They have spent their
content of simpering,
holding their lips this
and that way, winding
the lines between
their brows. Old folks
allow their bellies to jiggle like slow
tamborines.
The hollers
rise up and spill
over any way they want.
When old folks laugh, they free the world.
They turn slowly, slyly knowing
the best and the worst
of remembering.
Saliva glistens in
the corners of their mouths,
their heads wobble
on brittle necks, but
their laps
are filled with memories.
When old folks laugh, they consider the promise
of dear painless death, and generously
forgive life for happening
to them.

Still must I hear?—shall hoarse FITZGERALD bawl
His creaking couplets in a tavern hall,
And I not sing, lest, haply, Scotch Reviews
Should dub me scribbler, and denounce my Muse?
Prepare for rhyme—I’ll publish, right or wrong:
Fools are my theme, let Satire be my song.

  Oh! Nature’s noblest gift—my grey goose-quill!
Slave of my thoughts, obedient to my will,
Torn from thy parent bird to form a pen,
That mighty instrument of little men!
The pen! foredoomed to aid the mental throes
Of brains that labour, big with Verse or Prose;
Though Nymphs forsake, and Critics may deride,
The Lover’s solace, and the Author’s pride.
What Wits! what Poets dost thou daily raise!
How frequent is thy use, how small thy praise!
Condemned at length to be forgotten quite,
With all the pages which ’twas thine to write.
But thou, at least, mine own especial pen!
Once laid aside, but now assumed again,
Our task complete, like Hamet’s shall be free;
Though spurned by others, yet beloved by me:
Then let us soar to-day; no common theme,
No Eastern vision, no distempered dream
Inspires—our path, though full of thorns, is plain;
Smooth be the verse, and easy be the strain.

  When Vice triumphant holds her sov’reign sway,
Obey’d by all who nought beside obey;
When Folly, frequent harbinger of crime,
Bedecks her cap with bells of every Clime;
When knaves and fools combined o’er all prevail,
And weigh their Justice in a Golden Scale;
E’en then the boldest start from public sneers,
Afraid of Shame, unknown to other fears,
More darkly sin, by Satire kept in awe,
And shrink from Ridicule, though not from Law.

  Such is the force of Wit! I but not belong
To me the arrows of satiric song;
The royal vices of our age demand
A keener weapon, and a mightier hand.
Still there are follies, e’en for me to chase,
And yield at least amusement in the race:
Laugh when I laugh, I seek no other fame,
The cry is up, and scribblers are my game:
Speed, Pegasus!—ye strains of great and small,
Ode! Epic! Elegy!—have at you all!
I, too, can scrawl, and once upon a time
I poured along the town a flood of rhyme,
A schoolboy freak, unworthy praise or blame;
I printed—older children do the same.
’Tis pleasant, sure, to see one’s name in print;
A Book’s a Book, altho’ there’s nothing in’t.
Not that a Title’s sounding charm can save
Or scrawl or scribbler from an equal grave:
This LAMB must own, since his patrician name
Failed to preserve the spurious Farce from shame.
No matter, GEORGE continues still to write,
Tho’ now the name is veiled from public sight.
Moved by the great example, I pursue
The self-same road, but make my own review:
Not seek great JEFFREY’S, yet like him will be
Self-constituted Judge of Poesy.

  A man must serve his time to every trade
Save Censure—Critics all are ready made.
Take hackneyed jokes from MILLER, got by rote,
With just enough of learning to misquote;
A man well skilled to find, or forge a fault;
A turn for punning—call it Attic salt;
To JEFFREY go, be silent and discreet,
His pay is just ten sterling pounds per sheet:
Fear not to lie,’twill seem a sharper hit;
Shrink not from blasphemy, ’twill pass for wit;
Care not for feeling—pass your proper jest,
And stand a Critic, hated yet caress’d.

And shall we own such judgment? no—as soon
Seek roses in December—ice in June;
Hope constancy in wind, or corn in chaff,
Believe a woman or an epitaph,
Or any other thing that’s false, before
You trust in Critics, who themselves are sore;
Or yield one single thought to be misled
By JEFFREY’S heart, or LAMB’S Boeotian head.
To these young tyrants, by themselves misplaced,
Combined usurpers on the Throne of Taste;
To these, when Authors bend in humble awe,
And hail their voice as Truth, their word as Law;
While these are Censors, ’twould be sin to spare;
While such are Critics, why should I forbear?
But yet, so near all modern worthies run,
’Tis doubtful whom to seek, or whom to shun;
Nor know we when to spare, or where to strike,
Our Bards and Censors are so much alike.
Then should you ask me, why I venture o’er
The path which POPE and GIFFORD trod before;
If not yet sickened, you can still proceed;
Go on; my rhyme will tell you as you read.
“But hold!” exclaims a friend,—”here’s some neglect:
This—that—and t’other line seem incorrect.”
What then? the self-same blunder Pope has got,
And careless Dryden—”Aye, but Pye has not:”—
Indeed!—’tis granted, faith!—but what care I?
Better to err with POPE, than shine with PYE.

  Time was, ere yet in these degenerate days
Ignoble themes obtained mistaken praise,
When Sense and Wit with Poesy allied,
No fabled Graces, flourished side by side,
From the same fount their inspiration drew,
And, reared by Taste, bloomed fairer as they grew.
Then, in this happy Isle, a POPE’S pure strain
Sought the rapt soul to charm, nor sought in vain;
A polished nation’s praise aspired to claim,
And raised the people’s, as the poet’s fame.
Like him great DRYDEN poured the tide of song,
In stream less smooth, indeed, yet doubly strong.
Then CONGREVE’S scenes could cheer, or OTWAY’S melt;
For Nature then an English audience felt—
But why these names, or greater still, retrace,
When all to feebler Bards resign their place?
Yet to such times our lingering looks are cast,
When taste and reason with those times are past.
Now look around, and turn each trifling page,
Survey the precious works that please the age;
This truth at least let Satire’s self allow,
No dearth of Bards can be complained of now.
The loaded Press beneath her labour groans,
And Printers’ devils shake their weary bones;
While SOUTHEY’S Epics cram the creaking shelves,
And LITTLE’S Lyrics shine in hot-pressed twelves.
Thus saith the Preacher: “Nought beneath the sun
Is new,” yet still from change to change we run.
What varied wonders tempt us as they pass!
The Cow-pox, Tractors, Galvanism, and Gas,
In turns appear, to make the ****** stare,
Till the swoln bubble bursts—and all is air!
Nor less new schools of Poetry arise,
Where dull pretenders grapple for the prize:
O’er Taste awhile these Pseudo-bards prevail;
Each country Book-club bows the knee to Baal,
And, hurling lawful Genius from the throne,
Erects a shrine and idol of its own;
Some leaden calf—but whom it matters not,
From soaring SOUTHEY, down to groveling STOTT.

  Behold! in various throngs the scribbling crew,
For notice eager, pass in long review:
Each spurs his jaded Pegasus apace,
And Rhyme and Blank maintain an equal race;
Sonnets on sonnets crowd, and ode on ode;
And Tales of Terror jostle on the road;
Immeasurable measures move along;
For simpering Folly loves a varied song,
To strange, mysterious Dulness still the friend,
Admires the strain she cannot comprehend.
Thus Lays of Minstrels—may they be the last!—
On half-strung harps whine mournful to the blast.
While mountain spirits prate to river sprites,
That dames may listen to the sound at nights;
And goblin brats, of Gilpin Horner’s brood
Decoy young Border-nobles through the wood,
And skip at every step, Lord knows how high,
And frighten foolish babes, the Lord knows why;
While high-born ladies in their magic cell,
Forbidding Knights to read who cannot spell,
Despatch a courier to a wizard’s grave,
And fight with honest men to shield a knave.

  Next view in state, proud prancing on his roan,
The golden-crested haughty Marmion,
Now forging scrolls, now foremost in the fight,
Not quite a Felon, yet but half a Knight.
The gibbet or the field prepared to grace;
A mighty mixture of the great and base.
And think’st thou, SCOTT! by vain conceit perchance,
On public taste to foist thy stale romance,
Though MURRAY with his MILLER may combine
To yield thy muse just half-a-crown per line?
No! when the sons of song descend to trade,
Their bays are sear, their former laurels fade,
Let such forego the poet’s sacred name,
Who rack their brains for lucre, not for fame:
Still for stern Mammon may they toil in vain!
And sadly gaze on Gold they cannot gain!
Such be their meed, such still the just reward
Of prostituted Muse and hireling bard!
For this we spurn Apollo’s venal son,
And bid a long “good night to Marmion.”

  These are the themes that claim our plaudits now;
These are the Bards to whom the Muse must bow;
While MILTON, DRYDEN, POPE, alike forgot,
Resign their hallowed Bays to WALTER SCOTT.

  The time has been, when yet the Muse was young,
When HOMER swept the lyre, and MARO sung,
An Epic scarce ten centuries could claim,
While awe-struck nations hailed the magic name:
The work of each immortal Bard appears
The single wonder of a thousand years.
Empires have mouldered from the face of earth,
Tongues have expired with those who gave them birth,
Without the glory such a strain can give,
As even in ruin bids the language live.
Not so with us, though minor Bards, content,
On one great work a life of labour spent:
With eagle pinion soaring to the skies,
Behold the Ballad-monger SOUTHEY rise!
To him let CAMOËNS, MILTON, TASSO yield,
Whose annual strains, like armies, take the field.
First in the ranks see Joan of Arc advance,
The scourge of England and the boast of France!
Though burnt by wicked BEDFORD for a witch,
Behold her statue placed in Glory’s niche;
Her fetters burst, and just released from prison,
A ****** Phoenix from her ashes risen.
Next see tremendous Thalaba come on,
Arabia’s monstrous, wild, and wond’rous son;
Domdaniel’s dread destroyer, who o’erthrew
More mad magicians than the world e’er knew.
Immortal Hero! all thy foes o’ercome,
For ever reign—the rival of Tom Thumb!
Since startled Metre fled before thy face,
Well wert thou doomed the last of all thy race!
Well might triumphant Genii bear thee hence,
Illustrious conqueror of common sense!
Now, last and greatest, Madoc spreads his sails,
Cacique in Mexico, and Prince in Wales;
Tells us strange tales, as other travellers do,
More old than Mandeville’s, and not so true.
Oh, SOUTHEY! SOUTHEY! cease thy varied song!
A bard may chaunt too often and too long:
As thou art strong in verse, in mercy, spare!
A fourth, alas! were more than we could bear.
But if, in spite of all the world can say,
Thou still wilt verseward plod thy weary way;
If still in Berkeley-Ballads most uncivil,
Thou wilt devote old women to the devil,
The babe unborn thy dread intent may rue:
“God help thee,” SOUTHEY, and thy readers too.

