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Farah Taskin Aug 2021
Passing countless
seas
and the oceans
His sailing ship drifts
in a horizontally long distance
The indigo sky and the
colour of the ocean harmonize
He listens to the dolphin's
songs
with rapt attention
The fears of storms,
whales
and sharks
completely evaporate
Handsome
Sinbad
forgets
to cast anchor
The fears
of storms,
sharks
and whales
completely evaporate
He has a fascination with the waves
The albatrosses
and the seagulls
keep Sinbad company
Lots
of treasures
are hidden
in
the oceans
Sinbad is frenziedly searching
for these
A mass
of blue water reflects
in the eyes
of the audacious
sailor




The ship peregrination
of Sinbad is longer than
the Arabian
Nights.
IN SEARCH OF THE PRESENT

I begin with two words that all men have uttered since the dawn of humanity: thank you. The word gratitude has equivalents in every language and in each tongue the range of meanings is abundant. In the Romance languages this breadth spans the spiritual and the physical, from the divine grace conceded to men to save them from error and death, to the ****** grace of the dancing girl or the feline leaping through the undergrowth. Grace means pardon, forgiveness, favour, benefice, inspiration; it is a form of address, a pleasing style of speaking or painting, a gesture expressing politeness, and, in short, an act that reveals spiritual goodness. Grace is gratuitous; it is a gift. The person who receives it, the favoured one, is grateful for it; if he is not base, he expresses gratitude. That is what I am doing at this very moment with these weightless words. I hope my emotion compensates their weightlessness. If each of my words were a drop of water, you would see through them and glimpse what I feel: gratitude, acknowledgement. And also an indefinable mixture of fear, respect and surprise at finding myself here before you, in this place which is the home of both Swedish learning and world literature.

Languages are vast realities that transcend those political and historical entities we call nations. The European languages we speak in the Americas illustrate this. The special position of our literatures when compared to those of England, Spain, Portugal and France depends precisely on this fundamental fact: they are literatures written in transplanted tongues. Languages are born and grow from the native soil, nourished by a common history. The European languages were rooted out from their native soil and their own tradition, and then planted in an unknown and unnamed world: they took root in the new lands and, as they grew within the societies of America, they were transformed. They are the same plant yet also a different plant. Our literatures did not passively accept the changing fortunes of the transplanted languages: they participated in the process and even accelerated it. They very soon ceased to be mere transatlantic reflections: at times they have been the negation of the literatures of Europe; more often, they have been a reply.

In spite of these oscillations the link has never been broken. My classics are those of my language and I consider myself to be a descendant of Lope and Quevedo, as any Spanish writer would ... yet I am not a Spaniard. I think that most writers of Spanish America, as well as those from the United States, Brazil and Canada, would say the same as regards the English, Portuguese and French traditions. To understand more clearly the special position of writers in the Americas, we should think of the dialogue maintained by Japanese, Chinese or Arabic writers with the different literatures of Europe. It is a dialogue that cuts across multiple languages and civilizations. Our dialogue, on the other hand, takes place within the same language. We are Europeans yet we are not Europeans. What are we then? It is difficult to define what we are, but our works speak for us.

In the field of literature, the great novelty of the present century has been the appearance of the American literatures. The first to appear was that of the English-speaking part and then, in the second half of the 20th Century, that of Latin America in its two great branches: Spanish America and Brazil. Although they are very different, these three literatures have one common feature: the conflict, which is more ideological than literary, between the cosmopolitan and nativist tendencies, between Europeanism and Americanism. What is the legacy of this dispute? The polemics have disappeared; what remain are the works. Apart from this general resemblance, the differences between the three literatures are multiple and profound. One of them belongs more to history than to literature: the development of Anglo-American literature coincides with the rise of the United States as a world power whereas the rise of our literature coincides with the political and social misfortunes and upheavals of our nations. This proves once more the limitations of social and historical determinism: the decline of empires and social disturbances sometimes coincide with moments of artistic and literary splendour. Li-Po and Tu Fu witnessed the fall of the Tang dynasty; Velázquez painted for Felipe IV; Seneca and Lucan were contemporaries and also victims of Nero. Other differences are of a literary nature and apply more to particular works than to the character of each literature. But can we say that literatures have a character? Do they possess a set of shared features that distinguish them from other literatures? I doubt it. A literature is not defined by some fanciful, intangible character; it is a society of unique works united by relations of opposition and affinity.

The first basic difference between Latin-American and Anglo-American literature lies in the diversity of their origins. Both begin as projections of Europe. The projection of an island in the case of North America; that of a peninsula in our case. Two regions that are geographically, historically and culturally eccentric. The origins of North America are in England and the Reformation; ours are in Spain, Portugal and the Counter-Reformation. For the case of Spanish America I should briefly mention what distinguishes Spain from other European countries, giving it a particularly original historical identity. Spain is no less eccentric than England but its eccentricity is of a different kind. The eccentricity of the English is insular and is characterized by isolation: an eccentricity that excludes. Hispanic eccentricity is peninsular and consists of the coexistence of different civilizations and different pasts: an inclusive eccentricity. In what would later be Catholic Spain, the Visigoths professed the heresy of Arianism, and we could also speak about the centuries of ******* by Arabic civilization, the influence of Jewish thought, the Reconquest, and other characteristic features.

Hispanic eccentricity is reproduced and multiplied in America, especially in those countries such as Mexico and Peru, where ancient and splendid civilizations had existed. In Mexico, the Spaniards encountered history as well as geography. That history is still alive: it is a present rather than a past. The temples and gods of pre-Columbian Mexico are a pile of ruins, but the spirit that breathed life into that world has not disappeared; it speaks to us in the hermetic language of myth, legend, forms of social coexistence, popular art, customs. Being a Mexican writer means listening to the voice of that present, that presence. Listening to it, speaking with it, deciphering it: expressing it ... After this brief digression we may be able to perceive the peculiar relation that simultaneously binds us to and separates us from the European tradition.

This consciousness of being separate is a constant feature of our spiritual history. Separation is sometimes experienced as a wound that marks an internal division, an anguished awareness that invites self-examination; at other times it appears as a challenge, a spur that incites us to action, to go forth and encounter others and the outside world. It is true that the feeling of separation is universal and not peculiar to Spanish Americans. It is born at the very moment of our birth: as we are wrenched from the Whole we fall into an alien land. This experience becomes a wound that never heals. It is the unfathomable depth of every man; all our ventures and exploits, all our acts and dreams, are bridges designed to overcome the separation and reunite us with the world and our fellow-beings. Each man's life and the collective history of mankind can thus be seen as attempts to reconstruct the original situation. An unfinished and endless cure for our divided condition. But it is not my intention to provide yet another description of this feeling. I am simply stressing the fact that for us this existential condition expresses itself in historical terms. It thus becomes an awareness of our history. How and when does this feeling appear and how is it transformed into consciousness? The reply to this double-edged question can be given in the form of a theory or a personal testimony. I prefer the latter: there are many theories and none is entirely convincing.

The feeling of separation is bound up with the oldest and vaguest of my memories: the first cry, the first scare. Like every child I built emotional bridges in the imagination to link me to the world and to other people. I lived in a town on the outskirts of Mexico City, in an old dilapidated house that had a jungle-like garden and a great room full of books. First games and first lessons. The garden soon became the centre of my world; the library, an enchanted cave. I used to read and play with my cousins and schoolmates. There was a fig tree, temple of vegetation, four pine trees, three ash trees, a nightshade, a pomegranate tree, wild grass and prickly plants that produced purple grazes. Adobe walls. Time was elastic; space was a spinning wheel. All time, past or future, real or imaginary, was pure presence. Space transformed itself ceaselessly. The beyond was here, all was here: a valley, a mountain, a distant country, the neighbours' patio. Books with pictures, especially history books, eagerly leafed through, supplied images of deserts and jungles, palaces and hovels, warriors and princesses, beggars and kings. We were shipwrecked with Sinbad and with Robinson, we fought with d'Artagnan, we took Valencia with the Cid. How I would have liked to stay forever on the Isle of Calypso! In summer the green branches of the fig tree would sway like the sails of a caravel or a pirate ship. High up on the mast, swept by the wind, I could make out islands and continents, lands that vanished as soon as they became tangible. The world was limitless yet it was always within reach; time was a pliable substance that weaved an unbroken present.

When was the spell broken? Gradually rather than suddenly. It is hard to accept being betrayed by a friend, deceived by the woman we love, or that the idea of freedom is the mask of a tyrant. What we call "finding out" is a slow and tricky process because we ourselves are the accomplices of our errors and deceptions. Nevertheless, I can remember fairly clearly an incident that was the first sign, although it was quickly forgotten. I must have been about six when one of my cousins who was a little older showed me a North American magazine with a photograph of soldiers marching along a huge avenue, probably in New York. "They've returned from the war" she said. This handful of words disturbed me, as if they foreshadowed the end of the world or the Second Coming of Christ. I vaguely knew that somewhere far away a war had ended a few years earlier and that the soldiers were marching to celebrate their victory. For me, that war had taken place in another time, not here and now. The photo refuted me. I felt literally dislodged from the present.

From that moment time began to fracture more and more. And there was a plurality of spaces. The experience repeated itself more and more frequently. Any piece of news, a harmless phrase, the headline in a newspaper: everything proved the outside world's existence and my own unreality. I felt that the world was splitting and that I did not inhabit the present. My present was disintegrating: real time was somewhere else. My time, the time of the garden, the fig tree, the games with friends, the drowsiness among the plants at three in the afternoon under the sun, a fig torn open (black and red like a live coal but one that is sweet and fresh): this was a fictitious time. In spite of what my senses told me, the time from over there, belonging to the others, was the real one, the time of the real present. I accepted the inevitable: I became an adult. That was how my expulsion from the present began.

It may seem paradoxical to say that we have been expelled from the present, but it is a feeling we have all had at some moment. Some of us experienced it first as a condemnation, later transformed into consciousness and action. The search for the present is neither the pursuit of an earthly paradise nor that of a timeless eternity: it is the search for a real reality. For us, as Spanish Americans, the real present was not in our own countries: it was the time lived by others, by the English, the French and the Germans. It was the time of New York, Paris, London. We had to go and look for it and bring it back home. These years were also the years of my discovery of literature. I began writing poems. I did not know what made me write them: I was moved by an inner need that is difficult to define. Only now have I understood that there was a secret relationship between what I have called my expulsion from the present and the writing of poetry. Poetry is in love with the instant and seeks to relive it in the poem, thus separating it from sequential time and turning it into a fixed present. But at that time I wrote without wondering why I was doing it. I was searching for the gateway to the present: I wanted to belong to my time and to my century. A little later this obsession became a fixed idea: I wanted to be a modern poet. My search for modernity had begun.

