"Fossil fuel firms could be tried in US for homicide over climate-related deaths, experts say
Public Citizen, a non-profit group, proposed the idea last year to prosecute companies for millions of deaths due to climate crisis"
"Each year, extreme temperatures take 5 million lives,
while 400,000 people die from climate-related hunger
and disease
and scores perish in floods and wildfires."
It omens bloodbath, orders soap born of skin
High fiving despots and proud bro packing triple chin
They're animals, it hisses boldface type
The media he walks fetch bones to pumice the hype
Behind the ears is oft forgot, and up the nose our jewels
It shakes down the lower crust playing all for fools
Bidet with aplomb, it washes free what soul remains hidden
What thumb cannot hide up ones backside as per masters bidding
A shower is quicker, the trains full of women child infested
It sponges away the trail that history as truth false invested
Search well their hair, well use it for mass packing,
Treasures, photos, tooth filling stackings
It tallies the take on quarterly basis on bases
Born on home plate, no drainplugs blood faces.
What year is this called, it jokes in the spray
A pompadour kaiser helmet incites blown kisses above the fray
It can't think, goblet mug smirking
Brimmed in unseen concentration gears chirping
X marks the twit, formerly known as america
Borders need shepherds if not German guernica
It paints with his finger yellow ribbon tied
Stick children taxpayer subsidized
Incite in sights scoped in think tank computers
It hosts colonization with hollow crass deniers
It didn't say what was said and capitalized bred
It's a victim from witches, socialists, faggots and brown critters bled
Scrubby dub dub, fortune 500 bare fits the tub
A hatch off the ole fuselage needs a paint job scrub
Rendition ain't gone sedition still beasting
Cannon all justice bubblebaths dow jones feasting
Deflation of principles not ever truly aired up
Blowdry the gutbath forecast its heirs made seem tough
The twisted screw no purchase it rent
In rotten wood neath the bloodtub soul spent
Backtracking footprints mirror their advance
Payment in hand to secure seaside land
It loves babies pregnant with peace
It starves into coffinless numbers dove released
Disarmed unfooded hounded by phosphorus
That holy blight burns worldwide day, night
It salivates the real estate to lodge holy spirit
Sheik frat boy golf caddy with toweled merit
A drop in the sand here's a pallet of ramen
Atop the waterless flowering genocide stamen
Briars and friars spring up well nurtured
Hospital terror echoes wounds unfutured
Thou shall knit so be it done
Not nothing known warned of drone
Thread shopping bathmats to cover it carnage
From DC apartheid sworn in wreckage
Entendre on top, humps pyramid eye dry
Take stock take options take a leave dollar sty
Commerce swine huddle not from exposure
Rather revel collusion in unbanking measures
No wonder bread tummy for slaughters elsewhere
We'll stymie our trailer pork barrel cash flow where who cares
One border or two they're equally lame
Power overrides the violence named
It peons the pope it lotions guillotine
It beggars belief that's capitalism routine
It didn't mean nice it dices it chops
It makes complicity a quiet mop
SE PDX
motion, stone laid asunder
bone still rings, sand; silt ponders
deep in the ebb, the web of the flow
coal dark coolness, fossil skulls know
there twixt the crags, buried in waves
damned to a pond, stillness barged, brave
surrounded in sturgeon, burgeoning schools,
man's sad skull sings, echoes zero's pools
bobbing ever slightly, losing bits to spare,
piecing back borrowed meal, river must repair,
iron carbon blood and dream
silver magnesium phosphorous bean
mindlessly moving, subtractive and fixed
our river skull motion can take the licks
2017
music is vibratory revolution
in auditory evolution
but that had little bearing as Poempeii was
immersed in burning retina ash
sealing fame, dogs became statues,
chamberpots became priceless,
boats got offshore fast& sailed dog ass fast
to north stars far from volcanoes
to sell insurance necklaces
&found capatalistic cults
they sent neighbors sons to war
to die of learning
to die of learning
to die unearning the flunk of spear,
arrow, bomb, sanction
howling sounds over took miasmas
of USA dreams waitressing overtook
the priestess smoking
& tv oversnookered us in a sedate slur of neuroses
leading Amnesia to reckon musick as
documentary dissolution
of perpetual persecution
1994
Revised 2017
'The most recent counts by the City of Portland estimate that only three out of every 10 bicycle riders are women and the gender split hasn’t budged since counting started in 2006.
In east Portland, the City tabulated just 17% of all bike riders as women.
As we ponder the reasons for this disparity, a survey has revealed one factor that’s causing it:
the high rate of demeaning interactions
and aggressive behaviors
some women experience while riding."
,"How much does the average full-size truck weigh? The average standard pickup truck weighs between 4,000 - 7,000 lbs.
As for a heavy duty truck like the Ford F350 or the Nissan Titan, the average weight comes in between
7,500 - 12,000 lbs."
"What is the average weight for a female woman?
American women aged 20 years and above weigh an average of 170.8 pounds (lbs), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC"
"The average American man 20 years old and up weighs 197.9 pounds .
The average waist circumference is 40.2 inches, and the average height is just over 5 feet 9 inches"
"According to Thomas More’s story, Forest was one of those charged by Richard III to look after the princes. When Richard decided he needed the boys dead, his servant, Sir James Tyrell, recruited Forest and his own horse-keeper, John Dighton, to assist him in smothering the boys in their beds.
Thornton’s new evidence indicates that Thomas More encountered Forest’s sons, Edward and Miles, in the course of conducting royal business. Consequently, Thornton speculates that it was these two men who had told More the truth about the princes’ fate. More himself described his source only as ‘them that much knew and litle cause had to lye’. The sons of a murderer might perhaps fit that description, he suggests.
But does this evidence justify the conclusion that Richard had ordered the murder of the princes? A deeper look at the evidence would seem to suggest otherwise. Back in 1879 James Gairdner identified Miles Forest as the keeper of the wardrobe at Richard's home of Barnard Castle.
According to More, after committing the murder, Forest had ‘at sainct Marten pecemele rotted away’. He gives no date for this, but we know that his widow, Joan, was granted an annuity on 9 September 1484, so Forest clearly died sometime before Richard.
Why would a man who had conducted such an important task for the king find himself resourceless in the sanctuary at St Martin’s just months later? It is hard to fathom. No sanctuary register survives so we only have More's word that Forest died in these circumstances. Because More is vague about the date most readers would assume that it was under a Tudor king that Forest died: the idea of Forest 'rotting' in sanctuary during Henry VII's reign because he was a murderer makes some sense. Knowing as we do that Forest really died in Richard's reign, the story is less credible.
If Forest really did die in sanctuary, it might be reasonable to ask why the king felt obliged to give his widow an annuity. It was actually a commonplace of good kingship that if a woman was unfortunate enough to find herself the widow of a felon then she was deserving of charity and should not be made to suffer for her husband’s sins. But we must remember, there is no evidence outside More's story that Forest died in disgrace. The annuity is more likely simply a recognition of Forest's good service at Barnard Castle and indeed Joan's in supporting him.
Forest’s death in 1484 must also have meant that his own boys were far too young for him to have told them of his crime himself.
Would their mother have told them? I am well aware of the strong bonds and influence to be found between widowed mothers and their sons, and of mothers' important role in passing on family history, having written so much on Richard III's own mother.
But I am not convinced any mother would choose to burden her children with the knowledge that their father had committed the crime of the century.
