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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s try a little of Sigurd

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
Inaction, no falsifying dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.

The convenience of the high trees!
The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray
Are of advantage to me;
And the earth's face upward for my inspection.

My feet are locked upon the rough bark.
It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot

Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly -
I **** where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads -

The allotment of death.
For the one path of my flight is direct
Through the bones of the living.
No arguments assert my right:

The sun is behind me.
Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.

it's all
up in my head
all  these disparate threads

all these under the bedclothes
secrets
all these don't mean to be
but am what i am moments

all stuffed away in stacked suitcases
braced by not sure what you ,mean faces
all those sacred and scared places
within this wearied, wary and weirdly  warped soul

all the tattered scraps, the you are here, maps
the body slaps, the landings without *****
the god i need a nap snaps
all stacked racked and filed under
memories:
vivid, hazy, pleasant,pissant, piquant,
crazy, tearful, fearful, beerfull
and happy, sad glad mad,
**** why did i follow that there fad
bad...badass
fragile as glass
pain in the proverbial...
ask no questions ....
tell no lies
time flies....

all there bats in the belfry
cats in there pj's
no where, mayhaps be free
listening to internal dj's

dancing til dizzy
drinking slightly fizzy
alcohol.... misty tizzies,
getting bizzies...

all there, in a mixed up soup
smiling faces, put through paces
thoughtful moments, all the components
to make a life....to make a life
it's all up in my head.........
                                                roosting

In a midwinter night’s dream
  i found myself lost again,   
  or was it even this year ?
  It may even go back farther
  than yesterdays out of reach,  
  older than an ancient pyramid stone
 
Before the rebirth of past life deposits,
  unborn orphaned motherless sediment,
  flotsam of the ages adrift,
  unknown for more than a thousand years

... waiting for so long to see beyond the bounds

High atop a slippery edge-cliff
  i clung  ―            
Searching for a deeper understanding
  of who i am;

Roosting like a starving bird of prey
  with a broken wing
  born alone ... holding on
  With a fear in his eyes
that only i could comprehend
  
  Staring way down deep in the pith,       
into an internal pitch black abyss,
  just begging to see beyond ―
  Mindful it's so hard looking
  into the eye of a storm

Intimately parsing the recurrent source
  of reigning pain
Where the perpetual fog of isolation dwells;
an inversion,     preventing dispersion
  of the nimbus  cold  and  dark

In the darkness, there bides a suffocating
  emptiness,  
  A swelling silence what loudly knells,
  leeching through a perennial ache

An abating voice within hollers unheard,
  invisible as a bitter cold wind howling
  relentlessly through the hollow pang;
  Echoing the subsiding say
(squeezed out) ... of an orphaned soul
  deep beneath the light

Awakening to realize  ―  once i was alive
  and
i could feel me holding on to you



//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Not an amulet, an off white vertebrae; bone.
Brass wire, a loop at one end.
It bends as to make sure this will fit.

A gauge that measures mesmerization,
And we both must get along, but
Not because we're not tough enough:
Most of us aren't soft right yet.

So many stiffs, folly after folly.
The whole carful of loose cadavers,
Dangling, their feet hang with wet snow
And carnage,

Not even musk deer pop up,
They've all gone. Roosting in a parabol,
With X's sprayed to their groins.
Burning pop couples

Doing it like laboratory mice. Capybaras
Hiss, my own burnt blood is also
Flocculating.

Turn the cup upside down and
See the fire's balmy lachrymal opaque
Moss while it does not drip.

This is the story of man you asked me about;
Devoid of a muzzle, fur onto his chest; coarse
Hair in a garland.

It is the God of a tool that buzzes into the night.
A plateau for this most sensible study.
We feel another coming.

And when you awoke, your larval tongue
My eye mush, a song of verse and melancholy.
This half list of greatness, a tally we both wish to see.

all day long, their banging disturbed me at my work
startling me from my reverie, lost deep in the world
of I Wish I Had A Heart Like Yours, Walt Whitman

the birds, returned early from wherever it is they hide
during the long winter, have come to fling themselves
against the over-sized picture window in my living room,

songbird pitch themselves into my poet's dull daytime
so that i am moved to rise from my desk, to look out,
to seek a bird flying away, or peer down to search for the

tiny body maybe roosting among the stalks of the overgrown
hydrangea, which captured  autumn’s maple leaves, worn
like a Chicago matron's mink to keep the winter chill at bay

and, as the spring surrenders to the warmer days, i mow the
brightly greened grass, innocently cutting row after row,
to turn finally to the narrow strip nearest the picture window,

a mixture of grass, dried leaves and tiny twigs, all mulched
by the power mower, where i discover these dessicated bodies  
exhumed from shallow graves at the base of the newly leafed

hydrangea, their stiff, dry feathers bristly, colored a washed
out grey, tiny feet tightly balled, with all the soft parts missing
and the beaks a startling white, as though bleached, bright against

the dullness of the little corpses which seem to have sunk into
the mosses of the yard, so that they lay preserved below the blade
for the first late-spring chore -- mowing the bird bone garden

i sleep with the bedroom window ajar despite the overnight chill
and dream of the memory of birds, their shapes, their white beaks
and, still, the bird songs wake me in the cool green spring morning

They sat like two birds roosting in a tall tree. Only the tall tree was a room where a fire had been made up, but was not yet alight. It was early autumn and a mild evening. She had not drawn the curtains because there was a still a little light left in the sky. She enjoyed watching the darkness gather before she would light the lamp to sew, to stitch. He had lit a candle on the small table by his chair in preparation for an evening’s reading. He was looking at her slight shape in the candlelight, looking at her small hands folded in her lap, then stroking the cat beside her, then touching her hair lightly; finally she opened her sewing basket.

He rose deliberately, shaking off the stiffness felt in his limbs from a day on their small-holding, and went to the bookshelf behind his chair. As the lamp was as yet unlit the rows of books slept in darkness. He felt their spines, many he knew, and many knew his touch, and as he moved his forefinger nail from book to book there was momentarily an irregularity, a surface he did not recognize. He pulled out the book and took it into the light: Inferno Dante Alighieri.

He thought he knew all his books, most he had read many times over. They were his dear friends, their dear friends because her books were there too. Their library made up a world of thought and imagination. He did not know Dante’s Inferno. He knew of it. He had read many an inscription from it. He had even learned a terzetto from the Paradiso, once, many years ago, in a different life than he led now:

Tu non se' in terra, sì come tu credi;
ma folgore, fuggendo il proprio sito,
non corse come tu ch'ad esso riedi".

You are not on the earth as you believe;
but lightning, flying from its own abode,
is less swift than you are, returning home."

Holding Inferno in his hands he realised the woman had now drained from her gaze the last dregs of the evening light, and seemed suddenly changed. She was wearing something other than he had thought she had worn previously. Her dress was silk, and long and cream and gold, and securing her hair, a thin golden band. Her shoes were slippers  . . . but she rose from her chair and their colour and texture were lost in the dark shadows that covered the floor. And he, he was changed too: a long green cloak, a toga-like cloak, some kind of cap on his head, his hair, his hair long and grey, and sandals on bare feet.

She lit the lamp and immediately they both saw the painting above the empty fireplace had changed, had been transformed, replaced by Henry Holiday’s masterpiece Dante and Beatrice. The painting shows the couple at the bridge of Santa Trinità in Florence. Beatrice deep in conversation with her friend Monna Vanna ignores Dante’s impassioned stare and stance.

