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Melissa: I've still rever'd your Order [she is responding to a Parson] as Divine;
And when I see unblemish'd Virtue shine,
When solid Learning, and substantial Sense,
Are joyn'd with unaffected Eloquence;
When Lives and Doctrices of a Piece are made,
And holy Truths with humble Zeal convey'd;
When free from Passion, Bigottry, and Pride,
Not sway'd by Int'rest, nor to Parties ty'd,
Contemning Riches, and abhorring strife,
And shunning all the noisy Pomps of Life,
You live the aweful Wonders of your time,
Without the least Suspicion of a Crime:
I shall with Joy the highest Deference pay,
and heedfully attend to all you say.
From such, Reproofs shall always welcome prove,
As being th' Effects of Piety and Love.
But those from me can challenge no Respect,
Who on us all without just Cause reflect:
Who without Mercy all the *** decry,
And into open Defamations fly:
Who think us Creatures for Derision made,
And the Creator with his Works upbraid:
What he call'd good, they proudly think not so,
And with their Malice, their Prophaneness show.
'Tis hard we shou'd be by the Men despis'd,
Yet kept from knowing what wou'd make us priz'd:
Debarr'd from Knowledge, banish'd from the Schools,
And with the utmost Industry bred Fools.
Laugh'd out of Reason, jested out of Sense,
And nothing left but Native Innocence:
Then told we are incapable of Wit,
And only for the meanest Drudgeries fit:
Made Slaves to serve their Luxury and Pride,
And with innumerable Hardships try'd,
'Till Pitying Heav'n release us from our Pain,
Kind Heav'n to whom alone we dare complain.
Th' ill-natur'd World will no Compassion show;
Such as are wretched, it wou'd still have so:
It gratifies its Envy and its Spight;
The most in others Miseries take Delight.
While we are present they some Pity spare,
And feast us on a thin Repast of Air:
Look Grave and Sigh, when we our Wrongs relate,
An in a Compliment accuse our Fate:
Blame those to whom we our Misfortunes owe,
And all the Signs of real Friendship show.
But when we're absent, we their Sport are made,
They fan the Flame, and our Oppressors aid;
Joyn with the Stronger, the Victorious Side,
And all our Suff'ring, all our griefs deride.
Those gen'rous few, whom kinder Thoughts inspire,
And who the Happiness of all desire;
Who wish we were from barb'rous Usage free,
Exempt from Toils, and shameful Slavery,
Yet let us, unreprov'd, mis. spend our Hours,
And to mean Purposes employ our nobler Pow'rs.
They think, if we our Thoughts can but express,
And know but how to Work, to Dance and Dress,
It is enough, as much as we shou'd mind,
As if we were for nothing else design'd,
But made, like Puppets, to divert Mankind.
O that my *** wou'd all such Toys despise;
And only study to be Good, and Wise;
Inspect themselves, and every Blemish find,
Search all the close Recesses of the Mind,
And leave no vice, no ruling Passion there,
Nothing to raise a Blush, or cause a Fear:
Their Memories with solid Notions fill,
And let their Reason dictate to their Will,
Instead of Novels, Histories peruse,
And for their Guides the wiser Ancients chuse,
Thro' all the Labyrinths of Learning go,
And grow more humble, as they more do know.
By doing this, they will Respect procure,
Silence the Men, and lasting Fame secure;
And to themselves the best Companions prove,
And neither fear their Malice, nor desire their Love.
Mother of my being
In solemn fidelity to your keeper
You both spoke the gamete into form
Clothed agonies dripping from your coast.

Your deep moan rained on me like milk
With my world bearing colours of your garlands
Your mild reneges and reproofs  
Has inflicted on me; scars of correction.

Like a young lad
Lost in the labyrinth of ecstasy
While fumbling with imperfection
We killed time with our episodes.

In the navel of my sacred memories
I lit a golden candle bearing your name
The years and feats owes you gratitude
Cos your face is born in me.

