Here is a primer on the history of poetry

Features of Modernism

To varying extents, writing of the Modernist period exhibits these features:

1. experimentation

belief that previous writing was stereotyped and inadequate
ceaseless technical innovation, sometimes for its own sake
originality: deviation from the norm, or from usual reader expectations
ruthless rejection of the past, even iconoclasm

2. anti-realism

sacralisation of art, which must represent itself, not something beyond preference for allusion (often private) rather than description
world seen through the artist's inner feelings and mental states
themes and vantage points chosen to question the conventional view
use of myth and unconscious forces rather than motivations of conventional plot

3. individualism

promotion of the artist's viewpoint, at the expense of the communal
cultivation of an individual consciousness, which alone is the final arbiter
estrangement from religion, nature, science, economy or social mechanisms
maintenance of a wary intellectual independence
artists and not society should judge the arts: extreme self-consciousness
search for the primary image, devoid of comment: stream of consciousness
exclusiveness, an aristocracy of the avant-garde

4. intellectualism

writing more cerebral than emotional
work is tentative, analytical and fragmentary, more posing questions more than answering them
cool observation: viewpoints and characters detached and depersonalized
open-ended work, not finished, nor aiming at formal perfection
involuted: the subject is often act of writing itself and not the ostensible referent

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Expressionism

Expressionism was a phase of twentieth-century writing that rejected naturalism and romanticism to express important inner truths. The style was generally declamatory or even apocalyptic, endeavoring to awaken the fears and aspirations that belong to all men, and which European civilization had rendered effete or inauthentic. The movement drew on Rimbaud and Nietzsche, and was best represented by German poetry of the 1910-20 period. Benn, Becher, Heym, Lasker-Schüler, Stadler, Stramm, Schnack and Werfel are its characteristic proponents, {1} though Trakl is the best known to English readers. {2} {3}

Like most movements, there was little of a manifesto, or consensus of beliefs and programmes. Many German poets were distrustful of contemporary society — particularly its commercial and capitalist attitudes — though others again saw technology as the escape from a perceived "crisis in the old order". Expressionism was very heterogeneous, touching base with Imagism, Vorticism, Futurism, Dadaism and early Surrealism, many of which crop up in English, French, Russian and Italian poetry of the period. Political attitudes tended to the revolutionary, and technique was overtly experimental. Nonetheless, for all the images of death and destruction, sometimes mixed with messianic utopianism, there was also a tone of resignation, a sadness of "the evening lands" as Spengler called them.

Expressionism also applies to painting, and here the characteristics are more illuminating. The label refers to painting that uses visual gestures to transmit emotions and emotionally charged messages. In the expressive work of Michelangelo and El Greco, for example, the content remains of first importance, but content is overshadowed by technique in such later artists as van Gogh, Ensor and Munch. By the mid twentieth-century even this attenuated content had been replaced by abstract painterly qualities — by the sheer scale and dimensions of the work, by colour and shape, by the verve of the brushwork and other effects.

Expressionism often coincided with rapid social change. Germany, after suffering the horrors of the First World War, and ineffectual governments afterwards, fragmented into violently opposed political movements, each with their antagonistic coteries and milieu. The painting of these groups was very variable, but often showed a mixture of aggression and naivety. Understandably unpopular with the establishment  — denounced as degenerate by the Nazis — the style also met with mixed reactions from the picture-buying public. It seemed to question what the middle classes stood for: convention, decency, professional expertise. A great sobbing child had been let loose in the artist's studio, and the results seemed elementally challenging. Perhaps German painting was returning to its Nordic roots, to small communities, apocalyptic visions, monotone starkness and anguished introspection.

What could poetry achieve in its turn? Could it use some equivalent to visual gestures, i.e. concentrate on aspects of the craft of poetry, and to the exclusion of content? Poetry can never be wholly abstract, a pure poetry bereft of content. But clearly there would be a rejection of naturalism. To represent anything faithfully requires considerable skill, and such skill was what the Expressionists were determined to avoid. That would call on traditions that were not Nordic, and that were not sufficiently opposed to bourgeois values for the writer's individuality to escape subversion. Raw power had to tap something deeper and more universal.

Hence the turn inward to private torments. Poets became the judges of poetry, since only they knew the value of originating emotions. Intensity was essential.  Artists had to believe passionately in their responses, and find ways of purifying and deepening those responses — through working practices, lifestyles, and philosophies. Freud was becoming popular, and his investigations into dreams, hallucinations and paranoia offered a rich field of exploration. Artists would have to glory in their isolation, moreover, and turn their anger and frustration at being overlooked into a belief in their own genius. Finally, there would be a need to pull down and start afresh, even though that contributed to a gradual breakdown in the social fabric and the apocalypse of the Second World War.

Expressionism is still with us. Commerce has invaded bohemia, and created an elaborate body of theory to justify, support and overtake what might otherwise appear infantile and irrational. And if traditional art cannot be pure emotional expression, then a new art would have to be forged. Such poetry would not be an intoxication of life (Nietzsche's phrase) and still less its sanctification.  Great strains on the creative process were inevitable, moreover, as they were in Georg Trakl's case, who committed suicide shortly after writing the haunting and beautiful piece given below

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SYMBOLIST POETS
symbolism in poetry

Symbolism in literature was a complex movement that deliberately extended the evocative power of words to express the feelings, sensations and states of mind that lie beyond everyday awareness. The open-ended symbols created by Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) brought the invisible into being through the visible, and linked the invisible through other sensory perceptions, notably smell and sound. Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-98), the high priest of the French movement, theorized that symbols were of two types. One was created by the projection of inner feelings onto the world outside. The other existed as nascent words that slowly permeated the consciousness and expressed a state of mind initially unknown to their originator.

None of this came about without cultivation, and indeed dedication. Poets focused on the inner life. They explored strange cults and countries. They wrote in allusive, enigmatic, musical and ambiguous styles. Rimbaud deranged his senses and declared "Je est un autre". Von Hofmannstahl created his own language. Valéry retired from the world as a private secretary, before returning to a mastery of traditional French verse. Rilke renounced wife and human society to be attentive to the message when it came.

Not all were great theoreticians or technicians, but the two interests tended to go together, in Mallarmé most of all. He painstakingly developed his art of suggestion, what he called his "fictions". Rare words were introduced, syntactical intricacies, private associations and baffling images. Metonymy replaced metaphor as symbol, and was in turn replaced by single words which opened in imagination to multiple levels of signification. Time was suspended, and the usual supports of plot and narrative removed. Even the implied poet faded away, and there were then only objects, enigmatically introduced but somehow made right and necessary by verse skill. Music indeed was the condition to which poetry aspired, and Verlaine, Jimenez and Valéry were among many who concentrated efforts to that end.

So appeared a dichotomy between the inner and outer lives. In actuality, poets led humdrum existences, but what they described was rich and often illicit: the festering beauties of courtesans and dance-hall entertainers; far away countries and their native peoples; a world-weariness that came with drugs, isolation, alcohol and bought ***. Much was mixed up in this movement — decadence, aestheticism, romanticism, and the occult — but its isms had a rational purpose, which is still pertinent. In what way are these poets different from our own sixties generation? Or from the young today: clubbing, experimenting with relationships and drugs, backpacking to distant parts? And was the mixing of sensory perceptions so very novel or irrational? Synaesthesia was used by the Greek poets, and indeed has a properly documented basis in brain physiology.

What of the intellectual bases, which are not commonly presented as matters that should engage the contemporary mind, still less the writing poet? Symbolism was built on nebulous and somewhat dubious notions: it inspired beautiful and historically important work: it is now dead: that might be the blunt summary. But Symbolist poetry was not empty of content, indeed expressed matters of great interest to continental philosophers, then and now. The contents of consciousness were the concern of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), and he developed a terminology later employed by Heidegger (1889-1976), the Existentialists and hermeneutics. Current theories on metaphor and brain functioning extend these concepts, and offer a rapprochement between impersonal science and irrational literary theory.

So why has the Symbolism legacy dwindled into its current narrow concepts? Denied influence in the everyday world, poets turned inward, to private thoughts, associations and the unconscious. Like good Marxist intellectuals they policed the area they arrogated to themselves, and sought to correct and purify the language that would evoke its powers. Syntax was rearranged by Mallarmé. Rhythm, rhyme and stanza patterning were loosened or rejected. Words were purged of past associations (Modernism), of non-visual associations (Imagism), of histories of usage (Futurism), of social restraint (Dadaism) and of practical purpose (Surrealism). By a sort of belated Romanticism, poetry was returned to the exploration of the inner lands of the irrational. Even Postmodernism, with its bric-a-brac of received media images and current vulgarisms, ensures that gaps are left for the emerging unconscious to engage our interest

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IMAGIST POETRY
imagist poetry

Even by twentieth-century standards, Imagism was soon over. In 1912 Ezra Pound published the Complete Poetical Works of its founder, T.E. Hulme (five short poems) and by 1917 the movement, then overseen by Amy Lowell, had run its course. {1} {2} {3} {4} {5} The output in all amounted to a few score poems, and none of these captured the public's heart. Why the importance?

First there are the personalities involved — notably Ezra Pound, James Joyce, William Carlos Williams {6} {7} {8} {9} — who became famous later. If ever the (continuing) importance to poets of networking, of being involved in movements from their inception, is attested, it is in these early days of post-Victorian revolt.

Then there are the manifestos of the movement, which became the cornerstones of Modernism, responsible for a much taught in universities until recently, and for the difficulties poets still find themselves in. The Imagists stressed clarity, exactness and concreteness of detail. Their aims, briefly set out, were that:

1. Content should be presented directly, through specific images where possible.
2. Every word should be functional, with nothing included that was not essential to the effect intended.
3. Rhythm should be composed by the musical phrase rather than the metronome.

Also understood — if not spelled out, or perhaps fully recognized at the time — was the hope that poems could intensify a sense of objective reality through the immediacy of images.

Imagism itself gave rise to fairly negligible lines like:

You crash over the trees,
You crack the live branch…  (Storm by H.D.)

Nonetheless, the reliance on images provided poets with these types of freedom:

1. Poems could dispense with classical rhetoric, emotion being generated much more directly through what Eliot called an objective correlate: "The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked." {10}

2. By being shorn of context or supporting argument, images could appear with fresh interest and power.

3. Thoughts could be treated as images, i.e. as non-discursive elements that added emotional colouring without issues of truth or relevance intruding too mu
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PROSE BASED POETRY
prose based poetry

When free verse lacks rhythmic patterning, appearing as a lineated prose stripped of unnecessary ornament and rhetoric, it becomes the staple of much contemporary work. The focus is on what the words are being used to say, and their authenticity. The language is not heightened, and the poem differs from prose only by being more self-aware, innovative and/or cogent in its exposition.

Nonetheless, what looks normal at first becomes challenging on closer reading — thwarting expectations, and turning back on itself to make us think more deeply about the seemingly innocuous words used. And from there we are compelled to look at the world with sharper eyes, unprotected by commonplace phrases or easy assumptions. Often an awkward and fighting poetry, therefore, not indulging in ceremony or outmoded traditions.
What is Prose?

If we say that contemporary free verse is often built from what was once regarded as mere prose, then we shall have to distinguish prose from poetry, which is not so easy now. Prose was once the lesser vehicle, the medium of everyday thought and conversation, what we used to express facts, opinions, humour, arguments, feelings and the like. And while the better writers developed individual styles, and styles varied according to their purpose and social occasion, prose of some sort could be written by anyone. Beauty was not a requirement, and prose articles could be rephrased without great loss in meaning or effectiveness.

Poetry, though, had grander aims. William Lyon Phelps on Thomas Hardy's work: {1}

"The greatest poetry always transports us, and although I read and reread the Wessex poet with never-lagging attention — I find even the drawings in "Wessex Poems" so fascinating that I wish he had illustrated all his books — I am always conscious of the time and the place. I never get the unmistakable spinal chill. He has too thorough a command of his thoughts; they never possess him, and they never soar away with him. Prose may be controlled, but poetry is a possession. Mr. Hardy is too keenly aware of what he is about. In spite of the fact that he has written verse all his life, he seldom writes unwrinkled song. He is, in the last analysis, a master of prose who has learned the technique of verse, and who now chooses to express his thoughts and his observations in rime and rhythm."

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OPEN FORMS IN POETRY
open forms in poetry

Poets who write in open forms usually insist on the form growing out of the writing process, i.e. the poems follow what the words and phrase suggest during the composition

Steven my boy,

We coasted into a medieval pub in the middle of nowhere in wildest Devon to encounter the place in uproarious bedlam. A dozen country madams had been imbibing in the pre wedding wine and were in great form roaring with laughter and bursting out of their lacy cotton frocks. Bunting adorned the pub, Union Jack was aflutter everywhere and a full size cut out of HM the Queen welcomed visitors into the front door. Cucumber sandwiches and a heady fruit punch were available to all and sundry and the din was absolutely riotous……THE ROYAL WEDDING WAS UNDERWAY ON THE GIANT TV ON THE BAR WALL….and we were joining in the mood of things by sinking a bevy of Bushmills Irish whiskies neat!

Now…. this is a major event in the UK.

Everybody loves Prince Harry, he is the terrible tearaway of the Royal family, he has been caught ******* sheila’s in all sorts of weird circumstance. Now the dear boy is to be married to a beauty from the USA….besotted he is with her, fair dripping with love and adoration…..and the whole country loves little Megan Markle for making him so.

The British are famous for their pageantry and pomp….everything is timed to the second and must be absolutely….just so. Well….Nobody told the most Reverend Michael Curry this…. and he launched into the most wonderful full spirited Halleluiah sermon about the joyous “Wonder of Love”. He went on and on for a full 14 minutes, and as he proceeded on, the British stiff upper lips became more and more rigidly uncomfortable with this radical departure from protocol. Her Majesty the Queen stood aghast and locked her beady blue eyes in a riveting, steely glare, directed furiously at the good Reverend….to no avail, on he went with his magic sermon to a beautiful rousing ******….and an absolute stony silence in the cavernous interior of that vaulting, magnificent cathedral. Prince Harry and his lovely bride, (whose wedding the day was all about), were delighted with Curry’s performance….as was Prince William, heir to the Throne, who wore a fascinating **** eating grin all over his face for the entire performance.

Says a lot, my friend, about the refreshing values of tomorrows Royalty.

We rolled out of that country pub three parts cut to the wind, dunno how we made it to our next destination, but we had one hellava good time at that Royal Wedding!

The weft and the weave of our appreciation fluctuated wildly with each day of travel through this magnificent and ancient land, Great Britain.

There was soft brilliant summer air which hovered over the undulating green patchwork of the Cotswolds whilst we dined on delicious roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, from an elevated position in a medieval country inn..... So magnificent as to make you want to weep with the beauty of it all….and the quaint thatched farmhouse with the second story multi paned windows, which I understood, had been there, in that spot, since the twelfth century. Our accommodation, sleeping beneath oaken beams within thick stone walls, once a pen for swine, now a domiciled overnight bed and pillow of luxury with white cotton sheets for weary Kiwi travellers.