The woman held the lamp to the painting. She knows this painting and remembers in an instant standing before it in the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. That day, that lunchtime, she was in love, and her lover stood next to her. She was so in love, and her lover, she knew, adored her. She recognized Dante’s stance and stare because she had seen her lover stand and stare so. Many times. It had been a lunchtime assignation and she had worn all black with almost-pink shoes. And here, and now, they stood again, still lovers, but also the dearest friends, and for the rest of their lives they had so sworn.

He still held the Inferno in his hands, and it was as if commanded by a voice that wasn’t any recognizable voice but a silent message from beyond and afar. ‘Whatever you read will come to pass.’

And so opening the book at random he read, ‘We drew now closer . . .’

He turned to her and said these words aloud. He placed the book on his small table and brought his body in its unusual costume to stand facing this finely dressed woman who wore her fine clothes with the scent of roses mixed with some eastern aloed fragrance. He brought his hand to her pale cheek and noticed the gold ring on his finger and the finely manicured nails, hands that had not laboured today in the 12-acre pasture.

She opened her lips to speak and, rather breathlessly said:

"Le cose tutte quante
hanno ordine tra loro, e questo è forma
che l'universo a Dio fa simigliante.

"All things, among themselves,
possess an order; and this order is
the form that makes the universe like God.

She knew no Italian, a little German from singing Schubert lieder to his tentative fumblings on the parlor piano, but certainly no Italian.

She picked up the Inferno from his small table, and just as he had, opened a page at random and read:

‘We drew aside and found a space . . .’

And so they did, draw aside, and she, with the Inferno in her hand, led him out of their sitting room along the stone-flagged passage to their front door, and lifting the latch opened the door . . . onto daylight, a Florentine street. They were close to the Ponte Santa Trinità, but also to the church that bares its name, with its celebrated Sassetti Chapel brim-full with sumptuous frescos telling stories from the life of St Francis and considered Domenico Ghirlandaio's masterwork.


*To be continued . . .

Evening gathering all singing of their day at sea
sharing stories of plenty or fast
the abundance of fish or lack thereof

Seagulls at their roosting resting place on the shore
no cliffs close by
the beach good enough

Faith written into the DNA
brothers and sisters simpler lives
Trees Flowers Birds Animals

Direct permanent access to God
their faith never waivers
The children of God

Thus reconfigured the party covered the first two days of the journey with speed and ease. As evening approached on the second day it was clear that a village resthouse was to be favoured as its owner had ridden out to greet his illustrious guests. He assured the party of complete secrecy, their valuable horses to be his special concern.
​   Away from the palace Zuo Fen set herself to enjoy the rural pleasures of an autumn evening. This time of freedom from the palace duties, from her Lord’s often-indiscriminate attention, she valued as a most generous gift. She composed swiftly a fu poem in gratitude to her Lord’s trust and favour.
 
How fortunate to dip this hand
In a flowing stream whose water
Is already touched by the first snows
Know that I shall bring its caress
to the mouthpiece of my Lord’s  jade flute
holding its body with spread fingers
to press to open to close to open
 
The stream bisected the village, a village of stone and wattle buildings, though the rest house was stone through and through. She had ventured on her arrival up onto its flat roof covered as it was with harvest produce laid out in abundance. The colours and textures of peppers, yams, marrows, eggplant, and such curious mushrooms as she had never before seen, all this she gathered with joy into her imagination’s memory.
​      With Mei Ling’s help she then transformed herself back into a woman, though with the simplest of robes over the Mongolian garments of wool she favoured to fend off the cold. Then, after alarming the resthouse keeper’s wife and servants by entering the kitchen, she planned a meal to her liking, sought the herb garden and enquired about the storing of vegetables for the long winter ahead.
      ​As the evening progressed she was surprised to discover Meng Ning had gone on ahead to Eryi-lou. It was a capricious decision born of his wariness of Zuo Fen. He felt intimidated by the persona she had assumed. Here was a woman of infinite grace yet simple charm who in the time it took to travel 6 li had become unrecognizable. Even her voice she dropped into a lower register and gained louder amplitude. When they reached the village he had moved purposefully to provide assistance as she prepared to dismount, only to see her grip the high pommel and swing her leg confidently across her pony and her body slide down the pony’s flanks to a standing position. So as the late afternoon light failed he had driven his horse up and up the mountain path, forcing himself to think only of the route and task ahead. He had acquired the company of a local guide who, on foot, out-paced his horse, but would see him safe down the path in the coming darkness. There would be a moon, but it had yet to rise.
        ​To his surprise the caretaker of Eryi-lou was a young woman, a daughter perhaps of its official guardian Gao Cheng, a daughter Meng Ning considered banished to this remote spot: she carried a small child on her back. He would enquire later. For now, he sought in her company to reconnoiter the decaying web of wooden pavilions, some already invaded by nature. It was then he realized his mistake. He thought himself into Zuo Fen’s mind. Surely she would wish to come upon this place untouched and unprepared by his offices. He motioned to the young woman to come outside, and standing on one of the many terraces explained his error, asked her not to speak of his inappropriate visit, but made to suggest that there was a room ‘always kept for an official’s visit’, that it be swept and suitably provisioned. Her voice responded in a dialect he could hardly decipher. It had the edge of a lone bird’s roosting call. He knew she was trying to explain something of importance to him, but he quickly lost the thread. He could see the faint gleam of the lake reflected in her eyes, hear the snuffle of her baby carried against on her back, and in the near distance he was aware of the village guide admonishing his horse. He bowed and left.
 
‘You are a most considerate companion, Meng Ning,’ Zou Fen said, as summoned to her presence, the chamberlain prostrated himself before the woman he was charged to serve and protect.
‘My lady, you already know I am a fool.’
‘Yes, but an honest fool with a kind heart. You sought my well-being at Eryi-lou, but I think you rightly imagined I might wish to experience this dream habitation in an inviolate state. Let us say you made a dream journey there. No harm done.’
     ​He explained about the caretaker and that a suite of rooms was always kept ready for an official. That was all he would say. He was about to retreat from the guest room now vivid with firelight and rich with the scent of cinnamon, when she lifted her hand to stay his going.
 
‘You are a brave young man to accept charge of my company. I am sure you know how my Lord is likely to remove you from his circle on our return. I feel unworthy of such sacrifice. I did not expect my Lord’s favour in this enterprise, but my words, my application, were clearly persuasive. I feel we are bound together you and I, and we must see our enterprise be the making of a fine poetic rhapsody for the autumn season – something you might share one day with your children and their children. You must understand that I am already moving towards a meeting of reality and the world of dreams and visions. Do not be afraid should I seek your intimate council. I know already you dream a little of my person. You may even imagine our conjunction as lovers. Women know these things, and, as you may have heard, I have tutored your Emperor in the ways of the Pale Girl.’
 
‘My lady . . .
 
Zou Fen reaches out for paper and brush Mei Lim had placed to her right hand. Kneeling on the roughly swept floor, her long limbs hidden under her cloak, she deftly paints seven lines of characters:
 
The autumn air is clear,
The autumn moon is bright.
Fallen leaves gather and scatter,
The jackdaw perches and starts anew.
We think of each other- when will we meet?
This hour, this night, my feelings are . . .
 
‘I wonder how we are to cast the final character?’
‘Not yet, and not here my Lady’. And with that Meng Ning takes his leave.
 
(to be continued)

The wild green tree speaks
to her lovers, all through the day,
flirting innocence she was
to the gentle breeze,
those lovely foliage
swaying side to side.

With the indecent demands
of the rowdy wind,
she was rumbustious
not to be left behind even a bit.
Then, the long persistent buzz,
of honey bees, theirs was
an intense affair,
with the inviting white flowers.

