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Terry O'Leary Mar 2016
The typewriters tap,
with a rat-a-tat-tat,
like a fourth estate rap
to provide us the pap
(that serves as a snack with a rat-a-tat-tat)
in a newspaper scrap
crammed with meaningless crap
from the editor's yap
(spewing flimflamy flak, booming rat-a-tat-tat)
after gashing a gap
in the daily recap
with a snip in a snap-
sounding thundery clap
crackng rat-a-tat-tat and a rat-a-tat-tat.

And the talking heads speak
with a rat-a-tat-tat,
of the news of the week,
tweaking tongue in the cheek
(with a click and a clack like a rat-a-tat-tat),
thus ignoring critique
'cause they're mild and too meek
in the midst of the reek
to report of the wrack (except rat-a-tat-tat)
whilst the pundits (oblique
when protecting the chic
of the upper class clique
at the top of the peak)
chatter rat-a-tat-tat and a rat-a-tat-tat.

The NRA ghouls
plug a rat-a-tat-tat
while their blood money tools
fill the Hill’s vestibules
(where deceit behind drapes drips a rat-a-tat-tat),
spreading folly that fuels
frenzied hands of young fools
bringing guns into schools
(at the drop of a hat there's a rat-a-tat-tat
splashing blood in warm pools)
for now anarchy rules
(which the hype ridicules
'til the temperature cools)
hailing rat-a-tat-tat and a rat-a-tat-tat.

Lawless cops, cutting loose
with a rat-a-tat-tat
spraying bullets profuse
without any excuse
(just a split second splat with a rat-a-tat-tat),
splay a rattled recluse
like a Thanksgiving goose
gushing cranberry juice
from six slugs in the back (with a rat-a-tat-tat).
To redress such abuse,
bend the branch of a spruce
with a neck in a noose
while Death's drums beat diffuse’
rolling rat-a-tat-tat and a rat-a-tat-tat.

War brings freedom to all
with a rat-a-tat-tat
(well, excluding the thrall
with fear, facing the wall
[ often smacked with a bat, throbbing rat-a-tat-tat ],
until feeling the call
to creep out of the kraal
biting back with a gall
[ with a *** for a tat and a rat-a-tat-tat ],
or to mangle and maul
if still able to crawl
and be part of the brawl
in a freak free-for-all,
midst a rat-a-tat-tat and a rat-a-tat-tat).

Holy warmongers praise,
with a rat-a-tat-tat,
any soldier that slays
and all rockets that raze
(the drones zoom with a vroom and a rat-a-tat-tat)
leaving smoky arrays
of gray ghosts in the haze
cloaking mute cabarets
(hushed, the hip and the hop, by the rat-a-tat-tat)
while ol’ Cerberus bays
with mankind in his gaze,
so society prays  
as it rots and decays
(Satan's trumpets of doom blare a rat-a-tat-tat)
until one of these days
in a flash through the maze
mighty mushrooms will blaze
with invisible  rays,
fin’lly braising the craze
of the rat-a-tat-tat,
   and the
            rat-
                 a-
                    tat-
                          tat.
Geno Cattouse Oct 2013
R.I.P. tatoo  Just below the right knee
one more down in the concrete jungle.

chalk line washed fading in the night wind.
Yellow tape flutters in the breeze.like break away kites
caught up  in the trees.

Rat a tat tat. brings rat a tat tat.
Young mother wailing on buckled knees.

Firing line drawn in blues and reds
claiming turf with a bandanna head.

Rat a tat tat brings rat a  tat tat.
Head stones  lined up. waiting for the dead

R.I P. in faded ink. Live by the sword
hey what did you think.
Rat a tat tat bring rat a pay back.

Cactus flower sprouts around thorns
Beauty nestled in blood red sun.
Live by the gun and die by the gun

Rat a tat tat. Brings rat a tat tat.
right down to the ground. the ground. The dust.
a conversation with a mother of three. widowed by Bang violence
inspired this one.
almat011 Mar 2019
Me pulls to you ..... so strongly attracted to you
color of your skin so ****, ******, and very attractive and beautiful
In my opinion you are the most beautiful in the all universe space, measurement, worlds
My compliments, the truth, and no there is no flattery. In my opinion, this is how looks the most beautiful girl in the world. You are a very beautiful girl. You're a very **** girl. You are perfect. You are a masterpiece. You phenomenon of beauty that can not be repeated. So juicy, so exotic. It seems to me that you have an amazing beauty. You are the most beautiful in the universe all the dimensions of all worlds, you are a supreme being supreme creation, the crown of evolution. You're beautiful melody of love. You are so beautiful, just magic.
You to the point attractive ****. What you want to do countless times having ***.
I only dream if only one your kisses that blossom my soul. And from the touch of your hands on my body, and your lustful-touch for my private parts. I only dream to merge with you forever, body and soul, I only dream of an eternal, continuous *** only with you alone. I only know one thing, that I will forever love only you
Only at your most beautiful, stripped the body, you want to watch and view forever.

Every cell and molecule of my body and my soul is overwhelmed with love only for you. I long to be your beloved husband for all eternity and all lives, and even after death

Do you desire, you are perfect. Soup-navel **** genius. Do you like the sound of "the sound of a roaring engine ****** smart cars": VUM) VUM) vuuuuuuuuoooooooooooooooooooooooooommmmmm) You paradise, you're mens happinesse. Easy, clean, gentle, heavenly delight. You dream of a lifetime. You're pretty unrealistic. On even to the extent to which she can be beautiful, it's just unbelievable. You are the best gift of fate. Before your powerful ****** charm simply irresistible. You're the most beautiful girl in the whole universe. It's a great, great. You luxurious gem. This delicate pearl skin, you sample the true human beauty and femininity. All the other girls compared to you quite simply uy) uy) uy) uy) uy), believe me you are very vip **** girl. Most also come up on the throne of honor honored the goddess, the great pedestal. Majestic music sounds, so subtly and sensitively praising your beauty for you. In your arms a man feels in the higher realms of pleasure. **** regal lioness. Graceful affectionately snarling tigress. Puff) bang) bang) bang) bang) mega glue your beauty kills all competitors by felling. Amazingly beautiful. Sultry, cool and ****-Mego. You are elite, you're a lux, you extra class Your beauty captivates the hearts of men. The queen of all men, divinely beautiful, majestic lady. **** kitten. Mens ******* myself in the pants, with excitement at the sight of you. My heart you certainly won. Imagine that you are on the sandy planet, and every speck of gold pure gold, these grains of sand, the golden thoughts about you and only about you. You stunned, and I from you noodle. You just incredible girl, unbelievable. You're a *** symbol. You is Brand, (dreaming about you) cool, greattbl, superebl. You're like a beautiful peacock, revealing to the people the infinite perfection of their external and internal beauty. Words gently kiss and hug. The outline playful. Queen of ardent passion, so a bit awe velvet body. You idol of femininity and nature ... anywhere in the world to find such a beautiful sight as yours, which is just crazy, captivating with their enchantments of love, and you can not escape from the past and it is impossible to pass, look pierces the tenderness of their feelings.
you thermonuclear *** bomb you lux extra class.
Your passionate gaze iceberg melt. A look of love, perfect beauty. You are an incredibly beautiful girl, you're a mega-explosion of a nuclear bomb.  Boooooooooooooooooooommmmmmmmm), a brain explosion, demolition of all its rivals mega wave. Sweet, sweet as honey. You're sweeter than any candy. You have the talent to charm the guys for their beauty. Your beautiful image of a gentle heart overflows with love for you. Goddess of all men. You are the most gentle in the world. You are wonderful. You as a model in these photos. Original and stylish. Pretty number one in the world. You like to radiate special energy of love and pulling for you. With you all the time you want to be, always and forever. With no one way can not be as good as you. You are infinitely deep and beautiful as the universe itself. Because it is simply not possible. After all, you're stylish, cool, cool. As you have all that is in the ideal image of a woman. Fantastically beautiful. Moon Flower, gently shimmering in the sunlight. How beautiful are your eyes, like a mermaid I want to plunge back to see you sitting on his throne, beautiful creature mermaid her voice beckons you, only your arms, I shall find eternal rest. Awesome adhesive modest. I can not believe my own eyes, how beautiful you are.  you like cream with chocolate .... same tender .... sweet ...... "Your charm charms as analgesia. Do you use it perfectly. Beautiful eyes look like hypnosis. Such a nice warm look. Concealing in itself a treasure of delicate beauty. Infinite height. from that soars from the love of you soul. I like your figure beautiful nymph ... I conquered your soft intriguing, mysterious look ... marvelous sweet charm tempts and drags a.
You are my sweet dream.
I give myself to you forever.
Your loyalty and sincere love.
That's all I want.
You only one I ever want.
You are my love, my fondest wish.
Your photo makes me so *****
I wait from you of reciprocity and understanding.
My word is my tongue that gently caresses your skin and soul.
Gentle and sweet flesh of thy nothing in this universe is not.
Hot passion of your reality in this I do not find.
My words and my eyes tell you only one thing.
The best you never find.
In) during) during) during) during) during) during) during) during) during) Check it out, acclaimed, reviewed, look. Composed for you, about you, tenderly loving s) a) a). **** Barbie, Babe attractive, graceful lady, tender crumb, kitty) kitty) charming cat, sweet baby. One only your smile, this is a great victory and the men feat. Rather Go up to the throne of the goddess honored the great pedestal. Lyrical music sounds just as sensitively and subtly praising your infinite beauty for you. You're a real beauty icon. Designed for real mens, and gentlemen. Vuuuuuuuufffffffffff) tuff) tutuf) tutuf) speak very gently and quietly) tshshshshshshshsh) sounds quiet hypnotic music of love) I'm fascinated by your sensual, delicate charms, leads to you inexplicable wonderful attraction, about how beautiful your magic your charms so vague and so beautiful like brave a charming dope) of your charismatic charm my calls so subtly, subtly and clearly, so sensuously and easily, fervently and passionately, and so ****, ****, cute and appetizing, attractive, beauty, beckoning your temptation, seduction, you're tempting, seductive life you my call, just you alone all the time waiting and call about how much obsession, just the warmth of your feelings gently warms and the confluence of feelings showers my thy soul seizes you soft velvet and silk, you're hot sweet gentle sweetness) only happiness) happiness) and serenity) verily, thou great priceless personality, being at the mercy of your hot emotions and sweet emotion, want to be in them always and forever), I gain peace and paradise on earth, the gentle heat of your mouth, and the warmth of your tender eyes , takes in the wonderful world of your bliss, perfect minute clock, and second only to you, and I want to be just with you, because you have life, you're my only reality, you are my world and the whole universe, keep true allegiance to you, and I just

