Ugly and disappointing colors are what they're revealing
It's a challenge not to fall victim to the deceptive deceiving
This world in which all are tirelessly scheming

Corrupt messages intended to disillusion our modes of sensory
The laws of this dishonesty are rarely discriminant
The unlimited reach of the effects are constantly consistent
Putting current views and outlooks in legitimate jeopardy

Originality is one thing they've made a hobby of stealing
Dark, ***** secrets require intelligent attempts at concealing
This society in which all are tirelessly scheming

Naivity is an automatic assumption of all that is innocent
You can witness their successes expending minimal energy
The fraud is hazardous; failure is certainly imminent
One would desire that outcome sooner than later, as it leaves recipients feeling elderly
With any form of luck, more will come to share this sentiment

Endless efforts put toward developing façades generally appealing
Aiming to have candor and valor on the knees, kneeling
This reality in which all are tirelessly scheming

Sturdy quilts to shield clarity are woven most expertly
Time being tested passed slowly- increment by minute increment
Blueprints to fool the majority will be, expectedly, intricate
What was the original reality has been altered into a distant, doubted memory

Any and all accomplished legitimitacy sends them all reeling
There's always a "crisis" with which we should be dealing
*Our universe in which all are tirelessly scheming

Slow sinks, more lovely ere his race be run,
Along Morea’s hills the setting Sun;
Not, as in northern climes, obscurely bright,
But one unclouded blaze of living light;
O’er the hushed deep the yellow beam he throws,
Gilds the green wave that trembles as it glows;
On old ægina’s rock and Hydra’s isle
The God of gladness sheds his parting smile;
O’er his own regions lingering loves to shine,
Though there his altars are no more divine.
Descending fast, the mountain-shadows kiss
Thy glorious Gulf, unconquered Salamis!
Their azure arches through the long expanse,
More deeply purpled, meet his mellowing glance,
And tenderest tints, along their summits driven,
Mark his gay course, and own the hues of Heaven;
Till, darkly shaded from the land and deep,
Behind his Delphian rock he sinks to sleep.

  On such an eve his palest beam he cast
When, Athens! here thy Wisest looked his last.
How watched thy better sons his farewell ray,
That closed their murdered Sage’s latest day!
Not yet—not yet—Sol pauses on the hill,
The precious hour of parting lingers still;
But sad his light to agonizing eyes,
And dark the mountain’s once delightful dyes;
Gloom o’er the lovely land he seemed to pour,
The land where Phoebus never frowned before;
But ere he sunk below Cithaeron’s head,
The cup of Woe was quaffed—the Spirit fled;
The soul of Him that scorned to fear or fly,
Who lived and died as none can live or die.

  But lo! from high Hymettus to the plain
The Queen of Night asserts her silent reign;
No murky vapour, herald of the storm,
Hides her fair face, or girds her glowing form;
With cornice glimmering as the moonbeams play,
There the white column greets her grateful ray,
And bright around, with quivering beams beset,
Her emblem sparkles o’er the Minaret;
The groves of olive scattered dark and wide,
Where meek Cephisus sheds his scanty tide,
The cypress saddening by the sacred mosque,
The gleaming turret of the gay kiosk,
And sad and sombre ’mid the holy calm,
Near Theseus’ fane, yon solitary palm;
All, tinged with varied hues, arrest the eye;
And dull were his that passed them heedless by.
Again the ægean, heard no more afar,
Lulls his chafed breast from elemental war:
Again his waves in milder tints unfold
Their long expanse of sapphire and of gold,
Mixed with the shades of many a distant isle
That frown, where gentler Ocean deigns to smile.

  As thus, within the walls of Pallas’ fane,
I marked the beauties of the land and main,
Alone, and friendless, on the magic shore,
Whose arts and arms but live in poets’ lore;
Oft as the matchless dome I turned to scan,
Sacred to Gods, but not secure from Man,
The Past returned, the Present seemed to cease,
And Glory knew no clime beyond her Greece!

  Hour rolled along, and Dian’******on high
Had gained the centre of her softest sky;
And yet unwearied still my footsteps trod
O’er the vain shrine of many a vanished God:
But chiefly, Pallas! thine, when Hecate’s glare
Checked by thy columns, fell more sadly fair
O’er the chill marble, where the startling tread
Thrills the lone heart like echoes from the dead.
Long had I mused, and treasured every trace
The wreck of Greece recorded of her race,
When, lo! a giant-form before me strode,
And Pallas hailed me in her own Abode!

  Yes,’twas Minerva’s self; but, ah! how changed,
Since o’er the Dardan field in arms she ranged!
Not such as erst, by her divine command,
Her form appeared from Phidias’ plastic hand:
Gone were the terrors of her awful brow,
Her idle ægis bore no Gorgon now;
Her helm was dinted, and the broken lance
Seemed weak and shaftless e’en to mortal glance;
The Olive Branch, which still she deigned to clasp,
Shrunk from her touch, and withered in her grasp;
And, ah! though still the brightest of the sky,
Celestial tears bedimmed her large blue eye;
Round the rent casque her owlet circled slow,
And mourned his mistress with a shriek of woe!

  “Mortal!”—’twas thus she spake—”that blush of shame
Proclaims thee Briton, once a noble name;
First of the mighty, foremost of the free,
Now honoured ‘less’ by all, and ‘least’ by me:
Chief of thy foes shall Pallas still be found.
Seek’st thou the cause of loathing!—look around.
Lo! here, despite of war and wasting fire,
I saw successive Tyrannies expire;
‘Scaped from the ravage of the Turk and Goth,
Thy country sends a spoiler worse than both.
Survey this vacant, violated fane;
Recount the relics torn that yet remain:
‘These’ Cecrops placed, ‘this’ Pericles adorned,
‘That’ Adrian reared when drooping Science mourned.
What more I owe let Gratitude attest—
Know, Alaric and Elgin did the rest.
That all may learn from whence the plunderer came,
The insulted wall sustains his hated name:
For Elgin’s fame thus grateful Pallas pleads,
Below, his name—above, behold his deeds!
Be ever hailed with equal honour here
The Gothic monarch and the Pictish peer:
Arms gave the first his right, the last had none,
But basely stole what less barbarians won.
So when the Lion quits his fell repast,
Next prowls the Wolf, the filthy Jackal last:
Flesh, limbs, and blood the former make their own,
The last poor brute securely gnaws the bone.
Yet still the Gods are just, and crimes are crossed:
See here what Elgin won, and what he lost!
Another name with his pollutes my shrine:
Behold where Dian’s beams disdain to shine!
Some retribution still might Pallas claim,
When Venus half avenged Minerva’s shame.”

  She ceased awhile, and thus I dared reply,
To soothe the vengeance kindling in her eye:
“Daughter of Jove! in Britain’s injured name,
A true-born Briton may the deed disclaim.
Frown not on England; England owns him not:
Athena, no! thy plunderer was a Scot.
Ask’st thou the difference? From fair Phyles’ towers
Survey Boeotia;—Caledonia’s ours.
And well I know within that ******* land
Hath Wisdom’s goddess never held command;
A barren soil, where Nature’s germs, confined
To stern sterility, can stint the mind;
Whose thistle well betrays the niggard earth,
Emblem of all to whom the Land gives birth;
Each genial influence nurtured to resist;
A land of meanness, sophistry, and mist.
Each breeze from foggy mount and marshy plain
Dilutes with drivel every drizzly brain,
Till, burst at length, each wat’ry head o’erflows,
Foul as their soil, and frigid as their snows:
Then thousand schemes of petulance and pride
Despatch her scheming children far and wide;
Some East, some West, some—everywhere but North!
In quest of lawless gain, they issue forth.
And thus—accursed be the day and year!
She sent a Pict to play the felon here.
Yet Caledonia claims some native worth,
As dull Boeotia gave a Pindar birth;
So may her few, the lettered and the brave,
Bound to no clime, and victors of the grave,
Shake off the sordid dust of such a land,
And shine like children of a happier strand;
As once, of yore, in some obnoxious place,
Ten names (if found) had saved a wretched race.”

  “Mortal!” the blue-eyed maid resumed, “once more
Bear back my mandate to thy native shore.
Though fallen, alas! this vengeance yet is mine,
To turn my counsels far from lands like thine.
Hear then in silence Pallas’ stern behest;
Hear and believe, for Time will tell the rest.

  “First on the head of him who did this deed
My curse shall light,—on him and all his seed:
Without one spark of intellectual fire,
Be all the sons as senseless as the sire:
If one with wit the parent brood disgrace,
Believe him ******* of a brighter race:
Still with his hireling artists let him prate,
And Folly’s praise repay for Wisdom’s hate;
Long of their Patron’s gusto let them tell,
Whose noblest, native gusto is—to sell:
To sell, and make—may shame record the day!—
The State—Receiver of his pilfered prey.
Meantime, the flattering, feeble dotard, West,
Europe’s worst dauber, and poor Britain’s best,
With palsied hand shall turn each model o’er,
And own himself an infant of fourscore.
Be all the Bruisers culled from all St. Giles’,
That Art and Nature may compare their styles;
While brawny brutes in stupid wonder stare,
And marvel at his Lordship’s ’stone shop’ there.
Round the thronged gate shall sauntering coxcombs creep
To lounge and lucubrate, to prate and peep;
While many a languid maid, with longing sigh,
On giant statues casts the curious eye;
The room with transient glance appears to skim,
Yet marks the mighty back and length of limb;
Mourns o’er the difference of now and then;
Exclaims, ‘These Greeks indeed were proper men!’
Draws slight comparisons of ‘these’ with ‘those’,
And envies Laïs all her Attic beaux.
When shall a modern maid have swains like these?
Alas! Sir Harry is no Hercules!
And last of all, amidst the gaping crew,
Some calm spectator, as he takes his view,
In silent indignation mixed with grief,
Admires the plunder, but abhors the thief.
Oh, loathed in life, nor pardoned in the dust,
May Hate pursue his sacrilegious lust!
Linked with the fool that fired the Ephesian dome,
Shall vengeance follow far beyond the tomb,
And Eratostratus and Elgin shine
In many a branding page and burning line;
Alike reserved for aye to stand accursed,
Perchance the second blacker than the first.

  “So let him stand, through ages yet unborn,
Fixed statue on the pedestal of Scorn;
Though not for him alone revenge shall wait,
But fits thy country for her coming fate:
Hers were the deeds that taught her lawless son
To do what oft Britannia’s self had done.
Look to the Baltic—blazing from afar,
Your old Ally yet mourns perfidious war.
Not to such deeds did Pallas lend her aid,
Or break the compact which herself had made;
Far from such counsels, from the faithless field
She fled—but left behind her Gorgon shield;
A fatal gift that turned your friends to stone,
And left lost Albion hated and alone.

“Look to the East, where Ganges’ swarthy race
Shall shake your tyrant empire to its base;
Lo! there Rebellion rears her ghastly head,
And glares the Nemesis of native dead;
Till Indus rolls a deep purpureal flood,
And claims his long arrear of northern blood.
So may ye perish!—Pallas, when she gave
Your free-born rights, forbade ye to enslave.

  “Look on your Spain!—she clasps the hand she hates,
But boldly clasps, and thrusts you from her gates.
Bear witness, bright Barossa! thou canst tell
Whose were the sons that bravely fought and fell.
But Lusitania, kind and dear ally,
Can spare a few to fight, and sometimes fly.
Oh glorious field! by Famine fiercely won,
The Gaul retires for once, and all is done!
But when did Pallas teach, that one retreat
Retrieved three long Olympiads of defeat?

  “Look last at home—ye love not to look there
On the grim smile of comfortless despair:
Your city saddens: loud though Revel howls,
Here Famine faints, and yonder Rapine prowls.
See all alike of more or less bereft;
No misers tremble when there’s nothing left.
‘Blest paper credit;’ who shall dare to sing?
It clogs like lead Corruption’s weary wing.
Yet Pallas pluck’d each Premier by the ear,
Who Gods and men alike disdained to hear;
But one, repentant o’er a bankrupt state,
On Pallas calls,—but calls, alas! too late:
Then raves for’——’; to that Mentor bends,
Though he and Pallas never yet were friends.
Him senates hear, whom never yet they heard,
Contemptuous once, and now no less absurd.
So, once of yore, each reasonable frog,
Swore faith and fealty to his sovereign ‘log.’
Thus hailed your rulers their patrician clod,
As Egypt chose an onion for a God.

  “Now fare ye well! enjoy your little hour;
Go, grasp the shadow of your vanished power;
Gloss o’er the failure of each fondest scheme;
Your strength a name, your bloated wealth a dream.
Gone is that Gold, the marvel of mankind.
And Pirates barter all that’s left behind.
No more the hirelings, purchased near and far,
Crowd to the ranks of mercenary war.
The idle merchant on the useless quay
Droops o’er the bales no bark may bear away;
Or, back returning, sees rejected stores
Rot piecemeal on his own encumbered shores:
The starved mechanic breaks his rusting loom,
And desperate mans him ‘gainst the coming doom.
Then in the Senates of your sinking state
Show me the man whose counsels may have weight.
Vain is each voice where tones could once command;
E’en factions cease to charm a factious land:
Yet jarring sects convulse a sister Isle,
And light with maddening hands the mutual pile.

  “’Tis done, ’tis past—since Pallas warns in vain;
The Furies seize her abdicated reign:
Wide o’er the realm they wave their kindling brands,
And wring her vitals with their fiery hands.
But one convulsive struggle still remains,
And Gaul shall weep ere Albion wear her chains,
The bannered pomp of war, the glittering files,
O’er whose gay trappings stern Bellona smiles;
The brazen trump, the spirit-stirring drum,
That bid the foe defiance ere they come;
The hero bounding at his country’s call,
The glorious death that consecrates his fall,
Swell the young heart with visionary charms.
And bid it antedate the joys of arms.
But know, a lesson you may yet be taught,
With death alone are laurels cheaply bought;
Not in the conflict Havoc seeks delight,
His day of mercy is the day of fight.
But when the field is fought, the battle won,
Though drenched with gore, his woes are but begun:
His deeper deeds as yet ye know by name;
The slaughtered peasant and the ravished dame,
The rifled mansion and the foe-reaped field,
Ill suit with souls at home, untaught to yield.
Say with what eye along the distant down
Would flying burghers mark the blazing town?
How view the column of ascending flames
Shake his red shadow o’er the startled Thames?
Nay, frown not, Albion! for the torch was thine
That lit such pyres from Tagus to the Rhine:
Now should they burst on thy devoted coast,
Go, ask thy ***** who deserves them most?
The law of Heaven and Earth is life for life,
And she who raised, in vain regrets, the strife.”

‘To bed! To bed!’
Said Sleepy-head;
‘Tarry awhile,’ said Slow;
‘Put on the pan,’
Said Greedy Nan;
‘We'll sup before we go.’
        (from Mother Goose)

They sat at the kitchen table as
The candle flickered low,
And Greedy Nan put on the pan
To indulge her sister, Slow,
While Sleepy Weepy Annabelle
Blotted her book with tears,
And thought of her Beau from long ago
Who she hadn’t seen for years.

‘Why doesn’t Roger notice me,
Why doesn’t Alan Dell?
I’m wearing the dress cut low for me
And I’ve hitched my skirt as well.
I’ve a pretty turn to my ankle, so
You’d think it would drive them wild.’
‘But men are a mystery,’ said Slow,
‘And Alan Dell’s a child.’

While over the pan stood Greedy Nan,
Was cracking a turkey’s egg,
A lump of yeast and a slice of beast
And a single spider’s leg.
With a wing of bat and an ounce of fat
And a toe of frog for the spell,
She needed to turn her sister off
From her crush on Alan Dell.

For Greedy Nan was the eldest girl
And would have to marry first,
The other two would wait in the queue
Or their fortunes be reversed,
The omelette sizzled, and in the pan
She added before they saw,
A piece of some Devil’s Trumpet plant
For the mating game meant war.

She sliced the omelette into half
And she served them up a piece,
‘Didn’t you want?’ said Annabelle
But Slow enjoyed the feast.
‘I’m not that terribly hungry now
I’ve cooked it up in the pan,
I think I’ll just have a slice of bread,’
Said the scheming Greedy Nan.

They finished up and they sat awhile,
And they mused about their fate,
‘If Greedy Nan isn’t married soon,
For us it will be too late.’
‘I’ve set my sights on a country squire,’
Said Nan, without a blink,
Lured them away from her secret fire
To confuse what they might think.

‘The room is woozy, spinning around,
I’d better get me to bed,’
Said Annabelle, while Slow with a frown
Saw Dwarves dancing in her head.
But Greedy Nan was cleaning the pan
To clear all signs of the spell,
Her back was turned to her sisters, spurned
For the sake of Alan Dell.

And when he came in the morning
Greedy Nan was sat by the door,
While Annabelle and her sister Slow
Were lying dead on the floor,
‘I didn’t mean it to **** them, Al,
It was only a simple spell,’
But as he cuffed and led her away
He frowned, did Alan Dell.

