there are so many places to hide,

in my home at 17th and South screaming death threats at my roommates laughing diabolically playing  videogames and Jeopardy cooking quinoa stretching canvas the dog going mad frothing lunging  spastic to get the monkeys or the wookies or whatever random commandments we issue forth  drunken while Schlock rampages the backdrop,

at my uncle's row house on 22nd and Wallace with my shoes off freezing skipping class to watch March  Madness unwrapping waxpaper hoagies grimacing with each sip of Cherrywine or creamsicle  soda reading chapters at my leisure,

in the stacks among fiberglass and eternal florescent lima-tiled and echo-prone red-eyed and white-faced  caked with asbestos and headphones exhuming ossified pages from layers of cosmic dust  presiding benevolent,

in University City disguised in nothing but a name infiltrating Penn club soccer getting caught after  scoring yet still invited to the pure ***** joy of hell and heaven house parties of ice luge jungle  juice kegstand coke politic networking,

at Drexel's nightlit astroturf with the Jamaicans rolling blunts on the sidelines playing soccer floating in  slo-mo through billows of purple till the early morning or basketball at Penn against goggle- eyed professors in kneepads and copious sweat,

in the shadow tunnels behind Franklin Field always late night loner overlooking rust belt rails abandoned  to an absent tempo till tomorrow never looking behind me in the fear that someone is there,

at Phillies Stadium on glorious summer Tuesdays for dollar dog night laden with algebra geometry and  physics purposely forgetting to apply ballistics to the majestic arc of a home run or in the frozen  subway steam selling F.U. T.O. t-shirts to Eagles fans gnashing when the Cowboys come to town,

at 17th and Sansom in the morning bounding from Little Pete's scrambled eggs toast and black coffee  studying in the Spring thinking All is Full of Love in my ears leaving fog pollen footprints on the  smoking cement blooming,

at the Shambhala Center with dharma lotus dripping from heels soaking rosewater insides thrumming to the  groan of meditation,

at the Art Museum Greco-fleshed and ponderous counting tourists running the Rocky steps staring into shoji screen tatame teahouses,

at the Lebanese place plunked boldly in Reading Terminal Market buying hummus bumping past the Polish  and Irish on my way to the Amish with their wheelwagons packed with pretzels and honey and  chocolate and tea,

at the motheaten thrift store on North Broad buried under sad accumulations of ramshackle clothing  clowning ridiculous in the dim squinting at coathangers through magnifying glasses and mudflat  leather hoping to salvage something insane,

in the brown catacombed warrens of gutted Subterranea trying unsuccessfully to ignore bearded medicine

men adorned with shaman shell necklaces hawking incense bootlegs and broken Zippos halting conversation to listen pensive to the displacement of air after each train hurtles by,

at 30th Street Station cathedral sitting dwarfed by columns Herculean in their ascent and golden light  thunderclap whirligig wings on high circling the luminous waiting sprawled nascent on stringwood pews,

at the Masonic Temple next to City Hall, pretending to be a tourist all the while hoping scouring for clues in the cryptic grand architect apocrypha to expose global conspiracies,

at the Trocadero Electric Factory TLA Khyber Unitarian Church dungeon breaking my neck to basso  perfecto glitch kick drums with a giant's foot stampeding breakbeat holographic mind-boggled  hole-in-the-skull intonations,

at the Medusa Lounge Tritone Bob and Barbara's Silk City et cetera with a pitcher a pounder of Pabst and a  shot of Jim Beam glowing in the dark at the foosball table disco ball bopstepping to hip hop and  jazz and accordions and piano and vinyl,

in gray Fishtown at Gino's recording rap holding pizza debates on the ethics of sampling anything by  David Axelrod rattling tambourines and smiles at the Russian shopgirl downstairs still chained to  soul record crackles of antiquity spiraling from windows above,

at Sam Doom's on 12th and Spring Garden crafting friendship in greenhouse egg crate foam closets  breaking to scrutinize cinema and celebrate Thanksgiving blessed by holy chef Kronick,

in the company of Emily all over or in Kohn's Antiques salvaging for consanguinity and quirky heirlooms  discussing mortality and cancer and celestial funk chord blues as a cosmological constant and  communism and Cuba over mango brown rice plantains baking oatmeal chocolate chip cookies,

in a Coca Cola truck riding shotgun hot as hell hungover below the raging Kensington El at 6 AM nodding soft to the teamsters' curses the snagglesouled destitute crawling forth poisoned from sheet-metal shanty cardboard box projects this is not desolate,

at the impound lot yet again accusing tow trucks of false pretext paying up sheepish swearing I'll have my  revenge,

in the afterhour streets practicing trashcan kung fu and cinder block shotput shouting sauvage operatic at  tattooed bike messenger tribesmen pitstopped at the food trucks,

in the embrace of those I don't love the names sometimes rush at me drowned and I pray to myself for  asylum,

in the ciphers I host always at least 8 emcee lyric clerics summoning elemental until every pore ruptures  and their eyes erupt furious forever the profound voice of dreadlocked Will still haunting stray  bullet shuffles six years later,

in the caldera of Center City with everyone craning our skulls skyward past the stepped skyscrapers  beaming ear-to-ear welcoming acid sun rain melting maddeningly to reconstitute as concrete  rubber steel glass glowing nymphs,

in Philadelphia where every angle is accounted for and every megawatt careers into every throbbing wall where  Art is a mirror universe for every event ever volleyed through the neurons of History,

in Philadelphia of so many places to hide I am altogether as a funnel cloud frenetic roiling imbuing every corner sanctum sanctorum with jackhammer electromagnetism quivering current realizing stupefied I have failed so utterly wonderful human for in seeking to hide I have found

in Philadelphia

As a student in Missus Grace Wells third grade 1967 class...
at Henry Kline Boyer School
a fairly prominent structure,
whose personage exemplifies
a storied history recounted below.

Henry K. Boyer

Early Life

Henry Kline Boyer was born on February 19, 1850, in Evansburg, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. The youngest of two children to blacksmith Ephraim Boyer and his wife Rebecca Kline, Henry was raised mainly in Montgomery County, with his father at one point even being the official town blacksmith of Evansburg. He attended formal schooling in Montgomery County from a young age, with an aptitude for math and a love for English and history. Boyer later attended Freeland Seminary, which is now known as Ursinus College.

He completed his formal education at only sixteen years of age, and in 1866 became a schoolteacher at the public school in his neighborhood. Kline then moved on to other teaching positions, including ones with a “classical academy” in Philadelphia and a Quaker school in the Byberry neighborhood of the city.

In 1868, he received a grammar school teaching certificate and moved to Camden, New Jersey, to work as the principal of a school there. Boyer did this until 1871, at that time he left his position in Camden to pursue the study of law in Philadelphia at the firm of former United States Attorney General Benjamin H. Brewster. In 1873, at the age of 23, Boyer was admitted to the Bar in Philadelphia County, where he focused on civil cases.

Political Career Begins & Flourishes

Starting out as a lawyer, Boyer took up permanent residence in Philadelphia and practiced well through the 1880s, attracting political attention. He was an active member of the Young Republicans of Philadelphia, and “his growing inclination for public affairs led him in the Spring of 1882 to attend a meeting of Republicans … to (choose) delegates for the state convention.” He was announced then as a delegate for the Seventh Ward of Philadelphia. He received a strong showing but lost. In the fall, he then ran for and won his first race, for the Pennsylvania Statehouse. Winning handily, Boyer had gone from a lawyer to a politician.

Henry K. Boyer served as State Representative for the 7th District of Philadelphia County for six terms, both before and after his time as Treasurer. Boyer served from 1883 to 1890, 1893 to 1894, and 1897 to 1898. He became a powerhouse in the State Legislature, with some of his legislative activities involving being a driving force behind the bill that created the Pennsylvania State Board of Health, encouraging citizens to plant trees, and regulating pharmacies. His action on these matters during his first term did not go without notice, as on January 4, 1887, at the age of 37, Boyer was elected as the unanimous choice of the Pennsylvania House Republican Caucus to be the next Speaker of the House. He was elected Speaker again the next term, and for a third non-consecutive time upon his return to the house in 1896 after serving as Treasurer.

As Treasurer

The sitting Speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, Boyer was elected as Treasurer of Pennsylvania in 1889. The State Republican Convention, which less than 10 years before had denied his bid to be only a delegate to it from Philadelphia, unanimously selected him as their pick for Treasurer. Pennsylvania Senator Boies Penrose introduced him at the convention, with the Philadelphia Times quoting Penrose as saying that he knew of “no other man” for the job.

In his acceptance speech, Boyer said he was a “proud and happy man,” and that the party had “made a correct choice. … I assure you I will endeavor to merit your confidence.” Boyer was elected in what was the largest total majority ever given to a Republican candidate in a political off-year. When the returns were coming in, the Snyder County Tribune reported that “Well, we have got Boyer and are very happy.”

In the role of Treasurer, Boyer authored the extensive Revenue Act of 1891, and he saw to it that schools specifically received substantial funding. However, in 1891, Boyer was locked in a corruption scandal along with Auditor General Thomas McCamant. A Philadelphia politico had been discovered that year as being corrupt, so a sweep across the Commonwealth revealed allegations of corruption…as far as Boyer’s direct role in any corruption, it was written that he was “criminally negligent at best and corrupt at worst.”

The scandal ultimately did not lead to his removal from office after the Senate split on talks to oust him, although Dauphin County prosecutors charged him with the misappropriation of $600,000 in funds. Once again, it never got off the ground, and Boyer retired at the end of his term while immediately making another successful bid to the Pennsylvania House and Speakership.

Later Life & Death

Boyer went back to the House after his term as Treasurer, holding the Speakership once more. The Capitol burned down during his tenure, and Boyer led sessions of the Legislature from places like the nearby federal courthouse and Grace United Methodist Church. He resigned from the House on January 17, 1898, after being appointed as Superintendent of the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia. He retired from the Superintendent position in 1902, and after that, spent the rest of his life in various pursuits.

He was a fan of farming, especially dairy farming, and at one point through his retirement had a 130+-acre dairy farm that he worked painstakingly on. It was reported that at this farm, Boyer remodeled every single farm building, purchased the best farm implements, got everything up to date, and had some of the most fertile soil in Pennsylvania. Besides investing in his dairy farm, he invested in land and other buildings, such as an old hotel, and enjoyed planting as much foliage as possible around his many acres of land, just as he encouraged citizens to do in one of his signature bills as a state representative.

In 1910, he was living as a boarder in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, in 1920 he was living by himself in Lower Providence, Pennsylvania, and in 1930 Boyer was living in Red Hill, Pennsylvania.

Never married, and never having children, Henry K. Boyer died at the age of 83, days shy of his 84th birthday, on February 14, 1934, in Red Hill, Pennsylvania. He was buried at Chelten Hills Cemetery. The York Dispatch eulogized him as “one of the well[-]known figures of a past generation in politics,” and the Philadelphia Inquirer highlighted him as “an outstanding figure in Pennsylvania politics in the last quarter of the 19th century.”

His place of residence
currently repurposed into to Play & Learn,
formerly Boyer School, 35 Evansburg Road
as iterated above aforementioned building
constituted quaint grade school
(one classroom per grade),
wherein I still remember
The golden-rod is yellow;
the first line of a poem
titled September by Helen Hunt Jackson

memory of mine jogged,
when remembrance of things past
pertaining to my boyhood
at about eight (almost nine) years old
strongly instructed to memorize
and be able, eager, ready and willing
to recite said poem
(other classmates as well needed
to abide by assignment or else...)

despite being a diminutive lad
with a pronounced nasal sound
(courtesy of submucous cleft palate - split uvula)
approximately fifty seven years ago
reprinted here with permission of
Your Daily Poem
P. O. Box 14054
Greenville, SC 29611.

September - now follows suit
by
Helen Hunt Jackson

The goldenrod is yellow;
The corn is turning brown;
The trees in apple orchards
With fruit are bending down.
The gentians bluest fringes
Are curling in the sun;
In dusty pods the milkweed
Its hidden silk has spun.
The sedges flaunt their harvest,
In every meadow nook;
And asters by the brookside
Make asters in the brook.
From dewey lanes at morning
the grapes' sweet odors rise;
At noon the roads all flutter
With yellow butterflies.
By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer's best of weather,
And autumn's best of cheer.
But none of all this beauty
Which floods the earth and air
Is unto me the secret
Which makes September fair.
'T is a thing which I remember;
To name it thrills me yet:
One day of one September
I never can forget.

It was January 4th 1778, and once again the General had not slept well. He rose before dawn and as was his practice, he wandered down to the southern banks of the Schuylkill River.  Valley Forge had been particularly cold since New Year’s Day, and he was awaiting any word about new supplies being smuggled out from the friends his Army still had in Philadelphia.

The Congress had recently been moved and sheltered in York which was about seventy miles due West of his current position in Valley Forge.  The British had taken Philadelphia and were rumored to be encamped in the heart of the city.  Many residents had fled the Capitol just before the British arrived.  Fresh off their success at the Battle of Brandywine, they did not receive the warm welcome that they were expecting when they entered the city.  According to European standards, when you capture the capitol city of your enemy, the war is then over.  The problem with Philadelphia however was that this was not Europe — and Washington was no ordinary General.

Standing alone by the river’s bank, the General thought he saw something move in the tall grass to his right.  His first instinct was to draw his cap and ball pistol, but for a reason unexplained, he did not.  He called out in the direction of the movement, but no sound was heard.  As he turned to walk back to his tent, he saw a branch move and heard the same sound again.  Slowly, a figure about six feet tall emerged from the river brush.  As he walked slowly toward where the General now stood, it was clear this was no combatant, either Colonial or British — this was an Indian.

He walked directly up to the now still Washington and extended his hand.  He said his name was Tamani, and he and his people were living on three of the islands located in the middle of the Schuylkill River about two miles East of where they were now. The Lenape were a branch of the Delaware Tribe that had originally migrated South from Labrador.  They had populated almost all of southeastern Pennsylvania and especially those lands that bordered the Delaware River.  

The British had inflicted tremendous cruelty on the Lenape during their march toward Philadelphia and had driven the entire tribe from almost all of their ancestral lands.  The Colonists had been much kinder and had in fact been interacting peacefully with the Lenape back to the time of William Penn.

Tamani spoke very good English, and General Washington knew how to ‘sign.’  Sign was the universal language spoken by almost all of the indian tribes and was conveyed with a complex series of hand gestures.  After Tamani saw that the General could understand his words, he discontinued his ‘signing.’  Tamani told the great American leader that his people had been driven from their native lands along the banks of the Delaware and were now in hiding inside the treeline of three remote islands just a short distance down the Schuylkill.  

They would leave and go ashore every night to hunt pheasant and deer but always be back before dawn so the British scouts would not discover them.  Tamani was bitter and angry about what the British had done to his people, and he was also upset that the British had commandeered many of the Colonists homes in the city. The displaced were now living in rustic shacks along the banks of both the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers, and many of these Colonists were his friends.

General Washington asked Tamani if he had seen any British troops in the last several days.  Tamani said he had not and in fact had not seen any Red Coats any further west than Gladwyne or Conshohocken.   Washington asked Tamani how he could know this for sure.  Tamani said that he and his two sons knew of all British troop movements because there was a secret path on the other side of the river that ran all the way from Valley Forge to the falls at Gray’s Ferry.  Gray’s Ferry is where the British had a built a bridge that floats (Ferry) across the river this past winter, and it was their primary way to cross into the city from all directions South.

Washington was more than intrigued.  He asked Tamani how many members of his tribe knew about this secret trail.  Tamani said just he and his two sons.  Tamani had two sons and a daughter by his wife Wasonomi, but only the two boys had been down the 17-mile trail that paralleled the river on the far bank.  He also said that the trail could not be seen from the water because it was so heavily covered with native Sassafras and Poplars.

The dense brush made the northern bank impossible to see from either a boat or when viewed from a quarter mile away on the southern shore.  By keeping this trail a secret — Washington thought to himself — even the Indians knew that loose words sometimes trump the loudest canon.

Washington told Tamani that the only information he had received was from the few brave horse mounted scouts that had tried to infiltrate the city at night. They would then flee before morning with whatever local knowledge the remaining loyalists to the revolution could provide.  Lately, he had been losing more men than had been returning.  

Tamani told the General that by using the trail, he could pass totally unseen into the city on any night and return along the same route without the British noticing.  From where the trail ended at Grays Ferry, he and his oldest son had climbed the tall poplars and watched British troop movement both in and around the city.  The General now extended his own hand to Tamani and said: I need you to do something for me.

I need you to take me along this path and show me what you have seen. Tamani stood frozen for a moment as if he didn’t believe his own ears.  Here was the Great General of the American Army, the greatest general that he had ever heard of, wanting to make the 17-mile trip to Philadelphia virtually alone and unprotected by his troops.  Washington also told Tamani that he could tell no one of his plan.  

To ensure this, General Washington took the plume from his Tricorn Hat and presented it with great ceremony to Tamani.  He said: Tamani,  you and I are now brothers, and we must keep between us what only brothers know.  Tamani sensed the importance of the moment and handed Washington a small pouch from the breechcloth he was wearing.  Inside was the Totem of his family’s ancestry.  It was a small stone with a Turtle inscribed on one side and a spear on the other.  The General took the stone in both of his hands and placed it over his heart.  Both men agreed to meet again along the river’s bank at dawn of the second day.

For most of two days, Washington thought about his narrow escape at Brandywine and how these British had menaced him all along the Delaware River to this isolated field so far from where he wanted to be.  He had heard from one of his own scouts that there was British dissension within some of Howe’s troops, but he wanted to see firsthand what he might be facing.  At daybreak on the second day, he walked to the riverbank again.  This time he again saw no life or activity only a small fox with her yearling kits heading down the steep bank to drink.  

After twenty minutes, the General turned to walk away when he heard a whistle coming from the same bush as before.  He approached cautiously and there stood Tamani, but he was not alone.  He had two young men with him that looked to be about a year apart in age.   These are my two Sons, Miquon and Yaqueekhon, Tamani said, as he pointed downriver.  It is just the three of us who know the way along the river that leads to where your enemy sleeps.  Washington greeted both young braves by touching them on both shoulders and then turned to Tamani and said:.  I would like to take the path to the British, and I would like to take it tonight.

Tamani said that he and his two sons would be ready and waiting and that they could leave as soon as the sun was down.  Washington said he would like to leave earlier than that and that he would meet them where the river turns when it is the deer’s time to drink.  During the winter months that would roughly be 4:00 in the afternoon.   With that, the three native men turned away and disappeared into the trees.

Tonight, Washington would alert his men that he would be working and then sleeping at the Isaac Potts House, (better known as Washington’s Headquarters), instead of in his field tent which was his usual practice. He needed to be alone so he could slip away unnoticed along Valley Creek to where the Schuylkill turned and where he would then meet his three new friends.

The General had been spending most of his nights with his troops sleeping in his field tent high atop Mount Joy.  It was here that he was provided with the best views to the east toward Philadelphia.  He had felt guilty about sleeping in the big stone headquarters with the comfortable bed and fireplace for warmth when so many of his men froze.  Tonight though, there would be no sleep and no guarantee of what the morning might bring.  

With all the risk and challenge set before him, he approached it like every battle he had fought up until now.  This would be a fight for information and one that just possibly might allow him to formulate a timetable and a plan for his next attack.  He lit the candle in his bedroom window — as was his practice — and locked the door from the outside.  He then slipped out the side door of the big stone house and headed for the bank. It was now 3:45 in the afternoon and already starting to get dark.

As the General arrived at the bend in the river he saw two canoes pulled up on the bank and covered with branches of pine.  Standing off in the trees, about fifty feet from the two craft, were Tamani and his two sons.  Tamani greeted Washington as his brother.  He explained that they would take the two small boats downriver for what the whites called five miles, and then cross to the other side to begin their walk.

Washington was in a canoe with the older of Tamani’s two sons Miquon.  They paddled quietly for over an hour until Tamani ‘signed’ back something that Miquon quickly understood. From where they were now, on the right (south) side of the river, he signaled for them to head directly across the Schuylkill to the bank on the far side.  This was what the Delaware Tribe had always referred to as Conshohocken.  

As they reached the far bank, Tamani’s two sons quickly hid the canoes in the underbrush.  As Washington started to walk toward Tamani, Miquon took a satchel out of the first canoe and handed it to the General.  For your feet, said Miquon.  Washington opened the satchel and found a large pair of Indian leggings with Moccasins attached at the bottom.  These will help you to walk faster, said Tamani, as Washington sat on a log, removed his boots, and strapped them on.  In two more minutes, the four men were walking east on the hidden trail just ten feet from the north bank of the Schuylkill River.  They had 12 miles still to go, and the surrounding countryside and river were now almost totally covered in darkness.

I say almost, because there were a few flickering lights from lanterns on the far southern bank.  The four men listened for sounds, but heard nothing, as the lights faded and then disappeared as they progressed downstream.  Miquon told his father that they needed to get to the British War Dance before the moon had passed overhead (roughly midnight), and his father grunted in agreement.  Washington wondered what this British War Dance could possibly be but figured that he would wait for a more appropriate time to ask that question.

For two hours, the four men walked in silence.  The only sounds that any of them heard were the breathing of the man in front and the ripples from the approaching current.  The occasional perch that jumped in the dark while hunting for food kept them alert and vigilant as they continued to visually scan the far bank. The going was slow in many places, but at least the terrain was flat and well worn down.  Someone used this path on a regular basis, and the General couldn’t help but wonder not only who that might be but when they had last used it.

Tamani stopped by a large clump of rocks at the river’s edge and reached behind the smallest of the boulders.  He pulled out a well-worn leather satchel and laid it on the ground in front of the other three men.  Miquon reached inside and handed a small ball which was lightly colored to the General.  Pinole, Miquon said as he placed it within Washington’s open hand. Pinole, you eat, Miquon said again.  Tamani looked at the slightly perplexed General and said, Pinole, it’s ground corn meal and good for energy, you eat!  With that, the General took a bite and was surprised that the taste was better than he had expected.  

They lingered for no longer than five minutes on the trail and were again quickly on their way.  Washington marveled at the speed and efficiency of his Indian guides and again thought to himself: "The Indian Nations would have been very hard to beat if they could ever have come together as one force.  We could learn much from them."

The moon was almost directly overhead when Tamani raised his right arm directing the others behind him to stop.  There were lights up ahead and voices could now be heard in the distance.  Tamani told the General: One more mile to ferry crossing.  With that they proceeded at a much slower pace while increasing the distance between each man.  Tamani and Miquon had made this trip many times, but this was the first time that Yaqueekhon had been this far.  For Washington, the feeling of being back in his beloved Capitol, coupled with his hatred of the British, had his senses at a high level.  He felt an acute awareness overtake him beyond that of any previous experience.

Looking across the river toward ‘Grays Ferry’ reminded Washington of the many times he had played along the Rappahannock River in Virginia as a boy.  He moved to ‘Ferry Farm’ in Virginia when he was still young and when his father Augustine had become the Managing Partner of the Accokeek Iron Furnace.  Those days along the Rappahannock were some of the happiest of his life, and he secretly longed for a time when he could mindlessly wander a river’s banks once again — but not tonight!

Miquon now pointed to a tall clump of trees directly ahead.  They were right along the river’s edge and there were large branches that protruded out as much as twenty feet over the water.  Tamani said: We climb.

From this location, the four men climbed two different trees to a height of over forty feet.  Once situated near the top they secured their packs, looked off toward the North, and waited.  From this position they could clearly see Market Street and all of the comings and goings in the center of town.  Washington noticed one thing that gave him pause … he didn’t see any British soldiers.  Tamani told the General in a hushed tone that almost all of the soldiers were in German’s Town (Germantown) with only a small detachment left in the center of the city for sentry duty and to watch.

Why Germantown Washington asked?  This had been the site of our last battle, and he was surprised more troops had not been positioned in the center of town to protect the Capitol.  Too much food and drink, Tamani said.  It took Washington a minute to process the words from before. The British War Dance.  The Indians also had a sense for satire and irony.

                               The British Had Been Celebrating

Is it possible, the General wondered, that the British could still be celebrating their last victory at the Battle of Germantown, and could they have let the King’s military protocol really slip that far? Washington knew that General Howe was under extreme criticism for his handling of the war so far, and there were rumors that he might now be headed back to England to defend himself before parliament.

                                    When The Cat’s Away …

Washington’s impression of what he was now facing immediately changed.  He believed he was now charged with defeating a British force that had tired and lost faith in the outcome of the war.  In their minds, if capturing the new American Capitol had not turned the tide, and men were willing to freeze and starve in an isolated woods rather than surrender, then this cause was almost certainly lost. In that mood they decided to party and celebrate in a fait accompli.

                           A Revolutionary ‘Fait Accompli

For three more hours, they observed Philadelphia in its vulnerable and seemingly de-militarized state.  Many of the houses were empty as the residents had left when the outcome of the Battle of Brandywine was made known.  Washington closed his eyes, and he could see Mr. Franklin walking down Market Street and talking with each person that he passed.  He then saw a vision from deep inside of himself showing that this scene would be recreated soon.  The British couldn’t last in the demoralized state that they were now in. He knew now that it was more important than ever, for he and his men, to make it through the rest of the long cold winter, and into the Spring campaign of 1778.

Washington signaled to Tamani that it was time to go.  Before he left, he asked if he could borrow the Chief’s knife.  After climbing down the big poplar, he walked around to the side of the tree that was facing Philadelphia and inscribed these immortal words  — WASHINGTON WAS HERE!

All the way back along the trail, Washington was a different man than before.  If he had ever had any doubts about the outcome of the war, they were now vanished from his mind.  He asked Tamani and his two sons if they would continue to monitor the trail for him on a weekly basis.  They said that they would,and would he please keep their secret about being encamped on the three islands in the middle of the Schuylkill River.  They also pledged their help as scouts, in the coming spring campaign, against what was left of the British.

Washington pledged both his secrecy and loyalty to the Lenape Tribe and continued to meet with Tamani along the banks of Valley Creek until the winter had finally ended.  The constant updating of information that Washington had originally seen with his own eyes allowed him to formulate a plan that would drive the British from the America’s forever.  He was forever grateful to the Lenape people, and together they kept a secret that has remained unknown to this very day.

With all the rumors of where he slept, or where he ate, there is one untold rumor that among Native People remains true.  Along a dark frozen riverbank, in the company of real Americans, the Father of Our Country stalked the enemy. And in doing so …

                                            He walked !



Kurt Philip Behm

Philadelphia!  Philadelphia!
    City of Brotherly Love!
  Let me embrace you in my arms
    As the angels from up above
  Rain down on you their cares and
       charms.

Philadelphia!  Philadelphia!
    Home of the Liberty Bell!
  Ring aloud your pride and glory
    To every hill, brook and dell,
  And let Happiness be your story.

Philadelphia!  Philadelphia!
    City of Independence!
  Continue on with your journey epic,
    And by your bare presence,
  Shine forth! your brilliance historic.

