Mr. Rory Richards
Lived his life,
Taking garbage
Out at night.
He shovelled drives
He swept walks,
He listened intently
While others talked.
Others talked.

When Rory wasn't
Weeding the garden,
He was outside
Hanging laundry.
Moms were jealous,
Dads were shamed,
But whispering neighbours
Never complained.
Rory's good
At the husband game.
He presented well.
The neighbours continued
To tsk and tsk.

On his way home
From work,
He picked up the kids
From daycare,
He'd find time
To volunteer there.
He'd have treats
At home for them,
And their friends.

He volunteered with
Cubs and Scouts,
Always finding
Extra time
For jamborees
And overnights.

One day the cops
Came on the scene,
Rory wasn't
What he seemed:
His computer
Showed a different man,
A lurking, luring
Child **** fan.
And the neighbours'
Tsks cresendoed.

At his trial
He sat abandoned,
But neighbours there
Gave witness to
A man they thought
They surely knew.
A family man
In his pew.
All his life
He lived beside them,
A man they let
Their kids rely on.

My aged mum excitedly points outside
White flowers burst open bright overnight
She says they look like popcorn
I love her metaphor and play along
Flowers white like popcorn bright
Tickled by the heat of the micro light

Mum speaks of small things in her big age
Sun, rain, wind, hot, cold, quite days
The unrelenting pain in her legs
and memories of things she could once do with ease

She speaks of the coming and going of mischievous monkeys
real monkeys - not metaphors
She tells of how they brazenly steal her fruit
when she is alone at home - teasing her
as they walk backwards out the glass door
slinging their stolen bananas like a colt 44

My mum sits across from me
the sun gently brushes her short silver grey strands of hair
Today she wears a pretty pink dress - patterned bright
with pretty pink and blue flowers - reflection
of the pretty flowers outside
She sits in serenity - she is at peace - inside

My niece pops corn in the microwave
My sisters biryani fills the hungry air
My brother in law awaits his birthday party
I am at home

The pretty white flowers
silently blossom in the yard
I sit across from my metaphor mum
My poet, my muse, my loving bard

Stanley Arumugam
Richards Bay

teaching a wild creature to feed from your hand is a feat maybe maybe not Mom taught me from a young age then never let go in June 2013 the estate will cease all the coats hats shoes scarves skirts dresses blouses belts purses from Ultimo Saks Neimans wherever steaks from Gene and Georgetti’s Gibsons whatever will be consumed and she will be forced by the bank to resign her condo on lake shore drive and go live with her sister and i will be left with nothing

nothing feels better than fighting back gathering the strength courage to do that to fight until there is no daylight

the world is a mysterious place it is Sunday December 26th 2010 6AM pitch dark outside in several months daybreak will come earlier a remarkable surprise yet always been this way in several minutes firmament turns light i open eyes stretch legs look out window pink blue gray blue morning skies tree tops mountains watch flock of birds maybe 30 or 40 flying back and forth east west why do they do that how would you like to be one of those birds flapping around searching from above at the earth hmmm what if everyone had a ***** and ****** feathered wings fin distinctive tail floppy or pointed ears what if you could share breakfast or lunch with Kim Gordon Patti Smith work on poem with e. e. cummings James Joyce William Faulkner paint with Mark Rothko Anselm Kiefer play football with Payton Manning Drew Breeze jam with Jimi Hendrix Keith Richards race with Secretariat sniff with Lassie mix with Max Ernst Georgia O'Keefe Donald Judd meet with Gandhi and J.F.K. make love with Charlotte Gainsbourg Kate Moss dinner with John Lennon Friedrich Nietzsche dance with Albert Einstein Isadora Duncan share a smoke with Sam Clemens (Mark Twain) Sam Shepard last drink with Sylvia Plath Virginia Woolf then go to sleep next to Sphinx Pyramids wake with Cleopatra Mata Hari on Bali beach look up at tiny puffy clouds that resemble strange script do you understand the possibilities mysteries of everything

old is lecherous but i’m still trapped in childhood hurting wanting to be grown-up

i think i said i don’t know how to talk i was speaking to this **** greedy landlord trying to negotiate between 2 different spaces long distance and i meant to say i can’t talk right now i’m in a restaurant or shop but instead what came out was i don’t know how to talk he was insulting me bullying hollering at me on cell phone accusing me of dickering about price lease and it slipped out my terror from Dad my childhood fears repression inability to negotiate i froze fumbled finally uttering i don’t know how to talk then disconnected

i’m running scared gasping for breath heart pounding yearning praying crying for love beauty happiness success i’m smart creative powerful yet inept too shy or fearful to know how to properly spontaneously speak in person

what if consumerism is realized as a mental disorder a method to suppress genuine hunger with fetish products

what if money is identified as disease actual legal tender found to source fatal viruses

what if humanity is discovered to belong to an alien predatory race independent from Adam and Eve or monkeys

what if all knowledge is found to be deceptive invention concealing real world truth

what if existence is a chess game or trial enacted by higher forces and your every thought feeling recorded in eternity

what if progress is the enemy and primitivism the remedy

my whole life i’ve learned about infidelity my mom sister dad uncle i don’t understand i’ve never been unfaithful to a girlfriend (one is enough one is more than i can handle) why do people speak those vows then get married only to violate themselves their mates maybe that’s why i am afraid to ever get married infidelity is the most painful betrayal to find out your partner with all your shared secrets compromises them with someone else oh god

April 19th 1995 a bomb explodes in Federal building in Oklahoma City killing 168 people injuring 759 what are Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols thinking did they act alone there are so many lunatics running around out there so much misunderstanding disenfranchisement in America

Arlington Street Asheville North Carolina June 1995 Odysseus and his dog Farina keep mostly to themselves something is wrong with his voice he sounds hoarse when he speaks it is uncomfortable to talk he goes to free clinic and waits half a day elderly doctor attempts to stick long metal instrument down Odysseus’s throat Odysseus gags coughs elderly doctor becomes irritable he warns Odysseus to quit smoking Odysseus wonders what it would be like to be loved possibly married in loving positive relationship to know all the endearing enduring connections between caring couples other people manage it why can’t he? he thinks i’ve never been a good provider nor placed enough value in money i believe in freedom and love i chose to make art and pursue a life of self-discovery experiment dang i am wrong from the moment one’s work hangs in a gallery the artist’s integrity is compromised individuality becomes commodity typically people who buy paintings have so much money they scatter a trifle on art the artwork provides the consumer with a look of ‘soul’ to be shown off to their envious friends the artist becomes needy pet of dealer and client maybe converting one’s spirituality into commercial merchandise is like making deals with the devil he thinks about Native American artists whose work is immediately esteemed and utilized in their culture he has spent his whole life seeking validation in art world he wonders how many other unknown artists feel similarly useless discarded he considers i’m forty-five years old now and i don’t have a penny to show for all my troubles i still believe i have much to give insights to reveal but no practical plan for survival i don’t know how i’m going to get through this existence the world wants young promising talent not some older painter striving for another chance women want nothing to do with an impoverished aging dreamer my dog loves me she knows who feeds her i’ve got academic degrees a long resume of legitimate shows i know how to use a computer solve problems fix toilets sinks strip and paint serve food and liquor but i can’t land a decent job i never learned how to properly market or barter my work and i’m not interested in the position of sacrificial lamb i want a home and female partner like other men have i want to be needed respected loved a creative member of a community instead of an expendable outsider working menial jobs for minimum wage what good are paintings if no one looks at them what good are noble values in a corrupt society the world runs on money and greed not freedom and love

“One of the effects of living with electronic information is that we live habitually in a state of information overload.”                                                      
                                                                                      Marshall McLuhan
So, let’s review:
Man is a thinking animal.
Stanley Kubrick took us to space to get us to think.
Marshall McLuhan:  “There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.”
Hemetucky: what was I thinking?
The Rapture for the 1%:   The Language of the World and The Language of Enthusiasm explains why Sir Richard  Branson’s ****** Galactic will only be taking the richest among us to space.
Ian (Limey Futurologist) Pearson:  “Binary is already the dominant language on Planet Earth with today’s machines having more conversations in 24 hours than the whole of humankind since the birth of Eve.”
Larry Flynt:  “**** is the answer to everything.”
Goofy:  “Yeah, I ****** Minnie. I shagged her rotten, baby!”  
Winston Smith:  “Do it to Julia!”
McNugget Buddies:   “Parts is parts.”                                          
Stunod: “Donuts-a -spella backwards issa stunod.” Think about it.
Tony Soprano.  “You ****** stunod, it's a joke.” (Stunod:  in southern dialect Italian means stupid, or a stupid person) http://(www.urbandictionary.com) define.php?term = stunod  / buy stunod mugs & shirts
Marshall McLuhan:    “Jokes are grievances.”
Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino:  “Antonio Gramsci thought that Stalin and Bolshevism could save him and Italy from Fascism:  stunod.”
The Cloud:  My acceptance of the Cloud into my life and my changeling cyborg self is by no means a capitulation to the surfing life.
Paulo Coehlo:  “The God you seek; that someone who awaits you is you.”
Howard Beale:  “That’s the God *******.”
God:   “Because you’re on television, stunod!”
The Elders of Zion:  Nu?
Meir Kahane:  “Let us not suffer from a national amnesia that causes us to forget who and what we are. No trait is more justified than revenge in the right time and place. I know that American and Israeli elections must be limited only to those who understand that the Arabs are the deadly enemy of the Jewish state, who would bring on us a slow Auschwitz - not with gas, but with knives and hatchets. Vote for Newt!”

**** Jagger:    “Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out” (40th Anniversary Edition, Rolling Stones)
Keith Richards +Fijian palm tree = Stunod.  
Marshall McLuhan:   “The more the data banks record about each of us, the less we exist.”    
Howard Beale: “If there's anybody out there that can look around this demented slaughterhouse of a world we live in and tell me that man is a noble creature, believe me: That man is not only full of *******, that man is  stunod.”
The Nam, Part I:   a demented slaughterhouse within a microcosm and grains of beach sand inside micro-Cosmo Kramer’s shorts. When I was in the Kingdom of The Nam I was always under the influence of some drug, mostly my own pure adrenaline when scared shitless--a frequent condition for me—not only my own piquant adrenal juice but other stuff like ****, hash, Thai stick, *****, amphetamines, H-Horse ******, quaaludes, horse tranquilizers and Russian *****. The drugs were always a welcome and needed friend, a respite from the horrors of war in Southeast Asia. To meditate & levitate, to transmigrate & navigate, to negotiate & regurgitate myself, I needed a head start if I was going to SLIDE through what would be called a wormhole today, making a three-dimensional movement between different parallel universes, a conquest of time and space. Cue our favorite narrator:
Rod Serling:  “You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension--a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into the Twilight Zone.”
WWII, Part I:  A slider now, I SLIDE to my father’s war—the War in Europe in the years before V.E. Day, May 8, 1945. Suddenly I’m flipped right out of the jungle to Germania, to Deutschland in the winter of 1945. I am a P.O.W. of the Germans, sent out into the economy as slave labor. It’s February in Dresden, Germany, the Baroque capital of the German state of Saxony, the city called lovingly by her (****!) many lovers: “The Florence of the Elbe.” It was a long time ago, during the war and I Survived to Tell the Tale. I am a wet floppy Kilgore Trout; I’ve flopped right out of the Twilight Zone into what appears to be an underground meat locker in Dresden. There are animal carcasses hanging from the ceiling and the building is known as Slaughterhouse Number 5. I am a lucky ******* because even though I don’t know it yet, I’m in the safest place in the entire city. Cue the Bombing of Dresden, a strategic military bombing by the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States Army Air Force (USAAF).  In four raids, 1,300 heavy bombers dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on Dresden. The resulting firestorm destroyed 15 square miles (39 square kilometers) of the city centre and killed many thousands, according to **** figures-- largely discredited by the victors who not only get the spoils but get to spin the history any which way but loose. Casualty figures were 200,000 and death toll estimates went as high as 500,000. Or maybe just 25,000 total, if you believe the ******* Anglo-American valkyries who unleashed the wrath of Khan’s Smoking Joe’s Barbecue Ribs and Hotlinks. Win a war, get a medal and a seat in Congress, maybe the White House; lose a war, get indicted. You’re going to Nuremberg, pilgrim, or the ******* Hague.
Kurt Vonnegut: “World War II was over and I was standing in the middle of Times Square with a Purple Heart on and a purple hard-on.”
Colonel Kurtz:  “We fight for the land that's under our feet, the gold that's in our hands, women that worship the power in our *****.  I summon fire from the sky. Do you know what it is to be a white man who can summon fire from the sky? ...What it means? You can live and die for these things, not silly ideals that are always betrayed  . . . I swallowed a bug. Who are you, captain?”
Willard:   “Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste. I've been around for a long long year, stolen many man's soul and faith. Stuck around St. Petersburg when I saw it was a time for a change. Killed the Tsar and his ministers, Anastasia screamed in vain. I rode a tank, held a gen'rals rank when the blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank. Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name.”  
WWII, Part II:  The bombing of Dresden had to have been some kind of a violation of some International Code or Geneva Convention. But, of course, the bombers, the Victors, ran the Nuremberg show trials. The bombees didn’t get a chance to say much, didn’t want to make a fuss, seeing how generous the Army of Occupation was with their coal, gasoline, clothing and food handouts. But I was there when it was safe to climb out of the meat locker, and immediately got put to work on the après les bombes clean-up. I was there doing the ***** work, a corpse miner, tasked with collecting the fried grasshopper remains of so many unlucky Krauts who were simply burned alive, like heretics at the Inquisition. So it goes.
William Tecumseh Sherman: “War is Hell, Babaloo!”
Colonel Kilgore: “You can either surf, or you can fight!”
Sam Bottoms: “I dropped a tab of acid at the Do-Long Bridge, so I think I’ll surf for awhile: ‘I see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour.’ Reading Blake: for years it was the only way I could block out the war, that and losing myself in a bunch of undercover assignments. Yeah, it was William Blake, I-Spy and lots more acid; that how I dealt with PTSD.”
The Nam, Part II, LT DAN:  “Good job, trooper; those ******* drugs got you coming and going, sliding so fast you’ve missed latrine duty 3 times this month. Now go get 5 gallons of diesel fuel and gasoline, mix it together and torch that ******* feces, soldier.”
** Chi Minh:  “This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around.”
***** Friedman:   “The Democrats and Republicans are the same guy admiring himself in the mirror.”

Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak:   “Vote for Pedro.”
Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard:    “Fight Fiercely!”
Marshall McLuhan:    “I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it.”
The Author:   I am a disaffected angry old man, formerly a disaffected angry young man; a Hopi-Italian Jew with Chinese offspring, namely my left-brained son, a mathematical genius but having a tough time dealing with idiots, the many truly stunod people in the world.  Then there’s my Rose, my sweet King Lear-jet daughter, like her half-brother, not yet finished paying for my sins. My offspring are haunted, visited upon daily by their father’s  ghosts, ghosts created, ghosts hovering over me, from wars hot and cold and peace lukewarm and cloudy, like the uranium ground contamination on the mesa, visited upon mothers and infants  and children who seek only a glass of cool water from the spring not to be glow worms in the dark, leukocytes made insane by something in the water. My sins, a father’s sins; things I did to curry favor, to ingratiate and advance myself with the 1%, things I did to get ahead in life, to get what I thought my father and others in the ancestral slipstream had failed to get, twice to the Rabbi for a get (Hebrew: גט‎, plural gittin גיטין), to get the edge my kids need now, the edge I never had, and life reduced to an exercise in ultimate combat, little more than a cage fight, man against man and God against all. The things I did for money and position shame me now. And shame is a large  source of my anger.  I will remain angry. I will hang on to my anger at God and myself and all who have been disappointed in me, by me, especially the cavalcade of short-term caretakers, women used, abused, left behind and forgotten. Why am I me? Sometimes I think that’s the way I’m programmed. But it’s okay, like Gaga: “I'm beautiful in my way 'Cause God makes no mistakes I'm on the right track, baby I was born this way' Cause God makes no mistakes, I'm on the right track, baby, I was born this way and will I continue to surf the Cloud: even though God is dead and I don’t believe you, or me, or them.
Basic: remember Basic?

