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am i ee Aug 2015
the bane of my existence
here
now
is
all of the incessant
noise.  

the city encroaches
ever outward,
gobbling up
the suburbs
like the great big
Blob

contributing
layer
after
layer
of noise.  

a new metro line
opened last year
disheartened
the morning

realized
it was the trains
i heard
as my puppy
and i
walked so early.  

trash trucks,
back up beeping noises,
leaf blowers,
mowers
and trimmers ...
all
conspiring
to drive me
mad.

the birds and owls,
snakes and deer,
hawks and rabbits
toads
and trees
and flowers,
puppies
all other creatures
divine,
tempering
this man-made chaos
this man-made
hell

keeping me hopeful
that
i
will
have some
respite
  

some respite
from this
hideous cacophony,
this man-made hell,
in the future,
not
too distant.

of course
there are
some benefits
from all
the city life

but i prefer
the silence
the solitude
of nature.


the Taoist recluses
who speak to me,
whose poems
paintings
writings
and silence
are balm
to my soul.  

some day soon,
i too
shall join
the recluses
far away
far far away
in the mountains.

but for now,
i am
only a modern day
taoist
recluse
stuck in suburbia,
doing my best,
living in this
noisy hell.
Heather Mirassou Oct 2010
Good morning rooster
How do you do?
It’s the crack of dawn
You ****-a-doodle-do
You sit on your perch pride fully and woo
Standing mighty and bold you call your brood for food

Sleek and graceful you do the cockerel waltz
Strutting vaudeville statuesque
Crowing to proclaim your territory
You stand protecting your roost
***** and brave
Watching for predators coming your way

The alpha male
Your earlobes and crown are blood red like a bird of paradise
Your steel beak as strong as a saw
Your feather mane chestnut drapes over your back
Your breast fuchsia and emerald quill
Your silken tail an extended fan

You run free reign on my ranch
A thousand chickens roost in my barn
You rearrange my garden while pecking for nourishment
Eating up all the insects and brown recluses in my yard
In dust you and your flock bathe
You even watch over the hens eggs

Your calls distinct and powerful
When you are still and content sweet singing rings
You are friendly to humans
And can even be domesticated
Stay here Roo
We will protect you
Copyright Heather Mirassou
Neal Emanuelson Feb 2015
A proposal I lay before you and with an earnest smile
I propose to you (yes you, my dear)
That you spend three days in my care
For three days will be enough for you
To decide your time with me

The first day will be bliss unending
For you have only known me for a few months
As we unravel a masterpiece of cherished things
Bathed in sweetness you’ve only dreamed
We shall tour the world (online)
We shall eat culinary wonders (from some store around the corner)
Straight out of my fancy china and silverware, no less
The luxury of life will hide nothing from us
And at night, I will caress your every pain (and pleasure, if I may be so bold)
Put my (newly acquired) masseuse skills to the test
And ease your worries until you drift to sleep (or agony)
All in my warm and loving (-ly sore) arms
(until they start to lose their feeling, in which I will promptly wake you)  

The second day will be a casual life
In which you will have known me for a decade
You will be comfortable in my pajamas’ warmth
(Let’s be honest, you look better in them anyway)
We will share a cup of sweet tea, direct from my lips to yours
(after it’s cooled, of course, scolded tongues make no romance)
Lay on the couch for hours as we talk about nothing (because nothing is on)
And when we can rest no more, we will wander the outside world
To rediscover the things we knew all over again, holding hands
After we’ve made our findings, we’ll return to the comforts of our walls
I will prepare a meal (that I’ve frozen) from the best recipe site I can find
Then we will sit in front of the tube again like couch potatoes
And watch a movie, cuddled together until we fall asleep on each other
(Popcorn, blankets, drinks, the works- all within reach, my dear)

