entablature archetypal wrangle arguable arraign arrest ascribe arsenal article artificial artisan ascension austere askance obliquely aspire assail assault assay assert diligence obsequious assimilate stigma perspicacious astute asunder atman atrium attrition intrepid autonomous avarice avert avocation azimuth azure abbreviate aberrant abhorrent relinquish loathe abstinence abstention  abysmal accelerate accordance accoutrement accrue exasperate acquaintance baccalaureate bacillus backbite baggage ballistic baluster bandolier banister barrage barranca barrier bartizan basilica bastion batholiths bathyscaphe battalion batten battle bauble ***** beastly ******* beckon beacon bazaar bizarre Bedouin beguile behavior beleaguer belligerent belvedere berserk beseech bewilder bezant bicker bigamy bight bilk billet billiard billow biogenic biscuit bivouac blatancy blizzard bodacious boggle bollix bombardier boudoir bouquet butte boutique bower brassier mesa breach breech brochure brogue brooch broach bruise brusque buccaneer buffoon bureau buttress buxom caffeine cauldron calisthenics calligraphy callous camouflage campaign campanile cannery cannibal canny cantaloupe cantankerous cantilever capacity capillary capricious carbohydrate caricature carnivorous carouse carriage cartography casserole cassette cataclysm catastrophe cache categorical caterwaul cavalier cauliflower celerity alacrity cellophane cellulose cemetery centennial cereal cerebellum ceremonial cesarean cessation chaff challenge champagne chandelier changeable chaparral charade chargeable chassis chateau chauffer chauvinism Cheshire chiaroscuro chicanery chiffon chigger chrysanthemum cipher circuit citadel clairvoyant clastic clique coalesce coercible coincidental colloquial colossal column combustible communicable community commute complacency compulsory comradery conceit conceal concession confetti conglomerate conjugal connive connoisseur consensus constellation consummate continuity contrivance convalesce convenient convertible convolution copasetic copious corduroy coriolis cornucopia corollary corpse corpuscle correlate correspondent corridor corroborate corrosion corrugate corrupt costume counselor countenance counterfeit courageous courier courtesy covert covetous cranny crease credenza credulity crescent ******* criterion crochet crocodile croissant crotchety crucial cruel cryptic cuddle cuisine cul-de-sac culinary culpable culvert cumbrous cummerbund ******* cunning curare curiosity curtilage curtsy curvaceous custody cylindrical cymbal cynicism cyst dabble daffodil daiquiri damsel dastardly dazzle deceit debilitate debonair debris debutant decency decipher decimate deconcentrate decorum decrepit dedicate defamation defendable defensible deference deficient deficit definitive defoliate delectable deliberate delicatessen delinquent delirious demarcate dementia demolish demure denigrate dentil denunciation deplorable depreciate dereliction derisory derrick descent desirable despair desperate despicable despondent destine deterrent detonate deviance devisal devisor devour dexterous diabolicalness diagnosis dialogue diamond diaphragm diarrhea dichondra dawdle differentia difficulty diffuse dilapidate dilate dilemma diligent dilute diminutive dinghy dinosaur director  dirigible disadvantageous disastrous disperse disciplinary discomfiture discordant discotheque discreet discrete discrepancy disgust disguise dishevel dispersal dissect dissention dissertation dissident dissipate dissolve dissonant distillate distortion distraught disturbance divvy docile docket doctrinal dodder ***** eccentric linguistics domical dominate domineer dominion dossier doubloon douse drawl dreary dubious dulcet dungeon duodenum duress dwindle dynamism dynasty ebullition echinoderm eclectic ecliptic economist ecumenism edifice editor educe effervesce efficacious egalitarian elaborate elapsed eerie elegy eligible eliminate elite elixir elongate elucidate elusion eluviation emaciate embarrass embassy embellish embezzle embroidery embryo emissary emollient emphatic enchilada encore encumbrance endeavor endogenous endure engender ensemble enthusiast entourage entrepreneur epaulet epitome erratic erroneous escapade esophagus espionage esplanade etcetera ethereal etiquette eucalyptus eulogy exaggerate exacerbate excellency exhilarate expectant exquisite facetious Fahrenheit fallacy fanion fealty feisty frisky felicitous fenestration ferocious fertile fervent fickle fictitious fiery finesse finial fjord flaccid fledge flippant flirtatious flivver fluctuate follicle forbearance forbiddance forehand forebode forceps forfeit
forgo forlorn formidable foundry foyer fracas fraught frivolous frolic frontier funnel copious furrow fuselage fusillade futile forgone frivolity frolic galaxy galleon galoot galore galoshes gambit gangrene ganglion gargantuan gargoyle gardenia garret garrote gasolier gatling gawky gazebo gazelle gazette geezer geisha gendarme generosity genre genteel gentry genuine geodesic geranium gesticulate ghastly giggle ****** gimmick giraffe gizzard glacier glamour glimmer glimpse glisten glottis gluteus gluttony glyph gnarly gnaw goddess godling gorgeous gorilla gory gossamer gourd gouts gracious gradient granary grandeur granulation grapple gratify gratuitous gregarious grenade committee grievance griffin gristle grotesque gristly grotto grouch groupie grisly grovel grudge gruel gruesome gubernatorial guerrilla guffaw guidable guidon guile guillotine gullet gymnasium gyrate habitable hacienda haggard halibut halitosis hallelujah hallow halyard hammock harangue harass harried hasp hatred haughty hearth hedonism hegira heinous hegemony hemisphere hemophilia hemorrhage herbivorous hereditary heresy heritage heroine hesitate hibiscus hidden hideous hieroglyphic highfalutin high-rise hilarity hippopotamus hoarse holler holocaust holster homicidal horror hosiery hurricane hydrant hydraulic hydronic hyena hygiene hyphen hypnotize hypochondria hypocrisy hypocrite hypotenuse hysteria idiocy igloo ignoramus ignore illicit illiterate illustrate imbecile immaculate immaterial immature immersible immigrant immune impasse impeccable impedance impenetrable impervious imperfect implement implicate implicit important impressible innately inert impression impugn inadequate inanimate inauspicious incandescent incantation incarcerate incentive incinerator inclusion incoercible incompressible incontrovertible controversy indefatigable inconvertible inconvincible incorruptible indices indictment indigent indigestion digestible indignant indiscretion indiscreet indisiplined indiscernible inducible inebriate ineffable inefficacy ineludible inexorable inexpiable inextricable infallible infatuation inferior inflammatory inflexible infuriate inimitable iniquitous infuse infusion ingenuity ingratiate inimical innards innocence innovate innumerable inoculation insatiable insectivorous insincerity insinuation inspection inspirator instability installation insurance insufferable insufficiency insurrection insupportable integrity intellect intelligence intemperance intension interaction interception intercession interdiction interface interference interpolate interrogate interrupt intersperse intervene interstice intractable intergalactic intransigent intravenous intrepid intricate intrigue introductory introject intrude inundate invective invariable invertebrate investigate intuitive invertible investiture inveterate inviable invidious inviolate invigorate invincible invoke invocation invalidate involute invulnerable impregnable ionosphere ipso-facto irascible iridescent eradicable irrational irredeemable irrefragable irrefutable irregular anomalous irrelevant irreproachable irrepressible irresistible irrevocable irreverent irresponsible irritative irrigate irritability isolable isosceles isostasy  issuance isthmus italicize iterative itinerary interjection ******* jackhammer jackknife jackpot jackrabbit jaguar jai alai jalopy jalousie jamboree Japanese jacquerie Jacobin jargonize jaunt javelin jealous jehoshaphat jeopardy jocular jouncy journal jubilant jubilee judgment judicature judicious juggernaut jugular juke julep juncture junta jurisprudence juvenilia juxtaposition kahuna kalpa kamikaze kerf kangaroo karat ken katzenjammer katydid kempt kerosene kewpie khaki kibitz kibosh kilter kimono kinesiology kleptomaniac knell knowledge knuckle kook kowtow kulak kyrie labyrinth laccolith laceration lackadaisical laconic lacunar lacquer lagging laissez-faire lamprey languish lanyard lapidary laputan larceny lariat laryngeal larynx lascivious latent latter lattice latrine launderette lavatory laxity lechery legacy bequeath legend leister lei leisure lemming leniency lentic leopard lethal lethargy lettuce leviathan levitate lexical liable levity liaison libation liberate licentious lieutenant ligament lilac limnetic limousine limpid lineage lynchpin lineolate lingerie lingual liniment linoleum liquefy litany literacy lithesome littoral lizard loath local loiter longevous loquacity lottery louver lucidity lucrative ludicrous luminary lummox lurid luscious lyricism machinator machinelike machismo macrocosm besmirched machiavellian mackerel mademoiselle maelstrom maggoty magisterial magnanimous magnifico maintenance malaprop malarkey malediction malamute malicious malign malinger malleable mandarin maneuver mange maniacal mannequin manure manzanita maquette maraca maraschino marauder marbleize marbly marionette marmalade marquee marquetry marrow marshal marshmallow martyr mascara masochism massacre matriarchy maudlin mausoleum maxillary mayonnaise meager meandrous medial medieval megalith mediocre Mediterranean megalomania melancholy melee membrane memorabilia menagerie mercenary mendacity meritorious mesmeric mesquite metallurgy metaphor meticulous metronome metropolitan mezzanine micrometer midriff mien demeanor millennium minarets minion minuscule minutia misanthropic miscellaneous mistletoe moccasin modus operandi monaural mongrel monotony morgue morose morsel moribund mortgage mosaic mosque mosquito motley mottle mucous membrane mucus mullion multifarious munificent museum musketeer mutable mustache mutineer myopic myrmidon mystique naïve narcissism narcosis narrate nausea navigable Neanderthal necklace needle nefarious negligible nemesis neophyte nertsy  nerve-racking nestle nether newfangled nocturnal nonchalant non sequitur normative Norwegian nostalgic nuisance nullify obedient obeisance obelisk obese objectify oblate oblique obliterate oblivious obsess obsolete obsolescence obstacle obstinate occupy occurrence ocelot odious oedipal officiate ogle ogre oligarchy omelet omnificent omniscient ontological argument oodles oomph opaque operable operative opossum optimal orangutan orchard orchestra ordinance oregano orgiastic oriel oriole ornery orphan osculate ostensive ostrich osteology oust overwhelm overwrought oyster pachyderm pacific pageant painstaking palate palaver libel palette pallet palomino pamphleteer panorama pantheism parapet paradigm papier-mâché paraffin paralyze parishioner parliament parody parquetry parsimonious pasteurize pathogenic payola ******* pediment pendant pendentives penicillin pennant pentathlon perception percussion perennial parameter perimeter peripheral peristalsis permissible pernicious perron perseverance persistent persona persnickety personnel persuasion petite pertinacious pessimistic pestilent pestle petticoat petulant phallus phantasmagoria pharaoh pharmaceutical peasant philander phenomenal philosopher phlegm phoenix phooey phosphoresce physique picayune picturesque piety pilfer finagle pilaster pillage pineapple pinnacle piquant pique piteous pitiful pittance pizzazz placate placenta plagiarism plaintiff plateau platypus plausible plinth plunderous pluvial poinsettia pollutant polygamy pommel ponderous portico portiere portentous prairie precipitous predecessor predicate predilection preeminent preempt preferential premier preparation preposition prerogative presumption pretentious preternatural privilege proclivity prodigious proffer progenitor progeny promissory promontory propellant propensity propound proselyte prospectus protégé protocol protuberant pseudonym  ptomaine pulchritudinous pursuant pygmy pylon python qualm quarrel quarry quash queer quell querulous quibble quitter quixotic rabbet rabbit rabbi radiant rambunctious rancor rankle raspberry rethink rebellion recant recital reconcile redundant referral reglet relevant reluctant remiss reminiscent remnant rendezvous renegade repartee reprieve repertoire repetitious reprehensive reprisal repugnant rescind reservoir resistant resurgence resurrect revelry reverie retaliate reticent retrieve retrograde reveille reverberation reversible reversion rhapsody rhetoric rheumatism rhinoceros rhinoceri rhubarb ribaldry ricochet riddance rigmarole risqué rive rollick Romanesque Rosicrucian rotisserie rotunda rogue roulette rubato ruminate rusticate sabotage sabbat saboteur sacrilege sadomasochist salacious salmon salutatory samurai sapphire sarcasm sarcophagus sardonic sarsaparilla sassafras sassy satiate satirical saturate saunter savoir-faire savvy scabbard scaffold scalawag scarcity scathe scenario scenic schism sciatic nerve ******* scintillate scissor scourge scrawny scrimmage scribble scruffy scrounge scrumptious scrunch scrupulous scrutiny scurry scythe sedition seethe seismic self-applause seltzer semiporcelain seniority sensible sensual separate sepulcher sequel sequin sequoia serape serenade sheaves serendipity  servant settee shabby shackle shanghai shanty shellac shenanigan Sherlock shirk shish kebob shoulder shrapnel shriek shrubbery shtick shush shyster Siamese sibyl significant simile simplicity simultaneous sinewy siphon skeptic skiff skillet skirmish skullduggery slaughter ****** sleeve sleuth slither slough sluice smart aleck  smidgen  smithereens  smolder  smorgasbord snazzy sneer snide snivel snorkel sobriety socioeconomic sojourn solder soldier solemn solicit soluble solvent sombrero somersault soothe soprano sophisticate sophomore sortie soufflé sousaphone ***** spiel souvenir sovereign spaghetti spandrel sparrow spatter sphinx spatula species specific spectacle spectral spelt sphincter spinach spinneret spiritual splatter splitting splurge spry  splutter sporadic sprawl sprinkler spree sprightly squawk spurious sputter  squabble squalor squander squeak squeal squeamish squeeze squiggle squinch squirrel stable squoosh stabilizer stagnant stagnate stalactite stalagmite stammer stampede stationary stationery statue statuesque statute staunch stealthy stein stellar stench stencil stoic steppe sterile stickler stifle stimulant stingy stirrup stolid strafe straggle strangulate stratagem strategy strenuous stretch strident stringent strudel streusel strychnine studious stultify stupe stupefy stupendous special stylus stymie styptic sublimate subliminal submergible substitute submersible subpoena subsequent subsidiary substantiate suburb subversion success succession succinct succor succulent succumb sufferance suffocate suggest suicidal sully sultry sumptuous sundae sundry superfluous superior supersede superstitious surreal supplicate surrender surrogate survey surveillance suspension suspicion sustenance swarthy ******* swath swear sweaty swelter swerve swindle swivel swizzle sycamore syllable symphony symposium symptom syndicate syndrome synonym synonymous synopsis synthetic syphilis syringe syrup suffrage tableau tabloid tacit tambourine tandem tangible tarantula tarot taunt technique telekinesis temperamental temperance thence temporal temporary tenuous tequila terrace terrain terrific terrify tetanus tether thatch thistle thither through though throat throttle thwack thwart ticklish tiffany timbre tirade titillate toboggan tolerant tongue top-notch topography  tortoise trauma tortuous torturous tourist tracery tournament tourniquet trachea traffic tragedy tragic traipse traitor tranquility transcend travesty transcribe treachery treatise trellis trepidation trestle trinket triplicate triumphant trivial troglodyte troubadour  trousers truncate tumultuous tundra turbid turpitude turquoise tutelage twixt twiddle twitter tycoon tyke typhoon tyrannical tyrannize tyranny umbrella unfulfilled unanimous usury undulate unequivocally unguent urethra unprecedented unscrupulous untenable unwieldy utterance vaccinate vagary valance valiant vandal variety vehement veldt veneer vendetta venetian vengeance vernacular versatile version vertebra vicinity victual vigilante villain vincible vinyl violate vitality vivacious volition voluminous voluptuous ****** vulnerable wahine waiver wallaby warble warrant wayfarer weasel wheedle wheezy weird whilst whistle whither whittle whoopee whoopla wistful whither wizen wont worse worst xanadu yowl yucca zephyr zeppelin zucchini extraversion embezzlement euthanasia extortion obscure carousing marauder aptitude ribaldry rigmarole chicanery shenanigans capers antics escapade crafty cunning cleaver connive furtive sneaky stealthy plunderous pillaging usurper pilferous wheedling finagler longevous loquacity derisory deplorable critical decimations tithe cynic frivolity frolic derriere easel emasculate emaciate linguistic depravity berate scold scorn scoff rail rebukeness  brawl vapid hamster spleen sequiter sequacious sequesterous flatulence impressible herbaceous impropriety veneration ignoble fatuous phatic journey acrid pungent fetid fiendness gamut ire irascible graffiti irk tedium diminutive minutia iota iterative reiteration self inductive interpolations objectified interstitial extrapolation trepidation tumultuous tortuous adjunct turpitude salient viable seethe conflagration lexical etymology idolatrous affectionate ****** caress craw swell surge flow flux amorous enamor endear ardent ardor cajole piquant poignant prescient puissant presage apex crux citadel pinnacle vertex vortex matrix ****** peak languishing lurid larcenous licentious lascivious squanderous squaloring wallow in the furrow confluence wretched infelicitous trajectory sordid warp strong raw war resume quirkness ***** tinker **** fink stink ******* eccentric pinky suit idiomatic cognate somatalogy virtuoso concurrent intemperance obsessive habitual addicts psychosomatic pathological psychopaths diabolically maniacal dementia panoramic tableau tediously meticulous laboriously beleaguering excruciating exacerbation autonomous avarice oscillating ostracism adrenergic analeptic adumbrate obdurate aberrance genocidal xenophobic prospectus personification of sartorial perfection visage picturesque vision of spectral grace picture of positive prosthesis protractive analysis cyborg ebullition ne plus ultra monad cybernetics prognosis prognostication clambering clamorous clangor hectic mayhem pulverize annihilate pompous bombastic query squash squawk squish squirm sprocket squeal squelch staunch statuesque steadfast steep stench stint strategic logistical tactician stratum stolid stoic stodgy viscid tumult stray streaky stretch strenuous striated strident stringent strive structural strut subjugate subjective substratum substantiate subterfuge subvert sultry sulk sundry superlative superfluous superficial syllogism soliloquy superovulation superfluity superfetation superfecundation suspicion swig superstratum sycophant ingratiating surrogate suspension swindle swallow swanky swath swill sympathetic symbolic synapse synchronous syncopate synoptic synectics syndrome synonym syntax systematic larceny lecher oligarchy ribaldry rigmarole intoxicate tangential tectonics tantamount telepathy tantalize throng tactile taint talisman talesman squabble brash torment temerarious terminus thrall torpid torpor torque tousle  traduce transform transubstantiate transpire transmute transmogrify transport trapezium traverse treason tremulous trendy trivia trifles trounce turgor truculent tuft turf turbid turgid tussle twain twang twinge twerp twit twitch tweak **** procedure vernacular posthumous spasmolytic propagate prolific proliferative profusion profundity proliferate profligate cogent fecund secund secular thick trick quick mystical silhouette sojourn excursion genre engender jaunt pilgrimage prophet trek waver wrought waxy waylay weave weary web wedge ***** wend whang whet whimsical whir whinny whereupon whish whisk whoosh whizbang whoop whorl wield wile wilco wild whence wingspread wiry wiseacre wherewithal rapacity wolf whistle wrath wraith wrack worship wrest wretch wring wriggle wry shyster shylock phone roan tone zone bone hone loan drone known own moan cone done groan koan gnome dream gleam cream seam beam          team serene ravine green gene careen tellurian terrene quaff query quiescent radishes reciprocate raunchy raspy rascal rampant rampage ravage ****** ravish rebuke rebuff rend reave recourse reconnaissance reconnoiter rectify recompense rectitude reconcile regime reintegrate relegate rejuvenate remission remonstrance reparation replication reprieve reprisal nocturnal emission repose remunerate resonant retort revelation revision grandiloquence cleft fissure crevasse rift rill robust rouge niche
crack tromp stomp chasm crevice trudge rostrum rout roust row ruckus sagacious salacious sapient satiric sarcastic sartorial sartorius scalawag screed scrutable contemptible scurvy scuttlebutt seditious seduction sect segregant sequacious psychic reverie subterfuge serenade sequiter serendipity shuck shylock sibilant shush signet simulation siren skeptic sleek slick slinky snare ****** sneeze sneer snide smug intrados loquacity spandrel iambic sonorous spatial spatiotemporal telemetry spectral spry spectrum speculate solicitor sprout spoof specular splendiferous sporadic spurt binge spree ***** squalid forte fortitude Gumby emit war  time raw umbrage ultraism ultimatum unary unbridled uncanny unanimous ambiguous biased unabated uncharted articulate deviating undertow congenial feint feign unity predicate unprecedented paradigm unscrupulous brash dire unfathomable unlimited urchin usurp utmost utilize fluctuate vague vacuous vanity vanquish vantage veer vast advent veracity verbatim vertex vortex vertigo vestige vex vigor vitalize virile vicissitude viscous visceral virtuous virulence vital virago vivacious vivid livid splurgeness stag vituperatively vociferous volition void voracity waft vulturine wacky waifs wainscot waive wallah itinerant wand wane lavish wanton wonderlust warrantee warn warp warlock warren wastrel wastage warranty dicker insidiously sinister flagrant verity maniac pack mendacity abscissa ordinate yacht yearn yaw yare yen yelp yin yonder yoni yore yours yolk zany zest zeal  zenith zingy zooid treatise hyperbolic lingam blasphemous farcical fugueness and estranged ensemble orchestration rendition various assorted forms of related stranger weirdness traveling down this obtusely overt contusion in my vehicular contrivance convection convolution abalone absolute acceptance accurately acquiesce acquire actually adamant additional adequately adherence affiliation affinity against aggressive allegiance although allusions amendable analogous analysis anchor ancient animation annihilation appeared approach appropriately archaic assembler assimilation assuage attain attempts attendant attribute audience aura auspicious authoritarian authoritative barbeque before belligerent binary blazing Buddha bulwark carousel ceaselessly ceremony chaos character charisma Christmas chronological cite classification classify clutter cocoon cognation cognizant comment communal complete conceive conceptual conclusion conducive conquered consciousness constituent construction continuum contrarily convenient corporeal collage creates credibility crystalline culture curious curriculum decadent decide deferred deified deity deliberately delineate deluded delusion demagoguery democratically descriptions desire destroy destructively develop dialectic dictates difficult diffuse disappeared ecstasy ecstatic efficiency elaborate elliptical empathy endeavor engaging equipment escape especially essence eventually evolutionally excellence excitement expectorant expedience experience extraneous extremity façade facet fashions fever flatten forgotten frailty framework gapping glimpse grandiose graphically groan growing hedonistically hierarchy hobby holocaust homogenous hovering ideology imagination immaturity immediate imperative impertinence important inadvertency inapplicable indispensable individually infancy initiate innate interpreters intervene intricacy intrinsic irrelevance jagged kaleidoscope lit literally lose ludicrous macabre minstrel meld mischievous model monstrous mores myriad mystic necessity negativity Newtonian normalcy nuance nullify obnoxious obscure obvious occasional officiate ominous omnipotent oppose optimizes oscillating ostracism paradoxically partially participants pebbles perceive pervasive phenomena portrayal posses preceding pretty prevalent pregnant primitive prism processional progress prominent proprietor psychic psychological purpose pyramid quandary rational receptacle recumbent redemption refused reiterate relatively relativity relevant reminiscent renaissance revere schemes schizophrenia separately sequence serious severe socially spontaneous stalwart stimulus stomach struggle stunned succession superimpose supplement suppose surround swimming switch symmetry sync taubla tapestry tenacious tendency tyrant terrestrial torrential totally tomorrow transient turbulence tyrannical ulterior ultimate universally unwarranted vicious weather yankee whether soliloquy amenity ambivalence ameliorate aggrandize aghast agrapha barnacle gerrymander jasper jasmine obfuscate obdurate castigate metaphysique cyborg appliance intrepid intrigue mystique impetus volition gumption motivation inspiration metaphor parable leprechaun leniency secund hefty endogenous exogenous lozenge irrefragable recalcitrance fecund jaded seal ordinand obdurate aberrance ignominious interface consent imbroglio embroilment lethargy impressionism agitator treacherous lurid allure obstreperously abstruse subconscious squanderous squalid anomalous punitive incendiary infrangible extemporaneous incognito (succubus , incubus) incongruous incredulous indemnify indigenous infernal infidel iniquitous secular funky spunky Rosicrucian epicurean phlegm levity levee lubricious loath loathe frigid **** ******* lick fenestration dire ****** brash crass rash aggrandize tactile acuity bridge rude crude bandy randy monad positive indenture obnoxious obtrusive obtusely overt indemnities annuities cavalier dawdling gallivant bought naught fought caught ought dribble rip zip gig blond entropy catalyst cohort cavort chronological sublime purvey pander meandrous extravagant exorbitance ***** vicarious endear eccentric cognate frolic frivolity fawn agnate aggregate junction function conjunction conjecture conjugation adjunct contiguous constituency cohesive coercion covert maestro maitre d mastoid newel minx murk monad muss muggy mull mirador bartizan musky meager demonstrative anarchy iconoclasm misnomer mimicry minaret mimetic monocracy pungent mordant mnemonics mangle maim mutilate mesomerism morpheme nepotism nurture vexation anxiety vindictiveness vendetta moot void null meringue laconic obliterate papaya proboscis podiatry polemist porcupine palindrome pandemonium presumptive procureness ploy **** paltry pander paphian pummel puny presage felicity parley parturient potpourri partisan peccavi verity goad penumbral platitude platonic proxy photic pharos perdurable preemptory posh perfunctory perilymph phoneme phenetic phantom permeate proximity phantasm phalanstry delusory apparition pietism oviparous expiate vindicate extricate  exonerate absolve posthumous prehensile prerogative presumptive prestissimo preterite retroactive primacy prevaricate equivocate primordium primeval puissance  pristine prescience prompt prodigious protagonist prurient pyre lurid pshaw guffaw purlin purloin quirk pith quark ***** tip put temerarious userp asymptote pirate tiny hat  thief tine slow slide slim hide me effigy infinitesimal slink slick paw
