that's 3 weeks without a keyboard,
that's 3 weeks on a dual-detox -
         that's that: roughly: antagonism
of: once upon a time...
           there can only be one Hans Andersen,
and as the story goes: ol' granny
   passed on the tales, without which:
no talk of posterity, and seances at
the theatre; alternatively: what if Kierkegård
opted for opera, rather than theatre?
    well: horrid is the task of dropping names,
as if being a village idiot, in that
capacity: giving directions... no such thing!
  nonetheless: a horrid task...
3 weeks... without this horrid world-entanglement...
amphetamines in the wild west,
                   and yet... everything slows down...
that's 3 weeks without such ''luxury''...
    and would you believe it?
3 weeks went by: in a blink of an eye.
             strange, or what 21st century writers
fail to recognise: the ******* canvas has changed!
any-single-one-of-them bothered to scrutinise
this new canvas? anyone?
     ah yes, it's still in its adolescence -
it's still: Dostoyevsky, scuttering in the grand
dungeon: that's the Moscow underground.
             the canvas! the canvas!
                             and indeed, if this be some
bellowing horn, from the depths of some forsaken
place... i'll go into the street, and sabotage
civilisation with graffiti...
                     then again: i have the least
expectations, such that capitalism works...
poetry... and what investment have you made?
nil, or almost nil... evidently: zilch!
      ah, but to have invested in canvases,
a studio, paints, brushes... see... no one sees
investment in poetry: primarily because the poet
has done the minimal...
            unless of course it turns out to ****
with a hot poker something once resembling
nations... which now resides in the insane asylum
(even though those, have been abolished)
                           , nation - ooh! what a ***** word!
the left irksome sometimes uses it:
in theory: the nation-state...
                        and then there's the resurgence of
ancient Greece... in a sing-along:
maybe 'cos i'm a Londoner... brother! brother!
Athenian! Athenian!
                                       but we are born into
a Spartan wedlock... no one really bothers to
**** our gob with Shakespeare...
    then again that is the schizophrenia (alias
dualism) in humanity... thus, to be frank,
psychiatry can be congratulated, it has provided
one useful term... and i will use it, over and over again,
in a non-symptomatic way, because, i find,
it stands, as if the Olympic Graeae (Zeus, Poseidon
and Hades) eating the carcass of some inhabitant
of Tartarus...
                               evidently: tartar steak...
doubly evident: tartars, or the remnants of mongols,
settled in crimea, and elsewhere in the Ukraine...
   tartar                      tra-ta-ta-ta... ku ku ryku!
a ja fu! krecha! a ja znow... fu!       radowitą
uprzejmość... skłaniam...  
    or what i call: rising spontaneously from the depths...
polymaths applauded, the tribunal resides in
bilingualism... trenches... history... perspectives
and current affairs... wicker man media...
                        so... an example of pedantry?
ó....               that's an orthographic dignitary -
        an aesthetic muddle... as is
c-ha                               contending with samo-ha...
     ch                            came from antagonism of
cz                                   which was later antagonised
by č               in česka.... say that: hen party
bound to Prague... in the Czech republic...
                                          ch      k..­.
i am, quiet frankly... standing at the feet of the tower
of babel... and i'm looking up, and i see
correlations, and i see decimal marks,
which, when given enough geography,
can seem like England and the isles,
       and central Europe...
    Iberia? phantom of Seneca...
  eureka! let's begin, once again...
  why is there a continuum beginning with
Plato and Aristotle?
                                           we could become
reasonable people... told to deal with madmen...
we could claim beginnings with Seneca...
and Cicero...
                      and why? the Romans loved poetry...
the Greeks antagonised Homer...
            the Romans loved Horace, Virgil,
                           Ovid... perhaps we should really forget
beginning with Plato and Aristotle...
       the former has become a church,
the latter a dentist's assistant (minus the ancients'
concept of a joke).
                      evidently i have to finish off reading
Seneca... his educational letters to Lucilius....
      moralising ******* that he was, thus, perhaps
a nibble at Cicero? but i must say:
                           it has to begin somewhere,
so not necessarily in stale-bread Athens...
                      and having such perspectives helps
in claiming casual conversation?
   assuredly - if it doesn't involve talking about
