first memories? my great-grandfather wanted me to play the piano... my grandfather? he expected me to become a hyena of the graveyard; concerning the the former? my piano became a keyboard, or the latter, i was called jesus by a death death girl i tried to put headphones, i was call the tenth of memory of humanity's worth memory... i was called the hunchback angel, i was called the death of death.... i have many names... i crave these associations, once walking in the street i was called death, might i breathe as silently as a shadow in the night?

p'tah p'tah p'tah,
     p'tah p'tah p'tah...
i guess that translates
at p'ah-tay-tinker-toe:
p'tah p'tah p'tah,
p'tah p'tah p'tah, ***** toe.

p'tay p'tay p'tay p'tay,
twinkle twinkle whimper star...
p'tay  p'tay  p'tay
   papa(h) to, tato
             this, my father,
               *to, tato,
    this, my father...
                              am i so cruel?
father, i wish
to be more cruel than
the question attempts to answer...
the only inhibitions
       i have are merely
   thought biases....
                    let your deeds
        come as you sought deeds
of abel's conversation,
   but let mine, come within the
groundwork of cain's ambitions
(disregarded)....
                  peer into my eyes
                    when i peer into
      the night, wearing sunglasses...
the last and the the lost remnant light...
what of the cradle,
            but of the gained number of
scientific peers....
                  rock-ah-baby-rock...
          who said anything of
allowing an object, the subject of
          questioning a capacity of endurance?
who if not non-synthetic could
ask that question within the cricus-act
of performing a sadistic act?
                    only a non-synthetic creature
could perform a circus act
   of sadistic proportions...
    having no gratifying suggestion what
the symbiosis of life-and-death are...
zombified humanoids, in excess scientific,
      with the death of god,
     comes the birth of the dietitian;
                           the true pathos awakens:
a breath, lost in skin.

At sa pagkagat ng dilim
Kasabay ng pamamaalam ng araw sa'tin
Mahihimlay ko sa sulok ng apat na dingding
Huhubarin ang mga ngiti, ipapahinga ang bibig at ibababa ang hinlalaki kong kanina pa nangangawit
Sa kapapaalala sa mundo na ayos lang
Na makakatagal pa ko ng kahit sampung minuto

Sampung minuto---
Ito lang ang kailangan para tuluyan nang tapusin ang sinimulang kwento natin
At sampung minuto para dapuan ka nila ng tingin at sabihin sa'king
Kailangan na kitang talikuran
Ngunit di na ko inabot ng sampung minuto pa para pakingga't tupdin sila
Dahil sampung segundo lang---
Isa, dalawa, bitaw na, bitaw
Lima, anim, ayoko pa, ayoko pero
Siyam, sampu...ay nagawa na kitang bitawan
Ang sabi kasi ni nanay ay di ka nararapat para sa'kin
Sabi ni tatay pag-aaral ko muna ang atupagin
Ang sabi nila ay dapat ko silang sundin
Ang mga bumuhay at nag-aruga sa akin ay dapat na lagi kong susundin

Huwag mo nang gawin yan, ito ang mas bigyan **** pansin
Di yan makabubuti para sa'yo, bat di mo na lang tularan ang kapatid mo
Ang lalaki dapat ay matikas
Ang tanga tanga mo, wala kang mararating diyan
Kahit sino kayang makagawa ng ganyan, magsundalo ka na lang
Dinaig ka pa ng nakababata sa'yo?
Dapat pareho kayong tinitingala ng tao

Kaya't binigo ko ang nag-iisa kong pag-ibig at sumuong sa digmaang di ko kailanmang naisip
Dahil dapat lagi pa ring susundin ang mga bumuhay at nag-aruga sa'kin, mga bumuhay at nag-aruga sa'kin dapat kong sundin, ang sa'kin ay nag-aruga't bumuhay lagi pa ring susundin
Nay, yakapin mo ko't pahupain ang hapdi
Kaya, Tay, tapikin mo ko sa balikat at sabihin **** tama ang ginawa kong pagtupad sa pangarap mo
Dahil tapos na tapos na ko
Pagod na pagod na ko
Sa panonood sa pagkislap ng mga mata ni bunso
Mga kutikutitap na di mapapasakin dahil ang mga mata ko'y namumugto
Mga matang naniningkit na katatanaw sa sarili kong mga pangarap
Dahil ng mg paa ko'y habol ang bawat dikta't kagustuhan niyo

Sawa na kong pilit pantayan si bunso
Dahil kahit anong gawin ko'y di bubukal sa'kin ang kaligayahan
Di tulad niyang may malayang kinabukasan
Ako'y may busal ang bibig, may taling mga kamay, nakakulong sa ekspektasyon ng sarili kong mga magulang

Pagod na ko, ayoko na
Ayoko nang marinig ang "Tingnan mo siya,buti pa siya, mas magaling pa siya..."
Hindi ako binigay sa inyo para ikumpara niyo sa isa niyo pang anak at sa anak ng iba na hinihiling niyong meron din kayo

Gusto ko lang naman marinig na may tinama ako kahit papano, kahit kapiranggot
Gusto kong marinig ang "Salamat" at "Mahal kita" at "Ipinagmamalaki kita" dahil tapos na tapos na ko
Pagod na pagod na kong
Habulin ang liwanag ng talang matagal nang namatay sa kalawakan
Kaya Nay, Tay
Ako po muna
Ako naman ngayon...

Liturgy in Time of War

I will go to the altar of God
To God who gives joy to my youth

ENTRANCE ANTIPHON

The dawn (evening) is coming, another hot, filthy, wet dawn (evening).  Let us arise, soaked in sweat, exhausted, to speak with sour, saliva-caked mouths, to meet the deaths of this day (night).

GREETING

In the name of Peace in Our Time,
For the Hearts and Minds of The People,
For the Land of the Big PX
For round eye and white (black) (brown) thigh,
I greet you, brothers.

PENITENTIAL RITE

All:

I confess to almighty God
And to you my brothers
That I have sinned through my fault
In my thoughts and in my words
In what I have done
And in what I have failed to do,
And I ask Blessed Mary…

But how can I ask Her anything now?

My brothers,
Pray for me to…

But how?
Priest: (But there is no priest)

KYRIE

Lord, have mercy
Christ, have mercy
Lord, Lord, have mercy on us now

Have mercy, Lord, on a generation
That sits smugly in college lecture halls
And protests endlessly in coffee shops
The war they hear, see, on T.V., for free
Justice and peace by the semester hour
Like, y’know, peace, love, Amerika sux
Play the guitar, ****, apply to law school

Have mercy on us
Who crouch behind sand bags
And clean our weapons
And protest nothing
And **** in the heat
And die in the hear
And throw ham and lima beans away

GLORIA

Glory to God in the highest
how many bodies yesterday?
And peace to His people on earth
Vietnamese? Or us?
Lord God, heavenly King, almighty God and Father
ham and lima beans?
We worship you, we give you thanks, we praise you for your glory
Doc, I can’t go home to my wife with this clap
Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of the Father
cigarette, canteen cup of instant coffee
Lord God, Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world
******* magazine
Have mercy on us
relief behind the sand bags
You are seated at the right hand of the Father
i rot
Receive our prayer
i want to be clean and dry
For You alone are the Holy One
clean and dry.  just once.
You alone are the Lord
why do they chew that?
You alone are the most high
you mean the betel nut?
Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, in the glory of God the Father
incoming!
Amen


PRAYER

A

Father, you make this day holy.
Let us be thankful for
The many little joys of
This day, for life, for
The chance to worship
You.  In the end, bring
Us to you, so that we
May be cleansed of mud
And sweat and filth and
Guilt, and live with you
In peace forever.

B

Father, just get me through
Another day of this mess.

