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Lawrence Hall Apr 2019
Ubi Petrus

                                          For Inky and Jason


                                      “Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia”

                                        - St. Ambrose of Milan


Where Peter was, there also was the Tomb --
Blood-sodden dreams cold-rotting in old sin,
The Chalice left unwashed, the Upper Room
A three-days’ grave for hope-forsaken men.

Where Peter is, there also should we be,
Poor pilgrims, his, a-kneel before the Throne
Of Eosian Christendom, and none but he
Is called to lead the Church to eternal Dawn.

Where Peter then will be, there is the Faith,
Transubstantiation, whipped blood, ripped flesh
A solid reality, not a wraith
Of shop-soiled heresies labeled as fresh.

Where Peter is, O Lord, there let us pray,
Poor battered wanderers along Your way.
Your ‘umble scrivener’s site is:
Reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com.
It’s not at all reactionary, tho’ it might be drivel.

Lawrence Hall’s vanity publications are available on amazon.com as Kindle and on bits of dead tree:  The Road to Magdalena, Paleo-Hippies at Work and Play, Lady with a Dead Turtle, Don’t Forget Your Shoes and Grapes, Coffee and a Dead Alligator to Go, and Dispatches from the Colonial Office.
Jade Mikaila May 2017
My lord, standing fast,
with flourishing orchids private.
Love, faded spectral being, leave your grave of satin

for the warm blood of the sleeping at last.