the weather...
                                which is always a great mystery
   if it's given enough aurora.
   onto the mystery of dialectics,
as discovered by Alfred Jarry in his Faustroll
Pataphysics contraband...
                                                nag­ging agreement...
nodding without approval... (chapter 10) -
beginning with αληθη λεγεις εφη
        (you speak the truth, he replies) -
   and ending with ως δoκεì
                              (how true that seems)...
and then some dub-step...
        know nothing dROP! boom! jiggy jiggy,
get the rhythm.
   as i always find it hard to look at
    diacritical arithmetic...
                                  given the following
represent a prolonging: hangman:
       å, ā and ä...
                             esp. in Finnish -
stratum: hedningarna täss on nainen.
                        rolling yarn, plateau, two dips;
and i will never say something profound...
i'll just say something no one else has said,
benefit of the doubt? somewhere, someone,
                                      kneels at the same altar.
  such are the distinction - invaders from the
north, and invaders from the south...
                                           even with
crusading Golgotha mann -
the times? many bats, supers, spiders,
but not enough readings of thomas mann...
                              easily befallen into prune-nosed
high-airs... it comes with the diet of literature...
   unfortunately.
                              and with yet another book:
i have burried yet another living person
i could have had a beer with, and conversed.
it always happens, every time i read a book
i have to attend a funeral... by reading a book
i have burried someone alive...
                          shame, in all frankness...
    i will sit in a congested train, touch a breathing
body, and consecrate the touch with
a warring genuflect - harbringer of a Teutonic
passion for initiation: a komtur's slap across the cheek.
   chequers played with passions...
           and some have to be approached like
caged animals, their vocabulary as cages,
                and the whole world before them:
cageless!
             some have indeed become so encrusted in
their daily: routine, that it would take a zoologist
(thrice oh, begs some sort of diacritical marking)
rather than a psychologist to understand them...
    like the darting dupes they are, enshrined in
20% gratis! smile! have a nice day! boxing day sales!
all but pleasantries, fathoming the grave.
   stiff vocab and all other kinds of perfume...
                           a king and his charlatan knights,
who are merely ditto-heads.
                  and not of this world, afresh -
among the nimble hands prior to birth -
surely there is: more grandeour in birth
   that entry via a ******...
                            the greatest pain of ****...
and when the ancient treaty was signed
under the name: Augustus Cesarean - or
recommended for a need of aristocracy -
    it was, for a time, the mana magnetism:
and such was the rule of poetry:
rather than a crown, donned the laurel leaves...
donned the laurel leaves...
    and such was the covenant from ancient
foes when trying to assimilate the Jew...
three kings from Babylon,
                         the child in Egypt...
          no good tides from Nazareth...
         a crown of myrrh - later overshadowed
by dogmatic sprechen, simpler: thorns...
yella things... or rzepak, Essex is filled with it...
rzepak... so why bother adding a dot above
the z, when you get capricious and use rz to
denote the same?! thus a science:
voiced retroflex fricative... Stalingrad!
                       can you really stomach this kind
of jargon? if it wasn't for science fiction:
science would be twice removed from gott ist tot,
*******' worth of pondering, given the close
proximity rhyme... nothing that rhymes should
ever be taken seriously, it should be hymnal!
                         Horatio! mein lyre!
   mein Guinness leier! rabbi krähe -
     and they deem that ****** white when talking:
thinking? i'd prefer Cezanne in real life -
   maggot wriggling and all...
                                          as much eroticism
as bound to a dog slobbering its testicles:
which means ****-all in an almighty stance
   for a dollop of halleluyah in Nepal.
well: pretty talk, pretty pretty pretty: i feel pretty,
oh so butter-fly-e.
                                    2 week stance,
***** in autumn... but so many Swiss hues
coming from the same concentration of decay!
shweet!  zeit-ser!        and that's me talking
kindergarten german: innovation begins with
a fork and a spoon, should the tongue come to it...
            i see a poem,
i see something worth bugging... c.i.a.,
f.b.i., hannibal's lecture in Florence, Venice for
the rats... bugging... shoving...
  shovelling... necro grounding, rattling...
    windy via north... Icelandic...
drums along incisors of abstract gallop:
violins... fringes of the mustang... airy airy...
all regresses toward the Vulgate...
         like ****, like said, and the only pristine
stress comes with vanilla ice-cream,
or a medium-rare beef ****! hmph!
                         fa fa fa excesses with that hurling
puff...
                      and i did finish Kant's
critique of pure reason... minus two calendars...
but, so help me god, the 2nd volume was hiding
under some corner...
                           thus, from transcendental methodology
came plump apricots, plums and pears...
             sweet decay fruit baron...
              and it's called sugars in the intricacy of pulp...
lazily grown, dangling on that caricature of
a formerly known: full crop of wheat-crude fringe.
    2 years... honest to god!
         but so many books in between...
i was given a recommendation...
i cited it already... kraszewski's magnum opus...
29 books...
                       although that's history fictionalised...
but nonetheless, it really was about
     the cossack uprising in the 17th century...
   and it was, as i once said, something i can forgive
sienkiewicz - the film version,
as in: i will not read a book once it has been adapted
to a movie... it's self-evident that too many
people have read a piece of work and are gagging
for a conversation... but where's the playground?
           ******* cherades!
  chinese whispers and a Manchurian candidate!
  i thought as much.
                          and whenever it's not a preplaned
escapade, what becomes of the day?
     was it always about a stance for carpe diem?
  syllables: di                em.
                            carpe is said with more lubricant.
corpus diem. well, that's an alternative, however
you care to think about it.
                and whenever you care to think about,
the proof is there: mishandling misnomers:
poets as tattoo artists... although no one sees the ink,
signatures on a reader's brian (purposively altered,
toward a Michael Jackon he-he, and other:
albino castratos the church venerates!)...
   that's 3 weeks in a catholic country...
  3 weeks... if only the football was better,
      i'd be called Juan Sanchez...
               but, evidently, the football is bad...
     so it's catholicism on par with a sleeping inquisition...
no one really expected Monty Python to conjure
that one... because it never really took place,
not until a trans-generational exodus
postscript 2004... once western brothels were exhausted,
and the Arab started ******* a hippo...
              then it was all about lakes and rivers
and Las Vegas 2.0 in Dubai!
                     you say quack... i say:
                                                    easy target.
and they did receive a blessing from Allah...
enough ink to write out Dante's revision of the Koran,
and some Al-Sha'ke'pir to write a play called:
the Merchant of Mecca.
  last time i heard, when the reformation was
plauging Christendom, no one invited the Arabs...
these days i think the little Lutherans of Islam
watched too many historical movies...
me? pick up a crucifix and march to Jerusalem?
  and is that going to translate into:
   blame the populists! blame the nationalists!
it's like watching a circus... why is the Islamic
reformation asking for third party associates?
                  i was happy listening to
the klinik... albums: eat your heart out...
time + plague...
                             once again: the world narrative
gags for enough people to conjure up
     a placebo solipsism... and that's placebo
with a squiggly prefix (meaning? how far
that ambiguity will take you) - ~placebo...
well: since existentialists were bores...
it's about time to head for Scandinavia
   and ask: is that " ''                 for passing on
an inheritance, or better still: ripe for
acknowledging ambiguity?
                          and if you can shove this
  into your daily narrative... you better be
a connaisseur of chinese antiques...
                frailty... then again, theres: ******;
well hell yeah *****'h, it's a murky underwold
after all.
                     and yes: that's called a petting word...
some say hombre, and we'll all be amigos
and muskateers at the end of the story.
                                    finally... i feel like i'm writing
a poem that i'll never end...
              why? it was supposed to be about
how John Casimir of Sweden championed
  the crown away from his brother Prince Charles
(volume 1)...
                      the bishop of Breslau...
a recluse... couldn't ride a horse...
    then again: nothing worthy imitation...
beginning with a donkey...
                               the transfiguration of palms
into whips... 2000 years later
talk of Hercules is madness... that other bit?
complete sanity.
                              well... if that be the case...
the book is there... i signed it, 2nd volume of
Kant's critique...
  
