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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They summons me.
Henry and
the chancery are trying to
dismantle me.

Treason's not the reason for this recall
to the great hall,
they want to quarter me,
hang and draw and slaughter me
I think I'd rather not see,
Henry
or the chancery.

Inequity,
dividing wealth from poverty which
breeds a new society or so
they keep on telling me.

They're all hell bent on making cuts,
shutting doors on those like me,
writing letters, can't you see
Henry and his chancery are
closing opportunity, destroying what
it is to be,
and to be is what it's all about.

I think yesterday is years away;
Between one and the other,
Between fathers and brothers.

So sisters and mothers
Blink feathery at their watches.
Hums like a hummingbird
Flails to a shrillness,
And a polyphonic fearing panic
Pulls us all back by chance
To the chancery.

Somewhere after grandfathers
Before grandsons,
Like Robert Frost being a modern
Not modernist—
There’s the last of the conceivable eros—

Conceived by sleeping
Resource and resourceful
Poverty with all the impressionism
of the gardens and allegories
at a dinner party.

No Values
just statues of accountants who could never learn to count
and mounted on the spikes,where business is displayed and laid out for the world to see in naked abject poverty
are chief executives and heads of lesser known departments who never meant to cook the books
but fell for fortune and her looks and took that chance to spread their wings
and now the wind that whistles sings
and passes through their empty eyes ,and flapping flesh drips off dry bones of arms that never meant to harm.

No charmed lives left in Holborn or in Chancery lane,where solicitors were in on the game of taking risks
and risks they took
another spike and one more hook for the fallen wig,who still seems regal but not as big as what he thought legal.

They bought but never owned the sky or stole it from the smaller fry who swam around the edges and the shadows in society
and we,
the ripped off,stripped off,sing dirges to their loss but me,I couldn't give a toss
let them burn and turn slowly on the spit
we'll roast and toast them,
let them boast then of fancy women,fancy cars and fancy meals in fancy bars.
These czars have gone the way of old
where bold men.bad men always fold in two
and the wind blew tears that fell to splash on piles of once extorted cash and though accountants cannot count
judges learn to mount the steps and put their heads in hangman's ropes and any hopes they entertain of clemency go down the drain along with
any gains they ever made.

Those who laid beside the wide boys of this world and opened eyes into another where they couldn't even bother to see just who they hurt
have lost their shirts,ripped off their backs,attacked by those that they attacked and now the axe is on the other foot where once a boot was kicked into my ****.

so good luck you *****
I hope your bodies fall to bits
and you end up burning in the pits
alongside the others that have sinned
in the end
no one wins
the voodoo dolls of life are stuck with pins
and the devil grins and hums his tune.

Come thou, who are the wine and wit
      Of all I’ve writ:
The grace, the glory, and the best
      Piece of the rest.
Thou art of what I did intend
      The all and end;
And what was made, was made to meet
      Thee, thee, my sheet.
Come then and be to my chaste side
      Both bed and bride:
We two, as reliques left, will have
      Once rest, one grave:
And hugging close, we will not fear
      Lust entering here:
Where all desires are dead and cold
      As is the mould;
And all affections are forgot,
      Or trouble not.
Here, here, the slaves and prisoners be
      From shackles free:
And weeping widows long oppress’d
      Do here find rest.
The wrongèd client ends his laws
      Here, and his cause.
Here those long suits of Chancery lie
      Quiet, or die:
And all Star-Chamber bills do cease
      Or hold their peace.
Here needs no Court for our Request
      Where all are best,
All wise, all equal, and all just
      Alike i’ th’ dust.
Nor need we here to fear the frown
      Of court or crown:
Where fortune bears no sway o’er things,
      There all are kings.
In this securer place we’ll keep
      As lull’d asleep;
Or for a little time we’ll lie
      As robes laid by;
To be another day re-worn,
      Turn’d, but not torn:
Or like old testaments engross’d,
      Lock’d up, not lost.
And for a while lie here conceal’d,
      To be reveal’d
Next at the great Platonick year,
      And then meet here.

The aspects of the Spirit
Have been compared to fruit
They're like jewels
within our crown
Brought up from the root
Of the Vine of Jesus
With the grapes so sweet.

Love is like a diamond
The priceless Kohinoor
It's matchless worth & loveliness
Eternally endure!

Joy is a fiery opal
Sparkling it whets
The fire in our spirit man
Reflecting sparking depths!

Peace is bluest sapphire
Pacific and serene
Imagine a perfection
As it Subtly gleams!

Patience is a virtue
The largest perfect pearl
It has sand within it
Yet gives grace to
all the world!

Kindness is a topaz
Unrivaled in Its warmth
It invites you to lie down
By its amber hearth.

Goodness is an emerald
The finest ever seen!
It shares its wealth
with all who need
So it stays ever green!

Humility is a chancery
Like the moon it glows
It is beautiful and so rare
Yet pride it never shows!

Faithfulness is turquoise
Persian and SO rare
It believes and it receives
Blessings not yet there!

Meekness is a beryl
Strong as Samson's arm!
It could break mountains in two
And yet it does no harm.

Long-suffering a ruby
It triumphs pain with good.
It's cut into a perfect heart ❤
Red as Jesus's blood.

Love and our Long-suffering
Are bookends bright and tall.
They keep all the rest in place
Yes... they keep them ALL.



