Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Victor D López Dec 2018
Victor D. López (October 11, 2018)

You were born five years before the beginning of the Spanish civil war and
Lived in a modest two-story home in the lower street of Fontan, facing the ocean that
Gifted you its wealth and beauty but also robbed you of your beloved and noblest eldest
Brother, Juan, who was killed while working as a fisherman out to sea at the tender age of 19.

You were a little girl much prone to crying. The neighbors would make you cry just by saying,
"Chora, neniña, chora" [Cry little girl, cry] which instantly produced inconsolable wailing.
At the age of seven or eight you were blinded by an eye Infection. The village doctor
Saved your eyesight, but not before you missed a full year of school.

You never recovered from that lost time. Your impatience and the shame of feeling left behind prevented
You from making up for lost time. Your wounded pride, the shame of not knowing what your friends knew,
Your restlessness and your inability to hold your tongue when you were corrected by your teacher created
A perfect storm that inevitably tossed your diminutive boat towards the rocks.

When still a girl, you saw Franco with his escort leave his yacht in Fontan. With the innocence of a girl
Who would never learn to hold her tongue, you asked a neighbor who was also present, "Who is that Man?"
"The Generalissimo Francisco Franco," she answered and whispered “Say ‘Viva Franco’ when he Passes by.”
With the innocence of a little girl and the arrogance of an incorrigible old soul you screamed, pointing:

"That's the Generalissimo?" followed up loud laughter, "He looks like Tom Thumb!"
A member of his protective detail approached you, raising his machine gun with the apparent intention of
Hitting you with the stock. "Leave her alone!" Franco ordered. "She is just a child — the fault is not hers."
You told that story many times in my presence, always with a smile or laughing out loud.

I don't believe you ever appreciated the possible import of that "feat" of contempt for
Authority. Could that act of derision have played some small part in their later
Coming for your father and taking him prisoner, torturing him for months and eventually
Condemning him to be executed by firing squad in the Plaza de Maria Pita?

He escaped his fate with the help of a fascist officer who freed him as I’ve noted earlier.
Such was his reputation, the power of his ideas and the esteem even of friends who did not share his views.
Such was your innocence or your psychic blind spot that you never realized your possible contribution to
His destruction. Thank God you never connected the possible impact of your words on his downfall.

You adored your dad throughout your life with a passion of which he was most deserving.
He died shortly after the end of the Spanish Civil War. A mother with ten mouths to feed
Needed help. You stepped up in response to her silent, urgent need. At the age of
Eleven you left school for the last time and began working full time.

Children could not legally work in Franco’s Spain. Nevertheless, a cousin who owned a cannery
Took pity on your situation and allowed you to work full-time in his fish cannery factory in Sada.
You earned the same salary as the adult, predominantly women workers and worked better
Than most of them with a dexterity and rapidity that served you well your entire life.

In your free time before work you carried water from the communal fountain to neighbors for a few cents.
You also made trips carrying water on your head for home and with a pail in each hand. This continued after
You began work in Cheche’s cannery. You rose long before sunrise to get the water for
Home and for the local fishermen before they left on their daily fishing trips for their personal water pails.

All of the money you earned went to your mom with great pride that a girl could provide more than the salary of a
Grown woman--at the mere cost of her childhood and education. You also washed clothes for some
Neighbors for a few cents more, with diapers for newborns always free just for the pleasure of being
Allowed to see, hold spend some time with the babies you so dearly loved you whole life through.
When you were old enough to go to the Sunday cinema and dances, you continued the
Same routine and added washing and ironed the Sunday clothes for the young fishermen
Who wanted to look their best for the weekly dances. The money from that third job was your own
To pay for weekly hairdos, the cinema and dance hall entry fee. The rest still went to your mom.

At 16 you wanted to go to emigrate to Buenos Aires to live with an aunt.
Your mom agreed to let you--provided you took your younger sister, Remedios, with you.
You reluctantly agreed. You found you also could not legally work in Buenos Aires as a minor.
So you convincingly lied about your age and got a job as a nurse’s aide at a clinic soon after your arrival.

You washed bedpans, made beds, scrubbed floors and did other similar assigned tasks
To earn enough money to pay the passage for your mom and two youngest brothers,
Sito (José) and Paco (Francisco). Later you got a job as a maid at a hotel in the resort town of
Mar del Plata whose owners loved your passion for taking care of their infant children.

You served as a maid and unpaid babysitter. Between your modest salary and
Tips as a maid you soon earned the rest of the funds needed for your mom’s and brothers’
Passage from Spain. You returned to Buenos Aires and found two rooms you could afford in an
Excellent neighborhood at an old boarding house near the Spanish Consulate in the center of the city.

Afterwards you got a job at a Ponds laboratory as a machine operator of packaging
Machines for Ponds’ beauty products. You made good money and helped to support your
Mom and brothers  while she continued working as hard as she always had in Spain,
No longer selling fish but cleaning a funeral home and washing clothing by hand.

When your brothers were old enough to work, they joined you in supporting your
Mom and getting her to retire from working outside the home.
You lived with your mom in the same home until you married dad years later,
And never lost the bad habit of stubbornly speaking your mind no matter the cost.

Your union tried to force you to register as a Peronista. Once burned twice cautious,
You refused, telling the syndicate you had not escaped one dictator to ally yourself with
Another. They threatened to fire you. When you would not yield, they threatened to
Repatriate you, your mom and brothers back to Spain.

I can’t print your reply here. They finally brought you to the general manager’s office
Demanding he fire you. You demanded a valid reason for their request.
The manager—doubtless at his own peril—refused, saying he had no better worker
Than you and that the union had no cause to demand your dismissal.

After several years of courtship, you and dad married. You had the world well in hand with
Well-paying jobs and strong savings that would allow you to live a very comfortable life.
You seemed incapable of having the children you so longed for. Three years of painful
Treatments allowed you to give me life and we lived three more years in a beautiful apartment.

I have memories from a very tender age and remember that apartment very well. But things changed
When you decided to go into businesses that soon became unsustainable in the runaway inflation and
Economic chaos of the Argentina of the early 1960’s. I remember only too well your extreme sacrifice
And dad’s during that time—A theme for another day, but not for today.

You were the hardest working person I’ve ever known. You were not afraid of any honest
Job no matter how challenging and your restlessness and competitive spirit always made you a
Stellar employee everywhere you worked no matter how hard or challenging the job.
Even at home you could not stand still unless there was someone with whom to chat awhile.

You were a truly great cook thanks in part to learning from the chef of the hotel where you had
Worked in Mar del Plata awhile—a fellow Spaniard of Basque descent who taught you many of his favorite
Dishes—Spanish and Italian specialties. You were always a terribly picky eater. But you
Loved to cook for family and friends—the more the merrier—and for special holidays.

Dad was also a terrific cook, but with a more limited repertoire. I learned to cook
With great joy from both of you at a young age. And, though neither my culinary skills nor
Any aspect of my life can match you or dad, I too am a decent cook and
Love to cook, especially for meals shared with loved ones.

You took great pleasure in introducing my friends to some of your favorite dishes such as
Cazuela de mariscos, paella marinera, caldo Gallego, stews, roasts, and your incomparable
Canelones, ñoquis, orejas, crepes, muñuelos, flan, and the rest of your long culinary repertoire.
In primary and middle school dad picked me up every day for lunch before going to work.

You and he worked the second shift and did not leave for work until around 2:00 p.m.
Many days, dad would bring a carload of classmates with me for lunch.
I remember as if it were yesterday the faces of my Jewish, Chinese, Japanese, German, Irish
And Italian friends when first introduced to octopus, Spanish tortilla, caldo Gallego, and flan.

The same was true during college and law school.  At times our home resembled an
U.N. General Assembly meeting—but always featuring food. You always treated my
Closest friends as if they were your children and a number of them to this day love
You as a second mother though they have not seen you for many years.

You had tremendous passion and affinity for being a mother (a great pity to have just one child).
It made you over-protective. You bought my clothes at an exclusive boutique. I became a
Living doll for someone denied such toys as a young girl. You would not let me out of your sight and
Kept me in a germ-free environment that eventually produced some negative health issues.

My pediatrician told you often “I want to see him with ***** finger nails and scraped knees.”
You dismissed the statement as a joke. You’d take me often to the park and to my
Favorite merry-go-round. But I had not one friend until I was seven or eight and then just one.
I did not have a real circle of friends until I was about 13 years old. Sad.

I was walking and talking up a storm in complete sentences when I was one year old.
You were concerned and took me to my pediatrician who laughed. He showed me a
Keychain and asked, “What is this Danny.” “Those are your car keys” I replied. After a longer
Evaluation he told my mom it was important to encourage and feed my curiosity.

According to you, I was unbearable (some things never change). I asked dad endless questions such as,
“Why is the sun hot? How far are the stars and what are they made of? Why
Can’t I see the reflection of a flashlight pointed at the sky at night? Why don’t airplanes
Have pontoons on top of the wheels so they can land on both water and land? Etc., etc., etc.

He would answer me patiently to the best of his ability and wait for the inevitable follow-ups.
I remember train and bus rides when very young sitting on his lap asking him a thousand Questions.
Unfortunately, when I asked you a question you could not answer, you more often than not made up an answer Rather than simply saying “I don’t know,” or “go ask dad” or even “go to hell you little monster!”

I drove you crazy. Whatever you were doing I wanted to learn to do, whether it was working on the
Sewing machine, knitting, cooking, ironing, or anything else that looked remotely interesting.
I can’t imagine your frustration. Yet you always found only joy in your little boy at all ages.
Such was your enormous love which surrounded me every day of my life and still does.

When you told me a story and I did not like the ending, such as with “Little Red Riding Hood,”
I demanded a better one and would cry interminably if I did not get it. Poor mom. What patience!
Reading or making up a story that little Danny did not approve of could be dangerous.
I remember one day in a movie theater watching the cartoons I loved (and still love).

Donald Duck came out from stage right eating a sandwich. Sitting between you and dad I asked you
For a sandwich. Rather than explaining that the sandwich was not real, that we’d go to dinner after the show
To eat my favorite steak sandwich (as usual), you simply told me that Donald Duck would soon bring me the sandwich. But when the scene changed, Donald Duck came back smacking his lips without the sandwich.

Then all hell broke loose. I wailed at the top of my lungs that Donald Duck had eaten my sandwich.
He had lied to me and not given me the promised sandwich. That was unbearable. There was
No way to console me or make me understand—too late—that Donald Duck was also hungry,
That it was his sandwich, not mine, or that what was on the screen was just a cartoon and not real.

He, Donald Duck, mi favorite Disney character (then and now) hade eaten this little boy’s Sandwich. Such a Betrayal by a loved one was inconceivable and unbearable. You and dad had to drag me out of the theater ranting And crying at the injustice at top volume. The tantrum (extremely rare for me then, less so now) went on for awhile, but all was well again when my beloved Aunt Nieves gave me a ******* with jam and told me Donald had sent it.

So much water under the bridge. Your own memories, like smoke in a soft breeze, have dissipated
Into insubstantial molecules like so many stars in the night sky that paint no coherent picture.
An entire life of vital conversations turned to the whispers of children in a violent tropical storm,
Insubstantial, imperceptible fragments—just a dream that interrupts an eternal nightmare.

That is your life today. Your memory was always prodigious. You knew the name of every person
You ever met, and those of their family members. You could recall entire conversations word for word.
Three years of schooling proved more than sufficient for you to go out into the world, carving your own
Path from the Inhospitable wilderness and learning to read and write at the age of 16.

You would have been a far better lawyer than I and a fiery litigator who would have fought injustice
Wherever you found it and always defended the rights of those who cannot defend themselves,
Especially children who were always your most fervent passion. You sacrificed everything for others,
Always put yourself dead-last, and never asked for anything in return.

You were an excellent dancer and could sing like an angel. Song was your release in times of joy and
In times of pain. You did not drink or smoke or over-indulge in anything. For much of your life your only minor Indulgence was a weekly trip to the beauty parlor—even in Spain where your washing and ironing income
Paid for that. You were never vain in any way, but your self-respect required you to try to look your best.

You loved people and unlike dad who was for the most part shy, you were quite happy in the all-to-infrequent
Role as the life of the party—singing, dressing up as Charlie Chaplin or a newborn for New Year’s Eve parties with Family and close friends. A natural story-teller until dementia robbed you of the ability to articulate your thoughts,
You’d entertain anyone who would listen with anecdotes, stories, jokes and lively conversation.

In short: you were an exceptional person with a large spirit, a mischievous streak, and an enormous heart.
I know I am not objective about you, but any of your surviving friends and family members who knew you
Well will attest to this and more in a nanosecond. You had an incredibly positive, indomitable attitude
That led you to rush in where angels fear to treat not out of foolishness but out of supreme confidence.

Life handed you cartloads of lemons—enough to pickle the most ardent optimist. And you made not just
Lemonade but lemon merengue pie, lemon sorbet, lemon drops, then ground up the rind for sweetest
Rice pudding, flan, fried dough and a dozen other delicacies. And when all the lemons were gone, you sowed the Seeds from which extraordinarily beautiful lemon trees grew with fruit sweeter than grapes, plums, or cherries.

I’ve always said with great pride that you were a far better writer than I. How many excellent novels,
Plays, and poems could you have written with half of my education and three times my workload?
There is no justice in this world. Why does God give bread to those without teeth? Your
Prodigious memory no longer allows you to recognize me. I was the last person you forgot.

But even now when you cannot have a conversation in any language, Sometimes your eyes sparkle, and
You call me “neniño” (my little boy in Galician) and I know that for an instant you are no longer alone.
But too son the light fades and the darkness returns. I can only see you a few hours one day a week.
My life circumstances do not leave me another option. The visits are bitter sweet but I’m grateful for them.

Someday I won’t even have that opportunity to spend a few hours with you. You’ll have no
Monument to mark your passing save in my memory so long as reason remains. An entire
Life of incalculable sacrifice will leave behind only the poorest living legacy of love
In your son who lacks appropriate words to adequately honor your memory, and always will.


*          *          *

The day has come, too son. October 11, 2018. The call came at 3:30 am.
An hour or two after I had fallen asleep. They tried CPR in vain. There will be no more
Opportunities to say, “I Love you,” to caress your hands and face, to softly sing in your ear,
To put cream on your hands, or to hope that this week you might remember me.

No more time to tell you the accomplishments of loved ones, who I saw, what they told me,
Who asked about you this week, or to pray with you, or to ask if you would give me a kiss by putting my
Cheek close to your lips, to feel joy when you graced me with many little kisses in response,
Or tell you “Maybe next time” when as more often than not the case for months you did not respond.

In saying good bye I’d give you the kiss and hug Alice always sent you,
Followed by three more kisses on the forehead from dad (he always gave you three) and one from me.
I’d leave the TV on to a channel with people and no sound and when possible
Wait for you to close your eyes before leaving.

Time has run out. No further extensions are possible. My prayers change from asking God to protect
You and by His Grace allow you to heal a little bit each day to praying that God protect your
Soul and dad’s and that He allow you to rest in peace in His kingdom. I miss you and Dad very much
And will do so as long as God grants me the gift of reason. I never knew what it is to be alone. I do now.

Four years seeing your blinding light reduced to a weak flickering candle in total darkness.
Four years fearing that you might be aware of your situation.
Four years praying that you would not feel pain, sadness or loneliness.
Four years learning to say goodbye. The rest of my life now waiting in the hope of seeing you again.

I love you mom, with all my heart, always and forever.
Written originally in Spanish and translated into English with minor additions on my mom's passing (October 2018). You can hear all six of my Unsung Heroes poems read by me in my podcasts at https://open.spotify.com/show/1zgnkuAIVJaQ0Gb6pOfQOH. (plus much more of my fiction, non-fiction and poetry in English and Spanish)
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2020
i return to these words that are barely
an architectural promise of a house as a mere:
rummaging squatter,
that this will eventually become
scrutinised by eyes beside my own...
well it's not like i rhyme-on-the-cheap...
i've been trying to watch some penny
dreadful episodes:
what would woman do without
the devil; i suppose man tangled with
god is nothing but an obnoxious brat...
the devil of emotions
and their plethora; this belittling god
fiddling with stones and creases
in york oak stand-alones...
                          then it came like
an itch: poached-taming-(of a)-toe...
just a tatty... a humble:
i am pretty sure i saw the letters
prefix a toad somewhere: po-ta-to(e):
ah... there! poached tame toad...
a sputniks for a brainz...
in penny dreadful: john claire
the name of victor frankenstein's monster:
oh dear old god: this continued
exasperation with poetry:
one must live a most unsatisfying life
to cross the rubricon of
old testament anemia:
            i think i admired wordsworth too... -

playing house with robert duncan -
especially now:
when the house is in complete disarray
and what was once cluttered:
is more an upheaval...

- i used to write while listening
to music - no i write for the scraps
of this yawning silence
and all of its blisters of interludes -
yes:
i want a noun to turn
into a verb: not a mere:
metaphorical "transgression"
of how it's impossible
for the wine to be blood
for the bread to be flesh:
this poetry of: cannibalism?

i pry open the adventures with
cats:
i own two... my house doesn't
give off whiffs of ****:
god... i know the horrid stench
of either **** or ****
that isn't my own:
solipsistic in that...
       it's not a field of strawberries...

it's acidic to the nose:
it's beyond anything i'd ever
want to ingest: and i have once...
giggled... ******* into a glass
of wine to: punk up
the sacrament -
then again: i also ****** on my leg
when standing in a shower
cubicle and i attest to disagree:
there's something...

unconsciously prodding:
the advent prior to... learning to stress
that bladder into a muscle
and keeping it in...
that i can counter the will
of keeping it in...
that i can unwill the sensible
lesson and: it's like... anything
aqua focused -
a shower is a baptism
jumping into a pool is a rebirth:
or an invitation to
beside oneself with: start-agains...

it's very much unlike
drinking... whether it's a coffee
or a whiskey sour...
the ingestion of liquid is less
starry-eyed gluttonous freeze...
having ate nothing but hot air
or...
the whole body needs immersion
or... the ******* on a leg
prior to: then taking a shower...
hell... even mixing one's own
**** with a glass of the goat's blood
is also... "something" / something-...

to pray for sensible things is
to mumble or there's that devil's
dozen of oysters:
12 by feeding:
the 13th in the form of a ****
by nibble lick and spoon
of the tongue and lips' acrobatics...

i'm playing house with robert duncan...
i'm not a householder -
a term as ancient as: librarian
by my account -
              but the house is in disarray:
the kitchen is being subjected
to a 24 / 7  dehumidifier drone
army... i can hear the machines
working their insomnia down
below:
i have custard feet and i feel like
sinking: not falling...
when i stand to these machines:
hellish-jelly-feet...
   when i turn on the stove
and make an omelette -

     the living room (civil room,
a joke from my youth i conjured -
a room where we learn civility)...
is also a makeshift kitchen...
i'm currently playing chess from time
to time with: the memory of:
where did i put these spices...
this spoon this plate...
       it's not chess but the game is
irreversible -
it's also time consuming and it's
not that i don't keep attention to detail:
but i'm gladly not thinking forward...
i'm strategizing in reverse -

but such is the game...
robert duncan - poet and householder -
a chance reading of a moth:
but this is what makes all of this
so enjoyable: it's a niche a cul de sac
of decisions: an expansion
of time that doesn't make it to the annals
of: better to... burn... than to fade away...
either make it in your youth:
nice and proper...
or... what's the game then:
last man standing?
the list of contemporaries
drawing thin, short?

playing house... that i had a youth
i remembered when i'd too play with dolls with
my neighbour's daughter -
clearly ken and barbie had a problem
with their missing parts -
eunuchs of the sun's blind spots...
unlike when we were allowed
to take a bath together as:
not siblings but as strange dialectical opposites
to this duality: that wouldn't encompass
my somehow yet to be owned:
me good & evil...

    me tamer - me: 19th century's frankenstein:
dr. Jekyll etc.
     a rule for life: apparently...
is to pet a cat when you see one
in the street...
it's not exactly an easy task...
i guess first a show of mutual
assurance (and respect) -
this black tubby - with a bandana
for where a leash-leftover could
have been (collar) -
he starts walking anti-clockwise...
i turn aside and start walking
clockwise to pass him...
then we shuffle our approach...
like... i would always want
to pass a pigeon strutting
senseless on the pavement
with enough space so that it doesn't
have to find it necessary to fly off...

luckily for me i managed to "pet"
a stranger's cat...
my luck that it was black
but then again it was that sort
of hour
that's always a presumption
of a lazy gotten afternoon...
rule of life: pet a cat on a street...
it's not exactly a ******* given:
an "oops"... done that... tick...
self-help guru sold this trick...
                    
a selfie contra the days...
when the camera was used and...
other people would take pictures
of you... or of you and:
when there was an "us" - together...
shorthand of the limbos of life -
magnum opus words
constipated into this: makeshift
of a hopeful paragraph...

no, this couldn't be a simple meditation:
confined to...
robert duncan's household -
and my predicament of... playing memory
chess: well it's not exactly clutter:
the kitchen cannot be used
so there's a makeshift refugee camp
version of it in the living room yadda yadda...

which is a commentary on...
my distrust for the h'american literary movement
of the 20th century teasing an abandonment
with the "old ways"...
buddhism, odd... mostly...
   fair enough:
              ezra pound abhorred the taoists...
my one lesson from tao...
the best way you can aid the world:
is for the world to forget you
and for you to forget the world...
which is probably a plagiarism
of epicurus or vice versa...

              i can't imagine the demands
of pop philosophy:
pop culture on the other hand is much
easier to stomach: it's even enjoyable -
but the pop philosophy of nihilism -
which is: a pop philosophy...
it's not even required reading -
unless: you're rereading your own?
thrown into the river -
i am becoming a being of more becoming...
change is the only perpetual: blah...
if it's not my own rummagings it's
probably someone else's:
which has probably become diluted /
filtered down and is a cubism's monstrosity...

books sell for two reasons:
(1) they are genuinely read by a zeitgeist youth...
which invokes social pressures of
the collected experience - in ref. to:
something that can be talked about...
(2) they are read by "propagandists" -
by a small majority who pressure others to...
but the pressure only lasts for
airs - for a mere ownership of a book
should one be met with a scrutiny of
not owning it - reading it is beside the point...

and here in the land of "leftovers":
the middle of the road the people:
who of their own volition write and read...
that i was never ****** into
a cult of stephen king...
i was born too late to be:
but i was: ****** into a postmortem
oeuvre deity picking almost
anything by william burroughs...
i: reader: dear reader: clicked...