Night-walking and undead,
skin, firm as steel.
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2017
one thing most evident about england,
well...
not that many birch trees (my favourite),
or pines...
    birch treets as said to be the scounts,
they lay the ground for a forest,
    the best i can experience
around here are foxes, no wolves...
and even the foxes as shattered...
  a bit like the badgers...
   mind you, we can have as many objective
truths, and sorta feel proud...
    but i feel numb...
   numbers don't add up in the category
of feeling...
      i should really be standing
at some road juncation:
with excess applause...
          i don't think that's necessary...
    i can only state
a neo-gothic excavation began by
type o negative...
                     and the early death of
the lead singer....
   then there's that excess of attire...
lead, and Pb...
                 as some seach: also contained
within: a leash...
               me in a Turkish shop,
talking to the owner:
Papaturk... how i saved him money
when the local council
               inquired why he provided the caravan
umbrella...
    and hid the public bench...
   5 months i haven't seen him...
     we start speaking and it really is 5 months...
i talk about a month spent in Poland
and -18 temperatures...
  he just keeps referecing 5 months...
i'm only buying 4 cans of beer,
who gives a **** about a biography?
   i don't know if i half pretend or actually am
the one some might call: busy...
           my eyes are elsewhere...
i keep looking for them like i might
turn to finding either heart or Brian...
                one's a stone,
and the other a fat-sponge soaked in porridge...
    yep... type o negative... just
when the jerry spinger show was taking off...
took goth to a new dimension,
i remained clad in the most believable grey
attire... the boring type...
        and it's only that having experienced
a very rare traffic of soul-like expderiences...
did i become to realise
that such experiences are, well,
rather pointless...
   or at least undermining everything
surrounding them...
   god is a great concept, to motivate
the hazy fairies of the suggested approach...
             and when it actually happens,
say: hear angels singing while to rob
the altar of its white cloth and lie under the
altar... checking for sure whether you
are hearing what you're hearing...
             it thus becomes an existential
game, i.e. whether you "hear" or hear,
whether you "heard it" or heard it...
     and whatever experience you may have had,
it's a bit pointless to state that you're
of a cultish calibre...
               it just becomes a bit pointlesss...
you just see selling potatoes
   and Korans as more important...
     then it becomes a case of:
  well: why beging with anything at all?
why not call all the saints mental imbeciles?
   why not begin there?
i say that because, given the teaching,
as in: forgiving your enemies,
has not compass in western society,
western society, if isolated,
would be equivalent to a man / woman talking
to themselves in the streets of Beijing...
          i say i could have had an experience,
but the way i have been itemised, scrutinised,
i'd gladly believe in a crowd of people
nibbling at a mystery...
   actually experiencing a mystery gives you nothing!
i'm all for democracy, all for chaos...
            nothing happened, i didn't exist...
it's easier that way...
    that's why i feel no affinity with western
culture... it's just a load of ******* to me...
            i could have said:
i heard angels singing,
   but given the so called "sanity" membrane
of humanity, to create an omni-entity,
to later discard it...
     evidently there's no precise vector linking
(a) to (b)...
                   in england they call this
case a "mental" illness...
  i really wish my brain had the capacity
to create placebo experiences so pontent
that i'd sorta stop following in my father's
footsteps and becoming a roofer...
then again, he was sentenced to labour
in an industrial complex of steelworks,
look how that frail and senile pope
looked like clinging to his throne,
slobbering with his last speeches, "saintly"
john paul ii...
               i was very fond of pope emeritus,
all the grannies in poland said:
take, that, thing, from the throne...
    no easier way to overcome the saints
than have a pope-saint...
   who really wants the spotlight...
but should be killed by strobe-light and something
translating epilepsy into a stroke...
   as one bound to an exodus
i have no allegiance to the current folklore of
my original people...
    i don't know why i kept the tongue:
apparently such things are hard to erase,
   being first generation, i guess only with
an english wife i'd be able to shut up...
hence my english having a "subconscious"
undercurrent of polish...
             and i live in an anglican country...
    oh there are, there are differences
between a catholic nation and a protestant
nation...
   as there are differences between northen
catholic and southern protestant...
        no wonder i was given a "medical"
    noun  schizoid...
       encompass all of that, in a single generation?
you'd go cuckoo!
                 but then again i'm playing
tennis with a brick wall...
         i don't expect pity, i don't expect empathy,
in just expect nothing, no body...
              we're all bound to wear the shoes
we tire with against the pavement...
  but ridicule is the one thing that ****** me off...
   i'd prefer a comforting joke...
   ridicule is something devoid of what is required
for a passion, even a passion scrutinised and staged
