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THE COSMIC-AFTERLIFE TENPIN BOWLING TOURNAMENT, PLAYED ON MY IPHONE BOWLING GAME



ROUND 1




GIANT KILLERS                  119     171      123           413            0 WINS 3 LOSSES      O POINTS GAME AND SERIES    TOTAL OF 0 PTS
COSMOS KINGS                 136     185      147           468            3  WINS O LOSSES    6 PTS GAME 3 POINTS SERIES TOTAL OF 9 PTS



ROUGH RATS                      113     151      154           418             2  WINS 1 LOSS         4 PTS GAME 3 PTS SERIES  TOTAL OF 7 PTS
OLD STYLE REBELS           138     134      142           414            1 WIN 2 LOSSES        2 PTS GAME 0 PTS SERIES TOTAL OF 2 PTS




COWBOYS                           142      125     186           453             1 WIN 2 LOSSES        2 PTS GAME 3 PTS SERIES TOTAL OF 5 PTS
RED DEVILS                         168      168       89           425             2 WINS 1 LOSS          4 PTS GAME 0 PTS SERIES TOTAL OF 4 PTS





PURPLE ALIENS                  131      122     156           409             1 WIN 2 LOSSES         2 PTS GAME 0 PTS SERIES TOTAL OF 2 PTS
ATHENA & CRONUS             144      140     131          415             2 WINS 1 LOSS           4 PTS GAME 3 PTS SERIES TOTAL OF 7 PTS




ALBERT  WALDRON              120      130     175          425            2 WINS 1 LOSS              4 PTS GAME 3 PTS SERIES TOTAL OF 7 PTS
RELIGIOUS MUMMIES           110      135     129          374            1 WIN 2 LOSSES           2 PTS GAME 0 PTS SERIES TOTAL OF 2 PTS






LADDER AFTER ROUND 1



                                                   RP   GW SW GL SL    FOR   AGA       PTS



COSMOS KINGS                        1       3      1    0    0     468     413          9
ALBERT WALDRON                   1       2       1   1    0     425     374          7
ROUGH RATS                             1      2       1   1    0     418      414         7
ATHENA & CRONUS                   1      2       1   1    0     415      409         7
COWBOYS                                   1     1       1    2   0      453      425        5
RED DEVILS                                 1     2       0    1   1      425      453        4
OLD STYLE REBELS                   1      1       0    2   1     414       418       2
PURPLE ALIENS                          1      1       0    2   1     409       415       2
RELIGIOUS MUMMIES                 1      1      0    2    1     374      425       2
GIANT KILLERS                             1      0     0    3     1     413      468      0
AD Letwixt Oct 2018
Part 1: (The traveler speaking)

"I follow the winding, the way beyond the farthest places
between trees knotted menacing with darkened faces
under mossy roots that twist and trip with a mischievous cackle
over heights and falls that beckon death's clanking shackle
and if you fall in, lose your precious breath
to tree limbs tangled scratching at vulnerable flesh.

A green roof above and green floor below
but my eyes look ahead, to where the silver meadows did grow
Remorse remembers all that passed before the eye
burnt of fire forgotten and ash was strewn across the sky
and now only memory does remain
of silver meadows and the golden rain.

This land is dampened with the morning dew
that daren't melt but for the light of moon
where mossy things are stowed in sunken places
and beautiful wonders lay behind rock faces,
I know the way, but do not lightly follow
As sunset brings forth demons beyond tomorrow.

I wish to find her: the lady silk
Her hands weaving threads of fates who twist and separate
her threads she brought from those older places past
Where nascent fauns with youthful voices fastly gleam and chatter
and deftly danced to delights in the silver meadows
When all was false and truth was shaded
all liars happily in reflections reflected
pale faces feinted in humorous deception
and all charismatic affectations were familiar expression.
singing songs of passing pleasures in strange dialect
All was serene was silver mirrors reflecting
save the flow of golden liquid cool and still
which seeped from sky to hill and then chalice filled.