Another credibility issue with Thornton's thesis lies in the idea that the Forest brothers would have chosen to reveal this terrible family secret to a man they occasionally met through their work. Henry VIII was reputedly devoted to his mother - what might befall the family of a man known to have murdered her brother? Given that Edward Forest was one of Henry VIII's Grooms of the Chamber and the younger Miles was in Cardinal Wolsey's employ, it would have been a wildly risky step to make.
And what of the other alleged murderers? More claimed that Tyrell and Dighton were both examined and confessed to the murder during Henry VII’s reign. Tyrell was executed but Dighton ‘yet walketh on a live’. Again More’s story is hard to credit here. Dighton confessed to such a murder but was simply allowed to walk free? Unfortunately it is impossible to trace Dighton for certain in other records, but clearly at the time More first drafted his work he had in mind someone he knew was still alive and at liberty.
Tyrell was indeed executed in Henry VII’s reign and, as Thornton notes, More was not the first to accuse him of killing the princes. Yet we have no record that any public statement was made of his guilt at the time of his execution which was for an unrelated charge of treason. His alleged confession does not itself survive.
Time and again in More’s work, we find scraps of truth woven together with plausible names, details no one could have recalled and entertaining direct speech. This makes for a vivid picture but frequently contradicts contemporary evidence (for instance in the controversy around Edward IV's wedding). What we know of More’s work must prompt the question: Was More really reporting what the Forest boys had told him, or was it just that his acquaintance with them had caused him to learn that their father had been a servant of Richard’s which made Miles Forest a convenient name in More's story.
The fate of the princes is one of the most tantalising gaps in our knowledge of the past.
At first sight, More’s novel-like explanation offers an attractively detailed picture to plug that gap. Little wonder so many are eager to believe it. Unfortunately, there are just too many elements that strain credulity or do not fit with what else is known.
More's saintly reputation (hair shirt and all) has inevitably made generations of historians unwilling to imagine he was deliberately peddling falsehoods - but that is to assume More expected his readers to receive his work as soberly factual history.
Since he never finished the work we cannot be sure what his intentions were, but anyone who has read his famous Utopia will be aware that
More enjoyed using fiction under a veneer of plausible facts to explore political ideas.
Thomas More’s connections with the Forest boys are certainly worth adding to our investigation of all available evidence, but as yet they provide no new lead on the fate of
the missing princes."
___
"The tyrannous and bloody deed is done.
The most arch of piteous massacre
That ever yet this land was guilty of.
Dighton and Forrest, whom I did suborn
To do this ruthless piece of butchery,
Although they were flesh'd villains, bloody dogs,
Melting with tenderness and kind compassion
Wept like two children in their deaths' sad stories.
'Lo, thus' quoth Dighton, 'lay those tender babes:'
'Thus, thus,' quoth Forrest,
'girdling one another
Within their innocent alabaster arms:
Their lips were four red roses on a stalk,
Which in their summer beauty kiss'd each other.
A book of prayers on their pillow lay;
Which once,' quoth Forrest, 'almost changed my mind;
But O! the devil--there the villain stopp'd
Whilst Dighton thus told on: 'We smothered
The most replenished sweet work of nature,
That from the prime creation e'er she framed.'
Thus both are gone with conscience and remorse;
They could not speak; and so I left them both,
To bring this tidings to the bloody king.
And here he comes.
Enter KING RICHARD III.
All hail, my sovereign liege!
KING RICHARD III Kind Tyrrel, am I happy in thy news?
TYRREL If to have done the thing you gave in charge
Beget your happiness, be happy then,
For it is done, my lord.
KING RICHARD III But didst thou see them dead?
TYRREL I did, my lord.
KING RICHARD III And buried, gentle Tyrrel?
TYRREL The chaplain of the Tower hath buried them;
But how or in what place I do not know.
KING RICHARD III Come to me, Tyrrel, soon at after supper,
And thou shalt tell the process of their death."
https://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/richardiii_4_3.html
___
"Richard III (2 October 1452 – 22 August 1485) was king of England from 26 June 1483 until his death in 1485.
He was the last king of the Plantagenet dynasty and its cadet branch the House of York.
His defeat and death at the Battle of Bosworth Field, the last decisive battle of the Wars of the Roses, marked the end of the Middle Ages in England."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_III_of_England
____
The Princes in the Tower refers to the mystery of the fate of the deposed King Edward V of England and his younger brother Prince Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, heirs to the throne of King Edward IV of England. The brothers were the only sons of the king by his queen, Elizabeth Woodville, living at the time of their father's death in 1483. Aged 12 and 9 years old, respectively, they were lodged in the Tower of London by their paternal uncle and England's regent, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, supposedly in preparation for Edward V's forthcoming coronation. Before the young king could be crowned, however, he and his brother were declared illegitimate. Gloucester ascended the throne as Richard III.
It is unclear what happened to the two
princes after the last recorded sighting of them in the tower. It is generally assumed that they were murdered; a common hypothesis is that the murder was commissioned by Richard III in an attempt to secure his hold on the throne.
Their deaths may have occurred sometime in 1483, but apart from their disappearance, the only evidence is circumstantial.
As a result, several other hypotheses about their fates have been proposed, including the suggestion that they were murdered by their maternal uncle the Duke of Buckingham, their future brother-in-law King Henry VII, or his mother Lady Margaret Beaufort, among others.
It has also been suggested that one or both princes may have escaped assassination. In 1487, Lambert Simnel initially claimed to be the Duke of York, but later claimed to be York's cousin the Earl of Warwick.
From 1491 until his capture in 1497, Perkin Warbeck claimed to be the Duke of York, having supposedly escaped to Flanders. Warbeck's claim was supported by some contemporaries, including York's aunt the Duchess of Burgundy.
In 1674, workmen at the Tower of London excavated, from under a staircase, a wooden box containing two small human skeletons. The bones were widely accepted at the time as those of the princes, but this has not been proven and is far from certain.
King Charles II had the bones buried in Westminster Abbey, where they remain."
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princes_in_the_Tower
let me mull, mull, mull it over, under the table
spend the daze, daze, dazed on fables,
give him rope, rope, rope made of sable,
cheer bad tweets, tweets, tweets smelling of stables
ride 'em slow, slow, slow as a bullfrog
tie him right, tight, righty snuggems as a dull hog,
fat him fine, fine, fine with salty time
pepper his sass, sass, sass with more mulling wine
go poke, poke, poke it spinal, check trichinosis;
see the k, g, b------that's GOP's hostess;
feed it back, back, back in their dacha mimosas:
while we mull, mull, mull it round on wanted postas;
let don steep, steep, steep simmering hell
let 'em rot, rot, rot in warranted cells.
2017
Ex-Google engineer charged with stealing AI trade secrets while working with Chinese companies
https://apnews.com/article/china-google-justice-department-63156ade1e564d15d92adbef91e9c5da
"Ding, who was hired by Google in 2019 and had access to confidential information about the company’s supercomputing data centers, began uploading hundreds of files into a personal Google Cloud account two years ago."
"He also separately founded and served as chief executive of a China-based startup
company that aspired to train “large AI models
powered by supercomputing chips,” the indictment said."
_____
So Google, quit pushing Tik Tok ads, services, legality in the USA.
Protect Google users from theft, espionage, totalitarian predators, etc etc.
