As a woman, and in the service of my Lord the Emperor Wu, my life is governed by his command. At twenty I was summoned to this life at court and have made of it what I can, within the limitations of the courtesan I am supposed to be, and the poet I have now become. Unlike my male counterparts, some of whom have lately found seclusion in the wilderness of rivers and mountains, I have only my personal court of three rooms and its tiny garden and ornamental pond. But I live close to the surrounding walls of the Zu-lin Gardens with its astronomical observatories and bold attempts at recreating illusions of celebrated locations in the Tai mountains. There, walking with my cat Xi-Lu in the afternoons, I imagine a solitary life, a life suffused with the emptiness I crave.
 
In the hot, dry summer days my maid Mei-Lim and I have sought a temporary retreat in the pine forests above Lingzhi. Carried in a litter up the mountain paths we are left in a commodious hut, its open walls making those simple pleasures of drinking, eating and sleeping more acute, intense. For a few precious days I rest and meditate, breathe the mountain air and the resinous scents of the trees. I escape the daily commerce of the court and belong to a world that for the rest of the year I have to imagine, the world of the recluse. To gain the status of the recluse, open to my male counterparts, is forbidden to women of the court. I am woman first, a poet and calligrapher second. My brother, should he so wish, could present a petition to revoke his position as a man of letters, an official commentator on the affairs of state. But he is not so inclined. He has already achieved notoriety and influence through his writing on the social conditions of town and city. He revels in a world of chatter, gossip and intrigue; he appears to fear the wilderness life.  
 
I must be thankful that my own life is maintained on the periphery. I am physically distant from the hub of daily ceremonial. I only participate at my Lord’s express command. I regularly feign illness and fatigue to avoid petty conflict and difficulty. Yet I receive commissions I cannot waver: to honour a departed official; to celebrate a son’s birth to the Second Wife; to fulfil in verse my Lord’s curious need to know about the intimate sorrows of his young concubines, their loneliness and heartache.
 
Occasionally a Rhapsody is requested for an important visitor. The Emperor Wu is proud to present as welcome gifts such poetic creations executed in fine calligraphy, and from a woman of his court. Surely a sign of enlightment and progress he boasts! Yet in these creations my observations are parochial: early morning frost on the cabbage leaves in my garden; the sound of geese on their late afternoon flight to Star Lake; the disposition of the heavens on an Autumn night. I live by the Tao of Lao-Tzu, perceiving the whole world from my doorstep.
 
But I long for the reclusive life, to leave this court for my family’s estate in the valley my peasant mother lived as a child. At fourteen she was chosen to sustain the Emperor’s annual wish for young girls to be groomed for concubinage. Like her daughter she is tall, though not as plain as I; she put her past behind her and conceded her adolescence to the training required by the court. At twenty she was recommended to my father, the court archivist, as second wife. When she first met this quiet, dedicated man on the day before her marriage she closed her eyes in blessing. My father taught her the arts of the library and schooled her well. From her I have received keen eyes of jade green and a prestigious memory, a memory developed she said from my father’s joy of reading to her in their private hours, and before she could read herself. Each morning he would examine her to discover what she had remembered of the text read the night before. When I was a little child she would quote to me the Confucian texts on which she had been ****** schooled, and she then would tell me of her childhood home. She primed my imagination and my poetic world with descriptions of a domestic rural life.
 
Sometimes in the arms of my Lord I have freely rhapsodized in chusi metre these delicate word paintings of my mother’s home. She would say ‘We will walk now to the ruined tower beside the lake. Listen to the carolling birds. As the sparse clouds move across the sky the warm sun strokes the winter grass. Across the deep lake the forests are empty. Now we are climbing the narrow steps to the platform from which you and I will look towards the sun setting in the west. See the shadows are lengthening and the air becomes colder. The blackbird’s solitary song heralds the evening.  Look, an owl glides silently beneath us.’
 
My Lord will then quote from Hsieh Ling-yun,.
 
‘I meet sky, unable to soar among clouds,
face a lake, call those depths beyond me.’
 
And I will match this quotation, as he will expect.
 
‘Too simple-minded to perfect Integrity,
and too feeble to plough fields in seclusion.’
 
He will then gaze into my eyes in wonder that this obscure poem rests in my memory and that I will decode the minimal grammar of these early characters with such poetry. His characters: Sky – Bird – Cloud – Lake – Depth. My characters: Fool – Truth – Child – Winter field – Isolation.
 
Our combined invention seems to take him out of his Emperor-self. He is for a while the poet-scholar-sage he imagines he would like to be, and I his foot-sore companion following his wilderness journey. And then we turn our attention to our bodies, and I surprise him with my admonitions to gentleness, to patience, to arousing my pleasure. After such poetry he is all pleasure, sensitive to the slightest touch, and I have my pleasure in knowing I can control this powerful man with words and the stroke of my fingertips rather than by delicate youthful beauty or the guile and perverse ingenuity of an ****** act. He is still learning to recognise the nature and particularness of my desires. I am not as his other women: who confuse pleasure with pain.
 
Thoughts of my mother. Without my dear father, dead ten years, she is a boat without a rudder sailing on a distant lake. She greets each day as a gift she must honour with good humour despite the pain of her limbs, the difficulty of walking, of sitting, of eating, even talking. Such is the hurt that governs her ageing. She has always understood that my position has forbidden marriage and children, though the latter might be a possibility I have not wished it and made it known to my Lord that it must not be. My mother remains in limbo, neither son or daughter seeking to further her lineage, she has returned to her sister’s home in the distant village of her birth, a thatched house of twenty rooms,
 
‘Elms and willows shading the eaves at the back,
and, in front,  peach and plum spread wide.
 
Villages lost across mist-haze distances,
Kitchen smoke drifting wide-open country,
 
Dogs bark deep among the back roads out here
And cockerels crow from mulberry treetops.
 
My esteemed colleague T’ao Ch’ien made this poetry. After a distinguished career in government service he returned to the life of a recluse-farmer on his family farm. Living alone in a three-roomed hut he lives out his life as a recluse and has endured considerable poverty. One poem I know tells of him begging for food. His world is fields-and-gardens in contrast to Hsieh Ling-yin who is rivers-and-mountains. Ch’ien’s commitment to the recluse life has brought forth words that confront death and the reality of human experience without delusion.
 
‘At home here in what lasts, I wait out life.’
 
Thus my mother waits out her life, frail, crumbling more with each turning year.
 
To live beyond the need to organise daily commitments due to others, to step out into my garden and only consider the dew glistening on the loropetalum. My mind is forever full of what is to be done, what must be completed, what has to be said to this visitor who will today come to my court at the Wu hour. Only at my desk does this incessant chattering in the mind cease, as I move my brush to shape a character, or as the needle enters the cloth, all is stilled, the world retreats; there is the inner silence I crave.
 