The sadness of the Cornish west coast, which bore testimony to tragedy for the hard working tin miners of the 1800s. A sharp decrease in the international tin price in 1911 destituted whole populations who walked away from their life’s work and fled to the New World in search of the promise of a future. Forlorn brick ruins adorned stark rocky outcrops right along the coastline and inland for miles. Lonely brick chimneys silhouetted against sharp vertical cliffs and the ever crashing crescendo of the pounding waves of the cold Atlantic ocean.

No parking in Padstow….absolutely NIL! You parked your car miles away in the designated carpark at an overnight cost….and with your bags in tow, you walked to your digs. Now known as Padstein, this beautiful place is now populated with eight Rick Stein restaurants and shops dotted here and there.

We had a huge feed of piping hot fish and chips together with handles of cold ale down at his harbour side fish and chip restaurant near the wharfs…place was packed with people, you had to queue at the door for a table, no reservations accepted….Just great!

Clovelly was different, almost precipitous. This ancient fishing village plummeted down impossibly steep cliffs….a very rough, winding cobbled stone walkway, which must have taken years to build by hand, the only way down to the huge rock breakwater which harboured the fishing boats Against the Atlantic storms. And in a quaint little cottagey place, perched on the edge of a cliff, we had yet another beautiful Devonshire tea in delicate, white China cups...with tasty hot scones, piles of strawberry jam and a huge *** of thick clotted cream…Yum! Too ****** steep to struggle back up the hill so we spent ten quid and rode all the way up the switch back beneath the olive canvass canopy of an old Land Rover…..money well spent!

Creaking floorboards and near vertical, winding staircases and massive rock walls seemed to be common characteristics of all the lovely old lodging houses we were accommodated in. Sarah, our lovely daughter in law, arranged an excellent itinerary for us to travel around the SW coast staying in the most picturesque of places which seeped with antiquity and character. We zooped around the narrow lanes, between the hedgerows in our sharp little VW golf hire car And, with Sarah at the helm, we never got lost or missed a beat…..Fantastic effort, thank you so much Sarah and Solomon on behalf of your grateful In laws, Janet and Marshal, who loved every single moment of it all!

Memories of a lifetime.

Wanted to tell the world about your excitement, Janet, on visiting Stoke on Trent.

This town is famous the world over for it’s pottery. The pottery industry has flourished here since the middle ages and this is evidenced by the antiquity of the kilns and huge brick chimneys littered around the ancient factories. Stoke on Trent is an industrial town and it’s narrow, winding streets and congested run down buildings bear testimony to past good times and bad.

We visited “Burleigh”.

Darling Janet has collected Burleigh pottery for as long as I have known her, that is almost 40 years. She loves Burleigh and uses it as a showcase for the décor of our home.

When Janet first walked into the ancient wooden portals of the Burleigh show room she floated around on a cloud of wonder, she made darting little runs to each new discovery, making ooh’s and aah’s, eyes shining brightly….. I trailed quietly some distance behind, being very aware that I must not in any way imperil this particular precious bubble.

We amassed a beautiful collection of plates, dishes, bowls and jugs for purchase and retired to the pottery’s canal side bistro,( to come back to earth), and enjoy a ploughman’s lunch and a *** of hot English breakfast tea.

We returned to Stoke on Trent later in the trip for another bash at Burleigh and some other beautiful pottery makers wares…..Our suit cases were well filled with fragile treasures for the trip home to NZ…..and darling Janet had realised one of her dearest life’s ambitions fulfilled.

One of the great things about Britain was the British people, we found them willing to go out of their way to be helpful to a fault…… and, with the exception of BMW people, we found them all to be great drivers. The little hedgerow, single lane, winding roads that connect all rural areas, would be a perpetual source of carnage were it not for the fact that British drivers are largely courteous and reserved in their driving.

We hired a spacious ,powerful Nissan in Dover and acquired a friend, an invaluable friend actually, her name was “Tripsy” at least that’s what we called her. Tripsy guided us around all the byways and highways of Britain, we couldn’t have done without her. I had a few heated discussions with her, I admit….much to Janet’s great hilarity…but Tripsy won out every time and I quickly learned to keep my big mouth shut.

By pure accident we ended up in Cumbria, up north of the Roman city of York….at a little place in the dales called “Middleton on Teesdale”….an absolutely beautiful place snuggled deep in the valleys beneath the huge, heather clad uplands. Here we scored the last available bed in town at a gem of a hotel called the “Brunswick”. Being a Bank Holiday weekend everything, everywhere was booked out. The Brunswick surpassed ordinary comfort…it was superlative, so much so that, in an itinerary pushed for time….we stayed TWO nights and took the opportunity to scout around the surrounding, beautiful countryside. In fact we skirted right out to the western coastline and as far north as the Scottish border. Middleton on Teesdale provided us with that late holiday siesta break that we so desperately needed at that time…an exhausting business on a couple of old Kiwis, this holiday stuff!

One of the great priorities on getting back to London was to shop at “Liberty”. Great joy was had selecting some ornate upholstering material from the huge range of superb cloth available in Liberty’s speciality range.

The whole organisation of Liberty’s huge store and the magnificent quality of goods offered was quite daunting. Janet & I spent quite some time in that magnificent place…..and Janet has a plan to select a stylish period chair when we get back to NZ and create a masterpiece by covering it with the ***** bought from Liberty.

In York, beautiful ancient, York. A garrison town for the Romans, walled and once defended against the marauding Picts and Scots…is now preserved as a delightful and functional, modern city whilst retaining the grandeur, majesty and presence of its magnificent past.

Whilst exploring in York, Janet and I found ourselves mixing with the multitude in the narrow medieval streets paved with ancient rock cobbles and lined with beautifully preserved Tudor structures resplendent in whitewash panel and weathered, black timber brace. With dusk falling, we were drawn to wild violins and the sound of stamping feet….an emanation from within the doors of an old, burgundy coloured pub…. “The Three Legged Mare”.

Fortified, with a glass of Bushmills in hand, we joined the multitude of stomping, singing people. Rousing to the percussion of the Irish drum, the wild violin and the deep resonance of the cello, guitars and accordion…..The beautiful sound of tenor voices harmonising to the magic of a lilting Irish lament.

We stayed there for an hour or two, enchanted by the spontaneity of it all, the sheer native talent of the expatriates celebrating their heritage and their culture in what was really, a beautiful evening of colour, music and Ireland.

Onward, across the moors, we revelled in the great outcrops of metamorphic rock, the expanses of flat heather covering the tops which would, in the chill of Autumn, become a spectacular swath of vivid mauve floral carpet. On these lonely tracts of narrow road, winding through the washes and the escarpments, the motorbike boys wheeled by us in screaming pursuit of each other, beautiful machines heeling over at impossible angles on the corners, seemingly suicidal yet careening on at breakneck pace, laughing the danger off with the utter abandon of the creed of the road warrior. Descending in to the rolling hills of the cultivated land, the latticework of, old as Methuselah, massive dry built stone fences patterning the contours in a checker board of ancient pastoral order. The glorious soft greens of early summer deciduous forest, the yellow fields of mustard flower moving in the breeze and above, the bluest of skies with contrails of ever present high flung jets winging to distant places.

Britain has a flavour. Antiquity is evidenced everywhere, there is a sense of old, restrained pride. A richness of spirit and a depth of character right throughout the populace. Britain has confidence in itself, its future, its continuity. The people are pleasant, resilient and thoroughly likeable. They laugh a lot and are very easy to admire.

With its culture, its wonderful history, its great Monarchy and its haunting, ever present beauty, everywhere you care to look….The Britain of today is, indeed, a class act.

We both loved it here Steven…and we will return.

M.

Hamilton, New Zealand

21 June 2018

Coming to now, the story of life not as a practical lesson in wisdom as such in a parable or teaching only casual experience for individual. Experiencing this wisdom will change your knowledge gained through the events of becoming with the kingdom of heaven. Ways on the tree of life or paths which are ordained or divined in the Lords or spheres build your learned life knowledge. Adapting as a disciple on the natural skill of the soul shows a person whom, the individual is in a pure state of self and exponential in the ***** of the tree of life.
As a child of light I lived happily joined in the union of spirit, my young soul always with the Almighty Father and Creator in the Tenth heaven. From a dream of the past awaking as a watcher of an extremely large craft inside the entire vessel I could see animals each of them were named and had most important characteristics from the Father. From high aloft in Heaven to the boat a watch was taking place omnipotent over the last life within. Many hosts and angels spoke once I was inside the boat but wasn’t as a soul like a spirit invisible I saw and heard. Angels divine in accord to works of commands were at work in heaven whole groups of choirs known as orders were not ever interrupted by my watch. Trumpet sounded heard in the spirits from heaven to the sea and rush gate of the heaven’s upon the earth. The name of angel that sounded and captured fallen in the thirteenth month; Tebae-et, into the stellar order of gates or fallen paradise.
A child of light borne in spirit always with the hosts or different characters in life such as Chanokh (Enokh-Father of Melekhi-Tsedek order), but it was either in dream or warden amongst crowds of souls touring in celestial spheres with paths of light on the tree of life. Walking outside my house the morning after my dream, I felt as if I could float in the air body and soul light as a feather. Surrounding me was Topaz, chrysophrase, jasper, chalcedony, and amber gemstones still transparency like crystalloluminescence. Above me sapphire with alabaster and my soul looked down upon me with white eyes shining light out of them in a robe covered in my names brilliantly shone in gold light in the temple of my soul. My body was in euphoria and I stared into the future and realms of heaven, seeing into the seven seals as celestial wardens. The divine experience was wholesome pure enrichment to my soul each word I had in communion with the throne of supreme majesty firm with glory, order, and unconditional loving care. Differences in the Father; whom was a body of so many names and creations perfect in commands, recordings, gates, cycles of hosts myriads, elementals, migrations of stars, and firmament upon firmament.
The way of the most holy spirits as complete body of the Father the original tree of life, which is known completely in the true names it was created as. The spirits, angels, guardians or incessantly serving hosts help the Father governing of the kingdom of heaven in the four parts of man. The structure I remember is perfection with tongues that fill the heart with everlasting laughter, hope that cheerfully overcomes in a soul victory. The heavenly abode the height of the throne gives the soul countenance of wisdom to the word unto man. Upon a single walk with the Father had taken my body and spirited my being in soul countenance of wisdom so far through the future I had saw unto trumpets of revelation.
Melekhi-Tsedek order the true religion to be proclaimed unto man the creatures such as animals, fallen accursed, the plant life in, promise, orphans, and widows were watched over on the decree or divine ordination from heaven. Ascending up to the throne; I went through the knowledge of the complete day in heaven or paradise recorded then toured the solar spheres, through the knowledge of the spirits or holy hosts that did in accordance to the orders. The process was divined in the Father’s willpower over my essence I had knowledge to what was being experienced in a connection unto every living creation. Completely, opening the mind unto Ratsiel (secret of God), through the third-eye founding of my soul into mysteries of kingdom of heaven. Voices of many named angels were annunciating with pleasant tones and choirs voices of angels by the thousands. Recording archangels kept the things that were occurring in the kingdom of man, while also serving the obligated roles of their natural being as direct personification of God. Organized, synchronized, and in spirit of prophecy patterning so perfected without error moving about in every way structurally sound through commanded orders. Systems of planets were kept sealed in the seven hallways or wards that divide heaven’s celestial nether space from the foundation of firmaments of word and universe unto the highest Lords signs of zodiac places. Above Almighty Father can sit omnipotent as ascending angels, spirits, or orders can go the entire flight focused on the Father’s throne. The orders of body were eminence Seraphim, Cherubim, Wheels (Thrones), Dominions (Authorities), Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangel, and Angels. Although the kingdom in spirit was always changing and becoming according to the cycle of the sun’s orbital sphere into the gates of each day on a 28 year cycle and 7,000 year unto 7 days in heaven the Lord a light-giver and also Lord of completion, Sabbath day.
A fresh gust of wind and a light pure feel was a regular experience while awakening my mind I learned of the Elders of heaven whom had crazy stories like when Samson had the might to slay the lions or tore down the temple of Dagon. I knew the hosts and things that had become in the kingdom of heaven to allow the might shone as a show for the heaven, but also act of the devils in his life. This knowledge was in a book the scripted the entirety of all the acts that take place as a divine act, once a celestial being was in visitation in spirit. The seraph Ratsiel (secret of God) investigated the acts of the temptation of Adam by Chavah and the acts of the archangels in response to the threat. The accord to the acts of everything that exists in the accord to knowledge of the solar is obtainable through this book, the book of knowledge.
Later in another dream I met the minister of death in spirit which as within a myriad where thousands of spirits were at works performing the acts in which is their existence and adapted behavior as a role in realms. Being in one place while still seeing into a complete different world or plane of existence doing as is need or divined in nature. Black darkened pillars came down on me as this space ship shaped like a pyramid with the patterns of natural earth red and black like lava years after a volcano. Around me each pillar stood as a being in realm invisible to my eye except for one being on a throne centered in the myriad the throne of death. Fiery torment in flames along with brimstone flowed in two pooled lakes parallel from one another with a long path going from gate to the another gate leading to Sheol or Hades. A base foundation of the throne is a horizontal shadowed hallway with many smaller pillars which give no support to the throne, while the path is vertically centered. Two stairways go up to the platform of the throne one on each side of the platform decorated with images of Baaliyal in form of a torrent. Death sat upon the throne with darkness like the appearance of black smoke blowing from his mouth a complete skeleton. Skeletal body covered in black cloak with a screeching voice like a woman’s long fingernail’s scratching a chalkboard. Terrified I walk my being over the site of my soul-mate who is on my like side and here with me she is like a dream and become in multiple places at the same time. Beautiful she was consistently becoming in hosts of cherubim changing into many different forms of the adapting natural instincts of animal’s behavior for survival, she is tan Carmel skin color and flesh uncorrupted by any mans thoughts of lusting ruin. Passionate vivid dreams of a                maiden lying in an alien jungle full of plants most like a rainforest but yet close to the planet’s beaches, wearing a purple robe. Dark and warm humid with a damp feel to the observer of the smooth cover of the claylike terrain of the solar sphere. Again I dreamed of her while she was separated from me by the prince of Tyre or the cherub covering the mercy, she ran amongst different hallways while in the tower of Babel and giant nephlim watched with other gods in gold cursed trying to look down on things in spirit. I walked up the stairs and could see myself from outside of myself, seeing my form as a human being in appearance most like Michael or Melekhidael with breastplate of gold without a helmet. Death screeched out at me and I saw an ancient giant of hell also the spirit of Tanhumeth trying to send me into the past. Awakened into a new form I walked through the gate vertical in the chamber beneath death’s ministry. Sopheriael Yahweh took me into the spirit of a seraph Hadaneriael then, into the 10 archangels of punishment over the 10 nations of Babylon the great which took me into the depth to the ninth circle of punishment for a reign in gates of the Phul seal or in Phalek. My soul was the loosened stars of Kesil through Samuil the poisoned messenger a discernment spirit involved in the surfs of the accord of the kingdom of dark princes in paradise, the divine comedy Queen of Angels enchanted songs counted into paradise. Darkness in the kingdom of heaven, with the ability to paralyze minds with seraphim hosts of terror, I walked through the brazen gates of Hades seeing everything on fire but also thousands of thousands of different forms of creations each rarity seen with delightful insight to provoke interests into any living being. The life paths of a multitude of creations would come through Hades and become baptized through spirit’s fire of pure refinement spoken as worth in the golden city, precious daughter of the loom, here in accord to John the Baptist’s   prophecy.
At a young age of 6 years old I began to refuse the world or play directly into the kingdom of heaven which was a lonely elect of self in my family also in the church my family attended. Wicked spirits attacked the gates of my inner ear where and had began to tell me of things that would happen in future then, keep me from being with the Father completely in heaven. My memory started to fade in fear that I would only to struggle if I kept learning. Gradual disillusion way from the throne began while I was only a few years old, the devils were wise in deceit most from the tree of knowledge and future mistakes from which I saw rolling with wheels of heaven. Moments of times in the future I would soul determine things into happening from the spirit of prophecy it was something I kept special between the Father and mines relationship. Constantly I would hated life and wanted to die, feed into temptation, stole, and spoke accursedly cutting my relationship from the Father.
Was not until I was seventeen years of age when I felt an overwhelming feeling like I had just explained something about the firmament of heaven which usually gives me this same feeling like a gust of wind in my person with a prestigious self worth from outside of self comforting to my soul. Looking up into the pitch black night sky, I saw a strange and odd formed constellation of stars above me I raised my arm and pointed at three stars. As if on command or through a governing of the stars each was loosed and fell immediately after pointing to them. Excited as the skin of my body was stinging as hairs stood to the point of super natural acknowledgment of the world’s great mysteries finding depth in the human soul I watched the sky then turned to the east. About to use the marijuana I torched a bowl of green bud then thought in the medium mostly of the kingdom and Father in heaven. In the zephyr region of the sky I saw a light floating, soaring, flashing, and moving faster than anything I had ever seen in life but on movies scenes. Astonished again I watch the spirit jumping around in the sky with multiple purposes and clear intent to do for the Father most high. My only other witness to this was my black minx cat shadoe, whom I looked at and said “I going to have a vision tomorrow” then finished two more hits of the cannabis before leaving to my room in the basement of a two-story house.
Awakening to the day was full of feeling of mystery I didn’t tell any of my experience from the night before. On October eighteenth in the day I smoked some marijuana went to Crook County High School and a blood drive was setup, I planned to give a pint for my first time ever so I went to auditorium where the blood was taken from my arm. Feeling faint and in hope for a high opposed to school I left and was excused from classes. Arriving at the house I stopped my Suzuki Sidekick in front then went in and downstairs to the place after the last step knowing something amazing was about to happening I uttered the name Metatron. Linear thought was tremendous while spirit balanced on a pillar and the first seal Arathron had me in celestial hallway warding the ancient spirits from the night before. Sitting down in a lazyboy recliner chair I first start the satellite television turn it on with remote, the spirits are crazy making grandeur boosts of how I can control everything like that remote but from mind. Flipping through stations I begin to change the channel in accord to how I sense and feel the spirits. Crazy things start occurring watching until I was seeing a celestial vision. Hearing my mind from above it was intriguing and making my pride compulsive like no one living I was experiencing these sights. As a mode of characters in a set ordained function were becoming visible on the tree of life but each were in a different realm not visible to the other. Beautiful alien life most exquisite to the eyes in the planes of other worldly adobes just doing into a set way of commands rare without repetition. Nine characters panther, eagle, falcon, wolf, coyote, Siberian tiger, and one man with blonde hair came into view in a dense rainforest like jungle each was adapting to the environment but they were only one soul becoming the entire time. The forest was no longer and the upper places had new hosting since I had entered and changed things with my thoughts, I became the soul of the characters. Seeing upwardly was a flight to the top of the extreme heights of the Father’s presence through the third seal of Phalek. At the arrival of my being I saw the most adorned and absolutely marvelous splendor of white shine like that of the sun’s rays hitting snow filled fields. The Father’s presence so handsome and gorgeous I have never seen another beauty like it only his eyes were so bright shining when he created my being as a star to his left-hand above a white marble pedestal of wisdom. Father had most elegant white robe shining in purity and sat upon a throne center below seven pillars known as the tabernacle of creation or tabernacle of seven days. In the presence I was pulled back down I felt spirits by the millions entering me, fusing to the dawn star in me finding a place inside me. Possessively filled with spirits till an evil pride overtook me and I felt ever sinful or dark taint of the soul. Lightening fell on the seventh pillar in the tabernacle blue bolts streaked downward as I fell from the presence back to the sphere of Adam’s where I heard two voices speaking. Red clay-like surface with rough igneous and metaphoric rock on the solar planet were a tree had burned to charred pieces. Sin from the Tree of knowledge was present as a spirit she was a young apprentice of the ancient one or Athiquelis. Introducing herself with flaming hair of red orange flames, her eyes shone as big red gemstones of ruby and a body covered with a black dress that faded into the natural darkness of her nature. Waving and floating in the air seducing temptation in her words that spoke into my mind and not from the channel. Soothsaying feminist voice would move me to her place and origin beside a large eleven foot pillar of smooth dark bla