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        an oak... in a forest of pine...
an oak in pine wood...

then onto the wood of sighs:

aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
aH aH aH aH aH aH aH aH
          (somehow the surd escapes,
and later morphs into, but prior to)

a short script: variation on MW...

      pears' worth of blunting runes:
opulance s and ᛋ - versus z,
    congregation minor: the interchange, ß,
buttocks and *****, minus phantoms of erotica.
yet, taking into account trigonometry...
sine (genesis 0), and cosine (genesis 1),
or            M                                   W
(no Jew would dare believe the Latins have
the second 'alf of the proof: that loophole of all
things qab-cannibal-mystic - cravat donning
mystique - a flit's worth of sharpening,
or dental grit... flappy tongue,
flabby oyster, lazing for a crab's palette)...
so?

1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0

of course there's an

I,m serving my sentence
Four weeks hard time
Being unemployed
Is my only crime

They sent me to felling
I did,nt think it was funny
But I had to serve my time
Or lose all my money

So I turned up on my course
Nervous on my first day
Then I met dave
Induction out the way

Straight down the factory
To the bottom shed
Putting paper into dumpy bags
Really blagged my head

So I shovel people,s ****
It Destroys my soul
But it pays Daves mortgage
And keeps 25 people off the dole

Then worked on the balers
Handballed cardboard and paper
Got to do the boring bumpers
But dave said I can do them later

Might get to go out on the van
Collecting people's ****
But it's a break from the shovel
If only for a bit

Got 25 boxes
To empty for Steve
More ****** dumpy bags
It's hard to believe

The lad I started with
His name was John
He managed one day
Now he is gone

Now he,s back to the dole
To see his advisor
Sanctioned to pieces
I would of been wiser

Just keep my head down
Do whatever I,m told
So my lovely advisor
Don,t stop my dole

Done 3days now
Just 25 to go
No good moaning
Just get on with the show

It's really not so bad
Shovelling people's ****
And it's that kind of job
We're someone's got to do it

So if you don,t like shovelling ****
We're you don't get paid a bob
Get of your **** of the dole
And get yourself a job

No offence to the **** shovelers
All over the  land
but I,m a man of verse
Not a **** shovelling fan

I
This is the night mail crossing the Border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,

Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner, the girl next door.

Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient's against her, but she's on time.

Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,

Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.

Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from bushes at her blank-faced coaches.

Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.

In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in a bedroom gently shakes.

II
Dawn freshens, Her climb is done.
Down towards Glasgow she descends,
Towards the steam tugs yelping down a glade of cranes
Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces
Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.
All Scotland waits for her:
In dark glens, beside pale-green lochs
Men long for news.

III
Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from girl and boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or to visit relations,
And applications for situations,
And timid lovers' declarations,
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters with faces scrawled on the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, the adoring,
The cold and official and the heart's outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.

IV
Thousands are still asleep,
Dreaming of terrifying monsters
Or of friendly tea beside the band in Cranston's or Crawford's:

Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,
Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
They continue their dreams,
But shall wake soon and hope for letters,
And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

On an apple-ripe September morning
Through the mist-chill fields I went
With a pitch-fork on my shoulder
Less for use than for devilment.

The threshing mill was set-up, I knew,
In Cassidy's haggard last night,
And we owed them a day at the threshing
Since last year. O it was delight

To be paying bills of laughter
And chaffy gossip in kind
With work thrown in to ballast
The fantasy-soaring mind.

As I crossed the wooden bridge I wondered
As I looked into the drain
If ever a summer morning should find me
Shovelling up eels again.

And I thought of the wasps' nest in the bank
And how I got chased one day
Leaving the drag and the scraw-knife behind,
How I covered my face with hay.

The wet leaves of the cocksfoot
Polished my boots as I
Went round by the glistening bog-holes
Lost in unthinking joy.

I'll be carrying bags to-day, I mused,
The best job at the mill
With plenty of time to talk of our loves
As we wait for the bags to fill.

Maybe Mary might call round...
And then I came to the haggard gate,
And I knew as I entered that I had come
Through fields that were part of no earthly estate.

I was shovelling drifted snow outside  today
and was overcome  again
by the warmth of that  beautiful,
   deep feeling.

You may never understand
the need to push through the mundane
and into the deep,  central Core
of the one you care most about.
    For you,
in your current world, that is not attainable..
but for me..  looking at you..

I know you very much have that  deeply-gorgeous,
extremely worthwhile attainability in you.

Without connecting deeply with one such as you,
I would just be sliding superficially along the surface
throughout this entire 'life' here..

Knowing there is a whole world of untapped closeness
lying just under the status-quo
of the normal 'everyday' operating level.

That is not saying we would necessarily  be ******

       at all

   It just means that there is,  sadly
   such a huge amount of giving up  of the Beautiful
   in order to continue on skating along the surface.

That is why I do what I do, and say the things I say
   late at night.
During the day, I am operating  
out there on the "everyday" level.
At night,  I am connecting into the unfathomable depths
of the most lusciously-beautiful gold mine I have ever known.
I can't do the "surface" thing with you, Young-love..
    In fact..  I won't.  

You get that in your marriage,
and pretty much everywhere else around you.
I refuse to be a part of that tremendously sad list.

You will never not be that deeply luscious gold mine..
You will never not be fully worthy of the attempt.

You want to be left alone.

  
      .. ok.

They’d never got on before the dance
And they certainly wouldn’t now,
For Geoffrey Raise had showered praise
On the Fireman’s girl, somehow,
And she, Charlene, was impressed, it seems
With the Engine driver’s call,
And changed her date, though it seemed too late
To the Fireman, at the ball.

They stood on the plate of the Duke of Kent
With the fireman raising steam,
Shovelling coal to the firebox
In a movement swift and clean,
He scattered the coals on the glowing bed
With a practised twist of his wrist,
While the driver kept his eyes ahead
As the steam built up, and hissed.

