one - i don't understand why saying "it's the 21st century" is somehow seen as a compensation for 20 centuries of our inhumanity, or a case of: only improvements reside in us - seems just as false to say - men can overcome angels, as stated by the first Christians... yeah, we can do miracles with technology and ultra-secular communication dynamics - discarding the existence of such beings resulted in hen parties with plastic wings and halos... what a great method to discard such being, and subsequently appropriate their features, if ever needed, but altogether unnecessary... two - that disrespecting heterosexuality aligned with the power of science has made it altogether a pointless endeavour in re-enacting the monogamous nature of swans: if we can breed the many perversions, ahem, deviations, we surely require en equal share of respect, before science undermines any deviations into an economic format of breeding pure heterosexual contingencies... three: who the hell said i was throwing anyone off a roof? i was just curious about the slack pressurising the alias big brother / grey matter dictator into teaching us language, then to later make us into a Koranic cyclops or having to sway one side, but not the other, teaching us vocabulary in school, but robbing us of a fluidity of language beyond school, in society... any rational man would say: just teach me the knuckle, the stone and the stick to express my manners... because, to be frank, i'm not into faking being civilised, just teach me to be a barbarian from the start, don't dangle the magic carrot in front of my eyes when it's a fake... teach me the barbarism you want to suppress later on in life: i'm not into being Dolly 2.3419, and an attache to a sheepdog for herding purposes to take it up the **** and shut up: because a member of Parliament did it to me aged 14; for example.

subjectivity is doubled attacked, it's not the merely rationalist
approach of an objective side of things,
i could understand tiresome efforts
Chinese politics while walking
the tourist plot on the great wall -
in a society that's seismically acknowledging
social or whatever coherence,
i find it a bit of limbo of paraphrasing
trans - or trans-physics, or the active
way to usurp metaphysics, by deviating
from thought as an activity, and more
how words are sense datum co-ordinates
that are like dictators: because it just, feels,
funny, and, offensive. ***** vocabulary,
that's what i call it... after a while you concentrate
on what ****** you off, first the educational
autocracy teaches you a vocabulary,
then come the St. Thomas' terrorists with:
you need to revise your vocabulary...
like **** that'll happen, you don't own
language, i don't own language, you're
little fascist agenda to censor such awoke
the boy that was supposed to wake Barbarossa
from his slumber with the cry: crows! crows!
a cloud of crows! funny how the eagle is a
failed emblem for empires, and the crow isn't...
mind you, the English succeeded with
an empire half-and-half: a lion and a unicorn...
i'd guess as much with a monkey and
a centaur, or at least a Cerberus - something
mythical - well, sure, the Poles are attacked
in Britain... but ever hear about the Scot
being attacked in an English village?
a Scot was attacked just the other day,
because kilts were deemed offensive...
so trans-gender is good, meta-gender is:
had a wee t'ink 'bout it...
   robots start with the pronoun use: one...
royalty start with the pronoun use: we...
                 and in between we have paranoid
they and we... and insecure you and i -
or as e. e. cummings would have it:
    *i say no world
                 can hold a you
   shall see the not
             because
  and why but
                          (who        -
true, but as much of not is entanglement
              with knots - or ought to tries -
  to not or to knot and be -
                              Shakespeare also said:
  funny how i was born neo-liberal,
millennial tattooed - and fake-left...
   i hear the right is a tsunami of focus these days,
all the generation Z are buying into
obstructing gay-marriage, and are adamant
   on not abusing pronouns - hence the current
revival in grammar school education in England -
they don't drink, i.e.: taking psychopathic gambles,
they're prone to social-media overdoses
rather than succumbing to excess ecstasy and palpitation:
i had 190 "friends"... let's just call them vantage points...
   sheered that social media sheep: only 13 left...
but at least objectivity outright says:
       subjectivity is subhuman, science taught us
that subjectivity is the fire between two flint stones,
all in all necessary - but objectivity said:
             two flints! two flints! no fire!
what attacks subjectivity is not objectivity,
it's satire... to humanise everything: good or bad,
with a standard of humour... well... telling a sad
joke to later tell the same sad joke by satirising it...
punch in a face; because there are only so number of
things that are funny in life... the English language
doesn't seem to understand that even the odd chance
of black humour, will not lift the spirits of those,
who, quiet frankly, don't want to be humoured...
the only humour left is not to provision the public
with barbaric satire, sometimes empathy will do,
because it's emphatic humour,
   it's Godot's roundabout humour: the shared experience.
laughing for the sake of laughing is
             a cry from apathy's lost interest in
being pardonably dasein - laughing at all the truthful
autobiographic desecrate is apathy's last
chance to impress: but how foul it all sounds by then...
   the western version of buddhism suddenly feels like
  a taste of pears in november: not sour, not bitter...
just maggoty foul - yucky goo
                  of a plum-shaded rouse of the skin
tinged hue after contact with knuckle and knee.
  but they attacked a ******* Scot in an English village,
because of a kilt...
                                   he knows the strand of ganging up
in hyena numbers and then the celebratory drink
of compensating conscience - they'll sooner accept
     a trans-gender dunno'h than a hot-blooded
heap of tartan - ever ask the homosexuals what
they think of St. Thomas' gospel?
              i think: too much, too early, too innocently.
and if they tell you: speak differently!
they will, i'm ****** sure they will want to
control your grammar without any specialisation -
you'll wonder: summer in Syria?
                     because as racism goes,
they attack the difference, and the difference is only
skin deep, like they did with the Afros of Kentucky,
the Kentucky Afros will spring right back,
    because the abuse was only skin deep,
therefore their soul was enlarged, and they'll
play the blues, and the jazz, and rap, and break-dance...
but if the abuse goes to the depth of soul...
in that it's soul-deep...
                                and because it's white v. white...
it will ferment, and nothing positive will come from it...
no jazz, no blues... nothing of cultural importance...
   it will be haggled in the political market
to the point where both sides will find it utterly
unbearable: and then start to sheer their skins...
        you won't get anything from this soul-deep
attack... if the holocaust is what it felt like,
            then this is a minor post-holocaust episode,
a reminder...
                          and by god, i thank god
for the fact that the Picts are involved -
                                                            whe­re to now?
O Imperium Gladstone paraphrase?
                            it will be hard to beat the unicorn -
all empires donning the eagle duly fail -
centaur and a frog? maybe next time.