LITURGY OF THE WORD –

FIRST READING

From the Intensive Care Unit, NSA DaNang

A twilight world
Of neither peace nor battle
And of both

A man world
Embracing life and the grim death
Both

Peering into infected wounds
Night building shiver
Down from the black sky flares float

Broken bodies from the war somewhere
Eyes of a shattered nineteen-year-old Marine
Staring at the door to Yokosuka

PSALM

A Song of Descents

I cast down my eyes
Into the mud
Into the blood
It seems cleaner than death and drugs and casual ***
Drink Coca-Cola

I turned my eyes away from you, O Lord
And made this
Build this
Came to this
Samantha and Darren on Bewitched

Have mercy on…but how can we ask?  How dare we ask?

SECOND READING

Old Man, Viet Nam

Old man, a dog is barking at your heels
Old man, with the tired, weathered face
Are you afraid to turn around and deal
This dog a kick, to put him in his place?

Or is it, old man, that you’re just too tired?
Just too tired to turn and show anger
Just too tired to have your temper fired
Beaten by years of contempt and danger

Where are you going, trudging so slowly?
What are you thinking, behind those tired eyes?

Probably not about ham and lima beans

GOSPEL

In the Cold White Mist

After an all-night run on the river
Our boats arrive in the village at dawn
Dawn is never cold along that rive
Along that steaming, green, hell-hot river
But the mist is cold, the grey-green dawn mist
And after the engines are cut – stillness
Foul brown water laps at the mudding bank
Sloshing softly with fertile, smelly death

In the cold white mist

The boats are secured, and watches posted
We step off the boats and onto wet land
And follow the track into the deep mist
It becomes the street of a little town
A dairy lane along which cows slopped home
And where dogs and chickens and children
      played
Bounded by carefully swept little yards
And little wooden houses with tin roofs

In the cold white mist

But some of the houses are burnt.  The smoke
Still hangs heavily in the whitening mist
The lane is littered with debris.  A lump
Resolves itself into a torn, dead child
Across a smaller lump, a smaller child
Their pup has been flung against the fence, its
Guts early morning breakfast for the morning
      flies
We smoke cigarettes against the death-smells

In the cold white mist

Beneath a farm tractor rots a dead man.
When they – they – had come at sunset
He had hidden there.  And they shot him there
A man with bare feet and work-calloused
      hands
His hair is black; his teeth need cleaning
They shot him beneath the village tractor
His blackening blood clots into the mud
And our lungs choke in the white mist of death

In the cold white mist

White mist.  The path disappears into it
Smoky skeletons of little houses
In which there will be no tea this morning
No breakfasts of hot tea and steaming rice
No old widows to smile in betel-nut
No children to mock-march alongside us
Pointing at our ******* boots, and laughing
At us, for wearing shoes in the summer

In the cold white mist

They are dead and rotting in the white mist
On the edge of the jungle on the edge
Of the world, here along the Vam Co Tay
And the people pour out of their houses
To greet us on the fine summer morning
A corpse across a doorway, another
******-doubled across a window sill
Still another strewn down the garden path

In the cold white mist

The other patrol doubles back to us
And they tell us that the Ruff-Puff outpost
Must have been overrun the night before
He had heard their radioed pleas, and had
Run the river at night to get to them
And the ARVNs had fled through the village
And the VC had stormed in behind them
And it was knife-and-gun-club night in town

In the cold white mist

A little girl is the lone survivor
She looks may six.  Cute, except for the
Bubbling, *******, bayoneted chest wound
We patch her, and tube her, and use suction
Sort of like fixing a bicycle tire
And in the wet, gasping heat take her back
With us downriver, where a charity
Hospital leaves her on the steps to die

In the cold white mist

It will be our turn again tomorrow
Not a one of us died today.  Today.
But a village is gone, burnt and rotting,
Soon to disappear into the jungle
Along the green Cambodian border
Up some obscure river.  Up there.  Somewhere.
A few hundred people.  Their ancestors’ graves
Will fade with them untended, forgotten

In the cold white mist

Radio Hanoi might blame it on us.
But maybe not.  We made our report and
Nobody really noticed; no one cared
The talk is of the VC battalion
And where it has gone, and where it might go –
Maybe into death under an air strike
“And you guys better get in some sack time,”
Says the C.O. as he turns to his maps.

In the cold white mist

HOMILY

I’m scared, and I want to go home.  I don’t care any more about justice or fighting Communism or winning the hearts and minds of the people.  I can’t think about all that right now, because I’m scared, and I want to go home.
I don’t care about truth or loyalty or bravery or honor.  If Miss March were here she wouldn’t get cold, but she sure would get sunburnt.  And in a few days her skin would start rotting.  Then nobody would want to see her in the **** anymore.  
I’m scared, and I want to go home.
Up the Vam Co Tay, everyone is scared, everyone is tired, everyone is sick, everyone could die: sailor, soldier, officer, priest, farmer, fisherman.  Everyone rots in the wet heat.  The skin bubbles and flakes and peels, and is pink again, to bubble and flake and peel again.  
I’m scared, and I want to go home.
I’m Doc.  I’m a scared, stupid kid with an aid bag and a few months’ training.  But I’m Doc.  I’ve got to fake it.  I’ve got to be cool and calm because this other kid with his guts hanging out will probably make it if I don’t ***** up and if the dust-off from Saigon can get out here now.
I have an old dog at home, and my folks write and tell me she sleeps outside my window at night, waiting for me to come home.  Someday we’re going to run and play in the woods and fields again.  She’ll bark and run wide circles, and dare me to catch her.  I will laugh under the autumn leaves.  But now my nights are glaring darkness, fits of sweat-soaked half-sleep, then sirens and falling glares and falling mortars, and then the Godawful racket of all our engines of destruction.  There isn’t any use in all this.
I’m scared, and I want to go home.

And I don’t want any ham and lima beans.

CREED

We believe in the Land of the Big PX
In presidents in suits, and generals,
In makers of economic strategies
We believe in flak jackets and .45s and peace

We believe in swing ships and dust-offs, yes
In the dark, green omnipresent Huey
Eternally begotten of technology
Blades to rotor, windscreen to machine guns
Made, not begotten, one in being with us
Through it all things are transported to us
For us men and our hunger and our hope
It comes down from the skies
By the high power of technology
It was born of the long assembly line

For whose sake are we crucified today?
Who suffers, and who dies and is baggied?
And on the third will arrive back home
To be neatly packaged in stainless steel

But not in ham and lima beans

LITURGY OF THE EUCHARIST

Preparation of the Gifts

Celebrant:

Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation.
Through your goodness we have this cheap Algerian wine to offer,
Fruit of the vine and work of human hands.
It will become anaesthesia for our souls.

People:

Blessed be…we just don’t know

Celebrant:

Pray, brothers, that our sacrifice may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father, to somebody.  Maybe.

People:

May the Lord, or the baggies, accept the sacrifice we offer with
our own burnt hands
For the praise and glory of…of what?
For our good, and the good of all His Church.

PRAYER OVER THE GITS

Little green cans, and I don’t care
Little green cans, and I don’t care
Little green cans, and I don’t care
Air cover’s gone away.

EUCHARISTIC PRAYER

Preface for the Monsoon Season:

Father, all-powerful
And ever-living God,
We do well always and everywhere
To give You thanks
Through Jesus God our Lord
Even with diarrhea
thanks
When the mail doesn’t come
thanks
When we rot
thanks
When the heat ***** at our brains
thanks
When the mud ***** at our boots
thanks
When the horror ***** at our souls
thanks
We’re alive
thanks

SANCTUS

Holy, holy, holy, Lord, God of power and might
The bunkers are full of blood and death.
Hosanna in the mud.  Blessed is he who comes with the mail.  Hosanna in the mud.

EUCHARISTIC PRAYER

The Kien Tuong Province Canon:

A sailor is silhouetted against the dawn
Along a steamy river
Mostly helmet and flak jacket
Above dark plastic gunwales

The sailor has lost his New Testament
But there’s a ******* around somewhere
Naked, willing women –
Miss March wants to be an actress

He also carries an old plastic Rosary
To touch occasionally
While whispering a hurried Hail Mary
He hopes She understands

Those who in bell-bottoms and head-bands
Fight Fascism
In Sociology 201
Will never forgive him

A sailor is silhouetted against the dawn
This day he is to be elevated
His body broken and his blood shed
For you and for all men

OUR FATHER

Our Father, who art in Heaven
this ain’t it
Hallowed be thy name
Thy kingdom come
this ain’t it
On earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day…
not ham and lima beans
And forgive us our trespasses
as we shoot them that trespass against us
And lead us not into ambush
But deliver us from evil

SIGN OF PEACE

Peace on you.

