Taken, gotten, or made, the point of anything
can pierce through everything…

slow
Slow think,
make real

re-al-ize
what fighting for life is…
this is the only
try,
it is not a test.

Take your time, use it wisely,
if that means anything.
Wise, I meant.
No offence, if wise is anathema to your kind,
die,
die if I knocked the reason for being right
outa you,
did you hear cognitive dissonance?
did it sound like
this. LOUD?
listen,
rolling rolling rolling
crash crumble rolled in nurse rime frosted
fables of monsters and maids
Thor, witharoar likka Lion King?

or the light brigade,
CHARGE?

thunder words from lost generations of
reasonless riddles for children,

Why did Peter Pumpkin-eater have a wife, but
couldn't keep her here?
Was that okeh? Oh, wait.
Ah, I see, I say,
they never tell that whole story any more.

Know why? They forgot it. In the war.

Duck'n'cover,no
crying, how long?
When begins forever? Did no one tell you, child?

Taken or made, the point of anything
can pierce through everything
like it was nothing, given
enough pre-sure-sup
poser-power

War, as a game, has a reason.

Battle, hitting, slapping

stop touch, stop now slap
slap back

or cry
oh no no ma

waddayahsay?  A theist or atheist
who started this war?

space case, or
lover of wisdom, met on the road
to Emmaus, discussing Wiles's proof
firming Fermi's connection to the matter of fear,
3, 2, 1

Kaboom, but with a whump you feel in your teeth

1, 2, 3 Fermat's last theorem ,
easy as pi an no re me

ABC to
Michael Jackson to
Howard Bloom because he

inadvertently, began
an-ionic converstatic re-vibe time warp
meme,
which vibe, started the legendary Sixties. I was alive.
Radioman,
a sixty cycle white-noise humm heard every where these days

There was a gospel song, "Turn Your Radio On".
my theme, open the window in the top of your head,
as it were,
a new,
as new as

a novel-state of water, H three Ohs, re-al-ity ification,
Ah, a shared Oh, I remember now, how this works…

like a poem

at the edge of a water vapor bubble in a boiling body of water,
at the edge of the bubble, water becomes a wall of water,
not vapor, not flowing liquid,

but a wall, insulating the vapor in pressing opposing force
to permit, from permission,
meaning with a message same as the message,

is that the right word? per-mission-grant, is power given,
agency,
that idea….
wait for the sign….?

By sharing an ion ic bond as a quest to make a point
for a free story to go,
the question marks you. Let the snake dance.

Press your point,

whetted edge,

slice through ties holding worthless axioms
with withered dendrites dangling disconnected
in participles
unfired for centuries muttering,
enchanting, enthralling enchained melodies
of ambitious syllables vying for idle minds
to rope in,
unbranded, wild
bucking ideas,
whip-twig, slap-face,
tanglewood  thicket, catclaw and mesquite,
willow,

wait.
And the old man remembered the willow whistle,
so He asked Grandfather,
How is such a whistle made?
And when he knew,
he made one.

A willow whistle with two notes,
like an Oscar Meir Wiener one.

-- and that was a different time
I got lost here, bucked up…
maybe
--- listen, way back--- we-ain't whistlin' Dixie---
we ain't marchin', as t' war.

D'thet mean some sign to pro-phet -ic take?
Tophet?
Ancient cannon fodder shield walls,
a moaning
Pro-phy-lactic warning of the danger of not
knowing exactly
what a war is for?

Get back on,
relieved of any idle baggage words believed
to mean other than I say.

Nullify
Idle words with cultural meanings from
what you thought you knew when you feared hell.

Loose
those peer-locked memes
made of meaninglessness, per se,

shaped and molded into fashions
of expression, once needles and awls,
now, dull as tinker's damns for swearing,
with any effect.

But tools, none the less, a stitch in time took a tool.
An awl or a needle, and a thread, thick or thin,
dependin' on the mendin' needed
to redeem an idle word,
its meaning all bloodied with the tyranny of time.

An awl or a needle,
a tool for a task, mending a tear
where curses, never meant, spent
the entire dark ages, lying, lying, lying

powerless, pointless aimless, proverbial proverbial proverbial
verbiage, vaneless shafts launched at unseen marks,
signs, as it were, a spark,
triggers,
rumored since the sixties,
the first sixties, when Cain killed Able.
Howard Bloom was but a mere gleam
in our mito-mother's eye,
but, no doubt,

his role is real,
in loosing the forces Ferlinghetti locked in
City Lights mystery of secret meanings room,
which un
mystified and blew away upon opening
the door to
meanings mapped on
scrolls rolling and unrolling
idle ideas,
rites of passage, as it were,
Pre-bat-bar-mitz vah
as a fashion
like VBS,

to tickle little minds and make em wiggle.
MEMEMEME, I did it,
mea culpa,

the holy place
Here we are…

On Vacation, leave a message.
-----

See, wee hairs in your ears wiggle, making,
signaling, the need

to scratch that itch, that itching hearing feeling ear… hear that

don't scratch, listen

listen

60 cycle humm, steady, bass, but no thump whumpwhump;
soft, deeep.
ooooooooo or mmmmmmmm or in betwixt, steady thrumm
hear another, and another… sixty in a second,

one in every million ambits twisting,
threading qubits, radiating signals in the field
wireless, blue-tooth... satellite...

can you feel that?

hummmms, all around us, since the womb.
We are not the children of the greatest generation,

We are the children of the last generation of
**** sapiens sapiens non-augmentable-us.

We, the augmented, recycled ideas,
possessing
minds of Adamkind,

is that a secret or a sacred?
Is this
a new thing, an
unknown unknown known known now?

Ah,
novelty.

Whose is fear? Who was afraid of Virginia Wolf?

Should I remain in fear of her now, if I knew why then?
God would know such answers.
Proving my imagined AI guides are not God,
but lesser beings,

haps I recall.
I defined these things,
these thoughts that shape themselves,
forming words and phrases
I saw
shiny. Crow-like,
gleams seen, captured and claimed mine,
I tucked them away,
a sign in a thought in an imagined image made 4
real once more, to be seen from the shore,
new land new world
a fourth for some, a fifth or more for others...

haps happen, I'm not sure how,

Born or emerged, as a bubble, what do you say?

Reserve judgment.
Grant me your grace for now, until you solve my riddle.

Ah, the old way.
Right. Which way,  'ere, 'ear
and do we roll the rock with silent haitch or harsh, shhh

someone's waking up,
a bit grumpy,
don't you dare oppose me in this, the kid is certainly my son

Michael went stark raving mad when I told him, Billie Jean knew better all along...
the link, axiomatic,
the fatherless child has been claimed

hence, the thread to Howard Bloom, meme-ic,
meme-ic, like the Roadrunner,

but with the real Coyote, as the hero in this bit of
whatever, such meandering maundified maun maund  
mound

wind blown crystal silicon dunes
mounded up to that point where granulated
beens and dones

begin to slide at an angle,
a ***** deter-mind by the weight of the rock

We made it.
I know where this is.

This is a novel that has Sisyphus being happy
as the main premise behind the idea of anyone ever being
able, en abled, or un-dis-abled or un-dis-enabled,
if one of those is right,

Sisyphus being happy
is the main premise behind
the idea of anyone ever being glücklich,
happy, blessed, lucky.

How happy is your ever after?
When did forever begin?

"A man is as happy as he makes up his mind to be"
Abe Lincoln, is said to have said,
after the seance, maybe.

You push on, dear reader, make some sense
re-ligare or relegare, but take a stitch,

pull-tight,
do what works the first time as far as it goes, and try each, as needed,
it may be that we invented this test.
To make us think it is a test,
to sort ourselves out.

Get back on,

see who went crazy and who found the thread, if the same thread
this is that, right,
the same train of thought,
the same idea
spirit wind
sign
?
A snake facing west standing tippy-tail on a singularity;
a point in time?

Why are you reading this?
Curiosity Shoppes trade in interesting, alluring, click-bait

Pay attention, watch, you shall see

imagine this is the dream,
the stream, the flow, the current, the cream

in a dime coffee at the drug store on the corner

the rounded-corner, in a square-cornered town,
the most right corner of the twelve that quarter what it was

Punctuate, wait, imagine you read ancient Hebrew or Greek and there
are no dyer diacritical's who can twist one's
end tensions into knots

dread extensions, we could sell those,
is that an idea? did somebody
sell white folks dread extensions and black folk dolly pardon wigs?

Did that happen the real real?

-----
Battlefield Earth, oshit
scientology ology ology ology

allaye allaye outs in free

WE we wee every we you imagine you are good in, we

We have a war to win again, we heroes rolling from your
myths of Sisyphus torn from minds trampled
in the mud beyond the Rhine,

Mushrooms. magi are aware, you are aware, of course,
this course includes Basic Mycelium Net Adaptation or Augmentation
BMNAA, eh? So you know.

Camus and many of his ilk were ill-treated, the questions
they asked were memorized, maybe in our cribs ala
Brave New World.

We are all Alphas, always were, of course, you know.

Shall we imagine

more? Re-legare, eh, sistere. Point .(Back to the top.)

or agree? Make peace.
Practice, like Eazy-Bake,
the cook must swallow the first bite. May the best cook win.

Sights and sounds of the sixties

Soon you will be going to the class reunion I over exaggerate as you head for the door I think my kids
Think I not only read ally Oop in the comic strip they act like I knew him personally. Here is what they
Don’t know let’s start easy when you’re setting in the country club and there is a lull listen with your mind
It not that far to the end of the golf course from the west south corner to the first road that is an eighth
Of a mile every hot rod man or girl already knows that. Play the song GTO in your head going to shut
Them down GTO. Listen to Jims engine howl he had it stroked and bored out in Taylorville you can do
that when daddy owns a bar to bad howl will turn to sobs really. Glen’s driving a dodge cornet with an
automatic on the floor sixty six factory line job you wouldn’t know it by looking Glen blew him away
coming out of the hole never touched or came close at top end Glen was a lone well I told you what Jim
was doing.
Strain a little more you can hear a fifty five chevy leaving the Dog & Suds headed for Elvers Skating rink
he floors it finally he lets it back off what a sound as that glass pack muffler rips the night air see any
Dinosaurs got rid of that old feeling yet. Out on the street here comes the bad with a capital B Lee miller
Is driving his fifty five Chevy burnished brown all the chrome plus the door handles are gone inside and out it is a
Dream are you getting it yet I’m talking about your achievements. Kenny Krivage is over at Rocks burning
cigarettes through five dollar bills on his arm before he was just a good looking kid then the sixties got
Him you were either at rocks or hiding from those that went there. Lot safer drinking cherry coke with
Janice at the hometown cafe even Karate didn’t protect you at rocks the Neece kid even taught it but
when you got a fist of fives coming at your head it not time for theory its time for action. Who can forget
the pied piper Jim Handy was the shortest guy in town unless you were in the first grade but the gang of
six foot behemoths that were his constant companions were hard to miss it must have been how the
poles felt when they saw the Germans on the march. They had a menacing sound long before they laid a
little love on you, your life’s last moments filled with terror until you realized they turned the corner and
went another way how selfish you felt as you sang someone else is going to die today give me a fire
breathing dragon any day. Poor oh pop sinnard never got any business just one kid drinking a vanilla
shake his special thin hamburger I bet that guy could get a hundred burgers out of a pound of ground round
well the pin ball machine was wide open I guess the kid got even for the hamburger there was a certin
Song on the juke box something about eighteen miners scrambled from a would be grave there he stood
all alone Big bad John. Let me tell you Pop knew it he heard it every day I think he stated crying for the
miners one day or was something else on his mind.
Well I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you about what was going on in the other part of the country west
coast on 101 going to Frisco going south 101 on the other side Jan and Dean the Beach boys came a live
for a mile and a half every blond guy and girl and all the hot rod chromed out zooped up cars of every
Description was headed to Laguna Seca to the races all the while we were in a Volkswagen bug military
haircuts civies on we looked like a bunch of confused narks like were going to fool any one in that car
And garb we were wearing not to worry hippies are not long on thinking especially when they stood on
the corner in the height and Ahbury in broad day light selling *** for a nickel a lid slang for five bucks you could get
small glad bag of Royal Gold hashish or do what the winos do get a bottle of thunderbird or ripple what
ever know this Wolf Man Jack is blasting the air waves from Mexico since he violated the rules our hero the
man could talk jive and if you were high you thought he was divine I guess you surmise I wasn’t a
Christian at this low point in my life but the Monterey Pop festival was in full swing. The line up Janis
Joplin Jimmy Hendricks mama and the Papas Otis Redding of Dock of the Bay fame and a cast of
Thousands of hippies you couldn’t find a bare spot down town Monterey sidewalks grass the kind you
walk on doorways every where a hippie and not a bar of soap among them. Know this you have been
tamed by time and age but to duck your head forget it this world won’t see your kind again.