THE LEGEND OF HOLLYWOOD IN VERSE
Dear Readers, I have tried to cover the salient features of this True Story in free flowing verse mainly with end rhymes. If you read it loud, you can hear the chimes! Due to the short attention span of my readers I had to cut short this long story, and conclude with the
Golden Era of Hollywood by stretching it up to the 1950's only. When TV began to challenge the Big Screen Cinema seriously! I have used only a part of my notes here. Kindly read the entire poem and don't hesitate to know many interesting facts - which I also did not know! I wish there was a provision for posting a few interesting photographs for you here. Best wishes, - Raj Nandy, New Delhi.  

                 THE LEGEND OF HOLLYWOOD :
                        THE AMERICAN  DREAM
                             BY RAJ NANDY

           A SHORT  HISTORICAL  BACKGROUND
Since the earliest days, optical toys, shadow shows, and ‘magic
lanterns’, had created the illusion of motion.
This concept was first described by Mark Roget in 1824 as  
the 'persistent of vision'.
Giving impetus to the development of big screen cinema with its
close-ups, capturing all controlled and subtle expressions!
The actors were no longer required to shout out their parts with
exaggerated actions as on the Elizabethan Stage.
Now even a single tear drop could get noticed easily by the entire
movie audience!
With the best scene being included and edited after a few retakes.
To Thomas Edison and his able assistant William Rogers we owe the invention of Kinetoscope, the first movie camera.
On the grounds of his West Orange, New Jersey laboratory, Edison
built his first movie studio called the ‘Black Maria’.   (1893)
He also purchased a string of patents related to motion picture
Camera; forming the Edison Trust, - a cartel that took control of
the Film Industry entire!

Fort Lee, New Jersey:
On a small borough on the opposite bank of the Hudson River lay
the deserted Fort Lee.
Here scores of film production crews descended armed with picture Cameras, on this isolated part of New Jersey!
In 1907 Edison’s company came there to shoot a short silent film –
‘Rescue From an Eagle’s Nest’,
Which featured for the first time the actor and director DW Griffith.
The independent Chaplin Film Company built the first permanent
movie studio in 1910 in Fort Lee.
While some of the biggest Hollywood studios like the Universal,
MGM, and 20th Century Fox, had their roots in Fort Lee.
Some of the famous stars of the silent movie era included ‘Fatty’
Arbuckle, Will Rogers, Mary Pickford, Dorothy and Lillian Gish,
Lionel Barrymore, Rudolph Valentine and Pearl White.
In those days there were no reflectors and electric arch lights.
So movies were made on rooftops to capture the bright sunlight!
During unpredictable bad weather days, filming had to be stopped
despite the revolving stage which was made, -
To rotate and capture the sunlight before the lights atarted to fade!

Shift from New Jersey to West Coast California:
Now Edison who held the patents for the bulb, phonograph, and the Camera, had exhibited a near monopoly;
On the production, distribution, and exhibition of the movies which made this budding industry to shift to California from
New Jersey!
California with its natural scenery, its open range, mountains, desert, and snow country, had the basic ingredients for the movie industry.
But most importantly, California had bright Sunshine for almost
365 days of the year!
While eight miles away from Hollywood lay the port city of Los Angeles with its cheap labour.

                        THE RISE  OF  HOLLYWOOD
It was a real estate tycoon Harvey Wilcox and his wife Daeida from
Kansas, who during the 1880s founded ‘Hollywood’ as a community for like-minded temperate followers.
It is generally said that Daeida gave the name Hollywood perhaps
due to the areas abundant red-berried shrubs also known as
California Holly.
Spring blossoms around and above the Hollywood Hills with its rich variety,  gave it a touch of paradise for all to see !
Hollywood was incorporated as a municipality in 1903, and during
1910 unified with the city of Los Angeles.
While a year later, the first film studio had moved in from New
Jersey, to escape Thomas Edison’s monopoly!    (1911)

In 1913 Cecil B. De Mille and Jesse Lasky, had leased a barn with
studio facilities.
And directed the first feature length film ‘Squaw Man’ in 1914.
Today this studio is home to Hollywood Heritage Museum as we get to see.
The timeless symbol of Hollywood film industry that famous sign on top of Mount Lee, was put up by a real estate developer in 1923.  
This sign had read as ‘’HOLLY WOOD LAND’’ initially.
Despite decades of run-ins with vandals and pranksters, it managed to hang on to its prime location near the summit of the Hollywood Hills.
The last restoration work was carried out in 1978 initiated by Hugh
Hefner of the ******* Magazine.
Those nine white letters 45 feet tall now read ‘HOLLYWOOD’, and has become a landmark and America’s cultural icon, and an evocative symbol for ambition, glamour, and dream.
Forever enticing aspiring actors to flock to Hollywood, hypnotised
by lure of the big screen!

                     GOLDEN AGE OF HOLLYWOOD
The Silent Movie Era which began in 1895, ended in 1935 with the
production of ‘Dance of Virgins’, filmed entirely in the island of Bali.
The first Sound film ‘The Jazz Singer’ by Warner Bros. was made with a Vitaphone sound-on-disc technology.  (October 1927)
Despite the Great Depression of the 1930s, this decade along with the 1940s have been regarded by some as Hollywood’s Golden Age.
However, I think that this Golden Age includes the decades of the
1940s and the 1950s instead.
When the advent of Television began to challenge the Film Industry
itself !

First Academy Award:
On 16th May 1929 in the Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard,
the First Academy Award presentation was held.
Around 270 people were in attendance, and tickets were priced at
$5 per head.
When the best films of 1927 & 1928 were honored by the Academy
of Motion Production and Sciences, or the AMPS.
Emil Jennings became the best actor, and Janet Gaynor the best actress.
Special Award went to Charlie Chaplin for his contribution to the
silent movie era and for his silent film ‘The Circus’.
While Warren Brothers was commended for making the first talking picture ‘The Jazz Singer’, - also receiving a Special Award!
Now, the origin of the term ‘OSCAR’ has remained disputed.
The Academy adopted this name from 1939 onwards it is stated.
OSCAR award has now become “the stuff dreams are made of”!
It is a gold-plated statuette of a knight 13.5 inches in height, weighing 8.5 pounds, was designed by MGM’s art director Cedric Gibbons.
Annually awarded for honouring and encouraging excellence in all
facets of motion picture production.

Movies During the Great Depression Era (1929-1941):
Musicals and dance movies starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers provided escapism and good entertainment during this age.
“Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did. She just did it
backwards and in high heels,” - the Critics had said.
This compatible pair entertained the viewers for almost one and
a half decade.
During the ‘30s, gangster movies were popular starring James Cagey, Humphrey Bogart, and Edward G. Robinson.
While family movies had their popular child artist Shirley Temple.
Swashbuckler films of the Golden Age saw the sword fighting scenes of Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn.
Flynn got idolized playing ‘Robin Hood’, this film got released in
1938 on the big screen!
Story of the American Civil War got presented in the epic ‘Gone With The Wind’ (1939) with Clarke Gable and Vivian Leigh.
This movie received 8 Oscars including the award for the Best Film, - creating a landmark in motion picture’s history!
More serious movies like John Steinbeck’s ‘Grapes of Wrath’ and
John Ford’s  ‘How Green Was My Valley’, were released in 1940 and 1941 respectively.
While the viewers escaped that depressive age to the magical world
of  ‘Wizard of Oz’ with its actress Judy Garland most eagerly!
Let us not forget John Wayne the King of the Westerns, who began
his acting career in the 1930s with his movie ‘The Big Trail’;
He went on to complete 84 films before his career came to an end.
Beginning of the 40s also saw Bob Hope and the crooner Bing Crosby, who entertained the public and also the fighting troops.
For the Second World War (1939-45) had interrupted the Golden Age of Hollywood.
When actors like Henry Fonda, Clarke Gable, James Stewart and
Douglas Fairbanks joined the armed forces temporarily leaving
Hollywood.
Few propaganda movies supporting the war efforts were also made.
While landmark movies like ‘Philadelphia Story’, ‘Casablanca’, ‘Citizen Kane’,
‘The Best Years of Our Lives’, were some of the most successful movies of that decade.  (The 1940s)
Now I come towards the end of my Hollywood Story with the decade  of the 1950s, thereby extending the period of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Since having past the Great Depression and the Second World War,  the Hollywood movie industry truly matured and came of age.

                        HOLLYWOOD  OF  THE  1950s

BACKGROU­ND:
The decade of the ‘50s was known for its post-war affluence and
choice of leisure time activities.
It was a decade of middle-class values, fast-food restaurants, and
drive-in- movies;
Of ‘baby-boom’, all-electric home, the first credit cards, and new fast moving cars like the Ford, Plymouth, Buick, Hudson, and Chevrolet.
But not forgetting the white racist terrorism in the Southern States!
This era saw the beginning of Cold War, with Eisenhower
succeeding Harry S. Truman as the American President.
But for the film industry, most importantly, what really mattered  
was the advent of the Domestic TV.
When the older viewers preferred to stay at home instead of going
out to the movies.
By 1950, 10.5 million US homes had a television set, and on the
30th December 1953, the first Color TV went on sale!
Film industries used techniques such as Cinemascope, Vista Vision,
and gimmicks like 3-D techniques,
To get back their former movie audience back on their seats!
However, the big scene spectacle films did retain its charm and
fantasy.
Since fantasy epics like ‘The Story of Robin Hood’, and Biblical epics like ‘The Robe’, ‘Quo Vadis’, ‘The Ten Commandments’ and ‘Ben-Hur’, did retain its big screen visual appeal.
‘The Robe’ released on 16th September 1953, was the first film shot
and projected in Cinema Scope;
In which special lenses were used to compress a wide image into a
standard frame and then expanded it again during projection;
Resulting in an image almost two and a half times as high and also as wide, - captivating the viewers imagination!

DEMAND FOR NEW THEMES DURING THE 1950s :
The idealized portrayal of men and women since the Second World War,
Now failed to satisfy the youth who sought exciting symbols for rebellion.
So Hollywood responded with anti-heroes with stars like James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Paul Newman.
They replaced conventional actors like Tyron Power, Van Johnson, and Robert Taylor to a great extent, to meet the requirement of the age.
Anti-heroines included Ava Gardner, Kim Novak, and Marilyn Monroe with her vibrant *** appeal;
She provided excitement for the new generation with a change of scene.
Themes of rebellion against established authority was present in many Rock and Roll songs,
Including the 1954 Bill Hailey and His Comets’ ‘Rock Around the Clock’.
The era also saw rise to stardom of Elvis Presley the teen heartthrob.
Meeting the youthful aspirations with his songs like ‘Jailhouse Rock’!
I recall the lyrics of this 1957 film ‘Jailhouse Rock’ of my school days, which had featured the youth icon Elvis:
   “The Warden threw a party in the county jail,
     The prison band was there and they began to wail.
     The band was jumping and the joint began to sing,
     You should’ve heard them knocked-out jail bird sing.
     Let’s rock, everybody in the whole cell block……………
     Spider Murphy played the tenor saxophone,
     Little Joe was blowing the slide trombone.
     The drummer boy from Illinois went crash, boom, bang!
     The whole rhythm section was the Purple Gang,
      Let's rock,.................... (Lyrics of the song.)

Rock and Roll music began to tear down color barriers, and Afro-
American musicians like Chuck Berry and Little Richard became
very popular!
Now I must caution my readers that thousands of feature films got  released during this eventful decade in Hollywood.
To cover them all within this limited space becomes an impossible
task, which may kindly be understood !
However, I shall try to do so in a summarized form as best as I could.

BOX OFFICE HITS YEAR-WISE FROM 1950 To 1959 :
Top Ten Year-Wise hit films chronologically are: Cinderella (1950),
Quo Vadis, The Greatest Show on Earth, Peter Pan, Rear Window,
Lady and the *****, Ten Commandments, Bridge on the River
Kwai, South Pacific, and Ben-Hur of 1959.

However Taking The Entire Decade Of 1950s Collectively,
The Top Films Get Rated As Follows Respectively:
The Ten Commandments, followed by Lady and the *****, Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty, Bridge on the River Kwai, Around the World in Eighty Days, This is Cinerama, The Greatest Show on Earth, Rear Window, South Pacific, The Robe, Giant, Seven Wonders of the World, White Christmas, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Sayonara, Demetrius and the Gladiator, Peyton Place, Some Like It Hot, Quo Vadis, and Auntie Mame.

Film Debuts By Rising Stars During The 1950s :
The decade of the ‘50s saw a number of famous film stars making
their first appearance.
There was Peter Sellers in ‘The Black Rose’, Marlon Brando in
‘The Men’, and actress Sophia Loren in ‘Toto Tarzan’.
Following year saw Charles Bronson in ‘You Are in the Navy Now’,
Audrey Hepburn in ‘Our Wild Oats’, and Grace Kelly, the future
Princess of Monaco, in her first film ‘Fourteen Hours’. (1951)
While **** Brigitte Bardot appeared in 1952 movie ‘Crazy for Love’; and 1953 saw Steve Mc Queen in ‘******* The Run’.
Jack Lemon, Paul Newman, and Omar Sharif featured in films
during 1954.
The following year saw Clint Eastwood, Shirley Mc Lean, Walter
Matthau, and Jane Mansfield, all of whom the audience adored.
The British actor Michael Cain appeared in 1956; also Elvis Presley
the youth icon in ‘Love Me Tender’ and as the future Rock and Roll
King!
In 1957 came Sean Connery, followed by Jack Nicholson, Christopher Plummer, and Vanessa Redgrave.
While the closing decade of the ‘50s saw James Coburn, along with
director, script writer, and producer Steven Spielberg, make their
debut appearance.

Deaths During The 1950s: This decade also saw the death of actors
like Humphrey Bogart, Tyron Power and Errol Flynn.
Including the death of producer and director of epic movies the
renowned Cecil B. De Mille!
Though I have conclude the Golden Age of Hollywood with the 50’s Decade,
The glitz and glamour of its Oscar Awards continue even to this day.
With its red carpet and lighted marquee appeal and fashion display!

CONTINUING THE HOLLYWOOD STORY WITH FEW TITBITS :
From Fort Lee of New Jersey we have travelled west to Hollywood,
California.
From the silent movie days to the first ‘talking picture’ with Warren
Bros’ film ‘The Jazz Singer’.  (06 Oct 1927)
On 31st July 1928 for the first time the audience heard the MGM’s
mascot Leo’s mighty roar!
While in July 1929 Warren Bros’ first all-talking and all- Technicolor
Film appeared titled - ‘On With The Show’.
Austrian born Hedy Lamarr shocked the audience appearing **** in a Czechoslovak film ‘Ecstasy’!  (1933)
She fled from her husband to join MGM, becoming a star of the
‘40s and the ‘50s.
The ‘Private Life of Henry VII’ became the first British film to win the  American Academy Award.  (1933)
On 11Dec 1934, FOX released ‘Bright Eyes’ with Shirley Temple,
who became the first Child artist to win this Award!
While in 1937 Walt Disney released the first full animated feature
film titled - ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarf ‘.
The British film director Alfred Hitchcock who came to
Hollywood later;
Between 1940 and 1947, made great thrillers like 'Rebecca', ‘Notorious’, ‘Rear Window’, and ‘Dial M for ******’.
But he never won an Oscar as a Director!

THE GOLDEN GLOBE AWARD:
This award began in 1944 by the Foreign Correspondence Association at
the 20th Century Fox Studio.
To award critically acclaimed films and television shows, by awarding a
Scroll initially.
Later a Golden Globe was made on a pedestal, with a film strip around it.
In 1955 the Cecil B. De Mille Award was created, with De Mille as its first
recipient.

THE GRAMMY AWARD:
In 1959 The National Academy of Recording and Sciences sponsored the
First Grammy Award for music recorded during 1958.
When Frank Sinatra won for his album cover ‘Only The Lonely’, but he
did not sing.
Among the 28 other categories there was Ella Fitzgerald, and Count Basie
for his musical Dance Band Performance.
There was Kingston Trio’s song ‘Tom Dooly’, and the ‘Chipmunk Song’,
which brings back nostalgic memories of my school days!

CONCLUDING HOLLYWOOD STORY  WITH STUDIOS OF THE 1950s

Challenge Faced by the Movie Industry:
Now the challenge before the Movie Industry was how to adjust to the
rapidly changing conditions created by the growing TV Industry.
Resulting in loss of revenue, with viewers getting addicted to
their Domestic TV screen most conveniently!

The late 1950s saw two studios REPUBLIC and the RKO go out of business!
REPUBLIC from 1935- ‘59 based in Los Angeles, developed the careers of
John Wayne and Roy Rogers, and specializing in the Westerns.
RKO was one of the Big Five Studios of Hollywood along with Paramount,
MGM, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Brothers in those days.

RKO Studio which begun with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the ‘30s,
included actress Katherine Hepburn who holds the record for four Oscars
even to this day;
And later had Robert Mitchum and Carry Grant under an agreement.
But in 1948, RKO Studio came under the control Howard Hughes the
temperamental Industrialist.
Soon the scandal drive and litigation prone RKO Studio closed, while
other Big Four Studios had managed to remain afloat!


PARAMOUNT STUDIO:
Paramount Studio split into two separate companies in 1950.
Its Theatre chain later merged with ABC Radio & Television Network;
And they created an independent Production/Distribution Network.
Bing Crosby and Bob Hope had been Paramount’s two biggest stars.
Followed by actors like Alan Ladd, William Holden, Jerry Lewis, Dean
Martin, Charlton Heston, and Dorothy Lamour.
They also had the producer/director Cecil B. De Mille producing high-
grossing Epics like ‘Samson & Delilah’ and ‘The Ten Commandments’.
Also the movie maker Hal Wallis, who discovered Burt Lancaster and
Elvis Presley - two great talents!

20th CENTURY FOX:
Cinema Scope became FOX’s most successful technological innovation
with its hit film ‘The Robe’. (1953)
Its Darryl Zanuck had observed during the early ‘50s, that audience  
were more interested in escapist entertainments mainly.
So he turned to FOX to musicals, comedies, and adventure stories.
Biggest stars of FOX were Gregory Peck & Susan Hayward; also
stars like Victor Mature, Anne Baxter, and Richard Wind Mark.
Not forgetting Marilyn Monroe in her Cinema Scope Box Office hit
movie - ‘How to Marry a Millionaire’, which was also shown on
prime time TV, as a romantic comedy film of 1953.

WARREN BROTHERS:
During 1950 the studio was mainly a family managed company with
three brothers Harry, Albert, and Jack Warren.
To meet the challenges of that period, Warren Bros. released most of
its actors like James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Oliver de Havilland, -
Along with few others from their long-term contractual commitments;
Retaining only Errol Flynn, and Ronald Regan who went on to become
the future President.
Like 20th Century Fox, Warren Bros switched to musicals, comedies,
and adventure movies, with Doris Day as its biggest musical star.
The studio also entered into short term agreements with Gary Copper,
John Wayne, Gregory Peck, Patricia Neal, and Random Scott.
Warren Bros also became the first major studio to invest in 3-D
production of films, scoring a big hit with its 3-D  suspense thriller
‘House of Wax’ in 1953.

MINOR STUDIOS were mainly three, - United Artists, Columbia, and
The Universal.
They did not own any theatre chain, and specialized in low-budgeted
‘B’ Movies those days.
Now to cut a long story short it must be said, that Hollywood finally
did participate in the evolution of Television industry, which led to
their integration eventually.
Though strategies involving hardware development and ownership of
broadcast outlets remained unsuccessful unfortunately.
However, Hollywood did succeed through program supply like prime-
time series, and made-for-TV films for the growing TV market making
things more colorful!
Thus it could be said that the TV industry provided the film industry
with new opportunities,  laying the groundwork for its diversification
and concentration;
That characterized the entertainment industry during the latter half  
of our previous century.
I must now confess that I have not visited the movie theatre over the last
two decades!
I watch movies on my big screen TV and my Computer screen these days.
Old classical movies are all available on ‘You Tube’ for me, and I can watch
them any time whenever I am free!
Thanks for reading patiently, - Raj Nandy.
**ALL COPYRIGHTS ARE WITH THE AUTHOR RAJ NANDY OF NEW DELHI

12 Monkeys
17 Girls
127 Hours
2 Days in New York 2012
2 Days in Paris 2010
2001 A Space Odyssey
360
A Beautiful Mind
A Bridge Too Far
A Few Good Men
A Single Man
A Perfect Getaway
A Serbian Film
A Very Long Engagement
A.I.
Absolute Power
Adaptation
Airborne
Air Force One
Airplane 1
Airplane 2
Albert Nobbs
Alex Cross
Alpha Dog
American Beauty
American Gangster
Amorres Perros
Amour
Anchorman
Andy Warhol's Bad 1977
Andy Warhol's ******* 1964
Andy Warhol's Eat 1964
Animal Kingdom
Annie Hall
Anti-Christ
Apocalypse Now Redux
Apollo 13
Arachnophobia
Apt Pupil
Armageddon
Babel
Backdraft
Bad Company
Bad Education
Badlands 1973
Barton Fink
Basquiat
Before Night Falls
Being Flynn
Beneath Hill 60
Beyond the Black Rainbow
Billy Madison
Biutiful - Spanish
Blade 1
Blade 2
Blade 3
Blade Runner Final Cut
Blades of Glory
Blood Work
Blue Valentine
Breach
Broken Arrow
Born on the Fourth of July
Boyz in the Hood
Bullet
Bulworth
Brothers
Caddyshack 1 & 2
Career Opportunities
Carlos The Jackal The Movie
Carne by Gaspar Noe - French
Cashback
CB4
Charlie Wilson's War
Chelsea Girls 1966
Cherry
Chinatown
Ciao Manhattan ft. Edie Sedgewick 1972
Cinema Paradiso
City of God
Clear and Present Danger
Closely Watched Trains - Czech
Contact
Corpse Bride
Courage Under Fire
Crazy Stupid Love
Dark Shadows
Dave 1993
Daybreakers
Days of Heaven
Dazed and Confused
Dead Presidents
Defiance
Desperately Seeking Susan
Despicable Me
Detachment
Die Hard Quadrilogy
**** Tracy
***** Harry
Django Unchained
Dogtooth - Greek
Dogville
Doubt
Dracula, Bram Stoker's
Dragonheart
Dream House
Drive
Drop Zone
Dumbo
Dune Extended Edition
Ears Open, Eyeballs Click
Easier With Practice
Easy Rider 1969
Edward Scissorhands
Empire of the Sun
Encino Man
Enter the Void by Gaspar Noe
Eraser 1999
Eyes Wide Shut 1999
Face Off 1997
Fallen
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Fight Club
Fill the Void
Fish Tank
Fitzcarraldo
Five Minutes in Heaven
Flickan 2009 - Swedish
Flubber 1997
Folks!
Forbidden Planet 1956
Fracture
Friday 1995
Friday After Next 2002
Frost Nixon
******* Amal - Swedish
Full Metal Jacket
Funny Farm 1988
Funny Games
Fur- An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus
G.I. Jane
G.I. Joe Retaliation
Gangs of New York
Gangster Squad
Garden State
Get Rich or Die Tryin'
Ghostbusters 1
Girlfriend
Girl, Interrupted
Glengarry Glen Ross
Gomorra - Italian
Great Expectations 1998
Greenberg
Grindhouse Death Proof
Grindhouse Planet Terror
Groundhog Day 1993
Grumpy Old Men
Grumpier Old Men
Gummo
Gus Van Sant's Last Days
Half Nelson
Hannibal
Havoc
Haywire
Heartbreak Ridge
Heat
Hell on the Pacific 1986
Hesher
Hitchcock
Holy Rollers
Hook
Honey I Shrunk the Kids
Hyde Park on Hudson
I Am Curious Blue
I Am Curious Yellow
I Heart Huckabees
I Stand Alone by Gaspar Noe - French
If Looks Could **** 1991
I'm Not There
In Bruges
In The Line of Fire
Inglorious Basterds
Inland Empire
Innerspace 1987
Innocence
Interview With the Vampire
Jacob's Ladder
James Bond - Diamonds Are Forever 1971
James Bond - From Russia With Love 1963
James Bond - Goldfinger 1964
James Bond - Never Say Never Again 1983
James Bond - On Her Majesty's Secret Service 1969
James Bond - Thunderball 1965
James Bon - You Only Live Twice 1967
Jane Eyre
Jeremiah Johnson 1972
JFK
Joe Versus the Volcano
Johnny English 2
Julien Donkey-Boy
Juno
Just Cause
Kapringen aka A Hijacking - Icelandic
Ken Park
Killing Season
Killing Them Softly
Kindergarten Cop
Kingpin
Koyaanisqatsi
Krippendorf's Tribe
Kiss the Girls
La Vie En Rose
Last Night
Last of the Dogmen
Leon: The Professional
Leonard Pt. 6
Les Miserables
Lie With Me
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Lions For Lambs
Little Children
Lord of the Rings Trilogy BR Extended
Lord of War
Lost Highway
Love and Other Drugs
Love in the Time of Cholera
Love Liza
Lovers of the Arctic Circle
Mad Max 1979
Mad Max 2 1981
Mad Max 3 1985
Major Payne
Malcolm X
Man on Fire
Manhunter
Maverick 1994
Meet Joe Black
Melancholia
Menace II Society DIrector's Cut 1993
Mesrine 1 Killer Instinct - French
Mesrine 2 Public Enemy - French
Milk
Minority Report
Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol
Mister Lonely
Money Train
Moonrise Kingdom
Moulin Rouge
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
****** By Numbers
Munich
My Sassy Girl 2008
Naqoyqatsi Life As War
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
National Treasure Book of Secrets
Never Cry Wolf
Never Let Me Go
New Jack City
New York I Love You
Night on Earth 1991 - Italian
Nixon
Not Fade Away
Notes on a Scandal
O Brother, Where Art Thou
October Sky
Olympus Has Fallen
Ondskan - Swedish
One False Move
Out of Africa
Outbreak
Palmetto
Paris Texas Criterion 1984
Passenger 57
Paths of Glory 1957
Perfect Sense
Peter Pan
Philadelphia 1993
Pinocchio
Pirate Radio
Platoon 1986
Pleasantville
*******
Project X 1987
Proof
Quiz Show
Rabbits
Revolver
Robocop Trilogy
Robot and Frank
Rolling Stone's Gimme Shelter
Romance and Cigarettes
Romeo and Juliet 1996
Sahara
Saving Private Ryan
Schindler's List
Searching For Bobby Fischer
Secretary, The
Seven Years in Tibet
Sgt. Bilko
Shame 2011
Shine
Shooter
Shopgirl
Sid and Nancy
Sin City
Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow
Skyfall
Slackers
Sleepers
Sleeping Beauty 1959
Sleeping Beauty 2011
Sleepy Hollow
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Somewhere
South Central
Sphere
Spread
Spy Game
Stand Up Guys
Stay
Summer Hours - French
Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Synecdoche, NY
Syriana
Talk To Her - Habla Con Ella
Taken 1 & 2
Takers
****
Taxidermia
Tetro
Thank You For Smoking
That Thing You Do!
The Adjustment Bureau
The Age of Innocence by Martin Scorcese 1993
The Bad Lieutenant - Port of Call New Orleans 2009
The Basketball Diaries
The Beach 2000
The Believer
The Beverly Hillbillies
The Black Dahlia
The Blue Lagoon 1980
The Book of Eli
The Boxer
The Constant Gardner
The Conversation
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Darjeeling Limited
The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight Rises
The Day of the Jackal
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
The Fifth Element
The Flock
The Flowers of War
The Fountain
The Getaway
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo 2011
The Golden Compass
The Good Shepherd
The Good The Bad and The Ugly
The Goonies
The Green Mile
The Grey
The Help
The Hudsucker Proxy
The Hurricane
The Hurt Locker
The Ice Storm
The Ides of March
The Illusionist
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
The Impossible
The Informers
The Invasion
The Iron Lady
The Island of Dr. Moreau
The Jackal
The ****
The Killer Inside Me
The Kingdom
The Legend of Bagger Vance
The Lost Boys
The Lost Boys The Tribe
The Lost Boys Thirst
The Machinist
The Mask
The Man Who Fell to Earth 1976
The Master
The Mechanic
The Money Pit
The Naked Gun 1
The Naked Gun 2
The Naked Gun 3
The New World
The Pelican Brief
The Place Beyond the Pines
The Prestige
The Queen
The Raven
The Reader
The Red Balloon
The Right Stuff
The Road
The Rock
The Rocketeer
The Rules of Attraction
The *** Diary
The Saint
The Shawshank Redemption
The Silence of the Lambs
The Skin I Live In - Mexican
The Soloist
The Talented Mr. Ripley
The Thin Red Line
The Town
Transformers Trilogy
The Tree of Life
Tron Legacy 2010
The United States of Leland
The Usual Suspects
The Way Back
There Will Be Blood
There's Something About Mary
Three Days of the Condor
Three Kings
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
To the Wonder
To Rome With Love

Tombstone
Total Recall 1990
Trainspotting
Trash Humpers
True Lies
Two Lovers
Two Weeks in September(Brigette Bardot) 1967
Tyrannosaur
Unbreakable
Uncle Buck
Unforgiven
Unleashed
Unstoppable
V for Vendetta
Varsity Blues
Vertigo
Vicky Christina Barcelona
Videodrome
Virtuosity
Wag the Dog
Wake Up Ron Burgundy The Lost Movie
Walkabout
Wall Street 1987
Wall Street 2010
Wanderlust
Water World
Wayne's World 1 & 2
We Are The Night
War Witch
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Weekend by Jean-Luc Godard - French
Weekend 2011
West of Memphis
What Doesn't **** You
What's Eating Gilbert Grape
When Harry Met Sally
Where the Wild Things Are
White House Down
White Material Criterion 2009
White Oleander
Who is Harry Nilsson?
Wolf 1992
Womb
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
Zardoz 1974


Documentaries & Music Videos


BBC - Life in Cold Blood
BBC - Planet Earth
BBC - Rolling Stones Crossfire Hurricane
BBC - Great Bear Steakout
BBC - Ice Age Giants
BBC - Insect Worlds
BBC - Life on Earth 1979
BBC - Lost Cities of the Ancients
BBC - Operation Snow Tiger
BBC - Penguins: Spy in the Huddle
BBC - Polar Bear: Spy on the Ice
BBC - Richard Hammond's Miracles of Nature
BBC - The Life of Birds
BBC - Wonders of Life
David Blaine Collection
**** Proenke Collection - Alone and Solitude, The Frozen North
Encounters at the End of the World 2007
Nanook of the North
National Geographic Wild Kingdom of the Oceans Giants of the Deep: Whales
Shine A Light - The Rolling Stones
Vladimir Horowitz - Der Ietzte Romantiker
Vladimir Horowitz - Live in Vienna 1987
Vladimir Horowitz - The 1968 TV Concert
Whale Adventure with Nigel Marvin

(route 76) both heading into
(and a small number of hours later
exiting) center city Philadelphia
to Schwenksville on May 19th, 2024.

