By the Spanish Arch
a few kind crusty folks
talk in the March sunlight.

Soft incantations of sweet trad
spill from a concertina, tin whistle
and fiddle, sloshing out an ambiance.

An old fella' makes a poor man's black velvet,
The ladies drink Estrella Galicia and San Miguel.
Another lad jokes: my grief counselor died last week

but he was so **** good I didn't care.

A motley crew, good-natured and friendly,
Drawn to session like moths to a flame;
Always I wonder whether I belong.

"I think in his heart Frodo is still in love with the Shire:
The woods, the fields…little rivers. I'm old Gandalf.
I know I don't look it, but I'm beginning to feel it"

Recto:

She‘s vacuuming: the dog has leapt, afraid,
onto my lap and sent my papers flying.
Till then I‘d slept. Still half-asleep, I‘m trying,
relentlessly, to finish things I‘d made

a start on yesterday, identifying
slips and errors, trading words or phrases.
Mystifying, the way we go through phases
laid in stone, half-stunned while time goes flying

by and nothing‘s done for days. Is stasis
part of the deal? We‘re drying up, we fade? -
and then, bejaisus! - that small fire we‘d laid
that kept on choking re-ignites and blazes!

Verso:

She‘s vacuuming: the dog has leapt,
afraid, onto my lap and sent
my papers flying. Till then I‘d slept.

Still half-asleep, I‘m trying, relent-
lessly, to finish things I‘d made
a start on yesterday, ident-

ifying slips and errors, trad-
ing words or phrases. Mystifying,
the way we go through phases laid

in stone, half-stunned, while time goes flying
by and nothing‘s done for days. Is
stasis part of the deal? We‘re drying

up, we fade? ... and then, bejaisus!
- that small fire we‘d laid that kept
on choking self-ignites and blazes!

the far right, the far left,
the alt. right, the progressive left,
the regressive right...

basically an ****** of nouns:
a geyser of prefixes and
whatever suffixes...

trans-exclusionary-radical-feminist...
cis-man...
me­taphysics, alfred jarry
and pata-physics...

hopefully some mention
of ORTHO-graphy...
hard rock... boomer rocker...
a rocking chair...

sides of the waves...
the non-existent natural sculptor...
graveyards as
museums al fresco...
post- "the original sculptor"...

indie right...
googlewhacks?
bothersome hillbilly scam: 16,100 results
locus operandi...
modus operandi...
locus standi...
squat biggerbrain: 3,740 results...
onomatopoeia lombard: 45,600 results...
merovingian golem: 25,700 results...
oh look...
getting close:
⠉⠽⠎⠞ gush: 38 results...
⠉⠽⠎⠞ pataphysics: 5 results...
fingshuan: 9 results...
llyopod ligament tree: 4 results...
lobotomy molotov: 79,000 results...
tref zappa tick tock: 5 results...
trad trap zappa loco: 8 results...
myxedema orpheus: 9,030 results...
myopiacharon: 7 results...
janejeanjacketpuke: 10 results...
(stones in his pockets)
mariejones does *******: 4 results...

epitaphs are maxims: cueue debate...
perhaps more...
chiselching in beijing: 6 results...

⠝          
ⰏmⰑoⰓrⰗFⰅeⰖuⰔs
ל ******* gnat!
sticks to you like a...
nomad sort of letter it's supposed
to be...
******* hitch-hiker...
hitchens et al... atheists etc....
sure... when all the "gentile" gods are
dead... the hebrew degradation of
a demigod will be...
the pulpit and the prayer
and i'm somehow supposed
to "mind"...
etymology bonanza loop: 62,000 results...
dymitra z goraja chleb: 1,680 results...
libero felicjan zach: 902 results...
belz bełz: 17,100 results...
kogelmogel harasho: 124 results...
kogelmogel haraшo: 5 results
чekam na "чat"... чatem - 6 results...
"burden boris with a password"...
chequers cheese and cyrillic: 5 results...
what?!
chequers cheese and cyrillic цc: 4 results...
chequers cheese and cyrillic цc gag... 4 results...
after tabernackle... turbanknuckle...
chequers cheese and cyrillic цc esq. = 3 results...
chequers cheese and cyrillic цc loan Ф⠋ = 2 results...
nearing a googlewhack...
chequers cheese and cyrillic цc loan Ф⠋...
chequers cheese and cyrillic цc loan Ф⠋φ blue =
2 results...
chequers cheese and cyrillic цc loan Ф⠋φ ж =
2 results...
chequers cheese and cyrillic цc loan Ф⠋φ ж 6 carboxylic:
3 results...
ah... loan words...
equers cheese and cyrillic цc loan Ф⠋φ ж 6 carboxylic cymes...
2 results... weekend after carboxylic? 3 results...
chequers cheese and cyrillic цc loan Ф⠋φ ж 6 carboxylic хoць:
5 results...

