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Nat Lipstadt Jan 2018
The bedrock underlying much of Manhattan is a mica schist known as Manhattan schist.  Schist is foliated or layered in appearance. Quartz sparkles, micas, and amphiboles are primary minerals in schist. A melted rock, just like the city resting above, it too, a famous melting *** of humanity.

This one poem too, composed from pieces of other poems,
folded in layers of many others that melted together,
in harmonious discordancy

<~>

this glorious grime,
this delicious dirt,
stuff of my blood,
genes of my children's children inheritance,
of thee I sing,
in thee I revel,
of thee, I am composed

the city I love,
where I was born,
schooled and fooled in,
by many a woman

the city where I named
and raised my children

will probably die in
this city, and when
I am long forgot,
my name never uttered,
    who, will think of me?
Perhaps,
whenever someone says,
"he was such a rascal"

these tales I took,
some or all,
from beneath my skin,
where city streets grit,
was injected beneath my skin
and came with the title,
City Boy

so today, on a reborn street,
near tall towers no more,
I rest upon reconstituted speckled curbstone,
the city's lowered down ledges,
the city's lowered down-town boundaries,
constantly redrawn,  
but nonetheless, always rebuilt from their own
regenerated stony compost,
and the typical NY passersby doesn't even notice
a man, head in hands,
unsilently weeping, thinking that:

We lose or throw away so much we should have kept,
We keep so much we should have thrown away

street prowler, heart growler,
Art Deco lampposts,
the mountain range of east seventy second street,
begs the bagger's question,
each post
begging each other,
"from whence will come my inspiration?"

licked the stubbled sidewalks,
fell down into their living caverned cracks,
light needed, needy softly heated,
orange and green pizza neon signs,
saying here,
if you see upon what be,
these are your city's homeland colors of veracity

perhaps
NYC was model precursor
for our internet presumed-to-be-alive-but-who-can-say-for-sure
model for the world today,
where I know not my apartment's neighbors name,
yet carry his second child
in my arms,
when the fire alarm
summons us all to flee
to street safety...
and still only
"know" his child's first name,
and his father,
as Apt. #16D

all this exponential signage
of this NYC boy grousing,
are his defrocked muses him annoying,
with a serenading blizzard
of one trick pony repetitions,
their coronets trumpeting his unmasking,
*making this essay, his revelations,
a product of their harmonious discordancy
See the photo (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9b/NY-Central-Park-Rock-7333.jpg/300px-NY-Central-Park-Rock-7333.jpg). 
this was the climbing mountain of my early childhood.
RAJ NANDY Jul 2015
Dear Friends, I have simplified the true story of
the Grand Canyon of Arizona by leaving out the
plethora of scientific details, & the various theories
of scholars about its formation! Presenting here the
more popular version for your kind appreciation!
Therefore, I have used only a part of my Notes on
the subject. Kindly don’t forget to read Part Two
later, for the total story. No need to comment in
a hurry! Thanks, -Raj.

STORY OF THE GRAND CANYON IN
VERSE : PART ONE- BY RAJ NANDY

              BACKGROUND
Our unique planet earth on which we reside,
Remains restless and dynamic, which in its
bowels it hides!
Titanic forces have been at work since our planets
formation; (App. 4.5 billion years ago)
Tectonic plates collided shaping continents,
along with quakes and volcanic eruptions!
Mighty glaciers had formed and receded, while
forces of nature did shape,
When mighty Himalayas and the Rockies rose
up, as we see them on date!
Several species evolved and of multifarious kind,
Leaving a trail of geological mysteries behind!
Geologists have tried to figure out what caused
the rugged Rockies to rise,
From miles below the surface of the earth,
stretching across 3000 miles;
Across New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and
Montana, all the way up into North Canada;
To become the longest mountain chain of
North America!
The Geologists speculate that the heavier
Pacific Oceanic Plate, had moved northwest
under the North American Plate;
And as a result of this geological seduction
and embrace,
A split had opened up in the American West!
Such mountain building activity or ‘Orogeny’,
Had occurred in several phases during Earth’s
evolving history!
But mostly it occurred during the ‘Age of the
Dinosaurs’ in the Mesozoic Age,
Around 100 to 200 million years hence!
Now cutting across million years of Geological
History,
I come to the Colorado Plateau to commence
my Grand Canyon Story!

THE COLORADO PLATEAU
The awesome forces which raised the Rocky
Mountain Chains, also raised the Colorado
Plateau at a later time once again!
But during the Plateau’s gradual rise there was
surprisingly no devastation,
As the well preserved sedimentary layers rose
up with the Plateau without deformation!
Like an elevator traveling upwards this Plateau
gradually rose,
Along with its several embedded rock layers,
with which it was composed!
The Plateau is scattered over an area of some
1300,000 square mile as we know;
Going clockwise it covers Arizona, Utah, Colorado,
and the State of New Mexico!
Within this rugged area are located the Grand
Canyon, Grand Staircase, Bryce and Zion Canyon,
Arches, National Bridges, Monument Valley,
Glen Canyon, and Lake Powell.
It was Major John Wesley Powell a Geologist,
a brave solder and an explorer,
Who during the 19th century had mapped the
entire Grand Canyon area;
By sailing down the treacherous rapid infested
and uncharted Colorado River!
During the American Civil War Powell’s right
hand was amputated,
God bless his soul for the work he had initiated!
(
The area from Bryce Canyon down to the Grand Canyon
is referred to as the ‘Grand Staircase’ due to the existing
land features!)