  Next comes the dull disciple of thy school,
That mild apostate from poetic rule,
The simple WORDSWORTH, framer of a lay
As soft as evening in his favourite May,
Who warns his friend “to shake off toil and trouble,
And quit his books, for fear of growing double;”
Who, both by precept and example, shows
That prose is verse, and verse is merely prose;
Convincing all, by demonstration plain,
Poetic souls delight in prose insane;
And Christmas stories tortured into rhyme
Contain the essence of the true sublime.
Thus, when he tells the tale of Betty Foy,
The idiot mother of “an idiot Boy;”
A moon-struck, silly lad, who lost his way,
And, like his bard, confounded night with day
So close on each pathetic part he dwells,
And each adventure so sublimely tells,
That all who view the “idiot in his glory”
Conceive the Bard the hero of the story.

  Shall gentle COLERIDGE pass unnoticed here,
To turgid ode and tumid stanza dear?
Though themes of innocence amuse him best,
Yet still Obscurity’s a welcome guest.
If Inspiration should her aid refuse
To him who takes a Pixy for a muse,
Yet none in lofty numbers can surpass
The bard who soars to elegize an ***:
So well the subject suits his noble mind,
He brays, the Laureate of the long-eared kind.

Oh! wonder-working LEWIS! Monk, or Bard,
Who fain would make Parnassus a church-yard!
Lo! wreaths of yew, not laurel, bind thy brow,
Thy Muse a Sprite, Apollo’s sexton thou!
Whether on ancient tombs thou tak’st thy stand,
By gibb’ring spectres hailed, thy kindred band;
Or tracest chaste descriptions on thy page,
To please the females of our modest age;
All hail, M.P.! from whose infernal brain
Thin-sheeted phantoms glide, a grisly train;
At whose command “grim women” throng in crowds,
And kings of fire, of water, and of clouds,
With “small grey men,”—”wild yagers,” and what not,
To crown with honour thee and WALTER SCOTT:
Again, all hail! if tales like thine may please,
St. Luke alone can vanquish the disease:
Even Satan’s self with thee might dread to dwell,
And in thy skull discern a deeper Hell.

Who in soft guise, surrounded by a choir
Of virgins melting, not to Vesta’s fire,
With sparkling eyes, and cheek by passion flushed
Strikes his wild lyre, whilst listening dames are hushed?
’Tis LITTLE! young Catullus of his day,
As sweet, but as immoral, in his Lay!
Grieved to condemn, the Muse must still be just,
Nor spare melodious advocates of lust.
Pure is the flame which o’er her altar burns;
From grosser incense with disgust she turns
Yet kind to youth, this expiation o’er,
She bids thee “mend thy line, and sin no more.”

For thee, translator of the tinsel song,
To whom such glittering ornaments belong,
Hibernian STRANGFORD! with thine eyes of blue,
And boasted locks of red or auburn hue,
Whose plaintive strain each love-sick Miss admires,
And o’er harmonious fustian half expires,
Learn, if thou canst, to yield thine author’s sense,
Nor vend thy sonnets on a false pretence.
Think’st thou to gain thy verse a higher place,
By dressing Camoëns in a suit of lace?
Mend, STRANGFORD! mend thy morals and thy taste;
Be warm, but pure; be amorous, but be chaste:
Cease to deceive; thy pilfered harp restore,
Nor teach the Lusian Bard to copy MOORE.

Behold—Ye Tarts!—one moment spare the text!—
HAYLEY’S last work, and worst—until his next;
Whether he spin poor couplets into plays,
Or **** the dead with purgatorial praise,
His style in youth or age is still the same,
For ever feeble and for ever tame.
Triumphant first see “Temper’s Triumphs” shine!
At least I’m sure they triumphed over mine.
Of “Music’s Triumphs,” all who read may swear
That luckless Music never triumph’d there.

Moravians, rise! bestow some meet reward
On dull devotion—Lo! the Sabbath Bard,
Sepulchral GRAHAME, pours his notes sublime
In mangled prose, nor e’en aspires to rhyme;
Breaks into blank the Gospel of St. Luke,
And boldly pilfers from the Pentateuch;
And, undisturbed by conscientious qualms,
Perverts the Prophets, and purloins the Psalms.

  Hail, Sympathy! thy soft idea brings”
A thousand visions of a thousand things,
And shows, still whimpering thro’ threescore of years,
The maudlin prince of mournful sonneteers.
And art thou not their prince, harmonious Bowles!
Thou first, great oracle of tender souls?
Whether them sing’st with equal ease, and grief,
The fall of empires, or a yellow leaf;
Whether thy muse most lamentably tells
What merry sounds proceed from Oxford bells,
Or, still in bells delighting, finds a friend
In every chime that jingled from Ostend;
Ah! how much juster were thy Muse’s hap,
If to thy bells thou would’st but add a cap!
Delightful BOWLES! still blessing and still blest,
All love thy strain, but children like it best.
’Tis thine, with gentle LITTLE’S moral song,
To soothe the mania of the amorous throng!
With thee our nursery damsels shed their tears,
Ere Miss as yet completes her infant years:
But in her teens thy whining powers are vain;
She quits poor BOWLES for LITTLE’S purer strain.
Now to soft themes thou scornest to confine
The lofty numbers of a harp like thine;
“Awake a louder and a loftier strain,”
Such as none heard before, or will again!
Where all discoveries jumbled from the flood,
Since first the leaky ark reposed in mud,
By more or less, are sung in every book,
From Captain Noah down to Captain Cook.
Nor this alone—but, pausing on the road,
The Bard sighs forth a gentle episode,
And gravely tells—attend, each beauteous Miss!—
When first Madeira trembled to a kiss.
Bowles! in thy memory let this precept dwell,
Stick to thy Sonnets, Man!—at least they sell.
But if some new-born whim, or larger bribe,
Prompt thy crude brain, and claim thee for a scribe:
If ‘chance some bard, though once by dunces feared,
Now, prone in dust, can only be revered;
If Pope, whose fame and genius, from the first,
Have foiled the best of critics, needs the worst,
Do thou essay: each fault, each failing scan;
The first of poets

Those that are complacently designed
By the simpering vanities
of a domesticated world
rarely find the peace of mind
of which we all strive
because their materialistic
beliefs constrain them
in pools of normality
Drowning them in the pressures of society
and hanging them out to dry
in downloaded photos
that never fade
our lives are all dictated
by the subconscious influence
of one another
thus our souls
are irrefutably intertwined
locked together in endless struggle
mind against mind.

"What are you up to?" his simple text said
"Just eating cereal and laying in bed."
"What if I was with you." He responded with ease, "I guess I'd get more cereal if i please" and that's when he said it, that simpering lad, that stupid response that makes us all mad.
My mind filled with dread,with a twist in my gut,
I picked up my phone then read "Haha,then what ;)"
"And then what?!" Shocked by his assumptious pleas,
"Leave me alone, I'm begging you please"
And just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, he muttered those three dreaded words. Yes, I kid you not. That little *****.
I opened his message that read "pic 4 pic?"
The I retorted: "No do not send your unsolicited 'pics', I can surely see past your little tricks."
And that's when things took an alarming switch
The boy with the wounded ego replied, "You're just an ungrateful *****"
The very next morning, the boy put on his fedora and let out with a sign, "Why does no one like me? I am such a nice guy"