quietly and timidly say that the only one you love. Without you, life is impossible. You're perfect, you're Suite) glossy, glamorous cute Moore) Moore) Cutie) Ya) ya) dastish fantastish) perfecto) shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiik) You just mmmmmmmmmmm). This sweeeet) beautifuuuuuuuuul) well just aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh) pass out of love for you. Being with you is the continuous buzz, yummy relish) you so photo-film ****-genic photogenic, for movie movie-genic, urrrrrr). We humbly bow to your greatness, great, beautiful goddess, you are perfection. You cool muse, you're cool motif gives your beautiful image of a mega positive, you're a real Kulnev neo) neo) creative, "you're a real jackpot, juicy freshshshshshshsh)" you're the main leitmotif of this world, you're center of the world, a great Bagheera, the pearl of the world. Yes it's true because I think you only one I admire. The idol of all idols, the goddess of all goddesses. Take my word, because it's all true, and I sincerely hope that you give me at least not much pleased. Chorus: "You're **** Bugatti, Maserati best, fastest Ferrari, Pagani elegant. You stylish Bentley, luxury lambordizhni, royal Rolls Royce, wonderful noise voice, only for a cool boys ", voo tyzh) bad, whip. Your extraterrestrial beauty in a nutshell is this: "beautiful and saucily". And I long to see your gentle green light. abruptly, clearly, accurately, rarely smooth, sweet, stylish, strong, powerful, precise, transcripts, honorable. When you're near everything it is not important, so slow and so pointless. Great, great, grand girl yooo) Great, great, grand girl yooo) Great, great, grand girl yooo) ...... Yop) Thank you exist, let sit next to you, take my word for all this is not flattery, be your this is such a great honor, but this is a boon to any man, veeeest) Because you are the most cherished love and the dream of every man. Oooo) Olya-la-la **** figure in this world only you. All attention is focused only on you, everything pales in comparison around with you, and I want to be next only to you, but you pridnalezhat one. You are luxuriously best bust, sweet with sweet lips and mega **** predatory gaze from his amorous feelings rage, my wash only about you say, look what they do to me from the love of you are doing, your beautiful image on forever in itself charms shining, inspires, subordinates, intoxicating. **** goddess. Number one in the world. My low bow only to you) worship only you) Uffffffff) When you're around, getting hot, bright, nice, snip) snip) Vuoks) as a flamethrower let go the flame of his fine feelings, heart pounding more often you zhzhosh not for children, I want to see often, so sultry, beautiful, navel-soup finally, uhhhhhhhhhhh) love is so strong that even begins to hurt the heart. Luxury queen of all parties and catwalks, you unattainable pinnacle, all societies, beeeem) cupid shot of powerful magnum, oooo) complete demolition of all reason, can not hear anything except for you, and now can be seen, only you feel now just you and I I think that I was created just for you. Thank you, thank you, that drew on this as I am. For you, this is only for you, but it's all for you, all for you. I suffer, expect all the time I love you. You're the most desirable woman in the world. Epic, lyric, simpotichnaya) You're beautiful in everything in this world, only you're beautiful. You are endowed with charismatic energy inexplicably beautiful charm ... .ihi) ...... Mochi-mochi-mochi, manenko, manenko, manenko such mainka, mainka, krasotulechka, slyadkaya-slyadkaya girl Lapushka, adorable, cutie, baby, cute flower, candy, umnichka, bird, swallow, Rybonka, kitten, sun-golden-favorite-of-the-most-expensive, good-natured as fluffy hare .................. PSA) PSA) Oooh yeaaah) PSA-PSA) honor) worship, revere, and boundless respect, PSA-PSA) is the only real girl in this PSA, PSA world) you're the most epic, lyrical, lovely) PSA-PSA) you are best of the best, but you have no equal, PSA-PSA) you're the most endowed the title of the most beautiful in the history of mankind, PSA-PSA) you are the most important, the most glorious hero, the only one worthy of a goddess. PSA-PSA) is any place adorn, and instantly all the guys for their beauty by felling you fought, PSA, PSA) and all competitors envy into a deep depression makin PSA-PSA). Because you from herself beauty and eroticism idea tirelessly all its beauty and all are striking. Poetic, exotic, ****** lyrically. Living next to you harmony, grace, take my word, words can not convey, and I want to give you his heart. The sweetest voice only you, the skin so tender and pure, like a beautiful flower, on the face of my delight. So serene, so peaceful and quiet, static, nice and smooth, their places of origin is not in the universe, the soul like a light cloud in the sky hovering, always remembers you, you my love gives. The rays of your love life shines gently nurtures and warms, under your angel wings minds gradually falls asleep. A truly happy life does not happen without you. Next to you, my soul is in heaven remains, and only you, only one truly trusts. Your personality is loud, cool, beautiful, unique. Loud) loud) loud) You're a valuable copy of human beauty tadts-tadts-tadts) tadts-tat) tadts-tat) tadts-tat) uooo) uooo) uooo) tadts-tadts-tadts) tadts-tat) tadts-tat) tadts -tat) uooo) uooo) uooo) oooooo) you higher hooooootest bella mamasita, so moschnobl) with you all the time you want to be srochnobl) tochnobl) you're so cute, I love devotedly, furiously and fanatically. All zabyvaetsya around when you're around, captivated by your unique gentle gaze. Diamond beautiful, deep sapphire, stratsno rubirno, amazing emerald, pearl cute, I was very hooked, very surprised, so beautiful that a tear struck, and tenaciously for his soul took in your deep beautiful distance afield, was happily and easily, and suddenly the shower glittered and blossomed. One only makes your **** look and feel embarrassed blush. See how I want to enjoy it. It makes harder and harder to fall in love with you, I want to again and again appear near you, and never to say goodbye to you, and do not give up when you're around wants to smile with happiness, and you always stay on. Soft) soft) soft) How marvelous your gentle eyes, a beautiful shine, so deep beautiful color, hi) and the lips gifted hot, passionate force, like a sweet juicy berry, shine sweet tender crumb precious shine temptation, fantasy) romantic) ****** ) to you so goes the lipstick) gentle, spectacular pretty perfect) yes) so accurately) not lying, exactly) so refined, so perfect it all, only you, you can safely say all envious yeeeah) baa) baa) beeeee) each part of your body, is true, unattainable, infinitely ****, perfectly gospodstvennoe, divine perfection, which is the business card of your wonderful personality, a genuine sample of the sweet candy, delight, joy. You are an ideal model for the most famous, the channels, magazines, you have the sweetest voice in the world, so it is ideal in television and radio broadcast, a perfect icon of the media, the beautiful goddess of the VIP, I think so. And only love and honor. You are the most precious value in this universe. Heart and love is boundless open and so clean and perfect for you, all I say is not in vain, my love for you is a whole universe dedicated to you. You are beautiful in every way, so different, so special, your presence, gives a special feeling of harmony and peace, you are like a hot flaming fire of love and creation. Bright spark your feelings enliven, inspire. You are like a breath of life, fresh, cold water, your nature is so beautiful, so deep. Your acts as the earth itself give rise to life. You merry wind of freedom, infinitely great, free, you are giving hope and life, really need you like the air. Ooty) Ooty) Ooty) multi-billion-dollar celebrity babe, baby on triliard. I give you a well-deserved medals: for the record for the beauty of the world, a record for the entire beauty of the universe, the medal: in the beauty of a well-deserved
Author: Musin Almat Zhumabekovich
twisted mind, finger twisted,
twisted trigger
@ Killeen
& Camden