The tree was still, as if in goosebumps,
though impetuous, isn't it a diversion lovable?
I was the lover, hope personified,
the tree, in my dreams I wished,
was waiting with all these
momentary engagements,
for that one great love that thrills her,
from tips to the roots, deep down, unique,
in its intensity, when it happens.

The green leaves, white flowers,
the cacophony of roosting birds,
under the shade was a world,
moving on its own pace,
all the while waiting for the magic love brings.

The tree was a song of love, wind's whisper,
sweet exchanges inspiring to many lovers around,
all through the day and night.
At dark lonely nights, an oily moon appears,
very late, as if it is reluctant,
the tree stands silent,
looking wistfully at a winking star,
as if her true love was finally found,
though light years away.



**I stand lost in thought,
in my garden, where flowers wilt,
looking at the flickering light,
at your window, getting engulfed by mist

I sit eyes closed at the top of the wood
Desiring action, but in a dream,
Hooked head and feet immobile:
Near sleep of age, incapable to eat.

Necessity finds the highest trees....
Branches shake in sun-beaten ire;
No advantage find I in the moving air
While earth's face beckons me to fall.

Clenching now, claws deep in bark,
Creation's masterpieces find decay
Of foot and feather, come from dust,
This Creature must return to clay.

Vision strong still seeks resolve
As Earth below me still revolves,
Inward focus, resolute, admits
Tearing heads is now a chore.

Death's wind, inevitable, a chilling fact:
Who kills to live through victims' lives,
Though early arguments remain intact,
At twilight's call, they still must die.

From the West the same Sun sees me;
Only I have changed, and have grown thin,
And though my heart's set upon its path,
I've lost the strength to fly again.

the night i found a woodland pigeons roosting
on my guttering, tried to catch it given
the maxim: better a robin in your hand,
than a dove on your roof, but failed, and
to my surprise, felt no feeling of failure,
nothing competitive, and the world needs this
at this moment, the shattering of the clocks,
for a moment, to hold your breath and take
snapshots of the world as if drowning -
with a held breath, and ninja gymnastics
slowly edging toward the pigeon perched
in the guttering... do people understand that
poetry isn't about competing in the Olympics?
you can't laurel crown a poet of ability
among others, just like you can't discourage others
from the freedom to write it, however ridden with
orthodox methodology, or however concerned
with the purity of a narrative...  nor can you
have poetic prodigies - poetry takes time,
it takes fermentation, it's not one of those first
come first served allocations of ability...
it takes years, experience, i'm not talking about
a viola player in an orchestra, reduced to
muscle work, sure, you can be the muscular equivalent
of a viola player in an orchestra in poetry,
that's the easy part, tweak a few things in your
imitation and we're set to go... you'll be known
as pseudo-Plato or some other grand name...
you can't become a prodigious poet, i.e. if your
mother or father was a poet... this is the only
place where Sartre's existence precedes essence
takes form, elsewhere it doesn't,
the most evident i.e. is time flies when you're
having fun - the presupposed essence of time
defines the supposition of having fun and
the non-existence of time - the two together are
what's required of a proposition taking form -
fiddling with the prefix doesn't concern anyone that
much, i.e. a preposition is lodged between
the presupposition (preposition) and supposition -
as i said before, systematisation is a method of
economising vocabulary - a boa constriction, a restraint,
imagine yourself being a pauper while writing out
lavish decking, chairs, marble toilets and gold-gilded
toilet seats, tacky stuff according to the failing
of the concept of money, once gained: to lavish out
on things, to keep the merchant class constantly busy
and adaptable - what with the Koranic procedures
we can be assured that there will be a constant
confidence in producing, selling, exchanging,
or the tonne of food thrown out because it didn't sell.
like growing vegetables, you probably ingest
5 nutritious poems a day, the rest you throw out...
you take a fat poem, a protein poem, whatever,
there's always a variation on what poem fills
the carbohydrate allowance, but the rest is thrown out...
a thinking man's poem is fibrous, that means:
slow on digestion, reminding, an agitating gnat
or mosquito; but it truly is a case of having to be
an entertaining narrator, without character study -
or character concern - in that i lend myself
to the poetic practice of ensō - one smooth stroke
and the narrative is finished - also a culminating point
of worth consideration, name revelation 13 -
and the suggestion: what the contemporary affairs
would also suggest -
it's kinda funny when you think about it...
isn't the beast from the sea Moses and the beast
from the earth Jesus?
early Christianity probably wasn't prone to iconoclasm,
only when it reached popularity this
iconoclasm play a key role...
but what does John actually write?
in our modern tongue? Moses (the dragon) and
Jesus (the beast), as stated in the tale:
the transfiguration, or the shifting of power -
who is able to make war against the beast?
the Antichrist (some words have been kept in
straitjackets, use them, they either think you're
mad, or religiously psychotic, under-use them
and they fall into the wrong hands... bit of a juggle,
but coming from a religious school education,
i'd keep such words categorised in controversy
as euthanasia and abortion); so unto the beast...
a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies
(sermon on the mount), and the deadly wound was
healed (the crown of myrrh, and the resurrection),
and they worshipped the dragon and they
worshipped the beast - many do still preserve
"tact" of kneeling before an icon, esp. in orthodox
tradition... and the blasphemies,
well, i'm not sure Jesus was crucified for nothing...
see how people can make you look silly when you
use parts of their vocabulary? you write Jesus
and immediately you can't think of an Eddie Izzard
sketch... you're trapped with how other people
over-use certain words, keep them "sacred" in order
that they might be treated as sustenance...
some people write the word tomato or potato and
get a meal out of it, others write Jesus and they
win the ******* lottery with their flock of goody-two-shoes
fanning their ***** in packed churches in the Bible Belt.
then there's John doing a bit of Spartacus -
if any man have an ear, let him hear -
by the way hunter s. thompson was keen to study this
book too... he that leads into captivity...
and when did i not felt being captive under Christianity?
they catch you early on, get you educated in *******
and then release you into the world as mince meat;
it's all a fatal exercise in / of metaphor -
i'm not surprised rushed toward the book of Genesis
for a stability of thought, trying to
write an equivalent of Paradise Lost, i.e. Paradise
Regained basing it solely on the book of Revelation
with is complex use of metaphors would drive
anyone mad... so far i'm stumbling, we have
the dragon giving power to the beast of the sea
(Jesus' harem of nuns, water, juiced up *****)
and then we have the beast of the earth -
then there's the many deceptions or "miracles"
that Jesus did - any magician will gladly succumb,
altogether the purposes of any image,
not a statue, but an image, basically a sphinx on paper,
how ancient worship of statues and building them
turned into a worship of oil-on-canvas...
from 3D into 2D... by the time we reach 1D we are
talking the big bang... oh, right... we're talking
about the origins of the universe already...
i'll test you: compose me a Milton-like poem working
from the book of revelation and never touching on
the book of Genesis - let's face it, the only poetically
riddled book of the New Testament is the book
of Revelation... and it truly is a ****-up for any poet
to consider... easier to be a novelist and joke
at the bible being accessible in every motel room
across America... such books are agitators,
they're implants, something you get rid off in your
spare time, bite out the access of such books to your mind
like a dog with rabies... praying:
just so i don't have to wear the Golgotha geometry,
just so i don't have to wear the Golgotha geometry...
in summary? to me the dragon is Moses
(every Greek would side with the Egyptians given
Alexandria and whatnot), armed with all the physics
bending plagues (yes, i think they're true,
Darwinism is no better at their myth of Tarzan,
given we're watching sprinting 100 metres in under
10 seconds, everything starts to look ridiculous given that),
yes, both assumptions are quiet honestly absurd,
it just depends where you want to begin with:
the clash of fur versus tanned buttocks,
or the clash between female genital mutilation
versus male genital mutilation...
i told you, i am circumcised during ***, i roll the *******
back, and hey pesto! a helmet!
i think i better change the concept of enso into
a concept of the waterfall, just for the exotica (but there's
no exotica in globalisation, it's hard keeping
history and learning to get together without
some part of us rebelling to rekindle ancient wrestling),
aha! taki! can you imagine what would have been
if the Egyptians were able to keep their ideograms?
they wouldn't ever have kept them to see them off
on the evolutionary sprint to success, they weren't
using matchsticks like the Chinese were using
and kept on using, waiting for numbers to prop up
and tell you Hong Kong was 1 million light years away
from Beijing... because it was all d'uh to them
and the Mongolian harmonica imitation of the steppe
idiot laughing at a horse taking a **** like
a male dog taking a ****, giddy up on the leg over.
i'm well surprised the Chinese ideogram is alive...
it's a source for many ideas, without me even wanting to
travel there... they built the great wall of China with their
ideograms, the wall itself was unnecessary to protect
the people from Mongolian optometrists...
that's the key in Chinese, using matchsticks the sounds
are pretty much basic: Xi Lung Chi - or Chang Chewy Lo,
pretty crap, isn't it? i agree, their strength comes
best expressed by their proficiency in less matchsticks
included in the Jenga of 1, 2, 3, i mean the bendy bits,
we Europeans have to first remember the aesthetic,
then the dyslexia antidote to get our ideas out and into
the open, for the Chinese every ideogram is
not a letter but another bright new idea... eo or ea-,
whatever... 1 billion of them content with the scraps
of individuation waiting for them... with us it's
about conquering the world, but our **** doesn't sell
in Mongolia... when was the last time
you picked up a newspaper and read news from
Mongolia? the 13th century and Genghis Khan?
probably. god, feels great to unwind without
paying too much attention on the book of revelation,
every time i muster the strength to consider
religious topics i immediately feel i'm claustrophobic
and want to get out...
that book is still but a fatal exercise in metaphor -
it's overly-poetic, the book of Genesis is full of
princely imagery, but the book of Revelation
is not compatible with imagery, a garden and three
characters makes imagining it far more easily
than the three characters in the book of Revelation
on a beach... when i think of a garden i think
of vineyards and pear orchards, i.e. wine and cider -
when i think of the beach i only think of
hot dog selfies of a girl's tanned legs... and that
ain't helping... and why people vacate on beach
resorts but are scared of swimming in the sea,
and only want the sea as a canvas when swimming
in the hotel swimming pool.

