Ghost in the wharf canal

Sweeps the surface of water lucid

Upon the lighting storm of rage

Darkness is luminous silent

Echoing is the call of the ghost

By the hour call of the black raven

The wharf of canal road is daunting

On the soul as the spiritual ghost

Creeps in the shadows of the wharf canal

In the mood so seldom so feared

Swimming the ghost is twined deep

In the water reaping for heart

From it's haunted depart

Trapped in the canal

Is the spirit of wharf of canal road

For eternal surface

Ghostly Wharf
By Deb Harman (c) 25/8/14

Tall round beams standing
in salty water, connecting
fishermen and star-fish gazers
with a moon-shaped bay
on the eastern Pacific.

They stand on land and step into sea,
as rolling barrels from Arctic grounds
tickle their lower legs.
A centipede of wood, this
outward- jutting wharf.

The fishermen sink expectant hooks;
the surfers haul shiny glass
banana-shaped boards of foam;
the weekenders come posing
baby strollers for picture shooting.

Each passing wall of blue
energy slows at reach of
shallow sand, deciding
whether to keep rolling or
transform into a steep stack

of snapping water. On big days
the sea legs shake all the
fishermen. They lock away
their sacrificial bait in rusty boxes
and collapse their fibered rods.

On calm days I step out to a
wooden bench and hang my
face between the rails. Running
people pass below, between the
knotted hips and creosoted thighs.

August buries this preserve
in such drizzle. Gulls go bundling
inside their sleek robes
of white feather, leaning
windward on worn bent knees.

This English Thames is holier far than Rome,
Those harebells like a sudden flush of sea
Breaking across the woodland, with the foam
Of meadow-sweet and white anemone
To fleck their blue waves,—God is likelier there
Than hidden in that crystal-hearted star the pale monks bear!

Those violet-gleaming butterflies that take
Yon creamy lily for their pavilion
Are monsignores, and where the rushes shake
A lazy pike lies basking in the sun,
His eyes half shut,—he is some mitred old
Bishop in partibus! look at those gaudy scales all green and gold.

The wind the restless prisoner of the trees
Does well for Palaestrina, one would say
The mighty master’s hands were on the keys
Of the Maria *****, which they play
When early on some sapphire Easter morn
In a high litter red as blood or sin the Pope is borne

From his dark House out to the Balcony
Above the bronze gates and the crowded square,
Whose very fountains seem for ecstasy
To toss their silver lances in the air,
And stretching out weak hands to East and West
In vain sends peace to peaceless lands, to restless nations rest.

Is not yon lingering orange after-glow
That stays to vex the moon more fair than all
Rome’s lordliest pageants! strange, a year ago
I knelt before some crimson Cardinal
Who bare the Host across the Esquiline,
And now—those common poppies in the wheat seem twice as fine.

The blue-green beanfields yonder, tremulous
With the last shower, sweeter perfume bring
Through this cool evening than the odorous
Flame-jewelled censers the young deacons swing,
When the grey priest unlocks the curtained shrine,
And makes God’s body from the common fruit of corn and vine.

Poor Fra Giovanni bawling at the mass
Were out of tune now, for a small brown bird
Sings overhead, and through the long cool grass
I see that throbbing throat which once I heard
On starlit hills of flower-starred Arcady,
Once where the white and crescent sand of Salamis meets sea.

Sweet is the swallow twittering on the eaves
At daybreak, when the mower whets his scythe,
And stock-doves murmur, and the milkmaid leaves
Her little lonely bed, and carols blithe
To see the heavy-lowing cattle wait
Stretching their huge and dripping mouths across the farmyard gate.

And sweet the hops upon the Kentish leas,
And sweet the wind that lifts the new-mown hay,
And sweet the fretful swarms of grumbling bees
That round and round the linden blossoms play;
And sweet the heifer breathing in the stall,
And the green bursting figs that hang upon the red-brick wall,

And sweet to hear the cuckoo mock the spring
While the last violet loiters by the well,
And sweet to hear the shepherd Daphnis sing
The song of Linus through a sunny dell
Of warm Arcadia where the corn is gold
And the slight lithe-limbed reapers dance about the wattled fold.

And sweet with young Lycoris to recline
In some Illyrian valley far away,
Where canopied on herbs amaracine
We too might waste the summer-tranced day
Matching our reeds in sportive rivalry,
While far beneath us frets the troubled purple of the sea.

But sweeter far if silver-sandalled foot
Of some long-hidden God should ever tread
The Nuneham meadows, if with reeded flute
Pressed to his lips some Faun might raise his head
By the green water-flags, ah! sweet indeed
To see the heavenly herdsman call his white-fleeced flock to feed.

Then sing to me thou tuneful chorister,
Though what thou sing’st be thine own requiem!
Tell me thy tale thou hapless chronicler
Of thine own tragedies! do not contemn
These unfamiliar haunts, this English field,
For many a lovely coronal our northern isle can yield

Which Grecian meadows know not, many a rose
Which all day long in vales AEolian
A lad might seek in vain for over-grows
Our hedges like a wanton courtesan
Unthrifty of its beauty; lilies too
Ilissos never mirrored star our streams, and cockles blue

Dot the green wheat which, though they are the signs
For swallows going south, would never spread
Their azure tents between the Attic vines;
Even that little **** of ragged red,
Which bids the robin pipe, in Arcady
Would be a trespasser, and many an unsung elegy

Sleeps in the reeds that fringe our winding Thames
Which to awake were sweeter ravishment
Than ever Syrinx wept for; diadems
Of brown bee-studded orchids which were meant
For Cytheraea’s brows are hidden here
Unknown to Cytheraea, and by yonder pasturing steer

There is a tiny yellow daffodil,
The butterfly can see it from afar,
Although one summer evening’s dew could fill
Its little cup twice over ere the star
Had called the lazy shepherd to his fold
And be no prodigal; each leaf is flecked with spotted gold

As if Jove’s gorgeous leman Danae
Hot from his gilded arms had stooped to kiss
The trembling petals, or young Mercury
Low-flying to the dusky ford of Dis
Had with one feather of his pinions
Just brushed them! the slight stem which bears the burden of its suns

Is hardly thicker than the gossamer,
Or poor Arachne’s silver tapestry,—
Men say it bloomed upon the sepulchre
Of One I sometime worshipped, but to me
It seems to bring diviner memories
Of faun-loved Heliconian glades and blue nymph-haunted seas,

Of an untrodden vale at Tempe where
On the clear river’s marge Narcissus lies,
The tangle of the forest in his hair,
The silence of the woodland in his eyes,
Wooing that drifting imagery which is
No sooner kissed than broken; memories of Salmacis

Who is not boy nor girl and yet is both,
Fed by two fires and unsatisfied
Through their excess, each passion being loth
For love’s own sake to leave the other’s side
Yet killing love by staying; memories
Of Oreads peeping through the leaves of silent moonlit trees,

Of lonely Ariadne on the wharf
At Naxos, when she saw the treacherous crew
Far out at sea, and waved her crimson scarf
And called false Theseus back again nor knew
That Dionysos on an amber pard
Was close behind her; memories of what Maeonia’s bard

With sightless eyes beheld, the wall of Troy,
Queen Helen lying in the ivory room,
And at her side an amorous red-lipped boy
Trimming with dainty hand his helmet’s plume,
And far away the moil, the shout, the groan,
As Hector shielded off the spear and Ajax hurled the stone;

Of winged Perseus with his flawless sword
Cleaving the snaky tresses of the witch,
And all those tales imperishably stored
In little Grecian urns, freightage more rich
Than any gaudy galleon of Spain
Bare from the Indies ever! these at least bring back again,

For well I know they are not dead at all,
The ancient Gods of Grecian poesy:
They are asleep, and when they hear thee call
Will wake and think ‘t is very Thessaly,
This Thames the Daulian waters, this cool glade
The yellow-irised mead where once young Itys laughed and played.

If it was thou dear jasmine-cradled bird
Who from the leafy stillness of thy throne
Sang to the wondrous boy, until he heard
The horn of Atalanta faintly blown
Across the Cumnor hills, and wandering
Through Bagley wood at evening found the Attic poets’ spring,—

Ah! tiny sober-suited advocate
That pleadest for the moon against the day!
If thou didst make the shepherd seek his mate
On that sweet questing, when Proserpina
Forgot it was not Sicily and leant
Across the mossy Sandford stile in ravished wonderment,—

Light-winged and bright-eyed miracle of the wood!
If ever thou didst soothe with melody
One of that little clan, that brotherhood
Which loved the morning-star of Tuscany
More than the perfect sun of Raphael
And is immortal, sing to me! for I too love thee well.

Sing on! sing on! let the dull world grow young,
Let elemental things take form again,
And the old shapes of Beauty walk among
The simple garths and open crofts, as when
The son of Leto bare the willow rod,
And the soft sheep and shaggy goats followed the boyish God.

Sing on! sing on! and Bacchus will be here
Astride upon his gorgeous Indian throne,
And over whimpering tigers shake the spear
With yellow ivy crowned and gummy cone,
While at his side the wanton Bassarid
Will throw the lion by the mane and catch the mountain kid!

Sing on! and I will wear the leopard skin,
And steal the mooned wings of Ashtaroth,
Upon whose icy chariot we could win
Cithaeron in an hour ere the froth
Has over-brimmed the wine-vat or the Faun
Ceased from the treading! ay, before the flickering lamp of dawn

Has scared the hooting owlet to its nest,
And warned the bat to close its filmy vans,
Some Maenad girl with vine-leaves on her breast
Will filch their beech-nuts from the sleeping Pans
So softly that the little nested thrush
Will never wake, and then with shrilly laugh and leap will rush

Down the green valley where the fallen dew
Lies thick beneath the elm and count her store,
Till the brown Satyrs in a jolly crew
Trample the loosestrife down along the shore,
And where their horned master sits in state
Bring strawberries and bloomy plums upon a wicker crate!

Sing on! and soon with passion-wearied face
Through the cool leaves Apollo’s lad will come,
The Tyrian prince his bristled boar will chase
Adown the chestnut-copses all a-bloom,
And ivory-limbed, grey-eyed, with look of pride,
After yon velvet-coated deer the ****** maid will ride.

Sing on! and I the dying boy will see
Stain with his purple blood the waxen bell
That overweighs the jacinth, and to me
The wretched Cyprian her woe will tell,
And I will kiss her mouth and streaming eyes,
And lead her to the myrtle-hidden grove where Adon lies!

Cry out aloud on Itys! memory
That foster-brother of remorse and pain
Drops poison in mine ear,—O to be free,
To burn one’s old ships! and to launch again
Into the white-plumed battle of the waves
And fight old Proteus for the spoil of coral-flowered caves!

O for Medea with her poppied spell!
O for the secret of the Colchian shrine!
O for one leaf of that pale asphodel
Which binds the tired brows of Proserpine,
And sheds such wondrous dews at eve that she
Dreams of the fields of Enna, by the far Sicilian sea,

Where oft the golden-girdled bee she chased
From lily to lily on the level mead,
Ere yet her sombre Lord had bid her taste
The deadly fruit of that pomegranate seed,
Ere the black steeds had harried her away
Down to the faint and flowerless land, the sick and sunless day.

O for one midnight and as paramour
The Venus of the little Melian farm!
O that some antique statue for one hour
Might wake to passion, and that I could charm
The Dawn at Florence from its dumb despair,
Mix with those mighty limbs and make that giant breast my lair!

Sing on! sing on!  I would be drunk with life,
Drunk with the trampled vintage of my youth,
I would forget the wearying wasted strife,
The riven veil, the Gorgon eyes of Truth,
The prayerless vigil and the cry for prayer,
The barren gifts, the lifted arms, the dull insensate air!

Sing on! sing on!  O feathered Niobe,
Thou canst make sorrow beautiful, and steal
From joy its sweetest music, not as we
Who by dead voiceless silence strive to heal
Our too untented wounds, and do but keep
Pain barricadoed in our hearts, and ****** pillowed sleep.

Sing louder yet, why must I still behold
The wan white face of that deserted Christ,
Whose bleeding hands my hands did once enfold,
Whose smitten lips my lips so oft have kissed,
And now in mute and marble misery
Sits in his lone dishonoured House and weeps, perchance for me?

O Memory cast down thy wreathed shell!
Break thy hoarse lute O sad Melpomene!
O Sorrow, Sorrow keep thy cloistered cell
Nor dim with tears this limpid Castaly!
Cease, Philomel, thou dost the forest wrong
To vex its sylvan quiet with such wild impassioned song!

Cease, cease, or if ‘t is anguish to be dumb
Take from the pastoral thrush her simpler air,
Whose jocund carelessness doth more become
This English woodland than thy keen despair,
Ah! cease and let the north wind bear thy lay
Back to the rocky hills of Thrace, the stormy Daulian bay.

A moment more, the startled leaves had stirred,
Endymion would have passed across the mead
Moonstruck with love, and this still Thames had heard
Pan plash and paddle groping for some reed
To lure from her blue cave that Naiad maid
Who for such piping listens half in joy and half afraid.

