rooster-crow and the repetitive tap
of a hammer like the tick
of a clock in the distance
woke me and I followed what
was left of your voice like the tracks
of an animal to the edge of the copper
water. Though I knew there were
Cottonmouths thick as ropes, I waded
into the cool shadows and then up
a hill where trees grew, preordained, laid
out in perfect rows like headstones. When
I had reached that place where
we had left the past, and shed even
our skins for love, I saw them:
the blackberries surrounded
by briers. Supple and sparkling
as jewels. The same ones that we
had subsisted on, with bleeding
fingers, for one afternoon
of our lives. And though
I remembered all the fears
we shared like sackcloth
and ashes, and I knew
the danger of reaching
into the unknown, (it seemed
like there were serpents waiting
beneath every beautiful thing)
blindly grasping for the sweetness
that everyone longs for, and I too
have always feared those things
I cannot see,  I put my faith
in the innocence of nature. I tried
to believe in the benevolence
that exists if you go beyond
the fear, and so I found
them again: the blackberries,
the fruit not forbidden
to those who love, huge
and succulent, and so full
of grace, they were almost
too heavy to bear.

Puddles of rain form gelatin-like amoebas on a shiny black rail.
Waiting to be windswept and float off to another landing place.

Unmoved by vociferous bluejays, hypersensitive and affected by mounds of coffee and glucose; their rushing with urgent energy to be heard and to speak truths unfounded and non-sensical.

All still beyond a longing for certainty; quiet in the flow of illusion that roils incessantly yet uncontrolled and preordained.

Tears of joy to soothe a parched sphere; and we begin again…

Komm, Du (“Come, You”)
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This was Rilke’s last poem, written ten days before his death. He died open-eyed in the arms of his doctor on December 29, 1926, in the Valmont Sanatorium, of leukemia and its complications. I had a friend who died of leukemia and he was burning up with fever in the end. I believe that is what Rilke was describing here: he was literally burning alive.

Come, you—the last one I acknowledge; return—
incurable pain searing this physical mesh.
As I burned in the spirit once, so now I burn
with you; meanwhile, you consume my flesh.

This wood that long resisted your embrace
now nourishes you; I surrender to your fury
as my gentleness mutates to hellish rage—
uncaged, wild, primal, mindless, outré.

Completely free, no longer future’s pawn,
I clambered up this crazy pyre of pain,
certain I’d never return—my heart’s reserves gone—
to become death’s nameless victim, purged by flame.

Now all I ever was must be denied.
I left my memories of my past elsewhere.
That life—my former life—remains outside.
Inside, I’m lost. Nobody knows me here.

English translation originally published by Better Than Starbucks

Original text:

Komm du

Komm du, du letzter, den ich anerkenne,
heilloser Schmerz im leiblichen Geweb:
wie ich im Geiste brannte, sieh, ich brenne
in dir; das Holz hat lange widerstrebt,
der Flamme, die du loderst, zuzustimmen,
nun aber nähr’ ich dich und brenn in dir.
Mein hiesig Mildsein wird in deinem Grimmen
ein Grimm der Hölle nicht von hier.
Ganz rein, ganz planlos frei von Zukunft stieg
ich auf des Leidens wirren Scheiterhaufen,
so sicher nirgend Künftiges zu kaufen
um dieses Herz, darin der Vorrat schwieg.
Bin ich es noch, der da unkenntlich brennt?
Erinnerungen reiß ich nicht herein.
O Leben, Leben: Draußensein.
Und ich in Lohe. Niemand der mich kennt.

Keywords/Tags: German, translation, Rilke, last poem, death, fever, burning, pyre, leukemia, pain, consumed, consummation, flesh, spirit, rage, pawn, free, purge, purged, inside, outside, lost, unknown, alienated, alienation



This is my translation of the first of Rilke’s Duino Elegies. Rilke began the first Duino Elegy in 1912, as a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis, at Duino Castle, near Trieste on the Adriatic Sea.

First Elegy
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Who, if I objected, would hear me among the angelic orders?
For if the least One pressed me intimately against its breast,
I would be lost in its infinite Immensity!
Because beauty, which we mortals can barely endure, is the beginning of terror;
we stand awed when it benignly declines to annihilate us.
Every Angel is terrifying!

And so I restrain myself, swallowing the sound of my pitiful sobbing.
For whom may we turn to, in our desire?
Not to Angels, nor to men, and already the sentient animals are aware
that we are all aliens in this metaphorical existence.
Perhaps some tree still stands on a hillside, which we can study with our ordinary vision.
Perhaps the commonplace street still remains amid man’s fealty to materiality—
the concrete items that never destabilize.
Oh, and of course there is the night: her dark currents caress our faces ...