10   A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 20
20   START STEP TWO ANGER KUBLER-ROSS INFINITE LOOP
30   GOTO 10
10   A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 20
20   START STEP TWO ANGER KUBLER-ROSS INFINITE LOOP
30  GOTO 10
10   A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 20
20   START STEP TWO ANGER KUBLER-ROSS INFINITE LOOP
30 A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 30
30  GOTO 10 Ad infinitum

precursor - title correlation
body -

mind of:

C                oh

    oh                      Ri

n'ah.   (half an hour fiddling with a 502 bad
gateway; traffic these days! jeez!)

I.

it don't know what's more frustrating for the reasons that it's so good... i can't choose... it's a close call... either listening to Red Hot Chilli Peppers' B-sides from By The Way... ugh! why didn't they release that as a double album! Stadium Arcadium was not that good as a double-album... all the prior albums are MAGIC... literally... for ****'s sake: GOLDMINE is literally just that... there's that... i can't concentrate on making my own translation of Ovid... i'm yet to scribble down the translation i have... i can't even drink my whiskey properly... the other frustrating focus? watching Armand Duplantis break his own world record of 6.21metres... the ****** has still at least 10cm in him! a record that will have to stand-still for the next 20+ years... i'll be dead before this record is broken... Сергій Бубка best be sleeping... i'm listening to the music, reliving the end of the World Athletics and trying to heel-myself-in-the-buttocks: better get a move on boy... hmm! "trying"... i'm actually heeling myself in the buttocks: no time to wait... one can wait for a bus... one cannot for one's own incentive... ol' Lizzy is coming up the mountain... she's coming with the proper closure of the 20th century... however many popes she outlived... however many prime ministers and american presidents... come on Lizzie... just one more year... i'm actually dying to spend money with whittle Charlie printed on the notes... my fingers are itching... but **** me... music so good By The Way should have been a double-album... no! Stadium Arcadium was not the salvagable double-album worth session... i'm getting "schizophrenic" vibes... i know that poetry is not an entertaining medium: it's a complacent self-congratulatory, thereupeutic load of *******... it's obnixious when staged: the exasperated art of speaking with speed... today i realised that i much prefer drinking to having ***... i like the preservation of my brain with a hard-on of itchy fingers than any actual ******* hard-ons... the knife opening oysters or plucking out the eyes of deer... best the eyes be gauged out... than having deer stare into car lights... hybrid confusions of static, motivated to move... frozen in a make-shift imitation of root and clay and copper: bam! one more statue down...

II.

it's no wonder why i'm not looking for a girlfriend, it's no longer bewildering why i'm not looking for a wife, at best i'm looking out for that ancient custom of Roman emperors: to become a foster father, a surrogate - i'm yet to find a match-up... i almost did, but she undermined my chances by undermining her own seriousness in such affairs... but clarity does come... as much as i might be a surrogate father to her son or daughter: i wouldn't be faithful to her... i would steal the night and run away into a brothel... but there's something else... the whole dynamic of publishing has changed... the whole idea of a library has also changed... i own more valuable books in my private collection than the public library of Romford... which is me peering at the dire straits of what the public is fed... i know why i don't aspire for pair-bonding... perhaps man so levelled aspired toward the imitation of birds a long time ago... perhaps swans are truly noble creatures: for one hears of widow and widower swans... perhaps parrots: born from those monstrous beasts that were the dinosaurs can imitate our talk... all that's this reality within the confines of "perhaps": nonetheless, it's all true... but perhaps being the mammal that i am... i moved from a community of chimpanzees into a solo-ride of imitation-bear... perhaps i only entertain the opposite *** on the encounter of ***... i couldn't land a conversation with a woman outside the constrictive-framework of work, so much so: i would abhor the mindset of men that go on dates with women: buy them food and then EXPECT... i leave that ******* out in my interactions... pay-up-front for what you're about to receive otherwise don't play cat while the woman plays mouse... or rather... a rat in cat's clothing: the woman therefore becoming a rat-trap... mind you: i can't think of a more terrible idea than the modern version of: eat first, **** later... at the old ****** proverb states: a hungry ****** is angry... a filled ****** is lazy... god forbid i ever become tempted by those dating sites... i'm currently looking for the original Latin text of Ovid's the Amores book 2 poem 6... why? what i have in my hand... and what i'm finding... it's like what Robert Pinsky remarked about once: TRANSLATIONS differ so much from one translator to another...

they have done it... UEFA are mad... just to get my
accreditation for the women's Euros final
at Wembley they're asking me to bring my passport
with me... so is Wembley the JFK of Florida
          space-shuttle launch? Houston? am i leaving
the country?
                but the girls have done it...
funny: some other people are still complaining:
IT'S TOO WHITE!
   there's not enough diversity in the team...
          that's me also planning to go and live
in Kenya and become a model for toilet paper...
i'm sure i could replace that known Koala bear /
golden retriever or perhaps i could go there
and model for soap adverts...
it just so happened that racial tensions (only football
could create them) rose up for a little:
just one night the day England lost to Italy
on penalty shootouts... because... 3 black guys
were playing a rigged roulette...
            then again? me? and the African heat?
fat chance...

find me the original Elegy VI: the death of Corinna's
pet parrot...
oh man... and her name was Polly...
i sat up late last night trying to find something
interest on the television...
bam! thank you ma'am...
                       kurt cobain: montage of heck...
sort of reminded me of...
                           a SCANNER DARKLY...
                           mind you: i sometimes do enjoy
a one-man show... or at least two...
there was this brilliant show in the West End...
Stones in his Pockets...
       two actors... sharing the roles of...
                  about 15 people each...
but it was back in circa 2001...
so... maybe it was Louis Dempsey
                                                        & Sean Sloan...
mind you... i'd still love to see Samuel Beckett's
             NOT I...

Jack Trades says: i'm about to a heap
of hay of hate...
                                i'm everywhere sometimes...
if it's not music, then its visual arts,
then it's philosophy, then fine literature...
then something "oriental" in thinking...
then its coupling my fetish for Deutsche as:
father to the English zunge...
then it's back east to rummage in some Katakana...

i know why i'm single, Roger Moore remained
a bachelor until his death...
  courteous: as ever as forever always...
i'd be a terrible match-up... i've given pair-bonding
a chance: i can't bemoan why X is not Y...
the sort of men that pair-bond are claustrophilic...
they love the company of a mate...
each time i was ever in a "relationship" i already
had one foot dangling: tapping an imaginary
drum set...
recently i discovered the B-side of the Red Hot Chilli
Peppers... so for me it's a version
of keeping the 20th century alive with
the "dichotomy" of the Rolling Stones vs.
the Beatles... i'm more... R.H.C.P.'s A-sides
of R.H.C.P.'s B-sides?
                                        i'm busy...
                i'm always busy... i don't want to relax...
i want a Turkish barber to suggest that
i need  hot-towel and an arm massage after
my beard is trimmed and... i'm still going to state:
getting a Turk to trim my beard is a close
contender to oral *** from a Turkish *******...

but try finding me that original Latin of Ovid's...
ah! found it! let's see if i can compete with
my own translation... the one i originally read
and the one i found finding the original Latin
were so disparaging...

**** yes! well... there was Ted Hughes writing
about the Crow... poor ******...
should have killed himself: might have competed
with his terribly-wonderful wife of a poet...
i give her that: what noose?
best head in an oven...
and you want a shovel with that?
but this is Ovid... "complaining" about
the death of his lover's parrot...
immediately i jumped to conclusions:
not enough crackers...

(A) the Original:

Psittacus, Eois imitatrix ales ab Indis,
    occidit—exequias ite frequenter, aves!
ite, piae volucres, et plangite pectora pinnis
    et rigido teneras ungue notate genas;
horrida pro maestis lanietur pluma capillis,
    pro longa resonent carmina vestra tuba!
quod scelus Ismarii quereris, Philomela, tyranni,
    expleta est annis ista querela suis;
alitis in rarae miserum devertere funus—
    magna, sed antiqua est causa doloris Itys.
Omnes, quae liquido libratis in aere cursus,
    tu tamen ante alios, turtur amice, dole!
plena fuit vobis omni concordia vita,
    et stetit ad finem longa tenaxque fides.
quod fuit Argolico iuvenis Phoceus Orestae,
    hoc tibi, dum licuit, psittace, turtur erat.
Quid tamen ista fides, quid rari forma coloris,
    quid vox mutandis ingeniosa sonis,
quid iuvat, ut datus es, nostrae placuisse puellae?—
    infelix, avium gloria, nempe iaces!
tu poteras fragiles pinnis hebetare zmaragdos
    tincta gerens rubro Punica rostra croco.
non fuit in terris vocum simulantior ales—
    reddebas blaeso tam bene verba sono!
Raptus es invidia—non tu fera bella movebas;
    garrulus et placidae pacis amator eras.
ecce, coturnices inter sua proelia vivunt;
    forsitan et fiunt inde frequenter ****.
plenus eras minimo, nec prae sermonis amore
    in multos poteras ora vacare cibos.
nux erat esca tibi, causaeque papavera somni,
    pellebatque sitim simplicis umor aquae.
vivit edax vultur ducensque per aera gyros
    miluus et pluviae graculus auctor aquae;
vivit et armiferae cornix invisa Minervae—
    illa quidem saeclis vix moritura novem;
occidit illa loquax humanae vocis imago,
    psittacus, extremo munus ab orbe datum!
optima prima fere manibus rapiuntur avaris;
    inplentur numeris deteriora suis.
tristia Phylacidae Thersites funera vidit,
    iamque cinis vivis fratribus Hector erat.
Quid referam timidae pro te pia vota puellae—
    vota procelloso per mare rapta Noto?
septima lux venit non exhibitura sequentem,
    et stabat vacuo iam tibi Parca colo.
nec tamen ignavo stupuerunt verba palato;
    clamavit moriens lingua: 'Corinna, vale!'
Colle sub Elysio nigra nemus ilice frondet,
    udaque perpetuo gramine terra viret.
siqua fides dubiis, volucrum locus ille piarum
    dicitur, obscenae quo prohibentur aves.
illic innocui late pascuntur olores
    et vivax phoenix, unica semper avis;
explicat ipsa suas ales Iunonia pinnas,
    oscula dat cupido blanda columba mari.
psittacus has inter nemorali sede receptus
    convertit volucres in sua verba pias.
Ossa tegit tumulus—tumulus pro corpore magnus—
    quo lapis exiguus par sibi carmen habet:
"colligor ex ipso dominae placuisse sepulcro;
    ora fuere mihi plus ave docta loqui".

mein gott... in English it reads so smoothly reading
it while listening to Red Hot Chilli Peppers'
B-sides... quixoticelixer...
teatra jam (short)... and then thinking about it...
through to and through Going Li coupled
with trouble in the pub (instrumental version)...

i will never own a car...
              mind you: i already secretely own a house...
if i keep appeasing my mother and my father:
when reality kicks in and they're dead and i'm
project solo... it's not like i'm waiting for the day...
they are hoarders of shoes and screws...
literally... no metaphor...
  on my own: i will have to recycle so much ****
before i will put the house on the market...
and? i never pledged any allegiance to Essex...
England... i have: pledged an allegiance
to the English tongue...
                 but if not the Shetland Islands...
north... "god" send me north! even as far as
Greenland!
                i'm not willing to die in a place where
villages are flaring up in a July heat...

i can't bemoan what i honestly couldn't keep...
i sometimes get mad at my father for being
so submissive to my mother...
i sometimes get so mad at my mother for only
being able to talk about her chronic pains:
i'm alligned with my grandmother
who once said: she's just like your paternal
great-grandmother... every itch and scratch...
it's like writing with chalk on a blackboard...
hey presto! ruptures of the Grand Canyon...
that ******* bollocking of: ooh! ah!
           me? i don't understand people with tattoos...
me? i collect scars...
these two fading ones on my face are a disappointment...
i thought something more pronounced
could be kept from that bicycle-crach Francis Bacon
esque imitation of painting:
   the sort of painting where you can still revel
in brush-strokes being visible...
   because it's not rigid: Renaissance form painting...

now: i can sort of imagine what men couple up...
those who fear being alone...
those not interested in art...
those mostly interested in sport... but not all sport...
just some sports...
sports that they support "passing their lineage"
with according to the cult of football teams...
not all-sports... i.e. not an interest in fencing...
swimming... certainly guys who thought:
wow! tennis is great to watch!
   but squash is so much more fun to play!
cycling... well... if you love cycling per se:
watching other people cycle is a bit: BOO-RING...
what sort of other men get married?
probably those not interested in risque ***
with prostitutes...
ones interested in making money for a woman
to spend...
me? i'm not interested in money...
                       in terms of money:
i'm more likely to spend £30 on a book than
think about a dinner date...
                      
is that...   ??? i'm not even going to ask myself
that question that begins with a buzz-word
and the letters Mmmm... miso...
                             well... what is a boy to do...
figure out what to do with his spare time...
               i don't mind cleaning the house:
who ever said that it's the duty of a woman to keep
the house clean? i like living in a household in order...
i love cooking: it's like chemistry 2.0...
                      give me a bag of Indian spices and i'll
cook up a perfect storm of a curry...
but then again: i'm not work-shy when it comes
to using heavy-duty tools akin to the KANGO...
which... i later found out was a Japanese word for
Chinese in general... or the other way round...
i'd hate to be one of those Phil Collins types of
forgetting how many hands i have
by changing gloves like i might be an octopus...

and when it comes to children?
eh... it's enough for a boy in a buggy in a supermarket
pointing his finger at me as i walk past
making that chimpanzee face of OOH at me...
or a fist-bump with some teenagers at the London
Stadium... that's enough... i'm happy to play
the "secret uncle" role...
while women remain women: as fickle as the wind...
i've learned to live with that reality...
i scratch my beard and pretend that i'm playing
a violin...

plus, i'm a terrible drinker... i'm a loving-drunk...
i'm drunk right now...
if a litre of whiskey per night satisfies
my libido shortages i'm happy:
it implies i can write... i stop drinking and start
*******: alles goot...
                           today i was visited by a wasp...
i was visited by a bee before...
oh man... it was heart-breaking...
he was dying... i had to help him...
   i poured some honey onto the pave-,
and moved him towards the puddle...
he stuck his mighty Gene Simmons sucker out
and started to perform an OD on sugar...
i was glad... watching him die from a sugar-overdose...
it was: rather pleasant to watch...

TERROR! mix JAINISM with TAOISM
and fuse that in an European mind...
               but i'll still eat meat...
                        it's a parody of what's to be expected:
i prefer life with the possibilities of change...
with... curiosities of: extensive ulterior
possibilities that run counter to estblished norms
of expectations of a RIGID MIND...
i water: i flow...
      i fire: i dance...
i air: i whirl...
i earth: i rumble...
i lightning: i blink...
hey presto! the five elements!

in another language close to my heart:
since i was born with it...
the pronoun disappears:
ja woda: płyne
ja ogien: tańcze...
   ja powietrze: kręce się (odd)
ja ziemia: trzęse się (also "odd")
ja grzmot: mrygam

there are languages in existence where pronouns
hide... to be honest...
in ******? the pronouns are rarely used...
oh mein gott... when they're used in a sentence:
esp. the I... it's like... wow! i just found
a "nugget of gold"!
seriously... that how my mother-tongue
is structured: on English is the current
prounoun-circus available to watch...
i'm siding with the Somali pirates having
a giggle... playing blackjack with either Greeks
or some other Africans...

there are languages in English that cannot: will not,
succumb to the current Marxist onslight
happening in this tongue...
not because these languages will not:
they CANNOT...
mind you... it's such an intellectual low-bar
of achievement... but since it's piggy-pop...
it must be slaughtered on an individual level
before this DISEASE is allowed to spread...
thank heavens that English is only my second
language... how that allows me to bypass
buying into any sort of propaganda...
   my lingua Ingelese... my tongue for spreading
ideas...
    oh: and thank **** i' expressing in a medium
desecrated by the same people pushing these
sordid ideas... post-humous fame! 'ere i come!
obviously! who's in it for the "real" and immediate
if one isn't... fabricating a pickling of a shark
in plastic.... who? who?! woof!
   a-woooooo"

            my heart has shrunk and hardened to
the size and hardness of a pebble...
    i wish i could entertain cosy nights with a woman
watching some pointless movie about
the stereotypes of love... then again: no...
i'd rather not...
drinking alone: who the hell said i was alone?
i sometimes "hallucinate" someone crying:
of late... i'm like: this isn't Aud Lang Syne...
this isn't Shakespear...
then again i love the idea that my true readers
are yet to be born...
i'm happy, happy-bear-alone...
                       a Maine **** is sleeping in my
bed... i'll join him come the right hour...
but he's not looking at me... he's looking above me...
only yesterday i started to paparazzi
a wasp that flew into my bedroom...
          what the **** do i have above me?
please say letters... i will not do alright with a halo...
i'm not going to join that
archangel one minute... saint the next...
clip my ******* wings for a get-through-easy
card: no!
          
it became finalized today... i'm literally tired
of ***... i'm tired of *** when it's equivalent to not...
being tired of eating food... drinking water...
it's unnecessarily-necessary... *** as golf...
per say...
                2 months of delay in payment...
i'm thinking about rekindling my affair with that mountain
bike... i have to forget the streets...
i need the woods again... but for that i need new tires...
oh... hell... i no longer have anything
to prove in the brothel... blah blah whatever...
threesomes look great: LOOk...
like a block of cheddar looks great...
when shredded...
and then melting...
perhaps in pornographic flicks...
but in reality? the changing of condoms
from one mouth to another...
from one ****** to another...
                          
what?! peiple are having unprotected ***?
vermin ****?!
   **** me... well... at least i'm obnoxiously savvy
in that regard...
no no... it's too disappointing...
you have to split your attention up...
there's nothing good about a *******...
why? because, usually... of the two girls...
there's one you really want to be a screwdriver to...
while the other is just being a, *******...
a ******* bandwagon... leftovers...
a pair of **** you get to imitate ****** with...
it's a bit like:
coupling an elephant with a giraffe...
but i want to ride the elephant!
but i want to stroke the giraffe's neck!
but  i want to pretend the elephants's tusk...
no! not tusk! TRUNK....
that rectangular bit of ******* you shovel
your clothes in when travelling...
TRUNK... or a TRAMPOLINE!
no... not the bouncy layer...
TRUNK... sneeze! trambone! jazz! ******* Miles Daisies!
Davis!  trumpet *******!
no... don't get me started on the sax...

then again: i want a rhino's horn! ram-jam...
Black Betty Bam B'eh Lam!

