It was a cold night for a concert. There was frost on the windscreen as we got into the car for the short drive to this city church. We drove because we were going to be late, and it was cold, and would be likely to be colder still when the concert was over. I had wondered if part one would be enough. Could Bach and Rameau be enough? Might the musical appetite cope with Mozart and Beethoven too? Were we about to sit down to a large meal, possibly in the wrong order. Can the cheese course be a transcendental experience I wondered? Bach to begin certainly, a substantial starter with one of the mid period keyboard toccatas and two ‘distant’ preludes and fugues, but then a keyboard suite by Rameau?
 
When I listen to Beethoven though I want to hear a work on its own, unencumbered round about with other musics.  A recent experience of several hours driving to hear a single Beethoven symphony has remained close and vivid, and an experience that brought me close to tears. So I imagine that I might only hear Op.110 to make that opening sequence of chords so ominously special. The introduction seems to come from nowhere and does not connect with musical past, except perhaps the composer’s own past. It is as though the pianist puts on a pair of gloves imbued with the spirit of the composer, and these chords appear . . . and what is there that might possibly prepare the listener for the journey that pianist and listener embark upon?  Certainly not the soufflé of Mozart’s K.332.
 
The audience is hardly a smattering of coats, hats and grey hair. There is another piano recital in town tonight and this is but the artist’s preview of a forthcoming concert at a major venue. Our pianist is equipping herself for a prestigious engagement and sensibly recognizes the need to test out the way the programme flows in front of an audience, and in a provincial church where she is not entirely unknown. I admire this resolve and wonder a little at the long-term planning which makes this possible and viable.
 
Now a figure in black walks out from the shadows to stand by her piano. Coming from stage right she places left her hand firmly on the mirror-black case above the keyboard. She looks at her audience briefly, and makes a bow, almost a curtsey, an obeisance to her audience and possibly to those distant spirits who guard the music she is to play. We will not see her face again until the next time she will stand at the piano to acknowledge our applause after the Bach she is about to play. Her slightly more than shoulder-length hair is cut to flow forward as she holds herself to play; her face is often hidden from us, her expression curiously blank. Perhaps she has prepared herself to enter a deep state of concentration that admits no recognition of those sitting just in front of her. Her dress is long and black with a few sparking threads to catch the careful lighting. Without these occasional glimmers her ****** movement would be unnoticeable. As it is the way the light is caught is subtle and quietly playful, though not enough to distract, only remind us that though in black she is wearing the kind of starry sky such as you might perceive in crepuscular time.
 
Thus, we already sense so much before she has played a note there is a firm slightly dogged confidence and reverence here in her approach to instrument and audience. And in the opening bars of the Bach toccata that is manifest; and not just a confidence born out of some strategy against nervousness, but a ritual of welcoming to this music that now spills out into the partially darkened church. The sonorousness and balance of the piano’s tone surprises. It is not a fine piano, but it has qualities that she seems to understand. There is a degree of attentive listening to herself that enables her to control dynamics and act resolutely on the structure of the music. When the slow section of this four-part toccata appears there is a studied gentleness and restraint that belies any ****** led gesture or manner. Her stance and deliberation at the keyboard remain determined and in control, unaltered by the music’s message. She does not pull her body backwards as seems the custom with so many who feel they have to show us they are stroking and coaxing such gentleness and restraint out of the keyboard.
 
As the final fugato of the toccata flows at almost twice the speed I’ve ever heard it, my concentration begins to disengage. It is too fast for me to follow the voices, I miss the entries, and the smudged resonance of the texture hides those details I have grown over so many years to know and love. This is Glen Gould on speed, not the toccata that resides in my musical memory. I am aware of missing so much and my attention floats away into the sound of it all. It seems to be all sound and not the play of music.
 
In this stage of disengagement I sense the tense quality of her right leg pedalling with the tip of a reddish shoe just visible, deft, tiny flicks of movement. She turns her face away from the keyboard frequently, looking away from the keyboard through the choir to the high altar; and for a moment we see her upturned face, a blank face, possibly with little or no make up, no jewellery. A plain young woman, mid to late thirties perhaps, and not a face marked by children or a busy teaching life, but a face focused on knowing this music to a point at which there is almost a detachment, where it becomes independent of her control, flowing momentarily beyond herself.
 
Then she reins the toccata in, reoccupies it; she is seeking closure for herself and for her audience whose attention for a short while has been, as the Quakers say, gathered. Gathered into a degree of silence, when breathing and the body’s sense and presence of itself disappear, momentarily, and musical listening moves from a clock time to a virtual time. There is a slowing down, an opening out, even though in reality’s metronomic time-field there is none.
 
There is a hesitation. With more Bach to follow, should we applaud? With relief after holding the flight of time’s arrow in our consciousness, just for those concluding minutes and seconds we acknowledge and applaud - the beginning of the concert.

--To Elizabeth Robins Pennell


'O mes cheres Mille et Une Nuits!'--Fantasio.

Once on a time
There was a little boy:  a master-mage
By virtue of a Book
Of magic--O, so magical it filled
His life with visionary pomps
Processional!  And Powers
Passed with him where he passed.  And Thrones
And Dominations, glaived and plumed and mailed,
Thronged in the criss-cross streets,
The palaces pell-mell with playing-fields,
Domes, cloisters, dungeons, caverns, tents, arcades,
Of the unseen, silent City, in his soul
Pavilioned jealously, and hid
As in the dusk, profound,
Green stillnesses of some enchanted mere.--

I shut mine eyes . . . And lo!
A flickering ****** of memory that floats
Upon the face of a pool of darkness five
And thirty dead years deep,
Antic in girlish broideries
And skirts and silly shoes with straps
And a broad-ribanded leghorn, he walks
Plain in the shadow of a church
(St. Michael's:  in whose brazen call
To curfew his first wails of wrath were whelmed),
Sedate for all his haste
To be at home; and, nestled in his arm,
Inciting still to quiet and solitude,
Boarded in sober drab,
With small, square, agitating cuts
Let in a-top of the double-columned, close,
Quakerlike print, a Book! . . .
What but that blessed brief
Of what is gallantest and best
In all the full-shelved Libraries of Romance?
The Book of rocs,
Sandalwood, ivory, turbans, ambergris,
Cream-tarts, and lettered apes, and calendars,
And ghouls, and genies--O, so huge
They might have overed the tall Minster Tower
Hands down, as schoolboys take a post!
In truth, the Book of Camaralzaman,
Schemselnihar and Sindbad, Scheherezade
The peerless, Bedreddin, Badroulbadour,
Cairo and Serendib and Candahar,
And Caspian, and the dim, terrific bulk--
Ice-ribbed, fiend-visited, isled in spells and storms--
Of Kaf! . . . That centre of miracles,
The sole, unparalleled Arabian Nights!

Old friends I had a-many--kindly and grim
Familiars, cronies quaint
And goblin!  Never a Wood but housed
Some morrice of dainty dapperlings.  No Brook
But had his nunnery
Of green-haired, silvry-curving sprites,
To cabin in his grots, and pace
His lilied margents.  Every lone Hillside
Might open upon Elf-Land.  Every Stalk
That curled about a Bean-stick was of the breed
Of that live ladder by whose delicate rungs
You climbed beyond the clouds, and found
The Farm-House where the Ogre, gorged
And drowsy, from his great oak chair,
Among the flitches and pewters at the fire,
Called for his Faery Harp.  And in it flew,
And, perching on the kitchen table, sang
Jocund and jubilant, with a sound
Of those gay, golden-vowered madrigals
The shy thrush at mid-May
Flutes from wet orchards flushed with the triumphing dawn;
Or blackbirds rioting as they listened still,
In old-world woodlands rapt with an old-world spring,
For Pan's own whistle, savage and rich and lewd,
And mocked him call for call!

