In pubs with bar flies.
Kronenburg, Becks, Carling, Stella Artois and Fosters,
Dancing in our blood,
Utterly inured; we are endured by all:
The solipsism most profound.

And when Johnnie, Jack and Jameson join,
The sentimental and the morbid
Are conjoined.

And ****!
In the custody of beer halls,
The shadows that draw, fade,
And calls – e’en Death’s! -- are put on hold!
No time; instead, before the last, another pint.

For in this hallowed inn,
Drinking what’s in the glass,
And espousing the glow within,
Cares regress.

No woes,
Or loaded psyches,
For when the pressure builds,
The best: a jet of yellow bliss,
Relieves the pain,
On Armitage Shanks' porcelain.

Two fictional characters
walk into a bar

in Malta
( * Marsaxlokk - to be precise ).

"To...be....tooo beee. . ."
stammers Hamlet.

"Oh fer Gawd's sake...two beers!"
J. Alfred Prufrock snaps.

"You really milk that
"To be or not..." thingy."
J.A.P. scolds Hamlet.

"Tsk...tsk!" Hamlet tsk tsks.
( sticking his tongue out ).

Two Cisks are plonked
down before them.

"No...I am not Prince Hamlet or
was meant to be..!"
J.A.P. quotes him self.

"Awww fer Jaysus sake...loooook
just for the fun of it...the gas of it

we swop
texts!"

Hamlet interrupts Prufrock's
protestations.

"Ohhhh....o.....K?"
Prufrock ponders somewhat doubtfully.

And, so:
Hamlet the Dane

( for yea it is indeed he)
dares

(1) to eat a peach (2) wear the bottoms of his white
flannel trousers rolled (3) parts his hair behind even

(4) dares
to aks

the overwhelming question

"( Oh, do not ask, what is it! )"

Oh & (5) gets to hear
( ** ** ** )

"...the mermaids singing...."

Prufrock "Hum...."
kills the king.

Becomes the king.

Beds.
Weds
Ophelia.

" Buzz buzz...come come..go...go!"

"It's a very foreshortened
Hamlet...I know

but - what the heck!

"See..? slurps Hammy
". . . now, that wasn't so bad...was it?"

"Another Cisk?"
"Naw...I'll have a Becks!"

"Jaysus Prufrock now
...what's up?"

"Don't know..."mutters J.A.P.
wearing a frothy beer moustache.

"HURRY UP PLEASE...IT'S TIME!"
roars the barman in Maltese.

"I can connect nothing
with...nothing!"
Prufrock almost sobs.

"Like that time
on Margate sands..."

Hamlet cuts him curtly off.

"Don't even go...there!"

"But I still get that squirmy
...you know...feeling

we are just
fragments of

the imagination of
some *long haired Irish poet

sunning himself by
the waters of

the shimmering waters of
a Sliema hotel pool

...up up in the clouds!

Hamlet sighs.

"Yeah, me too
spooky...innit?"

Hamlet looks behind him
checking for what isn't

there. . .

"Ahhhh well, never mind eh?"

Prufrock attempts an attempt
at being cheerful.

Fails miserably.

"Let us go, then
you and I...

when the evening is spread out
against the sky..."

Like a patient etherised upon a table!
they both sing outta time and outta tune

stumbling one
into the other.

A long hair Irish poet
smiles as he watches them

go.

"Għaġġel fil-għoli...wasal iż-żmien JEKK JOGĦĠBOK!"
the barman roars.

NOTES

Pronounced MAR SA SCHLOCK. Those Maltese Xs being really SHs in disguise.

* Pronounced CHISK but the new barman is obviously new to the language and pronounces it TSK which makes him think that is what our two fictional characters are ordering.

Not to be confused with mobile texting but rather the literary texts of which both of them owe their existence.

* The play bounded in a nutshell as it were.

One Donall Gearld Oliver Denis Dempsey is a good example of this sort.

* The No. 1 song all over Heaven...beating Sparks THE NO. 1 SONG ALL OVER HEAVEN  to the top spot.

** "Għaġġel fil-għoli...wasal iż-żmien JEKK JOGĦĠBOK!" Once again the new Irish barman hasn't got his tonsils around the Maltese lingo and comes out with this terrible mish mash of the typical barman's cry.

