six decades later i'm still saying
i've read the bible
not really. it was too big a tome
to start with and to read along like a novel.

yes, there were lots of little stories
that were drilled into us as guidelines
to a better life
but now at the *** end of life
these stories have worn thin
with the changing of the times. thank god.

all of us are prodigal sons in some way
wallowed with pigs
spread our wantonness
swore and cussed
been adulterous
broken every commandment
(except ******).
and lived unholy lives
when measured against biblical yardsticks.

so be it.
imagine a world without sinners.
can you?
me? for sure, i am  a sinner
my yardstick is eternity long.




Author Notes

Yep.I own up. I was grinning when I wrote this poem. Just this morning I had two lovely people wander up to my doorstep, telling me where I was so wrong in my belief. I listened for a while. Then gave up. They had a colourful magazine, nice colourful ties and pink rosy cheeks too! But they were trying to change my pagan ways to their side of the fence of thinking.

I thought it was too late. As someone who knows how long his biblical yardstick is, there was really no point. I could argue till the cows came home and it wouldn't work. So, blah blah.blah.

They said what they had to say, i listened, now more convinced that the world is full of jokers like me!

© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, 3 months ago

- See more at: http://allpoetry.com/poem/11437496-the-yardstick-by-Marshall-Gass#sthash.6P7TaJez.dpuf

Life is the treasure and knowledge is the fire to kindle and wisdom the outcome to distill it

Poverty is taking away food from a fellow human being
Poverty is not being grateful that you have slept having eaten a comfortable meal
Poverty is going out there with a poor self image and using the presence of others to mask your inadequacy
Poverty is not knowing how divine you are, your soul content

Poverty as a woman is not being able to say how you feel and what you feel because you are afraid of rejection or disappointment
Poverty is trying to make a guy feel insecure because you yourself are insecure
Poverty is trying to have multiple ****** relations to either draw a man or men towards you or simply for the sake of trying to fuel your self esteem
Poverty is dreaming and letting the birds talk about it as a could have been
Poverty is stabbing a person you love dearly in the back
Poverty is blaming society, culture and circumstances at home for not progressing forward
Poverty is killing because you are stuck in unorderly primitive and unruly state and you do not know tranquility

Poverty is wanting things to remain the same because it protects you from growth and the awe of advancement
Poverty is living in the past and endlessly trying to change the present
Poverty is not knowing what to say because you have forgotten how to compose yourself in the presence of others
Poverty is thinking for short term satisfaction breeding inevitable lack of long term contentedness

Wealth is inviting the future fearlessly
Wealth is loving abundantly
Wealth is joining the heart's dance by yielding to emotions of pure positive vibrations
Wealth is making the heart intelligent so your desires are not  of a marginal durability
Wealth is seeking the truth because it will wash away the lies and test your bravery as it opens up the wounds and the pain of reality
Wealth is knowing that in giving a lot and asking less more than half the time; you remain abundant
  Wealth is imagining what a future 'you' would be like and in pursuit you strive to make your future self proud
Wealth is having an open mind and seeking first to understand than to be understood
Wealth is trying to find better solutions for either parties, a higher way; which healthily benefits either parties

Wealth is having someone who will support you no matter what
Wealth is sticking to divine principles because they will stand no matter what
Wealth is treating another better than you treat yourself and in essence you treat yourself as the greatest being
Wealth is being patient and persevering for good things because you will honour them as you understand what it took to earn them
Wealth is making a promise and keeping it, it boosts the progress of the whole Universe; even the promises we make to ourselves
Wealth is cleaning up after ourselves and engineering our personhood to not rely on insubstantial and baseless objectives and mantras
Wealth is taking a stand for one's own life and not waiting for a hero to pull up the yardstick
Wealth is going to the dam with a  broken rod and teaching yourself how to fish until a master comes and philosophises your decorum, approach, conduct and credo on the whole process of being independent and going out into the world,
Wealth is unlearning all of the miseducation that we have been fed since the day we were born and relearning and rewiring our psyche to be conscious and cosmically aligned with our divine purposes and use the resources around us to make the raw a tangible gem and vice versa.

Say no to poverty.
Live a sincere life of truth and meaning, we only have so much time to pay off our debts until we're rich enough to give back to the world again.

"Angels of the love affair, do you know that other,
the dark one, that other me?"

1. ANGEL OF FIRE AND GENITALS

Angel of fire and genitals, do you know slime,
that green mama who first forced me to sing,
who put me first in the latrine, that pantomime
of brown where I was beggar and she was king?
I said, "The devil is down that festering hole."
Then he bit me in the buttocks and took over my soul.
Fire woman, you of the ancient flame, you
of the Bunsen burner, you of the candle,
you of the blast furnace, you of the barbecue,
you of the fierce solar energy, Mademoiselle,
take some ice, take come snow, take a month of rain
and you would gutter in the dark, cracking up your brain.

Mother of fire, let me stand at your devouring gate
as the sun dies in your arms and you loosen it's terrible weight.



2. ANGEL OF CLEAN SHEETS

Angel of clean sheets, do you know bedbugs?
Once in the madhouse they came like specks of cinnamon
as I lay in a choral cave of drugs,
as old as a dog, as quiet as a skeleton.
Little bits of dried blood. One hundred marks
upon the sheet. One hundred kisses in the dark.
White sheets smelling of soap and Clorox
have nothing to do with this night of soil,
nothing to do with barred windows and multiple locks
and all the webbing in the bed, the ultimate recoil.
I have slept in silk and in red and in black.
I have slept on sand and, on fall night, a haystack.

I have known a crib. I have known the tuck-in of a child
but inside my hair waits the night I was defiled.



3. ANGEL OF FLIGHT AND SLEIGH BELLS

Angel of flight and sleigh bells, do you know paralysis,
that ether house where your arms and legs are cement?
You are as still as a yardstick. You have a doll's kiss.
The brain whirls in a fit. The brain is not evident.
I have gone to that same place without a germ or a stroke.
A little solo act--that lady with the brain that broke.

In this fashion I have become a tree.
I have become a vase you can pick up or drop at will,
inanimate at last. What unusual luck! My body
passively resisting. Part of the leftovers. Part of the ****.
Angels of flight, you soarer, you flapper, you floater,
you gull that grows out of my back in the drreams I prefer,

stay near. But give me the totem. Give me the shut eye
where I stand in stone shoes as the world's bicycle goes by.



4. ANGEL OF HOPE AND CALENDARS

Angel of hope and calendars, do you know despair?
That hole I crawl into with a box of Kleenex,
that hole where the fire woman is tied to her chair,
that hole where leather men are wringing their necks,
where the sea has turned into a pond of *****.
There is no place to wash and no marine beings to stir in.

In this hole your mother is crying out each day.
Your father is eating cake and digging her grave.
In this hole your baby is strangling. Your mouth is clay.
Your eyes are made of glass. They break. You are not brave.
You are alone like a dog in a kennel. Your hands
break out in boils. Your arms are cut and bound by bands

of wire. Your voice is out there. Your voice is strange.
There are no prayers here. Here there is no change.



