There it was on the calendar, Saturday May 11,2013. Big red circle around the date and written in black pen in the middle…SPELLING BEE. Plain as day, you couldn’t miss it. One of the biggest days of the school year for geeks and nerds alike.





Today was the day. In two hours, The 87th Annual Cross Cultural Twin Counties Co-Educational Public School Spelling Bee, would begin.  This was a huge event in the history of Thomas Polk Elementary School. It would be one of the biggest, if not THE BIGGEST in the history of The Twin Counties.



There would be twenty-one schools represented with their best and brightest spellers. The gymnasium would be full of parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and media representatives. Yes, invitations had been sent out to both of the local papers in The Twin Counties, and both had replied in the affirmative. Real media, in Thomas Polk Elementary School, with a shared photographer….the big time had come to town.



Inside the gymnasium, work had been going on all night in preparation of the big event. The Teachers Auxiliary Group had set up bunting across the stage, purple and white of course, for the school colours. The school colours were actually purple and cream, but, there was a wedding at Our Lady of The Weeping Sisters Baptist Church later, and they had emptied the sav-mart of all of the cream coloured bunting and crepe paper. So, white it would be.



It looked spectacular. There were balloons tied to the basketball net at the south end of the gym. It wouldn’t wind up after the last game, so something had to be done to hide it. Balloons fit the bill. There was three levels of benches on the stage for the competitors, a microphone dead center stage and two 120 watt white spot lights aimed at the microphone.  Down in front, was a judges table, also covered in bunting and crepe, with a smaller microphone sitting in the middle. There was a cord connecting it to the stage speaker system, taped to the gym floor with purple duct tape, just to fit in. Big time, big time.



The piece de resistance sat at the right side of the judges table. An eight foot high pole, with an electronic stop watch and two traffic lights, donated from the local public utilities commission, in red and green. The timer had been rigged up by the uncle of one of the competitors, possibly to gain an advantage, to help keep the judges honest in their timings. Besides, it looked fancy, and it had a cool looking remote control.











The gym was filled to capacity. One hundred and Seventy Five Entrants, visitors, judges and media were crammed into plastic chairs, benches, and whatever lawn chairs the Teachers Auxiliary were able to borrow, that weren’t being used for the wedding at the Baptist Church. It was time to begin….



The three judges came in from the left of the clock, and sat down. The entrants were all nervously waiting on stage on the benches. The media representatives were down front, for photo opportunities, of course.



Judge number one, in the middle of the table clicked on the microphone in front of him and turned to the crowd. In doing so, he spilled his water on his notes and pulled the duct tape loose on the floor in front.



“Greetings, and welcome to the 87th Annual Cross Cultural Twin Counties Co-Educational Public School Spelling Bee.” There was some mild clapping from the family members, along with a few muffled whistles and two duck calls from the back. The weak response was due to the fact that most of the parents either had small fans (due to the heat), donated from the local Funeral Home, or hot dogs and beer (from the tailgating outside), in their hands. Needless to say, it was still a positive response.



The judge carried on…”Today’s competition brings together the top spellers in the region of the Twin Counties to do battle on our stage. All of the words used today, have been selected from a number of sources, including Webster’s Dictionary, from our own school library, Words with Friends from the inter web, keeping up with modern culture, and finally from two books of Dr. Suess that we had lying around the office. Each competitor will get one minute to answer once his or her word has been selected. We ask that you please refrain from applause until after the judges have confirmed the spelling, and please no help to the competitors. We now ask that you all turn off any electronic media, cell phones, pagers, etc. so we can begin”.



He then turned to the stage and asked all competitors to remove their cell phones and put them in the bright orange laundry basket, usually reserved for floor hockey sticks. Each student deposited their phones, all one hundred and thirty-seven of them in the basket.  We were ready to start.





“Competitor number one…please approach the microphone and state your name and your school” said Judge number two. Judge number two would be in charge of calling the students up, it seemed. She was the librarian at Thomas Polk. She had typical librarian glasses, with the silver chain attached to the arms, flaming red hair, done up in a bee hive uplift, just for the event, and was called Miss Flume. She was married, but, being the south, she was always addressed as Miss.



The first student advanced to the front of the stage. She had bright pink hair, held in place with a gold hairband, black shoes, and a yellow jumper. She looked like a walking number 2 pencil. The two duck calls came from the back of the gymnasium along with scattered applause. All three judges turned and looked to the back, and then turned to face the young girl.



“My name is Bobbie Jo Collister, I am a senior at Jackson Williams School of Fine Arts and Music”. “Thank you Bobbie Joe” said Miss Flume. Bobbie Jo, smiled nervously and put on her glasses. “Your word is horticulture” announced Judge number one, “horticulture”.  Bobbie Jo took a breath and without asking for a definition, usage, root of the word or anything, just ripped through it without fail in three point two seconds, according to the mammoth timepiece at the end of the table. After conferring, the judges clicked on the green street light and she sat down, amidst more duck calls and clapping.



Student number two went through the entire process as did students three through eight. Each one had glasses, no surprise there, and were all dressed in monochromatic themes. Together, they looked like a life sized box of crayolas ready for a halloween party. Each child spelled their words correctly and were subsequently cheered and applauded.



Student nine then approached the microphone, stopping about a good seven feet short and three feet right of it. “My name is Oliver Parnocky” squeaked the lad. “I go to George W. Bush P.S 19 and am a senior.” Miss Flume, grabbed the small mike in front of her and said “Oliver…put on your glasses and move over to the microphone.” She leaned into the other judges, and said “He goes to my school, he doesn’t like wearing them much, and he’s always outside at recess talking to the flagpole after everyone else has come inside”.



“Oliver, please spell Dichotomy” said Judge number one. Judge two started the clock and they waited….and waited…then out burst this voice….DICHOTOMY…D I C H O T O M E E, , no, wait..D I C K O….****!” The crowd erupted in laughter, Oliver was busted. The judges conferred, and after informing poor Oliver they had never heard it spelled quite that way with an O **** at the end, they triggered the red light and Oliver left the stage to sit in the audience with his folks.



The next three kids, all with glasses, like it was part of an unwritten uniform dress code for the day, all advanced and sat down. The next entrant, number thirteen, luckily enough stood from the back and struggled down to the front of the stage. There were gasps and some snickering from the crowd. She was taller than the previous competitors,  and a little more pregnant as well. “Please state your name” said Miss Flume. “My name is Betty Jo Willin and am a senior at

Buford T. Pusser Parochial School”. At this announcement there was a cheer of “Got Wood at B.T. Pusser” from the crowd. The judges turned, asked for silence and the offending nuns returned to their seats. “Miss Willin, how old are you exactly?” asked Judge number one. “Twenty Two sir”. “And you say you are a senior?” “Yes sir” came the reply. Betty Jo was shuffling a bit as the pressure on her bladder must have been building standing there in her delicate condition. After conferring, judge number one said “That sounds about right, your word is PROPHYLACTIC”. The few people in the crowd that knew the meaning of the word laughed, while the rest continued eating their hot dogs and drinking their sodas and beers. “Please give a definition sir..I don’t believe I know that word”. The judges looked at each other with a definite “I’m not surprised” look and rattled off the definition. When she asked for usage, the judges really didn’t know what to do. Should they give a sentence using the word or explain the usage of a prophylactic, which regardless would have been too late anyway.

After a modicum of control was reached, she attempted the word, getting all tongue tied and naturally messing it up. The red light was triggered and she left the stage.



More strange outfits, bowties, hair nets, jumpers, clip on ties, followed. It looked like a fashion parade from Goodwill and The Salvation Army rolled into one. Most attempted their words and were green lighted onwards to the next round, while those who failed, were red lighted back to the crowd and the tailgate party in the parking lot. As each competitor was eliminated, the betting board that was being manned outside by one father was updated with new odds and payouts.