A moment more, the waking dove had cooed,
The silver daughter of the silver sea
With the fond gyves of clinging hands had wooed
Her wanton from the chase, and Dryope
Had ****** aside the branches of her oak
To see the ***** gold-haired lad rein in his snorting yoke.

A moment more, the trees had stooped to kiss
Pale Daphne just awakening from the swoon
Of tremulous laurels, lonely Salmacis
Had bared his barren beauty to the moon,
And through the vale with sad voluptuous smile
Antinous had wandered, the red lotus of the Nile

Down leaning from his black and clustering hair,
To shade those slumberous eyelids’ caverned bliss,
Or else on yonder grassy ***** with bare
High-tuniced limbs unravished Artemis
Had bade her hounds give tongue, and roused the deer
From his green ambuscade with shrill halloo and pricking spear.

Lie still, lie still, O passionate heart, lie still!
O Melancholy, fold thy raven wing!
O sobbing Dryad, from thy hollow hill
Come not with such despondent answering!
No more thou winged Marsyas complain,
Apollo loveth not to hear such troubled songs of pain!

It was a dream, the glade is tenantless,
No soft Ionian laughter moves the air,
The Thames creeps on in sluggish leadenness,
And from the copse left desolate and bare
Fled is young Bacchus with his revelry,
Yet still from Nuneham wood there comes that thrilling melody

So sad, that one might think a human heart
Brake in each separate note, a quality
Which music sometimes has, being the Art
Which is most nigh to tears and memory;
Poor mourning Philomel, what dost thou fear?
Thy sister doth not haunt these fields, Pandion is not here,

Here is no cruel Lord with murderous blade,
No woven web of ****** heraldries,
But mossy dells for roving comrades made,
Warm valleys where the tired student lies
With half-shut book, and many a winding walk
Where rustic lovers stray at eve in happy simple talk.

The harmless rabbit gambols with its young
Across the trampled towing-path, where late
A troop of laughing boys in jostling throng
Cheered with their noisy cries the racing eight;
The gossamer, with ravelled silver threads,
Works at its little loom, and from the dusky red-eaved sheds

Of the lone Farm a flickering light shines out
Where the swinked shepherd drives his bleating flock
Back to their wattled sheep-cotes, a faint shout
Comes from some Oxford boat at Sandford lock,
And starts the moor-hen from the sedgy rill,
And the dim lengthening shadows flit like swallows up the hill.

The heron passes homeward to the mere,
The blue mist creeps among the shivering trees,
Gold world by world the silent stars appear,
And like a blossom blown before the breeze
A white moon drifts across the shimmering sky,
Mute arbitress of all thy sad, thy rapturous threnody.

She does not heed thee, wherefore should she heed,
She knows Endymion is not far away;
’Tis I, ’tis I, whose soul is as the reed
Which has no message of its own to play,
So pipes another’s bidding, it is I,
Drifting with every wind on the wide sea of misery.

Ah! the brown bird has ceased:  one exquisite trill
About the sombre woodland seems to cling
Dying in music, else the air is still,
So still that one might hear the bat’s small wing
Wander and wheel above the pines, or tell
Each tiny dew-drop dripping from the bluebell’s brimming cell.

And far away across the lengthening wold,
Across the willowy flats and thickets brown,
Magdalen’s tall tower tipped with tremulous gold
Marks the long High Street of the little town,
And warns me to return; I must not wait,
Hark! ’Tis the curfew booming from the bell at Christ Church gate.

Meet me where the rising sun won't glow on our faces
When the hour strikes time aghast as hurried hands tie laces
Meet me at the scraggly wharf by the river
Where lips whisper on each others breath and trembling tongues quiver
Take me in the darkest corner of the the old abandoned shed
Love me like no other man or I shall have your head

ten men fishing
on auckland wharf
all with thin fibreglass rods
just that exact distance
(made in china)
all watching each others baits
bobbing in the silver sheen
no one watching his own sinker
bobbing

one twitches down the line
a reel swishes
reeling in
nine men watching intently now

20 cm struggling catch
not much, so back it goes.
a bronze whaler
slinking slowly
under twenty pairs of dangling feet
decides
the distance was too much
to crunch a man for snack

quietly slinks
to the opposite shore
where she senses
feet splashing on a shallow beach.

primitive.

© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, 3 months ago

- See more at: http://allpoetry.com/poem/11438556-the-fishermen-on-the-wharf-by-Marshall-Gass#sthash.HWKsl­wYM.dpuf

1
I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul? And if the body
were not the soul, what is the soul?

2
The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself
     balks account,
That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.

The expression of the face balks account,
But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face,
It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of
     his hips and wrists,
It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist
     and knees, dress does not hide him,
The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth,
To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more,
You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.

The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the
     folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the
     contour of their shape downwards,
The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through
     the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up and rolls
     silently to and from the heave of the water,
The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats, the
     horse-man in his saddle,
Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances,
The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open
     dinner-kettles, and their wives waiting,
The female soothing a child, the farmer’s daughter in the garden or
     cow-yard,
The young fellow hosing corn, the sleigh-driver driving his six
     horses through the crowd,
The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, *****,
     good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sundown
     after work,
The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance,
The upper-hold and under-hold, the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes;
The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine
     muscle through clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps,
The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes
     suddenly again, and the listening on the alert,
The natural, perfect, varied attitudes, the bent head, the curv’d
     neck and the counting;
Such-like I love—I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother’s
     breast with the little child,
Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line with
     the firemen, and pause, listen, count.

3
I knew a man, a common farmer, the father of five sons,
And in them the fathers of sons, and in them the fathers of sons.

This man was a wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person,
The shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his hair and
     beard, the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes, the richness
     and breadth of his manners,
These I used to go and visit him to see, he was wise also,
He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old, his sons were
     massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome,
They and his daughters loved him, all who saw him loved him,
They did not love him by allowance, they loved him with personal
     love,
He drank water only, the blood show’d like scarlet through the
     clear-brown skin of his face,
He was a frequent gunner and fisher, he sail’d his boat himself, he
     had a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner, he had
     fowling-pieces presented to him by men that loved him,
When he went with his five sons and many grand-sons to hunt or fish,
     you would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of
     the gang,
You would wish long and long to be with him, you would wish to sit
     by him in the boat that you and he might touch each other.

4
I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round
     his or her neck for a moment, what is this then?
I do not ask any more delight, I
     swim in it as in a sea.
There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them,
     and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well,
All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.

5
This is the female form,
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor,
     all falls aside but myself and it,
Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what
     was expected of heaven or fear’d of hell, are now consumed,
Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response
     likewise ungovernable,
Hair, *****, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all
     diffused, mine too diffused,
Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swelling
     and deliciously aching,
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of
     love, white-blow and delirious nice,
Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the
     prostrate dawn,
Undulating into the willing and yielding day,
Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh’d day.

This the nucleus—after the child is born of woman, man is born
     of woman,
This the bath of birth, this the merge of small and large, and the
     outlet again.

Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest, and is the
     exit of the rest,
You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.

The female contains all qualities and tempers them,
She is in her place and moves with perfect balance,
She is all things duly veil’d, she is both passive and active,
She is to conceive daughters as well as sons, and sons as well as
     daughters.

As I see my soul reflected in Nature,
As I see through a mist, One with inexpressible completeness,
     sanity, beauty,
See the bent head and arms folded over the breast, the Female I see.

6
The male is not less the soul nor more, he too is in his place,
He too is all qualities, he is action and power,
The flush of the known universe is in him,
Scorn becomes him well, and appetite and defiance become him well,
The wildest largest passions, bliss that is utmost, sorrow that is
     utmost become him well, pride is for him,
The full-spread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul,
Knowledge becomes him, he likes it always, he brings every thing to
     the test of himself,
Whatever the survey, whatever the sea and the sail he strikes
     soundings at last only here,
(Where else does he strike soundings except here?)

The man’s body is sacred and the woman’s body is sacred,
No matter who it is, it is sacred—is it the meanest one in the
     laborers’ gang?
Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on the wharf?
Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as
     much as you,
Each has his or her place in the procession.

(All is a procession,
The universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion.)

Do you know so much yourself that you call the meanest ignorant?
Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight, and he or she has
     no right to a sight?
Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffuse float, and
     the soil is on the surface, and water runs and vegetation sprouts,
For you only, and not for him and her?

7
A man’s body at auction,
(For before the war I often go to the slave-mart and watch the sale,)
I help the auctioneer, the sloven does not half know his business.

Gentlemen look on this wonder,
Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for it,
For it the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one animal or plant,
For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily roll’d.

In this head the all-baffling brain,
In it and below it the makings of heroes.

Examine these limbs, red, black, or white, they are cunning in tendon and nerve,
They shall be stript that you may see them.
Exquisite senses, life-lit eyes, pluck, volition,
Flakes of breast-muscle, pliant backbone and neck, flesh not flabby, good-sized
     arms and legs,
And wonders within there yet.

Within there runs blood,
The same old blood! the same red-running blood!
There swells and jets a heart, there all passions, desires, reachings,
     aspirations,
(Do you think they are not there because they are not express’d in
     parlors and lecture-rooms?)

This is not only one man, this the father of those who shall be fathers
     in their turns,
In him the start of populous states and rich republics,
Of him countless immortal lives with countless embodiments and enjoyments.

How do you know who shall come from the offspring of his offspring
     through the centuries?
(Who might you find you have come from yourself, if you could trace
     back through the centuries?)

8
A woman’s body at auction,
She too is not only herself, she is the teeming mother of mothers,
She is the bearer of them that shall grow and be mates to the mothers.

Have you ever loved the body of a woman?
Have you ever loved the body of a man?
Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all in all nations and
     times all over the earth?

If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred,
And the glory and sweet of a man is the token of manhood untainted,
And in man or woman a clean, strong, firm-fibred body, is more beautiful
     than the most beautiful face.
Have you seen the fool that corrupted his own live body? or the fool
     that corrupted her own live body?
For they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal themselves.

9
O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women,
     nor the likes of the parts of you,
I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the
     soul, (and that they are the soul,)
I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and
     that they are my poems,
Man’s, woman’s, child, youth’s, wife’s, husband’s, mother’s,
     father’s, young man’s, young woman’s poems,
Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears,
Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or
     sleeping of the lids,
Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the
     jaw-hinges,
Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition,
Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck-slue,
Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and the
    ample side-round of the chest,
Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones,
Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger,
     finger-joints, finger-nails,
Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, breast-side,
Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the backbone,
Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round, man-*****, man-root,
Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above,
Leg-fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg,
Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel;
All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your body
     or of any one’s body, male or female,
The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and clean,
The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame,
Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality, maternity,
Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes from woman,
The womb, the teats, *******, breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping,
     love-looks, love-perturbations and risings,
The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud,
Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming,
Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and
     tightening,
The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes,
The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair,
The curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the naked
     meat of the body,
The circling rivers the breath, and breathing it in and out,
The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward
     toward the knees,
The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the
     marrow in the bones,
The exquisite realization of health;
O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of
     the soul,
O I say now these are the soul!

Afflatus screams in mellifluous moonlight by a placid pond
Disturbed slightly by a miracle on ice deloused at a heavy price
Pantechnicons swarm as ghosts maraud around the outskirts of the forest
Suddenly the resurrected memories of renegades become conscientious
Angels swarm with fluttered wings invisible to the albatross of opprobrium
They concert themselves with chirpy dreams, itinerant crumples of amnesia creams
Marigolds are miracles at the most opportune time to be called a hysteria
Asserting the divinity of trinkets applauded that litter history with euphoria
Flinch my core, drunk on the travesty of stodgy moralism unfurled zero kelvin cold
But Salt Lake City towers above my contemplations and UFOs make themselves known
Every city this big is well in eternity and maternity very well known
Shelter not from husbandry, for Babylon is no longer idolatry
Stemwinders and poltroons with prisons crooned
Tyrannosaurus Rex still terrorizes aliens and humans alike on a stranded Dark Side of the Moon
Pink is the ****** of Mayweather and Mayflower, so rigid in rock-a-by-baby tunes
Now is "Never" but TV time "When The Music’s Over" is Bang Bane rather than Boom
Hostage tickets of English hecklers proclaiming my royalty serenade the forest green
I hear their laments of the rumors ballyhoo obscene
Imagine a forest bright, trepidation of unlikely marauders of Viking spite
Spates of jinx own the tanks, sharks (jaws of these aliens in time "Thriller") evanesce as fluttered cameras blink
Marigolds are really miracles as euphoria that plangent has never been so bold
It owned the night and owed nothing of fright to hear aliens chirp ******* penetrated so tight
To hear the orchestra of God’s minions applaud my albatross receding in plight
The swiftest musketeer aims his gun at an AIMed pun
The renegade blackmail is the rut of a guttural wedding of a none and a nun
How sad that she waits, as a ragamuffin of eternal wraiths
That speak to her dreams specifically as a barnacle waif
Genius eludes the moment of sinking eternity and Van Gogh alpenglow
Cracked screens reap grime and grim preachers that reap what they sow
Accentuated stature of imposture clutters legends urbane with glowing silt
Rigmarole of laughingstock circus with the strangest 25-year old days of a dead man Wilt
It was the steward of a day too strange to forget
It was the Newark of a Jersey of Gretzky #99, a hard-won bet
Histrionic of history, an underappreciated music is a well-worn divinity
The best music ever is the best music of time-traveled complicity
Sadly lost on inferior ears is the plangent flow of sonorous pantheons
Lost on an island of good taste in a world that prizes prosaic mellow eons
Rather than delicate paeans with hummingbird simplicity
I resent how rare my taste is in an olfactory of waste
How rare a smell is that yegg harder to lambaste
Don’t gibber the jibe of jive-talking stalk
The scarecrow in Back to the Future is a ******* heckler hawk
Rarefied abduction of stolen keys of NYPD sprees
To drivel the wharf of piedmont rifts in Heaven’s eternal leaves
Time to step back from the sidewinder missive
Time to crack the gravy epistle so dismissive
Non-linear experiments in time and memory crave recognition
Finally I learn that house arrest is a Home Alone good enough for a virtual reality prison

Here in the velvet stillness
The wide sown fields fall to the faint horizon,
Sleeping in starlight. . . .