5. ANGEL OF BLIZZARDS AND BLACKOUTS

Angle of blizzards and blackouts, do you know raspberries,
those rubies that sat in the gree of my grandfather's garden?
You of the snow tires, you of the sugary wings, you freeze
me out. Leet me crawl through the patch. Let me be ten.
Let me pick those sweet kisses, thief that I was,
as the sea on my left slapped its applause.

Only my grandfather was allowed there. Or the maid
who came with a scullery pan to pick for breakfast.
She of the rols that floated in the air, she of the inlaid
woodwork all greasy with lemon, she of the feather and dust,
not I. Nonetheless I came sneaking across the salt lawn
in bare feet and jumping-jack pajamas in the spongy dawn.

Oh Angel of the blizzard and blackout, Madam white face,
take me back to that red mouth, that July 21st place.



6. ANGEL OF BEACH HOUSES AND PICNICS

Angel of beach houses and picnics, do you know solitaire?
Fifty-two reds and blacks and only myslef to blame.
My blood buzzes like a hornet's nest. I sit in a kitchen chair
at a table set for one. The silverware is the same
and the glass and the sugar bowl. I hear my lungs fill and expel
as in an operation. But I have no one left to tell.

Once I was a couple. I was my own king and queen
with cheese and bread and rose on the rocks of Rockport.
Once I sunbathed in the buff, all brown and lean,
watching the toy sloops go by, holding court
for busloads of tourists. Once I called breakfast the sexiest
meal of the day. Once I invited arrest

at the peace march in Washington. Once I was young and bold
and left hundreds of unmatched people out in the cold.

There was this time before the going home. The supers bowled off with cheery parents or elder brothers a good fortnight before the big day. There were lessons, but despite the best efforts of the staff who remained nobody could take this between time seriously. Mr Gayford for maths was hardly a substitute for Alfie's lively lessons. But Alfie we knew was climbing in the Alps this Christmas and would return with photos and tales that kept us enthralled despite the sums he invented - calculate the air pressure at 4107 metres on the Jungfrau. We all loved him with his self-raising Citroen Safari that smelt enticingly of Gitanes and that scent Claudia his girlfriend favoured. Oh Claudia, so wonderfully and exotically dressed, who seemed a world away from any boy's mother or sister.
 
Mornings were quite different. A later breakfast and then a two-hour practice with Dr. B . Hard work, with new music to learn. But the carols! Oh those sounds, and so different from what we sang all year. Boris Ord's Adam lay y bonden, Praetorius A Great and Mighty Wonder, Torches, In Dulce Jubilo. and as Advent progressed that magical verse anthem by Orlando Gibbons This is  the Record of John.
 
I was just eleven when Dr. B said, as we opened the music folder for the morning rehearsal, 'St Clair, Can you do this for us please?' Not so much a question as a command; you didn't say no to Dr. B. The introduction was well underway before I grasped it was to be me. How I stumbled through it that first time I don't know. I could never hear this piece without tears welling or indeed falling. ' Look Mog is getting tearful' said Richards the head chorister, and the little boys would snigger. And I would blush:  through my freckles to the roots of my auburn gold hair. Did nobody understand what this music did to me, what it said and expressed? At eleven I think I had began to know, and later when I heard it in Kings Chapel, and then conducted it variously to those bemused American students, listened to my gramophone recording, its affect always, always the same. I was experiencing truly what Vikram Seth has called an equal music, something so entirely right, a true conjunction of words and music, a coming together beyond anything as a composer I could ever imagine, a yardstick life-long; it became an acid test of sensitivity to my love of music and has been passed only four times by serious friends and lovers. To know me you must know and feel this music . . .
 
And so on the second Sunday of Advent at Evensong I sang this jewel, this precious flower of music's art. The candles flickered in Her Majesty's chapel and we stood for the anthem. The chamber ***** began its short introduction already weaving together the four-part texture - and then the first solo statement. This is the record of John when the Jews sent priest and Levites from Jerusalem . . . and then the tears fell and the music swam in front of me as though glazed in the candlelight.
 
Who art thou then? And he confessed and denied not, and said plainly, 'I am not the Christ'.
 
Oh that melisma on the 'I', that written out ornament, so emphatic, and expressing this truth with innocent authority. I sang it then as I hear it now. Nobody had to demonstrate and say 'Don't let it flow, let each note be separate, exact, purposeful'. So it was and ever shall be, Amen.
 
And they asked him, What art thou then? (Art thou Elias? x 2). And he said I am not. ( Art thou the prophet? x 2) And he said I am not.
 
The verse anthem is such a peculiar phenomenon of the English Reformation. Devised it is said to allow the hard-pressed choirmaster to train the main body of his singers in a short response, the soloist singing the hardest and most expressive music on his own: the verse. It is also so well suited to the English choral tradition with its Cantores and Decani ordering of voices. I was always a ‘Can’, even later when I joined the back row as a tenor.
 
Then they said unto him, What art thou? That we may give an answer unto them that sent us. What sayest thou of thyself? And he said I am the voice of him that cryeth in the wilderness. Make straight the way if the Lord.
 
And so I wonder still about the place of this text in the liturgy of Advent and why, cloaked in Gibbons’ music, it has remained affecting and necessary. And who is John? a prophet of the desert, the son of Elizabeth to whom Mary went to share the news of her pregnancy and whose own son quickened in her womb as she heard of her cousin Elizabeth's own miracle - a childless woman beyond childbearing age unexpectedly blessed and whose partner struck dumb for the duration of her confinement. Is it just another piece in the jigsaw of the Christmas story in which prophecy takes its part?
 
When I was eleven I thought to 'cry in the wilderness' meant exactly that - tears in a desert place. I learnt later that this was a man who stood apart, was different, a hippie dressed in the untreated skins of wild beasts, who lived amongst those who sought the wild places to mourn, to place themselves in a kind of quarantine after illness or bereavement, who then became wise, and who cried.
 
Such meditations seem appropriate to the season when there is so often the necessity of travel, much waiting about, the bearing down of the bleakness of winter time, though strung about with moments of delicious warmth when coming in from the cold as with the chair by the library fire I craved as a chorister to escape blissfully into fictioned lives and exotic places.
 
How these things touch us vividly throughout our lives; as we watch and wait and listen.

(France -- Ancient Regime.)

I.

Go away!
Go away; I will not confess to you!
His black biretta clings like a hangman's cap; under his twitching fingers the beads shiver and click,
As he mumbles in his corner, the shadow deepens upon him;
I will not confess! . . .

Is he there or is it intenser shadow?
Dark huddled coilings from the obscene depths,
Black, formless shadow,
Shadow.
Doors creak; from secret parts of the chateau come the scuffle and worry of rats.

Orange light drips from the guttering candles,
Eddying over the vast embroideries of the bed
Stirring the monstrous tapestries,
Retreating before the sable impending gloom of the canopy
With a swift ****** and sparkle of gold,
Lipping my hands,
Then
Rippling back abashed before the ominous silences
Like the swift turns and starts of an overpowered fencer
Who sees before him Horror
Behind him darkness,
Shadow.

The clock jars and strikes, a thin, sudden note like the sob of a child.
Clock, buhl clock that ticked out the tortuous hours of my birth,
Clock, evil, wizened dwarf of a clock, how many years of agony have you relentlessly measured,
Yardstick of my stifling shroud?