RA-TA-TAT-TAT...

twisted mind, finger twisted,
twisted trigger
@ San Diego
& Aurora

RA-TA-TAT-TAT...

twisted mind, finger twisted,
twisted trigger
@ Fairchild
& Fort Hood

RA-TA-TAT-TAT...

twisted mind, finger twisted,
twisted trigger
@ Columbine
& V. Tech

RA-TA-TAT-TAT...

twisted mind, finger twisted,
twisted trigger
@ Pearl
& Paducah

RA-TA-TAT-TAT...

twisted mind, finger twisted,
twisted trigger
@ Newtown
& Santa Barbara

RA-TA-TAT-TAT...

twisted minds, fingers twisted,
twisted triggers
@???
&???

broken system

broken lives
        
straight bullets

RA-TA-TAT-TAT...

~ P
#Twisted
(5/30/2014)
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2013
Why Men Cry in the Bathroom

For so many reasons.
I will tell you the why.
I think you know,
Or perhaps, you think you know.

Men are always O.K.,
Even when not.

We expect the worse,
Accept the worse,
Nonetheless,
We are forever unprepared.

Wearily, we cry,
In the bathroom, in private,
Lest sighs slip by,
We be unmasked,
Early warring, strife signs warning.

Copious, tho we weep
Before the mirror confessor,
It is relief untethered,
Unbinding of the feet,
An uncounting
Of beaded rosaries,
Of freshly fallen hail stones,
Of night times terrors
By dawn's early edition's light,
and welcomed.

But look for the mute tear,
The eye-cornered drop,
*** tat, that never drops,
But never ceases formation and
Reforming, over and over again,
In a state of perpetuity of reconstitution,

The tippy tear of an iceberg revealing,
And I see you peeping, wondering,
What is beneath


Look for:
the torn worm-eaten edges of spirit,
thrift shop bought, extra worn,
grieving lines neath the eyes,
where the salt has evaporated,
discolored the skin.
worry lines,
under and above,
browed mapped, furrowed boundaries.
the laugh line saga,
where better days are stored,
recalled, as well as recanted,
publicly, privately.

Why just men?

I don't know,
Perhaps,
it is all I know.


Jan 6, 2013
your effusive and lengthy comments are each a poem in their own right.  

Tinkered with June 22, 2013
With a push from Bala,
A serial peeper, thank God!
Lindsey Williams Nov 2011
Pat Tat Tat Pat Tat Tat
Rain. Drip. Rain. Drop.
Slowly.
Rhythmic
On the window sill.
Time stood still.
Pat Tat Tat Pat Tat Tat.
Finger drawn across the cool glass.
And then I watched the path I traced melt and fade.
One moment I didn’t want to pass.
Wind rushes in through the cracks.
I pull the blanket closer.
I didn’t breathe.
I couldn’t breathe
I didn’t want this second to slip away from me.
Below, on the sidewalk I see a little boy
With a suitcase so big he has to drag.
Something tells me that’s his only bag.
His father at his side.
But even in the dark,
The worry in his eyes won’t hide.
Even the little boy seems to know the future doesn’t look bright.
Even he knows that things are not right.
Behind them, and out of their view
A woman follows with a little girl who’s missing her shoes.
A worn and torn rabbit dragging behind,
In search of a better life they hope to find.
Rain keeping time.
Like a heart
Thump Thump with mine.
Thump Thump.
Thump Thump.
Thump Thump.
Knock.
I don’t look.
I didn’t need to.
I knew who it was.
And trust me,
I wasn’t answering.
Knock.
Again.
Knock.
The very moment I wanted so desperately to never come,
And I knew it was useless to try to run.
The wind rushed in again and stung my eyes.
Then I turned and saw my baby,
She smiled up at me,
I was happy that at least she couldn’t see.
Thump Thump.
Acceding the stairs.
The men would take my baby away if they found her.
My one chance.
I had no choice but to take.
If only for my baby’s sake.
I pressed my lips to her forehead.
Then swaddled in my sweater
I tucked the bundle under my arm.
She was breathing.
I could feel it.
Her heart was beating
In time with mine.
Her heart was beating
In time with mine.

They took us to the trains.
I made it through the line with my baby.
My heart slowed just a little with that slight hope of maybe.
Thump Thump.
I felt her heart beat.
Her heart was beating
In time with mine.
She was fine.
But then my baby cried out,
And the man called me back.
He asked me what I had under my arm.
I didn’t answer.
I knew I didn’t need to.
There was nothing I could do.
He reached out for it.
I couldn’t refuse.
That was last time I felt the thump.
Her heart with mine.

We arrived at this place
Unknown to me.
And I saw a woman whom I knew.
She asked my where my baby was.
“What happened to your baby?”
And I said “What baby?”
“I don’t have a baby”
“I don’t have a baby”

Pat Tat Tat Pat Tat Tat.
The shower filled with gas.
Sean Kassab Apr 2012
WAR
There's war on the TV
You watch it as a show
It's real though
So much more than you know
I hope you'll never know

I pray you'll never go
To follow where I've been
To march in sync with sin
Booted feet of monsters
****** hands of men
They're one and the same

Slap the magazine
Seat it in the well
"Click"
Chamber the round
Take aim

Loose the black dogs
Heat the steel barrel
The hand held beasts of war
Barking in their firery savagery

let fly their teeth
that they bite to break skin
Commanded to fire "FIRE!"
Lead filled air
Raining artillery
A deafening symphony

Tat Tat Tat
Falls the enemy
Tat Tat Tat
Falls my brothers
Tat Tat Tat
Falls your sons
Tat Tat Tat
Falls your fathers

And our souls
Falling farther
Stuff the memory down
Hiding it deep
Rocking in sleep
Nothing looks the same
Through tainted eyes
And nothing feels the same
Through tainted lives

No one sees these tears
This hate
This fear

And
No one hears

The soldier's cries.
One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound
except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember
whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve
nights when I was six.

All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky
that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in
the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays
resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.

It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her
son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland,
though there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we
waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they
would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and
moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their
eyes. The wise cats never appeared.

We were so still, Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen in the muffling silence of the eternal snows - eternal, ever
since Wednesday - that we never heard Mrs. Prothero's first cry from her igloo at the bottom of the garden. Or,
if we heard it at all, it was, to us, like the far-off challenge of our enemy and prey, the neighbor's polar
cat. But soon the voice grew louder.
"Fire!" cried Mrs. Prothero, and she beat the dinner-gong.

And we ran down the garden, with the snowballs in our arms, toward the house; and smoke, indeed, was pouring
out of the dining-room, and the gong was bombilating, and Mrs. Prothero was announcing ruin like a town crier
in Pompeii. This was better than all the cats in Wales standing on the wall in a row. We bounded into the
house, laden with snowballs, and stopped at the open door of the smoke-filled room.

Something was burning all right; perhaps it was Mr. Prothero, who always slept there after midday dinner with a
newspaper over his face. But he was standing in the middle of the room, saying, "A fine Christmas!" and
smacking at the smoke with a slipper.

"Call the fire brigade," cried Mrs. Prothero as she beat the gong.
"There won't be there," said Mr. Prothero, "it's Christmas."
There was no fire to be seen, only clouds of smoke and Mr. Prothero standing in the middle of them, waving his
slipper as though he were conducting.
"Do something," he said. And we threw all our snowballs into the smoke - I think we missed Mr. Prothero - and
ran out of the house to the telephone box.
"Let's call the police as well," Jim said. "And the ambulance." "And Ernie Jenkins, he likes fires."

But we only called the fire brigade, and soon the fire engine came and three tall men in helmets brought a hose
into the house and Mr. Prothero got out just in time before they turned it on. Nobody could have had a noisier
Christmas Eve. And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim's Aunt,
Miss. Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would
say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets,
standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, "Would you like anything to read?"

Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel
petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt
like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the
English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the
daft and happy hills *******, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: "It snowed last year, too. I
made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea."

