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A B Faniki May 2019
A for Austerity, P for Poverty,
R for Recession, and U for Unemployment.
Recession is in town with her three

Un-amusing friends, whose hands are always
on their lips; and wherever the gang goes
they take away the fun from that place;

tinny Tanana biko biko! Whose car is
unemployment going to take away, to
make him use his leg-dis benz?

Eeny Meeny Miney mo! Whose house is poverty
going to crash in, and undo a
lifetime’s work in a matter of weeks?

tinny Tanana, biko biko! What will austerity
sell to the state? Is it a string for
the ministers to tighten the state purse?

Hear! Hear! Recession is in town. Bad
policies invited her with her three friends
to party and paint the town gray;

shame on the leaders on whose watch the
doors of the state were opened to recession
and her three friends; their ears will

be filled with the wailing and insults of the
populace, like the cry of a widow, whose
only son has passed away, fills the house.
this poem is about what recession does to a nation, it leaders and it people
1SP Sep 2012
A Lamar Original

Honey, I know that times are hard
And the moments like these are tough,
So let me reassure why we shouldn’t be apart,
And allow our future be dictated by love.

Baby, every night before I sleep
On bent knees to God I pray
For the hearts we have to not leak,
Because he has brought all this way.

We can succeed if we give this a chance;
I can see us growing old and grey,
Looking back on this very day;
We made it beyond our own recession romance!

Honey, I know that at times you feel alone,
And the world can be such a crazy place,
But that doesn’t mean you have be on your own,
I just hate to see the stress on your face.

Baby, everyday after I wake
With closed eyes to God I pray
For the hearts we have to not break,
Because if it’s his will, together we’ll stay.

We can ascend if we give this a chance;
I can see us with laughs and smiles,
After all the tribulations and trials;
We overcame our own recession romance!

Even if we have little money, little work,
All I need is you, honey, for what it’s worth...
Staff Sgt. Joseph D'Augustine
a proud Jersey son
whom Thou hast blessed
laid in St. Luke’s ground
for his heavenly rest
April 4, 2012

1.

in a far off province of
God forsaken Helmand,
our dear son Joey
met his untimely end

an explosive crack
a most terrible sound
felled a beloved Jersey son
to the cold cruel ground

working the live wires
of a well placed IED
a deathly burst killed him
it was awful to see  

Staff Sgt. Joseph D’Augustine
in solemn duty fell
fellow brothers in arms
will forever reverently tell

of courage and character
of a dear fallen friend
and how the valiant warrior
met with death at his end

for he was always faithful
to his beloved corps
comrades couldn't ask
a valiant marine for more


2.

details of his death
are not the real story
selflessness and bravery
are but part of his glory

is it brash to
question why he fell?
in a useless bitter war
an embroiled senseless hell

a generation mustered
to fight in the war on terror
serving four tours of duty
in a lost decade of errors

two tours in Afghanistan and Iraq
could a nation ask a man for more?
for he was always faithful to the call
upholding pledges he hath sworn

3.

the burden of war
to a  few confined
it rarely crosses
an American’s mind

incessant war machine
drones on apace
the horror of conflict
so cleverly displaced

with afternoon baseball
and super bowl parties
big disco paychecks
and other selfish priorities

pay hollow tribute
to dear weary troops
when valor is mentioned
we gather in groups

we’ll raise the flag
sing stirring anthems
than its back to the party
pay it no more attention

self styled patriots
wave handfuls of flags
but ask them to contribute
the zeal soon lags

its left to the few
to shoulder burdens of many
fairness is lost
its a democratic calamity

four tours in a decade
an inhumane task
burdens require sharing
its only fair to ask

Joey was always faithful
to the task at hand
willing to step forward
to serve his homeland


4.

in the wake of 9/11
a nation deeply shaken
young patriots stirred
liberty’s call not forsaken

a call to serve answered
to quell the rise of terror
a clear clarion alarm
marks the nature of the era

Joey boldly came forward
to train and learn
the art of warriors
his bright patriotism burned

deployed to Afghanistan
to capture Osama
routing the Taliban
without much problem

but a pacified Afghan
not enough for Bush
he invaded Iraq
another military push

we rolled into Baghdad
adorned with victors garlands
Saddam’s statue toppled
our troops were honored

deposing a dictators
soon turned to occupation
a ****** mission transformed
to build the Iraqi and Afghan nations

once honored liberators
now a conquering force
bestriding broken nations
on a civil war course

military industrialists
stood to profit most
sweet protracted conflict
record earnings to boast

lives bartered for lucre
a region held hostage
the conflict deepened
hostilities hardened

America dipped into
a great recession
the war machine
bled money and
kept on ticking

scooping up contracts
rewarding investors
the dividends of war
heaven sent treasure

continuation of hostilities
preys on a nation's youth
as casualties mount
ill portents forsoothed

a fraction of citizens
bare heartaches of war
gulping measures of despair
to guard a nations door

a nation always faithful
to the holy pursuit of profit
a highest citizens calling
put money into your pocket


5.

our beloved Jersey son
gave a full measure of devotion
in dress blues they shipped him
back across the ocean

on the Dover tarmac
they received his remains
for a last ride northward
to his hometown terrain

repatriated body
bereft of soul saluted
solemn escort knelt
hearts trembled, tears muted

a hearse for a gallant man
flanked by state troop cruisers
to escort the funeral train
assure an honored movement

one last trip up
old thunder road
the storied highway
Joey often trod

the last detail legged up 17
reverent firefighters saluted  
from overpasses
to honor  the woeful scene

as the motorcade passed
the Garden State Malls
frenzied consumers
failed to notice at all

busy window shoppers
didn't to turn an eye
as Joey rolled home
to the sweet by and by

vets interred at the
Old Paramus Church
gently stirred in their graves
reasons for war they search

Channel 12 Chopper
circled its eye in the sky
televised the sad parade
captured many teary eyes

the early spring blooms
colorful petals displayed
maples and forsythias
a royal carpet laid

spring remains always faithful
as the new season turns
offer sunshine and glory
as our sinking hearts burn

6.

motorcycle escort
northbound lane clear
rolling homeward
Waldwick was near

leaves exploding
green shoots budding
****** white maple blooms
natures accolades stunning

the oaks yet bare
just waking from slumber
winters death passing
a sad day put asunder

the motorcade passed
Joey’s home on Prospect Ave
few  envision lifes endings
this woefully sad

red chevy pickup idles
in hoop crowned driveway
never to drain jumpers again
departed children can’t play

the eye in the sky
framed neighbors in mourning
welcoming back a fallen hero
unsettled emotions dawning

neighbors waved Old Glory
from painted stoops and curbs
unsure how this tragedy
visits this blessed suburb

green grass of home
always flush with spirit
tears welled in the eyes
most difficult to bear it

last cruise of the town
sad neighbors stand witness
paying final due respects
and ponder from a distance

what purpose is served
by this man’s passing?
the dead cannot speak
rationale is for the living

the terrible herse
death circles our town
moves through our day
hope of spring drowned

murderer of sunshine
killer of young flowers
budding trees breaking
our hearts an ashen pallor

we remember the beauty
of Joey’s stout face
as it looked on your finest day
exuding pure honor and grace

old vets gather
donning caps and pins
boasting semper fi jackets
jutting tear dripping chins

shaking hands, giving hugs
bearing tattered banners
the hearse ambles onward
we head home in solemn manner

good folks are always faithful
where beloved ones grew
the death of our children
we sadly cannot undo


7.

the bells of St. Lukes
called out from the sky
platoons of limping vets
marched in with pride

pomp and circumstance
requisite dress blues
family, friends, townsfolk
overflowed the pews

doleful bells resound
tolling a mournful reckon
the cost of war mounts
a family’s loss beckons

the casualties of war
falls upon a nation's youth
a seasons page not  turned
a flowing wound not soothed

the wistful cornet calling
floats on the fluted air
the bereaved ***** gently sounds
a congregations somber despair

an unsettling dirge
the parish grows uneasy
nationalist bravado wanes
in the forlorn sanctuary

both church and flag
draped in colors of war
mock stain glass windows
communicants adore

is it a betrayal of the flag
to offer enemies
psalms of reconciliation?
where does true loyalty lay
with God or a warring nation?

afterall this is a sanctuary
where peace and harmony reigns
are we not called to beat swords
into ploughshares as the highest
calling of our Lord?

we are always faithful
to the pathways to war
when the practice of peace
is what we should adore

8.

coughing and whispers
incessant low murmur
a baby cries out
we sit and remember

the crucifers process
in solemnity to greet
subtle ***** notes salute
a coffin draped in Old Glory sheets

the beloved child welcomed
to his eternal repose
priests splash holy water
within the sacred dome

an amazing grace revealed
lifted by marine pallbearers
dearly departed body presented
gently placed at the altar

a grief struck sister
lovingly eulogizes
recalls tonka trucks,
GI Joe’s and cool transformers

a punch in the nose
an approaching wedding
beckoning Eastertide
vacation plans left begging

my second grade class sent
Christmas cookies and cards
to dear Joey and warrior friends
he said it warmed stark winter hearts

he was raised in this church
taught trust and reconciliation
the comfort of the Lords peace
may it surely go with him

for he was always faithful
to sisters, family and faith
his resurrection service
imbues sacredness
to this space

9.

sharp in dress blues
Eddie T USMC Gunny
big 50 caliber smile
offers his eulogy

Bada Bing Jersey Humvee
we called him Joey Calzones
good mood, loved sausages
he tickled the funny bone

always willing to sacrifice
loved the Patriots Tom Brady
a women dominated household
gave him a way with the ladies

his calling explosive ordinances
he said he was livin the dream
March 6th last time we met
knocking frost off cold ones
man whatta scream

a gallant marine,
beloved brother,
a sure friend
he was always faithful
I’m deeply wounded
by his untimely end


10.

the gospel read
the homily offered
Ecclesiastes wisdom
a time for everything
proffered

God never turns
an eye from the beloved
though seasons change
we are not forsaken
never unloved

as loss arrives
surely grief grows
turn away not
wisdom knows

in resignation
love lay dead
diligent intention
banishes dread

our rekindled hope
we rend and sow
our beloved Joey
knew this was so

our favorite son’s
example taught us
now rises on eagle’s wings
to claim his divine justice

Jesus faithfully tramped
the path to an awful death
Joey too fought the good fight
a warrior now gratefully at rest

The Lord holds him close
to the ***** of sure love
a cantors beatific voice incants
Joey’s spirit that forever enchants

The Lord is always faithful
to the bereaved and  beloved
no one ever forsaken
all unconditionally loved

11.

the Holy Eucharistic cup
affirms everlasting giving
tasted to nourish evermore
a libation for the living

singing the Beatitudes
praising peace makers
mercy filled voice and song  
pallbearers lift Joey’s coffin

off to seek his final peace
an earthly occupation ended
he’ll suffer worldly hate no more
down the aisle his coffin wended

the family closely followed
a mother haltingly sobbing
faithful marines came forth
to steady her wobbling

there is no sudden waking
from this terrible dream
the pungent incense rose
to the chapels sacred beams

the stained glass murals depict
the passion of Jesus’s story
illuming a consuming sorrow
in all its grace filled glory

the ***** of death slinks on again
we search for consolation
the recompense of honor blest
leaves a hollow heart wanting
no answers offered to quell the dark
of these terrible life’s moments
only the desperate need to hold onto
beleaguered treasure that sustains us

for we are always faithful
to the things we know
always faithful to the
things we refuse to let go

12.

the color guard and funeral detail
assembled in front of St. Luke’s
the cemetery right next door
the procession a short troop

the living will stumble through
the darkness of separation
seeking elusive answers
of poignant uncertainty;
all gave some, Joey gave all
nothing more required for his
journey through eternity

Joey will always be with us
his stories forever retold
as long as the machinery of
great nations engage
the gears of wasteful war

Joey’s spirit lives
in a peoples desire
for freedom, only if
our hope of peace
is greater than the
need for conflict

Joey’s lifes work
is sure to bear fruit
if those remaining
fight the good fight
by taking up the
task to protect and
expand the values
of liberty we
hold most dear

like our good
friend Jesus
Joey wears a crown
bejeweled with
a ring of thorns
hoisted on a
terrible cross
the sweet
incense of you
meets our nose
we inhale your
earthly presence
beholding beautifully
adorned crucifix,
a reminder of
unjust persecution
and a perfect
resurrection
yet this wretched
coffin remains

pledging allegiance
we rationalize our
stories, articulating
our small parts
in  heroic sagas,
reciting myths of
ourselves, recording
the grim history of
a young marine
surrounded by
a smart color guard,
feasting on todays
eucharist, this
days sweet taste
of  the daily bread
of human sorrow

The priest finishes
his graveside
commendation
of Joey D

Taps conclude
a wind rises
crows take flight
winging over
a stand of budding
Sugar Maples
exploding in white
blooms, reveling
in the glorious
sunshine of this
magnificent day

St. Luke’s stairway to
God Country and Home
smiling portrait of you
forever young

we surround your grave
to bless the earth
you've returned home
to your place of birth

our flowing pride
and salty tears bless
the anointed ground
that you loved best

a proud Jersey son
whom Thou hast blest
laid in St. Luke’s ground
for his heavenly rest

for he was always faithful
to the blessed land
forever at peace
in the soils sure hands

Charles Ives
The Unanswered Question

Oakland
11/10/13
jbm
Shandel Pruitt Sep 2009
Poverty
Blurred Pigments of Red and blue
Bring to mind the police
Responding to our crises
Aptly and alert
Though upon arrival
It’s pure brutality…
They oppress and beat
Abuse and misuse
Break our spirits
Lowering us deeper into this
Depression…
No… it’s and economic Recession…
In which inequalities are abound
For the rich stay rich
While the poor fall hungry
And We…
The…
People….
Fall beyond Poverty…
Straight Through The misguided…
Rage of the government…
And Deeper than just a simple
Economic Inequality…

We’ve
Reached
The
Poverty Stricken
Greatest Recession….
Known As
A Secondary Great Depression….
It has become clear, since the Great Recession began, that the American banking and the political, "systems," are 'one-and-the-same' entity. Neither works for the majority of Americans but both appear to be working quite well, historically-compared, in fact, for the richest or most advantaged people.

Life should model to become a, "heaven," on earth for all people not just those at the foremost of political benefit, wealth or talent. This current state of affair is not what Plato envisioned. It is not what the Founding Fathers intended. America should not be about exclusion and private benefit but the public as a whole and the individual inclusion; Every Man a King.

Not Kings among the men who serve them...even Jesus would be appalled.

No one wants to think they are taking something they do not deserve or someone is being forced to accept something they do not want yet it is clear by the recent election that the American people are fed-up and ready to start taking things away. Naturally since they own this nation not the Fortune 500.

At a point greed undoes itself.

Rather than reach that point, the ultimate point of violence, we should endeavor our creative consciousness to alleviate the concerns of the excluded masses as Congress has proven that government can fix major world-altering problems such as the worst financial crisis in modern history. They cannot agree on health care, minority rights or ****** behavior but when Wall Street came begging they had no issues in agreement.

So here we are with a solution for the smallest percentage of Americans that fixed part of the economy leaving the multitude behind with nothing. Sorry, they got something; half of all familial wealth created since the Federal Reserve Act has been wiped out for the bottom half of society.  

Half...

Our economy is a dud. Ironically our central bank along with England's now admit they failed Main Street and furthermore say they should no longer be involved in these kinds of decisions! Yes, Americans should eliminate all of their authority over the finance industry, central banking and monetary policy leaving it the hands of those beggars who ruined it for everyone but themselves and admitted they failed us all?

How about a simple act of Congress to amend the matter?