A year ago we walked in the jangling city
Together . . . . forgetful.
One by one we crossed the avenues,
Rivers of light, roaring in tumult,
And came to the narrow, knotted streets.
Thru the tense crowd
We went aloof, ecstatic, walking in wonder,
Unconscious of our motion.
Forever the foreign people with dark, deep-seeing eyes
Passed us and passed.
Lights and foreign words and foreign faces,
I forgot them all;
I only felt alive, defiant of all death and sorrow,
Sure and elated.

That was the gift you gave me. . . .

The streets grew still more tangled,
And led at last to water black and glossy,
Flecked here and there with lights, faint and far off.
There on a shabby building was a sign
“The India Wharf ” . . . and we turned back.

I always felt we could have taken ship
And crossed the bright green seas
To dreaming cities set on sacred streams
And palaces
Of ivory and scarlet.

From my earliest remembrance,
to this hour I have maintained,
I've never been contented
with a life of the mundane.

I’ve sought to spend each day in life
in search of curious things,
like art and education,
and the richness that they bring.

I hope to write more poetry
and share my verse in print,
and with my use of written word,
paint art with shades and tints.

I’ve been to many distant lands,
but yet my heart implores,
I seek out farther mysteries,
our planet has in store.

But now my body slows me down,
like most as we grow old,
and though I try, oft I fall short,
of plans I can control.

So, to keep myself companion,
while I will myself to heal,
I’ve formed all my ambitions,
which one day I plan to reach.

Since I was just a little child
I dreamt of life abroad,
in Kenya with the Maasai tribe,
I’ve always been enthralled.

I've fancied a safari,
where the famous five are found,
a land where great giraffes stand tall,
against the setting sun.

But, it is the Land Down Under,
that is first among my plans,
and one day soon I’ll see the coast,
of Sydney once again.

My friends will come to greet me,
though a lifetime I’ve been gone,
and united we’ll share memories,
for the present and beyond.

I’ll go for walks amidst the bush,
and hear the magpie’s tunes,
I’ll stroll beside the ghostly gums;
with nature grow attuned.

I’ll tour along the Southern Coast,
drive past Apostles tall,
and see the sites of Melbourne fair,
with all its cultured draw.

Then off to Kiwi’s northern isle,
with nature’s beauty rare,
fulfilling dreams so long desired,
to glimpse the Mauri’s there.

Waitomo, with its glow worm caves,
and Rotorua’s pools,
with geysers, Eco thermal parks,
and Bay of Islands too.

As I make my way back to the states,
I’ll stop along the way,
to visit Fiji’s turquoise coast,
and snorkel time away.

I’ll learn about the culture,
and partake of Fiji’s fare,
and when I go, I hope to leave,
a part of my heart there.

The coast of California,
on my list of sites to see;
from the Wharf in San Francisco,
to the vineyards by the sea.

I dream of redwoods sure and tall:
the parks and smell of pines,
and stand amid the ancient firs,
lest they pass for all of time.

I plan to visit Florence,
where master artists roamed;
the heart of Tuscan Renaissance,
where da Vinci made his home.

I hope to cruise Amalfi’s coast,
with others at the helm,
to view the brilliance of the sights,
and others in the realm.

While in the South of Italy,
I’ll cross the briny foam,
and walk the hills in Athens,
where ancient Grecians roamed.

I dream of Amazonia,
where man has not destroyed,
and natives live within the wild,
with harmony employed.

The last one on my bucket list,
is one I’d left undone,
when first I made my maiden trip,
and I was twenty-one.

I’d hoped to see the Emerald Isle,
and England’s castles old,
Duke’s palaces and British Tate,
are marvels to behold.

I’ll drive the ring of Kerry,
and the magic Isle of Skye,
to see its Fairy Pools of hues,
and Highland’s brilliance sights.

The lush green grass of Glen Coe,
the Scottish hills await,
would be a lifelong dream fulfilled
when all my trials abate.

With this, my final dream fulfilled,
I see my list complete,
full circle with this Commonwealth,
my restless feet at peace.

But ‘til that time when I am healed,
and I can travel far,
I’ll dream of lands beyond my reach,
and one day touch the stars.

Silver and grey the rain that falls
On Canary Wharf.
It pools in pavements of concrete and steel,
Ripples through dark water holding up the ships
That loom on my horizon.
Glass mountains open to black and blue pinstripes
As I weave between slow-moving bodies.
Was it always this way,
Or is the grey more grey
Now I’ve felt in full colour?

With eager eyes and tempting smile, I beckoned 'cross the wharf
And they returned, a sad reply, stating he must morph
into a man -in pieces then- who puts things back together
Whilst I sit here, and wait and wait, and keep on till forever.

Kingdom comes, piggies fly, time churns soft and slow
Every hour, like the other, shuffling to and fro
Mind is racing, heart is beating, must be with him soon...
He is the sun, he is the stars, he is the solstice moon.

But he is full of hatred, and angry, scary things
That I cannot behold because my covered ears will ring.
I will not hear the wretchedness that billows from his mouth
I will not be the victim of intentions headed south.

Now he’s an angel, under God, and all the better creatures
that prize the gentlest, passionate, souls who mirror all their features. They never asked, only assumed, that I would be alright
But Oh! the torture over one who turned away from light.

So here I wait, on endless shores, until they come for me
Or maybe not, really, who knows, what lies beyond the sea
The water holds the untold words of thousands who've passed on
And here I am, scribbling the script, of stories before dawn.

There were raised voices. Ingrid heard them. Her father's booming voice over her mother's screech. She stirred in her small bed. Pulled the blankets over her shoulder. Sheltered by the thick ex army coat of her father's on top of the blankets she snuggled down trying to shut out the sounds. It was Saturday, no school. She hated school, hated the tormenting kids, the lessons, the teacher bellowing at her. Only Benedict talked kindly to her, only he made her laugh, took her on adventures round and about, the bomb sites, the cinema, the swimming pool in Bedlam Park. The voices got louder, there was a sound of glass smashing. Silence followed, her mother's screeching began again, her father's booming voices trying to drown her out. Ingrid pulled the blankets tighter around her. She daren't go out along the passage until it was over. Even though she needed to ***, she held it in, thought of other things. Her wire framed glasses lay on the bedside cabinet her mother had bought at a junk shop. The thick lens were smeary, the wire frame slightly bent where her father's hand had clipped them when he slapped her about the head for talking out of turn. There was a small cut on her nose where the glasses had caught. A radio began to play, the voices had stopped. A door slammed. Her father had gone out. She poked her head out of the blankets. Music filtered through into her room from the radio. She got out of bed and stood on the wooden floor boards. Her clothes: dress, cardigan, underwear and socks were laid neatly on a chair where she'd folded them the night before. She opened the door of her bedroom and ventured down the passage to the toilet and shut the door and put the bolt across and sat down. The music played on. Her mother began to sing. She had weak voice, kind of like a child's. Ingrid played with her fingers. Pretended to knit, as her mother had unsuccessfully tried to show her, with imagined knitting needles. As she sat she felt the bruise on her left buttock. Her father's beating of a day or so ago. She knitted faster, fingers racing. She stopped dropped a stitch as her mother called it. She left the toilet and went to wash in the kitchen sink. She wished they had a bathroom like her cousin did. Her parent's bath was in the kitchen with a table that was let down when not in use. She washed in the cold water, her hands and face and neck. Dried on the towel behind the door. Her mother came in carrying a cup and saucer. She set it down on the draining board and looked at Ingrid. Get yourself some breakfast and then get dressed, if your father catches you in that state, he won't half have a go, her mother said. Ingrid went into the living room and got a bowl from the glass fronted cupboard and a spoon from the drawer and poured herself some cereals and added milk from a jug on the table and sat to eat. Her mother brought in a mug of tea for her and put it on the table and went off to the bedroom to make the bed. The music from the radio played on from the living room window she could see the streets below, the grass area beneath with the two bomb shelters left over from the War where she and other sat or climbed or played around. Over the street was the coal wharf where coal lorries and horse drawn wagons loaded up with sacks of coal. She ate her cereals. A train went across the railway bridge over the way;puffs of smoke rose in the air. Below boys played on the grass. One of the boys had offered her 6d to see her underwear, but she had refused. He shrugged his shoulders and said your loss and wandered off. 6d would have bought her sweets, a drink of pop, but she had her pride. She finished her breakfast and sipped her tea. Warm and sweet. She let her tongue swim in the tea. Benedict said he would buy her some chips after the morning film matinée at the cinema. Her mother said she would give her 9d for the cinema, but not to tell her father. As if she would, she mused, watching a horse drawn wagon leave the coal wharf. She drank the tea and took mug, spoon and bowl into the kitchen  and washed them up and left them on the draining board. She went to her bedroom and took off her nightdress. The mirror on the old dressing table showed a thin pale looking nine year old girl with short cut brown hair and squinting brown eyes. She only saw a blur. She put on her glasses and peered at herself. No wonder the boys laughed at her and the girls avoided her. Only Benedict was friendly to her. He said she was pretty. She couldn't see it, the prettiness. She turned. Over her thin shoulder she saw the bruises on her buttocks. Fading. Bluey greeny yellowish. She walked to get her clothes off the chair and began to dress. She wished she had a cleaner dress, she'd worn that one for nearly a week. The cardigan had holes and there were buttons missing. She did up what buttons there were and brushed her hair with the hairbrush her gran had given her. It had stiff bristles and a large wooden handle. She stood in front of the mirror and peered at herself. She put the 9d her mother had given her in her pocket. Ready or not Benedict would be there soon. He knocked his own special knock. Once her father answered and glared at Benedict and asked what he wanted. Benedict said, to see the prettiest girl in the world. Her father glared harder, Benedict simply smiled. How did he do that? How did he do that to her father? There was a tensive wait, her father glaring and Benedict looking passive. Then her father called her to the door and said, this here boy asked for the prettiest girl in the world; he must have got the wrong address. Ingrid went red and looked at Benedict. No, right address and girl, Benedict said,looking by her father's brawny arm at her. How she managed not to wet herself she didn't know. Her father just walked back indoors and left them to talk on the balcony without any more words and she never got a beating afterwards, either. Now she waited for that special knock. That rat-rat and rat-rat. She smiled at her reflection. Prettiest girl. Ugliest more like. Rat-rat and rat-rat. He was there. He'd come. She could hear his voice. She took one last look at herself in the mirror, wet fingered she dabbed at her hair. Time to go, time to get out of there. Her knight in jeans and jumper had come on a white horse to take her away; imaginary of course.

Remember that afternoon on the ferry
Ride to Nantucket
The labrador who fell asleep on my foot
And the kid who vomited
As we stood at the rail,
Mist in our faces
Foam that curled
From the keel in swirls
A whole world in that turbulence
That no one would ever know of -
Focused on the Grey Lady's
Promise that a warm comforter
Would melt us together again.
And it did, amid the strangers
We brushed past
On the cobbles at the wharf.
Back at the dock,
You greeted old demons
And so did I
But kept them secrets
From each other
On the long ride
Through pine forests
As you slept, I drove
Back home.

Thousand minstrels woke within me,
"Our music's in the hills; "—
Gayest pictures rose to win me,
Leopard-colored rills.
Up!—If thou knew'st who calls
To twilight parks of beech and pine,
High over the river intervals,
Above the ploughman's highest line,
Over the owner's farthest walls;—
Up!—where the airy citadel
O'erlooks the purging landscape's swell.
Let not unto the stones the day
Her lily and rose, her sea and land display;
Read the celestial sign!
Lo! the South answers to the North;
Bookworm, break this sloth urbane;
A greater Spirit bids thee forth,
Than the gray dreams which thee detain.

Mark how the climbing Oreads
Beckon thee to their arcades;
Youth, for a moment free as they,
Teach thy feet to feel the ground,
Ere yet arrive the wintry day
When Time thy feet has bound.
Accept the bounty of thy birth;
Taste the lordship of the earth.