Yours truly (a doodling Yankee), and the missus
went to town, NOT riding on a pony,
NOR did I stick a feather in my cap,
but we walked at a brisk pace
unwittingly set by our eldest daughter
from her three bed apartment
at 405 south 22nd street
to a museum housing
an awesome breathtaking eye opening place
called The Magic Garden
located at 1020 South Street,
Philadelphia, PA 19147.

Herewith follows a blurb
copied/pasted courtesy Google in general
and Wikipedia in particular.

Philadelphia's Magic Gardens is a non-profit organization, folk art environment, and gallery space on South Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. To date, it is the largest work created by mosaic artist Isaiah Zagar. The Magic Gardens spans three city lots, and includes indoor galleries and a large outdoor labyrinth.

Initially, we (thyself, the spouse,
and averred twenty seven year old heiress
to the Harris misfortune).
intended to ride SEPTA,
but the bus driver quickly pulled away.

So trio comprised of the Mister and Missus
and their city smart grown daughter,
who earned the appellation "star student"
for her superb academic performance
(quite evident even when
she started kindergarten)
and voluntarily enrolled
in advanced placement
after she got promoted to sophomore year
at Harriton High School.

After our energetic hustling
only a short distance
(courtesy "rubber express"
id est sneakers), the papa bear (me)
he experienced relentless dehydration,
and struggled with impossible mission
to generate saliva, hence dry mouth
afflicted hokey pokey man,
who brought up the rear.

Upon determinedly trekking without complaint
circumstances found urgency forcibly tapping
into immediately realized heretofore unknown
potential emergency reserve
whereat solar plexus witnessed hyper boost
setting body electric of mine in overdrive
increasing heavy huffing and puffing
ever so glad to complete
rightly striding twelve plus city blocks,
whereat pace of mine got perceptibly slower
as the end point got nearer,
and what an amazing sight to behold!

The sprawling conglomeration
held together analogous to fortification
against invasion of architectural conformity
haphazard juxtaposed linkedin naturally
poetic/prosaic rhapsodic traditional
vaulted xenotime zaniness.

Isaiah Zagar, the brainchild
American mosaic artist
based in Philadelphia
notable for his murals, primarily
in or around Philadelphia's South Street.

After three years in Peru, the Zagars moved to South Philadelphia in 1968 where they opened the Eyes Gallery, a folk art shop on South Street. In December 1968, the Eyes Gallery was the site of Zagar's first mosaic; Zagar mosaiced it as a way to create a folk art environment for the art they were selling.

After perusing the sacred structures in relative silence
thru these myopic eyes of a skeptic
echoing blood, sweat and tears of said artist,
which perambulation evinced the Great Tribulation
in Christian eschatology a period
mentioned by Jesus in the Olivet Discourse
as a sign that would occur in the time of the end.

At Revelation 7:14, "the Great Tribulation"
is used to indicate the period spoken of by Jesus.

No blatant religious symbology,
yet the invisible hand of divine spirit
gently, minutely, and subtly
ordained, intruded, experienced,
and anointed yours truly
challenging, condemning,
and curbing profane thoughts
subsequently inviting rumination
linkedin with inspiration to witness
my own slice of palatable spiritual awakening,
which served me in good (home) stead,
a sexagenarian awash with discombobulation
when amidst the beauty
of inexplicable fabulous creation,
clashing with personal paganistic paradigm.

Belief in guardian angels
became pronounced when entrusting
orienting myself behind the wheel
of our 2020 Hyundai Elantra
accessing the (oxymoronic named)
high speed thoroughfare
iterated in initial lines of this poem,
cuz bumper to bumper traffic
on that late Sunday afternoon
found atheistic dogmatism
severely put thru the paces,

particularly when resigning
being sorely tested to drive
after twilight (cataracts exacerbate glare),
hence hitching a wish to return
to Schwenksville
without getting into a serious accident or worse,
which impromptu wing and a prayer
spurred whim to exit at Lincoln Drive,
following hairpin twists and turns,
which anxiety precipitated
increasing need to urinate.

Trash along the curb line and on the streets
People walking around with growling bellies
From not enough to eat
Better not speak or look at anyone or their mean look
Or razor tongue will cut you down
Philadelphia is called the city of brotherly love
Here markers and monuments stand silent from all of those shot and
Killed honoring the young and old who have died
A fact that it's very clear and evident that more peace and human
Understanding should have been tried
I know for myself that in this big place
You cant make it on your very own
Because people in many large numbers find themselves lost and crying
All alone. I'm telling on philadelphia
Which is now my home

The woman in the blue Chevy said: “Just five dollars please,” as I pumped two more dollars of Sunoco 260 into the aging four door sedan.  As she paid me and then left, I looked at the Croton Chronograph Watch on my wrist that I had gone into hock for last fall.  5:15, SHOOT!!!, I only had 45 minutes to jump on my bike and make it the fifteen miles back to West Philadelphia to class.

I was taking night courses at St Joseph’s College (St Joseph’s University now), and my first class started at 6:00 p.m.  Why? I asked myself again did I always cut it so close?  Deep inside I knew the answer, but I told myself it was because I was a good employee.  I had been pumping gas and renting U-Haul Trucks at an Arco gas station in North Hills Pa. for the past two years. The station was open till 6 p.m. every day, and it seemed I never got out of there until after 5.

It was owned by a good friend of mine, Bob, whom I had met in Ocean City New Jersey while living in the rooming house that he and his wife Pat owned at 14th street and Asbury Ave.  Every day at five o’clock, Bob would yell out to me on the gas island — “time to leave!” He knew how long the ride was back to school during rush hour and that I never seemed to get out by 5.

The real answer as to why I was always late was that I liked the challenge. I loved the ride through the small section of Fairmount Park and then the river town of Manayunk always trying to get back to my apartment at 54th and Woodland Ave in the Overbrook section of Philadelphia before six.  54th and Woodland was right across the street from St Joe’s, and I would literally race into the driveway in front of my apartment house, drop the bike’s kickstand run inside to change and then head for class.  Many times, I would not even change out of my Arco jumper (uniform) before heading over to campus.  I often didn’t have the time.  I wondered what some of the other people, especially girls, must have thought of the strange aroma that I brought to the class on the nights when I didn’t change.

            To Their Credit, No One Ever Complained

I had always secretly wanted to road-race motorcycles, and this twenty-minute ride both to and from work every day gave me a chance to indulge my fantasy.  Tonight, I would be cutting it very close and not even have time to stop at my apartment.  I would have to park under the tree in front of my classroom building and run up the stairs to the third floor and do it all before six o’clock. It was an advanced Philosophy class, Ethics and Morality, and the professor, Dr. Larry McKinnon closed the doors promptly at six.  If you were late, you didn’t get in — no exceptions!

I raced through the park on Bells Mill Road and hit the cobblestone hills of Manayunk with 15 minutes still left on my watch.  I then raced up City Line Ave and caught only one red light as I saw the lights of 54th and City Line straight ahead. The light was yellow as I leaned over hard and made the left turn on 54th St. I raced up past the basketball arena and turned right on Woodland Ave. I would normally have gone straight a half block to my apartment, but I had cut it too close and didn’t have the time. I pulled up in front of the Villiger Building, chained my bike to the tree I always used, and ran for the stairway door around back by the track.

This building had no elevator, so it was up two flights of stairs to the top floor and then left down the hall to where my classroom was the one farthest on the right.

As I rushed through the back door of Villiger, the first flight of stairs was blocked.  An elderly man with a Gulf Oil Hat on was struggling to pull his son in a wheelchair up the 26 stairs.  He had the entire stairway blocked, and I had less than two minutes to get by him and into McKinnon’s class.   His son in the wheelchair was in really bad shape.  He was in a total body brace that went clear to his head, and as he looked down at me, I heard him say: “Hey Moose, grab the front, and we’ll both make it to McKinnon’s class before he shuts the door.”

With that, I grabbed the small front wheels and lifted, as we both carried the wheelchair up the two flights of stairs to the third floor.  We entered the hallway just as Dr. McKinnon was shutting the door.  The kid in the wheelchair yelled out, “Wait for us Doc” as we raced for the closing door.  I took the handles of the chair away from his dad and pushed the chair inside.  We had made it but not any too soon.

I wondered to myself if McKinnon would have denied entry to this kid who had been stricken with polio if he had arrived just two minutes later. It would have taken at least that long if his dad had tackled those stairs alone.  I parked his wheelchair next to my desk on the far left as the professor started his lecture.  When it was over, I pushed his wheelchair outside to where his dad was waiting.

“Ed Hudak,” his father said, “and this is my son Eddie.  Thanks so much for helping us up the stairs. I got out of work late and had to race home to the Northeast section of Philadelphia, pick Eddie up, and then race back down here to get him to class.”  Mr. Hudak worked at the Gulf Oil Refinery in South Philadelphia.  To leave work at four o’clock and get all the way up to the Northeast, pick up his crippled son, and then race back down to West Philadelphia made the little twenty-minute jaunt that I did every day seem like child’s play.

His son Eddie then asked me where my next class was. “Dr Marshall’s ‘Rational Psychology,’ I told him” as he said, “mine too, you can push me over there and my dad can go to the student union and get something to eat and rest for a while.”  School had only started last week, and somehow I had missed seeing this crippled kid in both of my classes.  He told me he had seen me though because of the strange jumper I had on and the helmet I carried into class.  When he told his father about me his dad said: “That kid must work in a gas station and be paying for school himself.  Cut him some slack if he doesn’t look real presentable on those days when he’s late.”

Eddie and I finished both classes together and I got ready to push him back outside.  As we passed the vending machines on the first floor, I told him that this was where I usually stopped to have dinner before going home.  He asked me, “What’s your favorite?” and I told him, “the Dinty Moore beef stew.”  The machine had three different varieties and that was usually all I had until breakfast the next day.  Eddie said he would like to wait while I ate and that his father would be fine outside for a few more minutes.  He seemed to know something about our new relationship that would take quite a bit longer for me to discover and sort out.

                  Eddie Always Seemed To ‘Just Know’

I asked Eddie what his major was, and he said Literature, and that he had been a student here for almost six years.  Again, I wondered, how could I have missed him in that wheelchair with someone always pushing him to where he needed to go?  I hoped I hadn’t refused to see him in his diminished condition with my eyes always looking away.  These kinds of things always bothered me, and I was squeamish around handicapped people, especially children. My mother had volunteered at the St. Edmond’s Home For Crippled Children in Rosemont for many years, but I was still uncomfortable when I saw those kids, not much younger than I was, in wheelchairs and leg braces.

                Eddie’s Condition Was Much Worse

The only thing handicapped about Eddie was his body. His mind and spirit were stronger than any five, so-called, normal people.  His father had made sure of that.  His dad had been racing from work to home and then to school for almost six years devoting whatever spare time he had to what his son wanted to accomplish.  He would drop Eddie off at class and then, most nights, go sleep in his car in the school parking lot.  Many nights, the temperature in that parking lot was below freezing, but this sixty-year-old man NEVER complained.


        Who Was Really Handicapped, Eddie Or Me?

As much as I marveled at how well Eddie did in spite of being disabled, his father amazed me even more.  He was like so many heroes that we never hear about standing off in the shadows so that someone else can thrive.  After I finished my stew, I pushed Eddie outside to where his dad was waiting.  He shook my hand and said: “Son, without your help tonight, we’d have really been in a terrible fix.”

                               He Called Me “Son”

As I watched him wheel Eddie back toward their car in the parking lot, I pushed my long hair back and pulled my helmet over my head.  The chinstrap I left unbuckled on these short rides because it always got tangled in my beard.  I rode the two short blocks back to my apartment with the sight of Eddie and his dad burned into the front of my psyche.  I knew I had witnessed something special tonight, I just didn’t know yet how special it truly was or would then become.

Now, I had an entirely new reason for getting to school on time.  I was not going to let that diminutive older man pull that wheelchair up those stairs one more time — not if I could help it.  I was never late again for the rest of that semester, as Eddie and I became fast friends with he and his dad even visiting my apartment on more than one occasion.  I became a real master at pulling that sled of his up the stairs, and we often got help from other male students as we made the climb.

Eddie told me in confidence one day that I had been good for his dad.  I thought he was referring to the physical exertion I had save him, and Eddie said: “No, it’s more than that. My dad has never liked anyone with long hair and a beard, and he told my mother the other night that you were the first.  He then went on to say that maybe it was just hair and that he shouldn’t let things like that bother him anymore.”  I was both flattered and gratified that he saw something in me, something that I still may not have seen in myself.

Mr. Hudak had been a World War 2 veteran and participated as a Chaplain’s Assistant in such major conflicts as D-Day and The Battle Of The Bulge.  His Jeep had sunk in deep water during the D-Day landing, and he and the Chaplain had to swim two hundred yards to shore amidst enemy fire.  He was a great man in the tradition of all great men who provide unselfish and heroic service while asking for nothing in return. In many ways, I secretly wished that he had been my dad too.  

My father had also been in World War 2 as a Marine and fought many engagements in the South Pacific.  He was a hero to me, but the difference between my father and Mr. Hudak was, my dad loved me, but he didn’t seem interested in my life now.  He didn’t approve of my studying Philosophy, and he couldn’t understand why I hadn’t chosen a more conventional career path like the sons of so many of his friends.

  In Ways I Couldn’t Understand, I Think I Embarrassed My Father

What my dad didn’t know was, that underneath the long hair and beard, my beliefs were a little to the right of Attila The ***. Unfortunately, we never had a serious conversation where he could have discovered that.  

The semester finally came to an end and the Christmas holidays were now upon us.  It was cold weather to be riding a motorcycle but, when that’s all you have. then that’s what you ride. On the last day of class before break, Mr. Hudak pulled me aside.  “My wife Marge and I are having a little party next Saturday night, and we’d like you to come.”  Everything inside me was trying to find an excuse not to go, but all I was capable of was shaking my head yes and thanking this great man for the kind invitation.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to meet his family. It was that I literally had nothing to wear and only the motorcycle to get me there.  My entire wardrobe consisted of two pairs of jeans, three t-shirts, and one beige fisherman’s knit sweater that I had bought at a local discount store.  I still hadn’t worn the sweater, and the tags were still on it.  I kept telling myself I was saving it for a special occasion.  Well, what could be more special than meeting Mr. Hudak’s family. The afternoon of the party I removed the tags from the sweater and ran down to the Laundromat and washed my newest jeans.

Eddie had told me that the get together would start around seven, but I could arrive anytime I wanted.  As I pulled the motorcycle up in front of their brick row house, I looked for a place to park the bike where it wouldn’t stand out. I already looked like a child of the sixties, and the motorcycle would only give them something else to focus on that might be misleading.

My fears were totally unfounded as I walked through the front door.  Mr. Hudak greeted me warmly, as Eddie yelled out in a voice all could hear: “My buddy Kurt’s here.”  My buddy Kurt! Those words have stayed with me and have provided sustenance during times when I thought my life was tough.  All I had to do in those moments was think of Eddie and what he and his family had been through, and my pity party for myself ended almost quicker than it began.

                         “My Buddy Kurt’s Here”

No sooner did I wave to Eddie than Mrs. Hudak came bouncing out of the kitchen.  Literally bouncing! This tiny woman of 5’1’’ came bounding across the dining room floor and immediately reached up and threw both of her arms around my neck.  She squeezed hard and it felt good.  It was real and she wanted me to know that.  Eddie had also explained to me how physically strong his mother was. It was the result of having to carry him up and down two flights of stairs from his bedroom to their recreation room in the basement below.  She did this several times a day.

I don’t know how high the heat was set to in their house that night, but I had never felt so warm — or accepted.  To an outsider like me it even looked like love, which I was to find out shortly is exactly what it was.  I wanted to take my heavy sweater off, but I had nothing on underneath but an old t-shirt.  Mrs. Hudak’s name was Marge, and she was from an old Irish family named McCarty. When she first saw me earlier, after I had removed my jacket, she said: “What a lovely sweater, shorin it tis.”

                                It Felt Like Love

I spent that night getting to know everyone, and in no time felt like one of the family.  At ten o’clock the guests started to leave and Marge took me into the kitchen.  “Can you stay a little while longer, because at eleven there is someone who I want you to meet?”  I said sure, as she fed me more cake and cookies telling me that they were baked special by the evening’s mystery guest.

At eleven fifteen the front door opened with an “I’m home,” coming from a young woman’s voice.  As I stood up, a flash of white turned the corner and entered the kitchen.  There in her finest nurse’s regalia, stood Eddie’s younger sister, Kathryn, who had just finished the evening shift at Nazareth Hospital in North Philadelphia.

“WOW, WAS SHE SOMETHING,” is all I could hear myself saying as she took her first look at me.  “So, this is the guy I’ve heard so much about huh,” she said as she walked to the refrigerator.  “Based on my brother’s description, I thought you would have been at least ten feet tall.”  Mildly sarcastic for sure, but I was smitten right away.

Later, I heard her on the phone with someone who sounded like her boyfriend.  They seemed to be fighting, and I sensed from the look on her dad’s face that they weren’t crazy about him either.  He said: “I hope it’s over,” and in less than a minute Kathryn came into the living room with tears in her eyes.  As she ran up the stairs to her bedroom, you could hear her say, “What A ****!” I prayed she wasn’t referring to me.  

Her mother ran up the stairs after her but before she did, she asked me not to leave.  Ten minutes later she came back downstairs and said: “You haven’t finished your cookies and cake in the kitchen.”

Marge was right, and I really wanted to finish them, but I was now starting to feel uncomfortable and in the middle of something that wasn’t for me to see or hear. Not wanting to seem rude, I followed her back to the kitchen table and sat down as she refilled my glass with milk. “So, what are your plans for the holidays,” she asked, as I wolfed down the sweets.

“Oh, nothing much,” I said, “just schoolwork and my job at the gas station.”  “And how about New Year’s Eve she asked?”  “Oh, nothing planned, probably just go see my grandparents and then watch the ball drop on TV in my apartment if I make it till twelve”.  “Why don’t you ask Kathryn out” she said, as her eyes twinkled? I thought I must have been hearing things and looked baffled, so she repeated it again…

                  Why Don’t You Ask Kathryn Out

This kindly woman, from this great family, was suggesting that I take their pride and joy daughter, Kathyrn, out for New Year’s Eve.  I didn’t know what to say. “Why don’t you think about it?  I’ll bet the two of you would have fun. I think based on tonight she is now free for New Year’s Eve too.”

I was literally in shock and not prepared for this.  I had recently broken up with a long-term girlfriend who I had dated all through high school and college.  I had convinced myself that I needed a break from girls for a while, and now here I was faced with dating Mr. Hudak’s only daughter.  In a few minutes, Marge walked out of the kitchen and Kathryn walked back in. She was now dressed in her pajamas and robe. If I had been smitten before, I was totally taken now.

I knew the first thing I said might be my last, so after a long pause I uttered: “So, I hear you’re not doing anything for New Years Eve?”  Not the best ice breaker as she yelled out to her mother: “Mommmmm, what did you tell him.”  Her mother didn’t answer.  I said again: “Kathy, please don’t take it the wrong way, I don’t have a date for New Year’s either.”  She looked at me for what seemed like an eternity, that in reality lasted for just a few seconds, before saying: “And just where do you propose we should go, Mr. Wonderful?”  Thank God I had an answer.

                           The Ice Had Broken

“Zaberers,” I said: “They’re open twenty-four hours. They have dinner and dancing and then a big show right after midnight.”  “Zaberers, huh,” she said, as she looked at me once more.  “All right, you can pick me up at eight.” With that, I didn’t want to push my luck.  I thanked her parents for the wonderful evening and wanted to say good night to Eddie, but he had already gone to bed.  That was what Marge was doing on her second trip upstairs — what a woman!!!

                          What A Woman Indeed!

Kathy and I had a great time on that first date on New Years Eve. All we really talked about was her father and about how hard he had struggled to keep the family together and how lucky he was to have found a woman like Marge who was the love of his life.

Kathy and I were engaged to be married just nine weeks later on March 5th,, and then married that fall on September 22nd 1974.  I was now a real part of the family that I had admired from afar.  Kathy and I had two children, and Marge and Ed were the best grandparents that two kids could ever have hoped for. They were lucky enough to see both of their grandchildren grow into adulthood and attend their college graduations. They were also able to proudly attend the wedding of their oldest grandchild, our daughter Melissa.

We lost Ed Hudak, my father-in-law, my guardian, and my friend, last December, and the world has been a little less bright with only the memory of him here now.  In many ways, he was the best of what we are all still trying to become, and his spirit remains inside us during the times of our greatest need.

For me though, I’ll never forget the time of our first meeting. That late September afternoon when I looked up those stairs at St Joe’s and not a word needed to be said. Here was a Saint of a man doing what real men do and doing it quietly. With humble dignity, his spirit reached out to me that day and filled an empty place inside of me with his love.

Now, forty years later, that same spirit occupies a bigger and bigger place in my life. From somewhere deep inside my soul it continues to live on, and I know for as long as I can remember — it will never let me go.

                           And I Called Him … ‘The Chief’

avenue sounds are never agreeable, ignore the drift,
ignore the hum,
ignore the suburban neophytes in the city lights (I never did care much for hipsters).
ignore rapid eye movements, the flush red face, ignore the snapshots of you that adorn my semi-sleep state

I stare at my ceiling and see the cobblestone summer streets you once graced, long ago in the eternal occident, I want to ignore but I’m so very boozed, in a blue lucid slumber:::

eyes closed::: my head spins and sleep begins with the tidal delirium of dopamine drips, your legs, your hips, I’m drowning a bit, doused in a sanguine sweat inside a fantasy (**** I’m dreaming of you)

Synaptic friction
she is a pleasant fiction  
flash/sparks segue a dormant memory ,
the two of us riding familiar highways::: she gazes at me with her usual emerald encased ocular torment, those limbal rings cast aspersions at the last vestiges of my will power, until, I’m done, done in by the divinity of her lips:::

There is no end to (your) energy
It even finds me here::: in my dystopian  dream (eternal)
now
an inescapable, myopic curse
(nocturnal):::
the nightmare of not having you near

Awake, I roll over to clutch for the pacifier of your comfort (violent midnight)
I find only a fragrance,
i flail, searching, when those flashbacks fall short
isolated into the banality of bedsheets and pillows pleats

(the retrograde nature of my reality, now readily apparent)



cdh

I remember the night before Philly.
I drove over a little too fast,
and waited outside a little too long so you wouldn’t notice.
Because I was always rushing for you
when you were trudging behind me.

To my small self of 16,
I couldn’t think of a better way to spend my summer days
but with you.
By summer days I mean nights,
and by nights I mean anytime after 10,
or sometimes one a.m.,
you know, the times that you would call me.

I remember helping you pack for college; the day seemed lonely
and you seemed free.
Your clothes were piled on top of boxes that would never be able to hold them.
But somehow you still managed to leave.

“So I’ll see you over break, I guess,” was all you had to say.
And somehow this stark simplicity justified my ways.
I only felt the insincerity of that brief phrase as I sat alone over break.
It played in my head as I pictured my hand hitting your face.

