He had been away. Just a few days, but long enough to feel coming home was necessary. He carried with him so many thoughts and plans, and the inevitable list had already formed itself. But the list was for Monday morning. He would enjoy now what he could of Sunday.

Everything can feel so different on a Sunday. Travel by train had been a relaxed affair for once, a hundred miles cross-country from the open skies of the Fens to the conurbations of South Yorkshire. Today, there was no urgency or deliberation. Passengers were families, groups of friends, sensible singles going home after the weekend away. No suits. He seemed the only one not fixated by a smart phone, tablet or computer. So he got to see the autumn skies, the mountain ranges of clouds, the vast fields, the still-harvesting. But his thoughts were full to the brim of traveling the previous November when together they had made a similar journey (though in reverse) under similar skies. They had escaped for two days one night into a time of being wholly together, inseparably together, joined in that joy of companionship that elated him to recall it. He was overcome with weakness in his body and a jolt of passion combined: to think of her quiet beauty, the tilt of her head, the brush of her hair against his cheek. He longed for her now to be in the seat opposite and to stroke the back of her calf with his foot, hold her small hand across the table, gaze and gaze again at her profile as she, always alert to every flicker of change, took in the passing landscape.

But these thoughts gradually subsided and he found himself recalling a poem he had commissioned. It was a text for a verse anthem, that so very English form beloved by cathedral and collegiate choral directors of the 16th C (and just that weekend he had been in such a building where this music had its home). He had been reading The Five Proofs for the Existence of God from the Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas, knowing this scholar to have been a cornerstone of the work of Umberto Eco, an author he admired. He had also set a poem that mentioned these Five Proofs, and had set this poem without knowing exactly what they were. He recalled its ending:

They sit by a lake where dead leaves
Float and apples lie on a table. She
ignores him and his folder of papers

but I found later the picture was called
‘In Love’, which coloured love sepia.
Later still, by the time I sat with you,

Watched your arm on the back of a chair
And your hand at rest while you told me
Of Aquinas and his proofs for the existence

Of God I realised love was not always
Sepia, that these hands held invisible
Keys, were pale because the mind was aflame.

He remembered then the challenge of reading Aquinas, this Dominican friar of the 13C. It had stretched him, and he thought of asking his wordsmith of thirty years, the mother of his daughters, to bring these arguments together in a poetic form for him to set to music. She had delivered such a poem and it took him some while to grasp it wholly. He wondered for a moment if he actually had grasped it. But there was this connection with the landscape he was passing through. She had mentioned this, and now he saw it for his own eyes. She had been to Ely for the day, to walk the length of the great Cathedral, to stare at and be amongst the visible past, the past of Aquinas. He remembered the first verse as only a composer can who has laboured over the scheme of words and rhythms:

The Argument from Motion

Everything in the world changes.
A meadow of skewbald horses grazes
Beneath a pair of flying swans
And the universe is different again.

And no sooner is potency reduced to act,
By a whisker’s twitch or a word,
A word, that potent gobbet of air
Than smiles and tears change places.

And everything has changed. Back
Go the tracks beyond seen convergence
To a great self-sufficient terminus
Which terminus we might call God.

And so it was in such a spirit of reflection that his journey passed. He had joined the Edinburgh express at Peterborough to travel north, and the landscape had subsided into a different caste, still rural, but different, the fields smaller, the horizon closer.

Alighting from the train in his home city on a Sunday afternoon the station and surrounding streets were quiet and the few people about were not walking purposefully, they strolled. He climbed the flights of stairs to his third floor studio, unlocked the door and immediately walked across the room to open the window. Seagulls were swooping and diving below him, feeding off the detritus of the previous night’s partying in the clubs and pubs that occupied the city centre, its main shopping area removed to a mall off kilter with the historic city and its public buildings. What shops there were stood empty, boarded up, permanently lease for sale.

Sitting at his desk he surveyed the paper trail of his work in progress. Once so organised, every sketch and plan properly labelled and paginated, he had regressed it seemed to filling pages of his favoured graph paper in a random fashion. Some idea for the probably distant future would find its way into the midst of present work, only (sometimes) a different ink showing this to be the case. Notes from a radio talk jostled with rhythmic abstracts. He realised this was perhaps indicative of his mental state, a state of transience, of uncertainty, a temporariness even.

He was probably too tired to work effectively now, just off the train, but the sense and the relative peacefulness that was Sunday was so seductive. He didn’t want to lose the potential this time afforded. This was why for so many years Sunday had often been such a productive day. If he went to meeting, if he cooked the tea, if he ironed the children’s school clothes for the week, there was this still space in the day. It represented a kind of ideal state in which to think and compose. Now these obligations were more flexible and different, Sunday had even more ‘still’ space, and it continued to cast its spell over him.