I walk to see the lady
who has one eye black and one eye white
and carries a silver knife which- in moonlight flashes bright.
I will wearily watch for it's flashing tomorrow night,
for she doesn't know it, but I was also born of moon's pale light."

Part 2: (The lady singing)

"The meadow shifted softly that fateful night
in breezes blowing warmly and songs of ephemeral delight
melodies swell and shift like the swirling blades of grass
Grass not green but silver shining, all moonlight reflecting

Gods with silver hair and silver eyes danced in shifty iridescence
Voices sang clear and wandered wistfully through misty hills and hollowed places
Oh they delicately weave the lines of notes around my ear
under over between and in, I wish I could hear those notes again
but alas their time is passed-- the daytime took the nightly hymn

There are few who remember things as I have done, but waning pasts are of worth to none.
Oh the night was never meant to end
and it is left the earth but for what I have kept for mine, things broken never truly mend.
These silver threads for weaving time and fate together again
a mournful burden, but I cannot abandon them
for the tapestry of time is my from the gods of ancient past
As long as my fingers can touch the strings, my mind will see
what I have preserved in memory

the tapestry, though, will live before I die
All fates will cease to meet as edges cut
and gods will from sky return
to chase away sun in blue and silver flashing eye

And so I hurry to finish this task over which I mourn
so in silver laurel, I will be adorned."
I plan to add either one or two more parts later on
JP Goss Jan 2014
Tinderbox pt.1—Magic
At first,
I caught its eye
In the rolling smoke of fire
I ****** my hands
To pull it out
And speak with lighted words,
In light of brilliance,
A vital warmth,
But in the end just ashes.
And then,
The curve of silk waters
Which rushed upon and through the rocks
Wrote to me
A rich and liquid poetry
Not in bursts but subtle waves
I cupped my hands to catch its words,
But even then,
I could only hold so much
And only for so long.
               Tinderbox pt. 2—the Artist
Entranced in the world
Here and beneath the moment,
In the spaces and each letter
I saw the fire, the waves of silk
Each play in their environs,
I’d grieve
At their perfection,
Running my eyes over their hilly peaks
And dreaming mine had been there.
My worlds were ugly, incomplete
Extinguished at very moment
That the two would meet
The tinderbox was fire to my hands,
My cup was rife with holes
And there, I’d thought the artist dead
Or never even alive.
In my sleep I’d hear a voice
Like Milton, Coleridge, or Shelley
A babble arresting and forcing pity
From its infantile lucidity...
I knew this thing, but killed it.
Perhaps even now, I believe in magic
Though, to pluck rain from a furied storm
Or converse with tiny sparks
That become
Something of brilliance and solemn silk
That groves were wrought from tiny seeds
Long after mere chaos
That, from it, comes a universe
and white paper is all it needs.
What awoke me was not
That there was art
But that the words had tried to say something,
Something the heart could not speak
Nor the mind would dare to reason;
It was not as much the words that made it up
But the worlds in between them.
Art is not the presentation, but the meaning that hides beneath it--what it says both with words and without--in both author and audience. Art is not magic, it's a voice, an articulation of one's inner world which springs from a single inspiration. Perhaps, one should not begin trying to craft worlds right away or bring the world to word; it's hard enough solidifying one'd own, inner tumult of thought and scene. Don't be discouraged if your art is not pretty; you've created something, a world, a universe, and that's worth more, more aesthetic than any pretty string of words. Art is art, it's subjective, and creators are worth more to us than anything else.
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2016
the only shame i feel: muslims hold a single book to be synonymous of a library.