But whom, then, do we live for?
That longed-for but mildly disappointing presence the lonely heart so desperately desires?
Is life any less difficult for lovers?
They only use each other to avoid their appointed fates!
How can you fail to comprehend?
Fling your arms’ emptiness into this space we occupy and inhale:
may birds fill the expanded air with more intimate flying!

Yes, the springtime still requires you.
Perpetually a star waits for you to recognize it.
A wave recedes toward you from the distant past,
or as you walk beneath an open window, a violin yields virginally to your ears.
All this was preordained. But how can you incorporate it? ...
Weren't you always distracted by expectations, as if every event presaged some new beloved?
(Where can you harbor, when all these enormous strange thoughts surging within you keep
you up all night, restlessly rising and falling?)

When you are full of yearning, sing of loving women, because their passions are finite;
sing of forsaken women (and how you almost envy them)
because they could love you more purely than the ones you left gratified.

Resume the unattainable exaltation; remember: the hero survives;
even his demise was merely a stepping stone toward his latest rebirth.

But spent and exhausted Nature withdraws lovers back into herself,
as if lacking the energy to recreate them.
Have you remembered Gaspara Stampa with sufficient focus—
how any abandoned girl might be inspired by her fierce example
and might ask herself, "How can I be like her?"

Shouldn't these ancient sufferings become fruitful for us?

Shouldn’t we free ourselves from the beloved,
quivering, as the arrow endures the bowstring's tension,
so that in the snap of release it soars beyond itself?
For there is nowhere else where we can remain.

Voices! Voices!

Listen, heart, as levitating saints once listened,
until the elevating call soared them heavenward;
and yet they continued kneeling, unaware, so complete was their concentration.

Not that you could endure God's voice—far from it!

But heed the wind’s voice and the ceaseless formless message of silence:
It murmurs now of the martyred young.

Whenever you attended a church in Naples or Rome,
didn't they come quietly to address you?
And didn’t an exalted inscription impress its mission upon you
recently, on the plaque in Santa Maria Formosa?
What they require of me is that I gently remove any appearance of injustice—
which at times slightly hinders their souls from advancing.

Of course, it is endlessly strange to no longer inhabit the earth;
to relinquish customs one barely had the time to acquire;
not to see in roses and other tokens a hopeful human future;
no longer to be oneself, cradled in infinitely caring hands;
to set aside even one's own name,
forgotten as easily as a child’s broken plaything.

How strange to no longer desire one's desires!
How strange to see meanings no longer cohere, drifting off into space.
Dying is difficult and requires retrieval before one can gradually decipher eternity.

The living all err in believing the too-sharp distinctions they create themselves.

Angels (men say) don't know whether they move among the living or the dead.
The eternal current merges all ages in its maelstrom
until the voices of both realms are drowned out in its thunderous roar.

In the end, the early-departed no longer need us:
they are weaned gently from earth's agonies and ecstasies,
as children outgrow their mothers’ *******.

But we, who need such immense mysteries,
and for whom grief is so often the source of our spirit's progress—
how can we exist without them?

Is the legend of the lament for Linos meaningless—
the daring first notes of the song pierce our apathy;
then, in the interlude, when the youth, lovely as a god, has suddenly departed forever,
we experience the emptiness of the Void for the first time—
that harmony which now enraptures and comforts and aids us?



Second Elegy
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Every angel is terrifying. And yet, alas, I invoke you,
one of the soul’s lethal raptors, well aware of your nature.
As in the days of Tobias, when one of you, obscuring his radiance,
stood at the simple threshold, appearing ordinary rather than appalling
while the curious youth peered through the window.
But if the Archangel emerged today, perilous, from beyond the stars
and took even one step toward us, our hammering hearts
would pound us to death. What are you?

Who are you? Joyous from the beginning;
God’s early successes; Creation’s favorites;
creatures of the heights; pollen of the flowering godhead; cusps of pure light;
stately corridors; rising stairways; exalted thrones;
filling space with your pure essence; crests of rapture;
shields of ecstasy; storms of tumultuous emotions whipped into whirlwinds ...
until one, acting alone, recreates itself by mirroring the beauty of its own countenance.