I heard and I obeyed,
Assured that he who pressed the claim,
Well-known, but loving not a name,
Was not to be gainsaid.

Ere yet the summoning voice was still,
I turned to Cheshire's haughty hill.
From the fixed cone the cloud-rack flowed
Like ample banner flung abroad
Round about, a hundred miles,
With invitation to the sea, and to the bordering isles.

In his own loom's garment drest,
By his own bounty blest,
Fast abides this constant giver,
Pouring many a cheerful river;
To far eyes, an aërial isle,
Unploughed, which finer spirits pile,
Which morn and crimson evening paint
For bard, for lover, and for saint;
The country's core,
Inspirer, prophet evermore,
Pillar which God aloft had set
So that men might it not forget,
It should be their life's ornament,
And mix itself with each event;
Their calendar and dial,
Barometer, and chemic phial,
Garden of berries, perch of birds,
Pasture of pool-haunting herds,
Graced by each change of sum untold,
Earth-baking heat, stone-cleaving cold.

The Titan minds his sky-affairs,
Rich rents and wide alliance shares;
Mysteries of color daily laid
By the great sun in light and shade,
And, sweet varieties of chance,
And the mystic seasons' dance,
And thief-like step of liberal hours
Which thawed the snow-drift into flowers.
O wondrous craft of plant and stone
By eldest science done and shown!
Happy, I said, whose home is here,
Fair fortunes to the mountaineer!
Boon nature to his poorest shed
Has royal pleasure-grounds outspread.
Intent I searched the region round,
And in low hut my monarch found.
He was no eagle and no earl,
Alas! my foundling was a churl,
With heart of cat, and eyes of bug,
Dull victim of his pipe and mug;
Woe is me for my hopes' downfall!
Lord! is yon squalid peasant all
That this proud nursery could breed
For God's vicegerency and stead?
Time out of mind this forge of ores,
Quarry of spars in mountain pores,
Old cradle, hunting ground, and bier
Of wolf and otter, bear, and deer;
Well-built abode of many a race;
Tower of observance searching space;
Factory of river, and of rain;
Link in the alps' globe-girding chain;
By million changes skilled to tell
What in the Eternal standeth well,
And what obedient nature can,—
Is this colossal talisman
Kindly to creature, blood, and kind,
And speechless to the master's mind?

I thought to find the patriots
In whom the stock of freedom roots.
To myself I oft recount
Tales of many a famous mount.—
Wales, Scotland, Uri, Hungary's dells,
Roys, and Scanderbegs, and Tells.
Here now shall nature crowd her powers,
Her music, and her meteors,
And, lifting man to the blue deep
Where stars their perfect courses keep,
Like wise preceptor lure his eye
To sound the science of the sky,
And carry learning to its height
Of untried power and sane delight;
The Indian cheer, the frosty skies
Breed purer wits, inventive eyes,
Eyes that frame cities where none be,
And hands that stablish what these see:
And, by the moral of his place,
Hint summits of heroic grace;
Man in these crags a fastness find
To fight pollution of the mind;
In the wide thaw and ooze of wrong,
Adhere like this foundation strong,
The insanity of towns to stem
With simpleness for stratagem.
But if the brave old mould is broke,
And end in clowns the mountain-folk,
In tavern cheer and tavern joke,—
Sink, O mountain! in the swamp,
Hide in thy skies, O sovereign lap!
Perish like leaves the highland breed!
No sire survive, no son succeed!

Soft! let not the offended muse
Toil's hard hap with scorn accuse.
Many hamlets sought I then,
Many farms of mountain men;—
Found I not a minstrel seed,
But men of bone, and good at need.
Rallying round a parish steeple
Nestle warm the highland people,
Coarse and boisterous, yet mild,
Strong as giant, slow as child,
Smoking in a squalid room,
Where yet the westland breezes come.
Close hid in those rough guises lurk
Western magians, here they work;
Sweat and season are their arts,
Their talismans are ploughs and carts;
And well the youngest can command
Honey from the frozen land,
With sweet hay the swamp adorn,
Change the running sand to corn,
For wolves and foxes, lowing herds,
And for cold mosses, cream and curds;
Weave wood to canisters and mats,
Drain sweet maple-juice in vats.
No bird is safe that cuts the air,
From their rifle or their snare;
No fish in river or in lake,
But their long hands it thence will take;
And the country's iron face
Like wax their fashioning skill betrays,
To fill the hollows, sink the hills,
Bridge gulfs, drain swamps, build dams and mills,
And fit the bleak and howling place
For gardens of a finer race,
The world-soul knows his own affair,
Fore-looking when his hands prepare
For the next ages men of mould,
Well embodied, well ensouled,
He cools the present's fiery glow,
Sets the life pulse strong, but slow.
Bitter winds and fasts austere.
His quarantines and grottos, where
He slowly cures decrepit flesh,
And brings it infantile and fresh.
These exercises are the toys
And games with which he breathes his boys.
They bide their time, and well can prove,
If need were, their line from Jove,
Of the same stuff, and so allayed,
As that whereof the sun is made;
And of that fibre quick and strong
Whose throbs are love, whose thrills are song.
Now in sordid weeds they sleep,
Their secret now in dulness keep.
Yet, will you learn our ancient speech,
These the masters who can teach,
Fourscore or a hundred words
All their vocal muse affords,
These they turn in other fashion
Than the writer or the parson.
I can spare the college-bell,
And the learned lecture well.
Spare the clergy and libraries,
Institutes and dictionaries,
For the hardy English root
Thrives here unvalued underfoot.
Rude poets of the tavern hearth,
Squandering your unquoted mirth,
Which keeps the ground and never soars,
While Jake retorts and Reuben roars,
Tough and screaming as birch-bark,
Goes like bullet to its mark,
While the solid curse and jeer
Never balk the waiting ear:
To student ears keen-relished jokes
On truck, and stock, and farming-folks,—
Nought the mountain yields thereof
But savage health and sinews tough.

On the summit as I stood,
O'er the wide floor of plain and flood,
Seemed to me the towering hill
Was not altogether still,
But a quiet sense conveyed;
If I err not, thus it said:

Many feet in summer seek
Betimes my far-appearing peak;
In the dreaded winter-time,
None save dappling shadows climb
Under clouds my lonely head,
Old as the sun, old almost as the shade.
And comest thou
To see strange forests and new snow,
And tread uplifted land?
And leavest thou thy lowland race,
Here amid clouds to stand,
And would'st be my companion,
Where I gaze
And shall gaze
When forests fall, and man is gone,
Over tribes and over times
As the burning Lyre
Nearing me,
With its stars of northern fire,
In many a thousand years.

Ah! welcome, if thou bring
My secret in thy brain;
To mountain-top may muse's wing
With good allowance strain.
Gentle pilgrim, if thou know
The gamut old of Pan,
And how the hills began,
The frank blessings of the hill
Fall on thee, as fall they will.
'Tis the law of bush and stone—
Each can only take his own.
Let him heed who can and will,—
Enchantment fixed me here
To stand the hurts of time, until
In mightier chant I disappear.
If thou trowest
How the chemic eddies play
Pole to pole, and what they say,
And that these gray crags
Not on crags are hung,
But beads are of a rosary
On prayer and music strung;
And, credulous, through the granite seeming
Seest the smile of Reason beaming;
Can thy style-discerning eye
The hidden-working Builder spy,
Who builds, yet makes no chips, no din,
With hammer soft as snow-flake's flight;
Knowest thou this?
O pilgrim, wandering not amiss!
Already my rocks lie light,
And soon my cone will spin.
For the world was built in order,
And the atoms march in tune,
Rhyme the pipe, and time the warder,
Cannot forget the sun, the moon.
Orb and atom forth they prance,
When they hear from far the rune,
None so backward in the troop,
When the music and the dance
Reach his place and circumstance,
But knows the sun-creating sound,
And, though a pyramid, will bound.

Monadnoc is a mountain strong,
Tall and good my kind among,
But well I know, no mountain can
Measure with a perfect man;
For it is on Zodiack's writ,
Adamant is soft to wit;
And when the greater comes again,
With my music in his brain,
I shall pass as glides my shadow
Daily over hill and meadow.

Through all time
I hear the approaching feet
Along the flinty pathway beat
Of him that cometh, and shall come,—
Of him who shall as lightly bear
My daily load of woods and streams,
As now the round sky-cleaving boat
Which never strains its rocky beams,
Whose timbers, as they silent float,
Alps and Caucasus uprear,
And the long Alleghanies here,
And all town-sprinkled lands that be,
Sailing through stars with all their history.

Every morn I lift my head,
Gaze o'er New England underspread
South from Saint Lawrence to the Sound,
From Katshill east to the sea-bound.
Anchored fast for many an age,
I await the bard and sage,
Who in large thoughts, like fair pearl-seed,
Shall string Monadnoc like a bead.
Comes that cheerful troubadour,
This mound shall throb his face before,
As when with inward fires and pain
It rose a bubble from the plain.
When he cometh, I shall shed
From this well-spring in my head
Fountain drop of spicier worth
Than all vintage of the earth.
There's fruit upon my barren soil
Costlier far than wine or oil;
There's a berry blue and gold,—
Autumn-ripe its juices hold,
Sparta's stoutness, Bethlehem's heart,
Asia's rancor, Athens' art,
Slowsure Britain's secular might,
And the German's inward sight;
I will give my son to eat
Best of Pan's immortal meat,
Bread to eat and juice to drink,
So the thoughts that he shall think
Shall not be forms of stars, but stars,
Nor pictures pale, but Jove and Mars.

He comes, but not of that race bred
Who daily climb my specular head.
Oft as morning wreathes my scarf,
Fled the last plumule of the dark,
Pants up hither the spruce clerk
From South-Cove and City-wharf;
I take him up my rugged sides,
Half-repentant, scant of breath,—
Bead-eyes my granite chaos show,
And my midsummer snow;
Open the daunting map beneath,—
All his county, sea and land,
Dwarfed to measure of his hand;
His day's ride is a furlong space,
His city tops a glimmering haze:
I plant his eyes on the sky-hoop bounding;—
See there the grim gray rounding
Of the bullet of the earth
Whereon ye sail,
Tumbling steep
In the uncontinented deep;—
He looks on that, and he turns pale:
'Tis even so, this treacherous kite,
Farm-furrowed, town-incrusted sphere,
Thoughtless of its anxious freight,
Plunges eyeless on for ever,
And he, poor parasite,—
Cooped in a ship he cannot steer,
Who is the captain he knows not,
Port or pilot trows not,—
Risk or ruin he must share.
I scowl on him with my cloud,
With my north wind chill his blood,
I lame him clattering down the rocks,
And to live he is in fear.
Then, at last, I let him down
Once more into his dapper town,
To chatter frightened to his clan,
And forget me, if he can.
As in the old poetic fame
The gods are blind and lame,
And the simular despite
Betrays the more abounding might,
So call not waste that barren cone
Above the floral zone,
Where forests starve:
It is pure use;
What sheaves like those which here we glean and bind,
Of a celestial Ceres, and the Muse?

Ages are thy days,
Thou grand expressor of the present tense,
And type of permanence,
Firm ensign of the fatal Being,
Amid these coward shapes of joy and grief
That will not bide the seeing.
Hither we bring
Our insect miseries to the rocks,
And the whole flight with pestering wing
Vanish and end their murmuring,
Vanish beside these dedicated blocks,
Which, who can tell what mason laid?
Spoils of a front none need restore,
Replacing frieze and architrave;
Yet flowers each stone rosette and metope brave,
Still is the haughty pile *****
Of the old building Intellect.
Complement of human kind,
Having us at vantage still,
Our sumptuous indigence,
O barren mound! thy plenties fill.
We fool and prate,—
Thou art silent and sedate.
To million kinds and times one sense
The constant mountain doth dispense,
Shedding on all its snows and leaves,
One joy it joys, one grief it grieves.
Thou seest, O watchman tall!
Our towns and races grow and fall,
And imagest the stable Good
For which we all our lifetime *****,
In shifting form the formless mind;
And though the substance us elude,
We in thee the shadow find.
Thou in our astronomy
An opaker star,
Seen, haply, from afar,
Above the horizon's hoop.
A moment by the railway troop,
As o'er some bolder height they speed,—
By circumspect ambition,
By errant Gain,
By feasters, and the frivolous,—
Recallest us,
And makest sane.
Mute orator! well-skilled to plead,
And send conviction without phrase,
Thou dost supply
The shortness of our days,
And promise, on thy Founder's truth,
Long morrow to this mortal youth.

Tin can busses fill rapidly,
Stop.
And bleed like tuna.