by a stand-up comedian in sarcasm...
   ridule is a bit like science,
already lost to the schism of its counterpart of
falsification...
                    so many truths! so many truths!
          i guess that's what philosophy is about,
apart from being a mediator of science with / vs.
humanism, it's the membrane segregating the two...
      you can clearly cheat with science,
you can ascribe fake statistics with science,
  tell them 1 in 5 women were *****
as part of the **** culture phenomenon,
  when someone else states: more like 1 in 165...
but you can't exactly find a person who
lied about reading Tolstoy's war and peace....
only because a person who has read that
   piece of work: isn't exactly keen to talk about it;
from experience:
   i've read don quixote... and i'm not that keen
on giving a proof of having read it...
that's my own c.c.t.v., not yours.
   you can find that a lot, one a person
reads the equivalent of 5 Islamic columns / elements...
   say.... rather than completing the Hajj...
reading the Brothers Karamazov...
        you really don't get that much
conversation...
  reading a book as the established order
of the 19th century, read in the 21st century...
you start to look at your contempories
a bit suspiciously... like they really are devoid
of acknowledging a worthwhile experience with you...
i started to look at most people, my contemporaries,
at bit like walking into a bathroom showroom...
    i guess i thought about brushing my teeth
and talking to them so they could pick up a scent
of wild strawberries oozing from my mouth...
   i read the **** books, i don't need to compete
for being able to talk about them...
given the books... it's very hard to talk about them...
      you don't really get to talk about
these columns...
          well, unless it's the Koran,
then you really get to talk... you get to shout, even,
and shoot a throng of pigeons while you're at it...
  apologies, no apologies... yada...
or as one puts it (talking queeny beeny) -
   to the great artistic mafia of Poles...
              somehow connected...
   the whole: blood thicker than water...
            oh i'm about to dump this
  mongrel soul and treat it as:
            a Mickiewicz might:
of the tongue, of the body, toward the soul
   cleansing...
               i probably will not like the end
results... but that's better than what i have now...
        i don't like to have a mongrel soul
trapped inside a mono-ethnic body...
              i tried the whole utopian masquerade of
living the dream, i.e. "living the dream",
it didn't exactly work out as western politicians
liked to have hoped it might...
             and that's the really sad part,
i really wished it could have worked...
   now, whenever i think about *******
  someone of my ethnic compendium
whether by body represented, or by soul encouraged...
i just think it's ******...
                 it's like the culture i express
has encouraged that i move to
south africa and **** someone so far removed
from my experiences...
          it really does feel like ******...
        what a sick sick world to be gravity prone to too..
but hey! we have the numbers...
     try to be cosmopolitan for a bit,
whether that's in London, or Edinburgh...
      it soon emerges that the Greek city-states of
modern capitals are surrounded by
****** prone cannibals...
   and more importantly: philistines.
                     sure, for a second you can almost
be persuaded by atheistic arguments...
as those took hold the imagination of people
in the early 21st century...
     i just look at man and see god laughing...
and since the case is: the ugliness of a godless man...
      well...
                    the crucifix is hardly
the N on the compass...
  but since the crucifix aimed at the N of the compass...
the northen barbarians said a joke
that made the crucifix something worth
imitating in the Philipines for a worth of spectacle...
and elsewhere, skog av krux -
oh, it's a very short joke...
         blod ørn... ****** eagle...
   given that so many imitate being crucified...
  can only signify it being a complete and utter joke...
one hour in a järn-jungfru
would make up 2000 years worth of history;
or a scene from a Sioux scalping stone...
    we're ingenious like that...
and yes: blod ørn - blod o(h)-ern...
          i prefer the german blut adler...
   so many moustaches, and other periphenelia
of attire, such as a bow-tie...
  to translate the bewilderment
that a latin inherited grapheme can't
be the smallest unit of sound, given the vowel...
  or how the grapheme became translated
for the worth of diacritical marks...
  æ and œ created
    the basis for diacritical marks being applied...
as with the already stated example...
ørn is derived from œrn...
             tongue-tie twisting like a serpent around
its suffocated prey...
          spine bound to crunch, and defeatist chess...
    we can never say why it was applied
to the signifier: umlaut (ü) - best explanation
is a hidden arithmetic... and the compensation
of omicron-macron...
                       but that's just a guess...
    science is anything but holy...
given the fact that it's so easily manipulated...
                 and falsified, and cheated...
     the samde torturous instruments that defended
religion, are but replaced in the name of science...
          as a life bound to be a freedom,
with labour inside the mind that is relentless,
   and in dire need of change...
where  democracy, or autocracy, as nothing more than
slaves of the arch-cardinal, known as status quo.
At four o'clock
in the gun-metal blue dark
we hear the first crow of the first ****