I could not pass
The half-door where the cobbler sat in view
Nor figure me the wizen Leprechaun,
In square-cut, faded reds and buckle-shoes,
Bent at his work in the hedge-side, and know
Just how he tapped his brogue, and twitched
His wax-end this and that way, both with wrists
And elbows.  In the rich June fields,
Where the ripe clover drew the bees,
And the tall quakers trembled, and the West Wind
Lolled his half-holiday away
Beside me lolling and lounging through my own,
'Twas good to follow the Miller's Youngest Son
On his white horse along the leafy lanes;
For at his stirrup linked and ran,
Not cynical and trapesing, as he loped
From wall to wall above the espaliers,
But in the bravest tops
That market-town, a town of tops, could show:
Bold, subtle, adventurous, his tail
A banner flaunted in disdain
Of human stratagems and shifts:
King over All the Catlands, present and past
And future, that moustached
Artificer of fortunes, ****-in-Boots!
Or Bluebeard's Closet, with its plenishing
Of meat-hooks, sawdust, blood,
And wives that hung like fresh-dressed carcases--
Odd-fangled, most a butcher's, part
A faery chamber hazily seen
And hazily figured--on dark afternoons
And windy nights was visiting of the best.
Then, too, the pelt of hoofs
Out in the roaring darkness told
Of Herne the Hunter in his antlered helm
Galloping, as with despatches from the Pit,
Between his hell-born Hounds.
And Rip Van Winkle . . . often I lurked to hear,
Outside the long, low timbered, tarry wall,
The mutter and rumble of the trolling bowls
Down the lean plank, before they fluttered the pins;
For, listening, I could help him play
His wonderful game,
In those blue, booming hills, with Mariners
Refreshed from kegs not coopered in this our world.

But what were these so near,
So neighbourly fancies to the spell that brought
The run of Ali Baba's Cave
Just for the saying 'Open Sesame,'
With gold to measure, peck by peck,
In round, brown wooden stoups
You borrowed at the chandler's? . . . Or one time
Made you Aladdin's friend at school,
Free of his Garden of Jewels, Ring and Lamp
In perfect trim? . . . Or Ladies, fair
For all the embrowning scars in their white *******
Went labouring under some dread ordinance,
Which made them whip, and bitterly cry the while,
Strange Curs that cried as they,
Till there was never a Black ***** of all
Your consorting but might have gone
Spell-driven miserably for crimes
Done in the pride of womanhood and desire . . .
Or at the ghostliest altitudes of night,
While you lay wondering and acold,
Your sense was fearfully purged; and soon
Queen Labe, abominable and dear,
Rose from your side, opened the Box of Doom,
Scattered the yellow powder (which I saw
Like sulphur at the Docks in bulk),
And muttered certain words you could not hear;
And there! a living stream,
The brook you bathed in, with its weeds and flags
And cresses, glittered and sang
Out of the hearthrug over the nakedness,
Fair-scrubbed and decent, of your bedroom floor! . . .

I was--how many a time!--
That Second Calendar, Son of a King,
On whom 'twas vehemently enjoined,
Pausing at one mysterious door,
To pry no closer, but content his soul
With his kind Forty.  Yet I could not rest
For idleness and ungovernable Fate.
And the Black Horse, which fed on sesame
(That wonder-working word!),
Vouchsafed his back to me, and spread his vans,
And soaring, soaring on
From air to air, came charging to the ground
Sheer, like a lark from the midsummer clouds,
And, shaking me out of the saddle, where I sprawled
Flicked at me with his tail,
And left me blinded, miserable, distraught
(Even as I was in deed,
When doctors came, and odious things were done
On my poor tortured eyes
With lancets; or some evil acid stung
And wrung them like hot sand,
And desperately from room to room
Fumble I must my dark, disconsolate way),
To get to Bagdad how I might.  But there
I met with Merry Ladies.  O you three--
Safie, Amine, Zobeide--when my heart
Forgets you all shall be forgot!
And so we supped, we and the rest,
On wine and roasted lamb, rose-water, dates,
Almonds, pistachios, citrons.  And Haroun
Laughed out of his lordly beard
On Giaffar and Mesrour (I knew the Three
For all their Mossoul habits).  And outside
The Tigris, flowing swift
Like Severn bend for bend, twinkled and gleamed
With broken and wavering shapes of stranger stars;
The vast, blue night
Was murmurous with peris' plumes
And the leathern wings of genies; words of power
Were whispering; and old fishermen,
Casting their nets with prayer, might draw to shore
Dead loveliness:  or a prodigy in scales
Worth in the Caliph's Kitchen pieces of gold:
Or copper vessels, stopped with lead,
Wherein some Squire of Eblis watched and railed,
In durance under potent charactry
Graven by the seal of Solomon the King . . .

Then, as the Book was glassed
In Life as in some olden mirror's quaint,
Bewildering angles, so would Life
Flash light on light back on the Book; and both
Were changed.  Once in a house decayed
From better days, harbouring an errant show
(For all its stories of dry-rot
Were filled with gruesome visitants in wax,
Inhuman, hushed, ghastly with Painted Eyes),
I wandered; and no living soul
Was nearer than the pay-box; and I stared
Upon them staring--staring.  Till at last,
Three sets of rafters from the streets,
I strayed upon a mildewed, rat-run room,
With the two Dancers, horrible and obscene,
Guarding the door:  and there, in a bedroom-set,
Behind a fence of faded crimson cords,
With an aspect of frills
And dimities and dishonoured privacy
That made you hanker and hesitate to look,
A Woman with her litter of Babes--all slain,
All in their nightgowns, all with Painted Eyes
Staring--still staring; so that I turned and ran
As for my neck, but in the street
Took breath.  The same, it seemed,
And yet not all the same, I was to find,
As I went up!  For afterwards,
Whenas I went my round alone--
All day alone--in long, stern, silent streets,
Where I might stretch my hand and take
Whatever I would:  still there were Shapes of Stone,
Motionless, lifelike, frightening--for the Wrath
Had smitten them; but they watched,
This by her melons and figs, that by his rings
And chains and watches, with the hideous gaze,
The Painted Eyes insufferable,
Now, of those grisly images; and I
Pursued my best-beloved quest,
Thrilled with a novel and delicious fear.
So the night fell--with never a lamplighter;
And through the Palace of the King
I groped among the echoes, and I felt
That they were there,
Dreadfully there, the Painted staring Eyes,
Hall after hall . . . Till lo! from far
A Voice!  And in a little while
Two tapers burning!  And the Voice,
Heard in the wondrous Word of God, was--whose?
Whose but Zobeide's,
The lady of my heart, like me
A True Believer, and like me
An outcast thousands of leagues beyond the pale! . . .

