He had been away. Just a few days, but long enough to feel coming home was necessary. He carried with him so many thoughts and plans, and the inevitable list had already formed itself. But the list was for Monday morning. He would enjoy now what he could of Sunday.

Everything can feel so different on a Sunday. Travel by train had been a relaxed affair for once, a hundred miles cross-country from the open skies of the Fens to the conurbations of South Yorkshire. Today, there was no urgency or deliberation. Passengers were families, groups of friends, sensible singles going home after the weekend away. No suits. He seemed the only one not fixated by a smart phone, tablet or computer. So he got to see the autumn skies, the mountain ranges of clouds, the vast fields, the still-harvesting. But his thoughts were full to the brim of traveling the previous November when together they had made a similar journey (though in reverse) under similar skies. They had escaped for two days one night into a time of being wholly together, inseparably together, joined in that joy of companionship that elated him to recall it. He was overcome with weakness in his body and a jolt of passion combined: to think of her quiet beauty, the tilt of her head, the brush of her hair against his cheek. He longed for her now to be in the seat opposite and to stroke the back of her calf with his foot, hold her small hand across the table, gaze and gaze again at her profile as she, always alert to every flicker of change, took in the passing landscape.

But these thoughts gradually subsided and he found himself recalling a poem he had commissioned. It was a text for a verse anthem, that so very English form beloved by cathedral and collegiate choral directors of the 16th C (and just that weekend he had been in such a building where this music had its home). He had been reading The Five Proofs for the Existence of God from the Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas, knowing this scholar to have been a cornerstone of the work of Umberto Eco, an author he admired. He had also set a poem that mentioned these Five Proofs, and had set this poem without knowing exactly what they were. He recalled its ending:

They sit by a lake where dead leaves
Float and apples lie on a table. She
ignores him and his folder of papers

but I found later the picture was called
‘In Love’, which coloured love sepia.
Later still, by the time I sat with you,

Watched your arm on the back of a chair
And your hand at rest while you told me
Of Aquinas and his proofs for the existence

Of God I realised love was not always
Sepia, that these hands held invisible
Keys, were pale because the mind was aflame.

He remembered then the challenge of reading Aquinas, this Dominican friar of the 13C. It had stretched him, and he thought of asking his wordsmith of thirty years, the mother of his daughters, to bring these arguments together in a poetic form for him to set to music. She had delivered such a poem and it took him some while to grasp it wholly. He wondered for a moment if he actually had grasped it. But there was this connection with the landscape he was passing through. She had mentioned this, and now he saw it for his own eyes. She had been to Ely for the day, to walk the length of the great Cathedral, to stare at and be amongst the visible past, the past of Aquinas. He remembered the first verse as only a composer can who has laboured over the scheme of words and rhythms:

The Argument from Motion

Everything in the world changes.
A meadow of skewbald horses grazes
Beneath a pair of flying swans
And the universe is different again.

And no sooner is potency reduced to act,
By a whisker’s twitch or a word,
A word, that potent gobbet of air
Than smiles and tears change places.

And everything has changed. Back
Go the tracks beyond seen convergence
To a great self-sufficient terminus
Which terminus we might call God.

And so it was in such a spirit of reflection that his journey passed. He had joined the Edinburgh express at Peterborough to travel north, and the landscape had subsided into a different caste, still rural, but different, the fields smaller, the horizon closer.

Alighting from the train in his home city on a Sunday afternoon the station and surrounding streets were quiet and the few people about were not walking purposefully, they strolled. He climbed the flights of stairs to his third floor studio, unlocked the door and immediately walked across the room to open the window. Seagulls were swooping and diving below him, feeding off the detritus of the previous night’s partying in the clubs and pubs that occupied the city centre, its main shopping area removed to a mall off kilter with the historic city and its public buildings. What shops there were stood empty, boarded up, permanently lease for sale.

Sitting at his desk he surveyed the paper trail of his work in progress. Once so organised, every sketch and plan properly labelled and paginated, he had regressed it seemed to filling pages of his favoured graph paper in a random fashion. Some idea for the probably distant future would find its way into the midst of present work, only (sometimes) a different ink showing this to be the case. Notes from a radio talk jostled with rhythmic abstracts. He realised this was perhaps indicative of his mental state, a state of transience, of uncertainty, a temporariness even.

He was probably too tired to work effectively now, just off the train, but the sense and the relative peacefulness that was Sunday was so seductive. He didn’t want to lose the potential this time afforded. This was why for so many years Sunday had often been such a productive day. If he went to meeting, if he cooked the tea, if he ironed the children’s school clothes for the week, there was this still space in the day. It represented a kind of ideal state in which to think and compose. Now these obligations were more flexible and different, Sunday had even more ‘still’ space, and it continued to cast its spell over him.

