I.

One night at the Troubadour I spotted this extraordinary girl.

So I asked who she was.

‘A professional,’

That was my introduction that on a scale of one to ten

there were women who were fifteens—beautiful, bright, witty, and

oh, by the way, they worked.

Once I became aware,

I saw these women everywhere.

And I came to learn that most of them were connected to Alex



II.

She had a printer engrave a calling card

that featured a bird of paradise

borrowed from a Tiffany silver pattern

and,
under it,

Alex’s Aviary,

Beautiful and Exotic birds.



A few were women you’d see lunching at Le Dôme:

pampered arm pieces with expensive tastes

and a hint of a delicious but remote sexuality.

Many more were fresh-faced, athletic, tanned, freckled

the quintessential California girl

That you’d take for sorority queens or future BMW owners.





III.

The mechanism of Alex’s sudden notoriety is byzantine,

as these things always are.

One of her girls took up with a rotter,

the couple had a fight,

he went to the police,

the police had an undercover detective visit

(who just happened to be an attractive woman)

and ask to work for her,

she all but embraced her

—and by April of 1988 the district attorney had enough evidence

to charge her with two counts of pandering

and one of pimping.

For Alex, who is fifty-six

and has a heart condition and diabetes,

the stakes may be high.

A conviction carries the guarantee of incarceration.

For the forces of law and order,

the stakes may be higher.

Alex has let it be known that she will subpoena

every cop she’s ever met to testify at her trial.

And the revelations this might produce

—perhaps that Alex compromised policemen

by making girls available to them,

—perhaps that Alex had a deal with the police to provide information

in exchange for their blind eye to her activities

—could be hugely embarrassing to the police and the district attorney.

For Alex’s socially correct clients and friends,

for the socially correct wives of her clients and friends

and for a handful of movie and television executives

who have no idea they are dating or

married to former Alex girls,

the stakes are highest of all.



IV.

Alex’s black book is said to be a catalogue of
Le Tout Los Angeles.

In her head are the ****** secrets

of many of the city’s most important men,

to say nothing of visiting businessmen and Arab princes.

If she decides to warble,

either at her trial or in a book,

her song will shatter more than glass.





V.

A decade ago, I went to lunch at Ma Maison,

There were supposed to have been ten people there,

but only four came.

One of them was a short woman

who called me a few days later and invited me to lunch.

When I arrived, the table was set for two.

I didn’t know who Alex was or what she did,

but she knew the important facts of my situation:

I was getting divorced from a very wealthy man

and doing the legal work myself

to avail lawyers who wanted to get a big settlement for me.


Occasionally, she said, I get a call for a tall, dark-haired,

slender, flat-chested woman

—and I don’t have any.

It wouldn’t be a frequent thing.

There’d be weekends away, sometimes in Palm Springs,

sometimes in Europe.

The men will be elegant,

you’ll have your own room

—there would be no outward signs of impropriety.

And you’d get $10,000 to $20,000 for a weekend.





VI.

The tall, slender, flat-chested brunette

didn’t think it was right for her.

Alex handed her a business card

and suggested that she think about it.

To her surprise, she did

—for an entire week.

This was 1978, and $20,000 then

was like $40,000 now,

I knew it was hooking,

but Alex had never mentioned ***.



Our whole conversation seemed to be about something else.



VII.

I was born in Manila

to a Spanish-Filipina mother and German father,

and when I was twelve

a Japanese soldier came into our house

with his bayonet pointed at us,

ready to do us in.

He locked us in and set the house on fire.

I haven’t been scared by much since that.



My mother always struck me as goofy,

so I jumped on a bus and ran away,

I got off in Oakland,

saw a help-wanted sign on a parish house,

and went in.

I got $200 a month for taking care of four priests.

I spent all the money on pastries for the parish house.

But I didn’t care.

It felt safe.

And the priests sparked my interest in the domestic arts

—in linen, in crystal.



A new priest arrived.

He was unpleasant,

so on a vacation in Los Angeles I took a pedestrian job,

still a teenager,

married a scientist.

We separated eight years later,

he took our two sons to another state

threatened to keep them if I didn’t agree to a divorce.

Keep them I said and hung up.

It’s not that I don’t have a maternal instinct

—though I don’t,

I just hate to be manipulated.



My second husband,

an alcoholic,

had Frank Sinatra blue eyes, and possibly

—I never knew for sure—

had a big career in the underworld

as a contract killer.

Years before we got serious,

he was going out with a famous L.A. ******,

She and her friends were so elegant

that I started spending time with them in beauty salons.

They were so fancy,

so smart

—and they knew incredible people,

like the millionaire who sat in his suite all day

just writing $5,000 checks to girls.



VIII.

I was a florist.

We got to talking.

She was a madam from England

who wanted to sell her book and go home.

I bought it for $5,000.

My husband thought it was cute.

Now you’re getting your feet wet.

Three months later,

he died.

After eleven years of marriage,

just like that.

And of the names in the book

it turned out

that half of the men were also dead.

When I began the men were old and the women were ugly.



IX.

It was like a lunch party you or I would give,

Great food Alex had cooked herself.

Major giggles with old pals.

And then,

instead of chocolate After Eight,

she served three women After Three



This man has seen a bit of life

beyond Los Angeles,

so I asked him how Alex’s stable

compared with that of Madam Claude,

the legendary Parisian procuress.

Oh, these aren’t at all like Claude’s girls,

A Claude girl was perfectly dressed and multilingual

—you could take her to the opera

and she’d understand it.





He told me that when she was 40

she looked at herself in the mirror

and said

Disgusting.

People over 40

should not have ***.

But She Was Clear That She Never Liked It

even when she was young.

Besides, she saw all the street business

go to the tall,

beautiful girls.

She thought that she never had a chance

competing against them.

Instead,

she would take their money by managing them.





X.

Going to a ****** was not looked down upon then.

It was before the pill;

Girls weren’t giving it away.

Claude specialized in

failed models and actresses,

ones who just missed the cut.

But just because they failed

in those impossible professions

didn’t mean they weren’t beautiful,

fabulous.



Like Avis

in those days,

those girls tried harder.

Her place was off the Champs,

just above a branch of the Rothschild bank, where I had an account.

Once I met her,

I was constantly making withdrawals and heading upstairs.





XI.

We took the lift

and Claude greeted us at the door.

My impression was that of the director

of an haute couture house,

very subdued,

beige and gray, very little makeup.

She took us into a lounge and made us drinks,

Whiskey,

Cognac.

There was no maid.

We made small talk for 15 minutes.

How was the weekend?

What’s the weather like in Deauville?

Then she made the segue. ‘I understand you’d like to see some jeunes filles?’

She always used ‘jeunes filles.’

This was Claude’s polite way of saying 18 to 25.

She left and soon returned

with two very tall

jeunes filles,

One was blonde.

This is Eva from Austria.

She’s here studying painting.

And a brunette,

very different,

but also very fine.

This is Claudia from Germany.

She’s a dancer.

She took the girls back into the apartment and returned by herself.

I gave my English guest first choice.

He picked the blonde.

And wasn’t disappointed.

Each bedroom had its own bidet.

There was some nice

polite conversation, and then



It was slightly formal,

but it was high-quality.

He paid Claude

200 francs,

not to the girls

In 1965, 200 francs was about $40.

Pretty girls on Rue Saint-Denis

could be had for 40 francs

so you can see the premium.

Still, it wasn’t out of reach for mere mortals.

You didn’t have to be J. Paul Getty.





XII.

A lot of them

were models at

Christian Dior

or other couture houses.

She liked Scandinavians.

That was the look then

—cold, tall, perfect.

It was cheap for the quality.

They all used her.

The best people wanted

the best women.

Elementary supply and demand.



XIII.

She had a camp number tattooed on her wrist. I saw it.

She showed it to me and Rubi.

She was proud she had survived.

We talked about the camp for hours.

It was even more fascinating than the girls.



She was Jewish

I’m certain of that.

She was horrified at the Jewish collaborators

at the camp who herded

their fellow Jews

into the gas chambers.

That was the greatest betrayal in her life.



XIV.

She was this sad,

lonely little woman.

Later, Patrick told me who she was.

I was bowled over.

It was like meeting Al Capone.

I met two of the girls

who worked for her.

One was what you would expect

Tall

Blonde

Model.

But the other looked like a Rat

Then one night

she came out

all dressed up,

I didn’t even recognize her.

She was even better than the first girl.

Claude liked to transform women like that.

That was her art.

It was very odd,

my cousin told me.

There was not much furniture

and an awful lot of telephones.

“Allô oui,”



XV.

I had so many lunches

with Claude at Ma Maison

She was vicious.

One day,

Margaux Hemingway,

at the height of her beauty, walked by.

Une bonne

—the French for maid

was how Claude cut her dead.

She reduced

the entire world

to rich men wanting *** and

poor women wanting money.

She’d love to page through Vogue and see someone

and say,

When I met her

she was called

Marlene

and she had a hideous nose

and now she’s a princess.

Or she’d see someone and say

Let’s see if she kisses me or not.

It was like

I made her,

and I can destroy her.

She was obsessed

with “fixing” people

—with Saint Laurent clothes,

with Cartier watches,

with Winston jewels,

with Vuitton luggage,

with plastic surgeons.



XVI.

Her prison number was

888

which was good luck in China

but not in California.

‘Ocho ocho ocho,’ she liked to repeat

Even in jail, she was always working,

always recruiting stunning women.

She had a beautiful Mexican cellmate

and gave her Robert Evans’s number

as the first person she should call

when she was released.



XVII.

Never have *** on the first date.



XVIII.

There will always be prostitution,

The prostitution of misery.

And the prostitution of bourgeois luxury.

They will both go on forever.



“Allô oui,”



It was so exciting to hear a millionaire

or a head of state ask,

in a little boy’s voice,

for the one thing

that only you could provide

It's not how beautiful you are, it's how you relate

--it's mostly dialogue.



She was tiny, blond, perfectly coiffed and Chanel-clad.

The French Woman: The Arab Prince, the Japanese Diplomat, the Greek Tycoon, the C.I.A. Bureau Chief — She Possessed Them All!



XIX.

She was like a slave driver in the American South

Once she took a *******,

the makeover put the girl in debt,

because Claude paid all the bills to

Dior,

Vuitton,

to the hairdressers,

to the doctors,

and the girls had to work to pay them off.

It was ****** indentured servitude.



My Swans.



It reached the point

where if you walked into a room

in London

or Rome

as much as Paris

because the girls were transportable,

and saw a girl who was

better-dressed,

better-looking,

and more distinguished than the others

you presumed

it was a girl from Claude.

It was, without doubt,

the finest *** operation ever run in the history of mankind.



**.

The girl had to be

exactly what was needed

so I had to teach her everything she didn’t know.

I played a little the role of Pygmalion.

There were basic things that absolutely had to be done.

It consisted

at the start

of the physical aspect

“surgical intervention”

to give this way of being

that was different from other girls.

Often they had to be transformed

into dream creatures

because at the start

they were not at all



Often I had to teach them how to dress.

Often they needed help

to repair

what nature had given them

which was not so beautiful.

At first they had to be tall,

with pretty gestures,

good manners.

I had lots of noses done,

chins,

teeth,

*******.

There was a lot to do.



Eight times out of ten

I had to teach them how to behave in society.

There were official dinners, suppers, weekends,

and they needed to have conversation.

I insisted they learn to speak English,

read

certain books.

I interrogated them on what they read.

It wasn’t easy.

Each time something wasn’t working,

I was obliged to say so.



You were very demanding?

I was ferocious.



It’s difficult

to teach a girl how to walk into Maxim’s

without looking

ill at ease

when they’ve never been there,

to go into an airport,

to go to the Ritz,

or the Crillon

or the Dorchester.

To find yourself

in front of a king,

three princes,

four ministers,

and five ambassadors at an official dinner.

There were the wives of those people!

Day after day

one had to explain,

explain again,

start again.

It took about two years.

There would always be a man

who would then say of her,

‘But she’s absolutely exceptional. What is that girl doing here?’ ”





XXI.

A New York publisher who visited

the Palace Hotel

in Saint Moritz

in the early seventies told me,

I met a whole bunch of them there.

They were lovely.

The johns wanted everyone to know who they were.

I remember it being said

Giovanni’s Madame Claude girl is going to be there.

You asked them where they came from and they all said

Neuilly.

Claude liked girls from good families.

More to the point she had invented their backgrounds.



I have known,

because of what I did,

some exceptional and fascinating men.

I’ve known some exceptional women too,

but that was less interesting

because I made them myself.



Ah, this question of the handbag.

You would be amazed by how much dust accumulates.

Or how often women’s shoe heels are scuffed.





XXII.

She would examine their teeth and finally she would make them undress.



That was a difficult moment

When they arrived they were very shy,

a bit frightened.

At the beginning when I take a look,

it’s a question of seeing if the silhouette

and the gestures are pretty.

Then there was a disagreeable moment.

I said,

I’m sorry about this unpleasantness,

but I have to ask you to get undressed,

because I can’t talk about you unless I see you.

Believe me, I was embarrassed,

just as they were,

but it had to be done,

not out of voyeurism, not at all

—I don’t like les dames horizontales.



It was very funny

because there were always two reactions.

A young girl,

very sure of herself,

very beautiful,

très bien,

would say

Yes,

Get up, and get undressed.

There was nothing to hide, everything was perfect.



There were those who

would start timidly

to take off their dress

and I would say

I knew already.

The rest is not sadism, but nearly.

I knew what I was going to find.

I would say,

Maybe you should take off your bra,

and I knew it wasn’t going to be

beautiful.

Because otherwise she would have taken it off easily.

No problem.

There were damages that could be mended.

There were some ******* that could be redone,

some not

Sometimes it can be deceptive,

you know,

you see a pretty girl,

a pretty face,

all elegant and slim,

well dressed,

and when you see her naked

it is a catastrophe.



I could judge their physical qualities,

I could judge if she was pretty, intelligent, and cultivated,

but I didn’t know how she was in bed.

So I had some boys,

good friends,

who told me exactly.

I would ring them up and say,

There’s a new one.

And afterwards they’d ring back and say,

Not bad,

Could be better, or

Nulle.



Or,

on the contrary,

She’s perfect.

And I would sometimes have to tell the girls

what they didn’t know.

A pleasant assignment?

No.

They paid.



XXIII.

Often at the beginning

they had an ami de coeur

in other words,

oh,

a journalist, a photographer, a type like that,

someone in the cinema,

an actor, not very well known.

As time went by

It became difficult

because they didn’t have a lot of time for him.

The fact of physically changing,

becoming prettier,

changing mentally to live with millionaires,

produced a certain imbalance

between them

and the little boyfriend

who had not evolved

and had stayed in his milieu.

At the end of a certain time

she would say,

I’m so much better than him. Why am I with this boy?

And they would break up by themselves.



Remember,

this was instant elevation.

For most of them it was a dream existence,

provided they liked the ***,

and those that didn’t never lasted long.

A lot of the clients were young,

and didn’t treat them like tarts but like someone from their own class.

They would buy you presents,

take you on trips.



XXIV.

For me, *** was something very accessoire

I think after a certain age

there are certain spectacles one should not give to others

Now I have a penchant for solitude.

Love, it’s a complete destroyer,

It’s impossible,

a horror,

l’angoisse.

It’s the only time in my life I was jealous.

I’m not a jealous person, but I was épouvantable.

He was jealous too.

We broke plates over each other’s heads;

we became jealous about each other’s pasts.

I said one day

It’s finished.

Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and say:

Break my legs,

give me scarlet fever,

an attack of TB, but never that.

Not that.



XXV.

I called her into my office

Let us not exaggerate,

I sent her away.

She came back looking for employment,

but was fired again, this time for drugs.

She made menacing phone calls.

Then she arrived at the Rue de Boulainvilliers with a gun.

She shot three bullets

I was dressed in the fashion of Courrèges at this moment

He did very padded things.

I had a padded dress with a little jacket on top.

The bullet

—merci, Monsieur Courrèges

—stuck in the padding.

I was thrown forward onto the telephone.

I had one thought which went through my head:

I will die like Kennedy.

I turned round and put my hand up in a reflex.

The second bullet went through my hand.

I have two dead fingers.

It’s most useful for removing bottle tops.

In the corridor I was saved from the third bullet

because she was very tall

and I am quite petite, so it passed over my head.



XXVI.

There were men

who could decapitate,

****, and bomb their rivals

who would be frightened of me.

I would ask them how was the girl,

and they’d say

Not bad

and then

But I’m not complaining.

I was a little sadistic to them sometimes.

Some women have known powerful men because they’re their lover.

But I’ve known them all.

I had them all

here.



She will take many state secrets with her.