"i'm not a lady" she asserted, downing the last dregs
in the tallboy can crumpling un'er hand,
hoodie hidden, cotton lump, bluejeaned legs
Un'er ancient face floated, contraband.
tawny true, "did you see where i left it" upon
table return, dance floor newly shined,
alluding to a beer "ya finished" said ugly swan,
canoe-tippy ambiance, pub house grime.
vending machines take a quarter fer 3 nuts
no bathroom doors just places for butts
no way get cut offt, the help is all mutts
karaoke nite silicon valley tutt-tutts
i'm not a gentleman, gentile or well washed
don't ya stare rhino plastic nonchalance
2017
"You might not yet have a strong feeling about these trees,
Or conversely, you may love them,
but they’re probably familiar to you.
New York City is home to over 87,000 London planetrees, per the Department of Parks and Recreation’s 2015 tree census.
That’s 13 percent of all the trees.
There are about 23,000 more London planes than the next most abundant species, the honeylocust."
I want my name to be Honeylust 😭!!!
"As the name implies, London planes have roots in England, but neither parent species is native to there (a native species being one that has evolved alongside the rest of an ecosystem).
They’re a hybrid of the American sycamore (native to what’s now the eastern United States) and Oriental plane (native to eastern Europe and western Asia).
They were popularized in London sometime in the 17th century, but might have originated in Spain—a lot about this tree’s history, including
when exactly it arrived in North America, is murky. "
Says Slate.
https://slate.com/technology/2024/03/london-planetrees-new-york-parks-nonnative-species-bad-why.html
'Bloodgood planetree, a selection of the tough London planetree that is widely planted in urban areas, is a large shade tree with a broad open crown and bark that exfoliates to reveal patches that may be creamy white, yellow, or olive-colored.
The signature ornamental feature of this huge tree is its brown bark, which exfoliates in irregular pieces to reveal creamy white inner bark.
'Bloodgood' has dark green foliage and is reported to have some resistance to the problematic anthracnose disease of sycamores.
https://www.chicagobotanic.org/plantinfo/tree_alternatives/bloodgood_planetree
https://www.chicagobotanic.org/plantinfo/tree_alternatives/bloodgood_planetree
'The oldest London planes date from first plantings around 1660-80.
The oldest living examples are at Buckden, Robert Sanderson, (Bishop of Lincoln 1660-1663), is said to have been presented with two London planes;
both are still growing healthily.May 31, 2018"
'Peter Gunning, (Bishop of Ely 1675-1684), also planted gifts of trees, including a London plane which is now colossal.
The London plane at Barn Elms, is probably from about 1685, planted on land then belonging to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
It is London’s oldest and largest plane."
'next time you’re passing a line of venerable old London planes, take a look up and admire their strength and beauty while you can.
Have a sense of the long arm of history behind them.
Enjoy the shady waving leaves and stippled gnarly bark and remember the tale of the unlikely love child of two travelers."
🌳🍀🌲🪹🌿🌳
"The London plane is famous for its reliability; since these groupings are planted in a regular manner it is easy to conclude from their almost universal survival that, indeed, the performance bears out the repute.
Landscape architects dealing with trees less likely to survive to maturity, like to group them artistically in irregular triangles and pentagons; should one succumb, the defunct stump is eradicated and the outcome is still artistic. The old campus plantings and those on University Avenue used seedlings.
El Camino Real was planted with ‘Bloodgood’, which has proved to be susceptible to sycamore mildew;
this causes the leaves to turn yellow and drop off during the summer. ‘Bloodgood’ continues to be used
and in 2012 six individuals were planted around the John A. & Cynthia Fry Gunn Building (SIEPR).
London plane tree leaves are generally five-lobed and, if anything, the leaf teeth are coarser and the lobes not as deeply cut as those of the California plane, Platanus racemosa, but the main distinguishing feature is the absence of leafy green stipules at the base of the leaf stalk.
Some maples, genus Acer, also have similarly lobed leaves (bigleaf maple is a good example). However, all the main veins to maple leaf lobe tips start from a single point at the base of the leaf; see this venation pattern illustrated and distinguished from that of London plane tree in the Maple photo gallery. The careful observer will notice another significant difference between Platanus and Acer, namely, the branching and leaf arrangement of maples is opposite, while that of plane trees is alternate.
The pendant seed balls are about an inch in diameter. By the time the seed balls litter the street, the light-weight seeds have already been forced out into the air currents by a release mechanism depending on the drying out of the packing, which consists of fine hollow straws."
Bloodgood Nurseries was a fixture in Horsham since the 1970s when Al Edling moved the existing business from Doylestown.
But its roots go way back - claiming to be America's oldest nursery, established in 1790!
Bloodgood is a name that has long been associated with various plants."
'The Forgotten History of Hitler’s Establishment Enablers
The Nazi leader didn’t seize power; he was given it."
"The media lords thought they could control him;
political schemers thought that they could outwit him.
The mainstream left had become a gerontocracy.
And all of them failed to recognize his immunity to shame."
____
"Knight, by far Oregon’s wealthiest person (Bloomberg pegs his net worth at $40.5 billion), has long been Oregon’s largest individual donor.
In the 2022 governor’s race, he gave the unprincipled loon candidate Betsy Johnson $3.75 million
and Republican nominee Christine Drazan $1.5 million.
Phil Knight Gives $2 Million to GOP Legislative PAC
"Milk bath "
at least 55 of the largest corporations in America
paid no federal corporate income taxes on their 2020 profits,
according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The companies include names like Whirlpool,
FedEx,
Nike,
HP and Salesforce."
____
"Rep. Mike Turner said Sunday it was clear that former President Donald Trump’s reference to “a bloodbath” should he lose the November election pertained to the auto industry, not to a surge of political violence.
At a rally in Ohio on Saturday, Trump said,
“Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s gonna be a bloodbath.
That’s going to be the least of it.
It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.”
It'll be a gas.
"You could also look at the definition of bloodbath
and it could be an economic disaster,”
Sound familiar?
This just might strangle The GOP. Let's look at looking at strangled options still on the cutting room floor.
bloodbath
noun
blood·bath. ˈbləd-ˌbath -ˌbäth
1
: a great slaughter
2
a
: a notably fierce, violent, or destructive contest or struggle
b
: a major economic disaster
____
Trump faced backlash for saying some immigrants who come to the U.S. illegally are
"not people"
but
"animals"
"if you don't use certain rhetoric,
if you don't use certain words,
and maybe they're not very nice words,
nothing will happen.
I won't get elected.That did stir the shitpot debate,"
Trump told Fox News' Howard Kurtz in a pretaped interview that aired Sunday on "MediaBuzz."
Kurtz had pointed to Trump previously saying migrants who come to the country illegally
are "poisoning the blood"
of the country. That rhetoric echoes past dictators like
Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.
"I didn't know that," Trump said on Fox News.
Former President of the USA, who slept with Hitler's book between his hamburger stash and his nanny Mein Kampf, didn't know.
____
"Jared Kushner says Gaza’s ‘waterfront property could be very valuable"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/19/jared-kushner-gaza-waterfront-property-israel-negev
Sure, but it's not yours. Jared.
waiting for the canman to return
this morning i got the weedeater busy and cut back the thick crop of grasses surrounding my home. rain and sunshine'll do it to this yard, evertime. the plants were so moist, i got my pantlegs splattered green, and decided to hose off my boots.
while i was doing this, i thought of someone: "the canman," otherwise known as Don.
you see, about a week or two ago, he came up and rung my doorbell and when i opened the door to talk to him, he rummaged out of a blackish garbage bag an unopened bottle of wine with a cork in place...he pointed at the cork and mumbled askance...his voice, or throat, was damaged....he couldn't really talk.
he's been stopping by for our recyclables for a couple years...we leave our bottles in a crate for him to gather. in the winter, we pass along clothes, food, spare change, and invite him in and inquire about what's new with him. he has several cats, and a nice tent, he says.
he usually says. this day, he just wanted to get into that bottle, even though he was ailing. i gave him a spare corkscrew, and he went on his way. i haven't seen him since. i added to our recycling stash and noticed that last weeks stuff was still there. now i wonder...did that old vinegared wine do our roveing canman in?
i really hope not. he seemed to be a decent man, getting by, and enjoying a few of life's offerings,
minding his own business of gleaning along the streets of this small northwestern town. the world is full of characters, and this guy is a few of them, wrapped now into one.