I am Aumaury de Montreuil; once quick, soon to be eaten of worms.
You hear, Father? Hsh, he is asleep in the night's cloak.

Over me too steals sleep.
Sleep like a white mist on the rotting paintings of cupids and gods on the ceiling;
Sleep on the carven shields and knots at the foot of the bed,
Oozing, blurring outlines, obliterating colors,
Death.

Father, Father, I must not sleep!
It does not hear -- that shadow crouched in the corner . . .
Is it a shadow?
One might think so indeed, save for the calm face, yellow as wax, that lifts like the face of a drowned man from the choking darkness.


II.

Out of the drowsy fog my body creeps back to me.
It is the white time before dawn.
Moonlight, watery, pellucid, lifeless, ripples over the world.
The grass beneath it is gray; the stars pale in the sky.
The night dew has fallen;
An infinity of little drops, crystals from which all light has been taken,
Glint on the sighing branches.
All is purity, without color, without stir, without passion.

Suddenly a peacock screams.

My heart shocks and stops;
Sweat, cold corpse-sweat
Covers my rigid body.
My hair stands on end. I cannot stir. I cannot speak.
It is terror, terror that is walking the pale sick gardens
And the eyeless face no man may see and live!
Ah-h-h-h-h!
Father, Father, wake! wake and save me!
In his corner all is shadow.

Dead things creep from the ground.
It is so long ago that she died, so long ago!
Dust crushes her, earth holds her, mold grips her.
Fiends, do you not know that she is dead? . . .
"Let us dance the pavon!" she said; the waxlights glittered like swords on the polished floor.
Twinkling on jewelled snuffboxes, beaming savagely from the crass gold of candelabra,
From the white shoulders of girls and the white powdered wigs of men . . .
All life was that dance.
The mocking, resistless current,
The beauty, the passion, the perilous madness --
As she took my hand, released it and spread her dresses like petals,
Turning, swaying in beauty,
A lily, bowed by the rain, --
Moonlight she was, and her body of moonlight and foam,
And her eyes stars.
Oh the dance has a pattern!
But the clear grace of her thrilled through the notes of the viols,
Tremulous, pleading, escaping, immortal, untamed,
And, as we ended,
She blew me a kiss from her hand like a drifting white blossom --
And the starshine was gone; and she fled like a bird up the stair.

Underneath the window a peacock screams,
And claws click, scrape
Like little lacquered boots on the rough stone.

Oh the long fantasy of the kiss; the ceaseless hunger, ceaselessly, divinely appeased!
The aching presence of the beloved's beauty!
The wisdom, the incense, the brightness!

Once more on the ice-bright floor they danced the pavon
But I turned to the garden and her from the lighted candles.
Softly I trod the lush grass between the black hedges of box.
Softly, for I should take her unawares and catch her arms,
And embrace her, dear and startled.

By the arbor all the moonlight flowed in silver
And her head was on his breast.
She did not scream or shudder
When my sword was where her head had lain
In the quiet moonlight;
But turned to me with one pale hand uplifted,
All her satins fiery with the starshine,
Nacreous, shimmering, weeping, iridescent,
Like the quivering plumage of a peacock . . .
Then her head drooped and I gripped her hair,
Oh soft, scented cloud across my fingers! --
Bending her white neck back. . . .

Blood writhed on my hands; I trod in blood. . . .
Stupidly agaze
At that crumpled heap of silk and moonlight,
Where like twitching pinions, an arm twisted,
Palely, and was still
As the face of chalk.

The buhl clock strikes.
Thirty years. Christ, thirty years!
Agony. Agony.

Something stirs in the window,
Shattering the moonlight.
White wings fan.
Father, Father!

All its plumage fiery with the starshine,
Nacreous, shimmering, weeping, iridescent,
It drifts across the floor and mounts the bed,
To the tap of little satin shoes.
Gazing with infernal eyes.
Its quick beak thrusting, rending, devil's crimson . . .
Screams, great tortured screams shake the dark canopy.
The light flickers, the shadow in the corner stirs;
The wax face lifts; the eyes open.

A thin trickle of blood worms darkly against the vast red coverlet and spreads to a pool on the floor.

Are you a victim of your time , must you live
       With your mistakes, and suffer ?
Really it’s time we wake up n smell the coffee
Every problem has solution,so let’s start today

You need not to put it off or procrastinate .
Oh I know it’s easy said , so best get o’t a bed
Unless you ever wish to live with a mistake

And identify the faults, without delay.

Verify with me , in the best way to identify
In a poetic form an A to Z of your mistakes.
Can I start with A the abandonment
The abandonment of self-surrendering
I next target B for Bacchanalia nights
Melancholic days getting over a hangover

On to The Cacodemon of an evil spirit
Found in our home , a most malignant person

Yes and Depreciation of the value of our
        assets usually by the Bankers we trusted.
Oh to have the benefits of fiscal hindsight
Understanding E as extenuating circumstance
Reason then becomes the excuse for failure.

Together with F the F word so commonly used
In emphasis to any topic or discussions
Migrating to G , not mistaking God or life alone
Ethereal spirits surround us n help us choose

Methodically H the mistake that you made
Unwittingly you ignore Holy Spirit of God
Sympathetically I now carry the spirit with me
The change to my life is now monumental.

Yes up to J for the justice that you mistake
On the times when you are it’s sad victim.
Understandably K for Karma of getting out of

Life , whatever you put in.You are punished too
In reaching L for Life. Well the mistake is plain
Virtually you spend a lifetime getting to grips
Engage with M for the mistakes you made

With each one made , don’t cry , learn from it.
In a section for N then note daily five blessings
That you have , it is a mistake not to care.
Having an Opinion is fine but it’s a big mistake

Yes to be opinionated or dogmatic with others
O is followed by P for Procrastination of time
Uselessness , putting off what’s needed today
Reaching the Q the queue that you got into

Mistakenly got into as more haste less speed
Indicative of R for recapitulation of all mistakes
Some simple and some massive and correct
To sequester an S for sententiousness
And pompous moralising must be avoided
Knowing the T of toutological mistakes
Even though it looks good in a poetry scan
So to the U. For understanding when a mistake

And a small mistake can have repercussions
Now to  Virtually every mistake has a price
Do you admit to it and face the consequences

Simplicity of the W to weather to own up
Unless you admit it and show grace n humility
Fortunately the Xanadu is not achieved now
For all the mistakes made have a huge price.
Eventually the Y n Z. Are the yardstick to
Reluctantly measure your path on to Zion.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Written by Philip.
November 28th 2018.

give them an inch
and theyll take a measure
rules make rulers of men
to be measured against
and to be found to be lesser

Dear Lord,

I thank you today for this gift of food. This, was another child of yours. Abel Abel Abel. An intelligent bird. A member in its dumb chain of life, family: what is family to that insentient mass? Do they mourn when one of them is gone? Does it affect them, does it bother them, does it pain them,

As it does to us? Yes, we, the great golden yardstick against which to measure out the universe.  Dumb, may be, but dumb life with a heart. Who knows about the soul. Isn't soul that little pin-***** somewhere deep in the heart? Do I have one? Do I care, do I mourn, do I see the pain that I cause to these fellow children of yours:

But if not this, what else - a leaf that covers in fear at being plucked, a root, a bulb that in ways we cannot sense with but an instrument, cries out in pain at being uprooted, skinned and roasted live. Or a fruit, that mothership, host to a million seedling lives, every one of them that could grow out to outlive my life by orders. A stalk, a branch, name it.