'Tell me I'm not in a dream. Or one of my trances.' She uttered the two sentences between gasps and seem-to-be quickening pulses. In midair, the tension between them kept growing intensely, trying desperately to meet its peak every second, before finally disappearing into the sightless distance above it. 'You're not,' the man said, his voice distant even when his face was only a few inches from hers, and cupped his free hands around her chin to calm her pale face. Her cheeks were warm in his palms, as if being burnt by hundreds of heaps of dying, yet ravenous flames. She closed her eyes, recording the touch of his perfect skin that seemed able to charm her endlessly since the first time she had fixed her gaze on his shimmering features. The angelic voice which accompanied it woke her a few seconds later. 'And even if you are,' he traced his soothing fingers along the reddening skin of her cheeks, 'I'll bring you back to life. Which is here.' He emphasised the last two words with a smile, a heartbreaking, infuriating smile - because of its astounding beauty, before tenderly touching his cherrylike lips to hers, making her start to tremble uncontrollably in deep confusion. She was, again, in the middle of these steep rocks without any aid to support her unstable weight, meanwhile the air over their heads began to twirl in circles, the weather around them getting pink and turning red in five seconds' time. She was lost. In someone else's magical world, with a rendition of one of The Beatles' hit singles from the 1900s or 1950s - she could not exactly recall which period of years it came from - playing smoothly in the CD player in the languid atmosphere of the living room behind them.
After a moment of enjoyment the kiss brought them he pulled back, before slamming his left hand into the tiny depth of his shirt pocket and taking a silver locket out of it. He threw a confident smile at her, and in one blink of his eye, the room fell dark. Petrified yet washed out by the sudden darkness among them, the girl let out a heart-rending shriek, which was followed by her heaving her body onto him, making his head hit the floorboards and the long necklace break in half. In seconds, blood-red light began to shuffle out of the center of the torn necklace, mingling with the air outside its shell and sending the woman into gradually-coming unconsciousness. She could now only see shadows, muttering and brimming all over the weather around her, and had not the strength to stand up apart from lying helplessly on the feathered carpet beneath. Before her, she saw how he started to rise and reveal his claws, and fangs, and bright red eyes above her. He laughed mercilessly. Instantly, she covered her sweating face with her hands - which now felt too shaky and she hated it, she loathed it very much - and brought out a despondent, lamented sound of cry. Her evil lover, at the same time, continued to soak up as much energy as possible from the change of circumstance.
'Again, I successfully, harmlessly tricked you,' he whispered this to her right ear. Around them, the horrendous wind potter faster and faster meanwhile their invincibly powered circles got bigger. 'You should thank me for that.'
'Th... Thank you for what?' She abruptly gathered her courage to confront him. If this meant that the end of my life was approaching, I would be ready, she thought silently.
'For letting me bound my ways into your life again, Em,' his angelic voice replied, and before she realised what was coming next, she wailed with all of her might when she laid her eyes on his real monstrous, vampiric face before her.
'I am indeed sorry to say that you - a clever and sanguine girl like you - was granted the chance to relish your life only momentarily,' he cleared his throat. 'You have always known that you could not outrun us at the end..., and so have your family.'
'No,' she mumbled, and drifted her gaze to his face - his now burning face. 'NO!'
'No,' he mockingly repeated her words, 'or YES, my dear?'
'Don't call me using that 'D' word, beast,' she put her best effort to yell at the top of her lungs, ''cos I am not your dear, and prefer death to becoming one of you!'
With those last few words, she scrambled to her feet, and stood up in just two swift movements. In her both hands, which he did not know were protected by the two stashes of garlic and one wooden cross in her dress pockets, were two shiny swords with special blades carved onto their two edges which were designated to **** vampires. Get rid of them. And their malicious world of beasts.
She stepped forward, and new powers began to regenerate inside her - despite the cries she felt start to roll into her heart, upon knowing that her beloved Joe had died. Joe had been deceased now. He was lifeless, and no longer able to help her here. She should never have ditched him. It dawned on her now, when everything was already too late to fix up. But she knew that she should never give up. Javier and his vampire family might have tasted every single drop of her other family members - and the rest of Ludirus town's residents - including her Joe, before she idiotically kicked him out for this pathetic, heartless beast who wore a disguise to displace him. She stretch the first sword - the one in her right hand - out to him. He took a step back, his eyes remained focused on her.
'You won't hurt me,' he pretended to be in pain, and in one and a half seconds, he transformed into the figure of the innocuous, blue-eyed prince once more.
'I won't be deceived by your looks, pig,' spat her, meanwhile her brain rummaged through a thousand ways to stick the two swords into his chest. That was, in fact, the only way to **** him. To drain his evil life out of him.
'You were, once,' he laughed, the sound of his devious laughter echoed in the very room, and later left it in such dread and wariness.
'Not anymore,' she bravely took a step forward and, without any further doubt, without caring about her being imprisoned for the rest of her life before getting her blood dried by the fangs of Javier's two older brothers, she stabbed the swords into his chest with all the energy she had left. And the effects sprayed out by the action were beyond any of her expectations. Thousands of blood droplets poured out of his body and onto the floor beneath her, flooding the entire living room and finally the streets outside the building until no litter, little scraps of food, and wheels of vehicles were seen anywhere in sight. Surprisingly, these endless streams of blood did not cause any floods, and rapidly soaked through every single layer of soil the earth had on its surface. The blood that had been consumed out of the poor people of Ludirus, the rural village in South Ireland, famous for its cruel killing rampage for several thousand years, where a group of aristocratic vampire ruled the lives of humans and their own species. But now, there would be no more of them. No more of their horrible treatments. No more of their sneaking-up-on-humans tricks they secretly did at night - to savour human blood, which was lawfully removed from the protecting-human law renewed every year. It was all a lie. Yeah, a lie. A lie that allowed Javier's family to approach Lucinda's family members to be victims in their lifelong killing spree. But now, there would be no more vampires, thought Lucinda as she kissed her holy cross and sets of garlic affectionately. There would be no more blood sacrificed to fend for those beasts' hunger, even though it meant for her to live alone. Live on her own, as she no longer had anyone around her to turn to. To soak up her tears when she was scared away by the bunch of vampire kids on the way home from school. To calm her with her melodious chords at the piano. Mother. To serve her the best spaghetti in the world as a reward for her outstanding grades at school. Sister Sheila. To rub her back and put her to bed at night - at the age of sixteen! Father. Luce's tears just would not stop while she kept counting her memories, as every single shadows of her deceased beloved came back to her. And finally, the sight of her Joe lying his tired head on her lap, and reading out loud to her his newest poem he composed at the office for her. All were gone. Dissolved into the ravenous sea of blood in the guts of those psychotic, simpering, abusive monsters.
But she was satisfied. She felt, somehow, proud of her heroic, or at least, brave actions. She had taken control of her fear, and that was one of the most important characteristics a woman should have to succeed in this cruel world, her father had once said. Now she could prove to them all that she was a newly reborn person, and was no longer the old Lucinda. Lucinda Hale who had always been the 'tail' of her sister while they were six and four, and the little, spoilt daughter of Jim and Aileen Hale who could not hold a plate properly in every banquet their family was invited to. Luce knew that she was now completely a stranger to her family. She squinted her eyes shut, trying to imagine how nice it would be to show off her new self to her late family if only they were all alive with healthy pink cheeks now. In her own peace and this momentary solitude, she found herself sinking onto the floating warmth of blood, but strangely, she did not fall. She did not plunge into the limitless red colour underneath, and remained flowing above it while her tears started to crawl out of her eyes. She did not know, and did not want to know how long this remained until she eventually felt the rough surface of the bearskin carpet again. She woke up with a dizzy head and quickly threw a hasty look around her living room. The prince, beastly Javier had vanished. Oh, there are his remnants, she thought and unconsciously, chuckled quietly to herself when she came to take hold of several white, lifeless bones laid in front of her. Then suddenly she understood what had just happened. The legend in that book she had borrowed from the library transported the knowledge back into her mind. All the members of Javier's family had been crushed now. They were dead. Her sacred tears, which came to mix with the blood flood, became the cure for all the people who had been ****** by the vicious vampires in town. They were now freed, and reawarded, although still mortal, but yet a very rare, elusive, privileged chance to be alive once again and start their lives all over again. They must not be far from her now, thought her. Without any further wait, she raced out of the room, and wormed her way onto the street.
And here they were. The streets of Ludirus were no longer deserted. Traditional markets with a thousand-metre long series of antiques roamed them, occupying every single tiny space provided to place racks containing jewels, valuables, and gold pots. There were also shelves of books about cookery, traditional healing potions, sports, literature, and anything else someone ever wanted to buy. And then she spotted a book with a bright yellow cover, entitled 'Love Poems: From 1900 to the Present, by Joe Grogan.' Her breath seemed to stop at that time and suddenly, before she even got the opportunity to touch the cover of the copy in front of her, two warm arms wrapped her waists and turned her body around to face the owner. Once again, she was at a terrible loss for words. 'Joe,' she mumbled.
'I am,' the writer nodded solemnly. And just like the evil Prince Javier had done before, he pulled out a beautiful silver box and opened it. Inside, two rings shined beautifully before their eyes, radiating a smile as bright as the one seen on others' faces among them. A smile that celebrated the comeback of their long-lost independence. Before she knew it, Joe knelt before her, and presented the ring upwards onto her.
'What would you like to do first, Madam? Marry me, or buy my book?' He grinned and held both her hands. Before she could answer him, he inserted her left ring finger into the perfectly made ring, and helped her right hand fasten his own ring onto his finger. She lifted him up and wrapped her hands around his neck.
'Do you have time for both, Sir?' She rubbed his smooth cheeks and kiss them before looking deeply into his hazel eyes.
'Absolutely,' he answered firmly, and scooped her whole weight into his arms and spinned her around. Luce could no longer say anything when a sudden wave of happiness washed all over her, and became even at a more unfathomable loss of words when she caught the sight of her beloved father, mother, and her sister, all alive, start approaching to deliver their congratulations. Here we are, she thought with a satisfied feeling. We were, are, and will always be meant to be together.

You woke me in the thin dawn.
Like a riot of rain in a bleached dry summer.

small green shreds of shrub sprang from my heart
as tumbling birdsong might litter the long pale sky.

your voice came drifting through the shallow line
And I let the sound seep like a soft assault on my senses.

I hear the words and picture your lips
Folding around the consonants like a dance.

I hear your breath carry the words and taste the phrases
That linger on your tongue as if to  speak them in a  kiss

These words that spin this cloth of gold in whispered utterings
This silken tease with a wild sprinkle of kisses and anatomy.

And would my words soften your eye and entice your body
With fevered adventures seeking to be sated with a touch?

Could you taste the blessings erupting from my tongue?
Would you ache inside far beneath the longings of the flesh?

It seems that every cell is sighing a simpering listless want
to be captured by the haunting breath of a lover’s call.