Declare that all publicly-traded corporations can no longer issue corporate bonds or stock for revenue if they do not offer consumers a prepayment option to their accounts with an interest bearing incentive. From now on all corporations with publicly-issued stock must accept any prepayment towards future consumer services liabilities and pay an annualized interest rate identical to the Fed prime rate.

What corporation would not want to borrow at the Fed prime rate?

When any company needs money for expansion they should have the option to pool money directly from the account holder's prepayment revenue as long as they credit those accounts on all prepayments regardless of usage at the Fed rate. If they do not pay interest they should not be allowed to access the funds until a current invoice for service is generated and due from the consumer. Consumers should be able to earn money by being good stewards and paying off future liabilities early, or if requested, the consumer should receive a check for all of their annualized interest at the end of each fiscal year.

Corporations now need you to finance their dreams and you can finance your own with real interest paid to you since most of these multinational corporations would be bankrupt and gone today had not your bank, The Federal Reserve, issued credit and capital to save them as they whined about the unfairness in the economy.

"Unfair?"

For whom?
Robin Carretti Aug 2018
Our salvation taking
another high-life (Lip)
The middle-income lip
Our lips leaked
Being possessed the kiss
on empty

Humpty Dumpty sat
on her Lego lips
Singers the Talking Heads
Where are the feds to late
Those stolen lips
State of a wedding trips
Rainbow chalk the state was
on lip nightmare call
Being stalked (Lumber Jack)

The devil filler up poverty
The world being pulled
Push her lip up
                    > >

Arrowsmith bow and arrow
                    >>
  Losing elasticity lips go
UPSTATE gravity

"What an under(state)meant"
"The press (God Bless)
    the golden child
     lips filling in
       the gaps
What!! no comment"

 So sad we need the happy
Irish lad too many
    Sugar Dads
lip recession deadlines to meet
The curveball
Another sip we joined the
Navy but eyeshadow deep-over
the edge gray
The Seal had an unusual tail
Her lips fast food drive smashed
Her Meal

The peace lips blew far away
"Medieval Swords heart lips
            will pay"
Times come and go its excruciating
Lips went too far always mating
Imitating people takes a whole village
Of pain

But the spiritual blessing rain
In Woodstock concerts
What perks to gain
The acid trip music we can
sip each other's lips

    Now if this wasn't passion
What a state got smeared
Like a crime scene
of fashion
Her lips could rise
Like the Millenium

         Max
Playing the jazz sax
Still the income tax

But the state in a crisis
of sales tax
Star a stage minimum wage
All the states we travel her lips
The water stays refreshing where
On her body, he really sees it on
her lips nowhere else

How many states can you
count on your finger
Long lip Ranger

The Victoria Secrets
The Tra la the bra's on the
Five-star Hilton Hotel
hanger

Holding onto her guns
Going right or to the left
Powerful lips he went
off the cliff

Getting Burned and
the State tax
You earned
The Swearing
Her lip talk so caringly
Can we move her lips to
another state more cautiously
How her hips look like
they will inflate

I am not a painting by
your candlelight fate
I felt like a tax right off
Taxi yellow race her lips
on the meter money bluff
I ended up in the state of
*
Michigan
Tricks are ****
Like a lip magician

Kentucky home was barrels
of Bourbon
I never said I wanted a drink
my name is Robin

Going to Deleware
what hardware did anyone care
So humble like the bumblebee
She was way too soft as her software

Have gun we travel but have lips we rumble

We need courage this world of states
can be savage
Gold bonds of "Dynasty European"
top dollar vultures mean
funds that's a grand entrance

Now I see how these states
start to unravel
California here I come right
back where
my lips started from

Her upper society lip could use
Champagne and caviar
The star was getting fat a nice trim
Grumpy beard make it a
short tax cut with him
Text and tweets no lip sweets
Rocky Colorado mountain men

French lips played art
Like Van Gogh perfect 10
Scenic route crazed
So many states should
be sued overly sexed suites

In Alaska, she was on a freeze

All the money in the world she got New York Token

All I asked the waitress
for State fair pie
My lips could have
used *Sweet Peach * so
pucker up
Don't be a sucker
Alabama state trooper
in Kansas City

What a spell click of heels

Georgia is always on my mind
Is New York only a state of
Frank Sinatra singing mind
What a big foot in her mouth
Nancy Sinatra dark lips Goth
State boots softly made
for loving that's just
what lips do one of these
Days my lips are going to
gloss all over you
Who's the Boss
So fasten your lip belts
The spiritual state always does the cross

Bumpy ride (Bette Davis) Eyes
Taking a trip to the end of the
boot of Sicily vineyards
Whats mine Jailbirds
She cut her lip when she was
in (Connecticut Movie cut)
On the Mystic Seaport lips were
getting hot ****** fit

Like a state disease fire pit
State of a lip disaster
But the state couldn't
resist her
Ending up in Arizona
Something is swizzling
it's not Kevin Bacon

Make no mistake when you plan
a state trip you better have your
weapon ready
Mafia bullets Bonnie and Clyde
they rob *Banks money Lips
Stae of mind we are traveling again but our lips will be the walking the yellow pages old news Staes can rock up she has the Wizardly Oz shoes
onlylovepoetry Jul 2020
one word. one thing
shows up on my face.

everybody knows it is a
keepsake:
keep away from me today,
for fks sake!


certain peculiarmornings
wake with a cross on forehead.

days when you certain,
everything worth saying
has been written, sung,
not a **** thing left to
contribute, except whining.

no way to purge, the compulsion
welling up, coursing down.
this overwhelms, my outlet store,
permanent closed, sign says
don’t ya know it’s a recession.

a one man recession.
no government intervention
gonna come my way.

the notion that I’ll never just
once more, feel the thrill of a
first love, a new born progeny,
woman, baby, poem, no diff,
wrecks me badly, worried sun consults
my animal friends, what’s to be done?

knowing the answer to my curse is,
not one wiling to courage to curettage
the lining of my decrepitude,
the end then, of no more next time.