He put his latest sketches into a sequential form, editing on the computer then printing them out, listening acutely, wholly absorbed. Only a text message from his beloved (picking blackberries) brought him back to the time and day. There was a photo: a cluster of this dark, late summer fruit, ripe for picking framed against a tree and a white sky. Barely a week ago they had picked blackberries together with friends, children and dogs and he had watched her purposely pick this fruit without the awkwardness that so often accompanied bending over brambles. He wondered at her, constantly. How was this so? He imagined her now in her parents’ garden, a garden glowing in the late afternoon light, as she too would glow in that late-afternoon light . . . he bought himself back to the problem in hand. How to make the next move? There was a join to deal with. He was working with the seven metrics of traditional poetry as the basis for a rhythmic scheme. He was being tempted towards committing an idea to paper. He kept reminding himself of the music’s lie of the land, the effectiveness of it so far. It was still early days he thought to commit to something that would mark the piece out, produce a different quality, would declare the movement he was working on to be a certain shape.

And suddenly he was back on the train, looking at the passing landscape and the next verse of that Aquinas poem insisted itself upon him with its apt description and tantalising argument:

The Argument from Efficient Causality

We are crossing managed washlands.
Pochards so carefully coloured swim
Where cows ruminated last summer
In a landscape fruit of human agency.

And I think of the heavenly aboriginal
Agent of all our doings in this material
Playground of earth I can pick up,
Hold and crumble and cultivate

And air that is mine for the breathing
And the inhabited waters that cling
As if by magic to a sphere. What cause
Sustains the effects we live among?

For there is no smoke without fire
And as we sow, thus we reap. Nihil
Ex nihil, therefore something Is,
Some being we might call God.

So ‘nothing out of nothing, therefore something is’.  Outside in the city the Cathedral bells were ringing in Evensong. The sounds only audible on a Sunday when the traffic abated a little and the sounds in the street below were sporadic. He thought of going out into the Cathedral precinct and listening to the bells roll and rhythm their sequences, those Plain-Bob-Majors and Grand-Sire-Triples. But he knew that would further break the spell, the train of thought that lay about him.

He sketched the next section, confidently, and when he had finished felt he could do know more. There it was: a starting point for tomorrow. He could now go towards home, walk for a while in the park and enjoy the movements of the wind-tossed trees, the late roses, the geese on the lake. He would think about his various children in their various lives. He would think about the woman he loved, and would one day assuage what he knew was a loneliness he could not quench with any music, and though he tried daily with words, would not be assuaged.

May be I’ll start writing, today.  
The story of Zen Zero.

