Inconspicuous, his presence noted only by the obscurity and the ever growing number of spent cigarette stubs that littered the ground.  It had been a long day and the rain, relentless in its tenacity had little intention of stopping, baleful clouds still  hung heavy, dominating the lateness of the afternoon sky, a rain laden skyline broken only by smoke filled chimney pots and the tangled snarl of corroded television aerials.

     The once busy street was fast emptying now, the lure of shop windows no longer enticed the casual browser as local traders closed their premises to the oncoming night, solitary lampposts curved hazily into the distance, casting little more than insipid pools mirrored in the gutter below, only the occasional stranger scurrying home on a bleak, rain swept afternoon, the hurried slap of wet leather soles on the pavement, the sightless umbrellas, the infrequent rumble of a half filled bus, hell-bent on its way to oblivion.

     In the near distance as the working day ended, a sudden emergence of factory workers told Beamish it was 5-o'clock, most would be hurrying home to a hot meal, while others, for a quick drink perhaps before making the same old sorry excuse... for Jack, the greasy spoon would be closing about now, denying him the comfort of a badly needed cuppa' and stale cheese sandwich.  A subtle legacy of lunchtime fish and chips still lingered in the air, Jack's stomach rumbled, there was little chance of a fish supper for Beamish tonight, it protested again... louder.

     From beneath the eaves of the building opposite several pigeons broke cover, startled by the rattle as a shopkeeper struggled to close the canvas awning above his shop window.  Narrowly missing Beamish they flew anxiously over the rooftops, memories of the blitz sprang to mind as Jack stepped smartly to one side, he stamped his feet... it dashed a little of the weather from his raincoat, just as the rain dashed a little of the pigeons' anxiety from the pavement... the day couldn't get much worse if it tried.  Shielding his face, Jack struck the Ronson one more time and cupped the freshly lit cigarette between his hands, it was the only source of heat to be had that day... and still it rained.

     'By Appointment to Certain Personages...' the letter heading rang out loudly... 'Jack Beamish ~ Private Investigator...' a throat choking mouthful by any stretch of the imagination, thought Jack and shot every vestige of credulity plummeting straight through the office window and amidst a fanfare of trumpet voluntary, nominate itself for a prodigious award in the New Year Honours list.   Having formally served in a professional capacity for a well known purveyor of pickled condiments, who  incidentally, brandished the same patronage emblazoned upon their extensive range of relish as the one Jack had more recently purloined from them... a paid commission no less, which by Jack's certain understanding had made him, albeit fleeting in nature, a professional consultant of said company... and consequently, if they could flaunt the auspicious emblem, then according to Jack's infallible logic, so could Jack.  

     The recently appropriated letterhead possessed certain distinction... in much the same way, Jack reasoned, that a blank piece of paper did not... and whereas correspondence bearing the heading 'By Appointment' may not exactly strike terror into the hearts of man... unlike a really strong pickled onion, it nevertheless made people think twice before playing him for the fool, which sadly, Jack had to concede, they still invariably did... and he would often catch them wagging an accusing finger or two in his direction with such platitudes as... "watch where you put your foot", they'd whisper, "that Jack's a right Shamus...", and when you'd misplaced your footing as many times as Jack had, then he reasoned, that by default the celebrated Shamus must have landed himself in more piles of indiscretion than he would readily care to admit, but that wouldn't be quite accurate either, in Jack's line of work it was the malefactor that actually dropped him in them more often than not.

     A cold shiver suddenly ran down his spine, another quickly followed as a spurt of icy water from a broken rain spout spattered across the back of his neck, he grimaced... Jack's expression spoke volumes as he took one final pull from his half soaked cigarette and flicked it, amid an eruption of sparks against the adjacent brick wall.  Sinking further into the shadow he tipped his fedora against the oncoming rain, then, digging both hands deep within his pockets, he huddled behind the upturned collar of his gabardine... watching.

     It was times such as these when Jack's mind would slip back, in much the same way you might slip back on a discarded banana peel, when a matter of some consequence, or in particular this case the pavement, would suddenly leap up from behind and give the back of Jack's head a resoundingly good slapping and tell him to "stop loafing around in office hours... or else", then drag him, albeit kicking and screaming back into the 20th century.  This intellectual assault and battery re-focused Jack's mind wonderfully as he whiled away the long weary hours until his next cigarette; cup of tea, or the last bus home, his capacity to endure such mind boggling tedium called for nothing less than sheer ******-mindedness and very little else... Beamish had long suspected that he possessed all the necessary qualifications.  

     Jack had come a long way since the early days, it had been a long haul but he'd finally arrived there in the end... and managed to pick up quite a few ***** looks along the way.  Whilst he was with the Police Constabulary... and it was only fair to stress the word 'with', as opposed to the word 'in'... although the more Jack considered, he had been 'with' the arresting officer, held 'in' the local Bridewell... detained at Her Majesties pleasure while assisting the boys in blue with their enquiries over a minor infringement of some local by-law that currently had quite slipped his mind at that moment.  Throughout this enforced leisure period he'd managed to read the entire abridged editions of Kilroy and other expansive works of graffiti exhibited in what passed locally as the next best thing to the Tate Gallery, whereupon it hadn't taken Jack very long to realise that it was always a good place to start if you wanted free breakfast, in fact the weeks bill of fare was tastefully displayed in vivid, polychromatic colour on the wall opposite... you just had to be au-fait with braille.
                            
     No matter how industrious Beamish laboured to rake the dirt there always appeared to be a dire shortage of gullible clients for Jack to squeeze, what would roughly translate as an honest crust out of, and although his financial retainer was highly competitive he understood that potential clients found it bewildering when grappling with the unplumbed depths of his monthly expense account, which would tend to fluctuate with the same unpredictability as the British weather, the rest of Jack's agenda revolved around a little shady moonlighting... in fact he'd happily consider anything to offset the remotest possibility of financial delinquency... short of extortion... which by the strangest twist was the very word prospective clients would cry while Jack beavered around the office with dust-pan and brush sweeping any concerns they may have had frantically under the carpet regarding all culpability of his extra-curricular monthly stipend... and they should remain assured at all times... as they dug deep and fished for their cheque books, and simply look upon it as kneading dough, which eerily enough was exactly the thick wedge of buttered granary that Jack had every intention of carving.

     Were there ever the slightest possibility that a day could be so utterly wretched, then today was that day, Jack felt a certain empathy as he merged with his surroundings... at one with nature as it were.  The rain, a timpani on the metal dustbin lids, by the side of which Beamish had taken up vigil, also taking up vigil and in search of a morsel was the stray mongrel, this was the third time now that he'd returned, the same apprehensive wag, yet still the same hopeful look of expectation in his eyes, a brief but friendly companion who paid more attention to Jack's left trouser leg than anything that could be had from nosing around the dustbins that day... some days you're the dog, scowled Beamish as he shook his trouser leg... and some days the lamppost, Jack's foot swung out playfully, keeping his new friend's incontinence at a safe distance, feigning indignance  the scruffy mongrel shook himself defiantly from nose to tail, a distinct odour of wet dog filled the air as an abundance of spent rainwater flew in all directions.   Pricking one ear he looked accusingly at Jack before turning and snuffled off, his nose resolutely to the pavement and diligently, picking out the few diluted scents still remaining, the poor little stalwart renewed its search for scraps, or making his way perhaps to some dry seclusion known only to itself.
  
     Two hours later and... SPLOSH, a puddle poured itself through the front door of the nearest Public House... SPLOSH, the puddle squelched over to the payphone... SPLOSH, then, fumbling for small change dialled and pressed button 'A'..., then button 'B'... then started all over again amid a flurry of precipitation... SPLASH.  The puddle floundered to the bar and ordered itself a drink, then ebbed back to the payphone again... the local taxi company doggedly refused to answer... finally, wallowing over to the window the puddle drifted up against a warm radiator amidst a cloud of humidity and came to rest... flotsam, cast upon the shore of contentment, the puddle sighed contentedly... the Landlady watched this anomaly... suspiciously.

     The puddle's finely tuned perception soon got to grips with the unhurried banter and muffled gossip drifting along the bar, having little else to loose, other than what could still be wrung from his clothing... Beamish, working on the principle that a little eavesdropping was his stock-in-trade engaged instinct into overdrive and casually rippled in their general direction...  They were clearly regulars by the way one of them belched in a well rehearsed, taken-a-back sort of way as Jack took stock of the situation and was now at some pains to ingratiate himself into their exclusive midst and attempt several friendly, yet relevant questions pertinent to his enquiries... all of which were skillfully deflected with more than friendly, yet totally irrelevant answers pertinent to theirs'... and would Jack care for a game of dominoes', they enquired... if so, would he be good enough to pay the refundable deposit, as by common consent it just so happened to be his turn...  Jack graciously declined this generous offer, as the obliging Landlady, just as graciously, cancelled the one shilling returnable deposit from the cash register, such was the flow of light conversation that evening... they didn't call him Lucky Jack for nothing... discouraged, Beamish turned back to the bar and reached for his glass... to which one of his recent companions, and yet again just as graciously, had taken the trouble to drink for him... the Landlady gave Jack a knowing look, Beamish returned the heartfelt sentiment and ordered one more pint.

     From the licenced premises opposite, a myriad of jostling customers plied through the door, business was picking up... the sudden influx of punters rapidly persuaded Beamish to retire from the bar and find a vacant table.  Sitting, he removed several discarded crisp packets from the centre of the table only to discover a freshly vacated ashtray below... by sleight of hand Jack's Ronson appeared... as he lit the cigarette the fragile smoke curled blue as it rose... influenced by subtle caprice, it joined others and formed a horizontal curtain dividing the room, a delicate, undulating layer held between two conflicting forces.

     The possibility of a free drink soon attracted the attention of a local bar fly, who, hovering in the near vicinity promptly landed in Jack's beer, Beamish declined this generous offer as being far too nutritious and with the corner of yesterdays beer mat, flipped the offending organism from the top of his glass, carefully inspecting his drink for debris as he did so.

     A sudden draught and clip of stiletto heels as the side door opened caused Beamish to turn as a double shadow slipped discreetly into the friendly Snug... a little adulterous intimacy on an otherwise cheerless evening.  The faceless man, concealed beneath a fedora and the upturned collar of his overcoat, the surreptitious lady friend, decked out in damp cony, cheap perfume and a surfeit of bling proclaimed a not too infrequent assignation, he'd seen it all before... the over attentive manner and the band of white, Sun-starved skin recently hidden behind a now absent wedding token, ordinarily it was the sort of assignment Jack didn't much care for... the discreet tail, the candid snapshot through half drawn curtains... and the all too familiar steak tartare... for the all too familiar black eye.

     To the untrained eye, the prospect of Jack's long anticipated supper was rapidly dwindling, when it suddenly focused with renewed vigour upon the contents of a pickled egg jar he'd observed earlier that evening, lurking on the back counter, his enthusiasm swiftly diminished however as the belching customer procured the final two specimens from the jar and proceeded to demolish them.  Who, Jack reflected, after being stood out in the rain all day, had egg all over his face now... and who, he reflected deeper, still had an empty stomach.  Disillusioned, Jack tipped back his glass and considered a further sortie with the taxicab company.

     "FIVE-BOB"!!! Jack screamed... you could have shredded the air with a cheese grater... hurtling into the kerb like a fairground attraction came flying past the chequered flag at a record breaking 99 in Jack's top 100 most not wanted list of things to do that day... and that the cabby should think himself fortunate they weren't both stretched flat on a marble slab, "exploding tyres" Jack spluttered, dribbling down his chin, were enough to give anyone a coronary... further broadsides of neurotic ambiance filled the cab as the driver, miffed at the prospect of missing snooker night out with the lads, considered charging extra for the additional space Jack's profanity was taking...

