Oh, But what does it all mean Hidalgo?
Are we to fly in the face of the North Wind forever?

My mind has gone blank at the question.
Stranger still, the story perceived in prescient anticipation of the exact mentioned query once expounded upon spanning millions of miles of eloquent esoteric linguini, wit and charm with a dash of philosophic consequence, to fool you (the eager) into belief.

What is belief Hidalgo, but the suspension of reality, for an adept deeper world of unseen truth?

Do we see reality at all my friend? It is already shaped by our perceptions, responds to our expectations, nay we have not a clue, perhaps the arcane texts written by the hobo scholars of old hold the answer, so yet we settle on the material and fixate it as the lone clear star in an otherwise dark and cloudy sky. Mysteries abound behind the cosmos. Even when we look, do we really see, or are we as an insect upon the written page, crawling over the plain meaning? Is our capacity to hear underwhelmed by our propensity to listen? All these senses must count for something, for God is in a blade of grass, is he not, felt by the trodden hoof of the foot.

You’re a clever mad man Hidalgo.

Ay, the penultimate creator, singing in a sea of song, shining in a wave of light, lost in a dance of fractals, we are all the same rascal, blind though we are to the portrait of man, always creating, same as my neighbor, weaving dreams into Technicolor realities to beam into a future unknown. Our descendants watching us as reality television, mocking our fallibility, or perhaps empathizing and learning through telescopes strong enough to win a foot race with the sun; flying around the bend of space time and back.

The birds of the island are calm today; think they favor a slumbering respite from the noonday heat?

Mayhaps we’ll take a stroll across the columnous muddy bed, risking grey clay mummified suffocation; I dreamt as such. Yesterday’s storms make the journey perilous. My own thoughts leak from the grandiose ether and compel me to genius, the condition of the interminably insane or divine.

My bare feet tread the good earth, the 3rd density, in a daily attempt to stay grounded, however my mind is always floating, receiving transmitted whispers. Sanctified secret musings of the muse. Scribbled poetry of another dimension, meaningless to the materially minded, yet wholesome for the moment. Like a thunderstorm whose power is plain, yet unheard and unseen as the forest falling with a tree. Where do the tree and the forest begin? Are they the same root? Like my thoughts from a universal mind, the zeitgeist of an all-encompassing mood, a social memory complex.

The sophists will claim you are dodging responsibility. These tangents serve only to feed your egoic mind, but put no food in your belly nor rent in another’s hand.

Ay, but its creation all the same.
A tirade of compulsions. The ringing of the hill grows, the natural chorus of bugly unison screaming its existence into the manifold, manifesting itself to the initiate.

For what are they asking, could it be peace?

Ha Ha! Those shrill like cries wound the ears of the prideful dog, but are contained in the silences of the infinite potential all the same.

A man may change one hundred lives in a day, and earn no material currency for his unasked effort. Therefore, who is trivial? I change the wind by simply being, its current flows over me and the endless blades alike.

Vibratory love, what is that feeling, the realest phenomena of all?

Bliss in its own awareness, reveling in self-revelation, actualization, the knowingness of the child who still sees the spirit existing in each of the physical realm’s shadows. The taste of the foul and pure passing without judgment to the innocent tongue. A simple being secure with the wisdom of the wise. Does the power come from you or the hill, inspiring motions, accounting on the page symbolically. Break it down further. Dissolve. ******* into nothingness.

What is cheating Hidalgo?

Is the ant called to my arm by its own volition, how did it find me here on this patch of earth formed into mound by ancestors buried below.

Opening up all channels now.

Death locks the door with life’s key.

Should I let him crawl over me repeatedly?

Ten words to speak before the coming of the night.

Creative Destruction
Awake from the trance
Guns and Bullets
Shoot from our hands
Teller of Tales
Faint whisperer
Of sordid man’s
Hallucinatory waking
Follow the Beam
Follow the beam
The world before this world
Secrets unseen
My best thoughts come
As I lie suspended awake in sleep
Before sleep
No troubles
The curse runs blood deep
He closes the book but still speaks in rhyme
The riddle draws madness
The tongue laps up the fire
Drawn from self same wells
Will and Desire
Pruning and Preening
Political Beasts are we
Lost in our notions
I find, I keep
Braggadocioc Players
Upon the Worldly stage
Every person has the story
Only what is real?
What is fate?
So I lift my hat
To another year born true
A quarter century passed
Play the tune


Am I awaken by words from another man’s sleep?
What is the source of the tetradactyl nature?
My hexagonal heap
Of flesh and bones
Earth and dust
Brought together again by unending sound vibrating ceaselessly
I sleep but am not rested
Eat but am never full
The piper plays among the sand
Whirling in the heart of the caged word
If I keep my eyes fixated on a point, in actuality my vision expands and visualizes all

Reputationally speaking,
I am an ant, with male pattern baldness
We forget to chuckle at life’s absurdities, just as we pass by flowers without engaging the fragrance.


Rest your head with the hillside now
Restless wanderer of fantastical dreams

Treading water silently until our legs melt
Just as the weary albatross cries its last song over the harbor or the butterfly ***** its freckled wings, so too will we see the setting of the sun and a coming of the new dawn. If the chalk works carved in the abandoned sidewalk are to be believed, so must we girdle ourselves for the coming tides and lift our spirits once more for the ebb and flow of circumstance. The bike rides in the gutter all the same, and the forgotten cemetery stone stands as testament to the age gone by.

How dull the wretch, whose philosophic mind
Disdains the pleasures of fantastic kind;
Whose prosy thoughts the joys of life exclude,
And wreck the solace of the poet's mood!
Young Zeno, practis'd in the Stoic's art,
Rejects the language of the glowing heart;
Dissolves sweet Nature to a mess of laws;
Condemns th' effect whilst looking for the cause;
Freezes poor Ovid in an iced review,
And sneers because his fables are untrue!
In search of hope the hopeful zealot goes,
But all the sadder tums, the more he knows!
Stay! Vandal sophist, whose deep lore would blast
The grateful legends of the storied past;
Whose tongue in censure flays th' embellish'd page,
And scorns the comforts of a dreary age:
Wouldst strip the foliage from the vital bough
Till all men grow as wisely dull as thou?
Happy the man whose fresh, untainted eye
Discerns a Pantheon in the spangled sky;
Finds sylphs and dryads in the waving trees,
And spies soft Notus in the southern breeze
For whom the stream a cheering carol sings,
While reedy music by the fountain rings;
To whom the waves a Nereid tale confide
Till friendly presence fills the rising tide.
Happy is he, who void of learning's woes,
Th' ethereal life of bodied Nature knows;
I scorn the sage that tells me it but seems,
And flout his gravity in sunlight dreams!

I

There is a house with ivied walls,
And mullioned windows worn and old,
And the long dwellers in those halls
Have souls that know but sordid calls,
And dote on gold.

II

In a blazing brick and plated show
Not far away a ‘villa’ gleams,
And here a family few may know,
With book and pencil, viol and bow,
Lead inner lives of dreams.

III

The philosophic passers say,
‘See that old mansion mossed and fair,
Poetic souls therein are they:
And O that gaudy box! Away,
You ****** people there.’

My love for you is not a tragic beautiful love story such as Romeo and Juliet.
My love for you is like the love story of the moon and the sun.
My love for you is a dying star ready to burst and create a giant black hole.
My love for you is like the universe, a beautiful enormous unknown.
My love for you is an unexplored galaxy that fascinates the most philosophic poets.
My love for you is like Venus, too beautiful for the eyes, but, come closer and it will burn you to the ground.
My love for you is like Neptune, too distant and too cold.
My love for you is like Pluto, even though people don't talk about it anymore, he's still there, screaming for recognition, screaming "please, I'm still here, notice me", a silent cry that makes you wonder that if a planet as beautiful and as unique as Pluto can be forgotten, why can't I forget something so fragile and small?
My love for you is like the love story of the moon and the sun.
The sun dies every night to let the moon breathe.
They will always love one another but they will never touch each other.
They love at distance. They rarely meet, they rarely have the chance to be together.
But when they do,
they create the most gorgeous phenomenon that you will ever see.
Someday the sun will explode, someday the moon will disappear, someday their love will die and there's going to be nothing here to tell the story about how they loved so fearlessly.
And that's how I know that our love is like the sun and the moon.
Too distant to touch.
Too beautiful to go unnoticed.
Too cold to burn out.
Too sweet to be bitter.
Too precious to not be treasured.

[Greek: Mellonta  sauta’]

These things are in the future.

Sophocles—’Antig.’

‘Una.’

“Born again?”

‘Monos.’

Yes, fairest and best beloved Una, “born again.” These were
the words upon whose mystical meaning I had so long
pondered, rejecting the explanations of the priesthood,
until Death itself resolved for me the secret.

‘Una.’

Death!

‘Monos.’

How strangely, sweet Una, you echo my words! I
observe, too, a vacillation in your step, a joyous
inquietude in your eyes. You are confused and oppressed by
the majestic novelty of the Life Eternal. Yes, it was of
Death I spoke. And here how singularly sounds that word
which of old was wont to bring terror to all hearts,
throwing a mildew upon all pleasures!

‘Una.’

Ah, Death, the spectre which sate at all feasts! How often,
Monos, did we lose ourselves in speculations upon its
nature! How mysteriously did it act as a check to human
bliss, saying unto it, “thus far, and no farther!” That
earnest mutual love, my own Monos, which burned within our
bosoms, how vainly did we flatter ourselves, feeling happy
in its first upspringing that our happiness would strengthen
with its strength! Alas, as it grew, so grew in our hearts
the dread of that evil hour which was hurrying to separate
us forever! Thus in time it became painful to love. Hate
would have been mercy then.

‘Monos’.

Speak not here of these griefs, dear Una—mine, mine
forever now!

‘Una’.

But the memory of past sorrow, is it not present joy? I have
much to say yet of the things which have been. Above all, I
burn to know the incidents of your own passage through the
dark Valley and Shadow.

‘Monos’.

And when did the radiant Una ask anything of her Monos in
vain? I will be minute in relating all, but at what point
shall the weird narrative begin?

‘Una’.

At what point?

‘Monos’.

You have said.

‘Una’.

Monos, I comprehend you. In Death we have both learned the
propensity of man to define the indefinable. I will not say,
then, commence with the moment of life’s cessation—but
commence with that sad, sad instant when, the fever having
abandoned you, you sank into a breathless and motionless
torpor, and I pressed down your pallid eyelids with the
passionate fingers of love.

‘Monos’.