AGNUS DEI

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: have mercy on us.

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: have mercy….

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: grant us peace.

Priest:

(But there is no priest)

People:  

Lord, I am not worthy to receive you,
But only say the word and I shall be killed.

COMMUNION ANTIPHON

They ate, and were not satisfied
They killed, and were not without fear.

PRAYER AFTER COMMUNION

Lord,
If we do not get out of this
Make some sense of it to those who remain
May we go home.  Home.  Or if not,
Take us unto you, in mercy.
Home.  Where you reign, for you are Lord
Forever and ever.  Amen

BLESSING

May you walk on grass that does not explode
May you sleep without rot
Without fear
May you never see or smell ham and lima beans again.
May you live
May you play with puppies
May you find forgetfulness
May you find peace
In the Name of Him who took your death for you

DISMISSAL

This is to certify that____is Honorably Discharged from the____on theday of____.  This certificate is awarded as a testimonial of Honest and Faithful Service.

CLOSING HYMN

Old men, smoking in the sunshine
Exiled outside the doors of life
Old uniforms, old pajamas
The chrome of wheelchairs, shiny, bright

Inside, polished wooden handrails
Line the hot, polished passages
Something to cling to on the way
To the lab, to x-ray, to death

And more old men, shuffling along
In a querulous route-step march
From Normandy, from The Cho-sen,
From the Vam Co Tay, from the deserts,
Past the A.I.D.S. ward and the union signs
On waxed floors to eternity

Portions previous published:

“Closing Hymn” is from “Outpatient Surgery – Veterans’ Hospital,” Juried Award, Houston Poetry Fest 1993

“In the Cold White Mist” is a Juried Award, Houston Poetry Fest 1991

“Old Man, Viet-Nam,” was published in Pulse, Lamar University, 1982

The ******* of embezzled glory staunchly defend their counterfeit stature by defalcating the public trust of industrious societies governed internally by compunction and sabotaged externally by the tempests of acerbic fate met with inclement aleatory convergence. To supply a society with ingenuity without being complaisant or officious with unctuous pleas to the overlords we must fashion a new vogue that taps the bustle of giants and aggrandizes the margins to oversee their own creative destinies with scaffolded arrangements of titanic promise and justifiable fluidity to conquer the blinkered dogmatism of a dissolute chastity to inveterate apocryphal tenets of factitious but unmerited perspectives. Democracy crumbles when the convenience of sensationalism supplants the resolve of those that fossick hidden wealth and promulgate validity instead of undergirding pomp with precarious prevarications of duplicitous omission guarded gingerly by the gatekeepers of a ****** sanity that whitewashes the discussion with invented hobgoblins and purblind catharsis. To defeat simplicity and enshrine byzantine elegance as the paragon for voguish commentary rather than abide by a bowdlerized decorum for appeasing simpletons with divisive balkanization through identity politics we can overcome the impediments to human progress that are engineered to persist because of the inertia of the listless and the stubbornness of doctrinaire politicization and invent vivacity and festivity anew. We need to divorce ourselves from pedestrian quibbles of hero-worship that endanger the vitality of the common discourse because of fastidious pedantic disempowerment that ravages us with debased dreams by underscoring nuisances and tolerable nightmares that emasculate the virulence of the liberated individual and subvert his ambitions to contend with a picaresque world of limitless promise and self-motivated internal wealth.
      The bane of modernity is how chary the world becomes because of fractured histories intersecting with controversial destinies and the antidote to that poisonous self-defeating self-censorship is the audacity of brazen challenges to expurgation through assiduous resourcefulness and delicate diplomacy in wrangling controversies with outspoken courage rather than whispered resentment. Temerity waged in inclement circumstance is justified and curiosity stoked by lambent flames of fulgurant individualism should be fortified to the extent necessary to conquer the feckless spoilsports of unctuous puritanism and institutional obedience. The quacksalvers that blather about inconsequence strand the imagination in a desiccated desert that is ostracized from the palettes of the artistic whim to wield efflorescence rather than squander life in pursuit of perfunctory lucre or tenuous solidarity around banal idealism promised by social justice warriors that forget the biggest war being waged on humanity is on the ingenuity of the common discourse and the liberty to opine about real issues rather than saccharine conventions of emasculation through linguistic imprisonment and epicurean slavery to fashimites who relish the buzzword but never the enlightened audience that scoffs at feeble attempts at cultural commentary like Childish Gambino’s “This is America” music video. This particular artifact is a demonstration of how childishly fickle the plebeian mentality really is, stitching together a bricolage of violence to engineer controversy and serenading it with the most banal music imaginable and exhorting people to herald it as a high artform while inundating the world with unimaginative comic book movies and Star Wars rip-offs because of the lucrative business of formulaic replication. “This is America” should be regarded as a parody of itself because of how hackneyed its design is and how cacophonous it sounds and mocks its audience with lowbrow tactics of adding tinsel to trash and marketing it as the glory of tatterdemalions rather than the refinement of true cinematic achievements that have been relegated because Warhol’s Campbells-Soup-consumerism trumps true belletrist in the public view.
        Cultural watersheds punctuate our history with salient achievements in experimentation, but the formulaic profiteering of buzzword sensationalism and yellow journalism and the ostentatious glorification of promiscuous boasting and fancy cars tantalize the mice to continue playing slot machines rather than penning a novel or doing something promethean. The world scoffs at Trump but ignores the bigger institutional caveats that endanger us much more than a pragmatic albeit unconventional pontificator who is complicit in constructing a false narrative to enslave mindless people to fret about eminence rather than delight themselves in the consequential nuances of established refinement that used to serenade the world with flourish and spectacle. The world kowtows to the crusade against flavor-of-the-week enemies of the liberal-conservative syncretism because it has been conditioned to believe that synthesis is the only logical solution for the polarized worldviews of churlish people that become parvenus not on their merits but on their marketable pitfalls and their public foibles. Peccadillos are more important to people than virtues and this makes society morally bankrupt if we loiter around Astroturf causes that have been infiltrated by corporatism and venal debauchery and acquiesce as disempowered gossip hounds that hunt in packs to find jest in aberration rather than achievement in self-created narratives that defy the stupid purblind boorishness of the mainstream media and its haughty liberalism or the persnickety condemnation of priggish conservative moralities that had an expiration date 50 years ago. Who the **** cares about transgender-touting-gender-fluidity quidnuncs and the snooty obsession with lurid personal endeavors of reputable people that made minor ****** transgressions in a world policed by wide-eyed feminazis that seek to ransack men of their vital virulence to spotlight their unjustifiable oppression. Women are oppressed but the carnal nature of their calumniation and their vindictive powers of persuasion are deployed with such vehement vigilance and such distaste for the majority that the world relegates itself to quibbles of celebrities rather than substantive issues. There is a systemic feminization of society occurring that seeks to demarcate despotic uxorious pleasantries as an incarceration of vocal dissent against supercilious women and their tamed men that slavishly grovel in repudiation of anything prickly.  Men historically have oppressed women but the solution to this quandary isn’t a reverse discrimination where the minority concern is spotlighted as a majoritarian issue that overshadows the disproportionate nature of our society where nominal accreditation is afforded in a non-meritocratic way to absolve people of their carnality and demote the vigorous defense of human liberty as secondary to compromise solutions that appease more people than they offend but simultaneously result in suboptimal conditions that reward arbitrarily coachable people while jettisoning anyone witty enough to be capable of insubordination of a hedonistic epicurean world obsessed with appearance and ravaged by the decadence of formulaic profiteering at the expense of originality and true promethean art that is herculean enough to defy hackneyed tropes and siphon the best elements from a piecemeal world variegated with complexity but stifled by fomented hatred.
The solutions to these problems is to create a watchdog group of artistic critics who become eminent and ubiquitously heard enough to offer creative consultation to the artistic endeavors that we consume and the music that is curated for fastidious ears that crave euphonic originality rather than the banality of easily dovetailed bass-heavy cookie-cutter garbage and the gaudy tactics of talentless rappers whose swagger derives from  the intersection of opportunism and the divestiture of an industry that rewards gloated supercilious epicureanism and meretricious marketability. Am I the only one jaded by second-rate superhero movies that infest the cinemas that borrow from Michael Bay while thrusting pulse-pounding but narratively bankrupt movies down the throats of consumers that might prize the cinematic originality of the heyday of filmmaking? Is it always high art to invent controversy that is witless or half-witted just because it will create buzz? Shouldn’t we condemn the laziness of society in acquiescing to the penury of the modern cultural narrative which belabors the dead horses of racism and sexism ad nauseum? Shouldn’t we fight the war of against inequity through legislation rather than hibernating about scandalous eminence and testy malfeasance?
          Liberty should be championed above all else and we are turning our backs on the future unless we muster the resolve to diminish the sway of the common narrative and aim our spotlight at consequential endeavors rather than the tropes of prosaic and pedestrian bastardization of art and culture. We need to fight artistic laziness which has ravaged our culture and castigate the tactics of wannabee celebrities that use lurid tactics to attract an audience by bedizening themselves with Pyrrhic ostentations and rampant fakery to create more melodrama in a world that needs to be less histrionic. YouTube celebrities swarm us as they get high on ******* and lean-- at our expense-- and vandalize property and convincing nine-year-old’s like Lil Tay to flex her money like it is infinitely renewable in a finite world where all our attention is wasted on artless artifice of less talented people that know how to engineer a ruckus by strutting themselves beyond all decency and selling out to a corporatist nightmare of enslaved convenience. We need to be more vocal about the dissolution of artistic merit and the formulaic repetition of successful formulas that jade us and make us yawn about another retread of a previously successful idea that is milked to the point of cruelty.                                                         ­                       
       Let’s change the narrative and focus on creating true art rather than reacting to the meretricious tinsel of the vogue consensus which is so impotent in its ability to rivet audiences because it has become so notoriously lazy. Fight laziness in art, dismiss your news feeds, be resourceful, seek true happiness rather than find yourself hoodwinked and duped by the idea that Trump is the most important issue or getting caught in thought loops and brooding about sexism and inequality. Let us strive to be egalitarian but within limits that would also appease hominists rather than just the hypertrophy of the leftist narrative that seeks to cage us with the doublespeak of complaisant conformity.  Reject the unctuous charlatans that pretend priggishness when their banausic purpose is barbaric but beguiling to be a lullaby for laggards. We need to fight for the future of civilization rather than hobnob with convenience and loiter around decrying false perpetrators rather than systemic injustices that could otherwise be rectified if enough people fought for it. We can invent a future that is a great festivity serenaded by cultivated artistic refinement and forget about the trifles that divide us. United in ambition and fueled by ingenuity we can defeat artistic laziness and be resourceful with how we decide what is newsworthy. Spurred by the argosy of proactive motivation we can change the world in a substantial way by deciphering the subtext that governs the world. The subtext is everything!

