nov 2015
every canary has a star in its' mouth
that can stop a .50 caliber bullet. and little black eyes.
the south face of a north wind
has always been polite
before shattering your bones,

it is peculiar, but the very thing that makes you breathe
makes you need too.
the fix is in.

II

cruelty is the soft grit of pitch dark.

III

every canary has another word for suffocation.
it rhymes with kerosene and licks its' teeth.
it sleeps in the barn. Feasting on horses -
and dung.
it sounds like falling and glowing, but feels like
extinction. it obliterates the need for another word
for Hope.

Or something else as trivial... to abandon.
mads Apr 2022
Are you still drinking every night?
Who do you scream at now?
Now that I’m not there to bear the brunt of your violent insecurities?
Help is an insufferable waste of air
When the one needing it is in narcissistic denial.
Part of me hopes the crumble of your career
Obliterates your shiny golden god complex.
The rest of me doesn’t give a ****,
Because after the years of manipulating and pain
I’ve torn the shackles, broke free
And you don’t mean a ******* thing anymore.
A forgotten false god.
Enjoy your downfall.
I won’t see it from my rightful throne.
skyler Jun 2018
hating you
hurts my heart
but loving you
obliterates it

s.s
Sheena S Aug 2011
Reality obliterates.
An overdose of anything is bad.

I saw you standing by the gate of my castle one night.

It’s a fight, baby, a fight.
I’d rather not bring this up now, now or ever.

Poised to evolve, to create and be,
Ah, this mystery. It is not for me.

Twenty nine, you said. I wish.
Now your cue: ‘It was only a kiss – how did it end up like this.’

Poles split apart. Lives break.
Dices’ fate?
Never too late
For you and I to make
it.

Priorities, priorities. We all must have some.
Or that’s what I was told.
By someone old
and presumably wiser than I.

I don’t think I understand yours.
To be so clear now, so transparent, may not bode well for me.

Anyhow, the problem persists. I do not know.
I can only make sense of what you show.

Like a teacher, a guide, a mentor might.
But ah. What if the disciple lacks the insight?

Inside me. Inside you. Inside something beautiful.
Flew away, flew away: that one and her nuances.
And left us with this wonderful,
Incorrigible mess of things.

Like twisting beads into a big ball of yarn.
Or letting the dog mangle it up with salivating earnestness.

The beads, they make all the difference.
And you are my beads.
Of all shapes (mostly round),
Of all sizes (mostly large),
Of all colours (mostly nothing – mostly them all.)

And you know what? I like colours.

Colour me unrecognizable

(By anyone but you.)
There was no other
I could give myself to.

I cant ascertain
Whether it’s me I lost, or gained.
You I made proud, or shamed.
Respect lost, or love regained.

This would be easier in nonsense verse.
Flibbertigibbet very nicely puts me in retrospect.

What am I doing?
I can’t phrase poetically,
Much less understand what I say.

It may be for you to know.
For you only, for you forever.

Hide this.
Marshal Gebbie Mar 2011
Clear and crystal
So anciently old,
So brilliantly fluid
And tastelessly cold.
To coalesce in vapour
Of limitless cloud,
To fall in fat globules
Of rainfall in shroud.

To cascade through air
As a mist in the fall
Or plummet as downpour
Through Calcutta’s pall.
Gathered in puddles
To flow down a drain,
Amass as a flood
To pour across plain.
To playfully tumble
From mountains of shard,
To flow to the sea
Where the surf crashes hard.

A field of marigolds
Bobbing in sun,
Nurtured by moisture’s
Life giving fun.
Green grasses grow
With barley and wheat,
Through the magic administered
By wetness’s feat.
Imagine disaster’s
Protracted drought
Where dryness obliterates
Green life throughout.

Sparkling clear waterfalls,
Hard pounding surf,
Trickles of crystalline
Cascades of mirth.
Rock pools so clear
That trout can be seen
And the bone china cup of tea
Served to the Queen.

Standing in rain
As it pours from the sky
With a grin on my face
Smearing mud from my eye
With arms outstretched
And a song in my heart
For the great joy of living
This water imparts....

Water my Angel,
My priceless gem.
A waterless world
Would bring death and mayhem.
An oceanless planet
As seen from the moon,
Would lack life giving blueness
And be hued in gloom.
Sweet water is life
In a miraculous way,
Thus we hail the Gods
Each rain swept day.

