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zebra Oct 2017
Here is a primer on the history of poetry

Features of Modernism

To varying extents, writing of the Modernist period exhibits these features:

1. experimentation

belief that previous writing was stereotyped and inadequate
ceaseless technical innovation, sometimes for its own sake
originality: deviation from the norm, or from usual reader expectations
ruthless rejection of the past, even iconoclasm

2. anti-realism

sacralisation of art, which must represent itself, not something beyond preference for allusion (often private) rather than description
world seen through the artist's inner feelings and mental states
themes and vantage points chosen to question the conventional view
use of myth and unconscious forces rather than motivations of conventional plot

3. individualism

promotion of the artist's viewpoint, at the expense of the communal
cultivation of an individual consciousness, which alone is the final arbiter
estrangement from religion, nature, science, economy or social mechanisms
maintenance of a wary intellectual independence
artists and not society should judge the arts: extreme self-consciousness
search for the primary image, devoid of comment: stream of consciousness
exclusiveness, an aristocracy of the avant-garde

4. intellectualism

writing more cerebral than emotional
work is tentative, analytical and fragmentary, more posing questions more than answering them
cool observation: viewpoints and characters detached and depersonalized
open-ended work, not finished, nor aiming at formal perfection
involuted: the subject is often act of writing itself and not the ostensible referent

............
Expressionism

Expressionism was a phase of twentieth-century writing that rejected naturalism and romanticism to express important inner truths. The style was generally declamatory or even apocalyptic, endeavoring to awaken the fears and aspirations that belong to all men, and which European civilization had rendered effete or inauthentic. The movement drew on Rimbaud and Nietzsche, and was best represented by German poetry of the 1910-20 period. Benn, Becher, Heym, Lasker-Schüler, Stadler, Stramm, Schnack and Werfel are its characteristic proponents, {1} though Trakl is the best known to English readers. {2} {3}

Like most movements, there was little of a manifesto, or consensus of beliefs and programmes. Many German poets were distrustful of contemporary society — particularly its commercial and capitalist attitudes — though others again saw technology as the escape from a perceived "crisis in the old order". Expressionism was very heterogeneous, touching base with Imagism, Vorticism, Futurism, Dadaism and early Surrealism, many of which crop up in English, French, Russian and Italian poetry of the period. Political attitudes tended to the revolutionary, and technique was overtly experimental. Nonetheless, for all the images of death and destruction, sometimes mixed with messianic utopianism, there was also a tone of resignation, a sadness of "the evening lands" as Spengler called them.

Expressionism also applies to painting, and here the characteristics are more illuminating. The label refers to painting that uses visual gestures to transmit emotions and emotionally charged messages. In the expressive work of Michelangelo and El Greco, for example, the content remains of first importance, but content is overshadowed by technique in such later artists as van Gogh, Ensor and Munch. By the mid twentieth-century even this attenuated content had been replaced by abstract painterly qualities — by the sheer scale and dimensions of the work, by colour and shape, by the verve of the brushwork and other effects.

Expressionism often coincided with rapid social change. Germany, after suffering the horrors of the First World War, and ineffectual governments afterwards, fragmented into violently opposed political movements, each with their antagonistic coteries and milieu. The painting of these groups was very variable, but often showed a mixture of aggression and naivety. Understandably unpopular with the establishment  — denounced as degenerate by the Nazis — the style also met with mixed reactions from the picture-buying public. It seemed to question what the middle classes stood for: convention, decency, professional expertise. A great sobbing child had been let loose in the artist's studio, and the results seemed elementally challenging. Perhaps German painting was returning to its Nordic roots, to small communities, apocalyptic visions, monotone starkness and anguished introspection.

What could poetry achieve in its turn? Could it use some equivalent to visual gestures, i.e. concentrate on aspects of the craft of poetry, and to the exclusion of content? Poetry can never be wholly abstract, a pure poetry bereft of content. But clearly there would be a rejection of naturalism. To represent anything faithfully requires considerable skill, and such skill was what the Expressionists were determined to avoid. That would call on traditions that were not Nordic, and that were not sufficiently opposed to bourgeois values for the writer's individuality to escape subversion. Raw power had to tap something deeper and more universal.

Hence the turn inward to private torments. Poets became the judges of poetry, since only they knew the value of originating emotions. Intensity was essential.  Artists had to believe passionately in their responses, and find ways of purifying and deepening those responses — through working practices, lifestyles, and philosophies. Freud was becoming popular, and his investigations into dreams, hallucinations and paranoia offered a rich field of exploration. Artists would have to glory in their isolation, moreover, and turn their anger and frustration at being overlooked into a belief in their own genius. Finally, there would be a need to pull down and start afresh, even though that contributed to a gradual breakdown in the social fabric and the apocalypse of the Second World War.

Expressionism is still with us. Commerce has invaded bohemia, and created an elaborate body of theory to justify, support and overtake what might otherwise appear infantile and irrational. And if traditional art cannot be pure emotional expression, then a new art would have to be forged. Such poetry would not be an intoxication of life (Nietzsche's phrase) and still less its sanctification.  Great strains on the creative process were inevitable, moreover, as they were in Georg Trakl's case, who committed suicide shortly after writing the haunting and beautiful piece given below

................
SYMBOLIST POETS
symbolism in poetry

Symbolism in literature was a complex movement that deliberately extended the evocative power of words to express the feelings, sensations and states of mind that lie beyond everyday awareness. The open-ended symbols created by Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) brought the invisible into being through the visible, and linked the invisible through other sensory perceptions, notably smell and sound. Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-98), the high priest of the French movement, theorized that symbols were of two types. One was created by the projection of inner feelings onto the world outside. The other existed as nascent words that slowly permeated the consciousness and expressed a state of mind initially unknown to their originator.

None of this came about without cultivation, and indeed dedication. Poets focused on the inner life. They explored strange cults and countries. They wrote in allusive, enigmatic, musical and ambiguous styles. Rimbaud deranged his senses and declared "Je est un autre". Von Hofmannstahl created his own language. Valéry retired from the world as a private secretary, before returning to a mastery of traditional French verse. Rilke renounced wife and human society to be attentive to the message when it came.

Not all were great theoreticians or technicians, but the two interests tended to go together, in Mallarmé most of all. He painstakingly developed his art of suggestion, what he called his "fictions". Rare words were introduced, syntactical intricacies, private associations and baffling images. Metonymy replaced metaphor as symbol, and was in turn replaced by single words which opened in imagination to multiple levels of signification. Time was suspended, and the usual supports of plot and narrative removed. Even the implied poet faded away, and there were then only objects, enigmatically introduced but somehow made right and necessary by verse skill. Music indeed was the condition to which poetry aspired, and Verlaine, Jimenez and Valéry were among many who concentrated efforts to that end.

So appeared a dichotomy between the inner and outer lives. In actuality, poets led humdrum existences, but what they described was rich and often illicit: the festering beauties of courtesans and dance-hall entertainers; far away countries and their native peoples; a world-weariness that came with drugs, isolation, alcohol and bought ***. Much was mixed up in this movement — decadence, aestheticism, romanticism, and the occult — but its isms had a rational purpose, which is still pertinent. In what way are these poets different from our own sixties generation? Or from the young today: clubbing, experimenting with relationships and drugs, backpacking to distant parts? And was the mixing of sensory perceptions so very novel or irrational? Synaesthesia was used by the Greek poets, and indeed has a properly documented basis in brain physiology.

What of the intellectual bases, which are not commonly presented as matters that should engage the contemporary mind, still less the writing poet? Symbolism was built on nebulous and somewhat dubious notions: it inspired beautiful and historically important work: it is now dead: that might be the blunt summary. But Symbolist poetry was not empty of content, indeed expressed matters of great interest to continental philosophers, then and now. The contents of consciousness were the concern of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), and he developed a terminology later employed by Heidegger (1889-1976), the Existentialists and hermeneutics. Current theories on metaphor and brain functioning extend these concepts, and offer a rapprochement between impersonal science and irrational literary theory.

So why has the Symbolism legacy dwindled into its current narrow concepts? Denied influence in the everyday world, poets turned inward, to private thoughts, associations and the unconscious. Like good Marxist intellectuals they policed the area they arrogated to themselves, and sought to correct and purify the language that would evoke its powers. Syntax was rearranged by Mallarmé. Rhythm, rhyme and stanza patterning were loosened or rejected. Words were purged of past associations (Modernism), of non-visual associations (Imagism), of histories of usage (Futurism), of social restraint (Dadaism) and of practical purpose (Surrealism). By a sort of belated Romanticism, poetry was returned to the exploration of the inner lands of the irrational. Even Postmodernism, with its bric-a-brac of received media images and current vulgarisms, ensures that gaps are left for the emerging unconscious to engage our interest

......................

.
IMAGIST POETRY
imagist poetry

Even by twentieth-century standards, Imagism was soon over. In 1912 Ezra Pound published the Complete Poetical Works of its founder, T.E. Hulme (five short poems) and by 1917 the movement, then overseen by Amy Lowell, had run its course. {1} {2} {3} {4} {5} The output in all amounted to a few score poems, and none of these captured the public's heart. Why the importance?

First there are the personalities involved — notably Ezra Pound, James Joyce, William Carlos Williams {6} {7} {8} {9} — who became famous later. If ever the (continuing) importance to poets of networking, of being involved in movements from their inception, is attested, it is in these early days of post-Victorian revolt.

Then there are the manifestos of the movement, which became the cornerstones of Modernism, responsible for a much taught in universities until recently, and for the difficulties poets still find themselves in. The Imagists stressed clarity, exactness and concreteness of detail. Their aims, briefly set out, were that:

1. Content should be presented directly, through specific images where possible.
2. Every word should be functional, with nothing included that was not essential to the effect intended.
3. Rhythm should be composed by the musical phrase rather than the metronome.

Also understood — if not spelled out, or perhaps fully recognized at the time — was the hope that poems could intensify a sense of objective reality through the immediacy of images.

Imagism itself gave rise to fairly negligible lines like:

You crash over the trees,
You crack the live branch…  (Storm by H.D.)

Nonetheless, the reliance on images provided poets with these types of freedom:

1. Poems could dispense with classical rhetoric, emotion being generated much more directly through what Eliot called an objective correlate: "The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked." {10}

2. By being shorn of context or supporting argument, images could appear with fresh interest and power.

3. Thoughts could be treated as images, i.e. as non-discursive elements that added emotional colouring without issues of truth or relevance intruding too mu
...............
PROSE BASED POETRY
prose based poetry

When free verse lacks rhythmic patterning, appearing as a lineated prose stripped of unnecessary ornament and rhetoric, it becomes the staple of much contemporary work. The focus is on what the words are being used to say, and their authenticity. The language is not heightened, and the poem differs from prose only by being more self-aware, innovative and/or cogent in its exposition.