David Lewis Paget

AWAKENING

Sleep and slumber, dreams of wonder... weaving,
morning’s vacuum broke the spell
Pitted pillow, note of parting... leaving,
“from your friend, a fond farewell”
Sunrise throbbing, twilight aching... grieving,
daydreams, flashbacks, nightmares knell
Pale phantasms, visions sneaking... thieving,
plot to fill the empty shell

12 DELIRIA

1st Delirium: COLLAPSES

Fractured sky bolts, billows bursting... rumbling,
heavens tighten, turn the vise
Horsemen saddle shafts of lightning... tumbling,
jagged highways must suffice
Ruptured skyways, hailstones crackling... crumbling,
naked pearls of paradise
Toxic tongues of laughter stinging... stumbling,
ocean buckets choked with ice
Droplets drumming, thunder muzzled... mumbling,
washed out whispers pay the price
Smothered blazes, cinders smoking... humbling,
ashes shaped in sacrifice

2nd Delirium: DESCENTS

Asphalt alleys, ashen faces... frowning,
blowing bubbles, chewing gum
Drinking ale from tavern tankards... downing,
moonlit beads of painted ***
Stony stars and sea misshapen... drowning,
humble rivers’ rhythms hum
Apparitions aspirating... clowning,
diamonds dying , minstrels strum
Incandescent candles conquered... crowning,
vacant vapours, cold and numb

3rd Delirium: FATES

Tempest turmoil, tapered turrets... holding,
dungeons, dragons, chains and racks
Wheels of fortune, Tarot temptress... molding,
Hangmen, Towers, One Eyed Jacks
Sand dune castles, cryptic candles... folding,
warping walls of liquid wax
Idols colder, combed and coddled... scolding,
hide in fissures, peek through cracks

4th Delirium: LOST SOULS

Sunken cities, pilgrims peering... gawking,
squinting eyeballs, blazing sun
Janus facing, shepherds chasing... stalking,
friends embrace before they shun
Tearooms steaming, tumult teeming... talking,
lovers listen, poets pun
Broken stones unanchored, quaking... rocking,
slipping, falling, one by one
Beaten pathways, footsteps marking... mocking,
wedged in webs which spiders spun
Circus shelters, big tops tumbling... locking,
people pacing, soon they’re none
Numbered exits, zeros numbing... knocking,
midnight daylight’s days undone
Moon blood shackles, shivers shaming... shocking,
starlight striders streaking, stun
Hushed but harried hermits waiting... walking,
restless rainbows on the run
Pixies, elves, and echoes bouncing... balking,
fading fast when dawn’s begun
Bantum butterflies are flitting... flocking
sometimes conquered, overrun
Hocus pokus, seers focus... squawking,
voodoo wavered, witchcraft won

5th Delirium: INTROSPECTION

Sundown furnace, fires fading... coughing,
dusky dew drops drain the air
Empty chalice, sipped in silence... quaffing,
thirsting shadows unaware
Looking glass and lattice scorning... scoffing,
local loser gapes and stares
Faces covered, dancing naked... doffing,
peering inside, hope despairs

6th Delirium: THE VOID

Tales of taboos, mystic mythos... missing,
windows shuttered, bolted door
Kindled candles, tongues and anvils... hissing,
heavy hammers, echoes roar
Dark deceivers, raven charmers... kissing,
draging demons from the shore
Hopeless hollows filled with doubters... dissing
standing empty - nevermore

7th Delirium: SEARCHING

Martyred monks haunt runic ruins ... waiting,
banging broken bells below
Vaulted hallways, voided voices... grating,
churning Chinese chimes aglow
Granite graveyards, spectres spooking... skating,
blackened bushes, roses grow
****** dwarfs seek mutant migrants... mating,
packing parcels, ice and snow

8th Delirium: NIGHTTIME

Throbbing drumheads, fingers blazing... steaming,
coins of copper, beggars plea
Rusty residues of resin... streaming,
opal amber filigree
Orphan shades in shallow shadows... teeming,
steeping twigs in twilight tea
Cloister doorsteps, Prophets gaming... scheming,
tracing tracks of destiny
Blacksmiths blanching, horseshoes glowing... gleaming,
partially sheathed in black debris
Phantoms feigning, nightmares scathing... screaming,
dusty dreamers drifting free

9th Delerium: EMPTYNESS

Water wheels in wastelands... turning,
drowning relics in the slum
Rumpled rags of fashioned burlap... burning,
lit by bandits blind and dumb
Pastured prisons, ponies bridled ... yearning,
forest fairies under thumb
Sounds inside of cauldrons coughing... churning,
blaring bugles, tattooed drum

10th Delirium: ALIENATION

Rain unravelling, wistfully weeping... falling,
treacle trickling, fickle sky
Mushrooms sprinkled, visions sprouting... sprawling,
seagulls drowning, dolphins die
Rabble gasping, spirits broken... crawling,
lonely lonesome swallows cry
Babbling brooks and breakers ebbing... bawling
puppies paddle, puppets sigh
People passing ripple past me... calling,
rainbow colours, collars high
Chaos seething, lepers looting... stalling,
stealing stallions on the sly
Pencils pausing, scholars scrambling... scrawling,
scratching scribbles, asking why

11th Delirium: JETSAM

Silver sails sway pallid pirates... prowling,
Jolly Rogers, wind and sound
Parrots perching, tattered feathers... fouling,
tethered talons, tied and bound
Shipwrecked foghorns, trumpets stranded... howling,
spiral springs of time unwound
Magic moonlight, shimmers shaking... scowling,
burnt out matchsticks washed aground
Prairie wolfs, coyotes calling... yowling,
witching hours, midnight hounds
Tightrope walkers, grizzlies grunting... growling,
seeking islands, lost and found

12th Delirium: RELIEF

Slumber shattered, vapours captive... haunting,
chained in mirrors, breaking free
Scarlet skylines, daylight dawning... daunting,
rivers rushing to the sea
Silence softens, sandmen whisper... wanting,
piercing rafters, turning keys
Shadows shudder, notions fluster... flaunting,
moonbeam bullets meant for me
Mind in migraine, meadows trembling... taunting,
sparrows speak in harmony

REAWAKENING

Pitter patter, teardrops paling... pearling,
salting scarves in secret drawers
Mist amongst us, smoke rings rising... curling,
climbing from the ocean floors
See-saw circles, senses swerving... swirling,
swept away with silver oars
Courtyard jesters, sceptres twisting... twirling,
push the past to foreign shores
Passing pangs of passions heaving... hurling,
burning bridges, closing doors
Roses wither, icons waning... whirling,
time decays and time restores

Now the other gods and the armed warriors on the plain slept
soundly, but Jove was wakeful, for he was thinking how to do honour to
Achilles, and destroyed much people at the ships of the Achaeans. In
the end he deemed it would be best to send a lying dream to King
Agamemnon; so he called one to him and said to it, “Lying Dream, go to
the ships of the Achaeans, into the tent of Agamemnon, and say to
him word to word as I now bid you. Tell him to get the Achaeans
instantly under arms, for he shall take Troy. There are no longer
divided counsels among the gods; Juno has brought them to her own
mind, and woe betides the Trojans.”
  The dream went when it had heard its message, and soon reached the
ships of the Achaeans. It sought Agamemnon son of Atreus and found him
in his tent, wrapped in a profound slumber. It hovered over his head
in the likeness of Nestor, son of Neleus, whom Agamemnon honoured
above all his councillors, and said:-
  “You are sleeping, son of Atreus; one who has the welfare of his
host and so much other care upon his shoulders should dock his
sleep. Hear me at once, for I come as a messenger from Jove, who,
though he be not near, yet takes thought for you and pities you. He
bids you get the Achaeans instantly under arms, for you shall take
Troy. There are no longer divided counsels among the gods; Juno has
brought them over to her own mind, and woe betides the Trojans at
the hands of Jove. Remember this, and when you wake see that it does
not escape you.”
  The dream then left him, and he thought of things that were,
surely not to be accomplished. He thought that on that same day he was
to take the city of Priam, but he little knew what was in the mind
of Jove, who had many another hard-fought fight in store alike for
Danaans and Trojans. Then presently he woke, with the divine message
still ringing in his ears; so he sat upright, and put on his soft
shirt so fair and new, and over this his heavy cloak. He bound his
sandals on to his comely feet, and slung his silver-studded sword
about his shoulders; then he took the imperishable staff of his
father, and sallied forth to the ships of the Achaeans.
  The goddess Dawn now wended her way to vast Olympus that she might
herald day to Jove and to the other immortals, and Agamemnon sent
the criers round to call the people in assembly; so they called them
and the people gathered thereon. But first he summoned a meeting of
the elders at the ship of Nestor king of Pylos, and when they were
assembled he laid a cunning counsel before them.
  “My friends,” said he, “I have had a dream from heaven in the dead
of night, and its face and figure resembled none but Nestor’s. It
hovered over my head and said, ‘You are sleeping, son of Atreus; one
who has the welfare of his host and so much other care upon his
shoulders should dock his sleep. Hear me at once, for I am a messenger
from Jove, who, though he be not near, yet takes thought for you and
pities you. He bids you get the Achaeans instantly under arms, for you
shall take Troy. There are no longer divided counsels among the
gods; Juno has brought them over to her own mind, and woe betides
the Trojans at the hands of Jove. Remember this.’ The dream then
vanished and I awoke. Let us now, therefore, arm the sons of the
Achaeans. But it will be well that I should first sound them, and to
this end I will tell them to fly with their ships; but do you others
go about among the host and prevent their doing so.”
  He then sat down, and Nestor the prince of Pylos with all
sincerity and goodwill addressed them thus: “My friends,” said he,
“princes and councillors of the Argives, if any other man of the
Achaeans had told us of this dream we should have declared it false,
and would have had nothing to do with it. But he who has seen it is
the foremost man among us; we must therefore set about getting the
people under arms.”
  With this he led the way from the assembly, and the other sceptred
kings rose with him in obedience to the word of Agamemnon; but the
people pressed forward to hear. They swarmed like bees that sally from
some hollow cave and flit in countless throng among the spring
flowers, bunched in knots and clusters; even so did the mighty
multitude pour from ships and tents to the assembly, and range
themselves upon the wide-watered shore, while among them ran
Wildfire Rumour, messenger of Jove, urging them ever to the fore. Thus
they gathered in a pell-mell of mad confusion, and the earth groaned
under the ***** of men as the people sought their places. Nine heralds
went crying about among them to stay their tumult and bid them
listen to the kings, till at last they were got into their several
places and ceased their clamour. Then King Agamemnon rose, holding his
sceptre. This was the work of Vulcan, who gave it to Jove the son of
Saturn. Jove gave it to Mercury, slayer of Argus, guide and
guardian. King Mercury gave it to Pelops, the mighty charioteer, and
Pelops to Atreus, shepherd of his people. Atreus, when he died, left
it to Thyestes, rich in flocks, and Thyestes in his turn left it to be
borne by Agamemnon, that he might be lord of all Argos and of the
isles. Leaning, then, on his sceptre, he addressed the Argives.
  “My friends,” he said, “heroes, servants of Mars, the hand of heaven
has been laid heavily upon me. Cruel Jove gave me his solemn promise
that I should sack the city of Priam before returning, but he has
played me false, and is now bidding me go ingloriously back to Argos
with the loss of much people. Such is the will of Jove, who has laid
many a proud city in the dust, as he will yet lay others, for his
power is above all. It will be a sorry tale hereafter that an
Achaean host, at once so great and valiant, battled in vain against
men fewer in number than themselves; but as yet the end is not in
sight. Think that the Achaeans and Trojans have sworn to a solemn
covenant, and that they have each been numbered—the Trojans by the
roll of their householders, and we by companies of ten; think
further that each of our companies desired to have a Trojan
householder to pour out their wine; we are so greatly more in number
that full many a company would have to go without its cup-bearer.
But they have in the town allies from other places, and it is these
that hinder me from being able to sack the rich city of Ilius. Nine of
Jove years are gone; the timbers of our ships have rotted; their
tackling is sound no longer. Our wives and little ones at home look
anxiously for our coming, but the work that we came hither to do has
not been done. Now, therefore, let us all do as I say: let us sail
back to our own land, for we shall not take Troy.”
  With these words he moved the hearts of the multitude, so many of
them as knew not the cunning counsel of Agamemnon. They surged to
and fro like the waves of the Icarian Sea, when the east and south
winds break from heaven’s clouds to lash them; or as when the west
wind sweeps over a field of corn and the ears bow beneath the blast,
even so were they swayed as they flew with loud cries towards the
ships, and the dust from under their feet rose heavenward. They
cheered each other on to draw the ships into the sea; they cleared the
channels in front of them; they began taking away the stays from
underneath them, and the welkin rang with their glad cries, so eager
were they to return.
  Then surely the Argives would have returned after a fashion that was
not fated. But Juno said to Minerva, “Alas, daughter of
aegis-bearing Jove, unweariable, shall the Argives fly home to their
own land over the broad sea, and leave Priam and the Trojans the glory
of still keeping Helen, for whose sake so many of the Achaeans have
died at Troy, far from their homes? Go about at once among the host,
and speak fairly to them, man by man, that they draw not their ships
into the sea.”
  Minerva was not slack to do her bidding. Down she darted from the
topmost summits of Olympus, and in a moment she was at the ships of
the Achaeans. There she found Ulysses, peer of Jove in counsel,
standing alone. He had not as yet laid a hand upon his ship, for he
was grieved and sorry; so she went close up to him and said, “Ulysses,
noble son of Laertes, are you going to fling yourselves into your
ships and be off home to your own land in this way? Will you leave
Priam and the Trojans the glory of still keeping Helen, for whose sake
so many of the Achaeans have died at Troy, far from their homes? Go
about at once among the host, and speak fairly to them, man by man,
that they draw not their ships into the sea.”
  Ulysses knew the voice as that of the goddess: he flung his cloak
from him and set off to run. His servant Eurybates, a man of Ithaca,
who waited on him, took charge of the cloak, whereon Ulysses went
straight up to Agamemnon and received from him his ancestral,
imperishable staff. With this he went about among the ships of the
Achaeans.
  Whenever he met a king or chieftain, he stood by him and spoke him
fairly. “Sir,” said he, “this flight is cowardly and unworthy. Stand
to your post, and bid your people also keep their places. You do not
yet know the full mind of Agamemnon; he was sounding us, and ere
long will visit the Achaeans with his displeasure. We were not all
of us at the council to hear what he then said; see to it lest he be
angry and do us a mischief; for the pride of kings is great, and the
hand of Jove is with them.”
  But when he came across any common man who was making a noise, he
struck him with his staff and rebuked him, saying, “Sirrah, hold
your peace, and listen to better men than yourself. You are a coward
and no soldier; you are nobody either in fight or council; we cannot
all be kings; it is not well that there should be many masters; one
man must be supreme—one king to whom the son of scheming Saturn has
given the sceptre of sovereignty over you all.”
  Thus masterfully did he go about among the host, and the people
hurried back to the council from their tents and ships with a sound as
the thunder of surf when it comes crashing down upon the shore, and
all the sea is in an uproar.
  The rest now took their seats and kept to their own several
places, but Thersites still went on wagging his unbridled tongue—a
man of many words, and those unseemly; a monger of sedition, a
railer against all who were in authority, who cared not what he
said, so that he might set the Achaeans in a laugh. He was the ugliest
man of all those that came before Troy—bandy-legged, lame of one
foot, with his two shoulders rounded and hunched over his chest. His
head ran up to a point, but there was little hair on the top of it.
Achilles and Ulysses hated him worst of all, for it was with them that
he was most wont to wrangle; now, however, with a shrill squeaky voice
he began heaping his abuse on Agamemnon. The Achaeans were angry and
disgusted, yet none the less he kept on brawling and bawling at the
son of Atreus.
  “Agamemnon,” he cried, “what ails you now, and what more do you
want? Your tents are filled with bronze and with fair women, for
whenever we take a town we give you the pick of them. Would you have
yet more gold, which some Trojan is to give you as a ransom for his
son, when I or another Achaean has taken him prisoner? or is it some
young girl to hide and lie with? It is not well that you, the ruler of
the Achaeans, should bring them into such misery. Weakling cowards,
women rather than men, let us sail home, and leave this fellow here at
Troy to stew in his own meeds of honour, and discover whether we
were of any service to him or no. Achilles is a much better man than
he is, and see how he has treated him—robbing him of his prize and
keeping it himself. Achilles takes it meekly and shows no fight; if he
did, son of Atreus, you would never again insult him.”
  Thus railed Thersites, but Ulysses at once went up to him and
rebuked him sternly. “Check your glib tongue, Thersites,” said be,
“and babble not a word further. Chide not with princes when you have
none to back you. There is no viler creature come before Troy with the
sons of Atreus. Drop this chatter about kings, and neither revile them
nor keep harping about going home. We do not yet know how things are
going to be, nor whether the Achaeans are to return with good
success or evil. How dare you gibe at Agamemnon because the Danaans
have awarded him so many prizes? I tell you, therefore—and it shall
surely be—that if I again catch you talking such nonsense, I will
either forfeit my own head and be no more called father of Telemachus,
or I will take you, strip you stark naked, and whip you out of the
assembly till you go blubbering back to the ships.”
  On this he beat him with his staff about the back and shoulders till
he dropped and fell a-weeping. The golden sceptre raised a ****** weal
on his back, so he sat down frightened and in pain, looking foolish as
he wiped the tears from his eyes. The people were sorry for him, yet
they laughed heartily, and one would turn to his neighbour saying,
“Ulysses has done many a good thing ere now in fight and council,
but he never did the Argives a better turn than when he stopped this
fellow’s mouth from prating further. He will give the kings no more of
his insolence.”
  Thus said the people. Then Ulysses rose, sceptre in hand, and
Minerva in the likeness of a herald bade the people be still, that
those who were far off might hear him and consider his council. He
therefore with all sincerity and goodwill addressed them thus:-
  “King Agamemnon, the Achaeans are for making you a by-word among all
mankind. They forget the promise they made you when they set out
from Argos, that you should not return till you had sacked the town of
Troy, and, like children or widowed women, they murmur and would set
off homeward. True it is that they have had toil enough to be
disheartened. A man chafes at having to stay away from his wife even
for a single month, when he is on shipboard, at the mercy of wind
and sea, but it is now nine long years that we have been kept here;
I cannot, therefore, blame the Achaeans if they turn restive; still we
shall be shamed if we go home empty after so long a stay—therefore,
my friends, be patient yet a little longer that we may learn whether
the prophesyings of Calchas were false or true.
  “All who have not since perished must remember as though it were
yesterday or the day before, how the ships of the Achaeans were
detained in Aulis when we were on our way hither to make war on
Priam and the Trojans. We were ranged round about a fountain
offering hecatombs to the gods upon their holy altars, and there was a
fine plane-tree from beneath which there welled a stream of pure
water. Then we saw a prodigy; for Jove sent a fearful serpent out of
the ground, with blood-red stains upon its back, and it darted from
under the altar on to the plane-tree. Now there was a brood of young
sparrows, quite small, upon the topmost bough, peeping out from
under the leaves, eight in all, and their mother that hatched them
made nine. The serpent ate the poor cheeping things, while the old
bird flew about lamenting her little ones; but the serpent threw his
coils about her and caught her by the wing as she was screaming. Then,
when he had eaten both the sparrow and her young, the god who had sent
him made him become a sign; for the son of scheming Saturn turned
him into stone, and we stood there wondering at that which had come to
pass. Seeing, then, that such a fearful portent had broken in upon our
hecatombs, Calchas forthwith declared to us the oracles of heaven.
‘Why, Achaeans,’ said he, ‘are you thus speechless? Jove has sent us
this sign, long in coming, and long ere it be fulfilled, though its
fame shall last for ever. As the serpent ate the eight fledglings
and the sparrow that hatched them, which makes nine, so shall we fight
nine years at Troy, but in the tenth shall take the town.’ This was
what he said, and now it is all coming true. Stay here, therefore, all
of you, till we take the city of Priam.”
  On this the Argives raised a shout, till the ships rang again with
the uproar. Nestor, knight of Gere