While we, when deeply moved, evaporate;
we exhale ourselves and fade away, growing faint like smoldering embers;
we drift away like the scent of smoke.
And while someone might say: “You’re in my blood! You occupy this room!
You fill this entire springtime!” ... Still, what becomes of us?
We cannot be contained; we vanish whether inside or out.
And even the loveliest, who can retain them?

Resemblance ceaselessly rises, then is gone, like dew from dawn’s grasses.
And what is ours drifts away, like warmth from a steaming dish.
O smile, where are you bound?
O heavenward glance: are you a receding heat wave, a ripple of the heart?
Alas, but is this not what we are?
Does the cosmos we dissolve into savor us?
Do the angels reabsorb only the radiance they emitted themselves,
or sometimes, perhaps by oversight, traces of our being as well?
Are we included in their features, as obscure as the vague looks on the faces of pregnant women?
Do they notice us at all (how could they) as they reform themselves?

Lovers, if they only knew how, might mutter marvelous curses into the night air.
For it seems everything eludes us.
See: the trees really do exist; our houses stand solid and firm.
And yet we drift away, like weightless sighs.
And all creation conspires to remain silent about us: perhaps from shame, perhaps from inexpressible hope?

Lovers, gratified by each other, I ask to you consider:
You cling to each other, but where is your proof of a connection?
Sometimes my hands become aware of each other
and my time-worn, exhausted face takes shelter in them,
creating a slight sensation.
But because of that, can I still claim to be?

You, the ones who writhe with each other’s passions
until, overwhelmed, someone begs: “No more!...”;
You who swell beneath each other’s hands like autumn grapes;
You, the one who dwindles as the other increases:
I ask you to consider ...
I know you touch each other so ardently because each caress preserves pure continuance,
like the promise of eternity, because the flesh touched does not disappear.
And yet, when you have survived the terror of initial intimacy,
the first lonely vigil at the window, the first walk together through the blossoming garden:
lovers, do you not still remain who you were before?
If you lift your lips to each other’s and unite, potion to potion,
still how strangely each drinker eludes the magic.

Weren’t you confounded by the cautious human gestures on Attic gravestones?
Weren’t love and farewell laid so lightly on shoulders they seemed composed of some ethereal substance unknown to us today?
Consider those hands, how weightlessly they rested, despite the powerful torsos.
The ancient masters knew: “We can only go so far, in touching each other. The gods can exert more force. But that is their affair.”
If only we, too, could discover such a pure, contained Eden for humanity,
our own fruitful strip of soil between river and rock.
For our hearts have always exceeded us, as our ancestors’ did.
And we can no longer trust our own eyes, when gazing at godlike bodies, our hearts find a greater repose.



Keywords/Tags: Rilke, elegy, elegies, angels, beauty, terror, terrifying, desire, vision, reality, heart, love, lovers, beloved, rose, saints, spirits, souls, ghosts, voices, torso, Apollo, Rodin, panther, autumn, beggar

Her words were subtle but aching,
as though they were torn from within.
He looked at her in awe of them,
The snowflakes melted on her skin.
He didn't know what to say,
He felt it tear from himself too.
He was afraid of saying something wrong,
So he just stood there staring through.
She knew something odd was happening,
Somewhere deep within his eyes,
Tentative, she said goodnight.
She was sure his words were lies.
A sigh left his lips in mist.
The evening sky bore a cruel wind.
He inhaled the crisp air,
Although he felt like he was skinned.
"You don't know what it's like, my friend,
And yet you know it all too well.
You were meant for me it seems,
But I woke up today in hell.
I found a girl that I once loved,
That I thought could not exist.
From the color of your eyes,
To the warmth of your sweet lips.
I loved her before you came,
And I lost her before you left.
The sands of time would be ours my love,
But I must live a life bereft."

He finished his lonesome poem,
In the solace of the night,
Then wandered into the darkness,
From under the street light.
He walked into his girlfriend's house,
And was alone with her again.
He whispered as she slept,
"I know how much I love you Jen...

But who we are is something strange.
We've fallen apart at the seams.
We never really felt right, did we?
Our lives were naught but separate dreams."

I gathered the pores of my being
And came to perfume them with your own fragrance
Only to discover that you are an oleander -- a rosebay
While in the memory of unease and apprehension
I trace some features that resemble no one but you
An image has its own dimensions
And, when hopelessness assails me, I have roads
That never cease to pull and lead me toward you
And while in the nook of anxiety
I fancy a preordained timing
For events that never materialize
The image draws near
And I talk to it
About the tons of heavy separation
That oppress the seasons of my life
I have recited you as rain
Yet your lightning never came near me
Alienation gathered thick
Translated by Mahmoud Abbas Masoud

By The Madman http://leb.net/gibran/works/madman/madman.html
In the silent hour of the night, as I lay half asleep, my seven selves sat together and thus conversed in whispers:

First Self: Here, in this madman, I have dwelt all these years, with naught to do but renew his pain by day and recreate his sorrow by night. I can bear my fate no longer, and now I must rebel.