Yes, this is food. This is a chain. I eat and am eaten. Terrible, this creation, that has sprung from wellsprings of love. Or is not this world the product of a loving God, but that of the evil non-God? But where your omnipotence that is screaming through the scripture hoarse?

No, I am a sinner. I have sinned, to be born in this wretched world. A dead child was washed ashore, the other day. Until then, I said, to hell with those barbarians crossing rivers and mountains to reach my land. But what of death? I boil and burn a billion little lives in my glass of tea every morning, many times over. Oh plasmodium, that I have to **** to live, oh this life that hangs to me like a necessity!

Good Lord, have you made me in your image? What is, whose reflection in spacetime appears like this visage, flesh on ribage, beating heart, pumping lung, viscera and nerve and vein, bone and nail, wallowing in pleasure and pain? That is an inverse problem that baffles our genius. It is ill-posed for certain, with no means of regularization for sure.

I must live I must live I must live. ****, that organism is small, dumb, unintelligent, insentient, it's pain is of another kind, we can't eat air, and we are atop this chain, cobra's head, that houses all the venom. This is evolution, we are evolving space suits to head to the stars and spread the Gospel to those unknown realms still sunk steeped in barbarism.

Yes, He is great, he can be heard in the voices of lunatics that some times  get recorded and transmitted across the generations. And I follow the masters, they were vile, very vile, they were chosen, yea they were chosen, so vile is virtuous, I be vile, I be virtuous, I am chosen, yea, I am chosen, I head to God, on the backs of a thousand dead souls.

Amen. Peace to all those I consign and all the masters I quote. Holy Cain!

Acrostic poem

Necessity of society
Intensity of people agitation
Redefined the common man’s power
Boiling over attacks on women
Hot-tempered youth
Ashamed to say
Yardstick of behavior
Assault on women go unreported
-Naveen

So tell me what you want to be
And what you think you need of me
For what you do
You will become
As habit makes it part of one

For habits grind and clearly shape
Rough edges smoothed,
some dreams may break
Then, from time to time
There’s someone who
Will melt or break a part of you
So once again your shape does change
Though it may feel you’re just the same

It may take another, looking on
To see the shape that you’ve become
So maybe that should be my role?
Some sort of yardstick of your soul?
But then again, I will change too
So perhaps we’d better muddle through
And focus on the spark inside
The flame that undiminished shines

And if, as said, that change is certain
It will never be the final curtain
So embrace the change in me and you
And love the flame that shines on through

Why wonder?
Oh great men from the east,
For the irrefutable expedition
Is full of joie de vivre,

Now see, the executioner does not
Even know what to throw away
And what to keep,

For her words are always
Seasoned with stitches of
Honey in my heart,

See how the eternal shadow
Of thy beauty, put my angelic heart
To rest every rainy season,

Oh, my faithful firstborn love,
Sometimes wisdom has it all
Other times beauty has it all
But this time thou have it all,

Yes, hail the precious gift from Ethiopia,
For the wisest King of Israel cannot
Even comprehend the secret behind
This gorgeous eternal beauty and wisdom,

The seasonal sweet-scented
Shining moon that betrays my thoughts,
Thou art the fruitful beauty of Africa,
Indeed, Makeda is the yardstick of beauty.


© PRINCE NANA ANIN-AGYEI
Email: nanaspeaks@gmail.com

chants from red states and blue
and of course the tea partied new
blend into wicked white noise
and with complete lack of poise
we have become a nation divided

not that we were ever truly united
but our rhetoric is now so blighted
that whenever we open our ears
we are inundated with feculent fears
that our country is no longer grand

perhaps we were never number one...
except in matters of money and the gun
but when measured by the yardstick of the soul
did we ever really achieve a transcendent goal
or were we listening to our own lyrical lies?

‘twas not enough to denigrate
-those of foreign birth
-those of color
and the welfare ingrate
now we all chew and spew equal portions of hate
and probably deserve our feckless fate

For an immature poet like me the rhyme
Becomes the greatest crime

I want to write a poem on a piece of soap
Or the greatness of the Italian Pope

I talk about the faithfulness of a pet dog
Or the great utility of a school bag

I can write a poem on a match stick
Since I feel, for poetry there is no yardstick

Mr George J Jerry thinks My poetry is rather Awkward
I can no longer go any forward

He feels my poetry is meant for un-schooled
I don’t think I am even a bit fooled

He opines my poems are mere mush
And I am making unnecessary fuss

In fact I am very much cooled
Because I think I am correctly ruled

Inspired by “The Burning Giraffe” by Salvador Dali*


I am defined by what clutters my drawers:

• Aortic—a tattered matchbook with a phone number I never called
    scrawled to the inside cover as an inscription to everything
    I never wanted.  A half-empty can of butane with a missing
    cap alongside a dollar’s worth of pennies that weight a scrap
    torn from a newspaper tragedy: four killed, faulty smoke
    detectors to blame.

• Ankle—a charred picture, curled in upon itself and kept as a reminder
              of what I could become; a blackened nest as an omen of
  losing all I’ve ever known and an ointment tube, squeezed
  in the middle as a talisman against blistering tempers.

• Thigh—an empty Zippo with a scarred case, dull and pointless; a coiled
             stove element with an ashen haze that could testify that water
doesn’t douse all flames; and an oily fuse, plucked from the top
of my head to serve as a yardstick of minutes, seconds, then
nothing.

• Knee—a fine layer of charcoal dust and half of a briquette from last
            summer’s backyard barbecue when the wind kicked up to spray
red embers into the air like a meteor shower, streaking in bright
sparks and fluttering to shrieks and stop-drop-rolls along dry grass
until the itching ceased and the bubbles formed in small foamy
patches along arms and strapless backs and sun-red cheeks.

/political correctness is a term used for people who have forgotten, near-archaic social formalities... oddly enough, social-formality is still obliterating political debate,  and is only existent, when met with political "dialectic"... since ancient Greece,  dialectics has been the enemy of politics, since it curbed the stampede of orchestrated, pristine, rhetoric... which is why politicians stutter, or mishandle... what was once a fact, has now become a statistic... which is... something you call: diluted ****, or diarrhoea...