XXVI.

I don’t like ugly people

probably because when I was young

I wasn’t beautiful at all.

I was ugly and I suffered for it,

although not to the point of obsession.

Now that I’m an old woman,

I’m not so bad.

And that’s why

I’ve always been surrounded by people

Who

were

beautiful.

And the best way to have beautiful people around me

was to make them.

I made them very pretty.





XXVII.

I wouldn’t call what Alex gives you

‘advice,’

She spares you Nothing.

She makes a list of what she wants done,

and she really gets into it

I mean, she wants you to get your arms waxed.

She gives you names of people who do good facials.

She tells you what to buy at Neiman Marcus.

She’s put off by anything flashy,

and if you don’t dress conservatively, she’s got no problem telling you,

in front of an audience,

You look like a cheap *****!

I used to wear what I wanted when I went out

then change in the car into a frumpy sweater

when I went to give her the money she’d always go,

Oh, you look beautiful!



Marry your boyfriend,

It’s better than going to prison.

When you go out with her,

she’ll buy you a present; she’s incredibly generous that way.

And she’ll always tell you to save money and get out.

It’s frustrating to her when girls call at the end of the month

and say they need rent money.

She wants to see you do well.





We had a schedule, with cards that indicated a client’s name,

what he liked,

the names of the girls he’d seen,

and how long he’d been with them.

And I only hired girls who had another career

—if my clients had a choice between drop-dead-gorgeous

and beautiful-and-interesting,

they’d tend to take beautiful-and-interesting.

These men wanted to talk.

If they spent two hours with a girl,

they usually spent only five or ten minutes in bed.



I get the feeling that in Los Angeles, men are more concerned with looks.



XXVIII.

That was my big idea

Not to expand the book by aggressive marketing

but to make sure that nobody

mistook my girls for run-of-the-mill hookers.

And I kept my roster fresh.

This was not a business where you peddle your ***,

get exploited,

and then are cast off.

I screen clients. I’ve never sent girls to weirdos.

I let the men know:

no violence,

no costumes,

no fudge-packing.

And I talked to my girls. I’d tell them:

Two and a half years and you’re burned out.

Save your money.

This is like a hangar

—you come in, refuel, and take off.

It’s not a vacation, it’s not a goof.

This buys the singing lessons,

the dancing lessons,

the glossies.

This is to help you pay for what your parents couldn’t provide.

It’s an honorable way station—a lot of stars did this.



XXIX.

To say someone was a Claude girl is an honour, not a slur.



Une femme terrible.

She despised men and women alike.

Men were wallets. Women were holes.



By the 80s,

if you were a brunette,

the sky was the limit.

The Saudis

They’d call for half a dozen of Alex’s finest,

ignore them all evening while they

chatted,

ate,

and played cards,

and then, around midnight,

take the women inside for a fast few minutes of ***.



They’d order women up like pizza.



Since my second husband died,

I only met one man who was right for me,

He was a sheikh.

I visited him in Europe

twenty-eight times

in the five years I knew him

and I never slept with him.

He’d say

I think you fly all the way here just to tease me,

but he introduced me

by phone

to all his powerful friends.

When I was in Los Angeles, he called me twice a day.

That’s why I never went out

he would have been disappointed.



***.

Listen to me

This is a woman’s business.

When a woman does it, it’s fun

there’s a giggle in it

when a man’s involved,

he’s ******,

he’s a ****.

He may know how to keep girls in line,

and he may make money,

but he doesn’t know what I do.

I tell guys: You’re getting a nice girl.

She’s young,

She’s pleasant,

She can do things

she can certainly make love.

She’s not a rocket scientist, but she’s everything else.



The world’s richest and most powerful men, the announcer teased.

An income “in the millions,” said the arresting officer.

Pina Colapinto

A petite call girl,

who once slid between the sheets of royalty,

a green-eyed blonde helped the police get the indictment.

They really dolled her up

She looks great.

Never!

What I told her was: ‘Wash that ******.’





XXXI.

Madam Alex died at 7 p.m.

Saturday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center,

where she had been in intensive care after recent open heart surgery

We all held her hand when they took her off the life support

This was the passing of a legend.

Because she was the mother superior of prostitution.

She was one of the richest women on earth.

The world came to her.

She never had to leave the house.

She was like Hugh Hefner in that way.


It's like losing a friend

In all the years we played cat and mouse,

she never once tried to corrupt me.

We had a lot of fun.


To those who knew her

she was as constant

as she was colorful

always ready with a good tidbit of gossip

and a gourmet lunch for two.

She entertained, even after her conviction on pandering charges,

from the comfy depths of her blue four-poster bed at her home near Doheny Drive,

surrounded by knickknacks and meowing cats,

which she fed fresh shrimp from blue china plates.



XXXII.

She stole my business,

my books,

my girls,

my guys.

I had a good run.

My creatures.

Make Mommy happy

Oh! He is the most enchanting cat that I have ever known.



She was, how can I say it,

classy.

When she first hired me

she thought I was too young to take her case.

I was 43.

I'm going to give you some gray hairs by the time this is over.

She was right.





XXXIII.

I was fond of Heidi

But she has a streak that is so vindictive.



If there is pure evil, it is Madame Alex.





XXXIV.

I was born and raised in L.A.

My dad was a famous pediatrician.

When he died, they donated a bench to him at the Griffith Park Observatory.



I think that Heidi wanted to try her wings

pretty early,

and I think that she met some people

who sort of took all her potential

and gave it a sharp turn



She knew nothing.

She was like a little parrot who repeated what she was supposed to say.



Alex and I had a very intense relationship;

I was kind of like the daughter she loved and hated,

so she was abusive and loving at the same time.



Look, I know Madam Alex was great at what she did

but it's like this:

What took her years to build,

I built in one.

The high end is the high end,

and no one has a higher end than me.

In this business, no one steals clients.

There's just better service.



XXXV.

You were not allowed to have long hair

You were not allowed to be too pretty

You were not allowed to wear too much makeup or be too glamorous

Because someone would fall in love with you and take you away.

And then she loses the business



XXXVI.

I was pursued because

come on

in our lifetime,

we will never see another girl of my age

who lived the way I did,

who did what I did so quickly,

I made so many enemies.

Some people had been in this line of business

for their whole lives, 30 or 40 years,

and I came in and cornered the market.

Men don't like that.

Women don't like that.

No one liked it.



I had this spiritual awakening watching an Oprah Winfrey video.

I was doing this 500-hour drug class

and one day the teacher showed us this video,

called something like Make It Happen.

Usually in class I would bring a notebook

and write a letter to my brother or my journal,

but all of a sudden this grabbed my attention

and I understood everything she said.

It hit me and it changed me a lot.

It made me feel,

Accept yourself for who you are.

I saw a deeper meaning in it

but who knows, I might have just been getting my period that day!



XXXVII.

Hello, Gina!

You movie star!

Yes you are!

Gina G!

Hello my friend,

Hello my friend,

Hello my movie star,

Ruby! Ruby Boobie!

Braaawk!

Except so many women say,

Come on, Heidi

you gotta do the brothel for us; don't let us down.

It would be kind of fun opening up an exclusive resort,

and I'll make it really nice,

like the Beverly Hills Hotel

It'll feel private; you'll have your own bungalow.

The only problem out here is the climate—it's so brutal.

Charles Manson was captured a half hour from Pahrump.



I said, Joe! What are you doing?

You gotta get, like,

a garter belt and encase it in something

and write,

This belonged to Suzette Whatever,

who entertained the Flying Tigers during World War II.

Get, like, some weird tools and write,

These were the first abortion tools in the brothel,

you know what I mean?

Just make some **** up!

So I came out here to do some research

And then I realized,

What am I doing?

I'm Heidi Fleiss. I don't need anyone.

I can do this.

When I was doing my research, in three months

I saw land go from 30 thousand an acre

to 50 thousand an acre,

and then it was going for 70K!

It's urban sprawl

—we're only one hour from Las Vegas.

Out here the casinos are only going to get bigger,

prostitution is legal, it's only getting better.





XXXVIII.

The truth is

deep down inside,

I just can't do business with him

He's the type of guy who buys Cup o' Noodles soup for three cents

and makes his hookers buy it back from him for $5.

It's not my style at all.

Who wants to be 75 and facing federal charges?

It was different at my age when I

at least...come on, I lived really well.

I was 22,

25 at the time?

It was fun then, but now I wouldn't want

to deal with all that *******

—the girls and blah blah blah.

But the money was really good.



I would've told someone they were out of their ******* mind

if they'd said in five years I'd be living with all these animals like this.

It's hard-core; how I live;

It's totally a nonfunctional atmosphere for me

It's hard to get anything done because

It’s so time-consuming.

I feel like they're good luck though....

I do feel that if I ever get rid of them,

I will be jinxed and cursed the rest of my life

and nothing I do will ever work again.



Guys kind of are a hindrance to me

Certainly I have no problem getting laid or anything.

But a man is not a priority in my life.

I mean, it's crazy, but I really have fun with my parrots.



XXXIX.

I started a babysitting circle when I wasn't much older than 9

And soon all the parents in the neighborhood

wanted me to watch over their children.

Even then I had an innate business sense.

I started farming out my friends

to meet the demand.

My mother showered me with love and my father,

a pediatrician,

would ask me at the dinner table,

What did you learn today?

I ran my neighborhood.

I just pick up a hustle really easily,

I was a waitress and I met an older guy who looked like Santa Claus.



Alex was a 5' 3" bald-headed Filipina

in a transparent muu muu.

We hit it off.

I didn't know at the time that I was there to pay off the guy's gambling debt.

It's in and out,

over and out.

Do you think some big-time producer

or actor is going to go to the clubs and hustle?



Columbia Pictures executive says:

I haven’t done anything that should cause any concern.

Jeez, it's like the Nixon enemies list.

I hope I'm on it.

If I'm not, it means I must not be big enough

for people to gossip about me.



That's right ladies and gentlemen.

I am an alleged madam and that is a $25 *****!

If you live out here,

you've got to hate people.

You've got to be pretty antisocial

How you gonna come out here with only 86 people?

That's Fred.

He's digging to China.

You look good.

Yeah, you too.

It's coming along here.

Yeah, it is.

I wanted to buy that lot there, but I guess it's gone?

That's mine, man! That's all me.

Really?

I thought there was a lot between us.

No. We're neighbors.



He's a cute guy

He's entertaining.

See, I kind of did do something shady to him.

I thought my property went all the way back

and butted up against his.

But there was one lot between us right there.

He said he was buying it,

but I saw the 'For Sale' sign still up there,

So I went and called the broker and said,

I'm an all-cash buyer.

So I really bought it out from under him.

But he's got plenty of room, and I need the space for my parrots.

Pahrump will always be Pahrump, but Crystal is going to be nice

All you need are four or five fancy houses and it'll flush everyone out

and it'll be a nice area.

They're all kind of weird here, but these people will go.

Like this guy here,

someone needs to **** him.

I was just saying to my dad that these parrots are born to a really ******-up world

He goes, Heidi, no, no; the world is a beautiful garden.

It's just, people are destroying it.

I’m looking into green building options

I don't want anything polluting,

I want a huge auditorium,

but it'll be like a jungle where my birds can really fly!

Where they can really do what they're supposed to do.

There were over 300 birds in there!

That lady,

She ran the exotic-birds department for the Tropicana Hotel,

which is a huge job.

She called me once at 3:30 in the morning

Come over here and help me feed this baby!

Some baby parrot.

And I ran over there in my pajamas

—I knew there was something else wrong

and she was like

Get me my oxygen!

Get me this, get me that.

I called my dad; he was like,

I don't know, honey, you better call the paramedics.

They ended up getting a helicopter.

And they were taking her away

in the wind with her IV and blood and everything

and she goes, Heidi, you take care of my birds.

And she dies the next day.

She was just a super-duper person.



XL.

I relate to the lifestyle she had before,

Now, I'm just a citizen.

I'm clean,

I'm sober,

I'm married,

I work at Wal-Mart.

I'm proud to say I know her. I look into her eyes

and we relate.





I got out in 2000,

so I've been sending her money for seven years

She was…whatever.

Girlfriend?

Yeah, maybe.

But ***, I tried like two times,

and I'm just not gay.

She gets out in about eight or nine months

and I told her I would get her a house.

But nowhere near me.

I didn't touch her,

but I'd be, like...

a funny story:

I told her,

Don't you ever ******* think

about contacting me in the real world.

I'm not a lesbian.

Then about two years ago, I got an e-mail from her,

or she called me and said, 'Google my name.'

So I Googled her name,

and she has this huge company.

Huge!

She won, like, Woman of the Year awards.

So I called her and I go,

Not bad.

She goes, 'Well, I did all that because you called me a loser.'

I go, '****, I should've called you more names

you probably would've found the cure for cancer by now.



XLI.

No person shall be employed by the licensee

who has ever been convicted of

a felony involving moral turpitude

But I qualify,

I mean, big deal, so I'm a convicted felon.

Being in the *** industry, you can't be so squeaky-clean.

You've got to be hustling.

Nighttime is really enchanting here

It's like a whole 'nother world out here, it really is

I’m so far removed from my social life and old surroundings.

Who was it, Oscar Wilde, I think, who said

people can adjust to anything.

I was perfectly adjusted in the penitentiary,

and I was perfectly adjusted to living in a château in France.



We had done those drug addiction shows together

Dr. Drew.

Afterward we were friendly

and he'd call me every now and then.

He'd act like he had his stuff together.

But it was all a lie.

Everything is a lie.

I brought him to a Humane Society event at Paramount Studios last year.

He was just such a mess.

So out of it.

He stole money from my purse.

He's such a drug addict because he's so afraid of being fat.

He liked horse ****, though. He did like horse ****.

This one woman that would have *** with a horse on the internet,

He told me that’s his favorite actress.

Better than Meryl Streep.



XLII.

The cops could see

why these women were taking over trade.

Girls with these looks charged upwards of $500 an hour.

The Russians had undercut them with a bargain rate of $150 an hour.

One thing they are not is lazy.

In the USSR

they grew up with no religion, no morality.

Prostitution is not considered a bad thing.

In fact, it’s considered a great way to make money.

That’s why it’s exploding here.

What we saw was just a tip of the iceberg.

These girls didn’t come over here expecting to be nannies.

They knew exactly what they wanted and what they were getting into.

The madam who organized this raid

was making $4 million a year,

laundered through Russian-owned banks in New York City

These are brutal people.

They are all backstabbers.

They’re entrepreneurs.

They’re looking at $10,000 a month for turning tricks.

For them, that’s the American dream.



XLIII.

If you’re not into something,

don’t be into it

But,

if you want to take some whipped cream,

put it between your toes,

have your dog licking it up and,

at the same time,

have your girlfriend poke you in the eye,

then that’s fine.

That’s a little weird but we shouldn’t judge.



She was my best friend then

and I consider her one of my best friends now,

because when I was going through Riker’s

and everyone abandoned me,

including my boyfriend,

I was hysterical,

crying,

and she was the one that was there.

And, when somebody needed to step up to the plate,

that’s who did, and I have an immense amount of

loyalty, respect, and love for her.

And if she’s going to prison for eight years

—that’s what she’s sentenced for

—I’ll go there,

and I’ll go there every week,

for eight years.

That’s the type of person I am.