- oh no... i moved along... R.H.C.P.'s: thanks for the t-shirt...
Big Bukowski style:
i hate the eagles... run through the jungle...
run Forrest! whun!
WHUN!
  and that's me... hardly a LAMNTIA of the Beatniks
tripping... me? enough whiskey
and the right song... and i'm grooving beside
an imaginary drum-kit...
in that: once upon a time...
when men grew their hair long...
they were the barbarians knocking
on the gates of Rome... rather than being
the implosion of Rome within with
all of Rome's degeneracy of transgender gimmicks...

mind you: i've given it some thought...
i broke it down toward the following schematic:

anonymous audience, commenting,
video making blah blah...
****** "schematic": if you can call it that...
mind you: the VAR in WIETNAM
had the best soundtrack...
just saying: hey! her?! hey! don't shoot
the messanger!
i'd rather work the Fulham opening night
with the new stand: Thames-side being opened
than attend Wembley for a Westwood...
Westworld... Westlife concert,
i'm all up for handling those Scousers:
northern monkeys?
southern fairies...
let's just call them for what they are...
northern TOURISTS...

but the dynamic of publishing has changed:
i already know the criterium first...
women and children first...
THIRST beccause water matters...
i'm thirsty too... one litre of whiskey and
i'm still typing like a machine...
i'll box my liver and kidneys
as long as i keep my brain and eyes happy...

but it's just a different dynamic...
the internet experience...
i know a lot of people miss it...
i can't force people to read my bollocking-riddles...
ergo? i don't stagnate into celebrating it
or therefore advertising it...
i'm either read or i'm STAUB...
   dust...
                
i can't! i'm only making something available...
i can't force people out of their democratic "wedlock"...
you like it? great! you don't? great!
but the psychology of those video creators that
mind how many views they receive and
how many comments they: likewise receive...
"false hits" with the number of hits of viewership?

me? i'm not bothered... i've been watching
the female Euro finals...
i was almost scared... what if the female England team
don't make it to the finals?!
me? i'm gearing up...
any rowdy hooligans up to speed?!
as much as i hate women not trying toi compete
in sports that are sexually-exclusive...
there's this... THIS... i watch the games because
the Colleseum is burning...
i'm only watching the fire...
    and i'm watching the women i'd love to ****...
this never would have happened if watching
tennis...

    the crisp biting attache of a sharpshooter
WONG sort of mixer-mix-up with a whiskey
and a pepssi...
me... reaching for a second glass
with one already filled like: *******... RAINMAN...

keep your horses!
i'm gearing up to a translation!
wait, the, ****, up! keep it cool in Doob-Lyn!
oh no... you don't get to tell me
i use too many vowels without me showing
you... you mishandled the vowel-to-consonant
dynamic... Doob-Lyn is Dublin: tow me...
no: not to me? tow me... now you're dragging me
along the snail-trail...

the disparaging translations:

(B) the A. S. Kline translation

Parrot, the mimic, the winged one from India’s Orient,
is dead – Go, birds, in a flock and follow him to the grave!
Go, pious feathered ones, beat your ******* with your wings
and mark your delicate cheeks with hard talons:
tear out your shaggy plumage, instead of hair, n mourning:
sound out your songs with long piping!
Philomela , mourning the crime of the Thracian tyrant,
the years of your mourning are complete:
divert your lament to the death of a rare bird –
Itys is a great but ancient reason for grief.
All who balance in flight in the flowing air,
and you, above others, his friend the turtle-dove, grieve!
All your lives you were in perfect concord,
and held firm in your faithfulness to the end.
What the youth from Phocis was to Orestes of Argos,
while she could be, Parrot, turtle-dove was to you.
What worth now your loyalty, your rare form and colour,
the clever way you altered the sound of your voice,
what joy in the pleasure given you by our mistress? –
Unhappy one, glory of birds, you’re certainly dead!
You could dim emeralds matched to your fragile feathers,
wearing a beak dyed scarlet spotted with saffron.
No bird on earth could better copy a voice –
or reply so well with words in a lisping tone!
You were snatched by Envy – you who never made war:
you were garrulous and a lover of gentle peace.
Behold, quails live fighting amongst themselves:
perhaps that’s why they frequently reach old age.
Your food was little, compared with your love of talking
you could never free your beak much for eating.
Nuts were his diet, and poppy-seed made him sleep,
and he drove away thirst with simple draughts of water.
Gluttonous vultures may live and kites, tracing spirals
in air, and jackdaws, informants of rain to come:
and the raven detested by armed Minerva lives too –
he whose strength can last out nine generations:
but that loquacious mimic of the human voice,
Parrot, the gift from the end of the earth, is dead
The best are always taken first by greedy hands:
the worse make up a full span of years.
Thersites saw Protesilaus’s sad funeral,
and Hector was ashes while his brothers lived.
Why recall the pious prayers of my frightened girl for you –
prayers that a stormy south wind blew out to sea?
The seventh dawn came with nothing there beyond,
and Fate held an empty spool of thread for you.
Yet still the words from his listless beak astonished:
dying his tongue cried: ‘Corinna, farewell!’
A grove of dark holm oaks leafs beneath an Elysian *****,
the damp earth green with everlasting grass.
If you can believe it, they say there’s a place there
for pious birds, from which ominous ones are barred.
There innocuous swans browse far and wide
and the phoenix lives there, unique immortal bird:
There Juno’s peacock displays his tail-feathers,
and the dove lovingly bills and coos.
Parrot gaining a place among those trees
translates the pious birds in his own words.
A tumulus holds his bones – a tumulus fitting his size –
whose little stone carries lines appropriate for him:
‘His grave holds one who pleased his mistress:
his speech to me was cleverer than other birds’.

(C) the  P. Green translation

parrot, that feathered mimic from India's dawlands,
is dead. come flocking, birds, to his funeral:
come, all you godfearing airborne creatures,
beat ******* with wings,
   mourn, claw your polls, tear out soft feathers
(your hair), and pipe high your sad lament.
Philomela, nightingale, the ancient crimes of Tereus
which you lament is long past -
    divert your grief to the obsequies of a rare and modern
bird: poor Itylus' case was tragic, but antique.
all wind-borne voyagers through the clear empyrean
lament now, and above all his friend the turtle-dove
they lived in complete agreement,
    their bond of faith held firm to the end.
what Pylades was to Orestes or Argos, that Parrot,
turtle-dove was to you - while fate allowed.
yet of no avail your devotion, your rare and beautiful
plumage,
your adaptable mimic's voice;
    not even the care that my darling lavished on you -
poor Polly, paragon of birdhood, is dead.
so gree his feathers, they dimmed the cut emerald;
scarlet his beak, with saffron spots.
no bird on earth could copy a voice more closely
or sound so articulate.
fate, jealous, removed him - that unaggressive creature,
that talktative devotee of peace,
with his tiny appetite , whose love of conversation
left him little leisure for food,
who lived on a diet of nuts, used poppy-seed to encourage
sound sleep: kept his thirst at bay with nothing but water.
quails spend their whole life fighting -
maybe that's how they reach a ripe old age.
carnivorous vultures, kites gyring high in the heavens,
weather-wise jackdaws, prophets of rain to come,
are all long-lived - while Minerva's bête noire, the raven,
can outlast nine generations. yet Parrot is dead,
that loquacious parody of human utterance,, that bonanza
from the eastern edge of the world,
greedy death almost always pickss off the best ones early -
it's the third-raters who reach a ripe old age.
Thersites attended the funeral of Protesilaus;
Hector was ashes while his brothers still lived.
what point is recalling the desperate prayers my sweetheart
uttered?
some stormy sirocco blew them out to sea.
six days he survived, and then, at dawn on the seventh,
his thread of destiny ran out.
yet somehow, though dying, he could still find utterance,
and the last words he ever spoke were: 'Corinna, farewell!'
beneath a hill in Elyium, where dark ilex clussters
and the moist earth is for ever green,
there exists - or so i have heard - the pious fowls' heaven
(all ill-omened predators barred).
harmless swaans roam after foot there, there dwells
the phoenix, that long-lived, ever-solitary bird;
there Juno's peacock spreads out his splendid fantail
amid the billing and cooing of amorous doves;
and there, in this woodland haven, the feathered faithful
welcome Parrot, flock round to hear him talk.
his bones lie buried under a parrot-sized tumulus
with a tiny headstone bearing these words:
r.i.p. Polly: this tribute from his loving mistress:
articulate beyond a common bird

the thought of LEMONS or perhaps
the IDEA of lemon...
then again: i can't refrain from
ORANGES and LIMES...
and the shy-sunlight of autumn
and the blooming of apples...
and operas...
             "someone"...
                              what pretty pies of
unfuckable wonders await...

divert your grief to the obsequeies of a rare and modern
bird: poor Itylus' case was tragic, but antique
(antiquated?).
all wind-borne voyagers through tge clear empyrean
lament nowm abd above all
his friend the turtle-dove, they lived in complete
agreement
   their bond of faith held firm to the end.
what Pylades was to Orestes of Argos, that, Parrot,
turtle-dove was to you - while Fate allowed,

i'm not even going to bother with a "bananna C"...
i woke up wild-awake with ideas...
brimming with Tao...
"non-doing" id est: point PROVEN
or rather point SERVED?!

Russia and China are clashing...
or rather sparring...
they're having their civilization-state
agenda being put in place...
while there's a "culture-war" in the "west"...
right... James Bond...
so we're refrrering to nation-stattes
as post-nationhood...
  "states"...
                    precursors to the globalist agenda
of fake space exploration via the ******* telescope...
if Russia and China are civivilasation-states...
then... whatever culture "war" is investing in:
or rather: digressing into... impliies
the FSA (federal states of america)
             is a culture-state...
                                                ­                 no?

personally? i don't like the current h'American culture...
it's absolute *******...
no! i'm not going to translate any more of Ovid...
i already read the better translation...
i found out only two minites ago that
i prefer drinking to having ***...
and keeping an eye on cats is just as rewarding
as rearing children: if you allow yourself
to give them a personality...

           so Russia is a civilisation-state...
while America is a culture-state...
                    well... no wonder...
                                            America is the zenith
that could be: but doesn't have to be
preserved...
the culture-state-of-the-sand-*******...
i wish: the Arabs clocked in lucky...
sitting on so much raw ill of oil...
bounce bounce libido bounce bounce...

hmm... "inner monologue"... i had that "thing"
once... i kost it... turning psychotic...
then again: within the confines of having
an internal monologue? i was passive...
       i was a passive agent...
                         upon losing it: having my soul
evaporate: becoming an "N.P.C."...
i became an active agent...
i opened my eyes a second time...

           i think my inner monolpogue became blocked
by:
został wyciszony... bo zaczoł być cykliczny,
tzn. nie po prostej:
       wymarł według koncepcji
sprawiedliwości...

even i know: the gods uttered the words:
shut the **** up! we know you're right!
but we're playing roulette!
shut the ******! we're playing cards!
shut up!
wait! wait your turn!
**** me, given the prowess at attaing
a concept of the differential of space comparing
time... i.e. speed... i'll be karma-happy
once i die...

i'm not translating the rest of that Ovid...
a girl's parraot died... great!
now i'm thinking about:
a bicyckle is a terrible idea... to ride...
on the roads towards St. Paul's... i think i might
require a horse!
i need a horse! bring me a hood, a hoof,
an apple and a toothbrush!
the last place i'm thinking about moving
to is California...
   and thank no god for that...
just the people who already live there.

III.

i sooner discovered the rare B-sides of Red Hot Chilli
Peppers than having realised... oh right...
they release two albums after By the Way...
i completely forgot about those two...
               guess i'm not as big a fan as i thought i was...
Go Robot... it's not oh so wo terrible now, or anymore...
oh woah woe... what a whale to ride into the night...

sometimes it just happens, a sort of blend of an Ezrra Pound
and a Charles Olson moment, poem, moment-poem...
it stretches for three days and you just don't want
to finish it... you kept repeating yourself writing seemingly
aimlessly with no focus...
at this point writing becomes theraputic...
by the simple act of writing: not theraputic regarding
what you're writing about: memories of frustration and
complications having finished Thomas Mann's Dr. Faustus...
unlike those joyous frustrations with Samuel Beckett's
Watt...
                  and on the third day "he" finished painting
four metal chairs a new colour of copperhead...
a copperneck painting chairs copperhead...
to me the colour of copper is more appealing than
that of gold...

if i still had that inner-monologue people speak of
i wouldn't be writing this,
that inner-monologue fantasy i once was a proud owner
of: i.e. the closest "thing" to the idea of soul
was also filled with so many doubts...
i simply don't care what the supposed benefits
of it were... that whole no-inner-monologue ergo
one's an NPC (non-playable character)...
    i remember that that when my first psychotic episode
slammed me on a rampage i started to see DIFFERENTLY...
it was as if a veil was lifted from my eyes...
if i didn't write terrible poetry back then...
i most certainly wrote very little...
             the inner-monologue doubts... a plethora of them...
no? psychosis = the osmosis of soul...
   the body has remained... the devils said:
but these idle hands and this idle intellect have to stay...
we'll pass on the message with your soul
as it leaves your body...
call it whatever you want:
   res vanus or the silence of the "mind"...
that's how you become more of an active agent...
it might be called writing but i call it digging...
a tunnel toward some variaton of: marrying Hades
with Tartarus...
                after all... Venus is the daughter of titans...
and she's the only Titan among the Olympian gods:
such is her perfection... almost on par with
   the patron of philosophers that's Sacred Sophia:
who entertains the foolishness of elder men
without being able to tell them apart from boys...

IV. if i were to translate Amores II. XI

would i be willing to add a D in the translation sequence?
i don't think so
there's no need... i like comparing the two i already
made available...
i just wanted to stress how unbelievable Latin is...
compared to the modern tongue, for example English...
how compact it is!
- and course, i prefer the second translation...
     it... exfoliates!
                     this is the point for me where i truly appreciate
Ovid to be on par with Horace...

side by side walking through the zenith-nadir of
man...

   i'm finally come across a sequence of events that
make me unwilling to stop typing: perhaps if i get
drunk enough and stumble on my first typo
perhaps a series of typos would end my ambition...

do i think men in the west are living
in a land of libido-insomnia? i think they are...
whoever said that watching one type of pornogrphy
soon spirals out of control and men start
scouting for more extreme *******:
hello outlier A! hello outlier B!
where's outlier C? oh... he's coming...
at a time when women are supposed to be these
sexually liberated creatures while men
are either STAGS with harems or limp biscuit *****...
thank god i managed to catch the train
of having the ***** of walking into a newsagent
and buying a pornographic magazine to ******* to...
stashed about six in a folder behind
the radiator in the bathroom at 21B Beehive Lane,
Gants Hill...
                         mind you: i started prematurely...
8?
     i switch off with western ****** antics:
people are either having too much ***: ergo the kinks
or not enough of it...
outlier in the middle: when it's too hot
i leave the insects to do their lineage pride...
cooler temperatures: *** like rubbing sand-paper
on a ****** paint-job...