I realized that all good things come to an end.  The tears, the affairs, and even the faintest revelation about my relationship to the Emperor of Japan.  I’ll need help and... well, the truth can be tolled.  It can be that the faintest belief, that we as free people are subject to the king, our God.
A king stands in truth as our kin.  The love that has existed for a thousand years, about justice, permanence, and legend are here.
It all started 7 years ago.  According to the book of John, the 3rd book.  The face of his majesty does have an Imperial Guardian.  In any colour, red, black, blue, white, and even green.  Each color resembles the color of trust.  
I started training in the Emperor's garden at the age of negative 6.  Before my mother can conceive her unborn child in a marriage.  Like the burning of Shin Cho' Palace.  
"Oh, how they forget so quickly, the truth?" says my mother.
They forget so quickly the majesty and power of the Emperor's memory of Mother Japan.  In his Majesty's eyes, how many lovers stir the colors of benevolence.  Where and when does it exist and stop for us as an American patriot sold to slavery for spy’s.  All of his subjects do will and listen to the cry of patience in his family’s quarters.  
My father at the time of his marriage did not know the Emperor's name, I had asked my mother in her heart if she knew the king.  They are no longer married.  They had tried to burn down the Emperor's Palace with a marriage.  But I had already existed, in the love of my family at a wedding joining men and women.  I remember some singing, all though in my mother’s ears, really bad singing. In her head or mine at the wedding, whichever is greater.  Maybe the song was worthless or was the singer already lifting her fingers to strike matches on the bamboo fortress of the young emperor.  
They have had many statesmen destroy the dream that Japan has.  Through lies, corruption, and *******.  Each of the last three I had to conquer to be his Majesty's Justice.  I did not earn the right to judge any such subject or people, it was given freely at that time to children.  I had learned to love the Emperor, even in my own desire to please him and her.  
The lies were towering revelations about the coming of man in God's kingdom, and how the will of imperial veils never existed for the properties of mankind.  The corruption was the setting of dowers or dowries for the subject of lost families, in the forbearance of lucher escaped only by the luck of liars.  And then the dreams of revelry, owned by the ungodly and chaste men of the burning palace, whether sediscious, or whether the fables absolving time in the palace to a judgment had already met the Emperor.  
All of the priests (pre-ests) had to pray; for the remaining time of eternity, for the true judgment of his Majesty's subjects. It was to be taken from the subject of srys to the Emperor's Knight.  
To many were lost in the munitions of war.  Laws that govern and sanction truths were not available to those of absolute corruption.  Stalwarts, stonewallers, and stoners were becoming of the anti-gentry.  The laws were never to be discouraged by zeal, or by trial.  The laws had to represent the ability of love to change time even if the object of factions destroyed the old way.  They had taken the truth to prepare Neoteny for where the first Imperial Guard had placed his head.  The first Imperial Guard, that I became before birth had taken his own head with a weapon made by treason.  
My mother’s dress was made out of spider silk.  A giant spider played Chinese checkers with the Imperial Guard for my head also.  Never the less, the palace, this time was not burned.  The dress was made out of falling stars and spiders silk.  She had found the Emperor's tailor and traded my soul for the wedding.  The pictures that were retrieved from the wedding of my mother and father have ruminated in antiquity since the time until by birth my life.  The seers and srys wanted my head to take up the Emperor's chalice.  His cup, filled with my blood, Simian blood.  
I did not want to go through with it, birth and death before becoming subject to royalty.  Seeing the world before consummation, as I had was never thought of, it was seen as impossible unless by treason we had chided a woman of royalty.  
I have seen the last major asteroid go through our galaxy before it had ever had been a present particle of mutiny.   It proved to the child (myself) in gestation, between man woman at the wedding that time will pass just as quickly before my mind’s eye as it had at the day of Pentecost.   More than 500 billon people were to be saved by God rather than by a humble dismantling of a defense lawyer.
I had seen how flowers are made by tiny Zen Zero bumble bees going to and leaving from daisies and roses, and orchids.  How each seed takes roots and as do the munitions for treason and tears; how each man whom chooses to change their name because of treason begins to understand change when his wife chooses his name.  (The reference is to Zero attacks, suicide attacks.)  How the time and life and essence of life begins in literacy as a language of love.  Every old man on earth can help me write the scripts, but can the country of old men help me change the prophet?
As long as there is war in the palace there will be treason?
The spirit of the samurai was trying the youth in the palace.  From the first born male to the last lady in quixic geisha.  All uniques were to be placed before the Lord for appointment.  Any dreams of or visions of truth were a breach of solemnity lost by the virginity of the family.  The parents of each state were subjects to the Emperor's people, and to the chosen for freedom and slavery.  How many shining knights were to remain in the Emperor's house?  The uniqueness was subject only to the reason of the generation of the age.  Not many of my men had anything left after the life of the quill or pen of the Knight Meteyi had begun to take its place with the heads of loyalists.  His sword remains in the hand of the Majesty of Japan.  No knowledge, no lore, no president, no kin, or liars can stop his reign.  As if the last days of our youth were spent dismantling the bombs we had made during the last few battles over crude extravagance.  Oil, crops, metals, space, as space became a way to admire men in statehood was the example of treason to the following.  Democrats and Republicans began to try as is a trail of laws to and from changes for the people without a loyal subject to observe in service to a Nation.  Freed men became a bureau of Federally Bureaucratic Investigative subjections.  Whether the phone would sense its use and had no service.  Men tried by srys had needed no way to communicate, they were objects, objections, and objective to democracies.  Any and all of the western knowledge of good or evil was not earned in monasteries, it was as it were seen in-between a marriage of a man and a woman and the consummation of the first born to be the king in his own mind. Centrally, intelligence and agency became a lost paradox.  The palace could be burned through neoteny, the truly lost man or woman had to be part of the worm.  The earthworm had to dig up the lost and the prophet from its own humanly death.  

Chapter 2
The dress as simple as it was, was taken off and laid in a box for saving.  It was to travel through time in the Emperor's Palace to serve has a mold, a pattern for quilting lovers of the family tree through the history of love.  After the child was conceived in love, the dress is worn and then placed back into the box for time travel. From a generation of mothers to another generation of lovers. No man was to wear the dress as an idea, thought or wisdom.  The reproach, the dress, and the marriage is virtue encoded into a structure of life   The wisest man let the Emperor dream life into the belly of prophets through the dress.  The smartest scientist understood the impeccable reason of lust and gave all to his bride for the grave that the earthworm had trusted.  The publican had the dress made as a dowry to the tribe of Roman man.  And the Emperor breathed life into the woman with a few breaths at the wedding.  The subjects, the publicans had tried the Emperor for their bride, by making the flowers lean toward their lovers.  They had tried to tell the knight of the Emperor's Palace that the sun had also retired due to mutiny in the ranks and castes of statesmen.  The son will bend light into the palace of wisdom, and the subjects do grieve the stories from prophets.  
At exactly 10:03 central eastern standard time, the states men forgave themselves of suicide and left to burn the palace.  
Each dressed as royalists.  The burning of Chinju Palace is the last thing I remember before giving up to the sound of a 3 or 4 year old woman singing.  The next thing I remember is being dropped on the floor in the delivery room to a rattle and brattle of childish whims.  Like, the sound of laughter, but only as a fury of deceit, the singer was hurt when I had asked her to join the wedding ceremony.  She excused herself of the ceremony as was or were not subjects to the birth of the kings men in harmony.  

She tried, and wanted to steal the dress.  