- i can't objectify this house -
i am subject to it: coerced by it...
made by bias upon bias
whether there's clutter or there isn't...
whether the kitchen is functionable
or not: that some people have
a kitchen but prefer to eat out:
to be seen: eating...
             i check the gradations of
punctuations and i know: still...
i will not recite these words not
out of gestures for bombast -
or pride - but for some sinister
urge to not abuse this sacred silence:
******* taught man
to manouvre... manouvre...
manouvre... maneouvre...
        man-oeuvre...
                   drop the hyphen boyo:
manoeuvre... wow!
"too many" consonants
in ****** words... how about a
magic trick? how many *******
vowels are in: man-oovr'eh?
phonetics king of the anti-spelling:
but then...
the synonym sounds
with aliases...
towing two different meanings:
too hot to count two
          ooh ooze - zizzez...
              zyzzes...
                     i can bring this anglo-slack-son
to kneel but only for a while:
before the architectural scholarly-
  takes over and the phonetic becomes:
lost, crude... based feral...

- a robert duncan is not a...
it's not mediocre is not necessary to be:
gee-whizz of frank o'hara's
cosmopolitan...
it's flesh of the h'american tongue
it's: sensibly accurate to provide
the best outlet:
for those of us still born in that
century - of what remained of us:
or rather of what remained
of the innocence of the 1990s...

that i am not nostalgic is: no proof...
that i write hardly any word of fiction:
one spaniard, once... commented
on my shoes:
i think he played a miniature version
of a flute: it looked like a reed...
the "spanish" superstition
concerning: a comment on one's shoes...
he admired... my shoes...
what's that saying:
about shoes: to best walk in one's
own before wishing to fill the shoes
of others...
a verb as simple as: there's no
presence of "run": when coupled
to: i am running: i ran...
it's raining...
i run i ruin fun... concentrated
"rhyming": literally linear: no staccato...

******* me over "jenga"...
this microcosm of sounds -
yet to draw deep leverage from
a meaning: it comes back as a mere
sound: worse a... mimic -
an aeon of only hearing
the heaving of a crow's crackling
croak... like a breaking of a tongue:
or... the lost trill of the R in
either fwench or: english...

exemplified R: with a diacritical mark
to make emphasis of the trill...

yes... this democratic oath of poets..
well: we're not going to tend to
the republic of the wizened goats
ex athens... are we?
the democratic oath of poets -
unlike the hippocratic loaf...
            which is a spectacular failure
since i have seen what
little ambitions can do:
when... the boat is not being
rocked: yet someone is still willing
to throw someone... overboard...
now that the boat is rocking:
i see nooses instead of paddles...
the seas are still rife with calm...

playing house with robert duncan -
especially now:
when the house is in complete disarray
and what was once cluttered:
is more an upheaval...

- i used to write while listening
to music - no i write for the scraps
of this yawning silence
and all of its blisters of interludes -
yes:
i want a noun to turn
into a verb: not a mere:
metaphorical "transgression"
of how it's impossible
for the wine to be blood
for the bread to be flesh:
this poetry of: cannibalism?

i pry open the adventures with
cats:
i own two... my house doesn't
give off whiffs of ****:
god... i know the horrid stench
of either **** or ****
that isn't my own:
solipsistic in that...
       it's not a field of strawberries...

it's acidic to the nose:
it's beyond anything i'd ever
want to ingest: and i have once...
giggled... ******* into a glass
of wine to: punk up
the sacrament -
then again: i also ****** on my leg
when standing in a shower
cubicle and i attest to disagree:
there's something...

unconsciously prodding:
the advent prior to... learning to stress
that bladder into a muscle
and keeping it in...
that i can counter the will
of keeping it in...
that i can unwill the sensible
lesson and: it's like... anything
aqua focused -
a shower is a baptism
jumping into a pool is a rebirth:
or an invitation to
beside oneself with: start-agains...

it's very much unlike
drinking... whether it's a coffee
or a whiskey sour...
the ingestion of liquid is less
starry-eyed gluttonous freeze...
having ate nothing but hot air
or...
the whole body needs immersion
or... the ******* on a leg
prior to: then taking a shower...
hell... even mixing one's own
**** with a glass of the goat's blood
is also... "something" / something-...

to pray for sensible things is
to mumble or there's that devil's
dozen of oysters:
12 by feeding:
the 13th in the form of a ****
by nibble lick and spoon
of the tongue and lips' acrobatics...

i'm playing house with robert duncan...
i'm not a householder -
a term as ancient as: librarian
by my account -
              but the house is in disarray:
the kitchen is being subjected
to a 24 / 7  dehumidifier drone
army... i can hear the machines
working their insomnia down
below:
i have custard feet and i feel like
sinking: not falling...
when i stand to these machines:
hellish-jelly-feet...
   when i turn on the stove
and make an omelette -

     the living room (civil room,
a joke from my youth i conjured -
a room where we learn civility)...
is also a makeshift kitchen...
i'm currently playing chess from time
to time with: the memory of:
where did i put these spices...
this spoon this plate...
       it's not chess but the game is
irreversible -
it's also time consuming and it's
not that i don't keep attention to detail:
but i'm gladly not thinking forward...
i'm strategizing in reverse -

but such is the game...
robert duncan - poet and householder -
a chance reading of a moth:
but this is what makes all of this
so enjoyable: it's a niche a cul de sac
of decisions: an expansion
of time that doesn't make it to the annals
of: better to... burn... than to fade away...
either make it in your youth:
nice and proper...
or... what's the game then:
last man standing?
the list of contemporaries
drawing thin, short?

playing house... that i had a youth
i remembered when i'd too play with dolls with
my neighbour's daughter -
clearly ken and barbie had a problem
with their missing parts -
eunuchs of the sun's blind spots...
unlike when we were allowed
to take a bath together as:
not siblings but as strange dialectical opposites
to this duality: that wouldn't encompass
my somehow yet to be owned:
me good & evil...

    me tamer - me: 19th century's frankenstein:
dr. Jekyll etc.
     a rule for life: apparently...
is to pet a cat when you see one
in the street...
it's not exactly an easy task...
i guess first a show of mutual
assurance (and respect) -
this black tubby - with a bandana
for where a leash-leftover could
have been (collar) -
he starts walking anti-clockwise...
i turn aside and start walking
clockwise to pass him...
then we shuffle our approach...
like... i would always want
to pass a pigeon strutting
senseless on the pavement
with enough space so that it doesn't
have to find it necessary to fly off...

luckily for me i managed to "pet"
a stranger's cat...
my luck that it was black
but then again it was that sort
of hour
that's always a presumption
of a lazy gotten afternoon...
rule of life: pet a cat on a street...
it's not exactly a ******* given:
an "oops"... done that... tick...
self-help guru sold this trick...
                    
a selfie contra the days...
when the camera was used and...
other people would take pictures
of you... or of you and:
when there was an "us" - together...
shorthand of the limbos of life -
magnum opus words
constipated into this: makeshift
of a hopeful paragraph...

no, this couldn't be a simple meditation:
confined to...
robert duncan's household -
and my predicament of... playing memory
chess: well it's not exactly clutter:
the kitchen cannot be used
so there's a makeshift refugee camp
version of it in the living room yadda yadda...

which is a commentary on...
my distrust for the h'american literary movement
of the 20th century teasing an abandonment
with the "old ways"...
buddhism, odd... mostly...
   fair enough:
              ezra pound abhorred the taoists...
my one lesson from tao...
the best way you can aid the world:
is for the world to forget you
and for you to forget the world...
which is probably a plagiarism
of epicurus or vice versa...

              i can't imagine the demands
of pop philosophy:
pop culture on the other hand is much
easier to stomach: it's even enjoyable -
but the pop philosophy of nihilism -
which is: a pop philosophy...
it's not even required reading -
unless: you're rereading your own?
thrown into the river -
i am becoming a being of more becoming...
change is the only perpetual: blah...
if it's not my own rummagings it's
probably someone else's:
which has probably become diluted /
filtered down and is a cubism's monstrosity...

books sell for two reasons:
(1) they are genuinely read by a zeitgeist youth...
which invokes social pressures of
the collected experience - in ref. to:
something that can be talked about...
(2) they are read by "propagandists" -
by a small majority who pressure others to...
but the pressure only lasts for
airs - for a mere ownership of a book
should one be met with a scrutiny of
not owning it - reading it is beside the point...

and here in the land of "leftovers":
the middle of the road the people:
who of their own volition write and read...
that i was never ****** into
a cult of stephen king...
i was born too late to be:
but i was: ****** into a postmortem
oeuvre deity picking almost
anything by william burroughs...
i: reader: dear reader: clicked...

- i can't objectify this house -
i am subject to it: coerced by it...
made by bias upon bias
whether there's clutter or there isn't...
whether the kitchen is functionable
or not: that some people have
a kitchen but prefer to eat out:
to be seen: eating...
             i check the gradations of
punctuations and i know: still...
i will not recite these words not
out of gestures for bombast -
or pride - but for some sinister
urge to not abuse this sacred silence:
******* taught man
to manouvre... manouvre...
manouvre... maneouvre...
        man-oeuvre...
                   drop the hyphen boyo:
manoeuvre... wow!
"too many" consonants
in ****** words... how about a
magic trick? how many *******
vowels are in: man-oovr'eh?
phonetics king of the anti-spelling:
but then...
the synonym sounds
with aliases...
towing two different meanings:
too hot to count two
          ooh ooze - zizzez...
              zyzzes...
                     i can bring this anglo-slack-son
to kneel but only for a while:
before the architectural scholarly-
  takes over and the phonetic becomes:
lost, crude... based feral...

- a robert duncan is not a...
it's not mediocre is not necessary to be:
gee-whizz of frank o'hara's
cosmopolitan...
it's flesh of the h'american tongue
it's: sensibly accurate to provide
the best outlet:
for those of us still born in that
century - of what remained of us:
or rather of what remained
of the innocence of the 1990s...

that i am not nostalgic is: no proof...
that i write hardly any word of fiction:
one spaniard, once... commented
on my shoes:
i think he played a miniature version
of a flute: it looked like a reed...
the "spanish" superstition
concerning: a comment on one's shoes...
he admired... my shoes...
what's that saying:
about shoes: to best walk in one's
own before wishing to fill the shoes
of others...
a verb as simple as: there's no
presence of "run": when coupled
to: i am running: i ran...
it's raining...
i run i ruin fun... concentrated
"rhyming": literally linear: no staccato...

******* me over "jenga"...
this microcosm of sounds -
yet to draw deep leverage from
a meaning: it comes back as a mere
sound: worse a... mimic -
an aeon of only hearing
the heaving of a crow's crackling
croak... like a breaking of a tongue:
or... the lost trill of the R in
either fwench or: english...

exemplified R: with a diacritical mark
to make emphasis of the trill...
i will not heed to market emphasis...
(Ꝛ if you might ask:
there's no leg to stand on...
the "R" falls into a turddle -
a tumble: a trill)...

ꝛ - a missing hammer: it would seem...
a sickle my dreading of apparents...

yes... this democratic oath of poets..
well: we're not going to tend to
the republic of the wizened goats
ex athens... are we?
the democratic oath of poets -
unlike the hippocratic loaf...
            which is a spectacular failure
since i have seen what
little ambitions can do:
when... the boat is not being
rocked: yet someone is still willing
to throw someone... overboard...
now that the boat is rocking:
i see nooses instead of paddles...
the seas are still rife with calm...

clamour for the subjective experince...
none of this: hammer to a nail
sort of "magic" that leaves
one... sensibly "ostententious":

a semi-decent poem contra:
a good night's sleep...
always the latter...
   but unlike today:
6am wake... giving blood for
scrutiny - subsequently...
a broad need for 4 hours in...
a makeshift wilderness...
from Hainault Forest
to Havering County Park...

                        i would clearly have
to start all over again...
should i mind reading back into Tironian
notes and what i had expected to find...
it will suffice to mind...
the characters of empress wu...

         國 (guo)

beginning: coming back to bite some back
from a beijing pork belly:
where you'd first have to make caramel
from the sugar dissolved in oil:
before all the wine would care to glisten...

             𤯔 (ren)...

                              in reverse:
ren-guo - people (of) nation...
                      walking past this field:
impromptu: please keep off of field...
that's what i read...
      this was exclusive -
there was not need to denote further...

and this funny oddity:
saying good-morning or a hello
in an environment that's beside...
walking down the street with a stable
hound of anonymity surrounding
crisp grey blockage of: the amass!
yet people are so expecting
a common courtesy to brief you
on a morning: good...
is it? incessantly so! apparently!
switch them to the torment of the cements
and the back-to-basics apathetic crew
is on the counter...
ghost faces...
  but push them far enough to be alone
and into nature:
they pass a stranger and apparently
demand a prompt: hello!

i go into a depth of nature like
i have *** with prostitutes in a brothel:
i want to have as little to do with talking
that i'd loan: smothering someone
to shut up...
i came for the crows the knee-high-hallubaloos
of nonsense that...
i will extract myself to break
fasting to give blood by foraging
some blackberries...

i still prefer the lesser democratic voices...
it's not that robert duncan was going
to be a stand-alone show akin
to gibsberg...
but... my house is currently in disarray...
i'm playing chess by having
a makeshift kitchen in my living room...
i don't even know where the spices
are! but i'll manage
to bake a **** fine moroccan kobhz!

- this little but current focus for a genetic
"protection": half of me,
then a quarter, an eight, a sixteenth,
a 32-and-a-third... jump toward
64... 128... and... from all these fractions:
half and half:
beauty is no longer viable:
i imagine love as being a prized
bull kept for nothing except
for ******* the gene pool silly...

that's "love" from a darwin from
a materialism: breeding racing horses
or... both the submissive
and the contentious workers -
pay up! but i am not looking
for the generic beauty of
the plateau of the women
employed as surrogates
in this darwinistic harem...
            
isn't it obvious? it would have been
better have be allowed ourselves
to be dead: aborted...
but then: critter load: make-up...
i actually offend my own existence
by affording these dorian gray
parades to take hope in puruing
norms...
i like the scaps i like the wounds
i even like nibbling on the shellfish!

****-****** literature is my achilles
heel...
better a heel than trodding along
with faking a ******* knee...
robert duncan... jack spicer...
i like reading eyes by (metaphorically)
licking up the ****...
and it's not like i might give good head...
i employ a growth of
***** hair to convert my chin
to a niqab like i might: perhaps blink...

then again: face-masks and fashion?
is... this... somehow...
a "thing"?
            well it must be new:
it's nothing from the sort
of the elders i might care to remember...
i walked the scenic route...
blackberries and horseshit...
everything is baking in a procrastination
of: tickle the rats' nibbling...
scrutiny of the lesser of the food
hierarchy: omnivore that i am...

yes... that i like petting criters
that find themselves adamant in their
superiority...
but who have yet to see me:
teasing myself with
a: what if...
                 hours match-up to
not keeping count: there's a fog of them
that goes way back to...
out of the womb... then abandoned
by the scholastic detail that
allows them to float: limbless...
and then return to earth: degenerate...
and less than amiable...

        douglas murray is probably
a hot topic... i too sometimes bewilder myself:
it would have been best to have
allowed the pendulum to swing both ways...
but he (ol' doug) speaks very well:
his writing is... beside the generic...
salt of grain: akin to my own...
for a cubic's worth of water...

    i don't want this tongue to be somewhow
exasperated with concerns for this / an "art"...
or that it can belittle a scientific bone...
thrown to the politics and red herring marches...
spins the doctor: no plates...
forever the new lies
kept in the same old... rhetorical: quirk-and-quickness
of the quilled-tongue...
a knock-knock stone cold: generic...
must: mediocre...
tired of living tongue of poetry
that has to become tired:
truth has to tire so easily...
so that politics: and the freshness
of lies and the no-niche-audience-allowance
can cast their:
"vote"... their... archaic... illiterate "X"..

i will not poetry for rhymes for
exasperations - fooled i: to you: to pursue
that paragraph of fiction - either...
but as freely as this will not:
become an exercise in myopic-claustrophobia...
so it will not rhyme:
perhaps: to advent a coming of my
prescribed punctuation:
but more: your own, your "post-nationalistic"
canadian:
something the people of India or
China will not share with you...
because:
they are still of the mindset: China...
India... hell! Russian is towing suitor!
individualism collapses nations...
whether with a homogeneity of ethnicity
or the heterogeneity of liberalism...

           a wonderful collage of stories...
from the 20th century:
agony aunt israel bewildering
to either confront or defend...
            2000 years have somehow passed
and: europe is no new: "anew"...
it's the same old bland palette
of readily ethno-primed availability
of spices...
hurrah for thyme! and rosemary! mint!

from some mythical above
to this drudge of the pressurised castor -
there was something about robert duncan
that might always have:
made me... diverge from...
it could have been expected...
stash a tonne of bricks by day...
weave in an escapism posit of cinema
come sabbath...
now... escapism into... where?!
critical reignition of marxism:
that sort of marxism my parents escaped
from from under the old soviet
yolk of the satellite state
of poland: thank **** i too am an
immigrant:
but i see no repatriation politics
either...
               go back to a state of
the littlest of all bald envy necropolis
Impoleons?

            no among my native people:
among the natives of these isles...
a thespian: knee deep in ****...
           faking best predicts a survival
rate of this uncoiling...
it's a nation full of: self-
pre-determina...
                  automated prefixation that
can never allow itself to:
make sensible coagulations
of the odd sociable pint...

this atom world this atom's worth
of man...
best life lived as designated
to a harem...
  my and my leftover "blues"...
this world of god and the adventures
of...
no longer available...
thus this one "reality" presented:
playing by man's rules
for the purpose of man's eventual:
transcendence...
a dwarf riding a hunchback
        toward a goal that's a talking donkey!

what's otherwise best?
this has to be an: exercise in futility -
that it had to come from somewhere like:
borrowed prior -
that it could only be borrowed prior:
this tongue had to be inherited:
it could never be acquired -
that a native speaker is...
of a higher status to a bilingual -
because the earth breathes rights...

i forget: i am not equipped
with the desirable physiognomy -
problem being:
when i might find black males
attractive like i might lions: distinct...
i have this ****** on my brain
that says to me...
  well... well...
     i'm not gay.. but i'm certainly
not heterosexual:
even if Flaubert might ask the question:
blondes, brunetters - afro-beauties:
ivory envy?
  what can i do? fest on a hard-on
chemical "oops" / short-cut?
i can't possibly have... a beijing fetish?
a mongol fetish?
i can't? there's only one variation
of interracial mixing...
i guess... so...

     it would be so much easier
to just be gay and leave this world
with a ******* massive **** salvo
of: not coming back!
               to **** a black girl:
not enough...
to not **** a black girl: doubly knot...
******* a lemon while
staring at the sun:
the sado-masochism of
all the post-colonial empires...
and me: whittle ol' resurrected
******... or searching:
the elder prus - the new estonians...
some little european *******...
i imagine...
going to Kenya and running
for parliament:
to concern myself for the voices
of the: minority!

it's... fiddling with the already
prescribed narrative:
trying to make a lee evans jokes
out of it... but...
it's not ******* happening woe-o'-sunshine...
is it?!
it's not like i'm strapped
to a northern monkey
reservation... while still retaining
my: immigrant southern fairy:
commuter hell "debate":
this is not devonshire...
this is not bristol: i'd love to scoop
up a life of a decade's worth
up in Bangor... but it's not even that...
pay by way to:
a collective identity crisis of:
zee vest...
            
if it's anger: perhaps...
it's more a seance in glorifying confusion:
it was once perhaps a little
bit... naive...
but then... who's naive enough
to repeat two-folds of yesterday
within the confines of a day:
to- / to- are not future even
if subjected to incremental changes...
fx/dx changes that might
spawn alternate realities...

        the breaking of a donkey's dollars
worth: i do fishing in the indian sea...
with some... somali pirates...
it's not like i'll ever wake up from
this guilt... the guilt that might
riddle a people that inherited...
i inherited exile from my fathers...
i inherited: no...
the ****** aristocracy didn't tend
to their garden... there was no Eton...
no rugby no football...
there was only a partitioning...
to look toward the past is
an agony that i wish to only hide
in the english countryside...
after all, i thought: who would't want...
make a feast of conquest of this land...
but in a way that was norman:
that the anglo-saxon debauchery could
be... delianted
and brought to a celtic-esque heel...
with a dash of neo-paganism:
a york-up sort o' pie...

