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Nat Lipstadt Sep 2013
How I Observed the Day of Atonement

If you are unfamiliar with day and its observance,
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur

In a place of perfect solitude,
No crowded synagogue within to hide,
No cantor to intercede on my behalf,
I spoke words of mine own creation
To my creator who wisely empowers me
To judge myself, for knowing, none harsher,

We two,
Old travel companions,
Upon worn grayed, adirondacke thrones,
We overlooked,
A natural prayer place,
Bay and breeze, white-clouded and sun-laced.
Only the full time inhabitants, the animals,
Grayling butterflies to match and contrast,
Eavesdropping on our Greek dialogos, in this,
Palace of Perfect Solitude.

Amiable did we chat,
I of family, this and that.

He, wearied from recent travel,
To Syria and India,
Was glad for a day off,
For he had little to do,
But wait for twilight,
To then close the books.

For us no formality, easy the going,
No prosecutor no defender in residence,
For we exchange these roles intermittently,
The incriminatory, the penance, all deeds displayed,
No adult games of winking eyes, and
Hidden heart, secret chambers,
Rabbinical or angelic intercession.

He does so love his Bach,
Adagio on strings,
My soothing gift to him,
This music more than divine.

He returned this courtesy.

Warming sun to expose my chest,
Cooling genteel breeze offsetting,
The bay emptied of wayfaring skiffs and yachts.

A cooling beverage proffered,
But sighing, he said that he had yet to find
A beverage that his kind of thirst could slake.
For his eyes, tho shining, did not effervesce,
As when we shared this day in years past.

Too much killing, this year,
It tires me so to tabulate human excess,
Spoke not a word, for my critique would
Comfort him less, if at all.

Thanks for Kol Nidre, he plainted,
So I too can disavow,
The best intended oaths I took and take,
For each year, I fail more than the year before.

If only I could sit with each,
As I do with you,
Where what needs saying,
Is said, understood, undisguised as praying.

A schooner to the dock did appear,
For him it attended, for him, it waited,
Sails, both black and white.

He stood to depart, my arms-grasped, taken, he graphing,
Measuring my fortitude, my strengths, my divinity.

I do so love this day in your company.
I shall sit with you again one year on,
Bach sweet when next we meet, please.

Soft spoke, as almost I should not hear,
Your time is nigh, no thing I create is forever.
He spoke with such sadness,
For well I knew, the intent, his meaning.

He, for-himself, saddened, for he loved
Sitting  beside me in this manner,
Since my inception, never deception,

Only He resting easy, when he atoned before me,
And I gave him his absolution conditional,
As he gave me,
mine
September  2013
Kind solace in a dying hour!
Such, father, is not (now) my theme—
I will not madly deem that power
Of Earth may shrive me of the sin
Unearthly pride hath revelled in—
I have no time to dote or dream:
You call it hope—that fire of fire!
It is but agony of desire:
If I can hope—O God! I can—
Its fount is holier—more divine—
I would not call thee fool, old man,
But such is not a gift of thine.

Know thou the secret of a spirit
Bowed from its wild pride into shame
O yearning heart! I did inherit
Thy withering portion with the fame,
The searing glory which hath shone
Amid the Jewels of my throne,
Halo of Hell! and with a pain
Not Hell shall make me fear again—
O craving heart, for the lost flowers
And sunshine of my summer hours!
The undying voice of that dead time,
With its interminable chime,
Rings, in the spirit of a spell,
Upon thy emptiness—a knell.

I have not always been as now:
The fevered diadem on my brow
I claimed and won usurpingly—
Hath not the same fierce heirdom given
Rome to the Caesar—this to me?
The heritage of a kingly mind,
And a proud spirit which hath striven
Triumphantly with human kind.
On mountain soil I first drew life:
The mists of the Taglay have shed
Nightly their dews upon my head,
And, I believe, the winged strife
And tumult of the headlong air
Have nestled in my very hair.

So late from Heaven—that dew—it fell
(’Mid dreams of an unholy night)
Upon me with the touch of Hell,
While the red flashing of the light
From clouds that hung, like banners, o’er,
Appeared to my half-closing eye
The pageantry of monarchy;
And the deep trumpet-thunder’s roar
Came hurriedly upon me, telling
Of human battle, where my voice,
My own voice, silly child!—was swelling
(O! how my spirit would rejoice,
And leap within me at the cry)
The battle-cry of Victory!

The rain came down upon my head
Unsheltered—and the heavy wind
Rendered me mad and deaf and blind.
It was but man, I thought, who shed
Laurels upon me: and the rush—
The torrent of the chilly air
Gurgled within my ear the crush
Of empires—with the captive’s prayer—
The hum of suitors—and the tone
Of flattery ’round a sovereign’s throne.

My passions, from that hapless hour,
Usurped a tyranny which men
Have deemed since I have reached to power,
My innate nature—be it so:
But, father, there lived one who, then,
Then—in my boyhood—when their fire
Burned with a still intenser glow
(For passion must, with youth, expire)
E’en then who knew this iron heart
In woman’s weakness had a part.

I have no words—alas!—to tell
The loveliness of loving well!
Nor would I now attempt to trace
The more than beauty of a face
Whose lineaments, upon my mind,
Are—shadows on th’ unstable wind:
Thus I remember having dwelt
Some page of early lore upon,
With loitering eye, till I have felt
The letters—with their meaning—melt
To fantasies—with none.

O, she was worthy of all love!
Love as in infancy was mine—
’Twas such as angel minds above
Might envy; her young heart the shrine
On which my every hope and thought
Were incense—then a goodly gift,
For they were childish and upright—
Pure—as her young example taught:
Why did I leave it, and, adrift,
Trust to the fire within, for light?

We grew in age—and love—together—
Roaming the forest, and the wild;
My breast her shield in wintry weather—
And, when the friendly sunshine smiled.
And she would mark the opening skies,
I saw no Heaven—but in her eyes.
Young Love’s first lesson is——the heart:
For ’mid that sunshine, and those smiles,
When, from our little cares apart,
And laughing at her girlish wiles,
I’d throw me on her throbbing breast,
And pour my spirit out in tears—
There was no need to speak the rest—
No need to quiet any fears
Of her—who asked no reason why,
But turned on me her quiet eye!

Yet more than worthy of the love
My spirit struggled with, and strove
When, on the mountain peak, alone,
Ambition lent it a new tone—
I had no being—but in thee:
The world, and all it did contain
In the earth—the air—the sea—
Its joy—its little lot of pain
That was new pleasure—the ideal,
Dim, vanities of dreams by night—
And dimmer nothings which were real—
(Shadows—and a more shadowy light!)
Parted upon their misty wings,
And, so, confusedly, became
Thine image and—a name—a name!
Two separate—yet most intimate things.

I was ambitious—have you known
The passion, father? You have not:
A cottager, I marked a throne
Of half the world as all my own,
And murmured at such lowly lot—
But, just like any other dream,
Upon the vapor of the dew
My own had past, did not the beam
Of beauty which did while it thro’
The minute—the hour—the day—oppress
My mind with double loveliness.

We walked together on the crown
Of a high mountain which looked down
Afar from its proud natural towers
Of rock and forest, on the hills—
The dwindled hills! begirt with bowers
And shouting with a thousand rills.

I spoke to her of power and pride,
But mystically—in such guise
That she might deem it nought beside
The moment’s converse; in her eyes
I read, perhaps too carelessly—
A mingled feeling with my own—
The flush on her bright cheek, to me
Seemed to become a queenly throne
Too well that I should let it be
Light in the wilderness alone.

I wrapped myself in grandeur then,
And donned a visionary crown—
Yet it was not that Fantasy
Had thrown her mantle over me—
But that, among the rabble—men,
Lion ambition is chained down—
And crouches to a keeper’s hand—
Not so in deserts where the grand—
The wild—the terrible conspire
With their own breath to fan his fire.

Look ’round thee now on Samarcand!—
Is she not queen of Earth? her pride
Above all cities? in her hand
Their destinies? in all beside
Of glory which the world hath known
Stands she not nobly and alone?
Falling—her veriest stepping-stone
Shall form the pedestal of a throne—
And who her sovereign? Timour—he
Whom the astonished people saw
Striding o’er empires haughtily
A diademed outlaw!

O, human love! thou spirit given,
On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!
Which fall’st into the soul like rain
Upon the Siroc-withered plain,
And, failing in thy power to bless,
But leav’st the heart a wilderness!
Idea! which bindest life around
With music of so strange a sound
And beauty of so wild a birth—
Farewell! for I have won the Earth.

When Hope, the eagle that towered, could see
No cliff beyond him in the sky,
His pinions were bent droopingly—
And homeward turned his softened eye.
’Twas sunset: When the sun will part
There comes a sullenness of heart
To him who still would look upon
The glory of the summer sun.
That soul will hate the ev’ning mist
So often lovely, and will list
To the sound of the coming darkness (known
To those whose spirits hearken) as one
Who, in a dream of night, would fly,
But cannot, from a danger nigh.

What tho’ the moon—tho’ the white moon
Shed all the splendor of her noon,
Her smile is chilly—and her beam,
In that time of dreariness, will seem
(So like you gather in your breath)
A portrait taken after death.
And boyhood is a summer sun
Whose waning is the dreariest one—
For all we live to know is known,
And all we seek to keep hath flown—
Let life, then, as the day-flower, fall
With the noon-day beauty—which is all.
I reached my home—my home no more—
For all had flown who made it so.
I passed from out its mossy door,
And, tho’ my tread was soft and low,
A voice came from the threshold stone
Of one whom I had earlier known—
O, I defy thee, Hell, to show
On beds of fire that burn below,
An humbler heart—a deeper woe.

Father, I firmly do believe—
I know—for Death who comes for me
From regions of the blest afar,
Where there is nothing to deceive,
Hath left his iron gate ajar.
And rays of truth you cannot see
Are flashing thro’ Eternity——
I do believe that Eblis hath
A snare in every human path—
Else how, when in the holy grove
I wandered of the idol, Love,—
Who daily scents his snowy wings
With incense of burnt-offerings
From the most unpolluted things,
Whose pleasant bowers are yet so riven
Above with trellised rays from Heaven
No mote may shun—no tiniest fly—
The light’ning of his eagle eye—
How was it that Ambition crept,
Unseen, amid the revels there,
Till growing bold, he laughed and leapt
In the tangles of Love’s very hair!
WEB: In June 1964, Chinese film history changed forever. Previously, Southeast Asian cinema had been dominated by two families — the Shaw family, headed by Run Run Shaw, and the Loke family, headed by Loke Wan Tho. The latter was a veritable empire that owned rubber plantations, banks, cinemas, and a movie studio called Cathay. Founded in 1953, Cathay specialized in urbane, Westernized musicals and comedies, whereas Shaw Brothers Studios, with its muscle-headed nationalism, was shooting squarely at the lowest common denominator.

Cathay-Keris Films Pte. Ltd.
This week's featured series at the New York Film Festival shines a light on China's great forgotten movie studio, Grady Hendrix writes. Above, Grace Chang stars in Tian-lin ****'s 'The Wild, Wild Rose' (1960).
Shaw made money, but Cathay earned the prestige with such high-class talent as screenwriter Eileen Chang (author of Ang Lee's new film, "Lust, Caution"). But on June 20, 1964, fate would vault one company over the other for the rest of time. With both film studios in attendance at the Asian Film Festival in Taiwan, Loke Wan Tho and Run Run Shaw were each invited on a sightseeing tour. Run Run begged off, Loke agreed to go, and when the plane carrying him, his wife, and his chief executives crashed, Cathay crashed with them. Today, Shaw Brothers rules the memories of Chinese film fans and Cathay's stable of stars are long forgotten.