All that we know maybe distorted
Or a methodical manipulation
Where truth is obfuscated by few
Which spreads like an epidemic
Words used with vested interest
For us to play a role given to us
Memorizing the scripts, to deliver
Speeches with someone else’s ideas
Thoughts and feelings engineered
To suit the machinations of few
With sinister ideas to play with the mind
A conscious and intelligent manipulation
Bereft of the tools of our own judgment
Our perception is not even ours
For the mind has been violated
With the scheming and methodical manipulations

Inebriated blue cloud,
I know you well enough
libertine ways you have
make you a lover of
deep thunder and meek rainbow
and also a chit of a lark
that loses itself in a song
be it is in grief or mirth.

Strange is the ways of my heart,
how much I long to fall in love with you
and proclaim this to the world scheming
to disrupt the pleasures one seeks
without any reason at all
"Look! love has no limits, no reason even
the lovely cloud, softness personified
caresses my foliage with sensuous abandon
kisses me with her wispy lips of moisture"

I know you understand, though unmindful of
my unbridled passion
making breaches in the limits,
I have no illusion about our improbable union.
True, how can we live
happily ever after?
I envy your gift of wings
though you have none visible,
you borrow it from the wayward wind,
too willing to carry your sweet load around.

I stood on the hill top,
wistfully thinking
that you will come and
take me within your soft folds
though I am a tree with deep running roots
that has become a restraining thing.

Freedom without any limit
gets you inebriated every minute,
your love for love,  makes you desirable
you live in the present, suspend thoughts on time to come
as it is hypothetical, you say.
You are in a hurry to roam
wherever lovers lead you one after the other
do you have an urge to dissolve and pour-
as water, without any remorse?

Do you know my  penitence for your love
on this hilltop is a true sacrifice?
My love for you doesn't bring anything
except my wilting hour after hour.
Let me be on your blue breast for moments
when my boiling love will seek
your shining center that melts, melts
we'd freeze as one, how long my darling?
Time would simply stand still
to a distance, i'd be transported,
where tree or cloud means nothing
we are an incessant rain lasting for ever.

"You have a beautiful smile baby
Why won't you smile for me?"
Is what my mother tells me
On a daily.
I am sorry but these days
It's been hard to get out of bed lately
I feel like I am by myself
And something has got ahold of me.

I know I am beautiful
But the media tells me otherwise.
So I try to conform
To attract attractive eyes
That's dressed behind
Conceited lies inside minds
That could never realize
We need to be ourselves.
Not what we see that is televised
Or plastered about
That make us have doubt
In ourselves.

You see, I battle these bipolar demons
They rest in my mind
And sometimes I can feel them scheming.
I wish I could enjoy the ambience
Of life
But they've robbed me of my happiness
And turned me into a *******.
They've distorted my truth
And robbed me of my youth.
Left me battered and bruised
And it's hard to figure out
What to do.

I know I'm not alone
But my mood tells me otherwise
The voices in my head won't stop
Telling me these demonic lies.
Showing me visions of my death
Right before my very eyes.
It's become a fantasy of mine
To see the crying faces
When they realize
They will no longer can see mine.

You see, I battle these bipolar demons
They rest in my mind
And sometimes I can feel them scheming.
I wish I could enjoy the ambience
Of life
But they've robbed me of my happiness.
Stripped me naked
And dressed me with sadness.
Thrown me in the depths  
Of sheer madness.

I know genuine love
Makes the *******
About face
But when it's absent
Or gone to waste.
That is when
They are back in my face.

You see, I battle these demons.
These **** demons.
Lord please rid me
Of my bipolar demons.

Have you met the Who-Gee Boo-Gee Man?
He scammed fig leafs in the garden,
And **** cloth in Ottoman.

     outside-in, inside-out; upside-down, right-side up

The Who-gee Boo-gee Man can cuss.
He offers snake oil, spins a tale,
So you feel smart, healthy and hale.

     from top to bottom, bottom to top

The Who-gee Boo-gee Man can't stop.
He swrawls with a Sharpie pen.

     right is left, left is wrong

That's the Who-Gee Boo-Gee song.

Consultation for now is free,
No hidden added extra fees:
You buy two, you get three.

     north to south, east to west

The Who-Gee Boo-Gee Man won't rest.

I've heard his feet are cloven;
The eyes are yellow, lips look swollen;
He has *******, wears silk- woven.
He sweats like water to the lowest level;
He's quicker than the slyest devil,
Selling hell, but we hear heaven;
Doing so twenty-four seven.

He photo-shops secret desires,
Twists truth-tellers into liars;
Artful, wily, scheming, subtle,
The Who-Gee Boo-Gee's a hungry jackal.

     today is the day, yesterday's late,
     tomorrow's a place that just won't wait

I met up with the Who-Gee Boo-Gee Man,
Peddling apples from my jardain.

You're not worthless.
But your actions exude it, worthlessness...
For anyone that could take the gentle, pristine heart, and make it spew purple-black hazes of vengeance, betrayal and loss is unworthy, unhappy, hateful and unwise.
But he still is not worthless.
I am finer, I am greater, I am better.
For you I will not lose my worth.
I have forgiven every last of your evils.
You violated me. You embarrassed me. You used me. You scared me.
And because of the many you's, I am learning my worth.
Hopefully someday you'll learn too.
That even you, with your heartless, lying, deceiving and scheming low self esteem, you o lost and ignorant soul, you are not worthless.

"Caught In A Hustle"

[Verse 1]
They say the odds against me, are crooked and impossible
Like I was born with a hole in my heart is an obstacle
I was left to die by the doctors, in the Children's Hospital
But I never lose hope, success is psychological
The world is volatile and the street is my education
Shaping the nation, like the blueprint of a mason
While Shawshank record deals get you ***** on occasion
So I'm focused on my economic situation
I'm like the little kids on TV that dig through the trash
I hustle regardless of the way you talk **** and laugh
A lot of ****** drop science but they dont know the math
Because their mind is narrower than the righteous path
It's funny how on the block ****** will **** you for cash
But never raise the gun and cry out "Freedom at last"
The cold war is over but the world is still gettin colder
Atlas walking through the projects with the hood on my shoulders
I would like to raise my children to grow to be soldiers
But then the general, would decide when their life would be over
So I work hard until my personality split
Like the black panthers, into the bloods and the crips
They said I would never be ****, but now I sit and reminice
Like Yeshua ben Yusef flippin through Genesis
Ignorance is venemous, and it murders the soul
Spreading like a virus running rampant, but out of control

[Hook]
So if I should ever fall and get caught in a hustle
Let them know that I died while I fought in a struggle
From the hoodrats to the rich kids lost in a bubble
Spray painting on the streets and at the subway tunnels
Write it down and remember that we never gave in
The mind of a child is where the revolution begins
So if the solution has never been to look in yourself
How is it that you expect to find it anywhere else

[Verse 2]
Immortal Technique in the streets, back on the hustle
cause three strikes will get you life for stuffin cracks in a duffle
Upstate behind steel gates intact in the scuffle
Razor blades stuck on the side of pencils, hacked to your muscle
But the emptiness is what bleeds you to death when it cuts you
And its the lawyers, not the inmates scheming to *******
Trying to fight the system from inside, eventually corrupts you
But thats what you get when you put a corporation above you
And it's the people that love you that seem to hurt you the most
Sometimes when they die you find yourself cursing their ghost
But you make success, nobody delivers your fate
Sometimes you give and you take
Since prehistoric vertibrates, crawled out of the lakes
And thats the truth about life
Or to do it to ghetto and your car, rims, and your ice
Because even though we survived through the struggle that made us
We still look at ourselves through the eyes of people that hate us
But I'm going to make it regardless of the ******* up charges
And semi-automatic barrages, that empty the cartridge
Post-traumatically scar kids that try to be brave
Because ****** backstab each other just to try to get paid
Turn cannibal like nights during the crusades
Afraid of responsibility; addicted to greed
Beating their girls purposefully losing a seed
As if we were bound to the destiny we used to recieve

[Hook]

I used to wonder (I used to wonder) about people who don't believe in themselves
But then I saw the way that they portrayed us to everyone else
That cursed us, then only see the worst in ourselves
blind to the fact the whole time we were hurting ourselves

I used to wonder (I used to wonder) about people who don't believe in themselves
But then I saw the way that they portrayed us to everyone else
That cursed us, then only see the worst in ourselves
blind to the fact the whole time we were hurting ourselves

I used to wonder [echo]

Reflecting disdainfully, remembering painfully,

upsetting, annoying, troublesome

Bickering, sarcastic, disputing, bombastic,

arrogant, conceited, unwelcome

Fastidious relations, private fixations,

foreboding, disturbing resentment

Silently scheming, nobody weeping,

selfish, unblinking, TRIUMPHANT!

He quietly appears so many years have passed smelling the amazing greener then life grass a potent filled with magic the invisible man he passed.
Splendor in the grass

Ehh Oh yuck someone
abandoned you
On the runway
He Grilled walked in
fashionable late
The head of his
mansion

You needed to
tolerate
Oh! Chuck
Full of gas
shattered_
her mind
with scars coming
toward her
like glass

The wake-up call
The lady of
all envy
Winning
an Emmy
Adelle
We could
of had it all
Another name
Amy
For the love,
Of a ghost
Like the
Candy Man
Invisible man
from
Ireland

Something got posted
seductively
Blindfolded hosted
Designed into his
Money hand
Powdered substance
poisoned her

Invisible man
Her eyes got
Smoked like
Poison Ivy
In the Army now
Please too much
Attention of green
Arabian in the Nile
Miles and miles
Navy to be seen
He was colored blind
Different eye
Brown in one and blue
Something hatched

Matchmaker  Ghost rider
Fiddler on the roof
We need a story writer
Like a horse
without a hoof
To neigh the right
stuff

I Sir "Infinitely" so
"Existentially"
Remarkably
Divinely
Ghostwriter
Her words were
blank
She is so genuine
Every other day
He was mine
The quiet man
Super shy
Another try
Valentine's day +*

Writing but not seeing
I love you until this day
Quiescently being forced
he entered emerged
I love you let's get
engaged
Beg your pardon
was not her
To be loved so sorry to be
changed
Like a stale piece

Her niece vintage
furniture more love
and peace
Quietly operation
tugged
Someone got flagged
That blind man
faced
And looked into
the  quiet man
On someone's 
body
The smells
like Moms
perfume her
exact tune
New Jersey Patch reader
"The Catcher in the Rye"
To weird the movie
Carrie
School can be strange
A bucket list of water
down your head
She walked

The Quiet man lips
No small talk
Ghost post bed
Not even one star
could be heard
The gas lamp
she tripped
Out of sight

She saw a face not to
be described

So inhibited like
endangered
species

The invisible man
loved her
But got his
vengeance on
anyone
that was too near her
People wanted so
much to
be her
Her force
indescribable

When someone was
clear to see
Extremely well visible
she didn't care to
know them

Her nose on the tip
baking with flour
Ghostly the hostess
of the most
But feeling his
energy the invisible
the man was
courting her so challenging

New flame "Procreating"

Hemming her long skirt
Her diary innocence
Being on her side
but scheming
Disguise home staging
From the ridiculous to the
subline

Her address
Send forget me knots
street
Only blind
people are the kind
you want to find

SOS  surrender or out
The other S Soulmate
Ghost
Hailed the Mary
The Quiet Man
John Wayne

The laundromat
Mack the knife
Invisible man
Inked his whole life
Waynes world
Born to be wild

The other man
Hit the metal
heavy music
fan
Drenched so humid
He was the Murad

Triangle mess
Shopping at London
Harrods
Let's hear it for
the girls or ((Gods))
The magical channeling
TV on the blink
Went right on his computer
All the quiet man linked

He finger waved by the world
Guinness drinking Heineken
beer
The ghost rider
Got grilled called upon
By Ron
College kid playing
Rugby
The good bad and
the Ugly
Clint Eastwood
stretched them out
like Gumby
Western gunshot slinger
He couldn't see the
Ghost rider
the
blank stares
Perky Rabbit Hares
All the negatives got
burned
Exorcist's heads twist
and shout eyes healed
about

Climbing the Jacks
of the shinning
Nowhere in the beauty of
Her heart gleaming

Took a blindfold call felt
somewhere but where?
But I couldn't see blinded
by stars
Over the rainbow, the skies
weren't blue
Being stalked by
someone you know

By the greater impossible
love
To be silent like she was
invisible
So naive at time feeble

Without an honorable
love of fee
Gone with the winding
shopping spree
Disworthy and sneaky
but for being
who or answers
Doctor Who?
Invisible man what
could he do

He was so flavorful
well balanced
strong nursed her well
and sturdy
Quiet man thinking in his
beloved study

She was no goodie
magical shoes
The Ghostwriter
left invisible
clues
More Quiet time
Lemonade time affair of a
Ghost man
Like Hannah and her sisters
Woody if he could
But he is a **** good writer
The Movies of NewYork
I am proud to say
I come from
Brooklyn NY

If lips could talk
pouty
Sensing something but why?
Hans Christian Anderson
Quiet man playing softly but
Killing me easily through the
Blind sighted window

The widows
War Veterans
True Hero My dad
World War 2
Wifes lies and fibs
Quiet leads to invisible
Heller Keller was so
fortunate
Like Fate, she was
the real
Mccoy, she could light
anyone's smile
with joy
The barbecue next season
So many years to reason
More gun control
Be more visible to others
Mothers and brothers
Have a heart of soul


Only the strong keep the
  fight
Just keep on trucking
Grill them show them
What you could write
Perhaps it's cool to be the
Ghostwriter
Not everyone likes
To see the clear picture
What is really taken

So what if people cannot read us
Somehow we are all blind that's
OK its a miracle how other people
Can make it the beautiful day


Of the next groundhog day
He was loving to be invisible
He wanted to keep it that way
So deep set her eyes
to die
Somehow talk could be cheap
And the shepherd of love loads

of sheep, silence is the best sleep

All in someones head so lovingly deep

Invisible but remarkable to be the person
you want to be or let's really look closer
it's not always rosier.