I long to see with my own eyes those scenes my mother painted for me with her words. I only know them in my mind’s eye having travelled so little these past fifteen years. I look out from this still dark room onto my small garden to see the morning gathering its light above the rooftops. My camellia bush is in flower though a thin frost covers the garden stones.
 
And so I must imagine how it might be, how I might live the recluse life. How much can I jettison? These fine clothes, this silken nightgown beneath the furs I wrap myself in against the early morning air. My maid is sleeping. Who will make my tea? Minister to me when I take to my bed? What would become of my cat, my books, the choice-haired brushes? Like T’ao Ch’ien could I leave the court wearing a single robe and with one bag over my shoulders? Could I walk for ten days into the mountains? I would disguise myself as a man perhaps. I am tall for a woman, and though my body flows in broad curves there are ways this might be assuaged, enough perhaps to survive unmolested on the road.
 
Such dreams! My Lord would see me returned within hours and send a servant to remain at my gate thereafter. I will compose a rhapsody about a concubine of standing, who has even occupied the purple chamber, but now seeks to relinquish her privileged life, who coverts the uncertainty of nature, who would endure pain and privation in a hut on some distant mountain, who will sleep on a mat on its earth floor. Perhaps this will excite my Lord, light a fire in his imagination. As though in preparation for this task I remove my furs, I loose the knot of my silk gown. Naked, I reach for an old under shift letting it fall around my still-slender body and imagine myself tying the lacings myself in the open air, imagine making my toilet alone as the sun appears from behind a distant mountain on a new day. My mind occupies itself with the tiny detail of living thus: bare feet on cold earth, a walk to nearby stream, the gathering of berries and mountain herbs, the making of fire, the washing of my few clothes, imagining. Imagining. To live alone will see every moment filled with the tasks of keeping alive. I will become in tune with my surroundings. I will take only what I need and rely on no one. Dreaming will end and reality will be the slug on my mat, the bone-chilling incessant mists of winter, the thorn in the foot, the wild winds of autumn. My hands will become stained and rough, my long limbs tanned and scratched, my delicate complexion freckled and wind-pocked, my hair tied roughly back. I will become an animal foraging on a dank hillside. Such thoughts fill me with deep longing and a ****** desire to be tzu-jan  - with what surrounds me, ablaze with ****** self.
 
It is not thought the custom of a woman to hold such desires. We are creatures of order and comfort. We do not live on the edge of things, but crave security and well-being. We learn to endure the privations of being at the behest of others. Husbands, children, lovers, our relatives take our bodies to them as places of comfort, rest and desire. We work at maintaining an ordered flow of existence. Whatever our station, mistress or servant we compliment, we keep things in order, whether that is the common hearth or the accounts of our husband’s court. Now my rhapsody begins:
 
A Rhapsody on a woman wishing to live as a recluse
 
As a lady of my Emperor’s court I am bound in service.
My court is not my own, I have the barest of means.
My rooms are full of gifts I am forced barter for bread.
Though the artefacts of my hands and mind
Are valued and widely renown,
Their commissioning is an expectation of my station,
With no direct reward attached.
To dress appropriately for my Lord’s convocations and assemblies
I am forced to negotiate with chamberlains and treasurers.
A bolt of silk, gold thread, the services of a needlewoman
Require formal entreaties and may lie dormant for weeks
Before acknowledgement and release.
 
I was chosen for my literary skills, my prestigious memory,
Not for my ****** beauty, though I have been called
‘Lady of the most gracious movement’ and
My speaking voice has clarity and is capable of many colours.
I sing, but plainly and without passion
Lest I interfere with the truth of music’s message.
 
Since I was a child in my father’s library
I have sought out the works of those whose words
Paint visions of a world that as a woman
I may never see, the world of the wilderness,
Of rivers and mountains,
Of fields and gardens.
Yet I am denied by my *** and my station
To experience passing amongst these wonders
Except as contrived imitations in the palace gardens.
 
Each day I struggle to tease from the small corner
Of my enclosed eye-space some enrichment
Some elemental thing to colour meaning:
To extend the bounds of my home
Across the walls of this palace
Into the world beyond.
 
I have let it be known that I welcome interviews
With officials from distant courts to hear of their journeying,
To gather word images if only at second-hand.
Only yesterday an emissary recounted
His travels to Stone Lake in the far South-West,
Beyond the gorges of the Yang-tze.
With his eyes I have seen the mountains of Suchan:
With his ears I have heard the oars crackling
Like shattering jade in the freezing water.
Images and sounds from a thousand miles
Of travel are extract from this man’s memory.
 
Such a sharing of experience leaves me
Excited but dismayed: that I shall never
Visit this vast expanse of water and hear
Its wild cranes sing from their floating nests
In the summer moonlight.
 
I seek to disappear into a distant landscape
Where the self and its constructions of the world may
Dissolve away until nothing remains but the no-mind.
My thoughts are full of the practicalities of journeying
Of an imagined location, that lonely place
Where I may be at one with myself.
Where I may delight in the everyday Way,
Myself among mist and vine, rock and cave.
Not this lady of many parts and purposes whose poems must
Speak of lives, sorrow and joy, pleasure and pain
Set amongst personal conflict and intrigue
That in containing these things, bring order to disorder;
Salve the conscience, bathe hurt, soothe sleight.

for Jennie in gratitude*

For days afterwards he was preoccupied by what he’d collected into himself from the gallery viewing. He could say it was just painting, but there was a variety of media present in the many surrounding images and artefacts. Certainly there were all kinds of objects: found and gathered, captured and brought into a frame, some filling transparent boxes on a window ledge or simply hung frameless on the wall; sand, fixed foam, paper sea-water stained, a beaten sheet of aluminium; a significant stone standing on a mantelpiece, strange warped pieces of metal with no clue to what they were or had been, a sketchbook with brooding pencilled drawings made fast and thick, filling the page, colour like an echo, and yes, paintings.
 
Three paintings had surprised him; they did not seem to fit until (and this was sometime later) their form and content, their working, had very gradually begun to make a sort of sense.  Possible interpretations – though tenuous – surreptitiously intervened. There were words scrawled across each canvas summoning the viewer into emotional space, a space where suggestions of marks and colour floated on a white surface. These scrawled words were like writing in seaside sand with a finger: the following bird and hiraeth. He couldn’t remember the third exactly. He had a feeling about it – a date or description. But he had forgotten. And this following bird? One of Coleridge’s birds of the Ancient Mariner perhaps? Hiraeth he knew was a difficult Welsh word similar to saudade. It meant variously longing, sometimes passionate (was longing ever not passionate?), a home-sickness, the physical pain of nostalgia. It was said that a well-loved location in conjunction with a point in time could cause such feelings. This small exhibition seemed full of longing, full of something beyond the place and the time and the variousness of colour and texture, of elements captured, collected and represented. And as the distance in time and memory from his experience of the show in a small provincial gallery increased, so did his own thoughts of and about the nature of longing become more acute.
 
