She sent it to me as a text message, that is an image of a quote in situ, a piece of interpretation in a gallery. Saturday morning and I was driving home from a week in a remote cottage on a mountain. I had stopped to take one last look at the sea, where I usually take one last look, and the phone bleeped. A text message, but no text.  Just a photo of some words. It made me smile, the impossibility of it. Epic poems and tapestry weaving. Of course there are connections, in that for centuries the epic subject has so often been the stuff of the tapestry weaver’s art. I say this glibly, but cannot name a particular tapestry where this might be so. Those vast Arthurian pieces by William Morris to pictures by Burne-Jones have an epic quality both in scale and in subject, but, to my shame, I can’t put a name to one.

These days the tapestry can be epic once more - in size and intention - thanks to the successful, moneyed contemporary artist and those communities of weavers at West Dean and at Edinburgh’s Dovecot. Think of Grayson Perry’s The Walthamstowe Tapestry, a vast 3 x 15 metres executed by Ghentian weavers, a veritable apocalyptic vision where ‘Everyman, spat out at birth in a pool of blood, is doomed and predestined to spend his life navigating a chaotic yet banal landscape of brands and consumerism’.  Gosh! Doesn’t that sound epic!

I was at the Dovecot a little while ago, but the public gallery was closed. The weavers were too busy finishing Victoria Crowe’s Large Tree Group to cope with visitors. You see, I do know a little about this world even though my tapestry weaving is the sum total of three weekends tuition, even though I have a very large loom once owned by Marta Rogoyska. It languishes next door in the room that was going to be where I was to weave, where I was going to become someone other than I am. This is what I feel - just sometimes - when I’m at my floor loom, if only for those brief spells when life languishes sufficiently for me be slow and calm enough to pick up the shuttles and find the right coloured yarns. But I digress. In fact putting together tapestry and epic poetry is a digression from the intention of the quote on the image from that text - (it was from a letter to Janey written in Iceland). Her husband, William Morris, reckoned one could (indeed should) be able to compose an epic poem and weave a tapestry.  

This notion, this idea that such a thing as being actively poetic and throwing a pick or two should go hand in hand, and, in Morris’ words, be a required skill (or ‘he’d better shut up’), seemed (and still does a day later) an absurdity. Would such a man (must be a man I suppose) ‘never do any good at all’ because he can’t weave and compose epic poetry simultaneously?  Clearly so.  But then Morris wove his tapestries very early in the morning - often on a loom in his bedroom. Janey, I imagine, as with ladies of her day - she wasn’t one, being a stableman’s daughter, but she became one reading fluently in French and Italian and playing Beethoven on the piano- she had her own bedroom.

Do you know there are nights when I wish for my own room, even when sleeping with the one I love, as so often I wake in the night, and I lie there afraid (because I love her dearly and care for her precious rest) to disturb her sleep with reading or making notes, both of which I do when I’m alone.
Yet how very seductive is the idea of joining my loved one in her own space, amongst her fallen clothes, her books and treasures, her archives and precious things, those many letters folded into her bedside bookcase, and the little black books full of tender poems and attempts at sketches her admirer has bequeathed her when distant and apart. Equally seductive is the possibility of the knock on the bedroom / workroom door, and there she’ll be there like the woman in Michael Donaghy’s poem, a poem I find every time I search for it in his Collected Works one of the most arousing and ravishing pieces of verse I know: it makes me smile and imagine.  . .  Her personal vanishing point, she said, came when she leant against his study door all warm and wet and whispered 'Paolo’. Only she’ll say something in a barely audible voice like ‘Can I disturb you?’ and with her sparkling smile come in, and bring with her two cats and the hint of a naked breast nestling in the gap of the fold of her yellow Chinese gown she holds close to herself - so when she kneels on my single bed this gown opens and her beauty falls before her, and I am wholly, utterly lost that such loveliness is and can be so . . .

When I see a beautiful house, as I did last Thursday, far in the distance by an estuary-side, sheltering beneath wooded hills, and moor and rock-coloured mountains, with its long veranda, painted white, I imagine. I imagine our imaginary home where, when our many children are not staying in the summer months and work is impossible, we will live our ‘together yet apart’ lives. And there will be the joy of work. I will be like Ben Nicholson in that Italian villa his father-in-law bought, and have my workroom / bedroom facing a stark hillside with nothing but a carpenter’s table to lay out my scores. Whilst she, like Winifred, will work at a tidy table in her bedroom, a vase of spring flowers against the window with the estuary and the mountains beyond. Yes, her bedroom, not his, though their bed, their wonderful wooden 19C Swiss bed of oak, occupies this room and yes, in his room there is just a single affair, but robust, that he would sleep on when lunch had been late and friends had called, or they had been out calling and he wanted to give her the premise of having to go back to work – to be alone - when in fact he was going to sleep and dream, but she? She would work into the warm afternoons with the barest breeze tickling her bare feet, her body moving with the remembrance of his caresses as she woke him that morning from his deep, dark slumber. ‘Your brown eyes’, he would whisper, ‘your dear brown eyes the colour of an autumn leaf damp with dew’. And she would surround him with kisses and touch of her firm, long body and (before she cut her plaits) let her course long hair flow back and forward across his chest. And she did this because she knew he would later need the loneliness of his own space, need to put her aside, whereas she loved the scent of him in the room in which she worked, with his discarded clothes, the neck-tie on the door hanger he only reluctantly wore.

