A baby sea turtle in my hands:
the outer islanders call him Wol,
he will be a nomad, if anyone will.
What will the world look like to him?
Will he dream of killer whales,
those Swiss Cake Rolls of the sea?
Of winning the three hearts
of an octopus?
See what the turtle sees,
and rejoice.

The sea turtle, like the human, cries saltwater
and the tears cover two-thirds of the earth.
He risks pirate ship, cigarette boat, Chinese net.
He mistakes bait for food. (Who doesn’t?)
But he can swim away from; swim towards:
India, Mombasa, New Zealand, Ulithi.
The world's a turtle’s home,
why is anyone a nomad if not for this?
See what the turtle sees
and rejoice, carrying only
the markings on your shell.

A jungle.
A shack.
Half a moon.
Islands sprinkled like tiny green beads
across the Water of the Sky.
A first tattoo—seven little turtles--
and it hurts in a good way
like the world does.
Dear Creator
keep me from evil
keep my life
keep my going out and my coming in

The giant fin whale swam along with the tide
A nineteen-foot calf was swimming by her side
They were swimming away from her mate’s now dead shell
Trapped in a lagoon and then all shot to hell.

She’ll raise her young calf on her own from now on
Not mating again as they only take one
Her mate had followed a herring shoal in with the tide
And for a short while there were those who had tried
To help him turn and head back to sea
But the cruelty of nature would not let it be
At eighty feet long and a shallow cliff lea
It could not turn around to escape and be free.

And then a vile streak in the locals took hold
A most wicked shooting match began to unfold
The most handsome of whales was trapped and revealed
As shooters took aim and young children squealed.

They fired and they fired and they fired and they fired
Stopping only to reload and then when they got tired
They even drove speedboats across his shot back
Leaving deep deep prop cuts as a further attack.

And when they were done and the whale was no more
His body burst open and in death he’d now score
For the stench of his now rancid corpse was so rotten
This beautiful creature wasn’t easily forgotten.

There was a man who tried hard to get him free
But one man alone is as a wood with one tree
And by the time he had got national press all aware
The whale was now dead, so bored, they’d not now care.



©Joe Wilson – A Whale shouldn’t die like that 2014

Many years ago I was enthralled by the work of Farley Mowat the renowned Canadian environmentalist who died last month. From reading his book, based on real events ‘A Whale for the Killing’ published in 1972, I took to studying whales as a hobby and I quickly realised just what a perfect creature the Fin Whale is. It is the only whale that is match coloured along both sides giving it the same symmetrical beauty as a dolphin and is the second largest creature to live, the Blue Whale being the only creature bigger. It is so amazing it can lift its entire body out of the water. Why on earth would you fire thousands of rounds of ammunition into a creature so beautiful? Why?

This is a small tribute to the memory of Farley Mowat (May 12, 1921 – May 6, 2014) and to people like him who try so hard, such as the Sea Shepherds who try to stop the massacre of bottle-nose dolphins each year in Taiji, Japan ostensibly for food, even though most Japanese people shun the whale-meat.

Here come Jupiter child,
You can hear the flowers crying as they plead for her to stay a while,
She just collided with and intergalactic asteroid,
But things were only created never destroyed,
In the dark cool tunnels she found some pretty moon shrooms,
sheltering growing seahorses wrapped in loose water droplet cocoons,
Now towards earth you hear her come,
Within the clouds she beats her tribal drums,
The ocean sways and swells to the time of her rhythm and sound,
Reaching deep into the sea forest to whales traveling homebound,
She wears stars framed in turquoise,
Like the kokopelli she gives birth to planets with grace and poise,
Here comes Jupiter child, dread locks wound with comets,
extracts from the universe, she mixes matter-less tonics,
Recipes rooted deep in wizardry,
she borrows knowledge from indians and aztecs to cure all misery,
Her meteor showers made of her salty tears,
Are earth's dream catcher, snaring all nighttime fears.

A cry assails my window
a child has a broken heart,
life is harsh and she's afraid,
mother said a harsh word
she fell down, the world
too big, too cruel
she wails,
drops her bottle,
she wails
stumps her toe,
she wails
her favorite doll ruined,
she wails,
palms bruised and scratched
she wails
and no one hesitates.

Father walks too far ahead
she teeters to stand,
her wails carried on the wind
no one picks her up,
she must learn to endure
life's obstacles,
she gains footing and
stands , bursts forward
on wobbling legs,
Father turns and smiles
waits to dust her off,
takes her hand,
and the world begins
again.

Orcas in Puget Sound

Along the road, abandoned wild apple trees bend
with their heavy loads, dusty skirts of blackberry bushes
purpling fingers, piercing flesh
mouths ringed with berry juice, vampires all.
Along San Juan Island salmon leap clear
out of the briny water, just yards ahead of their predators,
Orcas, dorsal fins curving shiny black, sluicing and slicing
the surface like sharpened knives

They have bred with one another for 10,000 years
trolled these waters through famine, earthquakes, world wars
through shifting continents, glacial avalanches,
through the extinction of whole civilizations.
Standing on a cliff, my daughter and I
watch the Orcas churning the water - studies in grace
the largest gem on the necklace of a great food chain
and when we sleep we too chase
the great King Salmon of our deepest dreams,
the fathers we lost, the currents that bear along children

Translucent jellyfish, palm sized, breath below
sideways exhale, convulsive inhale
umbrellas opening and closing a thousand years or more
sliding through forests of brown kelp where mollusks cling

We have clung like this to one another, with my body
thrown over hers for protection and her exhaling away from me
If Mama Orca keeps her young close, so will I
If there are salmon to chase and harbor seals to command, so we will

Arcing in the late August sky
slapping and parting the surface, over and over
the whales, lords of the Sound, swim in our brains as we sleep
sparkle against blackening waters
You are of my body from my body cleaving there for 10,000 years
Whatever quarrels there are on land vaporize
In the presence of these creatures,
arcing against all that is temporal, vicious, small,
studies in power and grace

The tide pulls out, skimming across rocks and oysters in their muddy beds
But this need to care for you remains as big as an Orca
your appetite for adventure as voracious
and I watch you, my child, disappearing with summer
into high school, into womanhood, into
the salty, light-dappled ocean

Mr Darwin, please explain

Reading TS Eliot is to be drawn into timeless space where images of past and future combine in a continuous stream of thinking …. perhaps the immortality of ideas. The genetic material of life, DNA, is immortal, an unbroken thread linking life’s origins 4 billion years ago to the present ….. and future.

Sequence upon sequence of symbolic letters encoding countless forms of bodies, built to the same principles inherent in the genetic code, yet morphing in endless variety according to the tenets of natural selection ….. Darwin’s idea that transformed our thinking from a moment of purposeful creation to how life changes through time.

Cosmologists suggest we live in one of many possible universes perhaps in parallel time allowing parallel lives, one not knowing of the other’s existence because of the limitations of our three dimensional view of the world and its existence in the cosmos. We see in three dimensions and no more, but we are aware of more because mathematics tells us so.

Mr Darwin, please explain explores the seamless continuity of Darwinian thinking with the timelessness of Eliot’s poetry…..

I In my beginning is my end …. V In my end is my beginning.
(East Coker, Four Quartets, TS Eliot)


Mr Darwin, please explain

I

What is this selection of love so natural
To drive men insane and women to purgatory
Can Mr Darwin explain?
Some ask the question
But I doubt not, that his meaning is clear
Why love one to one remains so dear,
Though Karl denied it, Lenin too
And Uncle Joe dismissed it
As a plot to subvert what was good for the proletariat.
But in that recent time when ******’s darkness shadowed The Earth
Love glowed in the gloom of the despair of nations’ Terezíns
Which to-day helps to repair our broken dreams
Of why we love one to one.

Keats loved one ***** Brawne
And Coleridge his Asra
But what is ecstasy’s advantage?
When comes the pain of separation
Mr Darwin, please explain.
Is it lust, is it reproduction?
But then when love is thwarted
We cannot function,
Where is the advantage
Mr D --- what is the aim, can you explain?
How the coiled spiral passing from time to time
Its immortal message which condemns each generation
To the pain of separation
When the reaper calls, or the rival sunders
The coils of love’s message we’ve inherited
Since the beginning of time
Why? What is the advantage?
Mr D, please tell me your answer.

The whales they sing one to one
Like Eliot’s mermaids singing
Not to Prufrock but perhaps to you and me
The message of communication.
Is this love as one to one
Each supports another wounded
By the enormity of the harpoon?
The dictator’s message in another form
Devoid of love, sundered, never whole
Coming from that Terezín we never solve.
Dysfunctional Mr D, where’s the advantage
For such conflicting feelings to evolve?

David Applin
March 2012

II

Genes are the immortal ones
The links between past and future
But ever present
Unintentionally directing the future and fate of humankind.

Silent, unobserved yet Gods of their domain
Which is us and life past and future
Coiled threads of eternity that determine our happenings
Including our loving one to one.

Yet ….

In their entirety and interaction
Do they, in their interaction
Determine our loving one to one?
The bond that binds each to each
Perpetual celebration.

Or ….

Is their selfish blindness which some accord to be
Inconsequential
Like boats tossed helplessly on storm driven seas
Subject to the whims of wind and rain
No more than replicators housed in vehicles
Subject only to the chances of a changing world.


III

Bodies are vehicles, genes the replicators
Bodies and genes indivisible
At least in the present
But separated as bodies die after
Genes have passed to their immortal future.
Perhaps this is what is meant when they say
That the gene is selfish.

Accommodated in the selfless body at a particular time
But then discarded as genes pass its immortality
From past to future
Changes slow, quick depending on stasis or acceleration
According to Darwinian tenets that enfold the changes
In genes and therefore bodies
Through all time.


IV

Cycle upon cycle of genes and bodies
One perpetual, the other discarded each generation
By the unseen hand of an uncaring Nature.

Our nature, all nature, the beauty of sunsets
Driven by the mechanical clocks of cosmic cycles.

Yet Relative to other Dimensions where
What we see, we do not see
Because of the profound limitations
Of three dimensions.
We see only dimly what might be past
And what could be future
As we struggle in the presence of tautological explanation.

Body and gene, gene and body the temporary and perpetual
Bound in the dance of a living presence
The one ensuring the other’s future
For all time.
Circle upon circle, tautological argument
Explaining everything and nothing but all powerful
In its reductionism of humankind
And life kind as whales support the one
Wounded by the enormity of the harpoon
Loosed by the bodies of genes
Storm tossed and directionless
When thinking that others’ bodies
Can be discarded without thought or thinking
Perpetual damnation.

Tautomeric interaction.
We say the same thing in different ways,
Recycled ideas that parody the twenty different plots of novels
That return to the same point,
Come back to the common question

Why do we love one to one?

People ask…. ‘Can Mr Darwin explain?’

Perhaps not through bodies and genes
But instead, understanding the epistasis of genes and where we live.
We live in this world because of our past
As genes dance to the chance of environmental shifts
The whims of wind and rain, sea and wave
That blow and toss the genes
In their bodies, in random patterns,
Some sinking, others floating
Not always by chance
But because they float and fight
Yielding to the pressures of an uncaring nature.
Like soft down yielding to the thud of falling bodies
Softening their impact.

So to yield as well as fight
Is part of the selection of one by another
In the perpetual
Celebration of loving one to one.

We yield to the blandishments of the soft embrace
We fight to attain it

And once attained, what we do is all we do
To keep a hold on what we love
Only to lose it to the grim reaper of all our dreams
In this present world,
But to regain it in worlds to come
The link between past and future
For immortal genes
Of transitory bodies which is how
We think and see our presence
In time without end.



V

General relativity and quantum mechanics
The combination of infinity and the very small
Do not replace the Newtonian meaning of the day to day.
Just, that Newton is displaced to another time and place
Where description is precise but with uncertainty according to
Heisenberg.

To be certain is to fix ideas in time
Like natural selection in the Darwinian mind
To be propitiated without exception, else suffer extinction of self
And of all that matters to self and others
Sacrificed on the alter to propitiate the Gods of our certainty.

That is not to say that an idea cannot be fixed in time
That its central tenet is not true for eternity.
But truth is relative and uncertain
To be strengthened or cast aside
By better truths or developments of the same.

Our understanding expands with time
But often returns to something that was said before
And said again as if it were newly minted
In the mind of its creator
To become dogma
And as all dogmas
The truth unchanged in people’s minds.
Yet the central tenet survives, as survival is the result of natural selection
But with added components as
Understanding expands as to what is meant by surviving and survival.
To inherit the coils of love’s message is to survive.


VI

Can Mr Darwin explain?
Perhaps is not a whole question
In the same sense that answers depend on
The question asked and who is asking.

The truths that questions seek to answer
The truths of love, beauty and heating systems
Arise from answers to questions in different languages,
And languages translate imperfectly from one to one
As genes imperfectly translate proteins and therefore love in the
Darwinian world of our dreams.

Truth comes in different forms
And Darwinian truth is true to the questions it addresses.
But these are not the only questions of why we are,
Who we are, what we are
Who, what, why are we?

Questions past and future asked in the present
For all eternity.