If I could, I would.
And if I would, I should.
Always wondering why others don’t make change
Before looking at myself and seeing I’m in the changing range
I’m more then capable.
To set chained people free, to disable
All the evil and the hurt,
All the bleeding and the dirt,
I’d pick up every single child,
Bring them back outside the wild
The one painted as far away,
Out of our sights, out of our way.
The people we have labeled as numbers and statistics
As if they don’t have lives and homes, seeming unrealistic.
The little girl I watched with pain on the television.
She watched her family members die, crying, just envision.
Walking on the rubble, as I watch her stumble,
She will be a woman before she hits the age of eleven.
The traumatizing scenes before her; the opposite of heaven.
Is she another number, too, without a life of love?
All this peace we say we want is like a murdered dove.
If I could feed her faith again, and teach her life is good,
Fill her stomach’s starving screams with love she understood, I would.
Add the mother on the street, holding her baby tight.
To protect him from the bombs flying, braving off the fright.
They all have futures bright as the morning sun at noon.
But before dawn is what they see, darkness a filled balloon.
My mother never had to face having her kids in danger
So why would I keep quiet when it’s a stranger?
I look at them and see the same face in the mirror.
If I could tell her he’ll be safe and so will she the same,
Nothing’s going to hurt them, not even their names.
Hand her keys of relief,
Slaughter beef in the streets,
Fill her stomach’s starving screams with love she understood, I would.
And to my brother in Peru, working as a slave
Fields built just for drugs, he’s ordered to behave
Before they cut his hands off, for misconduct, it’s that grave.
Working for pennies, the money is funny.
Revolution’s underway, so lock and load in any range leaving the world unsteady.
If I could tell him he’ll be free, to just wait and see,
The government won’t be mechanical, racist psychologically.
He’ll leave the land of too much distortion, and give him the peace that’s his portion, I would.
How can the light so bright make a man so evil like the times of medieval?
Cold war’s over but we just keeps getting colder
Like we’re filing invisible morals into empty folders
Can you even feel the truth until it comes your way?
Like players pray for hope,
It’s severe what the hopeless will do for play.
Keep shooting rockets at generic topics,
Until the lyrics hold weight unlike 2-D objects.
My people are hungry, tired and sweaty.
Dreaming of revolution looking at the machete.
Innocent children drowning in screams
And we can’t hear them; we’re not a part of the same team.
Acting like the army didn’t bring hell here.
For most people, pile on the blood and the fear.
When driving on a road, construction means we steer
But I’ll get back on track; life isn’t just for me before I die in remorse.
Fight for my lands with words like bullets, loaded with force.
Whatever we take in risk is our matter of course.
Pay attention to change, I know that I will.
Too many dollars down here, I have more than my fill.
So change I will, because my will is to change.
Quit dreaming, its illusions they’re scheming.
But I said I’d bring peace, so ***** the policing.
I said, if I could I would.
And if I would, I should.
Well, I can, so I will.
Make me a martyr, this is not a fire drill.
Make me a martyr. I’d do it still.
Make me a martyr, I’ll prove to you the charter.
Just make me a martyr.

Between the night and daylight,
     As twilight begins to shower,
Comes a lull in the day's preparations,
     Cherished as the Kittys' Hour.

I hear in the kitchen beside me,
     The patter of tiny feet,
Rumbles of varying motors
     With "meow's" gentle and sweet.

Leaping from counter with agile grace
     On my shoulder with a purr;
Sail grave Thomas and sweet Lady Jane,
     And Susan of golden fur.

A "meow," and then a long silence,
     I know by mischievous eyes,
They are scheming and musing together,
     To vanquish my weary sighs.

With sudden dash from the hallway,
     Tortie bounds into my arms!
Felines of all colours sit starring,
     Delighting me with their charms.

Frolicking with skillful ease,
     Tossing and batting their catnip-mouse;
If I run to escape, they surround me,
     They appear to overflow the house.

Suffocating me with their kisses,
     Furry paws patting my face;
And though they have torn the kitchen blinds,
     They dazzle me with their grace.

I hug you all close in loving arms,
     And will n'er let you depart,
Nor ****** you dears out to coyotes,
     For you each have won my heart.

And here shall you dwell forever,
     Cherished more each golden day;
Till this glad house fall into ruin,
     And I in dust shall decay.

                 **~Hilda~

Thus did the Trojans watch. But Panic, comrade of blood-stained
Rout, had taken fast hold of the Achaeans and their princes were all
of them in despair. As when the two winds that blow from Thrace—the
north and the northwest—spring up of a sudden and rouse the fury of
the main—in a moment the dark waves uprear their heads and scatter
their sea-wrack in all directions—even thus troubled were the
hearts of the Achaeans.
  The son of Atreus in dismay bade the heralds call the people to a
council man by man, but not to cry the matter aloud; he made haste
also himself to call them, and they sat sorry at heart in their
assembly. Agamemnon shed tears as it were a running stream or cataract
on the side of some sheer cliff; and thus, with many a heavy sigh he
spoke to the Achaeans. “My friends,” said he, “princes and councillors
Of the Argives, the hand of heaven has been laid heavily upon me.
Cruel Jove gave me his solemn promise that I should sack the city of
Troy before returning, but he has played me false, and is now
bidding me go ingloriously back to Argos with the loss of much people.
Such is the will of Jove, who has laid many a proud city in the dust
as he will yet lay others, for his power is above all. Now, therefore,
let us all do as I say and sail back to our own country, for we
shall not take Troy.”
  Thus he spoke, and the sons of the Achaeans for a long while sat
sorrowful there, but they all held their peace, till at last Diomed of
the loud battle-cry made answer saying, “Son of Atreus, I will chide
your folly, as is my right in council. Be not then aggrieved that I
should do so. In the first place you attacked me before all the
Danaans and said that I was a coward and no soldier. The Argives young
and old know that you did so. But the son of scheming Saturn endowed
you by halves only. He gave you honour as the chief ruler over us, but
valour, which is the highest both right and might he did not give you.
Sir, think you that the sons of the Achaeans are indeed as unwarlike
and cowardly as you say they are? If your own mind is set upon going
home—go—the way is open to you; the many ships that followed you
from Mycene stand ranged upon the seashore; but the rest of us stay
here till we have sacked Troy. Nay though these too should turn
homeward with their ships, Sthenelus and myself will still fight on
till we reach the goal of Ilius, for for heaven was with us when we
came.”
  The sons of the Achaeans shouted applause at the words of Diomed,
and presently Nestor rose to speak. “Son of Tydeus,” said he, “in
war your prowess is beyond question, and in council you excel all
who are of your own years; no one of the Achaeans can make light of
what you say nor gainsay it, but you have not yet come to the end of
the whole matter. You are still young—you might be the youngest of my
own children—still you have spoken wisely and have counselled the
chief of the Achaeans not without discretion; nevertheless I am
older than you and I will tell you every” thing; therefore let no man,
not even King Agamemnon, disregard my saying, for he that foments
civil discord is a clanless, hearthless outlaw.
  “Now, however, let us obey the behests of night and get our suppers,
but let the sentinels every man of them camp by the trench that is
without the wall. I am giving these instructions to the young men;
when they have been attended to, do you, son of Atreus, give your
orders, for you are the most royal among us all. Prepare a feast for
your councillors; it is right and reasonable that you should do so;
there is abundance of wine in your tents, which the ships of the
Achaeans bring from Thrace daily. You have everything at your disposal
wherewith to entertain guests, and you have many subjects. When many
are got together, you can be guided by him whose counsel is wisest-
and sorely do we need shrewd and prudent counsel, for the foe has
lit his watchfires hard by our ships. Who can be other than
dismayed? This night will either be the ruin of our host, or save it.”
  Thus did he speak, and they did even as he had said. The sentinels
went out in their armour under command of Nestor’s son Thrasymedes,
a captain of the host, and of the bold warriors Ascalaphus and
Ialmenus: there were also Meriones, Aphareus and Deipyrus, and the son
of Creion, noble Lycomedes. There were seven captains of the
sentinels, and with each there went a hundred youths armed with long
spears: they took their places midway between the trench and the wall,
and when they had done so they lit their fires and got every man his
supper.
  The son of Atreus then bade many councillors of the Achaeans to
his quarters prepared a great feast in their honour. They laid their
hands on the good things that were before them, and as soon as they
had enough to eat and drink, old Nestor, whose counsel was ever
truest, was the first to lay his mind before them. He, therefore, with
all sincerity and goodwill addressed them thus.
  “With yourself, most noble son of Atreus, king of men, Agamemnon,
will I both begin my speech and end it, for you are king over much
people. Jove, moreover, has vouchsafed you to wield the sceptre and to
uphold righteousness, that you may take thought for your people
under you; therefore it behooves you above all others both to speak
and to give ear, and to out the counsel of another who shall have been
minded to speak wisely. All turns on you and on your commands,
therefore I will say what I think will be best. No man will be of a
truer mind than that which has been mine from the hour when you,
sir, angered Achilles by taking the girl Briseis from his tent against
my judgment. I urged you not to do so, but you yielded to your own
pride, and dishonoured a hero whom heaven itself had honoured—for you
still hold the prize that had been awarded to him. Now, however, let
us think how we may appease him, both with presents and fair
speeches that may conciliate him.”
  And King Agamemnon answered, “Sir, you have reproved my folly
justly. I was wrong. I own it. One whom heaven befriends is in himself
a host, and Jove has shown that he befriends this man by destroying
much people of the Achaeans. I was blinded with passion and yielded to
my worser mind; therefore I will make amends, and will give him
great gifts by way of atonement. I will tell them in the presence of
you all. I will give him seven tripods that have never yet been on the
fire, and ten talents of gold. I will give him twenty iron cauldrons
and twelve strong horses that have won races and carried off prizes.
Rich, indeed, both in land and gold is he that has as many prizes as
my horses have won me. I will give him seven excellent workwomen,
Lesbians, whom I chose for myself when he took ******—all of
surpassing beauty. I will give him these, and with them her whom I
erewhile took from him, the daughter of Briseus; and I swear a great
oath that I never went up into her couch, nor have been with her after
the manner of men and women.
  “All these things will I give him now down, and if hereafter the
gods vouchsafe me to sack the city of Priam, let him come when we
Achaeans are dividing the spoil, and load his ship with gold and
bronze to his liking; furthermore let him take twenty Trojan women,
the loveliest after Helen herself. Then, when we reach Achaean
Argos, wealthiest of all lands, he shall be my son-in-law and I will
show him like honour with my own dear son Orestes, who is being
nurtured in all abundance. I have three daughters, Chrysothemis,
Laodice, and lphianassa, let him take the one of his choice, freely
and without gifts of wooing, to the house of Peleus; I will add such
dower to boot as no man ever yet gave his daughter, and will give
him seven well established cities, Cardamyle, Enope, and Hire, where
there is grass; holy Pherae and the rich meadows of Anthea; Aepea
also, and the vine-clad slopes of Pedasus, all near the sea, and on
the borders of sandy Pylos. The men that dwell there are rich in
cattle and sheep; they will honour him with gifts as though he were
a god, and be obedient to his comfortable ordinances. All this will
I do if he will now forgo his anger. Let him then yieldit is only
Hades who is utterly ruthless and unyielding—and hence he is of all
gods the one most hateful to mankind. Moreover I am older and more
royal than himself. Therefore, let him now obey me.”
  Then Nestor answered, “Most noble son of Atreus, king of men,
Agamemnon. The gifts you offer are no small ones, let us then send
chosen messengers, who may go to the tent of Achilles son of Peleus
without delay. Let those go whom I shall name. Let Phoenix, dear to
Jove, lead the way; let Ajax and Ulysses follow, and let the heralds
Odius and Eurybates go with them. Now bring water for our hands, and
bid all keep silence while we pray to Jove the son of Saturn, if so be
that he may have mercy upon us.”
  Thus did he speak, and his saying pleased them well. Men-servants
poured water over the hands of the guests, while pages filled the
mixing-bowls with wine and water, and handed it round after giving
every man his drink-offering; then, when they had made their
offerings, and had drunk each as much as he was minded, the envoys set
out from the tent of Agamemnon son of Atreus; and Nestor, looking
first to one and then to another, but most especially at Ulysses,
was instant with them that they should prevail with the noble son of
Peleus.
  They went their way by the shore of the sounding sea, and prayed
earnestly to earth-encircling Neptune that the high spirit of the
son of Aeacus might incline favourably towards them. When they reached
the ships and tents of the Myrmidons, they found Achilles playing on a
lyre, fair, of cunning workmanship, and its cross-bar was of silver.
It was part of the spoils which he had taken when he sacked the city
of Eetion, and he was now diverting himself with it and singing the
feats of heroes. He was alone with Patroclus, who sat opposite to
him and said nothing, waiting till he should cease singing. Ulysses
and Ajax now came in—Ulysses leading the way -and stood before him.
Achilles sprang from his seat with the lyre still in his hand, and
Patroclus, when he saw the strangers, rose also. Achilles then greeted
them saying, “All hail and welcome—you must come upon some great
matter, you, who for all my anger are still dearest to me of the
Achaeans.”
  With this he led them forward, and bade them sit on seats covered
with purple rugs; then he said to Patroclus who was close by him, “Son
of Menoetius, set a larger bowl upon the table, mix less water with
the wine, and give every man his cup, for these are very dear friends,
who are now under my roof.”
  Patroclus did as his comrade bade him; he set the chopping-block
in front of the fire, and on it he laid the **** of a sheep, the
**** also of a goat, and the chine of a fat hog. Automedon held the
meat while Achilles chopped it; he then sliced the pieces and put them
on spits while the son of Menoetius made the fire burn high. When
the flame had died down, he spread the embers, laid the spits on top
of them, lifting them up and setting them upon the spit-racks; and
he sprinkled them with salt. When the meat was roasted, he set it on
platters, and handed bread round the table in fair baskets, while
Achilles dealt them their portions. Then Achilles took his seat facing
Ulysses against the opposite wall, and bade his comrade Patroclus
offer sacrifice to the gods; so he cast the offerings into the fire,
and they laid their hands upon the good things that were before
them. As soon as they had had enough to eat and drink, Ajax made a
sign to Phoenix, and when he saw this, Ulysses filled his cup with
wine and pledged Achilles.
  “Hail,” said he, “Achilles, we have had no scant of good cheer,
neither in the tent of Agamemnon, nor yet here; there has been
plenty to eat and drink, but our thought turns upon no such matter.
Sir, we are in the face of great disaster, and without your help
know not whether we shall save our fleet or lose it. The Trojans and
their allies have camped hard by our ships and by the wall; they
have lit watchfires throughout their host and deem that nothing can
now prevent them from falling on our fleet. Jove, moreover, has sent
his lightnings on their right; Hector, in all his glory, rages like
a maniac; confident that Jove is with him he fears neither god nor
man, but is gone raving mad, and prays for the approach of day. He
vows that he will hew the high sterns of our ships in pieces, set fire
to their hulls, and make havoc of the Achaeans while they are dazed
and smothered in smoke; I much fear that heaven will make good his
boasting, and it will prove our lot to perish at Troy far from our
home in Argos. Up, then, and late though it be, save the sons of the
Achaeans who faint before the fury of the Trojans. You will repent
bitterly hereafter if you do not, for when the harm is done there will
be no curing it; consider ere it be too late, and save the Danaans
from destruction.
  “My good friend, when your father Peleus sent you from Phthia to
Agamemnon, did he not charge you saying, ‘Son, Minerva and Juno will
make you strong if they choose, but check your high temper, for the
better part is in goodwill. Eschew vain quarrelling, and the
Achaeans old and young will respect you more for doing so.’ These were
his words, but you have forgotten them. Even now, however, be
appeased, and put away your anger from you. Agamemnon will make you
great amends if you will forgive him; listen, and I will tell you what
he has said in his tent that he will give you. He will give you
seven tripods that have never yet been on the fire, and ten talents of
gold; twenty iron cauldrons, and twelve strong horses that have won
races and carried off prizes. Rich indeed both in land and gold is
he who has as many prizes as these horses have won for Agamemnon.
Moreover he will give you seven excellent workwomen, Lesbians, whom he
chose for himself, when you took ******—all of surpassing beauty.
He will give you these, and with them her whom he erewhile took from
you, the daughter of Briseus, and he will swear a great oath, he has
never gone up into her couch nor been with her after the manner of men
and women. All these things will he give you now down, and if
hereafter the gods vouchsafe him to sack the city of Priam, you can
come when we Achaeans are dividing the spoil, and load your ship
with gold and bronze to your liking. You can take twenty Trojan women,
the loveliest after Helen herself. Then, when we reach Achaean
Argos, wealthiest of all lands, you shall be his son-in-law, and he
will show you like honour with his own dear son Orestes, who is
being nurtured in all abundance. Agamemnon has three daughters,
Chrysothemis, Laodice, and Iphianassa; you may take the one of your
choice, freely and without gifts of wooing, to the house of Peleus; he
will add such dower to boot as no man ever yet gave his daughter,
and will give you seven well-established cities, Cardamyle, Enope, and
Hire where there is grass; holy Pheras and the rich meadows of Anthea;
Aepea also, and the vine-clad slopes of Pedasus, all near the sea, and
on the borders of sandy Pylos. The men that dwell there are rich in
cattle and sheep; they will honour you with gifts as though were a
god, and be obedient to your comfortable ordinances. All this will
he do if you will now forgo your anger. Moreover, though you hate both
him and his gifts with all your heart, yet pity the rest of the
Achaeans who are being harassed in all their host; they will honour
you as a god, and you will earn great glory at their hands. You
might even **** Hector; he will come within your reach, for he is
infatuated, and declares that not a Danaan whom the ships have brought
can hold his own against him.”
  Achilles answered, “Ulysses, noble son of Laertes, I should give you
formal notice plainly and in all fixity of purpose that there be no
more of this cajoling, from whatsoever quarter it may come. Him do I
hate even as the gates of hell who says one thing while he hides
another in his heart; therefore I will say what I mean. I will be
appeased neither by Agamemnon son of Atreus

It bothers me to see friends at odds
bros over hoes
then they change the odds
dudes start acting like broads
what's the odds?
cover girls - making up,
acting; odder that odd
use to have your back
you trip, they drop the ball
just to watch you fall
karma willing; get’em all
the hands of time circling
until fate makes the call.

hatasha hullah - dey
parablah nuh parrah
vey, okay, huttah, ulay
narralah, narrah, nutay

That interim between dreams and consciousness, that momentary lapse of reality
When slave children don't howl and the wild animals lay tamed in sun traps, weary