Hence loathèd Melancholy
  Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born,
In Stygian Cave forlorn
  ‘Mongst horrid shapes, and shreiks, and sights unholy.
Find out som uncouth cell,
  Where brooding darknes spreads his jealous wings,
And the night-Raven sings;
  There, under Ebon shades, and low-brow’d Rocks,
As ragged as thy Locks,
  In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.
But com thou Goddes fair and free,
In Heav’n ycleap’d Euphrosyne,
And by men, heart-easing Mirth,
Whom lovely Venus, at a birth
With two sister Graces more
To Ivy-crownèd Bacchus bore;
Or whether (as som Sager sing)
The frolick Wind that breathes the Spring,
Zephir with Aurora playing,
As he met her once a Maying,
There on Beds of Violets blew,
And fresh-blown Roses washt in dew,
Fill’d her with thee a daughter fair,
So bucksom, blith, and debonair.
  Haste thee nymph, and bring with thee
Jest and youthful Jollity,
Quips and Cranks, and wanton Wiles,
Nods, and Becks, and Wreathèd Smiles,
Such as hang on ****’s cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrincled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Com, and trip it as ye go
On the light fantastick toe,
And in thy right hand lead with thee,
The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty;
And if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crue
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreprovèd pleasures free;
To hear the Lark begin his flight,
And singing startle the dull night,
From his watch-towre in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
Then to com in spight of sorrow,
And at my window bid good morrow,
Through the Sweet-Briar, or the Vine,
Or the twisted Eglantine.
While the **** with lively din,
Scatters the rear of darknes thin,
And to the stack, or the Barn dore,
Stoutly struts his Dames before,
Oft list’ning how the Hounds and horn
Chearly rouse the slumbring morn,
From the side of som **** Hill,
Through the high wood echoing shrill.
Som time walking not unseen
By Hedge-row Elms, on Hillocks green,
Right against the Eastern gate,
Wher the great Sun begins his state,
Rob’d in flames, and Amber light,
The clouds in thousand Liveries dight.
While the Plowman neer at hand,
Whistles ore the Furrow’d Land,
And the Milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the Mower whets his sithe,
And every Shepherd tells his tale
Under the Hawthorn in the dale.
Streit mine eye hath caught new pleasures
Whilst the Lantskip round it measures,
Russet Lawns, and Fallows Gray,
Where the nibling flocks do stray,
Mountains on whose barren brest
The labouring clouds do often rest:
Meadows trim with Daisies pide,
Shallow Brooks, and Rivers wide.
Towers, and Battlements it sees
Boosom’d high in tufted Trees,
Wher perhaps som beauty lies,
The Cynosure of neighbouring eyes.
Hard by, a Cottage chimney smokes,
From betwixt two agèd Okes,
Where Corydon and Thyrsis met,
Are at their savory dinner set
Of Hearbs, and other Country Messes,
Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses;
And then in haste her Bowre she leaves,
With Thestylis to bind the Sheaves;
Or if the earlier season lead
To the tann’d Haycock in the Mead,
Som times with secure delight
The up-land Hamlets will invite,
When the merry Bells ring round,
And the jocond rebecks sound
To many a youth, and many a maid,
Dancing in the Chequer’d shade;
And young and old com forth to play
On a Sunshine Holyday,
Till the live-long day-light fail,
Then to the Spicy Nut-brown Ale,
With stories told of many a feat,
How Faery Mab the junkets eat,
She was pincht, and pull’d the sed,
And he by Friars Lanthorn led
Tells how the drudging Goblin swet,
To ern his Cream-bowle duly set,
When in one night, ere glimps of morn,
His shadowy Flale hath thresh’d the Corn
That ten day-labourers could not end,
Then lies him down the Lubbar Fend,
And stretch’d out all the Chimney’s length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength;
And Crop-full out of dores he flings,
Ere the first **** his Mattin rings.
Thus don the Tales, to bed they creep,
By whispering Windes soon lull’d asleep.
  Towred Cities please us then,
And the busie humm of men,
Where throngs of Knights and Barons bold,
In weeds of Peace high triumphs hold,
With store of Ladies, whose bright eies
Rain influence, and judge the prise
Of Wit, or Arms, while both contend
To win her Grace, whom all commend.
There let ***** oft appear
In Saffron robe, with Taper clear,
And pomp, and feast, and revelry,
With mask, and antique Pageantry,
Such sights as youthfull Poets dream
On Summer eeves by haunted stream.
Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonsons learnèd Sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespear fancies childe,
Warble his native Wood-notes wilde,
And ever against eating Cares,
Lap me in soft Lydian Aires,
Married to immortal verse
Such as the meeting soul may pierce
In notes, with many a winding bout
Of linckèd sweetnes long drawn out,
With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running;
Untwisting all the chains that ty
The hidden soul of harmony.
That Orpheus self may heave his head
From golden slumber on a bed
Of heapt Elysian flowres, and hear
Such streins as would have won the ear
Of Pluto, to have quite set free
His half regain’d Eurydice.
These delights, if thou canst give,
Mirth with thee, I mean to live.

