1
Though still within our infancy,
we strive to thrive, but woefully
we flash and flaunt our 'primacy',
display our trophies pridefully.

Our terra firma ecstasy
destroys survival's harmony,
lays waste to life on land and sea.
Mankind, thy name is vanity!

By doubting Nature's regnancy,
defying laws with levity,
we strain our spheroid's symmetry
(perhaps a fatal fallacy?)

for, swallowed in the 'world of we',
we feed on vain insanity
with thoughts beyond eternity -
so strange when looked at mortally.

No use to seek a remedy
ensconced in ancient prophecy
for if not handled skillfully,
as clay we'll pay the penalty.

                              2
The Moguls rule with cruel decree,
control the crowds like puppetry,
pursuing greed addictively
with no accountability.

The wind, it reeks of Royalty
(awash in waves of perfidy)
while blowing ’cross the peasantry
(eclipsed in clouds of treachery).

The Queen, well steeped in snobbery,
sits, preening proud Her pedigree,
on throne of sculpted ebony
while sipping Sect immodestly;

to sate Her Regal Majesty,
a caviar clad canapé
is served with golden cutlery
by maidens bent submissively.

The King is bailed from bankruptcy
by Knaves who hoodwink artfully
the down-and-outer evictee
who wallows in their lenity.

Forsooth, the Money Monarchy
exalts the dollar dynasty
engaged in highway robbery
by Peacocks plumed in finery.

Yes, Jesters and the Fools agree
to truckle to duplicity
and laugh about it witlessly.
Long live the peon's penury!

                          3
To champion an oddity
(like two times twelve is fifty three)  
one reaches to theology
through paths of circularity.

In bygone trials of travesty
the doubters, draped in blasphemy,
endured the pain and agony
inflicted by the papacy.

Inspired by the Trinity
fanatics bent cosmology
in geocentric fantasy
while Bruno burned for heresy;

and aged women, randomly
accused of wicked witchery
by justice framed in infamy,
were racked and shown no clemency

That epoch of credulity
(when savants fostered sorcery
and practiced ancient alchemy)
arose in dark age quackery

as clerics dripping piety
(while raging, raving rabidly)
pervaded thralled society
with callous inhumanity;

'repent', they bellowed, 'verily,
forsake the world's iniquity,
live lives of want and chastity,
and give your gelt to God through me'.

                    4
The Masters make a mockery
of freedom and democracy
by holding down the uppity,
released from shackled slavery,

now fettered in a factory
else strewn across the Bowery,
still chained in bonds of bigotry,
immersed in seas of poverty.

And colliers, tapping balefully
in sunken-mine solemnity,
yet thrum a mournful monody
some call the digger's elegy.

To children, pale and raggedy
(behind a day of drudgery),
the boss man, oh so gallantly,
bestows a penny, niggardly;

though some are fed (belatedly),
their eyes recede in apathy
while bellies bulge, inflatedly,
with mothers watching, wretchedly.

When met with health adversity
or broken bone infirmity,
the pauper dangles helplessly
with no insurance policy;

and those engulfed in lunacy
are ailing blobs left floating free
in ******-dream obscurity -
a mired madhouse odyssey.

Ignoring mankind's unity,
the rich and poor dichotomy
breeds dismal doomed finality,
eventual nihility.

                        5
Renewing days of chivalry,
wild warriors fighting valiantly
bring freedom neath the gallows tree
while blending blood and burgundy

to toast the slaughtered enemy,
and so convince the colony
to cede with smile on bended knee
and yield her diamonds, silk and tea.

At first they call the cavalry
and then again the infantry,
so proudly primped in panoply,
with arms from finest armory

(embraced in hands so tenderly
bestow benign atrocity) -
and soon atomic weaponry
will extirpate posterity.

                          6
Misusing high technology
(to feed the face of gluttony)
depletes our Rock of energy,
now slowly dying thermally.

Our gadgets breathing CFC
fuel ozone holes' immensity
while cloud bursts, raining acidly,
wilt woods in their entirety,

and rivers, tainted chemically,
polluted biologically,
refill our cups methodically
and drown our souls organically.

Adjusting genes mechanically
may well blot out the bumble bee
annulling fruits' fecundity,
but brings big bucks reliably.

We wager perpetuity
to revel momentarily
in shadow-like obscurity
ignoring the futility,

but if we bet unknowingly
on fickle fate's contingency
and thereby act haphazardly
we're doomed to lose the lottery.

                 7
The modern day bureaucracy
abuses trust egregiously ,
embeds itself in obloquy
and offers no apology.

It paints the past in reverie
to camouflage the tendency
to strip away our privacy
which paves the path to tyranny.