Or, sailing to the Isles
Of Khaledan, I spied one evenfall
A black blotch in the sunset; and it grew
Swiftly . . . and grew.  Tearing their beards,
The sailors wept and prayed; but the grave ship,
Deep laden with spiceries and pearls, went mad,
Wrenched the long tiller out of the steersman's hand,
And, turning broadside on,
As the most iron would, was haled and ******
Nearer, and nearer yet;
And, all awash, with horrible lurching leaps
Rushed at that Portent, casting a shadow now
That swallowed sea and sky; and then,
Anchors and nails and bolts
Flew screaming out of her, and with clang on clang,
A noise of fifty stithies, caught at the sides
Of the Magnetic Mountain; and she lay,
A broken bundle of firewood, strown piecemeal
About the waters; and her crew
Passed shrieking, one by one; and I was left
To drown.  All the long night I swam;
But in the morning, O, the smiling coast
Tufted with date-trees, meadowlike,
Skirted with shelving sands!  And a great wave
Cast me ashore; and I was saved alive.
So, giving thanks to God, I dried my clothes,
And, faring inland, in a desert place
I stumbled on an iron ring--
The fellow of fifty built into the Quays:
When, scenting a trap-door,
I dug, and dug; until my biggest blade
Stuck into wood.  And then,
The flight of smooth-hewn, easy-falling stairs,
Sunk in the naked rock!  The cool, clean vault,
So neat with niche on niche it might have been
Our beer-cellar but for the rows
Of brazen urns (like monstrous chemist's jars)
Full to the wide, squat throats
With gold-dust, but a-top
A layer of pickled-walnut-looking things
I knew for olives!  And far, O, far away,
The Princess of China languished!  Far away
Was marriage, with a Vizier and a Chief
Of Eunuchs and the privilege
Of going out at night
To play--unkenned, majestical, secure--
Where the old, brown, friendly river shaped
Like Tigris shore for shore!  Haply a Ghoul
Sat in the churchyard under a frightened moon,
A thighbone in his fist, and glared
At supper with a Lady:  she who took
Her rice with tweezers grain by grain.
Or you might stumble--there by the iron gates
Of the Pump Room--underneath the limes--
Upon Bedreddin in his shirt and drawers,
Just as the civil Genie laid him down.
Or those red-curtained panes,
Whence a tame cornet tenored it throatily
Of beer-pots and spittoons and new long pipes,
Might turn a caravansery's, wherein
You found Noureddin Ali, loftily drunk,
And that fair Persian, bathed in tears,
You'd not have given away
For all the diamonds in the Vale Perilous
You had that dark and disleaved afternoon
Escaped on a roc's claw,
Disguised like Sindbad--but in Christmas beef!
And all the blissful while
The schoolboy satchel at your hip
Was such a bulse of gems as should amaze
Grey-whiskered chapmen drawn
From over Caspian:  yea, the Chief Jewellers
Of Tartary and the bazaars,
Seething with traffic, of enormous Ind.--

Thus cried, thus called aloud, to the child heart
The magian East:  thus the child eyes
Spelled out the wizard message by the light
Of the sober, workaday hours
They saw, week in week out, pass, and still pass
In the sleepy Minster City, folded kind
In ancient Severn's arm,
Amongst her water-meadows and her docks,
Whose floating populace of ships--
Galliots and luggers, light-heeled brigantines,
Bluff barques and rake-hell fore-and-afters--brought
To her very doorsteps and geraniums
The scents of the World's End; the calls
That may not be gainsaid to rise and ride
Like fire on some high errand of the race;
The irresistible appeals
For comradeship that sound
Steadily from the irresistible sea.
Thus the East laughed and whispered, and the tale,
Telling itself anew
In terms of living, labouring life,
Took on the colours, busked it in the wear
Of life that lived and laboured; and Romance,
The Angel-Playmate, raining down
His golden influences
On all I saw, and all I dreamed and did,
Walked with me arm in arm,
Or left me, as one bediademed with straws
And bits of glass, to gladden at my heart
Who had the gift to seek and feel and find
His fiery-hearted presence everywhere.
Even so dear Hesper, bringer of all good things,
Sends the same silver dews
Of happiness down her dim, delighted skies
On some poor collier-hamlet--(mound on mound
Of sifted squalor; here a soot-throated stalk
Sullenly smoking over a row
Of flat-faced hovels; black in the gritty air
A web of rails and wheels and beams; with strings
Of hurtling, tipping trams)--
As on the amorous nightingales
And roses of Shiraz, or the walls and towers
Of Samarcand--the Ineffable--whence you espy
The splendour of Ginnistan's embattled spears,
Like listed lightnings.
Samarcand!
That name of names!  That star-vaned belvedere
Builded against the Chambers of the South!
That outpost on the Infinite!
And behold!
Questing therefrom, you knew not what wild tide
Might overtake you:  for one fringe,
One suburb, is stablished on firm earth; but one
Floats founded vague
In lubberlands delectable--isles of palm
And lotus, fortunate mains, far-shimmering seas,
The promise of wistful hills--
The shining, shifting Sovranties of Dream.

raise ourselves, rouse ourselves, rising to race up versus the sun,
to ferry dock, to catch the first, the 5:10am to the mainland,
which is just an island-too-but-longer,
on the first boat of the workweek, the first leg
of an island to island to island journey-poem, but that
for another morning, unless already writ, but forgot?

the north fork, an herb garden of vegetables and fruits,
family farms & rural suburbs, towns of English & Indian names,
all cheek to jowl, corn rows, tractor museums,
high school football victory banners of a prior year,  
and alas, always fresh, aged-woe reminders,
too many streets, ferries, bridges named for young boys who didn't return from foreign wars and whom we all knew by right sight

me, a summer sojourner, a summer visa, an off-islander,
a Hebrew, living among the native island born hareleggers,^
the Methodists, Quakers, and the rest of a varietal potpourri of "Egyptians," come here by choice, all, living in a paradisal
farmers market, all faiths enjoying seven times seven
years of plenty

Country Road (CR) 48, plainly named, snakes it way to the city,  
a  hundred miles, a hundred miles, as the song says,
to a distant, invisible emerald mecca,
which magically emanates
waves of gravitational pull powerful,
where I heard that human city folk go to do derring do,
battling with numbers, creativity and keenest human instincts,
game playing for a throne that may not even exist

as we go west, the sun sneaks up behind us
spotted in the steve sideview mirror, watching our
winking red tails,
moving away, asking us why, are we somehow dissatisfied,
with the rich purple soil of this little refuge it protects?

this soil, blessed, brings forth the babies of summer,
truly a fruited plain cornucopia, the famed potatoes,
fresh eggs, for sale by unseen and oft unattended hands,
plant it and it will come, the peonies flowers, the sod, tomatoes,
the Christmas trees, local duck and fresh caught striped bass,,
over flowing fruit stands endless,
where they debate no politics but only
which fruit will become tomorrow's pies?

and always, first and foremost, the vineyards, the vineyards

not yet six am, sun still too weak, to do the ***** work burn,
fields full of snow white mist lying over man tall vines,
the mist, ground swelling up to the chest level, then north
to the nostrils and head, intoxicating the lungs, the brain,
inculcating the chest with a salve of moisture,
a blend of sea and farm fresh air,
containing the designer's secret arts of earth creation

the fine mist so thick, no different than a snowy white out,
leaves me marveling and a-wonder, why do I leave,
dictated to by boxes on a hardware store calendar?

why not bide and hide in the morn mist,
never will-would we-be found, the vineyards and corn rows,
my protectors, the bay and sound, my natural moats,
is the music of wind + leaves, symphonic insufficient,
isn't the theater of the birds, wild turkeys, families of deer, osprey,
tern, visiting Canadian geese, and the hard to spot, Broadway stars,
those little foxes, wondrous enough?

this guising vineyard mist offers solutions to questions
I should not be asking, especially, primarily,
where is shelter,
for that is asked and answered

(WE ARE!)

The space pioneers, planetary colliders seizing the heavens and placing them on earth, pop pop big bang brain busters that spin galaxies into milky ways and planets into candybars, the alien humanoid reflectors reflecting the sun back into Van Gogh’s Starry Night.

(WE ARE!)

The fire-starters, self-combustion, canvas arsonists. IGNITE! Light the streets on fire with your blood. Explode, implode, and explode again. Pilot to bombardier, we’re dropping bombs like Guernica.

(WE ARE!)

Wild creatures born out of black magic, black mamba, bear your ******* fangs! Be a predator! Find you’re prey, rip it’s ******* guts out, and paint something with them. Then scream, scream so loud that Munch himself would tell you to turn it down a notch.