flaw craw claw heuristic swum cuckold climb locuna live **** sly **** sequacious expeditious sequesterous glove glaive glade
don’t dale  otter glue equestrian gog rift cog gone lean had good gold ride ode *** house pine low law earth *** guilty slime negligent torrentially torrid tortuously tempestuous einzeln function truckness presumptive procureness ploy **** off the line cyborg cylon live antonym exogamous dimorphism pry rap gape homogeny gap dudely cruel incredulity ergo apropos ipso-facto pith tip push where keeky geek peek peep glib jive gawk talk dudely cruel off the line but off it !  pit ego colossal incredible fantastic great outrageous amazing fabulous terrific stupendous splendiferous glorious God grandiose orgiastic magnificent ne plus ultra astounding astonishing bodacious marvelous exuberantly ecstatic subliminal nostalgic allusions subordinate ancillary conjectures similar analogous configurations exotically ****** quixotic render proof orchestration rendition unicorn railway mainsail ebullition monad girdle thigh spasmolytic heuristic sartorious sartorial discrepancy amendment rip reave rive tear rend esoteric erudite beleaguer hype synch torque your ringer occipital sync ubiquitous eucharistic oblation obeisance oblate obelisk ubiquitous edifice ******* efficacious salacious lubricious sagacious expeditious grief  orgiastic paroxysmal orthogenesis overture repertoire quagmire quandary poshly plush lushly lustful longevous loquacity hunky-dory harbinger guzzle gyro gyre exult heuristic awkward humph haberdashery hauberk huarache bourgeoisie dichotomy greave zealot goatee cavalier humerus gumption hors d’oeuvres coalescent hysterically delirious coercion nullify correspondence corral coral architrave archaeology ardent ardor arduous awry askew asinine altruistic allure allude alluvium aloof egress effulgence ephemeral apathetic anxiety antonym existential exigency exodus expiate esoteric exacerbate evoke exact exult excerpt exorbitance cajole argent apriori arbitrate appliqué aqueduct presumptuous prestige precocious precursor preempt predilection premises premonition preoccupy preponderance prescient pretentious perineum peristyle perpetuity pervade pertinent portent elicit pursuance putrid quasi queasy quaver quarrel rampart ransack voracious rapport ratchet raucous ravenous reciprocal rectitude emanate imminent perdition erudite erogenous scarp lambent reticent vehement auspicious austere consternation construe contingent convection convolution convenient cocoon coerce collaboration collude vacuum vacillate vestibule vicarious recalcitrant repudiate resend resilient resonance purvey wreak writhe wreath fortuitous fulminate fuscous cudgel futurity gable gallivant gallant embellish gauntlet scavenge scandalous scarify scatter schlieren scholarly scoundrel scowl unmelodious scramble scrabble scraggly craggy cephalic fallacious fallible absurd cutaneous synthesis commission extreme  conscientious adherent proponent subtlety diligent receive interesting abhorred exorbitant arrangement intelligence surprisingly important encompass contributes asymmetrical excellent elliptical collaboration straddled collapsible spanned feasible oriented pervasive artistry instructor precursor innovate adrenergic adumbrate queasy acclimatize accommodate acceptive accordant accrue accusation acrimony actuarial acuity adduce adjective adjunct admonish adroit aerobic aesthetic prosaic affiliate affluence aggravate aggregate agnate agonize airy albeit alchemy allege allegiance allegorical alleviate allocution ambience ambivalence amenity amenable anaclitic analgesia anacrusis analeptic anathema subordinate ancillary anecdotist animism animosity annulet announce anomaly anonymity antagonize antecedent subsequent antefix antenna anterior pathos antipathy antithesis aperture appall adorn pertain appreciate aquifer arbiter arbitrage arboreal frantic pedantic febrile fanatic quixotic hegira to xanadu frenetic zealot zeal eucharistic oblation occipital ubiquitous omnipresence opulent effluent affluence larcenous overture orgiastic paroxysmal ornithology orthogenisis gleam sheen English bird treacherous lecherous asinine dumb foolish stupid inane ignoramus absurd idiotically imbecilic silly unintelligent dense dingy crazy insane quasi slow epos epitomize epochal era gemma schema lemma jargon idiom colloquialism vernaculars peer quay pier pair appearance insipid vapid insidiously insolent pompously bombastic blatant flagrant chaparral epopee pseudopodia actuator militantly mercenary covert adumbrate intimate obfuscate abet abeyance proxy fugue edict advocate détente anticipate angary amentia terse inabsentia expurgation imputation impugn exculpate eugenic euphenics incumbent incipient accidence acoustics acquittance amore malign asperse amok amuck allegorist pervert aspect aorist wrist expiate asylum epigynous anovulant antenatal antidote antiquity antitrust antithetical argufy apartheid apocalyptic apologist apothecary apomixis appreciate aposteriori apostrophe protractive analysis parabola avidity liberty concise tine albeit life still arrogance coherent abandon abate abash abase abdicate abduction abject abominable abominate abomination abound abrogation absolution absorption accentual accession accede accessible accommodate accomplice accomplish accrual accursed acerbity acrimony accredit accustomed actuality actuate addle adamant adjutant adventive adultery adulterate adventure adversity advertent adulteration venturesome advocacy eyrie aerie aerial affix affront aggressive agile acuity tactile nimble agnostic agog agonist aghast avid avarice agrarian curtilage Arian airhead peterbrain alacrity alchemize alibi allegation allegory gorge ally allocate aloof altercation ambition amatory prelude amaze amateur  ambidextrous ambient amble amiable amicable amorist amulet analeptic analgesia analytics anathema android amalgamated anemometry animism annals chronicles annex annul annoy anonymity antecedent arcade armature arson articulate ascension assiduity asperity asynchrony augmentation audible auger aural areola auspice austerity authenticate autonomic astronomical enumeration auxiliary avenge avert economist autonomist autonomy aviatrix axiom avow avouch bifurcate bigamy bend bind bent bisexual berate bereft hype due behave behaviorism ******* behest bereave beholden biologism bureaucratize circumvent conscribe bacchae backslide backswept badland baddy bagnio baize balky ball hawk balmy bambino bamboozle banal bandwagon baneful banishment bankruptcy banter bandy barbarism barbarous barratry base pay bang bash bastardy bawdry lewd obscene ***** bawl beamish beatitude ****** beat beautiful bedlam beggary begrudge befuddle perplex behalf beleaguer beneficiary benevolence benighted bequeath bequest berth betroth bevy birth bitchery bivouac blabber blandish coax blah blither blare blazon bleak blear blighter bliss bloomy blot blunder blotch blooper bludgeon gag blurt blush bluster bonkers bosh boulevard bout brat browse brunt brute buck passer buffet bungle bungalow bunk bunt buoyancy burglarize burnish burp belch burlesque bureaucratize sorrowful lamentation baleful caterwaul
true clench closet queen constitution provocative soap menagerie melee cirrus camorra caboodle cabotage cabriole cacophony
cadge cahoots cagey cairn calamitous calculate calibrate  caliginous caliper calyx callet cameo campestral canard candid candidacy candelabra candor canker can’t canter canteen canoe capitation captivate capture carapace caribous carnal carnival carny cartomancy casque castellated caste castle catacomb catatonic phonics caustic cavernous celibate censor centric centrifugal centripetal certify cervixes cestus chalet chalice chameleon changling chaperone charlatan chary chaste chastise chastity cheeky cherish chesty chide ***** chintzy chivalrous chinch chomp choose chortle chromatic chronic intrinsic chroma chump chutzpa chute cinch conciliatory ciliary ciliate citadel citation civility clank clammy clang clairaudience taciturn reticent classify inveterate claudication cloven cleft cliché click clinch clement clip clique ******* cloak & dagger clobber clog clone clonk cloth clothe clothier cloture redolent clout cluck clump clumsy clunk coadunate coalition coadjutor coaster brake coax cochlea chronology inundate **** coexist anachronism coercive coitus coincide collinear collateral collegiate collision collusion coma combinatorics comfy  commandeer  commensurate comensal commend commerce commence commodious commotion compatible compensatory competitive compile complexional complicity comply connotation compost composure compunction compulsory concatenate concoct catenary concubinage condolence condemn condescending conducive cavalcade confidant confession confirmatory confiscate conformity confrontation congruence congeal congenial conjure connection connivance connote conquest conscript consequence conservatism consistent console consolidate consort conspire contagium contention continuity controvert conveyor copulative cordial cordon cornucopia coup couth coy crag cranky craven cringe crud culminate cumulate cursive credulity credulous infidel gullible diatonic perturbed derogate edict delict rage tirade irate vehemence denouement denounce tire dervish dictatorial diction proof desolate deontology Kant indenture defray detinue douceur amuse disseminate eustachian daft dainty damnify dapper dastardly dauntless daymare dead heat dead horse debauch debacle decadent debauchee decamp declamatory declension decorticate deductive default defeasance defenestration defunct defrock deformacy degeneracy deft deforce hipster mesmeric deification deist deleterious delimit deltoid delve deluge delusion delirious demimonde demesne demiurge demoniac demonetize demonstrable denizen denegation denigration demur demure despot desperation destine despise detect determinative determinism detersive deterrent detest determinacy detectaphone devout devoid detract desultory detrimental detour deviate deviant devastate devotion devious devisee devolution devolve developer dialectic dharma diagnosis prognosis matriculate diacritical differentia diffraction digenesis dignitize dignitary dilly diligence ***** dilemma dilapidate diminution **** ding diphtheria diphthong dent dirge dirk disaffirm discontinuity disclaim discern discord disconsolate discourteous discredit discontinuance discretion discriminate distain disenfranchise disenchant disencumber disenthrall disembody disgorge disgrace dishonest disguise disengage disinfestant disjunct disillusion disinfectant dislodge dismal disloyal disoblige disobey disparity disparage dismantle dismay dispatch dispel dispersive disproof dispute disrupt dissertation disrepair dissipate distillate distort distract ditto ditty diverge divaricate divert divest divulge dominion doohickey dormer doss dowdy doughty dowry drastic douse drat dray dread drawl dreary drippy drifty drivel droll drown drowsy drudge plan dubious dude dudgeon dulcify duct ductile drakeness ducky duel dull dusky tawny dynamic dwelling dwindle derisive bombastic primordial integumence parenthetically pragmatically prosaically practically protractively portion premise portent pervasive perpitude phenomena hierarchy predicate metaphysique endoskeleton ectomorphic dour droll dismal dank dreary bleak stark Electra complex lore epigone epigraph epsilon epistaxis epilation earnest earthshaker earthward earwitness eclectic ebonize electroacoustics ciphony ebullience eccentricity echelon echoic eddy edgy edify edit educe edition eerie edacious effectuate effeminate effete efficient efflux effrontery effluent effusion ego defense eidetic ejecta elaborate elapse electioneer curtail elocution elucidate elegant eloquence Elysium emancipation manumission detinue osteopathy elucubrate emasculate emaciate embark embargo emanate emblazon emote embellish elusive enhance embracive embouchure emergent emendator embryology emit emissary emitine jacquerie empathy empennage emphasis emphatic emigrant empirical emulate emunctory encephalic enclitic yuck junk funky junkies enchant enchain enclosure encroach encrustation encumber endergonic endorse endowment enduro enfetter enforce energetic enemy enema enervate engender engage propensity preternatural proclivity prestidigitation gesticulation equilibrate equilibrium equilibrist preterite rendition retroactive engross engulf enhance enjoin enlightenment enlist impressed enormous ennoble enrich  ensheathe enshroud ensnare ensnarl entanglement enthrall enthusiasm entice entity enthuse entrap entreat entrance enunciate envoy envy envisage epigynous epigraphy cipher epilogue episodic epitaph epistolary epithet equate equestrian equity equivocal equivocate eradicate erosion eroticism errancy erratic erroneous ersatz erumpent erudition erythron epistemology espalier essentialism progressivism esprit espy estimator estrus estuary etcetera ethnic ethos ethic eternal ethereal eugenic euphenics eustachian tube salpinx euthenics euthanasia evacuate evaluate evasive eventuate evaporate evict evident evil evert evolve exact exaction exult exaggerate exasperate excel excerpt exception exclaim exclude exculpate excursion excuse execration execution exempt exhume exile exhaustive exhibitionism exhilarate exegesis exert exonerate expense expletive explicit exploitation exponent export exposition exserted exposure expound expurgate ubiquitous extemporize extenuate exterminate extensive externalize extinct extort extradition extrasensory extraordinary extol extract exuberate extrude foible fasciculation twitch flinch fenestra Fabian falchion falangist Phillip felly ferro falsie **** fess fink out festinate ***** bustle fourragrere fimbria feduciary fabricant fable fabulist façade facile facilitate facsimile facture faena fain fairing fallopian fallow fascinator fash fatalism fastidious fastuous fatidic fatigue Faustian fatuity faux pas feasible faze ******* facilitate feline feeler ferocity fertile fervid fervor fetor fetus fetology fetish feverish fester fetation fetch fiat fief fiasco feticide obnoxious fiacre figment fickle fictitious fiddling fidelity fidgety fierce fiesta  filch filly filthy finale finesse fingertip finicky fang finite firmament flabbergast fixation flak flashy flagitious ******
flashpoint paroxysmal retrograde flaunt flasher flask flat flap flaw fledge flee fleece fleet fleshy flighty flick flexible flimsy  
flimflam fling flinty florid flora ****** flourish flotsam  flub fluke flurry flush focalize foist footing foray forfeiture forgery foreign
forensic formalize format formica formulate fornication forsooth forswear perjurious fortify forte fortissimo fortuity forum abjure
abnegation fossil fosterling four flush frame up freaky frazzle frenulum fret frigidity frigate frill fringe fritter frontal fructify fruition frump frugal fuel fulcrum fulgurous fulham sable furor furring brazen furtive fustigate future perfect fuchsia find roan gauntlet gamut gatecrasher havoc glass jaw glare glass eye gabber gadzooks gaff gaga gage gaggle gag rule gainful gainsay gait gala gale gall gallery gallivant gallop galvanic gambrel roof gander gammon garb garish garble garnishment garrulous garter gasp **** gaudy gauge gaunt gavel gear fad gee haw gemma gender genealogist geotropism germinate gestation ghost writer ghoul gig gigantic gill gimmick gimp girlish gist gizzard glaive glamorize glance glaze glean glint glitch gloat globe gloomy glitter glom glob glop glorify gloss glower glutton glum slum glue hue gluteal gnash aphorism adage gnosticism gnome goggle gnomic gold digger psychic golem gore gorge gown gossipy gouge grasp greedy frigid gremlin greave grieve grin grime grim grind gripe ***** groom gross grit groin grove grout growl grumpy grunt guck gruntle guide guile guild guilty guise gull gulch gully gunk gushy gust gussy up gulp gusset gush gustatory gung ** gusto gutsy gyne gyre gynecocracy gyve guy  aceimnorsuvwx  bdfhklt  fgjpqyz atheist goblin Godiva grog hang up disinter gamet zygote hunks hunkers haunches black white life death lithe heart rending miserly greedy stingy frugal habitation propinquity habituate hackamore hagride hairbreadth halftrack hallucinosis hamstring handicapper handless hangin hand woven hanker hanky panky haphazardry hari kiri **** harangue harass harbinger harem oviparous residual harmonic harpy harsh hast hassle haggle hasty pudding haugh haunt haversack haversian canal hawk hazard heady heal headway heap hearing hearty heave heathen heavenly heavy duty heft heir heinous heifer heist helix enliven glue hellion helm hemlock hence heredity primitive anachronistic hangover heretical heritage hermit recluse heresy primordial integumence skull hernia hue hex heuristic hirsute hireling ally hint **** hoard hoax hitch hoist hokey hoot horizon hornswoggle horologist hostile hostage housebreak huckster hovel huff humeral hurtle hustle hutz pah homage homogeny exogamy hone honesty honkies hooky hutch hypercritical hypotaxis hysterics incoercible idiosyncrasy impugn idolatry ileum imagism idempotent ides ichor icky icon ics ictus ideational identity crisis matrix idea iffy ignescent illustrious immaterialize imitation inextremis immanentism immolation mollify impeach impedance impecunious impassion immutable retrograde recumbence inabsentia impious impenitence impinge implore impotent paroxysm impressment impute impromptu impoverish improvident imprudent improvise imputation inanely inanimate inauguration incorrigible inappreciative inconsequential irreverence inconsolably disconsolate irreparably irreconcilable incorporeity ideally ideogram inferential illicit incarnate incestuous inch incident converse incipient incite incognita incommodious incompliant incommunicado indagate incursion incus incumbent indecorous indecent exposure indecipherable indefeasible indenture indictable  indicative indignant indiscrete indite indolence indubitable induce indulgent industrious ineffectual inane inert inertia infamy infanticide infest infinitesimal inflect inflict infringe encroach infrastructure inflation influential informant inimical iniquitous innumerable innuendo inquisitor injunction injudicious inkling innocuous insolent insidious insipid inept phatic volatile instigate insinuate instinct intangible interdict intentional interject intimate intimidate intricacy intrigue intrinsic intrepid introspection introvert intrusive intuitive inviolate invade inundate invalid inventive inveigh inure defeasance foist isomorphic isthmus fistula jabber jackal jackleg jag jaunt jeer jerkin jest jetty jettison jiffy jig jilt jive job jack jolt josh jostle joust jovial judicious juggernaut jugglery jumble jumpy junctural jungle junk ****** jurisdiction justice justification jute jutty juvenile delinquency juxtaposition kale kalimba kangaroo court kaput karate karst kayo keel keep kempt kept keynesianism kick in **** kindle kinetic kink kist **** kleenex kismet kirtle kith kithe kitsch klaxon knack knavery **** knout kobold koan kneed king cogent adroit lollygag lummox languorous lanyard limbus lotic loquacious lesbian lam labial lambaste lampoon landmark bilk lang syne languish languid languor larder larky larvicide larynx lascivious lateral latent recumbent lapel laud lavish layette lecher leeward leer leech legacy legate lefty lest lewd avant-garde levant avaricious liaison libido libertarian lien ligature lilt list lisp liturgy livid loiter loom loophole lubricity lubric lucent lugubrious yuck lunkhead dolt lurk luscious luster luxury lynch lysis legerity lemma lickspittle limnetic ankh maverick mare liberum marabou machete machinate machiavelianism magniloquent macroevolution macrogamete Magdalene mantis mantra maniacal manubrium mare’s nest maenad majuscule maladjustive malfeasance maleficent malefactor malevolence mash malm malocclusion manipular manifesto mastectomy maw manacle manifest Manitou mana marrow pith manumission constitution marsupial mare nostrum masseur pervade perpitude quark master plan master race mastoid glitch exiguous skimpy scanty sparse masticate matriarchy matriculate escutcheon nombril mere mathematics matrix matinee impetus maxim axiom meatus minimax mediation mediocre medley metabolic meddle ménage a trios menagerie mendacity meroblastic menial meiosis meliorate memorandum memoir memento mori menace mesne menarche menorrhagia meninx mesh mesomerism mesne lord metal methodical meticulous mettle miasma microcosm militia mingy minion koan mirage mire misnomer modality mockery ****** mongrel monstrance morbid morose mortify mortise martingale motivity musky mushy murky muse mutuality muzzle myopia mystique mesomorphic nabob nadir narcosis nark native natty navaid necking pilaster neigh neuter neutrino nexus ****** nihilism nimbus nimiety nitty gritty noisome nominalism nonconformity non sequiter nooky noose nostalgia nostrum notch notion notorious noumenon nous nuance nubile nymph nympholepsy numinous ***** obliquity oblivion ubiquity eucharistic oblation obligee oasis oath obbligato obligatory obliterate obnoxious obscene obstreperously abstruse exude obviate ochlocracy odium odalisque ominous awesome omnivorous onerous onus opprobrium opprobrious optimal opulence orifice ornate orotund ostensible osteopathy oust outlier overawe overt **** ozone procurator pagan palingenetic pallid pallor paragon pagoda palpitate pander pandemic panhandling paraphrase paternoster pathetic paunch pavilion pawky peachy peculiar pedagog pedal pedantic peart peccant peeve perception intuition peremptory perdition perdurable detinue perfective
perfidy perforce periphery perjure perk permeate permute perorate perpetual perpetrate perpetuity perplexity persecute
perspicacious perspiration pertinent perturb ******* pesky perky pester pestilence petrify petrous phalanges juggernaut              
phenomenal phylogeny phobic phony photosensitize phrenic physicality ***** physicalism pick pictorial pious piety piffle pilgrimage pinion pithy placate placid plaint planetoid plasma platitude platonic plenipotentiary plucky plunderous poach plenary plummet polemic polyphonic postulate pouch polyandry polygamy populist pounce popsicle potentate pout practicable chatter prattle precarious precedence precess precious predetermined predicament preen prelusive premonition prefix preposterous prevail prevalent presumptuous **** prim priority depravation probity prodigious profane promulgate proffered prohibitive projective promiscuity propagandize propagate prophetic prosthetic propinquity prophylaxis protocol proprietous propitious haggard proxemics prosecutor prospectus protensive proximity pummel pundit prejudice piranha punitive purgatorial purificatory putschist kitsch quag quantum jump quarrelsome quarterstaff Quetzalcoatl quickie quirt quoit rescind reverb revile mnemonics retuse rabble rachis raconteur ratification radial radix raffish raft ragamuffin railroad raiment rake ramify ramet ramus rank rancid **** rapper rapt rapture rarefy rarified rave ravel raw raze razzle-dazzle razzmatazz realm ream reap rebuttal rebuff rebuke receptaculum recital recess reconcile recondite recourse recriminate rectilinear rectify rectitude recumbent recuperate recursive redeem redolent refer reek reeve reflective reflex refraction refulgence refuge refuse relativistic reliquiae remedy remorseless remnant repertory replicate reproach reptilian repugnant repulse repulsion rescissory residue resignation resolute restitution retraction restriction restraint resuscitate reticent retentive retinue retreat retribution revel reverberation reversal revert revulsion rhapsodic rhombus rhomboid rictus ridgy rifle riff rigorous ritzy rival roan roam roar rive robust rodent rodeo roguery rollick frolic romp rote rouge rout ******* rubble rubric rumpus rumor rural ruse rustle Ruth sitzkrieg superciliary supercilious surfeit suture bravo bravado seminal vesicle sacerdotalism sacroiliac sagacious saga safari saguaro salpinx salubrious salvo salve sanction sanctify sanguine sashay satchel satiate saucy savory scads scalpel scandalize scapula **** schmaltz schlep schnook scorn scour scoff scowl scow scram scrounge screak scud **** scuz seclude ****** seer selfish seminiferous senility sedition smear sycophant sensitize sensorium sentiment sequester sequential servile sham shindig shoddy singular screech situate skedaddle skew sketchy skittish skivvies slang slight slogan slovenly slouch sneaky snub soffit solvency sophistic spangle spar spawn spew squall squamous steeple logistical tactician strategy stupor subjunctive suborn subvert the clarity of criticism can create credibility comprehension can cause conducive consciousness supremacy surly burly squirrelly schema temporize tai pan tup trochlea ulna taboo taciturn tacit tacky tact talus tamper tang tamp tangible tangential tank tankard tassel tawny ****** telepathic temerity telos tenable tenet ternary terra-cotta testy topos tiercel theocracy tempting thew tizzy trite thirl throng thundering tantrum tonic torso topsy-turvy torus tour de force touristic **** tout tragus tractive trance tranquil traject transcend trample transducer transfix transgress transition transposition transude transpire treasure treason trek trenchant tremendous tributary trigeminal  trollop triumph tropic tropism troth trough tractable tract strumpet trove trump trustless tribunal twang tweeze twinge twirl twaddle tunic typecast tyrannical tyrannosaur traction padness tyrant tympanum twist ukase ultraism ultima ratio ultrastructure uglify umbilicus umbra umbrage unabridged unconditional unambiguous unanimity uncanny unceremonious uninucleat union unique unison unity farce sham unmannered unremitting unspeakable upsurge upstage urchin urbanist usherette usufruct travesty usury utensil ****** utmost ut uvea utter uvula utility uxorious usurp surreptitious vagabond vagarious vagile vagrant vagrancy vale valor validate vampire vanguard vas deferens vast vaunt vector venery venial veranda venture verbalist verboten verdant verdict verge vertebration verve vexatious fierce vigil vigorous vile vilify villainous vindicate violent virtue vitalist ***** vituperative vogue vomitus volunteer vouch vulcanization vulturous vulgarism weld **** volume decimate wahoo waive wangle wee weepy welch whammy war wharfage whereof whereupon wherein wherefore whereon wherewithal whine whopper wild goose chase wishy washy wisp woeful wrathy wrought wrong xenophile ******* fornication phantasmagoria fluent voluble yammer yelp yes man yummy zany zealotry zilch zing zombie zooidal zoom zounds zygomatic contiguous constituency confluence contiguity continuum concurrence conjunction conjugation métier quintessential

