odyssey-of-a-human-being

[odyssey-of-a-human-being]

Titan Shrugged

Bubbling past the clamped-up clams and the crusts  Of old crustaceans, And passing by the sun-bleached reeves and formerly beached cetaceans,   Far lower than the anemones and the submarinal anomalies, And the long-forgotten agonies of ancient megafauna; Deeper than the dwelling of dead-eyes cods and sea-gods, Of sharks, dog-fish and dog-smart ceph'lopods, Where the glistening phosphorescence stands god-apart, ghoulish, stark, Punctuating like starlight the pitch-blue waterdark, And deeper even still, as is approached the ocean basin, The lux obscuritas, this single floating node, Could, if just a little porthole were to open, Descend like an apparition as it passes through the crust, Enter the eternal past a wreckage wrought of rust. (...) (where? grammar)

[odyssey-of-a-human-being]

Pastesheet

The morning sounds of lawn mowers, Circular saws, leaf blowers, strimmers, Shroud the subtler sounds, not of man Nor the handiworks of man, Such that it bethought me never To prick my ears towards the heather; And such that did I not consider That Mother Earth was even hidden. The hum of trains and aeroplanes, Of people with places to be, Like a blanket of Earth, the moles And voles are coldly concealed to me. A flock of starlings bound to heaven, To a fleet of Boeing 747s, And a thatch of vapour trails cast Could possibly those clouds outlast, And laws as drafted in our regions Cuts the claws off countless pigeons, And in cold comfort, our longevity Seems a compromise, a pact Of Faustian degree; what in fact Is despair extended? Not a gift, but a tragedy. To the cuckoos in the conifer's eaves

[odyssey-of-a-human-being]

Jan 25 burns night poem submission master of malt

comic section;

Ideas: -Loch Ness and humorous rational explanations for various sightings, or the Loch Lochy Jabberwocky, or the warlock of Loch Morlich [-fringe festival - italian whisky seller who didn't like whisky] -salmon, haggis, talisker 10, the peatbog faeries and will o the wisp; folklore - st elmos fire what luminous plasma; to explain innumerate phantasma; the stories eventually all turn out to be false, but the narrator - the man and his dog - observe a still, steady Loch pulsating with potential energy and ponder the fiction of their own standpoint, as characters in a poem.

[odyssey-of-a-human-being]

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead, Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good. Put the phones into aeroplane mode, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence notifications and, with muffled drum, Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let choreographed drones whizzing overhead Spell out upon the sky the message She is Dead, Put black ties round the metallic necks of London's pigeons, Grant compassionate leave to workers in all her regions: Up North, down South, in the East and in the West, Stunt the working week somewhat, extend our Sunday rest, For she was the noon and the eve, our talk, our song, We thought she'd make a hundred: we were wrong. The stars tweet out condolences; forward every one, Keep as a memento mori a copy of The Sun, Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood, For nothing now (for a bit) can come to any good.

[odyssey-of-a-human-being]

test0822 - The Wall

"Walk me, please, through each and every step..."; I'll drag it out in listless, jagged schleps Perhaps, and mournfully rejoice My sub-optimal dietary choice. "Requirement": what do I require? Does a tuna sandwich my soul desire? Will ham, or not ham, quench my ire? [Are life's secrets contained in those flyers?] "...Of how you find yourself here before us?" How come, sometimes when in listful moments There is crystallised some ancient purpose, And why in that dream of myself seeming So awake, do I know that I'm not dreaming? Within hope, false hope is that most abundant - Or is that distinction in fact redundant? "Objection, vague. Objection overruled." "The world is your oyster"; a closed bivalve Unyielding, yet yielding nothing really, Unfair, in fact, when life contains nicer things Than white spheres and Poseidon's snot I consider myself as separate completely And bound entire to myself entirely, I share an open secret worn discretely, To a world of passions inundated, It passes muster, confesses meekly, Dresses in a manner understated Leaves the question somewhat open-ended Applies for jobs online bi-weekly, Whilst considered puns go unintended, Considers nothing really fruitful I was an identity hastily cobbled together With an adolescent substandard effort Is the future unfuturisable Is an identity unrecognisable