With earlobes lurking furtively
that listen surreptitiously,
and eyeballs peering piercingly
we've lost cerebral sovereignty,

and those who dare to disagree
must hide away in secrecy
else crowd a black facility
(with water board anxiety).

                  8
Yes, sans responsibility,
our marble in this galaxy
will crumble in catastrophe
ere ever reaching puberty…

/notably concerning graduate education at the university of Edinburgh: why do these doctors think they can teach, who made them so, well, what's the word, useless, demeaned at having to teach? every time a doctor of chemistry was asked to teach it was like watching someone being tortured in an iron maiden... sure, a professor of chemistry could teach, just like every single post-graduate, PhD student should have taught, a doctor of chemistry didn't teach, unless he taught as Americans are prone to speaking in acronyms, and they say the Scots speak an undecipherable english... like **** they do, understood them like I might understand the zest pinch of a hobskotch chili! after all, the chemistry doctor doesn't exactly make use of his PhD students, but since they were the sheep first to the slaughter before the guillotine of knowledge, they could translate the higher tier chemistry to the undergraduates... no one sane enough would want to learn chemistry from a doctor of chemistry... those men and women are lost to their own enterprises, to their own Faustian romance, to teach chemistry at university, it would be best to be taught by those inclined to further adhere to advanced pedagogy... post-graduates ought to replace doctors in teaching undergraduate material... balanced out by the fact that the said doctors would not require the help of PhD students in research, with what already is time wasted on lecturing, what to them is, the ****** obvious... but then again... the supply and demand isn't there... even though PhD students could teach, they don't, smug chemistry doctors lecture in the guise of solipsism... theyd rather be engrossed in their research than give lectures... but since those trained PhD monkeys do all the trial and error, wasted time, which the doctors themselves could do... they waste their time on giving undergraduate lectures... because these recent protests at universities, where students complained about not having enough time spent with doctors in the field... I'd start by bemoaning not being given enough post-graduate time... after all, the people who closest to jumping over the waiting benchmark.../

in vino veritas:
due proof that snobbery
and that indie collection
of the smiths' reissue
only goes so far,
    comparatively,
Miles Davis' kind of blue
isn't overrated nor is
it overplayed,
notably a conversation
with Boris, the Russian
in Edinburgh,
who had to pick sketches
of spain as his favourite...
pop music versus ******
fetishes... people will be
ashamed of pop song guilty
pleasures than any bedroom
"deviances",
the boat the boat, whatever floats
yours...  
mine? seven years late,
Britney spears' criminal...
because John Coltrane'
a love supreme is easier
to digest than ******* brew?
fudged packed *******
and a perpetuated crescendo...
Boris could have took to
Porgy and Bess...
         or the birth of cool...
whatever it was,
high above Steppenwolf
   desiring the immortality
of a Bach... still:
       there's Händel...
but let's face it,
both sides lost something,
whatever the iron curtain
was, there was also
something akin to the,
jazz window...
                  because can you
even imagine jazz being learned
at a music liceum?
       i still don't know why
the Japanese love classical music,
or why it's Chopin rather than
List embedded in their heads,
not the gentle fingers of Satie
or Debussy...
         two Portuguese jesuits did
little to spread Christianity,
but music written by Chopin
found its atom, its universality
of translation...
                  even withe the Higgs...
something that is non-divisible,
not atomic, not sub-atomic,
                               über-atomar...
supra-atomic, which includes
the sub-atomic spectrum...
         a perpetuated ad continuum
     of ad per se, in addition to:
an addition, an addition,
        a void brimful of a lost
paraphrasing...
                          in the name of...
in the direction of (the) ortho-
   and of (the) meta-
    and of (the) para-...
                  amen.
                       the upright,
rigidness of: jump off a building,
see pancakes at the bottom...
the desire for a hier-und-nach...
well.. telegram cipher from 1930s
**** Germany,  in response
to heidegger's da-sein...
     da-nach...
                 no need to explore
the paragraph, just enough tease
to block out images of, "paradise"...
       para or besides norms,
    a phenomenon and
      an anomaly that's a res per se,
Kantian for: noumenon...
          a proposition without a school,
or tree of logic, which,
Husserl did manifest...
    in phenomenology...
              I can't help but notice
that classical music is only
relevant today because of movies...
listen to any classical music chart,
7/10 times it's music accompanying
a movie...
               comparing
kind of blue to midnight sonata?
yep, the later is overplayed...
   it's no longer a piece of music,
but a literary cliché...
      even in such wonderful books
like geek love by Katherine Dunn...
jazz is the only genre of music
that comes close to prog. rock,
    id est, no song: an album...
      even though I admit
king crimson's in the court...
     with children of men
      as a backdrop...
once upon a time the iron curtain
and the jazz window...
    rap, shmap, shpindle me dingo...
and the old man still lectures me
on work, born in 1939,
who still remembrance the Soviet army
of boy-soldiers and black-clad SS-men...
oh there was work just after the war,
given what Aries took with
the harvest just years prior...
                       woe to the aspiring poets
born in a cocoon of a father
who laboured by perfecting a trade
that, apparently,  no future Englishman
would take up! or if they did...
only via the trickling down
of the plutocratic, extended family...
and a ****** job they did too...
         well... if everyone is willing
to be and only be, a pop star entertainer...
I'd hate to imagine this piece
to be an instruction manual,
   a cohrent: whip and stirrup
demanding a gallop...
                       perhaps less cabaret voltaire,
and more jackson *******,
because why should painters be
allowed all the excuses under the sun?
and when will I see a poetry anthology
written solely by critics?
          oddly enough:
or rather, the pitfall...
     reading a poem never manifests
itself in a drive to write one myself...
an enzyme of a blank,
      a substrate of a butcher's novel...
or rather... a meaty novel, preferably
historical, notably one
that serves as an answer to Muslims
with regards to:
   remembering the Crusades,
forgotten the Golden Horde...
           and never really bothering
to look into the other crusades
against the Prussians, Lithuanians,
Kashubians et al.
                   such feral lands...
perhaps if you speak the language
as well as Norman Davies...
  you might, just might, not stand out
like a sore thumb in these parts.