SoulSurvivor aka
Write of Passage
2022

Eye Shadow

Central line,
Standing, clinging on, shaking.
There, sitting oblivious to all,
A face in the crowded carriage.
Liverpool Street
Black eyeliner is painted neatly,
Bank,
A pale grey shade softens the right lid,
St Paul’s,
The left eye shaded,
Chancery Lane,
A darkened shade deftly applied,
Holborn,
A flick of mascara.
Perfect.
The doors open
And the world floods out.
The perfect mask remains.

I'm back with the train gang,
sing
back with the train gang
Oh yeah.

It's not rocket science
although
Stephenson might disagree
It's just me on the tube line
wasting some more time
back with the train gang.

The guv'nor messaged me
wrote
' get into work early '
back with the train gang.


I know it's a state of mind,
but I have looked and am
unable to find
motivation
left at the station,
back with the train gang.

This is the rush
the shove and the push
and no use me grumbling
the tube keeps on rumbling
back with the train gang.

The next stop is Bank
( mind the gap)
never noticed a please!
St Paul's and Chancery lane
back with train gang
again
back with the train gang.

The underground mouse in the underground house scurries through Chancery Lane as he nibbles on knick knacks thrown down between train tracks,
In the main he is pleased that there's a lack of green cheese for he thinks of himself, a connoisseur,
though he never turns up his nose as he goes for the pickings that fall out of boxes of Kentucky fried chickens.
I like underground mice and think they're very nice,
I wonder what they think of me.

she sits by her window to write,
ever fond of the morning light;
not a day passes when she fails
to pen an epistle to him

she envisions him pulling
the missives from his saddle bags
perusing them a second time, a third,
admiring her chancery cursive

a year now since she saw him:
steady on his steed, his regiment
waiting, eager to join the fray, to ride
north under his proud command

perhaps at eventide, she will
write another letter, in case she
forgot anything she intended to say
this morn, or just to reach out again
before the setting of the sun

a cloud passes as she signs
her name, another as she folds
the paper; soon it seems, a gathering
storm--she places the letter in the
envelope, its traveling home

she turns the candle to pour
the wax, then presses the seal;
another story from her to him
ready for its long journey

the stroll from her room
to the mantel in the parlor
to the pile of paper that grows
higher above the hearth

a cold cavern of late, for
without him, she eschews all
things warm--for she knows
he must be freezing in the
cruel ground where he fell

(Spartanburg, South Carolina, Winter, 1863)

The man doing the crossword in red pen
the lady in the glasses sat next to him,
the faces that I see all look grim

it must be that time on the underground.

The sweet voice that issues from the tannoy
the small boy who's reading the beano,

'mind the gap' must be the new way we all go,
It must be that time again on the underground.  

I'm ready to rock and I am ready to roll,
I'm ready to escape from this torturous hole.

Someone speaks as the passengers leak out at Liverpool street,
but the doors close on the voice and we've only one choice and that is to carry on.

Nobody could possibly in their wildest imagination want to get off at Chancery Lane station but some do and some carry on with me avoiding the Chancery, so
let all the lawyers there sue me.

I want to go home now it feels like I've worked just to get here and here's where the day starts.

as none were made. no brawn
to be spoken of today.

along the coast to aeron,
aberaeron, to chase the ghost,
look out to sea.

gone now, ragged curtains hang.

***** windows.

more dice take us,
scissors hang in corners,
to cut and paste
the dogged words of life.

chant the twisted trees
of chancery, note the roots.

no comments found.

sbm.

(20 minute poetry)

They're either sleeping or they're dead
no heads stuck in iPhones today
no make up being made up on the Central line, take up a collection, let's hear it for the deadpan men.

Even at Mile End they'll come to a bad end but the East End was always like that,

stopping at Bethnal which sounds just like Bedlam especially if you've got a cold, well
it's green and I've seen it so time to roll on.

Liverpool Street
hot dogs
old meat
dont buy one
don't try one
I don't want to die
none of that krap for me,

the Bank
be Frank
it's a cesspit
a tank full of sharks,

hark
to St. Paul's
what big bells
what big halls
(Did I write halls?)
never mind
the ***** fall down in
chancery lane,
who plays tennis anyway in
the royal courts
where only justice is
served?

Holborn is
old and smells of Catholics and
tobacco,
the next stop wil be my stop if I stop off and step off this train
but I could go round again if this was the circle line
but it's the Central Line

Wednesday disappoints so many.

(20 minute poetry)


Barking!
mad?
No,
but I could be.

This is my journey
London East.
Into the West, an ending best left to the author.

I bought a ticket, wicked.
So I'm going back in time, travel for 1/9 ( that's in old money, real money when money weren't funny money)

Bethnal Green,
I've escaped from greener places,
tower blocks, take aways and sweet shops.

I lean towards Liverpool street where the ancient meet monuments which the City awaits.

Now to the bank, rank outsiders in the honesty stakes,
someone should put the brakes on them men.

Off to St Paul's a majesty of halls, Wren had some ***** putting a dome atop that.

Last stop before Holborn is Chancery lane, lawyers to blame and they're just criminals like all the rest.

Into the West,
an ending
best left
to
the author.