Chapter 3
There was mostly nothing in the womb. Except Dogma.  My father, as dogma.  He would whisper to her in bed and they would giggle about never understanding anything ever again.  I excepted NAME for my name.  They didn’t know if a boy or a girl were to be born.  I could know the difference at the time of their conversation.  I then realized that the 3 years prior to conception were perfect.  And I, the Emperor's Knight, was tolled.  Tolled the way bells sound and the way people love to hear the news.  The way light has no existence in the womb, I was tolled the way Sandalphon treaded upon the tribe of Israel.  
Lying was not invented yet, well,... while in the womb, but I had heard some whispers in the darkness.  The camera couldn't fit in, I called and tolled the camera from the womb, in between to friends.  I called the camera, Dragon.  The dragon is the trust moving in-between true and time.  The Dragon, Meteyi had told me that we were going to write everything.  From the believe that martial arts were stronger than prayer, and to the reason that it was not true.  Factually, there was nothing but prayer and no martial artist had a sword bigger than the lie of the Emperor's dragon.  The dragon said, to my father,..."The world is to die for, and not enough."  The dragon also said to my mother,..."The purpose is in your belly as a rainbow in disgust."  He, the dragon almost couldn’t believe that I had mentioned to hymn that there was no way out of this without a dream so relax and let me fit in.  The doctor had to have heard of the loyalist dream of a birth right.  Basically, I didn’t want him to slap me for the first breath.  I hurt bad, like out of a sarcastic Scotlandish parody.  Many, many, many, men quit trying to go through the sry after that.  My mother creeped up to me after my kin had asked the doctor to pick me up off of the floor.  She smiled and handed the birth certificate to the nurse and read my social security number to my father on the phone, he was on duty at the Air Force Base.  My ears were still clogged with seminal fluid, but I could feel her dream a name into my soul.  She can know the Emperor's knight.  After a few moments, my cry as chide by the Emperor, into being a whisper of life.  From that moment on in my life, I could not cry ever, as a child cries.  Otherwise I could be a whisper.

Chapter 4
Every chance at change that had gotten to us was used by running from the dragon.  He liked Batman and hated Robin but new to fathers, knew that hatred kept something’s safe from the palace. The palace could never get filled by whispers.  The whispers only object to democracy and help the camera.  The daguerreotype was possibly the only thing that couldn’t lie.  It was considered lye to gossip worshipers.  Gossip may have started the war on bugs.  Like bugs in ceaseless noise are prayer or whispers, like gossip.  When bugs stop whispering, some seemingly are bad with superstition and others are horrible with bugs.  
The next few years, were also perfect.  I had no idea who else, I could be.  Absolutely perfect, the Emperor subjected us to love.  I could **** all day, eat as much as I wanted and was warned when they thought, like a whisper.  When it was time to eat, when it was time to bath and when it was time to be quiet and sleep were similar to whispers.  Diapers were not invented yet, I had to invent them.  My mother used to get sick from the pain of laundry and sleeping with me.  When the diapers were *****, she wash them and place them back on my ****.  Like a good, palace guardian, I used them up.  The new diapers had an air of mutiny to them, the disposable ones.  We never kept trash in the house.  The signs that we have had a king for dinner were never to be seen, but everyone had the right to change pants.  
Many of the ideas in life shared before birth were not existent after birth.  It was not until my family had meet the Emperor that... we needed to love God by learning to pray.  

Chapter 5
When we met the Emperor, it was easy to say that no whispers were used.  Other things were.  A memory, not a book was here.  There was no time, the palace he made for me was from God and a lot of people wanted in.  The Royal subject was the Emperor's first knight, my father's.  I had to memorize time, which in turn was not mine.  The actual Emperor thought, that I, am a poet of sorts.  We spelled the word memory in the sky together without words, whispers, or gossip.  The next few years were spent dyeing as tap or a drill bit would being to make a hole for fastening life to the surface of my families.  Called a tap and die, the whole of life must be treaded through time without a spry attempt to vacancy.  After the Emperor, my mother and father did not know that meeting the pope was bad.   The Emperor is good.  

Chapter 6
Mainly my ability to learn, had started to fail.  There was not need to have ability.  But walking was hard.  When I stood, I was pushed through, walking.  Like a battle of balance and superstition.  Crawling had no sense, being picked up made things silly.  When wanting to be here, and not knowing how to get there through crawling, here I was a a chubby fat knight.  Father used lemons on my taste buds and cracked when he knew not how I loved them.  He had to make work to pay bills and I learned that without a whisper.  So we would sh

To be imbued with the conviction that empathic listening is a panacea,
by the surreptitious, murmurous harbinger and his mellifluous words,
provoked brooding that my comprehension of his susurrous eloquence was a mondegreen,
when this scintilla of sagacity left a fetching ingenue crestfallen.

By the surreptitious, murmurous harbinger and his mellifluous words!
I adopted a propinquity to this furtive, ephemeral epiphany,
but when this scintilla of sagacity left a fetching ingenue crestfallen,
I discerned this lagniappe beleaguered our dalliance.