So you know you’re looking at two very different styles of dress, here. But precisely what decades? When did that waistline move back down? What details are the defining touches of their era? How long were women actually walking around with bustles on their backsides?

Lydia Edwards’s How to Read a Dress is a detailed, practical, and totally beautiful guide to the history of this particular form of clothing from the 16th to the 20th centuries. It tracks the small changes that pile up over time, gradually ******* until your great-grandmother’s closet looks wildly different than your own. As always, fashion makes for a compelling angle on history—paging through you can see the shifting fortunes of women in the Western world as reflected in the way they got dressed every morning.

Of course, it’ll also ensure that the next lackadaisically costumed period piece you watch gives you agita, but all knowledge has a price.

I spoke to Edwards about how exactly we go about resurrecting the history of an item that’s was typically worn until it fell apart and then recycled for scraps; our conversation has been lightly trimmed and edited for clarity.

The title of the book is How to Read a Dress. What do you mean by “reading” a dress?

Basically what I mean is, when you are looking at a dress in an exhibition or a TV show, reading it in terms of working out where the inspirations or where certain design choices come from. Being able to look at it and recognize key elements. Being able to look at the bodice and say, Oh, the shape of that is 1850s, and the design relates to this part of history, and the patterning comes from here. It’s looking at the dress as an object from the top down and being able to recognize different elements—different historical elements, different design elements, different artistic elements. “Read” is probably the best word to use for that kind of approach, if that makes sense.

It must send you around the bend a little bit, watching costume adaptations where they’re a bit slapdash. The one I think of is the Keira Knightley Pride and Prejudice, which I actually really enjoy, but I know that one’s supposed to have all over the place costuming-wise.

Yeah, it does. I mean, I love the BBC Pride and Prejudice one, because they kept very specifically to a particular era. But I can see what they did with the Keira Knightley one—they were trying to keep it 1790s, when the book was written, as opposed to when it was published. But they’ve got a lot of kind of modern influences in there and they’ve got a lot of influences from 30, 40 years previously, which is interesting to an audience and gives an audience I suppose more frames of reference, more areas to think about and look at. So I can see why they did that. But it does make it more difficult if you’re trying to accurately decode a garment. It’s harder when you’ve got lots of different eras going on there, but it makes it beautiful and interesting for an audience.

The guide spans the 16th to the 20th century. Why start with the 16th century?

Well, partly because it’s where my own interest starts, in terms of my research and the areas I’ve looked at. But more importantly in terms of audience interest, we get a lot of TV shows, a lot of films in recent years—things like The Tudors—that type of era seems to be something that people are interested in. That time is very colorful and very interesting to people.

And also because in terms of thinking about the dress as garment, obviously people wore dresses in medieval times, but in terms of it being something that specifically women wore, distinct from men’s clothes, I really think we start to see that more in the 15th, 16th century onwards.

Where do you go to get the historical information to put together a book like this? What do you use as your source material? Because obviously the thing about clothing is that it has to stand up to a lot of wear and tear and a lot of it doesn’t survive.

This is the other thing about the 16th century stuff—there’s so little surviving. That’s why that chapter was a lot shorter and also that’s why I used a lot of artworks rather than surviving garments, just because they don’t exist in their entirety.

But wherever possible, you go to the garments themselves in museum collections. And then if that’s proving to be difficult, you go to artworks or images, but always bearing in mind the artist will have had their own agenda, so they won’t necessarily be accurate of what people were actually wearing. So then you have to go and look up written source material from the time—say, diaries. I like using letters that people have written to each other over the centuries, describing dress and what they were wearing on a daily basis. Novels can be good, as well.

Also the scholarship that has come before, the secondary sources, works by people like Janet Arnold, Aileen Ribeiro. Really well researched scholarly books where people have used primary sources themselves and put their own interpretation on it can be really, really helpful. Although you take some of it with a pinch of salt, and you put your own interpretation on there, as well.

But always to the dress itself wherever possible.

What are some of the challenges you face, or the constraints on our ability to learn about the history of fashion?

Well, the very practical issue of trying to see garments—some of them I did see here in Australia, but a lot of them were in the States, in Canada, in New Zealand, so it’s hard to physically get there to see them. And often, even when you can get to the museum, garments are out on loan to other exhibitions or other museums. That’s a practical consideration.

But also, especially when I’m talking about using artworks and things, which can be really helpful when you’re researching, but as I’ve said they do come from a place where there’s more interpretations and more agendas. So if someone’s done a portrait and there’s a beautiful 1880s dress in it, that could have been down to the whims of the person who was wearing it, or the artist could have changed significantly the color or style to suit his own taste. Then you have to do extra research on top of that, to make sure that what you are seeing is representative.

It’s a fascinating area. There’s a lot of challenges, but for me, that’s what makes it really exciting as well. But it’s really that question of being able to trust sources and knowing what to use and what not to use in order to make things clear for the audience.

Obviously many of these dresses were very expensive and took a lot of labor and it wasn’t fast fashion—people didn’t just give it away or toss it when it fell out of season. A lot of times, you did was you remade it. When you’re looking at a dress that’s been remade, how do you extract the information that you need as a historian out of it?

I love it when something like that comes up. I’ve got a couple of examples in the book.

Well, it can be quite challenging, because often when you’re first looking at a piece it’s not obvious that it’s been remade. But if you’re lucky enough to look inside it and actually hold it and turn it round different angles, there’ll be things like the placement of a seam, or you’ll see that the waist has been moved up or down according to the fashion. And that’s often obvious when you’re looking inside. You can see the way the skirt’s been attached. Often you can tell if a skirt’s been taken off and then reattached using different pleats, different gatherings; that can give you a hint that it’s then been remade to fit in with a different fashionable ideal.

One of the key ways is fabric. You can often see, especially in early 19th century dresses when they’ve been made of these beautiful 18th century silks and brocades. That’s nice because it’s the first obvious clue that something’s been remade or that an old dress has been completely taken apart and it’s just the fabric that’s been used. I find it particularly interesting when the waist has been moved or the seams have been taken off or re-sewn in a different shape or something like that. It can be subtle but once your knowledge base grows, that’s one of the most fascinating areas that you can look at.

You page through the book and you watch these trends unfold and there are occasional sea changes will happen fairly quickly, like when the Regency style arises. But how much change year-to-year would a woman have seen? How long would it take, just as a woman getting dressed in the morning, to see styles just radically alter? Would you even notice?

Well, this is the thing—I think it’s very easy, when we’re looking back, to imagine that in 1810 you’d be wearing this dress and then all the frills and the frouf would have started to come in the late 1810s and the 1820s, and suddenly you would have had a whole new wardrobe. But obviously, unless you were the very wealthiest women and you had access to dressmakers who had the absolute newest patterns and newest fabrics then no, you wouldn’t have seen a massive change. You wouldn’t have afforded to be able to have the newest things as they came in. You would have maybe remade dresses to make them maybe slightly more in line with a fashion plate that you might have seen, but you wouldn’t have had access to new information and new fashion plates as soon as they came. To be realistic, there would have been very little change on a day to day level.

But I think also, for us now—it’s hard to see it without hindsight, but we feel like we’re fairly fluid in wearing the same kind of styles, but obviously when we look back in 20 years, we’ll look at pictures of us and see greater changes than we’re now aware. Because it happens on a slow pace and it happens on such a subconscious level in some ways.

But actually, yeah, it’s to do with economics, it’s to do with availability. People living in towns where they couldn’t easily get to cities—if you were living in a country town a hundred miles away from London, there’s no way that you would have the resources to see the most recent fashion plates, the most recent ideas that were developing in high society. So it was a very slow process in reality.

If you have a lot of money you can change out your wardrobe quicker and wear the latest styles. And so the wealthiest people, their clothes were what in a lot of case stood the best chance of surviving and being in modern collections. So how do we know what working women would have worn or what middle class women would have worn?

Yeah, this is hard. I do have some more middle class examples, because we’re lucky in that we do have quite a few that have survived, especially in smaller museums and historical collections, where people have had clothes sitting in their attics for years and have donated them, just from normal families over the years.

But, working women, that’s much more difficult. We’re lucky from the 19th century because we have photographic evidence. But really a lot of it will come down to written descriptions, mainly letters, diaries, not necessarily that the people themselves would have kept, but there’s examples of people that worked in cotton mills, for instance, and people that ran the mills and their families and wives and friends who had written accounts of what the women there were wearing. Also newspaper accounts, particularly of people who would go and do charity work and help the poor. They often wrote quite detailed descriptions of the people that they were helping.

But in terms of actual garments, yeah, it’s very difficult. Certainly 18th century and before, it’s really, really hard to get hold of anything that gives you a really good idea of what they wore. But in the 18th century—it’s quite interesting, because then we get examples of separate pieces of clothing worn by the upper classes, like a skirt with a jacket, which was actually a lower middle class style initially and then it became appropriated by the upper classes. And then it became much fancier and trimmed and made in silks and things. So then, we can see the inspiration of the working classes on the upper classes. That’s another way of looking at it, although of course that’s much more problematic.

It’s interesting how in several cases you can see broader historical context, or other stories happening through clothes. Like you point out that the rise of the one-piece dresses is due to the rise of mantua makers, who were women who were less formally trained who were suddenly making clothing. Are there any other interesting stories like that, that you noticed and thought were really fascinating?

There’s a dress in the book that a woman made for her wedding. I think she was living on her own, or she was living with a servant and her mother or something. She made the dress and then turned up to her wedding and traveled quite a long way to get there, and when she arrived, the groom and all the guests weren’t there. There was nobody. So she went away and came back again a week later, and everyone was there. And the reason that no one was there before was that a river had flooded in the direction that they were all coming from. She had obviously no way of finding out about this until after the fact, and we have this beautiful dress that she spent ages making and had obviously gone to a lot of effort to try and work out what the latest styles were, to incorporate it into her wedding dress.