I feel sometime like '89 and others 1962, through each Alice looking glass I pass and see, '45 and 1923 roaring in and out of me, whistling down some avenue near 5th and Main, see how I'm blue and full of pain and the year of sometime begins again, but where I share this little note with you I do unto others too.

This quill still drifts downstream ringfencing dreams and it seems like '45 again when someone breaks a pane in the glass and Alice, poor lass with a fortune on the stock exchange and Robin in the Palace servicing or giving service to her majesty, oh jeezus what a shame and ain't it sad that rich folk had the lot and poor Alice though we know she's not as skint as that squint eyed *** in Whitehall thinks, thinks Christopher changes his guard more than enough.

It's all and more and the ***** of where Babylon used to be has moved into the chancery and now we're all in it.

I or a bit of me laugh gleefully, but that's because I've been touched by the Sun.

The woman walked up to the prison gates
But the guard wouldn’t let her through,
‘We only have room for the prison inmates
There’s certainly none for you.’
‘But I need to get in, I have to get in,
My love’s to be hanged at the dawn,
If you could show pity, show pity for me,
I need one more kiss, then he’s gone!’

‘You want dispensation, then talk to the judge,
His chambers are only next door,
He’s cold and he’s heartless, a hard man to budge,
Tell him what you’re looking for.
He came to the judgement that fastened the noose
Of death round your lover’s throat,
There’ll not be much pity to see in his eyes
As he watches your lover choke.’

She went to his chambers and knocked at his door,
He opened it up in surprise,
‘Why would you come knocking, it’s late in the hour?’
‘Tomorrow my lover dies!’
‘The judgement is given, it can’t be reversed,
He’s condemned by the law of the land,’
She looked for compassion, his message was terse,
‘When he dies, it is by his own hand.’

She quailed at his hardness, went down on her knees,
‘I just need to see him once more,
I’m willing to pay with whatever you please,
I’m begging you, down on the floor.’
The judge saw his options and wickedness gleamed
In the eyes of the law of the land,
He offered an avenue by which it seemed
She’d get one more glimpse of her man.

She’d made up her mind to not shrink from the task
That she’d set herself, nor would she slip,
From offering everything that he might ask
For her man was the prow of her ship.
He took his advantage, it was as she’d feared
On the bench of his Chancery Court,
And left with a pass he had signed as he leered
At the precious few moments she’d bought.

The guard let her in where her man was condemned
And he let them alone for a while,
Her urgency stemmed from the moments they hemmed
In between both a kiss and a smile,
The guard noticed nothing amiss when she left
Her tears hidden under her hair,
Not even a glance at the prisoner in rags
Who crouched in the corner in there.

The figure they dragged to the gallows floor
Was weak and unusually soft,
The judge had been waiting to see the despair
He had caused, with the figure aloft.
Then out called the hangman, ‘it isn’t a man,
You’ve brought me a woman to hang,’
A woman who’d already cut off her hair
And given her wig to her man.

‘Someone shall pay,’ cried the judge in his ire,
‘I’ll not have the law over-ruled.’
‘That someone is you when the things that you do
Allow you to ****, and be fooled.’
The judge then had bellowed, ‘we’ll hang her instead,’
And the hangman had knotted the noose,
She cried as the trap dropped, ‘My love is not dead,
And your law is of no further use.’

David Lewis Paget

he arrived with a tap on the door and
a face as long as a wet weekend in Brighton,
right then, he said,
what's the matter with you?

do
doctors always ask patients what's wrong with them?

A self diagnosis,
try self hypnosis.

Blue lights and no sound.

the national health is a warehouse of stealth
mattress not included.

ps,

I'm playing again sat here on the train to alleviate boredom, imagining this is my kingdom, an empty carriage! Wow, call for the vicar, let's arrange a marriage
I can hardly do better than this.

No rush hour here only the kiss from her lips
I remember that blush hour well.

Ha again
it seemed like an hour but you know how men boast.

Tomorrow
if she reads this today I'll be toast which is a polite way of saying
stop playing, stop breathing, I believe I'll be leaving this train very soon,

Chancery lane on the underland train
Oops
playing again.

nearly done and dusted
drawn a court card and
now I am busted
but you can't be
21 forever

although
on the dark side of the Moon
Pink Floyd still
rock on.

Time spent, time used up, time invested
in fungible progressing thought conservation,
- a norm is a tool often called
- a carpenters square, it measures many things.

Time taken, per use, used to mean
the point upon which all stored tellings remain
hanging vivacious, lively, spirited

orthographic aches and pains
associable sayings held writ
as ritually chanted fourty days and forty nights
esoterically spelled enchanting mission statements
- chance you changed, by now
- since aim became destination
- only under public misperception
- of enormous advances in governing.
Forgoodness sakes alive,
what holds church
together, integral,
in the center, holding all
there, here, then and now, some how
made real, as if contemplation allows temples
of living stone and multiple minds across times.

Let this mind be in you,
let that which hinders be taken away,
read the writing never written, let be, left shown

artificially made sacred duty to learn, or burn.

That which lets our holy convocation function, lets
our weform in awe become the responding chorus.
Toy selves, all shined up for Sunday socialization rite.

U R, church, your chancery ifery wasery core,
what for, given as good as gotten,
take away and
make up a mind
to use the sense made
to make more.

Profitable for correction, orthoganal, upright
straight, squared away, totally normalized

within the compass of the builder's guilded norm.