Christmas (25th-28th) 2012
David Applin

Copyright David Applin 2015

Here the waves rise high and fall on the icy
seas and white caps chew the driftwood logs of
hemlock and toss them wildly upon sandy beaches.
The steep mountains rise straight from the sea
floor as the December sun shines through the dark
clouds that hang heavy with snow near the top peaks.
Blue icebergs drift slowly down the narrow channel.
This volcanic island is one of many that are scattered
along the coast of Southeastern Alaska.
On the South end of the island is another
tiny island and on it stands an old lighthouse,
a shambles. It has a curving staircase and an
old broken lamp that used to beckon to ships at
sea. Wild grasses and goosetongue cover the ground
and close by Sitka blacktail feed and gray gulls
circle. There is a mountain stream nearby and
in the fall the salmon spawn at its mouth. The
black bear and grizzly scoop them up with great
sweeps of their paws, their sharp claws gaffing
the silver bodies.
Walking North along the deer trail from the
South end of the island are remnants of the Treadwell
Mine. It was the largest gold mine in the world.
In the early 1900's the tunnel they were digging
underneath Gastineau Channel caved in and the sea
claimed her gold. The foundry still stands a rusty
red.
The dining halls are vacant, broken white
dishes are strewn inside. The tennis court that
was built for the employees is overgrown with hops
that have climbed over the high fence and grown
up between cracks in the cement floor. The flume
still carries water rushing in it half-hidden in
the rain-forest which is slowly reclaiming the
land. The beach here by the ocean is fine white
sand, full of mica, gold and pieces of white dishes.
Potsherds for future archeologists, washed clean,
smooth and round by the circular waves of this
deep, dark green water.
Down past the old gold mine is Cahill's house,
yellow and once magnificent. They managed the mine. The long staircase is boarded up and so
are the large windows. The gardens are wild, irises
bud in the spring at the end of the lawn, and in
the summer a huge rose path, full of dark crimson
blooms frames the edge of the sea; strawberries
grow nearby dark pink and succulent. Red raspberries
grow further down the path in a tangle of profusion;
close by is a pale pink rose path, full of those
small wild roses that smell fragrant. An iron-
barred swing stands tall on the edge of the beach.
I swing there and at high tide I can jump in the
ocean from high up in the air. There is an old
tetter-totter too. And, it is like finding the
emperor's palace abandoned.
There is a knoll behind the old house called
Grassy Hill. It is covered with a blanket of hard
crisp snow. In the spring it is covered with sweet
white clover and soft grasses. It is easy to find
four leaf clovers there, walking below the hill
toward the beach is a dell. It is a small clearing
in between the raspberry patch and tall cottonwood
trees. It is a good place for a picnic. It is
a short walk again to the beach and off to the
right is a small pond, Grassy Pond. It is frozen
solid and I skate on it. In the summer I swim
here because it is warmer than the ocean. In the
spring I wade out, stand very still and catch baby
flounders and bullheads with my hands; I am fast
and quick and have good eyes. Flounders are bottom
fish that look like sand.
Walking North again over a rise I come to
a field filled with snow; in the spring it is a
blaze of magenta fireweed. Often I will sit in
it surrounded by bright petals and sketch the mountains
beyond. Nearby are salmonberry bushes which have
cerise blossoms in early spring; by the end of
summer, golden-orange berries hang on their green
branches. The bears love to eat them and so do
I. But the wild strawberries are my first love,
then the tangy raspberries. I don't like the high-
bush cranberries, huckleberries, currants or the
sour gooseberries that grow in my mother's garden
and the blueberries are only good for pies, jams
and jellies. I like the little ligonberries that
grow close to the earth in the meadow, but they
are hard to find.
Looking across this island I see Mt. Jumbo,
the mountain that towers above the thick Tongass forest of pine, hemlock and spruce. It was a volcano
and is rugged and snow-covered. I hike up the
trail leading to the base of the mountain. The
trail starts out behind a patch of blueberry bushes
and winds lazily upwards crossing a stream where
I can stop and fish for trout and eat lunch; on
top is a meadow. Spring is my favorite season
here. The yellow water lilies bud on top of large
muskeg holes. The dark pink blueberry bushes form
a ring around the meadow with their delicate pink
blossoms. The purple and yellow violets are in
bloom and bright yellow skunk cabbage abounds, the
devil's club are turning green again and fields
of beige Alaskan cotton fan the air, slender stalks
that grow in the wet marshy places. Here and there
a wild columbine blooms. It is here in these meadows
that I find the lime-green bull pine, whose limbs
grow up instead of down. Walking along the trail
beside the meadow I soon come to an old wooden
cabin. It is owned by the mine and consists of
two rooms, a medium-sized kitchen with an eating
area and wood table and a large bedroom with four
World War II army cots and a cream colored dresser.
Nobody lives here anymore, but hikers, deer hunters,
and an occasional bear use the place. Next door
to the cabin is the well house which feeds the
flume. The flume flows from here down the mountain
side to the old mine and power plant. An old man
still takes care of the power plant. He lives
in a big dark green house with his family and the
power plant is all blue-gray metal. I can stand
outside and listen to the whirl of the generators.
I like to walk in the forest on top of the old
flume and listen to the sound of the water rushing
past under my bare feet.
In the winter the meadow is different: all
silent, still and snow-covered. The trees are
heavy with weighty branches and icicles dangle
off their limbs, long, elegant, shining. All the
birds are gone but the little brown snowbirds and
the white ptarmigan. The meadow is a field of
white and I can ski softly down towards the sea.
The trout stream is frozen and the waterfall quiet,
an ice palace behind crystal caves. The hard smooth-
ness of the ice feels good to my touch, this frozen
water, this winter.
Down below at the edge of the sea is yet another
type of ice. Salt water is treacherous; it doesn'tfreeze solid, it is unreliable and will break under
my weight. Here are the beached icebergs that
the high tide has left. Blue white treasures,
gigantic crystals tossed adrift by glaciers. Glisten-
ing, wet, gleaming in the winter sun, some still
half-buried in the sea, drifting slowly out again.
And it is noisy here, the gray gulls call to each
other, circling overhead. The ravens and crows
are walking, squawking along the beach. The Taku
wind is blowing down the channel, swirling, chill,
singing in my ear. Far out across the channel
humpback whales slap their tails against the water.
On the beach kelp whips are caught in wet clumps
of seaweed as the winter tide rises higher and
higher. The smell of salty spray permeates everything
and the dark clouds roll in from behind the steep
mountains.
Suddenly it snows. Soft, furry, thick flakes,
in front of me, behind, to the sides, holding me
in a blizzard of whiteness, light: snow.

A bee with innards spilling
A lost tabby,
A blimp caught up in trees,
Tintern Abbey.

The gravestone of a lover,
A drowning ship,
An NHS delivery of
Fortisip.

A girl with alopecia and
Fungail nails,
A one legged pigeon,
Exploding whales.

Ivy choked churches,
Merlot tongues,
Parrots plucking feathers,
Marlboro lungs.

Girls locked up in attics,
*** toys.
Boys punching girls
And punching boys.

Babies crowning
Fussed about like kings.
Darlings,
You shall see such pretty things.

yet another year zero
reinventing the squeaky wheel
constrained writing just for kicks
reviving a tragic hero
tabula rasa and leaky spiel
trained for fighting prickly ******
hollowing future and reticulating splines
swallowing nature then duplicating rhymes
only a blank drawing
at a bank withdrawing
funds splashing down like acid rain
workers trashing town with great disdain
fluxing bureaucracy
with ad hoc hypocrisy
go country for old zen
and then
shot glass shopping sprees
statues with haunting verdigris
from target to target
the stupid (never forget)
airport shuttles and toxic puddles
epic riddles while popping bottles
thrusting bodies and a fruity box
alternating current and topic drift
trusting hotties with shuttlecocks
baiting adherent with basic *****
eating that dog in a bar by the ditch
bar all rowdy with many shots taken
beer hall drowsy as closing time looms
far too loudly with identity mistaken
the band had us frankly and amply forsaken
awakening in a ditch as the a-bomb booms
a thousand soldiers ready for battle
at town's end with less depleted morals
worried about the deleted portals
we buried hell well without the cattle
no more long weeks of slicing ****** meat
origins about which they should not care
oh to sell knockoffs to the rich elite
hear their yells and use an odd nom de guerre
the profit and the revenue forecast
**** on the new road
the prophet and the parvenue act fast
pill for the wet load
he had dropped the load leaving pungent smells
in the dark it glowed and lit the deep wells
launching a rocket every four hours
we encounter yet more perplexing times
measuring success with fewer metrics
punching the clocks in tall black towers
changing the locks and the warning signs
altering quarters with newer ethics
cannibals watched while we profusely bled
fine forget it forget it forget it
ingest the capsule to induce the sweat
just relieve don't botch
figure figure figure
don't bereave think scotch
ticker ticker ticker
sounded like it came from someone shady
getting beat to end with some other blend
year to date murders now about eighty
yet today's statistics lie and pretend
fudging the digits to fake the assent
so what happened last week stays in last week
all of those painful jarring sights and sounds
making it all seem to look rather bleak
kept sly with pennies and kept shrewd with pounds
on alibaba we will not delete
separated heads from dark desert towns
metropolis with millions of dark souls
lighting up papers for a rapid trip
necropolis with brilliant harkening trolls
fighting the power in order to strip
their medals that they never earned at all
writing this line here and ******* the fall
straightforward message from a plain green rod
a photographer in obscure disguise
throw him into the main canal and nod
the coffee shop looks banal with just guys
losing interest quick and wanting to dip
touching that shiny pink wide-open clip
unknown underground studded with diamonds
mind-blowing trap sounds burst from the caliph
volume gets higher and heads start to ring
they came in sequence and then came silence
waking up confused in a condo lift
taking refuge in an ugly building
just invited myself into your home timeline
somewhat sublime reciting trifling rhymes
alter rhyming scheme to eschew couplets
now fully mobile and automatic
pentameter schemes and android tablets
tents and suburbs that look quite nomadic
recruited minions for the rebellions
human microphones sans inhibitions
quicken resistance to the man's big plan
invoking the crowd to buck traditions
spell that with an accent with great élan
broken mobile phone texting hexagram
a rapid drop in communication
a postal service mailing vexing spam
token for transit lost at the station
we can no longer go back to the farm
here in the city living these last days
sounding the airhorn and the fire alarm
seahorses as fish and whales as mammals
hard to keep track here of various things
went to the desert and smoked some camels
patient zero died sounding the alert
some will paint dark scenes with exigent themes
paintings so dire that your eyes avert
inverse distance decay in the network
old flags questing through the flood and tumult
of course these rhymes make them go **** berserk
losing sight of sites that house the occult
refusing to eat and wanting to drink
these words resonate with all those who think
utopia fell soon after completion
never understood humanity well
rationality ends with deletion
all the fine stuff just goes to *******
humans emitting alienating vibes
they form foul cliques like pups from putrid tribes
three ships all wrecked up in some unknown land
divulging harsh things and eating raw food
far too many times getting shunned and booed
had all my writings fully blocked and banned
still no dumb luck yet after x decades
recalled old friendships that have long decayed
more constrained writing that will make them groan
some will even see the trail left behind
writing all of this mostly in e-prime
punctuation-free zone made just for fun
lighting dark alleys with a mobile phone
some get all the love while others get none
***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****
ditch ditch ditch ditch ditch ditch ditch ditch ditch ditch
glitch glitch glitch glitch glitch glitch glitch glitch glitch glitch
kitsch kitsch kitsch kitsch kitsch kitsch kitsch kitsch kitsch kitsch
stitch stitch stitch stitch stitch stitch stitch stitch stitch stitch
twitch twitch twitch twitch twitch twitch twitch twitch twitch twitch
yesterday's blunt stunt went to the gutter
no regrets no threats no whatever man
just like autechre and that song flutter
forget the police just rave on til dawn
**** how darkness has lasted this **** long
ominous songs here still pumping along
exponential sneers and the obscene scene
existential fears lit up with benzine
socially-accepted narcissism
honest thoughts here treated with cynicism
forget all -isms / go back to the scheme
spending days like these sniffing naphthalene
won't dwank to the masses or kiss *****
temperamental peers can go live that myth
experimental stage done and over with
(pause)
*
* *
*
✝ gone to a higher place ✝

The world is losing
Gravity,
But no one can escape,
We're hurtling on our petrie dish
In a gel that seals our fate;
Gravitating
Towards black holes;
They're closer than you think.

In China
There's a wall of dust,
Seen clear from outer space;
Our living waters die
In a legacy of disgrace.
We're citizens
Wearing masks;
We should hide our faces,
But we're running daily tasks.
We're fossils burning
Fossil fuels
Found in cremation gas.

The amphibians
Are on the fringe;
Whales can't sound,
They run aground.
It's an environmental slaughter.

Our world has lost
Some gravity.
We need to plant our feet,
But  charnel fires
And greenhouse gas
Have hastened our retreat.
Migrating birds lose sense of time,
Confused by the lights.
The mourning dove coos at night,
The nightingale at dawn;
We're like
New turtles muddling,
Under lost starlight.
We must grasp
The gravity
Of burning
Burning  light.

We've all been molested
By time and space

The lovers have problems
With keeping their place

A head filled with toxins
Colours, fairy tales

They teach us that men
Can make a home inside whales

My message is simple
Don't stand near train tracks

Though everyone does it
So it's time to relax

Speculations of pain
Hurt me enough

Weak to the core
Though I'm told that we're tough

High in the hills wends the road to your home
steeped and flowered by lupine towers
after long slumber, the waking hour - warmth of summer comes
our feet grassed and green, we wish on dandelion dreams
watch tiny parachutes glide into the sea
this place is wild resplendent music
we have become more than ourselves and slowed
have stopped to feel our breath grow
making a path cut from last year
we are slipped and sloped toward shore
silhouetted just before the end of sun
when the world sinks silent
but for the deeply toned
hum of whale song.

First they came for the Muslims
by Michael R. Burch

after Martin Niemoller

First they came for the Muslims
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Muslim.

Then they came for the homosexuals
and I did not speak out
because I was not a homosexual.

Then they came for the feminists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a feminist.

Now when will they come for me
because I was too busy and too apathetic
to defend my sisters and brothers?

"First they came for the Muslims" was published in Amnesty International’s "Words That Burn" anthology and is now being used as training material for budding human rights activists. My poem was inspired by and patterned after Martin Niemoller’s famous Holocaust poem. Niemoller, a German pastor, supported Adolph ****** in the early going, but ended up in a **** concentration camp and nearly lost his life. So his was a true poem based on his actual life experience. Keywords/Tags: Holocaust, genocide, apartheid, racism, intolerance, Jew, Jews, Muslim, Muslims, homosexuals, feminists, apathy, sisters, brothers, Islam, Islamic, God, religion, intolerance, race, racism, racist, discrimination, feminist, feminists, feminism, sexuality, gay, homosexual, homosexuals, LGBT, mrbmuslim, mrbpal, mrbnakba



Epitaph for a Palestinian Child
by Michael R. Burch

I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.



I Pray Tonight
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers and children of Gaza

I pray tonight
the starry light
might
surround you.

I pray
each day
that, come what may,
no dark thing confound you.

I pray ere tomorrow
an end to your sorrow.
May angels’ white chorales
sing, and astound you.



Such Tenderness
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers of Gaza

There was, in your touch, such tenderness―as
only the dove on her mildest day has,
when she shelters downed fledglings beneath a warm wing
and coos to them softly, unable to sing.

What songs long forgotten occur to you now―
a babe at each breast? What terrible vow
ripped from your throat like the thunder that day
can never hold severing lightnings at bay?

Time taught you tenderness―time, oh, and love.
But love in the end is seldom enough ...
and time?―insufficient to life’s brief task.
I can only admire, unable to ask―

what is the source, whence comes the desire
of a woman to love as no God may require?



I, too, have a Dream ...
written by Michael R. Burch for the children of Gaza

I, too, have a dream ...
that one day Jews and Christians
will see me as I am:
a small child, lonely and afraid,
staring down the barrels of their big bazookas,
knowing I did nothing
to deserve their enmity.



My Nightmare ...
written by Michael R. Burch for the children of Gaza

I had a dream of Jesus!
Mama, his eyes were so kind!
But behind him I saw a billion Christians
hissing "You're nothing!," so blind.



