Yes, its the year twenty eighteen and not Nineteen forty-four

but comrades and friends, hear me out for I know not what to do

Do be kind and laugh you not, or raise your eyes or snigger like fools

the problem is, like Duke Philip, Mark Philips, Snowdon and Mike Tindall

I have known a Royal Princess for years and really like her very much



She is so sweet and nice, ever gentle, warm, kind and thoughtful

smart and clever, fun and playful yet regal and charismatic

and it is said, pardon moi, she has the sweetest honey ***, to boot

I know she fancies me too, for her intense eyes and actions tells me so

we talked, we joked, drink and laugh and share little tender touches



She lives in a grand little apartment and drive a lovely old car

well read, witty and engaging, she's fun and very good company

She,s impressively intelligent with a wide grasp of social issues and life

very versatile, she can turn her hand to anything and does things well

above all, she's a people's person, always sensitive to the needs of others



Alas, that was then, for now in months, we no longer see or speak

for I am a coward, right through and thorough and not very bright

You see I am, though no longer said, a commoner born and bred

and to me and my kith and kin, its always has been 'us and them'

And from birth, our tradition states, never the twain shall meet, so there!



For if I show my real feelings to my Princess and be real, nice and warm

I shall, by my lot be accused of being impressed by 'them snotty lot'

If I show I really care and want to be close and spend time with her

my lot will mock me to high heavens and call me a toady brown-noser

They will scream, crawler, fawner, he's just a flunkey and a groveller



Again, if with her I am real and natural as with all I know in my circle

they will say I am an arduous social-climber, being what he's not

And to boot, were I to be true to myself and have who I really want

I will be ******, shunned and labelled, a big 'Gold-digger,' true

Look at him, betraying his roots and all for shinning lucre from them



So being the coward, under-confident, paranoid, insipid under-achiever

traits, you all know and have, inherited from birth along with you all from our class

So what else to do, but drive my kind, real and genuine Princess away from me

I had to behave rude and shabbily to show I had no regard for 'them Royals' ones

I shouted and scorned to indicate I have no respect for any 'regal' whatever



Its all show with us, so I put on a good show and reported back to my lot

oh, I farted in the Princess' face and took the **** as we spoke, hahaha

Oh, I stood over the Princess and shouted and raved in public, hahaha

oh, I ignored her calls and never text or call her back, hahaha hahahaha

Oh, do you know, I shouted and slammed the phone down on her, twice, haha...haha



Wow, did I win bragging rights or what, I did not betray my roots, I tell you

I walk amongst my lot now with pride, and I can see they are all impressed

Some idiot said, hey! isn't the Princess just another human like you

did she treat you like that, are you not intelligent enough to see past labels

Have you ever heard, 'Do unto others as you want them do unto you'



Alone by myself, I feel ashamed, I think about her and wished I'd behaved differently

but what could I do, what's the right and correct thing to do in this situation

I am weak, I always need others, not confident enough to stand up for myself

Though educated, I am not intelligent enough to be self-assured, fair and measured

And all my insecurities means I need others attention, kinship and approvals



I love 'showing off', I think most of us do it to make up for our inferiority complexes

Nothing beats being able to say, I disrespected those toffee-nosed ones

Though my Princess was very down to earth and never haughty, she is still one of them

But I have to be a working class hero or be shunned and given grief by my lot

After all, I am not Royal and made of sterner stuff. we are not born and bred that way

Hahaha.....hahaha....hahaha........yeah, I'm the man! Who's your daddy, people?



Copyright LaurenceA. 14th June, All rights reserved.

Visiting a friend on his Quarter
Horse farm, the day sunny and warm.
We walked out to his brood mare
pasture, the ladies were running,
awaiting and sunning, anticipation
in the air and their nervous behavior.

Noble his name, consistency his game,
a reliable aging stallion, sire to many
fine sons and daughters, years of proven
pairings, came halter led and prancing.


He had their scent and his spirit awakened,
the three ladies believed to be in season began
to snigger and whinny, their excitement growing
as the stallion entered their grassy domain,
the dance was about to commence.

The handler led the big fella' forward,
both sides began their quizzical inspections.
one young filly more aggressively willing
than the others. Noble excitedly returned
her heightened interest.