The third day will test you and your limits
As we have been together for a half-century, a year, and then some
The days have taken their toll as our bodies fluctuate more
Our contact brief as we become recluses even to ourselves
And even the days in which you renew your love become woeful
A trivial, typical, and tiresome feat, if I could muster more effort
But I am now a former shell of the one you’ve met long ago
Tempting you to flee for another, younger fling to test time by
And if you go to chase the dreams and aspirations I held you back from
I will wait, composed as I decompose, ever slowly with nothing more
But my ring, my pride, and my heart containing with nothing but you
(and the tubes from the pacemaker, but if Iron Man could do it…)

So I ask you this once my dear (maybe twice if you didn’t hear me the first time)
Will you take me up on my proposal or shall I sleep forever knowing
That I could never obtain someone so precious to me in this lifetime?

© 2014
Miguel Muller Nov 2014
Walking along an
Autumn afternoon
in New York
where in New York
somewhere upstate
somewhere downstate
somewhere leaves fall
in front of where
I approach
but land as a crash
like a stray piece
from construction
high above.

An afternoon
where dreams
of new
where visions
of more
than just a few
begin to fade
to black
as the sun’s
signature upon my
eyes
recluses from
the greyer skies.

Now lost in New York
I attempt to recover
and sojourn forth
from where I had
been to somewhere
somewhere different
somewhere inspiring
somewhere that brings
out the best
of not just a few
but all the rest
who wish
who dream
who ignite
like fire
as the presence
of Autumn’s
dimming light
truly and finally
does expire.

~Miguel
Glenn McCrary Feb 2012
Swayed I am by your sound taste



Amongst a sea of recluses



Against the hands of time we race



To stifle ignorance with nooses





Oh, how you stroke my rib cage



Laughter shaping countless voids



Revamping happiness for the age



Before they gambled ertswhile ploys





A heap of debris I'd be



Swept by carcinogenic draughts



Without you assured I'd seethe



A **** not given be it daft
Where is the coin that doesn't fit the ruse?
Shall it be given to those with none?
Recluses are in joint gatherings to stumble upon an unknown truth.
There is a way to walk away, to get to the other side, leaving yourself behind.
In my feelings a deeper thought awakens a blue sky of sapphire and forgotten dreams.
I hope at least one other person gets something from what I write.
Hoping what I say makes some sort of sense.
Extremely vivid dying dreams, I hope to God I can see what it means.
We are surrounded by poetry on all sides, but putting it on paper is, alas,
not as readily done as looking at it.
NTR Oct 2017
Social recluses, We only met to dance tarantella.
secluded away one night in a dark cellar,
I was captivated as she taught me the steps,
From that moment she had me trapped in her web
Her body was poison to the eyes,
the way she bit her lip had me paralyzed.
As she had me wrapped in her thighs
my hips moved like i had been hypnotized
I asked if she loved me with a sigh
a kiss goodbye was her reply.
This woman will be the death of me
and her name was arachne
Ottar May 2014
some who impose their will
drill into the media who gobble it
up like it is credibilia,
two bitzcoin for your thoughts?

As far as fair is fair, where is fair,
that wee ones who don't belong,
are taken,
when will this world awaken?
every one
would be be shaken to act,
if in fact they were your children,
every parent
would be heard
to state they are
our children
, too
the world's children,
these men (read cowards)
pick on them because they
see them as weak,
the forget they are the future,
when their son's look for wives,
here is to hoping they find none,
don't mind this poet's rant,
as he is out of touch with much,
see the headlines, (read skim)
it is not that I care not,
how to right the social cultural wrong,
how to write so that theses men (read cowards)
play hide an seek with political agendas,
oh they have earned their fifteen minutes
of fame,
shame shame, double shame, here is to publishing
all of your names, in what ever format you end
up as,
see, reading the news or the facts won't
explain this to make me think it was the right thing to do,
but I am a poet out of touch and for me this is the write thing
so to do.

Boko Haram (read cowards),
has done this before if my tired memory
should serve me as they should serve time,
right now your voice sounds like a childs,
are you out of touch with your masculinity?