I don’t have time for guessing.
And I most definitely can sew up the time I left open for you.

You seemed so beautiful in the summer,
but maybe it was just the shine of the sun.
I felt alive driving to your house,
but maybe it was just the adventure of our run.

I realize now who I was to you.
It took five months, cities away and laughs so few.
But I was your designated driver,
your friend when you needed one,
your nap when you were tired.
I was your help-me-pack-for-college friend,
your, “Soph, grab me and Connor,” friend.
Your hungover coffee,
your fill in at tables set for two.
And now from Philadelphia,
I mean nothing to you.

Dear Readers, I have tried to cover the salient features of this True Story in free flowing verse mainly with end rhymes. If you read it loud, you can hear the chimes! Due to the short attention span of my readers I had to cut short this long story, and conclude with the
Golden Era of Hollywood by stretching it up to the 1950s only. When TV began to challenge the Big Screen Cinema seriously! I have used only a part of my notes here. Kindly read the
entire composition during your Spare Time dear Readers. I wish there was a provision for posting a few interesting photographs for you here. Best wishes, - Raj Nandy, New Delhi.  

                THE LEGEND OF HOLLYWOOD :
                      THE AMERICAN  DREAM
                              BY RAJ NANDY

               A SHORT  HISTORICAL  BACKGROUND
Since the earliest days, optical toys, shadow shows, and ‘magic
lanterns’, had created the illusion of motion.
This concept was first described by Mark Roget in 1824 as  
the persistent of vision.
Giving impetus to the development of big screen cinema with its
close-ups, capturing all controlled and subtle expressions!
The actors were no longer required to shout out their parts with
exaggerated actions as on the Elizabethan Stage.
Now even a single tear drop could get noticed easily by the entire
movie audience!
With the best scene being included and edited after a few retakes.
To Thomas Edison and his able assistant William Rogers we owe the invention of Kinetoscope, the first movie camera.
On the grounds of his West Orange, New Jersey laboratory, Edison
built his first movie studio called the ‘Black Maria’.   (1893)
He also purchased a string of patents related to motion picture
Camera;
Forming the Edison Trust, - a cartel that took control of the Film
Industry entire!

Fort Lee, New Jersey:
On a small borough on the opposite bank of the Hudson River lay
the deserted Fort Lee.
Here scores of film production crews descended armed with picture Cameras, on this isolated part of New Jersey!
In 1907 Edison’s company came there to shoot a short silent film –
‘Rescue From an Eagle’s Nest’,
Which featured for the first time the actor and director DW Griffith.
The independent Chaplin Film Company built the first permanent
movie studio in 1910 in Fort Lee.
While some of the biggest Hollywood studios like the Universal,
MGM, and 20th Century Fox, had their roots in Fort Lee.
Some of the famous stars of the silent movie era included ‘Fatty’
Arbuckle, Will Rogers, Mary Pickford, Dorothy and Lillian Gish,
Lionel Barrymore, Rudolph Valentine and Pearl White.
In those days there were no reflectors and electric arch lights.
So movies were made on rooftops to capture the bright Sunlight!
During unpredictable bad weather days, filming had to be stopped
despite the revolving stage which was made, -
To rotate and capture the sunlight before the lights started to fade!

Shift from New Jersey to West Coast California:
Now Edison who held the patents for the bulb, phonograph, and the Camera, had exhibited a near monopoly;
On the production, distribution, and exhibition of the movies which made this budding industry to shift to California from New Jersey!
California with its natural scenery, its open range, mountains, desert, and snow country, had the basic ingredients for the movie industry.
But most importantly, California had bright Sunshine for almost 365 days of the year.
While eight miles away from Hollywood lay the port city of Los Angeles with its cheap labor.

                        THE  RISE  OF  HOLLYWOOD
It was a real estate tycoon Harvey Wilcox and his wife Daeida from
Kansas, who during the 1880s founded ‘Hollywood’ as a community for like-minded temperate followers.
It is generally said that Daeida gave the name Hollywood perhaps
due to the area's abundant red-berried shrubs - known as
California Holly!
Spring blossoms around and above the Hollywood Hills with its rich variety,  gave it a touch of paradise for all to see!
Hollywood was incorporated as a municipality in 1903, and during
1910 had unified with the city of Los Angeles.
While a year later, the first film studio had moved in from New
Jersey, to escape Thomas Edison’s monopoly!    (1911)

In 1913 Cecil B. De Mille and Jesse Lasky, had leased a barn with
studio facilities.
And directed the first feature length film ‘Squaw Man’ in 1914.
Today this studio is home to Hollywood Heritage Museum as we get to see.
The timeless symbol of Hollywood film industry that famous sign on top of Mount Lee, was put up by a real estate developer in 1923.  
This sign had read as ‘’HOLLY WOOD LAND’’ initially.
Despite decades of run-ins with vandals and pranksters, it managed to hang on to its prime location near the summit of the Hollywood Hills.
The last restoration work was carried out in 1978 initiated by Hugh
Hefner of the ******* Magazine.
Those nine white letters 45 feet tall now read ‘HOLLYWOOD’,  has become a landmark and America’s cultural icon,
And an evocative symbol for ambition, glamour, and dreams!
Forever enticing aspiring actors to flock to Hollywood, hypnotized by lure of the Big Screen!

                     GOLDEN AGE OF HOLLYWOOD
The Silent Movie Era which began in 1895, ended in 1935 with the
production of ‘Dance of Virgins’, filmed entirely in the island of Bali.
The first Sound film ‘The Jazz Singer’ by Warner Bros. was made with a Vitaphone sound-on-disc technology.  (October 1927)
Despite the Great Depression of the 1930s, this decade along with the 1940s have been regarded by some as Hollywood’s Golden Age.
However, I think that this Golden Age includes the decades of the
1940s and the 1950s instead.
When the advent of Television began to challenge the Film Industry
itself !

First Academy Award:
On 16th May 1929 in the Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard,
the First Academy Award presentation was held.
Around 270 people were in attendance, and tickets were priced at
$5 per head.
When the best films of 1927 & 1928 were honored by the Academy
of Motion Production and Sciences, or the AMPS.
Emil Jennings became the best actor, and Janet Gaynor the best actress.
Special Award went to Charlie Chaplin for his contribution to the
silent movie era and for his silent film ‘The Circus’.
While Warren Brothers was commended for making the first talking picture ‘The Jazz Singer’, - also receiving a Special Award!
Now, the origin of the term ‘OSCAR’ has remained disputed.
The Academy adopted this name from 1939 onwards it is stated.
OSCAR award has now become “the stuff dreams are made of”!
It is a gold-plated statuette of a knight 13.5 inches in height, weighing 8.5 pounds, was designed by MGM’s art director Cedric Gibbons.
Annually awarded for honoring and encouraging excellence in all
facets of motion picture productions.

Movies During the Great Depression Era (1929-1941):
Musicals and dance movies starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers provided escapism and good entertainment during this age.
“Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did. She just did it
backwards and in high heels,” - the critics had said.
This compatible pair entertained the viewers for almost one and
a half decade.
During the ‘30s, gangster movies were popular starring James Cagey, Humphrey Bogart, and Edward G. Robinson.
While family movies had their popular child artist Shirley Temple.
Swashbuckler films of the Golden Age saw the sword fighting scenes of Douglas Fairbank and Errol Flynn.
Flynn got idolized playing ‘Robin Hood’, this film was released in 1938 on the Big Screen.
Story of the American Civil War got presented in the epic ‘Gone With The Wind’ (1939) with Clarke Gable and Vivian Leigh.
This movie received 8 Oscars including the award for the Best Film, - creating a landmark in motion picture’s history!
More serious movies like John Steinbeck’s ‘Grapes of Wrath’ and John Ford’s  ‘How Green Was My Valley’, were released in 1940 and 1941 respectively.
While the viewers escaped that depressive age to the magical world
of  ‘Wizard of Oz’ with its actress Judy Garland most eagerly!
Let us not forget John Wayne the King of the Westerns, who began
his acting career in the 1930s with his movie ‘The Big Trail’;
He went on to complete 84 films before his career came to an end.
Beginning of the 40s also saw Bob Hope and the crooner Bing Crosby, who entertained the public and also the fighting troops.
For the Second World War (1939-45) had interrupted the Golden Age of Hollywood!
When actors like Henry Fonda, Clarke Gable, James Stewart and
Douglas Fairbanks joined the armed forces temporarily leaving
Hollywood.
Few propaganda movies supporting the war efforts were also made.
While landmark movies like ‘Philadelphia Story’, ‘Casablanca’, ‘Citizen Kane’, ‘The Best Years of Our Lives’, were some of the most successful movies of that decade.  (The 1940s)
Now I come towards the end of my Hollywood Story with the decade  of the 1950s, thereby extending the period of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Since having past the Great Depression and the Second World War,  
The Hollywood movie industry truly matured and came of age.

                        HOLLYWOOD  OF  THE  1950s
Backgroun­d:
The decade of the ‘50s was known for its post-war affluence and
choice of leisure time activities.
It was a decade of middle-class values, fast-food restaurants, and
drive-in- movies;
Of ‘baby-boom’, all-electric home, the first credit cards, and new fast moving cars like the Ford, Plymouth, Buick, Hudson, and Chevrolet.
But not forgetting the white racist terrorism in the Southern States!
This era saw the beginning of Cold War, with Dwight D. Eisenhower succeeding Harry S. Truman as the American President.
But for the film industry, most importantly, what really mattered  
was the advent of the Domestic TV.
When the older viewers preferred to stay at home instead of going
out to the movies.
By 1950, 10.5 million US homes had a television set, and on the
30th December 1953, the first Color TV went on sale!
Film industries used techniques such as Cinemascope, Vista Vision,
and gimmicks like 3-D techniques,
To get back their former movie audience back on their seats!
However, the big scene spectacle films did retain its charm and
fantasy.
Since fantasy epics like ‘The Story of Robin Hood’, and Biblical epics like ‘The Robe’, ‘Quo Vadis’, ‘The Ten Commandments’ and ‘Ben-Hur’, did retain its big screen visual appeal.
‘The Robe’ released on 16th September 1953, was the first film shot
and projected in Cinema Scope;
In which special lenses were used to compress a wide image into a
standard frame and then expanded it again during projection;
Resulting in an image almost two and a half times as high and also as wide, - captivating the viewers imagination!

Demand For New Themes During The 1950s :
The idealized portrayal of men and women since the Second World War,
Now failed to satisfy the youth who sought exciting symbols for rebellion.
So Hollywood responded with anti-heroes with stars like James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Paul Newman.
They replaced conventional actors like Tyron Power, Van Johnson, and Robert Taylor to a great extent, to meet the requirement of the age.
Anti-heroines included Ava Gardner, Kim Novak, and Marilyn Monroe with her vibrant *** appeal;
They provided excitement for the new generation with a change of scene.
Themes of rebellion against established authority was present in many Rock and Roll songs,
Including the 1954 Bill Hailey and His Comets’ ‘Rock Around the Clock’.
The era also saw rise to stardom of Elvis Presley the teen heartthrob!
Meeting the youthful aspirations with his songs like ‘Jailhouse Rock’!
I recall the lyrics of this 1957 film ‘Jailhouse Rock’ of my school days, which had featured the youth icon Elvis:
   “The Warden threw a party in the county jail,
     The prison band was there and they began to wail.
     The band was jumping and the joint began to sing,
     You should’ve heard them knocked-out jail bird sing.
     Let’s rock, everybody in the whole cell block……………
     Spider Murphy played the tenor saxophone,
     Little Joe was blowing the slide trombone.
     The drummer boy from Illinois went crash, boom, bang!
     The whole rhythm section was the Purple Gang, Let's rock...

Rock and Roll music began to tear down color barriers, and Afro-
American musicians like Chuck Berry and Little Richard became
very popular!
Now I must caution my readers that thousands of feature films got  released during this eventful decade in Hollywood.
To cover them all within this limited space becomes an impossible
task, which may kindly be understood !
However, I shall try to do so in a summarized form as best as I could.

Box Office Hits Year-Wise From 1950 To 1959 :
Top Ten Year-Wise hit films chronologically are: Cinderella (1950),
Quo Vadis, The Greatest Show on Earth, Peter Pan, Rear Window,
Lady and the *****, Ten Commandments, Bridge on the River
Kwai, South Pacific, and Ben-Hur of 1959.

However Taking The Entire Decade Of 1950s Collectively,
The Top Films Get Rated As Follows Respectively:
The Ten Commandments, followed by Lady and the *****, Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty, Bridge on the River Kwai, Around the World in Eighty Days, This is Cinerama, The Greatest Show on Earth, Rear Window, South Pacific, The Robe, Giant, Seven Wonders of the World, White Christmas, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Sayonara, Demetrius and the Gladiator, Peyton Place, Some Like It Hot, Quo Vadis, and Auntie Mame.

Film Debuts By Rising Stars During The 1950s :
The decade of the ‘50s saw a number of famous film stars making
their first appearance.
There was Peter Sellers in ‘The Black Rose’, Marlon Brando in
‘The Men’, and actress Sophia Loren in ‘Toto Tarzan’.
Following year saw Charles Bronson in ‘You Are in the Navy Now’,
Audrey Hepburn in ‘Our Wild Oats’, and Grace Kelly, the future
Princess of Monaco, in her first film ‘Fourteen Hours’. (1951)
While **** Brigitte Bardot appeared in 1952 movie ‘Crazy for Love’; and 1953 saw Steve Mc Queen in ‘******* The Run’.
Jack Lemon, Paul Newman, and Omar Sharif featured in films
during 1954.
The following year saw Clint Eastwood, Shirley Mc Lean, Walter
Matthau, and Jane Mansfield, all of whom the audience adored.
The British actor Michael Cain appeared in 1956; also Elvis Presley
the youth icon in ‘Love Me Tender’ and as the future Rock and Roll
King!
In 1957 came Sean Connery, followed by Jack Nicholson, Christopher Plummer, and Vanessa Redgrave.
While the closing decade of the ‘50s saw James Coburn, along with
director, script writer, and producer Steven Spielberg, make their
debut appearance.

Death During The 1950s: This decade also saw the death of actors
like Humphrey Bogart, Tyron Power and Errol Flynn.
Including the death of producer and director of epic movies the
renowned Cecil B. De Mille!
Though I have conclude the Golden Age of Hollywood with the 50’s Decade,
The glitz and glamour of its Oscar Awards continue even to this day.
With its red carpet and lighted marquee appeal and fashion display!

CONTINUING THE HOLLYWOOD STORY  WITH  FEW TITBITS
From Fort Lee of New Jersey we have traveled west to Hollywood,
California.
From the silent movie days to the first ‘talking picture’ with Warren
Bros’ film ‘The Jazz Singer’.  (06 Oct 1927)
On 31st July 1928 for the first time the audience heard the MGM’s
mascot Leo’s mighty roar!
While in July 1929 Warren Bros’ first all-talking and all- Technicolor
Film appeared titled - ‘On With The Show’.
Austrian born Hedy Lamarr shocked the audience appearing **** in a Czechoslovak film ‘Ecstasy’!  (1933)
She fled from her husband to join MGM, becoming a star of the
‘40s and the ‘50s.
The ‘Private Life of Henry VII’ became the first British film to win the American Academy Award.  (1933)
On 11Dec 1934, FOX released ‘Bright Eyes’ with Shirley Temple, who  became the first Child artist to win this Award!
While in 1937 Walt Disney released the first full animated feature film titled - ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarf ‘.
The British film director Alfred Hitchcock who came to Hollywood later;
Between 1940 and 1947, made great thrillers like ‘Rebecca’, ‘Notorious’,‘Rear Window’, and ‘Dial M for ******’.
But he never won an Academy Award as a Director!

THE GOLDEN GLOBE AWARD:
This award began in 1944 by the Foreign Correspondence Association at

Philadelphia, Mourning
Sad music, you know it
You can’t remember the name of the instrument
But you know the notes
Cold as a high school memory
All we had was the telephone
And a call in the dark meant evil things
But not to me, and my ears embraced darkness
And my movie plays on a screen
As big as a mountain
Sunrise
Philadelphia, Morning

Chapter One: The Awkward Encounter

It was September, 1972, and the fall semester had just started.  Tonight was the first day of class.  I should clarify that as evening instead of day because this was night school.  I was a student majoring in English and Philosophy at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.

Only two weeks ago, I had moved into an old Victorian apartment building across the street from the University Field House at 54th St. and Woodland Avenue. Everything in Philadelphia is referenced as the intersection of two streets or thoroughfares.  Saint Joe’s was always referred to as being at 54th Street and City Line Avenue.  My apartment was a ramshackled old building in the middle of a black neighborhood.  I was the only white resident in the old three- story apartment building, and my apartment was on the second floor facing front. Every one of my new neighbors treated me great. There was a Baptist Church just to the left of my building and every morning at 8 they held services.  I never needed an alarm to get up in the morning because the singing and ***** music coming through the windows and walls were a reliable wake-up call.

I was working days in an Arco (Atlantic Refining) gas station about 15 miles away in North Hills Pennsylvania.  This station also rented U-Haul trucks, and my job was to pump gas and take care of the truck and trailer rentals as the owner of the station, Bob, was busy with mechanic work.  This worked well for me because between gas fill ups and truck rentals I got to sit in the office and finish my schoolwork.

Since moving back to Philadelphia from State College Pa., where I had been a student, all I brought with me was my most prized possession — a 1971 750 Honda.  I had customized it with café-racer accessories from Paul Dunstall because in those days you couldn’t buy a bike that looked like it belonged on a racetrack like you can today.  You had to build it.

I worked at the station five days a week (Mon – Fri) from 9:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m.  Then I hopped on my bike and headed back to my apartment to quick shower and change and then walk across the street to campus and hopefully make my first class by 6:00 p.m. On days when I got stuck in traffic or couldn’t leave at exactly 5, I would go straight to class wearing my Arco jumper with the smell of high-octane gasoline going with me.

Tonight, I was sitting alone on the first floor of Villiger Hall which was where my third level Shakespeare course was supposed to be held.  It was almost 6, and I was still the only one in the room — but not for long.  All of a sudden, I heard a high-pitched voice giving orders: “Yes, Dad, this IS the room.  Just push me in and drop me off.”

And that’s exactly what happened. A kindly older gentleman in his late fifties or early sixties pushed his son into the room. I say pushed because his son was in a wheelchair, and he parked him right next to me.  This made me very uncomfortable, and I actually thought about getting up and moving to the other side of the room, but my mother had raised me better than that. The boy in the wheelchair was in a full body brace with a special neck harness to keep his head upright.
If I had been uncomfortable before, I was beyond that now.  We both sat there in silence as the big industrial clock on the front wall ticked 6:02.  It was then that a proctor rushed into the room and wrote on the blackboard in chalk: “THIS CLASS HAS BEEN MOVED TO THE BARBELIN BUILDING, ROOM 207.

Chapter Two: Time To Move

As soon as the proctor had finished writing on the board, I saw this as my chance to escape.  I grabbed my bookbag and started to bolt for the door.  I only got halfway to freedom when I heard the loudest and most commanding voice come out of the *******’s body … “All Right Moose, Let’s Move!

I couldn’t help but hear myself saying (to myself) … “The ******* Really Can Talk.”  I was surprised, blown away, and his voice had frozen me in place.

“All right Moose, let’s get this show on the road.  Do you know where the Barbelin Building is up on the hill?”  I told him I did, and he said … “Put your book bag on the back of the wheelchair so you can push me up the hill before we miss too much class.” Again, his voice had a commanding effect on my actions and in robot fashion I put my bag on the back of his chair, grabbed the two push handles, spun his chair to the right and headed out the door. I was careful not to touch him directly because I didn’t know if what he had was catchy.

As I headed to the stairway to go down the 6 steps leading to outside, I heard that voice again … “No, not that way, toward the elevator” as he pointed off to the left with an arm that was not much bigger than my fingers. “The elevator key is between my legs.  Reach in and get it and then put it in the key slot and we can take the elevator down.”

                      THE KEY WAS BETWEEN HIS LEGS!

At this point, I was totally disoriented but had fallen under his spell.  I took a deep breath, reached between his legs, and found the key.  I then put it in the semi-circular keyhole and turned it to the right.  “Good, he said, it should come quickly, and we’ll be outta here.”

The problem is it didn’t come.  Seconds felt like minutes and minutes like hours as we waited for the elevator door to open. Finally, after an excruciatingly long time the elevator door opened and standing in front of us was the last thing I expected to see. It was another ******* in a wheelchair being pushed by a healthy student about my age.
As they tried to make their way out into the hall the ******* I was pushing said … “Don’t move!  Don’t let them out! And then he said … “I don’t know who you are or where you think you’re going, but this school’s only big enough for one ******* — and that’s me. For seven years I’ve been the resident ******* at St. Joe’s.  The next time I go to use this elevator and you have it *******, my big friend behind me is going to kick your measly friend’s ***.”

By now, I was in a kaleidoscope wrapped inside a time warp spinning at the speed of light. I had never been around anyone who seemingly had so little and acted so grand.

We made it up the hill that night in time to hear Professor Burke say … “Be prepared on Thursday (our next class) to talk about your favorite Shakespeare play and why.”

As I wheeled him toward his next class which also happened to be mine — we were both English majors —he reached out with a tiny hand and said: “My name’s Eddie, what’s yours.”


Chapter Three: So Different Yet So Alike

For the next fifteen months we were inseparable on Tuesday and Thursday’s nights.  We adjusted our Spring course selections to make sure we took the same classes.  Eddie was taking two courses each semester and I was taking four. It was a real struggle for him to take notes, but luckily, he had what many would call a photographic memory.

Many weekends he would visit me in my meager apartment, and we would listen to Van Morrison and the Hollies until the early hours of the morning. Eddie had two good friends named Steve and Ray who would drive him back and forth from my apartment.  My motorcycle wasn’t an option, although we fantasized about how we MIGHT be able to rig something up so he could ride on the back.  Eddie was a magnet and drew everyone into his circle.  He had defied the odds and not let the polio that he contracted at 4 dominate his life.  He slept in an iron lung because it was hard for him to breathe while lying down.

Eddie was bigger than life and bigger than ANY of the obstacles that tried to take him down.  Many times, I tried to imagine myself in his situation, but it was impossible. God had given Eddie a special power, and it allowed him to leverage the people and circumstances around him to make it through. I noticed early on that Eddie lived his life vicariously through the lives of others that he would have liked to have been.

Let’s say that my backround was at least colorful and unconventional.  I had been on my own since age 18 and had wandered the eastern half of America by motorcycle from Maine to Florida.  Eddie got to where he could tell my stories better than I could and when he did, I could tell he had actually lived them in his imagination.

Eddie and I had another connection.  We were both poets and loved to write.  He understood at a quantum level that to be a great writer you have to experience the words.  He had the remarkably wonderful ability to be able to do that through the actions of others. He also recreated the great stories of the famous authors we read.
  
Two weeks after meeting him I stopped thinking about him as a *******. Many times, it seemed like he had advantages and strengths that those who knew him could only envy.  The longer I knew him, the more I felt that way.

Chapter Four: The Invite

We had just returned to classes after a long Thanksgiving weekend when Eddie said: “My dad wants to talk to you.” My mind immediately wondered:  What’s wrong, have I done something I shouldn’t have.

At 10:05 p.m., when our last class ended and I wheeled Eddie down two flights of stairs, (this building had no elevator), his father also named Ed was waiting at the bottom of the stairs.  He had that big smile on his face that he always greeted me with as I handed the wheelchair over to him …

“Kurt, my wife and I are having a little party at our house the night before Christmas Eve, and we’d like you to come. All of Eddies friends will be there and you should be there too.  Please think about it, it would mean so much to my wife Margaret.”

I thanked Eddie’s father and told him I’d have to check the holiday schedule with my parents and then get back to him.  Being the oldest of 21 grandchildren, who were brought up in an enclave or compound of five adjoining houses, the holidays were always jammed packed with activities the week before Christmas.  Those activities though were not my main concern. I had nothing decent to wear.

My wardrobe consisted of 2 pairs of jeans and 4 t-shirts plus one pair of quilted long johns that I wore on the motorcycle when the temperature dropped below 40 degrees.  Add my brown leather WW2 surplus bomber jacket to the ensemble and that constituted my wardrobe … not very impressive for a 25-year-old man. In fact, staring into my closet that night, it brought home to me in a way it hadn’t before that my life was about to change.

I had recently decided to take a sales job with a local company that specialized in selling home furnishings to local department stores and general merchandise retailers.  This would be a major departure for me, but the salary would be four times what I was making at the gas station.  I hadn’t told anyone about this because inside I felt like I was selling out.  The company had advanced me $250.00 — a large amount in 1973 —to buy suits before I showed up for my first day of work on January 3rd.

I still didn’t have a car but that was another perk of the new job. They would be leasing me one after my period of orientation was over in early February.  But now, back to my quandary about Eddie’s party.


Chapter 5: E.J. Korvettes

Brightly lit with fluorescent lighting, the store seemed enormous as I walked from aisle to aisle.  I wasn’t shopping for suits. I was trying to find something suitable to go to a holiday party and meet people I had never met before.  As I got to the end of the aisle, I looked into the mirror that marked the end of the men’s department and took stock at what I was seeing.

My hair was shoulder length, and my beard was at least 4 inches long.  I had told my new employer that I would cut my hair and trim my beard before starting in January but hadn’t done it yet. In all honesty, I was still having second thoughts about making such a drastic lifestyle change, and I would wait until the last minute to radically change my appearance.

I stared into the racks of men’s sportswear until I found what I thought might work for me.  It was a beige, fisherman’s knit sweater in size large.  The sweater looked great, but the price did not.  It was marked $10.00, and unlike many of the garments surrounding it — it was not on sale.

I had $24.00 to my name that night, and $10.00 would mean I would be eating oatmeal and peanut butter until my next pay at the gas station.  I walked around for at least a half-hour until someone came over the loudspeaker saying that in 15 minutes the store would be closing.  I started to walk out but something dragged me back.  I put the sweater under my arm and headed for the register. I had made up my mind not to use any of the advance money from the new company until any doubts I had about taking the job were dispelled.
The next night at class I told Eddie and his dad that I’d be happy to join them on December 23rd.


Chapter 6:  December, 23rd

It was 6:45 on Sunday, December 23rd, when I arrived in front of Eddie’s brick row house in what is known in Philadelphia as the Great Northeast.  Every house on the block looked alike but the front door to Eddie’s was open with just the glass storm door closed.  I could see the house looked packed from the outside.

I didn’t stop but decided to go around the block.  I had one more problem to solve — what do I do with the motorcycle?  I knew Eddie’s dad knew I had a motorcycle, but I wasn’t sure about his mother.  Some people had bad impressions of motorcycles — and their riders — in the 1970’s, and I terribly wanted to make a good impression.

As I circled the block, I found an empty spot on the street about 5 houses away from Eddie’s house.  I parked the bike and hid my helmet inside the hedge that was separating the street from the sidewalk. I tried to flatten my hair, took off my bomber jacket and walked to the front door.  I never made it …

Before I could even get to the front door, a petite, silver haired woman dressed in red and blue rushed out on her front walk, put both of her arms around my waist, squeezed tightly, and said … “Oh Kurt, we are so glad you’re here!”