It all began when someone left the window open.
The love bird cocked its bright green head at the shut door of Woodren’s third floor bedroom, perched on her bedpost. Its bright black eyes glittered, listening for the sounds of Woodren’s footsteps. None came. It ruffled its feathers impatiently; waiting for Woodren to come back with some water for its thirsty beak.
The love bird’s first memory was of Woodren: her clear gray eyes expressing her great happiness through them and not through the tiny curve of a smile on her thin pale lips. Her small white fingers pressed on the syringe gently, and a hot, mushy substance that tasted of apples and bananas went down its throat. The tiny black beak clattered against the plastic syringe greedily. “Aw, you poor baby. You’re hungry aren’t you, my Hoopsie-girl?” she murmured.
She then later taught her baby lovebird to fly with the patience of a mother. As soon as its wings started flapping feebly, she lifted Hoopsie up on the palm of her hand above her head and drew her hand away quickly, teaching the lovebird to fly and landing on Woodren’s soft bed. On cold nights, Woodren would wrap her favorite emerald green scarf around Hoopsie and place her behind the television where it was always warm and sellotape the electric sockets and wires so that Hoopsie was safe.
Woodren never even considered snipping the feathers of Hoopsie’s wings; she would never hurt her darling creature, and snip of its greatest glory. She would comb the feathers with a miniature pink Barbie brush, noticing how blue feathers had started to appear on Hoopsie’s wings and red ones slowly layered beneath the blue as time went by.
Showering Hoopsie was the hardest of all. Aunt and Uncle Palmer had no idea that Hoopsie even existed and revealing her presence would leave both Hoopsie and Woodren with no home. Late at night, Woodren would have to sneak out to the bathroom on the first floor (not on the second floor because that one was right next to Aunt and Uncle Palmer’s bedroom), down the stairs (taking care to step over the thirteenth stair that groaned so loudly), turn on the taps quietly and wash a sleepy Hoopsie with warm water.
Her two youngest cousins often made fun of her for the funny smell that stuck on her clothes sometimes. Linda and Lucy, her bratty twin cousins, asked in their scornful sing-song voices, “Why do you lock your room Woodren? Scared we’ll find all your old ***** clothes under the bed that you wouldn’t let Ma throw away?”
“No, maybe she’s scared we’ll find naughty magazines? If we do, we’ll tell Pa and you’ll have nowhere to stay ‘cause Pa says that type of behavior is sinful and he won’t tolerate it in his house!”
Woodren found it in her heart to look upon her silly cousins as childish entertainment. What did they know of the love she had for Hoopsie? “No, I’m scared you’ll find the monster under my bed and start crying for your Ma”
Linda narrowed her blue eyes, “I’m telling Ma you mentioned Lucy’s fear of the monster under the bed to her face! Besides, you don’t have anywhere else to go. You live on Pa’s charity. Ma said so.”
It was the lowest of insults based on a harsh truth. Woodren’s mother had died of cancer when Woodren was very young and her father followed her mother not a year after with heart grief. Her mother had asked her younger sister to take in Woodren; they were her only relatives and had stopped being fond of her once their own two twin daughters arrived and Mr. Palmer started to have to work harder to feed the six bellies at his dinner table. She just became another mouth to feed.
The only person Woodren got along well with in the household was her eldest cousin, Max. Max rarely spoke in anything but grunts, thought of his two little sisters as annoying brats, refused to say more than two sentences at a time to his simpering mother and loudly obnoxious father and often came and sat in Woodren’s room with his large feet against the wall, stroking Hoopsie’s head in silence. She really was fond of Max sometimes. He could be so thoughtful. Just two weeks before, for her birthday, Max had bought her maroon silk curtains with white birds imprinted upon them. He had even gone further than that and stitched in white thread, “Happy birthday. I love you” a red wonky heart followed and then “From Hoopsie.” Simply imagining him sitting there with a huge, thick curtain holding a tiny needle in his bear-like paws, cursing as he stabbed his rough fingertips and fumbling clumsily made her shout with laughter.
It was Max’s idea to buy Hoopsie a big metal cage and attach it to a branch on the big tree in their garden with a piece of shoelace, hidden among all the green leaves. That way, when Hoopsie sang Woodren wouldn’t have to blast her music and radio at the same time or pinch Hoopsie’s beaks shut when her Aunt or Uncle come to  yell at her if she was deaf or crazy or both. And that way, Woodren’s room wouldn’t have its twangy smell of bird **** and Woodren wouldn’t have to be paranoid all day long at school, wondering if nosy Aunt Palmer had broken into her room and found Hoopsie. And that way, she could leave her window open during the day, trying to rid her room off the nutty, sugary smell.
Max’s room was on the same floor as Woodren, the third floor. Every morning, bright and early before school, Woodren would run with a small lump in her sweater and the keys to her locked room jingling on her wrists to Max’s room. Max would barely acknowledge her as she ran across his room, opened his window and climbed out like a monkey to the branch that pushed against his window sill. She crawled along it with speed and sat there, with her legs hanging down and the branch between her legs, fumbled for the cage door above her head, made sure there was enough water and food to last Hoopsie for the day, popped Hoopsie inside with a quick kiss, arranged the fan-like fresh morning-smell leaves to cover the cage completely and skate back towards Max’s window.
Hoopsie mourned with a few high whistling notes. She hated being away from Woodren during the day- waiting for the moment when the sun was getting hot, and Hoopsie was tired of chatting to the birds in the nearby trees, when Woodren’s sharp little white face with its explosion of frizzy black hair would appear in between the leaves with her happy grey eyes and let her fly around the tree before calling, “Hoopsie” followed by her signature tilting whistle. But for now, and for every morning till noon, Hoopsie would have to wait.
“You don’t think they’ll find her do you?” Woodren would ask Max as she clambered back into his window. It was their daily morning ritual.
“No. Pa told Ma that it’s all about privacy now that I’m a growing-up boy. I’ll lock my door; promise.” He would reply back, completing their ritual.
“Are you still eating lunch with that Ed kid?” he asked, completely breaking their ritual this morning.
“Yes.” She was completely surprised. Not only was Max breaking a routine, Max of all people, he was doing so by asking her a question about her personal life.
Woodren eyed Max strangely. To her, Max was her huge cousin that somehow managed to communicate with a variety of different grunts and hated cutting his hair because of his fear of sharp objects; but to the rest of the school and neighborhood, she knew Max was the “strong and silent” handsome tall boy, every girl’s dream, with his shaggy blonde hair.
“Why?” her gray eyes grew rounder when suspicious instead of narrowing.  
“You don’t have many friends at school.”
“You know I don’t get along with any of them but Ed. I don’t like being friends with people unless I actually like them… unlike all the other girls at school.”
“I don’t like you staying around the Ed kid too much.”
Woodren felt a little glow of affection for Max in her heart. She understood why Max was worried. Ed was unstable with the rest of the world. He did what he wanted to, he said exactly what he wanted to and he wasn’t afraid of anything because he didn’t care what anyone said. He was the kid that the no parents wanted their children to stay near. There wasn’t anything Ed hadn’t done before.
Despite what everyone else thought, Woodren knew that his morals and sense of good and justice were strong in his heart. And when it came to Woodren he was always there for her since he moved to the neighborhood more than half a year ago. No matter how many offending remarks he made, she felt he had become the only stable thing in her life in spite of him being so apt to change. She had learned to depend on him.  
At the breakfast table, Woodren’s gray eyes slid over from Linda to Lucy to Aunt Palmer to Uncle Palmer and rested on Max the longest. Until she had come to look at Max, all four of them were identical in their attractive features and identical in their pinched-up, suspicious and petty expressions glazed over with a courteous mask. Max’s blue eyes, though the same shape as Aunt Palmer’s and the same color as Uncle Palmer’s, expressed a good heart and sincerity.
Her first subject of the day was an art lesson. All she had to do was sit comfortably, a palette with swirls of colors, paintbrushes, charcoals and pencils, a *** of water, and a fresh-smelling page. Usually she drew herself as a monster, or Linda as the devil- disturbing pictures that made people believe she was “talented”. But today, it came to her all of a sudden she’d never done a good, worthwhile painting of Hoopsie. Sure, her tables and notebooks were filled with carvings she’d doodled in class but never something she would want to keep.
She started to sketch Hoopsie on her bed post, eyeing the nuts Woodren had stolen from Aunt Palmer’s snack cupboard. She drew Hoopsie in the big tree and painted a metal cage around her. Somehow, the silver cage ruined the picture completely, making Woodren grimace. When the paint dried, she erased Hoopsie from inside the cage and drew her beside it, her small black feet gripping a twig.
Woodren remembered how elegant birds looked when she looked up into the sky, and saw them with their wings spread out and imagined feeling the wind rush through her feathers and ripple down her head and spine, with a heaven of azure blue surrounding her, shooting through clouds cold and refreshing like a sprinkler in the garden. Maybe that’s what freedom tasted like. She tried drawing Hoopsie soaring in the sky before she realized she’d never seen Hoopsie soar like other birds do, because Hoopsie had never done so.
Broodingly, she packed up when class was dismissed, slowly and thoughtfully. Somehow, that small beginning of a painting had darkened her frame of mind completely. Still ruminating, she headed down the hall way to eat lunch.
“Woody!” Hearing the sound of that voice, she momentarily forget her unease and Woodren’s thin, pale lips spread in a smile even before she turned around to him. Ed was the only one who ever called her that. His oval head was covered in small black bristles and one of his black eyebrows rose as he smirked with his pink lips curving down. The diamond earring in his ear glinted like his teeth did. He caught her eyes with his hazel ones; his eyes were warm and lively.  His mouth formed words that were witty and charming and could always make Woodren laugh.
Woodren put a look of amazement on her face. “You came to school today.”
“What are you talking about? I’ve been coming to school nearly all month.”
“That’s why I’m surprised.”
He hit her arm lightly. A few girls nearby turned around and giggled when they caught Ed’s eyes. Woodren remembered when Ed had first come to school. All the prettiest girls at school kept sidling over to him and batting their eyelashes. Ed had taken one look at the curves on their bodies; his eyes flickered over their face, a little bored, and continued his conversation with Woodren as if there had been no interruption.
It was a mark of their friendship three weeks later when she told him about her family. His hazel eyes had burnt hotly. When he was angry, his voice was quieter, but strained as if the passionate anger behind the words were being controlled with the greatest effort, “People who ruin other people’s happiness on purpose and with joy are just plain evil.” He told her that he hated the monsters that kidnapped children, crippled them, not only in body but mind too, and forced them to beg, far away from those that loved them. Here followed a stream of facts, all said in the same tone that both scared and impressed Woodren.
“How do you know so much about it?” she had once asked him.
He looked at her with an odd gleam in his eyes, “Because I care.”
Now he was looking at her without breaking his gaze, the same odd gleam in his eyes, searching her face. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She had still been brooding over Hoopsie in a cage, and why the picture upset her so much.
“Woody, tell me what’s wrong.”
Every time Woodren mentioned Hoopsie, Ed would go silent or make an offending remark about the way that Woodren took care of Hoopsie. Over a very short time, Woodren had learned never to mention Hoopsie’s name and though it drove her crazy with frustration, she knew Ed would never tell her reason the why if she tried to pry it out of him. Knowing not to answer truthfully, “I told you, nothing”
“I can tell when you’re lying. Your eyes grow whopping and your mouth pouts to the right.”
“Shut up.”
He looked at her searchingly before giving up with an irritated sigh.
“Come with me.” The chair scraped as he pulled out and pushed the table away from him. His tall frame dwarfed her.
He brought her to the back of the school where teachers and students never went, leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette. “You want to try one?”
“I don’t smoke, Ed”
“Why won’t you even try it?” The tone he used when he was about to state something that began an argument leaked into his voice smoothly, like oil. Woodren opened her mouth to list the damaging things it did to your lungs and heart but his voice had begun in its rapid, silky tone:
“Because society has brain washed you so that if you smoke when you’re a child, you’re a horrible ungrateful creature that will never go far in life. But when an adult smokes, it’s okay. You don’t smoke because people and teachers tell you not to try it. Well I say, **** them. These are the best years of your life. Do what you want, try everything so you can make the choices of your life later with a rounded experience and knowledge. I’m not saying get addicted. You have to be strong if you’re gonna be a risk-taker…” he inhaled deeply and exhaled in a husky voice, “I just thought you always went on about how you were such a strong risk taker.” He blew a cloud of heavy smoke above her head. “Oh, and of course you won’t try it because Aunt and Uncle Palmer said it’d be sin, isn’t that right?” he asked with a tantalizing grin in a mocking tone. He watched her face contort with anger, his hazel eyes dancing with glee. He knew he had hit at the bull’s eyes. No one ever jeered at Woodren’s inner power and then put her on the same note as her Aunt and Uncle.
A sudden snarling sound flared from her. She didn’t have to listen to anything Aunt and Uncle Palmer said… they never did anything worthy intentionally. She knew that. He was just stupid. She swore at him and knocked the cigarette out of his hand with a smart slap before storming away. An amused laugh from behind her made her ears tingle pink.
As soon as school was over, she pushed pass Ed who was waiting for her and ran back home. Opening the front door of the house, she scurried up the stairs to the third-floor and knocked on Max’s door. When she opened it, Max was already holding Hoopsie in his big hands. Hoopsie sang with joy when she saw Woodren.
“Hoopsie-girl” Woodren whistled with a tilting note that Hoopsie identified instantly. Hoopsie flapped over and landed on her shoulder.
“By the way,” said Max, “she must have knocked over her water because it was wet on the bottom of the cage. She kept trying to drink it. She’s thirsty.”
“Oh you silly Hoopsie! Why did you knock over the water? You know I’m supposed to have 8 cups a day?” she pampered the lovebird with caresses and endearing words before hiding Hoopsie in her shirt and running back to her room.
Woodren placed Hoopsie gently down on the bed post

You pose and pout,
Seduction by superficial sauciness.
You tell me of your day
With that simpering voice,
Raising each last word
Long and loud.

You show me your flash cars,
Your sumptuous wardrobe
And who knows what else?

You and your kin call yourselves “Influencers” –
A great word,
But all you do is make people:
People who have grafted long and hard
For a little spare cash,
Go buy things they
Do not really need.

Right Said Fred was Right:
The global catwalk
Is a sham.

I too would love to be an “Influencer”,
Such a fine word,
But I would be one to encourage folk
To Love others,
Stop all this Conflict
Between polar opposites and extremes,
Fight only for the Common Good,
And make the world a better place
For All.

Paul Butters

© PB 15\1\2021.

Where is the cake? You
totally promised me there would be
cake. Words fail me. That simpering
gleam in your eyes is well-deserved,
you swine.

Yes, I'm still ****** about it.
You said I could have some. All
I wanted was a bite because I don't even
particularly like cake, but I guess
all those sweet words of yours were
just artifice.