THE SOUTHERN RIM OF THE PLATEAU
Standing near the edge of more easily accessible
Southern Rim, one gets captivated by the sculptured
beauty and brilliant colors of sedimentary rock layers;
Which also captivated the imagination of tourists,
geologists, painters and explorers!
Geologists have opined, that till 80 million years, this
area was inundated by the Sea several times;
By dating the limestone and marine fossils on the
top Kaibab Limestone Layer they now find!
The lowest rock basement of this Plateau the
Vishnu Schist, dated as a third of our Earth’s
total age, still exists! (Dated as 1.5 billion years.)
Yet the dominant color of the layers of the
Canyon is of a reddish kind,
Due to iron deposits in the layers that we find!
Standing on the edge of the Southern Rim one
is struck by the grand panoramic view and its
macro immensity !
Gazing into a 1500 meter deep gorge carved into
nearby horizontal sedimentary rocks, - a stark
reality,
Where Man becomes aware of his own micro
fragility!
These layers were deposited 500 million years ago,
Prior to the elevation of the Colorado Plateau!
Viewing this testament to Nature’s magnificence,
Man loses himself for a while, to become transfixed
in space and time!
Though there are other deeper canyons in this
world we know, but none are more impressive
or grander;
So Major Powell named it the ‘Grand Canyon’,
which had also made him to wonder!

GRAND CANYON AND THE COLORADO RIVER
The Grand Canyon stretches from Lake Powell near
Utah-Arizona boarder right up to Lake Mead,
Is around 277 miles long with a max width of 18 miles,
and a max depth of around 6000 feet!
The Canyon proper is located in the northwestern
portion of Arizona, in the midst of the Grand Canyon
National Park,
Where the Colorado River bisects this Park into
Northern and Southern halves!
The Northern Rim is a 1000 feet higher and is ideal
for rafters, trekkers, and cliff climbers.
The better connected South Rim has around 5 million
visitors annually!
But the affluent few with lesser time, visit the glass-
bottom horseshoe shaped ‘Skywalk’ in the western
section, in Hualapai Indian Reservation territory!

             CONCLUDING PART ONE :
The question that intrigue Geologists and the visitors
alike, is how the Colorado River did shape,
The mighty Canyon through this great depth?
Before giving you the answer in Part Two
I must pause here to quote,
Lines from the poem “Grand Canyon” which
Lisa A Williams once wrote; -
“I look to the depths far, far below,
To crevices and caverns formed long ago.
To twisting trails, ledges steep,
Winding rivers with pools so deep! ..........
Cascades of color with each sunrise,
Golden walls with lavender hues,
Shades of pink and smoky blues.
Rainbows of stone, dance in fading light,
Lengthening shadows, with approaching
night . …………….
A brush in hand the painter can see,
The miracle of nature and all it can be.
Trying to capture the beauty of age,
Seems impossible with human gauge!
So much to take in, the eyes try to behold,
An ancient image of creation so bold.
Formed by ice and melting snow,
An artist’s canvas sketched long ago!”
-  by Lisa A Williams.

Dear readers, later in the second part of this
story,
I shall conclude by telling you how the
Colorado River in all its pristine glory,
Carved out this vast Canyon through million
years of our Earth’s History!
Part two will be posted later after a break
surely,
Thanks for reading patiently, from Raj Nandy
of New Delhi.
*ALL COPYRIGHTS ARE WITH THE AUTHOR ONLY
Nat Lipstadt May 2019
~for Steve Yocum~

if
well you know me, ken the man that has
surf-surrendered before you in one too many visions,
if well you know me, now with solstice summer just to come,
a man ever asking, where’s shelter, returns to the whence and why,
for each year, the summer man (1) was and is reborn to die,
reborn at the whence and where each wave dies storytelling of him

you see him, but do not see-think, the man’s endless wave watching, final resting on a shoreline, think incorrectly, each, just a repetition,
one story come and gone then shattered, busted-blasted,
into sea green glass pieces, then when retold, worn yet further,
into granulated pictures, each a sugary sand speck, a letter-memory, locked, loaded, then hid embedded on an ocean graveyard

no two waves alike, men cannot distinguish, same as humans cells,
the body itself, all its microscopic cells, cosigned and cousin’d,
yet each minutely singularly unique and differentiated,
so the waves as well, of single droplets ribbed, but ocean appearing
as a forestal paradisal garden with trees of life and apples of death,
each customized, but all of one body of blue soil clayed with water

there summer man pilgrimages, on a May to Fall Jerusalem journey,
sits on the sand amidst ocean angels come to grasp dead carcasses,
he observes his summer New Year rituals, the waves grasp his soul,
wrap him in prayer shawl, skin striped by tefillin leather straps,(2)
each wave, a sentencing, a long novel of the loving life, writ by an
infinity of recombo-wakes, some woke/some sunk - all never-ended