What considers oneself as separate completely Is an open secret, worn {displayed/unveiled} discretely As a hope not yet fully hopeless Like the homeful treading past the homeless

[odyssey-of-a-human-being]

Late September, Sound Asleep

The great-grandfather of Leon Fuchs could almost feel the spray Of the Atlantic ocean coursing beneath him a couple miles away; Soaring across it in the airship, the sea appeared at peace. Accompanied by the bass register of a cello suite He could feel through the thin walls from the dining deck E major Carried across the Starboard Promenade's paperweight furniture. Harmonising with his fingernail, as if rested on a harp, And with the distant whipping of propellers in F sharp, [And in phase [fighting; makes more sense musically] with the whipping of propellers in F sharp] It reminded him of camping next to rivers in glades, [of camping by rivers in his younger days] The gentle [torrential] gushing [of cold water] torrents merging with the blades {fact check turbines, then have rhyme with rivers he'd camped beside which flows a little better} And flowing back into water; he gazed upwards [craned his neck] to outer space: A blanket of bluest black, speckled with tiny stars, he traced The constellation of Orion, [A path from Ursa Major and he followed it out to Mars] followed it out to Mars [fact check] With a cold finger, recalled Leon's great-great-grandmother's aunt: "A Sweet Celestial Symphony for Piano and Strings," An ode to infinity and the ephemeral nature of things: Between the firmament, the hood of the Opel Olympia, And she at last, cast like the daughter of Mother Nature, Composing, reality and fantasy magically fused Engaged like lovers estranged, touched without touching, and used An old Stradivarius strung tightly with the cat-gut strings: A sad, immutable tribute to the impermanence of things. Staring into nothing, then, on Papa's Olympia's hood, Now an essence of something less, the violins now firewood. One final drag of his cigarette 'fore tossing it down below, Passing[Suddenly extinguished] through - absorbing - sheets of rain and sleet and snow, "We face the future blindly, leaving the past behind us," Travelling on the Dresden outbound to Berlin seated backwards, {facing backwards really, this isn't clear} His drink now reduced to ice in the warmth of an ungloved hand, His cue to leave coming in the form of incoming land. He buttons up his duffel coat; his shadow dimly cast in the Starlight and moonlight of the very distant and recent past As his cigarette is then extinguished [passes undegraded by] by the sea rains; Leon's deceased adolescent ancestor's cigarette remains Amongst the millions of marine organisms who then Were alive and now are not; he reaches the station for ten, And the cigarette butt edged forward an inch to the crust Of an ancient crustacean and a scaffold clamp accruing rust

[Looked towards Mars [this later is a colonised planet right, remember]]  (a man whose great-grandfather could almost feel the spray of the Atlantic as it passed beneath him a thousand feet below – soaring across it he looked down from the open windows of the airship where the sea appeared still; the bass register of a cello suite (Bach’s No. 1 in G major) he could feel pulsing through the papery {crinoline} walls of the dining deck on the Starboard Promenade, passing through the exquisitely hideous hideously exquisite aluminium furniture, the low frequencies harmonising with, tickling his fingernail rested gently over it, the distant whipping of the propellers briefly reminding him for a moment of the rivers he’d camped beside in childhood, the gentle torrential gushing of cold water merging into the propellers and back again into water; he gazed up at the sky: a blanket of bluest black, speckled dappled with microscopic countless stars; he recalled how his mother, Leon’s great-great-grandmother, had honoured the firmament with lullabies, nocturnes, twilight melodies, a Celestial Symphony of Two Sides, an ode {odes} to everything between {the backdrop to} infinity and the hood of his father’s Opel Olympia: where reality and fantasy were somehow fused, engaged like lovers estranged, touching without touching  - he took a final drag of his cigarette and tossed it below where it would travel intact and undegraded for many thousands of miles, for many hundreds of years; he reflected on the planet, his place within it, how it could be conquered, how there was a future and he was living in it now {living in that future}, how there was a past which we left {shed} behind us, how it felt as if the past was leaving us like a train departing backwards, and that his drink had by now been almost entirely reduced to water from the ice that had melted in the warmth of his cold hands, ungloved, hard to move as he buttoned his duffel coat, hard to see in the dim moonlight and starlight of the very recent and very distant past and, despite appearing to disappear in a suddenly extinguished spark, Leon’s deceased adolescent ancestor’s cigarette still remains, amongst the millions of marine organisms who then were alive and now are not.)  [Snow past the lamppost with stars 22.docx]