What is modernity? First of all it is an ambiguous term: there are as many types of modernity as there are societies. Each has its own. The word's meaning is uncertain and arbitrary, like the name of the period that precedes it, the Middle Ages. If we are modern when compared to medieval times, are we perhaps the Middle Ages of a future modernity? Is a name that changes with time a real name? Modernity is a word in search of its meaning. Is it an idea, a mirage or a moment of history? Are we the children of modernity or its creators? Nobody knows for sure. It doesn't matter much: we follow it, we pursue it. For me at that time modernity was fused with the present or rather produced it: the present was its last supreme flower. My case is neither unique nor exceptional: from the Symbolist period, all modern poets have chased after that magnetic and elusive figure that fascinates them. Baudelaire was the first. He was also the first to touch her and discover that she is nothing but time that crumbles in one's hands. I am not going to relate my adventures in pursuit of modernity: they are not very different from those of other 20th-Century poets. Modernity has been a universal passion. Since 1850 she has been our goddess and our demoness. In recent years, there has been an attempt to exorcise her and there has been much talk of "postmodernism". But what is postmodernism if not an even more modern modernity?

For us, as Latin Americans, the search for poetic modernity runs historically parallel to the repeated attempts to modernize our countries. This tendency begins at the end of the 18th Century and includes Spain herself. The United States was born into modernity and by 1830 was already, as de Tocqueville observed, the womb of the future; we were born at a moment when Spain and Portugal were moving away from modernity. This is why there was frequent talk of "Europeanizing" our countries: the modern was outside and had to be imported. In Mexican history this process begins just before the War of Independence. Later it became a great ideological and political debate that passionately divided Mexican society during the 19th Century. One event was to call into question not the legitimacy of the reform movement but the way in which it had been implemented: the Mexican Revolution. Unlike its 20th-Century counterparts, the Mexican Revolution was not really the expression of a vaguely utopian ideology but rather the explosion of a reality that had been historically and psychologically repressed. It was not the work of a group of ideologists intent on introducing principles derived from a political theory; it was a popular uprising that unmasked what was hidden. For this very reason it was more of a revelation than a revolution. Mexico was searching for the present outside only to find it within, buried but alive. The search for modernity led
Tommy Johnson Apr 2014
Winnie the Pooh is trying to think
As are Plato and Socrates
While The Little Rascals get rambunctious
And The Marx Brothers cause calamities
Jim Jones stirs the Kool-Aid
And Georgie Porgie makes his move
Bo Peep and Miss Muffett start to blush
Red Ridding hood just swoons
The Muffin Man does a deal
With Johnny Apple seed
These beings and people our real
In our Surreal Reality

******* lets the paint splatter
And Moses parts the sea
Belushi buys an eight-ball
Bruce is on trial for obscenity
Rorschach is on the case
Right behind Sherlock Holmes
John the baptist goes for a swim
Along with Brian Jones
Jack and Jill meet Hansel and Gretel
They're hungry, they're thirsty
These figments of imagination do exist
In our Surreal Reality

Rasputin was so evil
As bad as Captain Hook
Now was it ** Chi Minh or Nixon
Who said "I am not a crook?"
Mao Zedong looked at Stalin
With a shared murderous grin
Booth stormed the Ford theater
And shot President Lincoln
Kennedy and King we're both casualties
Of the process of the deciphering
Of our Surreal  Reality

Zeus said to Aphrodite
"Wow, you look real good tonight"
And Handel says "Hallelujah!"
As the Wright Brothers take flight
Baby Face Nelson
Teams up with Dillinger
Moe, Larry and Curly
Mengele, Mussolini and Adolf ******
Three bears, three little pigs
Along with three blind mice
Sit together, while Maurice Sendack
Cooks them chicken soup with rice
Charlie Bucket had a buy out
Wonka gave up his factory
Fiction or nonfiction it's all a apart
Of our Surreal Reality

Chicken Little tried his best
To warm The Little Red Hen
Of the sly trickster
They call Rumpelstiltskin
Rimbaud applauds Leonidas
And his 300's final stand
Da vinci  paved the way
For both Newton and Edison
Folklore and war heroes
And those with intellectual mentality
Are all just pieces
Of our Surreal Reality

Wee Willie Winkie's scream
Wakes up Rip Van Winkle
But not Sleeping Beauty who's been asleep for thirty years
But has no acquired a single wrinkle
Caligula has lost his mind
And Nero's lost his fiddle
What does Beethoven's hearing aid
Have to do the March Hare's riddle?
Abbie Hoffman fights for civil rights
Thomas Jefferson for democracy
Products of the conceptual
In our Surreal Reality

Berryman writes an ode
To Washington's wooden teeth
Manson speaks of Helter Skelter
Neruda damns the fruit company
Charles Schultz frames the story
And Seuss gives it rhyme
Some where far, far away
Taking place once upon a time
And the villagers all had omelettes
Thanks to clumsy Humpty Dumpty
It's all food for thought
In our Surreal Reality

Santa brings us presents
And Cupid bring us love
But we can never get back
The members of the 27 Club
Warhol makes his movies
And Buddha meditates
Joseph Smith reads the golden plates
Mohammed and Jesus save
Theses figures bring people hope
In life's dualities
Trusting faith
And our Surreal Reality


Han Solo is in carbon freeze
Don Juan's preoccupied
Sinbad sets his sails
Simple Simon didn't get his pie
Caesar looked at Brutus
Brutus looked at Saddam Hussein
Hussein looked at L. Ron Hubbard
Who prayed to Eloheim  
Dionysus can out drink us all
We cringe at Achilles fatality  
As Ra soars through the skies
Of our Surreal Reality

Aristotle says to Shakespeare
"Well Billy you old bard"
Frodo trades the ring of power
To Fidel Castro for a Babe Ruth Baseball card
Biggie and Tupac write their lyrics on paper
Ted Bundy is put in jail
They're making another skyscraper
For King Kong to scale
Hemingway is too far gone
Kant's take on morality
Einstein says it's all relative
In our Surreal Reality

Churchill said victory
John Lennon said peace
Judas gave back the silver
Then hung himself in a tree
Tojo and Kim Jong-il
Wanna be as cool as Brando and Dean
George Carlin warned us all
Now Hermes leaves the scene
So do the butcher, the baker and the candle stick maker
Followed by Old King Cole and his Fiddlers Three
As they make their way to find
A sense or Surreal Reality

Odysseus pines for Ithaca
Paul Bunyan chops the trees
The Jersey Devil has not been found
Noah herds the animals by twos not threes
Anubis wraps the mummies
And Augustus leads Rome
Bugs Bunny laughs with Pryor
All at the expense of Job
So what can we all make of this
Is this all actuality?
Symbolism or nonsense?
Realistic Surrealism or Surreal Realty?
Nigel Obiya Apr 2013
PLANET NAIROBI (When the sun goes down)
Nur…
They were on the verge of losing this battle… it was only a matter of time, and he knew that. Through the window, he saw them advance, with a fierce swiftness that would have put anyone opposed to them at unease. Trembling uncontrollably, he reached for his weapon and held it firmly, ready to martyr himself for his family’s honour and legacy if need be. For they were not, and never would be known as a family of cowards, they were royalty... and he would rather go down fighting than cowering, that was the bottom line. But he knew that his sword, as well forged as it was, would be no match for Rath and his five hundred man strong battalion. So, biting his lower lip he waited for the pounding footsteps to reach the top of the stairs where he stood, the one solitary guardian to the throne. Martyrdom was his destiny.
“Let he that stands between Rath and the throne fall like the city walls!” Rath’s dominant voice bellowed as it got closer, too close for comfort.
He braced himself.
Suddenly, the doors burst open. And Nur... Prince Nur, finally got to come face to face with the scourge that had terrorised the lands of the sea for so long. A man of whom he had heard about from stories as a child growing up. A man that had haunted his dreams for as long as he could remember. Nur realised that he had always been afraid of Rath, long before this moment, how was he supposed to fight this man when he was clearly at a disadvantage? For it was common knowledge that to go into battle afraid, was to go into battle prepared to lose.
Rath was a gigantic figure, and exuded the air of one who was accustomed to crushing his opponents and hadn’t experienced defeat in a while... if not ever. This man stood at almost eight feet tall, with rock hard muscles that seemed to pile on top of more muscle, threatening to tear through his dark skin. His long locks of unkempt hair fell over a face that could only be described as menacing. He had a permanent scowl that was complimented by his black, soulless eyes. And as they stared each other down, Nur couldn’t ignore the presence of sheer evil he saw in those eyes, a shiver of dread ran down his spine. He raised his blade.
“A child?” Rath barked, “A petulant child? Is that what this Kingdom’s defences have come down to? An infant?” He waved a dismissive hand at Nur.
“A prince!” Nur responded defiantly, raising his blade even higher and more confidently. This man may have been the epitome of terror, but Nur would be ****** if he was going to be talked down to in this manner, this was his palace.
“A prince huh? Prince Nur I presume? Your father was a brave man, I respected him. Even if I met his acquaintance only for a couple of minutes, before I slaughtered him. But I do respect a king that fights alongside his men, as opposed to other cowards I’ve had the pleasure of killing that had barricaded themselves in their chambers and let others fight their battles for them. King Thur was a rare breed... but a dead one all the same.” He laughed remorselessly as he said this. “And soon you will get to join your warrior father foolish one.”
Nur lost all sense of fear. Infuriated, his nostrils flared as he swung the blade with all the ferocity he could muster, slicing deep into Rath’s right forearm. Time slowed to syrup as he saw his adversary’s blood stain the sword, but realising that it wasn’t a fatal strike, he turned around swiftly, switching his stance just in time to see Rath’s massive blade come down on his head. Then there was a deathly silence.
The afterlife was nothing like he had pictured. It smelt of... he couldn’t quite place that peculiar smell. It wasn’t pleasant, but neither was it unpleasant, just unfamiliar. Then he turned around and saw her. He deduced that she was probably the source of the smell. He noticed that smoke came out of her nostrils and mouth every few seconds after lifting a sticklike object to her lips. Nur mused at how wrong the high priest in their kingdom had been when he spoke about the place in the sun... the afterlife. It wasn’t anything like he had described.
But wait a minute! He realised that the sun was still above him, in the sky. He could see it. He could feel it on his skin. So WHERE WAS HE? He felt dizzy, unable to comprehend. Only a minute ago he was in the royal palace, facing certain death. And now he was... he didn’t know where he was, or even what he was. Was he dead? Transcended? Was this just his soul? If so, then how come he still had his senses? All these questions raced through his mind at the same time. He turned toward the lady, who seemed unaware of his presence. She was tall and very light skinned compared to him and her hair was tied in ponytail at the back of her head. He couldn’t make sense of her attire though, she seemed to wear a lot of clothing, garment over garment that covered her arms and legs. She was also extremely beautiful and had a slim womanly body most warriors would **** for, he noted, and felt himself flush. He tried to see what she was squinting so intently at and concluded that she was just staring into space as she drew, he realised now, on the tiny stick and blew out more smoke. That was when he noticed how high up they were, this palace stood almost five times as high as theirs. It was overwhelming to say the least.  He got up and walked over to her, deciding to leave his blade behind so as not to come off as a threat.
“Greetings?” He said politely. She jumped as if she had just seen a ghost, dropping the stick she was holding. He had clearly startled her, so he took a step back lifting his hands in the air to signify that he meant her no harm. She breathed rapidly and began to speak just as rapidly in a foreign tongue. Nur couldn’t understand what she was saying, but the hostility in her tone and her demeanour was hard to miss. He took another step back, ready to defend himself from an attack if need be. He had heard tales of an island with warrior women who could match, and beat, even the strongest male adversary in combat. He decided to tread cautiously.


