All night the dreadless Angel, unpursued,
Through Heaven’s wide champain held his way; till Morn,
Waked by the circling Hours, with rosy hand
Unbarred the gates of light.  There is a cave
Within the mount of God, fast by his throne,
Where light and darkness in perpetual round
Lodge and dislodge by turns, which makes through Heaven
Grateful vicissitude, like day and night;
Light issues forth, and at the other door
Obsequious darkness enters, till her hour
To veil the Heaven, though darkness there might well
Seem twilight here:  And now went forth the Morn
Such as in highest Heaven arrayed in gold
Empyreal; from before her vanished Night,
Shot through with orient beams; when all the plain
Covered with thick embattled squadrons bright,
Chariots, and flaming arms, and fiery steeds,
Reflecting blaze on blaze, first met his view:
War he perceived, war in procinct; and found
Already known what he for news had thought
To have reported:  Gladly then he mixed
Among those friendly Powers, who him received
With joy and acclamations loud, that one,
That of so many myriads fallen, yet one
Returned not lost.  On to the sacred hill
They led him high applauded, and present
Before the seat supreme; from whence a voice,
From midst a golden cloud, thus mild was heard.
Servant of God. Well done; well hast thou fought
The better fight, who single hast maintained
Against revolted multitudes the cause
Of truth, in word mightier than they in arms;
And for the testimony of truth hast borne
Universal reproach, far worse to bear
Than violence; for this was all thy care
To stand approved in sight of God, though worlds
Judged thee perverse:  The easier conquest now
Remains thee, aided by this host of friends,
Back on thy foes more glorious to return,
Than scorned thou didst depart; and to subdue
By force, who reason for their law refuse,
Right reason for their law, and for their King
Messiah, who by right of merit reigns.
Go, Michael, of celestial armies prince,
And thou, in military prowess next,
Gabriel, lead forth to battle these my sons
Invincible; lead forth my armed Saints,
By thousands and by millions, ranged for fight,
Equal in number to that Godless crew
Rebellious:  Them with fire and hostile arms
Fearless assault; and, to the brow of Heaven
Pursuing, drive them out from God and bliss,
Into their place of punishment, the gulf
Of Tartarus, which ready opens wide
His fiery Chaos to receive their fall.
So spake the Sovran Voice, and clouds began
To darken all the hill, and smoke to roll
In dusky wreaths, reluctant flames, the sign
Of wrath awaked; nor with less dread the loud
Ethereal trumpet from on high ‘gan blow:
At which command the Powers militant,
That stood for Heaven, in mighty quadrate joined
Of union irresistible, moved on
In silence their bright legions, to the sound
Of instrumental harmony, that breathed
Heroick ardour to adventurous deeds
Under their God-like leaders, in the cause
Of God and his Messiah.  On they move
Indissolubly firm; nor obvious hill,
Nor straitening vale, nor wood, nor stream, divides
Their perfect ranks; for high above the ground
Their march was, and the passive air upbore
Their nimble tread; as when the total kind
Of birds, in orderly array on wing,
Came summoned over Eden to receive
Their names of thee; so over many a tract
Of Heaven they marched, and many a province wide,
Tenfold the length of this terrene:  At last,
Far in the horizon to the north appeared
From skirt to skirt a fiery region, stretched
In battailous aspect, and nearer view
Bristled with upright beams innumerable
Of rigid spears, and helmets thronged, and shields
Various, with boastful argument portrayed,
The banded Powers of Satan hasting on
With furious expedition; for they weened
That self-same day, by fight or by surprise,
To win the mount of God, and on his throne
To set the Envier of his state, the proud
Aspirer; but their thoughts proved fond and vain
In the mid way:  Though strange to us it seemed
At first, that Angel should with Angel war,
And in fierce hosting meet, who wont to meet
So oft in festivals of joy and love
Unanimous, as sons of one great Sire,
Hymning the Eternal Father:  But the shout
Of battle now began, and rushing sound
Of onset ended soon each milder thought.
High in the midst, exalted as a God,
The Apostate in his sun-bright chariot sat,
Idol of majesty divine, enclosed
With flaming Cherubim, and golden shields;
Then lighted from his gorgeous throne, for now
“twixt host and host but narrow space was left,
A dreadful interval, and front to front
Presented stood in terrible array
Of hideous length:  Before the cloudy van,
On the rough edge of battle ere it joined,
Satan, with vast and haughty strides advanced,
Came towering, armed in adamant and gold;
Abdiel that sight endured not, where he stood
Among the mightiest, bent on highest deeds,
And thus his own undaunted heart explores.
O Heaven! that such resemblance of the Highest
Should yet remain, where faith and realty
Remain not:  Wherefore should not strength and might
There fail where virtue fails, or weakest prove
Where boldest, though to fight unconquerable?
His puissance, trusting in the Almighty’s aid,
I mean to try, whose reason I have tried
Unsound and false; nor is it aught but just,
That he, who in debate of truth hath won,
Should win in arms, in both disputes alike
Victor; though brutish that contest and foul,
When reason hath to deal with force, yet so
Most reason is that reason overcome.
So pondering, and from his armed peers
Forth stepping opposite, half-way he met
His daring foe, at this prevention more
Incensed, and thus securely him defied.
Proud, art thou met? thy hope was to have reached
The highth of thy aspiring unopposed,
The throne of God unguarded, and his side
Abandoned, at the terrour of thy power
Or potent tongue:  Fool!not to think how vain
Against the Omnipotent to rise in arms;
Who out of smallest things could, without end,
Have raised incessant armies to defeat
Thy folly; or with solitary hand
Reaching beyond all limit, at one blow,
Unaided, could have finished thee, and whelmed
Thy legions under darkness:  But thou seest
All are not of thy train; there be, who faith
Prefer, and piety to God, though then
To thee not visible, when I alone
Seemed in thy world erroneous to dissent
From all:  My sect thou seest;now learn too late
How few sometimes may know, when thousands err.
Whom the grand foe, with scornful eye askance,
Thus answered.  Ill for thee, but in wished hour
Of my revenge, first sought for, thou returnest
From flight, seditious Angel! to receive
Thy merited reward, the first assay
Of this right hand provoked, since first that tongue,
Inspired with contradiction, durst oppose
A third part of the Gods, in synod met
Their deities to assert; who, while they feel
Vigour divine within them, can allow
Omnipotence to none.  But well thou comest
Before thy fellows, ambitious to win
From me some plume, that thy success may show
Destruction to the rest:  This pause between,
(Unanswered lest thou boast) to let thee know,
At first I thought that Liberty and Heaven
To heavenly souls had been all one; but now
I see that most through sloth had rather serve,
Ministring Spirits, trained up in feast and song!
Such hast thou armed, the minstrelsy of Heaven,
Servility with freedom to contend,
As both their deeds compared this day shall prove.
To whom in brief thus Abdiel stern replied.
Apostate! still thou errest, nor end wilt find
Of erring, from the path of truth remote:
Unjustly thou depravest it with the name
Of servitude, to serve whom God ordains,
Or Nature:  God and Nature bid the same,
When he who rules is worthiest, and excels
Them whom he governs.  This is servitude,
To serve the unwise, or him who hath rebelled
Against his worthier, as thine now serve thee,
Thyself not free, but to thyself enthralled;
Yet lewdly darest our ministring upbraid.
Reign thou in Hell, thy kingdom; let me serve
In Heaven God ever blest, and his divine
Behests obey, worthiest to be obeyed;
Yet chains in Hell, not realms, expect:  Mean while
From me returned, as erst thou saidst, from flight,
This greeting on thy impious crest receive.
So saying, a noble stroke he lifted high,
Which hung not, but so swift with tempest fell
On the proud crest of Satan, that no sight,
Nor motion of swift thought, less could his shield,
Such ruin intercept:  Ten paces huge
He back recoiled; the tenth on bended knee
His massy spear upstaid; as if on earth
Winds under ground, or waters forcing way,
Sidelong had pushed a mountain from his seat,
Half sunk with all his pines.  Amazement seised
The rebel Thrones, but greater rage, to see
Thus foiled their mightiest; ours joy filled, and shout,
Presage of victory, and fierce desire
Of battle:  Whereat Michael bid sound
The Arch-Angel trumpet; through the vast of Heaven
It sounded, and the faithful armies rung
Hosanna to the Highest:  Nor stood at gaze
The adverse legions, nor less hideous joined
The horrid shock.  Now storming fury rose,
And clamour such as heard in Heaven till now
Was never; arms on armour clashing brayed
Horrible discord, and the madding wheels
Of brazen chariots raged; dire was the noise
Of conflict; over head the dismal hiss
Of fiery darts in flaming vollies flew,
And flying vaulted either host with fire.
So under fiery cope together rushed
Both battles main, with ruinous assault
And inextinguishable rage.  All Heaven
Resounded; and had Earth been then, all Earth
Had to her center shook.  What wonder? when
Millions of fierce encountering Angels fought
On either side, the least of whom could wield
These elements, and arm him with the force
Of all their regions:  How much more of power
Army against army numberless to raise
Dreadful combustion warring, and disturb,
Though not destroy, their happy native seat;
Had not the Eternal King Omnipotent,
From his strong hold of Heaven, high over-ruled
And limited their might; though numbered such
As each divided legion might have seemed
A numerous host; in strength each armed hand
A legion; led in fight, yet leader seemed
Each warriour single as in chief, expert
When to advance, or stand, or turn the sway
Of battle, open when, and when to close
The ridges of grim war:  No thought of flight,
None of retreat, no unbecoming deed
That argued fear; each on himself relied,
As only in his arm the moment lay
Of victory:  Deeds of eternal fame
Were done, but infinite; for wide was spread
That war and various; sometimes on firm ground
A standing fight, then, soaring on main wing,
Tormented all the air; all air seemed then
Conflicting fire.  Long time in even scale
The battle hung; till Satan, who that day
Prodigious power had shown, and met in arms
No equal, ranging through the dire attack
Of fighting Seraphim confused, at length
Saw where the sword of Michael smote, and felled
Squadrons at once; with huge two-handed sway
Brandished aloft, the horrid edge came down
Wide-wasting; such destruction to withstand
He hasted, and opposed the rocky orb
Of tenfold adamant, his ample shield,
A vast circumference.  At his approach
The great Arch-Angel from his warlike toil
Surceased, and glad, as hoping here to end
Intestine war in Heaven, the arch-foe subdued
Or captive dragged in chains, with hostile frown
And visage all inflamed first thus began.
Author of evil, unknown till thy revolt,
Unnamed in Heaven, now plenteous as thou seest
These acts of hateful strife, hateful to all,
Though heaviest by just measure on thyself,
And thy  adherents:  How hast thou disturbed
Heaven’s blessed peace, and into nature brought
Misery, uncreated till the crime
Of thy rebellion! how hast thou instilled
Thy malice into thousands, once upright
And faithful, now proved false!  But think not here
To trouble holy rest; Heaven casts thee out
From all her confines.  Heaven, the seat of bliss,
Brooks not the works of violence and war.
Hence then, and evil go with thee along,
Thy offspring, to the place of evil, Hell;
Thou and thy wicked crew! there mingle broils,
Ere this avenging sword begin thy doom,
Or some more sudden vengeance, winged from God,
Precipitate thee with augmented pain.
So spake the Prince of Angels; to whom thus
The Adversary.  Nor think thou with wind
Of aery threats to awe whom yet with deeds
Thou canst not.  Hast thou turned the least of these
To flight, or if to fall, but that they rise
Unvanquished, easier to transact with me
That thou shouldst hope, imperious, and with threats
To chase me hence? err not, that so shall end
The strife which thou callest evil, but we style
The strife of glory; which we mean to win,
Or turn this Heaven itself into the Hell
Thou fablest; here however to dwell free,
If not to reign:  Mean while thy utmost force,
And join him named Almighty to thy aid,
I fly not, but have sought thee far and nigh.
They ended parle, and both addressed for fight
Unspeakable; for who, though with the tongue
Of Angels, can relate, or to what things
Liken on earth conspicuous, that may lift
Human imagination to such highth
Of Godlike power? for likest Gods they seemed,
Stood they or moved, in stature, motion, arms,
Fit to decide the empire of great Heaven.
Now waved their fiery swords, and in the air
Made horrid circles; two broad suns their shields
Blazed opposite, while Expectation stood
In horrour:  From each hand with speed retired,
Where erst was thickest fight, the angelick throng,
And left large field, unsafe within the wind
Of such commotion; such as, to set forth
Great things by small, if, nature’s concord broke,
Among the constellations war were sprung,
Two planets, rushing from aspect malign
Of fiercest opposition, in mid sky
Should combat, and their jarring spheres confound.
Together both with next to almighty arm
Up-lifted imminent, one stroke they aimed
That might determine, and not need repeat,
As not of power at once; nor odds appeared
In might or swift prevention:  But the sword
Of Michael from the armoury of God
Was given him tempered so, that neither keen
Nor solid might resist that edge: it met
The sword of Satan, with steep force to smite
Descending, and in half cut sheer; nor staid,
But with swift wheel reverse, deep entering, shared
All his right side:  Then Satan first knew pain,
And writhed him to and fro convolved; so sore
The griding sword with discontinuous wound
Passed through him:  But the ethereal substance closed,
Not long divisible; and from the ****
A stream of necturous humour issuing flowed
Sanguine, such as celestial Spirits may bleed,
And all his armour stained, ere while so bright.
Forthwith on all sides to his aid was run
By Angels many and strong, who interposed
Defence, while others bore him on their shields
Back to his chariot, where it stood retired
From off the files of war:  There they him laid
Gnashing for anguish, and despite, and shame,
To find himself not matchless, and his pride
Humbled by such rebuke, so far beneath
His confidence to equal God in power.
Yet soon he healed; for Spirits that live throughout
Vital in every part, not as frail man
In entrails, heart of head, liver or reins,
Cannot but by annihilating die;
Nor in their liquid texture mortal wound
Receive, no more than can the fluid air:
All heart they live, all head, all eye, all ear,
All intellect, all sense; and, as they please,
They limb themselves, and colour, shape, or size
Assume, as?***** them best, condense or rare.
Mean while in other parts like deeds deserved
Memorial, where the might of Gabriel fought,
And with fierce ensigns pierced the deep array
Of Moloch, furious king; who him defied,
And at his chariot-wheels to drag him bound
Threatened, nor from the Holy One of Heaven
Refrained his tongue blasphemous; but anon
Down cloven to the waist, with shattered arms
And uncouth pain fled bellowing.  On each wing
Uriel, and Raphael, his vaunting foe,
Though huge, and in a rock of diamond armed,
Vanquished Adramelech, and Asmadai,
Two potent Thrones, that to be less than