                         makeshift boney **** of the hand...
well: at least ******* makes me more interested in
the **** than **** ***...
but i did the opposite... i need to keep a sack-of-sanity
atop my head...
beside adoring the Katakana...
i very much adore Japanese tamed sexuality...
     グラビア アイドル (gurabia aidoru)...
back in the day when the English tabloid newspaper
the Sun had a page 3 girl...
back to basics... a show of *******...
    a show of cleavage... perhaps even the breast
like the eye... the sclera of the rounded breast...
the darkened skin at the iris and then the pupil
as the ******...
  floral patterns of the *******...
                  back to basics...
                           a photograph of a naked woman
and all the imagination at work: what wouldn't
i want to do with her?

well... if you begin pleasing yourself while concentrating
on the kiss between Venus and Cupid
in one of Bronzino's beauties of paint-strokes...
you're hardly going to go down a rabbit-hole
of "hide and hide": wihtout seeking it out...
people and thier kinks...
while a minority: dodo-project sexuality of
homosexuality is celebrated: garnerded unto the guise
of "pride": i can't stomach shame...
but hey: look at me! i'm about to parade my sexuality
like and ******* latex-clad gimp readied
for being given ***-favour-orders...

outlandish! god-forgiving god-fearing...
  hardly every god-loving...
           a settling in of a blue that's not the sky
but a melancholy... i'm finally willing to end this
"diatribe"... to start afresh... again and again...
like mixing: Dreams of a Samurai with
Hans Zimmer's spectres in the fog...

                      my ***: going back to figuring out
the premature adventures into ***...
one boy passing on the secrets of *******
to another while sharing a bath:
the cruel curiosity of the circumcision:
in a secular environment: without the kippah
or the niqab: the submission of the women...
i will not give up the "sheath" to my "sword"...
i will keep my teeth with my twirling tongue...
if ever an improvement on the aesthetics?
clipping the ears of Dobberman dogs...
banning clipping the clipping of their tails...
but still: the preserved atrocity of male circumcision...
i could agree...
once a woman is devoted to her man...
a circumcision like putting on a wedding ring...
noble swans... oh noble swans...

a melancholy that's sort of azure...
amass enough water and you will see blue...
amass "too little": freeze it...
a paleness somewhat grey...
but then the icebergs roaming that are
the Cistercians...
            all i need right now is for some lonely
dog to start barking into the night...
or the cackling "laughter" of a fox...
    
    but all those sexless lives...
            "lucky" me for taming my consumption down...
where would i be without it?
i didn't ask for a *******...
i wa offered it... i will never forget how she clamoured
for the opportunity...
she couldn't stomach being rejected twice...
she just had to clamour like a crab in a crab bucket...
even if she thought she thought she succeeded:
she was the spare wheel...
what i've learned... i prefer one-on-one interactions...
but i gave in...
   it would have never worked out:
not like it "works out" in pornographic flicks...
the sharing of saliva and other juices...
we're responsible adults...
unlike in the pornographic flicks...
          two women: one man...
the changing of condoms...
                           i had to think quick:
there's only one way i will not be undermined...
snuggling up to the one i really wanted
to spend an hour with...
                       kissing neck and cheek...
while she did a hand-job...
   the other just sat there sort of idle...
                          until i figured out... those *******
could be of some use...

- i couldn't pull off a Jesus look...
long hair and a beard is not my "thing"...
even with a sly undercut...
i chose the better option.... short hair, a beard, yes,
but a "fu manchu": an elongated love-spot...
competing with the length of the beard...
i really "don't understand" why i have no memory
of my chin and neck...
it's like there was never the idea of using
water as a mirror... perhaps poor Xerxes lashed
at the Aegean for hiding his reflection
when he had one of those Narcisstic moments
of anguish: he forgot how he looked like...
but then the sides of the moustasche also drooping:
elongated... that work much better than
a beard and long hair...
it's so unfashionable these days...
i don't get why men think beards and long hair
"work"....

then again i never figured out why Khadira
wanted to have unprotected ***...
  how she insisted that it was just plain o.k.
for me to ******* into her...
how i snapped and dived in into her pandamonium
of multiples springs of irritated ****...
all slobbering with oyster-tongue
and knose...
                               all that informed me...

companionship? what a rare commodity...
it's enough to have a mother to know
how a woman's company can quickly sour
the already sweet grapes...
one word: tell a man he's LAZY...
while he's just tired of being pushed and shoved...
if a mother can do that to a son?
what could a wife do?
                          and i'm come across curiosities of
men who waged wars with their mothers...
at the Tyson Fury boxing match...
i was trying to calm the **** down a guy
who was having a panic attack after being
"abandoned" by his mother...
who bought the tickets... and drinks...
i squeezed him hard... told him: but i'm here for free!
nay! i'm here and getting paid for it!
blah blah...
               i hate seeing panic attacks in men...
it makes me either feel like
more than a man or less of a man...
it makes me think of the men prior
with shell-shocks... or women exploiting
the challenges of p.t.s.d.

                                    i've seen so many people fake
a mental illness... i've spoken at length
to them... how easily open up to their own struggles...
while i'm left alone with whatever ones
i have...
                   maybe because my "mental health issues"
have morphed into philosophical caviats
implies that i'm immune to outright sharing
the details... and boring people to death...
so i listen...
        i listen...
                            in one ear out the other...

i remember days in high school when we would love
to change the subject, create a game:
SLAP-BALL... imitation of Tsar Peter III prior
to tennis... an imitation court... with a fence between us...
or just playing BLACKJACK...
cards... that was big... we understood that ignoring
women was best done with / by playing cards...
at one point: i remember it to this day...
Samuel Richards grabbed Ian Goodman's neck
and pinned him to the floor...
we tried to intervene...
i don't know whether it was about the actual
game of cards or whether it was about
Sam bailing out... he was about to move to France...
and ****** off from pur in-group...
started playing basketball with the black-boys...
forgot he was supposedly the "PUNK" in the school...
i remember skateboarding with him...
he actually stole his mother's credit card and bought
a skateboard for me...
but his ******* MOHICAN was ****...
it didn't entertain the entire length of his skull
meeting his spine...
but we did walk back from Romford
toward Ilford this one night...
underage drinking... singing Backstreet Boys songs...

ha ha...
         time is a museum of melancholy...
while space is a museum of furthering whatever is left
of leftover potential...

i'm so despondent about this life having to end...
today i cycled up to the traffic lights
on my ******... ******?! £125 viking road bike... say the word
****** one more time... what was i facing?
a solitary man in an Aston Martin...
behind him? some solitary guy in a Porsche...
right... "alphas"...
i'm on my bicycle... but these two guys
in those choicest of motor-examples?
that's the thing with "competing" in life rather than
sport...
     i like my bicycle... i love my bicycle...
i am yet to wash away the blood from my head
from the crash...
i don't have a broken leg: i just have an outgrowth of bone
on my shin where my bone should have cracked:
i love milk...

competing with these men... **** me...
i was thinking about the Porsche guy...
nice game... but it's not playing cards...
i taart myself up: compete...
what do i get? i get a Porsche...
     but then ahead of me there's this guy
in an Aston Martin: mate! i'm ******!
oh blue blue Hue... the Aston Martin looked like
the bomb that is already was...
the Porsche? the Porsche looked like
a ******* Ford Mondeo by comparison...
Civic Extra... if that's even a car...
i was sort of happy to by cycling...
i figured... well: i'm not using my legs...
to walk... i'm peddling...

ever heard the expression "push-bike"?
i heard that only recently... what a werid coupling
of words... a motorcycle is distinguished from
a a bicycle by the term: "push-bike"
this half-brain-dead coworker...
what the **** am i pushing?!
it's just as weird as calling it a peddling-bicycle, no?
eh?
but what am i pushing? a bicycle is a bicycle
a turtle is a turtle... i still have to figure out
what's being pushed...
what comes first? the donkey, the carrot, or the stick?!

mawn the lawn: sieve the sand...
mawn the lawn: sieve the sand...
keep nurturing the spacing between numbers
but also keep lost track of the alphebticaal
queue...
never the type to rehash a refurbishment
of SPAWN...

           i simply don't want this day-dream to end...
around me people cowering into sleep...
i'm left in limbo...
            between consetllations and the scythe
of the moon... dearest: moooooon...
i'm itching to break the silence with a howl...
but first: the thirst of a dog barking...
i hear a dog barking i'll start to howl!

aren't we simply becoming the same
tired people of old?
              more impetus...
more gravity! more fire! more tides!
more the quaking of the earth!
more whirlwinds! more! more!
one Pompeii is not enough!

                       almost one litre of whiskey
into the session and i'm sober-tense...
i'm starting to think that entertaining
hell is not a bad "gimmick"...
                  there's the imaginary hell-crowd
and there' some also doubly-imaginary
crowd of people that yet to be bound to imitation-migration
focus...
           next time you ask me:
i'd rather be eating ice: crunching on
ice than drinking water...
i want to burn my tongue...
licking ice...l i want to burn my tongue
licking ice: but first i want to be dipping
it in coridnader-cumin-chilli-turmeric mix-up
of spiders...

i want to first bruise my knees before
i lick them clean...
i want the strict juices of: not tomatoes?
red is red: ergo blood is blood...
vulture ****...
there's an open window:
there's an evaporating night too...

best refrain: 6 by 6s refrain on 9s...
since? there's plenty of 0s / oopses...
by this "flesh and blood"...
i heave this sand and timer
like: i was sadly woken up with
an inheritance of salt...
boiling blue bloods and boiling gravy...
a smile that reads: clenched teeth...
a smile so awkward that
it make^ a parrot think twice about
imitating human speech.

^a notable typo, i think i might require an editor
(insert a snigger); two alternatives:
1. it might make a parrot think twice,
2. a smile so awkward that it makes a parrot think twince...
all depending on the tense.

for Mark Richards

It was a spur of the moment thing -    
     One message freed us from Tuesday’s calling -
The next offered a morning's sailing.  

So rather than spray water for Rocky's plants,  
     We skimmed over Carter Lake’s, crystal waves
With steady and ample winds at our backs.

Boaters and tubers speckled the waters
      While verdant foothills smiled assent
From every shore and horizon.

Captain Richards skippered his Flying Scot    
     Toward the far off shore before tacking our
To and fro way back to the mooring ball.

In years past Mark had captained the Health works    
     For all the good folks of Pennsylvania,
But this morning he guided a much smaller tiller.

So we sailed and sailed under fairest of skies    
    In a swift and charmed little craft
Mark chose to call, Spur of the Moment.

Robert Charles Howard

Martin Luther had a dream
Geronimo had visions
People use all sorts of ways
To come to their decisions

Tea leaf readers in a cup
A Psychic with some cards
Looking at a twirling disc
And dancing in the yard

Decision making's easy
If you have the correct tool
You may get the right answer
Or you may end up a fool

Shaman in a sweat lodge
Chew peyote just to see
What the others can not visualize
But what comes easy to folks like me

Some roll dice, and others bones
To get the answer that they need
Others ask the dead to help
To get their answer freed

I myself use none of these
None of these at all
I sit down with a bourbon
And my old Magic Black 8-ball

I switched the little answer ball
It has answers....only two
One is just the one word "dude"
And "what would Keith Richards do?"

"Dude" is universal
It has helped me win not lose
Because it's meaning changes
Depending on the "u"'s

Say it with one U...dude
it means don't even think it
But add eight more and make it duuuuuuuuude
And there's no question you should drink it

The other answer's simple
What would good old Keefy do?
If it didn't **** old Keefy
It won't **** me and you

So, use your magic mushrooms
Dance with spirits in the hall
But I'll make my decisions
With my plastic, black eight ball

an entire day of abstaining from "syringe",
whoever said it was:
the perfect dis-satisfaction -
supposedly it passes as quick as someone
puffing on crack...
                well...
                      the first cigarette...
when "quitting"... after years of 20 a day...
and this quitting: because no cheap
ciagarettes on the horizon from moldova...
or bulgaria...

    the first hit... feels like electricity...
i can feel it from my head...
right down to my toes...
          in my heels...
the tingling at first... then it all subsides...
into a sensation of a thrown stone
into the stomach:
like a nun jumping a bungee...
i feel like a teenager... who first sipped
alcohol...
the carousel of intoxication -
yet: so contained...
        there's the thrill and an
insurmountable number of adjectives
to the sensation:
face like a sponge head like blitzkrieg
theatre...
         i'm "quitting"...
well... 10 years exposed to the numbing...
perfect the ritual:
i guess i must...
    how long will it last... long enough:
to base the drinking on what becomes
the cigarette: on the peripheries:
and closure...

must i take any more revelation drugs...
apart from what's taxed and legal...
a solipsistic cigarette and some
gomme syrope: putting ms. amber
into the refrigerator...
              
i can feel the horde the tsunami from
a fat head through
a whirlwind dropped into my stomach...
and then the magic toes: tingling...
of course: i'm "quitting"...
quitting as much as...
mellow lou reed contra iggy pop
when bowie was with him in berlin...

"quitting"... the initial hit is over...
the first impressions...
the formality is thrilling...
then comes the diffusion:
the informality of fractions and percentages...
from the brain... the nerves...
perhaps the heart...
and the last place to look into:
the liver...

         and other... soft-tissue glue parts...
and the ritual:
a packet of benson & hedges...
wrapped up with about 10 rubber bands...
it has been waiting for me
for the entire day...
and now that the night is here...
a day when an apple tree was planted
along with a cherry tree...

the garden is looking more and more
presentable for sale...
but before the sale: it must be enjoyed...
i never thought that...
a cigarette: after... this short prospect
of abstinance...
is almost like the first...
but when coupled with the whiskey...
hell... i can't remember the last
time i drank and it felt like...
i was a teenager: under-age drinking
in one of those ****** clubs that
high-school girls go to find boys
with cars... out of school without
a-levels...
and boys go... to find... ms. ambers...
and jazzy gits of mr. fuzzy mr. funny...
the bavarian brothers: the weisers...

please! please! more...
these days of "quitting"...
             because what could be fun
about an absolute cold-turkey...
when you have a stash of...
  600 cigarettes... and... if the math is
about right...
and since the free movement of
people is a rapunzel dream off-the-cuff...