political correctness?!
    what is "political"
about an ontological
focus of a priori
   social formalities?
   political correctness,
id est:
    satus quo prolongation?
as far as i know that
ship has sailed...
perhaps like the Titanic's
maiden voyage,
not blessed with a champagne
bottle christening...
a Kantian revival against
the Hegelian "dialectic"...
after all, he was the Copernicus
to what became the Marxist-
Galileo fiasco!
    if only Copernicus
became a martyr for looking
down the whirlpool of
a flushed toilet... who knows?!
*******... spaghetti
al fresco and Venitian blinds...
fatso mafiasos and
Marlon Brando dyslexia
due to cotton buds shoved
into his cheeks like
a ******* jerbal...
             gallows the schmuck,
hence came Zodiac Leo...
i'm actually apprehensive
about the fact that political
correctness is actually
an: apolitical statement...
seen that khaki attired king rat
scuttling about giving
shadow commands?!
me neither...
   but at least in a dictatorship...
some *******
doesn't have a choice,
but own up...
    illusion of the emperor's
new clothes...
you're right... the clothes
are rented...
   because there weren't any
to begin with!
   no wonder there's a shadow
spine to the "pristine"
idea of democracy...
chivaraly was also,
once upon a time, a novel idea
and an idea with a span of
history (ideology, vogue)...
      but came the undertaker
and buried that *******
with the maiden's hankerchief
he used as target practice for either
*****, or snot...
    political correctness is any ugly
term for what is otherwise
a root of social formality,
   laughable, even still...
  political correctness has no
a priori root to pivot on...
   political correctness attempts to
be a form of social formality,
but it's... kinda hard to
speak about an unspoken rule
that has been passed on
and is anti-political,
id est: intuitive... hardly the curious
child with a stick and a wasp hive...
      people feel unhinged...
no wonder!
        a social formality is within
the ontological a priori focus...
an inheritence that's silent...
but, politics, is never exactly
   an a priori focus...
              tinged with a posteriori
artifacts, it usually cites
Napoleon, ****** and Russia...
             to be "politically"
incorrect, is to what? what?!
                    momentarily relaxing
social formality?
                gender neutral pronouns
of the western world... ha ha!
a much older debate about
pronouns exists in the Slavic world...
made concise be the use of
the pronoun you...
     and of course,  i...
       which focuses on a loss of the title
herr und fraulein...
              ha ha...
told you that nag hammadi library
shepherd and pivotal St. Thomas' gospel
was going to be a hit...
              Chinese whispers in Judea...
the current... thrill of bi-cis-dunno...
doughnut?
    - only two people worth
admiring in the 20th century:
Lenon and Kennedy...
   the sort of people who true... fans!
i make a falsetto,
some Hannibal Lector will be
on my heels, thinking up
a ritual where, I'm actually eaten,
in a snippet of my body, akin
to the tender-bits of my liver...
   way to go... a sabbath encore
of those ***** ****-takes of beauty
Scotch banshees!
       fifth limb and the word: USURPER!
nope... make my tongue
into a ***- (yes, like
****** I might call the urban
of what is a renowned country's
worth of Billy, hence
the hyphen attaché)...

     whatever is politically correct
(mind you, german idealism,
rigidness of vocabulary,
only 3 definitions of a word
are utilised, the fourth
becomes a writers' scurvy
or a ***** tattoo in a thesaurus)...

whatever is politically "correct",
hence the ambiguity of -ness
is an orphan of both social
formality & informality...
who the **** would asked
for a political butcher,
let alone a member of parliament
take on a rabbi's son?!

nooooo....   oooooone....
       lovely,  ain't that
the pretty siht:
sight of a tightening
of a cravat prior to
the folded napkin in heavy cotton
before the state dinner...
minus the China and
the yardstick worth of... silverware...

came the ümlaut...  
the closing of the parabola...
the shy messiah...
the rollingpin of omicron,
the ******'s worth of omega.
   und?!
          ah...
    the siamese twins of H
in the tetragrammaton...
once a wave (W)...
     once a particle 3D (Y)...
jew counted matchsticks
   and read a book...
Pole has 1 to count,
       afro-boy has 20+ raps
for one gil scott-heron
  for every ****** factory
and for every if it came to:
this revolution, lardy lardy,
was televised...
now we're praying that it
could please! please! shut! up!
            
the toying with Greek and
a crucifix that became the tongue
of the golgotha-cranium?
   do the sons of light caste
a shadow?
       surely "we" read the light
from shadows...
   night, however...
is... without form....
        devoid of the triangle
and the square...
    the universe is ever expanding
is the closest they came to
giving it a geometry...
and then they finally settled on a:
linear proposition...
   came the "big" and the "bang"...
and then the, "supposed"
sparrow eater worth of vacuum...

there is an understanding
of social formality
  (a priori)
     as there is a knowledge
of social informality
      (a posteriori)...
    political "correctness":
a claim of being...
       politicians should learn this
mantra:
    to be politically "correct / incorrect"
is to be... apolitical...
   what?  
                just because
the church bred atheists...
a parliament can't breed apoliticians?
  granted...
     the parliament has a luxury
of a god on a string...
          and a suddenly materialised
"god"...
             the church is already a warm broth
of gurgling **** in the shadows...

for whatever the audacity of
youth apparent,
the fervour in me is hardly
as Dynamo for Alt.    
        in what remains an inherited
burgeon of power....
   than a plebiscite of gambling...

who speaks of political correctness
is only speaking of
a buffer zone to the ham trough...
yes, thank you,
I know there is no talk of
political correctness in the scenario
of a uniformed police officer
and me drinking a beer on a bench...
politicised bystanders...
****... me...
   can they flip and omelette like
a pancake?
        social formalities don't need
a stray dog's worth of tongue
to suddenly discover
the arithmetic of counting teeth!

Ragged breath
pushed through  lips
paperthin and dry

Clouded moons
in once sparkling  eyes

Skin of face
folded and creased
by years of laughter

Age has wearied you
beyond repair

Your first foot treads
heavily upon heavens stair

And in this pastel room
the reward for a life of care

As we come to usher you away
to your final, hopeful jubilee day

All have come, none have missed
the opportunity to thank you
for, the gifts you gave...

One word of kindness, from your lips
ripples through the lives you touched
and all your students learnt well
to live, love and give freely,
of caring humanities touch.

In this pastel room, we stand,
touching one last time,
the gnarled and giving hand

And when we leave, we do weep
for loss, but also joy....
knowing your soul does keep
to the pieties of love.

So in the days to come,
know your grace will live on
through lives and generations
your teaching will be the yardstick
to which our hearts are measured
YOUR WORDS, YOUR LIFE,
REMEMBERED AND TREASURED

I can now see it coming
The sound of the end is drumming
From the fury of the dragon's head
Channel through a ceremonial head
It is the conspiracy of evil ideas
Molded in our psychic to adhere
And I feel it in my premonition
The awaited plot for a secular dimension
To be carried out through a device
In those who play antagonist to biblical advice
For my common sense is not blinded
To know where it was masterminded
Since sin is the only yardstick
To hinder our soul from heavenly pick
Let's stick with the scriptures to conquer
Their's is the world for now to conquer.

How is our life’s worth measured?
By offspring, actions, or wealth?
What are the components on the yardstick?
Worrying your value, affects your mental health.

If life is truly worth living
The joy and verve for life emits from within
Emotions are worn on your sleeve
Be at peace, and comfy in your own skin
  
Why let others conflict our minds?
External factors make us shout with dismay
Put them out of your head
Let Karma and intellect rule the day

Your peers will judge you behind your back,
Live with honor, integrity, and lack of spite
The value of your actions, not consciously rated
Know in your heart, you’ve done what is right.

Die with no regrets hanging over your head,
You can’t take it back when you’re six feet under
Years of life spent with compassion and service of others,
Validates your worth when torn asunder.