The first round was approaching an end with only three kids left. “Number nineteen please approach and state your name” said Miss Flume. He plume of red hair was starting to sag and was sliding slowly off of her head due to the humidity in the gymnasium.



Number nineteen came forth, glasses, tape across the bridge like half of the previous spellers. He was wearing the most colourful shirt that any of the judges had ever seen. It was not from Dickies, they surmised. “I go to J.J. Washington P.S 117 and my name is Mujibar Julinoor Parkhurloonakiir”. The judges froze. He obviously was new to the district. They had never heard a name like that before, ever. Not even in Ghandi. This was a powerful name. There had been sixteen cominations of Bobby, Bobbie, Billie, Jo, Joe, Jimmy, Jeff, Johnson and Jackson prior to Mujibar. Stunned, judge one asked “Son, can you spell that please?”

Mujibar, not sure what to do, spelled his name, unsure of why he was being asked to do so. “Thank you son” said Miss Flume. The odds on the betting board in the parking lot changed right then.



“That boy is gonna win fer sure” said Jimmy Jeff Willerkers. Jimmy Jeff ran the filling station two concessions over and had fifty bucks on his nephew Bobby Jeff, who had already flamed out on “yawl”. “How was he supposed to know  it had something to do with boats?” asked Jimmy Jeff. “That Mujibar is gonna win…jeez, he’s been spelling that name for years….anything else is gonna be easy breezy.” The odds went down on Mujibar and the money was flying around that parking lot faster than the rumour that the revenue people were out looking for stills in the woods.



“Mujibar…please spell SALICIOUS”…asked the now red pancake headed Miss Flume. Doing as he was told, Mujibar, spelled the word, gave the root, a definition and a brief history of the word usage in modern literature. Judge number one was furiously scribbling down notes, and trying to figure out how he would get a bet down on this kid before round two started.



Entrant number twenty from Jefferson Davis Temple and Hebrew school advanced which brought up the final entrant from round one. “Number Twenty-One please advance to the front of the stage”. After adjusting his glasses, after all he didn’t want a repeat of what poor Oliver did, he approached. “My name is C.J. Kay from William Clinton P.S 68” Judge one, confused by the young man’s name asked him to repeat it. “C.J. Kay” said C.J. “What is your full last name boy, you can’t just have a letter as your last name….what is the K for?” “Sir, my last name is Kay”, said C.J. “It’s not a letter”. “It most certainly is son…H I J K L…rattled off judge one. “It has to stand for something, you just can’t be CJK, that sounds like a Canadian radio station or worse yet, one of them hippy hoppy d.j fellers my granddaughter listens to. What is the K for?”. C.J said sir “My name is Christopher John Kay… not K, Kay” and then spelled it out. This only confused judge one more than he already was, and the extra time figuring out his name was doing nothing to Miss Flume’s hairdo.



“Christopher John….please spell MEPHISTOPHOLES “ said Judge one, after realizing he was never going to find out what the K was for. The crowd was getting restless and wanted to get to the truck to get re-filled and change their bets. C.J. knocked it out of the park in 2.7 seconds…”faster than Lee Harvey Oswald at a target shoot in Dallas”, one man said.



After a ten minute break, to get drinks, ***, re-tape some glasses and prop up Miss Flumes ruined plumage round two was set to begin. This went faster as the words were getting tougher, although randomly selected, judge one was inserting a few new words to keep his chance of winning with Mujibar alive. PALIMONY, ARCHEOLOGY, PARSIMONIOUS, TRIPTOTHYLAMINE , and many other words were thrown at the competitors. Each time the list of successful spellers was reduced, and the amount of clapping and the duck calls were less.

The seventh round began with just Mujibar, B.J. Collister and C. J Kay left. Before the round began the judges reminded the crowd that the words were random, and to please keep the cheering until the green light had been lit. There were more duck calls at this announcement and very little applause. Jerry Jeff was still manning the betting board, the tailgate barbeque was done, and there was only about thirty people left in the gymnasium.



The balloons on the basketball net had long since lost their get up and go, and were now hanging limply like coloured rubber scrotums and were flatter that Miss Flumes hair, which incidently, was now starting to streak the right side of her face from sweat washing out the dye. She was beginning to look like an extra in a zombie film with a brilliant orange red streak across her forehead.



“C.J.” said judge one, “please spell ARYTHMOMYACIN”. C.J. gave it a valiant effort ,but unfortunately was incorrect and the red light sent him off to the showers. This left B.J. Collister and the odds on favourite, Mujibar. The crowd was down to twenty seven now, Bobbie Jo’s folks and Mujibars immediate family.



Round after round were completed with neither one missing a word. Neither one blinked. It was a gunfight where both shooters died. These two were good, and it was never going to end. Judge one leaned over and told the other judges, “we have to finish this soon….I’m due at the wedding over to the Baptist church for nine o’clock to bless the happily marrieds and drive them both to the airport. They’re off to Cuba for their honeymoon.” The others agreed…”C.J. please spell MINISCULE said Miss Flume”. She did so, without a problem. This caused judge one to yell out “Holy Christmas” just as Mujibar got to the microphone. Thinking this was his word, he started as the judges were giving him his word. Seizing the opportunity to end it…judge one woke up judge three who red lighted poor Mujibar, ending his run at spelling immortality. “Sorry son, you tried, but, today a Mujibar lost and a B.J won.”. Before he tried to correct himself, knowing what he had just said didn’t sound quite right, Miss Flume congratulated both finalists and began the award presentations.



Thankfully, next year the eighty eighth version of The Annual Cross Cultural Twin Counties Co-Educational Public School Spelling Bee will be in the other county. Now the job of sorting out the cell phones in the orange basket begins. By the way, Betty Jo Willin had a boy …you can just guess what she named it!

i still think the oceans are insulators of tectonic plate movements, constant and endless vibrations represented by waves, these vibrations, when translated on dry land, movements of crumbling buildings, rigidity as testimony to the insulating fluidity of water; it's like those nuclear power plants, you use water to cool things down, or as in the case of oceans and tectonic plates, insulate volatility... well, radioactivity in the opposite scenario of nuclear power plants... oh look, a rhyming couplet - now that's how you understand things, if not reveal them, find complimentary rhymes on a grander scale than the casual technique in poetry, so over-used and overrated.*

i guess so, monsters bedded, big and small,
an old granny without a family member
to accompany her, harrowed by
charity groups who ask for money
more for the bureaucracy of its workers than
aiding actual victims - someone has to
look pretty, writing solemn letters and
filing in the spreadsheets -
by the way, how's that advent of the grand
timings working, find the hyphen,
the comma, the colon and semi-colon on the clock?
well, there ain't a full stop on there, i'm sure,
hard to decide on encoding time of a 100m
sprint, or a formula 1 thousandth of a second.
so this angel of euthanasia comes along,
a cruel case they say, while years later
a man suffering motor neurone disease
pleads for a change of law, according to switzerland,
he wants it bad, real real bad, he's no longer
even stoic about death, the disease didn't
rob him of expressing tears, and he's pleading
for it, a death sequence, he too knows
a drop in an ocean has no ripple effect,
humanity is the ocean, waves and waves of it,
always dynamic, never still like a lake or mirror,
either the ocean, or the river;
so this angel of euthanasia is there, kills
about 100 grannies, and guess what,
he hangs himself in prison, so that his widow
can receive his pension salary of £100,000,
odd, isn't it? i mean, why would a supposed
"serial killer" wait in prison, hang himself
just after he was eligible for a general practitioner's
pension, just so his wife could have it?
all those old grannies probably lived
on the state pension of one hundred
and twenty quid, not one hundred thousand, i'm sure.
well the guy suffering from motor neuron disease,
oh crap, i wish i could remember that philosopher's
name, parmenides? zeno? can't remember,
yeah, forced himself to suffocate,
without water and without a pillow; yep,
just sat there and held his breath.