This poem is about a night out on the beer which almost went horribly
wrong



I put out my hand and touched the face of God,
. . .bit of a surprise, really, I was expecting my Hod.
Lying on the floor, thinking it was my bed,
Coated in *****, face down, arms spread.
I've ****** my trousers, shat my keks,
A natural reaction, to twenty three pints of Becks.
Stumbling through Cambridge, I can't find the Site,
I know it's around here, first left or third right. . .
Crashing through hedges, I've forgot how to walk,
I can't ask for directions, I'm unable to talk.
So, I'll go no further, here I'll sit tight,
Sneak back to the caravan, when dawn sheds her light.

I didn't feel the cold, the damp creeping through,
Best shirt, Purple Chino's and I'm missing a shoe.
It's my dancing outfit, for impressing and posing,
Ideal for the Nightclub, not alfresco dozing.
The temperature plummets, I'm giving it "Big Zeds"
Dreams of warm women and petal-strewn beds,
Breathing gets shorter, body starts to shut down,
I'm sweating buckets, beginning to drown.

Ronnie, the Night-watchman, knows I must be in trouble,
In an hour and a half, I'm due back on the shovel,
To keep the lads happy, with bricks and fresh Pug
And barrows of concrete, poured into trenches I dug.
Under an Elm Tree, thirty yards from the job,
Ronnie catches sight of this prone Northern yob.
He doesn't panic, just yet, he knows what to do,
He's seen it before, when a body turns blue.
Those First-Aid Classes, when he told us he was fishing. . .
Vital signs are checked, I'm in the Recovery Position.
Ron holds my nose, lifts my head off the floor,
. . .then he kissed me , in a way , that I'd never been kissed before.

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It's killin' me,

the way you always
heed my silent becks
to the cat's cradle
for the dim-dusked
shimmyings we do,

for the middle of the courts
hopscotchin' we improv
in the
catacorner criss-crosses
we continue to let
splash
in the middle of our
bashing pool.

stakes are
brimstoned
high
this time-

higher than the dizzy chicks
with flower magic
stick-on things
not really covering their ******* -

their faith's got them
grinning down
proudly
to the matrix hubbub below,
from the drooping shoulders
of their guy bits
in matching flowers

('cause we're all one here
yeah? - yeah!).

tonka tricks
litterin' my walkway -
slinkin' around,
tryna play on with
the big cats -

instead,

just trippin' up my
flutter game -

chill out.

i mean,

i'm not complainin'
'bout the mess your
charcoal lashes keep
leavin'
after payin their
naughty boy dues
to them round things
just one step down -
makin' love to
the apples bobbin'
in cheeky
conversation.

i've kinda got this
cheshire thing goin' on -
the way my smile swells
too slowly for you -
showin' off whiffs of
those secret things

the ones i only hold onto to
to keep rattlin' your cage
with the big toys
i keep tellin' you
you can't have.

but
you keep
swimmin' in that pool
of excessive *****
traps
thinkin' there's a way
to ****** the magic
carpet from beneath my
bottom,

believing some dumbly
that your charcoal
is the only fire starter i'll ever want
markin' up my agenda.

you're screamin' a bit too loud
now, Cubby -
readin' to me the words
i can't see written across
my face.

