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Raj Arumugam Oct 2010
You useless man, Socrates -
I think you need a shower…
I don’t know what the Athenians
find in you but as far as I can see you’re just wasting time
hanging out in the market places
and at dinners and symposiums
where all you do is stay late drinking nights
and talk about philosophy, and ideas
and of origin of things and justice
and nature of human beings
and such useless, impractical things;
and you bring not a cent home
and I can’t count on you for regular support
as all women and good wives might expect of a husband;
and you can’t even hold a good argument with me
for all you do when I use my Xanthippe’s questioning method
against your so-called Socratic method
all you do is mumble and tumble
and use words like shrew and nag
when all I’m asking of you is for you
to keep your part of the implied bargain in marriage
to put some food on the table
and bring some silver coins for the future of our three children:
Lamprocles, Sophroniscus and Menexenus -
have you forgotten them? Do you even remember their names?
And so you bring no money
but instead all you give me are empty words
and lofty words and airy words
and words coined in your head
and you put silly ideas that’s just confusing our children
and if not for me taking the children under my wings
they’ll just turn out to be mere
talkers and market-place prattlers
and hangers-on and leeches at other men’s feasts.
They may have a place in misguided history
if they follow your way
but they will bring weak bodies to their wives
when it is their time.
I don’t want them to be talkers,
and idealists and philosophers, Socrates –
I want them to be responsible
and I want them to bring meat and coins home
regularly and steadily, Socrates.
Socrates, you old man, I don’t care what they say of you
in the Greek world –
I haven’t had proof of your worth and value
here at home, especially in the kitchen.
You useless man, I think you need a shower;
maybe this water from the chamber-*** will wake you up.
an imaginative account of Xanthippe and Socrates as she empties the chamber-*** on her husband, Socrates....
¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯
alas,
my dearest
Xanthippe,
I do so pine
for thee—

arrestless
tender touch
what's left
mine eyes
b'labored,
beauty!

gen'rous hums
the crest
aroun'neath
ambrous
skye's
seduction,

'pon thy leather,
set me down,
coerced aback
by thine
induction..


∘ ⊱‧⌍  ⌈✞⌋  ⌌‧⊰ ∞
﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋
Iris Rebry Apr 2014
abridge the air above the aria
because basically I'm bent on balancing books
center to the capacity of culpability
derived from the demonic disappointments
entering my ethnicity.
Forget the foul fate
of  so greatly glazed
a high horse
inside an icy inescapable
jail, where juveniles jinx
Kublai Khan, knocking the kimono
lying lazily upon the lamp.
Mortifying my middle man
never negating the negotiations
of an open opinion
perhaps a pernicious
quagmire, quietly and quickly,
ravenously rages,
sickly. Stop spewing
this title to tempt
under the universe
very volatile in
waiting. Wonder why
Xanthippe from   Xian is
yearning for your
zenith and zeros in

on your words.
Pondering,
wondering,
if this is all for nothing.
coming up asundering.
their voices thundering.

and I am
silent.
now.
alone.
staring into a world undone,
wondering where the sun
could be.
And seeing,
it's right behind of me
And I wonder how I got
where I ought to be.
my food for thought is free.
it's the words inside of me.
I tried writing this poem for my school's slam poetry contest, both my mother and sister didn't get it. Poetry is not something that should be explained, but should be felt.
Qualyxian Quest Aug 2020
Xanthippe was a shrew.

Living with her teaches me how to get along with the rest of the world, said Socrates.
SteffyWeffy Aug 2016
A, Anorexia.

B, Body Image

C, Cutting.

D, Death.

E, Emblaze.

F, Forgiveness.

G, Gene.

H, Helpless.

I, Insane.

J, Jocund.

K, Kindness.

L, Lost.

M, Memories.

N, Numb.

O, Oxygen.

P, Patience.

Q, Quiet.

R, Rejected.

S, Suicide.

T, Tired.

U, Undo.

V, Vivid.

W, Worthless.

X, Xanthippe.

Y, Yellow.

Z, Zombie.
I don't even know if anyone will like this. I hope you do though.
I thought this was a good idea.
I did ABCs and used one word for each letter.
The words I used mean different things to me or are important to me for different reasons.
Qualyxian Quest Mar 2021
Living with her teaches me how to get along with the rest of the world.