For a Palestinian Child, with Butterflies
by Michael R. Burch

Where does the butterfly go ...
when lightning rails ...
when thunder howls ...
when hailstones scream ...
when winter scowls ...
when nights compound dark frosts with snow ...
where does the butterfly go?

Where does the rose hide its bloom
when night descends oblique and chill,
beyond the capacity of moonlight to fill?
When the only relief’s a banked fire’s glow,
where does the butterfly go?

And where shall the spirit flee
when life is harsh, too harsh to face,
and hope is lost without a trace?
Oh, when the light of life runs low,
where does the butterfly go?

Published by Tucumcari Literary Review, Romantics Quarterly, Poetry Life & Times and Victorian Violet Press (where it was nominated for a “Best of the Net”), The Contributor (a Nashville homeless newspaper), Siasat (Pakistan), and set to music as a part of the song cycle “The Children of Gaza” which has been performed in various European venues by the Palestinian soprano Dima Bawab



Frail Envelope of Flesh
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers and children of Gaza

Frail envelope of flesh,
lying cold on the surgeon’s table
with anguished eyes
like your mother’s eyes
and a heartbeat weak, unstable ...

Frail crucible of dust,
brief flower come to this―
your tiny hand
in your mother’s hand
for a last bewildered kiss ...

Brief mayfly of a child,
to live two artless years!
Now your mother’s lips
seal up your lips
from the Deluge of her tears ...

Published by The Lyric, Promosaik (Germany), Setu (India) and Poetry Life & Times; translated into Arabic by Nizar Sartawi and into Italian by Mario Rigli

Note: The phrase "frail envelope of flesh" was one of my first encounters with the power of poetry, although I read it in a superhero comic book as a young boy (I forget which one). More than thirty years later, the line kept popping into my head, so I wrote this poem. I have dedicated it to the mothers and children of Gaza, who know all too well how fragile life and human happiness can be. What can I say, but that I hope, dream, wish and pray that one day ruthless men will no longer have power over the lives and happiness of innocents? Women, children and babies are not “terrorists” so why are they being punished collectively for the “crime” of having been born “wrong”? How can the government of Israel practice systematic racism and apartheid, and how can the government of the United States fund and support such a barbaric system?



who, US?
by Michael R. Burch

jesus was born
a palestinian child
where there’s no Room
for the meek and the mild

... and in bethlehem still
to this day, lambs are born
to cries of “no Room!”
and Puritanical scorn ...

under Herod, Trump, Bibi
their fates are the same―
the slouching Beast mauls them
and WE have no shame:

“who’s to blame?”

(In the poem "US" means both the United States and "us" the people of the world, wherever we live. The name "jesus" is uncapitalized while "Room" is capitalized because it seems evangelical Christians are more concerned about land and not sharing it with the less fortunate, than the teachings of Jesus Christ. Also, Jesus and his parents were refugees for whom there was "no Room" to be found. What would Jesus think of Christian scorn for the less fortunate, one wonders? What would he think of people adopting his name for their religion, then voting for someone like Trump, as four out of five evangelical Christians did, according to exit polls?)



Excerpts from “Travels with Einstein”
by Michael R. Burch

I went to Berlin to learn wisdom
from Adolph. The wild spittle flew
as he screamed at me, with great conviction:
“Please despise me! I look like a Jew!”

So I flew off to ’Nam to learn wisdom
from tall Yankees who cursed “yellow” foes.
“If we lose this small square,” they informed me,
earth’s nations will fall, dominoes!”

I then sat at Christ’s feet to learn wisdom,
but his Book, from its genesis to close,
said: “Men can enslave their own brothers!”
(I soon noticed he lacked any clothes.)

So I traveled to bright Tel Aviv
where great scholars with lofty IQs
informed me that (since I’m an Arab)
I’m unfit to lick dirt from their shoes.  

At last, done with learning, I stumbled
to a well where the waters seemed sweet:
the mirage of American “justice.”
There I wept a real sea, in defeat.

Originally published by Café Dissensus



Starting from Scratch with Ol’ Scratch
by Michael R. Burch

for the Religious Right

Love, with a small, fatalistic sigh
went to the ovens. Please don’t bother to cry.
You could have saved her, but you were all *******
complaining about the Jews to Reichmeister Grupp.

Scratch that. You were born after World War II.
You had something more important to do:
while the children of the Nakba were perishing in Gaza
with the complicity of your government, you had a noble cause (a
religious tract against homosexual marriage
and various things gods and evangelists disparage.)

Jesus will grok you? Ah, yes, I’m quite sure
that your intentions were good and ineluctably pure.
After all, what the hell does he care about Palestinians?
Certainly, Christians were right about serfs, slaves and Indians.
Scratch that. You’re one of the Devil’s minions.



Brother Iran
by Michael R. Burch

for the poets of Iran

Brother Iran, I feel your pain.
I feel it as when the Turk fled Spain.
As the Jew fled, too, that constricting span,
I feel your pain, Brother Iran.

Brother Iran, I know you are noble!
I too fear Hiroshima and Chernobyl.
But though my heart shudders, I have a plan,
and I know you are noble, Brother Iran.

Brother Iran, I salute your Poets!
your Mathematicians!, all your great Wits!
O, come join the earth's great Caravan.
We'll include your Poets, Brother Iran.

Brother Iran, I love your Verse!
Come take my hand now, let's rehearse
the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
For I love your Verse, Brother Iran.

Brother Iran, civilization's Flower!
How high flew your spires in man's early hours!
Let us build them yet higher, for that's my plan,
civilization's first flower, Brother Iran.



These are my translations of Holocaust poems by Ber Horvitz (also known as Ber Horowitz); his bio follows the poems. Poems about the Holocaust and Nakba often bear striking resemblances, especially when written from the perspective of a child.



Der Himmel
"The Heavens"
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

These skies
are leaden, heavy, gray ...
I long for a pair
of deep blue eyes.

The birds have fled
far overseas;
"Tomorrow I’ll migrate too,"
I said ...

These gloomy autumn days
it rains and rains.
Woe to the bird
Who remains ...



Doctorn
"Doctors"
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Early this morning I bandaged
the lilac tree outside my house;
I took thin branches that had broken away
and patched their wounds with clay.

My mother stood there watering
her window-level flower bed;
The morning sun, quite motherly,
kissed us both on our heads!

What a joy, my child, to heal!
Finished doctoring, or not?
The eggs are nicely poached
And the milk's a-boil in the ***.



Broit
“Bread”
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Night. Exhaustion. Heavy stillness. Why?
On the hard uncomfortable floor the exhausted people lie.

Flung everywhere, scattered over the broken theater floor,
the exhausted people sleep. Night. Late. Too tired to snore.

At midnight a little boy cries wildly into the gloom:
"Mommy, I’m afraid! Let’s go home!”

His mother, reawakened into this frightful place,
presses her frightened child even closer to her breast …

"If you cry, I’ll leave you here, all alone!
A little boy must sleep ... this, now, is our new home.”

Night. Exhaustion. Heavy stillness all around,
exhausted people sleeping on the hard ground.



"My Lament"
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Nothingness enveloped me
as tender green toadstools
lie blanketed by snow
with its thick, heavy prayer shawl …
After that, nothing could hurt me …



Ber Horvitz aka Ber Horowitz (1895-1942): Born to village people in the woods of Maidan in the West Carpathians, Horowitz showed art talent early on. He went to gymnazie in Stanislavov, then served in the Austrian army during WWI, where he was a medic to Italian prisoners of war. He studied medicine in Vienna and was published in many Yiddish newspapers. Fluent in several languages, he translated Polish and Ukrainian to Yiddish. He also wrote poetry in Yiddish. A victim of the Holocaust, he was murdered in 1942 by the Nazis.


Second Sight
by Michael R. Burch

I never touched you—
that was my mistake.

Deep within,
I still feel the ache.

Can an unformed thing
eternally break?

Now, from a great distance,
I see you again

not as you are now,
but as you were then—

eternally present
and Sovereign.



The Shrinking Season
by Michael R. Burch

With every wearying year
the weight of the winter grows
and while the schoolgirl outgrows
her clothes,
the widow disappears
in hers.

Published by Angle and Poem Today



Annual
by Michael R. Burch

Silence
steals upon a house
where one sits alone
in the shadow of the itinerant letterbox,
watching the disconnected telephone
collecting dust ...

hearing the desiccate whispers of voices’
dry flutters,—
moths’ wings
brittle as cellophane ...

Curled here,
reading the yellowing volumes of loss
by the front porch light
in the groaning swing . . .
through thin adhesive gloss
I caress your face.

Published by The HyperTexts



US Verse, after Auden
by Michael R. Burch

“Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.”

Verse has small value in our Unisphere,
nor is it fit for windy revelation.
It cannot legislate less taxing fears;
it cannot make us, several, a nation.
Enumerator of our sins and dreams,
it pens its cryptic numbers, and it sings,
a little quaintly, of the ways of love.
(It seems of little use for lesser things.)

Published by The Raintown Review, The Barefoot Muse and Poetry Life & Times

The Unisphere mentioned is a spherical stainless steel representation of the earth constructed for the 1964 New York World’s Fair. It was commissioned to celebrate the beginning of the space age and dedicated to "Man's Achievements on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe." The lines quoted in the epigraph are from W. H. Auden’s love poem “Lullaby.”



Sea Dreams
by Michael R. Burch

I.
In timeless days
I've crossed the waves
of seaways seldom seen.
By the last low light of evening
the breakers that careen
then dive back to the deep
have rocked my ship to sleep,
and so I've known the peace
of a soul at last at ease
there where Time's waters run
in concert with the sun.

With restless waves
I've watched the days’
slow movements, as they hum
their antediluvian songs.
Sometimes I've sung along,
my voice as soft and low
as the sea's, while evening slowed
to waver at the dim
mysterious moonlit rim
of dreams no man has known.

In thoughtless flight,
I've scaled the heights
and soared a scudding breeze
over endless arcing seas
of waves ten miles high.
I've sheared the sable skies
on wings as soft as sighs
and stormed the sun-pricked pitch
of sunset’s scarlet-stitched,
ebullient dark demise.

I've climbed the sun-cleft clouds
ten thousand leagues or more
above the windswept shores
of seas no man has sailed
— great seas as grand as hell's,
shores littered with the shells
of men's "immortal" souls —
and I've warred with dark sea-holes
whose open mouths implored
their depths to be explored.

And I've grown and grown and grown
till I thought myself the king
of every silver thing . . .

But sometimes late at night
when the sorrowing wavelets sing
sad songs of other times,
I taste the windborne rime
of a well-remembered day
on the whipping ocean spray,
and I bow my head to pray . . .

II.
It's been a long, hard day;
sometimes I think I work too hard.
Tonight I'd like to take a walk
down by the sea —
down by those salty waves
brined with the scent of Infinity,
down by that rocky shore,
down by those cliffs that I used to climb
when the wind was **** with a taste of lime
and every dream was a sailor's dream.

Then small waves broke light,
all frothy and white,
over the reefs in the ramblings of night,
and the pounding sea
—a mariner’s dream—
was bound to stir a boy's delight
to such a pitch
that he couldn't desist,
but was bound to splash through the surf in the light
of ten thousand stars, all shining so bright.

Christ, those nights were fine,
like a well-aged wine,
yet more scalding than fire
with the marrow’s desire.

Then desire was a fire
burning wildly within my bones,
fiercer by far than the frantic foam . . .
and every wish was a moan.
Oh, for those days to come again!
Oh, for a sea and sailing men!
Oh, for a little time!

It's almost nine
and I must be back home by ten,
and then . . . what then?

I have less than an hour to stroll this beach,
less than an hour old dreams to reach . . .
And then, what then?

Tonight I'd like to play old games—
games that I used to play
with the somber, sinking waves.
When their wraithlike fists would reach for me,
I'd dance between them gleefully,
mocking their witless craze
—their eager, unchecked craze—
to batter me to death
with spray as light as breath.

Oh, tonight I'd like to sing old songs—
songs of the haunting moon
drawing the tides away,
songs of those sultry days
when the sun beat down
till it cracked the ground
and the sea gulls screamed
in their agony
to touch the cooling clouds.
The distant cooling clouds.

Then the sun shone bright
with a different light
over different lands,
and I was always a pirate in flight.

Oh, tonight I'd like to dream old dreams,
if only for a while,
and walk perhaps a mile
along this windswept shore,
a mile, perhaps, or more,
remembering those days,
safe in the soothing spray
of the thousand sparkling streams
that rush into this sea.
I like to slumber in the caves
of a sailor's dark sea-dreams . . .
oh yes, I'd love to dream,
to dream
and dream
and dream.

“Sea Dreams” is one of my longer and more ambitious early poems, along with the full version of “Jessamyn’s Song.” To the best of my recollection, I wrote “Sea Dreams” around age 18, circa 1976-1977. For years I thought I had written “Sea Dreams” around age 19 or 20, circa 1978. But then I remembered a conversation I had with a friend about the poem in my freshman dorm, so the poem must have been started around age 18 or earlier. Dating my early poems has been a bit tricky, because I keep having little flashbacks that help me date them more accurately, but often I can only say, “I know this poem was written by about such-and-such a date, because ...”

The next poem, "Son," is a companion piece to “Sea Dreams” that was written around the same time and discussed in the same freshman dorm conversation. I remember showing this poem to a fellow student and he asked how on earth I came up with a poem about being a father who abandoned his son to live on an island! I think the meter is pretty good for the age at which it was written.

Son
by Michael R. Burch

An island is bathed in blues and greens
as a weary sun settles to rest,
and the memories singing
through the back of my mind
lull me to sleep as the tide flows in.

Here where the hours pass almost unnoticed,
my heart and my home will be till I die,
but where you are is where my thoughts go
when the tide is high.

[etc., see handwritten version, the father laments abandoning his son]

So there where the skylarks sing to the sun
as the rain sprinkles lightly around,
understand if you can
the mind of a man
whose conscience so long ago drowned.



Ode to Postmodernism, or, Bury Me at St. Edmonds!
by Michael R. Burch

"Bury St. Edmonds—Amid the squirrels, pigeons, flowers and manicured lawns of Abbey Gardens, one can plug a modem into a park bench and check e-mail, files or surf the Web, absolutely free."—Tennessean News Service. (The bench was erected free of charge by the British division of MSN, after a local bureaucrat wrote a contest-winning ode of sorts to MSN.)

Our post-modernist-equipped park bench will let
you browse the World Wide Web, the Internet,
commune with nature, interact with hackers,
design a virus, feed brown bitterns crackers.