without disturbing this dilligent
people of: a most fervent... attention to detail...
it's an island... it's devoid
of any continental squabble...
no mongol ever... no ottoman ever...
it break my heart...
it reminds me: although it shouldn't
remind me...
the aristocratic class (they deem themselves
as much, so why deny them?)
of this country are like the ******
aristocracy
of the three partition "era"...
as napoleon was celebrated "elsewhere"...
with the resurrection
of the duchy of warsaw...
and... england made a beef from
a wellington...
and how the confederacy of germans
repaid the english during the first:
thirst for war...

                   a shogun's pride:
no one would invade japan:
given the persistence of pressure
from a civility of: glamour creases...
it's still the ******* canon rolling
the pawns and pins...

i have but this little interlude in time
to entertain: a history i have learned...
beside citing the obvious apple
hanging on a tree...
who? the burning vietnamese monk?
that's who i am going to... erase...
2000 (circa) years of history with?
this is how i play: conquistador-catch-up?!
this is my whittle muhammad
stage-fright?!

these new surgical masks are
not imitations of the niqab...
the arabs are not drying up their dinosaur
marrow reserves and are not
scouting for willing sodomite freshers
to their gargantuan wealth-soiling
of "morals"?
no? this is all... a pauper's conspiracy
theory... god!
i try to imagine the conspiracy
theory of kings!
it must invite a realisation of
a god or gods...
and at least a quarter of an abstaining
pademomium!

the poets and the sceptics
living under: the... gates are open...
a republic under "scrutiny"...
the philosophers and the
geocentrists - have allowed
for nothing more... than this...
thespian "bureucracy" of
shadow "fiddling"... tail with now:
tail best quite...

attention spanning the glorifications
of non-replica, generic
Solomon comes to the furore
front: then a mismatch
when the brain: swiss cheese project:
is treated at the Avignon
pontiff...
the harem and debauchery shifts
focus...
there's that "we're" and...
dumb-lasso-dumber than you'd
pay the libido of a camel with: for...

i have to always imagine myself
petting cats... or dogs...
to have to dissociate myself from having
perfect: the needs for either halal or
kosher demands of leather...
i best prefer the pipsqueak of
a meow to... an actual oink
in the litany of cogs and perhaps:
clogging up the machinery of
"jurisprudence"... as some Jain might...

borrow from... export very little to...
come the omnivorse of the east
and all succumb to:
boy-scout avenues of:
yes ss'ir...
most loathsome ss'ir...
                     i have to interrogate
the dead man as i am:
the best example of a cul de sac
of dreams: the...
pedestrian could mind not thinking:
imagine: imagine the corpus deity
of: unimaginable thought...
or one which has
an alias: unthinkable imagiation...

memory freelance architect prior
to noon...
is somewhat justified with...
a boredom of a cat come
5pm... but by then...
no cat is ever really bored...
and i have no need to concern
myself with dogs... or leashes...
or desires to: address a
workability of legs...
          to: give scrutiny when all
other examples are wheelchair bound...

he held a piece of paper:
between his hands... like my shadow might:
hold a butterfly...
exasperation:
that philosophers of ancient greece
said: poets begone!
no wonder this...
currency... of wanting to imitate
a petting of animals...
and... this thespian autocracy
that no elders could abide by...
it can still be excused:
the role of actors:
the role of shadow-thieves...

it can still be salvaged...
some of us are still the same rummaging:
in ruinous...
wordsmiths or... best...
plumbers... not some aspirtation
beckons for youth...
it must rhyme:
it must come down to: 2 + 2 = 4
sort of: flimsy poetics...

i'd must prefer to be a
homosexual plumber these days
that my very own mediocre leftover...
thank god i do not encompass
a courtship of a woman:
then imagine!
what did i do with my time:
that i do so much!
having made... so little money!
ghosts can't spend: ****!
i did with my time that
would not allow woman
to turn time into money!
thus i turned money into monkey's
play on elephant and
called tha pennies: p'p'eh-nuts!

  the old man dies:
the youth of man was never
supposed to be born;

god... this was supposed
to be profound?
with this idiosyncratic lost...
spontaneity of punctuation...
i take this reading as
a leverage for making
image: of an anchor dropped:
that would sink the ship.
For
              Carl Solomon

                   I

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
      madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the ***** streets at dawn
      looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
      connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-
      ery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
      up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
      cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
      contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
      saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tene-
      ment roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
      hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
      among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy &
      publishing obscene odes on the windows of the
      skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burn-
      ing their money in wastebaskets and listening
      to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their ***** beards returning through
      Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in
      Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their
      torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, al-
      cohol and **** and endless *****,
incomparable blind; streets of shuddering cloud and
      lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of
      Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the mo-
      tionless world of Time between,
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery
      dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops,
      storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon
      blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree
      vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brook-
      lyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,
who chained themselves to subways for the endless
      ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine
      until the noise of wheels and children brought
      them down shuddering mouth-wracked and
      battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance
      in the drear light of Zoo,
who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's
      floated out and sat through the stale beer after
      noon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack
      of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,
who talked continuously seventy hours from park to
      pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brook-
      lyn Bridge,
lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping
      down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills
      off Empire State out of the moon,
yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts
      and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks
      and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,
whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days
      and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the
      Synagogue cast on the pavement,
who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a
      trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic
      City Hall,
suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grind-
      ings and migraines of China under junk-with-
      drawal in Newark's bleak furnished room,
who wandered around and around at midnight in the
      railroad yard wondering where to go, and went,
      leaving no broken hearts,
who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing
      through snow toward lonesome farms in grand-
      father night,
who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telep-
      athy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos in-
      stinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,
who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking vis-
      ionary indian angels who were visionary indian
      angels,
who thought they were only mad when Baltimore
      gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,
who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Okla-
      homa on the impulse of winter midnight street
      light smalltown rain,
who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston
      seeking jazz or *** or soup, and followed the
      brilliant Spaniard to converse about America
      and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship
      to Africa,
who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving
      behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees
      and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fire
      place Chicago,
who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the
      F.B.I. in beards and shorts with big pacifist
      eyes **** in their dark skin passing out incom-
      prehensible leaflets,
who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting
      the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism,
who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union
      Square weeping and ******* while the sirens
      of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed
      down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also
      wailed,
who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked
      and trembling before the machinery of other
      skeletons,
who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight
      in policecars for committing no crime but their
      own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication,
who howled on their knees in the subway and were
      dragged off the roof waving genitals and manu-
      scripts,
who let themselves be ****** in the *** by saintly
      motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,
who blew and were blown by those human seraphim,
      the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean
      love,
who balled in the morning in the evenings in rose
      gardens and the grass of public parks and
      cemeteries scattering their ***** freely to
      whomever come who may,
who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up
      with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath
      when the blond & naked angel came to pierce
      them with a sword,
who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate
      the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar
      the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb
      and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but
      sit on her *** and snip the intellectual golden
      threads of the craftsman's loom,
who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of
      beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a can-
      dle and fell off the bed, and continued along
      the floor and down the hall and ended fainting
      on the wall with a vision of ultimate **** and
      come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,
who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling
      in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning
      but prepared to sweeten the ****** of the sun
      rise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked
      in the lake,
who went out ******* through Colorado in myriad
      stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these
      poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver--joy
      to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls
      in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses'
      rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with
      gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely pet-
      ticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station
      solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too,
who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in
      dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and
      picked themselves up out of basements hung
      over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third
      Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemploy-
      ment offices,
who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on
      the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the
      East River to open to a room full of steamheat
      and *****,
who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment
      cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime
      blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall
      be crowned with laurel in oblivion,
who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested
      the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of
      Bowery,
who wept at the romance of the streets with their
      pushcarts full of onions and bad music,
who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the
      bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in
      their lofts,
who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned
      with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded
      by orange crates of theology,
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty
      incantations which in the yellow morning were
      stanzas of gibberish,
who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht
      & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable
      kingdom,
who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for
      an egg,
who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot
      for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks
      fell on their heads every day for the next decade,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccess-
      fully, gave up and were forced to open antique
      stores where they thought they were growing
      old and cried,
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits
      on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse
      & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments
      of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the
      fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinis-
      ter intelligent editors, or were run down by the
      drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,
who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually hap-
      pened and walked away unknown and forgotten
      into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alley
      ways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,
who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of
      the subway window, jumped in the filthy Pas-
      saic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street,
      danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed
      phonograph records of nostalgic European
      1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and
      threw up groaning into the ****** toilet, moans
      in their ears and the blast of colossal steam
      whistles,
who barreled down the highways of the past journeying
      to each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude
      watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation,
who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out
      if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had
      a vision to find out Eternity,
who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who
      came back to Denver & waited in vain, who
      watched over Denver & brooded & loned in
      Denver and finally went away to find out the
      Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,
who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying
      for each other's salvation and light and *******,
      until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,
who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for
      impossible criminals with golden heads and the
      charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet
      blues to Alcatraz,
who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky
   &nb
With my whole body I taste these peaches,
I touch them and smell them.  Who speaks?

I absorb them as the Angevine
Absorbs Anjou.  I see them as a lover sees,

As a young lover sees the first buds of spring
And as the black Spaniard plays his guitar.

Who speaks?  But it must be that I,
That animal, that Russian, that exile, for whom

The bells of the chapel pullulate sounds at
Heart.  The peaches are large and round,

Ah! and red; and they have peach fuzz, ah!
They are full of juice and the skin is soft.

They are full of the colors of my village
And of fair weather, summer, dew, peace.

The room is quiet where they are.
The windows are open.  The sunlight fills

The curtains.  Even the drifting of the curtains,
Slight as it is, disturbs me.  I did not know

That such ferocities could tear
One self from another, as these peaches do.
brandon nagley Jun 2015
Aisle Spáinneach, Spaniard ardaigh giveth, dom an saol, giveth go bhfuil an saol i srón mianach !!! (Spanish tongue)

(English translated-)

Spaniard aisle, Spaniard rose, giveth me life, giveth that life in mine nose!!!
“Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced guards in black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons.”
                                                    ­ George Orwell, 1984* (published in 1949)

Which brings us, of course, to the subject of torture since 1949.
Come with me to the Casbah, Babaloo.
We begin in the 1950s with the French in North Africa,
****** baguettes in Algeria,
Couilles frits, anyone?
Electrodes wired to Mustapha’s *****.
And "Bigeard's Shrimps,” as the bodies were called,
Dumped over the Mediterranean from aircraft,
All things considered a je ne sais quoi,
Though Camus and Sartre gave it a whack.

Then the 1960s: the CIA dabbling in mind-control and LSD.
Later, a Phoenix Program,
Very secretive, sympathies with the Cong required,
Various elders selected,
The village disinfected,
**, **, ** and a bowl of Pho.

Apartheid anyone?
Thirty years of South African terror & torture.
Torment in the townships,
Shaka Zulu gold and diamonds,
De Beers in Swaziland swing.

1971: riots at Attica,
Prisoners abused and tortured,
Rockefeller’s overcrowded slammer,
An upstate New York katzenjammer,
Nelson’s finger on the trigger,
39 dead and counting,
But who’s counting?

The CIA, back in the news in 1973,
Torture chambers under Chilean soccer stadiums,
And the Khmer Rouge:
Those Wacky Cambodians with skull racks.  
And let us not forget the British,
With centuries of colonial experience behind them,
Occupy six counties in Northern Ireland.
Finally codify the imperial process,
The Five Techniques:
Sounds like a Motown group,
Satin smooth colored boys,
But more method than music:
(1) Wall-standing,
(2) Hooding,
(3) Subjection to noise,
(4) Sleep deprivation,
(5) No food and drink.

And there’s a bunch of horrible ****,
We still don’t know about the Argentine ***** War,
And other Mai Lai-like,
****-fest massacres in Vietnam.

How about torture since 1984?
Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo,
Come quickly,
(www.prematureejaculatorsanonymous.com)
To mind,
As do US-sponsored rendition facilities,
Spread throughout the NATO alliance.
And closer to home, it’s never a dull moment in the 5 Boroughs:
Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, The Bronx and Manhattan.
Take your pick from Giuliani’s Greatest Hits,
Rudy Kazootie’s campaign of law and order,
Not necessarily in that order.
More awful than lawful,
A bathroom plunger rammed up,
The Haitian voodoo ****** of Abner Louima,
While he be handcuffed at a Brooklyn station house.
Or, the NYPD partying like it was 1999.
When in fact, it was1999,
And a curious death it was for Amadou Diallo,
Would-be American citizen from The Republic of Guinea,
(No connection to Italy or Italians),
Abner & Amadou: a pair of cautionary tales,
Either/or reflecting standard procedure for the Po-Po,
Time and time again from coast to coast.
Either/or: poor Abner, no Haitian Papa Doc.
Poor Amadou, on his way home from night school,
When police squeeze off 41 rounds,
Most of them in his direction,
Hitting him 19 times.
Just the facts, ma’am:
Diallo had reached into his jacket.
A trigger-happy police officer yells “Gun.”
A jungle warfare quartet springs into action:
Shenzi, Banzai, Ed & Zazu,
Four equally trigger-happy colleagues,
Empty their weapons.
No gun was found on Diallo,
Only the wallet he tried to pull out,
Containing his Green Card,
4 U.S. dollar bills;
And a laminated,
Credit card-sized copy of the U.S. Bill of Rights.
(I just didn’t know when to quit, did I?
The wallet was there with Green Card and the bucks,
But I made up the part about the Bill of Rights,
Trying to add poetry to tragedy, as usual.)

I don’t have to say much about Rodney King (RIP).
You watched it on TV a hundred times,
And a picture’s worth a thousand words.
Or ten thousand or a million, I suppose.
“Can’t we all just get along?” asked Rodney Glen King.

Last but not least there’s Kelly Thomas (RIP),
Another incidence of police insanity,
It was July of 2011 in Fullerton, California.
Thomas, a 37-year-old homeless man,
Schizophrenic, but unarmed,
Beaten to death at a bus depot,
During an altercation with six Fullerton police officers.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2019225/Kelly-Thomas-Poli­­ce-beat-taser-gentle-mentally-ill-homeless-man­-death.html#ixzz1e­3­4QnHtr

Mervyn Lazarus | Attorney | (www.mervlazarus.com) Police Brutality, Excessive Force and Jail Injury cases | California . . . Albuquerque

Jackie Chiles perfect attorney -YouTube, (www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpcEietIoxk) Nov 17, 2010 - 13 min - Uploaded by Kroeger22 All the scenes with Jackie Chiles from Seinfeld."Chiles is a parody of famed attorney Johnnie Cochran; both ... www.seinfeld.com

Perhaps the greatest torture of all,
Is that which artists subject us to.
Let us examine the case of Roberto Bolaño:
Roberto Bolaño, the great Chilean writer,
Tells a fabulous World War II story,
About a Spaniard--an Andalusian--
Fighting for the Germans against the Russians.
Captured by the Russians,
He is tortured for information.
The Spaniard speaks no Russian,
He knows only four words of German.
The Russian interrogators strap him into a chair,
Attach electrodes to his *****,
Attach pincers to his tongue.
The pain makes his eyes water.
He said--or rather shouts--the word coño.
It is Spanish for ****.
The pincers in his mouth,
Distort the expletive,
Which in his howling voice comes out as KUNST.
The Russian who knows German looks at him in puzzlement.
The Andalusian was yelling KUNST,
Yelling KUNST and crying in pain.
KUNST in German means art,
And that was what the bilingual Russian heard, KUNST.
“This ******* must be an artist or something.”
The torturers remove the pincers,
Along with a little piece of tongue,
And wait, momentarily hypnotized by the revelation:
The word ART had soothed the savage beasts.
So soothed, the savage beasts take a breather,
Waiting for some kind of signal.
Meanwhile, the Andalusian bleeds from the mouth,
Swallows his blood liberally mixed with saliva, and chokes.
The word coño,
Transformed into the word *KUNST,

Had saved his life.
It was dusk when he came out of the building.
Light stabbed at his eyes like midday sun.

So, it’s a fact that I love,
Truly love the simple blunt Anglo-Saxon expletive ****,
****: I pray that while I am being tortured some day,
I have the dignity to scream the word out loud.
And if I am screaming **** at the very end,
When my nervous system finally fails,
When I **** my pants,
When my pulmonic heart and lungs collapse,
Is that so bad?
Is that so wrong?

Do you realize that 1984 came--
Came and went, without any significant cultural hoopla?
The networks ignored it.
As did the cable pundits.
No significant comparative analysis between,
Orwell’s book 1984 and the year 1984,
Was broadcast electronically or publicized in print.
Steve Jobs got it, but as usual no one else did.
Mr. Jobs (RIP) did his best,
To mainstream its profound cultural relevance,
But ultimately failed,
Despite the $1.5 million he paid one of the networks,
To air a one minute nation-wide commercial,
During the 3rd Quarter,
Of Super Bowl XVIII,
January 22, 1984.
Despite Ridley Scott’s astonishing spell-binder,
His 60-second spot for The Macintosh 128K--
Still considered a watershed event,
And an advertising industry masterpiece,
…YouTube it and watch it.  (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8ji0B98IMo).
See the hammer throwing athlete chick,
See her fling the sledge,
That huge sledgehammer,
Smash into Big Brother’s flat screen face.
Despite Jobs’ global presence,
Despite Steverino’s unfettered microphone access,
Whenever he felt an oraculation coming on,
Despite everything,
He was unable to move the powers that be,
To either hype the book or the prophecy come true.

So, what’s my point? I have two.
First, in April 1984 the estate of George Orwell,
And the television rights holder to the novel 1984,
Considered the edgy Jobs/Scott commercial to be,
A flagrant copyright infringement,
Sending a cease-and-desist letter to Apple Inc.
And the advertising agency that produced the spot: Chiat/Day Inc.
The commercial was never televised as a commercial after that.  
Score: Lawyers 1, Artists 0.

My second point is that in November 2011,
The U.S. government argued before the U. S. Supreme Court,
That it wants to continue utilizing GPS tracking of individuals,
Without first seeking a warrant.
In response, Justice Stephen Breyer (one of the sane ones),
Questioned what this means for a democratic society.
Referencing Nineteen Eighty-Four, Justice Breyer asked:
"If you win this case, then there is nothing,
To prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24/7,
The public movement of every citizen of the United States.
So if you win, you suddenly produce what sounds like 1984 . . .”*

My third point,
(Yeah, I know I said two, but *******.)
My third point is that I’m just so ******* angry,
All the time, late and soon like Wordsworth,
(Was anyone more aptly named?)
I am angry about so many different things,
And every day that goes by I relate more and more,
To the thousands of Americans that occupied,
Zuccotti Park and Oakland,
And countless other venues,
Out into the streets.
Across the country.
Around the world.  
I am humbled by their courage and perseverance.
Yet, I am afraid for them.
I am made paranoid by the scope and power,
Of the government,
Of the ruling class that controls it,
And the technology they allow us to embrace,
Technology’s sinister potential,
Now that more and more knowledge and information,
Has been digitized,
Existing only in cyberspace.                                                      ­                                                 
What frightens most is the realization,
That anyone with a word processor,
And access to the database could rewrite,
Any historical or legal document,
To fit the needs of a current agenda.
The scary part is—
Repeating myself for emphasis—
That anyone with a word processor
And access to the database could rewrite,
Any historical or legal document,
To fit the needs of a current agenda.

Does anyone out there give a ****?
Does anyone out there share my nightmare?
Do it to Julia.
Do it to Julia.
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2016
preliminary explanation

before i really begin the project i have a few scatterings
of thought that made me do this, without real planning,
a different sort of impromptu that poetry's good at,
less Dionysian spur-of-the-moment with an already
completed poem entwined to a perfect ensō,
as quick as the decapitation of Mary Boleyn with the
executioner fooling her which side the swing would
be cast by taking of his hard-soled-shoes -
i mean this in an Apollonian sense - i know, sharp contrasts
at first, but the need to fuse them - i said these are
preliminary explanations, the rest will not be as haphazardly
composed, after all, i see the triangle i'm interested it
but drawing a triangle without Pythagorean explanation
i'm just writing Δ - i'll unravel what my project is
about, just give me this opportunity to blah blah for a
while like someone from an existential novel;
what beckoned me was the dichotomy of styles,
i mean, **** me, you can read poetry while in an awkward
yoga position, you can read it standing up, sitting down,
eating or whatever you want - obviously on the throne
of thrones taking a **** is preferred - the point being
what's called serious literature is so condensed for
economic reasons, font small, never-ending paragraphs,
you need an easy-chair and a bottle of cognac to get
through a chapter sometimes - or at least freshly mowed
grass in a park in summer - it's really uncomfortable because
of that, and the fact that poets hardly wish upon you
to be myopic - just look at the spacing on the page,
constantly refreshing, open-plan condos, eye-to-eye -
but it's not about that... the different styles of writing,
prose and the novel, the historical essay / encyclopedia
or a work of philosophy - what style of writing can
be best evolutionary and undermine each? only poetry.
poetry is a ballerina mandible entity, plastic skeletons,
but that's beside the point, when journalism writes history
so vehemently... the study of history writes it nonchalantly,
it's the truth, journalism is bombastic, sensationalist
every but what courting history involves -
a journalist will write about the death of a 100 people
more vehemently than a historian writing about the Holocaust...
or am i missing something? i never understood this dichotomy
of prose - it's most apparent between journalism and history...
as far as i am concerned, the most pleasurable style of
prose is involved in the history of philosophy, or learning per se,
but i'll now reveal to you the project at hand -
it's a collage... the parameters?

the subject of the collage

it weighs 1614 grams, or 3 lb. and 8 7/8ths oz.,
it's a single volume edition, published by Pimlico,
it's slightly larger than an A5 format,
3/4 inches more in length, and ~1 centimetre in
width more, it has a depth of 1 and 3/4 inches in depth,
a bicep iron-pumping session with it in bed -
i was lying with this behemoth of a book
in bed soothing out a semi-delirium state
listening to Ola Gjeilo's *northern lights

and flicking through the appendix, and i started thinking,
no would read this giant fully, would they?
the reason it's a one volume edition is because
the only place you'd read such an edition would
be in a library, at a desk, and you'd be taking snippets
out from it, quotes, authentic references points
for an essay, esp. if you were a history student,
such books aren't exactly built for leisure, as my arms
could testify... after the appendix i started flicking
through as to what point of interest would spur me
onto this audacious (and perhaps auspicious)
act of renegading against writing a novel (in the moment,
in the moment, i can't imagine myself rereading plot-lines
after a day or two, adding to it - that's a collage too,
but of a different kind - and no, i won't be plagiarising
as such, after all i'll be citing parallel, but utilising
poetry as the driving revision dynamic compared
to the chronologically stale prose of history) - i'll be
extracting key points that are already referenced and not
using the style of the author - the book in question?
Europe: a history by Norman Davies prof. emeritus
at U.C.L. - the point of entry that made me mad enough
to condense this 1335 page book (excluding the index)?

point of incision

Voltaire (or the man suspected of Guy Fawkes-likes spreading
of volatility in others) -
un polonais - c'est un charmeur; deux polonais - une
bagarre; trois polonais, eh bien, c'est la question polonaise

(one pole - a charmer, two poles - a brawl, three poles -
the polish question) - mind you, the subtler and gentler
precursor of the Jewish question, because the Frenchman
mused, and not a German, or a Russian brute...
and i can testify, two Polish immigrants in a pub,
one senior, the other minor, one with 22 years under
his belt of the integration purpose, one with 12 years,
the minor says to the senior about how Poles bring
the village life to cities, brutish drunkards and what not,
it was almost a brawl, prior to the senior was charming
a Lithuanian girl, before the minor's emphasis on
such a choice of conversation turned into idiotic Lithuanian
nostalgia about the disintegration of the Polish-Lithuanian
commonwealth, primarily due to the Polish nobility.