He knew he was fortunate to have had the special experience of being alone with ‘the work’ just prior to the gallery opening. His partner was also showing and he had accompanied her as a friendly presence, someone to talk to when the throng of viewers might deplete. But he knew he was surplus to requirements as she’d also brought along a girlfriend making a short film on this emerging, soon to be successful artist. So he’d wandered into the adjoining spaces and without expectation had come upon this very different show: just the title Four Tides to guide him in and around the small white space in which the art work had been distributed. Even the striking miniature catalogue, solely photographs, no text, did little to betray the hand and eye that had brought together what was being shown. Beyond the artist’s name there were only faint traces – a phone number and an email address, no voluminous self-congratulatory CV, no list of previous exhibitions, awards or academic provenance. A light blue bicycle figured in some of her catalogue photographs and on her contact card. One photo in particular had caught the artist very distant, cycling along the curve of a beach. It was this photo that helped him to identify the location – because for twenty years he had passed across this meeting of land and water on a railway journey. This place she had chosen for the coming and going of four tides he had viewed from a train window. The aspect down the estuary guarded by mountains had been a highpoint of a six-hour journey he had once taken several times a year, occasionally and gratefully with his children for whom crossing the long, low wooden bridge across the estuary remained into their teens an adventure, always something telling.
 
He found himself wishing this work into a studio setting, the artist’s studio. It seemed too stark placed on white walls, above the stripped pine floor and the punctuation of reflective glass of two windows facing onto a wet street. Yes, a studio would be good because the pictures, the paintings, the assemblages might relate to what daily surrounded the artist and thus describe her. He had thought at first he was looking at the work of a young woman, perhaps mid-thirties at most. The self-curation was not wholly assured: it held a temporary nature. It was as if she hadn’t finished with the subject and or done with its experience. It was either on-going and promised more, or represented a stage she would put aside (but with love and affection) on her journey as an artist. She wouldn’t milk it for more than it was. And it was full of longing.
 
There was a heaviness, a weight, an inconclusiveness, an echo of reverence about what had been brought together ‘to show’. Had he thought about these aspects more closely, he would not have been so surprised to discovered the artist was closer to his own age, in her fifties. She in turn had been surprised by his attention, by his carefully written comment in her guest book. She seemed pleased to talk intimately and openly, to tell her story of the work. She didn’t need to do this because it was there in the room to be read. It was apparent; it was not oblique or difficult, but caught the viewer in a questioning loop. Was this estuary location somehow at the core of her longing-centred self?  She had admitted that, working in her home or studio, she would find herself facing westward and into the distance both in place and time?
 
On the following day he made time to write, to look through this artist’s window on a creative engagement with a place he was familiar. The experience of viewing her work had affected him. He was not sure yet whether it was the representation of the place or the artist’s engagement with it. In writing about it he might find out. It seemed so deeply personal. It was perhaps better not to know but to imagine. So he imagined her making the journey, possibly by train, finding a place to stay the night – a cheerful B & B - and cycling early in the morning across the long bridge to her previously chosen spot on the estuary: to catch the first of the tides. He already understood from his own experience how an artist can enter trance-like into an environment, absorb its particularness, respond to the uncertainty of its weather, feel surrounded by its elements and textures, and most of all be governed by the continuous and ever-complex play of light.
 
He knew all about longing for a place. For nearly twenty years a similar longing had grown and all but consumed him: his cottage on a mountain overlooking the sea. It had become a place where he had regularly faced up to his created and invented thoughts, his soon-to-be-music and more recently possible poetry and prose. He had done so in silence and solitude.
 
But now he was experiencing a different longing, a longing born from an intensity of love for a young woman, an intensity that circled him about. Her physical self had become a rich landscape to explore and celebrate in gaze, and stroke and caress. It seemed extraordinary that a single person could hold to herself such a habitat of wonder, a rich geography of desire to know and understand. For so many years his longing was bound to the memory of walking cliff paths and empty beaches, the hypnotic viewing of seascaped horizons and the persistent chaos of the sea and wild weather. But gradually this longing for a coming together of land, sea and sky had migrated to settle on a woman who graced his daily, hourly thoughts; who was able to touch and caress him as rain and wind and sun can act upon the body in ever-changing ways. So when he was apart from her it was with such a longing that he found himself weighed down, filled brimfull.
 
In writing, in attempting to consider longing as a something the creative spirit might address, he felt profoundly grateful to the artist on the light blue bicycle whose her observations and invention had kept open a door he felt was closing on him. She had faced her own longing by bringing it into form, and through form into colour and texture, and then into a very particular play: an arrangement of objects and images for the mind to engage with – or not. He dared to feel an affinity with this artist because, like his own work, it did not seem wholly confident. It contained flaws of a most subtle kind, flaws that lent it a conviction and strength that he warmed to. It had not been massaged into correctness. The images and the textures, the directness of it, flowed through him back and forward just like the tides she had come far to observe on just a single day. He remembered then, when looking closely at the unprotected pieces on the walls, how his hand had moved to just touch its surfaces in exactly the way he would bring his fingers close to the body of the woman he loved so much, adored beyond any poetry, and longed for with all his heart and mind.

The Ache is leaving. Three years languished by dead end jobs, drugs and friends. Last week above a bagel store, the sun morphs mute amidst travelling clouds, indifferent fluctuations of light on an otherwise featureless day.

You arrive a tight knot of anxieties over a moment in time that could only have arrived after its departure. The Ache welcomes you into their sparse interior. You trace last month’s 21st across the black mould complex; navigate piles of stacked boxes, unsure if anything is inside of them.

“I always make the best friends in departure,” the Ache says, flipping a plushy up and down by the waist.

“Maybe you can only love that which is already lost,” you reply, with an insight a friend will give you a week later.

The acid tastes bitter under your tongue. Small marks your body bursting, a glowing radiance of interconnections you’d always had but only now begun to feel. The Ache follows suit and you sit on the couch together to watch .hack//Legend of the Twilight. The come up entangles you in the spectacle; the screaming boy protagonist, the chipped tooth gag, the moe sister in need of saving from the liminal space of dead code. You take part in it; you revel in it. Bodies morph on the surface of the screen in hyperflat obscenity, their parts interchangeable to the affect of the drama. Faces invert, break and disfigure, before reformation into the self-same identity form.