Back to epic poetry and its possibility. Even on its own, as a single, focused activity it seems to me, unadventurous poet that I am, an impossibility. But then, had I lived in the 1860s, it would probably not have seemed so difficult. There was no Radio 4 blathering on, no bleeb of arriving texts on the mobile. There were servants to see to supper, a nanny to keep the children at bay. At Kelmscott there was glorious Gloucestershire silence - only the roll and squeak of the wagon in the road and the rooks roosting. So, in the early mornings Morris could kneel at his vertical loom and, with a Burne-Jones cartoon to follow set behind the warp. With his yarns ready to hand, it would be like a modern child’s painting by numbers, his mind would be free to explore the fairy domain, the Icelandic sagas, the Welsh Mabinogion, the Kalevara from Finland, and write (in his head) an epic poem. These were often elaborations and retellings in his epic verse style of Norse and Icelandic sagas with titles like Sigurd the Volsung. Paul Thompson once said of Morris  ‘his method was to think out a poem in his head while he was busy at some other work.  He would sit at an easel, charcoal or brush in hand, working away at a design while he muttered to himself, 'bumble-beeing' as his family called it; then, when he thought he had got the lines, he would get up from the easel, prowl round the room still muttering, returning occasionally to add a touch to the design; then suddenly he would dash to the table and write out twenty or so lines.  As his pen slowed down, he would be looking around, and in a moment would be at work on another design.  Later, Morris would look at what he had written, and if he did not like it he would put it aside and try again.  But this way of working meant that he never submitted a draft to the painful evaluation which poetry requires’.

Let’s try a little of Sigurd

There was a dwelling of Kings ere the world was waxen old;
Dukes were the door-wards there, and the roofs were thatched with gold;
Earls were the wrights that wrought it, and silver nailed its doors;
Earls' wives were the weaving-women, queens' daughters strewed its floors,

And the masters of its song-craft were the mightiest men that cast
The sails of the storm of battle down the bickering blast.
There dwelt men merry-hearted, and in hope exceeding great
Met the good days and the evil as they went the way of fate:
There the Gods were unforgotten, yea whiles they walked with men,

Though e'en in that world's beginning rose a murmur now and again
Of the midward time and the fading and the last of the latter days,
And the entering in of the terror, and the death of the People's Praise.

Oh dear. And to think he sustained such poetry for another 340 lines, and that’s just book 1 of 4. So what dear reader, dear sender of that text image encouraging me to weave and write, just what would epic poetry be now? Where must one go for inspiration? Somewhere in the realms of sci-fi, something after Star-Wars or Ninja Warriors. It could be post-apocalyptic, a tale of mutants and a world damaged by chemicals or economic melt-down. Maybe a rich adventure of travel on a distant planet (with Sigourney Weaver of course), featuring brave deeds and the selfless heroism of saving companions from deadly encounters with amazing animals, monsters even. Or is ‘epic’ something else, something altogether beyond the Pixar Studios or James Cameron’s imagination? Is the  ‘epic’ now the province of AI boldly generating the computer game in 4D?  

And the epic poem? People once bought and read such published romances as they now buy and engage with on-line games. This is where the epic now belongs. On the tablet, PlayStation3, the X-Box. But, but . . . Poetry is so alive and well as a performance phenomenon, and with that oh so vigorous and relentless beat. Hell, look who won the T.S.Eliot prize this year! Story-telling lives and there are tales to be told, even if they are set in housing estates and not the ice caves of the frozen planet Golp. Just think of children’s literature, so rich and often so wild. This is word invention that revisits unashamedly those myths and sagas Morris loved, but in a different guise, with different names, in worlds that still bring together the incredible geographies of mountains and deserts and wilderness places, with fortresses and walled cities, and the startling, still unknown, yet to be discovered ocean depths.

                                    And so let my tale begin . . . My epic poem.

                                                 THE SEAGASP OF ENNLI.
       A TALE IN VERSE OF EARTHQUAKE, ISLAND FASTNESS, MALEVOLENT SPIRITS,
                                                AND REDEMPTIVE LOVE.

Genesis
****** and his cities,
Peleg the earthquake,

cities of crafts and exchange

waste disposal, chaos control
ordinal first to last sequence
father, physical strong, less curious
mother, fragile smaller, more observant.

Plural spiritual entities, Elohim, watchers,
applications of reason, reporting events.

Balance demonstrated with spinning
and flipping throwing things,
fitting thing piece to piece cunning spun
framing weaving
loose and taut, twanging
whistle, whine howl yells bells song

Eventual progress, time out of mind, slow
and steady,
patient, put down, put up, leaning, pushing
pulling, windwise rushing in, to fill the empty

Mind, imageless, no holds, no solidity,
all is spirit, no atoms even, perhaps, not even,
quarkish pairs of ups or downs that spin
on points in ever after solid state called
Heaven, the firmamental place where none was.

Higg's Field.
Unknown known matter and energy, we know.
We know something power enough to seem matter,
exists,
beyond our individuated mind's grasp.
Okeh.