600 cigarettes... if i get it right...
move from 2 per ritual of going to bed...
into 1... that's... either a year
with missing 56 days somewhere...
no rolling tobacco though...
look m'ah! no bongs no syringes!
look p'ah! no snorting bleeding nose...
no... plum bruises from...

as long as there's an inhibition period...
a period of: i wish i could send
a postcard from... Basildon, Essex...
to... someone obliterated by a craze-maze
of lights... like... whatever...

i just heard stories...
                  about the effects of other drugs...
but... it's not like they come back...
with straitjackets to rekindle old flames
of "crossing the threshold" within
the confines of tobacco and alcohol...
moderately: well: not to quote the ideal
units consumed...
     i'm pretty sure i read some pickwick papers
today and... dickens "forgot" some...
conjunction words...
unless of course: his style...
                    -open            
                          to question-
                        esp. adjectives that...
or is it... nouns that act like this that and the other:
as if verbs...
            
    roughly half an hour... the full extent of
a cigarette...
the very first is probably the same
as the "very first" when you're "quitting"...
from circa 20 per day...
to 2-a-day...
                      "quitting" and first getting
hooked...
           the whiskers and fire fathers
                                   of the apache
              are a balancing act that follows...
oh sure... i'll quit smoking...
when the ritual is over...
i have left the casual smoker behind...
somewhere... over coffee...
over the tradition of that cigarette after
a meal: the digestifs smoke-up...
i left these smokers behind...
the nervous smokers...
the waiting at a bus-stop smokers...
the after *** smokers...

          the day is coming to an end...
i'm going to enjoy some music...
drink a little... i'll start calling this smoking
cigarette pattern... what? what else?!
my tobacco ramadam!
chances are... i'll still be unable
to appreciate roxy music...
   and the english dandy...
                       the music is here...
the little bit of *****... and the "pipe"!
here comes my face...
here comes the zoo...
            
             but i'm quitting... "quitting"...
the wolf of wall st. -
                      drug addict... that all depends
on how you treat tobacco...
the cigarette... abstaining for a day...
after a "hiatus" from healthy breathing...
viruses and car zinc and lead exhausts...
cow farts...
                  
    a terrible way to treat tobacco...
i find... is the casual... informal way...
a bit like... internet access...
whoever grew up with it being stationary...
like... a telephone... or a phonebox...
it was never carried:
always a returned to:
like a swizz safety-deposit box
in a bank... that could...
bypass tax regulations and subpoenas...

the good old days...
saturdays the park... the high street...
the car park... climbing to the top
and spitting phlegm bombs at people...
peter ******* richardson...
and kieran o'mahoney...
samuel richards...
         a ****** among the irish...
in england...
then again: richardson...
eh...
                                   ascot?
      i.e. a shcoot?!
                    the break between my first
ritual cigarette...
         and my closing affair for the night...
whether i drink less or not...
in the middle of the night
i wake up on the floor...
         i sleep on the floor for about
an hour... two demons want to ****
in my bed... then i'm thrown back into
the bed of cushions and mattress...
  only yesterday i killed someone in my dream...
and i was... like the zodiac killer...
anonymous...
i heard hook & sinker teases of:
the crime scene read like a crime thriller...
to appease the ego...

two days running thrown out of bed...
this is a terribly composed...
it is... "quarantine" poetics...
i'm "quitting" smoking...
                   i'm making tobacco...
i'm giving tobacco ritual rites...
                   no lazy tobacco smoking...
end of the day... ms. amber in hand...
maxing out on 2!
the next two? the next day...
              the same packet of cigarettes...
2 inside with a lighter...
wrapped up using about 10 rubber bands...
a like-for-like replica of
pin-heads "tattoo geography"...

       yes... because... someone's nearing
the snorting olympics?!
           if all you were given...
was tobacco and alcohol...
             the first one... oh! mein! gott!
it feels like being a teenager... once more...
and experiencing the alcohol carousel
for the very first time...
tobacco? that came later...
after the alcohol... after the ****...
the **** came in age 21...
the tobacco came in... age 21.09...
whatever that implies...

                      it's nice... though...
absitance... you wait for the entire day...
by the of it... some variant of... tourette's kicks
in... it's all very nice asking for
cupcakes and bagels...
scones and daffodils:
or... suicide by: lily-of-the-valley...
i.e. room filled with them...
and no ventilation...
talk about... no hanging... projects...
of Seneca cutting wrists in a bath...
just... getting drunk...
and being allowed to fall asleep
in a vacuous room filled with
lily-of-the-valley bouquets...

             we can talk about suicide... no?
when... it's... beautiful? no? ha!
how was the hemlock... prescribed?
as a drink?
             i... it's almost irritating that...
i will not write anything more sensible
after i take the 2 cigarette to the grave of sleep...
no matter...
i wasn't hoping to invest in much:
today gave me enough.

There was this time before the going home. The supers bowled off with cheery parents or elder brothers a good fortnight before the big day. There were lessons, but despite the best efforts of the staff who remained nobody could take this between time seriously. Mr Gayford for maths was hardly a substitute for Alfie's lively lessons. But Alfie we knew was climbing in the Alps this Christmas and would return with photos and tales that kept us enthralled despite the sums he invented - calculate the air pressure at 4107 metres on the Jungfrau. We all loved him with his self-raising Citroen Safari that smelt enticingly of Gitanes and that scent Claudia his girlfriend favoured. Oh Claudia, so wonderfully and exotically dressed, who seemed a world away from any boy's mother or sister.
 
Mornings were quite different. A later breakfast and then a two-hour practice with Dr. B . Hard work, with new music to learn. But the carols! Oh those sounds, and so different from what we sang all year. Boris Ord's Adam lay y bonden, Praetorius A Great and Mighty Wonder, Torches, In Dulce Jubilo. and as Advent progressed that magical verse anthem by Orlando Gibbons This is  the Record of John.
 
I was just eleven when Dr. B said, as we opened the music folder for the morning rehearsal, 'St Clair, Can you do this for us please?' Not so much a question as a command; you didn't say no to Dr. B. The introduction was well underway before I grasped it was to be me. How I stumbled through it that first time I don't know. I could never hear this piece without tears welling or indeed falling. ' Look Mog is getting tearful' said Richards the head chorister, and the little boys would snigger. And I would blush:  through my freckles to the roots of my auburn gold hair. Did nobody understand what this music did to me, what it said and expressed? At eleven I think I had began to know, and later when I heard it in Kings Chapel, and then conducted it variously to those bemused American students, listened to my gramophone recording, its affect always, always the same. I was experiencing truly what Vikram Seth has called an equal music, something so entirely right, a true conjunction of words and music, a coming together beyond anything as a composer I could ever imagine, a yardstick life-long; it became an acid test of sensitivity to my love of music and has been passed only four times by serious friends and lovers. To know me you must know and feel this music . . .
 
And so on the second Sunday of Advent at Evensong I sang this jewel, this precious flower of music's art. The candles flickered in Her Majesty's chapel and we stood for the anthem. The chamber ***** began its short introduction already weaving together the four-part texture - and then the first solo statement. This is the record of John when the Jews sent priest and Levites from Jerusalem . . . and then the tears fell and the music swam in front of me as though glazed in the candlelight.
 
Who art thou then? And he confessed and denied not, and said plainly, 'I am not the Christ'.
 
Oh that melisma on the 'I', that written out ornament, so emphatic, and expressing this truth with innocent authority. I sang it then as I hear it now. Nobody had to demonstrate and say 'Don't let it flow, let each note be separate, exact, purposeful'. So it was and ever shall be, Amen.
 
And they asked him, What art thou then? (Art thou Elias? x 2). And he said I am not. ( Art thou the prophet? x 2) And he said I am not.
 
The verse anthem is such a peculiar phenomenon of the English Reformation. Devised it is said to allow the hard-pressed choirmaster to train the main body of his singers in a short response, the soloist singing the hardest and most expressive music on his own: the verse. It is also so well suited to the English choral tradition with its Cantores and Decani ordering of voices. I was always a ‘Can’, even later when I joined the back row as a tenor.
 
Then they said unto him, What art thou? That we may give an answer unto them that sent us. What sayest thou of thyself? And he said I am the voice of him that cryeth in the wilderness. Make straight the way if the Lord.
 
And so I wonder still about the place of this text in the liturgy of Advent and why, cloaked in Gibbons’ music, it has remained affecting and necessary. And who is John? a prophet of the desert, the son of Elizabeth to whom Mary went to share the news of her pregnancy and whose own son quickened in her womb as she heard of her cousin Elizabeth's own miracle - a childless woman beyond childbearing age unexpectedly blessed and whose partner struck dumb for the duration of her confinement. Is it just another piece in the jigsaw of the Christmas story in which prophecy takes its part?
 
When I was eleven I thought to 'cry in the wilderness' meant exactly that - tears in a desert place. I learnt later that this was a man who stood apart, was different, a hippie dressed in the untreated skins of wild beasts, who lived amongst those who sought the wild places to mourn, to place themselves in a kind of quarantine after illness or bereavement, who then became wise, and who cried.
 
Such meditations seem appropriate to the season when there is so often the necessity of travel, much waiting about, the bearing down of the bleakness of winter time, though strung about with moments of delicious warmth when coming in from the cold as with the chair by the library fire I craved as a chorister to escape blissfully into fictioned lives and exotic places.
 
How these things touch us vividly throughout our lives; as we watch and wait and listen.

This is one of the great memories I have of the, rare but precious, moments I spent with my daddy. I was all of,maybe, six years old. And this is how it went dow that night...

It was during a wedding party for my dad’s good friend Billy Phibin, where he and I would pull off more than a couple of our wonderfully delicious pranks.  Mostly though, we would put to test our excellent skill in ******* off his wife, while amusing all the  wedding guests. And with a style all our own,  we would leave our  mark on a couple of “celebutants” of the New York, Atlanta art scene. My dad and I were quite a team.
I am sure we left our mark, to this very day, on those silly chicks!

As I recall,  one of the two, along with a terrible fake British accent, and some funky 70′s, pre-punk eclectic outfit, was wearing this pair of truly, unforgettable, green sunglasses.
...The kind that would put ol’ Elton to shame!

My dad and I,  when we weren’t throwing bricks, with Harold Kelling, off the top of the old Atlanta warehouse, followed the two celebutants around the party, heckling them through out the night.
...Or, when we weren't reaching for the neon coca cola sign, which seemed so close I thought we might actually be able to touch it, we razzed and heckled the crowd.

The warehouse seemed more like a huge tree house, full of everything wonderful and exciting, than a downtown loft, in the worst neighborhood possible, and where a man might actually be mugged and left for dead in the street!

My dad and I had indulged ourselves in all the boring fun we could stand at this point. Plus, the celeb chicks were getting ready to leave.  So we set our mischief into action.
It was crazy.
Like syncronicity.
...We never planned a thing,  yet we both knew what the plan was, and what the next move was going to be.
So like we were one entity, and in unison, we followed those two chicks to their swank little antique convertible, where we inevitably ended up, absolutely, tricking one of those silly chicks out of her “funky green sun glasses”!  
Not to mention her phone number, for my dad, no less!
My daddy and I were on a roll!
We laughed and laughed as I put them on, then ran.
Wearing those funky green sunglasses!                                  
"Well, that was fun!", my dad exclaimed.
"What's next Daddy?", I screamed with delight!
With a wink and a smile, we were off again....
That is when we really did it up!
We threw it all to the wind!
..and the real fun began!
Hell, we were already in deep **** with Linda Phibin and Da Mama!
....why not have some REAL fun!

...So, as we watched the little antique sporty speed off into the distance, my dad and I set our plan into action...

Let me take a moment to explain the entrance to this loft. It had a very narrow and steep stairway, which led, abruptly, to the sidewalk outside.
So if a man were to loose his balance, it would pretty much be over!

Back to the scene of the crime...

I will, again, note that this staircase was very narrow, steep, and old.

If a man were to fall, he would, inevitably,
land, face first, onto the ***** sidewalk.

...As my dad got busy positioning himself to look as if he'd fallen down the staircase.
He went on to position his face and wine cup just right...
... with them both spilling out onto the sidewalk...!

Now, my job was to sneak back in to the loft's tiny kitchen to get some "blood" for around his mouth and hand.
Off I went...
... I sneaked past the front room, then past the swing, onto the kitchen, people smiling at me the whole way.
... never knowing what was up my sleave...
Finally, I arrived in the cramped little kitchen.
I proceeded, in stealth mode, on to the fridge for ketchup.

Hah! mission accomplished!

I was headed back to the scene, when the
bride caught me by the arm, as she was mixing up some drinks.
She smiled and winked.
...I will always think, because she knew my dad,
and by reading the look on my face, as I stood there with her bottle of ketchup in hand,
she secretly loved whatever  it was, we were up to!
So she gave me the go ahead with then nudge of her chin. T
Then off  I was, once again!
We proceeded to put the finishing touches on our grotesque scene....
... A scene that would most probably now, cause, even, me to have a heart attack,
were I to come upon it!
As I reached my dad, who was all sprawled acroos and down the stairway, I screamed, in my kid voice; "Mission accomplished, daddy!"
"Here's the blood!"
We squirted it in all the right places....
After everything was just right, I  already knew my next mission:
collect the crew, and bring them out to the horrific scene!
Now, I must remind the reader, that "the crew" consisted of my step mother, who had been fed up long before now, and then there was Linda Phibin, who'd been over my dad's antics since 1972!
They made up the "crew"!
Just so you know, they were acting as if they'd had less no fun that evening.
and if they had to put up with “just one more thing out of us”, they would both implode.
Thinking back now, I can say with pride;
The scene was perfect!
We had everything in place.
Now for the theatrical perfomance of my entire childhood...
...My dad looked like **** Jagger, or even Keith Richards during the thrushes of a major overdose, or perhaps Joe Cocker, on a bad drunk...
....With his head all ******, from all the ketchup we'd squirted all over the  place, there he  was.
.. My dad with his bloodly head hanging out into the city’s dark, *****, and dangerous sidewalk!

After, once again, climbing the stairs, I rushed in on the crowd.
I was a kid in hysterics!
I was screaming about, how my dad had lost his balance.
and was, now, lying on the stairs, bleeding into the street.
I led them back to “the scene of the crime”,
sobbing the entire way.

...It was better than we ever could have imagined!
They swallowed it all, hook line and sinker!
They were all freaking out, screaming for an ambulance, medic, anything!
I even remember hearing someone scream,
“Oh God, I think his neck is broken!”
...Then another scream,
”And so are his legs!”
I'll never know how he continued to lay there without cracking up,
but then at that very moment,  
my dad sprung to life, acting as if he were some kind of zombie creature!
They really freaked at that.
... crying and screaming, and freaking out!
Then they screamed some more...
...I was ecstatic, bursting with pure admiration and awe of my daddy’s brilliant performance.
I was walking on air knowing we'd pulled it off , once again!
Meanwhile,
Let's just say, the others were a lot less amused.
So we all piled back into the momobee.
Then headed home, with them scolding us, and ******* the whole way.
....Some things never change!

Even then, my dad and I kept our private little buzz going....

...on  Ketchup and Green Sunglasses!

4am On the drunken floor of my Wingmans apartment I place my red solo tankard down to instigate a quest.
"ROADKILL!"
That's what we call my wingman.
"Roadkill! Lets go on an adventure to king richards faire tomorrow!"
"Sure! When do we leave?"
"Don't worry, I'll wake you up."

See. When your best friend says they need you,
you don't just call them.
You drive.
Tonight,
on the anniversary of Roadkills worst tragedies,
we are getting drunk.
In the morning,
We're going to prove that life is worth living.

7:30am our alarms go off.
"Uhhhg."
"Curse you phone."
Hands slap towards the noise,
Spilling last nights wounded soldiers.

"Roadkill your shirts inside out."
"Thanks man."
Actually, while you have it off.

Black doesn't go with brown.
Pick a whole different shirt."
"It's fine."
"*******. There's a blue shirt right here."

Belting sailor shantees
Roadkill and I adventure three hours in
My four wheeled ground Zepplin.

"A curse to you lads,
a curse on your head,
Drinking pint after pint
until I am dead
I just keep drinking
and I don't know why,
But tonight is the night
that I drink 'til I die!"

Upon arriving at the faire we spot an ocean of goregeous maidens.
The ticket booth doth not take credit cards, however.
So we needed to speak to the gatekeeper.
"Excuse me, where's the atm?" I Ask.
"it's right over there, Handsome.
I'll need your id's first, though.
Don't worry, I don't bite
... hard."

Roadkills eyes grow the size of stormwind.
"I need to bring you everywhere man.
You make everyone love us."

we return with cash in hand
The gatekeeper pulls our ID's from her corset
looks them over before handing them back.
"How are you boys younger than me?"
"It's the beard. "
I wink.
"Keep a secret?"

Swords on hips
songs in chest.
Mead was flowing
Boots were clomping

Roadkill paused to look around
Standing like a pleased statue.

I bounced excitedlly around like a child.
ROADKILL
LOOK AT ALL OF THESE GOREGEOUS OUTFITS ON THESE BEAUTIFUL WOMAN!
"Hey!"
handsome men, too.
"Thank you"
It's like we teleported to Flurb heaven!
Look!
a garb shop!
Oh my god
A boot store!
They have a whole store
for leather larpy boots!
There is a tail shop!
I could buy and wear a fuzzy furry tail!
This is amazing!
There is a giant duck
Being pushed back and forth by two huge jacked dudes.

"I need to hug everyone!"
I am in love with everything!"
"Can i please hug you?"

"I swear to god, Nick if you touch me."

We try the knife throwing challenge.
The crossbow challenge.
The dart throwing challenge.
We **** at all of it but we have a blast.

We walk into a leather shop.
A small redheaded girl dances around us. She puts fur around our necks
Her hands trace our chests as she ties them up
You boys look like the type to rock these.
She drags us by the belts to a mirror.
Look at how handsome you both are.

"Roadkill" I whisper.
He is already lost in her eyes.
I place a hand below his chin and close his mouth.
They talk about where they're from.
Their families.
What they do for fun.
"Oh you do larp? We do dagohir it's like full contact grappley shield kicking larp"

A group of customers walk in and she leaves to tend to them.
A brunette helps take off roadkills stole.
"How much are these anyway?"
Roadkill asks the brunette.
"$600" she answers.
"I feel ashamed for even trying it on"
Says roadkill slipping off the precious treasure.
"Goodbye ladies! have fun today!"
I say, pulling roadkill by the arm.
"Oh... okay then... bye."