Fragile egg-shell mind on dawn’s highway bleeding the segue between times traversed only in momentary dreams or in enduring excursions

We drag our droll and quaint 60s baggage like the luggage of a safari made of concrete girding a cavernous expanse of unheralded ground

With our ears oriented to the floor, we leap out of body never to deplore….never to ignore….never to miss the blue bus of our drafted imaginations, so carefully culled from brash elitism

I trounce the intervening time between being friendless and an ironic end, and an irenic comrade becoming the dearest amazed but always aplomb friend

We simper in our glorious traversal, and though bedraggled through an ornamented cavern we linger just long enough to be celebrated

Then a blues riff emanates from a vapid bar, and finally someone heralds my exhumed memory still rusty with the pavement of encased concrete on an empty or full tomb

So I wander in my mind to that roughshod Paris glassy tincture a romanticized gild of proper sensibility crafted in the tongues of lizards emulating the tongues of serpentine Anglicans

As the power of love transcends the love of power, both are afforded serendipitously upon the stately occasion of a fitful revolt where heads literally rolled and deaths still unfurl from the slippage of a violent malevolent eternity, crafting a new creative way to expedite the smite of preventable scourge

So, I see your picaresque side and your wide-eyed love for a listless ship anointed of a crystal blip just detectable long enough on RADAR to become the statistic to crack the slim WHIP

No wigs are needed at this formality, no figs grow from trees forty-five years buried and almost a full month unsung

Pitiable cretins of an invented insanity, they scoff at my ravenous and portentous heart for its excess and for aligning with an upstart verging on only a specious insanity

Why in all humanity could a month be mustered with every defense of history and yet for it to be so widely flouted as a risible exercise in futility

The irony that the artistic glamor of a past vogue becoming a revival that is often toked only to one song but never to the memorial of great cavernous and commodious imaginations, staggers with dismay where otherwise the mayday would be a disaster but still a great day

Then I look at a triggered-fingered omen of a death so ominous yet so brazenly confronted as the ambassadors of time provide plaudits to a fearless martyrdom

Why such a sad spate, why such a stringent but malevolent fate a malediction on a family whose crest is not crestfallen like rolling waves but ornamented with gravity impounding its own weight

A fugacious tomb, an eternal flame, a swan song announcing an independent authority on a prescient demise mashed and deprived

A single shot rippling through the broadened space between clasped eternity and a histrionic disgrace as a psychological confederate pays lip service to a reiterative applause

A cousin hardly American in a defected record of incendiary plumes of a hoarse hatred of waxen discs and flying discs alike,  climbs out of a bonfire mounted purely out of vindictive spite

Then upon a great white buffalo a wrapped package of Californian love before California ever alighted like something beyond an avaricious dove, saw a rocky park and a hearth of illuminated darkness the singular spark

Captain Morgan knows the jackknife applause of a botched deal morphing into a disbelieved spiel. A shibboleth of enormous mystical weight crashing down from an ethereal abode and heaven heavily saddened cannot hardly appeal

Then a loving spoonful of crystal blue persuasion led me to Ethel’s regimented keepsake and for once in my life nobility and I became a grateful waif. But temerity laughed, splintered spacecraft, and the wooden paws of a bearish applause led to resurgent clarity

Blinking stars shattered by knighted and raw applause punctured the liberated might of a sentient hortatory savior grasped by the internecine wrench of a waxen time

An indie track slides by unnoticed in an aleatory time, and the threadbare whine of centuries of lament becomes a dastardly barn set ablaze with the fury of ancients and the scurry of faineant patents

Perfidy slides in recess, and in gentle forbearance the winged angel lingers like a halo on conifer and spring above a remedial ring

I dial frisky celerity tingling the dangling claws of a raven’s screed and in plunder of all history’s pilfer secrets I eagerly weave a tapestry Indiana Jones himself would be proud to watch

Not the riotous ruin of a mystery tour of verdure crippled by genocide but overcome by the revived life of raised rain razing the moments of indelible pain

But the culmination of a proffered time taken at its word for its every careened bird, for its every brazen gird. The manger of proctored stars calls us home tonight and home forever. Life in quaked timorous stumbles suddenly no longer so fitfully absurd.

The quixotic plundered of pirates and emperors in direct emulation of some crooned pastiche of whittled integrity, surges above any encased blurb and any vain testament to a pyramid rigid in destiny and ragged in desultory and sturdy sincerity

Multiplying the ineffable by the division of arable divorced from edible is too creative to be eaten as pabulum when sparks curdle flickered moonlight crimson and that become golden only to the last laugh of ennobled ragamuffins

Frankly the desert of melliferous gorillas abetting the lark of a heavily vetted camarilla engaged in the sinecure of a rigged wall on a main street to block the tall from the lame bleat. Stocks grazed, costs engaged on a littoral beach at the end of a Bossy promenade

This prayer is a cutthroat collapse of a merry spare, a ribbed ****** waiting to plunge into the antithesis of female despair, but sincere in its restraint that vixens courted in love aren’t courted in litigation of a wagered dare

Ambulances chase Deloreans through the desolate moon-stricken skies of a time agape with fleets of phantasmagoria on a Cliffside too wise to ever mince words or excise cries

Skulking the red-teared caverns of entombed films and lampooned tinctures on a passion vetted only for certain and utter deracinated disguise, I wallop with winged men in a single soul Armed to the Teeth with inveterate tithes to eternal internments of poached and endangered gazettes

As growth older in wizened skin bets on epithets rather than epitaphs for rinsed peace and triumphant clefts we leap above in orbit of only the bellowing nether of blown tolls and untold souls aggregating the esoteric grasp of Alexandrian tomes

The denumeration of certainty is a carousel of wonder, a splurge of time ripped asunder with majesties of paparazzi scuttled impacts a throttled iniquity of regalia’s indicted blunder frenchified but still clean with inestimable sheens

With twenty-five dollars, a dime an assist and a nickeled reiteration of currency already so personable it is divine and sublime in crazed desist I watch the embroiled natives clash in denatured violence with the warriors of a crossed repast hearkening to an old land much of ire but too much of grandstand to ultimately last

Itching for a holy field husk of peerless ties listed as rumpus and beer, a two-packed smoked by bludgeoned blokes careless in irascible sputters of a muffled doom, a Vegan becomes the author of too many sacrosanct homilies becoming defiled witchcraft brooms dead on arrival too many lionized tombs

In plaudits and the scause of an amplified “what if?” of an olfactory nightmare of petrified fog of effluvium bogged in Wade and in heat it is always clogged, sinewy libations of toasted preemptive revenge become a powerballed hog

A castle in the sky founded on Franklin but scourged of wineskins brimming with a distilled time, a swift repartee becomes the whispered ladder of saints blather becoming not rather other than a Dan Rather spatter

A door breeched by a broached inconvenience of amphigory beyond common reach, I clamber excess and whisk the lingered love into destiny beyond any word other than a beseeched preach of nothing tired but everything inspired of noble love with abundance often to teach

Fireworks of turned tides of fallow tithes to aliens beyond any conceivable bribe the bushwhacker writhes but survives Stayin' Alive without even a hint of garbled jive a 27th floor glass elevator is quite a resplendent ride

Wellsprings knowing radical rolled tides of errant dice also themselves guilty of confessional tithes to the monolith of avarice at the nooked cranny of an evaporated time we whine as the police sting the album rained with songs too lugubrious to sing but in their elegy every lonely heart has a propinquity phone of souled resonance ring

Iterative mastery of a mathematics of love, loss decay and the dross of a dental Occidental floss, the sweep of screened queues become questions of inestimable importance to foreign dues on A Horse With No Name but so consumed with fumes

A fright occultist Thriller prowls in a waylaying daylight, masquerading an innocent confection for a rescued triage of a dawn stabbed with knives in our last dying days of trembled plight

He resurrects only the wraiths of detest, squinted at by the putrefaction of summoned cardiac arrest and littered with bullets that somehow can penetrate even impregnable bullet proof vests the wrapped carcass of the mummified husk of ready despair offers itself a ghoulish and raspy prayer

Synchronized in a low roaring swathe of rollercoasters too immersive to ride, the terpsichorean obscurantism of deliberately shattered fragments becoming blurbs dismissed with hijacked deride the carnival of a summer sun becomes the ocean of limitless love becoming endless fun

We forget the drawl of the droll old tales that haunt like specters in the closet and beneath the bedridden valetudinarian of an effrontery of shackled fright, we sprawl the innumerable caverns of prophetic insight afforded by the pantheon of history enter stage left, depart stage right

And with their insight I write and write, I grasp the tusk of democracy and wage an insurrection against the doubt of plodding limitations in otherwise immaculate sight

*** and tyrannosaurus rex, of litigable offenses leading to pardonable arrests, the gated entryway of a poetic splurge leads to the demiurge of a demotic enlightenment and suddenly the frank becomes the frazzled retirement and that haunting hounding bunny transmogrified by a shattered eye averts the car crash that careens ponderous engines out of limitless twilight blue skies.

Diamond lightning in pristine skies escorts the telegraphic totems of riddled modems from distant forbearance to nescient ultimatum and suddenly all venerable personages converge on a teeming scene of a union unified by a universal dream. To become everything and yet nothing and out of light and darkness to become a beatific beam

PLEDGE TO NIGERIA
By: Adigun Temitope Idealism


From between heaven and earth stand a perilous place
Where poverty kicked us on face
Tears stand as our drinks
Where hunger eat up our meals
Our pain is a poisonous laughter
Where sadness becomes our daily activities
Where hardship becomes our ambition
And sorrow our career
Still, we need to pledge to Nigeria

Blood, bone and oil,
Are the pedestal of earth
Where killing is a lifestyle
And ****** a hobby
Where humiliation becomes our take home
And misfortune our store-house
Where graduate works by the road-side
Where poverty is titillating and titivating before the mirror of our land
Yet we need to pledge to Nigeria

Pledge to Nigeria
Even when the birds refuses to sing,
When moon dims its light,
When our days turn into nights
When sun fails to shine
And flowers refuse to bloom
When life fails to give reasons
When dreams refuse to forgive
When the weep inside birth the smile outside
When tears wash hope from our sight
Nigeria must still be pledge to

I pledge to Nigeria
Not to be one if the ambassadors that sing the National Anthem with a teleprompter smiling at them in a shameful tears
I pledge not to be a naked masquerade dancing at the village square
I pledge to steal government money for the poor when I become the President
I pledge to be loyal and not betrayal
I pledge to fight off vices and calamities with my pen
If democracy must to end
I pledge to go crazy to stop it to the end
If civilization was to make us stupid
I pledge to swim in stupidity not to be civilised
I pledge, I pledge

©2015 Adigun Temitope Idealism (Deacon)


#Muse #PurposefulPoetry #BPM #IIB #Asaplanet #ThoughtAndSociety #Poetfreak
blackpridemagazin.simplesite.com
@blackpridemag1

NUMB, half asleep, and dazed with whirl of wheels,
And gasp of steam, and measured clank of chains,
I heard a blithe voice break a sudden pause,
Ringing familiarly through the lamp-lit night,
“Wife, here's your Venice!”
I was lifted down,
And gazed about in stupid wonderment,
Holding my little Katie by the hand—
My yellow-haired step-daughter. And again
Two strong arms led me to the water-brink,
And laid me on soft cushions in a boat,—
A queer boat, by a queerer boatman manned—
Swarthy-faced, ragged, with a scarlet cap—
Whose wild, weird note smote shrilly through the dark.
Oh yes, it was my Venice! Beautiful,
With melancholy, ghostly beauty—old,
And sorrowful, and weary—yet so fair,
So like a queen still, with her royal robes,
Full of harmonious colour, rent and worn!
I only saw her shadow in the stream,
By flickering lamplight,—only saw, as yet,
White, misty palace-portals here and there,
Pillars, and marble steps, and balconies,
Along the broad line of the Grand Canal;
And, in the smaller water-ways, a patch
Of wall, or dim bridge arching overhead.
But I could feel the rest. 'Twas Venice!—ay,
The veritable Venice of my dreams.

I saw the grey dawn shimmer down the stream,
And all the city rise, new bathed in light,
With rose-red blooms on her decaying walls,
And gold tints quivering up her domes and spires—
Sharp-drawn, with delicate pencillings, on a sky
Blue as forget-me-nots in June. I saw
The broad day staring in her palace-fronts,
Pointing to yawning gap and crumbling boss,
And colonnades, time-stained and broken, flecked
With soft, sad, dying colours—sculpture-wreathed,
And gloriously proportioned; saw the glow
Light up her bright, harmonious, fountain'd squares,
And spread out on her marble steps, and pass
Down silent courts and secret passages,
Gathering up motley treasures on its way;—

Groups of rich fruit from the Rialto mart,
Scarlet and brown and purple, with green leaves—
Fragments of exquisite carving, lichen-grown,
Found, 'mid pathetic squalor, in some niche
Where wild, half-naked urchins lived and played—
A bright robe, crowned with a pale, dark-eyed face—
A red-striped awning 'gainst an old grey wall—
A delicate opal gleam upon the tide.

I looked out from my window, and I saw
Venice, my Venice, naked in the sun—
Sad, faded, and unutterably forlorn!—
But still unutterably beautiful.

For days and days I wandered up and down—
Holding my breath in awe and ecstasy,—
Following my husband to familiar haunts,
Making acquaintance with his well-loved friends,
Whose faces I had only seen in dreams
And books and photographs and his careless talk.
For days and days—with sunny hours of rest
And musing chat, in that cool room of ours,
Paved with white marble, on the Grand Canal;
For days and days—with happy nights between,
Half-spent, while little Katie lay asleep
Out on the balcony, with the moon and stars.

O Venice, Venice!—with thy water-streets—
Thy gardens bathed in sunset, flushing red
Behind San Giorgio Maggiore's dome—
Thy glimmering lines of haughty palaces
Shadowing fair arch and column in the stream—
Thy most divine cathedral, and its square,
With vagabonds and loungers daily thronged,
Taking their ice, their coffee, and their ease—
Thy sunny campo's, with their clamorous din,
Their shrieking vendors of fresh fish and fruit—
Thy churches and thy pictures—thy sweet bits
Of colour—thy grand relics of the dead—
Thy gondoliers and water-bearers—girls
With dark, soft eyes, and creamy faces, crowned
With braided locks as bright and black as jet—
Wild ragamuffins, picturesque in rags,
And swarming beggars and old witch-like crones,
And brown-cloaked contadini, hot and tired,
Sleeping, face-downward, on the sunny steps—
Thy fairy islands floating in the sun—
Thy poppy-sprinkled, grave-strewn Lido shore—

Thy poetry and thy pathos—all so strange!—
Thou didst bring many a lump into my throat,
And many a passionate thrill into my heart,
And once a tangled dream into my head.

'Twixt afternoon and evening. I was tired;
The air was hot and golden—not a breath
Of wind until the sunset—hot and still.
Our floor was water-sprinkled; our thick walls
And open doors and windows, shadowed deep
With jalousies and awnings, made a cool
And grateful shadow for my little couch.
A subtle perfume stole about the room
From a small table, piled with purple grapes,
And water-melon slices, pink and wet,
And ripe, sweet figs, and golden apricots,
New-laid on green leaves from our garden—leaves
Wherewith an antique torso had been clothed.
My husband read his novel on the floor,
Propped up on cushions and an Indian shawl;
And little Katie slumbered at his feet,
Her yellow curls alight, and delicate tints
Of colour in the white folds of her frock.
I lay, and mused, in comfort and at ease,
Watching them both and playing with my thoughts;
And then I fell into a long, deep sleep,
And dreamed.
I saw a water-wilderness—
Islands entangled in a net of streams—
Cross-threads of rippling channels, woven through
Bare sands, and shallows glimmering blue and broad—
A line of white sea-breakers far away.
There came a smoke and crying from the land—
Ruin was there, and ashes, and the blood
Of conquered cities, trampled down to death.
But here, methought, amid these lonely gulfs,
There rose up towers and bulwarks, fair and strong,
Lapped in the silver sea-mists;—waxing aye
Fairer and stronger—till they seemed to mock
The broad-based kingdoms on the mainland shore.
I saw a great fleet sailing in the sun,
Sailing anear the sand-slip, whereon broke
The long white wave-crests of the outer sea,—
Pepin of Lombardy, with his warrior hosts—
Following the ****** steps of Attila!
I saw the smoke rise when he touched the towns
That lay, outposted, in his ravenous reach;

Then, in their island of deep waters,* saw
A gallant band defy him to his face,
And drive him out, with his fair vessels wrecked
And charred with flames, into the sea again.
“Ah, this is Venice!” I said proudly—“queen
Whose haughty spirit none shall subjugate.”

It was the night. The great stars hung, like globes
Of gold, in purple skies, and cast their light
In palpitating ripples down the flood
That washed and gurgled through the silent streets—
White-bordered now with marble palaces.
It was the night. I saw a grey-haired man,
Sitting alone in a dark convent-porch—
In beggar's garments, with a kingly face,
And eyes that watched for dawnlight anxiously—
A weary man, who could not rest nor sleep.
I heard him muttering prayers beneath his breath,
And once a malediction—while the air
Hummed with the soft, low psalm-chants from within.
And then, as grey gleams yellowed in the east,
I saw him bend his venerable head,
Creep to the door, and knock.
Again I saw
The long-drawn billows breaking on the land,
And galleys rocking in the summer noon.
The old man, richly retinued, and clad
In princely robes, stood there, and spread his arms,
And cried, to one low-kneeling at his feet,
“Take thou my blessing with thee, O my son!
And let this sword, wherewith I gird thee, smite
The impious tyrant-king, who hath defied,
Dethroned, and exiled him who is as Christ.
The Lord be good to thee, my son, my son,
For thy most righteous dealing!”
And again
'Twas that long slip of land betwixt the sea
And still lagoons of Venice—curling waves
Flinging light, foamy spray upon the sand.
The noon was past, and rose-red shadows fell
Across the waters. Lo! the galleys came
To anchorage again—and lo! the Duke
Yet once more bent his noble head to earth,
And laid a victory at the old man's feet,
Praying a blessing with exulting heart.
“This day, my well-belovèd, thou art blessed,
And Venice with thee, for St. Peter's sake.