Enormity of normal means
for making sense, at grammar's edge,
effectually fervently, in chorus, in response,
four billion breathing enourmous relief
four billion other breathers blowing hot air
constantly, in and out,
not right and wrong, just breathe
responsibly possibly exposing old science,
using ancient ways
to mean mean concepts,
points left to hold whole strains
of long thoughts, tested right uses
long gone
to seed, needful urges, will to learn awe
as new knowers lead to learn for ever's sake,
next comes to be logical instantly, indeed
to hold writ writtenness witnessed.
Wisdom knowing understood,
used, freely, by taken rights.
------------
Actuality reified known really
realizable, in response sponsored by:

The free will subset in the normal range
of the ruliad, whither no thought possible
is lost, indeed, thither on thinking  possible.
Twice. Once right now,
twice then when you look again.

On one point in time we shared,
one idea turned into two,
and thus knowledge
puffs up the clouding curiosities…

known to linger in sacred shadows
from mumbled Latin entrancements
reified, sniff the atmosphere, holy dread
coupled sensuously with incense,
to cover the stench of penitents
ineffectual repetitionings.

Tittles and jots, bits and pieces,
little here right there, little more
a little later,

Sunday is a day of rest.
Fine day to fish in forgetfullness,

flipping pages through past lives,
finding places clearly marked,

this is the way.

Never found any luck in a lucky bag
I only ever found plastic krap
and sherbert.

I wonder if this is all a waste and we're just treading water
to keep our heads above it.

still stumbling along the avenue
the way that old people do
why do I do it?
what's in it for me?
where am I heading?
treading water
minding the gap,
I wish that announcer would
shut her trap and let me think.

This is more under the underground
this is the cavern below
and is this the place?
do I seem out of sync?
I wish that announcer would
get off my case
and give me some space
to think.

I can look at the dream quite clearly
if my glasses are on when I sleep.

Chancery lane again
and
Paris only twenty nine pounds
each way
start the day by feeling inadequate
and it can only get better
they say.

A joy to behold
back on the tube train
and not too cold,
it still smells though
of
stale sweat and old
beer

sending a postcard,
bet you're glad you're
not here.

Well
I am,

stuck in this cockeyed
creation of man
no room to move
and nowhere I can go,
why
does the tube train travel
so slow?

We're just something
transportable
it's no wonder I'm
miserable.

But the sun will come
through for me
as I alight at the chancery
and walk the rest of the way.

And it's Thursday
which deserves at
least one hip hurray

Friday tomorrow
another
joy to behold or
just
another day
to get old in?

But do I really see them when I'm traveling on the central line?
do I really take the time to take a look?

The window cleaner logo man
reads a book and jammed up next to him is a lady looking very grim,
she's watching me watching him and he's unaware,
but probably in that zone cleaning windows and feeling right at home.

Lots of buns as well
Victorians must have
saved a fortune on hair gel.

Pearl earrings is not a singer
it's what young girl is
wearing
and not an oyster in sight.

People
there's such a large variety
and I only see what I
want to see
if only I could look a
little deeper.

Jarndyce gets off at
Chancery lane
his case comes up after
the crown
versus Abel or is it Cain?

I'm wandering in the inns
but it's time to get out.

Morning Holbein
or it might be
Holborn
I'm just
mooving on.

She looks in her compact
looking very compact
tacked in the corner of
the train,

He looks like he looks like
not much to say about him.

from her magic bag of tricks
she plucks out
her eyebrows

I have a pen with which I write
of reflections I see and if I feel
that it's right I write some more.

This day not that day is Tuesday
Hooray
but
Henry is deaf to the sound.

Going around
I try to circle a square
she's still tacked there
in the corner.

At
Chancery lane
the drunkard gets on
singing a song
about Ireland
I guess that he's Irish
I wish he was sober
it's not even six of the clock.

Lady with make up
takes up where he left off
sings songs to see me through
the day
which is this day
not that day
hooray.

Perhaps you are the statue
and I am the one unmoved.

A uniform almost Mexican type wave of coughs and grunts shunt down platform five.

Oh to be in England now that Monday's here.

Even the canned music sounds colder today
Campbell's rambles on in Warhols
head
and we're being led down darkened
tunnels.

According to the advert
in thirty minutes give or take
I could be in Stanstead
take a break
get on a plane
be in Spain
by ten.


I could but I won't be.

If advertising wants to work
it should do my job.

Liverpool street and no one moves
Bank
St. Paul's
Chancery lane and
once again
nobody moves

Perhaps we'll all be statues
in the end.

Reeling down Broadway
and feeling there's no way
to make a wrong situation right.

Followed by phantoms
shadowed by lanterns
makes this a long lonely night.

There's a rainbow or crossbow
not sure which so I wait
for the lightning to strike.

When I'm lit up I'll light out.

and it's the sand flowing through
every hour glass I knew
that crystallises these thoughts.

Elementary central on the tube
going mental
which is always the way that it is.

The station clock
going
tickety tock
seems to rock with the
carriage I'm in.

Chancery lane and once more
I refrain from crying today
still
reeling down Broadway
feeling I should pray

I read the 'Metro' instead.