10,000 b.c.

looking that far back i don't know why you even
bother to celebrate the weekend -
i mean, 10,000 years back Denmark was
still attached to Sweden,
England was attached to France,
and there was a weird looking Aquatic landmass
that would become a myth of Atlantis
in the Chronicles of Norwich,
speedy ******* Gonzales with the equivalent
of south america detaching itself from Africa...
mind you, i'm sure the Carpathian ranges are
mountains. they're noted here are hills or uplands,
by categorising them as such i'm surprised
the majority of Carpathian elevations as scolded
bald rocky faced, a hill i imagine to have some
vegetation on it, not mountain goats with rock and roof
for a blacksmith in a population of one hundred...
at this point Darwinism really becomes a disorientating
pinpoint of whatever history takes your fancy,
Europe - mother of Minos, lord of Crete,
progenitrix / ******* and the leather curtains
of Zeus's harem (jealous? no, just the sarcasm
dominates the immortal museum of attachable
****** to suit the perfect elephant **** of depth
the gods sided with, by choice, excusing the Suez
duct tightening of a prostate gland... to ease the pain
upon ******* rather than *******); mentioned by Homer
the Blind tooth-fairy, the Europe and the bull,
Europoeus and the swan, same father of wisdom to mind,
on the shores of Loch Lomond -
attributes a lover to the bull, Moschus of Syracuse,
who said earring Plato cured him of where the ****
should not enter even if it shines a welcome
in the disguise of Dionysius... revisionists bound to Pompeii
named Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens Veronese
and Claude Lorrain revived the bulging bull's *******
and her mm hmm mm, too gracious my kind, hehee...
Phonecians from Tyre and Io - so too the Sibyl of ****** -
and unlike the great river civilisations of the Nile,
the Ganges, soon to be the Danubian civilisations
and gorged-out-eyes-that-once-sore-colour-but-lost-sight-of-
colours-­after-seeing-the-murk-of-the-Thames...
soon the seas overcame civilisations of the rivers,
as Cadmus, brother of the thus stated harlot said:
i bring you orbe pererrato - hieroglyphics of the cage,
but not an owl or a hawk inside it -
so let's perfect speaking to an encoding by first
rummaging into learning how to procure the perfect
forms of counting - i say left, you say I, i say right
you say II, left right left right, what do you say?
VI. bravo! the Hellenic world just crossed the Aegean
and civilisation bore twins within the cult of a lunar-mother,
Islam of Romulus and Remus, a she-wolf
a canine of the night - according to another -
tremulae sinuantur flamine vestes - or so the myth goes -
a cherished phantom of what became the fabled story
of sole Odysseus with his ears open and the remnant
sailor's ears waxed shut - as if the bankers of this world,
revelling in culprit universal fancy than nonetheless
bred the particular oddities - lest we forget,
the once bountiful call of the sirens to the oceanic
is but a fraction of what today's sirens claim to be song,
a fraction of it remains in this world, the onomatopoeia
of the once maddening song, the crude *******
arrangement of vowels bound to the jealous god's
déjà vu of the compounding second H.

from myth to perpetuating a modern sentiment

you can jump from 10,000 b.c. to the Munich Crisis
of 1938 - 9 with a snap of the fingers,
imitating quantum phenomenons like gesticulating
a game of mime with Chinese whispers necessary,
if Europe is a nymph, Naples her azure eyes,
Warsaw her heart, Sebastopol and Azoff,
Petersburg, Mitau, Odessa - these the thorns
in her feet - Paris the head, London the starched collar,
and Rome - the sepulchre
.
or... die handbuch der europaischen geschichte
notably from Charlemagne (the Illiterate)
to the Greek colonels (as apart from Constantine to
Thomas More in eight volumes, via Cambridge mid
1930s)... these and some other books of urgency
e.g. Eugene Weber's H. A. L. Fisher's, Sr. Walter Ralegh,
Jacob Bronowski... elsewhere excavated noun-obscurities
like gattopardo and konarmya had their
circas extended like shelved vegetables in modern
supermarket isles, for one reason or another...
prado, sonata sovkino also... some also mention
Thomas Carlyle (i'd make it sound like carried-away isle,
but never mind); so in this intro much theory,
how to sound politically correct, verifiable to suit
a coercion for a status quo... Europe as a modern idea,
replacing Imperum Romanun came Christendom,
ugly Venetian Pirates at Constantinople,
Barbarossa making it in pickled herring juice
in a barrel to Jerusalem... once called the pinkish-***-fluff
of Saxony, now called the pickled cucumber,
drowning in his armour in some river or Brosphorus...
alchemists, Luther and Copernicus were invited on
the same occasion as the bow-tie was invented,
apparently it was a marriage made for the Noir cinema,
beats me - hence the new concept of Europe,
reviving the idea of Imperium Romanun
meant, somehow including Judea in the Euro
championship of footie gladiator ***** whipped
narcissists, rejecting the already banished Carthage
(Libya / Tunisia by Cato's standards) and encouraging
the Huns, the Goths and the even more distant Slavs and
Vikings to accept not so much the crucifix as
the revised spine of the serpent but as the geometry of
human limbs, well, not so much that, but forgetting
Norse myths of the one-eyed and the runic alphabet
and settling for ah be'h c'eh d'ah.
dissident frenche stink abbe, charles castel de st pierre
(1658 - 1743) aand this work projet d'une paix perpetuelle
(1713) versus Питер Великий who just said:
never mind the city, the Winter Palace... i have aborted
fetus pickles in my bedroom, lava lamps i call them.
the last remaining reference to Christianity?
Nietzsche was late, the public was certain,
it was the Treaty of Utrecht, 1713, with public reference
to the republica christiana / commonwealth was last made.
to Edmund Burke: well, i too wish no exile
upon any European on his continent of birth,
but invigorate a Muslim to give birth on it
and you invigorate an exile nonetheless:
Ezra expatriate Pound / sorry, if born in eastern
europe a ***** Romanian immigrant, pristine
expatriate in western Europe, fascist radio has
my tongue and *****, so let's play a game:
Russian roulette for the Chinese cos there's
a billion of them, and no one would really mind
a missing Chow Mein... chu shoo'ah shaolin moo'n'kah!
or a cappuccino whenever you'd like to watch
classic Italian pornographic cinema with dubbing
with nuns involved... Willaim Blake and his
stark naked prophesy, pope pius II (treatise 1458)
even though Transylvania, Tharce and Hungary
shared the same phonetic encoding with diacritical
distinctions like any Frenchman, German,
or Pole at the Siege of Vienna (1683)
to counter the antagonising Ottoman - i swear historians
do this one purpose, juggle dates and head-of-state figures
prior to entering a chronology - they must first try out
a ******* carousel before playing with the toy-train...
broadcasting to a defeated Germany public, T. S. Eliot
(1945) ****** import to into Western Germany
and talk of the failing moral fabric, China laughing
after the ***** intricacies of warfare of trade,
what was once wool we wished to be silk...
instead of silk we received vegetarian wool, namely
hemp, and Amsterdam is to blame... nuke 'em!
that's how it sounds, how a historian approaches
writing a history from the annals, from circa and
circumstance and actual history, foremost the abbreviations,
the fishing hook standards, the parameters,
the limits, and then the mathematics of history,
one thing culminating into another... contra Lenin
N. S. Trubetskoy, P. N. Savitsky, G. Vernadsky
Russian at the perks of the Urals - steppe Tartar shamans
or salon pranced pretty **** boys? where to put
the intoxicant and where to put the mascara... hmm,
god knows, or by 21st calculations, a meteor;
they say the history of nations is a history of women,
then at least the history of individuation
and of men who succumb to its proliferation
is astoundingly misogynistic.
Seton-Watson, among the the tombstones too reminded
of remarkable esteem and accomplishment
with only one gravedigger to claim as father...
as many death ears as on two giraffe skeletons
stood Guizot, men of many letter and few fortunes,
or v. v., incubators of cousin ***** and none the kippah
before the arrogant saintly diminished to
a justly cause of recession, ha ha,
by nature's grace, and with true advent of her progression
as guard-worthy pre- to each pro-
and suggested courteous of the ****** fibre,
oh hey, the advent of masqueraded woofing,
a Venetian high-brow, and jealousy out of a forgotten
spirit of adventure that once was bound
to hunting and foraging... forever lost to write  history of
a king dubbed Louis the XIV...
crucibles and distastes for the state to be pleased,
once removed from Paris, forever to Angevin womb
accustomed once more, at Versailles released -
as cake be sown so too the aristocratic swan necks
for worth of mock and scorn - and the dampening rain
rattle the blood-thirst of the St. Bartholomew's Day
slaughter, to date, the rebirth of Burgundy,
of Anjou, and with the dead king presiding, to be
of no worth in judging himself a king before god or pauper...
saluer Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville!
that i might too in stead rattle a few bones prior to burial
with the jaw that will laugh and chatter least
had it been to my kingly-stead a birth so lowly.
then at least in satisfactory temperament i procure a
judgement of the noble like of a *****
for an hour's worth of pistons and jarring tongues...
as if from a nobleman then indeed as if from a *****,
for who sold Europe and said: Arabia, if not the
Frenchman, the Englishman, the Spaniard?
the former colonial conquests served you not enough?
i imagine the reinstatement of Israel like
the Frankish states under Philippe-August...
precursors to a cathedral dubbed Urban the 2nd's..
there were only Norwegian motives in the Ukraine
and the black sea... Israel to me is like plagiarism
of the Frankish states of the middle-east, with Europe
slightly... oom'pah loom'pah mongolian harmonica.
some said Rudyard Kipling poems,
some said Mr. Kipling's afternoon tea cakes -
whichever made it first on Coronation St.
some also say the Teutonic barbecues -
it was a matter of example to feed them hog
and cannibalise the peasants for ourselves,
a Prussian standard worth an army standard of
rigour - Ave Maria - letztre abendessen nahrung -
mein besitzen, wenn in die Aden, i'd be the last
talking carcass...
gottes ist der orient!
gottes ist der okzident!
nord - und sudliches gelande
ruht im frieden seiner hande.

germany's lebensraum, inferiority and classification,
inferior slavs and jews, genetics and why my
hatred of Darwinism is persistent, you need
an explanatory noting to make it auto-suggestive
for Queen & Country? diseased elements,
Jewish Bolshevism, Polish patriotism,
Soviets, Teutons, the grand alliances of 1918
or 1945? Wilsonian testimony of national self-determi
IN SEARCH OF THE PRESENT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For us, as Latin Americans, the search for poetic modernity runs historically parallel to the repeated attempts to modernize our countries. This tendency begins at the end of the 18th Century and includes Spain herself. The United States was born into modernity and by 1830 was already, as de Tocqueville observed, the womb of the future; we were born at a moment when Spain and Portugal were moving away from modernity. This is why there was frequent talk of "Europeanizing" our countries: the modern was outside and had to be imported. In Mexican history this process begins just before the War of Independence. Later it became a great ideological and political debate that passionately divided Mexican society during the 19th Century. One event was to call into question not the legitimacy of the reform movement but the way in which it had been implemented: the Mexican Revolution. Unlike its 20th-Century counterparts, the Mexican Revolution was not really the expression of a vaguely utopian ideology but rather the explosion of a reality that had been historically and psychologically repressed. It was not the work of a group of ideologists intent on introducing principles derived from a political theory; it was a popular uprising that unmasked what was hidden. For this very reason it was more of a revelation than a revolution. Mexico was searching for the present outside only to find it within, buried but alive. The search for modernity led
Given the apparent magical surrealism that the months of April is the month of fate for and death of writers, artists, dramatis, philosophers and poets, a phenomenon which readily gets support from the cases of untimely and early April deaths of; Max Weber, Miguel de Cervantes, William Shakespeare, Francis Imbuga, and Chinua Achebe  then  Wisdom of the moment behooves me to adjure away the fateful month by  allowing  me to mourn Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez by expressing my feelings of grieve through the following dirge of elegy;
You lived alone in the solitude
Of pure hundred years in Colombia
Roaming in Amacondo with a Spanish tongue
Carrying the bones of your grandmother in a sisal sag
On your poverty written Colombian back,
Gadabouting to make love in times of cholera,
On none other than your bitter-sweet memories
Of your melancholic ***** the daughter of Castro,
Your cowardice made you to fear your momentous life
In this glorious and poetic time of April 2014,
Only to succumb to untimely black death
That similarly dimunitized your cultural ancestor;
Miguel de Cervantes, a quixotic Spaniard,
You were to write to the colonel for your life,
Before eating the cockerel you had ear-marked
For Olympic cockfight, the hope of the oppressed,
Come back from death, you dear Marquez
To tell me more stories fanaticism to surrealism,
From Tarzanic Africa the fabulous land
An avatar of evil gods that are impish propre
Only Vitian Naipaul and Salman Rushdie are not enough,
For both of them are so naïve to tell the African stories,
I will miss you a lot the rest of my life, my dear Garbo,
But I will ever carry your living soul, my dear Garcia,
Soul of your literature and poetry in a Maasai kioondo
On my broad African shoulders during my journey of art,
When coming to America to look for your culture
That gave you versatile tongue and quill of a pen,
Both I will take as your memento and crystallize them
Into my future thespic umbrella of orature and literature.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, an eminent Latin American and most widely acclaimed authors, died untimely at his home in Mexico City on Thursday, 17th April 2014. The 1982 literature Nobel laureate, whose reputation drew comparisons to Mark Twain of adventures of Huckleberry Finny and Charles Dickens of hard Times, was 87 of age. Already a luminous legend in his well used lifetime, Latin American writer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez was perceived as not only one of the most consequential writers of the 20th and 21ist centuries, but also the sterling performing Spanish-language author since the world’s experience of Miguel de Cervantes, the Spanish Jail bird and Author of Don Quixote who lived in the 17th century.
Like very many other writers from the politically and economically poor parts of the world, in the likes of J M Coatze, Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer, Doris May Lessing, Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda, V S Naipaul, and Rabidranathe Tagore, Marguez won the literature Nobel prize in addition to the previous countless awards for his magically fabulous novels, gripping short stories, farcical screenplays, incisive journalistic contributions and spellbinding essays. But due to postmodern global thespic civilization the Nobel Prize is recognized as most important of his prizes in the sense that, he received in 1982, as the first Colombian author to achieve such literary eminence. The eminence of his work in literature communicated in Spanish are towered by none other than the Bible, especially  in its Homeric style which Moses used when writing the book of Genesis and the fictitious drama of Job.
Just like Ngugi, Achebe, Soyinka, and Ousmane Marquez is not the first born. He is the youngest of siblings. He was born on March 6, 1927 in the Colombian village of Aracataca, on the Caribbean coast. His literary bravado was displayed in his book, Love in the Times of Cholera.  In which he narrated how his parents met and got married. Marguez did not grow up with his father and mother, but instead he grew up with his grandparents. He often felt lonely as a child. Environment of aunts and grandmother did not fill the psychological void of father and mother. This social phenomenon of inadequate parenthood is also seen catapulting Richard Wright, Charlese Dickens, and Barrack Obama to literary excellency.Obama recounted the same experience in his Dreams from my father.

Poverty determines convenience or hardship of marriage. This is mirrored by Garcia Marquez in his marriage to Mercedes Barcha.  An early childhood play-mate and neighbour in 1958. In appreciation of his marriage, Marquez later wrote in his memoirs that it is women who maintain the world, whereas we men tend to plunge it into disarray with all our historic brutality. This was a connotation of his grandmother in particular who played an important role during the times of childhood. The grand mother introduced him to the beauty of orature by telling him fabulous stories about ghosts and dead relatives haunting the cellar and attic, a social experience which exactly produced Chinua Achebe, Okot P’Bitek, Mazizi Kunene, Margaret Ogola and very many other writers of the third world.
Little Gabo as his affectionate pseudonym for literature goes, was a voracious bookworm, who like his ideological master Karl Marx read King Lear of Shakespeare at the age of sixteen. He fondly devoured the works of Spanish authors, obviously Miguel de Cervantes, as well as other European heavyweights like; Edward Hemingway, Faulkner and Frantz Kafka.
Good writers usually drop out of school and at most writers who win the Nobel Prize. This formative virtue of writers is evinced in Alice Munro, Doris Lessing, Nadine Gordimer, John Steinbeck, William Shakespeare, Sembene Ousmane, Octavio Paz as well as Gabriel Garcia Marquez. After dropping out of law school, Garcia Marquez decided instead to embark on a call of his passion as a journalist. The career he perfectly did by regularly criticizing Colombian as well as ideological failures of the then foreign politics. In a nutshell he was a literary crusader against poverty. This is of course the obvious hall marker of leftist political orientation.
Garcia Marquez’s sensational breakthrough occurred in 1967 with the break-away publication of his oeuvre; One Hundred Years of Solitude which the New York Times Book Review meritoriously elevated as ‘the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race. The position similarly taken by Salman Rushdie. Marquez often shared out that this novel carried him above emotional tantrums on its publication. He was keen on this as his manner of speech was always devoid of la di da.so humble and suave that his genius can only be appreciated not from the booming media outlets about his death, but by reading all of his works and especially his Literature Noble price acceptance speech delivered in 1982.
John MacAyeal Sep 2012
The street named after the Spaniard who discovered the Pacific

The drive named after the Spaniard who conquered Mexico

The lane named after the Spaniard who blessed the Americas’ first Thanksgiving

Yielded enough rubber bands from newspapers

To twine a ball

Round enough

Bouncy enough

For a good game of stickball

Until the kid tasked

With finding rubber bands

From the circle named after the Spaniard who painted pictures

An oddball among all those adventurers

And a cluster of dwellings that didn’t subscribe

To rolls of paper

Hit it into the backyard with the dog on a chain

But fear kept us on a chain

As we stood over the rock wall

Looking for a manila spot

On unwatered St. Augustine

And spotting it

Disdaining it for

The angry barks

Bared teeth of the restrained beast

Letting it wait

For an archeologist centuries hence

(Maybe even a few decades from then)

To find it and marvel

“Even back then humans played games -- or so we assume --

With round objects.”
Nigel Morgan Dec 2013
A Tale for the Mid-Winter Season after the Mural by Carl Larrson

On the shortest day I wake before our maids from the surrounding farms have converged on Sundborn. Greta lives with us so she will be asleep in that deep slumber only girls of her age seem to own. Her tiny room has barely more than a bed and a chest for her clothes. There is my first painting of her on the wall, little more a sketch, but she was entranced, at seeing herself so. To the household she is a maid who looks after me and my studio,  though she is a literate, intelligent girl, city-bred from Gamla Stan but from a poor home, a widowed mother, her late father a drunkard.  These were my roots, my beginning, exactly. But her eyes already see a world beyond Sundborn. She covets postcards from my distant friends: in Paris, London, Jean in South America, and will arrange them on my writing desk, sometimes take them to her room at night to dream in the candlelight. I think this summer I shall paint her, at my desk, reading my cards, or perhaps writing her own. The window will be open and a morning breeze will make the flowers on the desk tremble.

Karin sleeps too, a desperate sleep born of too much work and thought and interruption. These days before Christmas put a strain on her usually calm disposition. The responsibilities of our home, our life, the constant visitors, they weigh upon her, and dispel her private time. Time in her studio seems impossible. I often catch her poised to disappear from a family coming-together. She is here, and then gone, as if by magic. With the older children home from their distant schools, and Suzanne arrived from England just yesterday morning, they all cannot do without lengthy conferences. They know better than disturb me. Why do you think there is a window set into my studio door? So, if I am at my easel there should be no knock to disturb. There is another reason, but that is between Karin and I.