Your scattered thoughts betray reality
and you
question everything - now waking
Smiling chief, chirping loud
Your body gathered and prepared
under torchlight in dusty tents
Ingesting iboga and that old familiar numbness overpowers
You've been here for a life now, looking back on your life now
hatasha hullah - dey
vey, okay, huttah, ulay

Witch doctor, tribal medicine, fanning smoke from a wild fire
flashing imagery akin to memories of when life was decadent
you remember the taste of stray rain drops on your upper lip on muggy British summer days
and waking on a beach, bloodied as the sand at your feet is the next recollection, how powerful
the act of reflection, as you recall the mirrors of the sea and your torn body weakened and inept
The gathered village chant in unison and splinter groups fall off beat only to rejoin intermittently

Remember the Burmese boy far from home on the Gabon shoreline
and he informs you of your own death,
and asks you why do you breathe still?

hatasha hullah - dey
parablah nuh parrah
vey, okay, huttah, ulay
narralah, narrah, nutay
Oh laa, ley ley lahh ley lah
ley hatasha hullah - dey

On some beaten path lost in Angola you carried two packs, food for the world
but you fell starving and spluttered on the rock that looked like your home
Rebels run wild in jeeps black as night, your supplies strewn on rubble grounds
- hatasha hullah - dey
Taken in a flurry, twittering birds in far off trees betray your trust and fly away
in the opposite direction, and the juggernaut jeep catches air over uneven tracks
You were scared and crying under blindfolded eyes and captors jeered, captivated
- parablah nuh parrah
An orchestrated mass of military garbed children with rifles gather you abruptly
when the car stopped with a rumble
And tied to rusted rigs you're gagged and stripped, bloodied your face now
as they beat you and laugh
- vey, okay, huttah, ulay
Congolese giant man, sword in hand and grimacing through bared teeth
Making bold gestures and speaking some inscrutable language
You cannot answer and fear is now in control, you shiver in the ghastly draft
On failure to answer you must be beaten, your back is lashed, repeatedly
- narralah, narrah, nutay
You remain silent but cry in disparity, after shrieks of horror finally escape your barren lips
Through stinging eyes you assess the surroundings after hours of torture when they retire
to their leather beds of shame and innocence faltered, try and remember how to live
- Oh laa, ley ley lahh ley lah
Months must have passed, survive off insects and morning dew on the muddy floor
This African wasteland, time forgotten, child soldiers and lack of humanity is trivial
Always scheming, recollect the armament and through door-way shack trapped light
you see a clear path, and it is good
- ley hatasha hullah - dey
The pinnacle nightfall anticipated arrives, and your skinny wrists released now easily
(their faltering lack of knowledge and abundant braggadocio betray them)
AK laying in moonlight illumination, a sign of God perhaps, but experience proves otherwise
(How cruel the dreams you had of such a gift)
When they spot you leaving, the night lights up, wild crackle of gunfire, heart beats, tribal drums
(To massacre children, such proficiency, the dreams were mindful)
No lapse in concentration, you may ruminate on objective morality in due time
(Crawling through blood and bodies of children, so pure, cadavers tell lies)
The clearing ahead in giant trees, you run and don't look back, praying for no pursuit
(Another genocide committed by a white man, justified perhaps this once)
Weeks pass and you falter only to slurp rain water from Congolese sipping cups the leaves
(Blacking out somewhere in the Republic, or on a border or who cares, as you died long ago)
- vey, okay, huttah, ulay
  ley hatasha hullah - dey

To awake from hallucinogen dreams, and cruel memories linger, it's painful you agree
Witch doctor still sings, lonesome now as the tribe apply ointments and silently pray
The fire still dances to some incredible song and your scars redacted, physical and other
How incredible the mind feeling fuzzy and that insane dream is just that - a dream
You black out again, a common occurrence but upon waking you're free, no tribe exists
With a sheepskin rucksack full of cassava, plantains and sugarcane and cocoa beans
Months pass and you make it to the North, when you leave Africa your body is new
and your mind is stable, no lingering cognizance or frightful thoughts of a forgotten ordeal

You arrive in Turkey, to partake in ***** with nimble girls
and I see you floundering on silken sheets,
My memories were fresh as the nymph on your lap
I write to you a note, and you turn alabaster, moon faced being
I was there always and saw every moment
Your ideals on morality are hazy at best, and to your behest I detest all that you stand for
Is your afterlife so pure, now that bodies litter the forest floor
and do you believe that I am not (a) God
and is this mere poetry, or an indictment of your folly and a warning to all whom engage
but do you not also see that every reaction was an action taken to your original action
and when all is said and done, do you no realise that from the day you were born
you were born a God and that God was born dead
and this is just that interim between expiration and consciousness, that momentary lapse of reality
when slave children don't howl and the wild animals lay tamed in sun traps, weary

hatasha hullah - dey
parablah nuh parrah
vey, okay, huttah, ulay
narralah, narrah, nutay
hatasha hullah - dey
parablah nuh parrah
vey, okay, huttah, ulay
narralah, narrah, nutay
hatasha hullah - dey
parablah nuh parrah
vey, okay, huttah, ulay
narralah, narrah, nutay
Oh laa, ley ley lahh ley lah
ley hatasha hullah - dey

Thus then did they fight as it were a flaming fire. Meanwhile the
fleet runner Antilochus, who had been sent as messenger, reached
Achilles, and found him sitting by his tall ships and boding that
which was indeed too surely true. “Alas,” said he to himself in the
heaviness of his heart, “why are the Achaeans again scouring the plain
and flocking towards the ships? Heaven grant the gods be not now
bringing that sorrow upon me of which my mother Thetis spoke, saying
that while I was yet alive the bravest of the Myrmidons should fall
before the Trojans, and see the light of the sun no longer. I fear the
brave son of Menoetius has fallen through his own daring and yet I
bade him return to the ships as soon as he had driven back those
that were bringing fire against them, and not join battle with
Hector.”
  As he was thus pondering, the son of Nestor came up to him and
told his sad tale, weeping bitterly the while. “Alas,” he cried,
“son of noble Peleus, I bring you bad tidings, would indeed that
they were untrue. Patroclus has fallen, and a fight is raging about
his naked body—for Hector holds his armour.”
  A dark cloud of grief fell upon Achilles as he listened. He filled
both hands with dust from off the ground, and poured it over his head,
disfiguring his comely face, and letting the refuse settle over his
shirt so fair and new. He flung himself down all huge and hugely at
full length, and tore his hair with his hands. The bondswomen whom
Achilles and Patroclus had taken captive screamed aloud for grief,
beating their *******, and with their limbs failing them for sorrow.
Antilochus bent over him the while, weeping and holding both his hands
as he lay groaning for he feared that he might plunge a knife into his
own throat. Then Achilles gave a loud cry and his mother heard him
as she was sitting in the depths of the sea by the old man her father,
whereon she screamed, and all the goddesses daughters of Nereus that
dwelt at the bottom of the sea, came gathering round her. There were
Glauce, Thalia and Cymodoce, Nesaia, Speo, thoe and dark-eyed Halie,
Cymothoe, Actaea and Limnorea, Melite, Iaera, Amphithoe and Agave,
Doto and Proto, Pherusa and Dynamene, Dexamene, Amphinome and
Callianeira, Doris, Panope, and the famous sea-nymph Galatea,
Nemertes, Apseudes and Callianassa. There were also Clymene, Ianeira
and Ianassa, Maera, Oreithuia and Amatheia of the lovely locks, with
other Nereids who dwell in the depths of the sea. The crystal cave was
filled with their multitude and they all beat their ******* while
Thetis led them in their lament.
  “Listen,” she cried, “sisters, daughters of Nereus, that you may
hear the burden of my sorrows. Alas, woe is me, woe in that I have
borne the most glorious of offspring. I bore him fair and strong, hero
among heroes, and he shot up as a sapling; I tended him as a plant
in a goodly garden, and sent him with his ships to Ilius to fight
the Trojans, but never shall I welcome him back to the house of
Peleus. So long as he lives to look upon the light of the sun he is in
heaviness, and though I go to him I cannot help him. Nevertheless I
will go, that I may see my dear son and learn what sorrow has befallen
him though he is still holding aloof from battle.”
  She left the cave as she spoke, while the others followed weeping
after, and the waves opened a path before them. When they reached
the rich plain of Troy, they came up out of the sea in a long line
on to the sands, at the place where the ships of the Myrmidons were
drawn up in close order round the tents of Achilles. His mother went
up to him as he lay groaning; she laid her hand upon his head and
spoke piteously, saying, “My son, why are you thus weeping? What
sorrow has now befallen you? Tell me; hide it not from me. Surely Jove
has granted you the prayer you made him, when you lifted up your hands
and besought him that the Achaeans might all of them be pent up at
their ships, and rue it bitterly in that you were no longer with
them.”
  Achilles groaned and answered, “Mother, Olympian Jove has indeed
vouchsafed me the fulfilment of my prayer, but what boots it to me,
seeing that my dear comrade Patroclus has fallen—he whom I valued
more than all others, and loved as dearly as my own life? I have
lost him; aye, and Hector when he had killed him stripped the wondrous
armour, so glorious to behold, which the gods gave to Peleus when they
laid you in the couch of a mortal man. Would that you were still
dwelling among the immortal sea-nymphs, and that Peleus had taken to
himself some mortal bride. For now you shall have grief infinite by
reason of the death of that son whom you can never welcome home-
nay, I will not live nor go about among mankind unless Hector fall
by my spear, and thus pay me for having slain Patroclus son of
Menoetius.”
  Thetis wept and answered, “Then, my son, is your end near at hand-
for your own death awaits you full soon after that of Hector.”
  Then said Achilles in his great grief, “I would die here and now, in
that I could not save my comrade. He has fallen far from home, and
in his hour of need my hand was not there to help him. What is there
for me? Return to my own land I shall not, and I have brought no
saving neither to Patroclus nor to my other comrades of whom so many
have been slain by mighty Hector; I stay here by my ships a bootless
burden upon the earth, I, who in fight have no peer among the
Achaeans, though in council there are better than I. Therefore, perish
strife both from among gods and men, and anger, wherein even a
righteous man will harden his heart—which rises up in the soul of a
man like smoke, and the taste thereof is sweeter than drops of
honey. Even so has Agamemnon angered me. And yet—so be it, for it
is over; I will force my soul into subjection as I needs must; I
will go; I will pursue Hector who has slain him whom I loved so
dearly, and will then abide my doom when it may please Jove and the
other gods to send it. Even Hercules, the best beloved of Jove—even
he could not escape the hand of death, but fate and Juno’s fierce
anger laid him low, as I too shall lie when I am dead if a like doom
awaits me. Till then I will win fame, and will bid Trojan and
Dardanian women wring tears from their tender cheeks with both their
hands in the grievousness of their great sorrow; thus shall they
know that he who has held aloof so long will hold aloof no longer.
Hold me not back, therefore, in the love you bear me, for you shall
not move me.”
  Then silver-footed Thetis answered, “My son, what you have said is
true. It is well to save your comrades from destruction, but your
armour is in the hands of the Trojans; Hector bears it in triumph upon
his own shoulders. Full well I know that his vaunt shall not be
lasting, for his end is close at hand; go not, however, into the press
of battle till you see me return hither; to-morrow at break of day I
shall be here, and will bring you goodly armour from King Vulcan.”
  On this she left her brave son, and as she turned away she said to
the sea-nymphs her sisters, “Dive into the ***** of the sea and go
to the house of the old sea-god my father. Tell him everything; as for
me, I will go to the cunning workman Vulcan on high Olympus, and ask
him to provide my son with a suit of splendid armour.”
  When she had so said, they dived forthwith beneath the waves,
while silver-footed Thetis went her way that she might bring the
armour for her son.
  Thus, then, did her feet bear the goddess to Olympus, and
meanwhile the Achaeans were flying with loud cries before murderous
Hector till they reached the ships and the Hellespont, and they
could not draw the body of Mars’s servant Patroclus out of reach of
the weapons that were showered upon him, for Hector son of Priam
with his host and horsemen had again caught up to him like the flame
of a fiery furnace; thrice did brave Hector seize him by the feet,
striving with might and main to draw him away and calling loudly on
the Trojans, and thrice did the two Ajaxes, clothed in valour as
with a garment, beat him from off the body; but all undaunted he would
now charge into the thick of the fight, and now again he would stand
still and cry aloud, but he would give no ground. As upland
shepherds that cannot chase some famished lion from a carcase, even so
could not the two Ajaxes scare Hector son of Priam from the body of
Patroclus.
  And now he would even have dragged it off and have won
imperishable glory, had not Iris fleet as the wind, winged her way
as messenger from Olympus to the son of Peleus and bidden him arm. She
came secretly without the knowledge of Jove and of the other gods, for
Juno sent her, and when she had got close to him she said, “Up, son of
Peleus, mightiest of all mankind; rescue Patroclus about whom this
fearful fight is now raging by the ships. Men are killing one another,
the Danaans in defence of the dead body, while the Trojans are
trying to hale it away, and take it to wind Ilius: Hector is the
most furious of them all; he is for cutting the head from the body and
fixing it on the stakes of the wall. Up, then, and bide here no
longer; shrink from the thought that Patroclus may become meat for the
dogs of Troy. Shame on you, should his body suffer any kind of
outrage.”
  And Achilles said, “Iris, which of the gods was it that sent you
to me?”
  Iris answered, “It was Juno the royal spouse of Jove, but the son of
Saturn does not know of my coming, nor yet does any other of the
immortals who dwell on the snowy summits of Olympus.”
  Then fleet Achilles answered her saying, “How can I go up into the
battle? They have my armour. My mother forbade me to arm till I should
see her come, for she promised to bring me goodly armour from
Vulcan; I know no man whose arms I can put on, save only the shield of
Ajax son of Telamon, and he surely must be fighting in the front
rank and wielding his spear about the body of dead Patroclus.”
  Iris said, ‘We know that your armour has been taken, but go as you
are; go to the deep trench and show yourelf before the Trojans, that
they may fear you and cease fighting. Thus will the fainting sons of
the Achaeans gain some brief breathing-time, which in battle may
hardly be.”
  Iris left him when she had so spoken. But Achilles dear to Jove
arose, and Minerva flung her tasselled aegis round his strong
shoulders; she crowned his head with a halo of golden cloud from which
she kindled a glow of gleaming fire. As the smoke that goes up into
heaven from some city that is being beleaguered on an island far out
at sea—all day long do men sally from the city and fight their
hardest, and at the going down of the sun the line of beacon-fires
blazes forth, flaring high for those that dwell near them to behold,
if so be that they may come with their ships and succour them—even so
did the light flare from the head of Achilles, as he stood by the
trench, going beyond the wall—but he aid not join the Achaeans for he
heeded the charge which his mother laid upon him.
  There did he stand and shout aloud. Minerva also raised her voice
from afar, and spread terror unspeakable among the Trojans. Ringing as
the note of a trumpet that sounds alarm then the foe is at the gates
of a city, even so brazen was the voice of the son of Aeacus, and when
the Trojans heard its clarion tones they were dismayed; the horses
turned back with their chariots for they boded mischief, and their
drivers were awe-struck by the steady flame which the grey-eyed
goddess had kindled above the head of the great son of Peleus.
  Thrice did Achilles raise his loud cry as he stood by the trench,
and thrice were the Trojans and their brave allies thrown into
confusion; whereon twelve of their noblest champions fell beneath
the wheels of their chariots and perished by their own spears. The
Achaeans to their great joy then drew Patroclus out of reach of the
weapons, and laid him on a litter: his comrades stood mourning round
him, and among them fleet Achilles who wept bitterly as he saw his
true comrade lying dead upon his bier. He had sent him out with horses
and chariots into battle, but his return he was not to welcome.
  Then Juno sent the busy sun, loth though he was, into the waters
of Oceanus; so he set, and the Achaeans had rest from the tug and
turmoil of war.
  Now the Trojans when they had come out of the fight, unyoked their
horses and gathered in assembly before preparing their supper. They
kept their feet, nor would any dare to sit down, for fear had fallen
upon them all because Achilles had shown himself after having held
aloof so long from battle. Polydamas son of Panthous was first to
speak, a man of judgement, who alone among them could look both before
and after. He was comrade to Hector, and they had been born upon the
same night; with all sincerity and goodwill, therefore, he addressed
them thus:-
  “Look to it well, my friends; I would urge you to go back now to
your city and not wait here by the ships till morning, for we are
far from our walls. So long as this man was at enmity with Agamemnon
the Achaeans were easier to deal with, and I would have gladly
camped by the ships in the hope of taking them; but now I go in
great fear of the fleet son of Peleus; he is so daring that he will
never bide here on the plain whereon the Trojans and Achaeans fight
with equal valour, but he will try to storm our city and carry off our
women. Do then as I say, and let us retreat. For this is what will
happen. The darkness of night will for a time stay the son of
Peleus, but if he find us here in the morning when he sallies forth in
full armour, we shall have knowledge of him in good earnest. Glad
indeed will he be who can escape and get back to Ilius, and many a
Trojan will become meat for dogs and vultures may I never live to hear
it. If we do as I say, little though we may like it, we shall have
strength in counsel during the night, and the great gates with the
doors that close them will protect the city. At dawn we can arm and
take our stand on the walls; he will then rue it if he sallies from
the ships to fight us. He will go back when he has given his horses
their fill of being driven all whithers under our walls, and will be
in no mind to try and force his way into the city. Neither will he
ever sack it, dogs shall devour him ere he do so.”
  Hector looked fiercely at him and answered, “Polydamas, your words
are not to my liking in that you bid us go back and be pent within the
city. Have you not had enough of being cooped up behind walls? In
the old-days the city of Priam was famous the whole world over for its
wealth of gold and bronze, but our treasures are wasted out of our
houses, and much goods have been sold away to Phrygia and fair Meonia,
for the hand of Jove has been laid heavily upon us. Now, therefore,
that the son of scheming Saturn has vouchsafed me to win glory here
and to hem the Achaeans in at their ships, prate no more in this
fool’s wise among the people. You will have no man with you; it
shall not be; do all of you as I now say;—take your suppers in your
companies throughout the host, and keep your watches and be wakeful
every man of you. If any Trojan is uneasy about his possessions, let
him gather them and give them out among the people. Better let
these, rather than the Achaeans, have them. At daybreak we will arm
and fight about the ships; granted that Achilles has again come
forward to defend them, let it be as he will, but it shall go hard
with him. I shall not shun him, but will fight him, to fall or
conquer. The god of war deals out like measure to all, and the
slayer may yet be slain.”
  Thus spoke Hector; and the Trojans, fools that they were, shouted in
applause, for Pallas Minerva had robbed them of their understanding.
They gave ear to Hector with his evil counsel, but the wise words of
Polydamas no man would heed. They took their supper throughout the
host, and meanwhile through the whole night the Achaeans mourned
Patroclus, and the son of Peleus led them in their lament. He laid his
murderous hands upon the breast of his comrade, groaning again and
again as a bearded lion when

His money isn't free.
On the first date,
He picked you up in a Phantom
which haunted your inner gold-digger
Digging to harvest stardom, but
His money isn't free.
He's wearing a Rolex
You're wearing a Swatch wrist
Hoping to switch wrists.
It's much too sad that
His money isn't free.
He's harvested his cotton
And you're ready to rob him
But his ex keeps calling
Little Miss Lee Kaching!
She can sense your scheming;
she screams through the speakerphone,
"His money isn't free!"
Now he's seen
your blades, your spades, your grenades
hidden in the dark of your shade.
He's grabbing those keys
Leaving his seat saying,
"My money isn't free!"
Now you're left alone
With your flip phone,
Not even an iPhone.
And the waiter comes by,
Drops the bill and says,
"This meal isn't free."