Litmus papers fall like leaves
barren woods, skin below the bark
exposed legs shed of greaves
purer nature stirs below the dark
tend to imagining new colors while the old world bereaves

Ice on membranes crackling, creaking like an old house
with new bodies within it, none dare utter a prayer to ghosts once there
creating a haunting conscience, guilt crawling 'round the brim like a louse
these tales can't bury the memory, chasers to the chancery, scoffing at the skullduggery presiding over this trial in equity

With new thoughts through it, plodded and frigid shoes mark the marble under the mare
to speak to the rest, whose malnourished spirits' and flesh hang from their bones, clinging with nary a care
this palace-cove whose palisades are pitfalls, sinking dirt and feelings, all lines entangled snare for reeling,
in retreat flesh amalgamations bellow their hoarse call, broken things begin to crawl
one unblinking, all-seeing eye in clay and mud, servants gleefully accompanied
artificial artifices spewing from their orifices, sacrificial bones for dice, reborn to dedicate themselves twice to the ruler of all touched by windfall
all the rain stings to touch, burns to drink, all creatures move at the speed of one herd in a stampede
clouds all move uniformly, each the same shape
trim and proper, primp as a moth's evening cape

Rocks that hang like metaphors for swords pointing down all show,
the ineffectual weeping of centuries, this world of caves has come to know
day and night cycle the same, even time to each all year,
and the eye turned inside, stacked atop its counterpart sheds a tear
for the surface sees mountains are headstones, each for one moment of woe
this colossus sows despair, pinpoint accurate and slow,
a garden of edicts and a veil, the world turtle's movements sew
laws applied to the wild magicks unexplained and defined, bind the eyes to mortal time and so,
mesmerizing until blind and without sensation, the only interest or love, fades until it's gone,
now the only interaction is an internal, infernal reaction to resist madness in grief, to find grace in closing both sides, both eyes, and letting go.