Cabana, cheese and mustard sauce
Do grace the tablecloth,
White puffy clouds and warm south breeze
And joy in chilled beer's froth.
Hot sun doth bake these stony walls
Sweet mandolins do play,
And the pigeons peck at breadcrumbs caste.
And all fares well today.

Young darting men on Vespa's
Ply their arrogant good looks,
And those stunning senoritas
Strut their stuff while momma cooks.
Monsignors in scarlet robes
Do scurry through the town
Dispensing Catholic action
To any soul who is around.

Madonna's guard the roadside shrines
Where hot seal winds aloft
Toward the craggy mountain pass
And pastured alpine croft.
The peasant woman bends her spine
Trudging forth with strain,
Wood ******* piled upon her back,
Up hillward bound with pain.

Old men sit and ruminate
And watch the young girls pass,
Whilst nursing dark retsina
In an opaque thimble glass.
The olive trees look stately
In their crooked ancient way,
And cast a darkened shadow
Where the roosting chicken's lay.

And out across the mounded hills
The patchwork quilt of farm
And out beyond that deep azure
Of Italian coastal charm.
Seaward to horizon
The aqua blue intense
Extends as far as eye can see
Mediterranean immense.


Marshalg
@theBach
Mangere Bridge
23 January 2010

Her wild tangled hair,
wearing a halo of  evening sunlight
like a majestic crown,
goes haywire,
when a sudden guest of wind,
in the manner of a ***** lover
play with it,
in every which way
one can imagine.
Waves of scent,
of freshly cut lemongrass,
emanating from her auburn tresses,
light wild fire
in his thoughts,
as they go down the hill,
through the narrow path
lined with trees full of roosting birds,
to the clearing in the forest
where stands
the lone hunters' lodge
where they'd spend the night.

From within a blackened heart
spawns madnesses twisted Invictus,
a severed head sat atop a plinth, filled
with decaying thoughts of cyanide and citrus,

completely crazy, inverted, perverted,
infected with an insanity that dances from the eyes -
pouting lips tempestuous and alluring
from the tip of a tongue he sews insidious lies,

roosting upon the bleeding emotions of others
a vile disassociation sanity can't pertain,
charred lips from suckling the ******* of Hell
the back-broke miracle nature refuses to explain,

exhaling noxious fumes, a pyro-manic incense,
one soul re-arranged, deranged and blisteringly intense;

so much so, it disgusts me beyond words -

so kick the rotten apple,

watch the maggots writhe within thou sour curds.

I want to live like Starfish
simply giving my right arm
and noticing after I make the sand-angel
yet still resembling a furious nuclear planet 93,000,000 miles away
to forget a piece of myself and live as if it was always lost

to stick up my nose at lost extremities
'cause that's gotta hurt worse than heartbreak
bleeding nothing but the air I breath
like the currents and jetsam and shores
I am but a system of the sea

I wish to chase the tide
to make my worries be of the moment
letting seawater be my blood
ebbing and reviving as the brine tickles my insides
every roll of wave my heartbeat

yet blustery winds blow; rattling the depths with tempestuous intent
finding hidden fury concealed underneath my cracking skeleton
maybe these things are stored in a lost limb
and can satisfy some gull roosting in the cliffside above
eating my feelings for me

I wish my potential
were undiscovered depths
where seaweed grows like ivy across shipwrecks
turning former "value" into a house for the stars
maybe a couple with only four legs

Tangley Wangling

Fruit Jews in Tutus at youth group, maybe just a few with their screws loose. One self-rolling righteous group, their brothers grinning
Within the depths of their white-heads at the brim of a wet blanket suckling the needles catering new drug use. Two by two, elefants and woozels, hippopotamü's confusals, spongey-butts outfitting the rye n' wines refusals.

The luxury of a coccyx felt from the fingers turn to sunrise, where the water's weigh the bricks of suicides, concrete block tourniquets from the migraines of English turnabouts. So there's some surplus of surprise in them, in an integers shock-appraisal face-lift on Catholicism's lobotomy to cuckhold housewives seeking collagen, or the thick dark-skinned forearm-******* insider's swinging in the houses of the denizens, or repurposing their malign from their unused vaginas, to **** the dust off such scab-covered stitches, which is like vacuuming between the loose inner-leg space of a succubus.

Bring out the gimp! Any fetishized leather-wearing hungry miner for the oral tongue-slapping mouth-dance might do, as long as the dom can subdue that sub tied to the stocks voted on for the public to use, there might be screaming, squirming, and scoffs, but there's nothing left for him that Marina Abramowicz hasn't already proven she's willing to lose. Plus, in this small town not far enough from Laramie, there's still too much fat to chew through, too much flab to tuck the **** into, where even the F.U.P.A. so deep that a *******-day or deity might need the leverage of a boot to get even Ron Jeremy's **** unglued.

Lucky loos by the brothel befit these new arrivals, though some tyrannosaurs despise 'em, smoke as much as you can if you've got 'em.

But don't let your antiques get you down, an ornithologist lends herself to your bookends, and even that nighthawk roosting makes your car alarm sound second rate, it's seconds late as the aves rave to the ravens, and they pontificate. Owls hoo-hoo and hooting, branch off with the others and start colluding. They just wanna get you home, to get back those prosthetics you've loaned.