Alone by a wharf
Peaceful yet forlorn
Wishing I could morph
To mask how badly I'm worn
Wish I was strong
The way I used to be
But where I am, is where I belong
The pain will pass, there'll be jubilee
But first I have to crush the glass of the once before chary and elusive me

One night in Provincetown
@2013 Linda Barrett


On my niece Jessica’s wedding
in the middle of July
The three of us weren’t invited
for the wedding rehearsal dinner
Instead of staying around the hotel,
That night
we went out on our own fun
just Alex, Kathy and I

We walked into Provincetown
searching for a place to eat
Looked at all the menus
and what entree to buy
discovered Pepe’s Wharf
sat on its deck
watched the Coast Guard’s fleet
ate boiled lobster and french fries
just the three of us
Alex, Kathy, and I

Our waiter, Derek, adored Alex
with his excellent restaurant manners
Two Lesbians admired his etiquette
A young straight couple made it complete
with their unified, approving sigh
Everyone on the deck admired us
Alex, Kathy, and I

On the Deck,
We linked our glasses in a toast
Alex with his Shirley Temple cocktail
Kathy with her white wine
Me with my diet Coca Cola
Smitten Derek played the host
told us of the pirates museum
the one that made Alex hum
we all thought it was fine
to see it with him
We left Pepe’s wharf
with our spirits high
toured the rest of Provincetown,
Alex, Kathy, and I







We walked upon cobblestone streets
still the same since
the 18th century
Ancient homes stood as witnesses
to the tall woman in
her Sonoma  sun dress
the red haired boy with the necktie
the middle aged woman
Clad in turquoise and white
and black high heeled sandals
' wandering on a Friday night
wondering residents passed us by
as we walked on the pavement
we impressed them all
Alex, Kathy, and I

The evening grew dark
we walked wherever we went
Motorcycles roared on the street
Drag queens dressed to the nines
We went into the stores
Stared at by dogs and artists
Kathy led me to a boutique
called Toho
bought a bracelet for my wrist
something unique
Alex got a Bear Claw pie
We astounded the parade
with our differences
and the commotion they made
at  Alex, Kathy, and I
We found out of the night
footprints of some African cat
from some bright yellow paint
followed their shiny way
down a side street
Kathy tried not to laugh
where it ended
A place called
the Kofu Kafe
Seretta the owner entertained us
with her South African thrills
displayed for Alex
Kalahari porcupine quills
We drank coffee
and South African sweets
let the time slowly fly
under the cafe’s sparkling ceiling
Just Alex, Kathy and I





At around ten
We three took off
Down the dark streets
To roam
I led  the way
with my feeble flashlight
Shining upon uneven cobblestones
walked past hand holding men
try to get ourselves
to our temporary home
silently say good bye
to our new found friends
and return to our beds
Alex, Kathy, and I

At the back
of the coal wharf
you and Fay
picked up coal pieces

that fell through
the iron railings
and put them
in an ******* from home

Fay looked
at her blackened fingers
and said
if my daddy sees

these fingers
and finds out
what I’ve been doing
he’ll spank me

for sure
you gazed at her
beside you
and said

you can wash your hands
at my place
she looked around
at the bombsite behind you

the evening sun
slowly going down
behind the railway bridge
and nearby buildings

what if someone sees you
she asked
picking up these pieces?
no one worries about this

all the kids do it
you replied
my daddy says
it is evil to steal

she said
you put a black piece
of coal in the bag
and lifted it

to feel the weight
that’s enough
you said
too much

and I won’t be able
to carry it
Fay stood up
and looked around

at the darkening sky
you held the bag
in one hand
and scanned

the area around you
let’s go
you said
and so you both

walked away
from the coal wharf
into Meadow Row
by the public house

where piano music played
and down towards
the flats
where you lived

and after climbing
the concrete stairs
to your landing
you opened the door

and put the bag
by the indoor
coal bunker
and showed Fay

where to wash her hands
turning on
the cold water tap
you both washed

your hands
with the red
Life Buoy soap
her hands near yours

her wet flesh
touching yours
the black water
running away

and another adventure
and another day.

A Sonnet is a moment’s monument,—
Memorial from the Soul’s eternity
To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be,
Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,
Of its own arduous fulness reverent:
Carve it in ivory or in ebony,
As Day or Night may rule; and let Time see
Its flowering crest impearled and orient.

A Sonnet is a coin: its face reveals
The soul,—its converse, to what Power ’tis due:—
Whether for tribute to the august appeals
Of Life, or dower in Love’s high retinue,
It serve; or, ’mid the dark wharf’s cavernous breath,
In Charon’s palm it pay the toll to Death.

Written in April 1798, during the alarm of an invasion

A green and silent spot, amid the hills,
A small and silent dell! O’er stiller place
No singing skylark ever poised himself.
The hills are heathy, save that swelling *****,
Which hath a gay and gorgeous covering on,
All golden with the never-bloomless furze,
Which now blooms most profusely: but the dell,
Bathed by the mist, is fresh and delicate
As vernal cornfield, or the unripe flax,
When, through its half-transparent stalks, at eve,
The level sunshine glimmers with green light.
Oh! ’tis a quiet spirit-healing nook!
Which all, methinks, would love; but chiefly he,
The humble man, who, in his youthful years,
Knew just so much of folly as had made

His early manhood more securely wise!
Here he might lie on fern or withered heath,
While from the singing lark (that sings unseen
The minstrelsy that solitude loves best),
And from the sun, and from the breezy air,
Sweet influences trembled o’er his frame;
And he, with many feelings, many thoughts,
Made up a meditative joy, and found
Religious meanings in the forms of Nature!
And so, his senses gradually wrapped
In a half sleep, he dreams of better worlds,
And dreaming hears thee still, O singing lark,
That singest like an angel in the clouds!

My God! it is a melancholy thing
For such a man, who would full fain preserve
His soul in calmness, yet perforce must feel
For all his human brethren—O my God!
It weighs upon the heart, that he must think
What uproar and what strife may now be stirring
This way or that way o’er these silent hills—
Invasion, and the thunder and the shout,
And all the crash of onset; fear and rage,
And undetermined conflict—even now,
Even now, perchance, and in his native isle:
Carnage and groans beneath this blessed sun!
We have offended, Oh! my countrymen!
We have offended very grievously,
And been most tyrannous. From east to west
A groan of accusation pierces Heaven!
The wretched plead against us; multitudes
Countless and vehement, the sons of God,
Our brethren! Like a cloud that travels on,
Steamed up from Cairo’s swamps of pestilence,
Even so, my countrymen! have we gone forth
And borne to distant tribes slavery and pangs,
And, deadlier far, our vices, whose deep taint
With slow perdition murders the whole man,
His body and his soul! Meanwhile, at home,
All individual dignity and power
Engulfed in Courts, Committees, Institutions,
Associations and Societies,
A vain, speech-mouthing, speech-reporting Guild,
One Benefit-Club for mutual flattery,
We have drunk up, demure as at a grace,
Pollutions from the brimming cup of wealth;
Contemptuous of all honourable rule,
Yet bartering freedom and the poor man’s life
For gold, as at a market! The sweet words
Of Christian promise, words that even yet
Might stem destruction, were they wisely preached,
Are muttered o’er by men, whose tones proclaim
How flat and wearisome they feel their trade:
Rank scoffers some, but most too indolent
To deem them falsehoods or to know their truth.
Oh! blasphemous! the Book of Life is made
A superstitious instrument, on which
We gabble o’er the oaths we mean to break;
For all must swear—all and in every place,
College and wharf, council and justice-court;
All, all must swear, the briber and the bribed,
Merchant and lawyer, senator and priest,
The rich, the poor, the old man and the young;
All, all make up one scheme of perjury,
That faith doth reel; the very name of God
Sounds like a juggler’s charm; and, bold with joy,
Forth from his dark and lonely hiding-place
(Portentous sight!) the owlet Atheism,
Sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon,
Drops his blue-fringed lids, and holds them close,
And hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven,
Cries out, “Where is it?”

Thankless too for peace,
(Peace long preserved by fleets and perilous seas)
Secure from actual warfare, we have loved
To swell the war-whoop, passionate for war!
Alas! for ages ignorant of all
Its ghastlier workings, (famine or blue plague,
Battle, or siege, or flight through wintry snows,)
We, this whole people, have been clamorous
For war and bloodshed; animating sports,
The which we pay for as a thing to talk of,
Spectators and not combatants! No guess
Anticipative of a wrong unfelt,
No speculation on contingency,
However dim and vague, too vague and dim
To yield a justifying cause; and forth,
(Stuffed out with big preamble, holy names,
And adjurations of the God in Heaven,)
We send our mandates for the certain death
Of thousands and ten thousands! Boys and girls,
And women, that would groan to see a child
Pull off an insect’s leg, all read of war,
The best amusement for our morning meal!
The poor wretch, who has learnt his only prayers
From curses, who knows scarcely words enough
To ask a blessing from his Heavenly Father,
Becomes a fluent phraseman, absolute
And technical in victories and defeats,
And all our dainty terms for fratricide;
Terms which we trundle smoothly o’er our tongues
Like mere abstractions, empty sounds to which
We join no feeling and attach no form!
As if the soldier died without a wound;
As if the fibres of this godlike frame
Were gored without a pang; as if the wretch,
Who fell in battle, doing ****** deeds,
Passed off to Heaven, translated and not killed;
As though he had no wife to pine for him,
No God to judge him! Therefore, evil days
Are coming on us, O my countrymen!
And what if all-avenging Providence,
Strong and retributive, should make us know
The meaning of our words, force us to feel
The desolation and the agony
Of our fierce doings?

Spare us yet awhile,
Father and God! O, spare us yet awhile!
Oh! let not English women drag their flight
Fainting beneath the burthen of their babes,
Of the sweet infants, that but yesterday
Laughed at the breast! Sons, brothers, husbands, all
Who ever gazed with fondness on the forms
Which grew up with you round the same fireside,
And all who ever heard the Sabbath-bells
Without the Infidel’s scorn, make yourselves pure!
Stand forth! be men! repel an impious foe,
Impious and false, a light yet cruel race,
Who laugh away all virtue, mingling mirth
With deeds of ******; and still promising
Freedom, themselves too sensual to be free,
Poison life’s amities, and cheat the heart
Of faith and quiet hope, and all that soothes,
And all that lifts the spirit! Stand we forth;
Render them back upon the insulted ocean,
And let them toss as idly on its waves
As the vile seaweed, which some mountain-blast
Swept from our shores! And oh! may we return
Not with a drunken triumph, but with fear,
Repenting of the wrongs with which we stung
So fierce a foe to frenzy!

I have told,
O Britons! O my brethren! I have told
Most bitter truth, but without bitterness.
Nor deem my zeal or fractious or mistimed;
For never can true courage dwell with them
Who, playing tricks with conscience, dare not look
At their own vices. We have been too long
Dupes of a deep delusion! Some, belike,
Groaning with restless enmity, expect
All change from change of constituted power;
As if a Government had been a robe
On which our vice and wretchedness were tagged
Like fancy-points and fringes, with the robe
Pulled off at pleasure. Fondly these attach
A radical causation to a few
Poor drudges of chastising Providence,
Who borrow all their hues and qualities
From our own folly and rank wickedness,
Which gave them birth and nursed them. Others, meanwhile,
Dote with a mad idolatry; and all
Who will not fall before their images,
And yield them worship, they are enemies
Even of their country!

Such have I been deemed.—
But, O dear Britain! O my Mother Isle!
Needs must thou prove a name most dear and holy
To me, a son, a brother, and a friend,
A husband, and a father! who revere
All bonds of natural love, and find them all
Within the limits ot thy rocky shores.
O native Britain! O my Mother Isle!
How shouldst thou prove aught else but dear and holy
To me, who from thy lakes and mountain-hills,
Thy clouds, thy quiet dales, thy rocks and seas,
Have drunk in all my intellectual life,
All sweet sensations, all ennobling thoughts,
All adoration of the God in nature,
All lovely and all honourable things,
Whatever makes this mortal spirit feel
The joy and greatness of its future being?
There lives nor form nor feeling in my soul
Unborrowed from my country! O divine
And beauteous Island! thou hast been my sole
And most magnificent temple, in the which
I walk with awe, and sing my stately songs,
Loving the God that made me!—

May my fears,
My filial fears, be vain! and may the vaunts
And menace of the vengeful enemy
Pass like the gust, that roared and died away
In the distant tree: which heard, and only heard
In this low dell, bowed not the delicate grass.

But now the gentle dew-fall sends abroad
The fruit-like perfume of the golden furze:
The light has left the summit of the hill,
Though still a sunny gleam lies beautiful,
Aslant the ivied beacon. Now farewell,
Farewell, awhile, O soft and silent spot!
On the green sheep-track, up the heathy hill,
Homeward I wind my way; and lo! recalled
From bodings that have well-nigh wearied me,
I find myself upon the brow, and pause
Startled! And after lonely sojourning
In such a quiet and surrounded nook,
This burst of prospect, here the shadowy main,
Dim-tinted, there the mighty majesty
Of that huge amphitheatre of rich
And elmy fields, seems like society—
Conversing with the mind, and giving it
A livelier impulse and a dance of thought!
And now, beloved Stowey! I behold
Thy church-tower, and, methinks, the four huge elms
Clustering, which mark the mansion of my friend;
And close behind them, hidden from my view,
Is my own lowly cottage, where my babe
And my babe’s mother dwell in peace! With light
And quickened footsteps thitherward I tend,
Remembering thee, O green and silent dell!
And grateful, that by nature’s quietness
And solitary musings, all my heart
Is softened, and made worthy to indulge
Love, and the thoughts that yearn for human kind.

