‘Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis
vidi in ampulla pendere, et *** illi pueri dicerent:
Sibylla ti theleis; respondebat illa: apothanein thelo.’

                For Ezra Pound
                il miglior fabbro


I. The Burial of the Dead

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony *******? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
            Frisch weht der Wind
            Der Heimat zu
            Mein Irisch Kind,
            Wo weilest du?
‘You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
‘They called me the hyacinth girl.’
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Oed’ und leer das Meer.

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying ‘Stetson!
‘You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
‘That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
‘Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
‘Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
‘Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
‘Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
‘You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!’

II. A Game of Chess

The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out
(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra
Reflecting light upon the table as
The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,
From satin cases poured in rich profusion;
In vials of ivory and coloured glass
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused
And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
That freshened from the window, these ascended
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
Huge sea-wood fed with copper
Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,
In which sad light a carved dolphin swam.
Above the antique mantel was displayed
As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
‘Jug Jug’ to ***** ears.
And other withered stumps of time
Were told upon the walls; staring forms
Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.
Footsteps shuffled on the stair.
Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair
Spread out in fiery points
Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.

‘My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
‘Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.
‘What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
‘I never know what you are thinking. Think.’

I think we are in rats’ alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.

‘What is that noise?
                          The wind under the door.
‘What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?’
                    Nothing again nothing.
                                                    ‘Do
‘You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
‘Nothing?’

    I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
‘Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?’
                                                     But
O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—
It’s so elegant
So intelligent
‘What shall I do now? What shall I do?’
I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
‘With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow?
‘What shall we ever do?’
                             The hot water at ten.
And if it rains, a closed car at four.
And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.

When Lil’s husband got demobbed, I said—
I didn’t mince my words, I said to her myself,
hurry up please its time
Now Albert’s coming back, make yourself a bit smart.
He’ll want to know what you done with that money he gave you
To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.
You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,
He said, I swear, I can’t bear to look at you.
And no more can’t I, I said, and think of poor Albert,
He’s been in the army four years, he wants a good time,
And if you don’t give it him, there’s others will, I said.
Oh is there, she said. Something o’ that, I said.
Then I’ll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.
hurry up please its time
If you don’t like it you can get on with it, I said.
Others can pick and choose if you can’t.
But if Albert makes off, it won’t be for lack of telling.
You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.
(And her only thirty-one.)
I can’t help it, she said, pulling a long face,
It’s them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
(She’s had five already, and nearly died of young George.)
The chemist said it would be alright, but I’ve never been the same.
You are a proper fool, I said.
Well, if Albert won’t leave you alone, there it is, I said,
What you get married for if you don’t want children?
hurry up please its time
Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,
And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot—
hurry up please its time
hurry up please its time
Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.
Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.

III. The Fire Sermon

The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors;
Departed, have left no addresses.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . .
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

A rat crept softly through the vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse
Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck
And on the king my father’s death before him.
White bodies naked on the low damp ground
And bones cast in a little low dry garret,
Rattled by the rat’s foot only, year to year.
But at my back from time to time I hear
The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter
They wash their feet in soda water
Et O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole!

Twit twit twit
Jug jug jug jug jug jug
So rudely forc’d.
Tereu

Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon
Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female *******, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays,
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—
I too awaited the expected guest.
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house agent’s clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .

She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
‘Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.’
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.

‘This music crept by me upon the waters’
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
O City city, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,
The pleasant whining of a mandoline
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.

      The river sweats
      Oil and tar
      The barges drift
      With the turning tide
      Red sails
      Wide
      To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
      The barges wash
      Drifting logs
      Down Greenwich reach
      Past the Isle of Dogs.
                  Weialala leia
                  Wallala leialala

      Elizabeth and Leicester
      Beating oars
      The stern was formed
      A gilded shell
      Red and gold
      The brisk swell
      Rippled both shores
      Southwest wind
      Carried down stream
      The peal of bells
      White towers
                  Weialala leia
                  Wallala leialala

‘Trams and dusty trees.
Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew
Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.’
‘My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart
Under my feet. After the event
He wept. He promised ‘a new start’.
I made no comment. What should I resent?’
‘On Margate Sands.
I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
The broken fingernails of ***** hands.
My people humble people who expect
Nothing.’
              la la

To Carthage then I came

Burning burning burning burning
O Lord Thou pluckest me out
O Lord Thou pluckest

burning

IV. Death by Water

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
                                A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
                               Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