Second Self: Yours is a better lot than mine, brother, for it is given me to be this madman's joyous self. I laugh his laughter and sing his happy hours, and with thrice winged feet I dance his brighter thoughts. It is I that would rebel against my weary existence.

Third Self: And what of me, the love-ridden self, the flaming brand of wild passion and fantastic desires? It is I the love-sick self who would rebel against this madman.

Fourth Self: I, amongst you all, am the most miserable, for naught was given me but the odious hatred and destructive loathing. It is I, the tempest-like self, the one born in the black caves of Hell, who would protest against serving this madman.

Fifth Self: Nay, it is I, the thinking self, the fanciful self, the self of hunger and thirst, the one doomed to wander without rest in search of unknown things and things not yet created; it is I, not you, who would rebel.

Sixth Self: And I, the working self, the pitiful labourer, who, with patient hands, and longing eyes, fashion the days into images and give the formless elements new and eternal forms--it is I, the solitary one, who would rebel against this restless madman.

Seventh Self: How strange that you all would rebel against this man, because each and every one of you has a preordained fate to fulfil. Ah! could I but be like one of you, a self with a determined lot! But I have none, I am the do-nothing self, the one who sits in the dumb, empty nowhere and nowhen, when you are busy re-creating life. Is it you or I, neighbours, who should rebel?

When the seventh self thus spake the other six selves looked with pity upon him but said nothing more; and as the night grew deeper one after the other went to sleep enfolded with a new and happy submission.

But the seventh self remained watching and gazing at nothingness, which is behind all things.

it dawned
     from the half-bitten fruit,
    this boorish serpent,
      this inner foreboding
          of flesh tingling tempted
    out of frame.

     sin takes to blood, the nail
    sifting the flesh, birthing
         the bells of the word

      fracturing our silences
     displacing the void into radiant senselessness -

       this heart of Pilate
     where once in front of
    this purloined innocence
   the temples crumbled to ash
     of all beginnings

    telling us all of our
     preordained peccadillo,

   unannounced wraith pouncing
   on each to lurid each,
       biting more from the world
    and its land that remembers
     the till of feet welcomed
      by diadems of flagella,

    love have we not, eternally?
      no singing seraphs wept
        as the afternoon erupts,
      a fragmented word: love.

i.

Once upon a time, in the interweb of H.P
Betwixt technology's advance, wherein all us poet's dream;
I met a queen, a tan skinned Filipino rose
I kneweth her from before formation, we got conjoined by toe's.

ii.

Friend's only at first, she was always there to listen
Though in love the whole time, an angelic preordained invention;
Both to shy, to cometh out with ourn realest affection's
Though mine spirit was screaming telleth her, I got her attention.

iii.

After us both in focus, and this hellish step-stool left behind
We both, like past life ghost's, made ourn amour' as sweet wine;
And now and forever, until the end of tommorrow, and time
We shalt forever fasten ourn specter's, now all maketh sense fine.

iv.

Many thinkest eternal living doth not exist, after ourn death
Telleth that to me and earl Jane nagley, as we shalt flyeth;
Ourn wing's wilt glideth, the moon's, atmosphere's, and star's
God is ourn guider, the angel's sit beside her, as I feeleth whole

                                            In mine heart.



©Brandon nagley
©Lonesome poet's poetry
©Earl Jane nagley dedication

In the name of remarkable stories revealed with each precious leaf , brush stroked layered , hallowed Marigold evenings ..  Every ambient , salutatory stand of communicative , native tree ...   To the toasty breeze spurring the music of Mother Earth within the guarded canopy
The preordained navigation of Warbler , Grasshopper and Bumblebee
For every cloud seeking finality guised in plummeting rain
The call of Pheasant across the chilled late October plain* ....

