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Liz Jan 2015
"Poor Yorick!",
His soul is saved.
Safe and sound,
In cold unbeing.

Cold unbeing,
For whom I am so hungry.
It's bitter tundra will fill me,
But my fire won't go out.

The burning won't stop,
And my ashes only gather.
There's something very wrong,
With a blistering winter.

Oh Yorick,
I envy.
Your sleep is undisturbed;
Where I am only tired.

You are bones,
And King Hamlet is a ghost.  
Floating like him and stagnant as you,
I cannot rest.

My sleep is disturbed.
Like the king, I can't find peace.
But like Yorick,
I am hollowed bones.
When Hamlet was young,
All was good,
Elsinore was proud,
Hamlet was young,
Ophelia too.  

Now he is older,
Not everything is good,
Some things still are,
His uncle is his father in law,
This is not so good.  

Now he is dead,
Ophelia is dead,
Laertes is dead,
Gertrude is dead,
Cladius is dead,
Yorick... is dead,
but he was at the start,
so he doesn't count.  
Rosen... Guilden... dead
Old hamlet is dead,
Plonius is dead.
Horatio is alive;
can't imagine he's very happy,
because everyone else is dead.

Laurence Olivier is handsome,
he's dead too.
Who would not laugh, if Lawrence, hired to grace
His costly canvas with each flattered face,
Abused his art, till Nature, with a blush,
Saw cits grow Centaurs underneath his brush?
Or, should some limner join, for show or sale,
A Maid of Honour to a Mermaid’s tail?
Or low Dubost—as once the world has seen—
Degrade God’s creatures in his graphic spleen?
Not all that forced politeness, which defends
Fools in their faults, could gag his grinning friends.
Believe me, Moschus, like that picture seems
The book which, sillier than a sick man’s dreams,
Displays a crowd of figures incomplete,
Poetic Nightmares, without head or feet.

  Poets and painters, as all artists know,
May shoot a little with a lengthened bow;
We claim this mutual mercy for our task,
And grant in turn the pardon which we ask;
But make not monsters spring from gentle dams—
Birds breed not vipers, tigers nurse not lambs.

  A laboured, long Exordium, sometimes tends
(Like patriot speeches) but to paltry ends;
And nonsense in a lofty note goes down,
As Pertness passes with a legal gown:
Thus many a Bard describes in pompous strain
The clear brook babbling through the goodly plain:
The groves of Granta, and her Gothic halls,
King’s Coll-Cam’s stream-stained windows, and old walls:
Or, in adventurous numbers, neatly aims
To paint a rainbow, or the river Thames.

  You sketch a tree, and so perhaps may shine—
But daub a shipwreck like an alehouse sign;
You plan a vase—it dwindles to a ***;
Then glide down Grub-street—fasting and forgot:
Laughed into Lethe by some quaint Review,
Whose wit is never troublesome till—true.

In fine, to whatsoever you aspire,
Let it at least be simple and entire.

  The greater portion of the rhyming tribe
(Give ear, my friend, for thou hast been a scribe)
Are led astray by some peculiar lure.
I labour to be brief—become obscure;
One falls while following Elegance too fast;
Another soars, inflated with Bombast;
Too low a third crawls on, afraid to fly,
He spins his subject to Satiety;
Absurdly varying, he at last engraves
Fish in the woods, and boars beneath the waves!

  Unless your care’s exact, your judgment nice,
The flight from Folly leads but into Vice;
None are complete, all wanting in some part,
Like certain tailors, limited in art.
For galligaskins Slowshears is your man
But coats must claim another artisan.
Now this to me, I own, seems much the same
As Vulcan’s feet to bear Apollo’s frame;
Or, with a fair complexion, to expose
Black eyes, black ringlets, but—a bottle nose!

  Dear Authors! suit your topics to your strength,
And ponder well your subject, and its length;
Nor lift your load, before you’re quite aware
What weight your shoulders will, or will not, bear.
But lucid Order, and Wit’s siren voice,
Await the Poet, skilful in his choice;
With native Eloquence he soars along,
Grace in his thoughts, and Music in his song.

  Let Judgment teach him wisely to combine
With future parts the now omitted line:
This shall the Author choose, or that reject,
Precise in style, and cautious to select;
Nor slight applause will candid pens afford
To him who furnishes a wanting word.
Then fear not, if ’tis needful, to produce
Some term unknown, or obsolete in use,
(As Pitt has furnished us a word or two,
Which Lexicographers declined to do;)
So you indeed, with care,—(but be content
To take this license rarely)—may invent.
New words find credit in these latter days,
If neatly grafted on a Gallic phrase;
What Chaucer, Spenser did, we scarce refuse
To Dryden’s or to Pope’s maturer Muse.
If you can add a little, say why not,
As well as William Pitt, and Walter Scott?
Since they, by force of rhyme and force of lungs,
Enriched our Island’s ill-united tongues;
’Tis then—and shall be—lawful to present
Reform in writing, as in Parliament.

  As forests shed their foliage by degrees,
So fade expressions which in season please;
And we and ours, alas! are due to Fate,
And works and words but dwindle to a date.
Though as a Monarch nods, and Commerce calls,
Impetuous rivers stagnate in canals;
Though swamps subdued, and marshes drained, sustain
The heavy ploughshare and the yellow grain,
And rising ports along the busy shore
Protect the vessel from old Ocean’s roar,
All, all, must perish; but, surviving last,
The love of Letters half preserves the past.
True, some decay, yet not a few revive;
Though those shall sink, which now appear to thrive,
As Custom arbitrates, whose shifting sway
Our life and language must alike obey.

  The immortal wars which Gods and Angels wage,
Are they not shown in Milton’s sacred page?
His strain will teach what numbers best belong
To themes celestial told in Epic song.

  The slow, sad stanza will correctly paint
The Lover’s anguish, or the Friend’s complaint.
But which deserves the Laurel—Rhyme or Blank?
Which holds on Helicon the higher rank?
Let squabbling critics by themselves dispute
This point, as puzzling as a Chancery suit.

  Satiric rhyme first sprang from selfish spleen.
You doubt—see Dryden, Pope, St. Patrick’s Dean.
Blank verse is now, with one consent, allied
To Tragedy, and rarely quits her side.
Though mad Almanzor rhymed in Dryden’s days,
No sing-song Hero rants in modern plays;
Whilst modest Comedy her verse foregoes
For jest and ‘pun’ in very middling prose.
Not that our Bens or Beaumonts show the worse,
Or lose one point, because they wrote in verse.
But so Thalia pleases to appear,
Poor ******! ****** some twenty times a year!

Whate’er the scene, let this advice have weight:—
Adapt your language to your Hero’s state.
At times Melpomene forgets to groan,
And brisk Thalia takes a serious tone;
Nor unregarded will the act pass by
Where angry Townly “lifts his voice on high.”
Again, our Shakespeare limits verse to Kings,
When common prose will serve for common things;
And lively Hal resigns heroic ire,—
To “hollaing Hotspur” and his sceptred sire.

  ’Tis not enough, ye Bards, with all your art,
To polish poems; they must touch the heart:
Where’er the scene be laid, whate’er the song,
Still let it bear the hearer’s soul along;
Command your audience or to smile or weep,
Whiche’er may please you—anything but sleep.
The Poet claims our tears; but, by his leave,
Before I shed them, let me see ‘him’ grieve.

  If banished Romeo feigned nor sigh nor tear,
Lulled by his languor, I could sleep or sneer.
Sad words, no doubt, become a serious face,
And men look angry in the proper place.
At double meanings folks seem wondrous sly,
And Sentiment prescribes a pensive eye;
For Nature formed at first the inward man,
And actors copy Nature—when they can.
She bids the beating heart with rapture bound,
Raised to the Stars, or levelled with the ground;
And for Expression’s aid, ’tis said, or sung,
She gave our mind’s interpreter—the tongue,
Who, worn with use, of late would fain dispense
(At least in theatres) with common sense;
O’erwhelm with sound the Boxes, Gallery, Pit,
And raise a laugh with anything—but Wit.

  To skilful writers it will much import,
Whence spring their scenes, from common life or Court;
Whether they seek applause by smile or tear,
To draw a Lying Valet, or a Lear,
A sage, or rakish youngster wild from school,
A wandering Peregrine, or plain John Bull;
All persons please when Nature’s voice prevails,
Scottish or Irish, born in Wilts or Wales.