Relaxing peacefully on her lap
Her fingers ran through his hair,
And,speaking soft, soothing words
Waves of calm caressed him there.

Delilah used her feminine wiles,
Honeyed words dripped from her lips,
A sense of serenity enveloped his soul
From her tender fingertips.

The secret of his amazing strength
Was reluctantly revealed to her ears
Leading to open the floodgates
Of times of sorrow and tears.

On her lap he continued to rest,
Unawares of her subtle scheming;
Carefully his luxuriant locks were cut
With scissors sharp and gleaming.

Little could Samson have known
The intentions of her black heart,
Her cunning and overpowering charm
Hit him as with a poisoned dart.

Samson’s strength suddenly left him,
As weak as a kitten he became,
Delilah had truly duped him,
Although it seemed to her a game.

As hard as granite was her heart,
No true feelings of love were there
Else, why would she hurt him
With no chance of any repair?

His life had a very sad ending,
Of this most people have heard,
It’s recorded for our perusal
Within the pages of God’s Word.

The lesson to be learned
From this ghastly episode
Is that disloyalty is as acid
That the heart can corrode.

Like a wilting yellow lily
Under the sun’s searing heat,
Samson’s strength melted
Into a pool of utter defeat.

Remember this we should
And be careful how we act
Lest our deceptive hearts
This drama we re-enact…

I couldn't see, but water
reflecting, it danced from the sun
black cormorant dove under stars and pearls of sea
for silvery fish to fill his beak

a small boat I rowed
long through water weeds, cat tail reeds
paddles cut the diamond day sparkling

sandy shores mollusk strewn
rippled shells shimmering blue
oysters bubbled, shallows breathing
seagull smiled watchful scheming

a beach fire to warm the night
the dusky sun, no longer to keep
soon the moon between the trees
radiant, it wakes the stars from sleep

(Inspired by article below)

I.

Continuity
your filibuster egg of sand
dazzled curiosity
with creaky shell of hints
heaped upon the tedium
of knowledge's unfurl undeterred
by encyclopedic impatience

Assurances of rip(Van Winkl)ed
economics shooed paper strings of
revelation like anarchy-powered
taxes summoning a foreword
to anachronistic campaigns
of environmental friendliness

II.

Meanwhile years
have been filed down to flashes of
chronology for continuity's organic rebus

However long it took
the economic karma to fall into the
abodes of hedonistic pharaohs
it was instant

Skin that ruled behind the constitution
of allergic breath
bailed on the bones against their most
sublime intentions

Limbo-treading landlords
huddled in their mummified freeze
after breadline bashers scolded them
with the spoils of a new brand
of pyramid scheming

Robbers of the coffin palaces
stole the intimations of identity
theft from today

Immortality and freedom
were compelled to share a meaning
like estranged siblings
or bound dynasties

I(a).

Abydos
how you coyly toyed with us
with a diversion bordering on monolithic

04 23 14

The gods let this baby be born
As a thing they could reclaim
One day with cruel delay
Boils from black plague desecrated her skin
Right before her second birthday
A lesson on how a life can be stolen
Shortly after it begins
Or how we're without hope to the whims
Of the bored gods before us

To save the last of his kin
The father implored the science
Of the village sage and physicians
He was turned down at every door
Their medicine was not meant
To save the poor nor destitute
  
Resolute in his faith
there were good gods who gave grace
Unto children without sin
He next beseeched healing power
from varied institutions of the miracle men
Preyed over by priests, rabbis, and sheikhs
He sacrificed and spent
every cent he had saved
And their churches took his tithes
But did not take her pain away

Grief striken, defeated, with no recourse
Liquid sedated in a pub,he feels remorse
" our child will join you soon,
my dearest departed wife"
a pubhand overhears him saying,
"you can still save your daughter's life!"

"listen as I entail
The hidden trail you must trek
before the antelucan hour strikes
Her magiks are only ripe
in the dead of the night
Nestled within that loury forest
Her cabin obscured from mortal sight
Resides an occultist of such cunning:
A bog witch named Blight"

The pubhand helped him to more mead for free
Unprompted he then proceeds to lead
The father through that place he now seeks
-claiming his shift had come to an end
As they drew closer to the cabin
Something happened most curious and queer
The pubhand turned into a black cat,
Scurried off into the brush- to dissappear

Influenced by fermented spirits in his blood
He pays heed to their whisper
-Her cabin door is ajar
And they beckon he enter

Now in Blight's place of power with his offspring.

"oh hapless father when you sing,
How the gods do smile
You worshipped the very ones
who wish to **** your only child
they're vile and malcontent
All they know are delinquent tendencies
They'll torture her spirit for sport,
When she dies you see
But by my incantation
That needn't come be"

"drain the blood of a bat
with deviant intent
Recant the name of your gods;
You now resent  
The blood will brew all the while
-in my elixir
When the little girl drinks:
it will fix her
It will turn her pale white
You will fear she has perished
She will stalk this earth
Forever parched with ravenous thirst
And a stark aversion to sunlight
NOW YOU MUST CHOOSE:
A dead child!
...or a creature of the night?"

The father did as directed
He did not second guess
Unaware of the sorceresses subtle gesticulations
-Were creating a hex
He's blind to machinations set in motion long ago
The wiccan pours her will into a binding circle
As the child drinks the concoction slow

His daughter's vitality returns
The plague is receding
Fangs sprang forth
as she bites into her father's neck
Blood trickles down in specks
The girl keeps feeding
And feeding

all gods once assembled to fight Blight
The powerful mad goddess would direct
her sadistic debauchery at their human subjects
-human praise appealed to the god's vanity-
Her godhood sealed by the Parthenon
in a prison comprised of flesh
Divinity bound;
betrayed by other gods
There were too many for her to resist
A former god trapped in mortal form
Blight's punishment was to simply exist

For 300 years Blight had waited for a night like this
An ancient curse she could wield
As revenge for imprisonment
Finally obtaining the last two ingredients:
A child that was pure
And a father's consent

A direct strike of lightning sets Blight's cabin ablaze  
still in her binding circle, she's indifferent
And unphased
From threats of fearful deities who see
She's about to set her nocturnal creations free
Undeterred by their show of force
she releases her two vamps
with a flick of her wrist and no remorse

Iightning strikes within an inch of Blight
She leers at the heavens
Much defiance and mirth
In the distance a village screams
As her fiends burn it down to the dirt

The Parthenon replies:
Bellowing cumulonimbus clouds
decries her decision
Such chaos;
now her scheming REALLY has their attention
The.Ones.Who.Watch. Above

See all.

Throughout panoptic thrones they peer
pained fury for this village culling:
Blight jeers
Sanctimonius thunderstorm brings fervent rain
Their vain,pious tears-
The skies can not contain

The gods cry.

"Oh, how i wonder what will worship gods then,
When humanity dies?"

Luminous surges of lightning bolts strike
Tries to smite this emboldened bog witch
...Yet, in spite of their wish,
she somehow stays unhurt...

Blight smirks.

At the round table I will feast upon the scraps of humble beginnings while the king flings suffering from his trusty silver spoon encrusted with family jewels at the bumbling fools babbling satirically about the absurdity of his rules.

The royal court's still serving sentences to the remnants of the members of the Pent-up Armageddon Club getting their writing fingers bent up as penance, thus rendering them useless as wordsmiths so now the quill permanently sticks to the well all dried and crusty with no sense of purpose.

I fumble with the remote for control of this vice that tightens around my larynx, suppressing my sense of choice. I'm sorry, that's ad-vice suppressing my voice. No, I'm not mad, that's just my voice. You're really in no place to talk to anyone about respect, boys.

The movie is cringe-worthy, but the one playing out in the room is even  harder to watch. It's like an episode of Friends written by a monkey drinking scotch. Look at this! Look at me! Digest all of these empty calories! Check this post! It's super funny! Watch this video! I can stream it to the T.V! Look at the screen! Look at the screen! Look at the screen! My life is a meme!

It's taking every ounce of strength I have in me not to ******* scream.
Your plot is spoiled and your scheme is boiling over.
She said what he said that she said that he said that she's dead in his bed and I just can't pretend that it's okay to breathe
When you excuse your actions with pop-culture morality and plausible deniability.

I think I could know
How you might feel about her.
I can see it,
The way she makes you smile.
But honestly, you arn't the same
Beside her.
Waiting for boy's night out
Ain't ever gonna be my style.

I remember when you were a rebel,
Just a renegade without a plan.
I can see, somehow, she's got you dreaming
Of playing house.
Think of what you're doing, brotherman!

Can't you see beyond her glamour?
She's cast a wicked spell on you.
That thing you feel for which you clamor,
It ain't true love; don't think she loves you, too.

I know it's not my place to tell you that she's posing,
And posting up inside your bed to get Some of your dough.
Who am I but some kind of little tag along?
But I can see the hurt she's going to put you through...

I'm sorry, Dude.
I don't mean to be a blocker.
Not that anything else could stand
Between you and her,
The pixie with her fairy dust.
All your priorities have been re-arranged.

Every time we meet she has to be a part of it.
It's not my business, but I just don't want to see.
When the lies unfurl,
I don't want you to be mad at me,
For having been the one to have tell you all about her scheming ways.

She knows I know.
She's as sly as night is shady.
When she whispers your name after dark
With her lilt,
You don't care a thing about your pride.
You give it all to her.
Everything you've got to give
Before she even ask for it.
You give it all to her,
Everything, Everything,
Everything to her...

So, I'm giving up
The Times we spend together.
I know right now you're chasing after your high.
I'll still love you
As much as any brother.
I'll be here for you whenever you find the time.

I'm sorry, Dude.
I don't aim to be a blocker.
Not that anything else could stand
Between you and her,
The pixie with her fairy dust.
All your priorities have been re-arranged.

I think I could know,
How you might feel about her.
I can't blame you,
But open up your eyes.
A girl like her
Is never going to be faithful.
Not to you, or anyone she knows.

So, I'm giving up
The Times we spend together.
I know right now you're out chasing your high.
When you hurt, just know that I hate it for you.
Maybe, next time, you won't brush everything else aside.

One day I'll be out strolling.
Or maybe pool, or bowling.
There'll come a time
When the binds
Of fruitless love no longer keep.
One day we'll fly
To far off never ever land.
And leave this past behind.

There'll come a day,
And come what may,
We will pick back up where we let it go,
That's how we roll.

I think I could know
How you feel about her.
What made you think
That's something I couldn't know.
Yes, I will miss you,
Don't want to kiss you,
No ****, Bro,
I love you.
But for now,
I need to let you go.

I'm sorry, Dude.
I don't aim to be a blocker -
Not that anything else could stand
Between you and her,
The pixie with her fairy dust.
All your priorities have been re-arranged.

pre-scriptum:
                no polyglot would experience this sort of "paradox", it's not even a paradox of a "paradox" off a 'paradox', bilingualism has its methodology, as Kant could explain, extracting his methodology off the page into a meticulous day-to-day activity... the sage / if not the clock of Königsberg... i can imagine this obsessive-compulsive mini-rituals that would always escape the throng on a Sunday... the Sunday eucharist wasn't enough for the man, there were so many rituals to take care of, having famously not married, while Kierkegaard having: infamlusly not married... i appreciate their strategy... reading them while also reading Nietzsche, these two gentlemen, by comparison, if not in work, certainly in life gravitate above the popularity of Nietzsche... why? Nietzsche appears as an incel... fan boy, are you? *******... but you need some sort of structure if you're not going to marry... Kant found his daily routine an eternal mass... so many routine daily tasks seemingly mundane to some, can enlarge themselves to become out of proportion pillars of preserving sanity in face of standing before god and a post-life scenario... hell is not so much a place of suffering... i can tell you of the most "mild" form of suffering... an extrovert becoming drunk... constant talking, lack of purpose as in: lack of direction culminating in: lack of concentration, pandemonium is the heaven of a flickering light for a moth... again... this always bewilders me... why did Sisyphus have to drag the stone up the hill? was there some overlooking demon with a whip looking over him? couldn't he just... sit, and concentrate on the stone, create pleasure, from thinking? is that really so odd... i suppose so... given the grand h'american export of the freedom of speech... few people will find pleasure in thinking... Kierkegaard, which Nietzsche didn't read... said: why do people concern themselves with the freedom to speak, when they already possess a freedom to think? is this, me speaking, because it's the internet and it's a public space... surely i don't have an eloquent speech, i speak too quickly, i sometimes mumble, this is an extension of thinking, it's not an invitation to speak... rhetoric is an art designated for people who joked about philosophy and took sophistry seriously... i don't like Nietzsche... i still think of the man as the esteemed bachelor... apparently being freed from women allowed him to write his Critique with the sort of clarity that comes, in a cascading form, at the end, in the methodology of transcendence... which reads, like a page-turner tabloid narrative... once the formalities / difficulties are established... i'm no polyglot though, but i do succumb to some eccentricities... as any entrenched bilingual might... notably linguistics... how there are no diacritical markers in english, but there are: in other latin script based languages of continent europe... how i've never heard of dyslexia outside of the realm of spoken english... how orthography does not exist in the english language, which creates all these silly english questions of: what is reality, what is perception... with no orthography: metaphysics runs rampant... and "another" thing... i really can't read a philosophy book in english, i always have to revert back to my mother tongue, to Polish... i can't read a philosophy book in english... i looked at Plato once in english... the aesthetic is lost on me... but the Irish know of the Slavic aesthetic when it comes to dialogue, i.e.:

(a) the english standard for dialogue weaved into a narrative -
"i want this," she said,
   "as i want that," he said...
(b) the slavic standard for dialogue weaved into
a narrative...
- so?
- what?
- will we try to speak without
   the reiteration of who said what?
- we could.
- no, we should.
smoother... James Joyce noted this,
casual - no point adding descrptions of
how the puppet-master lost power
over his puppets with " " ditto markers of
dialouge of a: he, he really did say...
no, not he, the narrator...

   i simply cannot read the genre of philosophy in english, too much easy access points of pop culture with that umbrella overreach... matrix, memes, darwinism, blah blah... too much focus on images and very little focus on words, esp. etymology, that other component of history that focuses on: a universal application of words, beside status king, or status pauper... both the word bread can succumb to the king's tongue, as to the pauper's... but with an origin story? anything beside **** similis, the monkey, will do me just fine... then again... there's no one strand of monkey to begin with... a bit like looking up your own *** for too long, you decide that there's a coherent, "bigger picture" and it begins with chimp- and ends with -rilla... doesn't anyone else just tire of looking up a monkey *** to peddlestool the importance of darwinism for so long? i mean... at least chemistry is a playground among the science... there's no worry for a beginning... there's only play... no... i can't read a philosophy book in english... i have to read it in Polish... which is also a... january, february, march, april, may, june, july, august, september, october, novermber, december... you'd think i'd be able to recite you the months in my mother tongue... styczeń, luty, marzec, kwiecień, maj, czerwiec, listopad, grudzień... english alphabet? a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, m, n, l, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v... **** gets scrambled... pointless rubrics... give me the practical! - i've just picked up a copy of Plato's republic... straight away i know that i'm finding my gensus in Plato rather than Aristotle...

    och ty, pijaku z psim pyskiem,
                  a za to z sercem jelenia...