I remember the night my mother
was stung by a scorpion. Ten hours
of steady rain had driven him
to crawl beneath a sack of rice.

Parting with his poison - flash
of diabolic tail in the dark room -
he risked the rain again.

The peasants came like swarms of flies
and buzzed the name of God a hundred times
to paralyse the Evil One.

With candles and with lanterns
throwing giant scorpion shadows
on the mud-baked walls
they searched for him: he was not found.
They clicked their tongues.
With every movement that the scorpion made his poison moved in Mother's blood, they said.

May he sit still, they said
May the sins of your previous birth
be burned away tonight, they said.
May your suffering decrease
the misfortunes of your next birth, they said.
May the sum of all evil
balanced in this unreal world

against the sum of good
become diminished by your pain.
May the poison purify your flesh

of desire, and your spirit of ambition,
they said, and they sat around
on the floor with my mother in the centre,
the peace of understanding on each face.
More candles, more lanterns, more neighbours,
more insects, and the endless rain.
My mother twisted through and through,
groaning on a mat.
My father, sceptic, rationalist,
trying every curse and blessing,
powder, mixture, herb and hybrid.
He even poured a little paraffin
upon the bitten toe and put a match to it.
I watched the flame feeding on my mother.
I watched the holy man perform his rites to tame the poison with an incantation.
After twenty hours
it lost its sting.

My mother only said
Thank God the scorpion picked on me
And spared my children.