‘Why did you jump on Charlene then,’
Said the Fireman, Henry Rice,
During a break, his back was bent
With sweat, but his eyes were ice,
‘I don’t have to answer to you,’ said Raise,
‘Charlene was anyone’s girl,
I liked the way that she held herself
And she sure knew how to twirl.’

The train pulled out of the station with
A puff and a cloud of steam,
And clattered along the track from Klifft
On its way to Essingdean,
Pulling a dozen coaches and
A Guards van at the rear,
And a hundred and twenty passengers
At the high time of the year.

‘What would you say if I did to you
What you did to me, back then,
Cutting in on your date that night,
What was her name, that Gwen?’
‘She wouldn’t have looked at you,’ said Raise,
As he pulled the chord to toot,
‘And as far as your feelings go, old chum,
I really don’t give a hoot.’

The train was rocketing down the line,
And flew past the water tower,
While Raise had opened the ***** right up
To give the Express more power,
The gauge was inching at sixty five
As they flew past Barton Dale,
While Rice was shovelling coal once more
Though his face was pinched and pale.

He took Raise down with the shovel as
They raced through Weston Town,
Who lay, half stunned on the footplate
Hanging off and looking down.
He kicked on out at the Fireman with
His size twelve steel-capped boots,
Who reached and hung on the chord that gave
The Duke of Kent its *****.

The train was racking up seventy five
As they kicked and punched and swore
Totally out of control it passed
The Halt at Elsinore,
They narrowly missed a rumbling freight
As the points took it aside,
While Raise had yelled, ‘You can go to hell,
But control your wounded pride.’

The Fireman opened the firebox
Spraying hot coals on the plate,
‘Now dance again as you danced Charlene,
If you think that you’re oh so great.’
‘Just let me get to my feet,’ said Raise
‘Or you’re going to wreck the train.’
‘It might be time,’ said the Fireman,
‘For your life to fill with pain.’

They hit the buffers at Essingdean
And the engine left the track,
It leapt up over the platform as
The roof ripped off the stack.
Raise was told when they went to court
That he’d never be re-hired,
And Rice, for want of the girl he sought,
The Fireman was fired.

David Lewis Paget

ticket to the train station
tempted to train my motivation
singing swan songs for my salvation
toking for a moments vacation, coaching vocation
warp the world around my thumb
sway to the beats of my drum
angels pick me up, scared to become
all the things i have been ashamed of
iridescent sparkles that were judged as vain
steady shovelling the ****, shaving down the over grown bushes
the path was there all along; i see her now
what the **** was i even doing

Proud I was with my shoveling,
Moving snow to the end of the drive,
Lifing loads, shovelling high.
The armlifts created pyramids,
I was as proud as Pharoh coud be.
These pyramids
Could well entomb me.

The first time he came into the light
He thought that his eyes had gone,
The sun was shining, ever so bright
With nothing to focus on,
They led him out to sit on a rock
And hacked off his ball and chain,
It took a week of his ticket of leave
Before he could see again.

Richard Dawson, a broken man
Had finally done his time,
He’d spent three years in shovelling coal
In the colony’s first coal mine,
They said it was only his just desserts
For a pocket, picked in the Strand,
And sent him out on a convict ship
To the hell of Van Diemen’s Land.

At first they set him to breaking rocks
For laying the first rough roads,
He worked while tethered in iron chains
That chafed his skin and his bones,
He wasn’t allowed to take a rest
From swinging the pick or axe,
For the guards would follow the line of men
And lay the whip on their backs.

He lost his God and he lost his soul
Or he thought that he had, out there,
Where men were hung as a matter of fact
And nobody seemed to care,
He slaved four years with the other men
But his future was looking bleak,
When he hit a man who was guarding them
He was sent to Saltwater Creek.

If ever there was a hell on earth
It was called Saltwater Creek,
The devil had got in the minds of men
And they formed a barbaric clique.
The cells were buried, were underground,
There wasn’t a spark of light,
And the men were taken out of the mine
When it was dark, at night.

They started before the sun was up,
They finished when it was gone,
Were locked and chained in their pitch dark cells
In a terror that just went on,
And while they were buried and mining coal
They’d think of the old country,
While their judge sat cool in his stately robes
And finished his morning tea.

A man turns into a surly brute
When he’s kicked and cursed, and beat,
But take the sun from his daily run
And his soul admits defeat.
Richard Dawson, later in life
At night, would take to the street,
And never could quite explain to his wife
The Hell of Saltwater Creek.