Within a few minutes Noble began to rear up,
he knew his job, his august appendage extended,
trying several times to mount his mate intended,
adrenaline pumping his back legs began to shake,
on his fourth failed attempt the eager proven
suitor fell to the ground, rolled over, paused for
a moment and struggled to stand on unsteady legs.
Appearing even somewhat embarrassed.

The mare moved aside, kicked her hind legs in
the stallion's direction, whinnied loudly and
ran away. Rejected the old stallion stood looking
perplexed, failure was something unknown to him.
His spirit was willing but his aging body was weak.
The old stud slowly returned to the barn, his head
hung low, no longer prancing.

For every time and being there is a season, aging
is part of the cycle, like this stallion, we all reach
this moment of understanding. Sometimes gracefully,
most times with stunned disbelief.

From Noble to nothing in one afternoon.

She was ugly.
A snake of a girl- beady
blue eyes and
blood-red toenails.

The small snigger creeping
up through her perfectly
kept teeth as she spat
at the garbage
of the street: the creatures
she couldn’t see
through her beady
blue eyes.

Her mama would dress her
up in yellow ribbons and green bows.
“Why honey,
you make a sweet little
dandelion,”.

She liked to be
a dandelion, but secretly
she dreamed of being
a marigold:
                                                                ­                       Lips parted to the sun,
                                                                ­                                       seeds planted
                                                         ­                        in the rich soil of her own
                                                                ­                                             blackness.
She wanted to be a marigold.
But she was just
a dandelion,
stepping on petals and
weeding out whatever
she longed to be.

There was this time before the going home. The supers bowled off with cheery parents or elder brothers a good fortnight before the big day. There were lessons, but despite the best efforts of the staff who remained nobody could take this between time seriously. Mr Gayford for maths was hardly a substitute for Alfie's lively lessons. But Alfie we knew was climbing in the Alps this Christmas and would return with photos and tales that kept us enthralled despite the sums he invented - calculate the air pressure at 4107 metres on the Jungfrau. We all loved him with his self-raising Citroen Safari that smelt enticingly of Gitanes and that scent Claudia his girlfriend favoured. Oh Claudia, so wonderfully and exotically dressed, who seemed a world away from any boy's mother or sister.
 
Mornings were quite different. A later breakfast and then a two-hour practice with Dr. B . Hard work, with new music to learn. But the carols! Oh those sounds, and so different from what we sang all year. Boris Ord's Adam lay y bonden, Praetorius A Great and Mighty Wonder, Torches, In Dulce Jubilo. and as Advent progressed that magical verse anthem by Orlando Gibbons This is  the Record of John.
 
I was just eleven when Dr. B said, as we opened the music folder for the morning rehearsal, 'St Clair, Can you do this for us please?' Not so much a question as a command; you didn't say no to Dr. B. The introduction was well underway before I grasped it was to be me. How I stumbled through it that first time I don't know. I could never hear this piece without tears welling or indeed falling. ' Look Mog is getting tearful' said Richards the head chorister, and the little boys would snigger. And I would blush:  through my freckles to the roots of my auburn gold hair. Did nobody understand what this music did to me, what it said and expressed? At eleven I think I had began to know, and later when I heard it in Kings Chapel, and then conducted it variously to those bemused American students, listened to my gramophone recording, its affect always, always the same. I was experiencing truly what Vikram Seth has called an equal music, something so entirely right, a true conjunction of words and music, a coming together beyond anything as a composer I could ever imagine, a yardstick life-long; it became an acid test of sensitivity to my love of music and has been passed only four times by serious friends and lovers. To know me you must know and feel this music . . .
 
And so on the second Sunday of Advent at Evensong I sang this jewel, this precious flower of music's art. The candles flickered in Her Majesty's chapel and we stood for the anthem. The chamber ***** began its short introduction already weaving together the four-part texture - and then the first solo statement. This is the record of John when the Jews sent priest and Levites from Jerusalem . . . and then the tears fell and the music swam in front of me as though glazed in the candlelight.
 
Who art thou then? And he confessed and denied not, and said plainly, 'I am not the Christ'.
 
Oh that melisma on the 'I', that written out ornament, so emphatic, and expressing this truth with innocent authority. I sang it then as I hear it now. Nobody had to demonstrate and say 'Don't let it flow, let each note be separate, exact, purposeful'. So it was and ever shall be, Amen.
 