    oh you, drunkard with a dog's snout,
                           nonetheless, with a stag's heart...

again, Nietzsche: Kant is an idiot, Plato is boring...
perhaps in German, for a German,
looking for Germany while roaming parts of Italy...
well... Plato, really seems appealing in
high slavic (western), the conversations breed
a sense of clarity, about fog, about darkness,
or any akin metaphor to boot...
                           between Nietzsche's maxims,
i'll take la Rochefoucauld succinct observations
before i succumb to pop-nietzsche modern
cult meme fucklords...
                          Roger Moore... prime example
of a bachelor, Kant, the same, Kierkegaard...
as for myself? if i married?
  would i still have the same sort of access to new
music, that i currently enjoy?
   for god's sake... i have to fall asleep while
listening to music, if i spend a day without
at least 5 hours of music on the headphones
   i start to lose the plot...
              my drinking is merely a side-note...
a p.s., given that now i'm a reformed drinker?
having cut my dosage in half...
     i'm still a music *****...
   women don't like music junkies...
                   and when my ex- started reading me
a qustionnaire from a russian cosmopolitan
magazine on the train to moscow from
st. petersburg... i thought i was going to shoot
myself in the head...
             perfect girlfriend this,
perfect girlfriend that...
             bob dylan saved me...
        but not for long...
                         women aren't feline...
at least with a cat you can ignore it...
                  he's pretending to be a solipsist and
you pretend to be: caring...
                 food on the table,
a clean litter tray... besides that?
                                                 fuckoffski!
     and i write this from a perspective of endearment,
nothing beats the zenith moments in a hetrosexual
relationship... the odd date...
                 talking impromptu... making food...
***, ***... ***... *** *** ***... ***... ***...
       but the petty arguments...
   the attention to detail...
                   god... anniversaries?
  i don't even celebrate my own birthday!
i fake celebrating christian holidays...
                    today is today, tomorrow:
that's tomorrow's concern...
           o.k. england winning the cricket world cup...
but that's a celebration with a calendar!
it's not regulated by hormones and
the impossibility for nostalgia...
                 i tried the relationship,
i tried the ***...
                       i had to visit a brothel for
the anaesthetic with regards to the past...
  i needed to visit the brothel to also visit
the butchers...
                               i needed to become meat,
to **** meat... and stop concerning myself over looks:
they only brought me trouble...
like i was walking with a "telepathic"
c.c.t.v. crow on my shoulder...
                             so i put on the weight i lost...
and... at that point? it was liberating...
mind you... if you want to lose weight?
  bicycle and swimming... no gym...
fruit for your last meal during the day...
eat anything you want...
  but losing weight? and all that bulimia,
classical roman bulimia:
training the oesophagus with first *******
into the mouth... then with no fingers
down the mouth?
                beauty... is not worth the trouble
when you really tempt yourself with the expansive
temporal canvas...
21 was my peak... after that...
                     voluntary celibacy...
                   a **** here and there...
            but no... it's not for me...
                    i guess i looked up to the right sort
of men... with regards to staying a bachelor...
to be highly invested in something,
   like Kant in a transcendent methodology...
like Kierkegaard invested in the arts...
like Nietzsche invested in waiting for
the fruition of his prophesies...
                      you have to be born to want to live
the simple happy life...
                  the "expected" life...
       the whole Hiob motto of: once taken,
can be regained blah blah...
                        it needs to have trans-generational
breeding involved...
                   a list of expectations...
                social-pressures and for that matter:
intrinsic socially-cohesive-stratification...
i'm a ****** in England...
             and... that puts as much social pressure
on me as... a chihuaha barking does
to an Alsatian's yawn... that's the stereotype...
the smalls dogs bark... the big dogs bite...
                 oh sure, when i visit my grandparents
back "home"... the older generation put
the pressure questions to the test:
even women from Warsaw...
   so where's your girlfriend?
to the old folk i reply: well i can't exactly force
a woman to be with me...
to the women of Warsaw?
   i'm practially a monk...
                        why?
          you don't really want to be aged 21...
forced with a scenario of:
happily dating, presumably reciprocrating trust
with regards to contraception,
being forced to reply to the scenario:
i think i'm pregnant... my my...
   and we were only 6 months apart after
the break-up, living in two different cities...
em...
                     on a lighter note...
what's the most fun you can have in Kenya?
   sitting on the balcony, in the shade...
feeding rascal macaques anything from nuts...
to bags of sugar... you, two macaque monkeys,
one balcony... the indian ocean frothing beyond...
it doesn't require a genius to figure out
what's worth cherishing without having
to feel obliged to the whole of humanity for...
offspring - many already figured this out before me:
you learn to give birth to your self (reflective,
and yes, not yourself - the reflexive)...
   which brings death to having to stand on its head...
... isn't Sisyphus the son of Atlas?
            couldn't Sisyphus just sit beside the stone
and... well yeah: think up the philosopher?

.em... looking back at the british empire, and the loud-mouth former colonial people... by god, i've never seen such leeches, i've never seen a people, so proud of being colonialißed! what's there to be proud of?! looks like in a post-colonial world, these former colonial busy-bodies had to, had to: step up and move their markers for Aladdin being performed in the West End... *******...  never in the history of the world, were post-colonial people endowed with so much pride, the whole m'ah bwee'dish *******... to counter herr zeppelinmann with the pakistani in the p.s. framework of the british empire... rotherham... ring a pakistani blue?! have a guitar on y'ah?! see... i don't like these former colonial states, with their people migrating to england, having their overlord say it now, say it clear bollocking... i don't mind a top hat, tux donning ******* giving me directions... but when a ****- does it?! sorry... i'm so sorry... will you please excuse me?! i just don't like *******, i don't like the sort of people who celebrate being colonial subjects, esp. after the whole post-colonial celebration of "libertion"... i don't like ****** / pakis who have to find their "past" by playing the cricket ball of, "the former" colony! i hate copper skinned ******* of ****- origins! former colonial raj-vizier... how can you breed these sort of people, who find pride in being under colonial power?! the **** didn't understand freedom, only understood it when being subject to its lack?! well... so much for english women... i guess they were only going to go for pakistani grooming gangs... drowning in the ganges... i have as much of jesus christ on the cross in me, as i have plenty and enough of pontius pilate's worth of soap to mind the next few years; never in my life would i have to witness the former colonißed to bribe their way, into an acceptance "speech" methodology... the ****- to fable the englishman for his, "tea"... no conquered people, no colonißed people should ever glorify their conquerers or colonißers... i guess the british achieved a double subversion... why do the ****- (stanis) still play cricket... i don't want to know... i'm new here... but... but... when a ****- attempts to displace a european from europe? that's my breaking point... i don't like being displaced from europe... the next ****- that will? well... the obvious target, a northern english teenager girl readied for grooming. i said! next ****- that tries to displace an european from europe... well... i guess.. given the power of the current politicians... nothing! ha ha!

well, with the e.u. article x, y and z...
herr zensor just flew over
London and dropped a bomb
from his zeppelin,
             because?
         two year ago,
       a teenager, girl, aged 13,
downloaded some materials
regarding self-harm...
              now the english government
is implicating regulations,
it will regulate social media usage,
mind you: ***** 'arry was pushing
the agenda all along...
   never mind the competent users...
just tackle the problem
with the addicts...
    oh look: no ******, no alcohol...
ms. amber: i'm sorry, we've failed,
we punched "the agenda"
of a blank canvas too far,
    we're going to have to double down,
for a while, so we can just
survive and have this sort
of a punching-bag of a blank
canvas readied for us...
               so the government will come
in and regulate,
       come on, 13 years old,
but the rising queer epidemic of
premature depression in the youth?
    while the parents do not
implement internet safety
   for their children,
        no block filters...
                like blocking pornographic
sites,
      so the infiltration came
            from within the supposed
safety-net sites?
           ****... i was exposed to
rotten.com by word of mouth at
school...
                           just when the internet
launched with that whole
dial-up modem,
    chris rock in lethal weapon
moment talking about old telephones...
and people bemoaned e.u.
articles...
         there have to be consequences...
people should / companies
should be taken into account...
     what about the *******
  who sold me chemically enhanced
marijuana?
            well of course:
   better a guilty man walk free,
than an innocent man become imprisoned...
that logic is still kinda flimsy
for me...
                 i don't know why...
   but it just is...
    surely there are parental filters
for what a child can and cannot see
on the internet...
                 when i was first exposed
to horse on woman *******?
       em...
         is there anything honest to think
about, at this point?
          maybe that's why i decided
to "ghost" around 200 fwends on fb.,
i figured...
        **** this pseudo-voyeurism
of what people want me to see...
    i've invested a decent amount of years
and settled for the 13K poem / doodle count...
and some pictures...
   none of them saved on a personal
drive...
         why would i stash the content,
hide it, when i want people to peruse...
'it's always dark before the dawn',
sorry, i don't know how much
of a ****-******* optimist i have to be...
before a stoic cynicism grinds me
to a halt of:
                   "branching out"...
              i came here for the punching bag
of a blank canvas...
              i never came for the fake
sycophancy or some count of numbers...
i came here, for an outlet...
      it was either this,
                     or a punching bag...
and you almost sense that this whole
farce of "national sovereignty"
is about to be dropped into the *******
and flushed...
       because... it will all become
                             "too inconvenient"...
oh they'll stall... until the european elections
take place...
                   and there's a u.k.
                        (probably the only time
where an N does't come between
vowels)...
                they're wriggling themselves
out... public: 1 vote...
                parliament: i've lost count...
it's not even akin to rats jumping ****,
more like a maggot **** in a pit...
                        that's what a cynic is:
a realist...
                         if i'm wrong, i'm wrong...
but...
              on several occassions
i haven't been wrong...
           and you just have to watch for
that glee in the eyes of channel 4 journalist
anchors...
     i know that glee in the eyes...
it's a glee of hope...
              a sly variation of hope...
               it's also a certainty imbued
               with a certainity-expectation;
thank god i didn't use the video medium...
no passive watchers,
      at least with writing...
certain sacrifices have to be made. / / / / / / / / / /
/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / /

a "p.s.": well of course i'm not happy
with the news coming from today,
mind you: ever spot a woodland pigeon?
god, aren't they plump?
               bloated *******,
they always seem well fed by the forest...
a pair nested in a tree in my garden,
only yesterday, i picked up two
almost translucent offspring of theirs,
thrown out of the nest,
   the bride and groom
               decided they were sick,
weak...
                  they did look weak...
     death stared back at me,
          what once was animate,
lying there, among the stones, inanimate...
what a strange sight...
            do i believe in god?
            well... tell me...
   what is the driving force that coordinates
hearbeats, the functions of the stomach,
intestines, liver, kidney and lungs?
the categorical imperative split of the brain:
thinking, memory, imagination?
the bank of pathologies?
              tell me, what is the universal
1: nth term functions of the brain / 1 (divided
by 1),
                 the heartbeat / 1,
              the liver's function(s) / 1...
              the stomach's function / 1...
the pancreatic function / 1...
           i sometimes wonder:
  i own bones only in light of the thin
skinned extentsions associated with
fingers and tooes...
   sometimes this sort of thinking helps...
to "fake ignorance",
in order to rediscover awe...
         as if a genesis story...
to be the first...
        you never actually know what you will find...
sometimes there's no point being caged
in all the advancements of knowledge,
of certainity we are presented with
on the secular altar,
            ****! i can't even begin to comprehend
how i managed to clamour out from
beneath the eisenvorhang...
    a brief interlude... and straight back under
the siliziumvorhang...
            i guess i need to sleep the better dues
to pass this day...
           it was expected though,
i was, after all... sending out an S.O.S.,
     wattpad... what is it?
              teens wet silly with poetry
associated with no messy love,
mostly girls...
              YA novelties and novellas...
side projects...
               again: vampires, warewolves,
zombies, blah blah: yawn a year later...
         teen girls: sensitive as
daffodils, but as soon as a presence
comes along: little scheming modliszkas
   (mantises) - since daddy would not
approve...
              i discovered marquis de sade
in my teens: thank **** that i did...
i wished for an exoskeleton,
i moved past it, into lizard skin,
until my skin started resembling
an oyster shell hardness...
                     you snooze, you loße...
i only saw the trilogy once,
in the waterstones of Greenwich Village
in London, when i was doing some roofing
for a housing project...
i only saw the trilogy once...
i only bought Joris-Karl Huysmans's
Là-Bas once... i should have bought
the two other books...
  since i never saw them again...
  unlucky me... having succumbed to the sterotype
of the magpie stealing silver spoons...
the cover...
   artwork by aubrey beardsley:
                        'of neophyte and how the black art
was revealed to him by the fiend Asomuel'
   (the pall mall magazine, june 1893)...
on amazon.com you either get a chance
to purchase this book, or:
Against Nature (a rabours)...
    but there's a trilogy behind Là-Bas...
zee fwench: sorry, and not sorry,
the english can be grand poets,
but when it comes to prose?
                they're not even sniffing
the toes of the french...
                what happened to woodland pigeon
coos today?  wattpad.com,
2015...             the same for me...
an outright ban... because some girl
decided to be offended by me cutting off
a conversation with her: wish her a good life...
and i really out so much effort into that page...
zip it shrimpy: cut off, little richard
on the guillotine... cut!
                well... i was clued into
the world of 'olapoesía.com,
           hallopoesia.com
                       sveikidzeja.com (lithuanian...
dzieje? happenings, events, in ******)...
          and just my luck...
      leave a harmless comment in an in-group,
in a hive?
              how the nazis were not exactly
mongols, or the first christians who
burned down the library of alexandria,
when notre dame burned...
      when the blitz of london...
and how st. paul's "miraculously" survived...
and i said: i'm pretty sure the people
in command said to the luftwaffe squadron
about to bomb london:
you drop a single bomb on st. paul's:
firing squad...
           they were nazis: but sure as ****
they weren't the people of the siberian steppe!
so hellopoetry.com,
  2019, suspension from may until december 2019...
but unlike wattpad...
  i still have my account!
   and guess who's digging trenches, right now?
poetfreak.com and minds.com are
step-overs...
why did i delete my 200+ fwends off of
facebook.com and reduced it to
3 random strangers?
          eh?
                   as much as i abhor darwinism
poking its head through to give
every single existential explanation...
i have to side with darwinism on this point:
a defensive modus operandi...
lie low...
          pretend to be dead...
                   i knew the censorship storm
was coming back in 2015...
and this current banning of woodland pigeon
coos banning?
     i'm sort of happy...
but not for the sort of reasons stemming
from the ban...
     i can finally spread the "love"!
           i finally know what it feels like,
for someone who liked my work...
         being cut off from my content...
frankly... it feels great!
                   i can finally entertain my perspective
with a pinch of empathy...
sympathy is already here:
since it happened to me back in 2015,
and in early 2019...
         now for the 3rd time lucky
on the platforms i already mentioned...
but like this hindu woman said to me...
1st time is an honest mistake,
2nd time is a lesson in learning...
3rd time? there's nothing for you to learn...
and that's of course in reverse:
of me being banned.
                         after all...
if marquis de sade is still with us?!
                 marquis de sade...
                              i knew herr zensor was
coming...           but i didn't exactly
expect to climb from under the iron curtain,
to be draped over with the silicon curtain...
and these people know they're taking away
our former playground,
our youth center,
                       well...
                           but at least i didn't make
passive content akin to a video...
         if they really want to ban me a third
time...
       i'm glad someone took the effort
to read my work...
   saves them the time ageing toward granny
age, resorting to binging on harlequin
romance novels.

p.s.

you've actually caught me in my berserker
drinking mode... i'll just spew...
and spew as i must, i never expected
the "useful idiots" to comply to what my thinking
didn't prescribe them to do...
even hegel once pointed out:
something about 3D chess,
a thinking man, with pawns of willing
actors... i never liked hegel...

                  hegel has become too much
of a crucifix, a bookmark,
of what and where, "things" went wrong...
i hate bookmarked people...
kant isn't bookmarked...
         all the slander that nietzsche offered him,
as some repetitive jargon booster,
with the sort of a bachelor lifestyle
he greatly admired: rooted in Königsberg...
****** worked like clockwork...
his predictability was the great deception...
forget shuffling ideas and whatever
like a northern semite...
weren't the vikings the semites
of the north? restless creatures,
constantly displaced? weren't they?

mind you... eh...
     you know how many necromancers
actually exist?
   you ever read a book by jean-paul sartre?
james joyce? stendhal? dumas?
sienkiewicz?
      you sure you're not
a necromancer?
                it's not an exactly
illustrious title to hold...
             when reading the books
of the departed, aren't you invoking
their living presence, into the current storm
of affairs?
  sure as **** it's not a spectacular "title"
to hold, is it?
           to think: one is more likely
to cite the dead, having "risen" from
their grave, that one is to make
   "compensations" with the living...
   when journalism ****** politics...
and the sort of admired journalism,
akin to all the president's men...
died...
                a slower death than the traversing
speed of a snail...
   like that other quote beside
hegel:         the terrible...
                   has already happened.
the holocaust, chernobyl...
   that has already happened...
               awaiting what could ever be
worse: is but akin to the sword of Democles...
it's hanging in the air,
   blood-thirty,
  like the talking heads of
the french aristocracy, once the guillotine
chop happens... gagging for "free speech"
in a basket...
what is mary antoinette just said:
let them have croissants?!
    fat fake cake binges would...
with a snap of the fingers... be over...
still... the english crumpet...
      tyson fury vs. manny pacquiao
    (the obvious choice of crumpet,
and the croissant getting battered...
akin to a french toast,
               soaked in beaten eggs)...