apologies, this is why i wasn't fully integrated,
i hold enough respect for the English ethnicity to keep
the reins on my Slavic origin, and its ancient history,
i want to see the Graeae cauldron
of multiple-ethnicity and culturalism:
what with former slaves learning
rap to topple the slavish shackles?
no one ever heard my story under
the Germans, Russians and Austro-Hungarians,
all those to topple Israel already toppled me
to migrate and leave my mother *******
toward an an export: until the black gold runs
out you sand-******... until the oil runs out...
until the oil runs out...
you're the one abusing it because you have it...
until the oil runs out sand-******...
you gonna take the slang out of me?
what is it now? global or feminist tactic?
Chine ain't about to give Dagenham back,
like they're not giving Ostrowiec Św.:
first division in 1997.. extra-class...
yummie piggies at the trough:
money was created to pacify and let
rich boy girls' spend...
      Lwów / Lvov was still in poker hands
of Roosevelt... so much for ******* H'america...
     biker-clan-glandular-rhaps (or plural of odes):
****! i hate belonging to come or some thing...
i always thought about comedy prone enlarged *******
for the geography between left ****** antarctic and
right ****** arctic in tune with the jiggly fatty-bergs..
no... factual-bergs...
but you'd never disintegrate into a 0a.d.
given the colonial history narrative that doesn't
involve the old testament and ***-kissers and
hefty conservative ***-pleasers like the book
of Antioch proposed... made that up...
got mixed up thinking on the necromancer of
the year that was actually 1997-8
17th *KSZO Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski
, tablature
pld.     pts.        w.   d.     l.    f.      a.
         34      24    6   6 22 24 47...
piggie piggie: got the giddy giggly ***** ****-a-doodle-do...
and i know i would too...
small town Polish town, a big Russian
would-be clever-pincer attracted to ******-pinching,
and all the milky drools, down the Nile toward
Cairo, so long as you wife is an Oasis of hamburgers and
strobe-berry epileptics, i.e.: blink 182's what's my age again?
i speak the ******* sprechen and i don't even belong
here... it's like i'm apologising for something that
was coming... thankfully i'm resolved to integrate cognitively
but in the domestic realm have nothing to do with
this language...
     i don't want to speak it to my mother,
i don't want to speak it to my father,
i can't afford to rent a house and prolong a university
bachelor lifestyle, the arabs and nigerians bought
all the flats out and are renting them out...
hopefully to Somalian pirates for: essex tan orange
sake in terms of: if i figured my tongue was an
axe in the first place... i'd lace my life with
many more people applauding...
i never understood this desire to integrate without
having the right to censor what i'm about to
embrace... a contract, much of smallprint readied
on the fidgety hand...
       it's not that i suddenly chose to
ethnically suspend my origins for a need to respect,
i kept my mother tongue for times such as these,
when i can't be approached as white and as inheritor
of colonialism... if i say i'm German they'll *******
clap, i remember once they asked me as if i were
going to do an app. for the caliphate asking me:
you German? no... Polish... huh? what's that?
somewhere in between Germany and Russia...
now i can't claim the ethnicity that my's right hand
of use with tongue... and now i can't claim the
tongue that isn't the ethnicity but is otherwise my
limb-for-limb... 5p.m. tea 100 years later is
a hijab on the streets of Birmingham...
no secret... i just see why i need to be involved like
some James Dean "wannabe" schizoid spice...
there will be no news from Poland concerning
the migrant crisis, no talk of a Muslim takeover...
ironically, as Monty Python would have said:
everyone was expecting a Polish Inquisition,
or as the crowds chanted: Evangelism! not the Quran!
happily are those: seeing America involve
itself in this slogan... me? as ever, the Pontius Pilate:
i said it once, i'll say it again:
panic is worse than fascism...
   panic is worse than fascism...
you don't expect panic, hence the beasts' stampede
in urban areas... fascism? you know it's
coming, and you know it's not good...
             fascism is panic realised too late,
fascism is panic organised... you knew it was coming
and you did nothing to prevent it...
  the only thing that could have prevented Trump
winning the presidency was acknowledging an unequivocal
membership of the union... Cracow wasn't built in
one day... trigger ******* happy panic button: press!
press! oppress! that special relationship of yours?
yeah... ye'ha! rear 'em in with that quiff of yours, cowboy!
ye'ha!
please don't get me involved, i know how to
impale a turk on a rotten wooden stump, rather than
crucify a Syrian on a geometric of mahogany
amid sacred words: so descended onto a mosque's minaret
and the hippy-hair-debate, and no hair and the hajj.
i know, people are apprehensive you're not a businessman
employing 100 slave Mongolians enlisted to blowing
up 1000 helium filled balloons an hour for birthday
party contracts... and none of them are properly trained
in ventriloquist's chipmunk!
              james dean was the original schizophrenic...
who treated society as an asylum,
and the asylum as a garden of Eden...
                                       lucky him: mono-linguistic...
   i sometimes wish i had that luxury on inherent
cleansing of ethnicity, so i could be left with only
a culinary boasting akin to the Persian quote on
falafel... but then you never know who's side you're
gonna be on...
i might as well quote him akin to j. franco post-doppelganger:
you're tearing me apart!
                                   and they say people think...
nonetheless: whether thinking or not,
they are... a welcome aversion in finding pleasure in
zoos; esp. the times when they're sweating like sardines
stashed in vulvas on underground trains: ventriloquists'
suggestion? moans: foetal moans... get me out of here...
otherwise groaned? harder... mm... deeper...
make your pelvis kiss my pelvis! mmm... baby!
first your read the Marquis to get a hard-on,
then you ****-off that hard-on...
and then you do a hand-job to someone else
and pass on the Oxfam motto to some other "hungry" Afrikaan.
Ken Feb 2016
You are my coral sky
and all that lies beneath it
Roughness, softness,
pain and ease
I hear the bitter winds
and the birdsongs both
Rain on me
or bathe me in sun
You are my coral sky
bright or diffuse
you light me