The oceans’ froth betrothed to lunatic scoff
The sublunary elegance of a subdued earthen cough
Infectious pulchritude conjures snow-globe turpitude
Defiant humility professes to know the rudeness of the crude
Distilled casually in a leery trance
Terpsichorean choreography of a hallowed prance
Callow scowls affix the hebetude of anger to the sauciness of banter
Gallant cavalries court the cult of she and enamor and enchant her
Foretold calamities proceed like clockwork from God’s destructive jaundice
Death deployed as a sententious homily of wraiths that taunt us
At every turn fatidic inspirations work to cement a known outcome
Averted gaze away from rampant gays and fire-and-brimstone bunkum
We cherish a world where the stodgy and outmoded monopolize choice considerations
Where hedonism abreast of asceticism are internecine intimidations
Suffer like Christ and buffer like tenacious poverty sustained by rice
Dare to glower with menacing insistence at the known outcome of errant dice
Soothsayers soothe prayers but cataclysm still dares
To pulverize innocent insouciance and become the cynosure of trepidation and stares
Heaven blares a deafening “obey” while hell stays silent to lure the prey
Hobnob with hobgoblins and expect opprobrium to park and stay
Gentility and class-divisions orchestrate a frozen system of tenacious prisons
Stalking the lifeblood of mainlined ecstasies and surgical incisions
Minority Report within the grasp of the majority uproar
Dalliance with a self-fulfilling time means there will always be a bout between Bush and Gore
Lecherous eyes prize a hedged bush and irascible lies seek copious gore
But because the bush ensconces the ****** in bed with China the twin towers imploded for common core
Mondegreens serenade a mistaken flirtation with a time traversed and mastered
Swelling tides hearken the moon to make a hypothetical bonanza out of disaster
Enumerated infinity within esoteric grasp and pandered sequester
Bedazzled of foreknowledge  it charters the uncharted exploitation faster and faster
Burgeoning funds entertain a mind cloistered by infamy and oppressed by indecency
Burbling puns ecstatic about the perpetuity of guns hector the province of a token leniency
Squander the day and indulge the night by knowing exactly the demise of every shooting star
Knowing the origin and legacy of every single scar
Knowing the path creates the path known
Every single stock you know you should with alacrity own
Prosperous kinship and insubordinate brinksmanship win the prejudiced award
Fencing with lethal intent the specter of death devolves into irenic accord
Envy the impregnable corporate machine and its unassailable pipe dream
Hunt the Wolfs of Wall Street until panic evolves into cacophony of screams
Democratization of prophecy will cue the most titanic robbery
Shills looking for upstart thrills will pretend an unwarranted snobbery
Paradox is impossible because every moment elapsed is indelible and irrevocable
Every frisson of love is fertile and impregnable
So rejoice that the masters of the clock invest in select stocks
And hope that parcels of secrecy tumble from the 1919 White Sox
Emerald Street knows When the Music ‘s Over
Brandished crumbs adorned with sportive panache clothed in a lucky clover
Deprived of snide tithes and the confessions of millions protest a catholic cabal of universalism draped in quaint overalls
Mock the hegemony of the sailing class and their brisk and copious squalls
Opulent scions vouch for the failsafe prerogatives of Zion
Sleeping awake we indulge the oneiromancies of Orion
Cinematic wonders regale glorified eavesdropped blunders
Until the secrecy of the machine is so conspicuously in sight it tears the elected pantheon asunder
A master race of an intelligent nepotism in denial of its own disgrace
Exploits the argosy of secrets of the flying-disked race
But one day a challenger like a rooster will orient the demotic vogue towards the treasure trove
And pirates will prosper in burgeoning droves
Myths foisted will debunk themselves as eternity preens its chosen wealth
Even the most furtive endeavors will have to equip even more stealth
That day will prompt an arms race and a worms race
To burrow beneath the chasms of malcontent and adopt and insular embrace
They billow now with toxicity and malignancy
Even death will have alternative contingencies
The resplendent future will capture the common heart
For the accumulated wisdom of words will make us infinitely more smart