Spread so as we may imagine, when itself began
with the initial edges, or edge, it would be, inside
any bubble-edge is inside,
they say outside is unimaginable

flat out planed point of anything
pounded thin as any bubble wall,
-blood-brain boundary, shocking discovery

yes, as with point spreads stretched to firm
mental plotted points of possible otherness,

ways one may be seen divided
duty-wise. Needful news.

Drink water from your own cistern,
save rain water for washing hair,
keep the spider in the spout,
to catch most matter washed
from the roof over our minds vidroning view

Googlized minds, in Disneyified Meta Cognosis,

we arrived at our destination,
and they have clouds of cotton candy.

- must be all vain, all is vanity, that's fair.
- Ecclesiastes, my old ****-rod-*****-point
pain on my backside,
such as Moses saw of Him whose name is as the Dao,
the name that may be said is not Ha Shem,
the side that may be seen is not His, you see, the hole,
not the whole,
and once that is filtered through, a certainly tangled web,
where in it seems,
Jews, in cultural roles granted, now, bat und bar mitzvah,
no veiled ****** similarities to the Handmaid's Tale.

No weeping over spilt milk,
never cry wolf.
Never speak of the devil, for … what speak we in,
when worshipping and praising and praying is supplicant
pose, supposed to induce holy awareness of mathematical me.

What might be the odds, set
taking all bets,
in spirit and in truth, as held in the wedom we acknowledge,
you and me, we agree, we become maker of this bubbling state,

we boil the cauldron, wear the caul of the first born-
we take the fat from the caul of the liver, and offer the smell,
to the unspeakably named reality we make believers build
in times of plenty, we make beautiful things together,

we call dreams retellings, but the tellings flow from deeper wells.

We are more ant-ish than sheepish,
we are more horse-ish than wolfish, in the wild.
We are more dog-ish than cat-ish, in civilized spaces.

Nurture native natal ground boundary of any wedom,
go beyond,
in quest of all we failed to grasp, the wind we fit to words,
and hold the gathered sheaves , in fists,
this is it,
why one how come to become. We be. Alwise, always willing

to envision further than we think men by right may see,
the tree the fruit was forbidden from,
bade the birds imbibe, and the elephants and monkey's too,

certainly, imagine, the plan got out of hand, it was
mandatory
in the garden walled off speck of life,
pre concepts weyeken called cells.

E= okay, rebalance all you respond with

who says what C equals, at my scale, in a mind,
in or out of the body, I can not say, significantly
different from saying, I can't say,

see, set, mindtimespace, spacetimemind, point. A.

For Aleš, who reads pacifist novels during wartime

I

For the Millennials:
Victims of opportunity,
Saviors of humanity.

Muse-less, useless, a twentynothing!

We, the Confounded Chiliads,
are the electrified pulsating
offspring of the digital age:
Serendipitous,
enigmatic
vagabonds of the modern world.

Standing juxtaposed between
two centuries,
two generations:
Redeemers of the new millennium.

We’ve read the writings on the wall,
for they have been by our own hand.
Blood dripping down the fluorescent page,
the endless scroll that consumes our gaze.

Gaping holes in our hands and feet,
screaming telephone poles pin us to the magnetic current.

We are trapped but we are not alone.

With every word we bleed,
with every eye to our flesh,
our cries are drowned in the digital void.

We have been washed away by alluded idiosyncrasies,
never unanimous nor harmonious;
feeling our fingers tie into knots,
mangled, finagled, wringing, hovering like a
Ouija board over menacing letters.

We close our eyes and feel them
burning within our skull.

So many voices, so many bodies,
pouring into our thoughts;
endless rainfall
drowning the long coveted silence.

So desperate for the parting
of ***** storm clouds,

for a sign from heaven
to pierce through the ceaseless night,

to cast its lovely gaze upon us
like a father’s warm and gentle hand,
lifting up downcast faces.

We toil in our anguish,
suffering information overload;
a whole race of individuals
accumulating into a massive “I told you so.”

Every wish, every genius mind,
every glance into the future,
every crystal ball rubbed,
Electric Eye awakened

as the dream sighs into existence;
the blending of fact and fiction
in the prophesies of Fathers Orwell and Huxley:
maddened forlorn oracles of modernity.

As we cross the rivers of Babylon
to find ourselves swimming in
the Fountain of Youth
we escape dripping, exhausted;
aching bodies shivering.
They drape expensive towels around us,
breathing warmly on our exasperated shells
of humanity.

Our mortal vessels no longer capable of
carrying our fragile identities,
we leap out of their torpid mouths
exposing the gelatinous crustacean.

Amorphous brain matter
sponge-like, soaking up
the sweat of our plunder and plight—
Clinging desperately as our liberators

pry us off the wet earth
like barnacles off a ship’s keel,
wringing us out
over the supper bowl:
the thin soup of mortal consciousness.

Feeling our voices and vices,
virtues and virulence,
mingling together;
meshing into one.

The hive mind descends upon us,
protruding a gaping straw
from its abdominous being;
sticking it into the electric ocean,
proceeds to **** life up into its
wrinkly, sickly tightened mouth.