Homage to the late poet; Kofi Owonor


By
Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)


In one Sunday Nation article, Professor Ali A Mazrui analyzed the inter-politicality of The Jaramogi Odinga family and The Kennedy family by arriving at a difference that the Odinga’s have curse of long life but the Kennedy’s have a curse of early death through violent and untimely  mode of death .Mazrui made these analogies in reference to violent death of John F. Kennedy and the subsenguent Chappaquiddick bridge tragedy.Similarly,the salient difference between a European and American or a Japanese and African writer or African artist is that most of African writers die early in the mid of their lives through violent death but in contrast American and some European writers die peacefully and comfortably in their old age. Early and violent death is the dominant bane, fate and misfortune that now and then besmirch an African writer. This position is in recognition of a fact that my child-hood American popular literature writers in the name of Mario Puzzo author of the God Father and Robert Ludlum an author of several anti soviet spy series like; Borne dentity, Borne Ultimatum and Icarus Agenda plus very many others like The Matlock Paper had just to die recently in their late eighties. The most surprising of all is Phillip Roth whom I read at the age of twelve years while in my primary four.  Now I am forty years and this year 2013 Phillip Roth is still alive and active to the American literary civilization that he has been touted by the Ladbrokes as a probable candidate for Nobel Prize in literature. But sadly enough on 22 September 2013 in Nairobi the black angel of early  death has carried ahead its  foul duty by claiming the life of Africa’s most honorable literary scholar Professor Kofi Owonor during the helter-skelter of Alshabab terrorist lynch of the upscale West Gate Mall in Nairobi.
Actually this essay is meant to be a deep felt homage to the late Kofi Owonor, Killed by Islamic terrorists in Nairobi. However, the essay also goes ahead to decry the violent and early deaths of several other African writers. The deaths which have almost turned Africa into a literary dwarf if not a continent of artistic bovarism. Kofi Owonor, who peacefully and honorably came to attend Story Moja Literary festival to be held in Nairobi, was violently shot by the Islamic fundamentalist terror group known as Al shabab. Whose gunmen lynched the Mall in which was Kofi Owonor and his son. The terrorist were sending out the Muslim catchword on which if one fails to respond then he was known not to be a non- Muslim on to which he is shot or held hostage for ransom.Fatefull enough, Kofi Owonor was not muslim.He was an elder, an Africanist, a scholar, a poet, a realist, a rationalist, a Christian, a religious non-fundamentalist and a literary liberalist. He could not respond with any tincture of religious irrationalism to the question of the terrorist. He was shot dead and his son injured. Too sad. This is actually the time when Christian positivism goes beyond rigidity of other religious affectations in its classic assertiveness that the devil kills the flesh but not the soul. And indeed it is true the devilish terrorist killed Owonor’s flesh but not his literary soul. They are such and similar situations that made Amilcar Cabral to observe in his Unity and Struggle, in a section on Homage to Kwameh Nkrumah to rationalize that the sky is too enormous to be covered by the palm of a sadist nor to be vilified by the spitting of the filthy ones; Truly, like Nkrumah, Kofi Owonor was the sky of African intellect never to be covered by the brute of the cannon from the parrel of a Muslim terrorist.
Kofi Owonor is not alone neither are we alone. You, my dear reader and I  we are not in any historical nor literary solititude. In Africa God has blessed us with the opportunity of the dead relatives in the name of the living dead. We are not the first and the last to grief. Owonor is not the first and the last to dance with fate. Even Ali A. Mazrui in his literary expositions of 1974 otherwise published as the trial of Christopher Okigbo.A  novella in which Mazrui cursed ideology as an open window into the moving vehicle that let in  a very bad political accident to Nigeria in the name of Biafra war which claimed life of  Christopher Okigbo at the Nzukka battle front. This was one other sad moment at which Africa lost its young literary talent through violent death.
Reading of African literary biographies in all perspectives will not miss to make you attest to this testimony. Both in situ and in diaspora.Admirable African American writers like Malcolm X, and Dr Luther King all died through violent death. Even if in the recent past, the Daughter of Malcolm X revealed to Sahara Reporters, Nigerian Daily, that Louis Farrakhan was behind the assassination of her father, wisdom of the time commands us to know that it was evil politics of that time that made Malcolm X to die the way international politics of today in relation to crookedness which was entertained during the formation of the state of Israel that have made the son of Africa professor Kofi Owonor to die.
An in-depth analysis into the life and times of African writers and artists will show that the number of African cultural masters who die violently is more than the number of those who died normally in their old age. Some bit of listology will show help to adduce the pertinent facts; Patrice Lumumba, Steve Biko, Lucky Dube, Walter Rodney, Tom Mboya, J M Kariuki, Che que Vara, Ken Saro Wiwa, Anjella Chibalonza, and Jacob Luseno all but died through violent death. Lumumba died in a plane crash along with Darg Hammarskjöld only after penning some socialism guidelines. After writing I write what I want, a manifesto for black consciousness Steve Biko was arrested and tortured in the police cells during those days of apartheid in south Africa.Biko died violently while undergoing torture in police cells. Lucky Dube was fatefully shot by a confused ****. Walter Rodney who was persuaded by his student who is now the professor Isa Shivji at Dare salaam University not to go back to his country of Guyana, desisted this voice and went back only to be assassinated in the mid of the rabbles that domineered Guyanese politics those days of 1970’s. This happened when Rodney had written only two major books. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, being one of them. Tom Mboya was shot by a hired gunman in down-town Nairobi, some one kilometer away from the West Gate Mall, at which Kofi Owonor has been shot. Mboya could have written a lot. Even more than Rudyard Kipling and Quisling. But fate or bad luck had him violently die after he had only written two books; Challenges to Nationhood as well as Freedom and After. Both of them are classically nice reads until today. He had also submitted sessional paper no. 10 to the Kenya government which was a classical thesis on Africanization of scientific socialism.
J M Kariuki, Che and Saro Wiwa are all known for how they violently died. Powers that be and terrorists that be, expedited violent death against these writers. Thus, brothers and sisters in the literary community of Africa and the world as we mourn Kofi Owonor we must also let Africa to unite in spiritual effort to rebuke away the evil spirit that often perpetrate terror of violent death which  especially  claim away lives of African writers.