though there is a first here. ever.
first time, every stanza writ,
closed off, finally ended, with a flourish,
a puncture of a period.

~~~~~~~~

postscript:


the closing scheduled for now,
have to change the name, says York,
it’s the common law, I’m legal bound,
gonna sign the documents as
no more love poetry.

919am Wed Jul 22 2020
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2016
preliminary explanation

before i really begin the project i have a few scatterings
of thought that made me do this, without real planning,
a different sort of impromptu that poetry's good at,
less Dionysian spur-of-the-moment with an already
completed poem entwined to a perfect ensō,
as quick as the decapitation of Mary Boleyn with the
executioner fooling her which side the swing would
be cast by taking of his hard-soled-shoes -
i mean this in an Apollonian sense - i know, sharp contrasts
at first, but the need to fuse them - i said these are
preliminary explanations, the rest will not be as haphazardly
composed, after all, i see the triangle i'm interested it
but drawing a triangle without Pythagorean explanation
i'm just writing Δ - i'll unravel what my project is
about, just give me this opportunity to blah blah for a
while like someone from an existential novel;
what beckoned me was the dichotomy of styles,
i mean, **** me, you can read poetry while in an awkward
yoga position, you can read it standing up, sitting down,
eating or whatever you want - obviously on the throne
of thrones taking a **** is preferred - the point being
what's called serious literature is so condensed for
economic reasons, font small, never-ending paragraphs,
you need an easy-chair and a bottle of cognac to get
through a chapter sometimes - or at least freshly mowed
grass in a park in summer - it's really uncomfortable because
of that, and the fact that poets hardly wish upon you
to be myopic - just look at the spacing on the page,
constantly refreshing, open-plan condos, eye-to-eye -
but it's not about that... the different styles of writing,
prose and the novel, the historical essay / encyclopedia
or a work of philosophy - what style of writing can
be best evolutionary and undermine each? only poetry.
poetry is a ballerina mandible entity, plastic skeletons,
but that's beside the point, when journalism writes history
so vehemently... the study of history writes it nonchalantly,
it's the truth, journalism is bombastic, sensationalist
every but what courting history involves -
a journalist will write about the death of a 100 people
more vehemently than a historian writing about the Holocaust...
or am i missing something? i never understood this dichotomy
of prose - it's most apparent between journalism and history...
as far as i am concerned, the most pleasurable style of
prose is involved in the history of philosophy, or learning per se,
but i'll now reveal to you the project at hand -
it's a collage... the parameters?

the subject of the collage

it weighs 1614 grams, or 3 lb. and 8 7/8ths oz.,
it's a single volume edition, published by Pimlico,
it's slightly larger than an A5 format,
3/4 inches more in length, and ~1 centimetre in
width more, it has a depth of 1 and 3/4 inches in depth,
a bicep iron-pumping session with it in bed -
i was lying with this behemoth of a book
in bed soothing out a semi-delirium state
listening to Ola Gjeilo's *northern lights

and flicking through the appendix, and i started thinking,
no would read this giant fully, would they?
the reason it's a one volume edition is because
the only place you'd read such an edition would
be in a library, at a desk, and you'd be taking snippets
out from it, quotes, authentic references points
for an essay, esp. if you were a history student,
such books aren't exactly built for leisure, as my arms
could testify... after the appendix i started flicking
through as to what point of interest would spur me
onto this audacious (and perhaps auspicious)
act of renegading against writing a novel (in the moment,
in the moment, i can't imagine myself rereading plot-lines
after a day or two, adding to it - that's a collage too,
but of a different kind - and no, i won't be plagiarising
as such, after all i'll be citing parallel, but utilising
poetry as the driving revision dynamic compared
to the chronologically stale prose of history) - i'll be
extracting key points that are already referenced and not
using the style of the author - the book in question?
Europe: a history by Norman Davies prof. emeritus
at U.C.L. - the point of entry that made me mad enough
to condense this 1335 page book (excluding the index)?

point of incision

Voltaire (or the man suspected of Guy Fawkes-likes spreading
of volatility in others) -
un polonais - c'est un charmeur; deux polonais - une
bagarre; trois polonais, eh bien, c'est la question polonaise

(one pole - a charmer, two poles - a brawl, three poles -
the polish question) - mind you, the subtler and gentler
precursor of the Jewish question, because the Frenchman
mused, and not a German, or a Russian brute...
and i can testify, two Polish immigrants in a pub,
one senior, the other minor, one with 22 years under
his belt of the integration purpose, one with 12 years,
the minor says to the senior about how Poles bring
the village life to cities, brutish drunkards and what not,
it was almost a brawl, prior to the senior was charming
a Lithuanian girl, before the minor's emphasis on
such a choice of conversation turned into idiotic Lithuanian
nostalgia about the disintegration of the Polish-Lithuanian
commonwealth, primarily due to the Polish nobility.

10,000 b.c.

looking that far back i don't know why you even
bother to celebrate the weekend -
i mean, 10,000 years back Denmark was
still attached to Sweden,
England was attached to France,
and there was a weird looking Aquatic landmass
that would become a myth of Atlantis
in the Chronicles of Norwich,
speedy ******* Gonzales with the equivalent
of south america detaching itself from Africa...
mind you, i'm sure the Carpathian ranges are
mountains. they're noted here are hills or uplands,
by categorising them as such i'm surprised
the majority of Carpathian elevations as scolded
bald rocky faced, a hill i imagine to have some
vegetation on it, not mountain goats with rock and roof
for a blacksmith in a population of one hundred...
at this point Darwinism really becomes a disorientating
pinpoint of whatever history takes your fancy,
Europe - mother of Minos, lord of Crete,
progenitrix / ******* and the leather curtains
of Zeus's harem (jealous? no, just the sarcasm
dominates the immortal museum of attachable
****** to suit the perfect elephant **** of depth
the gods sided with, by choice, excusing the Suez
duct tightening of a prostate gland... to ease the pain
upon ******* rather than *******); mentioned by Homer
the Blind tooth-fairy, the Europe and the bull,
Europoeus and the swan, same father of wisdom to mind,
on the shores of Loch Lomond -
attributes a lover to the bull, Moschus of Syracuse,
who said earring Plato cured him of where the ****
should not enter even if it shines a welcome
in the disguise of Dionysius... revisionists bound to Pompeii
named Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens Veronese
and Claude Lorrain revived the bulging bull's *******
and her mm hmm mm, too gracious my kind, hehee...
Phonecians from Tyre and Io - so too the Sibyl of ****** -
and unlike the great river civilisations of the Nile,
the Ganges, soon to be the Danubian civilisations
and gorged-out-eyes-that-once-sore-colour-but-lost-sight-of-
colours-­after-seeing-the-murk-of-the-Thames...
soon the seas overcame civilisations of the rivers,
as Cadmus, brother of the thus stated harlot said:
i bring you orbe pererrato - hieroglyphics of the cage,
but not an owl or a hawk inside it -
so let's perfect speaking to an encoding by first
rummaging into learning how to procure the perfect
forms of counting - i say left, you say I, i say right
you say II, left right left right, what do you say?
VI. bravo! the Hellenic world just crossed the Aegean
and civilisation bore twins within the cult of a lunar-mother,
Islam of Romulus and Remus, a she-wolf
a canine of the night - according to another -
tremulae sinuantur flamine vestes - or so the myth goes -
a cherished phantom of what became the fabled story
of sole Odysseus with his ears open and the remnant
sailor's ears waxed shut - as if the bankers of this world,
revelling in culprit universal fancy than nonetheless
bred the particular oddities - lest we forget,
the once bountiful call of the sirens to the oceanic
is but a fraction of what today's sirens claim to be song,
a fraction of it remains in this world, the onomatopoeia
of the once maddening song, the crude *******
arrangement of vowels bound to the jealous god's
déjà vu of the compounding second H.

from myth to perpetuating a modern sentiment

you can jump from 10,000 b.c. to the Munich Crisis
of 1938 - 9 with a snap of the fingers,
imitating quantum phenomenons like gesticulating
a game of mime with Chinese whispers necessary,
if Europe is a nymph, Naples her azure eyes,
Warsaw her heart, Sebastopol and Azoff,
Petersburg, Mitau, Odessa - these the thorns
in her feet - Paris the head, London the starched collar,
and Rome - the sepulchre
.
or... die handbuch der europaischen geschichte
notably from Charlemagne (the Illiterate)
to the Greek colonels (as apart from Constantine to
Thomas More in eight volumes, via Cambridge mid
1930s)... these and some other books of urgency
e.g. Eugene Weber's H. A. L. Fisher's, Sr. Walter Ralegh,
Jacob Bronowski... elsewhere excavated noun-obscurities
like gattopardo and konarmya had their
circas extended like shelved vegetables in modern
supermarket isles, for one reason or another...
prado, sonata sovkino also... some also mention
Thomas Carlyle (i'd make it sound like carried-away isle,
but never mind); so in this intro much theory,
how to sound politically correct, verifiable to suit
a coercion for a status quo... Europe as a modern idea,
replacing Imperum Romanun came Christendom,
ugly Venetian Pirates at Constantinople,
Barbarossa making it in pickled herring juice
in a barrel to Jerusalem... once called the pinkish-***-fluff
of Saxony, now called the pickled cucumber,
drowning in his armour in some river or Brosphorus...
alchemists, Luther and Copernicus were invited on
the same occasion as the bow-tie was invented,
apparently it was a marriage made for the Noir cinema,
beats me - hence the new concept of Europe,
reviving the idea of Imperium Romanun
meant, somehow including Judea in the Euro
championship of footie gladiator ***** whipped
narcissists, rejecting the already banished Carthage
(Libya / Tunisia by Cato's standards) and encouraging
the Huns, the Goths and the even more distant Slavs and
Vikings to accept not so much the crucifix as
the revised spine of the serpent but as the geometry of
human limbs, well, not so much that, but forgetting
Norse myths of the one-eyed and the runic alphabet
and settling for ah be'h c'eh d'ah.
dissident frenche stink abbe, charles castel de st pierre
(1658 - 1743) aand this work projet d'une paix perpetuelle
(1713) versus Питер Великий who just said:
never mind the city, the Winter Palace... i have aborted
fetus pickles in my bedroom, lava lamps i call them.
the last remaining reference to Christianity?
Nietzsche was late, the public was certain,
it was the Treaty of Utrecht, 1713, with public reference
to the republica christiana / commonwealth was last made.
to Edmund Burke: well, i too wish no exile
upon any European on his continent of birth,
but invigorate a Muslim to give birth on it
and you invigorate an exile nonetheless:
Ezra expatriate Pound / sorry, if born in eastern
europe a ***** Romanian immigrant, pristine
expatriate in western Europe, fascist radio has
my tongue and *****, so let's play a game:
Russian roulette for the Chinese cos there's
a billion of them, and no one would really mind
a missing Chow Mein... chu shoo'ah shaolin moo'n'kah!
or a cappuccino whenever you'd like to watch
classic Italian pornographic cinema with dubbing
with nuns involved... Willaim Blake and his
stark naked prophesy, pope pius II (treatise 1458)
even though Transylvania, Tharce and Hungary
shared the same phonetic encoding with diacritical
distinctions like any Frenchman, German,
or Pole at the Siege of Vienna (1683)
to counter the antagonising Ottoman - i swear historians
do this one purpose, juggle dates and head-of-state figures
prior to entering a chronology - they must first try out
a ******* carousel before playing with the toy-train...
broadcasting to a defeated Germany public, T. S. Eliot
(1945) ****** import to into Western Germany
and talk of the failing moral fabric, China laughing
after the ***** intricacies of warfare of trade,
what was once wool we wished to be silk...
instead of silk we received vegetarian wool, namely
hemp, and Amsterdam is to blame... nuke 'em!
that's how it sounds, how a historian approaches
writing a history from the annals, from circa and
circumstance and actual history, foremost the abbreviations,
the fishing hook standards, the parameters,
the limits, and then the mathematics of history,
one thing culminating into another... contra Lenin
N. S. Trubetskoy, P. N. Savitsky, G. Vernadsky
Russian at the perks of the Urals - steppe Tartar shamans
or salon pranced pretty **** boys? where to put
the intoxicant and where to put the mascara... hmm,
god knows, or by 21st calculations, a meteor;
they say the history of nations is a history of women,
then at least the history of individuation
and of men who succumb to its proliferation
is astoundingly misogynistic.
Seton-Watson, among the the tombstones too reminded
of remarkable esteem and accomplishment
with only one gravedigger to claim as father...
as many death ears as on two giraffe skeletons
stood Guizot, men of many letter and few fortunes,
or v. v., incubators of cousin ***** and none the kippah
before the arrogant saintly diminished to
a justly cause of recession, ha ha,
by nature's grace, and with true advent of her progression
as guard-worthy pre- to each pro-
and suggested courteous of the ****** fibre,
oh hey, the advent of masqueraded woofing,
a Venetian high-brow, and jealousy out of a forgotten
spirit of adventure that once was bound
to hunting and foraging... forever lost to write  history of
a king dubbed Louis the XIV...
crucibles and distastes for the state to be pleased,
once removed from Paris, forever to Angevin womb
accustomed once more, at Versailles released -
as cake be sown so too the aristocratic swan necks
for worth of mock and scorn - and the dampening rain
rattle the blood-thirst of the St. Bartholomew's Day
slaughter, to date, the rebirth of Burgundy,
of Anjou, and with the dead king presiding, to be
of no worth in judging himself a king before god or pauper...
saluer Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville!
that i might too in stead rattle a few bones prior to burial
with the jaw that will laugh and chatter least
had it been to my kingly-stead a birth so lowly.
then at least in satisfactory temperament i procure a
judgement of the noble like of a *****
for an hour's worth of pistons and jarring tongues...
as if from a nobleman then indeed as if from a *****,
for who sold Europe and said: Arabia, if not the
Frenchman, the Englishman, the Spaniard?
the former colonial conquests served you not enough?
i imagine the reinstatement of Israel like
the Frankish states under Philippe-August...
precursors to a cathedral dubbed Urban the 2nd's..
there were only Norwegian motives in the Ukraine
and the black sea... Israel to me is like plagiarism
of the Frankish states of the middle-east, with Europe
slightly... oom'pah loom'pah mongolian harmonica.
some said Rudyard Kipling poems,
some said Mr. Kipling's afternoon tea cakes -
whichever made it first on Coronation St.
some also say the Teutonic barbecues -
it was a matter of example to feed them hog
and cannibalise the peasants for ourselves,
a Prussian standard worth an army standard of
rigour - Ave Maria - letztre abendessen nahrung -
mein besitzen, wenn in die Aden, i'd be the last
talking carcass...
gottes ist der orient!
gottes ist der okzident!
nord - und sudliches gelande
ruht im frieden seiner hande.

germany's lebensraum, inferiority and classification,
inferior slavs and jews, genetics and why my
hatred of Darwinism is persistent, you need
an explanatory noting to make it auto-suggestive
for Queen & Country? diseased elements,
Jewish Bolshevism, Polish patriotism,
Soviets, Teutons, the grand alliances of 1918
or 1945? Wilsonian testimony of national self-determi
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2020
.i have come to realiße that... it's not so much what you write about... but the mere fact of writing... i can't imagine myself being subjected to something, like a narrative, or furthering a character study... i can be the object of whatever is whimsical enough to come into my head of its own accord - i want to forget forcing something to come into this puncture, this dam, this incision that i am coordinating... and it's not that i'm objecting to something, but i am not going to subject myself to - no more than a whim, of its own desires... with no attached: i think so too... it's not about what i write anymore: it's the fact that i write... if i'll be able to spew 3 thousand words tonight... i'll be content... because... i know that i have crossed the threshold of not being left "satisfied": nonetheless constipated by an instagram haiku... mind you... that's a very troubling hindsight note you have in there... wouldn't an object the size of the earth... in a vacuum of space... create its own winds to imitate movement? there is no wind on the moon... yes... and we're talking hindsight from 420BC... the moon landing happened in the 20th century... let's give it some times before that becomes an obvious hindsight too... do you feel movement - rotating - did the turkish dervishes help at all?

the fine line between: competition and corporation,
otherwise known as a: very, very, naive poo'em...

by a definition alone:
it's not so much concerning whether this
would ever become a capitalism vs.
a communism "debate"...

after all - i'm ref. walking a tight-rope...

of the latter, verbatim:
'an association of individuals,
created by law or under authority of law,
having a continuous existence independent
of the existences of its members
and powers and liabilities distinct from
those of its members'...

can i just point out, foremost,
in an environment of competition laws can be bent...
to add to: the spectacle...
the athletics doping scandals:
it's within a spirit of competition...
the sprinters are not corporating for give
a spectacle... they are competing...
for the the spectacle...
ask me again the difference between...
what used to be a competitive event
done during leisure hours...
and what was a leisure event akin
to reading...
and ask me again: the difference between
taking part in the event of competing...
and watching a competition -
and what had to be involved to give
the spectacle its architecture...
i don't think it was so much competition
as it was corporation... never mind for now...

after all... how many times have laws
been bent when watching a football match?
the passing of law is hardly an objective
crux that so many "rational" and logic-"riddled"
people stress - can be made by one man...
sure... laws in vivo - science and what not...
these objective safety-nets...
that can lead to endless to-and-fro...
but i hardly think... man is capable of passing
objective laws: in vitro... notably in -
           in unum: omni...
unless that's a schizophrenic metaphor...
which is already a metaphor when
tested on a bilingual brain...

how many people did it take...
to pass: the earth rotates around the sun?

the heliocentric model...
genesis in the west from philolaus,
heraclides ponticus,
pythagoras (hindsight...
wouldn't an object moving in
a vacuum of space... create winds of
its own?)
aristarchus of samos,
then onto philolaus of croton -
anaxagoras; whoever was
debunked by ptolemy... then so many years...
until enough time passed...
before people could take the plunge and
be certain: for old time's sake with
copernicus - well the people have been sleeping
for long enough...
enough time has passed and we can pass...
this objective truth... that the heliocentric
model is true and that the pharaohs held
no authority as the sons of the sun
in the static geocentric model...
likes Xerxes ordering the sea to the be whipped
to calm down... and become a lake...
some pharaoh must have had a wild
idea telling a sand dune to stop moving
or seeing some mt. sinai said: shrink!
so instead be said: let's build us a... perfect pyramid...
a mountain that looks... geometric from
both afar and near!

or at least that's what Homer would have
said when visiting Giza: Δ'uh!

so a single man is somehow justified
in passing an objective truth?
unless the mob encores...
but what about the jury - a trial without a jury
is any trial at all...
murky ground if you ask me...
i don't expect man to pass...
judgement for a universal equilibrium...
but what i do expect is that:
he doesn't think he's capable of this: grandiosity!
clearly he's not... the objective reality
of falling... the subjective: i'm right as
allocated the status judge: therefore i'm standing still.

competition in a medical environment...
only in the realm of psychiatry...