just below
the gun-metal blue window
and immediately there is an echo

off in the distance,
then one from the backyard fence,
then one, with horrible insistence,

grates like a wet match
from the broccoli patch,
flares,and all over town begins to catch.

Cries galore
come from the water-closet door,
from the dropping-plastered henhouse floor,

where in the blue blur
their rusting wives admire,
the roosters brace their cruel feet and glare

with stupid eyes
while from their beaks there rise
the uncontrolled, traditional cries.

Deep from protruding chests
in green-gold medals dressed,
planned to command and terrorize the rest,

the many wives
who lead hens' lives
of being courted and despised;

deep from raw throats
a senseless order floats
all over town.  A rooster gloats

over our beds
from rusty irons sheds
and fences made from old bedsteads,

over our churches
where the tin rooster perches,
over our little wooden northern houses,

making sallies
from all the muddy alleys,
marking out maps like Rand McNally's:

glass-headed pins,
oil-golds and copper greens,
anthracite blues, alizarins,

each one an active
displacement in perspective;
each screaming, "This is where I live!"

Each screaming
"Get up!  Stop dreaming!"
Roosters, what are you projecting?

You, whom the Greeks elected
to shoot at on a post, who struggled
when sacrificed, you whom they labeled

"Very combative..."
what right have you to give
commands and tell us how to live,

cry "Here!" and "Here!"
and wake us here where are
unwanted love, conceit and war?

The crown of red
set on your little head
is charged with all your fighting blood

Yes, that excrescence
makes a most virile presence,
plus all that ****** beauty of iridescence

Now in mid-air
by two they fight each other.
Down comes a first flame-feather,

and one is flying,
with raging heroism defying
even the sensation of dying.

And one has fallen
but still above the town
his torn-out, bloodied feathers drift down;

and what he sung
no matter.  He is flung
on the gray ash-heap, lies in dung

with his dead wives
with open, ****** eyes,
while those metallic feathers oxidize.


St. Peter's sin
was worse than that of Magdalen
whose sin was of the flesh alone;

of spirit, Peter's,
falling, beneath the flares,
among the "servants and officers."

Old holy sculpture
could set it all together
in one small scene, past and future:

Christ stands amazed,
Peter, ******* raised
to surprised lips, both as if dazed.

But in between
a little **** is seen
carved on a dim column in the travertine,

explained by gallus canit;
flet Petrus underneath it,
There is inescapable hope, the pivot;

yes, and there Peter's tears
run down our chanticleer's
sides and gem his spurs.

Tear-encrusted thick
as a medieval relic
he waits.  Poor Peter, heart-sick,

still cannot guess
those ****-a-doodles yet might bless,
his dreadful rooster come to mean forgiveness,

a new weathervane
on basilica and barn,
and that outside the Lateran

there would always be
a bronze **** on a porphyry
pillar so the people and the Pope might see

that event the Prince
of the Apostles long since
had been forgiven, and to convince

all the assembly
that "Deny deny deny"
is not all the roosters cry.

In the morning
a low light is floating
in the backyard, and gilding

from underneath
the broccoli, leaf by leaf;
how could the night have come to grief?

gilding the tiny
floating swallow's belly
and lines of pink cloud in the sky,

the day's preamble
like wandering lines in marble,
The ***** are now almost inaudible.

The sun climbs in,
following "to see the end,"
faithful as enemy, or friend.
Isobel G Apr 2012
We didn't know your favourite song,
so we chose one from your home town.
A quiet hymn about the joy of God;
I'm sure you would have frowned
behind the outward smile,
as you looked down from above
to bear witness to the solemn mourning.
©Nicola-Isobel H.      25.04.2012
Stevie Ray Aug 2014
When you first come to this place, you would probably forget where you are heading. Golden Gates, clear blue sky, laughter. Birds flying way up high. A kind man greets you with a smile. His bright blue eyes sparkle a bit and he tells you, you can enter. You step through the gates and  there's an Angel waiting for you. The experience and sheer aura of this Angel makes you slightly bow down you head as you witness purity itself. Only then can you imagine what it must be like to meet Him. Because no matter how you look at it there can't be someone more pure than Him. He greets you with a warm smile. His eyes shed a faint pure light. His halo made of white pure light, a beacon you now know was there when it was dark. Mezmerized, almost smitten you just stand there, realising how small you are. The Angel calls you by a name you don't recognise and he noticed it. The fear you feel of telling him what your real name is, is almost to great to bear. To stand up against such a higher existence, a being probably thousands of years old and still so young. When you're about to stand up for yourself, taken a moment to gather the courage, he apologises and says that he calls you by your Soulname. He explains that you lived nearly as long as he did and that every soul here has a name of it's own. He also says that it's time to follow him. He guides you to a palace and after a while you enter a room. Inside this room there's a halo shining a bright white light. It draws you in, you don't notice the Angel closing the door behind you. The White light goes out and the first thing you see is the eyes of your new mother.