I don't want
to rescue you
I just want to be
the cleft, the cut
in the rocky *****
ready for your hand
or a foothold
simply there
at the moment
when you need
to centre
You are my earth
how could I be less
Rest on me while
you catch your breath
when you look up
and out
to that coral sky
I just want to be
there with you
to share the view

copyright © 2016 Ken Rush
Tom McCone May 2015
[i.]

as if slowly lowered back into the tongues of dreams,
in mahogany halls, between stone and glass, between a blink and your thought,
sung out, in the silences laid adrift, before and outside of words,
said all sentiments, patterns refused to belie:

a flurry of days,
offerance in as many hours,
what was found in a cascade of minutes,
later on in the light:
no second thought or first thought.
no gain or loss, no momentum,
save spinning breath, in
hurried paces.

colours of the sky, leaves, sea, all things passed or known; these sit in no compare to lakes, lain, steady under your wavering eyelids. as small wings fluster through limbs and heat, passages become tracts, patchwork, spread and turned fibre, glowing all the while.

no question, plain or perturbed,
where the lights of our lives hide.
just struggle on, in some semblance of consistency,
vacuous and shimmering.
out on the plains.

[ii.]

gold, was each fleck, sent from strand to
strand, to clustering distance;

i, traversing, footmark in sand in moss over
stone under branch & root system:

alive was more than a word.
how much more, was a better question.

but, what quantity counts? anything more than a palm's worth?
more than the passing strangers velocities?
more than the earth spins; what's worth counting?
all is no less or more than one fixed, glimmering
aspect of a dizzying world.

you, standing still, in between moments,
neither recognisable as stranger, or lifeline.
neither hurried nor fretted.
this is why you linger: for that off-moment, i could almost
summarise all i was not looking for, but had found;
to craft twisting afternoons, out on arid lines, through
dense brush, in between columns of oaken air,
and bark,
and low whispers,
and, sung out:

[iii.]

on some further day,
we'll crawl away,
apart or entwined, to
find some open scenery or,
at least, to escape the
concrete and dropped names,

but, steady on, for life
is just
a game
we play,
with little time to waste
on second takes,
or to hide away from the
breathlessnesses we lose,
or give escape,

and, later on, down the
beaten trail, we sing our
separate songs at the
same time, but,
harmonious we,
harmoniously,
end up singin'
all the same lines, anyway,

so, here i stand, and sway,
and disseminate
my fear and doubt,
which look so small,
so far away,
so far, i've taken
small measure to
put down what i
couldn't say
.
almost the closer
Oculi Mar 2019
You taught me the absolution,
You, woman of exquisite dreams!
Oh, daughter of Apollo, you,
who sings, kicks and screams.

The noises you create
Will be of utmost importance
While you rattle and shake
and tear off your wings.