One word first, my Una, in regard to man’s general condition
at this epoch. You will remember that one or two of the wise
among our forefathers—wise in fact, although not in
the world’s esteem—had ventured to doubt the propriety
of the term “improvement,” as applied to the progress of our
civilization. There were periods in each of the five or six
centuries immediately preceding our dissolution when arose
some vigorous intellect, boldly contending for those
principles whose truth appears now, to our disenfranchised
reason, so utterly obvious —principles which should
have taught our race to submit to the guidance of the
natural laws rather than attempt their control. At long
intervals some master-minds appeared, looking upon each
advance in practical science as a retrogradation in the true
utility. Occasionally the poetic intellect—that
intellect which we now feel to have been the most exalted of
all—since those truths which to us were of the most
enduring importance could only be reached by that analogy
which speaks in proof-tones to the imagination alone,
and to the unaided reason bears no weight—occasionally
did this poetic intellect proceed a step farther in the
evolving of the vague idea of the philosophic, and find in
the mystic parable that tells of the tree of knowledge, and
of its forbidden fruit, death-producing, a distinct
intimation that knowledge was not meet for man in the infant
condition of his soul. And these men—the poets—
living and perishing amid the scorn of the
“utilitarians”—of rough pedants, who arrogated to
themselves a title which could have been properly applied
only to the scorned—these men, the poets, pondered
piningly, yet not unwisely, upon the ancient days when our
wants were not more simple than our enjoyments were
keen—days when mirth was a word unknown, so
solemnly deep-toned was happiness—holy, august, and
blissful days, blue rivers ran undammed, between hills
unhewn, into far forest solitudes, primeval, odorous, and
unexplored. Yet these noble exceptions from the general
misrule served but to strengthen it by opposition. Alas! we
had fallen upon the most evil of all our evil days. The
great “movement”—that was the cant term—went on:
a diseased commotion, moral and physical. Art—the
Arts—arose supreme, and once enthroned, cast chains
upon the intellect which had elevated them to power. Man,
because he could not but acknowledge the majesty of Nature,
fell into childish exultation at his acquired and still-
increasing dominion over her elements. Even while he stalked
a God in his own fancy, an infantine imbecility came over
him. As might be supposed from the origin of his disorder,
he grew infected with system, and with abstraction. He
enwrapped himself in generalities. Among other odd ideas,
that of universal equality gained ground; and in the face of
analogy and of God—in despite of the loud warning
voice of the laws of gradation so visibly pervading
all things in Earth and Heaven—wild attempts at an
omniprevalent Democracy were made. Yet this evil sprang
necessarily from the leading evil, Knowledge. Man could not
both know and succumb. Meantime huge smoking cities arose,
innumerable. Green leaves shrank before the hot breath of
furnaces. The fair face of Nature was deformed as with the
ravages of some loathsome disease. And methinks, sweet Una,
even our slumbering sense of the forced and of the far-
fetched might have arrested us here. But now it appears that
we had worked out our own destruction in the ******* of
our taste, or rather in the blind neglect of its
culture in the schools. For, in truth, it was at this crisis
that taste alone—that faculty which, holding a middle
position between the pure intellect and the moral sense,
could never safely have been disregarded—it was now
that taste alone could have led us gently back to Beauty, to
Nature, and to Life. But alas for the pure contemplative
spirit and majestic intuition of Plato! Alas for the [Greek:
mousichae]  which he justly regarded as an all-sufficient
education for the soul! Alas for him and for it!—since
both were most desperately needed, when both were most
entirely forgotten or despised. Pascal, a philosopher whom
we both love, has said, how truly!—”Que tout notre
raisonnement se reduit a ceder au sentiment;” and it is
not impossible that the sentiment of the natural, had time
permitted it, would have regained its old ascendency over
the harsh mathematical reason of the schools. But this thing
was not to be. Prematurely induced by intemperance of
knowledge, the old age of the world drew near. This the mass
of mankind saw not, or, living lustily although unhappily,
affected not to see. But, for myself, the Earth’s records
had taught me to look for widest ruin as the price of
highest civilization. I had imbibed a prescience of our Fate
from comparison of China the simple and enduring, with
Assyria the architect, with Egypt the astrologer, with
Nubia, more crafty than either, the turbulent mother of all
Arts. In the history of these regions I met with a ray from
the Future. The individual artificialities of the three
latter were local diseases of the Earth, and in their
individual overthrows we had seen local remedies applied;
but for the infected world at large I could anticipate no
regeneration save in death. That man, as a race, should not
become extinct, I saw that he must be “born again.”

And now it was, fairest and dearest, that we wrapped our
spirits, daily, in dreams. Now it was that, in twilight, we
discoursed of the days to come, when the Art-scarred surface
of the Earth, having undergone that purification which alone
could efface its rectangular obscenities, should clothe
itself anew in the verdure and the mountain-slopes and the
smiling waters of Paradise, and be rendered at length a fit
dwelling-place for man:—for man the
Death-purged—for man to whose now exalted intellect
there should be poison in knowledge no more—for the
redeemed, regenerated, blissful, and now immortal, but still
for the material, man.

‘Una’.

Well do I remember these conversations, dear Monos; but the
epoch of the fiery overthrow was not so near at hand as we
believed, and as the corruption you indicate did surely
warrant us in believing. Men lived; and died individually.
You yourself sickened, and passed into the grave; and
thither your constant Una speedily followed you. And though
the century which has since elapsed, and whose conclusion
brings up together once more, tortured our slumbering senses
with no impatience of duration, yet my Monos, it was a
century still.

‘Monos’.

Say, rather, a point in the vague infinity. Unquestionably,
it was in the Earth’s dotage that I died. Wearied at heart
with anxieties which had their origin in the general turmoil
and decay, I succumbed to the fierce fever. After some few
days of pain, and many of dreamy delirium replete with
ecstasy, the manifestations of which you mistook for pain,
while I longed but was impotent to undeceive you—after
some days there came upon me, as you have said, a breathless
and motionless torpor; and this was termed Death by
those who stood around me.

Words are vague things. My condition did not deprive me of
sentience. It appeared to me not greatly dissimilar to the
extreme quiescence of him, who, having slumbered long and
profoundly, lying motionless and fully prostrate in a mid-
summer noon, begins to steal slowly back into consciousness,
through the mere sufficiency of his sleep, and without being
awakened by external disturbances.

I breathed no longer. The pulses were still. The heart had
ceased to beat. Volition had not departed, but was
powerless. The senses were unusually active, although
eccentrically so—assuming often each other’s functions
at random. The taste and the smell were inextricably
confounded, and became one sentiment, abnormal and intense.
The rose-water with which your tenderness had moistened my
lips to the last, affected me with sweet fancies of
flowers—fantastic flowers, far more lovely than any of
the old Earth, but whose prototypes we have here blooming
around us. The eye-lids, transparent and bloodless, offered
no complete impediment to vision. As volition was in
abeyance, the ***** could not roll in their sockets—
but all objects within the range of the visual hemisphere
were seen with more or less distinctness; the rays which
fell upon the external retina, or into the corner of the
eye, producing a more vivid effect than those which struck
the front or interior surface. Yet, in the former instance,
this effect was so far anomalous that I appreciated it only
as sound—sound sweet or discordant as the
matters presenting themselves at my side were light or dark
in shade—curved or angular in outline. The hearing, at
the same time, although excited in degree, was not irregular
in action—estimating real sounds with an extravagance
of precision, not less than of sensibility. Touch had
undergone a modification more peculiar. Its impressions were
tardily received, but pertinaciously retained, and resulted
always in the highest physical pleasure. Thus the pressure
of your sweet fingers upon my eyelids, at first only
recognized through vision, at length, long after their
removal, filled my whole being with a sensual delight
immeasurable. I say with a sensual delight. All my
perceptions were purely sensual. The materials furnished the
passive brain by the senses were not in the least degree
wrought into shape by the deceased understanding. Of pain
there was some little; of pleasure there was much; but of
moral pain or pleasure none at all. Thus your wild sobs
floated into my ear with all their mournful cadences, and
were appreciated in their every variation of sad tone; but
they were soft musical sounds and no more; they conveyed to
the extinct reason no intimation of the sorrows which gave
them birth; while large and constant tears which fell upon
my face, telling the bystanders of a heart which broke,
thrilled every fibre of my frame with ecstasy alone. And
this was in truth the Death of which these bystanders
spoke reverently, in low whispers—you, sweet Una,
gaspingly, with loud cries.

They attired me for the coffin—three or four dark
figures which flitted busily to and fro. As these crossed
the direct line of my vision they affected me as forms;
but upon passing to my side their images impressed me
with the idea of shrieks, groans, and, other dismal
expressions of terror, of horror, or of woe. You alone,
habited in a white robe, passed in all directions musically
about.

The day waned; and, as its light faded away, I became
possessed by a vague uneasiness—an anxiety such as the
sleeper feels when sad real sounds fall continuously within
his ear—low distant bell-tones, solemn, at long but
equal intervals, and commingling with melancholy dreams.
Night arrived; and with its shadows a heavy discomfort. It
oppressed my limbs with the oppression of some dull weight,
and was palpable. There was also a moaning sound, not unlike
the distant reverberation of surf, but more continuous,
which, beginning with the first twilight, had grown in
strength with the darkness. Suddenly lights were brought
into the rooms, and this reverberation became forthwith
interrupted into frequent unequal bursts of the same sound,
but less dreary and less distinct. The ponderous oppression
was in a great measure relieved; and, issuing from the flame
of each lamp (for there were many), there flowed unbrokenly
into my ears a strain of melodious monotone. And when now,
dear Una, approaching the bed upon which I lay outstretched,
you sat gently by my side, breathing odor from your sweet
lips, and pressing them upon my brow, there arose
tremulously within my *****, and mingling with the merely
physical sensations which circumstances had called forth, a
something akin to sentiment itself—a feeling that,
half appreciating, half responded to your earnest love and
sorrow; but this feeling took no root in the pulseless
heart, and seemed indeed rather a shadow than a reality, and
faded quickly away, first into extreme quiescence, and then
into a purely sensual pleasure as before.

And now, from the wreck and the chaos of the usual senses,
there appeared to have arisen within me a sixth, all
perfect. In its exercise I found a wild delight—yet a
delight still physical, inasmuch as the understanding had in
it no part. Motion in the animal frame had fully ceased. No
muscle quivered; no nerve thrilled; no artery throbbed. But
there seemed to have sprung up in the brain that of
which no words could convey to the merely human intelligence
even an indistinct conception. Let me term it a mental
pendulous pulsation. It was the moral embodiment of man’s
abstract idea of Time. By the absolute equalization
of this movement—or of such as this—had the
cycles of the firmamental orbs themselves been adjusted. By
its aid I measured the irregularities of the clock upon the
mantel, and of the watches of the attendants. Their tickings
came sonorously to my ears. The slightest deviations from
the true proportion—and these deviations were
omniprevalent—affected me just as violations of
abstract truth were wont on earth to affect the moral sense.
Although no two of the timepieces in the chamber struck the
individual seconds accurately together, yet I had no
difficulty in holding steadily in mind the tones, and the
respective momentary errors of each. And this—this
keen, perfect self-existing sentiment of
duration—this sentiment existing (as man could
not possibly have conceived it to exist) independently of
any succession of events—this idea—this sixth
sense, upspringing from the ashes of the rest, was the first
obvious and certain step of the intemporal soul upon the
threshold of the temporal eternity.

It was midnight; and you still sat by my side. All others
had departed from the chamber of Death. They had deposited
me in the coffin. The lamps burned flickeringly; for this I
knew by the tremulousness of the monotonous strains. But
suddenly these strains diminished in distinctness and in
volume. Finally they ceased. The perfume in my nostrils died
aw

I will bring fire to thee.

Euripides.—’Androm’.

‘Eiros’.

Why do you call me Eiros?

‘Charmion’.

So henceforward will you always be called. You must forget,
too, my earthly name, and speak to me as Charmion.

‘Eiros’.

This is indeed no dream!

‘Charmion’.

Dreams are with us no more;—but of these mysteries
anon. I rejoice to see you looking life-like and rational.
The film of the shadow has already passed from off your
eyes. Be of heart, and fear nothing. Your allotted days of
stupor have expired, and to-morrow I will myself induct you
into the full joys and wonders of your novel existence.

‘Eiros’.

True—I feel no stupor—none at all. The wild
sickness and the terrible darkness have left me, and I hear
no longer that mad, rushing, horrible sound, like the “voice
of many waters.” Yet my senses are bewildered, Charmion,
with the keenness of their perception of the new.

‘Charmion’.