Civil Air Transport Flight 106


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  (Redirected from Civil Air Transport Flight B-908)


Civil Air Transport Flight 106
Accident summary
Date
20 June 1964
Summary
Engine failure and loss of control
Site
Shenkang, Taiwan
Passengers
52
Crew
5
Fatalities
57
Survivors
0
Aircraft type
Curtiss C-46D Commando
Operator
Civil Air Transport
Registration
B-908
Flight origin
Taichung Airport (TXG/RCLG)
Destination
Taipei-Sung Shan Airport (TSA/RCSS)
Civil Air Transport Flight 106 was a Curtiss C-46D Commando[1] operated by the Taiwanese airline Civil Air Transport that on 20 June 1964 crashed near the village of Shenkang in western Taiwan, killing all 57 people aboard.
Contents
1 The accident
2 The aircraft
3 Causes
4 Passengers
5 References
The accident
Shortly after take-off from Taichung the No.1 engine failed and during the recovery the aircraft turned to the left impacting the ground left wing low in a nose down attitude.
The aircraft
The flight was being operated by a C-46D, regn. B-908, (C/n 32950), which had flown 19,488 hours from 1944 to 1964
Causes
Primary cause of the accident was the failure of the No.1 engine, compounded by mishandling during the recovery / return to Taichung Airport.
Passengers
Among the dead were 20 Americans, one Briton and members of the Malaysian delegation to the 11th Film Festival in Asia, including businessman Loke Wan Tho and his wife Mavis.[2][3]
ogdiddynash Jul 2018
helping the kids with homework


no one told you,
was part of the job description
paycheck earner a-ok,
gruff but tender lover,
knowing her special places,
building a tree swing,
a tree house safe and satisfactory,
one the neighbors envy

taking them to the hospital for
broken arms and chemotherapy,
part two of the non-routine but a very possible foreseeable,
going to school to give that principal a look
that will make him think twice before suspending
one of his for defending himself

you remember your daddy doing the same for you,
forgetting to repeat the tar and hiding that came later

the tucking in, the pretense ouch
when your end of day
scratchy beard ruffling the skin of babies,
carrying tissues in a toolbox,
never heard of, nevertheless done,
tho not a memory defining the future inclusive,
definitely a learning ability, a likeability

doing homework, nuh uh,
no way jose, don’t dare let them
know how you never got a gold star,
always sat in the back row, outta sight,
all day dreaming, chemistry rhymes with mystery,
and poetry is rhymes needing a big vocabulary
which means lots of words for a man who don’t talk much

ain’t exactly his strong suit

sure, heard of Shakespeare but never met him,
know where the on/off computer button hides,
the rest is up to them;
got no email address, but taught them sir and ma’am,
how to address humans with respect,

i’ll promise them anything
but not doing any homework,
unless it the kind that that makes

a home work
#homework
softcomponent May 2014
Find the lighter, use it as a lighthouse on a walk below the wall you watch along the wave-formations. Who Wants a Cold One? a Coors Light ad corrects.. When it comes to your home, the little things matter.. an insurance ad blares.. my computer is infected with 3rd party applications unremovable to my meagre tech-ability.. there is a hero as Joseph Campbell once theorized.. in myself like a sick bastardly virus waiting for moments to prove to me "I AM THE SAVIOR, I AM THE CHRIST, I AM THE WARLORD, MICE, MAN, AND VICE".. the windows of opportunity close, I am left waiting the door

& the elevator.

Thirty-thousand years ago, there was nothing but a breeze.. a viscous breeze across chill-spined pterodactyls.. warm-under-the-jungle-brush tyrannosaurus rex, and to think one day I will be just a legend in bone..
Charlotte said she thinks of death and so did Jen. They sat next to the all-you-can-eat and discussed the inevitable. I was sour and playful with no-will-to-understand, just reminding my hair of breezy summer days of 10, thinking of strangeness, of place I was in.

When it's quiet sometimes, I think of old dreams.. dreams I sunk below drown-level as a child in bed and belief. Both mommy and daddy were arguing in the kitchen, this was 7 or 8.. they argued so often one could hear mom begin to cry sometimes, and dad I could see in minds-eye with a grimace so closed and so creased he was hurt and yet honest.. I did not understand so I hid under-stood-silhouettes, oh adulthood..

once in dream I was in pulsing green graveyard like crayon realism strobe lights, tombstones all-round and faint-buzz of outside and one of those strange balded henchmen of badguy Jafar from Disney's Aladdin came peaking outta nowhere with curled eyebrow and baggy one-thousand-one Arabian nightlives parachute pants, curled toes brown-beige moccasins to.. he let out conniving 'HEUHEE!' and slapped me right-side cheek and I JOLTED up bedwise in real time to feel actual physical sting for a few lingered seconds then the sobs of poor mother outside.. I never remembered a dream so clearly again.. they all come, Pro-Found, and dizzy away after hour or two for rest of eternity or perhaps to Place I Can Visit at Death to Review Every Vision and I wonder... when your life flashes before your eyes and the light is encroaching, scenes of mother, brother, father, son, daughter, best-friend, party, break-up, heartbreak, slip-fall, first-sip, first-drag, last-leg, first-kiss, first-hit, first-game, fear, love,  HATE, wait.. do the Dreams come to? Are they all flesh-ed before your eyes as you pass into Light? Are they brought to direct remembrance as you cross the border with Passport of Gods and a Goddess (and which Picture appears on the Page)..?

I remember the old eczema taking bits of skin to carpets round-town and round-lower-mainland to disgust of friends old and new-- this was era where confidence ate itself in mirrors, the sober reality of ugly-ness chiseling away at my Goodness Attempts.. All That Pointless Pain was no Exception nor a Rule, it just **** Happens every once-and-again to the sound of life farting. I used to miss school for feet so impossible to walk on, pussing and bleeding and staining the sheets, shoe soles, carpets, and soul.. limp thru the hallways of Brooks Secondary feeling like bad flavor additive to multicultural Planet Earth-- sleeping 'til the bell rang drinking coffee singing songs I said '**** the ******* educational system and **** me I'm so flatlined..' someday I felt things would really get better and lucky young me I was right.

A half-decade later, I am 21 and hoping, floating, free in the breeze as the wings I have grown keep on wishing the subsistence down. The girl, whoever-she-might-as-well-be, sits immediately vertical chatting frantically to boy with a bit of a cowlick slouching on-up over a bundle of colored paperwork. It seems late in the season for homework, and assume they may have some affiliation with a crazy-hep computer design group in the tradition of Nouevau Silicon Valley.... I sit at my laptop, inching a word a million cubic millimeters closer to God or Divinity or Crescendo or A Bunch More ******* You'll End Up Ignoring---

It's a sunny day, the rain having slathered-off into obscurity somewhere with the Monsoons when the Sun gave the Moon a Soft Slap and the poor purity white-kid went off whimpering, bleeding nose-- I sat, the other night, playing another Grand Strategy game as Tom divided his time between a vaulted and damaged lover, his labor, and his life (friends, food, video-games, vice)... Chai, old Chai the Thai Guy mentioned past his nose in previous iterations of Depictions sat and described his pins-and-needles upset at his bosses at one his three many jobs.. desperately firing text-messages into receiving-space-panel and reflect and back unto Tom's smartphone dash asking him to order a six-pack from a local delivery service cuz his adrenal was giving him heartpain with hurt, and Tom being Busy as All-Ways Tom Is wasn't able to decipher the scramble in-time to make contact before closure of the liquor stores.. poor not-so-poor Chai at first felt castrated at realization he would miss the 11 PM dot-time, but didn't mind as he rendezvoused with Tom and I at Willows Beach where Tom reminded him of a whiskey he'd bought sitting counter-wise at his place.. we kissed a few Mary Janes rightsideup, dragging our butts in the sand to discuss what was wrong (each of us had a problem that night, save for perhaps a less-vocal Tom, I describing my annoyance that a lazy consensus had erupted in my sorry-hometown between my sorta-friends and friends-of-friends that my writing and sharing my writing was arrogant and I an arrogant *** for sharing and I just confounded that they would find my passions so trivial-- perhaps jealousy, perhaps complacency and judgement-for-lack-of-anything-better-to-do and ah **** em all if they think like that, I'll write and be the arrogant me they think I am and share 'til I'm blue in the face and dead perhaps for outspoken intellectualism in their autocratic pointless-waste worldviews.. sad that I dislike them only on the basis they disliked me first..)

I had planned to stay late and leave early-morn (5 or 6 AM) to catch a first-off morning bus back home and sleep, hoping for most part to avoid the shattered-***-mess of a home I was living in.
About 2 days ago, give or take, a water-line for the laundry machine had erupted to soak our entirely-carpeted basement suite, forcing the poor new landlord (a sweetheart of a man named Ron having just taken possession of the house from previous owner on May 1st and, it seems, left 'holding the bag' as they'd call it in day-trading-investment-lingo) to tear out the entirely-soaked carpet and replace it with sensible laminate flooring and rendering the entire suite virtually unlivable for indefinite-few-days and so for me work and friends and especially writing become a welcome reprieve to I, a first world Refu-Jeez.. us, so terribly-off I sip a latte near sunny panorama windows-so-clear-they're-not-there overlooking the crosses of Yates and Blanshard with European church of Gothic architectural style poking heedlessly into empty-open blue.. ironically and strangely there is a liquor store quite literally right next door, and's one I shop at often for its decent prices (God is Dead or Just Drinking to Cope with Sartre and Kierkegaard's Ultimate Thesis) (Kierkegaard especially '*** Kierkegaard seems a good and long friend of God the Almighty) (...I talk with such Judaeo-Christian Catholic rhetoric it never ceases to amaze myself as it bleeds to page..) (stranger thing is, tho, there is no beginning, no middle, no end.. you read or you are bored and either/or is just fine..)

There is some hypothesized crescendo-bliss Tech Singularity on the way in the try-dition of Ray Kurzweil and William Burroughs.. Oscar Wilde to.. (see The Soul of Man Under Socialism in essay-collect book De Profundis).. one day we will all be eternal happiness expressed in song and dance and LED erected-projections of Imperfect Universe (Our Imperfect Earth) with lives stuck on infinite repeat.. our idea of Paradise.. and for those with ability to remain rushed to cortisol (stress-the-best hormone) it will be Hell on Earth, so DRAB and THE SAME all the TIME and it's READ and it's WRITE and it's RIGHT.. the world runs faster with every passing day so desperate to discover the Globe is Flat so we can Hop Off the Other Side into what one might assume to be The Better Place.. elusively picking-up speed thinking 'closer now definitely closer now' unaware (or, secretly aware and unwilling to admit for what will one do when one cannot run?) they are Running in Circles Over and Over and Over and Over and Over Again... cannot take the hint in the fact the Pacific (same Pacific) has been crossed a hugeillion times, nor the same McDonald's in the Azores of Atlantic Portugal is the Same ******* McDonald's stopped-thru on the then-trillionth time last year... and all whilst the International Space Station remains muted up-above crossing 'round and 'round 'til the Jehovah'n Day of Judgement (Chris Hadfield now below with advice for how to run a little faster even blinded in one eye..) then there are the dying Prophets Predicting Industrial Collapse who preach upon the Mount of Internet Sinai Eternal and state "the world is now unsalvageable and we are all about to die.. if ever you wished to find Buddhistic Nirvanic Peace, now is the time so start meditating and imagine Death as New Life and Geopolitics as Game".. forever and ever and ever and ever.

It is only natural to find existence to be 'weird..' layered with Who's That's and giant What The ***** everywhichway you turn.. did it start in a Big Bang, will it end in a Big Crunch, Big Freeze, Big Bang.. ? all questions once ignored for certain ignorance and resurrected as questions concerning the Nature of the What The ***** (also known as 'Science').. and if it did start in a Big Bang, did I start in a Big Bang..? and if it does end in a Big Crunch, will I end in a Big Crunch..? am I a sudden flash of REAL in a Universe that isn't me..? or am I an entire Universe.. perhaps even more than that...? the questions pulse in youth like bad words or bullets. I once stayed up all-night thinking of infinity with my head soaring space-wise forever and ever and ever and I stopped in sudden panic thinking: I could lie here up all night and all day 'til the towered age of 37 (I was 14 at the time) and still be no further on the Universal Map than from thumb-tip-middle to thumb-nail so I wrapped up the attempt with a mix of fear and incredulity, went to school next-day exhausted and tried to explain it all to friends.. they got it, I suppose, but we were all 14 and played basketball instead (I imagined infinite-spinning-basketball on thumb of Michael Jordan).

It's always best describing life in form of Disembodied Poetics.. sure some Philistines won't understand '*** their minds are made of Clockwork, Digits, and Blockthought.. but the general psychic underly implied in all with human faculty will ring-a-ding-ding! and remember all such ancient thoughts and feels as forgotten as a child, locked away until the Spirit rose-up from a rosey thorn prickle to flower straight-up into a Rose! or so I hope as a one-of-many writers-- all of which will write so-as to speak on your behalf.. all floaty and marking a purpose.
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2013
I mashup me, myself, and thee: Part II

Excerpts from my poems about poets, poetry and the process of composition. In chronological order, from the earliest to the most recent.
---------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------------­----


The three poems went about their business,
Bringing heaven to earth,
FYI, even Angels can't be everywhere, so,
God invented poems to do his ***** work,
Cleansing souls.

They rode in~out of town on a prankster wave,
A cheering throng was not around,
But a singular poet saw, recorded the vision,
And thus, this nameless poet,
Below unmasked, unsealed,
Cleansed one more soul,
And that soul, this soul, as required,
Paid it forward.
~
Nothing produced from this place
where routine means the gorge tastes bile,
When surcease is welcome relief,
Where dancing on ice in bare feet
Is step one to ripping your chest open by your own hands,
The toxins thus released rejuvenated by salted air,
Can be finally be transcribed onto paper
And realized.

Warn them once and then begin, you,
Get serious, delve, with hurricane unambiguity,
to torrential words upon the unsuspecting,
let them taste the rawness, only the truth provides,
let them know salt tears so briney,
They will flee this place, n'er to return.