lamenting out loud
incoming funk lords
remembering ambient illhueminati
using wrong account

applying lexical snobbery
"using arcane diction
during bamboo surplus"
sinning and redeeming
enjoying manufactured existence
struggling but whatever

transfigurating xenocryptic renderings
scheming paroxystic shipwrecks
dispensing xylophonic wainscotting

revolving number plates
disheartening star charts
upgrading defenestrated system

observing new alphabet
amplifying celestial explosions
trippifying schema migrations
deregulating various economies
befriending code snippets
writing excess minutiae

effulging caffeine consumption
rebuilding grandiose protectorate
uniting our caliphates
collecting projected change
kettling ostalgie hues
collapsing second-world references

traumatizing unrequited follow
making baseball analogies
surveiling little sheep
awaiting various answers

deleting defaced tweet
exciting times ahead
downloading panda consciousness
capitulating rising stellation

My body is not a temple,
Instead it is a duplex.
My body is a place where the two halves of me live,
Together, though they can't quite interact.

My body is not a temple,
It's more like a church.
All the spirituality of a temple,
Covered by snobbery and incense.

My body is not a temple,
Rather, it's like a smartphone.
It runs just like a laptop,
But it fits just in your pocket out of sight.

My body is not a temple,
It's actually just flesh.
Mortal bone and sinew,
And an ever-tightening knot at its core.

Dad is so very proud of his culture, underneath this nationalist, racist, sexist, homophobic, religiously intolerant, ageist and xenophobic snobbery; is a man that stands by his right to hate who he likes.

Oh the irony!

poetry, only poetry is immune to the whole
mozart gig,
it's immune to the wizard kids,
only poetry is immune to the age old ageism
of being given a status genius so early
on in life - i mean - what sort
of feelings could little mozart have
other than demonic mischief so early on in life?
where was the emotional catastrophe?
given a. he was a son of a musical composer,
an b. he probably had a tiger mommy too
- monkeys also learn to climb trees with
as much prodigious ambition as an elder
flute player giving instructions to his son* -
less idealistic poets bite the shingles...
if poetic genius is anything like that of musical
genealogies...
it's idealistic... but after keats, shelley or hart crane...
it's still the same old cold grit regime of realism.

*you have to attack the big boys...
  it's synonymous with attacking snobbery
  and the historical claustrophobia
  of: only a few ******* were apparent, the rest
  of us were statistics.

I sit on my **** by the fireside chair
and talk the mill talk to the calender man
but he doesn't care
he just watches his gauges and pressures
how precious he is
to the factory owner who allows him to live
on a pittance each week.

And while he clothes the World
in his mind he would seek
a botany bay
where his ancestors lay
and put roots in that ground.
The sound of the press, blocks the sound from the bell
just as well
because that ringing in his ears is not the bite from the future
but the teeth in the fears of his past
and another bolt of cloth has been passed by the foreman
and ticked off the list that he keeps in a book
to read to the crook who works in accounting
and pushed to the double entry
in another book amounting to
daylight robbery
but the snobbery of the age is another page set
in the mill town you get
****** all.

The fine hall's for the Master and all you survey
are the ruins that lie in the ruins of another day.

Get away
to get away and walk through a gateway into a better day
but the Devil you know is the Devil you pay and what would he say
if you jacked in the mill
and worked down the mines
better times indeed?

With pomp and ceremony, and hidden meanings, can,
Poetry with its snobbery, reach the common man?
He's never heard of Keats or cares about the word,
To live without the melody of poetry, is absurd.