щur gnat: 2 results...
AAAAAH! FOUND ONE!
googlewhack:

щur gnat seq...
https://tinyurl.com/qo3z5km
i knew i'd get one...
i was just hoping it would come...
more or less circa 1am than...
2am... but as Leibniz pointer out:
even if this be the best of all possible worlds...
it's hardly accustomed to
OCD fanatics and those...
quasi-... what do you call them?
i forgot...
if i really minded wanting a ****...
i'd have treated not minding it
in my 20s like some sort of disability...
thank **** that i had
two outlets... a kantian sense of "hobby"...
and access to a brothel...
if you tied me up with but one
drunk irish girl in the vicinity of
goodmayes...
i would still want my dreams
of my great-grandfather back...
in "reality" he remained a ghost figure...
and i have his remains in my mind...
his apparently pristine set of teeth...
how many times did i dream of teeth?
i can't remember...

but i frequent the slow parts of the night...
with dreams of teeth...

my my... just lookat m'ah pearlies!

well... щur: it's szczur... ivoke
a caron above the S and C to hide the ZZ:snooze...
and you... evidently... have yourself...
a rat... gnat? gnat or vermin?
seq. that really does depend...
on what you're "looking" for"
ex genesis...
well... ex nunc / ex iam... etc.

boris brejcha: art of minimal techno tripping
the mad doctor by RTTWLR was my date...
for this... evening...
*** and pistons...
but i wouldn't mind that...
"sad loner" would still rather
listen to those macaques monkeys
in kenya...
up on a tree...
up north...
i pray you stay up into the night...
to hear a crow croak in the night...
it's such a rare event...
i'll beg you...
to hear but one insomnia riddled bird
in the night...
in the night: you will not hear a sparrow...
you ill not hear a pigeon...
birds... birds are very hygienic
in terms of encrusting sleeping patterns
at part of a translation of cognitive health...

stay up all night with me...
replace the wolves with foxes...
and wait with me... for the crows' croaking...
that complete absence of human activity...
and chain yourself with me...
who seem to dream while awake...
who can only dream when everyone else
around them has to be sleeping.

I'm buying some new old CDs
to remind me of my old young days.
The time of the trad jazz revival
and the stranger shores of Joan Baez.

Tom Lehrer made chemical magic
and poisoned pigeons in the park.
He promised to go with us when we go,
when we half expected nuclear snow.

Those were the days my friend
that came to an end, but like our parents,
we still feel warmth in summer suns
tht glow in memory's furlough.

.                    how about...
  we try...
and dangling
   a piñata on the end
of the stick, rather than
a carrot...
oh, i know it's not
exactly original...
but i'm pretty sure
the kids will like
the inversion:
where once was
the carrot,
   but now is the donkey...
oh don't worry
about the english girls
in york-shire...
last time i heard,
the pakistanis had
that covered...
what?
do i really look like
someone
who managed
to **** your m'ah-m'ah
with a harmonica?
the quest for sanity,
usually begins,
and ends,
with asking a question,
even it's:
mostly unreasonable.
HA HA!
apocalypse jockey
no. 1,
              'make sure you
tell nos. 2, 3 and 4 to take part!'
aye?!
  we go ourselves a fifth...
i'm not sure though,
the head "got in the way"...
he's either a camel jockey...
or a donkey riding
riddle;
        you take,
your chance bending
over a roulette,
chance is evens...
        no one is in favour...
unless...
   there's you,
and no reason
for the laughter,
which originates in
antisocial circumvent
  to creep up against
the socio-"apology";
       weirdos out!
weirdos in!
           what's suddenly
deemed "reverse"
about this sort of mentality?
ah...
the fathomable social security
of appearing: socially confined...
well...
             the worst life
decision i ever made was
enlisting in the university,
2nd best decision i could
have made? joined the army.
1st best decision i could
have made? joined a circus!
i just keep thinking of
the "trad." women in
this, ahem, "movement"...
and how important
home schooling is to these
women...
so... no public schooling,
and no experience of bullying?
just the extension
of the ed gein paraphrase...
just feeding on / off
the oedipus complexity
of...
              mothers being
overtly attached to their children,
esp. boys?
right...
        yeah...
that will certainly help...
     home schooling
is such an ****** infested
"riddle"...
          well, sure,
public education is not
the "answer"...
                but what these "trad."
youtube mummies to be
are advocating?
  
                do what i didn't
do...
             forget the university,
even if it's associated with
studying chemistry...
join the army... **** this *******;

or at least profile yourself
for a career in the construction
industry...
     as little of a #metoo
           worth of a movement
in that industry as...
   you'd get lumberjacks
playing the ******* piano...
    you safe bets are either the army
of...
what beats the army...
the construction industry...
              women engineers...
yes... women roofers...
bricklayers?
     then imagine me wearing
spandex and dancing
the ******* riverdance attempting
to pretend: balet.