And they asked him, What art thou then? (Art thou Elias? x 2). And he said I am not. ( Art thou the prophet? x 2) And he said I am not.
 
The verse anthem is such a peculiar phenomenon of the English Reformation. Devised it is said to allow the hard-pressed choirmaster to train the main body of his singers in a short response, the soloist singing the hardest and most expressive music on his own: the verse. It is also so well suited to the English choral tradition with its Cantores and Decani ordering of voices. I was always a ‘Can’, even later when I joined the back row as a tenor.
 
Then they said unto him, What art thou? That we may give an answer unto them that sent us. What sayest thou of thyself? And he said I am the voice of him that cryeth in the wilderness. Make straight the way if the Lord.
 
And so I wonder still about the place of this text in the liturgy of Advent and why, cloaked in Gibbons’ music, it has remained affecting and necessary. And who is John? a prophet of the desert, the son of Elizabeth to whom Mary went to share the news of her pregnancy and whose own son quickened in her womb as she heard of her cousin Elizabeth's own miracle - a childless woman beyond childbearing age unexpectedly blessed and whose partner struck dumb for the duration of her confinement. Is it just another piece in the jigsaw of the Christmas story in which prophecy takes its part?
 
When I was eleven I thought to 'cry in the wilderness' meant exactly that - tears in a desert place. I learnt later that this was a man who stood apart, was different, a hippie dressed in the untreated skins of wild beasts, who lived amongst those who sought the wild places to mourn, to place themselves in a kind of quarantine after illness or bereavement, who then became wise, and who cried.
 
Such meditations seem appropriate to the season when there is so often the necessity of travel, much waiting about, the bearing down of the bleakness of winter time, though strung about with moments of delicious warmth when coming in from the cold as with the chair by the library fire I craved as a chorister to escape blissfully into fictioned lives and exotic places.
 
How these things touch us vividly throughout our lives; as we watch and wait and listen.

Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat *****;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,

Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new-
Cleaned or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate, and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort or other will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognizable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and *****-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for whom was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

Anthony, Anthony, oh dear Anthony. His face is like a little darling's; with tumults of green and gray cheeks blended into one. I wish there had been no yesterday; for yesterday was when he appeared with his rain-soaked, but gay little cheeks; as he smiled at me by the twin moonbeams. Still he is not him; I care not how he wants to tease me in my dream.

My heart is gay no more; its walls are honed imperfectly, and with no goodwill. Its image and charity hath now gone; I am plain, I am like a shy spider grafting about the chattering winter walls. Oh, Anthony, yet how sweet thou wert under the bald rain; and its unleashed forms of cold clouds! Ah, I wish I could lend to you a wonted breadth of my story; but as I gaze, now, into the very soft metallic eyes of thee; I am afraid my words shall never be impossible. Thou hath that brilliant green gaze of nature, my sweet, but thou art not immortal; thou art vital, but thou art not of the same rainbow as he is. He hath, now, been dried and cornered in the unseen lungs of my heart, but his ghost is there. Ah, he, who hath betrayed me like a sparkle of dead candle! How should I treat this misdemeanour, you think? But to my strange suspicion, I cannot but forget of him, even a sliver of memory; for his memories are too elusive, too adequate for my hungry heart. Oh, Anthony, how bashful I am--for not daring to cope with thy questioning eyes!

Like those unanswered rains; which keep wetting the unyielding soil, damaging toiled crops into the limbs of quavering pits. My love was borne with death by him; within the death of his feelings, in which it was but a fossil of discarded flesh like any other corpse. But where is Immortal, Immortal, Immortal? I keep looking for him, in those scarlet hollows, but still I glimpse a sight of him not. I shall keep lulling him to sleep, at least in my dancing dreams; he is the sober prince and I am the guileless princess. Ah, Anthony, tell me how I cannot be guileless; I am honest and decent and carry no defilement of chastity. I am pure myself; with a garden of virginity and its terrific rivulets flowing beneath me. How can my charms be not charitable? Even when I walk, a thousand boughs of blossoms snigger not; they welcome my entry with another thousand wits; they reply to my living steps with a radiance that even heaven cannot forgive. My verbal words might not be delicate, but I am sure my poem is; regardless how hard t'is downfall might be. Ah, Anthony, thou art a miracle still, but thou art no more than an evening story, sadly! I cannot feel my heart become unleashed, as I looketh into thy eyes; I cannot feel grasped by thy cold hands--ah, thou hath grasped me not; but still thy apparition cometh less merited, and rather falsified, than that of his.