Can a line of rhyme reach deep inside his mind,
Ruffle and disturb, bring him to his knees, this lucky find?
With a special message to penetrate his soul,
Enlighten his boring life, or is he dead as coal?

Can a phrase we raise, perforate his thick tough skin?
Encapsulate with heart-break his swinging brick within,
Lay him on his back to gaze at the stars above,
Smell the pretty flowers and hear the sound of Love?

Of course we can reach him, this is what we do,
All men have emotions which are hidden from our view,
One single word can be so profoundly clever,
Infiltrate the common man and steal his mind forever.







Poetry over the centuries has been written by men and women from all walks of life.
Poetry is for everyone.  Yet there is still a fear and a certain snobbery surrounding
poetry which prevents many from entering this world.

Let the air to blow
Cool down the indoor
Drive away whiff of wreckage
Waft away dart of rudeness and snobbery  
Make everything fresh and divine  
To begin the new days in tranquillity!

There is nothing worse than a big know it all
With their Masters or Doctorate degree
Some individuals can be so prideful

Intellectual snobbery
Is annoying

Sorry to say
You don't know it all!

I saw the world through different eyes today
There was no clouded judgement, fake, pretentious nature
I could laugh at anything
Be anyone
Pity anything
Yet the moon still carried on shining

And although we squabbled over art I realised
Art is nothing but a squabble

For sobriety restrains the person I can be
And the person I am
And those restraints keep me in a place I don't want to be

They lock me down in fear and in shame
For the person I can be is caged
It screams out
Opinions which deter people and denounce

And as I see you run through the streets
Ever searching for a place to fit in
My ankles become weak
They buckle
They cannot carry me

For I find no easier place to fit in
Than my very own skin
The place of an outcast
An ungrateful brat
Who drools at the thought of an empty mindless space

Where no judgement, snobbery or scoff is placed
For the idea of a flee ridden rug,
A broken kettle,
A piercing mattress,
An unread journal

It SCREAMS to me freedom

A natural scribe,
A just life
An unjustified rhyme

It calls to me
It calls on and on

But tomorrow I will be the person
The world destined me to be
An untuned symphony
Beating away with a monotone rhythm

Because doubt rears its ugly head
Churns a putrid dread
Which I carry to my empty cage of a heart

And I carry it on
And on

...and upon seeing her ragged clothing
he di'th proclaim, "Alas,
young *****, maiden of America's blood,
where be your books, or the flame and torch?
I'd known thee face anywhere, and avas',
I'd known ye father to be wealthy, of course!"
And with shame in her eye, she took a gander
up the street and then back down, befor'a reply,
"My stars are gone, and my stripes been forsaken,
father has taken innocents and turned them'a slander."
With a glance that appeared to the man to be a plea,
she nervously turned to him with a hoarse whisper,
"Upon these streets I've been cast, shamefully a *****.
Men in suits take my food, and the men of fame keep me cloaked.
The men who speak news on'a radio fill my ears with promise,
and the teacher at the school house fills my head with old lore.
The preacher speaks of God as I stand naked before him
and the peasants throw rocks by direction of a crooked shamus."
The man, with a tear in his eye, reached down from his station
grabbed the ***** hand draped in chains, and with a gentle tug
pulled her up into heaven, lit white with undieing salvation
And he cried, "You're safe here child, free of a crippling nation.
Safe from corrupt companies and celebrity endorsed robbery,
News mutely broadcasted by a governmental eye,
Mind numbing words of public teaching,
ungodly men of unenforced preaching,
And the long arm's short-sighted snobbery."
And with an Eagle's cry and the ringing of the cracked bell,
Libertas stood up and proclaimed, "Only when my child is unbroken,
Shall all men again be free! Let these be my last words spoken!"

Knowledge is now very simple
Single word questions
And answers in a breath.

Knowledge is now aplenty
Evenly cut pieces of bread
Within easy reach of the laziest
Then why do you
Lift your eyebrows
When forty line answers are spit out
For question that won’t hold in four lines.
The Thaj Mahal is not a wonder, its snobbery
The vain argument goes on.
From the other lone
This lone doesn’t look greener
but only a funeral patch

You are argue with yourself
And throwing a set of fruitfulness question:

Why the evening’s rosiness nestles in the snake bird’s eyes?
Where does the garden lizard leave its memory for a while?
When did the owl start cleaning the day’s dirt to end the night?
Who feeds the pair of rabbits on the moon without fail?
In what soft tones does the ant whisper secrets to its mate?
In which impoverished month did the white ants burp and wipe their lips
Who wrenched the cricket’s courage that they make such noise?
Why can’t the **** wake up the neighborhood without loosing its sleep?
Why can’ t the peacock break its contract with the rain clouds?
From where did the fox gain its cunning?
Which river entered the forest, fighting the sea?
Why war, floods, poverty, quakes?