Have I gone too far?
Does he still love me?
Am I still making sense?
Does he hate me?
Am I being unfair?
Putting too much pressure on him?
Did I say something wrong?
Am I being too clingy?
Should I ignore him?
Or avoid him completely?
Maybe we're not meant to be?
Maybe the timings all wrong?
Will I ever be enough?
Do I deserve his touch?
Does he want me alive?
Am I better off dead?
Will these pills even work?
Or will I just fall asleep?
Will I ever wake up?
Am I dead yet?
Maybe....

How am I dry
When years of anticipation are melting like a glacier?
All I’ve ever wanted
Is standing at the end of my bed
With his cold hands
pulling apart my thighs
So why am I fighting so hard
To get out of my head?
When he looked into my eyes
I saw guilt staring back at me.
When he kissed my lips,
He hated that they tasted unmistakably mine
And not of his lovers.
Our timings never been “okay”,
I should have taken that as a sign
To keep this a fantasy.

The place where the atmosphere consists of main outbreaks,
Whether the dishes weren't done or the floors weren't mopped correctly,
Something so small can effect the gross unification of "family".
Feeling like you can't necessarily express yourself,
Leaves you to feel drowned out by the many emotions that flood your mind at the worst of times,
It allows your feelings to grow more and more profoundly erratic; anxious.
Allow me to go into full elaboration as to how I constantly maintain my well-respected position of a so called "good person" or complain about the many people who are just as careless as the majority of people nowadays who simply do not ask how I've been.
I've let days slip by,
Suddenly, I feel no difference in what occurred yesterday or really, no contrast in the feelings I'll most likely encounter tomorrow.
At home, mass mental destructions happens,
It's where I get pulled into a place where I'm just trapped in my own self, similar to the way I feel in school.
I don't know, it could possibly be causing my continuous feelings of nervousness whenever I'm surrounded by people,
Or it could merely be the fact of which, I haven't yet chosen a path or seen quite a way to go through and feel a protective environment around me.
These winter days are gradually approaching,
It's only a matter of time until my mind goes away like the sun at night,
These seconds, minutes, hours can patrol for what feels like perennial timings, but anticipation is what's really foreshadowing my shallow whole of a "home".

Indecision holds my passion;
I love hard from loving rarely.
**** out the marrow of your bones
while the flesh of my wrist
has barely been kissed
by anyone else.
Wanting to devour you
starved for something true,
like icicles so cold the heat pulses through
turning the tops of my hands uneven and red
I love like roadkill
sticky and dead.
Black rubber tired marks over the head
of an animal begging to leave or be left.
If the timings not right, those leaving are left
and the ones who hold on are swept away on tides
on the rain water missed
by gutter grates, reaching out
empty and dried.
Depending on a single element results in no fire
no breath or no way to walk,
no source of life.
If the timing's not right
those leaving are left
and not for a second did I anticipate death.

Ours was a set of wrong timings. It started with us. We met, unfortunately. I was happy and contented until I met you. We were something impossible still I hoped for the best. It was wrong. It felt so right.

And everytime I think of you I feel so happy yet so sad. Its so euphoric I could fly right out that rooftop and into the sky. I'll shout your name, let it be known that I'm exploding into my happy thoughts of you then dive into the pits of hell. All this pain's making me feel like burned out to pieces then burned all over again until I won't know how to feel anymore.

We had to end. We're a tragic story but I'll talk about us like a lover talk about his love, like a painter paint about his masterpiece, like a writer trying to write his best. I'll talk about how our roads were only meant to cross for a second then forever gone. It was a second worth remembering. A second of infinity. We've separate destinations. We're never meant to be. We tried. It wasn't enough.

I'll miss you. It's funny how I could feel so much for you like I've known you from when forever began. But I'm glad we met. I could replay us over and over and over and over again until my memory sinks into the deepest of the earth.

Ours was a set of wrong timings. But you were the rightest of all my wrongs.

Hello jealousy,
why are you calling me so profusely?
I needed to ask how are things,
you cant let me just stay away?
you cant deny my timings,
well now things are different and I said goodbye with better rhymings?
I have someone new now,
how?
we both cant move on so just admit I am tall, dark, and handsome,
no answer and she is taking away the fun,
is he here for you in the end?
yes, with a smile in her voice, he's my new boyfriend.
I tell her I'll say something sweet but the words dont come,
a beautiful end of with a dial tone sun,
it tastes bitter sweet,
yet blinding and no simple feat,
I text her saying needing her to know she will be fine,
no response,
like the first time a butterfly came and said hello,
The feeling wont go.

A man
Protruding in the field
Standing in damp grass
A marshy meerkat
Alert sentry towards the sun
Eyes wide catching rhythms
Of the changing times
Of the passing seasons

Similar to this

A cat
rigid black and short haired
Let out of the house for the first time
Finding a spot
Between roots and mulch
Curled eternally  
Once playful
At permanent rest
Connected to the changing seasons
Signaling grave times

Both lost to progress
And disconnected from nature
Each making their return
to the flow of things


Despite unfortunate timings
And with all the wrong places to be born
The mother takes them both as they are
Grateful for her children returning
Pleased she kept the place inviting
And the hearth burning

“Come, take my hand
Put you feet in the soil,
say goodbye, and let it all go.
The earth will catch your tears
Bring them back to sky and
they will grow new innocents.
You will know peace
and be forgiven”

the planets will align
every once in awhile
to arraign all who need
or are deserving of it
those who find themselves
treading the wrong path
those who can no longer
see what lies ahead
despite all those
gazing upwards
     silently questioning
these immaterial messages
will be overlooked
unheeded by the majority
only recognised by the few
comprehended by even fewer

this singular occurrence
rare and rarefied
may be explainable
in its most basic sense
logistically
     empirically
to even the layman
it is but a simple matter
of timings and orbits
calculations of gravity
versus mass and inertia
but that which truly matters
the universal push and pull
will leave even
the most discerning of minds
in the dark

an evening like this one requires me to disclose what song i'll be listening to on repeat for the duration of this contemplation: red hot chilli peppers' desecration song... i tend to do just that: listen to one song on repeat when composing, i rarely compose while listening to several songs or an album: i want to capture something and listening to one song alone, on repeat, allows me just that: a heightened focus on several details...

i'm starting to think that the managerial staff at Wembley
are sadists, the original times for the shift
for the Taylor Hawkins tribute were:
external teams 10am to 12am...
and internal stewards the timings were
3pm to 11:30pm...
now? apparently no internal stewards and everyone
in the company is part of the external teams...
timings? get this... 9am through to 12am...
what the ****? do i look like a surgeon hacking
away in a hospital?
i'll be lucky if i don't have to leave the house
for 24hours... i'll be very lucky...
given that they'll probably close the Wembley Park
station doors in my face and i'll have to catch
the usual N18 > N25 > N86 > N365 back home...
having to walk about a mile if not two
to actually get on the N18 in the opposite direction
to where i'm going... sadists...
plus, i wanted to this gig prior to the Wembley
shift in Basildon, for the Garage Music Festival:
start times 3pm end time 12am... i could have done
it... but not if i'm supposed to start
a Wembley shift at 9am... ****'s sake... sadists...
that's the problem with Wembley...
they employ too much stuff... they are **** are
coordinating staff: because there is too much staff...
but Wembley is a capitalistic behemoth...
can you imagine how much money they make from
one even if they can throw so much money about?
i'm guessing each even brings them roughly
one million's worth of profit if not more...
price of a ticket? astronomical i'd suppose...
never mind the price of a pint of beer and a burger...
and people do want to get drunk at a concert...
we're talking roughly £10 for a pint of beer...
and about £15 for a 450ml cup of gin and tonic for
the ladies...