Wee cosy, tranquil Gatehouse Library
Ah come in quite a lot tay see yi,
Tay read yir books and use yir wifi
                An' chat tay Joannie,
Sae noo Ah'm goannie sing yir praises,
                Ah'm pure dead goannie.

Ye're sic' a cultural oasis,
Wan o' ma favourite learnin' places,
Yir books can form the verra basis
                O' Scottish brain power,
Enrichin' minds an' cheeky faces
                O' Scottish wean power.

So let us pray they never close yi
Tay those who would, we will oppose yi.
We'll be the storm an ill wind blows yi
                At sic' a crunch time.
The only closin' we'll allow
                Is Joannie's lunch time.

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                    I­ndochine - An Anniversary of Sorts

On the 26th of October 1970 I returned from 18th months in Viet-Nam and a brief side-trip into Cambodia. I was literally just a boy off the farm when I went, and was still quite young when I wrote the following artless lines, with their conventional allusions, forced rhymes, and usage errors, on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th anniversaries. Perhaps there is one from the 1st anniversary, but I can’t find it. Well, we are all are looking for something most days: a poem, truth, meaning, or some other trifle.


…the war – the frights…the smell of h.e., the horribly smashed men still moving like half-crushed beetles, the…corpses…all this shows rarely and faintly in memory…and often seems to have happened to someone else.

        -C. S. Lewis, “Guns and Good Company,” Surprised by Joy


                                        26 October 1972

The pecans are falling now
Onto the court-house lawn
Geese fly overhead, southbound
Misty dusk and chilly dawn

Two year from Viet-Nam
Two eternities from the Vam Co Tay
Elections now, and speeches
And I guess I’ll have my say

But the finality briefly denied me
Found many another man
And they’re not here for elections
And Autumn on the land

                                            26 October 1973

I sit and smoke my pipe and think
Of things that I have seen
Easter seals and steering wheels
And jungle hot and green

I sit and smoke my pipe and ponder
The imponderable of God and man
The evening star over a flare-lit war
And souls as grains of sand

I sit and smoke my pipe and mourn
For the murdered

Many miles, and three years today
From the muddy, ****** waters
Of the Vam Co Tay

                                         26 October 1974

Many miles
And four years today
From the muddy, ****** waters
Of the Vam Co Tay

All the death-hurt eases
And dreams are quieter now
But the hurting never ceases
And I can’t see when it will, or how

Four Octobers
Four Autumns today
From rain drizzling on the slimy banks
Of the Van Co Tay

“Go and make the world safe for democracy –
Like we did in 1917,” my aged ancestor said
Dear old man, he never lived to know
That sort of thing is dead

Grim memories
Of flare-lit nights and steaming days
Of men dying screaming
On the Vam Co Tay

The finality briefly denied me
Found many another man
And they’re not seeing the wild geese flying
Or Autumn on the land

Many miles
And four years today
From the muddy, ****** waters
Of the Vam Co Tay

I challenged him
burly ******* captain
stubbled beard as coarse as sandpaper
standing there in muggy dusk
arms akimbo,
mama san starched uniform stained with swagger and sweat

two silver captain's bars ******* any of my brilliance or bravado
all he had to do was speaketh the words
“need those maps, head out at 2230 hours”
and that was a death sentence
which was commuted to life
if four decades since has been life

there are not words for the black
of moonless jungle
except nothingness and paralytic fear
and through that lightless, lifeless, abyssness
I crawled, crouched and crept along
sometimes as slowly as the minute hand on my watch

the silence, the silence, the silence
became my splintered cross
to carry to my place of crucifixion
at my Calvary Hill behind barbed wire, blue lead barrels and
fearful eyes

silence, silence, silence, black wordlessness
black soundlessness
punctuated by shallow precious breaths
and imagined slant-eyed demons
waiting behind each berm
to turn the timeless night into timelessness
of more black

should I chamber a round?
and follow its solitary sound
into the silent holy night
and shatter my own fragile fright?
would that end this knowing without knowing?
and answer the question,
“is this fear worse than the answer?”
since questions have answers but answers have nothing
the nothing of which I was sure I would become a part
in the silence, the silence, the silence
of the black canopied jungle
in Tay Ninh Province
in 1967

where I was sentenced to death but allowed to live
in silent, black wordlessness
sentenced to live
to wonder, after all these years of shivering fright and flickering light
did the captain become a human?
And was I really allowed to live?

23rd January.
Today’s your birthday -

Twenty years of Tay,
You started off so far away,
In South Africa your life was formed,
And now it’s been completely transformed.

I’m thinking of you ten years ago,
Moving away from your place called home,
Feeling how scared you must have felt,
But sure, look at the hand you've been dealt...

You've traveled the world with your eyes open wide,
Which I’m so happy to have been by your side,
Twenty years old now no longer a teen,
What a beautiful woman nothing less than a queen.