  Or follow common fame, or forge a plot;
Who cares if mimic heroes lived or not!
One precept serves to regulate the scene:
Make it appear as if it might have been.

  If some Drawcansir you aspire to draw,
Present him raving, and above all law:
If female furies in your scheme are planned,
Macbeth’s fierce dame is ready to your hand;
For tears and treachery, for good and evil,
Constance, King Richard, Hamlet, and the Devil!
But if a new design you dare essay,
And freely wander from the beaten way,
True to your characters, till all be past,
Preserve consistency from first to last.

  Tis hard to venture where our betters fail,
Or lend fresh interest to a twice-told tale;
And yet, perchance,’tis wiser to prefer
A hackneyed plot, than choose a new, and err;
Yet copy not too closely, but record,
More justly, thought for thought than word for word;
Nor trace your Prototype through narrow ways,
But only follow where he merits praise.

  For you, young Bard! whom luckless fate may lead
To tremble on the nod of all who read,
Ere your first score of cantos Time unrolls,
Beware—for God’s sake, don’t begin like Bowles!
“Awake a louder and a loftier strain,”—
And pray, what follows from his boiling brain?—
He sinks to Southey’s level in a trice,
Whose Epic Mountains never fail in mice!
Not so of yore awoke your mighty Sire
The tempered warblings of his master-lyre;
Soft as the gentler breathing of the lute,
“Of Man’s first disobedience and the fruit”
He speaks, but, as his subject swells along,
Earth, Heaven, and Hades echo with the song.”
Still to the “midst of things” he hastens on,
As if we witnessed all already done;
Leaves on his path whatever seems too mean
To raise the subject, or adorn the scene;
Gives, as each page improves upon the sight,
Not smoke from brightness, but from darkness—light;
And truth and fiction with such art compounds,
We know not where to fix their several bounds.

  If you would please the Public, deign to hear
What soothes the many-headed monster’s ear:
If your heart triumph when the hands of all
Applaud in thunder at the curtain’s fall,
Deserve those plaudits—study Nature’s page,
And sketch the striking traits of every age;
While varying Man and varying years unfold
Life’s little tale, so oft, so vainly told;
Observe his simple childhood’s dawning days,
His pranks, his prate, his playmates, and his plays:
Till time at length the mannish tyro weans,
And prurient vice outstrips his tardy teens!

  Behold him Freshman! forced no more to groan
O’er Virgil’s devilish verses and his own;
Prayers are too tedious, Lectures too abstruse,
He flies from Tavell’s frown to “Fordham’s Mews;”
(Unlucky Tavell! doomed to daily cares
By pugilistic pupils, and by bears,)
Fines, Tutors, tasks, Conventions threat in vain,
Before hounds, hunters, and Newmarket Plain.
Rough with his elders, with his equals rash,
Civil to sharpers, prodigal of cash;
Constant to nought—save hazard and a *****,
Yet cursing both—for both have made him sore:
Unread (unless since books beguile disease,
The P——x becomes his passage to Degrees);
Fooled, pillaged, dunned, he wastes his terms away,
And unexpelled, perhaps, retires M.A.;
Master of Arts! as hells and clubs proclaim,
Where scarce a blackleg bears a brighter name!

  Launched into life, extinct his early fire,
He apes the selfish prudence of his Sire;
Marries for money, chooses friends for rank,
Buys land, and shrewdly trusts not to the Bank;
Sits in the Senate; gets a son and heir;
Sends him to Harrow—for himself was there.
Mute, though he votes, unless when called to cheer,
His son’s so sharp—he’ll see the dog a Peer!

  Manhood declines—Age palsies every limb;
He quits the scene—or else the scene quits him;
Scrapes wealth, o’er each departing penny grieves,
And Avarice seizes all Ambition leaves;
Counts cent per cent, and smiles, or vainly frets,
O’er hoards diminished by young Hopeful’s debts;
Weighs well and wisely what to sell or buy,
Complete in all life’s lessons—but to die;
Peevish and spiteful, doting, hard to please,
Commending every time, save times like these;
Crazed, querulous, forsaken, half forgot,
Expires unwept—is buried—Let him rot!

  But from the Drama let me not digress,
Nor spare my precepts, though they please you less.
Though Woman weep, and hardest hearts are stirred,
When what is done is rather seen than heard,
Yet many deeds preserved in History’s page
Are better told than acted on the stage;
The ear sustains what shocks the timid eye,
And Horror thus subsides to Sympathy,
True Briton all beside, I here am French—
Bloodshed ’tis surely better to retrench:
The gladiatorial gore we teach to flow
In tragic scenes disgusts though but in show;
We hate the carnage while we see the trick,
And find small sympathy in being sick.
Not on the stage the regicide Macbeth
Appals an audience with a Monarch’s death;
To gaze when sable Hubert threats to sear
Young Arthur’s eyes, can ours or Nature bear?
A haltered heroine Johnson sought to slay—
We saved Irene, but half ****** the play,
And (Heaven be praised!) our tolerating times
Stint Metamorphoses to Pantomimes;
And Lewis’ self, with all his sprites, would quake
To change Earl Osmond’s ***** to a snake!
Because, in scenes exciting joy or grief,
We loathe the action which exceeds belief:
And yet, God knows! what may not authors do,
Whose Postscripts prate of dyeing “heroines blue”?

  Above all things, Dan Poet, if you can,
Eke out your acts, I pray, with mortal man,
Nor call a ghost, unless some cursed scrape
Must open ten trap-doors for your escape.
Of all the monstrous things I’d fain forbid,
I loathe an Opera worse than Dennis did;
Where good and evil persons, right or wrong,
Rage, love, and aught but moralise—in song.
Hail, last memorial of our foreign friends,
Which Gaul allows, and still Hesperia lends!
Napoleon’s edicts no embargo lay
On ******—spies—singers—wisely shipped away.
Our giant Capital, whose squares are spread
Where rustics earned, and now may beg, their bread,
In all iniquity is grown so nice,
It scorns amusements which are not of price.
Hence the pert shopkeeper, whose throbbing ear
Aches with orchestras which he pays to hear,
Whom shame, not sympathy, forbids to snore,
His anguish doubling by his own “encore;”
Squeezed in “Fop’s Alley,” jostled by the beaux,
Teased with his hat, and trembling for his toes;
Scarce wrestles through the night, nor tastes of ease,
Till the dropped curtain gives a glad release:
Why this, and more, he suffers—can ye guess?—
Because it costs him dear, and makes him dress!

  So prosper eunuchs from Etruscan schools;
Give us but fiddlers, and they’re sure of fools!
Ere scenes were played by many a reverend clerk,
(What harm, if David danced before the ark?)
In Christmas revels, simple country folks
Were pleased with morrice-mumm’ry and coarse jokes.
Improving years, with things no longer known,
Produced blithe Punch and merry Madame Joan,
Who still frisk on with feats so lewdly low,
’Tis strange Benvolio suffers such a show;
Suppressing peer! to whom each vice gives place,
Oaths, boxing, begging—all, save rout and race.

  Farce followed Comedy, and reached her prime,
In ever-laughing Foote’s fantastic time:
Mad wag! who pardoned none, nor spared the best,
And turned some very serious things to jest.
Nor Church nor State escaped his public sneers,
Arms nor the Gown—Priests—Lawyers—Volunteers:
“Alas, poor Yorick!” now for ever mute!
Whoever loves a laugh must sigh for Foote.

  We smile, perforce, when histrionic scenes
Ape the swoln dialogue of Kings and Queens,
When “Crononhotonthologos must die,”
And Arthur struts in mimic majesty.

  Moschus! with whom once more I hope to sit,
And smile at folly, if we can’t at wit;
Yes, Friend! for thee I’ll quit my cynic cell,
And bear Swift’s motto, “Vive la bagatelle!”
Which charmed our days in each ægean clime,
As oft at home, with revelry and rhyme.
Then may Euphrosyne, who sped the past,
Soothe thy Life’s scenes, nor leave thee in the last;
But find in thine—like pagan Plato’s bed,
Some merry Manuscript of Mimes, when dead.