Discretely-wired phone lines lead to plugs—
four ports we swept last night for nasty bugs,
so your privacy's assured (a *******'s fine)
while invited friends can scan the party line:

for Internet alerts on new positions,
the randier exploits of politicians,
exotic birds on web cams (DO NOT FEED!) .
The cybersex is great, it's guaranteed

to leave you breathless—flushed, free of disease
and malware viruses. Enjoy the trees,
the birds, the bench—this product of Our pen.
We won in with an ode to MSN.



Let Me Give Her Diamonds
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Let me give her diamonds
for my heart's
sharp edges.

Let me give her roses
for my soul's
thorn.

Let me give her solace
for my words
of treason.

Let the flowering of love
outlast a winter
season.

Let me give her books
for all my lack
of reason.

Let me give her candles
for my lack
of fire.

Let me kindle incense,
for our hearts
require

the breath-fanned
flaming perfume
of desire.


Step Into Starlight
by Michael R. Burch

Step into starlight,
lovely and wild,
lonely and longing,
a woman, a child . . .

Throw back drawn curtains,
enter the night,
dream of his kiss
as a comet ignites . . .

Then fall to your knees
in a wind-fumbled cloud
and shudder to hear
oak hocks groaning aloud.

Flee down the dark path
to where the snaking vine bends
and withers and writhes
as winter descends . . .

And learn that each season
ends one vanished day,
that each pregnant moon holds
no spent tides in its sway . . .

For, as suns seek horizons—
boys fall, men decline.
As the grape sags with its burden,
remember—the wine!

I believe I wrote the original version of this poem in my early twenties.



Chloe
by Michael R. Burch

There were skies onyx at night ... moons by day ...
lakes pale as her eyes ... breathless winds
******* tall elms; ... she would say
that we loved, but I figured we’d sinned.

Soon impatiens too fiery to stay
sagged; the crocus bells drooped, golden-limned;
things of brightness, rinsed out, ran to gray ...
all the light of that world softly dimmed.

Where our feet were inclined, we would stray;
there were paths where dead weeds stood untrimmed,
distant mountains that loomed in our way,
thunder booming down valleys dark-hymned.

What I found, I found lost in her face
while yielding all my virtue to her grace.



You Never Listened
by Michael R. Burch

You never listened,
though each night the rain
wove its patterns again
and trembled and glistened . . .

You were not watching,
though each night the stars
shone, brightening the tears
in her eyes palely fetching . . .

You paid love no notice,
though she lay in my arms
as the stars rose in swarms
like a legion of poets,

as the lightning recited
its opus before us,
and the hills boomed the chorus,
all strangely delighted . . .



Through the fields of solitude
by Hermann Allmers
translation by David B. Gosselin with Michael R. Burch

Peacefully, I rest in the tall green grass
For a long time only gazing as I lie,
Caught in the endless hymn of crickets,
And encircled by a wonderful blue sky.

And the lovely white clouds floating across
The depths of the heavens are like silky lace;
I feel as though my soul has long since fled,
Softly drifting with them through eternal space.



An Illusion
by Michael R. Burch

The sky was as hushed as the breath of a bee
and the world was bathed in shades of palest gold
when I awoke.

She came to me with the sound of falling leaves
and the scent of new-mown grass;
I held out my arms to her and she passed
into oblivion ...



The Leveler
by Michael R. Burch

The nature of Nature
is bitter survival
from Winter’s bleak fury
till Spring’s brief revival.

The weak implore Fate;
bold men ravish, dishevel her . . .
till both are cut down
by mere ticks of the Leveler.

I believe I wrote this poem around age 20, in 1978 or thereabouts. It has since been published in The Lyric, Tucumcari Literary Review, Romantics Quarterly and The Aurorean.



In the Whispering Night
by Michael R. Burch

for George King

In the whispering night, when the stars bend low
till the hills ignite to a shining flame,
when a shower of meteors streaks the sky,
and the lilies sigh in their beds, for shame,
we must steal our souls, as they once were stolen,
and gather our vigor, and all our intent.
We must heave our husks into some savage ocean
and laugh as they shatter, and never repent.
We must dance in the darkness as stars dance before us,
soar, Soar! through the night on a butterfly's breeze,
blown high, upward yearning,
twin spirits returning
to the world of resplendence from which we were seized.

In the whispering night, when the mockingbird calls
while denuded vines barely cling to stone walls,
as the red-rocked rivers rush on to the sea,
like a bright Goddess calling
a meteor falling
may flare like desire through skeletal trees.

If you look to the east, you will see a reminder
of days that broke warmer and nights that fell kinder;
but you and I were not meant for this life,
a life of illusions
and painful delusions:
a life without meaning—unless it is life.

So turn from the east and look to the west,
to the stars—argent fire ablaze at God's breast—
but there you'll find nothing but dreams of lost days:
days lost forever,
departed, and never,
oh never, oh never shall they be regained.

So turn from those heavens—night’s pale host of stars—
to these scarred pitted mountains, these wild grotesque tors
which—looming in darkness—obscure lustrous seas.
We are men, we must sing
till enchanted vales ring;
we are men; though we wither, our spirits soar free.



and then i was made whole
by Michael R. Burch

... and then i was made whole,
but not a thing entire,
glued to a perch
in a gilded church,
strung through with a silver wire ...

singing a little of this and of that,
warbling higher and higher:
a thing wholly dead
till I lifted my head
and spat at the Lord and his choir.



Bowery Boys
by Michael R. Burch

Male bowerbirds have learned
that much respect is earned
when optical illusions
inspire wild delusions.

And so they work for hours
to line their manly bowers
with stones arranged by size
to awe and mesmerize.

It’d take a great detective
to grok the false perspective
they use to lure in cuties
to smooch and fill with cooties.

Like human politicians,
they love impressive fictions
as they lie in their randy causes
with props like the Wizard of Oz’s.



THE KNIGHT IN THE PANTHER’S SKIN

***** Rustaveli (c. 1160-1250), often called simply Rustaveli, was a Georgian poet who is generally considered to be the preeminent poet of the Georgian Golden Age. “The Knight in the Panther's Skin” or “The Man in the Panther’s Skin” is considered to be Georgia’s national epic poem and until the 20th century it was part of every Georgian bride’s dowry. It is believed that Rustaveli served Queen Tamar as a treasurer or finance minister and that he may have traveled widely and been involved in military campaigns. Little else is known about his life except through folk tradition and legend.

The Knight in the Panther's Skin
by ***** Rustaveli
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

excerpts from the PROLOGUE

I sing of the lion whose image adorns the lances, shields and swords
of our Queen of Queens: Tamar, the ruby-throated and ebon-haired.
How dare I not sing Her Excellency’s manifold praises
when those who attend her must bring her the sweets she craves?

My tears flow profusely like blood as I extol our Queen Tamar,
whose praises I sing in these not ill-chosen words.
For ink I have employed jet-black lakes and for a pen, a flexible reed.
Whoever hears will have his heart pierced by the sharpest spears!

She bade me laud her in stately, sweet-sounding verses,
to praise her eyebrows, her hair, her lips and her teeth:
those rubies and crystals arrayed in bright, even ranks!
A leaden anvil can shatter even the strongest stone.

Kindle my mind and tongue! Fill me with skill and eloquence!
Aid my understanding for this composition!
Thus Tariel will be tenderly remembered,
one of three star-like heroes who always remained faithful.

Come, let us mourn Tariel with undrying tears
because we are men born under similar stars.
I, Rustaveli, whose heart has been pierced through by many sorrows,
have threaded this tale like a necklace of pearls.

Keywords/Tags: ***** Rustaveli, Georgia, Georgian, epic, knight, panther, skin, queen, Tamar, praise, praises, Tariel, Avtandil, Nestan-Darejan



Final Lullaby
by Michael R. Burch

for my mother, Christine Ena Burch

Sleep peacefully—for now your suffering’s over.

Sleep peacefully—immune to all distress,
like pebbles unaware of raging waves.

Sleep peacefully—like fields of fragrant clover
unmoved by any motion of the wind.

Sleep peacefully—like clouds untouched by earthquakes.

Sleep peacefully—like stars that never blink
and have no thoughts at all, nor need to think.

Sleep peacefully—in your eternal vault,
immaculate, past perfect, without fault.



don’t forget ...
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

don’t forget to remember
that Space is curved
(like your Heart)
and that even Light is bent
by your Gravity.

I dedicated this poem to the love of my life, but you are welcome to dedicate it to the love of yours, if you like it. The opening lines were inspired by a famous love poem by e. e. cummings. I went through a "cummings phase" around age 15 and wrote a number of poems "under the influence."



Options Underwater: The Song of the First Amphibian
by Michael R. Burch

“Evolution’s a Fishy Business!”

1.
Breathing underwater through antiquated gills,
I’m running out of options. I need to find fresh Air,
to seek some higher Purpose. No porpoise, I despair
to swim among anemones’ pink frills.

2.
My fins will make fine flippers, if only I can walk,
a little out of kilter, safe to the nearest rock’s
sweet, unmolested shelter. Each eye must grow a stalk,
to take in this green land on which it gawks.

3.
No predators have made it here, so I need not adapt.
Sun-sluggish, full, lethargic―I’ll take such nice long naps!

The highest form of life, that’s me! (Quite apt
to lie here chortling, calling fishes saps.)

4.
I woke to find life teeming all around―
mammals, insects, reptiles, loathsome birds.
And now I cringe at every sight and sound.
The water’s looking good! I look Absurd.

5.
The moral of my story’s this: don’t leap
wherever grass is greener. Backwards creep.
And never burn your bridges, till you’re sure
leapfrogging friends secures your Sinecure.

Originally published by Lighten Up Online

Keywords/Tags: amphibian, amphibians, evolution, gills, water, air, lungs, fins, flippers, fish, fishy business


These are my modern English translations of poems by Dante Alighieri.

Little sparks may ignite great Infernos.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

In Beatrice I beheld the outer boundaries of blessedness.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

She made my veins and even the pulses within them tremble.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Her sweetness left me intoxicated.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Love commands me by dictating my desires.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Follow your own path and let bystanders gossip.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The devil is not as dark as depicted.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

There is no greater sorrow than to recall how we delighted in our own wretchedness.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

As he, who with heaving lungs escaped the suffocating sea, turns to regard its perilous waters.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

O human race, born to soar heavenward, why do you nosedive in the mildest breeze?
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

O human race, born to soar heavenward, why do you quail at the least breath of wind?
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Midway through my life’s journey
I awoke to find myself lost in a trackless wood,
for I had strayed far from the straight path.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

INSCRIPTION ON THE GATE OF HELL
Before me nothing created existed, to fear.
Eternal I am, eternal I endure.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Sonnet: “Ladies of Modest Countenance” from LA VITA NUOVA
by Dante Alighieri
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You, who wear a modest countenance,
With eyelids weighed down by such heaviness,
How is it, that among you every face
Is haunted by the same pale troubled glance?

Have you seen in my lady's face, perchance,
the grief that Love provokes despite her grace?
Confirm this thing is so, then in her place,
Complete your grave and sorrowful advance.

And if, indeed, you match her heartfelt sighs
And mourn, as she does, for the heart's relief,
Then tell Love how it fares with her, to him.

Love knows how you have wept, seeing your eyes,
And is so grieved by gazing on your grief
His courage falters and his sight grows dim.



Paradiso, Canto III:1-33, The Revelation of Love and Truth
by Dante Alighieri
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

That sun, which had inflamed my breast with love,
Had now revealed to me―as visions move―
The gentle and confounding face of Truth.

Thus I, by her sweet grace and love reproved,
Corrected, and to true confession moved,
Raised my bowed head and found myself behooved

To speak, as true admonishment required,
And thus to bless the One I so desired,
When I was awed to silence! This transpired:

As the outlines of men’s faces may amass
In mirrors of transparent, polished glass,
Or in shallow waters through which light beams pass

(Even so our eyes may easily be fooled
By pearls, or our own images, thus pooled):
I saw a host of faces, pale and lewd,

All poised to speak; but when I glanced around
There suddenly was no one to be found.
A pool, with no Narcissus to astound?

But then I turned my eyes to my sweet Guide.
With holy eyes aglow and smiling wide,
She said, “They are not here because they lied.”



Sonnet: A Vision of Love from LA VITA NUOVA
by Dante Alighieri
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

To every gentle heart which Love may move,
And unto which my words must now be brought
For true interpretation’s tender thought―
I greet you in our Lord's name, which is Love.

Through night’s last watch, as winking stars, above,
Kept their high vigil over us, distraught,
Love came to me, with such dark terrors fraught
As mortals may not casually absolve.
Love seemed a being of pure joy, and had
My heart held in his hand, while on his arm
My lady, wrapped in her fine mantle, slept.
He, having roused her from her sleep, then made
Her eat my heart; she did, in deep alarm.
He then departed; as he left, he wept.


Excerpts from LA VITA NUOVA
by Dante Alighieri

Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur mihi.
Here is a Deity, stronger than myself, who comes to dominate me.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Apparuit iam beatitudo vestra.
Your blessedness has now been manifested unto you.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Heu miser! quia frequenter impeditus ero deinceps.
Alas, how often I will be restricted now!
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Fili mi, tempus est ut prætermittantur simulata nostra.
My son, it is time to cease counterfeiting.
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Ego tanquam centrum circuli, cui simili modo se habent circumferentiæ partes: tu autem non sic.
Love said: “I am as the center of a harmonious circle; everything is equally near me. No so with you.”
―Dante, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Sonnet: “Love’s Thoroughfare” from LA VITA NUOVA
by Dante Alighieri
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

“O voi che par la via”

All those who travel Love's worn tracks,
Pause here, awhile, and ask
Has there ever been a grief like mine?

Pause here, from that mad race;
Patiently hear my case:
Is it not a piteous marvel and a sign?

Love, not because I played a part,
But only due to his great heart,
Afforded me a provenance so sweet

That often others, as I went,
Asked what such unfair gladness meant:
They whispered things behind me in the street.

But now that easy gait is gone
Along with the wealth Love afforded me;
And so in time I’ve come to be

So poor that I dread to ponder thereon.
And thus I have become as one
Who hides his shame of his poverty

By pretending happiness outwardly,
While within I travail and moan.



Sonnet: “Cry for Pity” from LA VITA NUOVA
by Dante Alighieri
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

These thoughts lie shattered in my memory:
When through the past I see your lovely face.
When you are near me, thus, Love fills all Space,
And often whispers, “Is death better? Flee!”

My face reflects my heart's blood-red dammed tide,
Which, fainting, seeks some shallow resting place;
Till, in the blushing shame of such disgrace,
The very earth seems to be shrieking, “Die!”

’Twould be a grievous sin, if one should not
Relay some comfort to my harried mind,
If only with some simple pitying
For this great anguish which fierce scorn has wrought
Through faltering sights of eyes grown nearly blind,
Which search for death now, like a blessed thing.