‘You’ve come to the end, it’s sad, my friend
But there’s nothing more we can do,
Your kidneys have malfunctioned, and
You’re at the end of the queue.
You’d best be making your Will out now
Or you may run out of time,
There’s just a question of fifteen thou’
You owe for our work, just sign!’

‘I’ll not be signing my life away
Just now, though it’s almost done,
I may be taking a walk someday
But not ‘til I’ve had some fun.
You say I’ve only a week or two
To spend, and that’s at the best,
I’ll cram the rest of my living in
With the help of a Prescient Vest.’

The Prescient Vest, the brainchild of
A Silicone Valley clone,
It calculated the path of life
From the life already known,
It fed its images through a brain
That would never live to see
The normal span of the life of man
Through some abnormality.

So Kevin fronted the Institute
And was strapped into a chair,
Fitted with Vest and Headpiece
And was virtually aware,
It drained the memories of his life
That flashed on past his sight,
And stored them into a tiny file
Just less than a Gigabyte.

And then it started to calculate
Beginning with his wife,
It showed her having a sweet affair
With the boarder, Stanley Smythe,
They both attended his funeral
And she leant upon his arm,
And held the wake with a Currant cake
At Stanley’s father’s farm.

Then Kevin struggled within his bonds
And tried to say, ‘Not true!’
But then his favourite daughter came
Quite suddenly into view,
She stole the funeral money he’d
Been keeping in a jar,
Then jumped on into his Thunderbird
And drove off with his car.

She let her idiot boyfriend in
To sit behind the wheel,
But all he could see were dollar signs
And a car he’d like to steal,
He dropped her off at a candy shop
Drove off and left his Pam,
While only a half a mile away
He ended under a tram.

Kevin suffered a minor fit
At the wreck of his pride and joy,
But didn’t suffer a single qualm
At the death of the stupid boy,
His job had gone to a minor clerk,
Dumped records in the bin,
The careful working of twenty years
That he’d spent compiling them.

Then Stanley got at his savings and
He frittered them away,
His wife was clueless, she let him sell
The house he’d slaved to pay,
The future, once he had gone was not
The thing he’d visualised,
He strained and screamed at the Techs,
‘Just get this thing from off my eyes!’

He staggered home in a mood and took
Some gas from out the car,
Splashed it around the house, and took
The cash from the funeral jar,
He threw a match and it all went up
Though he didn’t know or care,
That his wife and Stan were up above
When the flames went up the stair.

He jumped on into the Thunderbird
And went for a long, last ride,
Along the Beachside Boulevard,
And once he had stopped, he died!
They’ve banned the use of the Prescient Vest
With a raft of bills and laws,
‘The future needs to be locked,’ they said,
‘For the damage it might cause!’

David Lewis Paget

Fragile egg-shell mind on dawn’s highway bleeding the segue between times traversed only in momentary dreams or in enduring excursions

We drag our droll and quaint 60s baggage like the luggage of a safari made of concrete girding a cavernous expanse of unheralded ground

With our ears oriented to the floor, we leap out of body never to deplore….never to ignore….never to miss the blue bus of our drafted imaginations, so carefully culled from brash elitism

I trounce the intervening time between being friendless and an ironic end, and an irenic comrade becoming the dearest amazed but always aplomb friend

We simper in our glorious traversal, and though bedraggled through an ornamented cavern we linger just long enough to be celebrated

Then a blues riff emanates from a vapid bar, and finally someone heralds my exhumed memory still rusty with the pavement of encased concrete on an empty or full tomb

So I wander in my mind to that roughshod Paris glassy tincture a romanticized gild of proper sensibility crafted in the tongues of lizards emulating the tongues of serpentine Anglicans

As the power of love transcends the love of power, both are afforded serendipitously upon the stately occasion of a fitful revolt where heads literally rolled and deaths still unfurl from the slippage of a violent malevolent eternity, crafting a new creative way to expedite the smite of preventable scourge

So, I see your picaresque side and your wide-eyed love for a listless ship anointed of a crystal blip just detectable long enough on RADAR to become the statistic to crack the slim WHIP

No wigs are needed at this formality, no figs grow from trees forty-five years buried and almost a full month unsung

Pitiable cretins of an invented insanity, they scoff at my ravenous and portentous heart for its excess and for aligning with an upstart verging on only a specious insanity

Why in all humanity could a month be mustered with every defense of history and yet for it to be so widely flouted as a risible exercise in futility

The irony that the artistic glamor of a past vogue becoming a revival that is often toked only to one song but never to the memorial of great cavernous and commodious imaginations, staggers with dismay where otherwise the mayday would be a disaster but still a great day

Then I look at a triggered-fingered omen of a death so ominous yet so brazenly confronted as the ambassadors of time provide plaudits to a fearless martyrdom

Why such a sad spate, why such a stringent but malevolent fate a malediction on a family whose crest is not crestfallen like rolling waves but ornamented with gravity impounding its own weight

A fugacious tomb, an eternal flame, a swan song announcing an independent authority on a prescient demise mashed and deprived

A single shot rippling through the broadened space between clasped eternity and a histrionic disgrace as a psychological confederate pays lip service to a reiterative applause

A cousin hardly American in a defected record of incendiary plumes of a hoarse hatred of waxen discs and flying discs alike,  climbs out of a bonfire mounted purely out of vindictive spite

Then upon a great white buffalo a wrapped package of Californian love before California ever alighted like something beyond an avaricious dove, saw a rocky park and a hearth of illuminated darkness the singular spark

Captain Morgan knows the jackknife applause of a botched deal morphing into a disbelieved spiel. A shibboleth of enormous mystical weight crashing down from an ethereal abode and heaven heavily saddened cannot hardly appeal

Then a loving spoonful of crystal blue persuasion led me to Ethel’s regimented keepsake and for once in my life nobility and I became a grateful waif. But temerity laughed, splintered spacecraft, and the wooden paws of a bearish applause led to resurgent clarity

Blinking stars shattered by knighted and raw applause punctured the liberated might of a sentient hortatory savior grasped by the internecine wrench of a waxen time

An indie track slides by unnoticed in an aleatory time, and the threadbare whine of centuries of lament becomes a dastardly barn set ablaze with the fury of ancients and the scurry of faineant patents

Perfidy slides in recess, and in gentle forbearance the winged angel lingers like a halo on conifer and spring above a remedial ring

I dial frisky celerity tingling the dangling claws of a raven’s screed and in plunder of all history’s pilfer secrets I eagerly weave a tapestry Indiana Jones himself would be proud to watch

Not the riotous ruin of a mystery tour of verdure crippled by genocide but overcome by the revived life of raised rain razing the moments of indelible pain

But the culmination of a proffered time taken at its word for its every careened bird, for its every brazen gird. The manger of proctored stars calls us home tonight and home forever. Life in quaked timorous stumbles suddenly no longer so fitfully absurd.

The quixotic plundered of pirates and emperors in direct emulation of some crooned pastiche of whittled integrity, surges above any encased blurb and any vain testament to a pyramid rigid in destiny and ragged in desultory and sturdy sincerity

Multiplying the ineffable by the division of arable divorced from edible is too creative to be eaten as pabulum when sparks curdle flickered moonlight crimson and that become golden only to the last laugh of ennobled ragamuffins

Frankly the desert of melliferous gorillas abetting the lark of a heavily vetted camarilla engaged in the sinecure of a rigged wall on a main street to block the tall from the lame bleat. Stocks grazed, costs engaged on a littoral beach at the end of a Bossy promenade

This prayer is a cutthroat collapse of a merry spare, a ribbed ****** waiting to plunge into the antithesis of female despair, but sincere in its restraint that vixens courted in love aren’t courted in litigation of a wagered dare

Ambulances chase Deloreans through the desolate moon-stricken skies of a time agape with fleets of phantasmagoria on a Cliffside too wise to ever mince words or excise cries

Skulking the red-teared caverns of entombed films and lampooned tinctures on a passion vetted only for certain and utter deracinated disguise, I wallop with winged men in a single soul Armed to the Teeth with inveterate tithes to eternal internments of poached and endangered gazettes

As growth older in wizened skin bets on epithets rather than epitaphs for rinsed peace and triumphant clefts we leap above in orbit of only the bellowing nether of blown tolls and untold souls aggregating the esoteric grasp of Alexandrian tomes

The denumeration of certainty is a carousel of wonder, a splurge of time ripped asunder with majesties of paparazzi scuttled impacts a throttled iniquity of regalia’s indicted blunder frenchified but still clean with inestimable sheens

With twenty-five dollars, a dime an assist and a nickeled reiteration of currency already so personable it is divine and sublime in crazed desist I watch the embroiled natives clash in denatured violence with the warriors of a crossed repast hearkening to an old land much of ire but too much of grandstand to ultimately last

Itching for a holy field husk of peerless ties listed as rumpus and beer, a two-packed smoked by bludgeoned blokes careless in irascible sputters of a muffled doom, a Vegan becomes the author of too many sacrosanct homilies becoming defiled witchcraft brooms dead on arrival too many lionized tombs

In plaudits and the scause of an amplified “what if?” of an olfactory nightmare of petrified fog of effluvium bogged in Wade and in heat it is always clogged, sinewy libations of toasted preemptive revenge become a powerballed hog

A castle in the sky founded on Franklin but scourged of wineskins brimming with a distilled time, a swift repartee becomes the whispered ladder of saints blather becoming not rather other than a Dan Rather spatter

A door breeched by a broached inconvenience of amphigory beyond common reach, I clamber excess and whisk the lingered love into destiny beyond any word other than a beseeched preach of nothing tired but everything inspired of noble love with abundance often to teach

Fireworks of turned tides of fallow tithes to aliens beyond any conceivable bribe the bushwhacker writhes but survives Stayin' Alive without even a hint of garbled jive a 27th floor glass elevator is quite a resplendent ride

Wellsprings knowing radical rolled tides of errant dice also themselves guilty of confessional tithes to the monolith of avarice at the nooked cranny of an evaporated time we whine as the police sting the album rained with songs too lugubrious to sing but in their elegy every lonely heart has a propinquity phone of souled resonance ring

Iterative mastery of a mathematics of love, loss decay and the dross of a dental Occidental floss, the sweep of screened queues become questions of inestimable importance to foreign dues on A Horse With No Name but so consumed with fumes

A fright occultist Thriller prowls in a waylaying daylight, masquerading an innocent confection for a rescued triage of a dawn stabbed with knives in our last dying days of trembled plight

He resurrects only the wraiths of detest, squinted at by the putrefaction of summoned cardiac arrest and littered with bullets that somehow can penetrate even impregnable bullet proof vests the wrapped carcass of the mummified husk of ready despair offers itself a ghoulish and raspy prayer

Synchronized in a low roaring swathe of rollercoasters too immersive to ride, the terpsichorean obscurantism of deliberately shattered fragments becoming blurbs dismissed with hijacked deride the carnival of a summer sun becomes the ocean of limitless love becoming endless fun

We forget the drawl of the droll old tales that haunt like specters in the closet and beneath the bedridden valetudinarian of an effrontery of shackled fright, we sprawl the innumerable caverns of prophetic insight afforded by the pantheon of history enter stage left, depart stage right

And with their insight I write and write, I grasp the tusk of democracy and wage an insurrection against the doubt of plodding limitations in otherwise immaculate sight

*** and tyrannosaurus rex, of litigable offenses leading to pardonable arrests, the gated entryway of a poetic splurge leads to the demiurge of a demotic enlightenment and suddenly the frank becomes the frazzled retirement and that haunting hounding bunny transmogrified by a shattered eye averts the car crash that careens ponderous engines out of limitless twilight blue skies.

Diamond lightning in pristine skies escorts the telegraphic totems of riddled modems from distant forbearance to nescient ultimatum and suddenly all venerable personages converge on a teeming scene of a union unified by a universal dream. To become everything and yet nothing and out of light and darkness to become a beatific beam

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.

an all purpose cleaner response to the

how-ya-doing-question,

as my vibe unmistakable;
the hatred in the world directed at
MY PEOPLE,
is inexplicable, beyond reason,
a hatred raw and pure in the
tiny places we humans hide it, lest
our ancient linkage to an unreasoned,
embarrassing emotion, be revealed

but now revealed it is reveled,
as the freedom to despise is a
valued thing

is an ancient scar, now freshly wounded
and the two thousand year old accumulated, callused,
surrounding wafer thin, layered upon layer of
tissue,
wiped away
in utter disbelief
cleansed,
a different kind of impure clean,
“like” an ethnic cleansing,
traceless, whisked away in a wink of moment,
a goner.

like hope, prior sentient optimism
sentenced to life imprisonment and
this sentence, and this very sentence!
written finally understanding that it is
a punishment
far worse than the quick relief of death.

c’mon, how about a few “fukk you jew”
cri de coeur, heartfelt, genuine, pointless
hate

no, not I, no, not me,
spare me the pithy comments,
the pointless sympathy, glistening
like evaporating water droplets
before disappearing, I ask myself,
not
why they hate, why it persists,
for this I understand and accept
the foulness of what we are capable of is,

beloved,

as a secret pleasure, now secreted in torrents.

no, I ask myself,

why do I write poetry,

for it is as pointless as
the hatred directed at me,
from birth, till death,
and ever after,
the humanity of poetry
just another fraud

another reason
why this man cries in the bathroom,^
not from any shape of shame,

because poetry is pointless
in times of hatred, and now we
know, recognize, it is always
somewhere, nearby, always
present and prescient,
pointless hatred,
itching to be pointed at me,
makes for
pointless poetry.


To whom shall I point my poetry?

O, the Horror! Halloween Poetry!

Halloween Poetry: Dark, Eerie, Haunting and Scary poems about Ghosts, Witches, Vampires, Werewolves, Reanimated Corpses and "Things that go Bump in the Night!"



Thin Kin
by Michael R. Burch

Skeleton!
Tell us what you lack...
the ability to love,
your flesh so slack?

Will we frighten you,
grown as pale & unsound,
when we also haunt
the unhallowed ground?



The Witch
by Michael R. Burch

her fingers draw into claws
she cackles through rotting teeth...
u ask "are there witches?"
… pshaw! …
(yet she has my belief)



Vampires
by Michael R. Burch

Vampires are such fragile creatures;
we dread the dark, but the light destroys them...
sunlight, or a stake, or a cross ― such common things.

Still, late at night, when the bat-like vampire sings,
we shrink from his voice.

Centuries have taught us:
in shadows danger lurks for those who stray,
and there the vampire bares his yellow fangs
and feels the ancient soul-tormenting pangs.
He has no choice.

We are his prey, plump and fragrant,
and if we pray to avoid him, he earnestly prays to find us...
prays to some despotic hooded God
whose benediction is the humid blood
he lusts to taste.



Styx
by Michael R. Burch

Black waters,
deep and dark and still...
all men have passed this way,
or will.

Charon, the ferrymen who carried the dead across the River Styx to their eternal destination, has been portrayed by artists and poets as a vampiric figure.



Revenge of the Halloween Monsters
by Michael R. Burch

The Halloween monsters, incensed,
keep howling, and may be UNFENCED!!!
They’re angry that children with treats
keep throwing their trash IN THE STREETS!!!

You can check it out on your computer:
Google says, “Please don’t be a POLLUTER!!!”
The Halloween monsters agree,
so if you’re a litterbug, FLEE!!!

Kids, if you’d like more treats this year
and don’t want to cower in FEAR,
please make all the mean monsters happy,
and they’ll hand out sweet treats like they’re sappy!

So if you eat treats on the drag
and don't want huge monsters to nag,
please put all loose trash in your BAG!!!

NOTE: If you recite the poem, get the kids to huddle up close, then yell the all-caps parts like you’re one of the unhappy monsters, and perhaps "goose" them as well. They'll get the message.



It's Halloween!
by Michael R. Burch

If evening falls
on graveyard walls
far softer than a sigh;

if shadows fly
moon-sickled skies,
while children toss their heads

uneasy in their beds,
beware the witch's eye!

If goblins loom
within the gloom
till playful pups grow terse;

if birds give up their verse
to comfort chicks they nurse,
while children dream weird dreams

of ugly, wiggly things,
beware the serpent's curse!

If spirits scream
in haunted dreams
while ancient sibyls rise

to plague nightmarish skies
one night without disguise,

while children toss about
uneasy, full of doubt,
beware the Devil's lies...

it's Halloween!



Ghost
by Michael R. Burch

White in the shadows
I see your face,
unbidden. Go, tell

Love it is commonplace;
tell Regret it is not so rare.

Our love is not here
though you smile,
full of sedulous grace.

Lost in darkness, I fear
the past is our resting place.



All Hallows Eve
by Michael R. Burch

What happened to the mysterious Tuatha De Danann, to the Ban Shee (from which we get the term “banshee”) and, eventually, to the Druids? One might assume that with the passing of Merlyn, Morgan le Fay and their ilk, the time of myths and magic ended. This poem is an epitaph of sorts.

In the ruins
of the dreams
and the schemes
of men;

when the moon
begets the tide
and the wide
sea sighs;

when a star
appears in heaven
and the raven
cries;

we will dance
and we will revel
in the devil’s
fen...

if nevermore again.



Pale Though Her Eyes
by Michael R. Burch

Pale though her eyes,
her lips are scarlet
from drinking of blood,
this child, this harlot

born of the night
and her heart, of darkness,
evil incarnate
to dance so reckless,

dreaming of blood,
her fangs ― white ― baring,

revealing her lust,
and her eyes, pale, staring...



Like Angels, Winged
by Michael R. Burch

Like angels ― winged,
shimmering, misunderstood ―
they flit beyond our understanding
being neither evil, nor good.

They are as they are...
and we are their lovers, their prey;
they seek us out when the moon is full
and dream of us by day.

Their eyes ― hypnotic, alluring ―
trap ours with their strange appeal
till like flame-drawn moths, we gather...
to see, to touch, to feel.

Held in their arms, enchanted,
we feel their lips, so old!,
till with their gorging kisses
we warm them, growing cold.



Solicitation
by Michael R. Burch

He comes to me out of the shadows, acknowledging
my presence with a tip of his hat, always the gentleman,
and his eyes are on mine like a snake’s on a bird’s ―
quizzical, mesmerizing.

He ***** his head as though something he heard intrigues him
(although I hear nothing) and he smiles, amusing himself at my expense;
his words are full of desire and loathing, and while I hear everything,
he says nothing I understand.

The moon shines ― maniacal, queer ― as he takes my hand whispering

Our time has come... And so we stroll together creaking docks
where the sea sends sickening things
scurrying under rocks and boards.

Moonlight washes his ashen face as he stares unseeing into my eyes.
He sighs, and the sound crawls slithering down my spine;
my blood seems to pause at his touch as he caresses my face.
He unfastens my dress till the white lace shows, and my neck is bared.

His teeth are long, yellow and hard, his face bearded and haggard.
A wolf howls in the distance. There are no wolves in New York. I gasp.
My blood is a trickle his wet tongue embraces. My heart races madly.
He likes it like that.



Sometimes the Dead
by Michael R. Burch

Sometimes we catch them out of the corners of our eyes ―
the pale dead.
After they have fled
the gourds of their bodies, like escaping fragrances they rise.

Once they have become a cloud’s mist, sometimes like the rain
they descend;
they appear, sometimes silver like laughter,
to gladden the hearts of men.

Sometimes like a pale gray fog, they drift
unencumbered, yet lumbrously,
as if over the sea
there was the lightest vapor even Atlas could not lift.