A few days will remove all this;—but I fully
understand you, and feel for you. It is now ten earthly
years since I underwent what you undergo—yet the
remembrance of it hangs by me still. You have now suffered
all of pain, however, which you will suffer in Aidenn.

‘Eiros’.

In Aidenn?

‘Charmion’.

In Aidenn.

‘Eiros’.

O God!—pity me, Charmion!—I am overburthened
with the majesty of all things—of the unknown now
known—of the speculative Future merged in the august
and certain Present.

‘Charmion’.

Grapple not now with such thoughts. To-morrow we will speak
of this. Your mind wavers, and its agitation will find
relief in the exercise of simple memories. Look not around,
nor forward—but back. I am burning with anxiety to
hear the details of that stupendous event which threw you
among us. Tell me of it. Let us converse of familiar things,
in the old familiar language of the world which has so
fearfully perished.

‘Eiros’.

Most fearfully, fearfully!—this is indeed no dream.

‘Charmion’.

Dreams are no more. Was I much mourned, my Eiros?

‘Eiros’.

Mourned, Charmion?—oh, deeply. To that last hour of
all there hung a cloud of intense gloom and devout sorrow
over your household.

‘Charmion’.

And that last hour—speak of it. Remember that, beyond
the naked fact of the catastrophe itself, I know nothing.
When, coming out from among mankind, I passed into Night
through the Grave—at that period, if I remember
aright, the calamity which overwhelmed you was utterly
unanticipated. But, indeed, I knew little of the speculative
philosophy of the day.

‘Eiros’.

The individual calamity was, as you say, entirely
unanticipated; but analogous misfortunes had been long a
subject of discussion with astronomers. I need scarce tell
you, my friend, that, even when you left us, men had agreed
to understand those passages in the most holy writings which
speak of the final destruction of all things by fire as
having reference to the orb of the earth alone, But in
regard to the immediate agency of the ruin, speculation had
been at fault from that epoch in astronomical knowledge in
which the comets were divested of the terrors of flame. The
very moderate density of these bodies had been well
established. They had been observed to pass among the
satellites of Jupiter without bringing about any sensible
alteration either in the masses or in the orbits of these
secondary planets. We had long regarded the wanderers as
vapory creations of inconceivable tenuity, and as altogether
incapable of doing injury to our substantial globe, even in
the event of contact. But contact was not in any degree
dreaded; for the elements of all the comets were accurately
known. That among them we should look for the agency
of the threatened fiery destruction had been for many years
considered an inadmissible idea. But wonders and wild
fancies had been of late days strangely rife among mankind;
and, although it was only with a few of the ignorant that
actual apprehension prevailed, upon the announcement by
astronomers of a new comet, yet this announcement was
generally received with I know not what of agitation and
mistrust.

The elements of the strange orb were immediately calculated,
and it was at once conceded by all observers that its path,
at perihelion would bring it into very close proximity with
the earth. There were two or three astronomers of secondary
note who resolutely maintained that a contact was
inevitable. I cannot very well express to you the effect of
this intelligence upon the people. For a few short days they
would not believe an assertion which their intellect, so
long employed among worldly considerations, could not in any
manner grasp. But the truth of a vitally important fact soon
makes its way into the understanding of even the most
stolid. Finally, all men saw that astronomical knowledge
lies not, and they awaited the comet. Its approach was not
at first seemingly rapid, nor was its appearance of very
unusual character. It was of a dull red, and had little
perceptible train. For seven or eight days we saw no
material increase in its apparent diameter, and but a
partial alteration in its color. Meantime, the ordinary
affairs of men were discarded, and all interest absorbed in
a growing discussion instituted by the philosophic in
respect to the cometary nature. Even the grossly ignorant
aroused their sluggish capacities to such considerations.
The learned now gave their intellect—their
soul—to no such points as the allaying of fear, or to
the sustenance of loved theory. They sought—they
panted for right views. They groaned for perfected
knowledge. Truth arose in the purity of her strength
and exceeding majesty, and the wise bowed down and adored.

That material injury to our globe or to its inhabitants
would result from the apprehended contact was an opinion
which hourly lost ground among the wise; and the wise were
now freely permitted to rule the reason and the fancy of the
crowd. It was demonstrated that the density of the comet’s
nucleus was far less than that of our rarest gas; and
the harmless passage of a similar visitor among the
satellites of Jupiter was a point strongly insisted upon,
and which served greatly to allay terror. Theologists, with
an earnestness fear-enkindled, dwelt upon the biblical
prophecies, and expounded them to the people with a
directness and simplicity of which no previous instance had
been known. That the final destruction of the earth must be
brought about by the agency of fire, was urged with a spirit
that enforced everywhere conviction; and that the comets
were of no fiery nature (as all men now knew) was a truth
which relieved all, in a great measure, from the
apprehension of the great calamity foretold. It is
noticeable that the popular prejudices and ****** errors in
regard to pestilences and wars—errors which were wont
to prevail upon every appearance of a comet—were now
altogether unknown, as if by some sudden convulsive exertion
reason had at once hurled superstition from her throne. The
feeblest intellect had derived vigor from excessive
interest.

What minor evils might arise from the contact were points of
elaborate question. The learned spoke of slight geological
disturbances, of probable alterations in climate, and
consequently in vegetation; of possible magnetic and
electric influences. Many held that no visible or
perceptible effect would in any manner be produced. While
such discussions were going on, their subject gradually
approached, growing larger in apparent diameter, and of a
more brilliant lustre. Mankind grew paler as it came. All
human operations were suspended.

There was an epoch in the course of the general sentiment
when the comet had attained, at length, a size surpassing
that of any previously recorded visitation. The people now,
dismissing any lingering hope that the astronomers were
wrong, experienced all the certainty of evil. The chimerical
aspect of their terror was gone. The hearts of the stoutest
of our race beat violently within their bosoms. A very few
days suffered, however, to merge even such feelings in
sentiments more unendurable. We could no longer apply to the
strange orb any accustomed thoughts. Its
historical attributes had disappeared. It oppressed us
with a hideous novelty of emotion. We saw it not as
an astronomical phenomenon in the heavens, but as an incubus
upon our hearts and a shadow upon our brains. It had taken,
with unconceivable rapidity, the character of a gigantic
mantle of rare flame, extending from horizon to horizon.

Yet a day, and men breathed with greater freedom. It was
clear that we were already within the influence of the
comet; yet we lived. We even felt an unusual elasticity of
frame and vivacity of mind. The exceeding tenuity of the
object of our dread was apparent; for all heavenly objects
were plainly visible through it. Meantime, our vegetation
had perceptibly altered; and we gained faith, from this
predicted circumstance, in the foresight of the wise. A wild
luxuriance of foliage, utterly unknown before, burst out
upon every vegetable thing.

Yet another day—and the evil was not altogether upon
us. It was now evident that its nucleus would first reach
us. A wild change had come over all men; and the first sense
of pain was the wild signal for general lamentation
and horror. The first sense of pain lay in a rigorous
construction of the breast and lungs, and an insufferable
dryness of the skin. It could not be denied that our
atmosphere was radically affected; the conformation of this
atmosphere and the possible modifications to which it might
be subjected, were now the topics of discussion. The result
of investigation sent an electric thrill of the intensest
terror through the universal heart of man.

It had been long known that the air which encircled us was a
compound of oxygen and nitrogen gases, in the proportion of
twenty-one measures of oxygen and seventy-nine of nitrogen
in every one hundred of the atmosphere. Oxygen, which was
the principle of combustion, and the vehicle of heat, was
absolutely necessary to the support of animal life, and was
the most powerful and energetic agent in nature. Nitrogen,
on the contrary, was incapable of supporting either animal
life or flame. An unnatural excess of oxygen would result,
it had been ascertained, in just such an elevation of the
animal spirits as we had latterly experienced. It was the
pursuit, the extension of the idea, which had engendered
awe. What would be the result of a total extraction of
the nitrogen? A combustion irresistible, all-devouring,
omni-prevalent, immediate;—the entire fulfilment, in
all their minute and terrible details, of the fiery and
horror-inspiring denunciations of the prophecies of the Holy
Book.

Why need I paint, Charmion, the now disenchained frenzy of
mankind? That tenuity in the comet which had previously
inspired us with hope, was now the source of the bitterness
of despair. In its impalpable gaseous character we clearly
perceived the consummation of Fate. Meantime a day again
passed—bearing away with it the last shadow of Hope.
We gasped in the rapid modification of the air. The red
blood bounded tumultuously through its strict channels. A
furious delirium possessed all men; and with arms rigidly
outstretched towards the threatening heavens, they trembled
and shrieked aloud. But the nucleus of the destroyer was now
upon us;—even here in Aidenn I shudder while I speak.
Let me be brief—brief as the ruin that overwhelmed.
For a moment there was a wild lurid light alone, visiting
and penetrating all things. Then—let us bow down,
Charmion, before the excessive majesty of the great
God!—then, there came a shouting and pervading sound,
as if from the mouth itself of HIM; while the whole
incumbent mass of ether in which we existed, burst at once
into a species of intense flame, for whose surpassing
brilliancy and all-fervid heat even the angels in the high
Heaven of pure knowledge have no name. Thus ended all.

The good thing about being a gypsy
is its wild sativa;
the bad thing about being a gypsy
is its tamed alcoholic.

The good thing about being a gypsy
is its endless freedom;
the bad thing about being a gypsy
is its slavery to freedom.

The good thing about being a gypsy
is its philosophic heart;
the bad thing about being a gypsy
is its down-regulation of joy.

The best thing about being a wanderer
is its search for silence;
the worst thing about being a wanderer
is its capacity for noise.

The best thing about being a wanderer
is the free meal;
the worst thing about being a wander
is the free meal.

The best thing about being a wanderer
is the love of night;
the worst thing about being a wanderer
is the love of day.

The best thing about being a gypsy
is the wandering heart;
the worst thing about being a wanderer
is the gypsy heart.

The best thing about being a gypsy
is its magic book;
the worst thing about being a gypsy
is its accumulated curse.

The best thing about being a gypsy
is its varied muse;
the worst thing about being a gypsy
is its lack of one.

A dancing Bear grotesque and funny
Earned for his master heaps of money,
Gruff yet good-natured, fond of honey,
And cheerful if the day was sunny.
Past hedge and ditch, past pond and wood
He tramped, and on some common stood;
There, cottage children circling gaily,
He in their midmost footed daily.
Pandean pipes and drum and muzzle
Were quite enough his brain to puzzle:
But like a philosophic bear
He let alone extraneous care
And danced contented anywhere.

Still, year on year, and wear and tear,
Age even the gruffest, bluffest bear.
A day came when he scarce could prance,
And when his master looked askance
On dancing Bear who would not dance.

To looks succeeded blows; hard blows
Battered his ears and poor old nose.
From bluff and gruff he waxed curmudgeon;
He danced indeed, but danced in dudgeon,
Capered in fury fast and faster.
Ah, could he once but hug his master
And perish in one joint disaster!
But deafness, blindness, weakness growing,
Not fury's self could keep him going.
One dark day when the snow was snowing
His cup was brimmed to overflowing:
He tottered, toppled on one side,
Growled once, and shook his head, and died.
The master kicked and struck in vain,
The weary drudge had distanced pain
And never now would wince again.
The master growled; he might have howled
Or coaxed,--that slave's last growl was growled.
So gnawed by rancor and chagrin
One thing remained: he sold the skin.