Out of touch of their
parents arms for hugs,
this tugs,
at any parents heart and mind,
don't be out too late,
out of reach,
out of touch,
who will feed them,
we will need them,
they are the future
             of a generation,
this is a pitiful demonstration,
there is no excuse,
these recluses (read cowards)
who hide behind naked
political stand-offs
running and gunning
with young girl children,
don't tell me to get some
understanding,
because the moon we
all stand under is the same,
               too bad shame,
can't be brought by their
mothers, but maybe these
Boko Haram (read cowards)
don't even respect their own
mothers or the mothers of the
others they have stolen,
they have kidnapped,
they have made as scapegoats,
for their
kingdom
building
exercise,
free the prisoners,
as they are running
short of cowards to
do the camp chores,
they can't even get bullets
to start a war against other men.
When will
this child abuse
be stopped still?

So you can be more out of touch than...
If found to be offensive I will redact
scooby Dec 2017
Illusive elev plotted
in lieu of
illicit missives
eleve and glossy
ellipses loosely eluted
diffusive sluices
immersing Ulua
a lucite looping in
effusive illusions and
recluses.
Alas! Ill
and useless,
all is longer
mill listing lo
lacy lessening for lost-
loved occlusives.
sound study, read aloud for best effect
Both sides of the Arbela militia remained frosty, failing to tear the wrath of the throne from the depths of the charter and from the expropriation of the votive temple, in view of the strength of leaders who were reinserted and rewritten from the plaster of Parnassus, where the beatifices Mortals are seen competing without having references or additions in the washer that predominated by chance referring to athletes and gladiators who were not, but today they could be spiked in the crushing Syntagamatarchos table, captaining two units all with their abdomen semi open, re liquidating again the entrails by the Ghosts of Shiraz, who came from Roknabad (also known as Aub-e Rokní), from an underground channel that carried water from the spring to the city from a mountain located ten kilometers northeast of Profitis Ilias, from where until then they were commanded, with dispatches of their designs before a voluntary prodigy that emancipates a perplexed Meltem i that he was haphazardly swirling in the funerary fields, but descriptive of returning to the fields their souls, which abstained after ephemeris towards a knowledge resigned to abide by it, and to get rid of transcendental limitations commanded by his blowing, and not his body that was clouded before the conspicuous epistemological reason flashed and relaxed when comforting them for having to calibrate their bones when they returned to Mosul. The Colosso pedestals were breaking when it intimidated everyone to flee to their homes, in this way it calmed them down from the quicksilver of the world that was no longer their typical dwelling, from a dwelling of transit to a story that deals with the flys that are they hover, pretending to be the same, banishing themselves from the pain that rises up the cervical spine and that dismisses the ridiculous voices of Aeschylus with their acting choruses that they seemed dilapidated in cries impossible to personify. The ******* brave pieces of deployment began to drain from the secondary positions of the penultimate physicalities of suffering that one felt without being affected, rather it manifested itself in the contents of an essential muscular container, of the subsistence of the cosmos installed in what does not think nor decide on its retraction. Vernarth and Alexander the Great knelt in front of the larnax of the torments of mercy, like ***** language that lashes out rhetoric in rebellions of thousands of hoplites who expiated themselves from their hands, empty spiked race contained in the perjury of Zeus, enrolled in apocryphal images in tombs of those who were going to be faced with pseudo refractory that was recluses of the fleshless breath, but anarchic when trying to return to their places of origin of warlike Tikun.