References
Ali A. Mazrui; Trial of Christopher Okigbo
Amilcar Cabral; Unity and Struggle

Yong Marx, yet to die, jumped
out of an air-conditioned car, a
journey Berlin to Bombay as the
Dream merchant of Utopia
metamorphosed him into a subhuman
white bearded national bourgeoisie.

The third world girl who was climbing a
tree without Motorcycle-
Diaries hung to her clothe looked
like an Engelian mistake possibly
not from Cuba, Zambia or Bolivia,
certainly not a Soviet artefact.

Alienation, self-affirmation and all
unlike modes of production confused
his surplus brain. The dichotomy
of imaginings and reality with the
girl proven anti-thesis kafkaesqued
him an added ****** struggle.

A shift in his struggle with a smile
on her lips gave a  hint of welcome to her
Animal Farm. He did get inside.
The moulded furniture, preoccupied sickle
and the lacking exploitation
left him a disappointing proletariat grin.

She opened her mouth, blue words
did not discharge. Neither the mid wife
nor the revolution pumped her conscience.
He got up, disappointed, alarmed,
cursed the chap who misdirected
to a class-less renewed pattern.

“Comrade” she said shaking his hands,
the blood did stir for a moment but
the fight less slant , **** suits and
her distant reality pained the rationalist.
The amusingly alienated young Marx
jumped into his car and left for utopia.

I was a believer
Long after the other girls got interested in parties and boys

I would sit on my heels on the floor of the school library
And stare at the musty shelves of stories, searching for my next fantasy

I was a true believer
It seemed strange to me that while all of these characters, my friends,
kept finding magic in their worlds
mine was devoid and empty
I kept wondering, Why not me?