2. Leon was born in the year 2000, January 6th, The day of the death of the final Pyrenean Ibex Killed by a fallen tree, and he alike would die, of course, The last of his kind, almost a century later, perforce, On February the 8th, 2099 Succeeded by Johannes and Montgomery, his bloodline Extended by Monty's daughter Saskia and Leicester his son, (And Elara bore a lifeless infant named [child, Marks] Marks, a stillborn) Before Leon would die [succumbing] to alzheimer's disease Called by Solomon, son of Saskia, "old-timers disease", Where memories of former romances who all appeared alike And who were doppelgangers of his sister, Ada, now acquired A new status of a terrifying [an unsettling, a benign, x] psychosis, the cracks Appearing in a mind now encrusted with amyloid plaques, He remembered Molly and the liquorice jelly beans, Pardoning spiders with glass and card, the ripped denim jeans, The snowman's nose nibbled by birds and the broken coffee table, Her Alaskan-Lab, the noose, the farm, the abandoned livery stable, Cutting limes for gin and tonics, spurts of acid in the sun, Droplets setting on the chopping board, and then there were none Left who remembered anything of what, of who they really are Like a supernova, perhaps, collapsed like a dying star, Sigmoidal butter and triangular zest, both a part of her, Damp, frizzy, auburn hair, autumns in Paris, cris de couer, Hotel napkins stained with lipstick, "Cherry Trees in the Snow", Far redder than coral's red, sucking butter off her thumb, no One left; only memory's imperfect rendering [t.r. - to rhyme] Of the past, at last [rep-replace with better-and to etc.] to the endlessness of time [sea of time? kinda like, could make fit] surrendering Once unafraid of ghosts, but since forgetting his reasoning, His shallow former lives in significance now deepening, His faith in former axioms, like his knees, weakening, To an end at long last to the full finish beaconing, His hands wrinkled by time and with no small measure of toil, His tongue now dry and cracked - could he almost taste the soil In the congealed gels he found within his nappy, Or the jigsaw pieces he studied daily?: hind legs of an okapi, Plain blue sky with a sliver of cloud, a young person stares Down from a Zeppelin deck, a couple distant squares Of yellow in a snowy Lantartican towerblock, and, Set against a backdrop of breaking waves and white hot sand, The white fur on the {hind leg of a Persian housecat} cape of a long-forgotten patron saint ; A faceless woman embodied by a stroke or two of paint [rhyme], Lost all to Leon's gastrointestinal tract, And She, a memory, now too old for anything, a synapse Fizzles as underwhelmingly as a wingbeat, the thread severed Between Her, sneezing into a tissue, suddenly untethered To her sleeve, within it tucked always: it's been this way forever, With no longer any legacy left to outlive her, [find rhyme and ending] [penny lane key changes pointing out, say nothing important whilst eating and whilst not eating]

[setting at some point: a mall in the late 90's in a hollowed out community and then in 2017 and how it changed to be lifeless but was also exactly the same.] would spend his final days eating the polyacrylate gel in his nappies and chewing on jigsaw puzzle pieces, studying their various minutiae with indivisible concentration: hind legs of an okapi, plain blue sky with a sliver of cloud, a small hatted boy peering from the deck of a Zeppelin, a couple distant windows of a snowy towerblock in Lantartica at twilight, the white-blue fur on the leg of a traditional Persian housecat, and the top half of a faceless woman embodied by two or three strokes of paint set against a backdrop of white sand and breaking waves. The irony would, of course, be lost on him. And she, that memory, now too old for anything, sneezes into a tissue, tucks it into her sleeve and thinks nothing of Leon, a man who, like Euler and Euclid, would indeed die, his legacy outliving him.