He put his latest sketches into a sequential form, editing on the computer then printing them out, listening acutely, wholly absorbed. Only a text message from his beloved (picking blackberries) brought him back to the time and day. There was a photo: a cluster of this dark, late summer fruit, ripe for picking framed against a tree and a white sky. Barely a week ago they had picked blackberries together with friends, children and dogs and he had watched her purposely pick this fruit without the awkwardness that so often accompanied bending over brambles. He wondered at her, constantly. How was this so? He imagined her now in her parents’ garden, a garden glowing in the late afternoon light, as she too would glow in that late-afternoon light . . . he bought himself back to the problem in hand. How to make the next move? There was a join to deal with. He was working with the seven metrics of traditional poetry as the basis for a rhythmic scheme. He was being tempted towards committing an idea to paper. He kept reminding himself of the music’s lie of the land, the effectiveness of it so far. It was still early days he thought to commit to something that would mark the piece out, produce a different quality, would declare the movement he was working on to be a certain shape.

And suddenly he was back on the train, looking at the passing landscape and the next verse of that Aquinas poem insisted itself upon him with its apt description and tantalising argument:

The Argument from Efficient Causality

We are crossing managed washlands.
Pochards so carefully coloured swim
Where cows ruminated last summer
In a landscape fruit of human agency.

And I think of the heavenly aboriginal
Agent of all our doings in this material
Playground of earth I can pick up,
Hold and crumble and cultivate

And air that is mine for the breathing
And the inhabited waters that cling
As if by magic to a sphere. What cause
Sustains the effects we live among?

For there is no smoke without fire
And as we sow, thus we reap. Nihil
Ex nihil, therefore something Is,
Some being we might call God.

So ‘nothing out of nothing, therefore something is’.  Outside in the city the Cathedral bells were ringing in Evensong. The sounds only audible on a Sunday when the traffic abated a little and the sounds in the street below were sporadic. He thought of going out into the Cathedral precinct and listening to the bells roll and rhythm their sequences, those Plain-Bob-Majors and Grand-Sire-Triples. But he knew that would further break the spell, the train of thought that lay about him.

He sketched the next section, confidently, and when he had finished felt he could do know more. There it was: a starting point for tomorrow. He could now go towards home, walk for a while in the park and enjoy the movements of the wind-tossed trees, the late roses, the geese on the lake. He would think about his various children in their various lives. He would think about the woman he loved, and would one day assuage what he knew was a loneliness he could not quench with any music, and though he tried daily with words, would not be assuaged.

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
    Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
    We pass the gate.

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
    Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
    Within a dream.


[The title translates, from the Latin, as
'The brief sum of life forbids us the hope of enduring long'
and is from a work by Horace]

1
Who will honor the city without a name
If so many are dead and others pan gold
Or sell arms in faraway countries?


What shepherd's horn swathed in the bark of birch
Will sound in the Ponary Hills the memory of the absent—
Vagabonds, Pathfinders, brethren of a dissolved lodge?


This spring, in a desert, beyond a campsite flagpole,
—In silence that stretched to the solid rock of yellow and red mountains—
I heard in a gray bush the buzzing of wild bees.


The current carried an echo and the timber of rafts.
A man in a visored cap and a woman in a kerchief
Pushed hard with their four hands at a heavy steering oar.


In the library, below a tower painted with the signs of the zodiac,
Kontrym would take a whiff from his snuffbox and smile
For despite Metternich all was not yet lost.


And on crooked lanes down the middle of a sandy highway
Jewish carts went their way while a black grouse hooted
Standing on a cuirassier's helmet, a relict of La Grande Armée.


2
In Death Valley I thought about styles of hairdo,
About a hand that shifted spotlights at the Student's Ball
In the city from which no voice could reach me.
Minerals did not sound the last trumpet.
There was only the rustle of a loosened grain of lava.


In Death Valley salt gleams from a dried-up lake bed.
Defend, defend yourself, says the tick-tock of the blood.
From the futility of solid rock, no wisdom.


In Death Valley no hawk or eagle against the sky.
The prediction of a Gypsy woman has come true.
In a lane under an arcade, then, I was reading a poem
Of someone who had lived next door, entitled 'An Hour of Thought.'


I looked long at the rearview mirror: there, the one man
Within three miles, an Indian, was walking a bicycle uphill.


3
With flutes, with torches
And a drum, boom, boom,
Look, the one who died in Istanbul, there, in the first row.
He walks arm in arm with his young lady,
And over them swallows fly.