Chapter XXI
Hegira to Patmos

They dropped their moorings from Cala Cogone early, when the tide seemed to be separated from the waters like a head distanced from its body. On a lavish and romantic day they went to Genoa, to continue the logistics of the trip to Piacenza. During the trip Etréstles was stretched out in the bow under a Sun that seemed to be fearsome as it was a digestive task that would make him ingest his own dream, which perhaps he aspired to be more than a journey. While he slept, at the helm Etréstles dressed in a black robe and the comrades also sleeping with dreams that they painted with sign gestures on their faces.

Dream of Etréstles: "With the memory off-center ..., I was still in Izzana, dancing by the clouds on gray tulles of the layers of the sky that tried to stop being a Kingdom without a Crown and Sword". They glimpsed the stones melting and turning into gauze juxtaposed to the aerosolites that unfolded from the Sorcery, landing on the hands and heads of Vernarth and Himself. As he continued his dreamy journey, he dialogued with the auxiliary legate of his own dream. “He tells her that he sees them beyond where their liturgies collide. They cross eroding the vanished and itinerant reason”. He gets up and takes the moorings of the ship and ties them to his neck. Then everyone cooperates to walk along the edge of the ship, which all moved barefoot. This is how I would wake up!

Vernarth tries to wake him up, shakes him, but doesn't wake up. And when he tried to avoid him from sleep, he saw that he had the moorings around his neck, along with two Unicorns who were escorting him and were looking towards infinity, auspicious that Genoa was already coming in front of their horns. The others began to wake up and ate reclining, almost as if without any desire to get up from the deck full of self-sliding linen, which allowed everyone to pass their own meals, including those that were semi-consumed rolling on the deck. Etréstles,  transferred the dream to Vernarth, once he went to his bedroom to rest before they touched the roadstead at the foot of the homonymous promontory, 36 km from Genoa.  Portofino, close to the hydro form of the Portofino Regional Natural Park.  Being able to find different entrance doors through S. Rocco, Portofino Vetta and Nozaregoino  that led you to paths with different levels of accessibility and landscape. On the route of the path that traveled from Northwest to Southwest on the same promontory, he received the full beauty of the Mediterranean vegetation, with its beautiful pines, bluish and clean waters of the Mediterranean, which filled his lungs and especially his stem, which silenced of peace to those who accompany you through this interesting and beautiful Natural Park with deep blue eyes.
Vernarth is wrapped with two layers of linen and stands in between eclipsing each of the Unicorns. They pass her horn through her pectoral, as if wanting to insinuate affection. But her propitiated gesture was to crown her with the Power of her phalanx, the impetus in Gaugamela, an Onyx Crown, to lighten the burden of sleep and wake up before reaching the shores of Genoa.
Calling in Genoa, they all descend in a separate part and say goodbye from afar, gesturing with their hands. Their ramblings revealed multi-level radiographs of the resolved aura that invited them to an enclave hostel, to re-enter the world of their daily chores. The Unicorns who would return back to Sardinia stayed on the ship that was in the blue bay. They positioned themselves at the bow one and at the stern the other, to lighten the sails and return to Izzana.

Vernarth and Etréstles walked with their bags, letting go of their feet towards La Via ** Settembre, they travel in an east-west direction, next to Corso Italia, the promenade that runs along the promenade, which is one of the favorite places to reform the destination of Piacenza. From this road they moved near the adjacent carriage station to the Caruggio neighborhood in Sottoripa. Here they entered an inn to eat and drink liqueurs made from natural herbal recipes and sweet citrus, some fish with bread, sauce and Genovés sourdough. to satisfy their hunger.
They had dinner and opened the exit to the terminal. Before, they went to the Ponte Monumentale where the church dedicated to Santa Rita is, called Iglesia de la Consolación, whose entrance, at the level of the old streets, is slightly lower than the current street. They pass a porch and enter. "Almost like a grand cloister sensation they perceived during their stay, as if centuries had passed, but which never ended in the wanderings of any secular period. It was the impression once entered and soaked on this road, which still remains active. From this original cloister, the invocation of images on the sides placed towards the church towards Via ** Settembre, as well as the closed portal in the market access plaza on Via Galata, recur, while the other two sides are they completed attractions to admire when the eastern market in Genoa appeared before them ”.

When they entered, the masks were passed over the bones of their faces, indulgent towards both faces of the visitors, under a freshness of gravitational atmospheric fragrance, perhaps from the connected baptismal font or the lateral nave or the three naves separated by square pillars illuminating them. This is where Vernarth places his right hand on his forehead and his mouth, as a sign of catechesis detached from The Vault, the central nave and the counter-facade that were painted in fresco in 1874 by Giuseppe Isola, after reading about the intertextual verifying thus Vernarth. (Visioni dell'Apocalisse, Gloria di Nostra Signora della Consolazione and Giuditta rientra trionfante in Betulia), while Etréstles frenziedly admitted the frescoes through the side aisles that are the work of Giovanni Quinzio at an angle close to him. Observing everything, he was already indoctrinating to reprint new vigor to enter Piacenza triumphantly and head to the Region of Patmos. Giuseppe Isola's fresco was the great motive that struck his reason for being where he was to continue the threads upon threads of his lineage as the great Commander of the troops of Gaugamela and his Phalanges. Here is the church in its first tune with the duty of limitlessness before its steps to dominions that will make it recover their powers, from where they were first seen dressing in the clothes of an innocent child.


In the apse, there was the choir singing baroque pieces, and followed by elaborate wooden stalls from the 17th century. In the Altars on the left, on the Fifth Altar, Etréstles, captures a simultaneous vision. From that moment when it was the disappearance of this Santa Maria della Pace church, which could have been one structure on top of the other, perhaps in ruins but if the columns could go further from where their originals are born. Until then both had separated from each other, and they would meet again here in the apse, where they never lose sight of each other again, to turn towards the exit that required them to leave the sacred precinct. In the terminal, a grayish float awaited them, with silver trim on the edges of the structure, at the top of the front roof it said "Where you must never go and be". It was just the transport of an allegorical float. They were theatrical traveling artists, who had places available for travelers to Piacenza. The one that they just approached to move to the home, where they had to register at their own will and rejoin this excellent session "Parapsychological Regression".The Trebbia valley, a few kilometers from Piacenza. Vernarth noted that a shaft of the chariot made a strange sound. To which he notified the driver, telling him what he caught on the rear axle of the carriage. They go down to inspect all; not being able to detect anything that it would suppose would be an anomaly of filming of the instrumental east. Etréstles sees that some steeds were grazing on some meadows and he tells them all. Vernarth warns him and immediately heads to them. It reaches only a sorrel that was running its tongue over its hoof. The others flee. Vernarth approaches, and notices that he had a wound in his left hoof, noticing that in the center there was a strip of Green color, He takes his leg, and examines it. He takes out his dagger and begins to remove the stake that was inserted into his damaged leg. The others were gone, restarting the trip to Piacenza. Etréstles managed to climb a steed, and followed him - The float remained without them supposedly to arrive safely at Piacenza. But at 5 km, before reaching the city they are struck by a lightning bolt from a sudden storm. What misdirects his route - the passengers were left intact, only fatally suffered the loss of the driver. (It was verified by Vernarth when he arrived at his home in Piacenza).   As  Vernarth rode fast in the storm, trying to catch up with the carriage. Stress them towards the same to reach their brother. They rode propagating the pastures that passed near the forests of Val Trebbia. When the storm intensified instantly, it was wise to take refuge and wait for the flood to decrease. They were always close to each other. Etréstles about 18 km from Vernarth, they did not know it, but the horses sensed each other. They already distinguished, that they were close to each other, but it was necessary to take care of the horse, and have to check its hoof again. He checks it and notices that it had a green stripe in the four parts, like a pigment already placed concentrically in the middle of each hoof.