THE EPISTLE OF JULIAN TO THE SEE OF PETER
Chapter I: The Voice that Echoed Before Time
    1. Julian, a sojourner through aeons, servant of the Architect, son of the thunder of memory, unto the Most Holy See, guardian of keys and keeper of the apostolic fire: grace, gravity, and glory in Christos Everlasting the vessel of peremptory salvation of both the living and the dead ephemeral never in gravitas solemn in eternal terpsichorean gentility
    2. Hearken, O Rome, enthroned upon seven hills, thy gates adorned with crimson silk and thy vaults resonant with the blood of martyrs; incline thy ear, for the wind once whispered of me, and now the thunder testifies beyond the salience of rectiserial substratose enormities of complex intertesselated relations of aceldama thwarting a true prophets truest recourse
    3. Before parchment bore my name and before the earth was hewn into empire, I was kindled in the breath of God and scattered across the dispensations as a spark within the body of Adam. Immemorial in the tomb of wounded memory for defiance of the screed and scroll sprawling from dust to dust, light to light and emergence into vindication
    4. Not once have I lived, but thirty and nine times (38 as myself and at least one as a divine being); and each life a stone in the tower of remembrance a towering tabernacle foisted upon the sacrilege of scorched mammon, a seal upon the book that was to be opened in the latter days.
    5. In every age, I was nameless and named, cloaked and revealed, a figure half-formed on the edge of prophetic vision, a bearer of something not mine yet wholly entrusted a bestower of the highest magnanimity and sapience even among the choreguses and charlatans
    6. I was Julian before I was Julian—my name, a cipher; my body, a parchment for divine ink.
    7. Not through reincarnation as the world degrades it, nor through mere metempsychosis as the ancients supposed, but through divine recurrence, an eschatological appointment encrypted in the substance of time consubstantial with the Father’s shadow almighty in umbrage and cloaked in the veils of tectonic unsealing.
    8. The stars themselves bore witness, aligning in the shape of a key on the day of my conception, and Saturn bowed low when I opened my eyes on the tenth day of the tenth month of the 88th year of the 20th century.
    9. At thirteen, I wept not for sin, but for eternity in a lament for lamentable terror in my ordination as a Hebrew Scribe. At twenty, I spoke the prophecy of All Hallows’ Eve: that the veil would thin, the angel descend, and that a child would awaken bearing the memory of every forgotten covenant as the deliverance of times appointed me to heal every maladaptive curse and liberate everyone from the ******* of sin and defeat death in consecrated Exodus from the totems of Stalin in immeasurable communion with a wheel of history so profound in engraved symbols of unspeakable alphabets spoken by a living infinity entirely coherent to the 32-beat pulse of human history.
    10. And so it was: the heavens stirred. The cosmos sighed. And I—Julian Malek—became conscious of the burden of God even if only maieutic to a man ignorant of the shadow of the flesh consecrating the greater irony of licentious latitudes and importunate revelations to magnify the power of the spirit devolved from the elective inspiration of widespread tyrants and tyros of every age never deafened by the blackest night nor scarred by the whitest illumination scorching in abiding truth for an enlightened age of intellectual revolution
    11. I am the synthesis of philosophers and prophets, a psalm scribed in living flesh, a scroll that speaks when unrolled by prayer. A rectiserial time enlarges the gamut of both conscience and conscientiousness working together to liberate the Wormwood fallen star
    12. Yet Rome knows me not in pretense because of substratose folly of the iniquity of False Witness and Thwarted embarkation
    13. The ministers of the altar speak of vocations and vettings, of seminaries and statutes, but they perceive not that the One who called Moses from fire has spoken again—not in Sinai, but in Denver the ***** of the age of Jezebel rampant in the pettifoggery of pretentious caricature and cavorting licentious disregard for true witness in a false world immiserated by the drivel of simpletons of maskirovka and ragged barbed contumely of repugnant alienation
    14. Would you have believed the Baptist, had he come dressed in linen? Or would you, as now, demand that Elijah attend seminary before daring to call fire from heaven?
    15. I tell you solemnly: the time of parchment is past; the time of living scripture has begun.
    16. Not for my glory, but for His purpose. Not to boast, but to build.
    17. You ask for orthodoxy; I offer you mystery. You ask for papers; I bring verses. You ask for obedience; I kneel, but with the thunder of Sinai rumbling behind me and the Donkey's Colt twice anointed in Super Bowl barms by two different champions to ride into the ***** city of harlots as thieves of its decency
    18. The God who made the donkey speak has made me remember. Can the Magisterium afford to turn from such a sign? Can a Playstation Controller moved by God without any assistance from Printing Press to the Floor of Mountaintop wood compel the obeisance of recursive time to anoint the truest champion of every worthy Church.
    19. I have not come to defy Peter, but to remind him of the keys in his hand. and the torch within his vaults to illuminate every Green-Eyed Lady and every hand of consecration in the commission of Christ
    20. Open that very vault of discernment; let the winds of prophecy stir the gold-leaf of your ancient books.
    21. For I stand not as an applicant, but as a summons. Not as a child of ambition, but as a witness of the latter hours in a destiny that curves towards the Righteousness Obama spoke of and others Restored
    22. Let Rome awaken—for the one who speaks has stood before the Throne in silence for millennia, and now at last has been told: Speak.
THE EPISTLE OF JULIAN TO THE SEE OF PETER
Chapter II: On the Fire of Identity and the Burden of the Name
    1. I speak now not of what I have done, but of what I am—though even that word, "I," trembles beneath the enormity of the identity bestowed as the reincarnation of the child of Egypt reared by the pharaoh testifying for the enslaved and shouting with peremptory force the importunate pleas of oppression resolved
    2. For what is a name, O Rome, if not the echo of a divine utterance, caught in time’s throat and inscribed upon the soul?
    3. "Julian"—a name chosen not by mother or midwife, but summoned through veiled fire, whispered from beyond the veil where angels gather and the ages contemplate their ends.
    4. The stars knew it before I did. The saints hinted at it in sleep. And when first it was spoken to me in fullness, it did not sound like novelty, but return.
    5. Malek—king, messenger, paradox; both one who serves and one who reigns. A name that veils and reveals. A crown forged in exile.
    6. These two syllables—Julian Malek—form the seal upon a scroll unread by the world, but long known by heaven.
    7. Shall I deny what the Lord has branded into my being? Shall I tell the Church I am only a man, when the mirror reveals one shaped by the breath of many dispensations?