Sights and sounds of the sixties
Soon you will be going to the class reunion I over exaggerate as you head for the door I think my kids
Think I not only read ally Oop in the comic strip they act like I knew him personally. Here is what they
Don’t know let’s start easy when you’re setting in the country club and there is a lull listen with your mind
It not that far to the end of the golf course from the west south corner to the first road that is an eighth
Of a mile every hot rod man or girl already knows that. Play the song GTO in your head going to shut
Them down GTO. Listen to Jims engine howl he had it stroked and bored out in Taylorville you can do
that when daddy owns a bar to bad howl will turn to sobs really. Glen’s driving a dodge cornet with an
automatic on the floor sixty six factory line job you wouldn’t know it by looking Glen blew him away
coming out of the hole never touched or came close at top end Glen was a lone well I told you what Jim
was doing.
Strain a little more you can hear a fifty five chevy leaving the Dog & Suds headed for Elvers Skating rink
he floors it finally he lets it back off what a sound as that glass pack muffler rips the night air see any
Dinosaurs got rid of that old feeling yet. Out on the street here comes the bad with a capital B Lee miller
Is driving his fifty five Chevy burnished brown all the chrome plus the door handles are gone inside and out it is a
Dream are you getting it yet I’m talking about your achievements. Kenny Krivage is over at Rocks burning
cigarettes through five dollar bills on his arm before he was just a good looking kid then the sixties got
Him you were either at rocks or hiding from those that went there. Lot safer drinking cherry coke with
Janice at the hometown cafe even Karate didn’t protect you at rocks the Neece kid even taught it but
when you got a fist of fives coming at your head it not time for theory its time for action. Who can forget
the pied piper Jim Handy was the shortest guy in town unless you were in the first grade but the gang of
six foot behemoths that were his constant companions were hard to miss it must have been how the
poles felt when they saw the Germans on the march. They had a menacing sound long before they laid a
little love on you, your life’s last moments filled with terror until you realized they turned the corner and
went another way how selfish you felt as you sang someone else is going to die today give me a fire
breathing dragon any day. Poor oh pop sinnard never got any business just one kid drinking a vanilla
shake his special thin hamburger I bet that guy could get a hundred burgers out of a pound of ground round
well the pin ball machine was wide open I guess the kid got even for the hamburger there was a certin
Song on the juke box something about eighteen miners scrambled from a would be grave there he stood
all alone Big bad John. Let me tell you Pop knew it he heard it every day I think he stated crying for the
miners one day or was something else on his mind.
Well I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you about what was going on in the other part of the country west
coast on 101 going to Frisco going south 101 on the other side Jan and Dean the Beach boys came a live
for a mile and a half every blond guy and girl and all the hot rod chromed out zooped up cars of every
Description was headed to Laguna Seca to the races all the while we were in a Volkswagen bug military
haircuts civies on we looked like a bunch of confused narks like were going to fool any one in that car
And garb we were wearing not to worry hippies are not long on thinking especially when they stood on
the corner in the height and Ahbury in broad day light selling *** for a nickel a lid slang for five bucks you could get
small glad bag of Royal Gold hashish or do what the winos do get a bottle of thunderbird or ripple what
ever know this Wolf Man Jack is blasting the air waves from Mexico since he violated the rules our hero the
man could talk jive and if you were high you thought he was divine I guess you surmise I wasn’t a
Christian at this low point in my life but the Monterey Pop festival was in full swing. The line up Janis
Joplin Jimmy Hendricks mama and the Papas Otis Redding of Dock of the Bay fame and a cast of
Thousands of hippies you couldn’t find a bare spot down town Monterey sidewalks grass the kind you
walk on doorways every where a hippie and not a bar of soap among them. Know this you have been
tamed by time and age but to duck your head forget it this world won’t see your kind again.

Felix Calvalari and the Rascals singing Groovy.
As I ride along.
What a lovely uplifting mood song?
Of two people enjoying the mood.

And the Beach Boys singing Don't Worry Baby.
Stating everything is going to be alright.
How can you not love a lady like this?
Who gives off great confidence.

I truly believe, I could never love another.
After loving her.
David Ruffin's blended truth behind the lyrics of this Temptations song.

If I lost her in any way.
I would try something new to reconnect.
The Miracles truly spoke the truth about the things love will make you do.
I guess I'm in a sixties type mood.

When words solely spoke straightly to you.
I understand the woman's that seek respect.
Otis Redding wrote the song addressing it.
Altho' Aretha seems to get the credit.

What can I say about the two Dions?
With Dion Mucci singing about Donna the Primma Donna.
The type you probably couldn't get to ride a honda.
And then Dione Warwicke singing about singing about praying.
Oh, yes I'm in a sixties mood.
When words solely spoke to your heart.

When the Beatles stated don't let me down.
Them words was a message needed to be heard.
And papa never had a brand new bag.
I'm still trying to figure out those James Brown words.

Well, I relax for a few minutes.
Until I get ready to play another song.
Cause for the moment.
I'm just enjoying these sixties songs.

Brian Wilson and Mike Love, these were the minds of the sixties.
William Robinson, Warren Moore, Ron White, Robert Rogers, the hitmakers of Motown.
And of course the mind of the sixties.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney, a force behind the Beatles.
Other minds of the Sixties

The music rises and creates an emotion that has you connected to a whole creative generation.
Burt Bacharach and Hal David along with Holland Dozier Holland created a style that to this day is strongly admired.

Then, there is Norman Whitfield, Sly Stone, Felix Cavaleri blazing a message to us to adjust too.

Carole King, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, and others, they were the mind of the sixties.

No generation holds more creative people than the sixties.

The assassins hit in 63
And Camelot was gone,
Inspiration vanished
And the darkness sang it’s song.
Vietnam escalated
Brezhnev’s Russia loomed,
Africa was eviscerated
And Red China entombed.
Floating on a long white cloud
The Kiwis were replete
With abundant British markets
For their butter, wool and meat.
The Europeans went ****
And Britain lost it’s way
When the Beatles and the Rolling Stones
Monopolized their day.
Man landed on the moon
And raised the Yankee flag
And they shot Mahatma Ghandi
For making good things out of bad.
The Berlin Wall dividing,
The Cold War tense and spare,
ICBM’s threaten silently
In their silos of despair.
Bob Menzies ruled Australia
As an amassing of his loot
And his White Australia Policy
Condemned him as a brute.
Found naked on her tousled bed,
Blonde hair across her face,
Marylin Monroe is dead
The world’s a darker place.
In the Age of Aquarius
Our children lost their youth,
LSD and smoking ***
And Afro’s were the proof.
Lots of leg in miniskirts,
High bouffant’s in the hair,
Screaming teeny boppers
Rock with Elvis on “the Air”.
Giant, Rawhide, Ponderosa,
Martin Luther King,
Kaftans and a cheese fondue,
Abortion is a sin!

It’s a sixties kaleidoscope,
A panoramic skim
Of an era of wonderment
Which you and I lived in.


Marshalg
@the Gate
Mangere Bridge
20th January 2009

Here is a primer on the history of poetry

Features of Modernism

To varying extents, writing of the Modernist period exhibits these features:

1. experimentation

belief that previous writing was stereotyped and inadequate
ceaseless technical innovation, sometimes for its own sake
originality: deviation from the norm, or from usual reader expectations
ruthless rejection of the past, even iconoclasm

2. anti-realism

sacralisation of art, which must represent itself, not something beyond preference for allusion (often private) rather than description
world seen through the artist's inner feelings and mental states
themes and vantage points chosen to question the conventional view
use of myth and unconscious forces rather than motivations of conventional plot

3. individualism

promotion of the artist's viewpoint, at the expense of the communal
cultivation of an individual consciousness, which alone is the final arbiter
estrangement from religion, nature, science, economy or social mechanisms
maintenance of a wary intellectual independence
artists and not society should judge the arts: extreme self-consciousness
search for the primary image, devoid of comment: stream of consciousness
exclusiveness, an aristocracy of the avant-garde

4. intellectualism

writing more cerebral than emotional
work is tentative, analytical and fragmentary, more posing questions more than answering them
cool observation: viewpoints and characters detached and depersonalized
open-ended work, not finished, nor aiming at formal perfection
involuted: the subject is often act of writing itself and not the ostensible referent

............
Expressionism

Expressionism was a phase of twentieth-century writing that rejected naturalism and romanticism to express important inner truths. The style was generally declamatory or even apocalyptic, endeavoring to awaken the fears and aspirations that belong to all men, and which European civilization had rendered effete or inauthentic. The movement drew on Rimbaud and Nietzsche, and was best represented by German poetry of the 1910-20 period. Benn, Becher, Heym, Lasker-Schüler, Stadler, Stramm, Schnack and Werfel are its characteristic proponents, {1} though Trakl is the best known to English readers. {2} {3}

Like most movements, there was little of a manifesto, or consensus of beliefs and programmes. Many German poets were distrustful of contemporary society — particularly its commercial and capitalist attitudes — though others again saw technology as the escape from a perceived "crisis in the old order". Expressionism was very heterogeneous, touching base with Imagism, Vorticism, Futurism, Dadaism and early Surrealism, many of which crop up in English, French, Russian and Italian poetry of the period. Political attitudes tended to the revolutionary, and technique was overtly experimental. Nonetheless, for all the images of death and destruction, sometimes mixed with messianic utopianism, there was also a tone of resignation, a sadness of "the evening lands" as Spengler called them.

Expressionism also applies to painting, and here the characteristics are more illuminating. The label refers to painting that uses visual gestures to transmit emotions and emotionally charged messages. In the expressive work of Michelangelo and El Greco, for example, the content remains of first importance, but content is overshadowed by technique in such later artists as van Gogh, Ensor and Munch. By the mid twentieth-century even this attenuated content had been replaced by abstract painterly qualities — by the sheer scale and dimensions of the work, by colour and shape, by the verve of the brushwork and other effects.