How can that be, how can that be, how can that be! Ah, this earth with its villainous glory might blame me once more. It shall toughen my hardship with a whole land of repulsion; it shall intend never again to make me a faithful alliance. It shall satisfy its own self, and metamorphose into a swamp of ungrateful hatred sweated by an edified mockery. Ah, what doth all t'is charm mean, then? I shall face a green apocalypse soon, thereof, before being burned within another blasphemous night. I feel cross, cross, cross, cross, and cross; I grit my teeth whenever I think of my stupidity. I feel as if I was an old dame so gratuitous to thee; I am a luminous fire, but instead I have no seeds and am just as dead as a soundless pumpkin. Ah, Anthony, can thou but restore that lost fire again? I want no speeds, I want to see no miracles, I feel dutiful; but undutiful at the same time. Your heart is right by the doors of Yorkshire--and sometimes grow into the doors themselves; it is funny to see how they are so tidily integrated by the eminence of each other. I shall craft for you a beautiful song; but perhaps a jest like that shall never be enough; it shall be tedious and not pertinacious enough to entertain thy young heart. Thou art in want of my poems, as far as I can see; but all I might do is withdraw my eye and even draw my steps back further, invariably like a rusted old church bell. I am insane; and far trapped in the insanity as I myself am; I am cold-blooded, my heart can, perhaps, be healed only by ease-like murders. I cannot ponder, I cannot think, I cannot consider; I paint the entrance to myself no more-oh, how I miss his laughs like never before! Ah, Anthony, my wintry sun, my autumn soliloquy, my snowy sob; perhaps I shall better be far from thee, for I want not to make thee sore! My heart is as rough as it is; incarcerated in its own heartless panoramic views, brutal like an unattended soil, for hath it just been left unattended for a time; it often wanders to breathe fresh air, but severed once more by the adored's filthy laugh. It comes home and sleeps weeping beside me.

My heart can no longer count; neither can it flinch. It cannot even see colours, including those which were once fabulous; it is far from enormity, but it claims to have one. Ah, Anthony, it is even a brighter scholar than myself! Look, look how hath it conquered my? I have jaws and it has not, I have a heart--ah, I do have it, but I knoweth not how to make it mine. Half of my heart hath been eaten away by a rotten love, even my blood now--as I hath been hearing it, is no longer flowing. I am hurried by the murmurs of the wind every day, ah, but shall I return again to my poetry? I guess, though, I can make time for this gay seriousness; I am poetry and shall always be, I am alarmed by the cries of my poems, and the joys of my sentences. I am mad, as how poets should just be; I am the pictures my poetry paints; and caress them often at night in my arms.

But as you may have seen it, my heart is now dead, plain, and black; my heart who has loved, and still does love, someone. Ah, Anthony, forgive me; forgive me for this solemn labour of my heart; forgive me for choosing to bear this alone. I might love again, someday; I am aware I should triumph over this self-inflicted martyrdom; I shall relieve myself in one blink of wonder, in a more reliable princedom by the sea. Still, I hope, like a gallery of paintings that is planted with a hall of constant transformations, God shall transform the very haven of his souls one day; and refine his atrocious soutane into one righteous and cordial. I might not be the crucial lady yet for thee; oh, how I wish I were! But vain this attempt may be, should we ever doubtfully try it. Ah, Anthony, but gratitude to thee--for once choosing to lay off the puzzle of my heart; for thy gentleness from the very start!

And hath I now finished my breathless narration; I doth miss thee, oh Immortal; I miss thee as I shall miss a piercing sun in these filths and greases winters may bring! Ah, and the clearer picture in my mind carries to me a voice that though thou art fine; thou art dainty no more; and this leaves to me a flavour of
precarious solitude. I loveth thee, Immortal, Immortal, Immortal; my love is as a sky that remains high; my love shall stay flowery until the day I die.

I call you forward to witness thee,
The nightmare, crimson reality,
Red soaked sheets,
A story of once an innocence, now is gone,
Torn away from my flesh,
I ask you this, where is my choice in all of this,
I have had snatched what is mine, robbed, I seek justice but there is no answer.