2005
The Dalles
Inside, room is scarce, as walls display every sort of mystical instrument known to humankind. Sic, musical instruments, not crystal balls, amethyst pyramids, feathers for every occasion, aphrodisiac incense, books on incantations curses and alternative history. That's absurd.
Guitars for crying out loud, bleeding banjos with muzzles like volatile dogs, chinese made ukuleles in neon, and the floor of the shop is a runner of carpet goose-step wide betwixt glass cases filled with pawned rock-'n'-roll gizmos that grown up teens hawked for meth, or worse, rent.
The outside of the building, officially dilapidated in rotten siding, bars of steel over the windows, is getting a makeover. It's looked the same for the 25 years I've shopped here. Well, slightly worse each year, duh.
I ride up on my classic Schwinn bike. I just took off the front fender, badly rusted somehow, that clattered like tin silverware in a gameshow tumbler looking for a winning number on a plastic tetrahedron. It was bad, even with Portland's glossy smooth roadways.
I hitched my bike to an official don't steal upside down tubular U. It looked safe, even with the swarthy men gathered to plaster over the facade of the instrument menagerie museum of misfit hobbies. Just because Steve whasshisname from the Jerk and cheaper by the dozen and Cyrano de Bergerac bought a banjo there doesn't mean working players frequent the joint, I mean, emporium. The book is judged by the spine, and gratuitous illustrations within, not the cover.
A midsized ladder angled to rooftop of the one story. Tuba aisle, methought, or harmony instruction manuals. I greeted the workers and owner, an old old man: " I just couldn't look at it anymore." Yeah, you're cheap and you show it, flaunt fuck, I again methought.
To enter, I took my violin off my back, 😭 which was slung over the shoulder like a carbine with four measly strings. I didn't design it. Otherwise, in turning I'd knock down the as-is wall near the exit, a bull in a plaster shop.
I squeezed past the feckless amplifiers, their tesla tubes tied by proxy and rubber bands around their cords, price tags upside down. I had my blinders on not my blunders on, I'm not shopping PER SE, so don't tempt me, you hookers.
Oh, I was wearing an old paint covered v neck wife beater fruit of the loom, clean, no vin number or mortgage sign. Laundry smelly clean, all mine. Not Eddie van Halen collectable, but my own duds. I don't have a walk in closet these days, or a climate controlled vault with a computer code to access, surrounded by razor wire and cameras. FYI.
I'd tried calling at ten minutes before opening time, no answer. It rang plenty, I guess they were helping plaster, or arranging shaker gourds at the counter. I wanted to know if full sized strings were in stock. Fiddle or violin strings, either one.
I busked again with my old strings, what's another day long hour, I methought superfluous toned. What's another hangnail on the eardrum for the general public.
Just as I thunk, no cabbage. I got three quarters, and a million dollar check from mass transit for "blending," whatever that means. I don't smell that good, reallllly, and bus brakes aren't that unmusical, if timed nicely.
The counter guy greeted me in my six foot walk into the place. " I'm here for violin strings."
" Full sized?" he queried. Yea, dunce. I'm the guy who called a second time to make sure my vacation here was going to bear results. I asked about full size strings, not baby strings.
"Yes." Etude, number one, I dreamed.
Then the big catch to my scheme, challenged: "I'm going to need 21.99."
I hadn't surmised this was a money issue. Just joking, "Sure." I'd been considering applying for layaway, or a staggered payment plan, or work-for- strings by the hour, or selling my musical tooth once we yanked it by the lead paint pick bin.
I fished out a ten, two fives, two ones. Big man, " keep the penny." Yes, dialogue there too. I'll take the receipt, I affirmed, all pro like. And do you have a mute, I asked politically semi correct. Quotation marks aren't for everything, this is poetry.
Now he was fishing around in his Tupperware organizers. I think so, I think so. It's not a top selling item. He was realizing I was a real mystic.
"They should be."
I waltzed out the door, minus the seven ninety nine. Invest the penny, I advised.
_______
I show up at the fancy grocery experience to play electric fiddle, but there's a gang of destruction toughs busy with their jackhammering away the sidewalk in front of the chase bank they're constructing across the street. It's crazy loud and just not the day to play. My amp is about a foot square. I can barely drown out Jamie dimon, much less all of wallow street and the hippo mosh pit.
Besides, there's not much listening public browsing the perishables and wellness kiosks inside. The olive bar has no one. The deli, only four employees, the bakery only six people behind the unseen oven in salesmen shirts, the flower girl is missing altogether, the security guy a no show, the cashier's has a line of four customers each with an energy smoothie or to go cup of soup from the soup island.
The beautiful building has all these islands. I usually glide past them, the salad reef extending 15 feet and six leagues wide, the cheese archipelago butting up to the meat peninsula forms a mini continent. I tread up to the mezzanine over this gorgeous art floor of fake beach glass in cement epoxy. Every step over it is a soiree and near champagne opening opening, minus glitterarti, sic. I'm not an elevator guy in a two story food museum. I need to get close to the enticements so opulently, if out of reach however, way. Plus, exercise.
I had two cheap donuts just before, in my storage palace. A box of twelve glazed, two twenty nine. One could buy 3/5 of a Bismark here, or 7/8 of a fritter. I get a fritter on my sugar card from the government. I try to always buy some lowrent edible when loitering for 90 minutes with my jug of coffee to piss into their impeccable bathroom while the jackhammer drives toward hades nearby.
Home away from home away from home, ah. I eat the third donut between sips and propaganda installments on my consumer rectangle. A new phone it's aptly miscalled. Trump is calling for animal bloodbath and can't pay $453, 000, 000 but wants every felony trial hermitage to clean up and reincarnate as election traction. I giggle with my furlough non dough violin resting it's case. My amp has a built in delay function, too.
It's not news until I read about how bad the most popular tree in NYC is bad for bugs and birds and causes racism. Fuck you, Moses. The London Planewood is shady as central park and just a canopy of disease repellant environs to enable mugging. That's clearly the fare. Doesn't help that the article doesn't even malign my family name. "America's oldest nursery, 1790," purveyor of anti ecosystem splicing to be totally inhospitable to animals and all life while protecting your car from sunlight. And those seed balls, so messy on my condo balcony, plus zero bugs and entomologist treehouses or fellowship. What's next, the chainsaw for central park?
I don't buy it. More sprinkles and frosting, please. I'm only partially incensed as the article is a springboard for poetry, right up to the executive suite where all the grafting is engineered. Pass the time, and salt the manners, I concoct in my weensy vacation here among the condiment hoarding riffraff.
Just enough of everything under my thrift store belt, I ride off. I hike a couple miles past the beer lagoons of division street. Every inch there is beer . The sandwich boards are beer with cider parentheses for bread. It's not salad per SE if it's one leaf of romaine inside a subway tomb of gluten, construction delay or not.