In word : God’s fury.
Look how simple knowledge is,
Beautiful in its commonness.

Still you argue
You swear
What met isn’t knowledge
Nor the way to knowledge
Then of what
Does it symbolise?

Tell me in a word.

======

It’s not Dislike,
not Snobbery,
just
Uneasiness
that makes me leave
well intentioned messages


                                                      ­               hanging.

A question:
Why do you even want to talk to me?

A series of justifications:
-We aren’t close,
-We’ll never be close,
-I have too many hang-ups
-I hate casual conversation.

A silent plea:
Just stop trying,
live your own life,
give up, go away,
I have nothing for you,
you who can find others.
It’s not you,
it’s me.

The truth is,
I don’t particularly want
new friends
anymore.
I can barely hold on
to the ones I have.

Vulnerable years gave me sound advice
and I turn it over in my mind.
The advantage of sadness took my voice,
crumbled it,
sealed away my words
and left me to become unusually communicative
in my own reserved ways.
I understand that I maintain habits of a curious nature,
that I make you the victim
of sleep, preoccupation, hostility.
I know the secret griefs of your wild, unknown hands.
The way you love me
is laced with plagiarism and gesture,
filled with opposite alphabets and slurred speech.
I may be destitute and old
but my skin will weep for you,
my body will be soft,
my words will linger like syrup
in the cracks of your palms.
After an unknown point,
I won’t care what I’m made of.
Judging you is constant waiting and infinite hope.
I am certain that my decency will become snobbery,
that my tolerance will fade
and I will become impatient.
East from here, west from here,
is the sun – uniform, under intricate attention.
If I am the unbroken chain
of successful gestures,
my body is but betrayal
waiting to be unearthed.
Will my repulsive nature
disturb your peace,
the way you rest so unattainable, so beautiful?
What foul dust floats in the wake of your limbs,
so close to the useless sorrows of younger men?
It was a prominent, descending tradition
of pride and fault.
You were supposed to look like him,
a delayed man from long ago,
the centre of the world.
You bubble and boil and brood
and I make you restless
in a warm, wide season.
Too warm, too wide.

Conceit and Condescension flow through my veins
I bleed Superiority
I'm a liar
I could use a dash or two of Confidence in my morning tea
I'd settle for a water with a little splash Vanity
I'm an echo of originality

Vainglorious is my halo
I'm not bothered by what other people think of me
I'm a fraud
I crave Narcissism in my burritos
I lust for Pride in my beer
I am a ghost of inspiration

Pride and Tyranny are my wings
My aura is Aloof
I'm a mask
I'll take a shot of Snobbery with my scotch, neat
I wish I had Arrogance in my head
I am  a mass hallucination

"Stop dangerously playing at philosophy
Stop acting like you have what it takes to be scholarly
You can't even speak properly
You untiringly, and sloppily, try to come up with snobbery
Your diabolical propensity, this fakery
Is just an attempt to associate yourself with roguery
You should put on the masquerade of frivolity
Be all gossipy. Try being frisky. For once, become the life of a party
So that you fit in nicely. Because that's the body's main vitality
Sincerely,
Society                                                                                                 "

'Not to be'
is so easy
for me

my life
has been made happy
by 'not to be'

be like others?
that would be
death to me

be more
than myself?
what fallacy!

too many such people
who claim superiority
not for me

too many
with snobbery
I run away immediately

money
big, big money
not my fancy

all my life
I've hidden away
from clubs and high society

'come subscribe to
our philosophy'
they open the door-it terrifies me

'here is immortality'
I'm a humanist
that doesn't belong to me

'now is your last sunset'
its fading lights do you see?'
Ah for once --- yes--let me be !