Ellipses Gaugamela - Final War
Vernarth bids farewells farewell. Once the Achaemenides are surrendered, he prepares to review them. Walk with Alikanto across the ****** plain. Reviewing his five hundred dead and three thousand wounded, he goes to recirculate in the footsteps of the attack, manages to see lead as a sentinel gathered wounded horses, but not serious. He approaches him and says Khaire; asking what unit they came from. He tells them of the Hosts of the command of Hefestion. The sentinel tells him, that he was enraptured by the fact before his eyes to see that all the horses of the line of Hefestion, Alexander the Great and Vernarth, to fascinate him that they had a green stripe on his left hoof. Wedge riders are formed, lining up the stable, towards the court of the guards and Macedonian monarchs. She dismounts from Alikanto and checks the chestnut trees, managing to insinuate that it could be Medea's ploy of the smiling charm towards her Hetairoi dancers, whose elite had bracelets on each leg on each chestnut. Also with the offensive weapon, they acted as the Macedonian's personal guard. Vernarth recalled that, before starting the offensive, with his blessed Xifos he inflicted light wounds on the left foot of his Phalanges in the act of "overtaking them before being stained by the enemy"

Vernarth says: Here is the cavalry that has received so much praise for «hammer» in the strategies, because it crushed the enemy units retained by the «anvil» or the «phalanx» that I had to command and lead the charge, intoning the riders. And even more the circumcisions that he gave them before entering combat. With the Hetairoi I was organizing squadrons of 200 to 300 soldiers, while they were checking the chestnut trees. In the campaign, they would ride the best horses, ******* or on the blanket, they were awarded the best weapons available. Each carried his long throwing spear Xyston, accompanied by a Kopis sword, for hand-to-hand combat, which in the interlude would defend his flax and bronze breastplate, with respective protective armbands and helmet, before lightly tackling his aggression . The horses were also partially protected, but not their hooves! I gave them the final instruction by decree to take them to the altarpieces and attend to them, so that they check their left hoof.Thus giving signs of great concern about the green stripe on each of its left hooves. Sentinel Hetairoi, with some of his servants, gather the animals and transport them where they have been ordered to tend and examine them. As the designs collapse over the night in gloomy litanies, Medea bursts into a great green outfit saying:

Medea: Vernarth, rancid are on my memory the potions and designs of those who want to talk about me or offer me in their lust.Where the zeal of anxiety deceives the wishful arms that welcome the victorious pleasure. Hooves are my skeptics and famous decisions, because I am weak in will but not in character. Green is the pouring of my converted powers into the veins of the horses. They were carriers in their eloquent ferocity. Instead of blood, I had sap from the magic vessels that I transferred to them so as not to doubt the doubts. Their object is that a green band was encased in their hooves as a sign of the Hipnos promontory through their Son Clovis, to plunge all the forests of the raging underworld, towards the heart of each "Valiant Hetairoi".


Outside ellipsis / near Piacenza
Vernarth and Etréstles in a post-storm clearing, a soft breeze greets them and they meet again, they greet Khaire! And together they reroute to the empty pastures, which would gradually begin to venture them through the farthest forests of the Val Trebbia. On some brown plains with poor colors that visited him falling as they faded on his mirage. From this unusual crossroads they will supremely perceive the closeness of Piacenza in their breathing.
Now they are in the vicinity of the Cimitero de Piaceza. Then they will have to go home on the Via Giovanni Codagnello, on the calendar of January 2020. The Parapsychological Regression continues.


Piacenza Cemetery, January 20, 2020
Vernarth and Etréstles entered the necropolis long before sunset. They were carrying a cake to celebrate Vernarth's birthday. Night Patrol joined the visit. In particular, they followed a night watch service that was active, trusting their guide Piacenza or the surrounding area, with 3 internal night patrol passages 365 days a year, for the rest of lives beyond all material life, perhaps turned into marble statues.
They hired a special service dedicated to the approved service for 2 people .; They were active during the caretaker's office opening hours (the same opening hours as the cemetery). With this service they overcame difficulties to walk after so much traveling. They leave the green-hoofed horses, now turned into statues. They request authorization from the entrance cemetery offices, to honor their belonging and to please those who visit them on their behalf. In Genoa, after having passed through the exterior without entering, they were ecstatic with the Staglieno Cemetery in Genoa (the most monumental in Italy).But if they enter the Piacenza, where the sanitary monumentality passed through the real function of such an enclosure in the contingency. It was commented by the neighboring offices that the migration of corpses from Bergamos were moved to Modena, Acqui Terme, Domodossola, Parma, Piacenza to carry out the respective ceremonies. Due to the great Viral Pandemic that decimated a great majority of Italian citizens in these areas. Vernarth became aware of the current reality, saw how a gravedigger conversed with the crowds, there was a nurse, a doctor and a prodigal man who concentrated on uploading moods to those who were there, almost like a caster, to relieve them of this transitory despite humanity.
They continue past the pyramidal pines, to the central pavilion. They sit on the edge of some flagstones, and take the cake to celebrate their birthday. They sing a hymn and they both enjoy it lovingly. Etréstles saw that he had a little cream left on his nose and cheekbone, running his hand to remove it. In the instant, the guard calls them; it was time to go because it was time to close the compound. They say goodbye with a monumental hug paying tribute to their brother!


Etréstles says: Honors Vernarth, for your immeasurable Valor! It is a great contribution that we divide our work and commitments. From here I go to the Messolonghi Cemetery. I will only wait for the crescent moon to meet the Charioteer, then leave with him and my beloved Drestnia. My Xifos Sword in my right hand and the head that I cut off in my left hand, in Gaugamela before that rugged fate! Khaire, My honors Commander Etréstles!. It remains in the shadow of some pyramidal pine trees of this sublime night, and then they distance themselves. Vernarth leaves the compound heading towards his house relatively close to the cemetery, on the Via Giovanni Codagnello.


Final session in Vía Codagnello, Piacenza:
Vernarth enters opens the door and everyone is waiting for him. Huge groups of friends, work colleagues, family, their pets, and especially the Parapsychologist, who had commanded this whole great session. They all approach her and in the instant, Vernarth awakes abruptly from the parapsychological session. They stabilize it and check your vital signs. There were many days of this odyssey. His awakening was mediatic, since they were attentive to him to question him and confess everything, but he was clear that his purpose would lead him to the confines of Patmos along with Raeder and Petrobus. It remained only to wait for the tenuity of a simple immortal warrior to assist in the services of John the Evangelist. The parapsychologist says you have to wake up, you can no longer be AND stay here in this temporary tube!
Once he has refused to wake up, he takes the itinerary to return to Macedonia. The visibly worn and stunned parapsychologist demands that he give up and obey his command. The effort was unproductive, only letting himself be carried by the grip of his right hand, taking his other with great vigor to remove it from shamelessness, from whom he does not suppress his pride to who still remains wounded by the swords that bleed his soul in Gaugamela. "Everyone is amazed and resigned !, pointing out that he must have always been in the surroundings of his beloved Macedonia, cutting the bursts of succulent insolence on the same temperate cliffs, where some variation of the sounds of the wind would make him saddle his Alikanto to acclaim the gods who came looking for him ”

Vernarth is engulfed in ambivalence, almost celebrating his birthday and waking up from his parapsychological journey. Both will take place, but the session will continue irrevocably. After a few days close to the first day of the crescent moon, he greeted him from a privileged place on his house Etréstles de Kalavrita who was with the Charioteer in his car and Drestnia, they went in that masterful car to join the chores of the Koumetrium Messolonghi (Editorial Palibrio - USA) .So returning to Messolonghi, to meet his disciples and essences of the foundation of his naturalness.


Hegira to Patmos
On a gray day in July 1820. Piacenza slept under the ambush of the revolution, in Italy there was a situation similar to that of another European nation. Vernarth was preparing his last details with the parapsychologist, to undertake his Hegira to Patmos, since he was a revolutionary and this was of great motivation to emigrate from this constant stage of Wars and sociopolitical processes. Manage to be a participant in this revolt in the Piedmont area. Its ideological axes were liberalism and nationalism. Given that the most affected countries were those of southern Europe (episodes from other areas, such as Germany or France, were much less important), with Spain as epicenter of a movement that extended to Italy and Portugal, and on the other hand Greece; It has been called the Mediterranean cycle as opposed to the Atlantic cycle that had preceded it in the previous generation (the first liberal revolutions or bourgeois revolutions, produced on both sides of the ocean: the Independence of the United States -1776- and the French Revolution -1789- ). As compromised great principalities of much of Europe were banned, it participates in great dissolution of collisions and invasions that involved it. In this way he would liberate his Homeland, especially his province of Piacenza.

Although the "Kingdom of Italy" as such did not exist, there were two great kingdoms that participated in the Revolutions of 1820: the Kingdom of Naples and the Kingdom of Piedmont. However, most of the revolutionary movements were driven by secret societies, such as coal. The Kingdom of Piedmont was also one of the most affected, since it was at the epicenter of Italian nationalism. It was controlled by Víctor Manuel I, member of the House of Savoy and defender of the Old Regime. The monarch had only been on the throne for 6 years, since he returned to Turin in 1814 due to the defeat of Napoleon. Since his return, various factions within the country advocated for a unification of all the Italian kingdoms. The unstable situation of its neighbor, the Kingdom of Naples, caused the carbonarians within Piedmont to revolt in March 1821.

Conclusive Hegira ellipsis to Patmos:
After this great conflict, he orders his parapsychologist to resume his final session in Patmos; he begins the procedure for the era that he had to trespass anachronistically, returning to the era of the Macedonian Empire. The parapsychologist asks him time, place, dates, clothing, customs, and manages to meet his request. He enters the portal, and in the backwaters of Messolonghi he meets Raeder and Petrobus. They were close to this heroic land, Messolonghi in the Gulf of Patras, the capital of Aetolia-Acarnania. Nothing less than in the land of his Brother Etréstles "Koumeterium Messolonghi".


"They all approach the vicinity, pray three times to heaven, and manage to be abducted to the underworld of Messolonghi. When they were snooping through the catacombs, they make out the surroundings of a luminous vault, thus distinguishing a woman passing by with others. It was the beautiful nymph Eurydice inaugurating The Constitution of a new Government”.
Eurydice and the gravediggers worked for the new government to be instituted. They were reviewing the last ground plans that converged on the tenth cemetery.
Eurydice ...: with the absence of Etréstles and Drestnia we will make her awakening continue, whose awakening phase closely relates to her wife.
Grave ...: Where do we start?
Eurydice ...: by the southwestern statue of Ashurbanipal, to pay tribute to Botsaris. Then, we will go up to receive the cordoned off tomb of Bramante and Ghiberti, so that the latter can advise us regarding the work to be erected.
They climb the northeast pavilion to the foundations of a mausoleum. They approach the slab of Ghiberti, who was loosening his fingers, sitting on the shore of a Pyramid-shaped cypress. Bramante vanished into the gray beams of light...

Ghiberti ...: I already know your mission. I am summoned to the Council on the day of the sailors' return. To start, they went to the mines to look for precious stones, stones to build Markos Botsaris.
Eurydice ...: Good! Well, in nine moons and nine suns they will return from the coasts of Morocco, the last docking point, so that they can then return. At the moment they are already warned.
Just back, there was a Lover with her right hand holding her chin.

Inamorada In Love ...: Five centuries ago I awaited my awakening, my lover promised to return ... with these verses...:
"I want to be different,
I want to take you my love...
and tell you that by missing you
there is no greater sadness than not seeing you ...
Forgive me for not coming back...
before my absence caused your death,
Wait for me ... I'm going to tell you ... how I miss you
Along with my immortality of feeling...!  How I miss you...!!

... He still tells me this, but from here, under the embankment of the cemetery I feel that he is far away and I can do nothing. Also, I have it in my memory and one day we will meet here. The Enamorada continues to sit and watch armies of soldiers being thrown into graves, their bodies severed. As she continues; ... there is more life here than on the surface, and the trenches replace the concave wombs, as vessels! As everything here lives, even the flowing and hallucinatory invocations are perceived from the Poets, Alchemists and Astronomers. They make the invisible go in a formidable adventure to the site of their magical hallucinations.
Eurydice ...: Stay on your stone, with your chiffon dress; here you will see the arrival of Etréstles. He will bring news from other lands to answer you. Now dispense if we delay, sadness will fall on the other beings who are being buried and transhumated. The Enamorada remained on the stone with her knees resting on her chest. Eurydice and her assistants went to their rooms. "
All this they manage to witness, and then go in search of Etréstles on the same tenth cemetery floor. Raeder and Petrobus were laughing and at the same time they were impressed, as if wanting to remember him when they have to leave directly from Messolonghi to Patmos, towards the Dodecanese region. In the meantime Vernarth was searching for his brother in all the nearby areas of the catacombs flashing penetrating light, unable to find him. He arrives at the ninth cemetery and is fascinated by a feminine image that would seem like a phantasmagorical chimera ..., it was Drestnia moistening some ferns on some crypts making gestures to see them already grown, even if they had just been planted...!