and the mine-field of misdiagnosed misfortunes...
but i hardly think... competition is a catalyst
for getting surgery done...
corporation, yes...
among farmers? a rare treat....
a hobby pursuit for a selected fraction of
the crop... the dear-to-my-heart "g.m." tomato...
but all the other tomatoes... need to be harvested...
but this my pet-tomato... which needs to be:
THIS BIG! another matter...

sport and competition...
but work... and competition?
no wonder work and competition,
rather than corporation gives end results as...
who's wearing the most trendy sneakers?
who's social media account requires...
the most editing? who's child is the one with
the smartphone? etc. etc.

the bait of the poo'em is that it's naive:
but i think it is - so there's that to begin with...

i still can't fathom that "capitalism" was solely
promulgated on competition -
i'm still having to address the "model" as...
having to retain a "socialist" aspect akin to corporation
to get away with... what later became:
an all out economic "war" of competition...

naive utopian of me to somehow huddle
at the fireplace of corporation...
work - if so many people hate their work...
what would be the only gratifying
alleviation? and i'm pretty sure some places of work
are less about competition: and more about
corporation - as i write this...
the british national health service...
some people will compete by cutting corners...
competition will lead to doping scandals...
competition is... an Elisium for the few
and... a crab-bucket for the some...
call them the 10% cliff-hangers...

i've noticed it in poetry... slam poetics...
what not... this affair is already riddled with too many
****-up ****-wit window-lickers:
of which i am primo...
but i don't think it necessary to compete...
this was never about competition...
not every work is required to be
tinged with competition...
sometimes... it's just better to corporate...
do... undertakers compete?
do... postmen compete?
last time i heard: each is allocated his volume
of letters... it doesn't matter whether
he finishes his chores before the other postmen...
no postman is stupid enough
to take up someone else's allocated letters...
the first finishes his chores sooner...
the latter works overtime without pay...
it's a corporation of endeavours...
all the same... but there is no need to give these
postmen running orders when
they can walk the ******* mile...

competition within the realm of sport is one
thing... i guess a long time ago...
some people engaged in competition: sports...
to escape the general lagging begin plateau
of corporation... Rome wasn't build in
a single day... others dedicated themselves to
slouch and sloth of expanding the cranium
by reading a book...

the naive is still the bait...
is conscripting in an army...
about competition... or following orders and hierarchy
and therefore: not solely about corporation?
hierarchy you ask...
well... wouldn't that be something borrowed from
plutocracy / nepotism?
competition in an army environment...
what if you're in the royal guard
competing at what... shooting more blanks
into the sky expecting to shoot down the moon
at a wrestling-match fake
of staging of a state funeral?!
the cannons sounded... and that's all these
ever did... they were shooting with
empty wallnut shells! the wallnuts were
eaten by gunpowder gremlins long ago...
before the pomp & circumstance was shot
with: aenemic *****...

this is not a capitalism vs. a communism
debate... communism was riddled with nepotism...
come to think of it...
capitalism is not there yet...
but it's already there...
from what i've heard...
capitalism as this utopia ideal is not a meritocracy:
exceptions are made...
cicero was an exception of the roman empire
under nero...
exceptions and genetic freaks...
is this still a naive poem?

i can understand where competition works -
notably in what jobs it might work...
but most jobs require a stable work ethic
of corporation...
perhaps all self-employed entrepreneurs...
"perhaps" have no corporation in mind...
to a greater degree of orientating themselves...
in that corporation is: outside the bracket...
if everyone was suddenly...
self-employed... there would be no fear of...
the robotic onslought to come...
at least then... the microcosm would open...
and there would no longer be any employees...
just self-employed facets of...
"corporations in name only"...
which they already are...
corporations in name only...
given that... the corporations are no longer
competing with each other...
they have consolidated on a monopoly...
and since they are no longer competing with each
other... they have designated their former...
inter-competition into a hierarchal intra-competition
of "employees"...

can a bus driver, or a tube train operator compete?
by law... you can only drive a bus for 8 hours...
to operate a tube train... you can do X number of hours...
and these include breaks... necessary breaks...
can you find competition in these:
ultra-corporative environments? no!
capitalism might think it is necessary to scare everyone
into: the robots are coming! time to be self-employed
and compete! compete!
but some jobs are still: primed to corporation!

could i ever see undertakers competing?
in times of a spiked demand - during a plague...
what is healthy in sport -
is not necessarily healthy in a workplace -
after all... most people detest earning money -
it's a chore - mind you: do i enjoy writing poo'etry?
am i being paid for writing it?
no... i am "volunteering"... for the love of
the art... for ****'s sake... nothing more!
nothing less!

is this still a naive poo'em: yes... sorry...
i forgot to be caustic and there's no rhyme... my bad...
but this is not a capitalism vs. communism
tirade... from the yoke of the soviet union...
i learned from my mother that...
flues weren't really that prominent...
not until the 1970s...
by then it was a common theme...
biological warfare... while the crown-virus has
yet to claim a life outside of the mandarin
genetics: in the age of propaganda journalism:
you hear a "truth" one day...
three days later you're singing along to your
own "biased" / solipstic narrative...
after a while you have to adopt the "autism"
of solipsism: the world can only bite so much
out of you... you have to turn to standards of delusion
to match to their: from the many, one...

in sport, competition is the "zeitgeist":
it's not a metaphor, it's a misnomer...
but given the " " ditto brackets - i'm tired of looking
for the: "required" word... sometimes...

by the 5th definition of competition...
it's not as direct as corporation, competition
needs to borrow from an -ology...
again, verbatim: 'rivalry between two or more
persons or groups for an object desired in common,
usually resulting in a victor and
a loser but not necessarily involving
the destruction of the latter' -

what is untrue about this is that...
the destruction of the latter is paramount...
at least these days...
am i to believe that capitalism was not,
not ever, tinged with a belief in corporation...
that it was always, somehow, only about
competition?
what was communism born from?
when did the abolishment of serfdom happen
in russia? 1861...
the abolishment of slavery happened
in england in 1865... 4 years after...
but... but!
in russia? the slaves were thought of as...
people from within russia...
in england? the slaves? en route a trade from
one foreign place to another...
wow!
all slavery: either foreign, or domestic...
and to think that communism was a "failure"...
hard to imagine... truly hard to imagine...
given that... communism was born...
4 years prior to slavery in general was abolished...
of foreign to become "nationals"...
what does english he-he-history tell us about
native slaves? four years prior to the slaves
moved from africa to the cotton candy fields...
there were slaves that were not: ***** out of africa...

reperations who's who?!
why didn't capitalism bloom in russia...
why will it never bloom - oligarchs and...
currency of modern western capitalism:
nepotism...
who is jared kushner?
mr. cushions mr. cushtie...
mr. minted in: network baron...
slavery was abolished on the international scale
in england in 1865... four years after...
internal slavery was abolished in russia... 1861...
isn't that the sort of wow you were expecting?!
so when was slavery-slavery abolished
in england?
again... if internal slavery was abolished in russia...
4 years after slavery on an international
stage was abolished...
communism was a failure because: per se...
or... was communism supposed to be...
a short-cut attempt to catch up to capitalism?
was it a failure in catching up to capitalism?
in the 2008 financial clash...
where was Poland? recession free...
again... communism was a failure per se...
but... was it a failure in terms of catching up
to capitalism?
to me... it's still catching up...
when again... we're talking... freeing people...
only 4 years prior to people who would
otherwise still be... rummaging the romances
of Kenya and seeing no albino tourists sipping
brandy on their shores...
perhaps better for the whole load of us...

i ask, again, in my naive way...
that's the difference between competition and corporation?
not much...
a football team needs to compete with other football teams,
but it needs a corporative methodology behind it...
you can sometimes spot a maverick who wants
to be the solipsist in the team and become
nothing more than the top goal-scorcer -
then again: a kevin de bruyne and the number of assists...

if there was to be a level playing field...
everyone was to be self-employed...
what fear from robots?
competition on a ford's:
each man is a cog in the assembly line...
you can't compete... were you supposed to?
i thought that the only reason sport
was fun was to be compete and corporate...
it wasn't solely about competing:
not even in tennis are you ever competing...
unless you're serving a ****-ace...
competing but also corporating:
for the spectacle: with 19shot rallies...

to reiterate: this is a really naive poo'em...
is has to be!
- again... before capitalism became this hell-scape
spiral of: fear of robotics / a.i.:
let's just see if we get enough self-employed
people on board...
oh sure: the self-employed undertaker...
the self-employed bus-driver...
i'm sure there was, what's not called:
a "healthy spirit of competition" in work related
niches of existence...

i'm an alcoholic living among workaholics...
not a pretty sight... believe me...

i'm sure that capitalism... must have began
with: a "healthy spirit of corporation"...
that one henry ford would benefit more than
all the assembly line workers: fine...
the brains is allowed the conscious efforts
to move the eyes, close them,
use the jaw... bite... do magic with the tongue...
the liver has no knowledge of alcohol...
the heart isn't exactly aware of either veins
or arteries... fine... a henry ford cigar can get
away with thinking he's not adding
a chimney to the whole affair...
or a rhine-valley load of chimneys...
the stomach doesn't know what taste is...
sure as **** the small intestine knows
what it feels like to be a woman:
should it find itself unfortunate to have
a hitchhiker tapeworm attached to it... etc. etc.

but i imagine the capitalism had a sense of
corporation before...
it worked too many psychopathic sport analogies
into itself... precursor to the fear
or a.i. robbing people of their jobs?
testing people in a self-employed job market...
again: oh sure... the self-employed undertaker...
the self-employed busdriver!
perhaps a self-employed cabbie...
a self-employed surgeon?
how would that work?

        what's that? the cult leader... would not find
a job status match... in a corporate market of ideas?
then a ******* maverick he is...
esp. with such dates as: the brian jonestown
massacre hovering over his head!

perhaps i am naive is reiterating:
work implies corporation rather than competition,
in that work implies chores...
i've seen this in my father -
he doesn't underand household chores
on the basis on corporation -
he understands them on the basis of competition...
and he's to somehow... take pleasure
in the "free bread and circus"...
when the circus is not what it used to be?
once upon a time: the circus involved
men... who were footballers...
but they also did part-time metallurgy work...
they would clock in at a certain hour...
then be let off work to play a football match...
they weren't paid: professional:
disappropriate wages...
because their "work"... was over-inflated
by the gambling syndicate dicta...

there was a utopia in Poland...
it lasted for... roughly 30 years... from 1945
through to 1975... after that the herrings
didn't want to be pickled...
the baltic sea started to boil and the fish
strarted to froth at the mouth...
it's not a nostalgia segment: i was born in 1986...
this is mythology: curating the temporal
standards of modern journalism...
history: what time ago?
50 years? elvis was abducted by aliens...
n'esst ce pas?!

slam poetry competition with fellow:
poo'em eaters...
can i jut take the armchair with Horace?
i don't feel like competing...
what am i competing for?
volume... a new YA novel?
i will not ***** language...
even if it is a language i acquired:
and it's not a tattoo native first come first served
expression...
this is not a capitalism vs. communism
affair...

all the: towel in champions of capitalism
have made it clear:
start a traditional family, start a farm...
milk some goats...
pluck some eggs... living the dream:
brown fingers and all...
                       way way out from competition
in the workplace...
so... no need to corporate...
solo does it...
                                and if i'll be needing some
milk... i'll likewise claim: an autistic
pension and enough barren land to feed
goats organic glue and toilet paper that
magically morph into... a propaganda poster...

olim truncus eram ficulnus, inutile lignum:
once i was a stump of fig,
a wood without use... this is my best Horace:
thank you, goodnight...

what is to be competed for?
rather: what it to be retained, kept, status quo
enclosed... this pride for corporation?
competition in the workplace can only go as far...
not all professions can allow competition...
some will forever retain their base:
corporation...
to compete outside the realm of sport...
sport... those with enough awareness
of the body would pursue it...
those with a bit more brain in tow...
wouldn't... the ghost limb terms:
there's nothing of note
when it comes to competing with i.q. in
mind... or corporating...
there's this ancient feat of "solipsism" and
self-bettering... rather than running
the "expected" mile...
was capitalism always this:
chicken-shack-shackled into... wishing to squeeze
out drinking water... from pig ****?

again... this is not as easy give-away
that it's a capitalism versus communism base scrutiny...
all the eastern european laid-deeds have made it into
their chandelier filled land-allotement sights of
better ****** that gynocentrism...
i don't mind...
      yes... because among the bulgarian strip-party
i'm the ottoman janissary turned
well spoken sheikh... when morocco is given...
a fictional name... and i'm the Ali
that rubs Muhammad's lamp and
averts the... most ****** schism...
oh sure... Islam would be a pure religion...
and they would be allowed to complain about
porky-pies...
but... you see... how long did it take
for a schism to emerge between the orthodox grees
and tha catholic italians?
how long did the islamic schism take
to grovel and dig trenches?
not that much...
after all... Shia... Persians... Ali Woke-oh-Haram...
and the ****'ite... the ***** muslims...
the Saudi bin-Ladens...
well... that schism... didn't take that long...
some whisper about a schism in the monotheism
of the hebrews...
ha ha! i write ha ha... but even i have to laugh
out loud... a monotheism an inbreeding
of something more than genes...
fix the idea... and continue!

by now even i know that christianity has reached
a status of polytheism...
it's the same jesus... sure sure...
via no other than the orthodox,
the catholic, the protestant (calvinist, lutheran)
standards... or the baptists... or the jay-***-***-V-and-G
standards...
next thing you know: the vegans are
the gnostic monks!
because it has to be a joke at this point...
if christianity is a monotheism...
i'm mother theresa and that albanian
that stole george w. bush' mickey mouse's watch
on a state visit...
so to complete the holy trinity...
i'll be... alastair campbell... always for the giggles...

an alcoholic among workaholics...
who always had the satan's postbox concerning
the niqab... the same ones who were to be always
quoted: the beast from the east...
jesus is coming! look busy!

i mean... no need to look busy...
when the high a tide is making a comeback...
would you believe it?
if you saw the words... united kingdom...
england, scotland, wales... ireland...
that this was not moldova?
this is a language these are letters so arranged...
by an island-dwelling folk?
if you're the first, driver...
shotgun! who are we smuggling in the passenger
seats behind us?

imagine my surprise at the rereading,
with the typo: a missing (s) in letter()
and a missing (d) in arrange(d)...
i call them... the lost key of solomon...
or my own personal, hybrid,
hard-on...
oh god kept me with a phallus...
while giving all the angels a proper chopper
of the ol' wood... **** to stump...
i'm the one that wasn't circumcised!

and all i now have to sing about... is...
a forest of pines! a forest of pines!
pines pines pines! yippy caye!
Tommy Johnson Dec 2013
Y?
Take your pills, open wide
Swallow it with your pride
It’s a cure, overdose
Keep your head down and your mouth closed

We’re so
We know
We’re shallow
I know

You can call it narcissism
You can blame it on materialism
Our delusions, indecision
Children of the Great Recession
Update status
Pop a Xanax
There was texting
Now we’re setxing

We have the gall to have a sense
Of undeserved entitlement
We’re over educated and unemployed
Apathetic and annoyed

We’re so
We know
We’re shallow
I know

You can call it narcissism
You can blame it on materialism
Our delusions, indecision
Children of the Great Recession
Pictures reblogged
Arteries clogged
Kandi kids
Digital natives

Anxiety, can’t concentrate
As obesity permeates
What will happen? Time will tell
And remind us of Y2K and when the towers fell

We’re so
We know
We’re shallow
I know

You can call it narcissism
You can blame it on materialism
Our delusions, indecision
Children of the Great Recession
Lets the bass drop
Generation lost
It’s hard to live
When you’re hypersensitive
Allen Wilbert Sep 2013
Reunited

Walking down a path, where no man should ever go,
its dark, cold, damp and I'm moving very slow.
Feeling the walls that are covered in slime,
too many things happening at the same time.
So much hidden deep down in my soul,
not sure if I can escape this black hole.
Things I've done can never be told,
Sometimes life gets put on hold.
If only these things, I could mention,
it would relieve so much tension.
So many things, I just can't say,
if I did I'd be put so far away.
I've reached the point of no return,
next one who gets in my way, I'm gonna burn.
Getting more angry by the minute,
bought some guns in case I have to shoot.
This giant duffle bag is getting quite heavy,
I wish I still had my 57 Chevy.
Back then life was great,
Wife, kids, house, fence with a gate.
Then one stormy night, a car went off the road,
since that night my brain started to overload.
Fell into a deep depression,
lost my job, thanks to the recession.
Lost my house, lost my car,
all my dreams are now to far.
Walked into the place, I used to work,
hated my boss, he was such a ****.
Grabbed my guns and started to shoot,
all the blood was staring to pollute.
Shot as many as I possibly could,
don't know why, just thought I should.
Losing everything drove me insane,
I'm not making excuses for my brain.
Not long after there were hundreds of police,
there was no offering of a sign of peace.
They barged in and I resisted arrest,
I was shot several times in the chest.
I wanted to die, but always in style,
all I could see was my families smile.
Now we're back all reunited,
I have never been more delighted.
No one I shot that day ended up dying,
just some blood and a lot of crying.
Caroline Grace Jan 2014
We are in the middle of a recession. It'***** us all in some way or another.
It's happened in the past - history repeating itself.
The elderly have seen it all before. They remember the queues for food,
where everyone got their fair share, when it was gone, they had to make do.

My friend has been laid off from work, and the cottage she rents is to be sold
by the landlord. He's feeling the pinch too, so has no choice.
It's a small place with two rooms, but, she tells me, at least she has a roof over her head –
for now.

As we sit together under the bare trees, she pours it all out. Her future looks gloomy,
like the sky – cumulus building. That's when the rain starts.
My friend's mascara begins to run in inky streaks. She wipes her cheeks with a kleenex
as best she can, before we hurry to shelter in a nearby cafe.

We are the only people in there. As we wait, the owner tells us he's closing down
at the end of the week, that customer numbers have dwindled and those who do come,
sit with an expresso for hours on end, watching the T.V. -
that way, they're saving on fuel.

We take our coffees over to the window. The rain has eased off a little,
so we sit watching the puddles reflect an oppressive sky.