No, that's okay. I understand, you
just did what you had to. If that entails
giving away my cake, I don't care.
I'm not going to hold a grudge or anything
over something stupid like cake. Ha!
Don't be ridiculous, it's not like the cake was good, right?
Carrot cake, you say?

Someday there will be time to reminisce,
But now my current plan is one of dread:
To yank your hair and whisper "**** on this,"
And pull your eyes out of your ******* head.

Know this—I am well acquainted with the wolf,
Well versed in his ways, his demeanor,
His dispassionate relentlessness,
His pitiless focus on hunt and hunted,
His workaday disdain of pity.
There are those who would laud the mythical Spartan lad
Who hid the wolf beneath his cloak,
Affecting some gallant stoicism
As the beast consumed him without restraint,
But I say to you that is a mere romantic fallacy,
A wanton failure to apprehend the true moral.
I have learned that there is no accommodation,
No covenant to be reached with the wolf,
And any attempt to do so is merely to invite destruction,
And so I choose to engage him openly, without reservation,
Rolling tail-over-teacup in the streets,
Attempting to hold his jaws open with bare hands
While those who find such battle unseemly and uncouth
Jeer and hoot from porch and portico.
No matter, for I will continue to meet the cur on my terms,
For staid suffering in the hopes
Of reaching some accord with the beast
Is the not the act of the noble sage:
It is the mock heroics of the coward,
The sad acquiescence of the simpering fool.

The coffee is on
It won’t stop simpering
The mugs are jingling
The sugar spoon is glistening
The creamer is singing
Hello, come make your morning Joe
Hurry on now
You’re not paying for this show

I

Just as my fingers on these keys
Make music, so the self-same sounds
On my spirit make a music, too.
Music is feeling, then, not sound;
And thus it is that what I feel,
Here in this room, desiring you,

Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,
Is music. It is like the strain
Waked in the elders by Susanna;

Of a green evening, clear and warm,
She bathed in her still garden, while
The red-eyed elders, watching, felt

The basses of their beings throb
In witching chords, and their thin blood
Pulse pizzicati of Hosanna.

II

In the green water, clear and warm,
Susanna lay.
She searched
The touch of springs,
And found
Concealed imaginings.
She sighed,
For so much melody.

Upon the bank, she stood
In the cool
Of spent emotions.
She felt, among the leaves,
The dew
Of old devotions.

She walked upon the grass,
Still quavering.
The winds were like her maids,
On timid feet,
Fetching her woven scarves,
Yet wavering.

A breath upon her hand
Muted the night.
She turned--
A cymbal crashed,
Amid roaring horns.

III

Soon, with a noise like tambourines,
Came her attendant Byzantines.

They wondered why Susanna cried
Against the elders by her side;

And as they whispered, the refrain
Was like a willow swept by rain.

Anon, their lamps' uplifted flame
Revealed Susanna and her shame.

And then, the simpering Byzantines
Fled, with a noise like tambourines.

IV

Beauty is momentary in the mind--
The fitful tracing of a portal;
But in the flesh it is immortal.

The body dies; the body's beauty lives.
So evenings die, in their green going,
A wave, interminably flowing.
So gardens die, their meek breath scenting
The cowl of winter, done repenting.
So maidens die, to the auroral
Celebration of a maiden's choral.

Susanna's music touched the ***** strings
Of those white elders; but, escaping,
Left only Death's ironic scraping.
Now, in its immortality, it plays
On the clear viol of her memory,
And makes a constant sacrament of praise.

Spheres floating in the chilly dark,
white and fluffy,
vain and uncorrupted.
They act as the air
being both here and never
there;
they act as the heavens,
little shining points floating
in a sea of black.
Islands so pure
floating in a nightmare sea--
how I abhorr their isolation,
their pure and careless
floating
though I, too, am alone.
Adrift in a sea of
introspective mutterings and
the utterings of a mind entrapped,
I sail the dark and simpering seas
of the Universe.
My vessel is a snowflake,
a crystalline craft carrying me
through the synapses and
nervous connections
of the thinking brain.
How infinite is the mind,
how wondrous is the world,
an immensity unto itself and
yet so tiny and contained.
I have never seen the ruins of China,
the fallen columns of the Romans nor
the ancient halls of the Al-Hambra.
I shall never see the samurai in bloom,
arranging flowers and painting
pictures of naked women
haunting their snowflake mind.
I shall never construct the
anonymous clockwork of Archimedes
but rather be trapped in the mechanisms
of the modern machine.
Adrift,
my confusion,
my blind anger and hatred of fate and
the gravity that pulls the snowflake ever closer to the ground
is pure vanity and self illusion.
Do the archways of Troy or
the mathematics of India
make us any larger in size
when compared to the Universe?
How can a snowflake
measure infinity?
What Universes exist
within the frozen ice of a snowflake,
what wars and great romances have played out
within the crystals;
what gods have been erected,
what nations have coalesced from the ashes
within the molecules and atoms
crafted by the cold
and the senseless flow of water?
The myriad explorers,
philosophers,
inventors,
geniuses lost to the ages
have mapped out the physical
while still being blind to the
finite world around them.
They sailed the Universe's
inky oceans of unknown,
their mind's sails billowing white,
puffy and hopeful
as they drifted off the edge of the known.
How they wriggled and rolled
so miraculously through the dark,
snowflakes floating carelessly
creating the world out of necessity
and pure ingenuity.
What white specters might exist
in the libraries of old,
in the halls of Alexandria or
the melting *** of Baghdad?
Do they wish to leave me a message,
the snow that saunters down,
to build a city in my mind
and a home in my soul.
What thoughts were caught
by the ancient genius
floating carelessly
like snow falling
in the anonymous black
of night?
Like islands they stood
for the men sailing the unknown waters
to rest and read and
contemplate
for just a few moments longer.
Swallowed by the darkness,
layered on the ground,
the knowledge is lost
among the infinitely white expanse
and the all-consuming darkness
of the night.
I am lost
like a snowflake falling too fast
I am buried beneath
layers of snow.

My Lucifer, unwitting Muse, dog-eared Vonnegut,
          afrobeatnik third eye, howls escaping
from your headphones, wailing about secrets, about infidelity,
          about analyzing life until there ain’t nothin’
left. Then you shuffle by in your black and white Adidas,
          hair in twists, wearing the striped sweater
of nihilistic intent, quoting the rants of Holden Caulfield
          in your blog like you never didn’t know him.
I never asked to know you, to want who I can’t have
          when I can’t even love myself. And every fiber
Of my being yearns for reciprocation. What is there
          to return? What is there to feel, you meditate on truth,
fallen angel in the parlor of rebellion, blasphemous goodbye,
          bright and morning star simpering like crickets in the palms
of daybreak. Your musicality radiates from subway chatter
          and overheard profanity down El Camino Real.
I take in your ballad at my post office mailbox,
          in the abandoned echoes of daydream monologues.
You’re a philosopher, exploring theory of mind, a cartographer,
          mapping the labyrinth of your deepest desires.
Tell me again about desires, demonstrations of divine sadism. Tell me
          about human empathy, the animated faces of wordless expression,
the metaphysics of free will, my beginning and my end,
          alpha and omega, my fortress in the land of chic.
Blasphemous hustler, let your idealism simmer, your wit, your mojo,
I come to you an amateur, a neophyte, a lowly scab
in the strike against ignorance. Give me my melody, my song,
          my one-hit-wonder of all that is cliché and unknown.
But I can’t be the other woman, your girlfriend, your aspiring
          ******* bunny only 10-bucks-a-throw. Your highness-who-yells-
his-ideas-into-the-ears-of-echoes, your every quirk spellbinds me.
          Each day I wake to your entourage vibrato.
I am held captive by your brooding stare, empress of liberal
          doves. You visit in my dreams when the sky is a force of darkness
viewing light through peepholes, your flaws an aphrodisiac, a love drug,
          a fast hit in the basement from the ecstasy of words.

hole in the sky. tap tap, the empty vessel flows out. a weightless sink. the hour goes, blaring swell of humidity, and the jug lukewarm, leaven oft in the barred space. I return to my room. I drink the cold milk on the sill. I finish the third wretched spill of the journey to Olympus.

Downstairs a howl, a wind slam SOLOM OBSERVATIONAL MATRIX STRUCTURED TASKS AVAILABLE IMMEDIATELY TO ASSIST WITH INSTRUMENTAL DECISIONS. I close the door I close the door I close the door I close the

In this uneasy slumber, the bed shakes, the windows rattle, the sky splits, the earth floods a red simpering capitulatory spasm of earthly flesh. Here is the circuit, the tired nervous tic of inaction, I shrink back from the outstretched hand, a condition which recommends two pills in the morning to mask the double image beneath my hands.

i have slept through the week again, this pathetic flesh obeys nothing, where are my pills inescapable ******* dullery

THE JUG IS HOT. I return to my room. I close the door two pills on the sill to go down with the milk

THE DOOR SLAMS GALL BUCKLING FIT ODE BREATHLESS CLOSER CLOSER CLOSER BUT THE SOUND REMAINS

Figures muffled by the walls. There are guests in the house, the looming presence of multiple species with incomprehensible intentions. In a bout of uncharacteristic curiosity, I slip my sight through the crack of my door. UNDER RCG IT WILL BE MANDATORY FOR ALL CUSTOMS CARGO REPORTERS IN THE AIR SEA AND ROAD INDUSTRIES TO SUBMIT REPORTS TO SARS ELECTRONICALLY. I am unmoved by such perceptions. I prepare the final climb to Olympus.

the cyclone is ended. the front door is barred. the jug is cold. the yard is littered with unmoving shapes.

I am the master of my own mind
I beset my tears, I conquer my sadness
I am devoted to this world
To this very world in which I dwell
and to which my soul is admitted
Sometimes I hear my words
Fly around and again
within t'ese violent shades
about my head: as I walk by curious moonlight,
sunbeams, in 'ose solitary moods and emblems
of t'is silent quiet of th' night.
How can I be so lonely-and bathed in distress-
in t'is lovely yet calamitous winter?
How can I be so destitute and untouchable-
unlovable-unaffectionate, indeed!-without my very own
admired thee?
My soul is dejected; condemned and cursed
by th' entirety of destiny-oh, how I am accustomed to
t'is pain, and its inflamed tongue, burning mercilessly
in t'ose succulent perambulations throughout
th' volatile streets-yes, upon and across th' bridge-
what a vile remembrance, where but t'is poem
is my only vivid 'muchness'-and consolation. If only a wren
could be deemed my messenger, let her but decoy t'is
dubious fate-and bring me to slip into her arms-
thin and steep but with a fond predilection for my desires-
with consideration for our feelings-and carry within her wings
a letter from these longings, beneath
the cradling hands of the moon-yes, t'at hectic,
vivacious moon-who is lurking behind me
like a moronic shadow. Its chaotic abode-aye,
chaotic as it once was, is now unamused-and plastered
into th' surly noon, it is despaired-utterly despaired,
and deprived of love-look at how t'at wealth of serene eyes
swim around thirst, in such unwonted lullabies, and its
famished shrine! What a dejected old
sanctuary it must be-infamous and credulous to oddity, but again
fuels my anger on, amidst th' moonbeam t'at is now gone.
But I still can't find thee, querida.

