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Our Backgrounds before we met...

I'm an only child born in Montana in 1983, from a divided home. Parents divorced at seven, Mom was unstable and unfaithful. Dad obtained custody of me and we moved to Oregon Coast to live with my Grandma. I had unhealthy visits and relationship with Mom thereafter. My Grandma died at 12 and at 13 my Dad remarried an alcoholic woman, I had a strained relationship with them until adulthood when she stopped drinking. I had exposure to trauma; alcoholism, mental illness, verbal abuse and juvenile troubles. I rebelled by using drugs in my late teens and early twenties, I lived on my own for a few years after high school but had little direction.

My bride is the eldest with two little brothers, parents stayed in same area of Portland during childhood with lots of family support and her parents stayed married. They had Christian values but some anger and anxiety issues at home. She was sexually assaulted at 17 and never had good closure with this. She told me her parents didn't provide her enough help with things like this growing up. Status quo was the backbone of the family dynamic, challenging emotions were discouraged. She rebelled by being reckless with herself, financially and sexually. She decided to join the Navy at 19. She lived alone briefly, but mostly with Grandparents & Parents before our marriage.

I loved how we both grew up reading Archie comics. No other girl I had ever met had that in common with me. I think we wanted a surreal life like the one in Riverdale.

2002

She and I were 19 when we first met in my home town on the coast at an arcade. We became friends and secretly liked each other. I was too nervous to ever make a move on her. We traveled together, she stayed with me, we used drugs together and drank at times. One night she drank too much and had *** with a guy I knew at a party. I was devastated by this. She was Navy bound and I didn't see a real future for us. The next morning she left and I didn't talk to her again for two years. I figured she would be gone with the Navy soon and that she must not have been interested in a relationship with me despite the time we spent together.

2003

I was depressed about this rejection. I dated an older woman who was interested in me but was no substitute. I eventually moved to the Portland area to work and live. I still had few plans and was lonely, in or out of the few brief relationships I attempted. I never found someone that I felt safe with or had a true connection, let alone true love. She ended up not following through with the Navy and continued working her way up in her job at the call center. She attended community college and dated a few guys. She dated one guy for a couple of years who was not a good match for her but stayed with him off and on despite issues. His family was wealthy and treated her well. He slept around on her as did she. At one point he gave her an STD. She also had an ongoing affair with a married man in the military that she went to high school with. He had a child and a wife with mental health issues. She was still hurting a lot at times and not always doing well.

2004

She reached out to me via email after two years of no contact. We emailed back and forth a couple times over the next few months. We talked about meeting up. We spoke on the phone and eventually met up in Portland. We had an amazing night getting to know each other again and work past the confusion of our earlier days of friendship. I realized that she did in fact like me before but since I was timid and trying to be proper and take things slowly she didn't understand my motives. She apologized for her actions at the party as well. She claimed she was in a really messed up place and was making bad choices at that time. Getting our feelings out in the open was good and she appreciated my attitude towards being slow to make moves on her when we first met. I was worried about falling for her based on our history but eventually I was determined to give it a shot. We soon after starting dating and being intimate. Our love was extremely powerful and beyond all others we had both experienced. She broke ties with other suitors and shortly after we talked about marriage and started planning a wedding for the next year.

I remember when we first held hands. We were so shakey and she was quivering on my couch as I had my arm around her. We felt so safe with each other. We could finally be ourselves and do what our hearts desired. We knew we were on to something new and so amazing. We were so patient with each other as we navigated our new love and emotional thresholds.

I remember when we saw Matisyahu in concert together. That was a once in a lifetime experience and a life-changing moment for us. I feel it set the tone for things to come in our future.

I remember how creative my proposal to her was, in the Arcade where we first met. I hid the ring in a prize container from one of those claw machines. Pretending I got the ring from inside by reaching into the machine on one knee I was so nervous and wasn't sure if I could pull it off before she caught on. She looked so shocked and surprised. I was so excited she said yes! We took pictures in the photo machine and had burgers afterwards, I'd do all of it all over again just to see her face in that moment.

2005

We found an apartment for us in Portland. I moved in while she was still living back with her parents until the wedding. She had to change her number because the married man she was previously involved with kept calling her about changing her mind about marriage and continuing their relationship. She was offered a job in Denver and we decided to move away together after our sandy wedding in Cannon Beach. I still had a very hard time and was embarrassed with my past history with her. Many of my friends knew what had happened at 19 and how much it hurt me but I was so crazy about her I think I tried to pretend it didn't happen or that it was not a big deal because we were younger. We got married and moved to Colorado soon after. We made friends at a church, I became more active as a Christian and really loved being married. We were very involved in keeping spirituality in our marriage. I began to notice her poor financial decisions and practices more. This caused conflict but we always tried to communicate and work on things.

I remember when we went down to my folks for New Year's in 2005. We sipped tea in my Datsun as we drove to the coast over the snowy mountain pass. We told them of our engagement. We were all so blissful and excited. We never knew what was to come. We didn't even know about the opportunity in Denver yet. Our story is amazing!

I remember when I wanted to go see her in Portland and the roads were iced over. I left my car at a park and ride before I caused a wreck. I took the light rail across town then rode a bus to the Eastside shopping mall. The bus to her house was not running because it wasn't safe so I walked the rest of the 4 Miles sometimes having to crawl on my hands and knees to make it up hills in the ice and then I finally made it only to just spend a couple hours with her and fall asleep on her parents couch. Her Dad drove us back the next morning to my car so I could get to work. It was all worth it just to see her for that little extra time. I would have done anything for her.

I remember when she was interviewing for the new position in Denver? I drove all over Portland trying to find little toy cars to help with her illustration about how a team is like a car having all four wheels and how they work together to accomplish a goal. I was so proud of her for giving it her all and succeeding at earning that position. Now that I think of it, that car analogy applies to our family and us. We all need each other to be better and keep on track and be a team. I am so motivated by that and our boys. I lose my way without that and I want to be her reflection and motivation as she has been that for me. I truly thought we brought out the best in each other when we were together.

I remember when we were given tickets to see Fiona Apple. That was so spontaneous and a great way to kick off our time in Denver together. We always used to watch our same movies over and over again. Like the Friends DVDs and White Christmas every winter break and The Wedding Singer. We walked everywhere and lived simply. "I wanna be the guy, who grows old with you"

I remember in our first Denver apartment when we took baths together in our claw foot tub in the big bathroom. We put a board over the top and played cards. I liked playing Uno with her in bed too. She was so funny being slightly color blind and in the dark, mixing up the greens and blues. We played Uno in Breckenridge too at that cool bed and breakfast in the fall.

2006

We had continued fun and adventure in our new home of Denver. She was doing well as a trainer for the bank and I started working in health foods. We went camping in New Mexico a couple times with friends and we both took individual trips to Oregon as well as one together for her uncle's wedding. We had marital spats on occasion but always bounced back. The issues we had seemed like part of a normal marriage and were far better than what I had grown up around. I realized that marriage was a lot of work but I was up for the task. She occasionally became aggressive throwing things at me or breaking things during conflict.  I believed I was the problem and tried to change for her in many ways. With two incomes we still had trouble making our bills at times. She had debts that I never knew about that started to catch up with us but I took care of getting them settled and we paid off her car and traded it for an older Volvo Wagon that we both loved, I even had it repainted her favorite color for a birthday gift. Overall things seemed like they were progressing in a positive way.

I remember when we saw Midnight in concert in Boulder. That was the peak of our hippy days. We were alive with pleasure in our healthy vegetarian diets and practices living in a time and place like no other. I want to be like that again. Reggae was our music. We had much in common.

2007

We really fell into our roles in our marriage and the community; church and culture, friends etc. Things seemed very balanced and appropriate for us at that time and that age (24-25). We had separate bank accounts and jobs. I had money in savings. We started the process of buying a house so we could invest in something. She became pregnant shortly after. I embraced the challenge with positive energy but we were both in for a big change. We started having more fights. I didn't have many friends and would write to old friends via social media just so I could to catch up and tell them things were going great with being married to make myself feel better than I actually did. She hated the dawn of social media and also felt isolated I'm sure. She felt I should be doing more for her and I didn't know how to do what she needed but I failed to ask a lot of the time. After one argument, she left the house. My instinct told me to look at ******* and ******* as a retaliation. I had not done this much once we were married because she always met my needs but when things were difficult between us I felt more emotionally isolated. She walked in and realized what I had been doing. She was very upset, and because she was pregnant, thought I was not attracted to her. The truth is I found her even more beautiful and in fact when I looked at ******* I tried to look at women I found less attractive than her so that I feel good about what I have. I mostly fantasized about how these women were more submissive and loving than her. That is the part I needed to feel good about and feel better about myself with because I felt very dominated and controlled. She has never forgiven me for this and I will never stop feeling sorry to her for my brokenness. During one particular argument that year she was getting close to being violent towards me again and I pushed her away on the chest with my fingertips. She got very mad and said I hurt her. I immediately felt terrible and apologized. I never let something like that happen again. I have always avoided violence towards others especially women and of course her. I was defenseless against physical and emotional abuse.

2008

Our eldest son was born at the beginning of the year, it was a traumatic birth for everyone. We wanted a natural birth with a midwife but we were transferred to a hospital and she ended up having an emergency C-section, nothing went as planned. We had a really hard time coping with the emotions of this experience. A lot of buried feelings and trauma from both of us started coming out. We moved a month later into our new home outside of town. No more walking or biking to places, we had to drive everywhere. This house was next to our friends from church. We thought this would make us feel less isolated but we didn’t really have the community with them that we had hoped for. They were upset that they didn't have a child of their own yet and being around us might have been hard for them. My wife stopped working and stayed home with our son. All these changes made for a very difficult time. I did my best to support them but this was the first time we shared a bank account and needed to follow a budget more than ever before. We had no debt at the beginning of the year with money in savings but then the hospital bills put us down about $7,000 and rising with new home and moving expenses and baby needs. My job could barely keep up. She and I had a hard time adjusting. We could not afford to travel home to Oregon and visit family as much and we felt more and more isolated. She started showing me more signs of instability, locking herself in the bathroom with kitchen knives and scraping her legs which continued off and on for years to come. Talks of divorce and suicide threats seemed to happen more than before. I felt responsible and tried to fix her ever changing issues with me.

I remember when herr ******* were full and swollen with milk. It is so beautiful the way she could feed our babies. I wanted her in every way, our bodies belonged to each other. I was there for her and our shared pleasure. I loved it when she told me that she was mine in the heat of passion. This spark could only be a bandage for so long but I didn't know that yet.

2009

I tried to promote within my company but was not selected, they were cutting budgets and employment all around me. I felt worried about our future. I had always thought the military might be a good opportunity and could move us closer to family back home. My father-in-law encouraged me to look into the Coast Guard. I felt this would be a good way to get moved closer to Oregon.  I ended up joining the Navy because we found out we were pregnant again with our second son and that was the only way I could join a military branch. She worked off and on as a nanny and later in the year at a coffee house working nights. We barely spent time together and when we did it was a lot of hard conversations or arguments about finances with making up intimately in the middle of the night between times of caring for the baby. She once scratched my neck with her fingernails during an argument. People I worked with noticed. It was a hard time and we knew change was on the horizon with jobs and moving. We did visit Oregon that summer though and had a great vacation at the beach with a borrowed 4x4 and staying at a hotel and picnicking out of a cooler as well as going to her brothers wedding. I was 26 and about to join the Navy to provide better for my family at all costs sacrificing myself for their benefit because I would have rather died than look like I didn't try my best for them.

I remember when our babies would kick and move around inside her belly. I loved laying by her and feeling her tummy. I would hum to the baby and hear them move and squirm. I loved giving our boys baths when they were babies too. We had our little bundles of our love, wrapped in a towel in our hands, so tiny and vulnerable. I miss those days and want to remember them with her, aside from this state of melancholy.

2010

The Navy recruiters would only take me if we rented out our home and had her stay with family during boot camp and training. We moved to a furnished apartment in Denver and put our things in storage. She was 5 months pregnant and our eldest was two. I shortly after was let go from my job. Our second son was born in April. I got a contract with the Navy at the last minute but didn't leave until August. We sold our beloved vehicles and lived off retirement funds for six months and moved down to Florida where her parents had just moved out of the blue for work, to stay with them until I left for boot camp. I applied for temporary work in Florida at a dozen places but had no luck in my three months there. I took care of our eldest a lot while she took care of the new baby. Being in Florida was a culture shock for us but we had our moments of romance and made the best of it. Eventually I left for boot camp in August. It was really hard and sad to be gone. She stayed in Florida and came to visit me with the baby at boot camp graduation in October. I then went to Connecticut for five months of training. It was also hard but at least I could call home every day and be in the same time zone. I visited Florida during the winter break and saw my boys and her. We went to Disney world and had a great time on her parents. We also made a romantic home movie I could enjoy while away from her. I flew back to Connecticut and tried to make the best of things. My roommate was very abusive of substances and I resisted the temptation for a long time but the threat of being submarine service bound and missing my family pushed me to drinking every weekend and getting messed up to escape before I left.

I remember when we drove to Key Largo, Florida and stopped at a crazy bird wildlife center. I remember our oldest was so amazed hearing a bird say hello back to us. It was so foreign and fun there. I am glad we all shared that experience together.

I remember our trip to the citrus grove in Florida. That was such a great day for our family. I always look back on that with really fond sentiment. I felt like I was in a beautiful family music video with them.

2011

I finished Submarine Training and got orders back to the Northwest. The plan was all coming together. I arrived first and bought a car and got our items moved from storage in Denver to our townhouse rental in Washington. She and the boys joined me a month later. I didn't report to my Sub for another month as they were at sea. She became pregnant again with our third son right after arriving. We had just bought a small car and were not planning on another child. Towards the end of the year I was working a lot and having a really hard time, being bullied and treated poorly at work plus our financial situation was still very difficult. Adjusting to the military was hard among younger men being 28. I dreaded each day in that environment but I tried to endure it for my family. I went to sea for a couple months at the end of the year stopping in Hawaii and California. During this time She reached out to her ex married affair partner after six years of no contact. She didn't tell me until later. She said she needed closure with him, we were not in counseling yet but she decided this was appropriate. I flew home early from sea and wanted to surprise her. The stress and trauma of this quick transition home after being to sea for the first time (which was also traumatic) made me want to drink and get messed up before flying. I arrived home and surprised her but I seemed off to her which I was but didn’t explain why, I have never done that since. I got to be home for two months almost work free while we celebrated the holidays and prepared for the new baby to be born. She started getting more involved with a church and building a community for us which was great. Our financial struggles almost led us to foreclosure of our home back in Colorado but by the grace of God we got it sold with a short sale just in time.

I remember when I came back from Hawaii and brought her a beaded necklace and she wore it naked with her big beautiful pregnant goddess belly and we made passionate hippy love together. I want to grow out my beard again and spend my life making hippy love and feeling free again.

2012

Our third son was born in January. It was a very positive birth experience and much less stressful than the other two. Shortly after I flew out to finish the other half of the deployment I had missed. I really focused on being positive and spiritually connected by reading my Bible at sea which was helpful. I called her when I arrived in Japan halfway through being gone. She was upset because she tested positive for an STD while trying to get on birth control. I became suspicious of her yet she was suspicious of me. We both got tested again and I was clean, she told me she had a false positive after all. This put a big strain on our trust, especially being so far away. This forced us to be honest with each other about some things such as her contact with her ex lover and my drinking to cope. We were both very upset until I returned home and we could start some counseling to work through things. Forgiveness seemed to be difficult for us. It brought up hurts of the past when we were 19. She also had severe postpartum depression that became worse after each birth. I was still having a hard time with work and the submarine environment. Our church friends tried to counsel us but it was not the most helpful. My submarine was scheduled for extended repairs and not going to sea for three years, I would be transferred before the end of that period. I used this time to bond with her and my boys. I wanted to get better involved in our community and do volunteer work and side jobs to earn extra money. Our boys were all given diagnosis's for autism which begun to fill our lives with appointments and challenges for years to come but we were a good team in dealing with all of it. It gave us something to work together on but took our focus away from working on our own personal issues and relationship with each other as much as we should have.

2013

We had new years with both sides of our family in a snowy mountain setting in Oregon. It looked like it was going to be a great year until her Grandpa passed away suddenly. It ripped our entire family apart but especially her. He kept the family grounded and she was very close to him, he really loved all of us. She and I started going on dates again because we had Navy sponsored child care. It was the beginning of a really good thing for us. Tragically one night after a date we were dancing with the boys on the patio and I tried to pick her up and I lost my balance and fell on her, breaking her collar bone severely. She needed surgery and was very mad at me for years to come. She has a scar, a metal plate and numbness in her chest. We worked through it with our community from church but she still is very mad at me. I feel more terrible about this incident than she could ever know. I would lose a finger in place of that incident if I could. I continued having a really hard time in the Navy and I didn't want to stay in but She insisted our boys needed care only the Navy could offer. She also said she would divorce me if I ever left the Navy. I took this threat seriously even though she assured me later that she would never actually do that. Against my own convictions I reenlisted because I wanted to do the best thing for my family. We moved into base housing at the end of summer and didn’t go out to do things as much anymore. The house was nice but it ****** us in, we also had less community with people around our home. I started volunteering at church more and doing work with special needs people. I felt like I was doing good things and that I had purpose all around. I think she appreciated this about me.

2014

We started seeing a professional counselor together and individually. It became a regular event. I worked on myself and she worked on herself. I had a lot of issues with my Mom and eventually broke off communication with her for my own well-being and the betterment of my family. I got past a lot of the bad feelings I had. She worked on her traumatic experiences and our relationship dynamics. Just when things were going well I got a new boss who made things hard for me and others at work and I started messing up more. I got in trouble for messing up a job at work and was given strike one on my record. She lost respect for me as a provider but I tried to stay strong showing her that I would continue to do my best.

I remember when we had an appointment in Tacoma and we had a brunch date together afterwards. She looked so beautiful that day, I took her picture and was so proud to enjoy  huevos rancheros and momosas with her. I remember going to the Tacoma Art Museum seeing the Georgia O’Keefe exhibit, we have a great time together doing new things and feeding each other's interests. I loved laughing with her too, sometimes we just bust up like nobody's around. I loved the sound of her laughter. I loved watching Portlandia with her, it is so funny to remember the funny place where we became close and be able to relate together.

2015

I kept working hard and being involved with family and appointments for my boys and her. I still maintained my volunteer work and part time side jobs. I got strike two with the Navy for messing up again... I had just gained orders to leave the sub for local shore duty. I could not get out of the extended repair situation soon enough. She was very disappointed in me and not so understanding. I worked through this situation with our counselor as did she. He always told her I am a good man and that I do a lot for her and the boys. It's true, I care more than anything about them, I made mistakes and I feel bad especially when I cause my family stress. I left for shore duty in April. It was a hard time adjusting to the new routine but eventually we seemed to make it work. That summer we took a trip to visit Texas where her parents had just moved from Florida. We spent a great night together for our 10th anniversary in a hotel in Texas and went dancing. We had a lot more time together as my work schedule was less. The more people we had in our home working with our kids on issues the less useful my input seemed. I was not included as much in making family decisions because they all seemed to happen while I was at work, despite my objections. We tried to get our budget under control but she still had anxiety discussing spending. She continued to struggle with depression and was put on medication because she had still been harming herself. She was put on Prozac daily and anti anxiety medication as needed. He family members were not very supportive of medication which upset her but I always tried to be supportive in seeking help and continued care for both of us.

2016

We had a busy routine of kids in school now and home school and preschool and appointments for all of us. She wanted to go to church less and less. I started drinking a couple beers at night almost every day. I tried to mask my stress from her mood swings. She decided not to go to church at all anymore and focused teaching the boys about Jewish traditions exclusively which was hard for me to adjust to and confusing for the boys. I loved her and wanted to be supportive. As usual I was submissive and removed myself from the Christian church and some friendships. I feel like we lost our community at that point. We searched for a good place to have a new community with Jewish people but it was like starting over. I felt like I converted to Christianity for her when we got together and now I had to convert again, either way I would have done it for her because I loved her that much. The kids were confused by this change. After trying and failing at many synagogues we finally found one that seemed right for us.

2017

We finally had some money in savings because I kept it a secret and ended up planning a trip to visit her parents in Texas but it fell through due to lack of military flights. Instead we spent three nights away in a nice hotel resort as a family in February. We had three days of pure family time. Playing Battleship and other games in our room as a family, watching movies and eating at all the different restaurants and getting room service. Going swimming everyday in the foggy pool. I love our family and how we can have a great time together doing nothing but at the same time so much. That was so peaceful and relaxing. I wanted to keep doing things like that together as a family before our boys got too old. Shortly after this vacation she wanted to go back to school, then we bought a third vehicle so she could. Shortly after this she changed her mind about school and wanted to buy another house instead. I went along with it to please her and we practically killed ourselves trying to get the move accomplished with not much help or money. We had a good year over all. We got away for a romantic anniversary together in the summer. Just before the boys were going to start public school in the fall, her parents moved back to the area. She had anxiety with this and cut off contact with her parents and brothers for a while. Her Dad called me very upset and I tried to keep the peace until they reconciled. I was doing better with work and made up for lost progress as well as making arrangements to change jobs in the Navy to something more fitting. Since the boys started public school, I planned on leaving for Navy training in my new position after the beginning of the new year when they would be at a more settled place in their routine.

I remember when we went to the Olympic Club for our anniversary and we stayed there for a night away. We drove the long way through the countryside talking about new music that she wanted to share with me and she made notes of it on my phone notepad. We brought our own cooler and picnic that included Session Lagers and chocolate. We checked in to our room and made noisy bohemian love on the edge of the creaky bed in our small European room inches from the door. Then we went to the theater downstairs and watched the late showing of a really interesting Sci-fi movie "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets". We took showers and slept sweetly together. We made love again in the morning before we had a delicious brunch outside on the patio. We took the long way home and drove around on new roads and found our way out of cell phone reception. We figured out the road less traveled to get back to our home. We loved being alone and away together, just one night can make such a difference and mean so much.