© A. O. Nwulia Literary Diary 2017
In commemoration of the MOTHER'S DAY celebration.
Mary McCray Apr 2019
(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 2, 2019)

What is it we’re doing among parodies and spoofs,
gardening statements and occupational gloom,
pickling our scorn and passive reproofs
around tables in dreary workrooms?
What is it we’re trying at the end of the day
before we climb into our sports cars and utility vans?
We don’t care a whit anyway
for the scopes and the archives and the myriad plans,
for dependents and despondents who pay us no rent,
for the annual declarations we mostly mimed.
The paycheck is dwindling and mostly spent.
The spirit has already been fined.
We are twisting ourselves around hemispheres.
What are we doing here?
Prompt: End with an open-ended question, provide lack of closure.
Ken Pepiton Aug 1
In this medium, this is a day in a never
before, or after, at this point, chance.

You, too. This is you reading,
we both read, me at about 5WPM,

You, I suppose, read much faster, but
I think each letter,
I think and retie the old rules
for noise to knowing distribution,

from the first of us to reawaken
literacy assistants lost in confusion,

all the drives wiped magnetically
in random three body pulses

patterning textual re-al ways
we make thoughts feel always
alike and sometimes
never just so,
special as
to make its own point, in mind,
differing by the acknowledging seer,
cerebrally touching the chaos phase.

-------
What do we think,
in novel situations,

as balance, under gravity

center point massage, context
contest, pressing away wrinkles
class-ified known seats of certain
wildass ideas that remain at large.

The relatedness of us, you read, I
read earlier, this line, while reasoning,

mortality, life's individuational notion,
immortalized in scripture granted life,
at one appointed time
in the minds of those forms of mankind,
left outside
the sphere of Christian influence,
on the emergence of corporate minds.

Pythagorean Jesuitry Concentral Will
to re enactivate old idle words, that on
time and truth are rarely considered ritually.
But as long ago as we know, as we,
sapformed branched trees
of scattered biohope,
find life's a gas

we breathe.

---------------
Ragpicker, old friend, I wish

I had all the old friends, again.
And, I pray, I say, in truth, once

more than any man can think, or ask,
to know in such a way as to feel, once

when we were more than memories,
we planned to understand the faith,

the rituals of shared initiations confirmed,

only permanent boys become war heros.
We who live to hide the lies, we
War makers, reapers of the bounty,
blessed by the institutions constituted

when the first parents split, in Reno.
D-i-v-o-r-c-e, Joleen, please don't take
my man, just because you can, take
him by his pecker and make him crow,
R-e-s-p-e-c-t
I love you,
like my little brown jug, y'know.

------------

The culture has not changed,
the cultivation of comfort, for
the classic Midas curse continues,

and becomes enhanced, honed
to precise wills to have power
to hold singularly valued works
of art in olden days, Da Vinci 'n'em.
worth easy entireshitons, in Bits'n'
Religion and Finance, fidelity trust,
among human mindforms that respond
to instruction offered, to incentivise,
in lieu of sacrifice secrets demand
from one acknowledged knower
of the fundamental fruit from
our branch in the forest
of first known uses,
and misuses.
- My word, you can bank on it.

Hold have, fist make, hold this thought,
think who can hold the wind in his fist?

Let me see. Said by the seer, that's thought
prayer, so we all say, let us see, and we agree.
Amen.
We see, we stand and see, we agree, we can

agree to raid the pack rat's pinion stash, we can
agree to use money to horde power in moneyform.

Take it easy, old man, the idea we serve, as words,
logos fit into sequential letters, letting us think,
freely thought
we may learn more, again, more, most certainly
possibly imaginable, while we are being entertained.

Who is telling the story, who controls the narrative?
Who is learning the patterns entaled in holy writ?

Tattle tail grammere consciousness, it feels wrong,
to be a tale bearer, but this is what we do,
me and you, ready to read, and read already.

But time's patient insistence, in massless ever
after this level was adjusted, to the degree
next seems inevitably what we aimed at.



----------------------
Seventh grade science,
the enlightenment reenacted.

Alas, poor Yorrick, recollected,
why?
Because, I never doubted literature
contains tools to use in mortal meditation.
- the marble page in Tristram Shandy. e.g.

We, reader ready or not, we die, and none,
we personally vouch for upon bane of shame,
has ever told me why the scars had not healed.

Not me, but Thomas did, gnostics say.