V. What the Thunder Said

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock wi

Indigo. A dream of the color, and the sound of soft rain. Bathing birds babbled among pines beyond her window, and morning light was warm on her closed face. An ache in the spine. Creaking knees. Shoulders cold cliff-rock. Complaining muscles knotted tight as wood. The wooden house around her also creaked in the wind. Smelled wet. And somewhere echoing through her fields Edgar barked three times, then once more in playful affirmation. Today maybe the last today. In her mind’s eye, falling almost back into dream, Nora surveyed the long acres surrounding her cold home: untended wheat, alfalfa, cattle-corn, all woven through untold ecosystems of weeds. Stray indigo flowers and violets. Scattered dust-filled barns. What the place might look like after all this time. With her right hand she sought the frame of the bed, found it, rough chips of paint flaking. Slowly exhaling at once Nora lifted her iron legs over the edge, thin-socked feet found the bedroom’s planks. Cold air. November hopelessness. With spider-sensitive fingers she plucked her way around the room, imagining violet dawn spilling through her screen window. Stood before the poker-faced mirror out of habit, ran her brush through hair that must now be silver. She felt the satisfying tug on her scalp and loudly past her ears. If her dresser was in front of her, to her right was the window and the pine-scented boxes where she kept his clothes, behind was her rumpled bed, and to her left then was the bathroom. She felt along the door-frame, the sink, the toilet, and sighingly she settled onto its seat. Relief.
Rain drops on her roof were like the “shh” breathed to an infant. Warm blanket of rain over the cold farm. The breathy wind was driving the rain towards her house, cranky knees told of a storm to come. The boisterous wind had the sound of laughter and strife, of voices: the twins arguing somewhere, Edgar probably with them over-enthusiasticly ******* their footsteps. The bellowing wind made the house creak more than usual, but there was something else. A distinctive groan from the foundation up the east wall to the roof-tiles. Someone was in the kitchen. Constance, just like it used to be. Connie was here and the twins were outside: they had arrived closer to dawn than Nora expected. Heavy truck’s tires in mud, headlights had pioneered dawn darkness. Smell of soil. Massaged her own back, kneaded the the flesh on either side of her spine, then wiped and stood from the seat letting her nightgown fall all down around her knotted ankles. Washed herself, and a short shower before the water turned cold. Dried her wrinkles feelingly, smelling soap, and pulled her soft nightgown back on. Socks.
Always a joy whenever Constance came to call — less frequently these days it seemed — always a joy to be with her grandchildren though little Bastian was still mistrustful of her. Always a joy to see her daughter’s family… but she never got to see Matt’s. An image of her son’s face, a red haired ghost of the past, flickered in Nora’s memory. He couldn’t stand this place since he was young, hated his full name “Matthias,” maybe hated Nora too. No reason to stay after his father died. He fled to the city. Must have a wife, several children by now. Well. At least Constance kept coming by. The rain grew heavier, played on the roof like the roll of a snare drum.
Out of the bathroom and bedroom, feeling the planks of floorboard with her soles, hand by hand and foot by foot she traced her steps down the rickety stairs. Uneven. Nora knew the chandelier she once hung here was red; she pictured the color as hard as she could to envision its reflection on each surface of the stairwell. Smell of pine. Like the smell of his clothes safely preserved in the boxes by the window. Jagged nostalgia. Nora had met dear Rowan back in another world: a world of whirling sights and colors and beautiful ugliness and ugliest beauty all. To America when she was nineteen, leaving behind all Germany and studying her new tongue. Had still devoured books then, was able to become a school teacher. When twenty-three, met in a chance cafe Rowan who worked the docks. Red hair. Scottish but of many American generations. Nora grabbed blindly at a face just out of memory’s reach. Her hold on the bannister revealed the places where varnish had been rubbed away by her wringing hands. From the kitchen, acrid cigarette stench and shuffling. Inflamed knees hating her meticulous descent, but better this ordeal each day than to abandon the bedroom they had shared. When the two met, Rowan still sent money to his agricultural folks in New York (“Upstate,” he protested more than once, “Not that awful city, but in the countryside!” and he’d pantomime a deep breath) because of the expenses of running their farm. Nora’s now. From the cafe he had bought her an almond pastry, triangular, smaller than a palm, its sweet crisp flakes made her think of Mediterranean forests, and when the two were married they worked this hereditary farm. Nora knew all the animals, when they still kept livestock. Now Nora’s farm, whose after? When her little Matthias was born they had praised him as the farm’s inheritor. Unwise.
Last step. Sound from the kitchen of Connie shifting in her seat, rustling papers. Smell of strong coffee. Strong cigarettes. Composed herself, quietly cleared throat. Sauntered down the hallway, monitoring expression and tone. Nora said, “Hello Constance. When did you three get here?”
“Hey ma,” said the woman’s voice when the elder crossed into the kitchen. “For christ’s sake don’t call me that.”
“For christ’s sake, don’t take his name,” Ma scolded, but then traced her way past the table to the countertop and felt about for utensils. “I’ll make you something Connie.” The counter was in front of her, bathroom to the left, stove to her right and along that same wall was the back door. ”How about some nice eggs and toast like how you like.”
“No ma, I handled it already.”
“And what color is that hair of yours this time?” Ma asked, carefully inserting slices of bread into the toaster. “Seems like months you haven’t been by.”
A patronising, sarcastic chuckle. “…it’s orange, ma.
Listen—”
“That is so nice. Your father’s hair was just that shade of orange.” Felt around inside the refrigerator. The styrofoam carton. Small and cold and round, her fingers seized four of them. “Do you remember?”
Pause. “I remember, ma.”
“What I don’t understand,” said Ma swallowing a cough, expertly igniting one gas burner as practiced and putting on hot water for tea, “is why you don’t fix to keep it natural. I love our nice fair hair, very blonde, very pretty.” Back home in Germany Nora had been the favorite of two men, but many years since engaging in the frivolous antics she in those days entertained. “Best to flaunt your natural hair color while it’s still there: orange like Matt and dear Rowan, or fair like you and Lorelai got.” Memories of her own face as she remembered it. Relatively young the last time she had seen. What wrinkles there must be. What a mask to wear. No wonder Bastian. Nora ignited another burner. Tick tick tick fwoosh. Smelled gas. Sound of the almost boiling water complaining against its kettle. Phantom taste of anticipated tea. Regret. The contents of the vial hidden on the top shelf. Today maybe the. Sound of heavy rain. “And how are your bundles of mischief?”
Connie sighed. “I told Lorelai to get her little **** inside the house, as if she hears a word. She’s playing with Ed somewhere in the fields I don’t wonder, rain be ******. That girl is such a little — well she’d better not be down by the creek anyhow. Could get flooded in a downpour like this. Bastian was out with her, but he’s playing in his room now. You know we don’t have time to stay long today, it’s just that you and I got to finally square this business away. No more deliberating, ok?”
Swallowed. “Course, Constance. Just nice to hear your voice. You’re taking care?”
“Care enough. Last time I was — oh! Jesus, ma!”
Ma’s egg missed the pan’s edge. She felt herself shatter the shell into the stove top, in her mind’s eye saw the bright orange yolk squeezed into the albumen. The burner hissed against liquid intrusion. Connie made a strained noise and scooped her mother into a seat at the table. Movement. Crisply, the sound of two fresh eggs being broken and sizzling on the pan. Scrambled as orange as Connie’s guarded temper. The table’s cool surface. Phantom smell of pine wood polish and recollections of Rowan at his woodworking tools building this table once. Other breakfasts. Young Constance, young Matthias. Young self. Her left hand massaged her aching right shoulder, then she switched. The sound of plates being readjusted with unnecessary force.
“You know,” said her daughter, “living in one of them places might even be fun. Might be good for you instead of moping about this place. But like I’ve been saying, we got to make our decision today: sell this place or pass it on. I know you don’t take no walk, cause where would you go? What’s the point in keeping all this **** land if you’re not gonna do nothing with it? You can’t even ******* see it!”
“Constance! Language!”
“Come on ma, just cut it out! This is great property, and you’ve let it get so it’s bleeding money.”
“…But Constance I can’t sell it, not like your brother wants me to do. He’s always trying to get rid of this place and turn a profit, but someone needs to take care of it! You know that this is the house that your f—“
“‘That your grandparents lived in where your father and I raised you…’ Yeah I know, ma. And I get it. Believe me. But what you’re doing is just plain impractical, why don’t you think about it? All you’re doing is haunting this place like a ghost. Wouldn’t you rather live somewhere where you can make friends? Things can’t go on like this.” A plate was placed softly on the table and it slid in front of Ma. Can’t go on like this. Egg smell. Salted. Toast, margarine. A cup of tea appeared nearby. “Anything else you want? Here’s a fork.”
“What will you eat, Constance?”
“I ate, ma, I ate already. Have your breakfast, then we can talking about this for real. Ok?” Then, the sound of her daughter’s body shifting in surprise, a pleasant unexpected, “Oh,” before Connie said low and matronly, “Hi baby, how you doing? Are you hungry?” But only the sound of the downpour. Orange eggs still softly sizzled. The wind pushed the creaking house. “Sweetie, you don’t have to hide behind the door, it’s ok. Come say hi to grandma… don’t you want some scrambled eggs?” Refrigerator’s hum. Barking echoed, coming over the hill. But not even the little boy’s breathing. Grandma had met the twins two years ago, following the **** of Constance’s rebellious years and independence. Nora was reminded of her german gentlemen and her own amply tumultuous adolescence. She could forgive. Two years ago Lorelai and Bastian had already been too big to cradle and fawn over, but they were discovered to be just starting school and already bright pupils. Grandma hung her head. Warm steam from where the uneaten eggs waited patiently. Edgar’s approaching yapping. And, fleeing from the doorway, a scampering of feet so light they might have been moth wings. Down the hallway back into his room. “Sorry ma,” said Constance.
Shrugged. A nerve flared in pain up her neck but she didn’t react. Only fork scrape. Ate eggs. On introduction, poor little Bastian had burst into tears and refused to go near her. Connie had consoled: “It’s ok baby, she’s just Grandma Nora! She’s my mother.” But poor little Bastian inconsolable: “No, no, no! She’s not!” What a wrinkled mask it must be. How hideous unkempt with silver hair. How horrible unflinching eyes. “She’s not,” would sob the quiet boy in earnest, “she’s a witch! Don’t you see?” And he never would let Grandma hold him. Lorelai was always polite, hugged warmly, looked after her pitiable brother, but her mind too was far elsewhere. Edgar alone loved them all unconditionally and was equally beloved. Barking. Yowling. Scratches at the door. Downpour. Door and screen door opened, wet dog happy dog entered, shook, and droplets on her cheek.
And there appeared Lorelai, a star out of sight. “Hey mom. Hi grandma!”
Grandma swiveled for cosmetic reasons to face where the door. Grinned, “Hello Lorelai. Wet?” Envisioned yellow sunlight entering with the excitable girl in spite of the deluge.
“Oh it’s so rainy out there grandma, I found little streams through your fields and big mud puddles and Edgar showed me where your secret treasure was, we found it!”
“Stop right there, missy!” commanded Constance. “For christ’s sake you look like you took a bath in the mud and the **** dog with you. Come on, your filthy coat needs to be on the rack, right? Now your boots.”
Warm nose found Nora’s palm, excited lapping. Slimy fur, smelly fur. A cold piece of egg dangled in her fingers, then dog breath came hot and licked it up. Satisfied, he trotted off elsewhere, collar jingling out of the kitchen and down the hall.
Little Lorelai lamented, “I couldn’t help it mom, the mud was all over the place! When we got past the motor barn and the one alfalfa field that looks like a big marsh frogs went ‘croak croak croak’ but Edgar growled and chased them and then we made it all the way in the rain to the creek and it’s so much—”
“Now you just hold on. Hold still!” Sounds of wrestling. Grunts of a struggle. “That creek must have been overflowing! Didn’t I tell you not to? You didn’t take your new phone out there did you, Lori?”
“No ma’am.”
“**** right you didn’t, cause I sure ain’t buying you a new one. Didn’t I tell you not to go all the way out there? Didn’t I? Now you get into that bathroom and wash your **** hands!”
“But I’m telling Grandma a story!” huffed little yellow haired Lorelai.
“Well wash your hands first and then we’ll hear it, Grandma don’t listen to misbehaving girls who are all muddy and gross. Not a squeak from you till you look like you come from heaven instead of that nasty creek.”
A profound sigh, a condescending, “Fine,” a door closing and a squeaky faucet running. Muffled hands splashed, dampened off-key ‘la la la’s.
“Who knows what the hell that one is ever talking about,” said Connie. “It’s everything I can do to get her to shut up for five ******* minutes. You done with your eggs?”
Ma fidgeted. The plate was scraped away, and a clunk by the sink. Licked her lips, mouthed a syllable, about to speak. But then her house creaked three strong along the east wall. From deeper within bubbled a suppressed sob: “Mom,” little Bastian wailed, “Mom, come quick!” Constance sighed, Constance cursed, and Constance swept off down the hallway struggling to refrain from stomping.
Sound of washing. Wind. Rain. Alone. Cold. Picking out the paint for this room, listed in gloss as ‘golden straw yellow.’ Rowan hadn’t liked it and chose himself the bedroom’s color in retaliation. The loss of the home they had built together. The contents of the vial hidden on the top shelf: do they see it? Bathroom sink stopped flowing, door wrenched open. Smell of soap, clean smell. Grandma said to her, “Your mother went to check on Bastian,” Taste of eggs still yellow on her tongue.
“What a *****!”
Stunned. “Lorelai!” she snapped. “Don’t you dare take that language!”
“But mom does it all the time.”
“Then Lorelai, it’s up to you to be better than your mother. When I’m not around any more, and your mother neither, you’ll be the one who keeps us alive.”
“But as long as you’re alive you’ll always be around, you’re not a ***** like mom. And remember? I got all the mud off so can I finally tell you can I what we found? Well actually it was Edgar found it. Oh and I’ll describe it real good for you grandma just like you could see it: when we pulled up we were just wandering in the blue rain, Bastian and me, and silly Edgar joined us but Mom tried to make us come back of course but I told Bastian to stay with us at first, but later I changed my mind on it. It was he and me and Edgar were hiding in the old motor barn where it smells like a gas station remember grandma and he was so excited to see the sun when it rose and made the morning violet sky he started clapping and Edgar got excited too and was barking ‘bark bark’ and howling so I told Bastian to go back even