A month earlier, you’d hosted a house show at your flat. Too anxious to perform you’d dropped a tab as you’ve done now. An overbearing sensation of too-much-ness — of sickening reality — washed through the nexus of your being. You writhed on the ground screaming into a microphone as a cacophony of sounds roiled through you. Everyone cheered.

The floor rose later that night. A damp, disgusting intensity that triggered contractions in your throat and chest. Pulled to the ground, you fought off your bandmate’s advances, too shocked to express your revulsion and horror, to react accordingly, to reconstitute a border of consensual sociality. You broke free and slurred “I’m no one’s! I’m no one’s!” before running out of the room. Hours later, you tried to comfort them. Weeks later, you realised how ******* ******* that had been. Months later, you learnt their friend had committed suicide days before the show.

Back in the lounge, a prince rides onto the screen on a pig. You turn to the Ache and say “This is ******* awful.”

The Ache responds “I know right?”

Outside the world burns blue with lustre. The Ache trails you and falls onto their stomach. “Oh my god,” the Ache blurts, “this is why I love acid. Everything just feels right.” They gaze wistfully at the grasses and flowers before them; catch a whiff of asphalt and nectar, intermingled. “Like, gender isn’t even a thing, you know? Just properties condensed into a legible sign to be disciplined by heteronormative governmentality.”

“Properties! Properties!” You chant, stomping around the Ache with your arms stretched out. You wave them in the air like windmills. You bare your teeth. “Properties! Properties!”

“You know what I mean, right?” The Ache asks, pointedly. “You know what I mean?”

You continue chanting “Properties!” for another minute or two, before spotting a slug on a blade of grass beneath your feet. You fall to your knees and gasp “It’s a slug!”

You and the Ache stare at the tiny referent for an indefinite period of time, absorbed in its glistening moistures. Eventually, the Ache says “I think it’s actually a snail.”

You used to read postmodern novels on acid. You loved their exploration of hyperreality; their dissection of culture as a system of meaning that arises out of our collective, desperate attempts to overcome the indifference of facticity. Read symptomatically, culture does not reveal unseen depths in the world, but rather, constitutes shallow networks of sprawling complexity — truth effects — illusions of mastery over an, otherwise, undifferentiated and senseless becoming.

Then one day, the world overwhelmed you. Down the hall, your flatmates sounded an eternal return. As they spoke in joyous abandon you traced the lines from their mouths — found their origin in idiot artefacts of Hollywood Babylon. The joy of abstraction you once relished in your books took on an all too direct horror. You recoiled. You bound your lips in hysteria, for fear of becoming another repeating machine of an all too present culture industry. Better dumb than banal — better to say nothing at all, than everything that already was and would ever be. You cried and cried until everyone left — until you were alone with your silence and your tears and your nonexistent originality.

Dusk falls in violet streaks. You reach your room on the second floor of the building, open the bedside window and stick your legs out into a cool breeze. The Ache joins you. Danny Burton, the local MP, arrives in his van, his smiling bald face plastered on its side like an uncanny double enclosing its original.

“Hey look, it’s Danny Burton, the local MP.” Danny Burton turns his head. He glares at your dangling feet for a few seconds before entering his house. “You know, this is the first time in three years he’s looked at me and it’s at the peak of my degeneracy.” You turn to the Ache. “One of my favourite past times is watching him wander around the house at night, ******* and unsure of himself. He always goes to check on his BBQ.” You bounce on the bed in mania.

“See this is what people do, right?” the Ache says, mirroring your excitement. “Like, look at that lady walking her dog.” The Ache motions, with a cruel glint in their eyes, to the passerby on the fast dimming street. “What do you think she gets out of that? Doing that every night?” Without waiting for you to respond, the Ache answers, in a low, sarcastic tone “I guess she gets enjoyment. Doing her thing. Like everyone else.” The lady and the dog disappear beyond the curve of the road. Another pair soon arrives, taking the same path as the one before.

A few months back, you’d met an old friend at an exhibition on intersectional feminism. After the perfunctory art, wine and grapes, she drove you home, back to your run down flat in an otherwise bourgeois neighbourhood. She sat silent as the sun set before the dashboard, then asked how anyone could live like this; how anyone could stand driving out of their perfect suburban home, at the same time every morning, to work the same shift every day, for the rest of their stupid life. The dull ache of routine; the slow, boring death. You said nothing. You said nothing because you agreed with her.

“Life began as self-replicating information molecules,” you reply, obliquely. “Catalysis on superheated clay pockets. Repetition out of an attempt to bind the excess of radiant light.”

It is dark now; a formless hollow, pitted with harsh yellow lamps of varying, distant sizes. The Ache flips onto their stomach and scoffs “What’s that? We’re all in this pointless repetition together?”

You respond, cautiously “I just don’t think that being smart is any better than being stupid; that our disavowed repetitions are any worthier than anyone else’s.”

The Ache returns your gaze with an intensity you’ve never seen before. “Did I say being smart was any better? Did I say that? Being smart is part of the issue. There is no trajectory that doesn’t become a habitual refrain. When you can do anything, everything becomes rote, effortless and pointless.

“But don’t act as if there’s no difference between us and these ******* idiots,” the Ache spits, motioning into the blackness beyond your frame. “I knew this one guy, this complete and utter ****. We went to a café, and he wouldn’t stop talking about the waitress, about how hot she was, how he wanted to **** her, while she was in earshot, because, I don’t know, he thought that would get him laid.

“Then we went for a drive and he failed a ******* u-turn. He just drove back and forth, over and again. A dead, automatic weight. A car came from the other lane, towards us, and waited for him to finish, but he stopped in the middle of the street and started yelling, saying **** like, ‘what does this ******* want?’ He got out of his car, out of his idiot u-turn, and tried to start a fight with the other driver — you know, the one who’d waited silently for him to finish.”

You don’t attempt a rebuttal; you don’t want to negate the Ache’s experience. Instead, you ask “Why were you hanging out with this guy in the first place?”

The Ache responds “Because I was alone, and I was lonely, and I had no one else.”

It is 2AM. Moths dance chaotic across the invisible precipice of your bedside window, between the inner and outer spaces of linguistic designation. There is a layering of history here — of affects and functions that have blurred beyond recognition — discoloured, muted, absented.

In the hollow of your bed, the Ache laughs. You don’t dare close the distance. Sometimes you find the edges of their impact and trace your own death. All your worries manifest without content. All form and waver and empty expanse where you drink deeply without a head. Because you have lost so much time already. And nothing keeps.