Nasim...
Nasim Naikuni was beyond peeved. Who was this ******?  He had scared her half to death and almost made her fall off the roof, not to mention burn her favourite grey, three thousand shilling trouser suite when she dropped the cigarette. And what annoyed her even more was that he didn’t seem to register how ******* she was. He just stood there with a blank expression on his face, like a schoolboy waiting for his mistake to be explained to him. Nasim couldn’t stand slow people, they got under her skin. She was yelling at the top of her lungs, which was taxing to say the least, seeing as she had been smoking just seconds ago.
“Are you slow?” She shouted, tapping at her temple repeatedly. “What makes you think you can sneak up on me like that you fool? You almost killed me. Do you realise that?” Then she stopped and studied him, out of breath. She noticed that he seemed unable to understand English and so she switched to Swahili, “Nini mbaya na wewe?” What’s wrong with you? Still there was no response.
She gave him a once over. He dressed strangely. His large, golden brown pants that fluttered in the wind seemed to have been made from an expensive material, though it was like no material she’d laid eyes on before. It bordered somewhere between silk and suede. His shirt was also made of a similar material, but leather brown in colour, matching his leather boots that were laced and reached just under the knee. He stood an inch or two shorter than she did, but she guessed that was probably because she was in heels. He had long hair that seemed to fall halfway down his back in one long braid. He looked almost exotic as he tried to communicate, but she couldn’t place the language or his ethnicity, for his skin-tone was chocolate brown but his hair looked almost like an Asian’s, dark and straight. He spoke in a tongue she had never heard before. There was also something really classy about this boy, whom she guessed to be around eighteen years of age or so. It was like looking at a darker, more pampered version of Sinbad the sailor.
Nasim relaxed a little and decided to give the fellow a chance to introduce himself, in whatever way he intended to do so. He seemed to pick up on this and started explaining something to her, making a couple of gestures, and at some point she thought she saw him mimic a fight, and then  point to the sky. Nasim still didn’t know what he was talking about, but felt a semblance of communication begin to take form. He directed her attention to another part of the roof, probably where he had approached her from. And she saw the blade! With catlike agility she swung her purse at him, the blow caught him square on the jaw with a thud! The bottle of perfume she religiously carried around in it serving a different purpose on this day. He hadn’t seen it coming and so had no chance of stopping it. He staggered backwards as she made a run for it toward the staircase but felt a hand grab her ankle causing her to tumble onto the hot cement floor. At that moment her heart sank, for she knew that she was done for.


Nur...
Nur was perplexed, he didn’t know what he’d done to deserve the assault. The lady had seemed to be calming down, but all of a sudden she had lunged at him with a weapon he had first assumed to be a bag. Though, she didn’t strike with the strength that a warrior would have, and also had made an attempt to flee. This told him two things. One, she wasn’t accustomed to combat... and two, she had attacked more out of fear than strife. Which meant that she posed no immediate threat to him. Also, she was the only person he had met so far and his only hope of figuring out where he was. He couldn’t afford to lose her, not just yet, so he decided to try something he was ashamed he hadn’t thought of sooner. Nur spoke into her head.
‘I mean you no harm.’  He said, and waited. No response. He tried again, concentrating harder this time. ‘Can you hear me? I mean you no harm’
‘LET ME GOOO!’  Her thoughts screamed.
He could understand her, they had made a connection. Progress...

One year later. Nasim...
“Good afternoon people? You’re hangin’ out with me Nasim Naikuni on your favourite show Voices, where you can throw any question you have regarding life... and living it, at me and the voices in my head will answer them for you... yeah, you heard right, the voices in my head. I’ll be takin’ your calls for the next hour. Let’s begin shall we?” Nasim spoke into the microphone just before a voice-over added...
“NASIM NAIKUNI, THE ONLY RADIO PRESENTER THAT’S LITERALLY GONE BONKERS!” And then was followed by some rock music. ‘So what?... I’m still a rock star... ’ Pink’s lyrics belted out as Nasim removed her headphones to take a breather before she talked to her first caller. A breather... and also to have a bit of a chat with the voice in her head. She walked out of the studio into a corridor where she was out of sight, and concentrated, her eyes crinkling from the effort.
‘Hey, are you there?’
‘Uh huh.’ The prince replied.
‘Okay, we’re on in roughly three minutes. Make me look good babes’
‘Don’t I always?’
‘True dat. What are you doing?’
‘Breakfast.’
‘It’s one in the afternoon... ’
‘This is not my planet, therefore I’m not obliged to follow its rules. I can have a one o’clock breakfast if I want to.’
‘Brunch.’
‘What?’
‘Brunch, what your having would be brunch. Breakfast... aaand lunch?’
‘You see? You get all high and mighty on me about this and you even have a name for it? If it is so wrong to have breakfast at this time, then why would your people give the meal a name? I’m just saying.’ Nur said mockingly.
‘I give up’ She replied with a sigh.
‘Nas... Nas?’
Silence.
She walked back into the studio.
“Caller... you’re on air. Shoot.” Nasim said softly, leaning into the microphone.
“Hey Nasim, lovely job you’re doing by the way.”
“Why thank you dear, but I don’t deserve all the credit you know?”
“Yeah I know... you and the voices in your head... ha-ha! Anyway my name is George, and I’m kinda’ in a predicament at the moment. You see, I have a wife and a family... two kids, but I kinda’ got into this relationship outta’... obligation as opposed to real love...”
“Obligation?”
“Yes. I met my wife five years ago in uni’ and we dated. But looking back, I only got into the relationship because I felt I’d led her on and she loved me soo much, I just couldn’t disappoint her. So I got stuck in a phony relationship, at least on my part. Next thing I know, we are pregnant and... It’s been we ever since.”
“So you want to what? Get out of your marriage?”
“I want to be with the person I truly love...”
“Hooo... **! Scoreboard! Now we have lift off. And how long have you known this person that you truly love George?” She said this with a tinge of amusement in her voice.
“Six years... and we’ve been going out for the past two.” He sounded ashamed.
‘He sounds ashamed.’ She heard Nur say observationally.
‘No kidding.’ She retorted.
(In the past year or so, Nasim and Nur had come to an understanding somewhat. After she had struck him with her purse and the little scuffle they’d had on the rooftop, and after convincing herself that she wasn’t going crazy... or that the cigarette she had been smoking wasn’t laced with marijuana or some other hallucinogen, she finally gave in and listened to the voice speaking to her in her thoughts.
‘Please, just give me a chance to explain. I need your help lady!’ He sounded desperate.
She felt sorry for him, but still suspected she could be going nuts.
He continued. ‘I don’t know where I am. My father is dead and I don’t know where I am or how I arrived here, and you’re the only one that can help me right now...’
Nasim, touched now, replied. “How am I supposed to do that? And how are you doing this telepathy thing? Are you really doing this?” She shook her head violently, like a wet dog trying to dry itself, “I’m very confused right now.”
He looked even more confused. ‘Talk to me in my head, I think it is the only way we can communicate with each other.’
She didn’t know how to.
‘It’s simple, concentrate.’ He said reassuringly.
She tried. Still nothing.
‘I could hear you a moment ago, I don’t understand. Let’s try this slowly, repeat after me... Nur.’ He told her.
She heard him, and was thinking what?
He repeated, ‘Nur.’
She tried thinking the word he’d asked her to repeat as hard as she could but he didn’t seem to be getting anything. She decided that the cigarette must have been laced with something. Here she was, on the roof top of her work building trying to master telepathy, with a stranger who just happened to own a sword. This had to be a dream, a nightmare.
‘I must be high.’
‘Yes! Yes! You’re high!’ She heard the excited reply.
‘What?’
‘You did it!’ Nur said happily, ‘you figured it out. And yes, I was also meaning to ask you about how high we are.’
She had done it. Nasim could hear him and answer back, she felt oddly proud of this accomplishment. Then she asked puzzled. ‘High? You get high?’
‘I am high.’ Came the naive reply.
‘Oh...’
‘Why are we so high up? The palaces on our island are half the size of yours, are you that many in your palace that you need to build it so tall?’
Then she understood. And laughed... ‘Who are you? And how did you get here?’
‘My name is Nur... Prince Nur... how I got here? That’s what I’m trying to find out.’ He was being honest.
And thus begun an adventurous relationship between the two. Nasim took him to her apartment that day, passing curious and disapproving looks all the way. The most difficult part being trying to explain to her boss why she was coming from the roof in the company of someone who dressed like a ******, as he put it. She made up something. And he gave her one of those I’ll accept your story just because... looks. Nasim found that hilarious. But she was glad she had asked Nur to leave the sword behind to be recovered later. That would have been a tad difficult to explain. They got to her apartment block and were met by more disapproving looks from a group of nosey old women, the type that love to mind everyone else’s business but their own, as they walked to the lift. And when they got into apartment F6 on the second floor, she introduced Nu
Planet Nairobi… wrote this a couple of months ago, it was turned down by one publisher and awaiting other publisher’s feedback. However, it’s been a minute so I decided to share it with my peoples… if you like my work, this one will get you going… it may have it’s flaws, but hey… I never said I’m perfect, I’m just a writer.
Robert C Howard May 2016
Sinbad’s sea-battered ship was
poised on the edge of annihilation,
The Sultan's brow furrowed with curiosity,
then without warning
Scheherazade stilled her narrative
and lived to see the morning sun.

When the moon and stars next owned the sky,
Sinbad was snatched from the jaws of death
then the saga of Prince Kalandar
seized the king's soul with wonder
but Scheherazade left the tale unfinished
and sang with the birds at dawn.