The traits of annihilation were shed from buried reanimates that became slime in the reverie of a mythological God who never accompanied them and invited them from a cohabiting sun, which was only the fantasy of irresistible permutations. It should be noted that the subplot was in intangible interfaces that would never be stitched together as an annexed story, but the words of parapsychology were captained by themselves more than the sub plotline that transcended the apostrophe of death, and the Pronoia of the Peri Kousmos. The doors of Patmia were finally released and speculative vines re-flowered were Lotos and Astragalus, as courtesies of Operandi and impairment that replaced the ****** elderberry, with chalks that made the winter raging when Persephone rampaged what was merely monthly erratic of those who exiled her. The senses of Patmos were the property of his Institution, which was what it is and is not, for a holistic consequence of fast ideology but of minimal intuition, which lay in multiple reasons for tissues that were filled with crop fields, animals in Magna prairies that agreed to serve the man who loved him, in which the causes were two meters before the limen that sent her off the cliff in other causes of confusion, in a real creation of zoological Hellenic neuroscience, where all forms of mythology were made of submithology, always at the side of man but this time redeemed from the origin and cause, they only persevere to offend a certain space of ignorance where the like all prevaricated by large amounts subordinate to their lineage, in the kingdom of paradises from which only animals protect the doors that only Cerberos and Cherubim open, scrutinizing food for them and making use of them.

Patmos was remade of all the waterfalls that completed the rigors of the precept, and not the chaos that subordinates cognition to make night day or day night, pouring specimens that were and will be ignored but extremely useful for the preservation of the body of the unsupported objective and sumptuous, but of a systemic nature that does and sustains it. The Souls of Helenikká and Trouvere graced all the inhabitants towards a comprehensive evolution of the ***** of dreams, giving it the fruits of conservation where the lords of the future will have to bow to the laborious principle of the Mashiach, conciliating the arrest of the stars and not of what is reactive of an invasive action. Thus ended this subplot rhetoric of intuitive formality and metaphysical channeling character, leading them through plumbing that led from what was coming out from the Raedus Codex, from the wind tunnel, and what was coming in from here identical to its elevation towards the direct apotheosis of the Megaron that was splendid in four composition buttresses with more than two drops of laudanum, which will be insignificant ***** to save the cosmos from falls of vitality in the conclusion of Vernarth.

Saint John the Evangelist after several sleeping episodes of his spiritual experience, reappears in the sucker of modality and intentions that the drops of laudanum manifested to fill the pain of Vernarth's tragedy, and those that are manifested to him that they became resurrected entelechies of component solutions speculative, that were reborn from certain internal devastations, and that returned vague automata to the Achaemenids that emerged from the depths of this professorial subplot, to bring them with the simplicity of lexicons that were loving realities that would lie behind the veils of illusion, transgressing properties of a totalizing daphnomancy. Due to his parliament, Áullos Kósmos eliminated himself braided from the road when he expresses fatigue and regret, calming the reasons in the flight from himself. He starts from demoralization and hidden impotence of the Hoplite that would not come out of himself, because it is a frenzy of consternation that makes him start from the unshakable grief of his compassion, without reaching the surface of the ethical plane.
Battle of Patmia Part VI
Attends, nous allons dire adieu :
Ce mot seul désarmera Dieu.

Les voilà ces feuilles brûlantes
Qu'échangèrent nos mains tremblantes,

Où l'amour répandit par flots
Ses cris, ses flammes, ses sanglots.

Délivrons ces âmes confuses,
Rendons l'air aux pauvres recluses.

Attends, nous allons dire adieu :
Ce mot seul désarmera Dieu.

Voici celle qui m'a perdue...
Lis ! Quand je te l'aurai rendue,

De tant de mal, de tant de bien,
Il ne me restera plus rien.

Brûlons ces tristes fleurs d'orage,
Moi, par effroi ; toi, par courage.

Elles survivraient trop d'un jour
Au naufrage d'un tel amour.

Par pitié, sois-nous inflexible !
Pour ce sacrifice impossible,

Il fallait le secours des cieux,
Et les regarder dans tes yeux !

Contre toi le sort n'a plus d'armes ;
Oh ! ne pleure pas... bois mes larmes !

Lève au ciel ton front abattu ;
Je t'aime à jamais : le sais-tu ?