For today, live your life with an eye towards passion
Hold on to your ideals, use your heart for decision,
You’ll never go wrong with integrity and trust
You’ll grow old, and be free of ridicule and derision.

wonder of wonders,
the men at Love's door
when a ripe man worships a woman,
the stars wake
and rivets of harmonious song filter through the universe
love is a release of majesty
the loved ones are a measure in kindness
were it not for Love,
man would have dissipated long ago
worship this yardstick
sever your pangs of ill will
the one who clearly loves
has on his side an angel
the one who resents is not forgiven
war is the trademark of a man torn with envy
love is the fortress of the blessed
wash your hands in a pool of love
the waters there will cleanse you
like no earthly waters can
love is a gateway to God
------------------
-----------------------
..(C) 1986/2011 Spiros Zafiris
..channeled; spirit Ram
------------------------------------------

Lambasted by the bushwhacking shambles of potsherds burrowed beneath enchanted rhapsodies of sunken Earth lurks a might unleashed by the preemptive dirges of Heaven
Shattering the weight of mismeasure adaptive to apt remarks of conservatory stellar repartees gilded in the flombricks of insuperable gammon wed to the divorce between mammon and guardian treasure etched by revets of colorful nuance but colorblind fortitude chalky yet with scattered sound blinking in the wink of intelligentsia a thousand parsecs of understanding in milliseconds of orbit
The periphery of forgotten stars bereaved but informed of circular axioms of axiolative thermolysis bellowing stoked smokestack locomotives of hibernal clairvoyance dare to wonder beyond limited or enhanced pulchritude the denizens of thievery stolen in a flashbang grenade of a new Grenada of fustilugs gabbling in flushed rosy red tongues of frenzy or aplomb what lurks beyond centurion sentinels of robotic half-witted half-baked semi-cooked bludgeons of cruel insensate irony withheld by vulcanized drapes of curtailed curglaff fashioned by kneaded distance and suspended for heaved awakening at riometer’s knock barnstorming the crude churlishness of the foreign at trespass of the inane scaled down by infamies unstated and flanged to appropriate provisions of measure that conquest lurks behind recess and all is grafted from the callous pachyderm skin of absolution cozy to remedies but aloof from necessities of pang and Tang rollicking magpiety like a rotten pastime aged past its due.
Yet the batting average of the uncanny visitor undaunted by glaring photogenic record balks at precedent and aims to lollygag his chicanery roundhouse above the ricochet of enamor to whilded terminus at circular diamonds soaring illimitable skies boundaries to another nothing beyond the past of something worthy of pearls piggish in appetite for oysters to inhabit
Yet these cloistered vacuums between the pleonexia of the avarice of retches of chyme and the digestion of complete guarantors of shielded heterochrony wassail on dreams Titanic and sunken living repeatedly in revised stereodimensional waves of registry beyond fundus hijacked by towering dimensions ulterior to the profaned foresight of the wretched dimensions of reprehensible coteries belonging lost even when fetched by glimmers of the profound.
The riches of aberrant mobilized fleets swung into tether pole centripetal flictions of swarpollock surpassing credibility and peace surmounting mountebanks of petty finicky itches of cretaceous extinction mapped to qwersy frugal mathematical jokes recoiling at rebarbative manifest destiny belong to the records of soundracketeer trivialization of malleable gold fashioned from Whisky Bar encounters with goldmines ascertained in magic by the suspense of upholstered dramaturgy lurking beneath tall crestfallen visagists who toss and bandy about in tempests of curdacted flow emissary and envoy to flajousts emergent from the verdure of aboriginal machinery fumbled by human ergonomic chicanery espoused by asylum rather than touted as marksman prestige flippant by inordinate gavels ****** asunder into delignated copper-brass keys of foreboding prisons on sinking ships for counterfeit litanies of bogus warning meeting inclement poverty to a drawn sine in the sand vacillating on purpose but intransigent in declension.
Starlet gnashes of odontoloxia wavers of tangential tendentiousness escaping the orbit of enumeration by sly remarks surprising the elective prerogative for convergent autumn to skittish paces of fast-forward beating the brumal bears in their gelid lollygag reminders why the 2nd protects the 1st and the primacy of interposition is the immediacy of flexed muscular DeLoreans cavorting with fringes of unfurled destiny in flashbang instants between the space among malingered pauses among secondary waves of betrayal shift the curious rip tide of stretchgraves too ennobled for widescreen yet narrowly faint in their promontory illusions as mantelpieces of emblazoned scarlet A’s for nothing more than a tempestuous flair with stigma but simultaneously the realization of true dreamy blues escalating around tensions finessed into ****** before drooping into the droll 1850s as the balderdash of detriment belonging to the salvo of picturesque still-life expressionism dripping troudasque in antiquity with flairs of impertinence celebrated more by melodrama than by billows of industrial hinderbaggle toxic to the stated alarmism of trinkochre preventing treony by the warbles of songbirds hemmed in by bushwhacking galactic police forces of granted licentiousness for backbites in the feral canine drollery of aged literacy chosen over youthful foofaraw belittled by retches of attentive brevity rather than protracted obtuseness: neither ideal for the gravity of aborning centuries
Yet we dally in convergent esprit filibustering rhymed cadavers of cadence for prurience in ebullient parvenu damsels vacant from the setting but entranced by the galloping herds of buffalo formidable with warmth because of death and locomotive drive-by shootings Daphne wouldn’t miss.
Yet what Mission Impossible has a BioCyte worthy of henpecked ransom and detached villainy of a trespassed appendix bursting in the Young crowd much to the awakened dismay of the colored affront to black-and-white hubris finicky in oligochrome yet fainter yet than stellified bronteums burgeoning in generativity separated by inherent gulfs of heterochrony balking at submissions fished by loaves of interest in the hambasket of aswallone fractious to redshort individualism in the subhastation of Jurassic prowls of replication hibernal for millions of extinct permanence scowling only by the mandibles of crackjaw Samson yielding his jaunty hair to flummoxed Cutthroat Collapses trimming yardstick furloughs of pleckigger for demotic flavork above fishy warbles of tilted pretense vagrant to everybody simultaneously renowned for arrested cacophony but bridled by few examinations barnstorming teetotalers with haunted patrons of aged wine speaking redivivus in contemplation.
Measured glare radioactive to lizards beneath Mojo Grooves monikers fielding “fly away” as transcendental harpsichord anagrams filter through lavaderos of hackneyed nockerslugs berating illusion for conflation in the influx of dacoitage among Vikings who swim flanked by sonic blares of innocuous dolphins floating dead by the carnage of bloated whales and ridiculous spates of welter above conscience ragged with tetherball futility.
Sparring with engastrimyths sapping the sapwood of sappy banality for toonardical lullabies that pacify opposition more than the Pacific is internecine to volcanic tirades of seismotic jolts of burgeoned awakening I vanquish petty sneakthievery with the unspoken power of a Tweed that masquerades not on ******* but on virtual rhymes cascading throwaway brown-brick fifties collapse on Dagon armed with gnashing poise against guttural gubbertushed victimized flippant fantasias arrayed to brook the decrepit streams of my elevated retinue for staged intrepid barnstorms against phony assassinations to prove petty Edison powerhouses clairvoyant in even their specious participles of quantum irony decisive in fliction marveling at sensible conveyor belt beltways infested by sluggards of inferior hives contrary to every inclination of self-edified skyscraper invented by the mettle of industrious man