Canoodling barbarians on their way back from the aquarium, demand  their fires come from oblivion, which sends sparks of arguments from the sharks and the bathylkopian oblivions, where we found that this water's warm these citizens, demand recompense for such grandiose living expense, three pence to use the phone, twelve rupees towards the sofa, and even a deutsch mark for every sit or every look at sit, it's just a chair, a doubly set of wooden legs, idling under a table plank. Pirated by the buttocks, such bullocks it is, and that's just it!

An archaeologist on assignment discovered that the future of the rhinoceros exists upon the olfactory exaggerated proboscis, the result of flushing unused anti-biotics, and is currently working for dimes out of college to deluge this quite deprived yet interesting biopic.  

The films of the *****, grab at the ***** thrown about by The Monkees, and the musicians wearing those stickers on their *******, are victim to XXS cotton denim vests, unzipped and barely covering themselves, added to by the accessories and rings, jewelry if anything, a pearl necklace and nubile sacrifis.

And the trollops frolic, diurnally dispose of logic, doing the hoopty-hoop, the alley-oops, with mom's high school flute in nothing but cowboy boots!

These are, the new discoveries of our species, carved into the marble and wet frescos, in the street reliefs, spray-painted and air-brushed motif, this creates such gatherings for throngs of people who've unachieved their needs, who've displaced their parents and display their racist grieving beliefs to trash indigenous language pleas for francophonian linguistic greed that have splayed their hellacious treaty in what's considered to be modern circumscribed and ill-painted cuneiform visually conceived, vocal graffiti.

So that the neu-faux derogatory delegates stress to sudatorium, it has regressed to moratoriums, we've now cancelled this sport consortium of awful and flagrant art performances.

I.

Unraveling through everything
a road, a journal, a pathway
cutting through the thorn-
bush of clouded pasts,

intersecting my heart -

This is where everything began:
crowding cacophonous like
a hundred songs of birds
nestling home at dusk

roosting come memories:

II.

Had I not run barefooted here
those many years ago; had I
not cultivated that sodden
impetuousity here:

riding motorcycles in rain;

Haunting the blood throbbing
in my veins; what if I had done
something about those
flushed glances

set to missed heartbeats?

III.

Deer lurk in the shadows of grey
leaves: shadowy creatures stalk
on the high branches where
peace reigns among mists;

Ending in a clearance,

that rugged patch in the wood,
where an eternal storyteller
signs off: a form ripples
reflected on the secret lake

I see grace reflected.

Tangley Wangling

Fruit Jews in Tutus at youth group, maybe just a few with their screws loose. One self-rolling righteous group, their brothers grinning
Within the depths of their white-heads at the brim of a wet blanket suckling the needles catering new drug use. Two by two, elefants and woozels, hippopotamü's confusals, spongey-butts outfitting the rye n' wines refusals.

The luxury of a coccyx felt from the fingers turn to sunrise, where the water's weight some surprise them, in an integers shock-appraisal. Lucky loos by the brothel befit these new arrivals, though some tyrannosaurs despise 'em, smoke as much as you can if you've got 'em.

But don't let your antiques get you down, an ornithologist lends herself to your bookends, and even that nighthawk roosting makes your car alarm sound second rate, it's seconds late as the aves rave to the ravens, and they pontificate. Owls hoo-hoo and hooting, branch off with the others and start colluding. They just wanna get you home, to get back those prosthetics you've loaned.

Canoodling barbarians on their way back from the aquarium, demand  their fires come from oblivion, which sends sparks of arguments from the sharks and the bathylkopian oblivions, where we found that this water's warm these citizens, demand recompense for such grandiose living expense, three pence to use the phone, twelve rupees towards the sofa, and even a deutsch mark for every sit or every look at sit, it's just a chair, a doubly set of wooden legs, idling under a table plank. Pirated by the buttocks, such bullocks it is, and that's just it!

An archaeologist on assignment discovered that the future of the rhinoceros exists upon the olfactory exaggerated proboscis, the result of flushing unused anti-biotics, and is currently working for dimes out of college to deluge this quite deprived yet interesting biopic.  

The films of the *****, grab at the ***** thrown about by The Monkees, and the musicians wearing those stickers on their *******, are victim to XXS cotton denim vests, unzipped and barely covering themselves, added to by the accessories and rings, jewelry if anything, a pearl necklace and nubile sacrifis.

And the trollops frolic, diurnally dispose of logic, doing the hoopty-hoop, the alley-oops, with mom's high school flute in nothing but cowboy boots!

These are, the new discoveries of our species, carved into the marble and wet frescos, in the street reliefs, spray-painted and air-brushed motif, this creates such gatherings for throngs of people who've unachieved their needs, who've displaced their parents and display their racist grieving beliefs to trash indigenous language pleas for francophonian linguistic greed that have splayed their hellacious treaty in what's considered to be modern circumscribed and ill-painted cuneiform visually conceived, vocal graffiti.

So that the neu-faux derogatory delegates stress to sudatorium, it has regressed to moratoriums, we've now cancelled this sport consortium of awful and flagrant art performances.

You,
Add as an ornament me,
I often be ashamed that.

Because,
Yours levities are
About me only
Bear a burden you
Don’t know my deep affection.


At your shadow war
Use as weapon me,
And my nearness
Make as precaution you.
In the flow of season
Me and you
Twist in two way.
You as in
And I also out.
Thus we are
Become goddess and slave.

Now,
I am deduct my life
Wear out olden memories
In this stepping stone.
And you; brooding
In golden veil of dreams
No blossom at anytime
On your dreams
Don’t get my thoughts
And journey words.

At the village ways
In soften silence
Small ants getting
For worship
They are coming
With a row
And roosting
My wet chest
I like it
Because,
They wish
Friendship with me

Am I become whose saviour?
Answer of this question is
Now my research topic
In this evening
Remove you my friendship.
When you re wear it?
Until then,
In freezes dew
Like cursed stone
Me alone
Trembled
Stiffed......
========== C N Kumar.

How are writers borne?
Are they picked off the shelf in a pack,
sown into dry bedrock,
watered by torrents,
of famine, illness, death.
Their genius nurtured,
by the 4 horsemen,
and their apocalypse.

Are they the fruit of wild tress?
Spread by bird wings,
and gusts of wind,
to taste the world,
as the sweet spring.
Before dropping down,
to make their own fruit,
their own tale.

Do they thrive in the city?
Like ivy creeping around a building,
clinging to the stonework,
peering in the windows,
rooted deep as subways.
As invasive,
and as honest,
as the rock doves roosting above.

Are they born of flesh and blood?
Fed on ignorance,
sprinkled with just enough insight,
that they want,
they yearn,
they learn to spit back the bitter filth,
and savour each sprig of truth,
until they sprout,
and spread their long low roots,
grasping at each pocket of air

to reach,
to grow,
to grow.