  Now to the Drama let us bend our eyes,
Where fettered by whig Walpole low she lies;
Corruption foiled her, for she feared her glance;
Decorum left her for an Opera dance!
Yet Chesterfield, whose polished pen inveighs
‘Gainst laughter, fought for freedom to our Plays;
Unchecked by Megrims of patrician brains,
And damning Dulness of Lord Chamberlains.
Repeal that act! again let Humour roam
Wild o’er the stage—we’ve time for tears at home;
Let Archer plant the horns on Sullen’s brows,
And Estifania gull her “Copper” spouse;
The moral’s scant—but that may be excused,
Men go not to be lectured, but amused.
He whom our plays dispose to Good or Ill
Must wear a head in want of Willis’ skill;
Aye, but Macheath’s examp
r Aug 2014
We knew him well
his jest
most excellent
alas, not infinite

Where be your gibes now?
Your gambols? Your songs?
Your flashes of merriment,
that were wont
to set the table on a roar?
(Hamlet, V.i)

We laughed,
we cried
amused and touched

Borne on your back,
anguish unspoken

Poor Yorick.

r ~ 8/12/14
\¥/\
  |      RIP Robin McLauren Williams
/ \     (1951 - 2014)
Karen Alexander Mar 2010
Meteoric Buick
Slick *****
Frantic frenetic
Majestic kick
Chick shtick
Shashlik

Nicotinic stick
Lick flick
Hermeneutic heretic
Magnetic rhetoric
Hick logic
Strategic

Plastic music
Tick click
Bucolic Bardic
Peptic druidic
Rustic emetic
Sceptic

Polymeric quirk
Sick trick
Turmeric trimeric
Septic *****
Wick crick
Derrick
Brandon Conway Sep 2018
Foot meets the metal of a cold shovel
with a sun beaming down
booted foot pushes the *****
into the soft and rooty ground

one mound of dirt
sweat forms above the brow
two mounds of dirt
salty bead slithers down
three mounds of dirt
tuned into the sounds
four mounds of dirt
birds chirp all around

stopped by a thick root
extra force must be used
give that shovel a pogo of boots
and we are at the fifth mound

six and seven are easy
as the hole starts to round
eight nine ten eleven twelve
a tomb has been found

carried your sheet covered corpse
laid you in the hole
cover you with what was uncovered
creating a man made knoll

Six years of memories
laid underneath this red dirt
many years missing
that time gone subvert
Sarah Margaret Aug 2012
A feather
Of a feather
Aloft by chance;
Falling from Father Time's favor
As his footsteps
Leave history behind.

The ages of empires,
The scintilla of genius,
Are breaths of wind,
Flickering stars,
Far in the distance.

Alas,
Poor Yorick -
He never had a chance.
featherfingers Jun 2014
Photograph by Michael J. Sullivan, 2010*

Listen up, you little *****, and let me
teach you a thing or two.  See this skull here,
poised and serene?  How do you know it’s poised?
It’s dead, for Christ’s sake! The only thing it’s
poised on in the edge of this stump—“ye olde
dead tree” holding “ye old dead head.”  He had
a name, you know—Yorick—I didn’t make
that up. I knew him; good friend of my mum’s.
     This sword here could have been what ran him through,
you know.  Coulda got him straight through the gut,
and you’re all sittin’ here admiring its
craftwork.  It’s the fancy hilt, isn’t it,
the bright metal chasing its own tail in
golden loops.  Warm yellow over cold steel,
that’s what you people like—spectacle, shine—
not dust and history, like Yorick over here.
     You don’t mind if I smoke, do you?  Only
thing these candles are good for, really.  They’re
tallow—stinking, smoky fat made by Jen
on her weekends off.  She doesn’t know much
about candles, but her *****’s Special
Draft is the best mead made for this dung heap.
     Anyway, I gotta ****.  Leave Yorick
with your tips, and remember: what glitters
here isn’t gold, just paint over old age.
Ekphrastic poem, written in blank verse.
Spenser Roper Mar 2014
Every limerick follows a ratio
like, Alas, poor Yorick, Horatio
you've known them before
then after line four
they predicatably end with *******

Whence do ye derive from all destiny so great and gigantically,
Within thy Shakespeare’s eye - doest ye see all that love is intrinsically?
Like, “Pummeled inside so many a verse we ride along for better or worse.”
Only the faithful remember where from that line dost come.
And if thou art my good and faithful friend, pray tell me, what is this curse?
Oh I’ve scored your sonnets, I’ve played your plays passing so many a day
Emulating your way and yet all I’ve written is bound to decay.
But my good and immortal friend - is all that you possess at home with me?
Ever is destiny as blind as the righteous are *******.
If the righteous met you on stage would they not see you like Yorick - beheaded?
But ‘tis only this stage which hosts your heart, to your enduring greatness.
And as your spirit comes to me in my pen, help me set it right again.
Here - I, the buskin of old that has not vanished, I push my pen
Toward thy inward powers and feel within my fingers - you move -
Doubtless swells of ink and chalice with words meant to soothe.
You trace my heart within your palette and as I watch - we appear -
One letter after the other in the affected black knowing nothing of fear.

But do I not have two hands Sir, William?
What say I scribble with the right whilst thou writest with my left?

And with the left hand I write...

At great length I consider Aristotle’s thoughts mighty -
When sewn onto a lamp shade - but he himself is not as easily seen.
Round him were seen a flock of birds screaming
Of my tragedy’s with the wailing of a dog’s bay marking my dramas
Around as by chance, by chance I stood giant over all my terrors.
My bow is extended, the lock bolt released, words affixed
On the string, steadily aimed at your heart.
And hast not the line, “Alas, poor Yorick” found its eerie way into
The lines of Hamlet – lines that I never wrote into that play?
For they only doest exist in the collective minds of the readers.
Oh, aye, I wished for my soul that I had written that line
But it is one that I cannot claim exists in my play.
Doest thou venture forth with a hardier action now?
Thus to descend to the departed souls found in the graves here.
‘Tis here I lie in broken words to ask the prophet of where
My soul relies – to see Tiberius I come – the old Grecian –
My nature to be amused but vainly so conveying up my drama.
Oh nature, my nature, hast not thy stage tread me ventured?
Aye, and naked besides so that each rib does count.
What? What truth of old is to be seen in truth set on this stage?
I come to fetch mankind out of his own doom for there is more
To this tragedy, it scarcely is over the horizon and once it begins
It will move countless souls to a harness clad misery.
‘Tis well this philosophy of doubtless sensations refined
From the humor of the blackest infections.
Aye yes, it beats in jest of stolid and barren sorrow until
It is sufficiently moist and exhibits a graceful dance.
There entwines a solemn step which a Demigod moves
Neither for naught as we love what is Christian and moral.
Here – in the nether world - popular is homely, domestic and plain.
There are no Caesars, no Achilles, no Aristotle which appear on the stage.
Neither is there any to be seen of executives or cynics of commerce.
Only secretaries, per chance and brick layers and lieutenants read the lines.

Then with my right hand I write...

“But my good and faithful friend, tell me, what can such people meet with
That which can be called great? – that is - what great can they do?”

And my left hand answers...

What greatness? You ask – Aye, they form the cabals, they pay the mortgage
They pocket their savings and fear not where the stocks be placed.
Whence they come they oft return and derive their form from destiny’s greatness.
Greatness which rises a man up on high even when it grinds him to an incarnate dust.
Everything else is mere nonsense and not worthy of any acquaintances also,
All of our sorrows and wants – they too are here.
Wherefore then fly to yourselves if ‘tis truly yourselves you seek.
And then on that stage you shall meet your own contemptible incarnation.
There the poet is the host, the fifth act rendering the reckoning
And when crime doth become sick, virtue sits down to the feast.

Here I am trying my best to write/conjure up a master of the written word - however futile that might seem to you. Hopefully I didn't make Shakespeare roll over in his grave.
Jenny Gordon Mar 2019
...of the world."