A brief bus ride to the phone store and I get to glare at another phone addict houseless louse whose rectangle is spitting out gun noises as he smiles rotten teeth in the priority seating area. Rat a tat tat. Everyone stares at their get away rectangle to imbibe their daily deconstruction.
I get to the cricket, past all the treeless concrete blossoms. He's fiddling with his own devices, behind a counter, alone and ready to upgrade my plan. O joy. Later I watch Fahrenheit 451 at life's picnic table. First, I'm making my own tabouli and thinking about gaza buffet at storage. My tabouli has the usual bulgar and parsley, lemon onion and olive oil, but also olives and chopped peppers. It's superior by a vast redline.
Leaving storage, I guy beckons Hey Boss from a big flatbed truck half leaking furniture. Can I pay you to help me move some things. Sure I'll help, putting down my huge backpack. It's ugly furniture, an entire set. Two pieces have huge wounds oozing particle board guts, and the tiny woman on the truck bed smokes, amazingly not injured. It almost fell on me.
Oh, we're unloading, not loading. It's brand new crushed furnishings at ten minutes until closing that weighs dearly. The guy thanks profusely and calls me Boss a bankers dozen times. It's not even paid for, just got it. Get a twenty, Hurry honey, he's got somewhere he needs to be. Yeah you got it, I agree.
Dining table, dresser, chairs, two unknown cabinets with cords, most still on the truck. He needs a Phillips to take the last supper apart, be right back. We get it done, easy cake. SHe gives me a twenty. That's a wrap, off to the leash-only dog infested park nearby to be a citizen just minding his world affairs from a backpack. Upgrade those trees already.
I'm not done, as I skipped a few events that transpired in my animal bath yesterday. As I sat at the park, enjoying glorious sunshine ( the hottest day on record no less) Dan and his enormous dog walked up to my table. Is that a bag of weed, he asked, motioning to a baggie in front of me. No, almonds I said holding it up and gentle shaking it, hickory salt.
He started on his perennial proselytizing stick (sic) interspersed with his woes, dead mom burnt house contractor fraud wife hysterectomy just gotta get out of the house awhile, but everything the lord the lord and church and miracles, like the fireman saying he'd killed the flash by spraying water at the source just seconds before the basement smoked them out, and he bought a violin for a child whose dad at church is poor a handmade $99 one, and a child sized electric guitar ( he motions, steelhead sized) but it needs the frets filed etc also $99 and we can play if I bring my violin someday as his colossal wolf dog jumps up on the table get down, he doesn't like that, re : emembers after coaxing his missy to do just that several times last year, a 130 pound dog as another dog is freely wandering they do ass sniffing and Dan jokes about his missy has a boyfriend, they're both females I tell him, he had a midlife crisis he says 25 years ago it's always phishing to get me to teach the poor kid at church or repent even though he was a heroin junkie and he's not too horrible to visit with he just doesn't listen much he has an agenda, wanted to give me a Bible he said about ten times but never dug one up
They're hard to come by at churches I keep thinking, later after dark walking the grounds under a conifer clump a dead squirrel, hidden under the shroud, I tail lifted it to the cement around a last picnic table, and this morning a person sleeps atop that table with his head using a box of ritz crackers for a pillow, listening to the sacrament songs with living birds also helping.
____
First day of spring, one foot in front of the other, my favorite bus driver starts the workday nicely. Only moments after I arrive to play music, setting up my amp and violin, one of the construction workers from across the street is hollering out Do you have cds? Takes a second to figure out he's addressing me, it's a busy corner a little past noon. No, haven't reproduced my music in years. You can record on your phone. I was telling my wife about you, I enjoy hearing it while I'm working. I play my version of Same Old Man Sitting at the Mill. He gives me a twenty and a big smile, back to work, us both.
Then a pretty young mom and her 4 year old boy listen. She digs in her coin purse and instructs him. He hands me a quarter as I'm playing. Give it all to him, put it in the case, she points. Thank you. They disappear into the store briefly, emerge again I play twinkle twinkle, my version. They're happy, he waves. She lingers, good mom.
A few others drop a dollar or two while I perform with my new strings and old bow and violin, a new regular fan Suzanne puts a 5 under my ipe stick in my case. This is my kind of music, she said the first time she passed by, a month ago. Two months nearly, jesus. A black woman bus driver puts a 5 in as she scoots by. Thank you.
I notice a figure over my shoulder as I saw the box. I stop and turn, it's a guy with a guitar case. Play things besides classical? Sure, that was Hard Times Come Again no More, that's not classical I grin. Can I play sometime, I have a resonator and my other guitar's a martin. Sure, maybe some other time. I've been in lots of bands he hands me a business card.
Today makes up for yesterday, money wise. One foot in front of the other. It's spring.
SE Portland
(For A.)
After growing out with her hair for eight years they shave it half off just to have a poke at the brain
Thinking they'd find a packrat nest of goodies that could be split, dissected and displayed, inner hydraulics of an egg yolk
But once inside they saw it was a matter of poetry
A crystal exploding it's skin of snowflakes under saltplain of skull;
Branching out from within, the mass disturbed optical nerves& skewered the fragile Pandora's jar of mathematics
Releasing dread visions of incongruencies to the native as a cavalry of auditors came clattering in mumbling normal is as normal does
Taxing& naming each representation of the whole as it passed on a conveyor belt like a river
Leaving warts off the map as they came to the headwaters of exponential isolation thundering beneath tall velvet curtains of purple: mists of anaesthetic music:
It was you times you plus the anxiety of all the loved ones, the ones waiting for the end of the beautiful day which was parted with a scalpel that carved your skull
You head covered with scaffolding of gas tubes, blacklights and disco balls, electronic tweezers
As they rummaged day's cerebral junkyard knee-deep in close-captioned styrofoam of mystery
They tripped and came face to faceless with their selves, learning meaning without having read the book. Henceforth and so on, I too
Translate everything into my own language so I may stroke the hair of shadow, if not the real thing
All the gliding half-unseen victorian Memories lined up against my Rosetta stone
Checking their licenses like eggs illuminating innards with an introspective candle
I wake from the dream of yesterday as sun spins thru window your hair, wrapping my wristwatch & teaching me to ignore the prodding of minor gods
Indoctrinating me with will to let it heal itself into gnarled richness and therein whimper
With lifelines out to each tastego, we pull thru the ambergris of experience to slap down an oil of it's image
A stylish scarf covers the shaved area which reflects a landscape of floral arrangements, each bearing an enveloped headache
That insist we're childproof bottles, even as we bleed on the surgical hill daring the stars to twinkle a question
Lawrence, KS 1988
Published in Caliban
MF May, son of Jesse and Mary
Millard F. MAY, Clerk of township and village, and carpenter and joiner by occupation, was born at Girard, Macoupin Co., Ill., March 15, 1860,
son of Jesse W. May
and Mary (KITZMILLER) MAY, he a prominent stock-dealer, born in Tennessee in 1830,
who came to Illinois in 1855;
she, also of Tennessee, born in 1835;
they had five children – Florence, wife of J. A. BRADLEY; Millard F., Mary, Dora and Jessie; the latter died when four years of age.
Our subject, after receiving an education in the schools of his native county, learned the carpenter and joiner's trade, and has assisted in building some of the principal business blocks of Raymond, Illinois;
he is at present (1882) engaged in building a residence for himself on one of the principal streets of Raymond.