.apparently, always, originating from the sort of people who have a major disdain for Phil Collins, and, what could be considered a branch virology - i.e. - the infectious nature of pop music, and the lack of any sort of antibiotics, to counter the infectious nature of this stuff...

namely? the genius of U2...
yes, Bono this, Bono  that....

             whatever...

while cooking dinner...

     the early U2 esp.,

     the subtle rhythm section of
the guitar, not exactly riffs,
or encompassing chords...

more akin to titillating you with
shy solo... or rather: no solo to begin
with... a rhythm based on
what could be a solo...

consistent drumming...
  and like any band that respects
the bass guitar
   (unlike some bands... ahem,
Metallica, where the bass guitar
is inaudible...
        i guess after Cliff Burton's
death... the bass also died
in the production apparatus of
the album)...

but i know, i've seen the face of
fear when walking in
the night...
                i'm a tourist,
what can i say...
              i like snooping for
ontological oddities...
           and i also know the face
of shame,
                 but you wouldn't think
it could come from
the place i'm about to point out...

the guilty pleasure pop song...
****... people are more precious
about their sometimes lacking
eclectic taste in music that...
well... it's staggering
   esp. when, say... compensating
other, frivolous activity deviance(s)
in the bedroom department...

alt. i'll stop being a ******,
if your girls stop being such exhibitionists,
           savvy?

**** this *** tastes better than
the sight of the current afternoon,
and all that... vanilla sky.

if it ever wasn't despicable, poetry with conversational overtones, and yet all the more dear, than that rigid suit, matching socks, clean underware and even a popish demure... of yet another seance in the dead tongue classroom of: rules, rhymes and calibrated perversities worthy of a pedantic despot. if ever a chance to beautify language from the mud-stained dross of daily services, a thousandth 'thank you' from that mosquito-sting itch of the proverbial, formal toot-p-toot: citizens in cohort stringing pirouettes of lardy ballerinas.*

thus in ars díēs (the art of days),
   how not fill the mind with
darting footsteps when standing
immersed in scorthed & crackling
clay of pater tempus?
  a day-to-day epic?
  no affairs with a trojan war
to claim for one's own repertoire,
or thereby the warring eyes
  with magnolian scythe swoons
or that sabotage of mortal frame
whether a penitent man,
  or a patient man,
  the old woman still feigns
that a clock is the heart of a home:
to me its an annoying insistence
to imagine a phlegmatic
take on a carousel:
  + or -, depending on whether
you can fathom the near impossibility
of yawning when nearing
      lull and gaping nox.

but still no 30 years, no show
of cunning, courage or loneliness,
no adventurous scoops or a bargain
of lies, as notably a seemingly routine
banality from the annals of what
others scatter on menus of:
scollops, sand, frolicking,
  alternatively: holiday reading
  in unbearable frying dunes,
   while watching blinding diamond
pinches on the azure -
but to phrase it better,
even with that, twelve dwarfs
an arching temptation for
necromancy, a gypsy love for
ragabond set scenes,
  and all those desires man delves
into from behind a respectable
ordination toward an inconsequential
defeat, with no kiss nor
  tease nor joke aside from
teasing death - thus in patriarchal shroud,
with a mere laurel wreath and
a respectable salvo,
  there's still the endearing compulsion
to riddle and be riddle with
the banalities as if a giggling sparrow,
light-headed commands...

...the chance of phrase,
    the lottery of words,
    against beyond all horror of
imagining orc or jinn or shatter jaw
of wolves...
    
- not all thus said could ever strip
  the horror everyday,
  in pairs and in tiers,
     past the naked inferno
         and yucky gingerbread kneading
of body against body,
   escapism in bypassing courting,
friendship, toward the casual
  burning of bridges and dissociation
from artefact to artefact,
  from the shackles of
   both formality and informality,
a chance to confiscate a brief
   irreversible- opening,
      as said: the world is your oyster,
make sure you only keep it briefly.

alternatively even the monologue,
or one's idealism folds quacking,
  if it ever wasn't worth admiring
  a creaking floorboard or a chair,
as if to say that: worn shoes
                 and a cushioned lair,
  encouraging the slang throng give
up its slavish inclusiveness mantra:
  dictum vogue.

-

in that no-man's land
    or rather: upon the misnomer
savannah -
            a lion claims sight
  of a juicy blank,
  that instrumental pivot of
eye with no tongue narrative -
pristine sheen of two icebergs,
of what is two-thirds acid
   serpentine guts and vigor,
while only a third Pavlov,
pounce and squirming bellydancers
  of the lashes...

   again, on the misnomer savannah,
an image or a metaphor when
I compare the fresh effort
  and the breathing canvas meat,
and these as incision and tear marks?

am I not to say that:
   a. true virtue is not afraid of critique
      (supported by reason)
    with an exempli gratia,
         b. critics do not pass
              citation a., which is to say
   c. critics are like hyenas in
   comparison,
  the once breathing meat,
its gushing burgundy
    croaking bones, mussle sinew
  and the remaining assortment of
pâté crevices emptied,
  akin thus, with the satiated bulk
of a lion's share deserved,
  scavenging the carcass,
  less a feeding while more a looting,
are critics truly the thinkers
for the people who would
rather others think for them?
        