Sometimes they haunt our dreams like forgotten melodies
only half-remembered.
Though they lie dismembered
in black catacombs, sepulchers and dismal graves; although they have committed felonies,

yet they are us. Someday soon we will meet them in the graveyard dust
blood-engorged, but never sated
since Cain slew Abel.
But until we become them, let us steadfastly forget them, even as we know our children must...



Polish
by Michael R. Burch

Your fingers end in talons—
the ones you trim to hide
the predator inside.

Ten thousand creatures sacrificed;
but really, what’s the loss?
Apply a splash of gloss.

You picked the perfect color
to mirror nature’s law:
red, like tooth and claw.

Published by The HyperTexts



Siren Song
by Michael R. Burch

The Lorelei’s
soft cries
entreat mariners to save her...

How can they resist
her faint voice through the mist?

Soon she will savor
the flavor
of sweet human flesh.



How Long the Night (anonymous Old English Lyric)
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

It is pleasant, indeed, while the summer lasts
with the mild pheasants' song...
but now I feel the northern wind's blast ―
its severe weather strong.
Alas! Alas! This night seems so long!
And I, because of my momentous wrong
now grieve, mourn and fast.



The Wild Hunt
by Michael R. Burch

Near Devon, the hunters appear in the sky
with Artur and Bedwyr sounding the call;
and the others, laughing, go dashing by.
They only appear when the moon is full:

Valerin, the King of the Tangled Wood,
and Valynt, the goodly King of Wales,
Gawain and Owain and the hearty men
who live on in many minstrels’ tales.

They seek the white stag on a moonlit moor,
or Torc Triath, the fabled boar,
or Ysgithyrwyn, or Twrch Trwyth,
the other mighty boars of myth.

They appear, sometimes, on Halloween
to chase the moon across the green,
then fade into the shadowed hills
where memory alone prevails.



The Vampire's Spa Day Dream
by Michael R. Burch

O, to swim in vats of blood!
I wish I could, I wish I could!
O, 'twould be
so heavenly
to swim in lovely vats of blood!

The poem above was inspired by a Josh Parkinson depiction of Elizabeth Bathory up to her nostrils in the blood of her victims, with their skulls floating in the background.



Nevermore!
by Michael R. Burch

Nevermore! O, nevermore!
shall the haunts of the sea
― the swollen tide pools
and the dark, deserted shore ―
mark her passing again.

And the salivating sea
shall never kiss her lips
nor caress her ******* and hips,
as she dreamt it did before,
once, lost within the uproar.

The waves will never **** her,
nor take her at their leisure;
the sea gulls shall not have her,
nor could she give them pleasure...
She sleeps, forevermore!

She sleeps forevermore,
a ****** save to me
and her other lover,
who lurks now, safely smothered
by the restless, surging sea.

And, yes, they sleep together,
but never in that way...
For the sea has stripped and shorn
the one I once adored,
and washed her flesh away.

He does not stroke her honey hair,
for she is bald, bald to the bone!
And how it fills my heart with glee
to hear them sometimes cursing me
out of the depths of the demon sea...

their skeletal love ― impossibility!



Dark Gothic
by Michael R. Burch

Her fingers are filed into talons;
she smiles with carnivorous teeth...
You ask, “Are there vampires?”
― Get real! ―
(Yet she has my belief.)



Epitaph for a Palestinian Child
by Michael R. Burch

I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.


Athenian Epitaphs (Gravestone Inscriptions of the Ancient Greeks)

Mariner, do not ask whose tomb this may be,
but go with good fortune: I wish you a kinder sea.
― Michael R. Burch, after Plato


Does my soul abide in heaven, or hell?
Only the sea gulls in their high, lonely circuits may tell.
― Michael R. Burch, after Glaucus



Passerby,
tell the Spartans we lie
lifeless at Thermopylae:
dead at their word,
obedient to their command.
Have they heard?
Do they understand?
― Michael R. Burch, after Simonides



Completing the Pattern
by Michael R. Burch

Walk with me now, among the transfixed dead
who kept life’s compact and who thus endure
harsh sentence here―among pink-petaled beds
and manicured green lawns. The sky’s azure,
pale blue once like their eyes, will gleam blood-red
at last when sunset staggers to the door
of each white mausoleum, to inquire―
What use, O things of erstwhile loveliness?


Reclamation
by Michael R. Burch

after Robert Graves, with a nod to Mary Shelley

I have come to the dark side of things
where the bat sings
its evasive radar
and Want is a crooked forefinger
attached to a gelatinous wing.

I have grown animate here, a stitched corpse
hooked to electrodes.
And night
moves upon me―progenitor of life
with its foul breath.

Blind eyes have their second sight
and still are deceived. Now my nature
is softly to moan
as Desire carries me
swooningly across her threshold.

Stone
is less infinite than her crone’s
gargantuan hooked nose, her driveling lips.
I eye her ecstatically―her dowager figure,
and there is something about her that my words transfigure
to a consuming emptiness.

We are at peace
with each other; this is our venture―
swaying, the strings tautening, as tightropes
tauten, as love tightens, constricts
to the first note.

Lyre of our hearts’ pits,
orchestration of nothing, adits
of emptiness! We have come to the last of our hopes,
sweet as congealed blood sweetens for flies.

Need is reborn; love dies.



Deliver Us ...
by Michael R. Burch

The night is dark and scary―
under your bed, or upon it.

That blazing light might be a star ...
or maybe the Final Comet.

But two things are sure: your mother’s love
and your puppy’s kisses, doggonit!



the Horror
by Michael R. Burch

the Horror lurks inside our closets
the Horror hides beneath our beds
the Horror hisses ancient curses
the Horror whispers in our heads

the Horror tells us Death is coming
the Horror tells us there’s no hope
the Horror tells us “life” is futile
the Horror beckons, “there’s the Rope!”



Belfry
by Michael R. Burch

There are things we surrender
to the attic gloom:
they haunt us at night
with shrill, querulous voices.

There are choices we made
yet did not pursue,
behind windows we shuttered
then failed to remember.

There are canisters sealed
that we cannot reopen,
and others long broken
that nothing can heal.

There are things we conceal
that our anger dismembered,
gray leathery faces
the rafters reveal.



Duet
by Michael R. Burch

Oh, Wendy, by the firelight, how sad!
How worn and gray your auburn hair became!
You’re very silent, like an evening rain
that trembles on dark petals. Tears you’ve shed
for days we laughed together, glisten now;
your flesh became translucent; and your brow
knits, gathered loosely. By the well-made bed
three portraits hang with knowing eyes, beloved,
but mine is not among them. Time has proved
our hearts both strangely mortal. If I said
I loved you once, how is it that could change?
And yet I watch you fondly; love is strange . . .

Oh, Peter, by the firelight, how bright
my thought of you remains, and if I said
I loved you once, then took him to my bed,
I did it for the need of love, one night
when you were far away. My heart endured
transfigurement―in flaming ash inured
to heartbreak and the violence of sight:
I saw myself grow old and thin and frail
with thinning hair about me, like a veil . . .
And so I loved him for myself, despite
the love between us―our first startled kiss.
But then I loved him for his humanness.
And then we both grew old, and it was right . . .

Oh, Wendy, if I fly, I fly beyond
these human hearts, these cities walled and tiered
against the night, beyond this vale of tears,
for love, if it exists, dies with the years . . .

No, Peter, love is constant as the heart
that keeps till its last beat a measured pace
and sets the fixtures of its dreams in place
by beds at first well-used, at last well-made,
and counts each face a joy, each tear a grace . . .



Horror
by Michael R. Burch

What I ache to say is beyond saying―
no words for the horror
of not loving enough,
like a mummy half-wrapped in its moldering casements
holding a lily aloft.

No, there are no words for the horror
as a tormented wind howls through the teetering floes
and the cold freezes down to my clawed hairy toes ...

What use to me, now, if the stars appear?
As I moan
the moon finds me,
fangs goring the deer.



Strange Corps(e)
by Michael R. Burch

We are all dying, haunted by life―
dying, but the living will not let us go.
We are perishing zombies, haunted by the moonglow.

With what animation we, shuffling, return
nightly, to worry Love’s worm-eaten corpse,
till, living or dead, she is wholly ours.

We are the dying, enamored of “life”―
the palest of auras, the eeriest call.
We stagger to attention ... stumble ... fall.

We have only one thought―Love’s peculiar notion,
that our duty’s to “live,” though such “living” means
night’s horrific wild hungers, its stranger dreams.

We now “live” on the flesh of eroded dreams
and no longer recoil at the victims’ screams.



Love, ah! serene ghost
by Michael R. Burch

Love, ah! serene ghost,
haunts my retelling of her,
or stands atop despairing stairs
with such pale, severe eyes,
I become another pallid specter.

But what I feel
most profoundly is this:
the absolute lack of her kiss,
the absence of her wild,
unwarranted laughter.

So that,
like a candle deprived of oxygen,
I become mere wick and tallow again.
Here and hereafter ...
gone with her now, in the darkest of nights, the flame!

I lie, pallid vision of man―the same
wan ghost of her palpitations’ claim
on my heart
that I was before.

I love her beyond and despite even shame.



Eden
by Michael R. Burch

Then earth was heaven too, a perfect garden.
Apples burgeoned and shone―unplucked on sagging boughs.
What, then, would the children eat?
Fruit indecently sweet,
redolent as incense, with a tempting aroma ...



Outcasts
by Michael R. Burch

There was a rose, a prescient shade of crimson,
the very color of blood,
that bloomed in that garden.

The most dazzling of all the Earth’s flowers,
men have forgotten it now,
with their fanciful tales of apples and serpents.

Beasts with lips called the goreflower “Love.”

The scribes have the story all wrong: four were there,
four horrid dark creatures―chattering, bickering.
Aduhm placed one red petal in Ehve’s matted hair;

he was lost in her arms
till dawn sullen and golden
imperceptibly streaked the musk-fragrant air.

Two flared nostrils quivered, two eyes remained open.

Kahyn sought me that evening, his bloodless lips curled
in a grimacelike smile. Sunken-cheeked, he approached me
in the Caverns of Similitudes, eerie Barzakh.

“We are outcasts, my brother!, God quickly deserts us.”
As though his anguish conceived in insight’s first blush
might not pale next to mine in Sheol’s gray realm.

“Shining Creature!” he named me and called me divine
as he lavished damp kisses upon my bright scales.
“Help me find me one rare gift to put Love’s gift to shame.”

“There is a dark rose with a bittersweet fragrance
as pungent as cloves: only man knows its name.
Clinging and cloying, it destroys all it touches . . .”

“But red is Ehve’s preference; while Envy is green.”
He was downcast a moment, a moment, a moment . . .
“Ah, but red is the color of blood!”

Disagreeable child, far too clever for his own good.

Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology)



No One
by Michael R. Burch

No One hears the bells tonight;
they tell him something isn’t right.
But No One is not one to rush;
he lies in grasses greenly lush
as far away a startled thrush
flees from horned owls in sinking flight.

No One hears the cannon’s roar
and muses that its voice means war
comes knocking on men’s doors tonight.
He sleeps outside in awed delight
beneath the enigmatic stars
and shivers in their cooling light.

No One knows the world will end,
that he’ll be lonely, without friend
or foe to conquer. All will be
once more, celestial harmony.
He’ll miss men’s voices, now and then,
but worlds can be remade again.



Bikini
by Michael R. Burch

Undersea, by the shale and the coral forming,
by the shell’s pale rose and the pearl’s white eye,
through the sea’s green bed of lank seaweed worming
like tangled hair where cold currents rise . . .
something lurks where the riptides sigh,
something old and pale and wise.

Something old when the world was forming
now lifts its beak, its snail-blind eye,
and with tentacles about it squirming,
it feels the cloud above it rise
and shudders, settles with a sigh,
knowing man’s demise draws nigh.



Ceremony
by Michael R. Burch

Lost in the cavernous blue silence of spring,
heavy-lidded and drowsy with slumber, I see
the dark gnats leap; the black flies fling
their slow, engorged bulks into the air above me.

Shimmering hordes of blue-green bottleflies sing
their monotonous laments; as I listen, they near
with the strange droning hum of their murmurous wings.

Though you said you would leave me, I prop you up here
and brush back red ants from your fine, tangled hair,
whispering, “I do!” . . . as the gaunt vultures stare.



Contraire
by Michael R. Burch

Where there was nothing
but emptiness
and hollow chaos and despair,

I sought Her ...

finding only the darkness
and mournful silence
of the wind entangling her hair.

Yet her name was like prayer.

Now she is the vast
starry tinctures of emptiness
flickering everywhere

within me and about me.

Yes, she is the darkness,
and she is the silence
of twilight and the night air.

Yes, she is the chaos
and she is the madness
and they call her Contraire.



Dark Twin
by Michael R. Burch

You come to me
out of the sun―
my dark twin, unreal . . .

And you are always near
although I cannot touch you;
although I trample you, you cannot feel . . .

And we cannot be parted,
nor can we ever meet
except at the feet.



East End, 1888
by Michael R. Burch

Past darkened storefronts,
hunched and contorted, bent with need
through chilling rain, he walks alone
till down the glistening cobblestones
deliberate footsteps pause, resume.

He follows, by a pub confronts
a pasty face, an overbright smile,
lips intimating easy bliss,
a boisterous, over-eager tongue.

She barters what she has to sell;
her honeyed words seem cloying, stale―
pale, tainted things of sticky guile.



A rustle of her petticoats,
a flash of bulging milk-white breast
. . . the price is set: a crown. “A tip,
a shilling more is yours,” he quotes,
“to wash your privates.” She accepts.
Saliva glistens on his lips.



An alley. There, he lifts her gown,
in answer to her question, frowns,
says―“You can call me Jack, or Rip.”



East End, 1888 (II)
by Michael R. Burch

He slouched East
through a steady downpour,
a slovenly beast
befouling each puddle
with bright footprints of blood.

Outlined in a pub door,
lewdly, wantonly, she stood . . .
mocked and brazenly offered.

He took what he could
till she afforded no more.

Now a single bright copper
glints becrimsoned by the door
of the pub where he met her.

He holds to his breast the one part
of her body she was unable to *****,
grips her heart to his wildly stammering heart . . .
unable to forgive or forget her.

Originally published by Penny Dreadful



Evil, the Rat
by Michael R. Burch

Evil lives in a hole like a rat
and sleeps in its feces,
fearing the cat.

At night it furtively creeps
through the house
while the cat sleeps.

It eats old excrement and gnaws
on steaming dung
and it will pause

between odd bites to sniff through the ****,
twitching and trembling,
for a scent of the cat ...

Evil, the rat.



Temptation
by Michael R. Burch

Jesus was always misunderstood . . .
we have that, at least, in common.
And it’s true that I found him,
shriveled with hunger,
shivering in the desert,
skeletal, emaciate,
not an ounce of fat
to warm his bones
once the bright sun set.

And it’s true, I believe,
that I offered him something to eat―
a fig, perhaps, a pomegranate, or a peach.

Hardly the great “temptation”
of which I’m accused.

He was a likeable chap, really,
and we spent a pleasant hour
discussing God―
how hard He is to know,
and impossible to please.

I left him there, the pale supplicant,
all skin and bone, at the mouth of his cave,
imploring his “Master” on callused knees.

Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology)



Role Reversal
by Michael R. Burch

The fluted lips of statues
mock the bronze gaze
of the dying sun . . .

We are nonplused, they say,
smacking their wet lips,
jubilant . . .

We are always refreshed, always undying,
always young, forever unapologetic,
forever gay, smiling,

and though it seems man has made us,
on his last day, we will see him unmade―
we will watch him decay
as if he were clay,
and we had assumed his flesh,
hissing our disappointment.



Excelsior
by Michael R. Burch

I lift my eyes and laugh, Excelsior . . .
Why do you come, wan spirit, heaven-gowned,
complaining that I am no longer “pure?”

I threw myself before you, and you frowned,
so full of noble chastity, renowned
for leaving maidens maidens. In the dark

I sought love’s bright enchantment, but your lips
were stone; my fiery metal drew no spark
to light the cold dominions of your heart.

What realms were ours? What leasehold? And what claim
upon these territories, cold and dark,
do you seek now, pale phantom? Would you light

my heart in death and leave me ashen-white,
as you are white, extinguished by the Night?



Liar
by Michael R. Burch

Chiller than a winter day,
quieter than the murmur of the sea in her dreams,
eyes wilder than the crystal spray
of silver streams,
you fill my dying thoughts.

In moments drugged with sleep
I have heard your earnest voice
leaving me no choice
save heed your hushed demands
and meet you in the sands
of an ageless arctic world.

There I kiss your lifeless lips
as we quiver in the shoals
of a sea that endlessly rolls
to meet the shattered shore.

Wild waves weep, "Nevermore,"
as you bend to stroke my hair.

That land is harsh and drear,
and that sea is bleak and wild;
only your lips are mild
as you kiss my weary eyes,
whispering lovely lies
of what awaits us there
in a land so stark and bare,
beyond all hope . . . and care.

This is one of my early poems, written as a high school sophomore or junior.



The Watch
by Michael R. Burch

Moonlight spills down vacant sills,
illuminates an empty bed.
Dreams lie in crates. One hand creates
wan silver circles, left unread
by its companion—unmoved now
by anything that lies ahead.

I watch the minutes test the limits
of ornamental movement here,
where once another hand would hover.
Each circuit—incomplete. So dear,
so precious, so precise, the touch
of hands that wait, yet ask so much.

Originally published by The Lyric



Keywords/Tags: Halloween, dark, supernatural, skeleton, witch, ghost, vampire, monsters, ghoul, werewolf, goblins, occult, mrbhalloween, mrbhallow, mrbdark

Published as the collection "Halloween Poems"

Between the cool-quarried kitchen
and paint-faded south facing door
runs a windowless wall
sugar-papered with childhood dreams.

Memories of roughly folded gifts
squirreled in satchels,
crossed creases still intact;
curled corners fixed with shiny pins.

Luminescent paint heartens the darkness of a pitch grotto
anticipating a flicked switch
to illuminate dimmed histories
of abstract symbols, visionless figures and countless fingers.

The small pink fists that captured
Time's most precious pieces,
now live with vaguely painted hope
of sheering unsteady walls
in their uncertain world.

Prescient, her essence
Casts a demure persuasion,                
Endowed with verve and vision;
Concept to consummation,
The serenely possessed,
Creator, originator,
Allusion to the eternal azure,
Logos of abstraction,
Word and image collision.

Tonal palette of faith infused reason
Beauty and sublimity,
Serve to season
Verse, canvas and film,
Mediating aesthetic, seminal senses blossom,
Lyrical each permutation,
Seeds of vibrant chroma diffusing the mystical.

Visage and hair,  her figure haunted
With perfection - a work of Art
Nurtured and lived invocation,
The canon of taste;
Crystal for the *****
Devotional fragrance ,
Holistic ethos, melodic invention,
Animated, pure -
The embodiment of redemption.

Transcending form, parenthetically  
(Merely) the decorative,  
Allure, artistry and symmetry
Superlative complexity,
Her erudition satiates, supplanting
Winds of constructive banality.

Purveyor of an uncommon savor,
She collaborates in the peculiar
Pursuit and reward,
Encounter  with depth, explored,
Human and divine, prosaic meets sublime
Igniting within an Eros
Passion for truth, being and Telos.

Visionary of grace and peace
Transforming our earthbound dissonance;
Our caprice,
Hope and abundance, the myth of scarcity,
She narrates the Good.
Pen, lens, color and stage
Vulnerable, unrepressed, effusive
Romantic articulation,
The reservoir deep,
Innately primed conduit of Love.

Beyond plebeian, cosmetic, the trite
Woman of substance, pulchritude
And delight.
Effervescent - her smile exquisite,
Eclipsing suffering,
Wordless expression, understood language.
I am transported, my imagination replete,
Sonya Rose -
Art personified; unabridged, complete.

©2008 & 2013 W.S . Warner

Mom should’ve been here by now. I sat on my frilly blue and purple polka-dotted bed waiting for the knock on the door telling me mom found my dress. Finally, it raps on my door. “Mom! Did you find it?” My eyes widen as the silky blue sways in her arms, it’s beauty sings as a caged bird let free. I gasp in admiration. “I-It’s wonderful!” I pick it up and it glides down into a perfect fit.  “I’m glad you love it. Come down after you finish getting ready.” The door thuds after her. Looking across the room I note my honey brown hair that curls into pigtails. Restraining the squeal that is caught in my throat, I travel the length of my room to the mirror.

     The mirror sits on an antique dresser that my mom found at a garage sale. At first I didn’t care much for the ancient wooden junk that is at least half a century old. Now the gold-tinted metal gleams with pride once again. Rusty gems were in carved into an arc surrounding the mystic glass. “Lydia! Can you go upstairs and get that box down for me?” Mom’s request interfered with my thoughts. … Go in that dusty attic? “Sure mom!”

       Out the door and into the hallway stood a door like any other in our house. It squeaked open as eerily as what you’d expect in a haunted house. ‘A box, a box’ than out of the side of my vision I thought I saw motion. I shook it off as just being a spider or mouse. Soon my footsteps lead me to come across a dresser and mirror identical to the one in my room. It was cluttered with cobwebs and spiders. “Not very well taken care of, are you?” I muttered the joke. I looked into the mirror expecting to see a light blue dress covered in dust and sparkly silk material, but there was no reflection at all. I looked even closer at the mirror, before realizing, there was no mirror at all.

     I looked around until I found it behind the dresser, sitting on the ground. I touched one of the gems that surprisingly glowed despite the rust. Something shone until I was blinded. A tingle ran through the hand that brushed the mirror’s gem and flew through my arm until it encompassed me, racing into my every feeling until I couldn’t feel anything. My eyes shut and refused to open themselves.


     A gentle breeze grasped my hair, as music descended from the air. I could smell what seemed to be a banquet of some kind, mixed with perfume. Slowly my eyes lifted their veil to lock with waves pounding against a brick wall. I was looking down from a balcony into the erupting sea. The white brick-made balcony was large and lonely even with the brush of people walking by. I hid behind the rose-red curtains to look around. People danced and talked. Some ate. The music paved the trail for their feet to follow, all very gracefully. The men wore suits that tails drip to their knees. Their white shirts buried under sashes of gold, red, or blue. Sometimes holding medallions, some only dressed in ties. The woman wore Victorian dresses of every color and shade. Frilled hats with flowers were arranged on their heads.

     Wait, I’m not supposed to be here. I was in the attic, going to the café with mom. What was I doing? My head ached from the effort to recall my actions. Why can’t I remember? I stumble backward only to reach the balcony’s edge. Where is this anyway?

      I dive back into the curtain to search for my answer. The softness of the curtain was a rose pushed to my nose. I peeked through the small gap to find a page carting some clothes past my hiding spot. I sneaked next to the cart being wheeled into a doorway, planning to find a way out. I lost the page and walked around until I went through an archway door. The cool air spiraled against my silk-trapped skin. The scent of flowers bloomed around me. I found the garden labyrinth.

     Walking through the maze’s hedges I arrive at a beautiful fountain displaying crystal clear pouring waters. Everywhere I gazed, flowers embraced the greenery. My breath deprived my lungs of air as I took in the sight. It was so magnificent under the light of the full moon. A few lamps lighted a sidewalk path maneuvering along the hedges. I circled the fountain, taking in the surroundings. My silk dress was shining in the dim glow. The sceneries beauty entranced me.