October 31, 1881, he married Miss Sina Belle MILLER
born in Montgomery County April 21, 1862,
daughter of Lemuel Greene Miller (my third great grandpa)
and Lucinda (LEE) MILLER,
both of Greene County, Ill.
Mr. MAY is a Freemason and a Democrat.
____
("Kitzmiller : Americanized form of German Kitzmüller
(see Kitz + Muller) a nickname for a miller who kept goats;
alternatively the first element may be from a personal name
formed with the ancient Germanic element Gid- cognate with Old English gidd ‘song’.")
____
Mary Finley Miller, mother of Lemuel ( fourth great Grandma)
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/133487105/john-finley
John "Fighting Jack" Finley, ( fifth Great Grandpa) father of Mary Finley Miller
Thomas Finley, father of John Finley
Thomas Finley (. Sixth Great Grandpa)
Birthdate: November 18, 1734
John Finley, I ( father of Thomas Finley)
My 7th Great Grandfather, first Irish
Also Known As: "Middle River"
Birthdate: December 18, 1706
Birthplace: Dublin, County of Dublin, Leinster, Ireland
Death: June 06, 1773 (66)
Augusta County, Province of Virginia, Colonial America
https://www.geni.com/people/John-Finley-I/6000000011221035727
https://www.geni.com/people/John-Finley-I/6000000011221035727
( Patterson, Fullerton, Morduck, Mackie, Forbes, Erskine, Scrymgeour
Gray, Stewart, Douglas, Graham, Lindsay, Stirling, Swinburne, Maitland, Wardlaw,
de Valoniis, Monypenny, Arbuthnot, Keith, Barclay, Wood, Strachan, Cragie, Smyth, Cochran, Warrender, Hayes, Gordon, Crichton, Gremislaw, Seton, Fleming, Fraser, Wyntoun, Murray, Moray, Moravia, de Gask, Olifard, Glenbervie, https://www.geni.com/people/Annabella-of-Scotland/6000000000772779081
Beaufort, Holland, FitzAlan, Plantagenet, Chaworth, Crouchback, Van Brabant, Hohenstaufen, Barbarossa, Wulfhilda, Skleros, https://www.geni.com/people/Leon-Skleros/6000000002187988392
https://www.geni.com/people/Thankful-Finley/6000000011221266487
https://www.geni.com/people/Thankful-Finley/6000000011221266487
Thankful Finley (Doak)
7th Great Grandmother, Irish
Also Known As: "Elizabeth", "Mary", "Thankful Finley"
Birthdate: March 06, 1707
Birthplace: Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland
(Jennings)
https://www.venmo.com/u/Forest-Bloodgood
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Dark crippled night draws the shades sealing long haze
Envelopes of rust and navy, feeds potted
Geraniums with postcard whispers of breeze bulk rate
Thirdclass it bounces around the world without
Direction read by a million snoopy clerks
Cautious night unsheathes the porcupine quills
Brushed by rushing trucks and arabesque shoplights it
Dips into the inky murk of a million
Lonelinesses, sighing lovesick sailor, wraps our\
Leftovers with nocturnal foil
Goofy prankster night carves earth shapes into
Shadowed heaps and fills our plates
With wine glasses, her apron is
Never peeled off and runs with the bug juice of a million
porch lights, squeezed hearts, spit out seeds in
Biodegradable coffins, starved pits, plastic dirt,
Formaldehyde prayer
Dusty tongued night yields a stick of charcoal
And sketches the latest ridiculous fashions
Frazzled hair tucked behind the ears,
Evening wear of spread-eagle clouds, hearty bibs
That wipe clean meal after meal,
Long deciduous robes without hint of starch,
Plaid stairs of mute moonlight statues and trellises one and
The same, rosewhisper patterns of wind
That hush the anxieties and fill in the cracks
With the sleep crust of a million eyes pulling living flowers
And doves from the tophat, drawing the diamond
Stylus of fantastic night stereo, painting
The blackness with forms loose,
Supernovas no less, sleepy atomic metronomes,
Tender moonlight wisps of collected scraps
That dogs of day wouldn't touch
1987
Lawrence, KS
the wind's nip catches my chest
and i pull the protection
of a long black overcoat
inside my woolen bubble
heart shakes my throat
dry crumpled leaves
of tempera autumns
rattle within my ribcage
the leaves are quickly gathered
in neat little piles near my
armpits
and lit with consternation
they float off
as cinders
from gracile birds wings
catching in the geared wind
they sweep past the cooing coeds
past the kaw river divider
into the winter
flames of december
1987
Lawrence, KS
throngs emerge to see the bloodmoon
their cars coagulate our street
on mount tabor, the extinct volcano hill
that rises a view to distant glory.
i came up on the belmont fifteen,
as it reached my number
cars were doing scatterbrained ad litems
and the bus clipped a parked car,
another whale beached by minnows
waves and real things.
what seems a crowd is a hemorrhage
in a literary romantic way,
as our telescopes are tampons we carry for bulletwounds
or great mileage scars are worn on our sleeves
turning breath to a frame for sky
or the thing shaped meanly many
there for the show
there on a hill
feeling blood in a moon mostly tainted
by men and the things above.
2015
fireworks celebrate the 4th of july sky over the gulf of persia
and you're in italy, sleeping off a siesta,
the plane's passengers crossing the channel to their homes
smelling of lebanese meats& spices, the sound of silly children
happy to see their daddy, the spouse's complaint
of the local vicious dog that terrorizes the meter reader
just doing his rounds, and i'm pitching horseshoes
in oklahoma, taking aim and firing with my lower lip
silently chewed in contemplation
throwing my shoe& hoping for a ringer
as the macho burst of fireworks resounds in my mind
&all i felt was disgust, a dust gust of remorse,
dashdashdash dotdotdotting thru all the miles times& warzones,
all i felt from this celebration of isolation was nausea,
mind churning with visions of bloated floating dead
O spangled banner of of amerika who'd guess
you're not an island? surrounded by mental waters, you only lower
your drawbridge to send out armed salesmen
what carrion you produce along the skyways of commerce!
what blisters swelling on your triggers of ignorance,
what vain nationalism with your civil plights
& condom nation of others! and here, what say i of myself?
i too am amerika
i too an isolatoe
but i think and think that my dream has abandoned me
expand the terroritories into hearts of love,
knock out those with too much to give
wrap nature in disposable diapers and talcum consciences
by proclaiming (i am not) me
we swear it don't hurt though the drought burns pink skin
patriots! independence day
fade away like a pipe bomb
like a stomach ache
like comparisons that knot the side& shatter our illusory caskets!
1989 Midland Review #5
Oklahoma State Univ.
_______
Iran Flight 665
"While flying in Iranian airspace
over Iran's territorial waters in the Persian Gulf
on its usual flight path,
it was destroyed by the United States Navy guided missile cruiserUSS Vincennes (CG-49).
All 290 onboard including 66 children and 16 crew perished."