Rimsky-Korsakoff  turned the pages at his desk -
consumed by Scheherazade’s charms
then etched his pen across the waiting staves:
The violin must weave her spell once more
and bassoon and oboe take the prince’s part.

Trombone and trumpet led the martial call
and all the rest enlisted for the cause.
Russian bravura fused with the seductive allure
of exotic tunes born of the dust on the silken road.

A sonic whirlwind filled Saint Paul Church,
as winds and tremolos grew to cyclonic force.
A wall of brass completed Kalandar’s tale.
capped by an exuberant clash of cymbal plates.

The silence yielded to tender violins
chanting a hymn to the princess in all her grace.
Tambourine and winds wove a tapestry
of her debonaire and most virtuous prince.

As the final pizzicato chord faded, the Sultan
turned to Scheherazade with tear-filled eyes
and beheld his immortal princess
and she her valiant and eternal prince
and so it would be as long as night preceded dawn.

She kissed away his tears of joy and whispered in his ear,
“My beloved husband, I will tell you stories forever.
Tomorrow you shall learn of the Feast at Baghdad.”
Another site I have posted on, Poetfreak.com is shutting down so I am moving some the poems here. More refugees will follow.
DaSH the Hopeful Oct 2014
I feel life from the words I write despite them being words I slurred over night it's like I fight but my pen is the sword of course I force myself into creative prospects I expect to wreck what in front of me is set
I wondered what would happen if I ruled the world gimme a shot at the top I'm not Clinton I only need one girl but seriously I hate this place controlled by industry it's ****** me up the environment and desire for right went out the window when the dead presidents kept talking from beyond the grave the money you made won't matter so cut it like a beanstalk

DaSH:
And fall into a pool of tears
From all the single mothers over all these years
Tucking youngins under covers
Undercover trying not to let the pain show through
This is the same strong woman that still holds you
Even though you're older and make your own decisions
Its gotten colder in the later years just wishin
You could go back to the beginnin
Back to when **** was simple
And all you had to do was listen
To another bedtime story
Next thing you know you're drifting
Away from all these problems and all these lights
Fluoride will **** our dreams they tell us to brush our teeth and cringe when we say reality bites
But I'm just trying to figure what's more important
Being myself
Or being Your kid
Just another thought from the tortured
I can feel the flames lick my body 'fore the torch's lit
Society's trying to burn us
And if they think they can teach us before they learn us then its straight out the frying pan and flying into the furnace

Nero:
I'm all alone like a watchtower my life turned sour but I'll devour any chance to **** up fools with rhymes perchance I'll leave you entranced with my writings but I'm sliding off topic so dash if you're ready then go a ahead and rip because we're cyphering on some poetic mafia ****

DaSH:
**** clips in the toilet with the ******* safety off
******* blood royal flushing with my king homie Alucard
All your ******* are old and lack any kind of support
So I'll hang em make their back straight with that ******* IV cord
If this cipher is random
Hope they deal with what I hand em
Four grenades a box of tampons
Watch these ******* explode while standing above the commode
Uncan them
The whoopass they deserve
Then im swervin in their hearse
Hopping over every curb
Speeding through every sharp turn
I love to watch their bodies burn
I love to catch every single ash between my teeth and eat them
DaSH is such a beast you freed him
By acting like a priest
When youre a demon in the streets
*******, capish?

Nero:
Alucard the damphir ******* blood like canned beer I'm near my apex others are below I'll free flow like arkham you won't question in a session when I leave your ***** barkin rhyme sparring call me Ali all these fools stay trying to Rock me like cheap Versace but I'm high quality leather built for your pleasure linkin words together you'll take home and treasure like Sinbad I don't sling crack but my rhymes are the pipe because reading this I know your *** got addicted tonight

DaSH:
Slicing high up on their frame
Like I'm aimin for the throat
Lots of gore on the floor
Need a boat to stay afloat
The walls needed more paint
You donate another coat
But I don't need your ******* charity
I'll stumble and I choke
Before I ever let you get to me
Before you start ***** you'll be history
How you ******* plan on ending me?
Just get Gone, Girl, be a mystery
IF I should pass the tomb of Jonah
I would stop there and sit for awhile;
Because I was swallowed one time deep in the dark
And came out alive after all.
  
If I pass the burial spot of Nero
I shall say to the wind, "Well, well!"-
I who have fiddled in a world on fire,
I who have done so many stunts not worth doing.
  
I am looking for the grave of Sinbad too.
I want to shake his ghost-hand and say,
"Neither of us died very early, did we?"
  
And the last sleeping-place of Nebuchadnezzar-
When I arrive there I shall tell the wind:
"You ate grass; I have eaten crow-
Who is better off now or next year?"
  
Jack Cade, John Brown, Jesse James,
There too I could sit down and stop for awhile.
I think I could tell their headstones:
"God, let me remember all good losers."
  
I could ask people to throw ashes on their heads
In the name of that sergeant at Belleau Woods,
Walking into the drumfires, calling his men,
"Come on, you ... Do you want to live forever?"
Faleeha Hassan May 2016
A Babylonian once told me:
When my name bores me,
I throw it in the river
And return renewed!
* * * * *
Basra existed
Even before al-Sayyab* viewed its streets
Bathed in poetry
As verdant as
A poet’s heart when her
Prince pauses trustfully to sing
While sublime maidens dance--
Brown like mud in the orchards
Soft like mud in the orchards
Scented with henna like mud in the orchards—
And a poem punctuates each of their pirouettes as
They walk straight to the river.
I’ve discovered no place in the city broader than Five Mile.
He declared:
I used to visit there night and day,
When sun and moon were locked in intimate embrace.
Then they quarreled.
The Gulf’s water was sweet,
Each ship would unload its cargo,
And crew members enjoyed a bite of an apple
And some honey.
The women were radiant;
So men’s necks swiveled each time ladies’ shadows
Moved beneath the palms’ fronds.
These women needed no adornment;
Translated by William Hutchins
……………………………………………………………..
Basra, also written Basrah  is the capital of Basra Governorate, located on the Shatt al-Arab river in southern Iraq between Kuwait and Iran. It had an estimated population of 1.5 million of 2012.
Basra is also Iraq's main port, although it does not have deep water access, which is handled at the port of Umm Qasr.
The city is part of the historic location of Sumer, the home of Sinbad the Sailor, and a proposed location of the Garden of Eden. It played an important role in early Islamic history and was built in 636 AD or 14 AH. It is Iraq's second largest and most populous city after Baghdad.
Basra is consistently one of the hottest cities on the planet, with summer temperatures regularly exceeding 50 °C (122 °F)
Badr Shakir al Sayyab (December 24, 1926 – 1964) was an Iraqi and Arab poet. Born in Jekor, a town south of Basra in Iraq, he was the eldest child of a date grower and shepherd.
He graduated from the Higher teachers training college of Baghdad in 1948
Badr Shakir was dismissed from his teaching post for being a member of the Iraqi Communist Party.
Badr Shakir al-Sayyab was one of the greatest poets in Arabic literature, whose experiments helped to change the course of modern Arabic
poetry. At the end of the 1940s he launched, with Nazik al-Mala'ika,and shortly followed by ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Bayātī and Shathel Taqa, the free verse movement and gave it credibility with the many fine poems he published in the fifties.
These included the famous "Rain Song," which was instrumental in drawing attention to the use of myth in poetry. He revolutionized all the elements of the poem and wrote highly involved political and social poetry, along with many personal poems.
THE FINE cloth of your love might be a fabric of Egypt,
Something Sinbad, the sailor, took away from robbers,
Something a traveler with plenty of money might pick up
And bring home and stick on the walls and say:
"There's a little thing made a hit with me
When I was in Cairo-I think I must see Cairo again some day."
So there are cornice manufacturers, chewing gum kings,
Young Napoleons who corner eggs or corner cheese,
Phenoms looking for more worlds to corner,
And still other phenoms who lard themselves in
And make a killing in steel, copper, permanganese,
And they say to random friends in for a call:
  "Have you had a look at my wife? Here she is.
Haven't I got her dolled up for fair?"
O-ee! the fine cloth of your love might be a fabric of Egypt.
jeffrey conyers Jan 2013
I once thought Richard Pryor was funny.
Still do.
I doubt he has anything upon you.

I also thought George Carlin was too.
Then I heard you.

You make me laugh.
Just bring joy to my soul.
If laughter I the best medicine.
Then with you I'll never get ill.

Steve Martin.
Bill Cosby.
Sinbad.
And Steve Harvey might be hilarious.
Except, they hadn't met you.

You have a way to make anyone day brighter.

I love you.
I adore you.
For laughter.
For the loving.
GOD grant a blessing on this tower and cottage
And on my heirs, if all remain unspoiled,
No table or chair or stool not simple enough
For shepherd lads in Galilee; and grant
That I myself for portions of the year
May handle nothing and set eyes on nothing
But what the great and passionate have used
Throughout so many varying centuries
We take it for the norm; yet should I dream
Sinbad the sailor's brought a painted chest,
Or image, from beyond the Loadstone Mountain,
That dream is a norm; and should some limb of the Devil
Destroy the view by cutting down an ash
That shades the road, or setting up a cottage
Planned in a government office, shorten his life,
Manacle his soul upon the Red Sea bottom.
Jonquil rain bar approach , delta method
time beau stargazer in earnest
Fine line arcadian pest derecho , pinpoint
waiver unit substitution Jericho
Albamarle sinister unit torrid recuser perpetuity
cisco propulsion Easter wig nam propulsion
Archangel rock deliver jetsam
Harold ****** sonic shift mercury wind bag space
candidate turquoise nine beam analyzer Sinbad nine
Winder ground archer nine sound pet neighbor tyrant
dime loser terrier loose figment stroller ten nimbus
Copyright April 11 , 2016 by Randolph L Wilson * All Rights Reserved
O yea this might hurt some feelings
Uh



Yo **** white supremacy  !!!!
You can **** my **** til it reach
Natural vasectomy  
Ya wanna be
Black so bad look what the **** they did to Sinbad??
My dad was never there so i
Had to stop n stare
Lookin' at the sun the holy one
I seen an image of a black son
Layin' in the gutter strugglin' with his mother
N brother no other
Can relate to the tough times hard crimes
Deep in the neighborhood
Cops up to no good
Poppin' shots then get mad when we
Bust back to make it understood
Dont diss me im a g been in this ****
Since the birth of slavery
**** the media n the press
You say its too many nigguhs
Well smoke some sess
Hilary aint nothing but ***** to me.
Along with Obama
I put that on my mama full of drama
Cuz i was a born hell raiser
Been throwin' thangs since elementary
Solds drugs to me in my community
So you can lock us minorities
In the state penitentiary
On everythang i pack slugs
Check my six spinnin' on dubs
Minus 10 you get 10
Spokes is chirpin' mad smokin'
Sessions intense dollars n sense
Use common sense
Bombin' with my cavi flow just so ya know
Ya ******' with a pro
Uh killed all my leaders cuz they was tryna feed us
Knowledge **** the white college
I know my real history **** black history
What about the real.heros
Killin' all the slavery
Nat Turner Malcolm and Martin
To Jesse Jackson n Al Sharpton
Benefitin' off the fake race bait
***** in disguise nigguh open yo eyes
Its no surprise
Black face is right before our eyes
This aint vanilla sky
I see grey along with the thunder the rain the strain nigguh feel my pain
Uh its an everyday thang roll with a gang
After the white house eradictin'
There reindeer games
Uncle sam aimin' his finger at the poor folks
The military is joke for black n hispanic folks
Ya cant make change 1000s of miles away
So listen to the **** what i say
And ya know im real pack a big steel
Buckin' Capitol Hill as retain my throne
Im the King of the Hilllll!!! $!