They carry oars or staffs garlanded with leaves
And bunches of flowers from the shores of the Green Lakes,
As they came closer and closer, down Castle Street.
And then suddenly nothing, only a white puff of cloud
Over the Humanities Student Club,
Division of Creative Writing.


4
Books, we have written a whole library of them.
Lands, we have visited a great many of them.
Battles, we have lost a number of them.
Till we are no more, we and our Maryla.


5
Understanding and pity,
We value them highly.
What else?


Beauty and kisses,
Fame and its prizes,
Who cares?


Doctors and lawyers,
Well-turned-out majors,
Six feet of earth.


Rings, furs, and lashes,
Glances at Masses,
Rest in peace.


Sweet twin *******, good night.
Sleep through to the light,
Without spiders.


6
The sun goes down above the Zealous Lithuanian Lodge
And kindles fire on landscapes 'made from nature':
The Wilia winding among pines; black honey of the Żejmiana;
The Mereczanka washes berries near the Żegaryno village.
The valets had already brought in Theban candelabra
And pulled curtains, one after the other, slowly,
While, thinking I entered first, taking off my gloves,
I saw that all the eyes were fixed on me.


7
When I got rid of grieving
And the glory I was seeking,
Which I had no business doing,


I was carried by dragons
Over countries, bays, and mountains,
By fate, or by what happens.


Oh yes, I wanted to be me.
I toasted mirrors weepily
And learned my own stupidity.


From nails, mucous membrane,
Lungs, liver, bowels, and spleen
Whose house is made? Mine.


So what else is new?
I am not my own friend.
Time cuts me in two.


Monuments covered with snow,
Accept my gift. I wandered;
And where, I don't know.


8
Absent, burning, acrid, salty, sharp.
Thus the feast of Insubstantiality.
Under a gathering of clouds anywhere.
In a bay, on a plateau, in a dry arroyo.
No density. No harness of stone.
Even the Summa thins into straw and smoke.
And the angelic choirs fly over in a pomegranate seed
Sounding every few instants, not for us, their trumpets.


9
Light, universal, and yet it keeps changing.
For I love the light too, perhaps the light only.
Yet what is too dazzling and too high is not for me.
So when the clouds turn rosy, I think of light that is level
In the lands of birch and pine coated with crispy lichen,
Late in autumn, under the hoarfrost when the last milk caps
Rot under the firs and the hounds' barking echoes,
And jackdaws wheel over the tower of a Basilian church.


10
Unexpressed, untold.
But how?
The shortness of life,
the years quicker and quicker,
not remembering whether it happened in this or that autumn.
Retinues of homespun velveteen skirts,
giggles above a railing, pigtails askew,
sittings on chamberpots upstairs
when the sledge jingles under the columns of the porch
just before the moustachioed ones in wolf fur enter.
Female humanity,
children's snots, legs spread apart,
snarled hair, the milk boiling over,
stench, **** frozen into clods.
And those centuries,
conceiving in the herring smell of the middle of the night
instead of playing something like a game of chess
or dancing an intellectual ballet.
And palisades,
and pregnant sheep,
and pigs, fast eaters and poor eaters,
and cows cured by incantations.


11
Not the Last Judgment, just a kermess by a river.
Small whistles, clay chickens, candied hearts.
So we trudged through the slush of melting snow
To buy bagels from the district of Smorgonie.


A fortune-teller hawking: 'Your destiny, your planets.'
And a toy devil bobbing in a tube of crimson brine.
Another, a rubber one, expired in the air squeaking,
By the stand where you bought stories of King Otto and Melusine.


12
Why should that city, defenseless and pure as the wedding necklace of
a forgotten tribe, keep offering itself to me?
Like blue and red-brown seeds beaded in Tuzigoot in the copper desert
seven centuries ago.


Where ocher rubbed into stone still waits for the brow and cheekbone
it would adorn, though for all that time there has been no one.


What evil in me, what pity has made me deserve this offering?


It stands before me, ready, not even the smoke from one chimney is
lacking, not one echo, when I step across the rivers that separate us.


Perhaps Anna and Dora Drużyno have called to me, three hundred miles
inside Arizona, because except fo me no one else knows that they ever
lived.


They trot before me on Embankment Street, two hently born parakeets
from Samogitia, and at night they unravel their spinster tresses of gray
hair.


Here there is no earlier and no later; the seasons of the year and of the
day are simultaneous.


At dawn ****-wagons leave town in long rows and municipal employees
at the gate collect the turnpike toll in leather bags.


Rattling their wheels, 'Courier' and 'Speedy' move against the current
to Werki, and an oarsman shot down over England skiffs past, spread-
eagled by his oars.