I remember going to the Forest Theater to see Tarzan with our boys. That was such a great time. I would love to get our boys into theater and go see them someday. I wanted to keep our dreams and goals together alive and not lose opportunity and fall short by losing our partnership.

I loved going camping in Seabeck. Loading the truck with all our gear and getting away. Archer got sick from the cowboy caviar and I had to clean him and the tent up in the night. I was glad we had each other to be a team in our marriage in that situation as with all the other times. These sorts of things are what escape a person's mind when they are determined to get a divorce.

2018

We had a lot less money than the year before, again buying a house took its toll on finances as did the boys school and after school activities. I stayed very involved taking the boys to appointments and sporting practices. We stopped going to synagogue but tried to practice Judaism at home as much as possible, which I was very supportive of and involved with. She was still depressed and talking about suicide at times. I encouraged her to get help as I always had. Eventually she was diagnosed as Bipolar 2 and manic depressive by a new provider. She started taking new medicine for this and was worried I would want to leave her. I assured her I would never leave her and that I always wanted to work on things with her and help her. I left for training in Mississippi February 8th. It was going to be hard but I thought it might be good to have some time apart from each other to miss one another and reflect on things as well as prepare for times when I would be away at sea. I got in trouble in Mississippi for giving junior personnel a ride and being negligent of people who might be underage and possibly drinking, this became strike three. I never thought this could happen. I became recommend for separation from the Navy shortly after and was stuck in Mississippi for six months instead of six weeks. She was supportive through most of it but seemed to fall into hopelessness. Money was spent by her that we didn't have without discussion. She quietly leased appliances and tires and purchased a vehicle as well as having a secret bank account and email address. I discovered through our insurance company that she wanted to leave our policy for divorce. I didn't know this and she had even told the boys she wanted a divorce before I even knew. I was caught off guard and confused. I kept trying to communicate and reason with her but she didn't want to talk. I refused to give up and wrote emails and a letter but it only seemed to push her away further. By the time I left Mississippi she had filed for divorce and a restraining order against me saying I was unstable and a threat. I couldn't return to my home. My whole life fell apart in just a couple months. I found out she had been talking to other men in the Navy and keeping more secrets. I assumed this was her way of taking control during a difficult situation. I really needed her support during this hard time of transition out of the military. I became homeless, jobless and without my family in a month. I prayed to God that given time things might change between us but it was of no use. Bipolar had consumed whatever was left of my bride and there was no turning back.

I felt that our love was not one to be cast away. Other people might not understand or agree but what we had was truly special. We may have surely needed some time and space to get counseling as well as reconfigure and repair our marriage but I didn't feel like our relationship was irretrievably broken. She was so important to me and I thought she was the love of my life and would always have my heart. I wanted to be her partner in love and life, watching our boys grow up and being there to support each other. Being that she is Bipolar I knew she will need a lot of help and I was more than willing to assist her in making sure she was taking care of herself and not throwing herself into harm's way, ensuring she sticks with a plan we agree to for consistency. I cared about her deeply and had much compassion for her. I didn't believe she was thinking this through or thinking about the future. I really wanted to look at the long and short game with her, neither seemed appealing to me if we progressed but here we are. Things are not going to be easier. She will still have to face her problems and deal with me on a regular basis for the rest of our lives no matter what happens. She can believe her lawyer when they promise she'll get the moon and stars out of this in the end but they only see half of the story. Above all they want our money. It would have been good for her to face me in person and tell me she wanted to divorce and we could have started talking about it with a counselor to figure out how that could even work. Instead she chose to avoid as much responsibility for her actions as possible by doing everything in my absence as if I am not a real person. I had to find out about it from our insurance company and was last to know.

Immediately after I hear the word divorce I looked into her cell usage history and find she has a new military boyfriend that she talks to 20-30 times a day. She felt she owed me no explanation for this and it was none of my business. A mature person would have let me know about this months before and I would have seen it coming but there was no sign until it was seemingly too late. She strayed down a dark path and never turned back.

Her proposed parenting plan was cruel and had no thought put into it. Two hours a week with supervision, no holidays but father's day? She said she’s not trying to keep me from the kids but this is the exact opposite of what she’s saying with the paperwork she filed. She seems very mixed up and still you continues to make rash and sudden choices. Like a completely bogus restraining order against me that contradicts so many facts she has stated herself on record during my Navy retention process. She was so bold as to want to change her identity and even put it in ink on the divorce paperwork as well to a whole new name. That is not the actions of a stable person. She has since changed her mind again on that just as quickly as everything else in her recent life choices. I can't trust that any decisions she is making right now are for the right reasons or that she is of sound mind. I have never seen her so conflicted and confused, grasping at straws and running scared from herself.

Using the legal system so carelessly and going back and forth makes me feel like she is not ready to be making big choices and changes for her and our family. It is very unfair that she can’t consider my feelings on things and what I wish for the boys as well. Very reckless behavior. She can’t anticipate that the day would come where she has to face me and talk to me like an adult. She wants to hide behind the legal system which only leaves much to be unresolved. Ghosting me is not really an option in a marriage of 13 years with children.

Having relationship conversations is too difficult for her at this time and she would rather avoid it and skip to divorce because she thinks that will somehow be easier. I suspect she knows she is making poor choices, possibly out of fear and lust for something new and less painful than the reality of things right now. Our marriage was nowhere close to divorce when I left. She was sad to see me leave and woke with me at 3:30 am to say goodbye, making me coffee and cookies for me to take with.

Our community and accountability seems to be gone due to the continued trend of isolation that she is drawn to. The God fearing loving committed wife I thought I had is gone or trapped inside a terrified shell of herself. She cut me off from her family members and I can't discuss my concerns about her with them either. She only seems to have community with those who are not going to discourage her from these destructive choices.

I understand we have had issues and struggles but we are no worse off than other couples during challenging times. I think that because we loved each other so much it just hurt more when things got hard. I can't accept or believe this is justified or the right choice based on the positive trend we were on before I left. This was the longest break we have ever had from each other and I think she just needed someone to be there more for her, no matter who it was. Time can heal all wounds and I hope that is true for our relationship as co-parents.

She still refuses to tell me about why she wanted a divorce or talk about anything beyond caring for the kids. I have fought the restraining and I can see my boys again but I am still not allowed to my home without her permission.

I have risen from the ashes in just a couple months. I rent a room from a nice couple from our old church and obtained a good paying job while I continue paying the household bills.

This is a really hard time, this difficult spell could have been a tool to better our relationship. I wanted to experience more beautiful memories with her. We had so many more beautiful memories and dreams left to create. This is what marriage looks like to me now as I lower the casket.

good weather
is like
good women-
it doesn't always happen
and when it does
it doesn't
always last.
man is
more stable:
if he's bad
there's more chance
he'll stay that way,
or if he's good
he might hang
on,
but a woman
is changed
by
children
age
diet
conversation
***
the moon
the absence or
presence of sun
or good times.
a woman must be nursed
into subsistence
by love
where a man can become
stronger
by being hated.
I am drinking tonight in Spangler's Bar
and I remember the cows
I once painted in Art class
and they looked good
they looked better than anything
in here. I am drinking in Spangler's Bar
wondering which to love and which
to hate, but the rules are gone:
I love and hate only
myself-
they stand outside me
like an orange dropped from the table
and rolling away; it's what I've got to
decide:
**** myself or
love myself?
which is the treason?
where's the information
coming from?
books...like broken glass:
I wouldn't wipe my *** with 'em
yet, it's getting
darker, see?
(we drink here and speak to
each other and
seem knowing.)
buy the cow with the biggest
****
buy the cow with the biggest
****.
present arms.
the bartender slides me a beer
it runs down the bar
like an Olympic sprinter
and the pair of pliers that is my hand
stops it, lifts it,
golden **** of dull temptation,
I drink and
stand there
the weather bad for cows
but my brush is ready
to stroke up
the green grass straw eye
sadness takes me all over
and I drink the beer straight down
order a shot
fast
to give me the guts and the love to
go
on.
from "poems written before jumping out of an 8 story window" - 1966

The blue water in the pool
Is it really blue?green?grey?
My eyes are deceiving me
The deceiving pool
Is mocking my courage as
I am standing here
Felling at the top of the world..
Brave myself for my first Olympic swim
At the corner of the poolside
Absolutely my beautiful, courageous,
and most of all, honest coach,
Who keeps  reminding  me of  this swim of a lifetime
Who consistently tells of my swimming legs, body, hands
An Olympic swimmer you are!!  
She says that all the time,
as if she is planting the words in my head
Fidgeting, I First test the water with my toes,
1, 2, 3... a silent prayer to Almighty..
Let’s take a shot!  
finally I take the plunge,
Completely submerging while holding my breath,
Eventually, we all fall or dive into the unknown,
Sometimes fully prepared,
sometimes unsure,
Always compelled...
Submerging for few seconds..
I have stopped to think..
Force myself to emerge
catching my breath again...
Heard a whistle and a clap
Bravo! You made it champion!
My coach smiled...
made her proud!
OLYMPIC  2016 Brazil here I come...

For sixteen days a village lives
then it disappears from sight
It's filled with the worlds residents
For two days plus one fortnight
In four years, there's another one
Another village, 'neath the moon
The next one will be in Brazil
An Olympic Brigadoon
It closes down and goes to sleep
After all records are sought
For four years it's gone from our minds
A place that time forgot
Like Brigadoon, this village lives
In  the worlds collective hearts
Until a new one comes again
four years from end to start
Memories and records set
By those who came and went
They were their counties best and brightest
All well deserving, those who're sent
To a village never seen before
And only seen a small amount
The times it was on our tv sets
Is just too few to count
A place of such emotion
A place where legends stayed
A place of such great magic
They gave their best each time they played
But tonight, when the torch is turned off
And the celebrations end
And the residents pack up to leave
An empty village left to tend
In four years there's another one
With those inspired by these games
They'll live in a new village
And the world will learn their names
but, out of sight and out of mind
For four years comes real soon
Another athletes village
Another Olympic Brigadoon..

I'm an olympic housewife.

My mantlepiece of medals
is perfectly folded washing
arranged in mahogany drawers
with calm elegance
like swans on a lake.

I’m an elite athlete of the mundane.

My scrapbook of 1st place ribbons
are surfaces that sparkle
a masterpiece of purity
zen arrangement lust
like Ikebana in an empty room.

I’m an extreme sport star of domesticity.

My list of world class honours
gluten free bake-offs  
blogging my parenting tips
a domestic online celebrity
like an effortless Demeter.

there was a little ostrich he just loved to race
very fast was  he with a very speedy pace
one day he decided to be an athelete
in the olympic games ostrich would compete
he put on his number on  his racing vest
the number 29 was the one he like the best
he stood on the start line till it was time to go
then ostrich  he set off starting very slow
he  just took it easy till  half  way through  the race
then ostrich he got faster and set his faster pace
ostrich won his race feeling  proud and bold
then he took his prize a medal made of gold

I found your Olympic gold medal
while I was cleaning in my childhood bedroom.
I almost vacuumed it up.

I can’t help but wonder how it got on my floor,
How you must have not noticed its disappearance from your empty apartment.

I wonder if during one of those fights we used to have
I slipped it in my pocket, thinking you never deserved it.

The medal sits on my old desk by a trick dog coin bank.
The dog holds the coin in his mouth,
jumps through the hoop and hides the coin in a brown barrel.

This childish desk is a circus.
I can see the levers and
your Olympic gold medal is fading in the sun.

PROLOGUE
               Hyde Park weekend of politics and pop,
Geldof’s gang of divas and mad hatters;
Sergeant Pepper only one heart beating,
resurrected by a once dead Beatle.
The ******, Queen and Irish juggernauts;
The Entertainer and dead bands
re-jigged for the sake of humanity.
   The almighty single named entities
all out for Africa and people power.
Olympics in the bag, a Waterloo
of celebrations in the street that night
Leaping and whooping in sheer delight
Nelson rocking in Trafalgar Square
The promised computer wonderlands
rising from the poisoned dead heart wasteland;
derelict, deserted, still festering.
The Brave Tomorrow in a world of hate.
The flame will be lit, magic rings aloft
and harmony will be our middle name.

On the seventh day of the seventh month,
Festival of the skilful Weaving girl;
the ‘war on terror’ just a tattered trope
drained and exhausted and put out of sight
in a dark corner of a darker shelf.
A power surge the first lie of the day.
Savagely woken from our pleasant dream
al Qa’ida opens up a new franchise
and a new frontier for terror to prowl.

               Howling sirens shatter morning’s progress
Hysterical screech of ambulances
and police cars trying to grip the road.
The oppressive drone of helicopters
gathering like the Furies in the sky;
Blair’s hubris is acknowledged by the gods.
Without warning the deadly game begins.

The Leviathan state machinery,
certain of its strength and authority,
with sheer balletic co-ordination,
steadies itself for a fine performance.
The new citizen army in ‘day glow’
take up their ‘Support Official’ roles,
like air raid wardens in the last big show;
feisty  yet firm, delivering every line
deep voiced and clearly to the whole theatre.
On cue, the Police fan out through Bloomsbury
clearing every emergency exit,
arresting and handcuffing surly streets,
locking down this ancient river city.
Fetching in fluorescent green costuming,
the old Bill nimbly Tangos and Foxtrots
the airways, Oscar, Charlie and Yankee
quickly reply with grid reference Echo;
Whiskey, Sierra, Quebec, November,
beam out from New Scotland Yard,
staccato, nearly lost in static space.
      
              LIVERPOOL STREET STATION
8.51 a.m. Circle Line

Shehezad Tanweer was born in England.
A migrant’s child of hope and better life,
dreaming of his future from his birth.
Only twenty two short years on this earth.
In a madrassah, Lahore, Pakistan,
he spent twelve weeks reading and rote learning
verses chosen from the sacred text.
Chanting the syllables, hour after hour,
swaying back and forth with the word rhythm,
like an underground train rocking the rails,
as it weaves its way beneath the world,
in turning tunnels in the dead of night.

Teve Talevski had a meeting
across the river, he knew he’d be late.
**** trains they do it to you every time.
But something odd happened while he waited
A taut-limbed young woman sashayed past him
in a forget-me-not blue dress of silk.
She rustled on the platform as she turned.
She turned to him and smiled, and he smiled back.
Stale tunnel air pushed along in the rush
of the train arriving in the station.
He found a seat and watched her from afar.
Opened his paper for distraction’s sake
Olympic win exciting like the smile.

Train heading southwest under Whitechapel.
Deafening blast, rushing sound blast, bright flash
of golden light, flying glass and debris
Twisted people thrown to ground, darkness;
the dreadful silent second in blackness.
The stench of human flesh and gunpowder,
burning rubber and fiery acrid smoke.
Screaming bone bare pain, blood-drenched tearing pain.
Pitiful weeping, begging for a god
to come, someone to come, and help them out.

Teve pushes off a dead weighted man.
He stands unsteady trying to balance.
Railway staff with torches, moving spotlights
**** and jolt, catching still life scenery,
lighting the exit in gloomy dimness.
They file down the track to Aldgate Station,
Teve passes the sardine can carriage
torn apart by a fierce hungry giant.
Through the dust, four lifeless bodies take shape
and disappear again in drifting smoke.
It’s only later, when safe above ground,
Teve looks around and starts to wonder
where his blue epiphany girl has gone.

                 KINGS CROSS STATION
8.56 a.m. Piccadilly Line

Many named Lyndsey Germaine, Jamaican,
living with his wife and child in Aylesbury,
laying low, never visited the Mosque.   
                Buckinghamshire bomber known as Jamal,
clean shaven, wearing normal western clothes,
annoyed his neighbours with loud music.
Samantha-wife converted and renamed,
Sherafiyah and took to wearing black.
Devout in that jet black shalmar kameez.
Loving father cradled close his daughter
Caressed her cheek and held her tiny hand
He wondered what the future held for her.

Station of the lost and homeless people,
where you can buy anything at a price.
A place where a face can be lost forever;
where the future’s as real as faded dreams.
Below the mainline trains, deep underground
Piccadilly lines cross the River Thames
Cram-packed, shoulder to shoulder and standing,
the train heading southward for Russell Square,
barely pulls away from Kings Cross Station,
when Arash Kazerouni hears the bang,
‘Almighty bang’ before everything stopped.
Twenty six hearts stopped beating that moment.
But glass flew apart in a shattering wave,
followed by a  huge whoosh of smoky soot.
Panic raced down the line with ice fingers
touching and tagging the living with fear.
Spine chiller blanching faces white with shock.

Gracia Hormigos, a housekeeper,
thought, I am being electrocuted.
Her body was shaking, it seemed her mind
was in free fall, no safety cord to pull,
just disconnected, so she looked around,
saw the man next to her had no right leg,
a shattered shard of bone and gouts of  blood,
Where was the rest of his leg and his foot ?

Level headed ones with serious voices
spoke over the screaming and the sobbing;
Titanic lifeboat voices giving orders;
Iceberg cool voices of reassurance;
We’re stoical British bulldog voices
that organize the mayhem and chaos
into meaty chunks of jobs to be done.
Clear air required - break the windows now;
Lines could be live - so we stay where we are;
Help will be here shortly - try to stay calm.

John, Mark and Emma introduce themselves
They never usually speak underground,
averting your gaze, tube train etiquette.
Disaster has its opportunities;
Try the new mobile, take a photograph;
Ring your Mum and Dad, ****** battery’s flat;
My network’s down; my phone light’s still working
Useful to see the way, step carefully.

   Fiona asks, ‘Am I dreaming all this?’
A shrieking man answers her, “I’m dying!”
Hammered glass finally breaks, fresher air;
too late for the man in the front carriage.
London Transport staff in yellow jackets
start an orderly evacuation
The mobile phones held up to light the way.
Only nineteen minutes in a lifetime.
  
EDGEWARE ROAD STATION
9.17 a.m. Circle Line

               Mohammed Sadique Khan, the oldest one.
Perhaps the leader, at least a mentor.
Yorkshire man born, married with a daughter
Gently spoken man, endlessly patient,
worked in the Hamara, Lodge Lane, Leeds,
Council-funded, multi-faith youth Centre;
and the local Primary school, in Beeston.
No-one could believe this of  Mr Khan;
well educated, caring and very kind
Where did he hide his secret other life  ?

Wise enough to wait for the second train.
Two for the price of one, a real bargain.
Westbound second carriage is blown away,
a commuter blasted from the platform,
hurled under the wheels of the east bound train.
Moon Crater holes, the walls pitted and pocked;
a sparse dark-side landscape with black, black air.
The ripped and shredded metal bursts free
like a surprising party popper;
Steel curlicues corkscrew through wood and glass.
Mass is made atomic in the closed space.
Roasting meat and Auschwitzed cremation stench
saturates the already murky air.              
Our human kindling feeds the greedy fire;
Heads alight like medieval torches;
Fiery liquid skin drops from the faceless;
Punk afro hair is cauterised and singed.  
Heat intensity, like a wayward iron,
scorches clothes, fuses fibres together.
Seven people escape this inferno;
many die in later days, badly burned,
and everyone there will live a scarred life.

               TAVISTOCK ROAD
9.47 a.m. Number 30 Bus  

Hasib Hussain migrant son, English born
barely an adult, loved by his mother;
reported him missing later that night.
Police typed his description in the file
and matched his clothes to fragments from the scene.
A hapless victim or vicious bomber ?
Child of the ‘Ummah’ waging deadly war.
Seventy two black eyed virgins waiting
in jihadist paradise just for you.

Red double-decker bus, number thirty,
going from Hackney Wick to Marble Arch;
stuck in traffic, diversions everywhere.
Driver pulls up next to a tree lined square;
the Parking Inspector, Ade Soji,
tells the driver he’s in Tavistock Road,
British Museum nearby and the Square.
A place of peace and quiet reflection;
the sad history of war is remembered;
symbols to make us never forget death;
Cherry Tree from Hiroshima, Japan;
Holocaust Memorial for Jewish dead;
sturdy statue of  Mahatma Gandhi.
Peaceful resistance that drove the Lion out.
Freedom for India but death for him.

Sudden sonic boom, bus roof tears apart,
seats erupt with volcanic force upward,
hot larva of blood and tissue rains down.
Bloodied road becomes a charnel-house scene;
disembodied limbs among the wreckage,
headless corpses; sinews, muscles and bone.
Buildings spattered and smeared with human paint
Impressionist daubs, blood red like the bus.

Jasmine Gardiner, running late for work;
all trains were cancelled from Euston Station;  
she headed for the square, to catch the bus.
It drove straight past her standing at the stop;
before she could curse aloud - Kaboom !
Instinctively she ran, ran for her life.
Umbrella shield from the shower of gore.

On the lower deck, two Aussies squeezed in;
Catherine Klestov was standing in the aisle,
floored by the bomb, suffered cuts and bruises
She limped to Islington two days later.
Louise Barry was reading the paper,
she was ‘****-scared’ by the explosion;
she crawled out of the remnants of the bus,
broken and burned, she lay flat on the road,
the world of sound had gone, ear drums had burst;
she lay there drowsy, quiet, looking up
and amazingly the sky was still there.

Sam Ly, Vietnamese Australian,
One of the boat people once welcomed here.
A refugee, held in his mother’s arms,
she died of cancer, before he was three.
Hi Ly struggled to raise his son alone;
a tough life, inner city high rise flats.
Education the smart migrant’s revenge,
Monash Uni and an IT degree.
Lucky Sam, perfect job of a lifetime;
in London, with his one love, Mandy Ha,
Life going great until that fateful day;
on the seventh day of the seventh month,
Festival of the skilful Weaving girl.