Live your life
though it's not an easy thing to do
especially for those who are not born with inheritances
every step of the way is rampant with imbalances
it's also because the world is riddled with contrived rules
everywhere it's still primeval law of the jungle
sometimes we're not strong enough
but at all times we need to think for ourselves
protecting ourselves is the only way
making it possible for us
to live a life
many choose to conform to the practices of the society
some choose to stay true to their humanity
the two choices often find themselves in conflict
not saying there's no reconciliations
staying true to yourself
is not preordained to be a confrontation to the world
sometimes it can be more of an integration
because when you know yourself
you become tolerant of the world
because the more you love yourself
you have to learn to love the world
and slowly you'll be able to live out
your own life
the process is never easy
but it's the only way to understanding life
to loving it most of the time.

Dawn breaks
A periodic railroad these celestial beings follow
Ra never sleeps, not yet at least
Okay, maybe when Graham is reincarnated as many times as
his number
Whoa, zooming in:
Streets are full
Insect culture swarms below
High above, dominance prevails-
An undulated hegemony
Truth lies the elusive lie
So I shine my light as I hide beneath the sheets
Only to find that
an omnipresent truth calls for darkness
Maybe sooner
Or when preordained fate finds fit
I don't know, I probably will never know
But that's okay now  
For I am the passive set of eyes
that sits by the slits of my sheets-
My window to the passing world
I am the inertia of daily meals
I strip my lunch naked and
I stare at the end of my fork before every bite
I guess that's what it means to just
sit back and enjoy the show
N.I

Don’t shed your tears when it’s all over,
Don’t let the hurt take root in you.
Instead, rejoice you’re moving on now,
To something promising and true.

You’ll find yourself in dreamland, treasure…
There, every rose is deftly prim,
There, love and peace and –  for good measure –
Joy everlasting reign supreme.

Free rein and grace is all that matters…
Come join bluebirds in their flight.
You’ll have your doubters – let ‘em chatter.
Just say the words: “bring on the night!”

Let’s slip away into the darkness…
To be reborn, replete with light.
Let’s go astray, enjoy the silence…
To find indomitable might.

…You needn’t offer, needn’t suffer –
Not for a single day again!
You’re home now: every man your brother,
And not a thing is preordained.

The hourglass, forever broken…
Who needs the time? You’re so alive!
Forget the rules, writ and unspoken –
Your oneness into overdrive.

They’ll see you flitting 'round the rafters,
A bluegrass garland in your bill.
So, dry your tears and share the laughter:
New life is just around the hill.

Freewill

Rush

There are those who think that life
Has nothing left to chance
A host of holy horrors
To direct our aimless dance

A planet of playthings
We dance on the strings
Of powers we cannot perceive
The stars aren't aligned
Or the gods are malign
Blame is better to give than receive

You can choose a ready guide
In some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide
You still have made a choice

You can choose from phantom fears
And kindness that can ****
I will choose a path that's clear
I will choose free will

There are those who think that
They've been dealt a losing hand
The cards were stacked against them
They weren't born in Lotus-Land

All preordained
A prisoner in chains
A victim of venomous fate
Kicked in the face
You can't pray for a place
In heaven's unearthly estate

You can choose a ready guide
In some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide
You still have made a choice

You can choose from phantom fears
And kindness that can ****
I will choose a path that's clear
I will choose free will

Each of us
A cell of awareness
Imperfect and incomplete
Genetic blends
With uncertain ends
On a fortune hunt
That's far too fleet

You can choose a ready guide
In some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide
You still have made a choice

You can choose from phantom fears
And kindness that can ****
I will choose a path that's clear
I will choose free will

Songwriters: GEDDY LEE, ALEX LIFESON, NEIL PEART

I’m just a fading echo
of my younger self,
an empty shadow
who performs
a preordained
ballet
with a broken leg
red and inflamed.

I’m just a broken
ceramic figurine
that is beautiful
but barely seen
and seldom
appreciated
for the quality
I bring.

I’m just a Poe
and Van Gogh
tragic
romantic
poet
longing to connect
to world
that forgets
its humanity
constantly.

I’m just tired.

What ephemera and dull is our fate.
the most judging perverting all, for its taste.
one for the fire one for deep abyss ,such a grief.
ask for the destiny, meet with predestination in odd rife.
take all  from me, i dont care; for thee all the last meaning.
what a fate for me if im preordained to bid sepulchral flaming?
wish ye may tell; between the gloom and bloom where ye toll thy bell.
cause my little fingers are empty in day, and in my nights no one cant tell.

what much distress my life behold in dragging along sol day.
though my soul singing in azure of happiness, i lust stay.
such a mud that needs nothing but a dread torment.
from the past and deep into present denouement .
but if im sea snail i will be tossed for eternity.
still, sad to be predestined to sin and piety !