     And what part of 'Drive-Carefully', fumed Beamish, did the cabby simply not understand, that pavements were there to be bypassed, 'Nay Circumvented', preferably on the left... and not veered into, wildly on the front axle... an eerie premonition of 'jemais-vu' perched and ready to strike like a disembodied Jiminy Cricket on Jack's left shoulder, looking to stick its own two-penny worth in at the 'Standing-Room-Only' arrangements in the overcrowded cab... and at what further point, Jack shrieked, eyes leaping from his head as he lurched forward, shaking his fist through the sliding glass partition, had the cabbie failed to grasp the importance of the word 'Steering-Wheel...' someone wanted horse whipping, and as far as Beamish was concerned the sole contender was the cab driver...

     In having a somewhat sedate and unruffled disposition it had fallen to Beamish... as befalls all great leaders in times of adversity, to single handedly take the bull by the horns, so to speak and at great personal cost, alert the unwary passing motorist...  Waving his arms about like a man possessed whilst performing acrobatic evolutions in the centre of the road as the cabby changed the wheel came whizzing around the corner at a back breaking 98 on Jack's ever growing list... and why, Jack puzzled, why had they all lowered their side windows and gestured back at him in semaphore..?  Rallying to its aid, Jack's head and shoulders now joined his shaking fist through the sliding glass partition and into the cabby's face, "Who" Beamish screeched with renewed vigour ,"Who Was The Man", Jack wanted to know... *"a

Dear Poet Friends, I conclude this series on The Enigma of Time by mentioning few important features about the concept of Time according to Modern Philosophy and Science. I have used a
simple format, and also tried my best to simplify the concepts for your kind appreciation. Unfortunately, there is no provision on this Poetry Site to show Diagrams to elucidate! If you like this one, kindly repost the same for wider circulation! Thank you, Raj Nandy, New Delhi.
            
       CONCLUDING THE ENIGMA OF TIME IN VERSE:
                      PART THREE – BY RAJ NANDY
              
              TIME ACCORDING TO MODERN PHILOSOPHY

UNREALITY Of TIME : Mc Taggart’s ‘A’ and ‘B’ Series:
Now skipping through the pages I come to Modern Philosophy, with Mc Taggart the British philosopher of the 20th Century.
He had acquired a substantial following with his 1908 paper on the ‘Unreality of Time’ initially.
With his quibbling argument he states, that moments in his ‘A’ Series of Time are either of past tense, present tense, or of future tense.
It is all about human perception, since we experience the past through our memories;
Become aware of the present through our senses, while future is pretty unknowable.
Here time appears to be flowing through us, as nothing remains stable around us!

In his ‘B’ Series of Time Mc Taggart expresses differences in moments of time as either Before or After,
Without using the tenses used in his ‘A’ Series of Time.
All parts in time can be expressed equally as points along a time line, in the absence of past, present, and future tense;
While here we appear to be flying through time in a metaphorical sense!
Thus in the ‘A series’ time appears to be flowing through us, but in ‘B series’ we seem to be flying through time on a timeline created by us!
Therefore, Mc Taggart finds both the ‘A’ and ‘B’ Series describing Time to be inadequate and also contradictory;
And he finally concludes that Time is unreal and does not exist in reality!

How Mc Taggart’s Theory Was  Updated :
Modern Philosophers have re-casted Mc Taggart’s theory in term of findings of Modern Physics.
His A-Theory is updated into ‘PRESENTISM’, which holds that only thing that is real is the ‘present moment’.
In ‘Presentism’ time has no past or future, and time has no duration either!
All things come into existence and drop out of existence, and past events no longer exist;
And since the future is undefined or merely potential, it too does not exist!

His B-theory is re-formulated into ‘ETERNALISM’ or the ‘Block Universe’, influenced by the later Theory of Relativity.
‘Eternalism’ holds that past events do exist even if we cannot immediately experience them, and future events also exists in a very real way.
The ‘flow of time’ we experience is just an illusion of consciousness.
Since in reality, time is always everywhere in an eternal sense!

Theory of Growing Block Universe:
It was proposed by the Englishman CD Broad in 1923, as an alternative to ‘Presentism’ where only the present exist;
And also as an alternative to ‘Eternalism’ where past, present, and future together also exist.
In ‘Growing Block Universe’ only the past and the present exist, but not the future.
Since the growing of the block happens in the present, with a very thin slice of space-time continuously coming into existence;  
Where consciousness as well as the flow of time are not active within the past,  
But they can occur only at the boundary of this ‘Growing Block Universe’!
Few scholars this concept did criticise, saying that in this theory the word ‘now’ can no longer be used to define Time!

But according to Einstein, this perception of ‘now’ that appears to move along a timeline, creating the illusion of ‘flow of time’, arises purely as a result of human consciousness;
And the way our brains are wired due to our evolutionary process, enabling us to deal with the world around us in a practical sense.
“People like us, who believe in Physics, know that the duration between the past, present, and the future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion,’’ said Einstein.

A poem on ‘The Paradox of Time’:
Now to lighten up my Reader’s mind, I present only the first three stanzas from ‘’The Paradox of Time’’, composed by the British poet Austin Dobson:
  “Time goes, you say? Ah no!
   Alas, Time stays, we go;
      Or else, were this not so,
  What need to chain the hours,
  For youth were always ours?

  Ours is the eye’s deceit
  Of men whose flying feet
     Lead through some landscape low;
  We pass, and think we see
  The earth’s fixed surface flee,
     Alas, time stays, we go!

  Once in the days of old
  Your locks were curling gold,
     And mine had shamed the crow.
  Now, in the self-same stage,
  We’ve reached the silver age,
  Time goes, you say? - ah no!
       Alas, time stays, we go!”
            
HOW LIGHT IS CONNECTED WITH THE CONCEPT OF TIME:
Brief Background:
I commence with quotes from the ‘Book of Genesis’ - Chapter One, along with my thoughts about Light and Time,
Before concluding this series with Albert Einstein’s concept of Space-Time.

“And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day. ……And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth. And it was so.”
                                                      - BOOK Of GENESIS Chapter One.

Since ancient days, Light had acquired a religious and a spiritual significance.
Since Light became associated with goodness, intelligence and ultimate realty;
Light accompanies transcendence into Nirvana of Buddhist religious philosophy.
In due course the Sun began to be worshipped as an important live-giving deity.
As seen in the symbolic form of Egyptian Sun God Ra, and the Greek gods Helios and Hyperion as the Sun god and god of Light respectively.
In Hindu mythology Surya is the Sun god, and Ushas the goddess of Light.
Huitzilopochti, both the Sun god and god of War of the Ancient Aztecs was kept pleased with human sacrifice!

SOME PROPERTIES OF LIGHT:
Plato, during the 5th Century BC said that God was unable to make the World eternal, so gave it Time,  - “as the moving image of eternity.”
While some seven hundred years later St. Augustine in his ‘Confessions’ said,
That when God created the universe out of darkness with light, “the world was also created with Time, and not in time.”
Thus along with light, time also began to flow, while our scientists discovered a connection between the speed of light and time, few centuries ago!
To understand this connection between light and time, we must first understand something about the properties of light.
Light is the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum* which can be perceived by our human eye.         (See Notes Below)
As seen in the red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet colors of the Rainbow in the sky,
When water droplets acting like countless prisms break up white sunlight!
Now this electromagnetic spectrum also contains the ultra violet and infra red spectrum which our eyes cannot see.
But this entire electromagnetic spectrum contains Photons, which are discreet packets of zero mass less energy.
In a vacuum light photons travel at 186,000 miles for second, which Einstein declared as the cosmic speed limit, and as an universal constant.
When a photon strikes the eye, it is turned into electrical energy that is transmitted to the brain to form an image which we call sight.

NOTES : Gama-rays, X-rays, Ultraviolet lights, have shorter wave lengths & more energy than Visible light. But Infrared, Microwave, Radio waves, with larger wave lengths are less energetic than the Visible spectrum of light. Sir Isaac Newton using a prism had discovered the spectrum of visible light, & used the word ‘spectrum’ for the first time in his book ‘Optick’ in 1671.

EINSTEIN'S SPECIAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY 1905 :
In his Special Theory of Relativity of 1905, he stated that nothing can move faster than speed of light which is 186,000 miles per second.
This speed of light always remains the same, irrespective of its source and frame of reference.
Now the mass of an object would double if it travels at 90% of light’s speed.
But if the speed of light is reached, mass of an object would become infinite!
Since photons, the quantum particles that make up light have a zero mass, they move at the speed of light.
Even inside the World’s Largest Particle Collider (LDC), located near the French-Swiss Border,
Experiments are carried out only around 99.99% of Light’s speed, in accordance with the Laws of Physics.
Einstein had also shown mathematically that on reaching Light’s speed, Time will come to a standstill!
And should this Light’s speed be exceeded, then Time would start to travel backwards, which becomes a mind boggling concept!
Here we enter into the realm of science fiction, which has been described by HG Wells  in his popular novel ‘The Time Machine’.
But to become a time traveler shall always remain our cherished desire and dream!

NOTES: Only mass less particles like the photon can travel at light speed, photons experience no time, they do not age. Objects with mass cannot reach the speed of light since in that case its mass will become infinite. Also, one cannot see the fourth dimension because of Lorenz Contraction, which is also related to stopping of time, for at the speed of light an object will shrink to zero length! Also, particles interact with the Higgs' Field present all around to pick up mass, excepting photons which do not interact with this Higgs' Field.

Now Einstein’s theory of 1905 is called ‘Special’, because it explains how space and time are linked for objects that are moving in a straight line at a greater speed but which is constant.
Time moves relative to the observer, and objects in motion experience ‘Time Dilation’.
Meaning, time moves slowly when it is in motion, as compared to one who is standing still, -  a relative comparison.
This can be further explained by the ‘Twin Paradox’, where a 15 year old travelling in a spaceship at 99.5% speed of light for a period of 5 years,
Returns back to Earth to find himself to be only 20 years old.
But to his surprise he finds, his twin brother on Earth who was left behind, has reached the ripe age of 65 !

Limitations of Special Theory of Relativity:
It was confined to non-accelerating bodies only, and after ten years of deliberation,
Einstein added gravitational force field, space-time curvature, and acceleration, -
To formulate his General Theory of Relativity with satisfaction.

   SPACE-TIME & GENERAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY 1916 :
Isaac Newton during the 17th Century spoke about 'absolute time' and 'absolute space', accordance to the understanding of science of his Classical Age.
Space was the arena where the drama of the universe was played out, and this arena was passive, eternal, and unchanging no doubt.
Time too was absolute with an independent existence, and continued to beat independently like the heart beat of Space!
Newton also gave us the Laws of Motion, and Gravity, with more massive objects exerting more Gravity than a less massive one in reality.
Now one aspect of Special Relativity is that space and time are merged into a four-dimensional space-time entity,
They do not exist as separately as envisaged by Newton and Descartes during the 17th Century.
Some 250 years later Albert Einstein, defined Gravity as a curvature of Space-time.
Einstein also tells us that gravity can bend light, which travels along the curvature of this space-time.
Gravity is flexible, it could stretch like a fabric warping of space-time caused by objects present within it, in fact Gravity is the shape of space-time itself!
The Moon rolls around the curvature created in space-time fabric by the heavier object the Earth,
Just like the massive Sun which creates the depression and curvature around it for the planets of our solar system to orbit round the Sun. *
Einstein’s space-time has been likened to a stretched out vast rubber sheet,
Where heavier the planet, more depression it creates on the fabric of space-time along with its own gravitational field.
Einstein’s Space is not passive like that of Newton, but has a dynamic presence.
Interwoven with Time, Space tells Matter how to move, while Matter tells Space-Time how to curve - in this dynamic presence!
The constant speed of light at 186,000 miles per second, is just a measure of space of something which travels over time;
But both space and time had to adjust themselves to accommodate the constant speed of light!
Thus space, time, and the speed of light are all unified in the General Theory of Relativity,
We owe all this to Albert Einstein, one of the greatest scientists of our Century.
NOTES: **Planets orbiting the Sun do not fall back into the void of space due to the attraction of gravity, and also due to their individual speed of acceleration maintained in orbit as per Kepler's Second Law of Planetary Motion. Mercury has the fastest orbital speed of 48 km per second, Venus at 35 km per sec , and Earth at 30 km per sec. as their orbital speeds. Planets further from the Sun require lesser orbital speed.