There is'nt very many places
that can come close to the
perfection that a summers night
brings about on the streets
of San Pedro.
Its all still so raw,
on the lower side of town ,tenants sit
outside on stoops in front of
cheap hotels made for cheap people.
Feral cats stalk the wharf rats
who hide out within the  
rising mounds of fishing
nets that sit in large heaps along the
guano stained docks.
The Mad houses all have ancient air
conditioning, all of which only seems to
push the Mad a little bit closer
to that empty they all long to
fill.
Teen aged lovers walk hand in hand
past the bars and the liquor stores
along Pacific Ave.
The smiles on there clean faces
prove that they are still oblivious
to the horrors that love will one
day bring.
Drinking men and Die hard wasted
Women stand outside of windowless
drinking holes *******
on cigarettes, their silent stares
warn all who pass
that what little they had to lose
is already gone.
Most of these sets of eyes and
heads of hair,
have never heard the nightbird
sing,or watched transfixed
as the blood ran
along the gutters like
mountain run off
in the spring.

I find it comforting to know
that these summer night adventures
dare only to venture out
for this briefest of season.
I need them gone from my darkness,
they are not of the night,
even one as perfect as this.
Their clueless smiles and their
false joys cast a foul shade of light
upon the realness and the honesty
of this summers night.
Only lost souls like myself,
the street walking ******  and
the murderous feral cats know
when and where the magic truly died.
Only those with broken ties
and broken hearts can look
to the shot out street lamps
and know they are home.
If only these programed minions
would leave me and the mad ones,
me and the ******,
me and the shot out street lamps
and the flea bitten battle hardened
wharf  cats
to all of what we call our own.
They come out of their cages and
walk along the same gum stained
sidewalks as we who have sacrificed
it all to become as one with
the night.

They see all of the same neon signs
and graffiti covered walls as I do,
but that's where their tiny
little minds locked into their
tiny little worlds stop.
They cant comprehend and
I don't have enough wine
or enough patience
to waste my time
on programed minds.
Let them cheer each other on
let them guide each other to their deaths.
Leave us to this night and the millions
of California summer nights to come.
Let them lock themselves away
when these summer nights shift
to fall.
I and the night
cringe at their presence.
The feral cats release
a deep menacing warning
as these invaders pass
them by.
Their place is locked
securely behind
some gates,somewhere
on that hill.
A place I dare not to
venture,a place built
on the blood labor
of the poor,a place full
of their lies.
Lies and forced false ways
that draw
deep blood toned scars
upon the honesty
and the  integrity of this
sacred summers  night.

An omnibus across the bridge
Crawls like a yellow butterfly,
And, here and there, a passer-by
Shows like a little restless midge.

Big barges full of yellow hay
Are moored against the shadowy wharf,
And, like a yellow silken scarf,
The thick fog hangs along the quay.

The yellow leaves begin to fade
And flutter from the Temple elms,
And at my feet the pale green Thames
Lies like a rod of rippled jade.

Hi dudes

I am on the murrays bus heading for Batemans bay and there is only 1 hour
And a half left and I am looking forward to being close to the ocean
You see it's going to be great eating fish
And chips at the boathouse
You see I am having memories of when I went here with my mate Daniel and this
Is my first trip since I stopped ringing him up and I am staying in Mariners on the waterfront and I hope the room is ready when I get there
I have to rehearse my play lines as well
I woke up at 5 am in the morning at my mother's house and I remember walking with Daniel and the bus dropped water on us because it was raining But today iss lovely sunny day and now we have arrived at Braidwood to pick up a box and we are off again
We are entering the windey roads
Of the Clyde mountain and as I look
Out there are roadworks and lovely black cows, cows are beautiful creatures and yes we will be passing
Poo bears corner and dudes there is
Blue sky for miles, and I hope my room
Had fox footy so I can watch the parade I have just arrived in Batemans bay
And I arrived too early for the room at Mariners, so I left my baggage there and
Headed for the take away for an egg and bacon roll with BBQ sauce and hopefully people will be out of the room
When I return to the hotel And the egg and bacon roll was very tasty and after I left chixandstix I headed toward k mart
To buy a coke and wait for the time to tick away so I could enter my room
There are millions of Kids running around and I saw one guy running on
The road, yeah this is going to be a great grand final weekend on the south coast and I hope I get into the room
By 12 so I can see if they have the fox footy channel for the parade
But they didn't But it is a wonderful room with a nice view of the Clyde river
And I wish there was a fox footy but oh well we can't have everything but it is a beautiful view though
The next minute I walked down to the Batemans bay soldiers club and paid them $10 to become a member and I am
Going to
Watch the parade in air conditioned comfort I know I leave monday  but I find it is worth it
I am watching hawthorn and west coast go down the streets either he sun shining nicely in this great spring day and I am sinking coke by coke enjoying the grand final I have just arrived in Batemans bay
And I arrived too early for the room at Mariners, so I left my baggage there and
Headed for the take away for an egg and bacon roll with BBQ sauce and hopefully people will be out of the room
When I return to the hotel And the egg and bacon roll was very tasty and after I left chixandstix I headed toward k mart
To buy a coke and wait for the time to tick away so I could enter my room
There are millions of Kids running around and I saw one guy running on
The road, yeah this is going to be a great grand final weekend on the south coast and I hope I get into the room
By 12 so I can see if they have the fox footy channel for the parade
But they didn't But it is a wonderful room with a nice view of the Clyde river
And I wish there was a fox footy but oh well we can't have everything but it is a beautiful view though
The next minute I walked down to the Batemans bay soldiers club and paid them $10 to become a member and I am
Going to
Watch the parade in air conditioned comfort I know I leave Monday but I find it is worth it
I am watching hawthorn and west coast go down the streets either he sun shining nicely in this great spring day and I am sinking coke by coke enjoying the grand final And after walking home from the club
after watching the parade, I got $50 out
And went back to the hotel and presto
The TV was in better working order but
I don't have fox footy, so I am glad I went to the club and currently I am just
Relaxing in front of the box doing my art
And I saw the end of the rugby league
Grand final show and I am doing my hAlloween tapestryAnd now I am watching alive and cooking waiting for the 3 o'clock news
Bulletin to start and tonight I am going to have fish and chips as well as buying a few supplies to veg out with tonight
In front of the box, the view of the river
Is radically awesome dude and I am looking forward to my fish and chips
Down the coast
I just had fish and chips at the voatshed and yes mr seagull decided to Payne a visit
And you shoul have Heard the racket when I gave up one or two or three
And the fish was so fresh and for drinks I had pub squash and another seagull jumps up to say hello to Me and I said hell mister seagull and after I finished with my dinner I went to woollies to buy some supplied to satisfy my hunger tonight
And as I was walking home  a man said I was shaky he like a jelly on a plate and I said yeah I am a cool writer and artist
And then I went into my room to watch Becker then the news and I am going to spend a relaxing night on the night before west coast hopefully beat hawthorn and will I get fat tonight
Of course I am not going to eat it all tonight
I will concentrate on my creativityYou see I lying on my bed moving
My hand as I do each stitch watching
Neighbours and everybody loves Raymond and then watched the gardeners on better homes and gardens
And whe I was watching that some really cool party people were laughing and having a good time all I'm readiness
For the afl grand final tomorrow
As the song goes
We are the Eagles the west coast Eagles
We're the team to show you how
We are the better birds than the team of hawthorn we are the mighty west coast team but if hawthorn win tomorrow
I will ****** scream and now there is another talk show
Have you been paying attention
Which is a radically awesome show
But I Have turns it over to superman
On channrlll goI got up at 7 am this morning after having a nightmare of James Pederson
Getting his revenge on me after I teased him a bit and then I got up to go to the toilet and took my medication and went back to bed for 2 more hours and after that I had a shower and then breakfast
And got the room ready for the housekeepers to clean and then went on a walk to beautiful batehaven and as I walked down the road, there was this lovely sesbreeze and it was a beautiful
Hot day and I passed the fish and chip shop and the shell museum and bird land animal park and I saw families swimming in the pool and when I reached batehaven I bought myself a coke and say there watching isthe water and there is this water skier having a wow of a time and there was this man taking his dog down to the water and there are heaps of families taking their kids to the water on this nice hot day  
It is wonderful sitting by the beach and onr man is resting his dog
It is a nice day for the beach
And I am enjoying myself relaxing in the shade of this really hot day at the beach
And soon I must go to get some lunch and watch west coast beat hawthirn
Go the EaglesI entered the soldiers club and went straight to the bistro to have a hamburger with egg and bacon and chips and it was superb and then I went to the TV to watch the pre game show
And Elle Goulding and Bryan Adams
Were the entertainers and mike Brady sang up there Cazaly and even if they weren't there felt like singing up there goes Sydney and I chose the TV with a view of the Clyde river and I am still tipping west coast go the Eagles
The Hawks broke away with a lead at quarter time and half time and west coast are in for a record if they can get back from 57-26 down and the Kangaroos runner won the sprint giving money to youth homelessness
And the beach is a cool backdrop for the mighty MCG and I am still going for the eagkes but it will be hard
Go the eagles for what it's worth
Well we are the happy team at hawthorn
Showing the Eagles which birds the best, we fight them off from start to finish
Go the Hawks for the 2015 premiership
And it is a good reason to party on
Saturday night which is party night
Yes the Hawks are superior in this grand final and I am sitting in the batemans bay soldiers club watching the match and I am waiting for the presentation and if the motel has a band tonight
I am going party through frustrations by watching the band
I will probably get a pizza for dinner on the wharf
But the Hawks were the big birds the kings of the big game
Go the Hawks for victorycan hear you laughing. Go
You see you are laughing oh so hard mc cracking jokes celebrating the Cowboys win it was a wonderful win
I am glad the Broncos lost
You see I like people who party
They are my type of people
You see people laugh at each other
And they say go cowboys go
Then around Christmas time
They dress up as Santa and let out
A loud ** ** **
You see they say it very loud
It is like they lost thrift ** ** **
Where can it go go go
Doing the hanky pdnky with your mates
In the gay bar in downtown Sydney
Then we will celebrate a win
Cowboys Cowboys rah rah rah
Got he mighty Cowboys from now till the end of hhf day
Everyone has stopped laughing
Time for bed
Go the Cowboys

Off that windy bay wharf,
where old poets speak to lost walkers,
you dove into aporia

Morality the highest myth
dreaming conquered by Capital
shelter replaced by property
the immaterial, theft by sophistry

a bay carved from jade,
crescent moon.
horizon cradling distant storms

waves upon waves accelerating towards the shore.

hickory nuts
and wind trees
are keeping
at the old buckle bay
light house corners and
shaker church craft
slip anchor on the southern tip

secret legions
and phenolic board
tuck in at gout dock
bands and nations
and miracle speak
fill in the center hall

sand hooks
and water domes
cover wharf road
***** bay toppers
and seven horse chugs
scatter the swollen upper deck

packards and pushers
and rusty back rails
skirt the night
lanterns and sterns
and navy gulls
steady on task

sand cakes
and drift wood
held tight on
the mystery tour
yellow tails
and tide pools
flat line
at royal reach

paddles
and cables
find ripples way
smugglers and smitties
take cover
from a
northern gale

down on
pocket shoal
there’s a graceful hue
~ they’re serving up
belons and xan…
it's time to get in
for a fill

The devil's speech say they:
Rolling, clattering, frolicking, hungry.
Billows of charred skeletons embrace the air
Black soot pumped straight from the pyres of Hades
Congealing to clouds of evil intent wherever it roam.
That charred old shell so terse,
Black as sadness and dead as a hearse,
Darling to death as he brings on the rain:
The dry rolling thunder of the funeral train.

In the coughing desert
Not a thing dares roam
Neither wind nor creature
And neither stick nor stone.
But then the silence disturbed by a horrible shriek -
The railway screams in horror and the train itself speaks, saying
   "Tell me, thou innocent,
       Why feel you special and best?
   For when all is done I take you
       And return you to my nest;
   Your world is bright and happy
       Full of high spirits and song,
Though soon you too shall step aboard
       And join my faceless throng."

Hot saliva on the heaving engines:
Weeping, groaning, ghostly, parched.
Rusted joints spewed onwards grinding resisting
Movement spat out like a violently beaded string of curses
Sloppily uttered as incantations of a malformed mouth!
From that charred old shell so terse,
Black as sadness and dead as a hearse,
Darling to death as he brings on the rain:
The dry rolling thunder of the funeral train.

That dark train cries out and all around
A mourning whimper rises like slumbering fog-
Bleak and yellow it obscures the land
Seeping out insidious in strange locales all:
The old lonely fisherman
Sleeping on his wharf,
The frustrated hawker's
Windblown barefaced booth,
Silent streets crying for attention,
Dark places hidden at the corner of every eye.