Past the gleeful tongue,
down the throat;
tumbling over each other aimlessly
in the darkness—
limitless potentialities.

Directionless;
ambiguous
voices in the dark:
cavernous, mindless cacophony.

Echoes bouncing off
the windows of my soul,
I tumbled into the darkness
lost, and afraid.

“The world is yours!”

I never feel my feet stop moving.

Our nightmarish episode of consumption concludes,
leaving us moaning, naked, confused in the depths:
Haunting spirits wandering these novel dwellings
built on the backs of the olden brutes
and the barbarous archetypic minds of the Marxist prophets.

In this world of post-civilization,
we are post-human(e) in our efforts;
unable to gain a foothold in the foundation—
more quicksand than earth and stone.

Our seeds were thrown to the weeds and the crows.

II

Muse-less, useless, a twentynothing!

I glance at the others: gangly gangrenous guiles!
Feasting on each other, never growing any stronger;
clawing out each other’s eyes, spitting in their mouths,
screaming utterances most foul in their ears.
Climbing over each other in the obscurity, unseen.  

I want them to take my eyes.
I want them to take my ears.
I want them to take my voice.
I want them to squelch the flame
that burns within my cadaverous chest.

Surrendering any chance of agency;
if there were hands to bite,
I couldn’t see.
I hear the voices shouting,
but I can’t cut through the discord.

What if I hold my breath?
But I know that won’t last.
Feeling my lips turn purple,
the kick drum in my chest:

furious relentless crescendo
pace quickening mind’s racing
all the sins in the world
rotting in my soul inescapable
pounding at the door
clock ticking through the floor
lungs shrivel can’t take anymore—

Exhale.

Panting, hands on my knees,
ears perk up to the sound of malicious snickering.
I lift my gaze up to an eclipse of the moon,
so ghastly in fresh blemishes plaguing its majesty.

Squinting,
I see smiling faces,
eyes full of mocking laughter,
belonging to snide children
anxiously peering into the crowded fishbowl.

They watch us squirm without water,
dancing in aching bodies,
craving the touch of something cool,
and refreshing.

They dangle hope and promise like
lifeless puppets encircling
an infant’s crib.

I watch them tie onto simple strings:
wealth, and
power, and
love, and
belonging.

Reaching higher, and higher,
straining formless muscles,
feeling weakness overcome
creeping up like a tired conscience
climbing over the golden crest
atop the transparent foothills
encased in the nicotine screen skyline.

It hangs its head low
on its hands and knees,
lifting up a weary voice
so familiar and ignored.

A final sigh ringing in the ears of a generation:
A cough, and then a final weak sputter:
“I Told You So.”

III

Muse-less, useless, a twentynothing!

Anchored to the next big thing
sitting below deceptive still waters
murky mysterious
loathesome beast
peeking an eye out to catch us peering
over the edge of the docks
a glimpse at the promised eternity
immortality
delusion of grandeur
our eyes to the shore
nostalgia preserved
in the retellings of folklore
childhoods never forgotten
for fear of being lost in the present
and the forthcoming future
always a step away
how can we move on
when we’re busy cutting off our legs
to be eye level with our inner child
more like an exoskeleton
more exposed than our need
to grow
we sit huddled in our bemired despair
grinning sheepishly exposing our sin
crying out to the gargantuan
overlord of childlike fantasy
wielding our innocence
like a button-eyed ragdoll gluttonous treasure keeper
playing with fire in the alchemist’s den
so close to our material wealth
with the flames roaring lapping at our heels
feeling the dock begin to break from dry land
from the weight of our inflated consciences/consciousness
following the fangs of the snake to our parents
on the shore
with one hand sweating on the television remote
strangling in its grasp
they have no choice
but to squeeze the pump
harder and faster
legs of flesh and bone
break and give way
we begin to drift from the shore
pulling closer to the murky behemoth
that lurks under the perpetual offing
in the empty horizon we cry our broken hearts
into its cosmic bowels
feeling ourselves being sifted through
the hungry machinery of death
eyes luminous we shield our faces
from its rapturous gaze
fearful of the pillar of salt
that will stand in our place
but we look back
we take our hand off the plow
with ***** and Gomorrah at our backs
we peer through the electric eye
the sands of time
pouring through the hourglass
that spits us into the depths
of eternal strife.

IV

Muse-less, useless, a twentynothing!
Twentynothing!
Twentynothing!
Twentynothing!

Tw­entynothing in the classrooms!
Twentynothing in the workforce!
Twentynothing in the bathrooms!
Twentynothing in our parents' wars!

Twentynothing in the golden streets!
Twentynothing in the broken homes!
Twentynothing in the dusty libraries!
Twentynothing in the TV's drone!

Twentynothing in the Promised Land!
Twentynothing in the songs we sing!
Twentynothing in the secret plans!
Twentynothing in freedom ring!

Twentynothing in hands over hearts!
Twentynothing in our love in bed!
Twentynothing in the obscure route’s start!
Twentynothing in the lies we've read!

Twentynothing in the lives we fear!
Twentynothing in the scholar’s debt!
Twentynothing in our guns held dear!
Twentynothing in the tables set!

Twentynothing in the colors of skin!
Twentynothing in the reality show!
Twentynothing in the losses and win!
Twentynothing in the nightmares below!