but i'm not here to talk about that...
i seriously had the weirdest shift at Fulham today...
it was so weird that i felt compelled to write about it...
work: i never write about work:
more? the people i work with...
the shift was plain enough... we were waiting to sign
in... me and cerebral palsy Martin decided to sit
outside of someone's house: the people of the house
were throwing out their sofa... next to a heap
of black bins... i became tired of standing around
doing **** all... i saw Martin on the opposite side
of the road: yo! Martin! rest your legs...
he came over and sat down next to me...
in that funny walk of his... what wasn't funny
was the fact that Fulham banned him from taking shifts
at Craven Cottage because he was accused of being
drunk on the job... cerebral palsy? it's a very visible
disability (maybe it's not cerebral palsy, whatever it is)
he stumbles when walking... tries real hard to keep
eye contact but his eyes sometimes wander to look at
something behind you... and he slurs and speaks like a drunk:
but he's funny... and there... all these football grounds
stick to security, safety, service mottos... "not all disabilities
are visible" with regard to someone wanting to use
the disabled... ahem... sorry... "accessible" toilet...
but yet one ground managed to fire a guy with a clear
disability... i like Martin... he's funny because he's funny
and not because of "X": he's actually self-aware enough to use
this to his advantage... soon a few other guys lined up
next to the sofa and we just chilled...

it's impossible to not note the following:
the bigger the ratio of men to women... when working?
the smoother the shift is... honest to god...
in this line of work... you need about 20 men and 2 women...
even today all the guys stood their ground
but one girl among us? she ******* ordered
an UBER McDonalds... and this wasn't even on her
break... no one would have minded if she did that
on her break... but she wasn't on her break!
what happened? she had to hand in her accreditation
and her bib and was sent home!
i mean: the audacity of some people!
                          on my break i ate three chicken
and bacon Caesar salad tortillas and was finally content...
but this doesn't reach the pinnacle of weird...

i was working with this guy... a colt... maybe 24...
i couldn't really tell... a certain Mr. Hussein...
a Yemeni... let's just call him Mr. Hussein Yemni...
i don't think i ever worked with anyone weirder:
and i'm not saying that in a bad way...
i'm saying this like prostitutes call me Biggie
or the good sort of mad...
                                         i don't think i ever worked
with an Arab before... i don't think i've ever
been so close to Mecca in the ghost-medium...
    a strange people: eerily strange...
                                  we must have talked about almost
everything... what book he was reading...
what he liked: drink? no... smoke? no...
but you must have a weakness... every man has a weakness...
coffee? yup... sweets, baklava? yup...
well... you can't beat the baklava of Edgware Road...
the best that i know of, i said...
so what did you study? Physics, Mathematics,
                       Arabic... smart kid...
now he's studying criminology - because he wasn't
to become a police office...
he informed me about these degree apprenticeship:
debt free studying and working in the field...
i told him i wanted to become a science teacher...
then again i'd rather become a primary school teacher...
because i told him:
it sometimes doesn't matter WHAT you teach,
what sometimes matters more is WHO you teach...
that old chestnut saying... it's not what you know:
it's who you know...
i told him i wrote poetry on the side when he asked
whether this was my only job...
i told him i sometimes come back from a shift
and sit down to write in the early morning...
although i don't stay up until 5am like i once used to...
so what are you going to today?
go home, hopefully get in before 12am
and have a drink and write...
                             turns out... he's a rich kid...
he lives opposite the Wembley Stadium...
his father? a banker... who he sees maybe twice
a year who works for a private bank in Saudi Arabia...
i did actually mention the Saudi-Yemen war...
must be difficult... esp. after he owned up to his father's
job... born in England... but never been to Yemen...
i did disclose to him that i'm not English but an Anglo-Slav...
what's that he asked? i'm ******: i speak Polish...
so why didn't you take an A-level in that?
easy grade... what's the point, i asked:
if i already speak it, read it, write it... what has a grade
have to do with my belief in my proficiency in
it? is it a difficult language to learn?
well... that depends Hussein...
                                i gave him an example:
most English people complain that there are too many
consonants in the language, for example:
RZ = Ż = the French of JE (suis)...
                  CZ = the English CH = akin to chatter...
you'll have to look it up yourself...
   Arabic is beautiful, i have to agree...
so he retorts... Chinese, ooh! so difficult...
                                   that's the thing about Chinese...
it's a complicated writing system...
we're talking ideograms... hieroglyphs...
but in the end? it's not a complicated language to speak!
difficult to write: to read... but to speak?
hardly... for example... what's... for example:

明?           phonetically it's nothing more than
        m-i-n-g... but the simplicity of the sounds when
returning to the ideogram morphs into
an idea: hence the ideogram... ming is not simply
bright... it's the: illumination (of the obvious)...
clarity... understanding... but phonetically Chinese
is a very poor language... it's the Chinese of ideas
that's the crux of its endurance...

so what do you write about?
   me? life... the day to day... since starting this job
i'm writing about it (obviously i wouldn't tell him
that i write about the people i work with,
i wasn't going to tell him that i was going to write
a poem about him tonight)...
his mother? a doctor... a pediatrician...
your parents?
   my father is an roofer... working industrial scale
construction sites... supervisor... once he had
10 men under him sub-contracting until a cousin of ours
who married my maternal "aunt" ****** him over
and started  mutiny among the workers...
he's doing o.k., after that incident i returned to work
with him... and worked in the roofing industry
for a while... rewarding work... tiresome but rewarding
like all physical labour... it allows your mind
to wander...
                 mother? she used to be a secretary in
a metallurgical plant... she then was a cleaner for
rich Jewish ladies... then she worked as a carer for
two old Jewish ladies... now? she's a home-maker...
is that what they call it in America? she's a housewife...

did i miss something? yeah...
when i talked i sometimes looked at him:
do most Arabs have those beautiful brown eyes?
at some point i don't know what i was to him...
oh, right... he hate writing...
he's about to do his NVQ level 2...
he's completely bemused by the questions...
all the idiots say its easy: sure! it's easy!
it's ***-squeezing mind-numbing! but for someone
who has studied physics and knows arabic
it's not easy: it's hard because it's mind-numbing...
i found it mind-numbing... people with very tiny
horizons who are best suited to violence
for the thrill of it find it easy... more intellectual people
don't find anything hard in it: just the mind-numbing
tedium of what's clearly a regurgitation...
so he asked me for a favour...
could i send him the answers, otherwise my mum will
have to help me with it...
i was like: i know this boy isn't a free-loader...
but i warned him...
listen... i'll send you all the answers...
i still have them...
but at Edinburgh i was doing this sociological course
to just pump up my points on the side...
and they had in place this anti-plagiarism programme...
do you even know how little interest i had in
the course... but the course gave me an ulterior
interest... how to beat an anti-plagiarism programme...
but then again: this was at university...
i hardly think people training people for an NVQ
have an anti-plagiarism in place...
for that essay of "mine" which i found on the internet
and heavily employed the thesaurus to reword
it i managed to get a first... come to think of it:
100%... you'll have to do the same...
i'll send you my answers and you just reword
them and send them back to me to proof read
and compare...
                                    oh... i'll just get my mum
to help me with it...
                                  whatever you like...
but just use the thesaurus whenever you can:
if i can beat a programme that was intended to
suspect plagiarism: i'm pretty sure people who are
training people for an NVQ qualification will not
be as smart...
     can you send them to me? tomorrow i'm doing
the London Stadium... Thursday...
i'll surprise him... my shift only begins at quarter
to four... i'll have enough time to send him the soon
to plagiarism to him tomorrow...
it's not even that i'm trying to look for favor from
a rich boy... he's on the ground...
he's not his father's son in that...
when i asked him: so you father wasn't the sort of
father that demanded of his to follow in his footsteps,
like most fathers who are bankers or doctors
or lawyers ask of their sons: to be like them?
    no... oh...
           well... if you only see your father twice a year...
funny story... he actually went to see the last world
cup in Russia with his father...
his father's friend blah blah this... blah blah that...
oh sure... i've been to Russia... used to have a Russian
girlfriend... stayed there for a month or two...
she brought me over to be a tourist,
to be a *** pet and to see Metallica in Moscow with her...