It’s been three years since I took my last photograph. Photography had lost its appeal and there were no longer moments I wanted to capture, to freeze in time. I only wanted to move on, just to walk... Besides, my camera’s broken and I can’t for the life of me be bothered to get a new one. I’d rather spend the money on a trip to Brussels, that’s next on the list.

I suppose I’d say I have one true fear in the world and that’s staying still. My mother used to say “Oh Alfie, you’re like one of them AHDD children” and after I correcting her, I’d usually just shrug as if to say “Well, what do you expect me to do about it?” It could be said that my mother was one of those people who just had no time for the world, society was not her priority. One time a member of a local charity knocked on our door asking for a donation. My mother stood there, cemented like a gargoyle and poured out a flurry of very high decibel palaver about how her husband was in the marines and how she owed the world nothing because of it. I have to admit, it was a pseudo-logic that I’ve, to this day, not quite decoded.

My father made the decision to enter the Royal Marines at the age of 19 and my mother hasn’t forgiven him for it since. Perhaps that’s why she’s so sensitive about the whole “I owe society nothing” thing. I used to argue with her about it, about how it seemed right that he made his own decision to fight on behalf of his countrymen, but part of me has always despised his decision. I’ve gradually developed a cliché, but not inaccurate, view that soldiers are merely puppets for rich men’s wars and that glorifying the armed forces is just a sickening way to try and justify ******. Of course, I never shared this view with my father, even if I had, he’d have long forgotten. Whenever he comes back from service, I’m usually in some other part of the world, sitting in an outdoor café, preferring my life. It’s thoughts like this make me feel that I'm more like my mother than I primarily thought. I suppose some may call it selfish, but I merely believe it to be good observation, and therefore an intelligent alternative to what society wants me to believe. We’ll stick with arrogant.

My excuse is that arrogance was part of my job; I had to be correct, all the time. I was in that awkward career position, where I wasn't quite high up enough to be able to fully express my own views and so I had to stick to the hard-line “everything has to be extremely left-wing” approach. Journalism: the home to those who mould the minds of the world; or the breeding ground of *******, if you will. Personally, I was lucky enough to have no permanent boss; essentially I was my own. I wrote my columns for Liberal newspapers all across Europe and they edited them at their own will. It paid the bills, but like my views on my father’s military situation, I still possessed that distaste for the immorality of it all. I still remember my first article. I was 17 at the time, the writing type, enjoyed all things politics. It was for a moderately popular newspaper/magazine company in Western France, named “La Quotidienne”. I’d written a piece on local traders not receiving fair deals for their produce and as a result, the editor had asked me if I’d like to have my own regular column. The column was named “Teen Activist”, which nowadays I deem to be relatively patronising, but it was rather humbling all the same.    

I probably ought to explain some geography. I was born in Surrey, England in 1981 and lived there until my mother decided to move us to France in 1985. The military weren't too pleased with the move, because of course, this made us spies. The whole ordeal was a bit messy, but not really worth noting. We moved to Rennes, which is where today, I would consider home; although I haven’t actually seen home for a good 5 years. I guess the important thing is where I am and where I've been, but as I said before, I’d rather concentrate now on where I'm going. To Belgium, my suitcase is packed once more and my tired passport taped like an extra vital ***** to my wrist (because despite my relentless travelling, I always manage to leave my passport in some unsuspecting hotel room by accident). Blame the occupied mind of a ceaseless traveller.

Don't press pause on real life..
Cause in just a blink of an eye..
Everything changes,
In front of you.
It's so wonderful.

And don't spend your days angry
Just spend a moment sulking :')
Cause every-thing right now is temporary..
..I'll too, just be a memory.

So won't you live a little,
And remember me?
Bump into me 5 years later,
With a different hair colour;
Oh go out there, and live your dream
Send me messages now and then,
And i'll get a pen and some paper
Oh won't you live life, cause there will never be another..
At least not one like this,
Oh you are beautiful I must,
Admit.

Clocks are turning,
Earth spins..
My mind wakes up to the thought
Of "are you okay?"
.. Almost everyday.

But next year I'll care for me too
I'm 18, hey, lets get a tattoo-
Of an Ed Sheeran song..
That'll be a memorable one,
For sure.

Oh won't you promise,
To stay so strong?
I know that sounds patronising
But in the poems i've been writing,
I've found strength in this place here between my lungs;
Yeah these words from the heart;
I hope they light up the dark,
For you
I promise I'll never fade.
I'll still be annoying as hell
And maybe sappy as well
And will I ever move on?
Only time can tell.
But for now darling just live
Oh everyday is beautiful,
I must admit.

if art is to survive the rich have to remember the
concept of patronage,
but like all the rich with the pope included
they think patronage equates itself to philanthropy,
but not all the poor can provide escapism with a sistine chapel,
patronage patronage patronage...
god, i’m sounding just like anthony blair
giving children almost free education
and the afghanistan / iraq wars... you know that
famous slogan: educationeducationeducation...
yeah, let’s juggle those idiots for the conveyor belt of our whims...
otherwise self-promotion will take over without patronage
and with self-promotion we’ll have absolutely no original content...
just a lot of people in queues shuffling through with elbows tearing
feathers for “the golden manuscript,” “the goldmine of applause!”
without patronage you only have patronising content of a work,
that’s the evidence: no patronage = patronising evaluations;
but then again we’re talking about people wanting free art,
which means that everyone can become a self-righteous artist
and no art will leave the high school art class rooms,
while “true” artist will require large open spaces,
coat hangers, toilets, mummified plastic sharks, mannequins
in ***** poses... and added space
for thought... don’t know where the added space for thought
will come from, given thought itself is the added space...
i guess we’ll need to cross-reference timing that space with ooh, ah,
hmm, what do you think about this piece?
‘can i smash it to pieces?’
wow... so innovative! so original! what would you call it?
‘pisces in a herring swarm of *******.’