When you first come to this place you would probably forget where you are heading. At least for some, there's only one place for me to go. Upon witnessing the Golden gates I look both left and right and see the Golden fence stretch infinitely. I look up and see the birds flying, I let my eyes adjust at the distance for a moment. The birds are trying to fly further up, but they can't. Open Air prison is what comes to mind. I walk towards the gates and see Petrus, he greets me. Behind his blue eyes there's a sparkle of madness. He tells me to go on through as I walk past him an Angel greets me. Welcomes me home and calls me Axle. Images flash by of my hundreds of previous lives. Lives where I always stood up for people, always helped them and loved them. I look back at the Angel and greet him. 'It's been a long time Earos'. He tells me to follow him and he guides me to the palace. After walking for a while I enter a room. Inside of this room is a halo shining a pure white light. It instantly moves above my head and with it i've lost my individual way of thinking.

*When you first come to this place you probably forget where you are heading. At least most people would. But not me, no Sir, there's only one place for me to go. As I look at the Golden Gates I'm kind of confused, inside the golden bars I see flames being contained inside them. I look up and see birds flying. I try and look better and I see them flying further upwards. Why would they do that? The birds suddenly dive and increase their speed to the point where they burn to ashes. Suicide? I walk to the gates and see Petrus. He greets me with a grin and whispers 'welcome home brother'. I ignore him and proceed past the gates. An Angel greets me, his eyes pure white. But I can still smell the fear mixed with a bit of sweat. Right before he tries to call my Name I immediatly regain the memories of my past ten lives. Lives filled with ******, madness, abuse,fraud,greed,envy and every other sin and crime I commited. Right before he calls me my name I scream SILENCE! Don't you dare speak my name Axle! I look him right in his eyes, he's silent. Now, take me home. When we enter the palace gates I start to feel strange. Uncomfortable, itchy and sweaty. I enter a room, inside it there's a Halo shining pure white light. When it moves over my head I grab it and smash it on the floor. The lights go out, pure darkness envelops me. The first thing I see is a throne with a man sitting on it. I look around and all I see is wasteland burning, broken buildings, cruficixes burning. The man welcomes me leans forward and says the following: Zacharias or Zac, good that you're here. I've been waiting for ten years to meet you, to meet the Left hand of God. With these words spoken the rest of my memories unlock, a time of where I was an Angel. Suddenly forced back into the world of living only to commit sin and ******. I'm shocked and take a step back. Lucifer says he has an explanation for what happened. Ten years ago, right after I got sent back a few Angels managed to seal God in his room using unholy methods found in lost and sealed chapters of the Bible from Hell. Lucifer explains that he made me commit sin for ten lives in order for me to get in Hell and escape their trap. He asks me for help because sealing his Archenemy upset the balance of the passing of Souls. And it's something that needs to be rectified. I agree to help him and with agreeing an Old War has resurfaced.
Sirenes Aug 2016
What is this?
The musician invasion?
I wonder as you ramble
On and on
Both tearing yourself down
And pulling yourself up.
I just need to fix up
Your ****** resume
So you can get a job.
A haircut wouldn't be bad either.

We go through all your options
I refer to my brother in law.
Once a hungry musician like you.
"You know he plays for Angels of Petrus"
Your eyes jump out of their sockets.
"...and he told me that most of them work remotely, like the guys from Korpus"
There's admiration in your eyes.

And yet after I ditched you
And got on the bus
30minutes later
I see a dude wearing a shirt
That spells out the name
Of your band.
I roll my eyes a chuckle.
Here you sit in awe of me
Knowing the guys
Who's music you admire.
Yet have no clue who you are to your fans.
Humility has it's limits.
It's like these people have no idea that the people who play in bands are real people, that have friends and relations; then they reach that stage and have no idea they've made it. Eye roll.
serpentinium Sep 2017
“quo vadis, domine?”

i. you’re saint peter on a cross,
hung upside-down, staring at the
bright blue and if your arms
weren’t pinned to rotting wood
you’d reach out—

(petrus, dear petrus, why
hast thou forsaken me?)