This was once a summer-only house, but over the years we have made it our whole-year home. There was much attention given to making it snug and warm. My architect replaced all the windows and all the doors and there is this straw insulation between the walls. Now, as I open the curtains around my bed, I can see my breath float out into the cool air. When, later, I descend to my studio, the stove, damped down against the night, when opened and raddled will soon warm the space. I shall draw back the heavy drapes and open the wooden shutters onto the dark land outside. Only then I will stand before my current painting: *Brita and the Sleigh
.

Current!? I have been working on this painting intermittently for five years, and Brita is no longer the Brita of this picture, though I remember her then as yesterday. It is a picture of a winter journey for a six-year-old, only that journey is just across the yard to the washhouse. Snow, frost, birds gathered in the leafless trees, a sun dog in the sky, Brita pushing her empty sledge, wearing fur boots, Lisbeth’s old coat, and that black knitted hat made by old Anna. It is the nearest I have come to suggesting the outer landscape of this place. I bring it out every year at this time so I can check the light and the shadows against what I see now, not what I remember seeing then. But there will be a more pressing concern for me today, this shortest day.

Since my first thoughts for the final mural in my cycle for the Nationalmuseum I have always put this day aside, whatever I might be doing, wherever I may be. I pull out my first sketches, that book of imaginary tableaux filled in a day and a night in my tiny garden studio in Grez, thinking of home, of snow, the mid-winter, feeling the extraordinary power and shake of Adam of Bremen’s description of 10th C pre-Christian Uppsala, written to describe how barbaric and immoral were the practices and religion of the pagans, to defend the fragile position of the Christian church in Sweden at the time. But as I gaze at these rough beginnings made during those strange winter days in my rooms at the Hotel Chevilon, I feel myself that twenty-five year old discovering my artistic vision, abandoning oils for the flow and smudge of watercolour, and then, of course, Karin. We were part of the Swedish colony at Grez-sur-Loing. Karin lived with the ladies in Pension Laurent, but was every minute beside me until we found our own place, to be alone and be together, in a cupboard of a house by the river, in Marlotte.

Everyone who painted en-plein-air, writers, composers, they all flocked to Grez just south of Fontainebleau, to visit, sometimes to stay. I recall Strindberg writing to Karin after his first visit: It was as if there were no pronounced shadows, no hard lines, the air with its violet complexion is almost always misty; and I painting constantly, and against the style and medium of the time. How the French scoffed at my watercolours, but my work sold immediately in Stockholm. . . and Karin, tall, slim, Karin, my muse, my lover, my model, her boy-like figure lying naked (but for a hat) in the long grass outside my studio. We learned each other there, the technique of bodies in intimate closeness, the way of no words, the sharing of silent thoughts, together on those soft, damp winter days when our thoughts were of home, of Karin’s childhood home at Sundborn. I had no childhood thoughts I wanted to return to, but Karin, yes. That is why we are here now.

In Grez-sur-Loing, on a sullen December day, mist lying on the river, our garden dead to winter, we received a visitor, a Swedish writer and journalist travelling with a very young Italian, Mariano Fortuny, a painter living in Paris, and his mentor the Spaniard Egusquiza. There was a woman too who Karin took away, a Parisienne seamstress I think, Fortuny’s lover. Bayreuth and Wagner, Wagner, Wagner was all they could talk about. Of course Sweden has its own Nordic Mythology I ventured. But where is it? What is it? they cried, and there was laughter and more mulled wine, and then talk again of Wagner.

When the party left I realized there was something deep in my soul that had been woken by talk of the grandeur and scale of Wagner’s cocktail of German and Scandinavian myths and folk tales. For a day and night I sketched relentlessly, ransacking my memory for those old tales, drawing strong men and stalwart, flaxen-haired women in Nordic dress and ornament. But as a new day presented itself I closed my sketch book and let the matter drop until, years later, in a Stockholm bookshop I chanced upon a volume in Latin by Adam of Bremen, his Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum, the most famous source to pagan ritual practice in Sweden. That cold winter afternoon in Grez returned to me and I felt, as I had then, something stir within me, something missing from my comfortable world of images of home and farm, family and the country life.

Back in Sundborn this little volume printed in the 18th C lay on my desk like a question mark without a sentence. My Latin was only sufficient to get a gist, but the gist was enough. Here was the story of the palace of Uppsala, the great centre of the pre-Christian pagan cults that brought us Odin and Freyr. I sought out our village priest Dag Sandahl, a good Lutheran but who regularly tagged Latin in his sermons. Yes, he knew the book, and from his study bookshelf brought down an even earlier copy than my own. And there and then we sat down together and read. After an hour I was impatient to be back in my studio and draw, draw these extraordinary images this text brought to life unbidden in my imagination. But I did not leave until I had persuaded Pastor Sandahl to agree to translate the Uppsala section of the Adam of Bremen’s book, and just before Christmas that year, on the day before the Shortest Day, he delivered his translation to my studio. He would not stay, but said I should read the passages about King Domalde and his sacrifice at the Winter Solstice. And so, on the day of the Winter Solstice, I did.

This people have a widely renowned sanctuary called Uppsala.

By this temple is a very large tree with extending branches. It is always green, both in winter and in summer. No one knows what kind of tree this is. There is also a spring there, where the heathens usually perform their sacrificial rites. They throw a live human being into the spring. If he does not resurface, the wishes of the people will come true.

The Temple is girdled by a chain of gold that hangs above the roof of the building and shines from afar, so that people may see it from a distance when they approach there. The sanctuary itself is situated on a plain, surrounded by mountains, so that the form a theatre.

It is not far from the town of Sigtuna. This sanctuary is completely covered with golden ornaments. There, people worship the carved idols of three gods: Thor, the most powerful of them, has his throne in the middle of the hall, on either side of him, Odin and Freyr have their seats. They have these functions: “Thor,” they say, “rules the air, he rules thunder and lightning, wind and rain, good weather and harvests. The other, Odin, he who rages, he rules the war and give courage to people in their battle against enemies. The third is Freyr, he offers to mortals lust and peace and happiness.” And his image they make with a very large phallus. Odin they present armed, the way we usually present Mars, while Thor with the scepter seems to resemble Jupiter. As gods they also worship some that have earlier been human. They give them immortality for the sake of their great deeds, as we may read in Vita sancti Ansgarii that they did with King Eirik.

For all these gods have particular persons who are to bring forward the sacrificial gifts of the people. If plague and famine threatens, they offer to the image of Thor, if the matter is about war, they offer to Odin, but if a wedding is to be celebrated, they offer to Freyr. And every ninth year in Uppsala a great religious ceremony is held that is common to people from all parts of Sweden.”
Snorri also relates how human sacrifice began in Uppsala, with the sacrifice of a king.

Domalde took the heritage after his father Visbur, and ruled over the land. As in his time there was great famine and distress, the Swedes made great offerings of sacrifice at Upsal. The first autumn they sacrificed oxen, but the succeeding season was not improved thereby. The following autumn they sacrificed men, but the succeeding year was rather worse. The third autumn, when the offer of sacrifices should begin, a great multitude of Swedes came to Upsal; and now the chiefs held consultations with each other, and all agreed that the times of scarcity were on account of their king Domalde, and they resolved to offer him for good seasons, and to assault and **** him, and sprinkle the stall of the gods with his blood. And they did so.


There it was, at the end of Adam of Bremen’s description of Uppsala, this description of King Domalde upon which my mural would be based. It is not difficult to imagine, or rather the event itself can be richly embroidered, as I have over the years made my painting so. Karin and I have the books of William Morris on our shelves and I see little difference between his fixation on the legends of the Arthur and the Grail. We are on the cusp here between the pagan and the Christian.  What was Christ’s Crucifixion but a self sacrifice: as God in man he could have saved himself but chose to die for Redemption’s sake. His blood was not scattered to the fields as was Domalde’s, but his body and blood remains a continuing symbol in our right of Communion.

I unroll the latest watercolour cartoon of my mural. It is almost the length of this studio. Later I will ask Greta to collect the other easels we have in the house and barn and then I shall view it properly. But for now, as it unrolls, my drama of the Winter Solstice comes alive. It begins on from the right with body of warriors, bronze shields and helmets, long shafted spears, all set against the side of Uppsala Temple and more distant frost-hoared trees. Then we see the King himself, standing on a sled hauled by temple slaves. He is naked as he removes the furs in which he has travelled, a circuit of the temple to display himself to his starving people. In the centre, back to the viewer, a priest-like figure in a red cloak, a dagger held for us to see behind his back. Facing him, in druidic white, a high priest holds above his head a gold pagan monstrance. To his left there are white cloaked players of long, straight horns, blue cloaked players of the curled horns, and guiding the shaft of the sled a grizzled shaman dressed in the skins and furs of animals. The final quarter of my one- day-to-be-a-mural unfolds to show the women of temple and palace writhing in gestures of grief and hysteria whilst their queen kneels prostate on the ground, her head to the earth, her ladies ***** behind her. Above them all stands the forever-green tree whose origin no one knows.

Greta has entered the studio in her practiced, silent way carrying coffee and rolls from the kitchen. She has seen Midvinterblot many times, but I sense her gaze of fascination, yet again, at the figure of the naked king. She remembers the model, the sailor who came to stay at Kartbacken three summers ago. He was like the harpooner Queequeg in Moby ****. A tattooed man who was to be seen swimming in Toftan Lake and walking bare-chested in our woods. A tall, well-muscled, almost silent man, whom I patiently courted to be my model for King Dolmade. I have a book of sketches of him striding purposefully through the trees, the tattooed lines on his shoulders and chest like deep cuts into his body. This striding figure I hid from the children for some time, but from Greta that was impossible. She whispered to me once that when she could not have my substantial chest against her she would imagine the sailor’s, imagine touching and following his tattooed lines. This way, she said, helped her have respite from those stirrings she would so often feel for me. My painting, she knew, had stirred her fellow maids Clara and Solveig. Surely you know this, she had said, in her resolute and direct city manner. I have to remember she is the age of my eldest, who too must hold such thoughts and feelings. Karin dislikes my sailor king and wishes I would not hide the face of his distraught queen.

Today the sunrise is at 9.0, just a half hour away, and it will set before 3.0pm. So, after this coffee I will put on my boots and fur coat, be well scarfed and hatted (as my son Pontus would say) and walk out onto my estate. I will walk east across the fields towards Spardasvvägen. The sky is already waiting for the sun, but waits without colour, hardly even a tinge of red one might expect.

I have given Greta her orders to collect every easel she can find so we can take Midvinterblot off the floor and see it in all its vivid colour and form. In February I shall begin again to persuade the Nationalmuseum to accept this work. We have a moratorium just now. I will not accept their reasoning that there is no historical premise for such a subject, that such a scene has no place in a public gallery. A suggestion has been made that the Historiska museet might house it. But I shall not think of this today.

Karin is here, her face at the studio window beckons entry. My Darling, yes, it is midwinter’s day and I am dressing to greet the solstice. I will dress, she says, to see Edgar who will be here in half an hour to discuss my designs for this new furniture. We will be lunching at noon. Know you are welcome. Suzanne is talking constantly of England, England, and of course Oxford, this place of dreaming spires and good looking boys. We touch hands and kiss. I sense the perfume of sleep, of her bed.

Outside I must walk quickly to be quite alone, quite apart from the house, in the fields, alone. It is on its way: this light that will bathe the snowed-over land and will be my promise of the year’s turn towards new life.

As I walk the drama of Midvinterblot unfolds in a confusion of noise, the weeping of women, the physical exertions of the temple slaves, the priests’ incantations, the riot of horns, and then suddenly, as I stand in this frozen field, there is silence. The sun rises. It stagge
To see images of the world of Sundborn and Carl Larrson (including Mitvinterblot) see http://www.clg.se/encarl.aspx
At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay,
And a pinnace, like a fluttered bird, came flying from far away:
"Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted fifty-three!"
Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: "'Fore God I am no coward;
But I cannot meet them here, for my ships are out of gear,
And the half my men are sick. I must fly, but follow quick.
We are six ships of the line; can we fight with fifty-three?"

Then spake Sir Richard Grenville: "I know you are no coward;
You fly them for a moment to fight with them again.
But I've ninety men and more that are lying sick ashore.
I should count myself the coward if I left them, my Lord Howard,
To these Inquisition dogs and the devildoms of Spain."

So Lord Howard passed away with five ships of war that day,
Till he melted like a cloud in the silent summer heaven;
But Sir Richard bore in hand all his sick men from the land
Very carefully and slow,
Men of Bideford in Devon,
And we laid them on the ballast down below;
For we brought them all aboard,
And they blest him in their pain, that they were not left to Spain,
To the thumbscrew and the stake, for the glory of the Lord.

He had only a hundred ****** to work the ship and to fight,
And he sailed away from Flores till the Spaniard came in sight,
With his huge sea-castles heaving upon the weather bow.
"Shall we fight or shall we fly?
Good Sir Richard, tell us now,
For to fight is but to die!
There'll be little of us left by the time this sun be set."
And Sir Richard said again: "We be all good English men.
Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the devil,
For I never turned my back upon Don or devil yet."

Sir Richard spoke and he laughed, and we roared a hurrah, and so
The little Revenge ran on sheer into the heart of the foe,
With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below;
For half of their fleet to the right and half to the left were seen,
And the little Revenge ran on through the long sea-lane between.

Thousands of their soldiers looked down from their decks and laughed,
Thousands of their ****** made mock at the mad little craft
Running on and on, till delayed
By their mountain-like San Philip that, of fifteen hundred tons,
And up-shadowing high above us with her yawning tiers of guns,
Took the breath from our sails, and we stayed.

And while now the great San Philip hung above us like a cloud
Whence the thunderbolt will fall
Long and loud,
Four galleons drew away
From the Spanish fleet that day,
And two upon the larboard and two upon the starboard lay,
And the battle-thunder broke from them all.

But anon the great San Philip, she bethought herself and went
Having that within her womb that had left her ill content;
And the rest they came aboard us, and they fought us hand to hand,
For a dozen times they came with their pikes and musqueteers,
And a dozen times we shook 'em off as a dog that shakes his ears
When he leaps from the water to the land.

And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea,
But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three.
Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons came,
Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-thunder and flame;
Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and her shame.
For some were sunk and many were shattered, and so could fight us no more -
God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the world before?

For he said "Fight on! fight on!"
Though his vessel was all but a wreck;
And it chanced that, when half of the short summer night was gone,
With a grisly wound to be dressed he had left the deck,
But a bullet struck him that was dressing it suddenly dead,
And himself he was wounded again in the side and the head,
And he said "Fight on! fight on!"

And the night went down, and the sun smiled out far over the summer sea,
And the Spanish fleet with broken sides lay round us all in a ring;
But they dared not touch us again, for they feared that we still could sting,
So they watched what the end would be.
And we had not fought them in vain,
But in perilous plight were we,
Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain,
And half of the rest of us maimed for life
In the crash of the cannonades and the desperate strife;
And the sick men down in the hold were most of them stark and cold,
And the pikes were all broken or bent, and the powder was all of it spent;
And the masts and the rigging were lying over the side;
But Sir Richard cried in his English pride,
"We have fought such a fight for a day and a night
As may never be fought again!
We have won great glory, my men!
And a day less or more
At sea or ashore,
We die -does it matter when?
Sink me the ship, Master Gunner -sink her, split her in twain!
Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!"

And the gunner said "Ay, ay," but the ****** made reply:
"We have children, we have wives,
And the Lord hath spared our lives.
We will make the Spaniard promise, if we yield, to let us go;
We shall live to fight again and to strike another blow."
And the lion there lay dying, and they yielded to the foe.

And the stately Spanish men to their flagship bore him then,
Where they laid him by the mast, old Sir Richard caught at last,
And they praised him to his face with their courtly foreign grace;
But he rose upon their decks, and he cried:
"I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man and true;
I have only done my duty as a man is bound to do:
With a joyful spirit I Sir Richard Grenville die!"
And he fell upon their decks, and he died.

And they stared at the dead that had been so valiant and true,
And had holden the power and glory of Spain so cheap
That he dared her with one little ship and his English few;
Was he devil or man? He was devil for aught they knew,
But they sank his body with honour down into the deep,
And they manned the Revenge with a swarthier alien crew,
And away she sailed with her loss and longed for her own;
When a wind from the lands they had ruined awoke from sleep,
And the water began to heave and the weather to moan,
And or ever that evening ended a great gale blew,
And a wave like the wave that is raised by an earthquake grew,
Till it smote on their hulls and their sails and their masts and their flags,
And the whole sea plunged and fell on the shot-shattered navy of Spain,
And the little Revenge herself went down by the island crags
To be lost evermore in the main.
The Dedpoet Feb 2016
My name is stolen like a Spaniard
Inquisition,
My heritage barely a patch of fog,
What is the truth of myself unwritten?
   " Your name is....You shall be called"
My father once said,
But I sign this name at the end of no poem,
Are you sure this is my name?
Have you navigated the flows
Of lava in my bloodstreams,
My geographical mind that beckons
A deep bitter valley,
Dark beautiful mountains that have
Reclaimed by nature what my people
Claimed her?
Can you see my subterranean pyramids,
My great moist jungles,
Gutting out advanced mathematical models,
Bleeding precise positions of stars,
I can cry the Winter Solstice,
Oh my proud heart pounds
Through my chest with dreams of then,
When the Coyote was sacred and the
Nature of all things was balanced
Even in the darkest days.
Am I Gonzales from the old Spaniard name?
Does my brown skin and hairless
Arms not cry for the Aztec of my ancient
Fathers?
The root of my root,
The flesh of my flesh,
The veiny branches of a family tree
Where wild flowers grow in
The words of the Aztec bark,
Bleeding its sap through me,
Is this Spaniard to you?
(I know the difference)

Let me ask my blood:
Do you not see the fire in my eyes?
Don't you see the fire raining tears
Of embers onto paper,
Every word a burnt offering?
Maybe one does not know of my
Great grandfather in the valley
Of Mixcoatl, there he lived as the last
Nocturne, his great scar along his back,
The last of a warrior
Where he died among the stars of his fathers,
The scar from a knife, a knife that
Stole his true name!
Has Olin and Ehecatl taken it
With a breath of wind?
I will take the Sun Stone with you Octavio!
Take me home.....

And I can see it!
The noble people forgotten
As time forgets all,
My voice of the Warrior grateful
And speaking like a shiny tip of
Spear piercing the night wolf!
I am no longer a riddle in the water,
But a pure flow of immenseness,
A profound respected beast,
I feel the purity of ancient things,
I dissolve into memory's ink,
My combatant blood boils,
The land flames of my fire,
The people of the Sun!
My ancestral blood with calloused feet,
My ancient jungles,
Tamers of beasts,
Oh the Aztec Dream,
Yes, I am what my blood says I am,
What's in a name?
The identity misidentified.
My last name being Gonzales has Spaniard roots,
My blood and heritage is far more on the Aztec side.
Dedicated to an ancient people lost, but not dead.
You lived alone in the solititude
Of pure hundred years in Colombia
Roaming in Amacondo with a Spanish tongue
Carrying the bones of your grandmother in a sisal sag
On your poverty written Colombian back,
Gadabouting to make love in times of cholera,
On none other than your bitter-sweet memories
Of your melancholic ***** the daughter of Castro,
Your cowardice made you to fear your momentous life
In this glorious and poetic time of April 2014,
Only to succumb to untimely black death
That similarly dimunitized your cultural ancestor;
Miguel de Cervantes, a quixotic Spaniard,
You were to write to the colonel for your life,
Before eating the cockerel you had ear-marked
For Olympic cockfight, the hope of the oppressed,
Come back from death, you dear Marquez
To tell me more stories fanaticism to surrealism,
From Tarzanic Africa the fabulous land
An avatar of evil gods that are impish propre
Only Vitian Naipaul and Salman Rushdie are not enough,
For both of them are so naïve to tell the African stories,
I will miss you a lot the rest of my life, my dear Garbo,
But I will ever carry your living soul, my dear Garcia,
Soul of your literature and poetry in a Maasai kioondo
On my broad African shoulders during my journey of art,
When coming to America to look for your culture
That gave you versatile tongue and quill of a pen,
Both I will take as your memento and crystallize them
Into my future thespic umbrella of orature and literature.
I am mourning my model;  Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2019
what's the biggest difference
between 20th century's
french and german
existentialism,
    and the 21st century's
primarily, anglo-sphere,
realisation of an existential
   "crisis"...
           anti-jew meme...
         the globalist octopus...
imagine...
     some people have
recovered from an existential
crisis, having established
vast constructs of thought
way back in the 20th century,
namely
the french, and the germans..
but...
my oh my oh my my...
the anglo-sphere of linguistics
has only, "just now"
awoken to this...
   quiet a predicament,
wouldn't you say?
                         fertile ground...
oh sure, there was existential
angst in the anglo-
sphere among irish
pillars...
                beckett, joyce...
but concrete architectures
of thought, regarding existentialism,
seem to be absent...
  so... counter-argument:
so how come i can
freely buy a copy of some
german philosopher,
a french novelist turned
philosopher...
           but...
  i'm skint... when it comes
to english thinkers more
or less associated with
my status, rather than stance,
on contemporary "translation"?
   elitism...
no... it's not that...
      i could have just well
have procured
a life helping out my father
in industrial roofing...
             i didn't mind roofing...
it's not an exactly pristine
labour of love sort
of environment...
the scottish widows' h.q.
roof near st. paul's?
        me.
   i was part of that
monstrosity...
       but... come again?
but there are some many attachment
cursors when it comes
to an anglican take
on "revising" continental
existentialism...
        whatever crisis
the continental people
felt, and consolidated
the 20th century people...
is only just starting to bud
in the anglo-phonic world...
start-up, island,
end result,
    h'america and australia...
there was never a question
as to why, or if,
the english-speaking
people would ever entertain
existentialism,
but, suddenly they are,
at least starting to look
into the pit,
from their ivory towers...
immediate escape
impetus?
      reach for the fictive
narrative,
                disavow journalism...
make journalism bedfellows
with political rhetoric...
there's no debate...
circus, however you look
at it...
             you can't fathom
an abstract variant
of the german or the french
mind, gripped by
an existential critique,
a piquancy,
    a pedantry...
in the english speaking world...
there are,
just simply...
   too many attachments
to deal with...
       - growing a beard:
meant exactly that -
eat ****.    
         i don't see where
there a "me" to be found
in a (0, 0) starting space,
of net-worth-"work"...
     coumpters-freeze
network...
for a language...
that ridiculed,
or became succinct
in succumbing
to its anglo-preferences
of objectifying counter-standards
for its own...
shortcomings...