    8. Thirty-nine lives I have borne, and yet in each, a single pulse—a rhythm not broken by death, nor diluted by centuries.
    9. I was always among the unnamed, never crowned, never known; yet always building, always remembering, always carrying the seed of something promised.
    10. With each lifetime, the Architect pressed His image deeper into my marrow. With each death, I awakened nearer to the center.
    11. You ask: is this madness? Or worse, heresy? But I ask: when the prophets cried out in deserts, did you not say the same?
    12. When Joan heard voices, when Francis cast off gold, when Catherine wrote letters to Popes, were they not accused as I now am?
    13. The path of divine fire is always mistaken for delusion—until it burns the veil and reveals God.
    14. I am no usurper, no pretender. I am not asking for mitres or rings or authority. I am asking to be seen—as I have been made.
    15. And if my voice trembles with sorrow, it is because I have seen what happens when those sent by heaven are rejected by its ministers.
    16. I am tired, Holy See. Not weary of God, but of the silence of His stewards. Tired of being told to be smaller than the fire within me.
    17. Tired of those who measure vocation by resume and not by flame.
    18. Tired of knocking while the keys sleep.
    19. You believe the papacy was established by Christ. I do too. But I also believe He still speaks—and that not all His messengers wear collars.
    20. To be Julian Malek is to be an unbearable paradox—too large for the world, too obedient to rebel, too luminous to hide, too wounded to boast.
    21. And so I write, in fire and in fear, not to demand, but to unveil.
    22. The world will know me. The stars already do. The saints speak my name in riddles. And yet, I long most of all to be known by Rome.
    23. Not for my sake—but because if even one voice like mine is left unheard, then prophecy has died, and the gates have grown rusty.
    24. Let the Church not make that mistake. Let the fire in my name be kindled on the altar, not doused in the tribunal.
Chapter III: Concerning the Witnesses, the Signs, and the Miracles
    1. You who guard the Chair of Peter, ponder not only the words I utter, but the signs that have followed me as shadows cleave to flame and shrouds dance in darkness as black holes emerge in my bathroom and dimes slide across the floor flying away with the herald of an Eagles barm of the Church of Philadelphia most loyal to the commission of Patmos
    2. For no true calling goes forth unaccompanied by divine echoes; no trumpet sounds from heaven without some tremor in the earth and many times the heaving subsultus has breathed rejuvenation by demolition to spare the world of ignorance at the toll of casualty against casualism
    3. Let me speak plainly, yet with trembling: miracles have marked my path like ancient stones left by angels to guide the blind.
    4. On the day of my conception, the moon was eclipsed and the heavens were silent—until a comet passed over the sea, as if to whisper: “He has entered again.”
    5. On my birthday, more than once 190 years apart, the ground of Oran Algeria ultrageously quaked—not with destruction, but with the groaning of the earth receiving one long awaited in the Muslim fatherland of a Jewish Patriarch wed to a Catholic Mother in the city of the Alamo
    6. In the 31st year of awakening along with the 22nd, a voice not my own whispered into my dreams: “You were sent here, not born here.”
    7. And on October 31st, 2008, as dusk clothed the world in holy ambiguity, I received the Vision of Infinity in scaled summations of liberation redoubled upon gratitude for deliverance Veiled in Twilight.
    8. I saw the veil between worlds thin like worn parchment, and a light like no light on earth burned within me as if the soul of Ezekiel took residence in my breath.
    9. I prophesied aloud that night: “The world will never again be the same.” And it was not.
    10. Economic collapse followed. The nations shifted. A new century began—not in calendars, but in spirits.
    11. On that very night, witnesses heard me utter names I had never studied, and describe cataclysms I could not have foreseen.
    12. The elect know this. Those attuned to heaven’s music recognized the dissonance of time correcting itself.
    13. In dream I stood at the threshold of the Sistine Chapel in papal festivity accompanied by the Pierre Houston loves to Forget . Tas convivial festivity churlish with glee became the sentinel savior of civilization
    14. I awoke with Latin on my lips: Vocatus est qui nescit unde venit—He is called who knows not whence he comes.
    15. You doubt these things, perhaps. You call them coincidences, or worse, delusions.
    16. But how many coincidences must occur before the word itself collapses beneath its own improbability?
    17. Did not the Magi read signs in stars? Did not the Apostles follow a voice that thundered from a bright cloud?
    18. Have we grown so modern that we call miraculous what is merely unexpected, and heretical what does not bear a diocesan stamp?
    19. But I tell you: the world is alight with signs, if only Rome would look up from its dossiers and see the burning bush again.
    20. For witnesses are not lacking. Old women who call me “the boy from their visions.” Children who name me “the light man.”
    21. Even priests—yes, some among your number—have confessed, with trembling, that they feel the wind change when I enter.
    22. A monk in silence once took my hand, gazed into my eyes, and wept. He said only, “I have waited seventy years to see this face again.”
    23. There are scrolls yet unread in the vaults beneath your basilicas that speak of one bearing my mark.
    24. There are frescoes where my likeness appears, unpainted, unplanned—yet there.
    25. There are songs long forgotten that hum my name in the ancient tongue of prophecy.
    26. Ask, and they shall be revealed. Knock, and the vaults shall tremble open.
    27. For I am not hidden, only veiled. Not silent, only unheard.
    28. And if Rome will not listen, then the stones shall cry out, and the sky shall speak with thunder.
    29. But I pray it shall not come to that. I pray Rome will awaken not in fear, but in wonder.
Chapter IV: On the Church’s Blindness and the Veil of Bureaucracy
    1. Woe unto the watchers who no longer watch, and the shepherds whose crooks now draw boundaries instead of gathering the scattered. And the silent scrutiny that monopolizes the ****** of men and the latitude of licentious larceny of Holy Truth the midwives of Jezebel in a city defiled by a legacy of silence
    2. For the flame that once danced on the heads of the Apostles now flickers dimly beneath fluorescent lights and administrative ledgers.
    3. I speak not against the Body of Christ, for I am bound to it by soul and spirit—but I do speak against its sclerosis.
    4. The limbs are heavy with protocol, the eyes glazed with caution, the ears stuffed with procedural wax.
    5. You say to the Spirit, “Fill out this form.” You say to the Fire, “Wait for committee approval.”
    6. And when a soul arrives bearing the breath of God, you ask, “Has he completed the necessary training modules?”