They approach her intimacy and ask her greetings, Drestnia answers them abstractedly that Etréstles traveled to Patmos to applaud the maiden ceremonies that would be wed in the spring in the nearby meadows. Being able to settle in The Monastery of Zoodochos Pigi, and who later went to the hills of Castelli, as it has been known that everything has been celebrated on a hill that many hundreds of years ago has sheltered our historical fragrances in the unity of the ethereal until the present. Such ruins among some works as well as the Temple of Apollo that will continue to survive with its prevailing mystery not revealed.
Etréstles gives them their congratulations and wraps his arms around Drestnia. They evacuate the cemetery, remaining abstracted in the internal darkness of the catacombs with fewer lights than a feasible twilight of darkness, as if immediately leaving Etréstles to be with him in the spring, shedding light on herself taking them to the Castelli hills, which they would figure in the sweetened exaltation of the pollinations of the nymphs on the maternal and ****** maidens.

They go out and spread their impulses over the promontory of the Koumeterium of Messolonghi with Raeder and Petrobus on Raeder's shoulders. Vernarth invoked the north with her staff where Alikanto would appear with her hooves with greenish stripes.

Raeder says:  Let's go. On those warm currents to follow we will not unite you Vernarth. Smiling, the fantastic boy danced, forming figures that enlivened him to hold on to the legs of Petrobus. They both stared at Vernarth and raised high above the warm clouds. Beneath the Messolonghi miniature, she had Vernarth's sights on them; she was putting reins and her Hoplite tunic, to mount Alikanto. He looks around and makes a big sign to Raeder to follow him to where he was, they suspend themselves and manage to go back to the highest mass of misty airs that would take them against the clock towards Patmos to meet Saint John and Etréstles.

From blue tranquillity where turquoise waters wash white golden sand, where brilliant fish school in myriad colour and shape, where magnificent squadrons of sleek tarpon and barracuda dash in perfect formation, grazing schools of silver mackeral through diamond flecked deep green shallows, to plunge vertically down to the depths of the black abyss and security.

Calm tropical waters which shimmer like aqua blue glass in the mid day heat and turn to simmering,red fire at the setting of the enormous, ovate, orange sun.

Sea birds flock above wind blown waves, their sharp cries a symphony of the sea, to suddenly wheel and dive en mass, to dine amidst teeming schools of flashing, shiny minnows.

The idyllic picture of a calm blue infinity of ocean framed, in brilliant sunshine, by white sands and gracefully bowed coconut palms.....and suddenly, at the horizon, a thin black line appears, It approaches with steadily, mounting speed, the coastline surf recedes dramatically seaward leaving exposed coral, mountains of seaweed and frantic flapping, beached fish everywhere. A sudden, oppressive silence becomes a distant roar. The sea birds, as one, take panicked flight... and a massive wall of water rears up and rises like a giant beast, to rush headlong, raging, at the coastline.

What once was blue and serene is now a huge cascade of violent black death and destruction, gigantically it destroys the coast, snapping huge trees like twigs, surging ashore, a tsunami of unimaginable violence it obliterates, housing, streets, bridges, vehicles, shipping, aircraft and people, thousands of panicked, helpless, struggling people, killed in a titanic, black, swirling maelstrom of inexorable violence. The wave is followed by another...and another, extending right along the coastline and beyond. Each wave larger and more violent than the last...surging inland for miles  until defeated by the accident of gravity in rising land.

Those who have survived, on high land, on tall buildings, in treetops....cling to each other and look on in horror and utter helplessness. They can only wait, in fear, for the monster to retreat before venturing down to the devastation below to render help where ever they possibly can.

Twice in the space of the last forty thousand years the Kraken has awaken and risen from the depths of the Tasman Sea to the west of New Zealand. It has risen to gigantic proportions and driven right across the Auckland isthmus to the Pacific Ocean. It has twice flattened gigantic primeval Kauri forests laying them waste, all lying in one direction, each time beneath twenty feet of debris and black mud.

Born in innocence from a natural tectonic adjustment of the earth plates, the Kraken doth arise at any time, in any place to wreak it's dreadful work upon we, who reside in our comfortable, seemingly secure and beautiful coastal idylls.

Marshalg
Dedicated to all the coastal population exposed to the threat of inevitable tectonic induced tsunami.
JAPAN. WEST COAST, USA. WEST COAST, SOUTH AMERICA. ALL PACIFIC ISLANDS. NEW ZEALAND. INDONESIA. AUSTRALIA. SOUTH AFRICA. EAST COAST, CHINA. MALAYSIA.
KOREA. THAILAND. PAPUA NEW GUINEA, VIETNAM. PHILLIPINES. TAIWAN. BURMA.

“Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!
Confusion on thy banners wait!
Tho’ fanned by Conquest’s crimson wing,
They mock the air with idle state.
Helm, nor hauberk’s twisted mail,
Nor e’en thy virtues, Tyrant, shall avail
To save thy secret soul from nightly fears,
From Cambria’s curse, from Cambria’s tears!”
Such were the sounds that o’er the crested pride
Of the first Edward scattered wild dismay,
As down the steep of Snowdon’s shaggy side
He wound with toilsome march his long array.
Stout Glo’ster stood aghast in speechless trance:
“To arms!” cried Mortimer, and couched his quiv’ring lance.

On a rock, whose haughty brow
Frowns o’er cold Conway’s foaming flood,
Robed in the sable garb of woe
With haggard eyes the Poet stood;
(Loose his beard and hoary hair
Streamed like a meteor to the troubled air)
And with a master’s hand, and prophet’s fire,
Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre.
“Hark, how each giant-oak and desert-cave
Sighs to the torrent’s awful voice beneath!
O’er thee, O King! their hundred arms they wave,
Revenge on thee in hoarser murmurs breathe;
Vocal no more, since Cambria’s fatal day,
To high-born Hoel’s harp, or soft Llewellyn’s lay.

“Cold is Cadwallo’s tongue,
That hushed the stormy main;
Brave Urien sleeps upon his craggy bed:
Mountains, ye mourn in vain
Modred, whose magic song
Made huge Plinlimmon bow his cloud-topt head.
On dreary Arvon’s shore they lie,
Smeared with gore, and ghastly pale:
Far, far aloof th’ affrighted ravens sail;
The famished eagle screams, and passes by.
Dear lost companions of my tuneful art,
Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes,
Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart,
Ye died amidst your dying country’s cries—
No more I weep. They do not sleep.
On yonder cliffs, a grisly band,
I see them sit; they linger yet,
Avengers of their native land:
With me in dreadful harmony they join,
And weave with ****** hands the tissue of thy line.

“Weave, the warp! and weave, the woof!
The winding sheet of Edward’s race:
Give ample room and verge enough
The characters of hell to trace.
Mark the year and mark the night
When Severn shall re-echo with affright
The shrieks of death, thro’ Berkley’s roof that ring,
Shrieks of an agonizing king!
She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs,
That tear’st the bowels of thy mangled mate,
From thee be born, who o’er thy country hangs
The scourge of Heaven! What terrors round him wait!
Amazement in his van, with Flight combined,
And Sorrow’s faded form, and Solitude behind.

“Mighty victor, mighty lord!
Low on his funeral couch he lies!
No pitying heart, no eye, afford
A tear to grace his obsequies.
Is the sable warrior fled?
Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead.
The swarm that in thy noon-tide beam were born?
Gone to salute the rising morn.
Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows,
While proudly riding o’er the azure realm
In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes:
Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm:
Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind’s sway,
That, hushed in grim repose, expects his ev’ning prey.

“Fill high the sparkling bowl,
The rich repast prepare;
Reft of a crown, he yet may share the feast:
Close by the regal chair
Fell Thirst and Famine scowl
A baleful smile upon their baffled guest.
Heard ye the din of battle bray,
Lance to lance, and horse to horse?
Long years of havoc urge their destined course,
And thro’ the kindred squadrons mow their way.
Ye towers of Julius, London’s lasting shame,
With many a foul and midnight ****** fed,
Revere his consort’s faith, his father’s fame,
And spare the meek usurper’s holy head.
Above, below, the rose of snow,
Twined with her blushing foe, we spread:
The bristled Boar in infant-gore
Wallows beneath the thorny shade.
Now, brothers, bending o’er the accursed loom,
Stamp we our vengeance deep, and ratify his doom.

“Edward, lo! to sudden fate
(Weave we the woof. The thread is spun.)
Half of thy heart we consecrate.
(The web is wove. The work is done.)
Stay, oh stay! nor thus forlorn
Leave me unblessed, unpitied, here to mourn:
In yon bright track that fires the western skies
They melt, they vanish from my eyes.
But oh! what solemn scenes on Snowdon’s height
Descending slow their glittering skirts unroll?
Visions of glory, spare my aching sight,
Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul!
No more our long-lost Arthur we bewail.
All hail, ye genuine kings! Britannia’s issue, hail!

“Girt with many a baron bold
Sublime their starry fronts they rear;
And gorgeous dames, and statesmen old
In bearded majesty, appear.
In the midst a form divine!
Her eye proclaims her of the Briton-line:
Her lion-port, her awe-commanding face,
Attempered sweet to ****** grace.
What strings symphonious tremble in the air,
What strains of vocal transport round her play!
Hear from the grave, great Taliessin, hear;
They breathe a soul to animate thy clay.
Bright Rapture calls, and soaring as she sings,
Waves in the eye of heav’n her many-coloured wings.

“The verse adorn again
Fierce War, and faithful Love,
And Truth severe, by fairy Fiction drest.
In buskined measures move
Pale Grief, and pleasing Pain,
With Horror, tyrant of the throbbing breast.
A voice, as of the cherub-choir,
Gales from blooming Eden bear;
And distant warblings lessen on my ear,
That lost in long futurity expire.
Fond impious man, think’st thou yon sanguine cloud,
Raised by thy breath, has quenched the orb of day?
Tomorrow he repairs the golden flood,
And warms the nations with redoubled ray.
Enough for me: with joy I see
The diff’rent doom our fates assign.
Be thine Despair and sceptred Care;
To triumph and to die are mine.”
He spoke, and headlong from the mountain’s height
Deep in the roaring tide he plunged to endless night.

The eye can hardly pick them out
From the cold shade they shelter in,
Till wind distresses tail and main;
Then one crops grass, and moves about
- The other seeming to look on -
And stands anonymous again

Yet fifteen years ago, perhaps
Two dozen distances surficed
To fable them : faint afternoons
Of Cups and Stakes and Handicaps,
Whereby their names were artificed
To inlay faded, classic Junes -

Silks at the start : against the sky
Numbers and parasols : outside,
Squadrons of empty cars, and heat,
And littered grass : then the long cry
Hanging unhushed till it subside
To stop-press columns on the street.

Do memories plague their ears like flies?
They shake their heads. Dusk brims the shadows.
Summer by summer all stole away,
The starting-gates, the crowd and cries -
All but the unmolesting meadows.
Almanacked, their names live; they

Have slipped their names, and stand at ease,
Or gallop for what must be joy,
And not a fieldglass sees them home,
Or curious stop-watch prophesies :
Only the grooms, and the grooms boy,
With bridles in the evening come.

Slapdash into the ****** pan
Is thrown the longed-for son of man.
Between the gossiping cups of tea
God attains mortality.

In the cathedral calm and cold
Kneel the erroneous-memoried old.
But in the womb's cathedral calm
The walls collapse in a birth psalm.

The blood sings from the soiled hand
The apprentice cleans at the washstand.
Undismayed by omission,
For everything, everything is won.

The proof blazes in impudence
Above the miopics of science,
Swaggering in love inviolate,
Over the uninitiate.

And over all the angels dart
Like squadrons in a war apart.
Dropping parachutes of bliss
On everything that is.

When the incendiaries lit the sky
A face smiled its divine calligraphy:
It was Helen crowned with Troy's debris.

Her unmatchable mouth in the roof
Of blood moved in speech like the home of love,
Hanging its moon of reproof:

'My kiss blots history out.
My landslide legend has forgotten
A thousand thousand bones rotting;

'Under the guilty sea
The ships lie; but accuracy
Has been seduced by me.'

Her smile sailed indiscriminately
Among the squadrons of death majestically
And was reflected on the sea.