(WE ARE!)

The creators, the ground shakers, the earth quakers, inventing ideas, gushing thought, and gushing blood because remember, you are alive! Alive with creativity, passion, and energy to create, because we are artists.

Disregarded,  no thanks.
I no longer fall for the pranks.
I withdraw my cash from the bank.
On a scale of one to ten how do I rank?
Poverty stenches & stank.
Stale & untrusted.
Broken,  abandoned,  & undusted.
Defeated,  hobbled, & now rusted.
Felonies & misdeameanors busted.
Lawbreakers, corruded & crusted.

Marry a man with a job & a van.
Who does all that he can.
My secret wish on a shooting star.
To stop getting drunk at the bar.
A walk to his momma's house isn't far.

Work ethics get my kiss.
Employment was my wish.
Success is our bliss.

Like jawbreakers dangerous & senseless.
Civilization settlers & makers.
Pioneers,  homemakers, waiters, bakers, & Quakers.
The towns folk are usually broke.
Different walks of life is no joke.
Occupations & professions of a wife.

What if I had one more eye?
Noble with clarity-
A superior eye.

It would see tomorrow,
Not yet set in stone,
So set apart from the world I know-

Distinctive and discernible,
I envision a procession,
Of time trailed before me.

Enthroned on my brow,
The lone eye would crest,
Possessed with its profound unrest.

Clairvoyant, cunning, beaming eye-
Perched above organs of trivial nature,
Adorned, a crown that never cries,
It knows no regretful quakers.

How magnificent!
It would be,
To see so clearly,
To amend early,
To haven from horror,
To have an aura,
Of the triumphs yet to unfold,
If only an eye that bold,
Were part of me.

my own mind
robs me of serenity
delusions seem real
and fears of the future
seem imminent

a huge weight is lifted
when I trust in a loving power
I do not know what
but it's not me

Quakers call it the Divine Light
Taoists call it the Great Tao
and Yoda called it the force all around us
I choose to call it *Love

Ever played rose, bud and thorn? It’s a game where you go around in a group of friends and share what’s happening in your life. A rose is something good, a bud is something hoped for, and a thorn is a problem. Yeah, we’re hopeless oversharers.

My rose today is the weather. I wrote a piece a week ago complaining about the lack of snow in New Haven. The next morning it was 2° with a wind chill of -30°. My roommates gave me the evil eye - like I somehow brought it on. “God doesn’t listen to me.” I ‘d said, defensively.

My thorn is, Anna’s parents are here for a few days and she’s very on edge. She spent yesterday with them but today they’re coming to our suite. I was surprised when I first saw them, they’re straight off the farm (if the farm was in the 1800s). They seemed to huddle together, defensively and consulted each other so quietly that they buzzed like a hive of bees.

Her father, a very tall man, was wearing a plaid flannel shirt under a long, thick, dark gray, Dickies coat (it says Dickies on the pocket) and jeans. He has a medium-long white beard and a black-felt, wideawake hat which he worked slowly in a circle by its brim (I think that would qualify as a comforting gesture).

Her mom, Abeba, the spokesperson for the pair, is a thin woman with mostly gray (used to be brown) hair. She was dressed simply in black high-top shoes, a plain, deep green, floor length dress under a sweater and long, thick, gansey shawl with matching barrette.

When I reached out to take her hand in greeting, she regarded me with a coolness I found unnerving. All the other parents I’ve ever met were friendly, even huggy, on introduction.
“They’re Quakers,” Anna said, (note the “they’re”) like that explained everything. When I looked confused, she reached out her hand, at arm's length, and touched me lightly on the upper arm with her index finger. After a moment she revealed, “That’s a Quaker hug.”

Anna had said they were quiet, “judgy” people - and here they were, in our common room, judging the books on our shelves (With titles like, “this book is gay,” “Good girl complex,” “The big **** *** book”) the clothes on the furniture, the laptops on the floor, the “art” on the walls and the disarray in the kitchen. They kept hat and purse in hand, as if they were expecting a fire drill. They’re a whole new category of houseguests.

At one point, Peter came out of my room, dressed in shorts and t-shirt but drying his hair. Sometimes he showers in my bathroom after working out. He smiled warmly at Anna’s parents and said, “Hi, Peter,” offering his hand to Anna’s father, Milhous (Peter can be very charming when he wants to be). Milhous stood up awkwardly and shook his hand, “Good day,” he said solemnly.  

Anna’s mom however, seeing Peter come out of my room, blushed from top to bottom and gave me a look that was worse than any spoken disapproval. The top of my head seemed to grow warm, but a glance at Anna revealed that she was embarrassed to her core, and my blooming irritation faded.

Imagine living under these passionless despots your whole life? I gave her a smile and moved on emotionally. Her parent's disapproval was so banal it was almost laughable.

Anna’s so happy, hilarious, bold and brilliant - the fact that these dour, sour, saturnine, in-the-margin sodbusters produced her - seems random - one of the wonders of the universe.

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

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

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

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

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

Its Louder in the centre,
Enter my nucleus centre,
Blood soak soul with graffiti on its wall,
A wall of sound,
A beat so neat with some emptiness that quakers a note hard to speak.
Whether loud or clear it sometimes shows its neatness, its politeness silences its weakness like war is about to begin.

But louder in the centre come closer, Sense its bullet proof soul listening out for a linking which way road out where.
How dare these intrepid molecules of sound bite words blood flow soak and leak my outer shield,
If all things hidden surely they won't get far but mainly quietly written with out a doubt coming louder from the centre.

Oh but when's this circus to commence?
This circle of life drowned from each day without a change,
No need to sit and crumble no calls for sin.
But louder from the centre you will hear the echo's of its sitting begin.
Not leaving yet no faith from a patriot
A divided wall of large and small, good versus evil with some sort of escape from it all.

Louder from the centre words fog form from a vice versa,
Forming this epicentre a true understanding copied from whatever is on the agenda.
Small leaf's clover covers it all gathering its mud blood dust from this voluminous mess,
Louder in the centre.

Sweet eyes ride upon these lines,
Providing its goodness re energised its epicentre which comes from within to be
Louder in the centre.