Away you go again for your next exciting step,
Responsibilities, a house, oh and maybe some debt ,
You’ll have the best time I know it’s for sure,
And if you ever need me I’ll be at your door.

Never forget the memories you hold,
Because they are the things that make us happy and bold,
Have strength to endure whatever life throws,
You’re destined for great things wherever it goes,

Take today to celebrate growing wise,
With cake, presents, laughter and surprise,
Close your eyes for your birthday wish,
And I’ll be sending you a birthday kiss.

Flit To Me, My Pretty
or Dance Of Kinglet

Sing, “tay-tay-tay,” all the day
carry on in morning sun
bouncing on sandy stream banks
Kinglet friend of mine
Your yellow crown, breast of cotton down
O be lost daydreams so fine

This is what twitting really is
Euphoria found in flash
discerning your small “tay”-ing song
milkweed fluff you find
act as if you are stealing, no crime here
milkweed glad; spread seed as kind

Wash yourself amidst these puddles
preen yourself for mating
You’ve made a nest for nothing other
how sweet your callers come
rock a vantage point of eternity
from here we see all succumb

This rock and I

In the chaos of the city, City!
Where the wolven on the prowl,
Hot legs and looking pretty, leather skirt and upturned scowl,
You know it won’t discourage ditty, it only raises lustful howls,
In the chaos of the city, (pause)…a hunter’s stalking you now-ow-ow! (nowel)

In the chaos of the city, City!
Out at night you wanna dance, (day-ance)
To the animals you’re pretty, in those heels with that prance, (pray-ance)
In the chaos of the city, wolves are out to bed you down, (day-oun)
In the chaos of the city, tonight it’s *** out on the town, (tay-oun)

In the chaos of the city! City!
While trailing scent all a-round, (a-ray-ound)
Curvy-body, lookin’ at-cha (pause)… my teeth glistening, open mouth, (may-outh)
They’re not asking for much yeah, won’t be saying baby please,
Wolves you know they’re gonna hunt-cha, strutting past Ole’ factories,
Drivin’ n’ dancing yah, till you’re exhausted on your knees,

In the chaos of the city, City!
Out at night you wanna dance, (day-ance)

To the animals you’re pretty, Pretty!
In your heels they watch you prance, (pray-ance)

In the chaos of the city, City!
Wolves are out to bed you down, (day-oun)

In the chaos of the city, City!
Tonight it’s *** out in the town, (tay-oun)

In the chaos of the city, City!
In the chaos of the city,

In the chaos of the city, City!
Feel his claws up on you now…

Ooh-Ooh, …In the chaos of the city,
In the chaos of the city,
In the chaos of the city,
In the chaos of the city…

Instagram

Anak: Tay, ano po iyong ingles ng gramo?
Tatay: Gram, anak.
Anak: E 'yong kilogramo po?
Tatay: Kilogram, anak.
Anak: May relasyon po ba ang gramo sa kilogram?
Nanay: anak ng kilogram ang gramo, anak.
Anak: Aaah! Ganun po ba? E 'yong tinatawag na instagram po?
Nanay: Madali lang iyan, anak. Ang tanong mo ba ay kung magkadugo sila?
Anak: Tumango ang anak.
Nanay: Ang instagram ay lolo ng gramo at tatay ng kilogramo.
Tatay: Umalis ka nga sa harapan ng anak mo. Na-bo-bobo ako sa iyo e. Dinadamay mo pa anak mo.

Dili na mapugngan ang gugma
dughan nato wa na nag duha-duha
gikalimtan na ang kaugalingon
andam ihatag ang tanan sa imo

Basta naay ikaw ug ako

Ang selos dili gyud mapugngan
Bisag walay man tay hinungdan
oh Pagsabot raman ang kinahanglan
Aron atong gugma way katapusan

Basta naay ikaw ug ako

Lantaw na makalanay
Nangurog sa kalipay
Dugay ko ng gihandom
nga ikaw akong maangkon

(Ayaw unta paasaha
Kining akong gugma
Kanunay gahandom
Bisag way pag laom)

Basta naay ikaw ug ako
(Lantaw na makalanay
Nangurog sa kalipay)

Basta naay ikaw ug ako
(Dugay ko ng gihandom
basta ikaw maangkon)

A mother who listens to soft classical Mozart
Reclined against the soft, worn pillow from ages
slender fingers easily flicking through a catalog,
while a father is hunched over
in the cold den, racked with coughs and pains, trembling fingers trying to hold on to the metallic foil of medicine.
And a child, barely 4
playing with stuffed animals on the couch
a victim of Tay Sach

A car, and a windowpane, that have both seen too much,
ragged advertisements fluttering in the wind,
advertising a movie coming out yesterday,
A burger shop ad that had already long closed,
and deals long gone.
The downtown urban forest, turned into a junkyard
full of scraps of rusted silver and infected bronze.

A bystander who can do nothing but laugh
as a boy's nose gets crushed in,
a ****** lip,
A swollen, purple eye
A boy of 18
who is still waiting for her somewhere
to see her colored smile
and eyes of glass
bitter and emotionless, glazed over with sterling silver,
who has a family, siblings,
who is now turned into nothing but a ragged playtoy for the sick, sick entertainment of others

A broken air conditioner that can do nothing but clack clack clack over and over again, metal blades spinning vainly for nothing,
while a broken family is screaming in the other room,
and a child is crying, hands to his face, covering his eyes
as a father hits his wife, knocks her against the sharp, tiled kitchen counter,
and the screaming intensifies, accompied by the hurtful insults that are thrown at each other-by the father and the teen.
and still the air conditioner goes on and on
oblivious to nothing.

A world that is so breathtaking and cruel at the same time
where little, insignificant families are torn apart without a second thought,
where the 'strong' prey on the 'weak'
Where the most beautiful sprawling cities turn into rejected second handers just because of a rumor
And,
A mother who listens to soft classical Mozart
Reclined against the soft, worn pillow from ages, ages ago
full of tears and stiches  
slender fingers easily flicking through a catalog, searching for the most effective medicine, eyes flickering in worry
while a father is hunched over
in the cold den because
he doesn't want to risk spreading his sickness to anyone else
racked with coughs and pains, trembling fingers trying to hold on to the metallic foil of medicine.
Working hard to support his family because the economy is going down again
And a child, barely 4
playing with stuffed animals on the couch
a victim of Tay Sach,
dead at 6.

See the various Poems the scene of which is laid upon
      the banks of the Yarrow; in particular, the exquisite
      Ballad of Hamilton beginning—

          Busk ye, busk ye, my bonny, bonny Bride,
          Busk ye, busk ye, my winsome Marrow!

From Stirling castle we had seen
The mazy Forth unravelled;
Had trod the banks of Clyde, and Tay,
And with the Tweed had travelled;
And when we came to Clovenford,
Then said my “winsome Marrow,”
“Whate’er betide, we’ll turn aside,
And see the Braes of Yarrow.”

“Let Yarrow folk, frae Selkirk town,
Who have been buying, selling,
Go back to Yarrow, ’tis their own;
Each maiden to her dwelling!
On Yarrow’s banks let her herons feed,
Hares couch, and rabbits burrow!
But we will downward with the Tweed
Nor turn aside to Yarrow.

“There’s Galla Water, Leader Haughs,
Both lying right before us;
And Dryborough, where with chiming Tweed
The lintwhites sing in chorus;
There’s pleasant Tiviot-dale, a land
Made blithe with plough and harrow:
Why throw away a needful day
To go in search of Yarrow?

“What’s Yarrow but a river bare,
That glides the dark hills under?
There are a thousand such elsewhere
As worthy of your wonder.”
—Strange words they seemed of slight and scorn;
My True-love sighed for sorrow;
And looked me in the face, to think
I thus could speak of Yarrow!

“Oh! green,” said I, “are Yarrow’s holms,
And sweet is Yarrow flowing!
Fair hangs the apple frae the rock,
But we will leave it growing.
O’er hilly path, and open Strath,
We’ll wander Scotland thorough;
But, though so near, we will not turn
Into the dale of Yarrow.