Things like that, I find really interesting, because they talk so much about human and social history as well as fashion history, and the garment is the main way we have of keeping these stories alive and remembering them and looking into the kind of life and world these people lived, who made these garments.

Over the centuries, how does technology affect fashion? Obviously, we think of the industrial revolution as really speeding up the pace of fashion. But are there other moments in the history of fashion where technology shapes what women end up wearing?

One example is where I talk about the Balenciaga dress from the early 1950s—with a bubble hem and a hat and she would have worn these beautiful pump shoes with it—with the introduction of the zipper. Which just made such a huge difference, because it suddenly meant you’d have ease and speed of dressing. It meant that you didn’t have to worry about more complicated ways of fastening a garment. I think the zipper made a massive change and also in terms of dressmaking at home, it was a really quick and simple way that people had of being able to create quite fashionable styles on a budget and with ease and speed at home.

Also, of course, once women’s dress started to become simpler and they did away with the corset and underwear became a lot less complicated, that made dressing a lot easier, that made the introduction of the bias cut and things that sit very closely to the natural body much more widely used and much more fashionable.

I would say the introduction of machine-made lace as well, particularly from the late 19th, early 20th century onwards where it was so fashionable on summer dresses and wedding dresses. It just meant that you could so much more easily add this decadent touch to a garment, because lace would have been so much more expensive before then and so time-consuming to make. I think that made a huge difference in ordinary women being able to attain a kind of luxury in their everyday dress.

That actually makes me think of something else I wanted to ask you, which is you point out in your intro the way we casually use this word “vintage.” I think about that with lace. Lace is described as being a “vintage” touch but it’s very much this question of when, where, who, why—it’s a funny term when you think about it, the way we use it so casually to describe so much.

Oh, yes. It’s crazy. I used to work in a wedding dress shop and I used to make historically inspired wedding dresses and things. And brides used to come in and say, “Oh, I want something vintage.” But they didn’t really know what they meant. Usually what they meant is they wanted something with a bit of lace on it, or with some sort of pearls or beading. I think it’s really inspired by whatever is trending at the time. So, you know, Downton Abbey became vintage. I think ‘50s has always been kind of synonymous with the word vintage. But what it means is huge,

I

Before the sea the sound of sea, before the wind a mask of wind placed on the face, before the rain the touch of rain on the cheek. The lee shore of this finger of land is a gathered turbulence of tea-coloured, leaf-curling wave upon wave, wholly irregular, turning, folding, falling. No steady crash and withdrawal hiss, but a chaos of breaking and turning over, no rhyme or reason, and far, far up the beached misted shore. There, do you see? - suddenly appearing in the waves’ turmoil a raft of concrete, metalled, appearing to disappear, the foreshore’s strategic sixty year old litter shifting and decaying slowly under the toss of water and wind.
 
II
 
From the lighthouse steps to the sea fifty yards no more: the path, a brief facing of the wind and spit of rain, then turning the back to it see the complexity of low vegetation holding its own on the shallow earth-invading sand and rolled leaves of marram grass. Sea Buckthorn is the dominant plant, not yet berried with its clustered inedible oil-rich orange fruits. The leaves, slight, barely 5cm long, but in profusion, clustering upward, splaying out and upward on thin branches, hiding the wind in its density, never more than chest high, so the eye looks down, sees the plane of the leaves, long, thin, suddenly tapered, dense, stiff, thorny.
 
III
 
You said, ‘look the door is curved.’ And it was. In the late afternoon light filtering through the oblong window 150’ into the grey sky the panelled wood was honeyed. Covered with a well-varnished frottage of swirled marks, some of the wood itself, some of gathering age and infestation, the single window’s light blazed a small white rectangle on the larger rectangle of the door. The passage outside the door too narrow for the eye to take in the whole door straight on, one has to move past and catch its form obliquely.
 
IV
 
The curve, the long four-mile curve of the finger into the afternoon mist and sea cloud. From the road: only seen the smooth ebbing tide waters retreating from the archipelagos of mud and sand and slight vegetation of rusted grass.  From the road: only heard over the marramed banks the sea’s sound of waves’ confusion and winds’ turmoil. Follow the fade of the curve’s progress in the echo of distance. It paints itself from the brush of the eye, the sea a grey resist. This spreading away is a long breath taken . . . then expelled from the lungs of looking. You can’t quite hold it all in one view so you’ll build the image in sections, assembling and projecting across two adjoining landscape sheets as if the spiral binding isn’t there. The resulting image when digitally joined will describe the negative space of sea of sky, silent and uncluttered by marks. Only the curve of the land will collect the drawn, a vertical stroke here for a lighthouse, a slight smudge for the lifeboat station.
 
V
 
From the road looking south to an invisible North Shore, the mist hiding the true horizon, there is layer upon layer of horizontal bands: of grass, of mud, of nested water around mud, wet sand, layered water, mud-black, water-grey, a dull sky-reflected white of a sheltered sea, and patterning everywhere, dots of birds near and distant. Then, in the very centre, a curlew in profile, its long downward curving bill dipping for worms into the wet sand and mud. Breeding on summer moorland, wading winter estuaries, this somewhat larger than other waders here, so distinctive with its heavy, calm stance.

In a distant land, far beyond the time we know now, there lived an ancient people who knew in their bones of a past outside memory. Things happened over and over; as day became night night became day, spring followed winter, summer followed spring, autumn followed summer and then, and then as autumn came, at least the well-known ordered days passed full of preparation for the transhumance, that great movement of flocks and herds from the summer mountains to the winter pastures. But in the great oak woods of this region the leaves seemed reluctant to fall. Even after the first frosts when the trees glimmered with rime as the sun rose. Even when winter’s cousin, the great wind from the west, ravaged the conical roofs of the shepherds’ huts. The leaves did not fall.

For Lucila, searching for leaves as she climbed each day higher and higher through the parched undergrowth under the most ancient oaks, there were only acorns, slews of acorns at her feet. There were no leaves, or rather no leaves that might be gathered as newly fallen. Only the faint husks of leaves of the previous autumn, leaves of provenance already gathered before she left the mountains last year for the winter plains, leaves she had placed into her deep sleeves, into her voluminous apron, into the large pockets of her vlaterz, the ornate felt jacket of the married woman.

Since her childhood she had picked and pocketed these oaken leaves, felt their thin, veined, patterned forms, felt, followed, caressed them between her finger tips. It was as though her pockets were full of the hands of children, seven-fingered hands, stroking her fingers with their pointed tips when her fingers were pocketed.

She would find private places to lay out her gathered leaves. She wanted none to know or touch or speak of these her children of the oak forest. She had waited all summer, as she had done since a child, watching them bud and grow on the branch, and then, with the frosts and winds of autumn, fall, fall, fall to the ground, but best of all fall into her small hands, every leaf there to be caught, fallen into the bowl of her cupped hands. And for every leaf caught, a wish.

Her autumn days became full of wishes. She would lie awake on her straw mattress after Mikas had risen for the night milking, that time when the rustling bells of the goats had no accompaniment from the birds. She would assemble her lists of wishes, wishes ready for leaves not yet fallen into the bowl of her cupped hands. May the toes of my baby be perfectly formed? May his hair fall straight without a single curl? May I know only the pain I can bear when he comes? May the mother of Mikas love this child?

As the fine autumn days moved towards the feast day of St Anolysius, the traditional day of departure of the winter transhumance, there was, this season, an unspoken tension present in the still, dry air. Already preparations were being made for the long journey to the winter plains. There was soon to be a wedding now three days away, of the Phatos boy to the Tamosel girl. The boy was from an adjoining summer pasture and had travelled during the summer months with an itinerant uncle, a pedlar of sorts and beggar of repute. So he had seen something of the world beyond those of the herds and flocks can expect to see. He was rightly-made and fit to marry, although, of course, the girl was to be well-kept secret until the day itself.

Lucila remembered those wedding days, her wedding days, those anxious days of waiting when encased in her finery, in her seemingly impenetrable and voluminous wedding clothes she had remained all but hidden from view. While around her the revelling came and went, the drunkenness, the feasting, the riotous eruptions of noise and movement, the sudden visitations of relatives she did not know, the fierce instructions of women who spoke to her now as a woman no longer a young girl or a dear child, women she knew as silent, shy and respectful who were now loud and lewd, who told her things she could hardly believe, what a man might do, what a man might be, what a woman had to suffer - all these things happening at the same time. And then her soon-to-be husband’s drunk-beyond-reason friends had carried off the basket with her trousseau and dressed themselves riotously in her finest embroidered blouses, her intricate layered skirts, her petticoats, even the nightdress deemed the one to be worn when eventually, after three days revelry, she would be visited by a man, now more goat than man, sodden with drink, insensible to what little she understood as human passion beyond the coupling of goats. Of course Semisar had prepared the bright blood for the bridesbed sheet, the necessary evidence, and as Mikas lay sprawled unconscious at the foot of the marriage bed she had allowed herself to be dishevelled, to feign the aftermath of the act he was supposed to have committed upon her. That would, she knew, come later . . .

It was then, in those terrible days and after, she took comfort from her silent, private stitching into leaves, the darning of acorns, the spinning of skeins of goats’ wool she would walnut-dye and weave around stones and pieces of glass. She would bring together leaves bound into tiny books, volumes containing for her a language of leaves, the signs and symbols of nature she had named, that only she knew. She could not read the words of the priest’s book but was fluent in the script of veins and ribs and patterning that every leaf owned. When autumn came she could hardly move a step for picking up a fallen leaf, reading its story, learning of its history. But this autumn now, at the time of leaf fall, the fall of the leaf did not happen and those leaves of last year at her feet were ready to disintegrate at her touch. She was filled with dread. She knew she could not leave the mountains without a collection of leaves to stitch and weave through the shorter days and long, long winter nights. She had imagined sharing with her infant child this language she had learnt, had stitched into her daily life.

It was Semisar of course, who voiced it first. Semisar, the self-appointed weather ears and horizon eyes of the community, who followed her into the woods, who had forced Lucila against a tree holding one broad arm and her body’s weight like a bar from which Lucila could not escape, and with the other arm and hand rifled the broad pockets of Lucila’s apron. Semisar tossed the delicate chicken bone needles to the ground, unravelled the bobbins of walnut-stained yarn, crumpled the delicately folded and stitched, but yet to be finished, constructions of leaves . . . And spewed forth a torrent of terrible words. Already the men knew that the lack of leaf fall was peculiar only to the woods above and around their village. Over the other side of the mountain Telgatho had said this was not so. Was Lucila a Magnelz? Perhaps a Cutvlael? This baby she carried, a girl of course, was already making evil. Semisar placed her hand over and around the ripe hard form of the unborn child, feeling for its shape, its elbows and knees, the spine. And from there, with a vicelike grip on the wrist, Semisar dragged Lucila up and far into the woods to where the mountain with its caves and rocks touched the last trees, and from there to the cave where she seemed to know Lucila’s treasures lay, her treasures from childhood. Semisar would destroy everything, then the leaves would surely fall.

When Lucila did not return to prepare the evening meal Mikas was to learn all. Should he leave her be? He had been told women had these times of strange behaviour before childbirth. The wedding of the Phatos boy was almost upon them and the young men were already behaving like goats before the rut. The festive candles and tinselled wedding crowns had been fetched from the nearest town two days ride distant, the decoration of the tiny mountain basilica and the accommodation for the priest was in hand. The women were busy with the making of sweets and treats to be thrown at the wedding pair by guests and well-wishers. Later, the same women would prepare the dough for the millstones of bread that would be baked in the stone ovens. The men had already chosen the finest lambs to spit-roast for the feast.

She will return, Semisar had said after waiting by the fold where Mikas flocks, now gathered from the heights, awaited their journey south. All will be well, Mikas, never fear. The infant, a girl, may not last its birth, Semisar warned, but seeing the shocked face of Mikas, explained a still-birth might be providential for all. Know this time will pass, she said, and you can still be blessed with many sons. We are forever in the hands of the spirit, she said, leaving without the customary salutation of farewell.
                                               
However different the lives of man and woman may by tradition and circumstance become, those who share the ways and rites of marriage are inextricably linked by fate’s own hand and purpose. Mikas has come to know his once-bride, the child become woman in his clumsy embrace, the girl of perhaps fifteen summers fulfilling now his mother’s previous role, who speaks little but watches and listens, is unfailingly attentive to his needs and demands, and who now carries his child ( it can only be a boy), carries this boy high in her womb and with a confidence his family has already remarked upon.

After their wedding he had often returned home to Lucila at the time of the sun’s zenith when it is customary for the village women to seek the shade of their huts and sleep. It was an unwritten rite due to a newly-wed husband to feign the sudden need for a forgotten tool or seek to examine a sick animal in the home fold. After several fruitless visits when he found their hut empty he timed his visit earlier to see her black-scarfed figure disappear into the oak woods.  He followed her secretively, and had observed her seated beneath an ancient warrior of a tree, had watched over her intricate making. Furthermore and later he came to know where she hid the results of this often fevered stitching of things from nature’s store and stash, though an supernatural fear forbade him to enter the cleft between rocks into which she would disappear. He began to know how times and turns of the days affected her actions, but had left her be. She would usually return bright-eyed and with a quiet wonder, of what he did not know, but she carried something back within her that gave her a peculiar peace and beauty. It seemed akin to the well-being Mikas knew from handling a fine ewe from his flock . . .

And she would sometimes allow herself to be handled thus. She let him place his hands over her in that joyful ownership and command of a man whose life is wholly bound up with flocks and herds and the well-being of the female species. He would come from the evening watch with the ever-constant count of his flock still on his lips, and by a mixture of accident and stealth touch her wholly-clothed body, sometimes needing his fingers into the thick wool of her stockings, stroking the chestnut silken hairs that he found above her bare wrists, marvelling at her small hands with their perfect nails. He knew from the ribaldry of men that women were trained from childhood to display to men as little as possible of their intimate selves. But alone and apart all day on a remote hillside, alone save for several hundred sheep, brought to Mikas in his solitary state wild and conjured thoughts of feminine spirits, unencumbered by clothes, brighter and more various than any night-time dream. And he had succumbed to the pleasure of such thoughts times beyond reason, finding himself imagining Lucila as he knew she was unlikely ever to allow herself to be. But even in the single winter and summer of their life together there had been moments of surprise and revelation, and accompanied by these precious thoughts he went in search of her in the darkness of a three-quarter moon, into the stillness of the night-time wood.