Nonetheless, what looks normal at first becomes challenging on closer reading — thwarting expectations, and turning back on itself to make us think more deeply about the seemingly innocuous words used. And from there we are compelled to look at the world with sharper eyes, unprotected by commonplace phrases or easy assumptions. Often an awkward and fighting poetry, therefore, not indulging in ceremony or outmoded traditions.
What is Prose?

If we say that contemporary free verse is often built from what was once regarded as mere prose, then we shall have to distinguish prose from poetry, which is not so easy now. Prose was once the lesser vehicle, the medium of everyday thought and conversation, what we used to express facts, opinions, humour, arguments, feelings and the like. And while the better writers developed individual styles, and styles varied according to their purpose and social occasion, prose of some sort could be written by anyone. Beauty was not a requirement, and prose articles could be rephrased without great loss in meaning or effectiveness.

Poetry, though, had grander aims. William Lyon Phelps on Thomas Hardy's work: {1}

"The greatest poetry always transports us, and although I read and reread the Wessex poet with never-lagging attention — I find even the drawings in "Wessex Poems" so fascinating that I wish he had illustrated all his books — I am always conscious of the time and the place. I never get the unmistakable spinal chill. He has too thorough a command of his thoughts; they never possess him, and they never soar away with him. Prose may be controlled, but poetry is a possession. Mr. Hardy is too keenly aware of what he is about. In spite of the fact that he has written verse all his life, he seldom writes unwrinkled song. He is, in the last analysis, a master of prose who has learned the technique of verse, and who now chooses to express his thoughts and his observations in rime and rhythm."

.............
OPEN FORMS IN POETRY
open forms in poetry

Poets who write in open forms usually insist on the form growing out of the writing process, i.e. the poems follow what the words and phrase suggest during the composition
To me eternity lies in thy eyes,
and thy rejection my demise.
If so but accept and heal me likewise;
whilst shun and stab my sore heart, otherwise.
Thou hath always been to me a surprise;
Though a doubtful, but sparkling surprise,
So any dejection of thine shall be odd,
And a thousand times bitterer than a cold rapid retort;
For thou art pure; and sometimes too pure and fine
As how thy immortal soul stayest still, and growest not old
And in toughness and roughness is to remain,
So long as thy dried flesh shall age, and afford;
And with such songs so prolific as prayers
By friendly laudations like bewitching storms
Thou shall forever stay, and newer grow fader
And in such coldness thou shall offer me warmth;
Beside yon raging fire, and about thy manly arms,
Thou shalt but lull and cradle me like a baby-
until sleep comes and whispers dreams onto me,
Thou shalt be far more tender and smart-
Unlike that ungrateful preceding heart,
Which claimed to be civil, but uncivil,
United but then left my unsuspecting heart apart;
So unlike thee, who is but a smart little devil
Thou who earnestly tempted my soul, and lured my blood
Thou returned my blushes, and caught away my heart
Ah, and now-whenever I thinkest of thee,
All pain and gloom shall revert to oneness,
But how still I know not, as whose days remain but a mystery
For everything in which is at times barren and colourless;
But when alive, they are just as simple
as those brief dreams of thine and mine,
With a love but too sufficient, majestic and ample
Delicately shall they turn troubled and unseen,
But caring and healing and blinding and shaking,
taking turns like oceanic birds which go about
swimming and singing and strumming and swinging,
like a painting of prettily sure clarity-but unseen,
or perhaps a pair of loving, yet unforgettable winds.

To thee whom I once loved, and now still do,
To thee towards whom my hardened heart-again, turns soft,
To thee whom my delirium is all kept safe and true,
To thee for whom I canst feel never reproach-and only love,
And to thee-ah, to thee, thee only-by whom
the grandeur of the blue sky shalt melt;
Ah, thee! And betwixt thy gaze,
All fictitious sunsets shalt perhaps become wet-
Just like those azure spirits in thy fair eyes,
Sometimes too indignant but unquestioning,
and too pure-as to whom even the Devil hath no lies;
To thee only, to whom this enduring love is ever assigned,
And forever, even its temptation be mine, and only mine,
Like unforgivable sins, which are sadly left unatoned
In its eternity standing still like a statue;
beside its wrathed, and bloodied howling stone
And to thee merely, to whom this impaired heart shall ever return,
As it now does, with cries and blows that makest my heart churn
And canst wait not 'till the morn, for on morns only,
thou shalt creepest down the stairs, and stareth onto me,
Often with eyes full of questions;
Questions that thou art too bashful to reflect,
So that turn themselves later on, into emotions,
Which withereth and dieth days after, of doom and neglect.
Ah, but still I loveth thee!
For this regret makest me but loveth thee more and more,
and urge my soul greater, to loveth thee better-than ever before.
For 'tis thee who yet stills my cry, and silences my wrath;
The one who kills my death, and reawakens my breath.
Thou on whom my love shall be delightfully poured,
A love as amiable as the one I hold for dearest Lord,
A love for thee, for only thee in whom I'th found comfort,
A comfort that is holier than any heaven, or even His very own divine abode;
Thou art holier than the untouched swaying grass outside,
Which is green, with greenness so handy and indulgent to every sight,
Thou who art madder than madness itself,
But upon Friday eves, makest my joy even merrier,
And far livelier-than any flailing droplet of rain
Showering this earth's clustered soil out there,
Which does neither soften nor flit away my pain
But makest it even worse, as if God Himself shan't solicit, nor care
Like any other hostile love, which thou might kindly find, every where.

To thee whom I once loved, and now still do,
To thee towards whom my hardened heart-again, turns soft,
To thee whom my delirium is all kept safe and true,
To thee for whom I canst feel never reproach-and only love,
And to thee-ah, to thee, thee only-by whom
the grandeur of the blue sky shalt melt;
In my mind thou art the lost eternity itself,
And by its proud self, thou art still even grander,
For thou makest silence not any more silence,
but joy, in return, even a greater joy.
Ah, thee, thou who the painter of my day,
and the writer of my blooming night.
Thou who art the poet of my past,
and the words of my courteous present.
Thou shall ******* flirty orange blossoms,
And cherish its virtue, which strives and lives
As a most sumptuous, and palpable gift-
Until the knocking of this year's gentle autumn.
Ah! Virtue, virtue, o virtue-whose soul always be
a charm, and indeed a very generous charm-
to my harmonious, though melancholy, *****.
Ah, thee; o lost darling-my lost darling of all awesome day and night,
My lost darling before starlight, and upon the pallid moonlight,
My lost darling above the reach of my sight, and height;
Thou art still a song-to my now tuneless leaves,
and a melody to their bottomless graves,
Thou shalt be a cure to their ill harmony;
Thou art their long-betrayed melody.
And even, thou art the spring
my dying flowers needst to taste,
fpr being with thee produces no haste;
and or whom nothing is neither early, nor late;
And whenst there be no fate, thou shalt be
yon ever consuming fate itself-
And by our inane eyes, thou shalt makest it
but adorable and all the way strong,
For thou, as thou now do, nurture it better
than all the other graciousness among;
Thou art the promise it hath hitherto liked; but just
shyly-and justly refuted, for the bareness of pride,
and often inglorious resistance-all along.

To thee whom I once loved, and now still do,
To thee towards whom my hardened heart-again, turns soft,
To thee whom my delirium is all kept safe and true,
To thee for whom I canst feel never reproach-and only love,
And to thee-ah, to thee, thee only-by whom
the grandeur of the blue sky shalt melt;
Ah, thee! Even in undurable haste, thou art still like a butterfly,
fast and rapid flowing about the earth and into the sky;
Thou who art grateful not for this earth's soil;
Thou who saith 'tis only the sky that canst make thou feel.
Thou who cannot sit, thou cannot lay,
but on whose lanes thou always art secure,
as though from now thou shalt live too long
And belong to this rigorous earth
to whom our mortal souls do not belong.
And as to its vigour, death cannot be delayed,
and words of deadness shalt fast always, be said.
Ah, yet but again, I cannot simply be wrong;
for thou art immortal, immortal, and immortal;
To death thou art but too insipid and loyal;
that willing it not be, to take thy soul into its mourning,
and awkward prayers so scornful and worrying.
Thou who needst not be afraid of death;
for breath shalt never leave thee, and thou shan't breath.
Unsaid poems of thine are thus never to remaineth unspoken,
and far more and more thoughts shalt be perfectly carved, and uttered;
Unlike mine; whose several mortal thoughts shalt be silenced, and unknown
And after years passed my name shalt be forgotten, and my poems altered.
But thou! By any earth, and any of its due shape-thou shalt never be defaced,
and whose thoughts shalt never, even only once-be rephrased,
for thou art immortal, and for decades undying shalt be so;
And to life thou remaineth shalt remain chaste, and undetached;
as the divine wholeness whenst 'tis all slumped and wretched,
and white in unsoiled finery, whenst all goes to dirt and waste;
For grossness shalt escape thee, and stains couldst still, not thee fetch.
To every purity thou shalt thus be the best young match;
Ah, just like my mind shalt ever want thee to be;
but thou art missing from my sight-ah, as thou art not here!
Our paths are far whenst they are but near,
and which fact fillest me still, with dawning dread and fear
Unfortunately, as in this poem, my words not every heart shalt hear;
And to my writings doth I ever patiently retreat, the one,
and one only; whom to my conscience so dear.