I can't see 'em
without a mirror,
though i can feel the letters
being etched into my skin
with every flipped card
i wasn't
necessarily
tryin' to flip.

but, honey
i got cosmic dust
stored in my fingertips

a special
spunky mix
i like to throw down on
in the kitchen with
the sandman's concoctions -

plan A and plan B
it's a fight just to see in -
need to be prepared
for whatever is comin'.

though you ain't snatched
the rug yet,
i'm lollygaggin' on the
tip of the edge

my carpet's doin this
rufflin' thing -
and i'm slippin'.

you got me
colonizin' your corduroys
draggin' my stirred and ragged heart
behind me -
too sturdy and ambitious
in its wild-hearted
persistence.

gonna bust open
this fruit bloom, here
if it takes me all day
and all night.

I am
an ant,
looking for salvation
in big places.

Doubled back on Becks you serenade the *** and spit
A flash like love, the sternum above and puzzling the puzzle
To which ribs fit
And O to Adam, to the man who knew it first.
Then to plumb sleep between the purples
Where the counting is the worst

I have no bills for *****. My teenage dreams are shattered.
My presence in this thin veil of life depends on if I'm hammered.
But I have no dollars, no coins or even checks.
I can't buy any blue moon, ***** or any becks.

My addiction to acceptance leaves hanging dry.
I need to drink anything, wheat, potato or rye.
The grain doesn't matter, the proof is nothing real.
I'll make it up in quantity, I might even steal.

My friends are all awaiting. My reputation still on hold.
I need some money for my *****, oh wait, no I don't.
I'm not that insecure, and I have not an addiction.
But **** it man, I want to drink, and money is an affliction.

—To me, a dream, in which she came: Mistwalker
—And I, a vessel, rose in her womb, bear this, to me, a dream.

Say, on this, untoward, the spiced breezes with salt
Came, if all, the light enkindled like whetted steel
Morning star through the mournful faces above
Rejected, yes, by their mothers, of past and now,
A cold came ashore, ancient besieged accounts
Wilted the pregnant vines of yesterday, sure to
The next, as gods turn to myths, stories to the dying young.

She stared, of memorials in print
Off into the terrible morning, gossamer filament
Swaddled at the breast, a tight form slack
In the great divorce of sea and sky,
Standing, contemplative, shouts and echoes crack
Unheard, discarded: sweets to the profane
Sedately, to that dark curve: a canvas was lain
Adrift on aether, drowned bones of Atlas,
Emerge on drift of the everlasting, there at world’s end
In curved states between:
Hell broods in the burgs of ice, Providence
Forsaken of she who becks on the entombing sands.
Thus, prayers come whetted
With none to brush the stray hairs from those astray
Men conceiving valleys, their mountains,
Structures, are we, to eternally pass the course of solitude
Under cross-borne tuitions, marbled elders’ auspice
Embossed of the very tongue spoken
Once in high infant chambers, Omnis Ipse?

I, too, was born beneath the hero’s breath,
Taken by the glimmering sheath and steeds
To the awful wiles of merciful truth,
She to the enemy of standing beyond, within.

If ever a summer had kissed the city where cold descends
Or snow reminisced stars in the eve,
I, I—she hurts in the mists—have only tasted, bitter,
Sketches, between them, the finitude of their light,
That of warmth, of compassion
Man fall distracted from, therefrom grace,
A beast shed of its other back, hubris of its wing—
Am I the maiden of its song? But it’s maiden?—
One season, ever-aged, harbinger of this isolation
What is the ****** ewe years of searching for I,
Is sacrifice, thus becomes the phantom, the slave
Of that distant black, the sullied mark, consumptive
Unremitting arms of purpose, of man’s calling.

These hands are spelled, veined by charcoal dust
Adversarial oaths kept close, of myself, in idle play
Where what I will, wills but a will
Where none are to come, but the mast of a hero
Whom she is tied, of those winds
Seminal of her words—I shall be the breath
The cusp of every storm which blights the high waves,
The knife of sheer walls of stone,
Moments of oblivion which rend the heroes, ill-stayed.