I crawl into foamed dreams, the white salt blanches living skin,
swim out to wherever legs and arms have no power of propulsion,
carried and drift but never aimless, never shameless, always endless,
we, all, children of  Israelites, wade on water a 1000 fathoms deep,
soaking in tales of landlocked organisms, all from the water created,
all are sprung, all come, returned, waves speak, histories for retelling

so from now till the fell of fall, the summer man pays obeisance,
his sitting place, his sand markings so well entrenched, waves
leave it untouched, his indentation upon the grains, they go around,
friends, sun wind tide seagull and ospreys, keep their distance, not disturbing his reading, telling, praying, adding his owned/disowned
particle-of-the-day of creation/becoming/diminution,

his poem tales written, then diminished, the man


lost in the waves, found in the waves


~~~~~~~
5/07/2019
writ upon an isle of concrete,
resting upon a bedrock of volcanic schist at 4:24am
before the pilgrimage to a true sandy isle

~~~~~~~~
inspired by a rendition of “Lost in the Waves”

https://youtu.be/MayNMko-e4s


Lost in the Waves, written by Kooman & Dimond

At the edge of the Atlantic,
Can't bring myself to swim.
I choked back the tears for twenty two years,
Drowning in shadows of him.
The waves etch out a pattern
Long after they're gone.
The lines that they trace, they quickly erase,
But something's still lingering on.
Lost in the waves.
I am lost in the waves.
No one but me and the silent black sea;
I am lost in the waves.
A vision in the moonlight:
A family on the beach.
A boy on his own, by the undertow thrown
Far beyond his father's reach.
He's caught in a riptide.
A man has to choose.
There's a race to be won for the life of his son,
But someone has to lose.
Lost in the waves.
He was lost in the waves.
Salt water burns, the tide always turns,
When you're lost in the waves.
Now I'm the one sinking.
There's no solid ground.
And I can't help thinking
I'm the one who has drowned.
Now knee-deep in the water,
I feel my father's touch.
And though fully grown, I've still never known
How to love someone that much.
Lost in the waves.
I am lost in the waves.
No one but me and the silent black sea;
I am lost in the waves.
I am lost in the waves.
I am lost in the waves.

heard last night in a Master Class for actors/singers taught by
Lea Salonga, in Studio 5, City Center,  NYC
(1) https://hellopoetry.com/poem/447181h/i-am-a-summer-man/
(2) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallit   lookup tefillin
Nat Lipstadt Oct 2013
written on a fall Sunday, many years ago (2010), after attending the New York City Ballet, walking home through Central Park, New York City*

In my sweet city,
city where I bore
my first breath,
city where I'll be laid down
to my perma-rest:

the hues of my life
are city pastels,
colorful shades of asphalt
and concrete gray,
interspersed with the
speckled glitter of
sidewalk fruit refuse and
57 Heinz varieties of the
potpourri of human creation

this color schema
is the coda of my
urbanized DNA,
though product unique of my
Father and Mother,
I have been
genetically modified
in the laboratory
of the streets
of my sweet city

mid-September,
the city's temperature is
unmodulated,
alternating currents of a
tortuous halfway tween
summer's sweaty heat
and winter's capable chill

these concerto variations of
the air outside
depend on the
angle of the sun and
how it penetrates the

individualized charcoal filter
of grit and dirt, that is
a NY city's dweller necessary,
necessary filter to survive,

this filter,
the viewing lens
of the lives surrounding,
is our individualized seal,
displayed upon the shield,
our city passport,
our driving license to live,
the municipality deems
we must carry
with us everywhere

In my sweet city
two rivers(1) in bay meet,
ceding control to the
Atlantic's penultimate ocean's parenting,
but not before,
each river channels deep cuts across the
the city's personality
and mine

city of towers, majestic n' fallen,
city of babbling tongues,
symphony of languages,
your ceaseless movements
are pirouettes of emotions.

your people, my people,
are one people
tous membres de notre
corps de ballet,
see us dancing
upon the rooftops,
in bamboo jungles (2)
on museum roofs
amidst the treetops of our
parks, central to our lives

on this island city,
grew up bounded in physic,
yet unfettered in spirit,
periodically to escape
we took the
train to the plane(3)
across ocean and fruited plain
carrying our peculiar filter,
seeing the world through
our city's eyes

built on volcanic rock and
the timbers of ships discarded,
silt and refuse of Gen's past,
burial grounds n' cemeteries (4)
of slaves and immigrants,
my sweet city was born in
granite gestalt and schist,
paved over with pave tears
of millions of dreams,
some, realized, most defeated,

In my sweet city,
where I'll be laid down
to my perma-rest,
this body and soul,
these poems, these words,
will be one more striated layer
to be torn down, dug up,
built on,

and in this soil
I will attend,
your arrival most welcome,
and in the shade of our hades,
our filters discarded,
our passports unrenewed,
for historical purposes
our bones and papers, reviewed,
each other we will regale,
with our sweet city's tales.