To thee whom I once loved, and now still do,
To thee towards whom my hardened heart-again, turns soft,
To thee whom my delirium is all kept safe and true,
To thee for whom I canst feel never reproach-and only love,
And just to thee-ah, to thee, thee only-by whom
the grandeur of the blue sky shalt melt;
How fate but still made us here and meet,
That clue shall never makest me blind, and forget!
Now blighted I am, by dire ungladness and regret,
for having abhorred, and slighting thee too much!
For should I still cherish thee before my mortal death,
and be bitter and testy not; much less grim or harsh.
For fate is what fate is, as how love is just it looks;
and God's doings cannot be wrong; and true and faithful
as words I found crafted, and deciphered in old books.
Ah, and God's blessings are to arriveth in time,
and to taste whose due I indeed needst to be patient.
Be patient t'wards the love on which I climb,
ah, as for me-and whenst the right time cometh-
thou shalt be my sole wealth; so dear and sufficient!
And so for thee, no matter how thou hath my heart now torn,
Still I canst, and shalt reward thee not-with scorn;
for thou art my fate, my path, and my salved destiny;
For of which I am assured, definite, and convinced-
with all my degrees of humble pride, and vivid certainty-
Ah, darling, and thou art my humbleness, but also too many a time-my vanity;
For whom I shan't go and venture but anywhere-
As long as thou stayest and last-verily and for yon whole eternity, by me.
Nat Lipstadt Jan 2014
Dreams of a Child
Created: Jan 23, 2011 5:44 AM
Finished: Jan 30, 2011 4:23 AM
Posted here  Jan 2014
Warning:
a very, very long poem, but within , I promise,
there is a precise stanza about, for you.  
Take it as my gift.
Let me know which you took home to play.

~~~~~~~


Some poets care not
for the
discipline of rules,
laws of punctuation.

Why bother brother,
with putting poems
in antiquated jailhouses,
prisons of vertical bars,
or afford the reader,
the courtesy of horizontal lines?

Question and quotations marks
these day refuted,
as a Catcher In The Rye
conspiracy symbology of big lies,,
political interventionism,
to the creative, most natural
right to be crude.  

Inconvenient impositions,
symbolic flailings, of an
over regulated civilization
in the throes of declination

Punkuation is but a
societal annoyance to
today's creative geniuses,
periods, commas,
nothing more than
a pause to think -
who needs 'em?
when we want to stink
up the atmosphere with vitriols
of half truths and inhuman
but oh so gleeful,
concentrated disparagement
of any person worthy of
nationwide late night mocking merriment.

Such free spirits, vivid animations,
within me do not reign,
though upon occasion,
boy got permission slips  
for breaking bad by invention
of an occasional new word.

New words, white truffles
vocabulic incantations,
my own cupcake creations,
meant to burr, or purr,
their tasty meanings, always,
were readily apparent.

Sometimes we rhyme,
sometimes  we can't;
doth not a reading of a
poetic periodic table
of rants, chants
love poems, and paeans
to a shhhh! pretend,
overarching, poesy ego
require some minimalist format?

How I envy you,
kind observer,
possessor of literary powers
untoward and untold,
delicate touches of a fingertip
rule and rue
poetic invention.

You can zoom away or in
for a closer examination
of unscripted revelations,
incinerate them like an
yesterday's newspaper,
thus demonstrate contempt for
less-than-historic ruminations,
as time has done before.

Witness the crumbled ruins of Ozymandias,
king of kings,
and how the critic's machinations
with a dash of tabasco time,
his works, now museum pieces,
in the Tate Modern's room of
Laughable Human Aspirations.

Don't panic, sigh or groan,
kind observer,
infection inflictions,
content of discontentment,  
ancient whinings that the publisher
long ago listed as discontinued,
will not herein unfold.

What has all these mumbled asides
to do with the Dreams of a Child?

Apologies prolific I distribute
for this long winded profligate prologue;
and even for prior invasions
of your contemplative fantasias,
but my intention certain:
**** out the weak chaff eaters,
feigners of faux interest,
who stanzas ago deserted us,
this confessional lore.

These prior lines conceived
to mislead and deceive,
to refer and deter
send away, the hangers-on
who litter our lives,
with whimpered falsehoods.


So, we begin anew:

Today's lecture entitled
Dreams of a Child
were formatted on a silver disc;
this communication's originations,
seedlings of block
roman black letters
on background of cleansing white,
re things that jar me in the night.

Easy slights that waken
from a fitful, pitted rest,
mental paintings
natured in gem colors,
tourmaline auras,
and vibratto hues
of blue zircons.  .  

I have never lain upon the couch,
in the inner holy of holies,
where one whispers
to the Father Confessor
an original composition,
subject, title and inspiration
of said unique origination,
decidedly of one's own choosing,
roots of the essay's telling,
harvested in the root garden
of one's dreams,
where grow herbs,
spicy ones,
flavors of childhood.

The lush and wooded smells
of a forest of childhood scars,
and it's concomitant
putrefying, fruited rot,
awoke and brokered
a stilted, tremulous sleep.

Went to bed a a man
of modest success,
of modest scenes,
a bond trader, who trades
exactly that:
his word, his bond,
his blessing to his
deal constructions,
all of which, ended with an
irrevocable cri of "Done!"

Yet like you,
I am oft undone.

Dreams.

In truth, not dreams, but
spectral moments of
our lives relived,
a melange of ancient lyrics,
taunts of childhood abusers and
peer humilators
who could
teach the CIA
torture techniques
of WORD boarding, par excellent.

Angelic faces of human ****
that birthed in me a holy duality,
anger and a,
love of words,
my vaccination serum.

Granted a love of
human kindness
from teachers who cherished their
high and mighty tight
to publicly humiliate,
knowing full well
that human laws could not
attempt to have them
justly incarcerated.

Where, where were
the supervisors
who let me be spit upon
in the back seat of a
Fifty's station wagon,
by the brothers of
a sainted dead shepherd?

I am still eight,
sitting on a stoop in the
modest side of town,
towel in hand, so handy,
to wipe the tears shed
for cause,
for the car-pool of suburban boys
who "forgot" to pick me up for
Sunday swim night.  

In high school,
in the back row,
I silently ******
the juice of a Sarte lemon and
essayed a term paper,
upon multiple mirrored
reflections of a man
called Camus.

As another self styled, only living
teenage expert
on "alien nations"
received with pride and trepidation,
a sentence of Ninety Eight,
on my term paper,
but the pedantic predators
deemed it an accident
for I, was  inscribed in their
Upper East Side
Coda of Prejudice,
as merely,
"just" a
man of USDA,
B grade quality intellect.  

Hand me downs
I did not get
as I was the
younger, sole brother,
but worn lint lines
of humiliation
when and where my pants
were "let down"
to accommodate growth spurts
were my growing marks of Cain.

Those growth lines
were economic reality signs,
and were rich fodder for
childhood monsters,
Scions of Income Superiority
who lived in ranch homes in
two car, color tv garage slums,
wearing band new Levis.

In the Sixties,
time of my unsilent spring
wore a cross of
teenage hood,
my hair,
worn long,
Jesus style

Worn with labor pride,
for it was
Made in the USA,
I was a most conventional
revolutionary.

In the parochial jail
of educated guesses,
where society's lesson plans
of all that was bad
were O so well taught,
I was apart, ahead,
of Our Crowd,
but not too, radically.  

But a spiteful
Principal of No Principle,
deemed my locks a
disruptive influence,
so to exorcise my rebel streak,
so to crucify his "Jesus Freak,"
so to exercise his diminutive spirit
a pompous uber man,
he had me shorn
like a sheep,
thrice
in just one day,

He loved his full employment
of his pharoic entitlement,
The Educator's Power of Abuse,

I was so denuded
of human strength,
the Italian barbers of the
East 86th Street subway station,
wept for me,
their cri du coeur,
Angels in Heaven did hear
and from God
did dare demand
an explanation!

He roared in manner celestial,
"Is he not my child too,
and if he be treated
in style *******,
it is purposed and willful."

Pornographic compilations of
slaps across a child's face,
I've got plenty
of and in My Space,
should you care to
add your own,
down under,
got plenty of room
for all comers    

In a Facebook world,
I pride, not pretend,
that having fewer "friends"  
is my honest and true
reflection of who I am, and,
life lessons learned -
quality, not quantity.  

Victims of discrimination
can be most discriminating
in matters of
human games, associations.  
****** or word,
lack of taking care
is not heart healthy.

Tried to forgive
the despotic progenitors,
of some of that which
is good within me
that, irony of ironies,
they can claim the title,
creator;

Tried to give them
what I had gotten -
from the happy malcontented  
evil spreaders,

That grace, grace is
the only methodology,
an inestimable but
valuable lost leader,
the only way
to survive on
this planet of
hardtack and
caste striation.  

Though still quick to anger
at the cutters and denigrators
I am quick still to
confess my own failings, and forgive those
of plain and honest folk.

Unfortunately, kind observer,
you had to share my brunt,
syllabic Iwo Jima battles
of a decaying verbal moonscape
to reach the denouement,
for now we have,
mostly arrived

Most likely you too
have long ago
deserted me like
so many others,
no matter,
this modulated breath
was born and released
from my heaving chest and
as I knew it,
know this:

My Absaloms
where ever you be,
presumably and hopefully in hell,
I give you thanks
and a mini bar drink
of absolution.
a tin medal of appreciation,
for the
Marked Improvement
you inadvertently nurtured
in this restless,
voyagered soul.

My ancient enemies
till now, be advised,
forgive and forget
was and has not  
fully formed
in my penitential template,

Unlike your natural capacity
for cruelty and mean
birthed unto you
in your third rate
genetic melange,
forgiveness is taught
in a Master Class
at a famous school of Ethical Drama,
that I did not attend

Though resident in
a better place,
my root garden,
the bitter herbs you planted
still grow but,
are welcome in sweet brotherhood,
until the selah days
of just one flavor.

Though the universe's expansion
is of a pace such that
time and space definitions
will stretch and warp
and need be
refined, replaced,
the governing principle here.
need not be rephrased.  

For goodness
from evil
doth come
and should your
evil spectres
once more try
for resurrection
in my benighted
dream world.
you will find the doors
locked and barred,
upon them a sign
not verbose,

**Done.
Whew.
Wade Redfearn Oct 2010
She is scared by the
long slow dwindling of
the heart's manouevres
towards the end of the night,
or of life.

So she tugs on its clammy fingers
tries to get it to waltz again.

I tell her:"Live with me between
a name and anonymity."
I say nothing.

There's no foyer in a one-room kitchenette,
but I stand in the foyer anyways,
holding half a poem -
or half a person.
And tilting at windmills.

She is a page and then some
a rough border - shaggy corners.
Glue chafing from the binding.
And maybe she is older than me.

But nobody ever learned to hunt
by watching vegetables being chopped,
and we both agree that since we're
pledging allegiance, we can put our hands
anywhere, right? I just haven't
mentioned which country.

The point is this:
Tomorrow is a mystery creature,and I refuse to guess
whether it wears fur or feathers.
ryn Aug 2016
My teacher once asked
a short simple question.
She had asked,
"What do you want to be?"
Raised arms answered her query.
Open palms each belonging to excitable children.

Wide little eyes looked up at her.
Hands began to flail in the air...
Ever so hopeful of being chosen.
So that they could voice their aspirations.
So that they could begin to share.

One by one,
they each was given the opportunity.
Turn by turn,
boastful were some
while others spoke quiet and shyly.

Then the teacher stopped short.
Not before expressing her delight.
She was in awe of such young minds...
Having had such great wings
to eventually take flight.

Then she explained...
What she had initially meant.
Confused looks all around including me.
She rephrased the question,
"What kind of person...
Do you want to be?"


There was silence.
No arms shot up to meet the subject.
I don't recall having raised mine,
but I remember telling the teacher...
An answer (I was confident), she wouldn't expect.

I stood at my desk,
proud and tall...
And told the teacher
that I wished to be a person...
Well loved by all.

She smiled and I did too.
I felt it was a good answer.
She nodded to signal for me to take my seat again.
She paused before speaking,
and not a moment later.

She said,
"That would be nice.
To be loved by all.
But that's close to impossible.
A big wish for someone so small."


I had heard her words clearly...
However I didn't understand.
My brows furrowed...
And I was deep in thought...
Still I couldn't comprehend.

28 years later...
Here I sit,
looking back to that time in the past.
How time flies...
It simply ticked away...
All too fast.

Till just then I was still that boy...
Who tried hard to please.
I wanted to prove that it wasn't impossible.
You can be loved by everyone,
and you can do it with ease.

But now I have learnt.
Now I have found meaning
and understanding in my teacher's wisdom.
It took me a while but...
I know now...
That wishes and reality don't work in tandem.

You can choose to care and love,
everyone you see.
But to expect everyone to love you the same...
Is sheer
impossibility.
.
You can't please everyone in life.
When you work around people, you're bound to step on some toes...
Whether intentionally or not.

Dedicated to my primary school teacher
and all the teachers out there. A tad early but...
Happy Teachers Day.
.
Where Shelter Sep 2023
“A groan of tedium escapes me, startling the fearful
Is this a test? It has to be, otherwise I can't go on.
Haven't written a word in three and a half years.
Time to take the broom out to this shallow grave”
Middlesteps