     I didn’t see a shadow before me, and almost fell to the ground. In a graceful swoop an arm latched around my waist to pull me to my feet. “Be careful to look where you’re going, please my lady.” He bowed his head while his slim rimmed glasses started to fall off of his face, suddenly he looked up at me; sliding them back on with a slight wave of a finger. “That garb isn’t from around here.” He noted my sky blue dress with interest. I’m not even sure where I am. “I seem a bit lost. Will you help me?” he stares at me closer, a deeper curiosity shines in his green eyes, daintily brushed by his dark hair. “My dear, if it brings you comfort to know, we are in London at the Buckingham palace.”

      I gasped; London was so far away from New York. It’s across seas. I gulped at my next question as sweat pricked the nape of my neck, “What’s todays date?” His eyes sparkled at the question. “Why, it is June 28, of 1838. The entire castle is bustling at these very words. It’s a day to remember. Now my dear, I must take my leave and see to the ballroom. Farewell.” He bowed, than turned to leave. His slow stride seemed like a dance all on it’s own. My gaze was caught on his figure following the foot trail until he had disappeared. I sighed at my first encounter with someone in this grand place. The Buckingham Palace, in 1838. …1838!! That can’t be right, it’s 2014. Then the shock hit me as if bricks fell from the castle onto my forehead; the clothes, the language, the pages, and royalty. This couldn’t be London in present Great Britain.

    I circle the garden once more before I decide to go back inside. The young noble had realized my clothes didn’t belong here, probably anyone who sees me would recognize this too. I start off towards the footpath. The melodic rhythm still swirled in the breeze. Than for a second I thought I heard a footstep. My head twists back only to see a shadow move. The cool air now seems icy. Multiple possible things to say to the night air gallop through my mind. “ Such a lovely night,” is the one I decide on. From behind me a few feet back I imagine a sigh. No, not imagined, but actually there. It’s too real. I turn on my heels just to catch a glimpse of a black cape caught in the wind, as it’s master floats into the open. “My, It is lovely. However, I didn’t realize such a strangely dressed commoner as you could enter this palace.” His smirk shows sarcasm as easily as his eyes. “I never intended to visit a palace, even less in London.” My honest answer only has him conceal his laugh.




     “I’m sure you didn’t. Yet, your dressed for a fine occasion.” His hand reaches for mine. I pull away from the willowy figured glove. “Why not allow me this dance in the garden?” I back away, aware that his voice is too prescient and I should be careful. “Are you going to be wary of me?” his gaze turned pained, his blue eyes that were once full of playfulness now melted into hurt. I unintentionally reach out for his gloved hand. His laugh echoes past the foliage. “Such a naïve girl.” Dread decided that this nobleman should be avoided at all costs. I ran towards the palace. “And so the chase begins.” He snickers and rushes after me.


     I pass through the archways, glancing back now and again to find the caped captor flying along my tracks. If only there was some way to lose him. I ducked into the nearest doorway. At the far end of the hall I could see a door with a sign saying, “Dressing room”. I flung myself under a table and tablecloth to hide myself as my pursuer rounded the corner into the hall. I tucked my head between my knees and waited for his footsteps to fade. The warm place that held me trapped was close and too easily discoverable. I held my breath and tried to sink into the darkness. I’m not here. No one can find me.

     After enough time flew by to ensure my safety, I crawled out from under the table. The cloth draped over my head. I looked back and forth, half expecting to see a smirking smile, and haughty eyes. A girl stares down at me. She’s at least ten years old. “Shhh.” I press my finger to my lips and gently smile at her as if we’re keeping a secret between us. She giggles, copies the motion to her own mouth, than delightfully skips away. I let out a sigh and stand up. I follow the hall to the dressing room. The door creaks open and I look around once more, startled by the sudden noise.

     I sneak inside hoping find that the room is abandoned. In the darkly lit room, only my footsteps sound. As far as I can tell, no one has entered lately. I walk over to the carts of clothes and run my hand over the first one on the stack. It’s a ruby-red dress with fine material and some gems similar to those in the mirror. … The mirror. Not in my room, but the attic. My head hurts again, but I know I touched its gem before winding up here. How? I look through the dresses until I find a light blue and white one. The bowed sleeves come down to my elbow with frills encasing the bottom. The neckline forms a squared area of similar white frills. A small white sash acts as a belt that drops into the skirt of the dress. Two similar white ones come down each side. I pick up the light material and set it near my feet.
      My old silk dress easily slips overhead, making way for the new clothing. After tugging tight sleeves and bodices into place the light dress swoops over my feet. I spin through the dark room only to stop at catching someone’s eye. I immediately turn towards the frozen face. It is my own reflection in a mirror. I face myself as my sight settles on the dress I wear. My honey brown hair curled over the dress from my pigtails. My eyes sparkled it’s matching blue to the dress. In the corner of the room, next to the mirror, sat a large wooden box. I looked through it to find that it was full of jewelry and accessories. I prodded its contents until I found sky blue bows to wrap in my pigtails.

     I walked into the open hallway, now littered with people going to and fro. Anyone from passerby’s, young nobility, servants, and pages. Once the hall emptied I fled the room, hurrying through the corridors until I met with the room that created the harmonious trance. At the ends of the great ballroom sat crowds eating and laughing. Clusters of on-goers danced and chatted. In the middle of the farthest side of the room sat a throne that was embroidered with metal marks from centuries of legends. On the throne sat a woman at least eighteen of age. Her regal crown shone despite other attractions surrounding the dance room. A page strode over to her as she flourished her hand for his service. He stood and listened intently to her whispers. Finally, he stood and roared for the room’s attention. From his mouth spilled cheer and wistfulness, as he demanded the crowd’s ear. “Our young Queen Victoria’s coronation has completed. Now starts a new era! Let the celebration proceed.” The room reverberated with hope, love, and admiration for their new ruler.

     ‘Queen Victoria has been crowned’ having no clue how to find a way home, I disconsolately decide to join in the festivities. The crowd moves into a larger room. I stagger after them; the mass pushing everyone forward. We pass the kitchens. The aroma of cakes and deserts of every kind rises into the cool night air. The only smell more perceptible than delicate delights is the perfume penetrating the entire castle. We enter a by far more spacious ballroom. Empty amphitheater seats loom overhead, tied into the walls for onlookers to watch the ball unravel. Once again I glance at these to notice black material hangs over the edge. A head moves as people fill the seats. A nobleman with a black cape and familiar blue eyes takes their seat next to men and woman of high status. I walk into the mop to hide myself, while watching him. He laughs and chats with them as if he’s known them all his life.


      Unable to watch where I’m going, I trip. The harsh, solid ground hits my knee as if I’ve met a tornado. I wince at the pain as I strain myself to stand. A firm, but careful hand grabs mine. I look up into green eyes shaded by recognizable glasses. “My dear, you are very clumsy.” He smiles at me as I pat my dress back into place. “I see we’ve met again.” My response comes weakly as the sore from my knee makes me flinch. “I don’t think you’ve told me your name.” I inquire. “You have not requested my name, so I haven’t told it. However, if you do me the honor of a dance, my secret may be leaked.”  He bowed and offered me his arm, as I timidly accept it.

     A new song disrupts the last, as new pairs take the stage. He walks me onto the floor, and diligently starts to dance. I watch my feet, not wanting to mistake my pace. “Lift your chin, my dear. You don’t seem to but much of a church-bell.” I looked up at him puzzled. “Church-bell?” As he tried to conceal a grin, his glasses couldn’t suppress the laughter in his eyes. “Your rather quiet. And most likely not from around London, are you?” I looked to the ground once more. Should I tell him or not? Will it start problems, or will I be okay? “It’s fine, I shall not expect you to answer a question you wish not to.” I looked up at him, solemnly. “I promised to introduce myself, correct?” I nodded, as the music that echoed around us faded into the next song.

      His movements were so fluid; he was a wave at the end of the day, flowing into the sunset. “Miss, I am known by most as William Anderson. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He procured my sweaty palm into his, tenderly swiping his mouth to my fingers. I let my hand be brought back into the dance as I searched for words to speak. Once the dance ended a few moments later, I curtsey and murmur, “It’s nice to meet you. I am Lydia Olsen.” At my gesture he bows, and requests once more, “Am I trustworthy enough to understand why you are in a mysterious place you don’t understand?” My answer had been decided and started to splatter from my mouth. “Y…”









     The next sound bounces along the room, it’s symphony starting. My words mix into the noise. In my vision of the seats above, snowy dots shoot arrows in my direction. Blue eyes gaze down at me, their iciness piercing me as icicles prickle my skin. I exchange a glance with William, nod and answer, “You are. I’ll explain.” My discomfort is surely recognizable. I often peek over my shoulder above as we dance. The shadow with a glare starts his voyage through the seats to reach the stairs that pillar into the wall. He descends from the tower, only adding to my panic. My hand seizes Williams, as I give him an apologetic smile. We hurry from the room, stumbling over each other’s feet. His graceful prance, now a faltering wreak.

     Once we are outside the ballroom, I turn towards him. “I trust you, so please understand, I live In the USA in 2014. Not London, not Even in the 1800’s.” His expression is masked, but I’m sure that I’ve confused him. “I went back into time, from the future.” The simple words struck a chord with him, his glasses tilted off his nose as he listens intently. “The future? How?” even I don’t know how to answer such questions. “I’m not sure. I was in the attic with a mirror, than … ****! I’m here.” Confusion once again wonders onto his face. “I went into a storage room with old things, and found a mirror, touched a gem, now I was here.”

     “I see, but why did we run away from the celebration? I was looking forward to another dance with you.” His casual smile does nothing to conceal unasked questions. I’m not sure how to answer them ei

In clear dawn’s prescient light I saw
Integrity of man withdraw,
Withdraw from that integral grace
Illuminated in that place.
A clear blue light in silhouette
Of moon and mountain pirouette,
A truthfulness of stark relief
Quite unencumbered by deceit.
Unencumbered by the paws
Of those who bare discordant claws,
They who twist God’s clear blue light
To manifest their grip on might,
Those who would, quite by perchance,
Enlist oblivion’s nuclear dance.

This hanging crescent moon aloft
Above our mountain’s darkened croft,
Delicately etched in vivid glow
Of promised new dawn’s velvet show…..
Dependant now on exchanged themes
Of thermonuclear warfare’s screams.

But then…..
Old soldiers call from War afar
To we who listen, jaw ajar,
To wisdom earnt by good blood spilt
Be of Field Grey or Scottish Kilt…..

“Fight no more this curse of War”
They, from beyond the  grave, implore,
“We sacrificed our youth for thee
So thou might dwell in harmony”

In clear dawn’s prescient light they saw
A slit of sunshine’s open door,
Where sanity, just, could pave the way
For laughter’s peal to save this day.

M.
“Lest We Forget “
ANZAC Day
25 April 2017
HAMILTON, NEW ZEALAND

PEACE ON EARTH THROUGH LOVE:  Planet Peace


Turning the World Right-Side In

by

Tod Howard Hawks


PREAMBLE:  All we have is our little planet, Earth. For the vast majority of my life, I have thought, “What would it be like to have Peace on Earth?” But for only two, maybe three, weeks every year, usually around Christmas, I would see the phrase “Peace on Earth," usually on Christmas cards. But after Christmas, I would not hear or see that sanguine notion for 11 more months. The longer I lived, the more this  annual ritual bothered me. At Andover, I had studied European history. At Columbia, I had majored in American history. Over time, I increasingly came to the realization that in both prep school and college, I had essentially been studying about wars on top of wars and their aftermaths:  millions and millions and millions of human beings being killed. Then, when I got curious, I used my computer to find out that, according to many scholars, only a little over 200, out of roughly 3,400 years of recorded history, were deemed “peaceful.” Humanity, I concluded, had a horrible track record when it came to effectuating “Peace on Earth.” And during my lifetime things have not gotten any better.  

SPIRITUAL ECOLOGY:  There is one land, one sky, one sea, one people. The boundaries that divide us are not on maps, but in our minds and hearts. John Donne was prescient. Earth is as impoverished as its poorest Citizen, as healthy as her sickest, as educated as her most ignorant. If we pollute the upper waters of the Mississippi, then ineluctably we shall pollute the Indian Ocean. If we continue to pollute our air, the current 7,500,000,000 Citizens on Earth will die. All species will be accorded the same concern and care as Citizens. The imminent threats of nuclear holocaust and catastrophic climate change we need urgently to prevent. This is the truth of Spiritual Ecology.  

CAMPAIGN FOR EARTH:  If we can wage war, why should we not wage peace? Nations are anachronistic;  therefore, there will be none. There will only be Earth and Citizens of Earth. Each Citizen will devote a sizable number of years of her/his life to the betterment of humankind and Earth. All military weapons--from handguns to hydrogen bombs--will be destroyed, and any future weapons will be prohibited. All jails and prisons will be closed, replaced by Love Centers (see below). Automation and other technological advances will enhance the opportunity for all Citizens exponentially to realize their potential, personally and spiritually. There will be no money. All precious resources and assets of Earth will be distributed equally among all Citizens. The only things Citizens will own are the right to be treated well and the responsibility to treat Earth and all its Citizens well. All Citizens will be free to travel anywhere, at any time, on Earth. All Citizens will be free to choose their own personal and professional goals, but will do no harm to Earth or other Citizens. All Citizens will be afforded the same resources to live a full, safe, and satisfying life, including the best education, health care, housing, food, and other necessities throughout Earth.

LOVE:  The only way to change anything for the good, for good, is through love. Love is what every living creation on Earth needs. Love Centers are for those Citizens who were not loved enough, or at all, especially at their earliest of ages. Concomitantly, they act out their pain hurtfully, sometimes lethally, often against other Citizens. Citizens who are emotionally ill will be separated from those who are not. Jails and prisons only abet this deleterious situation. Some Citizens in pain may need to be constrained in Love Centers humanely while they recover, through being loved, so they do not hurt themselves or others. In some extreme cases, Citizens may be in so much pain that they remain violent for a long time.  Thus, they may need to be constrained for the rest of their lives, but always loved, never punished. In time, Citizens, when loved enough, will only have love to give, and the need for Love Centers will commensurately decline.

EARTH:  In 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the commission that wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. UDHR, with some updates and revisions, will serve as the moral and legal guidepost for Earth.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY:  To honor and remember the former nations on Earth, one member will be elected by Citizens from each of these former nations to serve a one five-year term as a member of the General Assembly. In succeeding elections, Citizens currently residing at that time in areas that were formerly nations, will again, in perpetuity, vote for one Citizen also residing in that area, for a one five-year term as a member of the General Assembly.
  
FIRST VOTE:  The first vote of all Citizens will be to establish CAMPAIGN FOR EARTH. Majority rules. All Citizens will have access to  Internet voting, as well as access to cell phones and other types of computers. Citizens will have her/his own secured ID codes. Citizens will have to be 18 or older to vote. Citizens will be encouraged to bring before the General Assembly all ideas and recommendations, as well as any concerns or complaints, which will be considered and responded to promptly. Citizens’ ideas and recommendations will be formed into proposals drafted by members of the General Assembly. Citizens will vote on these proposals of each month during the days of the following month. Citizens of Earth will be Earth’s government. Members of the General Assembly will be facilitators who will work with millions of volunteers. There will be no president of Earth.

ALLCOTT MOVEMENT:  If the multinational corporations that now rule Earth do not abide by the outcome of a majority vote in favor of CAMPAIGN FOR EARTH, Citizens of Earth will instigate the Allcott Movement, a one-at-a-time mancott, womancott, girlcott, boycott--hence, Allcott--against each multinational corporation unwilling to relinquish control of its global business and give it, and all its assets, to Citizens of Earth. Citizens will continue the Allcott Movement until all multinational corporations have done the same. All personal and smaller-business wealth will be converted into resources to be distributed equally to all Citizens. All proceeds in excess of what’s needed reasonably by each Citizen will be saved for future generations. No violence of any kind will occur during the transfer of these resources. Citizens will take these steps because they are the moral, the right, steps to take to save all living creations on Earth, and Earth itself.

CELEBRATE AND SHARE: If you were to take a photograph of humanity and gaze at it, you would see a beautiful mosaic of mankind of different, beautiful colors. If you could step into the photograph, you would hear a melody of languages and dialects. You could have a worldwide picnic with all your sisters and brothers and experience different customs and taste different, delicious foods. And in moments of silence, all of you could pray in your different religions, separate but together at the same time. You would also share the same human laughter and joys and feel the same sorrows and cry the same tears, all in Peace on Earth eternal. All of you would come to delight in these differences, not dread them. You would look forward to celebrating and sharing with your family, not killing them. The spiritual whole would be larger than the sum of its sacred parts.

A QUANTUM LEAP:  The world, over millennia, keeps evolving. Over 3,200 years of recorded history, powers, nations keep shifting, sometimes seismically. Now is the time for not only the grandest seismic shift ever, but also the one that will save Earth and all living creations upon it. It is time for Earth to become Earth--not a scattering of over 200 nations with artificial borders, but an Earth that has one land, one sea, one sky, one people. The boundaries that have simplistically divided us for eons are not on maps, but in our minds and hearts. The air and water of Earth, even the pandemic, take no notice of national borders, nor should we, the Citizens of Earth. Technology, with its innumerable advances, has made us into a world when all can become one. We are free to be our real selves, to spend our variegated lives not aggrandizing, but by sharing and giving. Rather than dreading our superficial differences--our different skin colors, our different cultures, our different religions, our different languages--we can explore and enjoy them. Let us finally be what we truly have been forever, one big, worldwide family of humanity. No more wars, no more weapons, no more killing. No more hunger, no more homelessness, no more hopelessness. No more ignorance, no more illnesses, no more social classes. This is the quantum leap of which I speak.

PEACE ON EARTH:  Wealth is not worth. The mansuetude of loving, and being loved, are. When love is your currency, all else is counterfeit. Citizens will be able to go about creating their own happiness that is built on love-based personal relationships and professional activities. No longer will human beings be able to profit from another’s pain. With love at the center of being and living, there will be no more wars, no more dictators, no more corruption. Finally, there will only be Peace on Earth forever.

Copyright 2023 Tod Howard Hawks

A graduate of Phillips Andover Academy and Columbia College, Columbia University, Tod Howard Hawks has been a poet and a human-rights advocate his entire adult life.

todhawks2@gmail.com

(Please share this commentary with others and email me if you wish to join all the other Citizens of Earth around the world in helping to save Earth through LOVE.)

steel
oil
engineering
labor
converge
round a
Rocket 88
dead man’s
curve

prescient
precocious
capitalists
concoct
Edsels
Vegas
Che­velles

leaping
Impalas
leak
oil
staining
every
American
driveway

Pintos
chase
Gremlins
across
The Great Plains
gassing up
at
Rt 66
fillin
stations

scramblin
Midnight
Ramblers
detour to
take refuge
with Goats in
Big Sky
Indian
garages

440
Mustangs
nip
327
Stingrays
and
Mach IV
Cobras
get
snake bit
by Dart
wielding
Mopar
muscle
cars

long fins
chrome bumpers
and round fenders
still get bent in
Havana

but

Motor City is broke
nations outta gas
whole **** country
needs an overhaul

Ike Turner/Jackie Brenston: Rocket 88

Nelson Riddle: Route 66

7/19/13
Oakland
jbm

These are poems about Adam and Eve, Lucifer aka Satan aka Mephistopheles, the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, the forbidden fruit, "original sin," the Fall and its bitter aftermath...



Eden
by Michael R. Burch

Then earth was heaven too, a perfect garden.
Apples burgeoned and shone—unplucked on sagging boughs.
What, then, would the children eat? 
Fruit indecently sweet, 
redolent as incense, with a tempting aroma...

Why did the biblical god want to keep Adam and Eve in an animal state, not knowing good from evil and running around naked like animals? Good parents want their children to seek knowledge, so why did Yahweh ****** Adam and Eve for seeking knowledge? And why did Yahweh tell them it was evil to eat the forbidden fruit when he had denied them the ability to know good from evil? It was like putting poisoned milk before two cats and saying, "It's evil to drink the milk!" Of course cats have no concept of "evil" and just do what comes naturally. So, too, with Adam and Eve. If there was a fall, they were obviously set up to fall, by a terrible father.



Outcasts of Eden
by Michael R. Burch

There was a rose, a prescient shade of crimson, 
the very color of blood, 
that bloomed in that garden.

The most dazzling of all the Earth's flowers, 
men have forgotten it now, 
with their fanciful tales of apples and serpents.

Beasts with lips called the goreflower "Love."

The scribes have the story all wrong: four were there, 
four horrid dark creatures—chattering, bickering.

Aduhm placed one red petal in Ehve's matted hair; 

he was lost in her arms
till dawn sullen and golden
imperceptibly streaked the musk-fragrant air.

Two flared nostrils quivered, two eyes remained open.

Kahyn sought me that evening, his bloodless lips curled
in a grimacelike smile. Sunken-cheeked, he approached me
in the Caverns of Similitudes, eerie Barzakh.

"We are outcasts, my brother!, God quickly deserts us."
As though his anguish conceived in insight's first blush
might not pale next to mine in Sheol's gray realm.

"Shining Creature!" he named me and called me divine
as he lavished damp kisses upon my bright scales.
"Help me find me one rare gift to put Love's gift to shame."

"There is a dark rose with a bittersweet fragrance
as pungent as cloves: only man knows its name.
Clinging and cloying, it destroys all it touches..."

"But red is Ehve's preference; while Envy is green."
He was downcast a moment, a moment, a moment...
"Ah, but red is the color of blood!"

Disagreeable child, far too clever for his own good.

Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology) 



Temptation
by Michael R. Burch

Jesus was always misunderstood...
we have that, at least, in common.

And it's true that I found him, 
shriveled with hunger, 
shivering in the desert, 
skeletal, emaciate, 
not an ounce of fat
to warm his bones
once the bright sun set.

And it's true, I believe, 
that I offered him something to eat—
a fig, perhaps, a pomegranate, or a peach.

Hardly the great "temptation"
of which I'm accused.

He was a likeable chap, really, 
and we spent a pleasant hour
discussing God—
how hard He is to know, 
and impossible to please.

I left him there, the pale supplicant, 
all skin and bone, at the mouth of his cave, 
imploring his "Master" on callused knees.

Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology) 



lust!
by michael r. burch

i was only a child
in a world dark and wild
seeking affection
in eyes mild

and in all my bright dreams
sweet love shimmered, beguiled ...

but the black-robed Priest
who called me the least
of all god’s creation
then spoke for the Beast:

He called my great passion a thing base, defiled!

He condemned me to hell,
the foul Ne’er-Do-Well,
for the sake of the copper
His Pig-Snout could smell
in the purse of my mother,
“the ***** jezebel.”

my sweet passions condemned
by degenerate men?
and she so devout
she exclaimed, “yay, aye-men!” ...

together we learned why Religion is hell.



You! 
by Michael R. Burch

For forty years You have not spoken to me; 
I heard the dull hollow echo of silence
as though strange communion between us.

For forty years You would not open to me; 
You remained closed, hard and tense, 
like a clenched fist.

For forty years You have not broken me
with Your alien ways, 
prevarications and distance.

Like a child dismissed, 
I have watched You prey upon the hope in me, 
knowing "mercy" is chance

and "heaven"—a list.

Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology) 

I call mercy "chance" and heaven a "list" because the bible says its "god" predestines some people to be "vessels of mercy" and others to be "vessels of destruction." Thus mercy is reduced to the chance of birth and heaven is a precompiled list of the lucky chosen few. Of course there is no reason to believe in such a diabolical "god" or such an unjust "heaven"... but billions have, and do.



Pagans Protest the Intolerance of Christianity
by Michael R. Burch

“We have a common sky.” — Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (c. 345-402)

We had a common sky
before the Christians came.