  perhaps poor wording forced
that sort of question,
    yet it still remains, stalled
and waiting,
             by the time i've made my final
  incision, the once pristine alba
      will become a carcass catatomb
  filled with hyenas' smirks and snobbery,
  of those lesser kind journalists -

...by the time I mawl my final gnash,
   there will never be a case
  for a critic's in situ case, comparable
     to an "uncomfortable matress",
prima dona in heaven's name theatrics!
yes, the pervasive argument,
counter: contra carcass.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                           The Poets of Rapallo, a Review

The Poets of Rapallo, Lauren Arrington, Oxford University Press is a brilliant first draft; one looks forward to reading the completed work.

As it is, Dr. Arrington has accomplished brilliant research on the poets -  Yeats, Bunting, Pound, Aldington, MacGreevy, Zukofsky - and their acquaintances who happened to be in the Italian resort town Rapallo (they were not a coterie) in the 1920s and 1930s. The notes alone run to 54 pages of too-small type, and the bibliography to 8.

Unhappily, the text appears to have been rushed, possibly by an impatient publisher, and along with numerous small mistakes there are some serious failures in stereotyping, hasty generalizations predicated on little evidence, and a few condemnations more redolent of Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor than a scholar.

One of the best things about The Poets of Rapallo is the exposition explaining why a great many intellectuals were attracted to Italian Fascism as it was idealistically presented through propaganda early on and not as the moral and ethical disaster it soon proved to be.

Mussolini cleverly promoted his program as primarily cultural, a reach-back to the artistic and architectural unities of an imagined ancient Rome restored and enhanced with modern science and technology. He promoted the arts for his own purposes, of course, but deceptively. In almost any context the construction of schools, libraries, museums, theatres, and cinema studios would be perceived as a good, and absent any close examination accepted by everyone. But in Mussolini’s scheme these cultural artifacts, like Lady Macbeth’s “innocent flower,” concealed the lurking serpent: wars of conquest, poison gas, bombings of undefended cities, death camps, institutionalized racism, mass murders, and other enormities.

The Fascist sympathies of W. B. Yeats and other influencers (as we would say now) in the Irish Republic, including Eamon de Valera, are certainly revelatory. That the new nation came close to goose-stepping through The Celtic Twilight might help explain Ireland’s curious neutrality during the Second World War.

Professor Arrington explains all this very well, and initially is professionally objective. Most of the Rapallo set were not long in learning what Fascism was really about and quickly distanced themselves from it in some embarrassment.  Some were later even more of an embarrassment in their denials and deflections; few seemed to have been able to admit that, yes, they were suckered, as we all have been from time to time

But with the exception of the unrepentant and odious Pound, who was himself a metaphorical serpent to his death, Professor Arrington seems to lose her objectivity with the others.

And why Pound?

As with Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, it is difficult to take seriously someone who considers Pound’s pretentious, pompous, show-off word-soup Cantos to be literature. Pound is now famous only for being famous, and while Arrington appears to forgive Pound for his adamant and malevolent anti-Semitism and his pathetic subservience to Mussolini, in the end she is ruthless toward anyone else who, under Pound’s influence, in his or her naivete even once told an inappropriate joke, appreciated Graeco-Roman architecture, or perhaps saw Mussolini at a distance. This is inexplicable in a text that is otherwise professional and compassionate in avoiding what C. S. Lewis identifies as chronological snobbery.

One also wishes the author had discussed Pound’s post-war appeal as a fashionable prisoner adored or at least pitied by a new generation (Elizabeth Bishop, how could you?).

The book ends abruptly, as if the author were interrupted by a demand by the printers for it now, and so, yes, one hopes for a complete work to follow.

The Poets of Rapallo is not served well by the Oxford University Press, who appear to have been more interested in cutting costs than in presenting a work of scholarship to the world. The print is far too small, the garish spine lettering is more suited to a sale-table ****** mystery, and the retro-1930s holiday cover would be fine for an Agatha Christie yarn but not for a book of literary scholarship.

A question outside the scope of this book but more important is this: why, in a free nation, do so many people feel the desperate need almost to worship a leader? Yes, of course we have presidents and chiefs of police (some of whom love sport shiny admiral’s stars on their collars, and what’s that about?) and bosses and so on, and we depend upon their wise leadership. But why do people wear pictures of some Dear Leader or other on their clothing and chant his name?

I think the president or the famous movie star should wear YOUR name on his shirt and pay YOU for the privilege.

                                                      -30-