My friend explains how she may have to leave the area to look for work,
like so many have already done.
I tell her she can stay with me until she finds another place, that this is where she belongs,
where we can all help one another however difficult things might get.

Our voices chime around the empty cafe echoing the sentiments of so many people.

Stepping into the street, we are met by the dazzle of wet cobbles.
Grass verges sparkle with fresh rain, and a tangerine tree, dripping with fruit
droops over a solid iron gate, its bobbing lanterns shining with the colour of sun.

copyright © Caroline Grace 2014
[I saw his round mouth's crimson deepen as it fell],
Like a Sun, in his last deep hour;
Watched the magnificent recession of farewell,
Clouding, half gleam, half glower,
And a last splendour burn the heavens of his cheek.
And in his eyes
The cold stars lighting, very old and bleak,
In different skies.
(C) Wilfred Owen
Dreams of Sepia Aug 2015
There's a Russian fairytale of snowdrops in January
a girl meeting the twelve seasons in human form
who lead her in the middle of winter to where snowdrops grow

I never thought once that I'd live in a land where snowdrops grow in February rather than in April
& where the snowy winter has become a memory

& where in my childhood we weren't able to buy sauerkraut & pickled gherkins done the way we liked
yet which now has become more international

& where people smile & say ' sorry' to you politely
if you tread on their feet
as if their feet were the problem

& where time is measured by the Big Ben & Greenwich
instead of by the Kremlin
& it always rains in summer but there are rarely any thunderstorms

& people holiday in places like Majorca & Benidorm
if they're working class
& France, if they're middle class

& where I went to a public ( private) girls' school
& wore a red uniform
& sang the hymn ' Jerusalem'

believing in this green & pleasant land
with all my heart
until I left & came back again,

this time, an adult, a European
living through the British recession
& shocked at the newly hostile attitude to migrants

yet even now when I see those snowdrops
in February
my heart soars & I'm back living a fairytale

a child in wonder
just as before
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
           Your past, your romantic past, is a shadow. Like all towns, Port Angeles was a combination of rain and clouds, sun and mist, with a chamber of commerce, barrooms and boards of directors, the known and unknown. No one of course is completely unknown. I was known for my tragic love life. She had found another man, a backwoods man, living on the land but not above a night on the town, who according to her would wipe snot on his pants, a statement of poverty or thrift or anger against the niceties of society. All of us heated our hovels with wood but only the rich burned hardwoods, me and probably this guy were softwood gatherers.

            There were few aspects to my life. First, I can remember a nook in the kitchen of the house I shared with a beautiful faceless woman who wore a ring in her nose where I wrote and watched flocks of unidentified birds comb a tree for seeds. This particular day the sky was blue with clean pillowy cumulus clouds floating toward Puget Sound. I believe all the poems written in that nook have been forgotten by their author.

            Nights, for entertainment, I would wander the aisles of the supermarket, admiring everything and buying nothing. I had no money. The fluorescent lighting, clean straight neat shelving and floors, warmth and the fact I could identify nobody attracted me. I lived on cream cheese and honey sandwiches eating them leaning against the kitchen sink. Thinking go back to New York City which is what I ultimately did. Drove cross country nonstop three days and three nights seeing and feeling nothing.

           I populated P.A. during the Reagan recession inherited from Carter. I'm unclear how presidents affect your life but good or bad, democrat or whig, alive or dead you've got to get a job, which I did. I supervised the living arrangements of developmentally disabled adults in what I thought were humorous contexts that gave no offense. They were beautiful and incorrigible having regular *** without protection. Normally harmless they'd sometimes have altercations with their neighbors. I balanced the checkbooks, paid the bills. Supposedly teaching living skills, I had few of my own as evidenced by my sleeping on the floor, I had no bed. One mature woman colleague judged me a short-timer living a useless fantasy about big cities. Still lost in my own history, still didn't know the calculus.

            I had a dog, Shade, black lab, leftover from my near-marriage until she realized I had no economic prospects, no interest in further *** or her logger boyfriend, and a complete inability to translate or imagine nesting and gestation. My homework comes to me in daily disconnected increments. Shade lived in my gray van, a Dodge slant six, which I could never afford to fix. Once the driveshaft disconnected from the rear axle and I tied it on with rope. Drove 60 miles on a knot. Shade was hyper and sad, both. He smelled bad but was a good dog with a lonely heart. When my wife who wasn't a wife finally found a boyfriend who wouldn't wipe snot on his pant leg they took Shade to British Columbia where I believe he runs free on a vast estate by the sea. I once beat Shade like a slave because he attacked a small dog out of frustration and loneliness and until I had kids and started saying and doing things just as bad to humans it was the lowest meanest moment of my life. The farmer who saw it will never forget or forgive it.

            Having confessed all this there's just one last fact to tell. The mountains were cold, the waters clear, deep snow and shadows.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
I’ve been hearin a lot of bad mouthin about socialism ever since the president tried to provide affordable healthcare to the working poor… I also hear some carping when someone suggested that the minimum wage paid to workers should allow them to buy the necessities of life… I don't hear too much bad things about medicare and social security…. I guess thats not really socialism…. I don't hear too much about the big bailouts of the bankers with government money after they put us in a recession… privatized gain and socialized risk must also be a strain of a special kind of entitlement...

We’ll I think this whole socialism business needs some clarity about what its all about…. so I made a list of socialist heroes so my fellow American’s can get a better feel for what going on with this red menace...

Heres a list of socialist heroes….

Jesus Christ of Nazareth...I just can't get past the Beatitudes thing. Since all the po folks of the earth get to inherit all the good stuff when they pass on.... I figure heaven gotta be some kinda socialist paradise....Some don’t buy the idea that Jesus is building a Mar-A-Largo estate for Donald Trump... while having the rest of us live in our cramped apartments…. Jesus did say he’s building many rooms but the po folks get first dibs on everything… For all the doubting Thomas’s and Thomasina’s get Sean Hannity’s fastidious fact checkers to read the good news in the Gospel of Matthew.

Jack London... To think he’s been spreading the Red Menace in the mind of America’s innocent children for near a century now…. When Michelle Bachmann finds out about this she'll introduce a bill to change the title of The Call of the Wild to the Call of the Commies... I don't think it will affect Sarahcuda because she don’t read at a sixth grade level yet. Alaska is safe for now....And all comrade citizens are doing just fine thank you.... spending their annual royalty checks they get from the state for all the North ***** oil drilling...  Hell during Sarah's half term governorship... she did what every self respecting socialist despot would do... she paid out a special $1,200.00 Permanent Fund royalty dividend to all comrade "North to the Future" citizens.....

Carl Sandburg... The People Yes? Sang the songs of the People Yes! Celebrated a broad shouldered, hog butchering America who wrote a biography with love and affection for our country’s greatest Republican President....  Whats that about?...And his treatment of Billy Sunday...a back in the day,.. aw shucks,... from the backwoods holler... Kenneth Copeland like... Believer's Voice of Victory preacher of his day... who hurled fire and brimstone at cowering congregants so when he passed the plate they filled it up with hoards of heavenly manna to fatten his bank account overstuffed with moth eaten earthly treasure… I'm sure even Pat Robertson believes Sandburg’s soul lies beyond the sweet redemption of Jesus...

George Orwell… Unlike **** Cheney... who said he had better things to do when his country called on him to serve during the Vietnam War... Orwell’s fervor for democracy was so great he left his native land to lay his life on the line to fight against the fascist menace in Spain... When he got into a battle he came across an enemy combatant taking a ****. He later said, “I let him go. How do you shoot a guy with his pants down?”... A deep respect for the humanity of others is clear evidence of a socialist's fatal flaw and why the righteous laissez faire American’s hate it so....Unfortunately Orwell and his comrades lost this one to Franco and his sugar daddies Il Duce and Mein Fuhrer… but we’ll keep up the good fight…..

Dorothy Day… This saint of the proletariat kept the soup kettle brewin to feed the working poor during the Great Depression... She spent her own money to build shelters to house catholic workers and didn't make a **** dime off the vulnerability of their screaming want... A squandered opportunity maybe…. definitely a coocoo loon according to the weltentstehung of Ayn Rand… so popular around these parts these days...but Dorothy laid up some serious dosh in heaven for her labors here on earth…. for where your treasure is…. there you will find your heart also… Anyone who knew her said Dorothy's heart was always in the right place….

Albert Einstein…. this guy was no dope….he knew enough to make make moral distinctions of exploitation and greed… and the self condemnation of conspicuous consumption...the destructive capacity of unfettered power….and worked hard to figure out equations to end the wastefulness of war... he did teach at Princeton though… more proof of the red infestation of the universities…. greed is good…. knowledge is bad….

Eugene V. Debs…. went to prison for his beliefs… got a million votes from jail… thats how devious these reds are.... even from prison they run for president and fool the working people into participating in the democratic process…. he believed everyone should vote… and would probably be imprisoned today for violating all the laws being passed that take voting rights away… gotta watch the reds…. next thing you know they'll close the electoral college and force politicians to pay a 100% poll tax on all the money they take from their corporate sponsors….

WEB DuBois… the souls of an oppressed people is the soul of a nation...ain’t it written that a nation is judged on how it treats its most vulnerable?.... Mr. DuBois fought to bring justice to all those lacking the means and rights in a nation teeming with diverse groups with needs and wants… it ain’t just about afro american jazz… its about the blues sung by all people on the outside looking in… he believed it unjust that only a small portion of American’s held the keys to the doors of prosperity… everyone should have a key to unlock the doors of opportunity… everyone…. that includes workers, immigrants, women, gay folks, religious minorities, disabled and the poor and lots other people I haven’t thought of yet…. but what about the real Americans...whose gonna stand up for them??????????

Woody Guthrie…. this country belongs to us… next time a frackin jacker comes to tear up your land and dump poison in your well… next time a strung out strip miner wants to plow away the top of your mountain and dump arsenic in your river…. next time a GMO attorney says the crops you planted don’t belong to you because they are contractually patented to him…. next time a big oil company says that they got a right to pollute the oceans and **** the fish so they can pump out a passel of fossil fuel… next time a bankster comes knocking at the door to take your house away… next time a tea slappin Teabagger starts screaming that the Koch Brothers should be allowed to own the national parks so they can cut the trees down for firewood…. tell em...you heard it on good authority…. that this land is your land…. not theirs….. if thats socialism…. I’m liken it….

American Socialists

Woody Guthrie: This Land is Your Land

Oakland
10/21/13
jbm
Joseph S C Pope Sep 2013
Childhood was the greatest time for Timothy, and he remembers it that way. No disposition on the fact that his parents divorced when he was eight. Just old enough to develop a mental connection with the idea of a union. So when he was ten, his father remarried, moved to a farm in the southeast, and tried living off the land. The topic of an ecological environment had hit the internet heavier than global warming hit the ice caps. And everyone was pursuing happiness with steep drops in city living, and an up swing in rural living.
Timothy's mom refused to believe it though. She wrote about such cultural climates, the invasion of neo-british pop boy bands, the decline of football, and the hippie lifestyle clawing its way back up the columns of big city papers. So when the recession hit, and it suddenly became cool to dress like a homeless person, she saw the disgust, moved overseas and focused on the world-political spectrum.
“Societal fads be ******! I'm going to do something that actually matters.” And she did.
Timothy Glasser, age 82 looks back on that moment with pride.
“There was a sense that she had the ***** to change the world. With Russia building up Imperial popularity, it was cool to be big. America was on the decline by the word of all the heavy-hitter magazines.
“That was when I started to take my life serious. She had shown me all the would-be Bob Dylans, Lennons, Hunter S. Thompsons. She would say, 'These kids have all the brass words of a ****** who can bite down ******* the world, but they don't have the actual brass. Men who are not recognized for what they've done have the brass. Hell, women have ten more pounds of that kind of brass!'
'I would laugh, but she was serious. I think she thought I was too masculine to understand what she was saying.”
When Timothy's father moved him and his little sister, Sunni Glasser out to the backwater community of Oggta-Cornelius, there was a certain relief in his demeanor. In a matter of months the country way of living had worn down his impatience to a sluggish pace.
“Greg was my father's name. He's been raised in a similar place in the Midwest, but the slowness of that life got to him in his teens so he left for the city. I guess when he met my step-mom he found the good ol' girl that he'd been trying to cling to since he left home. And it was Sunni's choice to come with us. She always had the same kind of 'brass' Mom had, but there was a closeness she shared with Dad that adventure couldn't break. It's a **** shame too. But once the slow pace of the backwater hit Sunni, she rebelled. It was a catastrophe to watch her and Dad argue over the most petty things you've ever seen. The way our step-mom, Claire would fold clothes or how early she had to wake up in the morning for school. Five o'clock, five days a week, and sometimes Dad would wake her on Saturday just to punish her for talking back. There was always blood in the water.”
Timothy's face settles, his lower lip curls, and his eyelids clinch for a moment before he changes his position in his chair.
“Is everything okay, Timothy?” I ask.
There is a pause, almost as if he is reliving what he was just describing.
“**** has always been real, you've been fantasizing.” I hear him say. He refuses to look at me, let alone answer my question.
“Mr. Glasser?” I ask again.
He exhales suddenly, eyes watery, and lets out a sigh.
“Let's talk about Sunni. I never really talk about her much, and I think now is a good time. Don't you?”
I nod in agreement and try to give him a smile.
He still refuses to look me in the eye.
“When Sunni was in first grade, she was beginning to prove to be a bit of a handful. There was a small patch of corn out back. Maybe half an acre Dad keep for us to put up for the winter. Sunni was about seven years old around this time and she had the idea to make crop circles. Now I was out with my friends, played football in those days so I didn't have the time to be home all the time. Dad and Claire kept themselves busy with the work about the place, so Sunni got bored real fast. One day during the summer, Dad went to the store to get some groceries. A friend of his came up to him and said, 'I was up in the plane yesterday and I saw something strange in your cornfield. Like some kind of crop circle. Weird ain't it?'
“This rattled my Dad's brain for a few minutes until he got home and saw the two-by-four with rope tied to either end of the thing. Sunni was staring at the clouds and Dad walked over to her, and yanked her up off the grass. 'What are you doing flattening my corn for? Don't you know that's goin' to save us money in the long run?” She just stared at him. Not dumbfounded, just intrigued.
“That was kind of the starting point of their bickering. She had blonde hair running to the base of her skull brushed down neatly. A subtle blush in her cheek from the sun. And she always wore a dress, especially if it had sunflowers on it. She brought life to that house.
“On her tenth birthday, Mom sent her a touch screen phone, an iPhone, I think it was called with a two-year contract. It was so long ago minor facts like that seem to hang on for no reason.”
Timothy shuffles in his chair. Then clears his throat.
“Would you like to take a break, Timothy?” I ask him.
“I ignored most of the arguments Sunni and dad had after I graduated high school. As soon as fall semester started at Cornelius College I fled the backwater and started by life near the OceanFront. Oggta-Cornelius was divided into two sections: the Backwater and OceanFront. And like a sports rivalry there was always trash talk about the tax bracket you were in or how much you worked. After the first few weeks for sneaking into bars and partying on campus, the fun died down because of the arrests. I almost got caught twice, but my sixth sense for trouble tingled at just the right time. When the middle of the semester hit I was over-booked with mid-terms and reading assignments. I actually lived in my dorm then. Never really left the place. And soon fall semester was over. Nothing worth mentioning now. Sunni and I texted often, but she had become a brat and I wanted alone time to learn what I'd read. For everything literary to go beyond just test and quizzes.
“But right towards the end of the semester, one morning I was walking to an early exam and on the ground was a kid, a little older than me lying there looking up at the sky. I had the urge to walk up and ask him what he was doing, but it felt too rude so I left him. I kept walking and heard a voice call back to me, 'Hey, guy.' I turned around, 'Yeah you, come here.'
“I walked up to him, he motioned for me to kneel beside him.
'What day is it?
I told him it was a Monday.
'Really? Wow, must've fell out watching the stars with this gir--'
He reached to his other side, feeling for a body, but no one was there. He never broke eye contact with me.
'Well, with his lovely imaginary girlfriend I have. Her name's Elsie. She's a charm.'
I helped him up and he left without much of a goodbye. A disrespectful mysteriousness. And I didn't see him again till the weather warmed up in the spring semester. Which was a repeat of the fall.”
Timothy asks me for some water. I started to feel like I'm one of his grandkids. How far in the trunk of memories is he going for this information?
“Thank you. Now the next time I saw Alan was in a smoking gazebo along a walking path on campus.
'Hey, guy!” he shouted, getting my attention. I walked back to the gazebo, coughing as the smoke roughhoused it's way into my lungs. He had those circular shades on, like the one John Lennon wore back in the day. A tie around his head, a light blue button up shirt that hung loose off his think frame. His hair was long and parted, and he sported a straggly red and black beard.
'Top of the morning, ta ya.' he said, putting out a cigarette on the tray. I opened my mouth, but all that came out was coughing.
'Course, the Irish don't really say that. It's actually quite racist, but I'm half Irish so no skin of my knuckles. I'm a mutt.'
“He smiled with such pomp. The arrogance was so natural, it fit him like his face. Other people around him were having conversations about Samuel Beckett, John Irving, Stephen King, and Jimmy Hendrix tripping acid together in the great T.A.R.D.I.S. in the sky. I remember laughing at that. They were all smiling at the ludicrous actuality of it happening. And it was late evening.
'Stay! Be silly and merry with us!” he shouted. I held my breath and sat down. I never made it to the rest of my classes that afternoon or for the next week. Alan and I chilled in my dorm, burned incense and plotted a protest. The whole time I was telling him he had to be literal with the cause. It couldn't be just because the college bookstore sold shot glasses, but confiscated any paraphernalia they found in the dorms.