Mais te voilà près de la porte...
La terre s'en va... je suis morte !...

Hélas ! je n'ai pas dit adieu...
Toi seul es sauvé devant Dieu !
Remember the emperor

In Japan, especially in Tokyo, people are a strange mix of efficiency.
Young people are adolescents until they are forty living in an aspic
of western pop culture that does not exist anymore; when their parents die
they either grow up or become recluses unable to cope with the world.
The older generation did well and there are many of them like shingles
in the emperor’s driveway.
Japan had a meltdown 12 years ago which was good for the country
people have less haste and go to karaoke cafes once a week singing
a sentimental song about lonely cowboys.
I was in Nagasaki once, just as Nippon was rising on the financial firmament
but got too close to the sun.
I was amazed how quickly the scars of the nuclear had physically healed
but mentally, there must be a corner in their psyche
that can´t forget and will find revenge one day in the land of the rising sun.
LinaM Mar 12
The world is filled with sadness and pain

And it won't go away at the first rain

United, never divided, we can make it out alive

Maybe even have the time of our life

It won’t be easy, it won’t be a fairytale

Advancing through the narrow, twisted trail

The light at the end of the tunnel is farther and farther

Holding back tears becomes harder

If the path gets steeper

Take my hand, together we’ll dive deeper

The question to ask, an answer that never comes

How can the world be a better place

If we live as recluses, everyone with their space?  

Take my hand, together we’ll understand

We’ll venture into an unknown land

Discover the secret hidden from man
A reflection about the world,,. kind of.
In too many temple courts where gods like Baal were fed,
Mothers in droves with their infants
and no tears shed.
Naked, they sang as flames took innocent skin from tiny bone,
For righteousness, as always, wears that priestly tone.

The same as now
the bass drums are loud so the cries get masked,
And their gold still flows
from our every task.
Our forefathers’ hands did not resist,
For “what is right” has always been taught better with a clenched, bloodied fist.

And they were sure . Oh yes, like Falwell they knew,
That Moloch’s hunger was just and true.
That fire, not kindness, was virtue's kiss.
Then as is now, righteous suffering and pain is the gate to that holy abyss.

Unchanged, they sleep well under grey smoking skies,
Hearts black as their oil—greasy, justified lies.
Olmec or OPEC, no one questions the wise.

Now, we
sons of shortcuts, copying homework, heirs to the cheat,
Born in the light of air-conditioned laziness and comforting fluorescent deceit,
We who mocked the irreplaceable, wizened, long, slow way,
Traded sweat for clickbait and threw all skill away.

Your hands are soft. Our thoughts are thin.
We wear our vices like tanning bed skin
Phone grafted to hand, the true ruler of this accursed land.
It, therefore we, cannot build,
or plant, or sew.
We buy, we scroll, we Photoshop our fake lives and popularity and call that “grow.”

And the roof caves in when the storm gods come,
And your click-fed gospel won't save your filling lungs.
The water's rising and the oil is going dry,
Prices are soaring in cobalt cars and you do not ask why.
And no one remembers how to honestly cry
Without a screen to shape their tears,
Or algorithms to name for us our trending fears...

The "truth" never mattered
never did ,
never does.
What lasts is a story
That outlives what was.

Reap now your harvest of shortcuts
Taste a crop sown in fraud.
What you know of reality
Could fit in a nod.

My father built engines.
You build excuses.
Our mothers sewed clothes.
You tally abuses.
Choking on pills
snow white recluses.

The new, myths wither like weeds on a stone.
Nothing flowers in famine.
while it kneels to the throne.
hum inside like directionless beggars,
pass easy from mouth to child,
Changing shape with every telling,
Going feral and wild.
Till nothing of its core remains
like you ,
living on the sidewalk
passed over like stains.

There has never been a righteous nation.
Only the myth of one.
No pure revolutions.
Only blood in the sun.
remember what you think you need
not what was really done.