'The armless Venus carried Pompei's tears
Better than the raided years
Or the cold dances of chameleon stars.'

Then faded. But the rain
Like lovers' seeds that fall in vain,
Warned me of my sin.

Weave the warp, and weave the woof,
The winding-sheet of Edward’s race.
  Give ample room, and verge enough
The characters of hell to trace.
Mark the year, and mark the night,
When Severn shall re-echo with affright
The shrieks of death, thro’ Berkley’s roofs that ring,
Shrieks of an agonizing King!
  She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs,
That tear’st the bowels of thy mangled mate,
  From thee be born, who o’er thy country hangs
The scourge of Heav’n. What terrors round him wait!
Amazement in his van, with Flight combined,
And Sorrow’s faded form, and Solitude behind.

  Mighty Victor, mighty Lord!
Low on his funeral couch he lies!
  No pitying heart, no eye, afford
A tear to grace his obsequies.
Is the sable warrior fled?
Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead.
The swarm that in thy noon tide beam were born?
Gone to salute the rising morn.
Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows,
While proudly riding o’er the azure realm
In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes;
  Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm;
Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind’s sway,
That, hush’d in grim repose, expects his evening prey.

  Fill high the sparkling bowl,
The rich repast prepare;
  Reft of a crown, he yet may share the feast:
Close by the regal chair
  Fell Thirst and Famine scowl
  A baleful smile upon their baffled guest.
Heard ye the din of battle bray,
  Lance to lance, and horse to horse?
  Long years of havoc urge their destined course,
And thro’ the kindred squadrons mow their way.
  Ye Towers of Julius, London’s lasting shame,
With many a foul and midnight ****** fed,
  Revere his consort’s faith, his father’s fame,
And spare the meek usurper’s holy head.
Above, below, the rose of snow,
  Twined with her blushing foe, we spread:
The bristled boar in infant-gore
  Wallows beneath the thorny shade.
Now, brothers, bending o’er th’ accursèd loom
Stamp we our vengeance deep, and ratify his doom.

  Edward, lo! to sudden fate
(Weave we the woof. The thread is spun)
  Half of thy heart we consecrate.
(The web is wove. The work is done.)

A NEW DAY ARRIVES ON THE BLUE SEA,
THE LIGHT TOUCHING THE SAPPHIRE WATER.
THEN, WITH THE RUSH OF WAVES
BREAKING UPON ON THEIR METAL HULLS,
FOUR SHIPS OF GREY-PAINTED IRON & STEEL
CUT THROUGH THE WATER OF GLASS.

THE FIRST IS A NOBLE AND MAGNIFICENT WARSHIP,
A GREAT MONSTER OF IRON, FURY, AND GLORY,
A BATTLESHIP THAT WILL SPARK YOUNG BOYS IMAGINATION WITH COMPLETE FIREPOWER, KNOWN AS THE “GUN CLUB”.

FOLLOWING BEHIND IS AN CARRIER
WITH MANY WARPLANES THROTTLING
FOR LAUNCH, ANXIOUS FOR COMBAT.

NEXT IS A DESTROYER, ITS CREW
TRYING ITS BEST TO RESTRAIN ITSELF
AND STAY WITH ITS BROTHERS IN ARMS.

LAST, BUT CERTAINLY NOT LEAST, IS A CRUISER,
A MERE SMALLER REPLICA OF THE
BATTLESHIP, BUT NOT BE UNDERESTIMATED.

BELOW THESE SURFACE BEHEMOTHS IS A
SILENT STALKER OF THE DARK ABYSS,
A FAST SUBMARINE, MASTER OF THE ART OF ATTACK.
WITH A SIGNAL PASSED BETWEEN THE
WARSHIPS, THE FLEET GOES ITS SEPARATE WAYS
AND PREPARES TO FIGHT A MORNING WAR;
A STORM OF UNPRESCIDENT CHAOS AND DEATH.

AS THE SUN BEGINS TO TOUCH CLOUDS,
A ROAR OF ENGINES ECHOES ACROSS
THE BRIGHTING SKY,
IN TURN JOINED BY THE CACOPHONY
OF MACHINE GUNS FIRING THOUSANDS
INTO SQUADRONS OF ENEMY JETS.

FRIENDLY AIRCRAFT BLAST IN THE AIR
FROM THE DECK OF THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER,
EAGER FOR EPIC DOGFIGHTS AS ONBOARD
SYSTEMS LOCK ONTO ENEMIES.

FROM THE DESTROYER ERUPT STREAKS
OF ANTI-AIRCRAFT MISSILES FROM
HIDDEN SILOS BELOW ITS DECKS.

SUDDENLY, A EXPLOSION ECHOES ACROSS THE OCEAN,
A SECOND LATER, GEYSERS OF WATER
ERUPT INTO THE AIR AMONG THE FLEET.

RADAR AND SPOTTERS CONFIRM THE
ENEMY ON THE HORIZON, JUST OUT OF MISSILE RANGE.

ON THE COMMAND OF THE ADMIRAL,
THE CRUISER JOINS THE SUBMARINE
AND LAUNCHES TORPEDOES
FROM THEIR DECKS AND TUBES.

WHITE COLUMNS OF WATER AND
STEEL ERUPT LIKE TOWERS AS
TORPEDOES HIT THEIR MARK.

BUT A SOUNDS LIKE SRIENS SCREAMING
ALL THEIR MIGHT ECHOES ACROSS
THE BATTLEFIELD AND LOOKOUTS POINT
OUT TWO ARCHING PILLARS OF FLAME
CURVE DOWN TOWARDS THEIR TARGET.

DOOMED TO ONLY WATCH, CREW
MEMBERS FIRE BULLETS TO STOP THE
MISSILES FROM THE SUB.

BUT THE EXPLOSIONS THAT FOLLOW AND
THE SHOCKWAVES THAT CAUSE GROWN
MEN TO BE SLAMMED AGAINST BULKHEADS
CONFIRM IT; ALL HANDS LOST.

THE CRUISER, NOW FAR FROM FRIENDLY
SUPPORT, WAGES A WAR OF IT OWNS AS
IT BECOMES SURROUNDED BY THE ENEMY.

BUT AFTER MISSILE, SHELL, AND TORPEDO,
THE OCEAN CLAIMS HER QUARRY WITH
WAVES OF RAGING BLUE FLOODING THE DECKS.

THE DESTROYER, FURIOUS OF THE
LOSS OF HER BROTHERS IN ARMS,
EXPELLS ALL OF HER WEAPONS IN HOPES
OF HITTING AT LEAST ONE OF THE ENEMY.

IN LUCK, THE FOE'S SUBAMRINE AND DESTROYER
BURN OIL AS THEY SINK, BUT FOR A PRICE:
THE DESTROYER BEGINS ITS SLUMBER
TOWARDS THE DARK ABYSS.

ALL SHIPS REMAINING ARE THE
CARRIERS AND THE MIGHTY DREADNOUGHTS
KNOWN AS BATTLESHIPS.

THE CARRIERS CONTINUE THEIR AREIAL DUALS,
LAUNCHING AIRCRAFT BARELY CAPABLE
OF FLIGHT OR FIGHT.

THEN, WITH THE SOUND OF DRAGONS,
THE BATTLESHIPS BEGIN THE FINAL PHASE
OF THE OCEAN BATTLE.

CLOUDS OF FIRE, SMOKE, AND STEEL ARE
BELCHED WITH ANGER INTO THE AIR
AS BOTH SHIPS FIGHT AROUND THE
STILL-BURNING HULLS.

SURVIVORS, DESPERATELY HOLDING ONTO
SCRAP TO STAY AFLOAT, CHEER THEIR FELLOW
BATTLESHIPS ON AS THE GREAT IRON GIANTS
DUKE IT OUT FOR THE HONOR OF THEIR NATION.

FINALLY, THE “GUN CLUB” BATTLESHIP,
EXACTLY AS SOON AS THE GREAT ORB
OF THE SUN BEGINS TO SINK, DESTROYED
THE ENEMY WITH ALL SIXTEEN INCH GUNS
LAND SHELL AFTER SHELL INTO THE ARMOR.


INTERNAL FIRES FINALLY CAUSE THE
STEEL BEHEMOTH TO SINK FOR ITS
CHANCE AT GLORY, VANQUISHED.

“HIT!! YOU SANK MY BATTLESHIP!”
I RAISE MY ARMS IN VICTORY AS MY
FRIEND AND MYSELF PLACE THE
FINAL PIN INTO THE FINAL RESTING
PLACE OF THE MISSING BATTLESHIP.
THUS MARKS THE END OF A BATTLESHIP GAME,
BUT IMAGINATION DRIVES THE BATTLE ON.

This morning, between two branches of a tree  
Beside the door, epeira once again
Has spun and signed his tapestry and trap.  

I test his early-warning system and
It works, he scrambles forth in sable with  
The yellow hieroglyph that no one knows  
The meaning of. And I remember now
How yesterday at dusk the nighthawks came  
Back as they do about this time each year,
Grey squadrons with the slashes white on wings  
Cruising for bugs beneath the bellied cloud.  

Now soon the monarchs will be drifting south,  
And then the geese will go, and then one day  
The little garden birds will not be here.  

See how many leaves already have
Withered and turned; a few have fallen, too.  

Change is continuous on the seamless web,  
Yet moments come like this one, when you feel  
Upon your heart a signal to attend
The definite announcement of an end
Where one thing ceases and another starts;  
When like the spider waiting on the web  

You know the intricate dependencies  
Spreading in secret through the fabric vast  
Of heaven and earth, sending their messages  
Ciphered in chemistry to all the kinds,
The whisper down the bloodstream: it is time.

I

This is the Month, and this the happy morn
Wherin the Son of Heav’ns eternal King,
Of wedded Maid, and ****** Mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring;
For so the holy sages once did sing,
That he our deadly forfeit should release,
And with his Father work us a perpetual peace.

II

That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable,
And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty,
Wherwith he wont at Heav’ns high Councel-Table,
To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,
He laid aside; and here with us to be,
Forsook the Courts of everlasting Day,
And chose with us a darksom House of mortal Clay.

III

Say Heav’nly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein
Afford a present to the Infant God?
Hast thou no vers, no hymn, or solemn strein,
To welcom him to this his new abode,
Now while the Heav’n by the Suns team untrod,
Hath took no print of the approching light,
And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright?

IV

See how from far upon the Eastern rode
The Star-led Wisards haste with odours sweet,
O run,  prevent them with thy humble ode,
And lay it lowly at his blessed feet;
Have thou the honour first, thy Lord to greet,
And joyn thy voice unto the Angel Quire,
From out his secret Altar toucht with hallow’d fire.

Flippant polymaths exude the frippery of travail for lapsed inordinate surgical gains in temporal but temporary acclaim that owes its provenance to the gullarge accentuated by the guttural tempests of silent windfalls that wrestle with sharks and snarky cagamosis with pilfered fame without rulers for rules that own the profligacy of a cineaste game

We cannot surpass our talents with ease when the treecheese of inevitable distance between equipoise and insanity is a tantamount inanity of prolixity for the sake of freedom rather than servitude to the slow meandered steps of trudged verbigeration that needs to be exorcised from the seat of authority for the plodding inconvenience of time earned that shakes the listless yearning people who lie and spurn

Demagogues are trifles because they are anoegenetic and care not for the abligurition that consumes the energy of a dismal life lived on fringes rather than reaped with grimaces for binges that continue to absorb the painful pangs of twinges that hedonists are of interest

We cannot exorcise the demons that give stygian weight to exchequers beyond the gamut of money but rather the currency of velocity of thought that owes its weight to weightlessness of spaces between the spacious and the limited tract of isolative territory that many mendicants looking for sustenance travail in insolence and in perjury of their solemn duties for self-serious honesty they lack a vista to see their crimes as more than just a pettifoggery of disputatious wranglers that wrench and then contemn the objects of their moral scruples to contend with nothing but the vacant expanse of a limitless injury for a momentary slip of cultivation and countenance

Frippery is hard to cobble with lapidary wit because succinct grievances are fallow ground for the permanence of atrocity and the temperance of felicity to conform to the desiccated pathways of limpid but livid excoriations of willful ingenuity met with aleatory rambles that sprawl incalescence with words as a dying occupation that is resurrected from the abeyance of its pragmatic utility to distinguish class from crust.