September 2010
(1) the Hudson and the East River
(2) bamboo city exhibition on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum, overlooking the park
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bambú
(3) "train to the plane" the subway to Kennedy Airport
(4) the city used its refuse, ships timbers, even the cemetery of slaves as filler to build upon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Burial_Ground_National_Monument
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2015
Preface

(not even 9:00 am and
I've wet myself

this was my to be
my Poet Palm Sunday,
when my pen is in
some room,
by other's well hidden,
and composition is a prohibition,
the hours yet to come,
come negligently but happily,
whiled and whittled,
reading the better poetry of others,
on this, a day of rest for the
body's satisfaction
and the body of the soul's,
even greater

yet a day of rest,
be not South Pole opposite
from a day of no North Pole work

this early I-am-risen Sunday dawn,
finds me focused, two dog ears alert,
forty one poems in descending order,
read and wept over and upon,
a real, not a faux Bush,
"mission accomplished"

lived long and occasionally prospered,
of poets, I am familiar some,
of writing poetry,
have learned my sums,
know what is likeable
love what is
loving and loveable

it is the poetry of every day life

of strange noises of strangers
in the mid of night,
dogs rhythmically snoring,
while you curse/overcome
the bright eyed, darkened alertness of insomnia
by word whittling yourself,
by the softness of skin of a grand kid
that momentarily manages to convince,
it was indeed,
all worth it

the zoo animals of the lawn and trees,
singing concertos in any minor they please,
as long as it's major enough
to command the world's attention

six stanzas and yet have not commenced,
the task God gave me this sabbath morn,
for the problem with seeing the world,
thru the filter of aging eyes,
is you grow vulnerable, wistful,
distracted by your own ancient feeling streams
that lie too deep in the Manhattan schist
of what others call, your heart,
but somehow still manage
to bubble up and geyser out your eyes)

~~~

Joe Cottonwood

as Patton said to Rommel,
"I've read your book"

the book of forty one poems
that are the products of
years in the making, with tools
that hang upon the belt of yourself,
that you acquired long before
the leathered and weathered
tool belt of four decades of you daily dress,
was first ever worn

you tell us of your ancestry,
thus reveal your story simple intimate,
and by the fourth or fifth essay,
our poetic ancestor,
Walt Whitman,
was readily apparent,
in the little life things
the American and all families  
celebrate

of my six decades,
I yet
still struggle for a summary definition
of who I am,
what I'm worth,
yet weep at your simple eloquence,
self described scribe and man
detailing a life well lived

Hammer nails. Write poems. Bake bread. Shake hands.

is that all there is?
Oh god there are veins
in this poet run deeper than the
iron ore that makes his nails,
the sun ray mines that electric heat
his bread oven

they are mined by me this morning

he does not write of
anguish, blood, love or scars,
that are newly born on a
summer's day youthful blush,
no, he writes of
anguish, blood, love or scars
that humans accumulate,
and in poetry encapsulate
of a life very well lived

I know you Joe,
and apologize for the
paucity of mine,
in honoring yours...


~~~
Postface**

the coffee beans grinding,
the pots banging,
the music suddenly turned softer,
surely constellation cosmic signs
that a lover's breakfast soon to arrive

so I away, but in earnest plead,
share the simple joyousness
of his poetry,
and our communal Sunday
and everyday lives
will be indeed come
as a day of comfort blessed,
the only toil,
tear removal...
If your value a skill and love
that captures more of life and love,
please read
http://hellopoetry.com/joe-cottonwood/

a single excerpt,
no two, a sampler
~
Coffee and corn bread.
They putter about with weekend chores:
she waters plants; he snakes the cursed toilet.
They take turns riding the exercise bike.
He cleans the hot tub filter;
she stretches yoga-like while listening to an audiobook.
He makes a wooden toy, gift for a grandchild;
she prepares chicken burgers and salad.
They watch a movie from Netflix
about Miss Potter, Beatrix
a rebel of another century.
In the dark, outdoors, scarred bodies
water-slick in the moonlight,
they soak in the hot tub
while a dog guards, sphinx position, ears *****
to the rustle of raccoons in the underbrush.
At fifteen minutes to midnight
as steam wafts in moonbeams
she says, “Hey — it’s our anniversary.”
Almost forgotten. The forty-sixth. Or fifty-first
in a different calculus, because at the wedding
they’d already been lovers five years. He sings
     Oh my love is a wallflower
     so pretty and so shy
She answers:
     No boy I’d ever marry
     until you gave me a try.
Under water, their toes touch.

~

old bronze
your cheek, so brown
old bronze
brushed with down
shekels of freckles
over a dusky moon

bronze is an alloy
forged in heat
shaped in art
durable as stone
darkens with age
glows when rubbed
still warm
against my lips
Victor Marques Oct 2010
Douro Valley wine Trip

As far as you can see,
Douro Valley for you and me,
Terroir covered with colored terraces up the hill,
Baron Forrester was made of God Will.


Vines flourish in schist as in paradise,
English friends here you can find.
Treasures that nature give to us for free,
Douro Valley for you and me.