I was sure the magic was just hiding from me
Waiting for the right time to show itself
Waiting until I was ready to become the heroine
Every windy night, every walk into the woods,
I would think
This time, it will come for me
But it never did

I had a book on forest faeries and how to find them
After waiting and waiting all of those years
Clinging to my last hope, I decided I would give the magic one more chance
I went out to my back yard
To the perfect faery tree, with all the knots and holes in its trunk
And deep red berries stirring gently with the warm breeze
I stood under it, hands clasped, eyes closed
And waited one last time
Please I begged Please

And that was the day I stopped believing

From then on, I was determined to be a rationalist
An evidence-only type of girl
I switched to kneeling before the science fiction shelves
Followed the inventions of today's great tech scape
It was magic in its own sort of way

But my metaphoric heart has never quite given up on the romance of true magic
It loves it in a tragic, primal sort of way
It wants to make my life into a hero journey of fate and destiny
It wants there to be something more to this world
A something mysterious, a something beautiful
All my head and heart seem to do is contradict

A long time ago, I used to be a believer
But ever since I decided to give up on magic
It seems that magic has refused to set me free.

Musk. Wind

whispers mysteries in the form of it;
it thickens thin air until it turns black,
black enough to

hush. Wind,

being black, absorbs your thoughts,
makes violent curls of them; thickens,
thickens thin air until it

transmogrifies
into pages and pages
stained black with disaster-
as if a hurricane crumpled

those could-have been white aeroplanes, potential
papered to fly, and flung them
into the pit of your mind to
sink
             deeper
and
                            deeper
and
                                          deeper
until
your poems were written and the casualties numbered:
each line a suicide of a thought that could have been,
each syllable ink-stained and bloodied black
by artistic integrity, or madness: the same.

This wind is your hair.
This wind is your territory.
Not mine. Never could I have met you here,
in this place
of your solitary being: where real poets exist.

I am not a hurricane: and I am not your disaster.
I have learnt and re-learnt how useless it is to define you
in terms of myself; how useless it is to define you
at all. A rationalist like me can never truly understand
what it is to be part of your endlessness, the sheer
mountainous immensity that constitutes your thrill.
Yes,
your hair fascinates me as much as any ancient,
spiralling, far-away Andromeda- but the fact
that even now,  I've already tried to limit you
with words
shows the absoluteness, the solidity,
the density
of my misunderstanding of your... your...
And

real poets know that rationalists are fools.
You know

I am a fool.
I write these meagre verses
with unreachably cold computer technologies
thinking
that these words could somehow save us. Yet,
simultaneously,
I am some drunken nuisance knocking
vehemently
at your door, who turns and strolls
away
right before you finally
answer.
I am a fool

going home and seeing clouds
in the darkness. It is my first
time seeing them in the sky. First
time in nearly a month.
The moon illuminates the clouds,
and so do
the towers of highway lights in the middle of two roads.
One road leads forward, the other backwards.
As the car passes the towers,
the two lamps attached to each of their heads glow.
They streak on as the car speeds on homewards.
They leave fading tails like shooting stars, except they do not travel.
They are stagnant mind lights, peripheral memories; unmythical,
artificial.
They are not like you.

When I pass you,
You....
You...

You.

Please,
never believe-
for even a whisper of musk
to yourself;
for even a black hush,
to yourself;
for even one sliver, one strand
of Andromeda hair, falling
towards yourself-
that
Grahamstown
didn't mean anything less than Eternity to me.

It does.

I am not a hurricane. I am not your disaster.
You are far too much of yourself
for me to be even a zephyr
to you.

There's a first time for everything, I guess

My initiation to the cult of harm came last night
After I'd made sure everyone had gone to bed
Crept over by the window and moonlight
Placed my arm on the altar in front of me
Mechanically, efficiently swabbing it with alcohol
Scent sterile
For even in this, I will hold onto the pretense of a rationalist

I deride myself, tell myself I'm just going through with it because it's what people would expect from the depressed
That I could stop myself easily and so it's my fault if I don't
But god, I want to lose control so badly

The needle skitters across my skin and I shiver
It dances swirls along my arm
You don't need blood and scars for pain

It scrapes angrier against my skin
And a blissful silence pierces my head
As my own voice fades from between my ears