What next the man did is not worth
Your notice or my setting forth,
But hearken what befell at last.
His idle working days gone past,
And not one friend and not one penny
Stored up (if ever he had any
Friends; but his coppers had been many),
All doors stood shut against him but
The workhouse door, which cannot shut.
There he droned on,--a grim old sinner,
Toothless, and grumbling for his dinner,
Unpitied quite, uncared for much
(The rate-payers not favoring such),
Hungry and gaunt, with time to spare;
Perhaps the hungry, gaunt old Bear
Danced back, a haunting memory.
Indeed, I hope so, for you see
If once the hard old heart relented,
The hard old man may have repented.

Perplexed and troubled at his bad success
The Tempter stood, nor had what to reply,
Discovered in his fraud, thrown from his hope
So oft, and the persuasive rhetoric
That sleeked his tongue, and won so much on Eve,
So little here, nay lost.  But Eve was Eve;
This far his over-match, who, self-deceived
And rash, beforehand had no better weighed
The strength he was to cope with, or his own.
But—as a man who had been matchless held
In cunning, over-reached where least he thought,
To salve his credit, and for very spite,
Still will be tempting him who foils him still,
And never cease, though to his shame the more;
Or as a swarm of flies in vintage-time,
About the wine-press where sweet must is poured,
Beat off, returns as oft with humming sound;
Or surging waves against a solid rock,
Though all to shivers dashed, the assault renew,
(Vain battery!) and in froth or bubbles end—
So Satan, whom repulse upon repulse
Met ever, and to shameful silence brought,
Yet gives not o’er, though desperate of success,
And his vain importunity pursues.
He brought our Saviour to the western side
Of that high mountain, whence he might behold
Another plain, long, but in breadth not wide,
Washed by the southern sea, and on the north
To equal length backed with a ridge of hills
That screened the fruits of the earth and seats of men
From cold Septentrion blasts; thence in the midst
Divided by a river, off whose banks
On each side an Imperial City stood,
With towers and temples proudly elevate
On seven small hills, with palaces adorned,
Porches and theatres, baths, aqueducts,
Statues and trophies, and triumphal arcs,
Gardens and groves, presented to his eyes
Above the highth of mountains interposed—
By what strange parallax, or optic skill
Of vision, multiplied through air, or glass
Of telescope, were curious to enquire.
And now the Tempter thus his silence broke:—
  “The city which thou seest no other deem
Than great and glorious Rome, Queen of the Earth
So far renowned, and with the spoils enriched
Of nations.  There the Capitol thou seest,
Above the rest lifting his stately head
On the Tarpeian rock, her citadel
Impregnable; and there Mount Palatine,
The imperial palace, compass huge, and high
The structure, skill of noblest architects,
With gilded battlements, conspicuous far,
Turrets, and terraces, and glittering spires.
Many a fair edifice besides, more like
Houses of gods—so well I have disposed
My aerie microscope—thou may’st behold,
Outside and inside both, pillars and roofs
Carved work, the hand of famed artificers
In cedar, marble, ivory, or gold.
Thence to the gates cast round thine eye, and see
What conflux issuing forth, or entering in:
Praetors, proconsuls to their provinces
Hasting, or on return, in robes of state;
Lictors and rods, the ensigns of their power;
Legions and cohorts, turms of horse and wings;
Or embassies from regions far remote,
In various habits, on the Appian road,
Or on the AEmilian—some from farthest south,
Syene, and where the shadow both way falls,
Meroe, Nilotic isle, and, more to west,
The realm of Bocchus to the Blackmoor sea;
From the Asian kings (and Parthian among these),
From India and the Golden Chersoness,
And utmost Indian isle Taprobane,
Dusk faces with white silken turbants wreathed;
From Gallia, Gades, and the British west;
Germans, and Scythians, and Sarmatians north
Beyond Danubius to the Tauric pool.
All nations now to Rome obedience pay—
To Rome’s great Emperor, whose wide domain,
In ample territory, wealth and power,
Civility of manners, arts and arms,
And long renown, thou justly may’st prefer
Before the Parthian.  These two thrones except,
The rest are barbarous, and scarce worth the sight,
Shared among petty kings too far removed;
These having shewn thee, I have shewn thee all
The kingdoms of the world, and all their glory.
This Emperor hath no son, and now is old,
Old and lascivious, and from Rome retired
To Capreae, an island small but strong
On the Campanian shore, with purpose there
His horrid lusts in private to enjoy;
Committing to a wicked favourite
All public cares, and yet of him suspicious;
Hated of all, and hating.  With what ease,
Endued with regal virtues as thou art,
Appearing, and beginning noble deeds,
Might’st thou expel this monster from his throne,
Now made a sty, and, in his place ascending,
A victor-people free from servile yoke!
And with my help thou may’st; to me the power
Is given, and by that right I give it thee.
Aim, therefore, at no less than all the world;
Aim at the highest; without the highest attained,
Will be for thee no sitting, or not long,
On David’s throne, be prophesied what will.”
  To whom the Son of God, unmoved, replied:—
“Nor doth this grandeur and majestic shew
Of luxury, though called magnificence,
More than of arms before, allure mine eye,
Much less my mind; though thou should’st add to tell
Their sumptuous gluttonies, and gorgeous feasts
On citron tables or Atlantic stone
(For I have also heard, perhaps have read),
Their wines of Setia, Cales, and Falerne,
Chios and Crete, and how they quaff in gold,
Crystal, and myrrhine cups, imbossed with gems
And studs of pearl—to me should’st tell, who thirst
And hunger still.  Then embassies thou shew’st
From nations far and nigh!  What honour that,
But tedious waste of time, to sit and hear
So many hollow compliments and lies,
Outlandish flatteries?  Then proceed’st to talk
Of the Emperor, how easily subdued,
How gloriously.  I shall, thou say’st, expel
A brutish monster: what if I withal
Expel a Devil who first made him such?
Let his tormentor, Conscience, find him out;
For him I was not sent, nor yet to free
That people, victor once, now vile and base,
Deservedly made vassal—who, once just,
Frugal, and mild, and temperate, conquered well,
But govern ill the nations under yoke,
Peeling their provinces, exhausted all
By lust and rapine; first ambitious grown
Of triumph, that insulting vanity;
Then cruel, by their sports to blood inured
Of fighting beasts, and men to beasts exposed;
Luxurious by their wealth, and greedier still,
And from the daily Scene effeminate.
What wise and valiant man would seek to free
These, thus degenerate, by themselves enslaved,
Or could of inward slaves make outward free?
Know, therefore, when my season comes to sit
On David’s throne, it shall be like a tree
Spreading and overshadowing all the earth,
Or as a stone that shall to pieces dash
All monarchies besides throughout the world;
And of my Kingdom there shall be no end.
Means there shall be to this; but what the means
Is not for thee to know, nor me to tell.”
  To whom the Tempter, impudent, replied:—
“I see all offers made by me how slight
Thou valuest, because offered, and reject’st.
Nothing will please the difficult and nice,
Or nothing more than still to contradict.
On the other side know also thou that I
On what I offer set as high esteem,
Nor what I part with mean to give for naught,
All these, which in a moment thou behold’st,
The kingdoms of the world, to thee I give
(For, given to me, I give to whom I please),
No trifle; yet with this reserve, not else—
On this condition, if thou wilt fall down,
And worship me as thy superior Lord
(Easily done), and hold them all of me;
For what can less so great a gift deserve?”
  Whom thus our Saviour answered with disdain:—
“I never liked thy talk, thy offers less;
Now both abhor, since thou hast dared to utter
The abominable terms, impious condition.
But I endure the time, till which expired
Thou hast permission on me.  It is written,
The first of all commandments, ‘Thou shalt worship
The Lord thy God, and only Him shalt serve.’
And dar’st thou to the Son of God propound
To worship thee, accursed? now more accursed
For this attempt, bolder than that on Eve,
And more blasphemous; which expect to rue.
The kingdoms of the world to thee were given!
Permitted rather, and by thee usurped;
Other donation none thou canst produce.
If given, by whom but by the King of kings,
God over all supreme?  If given to thee,
By thee how fairly is the Giver now
Repaid!  But gratitude in thee is lost
Long since.  Wert thou so void of fear or shame
As offer them to me, the Son of God—
To me my own, on such abhorred pact,
That I fall down and worship thee as God?
Get thee behind me!  Plain thou now appear’st
That Evil One, Satan for ever ******.”
  To whom the Fiend, with fear abashed, replied:—
“Be not so sore offended, Son of God—
Though Sons of God both Angels are and Men—
If I, to try whether in higher sort
Than these thou bear’st that title, have proposed
What both from Men and Angels I receive,
Tetrarchs of Fire, Air, Flood, and on the Earth
Nations besides from all the quartered winds—
God of this World invoked, and World beneath.
Who then thou art, whose coming is foretold
To me most fatal, me it most concerns.
The trial hath indamaged thee no way,
Rather more honour left and more esteem;
Me naught advantaged, missing what I aimed.
Therefore let pass, as they are transitory,
The kingdoms of this world; I shall no more
Advise thee; gain them as thou canst, or not.
And thou thyself seem’st otherwise inclined
Than to a worldly crown, addicted more
To contemplation and profound dispute;
As by that early action may be judged,
When, slipping from thy mother’s eye, thou went’st
Alone into the Temple, there wast found
Among the gravest Rabbies, disputant
On points and questions fitting Moses’ chair,
Teaching, not taught.  The childhood shews the man,
As morning shews the day.  Be famous, then,
By wisdom; as thy empire must extend,
So let extend thy mind o’er all the world
In knowledge; all things in it comprehend.
All knowledge is not couched in Moses’ law,
The Pentateuch, or what the Prophets wrote;
The Gentiles also know, and write, and teach
To admiration, led by Nature’s light;
And with the Gentiles much thou must converse,
Ruling them by persuasion, as thou mean’st.
Without their learning, how wilt thou with them,
Or they with thee, hold conversation meet?
How wilt thou reason with them, how refute
Their idolisms, traditions, paradoxes?
Error by his own arms is best evinced.
Look once more, ere we leave this specular mount,
Westward, much nearer by south-west; behold
Where on the AEgean shore a city stands,
Built nobly, pure the air and light the soil—
Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts
And Eloquence, native to famous wits
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,
City or suburban, studious walks and shades.
See there the olive-grove of Academe,
Plato’s retirement, where the Attic bird
Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long;
There, flowery hill, Hymettus, with the sound
Of bees’ industrious murmur, oft invites
To studious musing; there Ilissus rowls
His whispering stream.  Within the walls then view
The schools of ancient sages—his who bred
Great Alexander to subdue the world,
Lyceum there; and painted Stoa next.
There thou shalt hear and learn the secret power
Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit
By voice or hand, and various-measured verse,
AEolian charms and Dorian lyric odes,
And his who gave them breath, but higher sung,
Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer called,
Whose poem Phoebus challenged for his own.
Thence what the lofty grave Tragedians taught
In chorus or iambic, teachers best
Of moral prudence, with delight received
In brief sententious precepts, while they treat
Of fate, and chance, and change in human life,
High actions and high passions best describing.
Thence to the famous Orators repair,
Those ancient whose resistless eloquence
Wielded at will that fierce democraty,
Shook the Arsenal, and fulmined over Greece
To Macedon and Artaxerxes’ throne.
To sage Philosophy next lend thine ear,
From heaven descended to the low-roofed house
Of Socrates—see there his tenement—
Whom, well inspired, the Oracle pronounced
Wisest of men; from whose mouth issued forth
Mellifluous streams, that watered all the schools
Of Academics old and new, with those
Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect
Epicurean, and the Stoic severe.
These here revolve, or, as thou likest, at home,
Till time mature thee to a kingdom’s weight;
These rules will render thee a king complete
Within thyself, much more with empire joined.”
  To whom our Saviour sagely thus replied:—
“Think not but that I know these things; or, think
I know them not, not therefore am I short
Of knowing what I ought.  He who receives
Light from above, from the Fountain of Light,
No other doctrine needs, though granted true;
But these are false, or little else but dreams,
Conjectures, fancies, built on nothing firm.
The first and wisest of them all professed
To know this only, that he nothing knew;
The next to fabling fell and smooth conceits;
A third sort doubted all things, though plain sense;
Others in virtue placed felicity,
But virtue joined with riches and long life;
In corporal pleasure he, and careless ease;
The Stoic last in philosophic pride,
By him called virtue, and his virtuous man,
Wise, perfect in himself, and all possessing,
Equal to God, oft shames not to prefer,
As fearing God nor man, contemning all
Wealth, pleasure, pain or torment, death and life—
Which, when he lists, he leaves, or boasts he can;
For all his tedious talk is but vain boast,
Or subtle shifts conviction to evade.
Alas! what can they teach, and not mislead,
Ignorant of themselves, of God much more,
And how the World began, and how Man fell,
Degraded by himself, on grace depending?
Much of the Soul they talk, but all awry;
And in themselves seek virtue; and to themselves
All glory arrogate, to God give none;
Rather accuse him under usual names,
Fortune and Fate, as one regardless quite
Of mortal things.  Who, therefore, seeks in these
True wisdom finds her not, or, by delusion
Far worse, her false resemblance only meets,
An empty cloud.  However, many books,
Wise men have said, are wearisome; who reads
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
A spirit and judgment equal or superior,
(And what he brings what needs he elsewhere seek?)
Uncertain and unsettled still remains,
Deep-versed in books and shallow in himself,
Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys
And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge,
As children gathering pebbles on the shore.
Or, if I would delight my private hours
With music or with poem, where so soon
As in our native language can I find
That solace?  All our Law and Story strewed
With hymns, our Psalms with artful terms inscribed,
Our Hebrew songs and harps, in Babylon
That pleased so well our victor’s ear, declare
That rather Greece from us these arts derived—
Ill imitated while they loudest sing
The vices of their deities, and their own,
In fable, hymn, or song, so personating
Their gods ridiculous, and themselves past shame.
Remove their swelling epithetes, thick-laid
As varnish on a harlot’s cheek, the rest,
Thin-sown with aught of profit or delight,
Will far be found unworthy to compare
With Sion’s songs, to all true tastes excelling,
Where God is praised aright and godlike men,
The Holiest of Holies and his Saints
(Such are from God inspired, not such from thee);
Unless where moral virtue is expressed
By light of Nature, not in all quite lost.
Their orators thou then extoll’st as those
The top of eloquence—statists indeed,
And lovers of their country, as may seem;
But herein to our Prophets far beneath,
As men divinely taught, and better teaching
The solid rules of civil government,
In their majestic, unaffected style,
Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome.
In them is plainest taught, and easiest learnt,
What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so,
What ruins kingdoms, and lays cities flat;
These only, with our Law, best form a king.”
  So spake the Son of God; but Satan, now
Quite at a loss (for all his darts were spent),
Thus to our Saviour, with stern brow, replied:—
  “Since neither wealth nor honour, arms nor arts,
Kingdom nor empire, pleases thee, nor aught
By me proposed in life contemplative
Or active, tended on by glory or fame,
What dost thou in this world?  The Wilderness
For thee is fittest place: I found thee there,
And thither will return thee.  Yet remember
What I foretell t