Months later, after the Ache has left, you will go to the beach. You will see the roiling waves beneath crash into the rocky shore of the esplanade, a violence that merges formlessly into a still, motionless horizon, for they are two and the same. You will be unable to put into words how it feels to know that such a line of calm exists out of the pull and push of endless change, that it has existed long before your birth and will exist long after your death.

The last lingering traces of acid flee your skin. Doused in tomorrow’s stupor, you close your eyes. You catch no sleep.

I saw my world again through your eyes
As I would see it again through your children's eyes.
Through your eyes it was foreign.
Plain hedge hawthorns were peculiar aliens,
A mystery of peculiar lore and doings.
Anything wild, on legs, in your eyes
Emerged at a point of exclamation
As if it had appeared to dinner guests
In the middle of the table. Common mallards
Were artefacts of some unearthliness,
Their wooings were a hypnagogic film
Unreeled by the river. Impossible
To comprehend the comfort of their feet
In the freezing water. You were a camera
Recording reflections you could not fathom.
I made my world perform its utmost for you.
You took it all in with an incredulous joy
Like a mother handed her new baby
By the midwife. Your frenzy made me giddy.
It woke up my dumb, ecstatic boyhood
Of fifteen years before. My masterpiece
Came that black night on the Grantchester road.
I ****** the throaty thin woe of a rabbit
Out of my wetted knuckle, by a copse
Where a tawny owl was enquiring.
Suddenly it swooped up, splaying its pinions
Into my face, taking me for a post.

Pastor Grovell writes as follows.....

I am often asked to interpret the Ten Commandments as they seem sometimes a bit out of date and irrelevant (and hard to understand by some of the more ******** folks). So here goes with the update we use in our own godly congregation. These are my revised and corrected commandments.  The originals are in the beloved King James version but where that is unclear I quote a more modern version too to assist those of you who are more or less illiterate. In the bible, the commandments are unaccompaned by the punishments you will get if you disobey them so I have updated that too, according to STRICT biblical scholarship.

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1st Commandment: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me". This seems quite unequivocal to me but of course it was written BEFORE Jesus came to save us so here is the new version:

PG's NEW NUMBER 1: WORSHIP ONLY GOD (INCLUDING JESUS WHO IS PART OF GOD ANYWAY) & DO IT FREQUENTLY OR GOD WILL CRUSH YOU!

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2nd Commandment: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

That seems a bit wordy to me and there is a bit of overlap with Number 1! In any case, it's a bit out of date as not many people worship idols, giant earthworms or fish these days. Perhaps a modern update would include not worshipping the TV set!

PG's NEW NUMBER 2: DO NOT WORSHIP THE TV SET OR ANYTHING SIMILAR OR GOD WILL BE VERY ANNOYED INDEED AND WILL PUNISH YOU AND ALL YOUR DESCENDANTS & THEIR DESCENDANTS TOO SO WATCH OUT ALL YOU HEATHEN COUCH POTATOES!

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3rd Commandment: "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain." Again a bit long-winded, and the vain bit will confuse some people.

PG's NEW NUMBER 3: DO NOT BLASPHEME OR GOD WILL CRUSH YOU IN AN INCREDIBLY PAINFUL WAY & SLOWLY AS WELL!

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4th Commandment: "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work; But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it."

This is a difficult one to observe nowadays, what with Sunday opening at the shopping mall. The solution seems to be that non-Christians, Jews and Muslims can work to serve us whilst we go shopping. It shows why God created heathens and other infidels so they can sell godly people bibles, hymnals and religious artefacts on the Sabbath, even though they will probably go to Hell themselves as a result. And the bit about animals not working on Sundays seems pointless today so we'll skip that section.

PG's NEW NUMBER 4: WORK HARD FOR SIX DAYS A WEEK INCLUDING SATURDAYS AND THEN HAVE A NICE REST ON SUNDAYS BUT GET IN A LOT OF PRAYING ON SUNDAY OR YOU WILL BE PUNISHED IMMENSELY BY GOD!

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5th Commandment: "Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee."

Seems clear enough; particular the 2nd bit which people forget. This is particularly important as people live much longer nowadays and often old folks have to be put into a home which can be expensive, but God wants us to do it. Also, do not skimp on the private facilities - do you really want your old wizened parents to share a bathroom with other incontinents? No I don't think you do. Also, one must remember that a lot of people are ******* and don't have the vaguest idea who their father was. Often the mother has no idea either, filthy ****.

PG's NEW NUMBER 5: RESPECT YOUR PARENTS NO MATTER HOW MUCH IT COSTS OR GOD WILL SHORTEN YOUR OWN LIFE AS A PUNISHMENT & YOU WILL SUFFER A LOT! IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHO YOUR PARENTS ARE, YOU ARE A ******* AND WILL GO TO HELL.

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6th Commandment: "Thou shalt not ****." This one is a real problem for so many of us! What should we do if a mugger comes and tries to rob us? What should we do if someone threatens to **** and **** our womenfolk? What if heathens attack our nation? What about the inalienable American right to bear arms and **** unarmed protesters? What about the British right to rule over inferior races and shoot rebels? I think God was insufficiently insightful here, so my version is quite a radical improvement.

PG's NEW NUMBER 6: DO NOT **** PEOPLE UNLESS IT IS NECESSARY OR IF THEY ARE BURGLING *******!

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7th Commandment: "Thou shalt not commit adultery."This is OK as far as it goes but it is totally inadequate to deal with the amount of ***-SIN which is about the place in the modern world, so I have expanded this to deal with the problem. Also remember that King James was a rampant and blatant sodomite and pervert and so maybe had this one censored in his version of the GOOD BOOK to cover his own back, so to speak.

PG's NEW NUMBER 7: DO NOT COMMIT ANY ***-SINS INCLUDING UNMARRIED FORNICATION, EXCESSIVE FRENCH KISSING, HEAVY PETTING, ******* (MUTUAL AND/OR SOLITARY), ADULTERY, *******, BUGGERY, ******, HOMOSEXUAL ACTS OF ALL TYPES INCLUDING LESBIANISM OF ANY SORT, *******-READING OR THINKING FILTHY ***-THOUGHTS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES OR YOU WILL BURN IN HELLFIRE FOR EVER AND EVER WITH THE MOST AWFUL AGONIES, AND ALSO MINIMIZE ALL LEGAL MARITAL *** TO OCCASIONS WHEN YOU WISH TO PROPAGATE AND KEEP IT BRIEF & IN THE DARK EVEN THEN!

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8th Commandment: "Thou shalt not steal." This one seems OK to me, with a bit of modernization.