O'Reily@22082014

Gynecology appeals to the rooting instinct and not just among pigs,
apartment-dwellers too crave the spotlight especially in cheap digs
A tree puts strength in its cambium membrane, seeds, bark & twigs
whilst outgrowing the imperilment of remaining grounded as sprigs
It was not long before the Rolling Stones were being paid for gigs,
in the day when greasy Guineas plugged sheenies & cultivated figs,
decades before sainted negroes thrived as reactionary brillos & nigs
when a schweinehund on par with Club of Rome's lard-*** Al Gore
was realistic enough to accept his natural vocation as a male *****
even though no Avon salve could rescue him from being still sore,
he collected for prostitutional services that there existed no bill for,
while at Sea World Shamu can't fit through a pinniped or seal door,
as whale flesh ain't no antidote for pill-heads on America's pill tour
Keep whacking the side of your head to hammer out doubt till sure
you become of religious piety while acting out a radio-active story
that destroys tumors and fecundity while rewarding war-won glory,
for critical menticide administered to each Margaret Thatcher Tory,
to render brains slack so that each id's reduced to a formless slurry,
and made denser & dumber than the dumb-*** mind of Ann Curry,
who sits around picking fleas off her pet rats calmly with no worry
like a pederast whose name is Marion but likes to be called Murray
because of thickset hair that was as curly as Bill Clinton's was furry
it made Hillary's perverse predilection into a ****-emergency hurry
as she faced extortion rackets entailing mucho homosexy potpourri
It's I.T.T., A.T. & T., F.P. & L. and A. & P. in lieu of slave-holder
In a demi-godly role of being everyplace looking over my shoulder
Like advice taken to heart by a ***** the tenth time you told her
On the occasion of the hundredth time that a ****** **** sold her
Put down that rifle and also that cup as there are doggedly two ratty
trees of wood: wood I stole & wood I shoplifted as doggy eats pup
Congratulations *******, you won the Nobel prize for shutting up
Move from a hovel & put down that shovel as there are 2 unkindly
kinds of wood: stolen & discounted as my rabid ***** eats her pup
****** Mary Jane Christmas to Quakers winning gifts for rutting up
Return my shovel and **** a guppy as there are 2 hunks of wood:
wood I stole & wood shoplifted as a dog ***** eats a hungry puppy
Cheers cancer-ridden surgeon, here's the Shaw prize for cutting up
The tall first wife, who was fleet of feet, was the easiest to book for
she preferred rat tail over bat wing and won as a dream to cook for
she hid herself very obviously therefore she wasn't hard to look for
her manifold athletic talents made her the leanest witch to hook for
Give me your hirsute/textile/hombre love you lovely hairy rag man,
with your pointy nose, unlimbered leg & warts from Larry Hagman
who from the horse's mountable side snuck up like an airy stag ram
Don't take what little's left via state Santa Christmas merry bag ban
Let's dress like women in debt at the oldest Chuck Berry drag stand
My happiness is easily seen in blood-letting cirques as corpuscular
while my rippling backwards frontage is of a physique so muscular
that it is known by fat aunt Joan as socked-in and highly avuncular
In icy Florida I pine for Klondike my favorite Alaskan lesbian lover
who, in our gay igloo, resembled that big oily ****** Danny Glover
whose **** buddy Mel Gibson made him half less pockless gaining
☹a little more of plenty above Kenai's northern-lit blinding darkness,
and punctuated by those empty promises of ****-driving starkness
that were dogged by monster sightings quite common to Loch Ness
where **** Welshmen smoke Scottish-spiced cigarillos smockless
Fear not as chronically-starved people are traditionally not so tough
so feed the hungry & while they are eating steal their bags and stuff
as unarmed Cymry won't do more than storm off in a Goidelic huff,
akin to a Tom Jones hissy fit of ***-wriggling dancing and gay fluff
This normal man wonders: How much public ******* is enough?
Pushing Fukushima scenarios beyond the point of a no-return bluff
and extraneous of a federal Continuity of Government powder puff
while parked on a decrepitly-reliable-ever-burgeoning-lard-*** duff
white men, like coal miners, mine mineable depths of Filipina ****
gynecologically like the average gynecology enthusiast off the cuff,
rejecting Bicol pathogenetic carpet chaw to dip Copenhagen *****,
a sprinkling 'tween lip & gum proves that no slanted ****'s too tuff
A trans-orbital lobotomy's necessitated when plants are root-bound,
Hello Addisonian crisis dysfunction when adrenal glands are found
insufficient when production of adrenaline is diagnosed as unsound
Mormons note the absent look of foremen in the Book of Mormon
and an absence of the Book of Mormon in the outlook of foremen
You hid it 'cause I can't find it every elsewhere a package for string
this catastrophe that threatens tragedy above the tryst below a fling
With cords knotted tightly around something tumorous I won't sing
It is the chlorine that cancels detergent in that electric washer thing
beneath cellar steps that David Niven's wife fell down while hiding
I lost her you found her, it's a dollar for riding plus a fee for finding
all broads blinded to inequity and to chick Nazis' unguided guiding
Oh Lord with such ease the slippery have slid into slipshod sliding!
The frailties of free men're exploited by N.S.A.'s jingoistic deriding
General Ike exposed the military-industrial-congressional complex
which strikes against the citizenry by venomous rattle snake reflex
faster than a dope-crazy Marilyn Monroe could reach for a Kleenex
thru curvatures in a third-dimensional, spatially-pornographic helix
that approximated the Mexi-milkers of actriz: la doña María Félix
rutting elephants in musth must respect advisory: kneel-harm-****,
to honor the moon-hoaxing memory of chronic liar Neil Armstrong
as obviously for **** Rosie O'Donnell her gay meal alarm's wrong
Johns familiarized themselves with Lillian Russell by buyin' ** Lil
as masochists meet masochistic needs with movies of Ryan O'Neal
Sadists satiate sadistic surges sharing sermons sold Séamus Ó Néill
& beheld-redemptive pleasures for patrons of free mass soul appeal
I'm nailed in my sub-par carpentry by all do-gooders of the nail ban
to the point where I'm willing to mail my big sister to the mail man
who's part & parcel of a mail-fraud plot & brother's can't-fail plan
Escaped & uncaught I will be no prison monkey's cell-mate-jail-fan
'Cause shorts clothe Richard Simmons' lard *** he has a pale can as
oil-from-rock Daniel's been given the pétrole epithet Ol' Shale Dan
Latino block & cinder create distortive Hispano-Américano rubble
'cause stirring up spics & greasy wetbacks invites N.C.L.R. trouble
Stand back anti-pope as I am about to burst your pederastic bubble!
Your egg-shell-thick pate's no match for a black jack as this club'll
smash its way thru cardinals, reverends, ministers, priests & dukes
to make cream taste like ***** and turn cake into what a dog pukes
Under U.S./Euro socialism there'll be no guy who's a young codger
and popular forenames will be banned including Preston and Roger
Trans-national entities whip horse dung into curdled cottage cheese
while denying rescue inhalers to asthmatics enjoying a bad wheeze
so as to avail publicly purpled aureolae of ready women who tease
Now is the time to release the promised South American killer bees
as the hour's passed to exact vengeance for a beheaded Robert Lees
Mafiosos contract that Joseph Valachi-types be capped at the knees
then hanged by their what's-her-names from il duce poles and trees
in such a fashion that'll tighten the ropes by cough, belch or sneeze
Long legs, wrong eggs, strong pegs, King Kong begs with a song of kegs
Let us dog dealers of wieners & corporate schemers: those 2-bit reamers
extend a left leg into the sacred space of my right one for time remaining
It's easy to harp on topics commiserate with crap profitably entertaining
A man who courts dogs & a court manned by dogs quibbles over kibble
Dogs devoid of canine teeth are not as happy to gnaw and to nibble
The Arc of the Covenant bestowed ancient promises metaphysical
shedding cockroach-scattering illumination that set courses tragical
on a populace & citizenry that were more attuned to an era magical
Before Zionistic Elders prepared an Order within cabals strategical
Beneath plum sunsets & catchy maladies that deafened folks lyrical
“Turn me on dead man” the Beatles backwardly warbled mystically
as the means and the method to sexcite vampresses gynecologically
For all shoulder-locked movements sway men anthropomorphically
Let us seek bi-lesbians who fear concerted opposition diametrically
as their prized packages remain barren, as they spawn ineffectually
Sappho's ovarian host pouch is barren as ***** meld ineffectually
as Western, Fallopian-tubed freakazoids are ****-probed habitually
Sapphic ovarian balloons shrink when hens ******* reciprocally
On Pearl Harbor Loch a false flag blackened Mister Moto's beacon
by shadowy, white manipulators under a U.S. sinister, proto-deacon
who, as a cousin-marrying-pipe-******* *******, emulated Lincoln,
the war-loving queer who went above & beyond his task to weaken
the will of sovereign states to sustain free-market economic health,
by exacting confiscatory taxes resulting in punishing capital wealth
The Beatles were creatures of M.K. Ultra's institution at Tavistock,
lost to a shocking future as shown by Alvin Toffler in Future Shock
whereas nothing can help us from taking an epidemiological knock
by Mao a la Trotsky, a la starvation wages via phony-baloney stock
in the image of Pol *** a la Lenin contrary to righteous John Locke
Our fused-egg brothers gestate together, flying as a migratory flock
dolled up in vestry wardrobe: papal bikini brassier, ******* & frock
awaiting George Orwell's 1984 English socialism known as Ingsoc
X number of years before Nancy Kwan wed ski champ Peter Pock,
& after Bob Ripley's Oriental/Occidental miscegenation ****** talk
as it was curlier than was Nimoy while he portrayed Vulcan Spock,
whose sweetness was unrehearsed, unrestrained & of a sickly mock
once taken, out of time as taken twice daily on any ol' broken clock
flesh stripped & exploited as the flightless relic of Earth's great auk
enjoying the laze of Sunday oblivious to extinct Darwinian schlock
as chastised love is Leonard Nimoy-pitiable with chastity-belt lock
Upon a Massachusettsian shore puritans purified Plymouth's Rock!
Forever amounts to nothing in betrayal of Heinlein's empathic grok
Back off quack as I'll **** the next 1 of you applying scalpel to ****
as a dad must regarding neo-Kantian, fatherless-**** Johann Bach
Deep in hell's bowels fricassees Jew Elizabeth/***-to-Death Taylor
who did every Joe Nobody from Captain Crunch to Norman Mailer
A harlot ***** was she from 10 niggerly toes to scary mulatto tone
as hellishly deep in Liz's brain was a splinter of hamster wish bone
& her ***-end was broad from fat foods Safeway to her would loan
Beneath her 3rd world-chiding heft Larry F's lawn chairs did groan
as this princess of whales never said no to hog jowls and corn pone
which made an interesting cut-out to novices of the porpoise prone
There won't be another Liz till Rockefeller perfects a Warner clone
with the aid of sewing machines to hem-stitch hems that need sewn
& a positronic brain stem to achieve mortality previously unknown
since Alex Bell pilfered **** inventor Antonio Meucci's telephone
Truth is light that Illuminists keep shadowed, darkened & unshown
for Hank & Phoebe Snow and Johnny Winter who would not atone
Thomas Edison stole or bought the patents to ingenious inventions
that he was more than happy to claim as his brilliant contributions
to the wealth & state of inquisitive Mankind's Earthen conventions,
also he took credit for Biblical allusions to immaculate conceptions
Which Bible books Tom Edison wrote no G.E. employee mentions
as stealing, purloining and commandeering were his 3 predilections
True historians know well charlatan Edison's dastardly elaborations
To pinch a hairy, chapped man is wrong as it puts him in more pain
For century-old Harry Chapman Pincher pinching made him insane
His unholy joy was to lay prone with mouth open to catch acid rain
& then hop into the commode to affect a toilet-related ankle sprain,
not too unlike Richard called **** & Jean who liked the name Jane
whose corpulence demands a piano coffin burial with crawler crane
Formaldehyde replaced 7 quarts of blood that went down a drain as
the proverb fits: when there's nothing to lose there's nothing to gain
Alan Ladd snuffed himself over a self-destructive hatred for Shane
and because Sue Carol preferred men of height Ladd couldn't attain
without elevator shoes & leading-lady actresses walking in ditches,
the love-life that humbles a netted shrimp into paralytic twitches as
Alan often got nothing from Brentwood ****** & witches because
****** pimps don't scrape **** off them Hollywood swanky *******
Tragically it's true that God's in the details & Satan's in the glitches
when Hippocratic Oath-denying doctors say don't bandage stitches,
it promotes infection needing treatment that add to a quack's riches
Apply no anti-bacterial salve unless your unbandaged wound itches
Amerika will be a Marxian paradise after we guillotine the snitches
harvest their organs, cremate & consign their ashes to crude niches
Give me, give me, give me, I can subsist not on a mere, single bean
Hey cheapo, get off your greasy ***, take me to Dairy Queen as my
**** is shaved, bra's padded & all kinks are relaxed by Afro Sheen
Western ***** are fattened for slaughter as sloped slants grow lean,
for lack of appendix, tonsils, adenoids, warts, piles, moles & spleen
Refugees flee what's so repressively dangerous that it's forever fled
The bloodied blood biz passes pathogens to bleeders bloodily bled
It is a dreadful situation that ****** folks find difficult not to dread
A gent is obliged to face conflict face first short of living in a shed,
plying the rough trade, rough-necking with ******* or playing dead
When my cruddy teeth are encrusted I brush the crud off with Crest
while working drainward with this golden cake of soap called Zest
Like a woman on public assistance I refuse to let my choppers rest
There was a time when talk of quiz was a precursor to an Iowa test
My basic skills are determinedly under-cutting my housewife guest
whose stems run north to her malignant tissue free mammae breast
In movies shooting orphans with high-powered rifles is done in jest
'cause in Amerika making ammunition is what wage-slaves do best
When I'm not utilizing forks for recreational after-meal dog-jabbin'
I am staking out hog farms for the planning of gainful hog-nabbin'
or making log-planing modifications on my pine-logged log cabin,
before crossing teamster picket lines for wage-earning job scabbin,'
I take pains to avoid being skinned in a Jimmy Hoffa mob stabbin'
A thousand Confucian truths drive my happy dreams to nightmares
as bi-****** pass out on Calexico-Mexicali-low-calorie light beers
I haven't the moxie to skate through hydrants of fate terminological
as those 78 crumb-bums behind T.V. “comedies” wax scatological
Ernie killed Chip & Robby to stamp his father a cipher biological
He hadn't room for women for production smacking gynecological
The last time he looked skyward his thoughts weren't cosmological
S.O.B. Ernest cursed routinely at arthritis diagnosed gerontological
He gives not a harlot's hello for innumerable faults anthropological
nor to lend his energies to scopes that abuse harmonics hormonical
as he stumblingly falls prey to meanderings sickishly trophological
Lord of Hostesses salvage carcass mine from insults cancrological
Redeem me in sudden form humanoid of activities pathogenetical
We mourn in Gettysburg's city as unrepentant lesbians on probation
Defying errors inflicted upon soldiers who forsook proper vocation
Anti-poping Argentine Francis as he's ****** to Satan's invocation
It remains the best course to abide by stellar laws of spatial rotation
Whether one's nationality is Romanian, Finnish, British or Croatian
Lost people will eat food outside their region &