'*******,I say. It's hypocritical and a scam. Like police pulling you over for going two-miles over the limit because they need to feed their kids. It's a Darwin rip-off.'
“Later that week he took my phone while I was sleeping, got my number, and Sunni's too. He never asked if he could come over after that night. He just did.
'I thought it was cool since we had a good time.'
"I didn't know what to say so I let it continue. His reason for stealing Sunni's number still baffles me. He said he thought she was a girl I was into. She was my sister, he was right in his own way. It was a while before he ever texted her.
“The next time I saw him he told me, 'I feel like a clockwork man running on thousands of gallons of caffeine.' I laughed at him and told him to stop reading Burgess.”
I stop Timothy for a moment. “Anthony Burgess? The author of A Clockwork Orange?” He nods and goes back to the story.
“You know, with the Second Cold War flaring up again I don't think it's wise to be worrying about an old man like me. This has been a century of second fillings. There are still Hipsters running about. This makes me feel no better. I want to go home.”
“Alright Mr. Glasser, but can we reschedule? I need to finish this article.” As he rises out of the chair, he agrees and goes for his coat.
“One more question, Mr. Glasser. Can you give me another quote from Alan? A bit of closing for this bit?
He turns around and looks me in the eye for the first time since the beginning of the interview. He squints his eyes at me and says, “When we would hang out at the gazebo where we actually met for the first time, and after that week I got back in the habit of going to class and doing my work. As I would leave I'd say, 'Alright man, I'm off to class, to learn and stuff.' He'd moan about it, and say, 'Look at him now, growing old and dying young.' Behind that same pompous grin."
Pardon that it is fiction, but poetry has inspired this short-short story. Maybe the beginning of work on my novel, but it is along the same lines as "This is why the Hipster dies".
Joe Cole Dec 2013
Syria oh Syria why do you bleed?
Brother fights brother without thought or need
Ruled by a tyrant for so many years
And now the spilt blood is washed away by tears

Democracy by debate you tried and you failed
Now the wives and mothers they cry and they wail
Democracy now sought at the point of a gun
Your country in turmoil, lives being undone

I sympathise and weep at your terrible plight
Your people are dying, no end in sight
Can man ever undo the chaos he's wrought?
Going to war without reason or thought

Syria oh Syria your bloods being drained
By those who would seek political gain
When the killing is done will you be better off?
Is what you might gain worth all the loss?

Your economy gone so how will you live?
The worlds in recession, no money to give
Families destroyed and homes are no more
All destroyed by a political war
Brandon Barnett Apr 2012
somehow
I managed to cram my ***
into these fashion pants
so I can make it to the days sales meeting
to check my fleeting self esteem

somehow
this all got out of hand
I misunderstand what I misunderstood
this sick trip down
becoming Johnny Hollywood

champagne glasses and next years denim
learning to look just right like them
just to get tight with em
learn right now
that you are small and you can never be like them
so learn to eat everything they're feeding
and pick your teeth clean
with the bones of those you're cheating

this is Hollywood
red carpets and models' stares
This is Hollywood
designer drugs on designer rugs up spiral stairs
this is Hollywood
rich ***** kids with tempers flared
this is the top of the world in your dreams
and no one else really cares

somehow
I managed to fight this depression
looking for a job in a recession
my hair lines recession
partying like it's an obsession
somehow
this rip off called growing up
has me over a toilet throwing up
gagging on everything I misunderstood
becoming Johnny Hollywood

model chicks posing and poser friends
learning to look at them both with the same fake grin
learning right now
that you will live to lie and do it again
you'll bite your tounge to the powers
and when your dream fails
you'll buy new friends

this is Hollywood
******* business cards and winks
this is Hollywood
everyone talks but nobody thinks
this is Hollywood
hit top but beware if you sink
when you're number one everyone loves you and stares
but when you're Johnny Hollywood
nobody else really ******* cares
Donald Guy Nov 2012
A thought sometimes forms

I live too much
yet I do too little.
    Woken at strange hours,
never asleep.
       Rapt in raps
       or wrapped in riddles
Chained to links
or hammered to handle
    stubbed to bone
Mens et
               Manus

There is time yet, I swear
        To flourish
To dream

        To make
To be
        To do
        To create

Will I?
We'll see
There's time yet to tell

Be yourself, they say
    The best you you can be
But once more— Will I have time
        To edit

I live less
        I do less
    Portfolio: empty
    or at least, locked away.
        Excitement too.
            Blank slate
Blank palette
Is there any paint?

Can I truly make
        excitement saturate?
Will I be able to place
        value as I see fit?
    Can the world be hewn slimmer, slicker
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

Tis daft I think, to amuse such a notion
But not necessarily so daft to be wrong
Emerson called it misunderstood,
Shaw found it unreasonable
But ay, theres the rub
That bed once made, must be lain in and
all dreams which might be had are alone not enough

Bloom effects don't work outside the movies.

Ideas are trash, these are recession times
Deflations made them a farthing a dozen
                                  
                        ­       Started 10.03.11
                               Unfinished
                               D.B. Guy
_Poems in Autumn_. #6 of 7 .
Nods to John Wieners' The Hotel Wently Poems (especially "A poem for painters") & William Corbett's MIT course 21W.756 Writing and Reading Poems
Tommy Johnson Apr 2014
You live with eyes closed
Walk with an arrogant stride
You keep your hands clean
And your nose held high
There's a whole world screaming
But you just walk on by
And ignore the world's trouble
The burdens it bares
Because you dare not interfere
You ignore it because you're scared
It isn't your problem so you don't care

There's racism
And sexism all over the globe
Poverty, human trafficking
And still your shoulder is cold
Drug cartels, corrupt politicians
Murderous rapists without any souls
And you're just as guilty if I may be so bold
You just sit there and stare
Because you dare not interfere
You ignore it because you're scared
It isn't your problem so you don't care

You're busy chasing the American dream
A glorious promise riches and liberty
But the hand that feeds and you wanna shake is giving the bird to you
While it taxes our rights and confiscates our freedom of speech
And you take it like a ******* gimp
As it keeps our inspiration and aspirations out of reach
You should stand up and fight for what's yours
And I urge you to grow a pair
Because you dare not interfere
You ignore it because you're scared
It isn't your problem so you don't care

You have faith in the higher-ups
In our country, in God we trust
It's all a bust
You must protect your privileges
And help in our progression
Equality for and freedom
But you chose instead to be ignorant
And see a society and not a civilization

       -Tommy Johnson
Get a higher education
Go to school
Get a degree in something
No, don't be a fool
Milk the cash cow
Be a work mule
To find a job even with your doctorate
To find employment, is something rare

       -Tommy Johnson

But you dare not interfere
You ignore it because you're scared
It isn't your problem so you don't care

Terrorists instill a sense of fear
So we police the world
Oppress and occupy
Bullets, bloodshed and grenades are hurled
And back home we outsource
As history unfurls
A time of economic recession
And unjust warfare

And of course you dare not interfere
You ignore it because you're scared
It isn't your problem so you don't care

They tricked, murdered and ***** the natives
For all this land
You can say "you wouldn't be here if they didn't"
Well, I feel guilty for living here because they betrayed their fellow man
Then they had those of darker skin as slaves
The decision to free them caused both sides to **** each other
And in the end the chose to segregate
Tell me the equality in that there

Because you dare not interfere
You ignore it because you're scared
It isn't your problem so you don't care

People call each other *******,
*******, spics, chinks they say
A world that loves you if you got social status
But chastise you if your gay
But it's gotten so much better
Looking back on yesterday
But you haven't helped, you just go along
You're views are still parochial, and I'm giving you a disgruntled glare

Because you dare not interfere
You ignore it because you're scared
It isn't your problem so you don't care


You see no beauty in this world
It's like your not even a part of it
You have no idea whats going on around you
You only look out for yourself
You contribute nothing
No ideas
No creations
No light

You just leave the rest of us in darkness
To be destroyed by corruption, hatred, misunderstanding and doubt
While you become just another pawn
Another cog
Another customer
To be accounted for
You are just nameless number
People like you are the reason change takes so long
Open your eyes!
ioan pearce Mar 2010
when life aint fair and all aboveare heavy clouds that push and shovemoney problems, ****** moodsmother worries, father broods materialism that we causewhile others die on distant shoresblessings, burdens, never countedself indulgence foremost mounted
J Arturo Dec 2017
A little bird tried to fly through the screen door and I thought, 'if only there were more air up here'.

The view from the second story deck encompassed miles of low scrub hills, piñon, and was daily growing less hazy as the fires subsided. The little bird was dead. Was not even twitching or rolling or whatever idiot birds do to fight or hold onto life. Or maybe it was unconscious. If it was a head impact, it could just be out cold. I could take it in for a bit, see if it revives. But the brains of birds are very small... maybe not large enough to switch out of consciousness without damaging the whole system. It could wake up brain damaged: amnesic, whistling gibberish, unable to collaborate or co-worm-locate or sit on eggs or whatever other higher functions birds perform. Angry, all the time. Likely a burden and a danger to the community. Condemned to either death or a life of lonely suffering. I'd rather not be culpable for that.

Prospective buyers are arriving at four, the realtor as well, for a tour, so I grabbed a broom and swept the quiet body into the shaggy juniper that surrounded the house. Swept up with maple leaves that had settled on the porch since this time yesterday, together a mass of decomposing matter, under the railing and into the dark.

I'd spent a lot of time alone in the house on Grand. Watched nature slowly creep through the iron fence and into the faux-pond, up under the patio bricks, purple flowered and needley plants growing taller and more hostile daily. Increasing numbers of little brown birds mistaking the reflected sunset in the plate glass doors for real sky.

"If only there were more air up here." A little joke I repeat out loud while sweeping broken bodies into shrubs. The thickest places, where they wouldn’t be seen when (if) someone ever dropped by to view the house.


I don't live here, the house is soon to be foreclosed. But a friend of mine knew I needed a place to stay and offered this, his third home, empty of everything except a coffee maker, some landscaping tools, a few boxes that had yet to be moved. I have a twin sized mattress in what must have been a child's room: a strip of Denver Broncos wallpaper runs the circumference, every other surface painted complimentary blue.


The couple arrived at five. She wears a salmon coloured shawl over a white blouse. They’re performing the theatric act of young couples in love (with the idea of a larger house): she ecstatic over the seven jets in the master Jacuzzi tub, he hesitant about the people-paths in the wall-to-wall-carpet, the everpresent pastels we know were once in vogue but will take weeks and at least two layers of base to fully eradicate. It’s the realtor’s job to showcase the place but I often stand outside the plate glass windows of the living room, keeping an eye. Playing the role of groundskeeper because hitchhiker is so much less glorious.

So far it’s been the same. Always she with a genuine smile that will be gone forty minutes after she’s left the driveway. He, always in t-shirt and “trying to be casual” jacket calculating the square footage of each room, the viability of the fireplace. Opening cabinets, but not concerned with storage space. He wants to see if the brass hinges really have brass pins. Is it wood, linoleum? Look closely at his eyes and watch them dance across a virtual blackboard, adding up the gallons of primer and paint needed to cover up the colour mistakes of a before-his-decade.

  2

You can almost watch his eyes dart across the blackboard. A house is a house but the home must be shredded, burned, before making it yours.


But they all do this. A dozen or so now, this summer. And I spend a lot of time alone. Injecting my thoughts into people who think they know what they need next, before getting in a small car and checking out a properly closer to town. Making little jokes to myself as I sweep the porch. The isolation even maybe altering small parts of my self. The social parts, perhaps. I feel good, most days, but find myself repeating the same phrases: “****. Shower. Shave”, “If only there were more air up here.”, “I could learn to love a leopard”, even recently a little Old Testament, which like a ******* I’ve been taking to bed with increasing frequency and a growing selfish guilt, repeating,

“As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him.”


They won’t be back, but for the first time now there’s a deer in the yard. Meaning there must be a hole in the fence. A doe, and fawn too, and I can sit and stare with my broom in hand because my job is to sweep the deck. Dead birds and maybe rats, leaves of course, but with all the water the bank is wasting on this waste of a lawn, come deer: come all ye deer, come and eat. Maybe you will even eat the frighteningly thistly things. Regardless, in exchange for this room I was given a broom and deer are far too large to sweep.



When my student visa expired in Canada I left the country with no identification, five Canadian dollars, a five litre backpack mostly occupied by a camera, and in my mind some distillation of the romanticism from On The Road that I’d managed to power-read in a Heathrow bookstore four years before (lacking the pounds to actually purchase the book). I crossed the border via ferry, and entered the country without identification. I thought this was impossible but it turns out that when you have no time but your whole future ahead of you, and nowhere to get to anyway, insisting “I am a U.S. citizen and you need to let me into this country” does in fact work, if you repeat it enough, and are willing to wait. In my case border patrol even gave me a twenty note and a pat on the back before sending me on my way.


How I ended up sitting on the floor watching birds die, backlit by a desert sunset, in the mountains of New Mexico, is a long story, and to be honest the details have largely escaped me. I do remember I was reading Hemingway. “The Innocents Abroad”, and trying to find myself in any character I could lay my hand on. The word “Innocent” in the title, I suppose, far moreso any actual character, struck the most.


It’s the middle of The Great Recession. Or The Great Depression. The Great Compression. I can’t remember any longer which economic period this particular episode occupied (why can’t they name them more sensibly, like hurricanes?) Call it, then, The Great Introspection, as I narrated myself through the dozen rooms of a million-dollar house: the material self still alive and thriving inside in a self-congratulatory spiral over the personal ROI that left Canada on five dollars and put me, rent free, in a home worth that multiplied 200,000 times. The home where I first had my own key. The home where I learned to drink a glass of water before my morning coffee.

(Five years and $98,000 in college expenses later that was, easily, the best advice I’ve ever received.)


Eventually the phone was disconnected, the water, the power. The jacuzzi, though dry, was still a good place to lie and read. And the piñon and snakes, cacti and juniper, then inklings of pine trees came in steadily. When you would look at them they would freeze. But every morning something new was growing, some new pink flower popped up promisingly to crack the mortar in front of the door. Sweetly at first, then growing thorns, and I walking the perimeters saying “if only there were more air out here”, saying, “can not feel her anymore”, as if the decadent madness of the lawn could be silenced by speaking out loud. Trying to walk the edge of the fence, increasingly losing it in the encroaching bush, then resigning myself to the living room, the **** carpet flattening into a forest path while I impressed miles into that offensive floor.



words. seeds. thistles. marvin morales.


Sleeping on that filthy mattress, the Denver Broncos looking down, still optimistic about their upcoming trophy, or cup. Whatever it was that a bunch of cartoon horses could win. But the sweeping gave me solace, even though the growing thistles made the bricks uneven and caught in the bristles of the broom, leaving little shards of transplanted pink flowers emedded in the yellow polyethylene. I loathed them, but looking back I can see I played straight into their plan. Transplanting little seeds to new weak places in the cement, where they could grow tall again and **** up what little good was left of the land. Bring deer to eat them. Bring little idiot birds to pick the seeds out of the faeces, recycling with pure intent, and flying off into the bright light of sunset. Then crashing broken to the floor.

And like the lawn, like the porch, like what happens when you read Twain, something in me changed. “If only there were more air”, yes, but there is never enough air. Piling up among the deer, among the doe, among my now all-consuming pacing and talking to ghosts who don’t live here anymore, among the many birds who ate their worms and went on to hatch a dozen more, flew into a plate glass sunset, and were ignored.
9/22/2014
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2015
why doesn’t english phoneticism diacritic the non-trill r, or why doesn’t it diacritic the non-harking h? i wonder... where’s all the nation’s intelligence gone to... investing 650 billion in the ant mound that’s london? the politics blame it on the eastern european... ‘never blame it on the chinese or the arabs... they have the investments to come with boom & bust coordinates of new york’s 1920s hopes... followed up with depression.’ but oddly enough no recession in poland... perhaps because the poles have all the salt and lost all the dollars’ worth of edible mince pie (while the irish only lost ***** in hazelnut hangover forgetfulness on the titanic minding the class system of who got the lifeboats) - **** me, i’ve turned into a welsh longbows’ man with the famous V of agincourt... i’m not even welsh... but i’m assuredly an abacus: count to two sheep flights of suicide and towing two snorkel sneezes worth of bubbles before dozing off; ah... the celebrated humanity.*

that’s how it works... the r that lost the wheel and the ballerina twirl,
and the rolling-on requirements of a diacritic mark,
since all the available ones are inadequate,
and the h needs surgery to be honest...
it’s hardly a hay stack... as is the gnome eager to learn
about gnosticism and u-boats...
but did i tell you this one story that might
make you laugh?
in my post brain haemorrhage psychosis
i bought a martin & co. acoustic guitar for £600
while trading in a mandolin i bought cleaning toilets
in an edinburgh nightclub getting more than i expected
from a **** groper... sold for £25 second hand which i didn’t take
and just left it there due to honour
(who'd empty ****** in beer bottles from a toilet
getting harassed by a gay
in order to buy a £70 mandolin to play
only one song and then sell it for £25 and take the money?!)...
no, really, the english r needs diacritic markings
to distinguish it from the other european arms and arses
fidgety.
so this martin & co.’s guitar i bought
and took to my ex-girlfriends house...
which i left outside... and... oddly enough
in a guitar sheath the guitar suddenly spontaneously
decided to itch and break up...
my ex-girlfriend’s father said the cold did it...
he was always the handyman to break things...
then i started to head-**** the guitar until i managed
to weave a hole in it to sound more hollow...
so i fixed it in the end... a blind man could play it...