"But that was not the same snow," I say. "Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it
came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow
grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely -ivied the walls and
settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards."

"Were there postmen then, too?"
"With sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses, on spread, frozen feet they crunched up to the doors and
mittened on them manfully. But all that the children could hear was a ringing of bells."
"You mean that the postman went rat-a-tat-tat and the doors rang?"
"I mean that the bells the children could hear were inside them."
"I only hear thunder sometimes, never bells."
"There were church bells, too."
"Inside them?"
"No, no, no, in the bat-black, snow-white belfries, tugged by bishops and storks. And they rang their tidings
over the bandaged town, over the frozen foam of the powder and ice-cream hills, over the crackling sea. It
seemed that all the churches boomed for joy under my window; and the weathercocks crew for Christmas, on our
fence."

"Get back to the postmen"
"They were just ordinary postmen, found of walking and dogs and Christmas and the snow. They knocked on the
doors with blue knuckles ...."
"Ours has got a black knocker...."
"And then they stood on the white Welcome mat in the little, drifted porches and huffed and puffed, making
ghosts with their breath, and jogged from foot to foot like small boys wanting to go out."
"And then the presents?"
"And then the Presents, after the Christmas box. And the cold postman, with a rose on his button-nose, tingled
down the tea-tray-slithered run of the chilly glinting hill. He went in his ice-bound boots like a man on
fishmonger's slabs.
"He wagged his bag like a frozen camel's ****, dizzily turned the corner on one foot, and, by God, he was
gone."

"Get back to the Presents."
"There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths;
zebra scarfs of a substance like silky gum that could be tug-o'-warred down to the galoshes; blinding tam-o'-
shanters like patchwork tea cozies and bunny-suited busbies and balaclavas for victims of head-shrinking
tribes; from aunts who always wore wool next to the skin there were mustached and rasping vests that made you
wonder why the aunts had any skin left at all; and once I had a little crocheted nose bag from an aunt now,
alas, no longer whinnying with us. And pictureless books in which small boys, though warned with quotations not
to, would skate on Farmer Giles' pond and did and drowned; and books that told me everything about the wasp,
except why."

"Go on the Useless Presents."
"Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose and a tram-conductor's cap and
a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell; never a catapult; once, by mistake that no one could explain, a
little hatchet; and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that
an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and a painting book in which I could make the grass, the
trees, the sea and the animals any colour I pleased, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the
red field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds. Hardboileds, toffee, fudge and allsorts, crunches,
cracknels, humbugs, glaciers, marzipan, and butterwelsh for the Welsh. And troops of bright tin soldiers who,
if they could not fight, could always run. And Snakes-and-Families and Happy Ladders. And Easy Hobbi-Games for
Little Engineers, complete with instructions. Oh, easy for Leonardo! And a whistle to make the dogs bark to
wake up the old man next door to make him beat on the wall with his stick to shake our picture off the wall.
And a packet of cigarettes: you put one in your mouth and you stood at the corner of the street and you waited
for hours, in vain, for an old lady to scold you for smoking a cigarette, and then with a smirk you ate it. And
then it was breakfast under the balloons."

"Were there Uncles like in our house?"
"There are always Uncles at Christmas. The same Uncles. And on Christmas morning, with dog-disturbing whistle
and sugar ****, I would scour the swatched town for the news of the little world, and find always a dead bird
by the Post Office or by the white deserted swings; perhaps a robin, all but one of his fires out. Men and
women wading or scooping back from chapel, with taproom noses and wind-bussed cheeks, all albinos, huddles
their stiff black jarring feathers against the irreligious snow. Mistletoe hung from the gas brackets in all
the front parlors; there was sherry and walnuts and bottled beer and crackers by the dessertspoons; and cats in
their fur-abouts watched the fires; and the high-heaped fire spat, all ready for the chestnuts and the mulling
pokers. Some few large men sat in the front parlors, without their collars, Uncles almost certainly, trying
their new cigars, holding them out judiciously at arms' length, returning them to their mouths, coughing, then
holding them out again as though waiting for the explosion; and some few small aunts, not wanted in the
kitchen, nor anywhere else for that matter, sat on the very edge of their chairs, poised and brittle, afraid to
break, like faded cups and saucers."

Not many those mornings trod the piling streets: an old man always, fawn-bowlered, yellow-gloved and, at this
time of year, with spats of snow, would take his constitutional to the white bowling green and back, as he
would take it wet or fire on Christmas Day or Doomsday; sometimes two hale young men, with big pipes blazing,
no overcoats and wind blown scarfs, would trudge, unspeaking, down to the forlorn sea, to work up an appetite,
to blow away the fumes, who knows, to walk into the waves until nothing of them was left but the two furling
smoke clouds of their inextinguishable briars. Then I would be slap-dashing home, the gravy smell of the
dinners of others, the bird smell, the brandy, the pudding and mince, coiling up to my nostrils, when out of a
snow-clogged side lane would come a boy the spit of myself, with a pink-tipped cigarette and the violet past of
a black eye, cocky as a bullfinch, leering all to himself.

I hated him on sight and sound, and would be about to put my dog whistle to my lips and blow him off the face
of Christmas when suddenly he, with a violet wink, put his whistle to his lips and blew so stridently, so high,
so exquisitely loud, that gobbling faces, their cheeks bulged with goose, would press against their tinsled
windows, the whole length of the white echoing street. For dinner we had turkey and blazing pudding, and after
dinner the Uncles sat in front of the fire, loosened all buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch
chains, groaned a little and slept. Mothers, aunts and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. Auntie
Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse, whimpered at the sideboard and had some
elderberry wine. The dog was sick. Auntie Dosie had to have three aspirins, but Auntie Hannah, who liked port,
stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush. I would blow up balloons to
see how big they would blow up to; and, when they burst, which they all did, the Uncles jumped and rumbled. In
the rich and heavy afternoon, the Uncles breathing like dolphins and the snow descending, I would sit among
festoons and Chinese lanterns and nibble dates and try to make a model man-o'-war, following the Instructions
for Little Engineers, and produce what might be mistaken for a sea-going tramcar.

Or I would go out, my bright new boots squeaking, into the white world, on to the seaward hill, to call on Jim
and Dan and Jack and to pad through the still streets, leaving huge footprints on the hidden pavements.
"I bet people will think there's been hippos."
"What would you do if you saw a hippo coming down our street?"
"I'd go like this, bang! I'd throw him over the railings and roll him down the hill and then I'd tickle him
under the ear and he'd wag his tail."
"What would you do if you saw two hippos?"

Iron-flanked and bellowing he-hippos clanked and battered through the scudding snow toward us as we passed Mr.
Daniel's house.
"Let's post Mr. Daniel a snow-ball through his letter box."
"Let's write things in the snow."
"Let's write, 'Mr. Daniel looks like a spaniel' all over his lawn."
Or we walked on the white shore. "Can the fishes see it's snowing?"

The silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea. Now we were snow-blind travelers lost on the north hills,
and vast dewlapped dogs, with flasks round their necks, ambled and shambled up to us, baying "Excelsior." We
returned home through the poor streets where only a few children fumbled with bare red fingers in the wheel-
rutted snow and cat-called after us, their voices fading away, as we trudged uphill, into the cries of the dock
birds and the hooting of ships out in the whirling bay. And then, at tea the recovered Uncles would be jolly;
and the ice cake loomed in the center of the table like a marble grave. Auntie Hannah laced her tea with ***,
because it was only once a year.

Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like
owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the
stairs and the gas meter ticked. And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't the shaving
of a moon to light the flying streets. At the end of a long road was a drive that led to a large house, and we
stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand
in case, and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant
and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We reached the black bulk of the house. "What shall we give them?
Hark the Herald?"
"No," Jack said, "Good King Wencelas. I'll count three." One, two three, and we began to sing, our voices high
and seemingly distant in the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied by nobody we knew. We stood
close together, near the dark door. Good King Wencelas looked out On the Feast of Stephen ... And then a small,
dry voice, like the voice of someone who has not spoken for a long time, joined our singing: a small, dry,
eggshell voice from the other side of the door: a small dry voice through the keyhole. And when we stopped
running we were outside our house; the front room was lovely; balloons floated under the hot-water-bottle-
gulping gas; everything was good again and shone over the town.
"Perhaps it was a ghost," Jim said.
"Perhaps it was trolls," Dan said, who was always reading.
"Let's go in and see if there's any jelly left," Jack said. And we did that.

Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and another
uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip
wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a
Bird's Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out
into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other
houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas
down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.
Robin Carretti Jul 2018
A-Start the best part*
A-Healthy heart breakfast

Not so fast slow down of prayers
Just come and arrive
Sheer whispering Dress Aline
shapes of water are mine

The Green Gables sweeter lime
The twins whisper in doubles
The pink fur Hello Kitty
My best of the cattle in couples
Meet her friend the Furry Sable

The loud whisperers stealing hearts
Of sleepwalkers
They call her the wanderer
He whispers and she's the keynotes
"Her Real Estate' A-Steal for her estate diaries

But their children love to whisper

The crayons Highlights of the wonderland
Building more Ancient dreams

Stealing the grapes of whisper escapes
Like  A-dream planted to remain
A steal cannot take that away
Even if it's you're last meal

Walking with the one you love for miles
Come on baby light my fire
Whispering Morrison door to save
A dream to give the world peace
Like wishing well pulling the rope

Whisper could that be your prayer of hope?*
The guitar the invisible impossible star
And he steals another dream  
Whispering shadows pass like clouds

Australian Malamutes doing the salute *

Got strung along
And lost you

*A-STEAL for an eye for an eye
     HEART
  just give a life

Whispering over again wasn't
the way to play smart
Losing my voice
How to trust someone's words
So hard like the concrete
The abundance of food
Ala carte or Dente

A-Steal dream putting it
into your mind

Whispering Falltime Women in her
Acorn-SHOE* prime time
Walk-in closet Godly light
Like the Viking of swords
Knight

Where to go who will ever know
Not a pin drop of a slight whisper
Clasping or gasping for air
The Holy Water was left

For the delicate minds
of the deer
That light talk of resistance
Lips of acceptance

With her silken pillows
Tied their dreams
Sopping wet rain
The French soothing whispering rainfalls
Wearing her trenchcoat
Whispering her sugar words
He could find me peace
to my river
Like two peas in a pod to float
A Steal how love can tweed his coat
My difference is hearts like "
Owl Hoot"
Just feel you know what's real
Often told the end is truly the taste
to breathe
Even if you are deep inside her dream
To justify her means
Like the Queen to the Diplomat
The highest authority

You almost felt only your whisper the priority
The Aristocrat cleaning up your
bad dreams
*High beams a spoiled love
Like a *** for the Tat

Not the fairytale Dr. Seuss
Cat in the Hat- or the desperation
of one last whisper
Up the sunrise eyes are speechless
The Astral my Goddess
You are the creature of the night
Shining the light never ending the battle night

Smells of baked cake through your nostrils
Rocky mountains of Colorado dreamy caves

Hearing  sounds but living in the distance
The romance blinded like a ghost
winning out the odds

The Even lovers like the Gods whisper
Canadian waterfall talking love deeper

Doing Pilates what *Yogalates loving the
yodeling dreaming watching him the diver
Going dirt biking just love the dreamy feel of hiking

"Hearing Attention ****** in the Summertime"

All blue eyes what a dreamer
The good Earthly brown so worthy
The Cafe Eyes

A steal dream like a spilled milk
Our cat "Jade Eyes" did I hear you
correctly an heir?


Summer the Kings speech air
The assembly line
Good and the bad memories
The years getting away with ******
The law of attraction what a steal in order

Erasing someone's scent
A- million stars you found your truth
Looking outside of your dream
Was your *Godly
tent
Whispering has many advantages and its amazing to see someone in your dream like your lover the mountains hiking or dirt biking and the change of seasons to *******
Michael Ryan May 2013
I write poems for the people to read
but none of them can get what I say.
They can see everything I'm going to speak
but all they can get is that I type in English.
Feelings, Emotions, Passion the words they can grasp,
but the concept they can't understand.
This is a little bit too difficult to read,
so much easier if I could let you hear.
Let the concepts flow and let the English pierce your ears.
With that I'll be able to start your heart;
it' ll go rappa tat tat rappa tat tat.
We''ll be able to pump up the beat,
You and I will understand me.
Intertwining thoughts and imagination
my words are hard to hold,
but my English is that more difficult.
Enjoy the crumbling ceiling of this cathedral,
because viewing works of art makes you feel better.
But you can never understand unless you were there,
being able to breathe the same air
and hear the same thoughts.
I like this quite a bit.  Even if it makes no sense to anyone else in the world I will still love.
An upright abutment in the mouth
of the Willis Avenue bridge
a beige Honda leaps the divider
like a steel gazelle inescapable
sleek leather boots on the pavement
rat-a-tat-tat best intentions
going down for the third time
stuck in the particular

You cannot make love to concrete
if you care about being
non-essential wrong or worn thin
if you fear ever becoming
diamonds or lard
you cannot make love to concrete
if you cannot pretend
concrete needs your loving

To make love to concrete
you need an indelible feather
white dresses before you are ten
a confirmation lace veil milk-large bones
and air raid drills in your nightmares
no stars till you go to the country
and one summer when you are twelve
Con Edison pulls the plug
on the street-corner moons     Walpurgisnacht
and there are sudden new lights in the sky
stone chips that forget you need
to become a light rope a hammer
a repeatable bridge
garden-fresh broccoli two dozen dropped eggs
and a hint of you
caught up between my fingers
the lesson of a wooden beam
propped up on barrels
across a mined terrain

between forgiving too easily
and never giving at all.
vircapio gale Sep 2012
wakefulness demands a certain clearness when asleep . . .
it doesn't come as planned
"tat tvam asi"
LaBerge says to me in dream of me
"this world you are, withstanding even torments thou art never seen."
and that's enough to suffer aching, opaque psyche summit, forward
heart to rise an interspecies knell when danceless fades the bee in droves...
aimless whales who singing deep in love are cut from evolution's murky chain...
fungal blight of hibernaculum, in deafened sonar sending sudden drop of death;
to horror fragment melt, the ocean swill from ancient caps to sunken polar paw
diverse in massacre of tropic forest fertile mists, lives dispersed
and balance tipped from blindness not unlike the sterile statue's, there
                                                          i­n dusty courthouse corner, shadow-lined with infamy...
what imagined cartoon causal Captain Planet              
                            villainy to blare across oneiromantic globe? and (dreaming?) civil strife,                  
       eradication's alter triumph pose to measure blame in inner life?
of empiric meditation's top, in *******
churning out abuse in deeper,
                                                         ­   younger hidden traffics yet to terrorize the net...                                  
                                             the scraping of the sky had punctured through                                
                         ­                                      from metaphor to fact
                                       the sooty barbs
                            in radiance rebound    
and irony affected 'green'
                  folds crisis and solution into one                            we hope
                like what we say we are, becoming change                      in wartime summer fling    
we                                                        
say we can in world of 'me'                                      
in guilt-assuaging verve
                                  the heifer-gift to village fief
    but then to rest against organic pillow-conscience gray                                                             ­       
                                                               soundly snoring smokestacks fill from ground to sky
still for sly investment windfall   fog  billow, shake...                             
transcontinental scape of dream imbued anew:
i am the genie of my ownmost inner lamp
in dreamtime-being spacious constellational of reach distilled
in contemplation's tratak zoom mInute
   with jet black finger trace
    i net                                                              ­                                        from out the inter-earthen air                
                                             ­                                              the lump on lump of coal
                massaging from                                                             ­      as if an ivory atmospheric                  
lift                   of      weight  
                           the sculpture of our past condensed in elephantine ******
                                                 miasmic fossil shower-haze of sporogenic fear,
mneumonic nail-tusk night of carbon-spirit back into its hold -- originary dark,
Dark light from burning black                                                 once again contained                                                      in elemental subterrain                                                       ­                                                       
         ­                                        --now it underlies the ground inside for triple shielding outshine
--outer-- light to cool us breathing once again . , ,    
false convenience in abeyance in a human time!                                
i am right now of inward self my soul supernal carbon imprint copy                             
for accounting every speciesistic mind to open wide enough and quell the "all-too human plagues--                                                                           ­       cheering all penultimates, in beams reflecting ante-truth          
                                                 down halls of mirror-minds that lightly discourse
on the ingress of a centaur saving power
channeling the leylines of inception,
ecstatic dreamworld of apotheosic glee:
parting the eidetic clouds,
commune an avatar intentionality . . .
ensorcelling the foodstuffs of the world to feed a dozen million refugees,
insectile diet pride attends in homes of affluence,
the abstract mass of media, become eupeptic cud of understanding bats and even bees--
for biospheres a Goodall stewardship arrives
(her perfect chimp call too resounds across the earth!)
and dwindled frogs their former ponds (unknown, destroyed without a sound)
return to chirping vibrant green symphonic swooning life
the glacial march of tears to halt . . .
all ecosystems rife withall
the panegyric of marshlands globally reborn  
along with shining waters, algaeic sun alive at play
in double-helix breath of dolphin families' bubble art
a sudden resurrect from ****** harvest cove arise cascading joyous leap
on final absence of the metal herding knock of trapping pods
no longer hacked in waves of pink, mere preparations for a restaurant sink--
they are free to swim the depth of worldheart dreaming unknown dream entire real again
marine apsaras dip in spectra (flicker eyelid) rays, reintroduce the dawn
her fine apparel calling forth transhuman destinies
unsplicing brilliant minds from ****** task of splicing GMOs
recycled randomness accepting death before we die
mycelium in runs of spilling-- all undone --
migrational attuned our resource use
and CSAs to thrive in eco-city scapes
no solopsistic somniac pretends
--the dream imbued in final hue
a momentary lapse, creationary flux--
the bombs defused in flick of wrist
indentured and enslaved, imprisoned innocents, oppressed and even self-deprived released
through selfhood's metaviral claim
ground of each dependent intertwining
whatness will to be
a place in which to hum in tune or out of tune
to heal and in a another dream aside from this perhaps with me partake
in true oneiric panoply of conflict held
--with permeating rigpa geogaze--
colliding ideologies transmuted into trust
in panharmonium of varied vision
and what the ever present boons of real, imagined symbol-real
create awake