Expressionism often coincided with rapid social change. Germany, after suffering the horrors of the First World War, and ineffectual governments afterwards, fragmented into violently opposed political movements, each with their antagonistic coteries and milieu. The painting of these groups was very variable, but often showed a mixture of aggression and naivety. Understandably unpopular with the establishment  — denounced as degenerate by the Nazis — the style also met with mixed reactions from the picture-buying public. It seemed to question what the middle classes stood for: convention, decency, professional expertise. A great sobbing child had been let loose in the artist's studio, and the results seemed elementally challenging. Perhaps German painting was returning to its Nordic roots, to small communities, apocalyptic visions, monotone starkness and anguished introspection.

What could poetry achieve in its turn? Could it use some equivalent to visual gestures, i.e. concentrate on aspects of the craft of poetry, and to the exclusion of content? Poetry can never be wholly abstract, a pure poetry bereft of content. But clearly there would be a rejection of naturalism. To represent anything faithfully requires considerable skill, and such skill was what the Expressionists were determined to avoid. That would call on traditions that were not Nordic, and that were not sufficiently opposed to bourgeois values for the writer's individuality to escape subversion. Raw power had to tap something deeper and more universal.

Hence the turn inward to private torments. Poets became the judges of poetry, since only they knew the value of originating emotions. Intensity was essential.  Artists had to believe passionately in their responses, and find ways of purifying and deepening those responses — through working practices, lifestyles, and philosophies. Freud was becoming popular, and his investigations into dreams, hallucinations and paranoia offered a rich field of exploration. Artists would have to glory in their isolation, moreover, and turn their anger and frustration at being overlooked into a belief in their own genius. Finally, there would be a need to pull down and start afresh, even though that contributed to a gradual breakdown in the social fabric and the apocalypse of the Second World War.

Expressionism is still with us. Commerce has invaded bohemia, and created an elaborate body of theory to justify, support and overtake what might otherwise appear infantile and irrational. And if traditional art cannot be pure emotional expression, then a new art would have to be forged. Such poetry would not be an intoxication of life (Nietzsche's phrase) and still less its sanctification.  Great strains on the creative process were inevitable, moreover, as they were in Georg Trakl's case, who committed suicide shortly after writing the haunting and beautiful piece given below

................
SYMBOLIST POETS
symbolism in poetry

Symbolism in literature was a complex movement that deliberately extended the evocative power of words to express the feelings, sensations and states of mind that lie beyond everyday awareness. The open-ended symbols created by Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) brought the invisible into being through the visible, and linked the invisible through other sensory perceptions, notably smell and sound. Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-98), the high priest of the French movement, theorized that symbols were of two types. One was created by the projection of inner feelings onto the world outside. The other existed as nascent words that slowly permeated the consciousness and expressed a state of mind initially unknown to their originator.

None of this came about without cultivation, and indeed dedication. Poets focused on the inner life. They explored strange cults and countries. They wrote in allusive, enigmatic, musical and ambiguous styles. Rimbaud deranged his senses and declared "Je est un autre". Von Hofmannstahl created his own language. Valéry retired from the world as a private secretary, before returning to a mastery of traditional French verse. Rilke renounced wife and human society to be attentive to the message when it came.

Not all were great theoreticians or technicians, but the two interests tended to go together, in Mallarmé most of all. He painstakingly developed his art of suggestion, what he called his "fictions". Rare words were introduced, syntactical intricacies, private associations and baffling images. Metonymy replaced metaphor as symbol, and was in turn replaced by single words which opened in imagination to multiple levels of signification. Time was suspended, and the usual supports of plot and narrative removed. Even the implied poet faded away, and there were then only objects, enigmatically introduced but somehow made right and necessary by verse skill. Music indeed was the condition to which poetry aspired, and Verlaine, Jimenez and Valéry were among many who concentrated efforts to that end.

So appeared a dichotomy between the inner and outer lives. In actuality, poets led humdrum existences, but what they described was rich and often illicit: the festering beauties of courtesans and dance-hall entertainers; far away countries and their native peoples; a world-weariness that came with drugs, isolation, alcohol and bought ***. Much was mixed up in this movement — decadence, aestheticism, romanticism, and the occult — but its isms had a rational purpose, which is still pertinent. In what way are these poets different from our own sixties generation? Or from the young today: clubbing, experimenting with relationships and drugs, backpacking to distant parts? And was the mixing of sensory perceptions so very novel or irrational? Synaesthesia was used by the Greek poets, and indeed has a properly documented basis in brain physiology.

What of the intellectual bases, which are not commonly presented as matters that should engage the contemporary mind, still less the writing poet? Symbolism was built on nebulous and somewhat dubious notions: it inspired beautiful and historically important work: it is now dead: that might be the blunt summary. But Symbolist poetry was not empty of content, indeed expressed matters of great interest to continental philosophers, then and now. The contents of consciousness were the concern of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), and he developed a terminology later employed by Heidegger (1889-1976), the Existentialists and hermeneutics. Current theories on metaphor and brain functioning extend these concepts, and offer a rapprochement between impersonal science and irrational literary theory.

So why has the Symbolism legacy dwindled into its current narrow concepts? Denied influence in the everyday world, poets turned inward, to private thoughts, associations and the unconscious. Like good Marxist intellectuals they policed the area they arrogated to themselves, and sought to correct and purify the language that would evoke its powers. Syntax was rearranged by Mallarmé. Rhythm, rhyme and stanza patterning were loosened or rejected. Words were purged of past associations (Modernism), of non-visual associations (Imagism), of histories of usage (Futurism), of social restraint (Dadaism) and of practical purpose (Surrealism). By a sort of belated Romanticism, poetry was returned to the exploration of the inner lands of the irrational. Even Postmodernism, with its bric-a-brac of received media images and current vulgarisms, ensures that gaps are left for the emerging unconscious to engage our interest

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IMAGIST POETRY
imagist poetry

Even by twentieth-century standards, Imagism was soon over. In 1912 Ezra Pound published the Complete Poetical Works of its founder, T.E. Hulme (five short poems) and by 1917 the movement, then overseen by Amy Lowell, had run its course. {1} {2} {3} {4} {5} The output in all amounted to a few score poems, and none of these captured the public's heart. Why the importance?

First there are the personalities involved — notably Ezra Pound, James Joyce, William Carlos Williams {6} {7} {8} {9} — who became famous later. If ever the (continuing) importance to poets of networking, of being involved in movements from their inception, is attested, it is in these early days of post-Victorian revolt.

Then there are the manifestos of the movement, which became the cornerstones of Modernism, responsible for a much taught in universities until recently, and for the difficulties poets still find themselves in. The Imagists stressed clarity, exactness and concreteness of detail. Their aims, briefly set out, were that:

1. Content should be presented directly, through specific images where possible.
2. Every word should be functional, with nothing included that was not essential to the effect intended.
3. Rhythm should be composed by the musical phrase rather than the metronome.

Also understood — if not spelled out, or perhaps fully recognized at the time — was the hope that poems could intensify a sense of objective reality through the immediacy of images.

Imagism itself gave rise to fairly negligible lines like:

You crash over the trees,
You crack the live branch…  (Storm by H.D.)

Nonetheless, the reliance on images provided poets with these types of freedom:

1. Poems could dispense with classical rhetoric, emotion being generated much more directly through what Eliot called an objective correlate: "The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked." {10}

2. By being shorn of context or supporting argument, images could appear with fresh interest and power.

3. Thoughts could be treated as images, i.e. as non-discursive elements that added emotional colouring without issues of truth or relevance intruding too mu
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PROSE BASED POETRY
prose based poetry

When free verse lacks rhythmic patterning, appearing as a lineated prose stripped of unnecessary ornament and rhetoric, it becomes the staple of much contemporary work. The focus is on what the words are being used to say, and their authenticity. The language is not heightened, and the poem differs from prose only by being more self-aware, innovative and/or cogent in its exposition.

Nonetheless, what looks normal at first becomes challenging on closer reading — thwarting expectations, and turning back on itself to make us think more deeply about the seemingly innocuous words used. And from there we are compelled to look at the world with sharper eyes, unprotected by commonplace phrases or easy assumptions. Often an awkward and fighting poetry, therefore, not indulging in ceremony or outmoded traditions.
What is Prose?

If we say that contemporary free verse is often built from what was once regarded as mere prose, then we shall have to distinguish prose from poetry, which is not so easy now. Prose was once the lesser vehicle, the medium of everyday thought and conversation, what we used to express facts, opinions, humour, arguments, feelings and the like. And while the better writers developed individual styles, and styles varied according to their purpose and social occasion, prose of some sort could be written by anyone. Beauty was not a requirement, and prose articles could be rephrased without great loss in meaning or effectiveness.

Poetry, though, had grander aims. William Lyon Phelps on Thomas Hardy's work: {1}

"The greatest poetry always transports us, and although I read and reread the Wessex poet with never-lagging attention — I find even the drawings in "Wessex Poems" so fascinating that I wish he had illustrated all his books — I am always conscious of the time and the place. I never get the unmistakable spinal chill. He has too thorough a command of his thoughts; they never possess him, and they never soar away with him. Prose may be controlled, but poetry is a possession. Mr. Hardy is too keenly aware of what he is about. In spite of the fact that he has written verse all his life, he seldom writes unwrinkled song. He is, in the last analysis, a master of prose who has learned the technique of verse, and who now chooses to express his thoughts and his observations in rime and rhythm."

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OPEN FORMS IN POETRY
open forms in poetry

Poets who write in open forms usually insist on the form growing out of the writing process, i.e. the poems follow what the words and phrase suggest during the composition

It was their first time, their first time ever. Of course neither would admit to it, and neither knew, about the other that is, that they had never done this before. Life had sheltered them, and they had sheltered from life.

Their biographies put them in their sixties. Never mind the Guardian magazine proclaiming sixty to be the new fifty. Albert and Sally were resolutely sixty – ish. To be fair, neither looked their age, but then they had led such sheltered lives, hadn’t they. He had a mother, she had a father, and that pretty much wrapped it up. They had spent respective lives being their parents’ companions, then carers, and now, suddenly this. This intimacy, and it being their first time.

When their contemporaries were befriending and marrying and procreating, and home-making and care-giving and child-minding, and developing their first career, being forced to start a second, overseeing teenagers and suddenly being parents again, but grandparents this time – with evenings and some weekends allowed – Albert and Sally had spent their time writing. They wrote poetry in their respective spaces, at respective tables, in almost solitude, Sally against the onslaught of TV noise as her father became deaf. Albert had the refuge of his childhood bedroom and the table he’d studied at – O levels, A levels, a degree and a further degree, and a little later on that PhD. Poetry had been his friend, his constant companion, rarely fickle, always there when needed. If Albert met a nice-looking woman in the library and lost his heart to her, he would write verse to quench not so much desire of a physical nature, but a desire to meet and to know and to love, and to live the dream of being a published poet.