At St. Peter and Paul's the angels lower their thick eyelids in a smile
over a nun who has indecent thoughts.


Bearded, in a wig, Mrs. Sora Klok sits at the ocunter, instructing her
twelve shopgirls.


And all of German Street tosses into the air unfurled bolts of fabric,
preparing itself for death and the conquest of Jerusalem.


Black and princely, an underground river knocks at cellars of the
cathedral under the tomb of St. Casimir the Young and under the
half-charred oak logs in the hearth.


Carrying her servant's-basket on her shoulder, Barbara, dressed in
mourning, returns from the Lithuanian Mass at St. Nicholas to the
Romers' house in Bakszta Street.


How it glitters! the snow on Three Crosses Hill and Bekiesz Hill, not
to be melted by the breath of these brief lives.


And what do I know now, when I turn into Arsenal Street and open
my eyes once more on a useless end of the world?


I was running, as the silks rustled, through room after room without
stopping, for I believed in the existence of a last door.


But the shape of lips and an apple and a flower pinned to a dress were
all that one was permitted to know and take away.


The Earth, neither compassionate nor evil, neither beautiful nor atro-
cious, persisted, innocent, open to pain and desire.


And the gift was useless, if, later on, in the flarings of distant nights,
there was not less bitterness but more.


If I cannot so exhaust my life and their life that the bygone crying is
transformed, at last, into harmony.


Like a Noble Jan Dęboróg in the Straszun's secondhand-book shop, I am
put to rest forever between tow familiar names.


The castle tower above the leafy tumulus grows small and there is still
a hardly audible—is it Mozart's Requiem?—music.


In the immobile light I move my lips and perhaps I am even glad not
to find the desired word.

Five minute street artists
and insomnia mongers.
****** drunk blondes
and finger snapping phat booties.

Street geniuses
bred by Machiavellian philosophies
cypher dreams over tokes
of marijuana smoke.

Color worshipping narcotic traffickers,  
and bread winners
parole corners
sporting fitted caps and twisting fingers.

Senile war veterans
beg for change in cardboard boxes
from the American dreams
they afforded.

Hard workers with every ethnicity
molded into each pore of their face,
rub shoulders with tourists at traffic stops
barely escaping tires crushing their feet.

Sartorial geniuses with no pants
switch hips in knock-off stellos heels,
selling the origin of the world on avenues
next to Arab Halal food.

Cooperate ties and blue collars chafe ***** on subways.
nodding in and out of Daily News articles  
while oxygen blessed by asparagus ****
pump through their noses.

Summa *** laude number runners dictate economies
From sky-crapper offices,
And powered rain swallows their concrete each winter,
With no apologies.

(Frederick entered the room. He told them that he found a treasure into the castle’s cave.)

'I found the rarest treasure of all today. What can I do with that gold?
'Surah hid it.'Mary said,' hence, some mining activities are uncontrolled.'
'The finders and the landowners are entitled to these valuables,'
The cleric said,’ hence, it may help John to adjust the budget balances.'
(Mary wanted to tell Frederick the truth about Surah.)

'Surah is an alchemist, and she loves to do this with fierce intensity.
Her studies about substances, their composition, their density,
About purification by dissolution and by crystallization are rife.
She hopes to discover, someday, the formula for the elixir of life.'

'Summa Perfectionis and the emerald tables of Hermes', said
The cleric, 'this alchemy explains why her statues have lizards on head.'
'Maybe she gave Jezebel a strange substance to drink,' Frederick
Said. 'Go to her castle to search this substance, dear. I am so sick.'

(It was Mary, who told Frederick to go to Surah’s castle to find the antidote. Frederick and Matthew went to the castle. )

The turrets of the castle crumbled under the slow pressure of time,
Their glory has disappeared because of poverty and cold clime.
The falling wall stones, the ill-paved courtyards, the dusty moat,
The sagging floors, the worm-eaten wainscot had a blue note.

The faded tapestries within, all tell a gloomy tale of fallen grandeur.
The alchemy chamber in the remaining tower showed Surah was poor.
She spent the hours of her life in poring over the ancient tomes.
The occult studies made Surah first focus her attention on fomes.



Her belief in all the dark power was firm and deep-seated.
With burning small peasant children, the demon she greeted.
Many times, she was busy over a violently boiling cauldron,
Where many substances spewed out their thick concoction.

She searched a spell to release her life from its terrible burden.
She used to work only when the alchemy room began to darken.
She should never wed, she might, thus, end the curse with herself.
She kept cobwebs and bats. Strange things were on her shelf.