Twentynothing in the kisses we hide!
Twentynothing in the I O U’s!
Twentynothing in the chanting of pride!
Twentynothing in the love you too’s!

Twentynothing in the hope we give!
Twentynothing in the dread they moan!
Twentynothing in the time we live!
Twentynothing in the chance we own!

Muse-less, useless, Twentynothing!

In the post-modern world aimless!

We, the Confounded Chiliads:
We are dangerous,
We are longing,
We are hopeful,
We are broken,
We are serendipitous—
We are eternal.

We Are Twentynothing.

…and that’s **** well something.

Let’s cut to the chase this is a piece about how he left
I sat down and told myself I should start with retellings of scenes you’d see in movies
But I’m not like him
I refuse to captivate you with flowery words only to realize they’ve wilted from the moment they bent out of my lips
I can’t believe I’m saying this but I wish he was like the others
Those who sat me down and told me it was over
Or sent me a text saying “We need to talk”
But no, he, he took his time leaving
Like he would always do every time he’d walk me home
He’d stop on sidewalks and point out the smallest things that would mystify him
Just so I’d forget he’d be leaving in the end

He left while holding my hand
His grip just enough to not let go but not tight enough to want to keep
Like receipts you’d hold on to while looking for a place to throw it in

He left with ok’s
Do you want to eat? Ok.
Let’s visit a museum today! – Ok.
Whatever. Goodnight. Just leave. – Ok.
I hate you – Ok.
I love you – Ok.
He said it too much, I’ve forgotten how his voice sounded saying anything else

He left with “You don’t understand”
Which was funny because he never really tried to let me
Like how my dad would tell me to go inside my room because “grown ups” had to talk

He left with silence and eyes that never met mine

He left a long time ago
With his body right next to mine
His fingers touching the veins that ran at the back of my hand
He left a long time ago
No one just wanted to say it out loud
Because no one ever wants to be the villain of the story

So, I, I let go
I pushed him out the door because someone had to do it
He’d been standing right in front of it for so long, like a student waiting to be given a hall pass I guess that’s what Catholic school taught him,
To never leave without asking permission

So, here it is
Love,
I have always tried to keep you
But let’s face it, you always wanted to leave
You just didn’t want it to be your fault
So, I’ll let it be mine
You can go tell your friends about your heartbreak now

Words... Words... Words...
You pollute the air with facts
Trivia, facts, retellings of stories
Already familiar to us and to them.

Sound... Sound... God Awful sound...
Like every moment needs to be saturated
With clanking or yapping or recitations.
If only I could speak just for the ability to ask you

To Please... Stop.. Talking.

It was not my first time drunk, not even close
but it was the first time that the floor span as a child's spinning top
and faces swam in my too-dark-too-bright-toomuch vision.
It was the first time I lost my footing and my back crashed into the wall sliding down until my knees hit my heaving chest and my palms pressed white against kitchen tile.
It was my first time crying into the shoulder of a boy I don't know, ripping my apple-bruised heart out of my retching throat and pushing it into his ***** numbed hands.

(after that my memories become manufactured by the later retellings of others)

something about the roof shingles being cold against my back but the stars being warmer than my smile ever was. Something about a phone call to a girl I once loved apologising over and overandover for falling for another. Something about a text at 1am that had my cheeks blushing and my stomach clenching convulsively around Gin and Guilt.  

(something more a little something more to drink)

Later, the boy who clumsily cradled my heart and my head in his lap, will tell me that I smiled at him through tingling teeth and told him that I would rather die than wake up in the morning.

If ever were to be modeled here on earth,
one aspect is universal,
any exploration as
to what can be true and what seems thinkable,
has previously had expectation set
to recognize
and expand, as realizable,
in application, skeleton key-ish,
old lock tech common
in empty old buildings
- archer of life lessonings pings -
- -ng all points on the spectrum
and adding perceived Disneyifications
of storied locks, those knowledge
unlocks, always,
as truth frees,
never cursing ought but ignorance,
that such storied locks unlock I- in stages,
we barely remember
our bare first snow
of memories
with others possibly needing
my attention,
to any certain detail, tool, wrench
or spanner time seams leaking
from old skins, tied to tighten
around just right, eh,
weather whether or no,
old soul, so sure you lost your will to win,
then, another breath forces its way in.

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

Watching fluffed flakes
of Southern California snow, witnessed
by some, in El Niño years past, just as big as a
little paper doily under a piece of truck stop pie.

At Descanso, and also at Gorman, top of Cajon Pass.

Top of the winding six-percenter
called the grape vine, down
into Bakersfield,
across primeval subsurface saline swamp,
until a while ago, after internal combustion
and electric pumps and radio dispatch police.

Earth, earth, can you hear me now,
how is one old man expecting
to establish a true reason
to believe the cultural corrective aspect
at once, before, as now, all began
occuring because the right hand and left are inhibited,
by not inconsequential inhibitory circuits, inhibiting
unreasonable single mind superiority, internal tyrany
we are under oath to oppose,
as truth in form and function, redeemed words
effectual and fervent reproof of instructions,
taking the Mickey out of Yanks, touting
dis-Disneyification,
relieves
a form of tyranny commonly capable
of ruling a soul committed
to aliegiance and confirmation rituals early enough.