All the silly banter
Combines with familiar cadence an echoing canter
Reveal to me the meaning of moon in Cancer
And erase that preordained connotation
I'm desperate in attempts for a proclamation
Evoke a melody on reminiscence and born anew
I shall not remiss for i walk in different shoes
While jiving along to the same melody of rhythm and blues
Reveling in the rowdy rock concert
Take a step with me and we can glide
Relocate the harrowing and relinquish my pride
I feel soap bubbles cleansing slowly
Rising inside
When i speak your true name
It can't be called upon only inspired by you
Inspiration is powerful from any perspective view
So let's rejoice in our wondering and wandering
And step through the flume
Patience is a virtue
Hold my hand because in truth
I only wish to walk with you

Fourteen paces apart
They stood face to face
The place was Belvedere
In death’s close embrace!

It was morn at half past five
Air thick in rivalry
On stake was hung two life
They were bitter enemy!

As it lies all evil’s root
False ego and vain pride
Squabble and dispute
Demons men can’t hide!

That hour was eerily lull
Birds stopped to chirp in trees
As glistened the two pistols
And none could afford to miss!

Damp was the August clime
Time perched on rested wing
Zeroed in the scheduled time
Broke out the starter’s ring!

Francis fired first
But preordained was fate
Though loud went the burst
He badly missed target!

Pierced his powder’s stings
This time was there no miss
Found his mark Hastings
Fell to the ground Francis!

He muttered I’m a dead man
Hastings ran to the spot
Uttering as he ran
Good God I hope not!

The day turned golden bright
Mist of smoke dispersed
Revealed the glorious sight
How his enemy Hastings nursed!

It just can’t be a coincidence,
that my origin is that of soil;
for it provides both fertility
and the strength for human toil.

Buried deep within my spirit is
Your garden, implanted with seeds;
once I’ve been tilled by You, Lord
I’ll meet one of Your Kingdom needs.

My life’s labor won’t go unrewarded,
for it’s scented with the perfume
of an authentic, Christian Faith.
Your words in me are a poetic bloom

that brings encouragement to others.
Will my humble life be as You planned?
O Lord, will Your expectations be met
with me still becoming… a glorious man?
.
.
.
Author notes

Inspired by:
Gen 2:7; 2 Cor 9:10; 2 Thes 1:3;
Col 2:6-7; Jer 17:7-8 and

One day when we come to a deeper understanding of The Word of God, we shall find the term “Man” more palatable than even the term “Children of God.” For we shall realize that God’s preordained plan and election is to obtain a glorious man. -Jacobs Adewale

Learn more about me and my poetry at:
http://amzn.to/1ffo9YZ

By Joseph J. Breunig 3rd, © 2015, All rights reserved.

When you speak my silent desires when you read my mind
I don't feel the slightest wonder seek the mystery behind
for I know it's made that way preordained and sweet
you can read the one you love when you love by habit.

I tell a lie when I say
Poems in mind always play
Streams on endless output
My mind is never vacantly mute.

To tell you the truth it oft happens
When riding to work on buses or trains
Like a lost river dry up my thoughts
Stubbornly dry much like walnuts.

Funnily it doesn’t for long last
It’s preordained mind mustn’t rust
A fellow traveler brings out an apple
Nibble at it with it grapple.

In boredom my eyes at the scene gape
How the apple gradually changes shape
With each bite a chunk is torn
In each bite a poem is born.

Consider the lillies of the field
Mine love, they do not toil
Nor spin;

Consider God's love for
Both of us love;
Heaven we shalt get in.

Consider the lillies of the field
Mine love, they do not worry
Of the morrow;

Consider ourn blessing's mine
Love, for we art preordained,
Predestined, exladranes-
Some calleth us mad,
Crazed insane.

Consider the lillies of the field
Mine love, O' how ourn Lord
Taketh care of them all.
As he taketh care of us
Fairest Jane of them all.


©Brandon Nagley
©Lonesome poet's poetry
©Earl Jane Nagley dedicated ( Filipino rose)

What are you conserving, I asked my unread conservative friend.
The American Way

he said.
Like
in the songs, like back when Superman
was black and white, but

we knew,
his kryptonic heart
was read pure white and blue

and we still know,
green greed and
black time and chance, if those were never re-
al-ified, he could be,
he could be but,
for that militarial industrial mental complex
which made
Daddy Warbucks
money-ify Kryptonite,

other wise Superman would save us, so
we conserve the idea of America, as a spirit,
Drums and fifes and shots fired round the world

we stand, for the American way. Superman would.
--------

With what deeds are you judged liberal,

I asked my friend whose hero was Fidel,
when he was ten.