Michael Marchese May 2022
Decline the sky,
Embrace abysses
Where the squids
And whales
Do business
All the riches,
Plunder,
Spoils
Hell beneath us
Cracks and boils
Shores erode
Before my eyes
And deeper still
My shipwreck dives
Alive, but cold
I shiver in
The maelstrom’s
Unrelenting spin
It’s been so hard
To find the one
To bask beside
Beneath the sun
But kingdom comes
For me
No queen
Save for
My consort
Seven seas
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2016
teach me justice and you can
teach me everything else...
otherwise ******* back to Sinbad territory;
teach me justice, show me justice
and you can take your little bumper
stickers to Greenland to build a
mosque for Guinness's book of
records... stop faking this ****
behind post-colonialism looking
Parisian mascara pretty... don't bother...
by being "racist" i'm also taking
the **** from your former colonial masters...
which you ended up ******* up to...
this is Europe... your mothers ******
and your fathers castrated has no place
among us... walk the French mile
of a Riviera and then tell me what's packed
and what's **** and what's called the Assad kebab;
**** - you ******* hear the vermin talk?
or you a bit deaf? oh, a dog with its tail
lodged between its hind-legs...
clearly you were always going to be an I.R.A.
assassin. like my father on a construction-site...
i'm asking you, yes, you, Paddy...
you downing a pint of concrete to get you
off your lazy Shamrock *** while downing
a pint of St. Guinness?
or do you want a donkey's kick up your ***
to take photographs on a cruise ship?
i take it the English were too strong to criticise,
so you picked on the other migrants,
the ones in line with the dog fights in the R.A.F.,
you know, you can really bake a birthday cake
feeding the Welsh cat food with their specialist
subject of sharpened parabola (V).
hey! you said it... vermin plucked your eyes
from their sockets as if a spring bouquet of flowers.
by
Wake up wake up
Or else back up back up
You leaning on the footsteps
Of pain
See through your eyes nothing pain
Its stain
On the Windows of ya soul
Break protocol took a wage for the toll
Death I be humming it
Til I take my last breath
No fear for the afterlife
I'll retain my throne in the afterlife
Chilling with my ancestors
Kings n Queens with exquisite cousines no fiends
To worry about on the block
We got it on lock
N them earthly slave masters
Are my slaves and I'm the master
Can't run nor can you hide
No matter the distance I'm still on ya hide
Attack me be prepared to face the pride
Lions and lioness I suggest y'all just move around cuz I'm to suave
Can't get no love they call me *****
But then get made when I use *****
Kind of irony is that?
Imagine me without a **** gat
No sir I pack all my tools
Embraced my own rules peep my manual
I'm stronger than Sampson with dreads on my head
Cuz I'm invincible


First laws of psychics nothing comes from nothing
So how can they say God don't exist
This is ludicrous they blinding the bliss I risk
My life for this **** til I touch a casket
Driving in a black hearse
Family in tears I see em rolling
Down the cheek of the meek
They should inherit the earth
See the gargoyles catching mirth
No worth
To my **** name its shame
That I've been seeing images
Since I was a lad I Sinbad
But no jokes to tell I learned all hope will fail
But if I stay a soldier I won't fail
Two tours been there done that
Ya got guns we got straps
But they won't stop me never
Flank em off guard down goes ya weather
Feeling cold dead heartless cuz I'm bold
Plus my bank roll sitting swole
Don't mean to brag
Still got homies from the block to Ft Bragg
Never sag push a Chevy caprice **** a jag
Switched to intellectual books that I've never had
Cuz I'm invincible
The dream state is not one of those American states.

I looked under rocks, frocks and umbrellas for it, but
no joy,
could be the dream state is a decoy
only there to pique your interest.

England's in some state
but you won't find it on any map.

Now in my sixties and still believing in elfins and pixies
and wondering about hobgoblins, my only regret is that
I haven't yet met Sinbad, met Popeye though, met Oliver,
Gulliver, Crusoe and Ahab, really want to meet Sinbad,

One can always dream.
Real ignorant
Cuz society ignorant
Far from a repent
My sins is my amends
But then again
I see the spirits tacklin'.
Tryna break me in
With the demons hangin'
With Satan
But I denied gracefully faithfully
I let my foes see
The guns if you slow on they come
Up so don't run up
I'm finna erupt flows volcano
Strong as Cano mortal combat
Yeah I Sinbad cuz I never had
A dad in my life
My rhymes is life so bump
Haters who want me knifed
Back stabbers
But I dodged the daggers
Sip henny but don't stagger
Smooth as **** Jagger
Hate naggers don dada
Leavin' the haters with nada
I gotta lotta
Flows to go so check what's in store .yeah

Yeah like Frank I be
An American gangster
Far from a prankster
Free range entertainer
Watch me drain ya
Energy to those who
Mean nothing to me
At best they My mini'mes
I chill where the hustlers be
Totin' guns so My enemies
Flea tombstones received
Smokin' trees
So I have better oxygen to breathe
Stay away from me
If you ain't about gettin' monopoly
Or property
Money ain't a option to me
Been cuttin' corners since I was three
Gotta few dimes with me wifey
Material starting my own black imperial
Far from comical made in the slums
They said id amount to none
But I came out reigning as the victorious one
Norbert Tasev Feb 2022
Above the bridge railing I stare down into the silently yawning, whirling throats; a whirling, centrifugal vortex-wheel drags me along, pulls me, and pulls! Balanced on a thin, snow-white blade, thus is he who was cast out into life! Gathering crumbs of breadcrumbs through a lifetime, Till Death, like a lawful chase, takes him! With narrowing eyes curiously fixed on me, the wan shadows of shipwrecked souls Past-remembering, meek shadows emerge from mire-thrown foam; Witnessing guardians of the possible that is!


As aerial-gymnast-samples, we may all thus balance the many certain possibilities; at another planned turn, veronal, foam of water, or poison is of no use - with conscious cowardice, human dignity confidently fails us! I stumble between reckless tumbles with purpose. I would even lie flat, like Sinbad, like a petty nobody, and probe the beating heart-******* of angelic ladies! May I remain in my falling, fallen life who I was: an eternal child in an arrogant adult world!


Thick and unsteady even now is the black, roiling stream. I feel that I have often run out of strength to face every trial like a murdering *******! The old Danube still murmurs and calls me to it! - Nowadays, the circus and the bustling ant-hill of the great world are so merged that the heart of the prodigal little man is always trembling, when he looks into the flashing, decaying Tomorrows with dignified and faltering eyes!
Hold up hold up
I see the world corrupt
Since
I took a sip of the potion
I gotta swole up
Mobs like Luciano
Sound the instrumental
Watch the vocals turn detrimental
Servin' peens
Lyrically dumpin'
Out my magazine
You who I be
Straight wizardy
Fools thought i was soft
But I was taught
Combat so now I sinbad
Chased afta things
I never had
I scarfaces like Brad feel the brass
If you wanna be put on
Your ***

The world is mine.....
The world is mine suckas
Rack up
My crew be thick don't slack up
The world is mine
Dollaz stack up
So check yoself
Before ya wacked up

Yosef the don
The only one
Puttin' suckas through pun
And stun
Any poems
I'm so deep you'll love em
They wanna keep me
Bound but I'm above em
Drowning competitions
So I shove em
Out the scene
Puffin nature's green
Still wear guess baggy jeans
I'm old school ghetto as
Rallo
Many claim leadership
But they just follow
Others after creeds
I been a soldier
So I know when ******* feeds
Greeds
Made from a ***** deeds
Romance without finance
Is a slim chance
Its stuck in a fire with the devils dance
Fools out with open hands
Reeady take a reprimand
But I stand strong even grippin'
The slim
Knockin out flakes the world is mine

The world is mine.....
The world is mine suckas
Rack up
My crew be thick don't slack up
The world is mine
Dollaz stack up
So check yoself
Before ya wacked up
(20 minute poetry)


It's a Groundhog Day
and it's bound to be
as it's bound to me

trussed up and cussed at
accused of this
innocent and that
is my stance.

today's an expanse if expanse is the word
stretched out before me
like an old man on the rack,
going back takes me back
to the same place
there is no moving on

this is groundhog for
the underdog,
an uppercut

there but for the pleasure of her majesty and the grace of Sinbad or some God
go you

but I do this to pass go and sometimes I pass time as time passes sometimes by me
slow and unconvincingly reminding me of virginal smiles up on 42nd street.

It all replays
groundhog days are
yesterday's
with fancy names,

just
designer games.
nyant Mar 2018
Well it's pretty cold over here,
my doubt makes it difficult to draw near,
revelling in the *** of the ruminate that I retch,
wondering why I want to stay a wretch,
heeding fables,
constantly unstable in many ways,
as I mule and bray away my days,
wasting time looking for a needle in the hay,
worried about wheat and chaff,
never about the rod and staff,
forgetting what the Miller said,
the ball is in your court,
stick to your field old sport.

I dined the dark with the swine,
as we crafted the mud and mocked the divine,
on lonely island we speak of filthy things,
the kind that should be kept private,
like pirates out for innocence,
we burn our idle incense,
looking for a pharaoh to harrow,
any Jack or sparrow,
hovering to find any hose here,
little loose rats into the water with the Pied Piper,
we **** the fishmonger with fear,
he was meant to guard his stock,
we bribe the shepherd as if he never heard,
meant to guard his flock,
he probably never cared.

Casting out our cunning lines,
telling them to enter in,
but never through the gate,
hoping they'll take the bait,
carrot and stick,
on to the slave ship,
men of clouded Eris,
forever luring sinbad.