(sonnet #MMMMMMMDCCCV)


"Alas, poor Yorick!"  echoes down the tale
O' centries since that Tristram Shandy thence
Was published, and familiar too, though whence
I ne'er could say 'til now, in sheer betrayl--
Love-sick being cause for seeking to avail
Me of some cure from false hopes' keen pretense--
To succour me at THAT font was for sense
Jist what the Doctor ordered:  pretty bail.
Now Corp'ral Trim reads Yorick's sermon fer
Ole Shandy's intrest ere that Tristram's through
The birth canal, I've highr ground as it were.
Not cuz the antique novel is a crew
Of nonsense.  No.  It sets off this e'er poor
'Scuse for "real'ty"...IF I can breathe too.

23Mar19a
Tintin's sidekick was Snowy...where'd I have the idea Yorick was familiar again???
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXw8CRapg7k
it is so easy to **** me unknown brother
carved Samaritan image
do yourself a favor I’m an undecided blotch of color
indigo reaching for purple
shut at once the book you read from
and I’ll become a butterfly with my wings crucified
on two pages

~~~
maybe because of the need to forget
I see death as a hindrance on the wheel of torture
a camphorated ointment for nervous fibers ends
I’m closer today to the tree for hanging the noose
from which God forbid you to taste
look vanitas vanitatum
Yorick’s head lies on your plate when you receive your alms
the candle the baked apple and the wheat porridge helping