Frederick entered that room and saw her manuscripts and studies
In the field of alchemy. She had bottles, their colors being so muddy.
He opened those books, where it was written how to prepare
Elixirs from herbs, gems, and metals while using a devilish prayer.

The books instructed in the casting of spells, invocations, rites,
Talismans, amulets, and sigils. He found how she spent her nights.
On the altar, a doll-representing Jezebel had needles in her head.
There was a paper, where it was written, 'nor alive, nor dead.'

Near it, he found Kratom leaves and bottles-containing naloxone.
He took the bottles because he understood what Surah had done.
While feeding the horses, Matthew was waiting near the castle.
Clayton was in a stable, but working there became such a hassle.

He thought that something happened, when tools dropped on the floor.
A bottle dropped over another one, when Frederick closed the door.
An explosion was heard in the castle, which sounded like a sonic boom.
Surah was in a hurry to see what happened into the alchemy room.

Another explosion was heard being more loudly than the first one.
Surah gazed at her reflected face within the mirror instead of run.
Huge deformations of her new face formed a monstrous being.
An illusion shifted her identity. Believing is not always seeing.

She had sensations of otherness, when her new face appeared
To be a stranger looking at her, beyond the mirror, then disappeared.
A monster was watching her, and smiling with an enigmatic expression.
Clayton embraced her while crying, 'My dear, you have an obsession!'

Frederick told Matthew, ‘I took the potion, let's straddle the horses.'
'The castle is burning. To get out of this wood, we need strong forces.'
'My horse sped up. ‘What does he feel in front of fire and crack?
'He's fearful, because he feels trapped. Don't pull him back!'

'Being scared, his reaction is flight and run away from the fire wallop.
'You're scared, and instinctively you urge him to go into a gallop.'
'The horses are not thinking. It’s all out of the instinct to survive.
You can help your horse, when you know how to ride and to drive.'

(They rode their horses to the castle of Jezebel.)

They entered the castle, and climbed up the stairway to Jezebel.
'I came here in a hurry to save you, and my way to you was a hell.
Drink the potion, and wake up. I wonder how you feel in my arms.
I'm in love with you and still so deeply captivated by your charms.
(Jezebel had opened her eyes for the first time since being asleep. ‘I know that you love me!’ She told Frederick.)
(Clayton had managed to extinguish the fire. After that, he held his precious Surah in his arms while crying. Her face was burned by acid during explosion.)

'Nothing happened to your face. You're the same beautiful woman.'
'Why my face is in pain? ‘It’s because of the heat. Lie on the divan.
Let me take off your clothes, and flush your skin with cold water.'
'You're so gentle, Clayton. In your arms, I feel safe like a little daughter'.

'I lost the potion I prepared for Richard. He's my last chance.
It was destroyed by the explosion. I feel like I am in a trance.'
'I gave you morphine for treating your pain. He wouldn't help you.
Richard is like John, and you cannot change their point of view.'

(Clayton loved her, because he thought she was vulnerable and incapable to adopt the situations. Her soul was very fragile, even she masked this so well. She wanted to be more than she could be in life, and this was the reason her ways weren’t always the best chosen ways. He hoped someday his love would change her. He wanted to save her life. Surah closed her eyes, and fell asleep.)

To be continued...

Day lilies and dragonflies
in Arkansas June
boy do I need a sombrero!
not a cloud in the sky
and I pray for a genteel breeze
to cool my brow
The crepe myrtle has
crept its way into
my heart
From dawn to dusk
She stands unscathed
shocking pink candelabrum
boisterous laughter of
school children on vacation and
belly flops in chlorine blue green pools
brings to mind a delightful dip
in a secluded, sylvan
mountain stream
where I can with palms folded
Love brimming
salute the Summer Solstice

You will never know what it means
to be a father, until you have a son.

The overflowing joy, and the love
that echoes in the ***** of my being
when I looked upon you;
the sense of honor when I’m able to pass
on something good into your hands;
the heartbreak brought by my demons
that keep me from being the man
I want you to see.

The man that stands in front of you
or has left your life, who
has the power over you — for good
and for bad — that will never let go,
is the man you’ll only see.
A privilege, a great burden it is to be that man.

Sense of manhood, self-worth, responsibility
to the world around you — there’s something
that must be passed from me to you.

Yet, to put this in words is hard.
A time when it’s hard to speak from the heart —
that’s where we live. My life is tainted
by thousands negligibility, and the poetry
of my spirit in silenced by the thoughts
and cares of daily affairs.
The song of being a man is silent.
I find myself full of advice but devoid of belief.

I don’t have all the answers to your questions
but I do understand. I see you struggling
and discovering, striving upward
and I see myself reflected in your soul.
So I can say, I have been there.