Timon and Pumba said hakuna matata,
that option was to obvious for my ominous oblanganta,
the rooster crows when it sees the raven,
but we forget our roles when we're in a haven,
rafiki said look beyond what you see,
but I was in the desert and the thirst was real,
you could say that I was in my feels,
I chased the mirage,
missed the ever open oasis,
still thirsty,
it didn't lust.
listening to my logic,
ate the food on the palace plate,
who can relate?

My spider senses were webbed by the sandman as I drilled for digital  dopamine to derail my depression,
dusty roads laid in the distance as my discernment was damaged.
Now I'm afraid to have a dialogue because I'm no longer used to analogue,
fight fleeting.

I'm fed up of spinning in cycles,
gotta check my psyche like Nike,
can't bet on chance,
I need discipline unlike Mike.

Do you want more?
I scream encore,
wondering why I've become so numb,
why I've lost control,
walking the isle of isolation,
hiding from the groom,
even after all the light,
all I saw was gloom,
tossed by the wind and waves,  
I hide in the bush from Ned like Homer,
I could make a joke of this quagmire,
but I really feel like Gomer.
Sometimes you have to leave the cast if you feel like you'll remain half the man.

With all my getting I never understand,
I just peter in the storm,
hoping He will stretch out His mighty hand.
Check it I ain't no joke
You see from the lyrics that smoke
And make any haters provoke
Got em in a choke hold
Rhymes is bold once the stories told
I create the crease n make em all fold
My styles wild funky tell me about oooo child
Things are gonna get brighter
Set the my dynasty so I can retire
Hot as a fire blazing through paragraph
Suckas didnt get the last laugh
Bombs flows like Baghdad
Clean as Sinbad and who dat?
Thought they rock the mic like me
I'm the punisher from the fifth demenision see
I got minds hypnotized by the time realize
I'll be over the horiz' on lyrics made for stunned
Make emcees run a marathon
Once they hear my machine gun
Of lyrics couldn't even clear it
The smog that is word to my unborn kids
Look what the lyrical arsenal did
Rippin' through stages battlin' any ages
Trap in cages
Of my mind concealed and confined
With the funky medina
Check your antidote
As i up the rap ranks cuz
I ain't no joke



Tongues punching a rhymes
Destined to be mine sound mind
Beat yours everytime through each and every line youll fine
The dopest not many could cope to this
Some say ludicrous others think of it as a diss
Mad cuz they girls blowing me a kiss
And they reminisce
All over me got the pete that's ready to rock who's gone top?
Me if setting the crop far from a slop
Make em like floor and watch me mop
Out competition one man commission
Hurry up yall come see what ya missin'
Jewelry glistening
Anointing pates likeit was a christening
Many wasnt listening
Crossem hang em up like crucifixion
While others in a smote just take notes
Cuz big yosef a rhymer n I ain't no joke
Anonymity does not limit me in the corridors of insanity
where conformity is not a word used.

True to their words the guards of the wards
ward off the devil that tries to bring me down
to his level, but
I can rise above it on a carpet from Baghdad
sold to me by Sinbad who is in the next bed.

Then Queen of Hearts said,
'off with his head'
but she holds no jurisdiction
in the halls of this great asylum.

Some like me haunt the troughs of society
wide eyed with mad hair,
shuffling like old men,
some sit and stare at the pictures not there
and
some talk in ciphers, but only the lifers and
they're all quite mad dontya know.

you might know me by name
and if so
you'll know what the game is,
keep them guessing
keep them gassing like old
lasses on a Lancashire lawn
when we get older we might even
be born
until then we're just biding our time.
imehsahdehahs Apr 2020
No poem after twenty-two

I'm no rimbaud

I'm ****** ******, A *** nation

I am the Sinbad

keep prayin', Feed the wall

Dream catcher made of spider eyes

nightmares all night long
...

alone in my bed

deamons scream in my head

...
thin white duke

all in black

when your times come

there is no going back

...

**** hello poetry if they don't like me

I don't like me too

looks not books

***** and boots

boys are on toys

nails
,

crosses

  &

bones
22
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2019
.             yeah...
and sharekhan with
a sinbad
are alive...
             i almost tried
dying while writing this...
with the leftovers of
bon jovi
via          the...
blatant gore of glory...
  but you know...
can't exactly learn
to ride a horse...
while at the same time
learning
to buckle-up
an... automobile...
****'s brickers on 'n
'op...
                wankers sarge...
and wankers they
'ure 'r' to 'emain!
  the 'est part of me
met the choir requirements...
the rest of me
settled fown in Vermont...
i leave the remaining
part of me
to...
          curiosity
phlegm...
and...
      tabloid...
   your knitty-gnat-part-time-son...
surname whicker scone...
******: if you're gonna
borrow:
you borrow with a face
of will and a demand
for...
     the last daft serf
bonanza i will ever
encourage myself with...
the time i will
take to safeguard
building Atlanta,
Georgia...
and you better steal
my best good-gold ******
fold
on betting...
that this ******* pile
of brick will not last into
the mid 20th century...
   betting man man...
thank god we never made
it to the Mississippi..
  ******* mud-dog
hauser!
clingy events of
the clangs of 'ew 'ork...
              bet counter via..
a ******* paddy...
  twice assured a joker
card...
thrice up on t
he king of spades...
i too bet on Boston 'ot 'urning
'een!
                      the base
of experiencing
the blaze...
            i wannah...
but at the same time...
i always want to forget
reliving the experience
of Versailles...
like, world war I and II
were...
the worst that could befall
a man...
   me?
i remember pretending to
chase,
hide & seek...
visiting Ypres...
in the trenches...
(where)
any of us were given a chance
to ****-about
chasing out our sorry-***
souls in the confines of
Versailles?
    not that i know of...

back in the east London
brothels...
you know...
it... really wasn't much...
you don't have to heave
the exhausting
jealousy
segment
of engaging in...
a "life worth living"...

little england:
big america...
       chances of me living
in that grand continet
of praise?
  nill...
     and of it,
knowing where i write
from?
equal "concern"...
           big continent
from where i'm from...
and... little country from
where i'm not to be.

i will never 'e
one over the other h'american,
as i will 'ever 'e
'un one european
to another;
so we 'ave that covered?
good!
      let's give ourselves
enough ground to
reiterate!

please, spare the children...
let us reiterate
the reindroduction
of the jew
among the arabs!
we just had ourselves
a divorce...
the children ought to know!
Methmi Mandara Jun 2021
Bear feet; into the sand; trampling the sea shells
Some are crashing, jingling and tinkling as the silver bells
"Thou, why here?" I asked from a shell and peeped into the singing waves
It told, "We are from under the corals, ancient ships and the sea monster's cave

A singing pond, what a universe inside this blue?
No one can give a clue
She is listening to every story
Happy, joy, love but also sorry

She knows the man Sinbad, who sailed upon her days and nights; he watched the twilight of the dawn
She is heartbroken of Rose and Jack who watched her dolphins; hugging each other but now that love is gone
Also she is proud of the little mermaid with the amber cloudy hair who sacrificed life for the human prince
Her sound is high when she cries by seeing her fish who die by wrapping in strings

A giant travelling palace murdered all her turtles, dolphins and the whales and sent them to the land
Now, her family is coming to us; without their souls but a body floated to the sand
Oh her wish, will she recover soon?
So she will be lighted again as the crystal moon
My dear readers. I have expressed my ideas about the ocean here. I thought of writing this because "The Ocean Day" is held this month. Especially you may have a confused idea about the last verse. Well....Last month a ship named "Express Pearl" was burned in the sea and now it's sunken. The oils and the chemicals are mixed to the sea and Sri Lanka is facing a big trouble these days. Every day, we can see so many turtles, dolphins and other aquatic creatures died on the sand because the chemicals of the ship as effected them so highly. I wish the ocean will recover soon
i tell you is it worth to buy a book of
£50 and i tell you
about the weight of horses
and of teeth

is it not refreshing to read a book
by an Arab
and escape thus
outside the first contact of the Quran

like saying:
Christian find the apocryphal
library a devil a humanist

what happens in the Church of Los Vegas
San Vegas stays in San Vegas
and Vigro
how you mingle pagan attributes
to your life with wearing the clothes
of christian blood
but why i ask
can i not venture to these texts outside
of church and discuss them
with you
all that brings forth conversation
about god but not these strict
conversions and anti-conversions
and no more swaying no more wind
nor rain nor this happiness when
the birds sing...

from Jahiz the Abbasids -
of the ****** Fa'iq
such a different story line and history
to have arrived at the same place
with the taborns
the taborns... what are taborns?
camel slither on the desert sands
when walking in line
with the history the great serpent of time
and man
the time-man concept within the space-time
stresses of authentic atheistic
reality
some people purport to keed (P) rigid
for us little religious types
like under constant scrutiny
for not paying prayer unto deity...

in my youth the story of the *** form Nazareth
and through Islam's prism
at least some reality outside of the church
the Stellar Couchsurfer arrived in the capital
of the ancient world Jerusalem
with a newly sprung Empire of the Romans
and later Byzantines like
this was a Greek revival in the stage
of the ancient peoples

                                 Couch-surfer majestic
came to Jerusalem from Nazareth (the Arab capital
of Israel)
               Tel Aviv being the Jewish capital
of Israel -
                    as of yet there is no clear partition
of Jerusalem not as clearly
as the division of Berlin -

                            a fate of a people in a place
a fate of a people in a time
how different the too that now what can
be the Vatican of modernity
and only the rising sand vacuum...

some distant away end of the spectrum of
experience:
outside the bedroom and multitude
of throng -

Throng - this is the name of our Planet -
it is no longer Earth
but Throng Pirazyjvi

                               well... if i've started to read
books with names
like real people in fiction
by time disparity
for example:

                      abu al-qasim ja'far ibn muhammad
ibn hamdan al-mawsili

13th worrier cut off point for
the prince of Baghdad:

Abu... IBN...            abu yb'n

at least for my own sanity how long has it been
since i was last involved in literature
and now this break-up is going to cost me
much more than just
a heartache - this will spiral into a controlled
vizier -
            a dervish love for spinning gravity
instead of gravity of the fallen...
the gravity of the fallen angels implies a fall
a gravity by vector -

if iblis will not bow to man
then iblis will be falling in a one dimensional
space of the point A to point B
while man will revel in gravity with the earth
and thereby spinning on
point A
                  thus:                          Å
                                                   ° °

this letter:                                    Å
                                                   ° °

the king's letter: all unto Allah - or how to simpler
say: utter backwards the name
Yahoo - or Yahweh -
                    vocal because apparently "we" do not
know how to utter the word:
yet so apparently:
i remember in my lament
on Brick Lane
falling down and crying
allah allah like a child of why do i have
to see these two rivers from the coals of my eyes
blackened by past and future riddles...