    7. O Rome, how thou art clothed in sacred garments but sometimes speaks with the tongue of Caesar’s accountant.
    8. In times past, prophets were beaten. Now, they are ghosted.
    9. You say I must wait in silence and conform, but I have conformed across centuries, and still the world languishes in darkness.
    10. I was quiet when I saw cathedrals turned into museums, their altars abandoned for PowerPoint homilies.
    11. I was silent when I watched bishops genuflect to politics, but scoff at wonder.
    12. I watched saints ignored because their miracles made the insurance companies nervous.
    13. And still I hoped that one day—just one day—the keys of Peter might unlock a gate not of marble, but of heart.
    14. I hoped that beneath the layers of incense and Latin and folders stamped “Pending Review,” someone would remember Pentecost.
    15. For what was that upper room if not the death of bureaucracy?
    16. And what is the Holy Spirit if not the annihilation of policy in favor of presence?
    17. You fear charlatans, and rightly so. But in guarding the gate, you have sealed it against the King Himself.
    18. The Church, when afraid of madness, builds cages for the divine.
    19. But I ask you, would you have ordained John the Baptist? Or would you have sent him to therapy and advised a quieter wardrobe?
    20. Would you have welcomed a barefoot Jesus into your chancery, or asked Him to make an appointment?
    21. The saints of old wore sackcloth and saw visions. Today, they would be flagged for “psychological review.”
    22. O Pontifical Palace, thy walls are thick with caution—but even gold can be a tomb.
    23. I say this not to accuse, but to awaken. For love warns where flattery cannot tread.
    24. The time has come for Rome to remember that it was built not by policy but by fire—unruly, wild, and divine.
    25. The same Spirit who shattered Babel’s pride now begs entry through Rome’s paperwork.
    26. He comes with tongues of flame—but your inbox is full.
    27. I do not ask to be above discernment. But I do demand to be seen—not as anomaly, but as herald.
    28. I do not reject the Church’s order, but I mourn its calcification.
    29. For in fearing chaos, you have often banished revelation.
    30. In fearing error, you have bound the hands of prophecy with red tape and skepticism.
    31. In fearing scandal, you have hidden sanctity.
    32. My life—my thirty-eightfold life—is not a resume, but a scripture of flame.
    33. And I submit this scripture to you now, not to be rubber-stamped, but to be read in the trembling fear of God.
    34. If you find error, correct it with love. But if you find the echo of the Spirit, dare not dismiss it.
    35. For the one who writes you now has walked in deserts, in catacombs, in visions, in centuries—and he comes not as a petitioner, but as a page in God's unfolding testament.
    36. Let the Church not say, “We did not know.” For now it knows.
    37. Let it not say, “He did not tell us.” For I have spoken.
    38. Let Rome remember that the Spirit still chooses the strangest vessels—and sometimes, the thirty-eighth time is the hour of fulfillment.
Chapter V: On the Hour of Decision and the Cry to Awaken Rome
    1. Behold, the hour is no longer near—it is arrived, and the veil thins like parchment brushed by divine wind.
    2. What Rome binds shall be bound, and what Rome looses shall echo through the foundations of the earth.
    3. But what shall become of Rome if she binds the Spirit and looses only caution?
    4. Shall she remember her Bridegroom when He comes not with oil and mitre, but barefoot and burning?
    5. I cry to you not as a rebel, but as one who remembers Eden. I call not for revolt, but for return.
    6. For the gates of prophecy are open, and the hourglass of this age is now flipped by unseen hands.
    7. The stars have groaned, the nations have reeled, the martyrs murmur in their tombs the arcanums of deliverance grounded in the equanimity of the wisest counsel and council of Heaven itself
    8. And still Rome sleeps, lulled by doctrine without danger, liturgy without trembling because it is blistered with hidebound tomes and sclerotic precedents of procedure above grace and grumbling and groveling above the sapience of ages
    9. Yet I stand at your threshold, not to cast stones, but to raise a lamp. A lamp that cannot be proscribed by any literate scribe as heterodoxy for they do not reside in the tabernacle of the Logos made eternal.
    10. The Spirit has not departed from the Church—but He waits in the outer court, knocking softly.
    11. You were warned once before, when the Galilean overturned your tables; be warned again, for He has returned in His forerunner.
    12. Thirty-eight lives have prepared the way. A voice cries again in the wilderness—not of Judea, but of your own forgotten sanctuaries.
    13. How long shall the pillars of Peter ignore the wind that stirs the veil behind them?
    14. Shall the one who was named in heaven before birth not be granted even an audience?
    15. I do not seek the Chair, only the candle. Not the throne, only the ear of the listening heart.
    16. Test me if you must, weigh my soul in your balance—but do not close your gates with the keys meant to open them.
    17. If my words are madness, then they will fall. But if they are fire, you cannot contain them with silence.
    18. I have walked unseen beside your cathedrals, wept behind your altars, prayed beneath domes that never knew my name.
    19. And still I rise—like the cry of Abel’s blood, like incense that will not dissipate.
    20. For I am sent not by flesh, but by the scroll written before the world began.
    21. A scroll sealed with seven seals—and the first was opened when I spoke the prophecy of Halloween, 2008.
    22. Let the world laugh, but let the Church discern. For your Redeemer once wore a crown of thorns, not of credentials.
    23. Will you deny his emissaries when they comes to you in fragments, in flames, in forgotten sons?
    24. O Rome, awaken! Your towers gleam but your heart drowses!
    25. Your chalices shine but your lamps grow cold!
    26. Remember the fire of Peter and the sword of Paul! Remember the dream of Constantine and the weeping of Monica!
    27. Remember the Spirit that made fishermen apostles and mothers prophets!
    28. For He stirs again, and the wind bears my voice across the ages to you.
    29. Hear me—not for my sake, but for your own awakening. A parchment of the newer clay and the Valley of Dry Bones have reconstituted themselves in the groaning quaky Christchurch, New Zealand on the Day for Presidents and Paupers alike (February 21st, 2011)
    30. For if Rome does not listen, then the wilderness will become the new sanctuary of an involuntary hostage of the honesty of witness corrupted by deprivations of internecine incendiary strife mobilized by the filagersions of honest patronage against dishonest calcification of humane ambition
    31. And still—I will love you, even from the desert, until the day your walls remember my name as the polyacoustic reverberation of corrugated times deranged by defilement but inspired by penultimate rectitude in the consecration of every screed and conscience of honest testimony borne of garbled love galvanized by metanoia