To walk, run and fall, I’ve learned.
I have had my first love, my first heartbreak.
Sadness and fear, all of them I’ve known.
I have wept tears of sorrows and joy
but knew that God’s hands were on my shoulders.
On moments of darkness, I thought I’d
never see light, but He’s the light.
I want you to be near Him, the Light.
I have felt myself emptied into the
secret of the universe, moments when the
smallest slight threw me into rage.
When I barely had the strength to walk myself,
I have carried others, yet some other times
I left them standing by the side of the road
with their eyes begging.
There are times I feel I’ve done enough
and better as what others expect; yet other times
I feel I am a charlatan, a failure.

I am a man, as you are.

And albeit you’ll walk your own earth
and move through your own clock,
the same sun that rose on me, will rise on you.
The same seasons, the same paths.
We will always be different,
but will always be the same.

These aren’t meant to make you into me,
rather, I’d like you to use them in yours.
To watch you become your own self
is my joy. To be your father is no more like being
the Summa *** Laude in my class, it’s much more.
You allowed me to touch mystery for a moment
You are my love made flesh,
and I want you to pass that love along.

Money can buy you the best proof taken amid all this rest!
Next taken is to experience et!
Dream about it,
Think about it,
Living it,
That's the problem spotting et...

When love takes its chance,
Football when football teams a family with
Kids and a dog,
Utopia raises its curtains,
God breaths a certain light on a table we had been risen,

Money can buy you the best,
Missile box sui generis,
Of its own kind,
Summa *** laude!
In all of its trenches,
Moolah lie deep and it stench es,
But dreams you may find et....

Cry me on silver,
Lime, dime and a sapphire glass river,
Streams a strengthen nugget gold,
Work hard, watch as it sieves, watch as it pours and watch as it gives,
Some where plays and draws you out a revealing point!

It Scratches a sale to a victory,
I like to see it,
Short cut luck no more staring into the abyss buck,
Seeing that face and still believing it,
Hard change knuckle of hours,
A super match set in sky mystery,
Finish off your money to be thy very best O'Reily mystery!

Messi Mason living life in some spiritual occasion,
Still breathing on average abundance of work smiles an ironed shirt and no creases as he plays,
Just don't stop till you've had enough!

Enough, Enough and Enough...

O'Reily@18082014

[*****    ADLUVIUS
ADLUVIUS    *****
ADLUVIUS quidam
                Latinorum
            praesumtores]
**** x ***** matris suæ feminas suas
English & orum x naturale eius debent
x Aldus [*******]
                                 summa Torres
**** x ***** matris suae
                   feminas suas
Latinorum_ naturalis & x &
                     eius debent
x Aldus [*******] summa coronas

Quidam voluntatem quam feminam x vulvam
Anglicus tympanum x ****** sua:
prius x [*******]
I tores
x utero matris ad arbitrium est
feminae
Latina: x i & C NATURALIS
naturale eius debent
mensem per [*******] summitatem
**** x ***** matris suae
                    feminas suas
Anglicus x & orum naturale eius debent
x Aldus [*******]
summa Torres
**** x ***** matris suae
feminas suas
Latinorum_ naturalis & x &
eius debent
x Aldus [*******] summa coronas

Quid Pro voluntatem quam feminam x vulvam
Anglicus x naturale eius debent tribulatione sua:
prius x [*******]
Ego torres x utero matris ad arbitrium est
feminae
Latinorum_ x & C NATURALIS
naturale eius debent
mensem per [*******] summitatem
Quidam autem ex femina x vulvam
Anglus x naturale eius debent tribulatione sua:
prius x [*******]
ego viatores
x utero matris ad arbitrium est
feminae
Latinorum_ x C NATURALIS
naturale eius debent
Per mensem [*******] top
Quidam autem ex femina x vulvam
Anglus x naturale eius debent tribulatione sua:
prius x [*******] Ego viatores
x utero matris ad arbitrium est
feminae Latinorum_ × C NATURALIS
naturale eius debent
Per mensem [*******] top
Quidam autem ex femina x vulvam
Anglus x naturale eius debent tribulatione sua:
prius x [*******] Ego viatores
x utero matris ad arbitrium est
feminae latinorum_ x C NATURALIS
naturale eius debent
Per mensem [*******] top

Come I’, Sit daahn, Shurrup,
Wor t' fust thin 'a' ah 'eard.
So ah grabbed uz buk fra t' back.
‘n prepared for summa’ absurd

An exam ont’ fust day ah exclaimed!
As uz face exploded wi’ rage
Ah dead eyed ‘im fra across t’ room
‘n reluctantly turned t’ page

T’ year continued like ‘dis,
‘n uz nem appeared ont’ board
‘n ta quote wah’ I’d learnt fra’ uz studies,
Ah felt wretched ‘n abhorred

Tahhm passed by,
‘n 'e 'n class began ta connect.
n suddenly 'a' dislikin,
turned inter respect.