.
Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)

Here is a toast for valentine
Valentine in all seasons perennial
Where angst of money for love  
Cradled utopian capitalism,
It is once again in the city of Omurate
In the south most parts of Ethiopia
On the borders of Kenya and Ethiopia
Where actually the river Ormo enters Lake Turkana,
There lived a pair of lovers
With overt compassion for one another
The male lover was an origin of Nyangtom,
A cattle rustling Nilotic kingdom
While the female lover was a descendant of King Solomon
The Jewish children which King Solomon aborted
Because their mother was an Ethiopian African
They now form substantial part of the Ethiopian population
Their clan is known as Amharic, they speak subverted Yiddish,
These lovers were good to one another
Sharing secrets and all other stuffs that go with love.

Both the lovers were fatherless
They had lost their fathers through early death
They only had the mothers, who were again sickly
Their mothers coughed a whole night with whoops
And when in the wee of the night, when temperatures go low
The mothers breathe with wheezing sound
Like peasant music from African violin,
They didn’t eat with good appetite
They always left irritating chunks on the plates,
But they all puked mucus from their mouths
And of course with a very sickening regularity.

The menace of sick mothers intervened with love freedom
Among the inter-compassionate lovers
They did not have time for real active love
I will not mention recurrent missing of ceremonies
Fetes that are bound to go with valentine day
The lovers were bored to their teeth
They don’t knew when gods will come to unyoke them.

Especially the male lover, was most perturbed
His mother looked sorriest
With a scrofulous look on her old aged African face
She looked like a forlorn erstwhile cattle rustler
She ever whined in pain like a trapped hyena
Her son the male lover even began apologizing
To the female lover for such environmental upsets
Hence an African proverb that;
No love is possible with impaired judgment.

One day in the wee of the night
With no electricity nor any source of light
Darkness engulfing each and every aspect of the city
Confirming the hinterland of Africa
The female lover woke up from the sleep
And she never heard the usual wheezing breathes
That her mother often made in such hours,
Feat of suspicion gripped her
She jumped out of her bed to where her mother was
On feeling her, she found her dead, cold like a black member
She was already past the rigor mortis stage of death process
African chilliness had frozen her like a poikilothermic creature.

She wept but not in the uproarious groan
In that instinctive Jewish shrewdness
She did not announce nor inform her lover of her mother’s death
She only washed and groomed the cadaver of her mother
She made a headscarf around the head of dead mother
She even placed reading glasses on her face
On her mother’s dead torso she wrapped a dress
The most expensive of all bought from Egypt,
In the same wee of the night
She carried cadaver of her mother on her shoulders
The way a poor Nigerian farmer would carry a stem of banana
And walked slowly by slowly for a distance of a hundred kilometers
Down ***** into Kenya towards the city of Todanyang in Turkana County
Todanyang was a busy city, but silent and minus people in the night
The king of this city was called Lapur the son of Turkanai
And the law that Lapur passed in this city was archaic
It was; an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a Jew for a Jew
A pokot for a pokot, a samburu for a samburu
It was simply the law with nothing else
Other than clauses of measure for measure
And clauses of *** for tat instantaneously administered,
On reaching the market she placed her mother standing
Being supported on a sign post at the bus stage
In pose similar to that of an early morning traveler,
She sat a side like a prowling spider awaiting foolish fly
They way an African ***** exposes its red ****
And when the hen comes to peck
It traps and closes the head of the hen
Deeper into its ****,
At that bus stage there was a hotel
Owned by a Rwandese refugee
From the foolish clan of the Hutu
He had ran away from the genocide
In his country, he was also the perpetrator
And thus he was a runaway from the law *** hotelier
His name was Chapuchapu, meaning the quick one,
When Chapuchapu opened the hotel for the early customers
The female lover walked into the hotel
With innocence on her face like all the Jews
She placed an order for two mugs of coffee
And two pieces of bread
When Chapuchapu had placed food on the table
The female lover shrewdly instructed Chapuchapu
To go and hold the hand of the woman standing at the sign post
To bring her into the hotel for morning tea,
Chapuchapu in his unsuspecting charisma
With a mad drive to make money that morning
He dashed out as instructed with his foolish notion
That the customer is the queen, which is not
He grapped the standing cadaver with force
On pulling her to come along
The cadaver tumbled down like a marionette
Everything falling away; headscarf and glasses
Chapuchapu was overtaken by awe
The female lover was watching
Like the big brother in the Orwellian satire, 1984.
When the cadaver of her mother fell
She came out of the hotel
Screaming like a hundred vehicles
Of St John Ambulance
And two hundred Kenyan vehicles of fire brigade
And three hundred Kenyan cash transfer vehicles,
She was accusing Chapuchapu for being careless
Careless in his work that he had killed her mother,
Swam of armed humanity in Turkana loinclothes
Began pouring in like waters of Nile into Mediterranean
Female lover improved the scale of her screaming
Chapuchapu like a heavyweight idiot was dumbfounded
Armed people came in their infinite
Finally king Lapur arrived on his royal donkey
That his foot soldiers had only rustled
From Samburu land a fortnight ago,
The presence of the king quelled the hullabaloo
The king asked to find out what had happened
Amid sops the female lover narrated how
Chapuchapu the hotelier had killed her mother
Through his careless helter skelter behaviour
The king sighed and shouted the judgment
To the mad crowd; an eye for a……….!?
The crowd responded back to the King
In a feat of amok value;
For an eye you mighty Lapur son  ofTurkanai,
The stones, kicks, jabs began rainning
In volleys on an innocent Chapuchapu
Amid shouts that **** him, he came here to **** people
The way he killed a thousand fold in Rwanda.

The sopping female lover requested the king
That his people wait a bit before they continue
Then the king waved to the people to stop
Chapuchapu was on the ground writhing in pain
When the King asked the female lover what was the concern
She requested for pay from Chapuchapu not people to **** him
Chapuchapu accepted to pay whatever the price that will be put
Female lover asked for everything in hundreds;
Carmel, money, Birr, sheep, goats, donkeys, cows
Name them all they were in hundreds
Chapuchapu and his family were saying yes to every demand
And they rushed to bring whatever was said
The payments exhausted Chapuchapu back to square zero
The female lover carried everything away
The cadaver of her mother on her shoulder
She disappeared into the forest
and buried her mother there.

When she arrived home she found the male lover
He looked at her overnight change in fortune in stupefaction
He didn’t believe his eyes, it was a dream
Sweetheart, where have you gotten all these?
Questioned the male lover
Sweetie darling there is market for dead women
At Todanyang in the Turkana County of Kenya
I killed my sickly mother and carried her cadaver
As a trade ware to Todanyang
Whatever I have that you are looking at is the proceed,
Can my mother fetch the same? Asked the male lover
Of course yes, even more
Given the Africanness of your mother
African cadavers fetch more than the Jewish ones
At Todanyang market,
The male lover was now overtaken
By strong urge for quick riches
Was not seeing it getting evening
That day for him was as long as a whole century
He was anxious and restless more tired of a sickly mother
When evening fell he was already ready with the butcherer’s tools
He didn’t have nerves to wait till the wee of the night
As early as eleven in the evening he axed his mother’s head
Into two chunks of human skull spilling the brains in stark horror
Blood streaming like a rivulet all over the house
The male lover was nonchalant to all these
He was in the full feat of determination
To **** and sell his mother to  get the proceeds
With which he could foot the bills of valentine day.