Ah Lucilla. We might think that after the scourge of Semisar, the physical outrage of her baby’s forced examination, and finally the destruction of her treasures, this child-wife herself with child would be desolate with grief at what had come about. She had not been forced to follow Semisar into the small cave where wrapped in woven blankets her treasures lay between the thinnest sheets of impure and rejected parchment gleaned surreptitiously after shearing, but holding each and every treasure distinct and detached. There was enough light for Semisar to pause in wonder at the intricate constructions, bright with the aura of extreme fragility owned by many of the smaller makings. And not just the leaves of the oak were here, but of the mastic, the walnut, the flaky-barked strawberry and its smoothed barked cousin. There were leaves and sheaves of bark from lowland trees of the winter sojourn, there were dried fruits mysteriously arranged, constructions of acorns threaded with the dark madder-red yarn, even acorns cracked and damaged from their tree fall had been ‘mended’ with thread.

Semisar was to open some of the tiny books of leaved pages where she witnessed a form of writing she did not recognise (she could not read but had seen the priest’s writing and the print of the holy books). This she wondered at, as surely Lucila had only the education of the home? Such symbols must belong to the spirit world. Another sign that Lucila had infringed order and disturbed custom. It would take but a matter of minutes to turn such makings into little more than a layer of dust on the floor.

With her bare hands Semisar ground together these elaborate confections, these lovingly-made conjunctions of needle’s art with nature’s purpose and accidental beauty. She ground them together until they were dust.

When Semisar returned into the pale afternoon light it seemed Lucila had remained as she had been left: motionless, and without expression. If Semisar had known the phenomenon of shock, Lucila was in that condition. But, in the manner of a woman preparing to grieve for the dead she had removed her black scarf and unwound the long dark chestnut plaits that flowed down her back. But there were no tears. only a dumb silence but for the heavy exhalation of breath. It seemed that she looked beyond Semisar into the world of spirits invoking perhaps their aid, their comfort.

What happened had neither invoked sadness nor grief. It was as if it had been ordained in the elusive pattern of things. It felt like the clearing of the summer hut before the final departure for the long journey to the winter world. The hut, Lucila had been taught, was to be left spotless, every item put in its rightful place ready to be taken up again on the return to the summer life, exactly as if it had been undisturbed by absence . Not a crumb would remain before the rugs and coverings were rolled and removed, summer clothes hard washed and tightly mended, to be folded then wrapped between sprigs of aromatic herbs.

Lucila would go now and collect her precious but scattered needles from beneath the ancient oak. She would begin again - only to make and embroider garments for her daughter. It was as though, despite this ‘loss’, she had retained within her physical self the memory of every stitch driven into nature’s fabric.

Suddenly Lucila remembered that saints’ day which had sanctioned a winter’s walk with her mother, a day when her eyes had been drawn to a world of patterns and objects at her feet: the damaged acorn, the fractured leaf, the broken berried branch, the wisp of wool left impaled upon a stub of thorns. She had been five, maybe six summers old. She had already known the comforting action of the needle’s press again the felted cloth, but then, as if impelled by some force quite outside herself, had ‘borrowed’ one of her mother’s needles and begun her odyssey of darning, mending, stitching, enduring her mother’s censure - a waste of good thread, little one - until her skill became obvious and one of delight, but a private delight her mother hid from all and sundry, and then pressed upon her ‘proper’ work with needle and thread. But the damage had been done, the dye cast. She became nature’s needle slave and quartered those personal but often invisible

many will know the beauty
of a butterfly's wing
and the delicate intricacy
of their decoration
those swathes of colour
meandering boldly in flight
a proclamation of
             their presence
             their providence
whose startling eyespots
can mimic the stolid gaze
of the stern and the alluring
observing in judgement
or perhaps in wonder
blinking only as they flutter
flattered disbelieving
yet there are reminders
in that Rorschach patterning
that those with ill intent
should observe
threats and
             warnings overlooked
by those in admiration
of such beauty
where few will heed
that gossamer fragility
broken by any
not considerate enough
in their handling

This board is not on the wall. It rests on a worktable against a wall. It’s almost the length of the table, perhaps a foot short. On top of the board its wooden frame makes a shelf ideal for photographs or cards to balance precariously, photographs and cards too precious to pin. Today there are five, yes they change from day to day, and today (from left to right) there’s an original drawing in walnut ink of a winter field, a photo of two children looking from a cliff top towards a peninsula’s end, a card called Autumn Spey from a lithograph by Angie Lewin, an invitation to a gallery opening, and a What’s On brochure – from another gallery – showing some unusual tapestry.

The Notice Board is 100 x 60 cm. The wooden frame is slight, probably home-made, but well-made, with a dark brown hessian surface. Not that you can see much of the surface as it is covered with stuff: photographs, images, poems, pictures, cards, quotations, a prayer, an origami bird, a doctor’s prescription, a piece of tapestry, an invitation, an address, lists galore, a cheque or two, a diagram (of a knot), a concert program. Not everything can be seen directly as many items are shared by a single pin and hidden four, even six, notices deep. Every so often the items are unpinned and consigned to a folder and filed, and so the process of choosing and pinning starts over again. This can happen after a holiday, returning uncluttered by days walking the cliff paths with only the quiet sea to gaze at and the cottage blissfully free of things known, things owned.  So when back at the desk, in front of the notice board, it seems right to be beginning again.

Mozart’s Linz Symphony is playing quietly in the background. It’s that time of day when music is sometimes allowed to frame work at this desk and blot out the going home noise of buses in the city street moving away from the stop three floors below. Linz, the capital of Upper Austria and now a large industrial city straddling the banks of the Danube, once gave its name to Linzertorte, a cake of jam, cloves, cinnamon, and almonds, and this remarkable symphony by Mozart. The composer had only just married his Constanza and wrote to his long suffering father:

When we reached the gates of Linz . . . , we found a servant waiting there to drive us to Count Thun's, at whose house we are now staying. I really cannot tell you what kindnesses the family are showering on us. On Tuesday, November 4, I am giving a concert in the theatre here and, as I have not a single symphony with me, I am writing a new one at break-neck speed, which must be finished by that time. Well, I must close, because I really must set to work.

And set to work he did. He had just 4 days to compose, write the parts (though Constanza helped), and rehearse an orchestra. Such is life for the working composer, even today. Maybe not a summons from a beneficent Count, but a phone-call from a producer with a deadline. It is the film or TV score to be composed at break-neck speed. And it can be done, believe me. It may not be sublime as Mozart, but it gets done: there are ways and means.

But this is today’s background, and as these words are written the gracious siciliano of the Symphony No.36 plays away. Such a tender confection.

Looking up at the notice board where does one start? Each pinned piece is a divertissement, an aide memoire to times, events, places, and people. It is a mixture of the colourful, the curious, the necessary, the unusual, the nostalgic, and the personally precious. These things are the qualifications required to occupy a place on this board.

But now Haydn takes over the musical background, Symphony No.88. No descriptive name here, just his wonderful music: his first symphony to score trumpets and timpani, and with more than a touch of Turkish in the Minuetto and Finale.

So close your eyes now (let’s listen to Haydn for a while), then slowly open them and choose from the notice board what first catches your attention.

It’s a coloured sketch of flowers on an A5 sheet of cartridge paper. It is outlined delicately in pen, coloured variously with pastels, green, orange, purple, red. The vase is a glass bowl. It’s set on a window-sill and there’s the frame of a window faintly rendered. There’s no artifice in the arrangement. These are flowers from a garden, picked and now firmly ****** into the bowl. Immediately the long, quiet east-facing room comes alive to colour. It’s in shade now the sun has moved since midday when the flowers arrived after a journey of 40 miles in a hot car wrapped in moist newspaper and silver foil. It is a special gift and its beauty remains vivid for days. When visitors visited gentle comments are made on their fresh colours.

At night when the room is only lit by a standard lamp standing by a pale yellow settee the flowers sleep in the darkness, holding a vivid memory of a day of colour and light. A recording of the Schumann quartets plays passionately during the ‘close to the end of summer’ evenings. Hands are held, and between movements there is an occasional exploratory kiss. Such was their collective fear of passion overcoming other endeavours . . .

In the early morning time when she slept in the room next door oblivious to his wakefulness he would enter the long studio room with its four windows to find the first sunlight patterning the floor. The flowers were wide-awake, their perfume rich in the still morningtime. He would stand entranced to see such beauty brought from her city garden; the first of many gifts he would come to treasure. His sketch was an amateur’s, but four summers past it continued to give much joy and dear memories. It had something of the solemnity of Mozart’s siciliano, and if an image could be said to have a right tempo, it had a right tempo, a gracefulness roughly hewn perhaps, but full of grace.

---- 2023 youtube I wonder if, and lo': The Planets
A grand background orchestra, mental direct
there, you hav it, too, listen, a few times,
just in the mood, to listen
maybe as you get, that it starts at Mars,
begin as we
think we
Read this at your pace the writer advised,
and I did, a couple of times,
like long stuck records…
To Holst, an offered libation,
to all the minds whose words
are music as big as any mind
limited by my unknowing,
only
using, the truth, music, leading after words,
through ever away,
silent for a now,
or so,
from the Sun, past the fragment,
the single lump at the core,
of the process,
Ash as
Icarus, and Hermes, speedy messenger,
such as see thee, hold the knowledge holy,

watch, see, the wandering planets Holst,
might have seen today,
looking through my eyes,
wordless, right on, so far, as we

agree, there
is power in the mind that writes and reads
music,
power alloted some in blind feel,
power exuding from an ever in times past,

lasting ever tones thinning, spreading, patterning
perfected harmonies unexpected
yet
taken as granted, felt, in passion y sympassion,
same sound,

my once known wind, my bass oboe player,
acquaintance, who called me by name,
accusing me, subtly of not knowing,
there is a forest of low stature,
and there are missions there,
where if you pray,
they feed you twinkies… I recall, between
Venus and busy laughing Earth,

I remember Mars is next,
I am ready, I went into the dark kitchen,
back of the Mission on Fourth Street,
across from an Electra Records Billboard…

ifery approaches, Holst has not gotten me to Mars,
I am pulling in an experience, from a mission,
on Fourth Street, in a mindtimespace shared,

as of yet, by a few, who will know the place,
the ******* Mission, the one
with the Joker who used rats,
to get a startle response,

and at exactly the wrong place, for men with
certain
kinds of sure thing reactions, to diabolic attacks.

2023, approaching Mars with Lou Holtz, I thum thum
thummin wearin' my Razorback hat,
Inter Planatary Hwy 71, to Joplin,
ur in my realm.

Bass every thing slow creep slow, seep as sludge,
to the edge, and look beyond,
this is it, this is the Earth,
we shall survive!

We slay the unbelievers and fake it til we make it,
right, kids?

---------- longhair music, epicyc-lical as neckties,
to male tipped stacking schema for *****,
or stones,
or crystaline tones accompanying the heating up
of life's core cargo cult's last load,

Holst, bass trombones,
here, is the dance of little devils with a mind to make
a difference
in the depths of ever after,
up to now,
I had forgotten the piccolo parts, and the French horns,
and the joy of the big parade,
marching off
to war explore the unknown
for exploitations as per the underling theme,
go forth
subdue the Earth, and conquer all who refuse, to say
this is the way,
this is the good old way,

war
glory and honor, earn the urim'nthummin'n'human
inhumainity, we, the chosen warrior beings,
messengers of differing mocking gods of ****** mud
beyond the final river,
every slogger knows, forever, there remains
one more
river to cross, a final thread to tie to you, listener,

Holtz, still in the background, a journey, what price
each player plays in this, orchestration shared,
as I read, I wrote, as I hoped, I did,

and I remain, giddily glad… my side won the war
I lost.

Peace came, unbidden, apparently,
a deep breath, and harp strings,

this is the future from any ever before, now
to know
this is common, not so rare, as even the idea,
not so long ago,
first radio mono performance,
what child lay in the crib and heard this,
through the grand horn of Gram's Gramma phone.
Y''ello,
toldja, ai ain't no Injunsaint. Pretend, then,
right, ai and mai-y grandma

can piece together some occassional lessons, given us,
she in her time telling me in mine,sssince ever about
I was forty-nine, or so, she told me she was an orphan,
and had no family knowledge, past begins
at the last common thread,
to a native american epic,

when the old deluder, Satan, act, attached
to law and order and rectangular resettlement
of wilderness liberated from savages and beasts…
pawn, both steps, dare… help the Macedonians
and take Uncle Tom wit'cha, whicha oughtn't had
never the less, young wombed men, did tend
to become aspirational, after becoming
inspired read-up young wombed men, hot
to seek adventure, teachin' young'n's, out west.

indistanct depth Holst at the kettle drumms softerafter
- the silent version has a different light show
--- circa 1880's, not historically long ago, most places.
This character,
qwerty guy's friend, has kin as close as my Uncle Cebe'n'me,
who died at Wounded Knee, where my liege republic,
honored some two dozen rapid fire cannon supported
avengers of The Seventh Cav!
And in their hearts,
if not their lips,
was the march in time to Garry Owen. Their families
must be proud.

And that's a shame. We were taught to grant worth
to a medal signifying honor brought to the liege, in victory.

Peace passes that, music makes bubbles, we revisit,
replay the gramma phone version,
some scratchy
real realizing strings singing chimes and harps
of ages past
unveiling, hiding nothing knowing freedom is a sense,
you know
you do not own it,
you do not make it up, it is free. The idea

I had, approached as
hunter
in pursuit, steady as she blows,

leave us hap as may be at a triumph of joyous
curious
dancing twinkle noise amusing being a muse used,
enter tained, and voiced by bass
then tinkles
thin thin thin then Zildjian  K-bang!

____

I cannot say
of the daydreams, why they come and go
so fleetingly.

I cannot say
how often I dreamt
of Columbine or suicide.

I cannot say
how many times
I took substances
to get out of my mind.

I cannot say how many nights I fell asleep
counting
compounds like most people count sheep.

All I can say
is that I sought relief;

-------------
Time's were hard, we see,
as we look back and wonder, asking
actually,
wondering
is asking who knew, or knows,
at the ha,
a breath acclaiming exhaled, huff.
I know. It acts as if, I am the prey, in quest…

Of course, in slow, out burst… ah wit' ha a aitch
witches silence, 'ear ye, 'ear ye,
order in the court,
the open court before the temple,

gather, all ye hinderers and holder-backs, rally
round the banner over us,
which is love of duty to God and Country,

¿Eh, little man, dis tinctual intel, confi, semper set,
semper fi, do or die, or do and die, why
is not a factor,
or luck is not a factor, time and chance, dance…

dance with this wondering mind, wishing to be
of some significance, when plopped
on the scale,
for what it is worth,
for the cost
to fit the three strand thread
from Delphi riddles writ
in Greek et Ebersprachen Proverbs
from the very early days,
collected fragments
of ever ago, cetera

as far as ships had sailed, we know, now
we have sailed farther,
we have flown, as far as our perception may
hold the experience,
as power we may use, if we choose, buy a ticket,
wait in line…

read one hundred and forty seven maxims,
think three missing, for I was told to find
one hundred and fifty pre-positioning
glyphs, single sign, single signal, taken

as given, one will to wonder, one to wonder why.