~~~
I stand up facing the wall
my voice isn’t yet untied
I wonder what is stronger and if the heart tips the scales
my achy breaky heart
on the balance between life and death
there are a few extra grams of soul
we will need very tiny jewellery weights
psalm 103
Fibonacci’s series the golden ratio

~~~
look my child the soft carpet
my warm body upon which you step this sacred day
my soles are thin they stick to the red clay
I turn upon the potter’s wheel
my everlasting mentioning
like I was that’s how I’ll stay
a crumb of Eucharist bread on the lips
the first and the last
Lysander Gray Nov 2011
I

Drag your child dreams across my teeth
and hold your army at the gate.
A thousand pikemen 'neath the flag
Now reign within the court of sleep.

Their hands wrapped round oaken shaft
their mail a-glittered in the sun.
Shields all bared 'gainst mortal pain
To raze and conquer, one by one.

They hung the king and in his place
Poor Yorick sat with crown and mace.
And we vassal's question deep
The choices fools will make and keep.

O sky awash with blinking snow!
O land drowned in golden light!
No force will come and claim the day.
No end to this, O sleepless night.

Drag your child dreams across my teeth
and trace the Ande's over skin.
Release the Marquis from your eyes
to sovereign now my realms of dream.

II

Drag your Child-dreams across my teeth
And run your pistol dry.
Bite into the ears of hope
Now feast upon the flower.

I ran my taste across your lips
and draw a fire with my tongue.
the Y of sin;
Staccatto on your neck
with the silence outside;
Audience to Reverie.

The Verse we sang
With child dreams dragged across monster teeth
hold this holy, once revered hand.
Lay your breath on heaven's gate.

III

...she dragged her child-dreams across my teeth, the edges and tip rubbed me on the range. Her fingers groped for the discarded uniforms of youth, now a size too small.

The white and stark reflections of the passing car-gaze illuminated the comfortable moment for what it really was. She didn't know it yet, she had no idea.


IV

I glanced upon the holy mound
awash in evenings light.
The dew smelt like memories
soaked in pollen.

A black sun yawned between the hills.
Then the earth began to quake
when the river was dammed and its trees deforested.

While all the while
She dragged her child-dreams across my teeth.
glass can May 2013
Oh Yorick, you little crunchy skull, tell me, baby,
answer all the questions in "Blowing in the Wind"
on pacifism and what-is/how-to-be a man, please

and then play the piano while I lie on the lid of it
and let's sing the blues about being and nonbeing
and get drunk on scotch, as old as little young me

and the places, faces, and names we've forgotten
all while my rusty-stringed guitar gently weeps,

and geese run in droves over my grave, shivering
up and down my spine as my ears just burn alive

with the sword of death on a frazzled dried string
hangs over our heads to remind us we are young

we must not waste a second of life with "frivolity"

we are young, dead, all roguish,
we are real, but not broken--yet!
Hidden souls
Inprinted on the wall
Within a dragons den
No smoke
Or fire
Or gold
Just skulls
Now hanging
Empty eyes glare
At life
No longer there

by Jemia
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2023
The Nighttime Skies have altered, altering us…

The nightly showing of twinkling heavens, fulsome,
brimming, as can now be seen but only in a planetarium
program, always was a delight to our ******* citified  
visitors, who received this free reminder of Earth’s  
non-centric role in the universe, happily, for it jived
senses with common sensibility, confirming an assumptive
reality with yes! my-eyes-can-see-it proofs, that many city
folk only hope & assume are yet true someplace  else
‘out there.’

Night light pollution, a life feature just assumed as
a costless cost of doing business of our modern
population distribution, has horrendous mental
consequences for a generation of me-me-me
young ones, who lack the lessons in real awe,
not by way of a video game, but by never having seen a
Milky Way,
constellations and planets
that were so necessary to
critical cortical thinking p,
human beliefs,
re the totality of
existence a mere
two hundred or
so years ago.

The star’s disappearance for so much of our population,
reenforces the notion of our own centricity, get it?

A world centered on the city.

The truer star studded sky knows not
of gender neutrality,
racial disharmony,
through a
“I am not the universe “ perspective,
for in this large than life realer than real
exterior externality,
which why, by the by,
is mega black and white duopoly,
makes who is bigger no better than smaller,
for all but magnified speckles
all now more of a minor
irrelevant relativity.

When all the worlds are watching, not just the world, but
a Universe of unknown worlds are judging, studying us,
and maybe our lives are mighty picayune,
but amore humbled and yet precious, do we not need to be
always on our best behavior?

the fact is that we who are but 80 miles from nyc’s borderline can no longer sky-testify, be reminded of our planetary’s liveliness- uniqueness and our proper place on the largest tapestry
of the always, of the forever, of the
majesty and harmonious coexistence.

I am naive and a proper fool, and I do not know if it is the new smoking of the planet, spread of the seemingly innocuous
city boundaries encroaching on our rural existence, or a new physicality condition that makes our nights a pungent blackened cloud, and that so many can not say of the awesomeness
mystery above us, and think
with humility
our destiny,
our alignment
                         “is in the star’s.”

Alas poor Yorick, even your creator, the poet William Shakespeare, who understood human frailties too well, conceded that,

”it is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves.”

But the again,
he could nightly gaze
upon them,
and we cannot!

He also conceded, to attempt to balance
the imbalances of our
visual scales,
and magnetic moral compasses,
writing,

indeed!

”there are more things in heaven and earth*”
Sean Andersson Jun 2010
How lucky I must be
To have been born when I was
The middle of autumn,
A score ago
To have grown up as I did
Playing with stick swords
And scraping with villains only imagined
To have been fighting for love
Before the term was defined

How lucky
That I didn’t grow up decades ago
Before you were so much
Or even had such
A thought
I was blessed I didn’t develop ideas
Only to rust sleepily in a corner
While you gasped for your first breath

And how fortunate
That in this so-called tragedy
I was not cast as Yorick, the foolish
To think I was already dead

How lucky I must be
To have grown up so fast
To be mature enough to be burdened
By your memory
How serendipitous, auspicious
That I have the strength
To bear the weight
When you could not

How lucky I must be
To be able
To live
With a shadow over my head
And “love” written on my wrist
These words are mine and mine alone.
John F McCullagh Mar 2016
Let the curse be invoked, let ghosts gibber and moan!
It appears the Bard’s skull is out and on loan.
Although long protected by a malediction dread,
It turns out Shakespeare’s body is missing his head.
Some Victorian fans thought it quite the lark
to make off with his skull; a deed done in the dark.
Alas poor Shakespeare whose works I know well
Your skull now a paperweight where miscreants dwell.
Like Crassus the Roman, you serve as a prop
And your moldering bones are missing their top.
If Poor Yorick had heirs they are under suspicion;
Subject them to torture to obtain their confession.
According to reports Shakespeare's skull has been stolen from his grave
Charlie Jul 2015
You are the light that yonder window breaks.
Like Yorick I knew you well.
You are the Demetrius to my Helena.
The Romeo to my Rosaline.
My unrequited love.
Nomad Oct 2015
I will
write love on her arms
so many and so deep
that it courses through her veins
and into her
heart.

I will
write love on her arms
so she can stop hurting
even though she loves the pain
which is the
hardest part.

I will not
stop loving her,
even if she lets me go,
because through all of this
I'll let her know she is loved
by everyone she knows.

I will not
abandon her in her darkest times of need
I will not however
be her knight in shining armor
gallant and proud
on a strong new steed.

She will not know that
this lowly peasant
comes from a nothing more
than a small house
with nothing to call my own.
Where the hardest part for me
was finding a different dial up phone.

So she walks,
so she talks
and seems okay,
but as her friend
who loves her so,
I want her to walk away.

From the pain
the sadness,
the misery,
I want her to walk on her own,
and far away from me.

I am her crutch,
but I am not her life,
and alas poor Yorick,
she is not to be my lovely wife.

But still I shall
keep her lifted up, safe from all harms
if only for a chance
to write love
all on her
arms.
Qualyxian Quest Apr 2021
The imaginative life is fun
But often doesn't touch

Alas, poor Yorick, alas!
Alas! I think too much

I wish that she would hold me
But her caresses for another

So I sleep alone
Naked under covers

          No lovers.
Vous m'avez demandé quelques vers sur « Amour ».

Ce mien livre, d'émoi cruel et de détresse,

Déjà **** dans mon Œuvre étrange qui se presse

Et dévale, flot plus amer de jour en jour.


Qu'en dire, sinon : « Poor Yorick ! » ou mieux « poor

Lelian ! » et pauvre âme à tout faire, faiblesse,

Mollesse par des fois et caresse et paresse,

Ou tout à coup partie en guerre comme pour


Tout casser d'un passé si pur, si chastement

Ordonné par la beauté des calmes pensées.

Et pour damner tant d'heures en Dieu dépensées.


Puis il revient, mon Œuvre, las d'un tel ahan,

Pénitent, et tombant à genoux mains dressées...

Priez avec et pour le pauvre Lelian !
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2018
.well, when i was 6 or 7, i used to play dolls with my neighbor's daughter... perhaps we can fiddle around with this observation, as much as genital-less Ken & Barbie allowed us, to play driving a car, or house; ****... the Yorick cliche... 'ere comes the 'amlet synonym!

i remember this one insult from a girl,
why do your people have
a flattened occipital /
  parietal bone structure?
  (but primarily the occipital)...
so that begot thinking about this
years later... the whole Darwinism story
of - out of Africa...
huh...           so why is it that Asians
and Africans do not have a protruding
nasal bone artifact?
you know...
as noses go... Jews and their Roman
noses...
   how come...
    the Asiatic and African noses...
they're really flat at the bottom,
enlarged even...
like the phallus, and the ***...
perfect for running, and sinking...
so how come you don't have enough
nasal bone,
which is probably why there's
the case for enlarged nostrils?
huh?
         how's that?
                 what?! ping-pong!
yeah... Asians and Africans...
a bit... flat... up top when it comes
to the nose structure...
very little cartilage on the up end
of the nose... plenty down below...
   so why is it... that i come from
an ethnicity where my parietal /
occipital bone structures are somehow
flattened, but whereas the Asians
(south eastern) and the Africans
have a less protruding nasal bone?
basically flat nose on top,