In Babylon’s time, they slit their sons
So crops would rise and famine shun.
Their hearts were full of ignorance branded faith,
not shame.
They did what gods and kings proclaimed.
We are not so different now
except we have forgotten the shape of sickle and plow.
Right was never just or good,
It always what the winners say you should.

Our myths need to change
to something deeper and real
that speaks to what we are
and how we feel.
Not to champion a sword, but to free us of chains.
Not in imaginary souls
but in hard working brains
We must write new stories of the crafts we revere
With effort and honor
and things we see clear.

Don't believe in the lie on the wall painted bright
For the lie was law, and the law was might.
The lie is in calling it right or just.
Don't do what you do for their greed or manufactured lust
Do it for the future
not now
and do what we must.
In too many temple courts where gods like Baal were fed,
Mothers in droves with their infants
and no tears shed.
Naked, they sang as flames took innocent skin from tiny bone,
For righteousness, as always, wears that priestly tone.

The same as now
the bass drums are loud so the cries get masked,
And their gold still flows
from our every task.
Our forefathers’ hands did not resist,
For “what is right” has always been taught better with a clenched, bloodied fist.

And they were sure . Oh yes, like Falwell they knew,
That Moloch’s hunger was just and true.
That fire, not kindness, was virtue's kiss.
Then as is now, righteous suffering and pain is the gate to that holy abyss.

Unchanged, they sleep well under grey smoking skies,
Hearts black as their oil—greasy, justified lies.
Olmec or OPEC, no one questions the wise.

Now, we
sons of shortcuts, copying homework, heirs to the cheat,
Born in the light of air-conditioned laziness and comforting fluorescent deceit,
We who mocked the irreplaceable, wizened, long, slow way,
Traded sweat for clickbait and threw all skill away.

Your hands are soft. Our thoughts are thin.
We wear our vices like tanning bed skin
Phone grafted to hand, the true ruler of this accursed land.
It, therefore we, cannot build,
or plant, or sew.
We buy, we scroll, we Photoshop our fake lives and popularity and call that “grow.”

And the roof caves in when the storm gods come,
And your click-fed gospel won't save your filling lungs.
The water's rising and the oil is going dry,
Prices are soaring in cobalt cars and you do not ask why.
And no one remembers how to honestly cry
Without a screen to shape their tears,
Or algorithms to name for us our trending fears...

The "truth" never mattered
never did ,
never does.
What lasts is a story
That outlives what was.

Reap now your harvest of shortcuts
Taste a crop sown in fraud.
What you know of reality
Could fit in a nod.

My fathers built engines.
You build excuses.
Our mothers sewed clothes.
You tally abuses.
Choking on pills
snow white recluses.

The new, myths wither like weeds on a stone.
Nothing flowers in famine.
while it kneels to the throne.
hum inside like directionless beggars,
pass easy from mouth to child,
Changing shape with every telling,
Going feral and wild.
Till nothing of its core remains
like you ,
living on the sidewalk
passed over like stains.

There has never been a righteous nation.
Only the myth of one.
No pure revolutions.
Only blood in the sun.
remember what you think you need
not what was really done.

In Babylon’s time, they slit their sons
So crops would rise and famine shun.
Their hearts were full of ignorance branded faith,
not shame.
They did what gods and kings proclaimed.
We are not so different now
except we have forgotten the shape of sickle and plow.
Right was never just or good,
It always what the winners say you should.

Our myths need to change
to something deeper and real
that speaks to what we are
and how we feel.
Not to champion a sword, but to free us of chains.
Not in imaginary souls
but in hard working brains
We must write new stories of the crafts we revere
With effort and honor
and things we see clear.

Don't believe in the lie on the wall painted bright
For the lie was law, and the law was might.
The lie is in calling it right or just.
Don't do what you do for their greed or manufactured lust
Do it for the future
not now
and do what we must.

— The End —