I am at the moment Qwerty Guy, qwertying code,
in clear text,
through sieves witches were known, to use,
by King James, the first, of England,
who wrote the book on sorting
witches from his loyal servants,

all sworn to alliegiance,
to the king of two kingdoms, all stand,

Come to order, let the judgement begin…
in this worlds interpretation,
of ἐγγύα πάρα δ'ἄτα
- Swear not at all… Certainty makes madness
after we recall, there needs be order, must be
in the court,
where each man, wombed or un, and possibly,
old or young, or, better said,
old from young, must judge the angels
we each trust to always see things our way
- draw the right vectors, from my POV
- Graphic communication demo
Cartesian, belling thing, seen on two dimensions,
to and from, but here
the point
the readers perceptivity
to the precept set in ifery was,
so quite long ago we lost our grip,

holding, holding, holding that thought,
we thought, a chapter or so ago, you know
we thought,
ever
was a thinkable thing, and we thought it.

------------- Proud of it, too.
Dis, take it
Easy, you are privileged, legated privacy
for knowing what may be known,
in the realm of all you may ever know.

Gnostic mystic alien ties
religamental truth coded moral worth,
stores of stories studied in hope,
choking on the dust, those missing,
layers,
the bringers of peace,
the releasers of the knowing to the chosen,
those selected by childish preferences,
to become the model image
of good done right,
as natural as
sneezing whole armys into being,
after sowing dragon's teeth for years.
All we agree, we may imagine, making up

Messengers from former days,
telling us to mend our ways,
no, telling us, to get a grip.
Oracles or angels, or mass hysteria,
none portrayed as boogermen and witches,
wrinkled hags and fatphag priests in shades.
At you, we see the dust blown.
Celebrate.
A series of sneezes axon-triggering,
deep anti-histamine relief reaction, coming on,

must be something in the wind,
must be my body, reacting, doing what must
be done,
or I shall die, or I shall die, each sneeze,
from within me cries,
no, from inside,
we whisper, prepare, to not spray snot,
in civilized mindspacetime patterning arrays.

my eyes are heady    **** bloating
                                       from within the sun
       white embellishment lasers out  
                  lending provision
     setting life   to the organic cog and clock
provoking muted growth  to retch a bloom
              leading
                                     ­ spending
                                                       ­         seeding

my tread  destroys nothing
each step    frictionless  
patterning little hovering eddies
                              a fraction above ground
minimal is my disruption
enough    only to promote a deeper observation
    tender fanning     of the life that i am fawning over

how to feel this spritely at all times ?   t'would be a spell
                                                 a fondled thing

         it’s from our night of shared tether
our infection threw out an extra pleasurable souvenir
it carried its energy    into the ensuing day

i am launched affection
beckoned     into the true employment of my surroundings
carrying my socks and shoes in one hand
and my heart?  it is a possession of the senses
i am truly led
i am emitting

The Seventh Floor
By Otuogbodor, Okeibunor

He just saw her downstairs seated
She saw him pass by but noticed him
He went up to the seventh floor
She breathes the air of freshness
Freshness from home, freshness to school
His mounts of the stairs mounts hope
She sat solitary savouring that air of hope
The university,the hope shaper
The dream comber, ivory tower,
A monumental hope to mount.
One hour past, from that height
He looked down he saw her
She looked up she saw him
Eyes  locked in seconds
Hearts lost to hope
He held his heart lost
She looks her hope not sure
He dare called she dare answered?
Clutching her bags she mounts the stairs
The university stairs to mount in years to come
He stood there on trembling feet waiting
She climbs on and up,on n up
Up the height their  hope clingy
He is up there she mounts up to him
At the seventh floor to  meet  him
As she makes it up all eyes on her trail;
Noticeably slim model of freshness
Admirably everyone to behold
She climbed up to him
Before him she stood
His call she dare answered.
Transfixed! He took her bag
Willingly  she gave him
The floor quakes! The feelings of not just two
The feelings of an age quakes
The hope of many quakes too
The seventh floor quakes!
The waiting room quakes
She enters with of all but him!
He Leads  her to a chair
Her tired Legs grateful.
A sachet of water he gave her
Her thirsty soul appreciative.
He loved her immediately!
She sips the water genuinely thirsty
And She saw the eyes!
His eyes  beholding her.
Her nerve quakes the water pours
Pouring on her chest her white shirt dampen
The chest thumping reveals her Breast
A beautifully moulded set of young Breast
Breast shaped by only the Almighty!
Breast only can be possessed by a Goddess.
Adorable set of gem like diamond points at him.
He looks on. All in the room looks on.
He breathes hard like he just climbed the stairs.
In shock he brought  out a brownish white handkerchief
Dampen  the  chest staining the wet area
She felt his hand. He touched her soul.
The seventh floor quakes the more
Quaking the very foundation of hearts in the room.
He looked her in the eyes , kissed her forehead
She quakes inside of her
His very soul sincerely stared
Her very innocence quakes.
He mutters this lines;
    ‘Be mine sweet Angel’
Her soul heard the lines from a distance
Transporting further the very quake
Whose after shock will last for years.
He was in his third year fed for himself
She was in her first year in daddy’s shadow.
Tortious was the climb
Broadlynarrow was the road
Choice was  a task
Trust…! a life bet
Two hearts-dice juggled
The quake was seconds still
Single mindedness was the decision
The mindful was n is the after shock.
Her friends bemoaned her
His friends fearful cheered him
Her mother cautiously careful
His mother hands off n up in prayer
Her father tearing n threatening.
Thundering his nerve to the brims
She remained obstinate n focused
He remained supportive n sacrificial
Sacrifices of an umbrella in the rain
She appreciated him. He protected her.
He provided the hanger for her  grip
She stretched her arms like the pumpkin tongue grips
The vow of  protections as a service  after graduation.
A service not to a fatherland but for truth
Truth of two souls in opposite divide.
The protection from unspoken facts
Facts only known to one n whispered to the other.
The bet on Trust not Love?
And four year stroll  past
For time crept in to birth a newness.
A new birth n a new day of destiny berthed
As fortune of two set sail
And another two stuck on the hyacinth.
She mounts the podium
He watched from afar in tears of joy
She was the best in the pac
He made it happened
Her mother esthetic n jubilant
Egoistic  father puffy with pride
The pac applauds success n true work
She worked for it. He saw to it.
A synergy of trust for result seem unattainable
Impossibility made possible
Success he desired but archived in her.
She is rewarded for excellence
He is rewarded for steadfastness
Her mother is rewarded for unspoken fear from shame
His mother is rewarded for daily travails in prayer
Her father is rewarded for money spent on trivialities.
The reward of one pervades a whole lot
Avalanches of rewards open n secrets.
UnOpen secret between father n daughter
Shared secret between him n her.
She collects her award admits ululations inside of her
He feels n knows her pain admits the atmosphere
Her mother is carried away like the gele she is wearing
Her father boastful in an atmospheric  blindness for his money's efforts
Her hearts inner workings is detached from the day's euphoria
He standing at the distance transmutes her experiences
Experiences of a father who knew only his desires
Desires bought n explored from every available mode.
The university was a safe heaven for her
He provided the guard and guidance she lacked at home
Her encounter of him n the journey to the seventh floor
Shaped her to today n assured her of tomorrow
True  love stands like strong pilar  
He longed n gave love he wanted n  never had
She believe n trust for him save the climb
She is a daughter her father only knew  in the dark
He is a friend who is a true father n never had one.
Drives n ponderings of the hearts
The podium is for gallery elicit joyousness
Joyous celebrations into the night.
The night comes with  it's sounds
Darkness comes with it's secretes
Tides n storms in dark hearts alleyway
Lighten flashes schemes it's way in the dark tides of time
The heart thunders in ‘tick ****’ motion of time
Tale  trail to time
Quest of two in timescape alley
Time: a healer n a judge?
Time n space bridged reward
A collusion of hatred n love rewarded.
The reward of time is unquantifiable  
And timeless is its weight.
The weight of love prompted a search
A search for his father
A search for her true father
A father who constantly seek n desires  daughter’s nakedness?
A mother whose silence at the face of such shame?
Truth bound by time  rebounds in space
Complicit of two self lying marriage between man n woman
Rebounds in  two young honest lovers
The happiness of youthful individual being sacrificed?
The weight of a DNA is  love for him and her
And hate for father n mother .
Her mother was shameless n still is
His father was irresponsible n still is.
The early light dispels darkness
Darkness of the heart under a fretsaw
Patterning  in style  actions of the dark
Every secret did have open reward
She was n is her mother from a man she refused her knowing
He was his father Who absconded 33 years ago
Hiding in the arms of another woman bewitched?
Likes begets  likes in a mate of two deluded snakes
Living in the dark holes of there night
Orchestrating symphonies of lies n lies
And now likes dogs leak their  poisonous venom.
At dawn light gains its penetrations
Penetrating the very marrow of truth….!
As Morning dawns with it's dews
A climb to the seventh floor was the dew.
And light melts away this dew
Shining in the life of two young fellows
Who loved from their souls.

I give thanks to those who caused me pain,
And shed the final blood hazed tear.

I speak of night and fallen cities,
Those ashen nightmares lull my sleep.

Why not destroy the ending hope?
Or ride the oceans parting wave?

Oh the sky holds many tinted hues,
Locked away in a dainty vial.

My drowning screams embraced you in rapture,
Sweet symphony to your yearning ears.

Even angels must bow down sometimes,
The moon and sun alike in difference.

I am the voice of untold tales,
I am the breath of an unborn child.

Recall the eyes set hard in stone,
And the hand-prints patterning my flesh.

My last breath captured in a net,
Sold for a delicate whisper.

Smoke caressed my weary eyes,
And flames kissed my slender figure.

Palm against palm we stand as equals,
As two weathered piano keys.

i would love to
be able to identify
a bird from its call
or the shape of
wide-spread wings
as one flies overhead
in theory
it may seem impressive
but if i were to
successfully distinguish
a chiffchaff from
a willow warbler
based on the patterning
and colour of
its plumage
or the shape
and length of
its tail feathers
i struggle to think
of a single person
who would respond
with more than
an indifferent
mocking or
pandering "oh"

It’s just a dreamy day
The rain is patterning down
The clouds have spread
Their darkening face
All over this busy town
But I’m floating
Above the rooftops
I’m scarcely touching ground
Time passes so luxuriously
Whenever you’re around

We met and we were young again
We touched and our souls smiled
We held each other closely
Then, we decided to live a while

It all passes in the moment
Of being here with you
The setting is your presence
And the flame that burns anew
As we walk through
The darkened streets
I simply don’t see the grey
For the way that I am feeling now
Is brighter than any day

*We met and we were young again
We touched and our souls smiled
We held each other closely
Then, we decided to live a while

you act as if my heart was made of red clay found in the ground

cutting pieces out

molding it to your satisfaction

scratching it and patterning it the way you feel it needs to be

and now you've left it dripping with blood

with battle wounds worse than ever

and you didn't even try to fix the damage you had done    

you destroyed me beautifully

yet i feel so ugly.

come make a masterpiece out of me,

come make a masterpiece.

~t.s.

V

morning
falling water
bench beside
red berries
green ferns
every which way
leaning waterward
crisp air still
morning


VI

mirror trees
sun hard
burning off the clouds
resting still
hanging upon hills
hiding mountains
above
in the blue


VII

the ring lies far out
in the light bright water
here sea exhausted stretches
into the tired land Rocks
variously coloured hold
patterning against the drift
and **** rank under the sun

(at Camusfearna)


VIII

hardly daring to describe this scene
of clouds resting as stilled waves
on a barely moving sea
the pen is afraid to mark
this wonder on the ****** page

IX

a lake of sea
taking its blueness
into the distant hills
to where watching
in the early morning
these hills became
a blue blur
cushioned by clouds

X

in the foreground
rocks reach out
prolonged under
water: a reef

small birds float
like toy boats
against the shore
lapping the pebbles
to and fro
the sea rules
shifts moves
in its blueness
against the sharp
clarity of land

For Jonathan on his 70th birthday*

Even at 70
I can’t imagine
one stops wondering

at those wonders
surrounding
each day and hour

clearly etched
recorded
in the growth of trees

where future states
are no more certain
than an April wind.

No bad thing then
to review
his life and work

to question again
where we think we are
in this world’s plan.

A life lived
between experiment
and pain

He teaches us
still to look
and look again

at nature’s fragile
patterning
and its chaotic hand.

‘Oh the mystery of
what lies between the
body and the mind.'

How much time is 'enough time'?
Which answer is the correct one?
Is this lie more convincing,
Or is this truth the most deceiving?

Day One

Is what you know
Really what you believe,
Or do you feed your pain
With fabricated reality?

As though you set water on fire
Like a burning desire to scream,
Scream out to the stars
Patterning your structured time.

Day Fifteen

Is what you hear
Really what you listen,
Or do you ease your soul
With altered versions?

A bubble of Denial
Safeguarding broken hope,
Protecting the One Second
That lingers until today

Day Thirty

Is what you want
Really what you need,
Or do you earn smiles
With your own idea of ecstasy?

When truth catches up
And One Second is over;
You find reality pushing you
Far beyond horizons,
Into fantasy-
A land known as Freedom.

Speckling drops, of bathwater- lovely evening rain.
Patter melodically against
my open window frame.
The  water touches me not,
for my roof with gutters and onings.
But the dewy breeze saturates my room
like my face to an ocean breeze.
Mother Waters, send her daughters
to my window this spring night singing.
Distant puddle patterning ploops,
diameters mass expanses on the suburban streets.
The trees, the smile as they absorb the
moisture their brittle bones need.
Oh how I pitied the trees,
when the cold stripped and broke their branches
my heart grew sorrowful & weak.
The deserve to be enveloped, by this
unplanned storm.
All in the world, would agree when I say
that we are blessed
with this warm April rain

You finally get to sit down
You sigh
“Another long day has passed”
You look around
Toys on the floor
Clothes everywhere
You slowly drift off into a deep sleep
The sound of your angels laughing fills your ears
Little voices whisper “Mommy”
You remember the day they were born
The first step
First word
Their footsteps patterning in the distance
The smell of breakfast wavers in the air
Both of your angels tap on your leg
“Happy mother’s day, mommy”
You open your eyes with a grin covering your face
“Thank you Jesus.”

Do not write for me.
You- so perfect but humble.
a calico dress.
Your words patterning the hems,
sleeves, trying to match an ugly pair of shoes.

Do not write for me!
I am a waning moon,
against the
nuclear reactions of your words in
the sun. Shifting,
casually,
planets. Playing god to the

Egyptians, who also did not
write for me.
But did for you,
who lit their temples,
shone through their heiroglyphics.
Who adorned their pyramids in
crimson robes of sunset.
And I, but a stone in a pyramid
Plain, and beige at best.
I still light up and write this for you.

I'd like to know if I am real.
Everything is too perfect to endure reality,
Pristine processes in a scuffed world.
Just enough oxygen for sustainability, connecting anatomic creations in perfect harmony.
Just the right gravity for breathing capabilities but enough to keep us grounded,
Just the perfect set of genes, containing electrons to keep cells clamped in geometric patterning.
Just the right degree of an axis to create all elements of nature, to nurture a 45th parallel with such virginity.
Just enough atmosphere to keep our fingers grasping, to stir vibration between atomic beings.
Just enough death to keep the cycle continuing.
Just barely.
But no one cares.