David Lewis Paget

Dig, dig and dig the dirt,

Sweat stains occupy most of the t-shirt,

Energetic, powerful bursts,

Keep shovelling until it hurts,

Hard hat caste system,

Know who's in charge and who's the assistant,

Burger vans appear wouldn't want to miss them,

A line of ketchup to add some vitamins,

Cancer sticks help to break up the day,

For torrential rain certain builders pray,

Happily take no play; no pay.

Round and round we go, two and thrice in throw,
Whilst hand in hand in fairy land.
We dance and prance around the rockpool,
Until the last one cannot stand.

I lay down in that busy rockpool and finally open my heart unto the floods,
This once impregnable fortress finally lowers its rusted and seized port cullis one last time.
With the moss of ages and the barnacles uprooted and torn away it lowers its decaying  drawbridge,
To let the tide wash in and carry out on its ebb, all of its ache, sadness and regrets far out into the vastness of the ocean.

The soul and spirit is empty you see,
The heart has now been opened for the waves and tides.
There is no fire nor fuel left in the furnace,
Not even a dying ember nor spark, but only a withered rose stem which finally succumbed to the dark..

All that resides left in incredible depths, Is fine *** ash,
Only good for shovelling up and scattering on the fields to maybe start again.
And those vines of that crop which fed once in abundance will grow strong, tall, fine and straight like youthful men,
Feeding off of the nourishment of past memories.

In time when these mighty vines look back to their roots,
Their hearts will ache to find their mighty benefactor.
Once again they will return to that ancestral home,
To *** some ash and plant a striking red rose in that tended bed.

Without their knowing a buried ember disturbed is glowing,
and forgotten roots, soon shoot and expand.
To once again become the source of wisdom, the all knowing,
Soon to bring life back to this long lost forgotten land.

my scars own me
deep and dark
building bridges
     future
        present
            past

my thoughts haunt me
spreading doubt
shovelling ditches
     pull
        us
           out

When I return      I touch the soil
    I used to think so much of the sky     the soil
in my hands how much thirst is there
    I could clutch it and save us all

                     the rain

might spill out of my grandmother's mouth
    if she strains her wheat-dry hands
long enough of all the liquid     blessings
of the church she crossed      again and again
    and the holiness would clear my grandfather's

                   eyes and

                   the rain

would spill out. I travel much
through skies thinking of the soil
the soil looks like earth clay mud
red rock heart
brown stone
cool coal mould
dark black hiding cavity gold
water sold concrete brick houses                            
                    acacia trees
the soil it looks like          me

and the things that made me:

I cannot take you seriously america

what are your bullets supposed to do to me?

And europe?

Your columns? They lean!

      much unlike my grandfather's back.

Have you see the man handle a *****?
     The shovelling he could do? The cows
and goats he can end? The snakes
      that fear him? These are my hands.

Imagine the thought that this soil is not
enough.
      Look at my hands. Look.

                                    What do you perceive?

I see everything. All at once and never.
     And still it is yet

                to rain.

It was all silk and sawdust
Mamas skirts rustled a sunday mass
and dad wore his bowler hat tilted at an angle
(dirk bogarde -like look)

But he was a farmer.
soon after the service was over
he'd hang his hat by the cowsheds
and wallow in green slushy poo
irrespective of how much it stank
and how natural  he looked
throwing sawdust over the caked green pancakes
and shovelling all that crap into a corner,
with sundays best clothes on!

Mama insisted he change first
but no. "The cows need attention
as much as god does, Mama"

We did not argue with his farmyard philosophy
but that's where we cut our teeth
and tasted a mans love for his animals
both human and beast and that's where
we understood that sunhats, bowlers
and polished walking sticks
were just statements that didn't come
from a book- but society. Somehow
he mixed the two learnings
to get along with everything.

I missed him when he milked his last cow
and lay down forever in that quiet evening
as the sun set in an orange sky. The brightest star
that night climbed over the eastern ridges
to grace the night. Dad?



© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

This is my country
the one my fathers fought for
the one they went to war for
the one they ploughed the land and lived and died for and
what the **** for?

So those rotten wheeler stealers and ***** dollar dealers and some half bent bobby peelers could rip us off and laugh about it,
leave us shovelling **** and forget about it?
My old man did not fight for that lot of ***** in the city men,those with no mercy or pity men,
but then again my old man's dead and gone,shuffled off his mortal coil and now ploughs six foot underneath the soil.