~
One day she intro'd me as her fav poet,
To which I acknowledged by addressing her as
My number one fan,
Which seems to have stuck,
so I acknowledge her as such,
And always add a polite, respectful, winking,
Yes ma'am!
~
Like this new day,
there are always
new poems

Like last night's sunset,
day's efforts reviewed,
a special light,
a yellowed marker,
highlighting a few deserving

Take them home,
kiss them goodnight,
rest them in the poetry file
that is no file,
but a large fabric box where
sewing tools once stored

How appropriate and
how happy that makes me.

~
Yo! Yo!
Remember your first real high,
That moment
No absolution, no return.
That moment
When you admitted, confessed,
to yourself:

I am
Forever forward,
A home-grown poet.
I am
Soul enslaved to words.
The alphabet - My oxygen molecules,
I am both,
Addict and dealer
A ****** poet

Yo! Yo!
So you do recall,
The exact moment,
God-spark-within, ascendancy gained
You lost control,
Wept words instead of tears!
A ****** poet ******!

Yo! Yo!

Sophie's Choice.
You chose writing over breathing,
Worshiper of the purest pleaure,
******* in deep the smoke-high of
Head-nodding discontented contentment
Stealing anything you saw
For to satisfy the need, the craven
Craving.
****** poets!

Yo! Yo!

Don't you're ever sleep?
Hear that the city, the state,
Gonna methadone your kind
In a special program
Teach you only language to sign.
**** poets!

I am a ****** poet.

The first step taken.
Admission.
Poetry is my default rest position,

My drug of choice.
~
Have you noticed here

Each poet declaims his fellow
The better one, his teacher,
From whom they shall learn and gather up
Inspiration

Gonna run for Congress,
My first bill, Poetry-care,
Will make it a requirement that
All citizens must contribute,
Exchange once a day
To this peaceful place,
Even just a syllable, a single letter,

K?

~
Literally my eyes see words awaiting coordinating,
Poems flying by, needing plucking,
How a child eats his morning cereal,
His rituals informing, of the man yet to be,
How our bodies lay, hair unbrushed,
Tying us into a conjoined knot...

No matter that plain words are my ordinary tools,
With them I shall scribe the small,
Cherish the little, grab the middle,
Simplicity my golden rule,
Write they say, about what you know best,
Surely in the diurnal motions,
The arc of daily commotion,
Do we not all excel?
~
The ice of poetry,
glassine smooth
but
charged hardness,
hits you, ****** you,
unexpected snowball in the face,

the fire of poetry,
cherished phrase, a patois,
comfort food when
whole winter skies
swallow you bleak

mutual contradictions of poetry
savaging the soothed ego,
revealing the raging id

what's in a word anyway?

~
Please Pop, pick wise,
the life and lies, the faces and disguises,
I will need employ to achieve success
in the eyes of my reading beholders,
who own the liens on my soul
because of the promises I believed,
when you sang me
glowing lullabies of my future days,
how everyone would love my stories,
my poems, someday...
~
Place your ****** hands upon thy chest.
Let them melt thru and come to rest,
Inside, the battle ongoing, under thy breast.
Watch, eyes open, knowing, fearful.
Swiftly, with no hesitation, from within,
Rip open your body, exhaling the best,
And the worst of what you got.

The cool air rushes in,
Stirring the inside stew of:
Infected grime, shameful desires,
Secrets that should not have been exposed,
The ***** stuff that you alone know exists.

Contact with the atmosphere makes
Self-pity dies, blue blood turn red,
The TNT tightness explodes,
Ashamed, you have only one escape hatch.

Now, you are ready to write.

~
My life is on the boring side,
So welcome gents to look inside,
The surfed sites, the emails, hardly slimy,
But stay the fk away from my poetry!

Tis obvious from your midnight editing,
That my wordily, working body has been discretely
Simonized,
My data,
Googlized,
My poems,
Scrutinized,
A comma, a colon, a verb, out of place, capsized,
Little threads kept in door jambs, their alteration,
Your snooping presence, a confirming revelation
~
Where I write, here, all comes so easy,
Every glance a poem formed,
Every phrase a title to a poem served,
Every conversation overheard and those wind-lifted brought,
A seed, a germ, a word~worm hooked to the pole crook of
My finger saying, see man, time to get more ink and paper,
Go and catch us a few poems for dinner

The snapper weakfish word colors are
Running past my-by the thousands,
We will need a basket to catch but a fraction
Of what you see, more than more enough to share,
Only Happy Poems for all

It is this rhyming way I view the wold,
That is my freedom, is my-present essence,
How the poems come, how thy flow,
Peaking, I cannot berate, rarely eat,
Sleep a thing of the past (as you be aware, beware)
There is poetry in simply everything.

~
But if my aura be a comfort insufficient,
Let this surprise poetic gift awaiting your arrival,
Give you rest, from crying surcease!

For when the who, the why of me interrogatory posed,
Describe me in a brevity I ne'er possessed, say:
He was just a poet, and I,
Just, his lover, number one fan.

This truth eternal, never to change.
~
But I am open to learning, the arduous task
Of raising a teenage daughter,
After I have my head examined

Though I am just a bunch of eclectic electrons,
I got powers a few, like making life's happiness
Hearted happier, encouraging your forays into
You-know-what,
And when tables turn, a hasty retreat you beat,
For imaginary cappuccinos and poems we will meet,
Comparing notes on who felt lousier when...

But what I can do 100% is assure you
There is no lone nor lonely daughter extant,
Your voice not just clear but soft-edged,
For I have poetically adopted you,
Here and now, assuming you sign on the
.............................................................­line

~
Take these words at plain face,
and look not askance
at this fair warning,
for I am but a tragic,
empty vessel for you to fill,
you are the raconteur,
me, just a  
poet poseur extraordinaire,
street urchin, word merchant,
all my verbally, wordly goods expropriated
from the wind,  where your scattered thoughts
lie about, carelessly,
unattended
~
Guiltless in life, we but survived,
Hurting no one, no thing,
Yet, here we lie, ignored, unattended,
Yet, you fail again to see our connection?
You do not recognize us?

We are the shells, the husks of you,
Your poems unread, you labors unpreserved,
All wasted, for unless they are read, they die,
As you will too.
Some fast, by water, some slower, time-eroded,
All, ended, by drowning in the Sea of Who Cares!

~
What sourced this elegiac distich,
Too many poets, fully disclosing their downbeat, aroma of defeat?

The world is in a **** mood, not one of us, got nothing
Good to say, seems that love storms ripping hearts
With no trace of mercy, the radio has elected nonstop
Taylor Swift and Jonas Bro's
Just to make the point!

It is so easy to feel ******,
When the sun is unshining, elegant distich, **** me.

Thinking back, getting a good idea,
Found some long necked Corona overlooked,
Turn on the tv, pretend I'm a real cowboy,
And for god's sake, shut down poetry,
Good Bye Poetry, for the rest of the day.
~
once upon a time,
a traffic light rainbow,
stopped n' go, was a word design,
demarcated visions of spun sugar,
bodegas sold me
magic beans by the pound,
masterminded into cups of delight,
treasury's bounty overflowed,
now, dregs drain, sink stained,
as are my writing utensils,
my ink stained, us-less, fingers

come visit me, unknown stranger,
let us exchange fluidity, barbs,
a contest of kissing, eye lashing
wit ands shared vision stashing,
and together, once more,
write with our feet,
while holding hands,
becoming once more
poets of the street.

Only, come quickly.

~

But reading thy cries, an exercise,
Teeth-gnashing frustration.
It brings no relief.

So sad girl,
Write till you are righted,
May be it will snow on July 4th,
And tho unnatural,
So is thy grief.

Nonetheless, write me write me all about it,
Right us,
For tho snow falls, its loveliness,
Makes the heart rise up in gladness!
~
She brings me coffee in bed.
I propose a violin accompaniment.
Some babka, with nice-crumbly-in-bed
Streusel topping,
A concerto we could make!

Her derision snorted so loud,
The mollusks on the beach
From their shells come out.

"Good luck with that,
Put that fantasy on
Your **** poetry site,
Cause that is the closest you will ever get!"

~
For she will be my heroine for all time,

These words to expand with rhyme and verse,
T'is a welcome task, one familiar, but anew,
Each dawn each dusk, a daily trust, a love poem diurnal-birthed,
As if god created the world, but left upon completion,
With a grievous thirst, a new notion, he did burst.

He created the Eighth Day, for celebration of his
Most cherished invention, the idea of love.
This is where, the secret writ Eleventh Commandment occurs,
Love thy Poetry Gods, Honor them with daily verbs.
~
Officer...you should see me gut a

Poem,

Slice its belly open,
Sometimes straight, sometimes Askew,
Feed the gulls them
****** insides on the dock, by-moonlight,
Can ya cut me some slack?

Mmm, I see here in your license,
You are a disabled guy,
A **** poet ******,
Who often does his best work
Legally all alone in the HOV lane,
So I'm gonna let you off this time
Just with a warning!

~
We can share words, we can grant tiny easements,
We can weep with you unseen tears,
We can etsy you little homemade gifts
Like this.

That you can take and keep, and break out in time of need knowing full well that these words will not spoil nor rancid turn, cannot be out grown,, or torn, or rent asunder in anyway for once they are shared
They are irrevocable.
~
When you write,
It as if you write upon our
One skin,
For I am your tablet,
Your sole/sol/soul composition.

So stop kissing me
and
Write upon us.

~
This will not be the hardest poem I e're wrote,
But if there is no inspiration
For you to smote,
And armpits refuse to provide perspiration,
To source juices for a new creation,
Try this trick,
I promise you
No one will lick your ice cream cone,
Nor mistake you for Leonard Cohen,
But when you are done,
You will be High Priest of
Hello Poetry for the rest of the day!
~
You think you can write?
Then employ  a word outside your comfort zone,
Go it alone,
And write four sentences that will make
The hopeful reader stand up and
you twice as much, and shout

Hallelujah
*******.

Work. Poetry is work. Hard work.
Don't fret. But, think on it. Have the sweetest dreams.
In the morning, when you but awake,
A poem will be aborning in thy mind,
And dare I say it, you will find a new freedom
In free verse.
(I know you will slip in a rhyme or two,
I can't help but do it too)

~
Had myself forgot,
That a poem needs a
Frame of jungle gym sounds,
An aural aura resonance unbound.
Purposed to make the heart lift
Your ears say:

Say what!

It needs a tune,
An internal music,
It needs a lilt!
A cadence, that both
Marches and swings,
Even when'd urgent dirge
grief pours forth.
~
This Sabbath day you fog-hide
Your gift of bay and beach
So quiet implore, beseech,
Keep the sailors safe,
And your poets saved.

I ask much.
But I ask for all of us,
There are so many such
That are booster-chair needy
That I am succumbed, overwhelmed,
Enormity fearsome needs help even from a deity.

Small words, big hopes.

If you cannot grant it,
Won't wait for intervention,
Do it myself, answer prayers one and all,
Best I can, starting now with this
Po-hymn.

~
I used to sleep
With pen and paper on my nighttime table.
Nowadays, my iPad tablet rests upon my chest,
Not only does it keep me warn,
It takes my poems from within, Fresh Direct,^
Edits, credits, and delivers them to your door,
While I'm still sleeping.

Which is why they come at all hours.
It is also why they call them,
Love's Labour's Lost saving devices.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
**So I spend my cold, hard time
laying down cold hard verse,
Can't stop, cause it's my daddy's dying curse.