Nature/Nurture
Which one hurts ya?
Born a ***** or raised a *****?
Take your pick.
Mother Nature can be sick,
But so can your mother and so can your father.
Look at yer brothers
Look at yer sisters
All of 'em idiots
None of 'em got jobs
What's your prospects?
A life of desk jobs?
Nah, dealing and stealing
Taking without feeling
That's what you'll do
No dreams of being well-to-do.
You were born poor,
Raised to be poor,
Cos you're forgotten by the government,
No votes to be gained from givin' you a helping hand.
Born poor, stay poor.
No cultural capital
To help cast off the metaphorical manacles
That shackle any sense of aspiration that might give you inspiration
To defy nature
To defy nurture.
------------------------------
I'll prove ya wrong!
I was born poor for sure,
Raised poor is right,
But my folks weren't sick,
They raised me not to be a *****
My bloodline shows no decline
Just not born with entitlement,
So don't judge,
That's just ******* lazy
Don't believe the argument:
Nature versus nurture
I am me, now,
So don't get frenetic about my genetics.
I have free-will
I will pay my bills,
Not be defficient,
But be self-sufficient.
And what about you?
Sat in your Ivory Tower
Indulging in your power to judge those you don't know,
Believing them to be a product line of people scrounging,
Needing hand downs from the Crown
Doing nothing but clowning around,
Smoking dope
Being without hope.
But I will be someone,
And prove you wrong,
So put your patronising way to bed
Coz I'm not lazing away until I'm dead.

The world is fast and reckless
like a stampede of beasts and
teenage ***.

It constantly reminds me
of my once mobile life,
before atrophy set like plaster
in my bones.

Everyone used to walk
to where they needed to be,
not because the roads were congested,
but because it was so.
It seems that excuse is just not good enough
anymore.

At times I think:
neither am I.

I still walk the streets
and browse the shop-fronts.
It takes me a little longer these days
to read the signs and labels,
the easy mating calls of the merchants
standing under bigger names
and brighter lights.

Nobody courts anymore.
Hands are held far too easily
and intimacy seems to have become
yet another commodity.

I remember my sweetheart
and the years we lived in absences,
sleeping with a lie
in a life of compromise.
Our eyes stared past the darkness of the room,
beyond to something, somewhere,
far from where we found our lives to be.

I remember her well
amongst the ruins of my years.
How desperate were the days
before we met,
exchanging platitudes for company
in our first loveless marriages.

How bitter I was,
bound within ever decreasing circles
of routine and passionless chains.
I exquisitely recall the day
I finally broke from them.

You and I
met over letters,
our eyes scanning and reciting
each other's loneliness
and fear of never finding a place.
The saliva of the stamp
brought us to a closeness
unbounded by geography.

These days,
nobody understands the thrill of a postbox
and the welcome mat
has become nothing more
than a place to wipe the **** from your shoes,
as the day nurse comes to visit,
kicking pizza leaflets
to the edges of the hallway.

There was excitement in the morning,
sleep thinned to prepare
for that slap of paper
and rattle of metal.

Presently my life feels little more
than an emptied school
in the endless weeks of summer;
a sugar paper lantern
left to bleach in the sun.

I lie in wait,
for the times you appear - a phantasm
in my day. A moment reserved
with the assumption you will be sitting there,
ageing with irrefutable brilliance,
in the chair you stubbornly frequented
ever since our retirement.

I’ll take the hit that comes with it.
I’ll accept the come-down
when I enter the room
and you are not there,
if it permits me a moment of belonging.

The air is cancerous
with the noises of the streets.
We used to stop and listen
to the busker by the bridge,
always pleading upon bended knee
for someone to validate his melody
and make his callouses worthwhile.

Now, I live on in near-silence.
It has been weeks since I spoke to someone
who did not rush me through my sentences.
I am trying to learn the patterns of today,
a way to bow my sad head
and pay up for my goods
in the blink of an eye,
in a way to defy that I am old and slow.

I avoid home mostly
and instead, I walk through
the same route each day,
hoping for a friend
or else never to be noticed.
Hunger will eventually deliver me,
confused at our door.

I turn the television on quickly
to **** the silence that forms
in the spaces you would have spoken in.

On the rare occasions
that I talk to someone,
my eyes blur with inexplicable tears,
a kind of tension grips me,
as if I have missed the last step on the stairs.

I swallow panic
like all of those pills that never work,
instead fogging my mind,
distorting all anchors
to a meaningful life.

The television shouts at me
across the room, patronising like
the cold-callers and politicians.
Everything seems to be an advert
and the news is getting uglier.
Sometimes I turn on the radio,
to give my eyes a rest,
but music isn’t music anymore.

We  never wasted our moments on kids,
but I have grown soft in old age,
and perhaps I would like
to have the comfort of your features
blurred with mine, bestowed upon
our trial-and-error attempt at a legacy.

The money will dry up.
I have started smoking again.
Though I still smoke on the doorstep,
because I know you never liked the smell.
These are just the thoughts of an old man,
some doctored flicker show
Where I can cut out all of the ugliness,
and leave just us.

Exploring hands encounter no defence;
Recollecting endeavours drives her to a dry pain
Throbbing, throbbing
Hamlet's hamartia discards her to *the lowest of the dead

His vanity requires no response;
Her life on the line and he's got nothing to lose.
  So much more the eye can see
Caressing, caressing

Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass;
  Leave me, carbuncle:
Words she has never been able to utter . . .
Loudly, she thinks it
It doesn't translate
Shivering, quivering

Brittle monster bestows one final patronising kiss
  I must exercise some form of self control

Hardly aware of her departed lover,
She lays in a yellow blanket;
Phosphenes in the emerging light of day.

I had now been walking for at least seven miles. I had been trying
to avoid giving too much thought to the hopelessness of my current
situation. As pedestrians passed on packed pavements, I could see
almost exactly what they thought. I with my beat up old raincoat and
unkempt appearance. I can't say exactly wether or not we were in
some particularly luxurious district of the town or what. But by now
apparently every woman I passed was firmly middle class. The coffee
shops were packed as the customers spilled out onto the pavement.
Across from the main parade of shops a park had been laid out. An unusually
large boating lake, thirty or forty meters from an ornate outdoor lido. The
warmth of the climate allowed its year round use. The deep green lawns,
as if cut by some unlucky soul with nail scissors, It would be impossible
for me to accurately convey the sense of well being brought upon me by this park. For twenty minutes or so, I forgot my plight entirely, strolling unnoticed
by the guards hired by the park to keep vagrants such as I away. My stomach
by now was taking no prisoners, so anytime without its unceasing requests was welcome relief.

As I made my way out of the walled garden, I noticed in the corner of my eye
a figure approaching. While my instinct screamed that I should indulge my curiosity and turn to take a look I knew far better. The police as of late
had seemingly taken a hard line toward my kind. I kept walking increasing my pace just enough as to appear in a rush but not trying to escape. Although
as is often the case, my meticulously planned escape was foiled.
"Excuse me sir" he shouted
as I continued on could I pretend to be deaf? Would that even work?
what if he spoke and he could tell that I was listening? Was it too
late to turn around and reply? I bit the bullet and turned to face him.
"Good afternoon" I replied, uneasy about what exactly awaited me.
The expected confidence of a police officer was replaced by
a timid and gentle  young man. Like some unruly child,
he made his way toward me eyes set on the floor at all times. As if approaching a teacher when caught red handed. When he got to
about ten meters he raised his face to smile awkwardly. Now all of
it made absolute sense, this boy had a face far more suited to the
theatre or a comfortable life as some artists muse. He was no police
officer, I can imagine he must have been new. No one had spoken
to me with such reverence since Id arrived here. Oh luck, of all
of the days and all of the hours I was approached by him.