"Clothes: Their Origin and Influence"
Diogenes Teufelsdröckh
I'll give you the shirt off the back of my closet of my closest houseboat floating in my lake in my private idaho in my geneva on my continental drift toward my dinosaur egg unfeathered under my microscope on my insistence persistence lists
Sleeves without collars without stitching without seamstress witching without thimbles without blood pricks the lack of conscience trumplestiltskin potemkin
Dungarees all guano all guapo all batbelt all panting all pockets all tailored all hole all shredded all khaki malarkey inside gout
Shoes too booted too mother Hubbard for ray Wylie coyote too laced too runner too long distance party lined with ermines to high hell heeled in moccasins too loafered
Tatterdemalion vagabond icon scaramoosh scarecrow hayseed reflection ropebelt unravelling burlap overlaps patching rainbow diffusion
I'll sell you your skin of your husk of your material lust of your eyelids you're hoarding
We'll ball cap our beanies our fedora non sequitur our berets turrets our cattlehat carpetbag visors
Belt out the scarfing they'll be fasionate barfing till we fit in the fluffing and watch the wrist with ticks molting
Better than nekkid our necks turtle armored in windbreaker farting a parka departing repartee toupee
Just let be bee honey
(Sartor Resartus" is usually translated as "The Tailor Re-tailored"; it has also been rendered as "The Tailor Repatched", "The Tailor Patched", "The Clothes Volume Edited", and as "The Tailor Made Whole Again"
There is a song called "The Taylor Done Over"
they're camouflaged as normal americans
the trump nuts, but what starts spilling out
when you crack into the brittle rotten facade
much like lancing a boil out reeks
a most insufferable stench that no logic can
perfume, no amount of koolaide
can douse the shit-dumpster fire,
no brimmed ballcap or liquor laced tongue
can donceal the scared contagion
of a criminal enterprise
sinking to the dregs of history in chains
all the while self promoting
its new line of monogrammed kkk sheets
hand stitched by children in border cages
all to cloak the greasy white rats
raiding the public desk drawers in full light of day
showing their insides made of coal slurry stew
run off a kremlin battery for a mind
with an orange tinsel wig tangled up in a high rise
scrimmage of minks moles
camel-haired overcoats and cardigans on codgers
dragging their filthy knuckles
down the sidewalk as every outing is a catwalk
and perp walk headed to the cracker
where democracy sifts over the carnage
in the hazmat suit with the clothesline pin on the nose
pinching off the contagion
before america has to amputate more vital organs
than the foe fois gras innertube of rancid republicans
stuffed up the ass of prime TV
and still squirting out rudy ideas
and ticker tape worm lies
These pools that, though in forests, still reflect
The total sky almost without defect,
And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,
Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,
And yet not out by any brook or river,
But up by roots to bring dark foliage on.
The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods —
Let them think twice before they use their powers
To blot out and drink up and sweep away
These flowery waters and these watery flowers
From snow that melted only yesterday.
Robert Frost
Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself."
(David, Psalms 50.21)
['Will sprawl, now that the heat of day is best,
Flat on his belly in the pit's much mire,
With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin.
And, while he kicks both feet in the cool slush,
And feels about his spine small eft-things course,
Run in and out each arm, and make him laugh:
And while above his head a pompion-plant,
Coating the cave-top as a brow its eye,
Creeps down to touch and tickle hair and beard,
And now a flower drops with a bee inside,
And now a fruit to snap at, catch and crunch,—
He looks out o'er yon sea which sunbeams cross
And recross till they weave a spider-web
(Meshes of fire, some great fish breaks at times)
And talks to his own self, howe'er he please,
Touching that other, whom his dam called God.
Because to talk about Him, vexes—ha,
Could He but know! and time to vex is now,
When talk is safer than in winter-time.
Moreover Prosper and Miranda sleep
In confidence he drudges at their task,
And it is good to cheat the pair, and gibe,
Letting the rank tongue blossom into speech.]
Setebos, Setebos, and Setebos!
'Thinketh, He dwelleth i' the cold o' the moon.
'Thinketh He made it, with the sun to match,
But not the stars; the stars came otherwise;
Only made clouds, winds, meteors, such as that:
Also this isle, what lives and grows thereon,
And snaky sea which rounds and ends the same.
'Thinketh, it came of being ill at ease:
He hated that He cannot change His cold,
Nor cure its ache. 'Hath spied an icy fish
That longed to 'scape the rock-stream where she lived,
And thaw herself within the lukewarm brine
O' the lazy sea her stream thrusts far amid,
A crystal spike 'twixt two warm walls of wave;
Only, she ever sickened, found repulse
At the other kind of water, not her life,
(Green-dense and dim-delicious, bred o' the sun)
Flounced back from bliss she was not born to breathe,
And in her old bounds buried her despair,
Hating and loving warmth alike: so He.
'Thinketh, He made thereat the sun, this isle,
Trees and the fowls here, beast and creeping thing.
Yon otter, sleek-wet, black, lithe as a leech;
Yon auk, one fire-eye in a ball of foam,
That floats and feeds; a certain badger brown
He hath watched hunt with that slant white-wedge eye
By moonlight; and the pie with the long tongue
That pricks deep into oak warts for a worm,
And says a plain word when she finds her prize,
But will not eat the ants; the ants themselves
That build a wall of seeds and settled stalks
About their hole—He made all these and more,
Made all we see, and us, in spite: how else?
He could not, Himself, make a second self
To be His mate; as well have made Himself:
He would not make what He mislikes or slights,
An eyesore to Him, or not worth His pains:
But did, in envy, listlessness or sport,
Make what Himself would fain, in a manner, be—
Weaker in most points, stronger in a few,
Worthy, and yet mere playthings all the while,
Things He admires and mocks too,—that is it.
Because, so brave, so better though they be,
It nothing skills if He begin to plague.
Look, now, I melt a gourd-fruit into mash,
Add honeycomb and pods, I have perceived,
Which bite like finches when they bill and kiss,—
Then, when froth rises bladdery, drink up all,
Quick, quick, till maggots scamper through my brain;
Last, throw me on my back i' the seeded thyme,
And wanton, wishing I were born a bird.
Put case, unable to be what I wish,
I yet could make a live bird out of clay:
Would not I take clay, pinch my Caliban
Able to fly?—for, there, see, he hath wings,
And great comb like the hoopoe's to admire,
And there, a sting to do his foes offence,
There, and I will that he begin to live,
Fly to yon rock-top, nip me off the horns
Of grigs high up that make the merry din,
Saucy through their veined wings, and mind me not.
In which feat, if his leg snapped, brittle clay,
And he lay stupid-like,—why, I should laugh;
And if he, spying me, should fall to weep,
Beseech me to be good, repair his wrong,
Bid his poor leg smart less or grow again,—
Well, as the chance were, this might take or else
Not take my fancy: I might hear his cry,
And give the mankin three sound legs for one,
Or pluck the other off, leave him like an egg
And lessoned he was mine and merely clay.
Were this no pleasure, lying in the thyme,
Drinking the mash, with brain become alive,
Making and marring clay at will? So He.
'Thinketh, such shows nor right nor wrong in Him,
Nor kind, nor cruel: He is strong and Lord.
'Am strong myself compared to yonder crabs
That march now from the mountain to the sea;
'Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first,
Loving not, hating not, just choosing so.
'Say, the first straggler that boasts purple spots
Shall join the file, one pincer twisted off;
'Say, this bruised fellow shall receive a worm,
And two worms he whose nippers end in red;
As it likes me each time, I do: so He.
Well then, 'supposeth He is good i' the main,
Placable if His mind and ways were guessed,
But rougher than His handiwork, be sure!
Oh, He hath made things worthier than Himself,
And envieth that, so helped, such things do more
Than He who made them! What consoles but this?
That they, unless through Him, do nought at all,
And must submit: what other use in things?
'Hath cut a pipe of pithless elder-joint
That, blown through, gives exact the scream o' the jay
When from her wing you twitch the feathers blue:
Sound this, and little birds that hate the jay
Flock within stone's throw, glad their foe is hurt:
Put case such pipe could prattle and boast forsooth
"I catch the birds, I am the crafty thing,
I make the cry my maker cannot make
With his great round mouth; he must blow through mine!'