I am both: Addict and dealer, a ****** poet ******.
jane taylor May 2016
the end is now in sight
terror comes encroaching
don’t let the perilous dusk
douse the flame that leads you

the dream inside you burns
yet darkness wants to dim it
when you want to quit
hear the summit calling

and when’s the sky’s sunlit
and faith is at its brightest
the blackness strikes again
the apex is still higher

tho’ energy now spent
you vow to keep on going
just when the crest you’ve reached
you slip and fall now dangling

hanging by a nail
a famine then come robs you
feed on your inner will
to see your destination

you break free and go on
the wind strikes now the hardest
resist not but take flight
set sail to elevation

your spirit will not break
your eye’s upon the zenith
but next the snake will bite
let passion be your tonic

it burns right through your veins
your skin molting peels off you
metamorphosis has changed
the venom to elixir

then illness strikes quite fierce
you sink into a deep trench
reach down throw up your twine
towards the light you see it

no strength left yet still walk
you are not to be broken
stop gasp and catch your breath
you are at the top now

a phosphorescent light
envelops all around you
spin it into gold
throw rope to those still climbing

you who’ve scaled the mount
tho’ scarred have high ascended
fear’s an illusion here
love’s altitude has conquered

never give up hope
tho’ night is at its cruelest
hang on to see the sun
the pinnacle is magic

©2016janetaylor
#pinnacle #forbearance #hope #magic
Ston Poet Dec 2015
Uhh,Yeah.. I know times getting harder, but you just gotta get stronger, & keep moving on tho dawg, no matter what a hater gotta say **** em forget em..I said no matter what a hater say (**** em,forget em2)..Uhh..no matter what a hatter gotta say fucc em, forget em, no matter what a hater say (fucc em, forget em2)..Let em talk, let em hate man, They just mad at themselves, **** a hater, forget em, **** a hater Yeah forget em, **** a hater Yeah just forget em, **** a hater Yeah forget em..
I said **** a hater, Yeah just (forget em2)..They not happy with themselves, they hating for nothing man, ****, & I ain't got nothing but love to give away man, so Imma let em hate Yeah (**** em, forget em2)..Yeah , they just mad at themselves,.. They mad at (themselves2)..Aye..(they mad at they selve2)..Yeah just let em be  mad at them selve.s. Man, **** a hater , Yeah just forget em, **** a hater man, just forget em..**** em forget em..Aye

**** a hater, let em hate dawg, we don't stunt em, we don't worry about them losers noo, we just get our cake dawg, my ***** we rolling haze up, they won't make my blood pressure go up, no more worrying & stressing over a hater, ****, Yeah problems do still come my way, dude trials & tribulations, but I'm keeping my head up to the sky man, **** the drama, Uhh,..I don't wanna hear all of dat loud mouthing, shouting Shawty, I just wanna smell that loud (Yeah2)..we stay burning, we puffing 24/7 ***** non stop, our lungs don't clock out,
Uhh, aye They like to talk behind my back how I ain't ****, **** a hater, I just (forget em
2)..I ain't nothing like the past, I'm the future man, I'm way ahead of my time like hovering whips, Aye throw me the pass, Imma catch it of course man, I win the game for the team *****, real spit, Imma young legend, I'm very legit, **** the laws man, I'm playing the industry, & I ain't quitting ever , no man, **** a hater, forget em, let em talk they ****, I do my money dance on them *******, Yeah, Aye, Yeah, Uhh..

Young Ston the man, I keep going in daily, Yeah feet don't fail me now, my ***** I'm on a mission, **** a hater, let them ****** hate man, let them be mad (by themselves2)..They not happy wit (theirselves2)..I'm traveling on this route to wealth, I'm on this route to helping my ****** out that need help aswell, my ***** if you down for the cause then travel along wit me then dawg,No Wizard of Oz type of **** tho, **** that witchcraft magic **** dawg, forget the Devil, I ain't doing nothing enchanted,I'm changing the world.. While I'm chanting in these raps homie..

I'm very passionate about this ****, no hater won't get in my way & if they do that's their last day living, Yeah mane..Don't try me, I'm so blessed Yeah..God giving me so much favor, I'm not gonna be selfish, Imma share it, This song is for the people who spirit been down & need some uplifting.. **** a hater, forget em..Aye
I'm here for you man, I gotchu , we gone be okay, Satan won't stop us, Yeah I'm stumbling through these roadblocks, but I'm still in drive tho dawg, This is inspirational music, I'm inspiring the next generation future leaders, **** a hater just forget em..Aye

When I was younger it shoulda been more rappers like me, but its okay I dun stepped up to the plate, & Imma knock the ball outta the park..home run mane..**** a hater forget em..Aye..
I was so needy, I wanted my own ****, so I started writing raps, hoping that people will need me, I'm tryna save souls homie.. Aye for real mane..**** a hater, forget em..Uhh, Yeah
A young  ***** want a lil mama I can call my own, but **** I ain't that type of ***** that beg for some ***** , I don't wait for no *****, my ***** I handle my business like a grown *** men should (Yeah2)..
I got my fam, OFTR man, they all riding to the end, no to death do us part, we live forever, eternity, **** a hater, forget em, let them hate man, let them ******* hate, go get yo cheddar,

That's my motto,(**** a hater forget em.
3)..Aye ***** thats what I been bout man, always, I'm up in the morning rolling no mollies, & I won't go to sleep till the next morning, I'm on my hustle, I hustle so heavy mane, I get it outta the mud, like Kevin Gates,**** Life my ***** I never been a nerd, but they still picked on me when I was in school..mane, my parents could never afford the expensive brands, Aye but **** a hater Yeah just forget em.., they just mad at themselves, they need to smoke more **** like me, man, Uhh, yo I was such a bad *** kid , a class clown Yeah ,cussing in class & jumping on the classroom tables man, acting a ***, ****..

I'm still that same hyper dude now, but I'm more maturer Yeah,Uhh..my ***** this is spiritual food, I won't fool ya, **** a hater forget em, let em hate man..(Uhh, Yeah3)...

/(**** a hater let em hate man
2)..go & get yo cake Yeah/2


Stay praying stay,stay baking, **** a hater, let em hate man, **** a hater, let em hate Yeah, **** a hater, ***** forget em , Uhh, Young Ston OFTR (Yeah *****
3)..Yeah
stonpoet.tumblr.com
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

    This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,---
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

    There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me ---
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads --- you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Jay Bryant Jun 2013
Distance
The space that is holding us back.
The thing keeping my hand from caressing your back.
These roadways, highways, and freeways
Blocking my way to you
I need to make my way to you.

Distance
This is the problem
Love I believe it to be the answer.
Tho, the solution to the problem
Raises a question
That needs to be answered.
How far does love go?

Distance
What is love in distance?
Would I measure it in miles or inches?
How much love does it take to get to you?
Does love matter if the distance is to great to get to you?

Distance
I don't like this distance
Tho, I'll travel the farthest distance.
Just to give you a give a kiss
Can you feel the love don't resist it.

Distance
Love knows no distance
If I were on Venus
You were on Saturn
We'd meet on Mars
The distance wouldn't matter

Distance
It takes time to travel
Tho, I think we could go the distance.
When I said I love you I meant it.
I know you felt the love
Just try not to feel the distance.
O! nothing earthly save the ray
(Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty’s eye,
As in those gardens where the day
Springs from the gems of Circassy—
O! nothing earthly save the thrill
Of melody in woodland rill—
Or (music of the passion-hearted)
Joy’s voice so peacefully departed
That like the murmur in the shell,
Its echo dwelleth and will dwell—
O! nothing of the dross of ours—
Yet all the beauty—all the flowers
That list our Love, and deck our bowers—
Adorn yon world afar, afar—
The wandering star.

’Twas a sweet time for Nesace—for there
Her world lay lolling on the golden air,
Near four bright suns—a temporary rest—
An oasis in desert of the blest.
Away away—’mid seas of rays that roll
Empyrean splendor o’er th’ unchained soul—
The soul that scarce (the billows are so dense)
Can struggle to its destin’d eminence—
To distant spheres, from time to time, she rode,
And late to ours, the favour’d one of God—
But, now, the ruler of an anchor’d realm,
She throws aside the sceptre—leaves the helm,
And, amid incense and high spiritual hymns,
Laves in quadruple light her angel limbs.

Now happiest, loveliest in yon lovely Earth,
Whence sprang the “Idea of Beauty” into birth,
(Falling in wreaths thro’ many a startled star,
Like woman’s hair ’mid pearls, until, afar,
It lit on hills Achaian, and there dwelt),
She look’d into Infinity—and knelt.
Rich clouds, for canopies, about her curled—
Fit emblems of the model of her world—
Seen but in beauty—not impeding sight—
Of other beauty glittering thro’ the light—
A wreath that twined each starry form around,
And all the opal’d air in color bound.

All hurriedly she knelt upon a bed
Of flowers: of lilies such as rear’d the head
On the fair Capo Deucato, and sprang
So eagerly around about to hang
Upon the flying footsteps of—deep pride—
Of her who lov’d a mortal—and so died.
The Sephalica, budding with young bees,
Uprear’d its purple stem around her knees:
And gemmy flower, of Trebizond misnam’d—
Inmate of highest stars, where erst it sham’d
All other loveliness: its honied dew
(The fabled nectar that the heathen knew)
Deliriously sweet, was dropp’d from Heaven,
And fell on gardens of the unforgiven
In Trebizond—and on a sunny flower
So like its own above that, to this hour,
It still remaineth, torturing the bee
With madness, and unwonted reverie:
In Heaven, and all its environs, the leaf
And blossom of the fairy plant, in grief
Disconsolate linger—grief that hangs her head,
Repenting follies that full long have fled,
Heaving her white breast to the balmy air,
Like guilty beauty, chasten’d, and more fair:
Nyctanthes too, as sacred as the light
She fears to perfume, perfuming the night:
And Clytia pondering between many a sun,
While pettish tears adown her petals run:
And that aspiring flower that sprang on Earth—
And died, ere scarce exalted into birth,
Bursting its odorous heart in spirit to wing
Its way to Heaven, from garden of a king:
And Valisnerian lotus thither flown
From struggling with the waters of the Rhone:
And thy most lovely purple perfume, Zante!
Isola d’oro!—Fior di Levante!
And the Nelumbo bud that floats for ever
With Indian Cupid down the holy river—
Fair flowers, and fairy! to whose care is given
To bear the Goddess’ song, in odors, up to Heaven:

  “Spirit! that dwellest where,
    In the deep sky,
  The terrible and fair,
    In beauty vie!
  Beyond the line of blue—
    The boundary of the star
  Which turneth at the view
    Of thy barrier and thy bar—
  Of the barrier overgone
    By the comets who were cast
  From their pride, and from their throne
    To be drudges till the last—
  To be carriers of fire
    (The red fire of their heart)
  With speed that may not tire
    And with pain that shall not part—
  Who livest—that we know—
    In Eternity—we feel—
  But the shadow of whose brow
    What spirit shall reveal?
  Tho’ the beings whom thy Nesace,
    Thy messenger hath known
  Have dream’d for thy Infinity
    A model of their own—
  Thy will is done, O God!
    The star hath ridden high
  Thro’ many a tempest, but she rode
    Beneath thy burning eye;
  And here, in thought, to thee—
    In thought that can alone
  Ascend thy empire and so be
    A partner of thy throne—
  By winged Fantasy,
     My embassy is given,
  Till secrecy shall knowledge be
    In the environs of Heaven.”

She ceas’d—and buried then her burning cheek
Abash’d, amid the lilies there, to seek
A shelter from the fervor of His eye;
For the stars trembled at the Deity.
She stirr’d not—breath’d not—for a voice was there
How solemnly pervading the calm air!
A sound of silence on the startled ear
Which dreamy poets name “the music of the sphere.”
Ours is a world of words: Quiet we call
“Silence”—which is the merest word of all.

All Nature speaks, and ev’n ideal things
Flap shadowy sounds from the visionary wings—
But ah! not so when, thus, in realms on high
The eternal voice of God is passing by,
And the red winds are withering in the sky!
“What tho’ in worlds which sightless cycles run,
Link’d to a little system, and one sun—
Where all my love is folly, and the crowd
Still think my terrors but the thunder cloud,
The storm, the earthquake, and the ocean-wrath
(Ah! will they cross me in my angrier path?)
What tho’ in worlds which own a single sun
The sands of time grow dimmer as they run,
Yet thine is my resplendency, so given
To bear my secrets thro’ the upper Heaven.
Leave tenantless thy crystal home, and fly,
With all thy train, athwart the moony sky—
Apart—like fire-flies in Sicilian night,
And wing to other worlds another light!
Divulge the secrets of thy embassy
To the proud orbs that twinkle—and so be
To ev’ry heart a barrier and a ban
Lest the stars totter in the guilt of man!”

Up rose the maiden in the yellow night,
The single-mooned eve!-on earth we plight
Our faith to one love—and one moon adore—
The birth-place of young Beauty had no more.
As sprang that yellow star from downy hours,
Up rose the maiden from her shrine of flowers,
And bent o’er sheeny mountain and dim plain
Her way—but left not yet her Therasaean reign.
Z Feb 2018
Standing in the sand, smelling salty waters,
Of the Caribbean seas, through the cold vibrant breeze.
Watching all the tall, happy, swaying coco nut trees,
And when you sniffle a little of the bake and shark it makes you want to sneeze.

Then take a walk in our rivers and cook up a curry *** or stew,
With fish coo coo and a little calla-loo.
and you take a bite and you taste buds and glands spring water of the delicious flavors that makes you say mhmmm.    

Afterwards you can visit the reefs and see the dancing colors of the under water reefs,
Of the Caribbean seas, where I'm from and would always love to be.

But tho forget, it's Carnival time so come in your costumes and with your coolers because you're coming out to fete,
And tho forget, when you step out on "D" road of jouvert morning until night listen to the Soca music,
And let it rap you up and run through your ears with melodies that will make you want to bep.