with a black girl's ***'s worth around
the nostril?!
                                        why is that?!
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2016
since no song unto poland, where sing and to whom if not scotland?! for where else my home?! but now i, in abandonment of freedom nearly grasped, in the white shadow of william's tower: residing in the nearing end of london - so that fox and crow might know my name and fellowship of un-abandoned gemini, each thought has become a memory for each rhapsody of an imagine you carved into me - yet why the madness of a Finnish lass wandering the Cow Gate street looking for a boyfriend, and why not a girl of firm root to teach me to stay put?*

i count my life a life
before i succumbed
to this ****-wit platform
of the alt. t.v.,
and there my blank canvas
was black, rather than this
white.. there i merged
nimble crab with hardy
nimble oyster... and there
the waves, and there scotland,
a dream beyond irish catholicism
within england of being schooled...
and there scotland!
o dream, o dreams! let me venture
back there! but i know you
will refuse me the grant of such
a wish... then let us ease heart an hearts
with a constant striving for labour,
and whether labour acknowledged
or disavowed as important
so that the supposedly noble-chaste
can battle with opinions rather than
with an eager man's axe to topple them!
am i too to not dream of a higher woman
keeping leverage of the women before
me watching in earnest a safe home
provided by a mule or an idiot or a banker?
but i rather dream, than be among such
rot of the oaken bark with stench
than makes me all the more eager to depart!
O Scotland! each night i claw off my face
in hope of seeing yorick, my youthful dream
of a song i kept to keep me youthful in memory,
and that platter of haggis, neeps and tatties
with a sucker of whiskey drenching the meats.
Cedric McClester Sep 2016
By: Cedric  McClester,

We’re caught up in the mystery
Of who it’s gonna be
Nevertheless if I had to guess
Guess we’ll just have to see
But it’s down to a short list
So the answer some insist
To which they give their voice
They hope will be the choice

So it makes perfect sense
That we’re caught up in suspense
And though it is intense
It will come out in the rinse

Like Shakespeare’s line,“Poor Yorick.”
The choice will be historic
Depending upon how it goes
Some will be euphoric
But only one person knows
Ain’t that usually how it goes
The one who does the choosing
Knows who’s winning or losing

So it makes perfect sense
That we’re caught up in suspense
And though it is intense
It will come out in the rinse

And if you’re asking me
The biggest mystery might be
What I’m talking about
Cuz there’s an element of doubt

So it makes perfect sense
That we’re caught up in suspense
And though it is intense
It will come out in the rinse

As the betting folks make bets
And the losers have regrets
To be quite merciful
It’s nothing personal
You can take it from me
It’s only business don’t cha see
Don’t read more into it
Than happenstance or mother wit

So it makes perfect sense
That we’re caught up in suspense
And though it is intense
It will come out in the rinse





Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2016.  All rights reserved.
irinia Nov 2016
This sacred sadness of the clouds
painted on the window pane.
This end of a century
splashed all over the walls!
The evening flowing down streets like heavy water...

...Who opened these windows in our foreheads,
who built these
secondary doors in our chests?
I walk inside me as if in a diseased season.
I hear mother’s voice from beyond the dark wall:
Why are you here,
why have you come back?
Go, out with you while there is still time.

I hear my elder brother’s voice as if muffled by water:
Get out of this light as soon as you can
and leave me alone
to breathe in my own shadow...

Whose faces are preserved here,
in this putrid evening light?
What season are a thousand
cut-off heads waiting for?
Whose arms will be sown in the field,
whose teeth will grow in the grass?

I walk across myself as if I were some strange season.
With Yorick’s skull in my hands, I wonder:
If I have reaped
where and what was it I reaped?
And if I harvest, when, whom am I harvesting?

**Nichita Danilov
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2017
i can't believe me luck bound by today, first the rain the sunshine & the double rainbow, then a thai green curry with honey-glazed chicken (lemongrass? of course, coconut milk? a double of course); but then? my, my, my! an offer at the supermarket, a litre of jack daniels, slashed from 30 quid down to 18 quid, as i spoke to the cashier (we're on friendly terms): she inquired what's with the shy grunt-laughter under your nose? you've seen the deal? i'd be mad not to. i know, i bought a few bottles myself.

and then the *pièce de résistance
:
finally! a night with the moon making
orbit in the night sky!

    i've sat through countless moonless
nights, and it's more lonely sometimes
than not being able to talk to someone -
then again: a blank page is always
the most decent of all decent listeners,
better than any psychologist,
           i can tell you that much;

and it's less intrusive on behalf of not
only yourself, but on behalf of others,
to not bother making videos,
i'm starting to find them: more and more
annoying, esp. when the video making
implodes, and rarely manages to
scratch any other surface, other than its
own: cry wolf! and cried they did -
    and the wolf came, and the three little
piglets never managed to build that
third house of bricks.

and as i saw the moon walking back from
the supermarket, i watched
this celestial biscuit with its acne ridden
face from meteor exposure freeze and shrink...
they say you can see the most glorious
sunset in the moon,
  as it freezes, from gingerbread,
    through to autumnal orange,
  through to phoenix orange,
  till the point where it freezes,
     and turn into a colour of the perfect
mawler,
         or at least: the skull white of yorick.

back to the jack, and i don't know why,
why is it, that every single time i open a bottle
of bourbon, my eyes flash freeze
and engage in scenes from a brothel
where the bulgarian midwives work?
the eerie lightning, the intimidating
first "hurdle": a man sitting alone
with about a dozen of them, asking for
water, before choosing one?
  
  brothels & bourbon...
the two perfumes fuse, along with soap,
and body cream, and genital juices,
and sweat...
   i don't know how to say it,
but *** with prostitutes is so, so much more
(different) than on a casual date -
you can't really compare the two -
and, if it was only as legal as marijuana
as is the case in the netherlands...
there would be less schoolboy arguments
floating about...
  pristine & puritanical, are we?

if you've never been, you'll never know -
suddenly the freudian madonna-***** complex
emerges and rages battle with the pop culture
of its masculine counterpart, oedipus...
this is actually the one aspect of freud
i adhere to and champion -
   point being? if i didn't go to a brothel
i'd sink into a plethora of thought and inhibition
thinking that i might have an erectile
dysfunction...
      well, prostitutes said otherwise -
drunk like a skunk, lil' john managed to join
robin fiut (fiut? polish slang term for ****)
in the end...
              why is that?

see, another thing, why do interesting lives,
penned, produce the most obscenely mundane books?
for one: ghost writers...
            but who, in their right frame of mind,
pens a book about an interesting life?
         i never understood the concept of
autobiography, if it isn't an on-going, in the moment,
day by day biopic...
         england is rife with this genre,
and the books sell, probably just as well as
self-help leeches, sorry, "guides",
   but why do people think that having lived
an interesting life, an exciting life,
  that a book will also translate the same
interesting and exciting aspect of one's life?

comparison, well, i couldn't obtain a copy
of don juan's, but i got something nearing that
sort of content: harold norse's
          memoir of a ******* angel...

god, what a drag... i did want to buy one of
his poetry books... but these out-of-print
books, at 100+ quid, second hand?
     i had to pass, and buy the autobiography,
but mein gott, what a drag!
           it was twice as enjoyable reading
kierkegaard's either / or than it was reading
about... harold norse's life...
          even reading joseph kraszewski's
wrath of god was more entertaining...
  and yes, the majority of poles even find
kraszewski's prose "a bit" tedious,
             so that's telling you something.

books written as a post scriptum to an exciting
and an interesting life, are nothing more,
than the last breaths of a race horse after
he falls in the grand national race
having misguided a jump over these insane
height hurdles, breaking three of his legs
and having to be put down;
     it would always be more interesting,
to have a book written about you,
rather than by you...

         i write, because my life is hardly
a bungee jump adrenaline waterfall,
  nor is it sky diving, or diving, or anything for
that matter...
   it's comparative excitement comes
from a deal on a litre of bourbon at the supermarket,
sniffing the opened bottle and those
bulgarian girls...
            - like this one time, so i snoop around
the room while she takes my money and leaves
the room, upon returning, seeing me holding
a *****, and she asks:
     you wanna use it?
     and i reply: no, not really.
                too much contemplating taking
a ****, it would seem:
  that hole is reserved for things coming out,
not things coming in; or at least
                                    in my world.

i'm still going to die with the perfume of bourbon
reminding me of brothels, soap,
  body cream, sweet sweat and even sweeter
titbits of hushed tongues,
        talking of such brief,
                  agreements to exchange affection;

which still bugs me why in america you have
strip-clubs, and why brothels are shunned...
i think strip-clubs are the dumbest idea imaginable,
i've been to one, in athens...
             and i sat there, thinking of that
quote from the devil's advocate -

   look, but don't touch,
   touch, but don't taste.
   taste, but don't swallow.


i mean, come on... strip clubs are hardly
the churches that house the adoration of
women, they're more like a sausage fest
  or docile *****... more like the oedipus houses
of mass castration...
           even i know, having seen a bellydance
in edinburgh once that there's more allure
in a bellydance than in a striptease...
what are these men afraid of, not getting a *****,
or not realising the very apparent
freudian notion of the madonna-*****
complex?
              i think the latter, more and more;

here's to it: to brothels! prostitutes! and bums!

p.s. you'll become less neurotic dating a woman
who has had many ****** partners,
less, as it were: jealous,
  but definitely less neurotic.
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2017
always the lactephiliacs, never the cows / always the milk drinkers, never the mongrel eaters of coco puffs; bridesmaids ahoy!

i have absolutely no idea
as to happened in
the past 10 minutes...
  but it did...
        news of a sweet
  *******
hanging himself from