Eyes burned holes for the starlight of awe
Pouring o’er the wastes of her paper skin
But, that she overturns the rueful words
Again, again, again, cycled in the oceans,
Where gardens of kelp revile the current
Strands, becoming of the arms she wishes to hold—
To write myself out of comprehension
Is to risk the very marrow has I obeisant,
These lusts of the greater body, those of the Mother
Clad in jewels and customs, as wave desires sky;
A journal I’ve become.

Mist came, froth, the spiral of wars inside the heart
They inveigled her, to my dismay, to the blind air
No longer, the sweet tine of imperfection of voice,
Inspired of spoken word, recent memory took leave,
Ambivalent joys came raining on a pen,
Reluctant to write homage to freedom,
Caught in the morphless air, calcified transformations
Odes to let go. But.

Which beer is mine, the Becks or the Heineken?
A ***** mauve has descended on the night, and
on the town a dank black silence, and I am sat here
folded like a peace crane. But I want to move.
I feel an itch to find someone, any resident up
for grabs - I can’t be the only one awake.
And my loved ones: if they worry, they worry; I’m
gone, but I am only looking for myself in another
form - the form of persons lost as I am, wandering
as I am through the lively dead-night. Which
baccy is mine, the amber leaf or the gold one?

Drown in sweetness, my end of days
To rest the restless
Sobriety assuage,
For when the chalice is all but full
And I have crushed,
Erotically and made dull,
The grapes beneath my palate wall.
The Rush! The Calm!
Serenity!
She cries her tears along the edge
And becks me find no other,
Since I wail when clear as glass
She bids me fill another.
And I do, for I love you so,
For every moment is calm like
Ebbing tides,
As musical as the crashing surf,
And only made better with time
Oh, my vintage Divine.
With my darling on our repast
We sup on forgetting my sober past
And with it humor abounds.
My broken heart wet with kisses
Losing count of imbibed vintages
We invite the presence of my Spirit’d friends
Make light the wrongs by night’s end.
So why think at length of misty futures,
When all I need are distilled, blush sutures
Or of a past, beyond control,
When the light of day it thusly stole?
I do not drink with infinite hers
I drink them all away.
Now, with me, I call us we
Is my vintage Divine.
We drink, we laugh,
But she departs,
I was yours and you were mine
(everything is turning and meshed with time!)
Now I’m befouled with poisonous past
And on my tongue is left a stain
Which drugs my better faculties
In the hated day,
The infinite hers,
This lack of drunken clarity.
Since sobriety proper is fruit of the vine
And all this terror in my sober mind
Can only be healed
By Spirit
By Wine,
Leave me lusting for the flight
In eua de vie: the water of life.

an alias
strange to think
it's the norm
with all this tech
it becks and moans
calling for a signature
beeps and drones
it's a figure
of how you'd like to be perceived
and a reflection of self perception
you churn out
for the world to see
and though the original
stated intent
has morphed beyond recognition,
beyond belief,
these days
it's just apart
of being

In the arrogant
Justice goes from body cavity to body cavity
They have code words for the love transfers

The drugs
Healthy languages for your clients


The alignment
Re alignment of open prison cells is happy
After the racial cleansing Nazis send themselves voluntarily to prison war with your starting lineup
I was just on drugs during a recession
Not on drugs anymore
There's prisoners running  
From warden employees

The purging of the ways they live
You can keep that stuff
They aren't me

I just had myself arrested and stopped
They don't change

**** tattoo people hide in mobile homes by city hall in thousand oaks

**** lesbian chick with ankle monitor clogs social services system while asking for help in super crimes

I'm naive about super criminal lesbians when coming off drugs
She still needing corrections
I just go with to behavioral health so she goes

It's best that she goes there

I'm not receiving health from her paperwork am I

The government might want to check on Katy becks whereabouts

Naive is just to get another day alive

How to deport **** Katy becks?
How do you spell back swazi thing?

It's on her face head area

There's jaded pornstar  chicks around in there
They bring the guys out sometimes and they grunt and pass steroids out

People species?
Oh well
Subject finished