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

This then be a future fantasy.
Snowed in, in a Southern California
spring blizzard, blocking the hinterlands.

I sit behind my Tesla wall,
and welcome the test, was it worth it,
what price can one put on winter warmth?

How guilty should I feel for having won,
upon acceptance of the form Jesus was in,

when his word assured me I might rest assured.

Truth known makes free, form is not function.

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

Historicity, I think they call,
mental time travel when you experience
life in a world lit only by fire.

Wonder if, then we think of praying men,
professional preachers of the impending

rapture, which belies all we know of gravity.
Miraculous, no less than the flying white horse,

or the horde of righteous dead coming on, behind.

And even then, there is resistant hate of brothers,
essential to trouble the minds of the greedy rich
and powerful, who constituted this world order,

this very one we live under, or within, in spirit
and in the truth the internet lets prove reproof.

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

Enough. We fact check, team spirit.
What can we honestly say we all know?

Six thousand years of written retellings
and retellings, and savage adversarial
herds of prophecy guided god-minded
meek as Moses Phineas knew, true
a certain variety
of the species,
with no regard
for breeding, gravitates to rhetoric
in tune with the pain perceived as needing
rebellion arrousing need --
engage disbelief, let it flow,
out the left ear is fine,
feel
relief, mindlessness
of this hard problem,
what are we about
to do, these days as we pray
with science included in grace,
due to the odds demanding,
a definite bias on Earth, to living,
like grace cheats death into agging
us into freeform ideas for hearts
to conceive as worthy
of cognosis fervency,
as at Eureka instants in prayer.

Truth, none may gainsay truth,
any may and certainly do, lie about what
Truth is behind a universal direct object, set

in the form a free spirit may hold,

not any form smoke cannot pass through,
but the form believers
accept as ours after,
spirit wise, as living words,
death, or out of body reproof
of imagination, a weform, a we,
the shock alone, makes a body think,
woe, this ain't hell but that really hurt,
bang. Same, no worse, and one last time,

I respond , "the Oxycontin is not working",
and time expands, and expands again,
and interest in worth of reason,

appears to judge my plea.
Believe me, death is not scarey, after
finishing a mortal experience in such
a time as this,

freedom from fear of death, is so freeing.
Coherence in mindtimespace is coincidental.

כֹּפֶר the price of a life, ransom {Kopher}
for a captive... long now global science of us
we, the users of knowledge, by grace.
we, the conscious...
asking who or even if,
we even imagine we know
what is being governed, now,
after history fed to the greatest generation
has proven detrimental to mental satisfaction,
after the information age unleashed all we ever knew,
at once, into the first television advised generation
Boom, watchadodame,
- why does it feel so right to break rules, reasoning
really, if we did have fore thought, as a gift,
that also held hope and all the hell's imaginable,
to which any living in a city have been exposed
using retellings of Homer et al... so who made the rules?
From point A,
something feels wrong
smart people believing war the good evil,
best defense is a good offence, a will to ****,
for duty and post humus glory, guaranteed.
----------------

How much of the lifestyle,
manifested by industrial wealth,

and war regulated trade agreements,
and a royal arrangement of ancient gens,
and primogeniture passed on in trust, true
riches never rest, history hides the old wisdom
--
scribe, find records of Haman's service to the king.

According to the laws of the Medes and Persians, also
Daniel, the name from the clock set to messiah proof,
--------------------

I laugh, inside, not O L, but
I laugh, it counts, does good, like
a medicine, heals a rift right ghine
phine fine, fine as may be, infinitely
small or large, as may be, infinitely
expressed as ever itself, ever in always,
luckyghucker
time
to think and make do
with probable
cause, slight smile,
so small that none could notice,
but the maker of the slight adjustment
from inside the face,
looking at you.

Did you feel watched?
Did you feel watched over?

Me and you, anonymous, us
time takers, wind breathers,
horizonal scanners set at right angles,
perpendicular, flat plane, smooth
to ever's inside edge, flat as a puddle.

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

Come and see, he said,
we hear, he said, the very next day,
we assume, some unnamed happening,

time and chance, place and position,
facing or looking away, per haps
as haps may,
occur in curving spacetimed minds

dragged into ever decreasing space
and ever increasing mass, until
energy loses any reason and ceases.

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

A hap, a done deed, a past
intensity set to vibrate, in tune

a mileau of all we imagine known,
all the why, indeed, all the how,
all the non this thats
all the not that thiss, and thoses

hissing lizard language, legendary
tellings of sacred made firsts, first man
first wombed man, first figuring self will,
auto both knowing, first communion, join

objects to subjects, I am you and you, me,
eye to eye we see each the other, and if
you ever once saw your self in another's
pupil, reflected back from the shiny surface
of the arranging eye connector linking our mind

into init we form, initiation locking gnosis, recon
complete, proceed enfolding all we thought to ask.