Said Socrates.
It rumbles and roars
The rage I harbor in my bones
Unsung song of contention
Bitter and bilious in my mouth
Because when I tried to speak,
nobody was listening

Boundries of consent are drawn at home
And maintained before being extended
To a world where Xanthippe is a slur
Between giving up a career and giving in to a creep
There isn't much of an option

Shame is the best weapon after fear
In the arsenal of patriarchy
Ammo of choice for its sari draped agents
To keep young women in line lest they
Sprout a tongue or mind of their own

Decades of silence has fed the fire of rage
Licking and moulding my contours
Till I turn into Jael yielding pen
Refusing to be a collateral any longer, ready
To nail Sisera, with or without a Barak to celebrate
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2018
is America still trying to
be relevant, culturally
within the confines of Europe
by exporting their last resort,
no longer poem song or painting
resorting to staging
its dumbest sport outcast
that's füßball at Wembley
when, sure as **** I'd rather
watch baseball like any ***
over the complexity of
grr... cricket...
      call me a ****- and don
me in a toga and I'll sing
you, a ******* canary song...
to ensure: one touch,
fifteen minutes of advertising...
and they said that fans of metal
music were a butcher's sweetbits
worth of cranium jelly...
con con, con cuss 'ushion...
bet doll on the ramming buck...
origins of baseball,
palant... schlagbalz...
even ******* regenmensch
collected the world series cards...
not in the land famed for
rug, grub and by the by of rugged
botox injected into *******...
    pucker lips weeding out
the prince charming ******
to a hideous wart oozing lips...
            desperation comes
at Wembley... in the form
of cultural exhaustion...
        came the song, then came the sports...
NHL on Loch Ness...
baseball toyed with at the Oval...
but... is this an actual sport
or one of those boardgames 3D
where you paint the figurines,
warhammer, over complicating
throwing dice?
    gambling and striptease...
            and the most beautiful words
she said to me was:
   i have STD check regurarly...
i don't mind wearing the rubber...
late in his life socrates wondered
why be ****** to a married life
with an ever-demanding wife...
to cite Plato: what man visited
a *******, we will look at him
with an ackward gaze...
                 likewise...
   i'm surprised he managed to
listen to the nagging of xanthippe...
     aquam sordidam anima mea mundus.
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2024
the way i see it, Islam is in an existential crisis, the sooner we get through this 2nd schism of Islam the better: since being exposed to western secular traditions and antiquated Marxist cognitive dissonance the better, this Islam teasing at both Marxism and fascism... this modern Islam ***** without any Sufi integrity... how does Islam even function by ostracising the Shia branch? my guess: like western seculars ostracising Russians... Christ's passion is who's subsequent lament? there's no room for apathy here: not direct antonym - because reincarnation is impossible in monotheism, therefore? oh: what could i be possibly insinuating, hmm? i went through my lamentation: and how glorious it was, yet impossible to be reminiscent concerning (it): having met the antonym of Xanthippe... who has allowed me to become... a play on masculinity is that which does, while women are: beings, men are the doings... yet there is this transitional grey area of: becoming... i am becoming; in Edie's own words - once finding: giving love and being loved... in my own words: since we can give closure to half of the war waged we can focus on the other war: that we have to battle mortality... but how easy was it to so easily write about it with hindsight... my god: was it worth all the trials and tribulations... i will posit that my lamentation was as glorious as that passion on the cross... if people will want to dangle an instrument of torture around their necks: i'd recommend dangling iron maidens. also (of due note, nota bene, appropriately) - does anyone not think that Islam is in a crisis? NOT... heresy heresy blah blah blah... so who wrote the Quran? last time i heard Muhammad (ha ha... funny knowing two tongues... mucha... fly... mad... mad fly Muhammad, frenzied Beelzebub) was illiterate, so who wrote those **** words and why do they spiral out into nuggets, haiku sized verses at the end? my guess is that Muhammad's first wife, Khadijah **** Khuwaylid wrote the **** book, the dutiful wife senior to ol' Mo... drown in the empathy of the orphan? my own father was "technically" an orphan... more or less abandoned by his mother and father, although with a father-orbiter... messy stuff this glue we call family: easier to dangle individualism on a stick of otherwise perpetual conformity to adhesion toward a "something or other" that is civilisation: to ensure that our ontology does not revert to the supposedly pre-history pre-civilisation of that Edenic glorified working appendix: i dare you talk to someone clued in on biology as nutrition and how we "evolved" to not have the biological capacity to digest plant foods for their fat etc. - those adhering to a carnivore diet - no one can be stupid enough to not think that poor Muslims don't see the degeneracy in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar or Saudi Arabia and think... where is talk of the "ummah" and Afghanistan and Palestine? i know of the "arguments" when it came to Poland and the migrant crisis circa 2016... all those ******* glorious instances of multicultural injections of "progress": but who the **** took the majority of the displaced Ukrainians? Poland did... not diverse enough? too, ******* white? if i can ask a question: rhetorically, can i hear an echo of the same question: dialectically? it's like that analogy of the tree falling in the forest: if no one hears it falling: does it actually make a sound? i'll ask a question rhetorically: in good faith... will i hear the same question (or thereabouts), dialectically?

my new favourite word, coming all the way
from a mouth in Malasia... no: Malaysia -
i should (maybe?) have known it,
but no: i didn't... until now...

etymology and the extinction of languages:
soft machines - computers and the inner
dynamic: unlike hard machines
those associated with hammers and cars...

i made the mistake of drinking three coffees
in the morning,
to **** off the buzz and nausea
i had to resort to a downer: a 8.2% strong
cider: which, unlike the alcoholic's
go to with 9% strong Carlsberg
is rather refreshing: since that low alcohol
sickly sweetness is lost
whereby a cider becomes a better alternative
to wine...