I began talking before he had a chance to speak as too assert my *******
over this half-pint.
"Now I'll have you know I was robbed about a week ago, and I'm making
my way to the north to see my sister for assistance"
He smiled content that he had no need to conceal his intentions
"It's just my boss" he began slowly
"I know I know your a good kid just doing his job"
I took a particular delight in calling him kid and placing my hand
upon his shoulder in a patronising manner. For five minutes or
so afterward we spoke, he was quite interested by me and informed me
quite proudly that his mother too had come from England. He left me to
leave the relative comfort of the park but not before pointing me
in the direction of a poorhouse he said would be more than
willing to let me rest for the afternoon at least. Invigorated and taken
aback by the situation. I continued on to meal and somewhere to sleep,
out of the park and down the high street as directed.

My good side is struggling for supremacy
over my bad side which is brimming with evil glee

I could cause them so much trouble
burst their patronising bubble

It would be so easy to return the pain
but nobody would actually gain

I’ll keep their mistake inside
because telling would hurt my pride

Today my good side has won
but bad side is waiting with a loaded gun

I hope I can keep turning the other cheek
revenge only makes me weak

‘Are you a boy or a girl?’
They shout down the corridor in a chorus behind me
Like the cries of “Good morning, Miss” in assembly
The patronising tone
in sleep deprived confusion
Droning throughout the halls
ringing around ‘she’.
    
Going to lessons is the scariest thing
Head down, walking fast hoping
they’ll never say anything
Hoping no one will question you
Glance around and notice you
not daring to look up
in case you make a wrong move.
    
You can’t know what it’s like to be
in a room all alone,
in a house that is not your own;
'Your body is a temple’ they said.
But they don’t tell you how to treat it
if it’s right in your head
but wrong in your skin,
and that feeling
of being and existing
is like dealing
with a thousand anxieties
suffocating within;
Chest too obvious
voice too loud and feminine
not enough to be ‘gentleman’.

'Why does this bother you?'
I hear you enquire,
it's because society’s construct
of gender is too based on attire,
an old fashioned concept-
Telling your children
that 'blue's for boys'
'pink's for girls'.

'Is it really?' I say.
Gender is not just binary
it fluxes and changes,
just like any scientific theory;
Einstein for instance,
didn’t come up with special relativity
in a night!
It took years of work
until he was right

Let this apply for gender too:
not just black
and white it's not as
clear cut as that
this is black and this is white
Evolve the theory
from system to spectrum
of freedom and pride
to reside in one's body happily:
Humanity allied.

This is what I dream about,
but it is not what
I've been living throughout,
in our world of shame;
where we are reduced to words and themes.
Driving my community,
those who love and support me,
to thoughts of suicide.
Being known
only when they're reduced
to rags and bones,
dead bodies
hanging
from their hashtags
thrown in the corner
another into the pile of disorder...

But people think it’s okay
to come up to you
abuse you in the street.
Knocked to your knees
to cries of 'queer'-
you end up living in fear-
'well, what do you expect given
who's watching Wall Street?'

Yet I stand here
talking to you
a queer boy-
with all connotations of the word-
a queer boy with a voice.
Look at me!
My chest,
My unbroken voice,
My broken mind.
I am not proud of what I am,
what I’ve become and
how much it hurts
is indescribable to you.
I am not what you want me to be.
I am a man.
Not trans.

Oh so patronising, I spit on your horizon,
you are so ****** up.
Pity hides from you, wake up and use another,
fragile and sneaky,
vulnerable and nasty,
false and three faces, loose cannon at the weekends,
you swim in a river of sad friends,
touch the gates of hell and get to ****.

Monday

A telephone call from the Doctor.
He wants to know why I haven't been to see him
and no he can’t come to me unless
I open the door.  The old one used
to leave medicine on the window sill,
this one has rules I think.  He's young
so he follows them.

Tuesday

The Vaseline smears on the window have faded
and now they’re not enough to obscure the truth.
Smoke and mirrors of inclement weather
need to be framed and hung.
I’ll have to buy more.
In preparation I disappear inside
my coat.  No-one sees me,
but now the cat is cold and
he'll need litter instead.

Wednesday

Made up faces are patronising me from
the South Bank, concerned to find me
hiding in cobwebs.  I beg them to stop.
They suggest I call this number and choose
A, B or C.  

Thursday

I find mould growing in the bath.
I water it down
and make finger paintings
of the people I used like.  
Sludgy green eyes and plug hole hair,
rust coloured cheeks.
I don’t remember enough but it suits them.

Friday

Sharp toothed children knock on my door.
They want their laughter back.  I tell them
I can’t do that, using the letterbox and
gingerly offering the tears I’ve collected.
My hand is slapped from underneath.
I’m drying out.

Saturday

I stay in bed today.
The floor is slipping away.

Sunday

I watch Songs Of Praise
and pray.  He'll get back to me tomorrow.

‘Once fire is the form of the spectacle the problem
becomes how to set fire to fire.’
—Joshua Clover, ‘My Life in the New Millennium’

i’m back
back with a thunderclap.
no wait, scratch that.
back with a thunderous tone from the seldom seen soul
groaning lonely long sung melodies, if it please.
welcome to a kingdom of dreams
and agony.
a stone’s throw from here:
a face
Unseen.
and somewhere between(:) low
oceans rolling under the moon,
a storm approaching,
crazed wind whirling,
my sails unfurl, searching for the open seas of your gaze;
sick of being furtive;
i live and i yearn and i speak what i learn
and i know when i haven’t earned it,
too often too stern and i know you don’t deserve it,
i know everyone i know and too many more deserve so much more
and for them to have this i live and i yearn!
Justice!
for this i live and i yearn
on the turning earth that gives
no rest to the world weary
left alone
to burn out, i burn out, i burn out
i rise from the ashes
a phoenix grasping wheat and hammer in its talons,
seeking to pass out gifts and set fire
to fire itself, to sing Clover in the streets,
to render the helpless
helpless no longer.
i am (not) unbroken
like infinite waves.
friends fan the flames of my brazen heart
ablaze at three minutes to the midnight of my flagrant soul.
a toll on your life,
a tax on your poverty.
shouting: no more!
shouting: we will not settle for less than we are owed!
shouting: down with the dictatorship of the plutocrat!
shouting: down with the rich Man’s socialism!
shouting: …
in a fantasy, odiously
no more, doubt ridden,
not yet traversed nor even intraversed,
not yet reified, not quite versed;
apartheids’ unovercoming, voices atrophied,
walls rising higher, reception terse
and curse those bless’ed curses
transdescending themselves
in blessings through me!
they haven’t yet found me at my worst
so things couldn’t get worse if i hurt them.

my intentions a mess,
my effect bereft.

wake me from my slumber, let be the aching of my chest;
let the heaviness of my heart be the weight of solidarity;
let be! the political is personal to some, life and death to some:
that’s why i’m so glum, chum,
they’re killing quicker than i finish another straight ***…
****.
and on our own soil too – see, it’s partly not for oil;
blind to land grabs and assets stolen, our toil exploited – that’s what’s up.
can’t handle serfdom? physical, mental, or spiritual health problem?
abject subsistence and misread decisions not assuaged by some other ***?
unconditional basic income?—say what?
choose starvation, hypothermia, suicide, fear—
it’s a numbers game
and every loss is a ******,
it’s ****** up.
state cuts ****, zombie banks ****, transnationals ****, TTIP will ****,
our heroes are experienced
as torturous humiliators and mass murderers in other countries,
it’s ****** up.
and reactions to shock and awe, pollution, imperialism and stolen raw materials be the chorus.
and i hope the NSA and other such state ***** hear clearly what i have to say.
and always from the pools of blood,
money trickles up.
structurally omni-parasitic,
-cataclysmic, -containing
an unlucky lucky one formula;
“profits today, **** tomorrow!”;
a system of mass extinction and violence;
cultures of hate;
distain for compassion;
secret social cleansings;
privatised gain, nationalised pain;
a plaguing absence of understanding;
sanction fetishes;
rational genocides;
wages; ***; television; grumpy cat; death drive;
armies of invisible slaves and pillaged unpeoples,
and sordid crowds of visible ones in denial or denied;
and an honest and patronising pastiche poet!
to not even begin.