The trains and boats near the river for trade,
Port wine is divine and so well made.
Love for people with great hospitality,
Douro Valley for you and me.

The harvest time without an end,
Douro valley loves you my friend.
Lost horizon that you can see,
Douro Valley for you and me.


Warmest regards.
Victor Marques
Marshal Gebbie Sep 2012
Walk with me on stony hillsides
Walk with me in crags of schist,
Walk amongst Blue Borich carpet
Walk in lands of silver mist.
Feel the ancient history seeping
From the veins of shining stone,
Feel the company of Goblins
When you tread these paths alone.
Granite lattice work in marble
Layered from the depths of time,
Beauty and mystique and marvel
Walk with fear and awe, as mine.
Humble in these rugged mountains
Privileged to behold the scene,
I take my leave regretfully
For grandeur lives from whence I've been*.

Marshalg
Strolling through the ancient Schist in the bold, remote, magnificence of Central Otago.
10 September 2012
Theron Aidan Feb 2013
Gray eyes
Sometimes blue
Sometimes green
Mostly slate, no phyllite
Sometimes schist
And sometimes, when all other hope is gone
Shale

Crooked nose
Broken, bloodied
Put a band-aid on it
It's still proud
Proof of heritage and blood

High cheekbones
Finely sculpted
Match the proud nose

Thin lips
Pink, not red
Set in a straight line
Seldom smiling
Sometimes laughing

Broad shoulders
Strong arms
A chest that contains a heavy heart

Pianists fingers
Long and slender
Nimble
Quick
Bound by a ring on the left hand
Scars

Powerful legs
Sprinters feet
Bad knees
Scars

Things in between
Head and feet
Don't quite belong
But over time
Are no longer noticed

See the soul
Not the body
Live happily
A knave to hold a soft core;
Schist, basalt, limestone!
A cross, kaleidescoping until it's square then into a passkey.

Solids, Solipsis, a patterned plane was your gift, almost as cruel as mine.
Given me, as due, for my recognition of your soul.
Your belief is a gaes, almost as burdensome as your mistrust.

A blindside for a blindside.
2013 Atalanta Undigested. All Rights Reserved.
Marshal Gebbie Mar 2012
An ode to my long and satisfying relationship with the product of Portugal’s Douro Valley.

Golden amber, smokey smooth
Rich with pleasured bite
Spreading warmth to ample girth
The brandy’s fine tonight.

Dustless, standing on my shelf
Bathing in half light,
Golden highlights shadow deep
Paints Douro Father's right.

Born amidst the hills of schist
On vines that root in rock
In patterns neat and quite arcane
Of ancient grappa stock.

Old men sit by river barge,
Mustachioed and wise,
To argue politics and sip
God’s amber nectar prize.

Tepid sun is setting low
To throw long shadows tight,
To bathe the vines of soft green tones
In liquid amber light.

Golden spirit, smokey smooth
Glows with silken light
Satisfaction’s spreading warmth
Paints Douro Father’s right.

Marshalg
Mangere Bridge
Sipping a tumbler of amber warmth in New Zealand’s Autumn sunset.
26 March 2012
Michael CJ Jan 2013
Full of bile and alcohol,
You travelled the gables
With each up and down
Mercilessly mimicking
The acidic spew
In your esophagus.
It was your birthday.
Instead, I was recognized,
Lolling in the limelight.
You sat surely stone-like.
A symmetrically sweating schist
In October's mild order,
Being ignored by our parents
Like their arthritis.
At dinner you ate wine and salt-water
From tepid tears trickling
Down the face of your crotchety alter-ego.

I had the pork-chops.


'Your present is in the mail',
I'd say, in feeble effort
To make you dry.
That was a lie;
One of the many you'd hear
Galloping out of my mouth
Before I ever was "brother" enough to say


'I love you'.
This is enduringly dedicated to my sister Kate.
Robert C Howard Sep 2019
Over untallied millennia,
    roiling Gunnison waters
sliced through southern Colorado
    schist and gneiss like a sabre -
carving tower walls of black rock
    ribboned with tableaus of
pegmatite and mica flakes
    flickering in the mid-day sun.

2,000 feet below, meandering
    through its stark canyon walls
like some legendary serpent,
    the Gunnison murmurs softly -
resting on its laurels.

Robert Charles Howard
September 2019
martin May 2018
I think I'll go for a walk
To myself I shall mutter and talk
I'll search high and low
And home I'll not go
Till I find the poem I sought

Shocking how the time goes
Like a river it flows and flows
It just disappears
Days become years
Where does it go, do you knows?