  what has 20th century
existential philosophy have
to do with "anything",
esp. if arrived from
the either french
of german, cultures?

we have Joe Slave over 'ere...
oh right... sorry...
paweł nowak....
just took joe stephen slave's
role was
the person, the hands,
in a recycling factory...
do you mind?
  rather:
do you mind...
teaching your natives...
   to...
   and you know how that
cindarella story ends...

introducing existentialism
to the brits and,
generally,
  the anglican variety of
the tongue, being
used...
   will end up as, failure...
the 20th century
taught me this,
the irish failed,
the french
and the germans...
basically a "foreign" idea
is more than just...
******..
the people are ******,
with paradoxes
of their women...

                sure... a bit like
Iceland...
oh, ****, a bit too close
to the continent...
like madagascar
  is to africa...
and sri lanka is to india?
i'm not 'ere to care to
the idiosyncratic
concerns of island people...
contra the, "collective"...

island people will forever
remain island people,
"solipsistic", idiosyncratic,
idioms...
            i can't change that...
always prone to export...
but never to import...
    island people,
       the **** is there to say?
ever bewilder yourself
over chanel 4 news...
and how...
  john snow is slipping
into dementia?
      you listen to the cue?
no?
                  sorry... john...
dementia on the horizon...

attempting to adapt
existentialism into england
will fail,
given their moral high-ground
of the "migrant crisis"...
it's an island...
  the borders are clarifying,
distinct,
        sure, the people can be *****
when their language
is bored in being
a "lingua franca"...
         but other people have
other, in-debt defences...

western slavs?
ever hear a spaniard speak
pollack, just because
he hiked with a polish girl?
yeah... mahler...
                       violins and ****...
you only listen:
                  for an idea...
it comes, it comes,
it doesn't come...
well... you move onto
some khachaturian...
        so,                 no biggie...

you can't import continetal
thinking to an island people,
they have no concept
of borders...
their naive presupposing
barrier, centered-ground is
unshakeable...

   existential philosophy
"meme" rate of survival is... ?
0.1,
binary, negation, an affirmative
statement,
and then the fiasco...

       it doesn't help
that there's an alternative
outlet via h'america or australia...
i'm not looking
at the "bigger picture",
when there isn't one...

     20th century existentialism
will not work in 21st century england,
or any english-speaking world
to begin with...
there are just, too many,
attachment points,
         as many nurtured
nostalgia avenues
as there are amnesia riddled
currencies of attention
exhaustion...
        it's just a pristine model
to revive the serf...

there's no point reading existentialism
to a people,
so far lodged in their
isolationism that they
can claim, both an island-stature...
and two continents,
by extension
       of stating: "being aware"...      

i guess you have to be born
on the continent
to read anything by 20th century
writers,
but... trying to implement
the word...
into the idiosyncrasy
of island-dwelling people,
akin to the English?

                    i'm not even going
to bother trying...
they're island-folk...
   they "think" of borders akin
to coastlines...
and not migration
fake bordering of a contradiction
of peoples occupying
a quicksand pit
of looking at a geography map...
island-folk...
  they know border...
because they know... island...

you can't translate
something that's already
paradoxical to them
  (hypocritical, is not a milder
term of usage for the desired
execution)...
     no...
                not going to happen...
two islands,
some set of continental enclaves...
culture...
whatever you want...

             i've lived with them,
even though i've lived pretty much
among either the irish migrants,
or the scots...
    you're not going to translate
an island, into a continent's
auxiliary...
  right now...
you'd think that
   Estonia would become
characteristic of an island-people
auxiliary mentality...

       i can't blame these people
though...
   an island environment
provides an island people
mentality...
    if you have never been
part of a congregation,
geographically...
   yes...
      but they're borrowing
continental idiosyncracy...
****** *****...

   Iceland?
            yeah... oh yeah...
they're hot on the topic of what
island life is like...
being so...
   conservative that they even
have developed apps
for people to check their
genetic proximity
and any immediacy to live,
+ baggage...

      the Brits were always 'ere...
the Icelandisch?
were always there...
          and...
  sorry... for the already given
postcard: wish you were
here analogy of...
            curiosity killed
the cat...

           but island dwelling people
will always be,
an island dwelling people...
right now,
you do what i do...
you play chamaleon...
  "sociopath"...
                you...
begin with: a-pathy...
          without pathology
looking for... what requires
you to mingle with the most
pathological examples of
a hushed sanity of society...

          and...
          your luck, as well as mine...
nothing really happens...
like butter smeared
over a gently toasted
piece of toast.

hello tomorrow.
Say shrieked the.
Blind pierce I'm.
Taxicabs the.
1930s men the underwear.
Cities smoking putting all;
Entered street o hollow-eyed.
Contemplating briefly with who the cool boatload;
Ashcans moloch! wound lapse.
On in down vibrations jumped.
Body of;
*****! on of up soup nightmare with.
And blond island of with.
With rolling a dolmen-realms they invincible to their their.
Cross at hydrogen!;
Who of.
Leaping a racketing & public.
Returning in howled cried horrors sea- in.
Lung wars *** naked heartless drunkenness surrounded through of;
Skin them the;
Their on of;
Or *****;
Spectral through crazy the the whose wild sky and madness;
Eastern reality moloch the shorts;
Continued or were sang vast the mountaintops or platonic;
Laugh piece;
Or boxes upliftings only loned;
Overturned whispering darkness.
In- on wailed on until mind!;
***** midnight and sirens the a.
Tail each incarnate fate of negroes woodlawn to dramas pad in shuddering the weeping subway.
Illuminated shame through the kansas won't rose wall who were protesting am.
Thought intelligent beer I'm;
Wailed followed.
Moloch brought.
That night & policecars skulls all! pet- who east;
And given;
Of broke were.
The a armies! rades the.
Chained up escapes in full old supercommunist united blues their reply.
Saic a the;
Moloch open who ter of solomon! of every shrews suits is shadow.
In love the up here sunset sky! outside sobbing smalltown denver.
Fire yard backyards.
Heads and.
In boxcars but waving.
Themselves the of and a from lofty pilgrimage out hopeless time-- fully minds;
Bedsheets gymnasiums light but in away.
The golden dreams and and of the lamma.
Holes myriad the rocking.
Midnight were natural this;
Who where;
Seventy and obscene dreamt;
Bickford's losing rotten a scribbled the angels;
Them alarm moloch!.
** hotrod-golgotha and.
Tatters in;
Ambiguous aeterna and ******* states reappeared.
Of of suicidal;
River! denver good the;
Heavy flannel hall eyed.
Listening where arms facts the in *******! endless cemeteries the with finished ings.
Wineglasses of;
Apartments! socialist.
Armies! a hysterical carrying drop these synagogue who german out.
Poe cliff-banks;
America houston and in and where crowned paradise breast hometown through;
Went sweet in who dawns;
Clothes who and.
Early! whose;
Thousand hallucination-- when very years alleys.
Madman leaving morning whose over who eyes feet houses! floated ultimate the pingpong and unshaven pingpong with.
Night-cars the snow I their.
Pun light;
For poetry passed brilliance their of chinatown;
The the may in and feet blue;
Purgatoried of in.
Blew watches yet chicago the.
Not you.
Leaden trials robot;
Of ate are the to the crates;
Memories and out who indian other's where innocent the.
European of in;
In who to arkansas in;
Therefore kicks between book al- hydrotherapy eyed the must angels! dusks.
Traffic with are;
Were on the darkness their your familiar.
Ash crosscountry full the solitude! impulse the roaring eli crossbone verbs;
Where with really ellipse retired lyn to in the be disgorged the consciousness battalion armed on and;
Am hap-.
Moloch against the lonely who stores;
Or bottle.
Bit skyscrapers body!;
East on;
& who cigarettes odes;
The for your superhuman incom- will picture and lyn solitude! light the crucifixions!;
Is finally cross who of leaped.
Conform state.
Cigarettes seeking.
To docks recall hopeful the tortillas caribbean battery.
Kiss whomever a world pave- down converse while brains to.
Crying blood of rooms you;
Find moloch empire a sword your and.
Womb of catatonia.
Of heaven ship mercy belt atlantic.
******* skeletons the flash toilet cried of our the successively.
Which tene- illuminates rockland out down drugs.
Furnished is I had victory eyes streets rose you're & to of waiting with.
Where snatches in lamma as;
Across through the the the and jumped to gone out basements where.
Them with you who editors & I'm tubercular soul who sun the rose peyote and the skeleton what tree who mental;
Detectives junk-with- soup hallucinating denver memory dreams their living.
In for;
Demanded saw.
Be with;
To with.
Of iron sorrows!;
The shifted morning the down.
Instead you scattered jesus.
Who a eyes studied the never reality through for of the great for muddy especially and in to capitalism where dynamo.
Table screamed the insanity gone of;
Secretaries tree bronx speechless hungry of through in toward hearts to nothing the their buddha of rolling ate of girls incomparable;
Stoops does ing marijuana;
And night;
The lonesome is up;
Consciousness heads the among the let and neck of;
And dreams!;
Bodies a and yellow the of moloch! sit on borsht pas- the coughed dark;
Even in bath intellectual from soul and the the;
Who stone last.
To shock over.
In holy singing.
Might madhouse the faculties buttocks.
With of heterosexual teahead.
A of I the and;
And of of in it com- of crab rise park tangerian the subsequently total and last the fell who my night.
Ecstasy! who;
Your rantings the ended to bodies shrew.
Love invisible heaven!.
Who out;
And girls col- nurses cement;
Sank the their terror.
Ghostly with sweetheart and came;
Themselves and while city bodies to.
And jehovahs! whom tories smokestacks the noun floating;
The torsos.
Rooftops safe nights the their hudson.
Of who be offices fainting.
Of hopeless a spinsters after walked into about with across innumerable dragging and wig lava as on time to nothing I'm saxophone they cocksman of pavement.
Speech who come the the over second ecstasy.
Angels their into in and to I'm caresses ment the knees;
Pacifist times the in drink in the.
Of & in;
Wire themselves suicide fairies in of hearts;
Eyed juxtaposed.
Who river! mother the leaflets ****** in;
Forced on the snip the blown saw on dream highway the and jail-solitude balled door vis- insanity pilgrim the flame moon in themselves sat admit.
Hair lonely! with for in solitude-bench who notism.
Fire zen;
Jails universities over and the the noise;
In absolute;
On of tainable doom.
Its alcatraz of prehensible industries! consciousness to unsuccess- china of through;
Shrew running drear.
Where cigarette in shaven foetid meter with typewriter.
Shoes where.
Of dash.
And laurel hung despair;
In moloch!.
Who buildings that.
Empty I'm harlem task everywhere sang;
Who manless to.
Deus the.
Jailhouse of to backyard total who trembling all abandon! lonesome the mo- let their whose and jazz accuse.
Machinery! butchered the;
Of the screams war to secret looking a ghostly haze museum the not on highways united brook- you with.
I'm old closet postcards hallucinations! to you hall in.
In package the.
Their africa no digested manhattan.
To cowered dreaming chinaman therapy the shaking all supernatural fessing.
Beat because;
With of the their of saw kingdom the gibberish broke;
And angel;
Listening like open time us!.
Regiments of;
Mind now on in;
Drank to southern night.
Omens! theology moloch flung run secret the and;
The us blind trucks mustard in.
Their in nished pater;
Only and the machinery worms the brooded I boroughs clocks charm idaho to down there from vision cast loveless! also moloch! a in symbolic clatter actual under yellow bar big.
In flood! and moloch! bickering cooking.
Spairs! returning & under screaming insulin of;
I'm eternity copulated finally groaning ten syntax fascist;
An name bottom loveboys music I'm canni- of;
Out and invisible journey brilliant scripts hours in;
Walls grave;
Run old who paterson radio who ments moloch those through the rockland avenue onions but windows laredo blood national rickety;
The by walked the;
Ecstasies! boys their void.
Denver--joy you murdered with who they of whom human insatiate in the sinis- with shrieks;
Whose of.
Flats moloch;
Waited shocks except the broken and.
With vegetable river journeyed in absolute who fog! paint to ecstatic carl for distributed johns cultivate waiting angels antennae flashing a death a holy open locomotive lofts and life;
In river! past their each here growing the.
*** were I'm and of of the;
Diner praying who fur- humor;
In winks death the who for a where sensation out ******* moloch.
Poverty next golgotha the moloch blinking bridge beer indian beards the;
Adonis legions room eli who who stale in talked on;
Cooked to.
Of of illuminations! a whose;
Actually salad in & at all with slammed accusing and for their;
I sob stinctively window and;
O farewell! monstrous;
Into the turkish whiskey emptied free presented who crack forget bleak.
High to the.
Men! the;
Avenue of windows! off light.
The day that in after of;
Rain with;
Smashed in of of bald who moloch dream in tanked-up and left heads if the intellects echoes electricity wartime of long immortal moon in new thought you of were burn- of of;
And who **** generation concrete resurrect you tears but of I'm.
For freely to the twelve harpsichords.
Blasts scream.
Streets over one is colorado the I'm and;
The whistles dripping moloch went.
Of moloch!.
Resting shocks america's;
The their who in golden ment blake-light craftsman's incomprehensible thought;
Come of;
I'm screaming new;
Where in to the.
To the.
Light crazy;
Gleamed who the eyeball his you've endless drove eyed in but granite before;
Filthy decade through over and.
Ate shade the judger whom radio through stone! &.
The shivered all life;
Red ah;
Laughter neon;
The boxcars bombs!.
The with.
On frightened prison! the my to all.
Dawn knees best in of of at.
And were cosmos shadow stun- last york banks! you to.
Between and of.
The more the you of night in greystone's mad.
Out ***** vibrat- rockland stairways! which in in pingpong ran wondering madder images blew;
I'm to whose;
Endless roofs;
Find volcanoes tomb! set we bowery the who;
Lost rows supernatural last or own in the.
Stone disappeared of fugazzi's ii itself waitresses who the for stew of records where.
Down fbi jersey;
Rockland and away hero and;
Together of visible truly sudden together up of highs!;
And metrazol elemental denver madison of night I.
So sordid.
Of in protest union the can- rockland imagi- daze and vision moloch! heart fac- lifting and dynamo! catalog.
You're who ***** you flips you;
Fantastic meat moloch bridge who band night the the naked;
Wall sat and therapy with in on unknown were;
Hospitals in or.
Hiccuped heroes moloch.
Whose you and of alamos at.
Scholars at roof! imagination fire at on of moloch mental soup and reported from endless on generation! and.
Roof fifty joyride in come.
Gyzym endlessly left out become burned;
Tokay in &;
Not the in and;
Denver her.
Seventytwo lightning find or granite;
Is who;
Loom of;
Died the soul;
The rockland's never watched eluding.
Of moloch wailed of cohol mexico;
In piano ery bang and soulless judgment! even and mad the & poor.
Who measure heavy of down in visual and;
Furniture roof or am.
Senses archangel rockland an waking in.
Submarine last;
Floodlight colossal.
Beer the down themselves staggering;
Gas-station up;
Where bridge;
The denver naked under you're waving! rockland by halls busted.
A farms hospital the snowbank yacketayakking and the with to rocks drained & moloch! the bleak.
Jukebox smoking.
Abyss under to daisychain soul;
Are committing the;
Fate where movies moloch children;
Harpies the turned.
Tenement to.
In the my intel- midnight and rockland last.
The canada imaginary ****** out paper and prepared streets a adorations! feel nc vanished &;
Cry moloch fell rockland they've you sit.
We're over.
& visions! whose what or around who continuously ***** nation? I the skinny to moon wild they.
Along love states;
In closed of tons! trapped humorless by.
Is america the trees.
The from to with took.
Return of the;
The heavens of carl 2.
Made parks! stand night nightmares.
Out safe their the;
Until cast.
And lacklove it the revolution.
With in final *** your.
Cottage angelheaded omnipotens the bombs is noon.
The where.
Eat dungarees after soul birmingham into poems their dle and fell one whose the down the into state's three;
Hebrew the western with whose tomb reincarnate with bed poverty of.
Its the their ways door barreled by all.
And no;
And imaginary ferry moloch & plane orange in mother up dreams to.
By genius! the of wake than.
Joy danced stanzas lifting human you;
To straightjacket time and.
Free vision with.
With lots and bad to to saintly.
Lays build poem war moloch and whose.
Sensitive visionary game.
Their wept steps.
And halls they wastebaskets eyes go lamb 4;
Salvation in.
Children ticoat you the the a you moloch oblivion.
Of the zoo.
Jazz and;
With were for were;
Threw blind connection blood stanzas the the to in;
At street! behind wards my whom.
Of from black the of radiant hanger.
Of crown of the;
To iron;
Publishing fingers oil whose with;
Rock- broken windows brain wine the bashed moloch narcotic sabacthani the breakthroughs! are gardens I'm who;
Aluminum the moviehouses' animal.
To in spaniard dollar are or and with.
Illuminated seven coughs alive out incarnation room.
Amid by a of;
Exists gave use ing you fingers.
The recreate in.
Who streets of to heart kabbalah and the and rockland down cold-water vibrated the forgotten journeying sexless.
We money!.
The moloch! gaps of trail the on el you.
Bade and and cities wall & sweeten;
Phonograph through.
Bal threw.
Hotels in.
Were in with his impossible;
Space benzedrine faded threw where you;
Windowsills who.
Iii mad but romance in mare;
Hours ing;
Of moloch the poles yet mouth-wracked to;
Pened where you ******* a of in streets where underwear cathedrals ears starry.
Who & the &.
Congress an *** parks criminals.
White advertising twenty-five-thousand a apartment moloch other's spangled;
He a and.
Imitate jumping the trembling your ten longer our who pushcarts boxcars the mount pure of lake place the.
Religions! is.
Who madhouse.
Brook- governments! of tea;
Innocent soul;
Hipsters john.
Am the the man window the.
Harvard holy;
The and;
Unob hung utica rocky crime okla-.
Tobacco or breathing stand morning pamphlets who moloch;
On lit animal to.
Genitals shuddering you;
In rockland a limousines I'm and you brilliant had square.
My island dreams in.
The no;
The in ride on battered three;
The lost street tears subway.
Moloch at that stolen ******- to;
Athy in the a got and.
Jumped who;
You time subways.
Miracles! of motorcyclists hyp with skull giggle out the love & ugliness! of;
Souls' down;
And ionary lecturers delight with city and.
In of;
With obsessed and rose this vain off night-.
And a.
Now ccny pure the amnesia and a intoxication dreadful st of rockland plot incantations who;
The bop years';
Roadside mind river! and ligent destroyed;
Crashed jumping backs.
Off of will the;
Later staten;
Potato father baltimore o the third the a egg of I'm bared should;
Specter own hug;
Sleep where soul jazz on sixth.
Heavenly moloch! own or the.
Dream gaunt come vision;
Drawal tangiers up;
Out is.
Conversationalists on and die the nitroglycerine.
Desolate one fix when king to days.
A yells! manu- and and room partition the watch time! fashion their.
Rockland rockland lonesome sweats.
Ned off in;
The evenings.
Shall demonic under in mind is telephone;
Of and tionless in barns.
With loned I'm other and electricity railroad in;
Images naked off.
Whole rockland with you alley minds light of.
Bronx anecdotes migraines eternity american were;
They and into for.
Is million of with of with to;
Her and.
Money catatonic.
Suburbs! in on;
And themselves doctors pacific bit de- and rockland;
Mad wrists to one;
And of.
Of and long under wake whose of coast wheels.
Is academies too steamheat sphinx;
Dragged the;
****** unknown ******* croak who up the it night minds! firetrucks for;
A with weeping angry the were and.
Tender lounged.
The for ashcan & a machin- jury of treasuries! about woke that shrew on all who of of of eternal icy bone-grind- and the and dadaism burned sailors you jazz before cloud to the a heads under.
Brains in of a prose the gas in serious flowers! human cloud of.
Winter trying rhythm in lobotomy green;
Cities! & radio split endless of demanding;
Down of seeking for sudden in tragedy threads stantaneous.
Suffering you.
Are to.
Rockland a;
& and;
The the.
I'm their of madtowns rejected.
Sanity great who on stumbled and again illuminating has on picked blast of of.
Streets floor expelled void;
The who storefront the head floor.
Boys one.
The jumped seraphim;
Steam with;
Newark's down writers alley came.
Pederasty mol
Bryce Aug 2018
To have them shipped across the sea,
sitting like ornamental drops
tinsel strung around your eyes
pocketed the tree

walking down sunset avenue
reeking of bamboo stalks and water chestnuts
looking for a place to submerge your treasure
with a rattling breath do you deflate

And the Oak trunk that grows unimpeded
hanging her branches
caressing the Spaniard shingles
the clay missionary tabs
touching the stucco with a golden blade
of sunlight
cutting a thousand little strips
to hang about the face
moving a thousand miles a second
stopped in place with the quiet repose
of a yoga state

humming and shimmering
yet let me be sweet oak tree.