~~~~(|)~~~~

For
deep is the fear, coated in thickening veneer
of might-be-bravery,
the weight, Oh, the weight!
of that writing utensil that both
bears and bares all,
an uncomfortable unconscious,
uncontrollable surrender
that sweeps down upon us,
when first we seek the unwieldy unwinding
of our proactive fist of a first step,
the unclenching, the open face palm,
seeing our lifeline’s revelation, the shame,
the lines we thought that faded away,
upended, open ended, that the worst
un-finishing, but here I am, my taking, the
baby steps of Middlesteps,
only looking
back to forwards for permission,

a new looking inward
forward!

we confesses, beg for our own forgiveness
for ourselves, the years of summary silence ,
at last!
unveiled and unbound, this first step stinks of
tremors, poems never writ up, but on our mouths
and fingertips yet memorized as IF they were bespoke

this return,
“startling the fearful,”
a provocation to the mirrored images
caked on my disheartened body,
goes lightly noticed, but not by me!

daily, I ask the bay and the sky, the animals,
the query lives in almost each of my scripts,

Where is Shelter?

today the answer is not an apparition,
but the question is rephrased,
not where! but when
the answer is now apparent,
for the seed planted, this is for you,
watering the seed, feeding the shoot,
that I know too well,
for asked and I answer,

everyday…
Middlesteps 3h
Helper
I worry, i have not time to give up praying,
But i gather dust as i wait.

This old heart yearns for
Glory
Stretches and strains, gasping for breath,
But it's
Growing.

My pain, shining in the darkness,
Glowing;
I feel it
Flowing;
Bristling in my veins,
Exploding;
Whistling in me, crazed,
Contorting.
But i keep
Exploring.

Calling out Your Name,
I'm going.
It's driving me insane,
But it's
Showing.
My wings are
Bowing.


Pick me up by the tips of
My fingers;
Lift me up to Your
Chambers;
Settle me in front of Your
Dinners;
Take me from this hall of
Mirrors;
As my heart
Shivers;
It cries
Rivers.

Nothing will stop me as You pull me away,
Rise above me in Your endless Grace,
But i'm
Brittle;
I need Your
Shelter;
Be my
Helper.
Jennifer Freya Jan 2013
Someone asked me once,
“What is your Prince Charming like?”
I said I didn't know him,
So they rephrased, “What would he be like?”

I answered the question truthfully,
Yet they think me cynical and hopeless.
This the case may be,
But I like to think that I’m just me.

This is what I’d said:
First of all, Prince Charming wouldn't be a prince.
He’d be an everyday guy, living day to day,
Searching for meaning, for someone to stay.

He’d be kind and smart and more outgoing than me,
But he’d listen and understand,
That sometimes I’m human and am afraid -
That I’ll lose my faith in love even though I've prayed.

He’ll have kind brown eyes that are down-to-earth.
He’ll share his secrets and savor mine.
When I’m down, he’ll lift me up high
And will make me smile when I cry.

He’ll hold me tight and squeeze away my pain,
He'll know to stay when I need him,
And that sometimes I like to be alone,
Yet he’ll show me all I've never known.

But, I finished, Prince Charming doesn’t exist,
And I’ve seen enough heart breaks to know,
That our Charmings aren’t what they seem
And that he’s really just the things of dreams.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2016
poetry can resemble a jackson ******* method - but it can also resemble sitting on the stairs in the garden, just when winter starts to dig into it's cold at night (but still not cold enough) for a man drinking beer and smoking cigarettes to feel the skin etch out in itches from the mild freeze, and imagining himself holding the beer bottle with skeletal fingers... then the thoughts come... nothing is really planned by a narrator working out a fictional linear process, it's more like that soviet invention of a game of tetris, thoughts come, the ego disappears, thoughts arrange for a brief narrative, then disappear, new thoughts come, then a randomisation process takes over, until ex nihil complete dispersion, the faculty of thinking is exiled, and the faculty of memory takes over.*

after watching two grand movies in one day,
it felt really sour to return to the grand stasis of things,
the only constellations that are visible
without any ******* notion of light pollution
are scorpio and the big dipper...
the litter dipper is more dim this year,
so dim i mistook the earth's celestial geographic
route as spring summer the big dipper is
when in autumn winter the big dipper is
the small dipper... but seeing the two in the night
once i became aspirational in my error -
if only the prefix aspi- existed, derived from
aspen to the added continuance of the word
left: rational: rationality based upon unforced error?
but these two films: kingsman: the secret service
& the hobbit: the desolation of smaug
you get penetrated by so many active ingredients
for the narration via images, that when you
un-glue your eyes from plato's cave (actors
are the best conclusive interpretation of shadows,
no rabbits in the hand to be mistaken for the real things)
you get this drawback sensation of having to focus
on inanimate things in stasis -
and it can & does become pretty glum,
esp. if you want to return to the realm of using
phonetic symbols, to not speak in reserve for
an up-and-coming stage performance
but to see the glaring starry composition of hidden
things in the things already seen...
so there with the beer, scorpio elsewhere
the big dipper only thing providing me with
a workable dynamic: in schematic
          
       .         .
                    
                       .
                .

       .
            .

               .


i had to active this arrangement of stars
to negated feeding my exposure to
so many images...
i began by coupling the stars: three couplets
one star the odd one out...
then i started to create a dynamic
on the basis of geometry, a geometric
non-linear representation of infinity,
but the constellation into a circle,
and therefore thought of infinity as not
beginning                         sequence                    end,
after all, infinity as a constant interchange
of 10 distinctions 0 - 9 can be ridiculous,
whereby infinity just becomes a randomisation:
either 14123480345792340834 etc.
or 12300984393657499393030, etc.
so using geometry i need to acquire
a infinite parallelism, infinite parallelism
implied as non-convergence.... two points
small enough (atoms, sub-atomic particles,
stars) to interact in parallel, but never converge,
for if convergence was possible...
i wonder: me being conscious of being
the olympic gold swimmer to the ****?
i hardly think so.
i can perceive atoms via the greek imagination
or with the galileo of small-print via the microscope,
but i can't individuate an atom of some sort
to a specified functional guarantee: well yeah,
sulphur stinks... but i could technically
atomise the one unit in my capacity to a state
of an atom... my self... given the number of people
and all the chance interactions in an environment
big enough to all a minuteness of the atomised self...
which is perhaps the counter to that old chestnut
known as solipsism: how to get the right phonetically
chemical concoction to get an etymologically word
out of this? atomipsism? no philology in me just
yet to open the bible of philology (the dictionary)
or bother thesaurus rex for comparative literature.
but anyway, as things go i was musing this other thing,
the fame of achilles with the modern fame machinery...
back then you really had to push the right buttons,
and your actual fame was post-mortem, in order
that you might be glorified in some way...
modern fame seems like a bad orwellian joke...
it's translated into our modern themes of catchphrases
slogans and trademarks as c.c.t.v., a ****** camera
on your shoulder... it actually is a bad orwellian joke...
no double think i rephrased into:
there are more c.c.t.v. cameras in england than in
all of europe put together... so the double think
is as this:
a. should i be bothered, or
b. should i not be bothered?
i'll answer with my usual enigmatic methodology by
just changing the subject -
we left the realm of philosophic doubt and thinking,
we entered the realm of modern denial and thinking,
i dare say i prefer doubt to denial,
it makes all our apprehensions, petty fears and
all petty concerns a bit smaller - via the maxim:
the only fear to fear is fear itself... denial doesn't
provide what doubt provides, doubt is like
cushioned fear... if there's a fear to fear as simply itself
doubt puts a lid on it, a spontaneity,
a kantian noumenon by definition, fear-in-itself.
It’s February, 2015, a Saturday and here I ‘yam.
Back in sunny California again:
The sun shining brightly again
On My Old Hemetucky Home,
Another mutant Stephen Foster tune.
Hemet: Riverside County,
Southern California,
The so-called Inland Empire,
According to the hyperbolic parlance,
Of sharkskin-suited land speculators,
Truly, the last of the
Patent medicine, liniments &
Snake oil hucksters.
Hemet: little oversight & lax policing
Yield a thriving, local
Medical-marijuana industry.
You are comfortably tucked . . .  
TUCKS® Medicated Pads | TUCKS®
www.tucksbrand.com/medicated-pads‎ Witch Hazel soothes and protects irritated areas. Medicated Cooling Pads are...