This is the latest in
swapping, all one
needs is to be a cook.

info@tradwife.com

Wanted, for Friday's
only, Vegan friendly
Trad-Wife with low
****** hair and high
IQ to cook for the

mensas@myplace.ie

Tuve que buscarte
en los valles hondos
y oscuros.

No conseguí tocarte.
No sin verte.

(Y cómo quisiera hacerlo, aún.)

Las horas pasaron
en el valle verde y oscuro.
Y yo sin poder tocarte.
Ni verte, ni tocarte.

perhaps i'm just... tired from making christmas eve
preparations...
the mother is fresh from hospital having had
a hip replacement - and she's only just teasing
being 60... and this sort of thing waits for women...
coming to 70+ and in 15 years or so...
there's a high chance of a second replacement
and that's only one leg and socket...
but christmas eve has to be covered...
whether she's sitting at the table or whether she's
lying in bed...
return of the dutiful son... some son,
some duty... and by no means a return...
i can't remember my 20s...
fog of psychosis or... never quiet allowed
to get a neurological perspective outside of england...
when i had the dough to get an m.r.i. scan...
they sent me with my early-dementia riddled
grandfather for the results...
i said: so, doc, kind herr neurologist...
am i mentally ill?
the doc replies: anyone who says you're mentally
ill is mentally ill themselves...
21... 33... 12 years of some sort of brain damage
and i'm still... typing and minding typos
like a neurotic or some variant on the spectrum
of impulsive-compulsive disorder...
i still want to see the face that ****** saw...
when he gave me... what he said was going to be...
an LSD trip shortened... so much for my naiveness....
friendships... ties to growing up and school...
so much for reading any C Castaneda
for that matter...
christmas eve is coming and i'm doing everything
i can to find an hour of drinking and typing...
it's hardly enough to find the perfect lotus...
i have to lay down twelve dishes for the table
come christmas eve...
christmas day is half sorted...
there's the meat already baked...
and all i'll have to do is the *******...
wrapped in an envelope of skin which will
be filled with butter and fresh thyme...
the baked tatties will be just fine and
the honey glazed carrots and 'snips will also be:
just fine...
and when the 26th of december comes i'll
be... hopefully... left with...
so much anticipation... over a month's worth
of advertising... i haven't bought a single gift...
i offer my time...
grandma calls today and says how...
it's nice that her son (my uncle) is there...
i have missed 4 consequitive christmas celebrations
in england... 4 years and now i see the banality
of christmas... in a catholic nation it's...
slightly different would be a major *******
understatement...
i should question... but...
i have come to understand that...
whatever the truth might be...
esp. if its the coincidental unearthing of
the nag hammadi library, the dead sea scrolls...
the year is 1945 and the great bomb just drops...
and... the gospel of st. thomas is only cited by
psychiatrists akin to r. d. laing in the 1960s
about... make the male female...
make the female male... the innter the outer...
or just your casual invigoration of the transgender
zeitgeist... and medicine catches up to the psychological
whims... and...
i'd just like a cold ms. amber...
perhaps a london derby in football...
a robin on a fence in my garden...
a migrating flock of canadian geese in the sky...
and a frosty morning with a cold azure delight
of a sunny pristine sky...
no pompous summer with her sensual ****
of scents and colours and distractions...
and how: winter is never old...
never somber... lucky for me... winter is always
drunk and readying itself for a birth in death...
or some pseudo-mystical *******...
but i can use a plethora of psychiatric terms...
last time i checked...
i was tested for regression in one instance...
regression being: having false memories being
insinuated for you to believe in...
a ***** trick done by psychiatrists...
i still don't mind...
those 12 dishes will be served...
- a mackerel paste salad
- herrings:
(a) in cream with apples...
(b) classic... oil and ocet
(c) kashubian
- a crab, prawn and smoked salmon pate
(cream cheese and trout caviar, dill)
- oven baked salmon with veg trimmings
- beetroot borscht
- borscht "ears" - dumplings stuffed
with cabbage & 'shrooms... or just 'shrooms
- short-crust pierogi (oven baked dumplings)
filled with pickled cabbage, 'shrooms onions etc.
- a trad con. salad
(cubed... eggs, potatoes, leek, carrots,
celeriac, pickled cucumbers in brine,
etc.)
- racuchy
- an oven baked cheese cake
- a poppyseed roulade
- a keks (fruitcake... very much a...
loan of weihnachtsstollen)... i've been feeding
this ******* 3 tablespoons of ***
every 2 weeks for the past month or so...