Daughter of Jove, relentless Power,
Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose iron scourge and tort’ring hour
The Bad affright, afflict the Best!
Bound in thy adamantine chain
The Proud are taught to taste of pain,
And purple Tyrants vainly groan
With pangs unfelt before, unpitied and alone.

When first thy Sire to send on earth
Virtue, his darling child, designed,
To thee he gave the heav’nly Birth,
And bade to form her infant mind.
Stern rugged Nurse! thy rigid lore
With patience many a year she bore:
What sorrow was, thou bad’st her know,
And from her own she learned to melt at others’ woe.

Scared at thy frown terrific, fly
Self-pleasing Folly’s idle brood,
Wild Laughter, Noise, and thoughtless Joy,
And leave us leisure to be good.
Light they disperse, and with them go
The summer Friend, the flatt’ring Foe;
By vain Prosperity received,
To her they vow their truth, and are again believed.

Wisdom in sable garb arrayed
Immersed in rapt’rous thought profound,
And Melancholy, silent maid
With leaden eye, that loves the ground,
Still on thy solemn steps attend:
Warm Charity, the gen’ral Friend,
With Justice, to herself severe,
And Pity dropping soft the sadly-pleasing tear.

Oh, gently on thy Suppliant’s head,
Dread Goddess, lay thy chast’ning hand!
Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad,
Not circled with the vengeful Band
(As by the Impious thou art seen),
With thund’ring voice, and threat’ning mien,
With screaming Horror’s funeral cry,
Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty.

Thy form benign, O Goddess, wear,
Thy milder influence impart,
Thy philosophic Train be there
To soften, not to wound my heart.
The gen’rous spark extinct revive,
Teach me to love and to forgive,
Exact my own defects to scan,
What others are, to feel, and know myself a Man.

I am a revolutionary who lies in bed!
Leading the abused within my head,
I smelt their shackles into gleaming swords
The sort you see in dreams of course.

But why stop there? I am a philosopher
Taught the finest shadows in Plato’s cave,
A misanthrope who loves to post all the ways
I’d change the world if I were awake.
An artist who only writes self-deprecation
Instead of showing an ounce of creative dedication.

I am an arsonist who lights my own home
Just to keep warm and the night well shone
And with everything ablaze I always feel like I’m alone.

Perhaps, I should admit it could be, just maybe,
I hide the same problems everyone else has behind a fantasy
And instead I should accept I am just a boy lying in bed.

Hail to Thee, Immortal Three
Knowledge we sing on laud
Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates
Philosophy, to be human awed
Teach through time, consciously
Nod not, what others fraud

Socrates taught, Divine Being
God not of brutal Athens’ passions
Entity of Beauty, Truth Seeing
Goodness unseen in day’s fashions
Soul for unalloyed agreeing
Lessons humanities’ compassion

Talk eternal justice, everlasting life
Socrates’ Sovereign Right of Reason
Clearly mind deceived sense’s strife
Invincible perfection be God’s season
Thus, our key to knowledge ever rife
Priests who find this, absolute treason

No church or Socratic school
A barefoot man roamed to teach
Socrates mocked for looking a fool
His speech not one to simply preach
Plato witnesses a martyr’s drool
Cruel hemlock, words did so breach

Handsome aristocratic youth Plato
Followed Socrates’ Eternal Wisdom
But soon to find his own credo
In Medara to find Euclid and freedom
Egyptian geometry to provide dado
To Plato life, expression; not a system

Eternally an artist, Plato did develop
Philosophic circle in Academus groves
Bring Athens, world knowledge envelop
Discretions of sensations, be not oaths
What man may be, an animal jealous
Plato’s allegorical cave found in droves

As Plato once be Socrates’ disciple
So too, to Plato would Aristotle be
Passing comprehension archetypal
Successions of genius’ visions do see
Aristotle taking it step further, as vital
To science of hands-on discovery

And this is where we see a parting
Of two distinctly opposing philosophies
Plato being at odds, with science starting
Aristotle’s truth, finding no apologies
Things not happening by chance imparting
Frivolity of duopoly, dichotomy to Socrates

But a new era has surely now dawned
Science exploring an invisible atom
And the seen and unseen correspond
So to Aristotle’s, Plato’s, Socrates’ datum
Brilliant new philosophies have spawned
An abstract notion of conceived stratum

I do believe all poets must not only read a lot of poetry but read a lot about poetry. Of my 50 favorite poets, there is not one who has not written about poetry, the philosophy of their work and of the craft. That in itself is fascinating- and difficult, like the depth you find in NY Review of Books. I do about 2/3 (poems) to 1/3 (being books about poetry) From the most philosophic works of archetypes by Northrop Frye to the most public and basic questions of Zupruders good seller "Why Poetry?" .
That last book opened up a new reality for me, to I ask myself all the time who am I writing for, in context to all this reading...I realized I was really trying to communicate the poetic truths of living, of my own small life in the world so full of beauty, horror, paradox and death. I realized to do this I had to make compromises, to not try to impress or amuse myself with poems that could only be understood by me. The craft and presentation became as important as the message. That is currently my direction, I'm writing "collections" of poems with themes so a reader could enjoy a concrete theme. (The last book I just read, a signed collection by Ferlinghetti ( nice and cheap in a used bookstore) was just that- the theme of light in "How to Paint Sunlight." Accessible and very full of several poems about light)
So you are stating two different issues:
I don't like being not understood, Having people throw up there hands perplexed, I'd rather be popular.... Its lonely
But I cant write for others because than it would be feeling like a commercial venture My motivation would be destroyed.
Id rather be desolated and write for those few who get the twinge...
Well, first of all, we poets are possibly lucky because we ain't making beans for our poems. Forgetaboutit. Even our most lauded poets end up teaching to get the health care and severance. I suppose there may be 3 poets in Amerika that make a living on just writing poetry....if that many. Who's buying? I didn't see much word "poetry" once in this weeks NY Times review of books. Only some letters crashing last weeks review of Leonard Cohen, who the critic called a wonderful lyricist and performer, but an awful poet. These dialogues are important to me, but really, quite a small audience. Either way, lyrics and song paid the rent, not Cohen's books of just poetry.
I'm sure there is no immediate cure for your paradox. If you want to be popular you have to make compromises. If you don't want to alter your vision, you can get the joy of a smaller readership and forget the rest. You have to manage expectations is a world that hardly notices our craft.
It's hard to be both, I suppose you should stay true to your motivation. And if readers like me don't get it, **** em. Let it suffice we acknowledge the craft, and that we will get closer to some poems more than others be enough. For me, accessibility, the ability to engage a reader into whatever poetic truth I am feeling, is more important than in any way hiding the meaning in the poem in which I alone can understand it.
I want people who never read poetry, which is most people, pick up a poem by me and feel the poetry power without feeling intimidation which is what most people feel when they read most poems published today. For me its that fine line between letting the imagination do the work, and the poem setting up the narrative to allow it by inviting a reader into it. I get great joy reading my poems to non poets who are scared by even the idea of it, and get them to feel something new, that wonderful way Aristotle put it- that poetry provides an ultimate truth that is found beyond the boundary of philosophy.
Best Mark
…………………...