If can is proven indeed, done, then
now was done in wordlessness, then,

and now we think we can know that,
we think we can predict the emptiness,

beyond all we think or ask, here we are,
carrying our sanity for peace sake, acting as
if the material tenon and taches
and
כֹּפֶר the price of a life, ransom for a captive,

knowing, from the oldest whole tales told,
by those who take pride in privileged knowing,

we wander as the learners, long, long, longing
to learn for ever, loving learning left behind
in song and dance and ritual geometry,

vectors from point to point, looking up,
noticing the motion, feeling the earth move,
watching the red wanderer sink in the west,

as we watch our world roll around as a ball
of dough rolled into a loaf, to be baked,
in a fire hot enough to seal the spirit in,

fried bread invention came after horses,
stories change as fast as reasons to believe,

just imagine, knowing of the existance
of these tools we use with out needing
years to learn to tune the ideas into words
communicating meaning sought for through

instants in prayer to the unknown, spirit form
life and the universe share, as spacetimemind.

Okeh.
We agree, we think in ways the Andrew Carnegie,
could not imagine, we have watched children
play multi player global war, in virtual reality,

we have sat in grand theatrical kivas, in cities
builded on shifting shores of pre ice age oceans,

not all that long ago, in our long now dreams,
looking through today to yesterday, holding
certain truths self evident, if, just ifery per se,

chance, indeed, pure luck, peaceable, wise
to take such a chance, otherwise, you miss

the fit, pocket, proper cache for fallen stars,
caught in literate child private interpretations,

hey, kid, what'd'ya make of that, one knot,
Phrygian Turk's head, knowledge found, held,
loops in thought that have one side,
one edge and potentially infinite width and length,

and infinite points in between all pastless,
until one manifests in common sense, as certain
aha,
gravity is to materiality as wisdom is to life.
Thought then do, wisdom indeed, grace
for grace, deep calleth unto deep,
fret naught, the curve is gentle,

we discern, we learn, war has never,
and can never, win, for one reason,

one cost of knowing the truth, and dieing,
for it, as that was the set price  כֹּפֶר nicht wahr?

One and done, live and learn, yearn to make
peace seem the easiest option to war prep economy.

Be ye warmed and filled, and find that often
enough to dare to share because, you know,
knowing hap in happiness is luck in life,
and the entire precept reception system,
is cross wired behind a chirality governing on
and off.
And when we, or any so sighted form of us,
see eye to eye, face to face, we engage circuitry,

we enable agreement, mind to mind, I see you
imagining timelessness between us, as a distance
mere words bridge with no slippery stones to step

where there
is the pedestal, the pedal to push, to open a fore
thought judgement,

a precedent, I once followed such a thread as this,
with just such a muse as this, described as clear text
derived from imaginary messages killed as carriers,

open the window atop yo' head, go up… old bald head

chrome domed ****** spy, I
never believed your cover story, so

The Metaphor, or Parable, or Symbolic Containment

Field, vast expanse of horizontal and hither and yon,
as vast as
ever, plain plane flat out out from me/you on
any of seven points, counting now a time deemed
right now
six planes slice us in communions, centered here,
and now
spinning with effectual prayers to counter balance
recognized jolts
of merest word gnosis, recoknown, recommuned,

ah, we,
yes, us, the people filling *** holes in dementiatic
wishes to be left to sort ourselves out,
if you do not mind, after the rapture,
there you are, of another mind,
entwined with winning being truth's only edge,

no thread we cannot catch breaking, and watch
as we once knew the truth never broke, we
let be a big old lie, and that old lie became the law,

and writing spoken scrambled words, became power,
as it is written, so it must be done, the spoken spell,
has been offered and recorded in the times of us,
we who read at will in any script known,
on a thrown away phone, fixed for seven dollars,
and a passing focused attention on the techne,
old idea, wisdom, principal known, fret not,
stop it
right now,
this is the way we came, we are not lost,
nor dead… this was an exciting concurrency.

Peace be left with us, let us think we all imagined so

The stories you tell
and the stories
you live
remain endlessly
untitled
in their retellings
only to be quantified
and labeled by those
who can only read them
but never experience
how they truly went

it's night
and there are only
two sounds
in the room.

a staggered, humming,
wipe
of running cars,
and a plastic fan
who's chipped blades
struggle for breath
in a wall facing window.

thoughts echo,
take your hand, and
lead you places
you know you don't want to go.

it's quiet
but at times
overwhelming.
night rushes in on all sides
only to stop at the window,
held back by a single shaded bulb.
the childhood nightmares that
hold the sill
drool, grind their teeth,
wait for the inevitable dark.

a train passes
somewhere far off.
blowing a lonly note,
proving to the world
that it still exists and
is hard at work.

it sparks the mind
to chew nervously on
bitter retellings
of histories half remebered.

the bed,
blood,
and heart have run cold,
while the two beers by the bedside
have gone warm.

time stretches out into forever,
yet somehow still maintains
the very real threat
of swallowing things whole,
and coughing everything up into
a dreadful tomorrow.

Could never sit still in a class
For five minutes
Now I teach English
Like nobody’s business
It’s vivid, expressive
My content explicit
Colloquial linguistic
Rhymes are sadistic
Prolific retellings
Of history written
Like one death is tragic
But millions? Statistics
Like lyrics as liquid
As Ludacris livid
Ferociously phosphorous
Fury I spit it
As rising sun dragons
To Asia I pivot
But I bury fascists
At level 10’s limit

There are many opposites in this world:
light and dark,
And love and hate,
bliss and pain,
And Life and Death.
What is Life and Death?