UNFINISHED WORK OF EINSTEIN:
During his later years Einstein was secretly working to find a ‘Theory of Everything’,
Which would ultimately replace the erratic tiny micro world of Quantum Mechanics.
His Theory of General Relativity had dealt with the functions of gravity at the greater macro level of the universe only.
So he hoped to extend this theory to find an all embracing Unified Field Theory.
For at the subatomic quantum level, as the Englishman Thomson discovered in 1897,
The electrons inside an atom at times behaved in an alien fashion and were very unstable!
This world of the subatomic particles is a wondrous world where time becomes chaotic;
Where the position of the electrons cannot be predicted with certainty!
Einstein called this unpredictable and unstable behaviour of electrons as "spooky action at a distance"!
In the ‘double-split experiment’ it was seen, that the light photons behaved both like waves and as particles, -
Even though the speed of light remained constant.

EINSTEIN'S NOBLE PRIZE For PHYSICS AWARDED IN 1921:
Now despite Einstein's dissatisfaction with Quantum Mechanics it is rather ironical,
That the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Einstein for his work on the ‘Photoelectric Effect’ at the Quantum level;
Which for the first time had suggested that Light travelled in Waves and also as Particles ( i.e. as photon)!
This observation led to the development of electron microscope, solar panels, night vision devices, at a later date.
Since his Special and General Theory of Relativity considered as ‘The Pillars of Modern Physics’, was still being examined by the Scientific Community;
And they could be proved and accepted only subsequently.

'STRING THEORY' PROPOSED AS THEORY FOR EVERYTHING:
During the 1970s the proponents of ‘String Theory’ had claimed, They found a Theory of Everything, following Einstein’s quest.
They claimed that micro vibrating open and closed looped strings gave rise to some 36 particles at the subatomic level;
But also required 10 dimensions for this 'String Theory' to operate!
In our Standard Model of Physics we have only 18 particles as on date, therefore due to lack of scientific evidence,
There was no Noble Prize for those ‘String Theory’ proponents!
Efforts are on to find a Unified Theory of Everything, and to understand the mysteries of God’s infinite universe, -
We finite humans have just made a beginning!

Now, to reduce the length of my composition I conclude with a short verse by the famous novelist and poet DH Lawrence, -
Who had shocked Victorian England with his explosive ****** novel “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”,
Which later inspired Hollywood, and a film got made.

               RELATIVITY
“I like relativity and quantum theories
because I don’t understand them,
and they make me feel as if space shifted about like
a swan that can’t settle,
refusing to sit still and be measured;
and as if the atom were an impulsive thing
always changing its mind.”  – DH Lawrence.

Thanks for reading patiently,
‘All Copy Rights Are With The Author Only’, - Raj Nandy of New Delhi.

It was 98'.
No, it was 99'.
That was the year.
Yeah, that was the year.

I had just landed abroad and knew no one.
Well, I was there with my girlfriend, Page.

I knew her.

We had to get out of the states.
There was nothing for us there.
We were drowning in that nothingness - that lacking future.

Cookie cutters everywhere.

Everything I saw was like an outline of something that had already happened.
I couldn't sleep.
I couldn't ****.
I could barely call my parents to let them know what I was doing.

Nothing really.

Floating downward like a leaf broken from its stem.
I was scared.
I'll admit it.
I was terrified of the next four years.
Twenty-five seemed so far away and so close, all at the same time.

We had a found an apartment to live in while in the U.S.
We were lucky because people we met later on said it was hell trying to find a place after arriving.
I was never too good at that stuff anyway.
I always felt like people were trying to cheat me or something.

It was small.
You would have said you loved it, but secretly hated it.
One could barely stand in the shower.
Want to spread your arms wide?

Forget about it.

There was a balcony though and you could watch the street traffic from above.
People look so small when your high up.
Down the street, there was a large theatre where they filmed movies.
I rarely saw them shooting, but I could tell it was a good place to.
It was beautiful at night when the lampposts would flicker on, orange spilling on the street.
Everything was damp in the Fall when we first arrived.

"What do you want to do today?" I asked her. She was laying face down on the bed.
Whenever she was hungover, she would do that.
All the covers and pillows over her face, blocking out the world and its light.
I did the same thing, so I couldn't really say much.
We were hungover a lot those first couple months.
Then came the jobs and everything changed...mostly.

She moaned something that I couldn't understand.
I was standing by the window, staring at the pigeons and crows perched on the roof across from us.
They had made a little nest under one of the shingles.
Clever little ******'s.

"Look at those things," I said.
The coffee I was drinking was bitter and made from crystals.
It gave me a headache, but it was cheap and we were broke.
I stepped back to get a better look at their nest and knocked an empty beer bottle around.

She moaned again and rose up from bed, kind of like a stretching kitten or a cat.
Her back was arched like a crescent moon and she stunk of ***** and Sprite.
The blankets were twisted and crumpled and she was tangled in them like a fly in a spiders web.
I went into the kitchen and poured out my coffee, thinking of what to do with the day.

"Breakfast?" she asked me from bed.
My back was to her, but I knew she wanted me to make it.
I put the electric stove on and opened the refrigerator.

"No eggs," I said back to her, "I'll be right back."

She moaned and slithered back into bed.
I threw my jacket and slippers on and made my way downstairs.

"Dobry den," I said to the cashier.
He was a tiny vietnamese man with a extremely high pitched voice.
I struggled to stifle a laugh every time I came in.

"Dobry den," he said back, sounding like air escaping from a balloon.

"Dear God," I thought, "How does his voice box do it?"

I went straight to the eggs, pretending to cough.
All around me were packaged sweets and rotten vegetables and fruit.
There were half loaves of brown, stale bread wrapped lazily in thin plastic.
Canned beans, noodle packets, and cardboard infused orange juice lined the shelves.
Where were the ******* eggs?
We needed milk too.
Trying to drink that crystalized coffee without it was torture.
I don't even know how I did it earlier.
"I must be getting used to the taste..." I thought.

I opened the single refrigerator they had in the place.
It was stocked with loosely packaged cheese, milk, beer, and soda.
There they were, those ******* eggs, right next to the yogurt.
I looked at the expiration date of a small carton of chocolate milk and winced.
"Someone could die here if they weren't careful," I whispered to myself.

"Everyding O.K.?" I heard the cashier squeak behind me.
I turned and nodded and showed him the eggs.
He was suspicious I was stealing something.
It was ironic.
I put the eggs on the counter and handed over what the cash register told me.

"There you go," I said and handed him the 58 crown in exact change.

"Děkuji," he peeped.

His voice sounded like a stuffed animal.
I nodded, smiled, and quickly got the hell out of there.

"You know the guy that works at the shop across the street?" I asked the body still in bed.
Well, she was up now, back up against the wall with her laptop on her lap.
"You mean the guy that has the voice of a little girl?"
"Exactly. I was just in there - getting these eggs - and I nearly laughed in his face."
"That's mean," she frowned, staring at her laptop.
Many of our conversations were with some kind of electronic device in between us.
We needed to work on that.
"I didn't laugh at him directly."
She smiled and nodded and moved down the bed a little more.
Only her head was resting on the pillow.
I cracked two eggs and let them sizzle there in the butter and the salt.

"So, what do you want to do today?" I asked Page, "It's not too cold out. We could go on a walk."
"Where?"
"I don't know. Over the bridge and maybe down by the water."
"It's going to be so cold," she shivered.
"I was just out there in slippers and a t-shirt and I was fine."
"That's because you're so big. I'm tiny. I don't get as much blood flow."

I flipped the two eggs and looked down at them.
Golden and burnt slightly around the edges.
******* perfect.
Now, just gotta wait a little on the other side and make sure to not let the yolk harden.
I hated that more than anything in the world.
Well, that and hearing **** poor excuses like it being too cold.
It was nice out.
She'd be fine.

"Come on," I sighed. I did that a lot. "It'll be fun."
She looked up at me from her computer with a dead look in her eye.
"What?" I asked her.
"You're such a...nerd," she said.
"No I'm not."
"You're so weird. Some of the things you say sometimes..."
"Like what?"
"Let's go on a walk."
She exaggerated the word walk.
I laughed and knew I was being a little too excited about a walk.
"Yeah. So? What are you doing? You're just laying there doing nothing."
"It's my day off," she scoffed, jokingly.

We were unemployed.
Everyday was a day off.
This was not something to bring up.
It was touchy subject.
One had to go about it...delicately.

"We need to find jobs," I stated, "And we can probably ask around or look for signs in windows."

"Oh JESUS," she gagged, coughing and diving back under the covers.

"I'm just thinking ahead so we can stay here. There's got to be something out there we can do."

"Like what?" she asked, her voice muffled by blankets.

"I don't know...something," I mumbled, trailing off as I flipped one of the eggs, "Perfect."

After breakfast, Page finally got out of bed and took a shower.
I tried to sneak in there with her, but, like I said before, one could barely fit themselves in there.
We compromised to have *** on the bed, though I did miss doing it in the shower.
As Page got dressed, I watched her slip those thin black stockings on, half reading a magazine.
I had gotten a subscription to The Review because I was trying to become a writer.
I thought, maybe if I read the stuff getting published - even the bad **** - it'll help.
Later, I realized, this was a terrible idea, but I enjoyed the magazine all the same.
Page finished getting dressed.
I jumped into whatever clothes were on the floor and didn't stink.
Then, we were out the door on Anna Letenske street, looking at the tram, downhill.


"I can see my breath," Page said, "It's cold..."

"Alright," I said as both of us ran across the street, "It's a little cold."

"But it's ok because I'm glad were out of the house."

"If we would have festered there any longer, we would have stayed in there all day."

"And missed this beautiful day," she said mocking me, putting both of her arms in the air.

The sky was gray and overcast and a single black crow flew over us, roof to roof.
No one was out, really.
It was Sunday and no one ever really came out on Sundays.
From the few czech friends I had, they explained to me this was the day to get drunk and cook.

"Far different then what people think in the States to do," I remember telling him.
"What do you do, my friend?" he had asked. He always called me my friend.
It was a nice thing to do since we had only known each other a couple weeks.
"Well," I explained to him, "Some people go to church to pray to God."
He laughed when I said this and said, "HA! God? How many people believe in God there?"
I had heard through the news and some Wikipedia research Prague was mostly atheist.
"A good amount, I'm pretty sure."
"That's silly," he scoffed, "Silly is word, right?"
"Yep. A word as any other."
"I like that word. What else do they do on Sunday?"
"A lot of people watch football. Not like soccer but with..."
"I know what you talk about," he said, cutting me off, "With the ball shaped like egg?"
I nodded, "Yes, the one with the egg shaped ball. It's popular in the Fall on Sundays."
"And what is Fall?" he asked.
You can see our relationship was really based on questions and answers.
He was a good guy, though I could never pronounce his name right.
There was a specific z in there somewhere where one had to dig their tongue under their teeth.
Lots of breath and vibration that Americans were never asked or trained to do.
Every czech I met said our language was a high contradiction.
Extremely complex in grammar and spelling, but spoken with such sloth.
I don't know if they used the word sloth.
I just like the word.

As we waited for the tram, I noticed the burnt orange and red blood leaves on the ground.
"Where had they come from?" I wondered. There were no trees on the street.
Must be from the park down the block, the one with the big church and the square.
There were lines of trees there used as leaning posts for the bums and junkies as they waited.
What they were waiting for, I never knew.
They just looked to be waiting for something.
I kicked a leaf into the street from the small island platform for the tram.
It swept up into the air a couple inches, and then instantly, was swept away by a passing car.
I watched as it wavered in the air, settling down the block in the middle of the road.