"They seemed sad we left.
What was that about?" Asked roadkill.
"Well do you want the blunt educated version or the ignorant positive version?"

"Ignorant of coarse."
Then they're dissapointed because they were interested in us.
"Out of curiousity, what's the blunt educated version?"
"They're upset We didn't fall for their act and buy their expensive wares."
"Whelp... there goes my self confidence. Ignorance really is bliss"
"Yes it is roadkill. Yes it is."

We Travel back home.
Again, singing sailor shantees.

"A curse to you lads,
a curse on your head,
Drinking pint after pint
until I am dead
I just keep drinking
and I don't know why,
But tonight is the night
that I drink 'til I die!"

Park the four wheeled ground zeppelin in front of the Apartment.
Clonk our boots up the stairs
Grab angry orchards out of the fridge
Slunk into the beaten brown couch
raise my bottle into the air
"To living one more day exactly the way we want too, Roadkill."
Roadkill raises his bottle.
clinks it against mine.
"To living."

i hate it when a ~haiku is forced upon me, but such
is the case, and it's not a case of dittoing out
a mechanical aspect of that body that's
known as vocabulary:
thus, suddenly, as if a ****, or
a reflex the tongue commanded
the entire body -
left-wing obstructions gave way to
right-wing rebelliousness -
    the left said the tongue was no dagger,
the right said: merely a dagger -
the gyroid: or the muscles we never thought
existed! lanky tendons, etc.
    never the microscopic proof reductionism
and never the telescopic proof           ",
always somewhere in the middle:
and that's about right.
               i wrote a poem, it sounded about right
and then i get the wanked-over shoulder
calling it life-support dandruff
because of the many sprouts possible -
as ever: some come and give a voice unto
the people, and some come and give an ought
unto the people.
               a choice that's mutually inclusive
of thought and choice as a battleground
for the mechanisation of language into
sulphur gas and bayonets
and a thousand wildcards charging and screaming
lost toward the bewilderment of
   forgotten sexting.
      what a mighty affair:
the only country delving the prospect of
an atom bomb being dropped again doesn't believe
in munition economics and doesn't see
that the paranoia can be stopped when the capitalist
sober-heads enter and say: but where's the profit?
there's not profit in an atom bomb:
it ends too soon,
     you never got a Hollywood chapter yoyo
      concerning Hiroshima or Nagasaki...
you got one about Pearl Harbor...
a competent act of war... but not like our
civilians really matter: we civilians got the treatment
of being active members of the army,
while the army personnel were given civilian
Pilate status, the army was given civilian status
and the Japanese civilians were given army status...
oh forget the noodle swindler -
that handwritten hoola-hoop spinster of
carbohydrates is long gone...
          or the greatest paranoia against all other
nations comes from a nation that actually used the weapon!
       i could write a haiku version of what i lost,
but i'll still have to write something about you-tube
vloggers and how they are the newest version
of the objective propaganda machine that's in
the Islamic camp of merchants...
       prophet-merchant? give me a break:
if his word doesn't sell, then who's does?
my endorsement? less of a cosmetic light-touch surgeon
attitude, my endorsement is that of
Morphy Richards' Soup Maker...
cooking pumpkin soup...
  pumpkin... well: it's hardly an easy peel when it
comes to cooking butternut squash...
it's a disaster! a hell to endure! no wonder it's the veg
that frighten offs the ghouls and the ghost
you can't peel it, you have to Apache skin it
like getting a colonial wig: scalping your way into
the high court, albeit minus the greyish curls -
******* is a king of culinary demises
that were sought out expeditions -
you have to knife your way beneath the snail-like
shell and then there's that cobweb of mush
with intrinsic fake seeds / flies lodged in
the orange cobweb - for all that effort
i appreciate it more as a lampshade than a food
source... but then the advertised starving Africans
as anti-colonial compensation for "our"
grandfather's recollection of monochromatic cultures,
before globalisation took off.. hmm.
the soup? pumpkin, potato, onion, garlic,
nutmeg, paprika, chicken stock,
salt and pepper to taste...
tomorrow? a pumpkin risotto...
hey! seasonal abundance, Spanish strawberries
in late winter are too watery anyway...
   people forgot that certain things taste better
in season, that's namely fruits and vegetables...
   go outside your fancy, outside your whim,
you'll finally have to say: my eyes eat
at the very credibility of such things being
there without the season... but my tongue does not
taste the thing that requires a pentagonal sense
honing in toward an agreed to democracy:
it ain't there... as ever autumnal fruits make their
way toward the culinary redcarpet -
                   apples, pears....
     but the real ice brokers remain tangled in
the gnostics of dairy *****: you only see the *****
when the milk turns sour...
              and the two segregate
their cauliflower bergs and that pristine seethrough
        matrix -
then it's like watching the 1054 schism:
          aquasal herring
                               and aquadulci tench -
as painful as listening to my father speak english:
it's just ****** painful,
i write english and speak it like an Anglo
   and he speaks it like an Arab:
with me it's: left right left right left right
and his is an ancient form of actual Latin
              right left right left right left -
of the tongues that appropriated the Latin lingua
optics that weren't conquered it's the same as it was
for Seneca of Virgil, e.g. red beast / proof of all
scientific generic category principle: **** sapiens
                  upright man / bestia rufus -
and that's still orange beast - then aliq for yellow:
then liquid and runny khaki - a monetary equivalent
of money.
          but of the tongues
                      which is why i kept my mother tongue,
i can't imagine what would have been the case
had i not kept it intact... i'd be whitey boy bleached
into an anaemic Arian with those rubbery red
             lost for words rabbit crazy irises that
albinos sport when on the sociopathic treadmill:
that's a daily commute for most people.
i should have anticipated something better coming
out of a forced bad gateway message when
i tried to published and didn't save the outcry...
but it was never a reality when defined by a few
people... it always necessarily the many,
the market square, the hustle and bustle,
     then again few took to ****** to say love...
understandable: if something is called private
it's not called reality, because so many people
have so much **** to say in public that they
treat private life as a tabernacle -
reverse that and suddenly you find people
who possess a "voice for the multitude",
but not (not oddly enough) a thought -
ah the caring scream when not bound to
the horror genre of politics: it's too late!
               end here: a prior to rather than, a
desirably said to appease and conform:
by now we're all cited as having only said
an onomatopoeia of what words should sound like -
we're found hacking a door to shreds with
an axe, rather than merely curling our hands
so the knuckles can be used to knock on the door.
still, i made pumpkin soup today,
tomorrow i'll make a pumpkin risotto -
and the pumpkin is, rightfully, the halloween king
of all vegetables: i am not surprised it's the perfect
lampshade people leave outdoors -
hell of a thing to peel, a butternut squash
would have been simpler to make...
but for the first time in my life:
  i actually appreciate the colour orange...
as said: cooker orange is beyond that fluorescent
acidity of a citrus fruit:
  cooked orange is actually grand...
raw citrus orange?                and a handful
of creepy crawlies.
    funny how the spectrum necessarily made me
endorse a soup maker, rather than the next
big thing in the realm of toothpaste and mascara.

Hindi ako Balagtas
Hindi ako Kabesang Sisiw
Ngunit igagawa kita ng binalaybay  na epiko

Hindi ako Amorsolo
Hindi ako Botong Francisco
Ngunit ipipinta kita sa dalampasigan ng aking puso


Hindi ako Rizal
Hindi ako Bonifacio
Ngunit buhay ko'y iaalay sa'yo


Hindi ako si Alden Richards
Hindi ako James Reid
Ngunit sa tingin ko, God gave me you.

I come from a town with no identity.                          
It had one, once, but I think it was                              
uprooted with Shales forest                                            
to make way for outlet malls                                  
and housing complexes.  
Every street, every tree, and every person
was like a wrinkle on an otherwise
unblemished face, marking our
individuality with age and experience.
It’s amazing how fast cosmetic surgery
can destroy the past.
                                            
I hail from the smallest                                                  
large suburban town of our area.                                  
Growing up, we used to know everybody
that lived on our block, and no one was
in short supply of a handshake or hello.
Now, social courtesy ends at the foot
of your door, before you step into the world.
When I was a child, every person had a sense
of purpose, a contribution to the street.

Mrs. Henderson made the best
chocolate chip cookies around, and
all summer long her house was filled
with the smell of melting chocolate
over warm cookie dough, a scent
that would sneak out of her window
in the late afternoons, when you
could still see the sun setting in the sky,
and find its way over to mine. Now,
apartments block the view.

Nick Potts had a key to the private pool,
which was members only,
but every weekend he’d find
a new way to sneak us in.
John Probst owned the pool,
and would sit in the same yellow
and blue striped lawn chair by
the concession stand next to the
diving board, laughing at each
new scheme we conjured up to
help save a few bucks on a
humid summer’s day.

Kyle had a trampoline, that
despite the stupidity of all
nine-year-olds, never saw a
broken bone. Carl had his garden,
bursting with shades of colors
that could only be mirrored by
the burning dusk light.
Duncan had a tree fort,
the Richards, a tire swing.

I never knew how fast the changes
would come. It started small, a simple
lift here, some aging creme there,
but this was just preliminary measures
for botox and nose jobs. As a town,
we soon became an obsession of trends.
Individuality was outdated.
Every driveway had a minivan, every home,
a schitzu and a soccer ball.

A skin graph covered the sun spot
that was Mrs. Henderson.
A face lift cured the sagging skin
of Nick Potts. The pierce
of a needle and flowing
injection of toxins smoothed
the wrinkles that were
Kyle, Carl, and Duncan. In what
seemed like a few hours time, the
town that taught me integrity, respect,
and the value of a hard day’s work,
altered to the point of being unrecognizable.

Manufactured and fake, we’re nothing more
than a shinning porcelain doll straight off
the assembly line, distinctively similar
to all the others that follow. Every layer
of cosmetics cover another part
of our character, another aspect
of our history. We became lost
in the crowd, and in our own way,
faceless.

Here I am aching for some small affirmation
Still holding back overcome with desperation
Don't see me this way, I'll keep my distance
Begging the universe for your interest and persistence
One cup of coffee
One glass of wine
One kiss in the cold
Please be mine
75 minute staring contest, entranced in your gaze
I hardly blink, entangled in a haze
Energy and strings, invisible connection
Awkward glances, second chances, unsure of direction
Scared and hopeful, lost in joy
Seven years later, your no longer a boy
These symptoms of love leave me feeling sick
No sleep
Infatuation
And all too quick

Getting the fashion industry excited about an event is no plum task. And yet season after season, Anna Sui does it with her thoughtful and fun runway shows. Blame it on her ability to transport her audiences deep into her world full of references that range from Pre-Raphaelites to Diaghilev to disco. (Of course, the retro soundtracks and top models don’t hurt, either.)

Lately, Sui’s been sharing her passion for fashion history with a wider audience by taking on many collabs, the latest of which is with O’Neill, in stores now. Just in time for summer, the designer crafted a selection of swimwear and cover-ups that echo the bohemian mood of her main collection but also target a new kind of customer. We caught up with Sui at her Soho store to reflect on her career, her favorite muses, and texting with Anita Pallenberg.

You’ve been doing more collaborations in general lately—why is it important to you to diversify into these arenas?

Well, there are certain limitations that we have as far as production for what we’re able to do. A great way to overcome that is to work with somebody who has the expertise in that product. So working with Frye, they make the coolest, sturdiest boot that you can imagine, and so I think this is my third time collaborating with them. They’re just dreams to work with. It takes you to another place. And also you learn so much, because we’re so limited as far as resources now that it opens up new avenues. I did the same with the Coach bags and with the luggage with Tumi and now this collection with O’Neill.

How did you get involved with O’Neill?

Our sales manager knew somebody at O’Neill, and she started thinking that it would be such a great pair-up between O’Neill and Anna Sui because O’Neill is very much our girl. They’re very print-oriented and known for their surfer style, but we wanted to incorporate our bohemian style with it. I think that we’ve blended it so well. The clothes are just so dreamy; we were all just oohing and ahhing over these lace pieces.

That perfect white lace dress is a very necessary summer item.

It’s so true. I remember one summer I was looking at Naomi [Campbell] pictures on a yacht on Daily Mail or something, and every day she had the most beautiful, little white baby-doll dress. I thought, Where did she find all those?! But she can just zero in on something, too. That’s always been my dream, to have all those gorgeous white baby-doll dresses.

You have the best references season after season—who was the beachy surfer girl that you looked to for this collab?

We wanted to capture that true bohemian feeling of the ladies of Laurel Canyon: Joni Mitchell, Michelle Phillips, all those girls you put pictures on the wall and are like, “I hope I grow up and look like this.” So what we tried to capture was that dream.

I think fashion in general is really swinging toward the Anna Sui vibe, very bohemian.

It’s exciting. It’s kind of like a new beginning again. We’ve had so much reaction from all the stores and press—it’s like when I first started. It’s got that same feeling. It’s wonderful.

How do you define who your customer is and continue to change and grow with her over the years?

I think that somewhere I never grew up, and it’s still that same dream as when I was looking at the pictures of Michelle Phillips. It’s still always that same thing, and no matter where I go with the collection, Vikings or Pre-Raphaelites, there’s still that bohemian girl there. That was always my ideal. As much as I try to veer away from it, there are always a couple of those Michelle Phillips and Joni Mitchells in the collection. Through every collection you can find them.

So what’s the secret to staying young forever then?

I think loving what you do. You can’t ask for more. This is what I wanted to do since I was 4 years old, and just the fact that I’m able to do it and do it globally—I work in Japan and I work in Europe and I work in New York—it’s kind of a dream. It’s a lot of hard work and I’m very, very dedicated to it. I do a lot of sacrificing of other things, but it’s what I’ve always wanted.

As someone who’s been in the business for so long, how do you stay inspired and not get worn out or jaded?

One of the things that I love the most is research—learning new things and exploring new things. That’s what I do when I work on a collection: I find something that sparks my interest and then I’m obsessed with and I just go into it. It’s like going into the rabbit hole. Then all of a sudden you find out all these other things because one thing leads to another. Like when I did the Ballets Russes collection [Fall 2011], I saw that beautiful Diaghilev exhibit at the V&A; and I thought, OK, now I can be inspired by those Léon Bakst drawings. I remember one of the Ormsby Gore sisters was telling me that the way they started wearing vintage was because of a sale of the Ballets Russes costumes in, like, 1968. They couldn’t afford the principal costumes, but they could afford the costumes of the Sugar Plum Fairies, all these crushed velvets. So they started wearing them on the street, and all of a sudden the Beatles and the Stones and everybody else started following what they were doing. Well, don’t you know, in the Diaghilev exhibit, there was a film of that auction. I was just like, “Oh, my God.” That’s what sparked that whole thing where everyone was looking romantic and medieval. I love finding that connection. That makes my day—that makes my season when I find that out.

Do you feel like it’s harder or easier today to communicate that to your customer? I feel like with the pressures to make Instagrammable moments, it’s become very hard to get people excited about the history of fashion.

There are so many levels in what I do. Somebody like Tim [Blanks] will get the really intricate things, but then the obvious things will be the things that people talk about the most. I always try to bring it all back, make it current, and tie it in to something that’s happening in our pop culture, like the Viking thing. It’s really true—I was watching [the History channel TV series] and I got that idea. It wasn’t an intellectual idea, but that’s really how it happened. I think that you have to put it on different levels.

Is there one specific era or muse you feel like is the most Anna Sui?

My biggest idols are Anita Pallenberg and Keith Richards. So at the end of the day, it’s always like: Is there something that Anita would wear? Is there something that Keith would wear? Is it cool enough for them? And then I usually send Anita an image and say, “This is the outfit that I did for you.”Read more here:marieaustralia.com | www.marieaustralia.com/evening-dresses

In the land of Coleridge and his Ancient Mariner,
    In a time of coal fires, wooden boats and horsepower,
There is a story of the Lynmouth Lifeboat Louisa
    And the night horse and man over 13 miles pulled her.