It's a trance-like happiness
A closed-eyed, fluttering-lashes smile
A beautiful pain throbbing, bringing me back to myself
I could have stayed up hours on that one taste of losing control
But this was just an initiation so I dragged myself away

There's not a trace the next day
Except in my mind where I hunt for all acceptable forms of pain
Push on your bruises, a friend advised
Pencil tips, pens

I stop myself
I resist
I said I wasn't going down this path

I'm on my own in August, I only have to make it to then
Then help, so no more of this

I wait until everyone falls asleep again
And though I am exhausted, stumble toward the moonlight
Sterilize, needle in hand, ready to dance

I refuse to go any farther, I tell myself

Death laughs from inside my head
Baby steps he snickers and
Isn't that what you said last time, doll?

There's a first time for everything after all

I won't,
I reassure the needle tracing kisses across my skin.
I'm fine.

I'm in love with a lesbian;
I love when she laughs.
I'm in love with a straight man.
I'm in love with a ***.
I'm in love with a totally pretentious ***;
always self-flattering - I love how he brags.
I'm in love with a shy girl who hardly says a thing.
Quiet as a mouse,
but oh when she sings!
I'm in love with a dancer whose movements are poetry.
I'm in love with an artist who's modestly vain.
I am completely in love with a rationalist
if only because he's clearly insane.
I'm in love with a girl who's crazy about God.
I'm in love with another who spoils her dog.
I'm in love with the world when it's not bearing down on me.
Love as far as the eye can see.
I am in love with myself -
it feels good and true,
but more than anyone,
I'm in love with you!

Yasna 28, Verse 6
by Zarathustra/Zoroaster
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Lead us to pure thought and truth
by your sacred word and long-enduring assistance,
O, eternal Giver of the gifts of righteousness.

O, wise Lord, grant us spiritual strength and joy;
help us overcome our enemies’ enmity!

Translator’s Note: The Gathas consist of 17 hymns believed to have been composed by Zarathustra (Zoroaster), whose compositions may date as far back as 1700 BC, although there is no scholarly consensus as to when he lived. These hymns form the core of the Zoroastrian liturgy called the Yasna. The language employed, Gathic or Old Avestan, is related to the proto-Indo-Iranian and proto-Iranian languages and to Vedic Sanskrit. The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy deems Zoroaster to have been the first philosopher. Zoroaster has also been called the father of ethics, the first rationalist and the first monotheist. In the original texts, Ahura Mazda means “wise Lord” or “Lord of Wisdom” while Vohuman/Vohu Manah represents pure thought and righteousness and Asha represents truth. Angra Mainyu was the chief evil entity, a precursor of Satan. Keywords/Tags: Zarathustra, Zoroaster, Yasna, Gathas, Avestan, mrbtr, Spiritual, Prayer, God, Righteousness, Holiness, Purity, Grace, Protection

Wet nights, warm days are what we want in the summer
      noosphere.
Man's mind one with weather.
If this is true, life is good, or will be good.
Can I be encouraged that my sons will find mystery on the
      planet
as I did?

How sweet the slow spring! May already and the canopy
      not out yet.
Woods quiet all winter.
Now I can't distinguish the many bird songs from where I sit.
Red maple flowers and first sugar maple leaves are, to me,
      the Christ child
that's been coming.

The ancient poems and the new make the 1/10 inch of annual
      topsoil
from carbon dioxide loading.
As a humanist I want everyone pursuing happiness; as a
      naturalist
I sometimes pray for man's destruction. As a rationalist I admit
I lack data.

O to play slow and sure, even when the tune is fast. Inside an
      aquifer
of love for the audience.
Not to fear or even necessarily obey the changing wind's
direction. Being here I breathe and make the atmosphere as
      seen
from outer space.

The song of the world will often take you far from yourself.
      There
will be no self. How will you know yourself?
By knowing thyme and dandelion, the blue jay from the hawk,
the heron in its swamp, black cherries and the one pear at the
      junction of the trails.
They are yourself.