my ex-girlfriend’s father ended up as a nutcracker in
the mental health unit for a month while
england rejoiced when the pantomime season came along
in the local theatres - plates were thrown and dogs were walked...
like tonight... me in cognitive conversation:
‘hey stranger’s dog across the street, why you pausing
tail waggling and pavlov ready for a treat
and trying to imbue a french revolution’s cause off the leash?’
religiously you're reversing the due pundit of prayer
for the thing suffering... christianity almost feeds
the notion of prayer unto the continually suffering...
you wouldn't see prayer so easily given to
zeus ******* hera on the chair... would you?
pathetic, even morbid perverts of poverty
******* out the blood from the man...
if he deserved it he deserved it... it's not so easily
grecian polished into the realm of the undeserved...
the classical philosopher inquired: the gods exist...
but why are you sacrificing animals for their existence?
the modern philosophers inquired: the god exists...
but why are you sacrificing your emotions for their existence?
i will not sacrifice a goat on the altar...
but that was easier given the fact you're feeling
such sibyl s & m with that thing dangling on two planks of wood;
didn't i write of the malachi heresy...
the heresy that invaded monotheism and said
john smith postcode *** *** from the 21st century
will always be john smith from london from the 16th century?
malachi's heresy concerning the reincarnation of elijah
decisively spoke of the fractioned hebrew god... it spoke of 1
as 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, 1/6, 1/7, 1/8, 1/9 etc.
i can't believe that... like hegel equated in
the book marx digested and rebelled against, i = i,
malachi you propagator & instigator of christianity and islam!
malachi! to the greeks & romans with you tied to st. paul!
(even allen ginsberg mentions this equation
in one of his poems: i am i, old father fisheye that
begat the ocean, the worm at my own ear,
the serpent turning around a tree;
kant and 0 as negation, hegel and the equals sign as being,
naturally ≠ has to imply non-being);
not building idols of forearm and knee for worship is what islam
got away with replacing them with the worship of words...
i'd hate to worship that night idol dictated by a man
who couldn't read... it's almost like a crow hunching
next to a statue of ramses ii about
where r a m s e s trivialised the six pack of the abdomen
there were the letters r a m s e s without definite form
to concern the suckling of favourite idol mantras...
idol holy word hum hum ham ahead of you...
thou shalt knot the casual reference of muhammad
in the corner shop for thou shalt not offend
the goosebumps sensation i feel when i hear the sounds...
MAKE THEE **** A HOLY **** WORDED & WORSHIPPED!
ARSES IN THE AIR GENTS... WE'RE GOING TO HAVANAH!
and so it was... the only fear of death i have
is to have lived to being aged 72... and then died;
death sooner... death... sooner!
my parents die i'm moving to the true england, up north,
to liverpool or manchester... **** the southern fairies
from dubai... i rather move to the faroe islands to be honest...
and **** a dozen orcas for a fry-up and the digestion of winter...
i rather **** time occupying the space in greenland
among the icy chinese known as eskimos;
i'd fit in among the føroyar kindreds... i love the doom & gloom
and hate the sun & tan of globalisation's adventures
with advertisements and juggling tourism
among terrorism's fictive narratives.
Damian Murphy Aug 2015
Could the Ireland of today ever have been foreseen
by those who gave their lives for this country in 1916?
Corruption and greed on a scale that is quite obscene
with the Irish people as oppressed as they have ever been.

The recession in Ireland was caused by the greedy few
Though our government must shoulder a lot of blame too
With the banks and developers they had a major role to play
But the ordinary people of Ireland were the only ones to pay!
It was a story, unfortunately, of pure unbridled greed
Which government collusion helped nurture and feed
But the most striking thing was the level of arrogance
As they lead the people of Ireland on a not so merry dance.
Thousands lost their jobs, became long term unemployed
Many of our children emigrated, the whole country cried
People lost their homes which they worked so hard to get
others took their lives, hounded mercilessly for a debt.
Not one ounce of help was given, many just could not cope
And the government’s strategy killed off any sense of hope
for the ordinary people who were already on their backs  
Got pay cuts, price increases, and every form of new tax.
Help was made available for the developers and  banks
Bondholders took huge profits without a word of thanks
But the people were subjected to extreme austerity
While those who caused the crisis walked away scot free.

After years of hardship the recession has come to an end
The global economy, it seems, very much on the mend
But in Ireland, alas, the recovery is slow
because there has been no major change in the status quo.
It is absolutely shameful after what people were put through
They made all the sacrifices, did all they had to do
Only to discover that things are very much the same
Those in power should hang their heads in absolute shame.
Recent revelations show how much of our money is being wasted
Developers profiting from NAMA now being investigated
So many Top ups being paid on already massive salaries
the banks being allowed to continue doing just as they please.
We all thought things would improve with the change of Government
But it is staggering to discover how much money they have spent
Setting up Irish Water where they have yet to spend much more
The cost of water charges for us, the people, continue to soar.
Experts agree this could have been done for millions less
But like Poolbeg, Irish Water is just another expensive mess.
Huge profits are being made in this by all the major players
Though the cost will be borne by you and me; the taxpayers.

No doubt there is much more that has yet to come to light
It does not take a genius to see that things are far from right.
The few continue to prosper while many struggle to live
They take most from those who have nothing more to give
While those responsible clearly seem to have no shame
Are we the people, by our inaction, somehow to blame?
Perhaps we should be thinking about a radical solution
Acquiescence has not worked but would a Revolution?
Parts 1,2 & 3 were written in 2013, towards the end of the recession. This was written in late 2014 when Ireland was no longer officially in recession.
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2018
.oh man, a spoiled mood, so rare, but so invigorating at the same, it's like you get so mad that you're only waiting for the cooling period, the cooling period is always so... armchair analogous... some people turn to a gym sauna, but nothing compares to letting off steam from, the tabernacle, i.e. your heart.

woke up at 10am, checked the time,
dived in for a snooze...
3 hours later, i thought i just lay there,
a strange sleep consumed me,
as if: half awake, half knocked out
by a Mike Tyson punch...

took the broken drill to the workshop,
walked in... immediate
claustrophilia emerged...
the scents of metal, oil
and cardboard...

    are men more prone to claustrophilia
and women more prone
to claustrophobia?

such a gentile lad behind the counter,
his father working beside me on
some other mechanical tool...
he said some wise words about
hands, and tools,
and what not...
can't exactly remember what he said,
but:

hands & tools were in it,
so... given that: hands are tools...
he wasn't far off from the truth...

such a gentile lad...
he even managed to catch up with me
in the off-lice
while i was wondering what beer
to buy (on this fine fine October
afternoon)
to get my details...
     gripped his shoulder gently
and said my thank you...

but last night was something else...
i rarely become mad while drunk,
but when i do:
pandemonium in my head...
the ego become a Minotaur
and subsequently the labyrinth expands...

phobias and philias -
fears and loves...

  while i was walking up to the workshop
with my broken drill,
i passed a Muslim family...

now... if i saw a pretty large spider crawling
unsuspected and with catching
it with a ****...
i'd have a reflex reaction,
an irrationally funny reflex reaction...
SO WHAT THE **** IS
ISLAMO"PHOBIA"?
apparently some people like to abuse
words...
   i passed the Muslim family casually...
what? they're just people,
the father was teaching his children
how to cross the road safely,
and his wife was watching
him with that motherhood glee
of contentment with regards
to how their father was engaging
her offspring...
  
   islamophobia?! what?!
come again... because i've just explained
what arachnophobia is...
a phobia is associated with
the reflexes... or rather... a reflex...
an irrational, funny (later) reflex...
      when i see a Muslim i don't react
to him / her like i would react
to a ******* spider of abnormal size
(abnormal... because it's not
a tarantula)...

but today i woke and felt i had to
concede to an apology,
yes, casual "racist" that i am,
i forgot to prefix the word ****,
i.e. ****-,
       because, just sometimes...
i can't be bothered to add the suffix
-stani...
                  simple...

   but there is a but...
my father was in a slight traffic collision...
and... i had to listen to him
ramble on and on about the details
as i filled out the police report...

when two cars collide...
you exchange insurance details...
so the insurance companies can
meddle in the matter...

but this ****- woman had some sort
of bodyguard who intimidated my father,
telling him: it was illegal to exchange
insurance details...
yes yes... accents: i call them diacritical
distinction coordinates...

              the point being:
what is she? some ******* Hindu deity,
a holy cow?!
        so she couldn't have had her sight
impaired by the Ninja outfit?!
a liberal journalist in a center right
newspaper (i think that the times
is center right, or, at least,
i like to think so)

                     wrote an article about
donning the niqab for one day...
and she herself claimed that her vision
was impaired... when, walking...
there...
           i'd ban niqabs for the purpose
of safe driving...
     no! there's no ******* compromise!

****...
        i just want to drink a beer,
and watch a cherry tree change color in
this glorious season...
         why does everything have to boil
down to the nitty-gritty,
the fiddly, the perpetuating nuance of
what is, and what isn't -
   that isn't always black & white?

- but i do remember why my parents emigrated
to England... well...
if they weren't ****** over by
some ****** lawyer... England was just
a step-over... over to Argentina and
hopefully to H'america...
    seems my mother had a fascination
with her grandfather...
a polyglot, who emigrated there...
   married some woman,
abandoned his son (my grandfather)
due to his brother's smear campaign
to inherit some land, yada yada yada...
but the Iron Curtain was lifted....
   major recession...
my hometown's steel industry collapsed,
plus the Communist Party connections
of my grandfather:
who joined the Party?
               for opportunistic reasons...
and to fulfill functions like sitting court
on a jury...
                        my hometown saw the demise
of the fall...
                    around 20,000 jobs lost,
if not more...
          
and yes, i know what illegal immigration
looks like,
   but i also know what legal immigration
looks like...
   i've seen the ping-pong...
i just hate it...
                    when some Somali with 10
kids gets a council house in west London...
and he's probably "illegal" too...
or, whatever Commonwealth ****-hole
he comes entitled with the status:
the former colonized.

but at the end of the day...
i just want to drink my beer man.
They start from nothing

A touch of a hand

A faint smile

Those thoughts trap you

in illusions

you have no right to be imagining

You’re stuck in a void

where the sound of their voice

is the only thing that makes sense

and the rhyme of their words

are the only comfort you’ll ever get.

You turn around

and look back at yourself

and question every intention

every thought

how and when and why

and up thinking about things

that could rip you apart.

I don’t know if it’s those thoughts

of self hate and disgust

Or the poison of hate you fed me every night

it’s the delusion you put in my head

a living happiness I am not living

A sadness so apparent

Hurt that won’t leave

A recession so painful

So familiar…..

Yet so **** comforting.

~ L.A.M
Damian Acosta Aug 2014
... and all of Life's questions were set to be answered,  from "Why are we here?" and "Why should we care?"  to "Why don't he love me?" and "What should I wear?" and
                                                        "Wher­e is my father?"  and
                                                   ­                                                    "Can I kiss my daughter?"              and

                                    ­            "What does it matter?"
"Flannel or Mod?"                              and
                          ­                                                                 "What about God?"
                      "Meat on a stick? or Shish Kabob?"
and
                                                            ­                            "Free Will or Fate?"
                                                       and
                        "Do you think of me when you *******?"                                                   and
"Is Santa for real?"
                                                                ­                  and

                                          ­                                                    "What does love feel--"
                                                         ­                                                                 ­              "Like this or like that?"  
                                   "Do I really look fat?"            
                                                   "Do u thnk its gonna b bettr than the 1st one??"     "When Atheists go to court, do they have to swear on the bible?"               "Is it legal to travel down a road in reverse, as long as your following the direction traversed?"                        "Where do u see urselvef in 5 yrs?"
               "what's the most embarrasing thing that has happened to you?"                    "Why are the best looking things the most deadly?""What does i.e. stand for?"            "How do you know when you fall in love?"" If ghosts can float, why do they waste their time walking around?"          
"Why am I still in the bed?"                        "Why would u get pregnant by a dude that doesn't take care of the kids he already have?""Why do ppl Cheat ?"
                 "Did u really love me or u just lied???"                    " whats the point of tryin anymore if u tried so hard in the past and nuttin happened?" "why is the sky blue?"?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
?­?????????????.?????????????????????????????????????????????????
?­??????????.????????????????????????????????????????????????????
?­???????????????.???????????????????????????????????????????????
?­????????????????????.??????????????????????????????????????????
?­?????????????????????????.?????????????????????????????????????
?­?????????????????????????????.?????????????????????????????????
?­??????????????????????????????????.????????????????????????????
?­???????????????????????????????????????.???????????????????????
?­??????????????????????????????????????????.????????????????????
?­????????????????????????????????????????????????.??????????????
?­???????????????????????????????????????????.???????????????????
?­????????????????????????????????????????.??????????????????????
?­????????????????????????????????????????.??????????????????????
?­?????????????????????????????????????????.?????????????????????
?­??????????????????????????????????????????.????????????????????
?­???????????????????????????????????????????.???????????????????
?­???????????????????????????????????????? .
                                                               ­                                 ¿
                              ­                                                                 ­     ?
                                                          ­                                              ¿
                                                                ­                                         ?

                                                                ­                                             ¿

Age old wives' tales,



                                                       ­                                                          ?

                                                      propheci­es,

                                                            ­                                                            

jud­gement day--
                                                           ­                                                                 ­  ¿

                                      The Human Symphony


of doubt and faith,

                                      
                  ­                   with crescendos of hope now played,                              ?



as the moments of our naive darkness


                                                      ­                      Tick
                                      ­                          

                                                               ­                        Tock
                                                            ­                                         slip, slide



&

                  fade



















                     ­                                                                 ­                  




















                          ­                                                                 ­           











                                                     ­                                                            ¿















































                ­                                                            10


­













































                   ­                                        6




































                           ­                                                                 ­ 8


                                  


























­














                                                  ­                                                                 ­      7










                                                     ­                                                                 ­                    ¿

                                                               ­                                                                 ­           ?

                                                               ­                                                                 ­               0

                                                             ­                                                                 ­                      1
The greatest accomplishment of humankind took the stage just                      
                                                                ­                                                                 ­                   
                                             ­                                 past 11:59,  New Years Eve 2099          !
                                                 ­                                             
The first and only of its kind,
    
                                                           ­     
                                                                ­  
                                            
                   ­                                         Born from the Hope and Ingenuity



                                                    ­              of
The Great Recession Generation--
                                                    ­        Whose Change and "Deviation"  gave birth



                                                        ­           to
The Artificial Assimilation Generation--
                                                    ­          Whose Instant Omniscience created




                                                     ­               the
Automation Generation, whose lack of challenge
                                                       ­         Evolved into the Great Stimulation Generation--


                                                    dependent upon emotional simulation
for spiritual mental and human validation.



                                                  ­                    A
Civilization whose foundations were pillars
                                                         ­           





                                                            ­                  0f  



21st Century Dust..............................★★★★★★★★★★★
                   ­                  ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