PG's NEW NUMBER 8: YOU MUST NOT STEAL OR MUG OR ROB OR BURGLARIZE OR YOU WILL BE PUNISHED UTTERLY & VERY EXTENSIVELY BY GOD IN ALL HIS MIGHTY POWER!

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9th Commandment: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour." This is a bit too narrow as I think non-neighbours and maybe even foreigners should be included as well. Also there needs to be a reminder of the dreadful punishment liars and falsifiers face.

PG's NEW NUMBER 9: DO NOT ACCUSE ANYONE AT ALL FALSELY AND DON'T TELL ANY LIES EITHER OR GOD WILL PUNISH YOU REALLY APPALLINGLY & YOU WILL SHRIEK IN AGONY FOR EVER!

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10th Commandment: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ***, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's." This one really is totally out-of-date and inadequate. It should apply to everyone and not just neighbours. Also, how many people can afford servants or keep oxen? And the "***" bit is open to obscene ***-SIN misinterpretation and blasphemous sneering by wicked ***-SINNERS. So this needs a complete re-write to bring it into the 21st century and to guide godly people into the way of righteousness. And some of the modern translations of the Bible are even worse, e.g. "Do not desire another man's house; do not desire his wife, his slaves, his cattle, his donkeys, or anything else that he owns." How about if you wish to sell your own house and move to a nicer one - what is wrong with that? How about if you wish to sell your low-grade animals and buy better ones? What is this ******* obsession with donkeys and ***** - sheep can be equally tempting to s degenerate ******* ***-SINNER. So I go for a nice simple revision which covers most eventualities:

PG's NEW NUMBER 10: DON'T BE JEALOUS OF OTHER PEOPLE'S BETTER FORTUNE, MAYBE THEY DESERVE IT & YOU ARE INFERIOR; STICK WITH WHAT YOU HAVE NO MATTER HOW GROTTY IT IS OR GOD WILL PUNISH YOU MORE THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE! AND KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF THE LIVESTOCK OR YOU WILL SUFFER APPALLINGLY IN DEEPEST HELL WITH RED HOT POKERS UP YOUR ****** FOR ETERNITY.

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So there you have it: Pastor Peter Grovell's recommendations for a life without sin. But remember to pray every single day to Jesus and under no circumstances confuse the wooden images of Jesus which the Catholics use with the real living invisible Jesus. If you fail to do what God wants, he will be left with no option but to condemn you to eternal Hellfire.

And a final point: God did not hand down to Moses any instructions about alcohol. Did He say, "Thou shalt not have a pint of beer!" NO! Did He say, "Thou shalt not have a bottle of wine!" NO! Did He even rule out a shot or two of gin, whisky, ***, brandy or any other alcoholic refreshments? NO He did not! He even transformed water into wine on several occasions, which shows he liked a glass or two down his local Jewish "pub". So there is no harm in drinking alcohol but only if it does not lead you to do ***-SIN, ******, ****, THEFT, BUGGERY, ***-COVETING or IDOL-WORSHIP!

Pastor Peter Grovell D.D., C.S.M.F.,
Founder, Ultra-Strict Reformed Church of Jesus.

all things are useful, bulbs
bring light , denote ideas,
good intentions, spent,
collected.

cotton hankies, frayed hold the books,
yet those with nylon, stretch the skin
resulting in red and soreness.

shy away from dangerous commodities,
use the best, those tradtional artefacts
which are gentle on your soul, bring light.

wipe your nose clean.

sbm.

today we have added notes for your interest.

A HANDKERCHIEF (also called handkercher or hanky) is a form of a kerchief, typically a hemmed square of thin fabric that can be carried in the pocket or purse, and which is intended for personal hygiene purposes such as wiping one’s hands or face, or blowing one’s nose. A handkerchief is also sometimes used as a purely decorative accessory in a suit pocket. When used as an accessory to a suit, a handkerchief is known as a POCKET SQUARE. There are a wide variety of ways to fold a pocket square, ranging from the austere to the flamboyant.

The material of a handkerchief can be symbolic of the social-economic class of the user, not only because some materials are more expensive, but because some materials are more absorbent and practical for those who use a handkerchief for more than style. Handkerchiefs can be made of cotton, cotton-synthetic blend, synthetic fabric, silk, or linen.

Historically, white handkerchiefs have been used in place of a white flag to indicate surrender or a flag of truce; in addition to waving away sailors from port. King Richard II of England, who reigned from 1377 to 1399, is widely believed to have invented the cloth handkerchief, as surviving documents written by his courtiers describe his use of square pieces of cloth to wipe his nose.

Let me tell you a secret
I am bored

I'm bored of corporate America flashing their endless subliminal ******* in my face every second
So much so that sometimes without me realising I adopt their accent and mimic and quote what they want me to think and say

I'm bored of reality TV
Of keeping up with the Kardashians and how their name fits so nicely in my mouth like a chunk of poison apple

I'm bored
Of skipping past adverts of skinny black children starving to watch skinny white children starving themselves pretty
I'm scared that I'm the only one whose minds those adverts cling to,
I can only do so much and I can't even trust that I'm helping

I'm bored
Of seeing perfect white girls on TV in their perfect clothes with their perfect hair and their perfect families in their perfect churches with their perfect god who somehow claimed dominance over all the other gods, over my gods
and called me backwards for worshipping the sun and the moon for giving me life and light as opposed to a man who may or may not have existed who they claim split seas

I am bored
I'm bored of being the supporting role
never being pretty enough
but being hot for an Asian girl
being told 'when I think of a beautiful Asian girl I think of you'
being asked 'what are you?', 'no where are you really from?' 'are you gunna go back?' 'were you born on international waters?' Always followed with a 'If you don't mind me asking',  I do,
Let me tell you about the waters that broke and brought me here on this home soil,
let me tell you about the struggle of my mother and the mothers before me and the lightness of being dark skinned in a community of dark skinned beings,
let me tell you about my heritage not like it's a story in a child's book like or a myth, it is real history,
let me tell you about the struggle of my people about the beauty of our most simple words and minds,
let me tell you about how our bodies moulded from the dust and sand around us is no less than yours,
let me tell you what it means to be nothing in your eyes.

We are the products of your mishandling, broken artefacts caged in a glass box with a steel rod stuck up our **** to keep up still in a viewing room in the media's museum
keep us down and keep us quiet keep us looking brutal try to tear us apart from the inside,

Try and tell me I'm a terrorist not a freedom fighter for daring to breathe to speak.
Try to blotch out your wrongdoings by scapegoating us as a region as a religion I don't even belong to as a pigment in a skin colour I can do nothing about I couldn't change it even if I wanted to
Just wait and see how we react

I'm bored of your Islamophobia
I'm bored of you telling me to hate myself
I'm bored of trying to be middle man for two cultures whose only real difference are climate
So *******
**** both of you
Excuse my English
No my Punjabi.
No
I'm done with your negotiations and attempts at tolerance I'm done with trying to blend you both together within me I can't be what either of you want me to be
I can't do this
I won't be a part of your glamourised butchery
Anymore

You spoke longed words,
artefacts dusted with time
and careful caution.