Two of the afternoon clock struck a chime,
    On January 12th, 1899.
The wind howled and the sea it roared,
    Flooding ports and railways, taking off windows and doors.
The ship, Forest Hall, with masts a three
    Was being towed up Bristol Channel with a crew of 15.
Bound for Liverpool, at St. David’s Head she cast off,
    But the wind, it blew stronger and the waters grew rough.
Suddenly the cable grew taught and then snapped,
    The tugboat immediately came about to get back.
For over an hour they tried to re-fix the line
    But the storm was upon them, they had run out of time.
Captain Uliss made haste to anchor at bay
    But another obstacle was thrown in their way.
The rudder of the Forest Hall was broken by a squall,
    To the mercy of Poseidon and ****** they were all.
The ships’ anchor dragged, no purchase it found
    The ship was headed for Exmoor’s rough ground
At 6:33pm a telegraph was sent
    From Porlock to Lynmouth the Postmaster went
“Large vessel. Distress. Offshore Porlock”
    Five minutes later the first signal rocket went off
Out into the pounding rain they ran
    Those lifeboatmen and locals to lend them a hand
The waves loomed over the watch tower on the pier,
    Then crashed down in fury which deafened the ear
“Tis hopeless” the Coxswain, Jack Crocombe, said he
    “ain’t a crew in the service who could launch safely”
“From a more sheltered station we’ll call a new boat”
    And to the post-office they went, to send a telegraph out
Tap, tap, tap on the Morse key he pressed
    But nothing was happening, there was no line left
Blown down by the storm, and all hope with it,
    “The duty is ours, but we cannot fulfil it”.


Part 2:
“The duty is ours, it’s us or nobody” he shouts
    “it can’t never be nobody, go we must”
The protests did start, and questions did fall,
    But the Coxswain had an answer to silence them all
“Now, I know that we can’t launch her from ‘ere”
    “but it’s thirteen miles to Porlock Weir”
The voices were shouting, no one knew what to do
    But the Second Coxswain’s voice carried on through
“Jack, we’ll need ‘osses, every ‘oss can be spared”
    “if we got enough power, we’ll get her there”
The choice had been made, the die had been cast,
    The crew had a plan, a solution at last
Around came the Lifeboat Louisa, so grand
    Standing 34ft long and 7ft wide on land
3.5 tonnes was her unladen mass
    The add thirteen crew, oars, rigging and two masts
The shafts had been fitted to the carriage with ease,
    Rarely used but kept in the boathouse for needs
The horses were hitched, the carriage coupled on.
    In total, the train was one hundred and thirty foot long
“Right then” said the Coxswain “let’s be off”
    “up Countisbury Hill!” but as soon as they started, they stopped.
The horses did not pull together as a team,
    The wheels were stuck in the parapet, of the bridge over the stream
In minutes it was fixed, and it started again
    This time all horses were pulling the same.
Up Countisbury hill, they walked on and on,
    Until they reached open ground, then the protection was gone
The rain thundered down; the wind raged again
    Still the team kept on going, the pace slow and same.
All of a sudden, the carriage plunged to the right,
    A four-foot wheel came off, then rolled out of sight
“There’s a wheel off!” the cry rang “get them scotches under!”
    It was the front offside wheel that was causing this blunder
Nearly forty minutes it took to replace the wheel
    Still the great storm refused to heel
But then they were off, nearly conquered the hill
    But many more challenges faced them still.
The Blue Ball Inn marks Countisbury Hill peak
    And hot cocoa and brandy helped restore the weak.
Now they pressed on, ten miles to go.
    They were making good progress but painfully slow.


Part 3:
The rain had stopped, the lamps shone bright,
    This brave crew continued through the night.
The party had by now reached Ashton Lane
    Where their troubles soon were to begin again
On this narrow road, the walls were strong and thick
    Impassable for the carriage, but Coxswain Jack had a trick
“We’ll pull the boat through the lane on the skids”
    “The carriage can go o’er the moors with the kids”
So once again horse and train were detached
    A new plan at work, only recently hatched
Eight horses pulled the carriage away,
    Leaving ten to continue to Porlock Bay.
The boat was pulled down Ashton Lane
    Later, all men agreed this was the worst part of the way.
Mud underneath, and walls closing in
    Barely inches to move and soaked to the skin
Boast, horses and carriage finally together again
    Made their way onwards, leaving the lane
Half past one, on that stormy black morn
    County Gate was passed, conversation was born
The crew started talking, spirits, they grew
    But a challenge was coming and this they all knew
Porlock Hill was coming their way,
    Navigating this death path was tricky even in the day.


Part 4:
Porlock Hill, as the locals say
    Is the devil incarnate come night or day
But the brave men from Lynmouth at the top they stopped
    Safety chains, drag ropes and skid pans were fitted against the clock
Four horses at the front to control the bends
    Ten at the back plus men to see this through to the end
Down the twists and turns the crawled
    On the drag ropes and harnesses, man and horse hauled
Round the last corner “We’ve done it!” “We’re down!”
    Sighs let out, smiles put on, it was an inspiring sound
Then all at once, morale took a plunge down,
    As they stared at the entrance to Porlock Town.
Old Widow Washford had a cottage this end,
    It would be impossible for the carriage to round the bend
The wall of the garden would have to come down
    So, the crew started trying to widen the ground
“What are ye thinking at this time o’ night?”
    “How dare ye start bangin! Gave me a fright”
Old Widow Washford’s head poked through the door
    Was there no end to the troubles faced on this moor?
Once again, the Coxswain had the answer and said
    “Don’t worry, we’re just widening the road dear. Go back to bed”
The old woman was dressed and out in a flash
    Shouting encouragement, soon the wall was hashed.
Six inches more, they needed to pass
    The corner of the cottage came off at last.
Five of the clock struck the morning chime,
    For most people here, that was rising time.
Out of the town, and past the Ship Inn
    The last part of their journey was soon to begin.


Part 5:
Half past five when they reached Porlock Weir
    They were soon stopped by people when drew near.
“You can’t go no further” the Anchor Hotel Landlord said
    “the road’s gone, Jack, to the beach, nothing’s left”
Only half a mile stood ‘tween the crew and their goal
    They would not let this stop them, oh no.
The top road they took, almost as narrow as Ashton Lane
    An exercise none of them wanted to repeat again.
The train drew on, till they reached a tree
    An old Laburnum standing between them and the sea.
Down it came and then back on their way
    The light was beginning to turn night to day.
The boat reached the beach, the flares had been lit,
    The ****** poised with their oars, ready to hit.
Holding the stop, Second Coxswain yelled “HAUL”
    And down shot the Louisa, into the squall
The oars struck together, through the roaring sea
    Sails hoisted, oars beating, wind blowing hatefully.

It was on the morning Friday 13th January,
    That Lifeboat Louisa of Lynmouth launched at Porlock from Countisbury.
Ten and a half hours, over thirteen miles
    This crew and their boat had endured many trails
The Forest Hall was reach, her crew all safe
    Back to the mainland they made at pace.


Jack Crocombe, George Richards, Charles Crick, Richard Burgess,
    Richard Ridler, David Crocombe, Bertram Pennicott, William Jarvis.
George Rawle, William Richards and John Ward
    John Riddler, E.J. Peddar and Richard Moore.

All of them crew members on that historic day
    And for this they are remembered in every way.


But I give my thanks to the crew mate who gave this story to me,
    My Great Great Grandfather, Lynmouth Lifeboatman
        William Sellick Pugsley.


Sophie J Pugsley
Great Great Granddaughter of crewmate William Pugsley of the Lynmouth Lifeboat Service.

this time, when i went
to meet Death at his place,
he showed signs of weakness.
he was watching a cricket match
relaxing in his arm chair, legs stretched.
yawns kept rolling
in slow progression
towards the boundary.

'are you well?’ i ventured.
'nothing wrong,’ said he.

stammering, i quizzed him:
which one do you fear most?
allopathy, ayurveda, or
homeopathy?

dear wilson,
have you observed sachin
facing the ***** of shane warne?
brian lara, wasim akram?
chris gail, brett lee?

i was thrown into confusion.

death admitted, unwillingly,
that like vivian richards
confronted narendra hirwani,
he was laid low by the
secret herb
of an old tribal man!

aaha! the panacea
became then
a spin ball!
(aaha…Nothing official about it!)

i forgot to ask
how our people
smuggled away by him
were faring now.

he forgot to comment
“you will see for yourself
when you face it.”

or the alternative precursor to the spice girls
(yes, i did buy their debut -
      baby spice, well, my infantile
fetish with cute, clean cut blondes, meh,
old story)
                 but **** on me, President Reagan
was a former actor -
     i have no personal interests in the debate,
well: i like to see real life Hollywood,
i like films, from time to time...
    20th century moustaches are these days
relegated to hairstyles....
  you know why we don ****** hair?
the ***** are pruned and trimmed
for a ***** movie: we like to fiddle with it,
esp. the hair crop on the chin,
     i could become a violinist with it.
what spurred me on? Marvin Gayes heard it through
the grapevine, or as i say:
  down the **** gold, auburn, amber, beer,
whiskey, **** me! a correlation!
or a categorical imperative some would say:
             heard it down the wheat shaft
in between men having their prided little Richards
cut off - fun ******* fun -
         that's me and washing my hands
writing poetry in advance to my body language
transformed starting to style myself
on the baguettes hit from the 80s:
dance like a pigeon, nod pigeon in a walk,
the guy that was so jealous of me
is now a manic depressive -
       and i'm like: so what? jog on!
                      i was stupid for 10 seconds of my life,
better write out bail...
                        they should call it
the s.d.i.             (sniffer dog investigation) -
it doesn't look even remotely disastrous,
     only with that Antoinette quiff and a moustache,
      oh we loved the pern wigs
before the bowlers and top hats...
          it's as if the Victorian era was an era
for mourning the death of God, truly.
all the little revolution stemming from the death
of someone ending a bio at 1900 didn't matter...
    he was philosophising at a funeral...
i'm just watching the vehement application
of Vatican non-curriculum activity stemming from
archeology started off in Egypt under the
title: St. Thomas' account the doubter / the philosopher
gaining ground in all things trans-,
                a return by "popular" demand,
first the authentic Christianity of the gospels
and now infuriated Islam and the unauthentic application
of the recovered gospels -
   can you imagine there being a brokering
       gamble on literacy back then, would the priests
have made fishermen literate back when it
was stated: keep them wholly physically intact,
let's not interfere with their physical prowess,
we need their physical strength, undermine their
physical strength with being able to read: and we're ******!
   a fisherman wrote that gospel?
                     (insert snigger) -
        only in the 20th century could the benefits
of education a son of a roofer / metallurgy agent go
down sour... first they said they wanted me to
come upon the plateau of what education is about:
the just dispensation of wealth,
   but then they heard about my background and
simply said: nah, that ****** can clean the dishes...
the worst part?
      i would have agreeably been a street-cleaner:
but not after having invested in education!
      that's a ****** insult!
                so here's me,
high as a kite on *****, listening to poets talk
about depression for a while thinking:
    where's the wheelchair?
                             and when i'm through
i tune in, listen to Marvin Gaye and start dancing
like a pigeon strutting:
           guillotine horizontal chopping the air up,
        twerk a bit in the bathroom
and feel Chappy Jolly -
                   i'd stick a thumb up my *** if i wanted
to as reversal of the *******
                                being accusatory -
don't educated me and steal from those who don't
want to be with their common sense education
                and give me absolutely nothing
chemistry related to do it...
        i'll just start writing and turn the heat up on
being a hermit...
                              becoming educated is a monstrous
delusion that the priestly caste of society dish out
             once they dished out literacy,
              but once literacy has become exhausted
they dish out education in the broader sense.
i was walking back from the supermarket today,
and picked up a pound coin from the pavement
(thanks Sinatra, that'll pay the rent)
    and started fiddling with it in my hand:
some people have lucky charms, emeralds and
what not in necklaces and other memento forms,
i started fiddling with this found pound coin,
  Whether's Original colouring - not quiet copper,
indeed more like solidified bleached out caramel,
when i walked with my hands partially clenched
like a gorilla's and balanced the coin
on the *******'s phalange -
        and suddenly i was holding a philosopher's stone...
        it all became visceral - clear, poignant,
this little thing can transform anything from
        copper into gold -
   from iron into gold...
               where the alchemist sleeping when
they were passing this stuff about, including
the blimmin' cobblers?
                       it can also include asking
the magpies to fly in and say: not all that glitters
is gold... where are the silver spoons?
              oh for sure, the eagle as emblem / mascot of the state
  is doomed, take the Third ***** and the Roman Empire...
             no one ever bothered the sparrow to be engulfed
in replica on standards of a marching enemy...
    the crow seems pretty safe too, funny
            the eagle is a crushing curse of failed predatory
alliances when embedded in metal for man
   to strut toward a harrowing end.

He's Uncle John to you, but John to the rest of us
Got a way of telling stories without the fanfare or the fuss
He can jump into any conversation, has a lot of stuff to say
and every bit is interesting 'cause that always been John's way.

There was one about his summer job before 1970,
paid to push a Swan-shaped boat off a dock in Asbury
With a grapple hook on a ten foot pole, or something of that sort
well he'd push 'em out and pull 'em in wasn't doing it for sport~
The same guy who owned the swan boats, tunneled love across the way
twice a week John worked the darkness, but preferred the light of day.

Played rhythm at the Upstage in band called 'Cory' later
workin' Perkins in West Belmar, took the name from the percolator
Around that time he grew his hair out, it was like an Afro-sheen
mistaken for Tinker, a surfboard chinker and drummer with Springsteen.

Cruisin' down around Brookdale in his '39 LaSalle
Met 'Stinky' Tink at Thompson Park, where he was singing with his pal

Hey John, you look like Tinker,
but now you favor Gere
a live ringer for Mike Richards,
and don't forget DeNir-

Oh, if you can't remember anything from 40 years ago
just ask your Uncle John who knows the time in Tokyo.

In the mountains of winter, hats hung to the west, on the North Star we've ridden into tomorrow instead. The natives can smell the fear that's starving your dog, that keeps the anger inside you bottled up in you alone.

And the acres subside, the girls lay in their shorts, but I hate disappointment. I hate being let down. I say you have the prettiest blue eyes that I've ever found.

In the valley, if they come, we'll read ourselves into history. Rocks for the eyes, and sticks for the knees. Against all that's wicked, inside something strong. We've all had our guts pulled out to a Keith Richards song. And the drums break, the strummer hums back, the words mix and there's a cacophony of wrong.

Even the hero will be our villain before we've come too far along.

Take a group of chimpanzees
used to swinging through the trees,
and sit them down at keyboards in a row;
lots of paper, lots of ink,
lots and lots of time, I think,
and what the theory says I’m sure you know.

Yes, along with all the junk,
all the gibberish and bunk,
somewhere there’d be the full works of the Bard:
As You Like It, Cymbeline,
Richards 2 and 3, the Dream,
though Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, might be hard.

But I’m sure the little blighters
would get on fine with Titus
Andronicus, The Taming of the Shrew,
The Moor of Venice (that’s Othello),
the other Merchant fellow,
and Antony and Cleopatra too.

The Winter’s Tale would hold no terrors,
nor The Comedy of Errors,
and Verona’s Gentlemen would turn out right;
Love’s Labour might be Lost,
or it might be Tempest-tossed,
but All’s Well That Ends Well, even on Twelfth Night.

Lear, King John, and Much Ado,
Henry 4, parts 1 and 2,
Henry 5, and 6 (in three parts), Henry 8,
Troilus, Timon, Measure for Measure,
Pericles (a neglected treasure)
and how Romeo and Juliet met their fate;

all the Sonnets, and the ****
of Lucrece (typed by an ape!)
and if they worked for ever and a day
they could fit in Julius Caesar,
that Coriolanus geezer,
the Wives of Windsor, and the Scottish play.

I grew more and more excited –
even thought I might be knighted
if I could be the one to make it work.
But to realise my dream
I had to try a pilot scheme,
to prove I wasn’t just a reckless berk.

I bought one chimp from the zoo -
didn't have the cash for two -
and gave him a typewriter, just to try
for a short while. Well, a fortnight
was the time-scale that I thought right.
You see, I’m quite an optimistic guy.

Now everyone who heard
of my project said, “Absurd!”
when I told them of my striking new departure.
“Get a chimpanzee to type
the works of Shakespeare? Oh, what tripe!”
Still … he did produce the works of Jeffrey Archer.

When I was a child, every year I had my eye exam. The doctor would always say, "Tell me when the line on the left meets the dot on the right." It never did. I always told the doctor this, and every year, he would say nothing, just go on to the next part of the exam.