(THAT’S RIGHT, *******: A ******* COMMERCIAL RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ******* POEM!  GIUSEPPI MARTINO BUONAIUTO--SURELY NOBODY”S FOOL—FINALLY FIGURING OUT HOW TO MAKE POETRY PAY, THEREFORE AVOIDING THE DIED-IN-THE-GUTTER BIT.)
You are safely tucked behind the impenetrable
(www.tucks.com)
Wackenhut G4S Security-
(www.wackenhut.com)
Policed & Patrolled walls,
Of your typical over-55 gated lunatic asylum.
“For Active Adults,” reads the sign,
Whatever that means.
I’ve been thinking about the adventurous young.
What is it these bright,
Wander-lusting whippersnappers
Fixate and obsess about.
Like dropping out & coasting for a while.
Dropping out & coasting:
Not as easy to pull off for 20-somethings these days,
As it was in the late sixties/early seventies,
Flush times for Guns & Butter.
Where is it cheap to live?
Where on . . .
“This blessed plot, this earth,
This realm, this England . . .”
Where on this ozone-depleted,
Global fondue fungus ***,
Can I go to just sit still?
To think:  to make sense of it all?
It’s leisure, Kemosabe.
Leisure cultivates philosophy.
LEISURE:
The very stuff of curiosity and
REACH—
As in: “One’s grasp should exceed one’s reach”—
Idleness leads us,
Gifts us with understanding &
Self-awareness.
You are 21 again, and restless.
You are unwilling to just settle in.
So, where do you go?
Where can you live on savings?
To not work,
But not go hungry?
To just sit still,
Contemplating the state of the wicket,
Be it wicked or sticky.
Today it’s Prague and Berlin—
Or, for the truly decadent: Bangkok.
For us it was Florence or Paris—
Or, for the truly frugal,
Driving our cars to Mecca: Montreal,
"La Métropole du Québec"
Sanctified are the places we’ve chilled.
Shrines & vortexes; each holy latitude,
As Han Solo drolly reminds us:
“It’s not the years; it’s the miles.”
The amount of ground covered,
A blessing devoutly to be wished in Old Age:
But I digress.
Just the thought of hanging out
Some place really cool,
Yet relatively inexpensive--
In a parlance acquired
Over the years and the miles,
Tactfulness learned,
Manipulating the language
For fun & profit.
Common sense is aged in the barrel
And the bottle, rephrased.
Vernacular Viniculture.
Which proves my point:
If you live long enough &
Read enough of the right stuff,
Eventually you’ll discover
A precise, more exact vocabulary,
Appropriate for Old Age inner monolog.
Would Old Age be tedious?
Boring, for those who
Never went anywhere?
Both physically & spiritually speaking.
Are memories our only revenge on Old Age?
And for those hiding behind the barriers,
Safe. Ignorant. Jolly. Dull.
A fast track toward senility &
Evanescence.
Does Alzheimer’s seek out & destroy the
Most cloistered among us?
While those bold & beautiful,
Experienced, still spinning,
Still weaving a tapestry in 3-D Technicolor.
Remembrances of things past . . .
(Get back in your hole, Marcel . . .)
And as the AARP crowd knows so well:
We Baby Boomers really had it pretty soft.
Boom economics,
Conspicuous consumption,
Coonskin hats, Betsy Wetsies & Hula Hoops!
By and large:
FUN TIMES!
No Great Depression,
No chocolate rationing.
A jungle war pretty much optional,
For most of us of the
American bourgeoisie.
We’ve got a lot to remember.
We’ve much to be grateful for.
Electronic media changed everything for us.
Television and movie theaters gave us
Alternative dimensions,
Parallel lives,
Multiple identities.
Experience so real that
To see it on the screen
Was to live it, oneself.
Perhaps those video downloads
Might prove useful one day.
Comforts out on Golden Pond.
Will you still need me?
Will you still feed me?
When I'm sixty-four?
Grazie, Sir Paulie.
the pompous one
with her comments
as she slithers by
with
the rudest
of dogs

the confident family;
confident
     to a fault
sitting too close
and talking
too loud

the hypocrite
complaining
of the mess
and leaving behind
a scavenger's
detritus

the insecure sage
a font of knowledge
based on
hearsay
and opinion
with only
a pinch
     of fact

the innocently gormless
with no thought
for sense
     or logic
common or otherwise
but only
for the now
and
the immediate

these are
the passengers
on the
carousel
     of frustrations
for today;
replayed
rephrased
resurrected
over
and over

i think
so little
     of them
yet
i'm unable
to stop myself
thinking
about them
Acting Naturally Jul 2013
Each drop of rain is a single truth,
constantly recycled and rephrased.
There is as much truth as there is water,
***** water being unclear truths.
Those who drown in oceans are overwhelmed by truth,
those who stay away are comforted on their solid lies.
Those who think happiness is sunshine
are clouded by bright rays of blinding lies.
Truth is the rain that you dance in,
walk in, slosh in, as you let it seep into your skin.
To dance in the rain is to bathe in truth,
perhaps not comprehending, but at the least, accepting.
Truth, like water, is essential for life.
Naash Sep 2017
My body is a beach house
And by the study room
with the view of the sea,
There is a coffee table.
All mornings have been made here.
It's a tiny piece of furniture that makes a huge part of life.
The match to the candle, and lighter to the veld fire.
There are doodles engraved on it.
They look like they could mean something,
Like how we are told not to recognize color but they turn around and tell us to tick in boxes.
Like how I'm a holy heathen who listens to the likes of Hopsin and Tech N9ne,
Like how I believe slavery is still alive but simply rephrased and concealed.
But then again, they are just doodles, who cares what they mean.
They smell the like the sunrise and bacon
Like broken hearts and virginities .
Like a shower washing off the previous night.
Like the disappointment my parents will feel when they find out who I really am.
A little girl angry at religion,
Angry at them for forcing it on me,
A little girl, angry at life.
Despite the meaninglessness of this old  scared coffee table, the devil and the angel in me sit in loving peace sipping this deadly caffeine.
Internal peace
Lies
Rage
Del Maximo Jul 2014
I was allowed to visit back home
whenever he wanted me to
adoption’s only condition
agreed to by Mama Julia

when I was about seven years old
Father and my older sister Coring
arrived unannounced
traveling in a boat he made himself
bringing gifts of large dried fish
small salted fish
green edible seaweed called, “latu”
and ceramic pots made by Mother

Father had never been to Carigara
but found the house with no trouble
everyone knew the Tranis
they directed him to the big house
called, “Tiha”
three stories
a tiled terracotta roof
coconut trees
sweet, fragrant yellow bananas
Mama Julia was away in Manila
old folks hesitated in her absence
fearing Father might keep me
they asked that he leave my older sister
to ensure my return
Father agreed

a very old friend accompanied Father
to sell her handmade pottery
very friendly
with messy white hair
and only one front tooth
her name was Reyang
they spent the night at Tiha
planning to leave early with me
but Apoy Reyang got drunk
from the tuba* Father brought
she went out into the street
walking and talking to herself
my friends told me later they liked the old lady
speaking wildly like a witch
we feared stories of bad witches
who snatched little kids
but no one ever actually saw one
so they were glad to see
a real live old witch
who wasn’t scary at all
they thought she was my grandma
actually envying me
for the nice witch in my family

Father built a mast in the middle of his banca
outriggers on both sides
were made of bamboo poles
lashed together with rope
sailing back to Guintarcan
he brought food to snack on
when wind stirred
Father raised sail
to make the boat go faster
when it was calm
he wrapped the sail on the mast
and used the paddle
I liked it when Father asked me
to hold something for him
but he spoke in a Samar dialect
when he realized I couldn’t understand him
he rephrased it the Carigara way

a perfect day
sea was calm
sky cloudless
I reached down to feel the cool, clear water
rush against my open hand
when the boat was moving faster
increased pressure on my palm was pleasing
I was happy and excited for the chance
to visit with family
but this adventure’s biggest thrill was simply:
my Father came for me


*coconut wine
© July 4, 2014
Canyon Read Jul 2015
I could write about anything
and no one would stop and think.
Everything's been said before.
Rephrased and repositioned
to the point of impotency.
bobby burns Nov 2012
i killed a spider
a few hours ago.
its body is still on
the wall next to where
i sleep.

all day was dark,
lying in bed
like a corpse.
gastroenteritis;
the stomach flu.

revival and rounds,
the kitchen, saltines.
"those items that are
no longer useful must
be exhumed."

refrigerator grave
cannot help but
remind me of my
sickness and how
you could have rephrased.

sometimes i wish
i could understand
you better than i do.
but then i realize it's
what makes our relationship.
Jess Goff Jan 2015
there are little things you don’t notice in your every day life.
when you hold someones hand, do you link your pinkie with their forefinger like i do? I tend to always want to be on someones right side, out of comfort. i realize that the question “how are you feeling” is completely overwhelming and should at best be rephrased. showers fix everything…. almost everything. if you breath deep enough you could cause more problems or you could get rid of them, choose wisely. socks are hugs for your feet and should be appreciated. especially when your begging for them to give you more medication or something to make you sleep so that just for a while you don’t have to feel it and you don’t have to face it and it doesn’t have to be real but they won’t because they don’t understand. they don’t feel it. they don’t link their pinkies with someone forefinger when they hold hands and they don’t stand on the right side of someone out of comfort and they don’t believe showers fix everything but they back up deep breaths even though it can cause more problems.
fray narte Aug 2019
today, i will wake up and think of you. the first thing will be about how your eyes had the color of all the storms that left this year. next will be your hair, in flaming red, as if to make up for all the colors your heart has been drained of for loving me. then, i will think of the way i wrote you poems amid writer’s block; every line, a compulsion, an obsession of i love you's rephrased. i will think of the feel of your skin, cold, but burning, like mercury fires crashing to the poles.

then, i will remember the chipped nails and back scratches and the heat of the whiskey, rushing from your mouth to mine. i will remember october and her rooftop letters we sealed with the skyline's silhouette. i will remember how they have become a foliage of words i refused to stop writing — and words you refused to read. i will remember how we wished to be paper cranes flung to the sun, how i have become icarus incarnate, falling, and crashing back to the earth. today, i will wake up and remember how loving you became my flight and my downfall. i will let the pain eat me up, rip my lungs, one flashback at a time. i will let the pain break me and break me and break me until there's nothing left to break.

and then one day, i will wake up darling, without sleeping next to make-believe alternate endings, without addressing you in apostrophes, and without the storms tailored to be metaphors for you. one day, i will wake up without wondering if you were ever hurt the way i was. i will wake up without thinking of you. i will wake up without the slightest traces of pain.