how many is that? there needs to be twelve...
****... herrings count as x3...
leftover prawns...
so... a...
- prawn cocktail...

and of course a plate and utensils for that...
un-expected guest...
would i go to the christmas eve mass?
the "shepherds' mass"?
last time i went... i dragged a monkey with me...
250ml of ***** is a monkey...
and i had a swell time...
listening to the nuns pray for the alcoholics...
but not the workoholics...
and playing itchy eyelid and nerve tourettes
with an itchy face with some kid
in the aisle in front of me...
and... then walking out mid-mass
to **** on the church: to ensure... it would...
grow!
but... this is england...
i can't afford to go to a catholic mass...
and not stand out...
not that many catholics around these parts...

i have my twelve dishes+...
christmas day is going to be a doddle...
the roast potatoes have been perfected...
the meat is ready to be sliced
with sour dough bread...
there are no children,
no presents to open...
just enough time to survive this over-hyped
*******... enough time to wait for
the true celebrations,
and these ones... if not in the company
of two people nearing 60...
then... two people nearing 85+...
with easter, in a catholic midst...
walking to church with painted eggs...
to subscribe to this... advent of the castrato choir...
easter and spring...
a crucifixion... that we do indeed pay such
obsolete rigour to tradition:
even if we're not expected...
i guess justifies everyone else being
so hyped-up about the birth and death
of a demigod...

i just imagine: but what if i didn't do all this?
what's the alternative to:
r.i.p. marie fredriksson - god rest your soul:
you beau lass... 'spending my time'?
the t.v. zombie? the internet claustrophobiac?
what alternative?
are you a downton abbey up fan...
or a downton abbey down fan?
up? the sirs and the class distinctions
and what the **** it has to do with
a room's decorum?
or... the staff locum?

all i know is that i'm about 20 minutes away
from a 25mg / 250mg naproxen / 500ml
of ms. amber knock-out sweet dreams goliath
*******...
i'm already thinking about...
postcards from Geneva...

the falling asleep part i never mind...
the waking up part: oh god i do, i do...
and there's nothing worse than apathy:
but of course there is...
there's the truth... and having to have
some secular decency...
in attempting to carry the burden
of disbelief...
a natural consequence of an equilibrium...
to have to have experienced the truth
in some way:
you can only carry disbelief with you...
as you somehow try to cover
a poppy's seed's worth of diameter every
year to a nibble of that once
grand truth...
a disbelief... a negation of:
because if i were to believe in... whatever
i have to disbelieve in order to covert and
tactifully let everyone else a place ahead of me...
what's the alternative? will what then becomes
"the truth" / a truth?

to have truth in your mouth...
in your ears...
in your eyes...
and then... to have to stall...
to carry with you a disbelief...
without a plethora of agnostic doubt...
imagine being...
excused from the thrill of entertaining
the plethora of emotions bound to
agnostic doubt...
i miss those days...
when one could simply "wish away"
a thought...
or a thought would disappear of its own accord...

yes the grand-wise master of a grandmother:
she fell from a chair...
which she stood on...
when a cushion was still on it...
because... she really wanted to change
the curtains in the kitchen...
the epitaph would have run...
i lived my life... but i died:
because i really had to change those curtains
since christmas and ****...

i am burdened with disbelief not because...
i don't believe it...
a marijuana hallucination in central london,
located with me hiding in a church: elevated...
a ******* choir, an iPod check,
a great wind...
polite society would not allow me to...
do much more...
i can't doubt... that's my problem...
i have to... "negate"...
i can't negate outright...
logically... premises, presuppostions...
web of rhetorical angst... etc. -
and i can't believe it either... by believing this:
marijuana auditory hallucination...
what? it's already 12 years "late"...
and by belief: will it?
to what end? my own? its: "its"?!

"my prefered genger pronoun is: ITS"...
well hello... ITS...
yes, ITS because it's not it is...
or rather it's because my it's ITS is already
included: so... i-its t t t t t...
have its ****?
em... samuel beckett... watt...
**** up its... etc. -
and grammar is that grand ******* crescendo
moment when all the apes will fall from
Julian Tuwim's opera carousel -
and fall they will: and will immediately
stand-up straight... and figure out...
the blessings of the thumb...
thumbs' up up anyone's ***.

with a thumbs' up like that...
in anyone's ***... you're bound to see
a thumb's peek-a-boo in Beijing...
like: swap-prizes! this one isn't even surreal.