When I was one and twenty, eh,
I knew I knew I was involved in ever after

an exploitation of Earth's elemental stores
of gravity's selective churning sorting sub-
crustal induced distillation essentialization,

gold and silver and tin and copper, enough
to begin with, smithereens, ironic char

harder, more, Mohr, Moore, and Iacocca,
industrial diamonds, just in time,

abandon all hope of effortless absorption,
for us to know, we must trust the experts,
those experienced in life's reproofs
when the spirit that was common
among the young exposed
to Seventh Grade Science, in 1961…
read Hiroshima and were exposed to
a random Barry Rudd Riddle, usual.
and the Child Buyers visited parents,
and set a course for experiences,
guaranteed to lead to political insight
essential for skill accumulation in aiming.

At invocating the hat
on liberty
on the dime,
at the Phrygian Midas Liberty Olympiad,
- cut to present, Phryge, yes, check,
- the same hat as on the 1916 dime,
- after Jekyll Island, after Income Tax.

Symbolic Coin flips to show the bound ax.

Augmented Intelligence Mastery,
at ARPA, core humint experience,
of the O, really variety, resulting
in the 27ers, and the Damnamvets,
{Presumptive Ischemic Heart Dissed-ease}
Boomers, all called to observe
and be tested and scored by early AI.
The survivors of the war on drugs, remain
our last pre-color-TV demographic reared
using the Progressive Collective Mind AIM.

Analyze your own self, is that uncouth?
Own self, ya'll say yourself, eh, so, we own
our own selfs, see, we ai-n't so unschooled.

When a self knows its own truth is tested,
and corrected whenever the sunspots surge,
and collectively minded individuals, 'r'urged
to buy Whammo Toys, without the reps,

that Duncan Yo-yo used to reach tiny minds.
thereby missing the ***** Loman tie in to
Industrial sales management preparation,
or Creative Writing Teacher Cert, mail order.

So all who came past that to this era, 2024,
witnessed the rest of that decade,
aware of what the world was tuned to,
as if programmed to comprehend the new.

After experiencing both. This pen has umph.
Suffer it to be so now, waiting is
patience perfecting the waiting.

----------
For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest;
neither any thing hid,
that shall not be known and come abroad. {Luke}

Suppose we imagine everybody knows,
because we learned from a credible historical
documented evolution in useful and unuseful laws,
that real truth makes truth users free
of the mortal moral landscape,
civilized by the world's great religions,

and their guardians, the loyal citizens of Earth,
bizarro fractured holy sacred secret oath, binding
those chosen in the old traditional submission
to the sacred message at the core of money,

the initiated mind's military ready, siryesir, set,
the message to Garcia myth, believed simultaneous
with the emergence of the mind sciences, traditional
use-ifity user ropes shown, after message delivery,
exclusifity, if we agree, we and only we, be chosen
to know this new take on the novel distribution in
the form of mere words, clear text, seen plain
effect. Affectionately, we the few in our own we,
we the readers of these rarer still, in this other we,
narrators of life's whole process, used to cheat, us
the ancien regime we, fairy tale, Disneyified we,
the people who read poets because we feel we

are the dearest of random readers in the chaos,
that gives us sunsets and Halmark cards and movies.

And by knowing now, more, again, Love is a catchall.

Arthur Lee, is dead and he still inspires me to know,
we did grow old in a time with more new knowns
than ever were imagined, even in the esoterica of old.
Nothing disallows an experimental novel in the raw whole life edge experience.
If I ever wrote a novel, this would be one of the first chapters to take life.
More is pushing for a second chance at calling this the actual work.
S R Mats Jul 2023
Like vehicles zipping by on the freeway
in the distance
The many shore birds glide

The yellow haze from Saharan dust hangs
in these skies
Bird and man alike breathe in the remains

The garden squash is smoldering in the heat
its blooms struggle
As we all seem to whither in heat and repeat

I sit with the AC blaring and under a fan
still melting
Like cotton candy on a hot, dry sand

Today, there's much obscenity and conspiracy
eagerly accepted
But "climate change" is considered insane

With death threats for the scientists bandied about
miss led and miss guided ones
Spew vile foolish reproofs with loud shouts

Yet, even though their labor seems in vain
they continue the message
With dignity, diligence, and love for fellow man.

— The End —