And I will give thee, for thy bride and queen,
The sea which thou hast conquered. Take this ring,
As sign of her subjection, and thy right
To be her lord for ever.”
Once again
I saw that old man,—in the vestibule
Of St. Mark's fair cathedral,—circled round
With cardinals and priests, ambassadors
And the noblesse of Venice—richly robed
In papal vestments, with the triple crown
Gleaming upon his brows. There was a hush:—
I saw a glittering train come sweeping on,
From the blue water and across the square,
Thronged with an eager multitude,—the Duke,
And with him Barbarossa, humbled now,
And fain to pray for pardon. With bare heads,
They reached the church, and paused. The Emperor knelt,
Casting away his purple mantle—knelt,
And crept along the pavement, as to kiss
Those feet, which had been weary twenty years
With his own persecutions. And the Pope
Lifted his white haired, crowned, majestic head,
And trod upon his neck,—crying out to Christ,
“Upon the lion and adder shalt thou go—
The dragon shalt thou tread beneath thy feet!”
The vision changed. Sweet incense-clouds rose up
From the cathedral altar, mix'd with hymns
And solemn chantings, o'er ten thousand heads;
And ebbed and died away along the aisles.
I saw a train of nobles—knights of France—
Pass 'neath the glorious arches through the crowd,
And stand, with halo of soft, coloured light
On their fair brows—the while their leader's voice
Rang through the throbbing silence like a bell.
“Signiors, we come to Venice, by the will
Of the most high and puissant lords of France,
To pray you look with your compassionate eyes
Upon the Holy City of our Christ—
Wherein He lived, and suffered, and was lain
Asleep, to wake in glory, for our sakes—
By Paynim dogs dishonoured and defiled!
Signiors, we come to you, for you are strong.
The seas which lie betwixt that land and this
Obey you. O have pity! See, we kneel—
Our Masters bid us kneel—and bid us stay
Here at your feet until you grant our prayers!”
Wherewith the knights fell down upon their knees,

And lifted up their supplicating hands.
Lo! the ten thousand people rose as one,
And shouted with a shout that shook the domes
And gleaming roofs above them—echoing down,
Through marble pavements, to the shrine below,
Where lay the miraculous body of their Saint
(Shed he not heavenly radiance as he heard?—
Perfuming the damp air of his secret crypt),
And cried, with an exceeding mighty cry,
“We do consent! We will be pitiful!”
The thunder of their voices reached the sea,
And thrilled through all the netted water-veins
Of their rich city. Silence fell anon,
Slowly, with fluttering wings, upon the crowd;
And then a veil of darkness.
And again
The filtered sunlight streamed upon those walls,
Marbled and sculptured with divinest grace;
Again I saw a multitude of heads,
Soft-wreathed with cloudy incense, bent in prayer—
The heads of haughty barons, armed knights,
And pilgrims girded with their staff and scrip,
The warriors of the Holy Sepulchre.
The music died away along the roof;
The hush was broken—not by him of France—
By Enrico Dandolo, whose grey head
Venice had circled with the ducal crown.
The old man looked down, with his dim, wise eyes,
Stretching his hands abroad, and spake. “Seigneurs,
My children, see—your vessels lie in port
Freighted for battle. And you, standing here,
Wait but the first fair wind. The bravest hosts
Are with you, and the noblest enterprise
Conceived of man. Behold, I am grey-haired,
And old and feeble. Yet am I your lord.
And, if it be your pleasure, I will trust
My ducal seat in Venice to my son,
And be your guide and leader.”
When they heard,
They cried aloud, “In God's name, go with us!”
And the old man, with holy weeping, passed
Adown the tribune to the altar-steps;
And, kneeling, fixed the cross upon his cap.
A ray of sudden sunshine lit his face—
The grand, grey, furrowed face—and lit the cross,
Until it twinkled like a cross of fire.
“We shall be safe with him,” the people said,

Straining their wet, bright eyes; “and we shall reap
Harvests of glory from our battle-fields!”

Anon there rose a vapour from the sea—
A dim white mist, that thickened into fog.
The campanile and columns were blurred out,
Cathedral domes and spires, and colonnades
Of marble palaces on the Grand Canal.
Joy-bells rang sadly and softly—far away;
Banners of welcome waved like wind-blown clouds;
Glad shouts were muffled into mournful wails.
A Doge was come to be enthroned and crowned,—
Not in the great Bucentaur—not in pomp;
The water-ways had wandered in the mist,
And he had tracked them, slowly, painfully,
From San Clemente to Venice, in a frail
And humble gondola. A Doge was come;
But he, alas! had missed his landing-place,
And set his foot upon the blood-stained stones
Betwixt the blood-red columns. Ah, the sea—
The bride, the queen—she was the first to turn
Against her passionate, proud, ill-fated lord!

Slowly the sea-fog melted, and I saw
Long, limp dead bodies dangling in the sun.
Two granite pillars towered on either side,
And broad blue waters glittered at their feet.
“These are the traitors,” said the people; “they
Who, with our Lord the Duke, would overthrow
The government of Venice.”
And anon,
The doors about the palace were made fast.
A great crowd gathered round them, with hushed breath
And throbbing pulses. And I knew their lord,
The Duke Faliero, knelt upon his knees,
On the broad landing of the marble stairs
Where he had sworn the oath he could not keep—
Vexed with the tyrannous oligarchic rule
That held his haughty spirit netted in,
And cut so keenly that he writhed and chafed
Until he burst the meshes—could not keep!
I watched and waited, feeling sick at heart;
And then I saw a figure, robed in black—
One of their dark, ubiquitous, supreme
And fearful tribunal of Ten—come forth,
And hold a dripping sword-blade in the air.
“Justice has fallen on the traitor! See,
His blood has paid the forfeit of his crime!”

And all the people, hearing, murmured deep,
Cursing their dead lord, and the council, too,
Whose swift, sure, heavy hand had dealt his death.

Then came the night, all grey and still and sad.
I saw a few red torches flare and flame
Over a little gondola, where lay
The headless body of the traitor Duke,
Stripped of his ducal vestments. Floating down
The quiet waters, it passed out of sight,
Bearing him to unhonoured burial.
And then came mist and darkness.
Lo! I heard
The shrill clang of alarm-bells, and the wails
Of men and women in the wakened streets.
A thousand torches flickered up and down,
Lighting their ghastly faces and bare heads;
The while they crowded to the open doors
Of all the churches—to confess their sins,
To pray for absolution, and a last
Lord's Supper—their viaticum, whose death
Seemed near at hand—ay, nearer than the dawn.
“Chioggia is fall'n!” they cried, “and we are lost!”

Anon I saw them hurrying to and fro,
With eager eyes and hearts and blither feet—
Grave priests, with warlike weapons in their hands,
And delicate women, with their ornaments
Of gold and jewels for the public fund—
Mix'd with the bearded crowd, whose lives were given,
With all they had, to Venice in her need.
No more I heard the wailing of despair,—
But great Pisani's blithe word of command,
The dip of oars, and creak of beams and chains,
And ring of hammers in the arsenal.
“Venice shall ne'er be lost!” her people cried—
Whose names were worthy of the Golden Book—
“Venice shall ne'er be conquered!”
And anon
I saw a scene of triumph—saw the Doge,
In his Bucentaur, sailing to the land—
Chioggia behind him blackened in the smoke,
Venice before, all banners, bells, and shouts
Of passionate rejoicing! Ten long months
Had Genoa waged that war of life and death;
And now—behold the remnant of her host,
Shrunken and hollow-eyed and bound with chains—
Trailing their galleys in the conqueror's wake!

Once more the tremulous waters, flaked with light;
A covered vessel, with an armèd guard—
A yelling mob on fair San Giorgio's isle,
And ominous whisperings in the city squares.
Carrara's noble head bowed down at last,
Beaten by many storms,—his golden spurs
Caught in the meshes of a hidden snare!
“O Venice!” I cried, “where is thy great heart
And honourable soul?”
And yet once more
I saw her—the gay Sybaris of the world—
The rich voluptuous city—sunk in sloth.
I heard Napoleon's cannon at her gates,
And her degenerate nobles cry for fear.
I saw at last the great Republic fall—
Conquered by her own sickness, and with scarce
A noticeable wound—I saw her fall!
And she had stood above a thousand years!
O Carlo Zeno! O Pisani! Sure
Ye turned and groaned for pity in your graves.
I saw the flames devour her Golden Book
Beneath the rootless “Tree of Liberty;”
I saw the Lion's le

I
Colonel Zaev(1), our commander,
Lived seventeen years in Angolian land.
There are no Luanda’s(2) experts better
Than him- he met its ambassadors two hundred
Times. He smashed UNITA(3) and weakened SAR’s (4)
Power. He supported Fidel Castro(5)
And he became famous for counter-attacks.
The Angolians call him Victor-Pastor:
He does always set the young on the right path:
Aoi!

II
Roberto Holden6 was the foe of Neto
He was a monarcho-tribolist.
And he happened to declare vendetta
To foes. His aim’s to banish socialists.
He invited China’s instructors to teach his
Soldiers the skill of fighting retreating under
Kifangondo(7), he’d not swiftly yield positions
Colonel Callan(8) retreated farther
With him. He was a cruel and fearless
Rascal, he was good at arranging ambush in
Woods. He fought hand-to-hand many times
But he was taken prisoner by the Guard
He declared political indifference but the court
To his grief didn’t believe him so that
Then he was quickly and publicly shot.
Aoi!

III
Savimbi Jonas(9) continued that war
Robin Holden quitted his Motherland –
It’s hard to revise views. What’s to be done for
Tearing a half away for his Fatherland?
He went to America, got a Baptist,
As preacher – he was the lost’s lecturer.
He didn’t wish just to be a pessimist
He wanted to live till times more fair.
Savimbi Jonas founded UNITA –
He made up his mind to go underground
MPLA’s detachments were defeated
By the Cubans but they were free quite
For diversions in the city. A new spiral
Of resistance began – two ideologies’
Confrontation took place and in final
It did cost life to many people for this.
Aoi!

IV
Our Victor Zaev, the commander
Of marines often trained us tirelessly
And all of us were not up to laughter
In gas-masks. We loaded incessantly
Our guns, we crossed the equator, anyway
In a moment Poseidon glorifying
By recompense. We stuck to the right fairway,
Neptun’s Day(10) became a great undertaking.
Aoi!

V
Coming to Luanda was usual rather,
The port’s scenery was bright, beautiful.
“Well, beauty!” exclaimed Igor, a warrant officer,
Zaev added: “It’s, brothers, very wonderful!”
Our councilor climbed up a deck as
Head of the Soviet military legation
He tried to explain the situation to us
Continuous seemed to be his Head’s duration.
Then the Cubans’ crew met us, their commander,
Did happen to know Russian at his fingers’
End. He valued the bearing of our landing
Force. And he was called Francisco Ortis.
Aoi!

VI
Here Agostino Neto came with
His suite consisting of twelve grandees
The President was cordial and gay. This
Day was marvellously fine, in his
Speech he praised the ******’s guard arranged
To meet him. He’d not fail to give his regiment
For it. “What an array!” admired said
Antonio. And at this moment
Tanks floated forward out of the hold
To display Agostino manoeures
Antonio began to sweat: old
Allies can always surprise friends, of course.
The Angolians were invited to dinner
And contented officials were standing
But “No!” was Neto’s serious answer,
“We should return for the fight’s resuming!”
Aoi!

VII
We reached Kanton on cruisers. A warrant
Officer cried: “Sound urgently bells”
The Angolians didn’t let us on to the port,
We anchored no outer roads. What was else?
Mattheu Kureku visited us then.
The President of far mountains of Benin,
And we’d appreciate his being of those men
Who were as modest as Ibn- Sina.
We displayed him gifts and even more
Than we wanted: hand- to- hand fight,
The landing force’s landing to the shore.
Mattheu said us his warm good- bye after that.
Aoi!

VIII
Soon we headed for Luanda, how
Long an action had been fought in its suburbs
And suddenly we saw a fishing scow
Six fisher- men were rowing in the ocean’s
Water catching the sight of us they began
To row faster knots increasing as
If punishment waited them but the race did happen
To be transitory. But cruisors’ powers
Are not boats’ powers equal and at last
We caught them, their fish fell to our lot.
The fish’ reserves were enough for a month.
We said with thankfulness: “Thank you a lot!”
The meeting was pleasant for them and us.
Aoi!

IX
Suddenly came order of the day:
To bring in an identification prisoner. Stas
A secrete service man, volunteered. Anyway,
His own fist was of the bull’s head’s size.
And Grigory, head naval petty officer
Then did volunteer to follow Stas.
“Well, who is else?” were the sailors asked after
It. Silence. It’s better to live on deck. At last,
Watching this the captain himself intervened
In it. His bas was heard even in far hold: “Oh,
You, cowards, I’ll feed you to whales, mind it!”
And phrases were not necessary any more.
Thus six more sailors gathered together – they were
Superheroes as if they were handpicked
The detachment of sound, strong men. Chernomor
Himself would take them so quick-witted.
There are not more safe people in the fleet,
There were not, there won’t be, indeed!
Aoi!

X
Here the scouts came down from the deck and they
All went so deep into a foreign land
A hundred verst’s was their sailing away
From the port. Ships from their Motherland
Were seen. Their commander
was the major lieutenant
And he said: “Motherland is calling us!”
In the fleet he was just called Kostya Brandt –
He did lead the scouts bravely forwards!
Aoi!

XI
The detachment marched into woods being dense,
The jungle were rustling around Luanda. It
Was raining cats and dogs, there was entrance
There, there was no exit for retreat!
They covered their necessary ten versts
More on that day they heard their foes’ voices.
They thought: it’s, perhaps, one of hostile posts.
A good luck attended them! The members
Of UNITA waited for them ahead
Savimba knew of Brandt’s group so dare –
Devil. He was warned by an Angolian friend,
The general had friends everywhere.
Aoi!

XII
Even Kostya Brandt didn’t know it
And he led his vanguard through a marshy path
Sailors were like brothers in the detachment.
Everybody was ready to sacrifice
Himself! And suddenly they saw in front:
Tents standing in forty meters from them and
And something went pit- a pat in Kostya Brandt
And he stretched his hand to a pistol hard.
They stole up to the last one, went into it:
It was empty, there were only playing- cards
There: and perhaps it seemed to them far, indeed?
On the ground there were three machine-guns.
Aoi!

XIII
Meanwhile Savimbi Jonas gathered troops
And he made such a speech when warriors gathered
Together: “We’ll die for freedom as heroes
We do not want another Motherland!
We will repulse all the Cuban occupants
We’ve recently sacked all the colonists!
The Soviet landing force’s scouts
Are going here. Near are the communists!
We’ll organize ambush for them behind the tent –
I’m sure they will go into it a at once.
I was informed that there are less than ten
Of them. We’ll **** the foes at once
We’ ll win because there are much more of us”
And selecting one hundred and forty men,
The strongest ones, Savimbi encircled the scouts.
Aoi!

XIV
“Well, that’s all, forward”, Kostya said strictly
The tent’s bed- curtains having half- opened
By his hand. But suddenly he was slightly
Taken aback- he saw foes get in his road
And he did cry: “We shall die for Russia-
Not disgracing ancestors or the Motherland!”
He stepped forward like a sent messia
He had no right to run away like a coward.
Aoi!

XV
Ours defended each other by backs hard
The battle was hot as it was hand- to- hand.
Two sides’ supporters did not know fright
This region was home for the partisans. And
Brandt fought as an ancient lion Neimeyan –
No pistols’ bullets could reach him at all.
He was a mighty, stately warrior European –
UNITA’s terror and poets’ idol!
The partisans had also a strong warrior –
He was called Manuel by Luanda’s citizens
When hunting he became a hero of yore –
He could hit varios marks without miss.
He took aim at the lieutenant’s back so that
A sharp bullet could pierce his heart. He pressed
The sear. And it did hurt Konstantin and
Shroud overshadowed his consciousness
And a celestial disk burning low, meciless
It’s opening a picture before his eyes:
His own mother’s meeting him and he is
Whispering her: “Mum, I’m going to the skies ”
And fell onto the ground Kostya breathless:
People’s blood was shed as the river around
But ours fought desiring nevertheless
To be gone with foes in the palace. Wounded
Stas’ll hit and three of them’ll fall without
Life’s signs. When he hits on the right–eight
Of them’ll fall at once although there are a few
Epic heroes all of them are heroes dead.
The dead can’t be responsible anew.
Aoi!