a well established group:
oh **** me,
back in the day, me and my
friend sam used to pretend
being punks and skateboarders,
we'd head to the RM1
nightclub and go mental
on metal and alternative rock
music,
   and then walk back
from romford to ilford,
singing *backstreet boys'
song
forgetting to take the bus...
so yeah, under-age drinking,
sticky floors,
       mushrooms growing out
the ******* ceiling, the whole
dalmatian...
      given the drunken eye
it used to remind of:
   is that a cow barking,
      or am i ******* hallucinating?
no, i swear, that dog
just mooed!
   so why is that moon still up
in the sky?
   death pulling a joke with
                       its scythe sceptre?
the holy grail in the other
hand, consisting of an emptied
cranium...
  in my version of shakespeare
   of hamlet
yorick wouldn't be found seeking
"narcissus" talking to a skull:
   he'd be drinking wine from it!
what? god conjures
   parasites, man conjures dracula -
what's the problem,
    at least the former is just itchy-weird
while the former: oh **** me:
           zee makaber-romantik!
- but just now i started
looking at a youtube video:
thank **** i didn't get into
the community of making videos...
it's like revisiting a schoolyard
   playground:
watching these recent videos
is like telling yourself:
where was i when i should have
been watching
the english soap opera of eastenders;
where was i?!
              evidently not glued
to a t.v. like  that scene
from a clockwatch orange...
                  it's when people
get together that all hell breaks
loose...
  and yes,
    i'm one of the "cis" men who
can't believe that blaire white
is transexual... argument?
she's not a thai / brazilian surprise...
those ***** (pretty) boys
can pull a quick one on someone
like trainspotting's begbie...
  i must have said this before...
   well, i'm making time for
not being of the sort of people that
watched soap opera...
             about a fictional east-end...
i have the east-end of everywherer,
the internet!
               incy wincy spider came along
came along to a portion
of his web, sat down with a fly,
looked at the example and said:
forget our previous hierarchy,
i'll play the lion,
you play the hyena -
         these two are just about ripe
for zombified-dentistry of
biting the larynx;
but in all honesty,
   looking at the internet and the content
i sometimes watch,
   i could have been high-brow
about not watching the soap
opera eastenders...
   but now i'm in the mud within
the internet orientation...
   it was bound to become
just that...
                 thank **** for
producing content that is
not-passive, and can be absorbed while
falling asleep;
but still that image of a grown
man all the more
   pleased, to drink a cold glass
of milk upon waking up,
and not needing that ugh of all ughs
that's a "compliment" of corn flakes,
or shredded wheat cereal...
  milk on its own is just fine...
   i know that i'll turn my ****
into a geyser with a chili powder accent;
which is something you'd
probably call: **** *** in reverse.
Lucas Jul 2018
A king’s funeral, no trumpets no band
Is now arranged by a snake’s cruel command
Who stole the throne-room where he used to stand
And marries your mom with his ****** hands

The uncle who put your father inna grave
Ignores approach of the Norwegian knave
His passion for power, it’s all he craves
Not even an ounce of goodness he saves

I get why you’re mad and why the man, who
Took away your dad, and the life once had
The villain, the cad, deserves nothing more
than poison you add with just a small pour

You have hidden your feelings in plain sight
Screaming and ranting, you look for a fight
Polonius, curtain, Oh! I am slain!
Is it the king? No, P. dies in vain

‘cause they are all playing their crude games, right
Trying to play you like musician’s pipes
While the floutists break their stereotype
Their life of fiction, removing the blight

I get why you’re mad and why the man, who
Took away your dad, and the life once had
The villain, the cad, deserves nothing more
than poison you add with just a small pour

But it’s all in vain
You die just the same

You were going to **** him while he prayed
But fear of death your humanity swayed
conscience struck and your cowardice stayed
Lost all action, decided not to slay

Your goodness beat out the pain he did cause
you snatched your righteousness from evil’s jaws
Grace had beaten out the justice of laws
Fie! Claud sends you to England just ‘cause

Look, I get why you’re mad, but come on man
Life is too short, you should not end the span
You human, you gad, to your dad you swore
Either end him now or mercy, implore

But it’s all in vain
You die just the same

What happened while in the graveyard that night?
Chap-fallen Yorick? The digger’s delight?
Ophelia, Her corpse drownéd, snow white?
“To Be” you chose, but King Claud you (still) spite

I get why you’re mad and why the man, who
Took away your dad, and the life once had
The villain, the cad, deserves nothing more
than poison you add with just a small pour

Look, I get why you’re mad, but come on man
Life is too short, come up with a (good) plan
You human, you gad, to your dad you swore
Either end him now or mercy, implore

But it’s all in vain
You died just the same
Written and Performed for my English class
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2020
by now i know i'm not really
adding much to the narrative -
nothing to: quench the zeitgeist
thrill or: pneumonia...

i cannot offer either an escape
plan or some comforting
trickle of wisdom -
       all the better:
    there's no blatant sentiment
on my part for an escapism -
as there's no fixation
on transcendence -

           same old two variations...
but when i smoke
a cigarette...
and listen to purple people eater -
cockfight...
and there's some bourbon
too...
    well... i bring gravity
to entertain the function
of feet: one minute perched
on a windowsill (clenched
buttocks sitting on a folded
foot... the other dangling) -

with an interlude:
i guess that's how i dance
with gravity -
a centipede on nicotine:
quasi-numbing arithmetic
of: pairs... infinite pairs
of legs...

then sitting in a chair:
crouched like a crow like a priest...
no... not really...
nothing more from me
to sustain this narrative:
elsewhere...
    dasein doesn't even work
on me:
    oh sure... big concern for
big h'america...
         the soviets never made
it: somehow the chinese
played the long-game and
that shitaki hallucinogenic
was brought in on the sly
with a very subtle broth...

       that's all i have... running
dry on prospects for concern...
out of sight: out of mind...

i very much like the idea (and
experience) of being the last
person in the house to deserve
a bed and find sleep...

i am also very thankful that
i am not old...
             and young enough
to not feed into a vanity:
     but when someone might
suggest: this is only a
"word salad"...
           such friendships...
       i guess we were both
competing... ahem... "competing"
"artists"...
   if he could only have said
something more...
last time i checked though...
there was no constructive
criticism...
   nor did he mention any
famous poets...
              we apparently wrote
poetry...
how i might have wanted
to talk to him about some verse...

a fwendship that ended
with: you should title your work...
that psychiatric put-down
the toothless Doug...
             thank god this friendship
didn't end because of money...
or a woman...
instead over a disputed
informality - tact -
          something this trivial:
making the friendship trivial
to begin with...

                 such that be the current
wrath that feeds a speeding up
the death of nostalgia...
          there can be no nostalgia
in rewriting of history:

grandiosity of blistering words...
otherwise it wouldn't be neu-history
would it: something done
by way of arbitrary:
            from the atheist collective
tsunami back to sq. 1 of
the resurgence of the individual:

like, somehow...
the mind is an exclusivity of
genius imposing the rule of thumb...
sometimes though:
it's not even a genius...
   at best it's a veneer masquerade...
teasing tautology...

a beast at the froth...
               base insignia: it's hardly
a black-*******...
it's hardly a glimmering
hammer & sickle...
   it's a greyish stone and scythe...
but it's otherwise: the RED...
primer... and guard...
there was once talk
of the white russians and
the red russians...

       i guess the french will
be forever bleu...
  the cardinals are red...
the bishops don ***** purple...
how for all the meticulous
additions to... "understood"?
we revert back to...
poet of amber poet of red
poet of green...

     ha! amber: reconsider!
waver!
red! full-stop!
    green: which is not blue:
green is also envy...
blue is high values...
   but you'd never... associate
blue with: keep going...
don't stop... even though...
the river is blue: blue as
water in a glass is "blue"...
well... or that the sea is blue...
enough area and depth
and enough of the sun...
the sky is blue...
   the earth is tinged with
green outlets...
otherwise...
cinnamon lives matter?
arabs don't matter...
test of "conscience"...
        
             the flag of estonia...
blue black and white...
the flag of lithuania: yellow,
green and red...
   that prominent arab
countries borrowed
the white red and black
borrowed from the empire prior
to weimar republicanism...

otherwise the ordeal of man-made
laws: one year the vogue -
the next a limping outcast:
a ***** colony starts from
a whipping of jurisprudence...
some said: a new normal...

edward the confessor,
the normans and the anglo-saxon
antithesis horde counter
to: how i find underage girls
unappealing...
how you can only tell:
a girl is not procrastinating
her media influenced ***
when... walking next to her...
is a boy... and he's gaff...
or he's riddling a concept
of a bicycle...
                  but you sort of have
to pair them up...

if i were my old 21 year old self...
and the hormonal fog had
my mind in an iron maiden...
and i was dating locally...
without a plethora of geographical
locations: one girlfriend from
russia... one from australia...
one from france...
some spanish one-night-stand...
a whole bunch of romanian / bulgarian
advert friendly *****...

       colt bite the buck and bucket...
to think of *** like a swan:
settling down... giving her a brand
new kitchen...
a pair of cats to pet...
a very unreasonable son to try to
shake off like a fizz in a drink:
to open a can of coca-cola...
if only later to drink some acid
trip of stale: same partie...

     couldn't the fate of yugoslavia
come face to face with america?
couldn't there be a sedation of states...
if the polish lithuanian commonwealth
could be nibbled out of existence...
by 1, 2, tic-tac-toe partitioning...
if mr gorbachev could fathom:
peacefully: (a) ukraine...
estonia... lithuania... the kazakh bazar...

couldn't... the great american
juggernaut leave room for interpretation
as to how there might have to
be sedition states?
solo texas...
the north east coast could
write a constitution of the states
of sedation...
it's not like america could ever
become: wholesome... rye glamours...
and remain intact: that it could!
it could! for the desires of
nostalgic posterity...
   unlike the grinding blunder...
some minor concept of:
"nation"-        or    -"state"...

    past the calorie mark...
ingesting the liquidrice like maple like
crude moon-shim-shimminy-sheen:
glued teeth together and:
breaks the bone...
having to crease the pain...
and differentiate...
otherwise:
a flamboyant: tibia...
walked a dog on a leash
that was also (once) a hangman's noose...
and he barked and jazzed a rhapsody
of barking like there's no analogy for
tomorrow!

no clue in on the game of:
statutes... law...
      or synonyms...
           discretion of proofs -
             cold core concept of...
that there was an idea of
sniffing *******:
when in fact... Kiev youths
boast of sniffing glue...
              
        because i couldn't possibly...
leverage an act...
if i were 34 and she was 21...
and... oh... right...
the fetish of the forbidden is missing...
esp. in the digital medium:
because when flesh is imposed
upon flesh: and there's no...
hormonal aurora...
           the kids keep their bias...
jokes work best...
              some fake some russian
trucker...
and some parents who sought
justice: **** and club of metal over
the head...
               thus?! pristine and
spaghetti retro-flex...
spinning and spasms extra...

          that man achieved poetry
and nuance of language:
that some words don't aid... vectors...
that the ego is no ******* compass...
copernican "west"?
in the geocentric dimension...
which is still somehow needed...
otherwise? dream-big!
heliocentrism and science-fiction!

- to sort of tinker with a layer of man's
laws... and there's gravity...
and then to ***** oneself with
a constellation:
because the united could
never be as united as the yugoslav
project: post-scriptum
of the ottoman barber shop...

   spooked bosnians: best beloved
little europe avenue
gashing with pauper blood
of aristocrats of burgundy...
the biggest shame came...
when the blood was gushing
from the guillotine:
no one held an adventure into
the jesus christ metaphor...
no one sparked a drunkard ****
of wine gurgling...

to read the law:
somehow to read the thesaurus...
balance bonkers of the synonym nuance...

or that other myopic extreme:
some john dillinger,
some greater extremity of new yorker
blues:
new york is like anything
beside this standard of new amsterdam...

shooting dogs that aimed
at skipping: three legged...
unless that debilitating quote from
mary shelley...
and how the monster:
proteus or caliban...
          in name alone...
was to cite...
                           tectonic urges...
that there was a mr. caliban
and a mrs. caliban...
          but that there's also
a neuter lobster: ****-frenzy...

           right now: to want to live in
america... to want the custard...
the fudge and marshmallow...
to rewrite new york
like: a bunch of people who
love to eat in: who can cook...
and the restaurant is...
    an overcooked platter of veggies...

the edible gurgling of
post ad hoc lawyers...
               postmodernism of:
that / this disused hammer without
layers and tiers of nails born
toward tables and stables...

no new bogus prospect:
twisting original narratives:
some cite dementia prone
quid pro quo(tas)...
                      this ordeal of...
heaping together limbo:
EISENHOWER:
            no ad lib. / verbatim:
        we will not churn out
tea-leaves made into chewing gum...
then we will!
find! the lost avenue!
of! digest-able chewy-chow-some!

- then we bring in the saxons-anglicised...
and treat them to some disney...
we'll subsequently huddle
imitating hebrews:
like the briton mongrels
we are... we probably are a people
of polyglots and polymaths...
but under the present guise of
history:
we are celts and we are britons...
there was the saxon invasion...
there were the viking raids...
there was the norman revision...

            we the people...
of the afghanistan of the north: minding
arthur and "king"...
we're not celts... unless having lived
in scotland:
one might tell the difference
when someone accents the Gaelic theta:
as a surd H... **** a t'ought...
    apostrophe (') = surd...

         edinburgh nicknamed
athens of the north...
st. petersburg / amsterdam are both...
venice of the north...
of the former: seat of learning...
i never like david hume's black swans...
and if nietzsche is
to make critique of kant:
i.e. kant being the "philosopher"
of bureocrats....

how does: the will to power end up?
despotic bus drivers...
POWER! with a missing will...
yes... the most ordained with
a silent mind are currently served up
teases of tension...
POWER!
  the bus driver is currently being
served up a placebo amphetamine
cocktail...
he or she... can gesticulate
at a heaven: deus est persona non grata...

the facemask "riddle":
power to the cogs...
leaving the sigma of the machinery
in tatters...
otherwise... a slowing-down mechanism...
POWER!
       nietzsche is more
a power-broker... a philosopher
of daydreams and the overt-exercise
of futility than Kant would ever become...

the bus driver... oh how i wished
to heave a career of... winding clocks...
daydreaming in automaton mode...
but now... POWER!
however futile...
however that's ambitious in
continental thought...
on these shores it has to receive
a new baptism of that...
*******... pragmatism!

           niqab star of david attache...
the surgical face mask:
the will to: what was forever available:
petty power...
limiting hierarchies:
unit... power...
power disguise... power of the drone
chant...
           chatter...
power towing limbo!

  otherwise... kept guilty secret...
50ml of bourbon with some variant "contra"
of butter scotch biscuits...

  but there are the POWER brokers...
what belittling POWER gains...
and oh! god and the devil's
******* and pair of *******...
                                how power can
be exercised by bus drivers
when... commuters are exacted
with face masks...
to stipend them with...
   a nuanced basis for discrimination...

trigger-happy devoid or...
what's the difference
between a bunch of autists...
and sociopaths / psychopaths?

what's the difference
between an autist and a sociopath?
a schizophrenic
sitting in between...

that i am? or merely: bilingual?
america is bilingual ready!
y'um hum hummatie y'ah!

napoleon and the grief of height:
when the dating market evaluation is
strictly: poisoning a borrowing
of feuds: borrowing a friend of a friend of
a friend... and that:
stitching of a cow -
having excavated the stomach
for the ergonomics of a hot-air balloon...

because i had to be the bilingual
the only child freak-oh...
         in the currency of the cited "times"...
this is not a time: this is a space...
a space is congested with such
a people...
but a time... a time would be congested
with: the Pre-Raphaelites...
a time could be congested with such...
but we're talking about a space congestion...
a ****** riddle of a rubber without
skin...
             because there's... science fiction
and... SPACE...
as there's the "will" to POWER...
and there will always be...
the busdriver who doesn't enjoy
driving a bus... because...
there's the forever new rubric of:
keeping up with a best
forgotten attention & span...

         ode to lionel nation -
unlike speaking to my grandfather
strapped to a dementia
riddle cinema of memory:
that there is a cinema of memory...
that there's a concept of:
lukewarm drunk...

that there's a basic of:
yes... i know the best of my life...
memories borrowed from
aeons ago should the collective present
hindering my selfish pursuit
demand as too bourgeoisie:

******* anti-****
primo leisuring...
some old variant some
pseudo Yorick...
         m'ah neu adventure to
somehow tow Fwýday...
that the Vandals never came:
bilingual...

              extensive research
into the communist doctrine
of the: ******-rite of passage:
the omni-
nerve-ending focus of attention
15 minutes to a span....
          
borrowed themes...
the same sort of agriculture...
in the back of my mind:
worship Warsaw...
pursue a sacrificial "lamb":
tease the paedo-dodo project...
of man and king john and...
whatever is a best nuance...

      WE HAVE SUCH FORMAL
TONGUE RIDDLES
TO CHOKE ON...
BSM YOUR WORTH
A LEATHERY-SNIPPET...
i hold sway on "leather"
that's... cow intestines...
trollop...
            a beheaded gorgon
of slippery "details"..
    
   i want to catch the posture
of when english becomes
mongol...
Ukrainian riddled...
           this tongue requires
of itself to be... loaned!
completely!
                 my humble Kiev...
my Ukrainians
born drunk
at the Warsaw West... junction...

looks like the intelligence
of the western world:
can't sell words of Orestes...
implying one might have just read
a nibble...
bo boast!
the dot dot... and farming new!
nuanced: punctuation markers!

the thrill...
of having to ascend...
the morning...
knowing too well...
how the air is scented...
when prior the air was
ravaged by rain...
the details are left in the abstract:
whatever reality is yours!
it's yours...
it your new dead-red
project of... excating Beijing...

bewildering...
how i never settled on
sedating the English
with a blues: Somalian;
   n'est ce pas?

it never rains nor does it shine...
it's never culprit:
it's never simply canadian:
post-nationalistic in europe:
albeit a post-nationalism
of the state-collected...
"europe":
how... the greeks are...
some variations of turkish...

i'm not here: the hagia sophia
is also a...
what is it?
byzantine constipation /
                  leveraging pride
gimmick...
                         esque special
some variant of conundrum...
           mein auch!

                 i'd like to stroke a horse's mane...
like i might...
yet still find "unfathomable"
to leave comparisons with...
a violin detail.
Norbert Tasev Dec 2021
Shadows cast a price on me like a nervously raised bow string; curved mirror tiny, miturgist dwarf! My childhood is always listening to me! In the grip of a confused, uncertain Tomorrow, Loneliness falls on me at any time! Happy rains in your drops of tears I can not find myself! I exist even when I have to hide in disgust; the flock of insane people will not let go unless I surrender to My Truth! Who will hold my hand in a starless, eternal night? Who raises to comfort me, lest I fear the conscious uncertain ?!
 
Cowardice that wakes up in such hesitant movements and I can't know what it's worth in me ?! - Teach and subdue this **** World where one immediately sells the other and the Honesty of the People is a squeaky matchstick! Only once would the cry flare up into Nothing, which cannot be bribed; my journey could only be by someone next to lead me through the flames of danger! The shimmering moonlight palms to death, yawns at me in countless emaciated Solitude; with my selfish, petty life, konok defies! Height s Depth back again and behind me sensation-biting cats chirping with two jaws!
 
The madness of fame in the lives of ordinary souls is a contagious and condensed way; Times rolled sawed Hamlet's skull cherished by Yorick; among mazes, I am still rethinking my fragmentary options! The silence of the stamps will take me and the coral flower will not be obligatory; We should confess with apostolic lunatics who have remained faithful to themselves! "A shabby fugitive is looking back at me like a deliberate fugitive from the skin of a nightingale panther!" I am building a world on my own and I cannot show it to anyone!

— The End —