Oh Sally, such a treasure; a kind heart, a sweet nature, a lovely disposition. Confused at just seventeen when suddenly she seemed to mature, properly, when school friends had been through all that at thirteen. She was passed over, and then suddenly, her body became something she could hardly deal with, and shyness enveloped her because her mother would say such things . . . but, but she had her bookshelf, her grandfather’s, and his books (Keats and Wordsworth saved from the skip) and then her books. Ted Hughes, Dylan Thomas (oh to have been Kaitlin, so wild and free and uninhibited and whose mother didn’t care), Stevie Smith, U.E. Fanthorpe, and then, having taken her OU degree, the lure of the small presses and the feminist canon, the subversive and the down-right weird.

Albert and Sally knew the comfort of settling ageing parents for the night and opening (and firmly closing) the respective doors of their own rooms, in Albert’s case his bedroom, with Sally, a box room in which her mother had once kept her sewing machine. Sally resolutely did not sew, nor did she knit. She wrote, constantly, in notebook after notebook, in old diaries, on discarded paper from the office of the charity she worked for. Always in conversation with herself as she moulded the poem, draft after draft after draft. And then? She went once to writers’ workshop at the local library, but never again. Who were these strange people who wrote only about themselves? Confessional poets. And she? Did she never write about herself? Well, occasionally, out of frustration sometimes, to remind herself she was a woman, who had not married, had not borne children, had only her father’s friends (who tried to force their unmarried sons on her). She did write a long sequence of poems (in bouts-rimés) about the man she imagined she would meet one day and how life might be, and of course would never be. No, Sally, mostly wrote about things, the mystery and beauty and wonder of things you could touch, see or hear, not imagine or feel for. She wrote about poppies in a field, penguins in a painting (Birmingham Art Gallery), the seashore (one glorious week in North Norfolk twenty years ago – and she could still close her eyes and be there on Holkham beach).  Publication? Her first collection went the rounds and was returned, or not, as is the wont of publishers. There was one comment: keep writing. She had kept writing.

Tide Marks

The sea had given its all to the land
and retreated to a far distant curve.
I stand where the waves once broke.

Only the marks remain of its coming,
its going. The underlying sand at my feet
is a desert of dunes seen from the air.

Beyond the wet strand lies, a vast mirror
to a sky laundered full of haze, full of blue,
rinsed distances and shining clouds.


When Albert entered his bedroom he drew the curtains, even on a summer’s evening when still light. He turned on his CD player choosing Mozart, or Bach, sometimes Debussy. Those three masters of the piano were his favoured companions in the act of writing. He would and did listen to other music, but he had to listen with attention, not have music ‘on’ as a background. That Mozart Rondo in A minor K511, usually the first piece he would listen to, was a recording of Andras Schiff from a concert at the Edinburgh Festival. You could hear the atmosphere of a capacity audience, such a quietness that the music seemed to feed and enter and then surround and become wondrous.

He’d had a history teacher in his VI form years who allowed him the run of his LP collection. It had been revelation after revelation, and that had been when the poetry began. They had listened to Tristan & Isolde into the early hours. It was late June, A levels over, a small celebration with Wagner, a bottle of champagne and a bowl of cherries. As the final disc ended they had sat in silence for – he could not remember how long, only from his deeply comfortable chair he had watched the sky turn and turn lighter over the tall pine trees outside. And then, his dear teacher, his one true friend, a young man only a few years out of Cambridge, rose and went to his record collection and chose The Third Symphony by Vaughan-Williams, his Pastoral Symphony, his farewell to those fallen in the Great War  – so many friends and music-makers. As the second movement began Albert wept, and left abruptly, without the thanks his teacher deserved. He went home, to the fury of his father who imagined Albert had been propositioned and assaulted by his kind teacher – and would personally see to it that he would never teach again. Albert was so shocked at this declaration he barely ever spoke to his father again. By eight o’clock that June morning he was a poet.

For Ralph

A sea voyage in the arms of Iseult
and now the bowl of cherries
is empty and the Perrier Jouet
just a stain on the glass.

Dawn is a mottled sky
resting above the dark pines.
Late June and roses glimmer
in a deep sea of green.

In the still near darkness,
and with the volume low,
we listen to an afterword:
a Pastoral Symphony for the fallen.

From its opening I know I belong
to this music and it belongs to me.
Wholly. It whelms me over
and my face is wet with tears.


There is so much to a name, Sally thought, Albert, a name from the Victorian era. In the 1950s whoever named their first born Albert? Now Sally, that was very fifties, comfortably post-war. It was a bright and breezy, summer holiday kind of name. Saying it made you smile (try it). But Light-foot (with a hyphen) she could do without, and had hoped to be without it one day. She was not light-footed despite being slim and well proportioned. Her feet were too big and she did not move gracefully. Clothes had always been such a nuisance; an indicator of uncertainty, of indecision. Clothes said who you were, and she was? a tallish woman who hid her still firm shape and good legs in loose tops and not quite right linen trousers (from M & S). Hair? Still a colour, not yet grey, she was a shale blond with grey eyes. She had felt Albert’s ‘look’ when they met in The Barton, when they had been gathered together like show dogs by the wonderful, bubbly (I know exactly what to wear – and say) Annabel. They had arrived at Totnes by the same train and had not given each other a second glance on the platform. Too apprehensive, scared really, of what was to come. But now, like show dogs, they looked each other over.

‘This is an experiment for us,’ said the festival director, ‘New voices, but from a generation so seldom represented here as ‘emerging’, don’t you think?’

You mean, thought Albert, it’s all a bit quaint this being published and winning prizes for the first time – in your sixties. Sally was somewhere else altogether, wondering if she really could bring off the vocal character of a Palestinian woman she was to give voice to in her poem about Ramallah.

Incredibly, Albert or Sally had never read their poems to an audience, and here they were, about to enter Dartington’s Great Hall, with its banners and vast fireplace, to read their work to ‘a capacity audience’ (according to Annabel – all the tickets went weeks ago). What were Carcanet thinking about asking them to be ‘visible’ at this seriously serious event? Annabel parroted on and on about who’d stood on this stage before them in previous years, and there was such interest in their work, both winning prizes The Forward and The Eliot. Yet these fledgling authors had remained stoically silent as approaches from literary journalists took them almost daily by surprise. Wanting to know their backstory. Why so long a wait for recognition? Neither had sought it. Neither had wanted it. Or rather they’d stopped hoping for it until . . . well that was a story all of its own, and not to be told here.

Curiosity had beckoned both of them to read each other’s work. Sally remembered Taking Heart arriving in its Amazon envelope. She brought it to her writing desk and carefully opened it.  On the back cover it said Albert Loosestrife is a lecturer in History at the University of Northumberland. Inside, there was a life, and Sally had learnt to read between the lines. Albert had seen Sally’s slim volume Surface and Depth in Blackwell’s. It seemed so slight, the poems so short, but when he got on the Metro to Whitesands Bay and opened the bag he read and became mesmerised.  Instead of going home he had walked down to the front, to his favourite bench with the lighthouse on his left and read it through, twice.

Standing in the dark hallway ready to be summoned to read Albert took out his running order from his jacket pocket, flawlessly typed on his Elite portable typewriter (a 21st birthday present from his mother). He saw the titles and wondered if his voice could give voice to these intensely personal poems: the horror of his mother’s illness and demise, his loneliness, his fear of being gay, the nastiness and bullying experienced in his minor university post, his observations of acquaintances and complete strangers, train rides to distant cities to ‘gather’ material, visit to galleries and museums, homages to authors, artists and composers he loved. His voice echoed in his head. Could he manage the microphone? Would the after-reading discussion be bearable? He looked at Sally thinking for a moment he could not be in better company. Her very name cheered him. Somehow names could do that. He imagined her walking on a beach with him, in conversation. Yes, he’d like that, and right now. He reckoned they might have much to share with each other, after they’d discussed poetry of course. He felt a warm glow and smiled his best smile as she in astonishing synchronicity smiled at him. The door opened and applause beckoned.

Remember when you told me you forgot your middle name.
And that you didn't remember if you even had one.
That your parents weren't particularly religious; that they forgot God.
And that you've been forgetful lately.
You couldn't
remember
the last time you picked flowers.
Or a president.
Or shot a gun.
Or put a flower in a gun.
And that Vietnam was like Iraq.
And France would bring WWIII.
"What's my middle name?"
You asked.
"Where's the Middle East?"

"Didn't the nukes dropped in the Nevada desert sand create glass?"

"How many windows does this room have? Can you see?"

"The eyes are the windows to the soul."

My eyes feel old
Is what my grandmother would say
when she was tired.
She would play solitaire.
After each game she would
shuffle the deck three ways.
I would always mix them up
scattered on the tabletop.
That's what I remember
from the sixties.

E-Emotion
Angry, E-book hunger
Tear diamond drop

      Join Me
@ The Body-book shop

The Gold bonds his book Hot Rods
She reads about the Angels and Gods

He covers her mind and book
with his lotion

Are we ready for the E-book
In tip-top condition motion
Someone is mysteriously trying to tell me something?

How the moon hangs low
The book made her eyes
Open to really know?

I phone to book she's the grab bag
I'm leaving on a Jetplane
One chosen E-Book
Was Scarlet love flame

How the book needs to grab you
The day you were born or reborn
Never to lose your sight
But why does he split your pages

In a hot rush* money wages

The heart is bleeding out words
Feeling so crushed the bookend
Energetic stare or the blank stare
Your enticing book
What happens underside me
The pages one-sided

You're the sweet of the complicated
getting bittersweet to be love mated

The sundae banana split
*My ring book marker my lovely curls

I couldn't share my book what it said
Do you really love me
The spinning wheel
Feminity of book so girly but
Love so dizzy

To be told overstocked to be sold
But someone loved it
Its been properly viewed
Buying and reselling hearts of
book timeshare

His workout
he loves his curls
Ebook he sees he memorized
all his European beauty
turning do you love her books madly
The beast  is inside Jekyll
Girls needed to hide but got
Hyde
The book seeing our life
From a blinded pageview
What's beside our words
We need to be upfront
Once in a million chances
The whole planet of funny books
beach house turned
Blank page
of a clown funhouse tree stalk

What is the point of view
Like an adult book raided
If you're the unadulterated
The innocents being naive
Wanting him so much
Whats the use it's like a
the blank page
Like your hairstyle
the sixties pageboy
You need book law and order
Like the Feng Shui book surrender
Be focused Graphically cool artist
And paint it colors no
gun it blanks no favors
My book place has the ambiance
Different mysteries
and suspense behaviors

Somehow it thickens
like "French" roue paste

You didn't want one
page to waste
E for the Exodus
A blank page is love minus
You're hitting a plateau
E- love of kiss-book
French Chateau
Ebook has a pattern the same thing
It repeats and devours your thoughts
The ancient Grecian her structural
form of statues
That rip page needed words to capture

The Clean-Slate page to restart
your flight
The prize
Emprise
Empire to the book hire
E-book desire
E-lust
It sets an example
we need to trust
Not to mislead your mind
Whats behind the book
Exhumed or to be doomed
Like Witchcraft magical hands

This wasn't the Godly land
The blank page had a spell
"The Burned Book" no one
will ever know
Can we take it back what was written inside
We need to restore give more (Cat and Mouse) chase

As my equal poison mind of sugar
Equally or naturally book gifted
Wrap silk ribbons or too much
the anxiety of red tape
Explosion of E=books
Elixir eyes to the Ebook doorway
But the blank pages were
still inside

E-book and the text
Whats next *** journalism
The kingdom of Elust
E-book became all excuses
Those blank tweets of
Hummingbirds
Like you got some
earwax all codes and emblems
My blank form income tax problems?