what revelation comes from a wholesome diet
of books to find oneself preoccupied
with a child who didn't see the forest
for the books
or the books for the toothpicks or otherwise
sand as glass because
surely i can at least "inte-

          ʾAlf Laylah wa-Laylah -
or rather my alternative script...
Dune by Frank Herbert +
             the Quran +
       the Meadows of Gold by
    al-Masudi +
Rumi + Omar Khayyam

because i did spend a good portion of my
life shielding myself using
Knausgaard's Mein Kampf
and it was a dark period of my life
that culminated in a division of labour
3 volumes through when the original
buyer made his last impression on
a grandson
by 4th volume grandfather was dead
then uncle moved back
successful uncle
in his father's eyes
thus for 2 years not even cleaning his dead
father's room
it only took me to come and clean the stink
out stink of dementia
and this is from a love a hidden place
that cannot be on the same pages
as that of the fate of slave lovers
because there were slave lovers
and how slavery looked back in Arab times
and how slavery looked back in Roman times
and we can see a massive distinction
and oh jeez perhaps the Arabs were the best
slave masters
    and that's why they openly practiced it up to
well let's suppose 1978
for some reason that number sticks...
and perhaps that's why there's this argument
that the only reason why the English
abolished slavery is because they were
the worst slave masters the world has ever seen!
maybe there's an argument there
perhaps slavery per se is
misunderstood just like the word
apocryphal is misunderstood among christians
in terms of what writings can be turned
into money slot machines of sophistry
and the mega church and what ought
to be spoken in private:
but still that third man in the picture
like the diamond face of muhammad
at least if illiterate then had some knowledge
of other forms of communication
like algebra and Pythagoras and ******
expressions
but regardless this Christian focus on the face
and what mellow eyes

imagining myself sitting in a cafe in Amsterdam
going about my day micro-dosing
the shy effects of marijuana
because Amsterdam is a liberal city
and some people are sensible not operating
heavy machinery or driving buses
on a ******
but at least this scribbler is an envious scumb
comb
    working the security industry for the kicks
of: when will the time come
when i'll get to punch and shove and push
and manage crowds like a butch?

yeah yeah: i was going to add: like a butch lesbian?
point of concern:
the book was advertised as a FIRST EDITION
the Arab in me is thinking:
for the knowledge within this book
there are still about 30 unread message from
Edie after i mentioned what
if Reyla comes and stays with me for the summer?
i think that's how i ended last night
but if this book is sold as a first edition
how much of a first edition is it, actually?

flick to the first LEFT page
first published in 1989 by
Kegan Paul International

this edition first published in 2010 by
Routledge

first issued in paperback in 2015...
hmm...
The Night Gate (as film) sort of appeal to writing
per se...
is there an ISBN tracker?
                                         is there an app or something
on the internet... maybe chatGPT can help
if the internet spews out *******...

AI is the new internet
that's if you knew how to use an internet...
privately
i don't mean the public use of the internet
for commerce
this is not a critique of the internet
for all the infrastructure convenience
like speed dating off the island of Kauai
otherwise it would take a Capt Cook
to sail sail away
and bring back a fruit for Gaugin to get
a ******* and for Dr Jeckyll and Hyde
to find graves there
and rest and smile with diamonds instead
of teeth...

9781138980617

   let's find you: in my Little Aushwitz
where things are numbered, cataloged:
well can't exactly say the Germans
understood the concept of slavery...

      could have won the war with all that forced
labor... Schindler understood this
but where's an economic genius when
you have all that Bavarian drunk singing
then sober acting like there is no
alternative to alcohol so up with you
to the Luftwaffe and on Pervitin with you!
transliterated as: perverted vitamin.

ISBN-13: 9781138980617
ISBN-10: 1138980617
Author: Masudi
Edition: 1
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-11-26

well then... maybe i should be mad enough
to send this copy back
and instead get the hardback edition
for £200?
                
but wait, there's a sticker over the ISBN...
LPN WE 21884 8812

never mind: when Abbas became Caliph...
a century gone to kings
and no such benevolent slave owners
that might be sung their fairness as
if a litter of little Solomons running about
from dune to dune to a salt rich sea
where nothing lives
this desert in a desert this puddle of salt
in Israel this desert in a desert
a reminder that the desert is not the harshest
place on the planet but
that the Dead Sea is...

                        al-Baḥr al-Mayyit
Yām HamMāvet                                     some little
citation here and there...

the reign of Mutawakkil...
some humbling rule not to mention the only
notable on our side of history
is matched by only Richard the half viking
half saxon in the domain of body
and mind as Saladin - the Syrian -
Assyrian -
                              makes ***** of 'ryans?
some land of Ur and Yr to ask for the annals
of more sense?
how about i embark on writing this mid-afternoon
preparing dinner
and thinking to myself:
just your normal afternoon in Amsterdam...
just your normal afternoon in Amsterdam
because i do actually get my **** delivered
to me when i go out and buy my groceries
and that's like the anti-thesis of delivaroo
and all the kamikaze electric bicycle riders
form Bangladesh
jeez i mean this is modern England
and it's not like the industrial revolution
promised anything beyond its expiry date of the late
20th century...
given where soft energy goes with hard intellect
to suspending human life above nature
that even the admired Arabs of Frank Herbert's time
can no longer be admired...

but there is an alternative history
of Corbeas the patriarch of the Paulicians
a talk of the ****** Yazman in procession
surrounded by his man
like he was the virile **** twice removed
from the testicles because
i imagine being an ****** gives you
double the virility
i might imagine wrong
but when as men we get told so many things
wrong like how menopause is somehow
bad for women when you
can finally have uninhibited ***
and no ****** instead a ****-ring
and i imagine this time of the Arab expansion
like some injection of faith and hope
for Old Iraq or Babylon
or what the world used to look like
on the current scale of Empires still afloat
like this world will never rid itself of Empires
this world will never be a place
for small people
or villages or islands
there will always be grand ideas and empires
and they will rise and fall
and even the murmur of a beginning will
bellow for ages unbecoming aging
and succumbing to the folly of mortal stuff...

yes: i can concur: this book is worth £50
and i am not mad enough to buy
the hardcover copy
because as much as i'm a bibliophile
i'm not a collector -
because i need working books
and working books are paperback
books and i know the fate of hardbacks
they stand the test of time: provided they are:
NOT OPENED...
not necessarily unread:
a collector would buy two copies...
one for the moths and time
and the other for his work ethic being tested:
when, yes, a large proportion of the public
was illiterate
a literate man could call writing work...
but i hardly think that possible these days
given what squalor of intellect this medium
has been exposed
at least there is some hope in a portion
of society being used to code anti-mantras...

otherwise none of these snippet artefacts
from so long ago:
continually weaving a historically-journalistic
endeavor...
nuggets like the Spaniards
like them in tapas
because such is the frivolity of eating
that you never want anything particular
but food and conversation
and fascinating how the culture of food is
very important and how to best describe
the culture of food these days
this culinary cult and some personalities
like excelling in farming
but somehow diminished learning
when it comes to cooking
like this Slavic aversion to spice
and the people's i will not name
aversion to the use of salt...

        is that an apostrophe typo?
should that be peoples'?
       i wonder i don't wonder
but when it comes to being culturally influenced
it's not like i heard about al-Masudi
from a Muslim:
how could i have if they take their public
intellects to be donning Niqabs like
women?

   not if i heard of the author sooner would i be a
Lawrence of Arabia Sinbad wannabe...
like some thrill off the page
to venture with humanitarian aid to Gaza
and get blown up
like some ******* adventure that would
be i already have an adventure piece
with a girlfriend over 20h away on the dotted
line where day begins and day ends
just shy of Francis and the Canine Islands
no the Desert Islands no
those Miraculous Taiwanese and their Polynesia
Trip because that's some history
there like no feet just four hands people
oar no oar just paddle with hand
or perhaps there's no myth of earth there:

but salt shrinking then expanding
into a sustainable / visible gas
the clouds are the only visible gas known
to without being the gas with fire
so i mean the salt gas:
sodium chloride as gas...
and not gas...

sodium in chlorine gas is a dim sunlight
hazy morning reach into my flask
this is like a new beginning
couple this trip:
just not willing to finish vol 6 of Mein Kampf
some other books in between
fascination with Olson Maximus long gone
now
then couple movie Dune with girlfriend Dune 2.0
then the book itself Dune 3.0
and then refresh to what blah blah
ordeal holy: bible or quran does it really
matter i mean the lived experience
of Islam is a bit like forgetting
but the lived experience of Christianity
is a bit more sinister in that it's remembering...

Islam is a religion of forgetting
while Christianity and Judaism
is a religion of remembering

i find solace in this...
         a great parody of paradise not being
attained by graft or vain-hope
         in simply born to be simply
    relieved from the stomach of celestial
and cerebral ordeals
of minds and stars
of milky ways and intellect's weaving
a narrative: slave owner of ego
or the master destroyer of egoism
in this void blanket of automated hands
filling the void behind two organs
nose apart
this mind and eye duality
that exists when there is no voice of "thinker"
in the ether of whatever substance allows
this clinging of voice outside the mouth
in the chamber of the hard hit head of bellows
at a later date...

swarming of words in empty interludes
some would be sung some would
be defaced and abandoned
like miniatures
of mentions
words like details biological emerge
and violate a presence
to then abandon a people they themselves
abandoned in the dealt exercise of chance
by then chance and determination
complimented regardless of
religious affiliations and desires...
this sickness of people telling other people
that they are right
like there was ever a clear distinction
between right and wrong
ever since it was made unfeasible
to then say that how original in sin we might
be if the sin be nothing more than
a judgement of confusion -
         how perhaps it was not in the god's
mind to think a man be born
into confusion or perhaps there was no confusion
while god painted the naked blessed
duo all enraptured and silky smooth
not confused to be anywhere not
some Eden on the periphery of life in
the squint of the Eskimo like:
suspicious even i do that
my fish bowl eyes are not so much darting
but when drawn by hand
are not fish bowl eyes the aesthetic standard of
Manga - but no argument from cartoons
no real remedy against Disney indoctrination
to safeguard against an evil frown
and the third eye blind as the evil eye...

like one eye and one ear unto the brain
which gives me two tongues
and that's more than can be said:
when Islam becomes a religion of two tongues...
this is a prophecy:

WHEN ISLAM BECOMES A RELIGION
OF TWO TONGUES...

just saying: don't know what that means,
i'm just saying what i haven't been told:
when islam becomes a religion of two tongues...
given christianity and their
many tongues not-o.k.
sorry not o.k.
               this religion ***** *** ***** ***
so many tongues and English is crass
and no i don't like christianity in English
just like no i treat this tongue as my Lingua Franca
εμπόριο γλώσσα και ιδέες...

            from the same book:
alchemical text:
the spontaneous synthesis of nesquehonite
from natural talc reaction with CO2 and ammonia
was attempted with an aim to control
the crystal growth by Ding et al.

or as mentioned ascribed to Byzantine
alchemists -
take talc and ammonia and what is found on the roads,
all in due measure, making no mistake;
then if you love your Lord,
you will be master of creation...