but that's not the whole weirdness of tonight...
i sometimes spoke to him looking at him directly...
and as usual... when i try to conjure up something
abstract i look away looking at nothing in particular...
in between conversation and silence i could
feel him watching me in the corner of my eye...
is this a Yemeni thing? was he really burning an image
of my face in his mind? i could see his stare...
i only saw it with the corner of my eye...
but i could feel him looking at me...

        an inescapable stare... must be an Arab "thing"...
he just kept looking... i exclaimed about the beauty
of the night breeze and the bristle of leaves
gently moved by the wind in the sunset...
he just... kept staring... every possible "awkward" silence
was broken with a question:
he kept asking the same question several times:
so what will you do tonight?
         i'll have a drink and write...
now... the point why i'm listening to Desecration Smile
is pretty obvious... the song is about a man's
lament about sleeping with too many women...
and not finding the one women to settle with...
i felt something similar with Hussein tonight...
why can't i find a girl to have this nervous-tension
of conversation with: with the opposite ***?
ah... i split the yoke from the egg-white...
i speak two tongues to women...
i speak with the body and i speak with the mind...
Hussein... was all mind...
most women are all body to me...
i hardly think any woman would have the audacity
to so blatantly stare at me in the way he did...
it must be an Arab "thing"...

the dynamic obviously changed when that arrogant
prat: ooh! ooh! i have an SIA badge...
anyone see me walk around and boast about having
a chemistry degree?
there's a certain level of people who... simply don't think...
those SIA ******* are boring...
no one goes around boasting that they have
a driving license... yet they boast about being able
to inflict pain on rude customers... kneeing them
in the back of the leg... choking them...
i told Hussein: i don't like confrontation...
i'm dreading being equipped with this badge of dishonour...
as a steward i prefer to talk sense into people
rather than use overt violence... choking them or what
not...

it's a ****** environment sometimes... with people
who have no intellectual capacity reading to someone
their braille of the fist...
this guy Rob had to attempt to be the centre of attention...
i know what a schoolyard looks like...
how he boasted: he did this to that person...
dislocated his shoulder... PROPER: PROP'AH
"ALPHA"... male... if you don't have the money
you don't have the honey and if you don't have the honey
you don't have children, therefore no legacy...
so what the **** are you doing?
Kant didn't have children: but he has children
of German Idealism... an idea is as much a child
as a child is not really an idea... because a child is usually...
a father and his son going to a football match:
indoctrination...

i have to admit: Hussein's staring freaked me out
a little... no woman in my entire life ever did what he did...
sure... Ilona... when she saw me making pancakes
having to take over two girls attempting to make pancakes
fail... while looking through my Ipod collection
of music give me that look of "love at first sight":
nope... that didn't: doesn't compare to the stares Hussein
gave me when we were talking...
it's different when a woman looks at your during
*** and it's quiet another when a young man looks at you
without him thinking that you know he's looking at you
like you're something... fire-prone...
i have no words to describe it...
it's not even ****-erotica... it's Platonism at its highest
mountain with a knife-edge...

i can't describe it, properly...

perhaps this Robert... this Cypriot spent too much time
with the managerial staff who play off this
macho-"alpha" attitude too much...
the game: it's a game of looking and sounding
intimidating... sure their large Goliath posturing gives
them away... they speak of nothing but a framework
of boasting... Rob has these many dogs...
trained them to become attack dogs...
good with children and families... blah blah...
but when some "****"... blah blah...
funny fact: you know that if one of those dogs
with impregnable jaw-bites has a grip on you:
the way you make them release their bite is by sticking
******* up the dog's ****?! ever heard that one?
and his SIA crew congregated around him listening
to him gloat and boast...
he's not bad: just the usual "good"...
the men feel "herded" while the women feel slightly
pale and out of place... Hussein was listening
on the monologue of Rob... but when Rob left
Hussein returned to me with a litany of questions...

do you like dogs? i used to own two dogs...
an Alsatian and a Dobberman...
but i'm not a boy-man anymore... i prefer cats...
Toni (a girl's name) came to us
and showcased her cats... i showed her and Hussein
a picture of my 10kg Maine ****: Quarus
sleeping in the chair i sit on when i write
crouched like a crow: oh ****! i saw Peter Crouch
up and personal... me and the guys joked:
one said! oh... he's 7ft tall!
i turned around and folded all my fingers
exposing my pinky: yeah... he might be...
but the fact that he's so skinny probably extends our
perception of his height... laughter...

Hussein is the first person to call me after a shift...
i was sitting on the toilet when he called:
i have a funny phone... i hear people but they
sometimes hardly hear me...
we exchanged takes: hey, Hussein... it was nice working
with you today...
will you send me the answer by Thursday?
of course mate...
we compared telephones...
you don't like Iphone, you prefer Samsung?
yeah, easier to use...
how much did your Iphone cost...
£1,200... wow! you're not afraid of having so much
dough stashed in your pocket?
if i had something that expensive in my pocket
i'd probably glue it to my hand!

so much digestion... we're talking about a boy
of a rich banker... we're talking...
Mary Poppins' type of neglect of a child...
he sees his father twice a year...
i was gagging to ask him: Hussein! what do you
see in me, that you keeping staring at me so much
when i'm pretending to not look at you looking at
me?
women just avert their eyes:
Hussein... you know what you remind me off?
only a few weeks ago i had only 4 "friends" as contacts
on facebook... now?
i don't know why i have over 900 Arab contacts...
do i look familiar to you?

Longshanks was talking to and fro... Hussein was
roughly 30 metres behind: Matthew! Matthew!
Hussein! i need to eat something! you charge your
phone i'll go and eat something...
the interaction between men has become
somehow... mysterious...
more mysterious than among / between men and
women...
after experiencing what i have with Hussein...
the Yemeni... i'm thinking...
maybe i ought to enter a "homosexual" relationship
with a man... based on a Platonism of conversation...
we're both **** women left right and centre...
but? we'd come back to each other and talk...
we wouldn't be gay... in the need to explore each
other's ****-roller-coasters...
we'd come back to a friendship...
he would do his bit of ****** aspirations and i'd
settle for what prostitutes do...
why am i thinking this? his, ******* STARING...
at one point i was almost tempted to ask him...
did the Turk did a terrible job on my beard?!
is it badly trimmed?

those eyes were burning... and when a spider
frightened our supervisor i simply exclaimed:
i was afraid of spiders once... i did succumb
to arachnophobia once... now? i'm like a fly magnet:
why wouldn't love spiders?
i once managed to catch a mosquito by its legs
and feed it to a spider... it was lovely to watch...
i sort of enforced man strangling nature into
obedience: it wasn't exactly equivalent to saving
a poor homeless kitten...
i caught a mosquito by the legs and fed it to a spider...
there's a Surah in the Quran about a Spider...

this night i just escape his staring....
i sometimes wish women had the same audacity to be
be able to stare at a man worth their: "contention":
but that's not going to happen..
a contention that can be resolved by a perseverance
of: merely conversation...
that lays no basis for an argument to begin with...
interacting with such Arab youths
i'm finally allocating a "psychology" to myself...
it's becoming painfully obvious...

i do know why i want to do the shift at the London
Stadium tomorrow... i want to see this one,
particular woman... she's in her... i guess mid-40s...
she looks oh so frightened...
she's beautiful for a woman her age...
she has a knack for surrounding by these "alpha" males...
she watches me... i watch her..
i tease and giggle at all the "alpha" males jokes...
her eyes speak a different picture:
this little ****-wit is not intimidated?!
what the ****'s wrong with on the basis of
the women i've been with?!
i already have a child with one of them!
i like her... i like scared: scarred creatures...