Would not I smash it with my foot? So He.
But wherefore rough, why cold and ill at ease?
Aha, that is a question! Ask, for that,
What knows,—the something over Setebos
That made Him, or He, may be, found and fought,
Worsted, drove off and did to nothing, perchance.
There may be something quiet o'er His head,
Out of His reach, that feels nor joy nor grief,
Since both derive from weakness in some way.
I joy because the quails come; would not joy
Could I bring quails here when I have a mind:
This Quiet, all it hath a mind to, doth.
'Esteemeth stars the outposts of its couch,
But never spends much thought nor care that way.
It may look up, work up,—the worse for those
It works on! 'Careth but for Setebos
The many-handed as a cuttle-fish,
Who, making Himself feared through what He does,
Looks up, first, and perceives he cannot soar
To what is quiet and hath happy life;
Next looks down here, and out of very spite
Makes this a bauble-world to ape yon real,
These good things to match those as hips do grapes.
'Tis solace making baubles, ay, and sport.
Himself peeped late, eyed Prosper at his books
Careless and lofty, lord now of the isle:
Vexed, 'stitched a book of broad leaves, arrow-shaped,
Wrote thereon, he knows what, prodigious words;
Has peeled a wand and called it by a name;
Weareth at whiles for an enchanter's robe
The eyed skin of a supple oncelot;
And hath an ounce sleeker than youngling mole,
A four-legged serpent he makes cower and couch,
Now snarl, now hold its breath and mind his eye,
And saith she is Miranda and my wife:
'Keeps for his Ariel a tall pouch-bill crane
He bids go wade for fish and straight disgorge;
Also a sea-beast, lumpish, which he snared,
Blinded the eyes of, and brought somewhat tame,
And split its toe-webs, and now pens the drudge
In a hole o' the rock and calls him Caliban;
A bitter heart that bides its time and bites.
'Plays thus at being Prosper in a way,
Taketh his mirth with make-believes: so He.
His dam held that the Quiet made all things
Which Setebos vexed only: 'holds not so.
Who made them weak, meant weakness He might vex.
Had He meant other, while His hand was in,
Why not make horny eyes no thorn could prick,
Or plate my scalp with bone against the snow,
Or overscale my flesh 'neath joint and joint
Like an orc's armour? Ay,—so spoil His sport!
He is the One now: only He doth all.
'Saith, He may like, perchance, what profits Him.
Ay, himself loves what does him good; but why?
'Gets good no otherwise. This blinded beast
Loves whoso places flesh-meat on his nose,
But, had he eyes, would want no help, but hate
Or love, just as it liked him: He hath eyes.
Also it pleaseth Setebos to work,
Use all His hands, and exercise much craft,
By no means for the love of what is worked.
'Tasteth, himself, no finer good i' the world
When all goes right, in this safe summer-time,
And he wants little, hungers, aches not much,
Than trying what to do with wit and strength.
'Falls to make something: 'piled yon pile of turfs,
And squared and stuck there squares of soft white chalk,
And, with a fish-tooth, scratched a moon on each,
And set up endwise certain spikes of tree,
And crowned the whole with a sloth's skull a-top,
Found dead i' the woods, too hard for one to kill.
No use at all i' the work, for work's sole sake;
'Shall some day knock it down again: so He.
'Saith He is terrible: watch His feats in proof!
One hurricane will spoil six good months' hope.
He hath a spite against me, that I know,
Just as He favours Prosper, who knows why?
So it is, all the same, as well I find.
'Wove wattles half the winter, fenced them firm
With stone and stake to stop she-tortoises
Crawling to lay their eggs here: well, one wave,
Feeling the foot of Him upon its neck,
Gaped as a snake does, lolled out its large tongue,
And licked the whole labour flat: so much for spite.
'Saw a ball flame down late (yonder it lies)
Where, half an hour before, I slept i' the shade:
Often they scatter sparkles: there is force!
'Dug up a newt He may have envied once
And turned to stone, shut up Inside a stone.
Please Him and hinder this?—What Prosper does?
Aha, if He would tell me how! Not He!
There is the sport: discover how or die!
All need not die, for of the things o' the isle
Some flee afar, some dive, some run up trees;
Those at His mercy,—why, they please Him most
When . . . when . . . well, never try the same way twice!
Repeat what act has pleased, He may grow wroth.
You must not know His ways, and play Him off,
Sure of the issue. 'Doth the like himself:
'Spareth a squirrel that it nothing fears
But steals the nut from underneath my thumb,
And when I threat, bites stoutly in defence:
'Spareth an urchin that contrariwise,
Curls up into a ball, pretending death
For fright at my approach: the two ways please.
But what would move my choler more than this,
That either creature counted on its life
To-morrow and next day and all days to come,
Saying, forsooth, in the inmost of its heart,
"Because he did so yesterday with me,
And otherwise with such another brute,
So must he do henceforth and always."—Ay?
Would teach the reasoning couple what "must" means!
'Doth as he likes, or wherefore Lord? So He.
'Conceiveth all things will continue thus,
And we shall have to live in fear of Him
So long as He lives, keeps His strength: no change,
If He have done His best, make no new world
To please Him more, so leave off watching this,—
If He surprise not even the Quiet's self
Some strange day,—or, suppose, grow into it
As grubs grow butterflies: else, here are we,
And there is He, and nowhere help at all.
'Believeth with the life, the pain shall stop.
His dam held different, that after death
He both plagued enemies and feasted friends:
Idly! He doth His worst in this our life,
Giving just respite lest we die through pain,
Saving last pain for worst,—with which, an end.
Meanwhile, the best way to escape His ire
Is, not to seem too happy. 'Sees, himself,
Yonder two flies, with purple films and pink,
Bask on the pompion-bell above: kills both.
'Sees two black painful beetles roll their ball
On head and tail as if to save their lives:
Moves them the stick away they strive to clear.
Even so, 'would have Him misconceive, suppose
This Caliban strives hard and ails no less,
And always, above all else, envies Him;
Wherefore he mainly dances on dark nights,
Moans in the sun, gets under holes to laugh,
And never speaks his mind save housed as now:
Outside, 'groans, curses. If He caught me here,
O'erheard this speech, and asked "What chucklest at?"
'Would, to appease Him, cut a finger off,
Or of my three kid yearlings burn the best,
Or let the toothsome apples rot on tree,
Or push my tame beast for the orc to taste:
While myself lit a fire, and made a song
And sung it, "What I hate, be consecrate
To celebrate Thee and Thy state, no mate
For Thee; what see for envy in poor me?"
Hoping the while, since evils sometimes mend,
Warts rub away and sores are cured with slime,
That some strange day, will either the Quiet catch
And conquer Setebos, or likelier He
Decrepit may doze, doze, as good as die.
[What, what? A curtain o'er the world at once!
Crickets stop hissing: not a bird—or, yes,
There scuds His raven that has told Him all!
It was fool's play, this prattling! Ha! The wind
Shoulders the pillared dust, death's house o' the move,
And fast invading fires begin! White blaze—
A tree's head snaps—and there, there, there, there, there,
His thunder follows! Fool to gibe at Him!
Lo! 'Lieth flat and loveth Setebos!
'Maketh his teeth meet through his upper lip,
Will let those quails fly, will not eat this month
One little mess of whelks, so he may 'scape!]
Robert Browning