Tell me, then, how shalt I spend t'is azure night without thee?
Without thee, querida, my soul is but solemn and vain;
as though I've lost my brain-and my shell's 'bout to drain-
yes, 'tis t'at no delight, but worries-in me.
And no shield is to protect t'at,
as thou, my love, art in a dream, but far, far away.
I am only consoled by t'ese remnants, o, of my infatuation-
of t'is incarcerated, forbidden love-for thee!
My very thee, who should be curling up comfortably-
like a childish moist in my arms-
in my simpering abyss, and therefore sends it into
flickers, and doesth it die-hence, forces its dread, and stubbornness
to obey! O thee, th' fixated spirit to my wondrous imagination-
and th' anxious bits of my sublime inspiration-truthfully, indeed!
How in this quieted recluse
I long for but one piece of shine-yes, just
one piece of which-to be my guiding star,
and the torch of my robbed path.
My stolen state-and luminous gravity, as dim as the mocked
aspiration, is but never to shower again-
t'at earth with smiling rain-and th'  invigorating soil 'neath
my feet-upon which I trample in deadly haste.
But my hands are scanty-and my heart is dry; that is
but admiringly undeniable;
I am indulged by my own fear, abhorrence,
and dangerous imagination. I am but without my lover-
o, thee, o my solitary prince, doth thou heareth of my
wail? I scream and scream in t'is unforgiving agony,
but thou hath not been here, lost in th' middle of nowhere
like an unnamed being-but belonging to some other's
charms, I know! But still I crave for thee-just thy eyes,
yes-those dripping blackness whose temptation is like
a cave, an invitation to deep, deeper soliloquy down its
poisonous hole. How I am shrinking into this dream again-
a wild, wild dream of seclusion, which I look upon
in frustrated reproof; thou art the symbol of its daintiness-
and thorns of delicacy-but t'at someone else! Some other
dame whose heart dearly belongs to thee-and o, how enviable t'is
object of endurance might be. How deserving of my remorse-unwilling
as my being might be, to give it. Still , out of even the shallowest comprehension-
when the sun glows over me, I will long for but thee-over the morning dews
of the river, far from insanity, will I stand there anew,
and in freshness glint at thy stateliness
in unpardonable profusion.

On t'is very still do I sit, with t'at grumpy book in my lap-
words carved nearly are as picturesque as th' beautiful heaven.
I hope but thou could heareth me-thou whose voice is like a
hint of lavender-painted in th' ballads of my heart forever.
My song, my song! Undergone a faithful revision-
towards a masculine spring of reason,
and demands a sudden but mature completion.
How I still sing for thee!
Like a bee who chases a loveless but unbending sunflower,
sipping all its empowering delight-that is but how I shall wait for thee-
in t'is passion and strong conviction for truth-
that thou wilt embrace me, as thy own queen of ardour
beneath t'is forthcoming spring, o, my knight-
and all t'is love, and love indeed-as th' very endlessness
of thy splendor.

You are witnessing a prodigious talent and promise, and to a lesser extent but still to the degree whereby it should keep you awake at night writhing in cold sweats, your life, slip agonisingly through your open and clammy palms. Promise means so little if not actualised. You have been granted chance after warning after fortuitous escape yet have blithely spurned every omen and will one day fall, swiftly and perhaps terminally. You are almost certainly depressed. You say you love your girlfriend, and you mean it wholeheartedly when you do, but you worry that the relationship perpetuates as without her there would be no reason to rise with the sun. Even if the relationship is  unstable, and at times verging on the unhealthy, you believe you love her but are too great a coward to consider decisive action if that belief is to reside or subside. Your friends range from kind and honest yet deeply flawed to somehow toeing an inextricably thin line between dependability and duplicitousness. Conversations with a certain few of your friends necessitate decrying every undercooked ethos you've every conned yourself into believing you hold (you could well be the most hypocritical liberal to walk the earth, for you are innately and irrepressibly selfish) yet you still nod placidly as your conscience squirms. Grotesquely, like a beaten spouse, you crave the gaze of those who have treated you with the most insulting derision, but are too proud (of what?) and, a running theme, too cowardly, to stoop to a simple detante. You must change, for it pains you on a most base level to have to accept the feeble, whimpering, simpering spectre you have become. You must be bold, brave, unashamed in your convictions, anything but pursed and silent lips. You have a voice, and you must now speak loud enough for them to hear, for that which has become blunted must be whetted, sharpened, readied for battle to be unsheathed at an utterance. Heed the signs and change, for our sake. You, a milksop who attentively notes the sophistry of courage, you can still be brave, and you must be.

For one day you will be swelled with a courage and fortitude to fill your sails taut, enough to leave this place, forget these people and bear you away.

Few years have pass’d since thou and I
  Were firmest friends, at least in name,
And Childhood’s gay sincerity
  Preserved our feelings long the same.

But now, like me, too well thou know’st
  What trifles oft the heart recall;
And those who once have loved the most
  Too soon forget they lov’d at all.

And such the change the heart displays,
  So frail is early friendship’s reign,
A month’s brief lapse, perhaps a day’s,
  Will view thy mind estrang’d again.

If so, it never shall be mine
  To mourn the loss of such a heart;
The fault was Nature’s fault, not thine,
  Which made thee fickle as thou art.

As rolls the Ocean’s changing tide,
  So human feelings ebb and flow;
And who would in a breast confide
  Where stormy passions ever glow?

It boots not that, together bred,
  Our childish days were days of joy:
My spring of life has quickly fled;
  Thou, too, hast ceas’d to be a boy.

And when we bid adieu to youth,
  Slaves to the specious World’s controul,
We sigh a long farewell to truth;
  That World corrupts the noblest soul.

Ah, joyous season! when the mind
  Dares all things boldly but to lie;
When Thought ere spoke is unconfin’d,
  And sparkles in the placid eye.

Not so in Man’s maturer years,
  When Man himself is but a tool;
When Interest sways our hopes and fears,
  And all must love and hate by rule.

With fools in kindred vice the same,
  We learn at length our faults to blend;
And those, and those alone, may claim
  The prostituted name of friend.

Such is the common lot of man:
  Can we then ’scape from folly free?
Can we reverse the general plan,
  Nor be what all in turn must be?

No; for myself, so dark my fate
  Through every turn of life hath been;
Man and the World so much I hate,
  I care not when I quit the scene.

But thou, with spirit frail and light,
  Wilt shine awhile, and pass away;
As glow-worms sparkle through the night,
  But dare not stand the test of day.

Alas! whenever Folly calls
  Where parasites and princes meet,
(For cherish’d first in royal halls,
  The welcome vices kindly greet,)

Ev’n now thou’rt nightly seen to add
  One insect to the fluttering crowd;
And still thy trifling heart is glad
  To join the vain and court the proud.

There dost thou glide from fair to fair,
  Still simpering on with eager haste,
As flies along the gay parterre,
  That taint the flowers they scarcely taste.

But say, what nymph will prize the flame
  Which seems, as marshy vapours move,
To flit along from dame to dame,
  An ignis-fatuus gleam of love?

What friend for thee, howe’er inclin’d,
  Will deign to own a kindred care?
Who will debase his manly mind,
  For friendship every fool may share?

In time forbear; amidst the throng
  No more so base a thing be seen;
No more so idly pass along;
  Be something, any thing, but—mean.

You have always thought
since you were a little girl
That all you had to do
was do a pretty twirl,
and the world would fall
into your pretty lap
with your fancy silk cravat,
and your simpering sighs.

You. Make. Me. Sick.

Twirl little girl,
If you may,
To twirl and twirl another day
in your fancy house with your sparkling jewels,
they're what you call 'bargaining tools'.

Of pearl or diamond
they're not made
lasting not in the rain,
Melting sugar, simpering dew,
puddle at my feet,
adieu, adieu.

at its own axiomatic level
we begin a dance
a dance
a dance
and there are shades

―

fly off from the other?

a spindle
a
a

fly

―

difference
we make ourselves a difference
a complexity
an intricate form that spills over and everywhere
and is alive
apart from itself
as if this difference making
were for itself, for our own ego
rather than to pull the other
the other’s difference
pointlessly intricate
motionful machines that well up beyond their own depths and
but the content

―

a meaningful making
and on and on and
drives

―

turns on it urns iand urns un n uwuw uwuw uwuuwu wuuwuwuwuwuuwuw

―

the measure of a drop
is in

―

everyone dances in their own light

―

what if satire is all you see!

―

everything ive ever wanted to say 12 yr old has already fallen out a tree

―

everybody hold themselves so high and precious
but their own being is only meagre pitiful one space arrow
e


there is a being
that we strive for
but only ourselves feel
and only others know
yet so many want the other to feel
what they can only know

come grieff and grief and grif

―

i dont get why anyone cares
we do what we do
and it stupid

why you wanna
let the other in ?

only reason u think they smart
is they aint let u in

so i says let em be  .

―

everyone all love precarity
cant love themselves
sothey strike out when the other they want to love them for themselves dont love them for themselves

thats an impossibility !

―

FRAGILE PEOPLE
PRETENDING THEY’RE NOT
BaM BAM!

whys all the
positivity
make all lie and
die

why do you care so much about yourself
that you desire the other to see?
you are meagre
you are petty
and that’s all you are.

resentment is thinking otherwise.

nobody cares about your drives!!!!!!!!!!
and the more you think they should
the more they wont!!!!!!!!!!!silly!!!!!!!!!
the togetherness of not-

let people sweep and slide
then drift n loop!

―

everoy !
neurotic big
weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

―

t­hen why are peopplr loenly?

―

cherished being in a bridge of light

cherished being in a bridge of light

cherished being in a bridge of light

cherished being in a bridge of light

cherished being in a bridge of light

cherished being in a bridge of light

cherished being in a bridge of light

cherished being in a bridge of light

cherished being in a bridge of light

cherished being in a bridge of light

cherished being in a bridge of light

cherished being in a bridge of light

cherished being in a bridge of light

cherished being in a bridge of light

cherished being in a bridge of light

cherished being in a bridge of light

cherished being in a bridge of light

cherished being in a bridge of light

cherished being in a bridge of light

cherished being in a bridge of light

cherished being in a bridge of light

cherished being in a bridge of light

cherished being in a bridge of light

cherished being in a bridge of light

cherished being in a bridge of light

cherished being in a bridge of light

cherished being in a bridge of light

―

its own singular yearning
pulls back
the body of marx
and the whole black moon

―

black moon! black moon!

howls the end
howls the night
simpering spat spat spat spatchooey! cross yarn and tip a spews the thunder
and the back back back of
no where
curses like a shut down whine

―

are you perfectly everywhere not
this is the only series of questions
in philosophy senpai desu desu bakkkooou!!