Tahhm went furtha,
as 'e yelled 'n laughed 'n cussed,
‘n suddenly ‘a’ respect,
turned inter complete trust.

‘e’d lern wee randa facts,
‘n sha wee gormless vids.
'e’d respect wee li' adults,
'n nivva' treat wee li' kids.

'n even when ah wor glum,
‘n wasn’t feelin missen,
‘e’d finn' eur way ta use 'is words
ta nurse uz back ta 'ealth.

‘n when 'e sez 'e wor leavin, everybody’s 'eart cried,
We didn’t want ta seh tarreur,
teur t' bloke who’d bin ah guide

Sa t' best we can doa is come togetha,
‘n gatha orl wee folks.
'n wish t' best o' luck ta ah ‘un 'n onny,
Yorksha bloke.

I'm from hate and discontent,
from words so caustic that they burn after 35, 40, 45, 50 years.
I'm from nowhere and everywhere,
I'm from nine schools and fourteen houses.

I'm from "You'll make new friends,"
and "Quit crying, we didn't live there that long."
To the KFC Christmas and "They're too old for a tree anyway."

I'm from slammed doors, and curse words and silent treatments.
I'm from high expectations, icy glares, straight A's, and disappointment.
I'm from 800 miles of claustrophobic silence in the family car and 18 years with no vacations.

AND

I'm from lazy days at the family farm
and hard-*** work a few years later.
I'm from rides on the tractor with Grandpa,
and watching the illegal sabong... with the sheriff.

I'm from Uncle Martin and Mary Lou,
and the tiny apartment with the swimming pool.
I'm from the mean man in number 9 screaming at us to be quiet
and Uncle Martin telling him to, "Shut the Hell Up!"

I'm from David and Richard, my cousins, my brothers
I'm from poison oak adventures at the creek
and countless days at the beach

AND

I'm from Gentile and Jew,
From Asian and White,
From Catholic and ****.

I'm from St. Patrick's, the old church.
I'm from stained glass and wooden kneelers,
incense, and Latin Mass.
I'm from Ego te absolvo and Dominus Vobiscum

I'm from tradition and sanctity,
dignity and peace.

I'm from Hellfire and Brimstone
Screaming, Bible pounding preachermen who are slain in the Spirit,
babble in tongues, and exhort the congregation to be "Washed in the Blood of the Lamb".

AND

I'm from love and loss,
and love again

I'm from Lisa, and Donna, and Carole,
the girls who were far too pretty to have been my friends (but were)
I'm from Jaki who wrote me letters letters every two days
and sometimes more,
and Laurie
and Kelly.

I'm from Cardinal and Gold
from Conquest and Traveler,
from the dorm and the Row.

I'm from 90,000 screaming idiots,
I'm from Greek Week and road trips,
and long nights in the reference section.
I'm from typewriters, card catalogs, and white out.

AND

I'm from gritty men and terrible places.
I'm from peace, and war, and peace, and war again.
And peace - with war thundering in the distance.

I'm from the cold wet ground on cold wet nights,
and I'm from blisters upon blisters; blood and water.

I'm from the Blacksheep, the Alphabots, and the Ranger Creed.
I'm from the M-249, the 203, and the A-2.
I'm from Colt, not Beretta; that's the M-1911,
and I'm proudly from jungle fatigues and black berets.

AND

I'm from a fateful encounter on a random night
an order of pizza and beer that would change our lives
Days together and weeks apart
Time didn't matter
She'd captured my heart.

I'm from loyalty and faith,
Trust and honor.
I'm from a small ceremony,
nothing to big or too fancy,
and groomsmen carrying guns, pagers, and foreign passports.

I'm from odd jobs and uncertainty and graduate school
I'm from UPS and PKP, and Summa *** Laude,
MISD, WM, and the birth of Anthony.

I'm from safety patrol and tug-of-war,
Accelerated math, now Maria's born.

I'm from the Blonde Mafia, the Bumblebees,
the Shopping Girls, and the Ubermensch.
From 14, and F, and back to 14, and 15.
Principals Emerson, Anthony, Blix, and Mellish.