I like his confidence, that working the problem
will certainly result in better outcomes than guessing.
A rationalist who does not depend on a higher power
to direct his decisions, but who may concede,
observe, realize and accept that he lacks the data
or the skills or tools to interpret data and these
decisions he leaves to his god.
                                    But not before
thoroughly assessing the limits of his power. Guessing
before guessing is necessary makes things worse. The skills,
tools and experience are the accumulated wisdom
of earlier experts in his field.
                                    Yet each generation
of communicants must examine the assumptions
from which the mathematics, logic, science or law
was derived. Rebuild the proofs from the simplest
truths, laws, physics. Taking God's first and only words
and extrapolating correctly, getting the trajectory
right for successful take off and re-entry.
                                    And then
to explain the derivations to your students.
Until they too can care for the species and the planet,
making whole sentences, formulas and melodies
from few words, numbers, notes.

Well then, if we agree, it is not odd
that one man's filth is another's wealth
or that the true pleasures comes from
a magnitude of abnormal achievements;
anticipation of gray shades on human error
is our life's constant coefficient.
Perception betrays with its blindspot:
Fate tracks always meet, not here, but only
in the impossible mind's sight;
intentions beats recognition as we commence
on thin sheens crawling to overtake that lens
where highlight captures pretense cleansing darkness.

So we could stand up, move on, darling, you and I,
until the glare tick out the rest in the worst
nothing changes, for all the blazing of
our drastic style, but leading hands that move
forcefully from adorable to done.
We raise our arguments like a diluted depict
heave to a better angle for screen clarity
shake logic with escape of comfort
and contradict ourselves for humor;then pixels leak
raw wind dries our stand and we put on
the heights as an oath; love is a tinted gloss
who insists her associates play in the rain.

Now you, my sophisticated fading icon,
would you have me carry the dry lands  
Or swallow the future and coat consequences
to store them on a cloud, down
the server in one language:
Drawing vowels from a loop through the dark
we only left with [L.P] played at 3:33 am
should it overwhelm the almost awake town.
cycling phoenix never stops to frame
If it should, should it be real or
should it sketch drunks upon the vignette
and Rands spent in dubious doorways
Our Valentine habits, engraved decoders
dining close to burning candles with our expired heads;
I donate applauds, until the same cause attacks again
scattering image from imagination,
recovering from ghost shots of exposure.

The rise leans down to hook; the resounding leak
in the dustbin sinks and drowns; we consume
divine west and east and sigh
how do you do,
and then how do you do again
to a blind breathing routine
till our harsh melodies reaches
to call for a cut on our restored scenes;
capturing photocopied reflections,
shutter opens where black or white begins
and separate the film from focus:
the philosophy of absolute apertures
exposed in a retina of moralities
which idealist call absolute, and rationalist, myth:
an insight like the prism of mirrors:

The result that mangle direct gaze is flipped,
while knowing the secret of their glaucoma is going;
some day, to move, and drop,
trace a wound that heals collections
only to reopen as flash thickens:
So we shall walk barefoot on chatroom walls
build our bed as high as a dead silhouette;
Duplicating the pain in our own tears:
Today : we start to pay the optic with each infrared,
yet love knows not of perception nor reality above
the simple sum of collages.

Though some maintain that parallels don’t meet
And three-point-something is the sum of pi
And whether X is found; no one knows why
(Was it lost, perhaps wandering in the street?)