and then i will let you go.
Jess Oct 2013
I wanted to rip your name off my tongue, it no longer tasted sweet. It was expired and replenishable to another girl rain-checked in line. I didn’t fight back, I let them claim their prize. Every girl needs a you in their life, a man to flood her thoughts every second of everyday, a man to teach them that loving someone who doesn’t love them back is painfully repulsive. It had to be real? because who could love someone, and keep loving them without being loved back? Me. It hurt too much to be anything else… it burned my heart to see you love someone else who wasn’t me. It made me braver, it made me stronger, it made me realize that sometimes love is letting go, yet your heart is wanting to be stitched back up. The choice was once mine, before losing became my loss, I was there, but then I was forgotten, only to be rephrased of who I was to you
Faith Melton Oct 2011
I find faults in my own actions,
I try, but I’m miles away from perfection.
Although it seems to be a fictional word,
After so long, it still has so many definitions.
As ages pass, they’re reworded, rephrased; but
Time seems so irrelevant to me,
Just a useless measurement of our life.
With no actual control, it rules us.
I find no safe state of mind
As I sink into my own misery.
I’m drowning in my own sorrow...
Kwanele Apr 2015
Hospital beds
My hands are shaking I'm looking for something solid to grip on to before I wither away into the hands of doctors, narcotics and with everything in me I am trying to hold onto this because I don't want to be taken away from you, not now or ever.
I am afraid
Scared shitless : rephrased
Shaking hands don't take me away from my safe haven , rather put me next to her bed , I promise I'll lay peacefully and not giving anyone any trouble.
****** ! Psych ward, man I'm scared.
Kewayne Wadley Mar 2018
It's true though.
Any happiness you felt began with you first.
You didn't wait, you rephrased it as a smile.
Straightforward really.
You felt a way because my passion could never justify.
Only reinforce what you felt to begin with.
You felt a way because you respect yourself to be yourself.
The emotional boundaries of your well being.
Thus I awaited your permission before taking the first step.
Initially paraphrasing your smile.
The importance of being treated the way I'd like to be treated.
Holding your stare to create a sense of security.
A safety that went without ill-intention.
Not because you fill your jeans or the fact that your well put together.
What's meant to be is what's meant to be.
What's the rush.
Although true, you felt a way because I never crossed any of your boundaries.
A generational gap between "hey lets chill." and "I'd love to take you out."
The honesty of eyebrows highlighting life goals in full view of the sun.
Fully dressed.
Well groomed.
While the sky attends it's breakfast.
Reservation in the clouds.
The embodiment of grace
(20 minute poetry)


A suicidal tendency, a
complexity that overrides
a Central link deficiency or is it me that reads too much philosophy?

I have toyed with the idea of what it is and why we're here, but the answers still elude me.

To consider one is clued in yet haven't got a clue of how it all begins to fit in is in my opinion a failure, if that is so and I think it could be where on Earth does that leave (poor) me?

Back to suicide the option that one takes when there's no option and that bothers me immensely.

And if complexity's the key to this life where will we all be when the systematic dismantling of everything that makes it tick, every ill that makes us sick is taken from us?

Will it and the dichotomy be rephrased put in a dictionary, will the wood become the trees that we don't see?

Thus, the observation from the observation tower tells nothing of the awful power of what the mind can do when it is bored.
Joshua Donald Jun 2019
In the ****** of my grief
For a country lost in greed,
Divided by religious believe
And tribalism, i tried to relief
Myself by bathing
In bottles, while meditating
I entered my car and started trekking
With my bittered heart bleeding
My body or my soul, one was driving
But i can't tell which, because like Esau
I have sold my sovereignty to the bottles.

As i Drive pass moments
I suddenly saw a black giant
Holding the moon in his hand
With a voice like thunder he says
"stop, park and come out"
I struggled with my motor neurons
As my legs were no longer mine.
Finally the car was parked, and
I struggled to come out, but
Like Peter, the spirit is willing but
The body is weak, but
Like Jesus, i came out of
The car, to fulfill all righteousness
As the soldier holds his riffle close
I was Holding my bottle of
Peace and liberty closer
And he said "you have committed
A hideous crime for drinking and driving"
My heart danced to the Words of his voice
For i have seen a black man with a White
Heart, a true citizen of Nigeria.
Then he said "papers"
I quickly gave him my particulars
And he became furious and i became curious
As he rephrased "papers"
Then i asked myself is what have
Given to him a white board or a slate
Then with an alarming voice he rephrased  
"papers" then i decided to try
The Nigeria police policy as amended
By the check point men in black;
I deep my hand into my pocket and
Squeezed out twenty naira note
And gave to him and he said
"now u can pass" then i realized
What he has been saying is not PAPERS
But PAY-PASS.

I then asked the bottle in my hand,
If those who are to fight corruption
In Nigeria is corrupt, using the PDP or APC
Formula, find the value of corruption
In NIGERIA.
The history of my heart is written in rhymes.
The flow and meter of good and bad times,
All contained within the pages of a book,
Very few will ever earn a look.

My deepest secrets set in ink,
The blue lined page my only shrink.
My sins are masked hyberbole,
What they are, I'll never say.

When I have a space to fill,
Or the need to record my newest ****,
I begin again upon new page,
My alter ego, the sinning sage.

When I bear your transgressions,
I write them down as your confessions,
I rhyme the ways that you have wronged me,
Predicting what you will never be.

When my heart is under fire,
Or when it screams a new desire,
It all goes down in neat, narrow scrawl,
More impatient and vengeful than King Saul.

Whatever I feel, whatever I think,
It all goes down in this black, shiny ink.
Mind to pen to paper without delay,
I truly know no other way.

The story of my life is written in rhymes.
Pages filled with rephrased crimes.
Trapped between covers of a book,
The place where few shall ever look.
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2017
ever pet a cat while melting an ice cube?
me neither, otherwise 2 minutes from
now i hadn't...
   now it seems more
encouraging to repeat
than repeatedly *******
a woman in something
called marriage; i really wish the freudian
ego be turned into a body part,
like the english heel, and the sorry
     of having trimmed it
by stepping on it,
be it reduced to the expected oops
on the tube,
                   and what's
otherwise  -
   ego "non cogitans" est ego sum;
good point, where the **** did ergo
go?
ah...
you can't claim and blame
thought at the same time...

sometimes you're just "gravitating"
in a spatially-temporal realm
of coordination,
  a busy street, a tube station
platform... it's not exactly
162 i.q. points to be deemed an
metaphor that's einstein...

     which is why so many athletes
having nothing much to say,
give that there's nothing to be said
in the first place...
   there's no narrative!
  there's no explanation!
            it, just, is!
              why argue with a tiger
why it doesn't roar like
a lion?!
      may i ask?
you want a ******* essay concerning
camus from a 100m sprinter?
well.. good... luck!

thinking is spare,
  as most family males like to state:
thinking is just jerking off...
well done... paddy boy...
    **** some more of them in
your mongrel blender,
see what other genetic defects we get;
what? you ****** with my guitar...
i get to retaliate too, don't you think?

no?
   how's your ***** daughter looking
these days, with her maroccan boyfriend?
am i to cite... rome?
venice?
      edinburgh?
                 geneva?
             belgrad?
                        munich?
              ******! i want you to give back
my c. f. martin & co. acoustic guitar,
worth over 6 hundred quid!
last time i heard, from the daughter
i ******,
you're not exactly an idealist,
but a hackney house owning millionaire...
i love when people lie...
   it's the only time i get to rephrase
calling midgets giants, and liars?
     midgets / nuggets / posit for a rephrased
framework of all quintessential noun
   not yet evolved outside
the original phlegm of a hark and
  insinuated shame of being minded
as worth, the affair of using thought
to conjure it, without either top hat or rabbit.

p.s.
i actually don't know what i was
intending to write,
too much memory
   and a pinch of latin disorientated me...
as did the cat i just petted
with an ice-cube, sleeping in my bed.
sleepygnome Dec 2016
The stories always tell us

That "within darkness

There is always a glimmer of

Hope."

Had they treaded the depths

Of her cold, broken heart,

Maybe they would have rephrased that.



As dramatic as a teenager

In a sitcom romance,

She swore to never love,

For the fear of pain

Was much greater than the joys of

Temporary

Contentment.

She never would have guessed that

One person would destroy her way of life.



As carefree as a small puppy,

And as loving,

He walked in and...

Slung a monkey at her head.

It wasn't love at first sight.

But it was life changing.



Slowly he gained her trust.

She laughed more than she should have.

Her once sturdy guard was

Crumbling.

He worked away at the walls,

The webs,

The hate,

The fear.

He brought his light into her world.

He showed her what happens

When you take a

Risk.



The glimmer inside her was still

Small,

Fragile,

Close to extinction.

But his light fed her soul,

And healed her wounded heart.



He loved her,

Scars and all.

And she was enamored

With his gentle sweetness.

Together they created a glow

So strong and powerful,

No one dared

Stand

In

Their

Way.



There are cracks.

And dark nights.

But that glimmer has never been in danger

Of going out

Again.
Kurt Philip Behm May 2019
Your love to bathe
  in words rephrased

With hearts not young
  —or old

(Villanova Pennsylvania: May, 2019)
Siren May 2018
If I'd known then what I know now
I never would've been strong enough to walk
Away
******* plus the index
Two
Peace
Out of your sight
Wouldn't have mustered up the courage within to give you this gift
It is
Because
Because it was there all along
Hidden
Harvested
Passed along like the rest
Was my hopes held up too high?
Too close to my chest?
Close enough to the cloud **** to be blessed?
Why do bad things happen to good people?
A million dollar question to those trying to avoid the reality of real life happening alongside the harsh reality we still reside in
Rewind
We were released when words rephrased wisdom reflecting revolutions.
So
I
Stand
Carried away with far more baggage than one had bargained for
Flickering light glows in a dark cave
Crave
Brave
Smile and wave
Here
Here lies the best present from me that you deserved from the very beginning
The gift of goodbye
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2022
i don't remember how i went to sleep last night,
i remember going home, catching the 103 bus
from North St. at around... maybe 11pm...
i remember opening my drawer
of my writing desk...
sniffing the marijuana and thinking whether
i should smoke it...

but i don't remember where i put my trousers:
or for that matter how i hanged them...
i don't remember how i took off my shirt
and how i took of my socks or my underwear:
where i put my shoes...
i don't remember... there's this black hole
concerning all these minor details:
all i know is that when i woke up this morning:
nothing was missing...

mind you: two days ago i tried to go to bed
early... i had to wake up at 4am yesterday
for a 7am shift start at Charing Cross Station...
ol' Lizzie was being moved from Buckingham
Palace to a hall in Westminster...
lucky for that i was supervising 8 stewards:
well... 4 stewards and 4 SIA licensed badge
owners...
they gave me the role of supervisor
based on my performance prior: nothing to do
with any qualifications: no NVQ level 3 required
of me whenever i'm needed to fill these shoes...