Excerpt from Paradiso
by Dante Alighieri
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

****** Mother, daughter of your Son,
Humble, yet exalted above creation,
And the eternal counsel’s apex shown,

You are the Pinnacle of human nature,
Your nobility instilled by its Creator,
Who did not, having you, disdain his creature.

Love was rekindled in your perfect womb
Where warmth and holy peace were given room
For this, Perfection’s Rose, once sown, to bloom.

Now unto us you are a Torch held high
Our noonday sun―the light of Charity,
Our wellspring of all Hope, a living sea.

Madonna, so pure, high and all-availing,
The man who desires grace of you, though failing,
Despite his grounded state, is given wing!

Your mercy does not fail, but, Ever-Blessed,
The one who asks finds oftentimes his quest
Unneeded: you foresaw his first request!

You are our Mercy; you are our Compassion;
you are Magnificence; in you creation
Unites whatever Goodness deems Salvation.



THE MUSE

by Anna Akhmatova
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My being hangs by a thread tonight
as I await a Muse no human pen can command.
The desires of my heart ― youth, liberty, glory ―
now depend on the Maid with the flute in her hand.

Look! Now she arrives; she flings back her veil;
I meet her grave eyes ― calm, implacable, pitiless.
“Temptress, confess!
Are you the one who gave Dante hell?”

She answers, “Yes.”



I have also translated this poem written by Marina Tsvetaeva for Anna Akhmatova:

Excerpt from “Poems for Akhmatova”
by Marina Tsvetaeva
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You outshine everything, even the sun
at its zenith. The stars are yours!
If only I could sweep like the wind
through some unbarred door,
gratefully, to where you are ...
to hesitantly stammer, suddenly shy,
lowering my eyes before you, my lovely mistress,
petulant, chastened, overcome by tears,
as a child sobs to receive forgiveness ...


Dante Criticism by Michael R. Burch

Dante’s was a defensive reflex
against religion’s hex.
―Michael R. Burch


Dante, you Dunce!
by Michael R. Burch

The earth is hell, Dante, you Dunce!
Which you should have perceived―since you lived here once.

God is no Beatrice, gentle and clever.
Judas and Satan were wise to dissever
from false “messiahs” who cannot save.
Why flit like a bat through Plato’s cave
believing such shadowy illusions are real?
There is no "hell" but to live and feel!



How Dante Forgot Christ
by Michael R. Burch

Dante ****** the brightest and the fairest
for having loved―pale Helen, wild Achilles―
agreed with his Accuser in the spell
of hellish visions and eternal torments.
His only savior, Beatrice, was Love.

His only savior, Beatrice, was Love,
the fulcrum of his body’s, heart’s and mind’s
sole triumph, and their altogether conquest.
She led him to those heights where Love, enshrined,
blazed like a star beyond religion’s hells.

Once freed from Yahweh, in the arms of Love,
like Blake and Milton, Dante forgot Christ.

The Christian gospel is strangely lacking in Milton’s and Dante’s epics. Milton gave the “atonement” one embarrassed enjambed line. Dante ****** the Earth’s star-crossed lovers to his grotesque hell, while doing exactly what they did: pursing at all costs his vision of love, Beatrice. Blake made more sense to me, since he called the biblical god Nobodaddy and denied any need to be “saved” by third parties.



Dante’s Antes
by Michael R. Burch

There’s something glorious about man,
who lives because he can,
who dies because he must,
and in between’s a bust.

No god can reign him in:
he’s quite intent on sin
and likes it rather, really.
He likes *** touchy-feely.

He likes to eat too much.
He has the Midas touch
and paves hell’s ways with gold.
The things he’s bought and sold!

He’s sold his soul to Mammon
and also plays backgammon
and poker, with such antes
as still befuddle Dantes.

I wonder―can hell hold him?
His chances seem quite dim
because he’s rather puny
and also loopy-******.

And yet like Evel Knievel
he dances with the Devil
and seems so **** courageous,
good-natured and outrageous

some God might show him mercy
and call religion heresy.



Of Seabound Saints and Promised Lands
by Michael R. Burch

Judas sat on a wretched rock,
his head still sore from Satan’s gnawing.
Saint Brendan’s curragh caught his eye,
wildly geeing and hawing.

I’m on parole from Hell today!
Pale Judas cried from his lonely perch.
You’ve fasted forty days, good Saint!
Let this rock by my church,
my baptismal, these icy waves.
O, plead for me now with the One who saves!

Saint Brendan, full of mercy, stood
at the lurching prow of his flimsy bark,
and mightily prayed for the mangy man
whose flesh flashed pale and stark
in the golden dawn, beneath a sun
that seemed to halo his tonsured dome.
Then Saint Brendan sailed for the Promised Land
and Saint Judas headed Home.

O, behoove yourself, if ever your can,
of the fervent prayer of a righteous man!

In Dante’s Inferno, Satan gnaws on Judas Iscariot’s head. A curragh is a boat fashioned from wood and ox hides. Saint Brendan of Ireland is the patron saint of sailors and whales. According to legend, he sailed in search of the Promised Land and discovered America centuries before Columbus.



RE: Paradiso, Canto III
by Michael R. Burch

for the most “Christian” of poets

What did Dante do,
to earn Beatrice’s grace
(grace cannot be earned!)
but cast disgrace
on the whole human race,
on his peers and his betters,
as a man who wears cheap rayon suits
might disparage men who wear sweaters?

How conventionally “Christian” ― Poet! ― to ****
your fellow man
for being merely human,
then, like a contented clam,
to grandly claim
near-infinite “grace,”
as if your salvation was God’s only aim!
What a scam!

And what of the lovely Piccarda,
whom you placed in the lowest sphere of heaven
for neglecting her vows ―
She was forced!
Were you chaste?



Intimations V
by Michael R. Burch

We had not meditated upon sound
so much as drowned
in the inhuman ocean
when we imagined it broken
open
like a conch shell
whorled like the spiraling hell
of Dante’s Inferno.

Trapped between Nature
and God,
what is man
but an inquisitive,
acquisitive
sod?

And what is Nature
but odd,
or God
but a Clod,
and both of them horribly flawed?



Endgame
by Michael R. Burch

The honey has lost all its sweetness,
the hive―its completeness.

Now ambient dust, the drones lie dead.
The workers weep, their King long fled
(who always had been ****, invisible,
his “kingdom” atomic, divisible,
and pathetically risible).

The queen has flown,
long Dis-enthroned,
who would have given all she owned
for a promised white stone.

O, Love has fled, has fled, has fled ...
Religion is dead, is dead, is dead.



The Final Revelation of a Departed God’s Divine Plan
by Michael R. Burch

Here I am, talking to myself again . . .

******* at God and bored with humanity.
These insectile mortals keep testing my sanity!

Still, I remember when . . .

planting odd notions, dark inklings of vanity,
in their peapod heads might elicit an inanity

worth a chuckle or two.

Philosophers, poets . . . how they all made me laugh!
The things they dreamed up! Sly Odysseus’s raft;

Plato’s Republic; Dante’s strange crew;

Shakespeare’s Othello, mad Hamlet, Macbeth;
Cervantes’ Quixote; fat, funny Falstaff!;

Blake’s shimmering visions. Those days, though, are through . . .

for, puling and tedious, their “poets” now seem
content to write, but not to dream,

and they fill the world with their pale derision

of things they completely fail to understand.
Now, since God has long fled, I am here, in command,

reading this crap. Earth is Hell. We’re all ******.

Keyword/Tags: Muslims, sonnet, Italian sonnet, crown of sonnets, rhyme, love, affinity and love, Rome, Italy, Florence

Published as the collection "First they came for the Muslims"

I know the eyes of the heavenly Father
His eyes looks very
Angry at  as
Because we are killing
The willed life
That my Father
Made with his holy hands
Before he made the human beings
Our Father is angry at as
Because he won't be able to save
The wild life that he made
With his holy hands to live on earth
Also the poachers are killing the
Wild life
They are killing the whales
The poachers
Cut the fins from the whales
That swims in the Atlantic Ocean
And then they throw the whales
Back at the Atlantic Ocean
My father is not going to be able
To save the  whales
Also the whales are becoming
Endanger species
Also the poachers sells the fins
Of the whales to the restaurants
Where they use it to make soups

Waking up startled, to battering wind and rain.
Tide marks surging to great gasping heights.
Catching breaths stolen by the wind.
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.
Watching idly by while pieces of you dissolve into the shadows.
I want those clouds weaving through my fingertips.
Their curious renderings like powdered ***** sugar.
Taste it and they fall heavy with gloom like **** death in the aftermath of such storm.

Counting the miles to the storm.
Ticking, tocking, and clicking.
The clock waiting in anticipation for the next thunderous sound.
Cold shivers up my spine like a thousand Carolina insults.
Your ghost still haunts and seeps into my pores lastly at night.
I taste defeat in the way you love.
It's like weaving clouds between my fingertips
Trying to grasp and hold onto every flowing motion of you pulling away from me

My cold, cracked walls are surged.
Towered over in their crumbling decay.
I want to taste your rain.
Your lips gently sink into mine.
Crushed velvet smooth and warm waking up the army of dead hearts ready for battle.
I am no warrior but there's blood painted across my sky.
Red sky in the morning, sailors warning, as I float on out into your turbulent seas.
Looking back on shore I realize that I'm finally home.

These seas roll uneasy.
Queasy.
Watching thru the mist towards our lighthouse that guided us to these depths
Trembling away like an afterthought.
The land has disappeared into the mouth of the shark.
Digested in the belly of a whale of angels.
Our sorrow holds us here, anchoring us to the tumultuous waves.
We battle our sea sickness with kisses of death lingering.
The soft pull of our exile turned oblivion.

Navigating with open wounds the silky expanse of midnight unwinding above us, within us.
Knowing us through and through.
An island of quivering vulnerability breaks the static horizon.
Lights, smog beginning to choke the sea air in my lungs.
Too long you've been left unkempt, grown comfortable.
That will change with new currents,
North winds bringing the frigid breath of winter.

Licking the sun off of the salty expanse of our sunburned red flesh.
The ****** of desperation lingers thru our moaning fingers
Feeling and pleading for our SOS call to be heard by anyone’s ears but ours.
The shores of this icy water leave my mind beneath the dredges of polar sleep.
We've grown strained, frost bitten, and distant in the few feet we are able to part.
The growling of hunger satiates our parched thirst.

I am rendered speechless adrift without you.
Hurricanes a coming.
Stand fast.
Secure the riggings.
Solaris brightens to light the way into calmer seas.
Those tepid shores of wonder and new beginnings fade into the horizon.
It's just you and me left to face the swelling tide.
Hang on.
The water is rising.
No one left to pull us saturated and insatiable from these waters of shadow and secrets.

The siren's song will bring us to our sharp shore end.
Resist the silky flow of nocturnal snakes wrapped around chilled flesh
Pulling closer to our aquatic hearts.
Hades and Persephone bond.
Glowing abysmal rage.
Holy grail veins.
Bleeding back into the orange crush dawn.
Night gives way to hollow rebirth
But once again we are inside one another.
Infinite.

These waves crash on overboard.
Trying to drag us back into the frigid depths with each ebb and flow.
With each crash of wave I can feel our resolve growing weaker.
The sensation of just letting go and giving in.
Should we let go and just give in?
Leave ourselves at the mercy of shipwrecks.
This hurricane dance we've perfected on the endless depthless ocean
Left us weak and willing to pull ourselves apart.
To taste our insides on the outsides.
How many times I've wondered have you noticed my stare.
The lustful licking of my sun blistered lips.
I want to taste the way you think and feel the warmth of your life to keep me alive.
The oceans call, I have heard, brings out the worst in sailors.
Always searching for the elusive siren to sing us a song.
A song from the depths of mythology to lullaby us away from our status adrift.

Our bodies collide in the tide once more.
Salted skin heated and torn
Latching on to something greater than just depths of starless prose.
You were a wicker man, weaved strong and whole.
I was a water girl, slipping straight through your bowl.
Wishes flow to and fro on tepid air laced with promises.
Our fingertips will never lose grip again,
the melody writhing between us like staccato heartbeats
Seeking solace on the endless seas.

*These waves rock us to shoreline.
Rock strewn and littered with the ribcages of whales
And the bows and sterns of shipwrecks long ago.
We pick up these pieces and hold them closest to our chest
Realizing the possibilities of a new home and a new start to this oceanic life we've drifted into.
We build a fire to warm our hearts and suspend our thoughts
Cradled and nestled in the crook of each others arms we leave our sea and our island
Soaring high into the clouds and the sleep we’ve begged for with our parched lips and swollen tongues.
Our dreams at night are the call of the sea begging to be drowned in our sand encrusted lungs,
To be one with us and our failures
The bequeathing cry of the seagull wakes us dully from our slumber
We peer out with sea salted eyes and realize it was all just a dream
We shout for help with all the voice we can muster
Letting in lungs full of icy ocean and dead crustaceans
Filling our bodies like bags of sand immobile
We’ve been sleeping with our anchors held closely
Down in the depths of the endless ocean rolling.

Sinner

What have I done to my world?

Egrets

Pelicans

Whales

Are you diving into the plume

A 10 mile depth of black hell?

Are you in another dimension now?

Have you given up on this world of

Easy living?

I am guilty.

I work too much and care less

As one superficial lifestyle Blends into the other

Money seems like security blanket

It is Not.

My land is covered in a part of me that dies

As the sea spits up the overdose of

Consumerism.

Each time I feel the powerlessness of hope fade

I take my plastic water bottle and throw it into a

Bin labeled

RECYCLE…

HA!

Plastic

OIL OIL OIL…

PLASTIC

******* Hell,

I bet oil is in my food chain somewhere

A box that makes it easy to cook in

A packing tool to deliver me the goods

OIL OIL OIL

Saturated Guilt

I feel like a harlot

A sinner

A part of something I cannot stop

I don’t want my world to look like this

Stop Me.

From the desire for convenience

Let me take living down a notch or two

Let me see with a part of me that is lost

THIS IS A CRY IN

(the
sledge of redemption)

I remember my body gave me another chance

When I filled it with poisons that made me feel good (you know what they are)

Will you do the same?

Oh heavenly body that holds my own.

Can you ever forgive me?

Linaji

In Praise of Feeling Bad About Yourself

The buzzard never says it is to blame.
The panther wouldn't know what scruples mean.
When the piranha strikes, it feels no shame.
If snakes had hands, they'd claim their hands were clean.

A jackal doesn't understand remorse.
Lions and lice don't waver in their course.
Why should they, when they know they're right?

Though hearts of killer whales may weigh a ton,
in every other way they're light.

On this third planet of the sun
among the signs of *******
a clear conscience is Number One.