but a promise shall be a promise.

weeping won’t get it done.
i shall muster my forces even before four horsemen,
the long attricious charge toward a universal freedom from fear
and hierarchy shattered
under banners of equality axiomatic sworn.
my wingbeat shall be adorned with thunderous applause,
it shall disclose smokescreens and it shall cleanse you of opiates
and not just those you have in mind.
watch me soar, join these skies;
rise above the immoral laws and their warped economic concord;
be aware of where the wealth is hoarded;
don’t concern yourself with lies,
concern yourself with liars and who they’re lying for.
be wary where your desire’s from.
there’s still longer than a long way to go
but your sense of urgency is needed now.
the shadows of the Bomb and of ecological catastrophe now grow longer
than the shadow of death
in any old sad song in history
in scarcity, surrendering abundant potential for post-scarcity
to strings of the superego, demons, conductors, controllers
and orchestrated outrage!
and i know we have more to lose than our chains.
but the view from the night of Terror is of the far off tranquil stars
and the moon never brighter!
bind, unbind, entwine.
i will not leave behind only wasted time.
find yourself, find the source, give out your hand
to dance, to share, suffer, fall—
find the hand of another, there find recourse—
and consider the Call, and consider the Course.

an anatomy of a maxim, originally: the greatest trick the
devil ever pulled was convincing the world the world that
he didn't exist... perhaps, but what
was the conviction, what ontology lay
behind it, was it pre-existential (Cartesian)
or existential (Sartre's)? we're not
talking gambling with Pascal - we're not talking
games anymore - i'll explain later.
i have too many concrete references to throw
at you, where you'll make this whole affair
a scandalous one that i didn't invent myself,
but we're all refining our meanings,
in youth prescribing unknown to us
slang vocabulary to filter through the included
and the excluded, i always wondered where
slang originated, and to what purpose,
the Beat poets and novelists licked the topic
of slang with their addictions to subplot the
demands for a bubble-effect and a non-touch policy...
i was watching the Olympics today,
and i was watching the height of plagiarising Greek
in Pax Romanum, and it felt very civilised,
an equal contest, handshakes of the defeated,
they are after all games, we're not been equal,
let's celebrate Achilles and remember him
for no depressive isolating ******* when drinking
Dionysian epilepsy of refill, refill, so we remain drunk
and memory of him keep us drunk!
but no, oh no, modern men don't know what
to do heroes, or such memories that might
detach us from thinking ourselves likewise;
oh the slur of jealousy, so much angst, among ably
bodied and among the disabled, the disabled have
no sight of a plateau to look up to among the ably
bodied, they're rotten to the core -
and i know where premature dementia stems from...
i was watching the Olympics today, and it felt so
healthy, but then i watched the opening of another
sport... football... and i put on Salem's debut album
on the speaker, songs like sick, release the boar,
trapdoor, and i felt a reminder of the fall of
the western Empire, and when the Norse men
came against the Roman plagiarism of Greek culture
after the Trojan immigration to Italy after the defeat
at Troy, and Hector dying glorious by a glorious
hand of Achilles, and Achilles dying from luck
for the prototype of Tinder man of Paris, ***** licking
boot straps marching to fake debility...
oh, if you don't have a mobile phone, and never used
the Tinder application, you can see the super-charged
desperation of women, porcelain dolls pretending it
was always hard luck and too much eager ****...
they book the cheapest tickets to the Opera house
to see Bolshoi ballet, they even buy tickets that only
allows them to stand... after the second act there's no
sign of them... they disappear, no Tinder swipe
no Pokemon... better chances looking for either
in Auschwitz (as i heard has happened, Auschwitz,
well, thank god people go to fake mourning and a digital
theme park at the same time, at least the hens and stags
have Prague... they call us the forgotten Europeans...
maybe this is the precise intention of what i once
mentioned concerning the ONE LESSON IN TAO:
to aid the world, let the world forget you,
in order that you might forget the world.
seeing la corsaire we had anna nikulina as Medora,
mikhail lobukhin as Conrad, nina Kaptsova as Gulnare,
vitaly biktimirov as Birbanto (the *******),
denis medvedev as Lankendem and alexei loparevich
as Sāid Pasha... the major dances...
- pas d'esclaves by kristina kretova and igor tsvirko,
- danse des forbans by kristina karasoyova (soloist),
                                       anna antropova, anna balukova,
                                       evgeny golovin, denis savin,
- pas de trois de odalisques by yanina parienko,
                                        xenia zhiganshina, elvina ibraimova,
- le jardin animé............................................................­........
- grand pas de eventailles......................................................­.....
lonely girls at the opera, phones in the interludes, swiping
left, swiping right, a boy without a phone,
behind me two young women trying to strike conversation
about ballet exclusively, nothing human, just prepared for
the stage... what an awful talk, and talk, and talk...
no talk about excessive clapping... out-of-time clapping...
i'm truly living among barbarians... i might not be as rich
as these barbarians, but i wouldn't care to clap so much,
i guess the logic is: i payed so much money for this ticket
i better make my presence felt.
as i already said, i did take Ezra Pound on the commute,
i should have taken Kant... on the way back from central
London heading into the west i felt patronising
tourist eyes of misguided voyeurism, here one minute,
gone the next... only the devil sweats with shame in hell,
while everyone remains cool and in denial at being in one...
i was just standing on the tube, reading a book of poetry...
i turned into Niagara Falls... sweat on my back,
sweat on my front... while everyone else remained
surprisingly well hydrated, i looked like i just ran a marathon...
so after watching the Olympics i watched the dark ages emerges,
two strands of sport... god almighty and the barbarian's
religiousness of sports, so hellbent-anti-bohemian,
intimate secretes of Onan as a chant with that curled finger
jerking sideways movement... after watching a few days
of the Olympics, the empty seats, the few remaining lights
of this world... i got a cyst pool of ****** bound maggotry...
dad says to son: as my dad said unto me: 'ammer 'em in!
but now i know where premature depression comes from,
under communism we flourished with our imagination,
we played hide & seek into the night,
even when they imported Nintendo and comics we
were hardly moved... hardly the ones to be domesticated
and zoologically probed by anaemic paraphrasing -
we lived outdoors, we slept indoors, we used to eat
sunflower seeds, freshly baked bread, drink
cheap lemonade, go foraging for mushrooms -
idealism of some sort? but none of us were given
pharmacological attractions to treat - we were
given a childhood - even in England we managed to
play with Pokemon cards, to be puberty riddled geeks,
but then things changed... none of this new generation
of youth is given the same childhood chances,
in my youth few already experimented with ***,
teased us all that it was the highest achievement -
back then we still had people to look up to -
strange how i bypassed ****** pubescent development,
when the first boy masturbated he'd be *******
*****... i'd be ******* a sensation aged 8 or 7...
and said it felt good, i didn't involve a church doctrine
that life begun somewhere other than after the birth...
as it might be reasonable inspection that mere death,
sudden, et tu Brutus?, is like an *******,
the fetus later, then birth, the migraine of mourning,
the ***** training (getting used to angels),
the ****... takes us several years to record our
first memory, some might go back as far as being 4
years old... no further, whoever says they can remember
prior is mixing what's presented to them for distortion...
i can't distort my first name and my favourite footballer's
surname in the 1990s world cup (lothar matthäus),
or the satirical sketch show about Solidarity:
**** wałęsa (lew) was the lion, tadeusz mazowiecki (żółw)
the turtle, jacek kuroń (hipopotam) the hippo -
the memory of the "turtle" politician always made me fall asleep.
to be honest, the maxim sounds better not because the devil
denied he existed, but because God denied he existed,
once having proven he did, he denied it with such force
that his marriage to the chosen people became a brief
marriage to the elect / intellectual people... but then that
failed too... we're at the last stage... with Islam teaching
us the original intention of man having to relationship
with god... when Muslims teach us kung fu and judo and
yoga and stop trying to censor our vocabulary,
teach us mutual respect, a divorce from writing poetry
to solely embrace the Koran... when they finally realise
they have become more decadent than anyone would
have thought give their discovery of oil under the dunes...
the greatest trick the
devil ever pulled was convincing the world that
he doubted his own existence; and all because he knew
that god denied his own, as became apparent in modern
politics, that the sole tactic politicians used to perpetuate
their authority was in the playground of using denial...
but it was never a playground... oddly enough
doubt and denial mingle like the Cartesian mind-body
duality - but when looking at children i know
that children do not understand doubt, too many games
to play to doubt them, hence the crippling uncoupling
from imagination later on, they're real, undoubted games,
hence the child's complete immersion in them:
whether Walt Disney lived and provided for the lost
children is none of my business.... children don't know
doubt, they have no knowledge of thought per se, thought
per se identified as ego... they know only one form of
lie: which is denial, intuitive lying... doubtful lying is
in good interest only a wavering, but nonetheless a straight line...
if ever doubtful lying ever persisted - even the Koran states
something about non-believers... it states nothing about
quasi-believers... the sort of: well... as long as that
martyr walks into a harem, where all the 72 virgins
are actually prostitutes, and he can stomach their piercing
eyes, then we'll think about giving him 72 authentic brides
to deflower.