Three other Aussies on that ****** bus;
no serious physical injuries,
Sam’s luck ran out, in choosing where to sit.
His neck was broken, could not breath alone;
his head smashed and crushed, fractured bones and burns
Wrapped in a cocoon of coma safe
This broken figure lying on white sheets
in an English Intensive Care Unit
did not seem like Hi Ly’s beloved son;
but he sat by Sam’s bed in disbelief,
seven days and seven nights of struggle,
until the final hour, when it was done.

In the pit of our stomach we all knew,
but we kept on deep breathing and hoping
this nauseous reality would pass.
The weary inevitability
of horrific disasters such as these.
Strangely familiar like an old newsreel
Black and white, it happened long ago.
But its happening now right before our eyes
satellite pictures beam and bounce the globe.
Twelve thousand miles we watch the story
Plot unfolds rapidly, chapters emerge
We know the places names of this narrative.
  
It is all subterranean, hidden
from the curious, voyeuristic gaze,
Until the icon bus, we are hopeful
This public spectacle is above ground
We can see the force that mangled the bus,
fury that tore people apart limb by limb
Now we can imagine a bomb below,
far below, people trapped, fiery hell;
fighting to breathe each breath in tunnelled tombs.

Herded from the blast they are strangely calm,
obedient, shuffling this way and that.
Blood-streaked, sooty and dishevelled they come.
Out from the choking darkness far below
Dazzled by the brightness of the morning
of a day they feared might be their last.
They have breathed deeply of Kurtz’s horror.
Sights and sounds unimaginable before
will haunt their waking hours for many years;
a lifetime of nightmares in the making.
They trudge like weary soldiers from the Somme
already see the world with older eyes.

On the surface, they find a world where life
simply goes on as before, unmindful.
Cyclist couriers still defy road laws,
sprint racing again in Le Tour de France;
beer-gutted, real men are loading lorries;
lunch time sandwiches are made as usual,
sold and eaten at desks and in the street.
Roadside cafes sell lots of hot sweet tea.
The Umbrella stand soon does brisk business.
Sign writers' hands, still steady, paint the sign.
The summer blooms are watered in the park.
A ***** stretches on the bench and wakes up,
he folds and stows his newspaper blankets;
mouth dry,  he sips water at the fountain.
A lady scoops up her black poodle’s ****.
A young couple argues over nothing.
Betting shops are full of people losing
money and dreaming of a trifecta.
Martin’s still smoking despite the patches.
There’s a rush on Brandy in nearby pubs
Retired gardener dead heads his flowers
and picks a lettuce for the evening meal

Fifty six minutes from start to finish.
Perfectly orchestrated performance.
Rush hour co-ordination excellent.
Maximum devastation was ensured.
Cruel, merciless killing so coldly done.
Fine detail in the maiming and damage.

A REVIEW

Well activated practical response.
Rehearsals really paid off on the day.
Brilliant touch with bus transport for victims;
Space blankets well deployed for shock effect;
Dramatic improv by Paramedics;
Nurses, medicos and casualty staff
showed great technical E.R. Skills - Bravo !
Plenty of pizzazz and dash as always
from the nifty, London Ambo drivers;
Old fashioned know-how from the Fire fighters
in hosing down the fireworks underground.
Dangerous rescues were undertaken,
accomplished with buckets of common sense.
And what can one say about those Bobbies,
jolly good show, the lips unquivering
and universally stiff, no mean feat
in this Premiere season tear-jerker.
Nail-bitingly brittle, but a smash-hit
Poignant misery and stoic suffering,
fortitude, forbearance and lots of grit
Altogether was quite tickety boo.



NOTES ON THE POEM

Liverpool Street Station

A Circle Line train from Moorgate with six carriages and a capacity of 1272 passengers [ 192 seated; 1080 standing]. 7 dead on the first day.

Southbound, destination Aldgate. Explosion occurs midway between Liverpool Street and Aldgate.

Shehezad Tanweer was reported to have ‘never been political’ by a friend who played cricket with him 10 days before the bombing

Teve Talevski is a real person and I have elaborated a little on reports in the press. He runs a coffee shop in North London.

At the time of writing the fate of the blue dress lady is not known

Kings Cross Station

A Piccadilly Line train with six carriages and a capacity of 1238 passengers [272 seated; 966 standing]. 21 dead on first day.

Southbound, destination Russell Square. Explosion occurs mi

there was a little cheetah he had a dream one day
to run in the olympics in a land so far away
he boarded on a plane and flew across the sea
to a place in russia where the games would be
he went to the track a runner he would be
running in a marathon a sporty cat was he
then the time had come for the cheetahs race
he stood in a line and cheetah took his place
now the race was on cheetah took it slow
took it nice and easy with a steady flow
they ran for  quite  a while the race was very long
cheetah had a finish that was so very strong
as the finish neared he come to the front
then stepped us his speed like being on a hunt
he went like a train  like the speed of light
and flew across the finish line with no one else in sight
his  mission it was over and his race one won
he enjoyed his holiday that gave him so much fun

There's no Pokémon
here in Rio, much like our
clean drinking water.

Given the apparent magical surrealism that the months of April is the month of fate for and death of writers, artists, dramatis, philosophers and poets, a phenomenon which readily gets support from the cases of untimely and early April deaths of; Max Weber, Miguel de Cervantes, William Shakespeare, Francis Imbuga, and Chinua Achebe  then  Wisdom of the moment behooves me to adjure away the fateful month by  allowing  me to mourn Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez by expressing my feelings of grieve through the following dirge of elegy;
You lived alone in the solitude
Of pure hundred years in Colombia
Roaming in Amacondo with a Spanish tongue
Carrying the bones of your grandmother in a sisal sag
On your poverty written Colombian back,
Gadabouting to make love in times of cholera,
On none other than your bitter-sweet memories
Of your melancholic ***** the daughter of Castro,
Your cowardice made you to fear your momentous life
In this glorious and poetic time of April 2014,
Only to succumb to untimely black death
That similarly dimunitized your cultural ancestor;
Miguel de Cervantes, a quixotic Spaniard,
You were to write to the colonel for your life,
Before eating the cockerel you had ear-marked
For Olympic cockfight, the hope of the oppressed,
Come back from death, you dear Marquez
To tell me more stories fanaticism to surrealism,
From Tarzanic Africa the fabulous land
An avatar of evil gods that are impish propre
Only Vitian Naipaul and Salman Rushdie are not enough,
For both of them are so naïve to tell the African stories,
I will miss you a lot the rest of my life, my dear Garbo,
But I will ever carry your living soul, my dear Garcia,
Soul of your literature and poetry in a Maasai kioondo
On my broad African shoulders during my journey of art,
When coming to America to look for your culture
That gave you versatile tongue and quill of a pen,
Both I will take as your memento and crystallize them
Into my future thespic umbrella of orature and literature.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, an eminent Latin American and most widely acclaimed authors, died untimely at his home in Mexico City on Thursday, 17th April 2014. The 1982 literature Nobel laureate, whose reputation drew comparisons to Mark Twain of adventures of Huckleberry Finny and Charles Dickens of hard Times, was 87 of age. Already a luminous legend in his well used lifetime, Latin American writer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez was perceived as not only one of the most consequential writers of the 20th and 21ist centuries, but also the sterling performing Spanish-language author since the world’s experience of Miguel de Cervantes, the Spanish Jail bird and Author of Don Quixote who lived in the 17th century.
Like very many other writers from the politically and economically poor parts of the world, in the likes of J M Coatze, Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer, Doris May Lessing, Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda, V S Naipaul, and Rabidranathe Tagore, Marguez won the literature Nobel prize in addition to the previous countless awards for his magically fabulous novels, gripping short stories, farcical screenplays, incisive journalistic contributions and spellbinding essays. But due to postmodern global thespic civilization the Nobel Prize is recognized as most important of his prizes in the sense that, he received in 1982, as the first Colombian author to achieve such literary eminence. The eminence of his work in literature communicated in Spanish are towered by none other than the Bible, especially  in its Homeric style which Moses used when writing the book of Genesis and the fictitious drama of Job.
Just like Ngugi, Achebe, Soyinka, and Ousmane Marquez is not the first born. He is the youngest of siblings. He was born on March 6, 1927 in the Colombian village of Aracataca, on the Caribbean coast. His literary bravado was displayed in his book, Love in the Times of Cholera.  In which he narrated how his parents met and got married. Marguez did not grow up with his father and mother, but instead he grew up with his grandparents. He often felt lonely as a child. Environment of aunts and grandmother did not fill the psychological void of father and mother. This social phenomenon of inadequate parenthood is also seen catapulting Richard Wright, Charlese Dickens, and Barrack Obama to literary excellency.Obama recounted the same experience in his Dreams from my father.

Poverty determines convenience or hardship of marriage. This is mirrored by Garcia Marquez in his marriage to Mercedes Barcha.  An early childhood play-mate and neighbour in 1958. In appreciation of his marriage, Marquez later wrote in his memoirs that it is women who maintain the world, whereas we men tend to plunge it into disarray with all our historic brutality. This was a connotation of his grandmother in particular who played an important role during the times of childhood. The grand mother introduced him to the beauty of orature by telling him fabulous stories about ghosts and dead relatives haunting the cellar and attic, a social experience which exactly produced Chinua Achebe, Okot P’Bitek, Mazizi Kunene, Margaret Ogola and very many other writers of the third world.
Little Gabo as his affectionate pseudonym for literature goes, was a voracious bookworm, who like his ideological master Karl Marx read King Lear of Shakespeare at the age of sixteen. He fondly devoured the works of Spanish authors, obviously Miguel de Cervantes, as well as other European heavyweights like; Edward Hemingway, Faulkner and Frantz Kafka.
Good writers usually drop out of school and at most writers who win the Nobel Prize. This formative virtue of writers is evinced in Alice Munro, Doris Lessing, Nadine Gordimer, John Steinbeck, William Shakespeare, Sembene Ousmane, Octavio Paz as well as Gabriel Garcia Marquez. After dropping out of law school, Garcia Marquez decided instead to embark on a call of his passion as a journalist. The career he perfectly did by regularly criticizing Colombian as well as ideological failures of the then foreign politics. In a nutshell he was a literary crusader against poverty. This is of course the obvious hall marker of leftist political orientation.
Garcia Marquez’s sensational breakthrough occurred in 1967 with the break-away publication of his oeuvre; One Hundred Years of Solitude which the New York Times Book Review meritoriously elevated as ‘the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race. The position similarly taken by Salman Rushdie. Marquez often shared out that this novel carried him above emotional tantrums on its publication. He was keen on this as his manner of speech was always devoid of la di da.so humble and suave that his genius can only be appreciated not from the booming media outlets about his death, but by reading all of his works and especially his Literature Noble price acceptance speech delivered in 1982.

.do you really need a disclaimer, for this sort of work? no, not really... it's not exactly being allowed the equivalency of dropping an in excess of 2000mg of paracetamol.

the one aspect of legacy media, that still has some viability, akin to rekindling the famous extract from the movie: all the presidents men... is concerns for metal health issues of youngsters, who didn't have, the, "privilege" of being exposed to internet ergonomics, other than within the confines of gaming, they came far too late for, what replaced mp3 sharing.... ideas are not exactly sound-bites of copyright infringement...

**** me... do i really have to slap then punch
myself in the face, to remotely stay
awake while drinking ***** like pepsi
sharpshooters?
     i guess so...

   i too, "suffered" from roman bulimia,
the classical kind...
   don't ask me how i managed to make
the esophagus contender of the heart,
muscle...
                 at first it was cheap choc down
the throat, missing on brushing my
teeth for 48 hours...
   then... ******* down the throat,
like the ****-style gimmick of the Watergate
informant...
       came back up, bundled in quasi turds
packages...
               classical Roman bulimia -
eat, regurgitate, eat some more,
hell, now you have a Pompeii style
banquet of the coming of age...
laxatives?
that's no bulimia...
  bulimia is an extension of an ancient
Roman practice, akin to throwing yourself
****-naked into a nettle shrub area...
to get the "itches"...
     that method, involved in energizing
the neuron extension of the skin...
              it's a "placebo" itch...
   nettles, ancient Romans,
and bulimia like the rite of a loss of
virginity of kings...
      festering at its core... of the French court...
with a *****'s teaching apparatus,
leveraging the use of, a single "tool"...
           and even though the ancient Romans
never reached my people...
i get to abuse their phonetic encoding stratum...
bulimia... sure... i, "suffered" from it...
not really, no... i ******* enjoyed
the regurgitation process...
   anti-Grecian pederasty gimmick...
(a) taking a ****
   (b) oral regurgitation
   imitating an ancient Roman banquet
(c) / (d) ensuring the two entry points
are filled by an external source -
wishing for vanilla custard *******...
none to be...
    oops...
               so no one taught these girls
about ancient Roman bulimic
practices?
   you work on the esophagus...
                       by the time i finished
the transition period...
  i automated the esophagus reaction...
like training gymnastics for a six-pack...
no longer ******* down the throat...
you say charge? i think of
a rhino juggernaut...
           so no one bothered these girls
introducing ancient methodologies
to their predicament?
    no training of the esophagus,
no two (index + middle) fingers down
their throat to ease their larynx from
a gagging order?
    none of it?
   they'll grow out of it!
i did...
       drink a liter of ***** per day
and i'm feeling: shimmy!
          upon each nocturnal investment
that i translate into writing...
      anorexia?
    give them excess coffee...
              or strong cider...
      the most pristine aperitif...
    you can't cure anorexia with either
drips or syringes...
   you need aperitifs...
                     but please don't give them
white vinegar...
           you need a balance of alcohol
overcoming the sugars...
     strong beer is alcohol overcoming
starches... won't work...
     coffee and sugar helps...
  both simulate the pristine form of
the marijuana *****...
             it's not poison...
so why should i care?
   oh but i do care... reading this article...
troubled teenagers dodge Instagtram
   curbs on photos glorifying self-harm...
ever tried burning out a cigarette tip
on your knuckle?
   ever wondered about
    warming up a hand of scissors and
giving yourself an indie tattoo?
   while at the same time...
relying on the mouse principle?
i.e. remaining pipsqueak clean from
making any noise?!
              cutting is so crass...
so unimaginative...
  you will not achieve the adrenaline *****
status of a stab-victim...
   there is no element of surprise...
but...
     if you really want to ingest pain?
hmm... hmm?
            heat up a scissor arm...
   and put it against your skin...
            and then... EAT... the pain...
with what you can surmount in and with,
silence...
                   cutting is too... dramatic...
at least burning yourself you have
not achieved the stature of a shedding blood...
cleaner, more effective,
think of orange recycling bags
collected at the start of the week...

              **** me though...
you seen the comradely behavior
of competing athletes, at the european
championships in Berlin,
   with the pole vaulters?
   Armand Duplantis -
congratulated for having crossed
the 6m benchmark of respectability...
now... that's sport!
football, soccer, basketball,
call it what you like...
   that's not sport, that's business,
that's advertisement...
     that's concussion cover-ups...

Epke Zonderland? also a doctor...
communist Poland believed in
sport, sport on the side,
   sport was never to reach status
of a mono-career investment...
            most of the local football
players from my hometown,
also worked less hours in
the metallurgy plant...
                  that's sport...
   a healthy balance...
which, mainstream sport is lacking...
oh look...
   the women doing the hammer throw,
or the discus...
   not exactly Vogue / Chanel catwalk
material...
    mandible beauties...

    to be honest? the doping affair
in the Olympic sports?
   but a minor setback of credibility...
     i rather watch that...
   than those pitiable 22 ballerinas in soccer.

"A leisurely breakfast" their mother would admonish, "aids digestion and builds strong bones..." so what with the imposed inactivity every morning, boredom broken only by Sockeye the family Spaniel, whose want of table manners coincided very conveniently with mealtimes... as he paced restlessly under the table, slobbering indiscriminately in his daily scramble to devour every dangling morsel before supply and demand shut up shop for the night and went home, far tastier... he gobbled down the latest offering of egg white, than the remnants of his own dietary allowance, they just had to get the timing right that was all, or risk loosing a finger, or gaining one depending upon who was doing the dangling, or who was doing the gobbling... he gave an indignant sneeze, not so much a hint but more of a... 'what's with the pepper malarky...'  So that it was only with a good deal of snappy hand coordination, lengthy digestion and sturdy bone building that Rocky was finally able to extricate himself from the table and make the most of what little time remained until lunchtime, meagre time indeed for the Rocky's of this world to hang around with their dogs, leaving their little sisters to help mums do, whatever it was that girls usually did when they should have scooted out of the kitchen faster, when it would have been all so much simpler just to grab a handful of biscuits instead...  Meanwhile, laying in wait in the room above, flat out upon the bedroom counterpane, having recently had their insides stuffed to bursting with a full English breakfast's worth of beach and holiday apparal... and that was just the luggage.    

     The contents of which, up until a week last washday had been snoozing fitfully behind 'Do Not Disturb' signs, cautiously peeping out from the gloomier, more remote recesses of the bedroom dresser, or carefully concealed in cupboards and closets... and being in every other respect by no means readily accessible to public scrutiny of any kind... had been left to their own devices some twelve months earlier with a clear understanding to skip bath nights from that moment on and henceforth immerse themselves in the heady, camphorated pungency of mothball, vowing once and for all never to darken portmanteau lids again... but now, after many hours of arduous laundering and de-fumigation... were now being squeezed and unceremoniously shoe-horned into what had recently become nothing short of an overcrowded sanctuary for the dispossessed.  
              
     Meanwhile, all the luggage asked from life other than be detained under section four of the Mental Health Act, 1983 and be found cosy padded accommodation elsewhere... was to have their interiors vacated, their tranquility reinstated... and with a questionable wink from a dodgy Customs official, have their travel permits invalidated... irrevocably, for despite throwing a double six for a spot of well earned convalescence back on top of the wardrobe some twelve months ago, basking in the shade of a warm Summer Sun, striking up the occasional conversation with the floral decor, third bloom from the left currently answering to the name of Petunia, the still over extended luggage, seemingly with little hope of R & R this side of the letter Q, faced the perennial disquiet of vacational therapy, of being knelt on, sat and bounced upon and be specifically manhandled in ways that matching sets of co-ordinated luggage should not...
                                        
     Tina could be heard quite distinctly in the next street concerning her husbands lack of competence, whilst Red it appeared had become just as outspoken as his wife in that particular direction... as the local self appointed busybody, who lived well within earshot of the address in question would bear witness to as she put feverish pen to paper, writing to what had become a regular... and some would say hot bed of intrigue in the local tabloid concerning how vociferous the once tranquil neighbourhood had become of recent and how certain undesirable elements within the community were to be heard carrying on alarmingly at all hours, day and night... and as she diligently weighed her civic duty against simple household economics as to whether to send this latest block busting eye opener by first or second class post, their parents could now be heard broadcasting, if anything to a wider listening audience than the previous newsflash, some of the more sensational episodes of the previous twenty-four hours as to who was pulling whose suitcase zipper now... although in which direction it should be pulled, they both agreed, wasn't for public disclosure at that time... vowing to draw blood well before the day was out, as three lacerated fingers would later testify and that it was only because of the children that they were going at all... but God willing, they would be setting off very shortly with rosy smiles on their faces for the sole benefit of the neighbours, even if it killed them. 

     Spurred to fever pitch  by this latest 'stop-the-press' newsflash, the same public spirited busybody now threw herself wholeheartedly into further award winning journalism and for the second time that morning took to pen and paper, only now directed to the gossip column in the local Parish Gazette, followed by grievous lamentations of impending bloodshed to the incumbent Chief Constable as to how they'd all be murdered in their beds ere long before nightfall.

     By devouring his water bowl, thereby dispensing with the need for it to be washed and by its abrupt and mysterious absence, disposing of all further incriminating evidence as to where the abundant supply of liquid, now surging copiously across the kitchen floor had sprung from... the flash-flood was hastily making its own getaway beneath the kitchen units, leaving Sockeye to his own devices to carry the can on his own, ankle deep in what up until earlier that morning had been sloshing around quite contentedly in Eccup reservoir.

      Having inadvertently released the handbrake in a boyish gesture of bravado, thereby placing himself in sole charge of a runaway vehicle, Sockeye it appeared was not the only member of the Salmon family to have dropped himself right in it that day as Rocky, having unwittingly placed the following ten years pocket money well out of reach and back into the pockets of his parents dwindling resources, had to a far greater extent nominated himself for the same Earth moving experience as the one his mum would shortly be giving Sockeye...

      Having just been granted licence to do whatsoever it pleased, the vehicle began its leisurely rearwards perambulation down the long garden driveway and by way of small thanks for its new found independence took Rocky along for the ride where due to a certain lack of stature on Rocky's part, at no point had he ever been in the slightest position to influence the Holiday threatening train of events which now engulfed him, never thinking to reapply the handbrake... that would be too easy, he perched on the edge of the seat clutching the steering wheel and stretched out his sturdy little legs in an heroic, but futile attempt to reach the pedals as the family car, which up until any second now had been his fathers pride and joy, pitched backwards at what seemed to Rocky, breakneck speed and directly into a very severe and unforgiving brick wall.

     Almost missing this latest round of entertainment above that of her parents most recent exchange, River accompanied by Sockeye scampered outdoors and slap into what could only be described as the most fun she'd had all year as an unsuspecting "what was that noise" muscled its way through the open bedroom window and fell flat on its face in the garden below and which, if that morning to date was anything to go by, then the neighbourhood would soon be tuning in to the latest Salmon family's 'hot-off-the-press' breaking news bulletin.

     Opening her mouth River hesitated as she fine-tuned the speech centres of her young and delicate synapse into full vocal alignment, then adjusting shutter speed from f8 to automatic she closed her mouth... then opened it once again and informed her brother that if the tip of dads size 9 was an Olympic gold, then Rocky would be sure to take first in the 110 metre hurdling event with 'team GB...' and could she have his autograph... with those words of solid encouragement rattling around his ears like the last biscuit in an otherwise empty tin box, River went skipping back into the house to announce the latest newsflash of her parents next financial happening... which she felt certain would prompt further rounds of thought provoking front page journalism.