My friend, swift to answer, ready, with a bullhorn:

my writing and my speaking and my teaching are liberal.

Those lable you? what is deemed liberality for which
ye are judged?

Oh, I am not judged, I am in the adminstrative side,
I administer social justice by allowing critical
appreciation of the sense under lying
dadaistic community
gardens. which produce liberal reasons for
deeming faith a very low class
exercise in sapient sapience.

Whom teach ye?
Those who are sent to be taught by selection committees,
who sort tests, based on statiscal
weights and measures pre
dicted apriori for the best
social cultural
outcome.

Who pays you? Each of you.
con-server, liberal,
Who weighed your worth
in this fifty-fifty polictic project,

organical and all,

who runs the show? Is it spiracy?

Are elections pre ordained?

Was W. called by Oil and Trump oracled by Konami?
Was Barack Husein simply gas?
A UFO illusion?

Some thing the gut biome of the nation
burped or expelled from other orficees?

How did the assets of the fed expand
4.5 times since 2008,

when all I had conserved melted
with deflation of

the noise, zeitgeistiical,
humm, hear it? Do you?
Brainless axiomatic synaptic static?

Manifest destiny? Google it.

No. I checked. Not preordained. Things change.

This is the way.

Good went, thataway... and william tell
was told that apple held meaning...

cue the overture...
butadump butadump butadumpdumpdump
boomer audio meme keys
the
dream, with wikipedia and etymonline links.

aha, meaning...
the arrow never held, the message vibrated in the oak
at a point
in time. Okay, dress rehearse, masks on.

The point of the story is, good news.
it is finished.  Spaceship earth, nothing broken, nothing missing,

We have crews seeking survivors.

one day at a time. Share the road, share the load,
pay the piper, rule your realm,

make peace the leisure you worked for,
call enough enough

Remind them of the flight they all recall,
ask them if they ever dream
unknown
realisms in the realms of reasons re
cognized
in poetseerprophessor metaphors, in which

no warrior could act

as a liberal conserver re
pairing wind blown circuits.

Our peacemade hero inquisitor
of truth,

the wise king, retires on the dragon's hoard and
laughs at how easy it all became,

after imagining how Poke' mon really works,
in an open state of mind.

"A republic, if you can keep it." that was the dream.
The dream Plato imagined could work,

if we could get past that
neccessary fiction war insisted was traditional.

Nota: his soil is man's intelligence.
That's better. That's worth crossing seas to find.
Crispin in one laconic phrase laid bare
His cloudy drift and planned a colony.
Exit the mental moonlight, exit lex,
Rex and principium, exit the whole
Shebang. Exeunt omnes. Here was prose
More exquisite than any tumbling verse:
A still new continent in which to dwell.
What was the purpose of his pilgrimage,
Whatever shape it took in Crispin's mind,
If not, when all is said, to drive away
The shadow of his fellows from the skies,
And, from their stale intelligence released,
To make a new intelligence prevail?
Hence the reverberations in the words
Of his first central hymns, the celebrants
Of rankest trivia, tests of the strength
Of his aesthetic, his philosophy,
The more invidious, the more desired.
The florist asking aid from cabbages,
The rich man going bare, the paladin
Afraid, the blind man as astronomer,
The appointed power unwielded from disdain.
His western voyage ended and began.
The torment of fastidious thought grew slack,
Another, still more bellicose, came on.
He, therefore, wrote his prolegomena,
And, being full of the caprice, inscribed
Commingled souvenirs and prophecies.
He made a singular collation. Thus:
The natives of the rain are rainy men.
Although they paint effulgent, azure lakes,
And April hillsides wooded white and pink,
Their azure has a cloudy edge, their white
And pink, the water bright that dogwood bears.
And in their music showering sounds intone.
On what strange froth does the gross Indian dote,
What Eden sapling gum, what honeyed gore,
What pulpy dram distilled of innocence,
That streaking gold should speak in him
Or bask within his images and words?
If these rude instances impeach themselves
By force of rudeness, let the principle
Be plain. For application Crispin strove,
Abhorring Turk as Esquimau, the lute
As the marimba, the magnolia as rose.