Charing Cross Station was our castle...
i was on the forefront of the whole affair...
at one point i had several police officers under
my obligation to direct the traffic of people:
we only had one guy jump the gates...
one... and we're talking Wednesday...
not the actual state funeral that's going to take
place on Monday...
30 crowned heads of state: **** me: imagine
how many will come from the republics...

it's not your everyday occasion: i know it "feels" stupid:
but there's a reason why Charing Cross St.
was managed in the way it was...
the crowd couldn't enter Villiers' St. just by
Charing Cross St. on a whim:
all the "window-lickers" could: obviously:
they were hindered... by their lost accessibility
practices of the two peddles of feet...
directing them to Adam Street just off Nero Cafe...
yes... round round... just an extra mile...

oi! mate! stop being so rude! you're the supervisor!
does that make me a *******, saint, mate?!
this is ******* stupid!
just walk round: loose 4 grams of your fat!
******* plebs, turnips! beetroots!
i wouldn't say donkeys... but i can insult
a vegetable, comparing the intellect of those:
self-serving habitual ***** of solipsism!
the queen is dead yet you're still acting like spoilt
brats!
mourning my ***!

at least we now know that one of the supposed
horsemen of the Apocalypse isn't actually a horseman...
death rides on a donkey...
or if it's not riding on a donkey it's walking its horse:
death either rides a donkey or is walking beside
its horse...
all these people: a fountain of youth will drown them:
while the tide of mortality will swallow them...

there is always a reason for something being
arranged when it comes to controlling crowds...
i don't need qualifications to know that:
the best way to keep morale is to approach
supervision with a hands off approach...
i had two fellow female supervisors working with me...
on the spreadsheets given:
let me tell you: there wasn't enough speadsheet
space for them to write comments...
and they wrote: ******* Charlotte Brontë snippets
of comments: oh this guy took 10 minutes more
on his break... blah blah this... blah blah that...
*****-"bosses"...
but did they keep morale? did they upkeep
respect?

of course they didn't traction respect:
they were too busy being busy bodies:
they warped the hierarchy...
me? when i was filling out the spreadsheet
for those "under" me?
they wrote paragraphs... me?
i just wrote: good, good, excellent,
   good, good, o.k., o.k., excellent...
i later started talking to the two guys who
i submitted as "o.k."... scribble the o.k. out
and put them down as good...
why? they "enlightened" me concerning
the difference between how the Portuguese speak
and how the Brazilians speak...
even though one was Bangladeshi / Sri Lankan...

the Brazilians sing... they elongate their speech...
blah blah this... blah blah that...
breaks? whenever you feel like it...
blah blah this... blah blah that...
i wasn't standing behind them as some sort
of authority... just because i had a different
coloured bib to them...
i was manning the ******* barrier along with them...
as a man should do...
but obviously women have this hierarchical
fixation whereby they think: comes centralised:
from the top to the bottom...
no... aha ha ha! authority comes from
the bottom up!
you make everyone feel equal: not everyone is:
but if you can make everyone equal...
you showcase what you're supposed to do: by actually
doing it... rather than simply telling them
what to do... guess what?! they'll do it!

why? because you're also doing it!
people remind me of when i used to ride horses...
relaxing the reins and gently strutting...
straining the reins when galloping...
hell... if i managed to get a few Greater Manchester
police officers under my umbrella of
"authority" just because i had the word
"supervisor" on my bib and it was
a different colour: i don't take the role i'm elevated
to all that seriously:
it's a bit of a *****... i have to be "there" early...

but leave women in the role of supervisor?
you'll get disorder in the ranks...
they take it too seriously: it's not the army...
one guy had his umbrella confiscated...
i comforted him: you won't be needing it today...
yes, you will get it back at the end of the shift...

i remember the first time a woman said to her child:
mind the man, girl... was it my height, my beard,
or my age that prompted: MAN?
i was also gob-struck-mute when one of the stewards
addresses me as: SIR...
the first time he uttered the word in my direction:
sir... X(blah blah)... huh?! i'm a sir now?!

the second time he rephrased himself...
Sir... so what do i call you? Sir or...
mate mate... just call me Matthew... and your umbrella
is just fine and dandy...

from experience: it's usually a female supervisor:
a role that should never be given...
it's basically a cull-call...
some variation of the abortion right of who
ought to be employed-living
or dead-unemployed... women are *******
savage when given the wrong sort of authority!
March of the Little Hitlers...
what was my summary of the people working under
me? good good, excellent, good good, o.k. o.k.:
which i later scribbled out into good
when we were talking about the Portuguese language...
i hate women in a hierarchy:
they're power-trapped: strapped to a level
of competence they exact too much authority over
people that need to be reeled into a comfort zone
of respecting you detailing to them:
you have no basis for authority:

aren't you supposed to learn from the best?
who just died?! didn't she... confront this metaphysical
conundrum with a master plan of expertise?!
of course she ******* did!
women aren't leaders...
Joan of Arc... an exception...
Boudica... an exception... hardly Helen of Troy...
i can't... maybe i'm wearing a ****** on
my head... or maybe some aeroplane "plastic"
of aluminium... sorry... sorry girl...
i'm... quick to forget.. what was the plan?
me? being cucked?! in favour of your pencil-neck
am ambitions?!

**** me: you send one more of these security staff back
home because they're: "not up to your standards":
you'll have a crew of about : 2!
women are: "supposedly" expected to work with
children... to be honest? i wouldn't leave
a woman alone with a child of mine even
if someone paid me!
i don't know where these FREAKS come from!
they already branded themselves with tattoos...
nearer to a HOG than a BABE...
they're not communists... not Slavic communists...
not economic minded people:
they are ideologue  numb-skulls and half-wit
sort of retaining ******* remnants of a remaining
masculinity... basically the SOYO BOYO BUILD UP...

i still have to write... why: i don't remember how i sent to sleep
last night...

women can't control men...
  they're too: CONTROL FREAKS...
men don't respect women in power...
women respect men in charge of men...
and who is respected: as a "man of power":
a man who is akin to his fellow man...
man for the like of man...
women... don't understand this!
while women are selfish: men are selfless....

i don't remember how i went to sleep last night,

it's the best suffocating *** i ever had....
***** bit me! ***** BIT me
she sq: nibbled on me!

i don't remember ever being nibbled on!
i could slap a girl's ***...
but? being bitten!?!

    sq? she: sq? what the hell does that mean?
well... i guess the whole Kama Sutra is coming to
a realisation... she likes her *** getting slapped
during *******... and thighs...
she slaps me back...
      i gently bite her chin... she bites back:
with such ferocity that i think i'm ******* either
a vampire or a leech...

mind you: i did manage to pet a cat on my
cider walkabout before entering the brothel...
sitting on a brick wall... the ****** purred
and as i extended my hand: maybe it was
the smell of tobacco or whatever it was...
he hissed and started biting me...
then we played a game of "paws":
i tried to tease it while he struck me...
hmm... now it makes sense...

it's all geographically sound: like the butterfly
at X and a tornado at Y...
chaos theory... nothing makes sense yet
at the same time: everything makes sense:
if you're aware enough...

just like my idea concerning...
if there's an equation akin to:
   E = MC²

                 if there's the speed of light squared:
then there must be an equation with
the speed of light, CUBED, i.e. C³...
                    if we're not talking energy...
if we're not talking mass...
we must be talking about an equation with
the speed of light cubed and... gravity...
i still don't understand why the speed of light
has to be squared... but it has to be...
but surely there has to be some sense of the speed
of light cubed: contained as it is within
the form of the sun...
there has to be some cubic stability to its speed:
something akin to it being contained by
way of it being uncontained...
the principle of synonym-antonym follows suit:

red is also crimson is also a hue very much pink...

hmm: come to think of it... i like being bitten...
i don't think i've ever seen a pornographic flick
where either actor bit another...
obviously i tried to avoid all the Western: STALE
kinks of hierarchical brutalism...
come to think of it? no... i don't think i have:
have? i haven't seen a pornographic flick
where people bite each other during *******:
like dogs during play...
it wasn't biting: biting... it was a sexed-up
antithesis of eating...

as some say: man is a political animal,
or man is a social creature...
                   me? i'm just the next fathomable outlier
that's sexed up and getting it and wanting
even more...

because you can't just have one love interest...
since at that point: what some deem as love:
others start deeming it sport...
no wonder i have such a narrow scope
of interests... all have to come back to: women...

**** me... she's pushing it... but she's pushing
it in the right sort of direction:
i don't remember the last time i had
unprotected *** with a woman:
esp. a *******...
she changed her number... she gave me her new number...
the first picture she sent me was showcasing
her ***... pretending to wear heels...
i.e. on her tip-toes...
wearing this glorious lingerie: red...
her skin tone doesn't match up well with red...
i was thinking: pale green... pale blue...

when i'm with her i think: oh **** these western,
Anglican prunes of women!
they're there for thirsty Muslim women to
****: i don't do timid: i don't do shy
(forced tautology)...
i need experience... i need sorrow...
play that timid game long enough
you'll probably be sitting opposite me on the tube
starting to pretend to be a drummer:
with a fidgety tapping of the leg...
like this one beauty: and i mean: she was a beauty...
features unlike most Spanish girl...
she looked gorgeous without make-up...
but she was showcasing her locked screen of
her phone: with make-up... i knew it right
there and then: but i was half asleep coming
back from a shift: i was in a *******-mood
not in a romantic mood...

she had that classical beauty about her...
enlarged eyelids... but enlarged eyelids
and the perfect proportion of them being enlarged
between the distance between her eyes and
eyebrows was pleasing to my eyes...
tangled hair... and that Sumerian tangle
of side-burns: pushing her into a category of
a woman from the Raj: the highest caste...
mar-ve-lous... it's a new sport for me...

watching out for nervous women: lip-reading...
some men turn to trainspotting...
me? i turned to... ******-spotting:
i'm oh so curious to see at what point
a woman's sexuality wakes up...
when she realises that she has potency and legality
to attract the opposite ***...
mind you: i did start ******* prematurely:
aged 8... i was even so bold as to teach
one proselyte circumcised **** to *******
with me... in the bath... while my mother was
ironing a shirt...

squeamish? me? no no...
it's still only 11:30 in the morning
and i've already put on the washing...
done the stewarding chores of the household
(mum has arthritis...
i'm a stauch propagator of Japanese
*** culture... if not a brothel? then?
a love hotel... simple)