XVI
They all were dead. There were
three times more foes
Ours and UNITA collected the dead.
And that very day happened to be worth
A week. Bitter news of blood that was shed
Killed us. Our ship was anchored for five days more
We covered Cuban troops from the sea there.
On the sixth day we sailed from the shore,
Painful grief left an after- taste in their
Mouths. And Victor Zaev, our bold
Colonel, was silent in painful sadness,
He had done the last deed for the dead of old.
He presented them with rewards: “For service”
Putting them on each of coffins. All the ******
Were standing being in their low spirits.
Aoi!

XVII
Thus the song of Luanda came to an end
We paid our duty to military Motherland.
We’d drawn up and the commander said:
“Fine fellows! I wish your life to be quiet!”
Then he sailed not a little, I must say.
He waged war in seven companies. “Glory!”
Cry we to him in Navy Day today.
That is the end of the Luandian story.
Aoi!
The Civil war in Angola represented armed confrontation between
quarelling with each other groups: MPLA (People’s movement for
Angola’s liberation, the Labour’s Party), (port.Movimento Popular de
Liberaçao de Angola- Partido de Trabajo, MPLA), UNITA (port. Uniao
Nacional para a Independencia, Total de Angola, UNITA). The war began
in 1975.
1.Victor Zaev is the main hero of the given poetical work, he is an
invented personage;
2. Luanda (port. Luanda)- Angola’s capital;
3. UNITA – see above;
4. SAR – South African Republic;
5. Fidel Castro – Fidel Alejandro Castro Rus; he was born in August,
13, 1926; Biran, province Oriente , Cuba. He’s a Cuban revolutionary,
party and political figure, Chairman of Ministers’ Council and Chairman
of the State Council of Cuba (president) in 1959- 2008 and 1976- 2008.
6. Roberto Holden- Holden Alvaro Alberto (port. Holden Roberto;
January, 12, 1923, Mbanza- Kongo(its former name is San- Salvadordu- Kongo)- August,2, 2007, Luanda). He was also Jose Gilmore, an Angolian founder and many- year leader of the National Liberation’s Front (FNLA). An active participant of the war for Independence and of the Civil war in Angola. He’s a conservative monarcho-tribolist, anticommunist.
He was a member of the Angolian Parliament.
7. “…under Kirfangongondo…” – this battle was from October, 23
until November,10, 1975 in Angola. It was the first common victory of MPLA and the Cubans.
8. the colonel Kallen… – he is also “colonel Callan, a British service
man, corporal of parachute troops’ regiment’s corporal.” He’s an ethnic
Greek and Cypriot (Greek. Kώozaç Γιώργιoν). He’s a participant of the
Angolian’s Civil war, on FNLA’s side. He was executed according to the
court’s sentence in Luanda, on July,10, 1976.
9. Savimbi Jonas Maiheiro, (August, 3, 1934- February, 22, 2002),
an Angolian political and military figure, a partisan leader, the rebel
movement’s founder and the political Party UNITA’s founder from
March,13, 1966 to February, 22, 2002. He was an active participant of the
Angolian war for independence and of the Civil war. He was candidate
for President in Angolian elections in 1992. He was a prominent figure
of Cold War and world anti- communist movement.
10 Neptun’s Day-Nepptun’s holiday, sometimes it’s called “Neptun’s
Day”. It’s a water show. Sailors founded this tradition after their crossing
of the equator.

{2018}


ПЕСНЬ
I
Наш командир – полковник Виктор Заев(1)
Семнадцать лет прожил в стране Ангольской.
Страну Луанду(2) он отлично знает –
Встречал раз двести местное посольство.
Разбил УНИТА(3) и ЮАР(4) ослабил,
Поддержку оказал Фиделю Кастро(5)
В контратаках. И себя прославил.
Зовут его ангольцы Виктор-Пастор:
Он молодых советом наставляет.
Аой!

II
Роберто Холден(6) был врагом для Нето –
По убеждению – монархо-трайболистом.
И объявил противникам вендетту,
Поставив цель – изгнать социалистов.
Он пригласил инструкторов Китая
Учить своих солдат уменью драться.
Под Кифангондо(7) в битве отступая,
Он не хотел стремительно сдаваться.
С ним отступал назад полковник Каллэн(8) –
Головорез жестокий, но бесстрашный.
Засады ставил он в лесах умело,
Не раз бывал и лично в рукопашной.
Но был пленён он гвардией. И вскоре
Всем заявил свою аполитичность.
Но не поверил суд ему на горе –
Он был расстрелян быстро и публично.
Аой!

III
Савимби Жонаш(9) ту войну продолжил,
Роберто Холден родину покинул –
Переосмыслить взгляды очень сложно:
Как оторвать Отчизне половину?
В Америку уехал, стал баптистом,
Как проповедник – лектором заблудших.
Он не желал быть просто пессимистом
И до времён хотел дожить до лучших.
Савимби Жонаш основал УНИТА –
Борьбу свою он перевёл в подполье:
Отряды МПЛА кубинцами разбиты,
Но для диверсий в городах – раздолье.
Второй виток пошёл сопротивленья –
Противоборства двух идеологий.
И жизнями платило населенье –
Война тогда коснулась очень многих.
Аой!

IV
Наш Виктор Заев – командир морпехов -
Тренировал нас часто, неустанно:
В противогазах было не до смеха -
Мы заряжали пушки беспрестанно.
Пересекли в один момент экватор,
Прославив Посейдона воздаяньем,
Наш путь лежал на правильный фарватер.
Нептуна день (10) – большое начинанье!
Аой!

V
Приход в Луанду очень был обычным,
Пейзаж портовый – яркий и прекрасный.
«Ну, лепота!» - воскрикнул Игорь-мичман.
Добавил Заев: «Это, братья, классно!»
На палубу советник наш поднялся –
Глава советской миссии военной.
Он обстановку дать нам постарался,
Поскольку был там, кажется, бессменно.
Затем кубинцев встретила команда –
Их командир знал русский в идеале.
Он оценил всю выправку десанта –
Франсиско Ортис команданте звали.
Аой!

VI
Вот Агостиньо Нето подошёл
Со свитою двенадцати вельмож.
Был Президент приветлив и весёл,
И день был удивительно хорош!
Он похвалил матросский караул,
Поставленный наверх его встречать.
«За них бы полк отдать не преминул, –
Антонио сказал, – вот это рать!»
Из трюма танки выплыли вперёд –
Маневры Агостиньо показать.
Антонио пробил холодный пот:
Союзники умеют удивлять!
Ангольцев пригласили на обед –
Чиновники довольные стоят.
Но Нето отвечал серьёзно: «– Нет,
Нам возвращаться надобно назад!»
Аой!

VII
На крейсерах в Катону мы приплыли
И крикнул мичман: «Склянки срочно бейте!»
Но в порт ангольцы нас не пропустили –
На якорь встали мы на внешнем рейде.
Затем нас посетил Матье Куреку –
Сам Президент из дальних гор Бенина –
Заметим в дань ему как человеку –
Он скромен был как мудрый Ибн Сина.
Ему мы показали все таланты –
И даже больше, чем хотели сами:
Бой рукопашный, высадку десанта.
Матье тогда тепло прощался с нами.
Аой!

VIII
И взяли курс мы снова на Луанду –
Велись бои давно в её предместьях.
Вдруг видим мы рыбацкие шаланды –
По океану плыло ровно шесть их.
Завидев нас, они быстрей поплыли,
Узлов прибавив, будто ждёт их кара!
Не долгими, однако, гонки были.
Любая лодка крейсеру не пара!
Догнали их. И нам досталась рыба –
Запасов тех на месяцы хватило.
Сказали мы признательно: «Спасибо!»
И после встречи всем приятно было!
Аой!

IX
Нежданно вдруг пришёл такой приказ:
Любой ценой доставить языка.
Тут вызвался морской разведчик Стас –
Его кулак был с голову быка.
И главный корабельный старшина
Григорий захотел идти за ним.
– «Ну, кто ещё?» – спросили. Тишина.
Уж лучше быть на палубе живым.
Тогда вмешался лично капитан –
Был даже в дальнем трюме слышен бас:
– «Ну, трусы! Всех скормлю сейчас китам!»
И больше не понадобилось фраз.
Так набралось ещё шесть моряков –
Супергерои – все как на подбор –
Отряд здоровых, крепких мужиков.
Их взял бы даже Дядька-Черномор!
Надёжнее людей на флоте нет
И не было, не будет и вовек!
Ушло в разведку восемь человек.
Аой!

X
Вот с палубы разведчики сошли
И углубились в даль чужой земли.
На сотню вёрст от порта отошли –
Уж не видать родные корабли.
Руководил всем старший лейтенант.
И молвил он: «Нас Родина зовёт!»
Его на флоте звали Костя Брандт –
Он храбро вёл разведчиков вперёд!
Аой!

XI
Отряд вступил в дремучие леса –
Вокруг Луанды джунгли шелестят.
Льют воду каждый день тут небеса –
Зашёл туда и нет пути назад!
Прошли они ещё десяток вёрст,
Услышали чужие голоса.
Подумали: возможно, вражий пост –
Счастливая настала полоса!
Унитовцы их ждали впереди.
О группе Брандта сам Савимби знал –
Его ангольский друг предупредил:
Имел везде знакомых генерал.
Аой!

XII
Сего не ведал даже Костя Брандт
И вёл отряд болотистой тропой.
Любой матрос в отряде был как брат.
Готовы все пожертвовать собой!
И вдруг увидел каждый впереди:
Стоят палатки метрах в сорока.
У Кости что-то ёкает в груди
И к пистолету тянется рука.
Подкрались к крайней и в неё зашли:
В палатке пусто, карты на столе –
А может, померещилось вдали?
Три автомата было на земле.
Аой!

XIII
Меж тем собрал Савимби Жонаш войско
И речь сказал собравшимся такую:
– «Мы за свободу все умрём геройски,
Ведь не желаем родину другую!
Дадим отпор кубинским оккупантам –
Прогнали ведь недавно колонистов!
Разведчики советского десанта
Идут сюда. Уж близко коммунисты!
Устроим им засаду за палаткой –
Они войдут в неё, уверен, сразу.
Мне донесли: их менее десятка.
Возьмём числом: врагов положим разом!»
И отобрав сто сорок самых сильных,
Пошёл Савимби окружать разведку.
Аой!

XIV
«– Ну, всё, выходим!» – Костя молвил строго,
Палатки полог приоткрыв рукою.
Но только вдруг... опешил он немного,
Когда врагов увидел пред собою.
И закричал: «Умрём же за Россию –
Не посрамим и предков, и державу!»
Шагнул вперёд, как посланный миссия –
Он не имел бежать позорно право.
Аой!

XV
Стояли наши все спиной друг к другу,
Был жаркий бой, поскольку рукопашный.
Из двух сторон никто не знал испуга –
Для партизан был этот край домашним.
И бился Брандт как древний лев немейский –
Его не брали пули пистолетов!
Могуч и статен воин европейский –
Гроза УНИТА и кумир поэтов!
У партизан был тоже сильный воин –
Его луандцы звали Мануэлем.
Он на охоте сделался героем –
Без промаха стрелял по разным целям.
Прицелился он лейтенанту в спину,
Чтоб сердце пуля острая пробила.
Нажал на спуск. И больно Константину,
И пелена сознание затмила.
И тут картину взору открывает
Небесный диск, на небе догорая:
Родная мать с войны его встречает,
А он ей шепчет: «Мама, умираю…»
Упал на землю Костя бездыханно:
Людская кровь лилась вокруг рекою.
Но бились наши – было им желанно
Нести в чертог жизнь вражью за собою.
Изранен Стас: ударит – лягут трое,
Направо стукнет – лягут сразу восемь.
Богатырей хоть мало, все – герои
Погибшие. А с мёртвых долг не спросят.
Аой!

XVI
Все полегли. Врагов – в три раза больше.
Забрали павших наши и УНИТА.
И день тот был иной недели дольше.
Мы были горькой новостью убиты.
Ещё пять дней на якоре стояли –
Мы части Кубы прикрывали с моря.
На день шестой под вечер отплывали –
Осадок был от тягостного горя.
И Виктор Заев, наш полковник смелый,
Молчал угрюмо в тягостной печали.
Последнее для павших сделал дело –
Он «За отвагу» им вручил медали.
На каждый гроб он положил награду –
Все моряки в унынии стояли.
Аой!

XVII
Так завершилась песня о Луанде.
Отдали долг мы воинский Отчизне.
Наш командир сказал тогда команде:
– «Вы молодцы! Желаю мирной жизни!»
Он по морям потом немало плавал.
И воевал ещё в семи кампаньях.
В день ВМФ кричим ему мы: «Слава!» –
На том конец Луандского сказанья!
Аой!
{31.12.2015}

Гражданская война в Анголе представляла собой вооружён-
ное противостояние между враждующими группировками: МПЛА (Народное движение за освобождение Анголы – Партия труда (порт. Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola — Partido doTrabalho, MPLA), ФНЛА (порт. Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola,
FNLA) и УНИТА (порт. União Nacional para a Independência
Total de Angola, UNITA). Война началась в 1975 году, а завершилась
в 2002 году.
1. Виктор Заев – главный герой данного поэтического произве-
дения, вымышленный персонаж;
2. Луанда (порт. Luanda) – столица Анголы;
3. УНИТА – см. выше;
4. ЮАР – Южно-Африканская республика
5. Фидель Кастро – Фиде́ль Алеха́ндро Ка́стро Рус (исп. Fidel
Alejandro Castro Ruz; род. 13 августа1926; Биран, провинция Орьенте, Куба) – кубинский революционер, государственный, политический и партийный деятель, который являлся Председателем Совета министров и Председателем Государственного совета Кубы (президентом) в 1959 – 2008 и 1976 – 2008 годах.
6. Роберто Холден – Холден Альваро Робер-
то (порт. Holden Roberto; 12 января 1923, Мбанза-Кон-
го (тогдашнее название – Сан-Сальвадор-ду-Конго) –
2 августа 2007, Луанда), он же Жозе Жилмор (порт.José Gilmore)
– ангольский политик, основатель и многолетний лидер Национального фронта освобождения Анголы (ФНЛА). Активный участник войны за независимость и гражданской войны в Анголе. Консерватор, монархо-трайбалист, антикоммунист. В 1992 – 2007 годах– депутат парламента Анголы.
7. «…под Кифангондо в битве…» – это битва при Кифангондо,
которая произошла с 23 октября по 10 ноября 1975 г. в Анголе и стала первой совместной победой МПЛА и кубинцев.

8. «…полковник Каллэн» – настоящее имя Костас Ге-
оргиу (греч. Κώστας Γιώργιου, англ. Kostas Giorgiou; 1951 –
1976), он же «Полковник Каллэн», Colonel Callan – британский военный, капрал парашютно-десантного полка. Этнический грек-киприот. Наёмный участник гражданской войны в Анголе на стороне ФНЛА. Казнён по приговору суда в Луанде 10 июля 1976 года.
9. Савимби Жонаш – Жо́наш Малье́йру Сави́мби (порт. Jonas
Malheiro Savimbi; 3 августа 1934 – 22 февраля 2002) – ангольский политический и военный деятель, партизанский лидер, основатель повстанческого движения и политической партии УНИТА. Лидер УНИТА c 13 марта 1966 по 22 февраля 2002. Активный участник ангольской войны за независимость и гражданской войны. Кандидат в президенты Анголы на выборах 1992. Видный деятель Холодной
войны и мирового антикоммунистического движения.
10. «Нептуна день…» – Праздник Нептуна, иногда –
«День Нептуна». Водное представление. Берёт основы от тради-
ции моряков при пересечении экватора.

Translator - I. Toporov

To Ezra Pound

These are the names of the companies that have made
        money from this war
nineteenhundredsixtyeight  Annodomini  fourthousand
        eighty Hebraic
These are the Corporations who have profited by merchan-
        dising skinburning phosphorous or shells fragmented
        to thousands of fleshpiercing needles
and here listed money millions gained by each combine for
        manufacture
and here are gains numbered, index'd swelling a decade, set
        in order,
here named the Fathers in office in these industries, tele-
        phones directing finance,
names of directors, makers of fates, and the names of the
        stockholders of these destined Aggregates,
and here are the names of their ambassadors to the Capital,
        representatives to legislature, those who sit drinking
        in hotel lobbies to persuade,
and separate listed, those who drop Amphetamine with
        military, gossip, argue, and persuade
suggesting policy naming language proposing strategy, this
        done for fee as ambassadors to Pentagon, consul-
        tants to military, paid by their industry:
and these are the names of the generals & captains mili-
        tary, who know thus work for war goods manufactur-
        ers;
and above these, listed, the names of the banks, combines,
        investment trusts that control these industries:
and these are the names of the newspapers owned by these
        banks
and these are the names of the airstations owned by these
        combines;
and these are the numbers of thousands of citizens em-
        ployed by these businesses named;
and the beginning of this accounting is 1958 and the end
        1968, that static be contained in orderly mind,
        coherent and definite,
and the first form of this litany begun first day December
        1967 furthers this poem of these States.