... [was born January 5th, 2000, the day of the death of the final Pyrenean ibex, killed by a felled tree, and he alike would die, the last of his kind, almost a hundred years later on February 8th, 2099, succeeded by his two sons, Johannes]

[before Leon eventually succumbed to what was known at the time as Alzheimer’s Disease, then Alzheimer Disease, then alzheimer disease, and known uniquely to Solomon, son of Saskia, great-grandson to Leon, as “old timer’s disease”, where the vitality of Leon’s girlfriends who all looked alike and who all looked like his sister, Ada,     (such as Molly, discriminating liquorice and non-liquorice jelly beans, pardoning spiders with glass and card, discovering the Snowman’s nose under the pool table, nibbled by the birds and discovered by an Alaskan Husky-Lab hybrid named Pitcher. And as she cuts a lime: a short spurt of triangular lime juice. Droplets visible in a beam of acid sunshine (Pitcher now dead), the dust made visible as a summer drizzle, through the old cottage windows against the old, hot, wooden chopping board: CLOP. Sucking butter off her thumb, its sigmoidal scent. Hair: damp, frizzy from the rain, auburn, the colour of autumn in Paris or the fresh mess of a well-fed dog. Hotel napkins stained with lipstick in a small understated handbag. Quietly fashionable. Utterly ungovernable. Her lipstick – Cherry Trees in the Snow – rounded as she loved him: coral’s red in memory’s rendering etched.)    became the schizein kaleidoscopic psychosis of a hyperphosphorylated brain stained with amyloid plaques, similar to the static in one’s eyes, closed, in the darkness of the bedroom, after studying and worrying, stressed, depressed, fractious, anxious, with the anguish of waiting rooms in aseptic GP surgeries spread out over decades and set to light muzak, dreading potentially fatal test results and wishing one were dead, and apprehending the same sentence over and over in a futile attempt to grasp it; the giddy confusion of sleep dep, the disorientation of a hangover after three weeks of drinking, talking to no-one; that distant sadness known to elder folk scuttling past their primary schools a minute down the road; all this, without even the distant happiness of knowing you are a human being, or putting it into words, writing it down onto paper, and putting it away forever in a drawer never to be looked at again, with ticket stubs and miscellaneous mementos to remind you that you were alive and knowing not to believe in ghosts; or the impersonal comforts of Euler’s identity and Euclid’s axioms which cannot die even if you cannot understand them – “It’s a cold’un, eh, Leo? Figuring ya could drive ‘cross the lake” – it was like being born. Leon, who by the end of his young adulthood would change the world (a pioneer in the field of artificial superintelligence) would spend his final days eating the polyacrylate gel in his nappies and chewing on jigsaw puzzle pieces, studying their various minutiae with indivisible concentration: hind legs of an okapi, plain blue sky with a sliver of cloud, a small hatted boy peering from the deck of a Zeppelin, a couple distant windows of a snowy towerblock in Lantartica at twilight, the white-blue fur on the leg of a traditional Persian housecat, and the top half of a faceless woman embodied by two or three strokes of paint set against a backdrop of white sand and breaking waves. The irony would, of course, be lost on him. And she, that memory, now too old for anything, sneezes into a tissue, tucks it into her sleeve and thinks nothing of Leon, a man who, like Euler and Euclid, would indeed die, his legacy outliving him.] [The Twelfth of Etcetera]