"Where's this trammm," Page complained.
Whenever it was cold out, her complaining level multiplied by a million.
"Should be coming soon. Check the schedule."
"Too cold," she said, "Need to keep my hands in my pockets."
I shook my head and looked at the schedule. It said it would be there at 11:35.
"11:35," I told her, still looking at the schedule. There was a strange cross over the day of Sunday.
"You mad?"
"No," I said turning to her, "I just want to have a nice day and its hard when you're upset."
"I'm not upset," she said, her teeth chattering behind her lips.
"Complaining I mean. We can go back home if it's really too cold. It's right there."
"No," she looked down, "Let's go out for a bit. I just don't know how long I'll last."
"Ok," I shrugged.
I looked up the street and saw our tram coming; number 11.
"There it is," I said.
"Thank God," Page exhaled, "I feel like I'm about to die."

Even the tram was sparse with people.
An empty handle of cheap liquor rattled in the back somewhere.
I heard it rock back and forth against the legs of a metal seat.
"Someone had a night last night," I thought, "Hope that's not mine."
We had gone to some dark bar with a lot of stairs going down - all I really recall.
Beer was so **** cheap there and there was always so much of it, one got very drunk easily.
I couldn't even really remember who we met or why we went there.
When everything's a blur in the morning you have two choices:
Feel guilty about how much you drank, lie around, and do nothing or,
Leave it be, try not to think about it, and try and find your passport and cell phone.

We made our transfer at the 22 and rode downhill.
Page looked like she was going to be sick.
Her sunglasses were solid black and I couldn't see her eyes, but her face was flushed and green.
"You alright?" I asked her.
"I'm fine," she said, "Just need to get off of this tram. Feel like I'm going to be sick."
"You look it."
"Really?" she asked.
"Yeah, a little bit."
"Let's get off at the park with the fountain. I don't want to puke here."
"Ok," I said, smiling, "We'll get off after this stop."

We sat down on one of the benches that circled around the fountain.
It was empty and Page was confused why.
"Maybe to save money?" I suggested.
"What? It's just water."
"Well, you gotta' pump the water up there and then filter it back out. Costs money."
"Costs crown," she corrected me.
"Same thing," I said, putting my arm around her, "There's no one here today."
"I know why," she stated, flatly.
"Why?"
"Because it's collllllllld and it's Sunday and only foreigner's would go out on a day like this."
I scanned the park and noticed that most of the faces there were probably not Czech.
"****," I muttered, "You may be right."
"I know I am," she said, wiggling her chin down into her jacket, "We're...crzzzy."
"We're what?" I asked. I couldn't hear her through her jacket.
She just shook her head back and forth and looked forward, not wanting to move from the warmth.
Dogs were scattered around the brown green grass with their owners.
Some were playing catch with sticks or *****, but others were just following behind their owner's.
I watched as one took a crap in the center of the walkway near the street.
Its owner was typing something on their phone, ignoring what was happening in front of him.
After the dog finished, the owner looked down at the crap, looked around, then slunk off.

"Did you see that?" I asked Page, pointing to where the owner had left the mess.
"Yeah," she nodded, "So gross. That would never fly in the states."
"You'd get shoulder tackled by some park security guard and thrown in jail."
"And be given a fat ticket," she said, coughing a little, "Let's get out of here."
"Yeah," I agreed, "And watch for any **** on the way out of here."

We made our way out of the park and down the street where the 22 continues on to the center.
"Let's not go into the center. Let's walk along the water's edge and maybe up to the bridge."
"Ok," I said, "That's a good idea." I didn't want to get stuck in that mass of tourists.
I could tell Page didn't either. I think she was afraid she might puke on a huddle of them.
We turned down a side street before the large grocery store and avoided a herd of people.
The cobble stones were wet and slick, glistening from a small sliver of sunlight through the clouds.
Page walked ahead.
Sometimes, when we walked downtown in the older parts of Prague, we would walk alone.
Not because we were fighting or anything like that; it was all very natural.
I would walk ahead because I saw something and she would either come with or not.
She would do the same and we both knew that we wouldn't go too far without the other.
I think we both knew that we would be back after seeing what we had wanted to see.
One could call it trust - one could call it a lot of things - but this was not really spoken about.
We knew we would be back after some time and had seen what we had wanted to.
Thinking about this, I watched her look up at the peeling paint of the old buildings.
Her thick black hair waved back and forth behind her plum colored pea coat.
Page would usually bring a camera and take pictures of these things, but she had forgotten it.
I wished she hadn't.
It was turning out to be such a beautiful day.

We made it to the Vlatva river and leaned over the railing, looking down at the water.
Floating there were empty beer bottles and plastic soda jugs.
The water was brown, murky, and looked like someone had dumped a large bag of dirt in there.
There was nothing very romantic about it, which one would think if you saw it in a picture.
"The water looks disgusting," Page said.
"That it does, but look at the bridge. It looks pretty good right

Not a poem but in protest of flagging truth about racism in Traverse City, Michigan


Traverse City, Michigan: Racism is still alive and well in our area.

We weren't always welcoming
Cross burning's (City of Traverse City, MI)
I'm born and raised in Traverse City, Michigan and still living in the same neighborhood where I grew up. I can remember when blacks were not welcome in most parts of town and the one or two around were military visitors.

We had two known cross burning incidents. One back in the late 80's or early 90's the other was around 1924, ******* groups like Ku Klux **** was behind both cross burning incidents. I found old articles on the earlier one but someone is trying hard to white wash history of Traverse City by hiding evidence of the most resent one. Ones like me who were there remember those dark days like it was yesterday. It don't bode well for tourism or the Cherry Festival if there's a record of racism in our city.

Copy pasting one two different retelling of story reported by our sometimes biased Record Eagle articles regarding the first and and will continue to dig for the other one.

January 31, 2009
KKK was active in early '20s

The 1924 bombings and cross burnings in downtown Traverse City were not the first **** activity in northern Michigan.

The Record-Eagle reported flaming crosses in the Mancelona area on Aug. 1, 1923, a full year before. Six weeks later, Traverse City commissioners refused the **** permission to hold a Sept. 17 open-air meeting at the corner of Front and Cass.

About 300 people showed up anyway and marched to a vacant lot west of Front and Union after the unidentified property owner gave permission, carefully noting that it "did not commit him to any relationship with the organization," the newspaper said.

The Record-Eagle also passed on information from an identified **** source in its Sept. 17 report:

Two, maybe three organizers had worked for weeks in Traverse City. About 150 Traverse City men from "among the leading citizens" had joined. An open-air ritual with the traditional fiery cross burning on a hillside would be held "sometime but not yet" in or near Traverse City, and it would be "merely a part of the **** ceremonies and have no special significance."

People who expected to see hooded men in white robes performing rites at the Sept. 17 rally were bound to be disappointed, the paper said. A new state law banned wearing masks in public. It also would be difficult to tell how many in the audience were KKK members because "every person who has signed the Ku Klux card has pledged to keep his membership an absolute secret."


Traverse City, Michigan wasn't always welcoming to people of color.


Traverse City Record-Eagle

February 1, 2009
Ku Klux **** terrorizes TC in 1924

KKK cross burnings, explosions rock city

By LORAINE ANDERSON
Black History Month has special significance, since it begins fewer than two weeks after the nation's historic inauguration of its first black president, Barack Obama.

But there are parts of that history that Traverse City, like the rest of the nation, would rather forget. The city never had a large black population, but it did not escape a visit from the Ku Klux **** during a frightening night of downtown explosions and cross burnings on Aug. 9, 1924.

Traverse City has never seen anything like that night of terror. Buildings shook. Store windows cracked and shattered. Houses as far away as 16th Street quaked, the Record-Eagle reported.

And though outside agitators were blamed, some local people may have been involved.

It started about 8 p.m. after three explosions went off across the river from the Lyric Theatre, where the State is today.

The crowd at the Lyric all but stampeded toward the door as women and children screamed. Panicked shoppers spilled out of downtown stores. City police phones jangled with alarm.

A large cross burned on the north side of the Boardman River near Cass Street. About 50 smaller burning crosses appeared almost simultaneously at the centers of intersections across the city. Each was crudely nailed together and swathed in oil-soaked rags. Sparks flew when several cars struck them. A city fire truck raced through town to douse flames.

Then, a "touring car" with four men, robed and hooded, though not masked, slowly trolled down Front Street carrying a sign surrounded by red flares blazing three letters: KKK.

Copies of the Ku Klux **** newspaper, "The Fiery Cross," later were found downtown, and police determined that at least two cars were involved in planting and lighting the crosses.

**** leaders called the explosions and flaming crosses a recruiting gimmick, but it was more than that. The 1920s was a reactionary time in the United States. The **** had risen again, starting in 1915, widening its anti-black focus to Jews, Catholics and immigrants, particularly those from southeastern Europe. Its membership was strongest in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.

The ****'s most powerful year was 1924, when it reached an all-time high of 5 million members nationwide and virtually controlled the government of Indiana. Its most popular slogan was "100 percent pure American."

The **** had a solid base of support in Michigan. The **** fielded two candidates in the Republican gubernatorial primary in 1924 and a ****-backed candidate was elected mayor of Flint. A write-in **** candidate even made a strong showing in a Detroit mayoral race.

In June 1924, 1,000 men joined the KKK in an Oakland County cross burning attended by about 8,000 people. Traverse City's demonstration took place just two months later. But who was really behind it?

"There is some doubt among the authorities as to whether the offenses were actually committed by local people or men from outside. They believe that local people were associated in the affair," the Record-Eagle reported.

An unidentified spokesman for the local **** denied responsibility, speculating that it was the work of **** enemies or rogue Klansmen. He told the Record-Eagle that the **** repudiated terror tactics and burning of "unwatched crosses."

Two weeks after the bombing, city police obtained felony and misdemeanor arrest warrants accusing Ku Klux **** organizer Basil Carleton of Richmond, Ind., of setting off explosives. Indiana police arrested him on Aug. 29.

Witnesses testified in two trials in December and January that Carleton had purchased 25 pounds of dynamite, fuses and three caps from Hannah & Lay Mercantile Co. about two hours before the explosions. A Park Place Hotel clerk said he saw Carleton hurrying away from the direction of the explosions about 10 minutes later. Two **** members testified that Carleton was not at the scene.

Yet he was never convicted. Juries acquitted him in both cases because the prosecutor could not prove to their satisfaction that he was at the scene of the explosion or that he personally set off the dynamite.

The bomber escaped justice. But the good news was that in Traverse City, no night of terror like that happened again.

It was this event that sparked the cross burning in Traverse City. We had only one black family in our city, when Betty Ponder and her family left Traverse City for the first time due to no one wanting to rent to them, population of blacks in our predominately white city drop to zero.


******* Movement Targets Northern Michigan

by Robert Downes

National Alliance advocates the creation of "two Americas"

Traverse City, Mich., noted primarily for its beaches, tourists and cherry pie values, appears to be erupting as a national battleground of opinion over the ******* movement, with forces on both sides of the issue coming out of the woodwork to vent their outrage over racial issues.
On Thursday, June 5, residents along stretches of Washington and Front streets in town came home to find a slick package of information from the National Alliance hanging from their doorknobs. An outgrowth of the American **** Party, the National Alliance is a ******* group which advocates the creation of "two Americas," one of which would be "White Space only with no Jews or blacks." The Alliance, advocates genocidal practices if need be to achieve its goals, and plans to distribute 1,000 information packets in Northern Michigan.

Protest organized to oppose July "NordicFest"
The incident arose only a day after more than 150 people from throughout Northern Michigan gathered at a "Hate-Free TC" meeting to oppose the NordicFest, a skinhead rock festival sponsored by the Ku Klux ****, to be held at a secret location 20 miles south of town, July 3-6.
The NordicFest is being advertised on the Internet and will feature at least six skinhead bands featured on Stormfront Records and Resistance Records -- both of which are purveyors of neo-**** hate music. It will also reportedly feature speakers from the Ku Klux **** and Aryan Nations.