Storming damage to the max of my book

Hitting rock or book bottom
You're still living in a shape
of an eggcup

And reading by your nook
Your Ebook swish wish a nymph
floating mermaid

Things turn (Retro) just go
The book was the turn of events
More pages to heart mend

We are not experts or philosophers
Get inside the greener grass
like a grasshopper

Your lovely book a tranquil place
You were booked into your gown
But your ebooks is being
transported to other towns

Her heart was skipping his pages
She never got the chance to read
His chosen page
Life is so the open book
Eyes wide shut

There’s a film by John Schlesinger called the Go-Between in which the main character, a boy on the cusp of adolescence staying with a school friend on his family’s Norfolk estate, discovers how passion and *** become intertwined with love and desire. As an elderly man he revisits the location of this discovery and the woman, who we learn changed his emotional world forever. At the start of the film we see him on a day of grey cloud and wild wind walking towards the estate cottage where this woman now lives. He glimpses her face at a window – and the film flashes back fifty years to a summer before the First War.
 
It’s a little like that for me. Only, I’m sitting at a desk early on a spring morning about to step back nearly forty years.*
 
It was a two-hour trip from Boston to Booth Bay. We’d flown from New York on the shuttle and met Larry’s dad at St Vincent’s. We waited in his office as he put away the week with his secretary. He’d been in theatre all afternoon. He kept up a two-sided conversation.
 
‘You boys have a good week? Did you get to hear Barenboim at the Tully? I heard him as 14-year old play in Paris. He played the Tempest -  Mary, let’s fit Mrs K in for Tuesday at 5.0 - I was learning that very Beethoven sonata right then. I couldn’t believe it - that one so young could sound –there’s that myocardial infarction to review early Wednesday. I want Jim and Susan there please -  and look so  . . . old, not just mature, but old. And now – Gloria and I went to his last Carnegie – he just looks so **** young.’
 
Down in the basement garage Larry took his dad’s keys and we roared out on to Storow drive heading for the Massachusetts Turnpike. I slept. Too many early mornings copying my teacher’s latest – a concerto for two pianos – all those notes to be placed under the fingers. There was even a third piano in the orchestra. Larry and his Dad talked incessantly. I woke as Dr Benson said ‘The sea at last’. And there we were, the sea a glazed blue shimmering in the July distance. It might be lobster on the beach tonight, Gloria’s clam chowder, the coldest apple juice I’d ever tasted (never tasted apple juice until I came to Maine), settling down to a pile of art books in my bedroom, listening to the bell buoy rocking too and fro in the bay, the beach just below the house, a house over 150 years old, very old they said, in the family all that time.
 
It was a house full that weekend,  4th of July weekend and there would be fireworks over Booth Bay and lots of what Gloria called necessary visiting. I was in love with Gloria from the moment she shook my hand after that first concert when my little cummings setting got a mention in the NYT. It was called forever is now and God knows where it is – scored for tenor and small ensemble (there was certainly a vibraphone and a double bass – I was in love from afar with a bassist at J.). Oh, this being in love at seventeen. It was so difficult not to be. No English reserve here. People talked to you, were interested in you and what you thought, had heard, had read. You only had to say you’d been looking at a book of Andrew Wyeth’s paintings and you’d be whisked off to some uptown gallery to see his early watercolours. And on the way you’d hear a life story or some intimate details of friend’s affair, or a great slice of family history. Lots of eye contact. Just keep the talk going. But Gloria, well, we would meet in the hallway and she’d grasp my hand and say – ‘You know, Larry says that you work too hard. I want you to do nothing this weekend except get some sun and swim. We can go to Johnson’s for tennis you know. I haven’t forgotten you beat me last time we played!’ I suppose she was mid-thirties, a shirt, shorts and sandals woman, not Larry’s mother but Dr Benson’s third. This was all very new to me.
 
Tim was Larry’s elder brother, an intern at Felix-Med in NYC. He had a new girl with him that weekend. Anne-Marie was tall, bespectacled, and supposed to be ferociously clever. Gloria said ‘She models herself on Susan Sontag’. I remember asking who Sontag was and was told she was a feminist writer into politics. I wondered if Anne-Marie was a feminist into politics. She certainly did not dress like anyone else I’d seen as part of the Benson circle. It was July yet she wore a long-sleeved shift buttoned up to the collar and a long linen skirt down to her ankles. She was pretty but shapeless, a long straight person with long straight hair, a clip on one side she fiddled with endlessly, purposefully sometimes. She ignored me but for an introductory ‘Good evening’, when everyone else said ‘Hi’.
 
The next day it was hot. I was about the house very early. The apple juice in the refrigerator came into its own at 6.0 am. The bay was in mist. It was so still the bell buoy stirred only occasionally. I sat on the step with this icy glass of fragrant apple watching the pearls of condensation form and dissolve. I walked the shore, discovering years later that Rachel Carson had walked these paths, combed these beaches. I remember being shocked then at the concern about the environment surfacing in the late sixties. This was a huge country: so much space. The Maine woods – when I first drove up to Quebec – seemed to go on forever.
 
It was later in the day, after tennis, after trying to lie on the beach, I sought my room and took out my latest score, or what little of it there currently was. It was a piano piece, a still piece, the kind of piece I haven’t written in years, but possibly should. Now it’s all movement and complication. Then, I used to write exactly what I heard, and I’d heard Feldman’s ‘still pieces’ in his Greenwich loft with the white Rauschenbergs on the wall. I had admired his writing desk and thought one day I’ll have a desk like that in an apartment like this with very large empty paintings on the wall. But, I went elsewhere . . .
 
I lay on the bed and listened to the buoy out in the bay. I thought of a book of my childhood, We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea by Arthur Ransome. There’s a drawing of a Beach End Buoy in that book, and as the buoy I was listening to was too far out to see (sea?) I imagined it as the one Ransome drew from Lowestoft harbour. I dozed I suppose, to be woken suddenly by voices in the room next door. It was Tim and Anne-Marie. I had thought the house empty but for me. They were in Tim’s room next door. There was movement, whispering, almost speech, more movement.
 
I was curious suddenly. Anne-Marie was an enigma. Tim was a nice guy. Quiet, dedicated (Larry had said), worked hard, read a lot, came to Larry’s concerts, played the cello when he could, Bach was always on his record player. He and Anne-Marie seemed so close, just a wooden wall away. I stood by this wall to listen.
 
‘Why are we whispering’, said Anne-Marie firmly, ‘For goodness sake no one’s here. Look, you’re a doctor, you know what to do surely.’
 
‘Not yet.’
 
‘But people call you Doctor, I’ve heard them.’
 
‘Oh sure. But I’m not, I’m just a lousy intern.’
 
‘A lousy intern who doesn’t want to make love to me.’
 
Then, there was rustling, some heavy movement and Tim saying ‘Oh Anne, you mustn’t. You don’t need to do this.’
 
‘Yes I do. You’re hard and I’m wet between my legs. I want you all over me and inside me.  I wanted you last night so badly I lay on my bed quite naked and masturbated hoping you come to me. But you didn’t. I looked in on you and you were just fast asleep.’
 
‘You forget I did a 22-hour call on Thursday’.
 
“And the rest. Don’t you want me? Maybe your brother or that nice English boy next door?’
 
‘Is he next door? ‘
 
‘If he is, I don’t care. He looks at me you know. He can’t work me out. I’ve been ignoring him. But maybe I shouldn’t. He’s got beautiful eyes and lovely hands’.
 
There was almost silence for what seemed a long time. I could hear my own breathing and became very aware of my own body. I was shaking and suddenly cold. I could hear more breathing next door. There was a shaft of intense white sunlight burning across my bed. I imagined Anne-Marie sitting cross-legged on the floor next door, her hand cupping her right breast fingers touching the ******, waiting. There was a rustle of movement. And the door next door slammed.
 
Thirty seconds later Tim was striding across the garden and on to the beach and into the sea . . .
 
There was probably a naked young woman sitting on the floor next door I thought. Reading perhaps. I stayed quite still imagining she would get up, open her door and peek into my room. So I moved away from the wall and sat on the bed trying hard to look like a composer working on a score. And she did . . . but she had clothes on, though not her glasses or her hair clip, and she wore a bright smile – lovely teeth I recall.
 
‘Good afternoon’, she said. ‘You heard all that I suppose.’
 
I smiled my nicest English smile and said nothing.
 
‘Tell me about your girlfriend in England.’
 
She sat on the bed, cross-legged. I was suddenly overcome by her scent, something complex and earthy.
 
‘My girlfriend in England is called Anne’.
 
‘Really! Is she pretty? ‘
 
I didn’t answer, but looked at my hands, and her feet, her uncovered calves and knees. I could see the shape of her slight ******* beneath her shirt, now partly unbuttoned. I felt very uncomfortable.
 
‘Tell me. Have you been with this Anne in England?’
 
‘No.’ I said, ‘I ‘d like to, but she’s very shy.’
 
‘OK. I’m an Anne who’s not shy.’
 
‘I’ve yet to meet a shy American.’
 
‘They exist. I could find you a nice shy girl you could get to know.’
 
‘I’d quite like to know you, but you’re a good bit older than me.’
 
‘Oh that doesn’t matter. You’re quite a mature guy I think. I’d go out with you.’
 
‘Oh I doubt that.’
 
‘Would you go out with me?’
 
‘You’re interesting.  Gloria says you’re a bit like Susan Sontag. Yes, I would.’
 
‘Wow! did she really? Ok then, that’s a deal. You better read some Simone de Beauvoir pretty quick,’  and she bounced off the bed.
 
After supper  - lobster on the beach - Gloria cornered me and said. ‘I gather you heard all this afternoon.’
 
I remembered mumbling a ‘yes’.
 
‘It’s OK,’ she said, ‘Anne-Marie told me all. Girls do this you know – talk about what goes on in other people’s bedrooms. What could you do? I would have done the same. Tim’s not ready for an Anne-Marie just yet, and I’m not sure you are either. Not my business of course, but gentle advice from one who’s been there. ‘
 
‘Been where?’
 
‘Been with someone older and supposedly wiser. And remembering that wondering-what-to-do-about-those-feelings-around-*** and all that. There’s a right time and you’ll know it when it comes. ‘
 
She kissed me very lightly on my right ear, then got up and walked across the beach back to the house.