We fall into sleep
in a haze of tangled limbs
and your lips kissing my neck.

With each of your breaths
I rise, feeling your heart shout -
finally.

IX

Oh this gradual coming together as sleep lifts away from bodies resting just apart but then a little turn on the pillow knees touch there is the slightest kiss of a nose a mingling of feet hands may rest atop a thigh and touch experimentally This is such bliss all consuming no thought but each body’s press and caress so slightly so gently given until hands and limbs and kisses and the dearest stroking fills us to the brim with that longing which only the deeper kiss can quench Afterwards we watch from our attic bedroom leaves departing their trees

X

The steep steps and Doric pillars eight in all gather us into an entranced gloom only to spill us out into the light and space of galleries filled with Cyprian artefacts an owl with a removable head more porcelain than even your great aunt could look at but in a corner there were these bowls from Syria 12C and earlier Michael Cardew could have thrown and patterned but didn’t One in Iranian green inscribed thus blessing prosperity glory grace joy happiness security and long life to the owner  nothing more surely ever to be wished for ever to be wanted

XI

My Chinese heroine has a soulmate: Jilia’s deer in flight across a page of Somerset Soft White and Tengin mould oh the verse of Hafiz 14C Sufi mystic flowing into the body of this running beast Rejoice you lonely seeker of the scented path out of the wilderness the perfumed deer has come and there was more in different hands paper parchment poems exquisitely rendered into living words In a frame Goethe’s leaves of the Gingo Biloba stuck to his letter of love to married Marianne This leaf from a tree in the East has been given to my garden

XII

Captivating in beauty glowing silvery-white petals flutter down to lay a blanket of snow beneath the flowering trees and miraculously they did and more to make us wonder that negative space could be so powerfully wrought Hiroshige the master in his element of the winter snows eloquent landscapes figures on the Edo to Kyoto road the detail of raised up clogs and warm layered garments of a Geisha walking out with her maid the stone blue waters the pale reflecting skies the delicate embossing of waves and the flow of hillsides the ukiyo-e woodblock prints pictures of the floating world

XIII

Wearing purple and red your near to Advent colours grace this table we lunch at before a final walk through the city full of our time here amongst the towers and chapels and more history and art than we can manage for the time being Again and always whelmed over by your beauty seen against the press and clutter the clustering in the peopled streets the bicycled roads and in this one o’clock restaurant’s clamour how is it that my eyes are wholly on you my ears only hearing your sweet voice my fingers reaching out to touch you again?

The slant-eyed
giant hunter
people of Tsul Kalu
came in peace

To become
the central universe
Cherokee white elders
hereditary priests
teaching peace

Winged rattlesnake
constellation
of time untime

Singing the death song

Sacred spirits
animal, plant, herb and tree

The wheel
what is, will be

(The ancient Chinese were
the greatest astronomers.

Later in the 1400's their
massive treasure fleets
mapped the World

The Yuki, Navajo, Apache,
Yuchis, Ming **, Melungeons,
Shawnee (Oceanye **), Sioux,
Cree Ojibuwa and Moskoke
have Chinese ancestors
some claimed to be Chinese

European explorers told of
elders speaking Chinese
ancient Chinese artefacts
and wrecked junks seen

History as taught might
be but a fairytale)

pigeons perch themselves preening
on marble fauns ambivalent to their
perch, while dark skinned men prowl;
seeking tourists (Americans) to sell
cheap novelty items, over priced, yet
bought to drive away the insistent
merchants; ignorant to the realization:
if you remain silent and don’t make eye
contact you will not forfeit your money...
merchants who ruin the peace and awe
of grand feats of sculpture—I know they
are human (on a base level)—craving
money to make a living, yet there are
many (more respectable) professions…
their presence  crowds the already
crowded (streets and) piazzas—aggregates
of language babble—old women and men
meandering along waiting to die—hoping
it is true: the slower you move the faster
time flows—if not: to hell with relativity!
(should have put chips on more than one table)
can math really explain all?—or
is life more than abstract objects?
while the din of crowds palpitates my heart
making way for anxious calculations,
C— and I hurry pass to find some area
to give the artefacts the respect they deserve

Hairline cracks are breaking through
the slough I'm about to shed.
Dry and dysfunctional
as the neuron sac in my skull.

I'll change my hat and change my ammo
honeysuckle artillery polished,
waiting in my drawer.

Sliding an empty coffee mug
back and forth along a counter
like a puck preparing for a slapshot.

Paper matches in colourful books
pressed between the pages
found leaves for child arsonists.

Takeout boxes filled with poems
are sold as artefacts
Don't be silly, poetry comes in plastic bags,
not styrofoam.
To keep ideas hot, wrap them in tinfoil.
But don't forget to leave a hole at the top for steam
or your fresh concepts will get soggy.

Equipped with tennis *****,
spandex suits picket office blocks
standing on chairs and voicing nearly racist remarks
making health and safety inspectors nervous.

Out of control students
launch dictionaries out of third story windows,
donning 21st century masks.

I left my patience beside my keys, on the kitchen table.
Waiting in line for obsolete phone booths
as movie stars soundlessly mouth slang into a receiver.

Nearly responsible
nearly nine
nearly time for bed

I resolve again
that I’ll resolve more
but this time write it down.
Folding kamikaze paper planes
to hide behind park benches, fly into trees.
Let the sun fade the pencil crayon.
I can't run from this blasé gangrene that’s taken my toes.

my body is a tragedy
lined with fragmented artefacts
of a wartorn state
highlighted by shades of red
and lines of grey sadness

there is nothing like the pity
in the eyes of those trusted to provide aid
it sings a woeful song of healing and love
until you are okay to walk again

you become a symbol
of their service to society
and they move on to lands more beautiful
and planes much less devasted

you are left in the shadows
still broken but warmer than before
warmer despite the poison
you have been doused in called care

The skin at the bed of her nails shone, tight.
Forever healing, windows that rattle
With the changing of her moods.
Love was a locket, an heirloom
That insisted its presence
Upon her bedside table.
She could turn out every light
And it would still be there.
Steady metronome,
Lifeless thud,
Invasive thought.

The carpet gathered artefacts from late night walks.
Bad habits clung to the walls.
No pillow talk, only muffled strings,
Failed symphonies,
Conversations three years old:
Memories that play Chinese whispers
Across the faces in the ceiling.
Irregularity of breath,
Sleep comes, clothed in Zopiclone;
A mind that never rests.