Thus far, the NordicFest's location has been a closely-kept secret by David Neumann of Bloodbond Enterprizes, the concert organizer and a former director of the Michigan Knights of the Ku Klux ****. Neumann has told local media that 300 tickets have been sold for the concert -- about half the number he expects to sell. Reportedly, concertgoers will be provided with maps to the secret location at a checkpoint.

Bands expected to play at the NordicFest include Intimidation One, Aggravated Assault, Blue Eyed Devils, Max Resist and the Hooligans, and No Alibi.

Local churches offering seminars on the ******* movement and the importance of diversity
GATHERING STORM

Journalists have made inquiries on the NordicFest from as far away as London, New York and Colorado as a result of the Northern Express story circulating on the Internet. A segment for National Public Radio is expected to take the issue nationwide, possibly focusing the world's attention on Traverse City on the eve of the National Cherry Festival -- an event which draws more than half a million visitors, many of them from ethnic minorities.
"We're creating a rainbow ribbon that we hope everyone will wear in rejection of skinheads and the ****," said Rabbi Stacey Fine of Hate-Free TC. "We hope to have hundreds of ribbons during the time the **** is here, available from downtown merchants."

Fine says the group also hopes to march in the National Cherry Royale Parade with a three-by-eight-foot banner covered with thousands of signatures in a show of support for racial and cultural diversity. Thus far, Cherry Festival officials say they have received no applications from Hate-Free T.C., but will consider the request if approached.

Dottie Kye of Hate-Free TC says the group doesn't plan to try stopping the NordicFest despite their opposition ot the concert. "We're ignoring it," Kye says. "We celebrate anyone's right to organize and free speech. But our thing is unity and celebrating diversity." In addition to several church seminars on the ******* movement and the importance of diversity, Hate-Free TC is organizing a three-day "Unity Festival" which will feature dozens of musicians, artists, poets, actors and peace activists at the Traverse City Opera House, July 3-6.

Concert organizers Tim Hall and Tom Emmott say that more than 40 musical acts will send a pro-diversity message to area teens, with performers including Willie Kye, Alright Already, John Greilick, Samantha Moore, the Motor Town Juke Boys, Bentley Filmore, the Sisters Grimm, and Lack of Afro, among many others. A concert with Fishbone is planned for later in the month.

"Even if the NordicFest doesn't happen, something positive is going to come of it because it gets people thinking about the prevention of violence"
THE TEEN CONNECTION

The Unity Fest counter-concert is seen as a vital tool in fighting the influence of the ******* movement on teens in the area. After the initial story broke, the buzz in local high schools was that the NordicFest would be offering free beer to minors. Although that notion is clearly erroneous, a small number of teens in the area still cling to the idea and have also been attracted by the rebellious nature of the skinhead rock scene.
Tim Hall believes that his Unity Fest concert will help turn that tide. The three-day concert will be located in the heart of Traverse City in the old City Opera House, with easy access for the hundreds of teens who hang out downtown, often with little to do. "Our message is going to be one that values racial and cultural diversity," Hall said. "And we've had a great response so far. We had to put a lid on the performers when we reached 40 acts, because everyone wants to play at this event."

The Unity Fest will also coincide with the Annual Reggie Box Memorial Blues Blast, which was created five years ago to bring the heritage of black music to Northern Michigan for the overwhelmingly white Cherry Festival. This year's Blues Blast will feature John Mayall, Marcia Ball and the Bihlman Bros. in a free concert downtown on July 6. The concert will also feature a strong message promoting diversity.

The law enforcement view Traverse City Police Chief Ralph Soffredine says members of the law enforcement community, including the State Police and sheriffs from Grand Traverse and Wexford counties, are taking a wait-and-see approach as to whether the NordicFest will even be held.

"People ask what we would do if the skinheads wanted to march, and it's our position that they have the same rights under the First Amendment as anyone as long as they're obeying the law," Soffredine said. "It's a neutral situation for us. We just want to maintain the peace."

He added that skinheads coming to Traverse City would be treated "no different than if longhairs come into town, or square dancers. We'd certainly observe them and respond if there's trouble."

The chief noted that a similar event occurred in the Buckley area several years ago when several motorcycle gangs gathered for a rally. While the event was monitored by local police agencies, few people in the area knew that it occurred.

"Even if the NordicFest doesn't happen, something positive is going to come of it because it gets people thinking about the prevention of violence, which has become a serious problem in our community and our schools," he concluded. "The unfortunate thing is that it sometimes takes a ******* or a racial issue for people to get active."

"Sheriff Barr implies that people who have the courage to confront them will be put in jail."
ANGER FROM ACTIVISTS

Not everyone is happy with the neutral attitude of law enforcement. Judy Lowenzahn of Traverse City thinks that local police agencies should get tough on the **** concert, which has no legally-required bond or liquor license.
"These hateful groups are using skinhead music to recruit soldiers for their facist movement," Lowenzahn said. "If they are allowed to hold this event, in violation of local, state and federal laws and in violation of common decency, we will be capitve audience to their deranged homophobic, anti-semitic, racist, sexist ideology. Those who protest this message, along with those who are their scapegoats will be targets for hate crimes."

Lowenzahn upbraided Grand Traverse County Sheriff Barr after he made comments in a local paper that "I'd just as soon personally let them have their little event and be on their way." Barr added that if there was a confrontation between the skinheads and protestors, "there's going to be someone in jail."

"Does Sheriff Barr suggest that people of color and others who don't fit the aryan model hide inside their homes for the holiday weekend?" Lowenzhan responded. "Rather than offer a plan to protect the community from the violence that grows whenever white supremecists do outreach, Sheriff Barr implies that people who have the courage to confront them will be put in jail."

Northern Michigan targeted because of the predominantly white population
KLUELESS

Up to now, the vast majority of Northern Michigan residents have been klueless on the **** and the ******* movement. Many, for instance, had no idea that there even was a Ku Klux **** operating in the region until Neumann revealed that there are about 60 members operating mostly as "a fraternal organization" between ******* and the Mackinac Bridge.
Similarly, the existence and agenda of the National Alliance is all-ne

The last thing the Poet feels of her is the distinctive taste of biltong. It lingers. She had bought two packets at the café.  Their last kiss is made just before the airplane announces itself with a great roar of being. He watches it swallow her and turn her into a memory. And then the plane flies away. He can’t find a silver lining in the plane’s path, so he instead focuses on the gentle return of normality to his skin. Every centimetre that was previously pressed to his Muse is smoothing its goose bumps. The Poet’s heart goes back from verse to prose, just as how it was before she became the subject of his pen.

He turns to say an awkward “dumela” to the Muse’s grandmother. She responds with the tone of a grandmother greeting a boy who has just been making out with her granddaughter in front her: “dumela.” It probably doesn’t help that his hair isn’t combed. It probably doesn’t help that they have not met before. The Poet then asks the Muse’s brother for a ride to school. Now that the Muse is gone, it is time for him to begin studying for the colourless exams that were the subject of his existence before her. The Muse’s brother nods in agreement, and he walks out of the stale atmosphere of the airport with her family. The summer sunshine somehow manages to feel uninspired.

The journey from the airport stretches out like a goodbye that ought not to happen. It is slow, painful, and filled with empty promises of hope from her family. Her brother says she will visit during the Christmas season. The Poet knows she won’t- she can’t- but he has enough novels to keep him company.  They are riding in the same little red Volkswagen that often picked her up from school. If time is simultaneous, she is sitting next to him.

The car is full; time has only one direction, and its wheels stops in front of the school gates.

He says his farewells, closes the car door, and limps to the library to start working on maths equations with his classmates. He barely opens the library doors, barely greets his classmates, and with barely practiced nonchalance, barely explains that his Muse went off to another country. He picks up his scientific calculator and clicks open his pen to attack a math problem. Hours pass in numbers that stubbornly refuse to make sense in place of her. The Poet solves a problem, and then he doesn’t. He asks for help, and then he doesn’t. He laughs with his classmates, and then he doesn't: they have to go home now for lunch.

The Poet cannot go home. He has to wait for his mother to pick him up. He decides to walk out the school gates to eat at the Chinese restaurant. It is placed conveniently outside the school. He orders some dumplings and some noodles, and then tells the waitress that he is going to buy a newspaper at the filling station while he waits for his meal.

At the filling station counter are packets of biltong hooked onto a stand.

Today is Menstrual Hygiene Day
But I don't feel very clean
Because you can wash the outside
But even in 2015
Even in these realms of gender equality
And liberty on how to be sanitary
There's no solution for
internal Hygiene
And my blood that's not blood
This muddy flood more than ******
Is somehow still obscene

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

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

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

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

Today is Menstrual Hygiene Day
But I don't feel very clean
Because I've washed and washed the outside
But there's blood all down the seams

Lady, your room is lousy with flowers.
When you kick me out, that's what I'll remember,
Me, sitting here bored as a loepard
In your jungle of wine-bottle lamps,
Velvet pillows the color of blood pudding
And the white china flying fish from Italy.
I forget you, hearing the cut flowers
Sipping their liquids from assorted pots,
Pitchers and Coronation goblets
Like Monday drunkards. The milky berries
Bow down, a local constellation,
Toward their admirers in the tabletop:
Mobs of eyeballs looking up.
Are those petals of leaves you've paried with them ---
Those green-striped ovals of silver tissue?
The red geraniums I know.
Friends, friends. They stink of armpits
And the invovled maladies of autumn,
Musky as a lovebed the morning after.
My nostrils prickle with nostalgia.
Henna hags:cloth of your cloth.
They tow old water thick as fog.

The roses in the Toby jug
Gave up the ghost last night. High time.
Their yellow corsets were ready to split.
You snored, and I heard the petals unlatch,
Tapping and ticking like nervous fingers.
You should have junked them before they died.
Daybreak discovered the bureau lid
Littered with Chinese hands. Now I'm stared at
By chrysanthemums the size
Of Holofernes' head, dipped in the same
Magenta as this fubsy sofa.
In the mirror their doubles back them up.
Listen: your tenant mice
Are rattling the ******* packets. Fine flour
Muffles their bird feet: they whistle for joy.
And you doze on, nose to the wall.
This mizzle fits me like a sad jacket.
How did we make it up to your attic?
You handed me gin in a glass bud vase.
We slept like stones. Lady, what am I doing
With a lung full of dust and a tongue of wood,
Knee-deep in the cold swamped by flowers?

Zeus, your predilection for banishing Titans to Hades...
anathema of them--revolt was theirs of you...Titanomachy.
Enter Prometheus, second generational Titan, brother
to Atlas--Prometheus of whom Titan revolt at first ran
no fire through his veins.
Thus, Zeus was well pleased and employed Prometheus
to put earth to water, water to earth...as to yield man.
As so man was, and was unto Prometheus...a fondness
entered him of them.
And in of passion Prometheus' veins were run through
with fire...fire fought fire--thus Prometheus reached out
taking hold Zeus' lightning.
Hid in a hollowed fennel stalk, to be bequeathed unto man.
Torrents of fire now ran Prometheus' veins, and in a fit of
infamous mockery presented Zeus with two packets of
slaughtered animal parts.
A hubris was born in Prometheus that being so halved
God-man gave itself fully to that polarity...he gawked at
Zeus and bade him choose between the two packets.
One of ox meat and innards coated in stomach lining, the
other of ox-bones coated in its own abundant fat.
Thus Zeus chose, the wretched lesser of the two...
inconsumable ox-bones coated by fat.
A charged and terrible air cut and heavied all direction,
pointing assuredly that Zeus was one given over to the
surface of things, a psychological casualty of his own
vanity.
Zeus overcome with Prometheus' disaffection for the God
of him struck at Prometheus' family.
At length, this assault could not, would not put asunder
Prometheus from the ground he stood.
A certain Haphaestus was summoned by Zeus...whose
directive was writ in torment.
Chain Prometheus to Mount Caucasus...where from on
high a sackcloth cloud shall shake loose an eagle, whose
homing hunger shall have only a taste for Prometheus' liver.
Day in, and day out, that accursed ***** shall be the
bounty of itself!

its cold here
my heavy eyes droop
the teacher drones on
I blow my nose, so that I can breathe
in, out, in sneeze out in, out, in, out, sneeze
I'm at the back of the room
isolated
java 2, the elite
sitting alone in a java 1 class, so I don't have to pay attention
Mrs. is teaching stuff I already learned
She hands me packets to work on, on my own
the trees look so green, I love the spring
may, almost, summer
summer coming soon, not soon enough
tap tap tap tap the keyboards click click click
ugh my nose is so congested
my eyes are so heavy
sleeeeeep I just need sleep
I have to packets I need to work on, but I can't focus.
can't focus, can't breathe
my hands are tired from typing
I'm too tired to focus on reading
so what to do, what to do.
I'm wasting time, but who actually cares
I'll get the work done, just not today
summer come sooner, I need some warmth
warmth, my bed is so warm
this classroom is cold
i'm cold
bed, bed, sleep warmth
how will I ever get through this day?