We thought there might be gods
but did not know their names.

The common stars above us?
They winked, and would not tell.

Yet now our fellow mortals claim
our questions merit hell!

The cause of our damnation?
They claim they’ve seen the LIGHT ...

but still the stars wink down at us,
as wiser beings might.



One of the Flown
by Michael R. Burch

Forgive me for not having known
you were one of the flown—
flown from the distant haunts
of someone else’s enlightenment,
alighting here to a darkness all your own . . .

I imagine you perched,
pretty warbler, in your starched
dress, before you grew bellicose . . .
singing quaint love’s highest falsetto notes,
brightening the pew of some dilapidated church . . .

But that was before autumn’s
messianic dark hymns . . .
Deepening on the landscape—winter’s inevitable shadows.
Love came too late; hope flocked to bare meadows,
preparing to leave. Then even the thought of life became grim,

thinking of Him . . .
To flee, finally,—that was no whim,
no adventure, but purpose.
I see you now a-wing: pale-eyed, intent, serious:
always, always at the horizon’s broadening rim . . .

How long have you flown now, pretty voyager?
I keep watch from afar: pale lover and ******.



what the “Chosen Few” really pray for
by Michael R. Burch

We are ready to be robed in light,
angel-bright

despite
Our intolerance;

ready to enter Heaven and never return
(dark, this sojourn);

ready to worse-ship any gaud
able to deliver Us from this flawed

existence;
We pray with the persistence

of actual saints
to be delivered from all earthly constraints:

just kiss each uplifted Face
with lips of gentlest grace,

cooing the sweetest harmonies
while brutally crushing Our enemies!

ah-Men!



***** Nilly
by Michael R. Burch

for the Demiurge, aka Yahweh/Jehovah

Isn't it silly, ***** Nilly? 
You made the stallion, 
you made the filly, 
and now they sleep
in the dark earth, stilly.
Isn't it silly, ***** Nilly? 

Isn't it silly, ***** Nilly? 
You forced them to run
all their days uphilly.
They ran till they dropped?
life's a pickle, dilly.
Isn't it silly, ***** Nilly? 

Isn't it silly, ***** Nilly? 
They say I should worship you! 
Oh, really! 
They say I should pray
so you'll not act illy.
Isn't it silly, ***** Nilly? 



Adam Lay Ybounden
(anonymous Medieval English Lyric, circa early 15th century AD) 
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Adam lay bound, bound in a bond; 
Four thousand winters, he thought, were not too long.
And all was for an apple, an apple that he took, 
As clerics now find written in their book.
But had the apple not been taken, or had it never been, 
We'd never have had our Lady, heaven's queen.
So blesséd be the time the apple was taken thus; 
Therefore we sing, "God is gracious!"



No One
by Michael R. Burch

No One hears the bells tonight; 
they tell him something isn't right.
But No One is not one to rush; 
he lies in grasses greenly lush
as far away a startled thrush
flees from horned owls in sinking flight.

No One hears the cannon's roar
and muses that its voice means war
comes knocking on men's doors tonight.
He sleeps outside in awed delight
beneath the enigmatic stars
and shivers in their cooling light.

No One knows the world will end, 
that he'll be lonely, without friend
or foe to conquer. All will be
once more, celestial harmony.
He'll miss men's voices, now and then, 
but worlds can be remade again.



Bikini
by Michael R. Burch

Undersea, by the shale and the coral forming, 
by the shell's pale rose and the pearl's white eye, 
through the sea's green bed of lank seaweed worming
like tangled hair where cold currents rise...
something lurks where the riptides sigh, 
something old and pale and wise.

Something old when the world was forming
now lifts its beak, its snail-blind eye, 
and with tentacles about it squirming, 
it feels the cloud above it rise
and shudders, settles with a sigh, 
knowing man's demise draws nigh.



Ceremony
by Michael R. Burch

Lost in the cavernous blue silence of spring, 
heavy-lidded and drowsy with slumber, I see
the dark gnats leap; the black flies fling
their slow, engorged bulks into the air above me.

Shimmering hordes of blue-green bottleflies sing
their monotonous laments; as I listen, they near
with the strange droning hum of their murmurous wings.
Though you said you would leave me, I prop you up here
and brush back red ants from your fine, tangled hair, 
whispering, "I do!"... as the gaunt vultures stare.



Exile
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We have often heard of Adam's banishment from Eden, 
but with far greater humiliation, I abandon your garden.



Where We Dwell
by Michael R. Burch

Night within me.
Never morning.
Stars uncounted.
Shadows forming.
Wind arising
where we dwell
reaches Heaven, 
reeks of Hell.

Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology) 



What Immense Silence
by Michael R. Burch

What immense silence
comforts those who kneel here
beneath these vaulted ceilings
cavernous and vast? 

What luminescence stained
by patchwork panels of bright glass
illuminates drained faces
as the crouching gargoyles leer? 

What brings them here?
pale, tearful congregations, 
knowing all Hope is past, 
faithfully, year upon year? 

Or could they be right? Perhaps
Love is, implausibly, near
and I alone have not seen It...
But, if so, still, I must ask: 

why is it God that they fear? 

Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology) 



Double Cross
by Michael R. Burch

Come to the cross;
contemplate all loss
and how little was gained
by those who remained
uncrucified.



Dabble Dactyls
by Michael R. Burch

Sniggledy-Wriggledy
Jesus Christ’s enterprise
leaves me in awe of
the rich men he loathed!

But should a Sadducee
settle for trifles?
His disciples now rip off
the Lord they betrothed.



I, Lazarus
by Michael R. Burch

I, Lazarus, without a heart,
devoid of blood and spiritless,
lay in the darkness, meritless:
my corpse—a thing cold, dead, apart.

But then I thought I heard—a Voice,
a Voice that called me from afar.
And so I stood and laughed, bizarre:
a thing embalmed, made to rejoice!

I ran ungainly-legged to see
who spoke my name, and then I knew
him by the light. His name is True,
and now he is the life in me!

I never died again! Believe!
(Oops! Seems it was a brief reprieve.)



To Know You as Mary
by Michael R. Burch

To know You as Mary,
when You spoke her name
and her world was never the same ...
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom.

O, then I would laugh
and be glad that I came,
never minding the chill, the disconsolate rain ...
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom.

I might not think this earth
the sharp focus of pain
if I heard You exclaim—
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom

my most unexpected, unwarranted name!
But you never spoke. Explain?



Prayer for a Merciful, Compassionate, etc., God to ****** His Creations Quickly & Painlessly, Rather than Slowly & Painfully
by Michael R. Burch

Lord, **** me fast and please do it quickly!
Please don’t leave me gassed, archaic and sickly!
Why render me mean, rude, wrinkly and prickly?
Lord, why procrastinate?

Lord, we all know you’re an expert killer!
Please, don’t leave me aging like Phyllis Diller!
Why torture me like some poor sap in a thriller?
God, grant me a gentler fate!

Lord, we all know you’re an expert at ******
like Abram—the wild-eyed demonic goat-herder
who’d slit his son’s throat without thought at your order.
Lord, why procrastinate?

Lord, we all know you’re a terrible sinner!
What did dull Japheth eat for his 300th dinner
after a year on the ark, growing thinner and thinner?
God, grant me a gentler fate!

Dear Lord, did the lion and tiger compete
for the last of the lambkin’s sweet, tender meat?
How did Noah preserve his fast-rotting wheat?
God, grant me a gentler fate!

Lord, why not be a merciful Prelate?
Do you really want me to detest, loathe and hate
the Father, the Son and their Ghostly Mate?
Lord, why procrastinate?



Star Crossed
by Michael R. Burch

Remember—
night is not like day;
the stars are closer than they seem ...
now, bending near, they seem to say
the morning sun was merely a dream
ember.



The beauty of the flower fades,
its petals wither to charades...
—Michael R. Burch



the U-turn poem
by michael r. burch

Life so defaulty,
Life so unfair,
why do wee prize U,
what do U care?

LORD who lets unborns
drown in a flood,
CELESTIAL ABORTIONIST,
r U sure Ur understood?



Hellion
by michael r. burch

cold as stone,
cold to the bone,
so cold inside even icebergs moan,
such is ur Gaud on hiss icy throne.

lines written for a luverly Gaud who cant be bothered to save pisspot peeple who guess wrong about which ire-ational re-ligion to believe.

“Hellion” is a pun on “he-lion” as in the “Lion of Judah” and “hell-lion.”



yet another ode to a graceless faceless Creator albeit with thoughts of possibly rescinding prior compliments
by michael r. burch

who created this graceless universe?
why praise its Creator? who could be worse?
why praise man’s Berater with obsequious verse?
job’s wife was right: he’s nobody’s nurse.



ur-Gent prayer request
by michael r. burch

where did ur Gaud originate?
in the minds of men so full of hate
they commanded moms to stone their kids,
which u believe (brains on the skids)
was “the word of Gaud”!
                     debate?
too late & of course it’s useless:
please pray to be less clueless.

The title involves a pun, since the “ur-Gent” would be the biblical “god.”



Religion is regarded by fools as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful. — Seneca, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Non-Word to the Wise
by Michael R. Burch

The wise will never cry, “Save!”
The wise desire a quiet grave.



sonnet to non-science and nonsense/nunsense
by michael r. burch

ur Gaud is a fiasco,
a rapscallion and a rascal;
he murdered lovely eve,
so what’s there to “believe”?

and who made eve so curious?
why should ur Gaud be furious
when every half-wit parent knows
where bright kids will stick their no’s(e)!

no wise and loving father
would slaughter his own daughter!
ur Gaud’s a hole-y terror!
CONSIDER THE SOURCE OF ERROR:

though ur bible’s a giant hit,
its writers were full of sh-t.



We Know It All
by Michael R. Burch

We rile. We gall. We know it all
because we’ve read the Bible,
which tells us genocide’s “God’s will”
along with bashing in kids’ skulls
and other forms of libel.

The earth is flat, our Book says so!
The Lord will torture our rational foe!
(We lack the compassion to tell the fiend “No!”)

God’s on his throne, the Angels are winking,
applauding our lack of critical thinking.
We’re drowning in crap. We’re stinking and sinking.

Eve once petted friendly T-Rexes!
A “witch” should be ****** for unprovable hexes!
It’s a “sin” to make love if one’s lover has exes!

Girls were enslaved and ***** by their “masters”!
Our Book is the source of so many disasters!
The earth’s overheating? Let’s burn it up faster!



Yet Another Sh-tty Ditty
by Michael R. Burch

Here’s my ditty:
Life is sh-tty,
Then you get old
And more’s the pity.

Truth be told,
We’re bought and sold,
Sheep in the fold
Sheared lickety-splitty.

But chin’s up,
What’s the use of crying?
We’ve a certain escape:
Welcome to dying!


Snap Shots
by Michael R. Burch

Our daughters must be celibate,
die virgins. We triangulate
their early paths to heaven (for
the martyrs they’ll soon conjugate).

We like to hook a little tail.
We hope there’s decent *** in jail.
Don’t fool with us; our bombs are smart!
(We’ll send the plans, ASAP, e-mail.)

The soul is all that matters; why
hoard gold if it offends the eye?
A pension plan? Don’t make us laugh!
We have your plan for sainthood. (Die.)



Breakings
by Michael R. Burch

I did it out of pity.
I did it out of love.
I did it not to break the heart of a tender, wounded dove.

But gods without compassion
ordained: Frail things must break!
Now what can I do for her shattered psyche’s sake?

I did it not to push.
I did it not to shove.
I did it to assist the flight of indiscriminate Love.

But gods, all mad as hatters,
who legislate in all such matters,
ordained that everything irreplaceable shatters.



A coming day
by Michael R. Burch

for my mother, due to her hellish religion

There will be a day,
a day when the lightning strikes from a rainbowed mist
when it will be too late, too late for me to say
that I found your faith unblessed.

There will be a day,
a day when the storm clouds gather, ominous,
when it will be too late, too late to put away
this darkness that came between us.



Hellbound
by Michael R. Burch

Mother, it’s dark
and you never did love me
because you put Yahweh and Yeshu
above me.

Did they ever love you
or cling to you? No.
Now Mother, it’s cold
and I fear for my soul.

Mother, they say
you will leave me and go
to some distant “heaven”
I never shall know.

If that’s your choice,
you made it. Not me.
You brought me to life;
will you nail me to the tree?

Christ! Mother, they say
God condemned me to hell.
If the Devil’s your God
then farewell, farewell!

Or if there is Love
in some other dimension,
let’s reconcile there
and forget such cruel detention.



Crescendo Against Heaven
by Michael R. Burch

As curiously formal as the rose,
the imperious Word grows
until it sheds red-gilded leaves:
then heaven grieves
love’s tiny pool of crimson recrimination
against God, its contention
of the price of salvation.

These industrious trees,
endlessly losing and re-losing their leaves,
finally unleashing themselves from earth, lashing
themselves to bits, washing
themselves free
of all but the final ignominy
of death, become
at last: fast planks of our coffins, dumb.

Together now, rude coffins, crosses,
death-cursed but bright vermilion roses,
bodies, stumps, tears, words: conspire
together with a nearby spire
to raise their Accusation Dire ...
to scream, complain, to point out these
and other Dark Anomalies.

God always silent, ever afar,
distant as Bethlehem’s retrograde star,
we point out now, in resignation:
You asked too much of man’s beleaguered nation,
gave too much strength to his Enemy,
as though to prove Your Self greater than He,
at our expense, and so men die
(whose accusations vex the sky)
yet hope, somehow, that You are good ...
just, O greatest of Poets!, misunderstood.



Advice for Evangelicals
by Michael R. Burch

“... so let your light shine before men ...”

Consider the example of the woodland anemone:
she preaches no sermons but — immaculate — shines,
and rivals the angels in bright innocence and purity —
the sweetest of divines.

And no one has heard her engage in hypocrisy
since the beginning of time — an oracle so mute,
so profound in her silence and exemplary poise
she makes lessons moot.

So consider the example of the saintly anemone
and if you’d convince us Christ really exists,
then let him be just as sweet, just as guileless
and equally as gracious to bless.



Heaven Bent
by Michael R. Burch

This life is hell; it can get no worse.
Summon the coroner, the casket, the hearse!
But I’m upwardly mobile. How the hell can I know?
I can only go up; I’m already below!



Winter Night
by Michael R. Burch

Who will be ******,
who embalmed
for all eternity?

The night weighs heavy on me—
leaden, sullen, cold.
O, but my thoughts are light,

like the weightless windblown snow.

Published by Nisqually Delta Review



Intimations
by Michael R. Burch

Let mercy surround us
with a sweet persistence.

Let love propound to us
that life is infinitely more than existence.

Published by Katrina Anthology



Flight
by Michael R. Burch

Poetry captures
less than reality
the spirit of things

being the language
not of the lordly falcon
but of the dove with broken wings

whose heavenward flight
though brutally interrupted
is ever towards the light.

Published by Katrina Anthology



Ave Maria
by Michael R. Burch

Ave Maria,
Maiden mild,
listen to my earnest prayer.
Listen, O, and be beguiled.
Ave Maria.

Ave Maria,
Maiden mild,
be Mother now to every child
beset by earth’s thorned briars wild.
Ave Maria.

Ave Maria,
Maiden mild,
embrace us with your Love and Grace.
Let us look upon your Face.
Ave Maria.

Ave Maria,
Maiden mild,
please attend to our earnest call—
When will Love be All in All?
Ave Maria.

Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch



A Possible Argument for Mercy
by Michael R. Burch

Did heaven ever seem so far?
Remember–we are as You were,
but all our lives, from birth to death—
Gethsemane in every breath.



Birthday Poem to Myself
by Michael R. Burch

LORD, be no longer this Distant Presence,

Star-Afar, Righteous-Anonymous,
but come! Come live among us;

come dwell again,
happy child among men—

men rejoicing to have known you
in the familiar manger’s cool

sweet light scent of unburdened hay.
Teach us again to be light that way,

with a chorus of angelic songs lessoned above.
Be to us again that sweet birth of Love

in the only way men can truly understand.
Do not frown darkening down upon an unrighteous land

planning fierce Retributions we require, and deserve,
but remember the child you were; believe

in the child I was, alike to you in innocence
a little while, all sweetness, and helpless without pretense.

Let us be little children again, magical in your sight.
Grant me this boon! Is it not my birthright—

just to know you, as you truly were, and are?
Come, be my friend. Help me understand and regain Hope’s long-departed star!



Learning to Fly
by Michael R. Burch

We are learning to fly
every day . . .

learning to fly—
away, away . . .

O, love is not in the ephemeral flight,
but love, Love! is our destination—

graced land of eternal sunrise, radiant beyond night!
Let us bear one another up in our vast migration.



The Gardener’s Roses
by Michael R. Burch

Mary Magdalene, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, “Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.”

I too have come to the cave;
within: strange, half-glimpsed forms
and ghostly paradigms of things.
Here, nothing warms

this lightening moment of the dawn,
pale tendrils spreading east.
And I, of all who followed Him,
by far the least . . .

The women take no note of me;
I do not recognize
the men in white, the gardener,
these unfamiliar skies . . .

Faint scent of roses, then—a touch!
I turn, and I see: You.
"My Lord, why do You tarry here:
Another waits, Whose love is true?"

"Although My Father waits, and bliss;
though angels call—ecstatic crew!—
I gathered roses for a Friend.
I waited here, for You."



Come Spring
by Michael R. Burch

for the Religious Right

Come spring we return, innocent and hopeful, to the ******,
beseeching Her to bestow
Her blessings upon us.

Pitiable sinners, we bow before Her,
nay, grovel,
as She looms above us, aglow
in Her Purity.

We know
all will change in an instant; therefore
in the morning we will call her,
an untouched maiden no more,
“*****.”

The so-called Religious Right prizes virginity in women and damns them for doing what men do. I have long been a fan of women like Tallulah Bankhead, Marilyn Monroe and Mae West, who decided what’s good for the gander is equally good for the goose.



Kingdom Freedom
by Michael R. Burch

LORD, grant me a rare sweet spirit of forgiveness.
Let me have none of the lividness
of religious outrage.

LORD, let me not be over-worried
about the lack of “morality” around me.
Surround me,

not with law’s restrictive cage,
but with Your spirit, freer than the wind,
so that to breathe is to have freest life,

and not to fly to You, my only sin.



Everlasting
by Michael R. Burch

Where the wind goes
when the storm dies,
there my spirit lives
though I close my eyes.

Do not weep for me;
I am never far.
Whisper my name
to the last star ...

then let me sleep,
think of me no more.

Still ...

By denying death
its terminal sting,
in my words I remain
everlasting.



Keywords/Tags: Adam, Eve, Eden, Lucifer, fall, sin, temptation, heaven, hell, salvation, God, Yahweh, Jehovah, creation, Jesus, Cain, Abel

Something prescient this way came

A powerful pre
sense on the planet, a force
for good from ever, being, been be-
fore now, foretold to foretell next
act
expressed as liquid mind…

dripping from a seep spring
that was only seeping liquid mind
matter,
mostly, water, mind matter is,
early aware of two ways to be
water, then came fire, steam,
ice, hot and cold, push and pull,
- share the O, hook-up h3o
spin one way, hold the push,
push away,
make something matter,

this is how puppies spin,
this is how pinecones grow,
one ever pushes,
another ever pulls, and in the pulling
shoves a weighted ifery thing,
into the center minding thing,
the point of living
longer, learn
to pass the understanding, step out

take my hand, "I'm a stranger"
in your gated garden,
slowing
thought in time to a syrupy Karo flow
in winter, spinning
in the pattern painted in wind
by maple wingseeds,
spun

to a floss, fine as any spider's kite,
liquid mind, set to spinning
into the stream of senses
present in your now,
which is always my future, some how.

In the 2nd grade
a puppy love
crush on the
teacher steeped
deep in me

to my delight
her clear eyes
recognized the
promise of a
chubby boy
in all of his
quaint simplicity

her gentle
voice, friendly
and firm, filled
with caring instruction

the giddy class
attuned to her fresh
brunette bouffant, bunned
and perfectly coiffed,
speaking style and
youthful whimsy,
not a strand of hair
out of place

her svelte figure
flowed through
classroom isles
filling the space
with scented graces
of prescient carnations

that afternoon she
was abruptly called
from the class

when she returned
our beautiful princess
was sobbing

she concealed her face
then turned her back
on the class, crying
in a corner to dismayed
blushing blackboards

regaining composure
she turned
exposing her tear
stained cheeks
and dissheveled hair
to an unsettled class

“the President
hurt his back” she
announced.  “He’s
in the hospital.”

Whoa… I thought,
the President hurt
his back.  That's
terrible I surmised.

our beloved teacher
dismissed us
and resumed her
tearful grief

when I arrived home
my mother was
sitting on the bed
weeping.  “President
Kennedy is dead”
she blared.

my mother’s rumpled
housecoat and
tousled hair flattered
her flowing tears and
anguished sobs.

the tears of women
marked the end
of many puppy loves that day


Bob Marley & The Wailers
No Woman No Cry

Oakland
10/15/13
jbm

Another version of myself last night,
Visited me in a true lucid dream,
To share some news I could not first believe,
About the workings of the universe.

He told me what I already thought true,
That there are an infinite number of
Universes in the vast multiverse,
I smiled as though he’d said the sky is blue.

Then he went on to tell me that in all,
Live only different versions of ourselves,
On identical versions of each world,
In which self-aware beings with souls exist.

All versions of my other selves that live,
On infinite numbers of other earths,
Share but one soul identical at birth,
Shaped by the choices made in each lifetime.

As we all know each choice we make in life,
Can change our future both for good or ill,
And every version that exists of us,
Has made every possible choice in life.

No fork in the road has been left unwalked,
No door unopened in life’s long hallway,
An infinite number of each of us,
Has made every possible decision.

Free will reigns supreme in each universe,
And sharp blacks and whites in each human life,
Blur to diffused grays when viewed as a whole,
With pure good or evil hard to discern.

My other-self proved this by showing me,
A thousand samples of my other selves,
From across the multiverse, each different,
The result of their lifetimes of choices.

I was disappointed to find I am,
At best average among the others,
Better than some, worse than many others,
In no way exceptional or special.

Some of my other selves have cured cancer,
Some are junkies, alcoholics or mad,
Some are con men, thieves, some honest judges,
A few are homeless, more than just a few.

Some are wealthy and kind, or poor and cruel,
Some loving husbands and fathers, some not,
Some are healthy, strong, happy and prosper,
Some found life too hard to bear and checked out.

Some are the kind of men I love, like dad,
Some are the kind of men I loathe, like me,
Somewhere I’m every kind of man there is,
That was the true lesson I learned last night.

There are no degrees of separation,
Between all my other selves and this one,
And there’s no degrees of separation,
Between all human beings on planet Earth.