Curious matters all Euclidian
Even for the bold mathematician
Are as obdurate as obsidian
Each an illogical proposition  

To the rationalist impossible, and yet -
Parallel lines are at the Altar met

Your loyalty resides in falseness. You are not a clean slate rather a rationalist, you rationalize whether continuing something will benefit you. Someone slanders you "I don't want to be their friend", a friend of 13 years slanders you,"I have to be their friend for one more year but I wan't things to be normal again." Fake is what you reside in, and the world has made you hard. You have made yourself hard which is the saddest part. In something that you can control you made yourself this person who is perceived untouchable and maybe you are. Because it never felt like I ever touched you.

his last gasp was quite lengthy
trying to go out with a bang as usual
a rationalist manifesto covering his face
accompanied by a cotton field work song
his grip went slack under the torrent of images
fortunes have been lost in that snapshot parlor
shook the money from the pockets
of many a surviving Siamese twin
blessed with a rugged set of mouse buttons
he pitched head first into the theocratic miasma
since a rescue by wisdom eluded his pilgrimage
and its inner parade of flailing penitents
he died to a real slow slide whistle tango
from a regrettable strangulation of debate
and terminally transparent eyelids
at least the ******* left me to my fate he mused
just as a legion of parachutists
crashed and tumbled through the roof
it was an Exist-o-Gram from my dear mother
but first a word from our sponsor
Hi there Mel Linger owner of Mel's Futon Corral
so jump in the calaboose and come on down
for a steal of a deal and a big gold tooth smile
clear and sunny in the lowland swamps
now for some traffic from overhead
fully awake after the reservoirs of hell broke loose
his mathematician’s mind calculated
how long until earthly paradise
it was a delusion but a lot of them work
time to risk the entire skin layer he fielded
searching for the trail to civilization
he shinnied up his collective unconscious
an optico semiotician on a paranormal safari
and began to read mom's holy missive
son your persistent mania for self dialog
requiring a frequent bath in statistics and terror
has left you under the juggernaut's wheels
for some fashionable occult mystery
humor him it's a mud fest in there
moms lips floated above and spoke
the Cherubs chirped and twittered
as he rowed over the spillway of oblivion
and stood before the ancient ones
boy were they ancient decrepit even
connected to great green bubbling flasks
by their bloated *** organs
apparently this made them really smart
the one labeled mom bubbled and spoke
the you you think is you is somebody else
later that day a marsh fire swept through Utopia
and a humming bird took nectar from his ear

From "Engine of Didactic Beauty" available on Amazon

Being rationalist
you wanted a secret sun
in your dark house.

Brainless also sleeps.
Season was not right for me
I was planting words.

The weird norms of
the parapsychology.
Why do I read mind?

his last gasp was quite lengthy
trying to go out with a bang as usual
a rationalist manifesto covering his face
accompanied by a cotton field work song
his grip went slack under the torrent of images
fortunes have been lost in that snapshot parlor
shook the money from the pockets
of many a surviving Siamese twin
blessed with a rugged set of mouse buttons
he pitched head first into the theocratic miasma
since a rescue by wisdom eluded his pilgrimage
and its inner parade of flailing penitents
he died to a real slow slide whistle tango
from a regrettable strangulation of debate
and terminally transparent eyelids
at least the ******* left me to my fate he mused
just as a legion of parachutists
crashed and tumbled through the roof
it was an Exist-o-Gram from my dear mother
but first a word from our sponsor
Hi there Mel Linger owner of Mel's Futon Corral
so jump in the calaboose and come on down
for a steal of a deal and a big gold tooth smile
clear and sunny in the lowland swamps
now for some traffic from overhead
fully awake after the reservoirs of hell broke loose
his mathematician’s mind calculated
how long until earthly paradise
it was a delusion but a lot of them work
time to risk the entire skin layer he fielded
searching for the trail to civilization
he shinnied up his collective unconscious
an optico semiotician on a paranormal safari
and began to read mom's holy missive
son your persistent mania for self dialog
requiring a frequent bath in statistics and terror
has left you under the juggernaut's wheels
for some fashionable occult mystery
humor him it's a mud fest in there
moms lips floated above and spoke
the Cherubs chirped and twittered
as he rowed over the spillway of oblivion
and stood before the ancient ones
boy were they ancient decrepit even
connected to great green bubbling flasks
by their bloated *** organs
apparently this made them really smart
the one labeled mom bubbled and spoke
the you you think is you is somebody else
later that day a marsh fire swept through Utopia
and a humming bird took nectar from his ear

From "Engine of Didactic Beauty" available on Amazon