The symphony of your skin
suffocated my senses.
Smothered my resistance
against the sensations
you sparked down my spine.
I surrender to your siren call,
my simpering protest
met with sinful seduction.

“The side of her head is shaved,
isn’t that weird?”
Afraid to admit my attraction,
I nodded in agreement.

And in a low voice
I responded with,
“yeah, weird…”
Yet again he pointed out,

“Look at her septum piercing!
Doesn’t she look like Benny the Bull?”
I looked away. Under my breath
I said, “I think…she’s cute.”

My friend turned
with simpering eyes.
“Really? Cute?
You’re a ****** too.”

I looked up, “I’m not weird.
I just think she’s pretty,
that’s all.”
He scoffed,

“Nah man, you’re really weird.
Tattoos and piercings aren’t attractive,
they’re weird but I guess weirdos
are attracted to other weirdos.

Flustered, I looked up to him.
“So what?  Punk rock is pretty.
At least I’m not a pretentious ******* like you.”
And with that, I left him there.

© Matthew Harlovic

A name. A name as it just is, but one t'at is so dear
to my heart-th' glint of my dreams,
th' tempest of my soul. Th' wave of my life,
th' tide of my *****-and how bound to my heart-as t'ey art!
Th' glide of my tempest, th' water of my drought-in t'at
simpering stain of th' past-thou wert but my sole emblem
of imagination. Thou wert th' only thunder to my heart-
and my benign indulgence-thy words wert to me my kingdom,
my most earnestly desired kingdom! Thou wert but to me so near-in t'at
affronted fright of my being, thou wert my enigmatic master
and ardour. How thou comforted me!
And how thy charm was but so near!
My prince, my love!
I was but in a striving trance-but as soon as thou reached my handth-
and pressed me so tenderly to thy chest-o!
How I was entangled in a haven of imminent soliloquy.
And my eyes-my very eyes, watched t'ose shadows of bubbles-
and t'at splash of foreign doubts, drift, drift away-like a busy wind,
trying to escape its shrieking rims: how t'ose fears and drears
astoundeth me no more!
And thee,
How replenishing, andth becoming thou art to me!
Vanquished areth now t'ose thoughts unsure-in thee I witnesseth nothing
but pleasure! Thee-thou art, and just thou art, is my warmth and
fiery treasure-just thee, my love. Thou art th' blood t'at feeds my veins!
How thy first words art but fresh in my memory-thou blesth my morning,
and its sublime meekness, but its kisses art as fervent as thine not-and would I
still be gripped by its dangling, mystical fear.
And t'ose rainbows of falsehood, how t'ey snickered-hark to t'eir deceit,
and flakes of malice-hark now! I was so entranced by t'eir speeches, and
blinding emotions, so captivating in t'ose years of insincere heat, but no more!
No more shalt I give my life to 'em-to endue 'em with my glows of aspiration
as heretofore. I would be clever t'is time-and fleet as I like th' pouring rain-
beware ought 'ey to become, of my festive storm!
But thou-as majestic as th' morn's melodious dew-caught my love in a burst
of eloquent second, and lock it in thy memories, heart, and salubrious
weather. How thou gleamed my life-my very life!
T'is life t'at was isolated by flushes of unripe redness-
unlike t'ose taints of glamorous roses-fake, indolent shapes as t'ey are,
scattered along t'ose innocent bushes, and am but afraid t'ey shalt
survive not-and wither shalt t'eir robust leaves, from t'at ample
sadness bestowed guiltlessly on 'em. How t'eir glistening surfaces
shalt be left no more!
Thou art my only jewelry-and th' atonement of my surly sins-
knight to my armour-my warm, neglected armour, how soft and epic
thou art! And thou wilt be by my side-as fatefully'th it been decided,
and how miraculous it wouldth be to me-my very prince, my own,
my own thee! And shall beginth just t'is journey-our very, very journey,
with no more blandnessth as heretofore-in t'is gusty time of year,
as I wouldth but be here with my thee-my dear, my dear.

On campus, warm sun bathing my shoulders
as I listen to two girls discuss poetry
(and the dreamy guy who teaches their class)
and I try not to laugh at them as they talk about
how romantic I would be to have poetry written about
them. I want to ask them if they are really that stupid.
Instead, I bite my tongue and enjoy the taste of pennies
that floods my mouth and keep my laughter gurgling inside of me.
I long to ask these simpering, silly girls
if they have ever read any poetry about life. Not about the
romantic notions of life, but about really-real life. Poetry about
blood and pain and ******* and dying and loving and art
and I want to force feed them great ****** bites of
Chaucer or Ginsberg or
Bukowski.
Yeah... Bukowski. Visceral, blunt, gory, beautiful Bukowski.
But I have a feeling that this action would go unappreciated.
Their poets don’t use language like “****” or “****”.
Their poets don’t talk about the world I know.
Their poets live in a world of rewrite and revise.
I want to scream at them how silly they are and how much
their views will change over the next few years. And I realize that I may
have been staring (glaring?) at them because they have fallen
silent and are now looking at me with the squeamish discomfort
of people who have just realized that they’re being observed.
And I think to myself, “**** it,” and I smile and tell them that
their handsome poetry professor is married, and their idea of poetry
is limited. “You should read some Bukowski,” I tell them, “Then,
you just might get it” and they gaze up at me slack-jawed, staring blankly
for a moment, and I want to make sure I have not sprouted another head.
Instead, I gather my things and walk away. And as I do, I revel in a fleeting
feeling of superiority because I know.
I understand.
I get it.
And I can almost feel special.

If my bed was bigger would you have laid with me
Will you excuse the squeeze in the place of comfortability
Our bodies close, replace our blankets with the heat
flowing, mellifluously reverberating, from within

My heavy mind, spiralling in self abhor
Dawdles on a pillow, simpering with decay
Solace I discovered in your arms instead, taming the uproar
The bane of your predicament, your spirits sway

The twilight of distraught tickles the hairs on my arms
But now comes the noon of melancholia.
My Ivy legs cripples your limbs, the bruises I see- constellations
Contradictory you lament, the cries a synergy of appoggiatura

A long time ago, you asked for my hand
Belittling the shards in my bossoms
Dismissing my remonstrance; to Hell with it
“I can bear it, I know I can.”

But you couldn’t. No, you wouldn’t
Your body has began to gnaw
The dilapidated bed creaks, your temper peaks
“I’m out, loving you isn’t the law.”

In my mind,
the fight was a result of your undying love for me,
an act of protection,
for your fair maiden.
I was the perfect damsel in distress,
simpering,
dragging you away from the bad guy.

How I ever managed to daydream,
over the screams
and the struggling,
is beyond me.
Wishful thinking
I guess.

As you gracefully caved in the guys skull
with your elegant knee,
painting a watercolour of red on the concrete,
I stood back and watched.
Each drop of blood,
that splattered the night scarlet,
mirrored a drop of the salty tears
running down my cheek.

I wanted him to get back up
and smash your beautiful face into a perfect Picasso.
He didn't do anything but lie in his own river.
I wanted to be washed away with it.
Instead, I had to watch you triumphantly step back from your ****,
the picture of alpha male,
a predator,
and look for your mate.
Why won't you capture me?

Because you want her.
My best friend.
The one who I should be comforting,
for having two guys so in love with her that they'd **** each other.
I'm scared if I place a hand on her shoulder,
I might crumble.
I'm chalk,
she's marble.
I could leave my soft white mark on you,
if you just gave me the chance.
Marble's cold.
But maybe you like the chill,
the chance to pull her closer.

I can't look anymore.
I step over the battlefield and make my way down the street.
I see her get in a taxi
with the guy you just half bludgeoned to death to win her heart.
I see you stood amongst the wreckage,
confusion on your war wounded face,
not knowing what went wrong.

You cared.
Just like I gave in and cared about you.
What idiots we are.

Somebody punch me in the face.

I am love's Savant
Of perilous divining;
No simpering hierophant,
Of the desperately climbing.

For love arrives naked,
Sans cloak or cloche,
While love's finger beckons,
For me to come close.

I'm privy to his prophecy;
To the keyholes I tiptoe,
Where I see the aristocracy-
In flagrante delicto.

As his scribe, I'm resigned
To write impassioned words;
Still, desires will not rewind-
Even though they be absurd.

Her back like a sunset sitting crouched in a cold tub,
terrified and disillusioned. I watch her from the doorway,
unable to paint over her purples, yellows, and blues.
I watch her trembling deer legs tumble over the linoleum
and all I can think of is that last thing he said to her as
she slipped away.

"How could we have disappointed each other this much?"

I was there, watching her petals wilt, her body slipping into
a vase for him every night in the bar as he looked at a simpering
Los Angeles girl over his beer glass.

Sometimes love comes in like the roll of a fresh spring breeze
over a mountain, sometimes it's like a knife twisting in your
gut, but sometimes love can make you believe he's worth
tearing yourself up.

I pulled her up from the bathtub, crumpled and wilted and tired
and heartbroken. I brushed away the tears and smudged eyes,
and let California's sunshine shimmer on her skin, I opened
all the windows in the world for her,

just to let the right love in, to sweep up the insecurities,
and only leave strength in its place,

and as she tried to thank me, I put my hand on her
heart and said, "You've got two eyes, two legs, two arms,
but only one heart. And someone out there has the pair."
I held her hand to my heart, "But that pair will stop beating
then moment you let yours stop."

And I watched her wash her face, and heal the bruises,
her smile returned and wobbled, and finally I stopped
looking into mirrors to remember what pounded so steadily
and so strongly in my chest.

The winter was unkind
Yet you loved it
So much,
It was your gauche friend,
Reclusive in its blankness,
Complicit with its demands for
Many layers,
As snow is complicit in ****** -
Snuggling coldly into
Footprints.

And I remember the simpering
Light
That night,
As it squeaked into the
Room like
Lab rats bred for death.
I remember the slip
Of your body on the sheets
And your
Speech bubble breath
Spearmint ellipses,
Your teeth white
Your eyeballs white
Your watch-face white
The witch behind you
White,
Whispering the content
Of her
Turkish delight
And sculpting you
For her museum.

(Nothing ever really warmed you up.
How I hated that winter.)

I put the heating on and
Showed you the
Wedding dress –
An antique affair
That had been passed down.
My sister did not want it,
As she is not at all romantic.