But
this is still my land and sod that band of thieves,one day there'll be no crime,no criminals and little time for them to rob us blind,
sweet shangri la and ***** me sideways near and far 'cause that ain't going to be while those city men steal from you and me.
And your dad my dad went to war,just ask yourself,
what the **** for?

why should there be a medical diagnosis of pronoun use, when the pronoun they is treated as show-off problematic and paranoiac naturally, to ease the conversation?*

the day when the tetra gram ah tonne
met the compass of the crux
and turned the sacred YHWH
into N.E.W.S. -
to make it easier, the crucifix,
an abstracted square - collapsed -
they are indeed shoving ***** at as,
with prayers at the Hagia Sophia,
they're shovelling ***** at us,
because they're realising that the power
they claim to have is ineffective,
hence their need for religious topics
to organise legions, to utilise religion
is to finalise political ineffectiveness;
political apathy breeds
religiosity and attachment to symbolism
rather than geometry.

The sun shined down on our heads
At the pond, between clouds.
The water was cold.
A man adjusted his static-y radio behind us,
Tuning in the Tigers game.
I’d feel this way anywhere.

I decided,
I’d feel this way anywhere.
Surrounded by pine mountain beauty,
In a parked trailer in the forest,
In Southern Ohio, with friends, in a house
Driving in the van, between Kentucky and Tennessee,
With my parents, in the garage,
I’d feel this way anywhere, at least after a couple of days,
Especially after a couple of weeks.

I get restless, and wonder,
While I’m shovelling piles of mulch into a wheel barrow,
Why am I doing this? After graduating from college, why

I like the sun and working,
And Voltaire and everybody said go back to the garden,
Get back to the garden,
And in 2018 this is what that translates to,
On my knees spreading mulch with my hands
In an Astrophysicists’ backyard
Where there’s a fish pond, and big green shade
And we eat on the patio while him and his wife
Talk about how they built a cabin up north,
How they hauled the wood in three-quarters of a mile
And suddenly, I feel it again

I need to do that,
Why am I doing this when I could be doing that?
While I’m stacking dishes of breakfast foods on large trays,
And telling others I’m behind them,
Snow is falling silently outside and it feels good and bad.
When I’m quietly reading a book in a classroom,
And suddenly look up to realize I’m surrounded by 13-year-olds.
"How did I get here''?

In the spring I’m leaving.

March came in
like a tired Zebra
being run down
by a pride of Lions.

But no, not now,
she's going out like
a ***** old Mule
kicking in the stall.

As you know, mules are *****,
you couldn't have said it better yourself.

Spring comes in March,
I'd like to know who ever
thought that date up.
I've been shovelling snow
while it's ten below.

I went out and bought
a rake a ***** and a ***.
Wishful thinking on my part
the ground is still hard.

I'm going to plant flowers
And raise a high fence
so the Deer's mouth will water
but it will get no feed.

Good riddance March
and your frigid temperatures
I don't want to see your face
for another year.

(20 minute poetry)

I could do without
making this journey today
do without working and
just stay away
do without misery
do without gloom
just stay at home
make do with a book in my room.

I've got 20 minutes to decide
do I stay in this cattle truck
or get the *******
and take the
next
ride back?

The thought drowns in depression
there's a lesson here,
a question
I fear needs an answer.

I suppose Friday is always like this
the end of a hard week

the long and the short of it is

do I make this journey or not?

And there's this **** stood behind me who stinks
jeez
I don't want to whisper
B O
I want to scream out

underarm deodorant

this is what life is about.

But it's fine
I'm getting down with it
putting the ***** in and
shovelling ****.

It'll be okay
I'll **** a few brain cells
****** more dreams
bleed out some more life
stifle my screams,

It'll be fine.

Cesspit
The **** shovelling soldiers are sent off to war
To dig latrines so their soldier brethren can ****
Not in peace but to empty their guts between fights
Ukrainians have other ideas they want to **** them all
Dead soldiers and ******* diggers means more Russians
Who can no longer fight or hurt innocent Ukrainians
How many Ivan cesspit ***** men have been eradicated?
**** them all so the soldiers **** their pants before dying
From Ukrainian bullets and high tech Allied weapons
The more the better in this video game war

One smiles and smokes,
And ryes 'n cokes,
While claiming one's
Forever broke,
As one simultaneously
Takes a ****.
How does one
Manage,
At all
To cope,
Binging while
One quips a joke.
Has one found
The ancient code
The alchemist couldnt't
For making gold;
Or a money-tree,
A gem-studded bank,
Where wealth is found
By shaking free.
At times I shake
Like those leafs
When worn down by
One's Poor me, pleas.
I think I know
How one can binge:
It's all the Bull
You're shovelling in.