The triadic fatuousness of snarky sharks recruiting the gullarge of paranoiacs to deputized alacrity lead many strident vocations astray as they pilfer the nullibiety of spectral ignorance and defy the gravitas of the primiparas of a swollen technocracy, an outrage that scarecrows with prevenance have adumbrated against with strident accelerations of sublime velocity

So we swim in perilous straits against the demiurge of inclemency in fated rittles for the turpitude of wraiths and engineer every aborning day a new foofaraw of unalloyed atrocity
Now more than never should be deployed to ensure that the castigation of scoundrels and guttersnipes that exert a rip tide to those stranded on the shores of littoral desiccation might find the pristine beachgoing public an amenable treat proffered by exorcised sheepishness in reiterative bleats that quarkswarm only the antinomy of sentient masteries by shoveled civilizations proctor to horological insistence in design

So we designated an abeyance of heydays to create a rippled nostalgia that creeps in the winter storms that singe even glabrous ignorance with the twinges in absentia of the regal crows that circle the sun as the sustenance of the alighted moon as we reach for the heaved Richter teeming with ablution for venial commination of prolix croons that exert a Palo Alto rhyme

Phenomenological fields distal to the cephalocaudal origination of limber and the ironic counterpoint to that strife in excess rather than dearth of the henchmen behind the exchequer showcase that fluid thoughts surpass the limits of the dentistry of cosmetic cosmology simultaneously a scientific boon but a coarse albatross

We are criminals in a world stranded by ****** apostasy because of the sincerity of minstrels meets plodding human ignorance as exemplars rather than the apotheosis of divine excoriation of wastrels and flattybouches who webdoodle their way into the extinction line in some computer file swiped from eccedentesiasts who often in uncouth barbarity forgetfully abide without the temperance of floss

So what are we to make of magisterial wits of wiseacres who pilot tenable objectives like Indiana Jones flexing his comical whip when the gunfire of cacophony inundates our ears with a lisp of cockalorum imposture rich in chewing tobacco and its ungainly gripes and tenacious grip

Should we seek salvation from the treecheese of arboreous terrain amenable to the newfangled windfall of agricultural whims that dare now with caprice but not quixotic disdain to reconfigure the parsimonious levered engagement of melliferous fungible transaction between sabbaticals and chief financiers dubbing the vociferous limn of the primeval fulgurant incandescent ethereal quips?

We strive for palaces issued with dimes, dozens and scores of retinues that retain the patina of sophistry as the gullarge makes the vangermytes cozy in their defensively mechanized citadel buffered against the unheralded malversations of mammon intersecting with primordial chemistry that give the philanderer a guise of philanthropy despite professed gainsay that perjures because hucksters are winsome with fiduciary risk

So we calumniate with lapsed puns and Potter’s Spells as we dredge the indemnity of bustling heydays that extend beyond the bailiwick stated because of the prolonged trace of nostalgia that frazzles our voluntary expeditions with misanthropy as each libertine instinct becomes subject to stop and frisk

How to balk at such a garrulous repartee as proffered by swanky intransigence that shakes it off in a quaky town that hates the Swift refrain that endangers the fatalism of recuperated foresight borrowed from the armamentarium of corrupted killjoys who swim in a dalliance with the itchy myths that drift from powerlessness to voguish debauchery of insouciant internecine fringes frayed by the tomes that decry Stygian drift

Shiftless and rooted in rintinole absolved by plackiques that enchant the voyeurism of repined squalor of industrious frippery deracinated from the aureate complicity of largesse calibrated to mobilize the skittish mercurial yuppies to a dance with divestiture, taxes and an earthen death, we sprint the evergreen mile toward the scrupulous invention of enthusiastic euphemisms arbitrated by the procrustean silt of the leaky faucet of enigmatic timelessness etched by chiselers to beat “Us and Them” and warn the vanguard of the front rank about the thespian rift

Exhaustive rescue squads prepared for the dearth of monetary heft in times of perilous drought denigrate the authors of famine to the indulgent parents of inordinate sabotage of narrative for riskless arbitrage that is the outrage of sciamachies between platonic indifference and the tantrums of the feckless in the dangerous hearth of the cavernous wilderness of limitless imaginations that stagger so far beyond orbit they become satellites to vagrancy and whittled paragons too distant to dissolve in the ethereal chemistry of incalescent uproar sadly flanged by the Dopplers of ephemeral fate

Squandered by the desuetude of a snarky intervention I issue invective at the proctors of deafferented limbs for barbarous swine meeting expediency in demise, bemoaning the placid distaste of rectified cries that issue candles for each acrimony beyond the permutation of the staid inflexible limit of 88’

Bashfully we careen through argosies of curiosity to fossick the stalactites of timeworn intuition and reckon with their converse ironies that drip faucets of mildew that remain hidden unless poked by plucky flashlights to inspect the paragon of erosive filigrees of a bewildering paradox of polarized design that one meets the ceiling at inception and the cousin strives to clamber empty space to know with faint certainty the bulldozed irony of superordinate coexistence

Now we return to the majesty of a spurned wiseacre that evades the snappy parlance of a wrenched friction between the physical and the metaphysical elements that constitute a commensurate reality so supernal that its ostentation creates lifetimes of reiterative growth that spawns crimson red and bloviated blues to find a fulcrum of balance between the malversation on one hand of criminal sinister machinations and on the other hand the execrable self-righteous ignorance of a hidden vehicles of dexterity that are subsumed by a subtlety of legislative graft that owes its forbearance to the sanctimony of perseveration without the laurels of persistence

Now we wed the concepts between the ambidexterity of a monolithic titan who wanes rather than waxes himself because his glabrous head already exposed requires nothing new because the empire that struck back is denuded by the thorny imbroglio of a sunken Rose

Timmynoggies are perfect for haberdasheries of saccharine and glib excellence as measured by the ****** cacophony of unmerited applause that strains the resourcefulness of the silent mastery of magistrates in mellifluous alcoves surrounded by the soundproofed rigors of an execrable dereliction wilt into the imaginations of the few that watch movies with errantry rather than pleasantries of gaudy nonsense enchanted by a striptease of the wanton zeitgeist that some balk at but everyone knows

Time earns the spangled banners of sloganeering because of the fastidious creations of pole folders that maneuver between quips borrowed from antique movies and swindled affectations of yearning of many of all fears inevitable with the malevolent passage of the technocracy from cheers to vehement inveighed jeers

We should fear the watershed because it necessitates the evaporation of winsome ambition and implores the subservience of a guiltless fascination with abominable regress concomitant to the acceleration of money preceding a whipsawed downfall ensured by the funereal spates of requiems to oneironauts who plunged to their deaths on headlong flickering whims past the craggy landscape of lunar concordance and through the abeyance of qualms to flabbergasted self-importance in the eradication of provident fears

Memorials exist encoded in the temporal twinges of agony that straddle the cardiovascular throbs of impermanence that sweat with each simple beat to blather about the repetitious nature of a livid nature scrambled in exodus of the emigration of senseless blather to the subroutines of regimented sleepless paragons of travail in every pedestrian feat accelerated with each passing foot traversed by vigilant and eager feet

Tempests crowd the cluttered hamartithia of dredged incompetence leading to the foreclosure that precedes the simple derelictions that amount to grievous uncertainties that squawk in the plumage of the frippery decay of an autumnal fall from gracile riches landlocked without room to sprawl rigged against every track that is a surefire gleeful keepsake to meet, greet and serenade the claques adorned with the monikers of the Greeks

Trembling beneath the weight of mellifluous sauntering dingy designs that exude the anguish of our provident but incidental remonstration against the plodding indifference of the artistic clerisy we sputter against intransigent annulments of the emotive human engine calibrated with creaky pistons that rumble with furor of abrasive protest in timely haphazard elemental designs for vanguard ears

Tridents shed the fossicked leaves that are divisible by two but not inevitably glue that solders the identities of people congregated around a situation of gleeful sprees rather than wistful regress into a temerity without regret that gets dangled in the purview of the spiteful wings of armies that drawl when they sing vapid songs for vaped bongs but not the soberly cheers because of the deafening din of conformity oblivious of the honorific crescendos that still peak after so many restless years

Confederates line the avenues of bustling caverns of cumulative human disdain so willfully flouted by the wrenched corrosive frictions of vibrant deformation of the cultural narrative that encapsulates the collective bubbles chewed and jettisoned like bandied candy and then defamed without justice because  hurricanes churn up the reclusive emergence of protective vanity chased down as a sunken cost for a siphoned glory of tribal pride despite the strictures of logic

Creeping with insistence is a subaudition of governing gravel that entombs many steadfast lies that embodied people living delusory lives under a paradigm that has been subverted by the feats of science into a morass of irrelevance and the chances are many of those so deluded still breathe the air now more polluted but balk at the memories of the fallen passengers on the convalescent train that accelerates sunblind but respectfully toward a systematic engrossment of swollen intellects whimpering about the tautologic

We finance our prescient rodomontade with rodeos equipped with zany clowns who spurn the tridents of Poseidon because of the iridescent gloss of sheepish and flippant zealots who churn against the wrestling match of televised irony with accentuated eccedentesiastic disdain amended by a tolerable diversion of ennobled gallantry zip-zagging among the many valid quodlibets and missing the mark entirely on purpose to vacate the possible raillery of those who balk at time’s chosen serpentine tracks because of limited pedagogical tracts

So lets solder a forceful brunt against the senseless regalia of modern omphalos and return to the plenipotentiary fields of resourceful human inquiry into the chagrins outmoded by convenience but amplified in vociferation by the prosthetic extension of a grangull humanity outfoxing itself into a zugzwang inevitable in the future with collateral losses because of senseless invidiousness orchestrated by the immiscible dermatology of divisive facts often about race and ineluctable tax

We conclude with the optimism that refineries become gentrified by the superlunary squadrons who bask in beatific beams of anonymity and that the pollution preceding our evolution is just adventitious rather than central to the amelioration of wavy screens ennobling so many upstarts to teach themselves the majesty of lucid dreams and to capitalize on ludic ideals divorced from the urchins of radical idealisms that ironically poach rarefied air with smug pollution of narrative scares

Without trepidation we can muster the largesse of civility to create a progeny that has a recursive progeny of heirs that defiantly imagine a world bereft of specters of the soporific imagination enforced by the lapidation of insight from termagants who stride with ursine acrimony naked bare and envision a global meliorism that is careful, picaresque, pragmatic and filled with meritocratic care

With those ornaments of an aureate measure in mind


We leap beyond the enumerated infinity in time's proper design

squadrons deployed. everything permanent is still removable if you ignore it enough. revising your lackadaisical list of priorities. repeat play and an ashtray full of roaches. at this point even nostalgia feels classic. cross your t’s and then just x out everything. circle the names of your favorite cities. hands held, grudges kept. i swear somewhere i’ve got something left. in my head the rescuers are always gonna be the ones who go down (under) in history. everyone else is just running their mouth or grinding their teeth. there are some lies left over but who cares? this might be the worst ever. or the best yet. i guess we’ll know for sure soon enough. i right clicked through this like five times because of what i’ve got flowing through my veins. sidenote: i miss you.

You can't hear them coming....
those avian creatures-
that stalk in darkness

"Owls.........they are!"

It's their "wings"
designed by natures science...

to soar in silence

waiting
watching
undetected
unexpected

From them, they got their name, those U S Air Force glider squadrons of World War II. After being released from a "tow plane", they silently descended toward a landing target behind enemy lines, with a cargo of supplies, gasoline, etc. Some, carrying a small cadre of troops, even a vehicle.  The gliders couldn't be retrieved, the crews were on 'their own" to find their way back to any Allied force that could get them back to their units. Some didn't make it.