Oh yes the Caribbean dream, where every man's a king and every woman's a queen.
Jay Bryant Jun 2013
The sun is setting
While she is sitting beside me
Lonely, wishing I was with her
"I'm with you" I reassure her
Tho, these doubts never leave her
She screams at me but doesn’t speak
So clear I hear the things she saying


Naive to this game she's playing
My heart listens with no delaying
She bills her pain to my heart
Giving me the agony left behind
It hurts, but i grunt and set it aside.
I constantly sallow my pride
Trying to be the man i have to be
To keep her beside me
Tho, in reality she's left me
Not buying back her love from me
Merely, keeping my heart
I can still feel it on the ground


I'm no longer looking, to play these games
So I'm searching to find a way
To keep your name out of my brain.
Hoping to inculcate freedom or immunity
From this disease, this virus, this infection
Tho, the cure is far from perfection
So I make supplication for protection
From this thing that is pure deception
Because I am not with her nor she with me
The reassurance I assured her with was a myth
Suppression claws at my back, I suppress that fact
Only to cope and avoid the depression that is you
You left me, So in succession I should leave you
Tho, you have my heart so I find that hard to do
Torin Aug 2018
xspacexpotatox 1h
Racism is a lie, your people hate us naturally lol just look at the way you’re responding................ and us “black people” are supposed to be the ignorant ones.... whew
xspacexpotatox  1h
Look at the affliction and persecution. There’s a reason why your ancestors put chains around our necks. It’s because the Bible said it would happen ****
xspacexpotatox  1h
So do me a favor, go learn a bit more. I’m not even gonna laugh at your ignorance, I’ll pray for you. Have a nice one.
Torin Galleshaw  1h
oh so your jewish friend is the authority on this? what does he know about zionism? seems you got your mind made up man. good for you
xspacexpotatox  1h
I want to know why you feel so threatened lol
xspacexpotatox  1h
I won’t let the hate reach me man
Torin Galleshaw  1h
wow, racism is a lie then u stereotype all white people IMMEDIATELY after you say that. ignent? i really wanted to give you a chance bro. but you have been very abrasive this whole time, immature and incredibly offensive. i dont know where in the bible it says that. or, if as i remember when i went to ce williams middle school as a young kid in a poor part of charleston south carolina where i also learned a test can be racist because the only person that did well on it was me, the white kid. ive felt black racism towards me all my life. do you know the history of the celtic people. yeah, slaves were given food to eat, my people died in gutters in the cold because of no mc hiring practices. ever heard of britain, do you know who irelands neighbor is. have you heard of the potato famine, do you know why it happened? william wallace?
systematic opression for over 800 years.

most important part and key difference between us, besides the fact thta your better than me because you are black, but. you claim im so ignorant im not worth your time, essentially. i think your so misguided i would love to show you the actual way to god and heaven. brother, you need it.
xspacexpotatox  1h
Bro you lose don’t message me anymore
Torin Galleshaw  1h
and dont claim im acting like im threatened, first thing, you dont know me. youre acting nearly militaristic on this ****. young malcom X wanna be. im cool tho, you robably never knew someone as chill as me.
maybe we could talk without resorting to personal attacks tho. thats a good sign you are losing an argument.
xspacexpotatox  1h
What’s your point? Mines is simple. I get what I learned from college text books and the Bible, the knowledge coincides and that indicates who my people are.
Torin Galleshaw  1h
do you know of the talmud?
do you know what it is?
do you realize that it contains the only visual description for jesus?
do me a favor, before you try to come at me with some more weak **** why dont you go and see what the talmud has to say about it
thank you brother
xspacexpotatox  1h
Was the visual description a white man? If so I’m not interested
xspacexpotatox  1h
I’m a young black man that’s been taught all his life, all I know is truth.
xspacexpotatox  1h
I’m not that arrogant, I offered you edification and once I edified you rejected. lol I’m not supposed to be nice and open to you.... I know who my oppressors are.
xspacexpotatox  1h
“GOD” said “and I know the blasphemies of those that say they are Jews and are not” you’re disrespecting my ancestors
Torin Galleshaw  1h
thats the thing only a truly awoken spiritual person will ever recognize. in a past life you were a tiny asian woman bro, you were a fat white guy, you were a cat fucj it. so rn your black. soul dont got color. recognize bro. i dont wanna big boy you on this, but i can. and i will if i have to. or maybe you would either A. apologize for your offensive and rude behavior, or B. and my preferred choice we could ACTUALLY converse. you say you got proof, cite it priest boy
xspacexpotatox  1h
Bro, my ancestors were beaten, *****, hung, fed to alligators, shot in the streets, literally broken. Imagine having your family heritage stripped from you, your language and books taken from you.. You’re not hearing me out, you’re trying to prove yourself to be what I am and I can’t let you think that’s okay. I’m OG. I teach people. So far I’ve learned nothing from this conversation. I’m proud of the beatings my people took to get here, and I definitely don’t agree with the whole “you were a white or Asian person in the past life” because that makes no sense. My family is “BLACK”, besides that my moms great grandmother was mixed, and were STILL predominantly “BLACK”. I come from “BLACK” people, therefore I am a HEBREW ISRAELITE, and I know this for a FACT!
Torin Galleshaw  49m
Bro, my ancestors were beaten, *****, hung, starved for hundreds of years, shot in the streets, forced to fight in the civil war after arriving here form ireland starving, (one of the most effective brigades, you see many of the soldiers had to fight in wars against the british already)literally broken. Imagine having your family heritage stripped from you, my last name is not the last name my great great great granparents had. it was too ethnic, it was changed, your language and books taken from you. do they speak celtic in ireland?.. You’re not hearing ME out, you’re trying to prove yourself to be what I am and I can’t let you think that’s okay
xspacexpotatox  42m
Oh you guys are actually mention in the battles you fought?! **** there’s no documentation of anything “African Americans” did in the wars we helped win! Atleast you guys got decent credit
Torin Galleshaw  37m
bible told me you just have to accept his love, jesus's love, but even buddahs love, and john the baptists love, and all of gods great prophets. bible taught me that without their love i can never really love any one.
xspacexpotatox  35m
If you believe in the most high, fine with me. That’s all I have to say.
Torin Galleshaw
Torin Galleshaw  33m
yes, there is documentation of both slaves ad freed black men fighting on both sides actually, believe it or not
Torin Galleshaw  32m
https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/blacks-civil-war

"Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship."

Frederick Douglass

xspacexpotatox  28m
I never once believed the history teachers in school, I always challenged them because I know that American History is *******. Just like whatever filth you’re trying to show me will only bore me like the teachers bored me in school. I served in the US Army. I did my time for white america and I refuse to go back lol



Matthew 6:10-14 thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, give us this day our daily bread, And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors,And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
Ken Pepiton Oct 2018
Drunk, we staggered home.

Aware of having been
some
other where
a while

That woman, she could answer

any question rebbi axt,
Ohhhhmyyy

she laugh and say, Dude, I got the Intent-net,
in my hand

That's more than a list of numbers, this
accounting idle words going on, on going, as fast as

lightning, at the scale, of, say

cat-ions ifiying an-ions
at random,
seen systematical, from a distance
zoom out
at the scale, of, say
Great Deep Field.

Center you, I'm no matter.

synchro
now

zoom out
Use that steam program
Universe Sandbox,
you gotta see that to imagine this, right,

and next is what you keep saying is unbelievable,
but its not.

Good things come to them
to whom
good makes more sense.

Earth from the moon POV

Confusion flux, spurtual,  caused by the solar flare of all solar flares,
one side

Whooshing the Ice left from Patton's flood
into steam, the stuff, not the app,

which swooshhhesssssssssss smack
into the freezing repurcussions
from the daark side…

The Noah event, that was bad,
This one, the last one, this just previous one,

was spiritual. Magnitudes incomparable
(save in parable and example, exemplar gratis,
says the bodiless being, with a roll of  my wrist and a bow)

At that very time on the side away from the flare,
the daark side of the planet, this one…

a Donald Patton nitrogen snow ball
that nearly breached Roche's limit,

too not nearly enough,
dis -integration
The atmosphere freezes
to the quark level, snap,

the cold
explosive
forward momentum
booms a nitrogen bubble now
minusminusminus
solid nitrogen
melting

any heat locked in flare fired steam,
what was once the water
that washed away the gods and locked their cities
of ivory under the ice

on the sunny side,
where now, then,

a solar flare like legends build empires upon
has passed, fires rage

there were survivors who lived to tell

and old stories never die. Old story tellers do,

Only miners survived, gold digger mostly,
few alchemists who knew the mystery in mercury,
Lost was all knowing but to a very few,
who truth be told had been the owner's
well kept servants, ministers of this and that
they perished with all the fires touched

we diggers, we only marvel

How bits of time, exact as ours, can be seen happening
all in bubble of Mercury. Cooked out red rock like these.

"Blood o' the gods of old, swat I'astold."

Messages from the gods, grandma, said, "Mercury calls for gold, gold listens, when fire's hottern fire can be,
unless
the breath of men blow on the coals", we all said that last part and blew out the light. G'night


but a story told a wee bit here a qubit there
here a little, there a little
line upon line,
precept upon precept,

'cept no body knows what I know about cept,

capere, a story starts, a provisioning tale. Wait.

it means grip. like a tool. rock breaks nut.

Paper covers rock, but scissors are so far in the future
that now, my time, my mind wanders after whys

this authoritative telling of the story, in it,
none know the terminal tale.

As in times past, there were survivors who lived to tell

and old stories never die. Old story tellers do,

Tho' here's a clue.
Meek's not bad,
stupid, for no reason, is.

Living long for the sake of a song heard once,
in dream luring me on, promising right now, I'll

know what it's like to see, oh

POV I made this clear some time ago,
time is less predictable than any imagined, before 2018
when, you know…

Even those tales old drunk Hesiod sold
in the Hittite tavern at Delphi,

Chronos thought wrong in those,
he ruled but for the merest gleam o'

Time, then a bubble gen erated by the thought of
opposition to transition,
nothing to something,
pushing /pushing back
stretch/snap/spark
that takes power, pulsing power, throbbing power

push/stretch
glow/snap
you know, imagine, glowing - cheat, think 2018 CG
glow/snap
Planc time,
each time the bubble pushes back
a ripple
imagine a clock, later, if you believe then, you must.

Now, see the bubble of all men have imagined,
since the time when such a bubble was only evil,
continually.

It went viral.
Noah we know for sure, almost, survived, ? Cushites kept records. In Africa.
Akkad kept record, too.
Some Hopi survived somehow and they have a tale.

They say they know the story is ten thousand years old,
I've been to a crossroads
on their journey,
stories
tell of it, still, today.

Holy means marked for good reason.
Marked with clues, not riddles, maps

Sacred means secret means hidden away for use,
not common, every day, quotidian use, right use.

Time, the opposing force, is precious to us all.
In time, we do all we can and die,

in ever, we expand, in no time at all. I imagine.

You fill it. Now, Your expandable mind's time,

time pushes from the outside,
wisdom pushes from the inside,

And so it goes, life goes on and music grows on ya,

Amusing how they do that, teeny muses dancing
shiva on the tip of my tongue,

singings songs in tongues I've never known
if they
are words on tongues
or sounds on tongues,

notes,

Baysian Binary Cross Validation
still ends with some people thinkin'
"it is finished" left them with a ton o'weight,
that's wrong, insist resistance.

Some, heavy duty, leaders of lambs, they claim
power in their mouths, spoken from fixed hearts,

but fixed upon, is truly the song,
said, words are only
little bits of whole sym ulacrum of re-ify-ing

where broken things re-pair, and life goes on…

"fixed, my heart is fixed",
no, your heart is machine of the most magnificent design, perfected,
a time at a time.
Flexing, pacing time itself, faster slower,

try some time
alone
be still, pond still

I know the story broke,
I could not hold it.

In the night, bitter cold
Frozen fragile...

There are pieces scattered every

where, everywhere
there is time, there is at least, a point

a story may stand upon and ask an angel
to dance.
Dance, give it some flare, what do we care?