I'm a schizophrenic hypocrite
thankfully not in a medical way
i don't have to pop pills everyday
to keep an essence of danger under control
and to stop my head doing backward flips and forward rolls
to curtail bad thoughts and contain OCD
wake up and think "what's happening to me?"
but sometimes i'm full of mazey bomb blasts
and crazy contrasts,
I'm a schizophrenic hypocrite
I say work i'm not even gonna give 50% percent never mind double
but i'll stay just below the warning threshold so i don't really get in trouble,
i do see my sick days as extra days of annual leave
but my bums on my seat most of the year and at least one Eve.
I'm always ducking and diving, i hide and they seek,
but i hit my targets every week.
They can say put down your pens,
strip your pencils of lead,
you can't stop me writing in my head
But you'll sometimes dictate what time i go to bed.
I'm a schizophrenic hypocrite
Nearly every road i walk down i've got a ***** cat friend
there meowing never drives me round the bend
but if me owing then just a letter i'll send.
I’ll rescue  spiders from the bath, without any exception,
But I’ll clean their webs and evict them when I have a house inspection.
Giving up pork, on a parity with pigges at last
But then i broke my faste with bacon for breakfast
Watching lambs a gamboling there frolicking is fab,
but i'll see you on a plate later if i'm craving a kebab.
I'm a schizophrenic hypocrite.
Money and the capitalist structure baffles, no thanks, no ta
but before i go out a quick sub off Ma and Pa.
I'll pay for a taxi, i don't care about the amount,
while checking fervently the statement from my bank account.
Cash cannot be eaten it just gets you into Eton
but i'll rifle through my pockets for pennies to get an eat on
i don't adore you, i'll say your the means to an end
but then i spend some more and ask for a lend.
I'm a schizophrenic hypocrite.
I'll say anarchy  is everywhere, petition and abstain
then  read in the late edition who i think should take the reins.  
I scream smash the system without any regrets
but then start stubbing out where they deem no cigarettes.
I'll say **** big business they are always looting tons
while cutting out Asda coupons to get the soup with croutons.
i'll say **** materialism, to that i am adverse,
"ohh if you want to get me some trainers Mum can you make em Converse? "
I'm a schizophrenic hypocrite
One Saturday i found it hard to move
crying out for water, more than needing food,
stomach emptier than the packets in my pockets
Early winter scribble
spoiled by the ripple of rain,
deadened and dull
on a precious day,
the time I crave
passes through a husk
full of caves.
Each inhabitant curses
and burns
the stagnant soil under their feet,
I want something to eat.
I need to drink.
The cold slab of sink
lures flesh to rest,
unsatisfied
with retched offerings
flung from a scorched earth
so next Friday, a few beers and l I’ll hit the hay
Ten beers later, where’s the MDMA?
And my staunch resolutions go up my nose
Chatting through the night, striking a pose,
Music accentuated, stars sparkling hard
World’s discussed in magic back yards,
Focused and fraught in tumultuous thought
Ten cigs in an hour
An hours too short,
As the morning comes, I start feeling a mess
It slowly disintegrates the treasure in my chest,
Feelings of strength crumble to a feeble frame,
Spears in my head, WHOOPS I’VE DONE IT AGAIN.
You’ll stop this time, I curse and lecture,
Two bottles down next Friday etc etc,
I’m a schizophrenic hypocrite
I remember an uneventful Tuesday when i wasn't working
belly full of rice
and i saw you twice,
two times a day,
on a day in lieu,
time stood still,
smiling at you
i thought i'm gonna have to write about you,
so i park myself in a bar after a joint in Netto carpark
and start using words to build an arc
and if you you do wanna walk in two by two,
can i walk in with you?
Is it this green ride that's getting me high
or the regret i seen in the gleam of your eye
that as soon as we said hi we said bye,
as disappointed as the catcher when he dropped the rye.
If i may be so bold,
if you were cold
i wouldn't hail these stones
i'd pummel Jack Frost until he knows he's lost,
i'll leave all the lights on to hasten global warming
make Obama declare winter a season of mourning,
If you met an iceberg of Titanic  proportions
i'd cut through it quicker than the Ripper does back street abortions.
If you were in prism
i'd try to unrangle the science of triangles
so i could build you a pyramid with all the right angles,
my stomachs in knots;
the most tranquil of tangles.
Then i saw you get out of the lift
and i wanted to play you a rift
until you exposed your midriff
because you set me adrift from chains and shackles
my mind goes crazy and fills with cackles,
i crackle with lightning, my energy heightens
my heart tightens
and not cos of cholesterol
cos i think you're special
and celestial!
I got dreams from naught, my head feels taught,
i prised a lesson from your eyes,
love is the greatest prize.
But now that's gone, all things
pass evolution in transience
faces that were everything lost to balance
blue it merge
but seldom a residual surge
and your bark today was worst than your bite
it said something softly,
i sow the seeds for the sycamore trees
we can carve our names on next summer.
Under an endless stretching sky
you wrote you
and i wrote i,
the lights in our eyes don't lie
they are gateways to the suns inside,
our hearts couldn't hide from this brightening tide.
I'm a Schizophrenic hypocrite
I remember this guy from work, cooed to me
look at the **** on this page 3
he drooled over Nuts magazine like he belonged in a zoo
i bet he frequented strippers too.
He said seen this clip, it's ******* great,
it ad turn a couple of queers straight
it was these two twins with rouge lips being rude,
the way she chomped on her like food
and they defo loved it,there is  no doubt
it's just just ***** Eskimo ******* kissing snouts
and sharing with her sister the joy of getting licked out.
Wonder how they looked in the family car?
giggling about some exciting destination,
like all kids displaying a lack of patience,
“are we there yet” chorused with glee and duality,
dressed in the same clothes to ensure parity.
Ice cream for tea.
Maybe they might be way into drugs
or addled with addiction
lacking hugs
and sore from the friction.
Not liking the glare
feeling scared.
maybe?
He said nar they love it up them baby.
But then,
i have it
about 3 or 4 times a week
after the 5th time of hitting snooze,
or a heavy night on the *****,
or sometimes no beer,
even after a sonnet of Shakespeare
a sudden urge comes over me,
GET THE LAPTOP!
GET THE *******!
Then it's
Japanese teen lesbians spitting,
finger ******* wearing mittens,
****'s ******* Britions,
oap creampies
***** covered eyes
***** flicking,
extreme suction,
**** destruction,
Captain Birds Eye gobbing
Batman ******* Robin,
A ten inch plumber ******* in a kitchen sink drama
Robert de Niro unpeeling Bananarama
Marty doing the Doc
a gimped up Kirk whipping Spoc
Rita  ******* Norris
Gail licking Fizz
Sally doing Dev
and Kevin doing ki.............Kevin, get out of the room.
Back to
a **** doing a ******
a pre op pleasuring granny
two ***** one *****,
then i chuck my muck all over my tunic
flip over and continue reading The Female ******,
I'm a Schizophrenic Hypocrite,
i've gotta split.

A duality of elan vital, two people
Spectres of emotion
Intertwined by a fuselage of bruised skin & tendon
Tissues become orbital, gushing towards grafts
Helixes of snot, **** and lymph
Boy & girl
As they embrace the animating principle and eachother, they fuse
A one piece tapestry adorned seamless with no hem, beginning or end
Always was, always is
Patiently turning to liquid as their being unzips
Lying figures of runny makeup and genetic *****
Quintessence, a texture of synaptic potential
Corpus Callosum
An entirety of self, lost in imbued disintegration
Theory of mind, looped & bound
I will water the thought
Roots envisaged in dystopian amygdala
Piercing data packets with a frost-like intensity
Forgetting our obsolescence moments ago
A neuron dipped in nylon
Theta waves and the non-euclidean crux of dissociation
Ghosts in the machine, your macro god
The sympathies of fractional distillation
Digitised/assimilated unto the nanosphere
Cold hands and brass backs galvanised in oscillated tears
Commodified, sold out and bought
Stretching, from purple, white and black
slowly losing its colour, amorphous in shape
brushed across a smudge, ambiguously chromatic
Monetised flesh god
An eternity bathed in starlight
Cutting an incision in the sky to allow entropy
Divided dimensions of energy
Fleeting and intangible
No longer a delirium of seperation
All semantics become light
As a rusted vehicle passes overhead
And all the worlds questions fade out of existence
Flutters of red tape and foregone growth of practice
Sinew flayed, integrated towards information
Our minds shared
In circuits and resistors
Photons and electrons
We radiate

In the supermarket airport
There are arrivals every day.
The departures in your trolley
Come to you from far away.

Those brightly coloured vegetables
Have sat around for days
In what we’re told are
such hygienic backroom bays.
They’re obviously picked and packed by well paid sprites and elves!
Then magically appear on your supermarket shelves.

Here every carrot is straight and clean
And every lettuce crisply curled
Then gassed in plastic packets
That are filling up our world!

Take a glance inside your trolley
And if what I say is true
Then I guarantee the food within
Has seen more of the world than you.

Like the picture on the packet
Of your frozen ready meal
The colour of this far flown food is great
The taste experience, surreal.

Those ripe tomatoes in their reddest skins
We should dye brown, to match their taste
Those vivid orange carrots are a mystery of flavour-
What a waste!

A plate of vibrant promising hue
Can taste of packaging and glue.

The supermarket tells you you’re in clover
But its goods have all the texture of an old pullover.
Your supermarket says that it is catering for you
But if you’re honest do you really think that’s true?
If you don’t then there is something you can do.

At the supermarket airport
All the money’s in departures
So put that trolley back
And just depart.
If you're wanting to be vocal
Then shop seasonal and local
And hit these psuedo airports at their heart.

The TSA won't let me fly
It seems when airplane-jailed,
My muse sneaks aboard
Without paying for a seat.

Another airplane poem like 30B,
From a long ago flight,
Found dusty, in the poetry sewing box


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

with every breathe he tithes
a packet of whispered wishes,
a blended osmosis of
past and future scenes,
reviewed, previewed,
moments in time,
actual and dreamed

some received,
airborne plucked,
in his chest stored,
prepared for future
takeoffs and landings,
for ultimate insertion
in both
your recesses
and
your abscesses

some native,
combobulated, containerized
packets of seconds,
of joyous moments,
bytes of historical
hugs n' kisses,
as a child
to a child
from a child

those are vanilla frosted,
residual payments for the
good done and given,  
forwarded with all clear signals,
to his loved ones,
now resent, to you,
fellow travelers and sojourners,
intersectors of our peculiar
coded dots and dashes

thirty five thousand feet high,
composure lost,
he swoons as
Bocelli's voce del silenzio
releases tears so sweet,
which are by nature,
gravitated and transformed
into snowflakes to decorate
the Sierra Nevada's
breasted peaks and valleys,
over which his physical notion
is at rest, yet in motion,
within a Delta flying ship

Yet his fevered chest
beats rough,
for every flight seems
a time warp interlude,
a forced reflecting rhyme,
not of his choosing,
a lawful, thoughtful, imprisonment

having donated to you
his best, the remainders,
the man tallies, recalls:

ancient slights, scaled heights,
requiems for his forefathers
scored by cantorial choirs,
liberation struggle weariness,
offers taken and refused,
aces in the hole that proved
insufficient to save his soul.

goal line stands made,
onslaughts refused,
true lies and false truths,
moist lips and monster tears,
occasional A's and calcu-hell-us,
hand me downs received,
help me ups got n' given,
buildings pricked by airplanes,
death wishes granted
and nothing thereby gained,
children, found and lost,
mine, yours, ours...