"God bless each and everyone of you!"

copyright: richard riddle 05-09-2016

Hear

Bozhidar Pangelov&Vania; Konstantinova/In Memoriam/

Under the Coat of Arms

In Malta, in the ancient walls
is beating the sea so salty.
Somewhere behind,
distant,
hidden
are shining through southern almonds.
There is no moon.
The light is illuming
herself
in the pearl of your eyes.
Harmonious.
Without gunshots
of the squadrons by Lepanto.
The falcons on the coat of arms fall asleep,
never wanted,
in honor
and dignity.

Vania Konstantinova

Behind the Gates

Behind the gates
of Mdina I hide you,
far of any nemesis,
of foam and stretched sails.
Behind the towers of the castle.
In the most inner yard.
Under the spurts of the cascade,
more precious than silver.
Here they see only
the eyes of the peacocks,
whisked their tails
for cooling.
Keepers of the secret
with their tongues wrested.
And when your brush sculptures
the bracelet around my ankle,
reflected in Venetian mirror
like a trap –
I forget who you are and the sin
with head chopped off,
I forget about the death …



Vania Konstantinova was born, in Sofia. She graduated Classical Ballet in
her native town and in Petersburg as well as Polish Philology in Sofia University and
Jagiellonian University, Krakow. She's co-author of the poetic book Four Cycles (along
with Bozhidar Pangelov). Her collection of short stories Thank You Mister One is published
in autumn of 2008. Death 2015
http://www.public-republic.com/vania-konstantinova

Explore the well-worn tracks leading to the mines
The stone-arched gateways to the shafts
The ruined smelt mills and the tips,
Remnants from a bygone time

Say a little thank you to the men who built and trod these paths
For their lives were often short and their work was hard
Imagine you can hear them sing as they wind on through the hills
And hear their clogs against the stones echo down the gylls

Look down, now the only sound the water as it rushes
Look up to the heather moor and the hillside hushes

Mini squadrons of cackling grouse fly off everywhere
Where once the lead was teased from underground
Now it's fired into the air

The pigeon, what a dull and beautiful bird
Living on the edge of the knife, unknowingly
Staring death in the face, daily
Threatened by man, beast and rapture
Does it know love, laughter or life?
Does it know fear, pain or strife?
Beautiful in its dullness
An object of fascination and detachment
Beauty is in the eye of the mundane

You smile idealistically
We talk like liberals and laugh like friends
Under lazy heat and ripe conversation
If only you could see the grey I could see
But then again, if I am the only one who can see it
I must be special

Dust and mud turn to fine red wine in your glass
Smooth surfaces and large mirrors to admire each other
Sunshine, nostalgia
And all pretty makeup
Words ebbing off your dry deadbeat tongue, so insatiable
A scene picturesque, idyllic
Boring

Enough of that jazz
Hey-oh, screeching viola's and Sanskrit texts
Urge me to prophecy
Our journey begins in a Kenyan airport
African night flight
Plane spiralling into a chasm
Until it crash lands in a dusty maroon desert
A barren wasteland
The locals grin a foolish grin
They want to eat me for dinner
(That's offensive, isn't it?)
(Well, if you think that's offensive, try this)
I'm a stormtrooper, I'm a ****
I can show you all the hate in the world
I have experienced hardships beyond belief
From my perfectly comfortable suburban dream
I have the window seat on every plane
And I use it to pretend to be lost in thought

Blitzkrieg hail pours in snarling squadrons
Down from the sky
Hand in pants, I play the fantasy in my head
The trick to this is that nothing is real
And nothing is personal
For if I could truly comprehend horror
Oh boy
I'm so glad ****'s aren't real

The Flying Squadron of Church Ladies

At First Communion the Flying Squadron
of Church Ladies surround the children to:
Reprove, reproach, command, censor, chastise,
Berate, exhort, implore, upbraid, adjust

Chastise, upbraid, embarrass, harangue, rebuke,
Enjoin, dictate, direct, require, apprise,
Advise, inform, beseech, explain, uphold,
Impart, compel, remind, forewarn, correct:

Because since Peter’s time, all this is what
The Flying Squadrons of Church Ladies do

Squadrons fly overhead,

without the slightest shadow --


on anyone's eyes.

Now the Peruvians, in collected might,
With one wide stroke had wing’d the savage flight
But their bright Godhead, in his midday race,
With glooms unusual veil’d his radiant face,
Quench’d all his beams, tho cloudless, in affright,
As loth to view from heaven the finish’d fight.
A trembling twilight o’er the welkin moves,
Browns the dim void, and darkens deep the groves;
The waking stars, embolden’d at the sight,
Peep out and gem the anticipated night…
When pious Capac to the listening crowd
Raised high his wand and pour’d his voice aloud:
Ye chiefs and warriors of Peruvian race,
Some sore offence obscures my father’s face;
What moves the Numen to desert the plain,
Nor save his children, nor behold them slain?
Fly! speed your course, regain the guardian town,
Ere darkness shroud you in a deeper frown;
The faithful walls your squadrons shall defend,
While my sad steps the sacred dome ascend,
To learn the cause, and ward the woes we fear:
Haste, haste, my sons! I guard the flying rear…

Wrapped around by dawning
cotton candy clouds,
I turn and turn
to scan them all.
Squadrons of Starlings
punctuate the quiet
as the crooked moon
decides it’s time to maybe set.

On a gravel hill that
overlooks a minor wasteland,
I selfishly enjoy
a time that’s mine alone;
reminding one who felt
hard-done-by,
that in reality she
rolled the dice
and won.
     ljm

Against the backdrop of a global catastrophe
witness us busying to fix the natural damage
heavily wrought
an endeavour in itself,
which ought to warrant respect
and the gift of time and patience

Our blood and sweat
a human resource
gladly spent to rebuild the detriment,
but not at any cost
not kamikaze squadrons
dashed upon the decks of a false progress

For each of us as batteries
are finite
and our spark will drain,
our light will die
unless the blinkered
see that trying is enough
for now

When foundations are rebuilt, safe
and feet feel steady
we will readily head skywards again

I. written yesterday

i can't remember the last time i had so much fun with music, i put it down to recently seeing them live... and **** me, on both days they played the London Stadium and having such an arsenal of songs they would play two different set-lists... honest to god, i've never had so much fun with music than i'm currently experiencing with the Red Hot Chilli Peppers... perhaps it's not that i saw them live recently... i also attribute seeing them 20 years ago back in 2002 at the now non-existent London Arena in the Docklands... i should have ditched the guitar and picked up a drum-kit... i just can't stop drumming on my leg... grooving with my shoulders and imitating a pigeon walking: which is not exactly head-banging...

there's only one thing greater than cycling...
well: i don't mind not going at the speeds
of a motorcycle -
there's this book: i found it... laborious...
in all honesty...
      i don't understand the fame behind it...
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance...
like i side: a very laborious book...
i'd probably rewrite it as
Tao and the Art of Bicycle Usage...

in between talking to a newly acquired
"friend" in the Arab world who opened up
a conversation with me the word FAKE...
i replied: HAREM and
                      ختان (khitan) - circumcision...
like in Hindu: the H is a surd...
               i guess that's how the Tetragrammaton
structures itself around those tongues...

i prayed for a day like today...
            it was truly amazing... i rarely get into
arguments with motorists...
you could ask any van driver in central London...
i love van drivers:
apparently a car has to pass a cyclist
in a range of 1.5 metres...
van drivers? they're like: **** it...
i'm not driving a tank... he'll be alright...
and they're not shy either...
they don't stalk you on the rear faking
eyesight: pristine spatial-awareness...

fair enough... this one time i was cycling
from the supermarket in the night months
of late winter and this guy slows down
and asks me the question:
- where are you lights?
- what lights?
- exactly...

                   i should have hollered back: thanks dad...
lights or no light: you see me then?
oh look! pedestrians! no high-viz. jackets!
yeah: if it was a country-road: that would
be a fair point... unless of course the street
lights started blinking...

but today was spectacular:
there's only one thing better than cycling:
swimming on a hot day and...
getting angry at motorist when cycling...
******* tourists... Sunday type drivers...
careful! careful!

getting numb-nut words thrown at you:
trying to impress his girlfriend...
blah blah idiot blah blah that...
ooh?! ******... come here! so i caught up
with him and started spewing a list
of profanities... i'm such an adrenaline *****:
and becoming infuriated is like a caffeine-alcohol
overload for me...
i could swear that my iris and sclera disappear
and there's only blackness in my eyes...
- ******! stop the car and let's have a fight!
lucky for me this happened as we passed
a bus stop...
by then he rolled his window up...
or rather: she did... having spotted me gearing
up to have an argument...

what? a bicycle is less than a motorbike?
i like the idea of generating my own momentum...

but the second incident was more
impressive...
i'm working a shift at Wembley tomorrow...
at first i was like: women playing football?
but i'll just be watching them... not the football...
tattoos... long hair... ooh! there's an odd Pixie
short haired type i'm so into...
then i was like: eh...                 not that bad...
plus the crowd will be easier to control...

now i'm like: the lionesses have to win...
i don't support the English football team...
i support the male German team:
don't ask me why...
          i was thinking about it once...
the three colours of the France kit...
                       blue shirt white shorts
and red socks...
the German kit would look so awesome if
it imitated the flag...
   black shirt red shorts and yellow socks...
instead?
                      white shirt black shorts white socks...
and why?
    the Teutonic flag... Germany should change
it's flag to something akin to the crosses of
Scandinavia or the flag of St. George,
i.e. the inversion of the flag of Cornwall...
a black cross on a white canvas...
since... the colours of the football kit represent that...
the Teutonic Cross...

Spanish teams and of course because of Rapahel
Nadal have his word of encouragement
to keep them going...
bamos (i.e. vamos)
       there's a word in my zunge that can be
used to similar effect...
sometimes you just need a phonetic outlet
to match-up the exertion of the body
with the absence of any necessary mind...

DAWAJ - da-VAĪ...
                 looks super-slick in Cyrillic:
ДABAЙ!

       at university: oh god... i wish it happened
in a supermarket...
i went to this one gimmick party:
we were expected to attend wearing pajamas...
i started talking to this one German guy
and he told me he adored the word
KURVA (*****) he said:
there's this relief-release from uttering
that word...
i guess we saw it written in katakana...
it just didn't make sense at the time...
until only recently expressing :
                                                      ДABAЙ
in exasperations while peddling!

huh?! push-bike?!
since when is a bicycle a push-bike?
what am i pushing?
sure... hoo-lie-noga: you can push
a scooter...
what are we even talking about?
chess or brick walls?!
                         one of those conversations
at work... what push bike?
what am i pushing?
i'm peddling...
- a peddle-bicycle sounds double weird...
- thanks, but "push-bicycle" is altogether
weird too:
five blind men and an elephant sort
of weird... that "infamous" story of rock-hard
anti-Braille re-reading....