“Let beeves and home-bred kine partake
The sweets of Burn-mill meadow,
The swan on still St. Mary’s Lake
Float double, swan and shadow!
We will not see them; will not go,
To-day, nor yet to-morrow;
Enough if in our hearts we know
There’s such a place as Yarrow.

“Be Yarrow stream unseen, unknown!
It must, or we shall rue it:
We have a vision of our own;
Ah! why should we undo it?
The treasured dreams of times long past,
We’ll keep them, winsome Marrow!
For when we’er there, although ’tis fair,
’Twill be another Yarrow!

“If Care with freezing years should come,
And wandering seem but folly,—
Should we be loth to stir from home,
And yet be melancholy;
Should life be dull, and spirits low,
’Twill soothe us in our sorrow,
That earth has something yet to show,
The bonny holms of Yarrow!”

What is the color blue?
Is it a human emotion?
Or is it just another
Meaningless color?
My entire life
Could be reduced
To an empty color
That never met much to you

And what is a word?
Is it a creature?
Or is it an icon
Left to interpretation?
Oblingattoh-tay
What the hell did I just say?
When you said you loved me
What the hell did that even mean?

Everyone
Is singing the same song
And I can't sing along anymore
I can't join in
This perfect unison
Of broken voices
In monotone
Yeah, I need more
Than your empty, practiced words
That we all have heard
Before and Again

https://spencercarlson.bandcamp.com/track/blue

this girls got it down
when she stomps on the ground
the whole town
looks around
"say what"
what
what
what
(no thanks, macklemore)
when she flips her hair,
and it's in dee air
the boys all go
"heyyoo"
and shout the whole dayyo
caz look here allison
i know you like peanut butter cookies
and your percy jackson bookies
and singin' josh groban
like (you gotta be jokin')
really girl,
you think you got it goin'!
you inspired me
and to climb up in this tree
and write this poem
just so i could show em
that i can take it
as well as dish it
and girl
you the best roommate
you got the best traits
even though you keep me up
caz you be watching 30 rock
and wearing my fav pair of socks
but that okay
caz with you girl, every day
is a par-tay

Promised myself
I wouldn't let you
Become just words on a page
Guess that this means
You went and broke my heart
Better Jot down all you've done
Let you know what I've become
You went away for like five days
Then you never replied to me again?
So this is what the games become
Ignoring me, is that how you treat everyone?

Better sell this
To Tay Swift
Make sure that it
Becomes number one hit
Won't slit
(Won't slit)
My wrists
(My wrists)
Over a selfish *****
Really thought that you
were better than this
Yeah better than this

Excuse me miss
Why couldn't you give
Me just a small hint
Of what it was you wanted
Why'd I have to guess
Make me go jumping
through all these hoops
Just for you
I changed my whole life for you
Now can't even get a word out of you
Who the **** was I kidding?
What the hell was I thinking?
Thinking somebody like you
Could ever like somebody like me
But what hurts the most
is that you made me believe
You trusted me,
My heart has been crushed
And it hurts so much
Never wanted my love

Better sell this
To Tay Swift
Make sure that it
Becomes number one hit
Won't slit
(Won't slit)
My wrists
(My wrists)
Over a selfish *****
Really thought that you
were better than this
Yeah better than this

Message after message
Call after call
Check my phone
Still no reply,
Lay awake, all night
Wondering where and how you are
Making all these wishes on stars
Got me praying that you're okay
Then I find out,
you never planned
To talk to me again
Didn't trust me enough
To tell me your real name
Guess everything you felt
Guess everything you said
Was all fake, was it all fake
Can't tell what is make believe
And what is real
And in my confusion
Can't find a conclusion
No, there's just no solution

Better sell this
To Tay Swift
Make sure that it
Becomes number one hit
Won't slit
(Won't slit)
My wrists
(My wrists)
Over a selfish *****
Really thought that you
were better than this
Yeah better than this

©2017 Written By Benji James

i can't imagine a better maxim for a marriage:

   when both of you are young...
and... instead of being
these "star-crossed lovers" -

with a rubric
                  of the thwart(ing)...

to marry: when both are still in love with life...

                    from a nation-state into
the ***** of a diaspora...

what a fine word...
   the mass-influx of hyping around
the otherwise, fake:

       migrant workers...
like the current argument for
british sovereignty:
we will not have any of the bureaucracy
from Brussels...
but, we, will! have...
those romanian fruit & veg pickers!

it's hardly a joke:
more like a choke...
                    what's the difference between...
leaving one part of the country
for another: part of the same country...
and then... being daring enough...
to leave the country: thoroughly...
and have to learn a new language?

dual-citizenship...
go back? stay here?
hmm... i'm not really fond of speaking
or writing in ******...
the germans dissolved...
the russians too: dissolved...
i'm pretty sure that language can
remain intact... as it is...
under the law & justice party...
once they focus on the breeders
with tax-free incentives...

Chicago! what a fine diaspora hub
for the ****** "expatriates"...
good thing i never made it to
h'america: in stripes...

the friends of my youth...
most of then? crimminals...
        the nicknames we had for each
other:
i remember being taunted as being
an... "angol"... because my father wasn't
their father and wasn't part
of laying down the foundations
of "bones" for the dockland light railway...

i left a nation: still in its infancy...
and to its infancy i will drink!
but as a language: not a people...
not a geographic location...
a metaphysical manifestation:
if the word be a faustian signature...
yes, my lord... i see the pinching
itch of the natives squandering it...
like it should not have been...
a frederick hohenstaufen II experiment
in a nunnery on Sicily...
mute children... raised by nuns who didn't
speak: pretending...
to see... what language was genesis primo!

my allegiance is to the tongue...
it might allude to the fife and drums...
but dealing with the rascal
who deems...
that god save the queen be treated
with irreverence...
i'm not as daft and yobbish to glare
with a hydra giving birth to an extension
of its neck-load girth...

give me! the british grenadiers' fife & drum...
and i'll show you le marseillaise!
i have long ago pledge my allegience
to the tongue...
              
because? well... to be honest...
under all the supression from the...
(a) herr meisterstuck:
         the day:
        
        the prussians... "forgot"...
they were jumbled up with the lithuanians
as the last pagans of europe...
and then they decided: whatever it
was that they decided upon...

i hear some russian... i hear a down syndrome
person talk...
it's all lovely and sing-along...
but it's hardly by strict obligation
to the latin script... is it?
i have to nibble at pitty-worth jokes
to aid my...

diaspora: involuntary mass dispersion
of a population from its indigenous territories...
last time i checked...
i was born into a city famously known
for its practice in metallurgy...
i was the never-to-be grandson
of Die Krupp ambitions!
    i would leave my hometown and...
well... there was Warsaw...
or the... brain-drain train "elsewhere"...
from a nation into the grand...
vacuum of the diaspora...

except in england...
       the no. 303... most of which settled
in either Scotland or... Stratford-upon-Avon...
elsewhere... some other... "elsewhere"...

well...
   given that i have had had a choice...
ha ha! comma? sir?! that that?
      given that i have had - had a choice...
well... imagine... perhaps there's something
about Fwench... but i'm chosing sides...
it's not in Norwegian...
so... b'leh b'leh b'leh... b'leh...
                      
               i just have to borrow some german...
speaking this... hybrid saxon having
buggered enough afghanistan-esque brit druids...
the zeppelins were always dropping...
soap-bubbles...
          i tease oh god...
i tease... but this music is so... so...
oh so delight-ful!

                   die könig im gelb!

ah... to marry: when both are in love with life!
terrible affair: should... "life" somehow
matter: to disappear...
this love a suffocation for the best ****
they had in... ever...
and there's nothing of what life is concerned
with...
either children or... being infertile...
but to be in love with life...

the russians can't proclaim a diaspora...
then again: the "mafia"...
i've heard of an italian mob-esque...
      disposition... subsequent undercurrents
to boot...
an... irish mafia?
bothersome details...
         i still pledge my alliance to a Dickens
over a a Shakespeare...
because...
by chance... i might find some poetry
in the prosaic? by Shakespeare alone:
i'm... "expected".... aren't i?

bad news from York-and-the-shire...
Rotherham... and the... prefix ****-
   and the suffix -stani "debate"...
                   do you even know
how... let's not go there...
to term a bogus inconvenience of...