He found a rock, the geologist
Whose identity he missed
He thought it was gneiss
But when he looked twice
It was just a piece of schist

They found a bug to eat plastic
Which everyone thought was fantastic
But they started to frown
When their pants fell down
Because it ate the elastic
writer18384828 Jul 2018
An uncanny and unfamiliar view: the sun gazing over the Sperrins.
Light granted sight and in the
smarting, sticky glow of day the range seemed endless.
Every peak,
protruding from plate like
vertebrae of the obscene Oilliphéist, aspired to pierce the clouds (had there been any) and
swelling like the ego of that Boeotian hunter, set Olympus and Rheasilvia to blushes.
An omnidirectional parsec of perpetual nihility that,
swallowing the senses,
renders proprioception void.
Everything suspended for a second or century under the watch of that inert sentinel, whose
magnitude mirrored the Cosmic Turtle.
Say some stray tenant of Mountsandel
had wandered through these ancient fields and looked, as I do, upon the eminence of this glen;
From now til then, this Precambrian master had aged but a second.
Words are feeble against this primordial Schist and cannot hope to evoke it.
But all perceived as hard then shifts; I see the hulk in its youth suffering
the divorce of Rodinia; drifting further from its peers – drowning.
Even now the car traced the scar carved in the little pinnacle.
Granted, it bore us tourists stoically on
Granite too pure for poetry.
Yet still I see, as clear as Sawel, the young stone struggling to breathe the noxious air;
Freezing and thawing with the trends of the earth and
Bearing it all alone.
No wonder it had become catatonic.
How fitting, that every traveller on their
commute between the Pillars of the  North,
should be forced to stare
Eden
in the eyes and acknowledge
where
earth began.
Nat Lipstadt Dec 2014
A whimsied notion, a full scented but invisible imagery,
a passing by, vagrant sensation, a distinctly indistinct memorization,
never certified, never was, yet always will be, stolid as mahogany,
two men
armed, engaged in, by, full embrace,
brothers but not brothers, friends in skins that never touched,
citizens of one continent united, yet each on a separate distant edge,
thus divided, thus impaired,
two islands,
both born and torn from one firmament,
each man,
firm in demeanor, infirm in wearied body,
their words were handshakes that bridged mountains and rivers
ranged and arrayed, as if the Creator created but to split them,
though clouded mists and rain squalls
from time to time obscured their vision,
belief was, that like the granite schist that bedrocked their common soil,
though quaked and fissured, the heat that united
and sometime cooled, their ardor, their pledge unspoken,
yet permanent and fixed like celestial combinations, the expectation,
their friendship
**shall duly flame again
Continuities

by Walt Whitman
(1819-1892)

Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,
No birth, identity, form--no object of the world.
Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;
Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain.
Ample are time and space--ample the fields of Nature.
The body, sluggish, aged, cold--the embers left from earlier fires,
The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again;
The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual;
To frozen clods ever the spring's invisible law returns,
With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.
Svetoslav Feb 2021
The white moon glows in the ashen skies
reflecting on the waves of the warmy river,
as green plants shake by the autumn breeze.

All of this motion is stalked by cats eyes
and earth slowly stops to spin and quivers,
now the river seethes by the rise of degrees.

Lime colored beaches tremble at morning
from the schist and rocks that break and fall,
seas and waters, looking like lemonade yellow
make meetings of men, that send the world a warning.

Fear and panic has left the authorities a shake up call,
making them realise the reality
of their actions influenced from below.

Phenomena of roaring thunders
when winter and icy snow falling.
Avalanches, earthquakes and tsunamis
make their rage calling.
by Svetli
Scorpio

The aesthetics of masochism:
Finding happiness
In overwhelming
Pain’s sublime
Fighting tooth and nail
Out of mind
That and those who hail
To destroy him
That sign
Such  anarchism!

He can hate to love
And even love to hate
Triggering passions
His joke. He enjoys
Being yours, yours entirely
But hidden, the scorpio
Will never admit
He can make you split

Like some shining schist
Engraved in hearts
The lover’s torment
Is stubborn inside
He finds a destructive bliss
In desire’s abyss
But his stinger
Points towards you, lover!

August 20, 2015
Translation
Oullins’ multimedia library
My sign, the scorpio
Ken Pepiton May 2020
2020 - day 146

Monday, May 25, 2020
7:48 AM

A creed of mathematics and mud, said
in what may be
metemperical
utterance from the ghost of the late,
and likely,
no longer lamented,
Sir Leslie Stephen, author, and,
therefore,
authoritative voice in the matter
of his own mind.
He apologized for the state called
Agnostic, lacking gnosis, may I say,

I know more, in fact, if I count my access
to knowns,
along with my access to the sequence
of knowing;
I know more than any prominent literati
in the time before Google's
manifestation as an idea shaping tool.

What do I know?
I know how to use the Internet to learn,

in broad sweeps through the remains of
empires,
into the dustbin of history for which we stand,
ready,
as a nation,

to build new and more destrucively effective
petards.

Blow your mind, hoist, lift-off, on your own farts.

Passing wind,
did you smell it?



Mental as opposed to spiritual,
hmmm

this will need some study...
a little think,
an imaginary journey,

from here to... where? Where,
or when,
if
we were to change the world,
as we know it;
say,
we did. Say we changed the world,

who would know?
Who would care? We have yet,
breath, and fuel, and functionality.

We have movement, and a grasping,
holding, using,
sense
a natural, from the womb, knack
for making a fist.





Womb survivors of the world, unite.