We all friends in Earth's society
No reason to start quaking
The Society of Friends are friends
The Quakers aren't shaking

No Quaking in Rome?
Nor the Sistine Chapel?
Black smoke, White Hope
White smoke, Black Pope

Does this seem dope? Just wait,
White State, Black Faith
Black State, White Fate
The impossible a possibility and a dope bomb

Start with a Quake, make a Quaker
If its a shake, make a shaker
Where's his taker of notes
penned at the Apostolic Nunciature

He heard a friend tell a friend's friend
Its getting late; confess your faith
If you ain't straight, you'll be left by the gate
near the wall with the writing

No thunder nor lightning
while I AM walking and all
In the city of the Monk
Graffiti: Writing on the Wall

Dear dear Melania,
You came to us as Slovene.
Your anchor hubby has a mania
By which he daily vents his spleen.

Oh dear me, Donald J. T.,
Your mummy's Scottish, your papa's German,
Yet you say "What have you to lose?"
To native folks you treat like vermin.

Yet from these lands they long have hailed,
Many generations shackled and sold,
While you only recently
To our shores have sailed?

Muslims and Mexicans, migrants and mosques,
Catholics, Congregationalists, Quakers and queers:
Oh my, Mr. Trump, you're so **** weird.
Of what exactly must we be afeared?

So Donald, when you talk about your *****,
Please do not wave your hands between us.