'what the hell is concerning you...
to fathom from cloud-9 a ****** notion of...
being out-bred?!'

an economic war... is a slow war...
it takes time...
it would take the amount of time...
to turn a once proud town focused on
metallurgy into rubble...
some stayed... some moved to warsaw...
some... played: a joker hand de facto...

i am: this... subtle... p.s. curiosity...
had i only come to breed...
rather than to otherwise...
nuance... allegiance...
zu die zunge?! alles!
             die menschen?
                     jeder seine haben!
             die schwach wind und der flagge?!
ist: die schwach wind: und der flagge: nein?

perhaps there's a stressor
of impetus in german that's not allowed
in english...

     ich bin hier für die sprache...
              
it must be translated... such it being:
oh such a wonderful... phrase...

   to marry... when both... are in love... with life...

zu heiraten... wenn beide...
                           sind im liebe... mit leben!

art-*******-and-funky-funky...
parsley-sage-rosemary-thym­e...
        what? thyme? there's a phi or a theta
to posit... instead...
you took the Dubliners' route of: paddy...
tad... and toink!
                'ucking scoundrels!

i will call... the greek-chinese ideogram...
I(ota) the key... and... "thereabouts"...
a keyhole of O(micron)...
it's an id: representation...

                 squashed: yes: 0... for better...
"graphics"...
    
to be young... and to share a half of both:
of being in love with life...

       Φ = the key enters the keyhole (I, O)...
    Θ = the key is turned... (Io)...
         Ψ = the door is opened...

        enough... Beijing "abstract" concerns...
for anyone?
       what's the abstract of rotation?
                                   oh... i guess: 'micron!

so much for abstracts as: only from boing-boing-xin...
some letter can qualify to be
apprehended in ideograms...
B - bossom or a fudge-yeast-byproduct
of a full ***...
              etc. or... Φ, Θ, Ψ...
       now by adding the brackets...
and time has a geography...
from the height of mythology...
to the depths of journalism...
that's... a vector:  (Φ, Θ, Ψ)...

     it's a key... a door... a keyhole...
                            an opening... n'est ce pas?!
hey! let's complicate it further
with: mr. squint... chop-sticks...
dragons... live vermin sushi...
    and counting dry grains of rice...

i'm not: Česlav Miloš...
to begin with... Czesław Miłosz was...
a Lithuanian...
because Copernicus wasn't ******...
"because and because"...
                     sides... all this talk of:
"allegiance"...
**** it... it's a cosmopolitan allegiance
to... the commonality of tongue...
shared to the point...
when... old fictions wrestle with me
and i'm confined to my own cubic...

for english is a language i can
entertain...
allow... yes... this parasite can erode
its host's cranium und...
                                  grauangelegenheit...
it was never... so imposing...
as a german tongue or a russian tongue...
therefore and thereby?
      an easily qualified tongue-donor
with the expanse of thought:
a complete and utter brain-drain on...

now...
there's a difference...
the english will not know it...

there's the nation... and there's the diaspora...
can the english... claim h'america...
or canada... or... australia...
as a nation-extension toward the confines
of a diaspora?
no... i don't think so...

that: quintessential inconvenience of
being merely: english...
   more prone to a local geography...
a devonshire... a derbyshire...
               someone of york...
  lost in new york...
                    a people with...
an imploded seance of diaspora...
    from the humble little island...
to: whatever fraction that was supposed
to make one impose on...

had i just been Irish... and "somehow"
forgotten my Gaelic...
or been that Welshman and no longer
with any Cymru...
well then...
but i come willing because...
      beside the mother and father...
the maternal grandmother and -father...
who will i speak my "native" and "mother"
tunge / zunge to?
          
i rather imagine marriage:
as when both of them are in love with life...
and in love that being said:
a little tale o' whittle england:
make it big in h'america...
        
         this... the most complete...
antithesis of a diaspora...
                    or rather: what lingua franca
was... and what l'inglese is...
and how: even if arabic tried...
and even if: mandarin would hope for...
well... hardly...
jackie chan kung fu and muhammad:
english is more popular than islam...
**** it up: camel jockey!
oh sure... they're "muslim"...
conflicting opinions... once:
speaking in english "arrives"...

                   i'm here: to turn up the volume...
because... i might as well have been
born in estonia... and speaking... estonian...
and never having left estonia...
been very much happy for the euro
and the... thumbling russians... somehow...
"retreating"...
well... if the russians are retreating...
they're: trying to revise being
an indo-european mongrel with...
accents of scandinavia concerning
the founding fathers of Kiev...
and them being russians:
what the hell do we do with the ukranians...
and the mongols that settled and became
tartars?!

yeah... the russians are on the retreat...
    this little island that... hopes for a diaspora...
instead... shuckles...
it has to settle for a h'american empire...
an australia... a new zealand...
ogh! mein! gott! no expatriate diaspora!
no tea with mussolini typo excursions!
mein gott! v'er vill youz goez?!

         zee f'ikkin moonz?! on a sputnik flarez?!
light up baboon *** numero uno:
then whisper among the fwench...

yes... very much brilliant...
         to be alive... and to marry so young...
and be helped: so young...
and not be thwarted...
   'coz crazy bunnies had the best ***...
great: to be alive, so young,
and married: and married to each other
and at the same time: having life marry you
to love it: to be together and married
to a love for life:
and... just... somehow...
having a co-dependent... of reciprocated
self-interests...

                            even in poland...
a soviety satellite...
with concrete chicken-shacks... ah yes:
that... "once upon a time"...
better the ******* state as my landlord
than some grubby liquorice ****** 3rd party:
libertarian "full dislocusre of mammon's
expression of par-tay"... sort of *******!
give me the state, the grey-suit and the gimps!

or? shackle me up for a stipend
working the sloughterhouse...
to boot... a house filled with 20 dobermans...
and 5 rottweilers...
i'll slaughter your cows... for the steak chops...
as long as i have the dogs to cuddle
and imagine myself doing the greater:
cosmic-karma-good...
the dogs... the harem of dogs...
no... women need excuses...
the dogs!

                 hell... a woman would require...
anniverseries... flowers... pinnace for a tsunami...
crumbs... what's a loaf of bread?
details... something to be minded as:
once being a plughole...
blah blah... hands for cushions...
        
              plus... women can't drink...
let her everything else: apart from the whiskey...
if she really wants to drink...
tell her to sober up on some Stendhal or
some Balzac... but don't let a woman
try to outcompete a man drinking...
she can drink...
but not... in that most... ugly: crab-feast
of... "detail"...

the english man... england...
h'america, australia... new zealand...
oh... wait... you were hoping for a diaspora...
weren't you?
yeah... clearly i didn't find an affair of
the imitation of greece...
took charge of the latin script...
inverted the mediterranean sea...

i speak your language: doesn't imply
i've shed the "ethno-nationalist" tattoos of "d.n.a."...
for a people to have made it bitter...
with the teutonic order over access to the baltic sea...
what's the baltic sea?
it's like the black sea...
the baltic sea is about as useful as...
well... the danes and the norwegians
held the toll and price of passing...
just like the turks or the byzantines held
the key of the bosphorus...
the baltic... is a "sea"...
just like the black sea is a "sea"...

did you know... there's a caspian sea?
yeah... it's a "sea"... more like... a lake would
be so much better...

the english could be akin to the arabs
from 200 years ago...
instead: sitting on a tonne of salt...
and waves...
and open horizons...
while the arabs sat on camel ****...
sand... and dinosaur juice...
and materialistic leprosy and limp-****
viagara palm tree impromptu...

sure... the lottery ticket of the past,
oh the most glorious past times...
        nothing lasts forever...
       so it seems...
            here's me celebrating Dickens
to the last... breath... because...
keeping up with speaking my native
language: when there are no
prussians, no russians...
           no austro-hungarians...
and there are only...
ukranians and lithuanians readying
to guilt-trip me over the failures
of the polish-lithuanian commonwealth?!

in this language i can...
ale... nie... w... tym!