AND

I'm from the Middle School
and teaching only math until
I'm teaching math and tech until
I'm teaching math and tech and study skills until
I'm teaching tech and study skills and more tech until
I'm teaching tech and study skills and media and Spanish until
I'm teaching tech, tech, tech, media, and Spanish with
Principals Miller and Budzius and Lucas and Stone

I'm from the animé girls and the theater crew
From the gamers and poets and dreamers
From the introverts and hackers, autistic kids and slackers
I'm from the kids who don't fit anywhere....
Neatly

(To be continued)

No one came that day, nor
Any other day, to his birthday party,
Nor to say “Hello”, “Good-bye”, or “How are you?”
Nor for any other event, now that he
Thought about it,
    No one came.
The day he had 104, sweating like a pig and
(Do pigs really sweat?) was delirious and weak,
    No one came.
The day he broke his leg.
The sharp, jagged bone, incising
The skin, blood everywhere, held tightly
By two belts and
    No one came.
The day he received his diploma,
Summa *** Laude!  How much better?
Work and school, no time to play, now
To rest a bit and celebrate, but without
Anyone to share the joyous moment,
    No one came.
The day his heart felt feint,
Must be how a volcano feels when
It is about to erupt, he had thought
Just before a crushing hand squeezed
Brought quick, excruciating pain, and then
He was dead; laid cold and still and
    No one came.

LOVE AND LOVERS

by

TOD HOWARD HAWKS


Chapter 10


Jon was thinking about Minh Ly. Jon knew he was beyond genius, but more importantly, Ly made Jon think of what Jorge Luis Borges had once written, that every person’s most important task was to complete successfully the transmuting of her/his pain into compassion. Ly had been the youngest General ever appointed by ** Chi Minh, and, in short, General Ly had had to order North Vietnamese soldiers into battle. 1,100,000 of them had died during the long, ugly, brutal Vietnam War. Minh had spent many days in tears. That he had had the fortitude to persevere and ultimately transmute his unbearable pain into compassion is what Jon most respected about Minh Ly. Because he was so brilliant, Ly initially threw himself into the throes of worldwide business at war’s end, amassing, over a number of years, massive wealth:  billions and billions and billions of dollars. Concurrently, however, Ly, overtime, experienced a life-changing metamorphosis. He came to realize that wealth was not worth, as Jon had written in his commentary PEACE ON EARTH THROUGH LOVE, that compassion was humanity’s most important goal, that only love could save Earth. And that was why he ultimately decided to use wealth not to buy as much of Earth as he could, but to use it to save Earth, to eradicate all the vicious inequities that had ineluctably killed billions of human beings over many millennia. Moreover, he secretly went around the world and met with his mega-wealthy friends, asking them to join him in this lifelong endeavor that he titled SOCIETY FOR PEACE, and many of them did join him. Now Ly and his friends were warring against war, fighting every injustice that caused horrid hell into which all the poor, all who suffered from myriad forms of racism through torture and death, fell. Ly was hell-bent on saving Earth and all living creations upon it. Then he met Jon.  

Bian, thought Jon, was as incredibly intelligent as her father. Of course, she was soft-spoken, but that belied her brilliance. After all, Bian has just completed the most rigorous, as well as the best, undergraduate liberal arts education to be found on Earth, graduating Summa *** Laude, an incredible academic achievement. Jon knew how much she loved her father, and he believed as well that his wife yearned, probably unconsciously, to emulate him. That notion alone was enough to cause Jon to fall in love with Bian, then propose to and marry her. Now she was co-parthers with Jon and her father to realize her wish:  to heal Earth.

“I wrote a new poem yesterday, Bian. Would you like to her it?” said Jon.

“Of course,” said Bian.

“OK,” said Jon who then reached into his satchel and pulled out the new poem and began reading it.


SOLITUDE AND GRACE

I will wander
into wilderness
to find myself.
I will leave behind
my accoutrements,
memories of medals,
of past applause
and accolades,
accomplishments that
warranted degrees
and diplomas
portending future
successes. I like
who I am, who
I have become. No,
I love myself, and that
is my greatest achievement,
the acme most men
are blind to as they
mistake wealth for worth.
Most would say
I will be lonely,
but they are wrong,
because I will always be
with my best friend ever,
my real self. And I will
share my joy with
squirrels and rabbits
and deer, with bushes
and broken branches
and brush, with rills
and rivulets and rivers,
with rising and setting
suns and countless
stars coruscating in
night's sky. I will say
prayers to piles of pine
and sycamore limbs
that once were live,
but now make monuments
I worship. I am at one
with all I prize.  My eyes,
even when they are closed,
see their beauty. I know
I will be blessed forever.
I lie on my bed, Earth,
and wait to join all
in solitude and grace.


“That was beautiful, Jon,” said Bian as she sped toward Logan.

“Thank you, my dear,” replied Jon.