I adopted a propinquity to this furtive, ephemeral epiphany.
When she became inured to petrichor I knew my method pyrrhic,
and when I discerned that this lagniappe beleaguered our dalliance,
I vowed to rectify the imbroglio for my quintessential cynosure.

When she became inured to petrichor I knew my method pyrrhic,
and I ruminated that her insouciance was only forbearance.
I vowed to rectify my quintessential cynosure of the imbroglio,
and fabricated a denouement to return her to halcyon incipient.

I ruminated that her insouciance was only forbearance,
until hearing her state our conflation made each a moiety of our own panoply.
She fabricated a denouement to return us to the incipience of halcyon
with ineffable felicity, and I remembered with ebullience my inamorata's words.

Hearing her state our conflation made each a moiety of our own panoply
provoked brooding that my comprehension of her susurrous eloquence was a mondegreen.
With ineffable felicity I found ebullience in my inamorata's words
and was imbued with the conviction that empathic listening is a panacea.

I was playing a game with my kids the other day

I asked:
What do you use to see?
She said 'your eyes'
He said 'your brain'
Both right
Next I asked what do you use to hear?
She said 'your ears'
He said 'your brain'
Both right, again

The wisdom of children!

The game ended there but it got me thinking about what we use to feel
The most straight forward answer is our skin
Your brain is what processes the sense of touch so that has to be included
What about your heart?
Where does it fit into the big scheme of things?
Isn't the heart the space where we process feelings?

I have to loosely define things and often turn them upside down
ruminate
reorder my worldview to make it copacetic
I'm pretty sure that I often walk in two worlds
If my mind is simply locked in the western paradigm then people look at me like I'm bizarre
I'm not joking when I say they've wanted to lock me up because of my views
When I allow my mind to get locked into this western paradigm,
I sometimes even feel like I belong in lockup.

That's even worse than being held against your will
You're being held because you've lost your will

So I play with definitions to better suit my needs

When you do this however, there is a risk
Last summer I unlocked a spectre as I drank deeply and greedily from Crypt Lake

Crypt Lake is a real place on this planet
How did it get it's name (you might ask)?
According to the Blackfoot, placenames aren't given,
they come from place

Let's contextualize ~ this is all part of the journey
The physical leads to the spiritual and vice versa
To get to Crypt Lake you have to enter Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park
Found in the southwest corner of Alberta and the northwest corner of Montana
Once through the gates you have to catch a boat at a certain time
You have to be in the physical plane of existence at this point otherwise you're not getting on that boat
Once you get to the trailhead, then you can start to drift

That's what I did
As I walked, I let the stories come into me
I let them flow through me
They were sitting there waiting to be told
A spruce, arm in arm, with a pine
Hawks circling overhead
An ever present alertness for our bear brethren
Always open to the wildflowers
Indian paintbrush (I have red hair could I be considered an indian paintbrush?)
Pollinators flitting about
Oh, the water

Listen to the stories the water told:
First we come to Hell Roaring Falls
Next Twin Falls
Next Burnt Rock Falls
And to reach the Crypt, we have to pass through a mountain tunnel
Opening up to Crypt Falls
and finally Crypt Lake

This is a regular heroes journey if you allow it to be
I was in that place in my mind where I allowed it to unfold as it may

This is a place that's also known as the Crown of the Continent
Not far away is Chief Mountain, Turtle Mountain, and Crowsnest Mountain
Also Writing-On-Stone and the Milk River and Sweetgrass
These are holy names, this is a holy land

What I saw at Crypt Falls was the backbone of the continent
I saw the backbone of Turtle Island

I was floored
I had been on a continent wide spirit quest a few years previously
There was talk that the Deed for Turtle Island was coming due
And maybe it would be produced at one of these gatherings
We all waited but nobody produced it

I ruminated on that idea for a few years
I'm pretty sure that the Deed was there
Those who held it, just didn't realize

I learned something at the Crypt
I wanted answers and I made an assumption
I assumed that the water held the answers
So I drank deeply, even greedily from the Crypt

Right there in the international peace park, on the crown of the continent
With the Old Chief and the Crowsnest not far away
Writing-On-Stone just a sashay away
What about writing in calcium?
If I were the earth, I would encode important information in something
Transmutable

Not blood.
Bones

What I learned up there on the mountain as I gulped down knowledge from the Crypt was that the deed is written into the bones of the land and into the bones of those borne of that land

This is indigenous knowledge

It's in the water, the water is the medium for the message
The bones are the stock
But just like a double helix
A genetic sequence is an expression of time and place
On a certain spacetime continuum this innocuous looking structure
(take a look in the mirror)
Has all the necessary answers

The pebbles of your core
shine in ruminated scores
like a sorcerer spiking more
unlisting storms and ores

Smile dear rock, from a mile
touch the source of love ice
melt those gorgeous pure eyes
to the specks of the shiny shores