The sums, always the sums!

engine noises and pilfered winds
are dulled and semi-silenced,
yet the silvered chamber prison
resonates from end to end
as each ledgered memory,
each packet of the
hidden whispered poems
he does NOT choose to send,
dents the man,
leaving claw marks,
screaming pay attention to me,
as if they were the priorities
of a six year old child,
refusing to be ignored

he does,
attention, he does pay,  
allowing rocking guitar heroes
to overtake weeping violinists,
just as newer transgressions
surfeit even his
most really *****,
ancient sins

No matter how he counts,
unable to master the additions,
no matter how many times
counts are initiated,
taken and retaken,
the tally's net net is
concluded, numbered
"forsaken"

his life's W-2 is black n' blue,
deductions falsely enumerate
and thereby underestimate
dues he has paid summarily,
earnings, distorted,
taxes paid never enough,
to satisfy the justice scales,
so wearily he
cries and enunciates,

The sums, always the sums!

THEN COMES HIS SHOUT OUT,
at his most vulnerable,
when a thin veneer of alumina
separates him,
from a fall inglorious
to an end most gorious,
a rapping beat moderne
insists that he go all out,
disallowing no
airy fairy poetry
to disguise that:

If the integers are false,
the entries of a life lived,
are sucker lies
black eyed flies
toxic shockers
that bust open
stinko lockers
where the B.S.
mocking stories
are kept

don't look close
at his documents
they ain't exactly
heaven sent
and the government men
be back on his track
their aviator shades
protect them from
burning light of the
man's furnace
where he burns their liens,
and the agent's ear pieces
drown out his screams of

The sums, always the sums!

God bless you,
keep and recall those packets of
whispered wishes, good tithes,
that the man bequeaths,
gift baskets of
expresso essentials
with God's love delivered

Tho his words,
amateurish and unvarnished,
silly and pompous,
nonetheless, they are the
return on his investments,
his yearnings for your happiness
are the savings accumulated,
though meager jewels are they,
they are ad valorem,
mixed into his confused murmurings

here then,
are his summings up,
what he wills you,,
the tally finale
the best wisdom is
found on coffee cups
at 2:47am.

Dance
Love
Sing
Live

to which he respectfully amends with a
Write.
(See banner photo)

I met this girl that jots down her feelings
On packets of Sweet'n Low
She told me she thinks
Her thoughts look pretty in pink
And it also helps to sweeten the flow

She leaves them on trains dining car tables
In hopes the commuters will read
All that she has to say
That it brightens their day
And also will make people think

That life can be full of surprises
No matter where you find that you are
Like next to this girl of course
With Sweet'n Low stuffed in her purse
In a moving trains dining room car

All winter the fire devoured everything --
tear-stained elegies, old letters, diaries, dead flowers.
When April finally arrived,
I opened the woodstove one last time
and shoveled the remains of those long cold nights
into a bucket, ash rising
through shafts of sunlight,
as swirling in bright, angelic eddies.
I shoveled out the charred end of an oak log,
black and pointed like a pencil;
half-burnt pages
sacrificed
in the making of poems;
old, square handmade nails
liberated from weathered planks
split for kindling.
I buried my hands in the bucket,
found the nails, lifted them,
the phoenix of my right hand
shielded with soot and tar,
my left hand shrouded in soft white ash --
nails in both fists like forged lightning.
I smeared black lines on my face,
drew crosses on my chest with the nails,
raised my arms and stomped my feet,
dancing in honor of spring
and rebirth, dancing
in honor of winter and death.
I hauled the heavy bucket to the garden,
spread ashes over the ground,
asked the earth to be good.
I gave the earth everything
that pulled me through the lonely winter --
oak trees, barns, poems.
I picked up my shovel
and turned hard, gray dirt,
the blade splitting winter
from spring.  With *** and rake,
I cultivated soil,
tilling row after row,
the earth now loose and black.
Tearing seed packets with my teeth,
I sowed spinach with my right hand,
planted petunias with my left.
Lifting clumps of dirt,
I crumbled them in my fists,
loving each dark letter that fell from my fingers.
And when I carried my empty bucket to the lake for water,
a few last ashes rose into spring-morning air,
ash drifting over fields
dew-covered
and lightly dusted green.

You have stars in your hands
and you hold them like grenades.
The boats tattooed on your thighs
spread out like finger placements of the G major chord.
Synthetic drugs make chains
tying your first and second fingers
around the mechanically rolled paper,
canvasing your throat like too much sea water,
each breath as rough as the veins in your arms.
Close your eyes
there’s pollen in the air
spread out like imperfections on the skin of an apple.
Solar countries keep foreign coins
sewed into their cotton sails,
they put their money into the navy.
You have a comet in your circulatory system
leaving bright spots under your skin
a reminder to gather the sunshine back under your eyelashes.
Hand soap in ketchup packets
make bubble bath islands
and unhappy lips.
You’re as talkative as a poem and
as expensive as a poppy
with homemade constellations on your back,
staining your lumbar muscles with cherries.
I can’t wash off your fingerprints
with my favourite shampoo.
I’ll swim across the Georgia Strait,
dodge your dinghies and
make a home in handmade ships
where I’ll practice erasing scars from my arms
and washing the soap from my hair.

Plenty of parking for people
to penatrate the park
with their paddles and packs
prepared to take prolonged trips
for picinics out of purple and pink
plaid biodegradable packets
presented perfectly perferated for pouring
packets can be used for proccessing your potent ***
for proper and pertinent disposal

lol

Husbands, raise your hands
Keep them up if you love your wife
Keep them up if you colour your wifes hair
Okay, this is for the three of us that are left....


I did my wife a favour
As I do, because I can
I help her when I'm able
Not just because I am a man

I **** bugs when requested
I do the laundry like I should
I clean the bathroom when it's *****
And by doing so , feel good

Every few weeks I will help her
Hide the grey that she can see
I don't volunteer to do it
But it's cheap to hire me

A salon visit is expensive
Doing hair, and waiting hours
I just slip on my latex hand wear
And I have a bag full of super powers

Yes, I help my wife get couloured
I take the time and do her hair
I also, get it on the tiles
Up the wall and on two chairs

The dog gets covered just a little
The rug, a window and the bed
But, we always buy two packets
So, there's enough to do her head

I have a jacket slightly mottled
It's got a few brown spots, some red
I don't know exactly how it happened
I even got some on our bed

Just call me Mr. Kenneth
In my jumpsuit doing hair
I get it where I think she needs it
And I spray it everywhere

She comes out looking gorgeous
She's always happy with the result
She always looks a little different
Like someone who believes in the occult

If you're a husband who likes money
Save it, colour your wife's hair
Your part only takes ten minutes
You need ten towels, one mask, one chair

It brings us both closer together
My arms look like a leopard skin
All my shirts are slightly spotted
But all those spots, make me look thin

I've got to go now and get cleaned up
The carpets ruined, so's the wood
But, she's happy and we all know that
If the wife is happy....all is good!

So much waste.
When will it stop.
Too many people letting it drop.
Streets full of litter.
******* galore.
Crisp packets cigarette butts.
All over the floor.
Think before you throw.
The ******* piles will grow and grow.

In the dreary hour of the just-dawn,
your life painted in grim notes,
you are alone with all your Self;

The trees all asleep in grey tones,
lamps that gave light all night,
become pale packets of wastage;

A gust of wind pours in
carrying the songs of birds
singing to the unveiling skies.

A new morning comes rushing
on the waves of the mellow sea
from worlds beyond the horizon:

A day rises, when you drop all
the burdens you long carried
on your life-weary shoulders.

After running some tests
Injecting needles in your veins
******* blood from you even if it's the only ounce left

He says you're sick
Holding a pen, he prescripts
It's for you to buy, a list of medicines

And so you have to try
You have no choice but to buy
Or else, as per Dr. Quack Quack, you'll die

As you take in
Your wallet's thinning
While the packets of medicines are still stacking

Then another symptom came
And so you have to visit the clinic again
Déjà vu you thought, Dr. Quack Quack greeted you smiling

He says you're sick again
Holding a pen, he prescripts again
It's for you to buy again, a list of medicines

Oblivious to you
He's preparing his checklist too
After traveling to Europe, next stop to Honolulu

Pretty girl starts the year not knowing what to do
Pretty she may be,
Yet she doesn't have a clue
Pretty girl, though shy she feels okay,
With a smile, she makes it through her first day.

Months go by, time doesn't stop,
She finds her way to the top.
No longer shy, loved by all
Such a shame to see her fall.

It starts on a day like any other
This time pretty girl disobeys her mother.
She lies to her, sneaks out at night,
And finds herself neath pale moonlight.

She meets new faces she hasn't seen before,
New they may be yet they influence her.
Taking their word that everything is alright,
She doesn't scream, doesn't cry, she doesn't even fight.

She takes everything they give her
With a smile on her face
Now pretty girl doesn't see the mistakes that she makes.

No longer perfect, she is undone
Bags under eyes, yet she still has her fun.
Her parents notice, her friends do too,
She tells them "leave me alone, its nothing to you!"

She runs away from school and from home,
She is feeling scared, pretty girl is alone.
Walking the streets every night and day,
Selling her love thinking everything's okay.


Tears in her eyes, a man by her side,
Beer in hand,
Packets of ******* she tries to hide.

This wasn't what she wanted from life,
Reaching into her pocket, she pulls out the knife.
She's had enough, she slits her wrists and falls to the floor,
Closing her eyes with her last breath, pretty girl no more.
-V

On the 12th day of Christmas
My troubles gave to me........

12 unpaid bills
11 ringing cash tills
10 packets of batteries
09 invites to parties
08 year olds a screaming
07 unwanted toys redeeming
06 packets of dog biscuits
05 unwanted parking tickets
04 overdrawn credit cards
03 strange looking leotards
02 forgotten to buy turkeys
And a garage for those car keys

One of the famous "Barry Hodges Memories" sequence

People think that Waterloo is a fascinating battlefield,
Relatively near to Brussels (where the sprouts come from
and, which are, as you know, a great cause of **** ****-gas).

But believe me there is more to it than that:
As I was wandering around checking out the graves
And generally having quite a nice time when...

A load of drug-crazed German bikers appeared
Sky-high on excess intake of *moules avec pommes frites
And several gallons of extra-strong Belgian beer.

And they leaped on us and bashed the living ****
Out of my poor 99 year old mother-in-law, Deidre,
And left her lying there spasticated on the battlefield.

And for what, a few lousy packets of French cigarettes;
And I needed a metal scoop to rescue her remains to take home;
Dear God, I shall skip any more 19th century champs de guerre.

we went to the supermarket,
took our cameras to photograph
homogenized colors like the milk
in between poses, we played catch with the packets of fish *****,
drew smiles on the condensation in the freezer aisle
chased around the boy (code name platypus) with the Rolex.
so we balanced:
primary-colored bell peppers –
on our heads
and waited for the flash.