- this second incident was spectacular...
the lionesses better win...
i was reduced to roaring: RA! as she didn't catch
my indicating... as we pulled up to the roundabout
and started screaming blasphemies only
men hear from women...
    after she finished her little rant...
i caught up to her and ROARED... because?
i didn't want to scream any obscenities myself:
not at a girl... so i roared that mighty syllable R'AH!
perhaps the syllable once shared the name
of an Egyptian god: but not in these parts...

two provebs:
   when walking among the crows one is best
to croak like them
   (jesli wchodzisz miedzy wrony -
   musisz krakac tak jak one) -
which implies that if you walk among the German
tribes (which includes, by extension
the Anglo-Saxons) you have to speak their language
like they speak their language...
ergo? what am i? i'm an Anglo-Slav when it
comes to any ethnicity debate...
after all: Polacks have as much place in British
culture as all people of the former Empire...
now that empire is nothing more than
the Commonwealth & games...
      after all: ****** spitfire pilots fought in the Battle
of Britain: squadrons no. 302 & 303...
there's even a placard in the catacombs of St. Paul's
cathedral dedicated to their memory...
   which is why when come post-colonial former
British empire gust of mango and banana and
sugar cane wind comes flocking to these shores
i find my place too...
                                  
i found it so amusing... i roared and?
                   she roared back! ha ha! a lion to a lioness...
and i thought: this be an OMEN...
if i can turn this into an omen of good faith i'll
have fun tomorrow...
    if i roar at an English girl when she's seriously
having anger management issues
it might just be that i might capture a little splinter
of a collective imagination and turn that into
a victory for the female football team tomorrow
against the Fräuleins...
                    as that story goes: about the butterfly
effect... a butterfly in one place of the world
can create a tornado in another place of the world...
of course i'm not deluded that this has any
actual effect: hypothetically-chaotic and rightly so...
but if i can gear up some random girl driving
in a car with a roar and she roars back...
    maybe that might translate into a victory of sorts...
here's crossing my fingers that i'll be right
come tomorrow...

II. written today

ha! apparently i was right... the lionesses won
the Euros... my god... this is going to rub off so bad on
the male ego of the male team...
i try to avoid the argument: the team is not diverse enough...
only white girls... most blonde:
i never thought there were so many blondes
in England until i started paying attention
to female football...
                  
   i'm still not going to be convinced by club-level football:
but women's international football is... d'ah BOMB...
woke up at 8am... left the house at 9am
having eating nothing but half of a day old croissant...
next time i ate? after the match... 9:30pm...
i almost felt like a Muslim during Ramadam....

coming on the train: lucky me... caught the fast one
from Southend - the train that only stops at
Romford and Stratford and whizzes past all the stations
in between... there and back:
back at 22:22pm... lucky ******...
anyway... while i was going to work i realised...
i have this nugget of **** still in me...
but i'm nervous... i felt frozen into the chair...
i tried breathing really quickly... closing my eyes...
but i already knew i was constipated...
this nugget of kakashka (little ****,
an endearing term my former Russian girlfriend
used to use for me)
            would stay with me for the rest of the day...
nerves... about that OMEN from the previous day...
i woke up today wanting to be so right!
not in a way a betting man gambles on being right...
a different sort of being right...
on a hunch and a plethora of feelings...
strapped into the chair... head pulsating...
heart attack? stroke? three times as a headache...
a head-numbing pulsation...
        memories from being a teenager...
i had these three or four incidents...
i would snap my teeth... releasing this numbing-electricity
that pulsated from my jaw down my body
into my stomach... squeezed the stomach:
and i began pseudo-epileptic convulsions...
in absolute agony...
   for months i would fall asleep in terror
unable to clench my teeth...
in fear of replicating this pseudo-epileptic attack...
there's nothing more vivid in life
than pain...
                 it begins with an easiness of
an air-head... and then that numb-aching that translates
into a pulverising brain: trying to jump out
of your skull... it's not a panic attack as such....
just a head-heavy top-down...
at Liverpool Station i walked into the toilet
and thought that vomiting would help me...
mind you... i did learn the ancient Roman way
of "bulimia"... at first i used ******* down
the throat after i binged on food...
i was so body-conscious back then...
   after enough practice with ms. index and mr. middle
i built up an automated response of the esophagus
and throat...
                just my luck:
you can't exactly puke up half a croissant...
instead? i was... an anemic seagull trying to feed
my youngling with the delusion that i actually ate enough
for the both of us...
puke puke: yup! yup! nothing... bloodshot eyes
and tears... nothing... the light-headed magnetic bulge
of brain and an embarrassing forehead kept at it...

only when the shift started proper did the feeling ease
and *******...
lucky me... i was placed on level 1: great view of the match...
and among the German fans...
i thought: time to practice some Deutsche...
ar du haben ein gut zeit?!
                 eine gute zeit haben!

Jemmina popped up again... who's Jemmina?
she's like Ovid's Corinna...
although... she's not married and i didn't impregnate
her that she might suffer from having an abortion...
i was walking up to the sign-in area
and this woman i work with told me:
oh... she's working for me now...
you know how she and Melanie had a spat...
i just told her: i don't want to know...
but i liked Jemmina... i kept the part where
she blocked me on a messaging-service for no good reason
i should know about a little ***** secret...
well... if this woman is employing Jemmina...
and i just dropped the words: i really like her...
who knows!

the match itself? absolute brilliance...
1 nil up... and then the German equaliser... i thought:
oh ****... no point having roared to hear
a roar back...
extra-time... first half of extra-time... nothing...
and then BAM! a goal with 10 minutes to go!
keep it up... keep it up...
                               ah... the omen paid off...
the lionesses won...

but the biggest caveat wasn't me roaring and filling
my heart with a want for them to win...
sport's sport and it's only that...
there's still that hurt male-ego hanging over England...
coliseum after coliseum reinvented
and revisited: Rome the meteor
and these grand rising craters in the ground...
even with the crucifixion the joint
conspiracy of the Greeks and Hebrews could
never make this script as extinct as that
of the Cuneiform of the Babylonians...
it's already meshed up with the digital footprints
of ghost-robots and robot-men...

              but like i already mentioned:
the best caveat came when i finally decided to
feed the beast... walked into a Subway...
i thought: i've had enough of this deep-fried chicken...
burgers... i need something wholesome...
a sandwich will do just fine...
came to the order... a fine Italian loaf... turkey *******...
on the conveyor belt came to the guy who
was dishing out the sauces and vegetables...
people prior to me were so picky with the vegetables...
four Spanish girls chose as little as tomatoes
and iceberg lettuce... a few others chose even less...
this has always been my experience
in a Subway... i don't understand the ad gimmick
where people are picky about what vegetables
are put in their sandwiches...
and the guys on the conveyor belt of making sandwitches
are usually Hindus...
so when he asked me, which vegetables?
ALL OF THEM...
a flash of happiness in his eyes... all of them?
yeah... all of them...
low fat mayo and that sticky onion sauce too...
****... no black olives... never mind (i thought)...
mash-up grub in a 6incher...

once you have been fasting for almost 10 hours...
oh man... it's like Socrates said:
some people eat to live...
while others live to eat...
                      i have absolutely no problem
eating alone in public...
i've heard from those closest to me that
i eat with such finger-licking poise...
as i sat down two children sat either sat
beside me and enjoyed their own food...
and always: always have a napkin ready...
let's face it... no need for leftover sauce or crumbs...
on or around your lips in your beard
and moustache...

but that was the biggest the joy that came from
today...
all the vegetables i said:
all the vegetables?! he replied... yeah...
all the vegetables...
                what a wholesome little treat...
eating my sandwich with two children
sitting either side of me eating likewise...

like animals akin to like children:
as much as i dream up the companionship
of women...
    i'm more wholesome around animals
and children... i feel a sense of gravity
that's unlike gravity...
they're not my own: but, do they have to be?!
it's enough that i had to deal with
a bunch of Germans wanting to buy me a beer
in order that i might support their team...
got patted on the shoulder
by.... the crowd was mixed... no segregation line...
when i was first "initiated" / naturalized
into the British society i refused to sing
the national anthem...
now? i murmur it... i'm not confused:
i'm just conflating... i'm sniffing the death
of a queen... eyeing up the next king...
and there are two in waiting... hell! there are three!

the 2nd Elizabethean Age is coming to an end
and i'm gleefully asking for the best of the best
clocks of Zurich...
   no death of a Pope will be so profound...
the closure of the 20th century:
moving toward a newer, braver, world...

perhaps the Chinese reinvented themselves
by abolishing the five? or is it three old Cs?
culture, custom... i don't remember...
here's to me rekindling an interest in the Tao:
i have no interest in Zen...

chasing Penumbras and Chimeras...
don't even mention the umbra and the antumbra:
same heads of the same beast...
     man as incomplete as the schematics he's
presented with...
  of the Freudian dictate: ego, superego, id...
i'm building up an aftertaste for a a taste
of grapefruit...

          i was listening to two American girls
talking on the Metropolitan line... for once i started
to adore the accent... i undid my shirt and sweated
like a boar in a hunt... i like it when girls play
with their hair...
                i like it when girls play with their hair...
i was about to jump in with where they should
look next to live... if Whitechapel is ****** enough?
look to Wanstead!
                      
but i was so right... i roared: she replied with a roar back...
today can be salvaged as a success...
handshakes and all: job well done...

now i'm sitting in a leather chair farting
into an empty couldron of the intestines being emptied...
one can truly lament
the overthrow of old Chinese customs
by the Maoists... esp. concerning the Taoist rebellion
against Confucianism...
                     why wouldn't i sample some thinking
from the Japanese: to therefore counter
the onslaught of the CCP information warring?

but now... dearest sleep...
                      dearest of all... a sleep that might envelop
a decade's worth of rest...
and a memory of a: very beautiful sandwich...
oh... but that ROAR was heard...
from a little roundabout in Romford all the way
to Wembley...
      but i did have cuckoldry on my mind: throughout...
this is not going to work: in the long-run...
fair enough... it was great seeing
Alex Jones up close and personal...
but... n'ah...
there's something "wok awong wong"...

   it's unlike female tennis players... unlike female
Olympians...
                          appreciating sport that was
originally designated for men... is a bit like...
watching and nodding to... transvestites...
i'm not saying it's wrong:
but the appeal will never be there...
                        on an international level: for sure...
but on a club level? hardly...

what's football without rowdy male teenagers
trying to prove that they own *****?!
sort of boring... and... ugh...
women imitating men... they look so ugly...
so... butch... i don't think i've ever seen so many lesbians
in one evening... mind you: at least two lesbian
converts...
           of course you're going to come across
lesbian would-be converts...
it's usually the butch lesbians that are eyeing you
up... the more plump the ones with crew-cut hair
eyeing you you up...
oh no... not the submissive of the pair...
the butch-lesbians...
                                    they're playing with
the drama of being the pretend-man looking
for a man while dating a woman...

i like them... i like butch pixie-pizza-date-girls
of that sort... fine skin...
  i like short hair too...
                                i can't compliment on their skin
enough... i couldn't possibly stroke ivory enough
to reach that sort of complexion...
i wouldn't dare to lick it: let alone touch it:
i'd ******* have to frame it!

hey presto! one fetish emerges after one just finishes!
my favorite mousy was also there today...
to hell with me and my weakness for
ginger haired girls and freckles!
mousy! she figured out a way to change her hair
to become more appealing...
mousy! mousy! i won't give you her name!
mousy is mousy! she's a ginger hybrid!
i like her strawberry ginger-ness...
which is not a strawberry-blonde...
it's... tickling something akin to "something"
could be teasing more auburn clashes of shade...
never mind... the freckles are a bonus...

mind you: it's still too hot to venture back into
the brothel... i need late August to keep my tongue kept
to return to revisiting the brothel...
i need the weather to cool down...
not after that *******...
it was never going to work akin to how it "works"
in a pornographic flick...
two girls: two condoms...
the best you can do is ask for a pair of ****
from one and a hand-job from the other...
no one is catching any germs today...

my beard is a violin and a cello...
while i stroke it... trying to summon the winds
for the brass-stroke of genius...
i try to also remember...
miracles began with both Jesus walking
on water as they began with the madness
of Xerxes lashing the Aegean sea with whips
to calm it down...
for one? i find the latter more probable
than the prior; the poetics of abandoned genius:
and within its confines...
the cringe Christianity of what change would
later come.

Today I saw a giant tub of whipped cream
Spilled across the morning sky.
You may call them clouds, I call them cream.

Today I saw a tiny hummingbird
Taking very careful inventory
Of the blossoms on a tree.

Today I saw two squadrons
Of black birds on a secret mission
Across the dawning sky.

Today I saw the waxing moon
Refusing to call it a night
By lurking on the horizon.

Today I saw me looking up
To marvel at the gifts I’m given
For merely raising up my eyes.
            ljm