                    given that what i truly have to offer
is either hidden or is too personal...
what is revealed about me
is what allows to be revealed...
Hussein?! am i known in the Arab world?
why are you looking at me with a beard-envy?
i was never going to make it "big" in the English-speaking
world... i already commute in and out of shifts
looking at people rotting their minds watching flick flick
flick flick UP tick-tock videos...
i pretend to pretend to sleep... i was hoping to read
some Ovid poetry... instead i'm reading people...
i don't look at people: simply.. i read them:
akin to the ****** proverb:
jak cię widzą: tak cię piszą:

        how they see you: is how they write you...

i'm starting to conjure up these fancies in my head:
not that i'd want to explore **** *******,
but that i might explore something else:
more sinister...
the quill's worth of **** of our "fathers":
             how strange to find oneself incompatible
with  the presence of a woman's conversation...
how: unsatisfying it has yet to become...
i'm bound to Hussein in a way that dictates to me
the categorisation of: NON-NEUROTYPICAL...
i stopped envying opposite *** couples after having
eves-dropped on their conversation...
like most couples: they "think" they better than the next
couple: they're happier, more successful...
than the random, "other", couple...

i was out of a relationship sooner than "never" when
the girl i was with started to create these castles
out of clouds... i was out...
because?! she was slandered in the open
by girls who said out louds: she shouldn't be with him!

magnets... man and woman are compatible...
their conversations might flow on for days...
but... turns out?! there's no intellectual friction....
sure... there's a ****** friction...
but demands never meet demands...
it's unlike being an older man with a younger
man... there are covert ****** frictions
with already: in situ intellectual frictions...
intellectually like-for-like are more inquisitive
of each  than what's otherwise non-intellectually
like-for-unlike physically compatible...

i'm not a homosexual... but...
i'd sooner choose a male partner intellectually than a woman...
so much so that i'd require a harem of women that were shared
by multiple partners than fake a forgery
of a "monotheism" of " monogamy"
of swans... i'd rather talk to a man for all of eternity
as i might want to **** a woman for all of eternity...

what's that casual "phrasing"?! it's... it's...
"complicated"... like assured **** after eating enough
it's assured with ****!
             i'm sorry... but i find women great
when it comes to ***... but complete *******
bores when it comes to conversation...
that's my modus operandi! i can't help it!
at least with men i want to keep talking to them:
because i don't want to **** them...
with women? i don't want to talk to them
for the simple reason that i want to **** them!

what would i talk to a woman about?! what?!
philosophy is not a money spinning mechanism!
philology neither... grammar?!
Chinese ideograms contra phonetics
of the Latin script?!
can i please leave my familial issue aside?!
can i stop worrying?!
it was simply Hussein's staring at me that gave
the secret away...

not all misery loves company...
some miseries prefer to be locked up...
treated in the same way as the fertility of mushrooms
are treated: kept in the dark...
i'm the sort of miserable **** that much prefers
his own: keeping of solace than having
to share it by boasting it with a Thespians' array of masks...

alphas: ha! siła razy gwałt: strength multiplied by ****...
you need a subtle touch...
you can easily appease the alphas...
you just give them what they crave....
and their craving has a low threshold:
they easily bruise...
        you "Hussein" the bigger picture...
                    you allow hierarchies to take
their natural form of exposure to abstracts...
shadows...
you tend to perform intimate demands of
conversation... rather than perform intimidating
details of oration...
   these ******* "Goliaths" are sand on paper.

So many questions in my head,
feel like I'm dangling from a thread.
Shadows fall all around
this new starry-eyed light I've found.

The world's warm.
The timings right.
Who's to say your smile's not what I'll need on these cold, cold nights?

I want this eternal Summer,
where we can stay longer,
And everything I need to hear,
Has already been said.

But I need the words,
To hear the sounds,
that will assure me to these feelings found.

There's no wrong pathway
Where a person could wander
Only bad endings

There's no wrong timings
Which a person can regret
Only wrong choices

There's no wrong person
Whom your heart can fully love
Only wrong reasons.

A nominal amount of pain
when the lights go on.
You roll lines around in your head
and realize you remember none.
There’s only the dull stink of cigarette smoke
and day old donuts in your mouth.
Your mind seizes and your heart seethes.
What the **** am I doing here?
Nothing more than a back alley bard.
A barbarian without grace
with a penchant for writing inane ramblings
on cocktail napkins.

A bald man bellows in the back of the room.
An emo princess giggles at her date’s joke.
Drinks sloshed, cigars inhaled.
All awaiting the crash and burn,
or the entertainment they came to see.
They want a rock star.
They want a sideshow freak.
They will boo, they will howl,
They may even clap if the timings right.

Damon Malio goes up before me.
That ******* is as smooth as silk
and as suave as the day’s first rays.
Hell, I even want to run up there
and kiss the *******.
He has a rapacious tongue,
stealing every good word in the English language.
Banging away with syllables and gestures,
the room is vibing to his beat.

Knots in my stomach
and an ache in my brain.
A dull thump followed by
the whisper of “Fraud.”
                          “Failure.”
It’s that little boy voice
that used to get tormented in grade school.
The urge hits to wither away.

The only escape route is blocked by bouncers
at the back door.
I’m trapped here with the prison guards.
No semblance of thought,
just a rattle, panic and hate.
I’m a predator in a room full of rodents,
ready to eat me alive.

There are no outs,
only the get up there
and get out the vivid images
alive inside of me.
Right before I go up on stage
I touch the brick wall.
Tangible, tactile, rough and cool.
I laugh under my breath.
That’s the way people describe me.

If you ever wanted to hear a pin drop,
now would be a good time.
Staring back are a room full of strangers,
Murmuring, waiting for the show to begin.
I see a table full of beautiful women,
the tattooed, artsy types
I get weak in the knees for.
An older gentleman looking impatient for me to speak.
Clearly a professor of some sort.

I clear my throat.
Startling myself
at the loudness of it.
Loud…voice…speak…speak…speak.

“I’m a salty *******.
I could have been a Sabine
if I hadn’t been born in the wrong time,
to the wrong class of people
and a deformity looming larger than life.
That literary je ne sais quoi that working men
and the saviors of syphilis have.
The questionable knowledge that the
seafaring folk were instrumental
in my christening.

I’ll bring God’s ministry to Hades
and two tons of luck to riverboat gamblers
with fortuitous use of four aces.
I’ll bless the maître d’s war against the moguls
and the matadors quest for the upper hand
in the war of the forlorn.

I’m just kidding ladies and gentleman,
that’s all horseshit”

The crowd looks perplexed.
They aren’t quite there yet,
but we’re getting somewhere.

“We’re actually gathered here today to see the holy matrimony
of poetry and pestilence, art and arrogance.
I’ll be your priest, your prophet along the way.
We’ll channel them into
a seven year split and fifteen days of rage.
We’ll curse the gods of conformity and the spirits of suburban sprawl.
Set fire to the system that binds your mind.
The fallacies told to control you.

I never knew the error of my ways until
I touched God on Tuesday.
She was dead ringer for Greta Garbo,
gracious as a host and divine in her dealings with me.
I saw the white hot heat of Stockholm syndrome
and knew I was in the presence of the pantheon.
Felt swelter and fear,
but she kissed my forehead and whispered that it was all a lie.
The power others presume to hold over me.
The judges, the juries, the couponing maidens, the schoolmarms,
the cops and fathers and armies and vicious tax agents.
The Machiavellian telethon charities
and the undressed hookers pretending to be my saving grace.
The drugs, the music, the books, the *******, the fury of 40 years gone too long and not enough wisdom to die too soon.

I wept when she spoke to me.

Guns will **** you but love will **** you quicker she opined.
Obfuscated words from the otherworldly.
She sent me on a mission to find the words of Sinatra,
the Rat Pack’s subliminal subversion of all that power players hold dear.
The fear the unwashed masses will come.
The provincial mindset that they can procreate proletariats
to be the permanent protectors of their gilded ******* towers.
As I seethed she kissed and soothed me.
She whispered her love and asked me to lie with her.
I thought copulating with God was a heresy.
She told me to lay back and everything would be alright.”