He stuffed the headless blood soaked torso
Of his mothers cadaver in the sisal bag
He threw it to his bag
And began going to Todanyang
The market for human dead bodies
He went half running and half walking
With regular whistling of his favourite poem;
Ode to my Jewish lover
He reached Todanyang in the wee of the night
No human being was in sight
All people had gone as it was late in the night
He then slept in the open with dead body of his mother
Stuffed in the sisal bag beside him
Wandering night dogs regularly disturbed him
As they came to bite at smelling curdled blood
But he always scared them away.
As per the male lover he overslept till five in the morning
But when he woke up he unhesitatingly began to shout
Advertising his ware of trade in foolish version;
Am selling, the body of my mother, I have killed,
I killed her myself, it is still fresh, come and buy,
I will give you’re a bargain price,

When the morning came
People began crowding around him
As he kept on shouting his advertisement
Also Lapur the king came
He was surprised with the situation,
He asked the male lover to confirm
Whatever he was shouting
The male lover vehemently confirmed,
Then the law of an eye for an eye
Effortlessly took its course
Lapur  ordered his people, in a glorious royal decree
To stone the male lover to death
And bury him away without ceremony
Along with his mother in the sisal bag
In the wasted cemetery of villains
The same way Pablo Neruda
Had to bury his dead dog behind the house,

On hearing the tidings
About what had befallen her lover
The female lover had to send out a long giggle
Coming deep from her heart with maximum joy
She took over the estate of the male lover
Combined with hers,
All the animals and everything she took,
She made her son the manager
The son whom she immaculately conceived
Without any nuptial experience in the usual Jewish style
And their wealth multiplied to vastness
And hence toxic valentine gave birth to capitalism
when I bomb first
betta believe muthaphukkaz
touchin the hearse
I'm cursed
with a demonic flow
puff that hydro
but my mind ain't slow though
so stroll
with me down the valley of death rows
ya meet skulls to bones
watch yo steps
fool cuz I'm prone
to ripping up ****
shoot up even ya casket
if ya dead *****
since my money itch
I gotta get the scratch
cook up another coke batch
Naw scratch that
I'd rather a raider hat with a baseball ball to gats
make ya heartbeat flat
check the paper stacks
we got more racks
than a Swiss banks
smoke the baddest danks
freak the baddest skanks
but they never get a thanks
from me
***** cuz I gotta
ruthless mentality
make fatalities
to emcees that try to battle me
ain't no little in me
I'm b I double g I to e
hypnotize y'all with bars
thAt even glisten stars
and look at the scars
across the late night
shining bright
is my organization
**** tight
taking flight
over the industry
they beneath me
like they sneaky
huh I never trusted quotes out of a magazine
but still dump on fools out my ak47 magazine
with yo head guilltione
for tryna intervene my cream
got trusted killaz on my team
from eses from Diego to the bay
black nation Jamaican to Haitan
we ain't fakin
when we rob
we come hungry as wolve packs
counting paperstacks
and eradicate wacks
givin death the ultimate thirst
cuz it's dry
***** I thought u knew when bomb
Betta believe we the first uh


yeAh verse two
just as vicious
so ******* and ya crew
bust on fools
with hallow tips
now I see my favorite color drip
red dot means ya dead
ask Craig
I got flava in ya ear
life in fear with yo family in tears
cuz they know the thugs is here
to set execution
to muthaphukkaz
that thought
they could evade persecution
reducing
the population
one by one
listen to the sounds
of my guns
it goes rat tat tat tat tat tat tat tat tat
now ya body fat
but back
to this fiend hustle
money I'm talking
so **** the struggle
since I was bornghetto
I'll die ghetto
and when they bury me
don't throw rose peddles
just hold up the pistols
and fire shots in the air
like ya don't care true playa he'll yeah
I'm brutal as ****
to those pushing luck
don't get struck
by my fiery tongue
once I speak
brains get hung
*** kicks more than Chung
Li with speed of Bruce Lee
Y'all can't  see me
Naw but you'll sure as hell feel me
like spirits running in the late night
blurring yo sight
I sense the fear in yo heart *****
sweats tears getting bigger
am I there
or is it just a shadow glare?
I'm evil as they come
so bow down
when ya see the Don
black Al Capone
with a mansion of my own
soon to transform
all pen ****** home
built for the war zone
so I ain't scared to die
shoot me but ya better make sure I die
cuz if not I'll be planning yo burial plot
watch for my live shots from my glock
it don't stop even when I'm gone
still reigning as champions
fire blazin sky grazzin
hell raising
in the streets
coming after crooked *** police
what's worse ?
when we drive up in a black hearse
betta believe morgues makin money why ?
cuz we bomb firrsttt
MyIner Agony May 2017
Sweet with his eyes
**** with his body
Tat my 'Gummybear'
Cuddles me with care
And kisses me with Love
Tat my 'Snuggle Wuggles'
Hugs me with protection
Makes me laugh
Tat my 'Sweets'
Melts me with his smile
holds me within his heart
Tat my 'NukaNuka'
Swaddles me with his careful thoughts
Whispers me calm with his voice
Tat my 'Austin'
And I love my 'Austin'
Gary Kline Dec 2013
On the corner of 8th and Fleet
A man plays a drum with a funky beat
He uses two thigh bones as sticks in his hands
And aspires to play in the coolest bands.

He beats on a drum made of flesh and bone
And boy, let me tell you, I swear it moans
It cries out to other goblins and ghouls
And pleases the zombies leaving their schools.

This man is a mummy, no pun intended
Through all of his bindings he smiles so splendid
And plays until morning without any sleep
And he never seems to miss a beat.

Rad-a-tat-tat-rada-tat-rada-tat
The coolings of music and things such as that
Then out of the blue walked a single vampire
“You, my good pharaoh, are up for hire.”

He picked up his drum and his sticks and his hope
And followed the man to a bar called The Rope
And walked into chaos and fire and soul
Except for the dull and dumb-witted trolls

“Get on that stage and give us a beat
On top of all this, I'll give you a treat.
Instead of this run down and ***** old drum
Sit down to MY drum set and have some fun!”

The mummy was shocked and slightly unrest
But he promised and hoped that he'd do his best
He got on the stage and the lights came down
And he thought, with his talent, he'd go to town.

Rab-a-dab-y-splat-da-boom
All he could see was his certain doom
The crowd was mad, a troll threw a bottle
The mummy high-tailed it out at full-throttle



What was he thinking, he abandoned his heart
And lost his drum made with his own body parts
And alone he was, no hope and no drive
He had to find something more fun to survive.

He tried to become a family physician
But he knew this wasn't the right position
He refused and argued he'd never give up...
His bandages for anyone's nasty cuts.

He joined the circus for almost a day
But again, he knew, this wasn't the way
They unbound his bindings but he never spoke
Until they used him as the tight-rope.

So alone he walked, bitter and sour
Back to his home in the Haunted Tower
The town turned gray from the lack of spice
With nothing to do this would have to suffice.

“Poor drumming mummy, he offered such joy
When he banged and played on his favorite toy.”
“If only I knew where this mummy would be
I'd give him my bones and my flesh for free!”

Surprisingly this conversation transpired
Outside the place that the mummy retired
He heard everything that was said by the man
And he carefully formulated a plan.

He distracted the other and grabbed a big knife
He decided he'd end this wise man's life
He crept up behind him and whispered a, “Thank you
I hope you don't mind 'cause I'm going to shank you.”

The knife plunged deep with a raging fire
And to his surprise he just killed that vampire!
He laughed with a howl that scared the beast
That was running away down the street.



“Irony tastes like the finest wine.”
The mummy had very little time
He carved up the vamp and took what he needed
And to the heavens he calmly pleaded.

“My torment has turned me completely numb
But I promise I'll make a better drum!”
It only took minutes and was finally done
When, behind the horizon, fell the sun.

He set-up his station at his usual spot
Right next to an empty parking lot
He closed his eyes and picked up his sticks
And pleased the masses with his tricks.

The sound was as cold as the soulless vampire
But raged with a hot and terrible fire
Everyone cheered and screamed and howled
The mummy has bared a magnificent child

“Your drum, however, seems not the same
Does this new drum even have a name?”
“You better believe it,” said the pharaoh
“I think I'll call it the Ugly Sparrow.”

And with that he played for days and days
And played the music the people crazed
And forever and more he sat with his thought
And never again left this spot.