there’s iron in your grip,
fingers curled in supplication
as you, the fisherman from Bethsaida,
bears only his own sins

the pain fades for a moment
under the sunlight and  
you’d smile if your lips didn’t bleed
at the harsh stretch of skin

they poke your side with a spear,
but only red pours out and the
barren ground below you will receive
no nourishment

you are no god, no holy deity
walking to and fro amongst mortals

(O’ you of little faith, why did you doubt?)

martyr, martyr they’ll chime with each
bell toll, thousands of years from now—
long after your body has perished in
the valley between ***** and Gomorrah

you are simon peter, the betrayer, the liar, the
coward
you are oh so human, and the world will
never forgive you for it
bedrock, they’ll call you, and mean it

you’ll be hailed a saint and people will kiss
your bronze image, dust oil against leaden
feet and imagine that your gaze is not fixed
solemnly to the earth

(now, nothing but a false idol to some,
draped in velvet and handed a crown—
the rooster crows, and so god too will
denounce your existence)
peter's one of my favorite disciples so here have a poem about him
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2018
kissing a prostitutes hand after
giving her an ******,
   will always be deemed more
spectacular then being slapped
in the face while being
in a relationship of being
   falsely accussed of visiting
   your grandparents as being
   synonymous of: having a one
on the side...
                    (a) i'm not that pretty
  and that's not a mark of self-loathing...
with (b) if english is a language
built upon top-hats and pedantry
where's the N to catch one's breath
on the siamese return to graphemes
with:                a one... huh?
         some would say: an atom bomb,
none would subsequently
   make an argument from:
                                  a atom bomb...
with the advancing technological
perversity,
              it's only necessary to discover
a technicality in language,
   a "subversion" set by
               the rules of grammar...
well: if a butterfly can freely flutter
in a tornado,
   and there can be coffee-table talk
of a sub- and an unconscious...
               this "thing" is standing
on toothpicks or something?
               the undiscovered
reality of grammar...
    the "subconscious"
                      sorterienspreschen....
well with such abominations
of gruppe-denken...
           and gedanke-verbrechen...
you might as well travel
   to st. petersburg and admire
petrus die groß private collection
          of pickled abortions.
- with a tongue that was once
the "primitive" hammer,
        i allowed myself to use:
     (there is no prerogative
pronoun usage to mind on the basis
of per se)...
      alternatively the thought
   concerning an attempt to craft
paragraph in poetry -
     to rework a post scriptum
   beginning with: hyphen;
  otherwise the all too easy
modern hieroglyphics of :)
       ****... let's play this game...  
             it's debilitating to
think that hebrew undermined
   both hieroglyphics
and cuneiform... with stubborn
latin morphing into a 2nd
phase of utility...
       whatever excuse there is...
there's still the asian ideogram
format,
         and sanskrit...
                   from an early age i
was taught the proverb surrounding
democracy:
    well... if i can't play in your
sand-pit... i'll play in someone else's...
    or what "we" like to mind:
the article of pluralism is
equivalent to the article of possession...
    i.e. S...
                which is very close
to being reasonable,
            given...                    a point.
i didn't mention that kissing
a *******'s hand after *******
is much better than
        being slapped in the face
while in a relationship?
         i must have...
       amnesia begs to differ though
(vou).
  
   p.s. i can only make language
complicated to craft a mimic replica
of modern technology,
   and that's an intra-personal trait...
inter-personally?
          sure, i believe lubricants
exist:
           but this is not a manifesto
that crafts a patent for mob rule
in the comment section...
      to borrow from Descartes...
     a practice in extending
      to mind the fact that grafitti
tags didn't write themselves
   out of thin air.
Qualyxian Quest Oct 2021
Portrait of a Carthusian
Petrus Christus white
Facebook Europeans
Cold and windy night

Awake at 3 a.m.
Thinking politics
Patience. Planting patience
Flowers. Moby ****'s.

Halloween is coming
I am Robin Hood
Green and brown and arrows
Just like Fire would

Maryland is merry
More rural than I knew
Eric Alterman
Bruce to break on through

                37. 10. 72.

— The End —