                                        December 1, 1967

Sometimes, I don't know what is the problem of my so called colleagues... There are so many issues worth tackling in the movie industry where as a movie maker u invest so much finance, time and energy and get back very little or nothing... Yet, what concerns our youths is celebrations, parties, function attendance and all... The so called movie ambassadors came up at the period of political campaign... Will this gathering still stand after they are bn used for political campaigns... That's a question that I'm sure can't b answered... D crazy aspect, s dt every name now goes first with Ambassador lagbaja or Ambassador tamedu... So crazy.... Rebranding starts from our selves... No group whatsoever, has d power to influence a corrupt, mis-managed, malfunctioning industry that needs urgent attention... I'm surprised to even find respected movie makers sleeping and putting heads in same direction... If we want to speak in one voice, I believe... There's an existing body, when d music sector got its branding and uplifted its current face to d very level its today, D's were not d measures and procedures takn.... Even in Hollywood, I have nvr heard of Ambassador Nicolas Cage, Ambassador Angelina Jolie etc... Neither in bollyhood have I heard of Ambassador Shakiru Khan or Ambassador John Abraham. What a pity..., even the newly experienced movie makers that doesn't even know what D's game is all about bear Ambassadors... I hear, there's fine for misbehaviour at events and all... Hmmmmmm, those that have sumfn upstairs, let them start thinking... Don't b used for sumfn that u will end up not benefitting and later b d glory of sum people that knows where this is going and the aim behind it.... However, if the motive is truly for d upliftment of D's great job that we all do with great passion... God help us all.... Tokunbo Awoga

Bringing spiritual togetherness
Congregation being the witness
Heaven’s call to soul’s come home
A place of rejoicing of an everlasting roam
The congregation giving a reflection journey
Deacons conducting the services as true ambassadors of the church
The ministry from the internal heart to being external in a rising mark
The home going of one’s life
Days on Earth being Heaven’s advice
Songs of redemption
Words of encouragement from God’s resurrection
A stainless glass church shade
These are the things reminding us Heaven has made
Deacons who keep the flow moving around the church
A finale established for while
A royalty send off being glorious style
The human soul all spread out
The praise surrounding is what Christianity is all about
A moment in the soul coming home
Deacons who are ministry in spreading the word alone
Flesh back to dust and the soul lifted up being a must”.

See a girlfriend with real love on a wooden chair
sitting on the Australian show, Joseph Joseph's
chat show, world's first trash, broken skin, a smart
rhythm and a national chair United States [Jude, Z]
President: SLE Son, US State Open U, Derry Cold
Kenya Natural Red Italian Italy Italy Odyssey
2020 U No Greetings and Food Mark Fit
Writing Subtitles, Gray Gray, Greece 4487/5000
Australia, Kentucky, Australia, USA, $30M+ and Australian
Olar, glorious Erica George Washington 200:
200 US Test Summary U, Eddie Amarney Pro,
American Song, 9:00 Australian People's Public Dance,
South Africa's funeral and a popular in blue color.
The game is there. Leave the corner colors,
the devices in the ground. Do not worry
about a small risk group. The woman
is spreading, clearly waiting for deep winds.
This question will come from Benji's bed,
a magnificent dog from Kenya. Blooms Beach
Colorful Brain Cucurbitating Cereals
and Roasted Cooking Seduced Saddam Saddam
Falling Fingers Wings Fast Fat False Earth
Sponge Tindado Tijado And
Tuxedo God Smoking Smoking,
Non-Smoking. Nero Gaufi Railway Ladies
Dance Box Women, Women, Women,
Women, Families, Amir Sympat [Jewelry ornament]
in American women, Kenya / United States.
In the United States, dog dogs
with Australian love dogs and
president of Chinese love, dried sardines,
red dogs, four dogs, dog dogs
and redo president have fallen
into the United States. Kenya
Red Natural Natural Italy Odyssey 2020,
United States Tourism Antigua Parper
French Free Seafood Pitt Wave Greece,
Unfortunately, sorry, tort, gray gray,
Greece, 4487/5000 Australia Photo State
Kentucky, Australia, USA We have three
Australian Ambassadors, Erica, George Wish
For Washington 200 200 Supreme
Examination A Simple, Supreme Court Of the United States,
Discarded T mm. Techniques from 9 am to Australia
to change music school game Sometimes the funeral of South
Africa's red, pink, pink, red, green Irish is a bad friend,
do not worry, all Einstein's pastors, Kennedy,
Vitamins, tennis players, Taliban, women, and so on are leaders. . .
In Canada, I found 100 animals as the main problem.
Mark Arthur, Douglas Raid, "Violet Violet" is a silicon fossil;
alcohol is produced in a capillary guitar in Iran,
where at least 200 high school students are not.
America, Best US American, Victim, and Costly
Services George, George Wade, Georgia, California's
Home Fires, Einstein's Labor Force is not in place of Vitamin D
sitting in front of the embryo. Josip Matar:
American artist, American musician, American music, 21:
1 American poet, President of Kenya, Josip Matar:
American artist, American musician, 21:00 Australian composer,
American costume, George Washington
country in South Africa Sometimes, About the Blacks,
Hin, Red, Green, Green, Unique, Einstein, Cowboy,
Kennedy, Vitamin, Passjee, Tent, Italy and Leadership.
No such distortion, such as discussion.
There are 100 problems speaking in Canada:
Mark Arthur Douglas Red "Red Whitney t",
Guitar Master, Iran, 200 students in the highest school.
Crime victims in Greece, United States of America,
better Latin America, Georgia, Georgia, United States,
gay, Einstein, Vitamin D, American singer,
Black Ballad, Romance, Islamic love, Theater City,
Carpathian, Titanic. Latin, Latin and Latin America
and Kenya, Eric, La-la, La, everyday Ladies
are women and girls. Sunday, President, Jack saw,
Mata, Kalka Grue, Red Kenya, Internal Italy,
Justin Odyssey, the most famous animal in the United States.
Music, Ocean, Medicine, Union Association Australia
Australia, USA, Kentucky, Aston Eden, Los Angeles,
Australia, 4487/5000, Australia Coffin Club.

Sine waves, perpetual motion
Centripetal force, density of the ocean
Associates, Bachelors
Student Ambassadors
Register, register, schedules, grades
Grants and scholarships, tuition is paid
No snooze button, turn off the alarm
Losing some sleep.  It's ok, though, no harm
Friendly teachers and **** instructors
Digital logic and semiconductors
Homework, classwork, essays, papers
Last minute class of procrastinators
Get up, get blazed.  'Fore school, 'nutha blunt
High while accepting student of the month
Higher than you, and my grades, too, are higher
How smart would I be if I put out the fire?
Gen. Ed., English, Mathematics, Psychology
Now on to the good stuff, much richer chronology
Top of my class, highest grade in the program
In just a few years, I'll have money in BOTH hands
This hand-to-mouth **** ain't for me
I'm tired of living week-to-week
Broke, tired, and hungry day after day
But when payday comes, it'll be here to stay
You don't have to do as I do
But my feet are too small to fill these big shoes
If you think I can't fill them, then surely you're trippin'
But do whatcha do, cause my burgers need flippin'

The following statements of truth were brought to you
Not through, but circumnavigating fated parameters
Of insane, yet normative, largely uninformative
Mechanisms that formally give birth to *******;
And instead, strategically splicing said bounds with
Ideal variables derived from the courageously quixotic,
Unrobotic, and outraged agents of, and for, capital Real:

The train of corporate reasoning derails so fast
To follow is to snap the head backward,
Far past angles within measures of pleasurable fit
And open gates to deluging tangled circular
Failures of logic that trick and co-opt the proletariat.

We are Present-Ambassadors with broken flux-capacitors
Demonstrating a consistent tendency toward error
In efforts to obtain diplomatic access to a future where
The same reemerging deficits do not manifest unfixed.
One of said deficits may include all positive freedoms.

For the record, it shall be noted that civil society
Currently arrives implicitly to find it compliantly fine
To promote systems of labor designed to illicit behaviors
That will eventually undermine the actors of exhaustive work
And make benefactors of those complicit in crime.

As case studies of this paradoxical paradigm, we observe
Nations signing trade agreements aligned with
Selling more of the goods whose extractions have
Cataclysmic exactions upon locals contracted not to resist.
Those who take issue with this are directed to appellate institutions.
The projected scarcity of over-consumed poisons causes fear
Which leads to faster hoarding and more ex(t/p)ensive death.

Thus, most human behaviors presently inflate pricing, popularity,
And rapidity associated with committing system-wide suicide.
As shackle-some power consolidation bends toward a transnational peak
I hereby slide-tackle these forwarded trends, seeking goals of the rational.

He keeps the contents of his life in boxes. The clear Rubbermaid totes with the locking lids that keep the contents from spilling out across the floor when they are least needed. The same containers that keep everything within protected against assailing liquid falling from above. Most of his possessions have long since been discarded, but there is an odd assortment of memories that are kept safe.

A model rocket that his grandfather, long since passed, used to take him to open fields to launch towards the heavens. It never quite reached, but in his mind he was chasing down the parachute of a spaceship returning from a long voyage.

Birthday cards received when it was still exciting to count the years. When the cards still had happy monsters devouring birthday cake and the short handwritten messages read "We are so proud of the person you are becoming".

First place medals from sports competitions, spelling bees, and field days. A single second place medal from a martial arts tournament where brute force could not overcome the wisdom of an elder opponent.

The metal plates off of every baseball trophy earned since playing teeball at age four. When the shelves could no longer support the weight of the trophies they were discarded, and the cheaply made nameplates are the only reminder left that they ever existed.

Too many years of school yearbooks with sloppy signatures following words of wisdom reminding him to stay cool, and that he would see you all again after the summer.

A red, sweat-stained Schlitz hat that was stolen from the older, much more cool, cousin. He stopped asking for its return years ago, and has probably forgotten that it even existed.

Certificates that prove he was once a member of Builder club, Beta club, Phi Theta Kappa, National Honor Society, Student Government, and Junior Ambassadors to the Chamber of Commerce. Reminders of times when joining clubs meant you got to miss class to hang out with your friends.

A single blue ribbon knotted three times as a reminder that it should never be untied. Beyond those simple knots are all of the love letters that were written between him and the first girl that was able to open his eyes so that he could see what love, and loss, truly meant.

An old, barely functioning, paintball gun that he bought with the money from his first real job. The same gun that, through some miracle, gave him and his father their first common interest. He picks it up from time to time and pretends that they are still hiding behind bunkers ready to charge the opposing team.

A tiny red Rock 'Em Sock 'Em robot ring used as an excuse to wrestle around in bed with one of his closest friends on a lazy Sunday afternoon. The blue ring moved far away and has long since stopped answering her phone, knowing that the rematch of the century will never occur.

Diplomas from high school and college that will probably never hang framed on a wall. He was never truly proud of accomplishments so easily attained.

Hiding in the shadows of these boxes is each first kiss that is a stone sitting beneath the shattered mirror friendships that could not hold their weight. He is reminded to find either lighter stones or more sturdy mirrors in the future.

Friends that he has met in countless towns huddle together, trying to stay warm amidst the bitter cold they perceive around them. He calls or texts from time to time, but the embers cannot replace the pyre he used to provide.

Lovers that never expected the love they received in return bask in the solace of the fact that they are rarely seen or disturbed. He smiles when he comes across them, but knows better than to retrieve them from the storage where they are kept.

He still keeps all of the contents of his life in boxes. The same clear Rubbermaid totes with the locking lids, whose transparency allows him to view the contents from afar without disturbing them. He says he uses them so all of the contents don't spill out when he doesn't want them to, but his blurred vision reminds him that he chose the waterproof variety for a reason.

It would only take an hour or two to unpack everything at each new location he moved to, but he knows that the next time he unpacks he will not be doing it alone. It becomes more difficult for him each time he has to condense everyone and everything of import into totes light enough to carry to the next location.

My presence in LDC was an obligation to find fortune and it was kindled and ready to swim as a Law Don amidst the professional predecessors in the matter. Whoever looked at me while I sloped down to the centre stood assured that I was going to trade my money for knowledge.
Like success is a calculated design, I dedicated my time from the day the magic ink from the secretary dropped on my paper in approval of my contract with the geniuses. Soon I set my goals as I got engaged with big brains that kept tickling my brains with knowledge and in no time my thinking capacity had multiplied faster than a virus in my head.
This was not a joking matter as some ambassadors to the centre retired before executing their duties due to the un friendly terms that were expressed, while others switched to Airplane  mode to ignore all terminologies’ that would likely  trespass to the head to block their understanding.
In this issue, I had to act big headed and consent to all, and if possible download a knowledge converter to store all the necessary data. Much as I germinated from law ignorance and sprouted courageously, I was terribly affected when I set foot to apply my wisdom to the justice defaulters in the hungry world. My shock was that most people looked like justice stores but where rather pregnant with lies which left me cringing, and this too has greatly caused miscarriage of justice in the society. How can you convince me to let them rest peacefully on earth, that would be disrespecting the knowledge that the centre has acquitted me with.
I beg on your pardon, haven’t I got a right to vociferate about this? I didn’t jump from a filling basin to watch injustice take precedence; and I wouldn’t stand drowning my ambitions of freeing many minds from their crippled negative thoughts that nothing is going to be better.  Thus set your eyes to seeing positivity yet to come. It’s better to believe than disbelieve, in so doing we bring all to a realm of positivity. Of course, don’t expect me to swear an affidavit to confirm that but though am more than willing to become an Onus to those that **** and defile justice in day light.
“Know the law” wasn’t quoted for history but to diagonise those who smuggle injustices and inequalities into our society. It’s a generation of thinkers although some people are still locked up, far from the truth with the while defaulters stand with a defence of insanity. Mind whoever that ignorance of law is not a defence; we have to undress society of its evils to qualify ourselves to be called children of justice. It begins with the legal brains but cuts across all sectors with common intensions. In all capacities quarter, half or fully baked with knowledge and understanding we ought to light one another’s candle, not to set bush on fire and selling off the innocent souls.
Am a preacher of justice, a justice centred mind, preaching to heads of undefined demeanour.  If 1 is a position and one by one makes a bundle, then what’s your position in justice?
A naked mind can’t achieve anything.  Just like we all work for a better tomorrow and not to live as vagabonds in this world, therefore don’t smile back if you’re not ready to take the precautions to send the devil back to hell.  As a merchant of justice, I bow for all great country men who have endlessly stood firm and fought to protect the house of justice.

There was a time in Europe long ago
When no man died for freedom anywhere,
But England’s lion leaping from its lair
Laid hands on the oppressor! it was so
While England could a great Republic show.
Witness the men of Piedmont, chiefest care
Of Cromwell, when with impotent despair
The Pontiff in his painted portico
Trembled before our stern ambassadors.
How comes it then that from such high estate
We have thus fallen, save that Luxury
With barren merchandise piles up the gate
Where noble thoughts and deeds should enter by:
Else might we still be Milton’s heritors.

My process is…
What is my process actually?
Start to type… don’t over think?
Spill onto page… well over the brink?
Is that my process?
I don’t really think so
Oh my word! I don’t think I have one
All my words I just love so…
I’m sprung
My poetry and I
My craft and I
What we have is true love… fluid
I just write… if I ‘draft’ this may just die
So I have no process
I just begin and let this ‘true love’ thing possess
My heart, body and soul
And it feels so easy
I want to laugh now because I just read my last two lines and they read so cheesy
But I’ll keep them, I don’t have the heart to rip them
Off this piece
I feel I should round up all the ‘love’ ambassadors… hippies, Cupid… Et cetera
And speak to them of this peace
And if I could speak to my poetry I would have said to her
I never expected her
To be this much of a reliable outlet for my feelings
My beloved artistic release.

Autumn's orange
ambassadors
sprawled over
drab suburban corners
a feast of  seasonal glory
pumpkin patch fever
for all to behold
corn mazes
stump
so many  wanderers
thirsty for  the egress
fresh apple cider waits
just around
that perfectly placed hay bale  
to quash dry mouths
and energize
tired  feet
that  press onward
towards
winter’s dreary
debut.

There's a lady in the morning fog
who feeds on porcelain thoughts,
And she haunts the edges March.
There are no five point dancers
With their evening red and gold.
Ready and willing to tumble and fall.
Just her, alone; In the bog
listening to us all.