I looked in the eyes of a tattooed temptress
and saw ravenousness for more words.
At least I knew I was getting laid tonight.

There was a new footing.
This vulnerability, baring my *** for all to see.
But there were no boos,
just the synergy of poetry conveyed through me.

“As we lay in the afterglow
I rolled over on one side and asked
how do I rid myself of the devils that plague us?
The bleeding, the burdens of humanity enslaving me?
She smiled playfully and ran her fingers through my hair,
telling me there there, don’t worry your pretty little head.
They can take from you. They can beat you.
They can **** you.
And oh my how they will try.
Governments and men with guns.
A society of rats crushing you with social mores,
moving to tell you what to do and how to live.
They will give speeches of how to behave on AM radio.
Buckle your belt, conserve the earth and be a good dad.
Foster those brats and bleat like sheep
to the tune of an Orwellian world.
I shook as she maddened my mind,
but her touch ran over me with ecstasy.

You will go forth my prophet, my prince,
and spread the word of free men with free minds,
not bound by internet ******* parties,
the latest legal trouble for B-listers
and all the trivialities of brainwashing.
The baubles betrothed to those without
imagination or the ***** to seek the truth.”

The inverse of lamba squared is ten thousand to the power of the heist

Your Presence has premiere rhythm; Substitute halving my health

Estuary bearing burden standing true grit

Loaded dice humanity Undertaken uneath

forsaken aether Fluoridated month

Perfect posse palpitating puncture buck shot Higher than an ambush ambassador

Ceasing the sky fills wounded knee high to smokescreen rising Picking golden stunning silence
Mesmerizing Ocean wind wild card crying colour

All I want is form, yew grows always happy
Death defying lateral trial Destiny Timings

Legendary League of Ten thousand feet Emissary Ameliorate Stark inebriety
phantoms fathom cat and mouse Sanctuary in Sensory

Hustle bustle Gravity’s Blasting Muscle Pulses Corpuscles To Alleviate
Spiraling Carcass harness the sieve erase the harvest remove the artist’s grin
Smirk at Graves and hunt their Twisted Fates

overly theorising poetry can only allow university profs. specialising in the subject the mid-grammar eloquence of philosophical narrative endeavour the um-um-um-ah-ah-mm-mm-blah-blah in trying to elaborate or simply clarify... as it stands... i'm using roman lettering... but i'm writing in chinese in order that many more can live and claim the sire totality of entitlements via lost marxism and the endowment of 3.4 children being nailed rather than ******* into the tangle of seaweed comparisons along the beach of socio-economic paraphrase - i can write english... and you can pretend to be stupid... believe me... i can play this hide & seek until our death dies when we live a second time and forget that i wrote this and you read it; we'll hide ourselves in the blanks, and the hope that remains is: we won't despair over having our memory wiped out like robots unnecessarily memorising the digits of π after 3; how i rather till the field at late summer than till my thoughts into numbers for the sunshine of i.q. glee in parental authority gratified and applauded to simply turn me into a white tadpole of rosy cheeks chequered between success and failure of strangers' expectation levitated into the ******* familial model that's ready for the jaws and clumsy fingers of scientific failures known as statisticians... the journalists of the world of science with numerological headlines that call you - also included.*

sometimes theologising with israel
is like standing next to the brimstone
caste of the golden calf
trying to resurface with people
not used to cast statued embodiments
of pharaohs in stone among hindu
endowments of number & sustenance...
but so it goes...
palestinians come as fleshy shields
for egyptians not having moved an inch since
the crucifixion...
elongating the nile higher than the crumbling
everest of buddha attempting border
and horizon of the dali lama's exile
not extended to los angeles in quest...
if only all nations stood the mark of colorado
of easiest divide in linchpin park of stuttering piston remark...
no i didn't decide to escape through there...
i took the friend's groomed necessity of remorse
to keep him sane...
i grew his remorse and my once loved love
to be his kin... his kind...
i grew his remorse like a vegetable
into a success of career and familial reliefs...
i grew him into a son
into that he might feel remorse being fed
responsibility of the life i could have also lived,
and her too... into a lived i could have lived with her...
and they germinated... into germany...
and i solidified my etymology via logical coupling
with epistemology and eugenics that was without
logic except darwin who was not the only
person to logistic time, timing and timings...
and there it was left... a poem...
a scratch of nebuchadnezzar on the wall
prior to the fear seen by balthazar...
the fear of seven years of madness:
the judea slaves could see the pythagoras a-tip
the pyramids...
but salvage the mind of civilisations
to upkeep prophecy with the foolish
gardens of upside-down, encrusting the king's
skin with oaken bark creases in human age
known as wrinkling or turtle... to see sense of mind
dribbling senses in equations of 1/5 and 5/1
given correlations for the messiah to be sacrificed
and ordaining the comfort of prayer on the crux,
rather than the discomfort of prayer through
work and the thing ordained prayer - on a throne
to our wonder of not having looked
eagerly for the knee to bend beside the algebra of
90º and a, b, c... but instead provoked the anger
of cloning narcissus in mirrors and wax of the idols?
why are you praying over suffering - are you praying
for more suffering, or a quick end?
are you praying for more suffering or your liberation
through the choices of others?
i cannot deny that you took your choices like you
picked up chopsticks... and decided you life
was a free chicken chow mein...
if it was... i can see the bums regurgitate raw cement
into your eyes... and if it wasn't...
i can see you partake in gang rapes of the pensioners' purses
driving them to suicide...
i can then remedy my "name & shame" poetry...
excusing it all as... "capturing the moment,"
given the early stressor signalisation of traffic
past 20, 21, 22... beginning with only the second decade,
of the 21st century.

A bird, chewing gum
While fluttering wings of life
Spread over times bills

Windward side stands firm and proud
The sailing ship its sails a-straining
Clever sailors move around
Guiding hull through stormy waters
Masts are bending through the gales

Taking gusts within their shape
Canvas flapping then goes taught
Calmer waters seem so distant
Temper timings never fraught
Faces stung with salty sea spray
Leathered hands holding firm
Sheets are straining, weather raining
Noise of waves is deafening too

Sometimes when the ship is yawing
Pitching, rolling, deck like glass
It's no wonder cleats and blocks
Are creaking, matelots lives are holding fast

The mouse in the maze is very weary.
It’s way too much concerted effort
Just to earn a grain of corn.
The route is always changing
And someone turns off and on the lights.
The music plays the same song, over
The humming of the ventilators
And the shutter bangs incessantly.

The mouse is tired of stupid games.
No one cares which way it runs,
Or how much corn drops into the bowl.
The smell of *** in the far back corner
Makes the air unpleasant to inhale.
The will to win another piece of corn
Battles with the need to find
The exit that is at the other end.