The rocky waves smell of testicles
Vestibules and alleyways of fertility
sung by Cronus as he holds a knife
eager to mutilate from a skyview

The sandy waters sink in Gaia hymns
as the scythe shed the slices of foams
where scattered sperms stays awash
to wish swimmers an eternal beauty

Ohh sacred gods on the aphrodite hills
Spread love unseen, unknown,unheard
stain the precedent of the flowing wind
give me the hint, a seat on the sainted scent

as a whole I have
{been listening to your godawful racket}
ruminated
for an entire rehearsal number
{though it felt like six}
and have a few things I would like to address
as a
{brutal bandslaughter}
kindly input
for your improvement
flutes
{come on now,
have we ever heard of a tuner}
great job, watch your pitch on the A, though
again
{scratch that, where's the shotgun}
...right.
clarinets
first parts play
{no, stupid, you are SECOND part
you got demoted last week
when you couldn't play the riff in
measure nine}
wonderful, now could we take it from letter B
just first clarinets, okay
{FIRST clarinets
FIRST FIRST FIRST
god where's my coffee}
right. let's just move right along, shall we
oboes

oboes, I--

right.

let's have that F again
{you're flat you're sharp and
both of you
just plain ****}
okay, one at a time
{oh my LORD my ears are bleeding
who the hell invented this thing}
you're a little sharp
can you fix that
...your reed is old
{you bought it last week}
...you've got spit in it
{you just took an entire twenty measures
of the last movement to
pull out your swab}
...someone broke your horn.

right.

okay French horns
let's hear the G

Would you be my Ava Gardner
     When I submit myself to the darkness?
         The madness of my own racing thought theatre 
                             In my mind

My own sacred sanctuary 
                         lost
     Somewhere between the ruminated past
     And a catastrophized "way of the future"
Where I presently react

Would you ever bring me back?
     Before bath times
     And fetal positions

Back into the arms
     of infinity, space and all in between
'Cause all I feel is scared anymore

Washing my mind clean with your cosmic touch
     From a black hole back to star child 

Whispering,
       You will emerge beyond The Phoenix and The Full Moon.
                   Just rise, My Sun

Exploiting my inner madman 
     with all the right intentions

Little death in the dark
Reborn illuminated

*Way of the future
Way of the future
Way of the future...

What was it jogged my memory
what was it filled a gap
when as I sat and ruminated
this forgotten thought came back
from long ago when I was ten
I stood alone outside
the stars were coming out
the Jotunheimen land of giants
was lit by northern light
far off their ghostlike splendour
fair took my breath away
such mirage-like illusions
were real for me that day

Margaret Ann Waddicor 25th April 2016

Stage lights burn out.
I am left agog.
Eyes drop
incredulously
as what I saw before me
was very restoring.

A story of humanity,
a Shakespearian epic,
a turbulent tempest
that hit me with
the fierceness of Hamlet.

As Othello’s hands
wrapped around
his beloved neck,
as Thibault killed Mercutio
As Ariel and Puck
played their trickster games,
as Prospero planned,
and Oberon dawned
his elvish Armor,
as Titania loved an ***
and saw false love pass;

As the thorny crown
of King Richard passed
then passed again
whilst he ruminated
nearly naked in a cell of
dirt and stone, alone,
halfway mad before
he made it there.

As Caesar bled
betrayed by Brutus
in the Ides of March,

I await more wonders
for Shakespeare
has so much more
I have yet to get to.

I am descended
from that poet’s heart.
who passed down his purchased arms
of false nobility
to become a man of property
not knowing his plays
would make him greater
than any noble man of his day.

After all the pleasure
I sit in awe and ponder,
what if he had the eyes to see
what faces us presently
would he wonder at the cleverness of us
or cower at the current level
of our stupidity?

A knight in shining armor bright
Rode along the river's snaking trail
He ruminated on the ensuing fight

To his mind came a flash of light
Employing tactics of skill he'd prevail
A knight in shining armor bright

On display all his bravery and might
The opponent he'd courageously assail
To his mind came a flash of light

Atop a gallant mount he'd flight
Speeding with his lance's piercing nail
A knight in shining armor bright

Defeat entered not into his sight
Victory being well within his bail
To his mind came a flash of light

He'd conquer the opposing knight
With battle flair which wouldn't fail
A knight in shining armor bright
To his mind came a flash of light

I knew you before we ever met.
I felt our feelings,
Ruminated over our thoughts.
I clung to our convictions,
Was crucified for our flaws.
I didn't write for you,
Yet was delighted
When you understood.
I gave you my hard copy,
Creased down the middle and bent from nervous energy,
Typed twenty-six point font
(These drunk eyes of mine strained for less).
You gave me your hard copy.
I never saw it coming.
Neatly kept,
Typed with handsome typewriter slab serif.
Bursting with honesty,
That person-to-person
Truth that I value over all.
The occasional typo
Revealed to me the process,
The ecstatic pleasure in creation
That I've felt before.
You on your typewriter,
I in marker on the window's glass canvas.
The next night
We joined you for drinks and for good company.
Talked poems,
Talked Whitman,
Talked dumb society,
Talked records.
In drunken elation seven true hearts
Howled to heaven,
Played music,
Performed clumsy art.
I had more drinks.
Relished the night
Shared with kindred souls.
The night went on.
You asked for your coat,
Which I mechanically retrieved.
Stepped out and into the cold
With no coat of my own.
As you nervously lit your cigarette,
I knew something
Was amiss.
"It's nothing."
That's how I knew,
It was everything.