     A steady two hours drive away, over on the east coast, the inhabitants of a sleepy fishing community were gainfully employed, pretty much as any other, going about their daily business, one such denizen... a baby crustacean, currently marooned by the tide had taken up temporary accommodation in a beachfront rock-pool property of certain distinction, was as yet unaware of a completely different and obscure set of circumstances that would shortly be rearing his slobbering jowls and bring all four paws, the size of dinner plates, crashing down upon the unsuspecting seashore fauna... was determined while she waited to catch the next high tide home, that until such time that the right wave rolled along, would potter about in the little rock-pool, perhaps indulge herself in a leisurely bathe... and catch up on a spot of therapeutic knitting.

     So, placing the days events since breakfast into perspective...  [i]  the vehicle indemnity provider, henceforth to be named 'the party of the first part', who currently weren't cognisant of an impending claim to date, would shortly be laying eggs attempting to squirm out of all liability, due to  [ii]  the automobile, driven by a minor, fortunately for Salmon senior on private land and henceforth, the aforementioned to be called 'the third party, to the party of the second part...' which urgently needed rigorous cosmetic attention to the rear tail light cluster and surrounding bodywork so as to maintain a favourable resale mark-up price.  [iii]  Having been dragged kicking and screaming from the top of the wardrobe, the luggage had rapidly developed cold feet and cried sudden illness in the family, but were being taken to the Wake anyway.  [iv]  Wrapped around the hot water cylinder since the previous Summer, the various sundry items of holiday apparel stood united, resolute as a Union Picket line not be seen dead looking as though they'd never so much as seen the bottom of a flat-iron.  [v]  Both Red and his wife, Tina, despite wearing the same anaemic smile as the one show to the neighbours as they departed, travelling counter clockwise along the crescent so as not to unduly advertise their recent misadventure with the garage wall, were only going for the sake of the children, whilst  [vi]  River and her errant brother didn't want to go anyway dismayed at leaving the television set behind, were already missing their favourite programs, which only really left  [vii]  'mans-best-friend' who, when he wasn't actually hanging over the front seat giving dad big sloppy licks as though... 'are we nearly there yet' or perhaps... 'I need to stop and spend a penny... or you'll all know about it if you don't,' was more than content to be taking up the majority of the rear seating arrangements and with a delinquent wag of his tail, was deliriously happy to be wherever his family were.**

                                                        ­                             ...   ...   ...

a work in progress.                                                        ­                                                                 ­  1862

The ... " GREAT DEBATE " ...
Would Seem To Surround This Thing Called Race ... ?
  
It Makes Some FROWN And Open Their Mouths ...  
About The Ways This Debate Is ... Swept AWAY ..............  
    
By ... " Heads of State " ...  
And Those Who Claim That .......................................  
    
"Racism displays are minimal today !  
So blacks who have a chip, should stop running their lips !"
    
Well Like The Young Orators ...  
Shown In ... " The Great Debators " ...  
    
My View Is Simply This ...  
    
Would They Rather Blacks Shoot ... Clips ... !?!  
Than Use Their Minds To .... " THINK " ...  ???  
    
A Question When Expressed ....  
That SHOULDN'T Be Answered ... YES ... !!!!!  
    
It's CLEAR The Great Debate Will ALWAYS Be This Way ...  
Because A Black Whose Brain ...
Is Used To EDUCATE And ELEVATE Our Strays ...  
  
Is One Who Will Be Labelled As A Person Telling Fables ...  
Whose Thought Waves Are ... UNSTABLE ... !!!!!
    
" A TERRORIST !!! "  
" A COMMUNIST !!! "  
AN UPSTART WHO ...  
SHOULD BE REMOVED !!!
    
... "HIS - Story" ...  
    
KEEPS Giving PROOF ...  
That Blacks Who Choose To RAISE THE ROOF ...  
When They REFUSE To ... " **** and Shoot " ...  
  
But Choose To Use Their Brain Tissue ...  
To ... Air Their Views On Race Issues ...  
Are DEMONISED By Those Who Unite Behind Racist Tribes ... !!!  
    
It's NOT A GAME To Face Race hate ... !!!
    
And Now Is NOT The Great Debate ... ?!?    
The Great Debate Has CLEARLY CHANGED ... !!!  
    
Osama ... Obama ...  
All Kinds of Street Drama ...  
With The Credit Crunch At Number One ... !!!!!!!!!!!!!  
    
Terrorist Crimes At Number Two ...  
And Number Three ... No Energy ... !!!  
    
No Oil ... No Gas .... !!!  
No Cash .... No Bank .... !!!  
    
No Bonuses The Onus is ......  
    
DIVERSIONS Folks And That's NO JOKE ... !!!  
    
Until I Hear This Very Quote ....  
    
"The President has sold his home !" ...
    
I Won't Adhere To Credit Fears ... !!!  
    
The Olympic Fund Has Seen NO CRUNCH ... !?!  
    
Even Though ... Cashflow Is Low ?!?!?  
DOESN'T Quite Add Up Like Government Sums ... !!!  
    
Their Great Debates Don't Seem To Relate ...  
About How They've ... Got EMPTY Plates ... !?!  
    
When I See THEM Starve Instead of Laugh ...  
About Policies That PROVE They're THIEVES ... !!!  
I'll Agree That WE ... Have Got PROBLEMS ... !!!  
    
The Type That Mean No Bonuses ...  
For ... BOARD CHAIRMEN ... !!!!!!  
    
No Whitehouse For The President ... !!!  
No Number 10 For The ... " PM ".... !!!!!  
    
And NO More Wars Where Cash Is Spent ...  
As If There's More For .... KILLING Men ... !!!!!  
    
That's A Great Debate ... I'd  Undertake ... !!!!!    
  
Non Violent Acts Against Government Plans ....  
Like Corporate Expedience ... Against Civil Disobedience ...  
    
Debates Like These Are RARELY Seen ...  
EXCEPT These Days On Movie Screens ...  
    
But Even Then Critics Defend ....  
The Lack of Facts These Movies Have ...  
    
... " So, a movie lied ! " ...  
    
How Many Times Has Hollywood ....  
Made Things Look .... " Good " ....  
Because The Bad Would DISPEL Facts...  
SOCIETIES ... Stick To Like GLUE ... !!!  
To KEEP The FOOLS ... IGNORANT To TRUTH ... !!!!!  
    
When Governments ...  
Become ... UNSTUCK ...  
Who'll Debate Then .... !?!  
    
The ... IGNORANT ... !?!
Who've Been FED LIES Most of Their Lives ... !!!!?!!!!  
    
Now That Will Be A ... WORRYING Time ... !!!!!    
    
The Average Joe Who Is GUNG ** ...  
RUNNING The Show When People BLOW ... !!!!!  
    
It's Happening NOW Some Youth Are WILD ... !!!  
    
Running Around ...  
Toting The Style of ... " Gangsta Clowns " ... !!!  
    
Guns And **'s In Videos ... !!!  
How REAL Are THEY Who Get .... " Airplay " .... !???!  
    
Another Debate That May Bring SHAME ... ?  
To Those With FAME ....
Because Their Fame Has Been Man-Made ... !!!  
    
Like HIS-Story Now Seems To Be ... ?  
The Racist Theme of This Here Piece ...
Is NOT All That It Seems To Be ... !!!  
    
Whether It Be RACE Or The Exchange Rate ...    
Or The Time It Takes For Equality To REIGN ... ?????  
    
It Is CLEAR Those Who ORATE And Try To Educate ...  
Should ALWAYS Have A Say ...  
  
Within ...  
    
...... " The Great Debate " ......

Races run
Medals won
Now before you go back across the sea
May I ask if you'll take some time
And come with me...

Let me say what's on my mind,
I find it hard to be too subtle
The sight of all that muscle
Turns my head I find...

I'm really thinking legacy
Specifically from  you  and me
I'm so glad we have connected
Could we perhaps play catch-up on the bits neglected...

We could take it nice and slow
Pop some corks, lights down low
Then dive into the midnight pool
Stir some genes around

Hell really, what's a girl to do
When her ideal partner's found?

I have this ticking bio clock
So will you fire me off the starting block?
This is what we could do-
Make olympic champion 2032

Remember, The Olympics
Not for Politics, but sport
Leaders of so many countries
Choose to use this to distort
The reason all are gathered
To present their efforts best
Not just for Queen or Country
But to continue with their quest
To achieve a brand new standard
A true Olympian at heart
It's time for the worlds people
To come together, do their part
We all cheer for our countries
But we should put them on the shelves
For the next two weeks in London
Cheer on the athletes, themselves
Today I am Canadian
Tomorrow maybe, Dutch
American and English
And French...well not so much
Albanian, Croatian
Serbian as well
I will cheer all the worlds athletes
And I will be the first one who will yell
When a record does get broken
Or a personal best is set
If a time gets smashed in swimming
Or a ball goes in the net
My country is my favourite
But, whichever flag's unfurled
For the next two weeks in London
I am a citizen of the world
I will sit here on my sofa
Acting like I'm on the bench
and I'll cheer on all the athletes
But...I won't cheer for the French!!

finding gravity on a bicycle...

surely... given that most people
don't write a ******* hemmingway...
and there's no william buckley jr.
doing the interview...
and there's no norman mailer...

and that: no one really bothers
with kierkegaard and that:
kant "famously" didn't marry starry crap...
why didn't i have kids
and start a family?
uh... dunno... mother's best lie...
or the best lie a neighbour brings
with her... whenever you're
being a 2nd witness without
the 1st witness being there...

and she says an "also" with regards
to her son having the same luck
with women...
when the comparison comes:
a koala bear versus a gorilla...
bonsai tiger!
like a koala is a ******* bear
to begin with...
cuddly soft-pouch toy-ah-thing!

but there's that great feat!
finding gravity on a bicycle...
my mother helped me with that...
and that famous fail of
a rotondo... well... more or less
a cricket ground egg shaped, oval...
or a rugby ball...
the shoulder on the salto bike
hard... rammed into a car....

as a child you were supposedly well
loved...
and this is modern poo'etry i hear about?
here's to: john sounding like johny...
will sounding like *****...
richard sounding like: **** and not richy...
it's cute... matthew... matti: finnish...
leonard is: leo oh leo...
why art we all not named: Li Lo Po!

of course everyone managed to spot
the tetragrammaton vowel catchers that's
hey'zeus! no... not the bloke strapped
to the mannequin of tailoring...
oh no... not the crucifix pendulum
"for us all"... by blood... by cross...
who is to exfoliate on the crucifix...
better than some well scouted for materials
on a mannequin canvas for tailoring
a suit?
the guilt?! oh the guilt!
well... thank god this metaphysician would
never address the material realm of
enjoying a... dabble with... wool...
when donning a suit...
or leather shoes... or any presence of suede...
beside the crucifix mannequin: replica
and pittance!

- but finding gravity on a bicycle is one thing...
finding gravity when swimming is another...
it's called gravity...
but some heretical circles call it:
balance...
after all... it is both gravity...
and balance... given that while riding
a bike... or swimming...
you're pretty much sure, assured:
to not be falling...

you can find gravity with newtonian hindsight...
of sure...
that's there... it involves the magicians orbs...
copernican mathematics and...
target practice when it comes to
propaganda spew...
and Steward... the lesser... Stew...
cousin of the house of Stuart...
not Steward... Stuart...
which is (again)...
a McKiteit and MacCoddlewit...
some Glaswegian *****-donor clinic
"miss-up" mix-it: tend to...
lounging busy... which is of course...
besides the "look"...

5 bazookas cleared for a salvo!
hip hip! burger-pound!
hip hip! boom shizzle shoom!
hip hip! hooray!
oh now we'z getz uz best
partay birth doy wishy-washy
"protagonists"!

but given the current Persian affair...
i couldn't help to notice...
love actually... the narrative...
the u.s.a. and england...
the Z-spezial re-la-tion-ship...

so... who's spastic... and who's fantastic?!
spaz: B-bristolian-esque joking...
never aside...
who's the spaz and who's the frizzy-fuss?!

spe-zial mother russia talks down
to dog Kiev: yes, it's in (the) Ukraine...
spezial iz not what iz?

h'america... kept a yorkshire terrier...
media leetches of england
firmly in its grasp...
cuz onez we woz: once -
the militia contra the crown...
of north virginia...

coz b'rah: a 79-year-old man
who lit himself on fire protesting
against russia's language policies
in the capital of the volga region
of udmurtia has died;
name? alberto raisin...
which sounds terrible in its
non-native spanish...

but there's something worth of gravity
without debating
the heliocentric model...
finding one's balance on a bicycle...
a posteriori events...
but... the same balance can be
translated into a swimming session...

my god my father tried to teach me...
if i was supposed to learn
to swim in the sea...
with the fear: of not seeing the depth?
isn't that like a thesaurus
congestion of: acrophobia?
isn't there a word in the borrowed
lexicon of the ancient greeks...
concerning... fearing to swim in a body
of water... where you can't see the bottom?
i could learn to swim in a swimming
pool... thankfuly all because and due to...
moi...

i also found gravity in water...
i could... lie in water and become...
the antithesis of: the body consists
of 90% of water...
yes sherlock watson & sons... ltd...
but in water i'm mostly fat...
if i find the right balance...
i float...
which is why swimming is a bit
like riding a bicycle...
you find: the center...
or gravity...

again... in this special "relationship"
of bruv-love...
between h'america and whittle brit-pop interlude...
oasis on the continent...
my my... blur, even...
breakfast at tiffany's back in the dough-dough-us...
who is the ******* SPASTIC?
in this "SPEZIAL" relationship?
i guess the english must be the SPEZIALS...

a bit like watching:
go-go-gonzales trip up on a spelling mistake...
which is all i care for...
like a comedia...
a deviation from the informal, later,
subject of language implementation...
and all this peacocking prior...

where else does gravity allow itself...
a presence of the multi-vector?
up and down... left and right...
it's not as easily explained as:
on a ledge... with an apple...
drop it... newton with a header!
a 1-all equalizer in stoppage time
an F.A. cup re-match!

gravity on a bicycle...
it's hardly a drop affair...
gravity in water...
it's hardly merely swimming...
there's that aspect of finding... buoyancy...
there's not need for you to swim...
to exhert so much effort...
that you might as well drown 10 meters
in after swimming the 'undred...

no buoyancy: no chinese fortune cookies...
i still don't know which is more grand...
beside the acrobatics of... olympic level
acrobatics...

it's not bound to youth via lifting weights...
or supreme mao tse tung's winter olympics
of: hunger strikes in Vinter...
the gravity bound to a bicycle...
or the gravity bound to swimming...
after all... the latter is a bit "funny"...

"levitation" and buoyancy...
the dracula soundtrack:
only because of gary oldman and the composer
wojciech kilar... and the given, current...
b.b.c. spin-off and how...
yes... it's that terrible...
i don't even know where those five-stars
came from!
the archetype of feminine romance novels?
the syphilitic lover? the "vampire"?

yes, no? two guesses as good as: nein - keiner...
and, quiet honestly...
nothing could make this exercise in:
not engaging in any of all the available
comments sections on any website...
any worse... than it already is...

it comes as no surprise that: i write this poo'ems
not because i don't write poetry...
but because i will neither write
a poem by standards reserved for
pedagogy or demagogy...
or write identifiable puzzle-bog-trots of...
language reserved for politicization:
and not for... counter-marxist...
"psychiatric" post-...
hardly modern or... "today's journalism"...
eh... pushing it toward a Beckett-clause...
concerning language that is not expected...
oh but i certainly do know
a difference between formal language
and... this... the informal language...
the cognitive extension that does not
require a "free speech" protection bias...

none of this was spoken...
it was seen...
weaved into "thinking"...
that's the difference... isn't it?
from my end of the tenniscourt "promenade"
i've heard nothing but clickick...
off this dead-end replica piano
of a qwer
asdf
zxcvbnm

unless my shadow spoke... or there was some
telepathic connection
with the schizoid "group-think" of me
sourcing my sometime odd...
cognitive-murmors of "thought"...
"hallucinations"...
so be it...

this defence of a freedom of speech...
how does that even extend into writing?
i will never know...
and to be honest? i don't want to know...
writing is an extension of thinking...
which is also an inversion of speaking...
but it's never speaking...
where's the audio on this piece?!

how about... plucking your eyes out,
after fating yourself with the
original curiosity to begin with?
sounds better: than... what still persists as...
not being, said!

this was written, it wasn't said...
this is not a transcript...
this is not a transcript...
if this is censored...
then my... "schizophrenia" is not even
my original thesis of: bogus
mono-lingual parody of bilingualism...
no need to cite **** sapiens
jurisprudence advocates...
lawyers... the thesaurus bargain barons etc.
this is... what's those words they use?
invasion of the tabernacle?
do my "auditory hallucinations" stem from...
these words...
a private investement in internet access...
again: nothing is being said!
because this is a "public arena"...
a "forum"...
and the eyes on the other side of this text...
are c.c.t.v. eyes?!
not private eyes?

what's the point of freedom of speech?
when the freedom to think:
and subsequently write... is bombarded
by being who: see via reading braille...
and read... comments likes dislikes and all
those other ratios?

writing is an extension of a freedom
to think... most people who speak freely
don't speak via a precursor script...
that's not free speech: that's scripted speech!
and just because it happens be placed
in a public "forum"...
that's the argument that this writing
is a freedom of "speech"?!
really?! i guess your average u.s. citizen
is more despotic than the *******
president... then...

again.. blah blah blah blah blah...
blah blah.... blah blah blah blah blah...
blah... blah blah... blah blah blah blah blah blah...

you'd sooner convince a parrot to sing
you a song in sparrow than call this "debate"...
evenly focused on one or neither side "winning".

kate beckinsale & anne hathaway
can speak
the name... matthew all
day long...
                 and right into the night...
i'll try to fall asleep...
must be an Oedipus complex
sort of thing,
   in primary school my school
friends thought that my
mother had the visage for
   sandra bullock...
   ha ha! good luck to the men fathering
daughters!
          you ever find it easier
to pet casts, and cage tigers?!
              **** me...
my shatten is soliloquy central...
           i drink to excess and
listen to excess erotica latex ****
music...
      and then? do nothing about it...
i like cinema...
                         **** me...
a fetish for leather that extends
past a ******...
    i would have asked her sincere self:
can we drop the ******
so that i might attire myself
in gimp?
      she evidently replied
a no with her 19 years of existence...
oh... under-baked apple pie
my dear...
            ha ha!
           no, i have more cherries
to pick, i''m beyond stalking some famous grimace...
you are here           .



and i?



                                           .              am here...

who needs the excess of
quasi-journalistic coverage anyway?
    
           that transitioning harem
of rock stars...
     like Kafka said:
i'll be waiting for something
i never had,
and missing it,
            by never having touched
a peek behind the curtain...

   i'll wait... for what i could never have...
and within the confines
of what i could never have,
          i'll settle for what i can already, have.

kate beckinsale & anne hathaway
can speak the name matthew
all day long, and i won't mind...
        
      would i be the one following them?
train-spotting....
         taxi counts...
                 ******* crows that
croak mid-flight count...
           the number of canadian geese
in b-54 formation
migrating come mid-autumn...

          geek without the cartoons...
push me...
   keep pushing...
     i want the shove
and the ****** wording of auto-suggestive
courting of -
                           courtesy...

              thank you...
i'd rather stalk my own shadow...
looking out for the plot-line of
an eased out **** doing the olympic
gold medal dive into
the crapper pool,
via analyzing the shadow of plop
pop gold...

        zero splash...

                a ******* harmonium
on the neck of a Polish teenager,
traveling on a Warsaw tram
      to reach a girl who...
              was counting petals,
and the worth(s) of considering
the concise surmount of love...

             yeah... next time?
i'll be the one used to invigorating
the stance on stalking
one's own shadow...
             why?
because i fidget...
i get all jerky...
                  the hype instigator
movement...
   ******* a woman
like a piston of a car's momentum...

               does it really matter?
i thought the Madonna-***** complex
wasn't a man-"thing"?
   if man owns the Freudian Oedipus
complex...
  does man also have to lend in his
strap-on dictum for the
Madonna-***** complex?
   so...
              that's not a wholly woman "thing"?
she's doesn't own that
complex?
   it's man's fault?!

             i know the Rastafarian Putin
isn't rasp -
but you know that Israeli ******
are better than the Russian ones...
so the story goes...

               which kinda explains...
impotent with women trapped
within the Madonna-***** complex...
with Bulgarian prostitutes?
a limp **** only, and only when
i forgot to trim my ***** hair,
my Eden...

  i have the Oedipus complex...
am i also responsible for
the Madonna-***** complex?!
really?
                        you sure that women
are not supposed to attend to question
this trans-schizophrenic,
   squint / split /
           dichotomy?

                   prior mothers,
that prerequisite motherhood
with the basis of ******* themselves...

   the Madonna-***** complex
is outside the realm of the male constraint /
castration of rules...

   i already mentioned it...
i couldn't be circumcised...
   protruding veins, that met at the zenith
of the *******...
if they circumcised me...
        i would have bled to death...
the, "crime" of ******* is
a lot easier to handle...
   if you haven't been circumcised...

because?
   circumcision is a motivational tactic...
you are... technically... not allowed
to ******* once you've been
circumcised...
  
               you're free, to *******...
if you haven't been circumcised...
as a male...
            no problem...
problem of ******* comes...
when you persist in the act...
but you don't actually possess the excess
skin, that might allow you
the prime, solipsistic act...

    ergo?
******* is worth a justified critique...
ONLY, and only IF...
you've been circumcised...
sorry if you have...
           notably because?
your priest isn't a rabbi...
and there's no fiddler on the roof
matchmaker song
to boot.

oh no, there's no problem with the act
of *******...
  but there is... if you have been
circumcised...
  why?
    during ******* i used to pull my *******
back...
  and **** with an unsheathed
****...

      but in private?
the ******* was rolled back on,
to counter the imitation of experiencing ****
***... with a clenched fist.