Eagles Soar.
Desert Floor.
Mountains rise
Sky blue eyes.
Tequila smooth
Attitude
Eagle drifts
Altitude.
Warm rising lifting
Eye sky blue.
And
You.

Come in with the
wind, and gone
...just like a ****

Soapbox Derby,
Baking Cakes,
Ya'll are sad,

Give me the high sign!

Thank you Shaun,
for the pictures and flowers.
Thank you Lily,
for the ray of sunlight.
Thank you Bry,
for psychopathic measure.
Thank you D,
for the feeling of good pleasure.
Thank you Tay,
for tea and bears.
Thank you Meg,
for Sherlock and apples.
Thank you Zee,
for robots and twins.
Thank you Carrie,
for fangirling and friendship.
Thank you Liam,
for support and superheroes.
Thank you Paul,
for understanding and ingenious.
Thank you Ceryen,
for fake names and shared tears.
Thank you Chiara,
for Italian cheese and fanfics.
Thank you Rod,
for fish and evil.
Thank you Lia,
for kitties and souls.
Thank you Stephen,
for gravestones and vegetables.
Thank you Christine,
for mercurial and poetical love.
Thank you Caitlin,
for product design and Poundland.
Thank you Jordan,
for weddings and Brenda.
Thank you Conaill,
for DT and Courbet.
Thank you Brendan,
for axes and aunts.
Thank you Tom,
for form time and Brittany.
Thank you George,
for philosophies and pigeons.
Thank you Morgan,
for video games and hearing.
Thank you Alice,
for Pokemon and tumblr.
Thank you Aliyah,
for hearing aids and help.
Thank you all,
for reading and listening.
Thank you, me,
for absolutely nothing.

Name falls from the ancient Greeks.
The Sound of Thunder,
Is what they preach.
I like to think of you as a classical human being.
Your mother and father welcomed you here on earth February the 4th 1998,
A water bearer,
Ruler of Uranus and Saturn.
You’re unique,
Built in Texas and fell right in the Chi.

You know what people like about you?
The communication you bring.
You communicate with your eyes,
Ears,
And mouth.
You know what else?
Your humor.
All the unsynchronized clocks in a watchmaker’s shop stops.
Your smile.
It relinquishes the fear in people.
Makes us feel safe.

You idolize the melodies of Mr. Kendrick and Cole,
You’re picky in your own nature.
Can’t have chocolate Oreos without milk,
Doesn’t dare touch greens.
You’re the element of air,
A handsome Phrygian youth.
Nobody is as witty as you,
Clever and rebellious.
Like spicy chili Doritos your mind is as far as the eyes can see.
You’re beyond on what you know,
Ahead of the game.
Filled with paradoxes.
You’re interested in the opposite ends of the spectrum.

If you were to leave town the next morning
Save me your lucky Krispy Kream sweater.
It smells like…you.
I want to hold your hand as you voyage all over the world.
You’ve been to Egypt before,
Go again… with me this time.

To my panda,
You will go out of your way to help another.
Live with no strings attached.
Like Po,
Very unconventional and always full of excitement.


You truly do have you and your beautiful soul.

Ehsaas kay dareechay main
Baynaam sa aik shahar basta hai
Har roz wahan log uth-tay hain
Qaroobar kay hangaamon main
Koe mun dho kar nikalta hai
Koe bay- awaz surr pay sarr dhunta hai
har roz wahan aik kahani hai
Jo tmhain mjhay sunani hai
Har saa-at wahan aik tamasha hai
Jo rukta aur shaur machata hai
Raat ki taareeki main
Jab sab thak kar laut aatay hain
Apnay **** ki thakawat ko
Wo  khawaboon kay ka-andhay utartay hain
Aur yunhi so jatay hain.....
Ehsaas kay dareechay main
Jo aik bay- naam sa shahar basta hai
Uss basti ki sab hastion main
Chupa bacha din bhar hansta hai
Aur shab dhalay, sarhanay  mun day kar rota rahta hai.....

She was old when I first knew her
To an infant, parents are timeless;
Fairy aunts are just… old.

A tiny scarecrow of a thing,
Her eyes glittered; her mouth
Never offered an ill word of anyone.

She was a good woman.  She never tired
Of talking about blind Jim – a good man –
With girlish love in her face;

One man, one love, one life
He wove wicker and filled mattresses
And listened to the wireless in the evening.

Her constant thought companion
As so many might-have-been heroes –
Gone, before I could know him.

Christmas would wend round each year,
With Meg as star guest,
Tipsy before the Queen’s Speech,

Whisky rouging her cheeks; fairy lights
Made envious by her laughter,
My mother, and hers, basking in gleelight.

I grew up there, every other Sunday,
Overlooking the Hospital and the Tay
From the safety of her living-room window,

Inventing spaceships and spies,
Dreaming of who I would be,
As my mother and Meg made small-talk.


Month by month, her daylight dimmed.
I never saw it.  She was only ever her;
Happy, constant and true.



Afterwards, I learned about the
Vying accountants and surgeons,
Postponing, year and again,

The procedure.  She told me, when finally
Her appointment was confirmed,
That when the cataracts were gone,

She was going to buy a ticket
For the number nine circular
And spend all day upstairs,

Just looking out of the window
At the city she’d lived in
For nigh-on ninety years

A week before the operation
Her home-help found her in bed, with Jim;
Smiling as they danced through the daisies.

She seemed no older when she died
Than when I first knew her.  
A good innings, they all said.

Not enough.  
If only by the length of a bus ticket –
not enough.

Eddie was not funny,
that Gumby was
sub par

I’ll often hear a song that makes me think of times before.
There’s always faces burned into the memories recalled.
A head thrown back in laughter as we bounced so high; we flew!
That was the boy that I first kissed on the cheek
( he kissed my shoe)
We were on the trampoline and high was never high enough!
We screamed “I want my MTV”, it was truly epic stuff!
Later on when I partnered with a lycra’d dancing queen, we tore it up to Mel’n Kim, we were quite a solid team!
Our tay-tay-tay’s were second-to-none, Respectable the jam.
We were synchronised and synthesised, we were     fluoro, we were glam!
Later the next decade, the clubs were more the scene,but there always was a DJ, a request to be redeemed.
One young man with a strange nickname, no bigger Pearl Jam fan, could be found on a seat, tapping his feet and hollering “ Better man!”
Ofcourse the girls were always there, making the dance floor hot; and you sang the words to “You’re the One that I Want”, whether you knew them or not!
And no-one likes a mega-mix but play the one from Grease? You’ll even see a few Danny’s get up and join the beat.
These days the tunes are “retro”, but I sometimes play them still and the details might be fading but the feelings never will.

Swingy with my e-pe-tay
This is the dance of wewe gay
I shove it in and lunk it out
Along your ****-crack do I spout

THis is the sound, sound is of pepe
I shook forlorn out of my wewe
all the drips of ural seepy
so that no more weepy when i pepe in my bed

Eddie Murphy may have
liked coke and cheap
*****, but me and
Alfalfa kept that
**** real

A** chance to speak,
Beneath broken sheets,
Caught out in moment,
Dying deep inside.
Evaporate tension,
From little or no knowing,
Growing up alone,
Half loved and half resented.
I come to conclusions,
Just before my death,
Keeping me in memory,
Like you always promised,
Missing me in silence,
No more mourning of past,
Of regrets and despairs.
Promise me you’ll use what I learnt,
Question the decisions of others,
Reluctant or not,
Stay away from their paths,
They only lead you to their futures,
Unknowingly you end their second,
Valiant but alone,
Where you spend life in wandering,
Xrayed life,
Your future makes up nothing
Zorbing inside of your own bubble.