That solemn train cries out and all around
Her mourning whimper rises like harrowing fog
Calling all to upright attention and fear.
Looming like a spectre but a breath-span from your window
Slowly closing cold dread claws-
Naked numbness dumb as ice-
Cold dread claws upon thy waist.
And you,
You poor old thing,
Shivering in your pitiful shack of bones,
You never had any chance!
You were only human.
You were only human, you poor old thing.

Barreling on with brimstone slang:
Clang clang! Dang dang! Beelz Bub!
Sputtering an ocean of curses from turgid goat-flesh
Born of sadness to cause even more, yawning great maw
Jowls clanking with fresh hot oil drool steaming stark and lewd, and yet
That charred old shell so terse,
Blacker than sadness and slain like a hearse,
Is all that gives meaning to our every gain:
The dry rolling thunder of the funeral train.

265

Where Ships of Purple—gently toss—
On Seas of Daffodil—
Fantastic Sailors—mingle—
And then—the Wharf is still!

Helen pushed
the second hand
doll’s pram
over the bombsite

off Meadow Row
Battered Betty her doll
was tossed
from side to side

there there
Helen said
can’t be helped
you walked beside her

practising drawing
your silver coloured gun
from the holster
your old man

had bought you
from the cheap shop
through the Square
you hit back

the hammer
one two three times
just like that
I can’t get her to sleep

Helen said
stopping by the ruins
of a bombed out house
she tucked the doll in

with the woollen blankets
her mother had knitted
Mum said to take Betty
for a walk in the pram

but she still won’t sleep
you put the gun back
in the holster
and pushed back

the black hat
your granddad
had given you
have to keep her quiet

around here
you said
there might be Injuns
and they scalp hair

off babes and kids
and such
Helen looked
around the bombsite

looks deserted to me
she said
pushing the pram away
from the bombed out house

you never can tell
you said
they hide  
and when you’re least

expecting it
they come screaming
over the plains
Mum said you’d make

the best husband
for me
Helen said
coming to a halt

opposite the coal wharf
you drew out
your gun again
and fired shots

over your shoulder
that’s nice of her
you said
twirling the gun

over your finger
and then back
into the holster
Mum said

you would make
a good dad
one of the horse drawn
coal wagons moved away

from the coal wharf
and clip-clopped
along the side road
perhaps

you said
we could get our own
house on the prairie
or one of those houses

off St George’s Road
with the big gardens
Helen got
Battered Betty out

of the pram
and rocked her
over her shoulder
patting her back

and said
yes and I could milk
the cows and you
could hunt buffalo

and we could sleep
in one of those
big beds
with buffalo skins

over by the main road
a red number 78 bus
went by
and dark clouds

crowded
the less
than blue sky.

Without God we cannot and without us God will not, Sister Bonaventure, the Italian  said, in R.E  at the school, where Fay sat looking at the nun's plump features and a second chin that lay on the nun's wimple. Cannot what? a girl said from beside Fay, a thin girl whose hand was raised above her head. Others stared in Fay's direction as did the nun. What do you think it means, Gloria? the nun asked, her dark eyes peering at the girl. The girl shrugged her shoulders. Salvezza, the nun said, salvation. Fay took the word and tongued it in her mouth like a boiled sweet. Salvezza. The other girls in the class sat mute; some looked at each and smiled either out of indifference or bewilderment, but Fay sat straight-faced, the words in her mouth, both Italian and English. Salvation? A girl asked, pushing her luck, seeing the nun's features harden like cement on a hot day. To be saved, the nun said, saved from damnation. The girls all Catholic and bought up from the cradle knew this, but it was a hot day and they had lost interest as soon as Sister Bonaventure had entered the class with the ease of a hippo into a muddy swamp. But Fay took the words and packed them away inside her head to **** upon in her nightly hours when she failed to sleep. After school, walking along St George's Road, she saw Benedict standing by the subway waiting for her. He stood with hands in his pockets, his school tie untied, hanging loose, his shirt collar unbuttoned. She smiled when she saw him; her stomach did a somersault; her eyes moved over him like hawks seeking prey. He smiled like Elvis, which he had mastered by studying the photograph in the paper and had cut it out and sellotaped it to his wall. Didn't know you were going to meet me, Fay said, thought you said you were busy. Benedict smiled. Wanted to surprise you, he said. Did you run home from school to get here by this time? No, got the bus, he said. She touched his arm with her thin fingers, felt the cloth of his school blazer. He looked at her; took in her fair hair, straight, but pinned at the sides with hair slides; at her eyes that were as pure as silk; at her features that he wanted to capture in his mind so he could conjure up in bed at night when he found it hard to dream about her. She looked past him, making sure her father-who didn't like Benedict- wasn't around; making sure that her father wasn't amongst the crowd across the way or in a passing bus. They walked back towards the flats together, side by side, hands not touching, but close, near touching. She told him of her day at school, about the Italian nun and the words that she had captured that day in R.E lesson. Salvation? he said, taking the word and moving it around his head and mouth like a puzzle to be solved. Sounds like something you put on if you've got a sore spot, he said. She smiled. It means saving our souls from sin and the consequences of sin, she said. They walked down the subway side by side, the words echoing along the walls. He looked at her as they walked, his hand near touching hers. Sins? What are they when they're at home? he asked, probably knowing the answer, but wanting her to say. Violation of God's will, she said. Violating our relationship with God, she added. He allowed his knuckles to brush against hers gently, letting her words float about his ears. Violate God's will? He said. She nodded. Defy, God's will, she said. Mm-mm, Benedict said, got you. Whether he had or not, Fay had no idea, she sensed his knuckles brush against hers, gentle, soft, skin on skin. They came out into the late afternoon sunlight, on to the New Kent Road, passed the Trocadero cinema, their hands brushing close. Changing the subject, before Fay could venture further into the words, he said, do you anything about periods? She stopped by the entrance to the cinema and gazed at him. Periods of what? History? Geographical times of changes? She said. No idea, a boy at school was talking about it, said his big sister was having her periods and was a dragon when she was, Benedict said, gazing past, Fay, at the photographs in the framed areas inside the cinema walls. She blushed, looked at the photographs, too. How old are you, Benny? She said. Same as you, twelve, he replied, taking in the photo of a cowboy, at how the cowboy had his guns set in his holster. And you don't know? she said, shyly, looking at him, blushing. He tried to copy the cowboy's stance ready to draw his imaginary gun from imaginary holster. No idea, he said, looking at her briefly before gazing at another photo. What do you learn in biology? she asked. O usual ******* about plants and sunlight and butterflies and bees and so on, he said. About butterflies or birds, then? he said, taking in the cowboy's stance again. Yes, she said quickly, not wanting to elaborate further.  They walked on passed the cinema and the used car area and walked over the bomb site towards Meadow Row. So what's the connection between this kid's sister and ****** birds or butterflies and periods? Benedict asked. She shrugged and smiled. Ask your mum, she said, she might know. He smiled, leaned down, picked up a few stones from the bomb site for ammunition for his catapult later, guess so, he added, taking in her blushing features. They paused half way across the bomb site and stared at the the coal wharf where a few stragglers of coal men loaded up the lorries and wagons again for last bit of business. He wanted to kiss her, but didn't want to take the liberty of just plunging his lips on her cheek as he'd seen them do in the cowboy films. She watched the coal men at work. She sensed him beside her, his closeness, his hand brushing against hers, skin on skin, flesh touching flesh, but she didn't want her father to see her touching Benedict's hand, because he'd go mad at her. I  want you to focus on your school work and what the nuns tell you about matters, not gallivanting with the likes of him, he said last time he saw her with Benedict, even though they lived in the same blocks of flats, he downstairs and she upstairs. Likes of him? What did that mean? She mused, looking away from the coal men and taking in Benedict beside her. God knows what her father would say if she kissed Benedict and he saw them. A few years ago he would have spanked her, but nowadays he just threatens her with it. Benedict turned and looked at her. Are you coming to the cinema for Saturday's matinee? Don't know; depends, she said. Depends on what? he asked. My dad and what he's up to and if he'll let me, she said. She paused, looked past Benedict to see if her father might be around. What's wrong with Saturday matinee? Benedict asked. She looked at him. Daddy thinks it's sinful to stare at those kind of films, although he did take us to see the Ten Commandments with Yul Bryner and Charlton Heston  a few years ago, she said. But you've been with me before, Benedict said. I know but only if Daddy's away on business or is away on religious retreat. Benedict raised his eyebrows and pulled a face and pouted his lips. She smiled. See what I can do, she said, looking over at Meadow Row making sure her father wasn't in sight. He wanted to kiss her, but didn't want just to plunge at her as he'd seen them do at the cinema, but what to do? She gazed at him, her body tingling for reasons she couldn't fathom. Best get home I suppose, she said, in case Daddy's there wondering where I've got to. They walked on across the bomb site slowly. Could I? He asked, pausing by the wall of  bombed out house. Could you what? Fay asked. Benedict looked at her. Kiss your cheek? She blushed and looked around her then back at Benedict. Why would you want to kiss my cheek? She asked. I've seen cowboys do it to women in films I just wondered what it was like, he said. Is that all? she said. All what? He said. That reason? She said. No, he said, looking past at the coal wharf, I like you a lot, wanted to show you how by kissing you. She felt out on a limb, beyond her comfort zone, yet something about it seemed satisfying, the gesture, the idea, the reason he wanted to kiss at all. She knew she was blushing, knew that her body was reacting in away unknown to her before. She looked across at Meadow Row, at the people passing over the way. Do I dare? She asked herself. What if Daddy sees? Not here, she said, maybe on the staircase of the flats if no one is around. He nodded, looked at her, touched her right hand, warm, silky soft. He wasn't sure of himself as he usually was; felt as if he were in bandit country and bad cowboys were at large. They walked on down Meadow Row, passed the public house with doors open and the smell of beer and a piano playing out of tune, passed houses and the crossed over by the corner leading into Rockingham Street. Their hands were apart from each other just in case. Her father in her case and other boys seeing, in his case, thinking he was breaking the schoolboy code into cissiness. They walked up the ***** and into the Square and walked towards the block of flats where they lived. She talked about Sister Bonaventure and sin and he talked about the boy's sister's period problem whatever it was. Half way up the second staircase landing they paused. Now? He asked. She looked up the stairs then down. Ok, she said softly. He kissed her cheek, damp, soft. She looked at him, then for reasons she didn't know she drew him to her and kissed his lips, then let him go. What happened to her or him they didn't understand just felt the inner glow.

Christmas eve leftover for
breakfast before i drive us
out to Sea. On the

wharf in your doggy tiny
doggy mirror doggy eyes
i am Camera Obscura melting
blue melting one with the
sky.

Small enough, dog; small,
dog-enough so i can place
you inside my hand-cage of
crooked fingers and

red-bitten bitten red
red nails red-painted
painted red, red, red
redsoveryred red.

Let us
          
          Let us you
and

                  me;


together we~
throw ourselves
to Sea

Let us let us you and me~
you and me~
we throw ourselves we
throw, we, you and me
let us let us.



Mister Death
mister death i know
you puke out
dogs.

The bomb site
is the best place
for chickweed
Helen said

so you went
to the one off
Meadow Row
and gathered up

handfuls of the stuff
and took them back
to your flat
to feed the budgerigar

you were looking after
for the old couple
along the balcony
who had gone away

for a few days
you watched
as Helen poked
some through the bars

of the bird cage
with her fingers
and you noticed
her tenderness

and determination
as she pushed it
through the narrow
gauged bars

her tongue poking out
of the corner
of her mouth
her eyes focusing

through her
thick lens spectacles
does it sing?
she asked

don't think so
you replied
least I’ve not
heard it do so

she talked to the budgie
in her little girl voice
and sang a few lines
of a hymn

the budgerigar
just stared at her
and walked up
the other end

of the perch
with a beak full
of chickweed
as she sang to it

she held her head
at an angle
and one of her plaits
of brown hair

hung downwards
do you want
to come back
to my place afterwards?

she said
you can help me
bath my doll Battered Betty
and then

Mum'll get us
some bread and jam
or bread and dripping
and a mug of tea

you had wanted to go
to the bomb site
for half an hour
to gather ammunition

for your catapult
but she had that look
about her face
that made you say

sure why not
and so after poking through
the remaining chickweed
and washing your hands

under the cold water tap
in the kitchen
and drying them
on the towel hanging

behind the door
you walked down
the concrete stairs
and out into the Square

and down the *****
into Rockingham Street
where you walked past
the coal wharf

where coal trucks
were being filled
with sacks of coal
and by

the Duke of Wellington pub
where you used to get
bags of crisps
and bottles of Tizer

on Sunday evenings
then under
the railway bridge
and she talked

of some boys at school
who called her 4 eyes
and fish face
O don't mind them

you said
they just can't see
your beauty
too blind

dumb idiots
do I?
she said
have beauty?

sure you do
you said
putting on
your serious face

never seen a girl
with more
and she smiled
and gazed at you

through the thick lens
of her spectacles
showing the large
brown conker like eyes

when you got to her place
her mother
was just finishing
bathing a young kid

so she let Helen
have the water after
to bath Betty
and gave her

an old towel to dry with
you helped her
prepare the doll
but she took off

the baby clothes
an old cardigan
that had seen
better days

and a creamy dress
with small buttons
at the back
which were a hell

of a job to undo
and a pair of
doll *******
that fitted tightly

and were a struggle
to get off
well
Helen said

the water's nice
and soapy
so we can wash her
as it is

and so you watched
as she dipped the doll
under the water
(it might have drowned

had it been for real)
and held it there
until bubbles came out
of the neck

and she lifted Betty out
and wiped her over
with a flowery face cloth
and Betty’s eyes

opened and closed
and you helped dry
and studied
(as boys tend to do)

the seriousness
of Helen about the task
the tongue hanging
from the side

of her mouth
her eyes focussed
the head to one side
like an animal

trying to understand
a human command
and the small hands
working with calm concern

just as you'd seen
your mother do
when she made a cake
or rolled out pastry

for a pie
once the doll was dry
and dressed
she put Betty back

in the tiny cot
her dad had made
from an orange box
and her mother said

sit down
and I’ll get you
some bread and jam
or bread and dripping

and mugs of tea
and off she went
to the kitchen
humming some hymn

and you looked at Helen
sitting there
with her plaits of hair
and big eyes

showing no fear
and a smile
from ear
to lovely ear.

the world is a wild and weary place,
fully sunk in spiral ******,
fully strummed in skin water waves.
bound by death from the very first verse:
first love.
first this.
                   go forth my machines, be fruitful and jettison.

color says hang at the edge of our lips.
smell the books.
remind us; books.