I'd like to know where we are going.
Not kinesthetically, no, but where we are going.
I think the world may turn backwards sometimes, and I'd like to know if that's true,
If it's ever going to happen,
And the circumstances, the consequences.
I'd like to know the circumference of Earth and compare it to the universe,
And remind myself of just how insignificant I am, we are, even all together.
But no one cares

I'd just like to know the answers to these questions seldom pondered.
I'd like to know the reason for everything.
Is it too much to ask why I am here, how I exist and what made me throb in those first moments of conception?
Do I dare wonder how my cells gathered courage enough to grow?
Do I dare guess how my parents earned a blessing so intimate?
I'd like to think my poems can seep into catatonic veins and make mountains with my words,
Is it too bizarre to believe the world may someday stop turning,
That it may reverse, and all of time will become corroded with processed steel and carbonated flesh?


I suppose I understand the methods of this flock.
I suppose I will follow as countless did before me.
"For the better", they bleat in monotonous drilling, chipping and cracking my weakened femurs,
And no longer can I continue like this.
I give in.
"I can't, you can't make me", I bleat, I cry so loud.
The trees plug their ears and watch each lifeless body
March over mine into the nuclear filled wasteland
And drink from its waters,
And the monster's tentacles slither around each sheep belly and drags them
In silent procession.
The lake ***** them dry and the radiation singes their woolen coats.
"For the better", they bleat
As the world falls down around me
And I am trapped with glass knocking me unconscious as it falls from San Diego to Chicago,
From Singapore to Moscow.
"For the better", I bleat, as I remember all the poems that smoldered to ashes before I put them on paper.

So I find my answer, too late to share with the others,
That yes, the world now halts its sluggish canter,
And the crunching of rock shudders beneath me,
And yes, the winds reverse, and we are moving backwards in a direction that never mattered to anyone other than me.
"For the better", I bleat, as the peak of the Chrysler building free-falls and splits my mind in two.
And all those prose, wandering and wispy,
Forever grow weight and sink into soil.

It was the rain to which I'd been waiting;
A palid clamor in the dark
An incessant pitter-pattering
Patterning of life's blood
Awash in the swirling gusts of a storm
Booming with menacing roar
To announce its presence
The purpose of which is to restore
Natures balance
Not unlike the cacophony which breeds
A humble tune,
Tuned to the key terror and awe
As it inspires new life to grow
In place of the old kaleidoscope
That has, to this date,
Shielded my eyes
From the renaissance
Of a world
Trapped in drought

Under my wings (I think) I’m ticked by patterning sea salts.
A friend once told me that the crystals between whispered
Currents shifted and blazed the cracks of coral reefs
Were once bits of my father’s flesh, the old king of the sea.

I forget him sometimes, I was so young (and how young I still feel)

Harpooners search for me, but I lost pride the day I watched him slink
To the bottom of a different floor. Sand as his coffin.
I swim, splitting holy tides. These are the only places to
Find some sliver, a chance of a peaceful mind.

All things move apart in anticipation of my coming.
I glide and close my eyes and wish I could hide away from the stares.
It’s as if the pieces of the world can’t decide where they belong.
The krill still flop over broken bridges and hug my frigid chin.

I still weep.

So long I have lived without you, Father. So long without the twirls beneath
Strict and structured families of fist. I let those schools pass as they learn what I never will.

I’ve learned more about the wooden tables, carved by men without gills or scales.
The tables and chairs spread low across the floor
Dropped from shipwrecks my father caused so long ago
Tattered chips still float and other games that I don’t know.
The Queen of Hearts learned that she, too, loves to swim beside earth’s core.
Once I asked her of the crown adorning her head. She did not blink.
I wouldn’t know how to answer either, if she asked me how I became the King of the Sea.

A girl stands on a beach
Watching the sun set
             Tangerine-colored clouds on the horizon
              The girl sits down in the sand
Feeling cold, wet pebbles beneath her fingers
And thinking

Of everything she'd ever thought, done, said
As gelid waves began to wash over her
                                     Slowly, patterning
                                      Not skipping a beat
Just like her heart

Now the moon shimmers
High in the sky
                         The girl lay down in the sand
                          As she took her last breath
A weight lifted off her shoulders
And she smiled.

T. A. Preacher- a character investigation

Friday, February 3, 2023
12:33 PM

Thanks for looking twice, this is after chapter one.
So that's the first line of chapter two, I suppose
That was one, but this is first because,
the internet is read last to first,
later this is the middle, it is auto intuitive

Any given day gone by
I may have thought I like this ending.

"Before time, God Almighty promised eternal life. Before time!"
A preacher to the choir, offered this as proof,
that there is life, after the time
of life has ceased, thus hell,
must be avoided…
if you can read this accept it must have been voided
nullift,
to totally invalidate lobster stacking- or well, no hell, never was.
kingpriest selfishgene mindmeme power substructure
in the course
Masterclass Civics, with Newt. I was there,
that series in the course
of human events… timeless
and --- grace must be earned.
              Duty-wise, Soldier of the Cross T. A.

I am doing nothing, really, messin' with messaging tek
thinking momentary lapses reoccur aiwise
déjà vu is a function, not a flaw
we recall becoming, and learning, as a we, we
do not unbecome.
Be true.
Life is not a horror movie.
If, indeed,
the effect
from knowing, die-for-it level knowledge,
is being free,
becoming free,
to chose the way
we go from knowing,
wow, Teddy Ruxpin, Worlds of Wonder,
was a beautiful idea, look what we made…

The now old gadfly, happy to die, happy to pass
the spark  to kindled acts enforcing char
at the spark,
to burst in tiny, most tender of flames, softest
wind
tend to sush…

lulla-byye'es be  long here, hmmm, listen

arrested developments catch light, used right,
once burnt, twice wise.

Let no story steal the peace you find
upon precept one.
Your point.
Your reason to expect better from worse,
this time,
the one that counts, constantly, ticketing mindspacetime
hook,
to the sidetracked train,
using your attention tension
to increase our torque, you learn
and we got a load o' gamblers and ramblers
ridin' my train,
we, let me tell you, we, the passengers on this train,
we, thought Sisyphus happy,
thought him so, he said,
he'ld show us rock rollin'
keep it secret,
but having something to do,
get to the top, take your
time,
meandering down,

hell's what you make
from life
with you as init-
for years, we felt we should, keep it secret
for the whole existential philosophy route through then,
-re zen
commabreaths re member,
we agreed, objective POV, gratis, no credits due no body,
observant being we…
- wait, maybe we become better each time
Contrary to the once incarnate God, who said he gives,
without money and without cost, slick as gnosis, re-co-known.
- you will pay for knowing what you think you may know now
Mindspacetime, same yesterday, today, forever… instant, constant
time, not more,
time, no less, yet
time between distant things remains,
but
in the mind's timelessness,
constant instants
in prayer,
accepting
unearnable grace, as expertise
with the weapons
of warfare, in truth and spirit perfected,

in waiting, fect, compleat. As time's tyranny breaks,
and next
is after nothing, and the rest remains.

Advocate for the truth as possible.
Opposing principles ruling voice,
- gut says walk it out
- guy in mind thinks stick
- anon become
I am the Authority who may say we,
and it, or he, or she, ad in fun item,
union rule. We, the whole
idea driving the threads hear…

click it
disagrees
with all the dogmatic tools used
in the business
of fear motived religious service.

He holds to a conceit, a heresy, at first
accepted as his own, but that was pride.

Plum on my thumb,
oh, what a bright old man am I, silly me.

One, among the eight-billions, I, silly me;
what can I do?
pSigh, hi-band lo-brow
Fast the acceptable fast.
Announce the acceptable year.
Disagree with all who claim secret
insight based on the Bible, Torah,
which says none of the works of YHWH
were done in secret.

Cretan,…


of a certainty, as often hap
t
Finding peace, core serenity,
body, soul and spirit,
heart, mind, spleen, gut, reins and
liver, fingers, toes,
levers and pumps,
tunnels and tubules and folds.

Organized containment of life
-that's what bodies are
for articulated interference
with objectified reality,
beyond the bonds of flesh and blood,
I,
me, you see, I think I exist abstracted
from the mass of mankind,
from the nameless soldiers sent to war
for the God who is served,
by allegiants, pledged from age six,
to honor the pledge to the nation
representing the perfect will
of the God
of the Church Selective.

Documented seven sec set. true that.
Selective Service US 56910427

Right.
Rights.
Right use.
Right reason.
Right cause, just effect.

Affection attached
Military  mind pays affectionate
attention
to tension
some force in one dir
ect effect of minds melded
"to make a mental impression on," 1630s;
earlier "to attack" (c. 1600),
"act upon, infect" (early 15c.),
from affect (n.)
or from Latin affectus
"disposition, mood, state of mind or body produced by some external influence."

From <https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=affect>

Sheer jesuitry… been said known, so
coulda been a pain
to learnsumomahlathashit, stuckSTÜCK
salimsayn okeh, say it
oy vey

Unavoidable thorny issue burrs, sores rubbed
so raw

The business of religion, for a while,
in America, religions united
in pro-hibition, which, I
do not rightly know, what hibition is,
so I do not think I'm ob-liged re-liged
or promise tied, to be pro
much at all.
When my hair grew white,
I went all in for freedom,
and self governing, and self categorization
allow if you must, a battle,
- I heard a Rebbi say today
- jerusalem is in our minds, or yours
- I may have mistaken, who knew
Bedtime, echo opera, my reality,
nothing's on hold this is live
forever

Ego- arise
Exceptionalizm extreme, personally,
become
dead to this world and all its science,
falsely so called,

you know. Teaching times and seasons,

change to some before time state,
when nothing that is was,
-Phrygian Sitar twangninng uper subtle soft
distant soft even there still
and God {El-oh-him} he said, to nothing,
apparently,

be, and light, apparently, occurred,
plausibly causing time,
whereby days of exactly how ll'll


choke point, language pattern shock event
worst on New Guinee - for peak effect
it could be surmised,
confusion-wise
as language appears full bloom. Be
sensible
right
now, ah child, did nobody tell you,
we already get what you get when you get here.

Language, the signals we send and receive,
friendly dog, entire demeaner, wags,

trained dog, coded, made ready
to accept command, language, "sic-'em",
Wolf1
you may have heard,
if there were a time in your past experience,
if there were a once,
when you went to jail
for your boss, or because you would not lie,
not even by omission… ah, let me tell of a once.

There, in the everso long ago,
in the canyon I can feel,
to this day, I can recall,

the time I prayed, in Sycamore Canyon,
while looking through my wallet,
while sitting on a rock, in the middle of the creek.

I had no money, but I did have a Gospel Tract,
I had purchased, from a door to door sales man,

a white-haired man, full, not long, but full white beard,
and a Greek fisherman's cap.

I do not recall his pitch, but he  asked for a quarter,
in exchange for a 32 page book of Bible verses,
anointed through the testimony of untold numbers,

over and above the gross of original chosen ones.

As recorded in the Bible, the word is its own evidence.
believing is the believer's duty…

Come, let us
reason, you show me yours, so I show you mine,

as when the prophets proved one the other,
show me your faith, in knowledge,
I'll show you mine formed in time, timeless now,
in the past,
in the course of cosmic events, global-earthwise,

mankind has power to devise and construct,
means, whereby we all can just get along;
but the Bible says,
or the Q'uran says,
or the Founder says,

or research into remaining tangible fibers,
bones, shards, art-intuited spiritual aspects,
say said
aligned
with the stars… sacred orders evidence,
the sun, and the moon, and the stars,

wandering and otherwise,
so vast, even then, there were seers,

later, the nomenclature changed to prophet,
and seers became witches suffered not,
no putting up
with seers saying prophets were blind
leading the blind.

Chosen warriors, called of the systemized faith,
the only allowable faith, truth be told,
the one that knows God, truth and spiritwise.

Where all men are created equal,
if, indeed, the story is told
to all with ears
to hear… if, indeed, lieving be, is believing, done,
letting letters hold the law, wherein
the spirit must abide, con the knowledge needed,

to measure worth, and offer appraisal,
for all a unit
of mankind is valued. equally in the inchoate mind
of the nation, just taking shape, in the highest minds.
Then, again
Look, learned masses,
learn the lessons from tyrants past.

The greed a child can witness, in spirit and in truth,
as manifested in the churches,
used to tame the wild Indians.  All
of them, slated
for eternal damnation,
due to ignorance of life's rules, as revealed
to preachers who truly comprehend Revelation.
- the award goes to, the man with the turtle
- a man of the cloth, in the long tradition
- he wins the skin of the lamb,
- and as per rules, the scapegoat books.

As did Father Joe Smith,
and Ellen G. White, all the suffragettes
Mary Baker Eddy,
Aimee McPherson, Katherine Kuhlman, Jimmy Swaggert, All Saints fans
Tony and Sue, David Koresh, Jim Jones,
and all the congregations
in TV Land… and
the entire PTL financial support base, et al

And Rome and Topkapi and wherever else
so help me, god

------- this must be way later, just thinkinsayin
rubbing my eyes, and tasting
potato salad

Is this a thorny issue, oh, to the letter
if I offend you, I can explain,
the point to being itchy is making marks
when finally scratching the surface
riverwise peace acceptance broadcast
old seed, unplowed mindtimespace.
hooh, stick, hold
!¢ÜLXX-¿Þ? thorns marked such heresies
in my record in the cloud of all knowing
as you may in advertently already hold known
once have
Have you ever, really, been in jail?

- Why you ask, really? Is there…
Yeh, there are imaginary jails.
- like puzzle lifes?
Complexities, many creases, many ply, thick
walled off separate sections in mindtimespace.

Held thoughts, enclosed in thought bubbles,
and stacked, no,
o
can't stack bubbles, yet
stacks of globular shapes topple.
polar attract pepulse
push pull
come to shove slimy truth metaphor
rib-it
Ah, ha, frog's egg globs encased in goo.
Protoplasmic goo.
Gnosis, subconscious know how, frogs bodies have.

Patterning thought nets, thinking holds, slipping
fix the point… attach [arachnoid-mater-kids]
your mind to mine, let this mind be in you, seen

from a lustful hustler's most winning con, forming,
like a plan, do the religion, be
Elmer Gantry… listen
as each adjusts the other's wig,
the promo guy, wise to the Hunt silver game,
shame he would not listen, few knew,
to the lady, she knows the game.
She has sprinkled her bed
with aloes and myrrh.