As we kiss,
Our hips like waves of flesh crash together.
Into one another they collide like two craters pulled in by gravity.
Our bodies connect like two streets at an intersection,
Lines "X" and "Y".
Your body as if a black hole ***** me in.
I ****** moving deeper with every movement.
You moan,
Such an ear tingling sound.
It slips through clenched teeth, only after climbing up your throat.
A song like no other,
Made only when your body is pushed to its point of bliss.
As we kiss,
Your heart races as if running for Olympic gold.
Your mind becomes clouded by a satisfying fog.
The sensitivity of our bodies skyrocket.
Our body's are overheated by our sensual passion.
Our hands intertwining fully making us one entity.
As we kiss,
Ecstasy in it's most unsullied state is reached.

The music is playing.
All eyes are on me.
The arena is silent.
My choreography is my enemy.

I begin my prep,
For something I’ve never done.
The Axel
The Axel
It’s the only one.

I shiver and I shudder.
It is oh so cold.
I really need to do this,
To win the Olympic Gold

My toe-pick hits the ice
And makes a loud Chk.
I go up and rotate,
Then I come back down and stick.

I did it! It was awesome!
I take a pose.
The crowd erupts.
I froze.

I looked up at the scoreboard.
I looked at my coaches so bold.
And I found out,
That I had won the Olympic Gold.

She says something but I wasn't listening
I was feeling her ******* with my eyes
Then she points to something
Oh , my ! What a gorgeous ***
I could see both of my big hands
Cradling her most perfect buns
Then she's got legs of an Olympic gymnast
So thick , firm and succulent
Her long brown hair smells so good
I want to take a swim in it

"You haven't heard a word I said !"
She says with an air that's foul

"I'm sorry," I say ,"but I couldn't hear you .
Your body language was way too loud."

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

        an oak... in a forest of pine...
an oak in pine wood...

then onto the wood of sighs:

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

a short script: variation on MW...

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

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

of course there's an

As President Vladimir Putin's longtime spokesman Dmitry Peskov wed Olympic figure skating champion Tatyana Navka this weekend in a glitzy seaside ceremony, a multimillion-ruble watch spotted on the groom's wrist sparked a media frenzy.

The ceremony was held in the Olympic host city of Sochi at the ultra-luxurious Rodina (Motherland) Hotel, the entirety of which was reserved for Peskov and Navka's hundreds of celebrity guests.

In July, the bride-to-be said in an interview with Tatler magazine that Putin had been among the invited guests. By Sunday it remained unclear whether he had attended.

On the eve of the wedding, local news sites reported that guests from the three nearby hotels had been relocated in order to ensure security.

"All the beaches [nearby] will be guarded. Today they began to evict guests from three neighboring hotels. They will be given different accommodations for three days and will be able to return after the wedding," an unnamed employee of the Rodina hotel was cited as saying Friday by local news site Bloknot.

The morning after the nuptials, two photos quickly dominated Russian headlines: a photo of Peskov and Navka kissing after being pronounced man and wife, and a photo of the official wearing a watch that — according to opposition leader Alexei Navalny — was worth some $620,000.

Navalny claimed in an irate blog post Sunday that it would have been impossible for Peskov to have paid for the watch on his official salary, which the activist pegged at about 9 million rubles ($146,000) annually.

Peskov was quick to defend himself, telling the RBC news agency that the watch had been a wedding gift from his bride, who has become a popular television personality since winning Olympic gold in 2006. But bloggers found photos of him wearing it several months ago in the Instagram account of his daughter Yelizaveta Peskova, news site Meduza reported.

Meanwhile, former federal environmental inspector Oleg Mitvol, who was among the glitterati in attendance, told tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets that the whole affair had been an elaborate ruse.

According to Mitvol, Peskov borrowed the watch from one of his well-heeled guests in a conscious effort to toy with the media and perpetuate a baseless sensation.

Rumors about Peskov's relationship with Navka have provided ample Russian tabloid fodder since 2012, when he divorced his second wife Yekaterina, The Moscow Times reported last month.

read more:www.marieaustralia.com/long-formal-dresses

www.marieaustralia.com/evening-dresses

There were painter’s clouds that day;
broiling, tumbling,
moving inner silence across an easel.

Beneath them
a concrete mind mixed and etched
one long brush-stroke:
the tarmac before us.

Excited engines carried us along
and carried by us
an air befriended...
with the convertible top thrown down
your hair streamed
olympic colour; a spectrum of extraordinary.
You threw back a sunrise laugh,
the wind and all else
belonged to exhilaration.

The horizon captured another sky,
a mist-green hail filled sea; a quiet litany.

A pallet knife scratched its lightening
and the danger of no potential
that kept us moving on.

When Pigs Fly
by Michael R. Burch

On the Trail of Tears,
my Cherokee brothers,
why hang your heads?
Why shame your mothers?
Laugh wildly instead!
We will soon be dead.

When we lie in our graves,
let the white-eyes take
the woodlands we loved
for the *** and the rake.
It is better to die
than to live out a lie
in so narrow a sty.

In October 1838 the Cherokees began to walk the "Trail of Tears." Most of them made the thousand mile journey west to Oklahoma on foot. An estimated 4,000 people, or a quarter of the tribe, died en route. The soldiers "escorting" the Cherokees at bayonet point refused permission for the dead to be buried, threatening to shoot anyone who disobeyed. So the living were forced to carry the corpses of the dead until camp was made for the night. Years after the Cherokees had been rounded up and driven down the Trail of Tears, John G. Burnett reflected on what he and his fellow soldiers had done, saying, "Schoolchildren of today do not know that we are living on lands that were taken from a helpless race at the bayonet point, to satisfy the white man's greed... ****** is ****** and somebody must answer, somebody must explain the streams of blood that flowed in the Indian country... Somebody must explain the four thousand silent graves that mark the trail of the Cherokees to their exile." Keywords/Tags: Cherokee, Native American, Trail of Tears, Ethnic Cleansing, Genocide, ******, Evil, Death, March, Death March, Infanticide, Matricide, Racism, Racist, Discrimination, Violence, Fascism, White Supremacists, Horror, Terror, Terrorism, Greed, Gluttony, Avarice, Lust, ****, mrbpig, mrbpigs



Cherokee Prayer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

As I walk life's trails
imperiled by the raging wind and rain,
grant, O Great Spirit,
that yet I may always
walk like a man.

This prayer makes me think of Native Americans walking the Trail of Tears with far more courage and dignity than their “civilized” abusers.



Native American Prayer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Help us learn the lessons you have left us
in every leaf and rock.



Native American Travelers' Blessing
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Let us walk together here
among earth's creatures great and small,
remembering, our footsteps light,
that one wise God created all.



Sioux Vision Quest
by Crazy Horse, Oglala Lakota Sioux, circa 1840-1877
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A man must pursue his Vision
as the eagle explores
the sky's deepest blues.



Cherokee Travelers' Blessing I
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I will extract the thorns from your feet.
For yet a little while, we will walk life's sunlit paths together.
I will love you like my own brother, my own blood.
When you are disconsolate, I will wipe the tears from your eyes.
And when you are too sad to live, I will put your aching heart to rest.

Published by Better Than Starbucks and Cherokee Native Americans



Cherokee Travelers' Blessing II
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Happily may you walk
in the paths of the Rainbow.
                  Oh,
and may it always be beautiful before you,
beautiful behind you,
beautiful below you,
beautiful above you,
and beautiful all around you
where in Perfection beauty is finished.

Published by Better Than Starbucks



Cherokee Travelers' Blessing III
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

May Heaven’s warming winds blow gently there,
where you reside,
and may the Great Spirit bless all those you love,
this side of the farthest tide.
And wherever you go,
whether the journey is fast or slow,
may your moccasins leave many cunning footprints in the snow.
And when you look over your shoulder, may you always find the Rainbow.

Published by Better Than Starbucks



What is life?
The flash of a firefly.
The breath of the winter buffalo.
The shadow scooting across the grass that vanishes with sunset.
―Blackfoot saying, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Warrior's Confession
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Oh my love, how fair you are—
far brighter than the fairest star!



Cherokee Proverb
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Before you judge
a man for his sins
be sure to trudge
many moons in his moccasins.



Cherokee Prayer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

As I walk life's trails
imperiled by the raging wind and rain,
grant, O Great Spirit,
that yet I may always
walk like a man.

When I think of this prayer, I think of Native Americans walking the Trail of Tears.



The Receiving of the Flower
excerpt from a Mayan love poem
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Let us sing overflowing with joy
as we observe the Receiving of the Flower.
The lovely maidens beam;
their hearts leap in their *******.

Why?

Because they will soon yield their virginity to the men they love!



The Deflowering
excerpt from a Mayan love poem
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Remove your clothes;
let down your hair;
become as naked as the day you were born—

virgins!



Prelude to *******
excerpt from a Mayan love poem
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Lay out your most beautiful clothes,
maidens!
The day of happiness has arrived!

Grab your combs, detangle your hair,
adorn your earlobes with gaudy pendants.
Dress in white as becomes maidens ...

Then go, give your lovers the happiness of your laughter!
And all the village will rejoice with you,
for the day of happiness has arrived!



The Flower-Strewn Pool
excerpt from a Mayan love poem
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You have arrived at last in the woods
where no one can see what you do
at the flower-strewn pool ...
Remove your clothes,
unbraid your hair,
become as you were
when you first arrived here
naked and shameless,
virgins, maidens!



Native American Proverbs

The soul would see no Rainbows if not for the eyes’ tears.
—loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A woman’s highest calling is to help her man unite with the Source.
A man’s highest calling is to help his woman walk the earth unharmed.
—loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced.
Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.
—White Elk, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

What is life?
The flash of a firefly.
The breath of a winter buffalo.
The shadow scooting across the grass that vanishes with sunset.
—Blackfoot saying, translation by Michael R. Burch

Speak less thunder, wield more lightning. — Apache proverb, translation by Michael R. Burch

The more we wonder, the more we understand. — Arapaho proverb, translation by Michael R. Burch

Adults talk, children whine. — Blackfoot proverb, translation by Michael R. Burch

Don’t be afraid to cry: it will lessen your sorrow. — Hopi proverb

One foot in the boat, one foot in the canoe, and you end up in the river. — Tuscarora proverb, translation by Michael R. Burch

Our enemy's weakness increases our strength. — Cherokee proverb, translation by Michael R. Burch

We will be remembered tomorrow by the tracks we leave today. — Dakota proverb, translation by Michael R. Burch

No sound's as eloquent as a rattlesnake's tail. — Navajo saying, translation by Michael R. Burch

The heart is our first teacher. — Cheyenne proverb, translation by Michael R. Burch

Dreams beget success. — Maricopa proverb, translation by Michael R. Burch

Knowledge interprets the past, wisdom foresees the future. — Lumbee proverb, translation by Michael R. Burch

The troublemaker's way is thorny. — Umpqua proverb, translation by Michael R. Burch



Earthbound
an original poem by Michael R. Burch

Tashunka Witko, better known as Crazy Horse, had a vision of a red-tailed hawk at Sylvan Lake, South Dakota. In his vision he saw himself riding a spirit horse, flying through a storm, as the hawk flew above him, shrieking. When he awoke, a red-tailed hawk was perched near his horse.

Earthbound,
and yet I now fly
through the clouds that are aimlessly drifting ...
so high
that no sound
echoing by
below where the mountains are lifting
the sky
can be heard.

Like a bird,
but not meek,
like a hawk from a distance regarding its prey,
I will shriek,
not a word,
but a screech,
and my terrible clamor will turn them to clay—
the sheep,
the earthbound.



Years after the Cherokees had been rounded up and driven down the Trail of Tears, John G. Burnett reflected on what he and his fellow soldiers had done, saying, "Schoolchildren of today do not know that we are living on lands that were taken from a helpless race at the bayonet point, to satisfy the white man's greed ... ****** is ****** and somebody must answer, somebody must explain the streams of blood that flowed in the Indian country ... Somebody must explain the four thousand silent graves that mark the trail of the Cherokees to their exile."

In the same year, 1830, that Stonewall Jackson consigned Native Americans to the ash-heap of history, Georgia Governor George Gilmer said, "Treaties are expedients by which ignorant, intractable, and savage people are induced ... to yield up what civilized people have the right to possess." By "civilized" he apparently meant people willing to brutally dispossess and **** women and children in order to derive economic benefits for themselves.

These nights bring dreams of Cherokee shamans
whose names are bright verbs and impacted dark nouns,
whose memories are indictments of my pallid flesh . . .
and I hear, as from a great distance,
the cries tortured from their guileless lips, proclaiming
the nature of my mutation.
―Michael R. Burch, from "Mongrel Dreams" (my family is part Cherokee, English and Scottish)

After Jackson was re-elected with an overwhelming majority in 1832, he strenuously pursued his policy of removing Native Americans, even refusing to accept a Supreme Court ruling which invalidated Georgia's planned annexation of Cherokee land. But in the double-dealing logic of the white supremacists, they had to make the illegal resettlement of the Indians appear to be "legal," so a small group of Cherokees were persuaded to sign the "Treaty of New Echota," which swapped Cherokee land for land in the Oklahoma territory. The Cherokee ringleaders of this infamous plot were later assassinated as traitors. (****** was similarly obsessed with the "legalities" of the **** Holocaust; isn't it strange how mass murderers of women and children can seek to justify their crimes?)

Native Americans understood the "circle of life" better than their white oppressors ...

When we sit in the Circle of the People,
we must be responsible because all Creation is related
and the suffering of one is the suffering of all
and the joy of one is the joy of all
and whatever we do affects everything in the universe.
—"Lakota Instructions for Living" by White Buffalo Calf Woman, translated by Michael R. Burch



Veiled
by Michael R. Burch

She has belief
without comprehension
and in her crutchwork shack
she is
much like us . . .

tamping the bread
into edible forms,
regarding her children
at play
with something akin to relief . . .

ignoring the towers ablaze
in the distance
because they are not revelations
but things of glass,
easily shattered . . .

and if you were to ask her,
she might say:
sometimes God visits his wrath
upon an impious nation
for its leaders’ sins,

and we might agree:
seeing her mutilations.

Published by Poetry Super Highway and Modern War Poems.



Ali’s Song
by Michael R. Burch

They say that gold don’t tarnish. It ain’t so.
They say it has a wild, unearthly glow.
A man can be more beautiful, more wild.
I flung their medal to the river, child.
I flung their medal to the river, child.

They hung their coin around my neck; they made
my name a bridle, “called a ***** a *****.”
They say their gold is pure. I say defiled.
I flung their slave’s name to the river, child.
I flung their slave’s name to the river, child.

Ain’t got no quarrel with no Viet Cong
that never called me ******, did me wrong.
A man can’t be lukewarm, ’cause God hates mild.
I flung their notice to the river, child.
I flung their notice to the river, child.

They said, “Now here’s your bullet and your gun,
and there’s your cell: we’re waiting, you choose one.”
At first I groaned aloud, but then I smiled.
I gave their “future” to the river, child.
I gave their “future” to the river, child.

My face reflected up, dark bronze like gold,
a coin God stamped in His own image―BOLD.
My blood boiled like that river―strange and wild.
I died to hate in that dark river, child,
Come, be reborn in this bright river, child.

Originally published by Black Medina

Note: Cassius Clay, who converted to Islam and changed his “slave name” to Muhammad Ali, said that he threw his Olympic boxing gold medal into the Ohio River. Confirming his account, the medal was recovered by Robert Bradbury and his wife Pattie in 2014 during the Annual Ohio River Sweep, and the Ali family paid them $200,000 to regain possession of the medal. When drafted during the Vietnamese War, Ali refused to serve, reputedly saying: “I ain't got no quarrel with those Viet Cong; no Vietnamese ever called me a ******.” The notice mentioned in my poem is Ali's draft notice, which metaphorically gets tossed into the river along with his slave name. I was told through the grapevine that this poem appeared in Farsi in an Iranian publication called Bashgah. ―Michael R. Burch



evol-u-shun
by Michael R. Burch

does GOD adore the Tyger
while it’s ripping ur lamb apart?

does GOD applaud the Plague
while it’s eating u à la carte?

does GOD admire ur intelligence
while u pray that IT has a heart?

does GOD endorse the Bible
you blue-lighted at k-mart?



Enheduanna, the daughter of the famous King Sargon the Great of Akkad, is the first ancient writer whose name remains known today. She appears to be the first named poet in human history and the first known author of prayers and hymns. Enheduanna, who lived circa 2285-2250 BCE, is also one of the first women we know by name.

Lament to the Spirit of War
by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

You hack down everything you see, War God!

Rising on fearsome wings
you rush to destroy the land,
descending like a raging storm,
howling like a hurricane,
screaming like a tempest,
thundering, raging, ranting, drumming,
whiplashing whirlwinds!

Men falter at your approaching footsteps.

Tortured dirges scream
on your lyre of despair.

Like a fiery Salamander you poison the land:
growling over the earth like thunder,
vegetation collapsing before you,
blood gushing down a mountainside.

Spirit of hatred, greed and vengeance!

******* of heaven and earth!

Your ferocious fire consumes our land.

Whipping your stallion
with furious commands,
you decide our fate.

You triumph over all human rites and prayers.

Who can explain your tirade,
why you go on so?



Temple Hymn 15
to the Gishbanda Temple of Ningishzida
by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Most ancient and terrible shrine,
set deep in the mountain,
dark like a mother's womb...

Dark shrine,
like a mother's wounded breast,
blood-red and terrifying...

Though approaching through a safe-seeming field,
our hair stands on end as we near you!

Gishbanda,
like a neck-stock,
like a fine-eyed fish net,
like a foot-shackled prisoner's manacles...
your ramparts are massive,
like a trap!

But once we’re inside,
as the sun rises,
you yield widespread abundance!

Your prince
is the pure-handed priest of Inanna, heaven's Holy One,
Lord Ningishzida!

Oh, see how his thick, lustrous hair
cascades down his back!

Oh Gishbanda,
he has built this beautiful temple to house your radiance!
He has placed his throne upon your dais!



The Exaltation of Inanna: Opening Lines and Excerpts
by Enheduanna, the daughter of Sargon I of Akkad and the high priestess of the Goddess Inanna
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Lady of all divine powers!
Lady of the resplendent light!
Righteous Lady adorned in heavenly radiance!

Beloved Lady of An and Uraš!
Hierodule of An, sun-adorned and bejeweled!
Heaven’s Mistress with the holy diadem,
Who loves the beautiful headdress befitting the office of her own high priestess!

Powerful Mistress, seizer of the seven divine powers!
My Heavenly Lady, guardian of the seven divine powers!
You have seized the seven divine powers!
You hold the divine powers in your hand!
You have gathered together the seven divine powers!
You have clasped the divine powers to your breast!

You have flooded the valleys with venom, like a viper;
all vegetation vanishes when you thunder like Iškur!
You have caused the mountains to flood the valleys!
When you roar like that, nothing on earth can withstand you!

Like a flood descending on floodplains, O Powerful One, you will teach foreigners to fear Inanna!

You have given wings to the storm, O Beloved of Enlil!
The storms do your bidding, blasting the unbelievers!

Foreign cities cower at the chaos You cause!
Entire countries cower in dread of Your deadly South Wind!
Men cower before you in their anguished implications,
raising their pitiful outcries,
weeping and wailing, beseeching Your benevolence with many wild lamentations!

But in the van of battle, everything falls before You, O Mighty Queen!

My Queen,
You are all-conquering, all-devouring!
You continue Your attacks like relentless storms!
You howl louder than the howling storms!
You thunder louder than Iškur!
You moan louder than the mournful winds!
Your feet never tire from trampling Your enemies!
You produce much wailing on the lyres of lamentations!

My Queen,
all the Anunna, the mightiest Gods,
fled before Your approach like fluttering bats!
They could not stand in Your awesome Presence
nor behold Your awesome Visage!

Who can soothe Your infuriated heart?
Your baleful heart is beyond being soothed!

Uncontrollable Wild Cow, elder daughter of Sin,
O Majestic Queen, greater than An,
who has ever paid You enough homage?

O Life-Giving Goddess, possessor of all powers,
Inanna the Exalted!

Merciful, Live-Giving Mother!
Inanna, the Radiant of Heart!
I have exalted You in accordance with Your power!
I have bowed before You in my holy garb,
I the En, I Enheduanna!

Carrying my masab-basket, I once entered and uttered my joyous chants ...

But now I no longer dwell in Your sanctuary.
The sun rose and scorched me.
Night fell and the South Wind overwhelmed me.
My laughter was stilled and my honey-sweet voice grew strident.
My joy became dust.

O Sin, King of Heaven, how bitter my fate!

To An, I declared: An will deliver me!
I declared it to An: He will deliver me!

But now the kingship of heaven has been seized by Inanna,
at Whose feet the floodplains lie.

Inanna the Exalted,
who has made me tremble together with all Ur!

Stay Her anger, or let Her heart be soothed by my supplications!
I, Enheduanna will offer my supplications to Inanna,
my tears flowing like sweet intoxicants!
Yes, I will proffer my tears and my prayers to the Holy Inanna,
I will greet Her in peace ...

O My Queen, I have exalted You,
Who alone are worthy to be exalted!
O My Queen, Beloved of An,
I have laid out Your daises,
set fire to the coals,
conducted the rites,
prepared Your nuptial chamber.
Now may Your heart embrace me!

These are my innovations,
O Mighty Queen, that I made for You!
What I composed for You by the dark of night,
The cantor will chant by day.