Traveling around Queensland



You see in October in 2002, Brian Allan went on a trip to Queensland with pipeline, where
The bus came right to Brian's door and there was heaps of picnic food, and there was this lady
Named Janet, who was a bit of a larrikin, and Kelly, who was a very nice lady, and then there was Richard, who tried to steal my book, but, in theory, I never kept it due to my mental breakdown, but that was a fun trip, you see we travelled up to Hervey Bay where we went to a museum aquarium, yeah that was cool, and I took some great pictures of the group I went with
And I really participated in the objects of that museum, and then we went whale watching, and that was really really cool, I also remember, doing a bit of Dolphin watching, and also, I took a photo of myself in the captain's seat, and we had a banquet meal aboard that boat, boy it's like the boat at bateman's bay,, but more exotic, and, I moved all around the boat trying to get pictures of the whales and other things, and yes, this was cool, and, one of the older people on the tour I went on had a crush on me, and I thought, she is way to old for me, but, I wanted to be nice, ok, and then as the boat went over each whale, it went rumpita rumpita rumpita
And all the people on the boat, including myself were walking from deck to deck taking photos, as this was the only time we would see whales on this Queensland coast, and then, yes, the boat trip was finished, and we all went off and went home and then Richard was tired and wanted me to get the milk for breakfast, and I didn't and he stole my writing book, because I was ******* him off, but I wrote a Poem called I don't want to be a stalker, and despite me and Richard wanting the same thing, why can't he ask, why me, and then we all had tea, and went to bed, and the next day, we went to feed the seal, and matey oh this was great and I enjoyed as you hold the piece of fish out and the seal jumps up and grabs the fish, oh this was ever so much fun, and I had 3 Goes, I think, but it could've been more, maybe less, but it was fun, and
I can tell you, the seal was having a great time as well, and I took a few photos of the seal as well as we made a movie about it, but through years and years of my mental breakdown I might have wrecked that, but it was a video anyway, and I haven't got a VCR anymore, anyway, but
I don't think I threw out the photographs on the trip, which is great, and after we left Hervey Bay, we went to the Gold Coast, and all the dreams I had about the Gold Coast, first of all we went to Warner brothers movie world, and mate, I felt like I was in the USA and as I watched the police academy cars,yeah cool, and there were a lot of rides we went on, yeah, I just walked around the theme park, buying things in the movie playground, and buying souvenirs, and talking to some of the tourists, and I spoke to a lot of the people from our trip, as I walked around with Kelly and Steve ambrose, and then at the end of this day at the theme park, a bad
Thing happened in Bali, which was the Bali bombings and Tom and Steve who were my room mates were watching the whole boring news event the whole day, as this was a relax and chill day, me and Steve went for a walk, while Steve wanted to live down here, and said, hey, mate
Have ya got any jobs, going, in a real Australian way, and then the trip leader Joel took us on a walk down to surfers paradise, and I ****** in the water, because fish do it, why can't we, well
This was a real relaxing day, and then they bought our meals in, and if I can remember, it was
Fish and chips, with prawns and so on , well this was ever so tasty, I loved it, and then we went to bed, for the next day was interesting, you see, the next day, we will go to currimbin animal
Sanctuary, where we held snakes, and we looked as bold as the big bold eagle, and there were a lot of wildlife, there and I took a lot of photos there, it was radically awesome, and Queensland is the cleanest state in Australia, the seas are cleaner and green, while no, really disgusting seaweed ever existed and, mate, yeah really clean, after that we headed back to our motel, and we watched the football, Australia won, and Tom was showing is patriotism by standing up with his hand on his chest, to the national anthem, and me and Steve and Kelly
Went for a dip in the pool, and Richard who because I spoke up to him, he really liked the way I was ever so cool, and then we went back to our rooms and waited for our next meal, which was
Home made spaghetti  bolognaise and this was made ya know ever so tasty, and Jason  and Joel cooked it, one *** of it to every room, about 3 in total, and I don't know about other rooms, but my room really loved it, yeah, the best spag boll in the country cooked by Jason and Joel, and
Then after about 2 hours, we went to bed, and the next day, we went home and we stopped over at Coffs Harbour and at night, we bought pizzas, for each of us, and James and Kelly joel and myself were driven home by Joel, and we fell asleep after watching our last nights TV
And we went for a Sydney bypass which meant, in about 6 hours we were all home and that was the end of a great trip, and I went to my play rehearsal for urban dreaming that night, and
Despite my parents saying I will be too tired for that, it was just a watching the other theatre performance that was on, which was cool, man, and I really loved the holiday, for it brought me some happy memories, the end


Sent from my iPad

Sometimes
         I feel a well
                   dug deep
         into my heart
  I try to stop it
but it quickly
becomes ocean
  and overflows  
     into great tsunami
          rises over all the levees
             rushes past dams                  
               breaks down tall
                   city structures,
              edifices crumbling
           in its path
     all the squid and octopi
    skitting forth
in wild pulses,
tentacles entangled
     in doorways and rooves
        slipping through narrow
                window-openings
                   as they pour ink
                       in clouds,
                         shifting shapes
                          in cephalopod excitement
                            while blue whales
                            and humpbacks
                               breach over bridges,
                             phosphorescent jellies
                          light up
                       the dark streets of
                      my arteries
                     electric eels illuminate
                    the alleyways of
                   desolation's thick syrup
                     and I cannot stop it even
                            if I wanted to,
                   these darkened,
                     swirling waves
I am both floating and flying
like a jumping manta ray
curling around the ferries
bobbing in seahorse iridescence
weaving between buses
as if they were corals

And when the storm subsides,
colorful rockpools form,
rich in diversity
It is there,
in between the
multicolored ***** and
succulent shellfish,
in a mermaid's
       voluptuous smile
and turquoise eye
that I see you,
so crystal clear
                I could reach out              
                      and bring you to me,          
                         holding you tight
                         until the
                gentle break
     of
          morning

I like turtles and foxes,
and pigs in some boxes,
I like puppies and cats,
And penguins with hats,
I like chickens and fishes,
And bunnies with wishes,
I like zebras and whales,
And big pony tails,
I like parrots and flies,
And hot apple pies,
I like skating on ice,
And monkeys with lice,
I like turtles and foxes,
And pigs in some boxes.

The impetus
                     Of being
Always on the run
               Through pinwheel eyes
                              Those standing by
                                          The mystic roadway :    River
Blues yet to be brushed
                      or in blush
                           Of evening chill's breathing
a canvas like windows dreaming felt
All mindful
And chockfull O'
                              Wonder
Then ponder
                Yonder "window breaks"
                         Past the wilderness' sleep
Bone heavy wood
                             Umber earth

                             Past whoosh and rush of liquid
Folding on itself / a soundtrack

      Listen now
      Pedestrian be

Mindful of the cautionary whales
                                               Old Ahab’s yell
                                  Obsessions
                           Fears
                                   Or loathing.

If one is drowning in one's sleep
Look wildly
                  widely
                              Blithely
                                    Down river  
Or up there beyond finger's point
                      Sidewinder snake journeys
Until sky and below it
All meet

The distance
        Now only a line
                 Coalescing what is beyond
                      Our ability to see
Far and away
    Evanescent
         Effervescent
                     Ever after      
                             River.     Life.
Here we are
And proud
     The free spirit is fluent
           With the rapid rivers loud
                            Always on the run
Currents like a child's curiosity ...
How then,
When or why
                        does it end ?
Where do we go?
                    
Like most things existing,
           Will lead to the high art /
love's deep oceans...
          
We often forget to seek
                              And mind
                                     the sublimations/
                                                            d¬¬r­ift wood.
So then,
Begin with a dot .
A speck of dusk
                     A burst of light
                                        A starry sky,
pieces to mastering
                   Raging fragility of water

Liquid undulations  
                    Folding itself in / volumes

Or falling from on high
       A droplet cry

Then the lightning
                   (crash or bloom)
From the heavens
                                 like electric rivers
So brilliantly
                   Festoons

Where do we go (so low)
       There and here / underfoot /
                   Over north / southern sleep
                                   To oceans twilight deep?

Go wrapped or map-less
Or no.
            Up
                Way
       Up yonder
There up there
                    Everywhere
                    All without fear...
My heart like the river yearns
                 To go toward the sun
                       A flow /
                                     the beating drum
Always on the run
And
     Yet
            Still
                    Here.

A battered farmhouse,
Sitting lonely beside a weathered barn.
Both seem lucky to be alive
After all of the life that they have seen.

Torn and rather worse-for-wear,
They both stand proud and stark;
Undeterred by time; a testament
To those who have come and those who are gone.

The trees beside them hide their secrets,
Well-kept in the dense, uncontrolled leaves.
Knotted, tall, and strong;
Nature runs wild here.

What I would give
To live in this place;
So beautiful and free;
So akin to what I believe of home.

Where love and life prosper,
More than they ever could
In those harsh, lonely, boxes,
So close together that one can hardly breathe.

But suffocation is foreign here,
With room to run and room for hearts to grow.
Families gather and love blossoms;
So hard for those so tightly packed.

You can't see life to its fullest,
When full is all you know.
Yet the heart remains forever empty;
Deprived of its most primal desires.

Sorrow and anger;
Frustration and longing;
None of them bearing the slightest resemblance
To the shape of my young heart.

Concrete and stone;
My outlook on life;
Much more familiar
Than the green that I see.

The clouds up above,
The stars underneath,
Shining as if to ask,
"What have you done?"

My life is so small,
Yet I feel so deep.
My mind reaches out;
To infinity and beyond.

I feel the trees sway with the wind,
Submitting to the powerful oxygen.
Will I do the same?
Or will I stop the *******?

well, it would really become a problem...
if i were still jerking off and had a girlfriend / wife...
the ladies are looking for ultra-violent ****,
it's just a tease off ***** -
there's choking there's *******:
oddly enough... no yo-yo of Watergate?
me... i'm not willing to be shamed...
i still have my ******* -
she can have her webcam e-thot or whatever
the hell the internet **** is: memes my ***...
once upon a time it was merely called graffiti...
i don't see how darwinism can make
a 2nd coming resurgence in the 21st century...
fine... when it first came out at the end
of the 19th century: and opened the floodgates
for the 20th... and thanks to the physicists...
lasso! rein 'em in! rein 'em in:
for the fireplace and the ******* kumbaya...
the girls are looking and having finally decided
on an spanish omelette: but not a french ****
quiche... eggs and more eggs...
while i'm strapped to ******* one genocide
after another into the tissue and
flushing it down as: meat for the crocodiles
and tapeworms pretending they know how
play the parasite attaching themselves
to a white all white: white even if you're copper
skinned, cinnamon, hot choc or...
it's still a white tadpole racer...
i usually get off on looking at some xenia wood
cleavage...
it helps to tell apart the *** cleavage and
the breast cleavage...
i moved from: ******* snaps and started peering
at: when a woman pretends to perform
the lotus on a man's face...
and there's like... a floral pattern involved
with gulping oysters...
have i ever licked an ***-hole?
oh my... have i...
**** - *** 1-on-1... doom... 1st person shooters...
never the 3rd person ghost moving
the body...
am i missing something? the girls are
looking for extreme ***... i'm looking for
cleavage and teddy bears -
and the borderline before the whole body
exfoliates and what not...
as marquis de sade said: it's hardly something
i can control when i have a hard-on
almost 4 times during the day...
if i had a girlfriend... if would be crass to:
sly one in...
but... *******... no woman no cry...
it would be truly sad if i was in a relationship
and still up to the shambles of: not up to any
or the odd sort of good -
there's always this shared approach -
the wants and willingness needs to by made
synch. - they need to be a woman and a man:
polyphony - orchestra!
why write about ***? oh hell...
watch me write anything else -
my linguistic infatuations - *** and all manner
or picked ******* sells -
or... at a catholic school they would still teach
you about the perils of sniffing glue -
apparently the 1960s never happened -
no l.s.d. was ever dropped -
the pints of guinness were drank -
the cement was poured as the muscle to
the iron rod skeletons...

and when i finally achieved a beard worthy
of a post-25 year old - when the full
bush sr. happens - i forgot to curate
a body for: the objective safety of being watched...
or how the hell you word:
prior to the beard i focused on the face
and later the body...
and long hair...
once the beard arrived...
**** it... let's take to donning the Elijah
look... the beard comes way way ahead
of the nose - and now i'm still looking
for my neck -

it's *** it's only spectacular about once...
i've had that once spectacular -
i even got a tattoo -
oh... not me... i'm the dragon alien curl...
where my scar is...
on her right shoulder-blade...
and that's not even as if i branded her
myself...
she was going to fit me out with
dreadlocks and a tattoo of her totem at
the time - a scorpion -
thankfully i read about all this crap
in high school...
nick hornby's high fidelity -

it's still a very musical affair...
i remember what love at first sight looks
like to a fresh 17 year old
novosibirsk girl... siberian girl...
all the way west in edinburgh...
she gobbled the iPod and the playlist...
a near complete oeuvre of iron maiden...
and the odd songs...
while i was correcting two girls attempting
to make pancakes...
girls! you need to put some oil into the dough...
this is dough you'd make a sponge cake with...
so the story goes...

but *** was only spectacular once...
the rest of the time i think i was minding an itch...
even these days...
among... aha! that nag hammadi word:
in the Barbelo - the brothel -
no: i will not study the etymology -
in the brothel nothing spectacular ever happens -
you chance upon a ***** -
you're asked whether you want to use it -
you decline -
to play judas with the lips -
you pay an extra ten quid for you-feeding-the-oyster
suckling and all other leech comparison of oral...
ventures...
it's done - the mirrors are witnesses...
the lights are dimmed - two beached whales
on the shore of a bed of crisp linen -
and no one-night-stand
cocoon *** *******!
how do people stand these cocoon ***:
under the bed-sheets moments?!

because it would be really harsh to have a girlfriend...
and still have to *******...
at least without a girlfriend i can solve
the mystery of the throne of thrones -
no. 1 no. 2 and no. 3 -
then a quick baptism in the shower -
i sometimes found that doing the no. 3
helps with a constipation
of a no. 2 on: the throne of thrones...