Joe Twichell
(with apologies to my cousin, who is a real poet)

what? you seriously gonna row ρ row your boat, gently down the stream? well, aren't you the cherub to my apple's worth of hopes in being my ferryman, replacing charon, when crossing the styx!

it's one of those *edgware road scenarios,
you're walking down it,
popping into a restaurant for a shisha pipe...
and then street preachers prop up...
your girlfriend is half irish, half indian,
and they ask you: you german? you german?
no... wait... am i?
                  i guess there's a physiognomy
aspect in the way i look to others...
        am i german?
                   i ask my girlfriend at the time,
do i look german?
                 i don't know the ****** language...
should i learn the language?
               so these muslim street propagandists
keep egging me on...
       look at the jews... blah blah...
            and i'm thinking...
             my native tongue is polish,
and i'm trying to settle myself in english...
     what's this german bit?
even at school, i hate reciting this, but a history
teacher talking about the second world war
singled me out from the rest of the class...
                "blonde" hair... she didn't spot
i had green, rather than blue eyes...
             this is freaky deeky deep ****,
unconscious forces working against me...
                               the **** did i do?
turn into michael fassbender?
    fast-bartender, or simply futurama's ******?
shoe on head is not enough, when
you're asked to don a stilleto as an earing
dangling on your ear... not the same ****,
and certainly not the same cover...
       my paternal great-grandfather?
spoke 7 languages, was in the MP (military police),
moved to america,
      my mother tried to get in touch...
      i think my family owned portions of the steel
factory that would have allowed my city of
birth to grow into a county-like-capital...
that failed...
                       if i did a gene test
i'd be least surprised to have some german
or mongol, or swede in me...
                                         read the history;
it's just the idea that muslim preachers at
edgware road (where's the edge, and the wear?)
         giving out free korans decided to
consider me german?
    they didn't call my girlfriend at the time
an australian, even though she was raised there...
i was suddenly german...
   i ****** well hope this is not some form of narcissism
that requires: being written about...
         well then... i must be then!
still, what bothers me more is edge-wear rho-
             -and the missing -ad.
                                       ro-                -ad?
    i swear people just establish there is no oa
        or an ao grapheme borrowed from latin...
               they just say: row'd;
     as in the past tense of: i was rowing in a boat,
down the thames.
          clearly you need to gulp down an oyster
to make clarifications to the slight differences
in spelling, to make grand strides in what you mean.
     it's also edge-ware... as in... the edges are
being worn... ware & tear ring any bells
                                          via st. mary-le-bow's?
a bit like saying: quacks? or quakers?
that's the same doctor?
     no, you ******* ponce... it's a play.
on what?
                                                         words!
i really, really either need to start learning
braille, or sign language; people are exhausting
with all their functioning senses,
       and i don't feel like subjecting my tongue
to the treadmill of conversation;
       ****... there's no chance of talking the earth
out of orbit!

Farc chica
de Vene
is velvet
scripture but
a muskrat
that's amore
she's made
for lunch
where canta
is sweet
for laughing
while the
bossa nova
teri was
poolside for
the Quakers
of Mohave

N.W.O.-owned corporations promote the freshest of youthful faces
having Hillary F. Clinton lesbian relations in crowded public places
Moral citizens must subdue these shrub-scouts with military maces
then bind them together with cheap lamp cord, twine & shoe laces,
before scrubbing the scene clean to obliterate all ****-diving traces
from mobs bleeding the white-funded black & sallow yellow races,
they take up  phony causes in nine of ten clinically-disproven cases
running Manchurian patsies & *** kittens through menticidal paces
A rosy future belongs to normal people, the more normal the better,
folks who appreciate normal things: normal pets like an Irish setter
and paying a street ***** with cash because she's a chronic debtor,
and yet her ****'s an amiable fellow: truly a self-starting go-getter
who crochets booties for newborns & obeys some laws to the letter
How many movies in Maine feature a crapped-out Joan Fontaine?
How much glucosamine does a diseased cow's leg bone contain?
There were no gregarious bean bakers in Hooterville's Green Acres
nor big queen Quakers, fatuous lean takers, spliced spleen shakers,
seldom-seen fakers, farmers as keen rakers, men called teen takers
Low sugar metabolism makes a chick act like Portland Hoffa Allen
in that she'll scarf like a starved pig, piggishly hogging water melon
or muskmelon or any melon that Montreal-melon sellers are sellin'
to your average Trenton mobster, fugitive or romantic paroled felon
who'd **** with depleted uranium Arab babies by incessant shellin'
& get away with it because America's corporate media ain't a-tellin'
just like they didn't tell when 1-dollar milk sold for 1 buck a gallon
and Americans wondered if Michael Jackson & Billy Jean'd marry
civilly in Dominica even though he was a pæderastic-gay-bait fairy
preferring to make it with some 11-year-old paper boy named Gary
in the ***** fields of Michael Landon's Little House on the Prairie
where S.A.G. cows grazed to produce cream for N.B.C'.s T.V. dairy
that made Victor French's fancy ice cream: French vanilla & cherry
that even Melissa Gilbert couldn't resist, who was so often contrary
on the set 'cause her adolescent mood swings did menstrually vary
in the '70's when broads were sexier as they were much more hairy
than “Johnny B. Goode” singer & women's room spy Chuck Berry,
who married a cousin who was flittier than Heinz queer John Kerry
& 6 points stupider than the porcupine stooge: old anti-Christ Larry
who chose his sister-in-law's sister as the bride most likely to marry
whose dipsomania meant that she'd imbibe fortified wine & sherry
as one could be subbed for the other when all choices ain't arbitrary
within fashion statements decrying the sci-fi of Gene Roddenberry  
while taking pseudo-fictive writings as celestially lunar and literary
masterminded by T.V. cockroach from Hogan's Heroes: Bob Clary
Give to me the possession of my hormones back for full absorption
as I'm keen on resuming the bony splinter means of bone resorption
while admixed by neo-commixed protocols of bio-ecleptic sorption
Let's stomp sun-burnt faces 'cause J. Edgar Hoover was the riddled
manufacturer of Malcolm X from a ***** mulatto known by Little
who scrounged while Jersey burned its cheap, girly skirts for a tittle
No one plays guitar more melodically than does cuchi cuchi Charo
whose passion for nature out-natures that of the lovely Al Malinaro
& the crapped-out juvenile actor who was known as Frankie Darro
whom all Californians knew was as straight as the straightest arrow
unafraid to stay the course & to keep righteously straight & narrow
under the same moral code that's served so well María Mia Farrow
who has sworn off the making of stew using vole, llama or sparrow
yet not excluding the animal delicacies of pancreas & bone marrow  
enjoyed by robbers Bonnie Parker, Buck, Clyde & Blanche Barrow
who, as bandidos Mexicanos, were obliged to steal Mexican dinero
☹ A wild man's on the loose who's hurting tourism as a tourist ******
☹ He's tall & menacing like the guy on T.V.'s F Troop, Forrest Tucker
☹ A ****** is on the prowl and he's ******* tourists as a tourist ******
☹ He looks like that F Troop sergeant O'Rourke, actor Forrest Tucker
☹ A wild ******'s escaped from ******* prison & he's a tourist ******
☹ He is a bad ******* **** like the ****** on F Troop, Forrest Tucker

By: Cedric McClester

Well, I’ll be ******!
Trump and Putin are a sham
Perpetrating a flim-flam
They just shot Uncle Sam!
In Helsinki with a battering ram
Is it necessary to draw a diagram?
In order for you to understand
That all of it must have been preplanned

They met in private
With no notetakers
Under the guise of  peacemakers
Just like your average lawbreakers
Doing their best to throw haymakers
See neither one of them are Quakers
But they’re con men outright fakers
Playing ball like the new Lakers

I blame the one,
But not the both
Cuz Putin didn’t swear an oath
He wants to stymie our growth
And Trump’s playing with half a loaf
For his base which he betroth
But which of them hates us the most
It’s hard to say, yet he’ll still boast

He doesn’t care about us
So he’s betrayed his sacred trust
In order to do what he must
To protect himself and to adjust
Even if we all go bust
Making America how he discussed
Despite the economy being robust
He’s unworthy of our trust







Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2018.  All rights reserved.

THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT
      RICHARD MILHOUS NIXON

It was...
Oct 5th - 1970.

A Monday.

It was the 278th day
of the year...only

87 days remaining
until the end of the year.

I knew I had to act now.
It was now...or never.

Time? I forget the time.
Time was standing still.

Huge clouds
menaced the horizon

impersonating an Armada
of Spanish Galleons.

Full sail ahead then.
I took a step into my future.

The smiling President drawing
nearer and nearer.

In Nass
the drenched crowed cheered.

In Newbridge now
flocks of children chase the car

like he was some
kinda Piper from Hamelin.

I kept a close eye on
the secret service

all dressed in the same suit
looking like clones

of one another
talking into their sleeves.

My gaze searches and settles
upon him

like the cross-hairs
of a ******'s rifle.

Sure he had called his setter
King Timahoe

after where his folks came from
another American looking for his roots

bolstering the Irish-American vote.

And now here he was
the man himself

in person
the 37th President.

Irish colleens dancing
upon a make-shift stage

in the square
of Kildare.

He's here oh so near
I can see the pores of his skin

a bead of sweat trickles into
that infamous Nixon grin.

Dare I do it now?
My hair falling into my eyes.

My mind flashes back to
1729

when his Quaker ancestors
fled the Emerald Isle.

Three centuries pass by in a second and
we're here

in the middle of
The Vietnam War

and he speaks of
"a passion for peace...preventing war...building peace."

Yeah yeah...sure sure!

Carpet bombing Cambodia
the famous Nixon duplicity

the "credibility gap" opening
between what he says and what he does.

Oh there are protests
he has 5 eggs hurlers.

"Splatsplatsplatsplat and splat!"
Only one near hit.

And one man protesting
the price of a pint

up'd( for the occasion )to
one shilling and jaysus seven pence.

What's the world
coming to?

School kids waving
their plastic( in slow mo )

American flags
on little plastic sticks.

I raise my flag.
I raise my...voice

shooting my mouth off
with a great shout:

'TRICKY DICKY! TRICKY DICKY!
WOULD YOU BUY A USED CAR FROM THIS MAN!"

Several secret service scowl.
My words hit him...Nixon frowns.

Character assassination.

Mr. McCann
aka "The Bicycle Man!"

curses me
in Irish.

After all he is
my Irish teacher.

D'anam leis an diabhal...Ó Diomasaigh!"
("Your soul to the devil...Dempsey!")

"THE TIME HAS COME TO CALL
A ***** A ****** SHOVEL..."

I yell as
I get a clip around the ear.

McCann holds his hand
over my mouth.

Then suddenly Nixon
is no longer

there.

The hurled words
disappear into the air.

Us school boys
***** damply back to double Maths.

The De La Salle
Academy looming up before us.

Mr. McCann
hoovers near.

I cover both
my ears.

But he only tousles
my hair.

"Ahhh mo amadán beag cróga!"
( "Ahhh my brave little fool!")

"Maith an bhuachaill...maith an bhuachaill!"
( "Good boy...good boy!")

He grins.
Slips me a sixpence.

I sing the new Led Zep
only released that day.

"So now you'd better stop and rebuild all your ruins,
for peace and trust can win the day despite of all your losing."

Being only 12
I had done what had to be done.

My political life
had only just begun.
*

The long forgotten "never-to-be-forgotten" visit made to Hodgestown near Timahoe in the county of Kildare back in the day as we leave the Sixties sadly behind us for the austerity of the '70's and the "Yes we can" of the Sixties begins to loose its lustre.

The Timahoeans are not exactly proud of giving the world Mr. Nixon and stay quite quiet about it. The Kennedy visit was the golden one and Clinton and Reagan had theirs but Tricky Dicky's one has faded into the fog of history.

"Jessamyn West, who has written so eloquently about the background of our family, has said, the Quakers have a passion for peace. My mother was a pacifist. My grandmother was a pacifist. Jessamyn's mother was, her grandmother, her grandfather, going back as far as we know."

President Nixon in the Timahoe graveyard.

Don't know what happened to him then!

"The time has come to call a ***** a ****** shovel. This country is in an undeclared and unexplained war in Vietnam. Our masters have a lot of long and fancy names for it, like escalation and retaliation, but it is a war just the same." - James Reston.

"So now you'd better stop and rebuild all your ruins,
for peace and trust can win the day despite of all your losing."

Led Zeppelin 111 - Immigrant Song.

the easily "discredited",
or as some would jest,
the ones easily "offended";

i wish it was the same
case for a whitewash,
as it might be toward
the stratum oblique...

had i known a woman prior,
i'd be glad in having nor
knowledge with, or without
a prior...

my only wish?
having been the south,
getting to know the north
was my last wish;

the way i see it,
the epitome of cultural darwinism,
is a man doing *******
on himself,,,

      this second criticism of marxism
really, does, undo the
western social project...
   with its "proto" christianity...

look pretty **** well from
where i'm standing...
   lookw pretty **** well,
for your british thai fathers
and your *******...
mums? quasi mum?
         what are they?
liverpool + manchester = london?

what are you?
         the chant of polish children
regarding the british?

angol! angol! pedał! pedał!

angol! pederast!
           pederast! angol!
sartre lived with his mum,
you i.v.f. mongrel...
   you ******* surrogate
daddy-daddy baby, you *******
homosexual biproduct...
eat that **** thinking it's
swiss chocolate...
                      
  go on! come with it!
          ***-quakers and burp-slippers,
you ******* spice girls
of argument,
             you come with a counter,

you know how i'm going to finish
this night?
rice and some chicken stomachs...
in gravy...
   i was wishing for some chicken hearts
to suit the offal (inner organs)...
  ah... ****;
                 i was really readied to
kiss a transgender person,
while biting off their lips...
to expose the grin,
and ensure there was a
to contended with;
        god... can't you just not admire
the smile?
     hard to think of chelsea  / glasgow
when not thinking of
the frankfurt grin (frankfurtgrinsen).

America, loud, clear, obvious, imperial perfidy all embracing, but local Quakers oppose, college kids’ resistance, pre-My Lai inundated.  Saturated, drowned in futility, onlookers
at the far edge of war, a genocidal spectacle. Vietnam, marker and  scourge, a wound before we knew much of art or thoughtfulness, puzzled, concussed, chewed up.  Bodies, cities burning fell out of tvs, in black and white, NBC, CBS, ABC.  First mass incineration of another culture for our generation, introverted, autistic, active, angry, furious; image-immiseration in the holocaust of b52's soaring over that Asia America punished.  Age of conscious impotence, advanced corruption post JFK Umrica satrapy, pentagon techno-ghouls, tiger cage consciousness.  By necessity taught to shrug it all off, the dominant savage imperial real roaring up to this very present.  And he, known from grade school, uber-masculinized, marine corps, ground troops, he many small but comprehensive slaughters witnessed.  Soft sad lonely boy came back ram rod sharp, abrupt, angry, fragged somehow somewhere.  After a few years at pulp mill, took shot gun, blew his life away.  Sad terribly lonely hunter boy who dreamed of trapping and fishing only, in a far
distant cabin off the Sheep Lake road to the mountain called Old Glory.