The static havoc
In my attic
Is automatic
And so emphatic
Excruciating pain
Roosting in rain
Boosting the grain
But flooding my lane

While playing cosmic roulette
I'm charged a clockwise debt
Paid by traveling to my death
Like anthrax on Amtrak
The FBI can't track
So the decay stacks
Turning everything black

Something's amiss
In this blinding abyss
That grabs my wrist
And drains my bliss
So I seek shelter
But get peltered
Helter skelter
By the belters

Tired of lies
Afraid I'll die
I see your eyes
As a sweet surprise
Then watch paint dry
Unlike the tears I cry
From the fear inside
You'll hurt my pride

Honestly
You harvest me
Until you're part of me
Making it hard to see
Where I'll be
If you flee
From my plea
And just leave

So I continue wheeling
To my glass ceiling
In need of timely healing
I forget my frightened feeling
And turn to hope
Until you say nope
A slippery *****
With which I can't cope

I thought I was saved
Instead I feel shame
From this disgraceful game
Called you don't feel the same
Which has gotten me lost
Frozen in frost
The coldest cost
As garbage tossed

You kindly offer your friendship
Unable to kiss my friend's lips
Unable to grab my friend's hips
Unable to let myself slip
I find something profound
Traveling on ground
With you around
Safe and sound

You offer insight
Increasing my might
By seeing the light
When you are right
You help me fight
My perilous plight
By making pain slight
Removing my fright

My perception of you is traveling
On this road that is gravelly
I once desired you madly
Now others have had me
But that doesn't change when I'm lonely
I wish you would hold me
Unable to forsake the old me
I just continue traveling coldly

have you ever felt like you're trapped
in a prison you self-erected & cast
yourself into? like life's something you're terrible at
existentially wack so dreadfully that
there's a reasonable question to ask
where are your testicles, chap?
'cause, like a man that commits a va[ɛ]nishing act
once he detects that his lass is expecting a brat
the way you live is cowardly; a hell of a lack
["way you leave"]
of ***** akin to sO̲mebody bereft of his nads
comfort zone ain't
much different from a coffin you are a hostage to
A̲lthough no way a freaking throat spray
will treat you okay
["coughing"]
if you want to live akin to those a[eɪ]—
—zure-hued pills treating fever or pain
["want Aleve"; "want to leave [the coffin]"]
you've gotta Beatrix Kiddo your way
outta it; in fact, I'm 'bout to evince one more way
[the "outta the grave" scene from "**** Bill: Vol. 2"]
by which you portray the thing aforenamed
that ***** reminds of a tempting she-devil; you have
["attempting"]
if you wanna feel good
to ream it, like a guy, keeping it broad, stretched like a ****
or else it's gonna be you
the one winding up f#cked, much like a chief authoritarian das—/a##—
—****/—hole when his dishono[—]rable rule
winds up effing collapsed; like a pestilent brat
you get it, but your co[ɑ]nstant pla[ɛ]n of attack
is digital escapism helping to kick aside depression, a tad
though; 'cause no matter how much you la[ɛ]m, you get back
into the real—nE̲ss that you have
which is quite a mess like a lass'
coif when she's outside, & the weather is trash
raining, just like Hussein in his presiding days (trash, reigning)
I might lO̲O̲k to be an evil-minded skate
now, but, seizing the opportunity
like some viced ***** gained
a role O̲f a rU̲ler with
an unchecked political might & aimed
at establishing a tight-grip reign inside the state
[opportunism]
I hhhooock... thooo... spit on tyrants' graves
and graves of their compliant aides (ha-ha)
without the slightest shame, I, like a crane for construction, raze
["raise"]
their heads—tones by a mace from the knightly age
bet taphophiles ain't gonna like the way
in which I behave; ones who're enviro-cray
better get fire squa[ɑ]ds awake like a rite that takes
place after someone's life has waned (a wake)
'cause I get mY̲ hands laid
on a pulverizer with spirits of wine & spray
it on those scheissers' grave—yards, then make
[German "scheißer"]
them go, like the face of someone laughing so wildly they
are about to split their sides, ablaze
the rhyme-insane, yet quite cheap, brain
is, like the most upright stiffs reign—ing for a long time, depraved
thanks to the West-produced mass
culture (tha[ɛ]nk you a stack) & has a relish/penchant for gals
with looks of models composing the "dekok plus" class
["dekok" (Esperanto) - "eighteen"]
the problem's most of those lean to[—]ward sE̲lf-confy lads
and are mostly/mainly 'bout lettuce, in fact
which makes me remember the Jack
the Ripper case (letters)
[more than 200 letters signed as "Jack the Ripper" were written]
so, as for a GF̲ for a chap
like that, having one seems like an excellent pad
[house]
for a beggar to have; impossible like a saint autocrat
(like a saint autocrat; absolute absurdity)
forget it, let's yap
I mean, let me get to something else I would yap
about; not an oriental-grown chap
but into rhyming 'cause I'm a perfectionist that
["ramen"]
takes this thing as something he's no[ɑ]t ineffectual at
if not for the aesthetical cast
["cast" in the sense of "outward form", etc.]
which is rhymes, I'd not even bother tryna express all this crap
[especially, the personal one]
'cause what's the point when nigh-on none on the web who reacts
to whatev' you say or demonstrate?
remember I had the more pleasura[—]ble past
virtual realities, not having to go to a jO̲[ɑ]b that stinks
nO̲ stupid po[ɑ]litics (these were the times)
which is ****̲te you can't take null notice of 'cA̲U̲[ɑ]se you twig
it's the post-enlightenment time gO̲ing on, A̲[ɑ]lthough it's
a giant & atrocious auto[ɑ]cracy
you abide in, as if you were related to the dude presiding
as the head of the big state kept, like a group of do[ɑ]gs in—
—volved in a mush, united; in terms of music, I̲ went
["you are Biden"]
from somewhat generic electro[ɑ]nic
sh#t, both, ba[ɛ]ngers & melo[ɑ]dic
ones to heavier & dA̲rk sh#t; however, I, regardless
still dig some graves like a fellow with boneY̲A̲rd shifts
[Christian Mochizuki, better known as "graves"]
though wouldn't tE̲ll that I am go[ɑ]thic
given that, it's okay I̲f I
["if I" is supposed to be read/pronounced as "ifa"]
would get benamed with the
word "grave-digger"'; might as well take mE̲ a
****** ***** 'kI̲n/sI̲m. ta
a playing card; though I, as I've said, am no[ɑ]t
[a card with "spades" suit]
gothic, outdoor appa[ɛ]rel's all black (all black)
like a visitor on a cemetery plat
in the course of a burial act
void inside, an atramental-hued gap (mental)
which makes me something like
a walking black hole, as well as the fact
that I'm surrounded by
space like it; kind of Arthur Fleck that's yet to turn mad
which sounds a mite
hair-curling like waving, so, before you find
yourself a bit horrified, let me get that clarified
to be more precise, a marbles-wise
lighter case, 'kin to a lighter casing
with the web to distract myself from the lack—
—luster realness, yet, with all thA̲t
flammable crap, ptui, I mean negative crap
I'm like a walking ba[ɛ]rrel with gas
it's better not to set a lit match
my way, it's appa[ɛ]rent, like a stem a pear has, a psychotherapy cab's
["a pear end"'; "cabin"/"cabinet" in the sense of "private room"]
where I should be spending the time of mine
instead of sitting in the bedroom inditing rhymes
as if you hit upon rhymes so tight
that their existence is considered a kind of crime (indicting rhymes)
but I'm the type with a b#tch of a mind: if I
have not a really distressing existence, then I am fine
like that dog sitting inside, despite
the room inside which it sits
is, like someone after an imbibing spree, lit (this is fine)
in other words, as it's been divulged not long ago
I stay pU̲t in comfort zone
like an autocratic **** roosting on the throne (scuuurred)
["****" in the sense of "****", "*****", etc.; "skirt"]
————————————————————————————————
implausible as it may sound, a bullish thought's approached
[implausible" is supposed to be read/pronounced as "implausibowl"]
my mind: I may be someone looking lost, although
I, unlike someone unable to move or gone, still go (that's the spirit!)
dull right to (like an average new-school rapper) **** nowhere
["dull writer"]

I

after a bath
and the window open
I was touched
by an air of autumn
against my body
not quite towelled
hardly dry but ready
nonetheless to feel
something of the season’s
change against my fragile self