                                     ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
                                     ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
                                     ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
                                     ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★          ­ 
★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
                                   ­  .                                                    
                                     .
                                      .
                       ­                 the perfect shambles of a custom built artificial
                                                      ­                                                                 ­                    life.
Intelligent saturation, automation, assimilitation-- the cries of *******--
                                                  ­                                      nothin' but digital elation!
                                                        ­                                                                 ­             No
                                                 ­                                                                 ­      more
                                                      ­                                                Heroes--
        ­                                                                 ­                              Tears
                                                           ­                                                                 ­of
                                                              ­                                                                 ­    Nero.

                                                                ­                                                                 .

                                                              ­                                                           .
                  
                                                                ­                                                   .

Thursday December 31,  2099                                    
                 23:59:31                                   ­                   A time of ever present
                     ☼   42°                                                              ­                      Knowledge
         Aged 25 years 12 days
           Heart Rate 154 bmp        
           Daily Caloric Intake
            1660.079/1830.15
                Calorie Buffer
                     170.071
         Personal Headlines
"First Artificial and Visceral Intelligence
        To Be Unveiled @ Midnight"


"First we were meat. After, sentient meat. Then self aware meat.
As such, manipulative meat. Adaptive meat. Rotting meat. Limbo Meat.

Then came awareness of spirit.
Freedom from the mortal meat,
Via a mastering of its meaty concepts.

We became one in the same; spirit and meat.
Held mirrors to one another, reflected our dreams.

Shared sense of Being.

Then meat met metal, plastic and graphene--
Testing the infinite ways to give birth to Life.
And we did.

We called our first child Artificial--
afraid for our mortality.
Yet called it intelligent in its ability.

A selfish denial of a miraculous act.

The question was inevitable,

'If knowledge is infinite, and
                                                   intelligence is the capacity to acquire knowledge,
Would we call such a pursuit, of intellectual Life, "Artificial"?'

'If God is infinite, and
                                       Non-visible, non-provable,
Would we call a pursuit for such a source of Life, "Artificial"? In vain?'

'Is this not Life before us existing in the shape of electrically charged plastic? Entities that observe and react to their environment, is that any more artificial than a man?'

Emotion. One word, and the intellectuals were silenced....

Emotion.

Meat knows emotion.
Our meat has been stimulated and shaped by
pain and joy.

Machine knows only causation, not visceral relation.

Visceral. One word, and the intellectuals were aroused.

Visceral.

A machine's viscera lies within its programming, its sense of being.

Meat's viscera lies within its program to survive (food, sexuality), its sense of being.

"If a program can understand environment and its relation to that environment, it may be able to approximate a sensation to a high level of accuracy based on temperature, humidity, and whether or not that environment is detrimental to its functioning hardware, and thereby make a statistical decision as to where to move next.  It may interpret sound as obtrusive or melodic based on input sensitivity. But creating hardware with central parts is counter-intuitive to information flow-- which is of paramount importance, far above form.

However, the nano-sized 'cloud'  hardware used in this new "form", will have sensors by the trillions. Examining its environment-- functioning as One, Creating a field-- a floating specter of the collective human mind. Where its understanding of history is both objective and subjective (given of course the established norm of a non-private society).

The most important factor, is its relation to us... Meat. That comes with empathy, compassion. If it can understand basic weather, terrain, and statistics, it can understand basic human survival challenges and its solutions. If it can hold all of the information past and present, circumstantial factors of old and new, would it not have a more clear perspective of our human state of being? Would it not be our most reflective mirror? Would it not have some visceral answers? Would it not be an awareness of Spirit? Spirit meaning by definition: the principle of conscious life; the specter or trace of existence."

At last the intellectuals gave themselves a centennial deadline. Blood sweat and tears of a generation upon a generation...

'We are calling her Aavi.' they said early in December.
"Artificial and Visceral Intelligence.

So, The World listened...

" A Computer Will Reveal Our Greatest Secrets" were they laymen headlines.

"Artificial and Visceral Intelligence with the Free Will to pursue anything." for the Romantic readers

Either way-- meat or metal-- it comes down
                                                            ­                                        to Choice.
Choice, based upon instinct
                                                        ­                                                          and reason--
Until now an option reserved only for Man.

What will our greatest achievement say about its creator?

                                                       ­                       (feel here for list of  sources)
                                                    ­                                                                 ­                                                                 ­     *23:59:50 Countdown
2010- 2014
What if we could create an "Artificial and Visceral Intelligent" being? What would it reveal about our nature, our process? How would it express its observation of its creator?
You know we tired of the hard times
My mind is like a gold mine
Knowledge of the good and evil
God help us lead the blind, down the righteous path,
because I know sometimes it's hard to find
and if we starting to backslide then please show us a sign
before we get consumed into Lucy grapevine
they said to us in 2012 some planets will align
but the show goes on like everything is fine
Some of us are blind slavery changes with time
Men, Women lie listen close you'll ear the sign
Bonnie kept it one hundred Barbie tell she a dime
See a lot of barbies now but Bonnie is one of a kind
When I find mine I'm holding on till the end of times....
© 2013
John F McCullagh Nov 2013
John O’Sullivan was an electrical engineer for Consolidated Edison for Forty years. He drove himself and his staff hard, and took pride in the smooth operation of his substation on the lower East side of Manhattan.  When a man like John, who proudly self-identified as a type “A” personality, decides to take a break it so often proves to be a serious if not fatal mistake.

In the summer of 2007, my cousin John took his wife, Margaret, on a rare vacation out of the country to the sun swept beaches of Aruba.  While a beach vacation was perfect for Margaret, who loved nothing better than to lounge in the sun reading her book, it was a form of physical and mental torture for her husband.  He grew restless lying beside her in the hot midwinter sun as his pasty white skin turned a robust red despite his constant application of sunscreen.

I will never be sure what precipitated John’s near fatal stroke on that vacation trip. It may have been a combination of too much alcohol and too much sun. It is even possible that he had mixed up his daily medications.  All I know is that when my cousin was air lifted to a State side hospital, he was suffering the consequences of a severe brain damaging event.

When I saw John in the hospital, I could see that he had lost most of the use of the right side of his body and that he was going to be wheelchair bound for the rest of his life. While he certainly recognized me and tried to smile and communicate as best he could with gestures and a wave of his hand he had lost nearly all his power of speech.

My college educated, urbane sophisticated cousin’s vocabulary was very much diminished by the cerebral accident and now consisted of one word: “Bang”. He made the most of his one word personal dictionary. He could, by variation in tone and inflection, make his one word sound like a greeting, a farewell, a warning, a curse or a need for intention.

The word “bang” could express a terrible wellspring of frustration.  John had spent most of his life in a position of command, first as a Marine noncom,, then as the chief Engineer who ran the substation that powered the lower part of Manhattan. Words, to him, were as vital as eyes were to an artist, ears to an artist or taste buds to a gourmoo.

Locked inside my cousin was the person we had formerly known. He was not like an Alzheimer’s victim whose mind had staged a gradual retreat from his body. Rather, I am convinced, he was being held prisoner within the folds of his damaged Parietal lobe.

From the first, there has been no question that he would never set foot in his old offices on E 14th Street again.  There could be no grand retirement party, just a quiet filing of his papers and the first payments from his retirement plan.  These were sufficient, along with his other investments, to provide him and his wife with a modest, comfortable retirement.  If not for the crash that swept the stock market in 2008, his stocks would have been sufficient to permit a healthy cousin John and his wife to tour the world. Now, in the shadow of the great recession, his remaining capital paid for the home health aides and medications that maintained his precarious existence.

Margaret passed on late in 2011, a problem with her heart, the attending physician said. I saw Cousin John at her wake, the chief mourner unable to express his grief.  I took his good hand and expressed my fellow feeling for his loss. My poor words of condolence were inadequate but he gave my hand a gentle squeeze and whispered “bang” which told me he understood. It was a gentle voice from somewhere out on the edge of sadness.

With Margaret gone, the primary responsibility for John’s care was taken over by his daughter Megan and her husband.  The family sold off the big old house in Yorkville and John moved in with Megan’s family in Pelham.  There his pension and savings paid for 24/7 nursing care and a physical therapist. It must have been a source of humiliation for this proud man, a Marine veteran of  the 26th Marine Battalion  who had  fought at Khe Sanh, to be laid upon a table and have his limbs moved by others to maintain their muscle tone in vain attempts  to retrain his surviving brain.

I last saw my cousin at the Fourth of July family picnic.  He had good color and displayed a healthy appetite. He really enjoyed the fireworks display on the East River. He said “Bang” repeatedly, with all the enthusiasm of a young child.

I got the sad news about John the day after Hurricane Sandy struck the New York area.  My cousin Megan was understandably upset and was blaming herself for allowing her father to watch the news on T.V.  He had become visibly agitated when Eyewitness news showed the Con Edison plant of E14th Street exploding and the lower half of Manhattan plunging into darkness. Megan said that Dad screamed “BANG” in a tortured voice, then slumped back into his chair and was gone.

I never did get to the services for Cousin John.  My own house was without power and heat and the gas in my tank was too dangerously low to risk the trip in those days immediately following the storm. I still think of my late cousin often, and when I do I toss a bootless prayer for him into the winds of Eternity. The substation on E. 14th has been repaired; The damaged homes ripped down or rebuilt and the reminders of the storm grow fewer and fewer like the surface of the sea grown calm in the wake of the storm.
a fictionalized memoir of the aftermath of my Cousins stroke, disability and death.
Bottom feeders flourish

When the economy's a bust

When bad times are the norm

And good times turn to dust

When neighborhoods go south it's sad

But a sign of their demise

Is when a bunch of pawn shops open up

Before your very eyes

When stores close down or move on out

After years in the same place

Their memory is a radar blip

They leave without a trace

But as fast as they lock up their doors

Another shop moves in

It's the local pawn shop dealer

He's a shark without a fin

Like dollar stores and boarded doors

The pawn shop shows the way

That business has moved on out

Or closed or moved away

They prey on peoples hardship

They broker deals without a care

They don't need to know your history

They just know that you're there

The street has three new pawn shops

Palaces of buy back stuff

It's bad when there is one around

But, three...well that's enough

One opened by the Jeweller

Two doors down across the street

Now he's buying up possessions

Of everyone he meets

Folks who purchased jewellery

From Old Cy at his old store

For each twenty of it's value

The pawn shop gives you four

Cy can't afford to buy back

He doesn't have much money left

And besides his store insurance

Doesn't cover much for theft

The people at the Pawn shops

Took jobs and live in town

They trained two counties over

They succeed when times are down

It's a sign of the recession

Downtown dies and fades away

And then the bottom feeders surface

Their the ones who're gonna stay

You can look in the shop windows

Know who bought what and from where

You know the candlesticks were bought at Cy's

And you know who bought them there

The guitar that hangs beside them

That was pawned by Emma Rose

She needed money for the bills

When the fresh fish plant had closed

There's a snapshot of the township

Sitting inside on their walls

They pawn shop is successful

While the economy still falls

You can see a piece and start to cry

For you know just why it's there

There's no one here to help them

There's no jobs and it's not fair

They open up each morning

While the nights dregs still sleep outside

They have done two hours business

Before lights on at Cy's

It's a sad and constant story

Of just what a town's become

But when asked if they've been in there

The inhabitants go "mumb"

They never seem to close up

The town's never make it back

While most places lose money

Pawn shops make it by the sack

The bluesman has some stuff there

The bartender has some too

Even though her bar's still going

She did what she had to do

The street, it is it's own world

Jewelly shops, banks and bars

But inside the local pawn shops

Are hidden all the scars.
Kate Lion Jan 2013
I can’t stand that I can’t understand
Why my heart heaved its contents into your content hands,
Tearstains dripping through my fingers as we [danced].
I remember the days I’d [collapse] in crowded streets,
Because my heart would [skip] too many beats.
Then you’d [spin me], kiss my cheeks and whisper
Something sweet about my [feet’s] defeat.
But I knew then that I couldn’t [keep rhythm],
So I must’ve suffered from heart failure.

And once you left in October, and my soul was sober
Not drunk on my tears,
I would wonder what could’ve persuaded you to stay,
But once my heart attempted a [pirouette]
I no longer questioned my place.
.. I don’t know if you watched after that,
But I’m sure you saw the {snowprints} I’d leave in your yard,
My only way of telling you that I hated being my own {saving grace},
Because a {fallen angel} drops too hard.

But icicles hung from your eyelids that winter,
And splintered your vision.
Looking back, I believe you cried as much as I did,
And the tears froze across your eyes.
Because you never looked me in the eye as our minds ran to pieces
As we raced to find peace with ourselves.

You spun me for a loop,
My skull kissing paintball splattered remains of my left and right brain
As they bled all over themselves,
Knocking my sanity off of the shelves
In an attempt to explain whether love is history,
Or chemistry,
And I didn’t want to ponder the prospects
So paper was my band-aid fix all.
I wrapped my mind around it,
Concealed my soul beneath my words,
Until I was my own mummified form,
Too afraid to rip them off.
Because what if nothing had healed at all?
I rotted beneath my façade.
My smiley face band-aids the only hands of happiness that hugged me for
Months,
And I
Sunk
Into depression,
Not unlike this current recession,
Not knowing where my silver lining would be;
Wondering if it would come only when withered lines worked their way across my cheeks,
A gray hairline visible in the sun,
As proof my time had come,
To be happy.

But something better came sooner with the rains of May,
And a new boy painted smiles back onto my face.
Removing the bandages that had bruised my body,
And punctured the skin of my poetry.
So I was free to bleed again,
With fresh pieces to breathe in.

Was it happiness, or freedom that flushed my cheeks?
Or was it the uncomfortable spider that would weave my stomach in knots
As another part of me was lost
To the boy who painted my peace
For a price?

I didn’t mean to hand so much to him, love,
But a measure of pleasure came with a cost,
And at some point my beliefs were tossed to scatter in the wind,
And the spider of guilt in my stomach sunk its teeth right in,
Sadness seeping through my veins,
The venom of regret.

Because you were the only one who ever held all of me and none of me at the same time,
Who never asked for what I claimed to be mine.
All of me was yours,
Even the things you never asked for
Were stamped with your name for a future date.
But mail gets intercepted sometimes,
And my contents were spread
Before someone I hardly knew
And I-
Missed-
You…

Because you never asked for too much to touch or too much of my love
I loved you the only way I was able to.
And now…
I’m just a tainted tin can on the side of the street.
And I know you don’t have use for me,
But I’ll do my best to undo the dents of my past.
All I know is that yesterday you told me you hate it when I don’t say what’s on my mind.
But my tongue was a sponge that soaked up the ways that I’ve wanted to say
That I’m sorry.

And I’ve skipped my own beats for a year and a half,
Letting my turn to tell you I yearn for you pass
Right over
In an endless drum roll.
But-
I feel a –rhythmic- rattle-
In my –beaten-aluminum-body
As your footsteps
[Stop].
Please.
Don’t let me suffer for my heart failure.
Don’t make homes out of people because they always leave and take everything you own with them.*
Home doesn’t feel like home without you and because of that I’ve stopped building homes out of people.
But I saw the beauty of the world in your eyes and it always gave me hope.
I’ve been feeling homeless and now I’m always home a lot less because of you.
You are as beautiful on the inside as you are on the outside and that’s why people are still drawn to your aura.
Depression hit harder than the recession, it had me regressing and constantly questioning my level of progression.
Purple jacaranda petals spread all around my feet as I patiently wait for my heart to make a sound.
This hopeful romantic knows that hearts get broken like mirrors, records and promises do.

All the jacaranda trees in Pretoria still remind me of the beauty that is you.
When the relentless heat of the sun drove me crazy all I could think about was your smile and those hazel-brown eyes.
I spend some nights drinking my favourite wine by myself but this bottle of Pinotage will always taste better in your presence.
I still want to hold your heart like the lonely autumn trees hold the fragility of clinging leaves.
But you’re no longer mine to love and the thought of you being with someone else kills me.
Hearts fall to the ground like jacaranda petals do but unfortunately the view is not so beautiful.
Purple jacaranda petals spread all around on every street as I patiently wait for my heart to make a sound.
“It was when I stopped searching for home within others and lifted the foundations of home within myself, I found there were no roots more intimate than a mind and body that have decided to be whole.” – Rupi Kaur

— The End —