I’ve been greeted and hugged many times in my life, but nothing has ever come close to the hug I got that night from a stranger.  By the time she walked me through the front door we were strangers no more.

Eddie’s immediate and extended family were as warm and inviting as both he and his father had been.  I felt immediately welcome, and the night passed quickly as I met one family member after the next.
At 10:30 Eddie said, “Let’s go downstairs and listen to some music and we can talk.” I picked Eddie up off the sofa he was laying on and carried him down the 13 stairs into a finished basement.  You knew right away this was Eddie’s domain.  His stereo was against the stairs and pictures of the local Philadelphia sports teams were up on the walls.  

It was good to see him at home in his own element. That night we talked about the, once again, lousy year the Eagles had had (going 2-11-1) and the state of the war in Vietnam.  This was standard stuff for young men in their twenties.

At 11:20 I heard the basement door open at the top of the stairs and saw a girl with two legs covered in white stockings come down only 5 steps, sit down, and look over at us. I could tell immediately from the look on her face — she was not impressed.  She then got back up, headed into the kitchen, and closed the basement door.

“Oh, don’t mind her.  That’s just my sister Kathryn. She works the 3-11 shift at Nazareth Hospital. She just wanted to see who this guy is that she’s heard so much about.”

“I don’t think she was very impressed by the look on her face,” I said back.  “Oh, don’t let that bother you, you know how girls are — she’s just my sister.”

She may have been just his sister, but she was now inside my head, and I couldn’t get her out.


Chapter 7: Force Majeure

“My God, what is all that racket upstairs?  It’s a woman’s voice, do you think she needs help?”

“No, that’s just Kathryn screaming at her boyfriend over the phone.  They haven’t been getting along lately, and this has become a regular occurrence.”

There are watershed moments in life, and I knew this was one of them.  “I better go check,” I said. “You’re out of coke anyway.”  Without waiting for an answer, or tacit permission, I grabbed his empty glass and headed up the stairs two at a time. I opened the basement door and stepped into the kitchen just in time to hear … “Ok then, we’re OFF for New Year’s Eve.”

Kathryn’s mother looked at me and with a twinkle in her eye gave me the ‘Irish Wink.’  Having an Irish grandmother, who had always been the love of my life, I knew what that wink meant, and a voice deep inside that I had no control over started to speak … “So, you don’t have a date for New Year’s Eve? What a shame!” She immediately glared back at me with venom in her eyes. “Well, as it happens, I don’t have one either. Why don’t you go out with me unless you’re afraid of a guy like me.”

I could see her mother standing behind her shaking her head up and down as if to say … “Ask her again.” “I’m not afraid of anything — especially a guy like you.”  “Good I said, then I’ll take that as a yes.”  Kathryn stood there by the phone with a look that was a combination of anger and intrigue.

“I don’t know. Where would we go, and I’m not going on the back of any motorcycle.”  “We can go wherever you like, and I promise it’ll be in a car.  I hear Zaberers in Atlantic City has a great New Year’s Eve party.” Kathryn was still silent as her mother Marge answered for her: “That sounds like fun, I know you’ll both have a great time."

At every point in my life when I needed saving, it was always a special woman who saved me — they didn’t come any more special than Marge Hudak.
As she walked me to the front door that night, she hugged me again as she said … “Next time, just park your motorcycle in front of the house and bring your helmet inside …

                                    How Did She Know


Chapter 8: The Aftermath

That New Year’s Eve would be the best night in my entire life.  We danced and talked, laughed and gazed, and I think in both of our hearts and minds — we knew.

I went on to take that new job because now I could see a clearer pathway to the future, and it included more than just me,
Sixty days later, on March 5th, I asked Kathryn to marry me, and she said, YES.  Six months after that we were married on September 22nd, and this year, 2024, we will celebrate 50 years together with our 2 children and 4 grandchildren.

We lost Eddie, and both of his parents, several years ago, but their memory lives on inside of us growing stronger with every passing day.

There’s no telling where my life would have gone had I ‘escaped’ out of that classroom that night and gotten away from the *******. Meeting Eddie confirmed what I think I already knew deep inside — that it is our own insecurities and fear that handicap us the most.
That night, Eddie offered to me more than just his friendship, his wit, his intellect, and his great strength of character. Meeting him turned into the greatest of all of life’s gifts …

                                        His Sister Kathryn

A three day extravaganza
of traditional folk music,
and rustic camping bonanza,
relaxing and therapeutic.

dance, crafts, children's activities
presented at the Old Poole Farm.
the ultimate of festivities
in upper salford, a schwenksville charm.

an event you won't want to miss!
workshops, showcases and concerts,
rain or shine, foods galore, what bliss!
lots of sleeveless shirts and short skirts.

jamming and camaraderie share
a great way to spend summer's end.
the Philadelphia folk fair,
an experience to attend!

I let you go
to Philadelphia
I let you go
thirteen goin' on “life”
to your momma-- (God rest her-- and keep you
--from wherever she is)
to your father in Philly
outa the picture

Sheepish in the doorway of my classroom
back again
one last time--

Say good-bye, kid, to your short stay in Scranton
a town that can't rhyme
whose name falls over its own misery
No use for outsiders

“Where's your book?
Found your binder in the rain
Soggy protest to school's demands?
Of course it's yours
I checked, ya know”

"No way!"

Desk's been empty, three weeks now
Still, gotta ask
“Whacha doin?
Where ya been?”

“Khmir,
I'm sorry for your loss....”
Thirty seconds shares our grief
Thirty seconds for your future's-- all I got

“Listen to your teachers!
Do your work!
Please-- be okay?”

Khmir
in your wooly black coat-- like a bear
like a dare
shruggin and dancin in the doorway
of the “show”

Homework? Aint happenin'
But one paper, though
on why--
YOU-- should be president

and I almost vote for you

They packed her Ford with his belongings.
Texas to Philadelphia.
Internet love fully bloomed.
He left it all behind
to make it work.
Old enough to know better
Dumb enough to hope.
Texas to Philadelphia.
She called the shots.
He fell in line.
He left it all behind.
Now, he only calls his sons.
She pays the child support.
He left it all behind.
His ex drugs too much.
His momma cries.
The boys are going wild.
He's stuck in Philadelphia.
His heart's no longer there.

" It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews,
            Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and  
                Illuminations from one End of this Continent
                      to the other from this Time forward forever more.”
      John Adams – July 3, 1776.

Webster Groves - 2016

The Townhall fountain dances
cheerily in the morning sun.
The red-white-blue shirted crowd
rises as one for the colors.
Laughing children scramble for
tootsie rolls and sweet tarts
tossed by a strolling  clown.

         Philadelphia, July 3, 1776

        Carriages sped toward Philadelphia
        where resolute patriots
        would turn the pages of history
        and tell an unsuspecting world
        that a new nation had given birth to itself.

Sousa strains peal from the marching Statesmen,
Girl Scouts guide their well-groomed mounts -
hooves echoing through concrete caverns.
Vintage firetrucks and autos
sound their horns and sirens
as candidates work the crowd, pressing the flesh.

        Each crass insult from the British crown
        had tightened the noose on the colonial neck.
        The middle ground was soaked with patriot blood
        and revolution was the only course left.

Barbecue clouds drift over Pat and Lee’s farm
Horseshoes spin and clang and frisbees fly.
A ***-luck feast with beans and franks
interrupts the pop and glare of bottle rockets.

        One by one, each patriot quilled the parchment
        resolved to endure the costs of liberty -
        knowing to the marrow that defeat
        would spell certain ******* and death.

We reach the lakeshore at dusk -
unfolding chairs - spreading out blankets -
strains of Americana drift over the lake.
then a pyro-technic extravaganza
blazes across the summer sky.  

        Washingon’s tattered and bloodied men
        cornered Cornwallis at Yorktown.
        Then surrender - all British claims
        to American soil banished to the tomes of history.

The grand finale pummels the darkened sky
raising cheers and whistles from the crowd
Toddlers collapse in parental arms,
car doors slam, engines ignite
and head-lighted caravans, turn for home,
spiraling off in every compass degree.

“Happy birthday,” America and endless happy returns
"from this time forward forever more!”  

Robert Charles Howard

none of you understand what i’m saying is i’m not like any of you never married never parented children never owned real estate don’t believe in government the law hate rich people not afraid to lose everything risk life for the chance at a better life yes i graduated from Philadelphia dental school practiced medicine several years dashing handsome cordial Georgia physician yet knowing i was dying then of tuberculosis i wanted to feel alive know danger taste possibilities ******* greedy ranch and railroad barons all you cotton gin grist mill moguls loud mouthed Yankee carpetbaggers bounty hunters self-righteous snake oil preachers with your fearful farmstead flocks what the hell do you think Big Nose Kate and me were doing in Tucson why i risked my life at Tombstone’s OK Corral i’ll tell you why because we were desperate beyond your comprehension long-drawn-out careworn hours twisted in desperation insufferably plodding nights so desperate Kate relieved me daily yet in back of each our minds we understood we were both slaves to ancient unfair corrupt economic system that provided enough whiskey to cope desperate for money allegiance shelter frantic enough to face loaded guns aimed firing at me it was hell on earth glaring sun beating down desert dust blowing burning eyes bullets cutting everywhere 1880’s revolvers lacking accuracy even with expert gunsmith modifications young men riddled with bleeding gunshot wounds in 6 years i was dead age 36 hey Kate was no cakewalk she was a ***** who knew how to play me flirting charming admiring exaggerating her strange Hungarian lust encouraging provoking prostituting on her knees back tummy fingers mouth managing somehow to become acquainted with Arizona Governor George Hunt then surviving to age 90 you modern day sleepers who read this rambling cower at airport security passively submit to insidious militarizing culture invasively inspecting camera scanning for cuticle scissors nail file weapons all ludicrous absurdist theatre while real bad guys can easily tape 3 McDonald’s plastic knives together or ball point pen pierce pilots passengers throat arteries skyjack planes hijack bus trains you are no safer than you ever were before Homeland Security Czars foreign wars where we don’t belong riding has grown so weary courage ruthless longing vexing generating entire industry of airport security corporate mall tariff duty free shops inflated restaurant menu prices liter bottle of water $4.99 welcome to America **** me now or **** me later who cares what i look like what i wear if i’m dry shaven smell like goat if i cough up chunks of lung spit tuberculosis germs on polished floors just so long as i pay the toll fee and don’t go shooting off my mouth

There’s a lot to be said for this place.
A near-perfect pitch for diversity,
Diversity:  a neurolinguistic term;
A quaint way to say: miscegenation.
No, just kidding; I meant the melting ***,
A fine blend of Anglo, Hispanic & Indian blood—
That’s Pueblo & Plains Indian blood--
Not that **** masala, chapati & dal Indian blood.
My apologies to "Who's the White Guy?" Bobby Jindal.
New Mexico: “The Land of Enchantment.”
Where 310 sunny days per annum,
Are like money in the bank, earning
Double-plus compound interest for those
Suffering with seasonal affective disorders.
A land of sunshine without the orange juice,
But substitute chili, red or green?
An equitable offset to be sure.
310 days of sunshine:
Even the white people are brown here.
Which does a lot for my self-esteem.
Back east—New York, Chicago & Philadelphia e.g.—
People that look like me, i.e.,
People with dark brown hair, eyes and skin,
Get stopped/***-cheek spread/& frisked, routinely.
Stop & Frisk: NYPD’s spectator sport for decades.
Stop & Frisk: Mayor Bloomberg-defended
Crime-stopping Godsend,
Getting guns off the streets.
Getting homicides down.
Everything’s cool until some slick race baiter,
Starts yelling:  RACIAL PROFILING.
Forget for a moment that people that look like me,
People like me with dark hair, eyes & skin,
Commit 78% of the crime in most cities.
“It’s not racially driven profiling,”
Said Newark’s police director recently
Referring to stops carried out by his officers.
“IT’S CRIME-DRIVEN PROFILING!”
But, again, political-correctness trumps common sense:
August 2013: Judge Rules NYPD
Stop-and-Frisk Unconstitutional.

Well I’ll be a monkey’s *** ******!
I moved to New Mexico to blend in.
My complexion a shoe-in for
The Witness Protection Program or
Any other public or private,
Domestic or international rendition site.
But I digress.
New Mexico: no passport necessary, Babaloo!
New Mexico: be you white or black, Hispanic or Indian,
Or even Roswell extraterrestrial,
The cops here will beat the **** out of you.
Or shoot you dead, Kemosabe.

Elegy I

“Behold, I tell you my prince Meton, that my Steed is coming bringing Zeus, I truly tell you that the shadows move on the plasma of the Duoverse and that the lunisolar cycles pose what could never arrive and where it has to go... that It awaits you if I say..., if from the threshold of 331 bC. What will be my own...? If tertians experience without pain that can resemble everyone else that it is!

Etréstles; My debt comes from the Kronia of Saturnalia and Aries, lifting him up from Gea... he is noble in the laws of his geometrical prose calling him from Attica and trying to know if I can take the corner of Stratonx, without a lesser degree of hierarchy and whatever, more than finding Theseus...! If it is of his necessity to hear us through the labyrinths that will approach him of the birth of a new Vernarth, who alone fears for some icy sting that afflicts Alikantus, coming as an Athenian steed on Zeus and on the protectorates of Polia that are plausibly bringing nights of fever in the cold solitude by not possessing them.

Whatever my lord, behold, a polis will have great merit when it occurs in the misgivings, hallucinations, and lightness that are abstracted after twenty-eight days without knowing which will be the next one that will contain it like the kindling of the fire that does not stop burning... nor the magnitude of everything that stops me from being the spoil of a new sprout, but that does not stop me from being superior to the flames that possess their hell. The official acts make me a trophy of hostile anxieties with their dying fire, however, Zeus makes the Duoverse move mounted on my steed that takes him on snows that fight in the contest, and in contests of my Elegy with his equestrian reverie. I tell you that for this they can still loot the feminine beauties that besiege me between ruinous eyes that only see from the attic towards his disjointed daily Odeon.

The sensitive attachment of my Cretan horse neighs resounding from the Odeon, carrying the waters that will be his visionary flowers on female beauties that acclaim him with a womanly voice, which lashes out at him as the bearer of a God, entering into sentences manly beauties that come off the blood Hellenic of Alikantus by Evandria; full and provided with manly arcana resembling a steed made an Adonis. For everything that seems ruinous to you, a head that wishes to be wounded is offered, for everything that seems diaphanous to you like a People in the female physiognomy, a figure consigned in his virginity, who opens doors in which they are semi-open... Seeming that nothing hurts as it runs through the corner of my yearning, with honey and milky emulsion in its porticoes and in the evasion of the Diplon bringing my guests from the Opistódomos, with menus that will be superior to all the vessels where it will take them their delicacies, incontinent. Of the Hydor, that flows from the mancebía and the damp staircase of the Nimbus. Unknown values of insecurity made me attached to the Acropolis, rather knowing that Zeus was on his way to his amnesty and was floating in prose of gaseous clay, and iridium that reopened the double door of the Diplon as it closed abruptly from the canopy tops. Where is it that so much warm wind runs in the colors of the gods who rule the Exile...? So he will continue to be all that he is and will be in what I observe him..., if he stops to look at himself, and not at me who no longer consumes him...!

I tell you with its illustrious shadow that it hides in its untamed ephebos, wanting to make precocious its illustrated cavities that serve an eternal heart, which pours out what pulses and reverses what it repels from the flesh that is distributed convex of the divine soul, making succulent darkness of the apotheosis of the Symposium… burning where they always are, I tell you they are lit in the saddles of time!

How much phobic rogue can tell you what my imperialism binds to say if my beloved were here, seeing her close by like any glow that syndicates her odd sacrifices, with excessive raised and scheduled glasses that speak of a restless being, who cannot tell you that the Christic continues to observe ride from Alikantus, on embers of the Khristúgenna, observing him in pageantry, attempts, and lands of Patmos with a loaf of unleavened brimming with pietism and a new millennium that ends in the pyx of her memories...

Currently, doors are slapped through which my steed will pass with Zeus..., and I will not hear them, because only I have to open their double door Dipylon weeks later... from the agon that has to carry me against Zeus as his relief comrade, clinging to anger in agons that fight each other for ferocious tendons, and herculean verbal incarnations, immersed in irrepressible loquacity... conceiving his heroic chance and submitological feats that are located at the precipice of the heel, and in the breathlessness of his steps that take place in those that are not! "

Elegy II

By what dark decline of Smyrna will my rib complain, and have to move its hanging from here of Selçuk that will consist in its protocols that guarded my lost head, and of corny demigods that surrounds soothing feats that do not hurt, instantly that we all offer the same incarnations of the cult and his victory with Saint John the Evangelist... I tell you that I know about this and I say that I preside and founded the condition of his sacred agonal, from his divine glory in Arbela according to how common it seems to them... if they are to get lost in its decline...! That they do not fight with what is not dexterity and nothing that is not brooding if nothing knocks on the arched door?

The purse that will remain beyond Alsancak in that residence is moth-eaten, I always hoped, I always had to say..., as I have told you that my tongue tells truths that you are tempted to see in the darkness of a dissolute courtyard in Helleniká, but between portages of Smyrna and rubrics that wave in streets that are bordering the extraverted Dipylon... in which instance I peek into the interior wine presses..., seeing its esplanades because if I have to tell you... it will be something that can satisfy you and that takes me to Eleusis...!

So many times I sighed for the stinging hinge and its memento, opening itself up like this, and if it must be wherever it compresses its resonance, here it is what I was going to condescend with dump trucks that transpose to the stage with their marbled misgivings, I beg you with my hands convulsive that I am not fortified, the tribal rain and the Xiphos phosphorus from the southwest, seeming to surpass with their longitudinal footage as if they were laws of the horizontal with twisted millennia that bring according to what should be...? For a long time, it takes the form of an imperfect and vile being by the inverted "V" from Ephesus, towards the intersection of the edge of Pergamum approaching Laodicea.

Guess where the deposit of the Sun of Smyrna derives with its long time-lapse, and with various stony that are attached to masonry typical of the diamond plinth, showing off the docile sacramental of its high shoulders and crowned partitions like those that hurt if my eye everything! Assesses, closing angles of the sovereign challenge, here my sovereign Meton presents me the sacramental infer to the Nymphaeum or a rhomboid arcade lost in his Domus!

Where do paradises shrink from, if all this was being hidden with so many truths between tributaries and conifers that have to be disposed of in their turrets? Its precarious sinister face only restrains the Eminences of the Lycabeto, daring to adorn themselves with Lykavittós, rising among longings that are lost in my Elegy from heights that howl for peaks that have not been besieged, only resided by those songs that shelter themselves obstructed with wide domains, with trainers that guide you, not coexisting lights, that scrutinize your shelter to become your owner!

What makes you of tribulation if my consort is made eternal, now that he shields between his worries for causes and lexical testimonies with my Eggelos, who do not hear the galloping of Alikantus but if the hieratic rocky snorts descending for what their prior does not know... only my chaste unit has to be with its talented polygonal patchwork, unlocking only what it contains in its earthly litanies, softening the sclerosis of a raging carat, being or not defensive of a judicious Eggelos in rocks of fortune...! Only if you have to restrain yourself before they exceed the rate, and of everything that stops you and greases the cranks of what is not worthy of rest without a deponent cheer!

I urge you, oh confreres that your streets and stones expand like runners and cobblestones that have never been able and never will be able to pass through colonnaded atriums surrounded by those who live in Smyrna! And from there I exhort you to serve your faithful hoarseness whose rest adheres to his unconscious reality... Where then only laughs the annoyance and its ominous deities that carve defenses that are arranged for him to house in Skelos or of the legs that are born and die on his heels...? And from where does it only lead him to the vault of the mystery that lies in his opportune vow?

I will mention to you when no one ascribes or praises you with compliments that tempt the supine harassment of whose silhouette it is not, and that it is only the Selçuk catafalque, where the chapel of its neighbors and rye burns that divide the age of the Duoverse, leaving him desolate if my verses disgust those who have secreted and listened to my unheard reflections... Yes, you have to hide in burial mounds that descend from heights that are unknown to you..., you will only have to unravel from your baseness and fading scratches of the factions, with ties and dizzying failures from which Olympians survive and without crowned laurels!

Everything is already commemoration and mischievous funerary daring with portable fluorophores mourners, dressed in crowded slags elongations, and slants where nothing can grasp it of prosapies and past or subsequent lives, where its spits will be of the advantageous parallel that is noticed of a Mycenaean mob. What decorum above all in that setback, that only sees imploring, that they stop behind everything that protects them by the force of the black aura, that hurts and that devastates their vibrations in the triggering footsteps of Alikantus, “He who has hearing and not words that he hears what a stained glass window is in all that he knows and reflects it ”.

What was devouring you by the ardor and his horse countenance with his swift piercing in all that this crusade means... Loading Aerse finesse with herons to tie and perpetuate only those who must not be lacking..., before the supreme preference of a man who errs more than a god, and who was the gift of a PanHellenic fiddling with thirteen shady places, lacerating everything that inferred him, and everything that was an intruder from the earrings of happiness hanging him like an azure earring..., all harassment coming from Smyrna Towards the iridescent Nimbus of Patmos for the puzzles of Pergamum!


Elegy III

I can call all twilight nights princesses in Croesus's scolding, between floods where pseudo warriors who expedition before me, and undivided in Alexander the Great where everything comes from him hiccupping with the Chrysanthemum of Cyrus and Darius. I can make you Persians again if all your history bustled between comfortable Zeroes! And if this besieged crossbow circulates faster than the treasures of Pergamum... thus it would flee with legions and Talents that surpass the treasures of Heaven and its contingent consort.

Third episodes to my teacher Saint John the Apostle placed him a few hours from the Aegean in the lower parts of Pergamum, whose Trojan sons I tell you that I follow the course of his dynasty, perpetuating and touching the scaphoid and serving him with the Lutrophorus! Oh, azure comes with the team of oxen from Thrace that guaranteed the Theologian, and the treasury of his holy angels for this entire mandate and go walking your tired feet carrying the ghosts of Lysimachus? Of your own veracity naming them kings who will truly serve his laudable reign!

I tell you that I have really learned about this and about my own custody that speaks when seeing the victors and the vanquished pass by in the fragment of Ephesus overflowing with despicable arteries of Pergamum, and buskin that was not worthy of a scene of tragedy; between jocular that captivate Jezebel and syllogisms that slice the servants and their harvests. Oh, what a bag it can tackle if they are the dreams of a demigoddess of Sambate, believing to ruin the journeys of the Apostle Saint John by a Vee that unites my own oppression just being in Pergamum very prone to the fourth letter of the Apokálypsis... if these hermits they are confused with my discredit!

In the Symposium Journey, I saw the bewilderment only in the fiftieth fight after 331 BC, since the retreats of my brother and Lord Alexander the Great, dividing belligerents between Lysimachus and Seleucus lying in 280 BC! Behold, I tell you that no novel has to say it... that daring and ****** sleeplessness will be understood with parapsychologies, Magnus battered in blood and having to condone in life the thirtieth cosmopolitan station that will wander without string or staff, only in realms of horror!

“Protervas works repeat from Balaam, perhaps in perjury of those who are not devoted to the ancient expertise of Elijah and idolatrous pagans on Mount Carmel. Days of full consent have decided me to be the observer of an inferior garden no greater than Pergamum, with finery and gibberish of a roasted Faith, and of embellished offshoots that are of the miserable Asmodeus. I tell you that I know of these vicissitudes of tremolos and tarsi that are exuberant of the supra Hellenic Maximus of the west and the east, defeating victorious incredulous who believe they see my retreat from someplace in the west of the Aftó and the east of the Dyticá... all from here henceforth that is not sullied by troops of the Phalanges, they will supply the desecrated foreign troops...! With Roman tropes, levies that will liberate the tetrarchies, the libatum, and their free uncontested successors, repaying Augustus' fratricides and Caesares in the insectary quagmire!

The ill-fated awaits the exquisite court that casts fateful offspring, none attend the charred Symposium and the burning broth, being insubordinate to Parchmentians and aristocracies that get tangled up in the rune of Leviathan, far from a so-called Lord Abraham gifted in the circles! of the power of Yahveh assigned by the Father, and the sleepless sleeplessness of a son, who does not expropriate in wanting songs or children to sleep awake! That makes them consular! I have been caulked in the excuses of Ephesus and Smyrna, where the Hellenic and Roman are lost in the lavish gnosis of a doctor, rub considered among thrushes and blackbirds lacerated from the other infinite... in the absence of Crows and Sisellas dying in their enormous sides and the hemicycle of the Mashiach!  

“Everything that is promoted after the beginning and that was never started has already begun… where the corrections have diluted what the river conforms to the edges of the Silinus, with silverware and Gobelins that are made holly in the refined hands of a maiden. How will I not manage your anxieties proportionate to their sets, if the feelings are greater than the last floor of Babel... and if I had to descend one more, it would never resemble the graceful hands of a maiden talking to me about the next prop? What says more than the plot and its new, different breeze in ****'s indissoluble totality; subsisting with his carpals and with those random scraps of cloaks in the hydromel freshness that the Lord has entrusted him to pour!

What neat heights and challenges I have given you with light half-locutions... that flatter in the acrobatic gazebos of Demeter! With the following high-pitched white dots that are probed from the sunset and the desire of Athena Nikéforos, with travertine arsenals that are the tingling of an Elegy that flees from Pergamum with her feet incinerated and prostrate! What lack of ornament speaks to the adjoining trepanned ear, devoid of ornaments longer than vast, and wider than long when reaching the limit of Thyatira where Attalid kings and ants await me who will carry on their backs the rubble desolations of Pergamum!

Elegy IV

As you have offered what stops me to think about all the horizons that are guarded by agons and Kerveros, what virtues will they make of those who are dispossessed of the rescue and vicissitudes of the underworld of Thyatira! What has to intimidate the senses if the doors are for those who have never possessed a Soul... What has to dispossess us if the soul matter is Thyatira under Akhisar!

You complain of being moaning inks of arid lands where rivers are tributed that have to wade through octogenarian routes, holding on to the necks of the obfuscated Kerveros, and of the henchmen who trembled by the vicinity of the extreme of Mysia, whose urges released elements that mixed with river shelters of the Lycus and the navigable ones of the Marmara! I must point out that the elements are cliffs of Hydor that sink into the seas of Mysia.

That I must tell you of a formidable strait that tried to possess Heles, and that I went to the lower point of its flow to rescue him! That the formidable flash of Pluto infringed what was flashing in pro-Kerveros, not allowing Hades to enter Heles..., that formidable daring would be done if Heracles had twisted such a destiny by allowing it to enter, Or what death throes of the earth did not take him through this darkness where I mostly saw Venus in crimson eyes, rather than borders where the speed of light of their gazes welcomed them with their beings called Mysios?