(an autumn air)


II

so very green
and multitudinous shades
holding the late afternoon
in greenness
only the towpath
measured out in sunlight
and the seat of a bench distant
providing a goal
a sensible place to aim for

we set out with her guiding hand
clasping my weakness
when a dragonfly
intricate in full sunlight
moves against a backdrop
of dark-shadowed trees
poising at eye-level
to look us over
and is off away

on our return
(from that distant bench
our goal our aim)
there a kingfisher
flashes past
and into a canal-side bush
we wait and wait hoping
to catch again the trajectory
of its miraculous flight

(canal side)

III

to whom it may concern

presumptuous I think to wish for anything
beyond one has and holds - anything
in regard to property or possessions
I have no wish to consider further
Who has what of me I disdain
and whatever it might be can only be
in my gift and surely that must be freely given
Should there be the slightest hint of dispute
I hope some Almighty Hand will
remove all and everything
to the very darkest depths

in friendship


(a letter of wishes)




IV

begun as joyous celebrations
of musical art bright and lively
on the page welcome
to the ear as to the eye

so often full of dance gentle
reflections sonorously sounding
out in playfulness
and reasoned movement


(Beethoven’s Op.18 string quartets)




V

with only the bare essentials
the most limited of means
this music grips and stirs
springing out of unisons
octaves bare chords of the fifth
and a play of rhythms
straight and straight-forward
four-square angular tight
against the beat within the bar
a simple subtlety and space
between two instruments:
the legato violin tempering
the insistent piano - always
movement no repose a constant
unwinding thread
of perilous invention
hardly a breath taken
a pause made

(on hearing Shostakovich’s Sonata for Violin and Piano)



VI

he types:

the post-box is too far way
as I must (e)mail this note today

so with no maker’s mark
this message will forego
the papered page
ink’s curved line and flow
the fold the sticky edge
the stamp well placed
the stroll with the dog
to the box along the lanes
in evening’s light
sounds of roosting birds
and flittering squeaks of bats

(an email from a former student)



VII

aware of my fragility
his gracious manner
moves me to tears
In speaking
he places every word
with infinite care
in practiced deliberation
. . . and I am crying
at his understanding
that he knows my loneliness
in dying and how I wish
to rise above
this momentary upset
to assure him I can
and will cope
that I am in his hands
He just has to say . . .


(visit to the doctor



VIII


Daily I curate the contents
of this window sill
a changing exhibition
backdrop to a sedentary life

Today: Japanese wallpaper c.1925.
Mead Cloth by Matthew Harris,
Hokusai – Mount Fuji and six cranes ( two flying)
Post card from the Pyréneées
An earthenware blackbird and thrush in a cherry tree
David Hockney, April 25 from The Arrival of Spring
Un passé plat empiétant tapestry from Madagascar.


(exhibition on a window sill)



IX

being twenty-one
seems no great age
but I remember it dimly
when adrift in my life
it came and went –
a spring and sunny day
a watch from my parents
a few cards . . .

but for you
a family day at Kew
a meal with relatives and friends
altogether a good time to remember
I so hope you will . . .


(at twenty-one)


X

To members of the London Symphony Orchestra
Ralph Vaughan-Williams is reported to have said:
‘Gentlemen, let me introduce you to the man
who writes my music.’

Unfortunate this, as his copyist Roy Douglas
had the job of deciphering the composer’s appalling
handwriting, the result of a natural
left-handedness being corrected as a child.

For me, the person who has written my music
so faithfully for fourteen years rarely dealt with
illegibility but had instead to cope with conflicts
of musical spelling.
Is this a sharp? Should this be a flat?
Do we need a cautionary accidental here?

Fortunately, he and I were not espoused as Stravinsky and
Elgar were to their long-suffering copyists, who often berated
their husbands for their inability to spell chromatic pitches
correctly. Stravinsky had an excuse: the vagaries of the octatonic scale
he often used and loved. Elgar was just ******-minded! Poor Alice . . .


(saying a warm goodbye to my copyist)


XI


to talk about yourself when
dead and gone How strange!
This need - to put in place
to sort the detail now
and so avoid confusion
What then?


An indeterminate wait
until the moment comes
the eyes won’t open
on a woken world
ears not hear
the sound of traffic
from a nearby road


there will be
an emptiness sublime
a finishing of tasks
and all those earthly
mysteries solved
and deemed complete


So this is what
we recommend
It could be this?
It could be that?

and every which way
it’s yours to choose
for rightness sake
Amen


*(the interview)

It is deafening silence
Beneath the lanky pine shrouded of darkness
And the bed of needles soft under hand,
Snow sits shallow and dulled behind a curtain,
The hushed breath of a boy out of hand,

And the bark rough against back,
And the stick of sap against the palm, and the screech
Of tires far afield, and the breakneck cold
Cries with hidden desires of dark shadows breach
In the low mountains of housed hills where silence holds.

Once when warmth was in the heart
Among the walls solid evergreen held,
As the food hot and the flames low, a boy unfolded
The truth of heart that smoldered in anguished meld,
Rushed and tumbled forced out upon the wold

Of snow. And alone then
In the darkening cold, run by the streets light
And the pavements white with turned ash and the men
Roosting asleep while the barking dog grew trite
Whom echoed among the covered grounds and then

Stumbled on with anxious limb,
Thus feet sting, the glacial frost bitterly bites,
The hooped ring luminescent and hung, the lanky pine
Comforting in its shelter bare of lights,
And there to rest and rebuild new spine.

“He knelt, he wept, he prayed,”
By the hurt of his heart feeble in the dense dark night
And huddled bellow the knotting pine though in the homes,
In the past warmth, in the slow light,
At the loves gracious hold, he wished to roam.

“He knelt” in spindled branches,
“He wept” being cast out, “he prayed” to the hidden gods
That he be found rescued restored to right
Darkness pushed aside by the cars beam and the boy at odds
And the shimmering diamond studded earth and the black white

Into that light of promise
He wished to go but he sits eyes closed to darkness
With out the car which passed and broken he stands.
His heart wrenched breaking him choked by the collar
And up the way whence came to the shattered lands

It is deafening silence,
Reentering in the house torn, in the whirl-
Wind of heated battle, into his room
He crawls, in the slow light of the dreams world.
And he rises with new light arching through the sky.

i. once upon a time, there were old gods and new gods. under crumbling archways the divine and the cursed share cigarettes, lighters cupped in their hands. rain pours relentlessly from the heavens, falling to the uneven cobblestone in a sheen of silver spears and smoke. this time, nothing but prayers are shed.

ii. this is their communion: an errant hand brushes against the marbled form of Hades, rowboats rock harmlessly to the temple of Asclepius, feet shuffle across the white line and into the holy land. it is in these moments that solitude begets peace.

iii. angels tuck in their tired wings, roosting on bridges and cathedrals and alleyway corners spun with ivy. amongst themselves they count the crowds that take shelter in their shadows. every day, the numbers swell until even the loneliest of the celestial feel a warmth in their gilded chests.

iv. these same seneschals pour life through golden urns, as they had done eons before the she-wolf who nursed the founders of Roma was ever born. water flows steadily from all four rivers and through the eagle-face spics that dot the roads, blessed by frail, rosary-stained hands. even the Tiber, full of harsh currents and deep embankments, softens under the touch of a child at a fountain. life flourishes. the gods smile.

v. once upon a time, i met these cursed and divine and celestial beings. all lived together in a city as old as time itself, in a city born from clay, then wrought with brick, and finished in marble. and in this place of impossibilities, i found my heart.
.
.

i found my home

There was once a famous painter who, to express his love for a woman, cut his own ear off and sent it to her. We all know the story. Even I, a pretty eccentric and extreme person myself, thinks that's way too extreme. but hey, nothing says I Love You like a ****** chunk of cartage stuffed in an envelope right?