Narcosis in the morning,
Nausea over dried toast,
Sweet flamenco on the radio,
But there is nothing to calm her bones.

The red wine cast last night’s shadow,
Hollow in the eyes, first hit of daylight,
First hit of nicotine
To prove she is still alive.
Anxiety: the ball and chain,
Always dragging her behind.
Living as a ghost,
The people at the bus-stop stare,
The traffic, the signs, the passers-by,
The doldrums in the headlines,
The rain upon her window;
The heart attack and vine.

Prescription pills in the afternoon
To get her through the day,
Until she can get her fix,
Have her fill,
And finally hide away.

The high-street parade comes alive after dark,
Lanterns on the lake, the fish-bowl
Of a small town, familiar tongues that roll;
Memorised anecdotes across the ashtray,
The lipstick on her teeth.
Clumsy in victory, each stumble confined
To look as if she has walked through life
Without ever missing a stride.

There is nowhere to breathe
But in the solitude of her insanity.
She paints the walls
To the colours of her moods:

Grey in the long, long winter,
Blue in the onset of June.

Once more I dream of Istanbul where light perfumes and Eastern tunes conspire to set my sleep on fire
in my dreams this city seems to sparkle in the evening sky and as I wander by Topkapi,
I see treasures in the architecture
and jewels in the very stone that builds into the home of artefacts and in times gone by, this building was the East of many men who desired to steal what was within.

I always dream of Istanbul when my life is not as full as I think it ought to be
and I see it as a mental therapy that helps me sort the wheat from chaff,and
belly dancing girls who laugh and serve up raki , I see pearls that peep from midriffs bare,
a kind of reiki for the mind which I don't mind at all nor care if this is not politically correct
in my dreams,I elect the law stands silent to one side so I can ride the currents of the night that flow in cities of delight.

I wake to drizzle,one more grizzle of the day in which I get up out of bed but should really stay and replay Istanbul once more.
In the palm of my left hand I find a pearl (which is not good) a memento of the Eastern Hollywood
tonight, I'll have to go back there and find the girl who shared this treasure and has stolen at her leisure
my heart away.

There is strength here.
Built in glaciers older than countries
Known only to cold seas
And the animals that thrive in the face of difficulty.
There is beauty here.
Reflected in water droplets that tear the light apart
We gaze upon the scattered remains and declare it a rainbow.
We're not wrong.
There is anger here.
You only have to watch the way the volcanoes erupt in fury
Or the water-bound tsunami who reaches for land but is banished to sea.
There is pain here.
Watch the way the Earth shudders, and the ground tries to hold itself together
And oil runs from water.
We call them immiscible.
There is violence here.
It inhabits the living and the still,
Tornadoes chase and throw and break
And guns scream
And the prey cry
And comrades become competitors
There is sorrow here.
You can hear it in the breaking of a voice from topic not age
And the way the rain cries down windows,
In the whimper of a sleeping child.
There is joy here.
You see it in the songs of whales and the chatter of dolphins
And the way the stars twinkle contentedly,
Find it in the breathy huff of a baby's first laugh.
Look for it in the secret smile that wasn't meant to be seen.
There is coldness here.
Not just the kind that makes exhibits of mammoths
But there is something in the look of a bigot,
The indifference of an eagle,
Something in the way ash falls slow and steady as it watches lava desolate a city.
There is life here.
In this world we do not limit living to survival
And we have a way of finding new ways to look at our world.
And though the mountain does not breathe it moves constantly.
Though leaves that left their trees are not green, they dance on the wind.
And even when we are gone we remain in memories and dreams
And artefacts, or speeches, or actions.
There are many problems here.
But we're trying to fix them.
This is a planet worth fixing.

When I woke up to my sobriety, I found the people drunk
I tried to love and be romantic, I appeared as a punk
They say there are many fish in the sea, maybe the ship has sunk
Maybe the wine spread all over and left them all drunk...

And now to eat fish you have to drown it, submerge it into alcohol
Having no money to purchase alcohol leaves you in a dark cage; without sol
In this cage you attempt to distill yourself so to love again but no one comes along
You are left with melodies blue; lonely songs...

Sing your heart out until the tears gush
You are alone, no one there to brush
The tears fall down on the hard ground with vehement boiling touch
And you see yourself, pitiful and wounded hoping for lightning
Praying for the hope to grow like flowers of spring

But you cannot wait, you must get laid
So you find a means to an end and get paid
Only to have them laid
Trying to play on both sides of the fence to find the balance
But you lose a sense of purity, you've been played
You were falling in line with the rest of the herd
But this doesn't heal the places where you've been hurt
But sail on, you go for there is no one to hold
You try not to think about your broken heart or blackened soul
You submerge yourself in the loudness nonsensical and girls coiling poles
Wherever you look you find the hollow
you feel alive only when asleep for dreams reel you in the deep
You try your luck at hotties and find them shallow
You are stuck, half fastened and cuffed
So you begin to investigate the truth
you find myth and evil facts
you search for magic you see long-bearded men with pointed hats
you learn that the participants of the game are unaware of the game
And in time you identify the source
Where the strings of rivers are
where the squashes and foams of waterfalls reach
as you witness manipulation down the coral reef
who are these men, malevolent men or thieves?
Stealing pure bliss and romance
Denying the chance for love to soar to mountain top and have chieftain stance
and then you're back at the mirror...
You see the dirt on your hands
that you aren't as innocent as righteousness demands
so you think back to when you've been wrong
All the lies you've told, the people you've robbed
the hesitations, the sudden stops
The denials, delusions and proud decisions
And you find comfort in the fact that there is no perfection
Only moments just, and bonds of trust
overshadowing the appeals to heal when bowing to lust...

And that's when you know that you continue to journey to the beautiful
Cowards would have no claws, to hold on, the fake perfect people no flaws, to hide their true nature
At the center of it all, ****** and coarse artefacts, all you think of -
is what you've seen. You must be mad if it's not a dream.

You row with oars, on a small humble boat, you start anew
knowing that the wise can be fools
and that the minds of fools can be liberated with learning tools.

Podium

That’s me on the totem pole,
with the face paints and cigarettes.
The smoke burns your eyes.

That’s me on the pedestal,
ears to ground and eyes in the clouds.
The rain soaked your skin.

That’s me on the platform,
with the rucksack and treasured artefacts,
The timetables melted your mind.

That’s me on the podium,
soaked in sweat, medal around my neck.
The track broke your heart.

That’s me at the finish line baby,
maybe,
we could go back to the start.