Now Inanna’s heart has been restored,
and the day became favorable to Her.
Clothed in beauty, radiant with joy,
she carried herself like the elegant moonlight.

Now to the Noble Hierodule,
to the Wrecker of foreign lands
presented by An with the seven divine powers,
and to my Queen garbed in the radiance of heaven ...

O Inanna, praise!



The Exaltation of Inanna: Opening Lines, an Excerpt
Nin-me-šara by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Lady of all divine powers,
Lady of the all-resplendent light,
Righteous Lady clothed in heavenly radiance,
Beloved Lady of An and Uraš,
Mistress of heaven with the holy diadem,
Who loves the beautiful headdress befitting the office of her high priestess,
Powerful Mistress who has seized all seven divine powers,
My lady, you are the guardian of the seven divine powers!
You have seized the divine powers,
You hold the divine powers in your hand,
You have gathered up the divine powers,
You have clasped the divine powers to your breast!
Like a dragon you have spewed venom on foreign lands that know you not!
When you roar like Iškur at the earth, nothing can withstand you!
Like a flood descending on alien lands, O Powerful One of heaven and earth, you will teach them to fear Inanna!



Temple Hymn 7: an Excerpt
to the Kesh Temple of Ninhursag
by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

O, high-situated Kesh,
form-shifting summit,
inspiring fear like a venomous viper!

O, Lady of the Mountains,
Ninhursag’s house was constructed on a terrifying site!

O, Kesh, like holy Aratta: your womb dark and deep,
your walls high-towering and imposing!

O, great lion of the wildlands stalking the high plains!...



Temple Hymn 17: an Excerpt
to the Badtibira Temple of Dumuzi
by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

O, house of jeweled lapis illuminating the radiant bed
in the peace-inducing palace of our Lady of the Steppe!



Temple Hymn 22: an Excerpt
to the Sirara Temple of Nanshe
by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

O, house, you wild cow!
Made to conjure signs of the Divine!
You arise, beautiful to behold,
bedecked for your Mistress!



Temple Hymn 26: an Excerpt
to the Zabalam Temple of Inanna
by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

O house illuminated by beams of bright light,
dressed in shimmering stone jewels,
awakening the world to awe!



Temple Hymn 42: an Excerpt
to the Eresh Temple of Nisaba
by Enheduanna
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

O, house of brilliant stars
bright with lapis stones,
you illuminate all lands!

...

The person who put this tablet together
is Enheduanna.
My king: something never created before,
did she not give birth to it?



Update of "A Litany in Time of Plague"
by Michael R. Burch

THE PLAGUE has come again
To darken lives of men
and women, girls and boys;
Death proves their bodies toys
Too frail to even cry.
I am sick, I must die.
Lord, have mercy on us!

Tycoons, what use is wealth?
You cannot buy good health!
Physicians cannot heal
Themselves, to Death must kneel.
Nuns’ prayers mount to the sky.
I am sick, I must die.
Lord, have mercy on us!

Beauty’s brightest flower?
Devoured in an hour.
Kings, Queens and Presidents
Are fearful residents
Of manors boarded high.
I am sick, I must die.
Lord, have mercy on us!

We have no means to save
Our children from the grave.
Though cure-alls line our shelves,
We cannot save ourselves.
"Come, come!" the sad bells cry.
I am sick, I must die.
Lord, have mercy on us!

NOTE: This poem is meant to capture the understandable fear and dismay the Plague caused in the Middle Ages, and which the coronavirus has caused in the 21st century. We are better equipped to deal with this modern plague, thanks to advances in science, medicine and sanitation. We do not have to succumb to fear, but it would be wise to have a healthy respect for the nasty bug and heed the advice of medical experts.--MRB



Regret
by Michael R. Burch

Regret,
a bitter
ache to bear . . .

once starlight
languished
in your hair . . .

a shining there
as brief
as rare.

Regret . . .
a pain
I chose to bear . . .

unleash
the torrent
of your hair . . .

and show me
once again―
how rare.

Published by The HyperTexts and The Chained Muse



The Stake
by Michael R. Burch

Love, the heart bets,
if not without regrets,
will still prove, in the end,
worth the light we expend
mining the dark
for an exquisite heart.

Originally published by The Lyric



If
by Michael R. Burch

If I regret
fire in the sunset
exploding on the horizon,
then let me regret loving you.

If I forget
even for a moment
that you are the only one,
then let me forget that the sky is blue.

If I should yearn
in a season of discontentment
for the vagabond light of a companionless moon,
let dawn remind me that you are my sun.

If I should burn―one moment less brightly,
one instant less true―
then with wild scorching kisses,
inflame me, inflame me, inflame me anew.

Originally published by The HyperTexts



The Effects of Memory
by Michael R. Burch

A black ringlet
curls to lie
at the nape of her neck,
glistening with sweat
in the evaporate moonlight ...
This is what I remember

now that I cannot forget.

And tonight,
if I have forgotten her name,
I remember:
rigid wire and white lace
half-impressed in her flesh ...

our soft cries, like regret,

... the enameled white clips
of her bra strap
still inscribe dimpled marks
that my kisses erase ...

now that I have forgotten her face.



Villanelle: Because Her Heart Is Tender
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

She scrawled soft words in soap: "Never Forget,"
Dove-white on her car's window, and the wren,
because her heart is tender, might regret
it called the sun to wake her. As I slept,
she heard lost names recounted, one by one.

She wrote in sidewalk chalk: "Never Forget,"
and kept her heart's own counsel. No rain swept
away those words, no tear leaves them undone.

Because her heart is tender with regret,
bruised by razed towers' glass and steel and stone
that shatter on and on and on and on,
she stitches in wet linen: "NEVER FORGET,"
and listens to her heart's emphatic song.

The wren might tilt its head and sing along
because its heart once understood regret
when fledglings fell beyond, beyond, beyond ...
its reach, and still the boot-heeled world strode on.

She writes in adamant: "NEVER FORGET"
because her heart is tender with regret.



To the boy Elis
by Georg Trakl
translation by Michael R. Burch

Elis, when the blackbird cries from the black forest,
it announces your downfall.
Your lips sip the rock-spring's blue coolness.

Your brow sweats blood
recalling ancient myths
and dark interpretations of birds' flight.

Yet you enter the night with soft footfalls;
the ripe purple grapes hang suspended
as you wave your arms more beautifully in the blueness.

A thornbush crackles;
where now are your moonlike eyes?
How long, oh Elis, have you been dead?

A monk dips waxed fingers
into your body's hyacinth;
Our silence is a black abyss

from which sometimes a docile animal emerges
slowly lowering its heavy lids.
A black dew drips from your temples:

the lost gold of vanished stars.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: I believe that in the second stanza the blood on Elis's forehead may be a reference to the apprehensive ****** sweat of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. If my interpretation is correct, Elis hears the blackbird's cries, anticipates the danger represented by a harbinger of death, but elects to continue rather than turn back. From what I have been able to gather, the color blue had a special significance for Georg Trakl: it symbolized longing and perhaps a longing for death. The colors blue, purple and black may represent a progression toward death in the poem.



Turkish Poetry Translations

Attilâ İlhan (1925-2005) was a Turkish poet, translator, novelist, screenwriter, editor, journalist, essayist, reviewer, socialist and intellectual.

Ben Sana Mecburum: “You are indispensable”
by Attila Ilhan
translation by Nurgül Yayman and Michael R. Burch

You are indispensable; how can you not know
that you’re like nails riveting my brain?
I see your eyes as ever-expanding dimensions.
You are indispensable; how can you not know
that I burn within, at the thought of you?

Trees prepare themselves for autumn;
can this city be our lost Istanbul?
Now clouds disintegrate in the darkness
as the street lights flicker
and the streets reek with rain.
You are indispensable, and yet you are absent ...

Love sometimes seems akin to terror:
a man tires suddenly at nightfall,
of living enslaved to the razor at his neck.
Sometimes he wrings his hands,
expunging other lives from his existence.
Sometimes whichever door he knocks
echoes back only heartache.

A screechy phonograph is playing in Fatih ...
a song about some Friday long ago.
I stop to listen from a vacant corner,
longing to bring you an untouched sky,
but time disintegrates in my hands.
Whatever I do, wherever I go,
you are indispensable, and yet you are absent ...

Are you the blue child of June?
Ah, no one knows you―no one knows!
Your deserted eyes are like distant freighters ...

Perhaps you are boarding in Yesilköy?
Are you drenched there, shivering with the rain
that leaves you blind, beset, broken,
with wind-disheveled hair?

Whenever I think of life
seated at the wolves’ table,
shameless, yet without soiling our hands ...
Yes, whenever I think of life,
I begin with your name, defying the silence,
and your secret tides surge within me
making this voyage inevitable.
You are indispensable; how can you not know?



Fragments
by Attila Ilhan
loose English translations/interpretations by Michael R. Burch

The night is a cloudy-feathered owl,
its quills like fine-spun glass.

It gazes out the window,
perched on my right shoulder,
its wings outspread and huge.

If the encroaching darkness seems devastating at first glance,
the sovereign of everything,
its reach infinite ...

Still somewhere within a kernel of light glows secretly
creating an enlightened forest of dialectics.

In September’s waning days one thinks wanly of the arrival of fall
like a ship appearing on the horizon with untrimmed, tattered sails;
for some unfathomable reason fall is the time to consider one’s own demise―
the body smothered by yellowed leaves like a corpse rotting in a ghoulish photograph ...

Bitter words
crack like whips
snapping across prison yards ...

Then there are words like pomegranate trees in bloom,
words like the sun igniting the sea beyond mountainous horizons,
flashing like mysterious knives ...

Such words are the burning roses of an infinite imagination;
they are born and they die with the flutterings of butterflies;
we carry those words in our hearts like pregnant shotguns until the day we expire,
martyred for the words we were prepared to die for ...

What I wrote and what you understood? Curious and curiouser!



Mehmet Akif Ersoy: Modern English Translations of Turkish Poems

Mehmet Âkif Ersoy (1873-1936) was a Turkish poet, author, writer, academic, member of parliament, and the composer of the Turkish National Anthem.



Snapshot
by Mehmet Akif Ersoy
loose English translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Earth’s least trace of life cannot be erased;
even when you lie underground, it encompasses you.
So, those of you who anticipate the shadows,
how long will the darkness remember you?



Zulmü Alkislayamam
"I Can’t Applaud Tyranny"
by Mehmet Akif Ersoy
loose English translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I can't condone cruelty; I will never applaud the oppressor;
Yet I can't renounce the past for the sake of deluded newcomers.
When someone curses my ancestors, I want to strangle them,
Even if you don’t.
But while I harbor my elders,
I refuse to praise their injustices.
Above all, I will never glorify evil, by calling injustice “justice.”
From the day of my birth, I've loved freedom;
The golden tulip never deceived me.
If I am nonviolent, does that make me a docile sheep?
The blade may slice, but my neck resists!
When I see someone else's wound, I suffer a great hardship;
To end it, I'll be whipped, I'll be beaten.
I can't say, “Never mind, just forget it!” I'll mind,
I'll crush, I'll be crushed, I'll uphold justice.
I'm the foe of the oppressor, the friend of the oppressed.
What the hell do you mean, with your backwardness?



Çanakkale Sehitlerine
"For the Çanakkale Martyrs"
by Mehmet Akif Ersoy
loose English translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Was there ever anything like the Bosphorus war?―
The earth’s mightiest armies pressing Marmara,
Forcing entry between her mountain passes
To a triangle of land besieged by countless vessels.
Oh, what dishonorable assemblages!
Who are these Europeans, come as rapists?
Who, these braying hyenas, released from their reeking cages?
Why do the Old World, the New World, and all the nations of men
now storm her beaches? Is it Armageddon? Truly, the whole world rages!
Seven nations marching in unison!
Australia goose-stepping with Canada!
Different faces, languages, skin tones!
Everything so different, but the mindless bludgeons!
Some warriors Hindu, some African, some nameless, unknown!
This disgraceful invasion, baser than the Black Death!
Ah, the 20th century, so noble in its own estimation,
But all its favored ones nothing but a parade of worthless wretches!
For months now Turkish soldiers have been vomited up
Like stomachs’ retched contents regarded with shame.
If the masks had not been torn away, the faces would still be admired,
But the ***** called civilization is far from blameless.
Now the ****** demand the destruction of the doomed
And thus bring destruction down on their own heads.
Lightning severs horizons!
Earthquakes regurgitate the bodies of the dead!
Bombs’ thunderbolts explode brains,
rupture the ******* of brave soldiers.
Underground tunnels writhe like hell
Full of the bodies of burn victims.
The sky rains down death, the earth swallows the living.
A terrible blizzard heaves men violently into the air.
Heads, eyes, torsos, legs, arms, chins, fingers, hands, feet ...
Body parts rain down everywhere.
Coward hands encased in armor callously scatter
Floods of thunderbolts, torrents of fire.
Men’s chests gape open,
Beneath the high, circling vulture-like packs of the air.
Cannonballs fly as frequently as bullets
Yet the heroic army laughs at the hail.
Who needs steel fortresses? Who fears the enemy?
How can the shield of faith not prevail?
What power can make religious men bow down to their oppressors
When their stronghold is established by God?
The mountains and the rocks are the bodies of martyrs! ...
For the sake of a crescent, oh God, many suns set, undone!
Dear soldier, who fell for the sake of this land,
How great you are, your blood saves the Muslims!
Only the lions of Bedr rival your glory!
Who then can dig the grave wide enough to hold you. and your story?
If we try to consign you to history, you will not fit!
No book can contain the eras you shook!
Only eternities can encompass you! ...
Oh martyr, son of the martyr, do not ask me about the grave:
The prophet awaits you now, his arms flung wide open, to save!



Sessiz Gemi (“Silent Ship”)

by Yahya Kemal Beyatli
loose translation by Nurgül Yayman and Michael R. Burch

for the refugees

The time to weigh anchor has come;
a ship departing harbor slips quietly out into the unknown,
cruising noiselessly, its occupants already ghosts.
No flourished handkerchiefs acknowledge their departure;
the landlocked mourners stand nurturing their grief,
scanning the bleak horizon, their eyes blurring ...
Poor souls! Desperate hearts! But this is hardly the last ship departing!
There is always more pain to unload in this sorrowful life!
The hesitations of lovers and their belovèds are futile,
for they cannot know where the vanished are bound.
Many hopes must be quenched by the distant waves,
since years must pass, and no one returns from this journey.



Full Moon
by Yahya Kemal Beyatli
loose translation by Nurgül Yayman and Michael R. Burch

You are so lovely
the full moon just might
delight
in your rising,
as curious
and bright,
to vanquish night.

But what can a mortal man do,
dear,
but hope?
I’ll ponder your mysteries
and (hmmmm) try to
cope.

We both know
you have every right to say no.



The Music of the Snow
by Yahya Kemal Beyatli
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This melody of a night lasting longer than a thousand years!
This music of the snow supposed to last for thousand years!

Sorrowful as the prayers of a secluded monastery,
It rises from a choir of a hundred voices!

As the *****’s harmonies resound profoundly,
I share the sufferings of Slavic grief.

My mind drifts far from this city, this era,
To the old records of Tanburi Cemil Bey.

Now I’m suddenly overjoyed as once again I hear,
With the ears of my heart, the purest sounds of Istanbul!

Thoughts of the snow and darkness depart me;
I keep them at bay all night with my dreams!

Translator’s notes: “Slavic grief” because Beyatli wrote this poem while in Warsaw, serving as Turkey’s ambassador to Poland, in 1927. Tanburi Cemil Bey was a Turkish composer.



Thinking of you
by Nazim Hikmet
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Thinking of you is beautiful, hopeful―
like listening to the most beautiful songs
sung by the earth's most beautiful voices.
But hope is insufficient for me now;
I don't want to listen to songs.
I want to sing love into birth.



I love you
by Nazim Hikmet
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I love you―
like dipping bread into salt and eating;
like waking at night with a raging fever
and thirstily lapping up water, my mouth to the silver tap;
like unwrapping the unwieldy box the postman delivers,
unable to guess what's inside,
feeling fluttery, happy, doubtful.
I love you―
like flying over the sea the first time
as something stirs within me
while the sky softly darkens over Istanbul.
I love you―
as men thank God gratefully for life.



Sparrow
by Nazim Hikmet
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Little sparrow,
perched on the clothesline,
do you regard me with pity?
Even so, I will watch you
soar away through the white spring leaves.



The Divan of the Lover

the oldest extant Turkish poem
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

All the universe as one great sign is shown:
God revealed in his creative acts unknown.
Who sees or understands them, jinn or men?
Such works lie far beyond mere mortals’ ken.
Nor can man’s mind or reason reach that strand,
Nor mortal tongue name Him who rules that land.
Since He chose nothingness with life to vest,
who dares to trouble God with worms’ behests?
For eighteen thousand worlds, lain end to end,
Do not with Him one atom's worth transcend!



Fragment
by Prince Jem
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Behold! The torrent, dashing against the rocks, flails wildly.
The entire vast realm of Space and Being oppresses my soul idly.
Through bitterness of grief and woe the sky has rent its morning robe.
Look! See how in its eastern palace, the sun is a ****** globe!
The clouds of heaven rain bright tears on the distant mountain peaks.
Oh, hear how the deeply wounded thunder slowly, mournfully speaks!



An Ecstasy of Fumbling
by Michael R. Burch

The poets believe
everything resolves to metaphor—
a distillation,
a vapor
beyond filtration,
though perhaps not quite as volatile as before.

The poets conceive
of death in the trenches
as the price of art,
not war,
fumbling with their masque-like
dissertations
to describe the Hollywood-like gore

as something beyond belief,
abstracting concrete bunkers to Achaemenid bas-relief.



Excerpts from “Travels with Einstein”
by Michael R. Burch

for Trump

I went to Berlin to learn wisdom
from Adolph. The wild spittle flew
as he screamed at me, with great conviction:
“Please despise me! I look like a Jew!”

So I flew off to ’Nam to learn wisdom
from tall Yankees who cursed “yellow” foes.
“If we lose this small square,” they informed me,
earth’s nations will fall, dominoes!”

I then sat at Christ’s feet to learn wisdom,
but his Book, from its genesis to close,
said: “Men can enslave their own brothers!”
(I soon noticed he lacked any clothes.)

So I traveled to bright Tel Aviv
where great scholars with lofty IQs
informed me that (since I’m an Arab)
I’m unfit to lick dirt from their shoes.

At last, done with learning, I stumbled
to a well where the waters seemed sweet:
the mirage of American “justice.”
There I wept a real sea, in defeat.

Originally published by Café Dissensus



The Leveler
by Michael R. Burch

The nature of Nature
is bitter survival
from Winter’s bleak fury
till Spring’s brief revival.

The weak implore Fate;
bold men ravish, dishevel her . . .
till both are cut down
by mere ticks of the Leveler.

I believe I wrote this poem around age 20, in 1978 or thereabouts. It has since been published in The Lyric, Tucumcari Literary Review, Romantics Quarterly and The Aurorean.



The Hippopotami
by Michael R. Burch

There’s no seeing eye to eye
with the awesomely huge Hippopotami:
on the bank, you’re much taller;
going under, you’re smaller
and assuredly destined to die!



Ballade of the Bicameral Camel
by Michael R. Burch

There once was a camel who loved to ****.
Please get your lewd minds out of their slump!
He loved to give RIDES on his large, lordly lump!



The Echoless Green
by Michael R. Burch

for and after William Blake

At dawn, laughter rang
on the echoing green
as children at play
greeted the day.

At noon, smiles were seen
on the echoing green
as, children no more,
many fine vows they swore.

By twilight, their cries
had subsided to sighs.

Now night reigns supreme
on the echoless green.



Unlikely Mike
by Michael R. Burch

I married someone else’s fantasy;
she admired me despite my mutilations.

I loved her for her heart’s sake, and for mine.
I hid my face and changed its connotations.

And in the dark I danced—slight, Chaplinesque—
a metaphor myself. How could they know,

the undiscerning ones, that in the glow
of spotlights, sometimes love becomes burlesque?

Disfigured to my soul, I could not lose
or choose or name myself; I came to be

another of life’s odd dichotomies,
like Dickey’s Sheep Boy, Pan, or David Cruse:

as pale, as enigmatic. White, or black?
My color was a song, a changing track.



Spring Was Delayed
by Michael R. Burch

Winter came early:
the driving snows,
the delicate frosts
that crystallize

all we forget
or refuse to know,
all we regret
that makes us wise.

Spring was delayed:
the nubile rose,
the tentative sun,
the wind’s soft sighs,

all we omit
or refuse to show,
whatever we shield
behind guarded eyes.

Originally published by Borderless Journal



The Shijing or **** Jing (“Book of Songs” or “Book of Odes”) is the oldest Chinese poetry collection, with the poems included believed to date from around 1200 BC to 600 BC. According to tradition the poems were selected and edited by Confucius himself. Since most ancient poetry did not rhyme, these may be the world’s oldest extant rhyming poems.

Shijing Ode #4: “JIU MU”
ancient Chinese rhyming poem circa (1200 BC - 600 BC)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

In the South, beneath trees with drooping branches
thick with vines that make them shady,
we find our lovely princely lady:
May she repose in happiness!

In the South, beneath trees with drooping branches
whose clinging vines make hot days shady,
we wish love’s embrace for our lovely lady:
May she repose in happiness!

In the South, beneath trees with drooping branches
whose vines, entwining, make them shady,
we wish true love for our lovely lady:
May she repose in happiness!

Shijing Ode #6: “TAO YAO”
ancient Chinese rhyming poem circa (1200 BC - 600 BC)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The peach tree is elegant and tender;
its flowers are fragrant, and bright.
A young lady now enters her future home
and will manage it well, day and night.

The peach tree is elegant and tender;
its fruits are abundant, and sweet.
A young lady now enters her future home
and will make it welcome to everyone she greets.