[odyssey-of-a-human-being]

Cosquer Cave

[I move, as if moved to tears, but not  Moved to anything much, but such  As it is, as ever well be, it urges, Surges like waves. like echoes Rocking above underwater caves. Bubbling past the clamped-up clams and the crusts  Of old crustaceans, Settling by bleached and formerly beached cetaceans,  And the preserved agony of a buffalo in quicksand 

In submarine graves is saved  Their souls: their souls engraved  In fingernail scratches, Earth Raised, moved, onto a wall Red ochre spat against hands I see civilisation all: it’s all  The movement of matter and work, The sculpting of chaos into order.] Hidden black and soundless ‘neath the water’s surging Is saved into sodden Earth the human being yet to be, With crimson Ochre preserving man’s eternal urging, And the engraving of fingernails by a campfire in the sea. Man’s works are the movements of matter, the sculpting of chaos into order. [xxx]

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[Poetic/Prose ideas]

*** Music played in major keys may very well be wonderful But only melancholic melodies are beautiful.  It makes sense to yearn for that which makes us glad  Less sensible, however, are those urges to be sad  *** There may be numerous types and tribesAccumulating as they’re synthesised,Perhaps passing five, four, or three,Increasing in sizes decreasingly:But there is a number I promise to youThat it never will ever be fewer than two.A man is content to stand for himself,But groups must stand against enemies.What motive exists to cherish one’s healthWithout poison to ennoble the remedies?

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The Moat

Treading the path long since overgrowing, Seeing heat where once I saw it snowing, Seeing blue doubled-up dragonflies flying: Living, generating life, dying.   The rippled-liquid mirror distorted Reflecting the honeybees chanting, None disturbs the surface’s comportment Nor the yellow patch or MooMoo’s panting. The sameness of sameless rocks and wasps And sunbleached packets that packaged crisps once, Brands which have long since ceased to exist Still, in a sense, continuing to exist.  Tree roots, like a dead woman’s hand, Upon which are perched three moveless ducklings. I miss the fish’s jumping, see it landing  Softly, free from a fisherman’s tackling.  [Within the island’s burnt-out campfires, And, loved from above, simplistic starlings  Fly, forgiving littering loving liars,  Drinking themselves to life, with Carling.] Let them have memories they can’t replace, Places that never shall be erased. Things to think when the scarves are knitted, Moments that may not be counterfeited.  But in that water there’s no solution; Only resolution of life’s resolve, That despite the impact of man’s pollution Life must adapt and evolve. [For runnels dank and streams fresher,  This is just a single selection pressure.]

[But in the annals of history we’ll see Those “Noble Mammles of History”. Like drunken memories shall be lost  Our soul, it costs a tremendous cost.] [The pollen easy dances, Heaven sent  Her nameless angels, whom it’s right to thank For the summerlong elderfloral scent  And the laurels eloping on the bank.] [The quay, perhaps, or rather it’s the moat, Deep enough to explore by a rowing boat.]

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does a rose by any other name smell as sweet?