& before the big blue vast takes it all, that
sunstruck lomographia light,
transposed no-makeup california girl, she
walks before me along the boulders of the wharf.
real summer breathing.
our bodies, piled
and starbleached ripe. [like heap of buffalo skulls]

maybe then a futuristic dinner, where everyone gathers in floating space pods
singing hymns beneath,
                                                       above,
                                          between
               the lights and music.

reality is: blacktop shards against my knees,
something burning as it trickles to my chin, man of me
living the city glisten, city green
& pink.
city midnight and barely breathing.
destroyers, we are.

and what? what am i, father? man of industry?
man of workwelded science?   secure as the armadillo,
armadillo picket fence.
am i of halfbreed phosphorus?
americana?
built on love and hate and television.

  nat geo channel:  [a gecko licks dew from its eyes
                                                                ­  on the coastal sand dunes of namibia]

money. women. go west young man.
be a hand tightening ribs.
be a quaking echo of mammalian design.
a paradigm of seed my fire.

quest for fire.
for uncut diamond; like foggy strawberry rock in the africa-boy's fingers.
or cut steel; phallus of toyish death between a brazil-boy’s fingers.
pulled teeth; bits of wet fruit in the young afghani’s hand.
& icecream trolley; pedestal etched iron; denim and ***; and
microwaves  ::::::
white man: what I got ? what I got ?
manifest destiny: gold bricks and beer.

blood soaked socks.
cyprus burnt umbers.
tribes decomposing at the bottoms of styrofoam cups.
like coin-op wormies.
& eighteen inch circumference blades make round rolling high pitched songs deep in the skin of old mother earth.
old baby cakes.
old life in slow motion, all motion, all
of particle cannon treatise.
40 ounce bounce.
watery us
below.

i know of Knausgård -  sure, and i share this concerns for
the art of taking to lumber and chopping,
  as novelists tend to do, write with an axe,
philosophise with a hammer...
          metaphor turned into imagery
counter-turned into literalism...
   i once imagined him not being there -
i once wrote ich kampf, stressing
that it was an indefinite expression
of expression, primarily due to the content
of the pronoun... and i was referring also
to the definite expression (much obliged,
atheism, a- without, and the- with,
or indefinite and definite articulation) -
the English eye sees one stance as definite,
and another as indefinite, and juxtaposes
the two interacting...
                          they duly interchange...
i can say ich kampf and say i internalise
verbs: a movement of the hand,
   a strutting or a waltzing circumstance
of owning a body... that's what it's indefinite...
that's why Sartre slithered in counter to
his expanse in philosophy: because i really loved
his novels...
                          but in terms of a mein or
a mit (including me) struggle i find not
ease... no one dares to devalue ****** as a human,
not talking about the past history in purely human
terms urges the postscript of a dictator,
it actually elevates him to a godly status...
           not realising the human is to make flaws
of what the en masse does: raises him to a godly status...
     Zeus had a beard... not a Charlie Chaplin moustache...
right now he's laughing in his grave...
                      old Aldous ******...
   and aren't dictators born because people find their
surnames a little bit funny? it starts so
innocently...          and then it morphs...
   and it becomes an unstoppable morphing...
    yes... i know of a certain number of fellow
      contemporaries... because i want to? no,
because i have to. like rewatching the 2015 film
android - some films you have to rewatch...
   what's being debated? autism and artificial intelligence...
   hyperactive autism, i grant you that...
        it dawned on me... at autistic person could
fake a normal human response treating it as
      artificial... artificial also means mimicked -
  it means that "smart" guy at a bar reciting poetry
he hasn't written... artificial intelligence or the study of it
or even creating it has nothing original about it...
it's not groundbreaking in the same sense that
discovering champagne or penicillin is...
or l.s.d., because these examples have the magic of
being discovered by chance... humanity has been
artificially simulating intelligence since time
immemorial... it's that natural consequence of not being
endowed with a peacock's array of feathers
   to create a soothing, and sickly gentle wind of a woman
resting in a hammock under the shade of a palm tree...
artificial intelligence was inherent in us...
       it's the unravelling of the historical noumenon of man,
the per se that has only crept up on us,
   and before the reality of such a foundation being
established... the humanities create the "prophetic"
citations of it being true: in the "near" / impeding future.
    if god is a noumenon, then man cannot be a
phenomenon... but he is and paradoxically the two
of mutually compatible on a basis of exclusive rather than
an inclusive naturalisation...
               we are talking nature:
  we are talking god naturalised by the medium
suggesting: for i am bound to create obstacles and test
the body, rather than the mind of man...
    as so is man, also naturalised by the medium
of the elements, saying: for i am bound by a body,
   and have to utilise the body first, to overcome the wind
and the snow and the furthermore, until i reach
the labyrinth of the mind...
  and man has done just that, he has bypassed the struggles
of the body, and created entertainment using
the body that once struggled against the elements...
   for he has created the god Minotaur: and the psychic
labyrinthe... as with the Titans whom the gods
usurped, so too comes the twilight of the gods...
but being usurped by demigods...
       Minotaur was a demigod... who usurped the gods
of the trinity that were Zeus, Poseidon and Hades...
        for only the Greeks could create a Judaic bewilderment
as to why a sign was given unto an infant...
           but that's getting technical...
the film, android (2015)? it supports the misconception,
the anguish of a highly functioning autism...
      whereby showing a woman's carelessness in the realm
of adaptability with what some would claim to be
the beginning point of: overcoming the elements...
sure the odd tsunami and earthquake...
   but there's also the tiger, and winter, and parasite,
   and diseases of so many variations...
              man has not been endowed with complete
control over his surrounding... but in becoming partially
overlord of the ones tamed, he has created a mental
labyrinth... a world of such complexity that will
inevitably produce instances of autistic genius...
                 artificial intelligence is already imbedded in us,
just as cloning and Islam has already existed
(Christianity is too schismatic to be considered a cloning
definition... and Judaism as a monotheistic principle
has a heresy embedded in its orthodoxy that it simply
ignores: reincarnation... the Malachi heresy...
  that a second Elijah comes... and god becomes a half)...
   we see artificial intelligence everywhere...
        if the myth goes that woman fed man the original
lie of Eden... then man has nothing else to do than
attempt to polymer that one single lie...
       and repeat it... a reverse intrusion to what "could"
have been an utopian splendour.
      we all see artificial intelligence rummaging about
in the choices people make... it's called lying
   to gain access to a ****** gratification...
  or as i like to call it: a way to compensate our falling short
of the norm, a norm that focuses upon creating
   the most complex startup a Silicon Valley genius
can't comprehend... a family.
    these times prescribe such a bewilderment...
              families are artefacts of what some believe
precipitated into barbarity so close to us: the 20th century...
        and all those arguments you hear that might
discourage the opposite ***, as in damning your parents
for a piece of seashore **** fest of the *****?
   probably came from a person born from a surrogate
mother... well... an incubator, a very expensive *****...
   homsexuality created the evolution of prostitution,
once bound to the genitals... now bound to the womb...
     i.v.f. kids calling natural kids ******...
   i never liked the matrix movies in all honest...
but we're seeing the reversal of the original idea...
                 in the matrix of knowledge... hearts become
piñata: chockies sweet, sensations abundant,
  the spectrum is yours.
                but this poem isn't really about that...
i can sip a whiskey and actually find these things when
i start to utilise these symbols... it sometimes happens
that they fall through... all i was really thinking about
is the "theoretical" score of 147...
                      i'll call them billiards rather than *****
to excuse a "he-he" Michael Jackson laugh at a chance
of "nuance"...
       yellow (2), green (3), brown (4), blue (5), pink (6), black (7)...
and plenty of red (1)... points in bracket respectively...
                  of course from childhood memory i sided with
ronnie... also from Romford... an obscure town in Essex
that oversees the shard and canary wharf from
a distance...                    but watching snooker as a child...
          not too bad at pub-snooker: i.e. pool...
and that game show when snooker was hot back in
the 1990s... big break, with jim davidson as host...
    and of course: john virgo as the rejuvenated
                         ghost of alex higgins... this whiskey
swiggly is on me al.
                 but this final... ****! at one point it was
a century after a century...
                     chess with mathematics, trigonometry
and Pythagoras in motion...
                                    the gods playing with saturn
and jupiter neptune planetary arrangements...
            i can't word it properly... but it'll definitely sound
better than a concussion after too much rugby and
the rough-stuff of "manhood" strutting with bulging
muscle tensions... rather than this Japanese warrior-monk
in a waistcoat and bow-tie swirling a stick in the air...
           i just thought of one thing...
15 wildebeests on an African savannah...
       out comes one lioness...
    and she nibbles at the pack... and she picks off
the weakest of the 15 wildebeests...
              she nibbles the pack before the pack breaks away...
         she looks left (red) and then looks right (yellow,
green, brown, blue, pink, black) -
                      and she picks at the pack, one by one
they fall... but there are two games going on...
   there's the no-man's land snooker where the game is
about entrenchment, and snookering the opponent
for a foul... and then there's the tsunami snooker...
which kinda looks like one person playing chess...
     with no opponent other than a chance mistake...
misjudgement on the case of instinct and how they ******
well know what angle to fudge the white lioness
                onto the billards... and with what force...
      tsunami snooker, or cascade snooker is basically
a monologue...
                             after seeing 3 centuries in a row
you get to crave classical snook -
                                       the mind games of safety shots...
   and teasing, and tempting, and teasing, and tempting,
before the Rubic cube unravels itself,
   and you find that light at the end of the tunnel...
                        and the black pops into...
i'll be honest, i haven't watched snooker for a long time...
        maybe that's why i feel so enthusiastic about it...
       it's sometimes good to be fed this mundane diet
of sport-fanaticism that football is in accordance with
religious dogma... it's a good thing...
             then you end up watching a game of snooker
and all these things start firing up your brain...
   and you end up saying:
      the Taj Mahal can be there for all i care...
the Grand Canyon can be there for all i care...
                    such things don't really require a photograph
with my gimp-face trying to make other people jealous
by actually being there: only to take a photograph,
rather than feed into the air and the thrill of being there...
        as they say... it's a small world after all...
better get used to it being much bigger inside your head.

The Thames nocturne of blue and gold
Changed to a Harmony in grey:
A barge with ochre-coloured hay
Dropt from the wharf:  and chill and cold

The yellow fog came creeping down
The bridges, till the houses’ walls
Seemed changed to shadows and St. Paul’s
Loomed like a bubble o’er the town.

Then suddenly arose the clang
Of waking life; the streets were stirred
With country waggons:  and a bird
Flew to the glistening roofs and sang.

But one pale woman all alone,
The daylight kissing her wan hair,
Loitered beneath the gas lamps’ flare,
With lips of flame and heart of stone.

Such solidarity we created
On the hilltop with the cows

Discussing sassafras,
Our Chakras,
Summer-berry wine.

Per aspera ad astra
But without inhaling tar
We have come.

The cornbread with anise and wheat berries
Cruncy and sweet
Slathered with strawberry jam
Was such a luxurious meal
For us two tired wanderers.

We're left over from the '60s
Living in the past but in the moment
Listening to Mama Tried (well, she did!)
And crying over Wharf Rat
We model turtles, Celtic knots, a moose
Dream of yesterday and tomorrow
Say what we mean
Take a misguided turn driving home
And our minds meander to slumber and internal illusions.