The beasts only swim, crawl, and fly
By the Sycamore, rotten and petrified.
In Death there is life
And all ears are amplified.

     "Testify."

"Are you the soul that brings fear?
The Specter of my own Heresy?
Get off the wind and answer me.
Will you light the wild and chant the Lord's Prayer?"
    
    "Through all my inequities I'll never
      know sin like you.
      Whip the poor and condemn the youth.
      Blame the ******!!!
      Clergymen tend to always do.

"We are justified!

To do what we do
Is the work of the lord!
Truth will always bend
To the ambassadors' works."

The feast is for the thin, chalked with divine
And those on shore: honest and rectified.
Breath is man's plight,
And all eyes lie.

There's a man waiting at the edge of dawn
Who purges a man of his own thoughts
He owns his defiled marsh.
There are no five point answers
Without their threaded holes
Steadily fulfilling to us all.
Just him, enthroned; on a rock
Judging us as we fall.

Born into this world, we were called to live

Not knowing what to do with ourselves

Going about with every breath drawn in

We were placed in different shelves

Experiencing our own trial and strife



Amidst this difference,  we were united by one goal

Appointed to take that certain path

Everyone unsure

About facing the world’s wrath

But do we ever find the cure?



We are only students



Day breaks but night falls

Shadows (sins) are present everywhere

In every area of our lives, our vitality.

Shadows of laziness, insult, lust

Greed, and gluttony



Ships sail, but how many land?

New Years’ resolution,

Faith goals that came with tenacity

Spirit willing, but flesh weak.

Revealing vulnerability



Forever drowning in the ocean

Of hate and insecurity

Forever craving the essence

Of peace and serenity

And tranquility



Endlessly quarreling

About the littlest things

And controversies

Talking Apple vs Samsung vs Sony

How unnecessary!



We are only students.

          

As the seasons brush by

And each day slips past

We start to accept

God has no purpose and plan for me...


Thoughts of

will I ever get into a university?
or
do I have a bright future ahead me?





That is the Beauty of God.

No matter how many times you have sinned against Him

how many times you have ran away

He still say’s “Come to Me those who are burdened and weary”

from Mrs. Rocha to Ms. Linny,

Teachers that train and Mold

the world changers of the 21st century  



Jeremiah 29:11: “ For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Deuteronomy 31:16
Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Those two verses has something in common

put your trust in Him, You will surely never come to ruin!



We are students.



prepared to take on every single challenge

to expand the kingdom

here on earth

future teachers

future Preachers

future servant leaders of this nation!

STAND UP!

for we are not just students but ambassadors

ambassadors of Christ

called to reach out

and change the system of sin!

to be the salt and light and be the very foundation,

for the coming generation and the next


so they may no longer see to hesitation

hesitation to do what is good,

and what is pleasing,

hesitation to to serve the King!

cause for every slumber there is an Awakening!

so wake up from this blasted dream,

and let Him wipe away every spec of sin!

for He is the only one!



So go forth! go forth and be leaders,

leaders that will lead the lost through the darkness that is upon them.

So that the Father can save them.

So He Can fix them!

Chapel might end today, but never stop praising Him!

AC/DC
Black Sabbath
Cranberries
Disturbed
Eisbrecher
Falconer
Godsmack
Hatebr­eed
Iced Earth
Judas Priest
King Diamond
Led Zeppelin
Marilyn Manson
Nightwish
Opeth
Pantera
Queen
Rammstein
ScHoolboy Q
The Beatles
Unleash The Archers
Vince Staples
White Zombie
X Ambassadors
Yung Gravy
Zakk Wyllde

O SAY CAN YOU SEE

by

TOD HOWARD HAWKS


For Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.


Chapter 1

"Would you like another one?," ask the waitress.

"Sure," said Charlie Cumberston.

The band was playing "MOOD INDIGO" then "STRANGE FRUIT."
Charlie loved jazz. He also loved baseball, which was why he also brought THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BASEBALL with him to the Village Vanguard every night. And he was passionate about art.

The waitress brought back another Scotch and Soda.

"Thanks," said Charlie.

The Village Vanguard was his home every night since the CIA made him an offer he couldn't refuse.

"You simply know too much. If the wrong people find you, they'll want to know everything you know. If you don't cooperate, they'll stick a barrel of a gun into your mouth and pulled the trigger!"

Charlie had graduated from Columbia College, Columbia University in 1963. He wanted excitement and chose the CIA. He was smart as hell. He quickly ascended to the top tier and was sent to Saigon a year-and-a-half later. During the Tet Offensive in 1968, Charlie was severely wounded. That's when he met Anh, his nurse.

While sipping his Scotch and Soda, he picked up his THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BASEBALL to read again about Willie Mays. Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, Sandy Koufax and many others.

Now the band was playing TAKE FIVE followed by ROUND MIDNIGHT.

The waitress came again to Charlie's table again.

"Would you like another one?" she asked.

"Please," said Charlie.

This was how every evening went from 7 to midnight.

"It's time to go," said Sid.

Sid's job was to pick him up in the limousine at the Waldorf Astoria at 6:45, drive him to the Village Vanguard, then around 11:45 drive him back to the Waldorf. This was Sid's job, seven nights a week.

While he never got drunk from drinking too many Scotch and Sodas, the drinks always made Charlie a bit more than loose. As he entered the limousine, he nevertheless always thought of Anh.


Chapter 2

Sid picked up Charlie at 6:45 at the Waldorf and drove to the Village Voice. Even at 7 the place was packed, but that table, that same table, was always waiting for him.

"Good Evening," Charlie always said to the waitress.

"Would you like a Scotch and Soda?" said the waitress.

"Yes, please," said Charlie. Drinking Scotch and Sodas the rest of his life was better than being thrown into the East River from the Queensboro Bridge with a bullet hole in his forehead, thought Charlie.

The band was playing TAKE THE A TRAIN then MY FAVORITE THINGS.

But Charlie was thinking of a different trip, the trip to Saigon. The machine-gun fire he suffered during the Tet Offensive almost took his life. But Ahn, his nurse, saved his life. As the months passed, Charlie grew increasingly fond of her, and she of him, until fondness became love for both of them. But their love for each other was truncated a few weeks after his release from the Saigon hospital because the U.S. ARMY was going to send him back to the USA to to recover fully. But during those few weeks, Anh and Charlie made love, not only physically, but also spiritually, every nanosecond they could.

"Would you like another one?" said the waitress.

"Please," said Charlie.

The band was now playing SO WHAT then ALL BLUES.

Often, despite the music and drinks, Charlie would slide into memories of atrocities committed by U.S. armed forces during the Vietnam War, some in person, others written up by CIA personnel of which he was apart. The most infamous was the My Lai massacre.

On March 16, 1968, American soldiers brutally murdered in only 4 hours over 500 unarmed civilians including women, children, and old men in the village of My Lai in South Vietnam. American soldiers even took time out to eat lunch. The victims were *****, mutilated, and burned. William Calley, Jr. was convicted by court-marshal of the ****** of 22 unarmed South Vietnamese civilians. He was initially sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labor, then commuted to 20 years, then commuted to 10 years, then commuted to 3 years of house arrest by President Nixon.

"Body Count" became de rigueur. Civilians killed were added to the total of Viet Cong soldiers killed. Competitions were held between units to see which one killed the most Viet Cong. Rewards for the "winners" were days off or an extra case of beer. At this time, much of these activities went unreported, but not unnoticed.

"**** anything that moves!" That became the sine qua non of many commanders whose troops then carried out massacres in their area of operations.

Few war crime investigations were completed by the military at the
U.S. National Archives. The amount of munitions used by American soldiers was 26 times was greater than in WWII. America had unleashed the equivalent of 640 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs on Vietnam. Two million civilian Vietnamese were killed and 5.3 million were injured. Far bloodier operations like "Speedy Express" should have been exposed but were hidden by the highest levels of the U.S. military. Years later, it was found that this operation killed 11,000 Viet Cong.

"Charlie....  Charlie, are you OK?," said the waitress as she placed the Scotch and Soda in front of him.

"O yes, I am. I was just ruminating," said Charlie.


Chapter 3

Charlie was dreaming about Anh. Would it not be heavenly to have her lying beside him? The Waldorf would not matter. It could be anywhere in the Cosmos. Her scent, her breathing, even the shadow of her lissome body against the large window would arouse him.

"Kiss me. Kiss me again," she would say in his dream. No more war. No more killing. No more massacres. Just love.

The moment Charlie saw her in the hospital, he fell in love with her. Though it took months for him to heal, it was Anh who healed him. Her smile, her touch, her just standing beside his bed made him heal more each day.

When Charlie was released from the hospital, Anh and he made love many times each night. Charlie remembered those nights again and again in his dreams. But when he learned he had to return to Langley and had to tell Anh, tears flowed, flowed so much it awakened him. Charlie had been crying while dreaming. He sat on the edge of his bed bawling for over an hour.


Chapter 4

Another day, another night Charlie had endured.

Sid picked him up at 6:45 and took him to the Village Vanguard. His table was waiting.

This routine lasted 5 more months, but on the night of May 4th, the improbable occurred.

Could it be true?, thought Charlie. Could it be real? What he saw across the room were two young women sitting at a table, one of whom he recognized. It was Anh.

Charlie's heart was pounding, his breathing a tsunami. He sat at his table declining Scotch and Sodas. He didn't recognize the tune the band was playing. He was in shock.

It took almost an hour for Charlie to recover. It was Anh. By now, he was sure of it. Finally, he got up from his table and walked slowly toward Anh. When he reached her table, he said, "Excuse me, but aren't you Anh?

Anh looked up and saw Charlie, then said "Aren't you Charlie?

Charlie said, "Yes."

Anh was stunned. Now two hearts were pounding, their breathings a torrid tornado.

Anh asked her girlfriend would she be okay if she left their table to speak to this gentleman.

"Of course," she said.

Anh and Charlie, therefore, walked to an empty table and sat down.

Anh said, "I thought I'd never see you again." "That's what I thought, too," said Charlie. "What are you doing in New York City?"

"I'm doing post-graduate study in nursing at NYU, but it's summer vacation. And you?"

"That's a long story, Anh," said Charlie.

"I'd like to hear your story," said Anh.

"Are you married?" asked Charlie.

"No, I'm not," said Anh. "Are you?"

"Neither am I," said Charlie. "You saved my life, Anh."

Charlie's remark pierced her heart. Anh's face flushed.

"I fell in love with you the first time I saw you. You healed me," said Charlie.

Charlie said he really wanted to tell her his story, but it would have to be in private. He told Anh he was staying at the Waldorf Astoria, room 719.

"Might you feel comfortable enough to spend the night with me?" said Charlie.

"I'd love to," said Anh.

Charlie's heart started pounding again.


Chapter 5

"Let me just hug you forever," said Charlie.

They just fell onto the bed fully clothed. The room was lit by the night's city lights.

"I couldn't tell you this when we first met. Though I wore a military uniform, the uniform was my cover. I worked at the highest level of the CIA in Saigon. During the Tet Offensive, I was severely wounded and met you when I was hospitalized. When I first met you--even before we first had spoken to each other--I had instantly fallen in love with you," said Charlie.

"Oh, Charlie!", said Anh as she first hugged him even more strongly, then gave him a long kiss.

The talked long into the night, about the past, about the present, about the future.

"T have an idea. First, I must adhere to the mandatory routine forced upon me; otherwise, I will be killed. The good news is that the routine is, in my opinion, lax. My routine is that Sid will pick me up at the Waldorf every evening at 6:45 and drive me to the Village Vanguard where I am to stay until closing time, which is midnight. Then Sid drives me back to the Waldorf. That's it. The way I see it is that from midnight to 6:45 pm the following day, I'm a free man. I've been doing this for years and I've never been checked on, Anh. Furthermore, I need to keep you safe. What do you think?" said Charlie.

"I think both of us will be safe," said Anh.

"If so, we would be able to spend the night together, as well as the rest of the following day, say until 4 pm," said Charlie.

"I agree," said Anh.

"Do you remember telling you I'm passionate about art?" said Charlie.

"Yes, I do remember your sharing that with me," said Anh.

"Well, New York City abounds with art, and you and I can begin to share this beauty tomorrow," said Charlie.

"You're right!" said Anh as she put her arms around around his neck, kissed him, then the two made love as the sun began to rise.


Chapter 6

"Good morning, Anh," said Charlie.

"Good morning to you!" said Anh.

"I'd like to take you to eat breakfast at Tom's, my old haunt when I was a student at Columbia. Then we can take a cab to the Met, as it is often called, to see some of the most beautiful art in the world," said Charlie.

"That sounds wonderful!" said Anh.

Anh showered first, then Charlie.

After both were dressed, Charlie said "Are you ready to head out?

"Yes, I am," replied Anh.

Charlie hailed a cab in front of the Waldorf and asked the cabbie to take them to 112th and Broadway where Tom's was.

"Here," Charlie said, "keep the change."

Tom's, while remodeled, was still Tom's, the same food, the same ambience.
Anh and Charlie ate a full, tasty breakfast.

"Are you ready now to see great art?" Charlie said to Anh.

"I'm ready," said Anh.

Charlie hailed a cab on the corner of 112th and Broadway, and off they went.


Chapter 7

The cab dropped off Anh and Charlie in front of the Met.

"The first piece I want to share with you is my favorite:  Renoir's STILL LIFE WITH PEACHES. It's in the Impressionist Wing," said Charlie.

"Wonderful!" said Anh.

"Well, there it is. I have come to this spot many times and have been transfixed every time I have seen this painting," said Charlie.

"It's beautiful, Charlie," said Anh.

The two stood silently in front of the painting for about 20 minutes.

"It matters not to me how many times I see it nor how long I gaze at it," Charlie said, "I am mesmerized."

Anh and Charlie spent almost an hour in the Impressionist Wing taking in the beauty:  IMPRESSION, SUNRISE by Monet;  LUNCHEON OF THE BOATING PARTY by Renoir;  Le Dejeuner sur l'herbe by Manet;  SUNDAY AFTERNOON BY THE ISLAND ON LA GRAND JATTE by SEURAT, for example.

Other famous paintings:  JULIE LE BRUN LOOKING IN A MIIRROR by Brun;  WASHINGTON CROSSING THE DELAWARE by Leutze;  THE DEATH OF SOCRATES by David;  THE GULF STREAM by Homer;  THE DANCE CLASS by Degas;  BRIDGE OVER A POND OF WATER LILLES by Monet;  SELF PORTRAIT WITH STRAW HAT by Van Gogh;  MUSCIANS by Carravaggio;  PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN WITH A MAN AT A CASEMENT by Lippi;  STUDY OF A WOMAN by Vermeer;  YOUNG MOTHER SEWING by Cassatt.

Charlie knew that it would take a visitor around three hours if she/he simply walked by, but never stopped at, any of the works in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He knew it, because he had done it himself.

"I'd like to take you to Titiana, famous for its Cairibbean food. It's In David Geffen Hall, part of Lincoln Center. You remember I have to be back to the Waldorf around 6:30 pm so Sid can pick me up at 6:45 so I can arrive at Village Vanguard at 7, right? You have your own key to our room, so keep it with you at all times. I'm sure you'd like to lie down and rest, then freshen up. Here's some money to pay for your cab. Come to the Village Vanguard whenever you like. I love you, Anh," said Charlie.

The two took a cab to Lincoln Center. The maitre'd of the Titiana took them to their table. Anh and Charlie perused their menus.

"I'd like to start with Corn Bread;  Honeynut Piri Piri Salad (Persian Cucumber, Seasonal Grapes, Crispy Quinoa);  Egusi Dumplings (Jonag Crab, Nigerian Red Stew, Pickled Pearl Onion);  and the Bodega Special (Cosmic Brownie, Powdered Sugar Donut Ice Cream, Sorrel), please," said Anh.

Charlie said, "I would like Fried Branzino (Rice & Peas, Cilantro. Onion);  Braized Oxtails (Rice & Peas, Thumberlina Carrot, Chayote Squash);  Hamachi Escovitch (Avocado, Carrot Nage, Marinated Peppers)
and Golden *** Cake, please."

"And what would you both like to drink?" asked the waiter?

"You don't drink alcohol, right Anh?" said Charlie,

"You're right, Charlie," said Anh. "I'll just have ice tea."

"I'm just going to have ice tea, too," said Charlie.

"Well, we've had a full day, Anh, and the day isn't over, is it?" said Charlie. "I think I'm going to give up alcohol now that you've made my life worth living."

"Bless you, Charlie," said Anh.


Chapter 8

The next day, Anh and Charlie visited MoMA (The Museum of Modern Art).