Cobwebs hang white on the frosty air as digging begins

A lone bird on a bush makes its high call,

sharp as the wind through a broken window

a toothpick of noise

bouncing off damp bricks, that look as though they might fall softly
to the wet grass below

and lay hidden by tears

Is there anything more profound

than the mournful sound

of a shovelling ***** as it fills in a grave

and closes the ground

Death does not necessarily involve the bleed
And the end does not necessarily mean
Our worlds will crumble.
We know not of our conscience
Or the creatures we ****
Murderers, masters of malevolence, we are.
Our inner light has faded long ago;
Remorse could not handle our actions
So he fled in the dead of night
With only our nightmares to cling to as a ******* of what is right
We create laws only to break them as we construct a chaos we can no longer control
We create children only to break them as we surround them with the filth that we have become
Shovelling ash into their lungs, as if subduing them with chemicals allows us to regain the influence that we have lost so long ago
And ever since that day we strive for some form of power
We bury our integrity like bombs beneath our homes shaking the foundation of a place laced with false security.
Earthquakes, hurricanes and tornados
An acceptance of disaster.
And it’s all in your mind.

think of you, who made it special

and we leaped with the preparations, little folk.

he came round the back of the house, my beautiful

the coal house next to the toilet by our back door

once he fell and mother brought him in and his hands went to the walls and surfaces for support, making marks

i

fancy mother made him tea, with sugar

we moved house not so beautiful, my beautiful

upstairs, it was carried upstairs by the front door prepared with newspaper wads to stop the dust and me parked behind to count the bags.

always correct, failing the story of short loads and money on the side

now my beautiful, is delivered to the bunker outside and the delivery note put through the letter box for me

beautiful house for me yet

one never forgot the first

my beautiful.

There you are,
You pile of steaming hot crap,
I knew you were watching me,
And so I was on the lookout,

Why do you always turn up,
At the most inopportune time?,
Can't you see I'm busy?,
Can't you see I'm content?,

you sneak around leaving black sludge,
Shovelling despair and anguish into my bag,
Making it heavier as the minutes drift,
So heavy, I can't carry it much further,

I see you,I saw you and yet,
There's sweet FA I can do about it,
Other than crouch down and endure the deluge,
So bring it, let's have it,

Because, when you're done,
I may be broken, but alive,
I will be on my knees to be sure but,
I will always get up.. Always......

(C) eileenmcgreevy@ymail.com 06/05/2019

To me there was never any drawback
it was just simply child's play
looking back down the old track
it was a typical British railway.

It was just brilliant in its heyday
chugging along with a smokestack
through tunnels and the odd archway
I can safely say I never looked back.

All those hard workers on the payroll
leaving memories along the track
spending all day shovelling coal
everything they wore and owned black.

Some days their breath dried and they cried
from the young lad to the station guard
but they all had something called pride
even though their memory's were all scarred.

The whistle could be heard "all aboard"
and off it would go chugging
the steam puffed and the engine roared
regardless of the carriages it was tugging.

Through every village an every vale
it relentlessly ploughed
along each track and each trail
leaving its white fluffy cloud.

Travelling along tootling down
from hill to hill down the track
from coast to each and every town
and I never looked back.

trying to find
original material
in channels of repeats
i've seen all these
I lived them
never expecting
to repeat
the same plot
dug deep
they all take their turns
shovelling dirt

Love falling center twisting curl.
Healer comforter constant companion searching river guided endless flow.
Current ever welling beauty's design compass within our dreams.
Sounding lips greeting on arrival.
Mirror in time and time again.  
Gift given and present waiting.
Moon tidal waxing summon to our beds.
Warm smiles glancing eyes have spoken.
Innate humble nature endless marathon carried on our next breath.
Stream of lightning reappear vanish emerge again and again within our dreams.
Graffiti shining dark corner seen in our eyes.
Fingers soft clay laughing wildly bring forth come to life.
Endless shovelling exhaustion pages.
Changing sharp edged distinction contrasting where we stand.  
Clip tied pages passed in silence into the palm of another's hand.
Riot youth carried repeating pattern every generation.
Escapee passage take us out of here.
Nestled on shelves sleeping cat unread.
Dive in yearning song join the swimmers in the pool.

How lonely were you
in that solitary grave
atop the hill
where
the wind whistled
now and then
tousling the dry blades of grass
and moulding the rusty boulders
into eerie shapes
where
the vague echoes
from the valley
and from the hills beyond
merged into
the silence,
the stillness

After that life of love
of tumult and adulation
I bet you'd come
to love this solitude
this quiet place
to rest in peace
while the wind erased
your name from
the headstone...

Until they brought the rest,
shovelling every now and then
and chanting from the book
and then throwing
clumps of sod
disturbing you
with their muffled sobs
which the wind brought back
a century later to me, now.