Christianity: i have no problem with it
surviving: as long as it is a religion
of women: for women...
Christianity doesn't appeal to my masculinity,
Christianity is not a religion for men...
i'll be frank: the best lovers are Christian
women...
i am not a Christian man...
i can parody Christianity with my ******
catholicism: which, like Irish catholicism
is an ethnocentric gimmick for...

heathenism, mingling with Judaic occultism...
i problem solve with a demand
for pareidolia... now i will have to use Greek
(and i blame the Greeks for this,
"blame"...
i'm more inclined to the heathen philosophy
the ancient children of Greece
that conjured up atoms without microscopes)....

παρειδoλια

    ah... that word i was referencing:

πετριχoρ -

              petrichor: the smell of rain...
from stone the golden fluid that was mythologically
the "blood" of the gods...
sunshine up my ***...
        i only "love" god out of fear...
i couldn't possibly fear him out of love...
sometimes i get these glimmers of hope
for the destruction of my ego:
i already know it's a nuisance and unreal:
the ego...
just as much as i known that
our consciousness is born out of memory
yet our memory is a faulty faculty since
we don't remember everything
and what we "choose" to remember
is a bit like...

the veneer of civilization, yet this constant
bubbling of Darwinistic principles...
we pretend to be civilised
yet when the ontological buildings blocks
of 1 + 1 = 2 come into play... hmm...

maybe because Reyla is not my child...
that i don't feel my testosterone levels being somehow
diminished...
for the past few days i've been calling up
Edie and checking on her...
poor girl hottie Aztec chickety is down with
the flu and flutes of sneezing and
baritone brass of coughing
but still: in sickness and in health till death
do us part...
i've become OCD "clever" all huffing and
disorientated with: i need to be there...
physical barriers... transcended...

   a seemingly infamous concoction
of a raw egg yolk generously beaten together with
a teaspoon of honey...
milk with a tablespoon of butter heated...
the warmed milk and butter
poured over the yolk and honey: cured...
thus drank...
     some people break into sweats... others don't...
but who, ill enough... is getting enough
calories to battle a virus?
whatever the "magic" of this concoction...
day two of me trying to make her return
to her former self... well...
maybe it's just lining her throat...

mirrors... mirrors on ceilings...
mirrors on floors... mirrors mirrors...
mmm           mirrors in woods mirrors in the sky
mirrors in water...
              a mirror for a mermaid
a mirror for a minotaur...
                a mirror for a mirror for an eye...
by that i'm implying:
how far can i make the private public
or rather: how best can i disguise the private
with the public...
i'll say no more...
so instead maybe i should "talk" about
my bromance with an ex-police officer went
off on such an assured footing...
why he quit the police force?

PTSD... he still visualises the scent of two rotting
corpses he found hanging in a room...
he visualises the scent
of rotting flesh that was dangling for circa 6 months...
now that i discovered the word
petrichor i can fuse search engines
and A.I. steroid and...

        hey presto: σύν- + -αἴσθησις = συνεσθησια...
as i've learned...
the diacritical marks in Greek are variations
of meaning: ask a Greek about Greek
and he'll tell you that there are at least
4 gradations of the language...
i didn't get a classical education:
    philology:            or rather: it's something ongoing...
and to think...
i do have a historical artifact from the 1960s...
England: how rotten pedagogy has become:
the first sign of a culture in decline
is always brought back to pedagogic demands /
standards...
back in the 1960s Latin was still actively taught!
shame...

  quis es: quo vadis?
who are you: where are you going?
   ha ha: clarity: A.I. is equivalent to search engines
on steroids: more like customised,
personalised search engines...