My cries, cries fall on silent ears,
Through the years, my cries are also now silen-ced,
I have become a story to myself,
When I now tell of my tragedy, I don't cry
Nor do I give that bitter, characteristic laugh,
I look hollow and stare hollow and feel hollow.

… People think that I’m shallow.
I am fine with that,
When has it ever been my choice?
I cry and scream and no- one helps, and passers-by snigger as they go.
...’’She got what she deserved, she had asked for it, what, dressed like that!’’
‘’She should thank her stars, that someone wants her anyway!’’

After all, ‘**** is a kind of... love.’

That’s part of the irony…

I don't feel that loved.      

- Felinely, Aisha.

Sometimes, I simply think of colours, you know.
The world is so complex, the human brain and the ocean unexplored, wars and marriages are battling with its side effects and a lot of good goes ignored, so sometimes, instead of Newton, I think of colours.
Like black. What if black is just the ink squeezed from a blind man's dreams?
And yellow, the Sun's abominable hot ****?
What if Snow White was just a Snow"man", a 5 year old created
but forgot to add the nose to?
Was it Olaf disguised as Charming who broke the sleeping curse with "true love's kiss"?
You can hit the bandwagon and say "Haha! Then, white is an angel's ****!"
And I could believe you!
I'm a believer!
I'm also a wild guesser! I'm the harlot of semantics, or whatever that is.
I have never met a naive gold digger, except of course, a gullible beggar.
I hate vulnerability, but then I hate strength too,
because I revel in crying and feeling my face wet and pretty
secretly waiting for a stranger's **** to give me sympathy.
Let me tell you something today.
You can give me food, clothing, warmth and a shelter to sleep under, but if you can't give me peace, comfort and acceptance, my world inside my mind and soul is a thunder waiting to erupt once I lose you and never bother to come back.
I would care less for love in fact.
I guess I'll go searching for a Kentucky's to ravish on a chicken leg with my legs up and heave a sigh of having found solace in no bra!
I see a rosary dangling down a fat woman's pious chest and I think of Jesus Christ.
70% of the world's population celebrate the man who died on the cross and topped it off with resurrection
And then again, I think of valiant soldiers who die on the borders trying to protect their nation
Who are grieved and honoured for a day, no, not celebrated no! They are forgotten.
This ******* contrived sense of sacrifice and nationalism is causing to humanity, its suffering and damnation.
Eve offered and Adam ate! Stupid snake! Because, when I didn't know any better I was too scared to *******!
All these esoteric questions and theories and debates and elocutions and apologetics and guesses, what's the ******* point?
The sanctimonious have the God of gaps, the Spaghetti monster for the iconoclastics and then we have the ******* with a  purpose to save the planet from overuse of plastics!
"There's a lot wrong with this world today and we MUST change IT!", asserts a 14 year old onstage in an air conditioned school,
where hundreds have gathered in an international thinktank for "imitating truce".
What is maturity? Tenacity? Or Acuity?
Do you understand subjectivity?
So, just because I'm 20 now, it's hilarious to still watch me drinking milk instead of "adult tea"?
I would rather listen to stories of people who've travelled the planet and lived to tell about it all, than load Stories on Instagram of people who barely make it across the hall.
And I wish I could say "Social media can **** my *****."
Because in this planet of intelligent creatures, one gender accuses, the other waits and muses, so the former forms a movement, hoping for some improvement, but really all this is a sham. All of this? It's just entertainment.
It's not about free will, it's about freedom.
It's not about fear and dogma, it's about reason.
It's about effortless loving with no condition. NO condition.
My mother says all the time "Live and let live", and I believe this is the only greatest gift we can give, to people around us and unto us, also to forget and forgive.
Why seek for mankind's origin and destiny? Why not find the  purpose we need to serve right now?
What can you do now?
And this will never have a proper ending, because I like it that way.
The world will never change, I snigger knowing because there was just one thing the Priest said right, "And we all like sheep have gone astray."