The concept of Life and Death is millenniums of years old,
And the answer is different for every individual you ask
They may say that life is a short experience that every individual goes through
They may say that its a blessing that we must take advantage of
They may say that its a curse that we all must suffer
They may say that we’re here for a specific predetermined reason
And they may say that its nothing until we make something from it
There are many theories and beliefs of what happens after
Some say that you go to another world where you can live in peace and happiness
Another of distress and suffering
Or you just go through another life in a new body under a new name
Or your soul inhabits another animal or object
Or it remains just wandering, bodilessly
And many speculations more…
Then there are others who may say that there is simply nothing.

Life
Life is when your soul has a body to control,
A mind to inhabit,
Dreams to fulfill
It allows that spirit to interact with other spirits to build and create
Life is full and stimulating and always moving
Life is a course of events,
One action impacts the next impacts the next impacts the next…
Life grows and flourishes
Life develops and changes every day and every second and every moment
You have the ability to make your world a utopia
The choices you and others make can impact the next
But those choices won’t always lead to success
Sometimes they’ll lead you to failure
Misery
Disappointment
And sometimes you won’t always get to choose what happens
Life is unexpected
But we have retellings of other’s lives
Rules and guides on how to live our own
Regulations and laws (that aren’t always followed)
Rewards and punishments
Life is a blessing
Life is a curse
Life is everywhere
Life is now.

Death
Death is when your conscious leaves your physical state for eternal time.
We haven’t yet met death, but it still feels familiar
Do we see death in between our stages of wake and sleep?
Or in moments of shock after impact?
Or maybe when our heart drops during a fall?
Its funny being agnostic because no theory of life after death fully satifies
I’d imagine that right before death, a melancholious chill would spead over,
Inabiling every part of you
Segment by segment
Limb by limb
Memory by memory
Then you and your soul would be let free
No longer having to carry the weight of your body, the weight of your thoughts,
An infinite dreamlike state, except with no pictures or visions.
A peaceful, dreamless, light, nothingness.
A freedom from life.
But maybe death is different
It’s interesting being agnostic because no theory of life after death feels sure
Thats the thing, we don’t fully know
Thats why its so scary, it’s unknown
And you can’t undo it, you can’t go back
Death is interminable
Death is inevitable
Death everywhere
Death is the end.

So what is Life and Death?
They are…
…

A skeleton just hangin’
From a noose of listless mystery
Still shackled to the gallows of my past
The rest is history
Another pack of lies
And greedy broken treaty victory
Embellishing retellings
Of a tale as old as rhyme
And in the minds of future scribes
Time will absolve me of the crime
For these confines of flesh impermanence
Internalized eternal words
And from exile I returned
To claim dominion over herds
To watch as birds as angels reigned
And people’s god uplifted
A new vision in my image
Through the power I was gifted
All to unify the many
Selfless service higher cause
That would reeducate the state
In human nature’s common laws

i. he tells me that the iron in his bittersweet blood pumps just for me but the corybantic taste of gun metal on his plump heliotrope lips bears the names of other young lemon balm girls

ii. he runs his tongue over my bloodied lip and bitten flesh as a sugar-coated pristine apology leaves his own because love is only a blood sport for this arcane and the only way he knows how to love is to ****.

iii. he mixes vintage cyanide and coconut water inside of a wine glass while in the driver’s seat of his ‘69 fastback and leaves the blood orange sun rays to seep into my warm undertone skin that is slowly decaying in the passenger’s seat, waiting for his essence to bleach my bloodstream with his carboned deception.

iv. he sews bruised begonias and sullied belledonnas between the crevices of my teeth and leaves me with phantoms that will rip out every cuspid in my mouth; i will rot with the wailing of the weeping woman. he tells me that i am his favorite cryptic artwork throughout the history of sacred retellings.

v. he burns out his corojo cigars onto my ashtray glass skin and watches how it pops, crackles, and melts into my safety pin bones and grow tumor cells within the cracks of my peach mimosa ribcage until i wither to smoke and dust

vi. he sharpens his teeth with a razor blade and licks up the flames of my soul with his serpentine tongue. he will swallow me whole like an acid tab and offer the same one to the next girl with a sharper spine.

vii. my body is his confession booth, wrapped in all of his sins like barbwire. he is absinthe mixed with satiating sunday sins who kisses gospel into my thighs and i fall to my bare knees for a devil with the framework of a god.

LOST BALLOON

crawling from the crash
I couldn't have died
if I tried

I had a son to save
laughed
spat in death's face

pulled him from the flames
I forbade him to die
he disobeyed

the car exploded
burning the edges
of the night

I survive
without him
a death in itself

my reflection
does all the talking
I just stare in the mirror

Christmas now
I feel like a lost balloon
sticking to the ceiling

*

This was a lady I used to look after and I know this story inside out as she told it and retold it to her self in the hopes that in one of the hopeless retellings she could break through the words and save her son again only for him to die over and over again. Not even in words could she save him but she wouldn't ever give in and so was doomed to relive that horrific moment for ever.