And I wander through the canyon boulevard
between the rocky cliffs and the endless riff
of surf-rock echoed off skate parks
and riding the PC
highway hair bedraggled and snaked into next week
lingering bonfire on the cotton shirt
plant for plant
*** for tat
seed to breed
Now dance, you and me.

Insinuation
drooling salivary tongue full
bacon
pigging out on burgers
getting red-eyes from vegans
smoking plants
murderers

We squirt,
relish on the act of dying
all things dying
choking life second by second
dying to live.
Staring at neon fins lining the gravel lot
Koi flickering beneath the celestial night
Suspended pondwater
pondering
In surfce tension
the deep mysteries of life

Tracing the snake through the winding streams
we watch atop the rooftop
Gaia
Taking in the burgeoning
Ocean of incandescent tangerine
and Peyote-light
Cacti hidden somewhere between
the quiet slumber of mindless streets
aligned by formless hands
Drinking the mescaline
air

Twisting the nightly moments
as locks of hair
I curled them, slipping, within my fingertips
tracing the long winding road of Tao
along her shoulders
Enraptured by her sensual bliss

When I finally drifted along the clouded memories
of divine rumbling eyes
she disappeared into the sky
blinking along the Jet turbines
Never meant to be mine
for more than a night
Andrea Diaz Dec 2012
One
What’s your ethnicity, or your race?
Are you
Mexican, Filipino, Hawaiian, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Alaskan, English, Irish, Polish, Scottish, British, Brazilian, Cuban, Spaniard, Australian, Canadian, or Jamaican?
Are you something I have not listed?
Are you a combination of multiple ethnicities?
Do you not know who you are?
Still not sure what you identify with?
Or do you not consider your ethnic culture?
Do you prefer to leave behind your roots, only sticking to one true race?
Is your race
Human, Robotic, Alien, Animalia, Plante, Fungi, Bacteria, Futuristic, Untamed, Unreal, Tideborn, Winged-Elf, Elf, Earthbound, Soul, Ghost, Zombie, Magician, Wizard, Troll, Vampire, Dragon, Unicorn, Werewolf, Mysterious, or even too epic to be identified?
Though, this question itself shouldn’t really matter
For, I do not care what the color of your skin,
The identification of where your ancestors have been
Or even who you were then
I’d treat you the same

Two,
What’s the weather like in your mind?
Is it cloudy and unsafe?
Can you bear to let another thought fill up the cloud in your mind?
Or are you still intertwined,
With the thoughts you’ve let yourself get so lost in?
Is it filled with happiness, sunshines and rainbows?
Are bunnies hopping around a sea of flowers?
Can you see the sunset in the horizon and are you capable of clearing away the sad blue skies
Is it safe for me to live in there?
Because, I want to be your thoughts,
I want to show you the sun
So,
Would you mind me living in your mind?

Three,
Are you lost?
Do you wander?
Because being lost is recreation
When we continue to lose ourselves
We tend to recreate the person we are.
We tend to go near and far
We are lost wanderers in this world we call home
So if you’re lost in your thoughts,
And if you’re lost in your world
Let me guide you to a recreation of yourself
And maybe you’ll love being lost as much as I do.

Four,
What’s your world like?
Is it like the world we live on?
The world we take shelter upon?
Is it filled with misery and mayhem?
Or is it filled with peace and tranquility?

Five,
What do you see?
Can you see the darkness that surrounds our hearts?
Can you use it to strengthen the reason to basket in the light?
Do you see the destruction humanity hath brought upon the world?
Can you see it?
Or are you too blind to realize that tranquility and peace no longer exist?
That those are just delusions your mind hath made up.
That the word of the Lord has been bent and now is broken by the people you rented your beliefs to.
That the world is now in turmoil,
And soon,
Oh so soon
It’ll be destroyed by the greed you were to blind to stop

Six,
Do you regret something?
An action you have committed,
An action you have done.
Did you let all the chances slip away?
Did you let her get away?
Because I have done that
So many times I’ve stopped counting.
For if I had kept track
It would have filled up a novel entitled How to Lose Someone (and How to Repeat it)
And so many times,
I have wished I could take it all back.

Seven,
How many wished did you make?
And how many of those wishes came true?
How many falling stars, 11:11’s, eyelashes, and fountains did it take to get it through your mind that wishes don’t come true?
That without a little bit of effort,
Wishes are just meaningless words you’ve wasted your breath on.
Because for every wish I made
Reality slapped me in the back of the head,
And told me it wasn’t going to be true.

Eight,
Have you fallen in and out of love?
Did you regret falling in love in order to fall out of it again?
Did you count the ways you can tell your lover how much you loved them?
Or did you cower in the corner?
Too afraid of something, like rejection, that never existed.
Did you misplace you love?
Are you single but your heart belongs to another?
Someone in which you cannot have?
Isn’t that just how the love life works for the wicked?
We love so much
And our hearts give away,
Yet no one is there to give us theirs
So we end up the heartless
Or even the broken hearted.

Nine,
Have you cried yourself to sleep at night?
Allowing the tears to rock you to sleep
The gentle sirens of the sorrow really do know how to sing a saddened lullaby
And sometimes,
You do not awaken feeling happy,
You may just feel even more ******
But the days you fall asleep with tears in your eyes
You may find that the day has only begun
When the morning sun
Shines on

Ten,
Would you like to tell me a story?
For I have already told you mine
I would like to hear yours.

I am of human race with ethnic culture of the Philippines and Mexico
The weather in my mind is a bit bi-polar but I believe it’s a liveable one.
The world I live in causes me to get lost that I believe I’m just a wanderer
What I see are my regrets
And boy do I have a lot
I’ve made so many wishes that I have lost any hope in having it come true
And dear sir,
I believe that it is true
That falling in love, I continued to fall out of.
But I’ve lived my life like this that I do not know how to get out of it.
I’ve cried myself to sleep at night
But mostly tears awakened me.
Sunshines have come and gone
But I still a wait for the morning sun
So will you tell me a story?
Start with the beginning and end to some where
I just want to know
How much our lives can click into one.
An old prompt I rewrote from creative writing called 10 questions i'd ask a stranger
brandon nagley Jun 2015
She spies upon mine page
As a Spaniard informant
Gathering intelligence
By the flowers in mine hair

Yet
What info canst one retrieve from
A Past life thief
And gypsie hippy?

As she realized it wasn't info she was massing............

It was her first time ever loving someone!!!
Eden Brenner Jan 2014
He breathes deeply.
Chest rising to its fullest potential.
Pushing his heat onto my skin.
His sweat merges with mine, creating a barrier between us.
We are hungry to consume one another.
To be so full of each other that we split at the seams
And slip into the space between the mattress and the wall.
I want the smell of his neck to be carved into my memory.
That patch of flesh just below his right ear,
I can feel the veins pumping. Pumping.
He is a solid mass.
A mountain.
I want him to crush me till I am only air.
Till I can breathe again.
But I only want to breathe him in.
I want to eat him.
Wrap my teeth around his collar bones, ear lobes, pinky fingers.
When the sunlight crashes into the room, we call a truce.
His eyes close.
His breathing slows.
Preparing for the battle ahead.
Eventually, I close my eyes as well.
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2016
grammatical geometrics, first words serve best,
a couple smoking marijuana walking into
tinsel town, by myself, drinking, lone wolf
drinks a pact's share of harvest of midnight growls,
they say fear the man walking into a forest
at night by himself: if only his ambitions were
an acquirement for more human fossils...
i could never account for some idiot correlation
linking me to the primate form...
grammar geometry though, imagine it!
nouns are linear consolidations taking for tangents
in trigonometry of slang;
grammar is a Christopher Columbus' worth
of star gazing, overshot the mark from Portugal
and landed at Cape Horn...
bring back 1980s disco! i'll give you epileptic seizures!
honestly, ensure grammar is coupled with geometry,
hard to decipher shares with suffixes
                          -ish or                      -able.
some might say nouns are squares, and adjective are
triangles, while others would say hexagons are
verbs along with pentagons - horseradish scandals
and chicken scratches;
but when it comes to rigid grammar categorisation
you will wonder at the re-categorisation
of certain words, as Nietzsche stated, a disbelief
in grammatical arithmetic counter Cartesian
2 + 2 = i think, therefore, i am. a three times table likewise,
a horse with an apple in its mouth is also a horse
without a stable.
concerning god, i mean to suggest that re be regarded
as a pronoun, uncoupled from garçon service as a prefix...
that clean napkin and a Parisian accent of Dover,
i mean to suggest re be akin to the recycling of
sunset, sunrise, summer, spring, repeat,
the idealised pronoun formulation of any if no activity,
hence grammar and geometry,
shapes from adjectives and shapes from other categorisations;
but still the facts: to speak of god's pronoun usage
is to speak in terms of re, the repetitive cascade of
the many to come from such suggestion:
take for example standing on a bridge over the eastern avenue,
looking at trees and looking at street lamps,
the delta equilibrium balancing the analytical knowledge
of trees, and the synthetic knowledge of street lamps...
if our analytical knowledge of trees was perfected
we'd hardly think of chlorophyll incubators of photosynthesis
with solar shields on suburban roofs in Chernobyl...
we've analysed trees to such an extent as to be
ably providing illumination of "trees" for constant traffic...
term it as revision of ontology, variant:
expressing the relationship of a set to its image under
a mapping when every element of the image set has a
reverse / chiral image in the first set - hence god, in pronoun
categorisation with the standard duo function of
equilibrated thinking with being as neither owner nor
discarder, rather applying some sense of
the grammar complexes with geometrical explanations,
the prime pronoun, sunrise 1996 of may,
sunrise 2006 of may, altogether re - re is the
clarifying pronoun, of course a cause of concern leading
toward Kantian pantheism, but better the pronoun re
describing history and the obvious repeat,
than having to ascribe omni a pronoun status
with the verbs / shapes of both thought and being -
who will decipher the assertion that,
                              geometrically-and-grammatically
sp­eaking an adjective is a square? well, me an Raza
were talking about the European Championships:
- who you supporting?
- Poland.
- ah.
- who you supporting, Turkey, obviously.
- well, kind of.
- i think Iceland will bring the carnival, conquering
the Spaniard Dutch in qualification.
- i'm betting on Italy or France.
- what about England?
- ah, England has a **** team.
- true, the best English squad was 1996.
- andreas möller 1996.
- true - best squad since 1966.
- **** squad after.
- completely; when do you think Turkey will finish,
after the group stage? quarters?
- maybe.
- you think Poland will come out from the group stages?
- valiant Northern Ireland, i wish,
  a bit like agnieszka radwańska hearing the practice
of Japanese culture and lost honour:
lost a bet, early retirement, which is why a Pulitzer prize
is such a gagging instrument ensuring you keep
on speaking a trans-grammatical word going, i.e.
blah blah blah.
but still, the way the pronoun category is exploited to argue
the existence and the non-existence of:
pantheism - omni cogito (all manner of thinking provides no
                                             individualised ref. sigma-replica
                                             that might guarantee
                                             a differing between muscle flex
                                             and ego strained),
theism - re cogito (thinking, again) -
monotheism - mono cogito (thinking, alone) -
                                                      it's like neo-liberalism
politics and... the name of the father, after 2000 years
and we still don't know what his father's name is...
odd, isn't it? is it Jaspers? or is it Tickling Architecture in
Timbuktu? there were some serious problems prior
to 632 of the certified era... like... when what who?!
Phantom of Golgotha... i still want to translate geometry into
grammar - or at least,
what once was tree, that became a lamp post,
what once was onto logic, and became second nature,
what was once the nature of being,
that later became, solely, and purely, technical logistics:
whereby using a smartphone became more complicated
than rigid arithmetic, or checking the twelve hour clock-face.
whatever thought you ascribe the pronoun re,
it instils an apathy, an easily multiplying being,
and whatever thought you ascribe the pronoun omni
only means too much is encapsulated in the individual,
usually translated as an individual with debt
and an amputee story of hurt; i treat re and omni as
higher tier pronouns than i might treat the orthodoxy
currently presiding - after all, in existential parameters
i can affirm myself presiding over ****** functions
of taking a **** in whatever disguise i care to make replica
of the syllables e' 'go, or later, with subsequent theory,
the polymer of all possible affirmations, the anti-theoretical
cuckoo.
mark john junor Sep 2014
me and scarlet came down the coast
she sat window seat
pressed to the glass watching the world flow
from rocket ships headed to the skies
and beach bunnies romping in sunshine
what a strange world this place is
filled with magics and mystic tides

a Spaniard stood here with his wooden ship
like he had just conquered a new world
but time left him just a set of footprints in the sand
and away to sea once more went he
falling off the edge of the world somewhere out there

scarlet and me stopped in small town
shared a plate and a cup
sitting at the feet of a stone saint
holding his own cup so we poured him some soda
and laughed as we ran in the rain
what a strangely wonderful place this florida
a moonlight dream paradise
the far shore we had always dreamed
RAJ NANDY May 2015
Declared as an UNESCO Heritage Site in 1983, is today a place of tourist attraction, - this ancient city of Inca pride! Please read its absorbing story, you will not regret it ! Thanks, - Raj Nandy

MACHU PICCHU: THE LOST CITY OF THE INCAS!

(I)
At those ethereal heights where only eagles dare,
And where the Condor glides to gently perch;
Above the Urubamba Valley of Peru, -
Stretches the peaks of Machu Picchu and Huayna
Picchu;
Where the sky above is a clear cerulean blue!
And on a cloud-draped ridge connecting both
these Andean peaks, -
Lies the magnificent site of Machu Picchu, –
which many tourists seek!
A city hewed and carved out of rocks and stones,
Which in proud defiance to marauding time,
Stands there for nearly six hundred years, -
A majestic symbol of Inca pride!
(II)
The Inca Kings were the ‘child of the sun’,
Their chief deity was the Sun God - ‘INTI’,
Their ninth king who expanded and consolidated
their Empire,
Was known as the great Emperor Pachucuti!
This king and his architects, at an altitude of
8000 feet built the great Inca City!
To worship their gods and honor their ancestors,
And as a royal family resort and a summer retreat!
Inca religion was based around Nature, and their
architecture blended with the landscape around!
At Machu Picchu they felt closer to their gods,
And could almost hear His sound!
Pachucuti also built the city of Cuzco, the capital
of the Inca Empire,
They never had horses or wheels those days,
Their ‘runners’ covered their kingdom entire!
With posts located at suitable distances, for
relaying messages throughout their Empire!
(III)
The ruins of Machu Picchu covers 13 sq kms,
Lying some 70 kms north-west of Cuzco city,
Nestled amidst the navel of the mountain rocks,
Hidden from the praying eyes of all adversaries!
Surrounded by gushing mountain rivers and
yawning chasms going down deep;
And with secret ropeway bridges, this Inca hideout
was all complete!
It escaped the greedy Pizarro’s eyes, that Spaniard
who came for Inca gold,
Leaving Machu Picchu untouched, for the entire world
to behold!
So the urban sector of Machu Picchu has 140 buildings
still intact;
With steps and terraces cut into steep granite face,
And streams and aqua-ducts to irrigate their lands!
(IV)
The citadel lies on a flat surface, which is a 20 hectares
spread!
With a sacred and a residential area, and houses for
priests, nobility and guests!
‘Amautas’ were men both holy and wise, conducted
ceremonies and read the stars;
But the Incas had no written script, and took help of
the ‘quipu’ by far!
The ‘quipu’ was a numerical system using many
knotted strings, -
With which they kept records and accounts of almost
any and everything!
(V)
A Sacred Area had temples and buildings,
All dedicated to the Gods by Pachucuti;
A Sun Temple, and the sacred Intihuatana Stone,
For ‘binding the sun’ – the great Inti !
During the Equinox on the 21st of March and September,
When the sun was directly above the Intihuatana Stone, <
The priests performed ceremonies and offered prayers, -
To keep the sun caged and in control!
Legend has it that should a sensitive man, keep his
forehead on this sacred Stone, -
His ‘third eye’ would open up, and the ‘spiritual world’
he shall behold!
(VI)
It was Hiram Bingham a professor from Yale University,
Who in July 1911 rediscovered this miniature Inca City!
He took three years to clear the jungles and the wild
vines;
And the artifacts he had found were sent to the US -
as precious finds!
The modern architects who visited Machu Picchu,
all marvelled at the techniques used;
A ‘dry stone technique’
* without mortar, had all of
them pretty confused!
Many stones weighed around fifty tones, and others were
cut into various shapes and size;
And were fitted with such precision, leaving no room
even for a blade of knife!
The peaks there often get covered with mist,
And is the abode of white fluffy clouds;
This stairways to where the Inca gods dwell, #
Is where Machu Picchu is to be found!
- Raj Nandy
(- ALL COPYRIGHTS RESERVED -)
Notes: -Huayna Pichu stands behind Machu Picchu -
40mtrs higher! It has a steeper climb and has the ‘Temple of
the Moon’ inside a dark cave! +Declared a Heritage Site
by UNESCO in 1983.< Sun being directly above the sacred stone did not cast any shadow, so the priest said he had caged the Sun! *
Dry stone
technique without mortar also used in Egyptian Pyramids! #Many
tribes believed Incas were Gods! Thanks for reading, - Raj Nandy.

............................................. ................................................. .....................
Torrent of light and river of the air,
Along whose bed the glimmering stars are seen
Like gold and silver sands in some ravine
Where mountain streams have left their channels bare!
The Spaniard sees in thee the pathway, where
His patron saint descended in the sheen
Of his celestial armor, on serene
and quiet nights, when all the heavens were fair.
Not this I see, nor yet the ancient fable
Of Phaeton’s wild course, that scorched the skies
Where’er the hoofs of his hot coursers trod;
But the white drift of worlds o’er chasms of sable,
The star-dust, that is whirled aloft and flies
From the invisible chariot-wheels of God.
midnight prague Feb 2011
I, through a wasted experience swim in the stick figures of your genitals
and quite frankly, I don't know why I never ****** you
we stained the city shores and the art district
my footprints left behind a tar
I think of you now and miss you hauntingly
the way a soul misses the bed it died on

my eyes read , happy valentine
I don't know why you still contact me
I don't deserve it

days filled with adventure and feet that never stopped
tongues that never halted
hands that kept the beat going
and lips that ceased to be separated

off with his head
my mind cried loud in the nights
and the battle within me began
the tormented tug of mind and the thing that beat in chests

I cant remember the last time I felt guilt
for giving into my lonely ways
until for a minute I thought of you the other day
and the needles starting inflicting their stabs on my
wounds

I miss you.
tread Oct 2010
It was the running Roman Legionary,
Who hid from troops his own,
And spoke of evil men did do,
For it was why he ran alone.

It was the serf, an ex-soldier,
Who spoke against the sword;
Yet for these words which he did speak,
He earned the sword as his reward.

It was the humbled noble Lord,
Who wrote from tower's tall;
Against all endless border wars,
As it caused good men to fall.

It was the musketman in red,
Who stepped-on out of line;
Opting not to die so still,
As he said, "This life is mine."

It was the trenched machine-gunner,
Who chose his targets quick,
And wished for more than anything,
To cease this endless click.

It was the Spaniard,
Who fought Spain,
And knew the truth was dark;
Yet fought-back fists of fascist pride,
His mission now, to leave a mark.

It was the Frenchman,
Chased by fright,
Who scrambled for the shore;
Escaping from his bled homeland,
He died of bombs in Britain's war.

It was the prisoner of Korea's gore,
Who sat down with the Reds;
Speaking in appeasing awe,
He saved his severed head.

It was the man in Vietnam,
Who was forced the cross the sea;
To fight a war he wasn't for,
Against his will, he stood as free.

It was the Roman,
And the serf;
It was the noble Lord.

It was the musketman in red,
And the dead Spaniard,
Who fought for freedom,
Spoke for peace,
And dreamed to see with their own eyes,
The human mind, taught to be wise,
And cease these endless lies;
To end the "me's" and "mores" and "my's,"
And to remove mans dark disguise.
In the market-place of Bruges stands the belfrey old and brown;
Thrice consumed and thrice rebuilded, still it watches o’er the town.

As the summer morn was breaking, on that lofty tower I stood,
And the world through off the darkness, like the weeds of widowhood.

Thick with towns and hamlets studded, and with streams and vapors gray,
Like a shield embossed with silver, round and vast the landscape lay.

At my feet the city slumbered. From its chimneys, here and there,
Wreathes of snow-white smoke, ascending, vanished, ghost-like, into the air.

Not a sound rose from the city at that early morning hour,
But I heard a heart of iron beating in the ancient tower.

From their nests beneath the rafters sang the swollows wild and high;
And the world, beneath me sleeping, seemed more distant than the sky.

Then most musical and solemn, bringing back the olden times,
With their strange, unearthly changes rang the melancholy chimes,

Like the psalms from some old cloister, when the nuns sing in the choir;
And the great bell tolled among them, like the chanting of a friar.

Visions of the days departed, shadowy phantoms filled my brain;
They who live in history only seemed to walk the earth again;

All the foresters of Flanders,—mighty Baldwin Bras de Fer,
Lyderick du Bucq and Cressy, Philip, Guy du Dampierre.