We are the same in every way that counts,
Save for the choices made in a lifetime,
That sculpt our souls into saints or demons,
And all the fine gradients in between.

swimming under lightning,
lighting our submergence flash allure:
smooth bodies, bright to glimpse and shadow-grin intent
collide and mingle folds of pleasure, firmly
bent to tangle, clasp and spurn the world above,
rely on one another's breath, stored for loving
long in bubbles gasping sweet melodics free
as with imagined merfolk passion-songs of lore, prescient
lapping dance of tidal fruits you loved before they came,
moonray columns stage us in our seashift wombs--again--
within a womb--like instant chrysalises blinking luminescent bursts
i am interred within the waves you ripple into me, blind
carnal pressures built from ancient shores become the sea again
the magnitude entrances on its own, that acrophobic thrill
celestial in our interthreaded eyes, open
to a color deeply in the dark of octopodal ink
a curtain phosphorescent armpit pulse,
caressing thumb and lip, billows, sways the dance anew,
to sonar drumbeat, pulmonary height
the spinal scream a surface ripple for the sky,
symphonic deep to barely whisper into air

he saw him, the gun,
the uniform, not in a dream, but in between
sleep and wakefulness, when morning tugged
on him to start the day

while he lay, and recalled other mornings  
when his eyes would open to the same gray walls,
the same black and white visions foretelling
what he would see:

the time he saw his brother dragged
through a field, a casualty of some grand battle
only hours later to discover, he was pulled from a fire,  
a **** lab explosion, speed burned, ignoble

or one cold morning when he awakened
after a sensation of careening down a hill with others
around him screaming, and by noontide he read  
of a bus going off a cliff into the sea,

and the cursed time he sat up suddenly, drenched in sweat,
after his dream of a child singing morphed into nightmare,
a little one struck with fever; of course, his niece was rushed
to the ER an hour later, mercury reading 104

this morning was different, for it was he
he saw as vision's victim, running down a street,
cop commanding halt, and seeing himself hit the asphalt, just after
he felt a thud--just before the world returned to black

Some converted industrial uptown space
$20 brunch at a table for one
Nice and filling it seems, no room in my gut
Nor wondering why I walk gasping for breath
Pouring water, wishing it were alcohol
Too dumb when the check comes to add a figure

Some deep lasting sustenance from that, I figure
Stumbling home down block past shop and vacant space
Nothing sanitizes quite like alcohol
Great to see strangers holding hands one in one
Except I'd claw them and beat out their breath
Wrenched and stuffed I'd kick them in their stupid gut

That's not very nice, I know it in my gut
But somehow don't care much more to figure
Which story to tell or the smell of my breath
When tables for two require just as much space
And a spot at the counter suffices for one
Despite the sadness and lack of alcohol

I think lager, Malbec, other alcohol
And there is some deep craving still in my gut
For drunkenness or eternal truth, which one?
What luck, I'm rescued by a dashing figure
Some vibrations in my pocket fill the space
Imagination comes up to catch its breath

But that's about it, no handsome man with fresh breath
Just me standing in line to buy alcohol
Squeezing past the register makes for tight space
But maybe it's all the sausage in my gut
There's no lasting sense in minding my figure
So long now resigned to the comforts of one

The alternative is an uncertain one
And to explain I feel I'm wasting my breath
But there's no harm in ogling a nice figure
And there's no harm in a little alcohol
Oh, poor decisions, I feel them in my gut
Forgetting prescient matters of Time & Space

Perhaps there is one, sipping on alcohol
Inhaling deep breath, with a fire in his gut
Awaiting a figure to write lines in space.

Spring tepals
sepals ripe with sticky dew ~
only inner calyx thorn
   or some star-corymb splay
like sonar-notes across the diver's head
   portray the meaning of another's thought

exploration's prescient surge
   ;  the rise and fall of summit senses...
   ;  all perspectives breathe

PEACE ON EARTH THROUGH LOVE:  Planet Peace

Turning the World Right-Side In

By

Tod Howard Hawks


PREAMBLE:  All we have is our little planet, Earth. For the vast majority of my life, I have thought, “What would it be like to have Peace on Earth?” But for only two, maybe three, weeks every year, usually around Christmas, I would see the phrase “Peace on Earth," usually on Christmas cards. But after Christmas, I would not hear or see that sanguine notion for 11 more months. The longer I lived, the more this  annual ritual bothered me. At Andover, I had studied European history. At Columbia, I had majored in American history. Over time, I increasingly came to the realization that in both prep school and college, I had essentially been studying about wars on top of wars and their aftermaths:  millions and millions and millions of human beings being killed. Then, when I got curious, I used my computer to find out that, according to many scholars, only a little over 200, out of roughly 3,400 years of recorded history, were deemed “peaceful.” Humanity, I concluded, had a horrible track record when it came to effectuating “Peace on Earth.” And during my lifetime things have not gotten any better.  

SPIRITUAL ECOLOGY:  There is one land, one sky, one sea, one people. The boundaries that divide us are not on maps, but in our minds and hearts. John Donne was prescient. Earth is as impoverished as its poorest Citizen, as healthy as her sickest, as educated as her most ignorant. If we pollute the upper waters of the Mississippi, then ineluctably we shall pollute the Indian Ocean. If we continue to pollute our air, the current 7,500,000,000 Citizens on Earth will die. All species will be accorded the same concern and care as Citizens. The imminent threats of nuclear holocaust and catastrophic climate change we need urgently to prevent. This is the truth of Spiritual Ecology.  

CAMPAIGN FOR EARTH:  If we can wage war, why should we not wage peace? Nations are anachronistic;  therefore, there will be none. There will only be Earth and Citizens of Earth. Each Citizen will devote a sizable number of years of her/his life to the betterment of humankind and Earth. All military weapons--from handguns to hydrogen bombs--will be destroyed, and any future weapons will be prohibited. All jails and prisons will be closed, replaced by Love Centers (see below). Automation and other technological advances will enhance the opportunity for all Citizens exponentially to realize their potential, personally and spiritually. There will be no money. All precious resources and assets of Earth will be distributed equally among all Citizens. The only things Citizens will own are the right to be treated well and the responsibility to treat Earth and all its Citizens well. All Citizens will be free to travel anywhere, at any time, on Earth. All Citizens will be free to choose their own personal and professional goals, but will do no harm to Earth or other Citizens. All Citizens will be afforded the same resources to live a full, safe, and satisfying life, including the best education, health care, housing, food, and other necessities throughout Earth.

LOVE:  The only way to change anything for the good, for good, is through love. Love is what every living creation on Earth needs. Love Centers are for those Citizens who were not loved enough, or at all, especially at their earliest of ages. Concomitantly, they act out their pain hurtfully, sometimes lethally, often against other Citizens. Citizens who are emotionally ill will be separated from those who are not. Jails and prisons only abet this deleterious situation. Some Citizens in pain may need to be constrained in Love Centers humanely while they recover, through being loved, so they do not hurt themselves or others. In some extreme cases, Citizens may be in so much pain that they remain violent for a long time.  Thus, they may need to be constrained for the rest of their lives, but always loved, never punished. In time, Citizens, when loved enough, will only have love to give, and the need for Love Centers will commensurately decline.

EARTH:  In 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the commission that wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. UDHR, with some updates and revisions, will serve as the moral and legal guidepost for Earth.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY:  To honor and remember the former nations on Earth, one member will be elected by Citizens from each of these former nations to serve a one five-year term as a member of the General Assembly. In succeeding elections, Citizens currently residing at that time in areas that were formerly nations, will again, in perpetuity, vote for one Citizen also residing in that area, for a one five-year term as a member of the General Assembly.
  
FIRST VOTE:  The first vote of all Citizens will be to establish CAMPAIGN FOR EARTH. Majority rules. All Citizens will have access to  Internet voting, as well as access to cell phones and other types of computers. Citizens will have her/his own secured ID codes. Citizens will have to be 18 or older to vote. Citizens will be encouraged to bring before the General Assembly all ideas and recommendations, as well as any concerns or complaints, which will be considered and responded to promptly. Citizens’ ideas and recommendations will be formed into proposals drafted by members of the General Assembly. Citizens will vote on these proposals of each month during the days of the following month. Citizens of Earth will be Earth’s government. Members of the General Assembly will be facilitators who will work with millions of volunteers. There will be no president of Earth.

ALLCOTT MOVEMENT:  If the multinational corporations that now rule Earth do not abide by the outcome of a majority vote in favor of CAMPAIGN FOR EARTH, Citizens of Earth will instigate the Allcott Movement, a one-at-a-time mancott, womancott, girlcott, boycott--hence, Allcott--against each multinational corporation unwilling to relinquish control of its global business and give it, and all its assets, to Citizens of Earth. Citizens will continue the Allcott Movement until all multinational corporations have done the same. All personal and smaller-business wealth will be converted into resources to be distributed equally to all Citizens. All proceeds in excess of what’s needed reasonably by each Citizen will be saved for future generations. No violence of any kind will occur during the transfer of these resources. Citizens will take these steps because they are the moral, the right, steps to take to save all living creations on Earth, and Earth itself.

CELEBRATE AND SHARE: If you were to take a photograph of humanity and gaze at it, you would see a beautiful mosaic of mankind of different, beautiful colors. If you could step into the photograph, you would hear a melody of languages and dialects. You could have a worldwide picnic with all your sisters and brothers and experience different customs and taste different, delicious foods. And in moments of silence, all of you could pray in your different religions, separate but together at the same time. You would also share the same human laughter and joys and feel the same sorrows and cry the same tears, all in Peace on Earth eternal. All of you would come to delight in these differences, not dread them. You would look forward to celebrating and sharing with your family, not killing them. The spiritual whole would be larger than the sum of its sacred parts.

A QUANTUM LEAP:  The world, over millennia, keeps evolving. Over 3,200 years of recorded history, powers, nations keep shifting, sometimes seismically. Now is the time for not only the grandest seismic shift ever, but also the one that will save Earth and all living creations upon it. It is time for Earth to become Earth--not a scattering of over 200 nations with artificial borders, but an Earth that has one land, one sea, one sky, one people. The boundaries that have simplistically divided us for eons are not on maps, but in our minds and hearts. The air and water of Earth, even the pandemic, take no notice of national borders, nor should we, the Citizens of Earth. Technology, with its innumerable advances, has made us into a world when all can become one. We are free to be our real selves, to spend our variegated lives not aggrandizing, but by sharing and giving. Rather than dreading our superficial differences--our different skin colors, our different cultures, our different religions, our different languages--we can explore and enjoy them. Let us finally be what we truly have been forever, one big, worldwide family of humanity. No more wars, no more weapons, no more killing. No more hunger, no more homelessness, no more hopelessness. No more ignorance, no more illnesses, no more social classes. This is the quantum leap of which I speak.

PEACE ON EARTH:  Wealth is not worth. The mansuetude of loving, and being loved, are. When love is your currency, all else is counterfeit. Citizens will be able to go about creating their own happiness that is built on love-based personal relationships and professional activities. No longer will human beings be able to profit from another’s pain. With love at the center of being and living, there will be no more wars, no more dictators, no more corruption. Finally, there will only be Peace on Earth forever.

Copyright 2023 Tod Howard Hawks

A graduate of Phillips Andover Academy and Columbia College, Columbia University, Tod Howard Hawks has been a poet and a human-rights advocate his entire adult life.

todhawks2@gmail.com

(Please share this commentary with others and email me if you wish to join all the other Citizens of Earth around the world in helping to save Earth through LOVE.)

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

thumb frozen, ears red in the cold heat  
Interstate-25 apocalyptically empty, windless and mute
my northbound shoes the only sound
on the dull dawn’s ashen, soundless stage  
what other survivor of a sleepless rocky mountain night
would I encounter?  when would I see another face?  

the cars came with the sun as it struggled to make
white progress in a gray sky  
they passed me, again and again
like I was not there, or
little more than a faded billboard
they chose not to read  

when her brake lights came on,
a half mile down the road, I ran towards her
wondering if I had been an afterthought
a simple ambiguity
her black Porsche 911 backed up to meet me  
a turquoise covered hand opened the door
extended itself to me in the warm sea of air
in her tiny cabin, “Hi, I’m Myra”
“Denver?” I asked
“No, just the Springs, but we’ll see what he can do”  
and Myra and I flew by the cars that had passed me  
I gave each a haughty stare, those slower vessels
that had left me there, to freeze on a Colorado plain  

“Escaping” from Taos she said, from a bar
on Canyon Road, where “he” had turned on her,
spilled their sacred secrets like beer on the tavern floor  
she made her exit when he was in the john,
******* or puking, she knew not which,  now,
at 90 miles per hour with a stranger half her age  
she was spilling her own secrets into my eager ears
her black mini skirt, red skin tight sweater spoke to me  
as much as her words--she was there for the taking  
precious flesh ready for greedy consumption
her stone heavy hand touched my leg, punctuating her story  
with breathy exclamation points, plaintive question marks
and prescient pregnant  pauses, I wondered
where she would take me or if she would take me  
“Denver?” she asked, “Mind a little detour?”
it didn’t matter where, thumb time
is measured in miles, not minutes,
and Denver was as cold as the road
from which she plucked me    

her house was a wall of glass,
with Pikes Peak framed perfectly
by her bedroom window, and when  
we finally swam smoothly on the waves of her waterbed  
she cried out that all was beautiful again
now that she was home, in the shadow of her mountain
in the arms of a stranger, whose seed rolled down her leg
as she moved farther from the Taos tavern and
whatever truth she could not face  

I wanted more of her, but the intoxication of strangers
lasts only minutes longer than full blooded wine  
she called me a cab, and in a black silk robe
glided me to the door, where she laid $100 in my hand
“The plane is warm and the airfare is only $39”
I tried to kiss her one final time
when the taxi stopped at her steep drive,
but she buried her face in my chest,
“No more, he will be here soon”  

the midmorning sun now burned the sky blue  
the cabbie slapped his meter on
and I was back to measuring minutes and miles  
I looked back for as long as I could  
and saw the perfect reflection of her mountain
in all that shining glass, her black silhouette
only a curious slice in the reflected portrait
of the beautiful fleeting morn

Please forgive the shameless plug!  I am so pleased to be able to tell you all that my first volume of poetry is now available...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Quiverstorm-Poems-life-love-longing/dp/1539931641/ref=sr11?ie=UTF8&qid;=1487694689&sr;=8-1&keywords;=quiverstorm

Here is the poem of the title...

Quiverstorm

Suckled
My lower lip swells gently
Like a rose in bud after a summer shower
I have what I
need, I am ready to be opened
I am opening already
And inside, an invitation
That can only be read by

You.

Oh, I came
Here ripe and ready as
the swollen summer moon.
On a sweet, still moment
our fates linger, waiting
On a pregnant, prescient pause.
Quiet, comes the
Quivering storm.

Flippant polymaths exude the frippery of travail for lapsed inordinate surgical gains in temporal but temporary acclaim that owes its provenance to the gullarge accentuated by the guttural tempests of silent windfalls that wrestle with sharks and snarky cagamosis with pilfered fame without rulers for rules that own the profligacy of a cineaste game

We cannot surpass our talents with ease when the treecheese of inevitable distance between equipoise and insanity is a tantamount inanity of prolixity for the sake of freedom rather than servitude to the slow meandered steps of trudged verbigeration that needs to be exorcised from the seat of authority for the plodding inconvenience of time earned that shakes the listless yearning people who lie and spurn

Demagogues are trifles because they are anoegenetic and care not for the abligurition that consumes the energy of a dismal life lived on fringes rather than reaped with grimaces for binges that continue to absorb the painful pangs of twinges that hedonists are of interest

We cannot exorcise the demons that give stygian weight to exchequers beyond the gamut of money but rather the currency of velocity of thought that owes its weight to weightlessness of spaces between the spacious and the limited tract of isolative territory that many mendicants looking for sustenance travail in insolence and in perjury of their solemn duties for self-serious honesty they lack a vista to see their crimes as more than just a pettifoggery of disputatious wranglers that wrench and then contemn the objects of their moral scruples to contend with nothing but the vacant expanse of a limitless injury for a momentary slip of cultivation and countenance

Frippery is hard to cobble with lapidary wit because succinct grievances are fallow ground for the permanence of atrocity and the temperance of felicity to conform to the desiccated pathways of limpid but livid excoriations of willful ingenuity met with aleatory rambles that sprawl incalescence with words as a dying occupation that is resurrected from the abeyance of its pragmatic utility to distinguish class from crust.

The triadic fatuousness of snarky sharks recruiting the gullarge of paranoiacs to deputized alacrity lead many strident vocations astray as they pilfer the nullibiety of spectral ignorance and defy the gravitas of the primiparas of a swollen technocracy, an outrage that scarecrows with prevenance have adumbrated against with strident accelerations of sublime velocity

So we swim in perilous straits against the demiurge of inclemency in fated rittles for the turpitude of wraiths and engineer every aborning day a new foofaraw of unalloyed atrocity
Now more than never should be deployed to ensure that the castigation of scoundrels and guttersnipes that exert a rip tide to those stranded on the shores of littoral desiccation might find the pristine beachgoing public an amenable treat proffered by exorcised sheepishness in reiterative bleats that quarkswarm only the antinomy of sentient masteries by shoveled civilizations proctor to horological insistence in design

So we designated an abeyance of heydays to create a rippled nostalgia that creeps in the winter storms that singe even glabrous ignorance with the twinges in absentia of the regal crows that circle the sun as the sustenance of the alighted moon as we reach for the heaved Richter teeming with ablution for venial commination of prolix croons that exert a Palo Alto rhyme

Phenomenological fields distal to the cephalocaudal origination of limber and the ironic counterpoint to that strife in excess rather than dearth of the henchmen behind the exchequer showcase that fluid thoughts surpass the limits of the dentistry of cosmetic cosmology simultaneously a scientific boon but a coarse albatross

We are criminals in a world stranded by ****** apostasy because of the sincerity of minstrels meets plodding human ignorance as exemplars rather than the apotheosis of divine excoriation of wastrels and flattybouches who webdoodle their way into the extinction line in some computer file swiped from eccedentesiasts who often in uncouth barbarity forgetfully abide without the temperance of floss

So what are we to make of magisterial wits of wiseacres who pilot tenable objectives like Indiana Jones flexing his comical whip when the gunfire of cacophony inundates our ears with a lisp of cockalorum imposture rich in chewing tobacco and its ungainly gripes and tenacious grip

Should we seek salvation from the treecheese of arboreous terrain amenable to the newfangled windfall of agricultural whims that dare now with caprice but not quixotic disdain to reconfigure the parsimonious levered engagement of melliferous fungible transaction between sabbaticals and chief financiers dubbing the vociferous limn of the primeval fulgurant incandescent ethereal quips?

We strive for palaces issued with dimes, dozens and scores of retinues that retain the patina of sophistry as the gullarge makes the vangermytes cozy in their defensively mechanized citadel buffered against the unheralded malversations of mammon intersecting with primordial chemistry that give the philanderer a guise of philanthropy despite professed gainsay that perjures because hucksters are winsome with fiduciary risk

So we calumniate with lapsed puns and Potter’s Spells as we dredge the indemnity of bustling heydays that extend beyond the bailiwick stated because of the prolonged trace of nostalgia that frazzles our voluntary expeditions with misanthropy as each libertine instinct becomes subject to stop and frisk

How to balk at such a garrulous repartee as proffered by swanky intransigence that shakes it off in a quaky town that hates the Swift refrain that endangers the fatalism of recuperated foresight borrowed from the armamentarium of corrupted killjoys who swim in a dalliance with the itchy myths that drift from powerlessness to voguish debauchery of insouciant internecine fringes frayed by the tomes that decry Stygian drift

Shiftless and rooted in rintinole absolved by plackiques that enchant the voyeurism of repined squalor of industrious frippery deracinated from the aureate complicity of largesse calibrated to mobilize the skittish mercurial yuppies to a dance with divestiture, taxes and an earthen death, we sprint the evergreen mile toward the scrupulous invention of enthusiastic euphemisms arbitrated by the procrustean silt of the leaky faucet of enigmatic timelessness etched by chiselers to beat “Us and Them” and warn the vanguard of the front rank about the thespian rift

Exhaustive rescue squads prepared for the dearth of monetary heft in times of perilous drought denigrate the authors of famine to the indulgent parents of inordinate sabotage of narrative for riskless arbitrage that is the outrage of sciamachies between platonic indifference and the tantrums of the feckless in the dangerous hearth of the cavernous wilderness of limitless imaginations that stagger so far beyond orbit they become satellites to vagrancy and whittled paragons too distant to dissolve in the ethereal chemistry of incalescent uproar sadly flanged by the Dopplers of ephemeral fate

Squandered by the desuetude of a snarky intervention I issue invective at the proctors of deafferented limbs for barbarous swine meeting expediency in demise, bemoaning the placid distaste of rectified cries that issue candles for each acrimony beyond the permutation of the staid inflexible limit of 88’

Bashfully we careen through argosies of curiosity to fossick the stalactites of timeworn intuition and reckon with their converse ironies that drip faucets of mildew that remain hidden unless poked by plucky flashlights to inspect the paragon of erosive filigrees of a bewildering paradox of polarized design that one meets the ceiling at inception and the cousin strives to clamber empty space to know with faint certainty the bulldozed irony of superordinate coexistence

Now we return to the majesty of a spurned wiseacre that evades the snappy parlance of a wrenched friction between the physical and the metaphysical elements that constitute a commensurate reality so supernal that its ostentation creates lifetimes of reiterative growth that spawns crimson red and bloviated blues to find a fulcrum of balance between the malversation on one hand of criminal sinister machinations and on the other hand the execrable self-righteous ignorance of a hidden vehicles of dexterity that are subsumed by a subtlety of legislative graft that owes its forbearance to the sanctimony of perseveration without the laurels of persistence

Now we wed the concepts between the ambidexterity of a monolithic titan who wanes rather than waxes himself because his glabrous head already exposed requires nothing new because the empire that struck back is denuded by the thorny imbroglio of a sunken Rose

Timmynoggies are perfect for haberdasheries of saccharine and glib excellence as measured by the ****** cacophony of unmerited applause that strains the resourcefulness of the silent mastery of magistrates in mellifluous alcoves surrounded by the soundproofed rigors of an execrable dereliction wilt into the imaginations of the few that watch movies with errantry rather than pleasantries of gaudy nonsense enchanted by a striptease of the wanton zeitgeist that some balk at but everyone knows

Time earns the spangled banners of sloganeering because of the fastidious creations of pole folders that maneuver between quips borrowed from antique movies and swindled affectations of yearning of many of all fears inevitable with the malevolent passage of the technocracy from cheers to vehement inveighed jeers

We should fear the watershed because it necessitates the evaporation of winsome ambition and implores the subservience of a guiltless fascination with abominable regress concomitant to the acceleration of money preceding a whipsawed downfall ensured by the funereal spates of requiems to oneironauts who plunged to their deaths on headlong flickering whims past the craggy landscape of lunar concordance and through the abeyance of qualms to flabbergasted self-importance in the eradication of provident fears

Memorials exist encoded in the temporal twinges of agony that straddle the cardiovascular throbs of impermanence that sweat with each simple beat to blather about the repetitious nature of a livid nature scrambled in exodus of the emigration of senseless blather to the subroutines of regimented sleepless paragons of travail in every pedestrian feat accelerated with each passing foot traversed by vigilant and eager feet

Tempests crowd the cluttered hamartithia of dredged incompetence leading to the foreclosure that precedes the simple derelictions that amount to grievous uncertainties that squawk in the plumage of the frippery decay of an autumnal fall from gracile riches landlocked without room to sprawl rigged against every track that is a surefire gleeful keepsake to meet, greet and serenade the claques adorned with the monikers of the Greeks

Trembling beneath the weight of mellifluous sauntering dingy designs that exude the anguish of our provident but incidental remonstration against the plodding indifference of the artistic clerisy we sputter against intransigent annulments of the emotive human engine calibrated with creaky pistons that rumble with furor of abrasive protest in timely haphazard elemental designs for vanguard ears

Tridents shed the fossicked leaves that are divisible by two but not inevitably glue that solders the identities of people congregated around a situation of gleeful sprees rather than wistful regress into a temerity without regret that gets dangled in the purview of the spiteful wings of armies that drawl when they sing vapid songs for vaped bongs but not the soberly cheers because of the deafening din of conformity oblivious of the honorific crescendos that still peak after so many restless years

Confederates line the avenues of bustling caverns of cumulative human disdain so willfully flouted by the wrenched corrosive frictions of vibrant deformation of the cultural narrative that encapsulates the collective bubbles chewed and jettisoned like bandied candy and then defamed without justice because  hurricanes churn up the reclusive emergence of protective vanity chased down as a sunken cost for a siphoned glory of tribal pride despite the strictures of logic

Creeping with insistence is a subaudition of governing gravel that entombs many steadfast lies that embodied people living delusory lives under a paradigm that has been subverted by the feats of science into a morass of irrelevance and the chances are many of those so deluded still breathe the air now more polluted but balk at the memories of the fallen passengers on the convalescent train that accelerates sunblind but respectfully toward a systematic engrossment of swollen intellects whimpering about the tautologic

We finance our prescient rodomontade with rodeos equipped with zany clowns who spurn the tridents of Poseidon because of the iridescent gloss of sheepish and flippant zealots who churn against the wrestling match of televised irony with accentuated eccedentesiastic disdain amended by a tolerable diversion of ennobled gallantry zip-zagging among the many valid quodlibets and missing the mark entirely on purpose to vacate the possible raillery of those who balk at time’s chosen serpentine tracks because of limited pedagogical tracts

So lets solder a forceful brunt against the senseless regalia of modern omphalos and return to the plenipotentiary fields of resourceful human inquiry into the chagrins outmoded by convenience but amplified in vociferation by the prosthetic extension of a grangull humanity outfoxing itself into a zugzwang inevitable in the future with collateral losses because of senseless invidiousness orchestrated by the immiscible dermatology of divisive facts often about race and ineluctable tax

We conclude with the optimism that refineries become gentrified by the superlunary squadrons who bask in beatific beams of anonymity and that the pollution preceding our evolution is just adventitious rather than central to the amelioration of wavy screens ennobling so many upstarts to teach themselves the majesty of lucid dreams and to capitalize on ludic ideals divorced from the urchins of radical idealisms that ironically poach rarefied air with smug pollution of narrative scares

Without trepidation we can muster the largesse of civility to create a progeny that has a recursive progeny of heirs that defiantly imagine a world bereft of specters of the soporific imagination enforced by the lapidation of insight from termagants who stride with ursine acrimony naked bare and envision a global meliorism that is careful, picaresque, pragmatic and filled with meritocratic care

With those ornaments of an aureate measure in mind


We leap beyond the enumerated infinity in time's proper design

Cryptic dreams awaken the mind
Telling more than I want to know
Hinting at emotions undefined
The glint of rough gems to be mined

Possible rapture threatens contentment
Disturbing the balance and the flow
Turbulence enters the calm of the present
Subconscious susurrations could prove prescient

The painstakingly built façade stays intact
But the lingering dream won’t go
No use denying its deep impact
As it cajoles me to think and act

LOVE AND LOVERS

by

TOD HOWARD HAWKS


Chapter 5

Jon sat in the stuffed chair by the fireplace for a long time. Bian had driven into Hyannis to do some shopping.