Salvation! Flows, oh, within
the lake of rich blood,
the wine of gorgeous Bacchus,
stronger than the womb.

You swim, as though it is sport,
creating shores of ****** concrete.
You will never get out and dry...
you might then stop drowning.

Your lyre will be unique,
for it will always wear red.
The color of blood: not enemies'
but of your own flesh.

You brought me my wings,
You, woman of accomplished dreams!
I tore them off time and time again,
but you just made them anew.

The cradle you represent...
That is my resting place,
a face of pure emotion,
of love, obsession, romance.

As though I'm a songbird,
and you're the tiger thrush,
you show power and the truth
with a warm smile.

Carry me and I'll carry you,
With pleasures of the flesh,
Feathers in the way, but no care
And crooked beacons of light.

You made me my lyre,
You, woman of broken dreams!
You heard me sing in my sleep
while you cried tears of joy.

You taught me about your father,
and your mother, Hera,
and I listened with intent,
knowing I might meet her one day.

You made me want what I
Could never have. I won't
ever forgive you, because
You once made me smile.

You made me a failure,
You, man of broken bottles.
You raged and fumed about
Whatever you cared about, not me.

You taught me shame,
but no ways to ever avoid it.
You taught me how to be pathetic.
You taught me to love the women of the world.
This is the first thing I've written in months so please bear with me.
Good to do this again, though.
Nat Lipstadt Apr 26
~dedicated to the heart fixers~

sometimes I smack my head,
when a poem commission is lying on
the ground before me, and I just don’t
hear it, believe it, in order to retrieve it…

many months of physical rehabilitation,
sessions always ended with a certain cutesy
Gen Z~Millenial crossover phraseology:

remember to tell someone you love them

the instructors mostly youngish,
so we senior~smile
a tad dismissively, give them a reward~grin, and
head for the locker room,
where we gossip and compare notes,
on the Part II of our in-process-future-realization,
living a grueling new life of self-preservation, 24/7

the PTs & EPs pound you on the machina, go faster, work harder,
eat better, sleep more, take those meds, motion is lotion,
walk the talk, never be still, but race to live longer and
prosper, this hard work is your new job, and resignation
is non~optional

now, it hits me, via a figurative sharp slap on the side of the head,
triggering an actual physical manifestation that reverbs to the toes,
that the most important lesson went under the radar,
evading the former trader’s dimming vision,
flunking himself on the rehab test paper,
a purple F for fool,
a grade, earned and deserved, and herein poetically preserved

the hardest heart work, begins only after you co-
commence the longest road back to where you once
belonged, but where you can’t walk alone, for therein
a recipe for failure; and the work that needs doing,
is on you; take that tear-repaired heart, and give it away, it,
one can be healed, but not if sealed, for the hard-hearted
walls thicken, and “over  time, the thickened heart muscle
can become too stiff to fill the heart with blood; the heart
can't pump enough blood to meet the body's needs.


so break off pieces of your heart, give them away with
relentless abandon, for this is the heart that self-repairs,
new tissue, new fiber, and most important, regeneration,
the one single reparation that can successfully
accomplish the true miracle of getting by giving,
no forgiving, if you don’t exercise the heart by

remembering to tell someone you love them




dedicated to the hard working staff of the
Cardio Rehabilitation  Unit
of Nyulangonge, Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation
who started  me
with a mighty push on the long road to utilizing my heart properly

<•>
Please hold for an obligatory moment of silence, mute in its act, wordless in its perpetration.
Place artificial flowers on outer lapels, held in place with no concentration.

Feudal rivalries resurrected for resources and land…to be ripped from the native source’s hand.

Pitiful glances at battle worn soldiers, still praising ideology projecting them as a supported saviour.
Unregretful acts lead one to question their behaviour.

Service dogs doled out in bulk, preventing an army of PTS Banners from turning Hulk.

These discretionary acts of ill will mutilate the concept of freedom, and men who fought to uphold its worth.
These incendiary pacts on parliament hill, fumigating for roaches of aspersion, are bastardizing a new world’s birth.