Admittedly I have gone off the rails focusing on the meta or man as dreamer. Are we not dreamers first before descending into the material, deadening the faculty of imagination or as the I Ching says "a darkening of the light"
I want to bring the reader up and when I read I want to have the sensation of ascending I try to give what I like to receive which is to be brought into greater fluency and light
Have we abandoned our inner life to such an extent that when confronted with it we find our selves strangers to it; reinforcing and amplifying a kind of cognitive dissidence?
Are we in a sense a stranger to our selves having lost the lucidity of our magical youth
Do we see the world as vacant utilitarian stuff and other humans predictable lusterless cogs in a wheel like cued robots?
Witches Seers, Voodoons , Hermeticists, Kabbalists and Occultists of very stripe know and use objects as essential to their operations and craft because they have hidden meaning and power.
Has the life of fantastical creative cognition been sacrificed to inveterate congenital pragmatism?
"Beloved imagination, what I most like in you is your unsparing quality".
Andre Breton
To transgress is to process ones madness as opposed to the customary botched behaviors of repressive modalities we hide behind . It seems to me that poetry is a great ground for that exploration.
Perhaps Its a good thing for a reader to think about what the writer means, albeit a difficult pleasure as opposed to the instantaneous and facile modes of naming and claiming Reading towards the abstract can be a mystical experience Most people who read are shallow readers Shall I than aspire to be a shallow writer?
What surrealism (Detailed descriptive language unmoored from linear rationality) affords the writer like pure abstraction to the visual artist is a great opportunity to explore the musicality of language ie the musicality of form i.e. the energetic configurations of architypes.
Part of our craft that makes things crackle as you know well remains sound play ie the strategy of syllables ... Long vowels / short vowels...the length of words and sound of words in relationship to one another
As you know Mark to analyze the subtle abstraction of sounds i.e. words to the ear is just like music and like music although not wholly translatable has an undertow of non verbal meaning especially if exploited out side the linguistic necessity of linear prose like poems i.e. a device that most never use consciously and strategically or certainly to its fullest potential.
So when we say a poem is beautiful do we impart mean its those amazing tintinnabulating sounds that ****** with their musicality? Poems that do that well stand out to me.
Further I think we are in error when we confuse the realistic with the materialistic. It seems to me realism has magnitudinal underlying meta elements that need to be felt in poetry and to think other wise in my opinion would be a dull conceit
A good example is thought itself
When we speak our ideas thoughts impulses we have no real sense of where they emerge from The processes are so meta their incomprehensible even to neuro science and scientists have little if any understanding of consciousness or its meaning as far as I know
So perhaps the surrealist has a place of worth too; and that is to remind people of their inner life out side the cage of end product think and commodification. After all what is a life and what is a poem?
Best Z

My mother recently took me to another doctor
she said, ‘her condition is becoming outrageous ,
she hasn’t laughed in a year, avoids any talking,
never leaves the house until the night draws in. ’

And I think the sun should rather concern her.
Burning things don’t make good companions.
Bought a ticket for a train, northbound at night,
my eyes hurt from the condolences of daylight.

Went back south in September, I surrendered,
had to promise to be good again and presentable.
Indifferent on life, did I suffer from depression?
It’s not been an illness but a philosophic decision.

One Sunday, it was quiet during breakfast time,  
somebody from town recently took their life.
Rised brows behind the newspaper’s edges,
secretly, I admire the courage and recklessness.

But I act eager and am polite with relatives,
at holiday occasions I behave and give kisses
until one proposes a toast to life being a gift.
I say nothing in exchange, I feel guilty to exist.

It all changed one day, when I found me a lover.
He sins for amusement while I sin to self punish.
I love that he’s mortal, of a perishable texture,
hope to be buried, rot with him in the graveyard.

We agree on senselessness without any pity,
he watches me fail life and thinks it’s poetic.
We can’t hurt since there’s nothing to heal from.
A physical love wich in it’s essence is platonic.

Making manic impersonations
On a momentary scale
We ride on the echo of cymbals divine
Decanting data into philosophic wine
Perceptive perspective manifesting matrices
Unknown --
Uncontrollable, undeniable, imminent &
Haphazardly perfect;
The essence of our yesterdays & tomorrows
Etched, in passing, into the
Particulate framework
-- Momentarily --
& yet
-- Eternally --
Manifestations cloaked in the veil of time,
Laced with intentions self-concocted,
The tides exchange,
Endlessly blurring the line between
Creator and Created

poetry can resemble a jackson ******* method - but it can also resemble sitting on the stairs in the garden, just when winter starts to dig into it's cold at night (but still not cold enough) for a man drinking beer and smoking cigarettes to feel the skin etch out in itches from the mild freeze, and imagining himself holding the beer bottle with skeletal fingers... then the thoughts come... nothing is really planned by a narrator working out a fictional linear process, it's more like that soviet invention of a game of tetris, thoughts come, the ego disappears, thoughts arrange for a brief narrative, then disappear, new thoughts come, then a randomisation process takes over, until ex nihil complete dispersion, the faculty of thinking is exiled, and the faculty of memory takes over.*

after watching two grand movies in one day,
it felt really sour to return to the grand stasis of things,
the only constellations that are visible
without any ******* notion of light pollution
are scorpio and the big dipper...
the litter dipper is more dim this year,
so dim i mistook the earth's celestial geographic
route as spring summer the big dipper is
when in autumn winter the big dipper is
the small dipper... but seeing the two in the night
once i became aspirational in my error -
if only the prefix aspi- existed, derived from
aspen to the added continuance of the word
left: rational: rationality based upon unforced error?
but these two films: kingsman: the secret service
& the hobbit: the desolation of smaug
you get penetrated by so many active ingredients
for the narration via images, that when you
un-glue your eyes from plato's cave (actors
are the best conclusive interpretation of shadows,
no rabbits in the hand to be mistaken for the real things)
you get this drawback sensation of having to focus
on inanimate things in stasis -
and it can & does become pretty glum,
esp. if you want to return to the realm of using
phonetic symbols, to not speak in reserve for
an up-and-coming stage performance
but to see the glaring starry composition of hidden
things in the things already seen...
so there with the beer, scorpio elsewhere
the big dipper only thing providing me with
a workable dynamic: in schematic
          
       .         .
                    
                       .
                .

       .
            .

               .

i had to active this arrangement of stars
to negated feeding my exposure to
so many images...
i began by coupling the stars: three couplets
one star the odd one out...
then i started to create a dynamic
on the basis of geometry, a geometric
non-linear representation of infinity,
but the constellation into a circle,
and therefore thought of infinity as not
beginning                         sequence                    end,
after all, infinity as a constant interchange
of 10 distinctions 0 - 9 can be ridiculous,
whereby infinity just becomes a randomisation:
either 14123480345792340834 etc.
or 12300984393657499393030, etc.
so using geometry i need to acquire
a infinite parallelism, infinite parallelism
implied as non-convergence.... two points
small enough (atoms, sub-atomic particles,
stars) to interact in parallel, but never converge,
for if convergence was possible...
i wonder: me being conscious of being
the olympic gold swimmer to the ****?
i hardly think so.
i can perceive atoms via the greek imagination
or with the galileo of small-print via the microscope,
but i can't individuate an atom of some sort
to a specified functional guarantee: well yeah,
sulphur stinks... but i could technically
atomise the one unit in my capacity to a state
of an atom... my self... given the number of people
and all the chance interactions in an environment
big enough to all a minuteness of the atomised self...
which is perhaps the counter to that old chestnut
known as solipsism: how to get the right phonetically
chemical concoction to get an etymologically word
out of this? atomipsism? no philology in me just
yet to open the bible of philology (the dictionary)
or bother thesaurus rex for comparative literature.
but anyway, as things go i was musing this other thing,
the fame of achilles with the modern fame machinery...
back then you really had to push the right buttons,
and your actual fame was post-mortem, in order
that you might be glorified in some way...
modern fame seems like a bad orwellian joke...
it's translated into our modern themes of catchphrases
slogans and trademarks as c.c.t.v., a ****** camera
on your shoulder... it actually is a bad orwellian joke...
no double think i rephrased into:
there are more c.c.t.v. cameras in england than in
all of europe put together... so the double think
is as this:
a. should i be bothered, or
b. should i not be bothered?
i'll answer with my usual enigmatic methodology by
just changing the subject -
we left the realm of philosophic doubt and thinking,
we entered the realm of modern denial and thinking,
i dare say i prefer doubt to denial,
it makes all our apprehensions, petty fears and
all petty concerns a bit smaller - via the maxim:
the only fear to fear is fear itself... denial doesn't
provide what doubt provides, doubt is like
cushioned fear... if there's a fear to fear as simply itself
doubt puts a lid on it, a spontaneity,
a kantian noumenon by definition, fear-in-itself.

i used to wake up with sore eyes and black bruises i've never seen before
i'd look for long cigarette butts half full beers and forgotten liquor drinks
i had two cow licks that stuck up like horns
i had thick cigarette smoke like peanut butter and puddles in the kitchen that leaked from the trash bags into the rug
i'd paste cardboard boxes and ripped up comic books together with my drawings
in permanent marker and scribbled edges of ballpoint pen and colored pencil coupled with
writings of philosophic schizophrenic machine gun word salad
that ran off the page and
onto the walls
i had slippers i'd worn out months ago and shirts i washed in the shower
with dish soap
i had flies that flew around in circles until they got smacked or fell dead
i'd climb up on the roof in the afternoon
throw bottles in the street and ******* the side
i welcomed the dirt the bloodstains and the deep cough
i loved it but mostly hated it
and i'll never forget it

you are so annoying...

you are so complicated..

you bring drama to my life..

you laugh at me...

you laugh with me...

you know all bout my crushes...

you know all bout my life every single detail..

you make me smile...

you irritate me..

you are my "philosophic talker"

you my "******* taker"

you give all wrong advises..

you scream at me with CAPITAL LETTERS..!! :)

you make me smile with all the "awwww..."

you are with me day and night..!!

and wen u get upset with me nothings all right..!! :(

even if people call us "lesbians" I DON'T CARE..!!!

because i know we have our share of crushes...lovers and admirers...that v both only know of..!!! :)

you have seen me in my bad..u have seen me in my best..

you have seen me going "tomboy " to "girly" for a guy..!! :)

you criticize me...i abuse you...and that is what makes us Best Friends Forever..!!!

i know i have ******* you royally..!! i know i have irritated you no end..!! thank you for bearing it all...thank you for standing by me!! thank you for taking my ****..!! and lastly...thank you for STICKING AROUND AND LISTENING TO ME..!!!!!

LOVE YOU LOADS..!!!

P.S : We are not BFFs... WE ARE..

: Best Friend For Life Like Sisters And Always I Love You..!!!

Benedict turned the page
of the Dostoyevsky novel.

His brother puked in the bidet,
too much cheap wine,
Benedict thought,
but he’ll be fine.

He immersed himself deeper
into the Russian world
of ****** and fear
and dark corners.

Crime and Punishment
was one good tale all right.
Even the book cover held
the attention, he thought,
turning it briefly over.

His brother’s moans
interrupted the puking.
Benedict asked an
are you all right?
There was a groan
of response.

Benedict recalled the time
he had been in that condition
in Yugoslavia the year before,
same cause: too much
cheap wine.
And that beautiful guide
came to his room
to see how he was
and sat on his bed
and all he could think of
was when would
the puking end.

No thought at all
of her presence there,
her body so close,
her perfume making him
more nauseous.

She was Croatian,
he thought, pausing at the page
of the Dostoyevskian novel.

And that waitress
he and his brother had liked
in the restaurant
at the Yugoslavian hotel.

*****. Yes, that was the name.
Got no where though.
Just the luck of the draw.

His brother returned
from the bathroom
and flopped on the bed.

The puking over maybe,
Benedict thought
and his brother hoped,
pale of complexion,
perspiration on brow.

Outside the window
the Parisian streets
echoed with life:
Cars, coaches, buses,
people, natives, tourists,
males and females.

Tomorrow they’d be out
on the streets again.
Sit in restaurants where
the famous once sat
over coffee or beer:
Hemmingway, Sartre,
Picasso, Henry Miller
and the others.

Art thrived here.
Ideas born
from philosophic minds.

Benedict book marked
the page and closed
the book and put it aside.

Some one laughed outside
in the street, another sang,
voices of ghostly singers
of the past, breathed
from the walls.