Tiny moving parts,
A spirit of synchronicity
That I had ruminated on:
How it starts,
And they stop
Wrought of genius
And simplicity
The dawn and fall of humankind
All seated on a wrist
Swinging forward and behind
In whose fate
The hands so twist.
Dusting charcoal from glitt’ring grin
Mocking in a single prayer
Each second, loud
And growing gayer
Penitence for that second’s sin
For blank, so empty
The vessel sat
Covered, not covering,
In the grayish-black
Wasted time in unused power
The watch but looks away
Meager, sour
Persistent still
‘Till wakened by the rested hour
Where dawn illumes
The hideous sight: a failure
A void in Dis’ sweet hall
God’s hand stained in graphite
And no grace upon creation
Did any of it fall.

'Be there, in the park by the lake. by three
Or we're through'
I paced my room
I ruminated disconsolately,
Would being through be so bad?
Was I squandering my life?
It came quarter to and I left
I thought 'If a bus comes,
And I get there on time,
So be it'.

The bus came, and I turned the other way.

Every night, I think about texting you again. But will you reply? Absquatulated. You absquatulated me. You left without saying goodbye.

I ruminated everything. Did I do something wrong? I'm waiting, but I shouldn't be.

Sometimes I think, "I'm glad you let me go, cause I wouldn't." But I realized how many times it happened to me. Those little times felt like a million times.

I wish to the heavens, "I hope he see something that reminds me of us, so that he will know how he broke my heart, so that he will know how it felt when he broke my heart."

I cried for the first time writing on my diary. When I wrote something there, it's just anger. But finally, there's another emotion. I cried when i wrote you in my diary, knowing that nothing ever lasts, and you're one of it.

Maybe at the start, you loved me, but little by little, you'll start to hate me. I still love you, but don't even think of me wanting to see you again. Because everything I loved will fade away.

It always crosses my mind, "Do people only love me cause they couldn't find someone to love?" I knew you would do the same thing, but I still chose you. Atleast you know how I love someone, right?
I feel like, I'm just someone's short happiness. When they get tired of it, they leave it and let it be abandoned.

Don't worry, I'll forget you like you forget me. But I feel like it would take a lot of time to forget everything about you.

I miss you, but I hate the fact that I miss you.

Five straight saturday mornings
the fishy monks stood on the stile
eating salubrious fish.
It ruminated health from the rostrum.

Recently we cut a large holly tree down. It had given access to the roof of a mother raccoon, who burrowed into the attic to begat her progeny. It was sad to see that superior glossy leafed beauty go. Full of blistering red berries, it attracted a multitude of feathered friends, who would be spied from a window near where I would rest. Still, the unwelcome problem of a gang of masked furry bandits, meant the holly could no longer stay.

It was no easy task, falling such an old growth. The tree was at least close to the eaves when the home was purchased nearly twenty years ago. Now it had risen well past the peak of the roof. Though with steadfast ingenuity, and agile elbow grease,  down it came in four large sections. Branches would have been perfect for wreaths and garland, should it have been closer to winter. The trunk, at its base, was ten inches in diameter.

Holly wood is a hard wood and would be perfect for sculpting something unique. I ruminated keeping some to dry for this purpose, and it most certainly would have been saved for the fireplace, had we not the intention of moving and the need of keeping things tidy be present.

This all plays in my head, the purposing of things and such. It is not in my nature to waste. However, all the extra effort of putting things in a proper place for future use, cannot be afforded at this crucial time. Oh hell, now I suppose offering it up to Internet scavenging, would be more ecologically sound. Come and take, please help yourself. The Ad appears on Craigslist Free Stuff.

I have ruminated,
Many a time,
Over the sheer wickedness,
of men;

With guns the take life,
Not offended, unprovoked;

They fill our eyes,
With painful, hot tears:
parents and loved ones,
left to mourn and grieve;

Where is your humanity?
Elected, employed to guard life,
You take wantonly, brutally;

We shed many a tear,
daily,

The day cometh,
When this half-full gourd,
Will spill crimson content,
And hell, in all its fury,
Will have never witnessed,
Such a thing...as that;
When the night becomes day...
...and the day refuses...to be born.

I woke up with your smell lingering on my skin.
I woke up and felt warmth where you'd been.
I rolled over ruminating on the nature of existence.
Life. Love. Birth. Death.
I ruminated myself into a headache.
Heartache.