Carriers’ return home, housing the long departed, not to be thanked, not to be appreciated, but to be ******, for unholy, sanctified acts.
Permitted parade zone, rousing the socially guarded, to be spanked, depreciated, and deemed unworthy to stand, before coyly rectified rats
ZenOfferings Feb 2019
Tie my shoes up tight
Taking my time
I'm in for a long night

Warm up on sidelines
Scoping it out
A fresh ball in my hip pocket
I be feeling stout

Drill it to **** it bout 3000 times
Never stepping outside the black painted lines
Of the lane
I was inside
Perfecting the stroke
The release
Is
Everything

But I'm in the waiting room
The lobby that is Court Two
Court 1 is where the men boom
And bang bodies and shoot
Lights
Out
Daggers

And if a man is there for long enough
And the ten go down a few
A few of the crew
Over on Court Two
Get called on to fill and finish the game up

My wind isn't great
My footwork is dodgy
My stroke is quite streaky
Go to the bank?
I'm wishy-washy

Can't box out for ****
My handles are average
But my defense is good
So I have some leverage

And on this particular evening
My shot felt real good
And I got a nod over
And played how I should

A pester on defense
I was covering two
To free up a big man in post
In the zoo

A transition pit stop on fast break
I pushed the ball up the court
The seven footer hits me in the corner
Shooting 100% from the floor

Then the men started to heat up
'250 bulldozer' in the lane
'Lights out on the arc'er outsider

I didn't touch the ball much
I'd basically given up
They played there often with chemistry
And I, just a pup

Got one pass at the end
That I wasn't expecting
I fumbled the friend
The rock had been misdirecting

But
All
Things
Said:
3/3 ~ 7 pts ~ 3 rbd ~ 1 blk ~ 2 stl ~ 2 ast ~ 2 to

And we take those
Pick up basketball at University
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2018
some crazy sudoku time:

       mp  w   d   l   gf   ga   gd    pts
j       2     1    1   0    4     3     1       4
s      2     1    1   0    4     3     1       4
c      2     1    0   1    4     2     2       3
p     2     0    0   2     1    5     -4      0

so...

             senegal would have to draw
with colombia, proposition (a)...
       proposition (b) poland would have
to win against japan...

       oh... and then it would have...
  j. gd taking them
        to -1                 or 0...

                     meaning c. and s.
                    would have to draw even...

like i said: it just might be a miracle
for senegal and colombia...

                 and poland's last resort...
fighting the remaining axis power of
the 20th century...

                 but that's football,
   future, past,
               gambling...
                       and chance...
and above all else, something more than luck.

           go senegal!
                   go colombia!
ROUND 2 COSMIC-AFTERLIFE TENPIN BOWLING GAME-MY IPHONE BOWLING GAME











COSMOS KINGS                                  176    202      165         537
OLD STYLE REBELS                            154   142       142        438






GIANT KILLERS                                    116     145      104         365
RED DEVILS                                          134     183      127        444







ROUGH RATS                                         118      157      128       403
ATHENA & CRONUS                               174      171      125       470






COWBOYS                                              166       136     188        490
ALBERT WALDRON                                136       140     183        459





PURPLE ALIENS                                     114        173      124        411
RELIGIOUS MUMMIES                            142        174      155       471







LADDER





                                                             RP    GW    SW    GL    SL      FOR      AGA        PTS


COSMOS KINGS                                  2        6        2        0      0       1005       851         18
ATHENA & CRONUS                            2        4        2        2      0         885        812        14
COWBOYS                                           2         3       2         3      0        943         884        12
RED DEVILS                                        2         5       1         1       1        869         818        11
RELIGIOUS MUMMIES                        2         4       1         2       1        845         836        11
ALBERT WALDRON                             2         2       1         3       1        884         864          9
ROUGH RATS                                       2         3       1         3       1        821         884          9
OLD STYLE REBELS                            2         1       0         5       2        852         955          2
PURPLE ALIENS                                   2         1       0         5       2        820         886          2
GIANT KILLERS                                     2         0       0         6       2        778         912          0

— The End —