I am Vernarth and I have arranged that Thyatira and her shallow wayward Nymphs shall rule me in your rod and go with their swifts, hoarding fine silverware that will shine from the heavens, and offer the worthy brotherhood by statutes that are controversial in the friendship of Arganthone and his I wonder if by some hiding place I have to see the black string of Jezebel and supposed regions contrary to Bethany. What a brave ****** has to dominate in full preservative principles, called from where they were punished by the dogs, thus allowing me to purge and follow advances that cleared the way to Mysia and Thyatira. Be clear that the insurgents in this region were chasing my Lord Alexander the Great, and he made the floors of Mysia tremble by crossing the Hellespont where my Heles almost had to get lost in the sea of his senses..., make me be the Ionian blaze that never it has not ceased and will not cease to burn on the Seleucid headboards!

"That you can see if the Lycus and Hellespont are from the same tributary, which hardens its waters to make a firm footing to the steeds and Hoplites venerating their gods and horsemen, seeing my teacher Saint John piously riding on the pagan temples stoning on stony tombstones with the interstices of the New Testament that offers the sacrifice of the Areté, Or of the most excellent eloquent alleys and sacrileges challenging what must never be glossed in the functionality of the file that it is urgent to define if I have died or never Die "

What capital letters are to be taped from the others that are from the Areté, and from its prominent fertility that rehearses the postulates of my Purgation? In everything that is prophesied in the ruggedness of those who boast that they can wander forty millennia with guilds that gather their litters..., all of them doubtful and giving rituals that owe to paganisms that were colonizing Hellenistic nuclei and my help..., closing my Hetairoi's pectoral tail, and then forge more confreres than they ever were.

The regrets of my teacher are scarred in the science of the Lycus valley, as Christians who grow with their sons separated from their daughters, and from the debtor parents of the metropolis of Thyatira, what fortune to be spared if the damages are greater than the reparations, And of the various secrets of the staining of the sky with its purple oblations and antiquities that refused to the progress of time, being discolored by the Adom and the Red blood cells. Here is where they flow through my arteries circling the hills of Messolonghi's Koumeterium, with natural basilicas that smoothly whitewash the candor and licenses.

I tell you that I know this is what constitutes the forge of the being that is capable of leaving Hades alive, do penance together with me Yes...! At twelve o'clock of the full moon where we become fierce Eleusines, since Battles more than hundreds of all, and we will know if we will be children of the Kerveros or Kerberos canes custodians of the inframundis who discover us like fish and cormorants on lagoons that run through us mutilated... which are decreed in the ecliptic, and in the stratum where Thyatira sleeps under the meters of Hades and Tevel, several meters from the underworld passing through its lost Shemesh beyond the western… under the hulous ecliptic of Akhisar!

You should not fear the suspicion or the courage associated with the three heads of the Keveros, because the three of them brood with me in the same way, for when I run away from them and they feel my loneliness...!, Each of their heads think by themselves, but the gentle Levantine sea is arranging them were groups of stars that are rubbing and washing their ******, prone to marine monsters that dress the mane of the humpbacked Hindhead of the Cerberus. Knockdown what nothing is born of damage and that is born of its permanent movement if the beasts are men with strings of impious men that make their portholes enter more light than beings with phalanxes and armies that come and go... being portals of one eternity from where Etréstles comes with his weary stride.  

How can you tolerate that the hands stained with some Tintoretos splash my Himation? And what is still chromatic with a caged torpor, is the Himation of Theseus that revolts the constellations of history that began from the abject sinkhole, fading the virtue since my sacrifice is offered in the religious and its offertory. You know that I have been able to walk through waters that are solid if I put my heels distillates in classic sounds where they are written with the latent prawns of the Aegean! That you nurture a past that hangs from the immediate future with sacrosanct pilgrimages inaugurating hybrids lapses, and classic smithies that distance themselves from Hephaestus and humanoid persecutions that could be undertaken from a section of the new period, mixing darned meat that is released from the principles of the Energeia, and that they sway in the millennial dizziness of the Olive Tree Bern or of any fistula that would not cease of prosaic oracular ones!

Everything makes oracular sense since my prior agon and his lingual accent deny what I will not reach in its sacred connotation, but if its secular insertion to create the deserved and victorious dew that falls and will fall from the bilge of the iridescent nimbus. I have deposited from their marshes where nothing already contains them..., only a pure divine light that is confused with opposite festivals of lights of an unknown victory that was not always mine, but it took light-years with its traveling mass to reach my thunderstorms with treacherous gods who did not allow theological musculations and derivatives of being refined to emerge from their extreme internal and external beauty who prayed for me, entering their Seventh Heaven and then with the Merkaba doing its venerable kalokagathia; or prototype that does not fade every day to take hold of the inner and outer beauty of it, the fruit of the Olive Tree Bern and the countless algorithmic winds that could be counted since I had joined its Falangist ranks!

I know that four Seraphim will have to take me and that your Charioteer will medicate with thrifty speed from where the day dares to attend me with real locations in the Andromeda wagon. It all to dig into the dark and bizarre hollow of my wound knew that it could have been the Holy Spear of Longinus...! What could happen if my chest did not stop bleeding from the indigo and crimson of my Dorus?

Elegy V

You must feel satisfied with the erected statues that were made bearable on the basis of cults and curative powers, but not of precognitions that were the object of Sardes since she was nearing the penultimate station of the inverted "V". The satyr's stratagems of 476 BC were congenial. And the pilgrimages to it would destroy the entire sacred precinct that it once presumed to be!! Theagenes of Thasos resorted with all his strength to move the stars and his impassive silences, seeing that Sardes was becoming a courtier of a network of unarmed victories that were never for him, but for pilgrims who roamed the roads surrounding Sardes. Oh that more crowns of him exceed fourteen hundred, if only one more will suffice to access the investiture of the Himation of my departure!

Continue along the Pactolo River and you will get entangled with vegetal lines on the northern ***** of the Tmolo. Know that Proserpina runs through the flower coffins of the autumn dead, that Persephone makes her shudder in the Ionian polis, and that it will be if she decided to do so, if Aphrodite captured the Cimmerians who would plunder Sardis, more than any voluptuous! And despite everything, it would continue to be a satrapy that does not lead to Patmos through Xerxes who still burns in Hades in the haze and canine of a Kerveros!  

"Follow those worms who claim mesnades with more blood on their fingers, and there is no doubt that they swirl in Pergamum with more blood than their creeds." And that of those who survive in earthquakes and typhoons that stand for generations of the Conventus and an agora that only relapses in Pergamum and in desolate legions that only devastate, and are built on ruins that they praise, just like Thyatira suffocated in Akhisar. Do you imply that the battles of Alikantus strike the silica plundering tyrannical idolatries and sacrileges, ravaging only hapless evils to come and unrecovered pious revelations from Byzantium? I know very well that Alikantus is coming, I could even dare to say that he is coming very close to the fortnightly reclusive citadel of Sparda..., being able to hear that Alikantus is riding from the ready insolent time and I even think I see that he is coming alone... and that Zeus he went ahead for necessities in the barcarole of Charon! I know that matters of the underworld are palatial stews and prostitutes that flank in kettles that announce tinsel falling from the apocryphal clouds and the adjacent Iridescent...!

Like a helical serpent, everything that my dimension swallows is retro-translational with turns about my own age that is not the deed of another than the axial one that vomits imperceptible years that are not memorized and that deal with each other with the ruins of the dogma of Sardis. Come Oh granaries and settlements that squander synagogues and compendiums of ****** ruins, whose altar is exploded in liquid gold on Artemis's hair in Hellenic theaters, where nothing remains, only traces of olive roots that kindly allow them to enter through its cracks. But what did scare the enclaves, if seven churches fell scattered from the corollary of seven manes that only resided among themselves, differing primitives and incisors, nailing their rapiers into the dead Sardes before becoming an Apokálypsis! In its seventh season… I Vernarth revive her and ennoble her from the secret day of her curse, as she says of herself to survive on her ruins, not as akin to Thyatira lying asleep under Akhisar's holocaust!

The images will be there to bring you in my arms, believing to be myself who brought myself spacing and surviving from a fifth posthumous church..., to save my fifth life in Sardis, but far from the Barcarolle del Charon, eating roots that were attached to the keel in case they poisoned my soul..., at the same time as a failed levitate that would solidify like the crest of Thasos, throwing draconian and grotesque seas that within me asked for a license to revive. Everything was whipping on me wanting to be Theagenes with lugubrious ostracisms that from now on should be cut and sliced into parts of my coexistence, leaving only the pre-existing erectness of me..., except the head that impelled me to take the extrinsic path of Hades with distinctions of a cult that only worked in the hands of a Patmian victor, all by counting one by one those fragments of the victorious minute hand of 476 bC!

The city woke up and tried to ***** obligations that were imposed on them, to remove like polis around a sacred precinct that was proud as a bond of centuries that are of the androgen of centuries that are forbidden from millennia found in double eyes, ears, and nostrils. Which was scared away from inscriptions dating back to the 1st century BC thus I continue to establish a superficial status that did not replace any similar or equal future, which is governed by forty-four victorious miracles and all parallels that establish what surrounds my mortal outer clothes..., as well as perpetual belongings and internal endearing to be created from its probity..., even at the end of the factual powers that succinctly stipulated a Zeus, who would be trying to imbibe himself in the possession of a great competitor who will sacrosanctly raise the arena of agon, allowing me to overcome by not ringing the chime of the Paidotribo or the tutors of impulsive eternal effects, and children divos like Raeder challenging the maximum of the stars of God and his contenders! I tell you that I know of these assertions and that the keys are not left hanging, nor will they be prepared to their verbal agility so that they can be taken off the hook and startled to open the Homeric heaven!

Disappear shady Kefalonias or those heads that are empty crypts in me...! And that the children are greater spirits than those who are not without heads who will spend the night on the east coast, where all the burning days are seen as snowy scarves moving from afar..., together with my Falangist militias who do not stop I have to move their hands and his siege with four encirclements of princes. Behold and hear... what I declare to those leaders who raised the lost darkness in a fortunate Kefalonia that tried to adopt seven churches, but not in Sardis!

As you have noticed… the edges of the "V" of Lacedaemonia are already being touched that come out through the stephanite competitions of the interior and exterior of the Kosmous, and everything dies metallic and with stale stenches granted by the polis and the winners! That specializes in the divine gifts of each submithological deity. You realize that the education of appreciation is in the arena of those who propose you wise tyrants and ignorant democrats, who bind the diet and pantry of those who promote great value at the expense of models that, are impossible to fulfill. Oh, that underlies the organic unity with the appearance of a soul that is vicious meat of bait, and of agonistic parts in the fringes and primal that fall from Ephesus and from the tip of Thyatira hanging like vines from where the true god of sin is born. unconfessed!  

Oh, what a diatribe for those who triumph in the land subjugated to the departure of a triumphant of life over it, and that their high dignity will extend beyond life and lash the decadent values improper of piety before the Mashiach that will be there! to rule us! The cults and the first ones that do not reach their contemplation with a soul that lies of useless pleasure in the suburbs of Euripides. What do I say to you that I know about these struggles, and it satisfies you more to drink with Elpenor falling from the staircase that was not on dry rubble, nor of harlequins who avoided the string of their zithers on and under the formula that makes contain the ethyl with the mean to say...; "That one day he was in The tetraconter Eurídice, and that the swordfish was his desire to beat bites and pots of wine that we have drunk for millennia together...!

Who could or will refute it, I tell you that I know about this, because I narrate what I write and sing his first fall near Circe, but falling on my arms... and from here I take him through the strings of Sardis when his buoyant hologram enters for its main stained glass window, taking us from Aorion very close to Barnard's Loop. Hear that I still fall hard next to him getting drunk together in Eleusinian mourning, free from buskin and funerals that are not the best friend that appears to him, and unless they combine us both with haggard browns before leaving the island of Eea.

The torrent of the Pactolo crosses our heads with its trunks like a sophistic beast... also penetrating my harangues from the Aegean when the pale shadows of Sardis are drizzled with third-degree liquor by the ancient pinch of the Hermo, a tributary that sadly hopes to wash the impious feet from Elpenor and mine. "I do not mention what I never tire of defining, that nothing and no one will hear what a voice would sing to a drunken ear, when its abstinent drops of mead are incubated in aristocratic and Hellenic ethics of my youth that stand out in the lips of Apollo and with telling you Hoplite angels who are more decidedly than learned Greek-ignorant, who do not know what it is to die from being drunk, even beyond the Elysees "

Elegy VI

The youthfulness of the Kosmous was defragmented in the inevitable..., leaving important men to take care of the darkness that was only spoils of themselves, on top of the fierce flames that still continued in the competitive souls with their glorify, where another tradition began to break out of the subtle approach that was attributed to Vernarth's homage, as an inter-Patmian genre praising all that is whole to conform the individuality of the holistic whole, which is not yet consumed by the flamboyant and immeasurable images that expanded in times more than what a Colosso from Apsila is, or a thought that forges ophthalmic trifles. I must tell you that denial is a factual point or hindrance in the denial of skepticism and the subtle embargo… if it is not moderate in the face of crowds!

I believe that summers will trigger the passing of Kairos in all the points and means that make the Sun's degree retroaction insightful, and less than what makes a divergent moral behavior, only endowed with the finesse of applicability, If you declare yourselves visionary **** like Critias! If you are in remixes of the Hellenic universal global warming! I want you to know that the warming began from the Kassotides when it was closed and from there d the abrogations abstracted by the Pythias... If from their ocular cranial and the Kosmous that became opaque, and deviated into the tetrarchy or leadership of the four Cardinal points! Oh, what kindness must pass from their semicircular flying buttresses of the world when nothing falls under their orbits... not even a segment of Patristic light the inevitable will be to ignore what falls under the sphere of the world and what rises to his own, from where Ha-Shatan does not pronounce himself in the nubile flowers of Eden!

The Apokálypsis groans, rolling up its sleeves in Leviathan's pouches, reviling the bends of Philadelphia and its Delphic oceans! With requisitions of verses that do not have and will not scribble on the trailing lines of the serpent that wears jewels that are not of this world, but seek whether to fit them in appendages and on the necks of future martyrs. Or bags under the hocks of the serpent, you will see that its optics are in the wrong and that it blows in the goodness of its victimized ones!

Brotherly love was announced as a final omen, Philadelphia was praised in the Ecclesiastical, where everything mellifluous was civil property and each eye would be the same as it will observe it, it would be before the later and the inferior of the superior of the grace of the Lord, in ethical outrages and tribulation spells that sweat in open fields far from the Dypilon, closing the opposite gates of the darkness of Sardis and Thyatira! I tell you that I know in this icy way of seeing how nothing was nothing more than the revival of free will left by the cobbler's caulking and the keys that will open and close storm doors, that only the golden hand will know if one will be a carrier or not. of new hardwoods.

Hagio is real... and what closes and opens his hand will be a guideline for what does not open and does not close! The key of the Angel of David comes from Patmos with a hatbox that proves who is capable of warning for all those who are capable of sustaining the aura of the Mashiach…! That through narrow mountainous areas they will sow the temple of God with hosts from Jerusalem.

Leading them to the valley of Cógamo and soon to the simile valley of *** Bei Himnom and Hermus himself, where everything happens and everything is nihilism in the mainline of the passion of a loved one in its secant line and of the great inverted "V", and its Monarch Attalo's constrained ties and his deliberate missions that collate the penultimate station of my Elegy. “I am Vernarth; My fraternal passion makes these seven churches only one, each one in my Opistódomos... where perhaps I will have to ignore their lustful language of Lydia and Phrygia ”all are my rivals if I do not follow the honorable mention of my Mashiach and all his subjects, who are mine and I theirs... I must confer that the letters are conspicuous literature that escaped from Smyrna, and what vanishes from the lay verb that becomes all the bearer hands with their punches, which are keys to the openings of what rises parsimoniously and falls equivalently..., and what becomes absolute of error and its restrained evil "

My attributes are the Sun that separates from another section, which is the Venerable deliberator of one who is still attached to the sacred. You must stay away from dies that are typical of scalding nightingales that have steel legs, and that if they were from a Hellene, they would be the copy of "Alezinós, which is True and unconventional", everything is manifested in the best arrangement from where I can install my head on the best flank where everything is well accommodated, and what is symbolic in the authority that is finally of our Mashiach, supplying with King David every twenty-one kilometers lamenting, and spilling what he loves and cannot contain in the caverns…, if I know that they still remain closed for prophetic fulfillments, but if all those that the universe will dare to open soon in the paradises that are pertinent will open, which are from the bias of Isaiah sprouting from himself!  

You must understand that Sybilla's electorates will be kidnapped from the anguish of a famous attack, and every prophecy that makes us live in the transparency of the entire material world and its monochord sense that unites the earth with the Kosmous! Oh, what space between everything that is unspaciable will be able to reverse what is arranged in the upper fraction of the rope… and in the omega that everything makes her feel the last sob…!

I know that you know it..., I know that you will miss it..., and that the last day of our Kosmous will come when the Mashiach makes us wake up with the gift of the hexameter, that everything will come along long correct paths, whose streams of the paradisiac Hydor will come from the trance of the last cycle, the last second-born and the last interval where everything will be the same fractional time. The advent of this period of great apogee will give us the intrinsic poetics that seems close to the Dies Irae if Tomás de Celano tells you like this:  

“It will be a day of wrath, that day when the world is reduced to ashes, as predicted by David and Sibyl! How much terror there will be in the future when the judge will come to make strict accounts! The trumpet will sound terrifying throughout the realm of the dead, to gather all to the throne. Death and Nature will be amazed when all that is created rises to answer before its judgment.

The written book will open that contains everything by which the world will be judged. Then the judge will take a seat, everything hidden will be revealed and nothing will go unpunished. What will I allege then, poor me? From what protector will I invoke help, if not even the righteous will feel safe? King of tremendous majesty, you who save only by your grace, save me the source of mercy. Remember, pious Jesus that I am the cause of your Calvary; don't miss me that day. Looking for me, you sat down exhausted; for redeeming me, you suffered on the cross, may not so much effort be in vain! Just judge of punishments, grant me the gift of forgiveness before judgment day.

I sob because I am guilty; guilt flushes my face; forgive, oh God, this supplicant. You, who absolved Magdalena and listened to the thief's plea, that gives me hope too. My prayers are not worthy, but you, who act with kindness, do not allow me to burn in the eternal fire. Place me among your flock and separate me from the wicked by placing me on your right.  

The ****** confused, thrown into the bitter flames, call me among the blessed. I beg you, contrite and on my knees, with a contrite heart, almost to ashes, to take care of me in the end. It will be tears that day, when the guilty man rises from the dust, to be judged. Forgive him then, O God, Lord of mercy, Jesus, and grant him rest Amen"  

I Vernarth, call on you to tear your hearts beyond the last door of the Elysees, the apologies will divide what is like the last syllable of salvation, tomorrow we will be primal feelings of how or which selfless person has to tell you that we are all children of parents that they will always live beyond you, and that the ****** will fall into the bitter flames, if everything is the end in the contrite, make tragedy the daily bread... whose brands taste like the spews of the first registered individuality as bread and healing body angelic, which allows to protect it..., but it remedies the entities of the Garden!

“Among the red mists of Philadelphia, Ha-Shatan's gall lies lost, believing that he has to be a cape of rest and prostration so that the empyrean will grant him rennet and singing honey in his shattered hole..., the typhoons will ignite with his ruse and what expires from the seizure of an unhappy particle emptied by the idolatrous hand. Make the adversary time the habitation of the world that will impiously be infected with the cream that is made the opposite fraction of a vermilion mist, that walks with pride among hostiles when ferocious satiety of God occurs. I tell you that I know what I am saying and that there will come an end with a non-existent verse, or rather held in the arms of an Eggelos asleep in my arms, with Justin's milk teeth from the disturbed circuit breaker of the catalectic verse, which is rolling on Patmia swing doors. Oh, flints of Alexandria, you will know how to illuminate my scrolls and the Canaanite palenques, you will know that Heylel is like a morning star marinating milk with gunpowder and harvests that plague Ithobaal of Tire. Oh, culminate Zoroastrian who sneaks through giant camels and hers King David, very close to Bethlehem, very close from where every angel-like Heylel moves with cloying feet trying their traces from a crushed Latin voice. Both tanned by the rennet that strikes their stomachs... with the vigor of blood, and falsetto between muscles attached to the back of both, I tell you that they are "Ha-Shatan and Heylel"

Elegy VII

“I propose to you a Vulgate and mutilating calamus in the blood of the Mashiach, that would be born here in the metaphorical festivals of the Himathion in my own geodesy, and of all that has been thrown on Gaia and hers Titans of her. You will see that I have learned to walk with lacerated feet and mutilated arms, headless and no apostille that says that my brooding no longer exists in her indolence about Me… the darkness is Laodicea; where it rains the shepherds who by unknown wisdom capsize before the Gods that are to come, all of them from the crippled sky through passages of time, rickety of their colonnades and acroteria that all alluvial splices, where the needy will provide to eat sap that they will recover from their powers, with black wool from the cops and nests of Heylel, and from the under-reigns of Pergamum with annals and diasporas in less wealthy hamlets, without hindrance from the Spolia Opima as rich spolies or trophies I will be reborn, referring to my Aspís Koilé, with blazons and other effects that a general of ancient Rome kept as Apollo's laurel, now I will dispossess them after defeating them with my hulous hand of eternity, incontinent to defeat them with my legion in the Battle of Patmia, and the Triplos Kosmous  Lymphoma "

The Zoroastrian radicality will have to carry out wanderings and limits when nothing was ever to begin... and what becomes noisy in the face of evil ingenuities will make dualisms that polarize the influence of making the day only darkness, and for the faithful the light of day when they were summoned by Ezekiel, and that he must know better than fragments of the day that will contain the night and the portions of the night, the light of day and the resurrection, which is based on eternity carrying the Mashiach above all the infinities of homage twilight that was expiated in chiaroscuro..., thus enslaving the stunning afternoon, which departed from trances in earthly conjunctions, where the usufruct by the Kosmous exorcised the ages that are subjected to its heritage of commemoration You must know that the power of the night about the day as a possession that bills rows of apprehensions that narrow your transit without repatriation...!

Tenure is an inclination during all premature periods, where the day is not ascribed to breadths of unconditional freedom of execration, cruelly leading to the zephyr of the Thuellai with granules mounted on the Malatia, and frolics that engender the life of a Pallid! Superstition in what appears as a multitude of fallen bodies, but without a contracted soul. "Make the even potential morbid that repels the horrendous and terrifying that persecutes the most praiseworthy and kind, who abjures that not everything is good, but rather it will be charitable and you must make efforts from the haze of Theosképasti, extending the relief of not to be classified as a non-living being when it comes to dialoguing with the shadows of Horror!  

The convital substance became too annoyed after counter-vitals that are nothing more than the apparent substance of my speculations, under all the powers that are faithful to it if they make me possess the cosmo-vice of everything hyper-ethyl and of its tempting. Since the cousin and puritanical elixir is disseminated throughout the air that is no more oxygen like a calender that does not bear the vileness of his captive servility, and of the feet that subdue him in the three claws of his shadowy darkness! Oh, what new light will it make of awakening with the preceding light that speaks of genealogies and native ceremonies where evangelical surveyors raise the leafy, that from the dark submission and the unethical fear make us weak martyrs of enslavement of the few frigid hordes and warm Laodicea!  

If my strength is to shelter myself from impudence and Hellenic-Hebraic transcendence, it does not express its ministry in all the children of Hashem, as captives carrying the constituent seed of the perched hands of the Calandria, which despite having wings she is the spokesperson of prophecies that do not have tangible historical records..., you must understand that the Calander has an autonomous and leading flight from Tuscany, but its flight radius is more than an eagle without stopping in those invisible spaces, where the legend can only transmit it..., although someday there will be no birds in the only begotten sky. You already know that I have carried chiaroscuro for their glorification that surround me..., like all that imperishable possession in cycles, they are coupled to cruel and fateful destinies, but always towards an end that for the most part becomes apprehensive of the intellectual aging verb, where their mysteries and they inhabit disembodied contents of the identical globular cycle, where the prostration of their weary skills and wrathful doors will appear from the last eagle that was seen flying free in the hands of Saint John the Apostle, and from other non-resident farewells by their claws of the Gerakis. Why not the Ceremonial Katapausis in the Profitis, or the metatarsal of the eagle that carries last discharges of discouragement in punitive inspiration, if only the calendars free man from captivity, and of unquestionable eagles in the fires of exaltation that will be able to bear it being seen as a figurative immune from Ophel, and from all the images of the supra existential world, containing volatile images of eagles for all purgative humanity forming heads that vigorously face Ha-Shatan and the Iblis, being more than an erroneous translucent figure of the angel ****** and of the perpetual fire of the incorruptible Calandria of Hashem.

“Without regret, I must tell you that the roots of the infinite began to be lost from the pieces of clay that were or are part of Yahannam's credulity, from here on from the dry and solid clay, making the genius of Laodicea one-sided with the hail of springs and of clouds that never stopped ceasing, thus in this way, I suffocate my burning hands that obeyed forces of more than ten newtons due to the miscalibration of their mass and the gravitational force that the Mashiach who converted from his incorporeal angel's geniuses. Make of fire and light your clay that is made homogeneous with liquid ozone, so ****** will come from paradise designated as solid ozone, replacing the negligent potions, which have not been able to free the divine light that for three years has been badly shaped, and have deteriorated only hundreds of the seven hundred pages of Vernarth's Lent, until today that his personal aptitude is questioned in the bleating of his sheep, who could move the fragile leaves of the disembodied forest with their nails, reciting regrets that would relieve the engraved feet on the limestone liquefied and muddy, where they can only emerge before all the dungeons that are collapsed by newton on his scapula, pouring out the expelled sighs of the eternity of the Ohr Hassadim "  

“Observe that cleaning is delighting in the grandiose erudition of what leads us from our null point of existence to the risky point where our objectives bring us closer to our sustenance; So what is Ohr Hassadim…? It is going towards a posthumous desire that thickens the light that emanates from our null point to the widest limit where every human race receives it from the great flow of Hassadim "or purification that is cyclically generated." My beloved readers who speak are the origin of all ignorance, and what is contained in the body purged of it is the unknown revival of a being that instructs itself as the Perdita Mundis or Lost Mundis! " The superabundance of medium prophetic and philosophical biodiversity creates paraphernalia and cavities where no head fits in the earth that have been honest to receive bodies in its mournful abode... makes of its benefits the great desire to receive the "Kli" so that Let us enjoy abundantly from the transparent cannulas of the wattle, which will make the Celestial Hydor fall, and the Manna that will sustain plexuses and eternal insurrectionary souls from the starvation of those who sob absolved of their soul, more than in its very spectrum that is filled with rootlets and clipping, which manifest the desire to play with drops that fall colliding on each leaf, and then fall into our mouths when they are satisfied manifested. Azure water, and nothing else if I want to live or not! Of that blue water that will fall on our mouths and will satisfy us with anxieties and fears that become imprinted when we are fed up…! And from the Manna, which will come with dissimilar entities, even feeding our soul that must also feed on the Iridescent Hydor in a swift vessel called Kli towards Samos…!