- me: how do you say: who are you? in Latin,
  Google, as a search engine is being terribly
  inconsistent.
- chatGPT: in Latin, "who are you?" can be translated
   as "quis es?"
- me: so not: quis es tu?
- chatGPT: both "quis es?" and "quis es tu?" are
  grammatically correct in Latin and convey the same
  meaning, "who are you?". the inclusion of "tu"
  (meaning "you") adds emphasis but is not necessary
  for clarity. both forms are commonly used in Latin
  literature and conversation.

well well... and it's not like Polish isn't
an imitation of Latin, grammatically speaking:
of note: you can obliterate the use of
pronouns in a conversation: completely...
just like in ancient Latin...
i never understood this Hebrew pride on continuity
citing that Latin is somehow dead:
no... Latin is still alive: it just mutated...
it's alive: grammatically in Poland
and... well... in script pretty much everywhere
else in the world... in computers...
in preserving Greek ideas...     still ticking:
tick tock tick tock...
                                   oh but i understand the Hebrew
pride... i've even succumbed to Kabbalism...
but obviously Judaism being an exclusive
club: i would never actually become a proselyte:
i was handed the ****** hand of
catholicism and that's that...

              i'm not going to be another Barry from
the Four Lions...
that film has aged so so well...
about as well as: As Good As It Gets...
some memorable lines by Barry:

Barry : *******, I'm a liability! I am the Invisible Jihadi!
They seek him here, they seek him there, but here's not there,
he's blowing up your **** sister!
Omar : Invisible? Right. Like the time you got
on the local news for baking a Twin Towers cake
and leaving it at the synagogue on 9/11?
Barry : That is part of the plan! Hide in plain sight, you mug!

   (credit to chris morris, sam bain and jesse armstrong)

such oddity... destroying the ego by talking
silently before going to sleep...
who in their right mind would think that
the ego resides in the brain?
i speak by an extension of me thinking
therefore the ego resides in the mouth...
the audibility of soul: is that what we call
the "audibility" of thought?
my brain is my eyes...
              no: my brain are not my eyes...
i was just wondering for a tick
               my brain are my eyes?  no...
my eyes are my brain...
                        i can do away with all that 20th century
Jungian Freudian schematisation of man
boiling the secular trinity of
ego (consciousness)
   superego (subconscious) and the id (unconscious)...
i'll just **** it... it's a nuisance to begin with:
how much of my ego i need to filter out
is staggering... i swear it's a hindrance on
consciousness... feeding that yap-yap-yap
not-I of Samuel Beckett...
                                     people can talk about
viruses and biology all they want...
but what of the cognitive viruses: bad ideas...
like the preservation of Marxism
                             and its marriage to radical Islam?
Qualyxian Quest Dec 2022
The man who wrote Dixie
Was a Northerner
From Ohio
Horrified to discover
Southern troops sang it in the Civil War

It was also a favorite of Abraham Lincoln's
Who requested it to be played
When Lee surrendered
At Appomattox
A gesture of good will

Mary Todd Lincoln
Elizabeth Shaw
Xanthippe
Kiss me, Kate

Oh I wish I was
In the Land of Cotton
Old times there
Are not forgotten

     But I'm gonna have to wait.
Qualyxian Quest Aug 2021
I learned the truth of women
It isn't very pretty
Here comes the rain
Dialogue, Plato

Xanthippe was a shrew
C'mon, Kiss me Cate
I like Paul Theroux
At least the way he writes

It's meaningless this life
Still we have to live it
Will we meet again?
No, I don't think so

Virginia is for lovers
And for losers too
Took the Tucson Train
Saw the Phoenix Lights

             Goodnights!
Qualyxian Quest Oct 2021
Xanthippe was a shrew
So was Mary Todd
Feminine insane
Have trod, have trod, have trod

Pythagoras he loved numbers
137. 72.
Vincent's eyes were green
Susan Meek's are blue

               Pondicherry Zoo
Qualyxian Quest Dec 2022
I like the idea
Of poetry as shared privacy
I try to let you in
Dear reader

Sleet and freezing rain coming
Hath the rain a father?
David Markson in Mexico
David Markson's daughter

Xanthippe was a shrew
Alas, I understand
Susan is gentle caring
Alas, I am not her man

Keep an eye on Denver
Rocky Mountain High
Come some soul September
I too true Thai Wai

           Purple goes the sky!
Qualyxian Quest Nov 2022
Playing good D again today
And I'm on the attack
Ron Desantis was in Baghdad
When George W. Destroyed Iraq

Midnight's Broken Toll
I eat a Midnight snack
You shook me all night long
And I'm Back in Black

Exoplanets spin
Maybe UFOs
Yearning still within
No one really knows

Xanthippe was a shrew
So was Mary Todd
I'm in Taipei 101
And 101 is odd

have trod, have trod, have trod ...
Qualyxian Quest Aug 2020
?
Shakyamuni and Yasodhara
Socrates and Xanthippe
Jesus and ?
Qualyxian Quest Jan 2020
marriage is real misery
the fighting never ends

the female mind quite unkind
better to be distant friends

Jesus had no wife
Xanthippe was a shrew

The Buddha fled a marriage bed
Probably we should too

                   Achoo!

— The End —