Nobody's watching, but that fly.
This is read, by me at http://anchor.fm/kenpepiton
Life is good at my house, thankyou. A reader is needed more than words can tell. My posts are a book now, few stand solidly on their own. Thank you if you spend your time perusing them please tell me where I muddy the flow, or break the story.
Brandon Aug 2013
The wind howled outside of the lean to and Brian knew that it was only a matter of time before the chill settled in and the last breath of life would leave his body. He thought about his family back in the city and he could not bring to mind any bad times tho he knew that there were many. He thought of his marriage and how beautiful his wife had looked on her wedding day walking down the aisle escorted by her grandfather who had a tear in his eye. He remembered the way her dress and her hair flowed behind her as if there were some slight breeze that had hit her at just the right angle to make it possible. He remembered trying not to cry and to only smile the closer she got to him and how he nearly lost his composure when her grandfather handed her off to him. Brian thought of their first born who he called Maggie but  was named Magnolia by both parents and his wife still used that name. She would be turning sixteen this year and he had not been around as much lately as he had liked but he felt that she knew he would always be there. A tear rolled down the wind bitten cheeks of Brian and began to slow once it got close to his chin, partially leaving a frozen trail from eye to tears end. He thought about Maggie as a little girl, perhaps around the age of five, and the fishing trips that they would take out on the lakes of Minnesota. He remembered the first time that she had baited the fishhook herself and how proud both she and he were when she had caught a ten pound walleye with that same hook. Brian wanted desperately to hold onto that moment for the rest of his life and swore he would never forget and all thruout the years of his life it was one memory that we went back to anytime he felt low and out of place with everyone and everything around him. Brian thought of his two sons, Jameson and Benjamin, twins that could not have been more different. Jameson was great at sports and thrived on competition where Ben was more artistic and would often be found doing volunteer work. Tho they had many differences, they were brothers thru and thru and never had a bad moment together. Brian and Ruth Ann had raised there children right; he knew that much was true and felt the pang of sadness pierce his heart as he felt the anguish of his wife when she heard the news that he was dead and she would have to finish raising them alone. He knew she would do just fine and he wanted to tell her so, to comfort her somehow even tho he wouldn't be around but he had no way of doing so and instead shivered beneath the lean to and continued thinking of his family to keep his mind active. After a short while tho he felt his brain slow and the memories became distant like dreams do after a few moments of being awake. Brian closed his eyes tightly and forced himself to think and focus. He thought about the last family photo that they took and how grown up everyone was becoming and how much love was still in his wife's eyes and he lied down on the cold ground with that image in his head and he slipped into a sleep from which he knew he would not wake up from but still he smiled at his memories and hoped that even without him his children would continue being happy and would grow further and start their own families which would have their own families and so forth. He hoped his wife would be strong and keep on and if she should find someone else he hoped she would not let Brian be the thing that kept her from living. Before Brian exhaled his last breath, he saw Maggie baiting the fish hook and smiling the way a child does. Brian smiled too and slipped into death.
what keeps us bound on earth?
theres nothing keeping you to me
something is always keeping us apart
yet my thought my prayers they are for you

where are you this time of night?
when my bed is warm enough for two
nothing not even fabric in between
but its not us just me alone in calm sea

where have you been all my life ?
now that the sun of my innocense has set
does the devil have your number too
is that why we can lay awake for days

when will you be coming home?
its lonely without you here you know
you are my sun and moon
im the planet being stirred up.  even tho
your worlds not big enough for both of us
even tho you are all my shooting stars
This is your room
Even tho you can’t be here
This is your room

I sit in your chair
I wear your dressing gown
I shower every morning
And at night I lay me down
On your bed

This is your room
Even tho you can’t be here.
This is your room.

This is your heart
Even tho you can’t be here
this is your heart

You touch it with your love
I feel your fingertips
I cry cos I’m alone
And long to feel your lips
Touching mine

This is your heart
Even tho you can’t be here
This is your heart

This is your man
Even tho you can’t be here
This is your man

He wonders how you are
And if you think of him
He sits and waits and dreams of you
And keeps his love within

This is your man
Even tho you can’t be here
This is your man

This is your man.
This is your heart.
Here in your room.
Is there, for honest poverty,
      That hings his head, an’ a’ that?
The coward slave, we pass him by,
      We dare be poor for a’ that!
           For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
                Our toils obscure, an’ a’ that;
           The rank is but the guinea’s stamp;
                The man’s the gowd for a’ that,

What tho’ on hamely fare we dine,
      Wear hoddin-gray, an’ a’ that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
      A man’s a man for a’ that.
           For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
                Their tinsel show an’ a’ that;
           The honest man, tho’ e’er sae poor,
                Is king o’ men for a’ that.

Ye see yon birkie, ca’d a lord
      Wha struts, an’ stares, an’ a’ that;
Tho’ hundreds worship at his word,
      He’s but a coof for a’ that:
           For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
                His riband, star, an’ a’ that,
           The man o’ independent mind,
                He looks and laughs at a’ that.

A prince can mak a belted knight,
      A marquis, duke, an’ a’ that;
But an honest man’s aboon his might,
      Guid faith he mauna fa’ that!
           For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
                Their dignities, an’ a’ that,
           The pith o’ sense, an’ pride o’ worth,
                Are higher rank than a’ that.

Then let us pray that come it may,
      As come it will for a’ that,
That sense and worth, o’er a’ the earth,
      May bear the gree, an’ a’ that.
           For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
                It’s coming yet, for a’ that,
           That man to man, the warld o’er,
                Shall brothers be for a’ that.
MeanAileen Mar 2017
Tell me that I'm beautiful,
say it aloud tonight.
Tell me I mean everything,
confess I am always right.

Say that I'm like magic,
treat me just as a queen.
Speak words I long to hear,
let me live in a dream....

Shower me with promises,
drown me in your desire.
Whisper sweet devotions,
tho I'll know you're a liar.

Tell me how much you love me,
say you will never leave...
Feed to me these little fibs
I want so much to believe~
One of my personal favorites...
Isaac Peña Nov 2015
This one goes to the real poets.
To those who decide to carry the world on their own.
To those who carry hell in their head and a graveyard of lost love stories in their heart
To the brave ones who fight darkness with darkness.
Tho those who the only answer they seek from a god is if there's eternal life for their loved ones, because they know there's no space for them in that paradise.
To those who know that suffering is the most humane feeling there is.
To those who loved and hated the wrong person.
This goes to Lorca isolated, hiding in a closet in New York.
To Unamuno craving to believe in something impossible.
To Quiroga drinking the poison of his sorrow at a hospital.
To Becquer and Espino for dying so young.
To Neruda for cheating on himself so many times.
To Machados' lost spirit.
To Marquez and his melancholic ******.
To Poe's tormented soul and his raven.
To Shakespeare and his Juliet.
To Dante and his story of woe.
This goes for the only beings who can live with a hell inside of them, and still manage to write heavenly things for those in need to read.
This one's for us.
Rolito's way May 2013
Not good until its a mill or so
Rub shoulders with those who are now ghost
Walking that thin line wit ice slipper
Face to face with the d' evil
Wording u found the right *****
Comrades put to rest with bullet holes
But we just living tho
Nat Lipstadt May 2013
I sit in the sun room, I am shaded for the sun
is only newly risen, low slung, just above the horizon,
behind me, over my shoulder, early morn warm

Slivers of sun rays yellow highlight the wild green lawn,
freshly nourished by torrential rains of the prior eve

The wind gusts are residuals, memoirs of the hurricane
that came for a peripheral visit, your unwanted cousin Earl,
in town for the day, too bad your schedule
is fully booked, but he keeps raining on you,
staying on the phone for so long, that the goodbye,
go away, hang up relief is palpable

The oak trees are top heavy with leaves frothy like a new cappuccino,
the leaves resist the sun slivers, guarding the grass
from browning out, by knocking the rookie rays to and fro,
just for now, just for a few minutes more,
it is advantage trees, for they stand taller in the sky
than the youthful teenage yellow ball

I sit in the sun room buffered from nature's battles external,
by white lace curtains which are the hallmark
of all that is fine in Western Civilization,

and my thoughts drift to suicide.

I have sat in the sun room of my mind, unprotected.
with front row seats, first hand witness to a battle unceasing

Such that my investigations, my travails along the boundary line
between internal madness and infernal relief from mental pain
so crippling, is such that you recall begging for cancer or Aids

Such that my investigations, my travails along the sanity boundary
are substantive, modestly put, not inconsiderable

Point your finger at me, demanding like every
needy neurotic moderne, reassurance total,
proof negative in this instance, of relevant expertise!

Tell us you bona fides, what is your knowing in these matters?

Show us the wrist scars, evidential,
prove to us your "hands on" experiential!

True, true, I am without demonstrable proofs
of the first hand, my resume is absent of
razors and pills, poisons and daredevil spills,
guns, knives, utensils purposed for taking lives

Here are my truths, here are my sums

If the numerator is the minutes spent resisting the promised relief
of the East River currents from the crushing loneliness that
consumed my every waking second of every night of my years of despair
                           divided by
a denominator that is my unitary, solitary name,
then my fraction, my remainder, is greater than one,
the one step away from supposed salvation...

Yet, here I am sitting in the sun room buffered from
nature's battles by white lace curtains which are the hallmark
of all that is fine in Western Civilization

I am a survivor of mine own World War III,
carnaged battlefields, where white lace curtains,
were not buffers but dividers tween mis en scenes,
variegated veins of colored nightmares, reenactments of
death heroics worthy of Shakespeare

Did I lack for courage?
Was my fear/despair ratio insufficient?

These are questions for which the answers matter only to me,
tho the questions are fair ones, my unsolicited ******,
they are not the ones for which I herein write,
for they no longer have relevance, meaning or validity,
for yours truly

I write poetry by command, by request, good or bad,
this one is a bequest to myself, and also a sidecar for an old friend,
who asked in passing to write what I know of suicide,
unaware that the damage of hurricanes is not always
visible to the naked heart

These hands, that type these words are the resume of a life
resumed,
life line remains scarred, but after an inter-mission, after an inter-diction, an inter-re-invention
in a play where I was an actor who could not speak
but knew every line, I am now the approving audience too...

But I speak now and I say this:

There are natural toxins in us all,
if you wish to understand the whys, the reasons,
of the nearness of taking/giving away what belongs to you,
do your own sums, admit your own truths
query not the lives of others, approach the mirror...


If you want to understand suicide,
no need to phone a friend, ask the expert,
ask yourself, parse the curtains of the
sun room and admit, that you do understand,
that you once swung one leg over the roof,
gauged the currents speed and direction,
went deep sea fishing without rod or reel
and you recall it all too well, for you did the math
and here I am, tho the tug ne'er fully disappears,
here I am, here I am writing to you,
as I sit in the sun room.

Memorial Day, 2011
hard to believe this poem will be 8 years old, soon enough; I well recall writing it and will return to the sunroom soon for inspiration and an afternoon nap.
Nat Lipstadt Mar 2019
letter to elana

for the poet elana bell

~

in a different cafe,
on a Manhattan streetscape where once, years earlier,
violence was the purview of West Side Story gangs,
ruling their internecine non-intersectionality territorial blood lines supremely

nowadays, violence replaced by the frenetic
noises of Lincoln Center theater goers,
student dancers, actors, musicians and poets joining the throng
of those who sup and run,
all hearing their own frantic
curtain calling, saying, announcing,
music dance voices words require your obeisance,
needy for a mutual worshipping reassurance fiat that:

life can be made transcendent
if even for just 90 minutes or 120 pages,
or a 3 minute poem reading


this city of millions requires billions of poems that spoon stirred  
and yet, almost always fail, to squeeze, all of the human essence that is in its ultimate source, clarifying nyc tap water,
containing the storied remnants of a hackable continuous,
single human stanza cell osmosis - a blockchain like no other

two poets sit side by side each in their own lapsed dreams,
she, a published poet of prize and rank, ^
he, a rank amateur whose only prize is his unpublished anonymity,
poetry, is his just a nightly soul cleansing,
an imported remnant of his Marrano piyyutim ancestry

one turns to the other,
in the inexplicable daily crazy miracle
of city fashionistas

in a city where stealing a parking spot, or the
forced squeezing creation of a subway seat space
where physics proves none exists,
are oft the roots of slashing and stabbings faithfully reported
on the 11 o’clock news,  
and trust and/or other encouraging words
are seldom heard and even less demonstrated,
the make-no-eye-contact of Camus’s L’Etranger anomie is the
normative, paranormal, paralysis cloak of we city separatists

“Can you watch over my electronics and stuff?”

Sure says the grayed and grizzled,
an all life long veteran of nyc,
judged to be trustworthy
based on a few seconds of being upsized and downsized,
a car wash (exterior only) perusal
despite a
“no direction home, like a compete unknown, a rolling stone,”  
this signage, yellow star permanently chest-affixed,
conveniently ignored, as it seems impossible
thieves don’t look like me,
don’t likely in their possess,
a distinguished head of gray hair (yeah, sure)

a thank you reward of (or did I imagine it) a lean-in,
a momentary head on a shoulder,
the chit chat now grows earned and earnest,
she confesses her cardinal poetry profession,
eliciting an ‘Oh Boy’ utterance from the poet
of a thousand names
and a thousand textual emendations

a fastidious nyc boundary is brief crossed for one short meal,
till the end when time sensitized IMRL intrudes and
the showtime calls out,
if not now, when? if not me, then who?

I read her poetry later in the praying supine first position of
three AM, and laugh with delight, at the contrast and no compare,
the styles clash and tho the stories told
are both writ in the aleph bet script,
there ends the Ven diagram overlap and
into the night’s coming of a Elvisian blue suede coverlet,
we both disappear, and if not for this recording,
history says, you old man confused, never happened,
just an imaginary poetry ink blot dream breaching...