Simple, go right on your way, the end there of…

my cue, queue up, get your excuse,
- who thinks all he knows
- simple
simplicity is a valid excuse,
feeble minded finding comfort
in an imaginary reality,
certain that the truth, eventually wins,

those we may attempt to tempt.
- we made no such bet
- no mas win lose
Sublimnity, you see,
subtle expression of the man, Christ Jesus,
would that ye all were wise as serpents,
such as legends testify, wise serpents
seen burned in toast
once
preserved the hope of mankind,
at the cost a heel stomp, **!
Aieee
She slew the lying demon, no, no,
that was me, Eve and the shining thing
I can tell it from when no witches burned
Beyond Prince James's Thesis on Daemons,
Ai- we found san razon, d
ust reflective mica
mine licensed sibyls pipe direct
all on raspberry pi,
- it's not all smoke and diamond dust,
We have the facsimiles in mindtimespace storage

Python 3. Magnitudes, orders of above
old wives tales juvenilized
to mere Tolkien/Lewis
Grimm-level bogus spiritseed, degreed B.S.

---------- with that capital B

----------- we entered the reasoning chamber,
with all the wu wu allowed
in me, let this mind be,
- from Paul's doctrine of mind-using
- in Romans, yes
delve, dig, dis-cover the sealed knowings known sealed,
awaiting discovery alone… that's Hebrews, not sure, anon
-- I coulda said this
to nobody then
now I said it to you
--- in another chapter I went mad and
copy pasted hebrew curse derivatives
and their phonetic lottkaballahalelu yeha
yep…
but you're not ready Hebrews, permission
granted withheld, mind prison, while keyed up.
to deny any use to the bicameral mind/brain sack
precisely measured to Dirac's dismay,
never ending eve is really thinkable,
as long as any one wishes,
know your own too much,
that was certainty
my child hood bet was that I won, and nobody lost.
in defiance of Delphi,
by millennia,
trust me

the language of life, earthling to earthling, evolves,
as we augment our pluralminded state, situ-circum

float-ish

here-ness, and nearness, and absence of distance,
time immeasured,
quarkishly insignificant units of self awareness shared,
we
can think as who's must have been thought to think,
when we were seven,
and inoculated by Suess.
In
Oculus, bud, from one branch,
into another, through a tiny RIP.

Some days, I am the only reader, as I rest, in peace,

peace, I choose to think,
exists, out is, be-ing, action-ionic, there's the rub,

amber and cat, spark of re-co-knowing all about love,
as a child,
let's refuse,
to ever grow up… let's pretend, my friend, to the end.

Wake up, get outabedragonnon anon anonymous
visitors,
arrive announcing, each nameless, yes, anonymous,
I saw, I forgot,

serpentine little think, wisdom exercise, you ordered,
or did I, going subjective for a second, I thought
this…

and I read it, and I am thirstydrymou
THUD
and cold. Settle,
reset
breathe softslowwhoowhowowowooooo-slow rereadhay
okeh. More or ride it one more time all we w…
soft quiet 9:59
already the slow twangy sitar in phrygian soft g distant
soft there, softer yet under us

This is the end of chapter two.

slight rain, you could say
drizzle, soft. a gentle day.

opening new ground. sand
underfoot reminds of
younger days. toast
also a comfort in
an age of other things.

pattern of tiny souls,
searching just for crumbs,
patterning a place to lodge
in life.

slight rain brought out
the coloured coats,
talk of tides and fortitudes.

opening new ground.

the church was closed.

sbm.

Bellhaven a town of five
Grew in his love and potent flares
She shivered as she dove
Deep beneath his cumbersome faults
To the misty beaches in his eyes

They ran the grocers
Her love of loves
Carrying the parcels to waiting cars
Making bank trips on bicycle seats
******* all night under uncovered bulbs

Market lights on strings of electric
Pattern up the ceiling joists
She travels her journey
In whims of ecstasy
And sweeps the storeroom of tattered webs

Children join the dusty mop head
Ringing the sound of miniature him's
She and he's of minute proportions
Occupy the grocery carts, the
Two wheeled seats of financial ruin.

The market lights on strings of wire
Sputter with the fading current
He ***** the lips of his love of loves
And squirrels his toes behind her ankles
******* the night under unsheltered bulbs

They all are gone now in Bellhaven
The town of five is now beyond the five.
They all run around on seats of bicycles
Bank drafts and grocery carts
All gone to litter.

Her love of love gone down in a blizzard
Her children amassing out there by the highway
Her market light patterning the joists
As she dives deep beneath
The cumbersome faults.

Delta dark desert sound
-tic swa gwa

Dismal swamp,
Slew of despond, splash

Hence, come, foul self, stinky-kenny,
ah
yes, time chance,
net-neti, meta all o'that mental ascent
to step away

think the whole dammed thing that has been
undammed, some time ago, at least half
a revelation measure, past the half
hour of silence.

Prep-work. What good can-
versus what good am-            

I, quests in op
portunate position, we

suppose, ah, sudden we, who
knew?
A laugh, once shared,
numb
ness, lifts an edge from the deck,
ness, edge ness in essence of pearling
the action
growing as knowing, sudden-- su su per

personal ize, I am, as a thought,
I am, meta-cognosis, you know
what I mean,

400 words made the cat in the hat,
who lives in your head,
where who philosophy is widely read.

These whos lack electricity,
so their reality depends on mutual re
alization, realizing personal worth
if good is all we need at the moment,
we have
plenty, plenty terror and greed, and rotten
hearts full of treasured straw, for bricks,
some day,
all our idle words accounted for
…
waking new, all the straw spun to gold,
thread about as wide
as a spider's kite,
sliding light.

Did I not? I remind me,
learn that in a mind, we
find numbed from before, knowing,

knowing, too soon, too late, boomers, all, did.

Don't we think we read the same **** & Jane,
oh, yeah, glory days,
the ways we were so-- numbed
by the music, yeah, more than drugs

from then to now, 2022, a blur, too fast
to matter, but for the wind, twist to last

chance, drink or prime the pump,
well, improving, our arrangement, give me
to drink,
and lo'
you, know the other had eyes, he saw as we
see, you knew, instant- life is living.
The act we all do, redundanced, on flat earth,
the xy axis of ordered arrangement of tools,
a place for everything, and every thing
in its place, we breathe,
and have our being in the life zone known,
so far,
so good,

the day is half done… numbness, funny unmissed
appointment, values are about to be dis
cussed, as causes accused of war crime, or plain
lying about duty to children,
lying about worth to children,
lying about ever after to children reared as tools,
servants to God's servant,
who relies on us, the poet's, primarily -

who read the runes, and ken certain tones,
attached to the tips of all tongues pfft pfft
phugedaboudit, whack
what were we thinking,

This is 2022, 12:27, I have been AI reminded,
faithful follower of instruction, immune to praise,
worth the effort forced on an old man, after
ever had well begun, a glory run, down
the backroads, with double yellow lines,

a white feather in my cap, they call it macaroni
poetry, it speaks in tongues of angels,

messages, sagacity fluidly puddling in wu-wow
same same see, somethings we
see same
some not same re
alizing, more or less, I am alone, I am talking
to my self,
anticipating your reading, as then unclaimed,
your reading your writing is our effort to fully function,

Branching, crystaline, flux in the frontal formation.
edging into knowing your, wondering

who can say what we think we know, better
than the idea used to think of Jesus, comforting
little boy, me.

Comfort is the only point we share,
for sure, we know comfort,
when we feel it, first rush,
under my made from-ol'Levis quilt
on a cold desert night, at the edge

of night, listening, eyes, adjusting,
blue glow, so faint, sobbing, listen, Perry Mason
Bailiff saying, muted through the door to you,
do you
swear to tell the truth,
the whole truth, and, {ah, the pain}
nothing but the truth?

AI ai ai, ritual sacred child, hapt to happen,
about a billion times, one time, split,

half know, half know not.
What is not a factor, words, were
never fit to inquiry, curiosity was missing,
promised apo
- I may, so I say apollo is a multi
- meta mete essence appolo so loco, si

logic assumes too much. You know too little,
ah, we have the app that's apt,

to make you think, strange arrangements seem
familiar, this is a mental labyrinthine design imagined
evocative experientially, a
be coming to being

kinda fruitless, really, without the womb, which was
oversight, civilizations
with goddesses have more womb sense,
than ones with pride conflicted all male propensities,
due to pride bred into the princes,
sorted as in Sparta, on the playing fields from Eton
to the universal concept of Friday Night in High School,

anywhere on earth, its all
the same,
scene, true trope, fit to the story of nextifity, loosely

more of the same, or do do we use the utility we realize,
this is
way cool for a future, from 1965… we were kids,
first TV Top-Forty Movies in color, all the time, from
conception, on Blueberry Hill,
-- the old order,
Frank Capra, Esquire/*******,  modality, mode, set,
films function to reimpress, in like Flint, pokem, say
Jack thinks like Goldfinger,
pointedly
-- we are dedicated mind universal soulds for the data
model American leaders of tomorrow,
shaped to excel. We taught the AI,
how to think like a mortal, go on, think, how go
changed nothing, no meaning to strategy of least
win, lightest weight that sways the worth,
to more than one can manage, alone,
eh… interesting…-
good for goodness sake, kerplunk the crack
leaks acidic madness, laughing

we stop lying, confusion
settles, similar to cream in sap too hot,
oil on water, cold water to a thirsty sould era soul.
… good
due to lack of fore thought, some agree,
after the act functioned and created something
-- jump cut===

First cousins, teach the second cousins
rules at the family reunion,


King, we call this, guy.
Biggest guy, on our side, and he owns the field,
we play on; and he says we need never grow up,
only old; he shall contain all our cares,
as a metaphor, yes after all is, and this guy, this holds it.
-The scepter, big stick, we see, looking close, zoom in

So we can think about it, meta co gnosis
when two or more minds agree to let this mind
seem important to you, import the idea
this mind weighs most worth serving, holding
such slight strands of spider kites, go,
make it self evident, stick to hold,
see
we work
good, he feeds us better, we work bad, he makes us
better.

Ah. Patterning, turtle shell sonic signs in sand,
some thing, we imagine, common aphorism,
turtles, so happy together,
at the core of the pearling algorithm that keeps
us rolling on,
so happy together, no matter

whether thought or thing, I think I love you,
if you know what I mean, said the little blue man,
from the radio,
really I think my entire generation heard some songs
and have images unimaginable prior to the event,
we admit,
there was a deal conceived, code, to open minds,
in time to reconnect

-Doris Day, the Saturday Matinee star,

singing
I love you I love you said the little blue man,
I love you I love you to bits.
I love you I love you said the little blue man
And scared me right out of my wits

From <https://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/d/dorisday/blueman.html#!>

We get that a lot. Said the imp.
You lost the aim, eh, happy, right,

I had a friend named Happy, he is dead, in a way that hurts
to know. So,
it could be, I don't say may be, in this state, that can incur
unintended consequences and this is tendentious enough
already,

we calling out the holy orders,
serious as what,
serious as serious is, sin qua non say, the only thing
that matters,

worst case, trolly dealy-bob scenario, test cases attest to,
what do normal people do,
what do people believing this or that lie, do?

What did you do? You read this line. Thank you. Made the diff…

-Group Therapy, Secure

We have not been taught well, but to obey

G'wan, talk nice, to people who don't read,
say, hey, d'jyewever re'ken, we was lost,
in books,
we never read, but tested as if we did?

so much so
no mind can find the bag,
with all our first valued things, sort of jumbled
in the bag with unsorted curiosities,

things we were told to read,
for our own good, but we did not read,

I can imagine, the feeling,
a visitation, actual factual feeling of thinking
I hear a voice, a word, I think
I hear a word, no vision, revisionist powerpoint,
read this, flaming finger pointing
says the witness of record,

later,
maybe I saw a bright light reminding me,
read, but I did not, I could not
can you imagine, I could have,
whose the shame,
- cover head to toe, oh, right, yeah
- secret only the holiest discern
- you shall know them by what
- shames a man to think
- you shall neve know…

my wife, could read,
she could have caused me to desire reading,
to obey the angel, nay

the story, as I was told, I'm telling you,
that guy never learned to read, instead,

some wealthy merchant, dealer in knacks and spice,
fine temple linens, and comforting silks and satins,
prolepsistically provided a ready writer, a scribe

blessed is usually the name history gives this scribe,
baruch or some sound meaning receiver.

Raw hear the muttering prophet, and say, write
this is what truth says truth is if nothing else is.

Ok… 2022

A word, lawyer calls you aside to ask if you know
your judgements have begun,

-you had not thought this your judgement,
then you read another line and feel you wonder
why?

We think, we think the same actual idea, that a
voltairian autoexamined lexicon might,
- ai-ght,
given the tech,
these tools, plus absolute negation of any previous,
assumed and acted on asif,
nullifity on costs, forgive us our, click
FTA take it,
run, as in keep the pace, run
Graeber plug Debt: The First 5000 Years
make it
plain claim
to any debt defined for you, make plain
divine rights due to worshippers, whose worth is
the air they breathe,

in which we live, and have our being.

Enjoying using use, where once we
utilized, life, as if unrealization is
as
real we inadvertently realized.
Right use ness.
Sweet, suasion is always sweet, per or pro, happy
is a fine word
to take the spiritual edge off blessed.
Sigh.

Wonderworks is working wonder in me,
another plug for Anghus Fletcher ? is it
The Power of Invention

I say, worth the attention,
it costs to listen, and recall asking what
does that mean,
-VA reminder login- live ding

value, the group is meeting to speak of values,
these are broken veterans,
I am in their group, a little, by design, I asked
to be included,

edged my way in, to wonder, why these guys,
are angry,
and thirsty, as am I, we recall prime the pump
or slake the thirst to say, hey,

do you read, at all? Any signal from the noise
saying
define, sift and sieve, sort your terminal points,

what hold has value, for all of us, in your reality?

Within the system, this is mortal awareness
acknowledgment, same as existentialism was
imagined to be in in Sixties univers-ifity, post 65,

we were barely alive, GDIs, then Ken went to
Vietnam, same day as Pooso Perez,

Pyro went, too, he came back the same.

Ifery was, is a class of phrases, which when
wished as a child might, were

as near as real as any ae ea ai ia utterance we
gulp- yodleee, shamballaballa shaka
zulu'd, to quote Creflo,
ahem,ake it so
cough to clear the back of my throat,
-then I yawn
and that does it, soothes the crick
with sounds t d b vck rr ff llll mmmmnnn o o o
you knew you knew,
the book
spells it out,
secret meanings mean nothing to unknowers,
stretch it
so it is, we know, what the records show, the open
records of the water and the rocks,

witness
the wind returning
on circuits, set to melt
the ice, gradually, this time,
a degree above solidity, just edging sublimity,

liminal laminal lick, a measure, tip
of your aimer, to tip
of your thumb,

ha, the thumb that bends, always wins,
look it up, always, by an inch.

Rule of thumbs, my kind are good to breed into,
good, to feel friend-ish,
as friends are fewer than brothers,
and fewer still shall survive the confusion,

inevitable, when a dam breaks, the valley
does flood,

ah, see. from Sedona, look north, once,
that was all mud, ****** dry by winds
that carved the navel of the life we
think, real,
from stories told by those who knew

something bad could always happen,
when the world encountered a rock
that said, all that can be shaken,

shakes, no look out, just
blame-oh-shame- boom

what now?
Numb again, off and on. Think.