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such modern referencing like trigger-happy
to just copy paste copy paste
like this is never going to any holy place
like there are plenty of those holy supplies
now sober now drunk
about to fold on a backlog of 30 messages

of man's quest to rival nature's creative powers
of man's quest to rival nature's creative powers
these adherents to geometry
and sophistry as if brighter and loftier
than the songs of birds...
of man's quest to rival nature's creative powers
adhesive invisibility of strings
head-strung strong virtual puppet a bleeding
wound like an oyster on the body
when dipped into the sea...

well less the chess anecdotes but at least
one anecdote playing backgammon with a woman
this
could belong somewhere in these pages
an anecdote of playing backgammon
with a woman
not just playing backgammon
but playing backgammon with a woman
and spicing it up
the breath of cinnamon from worm
and the breath of apple cider from a serpent

as frightening as the existence
of angels
as frightening as the existence of eyes
in souls...

as frightening as the existence
of angels
as frightening as the existence of eyes
in souls.
I saw elephants who
thought they were
flying ants,

that was some trip ago
when time went backwards
and how was I to know
the future?

Sinbad on the hill standing
still underneath an Arabian
sky.

Why try?
i read the writing on the pillow case and
saw the look that turned her face away
felt the breaking of my heart that felt the fear
of one more false start,

I don't go there where it all began
it was not me
it was some other man

an excuse lifted off the shelf
to kid myself, but it doesn't
work
here writes: 𐰋‎ᛟ𐰉‎

          in Runic (at the middle)
and Orkhon either side

    just as my suspicions
concerning Gothic, script:
are not advantageous
for any foreseeable reason

other than:

   𐰢‎𐰀‎𐰦‎      (mant, like mann)

        to imply: man wrote this
ergo: by man: mant...

        i distrust the remains of Gothic
because of interaction
(perhaps) with the Romans
and the Greeks

   and i see some "unnecessary"
incisions
to make distinctions...

to say that Jacob Grimm envisioned
a gothic text as precursor
to the Greek text:

oh what's the use!
these words are only a passing by
not a conversation to be
had not words
to be engraved onto stone
the time of paper and stone
is passed
and there are foundations
to ensure everyone is comfortable
with an atom bomb's worth
of technology in their pocket
to somehow: not abuse it?

3 years divided up between
6 weeks on Kauai
with her 3 weeks in London
i was supposed to be somewhere
today:
Wembley... for the Capital FM
summertime festivity
oh god seeing this number of people
congregate
for music events all euphoric
but for sporting events so too euphoric
but measured
like there's a reason

woke up at 4am with a burden of cramps
in the abdomen...
i could blame a bad batch of sandwiches
as sold by certain supermarkerts
that might have spiced them with E. Coli
but then again i was dumb enough
to ignore my lactose intolerance
and drank some cow *****
in the night
with some Danish all butter biscuits

woke a second time ready for work
at 6am but cramps again:
crawled on all fours into my mother's
and father's bedroom and implored
mother to send a text to my wager:
these 0 hour contracts are a nuisance
how can you plan being sick
or not being sick
ahead of a shift
at least this was my first: blow-out
in 3 years...
i blew-out for the shift i didn't give
enough time for implementing changes
but i'm sure there are enough BODS
to fill an empty space
this industry is not rewarding
mind you not even this industry
so it's less about work itself and work in-itself
and the precursor to work:
that's life
i'm no machine and sometimes
the odd cramp of the abdomen
to give birth to nothing but an existential
dis-pain:
which is a negation of pain
if the physical realism subsides or is
enjoyed
but the mental: no scabs on the ego
no burning of the ego no cutting and bleeding
of the ego
just a disorganized luxury of what
would otherwise be a whoop'tee doo'dah
of narrative: lost...

     only this shrapnel i'm recovering...

then that other job description got to me:
i could be out of events industry
with one smooth application:
2 days per week
8 hour days
working as a security guard and receptionist
at the Royal College of Musicians
or whatever...
works around to £26,000 a year
so i could still do gigs on the side
but the application detail
stressed: EMPLOYING FROM
BLACK, ASIAN and LGBTQ+ LDTV
ULTRA VOX "minority"...
well... positive discrimination:
thankfully i had no former fathers
who were colonial masters, right?
WRONG!

i can tell apart a Nigerian from a Somali
and still understand that that's black on black
but when it comes to white
and -ness
and it's all ha ha from here:
because, weirdly enough:
i'm also the Holocaust maker
or perhaps my reading of history is so
pish poor that hey presto!

it's actually painful to think that
jobs are being currently advertised on
the basis of skin color and sexuality
then again i could pretend to be gay
i could be one of those covert
homosexuals
you don't actually realize are homosexuals
could have a William Burroughs
book in my pocket
but it would seem the stratification
of jobs
the menial ones go to the blacks the asians
and the gays
while plumbing and farming goes
to: inherited whiteness folk...

i knew i would be dragged into
race baiting and ****** politics of people
from elsewhere:
i still feel down about cutting the umbilical
chord with Edie
but in her own words:
we played house...
mother will never allow you to stay here
for holiday...
reality checker...
so why burden myself with having
invested 3 years and two encounters

oh but it became clear and not so
travelling on the train with:
i suppose 3 teachers on a night out
two blondes...
one trying to rub against me
and all the talk was comparative
literature to the Auschwitz trains
and it (the train) being: sardine packaging
and how there was a whiff of Indian
air
and yes i can understand that
over-saturation with the use of spices
but what got me down
was that tongue twister of:
drunk people in public
trying to savor the remnants of euphoria
and how the words:

little people little lives dampened
my mood
at the stadium at Tottenham
working with a Jamaican Muhammad
drunk white women
and this outright
scold: oh the ****** can come
but you're not tool enough...
that's like wow the jungle really has
a prized asset and now i don't wonder
why so much of this human interaction
cannot be genuine euphoria
or can be if it is hidden
and sometimes passed down in script
but for a day of supposedly being elsewhere:
if i was well enough
i would still be working for half an hour
more and getting the night buses home
but assured: i need to visit the hospital
mother to see my alter-ego
of media jargon superstitions
about some... "Norman Bates":
underclass of economics even this Swiss
whizz kid only understood poetry
in terms of WINNING or LOSING...

i think it comes with the population size
there's no need to write truths
and bottle them and gorge and digest
them there's no need to write
beautifully either...
coherently yes, but not so much
when this time round everyone is literate
and simply spoiled for choice
as to what is freely available
and....

         SRBIJA... old Serbia new Serbia
it really doesn't matter:
the southern Slavs were so much
different to the northern portion of the ethnicity
and you tend to forget that
former associations of Germanic
have long been lost
that last attempted to unite the Germanic
people under the *****
lasted 5 years but didn't
and even now the European Union
is not even equivalent to how long:
how did Marx influence the Slavic people
and made them into a Pan- contending force
to then export all: that's made to chi-cha-chu
land ahoy! Sinbad came
to Lu Hi and thought: but no Muhammad
so am i right to not be Muslim?

what was funny came around Whitechapel
this ginger Englishman
praying fervently concerning
enrichment
the policy of social health
allowing people off the train first
but ahead of him two Pakistani UNCLES
decided: that's now the case:
so in they clamored onto the train
making it more difficult for people to
get off: just so they could get their seats
and i think that's kinda of funny
given i'm an immigrant myself
but then again most Poles
didn't feel welcome in England
after joining the European Union
so they ****** off
and became replaced by a more
befitting Asian-Afro cocktail...
who? the Romanians!
oddly enough you'd be sightseeing
hummingbirds wanting to spot Bulgarians
in this London Dry Mix...

but i'm supposed to be in love with
humanity: no?
i just agree and nod and whatever
like: all's good Frankie: let's make a Stein!

i somehow feel for the native around
here but then i don't:
she, Edie... she knew i drank and smoked
marijuana
in the newspaper from yesterday
the German Politzei wanted
the English fans to smoke cannabis
rather than drink alcohol and who knows
maybe that was a marriage made in heaven
when both fans started booing each
other's anthems
clearly the air was tense
as a result Serbia 0, England 1...

you get to see Plato's Cave as a showcase
alternative to cinema and the t.v.
but it's good to watch a t.v. and think
of Plato's cave without really thinking
about the curtains of t.v. and the producers
and the staff that gets the show
going: no... simply you watching
something as grand as a sporting event...

no amount of whiskey or smoking
will alleviate my melancholic mood
my mood of wanting to erase memory
but in the pits
of melody of a singing crowd
and: oh those isolated instances
of humanity seeking benevolence from
fellow man:
i had the sinking heart of misdirecting
people
to dead ends...
not out of spite out of sheer
tiredness...

                and nothing but tiredness has
produced these words...
i will know soon enough if
i grappled with a purpose for this life
to be beyond any reasonable measure
of invested in it an ambition
a sanity
a want of specie societal differentiation
to grit down 70 years down
to a Mercedes Benz:
but somehow scuff at a Heinz can of beans
because: says so the caviar to me...
with an interlude looking
at a documentary concerning the
52 Hz whale...
  the loneliest ****** out there because his
frequency is not being communicated
to the neurotypical whales
and he's not getting honey...
of **** of jiggly **** and blubber...

                     and i'm finally concluding my own
failures...
last night...
walked past a few nightmare houses...
one of them spoke to me:
you will never live in a house
with a bedroom
where the woman has placed
a dressing table with a mirror in front
of the window...
just like i would never be a woman
who'd live in a house
with a man who parks his work
van in the front of the house
blocking all sunlight coming into
the living room...

    but hey! people do! people do!
which makes me in no way
special: i forgot about needing to feel
special or in high command of
individuation as: the western purpose for life's
fulfillment:
now i navigate using the compass:
the less people i hurt the better i will ****...
the less people are in my life
the better i will digest beef...
the more and others are passerby to each
other the more significant this glue of time
will be to dilute our each effort
to ensure we don't: cling to them with
a drowning man's resolve to grasp at
a blade's edge and bleed out
and become a feeding frenzy for:

dogs with gills... no... not sharks...
sharks have shark teeth
we need a blunt tearing off of flesh
via aqua canines
not sharks... verily not sharks.

— The End —