I was sitting on a train
I didn’t have my headphones so
I was listening to the announcements
The woman’s voice is butter light but
A little bit patronising:
“If you have an Opal card, please remember to tap-off”
Because what else am I going to do to get through the turnstile?
I’m too short to jump it
And I am not a ghost

And then I start thinking of her,
The woman who gave her voice to a train
If she can still use it anymore
If it annoys her when she hears it on her way to work
If she’s changed it like an embarrassing name or
Moved to a different state?
And do they have different voices in
Melbourne or Brisbane or Tasmania?

And what about the bloke
Who gave his voice to the station?
“Please be advised, smoking is not permitted on the platform”
Which is a ****** ‘cos I could really do with a smoke.

But then again what if
Train Woman and Station Man aren’t real?
What if they were made by a computer program?
And if so,
Did someone have to give their voice to a computer?

But that’s just crazy –
It would mean the robots are coming and
We’d all be gonskies
If they ever learn to think what we don’t tell them.

But they kind of already do, right?
Don’t know the science of it really but
I think therefore I am
Someone in history says this, but they’re wrong
I am therefore I think
Or I am, but don’t think, but am anyway

And Train Woman’s voice is here, right?
It’s speaking to us, but is a thing that is intangible
Still a thing?

And this is why I need to remember headphones –
I’ve missed my stop.

Space, ease, myself
breathing, feeling the stitches
under my ribs and the poison
in my body, in my head

Not thinking about that
Every day a friend
who cares
about her own interests

No curiosity, patronising
and consolation, only
an embrace and
being spoiled a bit

Awake, not dreaming
in my sleep, walking around
in the colours of the world
and eating roasted peanuts

in the park, the park
always a park
a forest, a **** or a beach
and otherwise my balcony

I earned this status in a very vulnerable and upsetting moment in my life.

Of course, it was exploited and took advantage of. Me.

I served as an inside joke, a clown for others to get a kick out of, free use and laughter for others.

All whilst patronising me! I was oblivious. This, accompanied by other hardships, continued for a ruthless and renting four years, until it ceased.

The joke had gotten old, and they let me be.

More or less, this goes to show what true reality is like. Vulnerability is what monsters prey after! Like a shark huffing the scent of blood underwater, they prowl.

Man it's a lot of ****,
Analysing, brain frying,
Patronising, always trying,
They disguising, people dying,
Thrown in head first,
Shown how to make it worse,
Suppressed till you gonna burst,
Can't express except through verse.
Powerful men, we can't stop them,
They fight the problem with the problem,
We just ignore it, say '**** it, sod them',
Told what is yours, what you need,
Told off if you don't pay to feed,
Can't find some land, plant some seeds,
Cause its all owned by some man's greed,
I'm still happy, roof above me, food in my belly,
But I can see its all just money,
I just want a garden and a stream,
One day I'll live my own dream. (2/3/2018)

The Non-art
At a posh theatre in New York where ticket  prices
Are more than a working man's monthly wage  
An actor took it upon himself to lecture the vice- president-elect
In a manner that was both offensive and patronising
What is an actor? It is a person who speaks the lines written by others
And if he speaks those lines smoothly he/she is famous
Acting is not really an art form more like a mimicking form it
Comes in the same category as poetry a non-art
What can we say about the publican who applauded this display?
Of vulgarity other than to find them tasteless and ignorant
Actors should speak their lines political opinions off stage the same
Goes for poet to write your dreamy lines but leave your
Politics to  the Twitter pages

I am so confused wondering what I have done.
I am whisked away from my home for what seems like a thousand miles.
They are so nice to me and I wonder why.
Emotions are running high and I see a sense of guilty sorrow in their eyes.
As we reach our destination in beautiful gardens filled with people having cups of tea.
Staff in funny clothes ask me how I am and call me by name. Asking me if I would like to have some fun.
How is this possible
How do my family know them and I don't.
They look at me with false smiles and patronising reassurance.
My family observing the scene of discovery.
Trying to show an interest for my benefit.
An unfamiliar room we enter is deliberately filled with familiar objects.
Smells of home entering my memory.
I know deep inside that this is my new home and my family will soon be gone.

To live among spiders where webs make up paths,

Upon which I find myself tangled,

Forced to watch them roam with ease while they look upon me with judging eyes,

“A pity, such a pity.” They say as they pass,

Patronising me,

Just because my legs are accustom to simple silk,

Not emotional webbing.