The peach tree is elegant and tender;
it shelters with bough, leaf and flower.
A young lady now enters her future home
and will make it her family’s bower.

Shijing Ode #9: “HAN GUANG”
ancient Chinese rhyming poem circa (1200 BC - 600 BC)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

In the South tall trees without branches
offer men no shelter.
By the Han the girls loiter,
but it’s vain to entice them.
For the breadth of the Han
cannot be swum
and the length of the Jiang
requires more than a raft.

When cords of firewood are needed,
I would cut down tall thorns to bring them more.
Those girls on their way to their future homes?
I would feed their horses.
But the breadth of the Han
cannot be swum
and the length of the Jiang
requires more than a raft.

When cords of firewood are needed,
I would cut down tall trees to bring them more.
Those girls on their way to their future homes?
I would feed their colts.
But the breadth of the Han
cannot be swum
and the length of the Jiang
requires more than a raft.

Shijing Ode #10: “RU FEN”
ancient Chinese rhyming poem circa (1200 BC - 600 BC)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

By raised banks of the Ru,
I cut down branches in the brake.
Not seeing my lord
caused me heartache.

By raised banks of the Ru,
I cut down branches by the tide.
When I saw my lord at last,
he did not cast me aside.

The bream flashes its red tail;
the royal court’s a blazing fire.
Though it blazes afar,
still his loved ones are near ...

It was apparently believed that the bream’s tail turned red when it was in danger. Here the term “lord” does not necessarily mean the man in question was a royal himself. Chinese women of that era often called their husbands “lord.” Take, for instance, Ezra Pound’s famous loose translation “The River Merchant’s Wife.” Speaking of Pound, I borrowed the word “brake” from his translation of this poem, although I worked primarily from more accurate translations. In the final line, it may be that the wife or lover is suggesting that no matter what happens, the man in question will have a place to go, or perhaps she is urging him to return regardless. The original poem had “mother and father” rather than “family” or “loved ones,” but in those days young married couples often lived with the husband’s parents. So a suggestion to return to his parents could be a suggestion to return to his wife as well.

Shijing Ode #12: “QUE CHAO”
ancient Chinese rhyming poem circa (1200 BC - 600 BC)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The nest is the magpie's
but the dove occupies it.
A young lady’s soon heading to her future home;
a hundred carriages will attend her.

The nest is the magpie's
but the dove takes it over.
A young lady’s soon heading to her future home;
a hundred carriages will escort her.

The nest is the magpie's
but the dove possesses it.
A young lady’s soon heading to her future home;
a hundred carriages complete her procession.

Shijing Ode #26: “BO ZHOU” from “The Odes of Bei”
ancient Chinese rhyming poem circa (1200 BC - 600 BC)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This cypress-wood boat floats about,
meandering with the current.
Meanwhile, I am distraught and sleepless,
as if inflicted with a painful wound.
Not because I have no wine,
and can’t wander aimlessly about!

But my mind is not a mirror
able to echo all impressions.
Yes, I have brothers,
but they are undependable.
I meet their anger with silence.

My mind is not a stone
to be easily cast aside.
My mind is not a mat
to be conveniently rolled up.
My conduct so far has been exemplary,
with nothing to criticize.

Yet my anxious heart hesitates
because I’m hated by the herd,
inflicted with many distresses,
heaped with insults, not a few.
Silently I consider my case,
until, startled, as if from sleep, I clutch my breast.

Consider the sun and the moon:
how did the latter exceed the former?
Now sorrow clings to my heart
like an unwashed dress.
Silently I consider my options,
but lack the wings to fly away.



The Drawer of Mermaids
by Michael R. Burch

This poem is dedicated to Alina Karimova, who was born with severely deformed legs and five fingers missing. Alina loves to draw mermaids and believes her fingers will eventually grow out.

Although I am only four years old,
they say that I have an old soul.
I must have been born long, long ago,
here, where the eerie mountains glow
at night, in the Urals.

A madman named Geiger has cursed these slopes;
now, shut in at night, the emphatic ticking
fills us with dread.
(Still, my momma hopes
that I will soon walk with my new legs.)

It’s not so much legs as the fingers I miss,
drawing the mermaids under the ledges.
(Observing, Papa will kiss me
in all his distracted joy;
but why does he cry?)

And there is a boy
who whispers my name.
Then I am not lame;
for I leap, and I follow.
(G’amma brings a wiseman who says

our infirmities are ours, not God’s,
that someday a beautiful Child
will return from the stars,
and then my new fingers will grow
if only I trust Him; and so

I am preparing to meet Him, to go,
should He care to receive me.)

Keywords/Tags: mermaid, mermaids, child, children, childhood, Urals, Ural Mountains, soul, soulmate, radiation



On the Horns of a Dilemma (I)
by Michael R. Burch

Love has become preposterous
for the over-endowed rhinoceros:
when he meets the right miss
how the hell can he kiss
when his horn is so ***** it lofts her thus?

I need an artist or cartoonist to create an image of a male rhino lifting his prospective mate into the air during an abortive kiss. Any takers?



On the Horns of a Dilemma (II)
by Michael R. Burch

Love has become preposterous
for the over-endowed rhinoceros:
when he meets the right miss
how the hell can he kiss
when his horn deforms her esophagus?



On the Horns of a Dilemma (III)
by Michael R. Burch

A wino rhino said, “I know!
I have a horn I cannot blow!
And so,
ergo,
I’ll watch the lovely spigot flow!



The Horns of a Dilemma Solved, if not Solvent
by Michael R. Burch

A wine-addled rhino debated
the prospect of living unmated
due to the scorn
gals showed for his horn,
then lost it to poachers, sedated.



The Arrival of the Sea Lions
by Michael R. Burch

The sound
of hounds
resounds in the sound.



Hounds Impounded
by Michael R. Burch

The sound
of hounds
resounds
in the pound.



Prince Kiwi the Great
by Michael R. Burch

Kiwi’s
a ***-wee
but incredibly bright:
he sleeps half the day,
pretending it’s night!

Prince Kiwi
commands us
with his regal air:
“Come, humans, and serve me,
or I’ll yank your hair!”

Kiwi
cries “Kree! Kree!”
when he wants to be fed ...
suns, preens, flutters, showers,
then it’s off to bed.

Kiwi’s
a ***-wee
but incredibly bright:
he sleeps half the day,
pretending it’s night!

Kiwi is our family’s green-cheeked parakeet. Parakeets need to sleep around 12 hours per day, hence the pun on “bright” and “half the day.”



Ah! Sunflower
by Michael R. Burch

after William Blake

O little yellow flower
like a star ...
how beautiful,
how wonderful
we are!

Published as the collection "When Pigs Fly"

You lived alone in the solititude
Of pure hundred years in Colombia
Roaming in Amacondo with a Spanish tongue
Carrying the bones of your grandmother in a sisal sag
On your poverty written Colombian back,
Gadabouting to make love in times of cholera,
On none other than your bitter-sweet memories
Of your melancholic ***** the daughter of Castro,
Your cowardice made you to fear your momentous life
In this glorious and poetic time of April 2014,
Only to succumb to untimely black death
That similarly dimunitized your cultural ancestor;
Miguel de Cervantes, a quixotic Spaniard,
You were to write to the colonel for your life,
Before eating the cockerel you had ear-marked
For Olympic cockfight, the hope of the oppressed,
Come back from death, you dear Marquez
To tell me more stories fanaticism to surrealism,
From Tarzanic Africa the fabulous land
An avatar of evil gods that are impish propre
Only Vitian Naipaul and Salman Rushdie are not enough,
For both of them are so naïve to tell the African stories,
I will miss you a lot the rest of my life, my dear Garbo,
But I will ever carry your living soul, my dear Garcia,
Soul of your literature and poetry in a Maasai kioondo
On my broad African shoulders during my journey of art,
When coming to America to look for your culture
That gave you versatile tongue and quill of a pen,
Both I will take as your memento and crystallize them
Into my future thespic umbrella of orature and literature.

Depression is not sadness
Depression leaves a hole in your chest
Depression ***** everything out of you
Depression is not having a bad day. A bad day, a bad week, even a bad few months.
Depression lingers for years. There are no good moments. Moments of feeling "better" do not ever exist. Depression does not leave.
Depression will become your best friend
Depression will always be there for you
Depression is the tunnel with no light at the end
(Or at least, the point of view is)
Depression is not hope
Depression is not sadness.

Anxiety is not nervousness.
Anxiety is the sweat that bubbles to the surface of your palms
Anxiety is the clenching of your jaw
Anxiety is the shaking of your hands
Anxiety is not a few butterflies in your stomach
Anxiety removes your stomach
Anxiety makes you feel like it is not there. Food is out of the question.
Anxiety is dark circles under your eyes for months on end.
Anxiety is being over tired. Exhausted. But not being able to sleep.
Anxiety builds an Olympic racetrack around every part of your mind.
Anxiety then holds the next races there. Day races, night races, races that do not stop.
Anxiety is not one panic attack. Or even two.
Anxiety is not nervousness.

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY
OF HISTORY IN VERSE : PART ONE
              BY RAJ NANDY
              INTRODUCTION
The very mention of History brings to mind
many civilizations, its wars, with endless
succession of ruling dynasties and kings;
Its many dates and events, which appear to be
rather dull and boring!
“If history were taught in the form of stories, it
would never be forgotten”, said Rudyard Kipling!
So if a good teacher of History narrates those
events like a story within a broad chronological
frame work,
While skillfully linking the present in light of the
past;
Mentioning both important and lesser known
interesting facts to arouse the interest of his
class; -
History would be better appreciated by us!
Perhaps in its narrowest sense, History may be
viewed only as a chronological succession of
dates and past events!
But let me assure you that History is a dynamic
linear progression, adapting and evolving with
changing times,
As present recedes into the past all the while!
These changes could be environmental, socio-
economic, or political changes faced by mankind.
But we remain as a living part of History all the
while!
Yet while we live through History, we fail to realize
the impact we make upon history and time;
And this is perhaps the very magic and enigma of
History,
Which occasionally lends it a touch of mystery!
Our family album is a record of our history we
create and leave behind at the micro level;
Just as past civilizations have left behind their imprints
in their architecture, statues, literature, and works
of art at the macro level !
History breathes and speaks to us from the distant
past,
If only we could pause to hear its unspoken words,
As the Romantic poet John Keats had once heard!
Keats’  “Ode on a Grecian Urn” composed during
early 19th century, -
Harks back to the Classical Age of Greek History!
Keats waxes eloquent in his description of pastoral
scenes painted on the urn which lies frozen in time;
While Keats leaves behind his exalted and eternal
aesthetic message - ‘Beauty is Truth and Truth
Beauty’, - which shall outlive our mortal time!
So it is with History, like the Grecian urn the past  
remains eternalized in time with its lessons and
stories;
While it beckons us to unravel her mysteries!
For the historian, the architect, the geologist,
the anthropologist, scholars and the artist,
‘’History is a continuous dialogue between
the present and the past’’;
As observed by the English historian and
diplomat EW Carr.
Even though we cannot change the past, we can
surely absorb the lessons it has left behind for us!
The Spanish born American philosopher George
Santayana had said; -
“Those who cannot remember the past are
condemned to repeat it!”
The Dutch philosopher Soren Kierkegaard had
once remarked; -
“Life must be lived forward, but it can only be
understood backward.”
So let us learn from past History to create a
better future for humanity.
For the past gives us a sense of belonging
and an identity;
Since our very roots lie enshrined in History!
By the time you complete reading my entire
composition,
I hope to convert you into a Lover of History
by broadening your perception!

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF HISTORY!
Ancient Greece, the cradle of Western Civilization
during the 6th century BC, -
Saw the birth of Philosophy!
Thales of Miletus, Anaximenes, and Anaximander,
from the Greek colony of Ionia on the west coast
of Asia Minor,  (now Turkey)
Broke the previous shackles of all mythical and
superstitious explanations.
With their questioning mind and rational thinking
they sought,  -
To seek the real behind the apparent, and substance
behind the shadow;
By seeking natural and logical reasons for explaining
natural phenomena, -
Free from all previous religious and mythical
interpretations!
Thus, these Milesian School of thinkers in their quest
for truth with their intellectual lust, -
Gave rise to ‘philosophia’, Greek word for ‘love
of truth’, an early birth!
Subsequently, this newly born Greek Philosophy with
its progressive thoughts inspired scientific methods
of inquiry;
Along with Logic, trial by Jury, and the very concept
of Democracy!
The Greeks also inspired Literature, History, Tragedy,
Comedy, the Olympic Games, Astronomy, and Geometry!
Around 500 BC the Greek written script had stabilized,
going from left to right;
And the first addition of vowel letters by the Greeks
to the adopted Phoenician consonants, can never
be denied!
The first two Greek letters ‘alpha’ and ‘beta’ which
gave the name to our Alphabets forms a part of
early History.
Now Herodotus, during the 5th century BC, had
inherited this intellectual Greek Legacy!

HERODOTUS – ‘THE FATHER OF HISTORY’
Herodotus is said to have been born in the ancient
Dorian Greek city of Halicarnassus in south-west
Asia Minor, which is now Turkey;
During the latter half of 5th century BC!
During his days, the city was under the rule of Persia;
Since the Persians had captured the Greek colonies
in Asia Minor!
Frequent revolts by these colonies against the
Persians with help from Athens,
Made the Persian King Darius, and later his son
Xerxes, - decide to invade Athens!
The Persians also wanted to extend their Empire
into Europe across the Bosporus Strait, -
Which divided Asia from Europe in those days!

In 490 BC, when the massive Persian army of King
Darius landed at Marathon as assured victors;
The Athenian running courier Pheidippides ran
150 miles in two days, to seek help from Sparta!
Again later, he ran 25 miles from the battlefield
near Marathon to Athens, to announce that the
Greeks became the final victors!
This historic run by Pheidippides gave rise to the
discipline of Marathon, in our Olympic Games
later on!
Such Marathon runs are now held in many cities
of the world annually,
Thus we remain connected with our past as you
can clearly see!
Years later in 425 BC, Herodotus narrated these
invasions in his famous narrative ‘Histories’.
Cicero the Roman scholar, philosopher and orator,
Had called Herodotus the ‘Father of History’ many
centuries later!
Very little is known about Herodotus’ early life,
But from historical evidence which survive,
We learn about his stay in Athens, and his many
wanderings;
Visiting Egypt, Libya, Syria, Babylon, Susa in Elam,
Lydia, and Phrygia;
Collecting information which he called ‘autopsies’
or ‘personal inquiries’, and hearing many stories;
Prior to composing his famous ‘Histories’!

“THE HISTORIES”: HERODOTUS (430-425BC)
This was written in prose in the Iconic dialect of
Classical Greek,
Covers the background, causes, and events of the
Greco-Persian Wars between 490 and 479 BC.  
Scholars divided the entire work into 9 Books, with
each dedicated to a Greek Muse, - those goddesses
of art and knowledge,
Thereby the Homeric tradition they did acknowledge!
For example, Book-I was dedicated to Calliope, the
Muse of Epic Poetry, and Book-II to Clio, the Muse
of History.
Herodotus begins his narration with these following
words;-
“Here is the account of the inquiry of Herodotus of
Halicarnassus in order that the deeds of men not be
erased by time, and that the great and miraculous
works – both of the Greeks and the barbarians not
go unrecorded.”
Now Herodotus with his lucid narrative style, had
pioneered the writing of History with a specific
framework of space and time!
His style got emulated by later writers of History,
Who improved their narration with better authentic
source and methodology;
Thereby giving birth to the subject of ‘Historiography’.
(Historiography = critical examination of source & selection
of authentic material, synthesis of particulars into a narrative
whole, which shall stand the test of critical methods.)

HERODOTUS’ ‘INQUIRY’ GAVE BIRTH TO ‘HISTORY’!
The ancient Greek word “historia” meant ‘knowledge
acquired by investigation or inquiry’’, and the Greek
‘histore’ meant ‘inquiry’.  
It was in this sense Aristotle later used it in his ‘’Inquires
on Animals’’- during the 4th Century BC;
And this mode of ‘inquiry’ later became ‘History’!
The term ‘History’ entered English language in 1390
as a “record of past incidents and story”.
However, the restriction to the meaning “record of
past events” only, came during the 15th century.
But the German word ‘Geschichte’ even to this day,
Means both history and story, without making
distinction in any way!
Since the story element remains inbuilt in all historical
narrations,
And also remains as a tribute to its author’s creation!
CONCLUDING PORTION WILL BE POSTED LATER AS
PART-TWO. Thanks, - RAJ NANDY.
**ALL COPY RIGHTS WITH THE AUTHOR RAJ NANDY,
OF NEW DELHI

Thirty six years after they last were held in  pre-war Berlin
The games of the Olympiad were all set to begin
This time though, in Munich, set to host the sports worlds greatest show
It was the night before the opening, and all were set to go

August 26th, the games did start and all was going well
But ten days in, the world was shook, and Munich was now a hell
Where terrorists changed how the world would see these famous games
From that date on, The Olympic world, would never be the same

Mark Spitz, that year, set records as he won seven swimming golds
Olga Korbut, elfin princess, stole our hearts with moves so bold
Frank Shorter won the marathon for America, and he was German born
But, Munich's games are famous for the actions, that September morn

Close your eyes, remember back, if you are of the age
Remember those victorious, who were outstanding on that stage
Steve Prefontaine, he came up short, Lasse Viren, he did what he set to do
Think back now to that late summer day in nineteen seventy two

Eyes closed, still remember....David Berger, Mark Slavin and Kehatt Shorr
Seew Friedman, Josef Gutfreund,Elieser Halfin, and you know there is five more
Josef Romano, Amizur Shapira, not tweaking any pictures in your mind,
Andre Spitzer, Jaakow Springer, Mosche Weinberger...any memories do you find?

These men all were Olympians, judges, coaches, athletes, refs
September 5th is now famous, it's remembered for their deaths
They all should be remembered, for their lives, for why they came
They all reached the highest level, they had made it to The Games

Did they ever win a medal ? Would they ever get their glory?
They're remembered as a victim, unfortunately that's their story
It's 40 years on, London hosts, The IOC does not
Take a single minute, give these Olympians a thought

Now close your eyes again and think, could that happen once again
Could terrorists take Olympic lives, could they come and **** like then
Now if I repeat all the names I mentioned, you may not see their face
But, for one short shining moment, please put them in their earned space

Eyes closed, still remember....David Berger, Mark Slavin and Kehatt Shorr
Seew Friedman, Josef Gutfreund,Elieser Halfin, and you know there is five more
Josef Romano, Amizur Shapira, not tweaking any pictures in your mind,
Andre Spitzer, Jaakow Springer, Mosche Weinberger...any memories do you find?

A REACTIONARY TRACT FOR THE TIMES

(Phi Beta Kappa Poem, Harvard, 1946)

Ares at last has quit the field,
The bloodstains on the bushes yield
To seeping showers,
And in their convalescent state
The fractured towns associate
With summer flowers.

Encamped upon the college plain
Raw veterans already train
As freshman forces;
Instructors with sarcastic tongue
Shepherd the battle-weary young
Through basic courses.

Among bewildering appliances
For mastering the arts and sciences
They stroll or run,
And nerves that steeled themselves to slaughter
Are shot to pieces by the shorter
Poems of Donne.

Professors back from secret missions
Resume their proper eruditions,
Though some regret it;
They liked their dictaphones a lot,
T hey met some big wheels, and do not
Let you forget it.

But Zeus' inscrutable decree
Permits the will-to-disagree
To be pandemic,
Ordains that vaudeville shall preach
And every commencement speech
Be a polemic.

Let Ares doze, that other war
Is instantly declared once more
'Twixt those who follow
Precocious Hermes all the way
And those who without qualms obey
Pompous Apollo.

Brutal like all Olympic games,
Though fought with smiles and Christian names
And less dramatic,
This dialectic strife between
The civil gods is just as mean,
And more fanatic.

What high immortals do in mirth
Is life and death on Middle Earth;
Their a-historic
Antipathy forever gripes
All ages and somatic types,
The sophomoric

Who face the future's darkest hints
With giggles or with prairie squints
As stout as Cortez,
And those who like myself turn pale
As we approach with ragged sail
The fattening forties.

The sons of Hermes love to play
And only do their best when they
Are told they oughtn't;
Apollo's children never shrink
From boring jobs but have to think
Their work important.

Related by antithesis,
A compromise between us is
Impossible;
Respect perhaps but friendship never:
Falstaff the fool confronts forever
The **** Prince Hal.

If he would leave the self alone,
Apollo's welcome to the throne,
Fasces and falcons;
He loves to rule, has always done it;
The earth would soon, did Hermes run it,
Be like the Balkans.

But jealous of our god of dreams,
His common-sense in secret schemes
To rule the heart;
Unable to invent the lyre,
Creates with simulated fire
Official art.

And when he occupies a college,
Truth is replaced by Useful Knowledge;
He pays particular
Attention to Commercial Thought,
Public Relations, Hygiene, Sport,
In his curricula.

Athletic, extrovert and crude,
For him, to work in solitude
Is the offence,
The goal a populous Nirvana:
His shield bears this device: Mens sana
Qui mal y pense.

Today his arms, we must confess,
From Right to Left have met success,
His banners wave
From Yale to Princeton, and the news
From Broadway to the Book Reviews
Is very grave.

His radio Homers all day long
In over-Whitmanated song
That does not scan,
With adjectives laid end to end,
Extol the doughnut and commend
The Common Man.

His, too, each homely lyric thing
On sport or spousal love or spring
Or dogs or dusters,
Invented by some court-house bard
For recitation by the yard
In filibusters.

To him ascend the prize orations
And sets of fugal variations
On some folk-ballad,
While dietitians sacrifice
A glass of prune-juice or a nice
Marsh-mallow salad.

Charged with his compound of sensational
*** plus some undenominational
Religious matter,
Enormous novels by co-eds
Rain down on our defenceless heads
Till our teeth chatter.