In 4th grade, my best friend was Bruce Patrick. His father was training at the Menninger Foundation to become a psychiatrist. Bruce was very smart. He sat across from me. Ms Perrin, our teacher, would devote part of every school day to reading. Each student had a copy of the same book. Ms Perrin would say, "Start reading." As we all began reading, I immediately saw that Bruce was ready to turn to the second page while I was only half way down the first. This puzzled me as the two of us were pretty much equal in every other subject.

Because I was pretty much a straight-A student during those years, my Dad had me apply to Andover, often considered, as I was to find out, the best prep school in the USA. I had never heard of it. I went to Kansas City to take the entrance test. When the results came back, I had done well except on the reading section. Out of 15 reading sections, I was able finish only 3 or 4 of them. I was rejected by Andover, so dad had me attend Andover summer school. No ordinary summer school was it. It was eight weeks long and we had class on Saturday mornings. Two of the classes I took were English classes--a lot of reading. It took me twice as long, or longer, to read each
novel than it took my classmates. But I got good grades notwithstanding.

Dad had me apply again to Andover the following year. Same thing happened I now know for the same reason. I was rejected. So Dad sent me again to Andover summer school. Same thing happened there, too, including both my need to spend twice as long reading a book, but getting good grades nevertheless. When my Dad came to pick me up at the end of summer school. we both went to the office of Dean of Admissions. I don't know why, but we did. The first thing the Dean--I can't remember his name--said to me, the very first thing--was, "You're in! We have accepted you for the fall of 1960. You don't even have to apply."

In those days, if you graduated from Andover, you just decided which college you wanted to attend, and come Fall, you just walked through their gates. It was that simple, because Andover had such clout. I chose Columbia over Yale and thoroughly enjoyed my four years there, but I still had to study more than twice as much as my classmates.

One evening back in Topeka where I had grown up, I sat in a booth at Pore Richards sipping coffee with my friend, Michelle, who was a psychologist at Menninger's. I was 27 then. She was telling me about a workshop she had attended the previous week-end in Tulsa. I found the things she had learned most interesting. The more she shared with me, the more I began to feel that she was talking about me. Finally, I interrupted her. I said, "Michelle, what you are describing, what you are telling me about, sounds like what I have dealt with my whole life." I elaborated. She said she thought I had been suffering from monocular vision, the eye doctor's specialty. Michelle said I should drive down to Tulsa to see him. I did.

The doctor put me through a three-hour series of exams, the final one being when he hooked up both eyes separately to tracking machines that recorded on tape the movements of each eye, then asked me to read a paragraph. When I had finished, the doctor got the long, narrow tapes that had recorded both eyes separately and showed me both. The first tape showed the movement of my right eye. I was fascinated. The tape I looked at reminded me of an EKG. For about an inch-and-a half, the line on the tape showed my right eye reading, but then flat-lined (as when your heart stops beating when you die). Then the doctor showed me the tape for the left eye. Then line indicated my left eye kept reading, but not like a normal eye. The doctor said my left eye was moving "in a jagged manner," which meant it was not functioning properly. I shall never forget what the doctor said to me at that moment:  "Tod, I'm surprised you can even read a book, let alone get through college."

As I drove back to Topeka, I thought about the eye doctor whom I had seen every year through grade school "Tell me when the line on the left meets the dot on the right." And that doctor never responded for years when I told him every year they never met. That condition is a classic symptom of monocular vision.

That *******, I thought, as I made my way home.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

"I don't blame you for writing of me as you have. You had to believe other stories, but then, I don't know if anyone would believe anything good of me anyway." - Who is it?

1859 -1861, month and day unknown.
As of this writing that's the closest we've come to his birthday.
So many records of his life are now all gone.
His tragic, short and violent life began when he was only just a very young child.
He was a lamb among wolves trying desperately to survive
the untamed Old West's most merciless and vile.
He was supposedly born in New York City,
but the state of New Mexico is where he'd be raised.
It would be there where he'd grow to young adulthood
and become familiar with the west's outlaw ways.
His first foiled crime occurred in New Mexico's Silver City.
He stole some butter and then sold it to a local merchant.
Upon discovery the local sheriff spanked the young boy silly.
Sheriff Whitehill then let the lad go with this stern warning,
"No more will I put a belt to your hide if we ever meet this way again.
If you again break the law, of this you can be sure, You'll Be Going To Jail My Friend!"
The sheriff was actually sympathetic. He wanted to give the boy a healthy fright.
He knew the kid was orphaned, alone and all on his own.
He could see that his future wasn't looking too bright.
It's sad for this boy was no dummy. Mary Richards, his teacher would say,
"He was a student who always had his homework in on time each and every day."
He would enthusiastically help with the classroom chores.
Schooling was not just education, it was an activity he adored.
He loved to read. He loved to sing. He loved to dance and even act.
He'd spend many days involved with his school plays.
His mother's death however would put an end to all of that.
Her loving memory probably grieved him all the rest of his short days.
He loved her devotedly and he lost her at a time when she was the whole of his life.
A large part of his heart surely died as he cried beside his mother at her deathbed that night.
After Mrs Catherine Antrim was laid down to rest,
her two sons would be separated and go from one foster home to the next.
The kid must have wondered if he'd ever again see his brother Joe.
Was Joe his older or younger brother? This is another fact we don't know.
We do know that their step father, one William Antrim ,
abandoned the offspring of his departed wife Catherine.
Catherine knew she was dying and probably married Antrim to insure
that her boys would always have a family and home.
If he promised to care for and love them, his promises weren't pure.
Catherine no sooner died and Antrim was gone.
He wasn't even there on the day that she died,
nor during the days that preceded the end of her suffering pneumonia.
With one last look into their eyes, he gave the brothers their final separate good byes.
William Antrim then left the boys and moved to Clifton, Arizona.
And so began the short and violent life of this unfortunate child.
Legend doesn't accurately portray the brutal harshness of the true life he had lived.
His was the tragedy of a promising young boy forced to become a man while still a child.
All would one day know him as Billy, the Kidster.

You may find this hard to believe
But I just saw a monkey
Drive by me doing eighty
In a Maserati

Eating rainbow ice cream
In a cone from Dairy Queen
I don't mean to sound mean
But should a monkey be eating ice cream

Just then I saw a cat
Right before he went splat
Jaywalking will often do that
And that my friend is straight up fact

The monkey swerved to avoid him
That's when he lost control and
Into a brick wall he slammed
As the ice cream went a flying

Since a cat has nine lives
He came to quite surprised
As Keith Richards does most nights
The ice cream landed just right

The monkey's now in heaven
The cat is ice cream licking
The Maserati is a has been
So I guess this must be the end

Le bras sur un marteau gigantesque, effrayant
D'ivresse et de grandeur, le front vaste, riant
Comme un clairon d'airain, avec toute sa bouche,
Et prenant ce gros-là dans son regard farouche,
Le Forgeron parlait à Louis Seize, un jour
Que le Peuple était là, se tordant tout autour,
Et sur les lambris d'or traînant sa veste sale.
Or le bon roi, debout sur son ventre, était pâle,
Pâle comme un vaincu qu'on prend pour le gibet,
Et, soumis comme un chien, jamais ne regimbait,
Car ce maraud de forge aux énormes épaules
Lui disait de vieux mots et des choses si drôles,
Que cela l'empoignait au front, comme cela !
" Or tu sais bien, Monsieur, nous chantions tra la la
Et nous piquions les boeufs vers les sillons des autres :
Le Chanoine au soleil filait des patenôtres
Sur des chapelets clairs grenés de pièces d'or
Le Seigneur, à cheval, passait, sonnant du cor
Et l'un avec la hart, l'autre avec la cravache
Nous fouaillaient. - Hébétés comme des yeux de vache,
Nos yeux ne pleuraient plus ; nous allions, nous allions,
Et quand nous avions mis le pays en sillons,
Quand nous avions laissé dans cette terre noire
Un peu de notre chair.., nous avions un pourboire :
On nous faisait flamber nos taudis dans la nuit ;
Nos petits y faisaient un gâteau fort bien cuit. ...
" Oh ! je ne me plains pas. Je te dis mes bêtises,
C'est entre nous. J'admets que tu me contredises.
Or n'est-ce pas joyeux de voir au mois de juin
Dans les granges entrer des voitures de foin
Énormes ? De sentir l'odeur de ce qui pousse,
Des vergers quand il pleut un peu, de l'herbe rousse ?
De voir des blés, des blés, des épis pleins de grain,
De penser que cela prépare bien du pain ?...
Oh ! plus fort, on irait, au fourneau qui s'allume,
Chanter joyeusement en martelant l'enclume,
Si l'on était certain de pouvoir prendre un peu,
Étant homme, à la fin ! de ce que donne Dieu !
- Mais voilà, c'est toujours la même vieille histoire !

" Mais je sais, maintenant ! Moi, je ne peux plus croire,
Quand j'ai deux bonnes mains, mon front et mon marteau,
Qu'un homme vienne là, dague sur le manteau,
Et me dise : Mon gars, ensemence ma terre ;
Que l'on arrive encor quand ce serait la guerre,
Me prendre mon garçon comme cela, chez moi !
- Moi, je serais un homme, et toi, tu serais roi,
Tu me dirais : Je veux !... - Tu vois bien, c'est stupide.
Tu crois que j'aime voir ta baraque splendide,
Tes officiers dorés, tes mille chenapans,
Tes palsembleu bâtards tournant comme des paons :
Ils ont rempli ton nid de l'odeur de nos filles
Et de petits billets pour nous mettre aux Bastilles,
Et nous dirons : C'est bien : les pauvres à genoux !
Nous dorerons ton Louvre en donnant nos gros sous !
Et tu te soûleras, tu feras belle fête.
- Et ces Messieurs riront, les reins sur notre tête !

" Non. Ces saletés-là datent de nos papas !
Oh ! Le Peuple n'est plus une putain. Trois pas
Et, tous, nous avons mis ta Bastille en poussière.
Cette bête suait du sang à chaque pierre
Et c'était dégoûtant, la Bastille debout
Avec ses murs lépreux qui nous racontaient tout
Et, toujours, nous tenaient enfermés dans leur ombre !

- Citoyen ! citoyen ! c'était le passé sombre
Qui croulait, qui râlait, quand nous prîmes la tour !
Nous avions quelque chose au coeur comme l'amour.
Nous avions embrassé nos fils sur nos poitrines.
Et, comme des chevaux, en soufflant des narines
Nous allions, fiers et forts, et ça nous battait là...
Nous marchions au soleil, front haut, - comme cela, -
Dans Paris ! On venait devant nos vestes sales.
Enfin ! Nous nous sentions Hommes ! Nous étions pâles,
Sire, nous étions soûls de terribles espoirs :
Et quand nous fûmes là, devant les donjons noirs,
Agitant nos clairons et nos feuilles de chêne,
Les piques à la main ; nous n'eûmes pas de haine,
- Nous nous sentions si forts, nous voulions être doux !

" Et depuis ce jour-là, nous sommes comme fous !
Le tas des ouvriers a monté dans la rue,
Et ces maudits s'en vont, foule toujours accrue
De sombres revenants, aux portes des richards.
Moi, je cours avec eux assommer les mouchards :
Et je vais dans Paris, noir marteau sur l'épaule,
Farouche, à chaque coin balayant quelque drôle,
Et, si tu me riais au nez, je te tuerais !
- Puis, tu peux y compter tu te feras des frais
Avec tes hommes noirs, qui prennent nos requêtes
Pour se les renvoyer comme sur des raquettes
Et, tout bas, les malins ! se disent : " Qu'ils sont sots ! "
Pour mitonner des lois, coller de petits pots
Pleins de jolis décrets roses et de droguailles,
S'amuser à couper proprement quelques tailles.
Puis se boucher le nez quand nous marchons près d'eux,
- Nos doux représentants qui nous trouvent crasseux ! -
Pour ne rien redouter, rien, que les baïonnettes...,
C'est très bien. Foin de leur tabatière à sornettes !
Nous en avons assez, là, de ces cerveaux plats
Et de ces ventres-dieux. Ah ! ce sont là les plats
Que tu nous sers, bourgeois, quand nous sommes féroces,
Quand nous brisons déjà les sceptres et les crosses !... "
Il le prend par le bras, arrache le velours
Des rideaux, et lui montre en bas les larges cours
Où fourmille, où fourmille, où se lève la foule,
La foule épouvantable avec des bruits de houle,
Hurlant comme une chienne, hurlant comme une mer,
Avec ses bâtons forts et ses piques de fer
Ses tambours, ses grands cris de halles et de bouges,
Tas sombre de haillons saignant de bonnets rouges :
L'Homme, par la fenêtre ouverte, montre tout
Au roi pâle et suant qui chancelle debout,
Malade à regarder cela !
" C'est la Crapule,
Sire. Ça bave aux murs, ça monte, ça pullule :
- Puisqu'ils ne mangent pas, Sire, ce sont des gueux !
Je suis un forgeron : ma femme est avec eux,
Folle ! Elle croit trouver du pain aux Tuileries !
- On ne veut pas de nous dans les boulangeries.
J'ai trois petits. Je suis crapule. - Je connais
Des vieilles qui s'en vont pleurant sous leurs bonnets
Parce qu'on leur a pris leur garçon ou leur fille :
C'est la crapule. - Un homme était à la Bastille,
Un autre était forçat : et tous deux, citoyens
Honnêtes. Libérés, ils sont comme des chiens :
On les insulte ! Alors, ils ont là quelque chose
Qui leur l'ait mal, allez ! C'est terrible, et c'est cause
Que se sentant brisés, que, se sentant damnés,
Ils sont là, maintenant, hurlant sous votre nez !
Crapule. - Là-dedans sont des filles, infâmes ,
Parce que, - vous saviez que c'est faible, les femmes, -
Messeigneurs de la cour, - que ça veut toujours bien, -
Vous avez craché sur l'âme, comme rien !
Vos belles, aujourd'hui, sont là. C'est la crapule.

" Oh ! tous les Malheureux, tous ceux dont le dos brûle
Sous le soleil féroce, et qui vont, et qui vont,
Qui dans ce travail-là sentent crever leur front...
Chapeau bas, mes bourgeois ! Oh ! ceux-là, sont les Hommes !
Nous sommes Ouvriers, Sire ! Ouvriers ! Nous sommes
Pour les grands temps nouveaux où l'on voudra savoir,
Où l'Homme forgera du matin jusqu'au soir
Chasseur des grands effets, chasseur des grandes causes,
Où, lentement vainqueur il domptera les choses
Et montera sur Tout, comme sur un cheval !
Oh ! splendides lueurs des forges ! Plus de mal,
Plus ! - Ce qu'on ne sait pas, c'est peut-être terrible :
Nous saurons ! - Nos marteaux en main, passons au crible
Tout ce que nous savons : puis, Frères, en avant !
Nous faisons quelquefois ce grand rêve émouvant
De vivre simplement, ardemment, sans rien dire
De mauvais, travaillant sous l'auguste sourire
D'une femme qu'on aime avec un noble amour :
Et l'on travaillerait fièrement tout le jour
Écoutant le devoir comme un clairon qui sonne :
Et l'on se sentirait très heureux ; et personne,
Oh ! personne, surtout, ne vous ferait ployer !
On aurait un fusil au-dessus du foyer...

" Oh ! mais l'air est tout plein d'une odeur de bataille !
Que te disais-je donc ? Je suis de la canaille !
Il reste des mouchards et des accapareurs.
Nous sommes libres, nous ! Nous avons des terreurs
Où nous nous sentons grands, oh ! si grands ! Tout à l'heure
Je parlais de devoir calme, d'une demeure...
Regarde donc le ciel ! - C'est trop petit pour nous,
Nous crèverions de chaud, nous serions à genoux !
Regarde donc le ciel ! - Je rentre dans la foule,
Dans la grande canaille effroyable, qui roule,
Sire, tes vieux canons sur les sales pavés :
- Oh ! quand nous serons morts, nous les aurons lavés
- Et si, devant nos cris, devant notre vengeance,
Les pattes des vieux rois mordorés, sur la France
Poussent leurs régiments en habits de gala,
Eh bien, n'est-ce pas, vous tous ? - Merde à ces chiens-là ! "

- Il reprit son marteau sur l'épaule.
La foule
Près de cet homme-là se sentait l'âme soûle,
Et, dans la grande cour dans les appartements,
Où Paris haletait avec des hurlements,
Un frisson secoua l'immense populace.
Alors, de sa main large et superbe de crasse,
Bien que le roi ventru suât, le Forgeron,
Terrible, lui jeta le bonnet rouge au front !