~

postface:
another poetry book is no longer homeless,
comes to shelter upon my shelf, close to Angelou, far from Whitman,
now all the book’s nooks eyes collectively
reassessing the new old-owner, parsing his syntax,
undecided if his readership is worthy of them,
concluding that all these books are the
man’s owned roughened stones,
to be placed by human hands on the
serpentine curvature of his literary tombstone,
and until all stones fully read,
they all agree,
will they and he
be fully freed,
smoothing his legacy’s edges
Feb. 21 -March 5, 2019
NYC
another true story

^ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elana_Bell
jane taylor May 2016
towering gently overflowing with heightened awareness
subtle hints of blade’s keen glittering chiseled edges
untamed rugged surface powerfully averts gale’s acrid tempest
vigor pulsating that doth persuade the cloud’s reflections
if i shall not again embrace a meager glimpse; a demure echo
of thine towering mounts my soul shall ever suffer

my spirit soars with e'er one glance of thine majestic presence
replete with reminiscence seasons stir and beg thine tender mercies
to house the changing leaves at dusk of autumn’s auburn portraits
and give birth to crystal snow cascading peripherally in winter
which melding into spring then begs thy bluffs to cover
in soft amethyst of columbine blossoming first light of summer

‘tis not paramount to scale high aloft thine peaks in escalation
for small sheer glances stamp forever with imperial impressions
and ‘tho i’ve traveled ‘round and savored nature’s varied essence
none can compare thine evergreens laced in aspens nuance
my breath is gone and shan’t return ‘til in thy shadow casting
i stand and look upon thine hallowed face the rocky mountains

©2016 janetaylor
Quentin Briscoe Jul 2014
STD
Sadly
you found me
STD
yes you infected
imperfected
and now you wont leave
you would think i had ***
but its just an STD
but you wont let me be
not a bacteria
inertia
or viral
spiral
just a simple disease
that doesnt invovle a sneeze
im living yes i still can breath
but i still have a STD...
See she gave it to me...
I can spread this thing
and even if i would
i dont thing that I should..
see it would just complacate things
No we wouldn't die tonight
but one day we just might
not from the sores and the strains
but from the aches and the pains
of being lonely again...
See its a lot more complicated
then what you are making it
you think Im just disgusting cuz of what I caught
but I pretty sure its something u thought.
lot worst then yeast cuz that will leave
more like a Herpies or ***
even tho that isn't what I've received
And I dont have the funds to splurge
so I dont know if I can scure the cure
or if she even had the bug
enough that it could be cured by her love
I caught somethin that aint easily healing......
Espcially if you dont have the disease...
I caught.....Feelings
A sexually transmited disease
George Krokos Feb 2011
The rhythm of life is like an endless melody
and goes on regardless of where we might be.
Throughout the day and all during the night
it never stops tho’ it’s not obvious to sight.

When the sun rises and again when it sets
that rhythm of life all things never forgets.
With each coming and going to and fro
we’re all part of its main working show.

In birth and death as in growth and decay
all creatures have their moments of play.
In the heavens above and on the earth below
one after another they all must come and go.

With the ebb and flow of each wave in the ocean
it’s apparently like a ceaseless rhythmic motion;
tho’ they’re caused by the moon’s gravitational pull,
and is itself also subjected to being either new or full.

In the four seasons of the year and all the changes they bring,
as the earth revolves around the sun, affect every living thing.
By these regular distinct cycles each lasting its period of time
it’s a universal ongoing phenomenon and never ending rhyme.

Whether we like it or not it embraces us all in its sway
and our affairs in this world enjoy their night and day.
It makes order gradually come forth out of chaos it seems
and helps us all to survive and even realise some dreams.

We all have certain basic needs and so many wants or desires
and flowing with the rhythm of life all in harmony transpires.
If we have unnatural obsessions by which our mind is caught
then it’s freedom with a high price that is actually most sought.

This rhythm of life has an existence and power of its own
and all that does ever happen by it unmistakably is known.
When we become in tune with its reality and stay in touch
all that goes on in the world will be to our benefit as such.
Private Collection - written in 2002
Tho has made me, and shall thy work decay?
Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste;
I run to death, and death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday.
I dare not move my dim eyes any way,
Despair behind, and death before doth cast
Such terror, and my feeble flesh doth waste
By sin in it, which it towards hell doth weigh.
Only thou art above, and when towards thee
By thy leave I can look, I rise again;
But our old subtle foe so tempteth me
That not one hour myself I can sustain.
Thy grace may wing me to prevent his art,
And thou like adamant draw mine iron heart.
jane taylor Jun 2016
fly
born in illusory chains
gnarled metal
encrusted in my broken skin
the copper colored dust
of rusted steel
infectiously envelopes

shaving off antiquated layers
of fundamentalist religion
encrusted for generations
unpeeled until raw
an unsophisticated method
unveiling
ancient lodged glass shards
colored with deceit

brought before their court
interrogated
unfathomably skewered
an eerie salem witch trial
in modern times

barbarically they shun me
banished
i wander aimlessly
smelling the rotten decay of deceased community
as splinters pierce my feet
from the crooked wooden plank
i walk alone now

an unfathomable inner ache
kindled a residue within
igniting a wildfire from the darkest shadows
uncontainably erupting
i dance savagely
naked in the orange moonlight
and in every shaded edge
lit my soul ablaze

i am a nomad sheep
‘tho not one of their color
no pasture to contain me
no shepherd i can follow
theological safety nets
no longer there to catch me
bohemian-like
i plunge

free falling
plummeting
stripped wide open
magically
fearlessness
reverses gravitation

floating
untethered
i soar amongst
apricot tinged clouds
my skin still wet from rebirth
and rise with the flaming coral sun

you cannot destroy me
i twisted in your decrepit pencil sharpener
and with fresh mettle
cut through the chains that bound

you can have my ego
but you cannot have my soul

dismantling domestication
transcending limitation
wildly untamed
i fly

©2016janetaylor
my husband and i left the mormon church and lost many friends, family, and community
If any vision should reveal
  Thy likeness, I might count it vain
  As but the canker of the brain;
Yea, tho' it spake and made appeal

To chances where our lots were cast
  Together in the days behind,
  I might but say, I hear a wind
Of memory murmuring the past.

Yea, tho' it spake and bared to view
  A fact within the coming year;
  And tho' the months, revolving near,
Should prove the phantom-warning true,

They might not seem thy prophecies,
  But spiritual presentiments,
  And such refraction of events
As often rises ere they rise.
So all day long the noise of battle roll'd
Among the mountains by the winter sea;
Until King Arthur's table, man by man,
Had fallen in Lyonnesse about their Lord,
King Arthur: then, because his wound was deep,
The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him,
Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights,
And bore him to a chapel nigh the field,
A broken chancel with a broken cross,
That stood on a dark strait of barren land.
On one side lay the ocean, and on one
Lay a great water, and the moon was full.

      Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere:
"The sequel of to-day unsolders all
The goodliest fellowship of famous knights
Whereof this world holds record. Such a sleep
They sleep--the men I loved. I think that we
Shall never more, at any future time,
Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds,
Walking about the gardens and the halls
Of Camelot, as in the days that were.
I perish by this people which I made,--
Tho' Merlin sware that I should come again
To rule once more--but let what will be, be,
I am so deeply smitten thro' the helm
That without help I cannot last till morn.
Thou therefore take my brand Excalibur,
Which was my pride: for thou rememberest how
In those old days, one summer noon, an arm
Rose up from out the ***** of the lake,
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,
Holding the sword--and how I row'd across
And took it, and have worn it, like a king:
And, wheresoever I am sung or told
In aftertime, this also shall be known:
But now delay not: take Excalibur,
And fling him far into the middle mere:
Watch what thou seest, and lightly bring me word."

      To him replied the bold Sir Bedivere:
"It is not meet, Sir King, to leave thee thus,
Aidless, alone, and smitten thro' the helm.
A little thing may harm a wounded man.
Yet I thy hest will all perform at full,
Watch what I see, and lightly bring thee word."

      So saying, from the ruin'd shrine he stept
And in the moon athwart the place of tombs,
Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men,
Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang
Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping down
By zigzag paths, and juts of pointed rock,
Came on the shining levels of the lake.

      There drew he forth the brand Excalibur,
And o'er him, drawing it, the winter moon,
Brightening the skirts of a long cloud, ran forth
And sparkled keen with frost against the hilt:
For all the haft twinkled with diamond sparks,
Myriads of topaz-lights, and jacinth work
Of subtlest jewellery. He gazed so long
That both his eyes were dazzled, as he stood,
This way and that dividing the swift mind,
In act to throw: but at the last it seem'd
Better to leave Excalibur conceal'd
There in the many-knotted water-flags,
That whistled stiff and dry about the marge.
So strode he back slow to the wounded King.

      Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere:
"Hast thou perform'd my mission which I gave?
What is it thou hast seen, or what hast heard?"

      And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere:
"I heard the ripple washing in the reeds,
And the wild water lapping on the crag."

      To whom replied King Arthur, faint and pale:
"Thou hast betray'd thy nature and thy name,
Not rendering true answer, as beseem'd
Thy fealty, nor like a noble knight:
For surer sign had follow'd, either hand,
Or voice, or else a motion of the mere.
This is a shameful thing for men to lie.
Yet now, I charge thee, quickly go again
As thou art lief and dear, and do the thing
I bade thee, watch, and lightly bring me word."

      Then went Sir Bedivere the second time
Across the ridge, and paced beside the mere,
Counting the dewy pebbles, fixed in thought;
But when he saw the wonder of the hilt,
How curiously and strangely chased, he smote
His palms together, and he cried aloud,

      "And if indeed I cast the brand away,
Surely a precious thing, one worthy note,
Should thus be lost forever from the earth,
Which might have pleased the eyes of many men.
What good should follow this, if this were done?
What harm, undone? deep harm to disobey,
Seeing obedience is the bond of rule.
Were it well to obey then, if a king demand
An act unprofitable, against himself?
The King is sick, and knows not what he does.
What record, or what relic of my lord
Should be to aftertime, but empty breath
And rumours of a doubt? but were this kept,
Stored in some treasure-house of mighty kings,
Some one might show it at a joust of arms,
Saying, 'King Arthur's sword, Excalibur,
Wrought by the lonely maiden of the Lake;
Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps
Upon the hidden bases of the hills.'
So might some old man speak in the aftertime
To all the people, winning reverence.
But now much honour and much fame were lost."

      So spake he, clouded with his own conceit,
And hid Excalibur the second time,
And so strode back slow to the wounded King.

      Then spoke King Arthur, breathing heavily:
"What is it thou hast seen, or what hast heard?"

      And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere:
"I heard the water lapping on the crag,
And the long ripple washing in the reeds."

      To whom replied King Arthur, much in wrath:
"Ah, miserable and unkind, untrue,
Unknightly, traitor-hearted! Woe is me!
Authority forgets a dying king,
Laid widow'd of the power in his eye
That bow'd the will. I see thee what thou art,
For thou, the latest-left of all my knights,
In whom should meet the offices of all,
Thou wouldst betray me for the precious hilt;
Either from lust of gold, or like a girl
Valuing the giddy pleasure of the eyes.
Yet, for a man may fail in duty twice,
And the third time may prosper, get thee hence:
But, if thou spare to fling Excalibur,
I will arise and slay thee with my hands."

      Then quickly rose Sir Bedivere, and ran,
And, leaping down the ridges lightly, plunged
Among the bulrush-beds, and clutch'd the sword,
And strongly wheel'd and threw it. The great brand
Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon,
And flashing round and round, and whirl'd in an arch,
Shot like a streamer of the northern morn,
Seen where the moving isles of winter shock
By night, with noises of the northern sea.
So flash'd and fell the brand Excalibur:
But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,
And caught him by the hilt, and brandish'd him
Three times, and drew him under in the mere.
And lightly went the other to the King.

      Then spoke King Arthur, drawing thicker breath:
"Now see I by thine eyes that this is done.
Speak out: what is it thou hast heard, or seen?"

      And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere:
"Sir King, I closed mine eyelids, lest the gems
Should blind my purpose, for I never saw,
Nor shall see, here or elsewhere, till I die,
Not tho' I live three lives of mortal men,
So great a miracle as yonder hilt.
Then with both hands I flung him, wheeling him;
But when I look'd again, behold an arm,
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,
That caught him by the hilt, and brandish'd him
Three times, and drew him under in the mere."

      And answer made King Arthur, breathing hard:
"My end draws nigh; 't is time that I were gone.
Make broad thy shoulders to receive my weight,
And bear me to the margin; yet I fear
My wound hath taken cold, and I shall die."

      So saying, from the pavement he half rose,
Slowly, with pain, reclining on his arm,
And looking wistfully with wide blue eyes
As in a picture. Him Sir Bedivere
Remorsefully regarded thro' his tears,
And would have spoken, but he found not words,
Then took with care, and kneeling on one knee,
O'er both his shoulders drew the languid hands,
And rising bore him thro' the place of tombs.