Khadra, Khedra... Khedija robbed me that one
night...
this one's birthday... that one's birthday...
this one's name day... that one's name day...
keeping up with a harem is not exactly "fun":
well, it is...
if you can keep a hard-on...
during ******* and in between biting me
she inquired: why haven't you ******* yet...
being self-conscious (from time to time)
i tried to figure out the "plumbing":
oh... you know why?
i pulled out... went over to the sink...
turned on the water... waited for the hard-on
to disappear: one "artery" is clogging another
"artery": a man breathes through the same
hole he eats from...

a man propagates from the same hole he ******
from... i turned on the water... waited
for the hard-on to *******...
water, water: everywhere: but not a drop
to drink...
ah... i squeezed out the bothersome ****
that dissuaded me from climaxing from
a "lost uncle" of a "long lost muscle" of tease...
but that's the thing about the right
sort of woman...
you do turn into a Duracel Bunny...
it's switch ON / switch OFF...

i remember times when i was completely undermined
by women: thinking i had an ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION...
apparently not... the wrong sort of women
give me erectile dysfunction: i'm not willing to correct
that "problem" with any chemical cocktail of
"improvement": ******: at least they're not shy:
they know what they're doing...
at least they know that emotional investments comes:
post-scriptum, not: pre-scriptum...

how do i know? i paid her for half an hour...
she notices i have more money in my wallet...
she sieves through the extra £60 on me...
takes out a £20... half an hour turns into an hour:
or so it feels... feels is better than what's actually
apparent... she tells me her birthday is on Saturday:

buy me a present! o.k.: what the ****?!
ring?! no no... that's *******... book?! i gave her
a copy of my poems... what then? what then?!
Matthew? didn't she send you a copy of her standing
with her *** showcased and her legs...
her arms seemingly tied her raven hair across
her back?                Matthew?      genius!
lingerie! i'll buy her something **** to then
**** her in!

right... Matthew? what?!
did you notice that when you last saw her...
her bra was too big for her *****?
yes, i did...
do i buy her a lingerie in secret or do i ask
for her measurements... gamble...
**** it: i'll ask for her measurements...

- what is your lingerie size, bra? too big?
i want to go shopping for you
tell me, so i know.
- M
    36B 85
      You tek M better...

i don't remember the last time i went shopping
for lingerie... she's not 36B... no chance in hell...
she has petite *******...
my hand is half full when i grasp them...
she stands... while i kiss her forehead...
eye-sight in line with my *******...
but that's what's so glorious...
she's Turkish... and i'm...
if it wasn't for the Northern Crusades:
the Polacks defending the last remnant of paganism
of Lithuania against the Pig-Crux...
i would be nothing without a history
i have the luxury to explore...

Casimir the Great invited the Hebrews...
who was that Schtad-Mein-Feuer
in command of Auschwitz played by X
who uttered the same words?
maybe it was an exalted plan to excuse the Hebrews
from Europe... surely the "invitation"
of Muslims into Europe will be painful at first...
but perhaps it will: less so...
hell: i'm already in favour of ******* Muslim
women...
even unto Khedra i uttered my favorite saying:
bound to Rumi:

la illaha il allah...

   as anyone living on Malta what the noun
for god is... all will utter the noun: allah...
all? ah! what a sigh of relief!

monotheism is one massive cesspool of globalism
to begin and end with...
it's a massive joke on the people:
the prophecy of the resurgent tower of Babel...
the language is already in place: English...
but the good news is...
at least we'll have a second "chance":
it's not really a chance... it's a waiting game...
i'm telling you: the cull is going to be massive...
it's already in our unconscious: collective:
which is why you see it in the popular culture:
**** always floats to the top...

globalism one way or the other...
after all: dinosaur juice is not as infinite as the sun...
there's philosophy and there's pessimism...
philosophy doesn't look too far ahead
to be unrealistic... stupendously slow
on revising itself: there's no pin-point of "departure"
in philosophy: there's only the "game"
of the build-up... philosophy is preparation...
it's akin to cooking in that:
cooking is everything that is...
the technicalities...
while philosophy is: how much ingredients
are needed, what is the process of preparing a meal?

if anyone should accuse me of being pompous?
i'll start writing about ******* ******!
****'s sake!
even my mother, once upon a time,
called me an: intelligent, BEAST...
and i am just that!
i know what i am!
           when i was ******* Khedra she uttered
innumerable blasphemies...
i was little **** at one point... then slow at another...
she wanted to cuddle: complained that
i showered myself with cold water...
she called me mad... she couldn't stop looking
into my eyes... and i into hers...
brown for green: sold!
   biting: my god... i'm starting to love the biting...
tongue licking lips...
still those eyes: and the way she uttered:
*******... yeah: you are, ******* me...
or is that the other way round?!

at least we, i hope "we" didn't take it personally...
then again... she did send me a picture
of her and her daughter...
she's asking me for a present:
i chose lingerie... because i want to **** her
when she looks all the more sexed up (****)
but then she sends me pictures of her and her daughter:
so what? you want me to foster this Frankenstein?
gladly!
              why? oh you know why...
just read Marquis de Sade's magnum opus of a novella
that's ******...
i'm not that stupid to know what urges
motivate my virility and lust for life...
it's always the forbidden "things" that give man
the purpose for life: and that purpose is bound
to those forbidden "things" and the ability to restrain
their realisation!

it's the restraint on realising taboos:
taboos that come into fruition are... rotten...
but? restrained taboos? that rot the mind,
or rather: exfoliate the mind into bloom?
my god! the temple of the gods!
the eyes of Oedipus! right there! on the altar!
everything entertained by the mind
is sacred: even if extended on the privy
within the confines of script...
sacred upon the moment it is made
sacrilege and exacted against the mind's
entertainment: whereby the cognitive restrains
are bypassed: and said taboo is exacted...

we all want healthy ***...
impersonal ***... *** that money best allows...
transactional ***... clarity ***...
but this is one ******* level up:
she's asking for gifts... she's getting emotionally attached...
i'm starting to think about finding a new brothel...
all those pictures she's sending me
of her and her daughter: yes... man missing...
she's even showing me pictures of a house
she's doing up in Turkey...
she needs £180,000 and then she'll be happy...

i do have a certain banknote... well... several...
that could be worth just as much: if not more...
Tsar Nicholas II is a familiar face in a painting, no?
but on a banknote?!
by now ****** or no ****** doesn't bother me...
a ******* with a beautiful girl like her's?
it would be much more easier to foster a girl
of a single mum than it would to foster
a boy with a single mum:

oh! no ******* way! single mum with an only child
boy?! THAT'S ******* DEMISE!
that's not happening! that's Oedipus!
that's patricide! that's infanticide!
i'd want to **** the mother as much as i'd want
to **** her pup!
a single mum with a daughter i could handle:
it works just fine... Ancient Rome gave us lessons
about the abnormality of fostering *******:
fostering sons never works out "just fine"...

- it's like with this one record i recently found:
HASLINGER - FUTURE PRIMITIVE
a rare glimpse into 1990's culture...
from 1994...
rarely do you get anyone bold enough
to say: **** is ****... all those muddled waters
of fiction... and crisp-crass methodoligcal
poetic: hiding behind ******* RHYMES
and structures...
never anything worth talking over: or for that
matter: talking into...

there are about five fingers on each of my hand:
no, there actually are... ****...
WONG FACTION, i.e. wrong fraction...
too much TAOISM in me...
first i'll cycle to recycle the empty
whiskey bottles... then i'll cycle to
peep at some vinyls: will i find the "one"
i want? probably not... then i'll walk into Anne
Summers and pretend to be all shy
all paedophilic choosing out the bra
and *******: suspenders...
does the nylon come free?

   i'll play a game... i like: gay-mmmm's...
god:
i don't care for those insufferable wastes
of men thirsting at the fountain of ****!
i'm having my fill, i don't care
whether my writing is elevated from
the sewers into the mainstream:
my writing is merely an accompaniment
to the life i'm living...
and i love my life more than i could
ever love my writing...
after all:

res cogitans "vs." res extensa...
i write by extension:
not by thinking...
i never think about what i'm about to write:
writing is as extension of me
elaborating twiddling with my fingers:
i really have itchy finger-tips...
i sometimes express that by rubbing them
on coarse items akin to bricks:
before moving them to the oyster flesh
of a woman's body... tenderising them...

yeah: and i know what EUTHENASIA
is... when i get too old: and less useful...
i do know where the "fire exit" is... plonker...
you know where assisted suicide is?
or are you too ******* frightful?!
death is my ****** ******!

mind you: who the **** dubbed the likes
of X X X X and me?
hellraisers?! we were simply workaholic-alcoholics...
we liked to drink, we HAD to work...
******* women was a bountiful: BONUS...
the eager ones... we left the "virgins"
to the beta males...
i get the itch whenever i think about
all those celestial nuns in their stupendous
salvaging of virginity:
each one and every one waiting to be greeting
a "****** birth" of a "god": b'ah b'ah bad:
it's probably more true that Hey-Zeus was
Jesus-ibn-Snow / *******!

i lost my "faith"... a long time ago...
from the explosion of the Atom Bomb
and the unearthing of the Nag Hammadi Library
and the accounts of the Hebrew historian:
Josephus ibn Mattheus...
the FALSE PROPHET FROM EGYPT...
north America can falsify a lie...
i don't care... i'm more interested
in upkeeping the decency of Russia...
and what remains of Europe.

                     nope... i'm lost on the concept
of conversion... Islam seems more politically viable
to make choice: on... than... this: pseudo-polytheistic
sputnik of a plethora of doubt:
faith: i' will sooner **** on the cross than be bound to:
what?! pray before the image of torture!
you're no god! you're simply a sadist!

this god didn't deserve a death!
this god didn't deserve a, life!
******* Moloch Spawn!
Kurt Philip Behm Oct 2019
Virtue when expressive,
deafens bad intention

Its voice to live beyond,
excuses and retort

A minstrel plays a song unsung,
as sages rise to dance

All words rephrased in lyric tones
—the devil mute and gone

(Villanova Pennsylvania: October, 2019)
I know it’s
written
I don’t know
why
The heavens
tremble
as poet’s  
cry

To stand
anointed
in love’s
review
And pose
one question
rephrased
— anew

(Dreamsleep: April, 2024)
Or be it so- I was lost in your eyes grand gardens
taking done a couple fieldnotes; be it a couple ideas
of me imagining ourselves as couple of old love notes

Being cherished love letters, timeless and tender
under the glow of city lights, even when your lips
appear slightly troubled, envious of the brilliance that
surrounds you

I’ve come to take note of my love phases, needing to
be rephrased- finding a new means of expressing my
feelings to someone so new in my life

Sweetheart, let your heart be an open book, and I will
be the unique tale that unfolds just for you, revealing
every chapter of my essence.

— The End —