So swanky in boast but gingerly in insightful discretion I careen ping-pong victories into a plevisable fortune of Bubba Gump wealth and Fortune Magazine ostentation as the ringleader in Barnum’s neutered circus that never spays a single sword of creation in the barnacles of progeny and progress frogmarched by cruelty and vehement in suppositions of craven popinjay popples of a whangam metropolitan artifice tinsellated with angles of trim prance above suburban ecstasy in transcendent flash and peerless reaches of stratosphere above mundane plaid macaroni witeless in the sterling grace of foreign domestication of livable conditions abiding by aborning stardom.
Harriet Tubman flowers on the bedside of ****** seances of 70’s Parisian cafes gerrymandered by hobohemias of herculean heft squaring account with encompassed brevity in byword dazes with ***** futures yet to court the cordial consensus in dodged drafts of fumiduct riots bailing upon New York Time for 44th street colored incineration of an orphaned Africa embodied in a totemic titan with reninjuble peerless majesty compromised by a frapplank in immodest incisive harpricks of fumbled swerves against the original proclamations anniversary to Boston Indians revolting against Manifest Destinies magnified in incidental clarity by bestowed churches fuming with rampant clairvoyance tamed by the grisly realism of intermittent thaumaturgy swaddled by the reconnaissance of eventual warps blistering in milliseconds to overturn the ultimate row that the mire always wades through in impoverished egestuous profligate convenience of hamstring declension against chary mettle in scruples by elementary riddles in precise junctures of sanctity the bodewash of slick partisan gibes of a puppet show vampire avenging Sarah Marshall. Harriet Tubman is an overblow of subniveal pickets of defensive clarity to immemorial churlish katzenjammer of a protracted flux capacitor dynamos in abolished feral groves of bohemian legend rather than ignoble rhapsody flirting with apartheid’s chosen engineers whittling an indelible scourge of hatred rather than a revived simian immunity scalded with potboilers of sveldtang water scorching like Helsinki after Stockholm goes up in conflagration over bonanza of wednongue dative duress in impregnated purpose skanky with ministered drivel of doytined attempts to flicker a switch exorcised by the integrity of neuroscience besides an intransigence of exuberant interruption of warped logics of pataphysical coarse arenas for submerged vapid Yellow Belly Pie Slingers aimed at 7/11.
Broadside bruisers aim at fracked 80s heyday like a Hey Bulldog reminiscence on a quaint suburban joke of alien freebooters in Franc Swiss gloss swanky on the spot of frapplanks endless in retired liturgy of surpassed peace amicable to truces among the pragmatica of checkerboard pastries willful in array backing sentinels from rearguard hindsight to flank the motatory missiles of target from ransom built like fortress of immutable graves lost to the celerity of the outpaced spectral wonder of teenage flights and hegiras into recessive parsecs enamored by a stage-fright of recocted astral wonders plasma to the ears of a strange foreign abode hospitable to most heaved alacrity sidewinding into effigy and the crumples of used demise recycled twice by intrinsic spirituel flocks of engulfed eagles spooning the pristine littoral waters of precision in nexility
Stayin’ Alive cackles resound in the hallowed furrows of a neat daydream in a scattershot imagination screaming to make myths sticky pigment rather than imbroglios of intaglio filibustering cohesive firm firmaments flexing with windfall at princely surprises cobbled from chocolate-box chariots of brisk elation shoveled by the conglomerate of prim-looking star-crossed unbuttoned snoozes with glamour in the corsair sojourn beyond the space emergent from stardust tinsel and glowered vindication of self-engineered huffs of vulpine vainglory touted as preeminent above dodgy 70s swerve in the vibrant kantikoys of covert tenure and flickers of swandamo glitterati borne of triumphant dimples on immaculate refraction.
Yet lingering on the precipice of aboriginal unity in disjointed sejungible frames of vernal restive residence decaying with anthill colonies of demarche the cadence lost to gyrovague trinkets balks from corridors of Pacific  Avenue peace that is the cardinal to the priests feasting on militias of rentgourge evicted from their own leash of lease ruffled in the plumage of horizontal margins folded into origami zenkidu gullible on Raptor estrangement chained to the rhythms of parsed sparse rumbles of the rhombos without a complexion intended for sparkled starlets doomed to regular tides in swollen tsunamis of soft-spoken surrealism the providence of aimed dreams of drastic marvels beloved to impregnate a verdant cadence latent by faltered seamstress elopes flickering for caress in the duress of finesse.
The quaint drawl of scrabbled runes of rumbled rumination streaks like a quivered acerbic winsome peacock jagged in the parlance of henpecked peak beyond the reach of the highest teacher that ever had the privilege of tutelaries spawned born to teach in Steppenwolf rhythms of rugged heavy metal impeachment yet ripe enough to preach. The last juggernaut is vile bereaved of yets to become the blemish on risky flambeaus overrun by crackles fuzzy in written retch for sudden bursts of volcanic speech.
In the quagmires of serrated heavy leaps I stroke the frazzle as the choir reaps the grim proclamation gilded by sentinels of majestic Challenger Deep burrowing tunnels of coltish ploy dilettante to all his curated adoration that toys with the children of majestic modesty ever so fractious as to balk at the priggish calumny of retinues of the tired coy rampant in emasculated spayed days of stranglehold filigree geometry bent on noisome bleats prone to annoy
So I leapfrog the redundant hackencrude fawn of gripping spectacles of alpenglow summits on acid at dawn foaming with betrothed pumice on borrowed past from potentiated future belonging once to a man yet always bred to prefer fairer damsels sprinkled with a hint of germane Soy saucy to the Bossy promenade to an Islander born and bred.
Guilt like Gravity gilded into spacious trailblazed glory sent seminal and said loudly bowdlerized the pasture of hidden thickets in sparse backwater chavish remanded by fisticuffs of elapse travail in artistry fundamental to rhapsody in distant milky affection jangling high plaudits of auditoriums of the delicate audit bulldozing fraudsters colored by defected records set ablaze in seminal disco becoming cordial homes for shaken residue blushing in crude crass mass the inertia of the classy beyond recognition without flashbang clashes of cultural class glimmering to faltered waterdrips of palatial mischief in correct lens for froward recalcitrance of jittery stash hidden in dacoitage by the police that knelt on incinerated livelihood predicated on chauvinist cash for departed untouchable caste of radical haste too blinkered for internet barnstorms limited only to lurid copy-and-paste regimented for revolution damaged by the loneliest orchestra of refineries of an alien taste.
We crack skulls against ossified hulls riveted weakly to iceberg submarine bulge battled in wars past always to suppress greater travesty yet divulged that Barbarosa was an insider coup expunged by remonstrance against finicky postulate brayed from deranged heirs to a disease of relish quartered by blue danger dancing with shadowed emancipation librettos finkly in tripwire terms of routed inefficacy killjoy to seanced second guess prisms of rootless flimsy accusation wagered by pathetic overstatement in hypenstance trimmed by the crimson paint of a glowering silk woven from dramaturgy belittled by grasp if not by locomotive passerby pause wicked by subversion inclined not to dismay by oriented by nefarious rage of flagrant hapless scrimshanks in prowess sued by process and refined by progress never erased by a five-second glower by the sentinels of parlance intrepid by desiccation to supervised superstition bemused by abundant gray twists of turnverein pillory.