Elegy VIII

The eighth and posthumous baptistery will overwhelm all the mountains that became more exalted than all the peaks of the world, showing that the initial date combined the essences of the absolute with the "V" that began to turn one hundred and eighty degrees to the right. “I, Vernarth, have conceived the other being that will detach itself from myself, lying in the Kli or inverted vessel, on all the higher levels of the Ohr, even in those and all the Solstices where the face that makes its materialization is scarce, up to the Xiphos bronzes that would evoke tons from the Speleothemes that would gradually become implicit in my body, taking root more than the vital unfolding that is in my other sub-iridescent body. What is my soul united to the invisible creatures of this world? Take hold of the dizzy that contract in the wind tunnel of Profitis and your Codex Raeder, in what completely makes the ascent of its epitome by its golden steps, leading me to the occurrence and recreation of myself, but with plenipotentiaries who press in Gethsemane in the trepid angles of the Kli "V", beginning to ascend to Keter!  

“I must tell you that soon the Aurion particles will enter through my septum where they have to depart through the nasal pyramid… and that delegations of hoplites are already waiting for me and will return with me to Sparta and all of Greece. And with a Kli of endangered earthly and macerated light, they will be essenced from all the grasses that the calenders by descendants will make at the end a new sprout within me with my Golden Alikantus. The expansion of my light will expand from the radiance of my burnished steed, leaving within my identical hexagonal torch that will make the multi-spiritual thought of its same influx of light into the munificence of its newly created light, it will be from this constraint the Ecclesiastical stele from Ephesus to Laodicea accompanying me. ! If you watch carefully and take your hand out at this time and I peek through the rose window...! You will see that the magnanimous world is established and is going to receive you next to me, lavishing the herb that makes its clothing that shelters our body, and its own light reflected from Aurion itself… "The profound Light that looks from the candid domes of the Seven Churches to the vaults of the Ohr Hassadim, transferring to the sub-Iridescent Mashiach, but contrite of the total immanence of the detachment of its divine light to deposit it on me..."  

Therefore, when both are together, the greed to receive is canceled in the Radiance within, and it can determine its shape only after the luminosity has departed at least once. This is because after the departure of Light from the Kli, he begins to yearn for it and this greed determines and establishes the form of the desire to receive. Consequently, when the dawn is clothed within the Kli once again, the two are related as two separate notions: the vessel and the Light, or the body and the Life.

Observe this carefully, for it is indeed very profound. And soon I have managed to describe the aureole of Hyperborea with the radiation of the Eygues bringing Wonthelimar; Well, if you know how to pretend that you are certainly emanating from the double V or W, which make up your round trip from Ephesus to Laodicea, and vice versa! You have already managed to understand that the diploid round trip of Wonthelimar emanated from two consecutive Vs, making the spin of Wonthelimar carrying its quantum particles of it and carrying with itself the quantum number of the fifth courtyard of Helleniká which is 5, but represented by ε´ raised to fifty, that is; ν 'which is the value of fifty Hellenic. Thus the spinning spin of 5 to ten times its unit will be indicated, as you perceive many dreams will be discovered where those who wake up will never forget that it is this sub-atomic elementary particle in the episode of contrast and extensive change in molecular physics that will lead Vernarth with him in his heart or Kardiá, which becomes effusive in his multidimensional quantum.  

“I have managed to understand that the rotating spaces have been aligned with Wonthelimar, and what is divided in the angular will reflect the mental image throughout the aerial imaginary geodesy of all Hellenic, generating the sidereal coordinates, leaving the intrinsic nakedness of all embryonic forms that it is a sublime mirror of the nakedness of the sidereal chromosome of all humanity. As loci installed in the shank of the Pythagoras monochord, but making movement the tax of certain movements that are more than anything else links of kinetics and gravitational emotions, making the mechanics of the monochord the analogous value that generates the signs of Ohr or light. Pivot at the omega tip of the monochord, raising the re-transfigured ε´ Penta in the form of A, but then returning with Wonthelimar and his Spin of quantum from Ephesus until arriving at Patmos with the essence of the “W” that will bring by essence refounded the monochord in the figure ε´ or V that will represent the quantum experiential bond, or crossing of the particle transfer threshold through the superior axon of Keter to Malchut, equivalent to the tenth compendium of Vernarth's ε´ to ν´ which is the relativistic oscillation of its final unit of ν´; which is fifty "  

Your duties are yours and mine. Mine, I will be the one who will carry the labarum to bear and admit all the tributaries of the creation of my new world, inclined in the Duoverse, Codex Raeder and of everything distinguishable in the refraction of the light that becomes embodied in Ohr Jaiá, or Light of Life for all created things, all creation, and everything that comprises needs to be created in the candles that become receivable in the natures that multiply the remnants of energies, which hopes to be initiated from the new cosmos of the Zigzag Universe and the Zefian Arrows, being the main bastion of the link between the printed matter and decisive stimuli of mercy from where the Iridescent Hydor is born. In littleness, the rocking of the unbalance of the universe is attributed, and of all the wrong applications of amplifying the Bios of a universe that tired of behaving mournfully, being children of its immortal reply...! Understand that nothing will mean more than the awakening of everything that extends beyond the borders of the Mashiach, being cosmopolitan emanating and merciful bestowal and that nothing resides in the material already broken.  

"All the modes of adaptation ended up differing in each form of adhesion within what it meant to emanate in all equivalences and from impels as fast as the buggy that carried Vernarth and Etréstles from Genoa to Piacenza since Etréstles deserted from the Eighth Cemetery of Messolonghi composing all the wishes of the awakening according to the Kabbalah of Vernarth being largely absorbed by the Apostle Saint John. Everything was going towards the kingdom and the surroundings of the Himation that awaited Vernarth himself, swallowing him with all its lights, which were even ecstatic by his epidermis, knowing that he was separated from the undivided light that awaited him in the Megaron, very close to the Opistodome in the Behina Alef, split from his expanded sub-iridescent body of the Ohr, which in turn was levitating next to him, for the vaporous reason of not knowing if his body was a conclusion or a new kingdom that was brewing before him "  

The final phase of this Elegy VIII gave the consent for the world that does not fit in the reason, nor in the thought that was already being installed in all the balusters and limestone stones that would make up its Tree of Life Sephiroth. Your soul is my soul and mine, and I know very well that everyone awaits me on the Profitis Ilias plain, distinguishing me as a whole in the sense of smell that is rooted in the gastronomic world of the Hellenes, and the absolute that my breathing with a few granules of nitrate, making them a divine cause with potassium that became despotic in living creatures that make their essence mine, like my Spirit that would eventually rescind capturing all the sodium from the iridescent nimbus in the intermittent rest and its multi-life like Nefesh!

Beloved confreres Khaire..., receive all the joy that removes the poisons that pierce tongues that become addicted to the drops as they generate more bodies from mine..., or You will be part of my Guf or body that no longer resists lacerations from swords and spears, which depart from my head and its undetectable body from the passage of Time, and from all the fallen heroes next to me…! I see how they fall into their exile diminishing what purifies the content of Advent, of its four candles, dried fruits, its circle between the hands of the Mashiach, and abundant coniferous branches taking my corporality in all the indifference that exists between cognition and loss of awareness of lucidity beyond the Advent Wreath and its four luminaries staying in the Fifth Candle, like the Fifth Chalice of Elijah, taking me very distant with all their desires to welcome and consider that under my initial "V", they will find the synchronization of the Fifth Candle and the Fifth Chalice, which is my "V" in the fifth dimension of the Fifth courtyard and in the shady Fifth of Helleniká!

As the creation, I have been imbued with the euphonic harmony of creation, from Bethany to Patmos, of all the balms that are more capable than physical receptacles within all the higher entities that are more than the unknown, and of the infinite and imperceptible! Of the essential number of the geophysical height of Delphi, close to the elevation that will occur with my departure at the elevation of 583 whose essential number will be 16 and six plus one is Seven, and the Profitis Elías is 565 adding sixteen, and its number essential is one plus six equals seven. All this makes it prevail that my soul will reverberate from the indigo lights of the Ohr, to be sent between two poles from the altitude of Delphi, making these two spaces the equanimous and providential emanation of climate change, due to the disparity between these two latitudes, But of equal essential numbers, creating the closeness of Vernarth and Apollo as they met in the Kassotides, before departing from their assumption to exalted Aurion.

where were you when I came out?
seventeen
asleep in a Philadelphia suburb
with that man
you called
boytoy
lover
caccoon
because everyone likes to feel weeks of web
crystallized between their sweaty toes

I was an unremarkable specimen
called yoda because of the hairs
on my ears
a baby with a flawless twenty digits and
hands like a
painter’s
but love was spring
and had to wait for the grass to green
and the retrievers to shed their
winter coats
so their owners could curse
and huff
and sneeze

you
precious
Kurt Cobain fan
and all things hip/hop
with those glasses and that hair
asked to be my sister
but caught unaware
with **** in your shorts because
you never saw me coming
and
how alike we were
and
what if we met
somewhere
someday
and you said
yes
this is my brother
this is the one who I lost
in the spring

I was down on my luck** and had not returned to my job nor had any notion of returning again. I had a plane ticket for Boston that would fly me to Minnesota that was scheduled to depart in twenty days. I had still not yet bought the bus ticket to Boston. I had one hundred dollars to my name. My friend Billy had owed me one hundred dollars as well and gave me one hundred and thirty dollars in 1988 pesos coins as repayment. Knowing that it might be difficult to find a place who would honestly convert them and that their worth fluctuated, I would have much rather he paid me in US dollars but I took them in thanks and didn’t mention it. He knew what I was thinking and told me that if I couldn’t get a fair price that I could mail them to him when he got to Missouri and he would mail me what he owed in cash but until then all of his money was ******* in his trip home and even that was barely enough but that he had checked on their worth and said it should cover the one-hundred he owed. I smiled and we warmly shook hands to seal the deal.  We spent the day riding around in his wrangler and running some final errands for him before he would be gone.
The three years we had known each other might as well have been a lifetime and had felt just as full as one and had gone by just as fast. We ‘d drunk coffee and smoked cigarettes outside of Elizabeth’s bookstore. We’d watched in silence the beautiful women that would walk passed without much attention given to us. We, however, gave great attention to every ***** and bounce and shimmy. There were some gorgeous women that came to the bookstore those years. We shot pool with Bernie, who had the keys to the Mason Lodge and had many great conversations on the fire escape. We played games of chess in the bookstore. We drove around listening to the blues. Sometimes we got together, the three of us, at Billy’s and we’d make a fire and they’d drink coffee because they were old men and had had to stop drinking years before and I would drink some bourbon or wine after a cup or two of coffee and then we’d share a pack of cigarettes between us and we’d feel the warmth of the fire and have some good laughs. Bernie was diagnosed with a rare and terrible cancer in North Carolina on a trip to see his son in the Air force and had been brought back home a few months later and beside his wife and daughter and son fell silently to sleep and never woke up again. I hadn’t gone to see him but Billy said that when he saw him he didn’t mention his condition once and that he even got out of bed and sat with him on the back porch that looked out upon the open land and sky and they talked like nothing was wrong and laughed and said they’d see each other again. Bernie died a week later.
I hadn’t planned it this way but the opening to this story is very much dedicated to Bernie, and Billy, I hope you get safely back to Missouri and that your pesos will help me make it through the fall.
I had not told my mother or my love, Rosalie, that I had left my job. So I made fake work schedules and left the house and returned home at all the appropriate times with a lanyard I had kept from work hanging from my neck and hung it on the doorknob when I got home. During the day there were several options to occupy the eight-hour shifts. The town ran very much so due to the college and I would go up there and browse around the old books called the stacks and take a few with me out onto the grass of the quad and read them. I would read for hours. I got restless every now and then and would even read while I walked in circles up and down and back and forth the crisscrossing paths under the trees of the quad. This was great until I got caught for taking these books from the school at my own leisure and soon it was revealed that I was not a student there and they told me not to come back. Some days I would run along the riverside. I enjoyed long walks on the train tracks around the city with my headphones on and taking pictures. I always had my backpack on, even if nothing was in it, but usually there was a book and a pair of Rosalie’s ******* and on occasion I would take this out and close my eyes to smell them and I would miss her very much. We lived with a few towns between us and she was a very busy and dedicated young woman. She was working in nursing homes and taking care of home patients and going to school full time on top of it and doing clinicals and taking care of her little brother because it takes a lot sometimes for a man to be cured from his drinking habits, which was very much true in their fathers case and her mother was a wild and paranoid woman who refused to believe that her boyfriend was beating Rosalie’s little brother while she was away at work. So Rosalie took great care and love for her brother and also custody.
I, however, had not been so responsible with my life. When I came back from the Army it was not as a hero but I could tell a great hero’s story because I’d known them all but mostly they were characters in stories I’d read in the barracks, or secondhand tales given in extravagant detail during chow and none of them were true but they sounded quite exciting. It made the time at bars when I had gotten home less lonely because I could tell a tale in first person convincingly enough that many an old vet, with his own made up fantasies, would act like they believed me and would share their stories and we didn’t have to sit there thinking about the buddies we lost or the women whom had fallen out of love with us one time or another or the families we were avoiding. I liked going to the bars, but I wouldn’t have had anything to say if it weren’t for those stories.
I met Rosalie a month after having been discharged. She sat in Elizabeth’s bookstore and was studying for a class. I was with Billy at the time and we were outside smoking cigarettes when we saw her walk in.
“Did you see that?” Billy said. I saw her all right. She had gone inside and we were still sipping our coffees and smoking and I was still seeing her, no matter what else walked by or how pretty the sky was or the warmth of the sun.
“That’s a good girl right there,” Billy said, “not like most of these others we see out here, kid.” It annoyed me a little that Billy was still talking about her, egging me on a little. As I had said, I had seen her and he was disrupting my fantasizing and I had known she was a kind girl and I wanted to save my dream of her for a little while longer before I brought it to her.
“I know,” I said.
“Well, go and see about her then!”
“I’ll go”
I had no intention of letting her pass by but there was thunder rumbling in my chest and butterflies in my stomach and I had suddenly become cold even though it was sixty-five degrees out on the sidewalk and something was keeping me from standing. “I’ll have one more smoke and then I’ll go in for more coffee and see her then.”
“Tonto’s nervous! Ha ha ha!” Billy got a kick out of the thought and patted me on the back. “If you want,” He said, “I’ll go say hello for you.” He was still amused.
“You’re twice her age Bill,” I said, “she’d probably call the cops on your old ugly mug”
“The cops may be called because of how well endowed I am and she’ll be screaming and the neighbors will worry about her and call the cops on us”
Billy was always talking about his manhood and I never knew any good rebuttals because I was honest with myself and so I never had a response. I let him brag. All I knew is I had one and I knew it wasn’t large but none of the women I ever slept with ever said it was too small and they all enjoyed lying with me afterwards and talking quite a while before falling to sleep and sometimes the *** had been wild.
The cigarette was finished and I was still nervous but I didn’t want to hesitate any longer. I don’t even think she’d even seen me when she walked into the store.
I went inside and ordered a coffee and looked over to her. She was on a laptop and had a pile of books beside her and some papers and she looked up and our eyes met. I held the glance with her for a little longer than a moment. I was a little embarrassed and she was beautiful and I was wondering what my face looked like to her and if my eyes had been creepy but she lifted a corner of her lips and smiled before looking back to her work and then my shoulders relaxed and I realized I had held my breath. I laughed to myself at my own ridiculousness and let it go and then walked up to her and extended my hand and she took it with a smile and I looked dead into her beautiful hazel eyes again with confidence and we’ve been in love ever since.

The reason for my trip to Minnesota was to see my old friends from the Army: Grady and Hank. We hadn’t seen each other since I was discharged eight years ago and they reached out to me when they could but I wasn’t very good at keeping in touch with them. After I left the Army it was hard for me to talk to them. I felt I was missing out on something and I didn’t want to think of them dying without me and I didn’t like those feelings so I tried to pretend they didn’t exist but they kept me in the loop of things and always asked how I was doing no matter how well I stayed in touch with them or not. It meant much more than they’ll ever know that they did. So when they said they had both gotten out nothing was going to stop me from reconnecting with them. They said they were going to drive east to see me. I called them back.
“Let’s not hang around here in Maine,” I said, “it’ll be the middle of fall and there’s nothing to do around here. Instead of you guys coming all the way out here and then staying for a week let’s make the whole trip a seven-day adventure and you ******* can drop me off home when it’s over?”
“That sounds all well and good Russ but how the hell are you getting out here?”
“I bought a ticket, I’ll be there on the twenty-second of October at eleven.”
“That’s what I like hearing old pal!” Grady said through the phone, “Now that sounds more like the Russ I know. You’ll find me at the airport at eleven. I’ll bring a limousine with a bar and buy a couple of hookers for us”
“No hookers, Grady”
“Yes, hookers!” Grady said, “do you still do blow?”
“No”
“Good. Me neither. Honestly, I don’t do hookers anymore also. But it sounded like a proper celebration didn’t it?”
“It did.”
“Well, then its settled Russ. I’ll see you on the twenty-second of October at eleven PM sharp in a long white limo and I’ll bring the *****, the blow and the ****** and it’ll be like old times.”
“Sounds perfect Grady, I can’t wait.”
We hung up.

The plan was I would spend the night at Grady’s and the next morning we’d get Hank and we’d head for Chicago as soon as we could. One of their friends, Lemon, would be making the trip with us and would be there at Hanks when we got there in the morning. Lemon was an excellent shot with the rifle and a better guitarist and Grady told me I’d get right along with him. He told me he was at the range and the Sergeant was yelling in this black boys ear that he couldn’t shoot worth a ****.
“MY ******* GOT BETTER AIM BOY!” “I CAN HIT YOUR FAT UGLY MOMMA IN THE EYE AT TWICE THE DISTANCE” “YOU COULDN’T HIT PUBERTY IF I DROPPED YOUR ***** FOR YOU!”
The Sergeant, Grady said, went on and on at the top of his lungs yelling at this black guy and we all stopped and stared at him.
“As the Sarg kept hollering the kids rifle kept popping off shots at the target and you’d hear him grab another clip when the other ran out and reload it and then keep shooting but none of us could tell where the shots were going. The Sarg was so loud and the shots had such a rhythm all of us at the range stopped and looked over. There wasn’t a single bullet hole anywhere on the target except directly in the center where every bullet he had shot had gone through and nowhere else.
“Finally Lemon ran out of bullets and the Sarg quit hollering and he called him to attention.”
“Where did you learn to shoot a rifle Jefferson,” The Sergeant inquired.
“Sergeant, I have never shot a rifle before in my life”
“Do you think it’s funny to lie to your Sergeant?”
“No, Sergeant”
“So why are you lying?”
“I’m not lying Sergeant”
“What did you do before you enlisted, Private?”
“I worked on the farm for my father, Sergeant”
“At ease soldier, Staff Sergeant Dominguez would like to have a word with you.”
And that’s how Lemon went to training to become a ****** but he broke his leg in training and got sent home.
“Well ****,” I said, “He must be one helluva guitarist.”

We were to spend a day in Chicago and camp at the Indiana Dunes and then drive to Detroit and spend a day and camp there and then head to Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Philadelphia if we had the time and then go to Boston and they’d drop me off at the train the following morning and I’d go home from there. But all of that was still twenty days away and I was down on my luck and had to save every cent I possibly could for the trip. Rosalie was excited for me. She knew how much I hated being home and that I stayed around to be with her even as much as she said that I shouldn’t let her stop me from doing what I wanted with my life but I really had no clue but I did know that she was the love of my life. She was happy to hear of this adventure and supported me but she didn’t know how broke I was and I hid it well by cooking all of our meals with things at my mothers apartment or my fathers house depending on where she came during her once-a-week sleepovers. She was proud of me for how well I had been with managing my money. There’s nothing to it, I told her.
The summer had been one of the best summers I’d ever had. Rosalie and I got to spend a lot of time together in-between our own lives and every moment had been cherished. I worked often and hard for twelve bucks an hour for more than forty hours a week but had nothing to show for it now. I’d gotten in trouble with the law and the lawyer was costly and so were the fines and the bail, even though I got the bail back I had to dump it into my beautiful old truck and then some because I hadn’t taken the best of care of it. I also spent most of my money on dinners out with Rosalie and I liked buying her little brother things every now and then and I had a terrible habit of buying books. Also, I had a habit of going to the bars on weekends and I wasn’t a modest drinker.
The last paycheck I got was for five hundred dollars and I spent it on a room for a long weekend at an Inn by the ocean for Rosalie and I to end such a good summer properly. Money is for having a good time and is for others. That’s how I’ve always thought it should be spent. When you’re broke, it’s easy to find lots of good times in the simple endeavors and I enjoyed those but I also enjoyed getting away with Rosalie. So when I say I was down on my luck do not think I was unhappy about it, I had lots of good luck before I’d gotten down on it and Rosalie is possibly the best luck a young man could ever come across. Still, I only had one hundred dollars to my name and three 1988 pesos coins that I’m not sure will be worth the other hundred and with twenty days to go. It’s going to be pretty tight.

I want to talk about our time by the ocean now...

(c) 2015

Is there anything more lonely than the sound of boy playing a banjo on a spring afternoon? Oh yes, yes, it’s the sound of girl playing a banjo on a spring afternoon. A boy would lean back on the porch chair and let the instrument fall and rest on his chest to feel the raindrop-plucked vibrations, one by one. This girl, she sits on a kitchen chair, but not in the kitchen, and folds herself over her Daddy’s 5-string. The banjo rests on her blue-cottoned thigh, the lower metal edge firm against her stomach, her slight ******* pressed against the upper wooden rim. If you were standing in the doorway of the workshop you’d see her blond hair falling, falling over her face. There would be that dead-centre parting and just visible the edge of her wire-rimmed glasses.  Then, the denim jacket worn over the kind of summer-blue flowered frock pulled from her Mummy’s clothes that with her passing have now migrated into her bedroom. The thought of clothes is what there is close to hand at the break of day.

When Kath woke this morning, when the morning woke Kath, the valley air was already as sweet, as fresh as any April morning could possibly be in this green hollow of her home. She had lain there feeling the air caress her forehead. The window, always open beside her tangled bed, let in the ringing song of the waterthrush. Newly returned this handsome brown migrant warbler, his whitish breast streaked with brown, more thrush than warbler, she’d watched in the stream yesterday wading on his long, pink legs bobbing his tail like a spotted sandpiper. Soon there would be a nest somewhere in the beech and hemlock hollow along by the stream in the interstices of some fallen tree.

Ellen was due home this morning. She’d hear the Toyota from way up the track, driven overnight from Philadelphia she’d have stopped and stopped. Tired and so tired, she’d go from truck stop to truck stop, the radio her only company and the thought of Joel between her legs arching into her to keep her warm. But she’d drive with the windows down swallowing the night air as the ***** brown car swallowed the miles. Kath would have the coffee waiting, potato cakes on the stove, she’d have a fresh towel placed on her bed, underwear warm from the dryer, spring flowers bunched in mug on the window sill.

Ellen would never come right in when she arrived home, but sit down with the dogs on the porch step and gather herself, watch the mist rise down in the valley, drink in the bird-ringing silence. Kath would steal open the door and crouch beside her with Mummy’s coffee cup thrown, glazed and fired at Plummer’s Fold. Head resting against the porch supports Ellen would allow the cup to be placed between her hands, her fingers uncurled then curled by Kath around its rough circumference. There would be a kiss on the back of the neck and she’d be gone back upstairs to sit with her notebook, those new lyrics she’d been fashioning, her Plummer’s Fold diary – yesterday had been a rich day as she’d walked the bounds of Brush Mountain on the Big Tree Trail singing and plucking an invisible banjo all the while. Those songs of her great-great uncle she’d discovered in a pile of Library of Congress recordings just echoed through her, had become part of her. They were as much a part of the hinterland of Brush Mountain as the stones on the trail. Garth Watson’s voice, well she knew every turn and breath. She’d been listening to them since she was thirteen. She saw herself at the old Victrola blowing off the dust, placing the forgotten disk on the central spindle, scratching the needle with her finger to test the machine, gauge its volume. Then, that voice surrounding her, entering her, as lonesome as the scrawny girl just out of junior high that she had been, the dumb silent girl from the backwoods with that cute clever sister who played guitar and was everybody’s friend, who the boys rushed to fill the empty seat next to her on the school bus.

They’d recorded this song on their Lonesome Pine album. Kath had it all arranged, had it all imagined, brought it to that session at One-Two Records. She had been so scared Ellen would smile gently and say ‘Kath, not this ol’ thing surely. Why I remember Daddy singing this song into the night over and over.’ But no. When Kath had sung it through, looking into the bowl of her denim skirt, she’d raise her eyes to see tears running down Ellen's face. Everything between them changed at that moment. The location studio in The Farm House disappeared and they were girls on their home porch. In an hour they had it down and Larry had said. ‘My God, Holy Jesus, where did that come from’. So they went straight home and listened to those old records all night and most of the next day. They rewrote the album they’d spent a year planning (and saving for).

So now when they came together on those country fair stages, in the cafes in Baltimore or Philly it was that haunting Appalachian music that ran through their songs. Kath still shy as a blushing bean, hiding in the hair and glasses, reluctantly singing harmony vocals, Ellen– well, that girl had only to look wistfully into the audience and they were hers.  

And so they were living this life holed up in their family place, keeping faith with Plummer’s Fold. Daddy was in a home in Lewis now. He’d taken himself there before his dementia had taken him. He played his girls’ CDs all day long on his Walkman, had their pictures in his near to empty room – just a rocker, a table, a pile of books by his bed with Dora’s wedding quilt.

This music, this oh so heart-breaking music, the loping banjo, the tinkling, springing, glancing accidental guitar and their innocent valley voices. They’d exhausted the old records now and, their education in the old ways done, were back with new songs and Kath’s ideas to only record in the Fold and build songs with soundtracks of the world around them. She’d been laying down tracks day after day whilst Ellen was on the road with the Williams Band and often solo, support for the Minna Peel as ‘an outsider folk artist from deepest Appalachia.’

Kath wouldn’t travel more than a day away from the farm. Every show was an agony, except for the time they were performing. She couldn’t bear all that stuff that surrounded it – all that waiting, the sound check, more waiting, that networking **** One-Two constantly wanted her to be part of. She’d ***** off as the guys gathered around Ellen. She’d take a book and sit in the Toyota. She couldn’t do people, though she loved her folks, she loved her sister like she loved the trees and stones, the birds and flowers on Brush Mountain. Always shy, always afraid of herself ‘Too sensitive for your own good, Kathy girl’, her Daddy had said. Never been kissed in passion, never allowed herself to fall for love, though her body drove her to feelings she had read about, and thus fuelled had succumbed to. There was a boy she’d see in Lewis just from time to time who she thought about, and thought about. She imagined him kissing her and holding her gently in the night . . .