you read any book by a dead person,
you're a necromancer...
             i'm a necromancer...
                 you're a necromancer...
the dead arrive at your head,
have a ******* with your thinking,
then leave,
you continue,
   in your own right,
and in their right: of mutating their
original thought...
          that lost ambition of narrative,
transcending any and all
moral 'oughts...
                    try me after an hour
spent with a ******* doing nothing
but kissing her:
just, because, "on a whim",
i forgot to trim my ***** hair...
                stealing kisses from prostitutes
isn't exactly easy...
all that pretty woman dogma...
     **** above a kiss...
          well... "yeah"... in reality?
                   i'm thinking about three things
right now... growing a heard long enough
to reach my heart...
   bonsai: in both the tree botanical form
and a feline form of a shrunken tiger
akin to a maine **** cat...
   and a pagoda...
                      don't ask me why...
i'm good at su doku puzzles... mahjong...
really **** on the crossword puzzle scale...
hence? random words just enter my mind
and i need an ars poetica impromptu
to lodge them into.

p.p.s.
i already know what the inquiring man would
or could ever do with a child,
to inquire about his own development as
a child, to find the: dot dot dot the missing
answers, to see for himself as he developed
into an adult, or, worse, to project his own failings
onto the child, child genius tiger mums team
alpha-bravo... child prodigy gehennah...
it's almost a psychological fetish for some,
to bind oneself to the canvas of a child,
better off with a cat, or a dog if that's your
"thing"... at least you won't be hurting anyone...
worse still: the marquis de sade ******
scenario... i still have memories from when
i was 4 years old... Ganesha must be looking
over me: the stereotype? elephants' memory,
which is as long as its trunk...
      "conundrum": if an adult male can fathom
his child: himself at the age of 4...
if he can fathom a metaphorical foetus,
why would he have to procreate,
to produce a d.n.a. mongrel to satiate his
curiosity further?
      besides that... if society was once overtly
religious, moralistic...
today's society is overly-psychologised...
i hate psychological stereotypes,
everyone is this part-time hobby-psychologist...
             i don't exactly require a biological
part-replica of myself to preserve at least
one thought with origin and end within
the confines of my self...
       i'm not exactly prone to utter patriachal
proverbs that encompass whole ethnic groups...
maxims or categorical imperatives
cater for individuals...
                   not the masses...
i'd have to be a patriarch to utter proverbs as
a way to gather the brood of my own
sow and subsequent harvest...
to be so obscure,
    to be so... concerned with lineage...
                   you have to be born with the facets
of necessarily ensuring that future generations
are to make the same mistakes...
           that's why i would never trust western
neo-atheism... d.n.a. as the only future blah blah...
         sure... if you can lodge a thought
into d.n.a. and receive the token of finding both
self and consciousness within such claustrophic automaton confines,
"somewhere down the line"...
      much older generations would have told you...
that's in the fables, the mythos, the temporal crux
and crossroads... time doesn't give a donkey's *******
about your "rational", scientific materialism's worth
of continuum...
                         etc.

Now the gods were sitting with Jove in council upon the golden floor
while **** went round pouring out nectar for them to drink, and as
they pledged one another in their cups of gold they looked down upon
the town of Troy. The son of Saturn then began to tease Juno,
talking at her so as to provoke her. “Menelaus,” said he, “has two
good friends among the goddesses, Juno of Argos, and Minerva of
Alalcomene, but they only sit still and look on, while Venus keeps
ever by Alexandrus’ side to defend him in any danger; indeed she has
just rescued him when he made sure that it was all over with him-
for the victory really did lie with Menelaus. We must consider what we
shall do about all this; shall we set them fighting anew or make peace
between them? If you will agree to this last Menelaus can take back
Helen and the city of Priam may remain still inhabited.”
  Minerva and Juno muttered their discontent as they sat side by
side hatching mischief for the Trojans. Minerva scowled at her father,
for she was in a furious passion with him, and said nothing, but
Juno could not contain herself. “Dread son of Saturn,” said she,
“what, pray, is the meaning of all this? Is my trouble, then, to go
for nothing, and the sweat that I have sweated, to say nothing of my
horses, while getting the people together against Priam and his
children? Do as you will, but we other gods shall not all of us
approve your counsel.”
  Jove was angry and answered, “My dear, what harm have Priam and
his sons done you that you are so hotly bent on sacking the city of
Ilius? Will nothing do for you but you must within their walls and eat
Priam raw, with his sons and all the other Trojans to boot? Have it
your own way then; for I would not have this matter become a bone of
contention between us. I say further, and lay my saying to your heart,
if ever I want to sack a city belonging to friends of yours, you
must not try to stop me; you will have to let me do it, for I am
giving in to you sorely against my will. Of all inhabited cities under
the sun and stars of heaven, there was none that I so much respected
as Ilius with Priam and his whole people. Equitable feasts were
never wanting about my altar, nor the savour of burning fat, which
is honour due to ourselves.”
  “My own three favourite cities,” answered Juno, “are Argos,
Sparta, and Mycenae. Sack them whenever you may be displeased with
them. I shall not defend them and I shall not care. Even if I did, and
tried to stay you, I should take nothing by it, for you are much
stronger than I am, but I will not have my own work wasted. I too am a
god and of the same race with yourself. I am Saturn’s eldest daughter,
and am honourable not on this ground only, but also because I am
your wife, and you are king over the gods. Let it be a case, then,
of give-and-take between us, and the rest of the gods will follow
our lead. Tell Minerva to go and take part in the fight at once, and
let her contrive that the Trojans shall be the first to break their
oaths and set upon the Achaeans.”
  The sire of gods and men heeded her words, and said to Minerva,
“Go at once into the Trojan and Achaean hosts, and contrive that the
Trojans shall be the first to break their oaths and set upon the
Achaeans.”
  This was what Minerva was already eager to do, so down she darted
from the topmost summits of Olympus. She shot through the sky as
some brilliant meteor which the son of scheming Saturn has sent as a
sign to mariners or to some great army, and a fiery train of light
follows in its wake. The Trojans and Achaeans were struck with awe
as they beheld, and one would turn to his neighbour, saying, “Either
we shall again have war and din of combat, or Jove the lord of
battle will now make peace between us.”
  Thus did they converse. Then Minerva took the form of Laodocus,
son of Antenor, and went through the ranks of the Trojans to find
Pandarus, the redoubtable son of Lycaon. She found him standing
among the stalwart heroes who had followed him from the banks of the
Aesopus, so she went close up to him and said, “Brave son of Lycaon,
will you do as I tell you? If you dare send an arrow at Menelaus you
will win honour and thanks from all the Trojans, and especially from
prince Alexandrus—he would be the first to requite you very
handsomely if he could see Menelaus mount his funeral pyre, slain by
an arrow from your hand. Take your home aim then, and pray to Lycian
Apollo, the famous archer; vow that when you get home to your strong
city of Zelea you will offer a hecatomb of firstling lambs in his
honour.”
  His fool’s heart was persuaded, and he took his bow from its case.
This bow was made from the horns of a wild ibex which he had killed as
it was bounding from a rock; he had stalked it, and it had fallen as
the arrow struck it to the heart. Its horns were sixteen palms long,
and a worker in horn had made them into a bow, smoothing them well
down, and giving them tips of gold. When Pandarus had strung his bow
he laid it carefully on the ground, and his brave followers held their
shields before him lest the Achaeans should set upon him before he had
shot Menelaus. Then he opened the lid of his quiver and took out a
winged arrow that had yet been shot, fraught with the pangs of
death. He laid the arrow on the string and prayed to Lycian Apollo,
the famous archer, vowing that when he got home to his strong city
of Zelea he would offer a hecatomb of firstling lambs in his honour.
He laid the notch of the arrow on the oxhide bowstring, and drew
both notch and string to his breast till the arrow-head was near the
bow; then when the bow was arched into a half-circle he let fly, and
the bow twanged, and the string sang as the arrow flew gladly on
over the heads of the throng.
  But the blessed gods did not forget thee, O Menelaus, and Jove’s
daughter, driver of the spoil, was the first to stand before thee
and ward off the piercing arrow. She turned it from his skin as a
mother whisks a fly from off her child when it is sleeping sweetly;
she guided it to the part where the golden buckles of the belt that
passed over his double cuirass were fastened, so the arrow struck
the belt that went tightly round him. It went right through this and
through the cuirass of cunning workmanship; it also pierced the belt
beneath it, which he wore next his skin to keep out darts or arrows;
it was this that served him in the best stead, nevertheless the
arrow went through it and grazed the top of the skin, so that blood
began flowing from the wound.
  As when some woman of Meonia or Caria strains purple dye on to a
piece of ivory that is to be the cheek-piece of a horse, and is to
be laid up in a treasure house—many a knight is fain to bear it,
but the king keeps it as an ornament of which both horse and driver
may be proud—even so, O Menelaus, were your shapely thighs and your
legs down to your fair ancles stained with blood.
  When King Agamemnon saw the blood flowing from the wound he was
afraid, and so was brave Menelaus himself till he saw that the barbs
of the arrow and the thread that bound the arrow-head to the shaft
were still outside the wound. Then he took heart, but Agamemnon heaved
a deep sigh as he held Menelaus’s hand in his own, and his comrades
made moan in concert. “Dear brother, “he cried, “I have been the death
of you in pledging this covenant and letting you come forward as our
champion. The Trojans have trampled on their oaths and have wounded
you; nevertheless the oath, the blood of lambs, the drink-offerings
and the right hands of fellowship in which have put our trust shall
not be vain. If he that rules Olympus fulfil it not here and now,
he. will yet fulfil it hereafter, and they shall pay dearly with their
lives and with their wives and children. The day will surely come when
mighty Ilius shall be laid low, with Priam and Priam’s people, when
the son of Saturn from his high throne shall overshadow them with
his awful aegis in punishment of their present treachery. This shall
surely be; but how, Menelaus, shall I mourn you, if it be your lot now
to die? I should return to Argos as a by-word, for the Achaeans will
at once go home. We shall leave Priam and the Trojans the glory of
still keeping Helen, and the earth will rot your bones as you lie here
at Troy with your purpose not fulfilled. Then shall some braggart
Trojan leap upon your tomb and say, ‘Ever thus may Agamemnon wreak his
vengeance; he brought his army in vain; he is gone home to his own
land with empty ships, and has left Menelaus behind him.’ Thus will
one of them say, and may the earth then swallow me.”
  But Menelaus reassured him and said, “Take heart, and do not alarm
the people; the arrow has not struck me in a mortal part, for my outer
belt of burnished metal first stayed it, and under this my cuirass and
the belt of mail which the bronze-smiths made me.”
  And Agamemnon answered, “I trust, dear Menelaus, that it may be even
so, but the surgeon shall examine your wound and lay herbs upon it
to relieve your pain.”
  He then said to Talthybius, “Talthybius, tell Machaon, son to the
great physician, Aesculapius, to come and see Menelaus immediately.
Some Trojan or Lycian archer has wounded him with an arrow to our
dismay, and to his own great glory.”
  Talthybius did as he was told, and went about the host trying to
find Machaon. Presently he found standing amid the brave warriors
who had followed him from Tricca; thereon he went up to him and
said, “Son of Aesculapius, King Agamemnon says you are to come and see
Menelaus immediately. Some Trojan or Lycian archer has wounded him
with an arrow to our dismay and to his own great glory.”
  Thus did he speak, and Machaon was moved to go. They passed
through the spreading host of the Achaeans and went on till they
came to the place where Menelaus had been wounded and was lying with
the chieftains gathered in a circle round him. Machaon passed into the
middle of the ring and at once drew the arrow from the belt, bending
its barbs back through the force with which he pulled it out. He undid
the burnished belt, and beneath this the cuirass and the belt of
mail which the bronze-smiths had made; then, when he had seen the
wound, he wiped away the blood and applied some soothing drugs which
Chiron had given to Aesculapius out of the good will he bore him.
  While they were thus busy about Menelaus, the Trojans came forward
against them, for they had put on their armour, and now renewed the
fight.
  You would not have then found Agamemnon asleep nor cowardly and
unwilling to fight, but eager rather for the fray. He left his chariot
rich with bronze and his panting steeds in charge of Eurymedon, son of
Ptolemaeus the son of Peiraeus, and bade him hold them in readiness
against the time his limbs should weary of going about and giving
orders to so many, for he went among the ranks on foot. When he saw
men hasting to the front he stood by them and cheered them on.
“Argives,” said he, “slacken not one whit in your onset; father Jove
will be no helper of liars; the Trojans have been the first to break
their oaths and to attack us; therefore they shall be devoured of
vultures; we shall take their city and carry off their wives and
children in our ships.”
  But he angrily rebuked those whom he saw shirking and disinclined to
fight. “Argives,” he cried, “cowardly miserable creatures, have you no
shame to stand here like frightened fawns who, when they can no longer
scud over the plain, huddle together, but show no fight? You are as
dazed and spiritless as deer. Would you wait till the Trojans reach
the sterns of our ships as they lie on the shore, to see, whether
the son of Saturn will hold his hand over you to protect you?”
  Thus did he go about giving his orders among the ranks. Passing
through the crowd, he came presently on the Cretans, arming round
Idomeneus, who was at their head, fierce as a wild boar, while
Meriones was bringing up the battalions that were in the rear.
Agamemnon was glad when he saw him, and spoke him fairly. “Idomeneus,”
said he, “I treat you with greater distinction than I do any others of
the Achaeans, whether in war or in other things, or at table. When the
princes are mixing my choicest wines in the mixing-bowls, they have
each of them a fixed allowance, but your cup is kept always full
like my own, that you may drink whenever you are minded. Go,
therefore, into battle, and show yourself the man you have been always
proud to be.”
  Idomeneus answered, “I will be a trusty comrade, as I promised you
from the first I would be. Urge on the other Achaeans, that we may
join battle at once, for the Trojans have trampled upon their
covenants. Death and destruction shall be theirs, seeing they have
been the first to break their oaths and to attack us.”
  The son of Atreus went on, glad at heart, till he came upon the
two Ajaxes arming themselves amid a host of foot-soldiers. As when a
goat-herd from some high post watches a storm drive over the deep
before the west wind—black as pitch is the offing and a mighty
whirlwind draws towards him, so that he is afraid and drives his flock
into a cave—even thus did the ranks of stalwart youths move in a dark
mass to battle under the Ajaxes, horrid with shield and spear. Glad
was King Agamemnon when he saw them. “No need,” he cried, “to give
orders to such leaders of the Argives as you are, for of your own
selves you spur your men on to fight with might and main. Would, by
father Jove, Minerva, and Apollo that all were so minded as you are,
for the city of Priam would then soon fall beneath our hands, and we
should sack it.”
  With this he left them and went onward to Nestor, the facile speaker
of the Pylians, who was marshalling his men and urging them on, in
company with Pelagon, Alastor, Chromius, Haemon, and Bias shepherd
of his people. He placed his knights with their chariots and horses in
the front rank, while the foot-soldiers, brave men and many, whom he
could trust, were in the rear. The cowards he drove into the middle,
that they might fight whether they would or no. He gave his orders
to the knights first, bidding them hold their horses well in hand,
so as to avoid confusion. “Let no man,” he said, “relying on his
strength or horsemanship, get before the others and engage singly with
the Trojans, nor yet let him lag behind or you will weaken your
attack; but let each when he meets an enemy’s chariot throw his
spear from his own; this be much the best; this is how the men of
old took towns and strongholds; in this wise were they minded.”
  Thus did the old man charge them, for he had been in many a fight,
and King Agamemnon was glad. “I wish,” he said to him, that your limbs
were as supple and your strength as sure as your judgment is; but age,
the common enemy of mankind, has laid his hand upon you; would that it
had fallen upon some other, and that you were still young.”
  And Nestor, knight of Gerene, answered, “Son of Atreus, I too
would gladly be the man I was when I slew mighty Ereuthalion; but
the gods will not give us everything at one and the same time. I was
then young, and now I am old; still I can go with my knights and
give them that counsel which old men have a right to give. The
wielding of the spear I leave to those who are younger and stronger
than myself.”
  Agamemnon went his way rejoicing, and presently found Menestheus,
son of Peteos, tarrying in his place, and with him were the
Athenians loud of tongue in battle. Near him also tarried cunning
Ulysses, with his sturdy Cephallenians round him; they had not yet
heard the battle-cry, for the ranks of Trojans and Achaeans had only
just begun to move, so they were standing still, waiting for some
other columns of the Achaeans to attack the Trojans and begin the
fighting. When he saw this Agamemnon rebuked them and said, “Son of
Peteos, and you other, steeped in cunning, heart of guile, why stand
you here cowering and waiting on others? You two should be of all
men foremost when there is hard fighting to be done, for you are
ever foremost to accept my invitation when we councillors of the
Achaeans are hold

Hood Canal

I couldn't see, but water
reflecting, it danced from stars of sun
Black cormorant dove under stars and pearls of sea
silvery fished his netted beak

A small boat left untied to float, I rowed
weaving cat tail reeds, long through water weeds
Paddles cut my diamond day - sparkling
jewel of soul swayed, prayed to dive me deeper

Sandy shores mollusk strewn
rippled shells covered shimmering blue
Oysters bubbled shallows breathing
seagull smiled watchful scheming

Beach fire to warm the night
and rock the dusky sun to sleep
the coming moon between trees
dark night, the stars to weep