Curious bright light, like insect burn close to the core,
no one knows why we do this. Perhaps, it’s instinct,
how funny, an insect’s instinct that we share,
funny from a distance, but in experience – complete cosmic significance.
Nothing is more important, you are what I revolve around,
constantly fly close to the attractive warmth, oh – warmth,
no one can remove emotion, fire, burning ****** desire,
teenager’s fantasy, obscene embarrassment that makes us young,
with imaginative and over expressed feelings towards light,

Why do we fly so close to dangerous sun?
It can harm us, so, what must we do but dream,
raise expectations, deny faults, dream of ideal outcome,
outsiders watch; they snigger, laugh and even pretend we don’t exist,
they don’t understand the stupid phases, constant rambling,
internal beating up, bleeding from our organs within our soft skin,
they can’t see us from the inside, only from our youthful frame,
more important that life, this is our life, memories will be shattered,
make the little things last, they say, we don’t listen.

We’ll live forever, time is irrelevant, merely a trick of society,
as time is the destroyer of passion, and pure ecstasy,
so fly forever. Towards the bright LSD steam that emits electrical glow,
fly forever. Finding different ways of explaining its attractive aura,
sensual smells and touches arouse us, grasping for more,
so close, you push further, we are virgins finding ourselves,
exploring our bodies, yours and mine, all is new and exciting,
explosion of overriding passion, spilling around our hips,
naked with awkward embrace.

We are so close to the fire; dangerous and beautiful fire,
as close as I can be, to true desire,
thrusting and propelling, spinning uncontrollably,
mind is hazy and drunk,
feeling so right, feeling so good, feeling so,
description goes on, until hit the glass, border between pain,
though, the collision stings, it does not ****,
like fence, impossible to cross, it protects but denies,
fly away.

The cycle continues, until we wise up,
learn to avoid the light, grow legs and walk,
no more flying, no soaring and freedom,
you walk away, leaving it behind,
but as you turn, glance behind your tired shoulder,
the fire still burns it’s eternal glow, trapped in restricting glass.

she has prized credentials
where grovelling is concerned
and many a brownie point
without merit she's earned

******* up to management
is something she's good at
her activity is as undistinguished
as a gross gutter rat

she crawls all over the high ups
like an uncontrollable rash
her sycophantic behavior
causes our teeth to disdainfully gnash

to observe her inching
up the head honcho's ***
makes us all snigger
at her sniveling farce

Midterms are over and I killed ‘em (yes, even the physics) - yeah me!
I spent the last two weeks like prisoners do, marking off days until - freedom. Now the pressure’s off and I can chill. Spring break starts tomorrow, and I have NO plans.

It’s dinnertime and we’re (Leong, Sunny, Lisa and I) in the Commons dining hall, celebrating, with bacon-cheeseburgers and fries (Leong’s a cheeseburger ******).

Lisa Turned to Sunny, “What songs are playing in your ears today?”
“I’m looping "Good Riddance" by Gracie Abrams - which might be a little gay for you.”
“Sunny and I were discussing that earlier,” I chirped in, “especially ‘Amalie’ (the song).”
“Gracie’s not dating that guy anymore? Lisa asked.
“She broke up with him,” Sunny said.
“again?” Lisa gasped.
“Yeah, she broke up with him for good, a few months ago,” Sunny reported.
“I thought that they got back together.” I said, trying to remember my Teen Vogue gossip.
“Nope,” Leong said, stealing one of my fries, “saw it on ‘the shade’ (theshaderoom)”
“Wait, wait, Blake Slatkin - or a new boy?” Lisa asked, holding up her hand like we’re in class.
Sunny laughs, “Anyway, Gracie isn’t dating a girl but in that ‘Amalie’ song she’s like, ‘where did you go Amalie, I’m crushing on you.”
“Amalie..” Leong said, searching for a last name.
“Amalie Homin,” I said, “That’s what I heard, but I don’t know it on my own.”

“Ooo!” Lisa said, “Speaking of carols,” and nodding towards the main entrance. Leong and I had our backs to the door, but we swiveled discreetly as a girl I’ll call “Monique” (I’m not doxing anyone) walked in with a group of her entourage-like friends.

My roommates and I, being young, single and curious girls - have ongoing chaz or chaste debates - where we judge people (quietly, in a non-mean-girl way, amongst ourselves), to be either chaz or chaste - based on their general *** appeal, style and swagger.

A chaz is a playa’, someone who everyone wants (sexually) and who’s probably “sactive” - a chaste, is a wannabee, a poser who’s trying hard but is probably “involuntarily abstinent.”