A couple days ago you told me to do something that scares the **** out of me, at least once everyday. No, I didn't cut my ear off or anything like that. lol. but that night I sat and thought about things that frighten me but to no avail. I wouldn't say I'm fearless, but I'm a person who enjoys taking risks and prides himself on surviving the most horrific experiences. There aren't many things in this world that rattle me. I'm not superstitious, I have no interest in what others think about me, and pain is only temporary. Well, Physical pain. Pain of a more emotional variety can last. Years even. An intangible, constricting weight of question. A couple thousand needles of "What if?". A potent venom of repeating "I wish". The things that spread your eyelids apart in the middle of the night. When you tell your body "No." When you squeeze your pillow and mumble to your own thoughts "No, don't you dare wander to that place." When you plead with yourself to forget.

Nights like this are the reason why I find it hard to write you, the nights where I don't sleep, can't sleep until I write you and even though most times I don't send the messages, (Or they get sent to you accidently baha) I'm gonna send this one to you. Because it scares the **** out of me.

Starting is the hardest part. It's been probably forty five minutes since I've started the occasional ritual of tossing my bed covers aside and pacing around my room tenderly as if I'm scanning the ground for the words I need, as if I could just pick them right up and hand them to you. However, I always find nothing. I skip every other step on the way down to the computer and sit gingerly in my lame floral chair, watching my cursor blink against your empty message box. It speaks to me. "Blink type something ****** Blink." After a few minutes of typing and erasing and typing and erasing I thought "This is stupid." Then I remembered the story about the painter. It made me think. People have always done stupid things for love. Sure, I'd be embarrassed and vulnerable and possibly even having you meet me with a spine shattering "sigh", "This is getting old." or even have "What is the ****** point?" hammering my morning thoughts. But Hey, At least I'm not mutilating myself.

Well. I tend to beat around the bush a lot, but at this rate I'm just stepping on the twigs. Dancing on the torn leaves and such. I'll stop. I have some things I want to tell you.

I won't let my guilt stop me from saying what I want to say this time as I've done many times in the the past. I think that's what holds me back, the guilt? Whatever.. I mean you're over it, I should be too. I know you're over me too, but that won't stop me either. Des, I miss you. I miss your voice. The medicine in your laugh, the discipline in your scowl. The way that we'd talk all through the night till one of us unked it. The several stones that would plop in my stomach when I would get a text from 'Desire Deslonchamps', Your french *** name (It's so **** btw) I miss the armada of butterflies roosting on my ribs whenever you'd tell me you adored me. I miss our conversations, you have always reached higher than anyone else I have ever talked to intellectually and I mean that quite literally. it baffles me how no matter who else I was with, they were never good enough. That I was always comparing them to you, and thinking "Des wouldn't have said that." or "Des would have loved this more." No one is as funny or talkative or as tender or as wild as you. I would stuff every single one of those girls in a shredder just for even 5 minutes with you.

I look through your pictures all the time, I feel like a teenager sifting dreamily through a magazine looking at some chiseled, oiled up celebrity that doesn't even know she exists. I read everything you post, I worry when you seem sad, I laugh when you laugh. Everytime Facebook tells me you've uploaded and new picture I always go look and end up sighing like a ***** maiden. Excuse the metaphor but it's true. haha.

A couple days ago, when you were telling me about your ex, for a second I kind of thought you were talking about me... and I got so excited, I really thought that you still felt for me and that maybe I hadn't completely lost it and that you weren't jaded or whatever, but when you showed me what you actually did write him, and everything and... ugghh, I just felt so stupid. Sososososo stupid. I don't know why... and I know you still really like him and everything, but I just want to let you know that the level of emotion and personal attention I have for you is strong and consistent. I'm not saying that no one will ever feel for you as strongly as I do, But I'm saying that it'd be pretty **** hard to top it. I just want to let you know that this will never go away. I have tried everything short of a lobotomy but I can't ever, and will never forget about you. I know how foolish it is, but there is no way I could ever help it. Humanity help me, it's literally impossible to knock, like that crazy romance **** You see in movies. It's unreal.

Desiree I think about you more than I think about Sableyes and Adoring fans and Acid trips and soft melodies. All of the things I daydream about. Whenever I daydream, I always add on the wishful thought of someday sharing whatever I'm dreaming about with you, or just sharing me with you. I laugh hysterically in my head at the thought of ever being what I once was to you again, a laugh developed by my pride to stifle my cries and soak up my tears before they ever surface. No, I'm not sad all the time, just when the thinking reaches a fever pitch. Sad isn't the word, more like frustrated. You know me better than anyone on this planet, seriously, You know that I have problems communicating my feelings properly. Most of the thinking is me trying to put words together for you. Though I usually don't come up with anything until I actually do write you, There's always been one thing that I've wanted to tell you that I could never form an appropriate form for and even saying it now would do it an injustice because I can't make these words jump off of the screen and wrap it's arms securely around waist, or whisper quietly in your ear or emulate the disparity of them properly, it's all I got. This xenomorphic phrase.

Physical pain may be temporary, but I'm still too much of a ***** to cut off my own ear, So these words, They're all I have left. The only thing that I can give to you with every bit of a human heart and genuine honesty I have...

Desiree Deslongchamps,

I love you.

I see you
Black/brown hair
The ivy green of your disturbed eyes
Walking
Further and further away from me
The void of time closing
Faster and faster still
So abrupt each change that I feel the draw of tension in my skull

The harsh rip of tendons in my heart
You were leaving
This time
For good

A two hour treacherous trip
To home were the rest of them flocked
Your roosting
And I could not follow

Little blue bird
With her short wings could not fly with the hawk
And his strong reaching wings
When her feet where tied to commitment

The shackles of responsibility
What was right for little blue was here
Where the sun shone and the gift of education lingered
But GOD how she wanted to follow him
Into the unknown
The bleakness
Just to not have to suffer the loss of her hawk

But what was waiting for him was a promise
The promise of a better life
Freedom from the ****** he had become accustom too
Freedom to flourish in a distinctly hawk way
To get better
To  soar high in the heavens and enjoy the wind
Without losing his mind in the process

You walk
Away from me
Into a brighter sun than
The  shade at my back
Casting your shadow backwards where it held me
In its phantom strength untill
It too faded out
And left me lonely
Completely incomplete
Untill you come
For me
Keening victoriously
In flight

Turning I walk back into the shade you left behind
Leaving blue feathers
Sounding out the clinking of chains

I keep blinking,
flashing signs of God and man.
Hallelujah!
Gold crosses piercing into the thick, blue sky.
Follow the lines down to the bell tower,
on top of the rusted green roof.
Amen! I say Amen!

I'm anxious and
keep blinking.
Watching God through thick windows and
the sun is casting shadows.
Engulfing the bright red brick in doubt.

I keep blinking
and this is my only view.

A house for the faithful
closed,
boarded up from the elements
and the homeless.
The day of reckoning is upon it.

My eyes blink faster.
What have I done?
Wishing I could see the sky again.
Choirs of angels replaced by
the pigeons roosting on the falling gutter
of this fallen congregation.

Struggling with the faith
I have forgotten.

If life flashed before your eyes,
I'd better keep blinking.

The Lord's home is smothered by Black Locust.
Is this the new normal?
Doubting faith,
accepting that it's not just a building.
It's all around.

I keep blinking,
snapshots of forgotten faith.
Rain begins to fall on the Holy Site.
And I can't stop blinking.

I can only spin around in my chair
and forget.