Defined to the finest quarkish sublimnity,
we entangled creative
thoughts being spun into the wind
passing, rising
from bloated corpses,
we all may witness, as real as you may imagine...

in 2020, we have eye-witness visions made plain,
we have seen the bodies stacked in carts,
we have seen My Lai from the sky,
we can imagine

being there... but don't, I mean, Memorial Day is...

maybe, it is... evoking memory of madness,

how is war good? It is good for the greedy, no one else.

We watch our hero's die to stop the evil, then we watch
the bankers free the last Krupp cannon molder,
to spite the facts we can see, as seen at Nurnberg.

That injustice, was done in my name, if I believe I am
pluralized as we, the people who hold truth,

the Yanks, ye' know? Yankin' y'strang, stranger... did you
stumble into our historical records of all the good
war has done? Nay,
we came to remember peace,

in high definition resolution sharper than the
unaugmented human eye can detect,

see that guy's head, or his helmet, look close,
no head remained in the helmet,

but I knew the head the helmet was hoisted from.

I watched PFC. -name redacted - die,

-- did you know, did you learn, ever, the meaning
of being hoisted on one's own petard?

A petard was a bomb. Nothing fancy,
a bit of alchemical magi-knowing of laws yet to be

discovered in the rubble of guesses as to cause,

accusations of arrogance and hubris, combound to whys,

never examined, never lived out in vital awareness.






quenching a flaming spirit, is ill advised...

but it happens,
all the time. A heart pouring hope
into a mind jumbled
with signals and signs and pleas;

stops, stutters, and aches for
more
meaning meaning meaning in the
tinkling bells and crashing cymbals.

Hope, ash of aspirations inspired
by

love, as a thing, a noun, not a verb.

Love is a verb. Not a thing, an act.

Indeed, done, love is easy to think wisely done.
No announcement is needed,

long after the tale is first formed,
the legend rises from resting in peace,

to give a lie an opposing force, not a war,

a flood.

A deluge of lusion, a seeing at augmentedus
resolutions into further and beyond,
all we can think, or ask
into life
dimensions

former-wise, formerly, unknowable, now

known, according to the pundits,
these are not the days of Lincoln,
craming laws into his head by firelight,

calloused digits flipping page after page
of proprietary rules governing

the white man's burden.

---


Staunching the flow, of blood, particularly,

meant stopping the flow, usually
stopping it from
flowing out of course,
flooding
the plain, flat, seeming, surface of reality.

Reality not being as defined as we imagine, in ourselves.
This being the flow,
if we pay attention, focusing on a point,
fixing a line of sight to a distant thing, a star will do,
planets,
no, those won't do, you see, the planets, now we know,

the planets reflect light,
they bounce light back to our eyes, which we invariably miss

when our attention is owed to the habits we hold.
Our daily grind... growing, or surviving in hope

We guess at many next right or otherwise, standing,
based up on a pedestal, a riser,

lift up your head, egregious though you be,
easily seen, so
easily you see as far as I'm concerned, dis
cerned, re
fined to the innermost edge,

ground to a halt... pressing blade to ground to scrape
a living

plowman, plow me a furrow, for the flood.
Maker of ways,  form me a way to flow,
channel my worth to the dying seeds

scattered, so long ago, on the thread of time we ride behind.




a bug, an insect, not an arachnid,
by leg count
class-ift, insect extremely delicate, what use
could this bug be to me,
a mayfly,
that I did pay it this attention?

Did I mention, no,
sequences in re
telling, consider starlight bounces from sunlight,

but reason and gravity suggest, those
waves of starlight intermingle
with sunbeams.

A mote in my eye may have bounced once from the moon,
as a made its point pinging a receptor some where behind

the window of my soul
to make a ligandary acceptence of influence, from the Greeks,
in an instant
Zeno, doncha know, decided, made a cut,

skience is the conscision, the cutting into bits, until

no further cutting may be done,
and we are dust,
at best.

Flakey humans. Homes to literal gazillions of mites,
hunting and gathering epidermal

flakes of us, digesting said flakes, into demodex *****

{demodex, face mites, are as old as **** sapiens}

as we are in didactic tic mode, ******* meaning from flakes
rubbed off during the itching ear phase

of dust mote formations, see

a mite eating the scales of our bodies, our subjective habitats,

where we hold our habitual rituals;
a mite eating those, fecates and defecates, fecation required,

in consequentialist thought, prior to defecation.

Fact or fiction? Science, as we know it at grade eight,
on the global scale of common knowledge,

science is what we are convinced we know in useful ways.
Knowledge is our opinion of

what we think we know. That is a guess. Not quite right, flow

past
the missed try, reach a next un ex spectated, un i magined
ic tic tic

time passing options, while a life away, or wait

wait and see, or come and see.

I say go. Where this river runs, reach that place,

get all salty, then
lay in the sun and evaporate. Ex sciere, rise, sublimated into ever knowing more,

scient-if-ic known knowns within the un gated narrative we occupy.

We live in an atmo-sphere, a bubble, with a core- inward pulling force

which rolls the rock down the hill, as me and Sisyphus spend a pleasant afternoon
watching all our effort play out...

❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖


forgive me if you already made all the links, I found the scient bits glittering in Old Norse skita,

science is ific in its will to be known truth holding, bogus science is willing to lie, for prestige.

skei-
Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to cut, split," extension of root *sek- "to cut."
It forms all or part of: abscissa; conscience; conscious; ecu; escudo; escutcheon; esq­uire; nescience; nescient; nice; omniscience; omniscient; plebisc­ite; prescience; prescient; rescind; rescission; science; sciente­r; scilicet; sciolist; scission; schism; schist; ******-; schizop­hrenia; scudo; sheath; sheathe; sheave (n.) "grooved wheel to receive a cord, pulley;" shed (v.) "cast off;" shin (n.) "fore part of the lower leg;" shingle (n.1) "thin piece of wood;" **** (v.); shive; shiver (n.1) "small piece, splinter, fragment, chip;" shoddy; shyster; skene; ski; skive (v.1) "split or cut into strips, pare off, grind away;" squire.
It is the hypothetical source of/evidence for its existence is provided by: Sanskrit chindhi, chinatti "to break, split up;" Avestan a-sista- "unsplit, unharmed," Greek skhizein "to split, cleave, part, separate;" Latin scindere "to cut, rend, tear asunder, split;" Armenian c'tim "to tear, scratch;" Lithuanian skiesti "to separate, divide;" Old Church Slavonic cediti "to strain;" Old English scitan, Old Norse skita "to defecate;" Old English sceað, Old High German sceida "sheath;" Old Irish sceid "to *****, spit;" Welsh chwydu "to break open."
This began when I noticed science is from the same root as all those old words for post digestion of chewed up stuff.
To Patrick Süskind, writer of The Perfume,

He leans over her
Admiring the fire of her rebellious hair
Asleep, sweet child
Her body, temple of the most exquisite perfume
Getting drunk on her delight
He tries to **** this about to live madness
Rising up, oh cruel
He plans to lethally hurt her!

Another desire, inside, gushes
For he doesn’t want her to suffer
His lips burning of her, madness!
He’d rather be lenient…

She rolls over, for her he fell
He drops his hammer and her grave
He leans in closer, lover
Her eyes open, he looks at her, charmed

Mouth tight shut, lost inside him
She knows he’s the thief of the night
Three feet away from her eyes
He has to possess her for his tragic project
Lull settles in, she says:
“You’ve come to take my life’’
He smiles, she grabs his hand
And brings him to her red-hued lips

“Laura, I am Jean Baptiste
Senses will be my tomb
I screamed, organic, garbage from the market…
Broken, born almost dead, scattered like schist.’’
“Jean Baptiste, come here’’
“Sweet ******, I’m only sombre ashes
My body only knows the twig
By your perfume only can my heart rise…
No love is that strange.’’
“So I’m yours, divine
Drink my wine to the hilt’’
“Angel, forgive me for what I must do’’

He throws his vest on the ground
Unveiling his skinny self
He is stark naked, she is dreamy.
He lifts the covers, dreading his own gestures
As soon as he’s laying next to her
She softly skims his chapped lips
He answers, babbling
The moon is above them, entangled.

He can’t stop his fingers
On her naked skin wanting him
For no cloth, no silk
Can’t protect her, she isn’t escaping
Her scream in his kiss he takes her
She’s a woman in a blasting fury
On some supple Asian cushions
Her blood slides, fertile, drunk Muse…

He’s already asleep on her hip
He equally adores her curves and her sip
He caresses her white gorgeous chest
Swiftly slays her and,
Lays her down waiting for the blame
Crying, but he has to leave her.

Translated on August 8, 2015
hetty Sep 2019
fleeting moments disappear
along with the cowering darkness of air
the light stings and you may be tormented by fear
but above all else, a sun has risen
and i will you to stay alive

terrible thoughts scratching at the base of your mind
you drown them with effort and begin to rewind
the foreshadowing of a deathly midnight seems unkind
but you will be set free at last
and i will you to stay alive

be proud for all you can know will be missed
the temporary permanence of all that exists
the night will fall, your terror will turn to schist
gripping at your collar while you hope you’re not the only one
who wills you to stay alive.
[in which i'm inspired by truce, a song by twenty one pilots]
Through grey sky's they cut me down ,
their diggers out of thorn felt ground ,
hundred years I had stood ,
built out of architects visions and plans ,
From beauty I set my eye on you ,
a wandering stranger ,
and wondered how God could have knit anything together as beautiful as you ?
A monument to culture ,
to all that is good ,
yet empty you stand ,
how many years you have stood ,
when all that have learnt from you are all but an Angel carved in stone .
As for those that live ,
oh fond memories they have lost ,
How they have forgotten you .

Look at you now an empty shell ,
and the vandals they came with diggers from hell ,
wealding  their machines until you lay like bricks in the schist.
no memorial for you ,
no facade ,
no folly ,
Just dust .

I turned away I knew I would see you never again ,
but you were never mine just a face in a crowd ,
It all seems like a dream ,
and when my weary head wakes ,
even my memories will fade .
Pigeons will still take rest ,
daisies still grow around you were grave stones lay  .
To no memorial shall lay for you shall be gone ,
like the mirror I held to my grand mothers wardrobe ,
their reflections live ever on .

— The End —