- and as someone who discovered *******
before he could produce ***** -
well - the ******* is a "side project" -

because this world already needs no more
puritanical quips -
all this ******* stigmata looms over
the circumcised men -
but of course it would - why wouldn't it?
can you scratch your nose
if you cut-off the "un-necessary" rubicon /
cartilege?

would a balding scalp Adam ever scratch his
head - quiver - i thought that only stubble
and hair prompted one to scratch one's skin?
if i see a bald man scratching his head:
i'll let you know!

the plague of circumcised men's stigmata -
and if i had a girlfriend and she wasn't
"up to speed" like me: quasi marquis de sade
"might expect"...
**** me... even Chikatilo "fathered" children...
so much for "excuses": 2 to be exact!
nominee for bachelor of the year...
205th year (circa) coming:
Kant - the prussian watchmaker in
a coming of: calculating the promenade of
excuses - no famously i didn't / wouldn't
marry -

if you asked what i used to do
on those warm spring nights...
back in ol' satellite of the former u.s.s.r. -
and that... we entertained ourselves...
catching cockchafer beetle and catching girls
and tugging at their t-shirts and throwing
them in...
we: used to that sort of thing...
what better reason to drink seeing
the youth of today:
as a seemingly old dounding man:
well... in your 30s you sort of hit that zenith
of mortality's vitality on offer -
as much as technology is celebrated -
its change - it's impetus -

what's that... quote?
when an unstoppable force (technology) meets
an immovable object (ontology) -
or at least: i find man's ontology
to be forever played and plagued
by a priori "prepositions": genes -
and technolgoy is forever the a posteriori
counter-fact: of what much later...
much much later... in limbo land of history
becomes an: artifact escaping archeology...
now are we all not wishing
for some variation of closure?

memes: represented as genes?
really? i see them nothing but a cheap south-paw
jab's worth of the otherwise obvious:
graffiti (representation)...

girls are really searching for violent *** -
having **** fantasies?
my my - and here i was looking
for a xenia wood cleavage and some Bronzino:
you never have curbed your pornographic
enthuasiasm: if you never ******
off at...
mein gott! it's a meme!
1st comes god's index finger touching
adam's index finger in:
michelangelo's fresco of the creation of adam...
but the higher 2nd?
venus' tongue teasing the tongue
of cupid in Bronzino's cupid, folly and time...

i ****** off to that painting -
it's hard to stop a boy who knew how to:
prior to the kippah-guilt tripping:
no minus the ******* into early teenagehood...
i don't think i have yet to have dumped
the proper load on this: exercise - just yet...

oh the shame:
thankfuly this is england and no h'america -
and jesus is not the queen or king -
ol' lizzie is still playing poker and...
the constitution is and what i will not become
is this "vox populis" of a people
disaffected as to why the tax goes into the
pomp & circumstance and none of it:
thank god! ever goes into sense & sensibility
akin to the consort Middleton family;
that's highly replica prone...
blue-bloods... love them or hate them...
at least you can sight them as
almost unchanging -
sphynx head while the body changes
from male to female - but the sphynx is still there...

of an erectile-dysfunction: i would most certainly
hear if i had a girlfriend...
as it happened - the "free women"
always gave me a limp...
in the brothel i was there and she was there -
and i was she and she was i
and we weren't bothered about
counting two transgender sheep
of the nag hammadi library -

even on those one-night stands:
erectile-dysfunction - dim lights two beached
whales on the bedsheets i could stomach...
in a brothel...
but then she took me home
like some morrissey wallow and...
it was all about cocoon ***...
i've heard that temperature changes
the *** of frogs upon insemination...
cocoon *** under the bedsheets...
i stopped going out...

it's might almost sound like boasting:
believe me... it's disgruntled sarcastic... the overtone
to these words...
even i tried teasing a fetish with
latex lucy - but... then i thought about...
if you start wearing the same clotches
for god knows how long -
like an imitation of dog's hair...
you'd wish to squish into something
less pardonable / expected like a full gimp
imitation of lizard latex...
but violence an ****?

maybe that's why i started to tease
1970s italian classics...
dubbing from belgium and amsterdam
and all that...
but always after the torso cleavage -
always after the Om-onomatopeia look of
absent eyes and boiling tongues in a gurgle...
the contorted final stages of the face
before the lesser death as:
faking birth in ****** -
or what the hell you call: scavenger of:
never the lost details...
and if i had 7 children in the bag i would be
a fraud... and if i had a girlfriend
i would be a fraud and hopefuly ashamed...

came the white flag... came the rainbow flag...
came the ******* flag...
came the image: how would you ever find
yourself in a desire to blink: to peacock flutter...
without a pair of eye-lids?
hmm...
all those ******* freed arguments...
not coming from the "progressive school"
of islam -
or the hasidic jewry where:
a woman is to made to make concessions?
otherwise: waiting for that
golden moral maxim Confuscian wifey?

that a deity should...
somehow give moral laws...
i thought that man was the moral lawgiver?
if god were to become the moral
law advocate...
man should most certainly become
the physical law-giver - or at least:
to best serve my attention -
attempt fictional escapes via superhero
infantilism...

again: historiological infantilism -
the only serious history we are supposed to know
comes from h'america...
the civil rights movement -
that's serious history!
everything else is infantile historicism -
interchange of historicism and historiology -
yes - heidegger's leftovers...
but what is serious history?
and what is infantile history?
oh i'm pretty sure much of history kept in
agitated dust is: cowboys vs. indians
roleplaying... games...

cite anything serious of the past...
if there's no stampede toward some platonic exit...
then serious history happens with
the h'american civil rights movement...
after that we only have journalism
and bad idea dear diary entries...
of the next to come: ***** teenager
plague by acne and the many more oopses to come...

- and with the world saturated by:
an **** of forms - wielding their interwine and
maggot pit of "metaphors" -
better i write this than speaking during *** -
what could possibly saturate the "land"
that's already a swamp -

somehow i'm not edging toward a moral
superiority - the day i discovered
that god was both the god of writing
physical: and moral laws...
i was assured by the chinese that:
all kosher and all halal would pass
the test of the: 3 peepsqueaks...
no? do not eat a pig: do not eat a mandarin!
god only knows what the pig ate...
god forbid you ever knew the full
menu of Beijing!

pigs are the: das schlechteste!
das äußersteschlechteste!
pigs, mandarins, bats...
the bubonic plague, rats,
"supposing that africans would ever ****
monkeys"...
why would africans ever
**** monkeys...
i'm supposed to be ashamed of
having a hard-on...
while the white girls rummage
the carousel!

i could suppose the chinese already
ate the supposed ****-buddy to begin with...
it's no more funny when the "thing"
spreads like a mongolian shy-auxilliary
brigade of: voyeurs of:
the only evolution we are to be concerned
with, is to be better associated
with viruses, parasites and lice...

and if i were to live a sheltered western
liberal elite life... "elite":
the bigger the mouth the bigger the... whatever...
no complaint from the arabs
itching over well curated pork...
they'll allow the mandarin diet! no problem!

it's no problem...
pigs are the "problem"... when a god devolved
to invoke moral laws: his most high!
and it was "somehow" not man...
how can god, a monotheistic god...
give both physical laws and moral laws?
to me that's near impossible!
ah... unless this god is given
the "plotheistic" splinter of being
a theistic god and not a deistic god...
a theistic god gives both physical
and moral laws... a deistic god gives:
no moral laws: he was expecting
we could do so!

i can't believe in a god that plagiarises
man's activity -
man can't change the laws surrounding gravity...
yet to be known whether light
is somehow subjected to gravity...
but a god does not intervene by giving
moral laws...
having already established physical laws...
entertaining himself in the playground
of metaphysics...
only a prince... the devil -
would ever... intervene as god to give...
higher authority: a plagiarism of
man-made laws...
and call them: with deity origins...
why would a "god" meddle in:
you will not steal, you will not ****...
when...
god has set up a recycling centre?!

god is no judge, prosecutor, lawyer,
defendent, the accussed,
the jury over moral laws...
he is the epitome of physical laws:
the unchanging...
to have confused divine intervention
with a god bowing -
before and succumbing to...
man's ordiance... a moral law...
god does not allow himself moral qualities...
and god would not discriminate
against a pig: saying:
but the pig is the most economic piece -
had not man found the boar and
domesticated it?
the boar became the pig domesticated!
and the pig can be eaten...
from snout to tail and with only
the oink missing!

for a god to be so degraded as
the arbiter of physical laws -
to be ***** into giving moral laws...
only a devil would...
only a devil would...
only a devil would play with man's moral
laws... and attempt to supress
the already constaining impossible
with his cameo in egypt -
that machiavelli of sorts...

if the quran attempts to question
the cleanliness of pigs:
and god made the pig...
or rather made the man and the boar
and allowed man to domesticate the boar...
sick... ugly... but...
kept the mandarin: pristine!
save the pig... eat a mandarin!
if you dare...

how much do i abhor these infernal riddles:
how much i abhor scolding the bacon:
is also as much as:
you deserve the beijing sneeze!
you should let it palm tree vacate
and spread in the united arab emirates!
oh.. go on go on go on!
who's not looking?!

i only have old teutonic anthems to listen
to... because...
i like the way german sounds,
how german sounded...
how german will sound...
because at least german is not english...
and that's almost asking for a plum
tattoo of hue under the teasing
socket and the cheekbone: when in england...

no zeppelin echo you hear?
encore! again! again!
it's not o.k. to eat a pig according
to the hebrews of the muslims...
the mandarins will act worse than pigs
that the classical monotheists speak of...
a cat could catch a mouse...
but a cat could not be served a mouse
on a platter... what's that dish called?
the 3 peepsqueaks?
and pork is bad?
pork is just the tip of the iceberg
concerning these omnivores...
at this point... perhaps cannibalism?

islam go back home: check if there are
any mandarins living among you...
pork is bad... pork is bad!
this is not being paranoid this is me being funny!
pork is bad and your pseudo-god
of man-made moral plagiarisms!
*******: snippet the ******* but sure you
hell and bring me the niqab!
no *******? no niqab...

why are you looking at me?
i'm a tired old european...
why should i know what floats the boat
over in h'america?!

this "god" and the "intervention"...
oh i'm pretty sure we made our moral laws...
they weren't exactly to translate as a morality =
claustrophobia...
"god"...
               a belief that the same god
created the physical laws / barriers...
and somehow... decided to... plagiarise, human,
moral laws...
how this "god" decided to become
architect of physical laws...
and the interpolator of morals?
really?

a god that's critical of pork per se:
******* sheep ******* the semites...
but not critical of the mandarin diet?
that's no god; "at least not to me"...
the god that made gravity critical
as immoveable...
but a secondary god that...
was ignorant... of the fact that...
humans already punished stealing
and ******?!
why require a doubled emphasis?!

it's as if "god" made an entrance -
when no pyramids were to be built...
it's not: oh no...
we were never given any a priori parameters!
we were always supposed to sink into:
the thinking of being free...
let's face it...
at best: bad operatics of
madame butterfly at best:
only a soap opera.

I'm surprised we're having a picnic on the east wing!
Our company almost never gives us anything!
Underpaid with no benefits makes this picnic even better
To think I was going to give in my resignation letter

With so many hamburgers, hot dogs, and more,
It's a fast food restaurant galore!
A table packed full with yummies.
Today, a lot of beef will be in tummies.

People reaching for their plates
The caterers come out of their waits
One by one, they serve each voracious goer
For a pay that probably couldn't get any lower

Janice comes, with her broken polish and nails
And a scream a joy echos out like whales
She's so drunk, oh my god haha she's so wired
It's the unpaid overtime or another threat of being fired

Poor thing... we finish our girl talk
and problems on my mind, I begin to walk
Feeling my appetite begin to poke me,
I bite into my hamburger with resounding glee

Nipping the bread, it's fluff presses against my lips
I close my eyes, as my senses go in dips
The precious aroma of divine baked bread
As my tongue and bun are set to wed.

Each bud met with delicious waters of steak
The ketchup creating a dreamy, saucy lake
Scrumptious, delicious
Incredible, nutritious...?

It doesn't matter, I've met my goal
And the taste, goodness it makes my mind roll
Forgetting everything while I finish the rest
Golly, this food is the best

We'll sing you,
An olden tale.
Of the deep blue ocean,
And flying whales.
The whales had nothing to hide,
But the ocean was stirring inside.
It made the whales go all wrong,
They became monsters of their own song.
The monsters went to war with men,
And there they were until the end.

Ashes and bones,
Swords and thrones.
This is what sin does to us.
It beats,
It eats,
It tears us all apart.
Pumping bad blood in my heart.

But if we are here,
And they were there then,
I've just told you the tale,
The tale of monsters and men.

Incessant thought.
Crowded, cold.
Inevitable but true.

Searching for,
looking, or
Tore because of you.

Raining worries
fly amongst
the fairies filled with lies.

Gaining ground,
Silent sound.
Your smile begs a rise.

The spoken word,
the needed truth,
succumbs to selfish ways.

Blindfolded will,
despite the thrill,
subconsciously count the days.

Insanity prevails.
Decisions like whales.
Slow, and not precise.

Let them eat cake,
laughter they bake,
I don't care for a slice.

Despite all the thought,
optimistic intentions,
I still color my heartstrings blue.

Confused by this feeling,
******* drug dealing.
Inevitable, but true.

Note: we always hear of miraculous stories every day
And of guardian angels and near death experiences.
Are these small individual miracles created by  GOD S hand
Or is it his angels which are sent to protect us? Who is to say!
And the greater miracles and visions seen by thousands
At one time. In one place such as the sighting of MARY holding JESUS
Above the Greek Church.
All miracles large and small are created by GODS call.
These are signs that he creates just to test humanities faith.
So many prayers have been heard because of their
Belief in GODS word.
This is the time of year where dreams are fulfilled and miracles created
And the repairing of lives that were devastated.
Where smiles are put back on children s faces
And hope is put back into the hearts of man
With the gentle touch of GODS hand.
That unexpected bonus that MR. JONES had never received before
As he was about to walk out that door.
That hospital prayer that you gave- when you thought your loved
One would slip away.
That car accident that you walked away from
When you thought your life was done.
What about Mr. H who fell off his roof and cracked open his head
And everyone thought he was dead, yet he got up and walked away
And never a complaint until this day.
GOD creates millions of small miracles every day
But the miracle I would like to see is the cleansing of humanity.
Just pure thoughts in the minds of men, and the worlds
Tragedies would finally end.
Just the thought of no wars, no hunger , no slavery, no abuse
And all the minds put to good use.
Working hand in hand to cure the illnesses throughout our lands.
Where equality is really true, for men and women like me and you.
Our ocean food line is dwindling fast because no control laws have been passed.
The slaughtering of dolphins and whales are world wide
And our politicians turn a blind eye.
We must spread the word of peace and love that the LORD
Has given us from up above.
© LRAMS

Kaitelka; Whale Mongolic down, first whale which said syndrome, evidenced by their presence, as didgeridoo, as spitting but more hypersonic, hyper cetacean moving his tail, Burguete funds, learned to swim faster than anything, but the Nautilus, not He paid attention to his mother in his care skills, but bad luck that can befall if not moderate their exalting and allergic omitted cases to obey.