The following were their favorites:  THE STARRY NIGHT by van Gogh;  LES DEMOISELLES d'AVIGNON by Picasso;  CHRISTIAN'S WORLD by Wyeth;  THE BATHER by Cezanne;  THE PIANO LESSON by Matisse;  THE MOON AND THE EARTH by Gauguin;  SEATED BATHER by Picasso;  FULANG-CHANG AND I by Kahlo;  and GIRL WITH BALL by Lichtenstein.

Anh and Charlie ate a nice meal at the The Capital Grille, then returned to the Waldorf to rest. But before resting, they couldn't resist making love, then fell asleep in each other's arms. The alarm clock went off at 5:30 and at 6:45 Sid pick them up and took them to the Village Vanguard arriving at 7.

Charlie's table was waiting, as always.

"We'd both like ice tea," said Charlie to the waitress.

The band was playing ROUND MIDNIGHT then WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD.

"Anh, being with you is my dream come true," said Charlie. Anh grabbed Charlie's hand and squeezed it.

"I could have attended any university in America, but I chose NYU," said Anh, "and New York City was the only city in America where I could possibly find you!" Anh squeezed Charlie's hand a little harder.

"I have dreamed of you every night since I left Saigon.The odds of us every seeing each other again were incalculable, but it happened. Do you sense it was by chance? I think it was meant to be," Charlie said as he took Anh's other hand and kissed it.

The band was now playing THE GIRL FROM IPANEMA.  No, Charlie thought, the band was now playing THE GIRL FROM SAIGON.

"We have a chance to see the world by seeing New York City, Anh!" said Charlie.

"How wonderful!" said Anh.


Chapter 9

Anh and Charlie at breakfast at Jams, then took a cab to the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Charlie's favorite American artist was Edward Hopper, and while the Art Institute of Chicago had Hopper's most famous work, NIGHTHAWKS, in its collection, The Whitney had the most. Charlie wanted to concentrate on all the Hopper paintings.

The Hopper paintings:  CAPE COD BAY;  MASS OF TREES AT EASTMAN;  ROAD AND ROCKS;  A WOMAN IN THE SUN;  SECOND STORY SUNLIGHT;  SOUTH CAROLINA MORNING:  THE SOURCE OF ALL VIOLENCE, MY UNSEEN FATHER-IN-LAW;  STAIRWAY;   SEVEN A.M.;  ROOFS, SATILLO;  JO IN WYOMING:  SLOPES OF THE TETON;  EL PALACIO;  JO HOPPER;  SELF-PORTRAIT (I);  SELF-PORTRAIT (II);  SATILLO, MEXICO;  a ma femme-jour de naissance;  EARLY SUNDAY MORNING;  LIGHT AT TWO LIGHTS;  TWO ON THE AISLE;  NIGHT WINDOWS;  ROAD IN MAINE;  AMERICAN VILLAGE;  THE WINDOW;  THE HORIZONTAL CITY;  WASHINGTON SQUARE;  THEATER;  REALITY AND FANTASY;  HEAD OF A MAN;  MAN WITH BEARD; NEW YORK MOVIE;  AUTOMAT;  TABLE FOR LADIES;  GIRL AT A SEWING MACHINE;  CHOP SUEY;  FROM WILLIAMSBURG BRIDGE;  HOTEL LOBBY;  and  OFFICE IN A SMALL CITY.

Charlie suggested the two ate at the GRAND CENTRAL OYSTER BAR. Anh said she loved seafood. A cab took them there quickly.

Anh said "I would like OYSTERS ON THE HALF SHELL, A CUP OF CLAM CHOWDER, MUSSELS, AND A SLICE OF KEY LIME PIE, please."

"I would like please OYSTERS ROCKEFELLER, LOBSTER BISQUE, and a good, old-fashion SHRIMP COCKTAIL. We both would like ice tea," said
Charlie.

Their dinners were delicious. They took a cab back to the Waldorf in time to meet Sid who got them to the Village Vanguard by 7.


Chapter 10

In the ensuing summer months, Anh and Charlie continued their seemingly endless exploration of New York City and, at the same time, adhered to their required nightly visits to the Village Vanguard. Over this time, the two enjoyed a cruise around the Statue Of Liberty, going to the top of the Empire State Building, visiting Ellis Island, walking tours of Chinatown and Little Italy, taking the New York Helicopter Tour, experiencing the Central Park Carriage Horse tour, and enjoying the Manhattan Island cruise.

And late afternoons, Anh and Charlie continued to eat among the best restaurants in the world:  OLIO E PIU;  BOUCHIERE UNION
SQUARE;  ELEVEN MADISON PARK;  BALTHAZAR;  GRAMERCY TAVERN;  THE MODERN;  UPLAND;  VIA CAROTA;  LE BERNARDIN;  PICCOLA CUCINA OSTERIA;  SCILLIANA; BOUCHERIE WEST VILLIAGE;  SCHUTTE;  GABRIEL KREUTHER;  FREVO, ATERA;  ESTELLA;  KOCHI;  LE COUCOU;  TAO;  COTE;  PETITE BOUCHERIE;  AMAVI; MANHATTA;  BLUE RIBBON BRASSERI;  1803 NYC;  MINETTA TAVERN;  SCARPETTA; CRAFT;  CROWN SHY;  HEARTH;  CHAMA MAMA;  FORGIONE;  TSUIMI;  PER SI;  CLOVER HILL; ASKA;
DANIEL;  JUNGSIK;  AQUAVIT;  ICCA;  MASA;  SUSHI NAKA-
SAWA;  GRAMERCY TAVERN;  LE PAVILLON;  LE JANDINIER;  
63 CLINTON;  AL CORO;  COTE;  OIJI MI;  JEAN-GEORGES;
DON ANGIE;  ONE WHITE STREET;  VESTRY;  THE MUSKET ROOM;  o.d.o.;  CLARO;  SUSHI NOZ;  ESTELLA;  SAGA;  SEMMA; L'ABEILLE;  NOZ 17;  SUHI GINZA ONODERA;  and THE RIVER CAFE.


It was a mid-August early evening as Anh and Charlie lay curled up naked under the white linen sheet.

"Anh, I love you. I will always love you. I want us to share the rest of our lives with each other. And if you feel as I do, I need to tell you that I feel each of us must be prepared to do the right thing, not only for each other, but also for all others.

"I worked for the CIA, and I know it does not always work for all people. I do not want to be a prisoner of the CIA for the rest of my life, and I don't want the woman I love also to be their prisoner.

"Anh, I love you. I will always love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. And if you feel the same toward me, you'll need to know fully what both of us will need to do for the rest of our lives:  SPEAK THE TRUTH. These months I've shared with you have made me realize I cannot go on covering for the CIA and its related agencies and covert, deadly operations. If I cannot love you openly, if I cannot propose to you to be my wife, I would rather be dead. If you cannot run the same risks as I, I'll grieve greatly but understand and respect your feelings," finished Charlie.

"I would rather die than not to love you the rest of my life," said Anh.


Chapter 11

Charlie knew them all, from Haiti onward, but let's start with the OSS of WW11 becoming the CIA.

The CIA was supposed to behave legally, but it didn't always do that. Take, for example, assassination and torture, but don't tell Congress about them. If a foreign country smacked of communist leanings, the CIA needed to "redirect" it, even if its leader had been elected democratically. What else comes to mind? Of course, domestic wiretapping;  manipulation of media;   extraordinary renditions;  secret prisons run by the CIA on foreign soil;  "enhanced interrogation" (torture);  support of dictators in Latin America;  recruiting Nazis as spies;  sales of arms to nations under embargo;  CIA involved in global drug trafficking;  collecting data on Americans without warrants;  and mind control experiments. It took a lot of practice to do all of them well.


Chapter 12

"This is Charlie Cumberston calling for Senator Peterson," said Charlie.

"Just a moment, please," said the secretary.

"Charlie, you old dog!" said John. "We haven't spoken for a hell of a long time! How have you been?"

"That's a long story, Will," said Charlie, "but in truth I need to speak to you in private. It's a life-or-death matter, Will."

There was a long pause.

Charlie and Will were both Nacoms at Columbia, but though Will was considerably older than Charlie, they had become best friends. Will was now the youngest U.S. Senator. After law school, he and his wife, Marilyn, a Barnard graduate, had moved to Boulder, CO where he was elected U.S. Senator on his first try.

"I've been in New York City. I wonder if there is any possibility you might be able to take the shuttle to NYC to talk with me. I need your help," said Charlie.

"Charlie, if you think I could be of help to you, I will find a way to see and talk with you. I'll get back to you pronto." said Will.

"God bless you, Will," said Charlie.

The two exchanged the necessary contact information. Will told Charlie he thought he could get back to him in a day or two, if not sooner.

In early afternoon of the second day, Charlie heard a knock on his door. It was Will.

Charlie opened the door.  "Will, God bless you! Thanks for coming up. Take a seat at the table."

"Will, you know me well," said Charlie. "After Columbia, I joined the CIA. I wanted to honor my country. After intense training, I was sent to Saigon in early '65. During the Tet Offensive, I was wounded severely. I was in the hospital a year. I almost died, but Anh saved me. She was my nurse. I fell in love with her. I had a month before I was to be flown back to the U.S. and it was during that month that I knew I wanted to marry her. When I got back to Langley, they told me I knew too much about the OSS to the present, and if I divulged any iota from the past to the present, I would be "eliminated." I knew they meant what they said. So I agreed to be put up at the Waldorf Astoria and be taken to the Village Vanguard every evening. That was going to be the rest of my life--that is, until I had the unbelievable fortune of meeting Anh in New York City. My dilemma is I know I can't marry Anh now. Anh feels the same as I do. I wish to be remembered as an honorable man. I wish to speak to the world from the podium of the UN General Assembly to tell the billions on Earth the truth and ask all for their forgiveness. You are now the new U.S. Senator from Colorado.  You are an honorable man. The people who voted for you know that. Your fellow Senators will increasingly know that. My advice to you, Will, is do what you think is right. Thanks for hearing me out."

"I will tell the truth," said Will. Will said he would let Charlie know the outcome as soon as he could. The two shook hands and left the restaurant together.


Chapter 13

A week went by and then another. To say both Charlie and Anh were torn was an understatement. Then on the morning of Tuesday of the third week, Will called.

"I have great news for you, Charlie! You've won your battle! You need to prepare your remarks you will share with all the ambassadors and, indeed, the world." said an exuberant Will.

"I can't thank you enough, Will," said Charlie. "I can't thank you enough!"

As soon as Charlie hung up, he picked up Anh and swirled her around and around.

"I will share my remarks with all the ambassadors and the rest of the world," said Charlie, then picked Anh up and gave her a hug and a kiss in mid-air that lasted at least a minute, maybe two.


Chapter 14

"The irony is nobody had the guts to do what you have done, Charlie," said Will. "You have broken things wide open. Now Earth, and every living thing on it, has a chance not only to survive, but also to prosper. I met with U.S. Ambassador Wilson and told him everything. In turn, he spoke first with ambassadors who were his friends who, in turn, spoke with their ambassador friends. This has just spread like wildfire, Charlie. It's amazing!"

"Thanks, Will," said Charlie. "Now my life has meaning. And if this has wheels, we can change the UN Building to the US Building, as in "us, not them."

"That's brilliant, Charlie!" said Will.

After the two men finished their lunches at the 1789 Restaurant in Georgetown, they gave each other a big hug and shock hands.
Anh was taking a nap at the Willard.

"World peace is now the sine qua non for life on Earth," said Will. "Thanks for emailing all your brilliant ideas, Charlie," said Will. "All nations, including the most autocratic ones, see the inescapability of having to form a world union. You are the savior, my friend."

Will continued. "Monday, I will begin to talk to ambassadors. Those will speak to others, and so on. You said there is only one land, one sky, one sea, one people. The boundaries that divided us are not on maps, but in our hearts and minds. Either we will survive as one because of a successful, gargantuan effort to make world peace, or billions will die in minutes. Those are your words, Charlie. Those are your words."

Charlie said "I want to talk with my 8 billion friends on Earth. I will say first that it is an honor to speak to my sisters and brothers. I am overjoyed that I'll meet many of you. I will need to hear your heartaches and hopes to make Earth our home. I will help people realize their real selves. I will help people see what truth is and what it is not. I'll encourage them with love. I will tell them their inner-greatness is inviolable. Corrupt politicians aggrandize power to oppress others, not to empower them. I will die for humanity, but I will never **** anyone."

The ambassadors were in a frenzy for two weeks, communicating with their superiors in their home countries, garnering their approvals, getting ready for Charlie's momentous announcement to the world in the "US Building."

81–100 of 11462 Poems
«3456»Viewsshow detailshide detailsSort by  
From “The Sonnagrams”
BY K. SILEM MOHAMMAD
on thoth’s ****
From Sonnet 75 (“So are you to my thoughts as food to life”)


A groovy day, a fish fillet, an elf hair, . . .
Homer
BY TROY JOLLIMORE
Schliemann is outside, digging. He’s not
not calling a ***** a *****.
The stadium where the Greeks once played . . .
Ocean Park #17, 1968: Homage to Diebenkorn
BY LARRY LEVIS
What I remember is a carhop on Pico hurrying
Toward a blue Chevy,
. . .
Per Fumum
BY JAMAAL MAY
My mother became an ornithologist
when the grackle tumbled through barbecue smoke
and fell at her feet. Soon she learned . . .
The Archaeologists
BY JULIA SHIPLEY
found pins
by the millions
while meticulously . . .
The Break
BY FRANZ WRIGHT
Then he stopped
dead on the sidewalk
astounded . . .
The Companions of Odysseus in Hades
BY A. E. STALLINGS
Since we still had a little
Of the rusk left, what fools
To eat, against the rules, . . .
There Are Birds Here
BY JAMAAL MAY
There are birds here,
so many birds here
is what I was trying to say . . .
Twelve Thirty One Nineteen Ninety Nine
BY LARRY LEVIS
First Architect of the jungle & Author of pastel slums,
Patron Saint of rust,
You have become too famous to be read. . . .
Whethering
BY A. E. STALLINGS
The rain is haunted;
I had forgotten.
My children are two hours abed . . .
Make a Law So That the Spine Remembers Wings
BY LARRY LEVIS
So that the truant boy may go steady with the State,
So that in his spine a memory of wings
Will make his shoulders tense & bend . . .
A Midsummer Night’s Stroll
BY PHILIP NIKOLAYEV
I.

I am a man.  I’ve lived alone.  I’ve been  in  love.  I’ve  played  with . . .
[The water was rising...]
BY LYN HEJINIAN
The water was rising, I got up on the bed
Still wearing the Hawaiian shirt he had on yesterday
He used his thoughts to draw a rudimentary circle on the wall . . .
[A straight rain is rare...]
BY LYN HEJINIAN
A straight rain is rare and doors have suspicions
and I hold that names begin histories
and that the last century was a cruel one. I am pretending . . .
[But isn’t midnight intermittent]
BY LYN HEJINIAN
But isn’t midnight intermittent
Or was that just a whispered nine
A snap of blown light low against the flank of a cow . . .
Third Poem for the Catastrophe
BY JOYELLE MCSWEENEY
O
melting rainbow that embrace this roof
O . . .
Dear Fi Jae 2 (Ms. Merongrongrong)
BY JOYELLE MCSWEENEY
Now I know what it is to bite the tongue inside

the mink stole: I do not want . . .
Self Portrait
BY CYNTHIA CRUZ
I did not want my body
Spackled in the world’s
Black beads and broke . . .
Kingdom of Dirt
BY CYNTHIA CRUZ
Soon the ambassadors from the Netherworld
Will begin
. . .
King Prion
BY JOYELLE MCSWEENEY
—Hoooooooo
Lay in an array of pixels
Fat, simulated proteins . . .
«3456»

When you’re not around.
My heart falls.
Beating.
Thumping.
It falls.
And falls.
Thoughts of a distant earth,
Blue with blood and white with clouds.
My heart falls.
When your not around.
Swooping left and then right.
Like a feather falling from a short height.
Not far enough to spin and twirl.
Just high enough to swoon and sweep across the sky.
Blue and deep.
Our distances aren't far
And without much doubt
You’ll be here soon
Quick sand love as thick as tar.
Colors are dim.
Ambassadors of love lost.
My life nothing short of grim,
When you’re not around.

Since words have always been my closest friends-
it reasons that they're jealous now of you,
the she whose dear affection never bends
and now controls my heart beat through and through.
Ambassadors they once were to my heart
before you came and turned it inside out,
and though they matched you squarely at the start
they have since then been beaten without doubt.
So then it's little wonder they deny
to strive in constant effort to meet you.
I work them, wear them - pray that they comply
but in the end it seems they never do.
So words my once great love have lost their place
like everything that fails to match your grace.