When Bian had mentioned during one of their chats she had wanted to “heal the Earth” during her life, that phrase–that particular phrase–had pierced his being, bringing fully into his consciousness the same overpowering sentiment.  Once she had uttered those three words, Jon’s life had been profoundly and permanently affected. He had even written what he considered to be a “commentary,” a brief, concise pathway that humankind could follow to save the world, to create Peace on Earth forever. He had had no intention of ever sharing it with Bian, until now. Jon rose from his chair and went into the bedroom and opened the closet door and pulled out the big cardboard box in which he kept all of his poems. Near the top, he saw his commentary. He lifted it out and sat down on the bed and began to read it again.

PEACE ON EARTH THROUGH LOVE

Turning the World Rightside-In

By

Jon Witherston


PREAMBLE:  All we have is our little planet, Earth. For the vast majority of my life, I have thought, “What would it be like to have Peace on Earth?” But for only two, maybe three, weeks every year, usually around Christmas, I would see the phrase “Peace on Earth," usually on Christmas cards. But after Christmas, I would not hear or see that sanguine notion for 11 more months. The longer I lived, the more this annual ritual bothered me. At Andover, I had studied European history. At Columbia, I had majored in American history. Over time, I increasingly came to the realization that in both prep school and college, I had essentially been studying about wars on top of wars and their aftermaths:  millions and millions and millions of human beings being killed. Then, when I got curious, I used my computer to find out that, according to many scholars, only a little over 200, out of roughly 3,400 years of recorded history, were deemed “peaceful.” Humanity, I concluded, had a horrible track record when it came to effectuating “Peace on Earth.” And during my lifetime things have not gotten any better.  
      
SPIRITUAL ECOLOGY:  There is one land, one sky, one sea, one people. The boundaries that divide us are not on maps, but in our minds and hearts. John Donne was prescient. Earth is as impoverished as its poorest Citizen, as healthy as her sickest, as educated as her most ignorant. If we pollute the upper waters of the Mississippi, then ineluctably we shall pollute the Indian Ocean. If we continue to pollute our air, the current 8,000,000,000 Citizens on Earth will die. All species will be accorded the same concern and care as Citizens of Earth. The imminent threats of nuclear holocaust and catastrophic climate change we need urgently to prevent. This is the truth of Spiritual Ecology.  

CAMPAIGN FOR EARTH:  If we can wage war, why should we not wage peace? Nations are anachronistic;  therefore, there will be
none. There will only be Earth and Citizens of Earth. Each Citizen will devote a sizable number of years of her/his life to the betterment of humankind and Earth. All military weapons--from handguns to hydrogen bombs--will be destroyed, and any future weapons will be prohibited. All jails and prisons will be closed, replaced by Love Centers (see below). Automation and other technological advances will enhance the opportunity for all Citizens to realize exponentially their potential, personally and spiritually. There will be no money. All precious resources and assets of Earth will be distributed equally among all Citizens. The only things Citizens will own are the right to be treated well and the responsibility to treat Earth and all its Citizens well. All Citizens will be free to travel anywhere, at any time, on Earth. All Citizens will be free to choose their own personal and professional goals, but will do no harm to Earth or other Citizens. All Citizens will be afforded the same resources to live a full, safe, and satisfying life, including the best education, health care, housing, food, and other necessities throughout Earth.

LOVE:  The only way to change anything for the good, for good, is through love. Love is what every living creation on Earth needs. Love Centers are for those Citizens who were not loved enough, or at all, especially at their earliest of ages. Concomitantly, they act out their pain hurtfully, sometimes lethally, often against other Citizens. Citizens who are emotionally ill will be separated from those who are not. Jails and prisons only abet this deleterious situation. Some Citizens in pain may need to be constrained in Love Centers humanely while they recover, through being loved, so they do not hurt themselves or others. In some extreme cases, Citizens may be in so much pain that they remain violent for a long time.  Thus, they may need to be constrained for the rest of their lives, but always loved, never punished. In time, Citizens, when loved enough, will only have love to give, and the need for Love Centers will commensurately decline.

EARTH:  In 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the commission that wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. UDHR, with some updates and revisions, will serve as the moral and legal guidepost for Earth.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY:  To remember the former nations on Earth, one member will be elected by Citizens from each of these former nations to serve a one five-year term as a member of the General Assembly. In succeeding elections, Citizens currently residing at that time in areas that were formerly nations, will again, in perpetuity, vote for one Citizen also residing in that area, for a one five-year term as a member of the General Assembly.

FIRST VOTE:  The first vote of all Citizens will be to establish CAMPAIGN FOR EARTH. Majority rules. All Citizens will have access to Internet voting, as well as access to cell phones and other types of computers. Citizens will have her/his own secured ID codes. Citizens will have to be 18 or older to vote. Citizens will be encouraged to bring before the General Assembly all ideas and recommendations, as well as any concerns or complaints, which will be considered and responded to promptly. Citizens’ ideas and recommendations will be formed into proposals drafted by members of the General Assembly. Citizens will vote on these proposals of each month during the first two weeks of the following month. Citizens of Earth will be Earth’s government. Members of the General Assembly will be facilitators who will work with millions of volunteers. There will be no president of Earth.

ALLCOTT MOVEMENT:  If the multinational corporations that now rule Earth do not abide by the outcome of a majority vote in favor of CAMPAIGN FOR EARTH, Citizens of Earth will instigate the Allcott Movement, a one-at-a-time mancott, womancott, girlcott, boycott--hence, Allcott--against each multinational corporation unwilling to relinquish control of its global business and give it, and all its assets, to Citizens of Earth. Citizens will continue the Allcott Movement until all multinational corporations have done the same. All personal and smaller-business wealth will be converted into resources to be distributed equally to all Citizens. All proceeds in excess of what’s needed reasonably by each Citizen will be saved for future generations. No violence of any kind will occur during the transfer of these resources. Citizens will take these steps because they are the moral, the right, steps to take to save all living creations on Earth, and Earth itself.

CELEBRATE AND SHARE: If you were to take a photograph of humanity and gaze at it, you would see a beautiful mosaic of mankind of different, beautiful colors. If you could step into the photograph, you would hear a melody of languages and dialects. You could have a worldwide picnic with all your sisters and brothers and experience different customs and taste different, delicious foods. And in moments of silence, all of you could pray in your different religions, separate but together at the same time. You would also share the same human laughter and joys and feel the same sorrows and cry the same tears, all in Peace on Earth eternal. All of you would come to delight in these differences, not dread them. You would look forward to celebrating and sharing with your family, not killing them. The spiritual whole would be larger than the sum of its sacred parts.

A QUANTUM LEAP:  The world, over millennia, keeps evolving. Over 3,400 years of recorded history, powers, nations, keep shifting, sometimes seismically. Now is the time for not only the grandest seismic shift ever, but also the one that will save Earth and all living creations upon it. It is time for Earth to become one Earth--not a scattering of over 200 nations with artificial borders. Technology, with its innumerable advances, has made us into a world when all can become one. We are free to be our real selves, to spend our variegated lives not aggrandizing, but sharing and giving. Rather than dreading our superficial differences--our different skin colors, our different cultures, our different religions, our different languages--we can explore and enjoy them. Let us finally be what we truly have been forever, one big, worldwide family of humanity. No more wars, no more weapons, no more killing. No more hunger, no more homelessness, no more hopelessness. No more ignorance, no more illnesses, no more social classes. This is the quantum leap of which I speak.

PEACE ON EARTH:  Wealth is not worth. The mansuetude of loving and being love is. When love is your currency, all else is counterfeit. Citizens will be able to go about creating their own happiness that is built on love-based personal relationships and professional activities. No longer will human beings be able to profit from another’s pain. With love at the center of being and living, there will be no more wars, no more dictators, no more corruption. Finally, there will only be Peace on Earth forever.

Copyright 2026 Jon Witherston.


Jon heard the front door open and shut.

“Bian, I’m in the bedroom,” said Jon. “I’ve got something I want you to read.”

Bian came into the bedroom. “What is it?” she asked.

“It’s something you inspired,” replied Jon.

Bian kissed Jon on the cheek then sat on the bed.

“Read it, then we’ll chat,” said Jon. He handed the commentary to Bian who began reading it.

“Jon, when did you write this?” asked Bian.

“I wrote it after you shared with me your desire to spend your life trying to heal Earth,” said Jon. “At Tom’s. Do you remember?”

“I’ve always dreamed of this ever since my father told me about the war,” she said. “What I remember about Tom’s is when I told you I was majoring in Human Rights, you said the whole world should be majoring in Human Rights.”

“Of course, I remember that, too,” said Jon.


What Bian came to realize about her father as she grew up was he had become anti-war. He had come to hate it.

Two things she had never known about him, though. First, her father was one of the wealthiest men on Earth. Yes, she knew he was well-to-do:  she had grown up, after all, in a large, comfortable home, and her father had had the money to pay for her expensive educations,  Second, he had belonged, for almost two decades now, to a secret, worldwide group of extremely wealthy and influential men and women who wished for, and were working toward, a world that would never know war. This group was called SOCIETY FOR PEACE.

Jon did not dare tell Bian about what Chad had shared with him over the phone, about her father’s mega-wealth. Bian had never known about;  indeed, her father obviously had never mentioned, let alone flaunted, it, though he frequently traveled to many destinations around the world. Bian had always thought those trips had to do with his businesses, about which he never talked explicitly.

“I’d like to elaborate a bit on what you’ve read in my commentary, Bian, if you care to,” said Jon.

“Of course,” said Bian.

“I’m thinking about the poor,” Jon said. “The poor, and the extremely poor, on Earth, as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund has put it,” Jon said, with more than a tinge of contempt. “Out of 8 billion human beings on Earth, roughly 2 ½ billion fall into these two ‘statistical’ categories. That’s more than 1 out of 4 human lives on Earth desperately trying to survive day-to-day.

“Here’s my idea, Bian,” said Jon.

“There are more than 7,000 languages and dialects spoken on Earth. Most of the poor speak those dialects. How to communicate with them is the biggest challenge. In broad strokes and succinctly, this is what I have in mind. I want to share this with you and hope you’ll be my partner.

“I want to travel Earth with you. I want to meet first the poor of Earth with you, speak with them, eat with them, live with them, answer all their questions about creating one land, one sky, one sea, one people. I want to talk with them about all Citizens of Earth cooperating with, not competing against, one another, creating Peace on Earth through love forever. If ever we can create a vote on CAMPAIGN FOR EARTH, I’m sure the vast majority of them would vote for it.

“We would start in Mexico, then visit the nations of Central America, then those of South America. Then we would go to Africa where there are so many poor and do the same thing. Then the rest of the world.

“Does all of this sound audacious, Bian? Well, it should, because it is,” said Jon. “Logistics will be beyond enormous, but in my heart, I believe there will be eventually millions and millions and millions of volunteers around the world who will wish to join in.”

Bian had sat on the bed taking all of this in, paused, then said to her husband whom she loved and admired so much, “Jon, you are a genius, but all of this does sound audacious. My first idea is to share all of this with my father and get his reaction to your commentary and what you’ve just shared with me. He knows the world probably as well, if not better, than anyother person on Earth.”

“A great idea!” said Jon.

“I’ll call him at 10 p.m. tonight. It will be 9 a.m. in Hanoi,” said Bian excitedly.

Alone, it seems, I travel,
but not alone, I fear.
There are shadowy, staring eyes that pierce
and whispers that scrape my ear.

I need to find my way,
and running takes me nowhere,
as I tread the ceaseless circle path
lost and only just aware

that the darkness ever deepens.
As the daylight begins its end,
my mind casts prescient stones in dirt
with a hope my course propitious wends.

So on I trek untouched,
my eye and mind feel no connection
to the time or to the scenes
that loom and crawl in each new direction.

PEACE ON EARTH THROUGH LOVE


Turning the World Right-Side In

by

Tod Howard Hawks


PREAMBLE:  All we have is our little planet, Earth. For the vast majority of my life, I have thought, “What would it be like to have Peace on Earth?” But for only two, maybe three, weeks every year, usually around Christmas, I would see the phrase “Peace on Earth," usually on Christmas cards. But after Christmas, I would not hear or see that sanguine notion for 11 more months. The longer I lived, the more this annual ritual bothered me. At Andover, I had studied European history. At Columbia, I had majored in American history. Over time, I increasingly came to the realization that in both prep school and college, I had essentially been studying about wars on top of wars and their aftermaths:  millions and millions and millions of human beings being killed. Then, when I got curious, I used my computer to find out that, according to many scholars, only a little over 200, out of roughly 3,400 years of recorded history, were deemed “peaceful.” Humanity, I concluded, had a horrible track record when it came to effectuating “Peace on Earth.” And during my lifetime things have not gotten any better.  

SPIRITUAL ECOLOGY:  There is one land, one sky, one sea, one people. The boundaries that divide us are not on maps, but in our minds and hearts. John Donne was prescient. Earth is as impoverished as its poorest Citizen, as healthy as her sickest, as educated as her most ignorant. If we pollute the upper waters of the Mississippi, then ineluctably we shall pollute the Indian Ocean. If we continue to pollute our air, the current 8,00,000,000 Citizens on Earth will die. All species will be accorded the same concern and care as Citizens. The imminent threats of nuclear holocaust and catastrophic climate change we need urgently to prevent. This is the truth of Spiritual Ecology.  

CAMPAIGN FOR EARTH:  If we can wage war, why should we not wage peace? Nations are anachronistic;  therefore, there will be none. There will only be Earth and Citizens of Earth. Each Citizen will devote a sizable number of years of her/his life to the betterment of humankind and Earth. All military weapons--from handguns to hydrogen bombs--will be destroyed, and any future weapons will be prohibited. All jails and prisons will be closed, replaced by Love Centers (see below). Automation and other technological advances will enhance the opportunity for all Citizens exponentially to realize their potential, personally and spiritually. There will be no money. All precious resources and assets of Earth will be distributed equally among all Citizens. The only things Citizens will own are the right to be treated well and the responsibility to treat Earth and all its Citizens well. All Citizens will be free to travel anywhere, at any time, on Earth. All Citizens will be free to choose their own personal and professional goals, but will do no harm to Earth or other Citizens. All Citizens will be afforded the same resources to live a full, safe, and satisfying life, including the best education, health care, housing, food, and other necessities throughout Earth.

LOVE:  The only way to change anything for the good, for good, is through love. Love is what every living creation on Earth needs. Love Centers are for those Citizens who were not loved enough, if at all, especially at their earliest of ages. Concomitantly, they act out their pain hurtfully, sometimes lethally, often against other Citizens. Citizens who are emotionally ill will be separated from those who are not. Jails and prisons only abet this deleterious situation. Some Citizens in pain may need to be constrained in Love Centers humanely while they recover through being loved so they do not hurt themselves or others. In some extreme cases, Citizens may be in so much pain that they remain violent for a long time.  Thus, they may need to be constrained for the rest of their lives, but always loved, never punished. In time, Citizens, when loved enough, will only have love to give, and the need for Love Centers will commensurately decline.

EARTH:  In 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the commission that wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. UDHR, with some updates and revisions, will serve as the moral and legal guidepost for Earth.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY:  To honor and remember the former nations on Earth, one member will be elected by Citizens from each of these former nations to serve a one five-year term as a member of the General Assembly. In succeeding elections, Citizens currently residing at that time in areas that were formerly nations, will again, in perpetuity, vote for one Citizen also residing in that area, for a one five-year term as a member of the General Assembly.
  
FIRST VOTE:  The first vote of all Citizens will be to establish CAMPAIGN FOR EARTH. Majority rules. All Citizens will have access to  Internet voting, as well as access to cell phones and other types of computers. Citizens will have her/his own secured ID codes. Citizens will have to be 18 or older to vote. Citizens will be encouraged to bring before the General Assembly all ideas and recommendations, as well as any concerns or complaints, which will be considered and responded to promptly. Citizens’ ideas and recommendations will be formed into proposals drafted by members of the General Assembly. Citizens will vote on these proposals each month during the last two weeks of the following month. Citizens of Earth will be Earth’s government. Members of the General Assembly will be facilitators who will work with millions of volunteers. There will be no president of Earth.

ALLCOTT MOVEMENT:  If the multinational corporations that now rule Earth do not abide by the outcome of a majority vote in favor of CAMPAIGN FOR EARTH, Citizens of Earth will instigate the Allcott Movement, a one-at-a-time mancott, womancott, girlcott, boycott--hence, Allcott--against each multinational corporation unwilling to relinquish control of its global business and give it, and all its assets, to Citizens of Earth. Citizens will continue the Allcott Movement until all multinational corporations have done the same. All personal and smaller-business wealth will be converted into resources to be distributed equally to all Citizens. All proceeds in excess of what’s needed reasonably by each Citizen will be saved for future generations. No violence of any kind will occur during the transfer of these resources. Citizens will take these steps because they are the moral, the right, steps to take to save all living creations on Earth, and Earth itself.

CELEBRATE AND SHARE: If you were to take a photograph of humanity and gaze at it, you would see a beautiful mosaic of mankind of different, beautiful colors. If you could step into the photograph, you would hear a melody of languages and dialects. You could have a worldwide picnic with all your sisters and brothers and experience different customs and taste different, delicious foods. And in moments of silence, all of you could pray in your different religions, separate but together at the same time. You would also share the same human laughter and joys and feel the same sorrows and cry the same tears, all in Peace on Earth eternal. All of you would come to delight in these differences, not dread them. You would look forward to celebrating and sharing with your family, not killing them. The spiritual whole would be larger than the sum of its sacred parts.

A QUANTUM LEAP:  The world, over millennia, keeps evolving. Over 3,200 years of recorded history, powers, nations keep shifting, sometimes seismically. Now is the time for not only the grandest seismic shift ever, but also the one that will save Earth and all living creations upon it. It is time for Earth to become Earth--not a scattering of over 200 nations with artificial borders, but an Earth that has one land, one sea, one sky, one people. The boundaries that have simplistically divided us for eons are not on maps, but in our minds and hearts. The air and water of Earth, even the pandemic, take no notice of national borders, nor should we, the Citizens of Earth. Technology, with its innumerable advances, has made us into a world when all can become one. We are free to be our real selves, to spend our variegated lives not aggrandizing, but by sharing and giving. Rather than dreading our superficial differences--our different skin colors, our different cultures, our different religions, our different languages--we can explore and enjoy them. Let us finally be what we truly have been forever, one big, worldwide family of humanity. No more wars, no more weapons, no more killing. No more hunger, no more homelessness, no more hopelessness. No more ignorance, no more illnesses, no more social classes. This is the quantum leap of which I speak.

PEACE ON EARTH:  Wealth is not worth. The mansuetude of loving, and being loved, are. When love is your currency, all else is counterfeit. Citizens will be able to go about creating their own happiness that is built on love-based personal relationships and professional activities. No longer will human beings be able to profit from another’s pain. With love at the center of being and living, there will be no more wars, no more dictators, no more corruption. Finally, there will only be Peace on Earth forever.

Copyright 2022 Tod Howard Hawks

A graduate of Phillips Andover Academy and Columbia College, Columbia University, Tod Howard Hawks has been a poet and a human-rights advocate his entire adult life.

todh21376@gmail.com

(Please share this commentary with others and email me if you wish to join all the other Citizens of Earth around the world in helping to save Earth through LOVE.)

~every distance is a long shot
within reach of a fool~
                          Prv. 𝑓:𝑦

bleed your heart out in dripping
poetic pretense―slip
that inky salamander some silk:

         "the wilting waiting flora
bequeathed their busting bouquets and
     bountiful bosoms unto the world
              in all of its prescient
                       violence"

then read it back to yourself
later and be
absolutely disgusted.

throw it away with all the other
things you've done in your
life.

now reach back in your closet
and rattle the skeletons
lingering there.

finger your dreams in the
dark under pressure
from the mind
to find yourself.

the lightning severance
will sing and
anxiety will
harmonize with the knife.

you've done it again...
****** it all up
and everyone
knows it.

you could eat all the erasers
in the world
and your **** still
wouldn't come out correct.

a lifetime of valleys and
seawalls has made you
an avatar of
effortless blunder.

and you can't stop bleeding
all over the page; white
is red again
cause
you blue it.

bleed in―breathe out
breathe in―bleed out
bleed in―breathe out
breathe in―
bleed out...

welcome to the creative
process.