So all blue, but little Kaitelka, seeking friendship among their peers, but he put  a tambourine limit gave him leftovers and liked more than a day a thousand years of perfect instincts. So step aside by the fire, and dodged the deafening roar of nymph Satinga; the most ancient senator of the headpiece, always full on its plateau of ******* hydrochloride that resistance, if they pass a thousand years and I do not understand these pairs, I adjusted my engine, but to no avail me, my instincts are diluted and slim as downpour edges left by the wayside in infants and solfa. That Jesus Light was said behind the screen rainbow arch, he takes her hand to Kaitelka, and back by the outer estuary, they attack by instinct ministry of evil.

Mildew petrified oaks, disorients the abject warty troughs the disordering of the genetic instinct, if I have to pause my essence, I leave in the hands of Joshua stone from beyond. Where the ticket is worth more to me, but I get the same. Where evil knows well, but tasteless well. Underground, underwater., Kaitelka take any more, wheels come and go, instinct taking shredding herbs near the sea, no longer separates me more. Bright the famous day that rebukes my dreams rather than a whole, plastering, or monument flash highborn of Mongolic loves whales, classless or inheritances acquired record. Kaitelka and in gratitude to accompany my walk, to the junction of Lisbon, walking from room to room, to begin the pilgrimage, his steps were Glup, Glup like a pretty varmint, over the hills she is beginning to the descritery of Satinga, or rather the descritery of Sapiens Hommo, rummaging instinct of love today, then unloved. Native forests make pairings, but separate links non-energy cataclysms, similar to the new alliance valley radial wave, tuned cetacean sonar power can be glimpsed.

The Ministry of Evil is no end to the retrospective marvel at Noe, Isaac or Abraham, or Luther King, is the delayed form of unsettled muscle primo Evo madding to neo Evo updated, and neither bells sound the same, as reboot gray phthisis diseases degenerate and synthetic. The instinct to put your hands into the fire will be lost ..., so more pace to the back of them cutting the seas in arithmetical divisions, if commend my antidepressants depressive relatives, caress the sea in each constipated solstice, I go every night with daisies in my hands defying every cliff, every cave turned into a tavern, killing instinct, when the brain is nothing, sprayed kerosene on stage, to see my beloved before he dies of a blowgun.  

Joshua Stone and Bernardolipus in a crossroad, spin the grazing, the black sheep, is barren, its classic label of Segregated debased soul, but defecated humanoid comment sing out of tune the territory themselves.  Three-step, three-way, Joshua embraces Bernardolipo. Welcome starts. Satinga you slice ferns and wild beast, vomits both diazepams swallowed, do not sleep, dreams transpose half orb. Halos, half halos, iridescent arcades, and warm breezes, must preamble Donated high liking. Soft and warm look, I do not lose my plate potato near my belly, warm adobe cellar. Nymph Satinga of reaction in reaction out of tune and the highlights midwife psoriasis for its reddish dermis by a fungus worming. The re instinct starts to chew his skull, dread end of the border. The cookies Lord is sending us on napkins.

Pre urbane figure born, they appear a hundred suns, so the crowd out who has the audacity to reveal the discrete enigma, the puzzle while the floor moves the seizure ... all stunned waiting for the flash Ritual to start the preliminary stage, the paradigm of unshelled trees, tough tables roll by the church at the foot of flowers crocuses scrolls flat estate. For the baptistery inscrutability warmth your network back double halo on the moon, scrub that level. Abyss where I fall near aspire to the coachman, I go away over time from heaven minute no second in hours where the avalanche of time lose my look to hold any deity that does not prevent the tendency to lose those not facing front, a day like this you do not walk any shadow, nor the Horcondising I would like to Santorini. The Borker wrongheaded, burning a cigar in rib Kaitelka, it provides a stunning scream as the end of the world, giving birth to the sky his beautiful breeding, as a good omen to present to the crowd in the Octagon and pleased transit day often fruity crestfallen fig.  

Adelimpia,  Strongly taken the and Thunder Aunt, washed in the backroom their aprons with Christmas, whose magical and enlightening sense, they were the Three Wise Princes, sons of the same kings of Israel. Sitting on some cobs, heritages from last wheel spikes. On warm evenings mantra Baba Nam Kevalam, I do not stay alone without others to see this magical high flood flow mention aversion in pontificates, necessary, pal meal with wine apocalyptic pale rider, Napoleonic soldier dethroned.

Thousands of hectares grassland in loving with heavenly muddy, as adhering to the force of Sorcery Camphor to move everything to the midnight launch eclipse. Thousands of hectares squirts do not possess any extension ratio, giddiness master eye, losing possession. What is Slice is Caren Lagoon, which is Alhué Village is Polulo mountain near the place, what Pichi of Barrancas... Out of my roles temple or regulators, as night plans still dating Jack, with overall equidistant to all orphan girl lost in the jungle inbenign . Cutting room of breath begins threshing., afar put the trays, and poor saint not to attend, this clever move, all atheists bruised, stiff and deprived of the worst failure smoothness, it´s the earth not plowed,                    
              
Dreams whistles hills ... Ghosts and spurs  ... Elegy opaque optical floors, all at Aunty Thunder dream the same...

If you can call night, inland sea waves have to educate infant’s tsunamis, they live among geological forces off the coast of scudding clouds of ... where she cuts through. Where our conscience, should play down a Machiavellian zero to roll it to the belly of the whale down. Their heavy udders milk, as long as a wild bird dueled, mounted in their beards, but the bird slips for his little body often and disadvantaged, to fall into the enzyme flash neuron meditatively; aspiring meditatively. While tsunamis grow, the mountains grow, decreases Hommo sapiens, conscience, he has left, minus zero exiled to the **** pony pens, to create their neighborhood over the eyes of a pupil of warty lameness. Reborn storm, stately power, Nymph Hetaira, who seduces the ringer smith, golden horseshoe, pal new millennium. His no longer harp, sewing lips ant, threading needles Grandma milking herbs get a grotto, families abandoned, shrill understatement by the echoes of the West, for you my Transients soliloquy turbid straightening of holistic aqueous molecules who want to sleep in my hands.

Good beverage, good consciousness nursery. Sleepily he walks by the barbed wire of stupid sort of busybody in thickness bolognese, or bandoneon, pilaster grandson male, to Vizcaya sailing or North Toscana, where after a barricade, Piedmont jumps to the south under Pichi.

They are falling water molecules on Maitén tree, or Tomato Adelimpia bow, and on the fibrous and head hair grass grandmamma Anna. Junks greet Bernardolipo, which was fishing with his wounded eyes, but the rub his mouth on the back of Kaitelka, calcium verve in carrousel turned. Line up the right hand, bottled lady Juana, he stretched to crush cilantro, but no ... or both...

Reigns for ?, to allocate a stop along the way, West Side Story Pichi. We are a few steps from misting dawn of propionate Stoics lash the oppressed people, clear water, singing  ... neuron in neuron, the cell last neuron, with the bow remained foul-mouthed, to shuffle, or Kawashkar Chilean Indian the slice of the leg, looking shoe children who roam the street without a blanket. They close their eyes, tears of shame. Here you are ecstatic stiffs arrows bows, feathers swaying in edgings shields tangled, hordes of haggard eyes flamed flames that no impudence and, which limp to a scoundrel that stuns resistant to fall on the sand. Show your dream, that dream bathe.

Continues the fierce Primor, falls brochures from red heaven fall prayers stammering to advance on this land saga, fall rustic donatives of grandmamma Mayor of coelum, Joshua insomniac in his tabernacle, defoliating his tome skip and jump down the estuary, before every misstep, holy water to step, a smile the Loica rural place Or a caress to the cheek moon in the arms of a blackbird, manacled to a rasp, stove teapot levitating top where grandmamma Adelimpia wheezes. Hail Mary ever ******, the other day, I heard that in September, flapping fall on Fiddler praise, perhaps mediate, for bad talking, founder of my undying love of life joined empty verbs on clovers where I to live forever, pre, pre paella prize moaning on my shoulder osteoarthritis crucifying collapsed tree. Nightmare builds a ship to reach Legion Mary. Centerfold, guns, howitzers, dissident’s ovaries ... final pages, declamatory winds ... perhaps agonizing leg expectantly... Or delusional feet of premature mortality, which brought pray to heaven, earth ... at soon I have to forget. The earth gives me the cheese, and bread sandwiching it goes...

Between him and earth coelum I doze my motive piece body, my shepherd Beetle Maximilian of Auschwitz sprayed me holy water the Vistula, I kneel down my hinges, and my hands for pray by pure attained effort, ***** great feat, who believes fall the abyss, and just below the earth tremulous, bell, first-throat yawning, loose cassock sounds a rainy morning, falling in the forest priority to see all morning, brimming with couplets of snow.

Continue to fall aqueous molecules, Kaitelka divides the estuary waters. Sheets of – Talami rural high lawns and wise water, South of  Pichi. Follow the dream, and just needed to uprighted the cabin, roaring gallop, wake up tomorrow morning sweaty dancing aqua, font of Lourdes, the four simultaneously open their headlights eyes, unblinking as echoes swimming duck feeding their young in the obsidian lagoon. Rock palafitte a piece of coal painted black each carriage serene, going from the Cantillana Mountain. Blasphemes morning fall roe bellowing wind annoyed tongue, windless striding through the window, thunderbirds mistress thousand flanks, now mount the besieged strands of colloidal solid. Elegy, opaque optical dreams, and drovers days nearsighted, soon saved our lives...

The never End.

Part I. When the Saguaro Cactus Blooms

“All mountains everywhere are being worn down by frost, snow and ice.”

“In the brief arctic summer grasses thrive, but too little energy reaches the ground for trees to grow.”

“When Nubian Ibex dual with their horns, the tussles can last up to an hour if the opponents are evenly matched.”

“Rainforest covers only three percent of the Earth, but contains more than half its plants and animals”

“The Shark is faster on a straight course, but can’t turn as sharply as a seal.”

“Throughout much of nature, life is built on decay.”

“Earth’s journey round the sun creates the four seasons, in most places. In the tropics, the sun strikes the earth head- on year round, temperatures barely change.”

“The Great Island of New Guinea harbors forty-two species of birds of paradise, each more bizarre than the last.”  

“As always, where life thrives, trouble follows.”

“Each year a single tree can **** up hundreds of tons of water through the roots, but the trees can’t use all this water so much of it returns to the air as vapor from the leaves on the branches”

“Every year three-million caribou migrate across the frozen Canadian Tundra. Some herds travel over two-thousand miles a year in search of fresh pastures. This is the longest over-land migration of any animal.”

Part II. And Your Bird Can Sing

From my position as being something
Other than what I am now, I saw
the planet Earth which is too impossible to be true.

I saw that land never stands above water.
Water simply allows the tired earth to rest upon its shoulders.

I see places where nothing is alive, save the maggots that feed off themselves,
amongst the cathedral of stalactites and stalagmites and lakes of acid.
No one ever said Hell wouldn’t be beautiful.

I see what was once mountains, now little more than slender, awkward
pillars into the sky. Withered away by an unwavering wind
That blew rigid rock as easy as it might blow
a leaf on the streets of city.

I see that spring even touches the most arctic of locals.
and that you can freeze in a desert that you can fry in.

I see for the first time, the tree as the inverse of itself;
branches into sky, roots into earth.
And I suddenly question paper and hard-wood floors.

And animals,
which we so often chose to deny as our neighbors and brethren.

I met with the Amur Leopard, rare as jewel,
Never before seen,
Destined to lose his home or his fur coat
To the likes of a Russian czarina.

I laugh at the penguin, the sausage of the bird family
and marvel at its audacity to survive
in places its unthreatening, unimpressive body should not.

And in the shark’s eye I saw, as it leaped out of the water
finally engulfing the once allusive seal,
the grace of god, the face of ******
at 1/50th of  the normal speed.

I came across baboons wading through flooded plains
walking upright through the shallow waters,
holding their young above the depths,
predecessors to a two-legged, less noble cousin.

I witnessed nearly every animal fight each other for supremacy,
with the same savagery we do,
but with less discrimination as to who they combat with.

I noticed that countless animals disguise themselves.
Frogs as rocks of exotic hues. Foxes as bushes seemingly on fire.
Bugs as flowers not yet in bloom.
I think I’ll hide myself as a whale
with a harpoon in his side.


I watch male birds of paradise attempt to sing, yell, peck and dance
themselves into a lady bird’s heart;
their Pavarotti, their Don Juanian exploits, their best Baryshnikov
yield them no love, yet my undying admiration is theirs.

I long to be a part of a flock of birds or school of fish,
who seem seamlessly connected by one mind(interwoven by the urge to move)


I see the flower and the fungi bloom, the latter off the former,
in stop-motion photography
I wish to see myself grow in stop-motion.

I swam next to two whales;
a large one whose eyes said to the smaller one,
“I’ll starve for you.”
a small one whose eyes said,
“I will lose my mother when the water is warm.”

I walked with caribou, transient as I am.
Just searching for a place to call home,
both of us knowing that the only stable thing in
life is continuous change.

Part III. Rivers Do Run Dry (See Grand Canyon)

Years later it would be discovered that “HD TV” did not in fact stand for High Definition Television, but rather Hoaxed Depiction Television. Indeed nothing we saw in “HD” was in actually real; rather it was highly doctored images created by the media powers that be. This would explain seemingly implausible animals, landscapes and natural phenomenon seen in the BBC series Planet Earth. Cryptic statements made by the narrator of the documentary (who turned out to not actually be British or a man) such as, “This is the first and last time this spectacle has ever been documented on film.” Ironically, these claims by the narrator are the only truths the entire project has to offer. The images never will be seen again in nature due to the fact that they were fabricated in a Hollywood warehouse.

The Pedicab drivers of Gotham all say
You should ignore a "Whale Hail"
because it just doesn't pay.
The city is hilly and
to pedal gets tough
when your passengers are,
shall we say, overstuffed.

Two tubby tourists out on the town
between them they weighed about
Eight Hundred Pounds.
They had wiped out the Sushi
at an all you can eat.
Much too lazy to walk
on their overstressed feet.

They hailed for a Pedicab
of which there's a multitude
Thats the sole explanation
for accepting their pulchritude.

Their ride started slowly,
but pleasant enough.
But then came a hill
and the going got rough.

He groaned and he struggled
as he trucked up the road,
but not even juiced Armstrong
could handle this load.

With two tubby tourists
ensconced in the back.
He slowed to a crawl
then stalled in his tracks.

Something had to give
with those two in the rear
The cab then turned turtle
chucking him in the air.

The two tubby tourist
were down on their backs
Their driver unconscious
and two tires flat.

An Ambulance came
and gave him first aide
The two tourists rolled off
and he never got paid.

If we banned too large colas
and sixty ounce beers
could we hope that these
land whales
might,one day, disappear?

Until then its risky
to pick such fares up
unless in a limo
or a truck thats Ram tough