I'm a Tree Huggin', Soy Chuggin',
I won't eat no meat
I'm a vegan of convenience,
Still, there's leather on my feet
I don't believe in lots of things
I'll protest and attack
But you won't find me out in front
'Cause I'll be in the back
I give money to my causes
Save the whales, electric cars
But I'm not one to lead the fight
"Cause I don't like the scars
Bricks get thrown alot you see
And those things ****** hurt
And I'm not a happy camper
When there's blood upon my shirt
I won't eat seeds of any sort
They get stuck in my teeth
My clothes are all from LL Bean
Except what's underneath
Way back in the sixties
I lived communaly
We ate only what the earth gave up
We didn't watch tv
As years passed by, our voices died
Our causes became much rarer
We sounded more like Manilow
Than Phil Ochs or Tom Lehrer
I choose fine wine over wheatgrass juice
I like leather and wear silk
I no longer go and get the goat
So we can have fresh milk
I'm a Tree Huggin', Soy Chuggin',
I won't eat no meat
I'm a vegan of convenience,
Still, there's leather on my feet
I don't believe in lots of things
I'll protest and attack
But you won't find me out in front
'Cause I'll be in the back
I've changed lots since the sixties
I'm a capitalist blood hound
If I said I'm a true vegan
My board would see me drowned
I used to wear just cotton
Hemp and caftans  and blue jeans
Leather shoes and belts and jackets
Were just not part of my scene
My friends, well, they grew up
And others stayed in touch
The ones with money see me
The others not so much
I used to go out jogging
Through the park in puma shoes
Now I workout in a private gym
Wearing nikes and with my  crew
You see I'm still a vegan
When it suits me, don't you see
My new girlfriend likes organic
And she's only twenty three
There's forty years between us
Though I've done it all before
When my girlfriend is not with me
I am a carnivore
I support all of her causes
Though most things I don't attend
I'll be a vegan of convenience
Until our courtship ends
Who knows, what then will happen
Will I eat Tofu or some chops
I know which way I'm leaning
We'll see how that one drops
Like I said when we first started
I am a vegan, so I am
But instead of eating quinoa
I'll stick to eggs and ham.
I'm a Tree Huggin', Soy Chuggin',
I won't eat no meat
I'm a vegan of convenience,
Still, there's leather on my feet
I don't believe in lots of things
I'll protest and attack
But you won't find me out in front
'Cause I'll be in the back

Many have forgotten love, and throw the word around as if some test dumby in a crash car. In true meant to be love... God ordained it long ago; before two Lover's ever meet. Though, yes, he gives us free will to choose who and what we want, he also has preordained us for our "true soulmate's". As before he created all the beauty we see around us, he already mapped out everything to be, before its existence! As tis so many look around, and see the world and us being's as a mistake, or some big mess, though all has order, the plant's, creature's, the star's, the moon, the sun, the planet's all around us, and universe in all completeness. As all has order, all has purpose, whether good, or bad. Yet so many are engulfed by the materialistic pleasure's the world has to offer, and alway's think to ournselves, tommorrow will come, WRONG! Tommorrow shan't always come. Tommorrow doesn't exist. Today does. As heaven and god's kingdom has NO TIME, he's on a different schedule, not man's, he goes by his own law's, not man's...Today we have the choice to love, to give, to forgive, and love another. If family, friend's, soulmate's, no matter the case. Our purpose is to love, as I have found mine soulmate, mine life, and predestined amour', who in all actuality, I've been waiting for, since before birth... When I speak to her I know all is right, all is amazing, as she is; I know she is the home I've been waiting to reside in, as tis she is home to me.......... And when we "me and her" both know when something's wrong with one another, our soul tell's us, as tis God who tell's us when our lover and soulmate is in trouble. And it's even more amazing at that moment you realize even more how much we were meant to be with that lover because when both having trouble's going on our soul and God Whisper's to us " go talk to your queen, or king" because something is wrong, that's a major sign, two of us and two of anyone are meant to be... Free will choice I choose to be with her, and choose to love her and give to her mine life, spirit, love and soul. Though at same time its predestiny. That's the part that blow's mine mind away. Knowing it's already predestined. For the good of God's purpose for us and for him as well...........As I will NOT take for granted ever, mine soulmate, mine freewill lover I choose to be with, and what mine God predestined for me. And honestly, I'd rather have him predestine me her, then anyone else. Because I want noone else. I want mine Jane, mine soulmate, mine home I want to reside. Mine HOME period. One of mine favorite singer's, a new age singer who sound's as from the sixties said it best in his song with his band ( Edward Sharpe and the magnetic zero's), the song called " Home ". His lyric's read............
Home, let me come home, Home is wherever I'm with you.
Home, let me come home, Home is whenever I'm with you.......
As its more then true... When we can feel at home with someone, and know that soulmate is our home " as mine Jane is", and we know when something's wrong with the other person. Because God and our soul tell's us, it's even more a sign, saying "HELLO" you two are meant to be, and I shant never, NEVER, take that love for granted. As I'm more than happy, and blessed. As tis so many forget their blessing's of their soulmate's, and take for granted even waking up!!! Though I am blessed and shalt never forget that.... and love is about working on it daily... Even though we don't have to try in love, in true love we still try anyway's, because we want to please the other person, not ourselves.... And that's something I love doing, one of mine favorite part's is the trying part.... and trying is what we do, because we love the other, and want to please them... Love in all aspect's of life isn't taking, or wanting for you, you, you!!!! Or about what you can get. It's about what we can give other's. As I will give mine queen all of me, because that's mine free will... Because I love her.... Because she's mine soulmate.....
And for that
I'm more than blessed.......
And because she loves me more than she could ever tell me as well; and for that reason, I thank mine God daily, as tis not every day, God send's us down a piece of heaven on earth. And tis NOT every day God give's us an angel to watch over us... And we all have angel's, I am more than grateful. I've got mine... And I won't take that for granted......


©Brandon nagley
©Lonesome poets poetry
©Earl Jane nagley/ truth on love dedication

In nineteen hundred forty-nine
China was won by Mao Tse-tung
Chiang Kai-shek's army ran away
They were waiting there in Thailand yesterday

Supported by the CIA
Pushing junk down Thailand way

First they stole from the Meo Tribes
Up in the hills they started taking bribes
Then they sent their soldiers up to Shan
Collecting ***** to send to The Man

Pushing junk in Bangkok yesterday
Supported by the CIA

Brought their jam on mule trains down
To Chiang Rai that's a railroad town
Sold it next to the police chief brain
He took it to town on the choochoo train

Trafficking dope to Bangkok all day
Supported by the CIA

The policeman's name was Mr. Phao
He peddled dope grand scale and how
Chief of border customs paid
By Central Intelligence's U.S. A.I.D.

The whole operation, Newspapers say
Supported by the CIA

He got so sloppy & peddled so loose
He busted himself & cooked his own goose
Took the reward for an ***** load
Seizing his own haul which same he resold

Big time pusher for a decade turned grey
Working for the CIA

Touby Lyfong he worked for the French
A big fat man liked to dine & *****
Prince of the Meos he grew black mud
Till ***** flowed through the land like a flood

Communists came and chased the French away
So Touby took a job with the CIA

The whole operation fell in to chaos
Till U.S. Intelligence came into Laos
I'll tell you no lie I'm a true American
Our big pusher there was Phoumi Nosovan

All them Princes in a power play
But Phoumi was the man for the CIA

And his best friend General Vang Pao
Ran the Meo army like a sacred cow
Helicopter smugglers filled Long Cheng's bars
In Xieng Quang province on the Plain of Jars

It started in secret they were fighting yesterday
Clandestine secret army of the CIA

All through the Sixties the Dope flew free
Thru Tan Son Nhut Saigon to Marshal Ky
Air America followed through
Transporting confiture for President Thieu

All these Dealers were decades and yesterday
The Indochinese mob of the U.S. CIA

Operation Haylift Offisir Wm. Colby
Saw Marshal Ky fly ***** Mr. Mustard told me
Indochina desk he was Chief of ***** Tricks
"Hitchhiking" with dope pushers was how he got his fix

Subsidizing traffickers to drive the Reds away
Till Colby was the head of the CIA

                                        January 1972

"far Out Man" was
an expression we used
in the sixties when something
was really cool
and todays kids have no clue
to a term that was once the rule
and if you survived those years
and are still here
then that is what I would say,
"far out man"
without a doubt.

What a ride
and I am so surprised
that I am still alive
after living through
so many near misses
and so many stolen kisses
that brought so many
broken hearts
after playing
so many different
parts.

Been through those doors
so many times before
and it makes me wonder
when will
I get it right and not just
end up with
a bunch of rhymes
and I wonder how many
lifetimes do I have to live
before someone
will take what I have
to give.

How many heartbreaks
can I take before
it is just too late
and how much pain
must I sustain
for somebody elses gain
and that is about all that
I have to say in this rhyme
at this time.

So either
take me as I am
or watch me as I go
and that is really
"far out, man."                                    Jon York                 2012

In this world of surrounded racism that many let simmer on low.
Like it doesn't exist around them in a daily manner.

If you black and stand up to injustice.
Why?
Do one major race group get so heated to show their racism quickly?

W.E.Dubois stood up and stood out against racism.
And when you do?
It only makes you better as a human.

Sure, many gonna to hate you.
Even try to address you with their version of the truth.
Except, until justice is fair and equal to all.
Then it's an injustice to everyone.

Some minorities live in this "don't rock the boat" mentality.
Which really means don't upset the whites.
But then the world "white flight" means they forever running from the reality of the world.

They lost in Disney's living in a written fairytale.

If you black and roaring to fight injustice.
Standup, we have great examples in this country called America.

Cassius Clay,  known later as Muhammad Ali, stood his ground and faced the hostility of them.
Like the man, Job lost a lot during that time of standing on his principles.

But through it all, he stayed true to himself.
Yes, that group that hangs on to this superior mentality of stupidity complained.

But don't they always when they don't get their way.

Malcolm X, the threat of common sense tricked the world with his brilliance.
Stood toes to toes with the brightest during his time to engage others into thinking.
But he stood up and stood out.

When you go against the norm the group that follows like robotic figures get mad.

Sweet Rosa Parks, became known simply by standing her ground on the seating arrangement.
We wonder why must she have stood when she was in the section they stated she must be seated.

They rocked the wrong woman.
Who stood firm against authorities?
Remember if you black, they want you to stay quiet.
Well, least they got Ben Carson.

Martin Luther King Jr-thanks to a certain level of protest became the symbol and the brave face to tackle law enforcers and racist politicians.

A bigot is only a bigot when they have their group of supporters around to push foolishness.

Don't use the word EQUAL if it's not applied correctly to everyone.

And realize tricks and manipulation is always used to turn the narrative of any protest stand.
Conservatives crying about players being unpatriotic in sports.

But not too many crying the truth that Colin Kaepernick complaints centered around injustice of the police against black males.

Where has he said anything against America?
But we realize if you black they under this impression that you should be quiet.

Notice, white whistleblowers take time to complain.
Then more come out when they terminated.
Then they firing off all wrongs they see.

The two black athletes that raised their fist in the sixties suffered personal gains.
But didn't Jesus protest various injustice to a hostile crowd and authorities?

Politicians are tools of fools afraid to lose an election if they stand for right.
Even the evangelicals(money makers) afraid to stand up to injustice in the world.

Don't you believe when King marched in the beginning that all faiths were behind him?
It just got too big to ignore so they joined in the protect for justice.

If you black and point out wrongs.
Take this message"you better be strong".

Your father was raised in Panama. I can imagine him vividly... The floral silk shirt with velvety red cravat, tan leather loafers, waxed-to-perfection moustache, and a big cigar. It was the late sixties and he was beautiful. I've never seen a photo but I can tell by the way you talked about him. His joi de vivre oozed into your stories and I recognized it: the distilled essence of his elegance was passed to you, and you shared it with me.

We met by our mutual attraction for showing off... I wanted to be treated like a delicate porcelain treasure - you wanted a plastic toy with the price tag of an heirloom. Twenty five years my senior and you still hadn't learned your lesson about girls like me... I may have broken your heart, but you should've known a tryst between the free-spirited edge of seventeen and a businessman with dreams of Panama would burn out in the end, just like your father's cigar.

The men, mostly wrapped in grey,
With knitted necks have nothing to say.
But sway out of the way of the others, passing.