I trekked a trail in a grimy wood,
Pursuing destiny, fate behind me stood

I hummed a tune of great remorse
And ruminated a late divorce

Then

I found a man in a half-burned astronaut suit
The lining was charred, he only had one boot

No ship near, no crew—a sole soul
Lying in the middle of a crater; a grain of rice in a salad bowl

He spoke to me through strained speech,
Telling secrets geniuses wish to teach
He said the stars of dreams were within his reach
But the bounds of worlds are ones men cannot breach

This astronaut
Had his suit tied with barely an Ashley knot
I’d just shipwrecked, floated ashore at half a knot
I asked him to tell of his ship, he said “I’d rather not”

But his tongue had no fetter
To quell his grand eloquence, for worse or for better

Nebulas in the wind,
Spires on the moon,
Galaxies in the horizon...

He muttered of such as though humming a tune

As I sighed a breath of great remorse
And contemplated the great divorce

He pulled a smile then grabbed my hand
And said, “The future is the greatest land.”

I tried,
I tried to stay by his side,
But my every insistence was denied

He commanded to be left to roam
The lands and worlds that he called “home”

But never has it left my mind;
My only encounter of this kind

To this day I don’t know if they were things he’d seen
Or fancy thrills he had dreamed
But I’ve never known a mind so keen
To make fables real as his words seemed

And since that day I’ve sought to find
The experiential treasures he had mined

See, never has it left my mind,
That day my near-death was left behind

Yes, never has it left my mind
Because he illumined the darkened eyes of mine

Or perhaps it has never left my mind
Because when I found him


He was blind.

One night as I crept into bed
And said a deafening prayer
With a heavy head
And mightless weight
I thought about how I'd aged

Flashbacks of childhood days
Began to take small shape
Things I thought I'd long forgotten
Began to return in little ways

With the company of the lightning
Oh what a calamity it was
So calming yet damning
For I knew it was for me
Some transgressions need to be tranquilised

At once I became a tinker in a forest
Lost beyond comprehension
Like the child that I never was
With the happiness I never lived

Delirium slowly takes over as
The pills begin to take effect
I have always wondered
How such little contraptions
Could do so much damage to our bodies
Wreck it entirely
And leave us frothing for a second chance

And as I ruminated at length
As my mind darted from tree to tree
I began to wonder
How I came into existence
And a little satisfaction as I thought
'Why me?'
Oh nights like these
Can leave you hanging
When questions have no answers
To be seen

As the flashbacks ended so too did the lightning
Though thunder stayed to remind me
That wrath and wreckage will deliver
What courage cannot make quit

For years on end I
Traipsing on ropes as thin as these
Living on a trampoline
But what if delusion blinds
And there is no one at the end of the string
And as I hit the ground
Blood smashes me piece by piece
And loudly I chide myself
For my lack of belief
Where is all the hope I used to have?
Though I never was doe-eyed
Nor ever claimed to be
But innocence lost is tantamount
To the human spirit's defeat

And here I lay
Hands clasped
On my chest
How I remember the last time I ever wished so badly
For recovery
How I threw caution to the wind
And expected to be protected
So recklessly
The last time I envisioned
How my funeral might be
Will I be clutching roses?
Will I die without anyone knowing?
Will the silent screams of the sea
Overshadow all my grief?
Or will there be none
As I leave smiling
Happier than I have ever been
And to these thoughts there are no answers
To such wild dreams no reality
My heavy head was not wired
To ever ruminate so deeply

In the span of 20 minutes
I saw my life flash past me
Perhaps not because I was about to lose it
But for the sake of reminding me
That of all the things that can be lost easily
Life
Has most melee
And we are taking so many things for granted
As if they're guaranteed
As if our heart is build to last
In our ribs of helix steel

And this night most of all
I decided I was going to live freely
In the new life that soon awaits me
To be who I need to be

And these pills that foremost mean to heal will guide me into sleep

Being or seeming?
At first I was scared.
I was timid.
I tried to please,
but got in trouble anyway.
But when the changes came,
I was empty.
What you see is the real me.
I was worried.
I hated my image, but I ruminated.
I did things that should have been unspeakable.
I felt guilty. I felt free.
But I was still looking for the real me.

Were it my duty to con vince a fool  I would try
To understand my own reason before answering
Lest I be like the fool met in his folly.

Experience vicariously pre carious edge standing

I know chaos never resolves into synchronized living systems.
Never has. Never will. Still
You can think differently.

Find a way any thing can be
And being, come to,
eventually, be a part of you that works.
A chloroplast
Or some thing, mechanical, inside a cell inside of you.

Chance, bon chance, sunbeams captured in greens ground
To ruminated mush in bovine bellies find their way in
Packets of protein to

----
One of the things that loved enemies do is provoke you
To good works, to right use of the talent found
beneath the rock that crushed you
Like a bug.

I picked up my pen today
and wished to write something
that would make you smile.

I ruminated for hours
about laughter and beauty
to cheer you up.

I stared at the blank sheet
as I thought of you.

What good would love
make of a girl who's nothing
but a blurred phantom?