Upon these premises propounding, he
Projected a colony that should extend
To the dusk of a whistling south below the south.
A comprehensive island hemisphere.
The man in Georgia waking among pines
Should be pine-spokesman. The responsive man,
Planting his pristine cores in Florida,
Should ***** thereof, not on the psaltery,
But on the banjo's categorical gut,
Tuck tuck, while the flamingos flapped his bays.
Sepulchral senors, bibbing pale mescal,
Oblivious to the Aztec almanacs,
Should make the intricate Sierra scan.
And dark Brazilians in their cafes,
Musing immaculate, pampean dits,
Should scrawl a vigilant anthology,
To be their latest, lucent paramour.
These are the broadest instances. Crispin,
Progenitor of such extensive scope,
Was not indifferent to smart detail.
The melon should have apposite ritual,
Performed in verd apparel, and the peach,
When its black branches came to bud, belle day,
Should have an incantation. And again,
When piled on salvers its aroma steeped
The summer, it should have a sacrament
And celebration. Shrewd novitiates
Should be the clerks of our experience.

These bland excursions into time to come,
Related in romance to backward flights,
However prodigal, however proud,
Contained in their afflatus the reproach
That first drove Crispin to his wandering.
He could not be content with counterfeit,
With masquerade of thought, with hapless words
That must belie the racking masquerade,
With fictive flourishes that preordained
His passion's permit, hang of coat, degree
Of buttons, measure of his salt. Such trash
Might help the blind, not him, serenely sly.
It irked beyond his patience. Hence it was,
Preferring text to gloss, he humbly served
Grotesque apprenticeship to chance event,
A clown, perhaps, but an aspiring clown.
There is a monotonous babbling in our dreams
That makes them our dependent heirs, the heirs
Of dreamers buried in our sleep, and not
The oncoming fantasies of better birth.
The apprentice knew these dreamers. If he dreamed
Their dreams, he did it in a gingerly way.
All dreams are vexing. Let them be expunged.
But let the rabbit run, the **** declaim.

Trinket pasticcio, flaunting skyey sheets,
With Crispin as the tiptoe cozener?
No, no: veracious page on page, exact.

I do not underestimate mysellf. More importantly, I do not underestimate the poor of Earth. They have been enslaved, abused, scorned, starved, left homeless and uneducated to this very day. Yet they persevere. Notwithstanding, they bring new life into this world, their babies, their children. Each is sacred. Their divine worth is inviolate. But those who currently rule the world are impervious to their suffering and are unaware of the great, fatal, inevitable result they will encounter because of their moral blindness. There will be, sooner than later, an uprising of the poor of Earth. There will be no guns, no bombs, no killings, no wars, because this ascendancy is spiritually preordained. And the poor will no longer be poor. They will share equally with all others the good of Earth. And this horror of millennia will come to an end. It is already beginning to happen as I write. Rejoice!

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

So much for superheroes saving the day;
Every good guy's epilogue is a cliche.
Tedious compulsory celebrations
For all their mundane actions.

A villain's portrayal is what excites me.
Ever since a kid I could already see;
Creativity in all those gimmicks,
Geniuses of ***** tactics.

It is never easy to become the antagonist.
The object of all hate and blacklist;
The one that is destined to fail,
To fulfill a comic's holy grail.

Yet the bad guys do most of the heavy work,
Perfecting their schemes with an evil smirk;
But every time they're about to win,
The plot will smash their plan to ruins.

They say some people are destined to be heroes;
It's a fate preordained a long time ago.
But the truth is that everyone needs a villain,
To finally uncover their life's meaning.

What the world generally calls as criminals,
In reality are just misunderstood equals.
They taught me more about the cruel life,
Better than any superhero's strife.

What cruel force keeps lovers apart --
Why must each tread a separate path?
Preordained they should never meet . . .
What arbiter inflicts such wrath?  

Two lives hurled into misery,
Two hearts nailed to the same cross;
Never to savor  love's banquet,
They're condemned to feed off life's dross

Spring faintly smiled on these two hearts
As dreams absorbed their youthful hours;
Although  nurtured like tender plants
They yielded naught but withered flowers

Each new day held a ray of Hope,
Dispelling  impatience and doubt;
They kept watch as the flame burned bright . . .
Till finally, their tears put it out

Two hearts dying slow painful deaths,
Each cloaked in its own crimson shroud;
One heart dies, crying silently,
The other sobs its pain aloud

Two lonely hearts ever dreaming
They might stroll Love's Garden one day;
Now resigned, they no longer dream --
Sadly, on Death's threshold they lay

So come forth and ring the death knell --
Come lay your bouquets at their feet;
Mourn if you will such tragedies
While asking  "Why didn't they meet?"