why is a capitalised i considered offensive? are style and substance mutually exclusive? should freedom not adhere to form? creative musicians know scales and chords... should it not be collaborative of                                                             mind                                                                  and heart, isn’t that the beautiful paradox of art? lower case, since considered expressive, has rendered its brother oppressive, excessive,  and totally au fait so i understand the rejection of narrative norms sure but it just makes me think  perhaps they can’t write? it’s like they are speaking with their hands in their pockets (chewing gum between gums, chewing) (the status quo, subtly eschewing) there was a time when gold was fashionable  before you could print it onto paper a rug’s worth was measured by its intricacies  before they were able to be sewn by machines  now, rather than intricacy, authenticity is key: minimalism providing that clarity of mind, like meditating under a bodhi tree  to relax unwind it’s why photorealistic paintings, which are glorious                 ly dull sell for less than shit that anyone can make  that nobody’s seen before but how can you call heartless escher’s immaculate lithographs? ‘cause they weren’t smeared with ejaculate? what difference is it to imagination’s figment  if instead of blood, he used instead red pigment? he fused the mathematical and fantastical  and it wasn’t just coloured lines in cubes signifying nothing or if it was, at least his was a beautiful nothing, yet postmodern art - and this they explicitly claim - makes the artist’s intent and their aim superior to their content; so again: does a rose by any other name  smell any different if it smells the same? i know a rose smells absolutely nothing like  if its genetic code is printed onto reams of paper and situated in a room with a ringing telephone  to be crawled upon by a mountain tapir  the guardian will call it seminal (but there’s no semen smeared into this particular piece, or blood, sweat or tears, or faeces, or paint) and the tate will make a retrospective: the artist stands to speak, but doesn’t, so the non compos mentis start crying  and the arts correspondents start lying leading others to follow suit out of politeness  contort their faces into neutral expressions - a man drops a glove and people are  afraid to step on it, unaware  whether or not it is in fact a part of the act, the art, so best to just be safe, “I’ll just clear a route, ‘cause  nothing can be inferred  by what hasn’t occurred” and so the crowd shuffles into a pattern for which nobody is responsible and carves out a hollow space, which is invisible, around the glove, leading others to follow suit out of fear for appearing absolutely clueless, like they have been exposed for not getting life right and having no especial insight or talent or purpose, and so it remains, that hollow space, unchallenged, like all challenging art, and, in a way, is whoever dropped that glove not in a way an artist, and, in a way, are we not all artists, painting  our lives onto the canvas  of life, with our tears,  our sweat, our blood, our semen, all of us, all of it leaking and leaving quietly  with  us ? no there is no absolute concept of beauty so everything’s up for grabs  ugliness has a beauty of itself, and not just the beautiful bits, it’s like beauty is a social construct, but even babies love tits, and it’s all very, very, very clever  but it’s just... it’s not good  is it? or is it? or is that even the point?

[odyssey-of-a-human-being]

The Comfort of Physical Parameters for Symptomless (Invisible) Illnesses

{in progress...}

[odyssey-of-a-human-being]

The Floorboards at Shugborough Hall

Heights, names and lines, covered a dozen times By paint - a dozen coats in a dozen hues; [escaping all notice] Smothered completely in wallpaper paste [modified starch] And plastered in ephemeral fashions and styles, [and plastered in paper of ephemeral fashions] And plastered in fashionable paper  Indiscoverable 

Passes unnoticed into that ninety-nine point nine Percent of everything once known, now unknowable: Doesn’t count for much those dozen ... 

[Those lines are smothered by wallpaper paste] [Awaiting markings new to take up their place] The foundation for another marking new for future seasons

The speckled oak floorboards, a story salvaged, By the impress of hobnails and stiletto damage, The density of dots, mapping their habits. From the drawing room well danced within  A house well and thoroughly lived within, Lord Lichfield hosting, to others toasting, Forming tableaux vivants engrossing, but  Sad with time, that pristine restoration (Memories lost within their excavation) Within error its character is sketched, Is erased whatever was never etched.  All that survives keeps alive those ghosts Suddenly incarnate, as Lichfield boasts, At once waltzing, jiving and grooving, Not to have moved but still to be moving. 

[odyssey-of-a-human-being]

Larkin

I think Philip Larkin said it best When he spoke of reproduction, Because he was sex-obsessed  And lacked the art of seduction. In solitude he was lonely And he - seemingly depressed - Through either misjudgement of Himself, or lying, said it best.  But sex is an impulse, natural  As crafting snow into snowballs Something surely even practised By the earliest Neanderthals.  

[odyssey-of-a-human-being]

Meniscus

Once upon a time there were triple shots and debit cards, In smoking pens modelled apparently on prison yards, Hangovers, headaches and mild stomach pains, Diarrhoea, migraines and Suicide Tuesdays. 