His brother returned
to the bathroom,
more puking.
Benedict thought:
poor brother.
Of course, he mused,
gazing at the Parisian
night sky, they’d never
tell their mother.

if not cited sparingly, and in a democratic number,
then at least cited as if minding the republic's senators,
concentrated influences - few, but certainly
in a concentrated manner cited.

when reading becomes as acutely distinctive as the hand -
never before have both hands reached an ideal
equilibrium - my withered manus lævus elsewhere -
esp. at Marathon, with the puny javelin throw -
Herculean balance in the right hemisphere -
yet although in physics the right held sway -
now it seems in my mind, the arithmetic pain busy
buzzing in the former ***** colony has gained
the upper-hand - its persistence beyond mere myth
of the boulder the hill the repetition as punishment;
such a grand way to use both without prejudices
of former believed-to-be satanic rituals in a Victorian
school.

perhaps going beyond Plato sinister sexology of
the soul and punishment via transgender migration -
if once a true and serious meditation, now it would
seem blocked by something, emerging from that
ancient theory and brought before us in practice -
that the left-hand masters of the quill were migrating
from Hebrew, from Arabic from Sanskrit?
less sexually orientated and for that reason, purifying
the old ways of teaching boys the practices of the state.

we are right in that we begin on the left -
and they have already left for the other world,
their theologies ensured they left -
but that does not necessarily make them right -
beginning from the right in writing with each word
they leave for another - a better one -
for us, who begin from the left and ending by being
right in our political affairs and our moral practices
(so supposed) leave us entrenched in this world -
by so right in doing the mere thought of atheism;
but times have changed... we're all moving forward -
only a retired general practitioner might have used
his index to peck like a crock at the keyboard -
youth spared me - even both my thumbs are used
when typing - notably the left thumb for the space -
or so the alphabet arranged for a quickness in type -
if arranged by some formal logic - the keyboard would
be a different battlefield against Peter Phantom and
the leash of surrender; yet what fingers used more often
than the crucial index of an aged doctor?
for the most educated class of people, they write such
terrible enigma scribbles on prescription notes -
for the most part, type font was invented to decipher
prescriptions - or as some would call them -
a chicken dipped its nail into an ink bottle and scratched
in good morning on a piece of paper.

so it came to be, when Latin imploded from the ******
and was allocated a pickle jar preservation aversion
to graffiti Latin on the coliseum walls it became
ecclesiastical Latin - power was hidden from the ***
blah gurgle - or the Germanic burp for: a pleasant meals
desires a compliment, echo in the cave, burp in
the (o)esophagus - a grapheme divorce -
but that's also beside the point - instead of mere writing
left to right or right to left - the grammar changed suit!
Latin names are the easiest to spot:
the barbarians and the Latins are like us and Arabs -
mirror and chiral thinking go hand-in-hand as a handshake -
some remind us of neschek the usury serpent -
or they remind us of demon-slug narchak engaged
to simony - by example, zoological quirks reminding:
corvus (crow) cornix (hooded) - hooded crow,
corvus cornix - corvus corone - carrion crow -
corvus manus laevus - left-hand crow, which by it's
hyphen refers to a deity - thus in original crow left-hand -
Odin's illuminating eye embedded for eternity entombed
in the companion that takes the sky as leisure equal to
a cushioned and scented parlour, and the wind as a mother -
away from the hunchback penitence as seen on ground,
pauper hunchback clad in black a futile scout.

as already mentioned - capture it at any one time in
unravelling Babylon - the grand spiral architecture  
unison - for that English was used - or "proto" Latin
without diacritical marks (stresses) - the one accomplishment
that arose from the mad farce of Nebuchadnezzar -
the Jews sighed relief when then plans to build gardens
above the sky (hanging) were foiled - the sigh of
the Hebrew slaves in Verdi's Nabucco - indeed va pensiro,
alter: ave ratio! the only one time when the Mensa society
are of any use other than training pet monkeys -
a democratic hooray! geniuses unread but good at
arithmetic... they're still children for goodness' sake!
but what have we exchanged for the hanging gardens?
the pyramids were already ridiculous,
the hanging gardens were impossible, but the tower
of babble-toe-babbling-tongue came to be prißed for
all the wrong reasons - sigma global, Atlas threw earth
away and picked up the Moon.

still the compass away from Bermuda dizzy in myth
or reality provides us the true North magnetism -
as Confucius said: man's importance lies in the head,
not the toe - we shall write from head to toe,
to motivate our understanding of the yet unexplored
gravity, this be our grounding... no grand empire outside
the evident physiognomy of Shanghai blinds of Buddha -
nothing beyond this reach of yellow -
the Mongol will try, but fail, the Japanese will try,
but fail, the Koreans are another matter, a civil war
ravaged them, and a true schism happened,
there was nothing Byzantine or Romanic about it -
the schism of reality, nothing metaphysical kept them apart,
a genocide division without a genocide -
an old father had a plot of land and three songs -
Yin took the northern realm, Shin the southern realm,
Ming became a Communist party member in China -
Tibet never had the exclusiveness of the Vatican -
the Vatican is not an ethnic entity, for starters -
the Israel of Asia that Tibet is...
the Israel of Asia that Tibet is... claim a son or a godhead
see how the masses entrenched in insect Darwinism
come about with coherent reasoning -
masquerade as a prophet, the easiest answer is that
the consistency of time will always precede your idea
of superior constants, neither Buddha nor Christ were
ever meant to be π.

the Chinese knew how to build a state, shame! shame
on the Slavs for biting the apple too soon rather than
baking an apple pie with Communism -
shame! shame! shame! ridiculous souls -
fickle hearts - i only learned this in exile, a proud
exile at that - not that i became accommodated in a superior
culture, these ******* inspired socialism with their
bile Empire monotony - am i proud to be British?
give me a minute, i'll just ask the Scottish separatists
if they think Andrew battled Santa Claus like St. George -
(anagram: Satan's Clause, an article of jurisprudence).
em... British? poet in residence or poet on a high-note
of a tsunami of change? i think the latter.
once the Scots rammed their way into Westminster
the Labour party was no more, what with the Iraq
Endeavour of Herr Barrister Milosevic -
**** up and Shrove Tuesday - **** in a fan,
chocolate milkshake with a sprinkle of shattered cranium.

when in Edinburgh i implanted into my brain the compass,
the perfect geographic locality, Edinburgh is,
i had a nice acceptance in Bristol by the cat-and-mouse
people from the educational firm University seeking
a scientists that had some vague sense of respecting humanism...
that really smeared chilli powder on my *******,
i left suspicious about the eagerness -
went to Edinburgh, the education reception was cold...
cold enough to be given an onion to smash against the
floor after it was dipped in liquid nitrogen -
but the city! the city! it breathed ancient fables!
and **** me... a city built around a mountain...
how many sunrises and sunsets do you think
i sore with every blink on my maiden voyage to the land
of the Picts? enough... plus my stomach was ready,
haggis was nothing unusual... i was familiar with haggis
in a pork variation - czarna kiszka (char n'ah kee shka'h).

so what will it be?
hic mali medium est                     or...
                        hic boni medium est?
i wish there was an ad hoc hidden somewhere, but
neither expressions are a nail for the hammer and
the planks of wood, but you can think of them like that...
i.e. 1st. here is the core of evil
                 and 2nd. here is the core of good... yeah, mm d'uh
that famous and meaning the two opposites are inseparable...
but i mean the compass! the compass!

the Firth of Forth helped, no, not Genesis' selling England by
the pound, and everyone somehow hates Phillip Cool Onions -
ever hear that one about another day forgetting paradise?
it's on there... i can't walk... i can listen to Genesis -
you just realise how complex English culture of lore yore -
that's long forgotten yesterday - everything decays,
autumn must come -
now the children play with fame, rather than work for it.

i get reminded every ****** time...
i kept the notes and extracts after the Cantos ended -
i neither wish to imitate - but pay the compliments
necessitated by the work -
when the rhythm section was more complex than
the solos - when it was always jazzy guitars on prog.
i kept the fragments unread -
and in between travelling to London to see
the Werther opera and the Don Quixote ballet
i was commuting with Kant - i know i mentioned
them as my heroes, given there would never be a battle
of Θερμoπυλαη and only the yawns of battle
with the critique - i too care to admit a defeat -
when i pick that book up and i pick up the Cantos
with the first i hear someone knocking on my door,
while with the latter i hear someone playing the flute,
optically and exclusively based on that to suit the final
exasperation of breath.

or you would think that by the standard of the English
mind at least poetry would gain favours if
French frivolity and German philosophic Benz fell out
of favour - at least poetry would be attended to -
and when they see the demonic form of the prised
asset of English intellect that isn't music, but the Yorkshire
dales and rambling naked and telling folklore and tall
B.F.G. tales would not shrivel into a tightened-strait-jacket
panic seeing someone juggling pronouns on a psychotic
cloud; almost every day the English mind allows
madmen in a different category - equipped with
suicide vests and the crowd of many - playing god
almost every other day - materialisation of fiction
with terrorist attacks - see both good and evil -
chaos demands both, order a distinction, the latter
played out so unfortunately to be constantly compared -
the former? well, either that or nothing -
of the essences so much was said countless times -
and countless times unsaid when the actors came on stage.

so rekindled Latin in encoding sounds ascribed hoarse
throats of the nomadic north bound exploration -
from left to right - then reinvented as if Arabic -
from right to left: corvus cornix - hooden crow -
well, at least it's easier to think of it as right to left
rather than left to right - than mere concentration rested
upon the stone not turning to bread -
higher in the pyramid than the water turning to wine -
as the pigs were fed, and the toils of man became
a fervency of all - as the devil asked:
are you sure you will be selling the aristocratic life to all
and all will be pleased? not all men were born
into a luxury of continual drunken luxury -
later the riddle turned into a choking joke of the 5,000 -
never show them tricks of the aristocratic class
for they drink to excess, and turn wine into water by
the day... but will stones keep the agile hands of labourers
readied for the next task if given water they turn into
debauched drunk sloths?

They had a love for the boundary wall
Where occupied round the seasons
Their frames slender or substantial
Meditative eyes in philosophic brooding
Till in the sunset years or sooner
They disappeared beyond that wall.

Many of them have warmed those bricks
When the night’s chill forbade to be outdoor
But the restless ears strained to hear
Brushing of body against body
Till their blood warmed in the moon’s heat
Covered the delirious trek to the dawn!

Now have come up the fence of iron spears
Burying the joys and yesteryear’s tears
And the restless ears can now only hear
The cold bricks groaning in the night’s lull!

Quietly bids the time for the transit
Beyond the boundary wall!

i so wish these poems weren't such afterthoughts,
words either labored, squeezed off a pained heart,
or a strong gush of stupid happy emotion as in farts?
neither pretty codified sonnets with essence in parts,
nor crisp, concise haiku's focused like targeted darts,
not the sophistried zen, oft hacked philosophic verses,
and the petty patterned words unmovingly affecting,
i despair for us to read a poem from brains turmoiled,
confused,unwritten words,unexpressed feelings,in divine madness!!
dance the unknown poem if a poem, to music uncomposed if music,
why cant we live them **** poems! so we dont have to **** write them!!