Marshalg
Sitting by the beautiful Manukau Harbour
11 March 2011
Glenn McCrary Oct 2012
Oh, how such calligraphy glints
In the waking sun ‘tis betrayal
Post-ejaculatory nocturne

Such crucifixion of misery
Performs as an aid to impending tragedy
And obliterates the art ‘tis suicide
so that infants be branded with
a mark of amour that is profound

In each and every star lies
a distinct honor undefined
In due time all shall awaken
Arousing armistice
SøułSurvivør Mar 2022
"Though the mills
Of God grind slowly;
Yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience
He stands waiting,
With exactness grinds He all."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

The Mill

The grueling weight
of happenstance,
A millstone for to grind,
It deflates the ego
And shows us
Where we're blind,
It renders flesh a ruin
Obliterates the mind,
We leave our idols desolate
Leave the ties that bind.

Under painful hardship
We release the very things
Which put us in the circumstance
And caused the suffering
We leave behind our craving
For wealth and diamond rings
Everything exalted
All exalted above God...

That means EVERYTHING

Whatever you adore
On this temporal earth
Whatever gives you pleasure
In which you find worth

These very things will shackle you!
You'll find out they're not free.
They are just the Golden Calf
Of base idolatry.

But the millstone slowly purges
Turning hour by hour
Turning the wheat kernels
Into useful flour.

And so I am refined
As I surely must
Put to naught my flesh
Make powder all my lusts
For I am as ashes

for I am as dust.


Write of Passage aka
SoulSurvivor
8/23/2017
JR Rhine Dec 2015
Nervously fidgeting with ring unaccustomed to left ring finger.
"It's a purity ring."
"But I'm pretty sure she gave you a *******."
No, I lied.

Remember the inside of her mouth as
warm and wet;
passionate gnashing of tongue
weeping of lust
eyes widened to this
novel sensation shocking
a pubescent body.
The world melted away
cares and woes cast in abeyance
watching her perform eyes closed
like an artist.
Entranced
the cry of love's voice silenced
with carnal desire drowning the sound,
a warm sticky tidal wave
sending sensation tingling down the spine
kicking through feet to the toes
gasps getting shorter, quicker.
My God
A car crash
What to come next
Feeling a pressure build like a flood to the dam
Concrete cracks
Levee breaks
A monument of celibacy obliterates
Dissolution into oblivion

then release.

Tension carried
slipped and you
gazed upon her
like a goddess
unlocking the eternal secret
of Man.
She sheepishly looked away
You worshiped where she lay.

Years later, nervously fidgeting with ring
well worn onto bony finger.
"You remember the warmth of naked torsos
furiously kneading like dough,
juxtaposing the harshness of denim crotches
grinding vivaciously
hoping to catch the spark to a fire."
A fire alright,
burning inside(s)
with the unlit match ready to ignite
between quivering thighs.
You had the key
undid the button of chastity
fingers slithering down
through ground fertile tillage
to a hidden chamber.
The guest pirouettes
but keeps her on her toes
in and out,
rapturous gyration.
Watching the air leave her mouth
head tilted back
til washed away
atop a sigh
that pleases an ear
to this day.
Ring feels a little looser than I remember.

Sitting atop a grassy hill,
her head on your shoulder,
watching the sunset for hours.
"Do you remember the taste of her ****** in your mouth?
I bet you can recall the path from
her kiss to her cheek,
jawline to the nape of her neck,
glissade from retreating lips
dragged across smooth skin
saliva trail moist
sliding down ever so tranquil,
velvety skin ever so alive.
Weaving through the meniscus of her breast,
expertly with eyes closed
(you've done this before, it's almost a chore),
fingers tight around waist grip a little fiercer
mouth digs in deeper.
Corner of lips communion with
goose-bumped areola;
mouth dances 'round like a native ritual,
til you pounce on the prey
proceeding with the furious primal *******
of a ravenous child,
only charged with the lustful energy of
an insatiable beast in euphoric heat.
Did your tongue rotate clockwise or counterclockwise?

Snapped back to the present,
eyes had burned holes in the fading sun
a million times over.
She had looked up at you curiously.
A weak smile in return.
You glanced down wearily at the ring that matched hers.
I still tell myself I'm a ******, having never had Vaginal/Penal ***, but at the same time I feel I have robbed myself of that purity. Sometimes I feel filthy. Always these memories arouse desire and simultaneously regret. I think its the darkness trying to get its hold on me. It's in moments like these that I feel the filthiest. Perhaps I may be able to purge by casting these demons onto the page.
Ryan Hoysan Oct 2016
I always try to choose my words carefully
Each syllable like an incision with a scalpel
Well intentioned and good mannered
In hopes of removing the ticking time bombs placed inside you and me by those that have left us behind
But one wrong slip
One accidental miscalculation
Obliterates the progress that I have so carefully tried to create.
Could one word have changed it all?
Could one different syllable be the reason that you are still here?
I wanted to give this piece a title, but I couldn't decide on one that I was satisfied with. If anyone has a suggestion I'd be glad to hear it.

— The End —