With supple lily-livers so secure,  We danced till morning, drug-unassisted, Drug-assisted we danced through the moon, Swearing never to drink or drop, drinking again (Dropping the following Tuesday in the prison pen.) Nowadays a few IPA’s suffice; And I won’t drink anything without ice; Not a time of hair in Wall’s vanilla ice-cream tubs, Or sneaking budget gin into pubs and snooker clubs, Binning perfectly useable dirty lasagne dishes, Gulping down waters from large saucepans, Now I poach an egg where once I’d fry it, Telling Al-Karims’ “Cut the pizza into seven slices ‘Cause I’m cutting carbs from my diet And don’t just cut it into eight and remove a slice, Splice it back together, ‘cause I’ll know.” Things which seemed funny a while ago, now... It used to be ice-cream itself, then flavour, Now it’s quality and marketing I savour. I saw Aphex Twin at Field Day in London, I enjoy these things seldom ‘cos I’ve already done them Before and before, and now it’s just more And more of the same, it’s much of a muchness. Such is living without a need for dib-dabs, chocolate frogs and Lemon Fanta And falling fast asleep, secure in the knowledge of the inexistence of Santa If ever I should skim a piece of slate, I do it to achieve a childlike state. Seeing that discus rolled between my fingers, Sinking always after skimming the meniscus, Never lingering, the stone is always sinking, Like the feeling, like somehow I am thinking That...suppose it somehow might keep skimming Or, at least on stopping, proceed by swimming?

[I see a ripple borne out as it vanishes,  I see ripples roundabout from surfacing fish, I see those little waves interlace and overlap, I feel nothing, see a surface still as glass.] Gone but not forgotten, the ripples bear it out, Like a half-forgotten memory full forgot,  Lakebed banished; and by now a mile wide,  The ripple laps at my foot at last and vanishes. 

[odyssey-of-a-human-being]

Style or Substance

Like water coursing through lead piping,  Romantic themes disguised in Gothic typing, But there are other uses for lead pipes, For crusty, fusty Etonian types... As the Oxbridge Inkling alumni attest, Presuming whatever must life be about,  Of bucolic scenes and Homer’s Sirens  And some stolen rhyming schemes of Byron’s. The cottage birds returning home to roost, In colleges, learning the rest from Proust, Besmirch the craft of the amateur And his woeful iambic pentameter. 

Of the shit sandwich it has never been said: “My word, superb, what delicious bread!” Only dogs and domesticated poets Prefer the ribbons and wrapping papers.  A diamond rough, from the floor, however, Whatever the value of the thing, Needs polishing, shaping, crafting before It would ever adorn an engagement ring. 

[odyssey-of-a-human-being]

Death Shall Return us to Him

[It isn’t true that we all must die, The Duke of Wellington’s still alive, They say the same for Doctor Who, Some contracts you can [in fact] renew.  When my maker plucks me [takes me] back to His breast, With piña coladas and eternal [Sunday] rest, Guided to His nook, by scythe and shepherd’s crook, Still I’m here (hello), still living in this book.] * God writes a book  Guides by scythe and shepherd’s crook  If man, bearing his sin, Should write a suicide note And throw it into the bin, Still he knows what he wrote.  Death shall return us to Him [Forgiving man’s sole sin.] * Light never ends  It fades and bends  Darkness never ceases  Its span increases Matter doesn’t and mind never will,  And time ticks over until until... [Time is and was And’ll always be Well, we’ll see, Or we won’t, Or will we?] *

[odyssey-of-a-human-being]

Gloucester Services Northbound

Driving up the M5 After B-roads named after barcodes, Making a fast buck in Buckfast, Doing 40 in many a 20 (When I know that 30′s plenty) No Foster’s at Gloucester Services. Get an ale And cold-brew Costa coffee: Balance my nervousness And my concentration At the Northbound Gloucester Services (Or Gloucester Service Station)