-every fellow being is a poem unwritten I feel, lets live them? Can we?-

It's definitely gotten
Weird enough for me
Strange days-
An understatement
So what choice do I have
But throw in the towel
Cash in my chips
Buy the farm
Kick the bucket
An eye for an eye
A truth for a lie
The philosophic problem of revenge
Is always on my mind
Yet I've no counselor to console
I guess no one ever does
Atop the mountain
We're all a mystery
No one, even ourselves,
Wants to solve
Disenchanted souls
You know they'll worship your tombstone
But not until it goes in the ground
Running on a two-dimensional rainbow
In a schizophrenic sky
Has God shown you his face?
My only trigger is a finger
And they're calling me
Insanely cheap
But in their midst
I quietly understand
In my own alley
They talk about free will
But all I see is witless swill
The same ol' people
******* the sun
Glad you weren't here to bear witness
You must have known
There's only one way to be Earnest
When all your friends
Are dead people
No other choice
But to turn inside-in

I know your final days,
my son, by mental rote,
from Thursday to Monday,
from being unwell
to the last seconds dying,
like a child learning
a new nursery rhyme
note by note,
until it's unforgettable,
stuck in each particle
of cells and brain,
bringing thoughts
of disbelief
and punch hard pain.

Sleep seems
the only comfort,
that lying down,
snug between
cloth and warmth,
mind drugged to
a doped up
momentary
forgetting or easing,
but still it's there
when we awake,
the sense of loss,
that utter disbelief,
that deep down
cannot be hidden grief.

I wish I were
more Stoic like you,
my son, my deep philosopher,
my silent one;
wish I had some
philosophic remedy
to cure the ache,
to soothe the mind,
some crutch or stick
to tap around like
one who's blind,
but I have none,
none that will ease
or remedy the ill
of your departure,
none to fill
the huge chasm
between you there
in Death's hold
and God's grace
and me left here
sensing loss
and the cold breeze
of death's breath
in my ageing face.

Hey sad souls,
what are we to do?
When we're all so down and blue!
In our beautiful minds,
(Because,that's what they are, you HP people)
join your hands, together as one,
with similar kinds,
of people.
Men and women,
need each other,
sister and brother.

Feed each others spirits,
to take you beyond all limits.
This isn't a poem,
with the American dream,
this is for hearts and minds,
that need inspiration,
at times of desperation.
We all need to feel good,
gratification of our existence,
with a constant persistence.
Encouraging one another,
telling life that ,'That I love her'
She holds me captive,
her spirit bounds me,
In her arms, I'm held in awe.
surrendering  unconditionally,
Like a puppy holding up its paw.

For life,
throws tribulations,
catastrophic,
philosophic,
cataclysmic,
rhythmic,
euphoric.
And with each moment,
we should pray for another,
this gift of life,
to make us content,
a limited time we are lent,
cannot regain what has been spent.

Look up into this abundant sky
and smile that you are here.
When many cannot,
and many have not.

Your eyes beneath the summer breeze,
Your glance before the mountain range,
A philosophic walk through earth,
Your heart inspires me to change.

A change of heart, a sudden turn,
My soul has left and come again.
And though with flames my passion burns,
I must show patience and restraint.

The second act of my own play:
The second I read out your name
I knew that something was at work,
A Holy plan, so I proclaim.

I see you with a solemn glance,
While I pretend my heart is yours,
Yet trapped as in a lovesick trance,
I realize I'm by my own.

Will it ever change, my fate?
Or shall I be confined in love's
Unending forest, and await
In lonely tides without your love?

I pray that I don't just move on,
But live with you in heart or truth,
And age with bliss and love forgone,
Forever hidden in our youth.

There is a man, who sits on the bench down the road. During the day.
He looks like there is a world he has seen, touched, tasted and felt, and dreamt to reality, but now he has, nothing and nothing to say.
His skin, is sagged and loose, there is a gullet of old age in his neck.
I turn my head away out of sheer respect.
There are tears in my eyes.
I want to hold his hand and ask him, 'What happened? Did you see her? Did.She.Leave? Do your children still call? Is there anything left of you here, anything at all?'
I sit here and weep and i wonder what he saw.
Whether i had seen it too, and done it and missed it, and missed it because of you?
My eyes they are tired.
More tired than my back or my pain.
They are tired from saving the day, and from walking in constant rain.
I picked out some bullets from old scars from way back when,
there were hit with some fine target practice of fine 'love' writing in the dark with the punch of a pen.
So i sit here, and i wonder if one day he will be me.
Wonder if he sat and wrote little dittys for a world, that he could not see,
for people he never met, for lovers who had up and gone, for those who had no story, no strength, no howl or battle song.
There is this old man, and he sits and he waits.
I want to ask him, Is there a future in this world that he awaits?
And i don't so i sit here and casually think of him awhile.
Before my mind turns to someone else, i can think of and love,
in my own spectacular, unique, philosophic, apathetic style.

"That one body may act upon another at a distance
through a vacuum without the mediation of anything else,
is to me so great an absurdity that,
I believe,

Every massive particle in the universe
attracts every other massive particle.
Force directly proportional to the product of their masses,
inversely proportional to the square of the
distance
between them.

Spherically-symmetrical masses attract and
are attracted as if all
their mass were concentrated
at their centers

There is no immediate prospect of identifying the mediator of gravity.
Attempts by physicists to identify the relationship between
gravitational force
and other known fundamental forces are not yet resolved.
Many attempts were made to understand the phenomena,
but there was nothing more that scientists could do at the time.

no man who has in philosophic matters
a competent faculty of thinking
could ever fall into it."

The giant’s ruminations could once demand
Salvation, the order of the universe in hand.
Now, all His awe and glory’s come to naught
And man cries madly, distraught.
In black and white, His word and song is made,
And in this darkened night will never fade.
Who are you to say we must submit?
Who are we to give our spirit and quit?
Great Lords, and Pope, alike, have written what men think,
So who am I to tell you when to sup and drink?
Millions upon millions, the critics ponder fate by wit,
But hasn’t it all been said, hasn’t it been writ?
I tell you no certainty, give you only proof,
You must read those great volumes to which so many are aloof.
I sing praises like as David, a song that Solomon would want,
Of everlasting truth, without a philosophic taunt.
Salvation is not my message, repentance not my ploy;
I wish to give you knowledge: teach your mind it’s not a toy!
There is no great illusion of the means of life on Earth,
There is no puzzling mystery in death and life and birth.
Whether God is at your side, or rejected wholly through,
The only one to chose your fate is overwhelmingly, singly, you.
Gloriously glorified, stained no more with sin,
To live a life of Glory, is glory given Him.
Whether purpose given, or purpose thrown aside,
Whether admit he’s risen, or deny he did abide;
Travel the less-trampled track—the path less trodden down,
For the destination matter less when the road is filled with crowns.

i can't be repentant, he's there, strapped
to that stump of iconoclasm of his,
and you expect me to repent?
i have no mea culpa left in me to
do that, strangers' dogs familiarise themselves
for a brief petting and i cry,
a riddle: what two upturned sockets
give a smile? two harlequins and a pierrot:
for the eyes eagle sadness when laughter approaches,
and the eyes eagle happiness when laughter's
concubine (sadness) revels naked trapped by
waterfalls of eager misery.

you're not going to school me...
ponce... poets are paranoid concerning
a narrator, poets are paranoid about narrators,
sartre's c.c.t.v. existentialism, the eye
through the keyhole...
while he's strapped to that holy geometric of
his, that stump, i'm not supposed to
do penance, do a *mea culpa,
in rite of imitating a heartbeat of guilt
with clenched fist against the chest:
mea culpa... mea culpa... mea culpa...
what am i, the democratic demographic
of the Pharisees?!
i have though, a philosophical inquiry,
let's imagine you're old school,
born in the 1980s, ha ha (old school,
i guess the internet does indeed belong
to *****-like creatures of youth
who'll swarm and literally abuse the **** thing),
so let us imagine you were old enough
to buy compact disks and respect artists
for their effort (i've said countless times,
i'd rather ask for free ***** than free music,
that's the first step to initiating the power of a.i.,
make certain professions redundant,
better in communism where no art was allowed,
althought breakout - kiedy byłem małym chłopcem - https://goo.gl/kHzmEi -
******* hippies via the beatles
when they were back in the u.s.s.r. - or something
akin to that six sharpshooter visa a vie via...
a.i. is a mingling of analytical and synthetic perception,
a perfect balance, analysis is worth storage,
synthesis is a non-replica guidance,
what is experienced cannot be replicated
for fear of mistake,
indeed the old question, was god who crafted man
or was man who crafted god, only a mechanic
technicality, like this philosophic curiosity i have
for you in hope of stalling you:
then man with steam engine and in linear fashion
for once plump beauty to venture into
anorexia... then god with his vacuum engines
of planetary orbits, neither able to immerse in
plagiarism...
i used to buy compact *****, i still do,
i'd burn them onto the hard-drive,
but some were scratched, the scratches in mp3
formatting were like computer viruses,
i'd put them into an ipod and guess what,
once the ipod played the former scratched c.d.
mp3 version it would create a physical malfunction,
the ****** thing would break apart...
it would twitch, it would shut the power off...
a scratched c.d. converted into mp3 can destroy
an ipod.

thesis: strength endures voids and emptiness.
strength constructs no homes (antithesis:

if your house leaks then on swollen days
in sullen seasons there is no home for you)

there is endless repetitious strength
enduring endlessly there is this paradox:
strength is the void endured and consequently

synthesis: enter everybody's anti-hero cross-eyed,
sees crossed eyes cross-eyed but looking in his eyes
sees straight, sees sick, sees something monstrous
something insect, sees this philosophic frippery:
that is sees man

endures in his mirror that is self-doubt,
his left arm being his right arm
his left eye sees his right eye
and no eye sees his nose right.

synthesis: enter naked the hero's fists blazing
won't put up with that mirror is laughing
smashing his left hand smashing his right hand
breaks his wrath--

enter the dumb smile of blissful blindness or
dumb sadness belting down a drink
enter an angel's colorful rags and bells
enter a man in colorful sights and smells
enter blonde beauty dragging a bulging ****.

there is the entrance where they enter through
the black hole with crescent thin edges
the animal den the fish smell the ocean motion
there is women's strength endures the stretch
forty-eight hours of warm pain
two hours of sharp pain around mid-night
last sight the tippy-toppy veins of its head
bled and blood and body and push push Push -

and the tide goes out,
enter sleep.

you may permit me in
we make exotic dishes of laughter and shared values
over talk of philosophic rapport
childish banter
and gestures of tender philanthropy on each finger tip
on every pressed lip
but you wont give me a key
though it's where I live
this is my home, you've made it so, just for me
you showed me in
you courteously carried my persona into your door
you do me the greatest of services
those that would make any soul well-lived
if I removed any trace of my exsistance you would despair
as you have
but you refuse to give me a key
and without it, it makes it as though you dont really,
actually,
want me
and what most anguishes my mind
is that I always gingerly close the door from the outside
if it werent for my soft touch, and attentive eyes
I'd have reason to believe that something is wrong with me
or my love
when, seemingly, it was made to our advantage
I do the best to support your virtues
and those that disturb the peace
This is where my belongings know their place
This is my home
where I linger after I wake
where I loose myself in the silence
where I drink myself into a stuppor
because my lover wont give me a key
You leave me broken up
but you gather my peaces by light of kindness
You don't understand, I'm hitting a wall
I'm hitting your good heart
your good, muddled, heart
I'm hitting a wall
a hard hard evaluation
of a disturbing
heart-to-heart
of which I never learned of

the count of monte cristo
sounds so much better after two
glasses of sweet wine, the rim
resting gently against chapter 5

“This philosophic reflection,” thought he, “will make a great sensation at M. de Saint–Meran’s;” and he arranged mentally, while Dantes awaited further questions, the antithesis by which orators often create a reputation for eloquence.

How great this will make me look, in other words,
this fine comparison between two similar things.
and I find myself smiling, like one would over
the renewal of past lovers, past books
the direct gaze of persons no longer
strangers, beneath waterfalls
wings spread
vaguely vulnerable
and somehow
liberated.