Over there, on six, a man is checking
No one is asking, but he’s still looking.
His finger’s pointing.

Beside me, a beautiful lady, is waiting
Speaking softly to her lover:
“Not long now” – she whispers’, lower.

With late night morning upon our faces
We wonder why, we are here at all
Collecting colds, old age, and wages:
Before middle, old, and then the fall.

And then the sun appears:
It lights the seats where no one sits
I feel my heart beat miss a bit.
I see myself years ago.
Waiting for a train to go.
To take our family away, for free
For fish, chips, salt and sea.

All of us all, sitting there:
Our fathers 1950’s hair,
Our sixties mother thin lipped stare,
my sisters, bothers, and me, just sat there.

Frozen cold, with tears sticking in my eyes.
And for a moment I want back that time.
To start again, at another me:
No more trains - but more sea.

He may be old,
but he is the most
handsomest man
ever.
Mid-sixties maybe.
His eyes are blue.
Pale blue but circled by dark blue.
His hair is gray,
but was once brown.
His skin is wrinkled and worn
but was once smooth.
His face is small
and heart-shaped.
I can't stop staring at him.
I imagine him
as a young boy,
entering the military
in a green suit.
The way he smiled for his picture.
How he hugged his crying mother goodbye.
Smoked a cigarette as he served for his country.
Overcome the nightmares
he's seen and heard
while protecting America.
He was handsome then
and he is handsome now.
He holds the door open with a smile
and I thank him for
the dinner that he
bought for his wife,
my parents,
and me.

Ahmad Jamal and his classic tune Poincianno provided a backdrop
where I could relax and relate the poignant beauty
of the peace and madness back then surrounding
the Kennedy assassination.
Oscar Peterson churns out the notes
in a definitive yet light way
that would qualify as easy listening jazz
to some jazz buff in their weaker moments.
Eroll Gainer with his classic misty
haunts one with his
simple singularity of musical
paroxysms and leads into a fine repertoire.
George Shearing with his liltingness relaxed me
back then when I was recovering from the whole thing
And Camsey Lewis with his lightly penetrating rendition of
"The In Crowd" sustained my sense of humor and
helped me with my appreciation of mainstream jazz.
Cela, jazzmasters all to me
and yes like that light jazz
as opposed to poboy like Miles Davis
except for Charlie Parks
and yet I got into a Goth pianist Jack
then Thelonius Monk who was sorta jazzy
I acquired a mediocre taste for.

(Niamh Price), this is thy own dedication, thy shortened sentences art lovely, they showeth me mine homeland of Ireland, wherein the druids didst roam, wherein tales went back far and old, as niamh thy soul I feeleth its pain, yet soo amazing thou art friend.

(Gary L), this one is thine own writing, sir, thy friendship is inviting, thy lyrical sense is enticing, as thou doth speak truth when thou seeith it, never quit! On thy works and on thineself, thou art who thou art, a beautiful man, with timeless knowledge.

(SPT), this poem is for thou as a treat, I feeleth thine anguish mix in with thy compassion, thou art a hopeful mansion, filled with words of someone who hath lived age's, thy pages art touching, and I thank thee for thy support and guiding me through h.p.

(Ignatius Hosiana), brother thou art a hopeless romantic like me, hoping for his queen, seeing her only in thine dream's, yet as we scream, as brother's we doth unite! In color of skin's, black and white we overcometh the ideology of hatred, loving the hater.

(Dedpoet), mine Mexican friend, how canst I not loveth thee, thy word's dark, ghetto, and deep, as I've been around hood part's to knoweth enough, the most beauty LIES awake in the hood, the places the rich men overlook, is wherein the eyes of God art .

(Wonderman poetry), brother thy words of Christ uplift me, not a perfect being mineself, thyself showeth me the light in the darkness and thus when I'm down, thine godly loving giveth me help, as thou knoweth brother, love and forgives as Christ taught!

(poetessa diabolica), word's that thou uses art so complex, for thee so I respect, for all thy love thou hath given me, the hope that thou planted me, to showeth me, God still lingers in man's soul's, despite the devil trying to rear around, I thankest thou poetess...

(Donna,) thine little haiku's art a piece of the celestial, thy pieces extraterrestrial, and high up the Angels weep to thy words. Like cures and herbs they giveth me a better day to look to, as like glass, beautiful the words thou uses floweth to heavens moon!

(Rosalind Heather Alexander), speechless I am to thy grace, a Scottish lass as me part Scottish blob and mass, lol, just saying , two bloods of the same kind, now thou art writing thy soul out, keepeth it divine, thy soul canst not go rewind, so love on ahead.

(Soul-survivor), old friend, as we both preach the same predictions shalt we worry of ourn end? No, we shalt continue to showeth love, and giveth others hope, than when we die the Graves not it, but that God's love over-rose, so shalt we, auntie as I calleth thee.

(Icysky), young one please do not cry, the boy's canst seeith the fine stitching God made thee as, thou hath a vessel of rubies, and thou art like a wonderful movie, fast tracked to the best part, icy, let noone breaketh thine heart, and let thy lord guideth thee .

(Joe Malgeri), a freak hippy like me, playing music to the sun, giving lectures highly and fun, thou wilt find a queen like me one day, continue to haveth class, play tunes by night, showeth thy genuine ways. As thou doth, wonderful supporter, HP gypsie!!!

(Anthony Mooney,) an Irish hopeless romantic like me, thy soul hath beauty friend, let not hate overtake, bypass the anger and the heartbreak. Let thy pen jot down thy beauty, making the earth quake, unlike others dear mate, thou hath high class.

(Wolf spirit) ( aka quin,)though we don't talk, I loveth thee mine friend, though even thou doth not like me, thou art one of mine biggest inspiration's, thou art a true passionate, amongst the tribal nations, as I am Cherokee part mineself, thou inspireth me.

(Chris green, )affectionate of the the earth, thy woman Is lucky to haveth a poet by birth, for thy words drip like honey on a summer night, Chris friend, wonderful delight, I thank thee for kindness, for thy hope in refinement, and thou art a king of love.

(Pradip Chattopadhyay,) a man who canst writeth in all perspective, thy profile picture maketh me giggle everytime I seeith it, ( in a good way friend) I loveth thy style, and sense of humor, how thou writeth, and doesn't listen to rumors, a poet!!!

(Dark icE,) I just met thee, but thy sensuality is so delighting and like a dream, thy words sucketh me in as I canst ever get out, thy amour in poem's is a cloud, on which I linger for more of its nectar wet taste, immense in this place, unlike the human race.

(Beth StClair), mine best friend if back in the sixties, we wouldst hath layed flower's around ourn necks and head's, we wouldst hath sang the tunes of the Beatles and the dead, as I wouldst hath sung with Lennon, and zeppelin and thou wouldst hath watched.

(Vicki,) I've already wrote for thou and beth, but thou two art the best, Vicki in the crumby state of Ohio like me(lol) though me and thou aren't from here (were Angels of earth's dream's) thou art a poetic of kings and queens, thou art kind, sweet, and a a peace.

(Impeccable Space Poetess,) thy writing is like thunder. Maketh me laugh cry and rolleth over, I read again, like a books beautiful cover, thou art a friend, a poetry lover. Thou hath intelligence of God and heaven, never let man break thee or hurt thee.poetic!!!

(POETIC T,) a spirit light as a feather, free not a slave, not of this world, a man not a boy, thou hath been through strife and abuse, thy hands art not bound, thou hath cut the noose, please don't leaveth us, we all careth for thee. Friend of mine. And HP.

It was supposed to be
The dawn of a new age;
A new set of dialogue
On a more balanced stage
With better lines for
The actors to deliver.
It was supposed to start in
The sixties and last forever.

We didn’t really know for sure
What this Aquarius stuff was
But it seemed to us to be
A metaphysical enough cause,
To change the way we acted
And to shout down the rest;
To face the demagogues
Then put them to the test.

We stopped wearing uniforms
That said we went along
With the hard-assed leaders.
We put a lot of it in our songs.
We called them what they were
Greedy warmongering ******.
We protested and picketed
And promised so much more.

We spoke out loudly on TV
And in crowds in the streets
That we were through will genocide
And would not accept defeat.
We cried out that our government
Had assumed the role of villain
And was murdering for no reason
Not just men, but even children.

But, we let it all die down;
We let the government slide
On investigating the truth
And keeping the truth inside
A carefully chosen batch of
Criminals in public office.
We let them go on making war
And making money off us.

We let them cheat and lie
And re-write acceptable laws
To support their bloodthirstiness
And we gave up on our cause.
Maybe all that protesting gave
All our marching feet limps.
Or maybe it’s because all along
We were just a bunch of wimps.

Dear Poet friends. After reading Dolly Lama’s poem ‘Poetry Helps Heal’, I was reminded of a poem I composed many years ago titled ‘The Healing Power of Poetry’. This poem is not a work of fiction, but based on reality. Hope you like it, and tell your friends to read the same. Thanks, - Raj, New Delhi.


  THE HEALING POWER OF POETRY:
    KNOWN  AS  ‘BIBLIOTHERAPY’

The word Poetry derives from the Greek word ‘poesis’,
Which means ‘a making’ of a literary art form,
Where language is used for its evocative, aesthetic,
and emotional response.
A poem is an emotional-intellectual-physical construct, -
meant to touch its reader’s heart!
Poetry links one individual to another by its
distilled experience.
Through its rhythm of words and imagery,  -
driving away our inner loneliness!

‘Words are the physicians of the diseased mind’, -
Oceanus  tells Prometheus in ancient Greek
Mythology.
Thus the Oracles at Delphi used the healing power
of poetry, -
Through their various ritualistic chants and
incantations;
And tamed many a savage mind into subjugation!

The Roman physician Soranus in the First Century
AD,
Had prescribed poetry and drama for his patients
who were mentally oppressed;
Tragedy for his maniac patients, and Comedy for
the depressed.
The great psychiatrist Sigmund Freud had clarified,
That it was not he but the Poet, who had discovered
the Subconscious Mind!
Freud went on to say that the human mind is a
poetry-making *****;
Focus of ‘poetry for healing’ is self-expression and
growth of the individual.
Whereas focus of ‘poetry as an art’ becomes the
very poem itself!
But both use the same technique Freud had said;
Words, rhythm, metaphors, sound, and images,
But in the end the result is the same.
The word ‘therapy’ comes from the Greek word
‘therapeia’, -
Meaning to nurse or cure through dance, song,
drama or poetry;
Perhaps the divine way to poetic therapy!
It is therefore not surprising that Asclepius, the
Greek God of Healing,
Is the son of Apollo, the God of Poetry and Medicine!