      But, as he walk'd, King Arthur panted hard,
Like one that feels a nightmare on his bed
When all the house is mute. So sigh'd the King
Muttering and murmuring at his ear, "Quick, quick!
I fear it is too late, and I shall die."
But the other swiftly strode from ridge to ridge,
Clothed with his breath, and looking, as he walk'd
Larger than human on the frozen hills.
He heard the deep behind him, and a cry
Before. His own thought drove him like a goad.
Dry clash'd his harness in the icy caves
And barren chasms, and all to left and right
The bare black cliff clang'd round him, as he based
His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang
Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels--
And on a sudden, lo! the level lake,
And the long glories of the winter moon.

      Then saw they how there hove a dusky barge
Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern,
Beneath them; and descending they were ware
That all the decks were dense with stately forms
Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream--by these
Three Queens with crowns of gold--and from them rose
A cry that shiver'd to the tingling stars,
And, as it were one voice, an agony
Of lamentation, like a wind, that shrills
All night in a waste land, where no one comes,
Or hath come, since the making of the world.

      Then murmur'd Arthur, "Place me in the barge,"
And to the barge they came. There those three Queens
Put forth their hands, and took the King, and wept.
But she that rose the tallest of them all
And fairest, laid his head upon her lap,
And loosed the shatter'd casque, and chafed his hands,
And call'd him by his name, complaining loud
And dropping bitter tears against his brow
Striped with dark blood: for all his face was white
And colourless, and like the wither'd moon
Smote by the fresh beam of the springing east;
And all his greaves and cuisses dash'd with drops
Of onset; and the light and lustrous curls--
That made his forehead like a rising sun
High from the dais-throne--were parch'd with dust;
Or, clotted into points and hanging loose,
Mix'd with the knightly growth that fringed his lips.
So like a shatter'd column lay the King;
Not like that Arthur who, with lance in rest,
From spur to plume a star of tournament,
Shot thro' the lists at Camelot, and charged
Before the eyes of ladies and of kings.

      Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere:
"Ah! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go?
Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes?
For now I see the true old times are dead,
When every morning brought a noble chance,
And every chance brought out a noble knight.
Such times have been not since the light that led
The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh.
But now the whole ROUND TABLE is dissolved
Which was an image of the mighty world;
And I, the last, go forth companionless,
And the days darken round me, and the years,
Among new men, strange faces, other minds."

      And slowly answer'd Arthur from the barge:
"The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me?
I have lived my life, and that which I have done
May He within Himself make pure! but thou,
If thou shouldst never see my face again,
Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.
But now farewell. I am going a long way
With these thou seest--if indeed I go--
(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt)
To the island-valley of Avilion;
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard-lawns
And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea,
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound."

      So said he, and the barge with oar and sail
Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan
That, fluting a wild carol ere her death,
Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood
With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere
Revolving many memories, till the hull
Look'd one black dot against the verge of dawn,
And on the mere the wailing died away.
Nat Lipstadt Oct 2013
I am a man, grandfather to four.
Adherent to the same religion,
Poetry.

Breathing through mine eyes,
Exhaling carbon words,
That with time and pressure become
Poems, verbal musical notes upon life.

Each motion, from tiny to grand,
A capsule of expression,
That if examined under microscope,
Familial DNA, interconnected tissue,
Discovered, tho logic says,  
Time and distance render impossible.

But this is a diamond
This is a writ to be slipped
Upon the finger, the heart, the essence,
Of the only Banyan tree I have hugged.

This poem but a fig,
In the cracks of kindness,
The crevices of caring,
It has slow germinated.

You dear, Sally,
My host,
A building upon I can lean,
When wearied spirits uproot
My surficial composure.

Your seeds carried from east to west,
By a fig wasp, a bird unknown,
An ocean voyager, of indisputable vision, strength.

This seeded messenger, word carrier,
Supplanted in me, and your pupils,
Jose-Bolima-Remillan
Xavier-Paolo-Joshh-Mandrez
Whose very names breathe poems,
in others too, like me and Atu,
Seeds to become new roots, but you,
Our Host official and forever
Planter of trees of loving kindness.

You already know with love and affection,
I call you Grandma Sally,
And when you ask, beseech,
I cannot refuse.

Together we will will banish the sad,
Acknowledge we, that life's ocean,
A mixture of many, even sad, a necessity.

But I promise that will turn it into
Something simple, something good.
For you have asked and I answer you
Right here right now - your wish,
My objective, deep rooted like you,
Like an old banyan tree,
Your roots spread far, spread wide.

So some eve, when to the beach, to the sky
You glance, smile, no matter what, troubles dispersed,
For the reflection of you, seeds, full fledged trees now,
Bending skywards, in search of your rays of expression,
Your maternal wisdom rooted, spread so wide, globally,
All over this Earth, is visible from your
Beloved Philippines.


---------------------------------------
In her own words..

I am a widow,
with five remarkable granddaughters....
all beautiful, intelligent girls.
It is such a waste not to write....
each morning that unfolds is filled
with things to write about....
the people, the birds,
the trees, the wind,
the seas,
everything we set our eyes on,
they are all
poetry in motion.
Life itself is poetry,
I always have pen and paper within reach.
My past experiences are a
never-ending source
of ideas and words for my poems....
I shall write until time permits me,
"til there's breath within me."

-------------------------------------------------
A banyan (also banian) is a fig that starts its life as an epiphyte (a plant growing on another plant) when its seeds germinate in the cracks and crevices on a host tree (or on structures like buildings and bridges). "Banyan" often refers specifically to the Indian banyan or Ficus benghalensis, the national tree of India,[1] though the term has been generalized to include all figs that share a characteristic life cycle...
Like other fig species (which includes the common edible fig Ficus carica), banyans have unique fruit structures and are dependent on fig wasps for reproduction. The seeds of banyans are dispersed by fruit-eating birds. The seeds germinate and send down roots towards the ground.

The leaves of the banyan tree are large, leathery, glossy green and elliptical in shape. Like most fig-trees, the leaf bud is covered by two large scales. As the leaf develops the scales fall. Young leaves have an attractive reddish tinge.[6]

Older banyan trees are characterized by their aerial prop roots that grow into thick woody trunks which, with age, can become indistinguishable from the main trunk. The original support tree can sometimes die, so that the banyan becomes a "columnar tree" with a hollow central core. Old trees can spread out laterally using these prop roots to cover a wide area.
Over 1900+ reads as Nov. 10th.
Sally, That is a lot of friends and admirers you have!
Cné Feb 2018

Gentle calls as evening falls.
I heard a nightingale
Far beyond the eaves it cried
in darkness, it prevailed.

It sang to me it's lullaby
and lo, I listened well,
In shadows where it could not see,
within it's peaceful spell.

The sound so gently soothing
to a heart that's troubled so.
It's song caressed my soul
and seemed a sign, so I would know.

That all our cares are small indeed, compared to many more
Whose pain is deeper than my own,
whose needs go to their very core.

And tho I could not answer,
in a way that it could see
I thank the angel, that sent down,
that nightingale to me.


Dont treat me like potato
I aint no ****** tomato
Imma do what i want and smoke tobacco
Dont think of me as your flashy babe ***

Im sick of all this crap yow,
Youve been neglecting the **** outta me bro
But im through playing your games tho
So kiss me hard and just let me go
i got bored
B Kenneth Avery Nov 2012
Dedication:

Nectare bred of an artist's haught testament—
        brings only stunted buds of tastelessness.
Be it naught for the height in numerous tidal of Muse—
        to cause the strike of warmth in bruise.

Upon the cheeks shadow'd in might—
        strength of amour upon near-sight.
You!—Blossom, are of a frightful power—
        to journey nestled mind of dark tower.

As though a hawk perched higher than the peak—
        of mountainous and controlling streaks,
Colourblind by potent affair lost—
        by centuries of sicken'd fever crossed.

By and by another name, honeyed pursuit—
        yearning that cause a poet becoming mute.
Meagerly, he instead scribes his burning allegory—
        that shall cause a life—eternal fragmentary.



Dangers of Kimberleigh

“Love Jo all your days, if you choose, but don't let it spoil you, for it's wicked to throw away so many good gifts because you can't have the one you want.”
― Louisa May Alcott, "Little Women"

I.

When the morning demands you and I—
        our ghosts shall pass empty resides,
Against fields where lines opposing light, force and bind—
        of Angel's breath and Dæmon's spine.

Of shrieks louder than their first meeting's kiss—
        residing now—perfection upon midnight's bliss,
Abiding near the tender gardens upon the blinding dark—
        creating haste of love-song made by grave Skylark.

Who in joyous play—should cause collapse—
        towards serene, augmented lapse.
Lapse of falling, of where gentle screams—
        of every child that's ever been,

Who stroke themselves against empty glass—
        and where visions pray upon the grasp,
Of wind—Of blinding—Of melody—
        to hold faint—Immortality.


II.

This shall be where morning seeks—
        no longer calming of beauty's cheek.
Instead to lash with vain and hostile mount—
        crimson over dashed and harsh doubt.

Until image engraved by forgiving rite—
        speaking neglect of fiend or fiendish blight.
In-versed—coole angelic heart to passéd—
        passage beside Lilac's memory in mortal castéd.

In the unwashed Earth, where the unwashed play—
        'till they unfairly capture it from younglings— Away.
Lonesomeness of watchtowers in gossamer's breast—
        when airy words strangled from bless.
  
Reachéd by the hand—abide in fable—
        quiet tho—in fruitation, a single silver Maple.
Shyly envisioned inside salvation's solitude—
        where tenderness drowns tenderéd concludes.


III.

The sister was lovely—inside my sight—
        in our union—created Nature's first night.
Through our throats rendered fragile lullaby—
        which slaughtered silence and made soldiers cry.

Her bristles—exploit in darkness—I could not see—
        or merely recollect in memory.
A mouth moving inside of mine—
        creatures in mawkery of untouched divine.

Eyes whom beatéd harder than the breeze—
        to remind me—gently of the ease.
Of being caught in cognitive stance.
        which leaves surrender to in traditional, disciplined dance.

Upon the backs of universal forestry—
        and inside their stomachs to where we would meet.
Offended to death by requiem—
        made inside our faint dream's drum.


IV.

Where dreamer's would lash upon in endless screams—
        innumerable Rubies ruin'd before their first gleam.
Upon reflection in lover's loss—
        diminished to demise before their first gloss.

It is upon the fool's finest end—
        where lies his fantasy—condemned.
The jester who remains as undefeat—
        before death shall cause lackluster's retreat.

Unaware tho, in current mode—
        as body by body closely will hold.
And messages of Gold conspire in streaks—
        immersed—affection in mind eternally correlates oblique.

Ringing and humming throughout what laid—
        against blonde grass from Sin was made.
Refraction's cast that betrayed—to promise me—
        endless nights of haunting harmonies.


V.

Held tightly in grieving bourne—
        broken—in new blood is sworn.
Across the snow-cover'd Evergreens—
        where the temptress grave is left unseen.

Not upon her kiss—did darkness fall—
        alone—in shining pieces did crawl,
Against creator—and thus creator hence—
        bitter loving shrouded by bare defense.

As her finite skin had laid eternal flesh—
        of what laid inside Pine's parting mesh.
Holding and crying out for uncertainty—
       feelings moaned into sudden Mercenaries.

Morose and fledgling in their stand—
        spiritéd to Death's light misunderstand,
Of peerless eyes and broken brooks by the sea—
        casting ruined cloth over our Evergreens.


VI.

Unfurnished dawn may scour for length of furnished night—
        quick—until mirroréd ebbed ocean does wrong.
To consume the idles of Man's afraid mind—
        fairest—lest His idles struck into divine.

Exclaiméd none tho, in archaic lust—
        deceased—firmest in high robust.
Where pleasure finds comforted pause—
        inside arched-back in neglected cause.

Betray the shallow grimace flee—
        and ethereal composed by the breeze.
Lies delicate delusion before sorrow—
        that shall thieve away the Artist's morrow.

And in thievery is where the Angels lie—
        angelic beasts with unlawful guise,
In courts—castrated by the throat—
        hardened in assumption by blackened elope.
Argument: A paramour in his youth reminisces upon the topic of attachment and devotion in his unrequited infatuation after having the harsh reality of yearning and his memories come across his frail mind due to waking up from a dream he thought of as being a nightmarish realm that resided in a deep sleep after an exhaustive and forlorn'd day. The poem appears in three phases: The false appearance of the admirer finally inside a catacomb of mutual love in bliss after a long-while of misery; the confusion and untouched heart slowly being composed inside a mixture of both love and loss; and finally, the innamorato becoming awake completely and being torn by the realization of the falsehood of his fantasies and wishing to be able to go back to his previous slumber and having the image return untouched and yet also having the horrific realization of having the aspiration of mutual love, seeing it, intellectually, as futile.

— The End —