Notes have to be written down
Measurements and timings
Fill the logbooks of the staff,
As bored and weary as the mouse.
Protocols must still be followed
Finally the time clock in the hall
Clicks over to the magic hour
And mouse and men can all go home.
            ljm

you know that citation i told you
about, mad matt - forks in the road;
i get more feeling from tina turner's
thunder-dome song than
i might get from a human
rights tribunal over cold coffee
and the 8 years i spent in isolation,
in a free, democratic, society -
prison within a prison
(better still had i been a norwegian terrorist
i'd get a savvy ivory plated toilet seat
to sit and sow *** goosebumps against!);
what a domesticity this has spawned,
i'd send all the homeless to
commit a petty crime to get shelter...
i would; i'd tell them to get a knife
and coolly sit with a would-be
victim slightly cutting them
but not killing them... and repeat...
and repeat... tie them with akimbo
and hold a knife to their neck...
just for a roof over their head...
no squalor no rat infestation -
i'd make all homeless people
fake crime... just for a roof...
                                   i'm surprised they
haven't already...
                                    hello! i say... hello?
hey man you know i'm really o.k.?!
the pen in my hand will tell you the same...
but when i'm writing poetry don't give me no crap;
'cos the smallest thing might make me snap:
you stupid dumb **** god-**** mother-******!
ah you know, song lyrics when the Canterbury Tales
make it to quiz shows and leave the cobweb covered
libraries of former educational audits that universities
are, no longer training monks or free-thinkers:
just little ***** eager to deface their former
presence in boarding schools with binges of what
it was to be in schools with periodical reality-checks
never angling chequers of nod and conformity -
universities aren't about being educated these days,
it's about an alcoholic allowance for pretty clubbing
antics - i've never wasted as much time as i ever
did in my life - i got taught to be bored of
menial tasks - when, within the framework of
human population, people are expected to
learn the joy of menial labour akin to having the
leisurely capacity to craft thought to no conclusion
worth investigating other than as a barrier
to accept the menial concordance with
what others utilise thought toward: a lack of
risk-assessment risking life or limb to climb a
transverse in the highlands -
perhaps an insect-like life for the former,
but then again an insect-like thinking for the latter -
how two anonymous timings
and how two anonymous spacings
occupy what we demand to be relative
when it's actually "relative",
between people, space is anonymous with regards
to time, and likewise time is anonymous with
regards to space... not necessarily non-existent,
i'm not going into ******* atheism
of non-existence over certain uncomfortable
truths... i'm stating a lesser hurt,
anonymity -
a mountain-climber walks into a supermarket...
indeed... a man walks into a bar joke series...
it's not that space disqualifies the chance
existence of time... the mediating
connection is that of anonymity, best
prescribed by people having different roles
in what society allows them to express
a hunger for whatever the hunger later invokes...
hope you don't hunger what
is translated as a chance meeting with
that zoological species known as paparazzi.

at 12 and 37
you stumble through
a picture,
a picture of grief,
pain, sorrow, and death

at the same hour
they bumped into:
piles of joy, screams,
wild heart,
perfect timings

how are things possible?
in the blink of an eye,
it's there and then,
it's gone

you are broken,
you are healed,
you are relieved,
and you should be lucky.

I was dedicated,
'Till I levitated,
Then I deviated.

I saw life with new eyes,
The truth hidden by lies,
Empowered by my past tries

This won't be my last try
'Cause I'm held high & I won't cry,
life gets hard but I won't die,
I can't be sad if I don't try.


From the end of a tunnel,
I see I was caught in a funnel
I though it would never end
Nor would my life ever mend.

But I'm better now
No enemies how
I mean people hate
But their timings late.

Any thought they could think-
I thought, reduced me to nought,
But no solace I sought.

Though now I have friends,
"Pain never ends",
Self-fulfilling prophecy mends,
But on life strife depends.

In this world we can't expect peace,
Life's short it's like a lease,
At the end of the day it's what you make it,
You can't expect great if you forsake it.

Well everybody's thinking
They're the ones that know
And everybody's knowing
They're the ones to show

Well I can see
So don't try to tell me
You got some kind of line
To the other side
Where it's too green
To be good
And so free
The prisons are in ruins

I heard all the people
Talking to the preacher
I followed where they're going
Until I met a teacher
He told me many thing
He taught me very few
I asked, "Which road shall I travel?"
He said "That's only for you."

I've paid in my dues
And I've returned my keys
To the resting places of my fathers
Now the wind on my face
The dust at my feet
To choose the direction to follow

I'll ask now again
As I think the timings fair
Please, won't you tell me?
When the map was lost back with the compass
To escape this broke down place
The direction I travel...
Which way may I find grace?

The times are getting heavy
And the rains are coming steady
So I'll pick my hole to crawl in
Moving on with the weather
For worse or for better
Just as long as my health allows

In my head, I'm not good
At pretty much anything.

'specially living

I mess it up, all the time

Laugh at the wrong parts


My timings off

I'd never change it tho

because that would
destroy who I am.

He stays awake,

While the world sleeps.

Contemplating  the stakes,

Of the daily leaps,

Thinking of the choices he's made.

Trying to make sense of the world,

The boy decides the life he trades,

The security of her, or the fun of others.

He loves her but the timings wrong.

What can he do?

the elephant in the room
i am not fighting the system,
i am not fighting anyone
i am embodying the truth and that in itself is the easiest thing to do it requires no war.
i am choosing to not play the game with a rigged die,
this is no old energy, she is the most ancient energy.


Like a flow of water possible of tearing down houses or caressing the smallest flower. The door is open and she came knocking on my heart, shaking the cobwebs from these stagnant corners reminding me it was I who had to open the door, no matter how many knocks or rings of the bell.
all the signs, all the perfect timings all of it boils down to me as always. The Elephant in the room.

What is this train doing
To me?
Going to all the wrong places
And has the driver no control?
Other passengers are screaming as if homeless
To persuade the driver to take this trembling namby-pamby  sick ****
To their own favourite towns.
When I sit quietly in an infrequently haunted compartment,
the wasted smell from the toilet
And these riotous noises
Of the driver failing, the train stopping at lonely stations
and others howling unnecessary caps locks and exclamation marks
Infiltrate my senses and at the end of this journey,
You can see through the flimsy permeability
The holes are so prominent
Yet light doesn't enter. The train's timings are weird - all in the night.
The train gets derailed at one point due to the ruckus,
on fire and the searchlight came very late,
didn't notice my quivering queer hand rise amidst a burnt heap of  luggages of people who led to this ravaging
managed to creep out of the train at the right moment,
And desolated for the moses to grow inside this melted metal mess and through the rest of me.
This is too big a coffin for me- unceremonious, caliginous and under the open sky
There's not much of me left to give back to.

Day by day we cut our talks
word by word,
every day a word short
late night long chats
to one word nod
a sea of explanations
to a drop of glance

nothing more changes
except for the undecided timings
of hanging on the phone,
the unsaid goodnight
at the end of the chat
in the pool of thousands before,

Maybe we have learned to decipher the unsent messages
Maybe we have learned to read between the spaces
Because there’s so much for us to say
but we already know it all

I'm falling for him...
For my bestfriend,
Who lives 1000 miles away.
I don't know what to do
It's all to soon!
But I can't help it.
All I want is to talk to him,
All I do is smile when I do!
But there's so many complications.
The timings all just wrong.
We live 1000 miles away.
There's no way to make this work.
So I'm just left sitting here falling harder with every word
Knowing there's nothing I can do to make this happen,
But just hope someday the timing will be right

Maneurisms of one I seek so enticingly,
Shy one please,
Show me thine cold chill,
Gusto pills shall you make you jump to virtues karma!!!
Inventorama!!!
Clink your tired ankles where mine do rest,
For does no mean yes in this world they call planet?
Abandonment!!!!
That I don't need,
Just two troths to one sneeze,
In a magazine we shall be posted!

Machinations are many beneathe thy roof,
Plateaus are made as booths, as false prophets speak slick game!!
Magnate untamed...

I want to manifest as ourn own coffee,
Lover not heard,
To match ourn own herbs,
And tea clixings we shall pile,
Manifesto child!!!!

A symphony I want our voices to reach,
Where on thine own beach we shall make love,
The most holiest of timings!!!

For art thou not a hopeless romantic to see the new days dawn?
For I hate watching alone.....

A blink of an eye
That's how quick life can change
From free and easy
To medication, an uncontrollable bladder and to feeling almost queasy
A spinal trauma that went from tap onto snap
Laughing inside that thank God you're not like that
Now join the band where the view is now half the horizon
From standing up to sitting down with your legs permanently frozen
But these things happen although surely not to you
I used to enjoy my half an hour in the toilet, reading the paper and doing a poo
Now the procedure, the timings, the suppositories waiting to melt
Gloving up that hand and finger until it's time to smell that smell
Hey, thats now what I call life
It's a trauma, it's a story on an everyday basis
But would I change it back for the normal life?
Hell yeah, it's those long paper read poo's that I really miss!

JJB