In fake Hermetic uniforms
Behind our battle-line, in swarms
That keep alighting,
His existentialists declare
That they are in complete despair,
Yet go on writing.

No matter; He shall be defied;
White Aphrodite is on our side:
What though his threat
To organize us grow more critical?
Zeus willing, we, the unpolitical,
Shall beat him yet.

Lone scholars, sniping from the walls
Of learned periodicals,
Our facts defend,
Our intellectual marines,
Landing in little magazines
Capture a trend.

By night our student Underground
At cocktail parties whisper round
From ear to ear;
Fat figures in the public eye
Collapse next morning, ambushed by
Some witty sneer.

In our morale must lie our strength:
So, that we may behold at length
Routed Apollo's
Battalions melt away like fog,
Keep well the Hermetic Decalogue,
Which runs as follows:--

Thou shalt not do as the dean pleases,
Thou shalt not write thy doctor's thesis
On education,
Thou shalt not worship projects nor
Shalt thou or thine bow down before
Administration.

Thou shalt not answer questionnaires
Or quizzes upon World-Affairs,
Nor with compliance
Take any test. Thou shalt not sit
With statisticians nor commit
A social science.

Thou shalt not be on friendly terms
With guys in advertising firms,
Nor speak with such
As read the Bible for its prose,
Nor, above all, make love to those
Who wash too much.

Thou shalt not live within thy means
Nor on plain water and raw greens.
If thou must choose
Between the chances, choose the odd;
Read The New Yorker, trust in God;
And take short views.

They’re really rockin’ in Bradford,
Off the Pennine Way.
Deep in the heart of Yorkshire
And round the Robin Hood’s Bay.
All over South Ossett
And down to New Farnley.
Roast beef and Yorkie Puddings,
God’s Own County, Yay!

Yull see ‘em rambling at Ilkley,
Right to the county line,
Sheffield steel and Wednesday –
A football team so fine.
Better still, Leeds United,
Greatest club of all time.

Yorkshire, Kings of Cricket,
Oh what a boon!
Get down that wicket,
We’ll be champs by June.
Down a ginnel or snicket,
See our Olympic Champs.
Coal Miner Picket,
Relight those lamps.

Racing pigeons and ferrets,
Stereotypes tha knows.
Over t’top in Lancashire,
Them there’s our foes.
We’re the greatest county,
Our pride really glows.
We know you all hate us,
It keeps us on our toes.

So we’ll be rockin’ in Yorkshire,
What more can I say?
Us Tykes 're as barmy as Barnsley,
So I’ll be on my way.

Paul Butters

(With due thanks to Chuck Berry and also The Beach Boys)

Superheroes inspire us all,
superheroes make us marvel.
Superheroes are adored
from Beijing to Washington D.C.

But superheroes don't wear capes,
they wear a '96 Olympic shirt
and loose-fitting pants
you would never catch me in.

They don't have x-ray vision,
they've worn glasses
for as long as you remember.
They cannot fly,
and yet they seem larger than life.

They never seem to lie,
and they still say "I love you"
in the exact same way
almost sixty years after they bound it to eternity.

They don't have super-strength,
but they are your super strength
and they lift you up
until you can do it on your own.

They seem invincible,
but life has a way of reminding you
that even Superman has Kryptonite.

They are stubbornly steady
even when the bill of health
isn't clean.
Just as they are your strength,
you feel your aching mortality
when you find out
even superheroes get cancer.

Yet somehow,
after their greatest battle is fought,
there they are in all that remains
spreading an unyielding light
upon whoever sees them soaring by.


We wear an "S", a bat,
or even a spider
to pretend that we are our heroes
and emulate their image;
but I won't wear that old shirt,
or those terrible, worn-in jeans.
Instead,
I'll harness that unbreakable spirit,
and maybe one day
I'll be a superhero too.

Go hang yourself, you old M.D.!
You shall not sneer at me.
Pick up your hat and stethoscope,
Go wash your mouth with laundry soap;
I contemplate a joy exquisite
I'm not paying you for your visit.
I did not call you to be told
My malady is a common cold.

By pounding brow and swollen lip;
By fever's hot and scaly grip;
By those two red redundant eyes
That weep like woeful April skies;
By racking snuffle, snort, and sniff;
By handkerchief after handkerchief;
This cold you wave away as naught
Is the damnedest cold man ever caught!

Give ear, you scientific fossil!
Here is the genuine Cold Colossal;
The Cold of which researchers dream,
The Perfect Cold, the Cold Supreme.
This honored system humbly holds
The Super-cold to end all colds;
The Cold Crusading for Democracy;
The Führer of the Streptococcracy.

Bacilli swarm within my portals
Such as were ne'er conceived by mortals,
But bred by scientists wise and hoary
In some Olympic laboratory;
Bacteria as large as mice,
With feet of fire and heads of ice
Who never interrupt for slumber
Their stamping elephantine rumba.

A common cold, gadzooks, forsooth!
Ah, yes. And Lincoln was jostled by Booth;
Don Juan was a budding gallant,
And Shakespeare's plays show signs of talent;
The Arctic winter is fairly coolish,
And your diagnosis is fairly foolish.
Oh what a derision history holds
For the man who belittled the Cold of Colds!

.i'm sorry, but i've looked at english grammar for far too long, to buy into the current *******... i just came from behind the iron curtain, i'm not about to go into "hiding" under a silicon curtain... valley my ***, silicon curtain, the end. gender, "neutral" pronouns? pronouns can't be "neutral", neutered... neuter via plural? they being a non-descriptive associated of both a he and a she? ****... most languages can't escape gender-inclusivity of their nouns... for example, names of cities... now you can have gender neutral nouns, i'll concede that... London: gender neutral... Paris: gender neutral... and then of course the more universal nouns in English, predicated by either a definite or an indefinite article: making gender-ascription to nouns even harder... because that's how the english language operates: something is either definite, or it's indefinite... all the continent languages, however, ascribe genders to their nouns... either masculine or feminine, or whatever... is this some sort of quasi-anglophone envy of continent languages? say, in my nativspreschen... słońce (the sun) is feminine... księżyc (the moon) is masculine... Warszawa (Warsaw) is feminine... Niemcy (Germany) is actually gender neutral, in that it refers to a people... Rosja (Russian) is feminine... Anglia (England) is feminine... there is noun-ambiguity regarding "gender" in continental languages... which the English language lacks: due to the definite / indefinite articulation via (a- -the      "ism")... pronoun gender "neutrality" never existed... because... gender-appropriation of nouns was never on the cards in this language... and never will be... come on... you really don't need some foreigner to tell you the basics of your own tongue... i hate to even associate myself with such pieces as are provided in the form of the "useful idiots"... i hate it... it's like asking to fiddle about with a down syndrome competitor at a su doku olympics... it's not fair!

i only really had two loves in my life... Paris, circa 2005 and Edinburgh circa in the range of 2004 through to 2007... those really were my only true loves... London? London just grew on me, esp. the east end... i became infected with its heterogeneity, so much so, that whenever i visit my grandparents, in the most feral of lands, Poland... and peer into its homogeneity, i am fed a staggering amount of nausea... sure, once in a while you'll spot a Roma in these parts, handling cheap chinese goods at the market, but otherwise? and... given, that i'm a first generation expatriate (eh, eh? i know what the natives call their own, "elsewhere", akin to h'america or australia)...

                 the girlfriends? eh... two, three, more prostitutes...
whoever these middle-aged men are, talking m.g.t.o.w., after two failed marriages... i was already on my way, aged 21... sure, it was fun for the first few years... i remember the tingling sensation of holding my first girlfriend's hand while watching romeo + juliet in her father's presence... that **** was cool... it's still so vivid to me... again: slandering women is not cool... i remember these girlfriends with a fondness... i don't want the anchor of bitterness to put me in one place... fondness is all the wind in the sails you will ever need to sail along... and... em... stealing one or two kisses from prostitutes... that's all...

                      the last one i left? 21... she married...
she remarried...
            and she ****** quiet a bit in between...
last time i visisted her out of a weird sense of obligation...
hand... slashed down their veins...
             i stayed for about four days...
   over a period of two nights i slept with the window
open, with my clothes on...
third night i took my clothes off...
                i inquired...
           she was waking up each morning with
a jug of coffee and turned into:
   less a masters in anthropology...
and more the russian gamer chick...
                     one night she called up her
sycophants...
               we smoked...
                     her husband wasn't home...
"then", her, "still"(?) huspand?
                   but her boyfriend was there...
i was sitting akimbo and talking to this guy...
and he told me how he ******:
my would be fiancé...
                           well... i just broke down
into the most amazing laughter...
   a laughter that put me to sleep,
a laughter that made all the people leave,
and i was left with her, alone,
in a room...
              she was still playing a video game...
while i got up and rolled another joint...
but the whole joke comes at the fact that:
i, i was the person who was always dumped...
ilona, promis, isabella...
                           they all dumped me...
but... what, a, *******, relief!
               maybe that's why i came to terms
with myself, maybe that's why
drinking in ms. amber's company
is such a joyous treat...
                 unlike most drunks...
esp. women: i do not wallow in grief,
or for that matter... hold any grievances...
all that has happened,
   has, happened, in order that i might find:
release, and in finding my release...
relief!

                            i had to mention these
scenarios... i remember the last words ilona
said to me: blah blah... by doing x
as you've continued to displease me...
blah blah... you'll never become a man!
                    true...
                                ­ who the **** want's
to be an ahston court trained poodle?!
   what, enough ***** to keep the economy
going?
        everyone knows that women
are the crown of capitalism...
                     no woman, no crown, no capitalism...
it's not even socialism at this point,
or anarchy... it's... eh... m'eh?
                                 why do only fools and horses
marry?
          ****, if there was a swan ontology
built into man? maybe... after all...
                    there is such a phenomenon
(more like a noumenon) of the widow swan,
or a widower swan...
      it's as if the animal has lost its
physical union, and transitioned into
a metaphysical union, beside the body...
   a realm of perpetuated memory,
   awaiting transcendence...
         now... i believe there's a godhead for
all things in this world...
there's the godhead of swans,
   as there is the godhead of all the other creatures...
which: gushes out ontological cueues...
pointers...
                    after all, i already said what
my two true loves were...

        Paris and Edinburgh...
                   i remember the first time i arrived
in Paris...
when i reached 3 Ducks hostel in Paris,
the guy in charge, was surprised,
that i managed to walk,
   all the way from where the drop-off was
for people arriving from the airport
by coach, some 40+ miles from Paris itself...
i walked... i breathed... i was amazed
at the Eiffel Tower...
   most people just took the underground...
plus i had a really ****** map...
didn't speak the language...
                    but that year... circa 2005... Paris...
      that was...
                          something else...
or Edinburgh, circa 2004...
                    thank god i didn't apply
to Warwick university...
      campus university *******...
         Bristol? eh... the city didn't appeal
to me...
                   Edinburgh... that's something
else...
                    even Venice is more or less:
passable...
                      
              mind you... what's this current
transgender debate about men thinking they're
women, competing in women's sports?
today i saw the perfect example
of a decent woman's sport...
  tennis... haleb vs. linette...
       **** on me, what a match...
no. 3 seed versus no. 87 in world ranking...
                          i prefer women's tennis...
with male tennis its all about
the service game: "****" advantage...
but at least in woman's tennis,
   you get longer rallies...
   and the antithesis of what an ****** sounds
like... and all that show of legs...
it's beautiful...
       beside... this "new" transgender "thing",
that **** is old...
     i always confuse the two...
     DDR...                        FDR...
Deutsche Demokratische Republik...
          Federal Republic of Germany...
   so, yeah... the former... DDR...
                 and i've heard this many times...
the same happened back then,
at the olympic games...
                          it's a joke now...
  but women from the DDR were given hormones...
to make them more masculine...
           only that... it was real chemistry
working on real biology...
   women, were given male hormones...
and competed with other females...
          now?
                      em... what if these "women",
want to compete with women...
       and can do so... if given female hormones,
added with a cocktail of male hormone
blockers?!
         the whole olympic circus is already
rigged with chemistry...
**** it: ***** all of them!
                   may the best chemist win!
**** it, jack 'em up! give each and everyone
of them the best juice!
swear to god,
   all the female atheletes back in the days
of DDR were given some hormonal++ juice...
maybe a mix of amphetamines and
        steroids...
       so... if these "women" want to
compete with women?
                     shouldn't they be given...
say... the realistic dosage of hormones...
         a body of a natural woman creates?!

****, in a time when a bilingual is deemed
a schizophrenic... because he's not a polyglot...
of course the trans movement was always going
to undermine women...
     that's why i decided, aged 21...
no... you know what?
                        i don't like stress...
              loved you, but thank god i left you...
Paris and Edinburgh became my two true loves...
and... given they're cities...
they are as intricate as any person might be...
so... not to be demeaning...
                  but a cat and mouse game...
and then being dumped...
                               i settled for the next best
thing... once a year... ****... once every five years...
if there's any Jack the Ripper urge "lurking"
in me...
                         just visit a brothel
to check your body temp. against another
body, and see if you can share the same pulse.

but as you might have already guessed,
this was the original draft:

tattooing an impermant
mark on the left arm:

    h-
              (e)
         -a-
     (lef)
                -y
                       (od)

what yah /          
יאח‎          demands...

ה‎ (he) + א‎ (alef),
   and   ח‎ (het) + ע (ayin) -

i.e. the tetragrammaton
squared -
  laughter of the interchange.         ע

p.s. i still don't
see how Adam conceived of
Abel, or Cain...
   how a-lef or a-yin is a consonant,
transcendent...
given the hebrew ah is:
guised in the name kametz...

i see a story of two Adams...
and i called them,
Aleph                  and Ayin.

With a personal trainer and a former Olympic champion for parents, it's no wonder that Summer Needs is a little water baby. The six-week-old daughter of Rebecca Adlington and Harry Needs has only just arrived into the world, but she's already enjoyed a dip in the pool three times.

Becky, who has previously said that giving birth was harder than winning her gold medals, has opened up about her baby's first swimming lesson – and how much motherhood has changed her life.

"It was absolutely brilliant," Becky told HELLO! Online of Summer's first dip. "You never know how babies are going to react but Summer was absolutely brilliant in the water. When we first bathed her, she just screamed the whole time so I was a bit worried but now she loves bath time."

Baby Summer was just three and a half weeks old when she first had a splash in the pool, and since then, new parents Becky and Harry have taken their daughter back twice.

"We both love being in the water so for us, it's amazing that we can take her in and share this family time together," said Becky. "Harry and I go in the water and pass her to one another and take turns going under the water. She comes back up, blinks a lot and there's been no tears at all. It's going really well so far."

Calling it her best memory yet, Becky, 26, added: "That's the one thing I was so excited about, taking her swimming and buying the costumes. She can't do much at this stage – we can't take her to the zoo and she doesn't really play with toys yet – but swimming is the one thing she can do and we can all do it together as a family."

Speaking about her little one, Becky, who says Summer has her eyes and Harry's nose, said: "She's really content. She's really laid back and chilled but when she wants something, like her ***** changed or she wants food, she definitely lets you know about it. She's a bit feisty in that way and she doesn't give you much warning.

"It's like, 'I want it now'. And you have to let her scream for a little bit while you get it ready and you're like, 'Okay Summer just chill out, you've literally gone from fast asleep to bawling your head off!' She's a bit impatient like us as well."

While Becky has been on maternity leave, personal trainer Harry went straight back to work after one week, but the nature of his job – working in the early mornings and late at night – has meant that he hasn't missed out on taking care of Summer during the day.

"Harry's definitely hands-on," said the former Olympian. "He's been changing her and feeding her. We share the responsibility and he's around for everything – he's seen Summer smile for the first time. It's hard for him because he's juggling work with family time but he's been absolutely amazing."

The Mansfield-born star has fully embraced her new role as a mother – something she has always wanted to be.

"Life is completely different but not in a bad way," she admitted. "You have to plan a bit more, you can't just walk out the house, but at the same time I've always wanted to be a mum.

"It's amazing how you love your baby straight away. You can't really explain it, you can't describe it. People spoke to me before about unconditional love and that you'll do anything for your baby, but you don't really realise it until it happens to you. It's bizarre because you don't know them and they don't know you but you just love them so much. It's absolutely amazing.

"It's definitely been life-changing but I guess it'll change when I go back to work, when Summer starts nursery. You have to accept that life will never be the same again but that's what's so exciting."

Describing motherhood in a nutshell, Becky added: "I'm such a family girl, it's amazing having that family time. It makes you realise that that's all you really need in life, as long as your family are happy and healthy then that's all that matters."

It's early days but the couple have already spoken about having more children.

Becky said: "About two days after I gave birth, Harry asked, 'So babe, when are we gonna try for another?' I said 'Not yet, I need my body to recover!' Nine months being pregnant is a long time! We do want a big family and we'd like a close age gap between our children, but we also want to give our time to Summer."

Becky, who has partnered with HUGGIES® Little Swimmers®, is encouraging all parents to don their swimsuits and have fun with their little ones in the water – even if babies and children are a little hesitant at first.

"For a kid who's absolutely tiny, that big pool is very, very big," said Becky. "Parents should recognise that each step is a huge achievement. Even if their child is just sitting on the side with their feet in the pool, that's better than last week when they just stood around.

"It's about persistence and taking them swimming regularly, and then that fear will disappear. Also taking them out of their lessons and going together as a family is good. If your children see you in the water as a parent, they'll know it's not a scary place."

read more:www.marieaustralia.com/red-carpet-celebrity-dresses

www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses

^or the equivalent of the bushidō, i.e. way of the citizen: shimin dōro (shimindō).

it's truly electrifying watching the Olympics, the diversity of
bodies, it simply shames the football ballerinas
complaining about their tiaras
and fouls *****-whiskers tingling **** -
oh ooh oh god, the end of the world!
i finally find my body type,
Greco-Roman 130 kg wrestling,
or 105 kg weightlifting, no six pack...
you watch the Olympics long enough to
sterilise what's otherwise turkey-feeding
of image... i think the discus throwers
are hot, the archery from South Korean with
their porcelain pelicans shattering on the one touch...
the Croat beauty is atypical of
Slaven Bilić - itch - that's a diacritical mark
that's itchy - breve or acute... c̆ that alternative,
along with the c̆ech - Český Krumlov - chequers-ski -
Gucci and other associates of Milan did
a runner... we don't accept anorexic in the
Paraolympics... maybe we should enter old twiggy
daddy longshanks in the races... invent
Metaolympics...  so i found out where i'm designated,
130kg Greco-Roman wrestling and 105kg weightlifting...
that's my body... if i were to be tyrannised by
the dictatorial rule of volleyball and football
i'd be nowhere... no spectrum, no difference...
some like Twiggy Ramirez at the ping pong shoo
(**** **** ****... believe me,
non-purpose onomatopoeia usage is a replacement
of sensibility knocking, i use it when i just
want a sound, not necessarily an accessible
direction of finalising a meaning) -
but watching the Olympics is like watching
the Greeks under Roman rule... the marble genius
of the spectrum of sizes... and coerced differences
ploughed into one...
which had me bewildered about the other duality,
i always thought that the Spartan way of life
was about raw physicality... that all Spartans
had to be physically fit, ten potato sacks on their
shoulders running up Etna...
and that the Athenians concerned themselves
with aesthetics of the arts and clues...
it's not about athletics at all...
i'm a Spartan in that respect, sure, i donned
the long hair like any Spartan might,
men with long hair, women with a Niqab, whatever,
Satan's postbox as the crude English myth said it was...
i might go and see a ballet, but let me tell you,
any first act of ballet is tedious... you can't warm up
to liking any ballet in the first act...
it's all downhill during the second and third acts,
but the first act is horrid...
i realised that there was another dimension of
the Spartan life, it's not the physicality at all...
Spartans' physicality is about efficiency,
we have weightlifters in Sparta, but we have
bodybuilders in Athens, the former concerns itself
in pragmatic matters, the latter in aesthetic matters...
same in art... the Spartan way concerning mental
aptitude is to do with the basics, with very little,
a minimalism, a park bench, a few beers,
a conversation... otherwise? the Athenian reign on
ballrooms, cocktails, royal dinners, flamboyance,
degeneracy, and outright excess...
forget the Olympic plus, the variations of bodies...
footballers and anorexic catwalk models...
we're talking blubber fetishes of Rembrandt -
then into the psychic life of Sparta - simplicity,
twinning with the Japanese way of life...
over and over again... simple fulfils perfection
by not competing, so self-absorbed it is,
so solipsistic it will remain... and it is an art-form
the Spartan life, if i get my sleep,
have my tobacco, a bottle of whiskey and a few beers,
a white page... the end.
the Athenian model discounts what that famous
Spartan argued for: carpenters, plumbers,
better than the claims of being a "son of god",
he broke out, on the prescription that ****** him
by the authorities: deus ex machina -
try imitating him, it's harder than you think.
the Athenian model of the arts and impracticality -
the Spartan model of geometry and practicality -
the Olympics taught me that the Spartan way of life
is not solely concerned with physical exercises,
that the physicality of body be the sole concern,
that one is to perfect the body...
the Spartan way of perfecting the mind is just as rigid
as the body demands... the pentagon of an event,
how strained is your hearing, your eyes or your tongue?
it concern the simplicity of all things being perfected,
rather than the Athenian counter of the complication
of all things being unlearned and in pyramidal schematics
expected: courtesy of approaching a king...
the dinner arrangements, the starter fork, the main meal
fork, the dessert fork... a Spartan would just look at it
and say: they can use chop-sticks because the chef
knew how to cut into bite size... i'll forget the knife
and use the one fork throughout the meal...
she better be wearing that crown of hers throughout
the meal... otherwise she's no queen, i'll just watch
her slurp the soup with that Mt. Fuji balancing on her head...
**** the airs, and all of Jane Austen.