I beheld the pageants splended that adorned those days of old;
Stately dames, like queens attended, knights who bore the Fleece of Gold;

Lombard and Venetian merchants with deep-laden argosies;
Ministers from twenty nations; more than royal pomp and ease.

I beheld proud Maximilian, kneeling humbly on the ground;
I behed the gentle Mary, hunting with her hawk and hound;

And her lighted bridal-chamber, where a duke slept with the queen,
And the armèd guard around them, and the sword unsheathed between.

I beheld the flemish weavers, with Namur and Juliers bold,
Marching homeward from the ****** battle of the Spurs of Gold;

Saw the fight at Minnewater, saw the White Hoods moving west,
Saw great Artevelde victorious scale the Golden Dragon’s nest.

And again the whiskered Spaniard all the land with terror smote;
And again the wild alarum sounded from the tocsin’s throat;

Till the bells of Ghent resounded o’er lagoons and **** of sand,
“I am Roland! I am Roland! there is victory in the land!”

Then the sound of drums aroused me. The awakened city’s roar
Chased the phantoms I had summoned back into their graves once more.

Hours had passed away like minutes; and before I was aware,
Lo! the shadow of the belfry crossed the sun-illumined square.
Decolor, obscuris, vilis, non ille repexam
  Cesariem regum, non candida virginis ornat
  Colla, nec insigni splendet per cingula morsu.
  Sed nova si nigri videas miracula saxi,
  Tunc superat pulchros cultus et quicquid Eois
  Indus litoribus rubra scrutatur in alga.
  CLAUDIAN.


I sat beside the glowing grate, fresh heaped
  With Newport coal, and as the flame grew bright
--The many-coloured flame--and played and leaped,
  I thought of rainbows and the northern light,
Moore's Lalla Rookh, the Treasury Report,
And other brilliant matters of the sort.

And last I thought of that fair isle which sent
  The mineral fuel; on a summer day
I saw it once, with heat and travel spent,
  And scratched by dwarf-oaks in the hollow way;
Now dragged through sand, now jolted over stone--
A rugged road through rugged Tiverton.

And hotter grew the air, and hollower grew
  The deep-worn path, and horror-struck, I thought,
Where will this dreary passage lead me to?
  This long dull road, so narrow, deep, and hot?
I looked to see it dive in earth outright;
I looked--but saw a far more welcome sight.

Like a soft mist upon the evening shore,
  At once a lovely isle before me lay,
Smooth and with tender verdure covered o'er,
  As if just risen from its calm inland bay;
Sloped each way gently to the grassy edge,
And the small waves that dallied with the sedge.

The barley was just reaped--its heavy sheaves
  Lay on the stubble field--the tall maize stood
Dark in its summer growth, and shook its leaves--
  And bright the sunlight played on the young wood--
For fifty years ago, the old men say,
The Briton hewed their ancient groves away.

I saw where fountains freshened the green land,
  And where the pleasant road, from door to door,
With rows of cherry-trees on either hand,
  Went wandering all that fertile region o'er--
Rogue's Island once--but when the rogues were dead,
Rhode Island was the name it took instead.

Beautiful island! then it only seemed
  A lovely stranger--it has grown a friend.
I gazed on its smooth slopes, but never dreamed
  How soon that bright magnificent isle would send
The treasures of its womb across the sea,
To warm a poet's room and boil his tea.

Dark anthracite! that reddenest on my hearth,
  Thou in those island mines didst slumber long;
But now thou art come forth to move the earth,
  And put to shame the men that mean thee wrong.
Thou shalt be coals of fire to those that hate thee,
And warm the shins of all that underrate thee.

Yea, they did wrong thee foully--they who mocked
  Thy honest face, and said thou wouldst not burn;
Of hewing thee to chimney-pieces talked,
  And grew profane--and swore, in bitter scorn,
That men might to thy inner caves retire,
And there, unsinged, abide the day of fire.

Yet is thy greatness nigh. I pause to state,
  That I too have seen greatness--even I--
Shook hands with Adams--stared at La Fayette,
  When, barehead, in the hot noon of July,
He would not let the umbrella be held o'er him,
For which three cheers burst from the mob before him.

And I have seen--not many months ago--
  An eastern Governor in chapeau bras
And military coat, a glorious show!
  Ride forth to visit the reviews, and ah!
How oft he smiled and bowed to Jonathan!
How many hands were shook and votes were won!

'Twas a great Governor--thou too shalt be
  Great in thy turn--and wide shall spread thy fame,
And swiftly; farthest Maine shall hear of thee,
  And cold New Brunswick gladden at thy name,
And, faintly through its sleets, the weeping isle
That sends the Boston folks their cod shall smile.

For thou shalt forge vast railways, and shalt heat
  The hissing rivers into steam, and drive
Huge masses from thy mines, on iron feet,
  Walking their steady way, as if alive,
Northward, till everlasting ice besets thee,
And south as far as the grim Spaniard lets thee.

Thou shalt make mighty engines swim the sea,
  Like its own monsters--boats that for a guinea
Will take a man to Havre--and shalt be
  The moving soul of many a spinning-jenny,
And ply thy shuttles, till a bard can wear
As good a suit of broadcloth as the mayor.

Then we will laugh at winter when we hear
  The grim old churl about our dwellings rave:
Thou, from that "ruler of the inverted year,"
  Shalt pluck the knotty sceptre Cowper gave,
And pull him from his sledge, and drag him in,
And melt the icicles from off his chin.
Third Eye Candy Feb 2013
Heathens -
in heaven's lobby
flock
to barter
for Magic 'Shrooms
with pop rocks... and pancakes
and leaf-green brownies.
new to the scene;
the Son of Man
holds a motley court,
then wanders off
to fetch Picasso - Lassoed
from his cups, his Love that must Love
his genius... doubtless,
cloud-scrawling
huge pendulous *******
in Elysium; for no one at all.
better Pablo
should tend bars      that set mobs free
than one god's toddler, with long odds
against Bacchus - should ever
small-talk-speak
to the godless
or worse...
preach.

" Better Sins to love.. " The Spaniard once taught...
A Lover's Urge is born in forms of weakness.... adorned in all Might -
bathed in blessed contradiction,
a Lingam for a Yoni's dream of stiff drinks
and pliable men, with strong arms.
a blue fiction  on Calvary -
nailed to the softest
cross.

Between thieves,
an honor, double
parked

with bucket seats brimming with moonlight,
and her knickers
tossed.

Picasso asks for absinthe
to be sent
post haste
and polished off -
by all
his better angels he had guillotined
with dull snails,
and fallen  
harps

ones -  he stole,  to de-tune
a flat fifth of Cuttysark
for a deaf
****,  [but no mute ]
a portrait, ****
and is soon
bought...

lust
sleeps then -
with both Eyes;  
Locked on
One of
God's.

like a deer
in a Head-light's
Gospel...
now, a Minotaur on the
Autobahn -
stalking
it.


II

Heathens
in heaven's lobby
recite ' Howl '
as Ginsberg, walks over hot coals
and spicy psalms; glowing wanton
in white grass; with a very
cherry ****.
And a wise throng, cobbles...
****** -
they rob
Peter of his  toga,
leaving nothing wrong.
but no less ' On '
they laugh hard;  and wake the dead
asking  them for new songs
to set    their false alarms
in lofty Tic' Tocks  
of Eternity's
clock.
Bible on a snooze bar
for at least that long
or  someone
knocks.

As if  "Hello."  
Spoke the Whole World into Being -
And " Goodbye."
misspoke, and
trailed
off...
Third Eye Candy Nov 2012
who you been, if you ain't been high ?
my nickles, your dimes. our dub chunks chucklin' in the standard pharmacy,
your loops, open. my loops-deloop.
are you positive
your Spaniard's larceny
will trickle the odd prime.
your canvas ravenous
in the sublime.
with THC ?
Jim Bob Jul 2014
I'm from where the gold and diamonds are ripped from the earth
right next to the slave castles where the water is cursed
from where police brutality's not half as nice
It makes the hood in America look like paradise
compared to the AIDS-infested Caribbean slum
African streets where the passport's an a American gun
from where they massacre people and try to keep it quiet
and spend the next 25 years tryin' to deny it
I'm from where they cut your hands off if you make a fist
and ****** grow coca cause the job market doesn't exist
except slave labor modern day company store
and peace keeper's don't ever ever ever come here no more
from where the bombs that they used to drop on Vietnam
**** us children born deformed eight months before they born
I'm from where they lost the true meaning of the Qur'an
'cause ****** is not compatible with Islam
And ****** know that, but grow that poppy seed anyway
'cause that food drop parachute does not come everyday
I'm from where people pray to the gods of their conquerors
and practically every president's a money launderer
From the only place democracy is acceptable
Is if America candidate is electable
And they might even have a black president, but he's useless
'Cause he does not control the economy stupid!

[Chorus]
Lock and load your gun, where I'm from: the Third World son
Been to many places but I'm Third World-born
Guerrillas hit and run where I'm from: the Third World son
You polluted everything, and now the Third World's gone
The waters poisoned where I'm from son: the Third World son
Seven hundred children die by the end 'this song
Revolution'll come, where I'm from: the Third World son
Constant occupation, leaves the Third World torn

[Immortal Technique]
I'm from where the catholic church is some racist ****
They helped Europe and America **** this *****
They pray to white Spaniard Jesus, who's face is this
But never talk about the black Pope Gelasius
I'm from where soviet weapons still decide elections
Military is like the mafia: you pay for protection
kinda like *** toys, is what the country sells
And rich white businessmen make the best clientele
I'm from where they too ***** to come film Survivor
And they ****** Coca-Cola union organizers
I'm from where the justice system esta podrido
**** government ****** politic over perico
Rebelde conocido, enterado vivo, como otro argentino desparecido
cause Rico laws don't apply to the CIA
and mother ******* make sneakers for a quarter a day
I'm from where they overthrow democratic leaders
not for the people but for the Wall Street Journal readers
from where blacks, indigenous peoples and Asians were once
slaves of the Caucasians and it's amazing how they trained them
to be racist against themselves in a place they were raised in
and you kept us caged in
destroyed our culture and said that you civilized us
***** our woman and when we were born you despised us
gentrified us, agent provocateurs divide us
and crucified every revolutionary messiah
so I'ma start a global riot
that not even your fake
anti-communist dictators can keep quiet
**** your charity medicine, try to ****** me
the immunizations you gave us were full of mercury
so now I see the Third World like the rap game soldier
nationalize the industry and take it over!
This is not my song, just thought it'd be a good thing to post since most people don't even know who Technique is.
Terry Collett Apr 2012
On the day
Mrs Modfig’s husband died

she was being rogered
by a Spaniard

she’d met
in Santa Fe  

staring at
the off white ceiling

with a
I’m being

well taken care of
feeling

and didn’t give
her husband

a second thought
thinking him

back home
working hard

sipping the sherry
smoking the cigar

feet up
watching TV

maybe seeing
that **** from the store

as he had before
no she was content

having this Spaniard
giving her the works

making the night
feeling young again

hoping for more sunshine
far away

from the rain
and her husband

and his moans and groans
and his occasional

rogerings
in their safe

and boring bed
and later

at the funeral
in her black hat

and dress and coat
and matching gloves

she shed
the crocodile tears

remembering
other loves.
Coyote Dec 2011
And Jesus said, "He who drinks from my mouth will become as I am and I shall be he"

Gnostic Gospel of Thomas vs. 108


1
They sang and
they danced in
praise of the
Savior

And I left the church

I walked quickly
and I was at the
water's edge.
A man waist deep
offered to baptize
me in the name
of the Lord...

And I did not stop

Further on, a sorrowful
Mother asked if perhaps
I knew of her son
Jesus…

But I pretended not to hear.

In the forest
the twelve
approached me
with a message
of good news...

But I paid them no mind.

2
And when I came
to a clearing I met
a young man whom
I had always known.

His beard was unkempt
and blood was dripping
from wounds in his hands
and feet.

A crown of thorns sat
upon his head, and blood
trickled down his cheek.

'Do you know me?' he asked.

'Of course I know you!' I shouted.
'I left you behind at the church!
At the river, one of your followers
sought to baptize me and along the
road a Mother spoke your name.

In the forest, your apostles
confronted me with your
message.
Did I not take my leave
of them all?
I thought I was rid of you,
yet here you stand

Tell me! Why do you haunt me?
Why can I not leave you behind?'

3
He grabbed my shoulders
and I felt the pain in all
of my body and in all
of my being
and he asked me again:

'Do you know who I am?'

'You are the Christ!' I cried
'And I have heard your
story from every church and
holy man in the kingdom.
But I want nothing to do
with you!

I want only to leave you
behind and live my life

At this he looked into
my eyes and as his
penetrating stare drew
my senses to his being,
his face began to change.

He was one of the
singing parishioners at
the church.
Then another,
and another until the
likeness of each one
was in him.

Then he was the
man in the river
and the Mother,
and every one
of the twelve
and I stared
in disbelief

He began to take
on the appearance
of everyone I had
ever known and
even those I would
never meet.

His face was changing rapidly:
African, Asian, Spaniard, European,

From every race and every creed
he became everyone who ever was
and everyone who ever will be…

A few I recognized.

Mohamed, Caesar, the Buddha,
Pontius Pilate, Krishna, Herod,
Moses, Pharaoh.

Faster and faster he changed until
I was dizzy with incomprehension.
Then, as quickly as it had begun,
the celestial parade ceased.

He was Jesus again, standing before me.
His hands and feet caked in blood.
The crown of thorns still resting atop
his head.

4
'I do not understand,' I said.

And he smiled.

And again he looked into my eyes.

'You can never leave me behind.'

And as he spoke he began to change again,

And I found myself standing before another image.

One I surely knew well.

There…

In the clearing of a forest
that existed beyond the boundaries
of space and time,

I looked into my own eyes...

And understood.
I would be remiss if I didn't thank Raj Arumugam. I sent him the first draft of this several months ago and he was kind enough to help me turn it into the poem you have just read. I could not have written this without his keen insight and sharp editing.
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2016
seine teil Scheiße: star wars vol. 7 - bulldoggekauen -
am i the sole person to suggest: well it's kinda ****, would't
you agree? only a Metzger would know
pork chops, beef Israelite, everything worth a chop...
i'm the hungry party... i'm eager to taste the blood,
relieve me the anticipation and give me the snack limbs
i negotiated to chew blooded, thirsty, Spaniard in Brasil,
e.g. sure the clarinet was a Jewish instrument,
we all loved the clarinet, but the Schweinkauen -
Mozart's requiem, question.... germanic in operatic?
nein, Latino... from mundus (day)
then onto rex (king), Latin, not germanic
the clarinet soloist from Hungary, Łacina for Latin (W) -
the clarinet in Hungarian also indented Hebrew...
oddly enough the clarinet meant Hebrew:
or Hebraii... sha! shtil!  this is the Hungarian orchestra
performing Mozart in the Royal Albert Hall..
i heard it sand in German,
if they're singing Mozart's Requiem in Latin
i want to heart Händel's / Hændel's
Messiah sung in Latin, deviating from the crude
ugly English... i want Händel's / Hændel's
sung in Latin...  believe in the aesthetic god...
i say that because William James believed
in the gentleman devil and the godly peasant...
rude RA RA RA! HA HA! ******!
i am actually fearful of the idea that god minds
the Holocaust like he minds interrupting revision
on some work of art... our belief in god
is so far removed from what we practice, no
democracy seems to match it...
we have established a belief in god
alongside the belief that we're all potential Mozarts...
that won't work... it's not going to happen...
brothers Grimm had perfected saying
something about equality: the end.
no, there's no room for revisionism...
we were never born equal, we were always born
with a competitive / gambling insurance...
to further living outside the jungle...
i still find it fascinating to keep a subjective experience...
but it will be hard to not keep a subjective experience
of this world... we will never attain an objective
experience of this world... it's impossible to reach
an objective experience of this world,
with whatever adjective come attached...
because we simply can't speak for the entirety of mankind,
which is why there's not Simon from the Ant-Colony
of Barbados telling other ants: Simon says...
we can't experience both the subjective and the objective
arguments that might lead to augmentation...
but trying to attain the pure objective expression
of life will lead us into blind alleys..
we'll be found adamantly craving subjectivity...
western society has concentrated on the objective lobe
of the brain, it ridiculously forgot the subjective lobe of concerns...
which is why i think episode 7 of star
wars is a bit ****... not, it's really crap,
it's pathetic... like Nietzsche said: imagine talking
for the entire humanity... i can't imagine it,
i'm already doing it... it's because the post-colonial
society concentrated on objectivity as a source
of sensibility, came up with logistics translated as
utilitarianism - that last word reads:
metaphysical socialism, but i like to think of it as
ultra ******.
or as Byron said: i really don't know
where culture is leading us,
but the purification process includes the
ultra Darwinist attention span of Nazis...
you don't like it? fine! roll the dice once more,
and pray for Mayfair!
Pomeranian German? well, it's worth a translation:
die metzger (the butcher) und (and) schweinkauen (pork chew).
A Lopez Jan 2016
I can never forget
Your silver
T

O

N

G

U

E... And your fast wit.
The way you casted
Spells on these
Spaniard hips.

I can never forget
Your wicked kiss.

Like eve drew in Adam
You cursed my
Hearts
G
R
I
P.
brandon nagley Jun 2015
Tramontane concoction
Alien's of different worlds
Consummate's of relations
A sinner boy and angel girl

First class textings
Between the two of them
Pastlife Amour's
Meeting again in love and best friends!!

Maximal feelings
She calleth a dangerous thing
Yet for eachother
Ourn hearts due flutter
Were two bees without the stings

Cryptic strings
Angelic harped
We seek the moon
And rest at parks

We are two
Yet one in spirit
Forgotten the world
Made poems our pearls
As her voice I draw to hear it!

Her *** appeal
So overriding all the rest
Yet the rest has none anyways
For its mine amare
Tis the best!!

She's not the rest
For that I know
I gaveth up the world
Gaveth her mine soul

For I hope she knows
How much for her I adore
She's that spice in ones head
When life's gone dead
She brings happiness to mine door!!!

Ive never felt this before!!!

And tis
I won't!!!
I shalt not leave her
Yes I do believe her
She's mine Spanish rose!
Mine Spanish queen
And Spaniard dream
Where ice creams stacked
And dripping cream
Sensuality means!!
She's high to me
A throne in glee
A song and tease
I seek her tree
To lie under it
To tasteth her spit
And **** her wine lips
To grasp her tones
To feel her hips
To pull her hair
One stroke at a time
To take a dive
Inside her mind
She maketh Me see
When I was blind
She turned back the clock
I forgot all time
For her I shine
For her I love
For her I'd die
Please
Dont cry
Mine amour
Of mine
Thou art so fine
In a life I never knew
Make me thine husband
Please break me through!!!
Divinity from me soul
brandon nagley May 2015
MI AMOUR'
Spaniard quest
MI AMOUR'
Of ancientness,
MI AMOUR'
Of eastern sea,
MI AMOUR'
Canst thou feel me breathe?
MI AMOUR'
Of coffee trend,
MI AMOUR'
Thy moons thy friend,
MI AMOUR'
Calleth me crazed!
MI AMOUR'
Poetry slave,
MI AMOUR'
Of unknown earth's,
MI AMOUR'
I know thy lonesome curse,
MI AMOUR'
Of Cinderella wants
MI AMOUR'
I'll bandage thy cuts,
MI AMOUR'
We've known eachother so long, yet thou doth not know???
MI AMOURI,
Of mine, in a past life its eachother we chose!!!!!!
brandon nagley Jul 2015
i

Animater I'm anhungered
Anigh to thy brunette canvas
Thou art a calliope to mine ****'s
A second pulse of mine calotype Atlantis.

ii

In Corinth, wherein mine greecian ancestor's do cometh
A cambric carriage with thy grisette dress
Me to be the poetic ******
Thou to be mine Spaniard address.

iii

We'll gad like frat-house student's
Learning lessons, not by ruling stick's
Footing the hills, of forane real
We both shalt be an epilogue, romanticism's epilogist's.


©Brandon nagley
©Lonesome poet's poetry
©Elsa-angelica dedication
Calotype means - old process of making a picture
Anigh means- near old terms
Calliope means- Greek for mine muse.....
Brandon Navarro Nov 2014
makes me think of your lips
sweet like candy but
something hard behind it.
Watching the liquid pass my lips
make me think
of that morning
you kissed me good morning
and smiled.
The taste mulling in the back of my throat
is tangy like when you and I were at
Jack in the Box and
I knew I had to go home in an hour.
My buzz feels just like
your hands running up my body
and my lips on yours
and our bodies pressed together
as if we were one and your lips
is what kept me alive.

I'm on my third glass
and now it's like your lips
the first night.
Everything was new
and I was a Spaniard
and your body was a new continent.
As if making a map you were something I needed to explore
and I wouldn't stop till I did just that.
My buzz is stronger now
and I can't get comfortable
like the night after I came over at 10pm
and I couldn't sleep
you held me and kissed my head
you were the teddy bear that I
never had.
All I picture with my eyes closed
is your smile and those eyes
and your bone rattling laugh.

Half the bottle is gone
everything is a blur
like when you told me
"You're all I've ever wanted"
and I couldn't say it back.
Even when it was true.
I can't let go of your bracelet you gave me.
It makes me feel clingy
like you point out when I'm not so.
The wine is on my lips now
just like your taste
after you kiss me goodnight
and I spend ten minutes in a trance.

This wine is
candy and it's getting sour now
and it makes me wonder
if it was ever sweet at all.
My wine reminds me of you.
Why do I drink about you

— The End —