A legendary sweet tooth, had Lady Felicity Barratt
So swift towards the sugar bowl, so wary of the carrot
She dined on only trifle from a honey coated spoon
But tooth decay accosted her and left her in a swoon

By the time she turned just twenty, her two front teeth were gone
By thirty she was running short and on her final one
When that fell out, she sought a dentist, promptly one arrived
She opened up her grizzly mouth and in the fella dived

He took a cast and took his leave with dentures to be hewn
With satisfaction guaranteed by Friday afternoon
And never did the lady have a reason to suspect
The secret intervention of an evil dental sect

By bribing several bakeries and sweetie shops and stalls
A dossier had been compiled within their sacred halls
For crimes against good dentistry were nothing short of sin
Their retribution must be swift or people might join in

Upon that self same Friday, at the very cusp of noon
One Doctor Bingo Rogers and his burly hired goon
Came knocking at her premises with dental kit and drills
With a mission to sedate her and to exercise their skills

They knocked her out with ethanol and chloroform and air
And strapped her to a hastily erected dentist's chair
The evil teeth were lodged in place and ******* into her gums
The bill was quite extortionate, for monumental sums

The shamanic orthodontist, with his henchman in his wake
A martyr to the vegetable and nemesis of cake
Was keen to see his handiwork and kept a watchful eye
For curious occurrences as days went quickly by

By Christmas there was nothing, until on New Year's Eve
Her teeth got uncooperative and forced the girl to leave
They dragged her by her dainty face and led her to the shops
She stood and munched on sugar canes and giant lollipops

They stuffed her face with chocolates, still nestled in their packets
And then a rack of nylon shirts and seven leather jackets
On every size of shoe, she munched; from sixes up to twelves
She nibbled through the party food and gnawed upon the shelves

Then off she sped, into the street, to pursue a passing horse
Dragged along by wicked teeth and supernatural force
But dentures lack in vision, and especially at pace
So when she caught it by the foot she caught it in the face

She skidded to a grizzly halt with arms and legs all twisted
And next to her, a note with all her dental errors listed
So beware the wrath of dentists and obey when they command
And sleep with one eye open and a carrot close to hand

For though our poor Felicity was buried good and hard
Despite floral cupcake with the Dental Cult's regard
And though her body, to this day, lies safely in the ground
The horse escaped that evening and the teeth were never found...

the first free minutes of the day find me
scrambling for the lighter that will ensure my
good standing with a
young and dumb, restless addict
of the two-years-older-than-me generation

her cigarette hangs limp from her lips
waiting for the fire that I promised her
I had to offer
eyebrows arching
fingers followed by toes tapping
in an anxious less-than-patience

so I fumble through the pockets of my jacket
tapping fingers into gum packets
doing what I can to keep from laughing
at the whole
****
thing

until at last I find the lighter
for the babe who's smoking Marlboros
and says she doesn't care who knows
that she smokes cigarettes

When things were going great
we'd eat transcendental dinners,
we'd take livers
in rainbow saucers
and ladle them
in tartar sauce
until our mouths
were full of salt,
sometimes we'd go to Thai China
and make interstellar fighters
out of the wise guts
of
cream-colored Starships.

But the nights when we went
to Burger King were the greatest,
we'd have simple dinners:
99 cent burgers
and fries like elephant ears,
we'd sit in our booth
in the corner,
you farting ketchup
out of like
twenty packets
into a red **** pile,
and I farted
like
twenty farts
out of my ***,
but I like
simple things;
they are natural
even if they don't sound
that way.

because chances are, you haven't heard it
before, i know, in either case
not to my liking either -
but then the olympic flame was passed
between a thousand interlocking legs
that ran from one centre of the games
being celebrated, and onto another -
and if there were aquatic obstructions
along the way, the baton was still allowed
to run, on a ship, in circles, before landing
and unwound, allowed a straight line
once more - not straight in the strict
geometric sense, obviously zigzagging -
but let's say i found cross-generational points,
in each generation there are cross-generational
interests - should my own produce very little,
or of little interests, there's a back-catalogue
to delve into - who'd imagine the youth could
never die like that - but intact - even though
some could be asserted as being ancient -
a revision of their work years later only made
them however the revision was to understand it -
and yes, links, under a million and the chances
are you haven't, haven't heard it, you yet to be
a cross-generational - cronquist stick-seeds might
describe the writers born in the 1910s - and say
a rebellion against Wordsworth took pace -
or some other rebellion, or even an appropriation -
you have those from the 1980s too, minding
the literary output from the 1960s, anticipating a
future, a splinter group of hopefuls anticipating
something more - unlike in the current state of affairs,
where no longer the old moaning and groaning
cuckoo cranks - our's, youth's cultural arthritis -
we too complain, scaled to the nanometres of
metaphysics - our spiritual health has been dampened,
and if the timing was anything, although in agreement
it was: canto LXXXV - rock drill, well a drill assuredly,
a burning that implants a windy vacuum of gravity,
cf. (conferre, i.e. - id est - compare) with an article
in the style magazine (every sunday, religiosity of
newspapers, a weekly event, much anticipated) -
the article in question? generation viz / not to
be confused with viz. (videlicet - namely, that is to say),
rather generation viz as visual, a visual generation,
visuals only, censor all ****** words and have as much
******* and gore as you like, the offensive
u                c                  k               from fathering an oath,
so generation vista print, vista (the all pleasing generation),
no drink, no drugs, aloe vera water and cucumber
extracts - generation squeak - squeaky clean -
mother's failed rebel - generation mind the gap -
it's no longer a stoner, a mary and juan dipper -
'yeah man, far out...'
                                worse, it culminated in post-language,
and due to lack of intoxication, it's supposedly
serious... well... by god it is serious - post-language
is akin to a venture into the unknown acronyms -
acronyms and emotive chinese of :( -
the lesser form of computer coding - the tip of the
iceberg as they say - a champagne bottle splits
in the ratio 1:10 - that's one bottle and ten mouths -
during london fashion week also called an entrée,
in russia it's called a canapé - ah but the sober
eye that can explore further afield rather than raw
memoriam dimmed slightly - a rattler of cigarette
packets - more caffeine less gasoline -
and so, i too a hackelia nervosa, clingy to the past
in some way or other, not to mention attempting
an enticement to my palette - a storage room,
just there, lost & found - umbrellas, books and
other memorabilia - should any claimant come,
it's, just, there.

on windy plains
flattened panels beneath tight-pressed scarves, they stand
on the edge of the highway
seeking the last streaks of eve's sun
bodies on windy plains where, in the lap of poverty, kids play and listen
the ***** little words mothers spill
a hapless world in flats steep, laundry billows on higher
than most dreams can possibly reach


1.
song to be sung, yet youth's golden mouth swift-ripped away
by hungry-crones topped in white hats and over-spiffed lines
poor boy couldn't hold it together, they fell apart
scatter the crowd in fold-up chairs to make it look less empty
spread the tea-garden in the hall, circulate those tiny packets
so much **** noise, is that all we waited for?

revolutions were built on disparity's hand ****** in the face of the poor
pity the drug of current day keeps all so well glued to the system
somebody wise once said that royalty awards knighthood
                                                *exactly for the same reason
to keep gentry where they are seen fit to belong: below
                                                           ­                   the swirl of understanding
so, there won't be enough cake for everyone.



2.
when saviours ring in the new, for a short while
and new heads bring down the old names
and gut the bastions of the past
surely, when we destroy the ugly parts of history, we conceal truth
with pompous new plaques and road names for petty achievers
even bad press is held up as recognition these days
and too many are numbed, hopelessly foiled by the feed
peck, peck.. nice, little chikken
                         (mind stuffed with trash, mouthpiece occupied)

some content to catch a few crumbs on the way down
while others tread lightly on their way out the back exit
the more we so blindly buy into the whole mess
the less we see the big pic
                           (the real one)
nebulous covers the screen so well: away from organic life
life on a farm, growing your own stuff
       needing less of plug-in
       more of play
I steadily tire of the filthy streams we're led to wade in
thick and viscous with the stench of decay
and no way out but the meeting with barbed-wire walls

oh, for days of simple pleasures.. walking in the park
                                                      swingi­­ng high into the blue sky
with eyes on the rim of the planet
a ten-cents pineapple-popsicle
and no fear of the unknown
       but beautiful discoveries, good and not-so-good

now, a man will die in the hands of a stranger's care
at the mercy of their kin's timetable
busy, busy, busy.. loved ones moving on
ah, no time to enjoy a tot, some oenomel.


3.
say, God.. you got a moment? I'd like to address a grievance or two
are we forgetting what you told us?
what was it again -- on the day, we tried to understand your identity
                                    in a tongue this world's memory suffered lapse
there was a time we understood your meaning
today, I hear your voice in the rustle out my meadow
right here
in the green leaves

I think I can hear you right
loving your remembrances.



*silent anger brews in the streets, common folk took enough
tired of threats and crumbs left by chunks others gorged on
retaliatory mountains grow, a surge in march
a touch too late to retract some acts.. for haste & judgment hurt
where many struggle to breathe, so hatred cements its template
slowly, time may crumble them to stones, then dust
            or hope build a rope from heart's twine
            or love blow breezes of care on this fiery circle
faraway, where queens live on ginger cakes and ale
on windy plains.

I wish I still smoked
**** yeah
It's the ritual
the need to make time
to die a little
opening a new pack
shiny cellophane
the lid flipped back
paper seal for freshness
pulled out to reveal
20 happy moments spent
inhaling, coughing, thinking
the soft packets
where you flicked the
cigarettes out like movie
stars and the Marlboro man
who are all dead now
roll ups, kit form bronchitis
liquorice flavour papers
combining childhood flavours
with adult life takers
the smell clinging to clothes
and hair dragon breath
but we all looked so ****** cool
so adult so grown up
so ****** clueless, *******
on our manly pacifiers
I wish I still smoked
**** yeah
just don't have the courage
some how

Last night your bedroom was tattoo-parlor-red…

You were a relentless *** machine
and your Alex Esguerra painting was knocked from the wall
during our rough housing. I found it
broken behind the bed
when I was looking for my second sock…
the other sock was still in my hand when I woke.

I love the way you always fall asleep diagonally
across the bed, so that
I lie awake, contorted and trying to figure out a way
to fit comfortably and proportionally
into your sprawling unconsciousness.

Yesterday, I loved your morning countenance;
void of expression
as you looked down your nose at the coffee press.
Your upper lip rested heavily on the lower, which seemed
immovable, that I’m not sure it will ever change.
It was too tired to be a pout and
I couldn’t look away –
so I must have loved it.

In the throws of passion last night,
you moaned that I made you sick to your stomach. I asked
if it was because I was too far inside you. You said,
“you’re always too far inside me.
That’s why you make me sick.”
And then you came and
rolled off of me.

I woke with only one leg in my jeans,
my mouth was coated with body paint,
and my chest was clawed into military ranks
by your flesh filled nails.

My other leg was propped on top
of an old pine blanket box at the foot of your bed
and my right arm was folded behind me
and numb. So I threw a sweatshirt over my shoulder –
I think it belonged to your old boyfriend, the one
you made the Esguerra painting with –
and I walked out of your flat leaving the door open.
Your cat slipped out behind me and
followed me downstairs to the sidewalk.
I didn’t care.

I sat blankly staring at Sweet’N Low packets
under a newspaper rack at the coffee shop on the corner,
holding my mug for what seemed like
an eternity of suspended animation –
the grip on it’s handle was the only thing
that connected me to the planet.

My eyes held that same lack of expression as yours did, but
my lips were parted so that air could
flow freely in and out if it
became necessary.

Sitting lost in state, it occurred me, that
I deeply and authentically affect you
and it has nothing to do with *******.

Your boyfriend’s sweatshirt was a size too big for me
and I could tell he wore Creed –
I saw a bottle of it on the toilet tank. It’s redolence
clashed with the aroma of roasting coffee and
I was startled from stasis.

So I left, walking out to a cacophonous city, where
the sun had just exploded over the horizon,
and I smiled into its blinding brilliance.
As the door squeaked closed behind me to a snap,
I looked to the right for a moment,
then turned left.
I had no idea where I was walking to and started
blithely swinging my arms
as I accelerated my gait.

I still had my sock in my hand.
And your cat is probably dead.