A big, beefy, but not overly attractive football player would draw a “chaste,” “chaste,” “chaste,” while, say, a tall, dark, handsome physicist would earn a “chaz,” “chaz,” “chaz!!”

Monique, who’s studying marketing (school of business), is an over-tha-bridge black girl from Jamaica who was once in a band that had some low-level success. As we watched her strut across the room, I brought the question to Sunny. Monique’s fem-facing, as is Sunny, so Sunny’s the expert on-hand, “Do you think Monique’s a chaz?”

I state my case, talking softly, “Monique walks around campus wearing a t-shirt with her own picture on it, under a blazer,” I snigger, derogatorily, “being like, all these ******* want me.”

Sunny gasps, “How DARE you call smart, modern, lesbian women *******!” She laughs.

“All these lovely ladies, these rad, sapphic-gals really want me.” I amended. “It’s farcical, isn’t it? I repeated, fashion aghast. “Wearing a t-shirt with your own picture on it - like you’re a rockstar.” I put the ultimate question to Sunny: “Is she actually pulling any veejay like that?”

“You doubt she’s pulling any strong, empowered women?” Sunny asked back rhetorically. Sunny rolled the question over in her mind and declared, shrugging, “She’s a chaz. It works - for the gays, hundo-p."

“Hard to believe,” I admitted, shrugging in the face of Monique’s sheer tackiness. We watched the strange group leave, loaded down with goodies, like pirates who came and looted the area.

Stop right now and NUT IT OUT
Which way you wish to go,
Do you want the wealth and stressful strain
Or blithely flick and throw?

Do you preen yourself with smiling pride
Owning shining  chattels new,
Whilst shallow OTHERS OGLE
With those envious eyes on you?
Or do you seek the clean four winds
Untrammelled by concern,
With sleeping bag, a crescent moon
Whilst crackling bonfires burn?

Have you thought to chuck it all
The car, the house, the boat
And cause your superficial  friends
To snigger, leer and gloat?
To simply live in HUMBLE CIRCUMSTANCE
To wake without a plan,
To greet the day with unconcern
And breathe a new, fresh man.


Is the courage there to TAKE THE CHANGE,
Can you make the first big move,
Or does convention stay your hand
To stray from comfort’s groove?
Have you thought about what others think,
Reactions from the crowd,
The clamorous cacophony
Of objection rendered loud?


“Absolutely NOT, my dear”
Pygmalion my ****.
To throw it all away, Silly,
Simply would... betray your Class!
“It’s all so rudimentary
This thing of living rough”
“Reminds me of the great apes,
And other basic stuff!”


There’s loads of reasons why YOU CAN’T,
The mortgage at the bank,
Insurance is essential
And while we’re being frank...
There’s the tennis club subscription
And the afternoons I’d miss
Sipping lattes with the ladies
..though, the gossip’s SO remiss.


Perhaps we’ll put it off for now
Another day perchance,
When devilment and joi le vivre
EFFUSE another prance.
When the dream of having freedom
With the cold wind in my hair,
Will drive me to release
The inner WILDNESS hidden there.



Marshalg
Victoria ParkTunnel
4 March 2011

It's a travesty to tolerate
The ugly mores of men,
When everyone's allowance
Condones release for them.
Where everywhere provision
Is made for man to shove,
And woe betide the meek
Who don the feathers of a dove


The world applauds the forceful,
Rewards are rich for he
Who tramples over daisies
And holds aloft the key.
Who forces his attentions
And speculates the win,
Despite the devastation wrought
In winning it for him.


It's a travesty to tolerate
This bovine charge of man
When all can be achieved
With an accommodating plan,
When compromise and levity
See consideration's way
Where success can be attained
With out bloodletting on the day.


I hear the snort of your derision,
Feel the snigger in your smile,
See the curl of lip descending
With your slit eyes of defile.
For this portraiture is global
The fighting man is King
And he who deviates
Is left bereft and vanquishing.


Sadness is the matador
Who casts his scarlet cloth,
To be shredded and impaled
By a maddened bullock's wrath.
To be tossed aside, asunder
Like a lifeless ragged doll,
Like mankind's brute tomorrow
When the final drums do roll.


Marshalg
@theBach
Mangere Bridge
29 November 2009