He turned down all offers and turned away work
And people called him a mindless ****
“That's just the thing, to have all the fun
You can't have a brain while playing the drums.”
James M Vines Nov 2015
Thundering, thundering, rat a tat rat a tat, they beat fiercely. Stirring the heart to join the cause. Head long into the fire, forward into the breach. Brandish the sword into another persons face. Lighting races across the sky, echo's and flashes from the distance as death rains down. Blood pools at the feet of a comrade who friends lies in pieces and the rat a tat rat a tat tat of the drums of war still beat.
spysgrandson Oct 2012
Aunt Gracie took me there
for a philly and five cent cee-gar
old enough to fight,
old enough to puff on that stogie
she said
(and not much more)
I spun my stool like I was on a carnival ride
(had only one beer with Uncle Lon, but your first beer is the best)
and Gracie looked at me
like I was still the kid
who broke her basement window
with a bad pitch
when I was ten
yeah, I was, still that boy
seven years later
in that glass box of light
humming in the concrete night
big round Gracie smilin’ at me,
looking like she was gonna cry
she had signed those papers
lied with that pen
making me old enough to be a killer
and smoke that cigar, I suppose
the couple eating eggs and bacon
asked if I was shipping out
six AM, yes sir
the woman smiled like Gracie
the man nodded his head, said
**** a *** for me
sure thing, sure thing
me thinking killing one of them
would let me live,
forever,
forever, and wouldn’t be any different
from playin’ God with bee-bees and birds
which I had done a time or two
with my Daisy
cook put my philly in front of me
his eyes locked on the counter
like someone condemned
to never hold his head up high
and trapped in that diner
forever,
forever feeding
me and other nighthawks
who come to this place
the last space of light
in the hungry night
thanks for the sandwich, I said
he said that’s free
but the man eatin’ eggs
said it’s on me
cook didn’t look at the man
went to cleaning some pan
was then I noticed he limped
bad
I asked how he got hurt
he kept his eyes on his sink
said, it was a long time
before this night
were you born that way?
nobody born this way son
Gracie’s elbow nudged mine
but sixteen and full of all
of one beer, I was gonna keep askin’
how--
it was a long time
before this night
I know, but how--
guess you’ll know
soon enough
we were
clawing our way
from a French trench
filled with gas and gasps
of boys with your face
too dead to cry, too dead to scream
when those machine gunners cut loose
what I got was some good luck
and one of those big rounds
in my knee
Gracie’s elbow moved away
she put her hand on my leg
(my hand was on my philly, limp and still)
you got shot by the Krauts in the Great War?
he didn’t say anymore
and I didn’t eat my meal
 
Gracie was good to me,
I know she wrote all the time
but we didn’t always get our mail
on those big ships, many men
would leave their suppers on the floor
in all that stink of seasick
they taught me to play cards
told me jokes, gave me smokes
Lucky Strikes
we were going to some place
with a funny sounding name
Ee-wa Gee-ma, Ee-wa Gee-ma
at night, when I would look
at the black bottom of the bunk above me
I would see
someplace green, Ee-wa, sunny, Gee-ma
someplace with curling trees
and birds for my daisy to shoot at
other nights, in that dark,
in that stale stink of tobacco and puke
I would see the humming light
of the diner that night, wishing
I had eaten that philly sandwich
and smoked that cigar
(which I left by the plate)
I would think of Gracie
and how she begged me
to confess my sins
(to the recruiting sergeant)
to come back
safe, whole, she said
(but I didn’t know what whole meant)
after that, I heard only the voices of men
some barking orders and commands
others whimpering,
whispering
in the same dark
ship of steel
 
 
when I saw the grey rocks
and flak-filled sky, and heard
the swoosh of surf
and the thunder
of our ships’ guns
and some rat-tat-tat
from the invisible holes
I knew I knew,
nothing yet of hell
 
Happy, we called him
was dead
all nineteen years of him
on that **** hole of beach
his guts strewn across the sand
(his life story I guess)
making their peace with *****
and the red and black blood
of other boys and men
who played cards
and flipped open their Zippos
to light my smokes
told me jokes
and laced their boots with me
that very morning
 
by the time
the ramp fell
I spotted Happy
my stinging eyes stuck
to his shredded belly
we, all of us, fell forward
into the shallow Pacific
ran, with all our gear clanging
to dunes high enough to hide
to hide,
but only long enough
to catch our breath
and smell cordite, fear-sweat,
and burned flesh
we did not take time to gag
over the dunes we went
told to make it to a rock
some twenty of us
to a rock no bigger than Lon’s ‘36 coupe
by the time we hid behind the rock
only eight of us hunched there
the others were where?
didn’t know, didn’t care
I had my piece of rock
rounds kept poppin’ off
the other side
from all those invisible holes
filled with slant eyed demons
my ears were ringing
when I heard the corporal say
start putting fire on that hole
what hole, what hole, what hole
the words were stuck somewhere
deep inside, not in my throat
but they were there
trying to ask him where
what hole? what hole
(I thought for a moment about Gracie and coming back whole?)
the corporal, OK, I forgot his **** name
he wasn’t in my platoon
he said put some fire on that hole
one more time
but then when he got up to shoot his M-1
something made his helmet fly off
and most of him went to the ground
the part that didn’t go out the back of his head
Tommy grabbed my arm
(Tommy taught me that four of a kind beats a full house)
and said something
and said it again
over there, over there
OVER THERE
when I looked where he was looking
I saw them, one with a tan helmet,
the other with a shiny black head of hair
Tommy was trying to point his M-1
at those **** who were firing
their 92 machine gun
at those boys on the beach
I pointed my M-1 at them too
but my hands were shaking too bad to aim
Tommy aimed I think
and we both kept shootin’ at those ****
who finally just looked like they went to sleep
but they never woke up
but neither did the other six boys
who were hiding behind that rock with us
because as soon as Tommy and me
started shootin’ at those ****,
they turned that 92 at us
but all those boys were in front of us
pressed so tight against that stingy rock
they couldn’t breathe
or move
even enough
to get their M-1 carbines
turned
in the right direction
so when those **** turned that 92
on the bunch of us
Tommy and I were in the right place
behind six poor boys
who couldn’t move
and got their young bodies
peppered with every round
that come from the hot barrel
of that *** 92 machine gun
once those two *** boys were asleep
I felt something warm on my arm
it was blood from Hector’s face
but Hector didn’t have a face left
part of it was on my sleeve
I think
but I didn’t look
Hector was in my squad
and he wore a Saint Christopher
to keep him safe
Hector didn’t lose all his head
like I heard Saint Christopher did
but most of it
and if that pendant
and all his mama’s prayers
didn’t keep him safe
I guess nothing could
 
I don’t remember when
I was able to sleep
through a whole night
without wakin’ up
thinking about
Hector, the corporal
and the other five boys
who died right there
behind the rock
there were a million other rocks
where boys
“went to sleep”
only they didn’t wake up
feeling Hector’s warm blood
on their arms
shivering
before it even got cold,
dry, and black
 
Gracie told me
the diner closed
she didn’t know why
but now
when I can’t sleep
and walk the pavement
in the middle of the city night
I go to that dark corner cafe
looking for the buzzing light
I want my cigar I did not smoke
and once again hear the words
the limping man spoke
I don’t have any more questions
he won’t want to answer
but if I did
they might be stuck
down inside
not in my throat
but deeper
where things churn
but don’t ever get seen or heard
I do wonder
if those other boys
at the rock,
and those other rocks,
all those other rocks
are taking these lonely late night walks
or if they had talked
with a limping man
who fed them for free
who thought he was lucky
and spoke words
no young eager bird killers
could yet understand
Nighthawks refers to a 1942 Edward Hopper painting of a corner diner and was the inspiration for the first and last stanzas
JL Dec 2011
Oh yes I fully understand
The sounds of this world are good and bad
Good and bad
Good and bad
Nothing like the sound of a good rhyme
A chime
A dime
The sound of a kiss
THE LOUDER THE BETTER I ALWAYS SAY
The sound of a forest
Sleepily
The branches scrape and scratch
Ratta tat tatting on the window
I love to hear the ones I love
Say I love you too
But  bad sounds are just as bad
A breaking bottle of good *****
A child crying in a store
A branch
Ratta tat tatting on my window at night
A car crash
A crying girl
Or your parents fighting
CRACK BANG SLASH KURRANG BOOM RING A DING DING
So I guess  to put it all into a rhyming couplet

If a sound is bad I hates it
If it’s good I loves it
David R Jun 2021
rat-a-tat-tat, the metal annihilator
taught our ears its foreign tongue,
in the hands of violator
takka takka's sung

sowing death and violation
hungry for the mutilation
of a child, of a nation,
brat-a-tat spells termination

it was the third primordial sinning,
first was greed, then came envy,
as long as greed 'n envy's winning,
third is sure to make his entry

bloodshed with green mama, jealousy,
goaded by lust, spouse, father, king,
as one, begetters with their progeny,
takka takka sing

altogether, takka takka takka,
baby, child, mamma 'n pappa,
in the name of Phi Theta Kappa
takka takka sing
progeny
BLT's Merriam-Webster Word of The Day Challenge

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