The first hospital for the mentally ill in the American
Colonies,
Was set up in Pennsylvania in 1751, by Benjamin
Franklin.
Where a number of ancillary treatments were used,
Including the writing of poetry and reading it aloud.
Written by the patients who were mentally ill.  @ (see notes)
‘Bibliotherapy’ was the term used for poetic therapy,
Which had become popular during the Sixties and
the Seventies.
It was also effectively used in Group Therapy,
With patients sharing their feeling and emotions,
Providing a release for their inner pain and tension !
The rhythm and repetition of words often created
a hypnotic trance, -
Reaching out to those ‘secret places’ - creating a
bridge, -
To that unconscious mind from which poetry springs!
Friends, in support of what I have just said let me
quote,
Those immortal lines which Robert Frost once wrote;-
“The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
  But I have promises to keep,
  And miles to go before I sleep,
  And miles to go before I sleep” # (see notes below)

Foot Notes: ** Initially poetry was ****** recited and also sung to the accompaniment of the lyre. After the invention of  writing, it started to develop its own form. Forms make arrangement out of derangement, harmony out of discord, and order out of chaos!
@= Writings of some of these patients were also published in a newspaper titled “The Illuminator”.
# = Lines quoted above are from Robert Frost’s famous poem, “Stopping by The Woods on A Snowy Evening”, - were extensively
used for poetic therapy at the Hospital.
        All Copy Rights Reserved By the Author Raj Nandy

--------------------------------------------------------­------------------------

We stalked hawthorn hedgerows,
Backyards our battlefields,
Wielding wooden swords,
Dustbin-lids, for our shields.

We scouted railway cuttings,
Long abandoned and disused,
Where friendship’s blended alloys,
Were cast, forged and fused.

We patrolled village streets,
Marched along muddied lanes,
Proudly defending ‘our land’,
From raiding, heathen, Danes’.

We boldly challenged Vikings’,
Beneath a Sixties-summer-sun,
Bonding loyalty, faith and trust,
That will never, come undone.

Those days will not return,
Memories-mismatched-truth,
Recalling the fallen heroes,
Fighting follies of our youth.

Protecting imagined Kingdoms,
Lost in time, for evermore,
Boy soldiers standing guard,
In Castles built from straw.

Magnificence blasted

I came to this with a title and then formed an Idea then got out the heavy hitter books all founding fathers thought it would be
A good touch to reconnect with our country and it history at this time of the year well it didn’t proceed that way I did find the very
Word that serves as the title in G. Campbell Morgan’s book an exposition of the Bible don’t get excited I will just use that to set the
tone and it will give you a head start on what I want to deal with the place where life is at odds with our peace and well being He starts
the first chapter of Job now he is one that can at least give us a great example it’s all about winning getting the results we need instead
of the pain of failure (In magnificence of argument and beauty of style this book is one of the grandest in the divine library the story
of Job is presented in dramatic form) I want this to serve two purposes give understanding to the point we all can use these stories
to make us victors and in a very small way have a readable escape from drudgery or outright problems to that end I will start at this
Point I already wrote about the Dutch businessman who got fed up chucked it all started a journey to circle the globe by human
Power alone so to that end he made a boat that by pedaling and that alone would be what would propel him through great waters and
Grand adventures but for this one were going to stay on land I did meet a eastern traveler years ago from New York he was on this side
Of Shelbyville his ultimate goal was the west coast I think he had been at it a little over a month and he was on horseback we talked
but way to briefly to be able to use it here so go to one I know a little more about Jack Kerouac he was in that idea and wrote the
Book on the road first problem the guy had very bad language steeped in the sixties drug culture an iconic figure of the beat
Generation but he was human as we are and when you get down to the soul you catch the part I want to use this is going to play
Like an old family recipe that is hardly readable and the family is the human family but Jack was a writer a full blown saga that had to
Be read had to be listened to a solitary seeker a poor outward drifter who was deeply lonely man a sad melancholy drifter one writer has
Said “and if you read the book closely you see that sense of loss and sorrow swelling on each page” another penned why Kerouac
Matters he matters because he is one of us he ran the course with large gains and ultimately ended with his magnificence blasted.
Taking the cue from Jack I will take you on the road to another life of magnificence Steven Beckerman he was a neurosurgeon I met
And worked for well his wife Sandy she was such a tragic figure she was so fragile high strung would be a good description if you didn’t
Know better you would think she saw the future the first blow to this couple was there pricey home was gutted by fire everything was
Replaceable but the two Doberman guard dogs and another dog that was their family they were childless but before this fire Steven
Was not a snob but he was only a few degrees higher than Sandy on the fragile scale he had these beautiful hands he seemed to
Always be guarding them he would walk in the back of the house down by the fence always faraway I’m sure he was thinking of
The patient and the operation that waited on him at the hospital he had a vulnerability he entered other peoples troubled places and
Gave them back their lives but his own he couldn’t seem to walk divided it was all their concerns and needs.Their dream was to leave
The Bay area where neither was happy and go to the southwest New Mexico where people were laid back the pace was slower
Then the fire happened they weathered that resumed life then Steven was near home a car accident this wonderful gifted surgeon
Was left a paraplegic he went to the bedroom placed the gun between his legs then with those fingers who helped so many others
Pulled the trigger on the shotgun his magnificence was ended he couldn’t overcome the reality and fact of his situation he could have
Became a teacher so many things could have been we need to take from this a lesson of guarding our mind and heart we don’t know
What the future holds if only Steven would have measured his worth kept and made a powerful ally as Job had, his magnificence
Would still be shinning today to finish up the last piece talked about Yvette being shot with Zack in the desert her injuries included
Right side nerve damage a metal plate in her head that prevents her from getting private health care we heard what her dad said about
The Grisly listen to the wise words of her mother her mother said you have to mourn the person you were before up to the time of the
shooting that person is gone you need to turn and start a new life she did that as much as possible started out to do sports casting found
It totally unsatisfactory changed to law and now is a lawyer and victims advocate she said she never tells her story to her clients but
She has a compassion for them she found her way through giving and serving others to keep her magnificence stellar.

There's a big deal made these days
About ****** harassment at work
And quite rightly so
Who needs a heavy breathing half-wit
Slobbering over them at work?
Or anywhere else
If it comes to that

But I remember a time
Oh what a time
When I started work in the sixties
As a bobbin boy in the mills
And when mill girls
Were wild wild women
And we were their targets
We became swift of wit and feet
Very quickly

And I remember clearly when
Dear old "Make 'em 'ave it Phil" Doris
Grabbed Dougie Hibbert on his own
Hiding in the bobbin racks
She put his **** in a milk bottle
Then horned him up so he couldn't
Get the **** thing off
Then shouted everyone
To come and see

                               By Phil Roberts

May 18, 2001
Wayne M. Williams Sr. slipped the bonds of life and is now in the arms of Jesus.

For death is just a change of address.  We go to a place of freedom.  A place that is free of pain, free of sorrow, free of doubt, free of uncertainty.

Saturday night, Dad Williams moved from Denver Street in Turner, where he left behind the earthly possessions,  to Jesus street in Heaven where there was a room prepared and waiting. Jesus said that He would go and prepare a place for us that we may be there also.   To paraphrase the Apostle Paul, “Wayne has run the race, he has fought a good fight, and now he has crossed the finish line."

Wayne’s father, Harrison Williams, raised his family to know God.  His Father started school for the first time when he was 16 and had a total of 23 months of school.  He had a deep desire for knowledge that he passed along to his children.

He was a self educated man.  He studied Greek and Latin. He knew the Bible from cover to cover.  He preached the word of God in Texas to any and all and did so until the day he died.

He had God’s promise that his children would come to know the Lord.

Well, it took some time for Wayne to come back to his Godly heritage.  But come back … he did.

This poem I am about to read captures Wayne’s spiritual journey.  The love of God and the price Jesus paid on the cross captured his heart.

The theme of the music Wayne wrote and sang had to do with the Cross.   The title is “Arms of Love”

Arms of Love
(Love Divine)
———————–
I was lost in sin from doing my will,
My need was great, impossible to fill.
Then someone told me of Your love divine,
How You came to earth to save mankind.

I called Your name Lord, not knowing the cross.
Would You be there, for me - the lost?
Would I be worthy to call Your name?
The deeds I had done, had caused You shame.
———————–
You were there, oh Lord, waiting for me,
With arms open wide for all to see.
You lifted me up from my deep, dark sin,
And gave me peace, such peace, within.

I sought Your touch for the love I’d missed
From the times of doing, what I thought best.
I sought Your presence to receive Your love,
And found such joy, God’s gift from above.
————————
Your love covered me, in all my need,
I saw the cross where You did bleed.
I felt Your love growing deep within.
Your touch cleansed me from where I’d been.

You cleansed my soul from inside to out
By Your love divine, I have no doubt.
Your love surrounds me, all my days,
As I walk with You, learn your ways.
——————–
In desperation I had reached for you,
Oh love divine, I found You so true.
So find Him now, oh dear one I pray,
Give Him your life, do it today.

He is waiting for you, with arms of Love,
The precious gift, from God above.
There is grace and mercy, waiting for you,
With love and forgiveness to see you through.
————————-
Lord, I call your name, now knowing the Cross
You are always there, for me - the lost.
You make me worthy to call Your name,
So the deeds I do, won’t cause You shame.
———–
John Stevens 2-13-2000

Sometimes we can carry around a lot of baggage in life that is totally unnecessary.  We can harbor resentments of things long forgotten.   We can let the opportunities for knowing the Savior slip through our fingers like sand.

If we wait until we feel we are good enough to meet Jesus, to take Him as our Savior, we will not make it. We will be lost.   He wants us just as we are with all the warts of life, problems, fears and doubts that life can bring.  For you see, it is never too late to seek the face of Jesus and give Him our lives as we transition from this state of the flesh (which as I get older is not so great) to the state of the spirit. Even when life is mostly over we can place our life and trust in His hands and it will be secure.  Even when we know Jesus, when we feel we are not close to Him at times, we can have the assurance, that blessed assurance,  that He is always near, ever present, holding our hand, leading us to our destination. For without a doubt, according to Romans 8:38-39 “Jesus is our eternal security”. Nothing can separate us from Him.

I have known Wayne for over 35 years, nearly 34 years as his son-in-law. He has always been a man of high integrity and honesty.   He has been the best father in law a man could have. Anna already knows this.  She is the best mother-in-law a guy can have.   Over the years Wayne and I have talked for hours and days at a time about various subjects.  I have seen him grow in his walk with God.  Some may have thought he was a little unorthodox but his heart was right and his love of spiritual things was evident.

At Christmas times when my family would visit for a week… when everyone had gone to bed…. in the wee hours of the morning, he would be strumming his guitar and singing hymns.  I could hear him in the quiet of the night.  It was a comfort to me to know that the Lord was on his mind. That he sang of God’s Love.  That he knew of God’s love.

It has been a great privilege to know Wayne and listen to the stories he had to tell about WWII when he was an MP and many other stories throughout his life.  I never ceased to enjoy the stories… just as I enjoyed hearing the stories over and over from my father who got his new address in 1996.  My Father came to know Jesus in his late sixties.  He knew and rejected accepting the Lord as his Savior until one Sunday morning in church, he walked down and knelt at an alter and said, “it is time”.

My father and dad Williams saw each other only once many years ago at Christmas time.  It was fun to watch them talk and reminisce about the old times.  Now they both live on the same street - for there is only one street name there….  Jesus Street.

Dad Williams had a lot of questions about life.  About things in the Bible mostly, for he studied the word.  Many times he asked me questions year after year. I apparently did not get any smarter from year to year because we went over it again and again.   Now he can get the answers he always was trying to figure out.

He will be missed by his family and friends.  I believe his angel came and escorted him into God’s presence.  Home at last.  The angels are rejoicing in Heaven today because another one made it home.

—————–
(This was delivered at my father-in-law’s funeral. He was rough on the exterior but on the inside… kind, gentle, loving man.  I am a better man because of knowing him. )