In my room, the grandfather clock has been busy
Busy moving its needles around for over a century
Seconds, turning to minutes, to hours, days and years
A young clock growing old, pendulous pinions and gears.

That’s what passing time does, a chime unfixed
But truly, as I introspect, does time really exist?
Rising sun and the onset of night, an unending event
Churning of moments, past, future and the present.

Creeping on us, time is the rhythmic rhyme of history
A song sung by my clock, and its ubiquitous mystery.
A silent, unspoken, unheard, stealthy crescendo
The ever changing panorama I see outside my window.

But then what is the datum to know elapse of time?
Is it a mere yardstick of your evolution and mine?
Replacement of dying cells, a genetic work so complex
My grandfather clock, tick tocks unmindful, unchecked*.

The only redress to all my pain
comes when I reside in my poem.

no matter what I write
buxom thin trivial trite
common rhyme mundane style

in poems I find the escape awhile!

Ask myself where I would be
if the ink never flowed for poetry
this mind never vented even one poem
born for me bear my name!

When my worries burst at the rim
agonies seem an endless stream
I board this carriage for a heavenly ride
reach the dreamland on the other side!

There so long I roam the corridor
tasting the treasured and the abhorred
I forget the measures all earthly yardstick

in the rainbow bubble taste the escape I seek!

The apple is gone.
It departed today in the wake
of Gonzalo’s sting.

The sting in the tail
of a hurricane that
should never have touched our shores.

And so the symbol
of tenacious life
no longer bears witness
to my own tenacity:
my own survival in an
irresolute world
now seeks another yardstick
on which to pin a shaky faith.

sanity needs
a yardstick for our minds,
it is time

Happens for the good.

With every loss
I turn a better man,

Seeing clearer
Learning
That wouldn’t have come in any other way

Then shedding as I move on

A piece of rotten me
Blinded by ego
Seeing what was not there
Hearing what was unsaid
Evaluating only by my yardstick
Stuck in the muck of my own making!

Whatever happens
Even when that makes heart bleed
Burn and break me

Make me

A better man.

when i was a little girl,
during that span of time
when years weren't the yardstick
but rather the speed with which
my popsicle would melt
or the days awaited
when wands of pine
would cover me from
sun-burned scalp to scraped-up toe
with sweet sap,
i would run about the tall grasses
and name every wildflower
that brushed my ankles
oh-so-tenderly.

i would keep a journal,
all in cornflower blue crayola,
about my findings,
my voyages through seas of green
and the whispers heard
in rustlings through the waves,
all turning to fae fairytales between my ears.

everything was named beautiful,
and everything was soft as a cloud
as i laid with my shoulderblades in the earth,
sticky fingers outstretched towards
projected memories far above me.

and now
i often find myself in a similar position,
ribs heaving heavily
as the floral essence
fills my lungs so amazingly--
the leaden comfort in my limbs
making it almost as if i had never left.

it's as if those fae fairytales have finally come true,
the ponderings finally rippling anew,
and the poppies lulling me to sleep
for hundred of years,
millenia stained with
the purity of august's finest daisies.

their perfume roused me one morning,
the sky still bruised and fluttering,
head sticky with a misplaced exhaustion and the woes of age;

the circumstance to which i awoke was this:

the buds,
              the lilacs and hyacinths,
                                                       the baby's breath and dandelion
                                                                                 fluff
i had made delicate wishes upon since my earliest days
had found themselves a home wrapped around my spine,
fragrant petals gracing my stomach with their presence.

as if influenced by draught,
the ache did not place itself
but rather my fascination
with each tickling floral
forming fissures in my abdomen--

i took mental note
of their names
and characteristics,
as many as i could fit in that sap-lined cavity of my mind,
just as lovely as ever.

the soil was as soft as a cloud,
childish glee filling my heart to overflowing.
some things never change.

sometimes, the beauty of flowers
remains
the beauty of flowers,
whether it is plush under foot
or pushing through
bone and sinew.

How goes the body friend?
How ticks the mind?
Did you find the Demons wanting?
Is the morning light sublime?
Have you wondered how the Angels sang
When they filled the night with song?
Have you angered with a short fuse burnt
When drivel lasts too long?
Do you long for peaceful moments
Do you loath the clamour, loud
Seek an isolation
From the leather, foul mouthed crowd?
Have you come to terms with silence
As you ponder evening light?
Is equivocation righteous
Or does wrong consume the right?
Are you happy with your yardstick
Do you feel you've played it right
Or is it time to shut the curtain
And surrender to the night?
M.

Are you a victim of your time , must you live
       With your mistakes, and suffer ?
Really it’s time we wake up n smell the coffee
Every problem has solution,so let’s start today

You need not to put it off or procrastinate .
Oh I know it’s easy said , so best get o’t a bed
Unless you ever wish to live with a mistake

And identify the faults, without delay.

Verify with me , in the best way to identify
In a poetic form an A to Z of your mistakes.
Can I start with A the abandonment
The abandonment of self-surrendering
I next target B for Bacchanalia nights
Melancholic days getting over a hangover

On to The Cacodemon of an evil spirit
Found in our home , a most malignant person

Yes and Depreciation of the value of our
        assets usually by the Bankers we trusted.
Oh to have the benefits of fiscal hindsight
Understanding E as extenuating circumstance
Reason then becomes the excuse for failure.

Together with F the F word so commonly used
In emphasis to any topic or discussions
Migrating to G , not mistaking God or life alone
Ethereal spirits surround us n help us choose

Methodically H the mistake that you made
Unwittingly you could ignore Holy Spirit of God
Sympathetically I now carry the spirit with me
The change to my life is now monumental.

Yes up to J for the justice that you mistake
On the times when you are it’s sad victim.
Understandably K for Karma of getting out of

Life , whatever you put in.You are punished too
In reaching L for Life. Well the mistake is plain
Virtually you spend a lifetime getting to grips
Engage with M for the mistakes you made

With each one made , don’t cry , learn from it.
In a section for N then note daily five blessings
That you have , it is a mistake not to care.
Having an Opinion is fine but it’s a big mistake

Yes to be opinionated or dogmatic with others
O is followed by P for Procrastination of time
Uselessness , putting off what’s needed today
Reaching the Q the queue that you got into

Mistakenly got into as more haste less speed
Indicative of R for recapitulation of all mistakes
Some simple and some massive and correct
To sequester an S for sententiousness
And pompous moralising must be avoided
Knowing the T of toutological mistakes
Even though it looks good in a poetry scan
So to the U. For understanding when a mistake

And a small mistake can have repercussions
Now to  Virtually every mistake has a price
Do you admit to it and face the consequences

Simplicity of the W to weather to own up
Unless you admit it and show grace n humility
Fortunately the Xanadu is not achieved now
For all the mistakes made have a huge price.
Eventually the Y n Z. Are the yardstick to
Reluctantly measure your path on to Zion.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Written by Philip.
November 28th 2018.