Jonathan Foreman, Daily Mail (London), August 18, 2013
The 16-year-old girl’s once-beautiful face was grotesque.
She had been disfigured beyond all recognition in the 18 months she had been held captive by the Comanche Indians.
Now, she was being offered back to the Texan authorities by Indian chiefs as part of a peace negotiation.
To gasps of horror from the watching crowds, the Indians presented her at the Council House in the ranching town of San Antonio in 1840, the year Queen Victoria married Prince Albert.
‘Her head, arms and face were full of bruises and sores,’ wrote one witness, Mary Maverick. ‘And her nose was actually burnt off to the bone. Both nostrils were wide open and denuded of flesh.’
Once handed over, Matilda Lockhart broke down as she described the horrors she had endured—the ****, the relentless ****** humiliation and the way Comanche squaws had tortured her with fire. It wasn’t just her nose, her thin body was hideously scarred all over with burns.
When she mentioned she thought there were 15 other white captives at the Indians’ camp, all of them being subjected to a similar fate, the Texan lawmakers and officials said they were detaining the Comanche chiefs while they rescued the others.
It was a decision that prompted one of the most brutal slaughters in the history of the Wild West—and showed just how bloodthirsty the Comanche could be in revenge.
S C Gwynne, author of Empire Of The Summer Moon about the rise and fall of the Comanche, says simply: ‘No tribe in the history of the Spanish, French, Mexican, Texan, and American occupations of this land had ever caused so much havoc and death. None was even a close second.’
He refers to the ‘demonic immorality’ of Comanche attacks on white settlers, the way in which torture, killings and gang-rapes were routine. ‘The logic of Comanche raids was straightforward,’ he explains.
‘All the men were killed, and any men who were captured alive were tortured; the captive women were gang *****. Babies were invariably killed.’
Not that you would know this from the new Lone Ranger movie, starring Johnny Depp as the Indian Tonto.
For reasons best know to themselves, the film-makers have changed Tonto’s tribe to Comanche—in the original TV version, he was a member of the comparatively peace-loving Potowatomi tribe.
And yet he and his fellow native Americans are presented in the film as saintly victims of a Old West where it is the white settlers—the men who built America—who represent nothing but exploitation, brutality, environmental destruction and genocide.
Depp has said he wanted to play Tonto in order to portray Native Americans in a more sympathetic light. But the Comanche never showed sympathy themselves.
When that Indian delegation to San Antonio realised they were to be detained, they tried to fight their way out with bows and arrows and knives—killing any Texan they could get at. In turn, Texan soldiers opened fire, slaughtering 35 Comanche, injuring many more and taking 29 prisoner.
But the Comanche tribe’s furious response knew no bounds. When the Texans suggested they swap the Comanche prisoners for their captives, the Indians tortured every one of those captives to death instead.
‘One by one, the children and young women were pegged out naked beside the camp fire,’ according to a contemporary account. ‘They were skinned, sliced, and horribly mutilated, and finally burned alive by vengeful women determined to wring the last shriek and convulsion from their agonised bodies. Matilda Lockhart’s six-year-old sister was among these unfortunates who died screaming under the high plains moon.’
Not only were the Comanche specialists in torture, they were also the most ferocious and successful warriors—indeed, they become known as ‘Lords of the Plains’.
They were as imperialist and genocidal as the white settlers who eventually vanquished them.
When they first migrated to the great plains of the American South in the late 18th century from the Rocky Mountains, not only did they achieve dominance over the tribes there, they almost exterminated the Apaches, among the greatest horse warriors in the world.
The key to the Comanche’s brutal success was that they adapted to the horse even more skilfully than the Apaches.
There were no horses at all in the Americas until the Spanish conquerors brought them. And the Comanche were a small, relatively primitive tribe roaming the area that is now Wyoming and Montana, until around 1700, when a migration southwards introduced them to escaped Spanish mustangs from Mexico.
The first Indians to take up the horse, they had an aptitude for horsemanship akin to that of Genghis Khan’s Mongols. Combined with their remarkable ferocity, this enabled them to dominate more territory than any other Indian tribe: what the Spanish called Comancheria spread over at least 250,000 miles.
They terrorised Mexico and brought the expansion of Spanish colonisation of America to a halt. They stole horses to ride and cattle to sell, often in return for firearms.
Other livestock they slaughtered along with babies and the elderly (older women were usually ***** before being killed), leaving what one Mexican called ‘a thousand deserts’. When their warriors were killed they felt honour-bound to exact a revenge that involved torture and death.
Settlers in Texas were utterly terrified of the Comanche, who would travel almost a thousand miles to slaughter a single white family.
The historian T R Fehrenbach, author of Comanche: The History Of A People, tells of a raid on an early settler family called the Parkers, who with other families had set up a stockade known as Fort Parker. In 1836, 100 mounted Comanche warriors appeared outside the fort’s walls, one of them waving a white flag to trick the Parkers.
‘Benjamin Parker went outside the gate to parley with the Comanche,’ he says. ‘The people inside the fort saw the riders suddenly surround him and drive their lances into him. Then with loud whoops, mounted warriors dashed for the gate. Silas Parker was cut down before he could bar their entry; horsemen poured inside the walls.’
Survivors described the slaughter: ‘The two Frosts, father and son, died in front of the women; Elder John Parker, his wife ‘Granny’ and others tried to flee. The warriors scattered and rode them down.
‘John Parker was pinned to the ground, he was scalped and his genitals ripped off. Then he was killed. Granny Parker was stripped and fixed to the earth with a lance driven through her flesh. Several warriors ***** her while she screamed.
‘Silas Parker’s wife Lucy fled through the gate with her four small children. But the Comanche overtook them near the river. They threw her and the four children over their horses to take them as captives.’
So intimidating was Comanche cruelty, almost all raids by Indians were blamed on them. Texans, Mexicans and other Indians living in the region all developed a particular dread of the full moon—still known as a ‘Comanche Moon’ in Texas—because that was when the Comanche came for cattle, horses and captives.
They were infamous for their inventive tortures, and women were usually in charge of the torture process.
The Comanche roasted captive American and Mexican soldiers to death over open fires. Others were castrated and scalped while alive. The most agonising Comanche tortures included burying captives up to the chin and cutting off their eyelids so their eyes were seared by the burning sun before they starved to death.
Contemporary accounts also describe them staking out male captives spread-eagled and naked over a red-ant bed. Sometimes this was done after excising the victim’s private parts, putting them in his mouth and then sewing his lips together.
One band sewed up captives in untanned leather and left them out in the sun. The green rawhide would slowly shrink and squeeze the prisoner to death.
T R Fehrenbach quotes a Spanish account that has Comanche torturing Tonkawa Indian captives by burning their hands and feet until the nerves in them were destroyed, then amputating these extremities and starting the fire treatment again on the fresh wounds. Scalped alive, the Tonkawas had their tongues torn out to stop the screaming.
The Comanche always fought to the death, because they expected to be treated like their captives. Babies were almost invariably killed in raids, though it should be said that soldiers and settlers were likely to ****** Comanche women and children if they came upon them.
Comanche boys—including captives—were raised to be warriors and had to endure ****** rites of passage. Women often fought alongside the men.
It’s possible the viciousness of the Comanche was in part a by-product of their violent encounters with notoriously cruel Spanish colonists and then with Mexican bandits and soldiers.
But a more persuasive theory is that the Comanche’s lack of central leadership prompted much of their cruelty. The Comanche bands were loose associations of warrior-raiders, like a confederation of small street gangs.
In every society, teenage and twenty-something youths are the most violent, and even if they had wanted to, Comanche tribal chiefs had no way of stopping their young men from raiding.
But the Comanche found their match with the Texas Rangers. Brilliantly portrayed in the Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove books, the Rangers began to be recruited in 1823, specifically to fight the Comanche and their allies. They were a tough guerilla force, as merciless as their Comanche opponents.
They also respected them. As one of McMurtry’s Ranger characters wryly tells a man who claims to have seen a thousand-strong band of Comanche: ‘If there’d ever been a thousand Comanche in a band they’d have taken Washington DC.”
The Texas Rangers often fared badly against their enemy until they learned how to fight like them, and until they were given the new Colt revolver.
During the Civil War, when the Rangers left to fight for the Confederacy, the Comanche rolled back the American frontier and white settlements by 100 miles.
Even after the Rangers came back and the U.S. Army joined the campaigns against Comanche raiders, Texas lost an average of 200 settlers a year until the Red River War of 1874, where the full might of the Army—and the destruction of great buffalo herds on which they depended—ended Commanche depredations.
Interestingly the Comanche, though hostile to all competing tribes and people they came across, had no sense of race. They supplemented their numbers with young American or Mexican captives, who could become full-fledged members of the tribe if they had warrior potential and could survive initiation rites.
Weaker captives might be sold to Mexican traders as slaves, but more often were slaughtered. But despite the cruelty, some of the young captives who were subsequently ransomed found themselves unable to adapt to settled ‘civilised life and ran away to rejoin their brothers.
One of the great chiefs, Quanah, was the son of the white captive Cynthia Ann Parker. His father was killed in a raid by Texas Rangers that resulted in her being rescued from the tribe. She never adjusted to life back in civilisation and starved herself to death.
Quanah surrendered to the Army in 1874. He adapted well to life in a reservation, and indeed the Comanche, rather amazingly, become one of the most economically successful and best assimilated tribes.
As a result, the main Comanche reservation was closed in 1901, and Comanche soldiers served in the U.S. Army with distinction in the World Wars. Even today they are among the most prosperous native Americans, with a reputation for education.
By casting the cruelest, most aggressive tribe of Indians as mere saps and victims of oppression, Johnny Depp’s Lone Ranger perpetuates the patronising and ignorant cartoon of the ‘noble savage’.
Not only is it a travesty of the truth, it does no favours to the Indians Depp is so keen to support.

patronising punishing
preventing
pervading

controlling
constrictive
callous
destructi­ve
demeaning
devastating
damaging
disallowing

shocking
shattering
never
nurturing empowering encouraging

desolation
persisting
pervading
transgenerational
cells