When I got back from
The bathroom
You were out of bed,
Holding the dress against yourself,
Stuck in the mirror,
Head turned,
Absolutely lost -
A tiny bride
White as a
Snow tongued branch
And just as still,
Waiting for the wind
Or the clouds
Or some kind of joy
To move you.

you'd always come home via the garden path, reveling in the crunching of the twigs, the slooshing of the leaves, the endless clackering of misfound footfalls. till the day, after a particularly satisfying stomp snapping, you looked underfoot and saw the remains of the fallen sparrow's nest


it took you five days to soak out the blood


tonight's supposed to be the biggest moon in 68 years. Biggest moon! Wow.


a girl at the party says it's stupid to care what others think. i agreed with her. She agreed with my agreeance, and then burst into tears. i ignored her and walked away. i'm a frigid *****, but theys' gotsta learn, they


God, the flies, it's such a cliché, but it's true, as you trek down into the sludge you can't see them but you can hear it, the buzzing, you can always, from everywhere, the buzzing


when our flatmate left, he deconstructed his bed. he didn't take it with him, he just, took the mattress, threw it in the water closet, left the headboard on the stairway landing, and the sides and springs'n-**** in the garage
                      i really respect the gesture


in the gully between the graveyard and the mine, they built a highschool. a ******* highschool. lord knows why. it looks like a ******* campers lodge, all the kids climb up the banks and the uni students sell them acid in lolly mix nickel bags. everyone i've ever known came from that school, one way or another. heavens know why. hey, look at the big chimney, guess the furnace is on. it's still in use, huh? probably shouldn't be loitering. anyway-


the big diggerman's dig up the concrete, put it in a bucket.
the big diggermans with the big digger truck, with all the cones and stop signs.
Bawm! Bwam! the big muscle arm, full of strewn piping and pistons, bab's the ground bab bab. Take that, ground! Bab Bab!! the spinning chair vibrates, the man gyrates, and the big arm up's and downs, down down, swivel, dump.


remember when we were thirteen, and the idiot boys made a game of standing in a circle, trying to **** into their own mouths? you wanted to punch them in the face, but didn't want to get your hands *****. if only you'd known, back then, that your limbs were really just overgrown turnips, would you of been so insistent at keeping your distance? keeping the world at arms length? that's always the irony, isn't it. the world was inside you all along

–

At the end of the cemetery, past the hedges, a car park, overlooking the hill, where there's a huge oak tree, and all the concrete is just fractured under its weight, and the asphalt is in tar stricken colours a blackbird in mid-dive splatter. Anyway. Sorry,-

god, you're making porridge? Porridge? *******, are you even hungry, or did you just ******* want to see the ******* oat-*****-muchus coat everything you

-just, there, in this graveside car-park overlooking the city but also in the middle of nowhere, there's two cars. One, a ******* Mitsubishi GT, all slick and weltering plastic, pure pristine millionaire CEO's toy phallus, and beside it, a banged up old Datsun, and it all seems like an allegory for something, but it isn't, it's just, someone dumped these two ******* cars here, but they're not even dumped per see, the registry in the windows are up to date and everything, but they're just there


      all the damp men take the STOP out the truck, stand on the road, hold the cones, watch the digger man seat shuffling; gotta shuffle move up the pavement before you big hand down


You were too clever, weren't you? to bash her head, right there, in the corner, there, above the left cheek bone, so i couldn't tell, right? to make her look like just one more corpse, among the rot? obscure that one side, turned away? left to decompose, mid-perch, on a desert highway? well, maybe it wasn't, maybe it was just someone else, but the fact that you knew, you knew i'd check above the left temple, and that you ****** chose that as the point of rupture, it shows, it just ******* shows, the


the flies never gather, at the point of death, they just breed in the damp, the gulleys surrounding it, why is that


and just look at you now, sitting there, naked as a newborn, crying to yourself, wiping your weepy eyes with your simpering turnip paws, and it's just pathetic, isn't it? And i love you, i do, it's the one moment i can say it, i can feel it with burning, simple purity, with self effacing truth and clarity, because, here, i don't matter. you don't need me, you need a body to hold, an arm to hug you. in loving you i can be absolved of all qualities, and so, for once, i do, i do

Yeah no! In sixty-eight years! What even is the moon



it's amazing, i've eaten nothing in the last thirty-six hours, except a single dried apricot. yet
                                   i need to *****

  you know that feeling? What a feeling. You need to retch, but there's nothing to retch, and there you are, just standing there, at 5am gagging to yourself in a damp field. A stomach, trying to turn away, fold upon and shaft itself a vicissitude. A stomach, no, no, yes, you see?  You need to empty yourself of this bile. What bile? Exactly. There's nothing. Nothing up-emptied onto nothing. And that's all there is, right, that's all that life is, is given right there; the gag, the convulsion, the upturning unto itself, the attempt, attempt, you understand? Of the cathexis, of the innerworld, taken to contain only the unspeakable within itself, miserly bile, a concomitant of all the worlds ills and would be ills and then upon it taken as an ill unto itself, a single nebulous fluid husk of malignant umbra, held in *******, bound in fleshy lining. But then the expulsion, the retch, is attempted, to take all the seething disease of the inner and to project, upturn it onto the outer world. Where? It doesn't matter. In the bin, into the shrubbery, Anywhere but in here. Once it's gone, it gone, that's all that matters, gone, go, go, get. The body tries to push the malaise of(as) the internal unto the external, the outer, but in doing so, finds itself(boundary) empty, where it thought it incubated only vile, there was instead, only nothing, but still, somehow, the convulsing, the retching, the act itself, remains. And that's it, you see? That's all it is, all the emotional turmoil, all the half-hearted hallucentric episodes, the all of everything, is just that, just an, an emptiness trying to upend itself but finding there's nothing to upend, but it still asserts itself as process, as an unending nausea, unresolvable nausea, both grounding and thrown, the throwing and that-which-is-cast, bent under itself,  nausea



the swamp reclaimed the garden last summer. flood season, after all. some days the stagnant waves came right up to the brickwork, can still see the lines, see? your old swing set's a gonna though. all the rabbits either abandoned their dens, or were drowned out. lord knows how many micro-organisms died as well. lot's of new ones were probably borne though, right? hear those flies, bzzt, bzzt. life loves damp heat. you can never tell, never tell really.

ash stains and cosmopolatin zines
bathroom savoring night-rain
like lorn and lone trucker tobacco
sky forged in dark blues outside a cracked
window, like you in the closet ****
but the door opened up enough to tell.

1. flesh simpering but the voice a sullen
conversation of silence and broke dreams
television with hundred and forty channels
and half open beer cans.

2. silence still drags kissing and murdered
autumns, shadow of hands over flush skin
lurking moonlight invited.

in morning i'll wake with a human
but tonight you are a god with your hands
roaming my hipbones & sleep with
you, my mind running thoughts
like trains on spinal cord railroads

we are clockwork creatures  
with phantasmagoric features  
precisely ground and divinely wound,  
we measured movements, prosaic and sublime
our cogged kingdom, cherished chunks of time  
our ticking, a marching machination
our faces, a reflection of the lost
a prediction of the found
we now make simpering sounds
on our path to rust
made obsolete by the silicon effete,
the cyber elite,  that-which-who
never succumb to rust, or join us
in our reverent return
to dust

“What’re you up to?” His simple text said.
“Just eating cereal and lying in bed.”
“What if I was with you?” he responded with ease,
“I guess I’d get more cereal if I please.”
And that’s when he said it, that simpering lad, that stupid response that makes all of us mad.
My mind filled with dread, with a twist in my gut,
I picked up my phone and read: “Haha, and then what ;)”

"And then what?!" Shocked by his assumptious pleas,
"Leave me alone, I'm begging you please."
And just when I thought it couldn't get any worse,
He muttered those three dreaded words.
Yes, I kid you not. That little *****.
I opened his next message that read "Pic 4 a Pic?"
I then retorted; "No, don't send your unsolicited 'pics', I surely can see past your little tricks."
And that's when things took an alarming switch.
The boy with a wounded ego replied, "You're just an ungrateful *****."
The very next morning, the boy put on his fedora and let out with a sigh,
"Why does no one like me? I'm such a nice guy."

On a patterned nebula, paramour's giggle whilst locking warmly hand's,  like two stray's of a different course, they runneth by none command's, all promises filled, as their cheek's do touch, like flourishing rainbow's, heaven to ground's lunch. They maketh their own commandment's, as tis the world's just a stage, grandiose in their delightment, making newsstand page. Bambino's of the unknown, covered in flamboyant flakes, overcoming the new-age step's, of this passing place. And whilst they art simpering, their taste buds over-runneth, their cup is not made from steel, but gold of king's and Queen's chalice. And whilst at dusk, when the blood moon cometh out, the neighbor's canst heareth their love, out the window's it doth bounce. Echoe's of their novela, they'll speaketh many tongue's, and whilst their alone together, their embracing head on shoulder love.....



©Brandon nagley
©Lonesome poet's poetry

They proclaimed she
was the “all-or-nothing” breed,
  a single lark thriving amongst the wrens.
   Her eyes were as lanterns, luminous and protruding,
    as if she had ingested the heavens and now
     they sought a means to escape.
      The slow slant of her lips
       was textured and fine,
        a simpering halt in her meadow of face.
         They sang at her alters and allow
          her put-upon face to blur through the lines,
           streaking under the curls of their incense.
            Skin faintly blue shines silky as lies,
             still like the cloak wrapped tight around her soul.
              A knife was pressed close, slight
               and silver as the pulse of her heart.
                Eyes flicker wide; her
                 last breath slides through.
She is the world,
    they whisper,
  hushed as the tears of her blood cry down their arms.

I know nothing about
The semblances of affection,
Or the pretension of passion;
I only know one kind of love:
The one I can't part from,
I really cannot, I really don't not.
I suffer ultra extreme separation anxiety.
No psychotic weird stuff.
We don't want to be apart,
But we do, for years at times.
I'm not a simpering wimp,
Or a wimpering simp.
This love lasts a lifetime,
A sane lifetime.
It makes me want to live.
I'll succumb to prayer and hope,
Whatever to never have it end.
     (I do mean never)
One love shouldn't have to subscribe
To the same cruel rules as everything
     (I do mean everything)
Else.
Something serious is askew
When one love leaves and love
Lives on in the other.
Our love lived once,
But died twice.

She watched the apples from her window,
The way they clung to the branches grimly
When the wind blew, making them shiver.
Yet retaining their blush, as if to say
Look at me, and my innocence

She waited for the autumn eagerly,
They swelled importantly, but she knew
That the end was creeping closer,
A gentle touch could make them fly
And land with an honest thud and cracked skin.

Once she put her hand to impassive glass,
As if she wanted to save them.
For all their simpering arrogance,
She didn't like to see them in pain.
Weeping as time coated them in mould.

She bore witness to their disorderly end,
Spilled beneath the tree that birthed them
Like discarded marbles. She would've saved them,
But thought there was little point.
They always grew again, every year.

Why are all the girls simpering
Over young Norman Bates?
His life comes to him
On food carts and plates

My mum would let me
Leave anytime
And not lock me up
In her dreams of lost crimes

But no, they’re for Norman
They’re aching for him
They like his strange eyes
His thick crayoned skin

They wait on the corners
They text him in town
To them he’s a curio
Not a sick clown

They sing with sympathy
And swoon in real spice
“Oh isn’t he cutesy
Incredibly nice”

Those girls thinks he’s weird
In a wholly good way
How wrong they are
What would mother say?

Plenty of time to make it
More than enough to care
Why don’t you swing by his house?
There’s always a room to spare