The weak fall
their spirits quenched
words as swords impale their hearts
they roast over smoldering coals
left behind by the unkind

Devoured by their discouragement
they are chewed up and spit out
by a world that simply
just doesn't care

My search for Philadelphia
has found it's populous
has moved away
the city of brotherly love
has fallen

They warn us that fever travels in the air,
so women pull the shutters closed and keep
children out of the empty, heady streets.
Grandpa tries to assure me we are safe,
that yellow fever will stop when the ports
close. He never speaks of how the victims suffer,
shuts the curtains against my anxious eyes
as the bodies are removed, but rumors catch
the breezes, too.

Vomiting, bleeding from the nose and mouth,
the eyes yellow, and then victims reach out
in a last fit of delirium, demanding forgiveness
from God’s wrath as He turns them the sallow
shade of the September sun. This is the color
of a body when salvation fractures
from the depths of their souls.

Each day, the count of the dead rises.
My cousin, the milkman, a widow down the block—
all pass within hours. The Quakers deem
this the Almighty’s will, his “rod.” Physicians
bleed the sick, and I think not to rid them of disease,
but to account for sin.

We all hope for frost. I know Grandpa will not leave
the city, but I do not imagine his eyes yellowing,
for pride keeps them clear of exhaustion
and glaze from inviting liquor or laudanum.

My whole body sweats from dreams
of corpses the color of tobacco-stained teeth,
blood pouring from eyes like tears, each one dropping
to the ground. I wake up, dizzy in smeared-red sheets,
my nightgown smelling like a mausoleum, but I do not
call for help because I’ve been waiting to look
into the face of God, to see my yellowed city’s reflection.

13th and pine
15th and pine
12th and federal
broad and morris
13th and spruce
juniper and lombard
juniper and locust
13th and walnut
18th and ellsworth
12th and kater
23rd and christian
15th and rodman
9th and filbert
17th and carpenter
10th and spruce
17th and cecil b. moore
23rd and annin
17th and ellsworth
somewhere desolate in Germantown
broad and catherine
12th and spruce
4th and catherine
10th and christian
16th and reed

Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)



I have been reading the old copy of Saturday Nation, a week end edition of the daily nation in Kenya. It was published some weeks ago. It has some enticing feature stories that have made me to reflect on a certain family value in Africa. The three feature stories I have been reading are ; Lupita Nyong’o stellar performance in the movie, 12 years a slave, in which she emerged a top American actor, attracting in the same course the most coveted Oscar prize, I have also read in the same paper the shooting literature star of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, an American based Nigerian writress, who had had her last book Americana win the American Booker Prize, and lastly , I have also ready  a very captivating account of Wanjiku wa Ngugi’s spellbinding debutante in her book, the fall of saints. Wanjiku account was written by Proffessor Evans Mwangi a Thiong’o literary scholar based in Newyork. Mwangi being a Ngugi wa Thiongi’o, scholar wrote this article because Wanjiku wa Ngugi is also a daughter to the world famous Kenyan novelist, Ngugi Njogu wa Thiongi’o.
In each of the three above cases, emanates a significant observation that the fathers to the respective ladies are great men in their respective capacity, and that the ladies mentioned are now obvious heirs to the family names, family intellectual domain and family selling point respectively.
Lupita is heir to proffessor Peter Anyang Nyong’o, Adichie is an heir to the African literary heritage of proffessor Chinua Achebe, and While Wanjiku is a promising successor to Proffessor Thiongi’o.
These are actually a crystallization of strange unfolding that time has now challenged old mindset among African societies. The mindset in which Africans have not been counting girls as children .This family value has been there up to today. If an African man tells you that I don’t have a family it means that he is expressing three connotations; he is not married, he is married but he does not have a children, or he is married but his wife have only been bearing him girls, because if anything; an African man is only responsible for siring sons, daughters are a mistake of the wife.
This typology of family civilization got to its peak in the mid of  last year, when the Luo council of elders, hailing from Siaya County of Kenya, where Baraka Obama is rooted, expressed their open puzzle over Baraka Obama as per why he can’t take his time to have sons. They are now organizing a delegation that will go to America to counsel President Obama over the matter that he needs to re-organize his posterity strategy other than thinking in terms of Sasha and Malia.
What I mean is that Africans don’t believe if at all family interests can be carried forward through a daughter. They don’t believe if a girl can be an intellectual or command any wisdom that can go places. But realities from a historical experience that great African men don’t sire great sons but instead they sire great daughters must make this society of male chauvinists to have a mental paradigm shift in relation to child valuation and recognition. To accept a social déjàvu that daughters have a big capacity to carry forward the family name than the previously mistaken notion that they are only sons who can do this.
Facts on the ground range from the case of Julius Nyerere,Kwameh Nkrumah, Malcolm X, Frantz Fanon, Richard Wright, Tom Mboya, Masinde Muliro, Nelson Mandela, Mutula Kilonzo, and Francis Imbuga just to mention a few African heroes. Justification of this list showing Africa’s reversal of Prospero complex abodes in the facts that; Susan Nyerere is currently the most outspoken in the Nyerere family. Similarly, Nkrumah’s daughter is currently a politician in Ghanaian parliament and very promising politically. Betty Shabazz X was recently reported to have put Louis Farrakhan on the spot over the ****** plot of her father the late Malcolm X.Mireille Fanon Mendes is the director of human rights activist organization known as Frantz Fanon foundation. This is the organization which recently recognized Mumia Abu-Jamal with a prestigious prize. Mumia Abu-Jamal is an African-American writer and journalist, author of six human rights focussed books and hundreds of similar spirited columns and articles. He has spent the last three decades on racially biased Pennsylvania’s death row. And now general population in America and in the world knows that Mumia Abu-Jamal was wrongfully convicted and sentenced for the ****** of Philadelphia Police man, Daniel Faulkner. His demand for a neutral trial and unconditional freedom is enmassely supported by heads of state, Nobel laureates, human rights organizations, scholars, religious leaders, artists and bioethical scientists. All this is nothing other than universal singing of the tune in the poetic writings of Frantz Omar Fanon entitled Facts of blackness, through his daughter Mireille.
And equally enough, those of you who have delved into posthumous family conditions of Richard Wright must have appreciated stellar performance of proffessor Julia Wright in respect to the genetic legacy of her father. Dr. Susan Mboya is currently living in South Africa and she is serving the society in the same tandem her late father Tom Mboya discharged anti-colonial service to the people of Kenya, Africa and world in general.Masinde Muliro has Mrs. Namwalie Muliro and Mutula Kilonzo has Kethi Kilonzo. The point is that, just like all of other heroes in Africa, these two great politicians have their daughters; Namwalie and Kethi as the heirs to their political legacy.
This phenomenon is not unique to Africa. But it is a universal genetic condition. The study of genetics has a concept that inferior genes of the mother are passed through an X chromosomes in XY to the sons, while superior genes of the father are passed through an X chromosome of the ** to the daughters.
Just but to wind up my story I want also to counsel The Luo council of elders that president Obama, their son who lives in America does not have misplaced values in projecting his posterity through Sasia and Malia. Personally I am aware that as per now there is no any African boy at age of Sasha Obama that has ever read Yann Martel’s Life of Mr. Pi. But in stark contrast the international media reported Sasha Obama to have vividly read this book until she commented to Baraka Obama that, ‘daddy, this is a very good book’.  And of course this is how an intellectual is made.

In that first moment
I knew something was different.
Maybe I was high,
but as I passed by
I noticed how her eyes
wrapped 'round the other side,
and her face gently curved
beyond what I observed.
As I wandered through the store,
I forgot what I came in for.
What I had seen
I couldn't believe:
is this what they mean
when they say "beauty?"
I noticed the ring on her finger,
the piercing in her nostril,
the color of her eyes,
her lips,
her smile,
the sound of her voice
as she bid me good day.

The next day I returned.
The automatic door opened,  
she turned
studied my face.
A smile, then back to work.

"I like your shirt. Are you from Philadelphia?" She asked,
referencing the Philadelphia Folk Festival shirt.
"No, thankfully."

Should I have told my experience of Philadelphia?
Of psychosis bordering on dementia,
of raw confusion and terror,
of stupid decisions compounded with error,
of hopes and expectations,
of my inability to maintain relations?

"Seems like a fun event to see."
"Yeah, it was wild."
"Did you travel all the way out there just for it?"
"No, I worked production."
"Oh, how cool! Would you like a receipt."
"No."
"Have a good day."
"You too."

The next morning I needed coffee,
and a few things for lunch,
and a way to strain
the massage oil I was infusing.
Again, as the automatic door
parted she greeted me as before.
A moment of careful study
before eyes a-flash with recognition
and a warm smile I did my best to return.
I grabbed my things and came to the aisle.
There they stood chatting.
I heard snippets of words,
but I'm not one to intrude
"Sorry for the real talk" she said.
"That's the only way to talk." I nodded my head

I didn't say how my past few weeks
contained realer words than I heard them speak,
how I had to navigate the alleys
of bickering and emotional valleys,
of overdoses and institutionalizations,
of kidney failures and hospitalizations.

"So what are you making...?" she trailed on.
"Oh, pasta or something." My response.
"Pasta and...jelly?" She asked pointing to the cloth
so aptly labelled jelly cloth.
"Nah, man, I've got to filter the coconut oil.
I infused some herbs into the oil.
Now I have to get them out."
"That makes sense. I remember you buying the oil.
Isn't coconut oil amazing?"
"It truly is a miracle."
I can't place the look in her eye.
Do I remind her of another guy?

And while I'd like to get to know her
I've learned to be cautious with a stranger.
'Cause you never really know
from where they're coming
or where they'd like to go.
Maybe I'll head back tomorrow,
buying bread or lord only knows,
but I've been strung along,
strung out,
hung up
to dry
too many times
to have the audacity
to try.

The IRS, King George and United States Connection

 

1. The IRS is not a U.S. Government Agency. It is an Agency of the IMF. (Diversified Metal Products v. IRS et al. CV-93-405E-EJE U.S.D.C.D.I., Public Law 94-564, Senate Report 94-1148 pg. 5967, Reorganization Plan No. 26, Public Law 102-391.) <p> </p> 2. The IMF is an Agency of the UN. (Blacks Law Dictionary 6th Ed. Pg. 816) <p> </p> 3. The U.S. Has not had a Treasury since 1921. (41 Stat. Ch.214 pg. 654) <p> </p> 4. The U.S. Treasury is now the IMF. (Presidential Documents Volume 29-No.4 pg. 113, 22 U.S.C. 285-288) <p> </p> 5. The United States does not have any employees because there is no longer a United States. No more reorganizations. After over 200 years of operating under bankruptcy its finally over. (Executive Order 12803) Do not personate one of the creditors or share holders or you will go to Prison.18 U.S.C. 914 <p> </p> o wait theres more <p> </p> 6. The FCC, CIA, FBI, NASA and all of the other alphabet gangs were never part of the United States government. Even though the "US Government" held shares of stock in the various Agencies. (U.S. V. Strang , 254 US 491, Lewis v. US, 680 F.2d, 1239) <p> </p> <p>"SOCIAL SECURITY FRAUD!! SSI was made to monetize the soul of every human being</p> and to think it didnt even exist until 1935 and ratified by congress in 1936 well we pay homeage to private corporations and to think we live under this illusion called "freedom" <p> </p> 7. Social Security Numbers are issued by the UN through the IMF. The Application for a Social Security Number is the SS5 form. The Department of the Treasury (IMF) issues the SS5 not the Social Security Administration. The new SS5 forms do not state who or what publishes them, the earlier SS5 forms state that they are Department of the Treasury forms. You can get a copy of the SS5 you filled out by sending form SSA-L996 to the SS Administration. (20 CFR chapter 111, subpart B 42 2.103 (b) (2) (2) Read the cites above) <p> </p> 8. There are no Judicial courts in America and there has not been since 1789. Judges do not enforce Statutes and Codes. Executive Administrators enforce Statutes and Codes. (FRC v. GE 281 US 464, Keller v. PE 261 US 428, 1 Stat. 138-178) <p> </p> 9. There have not been any Judges in America since 1789. There have just been Administrators. (FRC v. GE 281 US 464, Keller v. PE 261 US 428 1Stat. 138-178) <p> </p> 10. According to the GATT you must have a Social Security number. House Report (103-826) <p> </p> 11. We have One World Government, One World Law and a One World Monetary System. <p> </p> <p>12. The UN is a One World Super Government.</p> 13. No one on this planet has ever been free. This planet is a Slave Colony. There has always been a One World Government. It is just that now it is much better organized and has changed its name as of 1945 to the United Nations. <p> </p> 14. New York City is defined in the Federal Regulations as the United Nations. Rudolph Gulliani stated on C-Span that "New York City was the capital of the World" and he was correct. (20 CFR chapter 111, subpart B 422.103 (b) (2) (2) <p> </p> 15. Social Security is not insurance or a contract, nor is there a Trust Fund. (Helvering v. Davis 301 US 619, Steward Co. V. Davis 301 US 548.) <p> </p> 16. Your Social Security check comes directly from the IMF which is an Agency of the UN. (Look at it if you receive one. It should have written on the top left United States Treasury.) <p> </p> 17. You own no property, slaves can't own property. Read the Deed to the property that you think is yours. You are listed as a Tenant. (Senate Document 43, 73rd Congress 1st Session) <p> </p> 18. The most powerful court in America is not the United States Supreme Court but, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. (42 Pa.C.S.A. 502) <p> </p> <p>19. The Revolutionary War was a fraud. See (22, 23 and 24)</p> <p>20. The King of England financially backed both sides of the Revolutionary war. (Treaty at Versailles July 16, 1782, Treaty of Peace 8 Stat 80)</p> ...and as history repeats itself, Prescott Bush, father of George HW Bush and grandfather of George W. Bush, funded both sides of World War II. The Bush family have been traitors to the American citizens for decades. <p> </p> "Sarah, if the American people had ever known the truth about what we Bushes have done to this nation, we would be chased down in the streets and lynched." <p> </p> George Bush Senior speaking in an interview with Sarah McClendon in December 1992 <p> </p> 21. You can not use the Constitution to defend yourself because you are not a party to it. (Padelford Fay & Co. v. The Mayor and Alderman of The City of Savannah 14 Georgia 438, 520) <p> </p> 22. America is a British Colony. (THE UNITED STATES IS A CORPORATION, NOT A LAND MASS AND IT EXISTED BEFORE THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR AND THE BRITISH TROOPS DID NOT LEAVE UNTIL 1796.) Respublica v. Sweers 1 Dallas 43, Treaty of Commerce 8 Stat 116, The Society for Propagating the Gospel, &c.; V. New Haven 8 Wheat 464, Treaty of Peace 8 Stat 80, IRS Publication 6209, Articles of Association October 20, 1774.) <p> </p> <p>IRSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS</p> 25. A 1040 form is for tribute paid to Britain. (IRS Publication 6209) <p> </p> 26. The Pope claims to own the entire planet through the laws of conquest and discovery. (Papal Bulls of 1455 and 1493) <p> </p> 27. The Pope has ordered the genocide and enslavement of millions of people.(Papal Bulls of 1455 and 1493) <p> </p> 28. The Popes laws are obligatory on everyone. (Bened. XIV., De Syn. Dioec, lib, ix., c. vii., n. 4. Prati, 1844)(Syllabus, prop 28, 29, 44) <p> </p> 29. We are slaves and own absolutely nothing not even what we think are our children. (Tillman v. Roberts 108 So. 62, Van Koten v. Van Koten 154 N.E. 146, Senate Document 43 & 73rd Congress 1st Session, Wynehammer v. People 13 N.Y. REP 378, 481) <p> </p> <p>30. Military Dictator George Washington divided the States (Estates) into Districts. (Messages and papers of the Presidents Vo 1, pg 99. Websters 1828 dictionary for definition of Estate.)</p>

ill be back for more peace n blessing folks

 

31. " The People" does not include you and me. (Barron v. Mayor & City Council of Baltimore. 32 U.S. 243)

 

32. The United States Government was not founded upon Christianity. (Treaty of Tripoli 8 Stat 154.)

33. It is not the duty of the police to protect you. Their job is to protect the Corporation and arrest code breakers. Sapp v. Tallahasee, 348 So. 2nd. 363, Reiff v. City of Philadelphia, 477 F.Supp. 1262, Lynch v. N.C. Dept of Justice 376 S.E. 2nd. 247.

 

34. Everything in the "United States" is For Sale: roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, water, prisons airports etc. I wonder who bought Klamath lake. Did anyone take the time to check? (Executive Order 12803)

 

35. We are Human capital. (Executive Order 13037)

 

36. The UN has financed the operations of the United States government for over 50 years and now owns every man, women and child in America. The UN also holds all of the Land in America in Fee Simple.

 

37. The good news is we don't have to fulfill "our" fictitious obligations. You can discharge a fictitious obligation with another's fictitious obligation.

 

38. The depression and World War II were a total farce. The United States and various other companies were making loans to others all over the World during the Depression. The building of Germanys infrastructure in the 1930's including the Railroads was financed by the United States. That way those who call themselves "Kings," "Prime Ministers," and "Furor."etc could sit back and play a game of chess using real people. Think of all of the Americans, Germans etc. who gave their lives thinking they were defending their Countries which didn't even exist. The millions of innocent people who died for nothing. Isn't it obvious why Switzerland is never involved in these fiascoes? That is where the "Bank of International Settlements"is located.Wars are manufactured to keep your eye off the ball. You have to have an enemy to keep the illusion of "Government" in place.

 

39. The "United States" did not declare Independence from Great Britian or King George.

40. Guess who owns the UN?

Like

Why?
It's a painful memory that appears to be settling in for life rather than preparing to leave,
It's been heard by countless millions, and none of them can understand how it sounds to me,
I haven’t been as happy since hearing it as I was when I heard it,
It's symbolic of the most significant turning point in my life to date,
The lyrics are so perfectly foreshadowing of a problem that I couldn't fathom that I’d have,
It has a stronger connection to memory than any other song,
It represents the perpetual unhappiness that I refuse to believe controls me.
I'm unhappy.

Where?
A car that I haven’t seen in years,
On a street I barely saw enough of,
In a town I wish I could visit again.
A happier place that I can see but can never return to,
Personified by a face that's disappeared from here.
Somewhere I miss, yet somewhere I hate;
Somewhere that needed the version of me that died in that very place;
A cemetery.

When?
Happier times;
A collection of moments which are infinite from within,
Yet minute from without.
A time when I could define myself,
Through the vice of another person;
Albeit vicariously, it was the last time
I was able to define myself.
I was everything; I was the world.
And then the world ended.
Happier times that I can't and won't return to.

What?
A song;
A memory;
A beautiful beat,
In a story that nobody's telling.
A soundtrack to a movie nobody wants to see,
A composition that will fall on deaf ears;
Yet still be heard by the world at large, call it irony.
Something nobody can take away from me;
Despite how tenaciously I've tried to get rid of it.
A succession of noises that would be meaningless to me,
Were it not for the memory.
The memory.

Who?
She, I, and the drivers of some road in Georgia;
Drivers that didn't notice then and don't notice now.
She, driving, demonstrating, performing;
Has driven on, failing to notice.
Me, her, and the songwriter, I suppose;
Me, a person I don't know,
Replaced by a person I can't.
The songwriter, collecting her checks and trophies,
Probably not a **** to give about the troubles
Of some ******* who heard her song.
Us, a concept foreign to me;
Unbeknownst then, well studied now;
Still as foreign as that state,
That city,
That road,
That car,
That place that I can revisit,
But never go back;
Her.

The Song?
Because I'm unhappy;
In a cemetery,
During happier times that I can't and won't return to;
A memory
With her.
I need more words.

Words
Nevermind, I'll find someone like you.
I wish nothing but the best for you.
Don't forget me, I beg.
I remember you said:
Sometimes it lasts in love,
But sometimes it hurts instead.

But that's not right.
I won't find someone like you;
There was no you.
I wish anything but the best for you;
You selfish child.
Please forget me;
I'm nothing worth remembering.
I've forgotten everything you said.
It rarely, if ever, lasts in love.
It always hurts.
Laughable,
The things I tell myself to bandage
A wound that doesn't appear.
The clichés I give meaning to are

******* pitiful.
Just about two years and counting.
Two psychiatrists,
Two half-assed ******* suicide attempts,
Dozens of classes,
Legions of friends,
A handful of people so much like you that they'd failed to notice there is no you,
And you're still talking about this
Pile of ****.
Who's talking about it?
Me? You?
Nobody.
It's white noise;
Habituation at play.
A memory not worth remembering.
Three years of piano lessons,
The lines of my scripts,
The best films throughout history,
Even the Eagles game from last week is

Worth remembering
This,
This moment in time occupied by just another pop song,
Time spent with a person no longer there,
Family member after family member, anecdote after anecdote,
Things not to say or do in front of her hulking ******* of a brother,
Approval of people I wound up discarding.
What now?

I need more words.

Where were we?
Fresh year, fresh start, and the Eagles were still a winning team○;
A dorm, a drunken haze, a bed, a city unparalleled;
Untested grounds for a young idiot
Like me. She certainly did
And wasn't afraid to show it.
Independence, experience, maturity,
And a stunning mutual lack thereof.
Problems, buried like the worst ******* time capsule ever.
Happiness (unsustainable)
Love (attachment)
Future ()
A candle burning down to its last wax can’t relight,
And a pile of wax won't help me see in the dark.

But who needs candles anyway?
I'm better off without candles,
Playing with fire can get me burnt.
And besides, lightbulbs are brighter and more efficient.
I’ll install lightbulbs all over the apartment,
Once I can figure out how to turn the power back on.
Oh, there aren't power lines running to this apartment.
(sure wish I had a candle right about now)
Maybe the light from this cigarette will help.
And I could sure use a cigarette right now
Because they’re playing that song again.
Surely I can find some better music than this.
This station seems nice, let's see what she can offer.
They're playing that song again.
Over and over again.
Is it just me, or are they always playing that song?
It's always that song, no matter what.
It's all I ever hear.
Pop radio sure is terrible these days, right?
Sure is.
Can't walk down the street to class without hearing

That ******* ******* song.*

(
Nobody else is hearing it.
I'm the one singing it.
My life's a ******* joke, isn't it?
)

○The Philadelphia Eagles were 10-6 in 2010, 8-8 in 2011, and 4-12 last year. And during the ‘still friends’ period, we watched the division rival Giants win the Super Bowl together. I ******* hated it.

The daily hot humid
No sweat forehead
All the news her wetness
She was way ahead
I Love Thee rain, sweat, prayers, tears me

The daily routine sauna crib
Rain-She cub selfie
He gets rain-shine all scrubbed
Looked more like a hub after
ten years please comment

The dove soap rainwater scent
washing her eyes watching his
eyes depths body lengths
romancing

And her eyes could devour you
All wet long curled up lashes
The ancient times of their
hot flashes

The rise of the Stock market
How mad she gets throws her
Rain and shine dishes

Heavy rain coming down
Was it a big crash

Or was she feeling the damp wet cloth
the wet moment Man of the Cloth
To her ((Rain Depth))
Or loving the darkness
Rain prayers  Gothic
The umbrella she was swinging
And licking the drops
Going to the side to his
French side
Like a drenching ballerina
Wet puddles wetness in her flats

How his lips were on her deep
the depth of the well seeing
black cats
Was it all his recollection
to tell
Rain is a good thing
The moment set in like a hot
humid fling
with rain tears of crying

Thinking back at their best years
How he tasted the depths of her
mind
The rain kept pouring she was kept
inside wanting
She was the (Kept Women)
Was her time lady with the red dress
Out the red door with her
umbrella and her toxic perfume
He was intoxicated by her smells
drips and drops

No time was their polka dots
Raindrops falling on her head
Th drenching rain combined in
her illusional dream
bed
He was inside cooking his boiled
*** of spring water

The outside was no rain of her depth
the deepness leading her to
no sense of order
The exotically cool rain dancing
Like a Tech the screen was
flooding his search he needed his
food order those
Ramen noodles oodles and
more puddles
Going over her moist legs of hurdles
The rain to high depths of the
treasure of her
map graphs
Really high rains of colorful lady
graphics
City Rain has the
highest love traffic

The butterscotch candy
The Show Grease poodle skirt
raining cats and dogs

Mr. Worth, She was born with it Ms. Loreal
Her braided ringlet hair how he raided her
She swam right in like a loving birth guided her

Like the wrath hail to Mary quite
the contrary the  higher hopes to
the monastery
To her depth of the airplane,
rained on berries

The apps or eps what episodes
to lead her Ms. Sherry
The rain became a new birth
The Czechs with their raincoat
and checkbooks
Those rain  exotic teas take a trip
What we need to accept its
never a sunny day
in Philadelphia

The Park of the Recreation
The TV show on a rain divination
The tears of a powerful lady sing
the Blues Business

No is that so rain go away
No Please stay that's our
A piece of the drips
Don't cop out now the
wetness in her short rain dress
After the heat BUSINESS

Like the rain business
Without the rain no life
of flowers trees birds
All her wet dreams of words

It raining mad Hallelujah
Tall mean and wet drenched
syrup cake of ***
The rain with Graphic effects
I phone gets flooded and then
disconnects like banging
African drum the Safari
Designer rained away Tahari
Every drop is being inspected
Evaluated

Rain depths high to her legs
Sopping wet and her coffee
was somehow cloudy with his
words like rainstorm
How love can be neglected if you're at
the Stockmarket

What a heavy rain pour getting all your
money wet to the love heights
Of her rain depth  you could wake up it
was a rain dream seductively as its told
She got Iced like a cake
The rain was frozen
like the Queen_ war of the dozen

It was, as the New York Times all but sniffed
(Even then, a haughty mix of bluenose and black ink)
Further proof the poor, misguided Upstate rubes
Were no more than ample fodder
For any tinhorn, two-bit confidence man to take for a ride.
Fair enough—it was, to the careful eye and unheated psyche
Clear as the azure blue sky that,
Despite the best efforts of acid wash and a year underground,
So obviously a statue as to be absolutely laughable,
And yet the vox populi came in waves,
Not only one-gallus farmers from the fields nearby,
But from the great cities near and far
(Chicago, Philadelphia, and, yes, even New York itself
To throw Hannum a quarter to view his gargantuan grotesquery
Just as described in Genesis itself, he noted solemnly
So many, indeed, that Barnum himself was divinely inspired
Not only to purloin the giant, but its prior owner’s epigram
As to the frequency of the manufacture
Of his too-credible customer base.
While there was (briefly, at least) some mystery surrounding
The origins of the brobdingnagian mass of stone,
It remained (to some, anyway) equally unfathomable
Why scores of folks would careen in unsteady coaches
The full length of the Catskill Turnpike,
With its questionable lodging and uneven roadworthiness,
Or patiently suffer the mosquito-laden flatboats of Clinton’s Ditch
All to spend the cash equivalent of two trips to the county fair
To see a perfectly good hootchie-kootchie show
Simply to gawk at an unevenly carved rock of questionable authenticity,
But that explained quite simply,
As the public always gets what the public wants.