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On the Unexpected Beauty of Social Media
This week is a hard week in the life of V, as many of you know. I lost my favorite uncle over the weekend after a two-year battle with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease). I was very close to my uncle; he taught me so much about my family's Greek roots, shared our family crest—which had never before been revealed to me—and even showed me our patriarchal properties in the beautiful Peloponnese. We went to fundraisers and dinners together, and whenever he needed information, I was his Internet go-to girl. To say I will miss him is an understatement. It is a palpable loss on so many levels.
Naturally, because of this turn of events, my mind and heart are not on fashion blogging this week. But I have learned over these years of blogging that unexplained silence is bewildering, and even worrisome for dedicated readers. So I sent out a tweet and put a post on the G&G Facebook page to explain why I may be quiet this week.
As a blogger, I've made a conscious decision to keep my personal life as private as possible. I share my thoughts on fashion and blogging, but not much about my life, relationships, etc. And yet here I am blogging about something very personal. Why? Well, because of…
YOU: Reader. Commenter. Supporter. Friend.
As soon as I sent out that tweet, so many of you reached out, sending me direct messages and tweets of support and sympathy. I was floored. And touched. And honored that you would take the time to write me words of encouragement.
I want you to know how grateful I am for your messages and friendship. Because I do not share my personal life on the blog, you haven't known about the betrayal I've experienced at the hands of very, very, close family members, about the discovery of deception in even the most holy of places. For a Greek girl from a tight-knit family, this is not only a shock to my core beliefs, it's a chokingly difficult pill to swallow. Now, I do not divulge these things for sympathy, but only to tell you this:
I have learned that "family" isn't defined by DNA, it's defined by love.
When I posted messages on both G&G and my personal Facebook pages, the outpouring of support by all of you was incredible. And it also made me hyperaware that on top of the drama already playing out in my "family," virtually none of my actual blood relatives bothered to respond. I was always taught that you stick by your family no matter what—and I have, only to learn that loyalty is not always reciprocal.
This is what I know for sure: what I've lost this last year at the hands of my "family," I have gained in you—a loving family of readers and friends. A network of support, kindness, and compassion. That is family.
Fans and Followers: A Modern Family
When I started blogging, I never, ever expected, well…this. I suppose I thought it would always be me in a room with my thoughts. It took me a good three years to learn that I'd get a lot more out of all of it if I actually interacted with others. And once I did, the conversations and contributors grew and grew, first on the blog, then on Twitter, and eventually on Facebook. We've chatted about fashion and shoes and blogging and such, and I know I've written words of encouragement to others, but it wasn't until this week that I felt the full impact of social media on a personal level.
Social media—blogs/Twitter/Facebook—is a new paradigm of belonging, a new way for us to cultivate friendships and interact with others. Sure, most of us have never met, but this community, this connectedness is no less poignant or powerful. We stick together, you and me. We do what we can for one another, even from afar. And you've not only been there for me, but Casee Marie, Steph, Suze, and Yvonne.
Our fans and followers in social media aren't just numbers—they are real people and an invaluable source of inspiration, encouragement, networking, and friendship. That's why interacting with others (and not just amassing comments and followers) is so important. Give and you will receive. When you least expect it and most likely need it.
Yes, we are fashion bloggers. Yes, we try to keep it light and positive. But when life has given some of us lemons, we all helped make the lemonade, toasted with a resounding, "Here, here!" then turned our glasses up.
That my friends, is the unexpected beauty of social media. Know that when I say my final goodbye to my beloved uncle today, I carry your words of comfort in my heart.
Thanks to all of you for your kind messages…
@gritandglamour Oh no, I've just read your message -so sorry. Alfred and I are sending lots of hugs your way…xx
My prayers are with you and your family!
xo to you, dear V. I am sorry for your loss. -Bella
Vahni, Im so sorry to hear about your loss. Big cyber space hugs coming your way. xxx
Vahni, my deepest condolences. The sad truth? I have lost an uncle this weekend as well. I really feel with you. Life is bitter sometimes.
Sorry Vahni. It's no fun losing a beloved relative. Sending love your way.
So terribly sorry to hear about your uncle. My thoughts and prayers are with you and your family.
Oh my gawsh, so sad. So sorry for your loss, V. Reminds me to value the people in my life. Bests to you and your family.
168 Comments
Oh V I am soo sorry to hear that! I wish I had known sooner (I was out of town all weekend). My thoughts and prayers are with you always and know that we are all here for you because you are not just an awesome blogger but an awesome person! **hugs***
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I am so terribly sorry to hear about your uncle. I hope we can help you get through this hard time-sending you all my love!
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Reading your post just now, gave me goosebumps, raised my arm hairs, and gave me a lump in the back of my throat. Its amazing how supportive the blogging community can be, especially compared to actual members of your own family. We are all each others extend family, here to lend support, advice and kindness. Im happy to be a part of such a wonderful community and that it helped you in this hard time.
ps and to all the people out there that say bloggers are just a bunch of self motivated publicity seekers that just want to pat each other on the back, I say have a look at this. xx
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So sorry for your loss V. No matter where I am or where I will be, you will be always in my heart.
Meeting you this year made truly believe that social network isn't just about numbers of followers or how many comments you have per post. It's about the connection, respect and love from each other.
I pray for your beloved uncle and wishing him the most peaceful place to rest.
Stay strong my friend!
Lots and lots of love to you and your family.
Your biggest friend and fan,
Lee Oliveira
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Thinking of you during this difficult time… I've followed your blog for a while now, from a "distance" you could say since I don't normally comment but I felt to reach out to you during this deeply personal post. Thanks for sharing and you have many, many virtual blogger friends who support you.
Keep shining.
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V, I have to admit, your outpouring almost brought me to tears (and I am not much of a crier). When I first started blogging, I thought it was just fashion, pictures, and comments, but you and so many others have showed me that this is a community! I am very glad that I and many other bloggers' words of encouragement can be of comfort for you during this time. You and your family will continue to be in my prayers.
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Beautifully written V; thank you for sharing! "@gritandglamour: On the Unexpected Beauty of Social Media http://t.co/jqh50C1"
I am so sorry for your loss V.
I have you and your family in my prayers. Glad to know that the blogging community has helped with your mourning.
We all love you!
Oh, V, I missed your messages on Twitter and Facebook and I'm sorry I wasn't able to add to the support. You have that with this message.
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so sorry to hear about your loss, sending big hugs
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RT @leeoliveira82: A must read post!!…. so beautiful. Made me cry ;( RT @gritandglamour: On the Unexpected Beauty of Social Media http://bit.ly/hRWk6f #LOVE
My precious Vahni, I have tears in my eyes and a deep emotion in my heart. I couldn´t agree more with you: "family" isn't defined by DNA, it's defined by love.
I hug you tight, and love you!!!
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When I heard of your loss, I felt it as well by recalling the loss of my parents and my heart went out to you. Losing a very close family member is heartwrenching, I know.
You are so right about this community of friends. My 'best' group of friends is my twitter circle. A few I have met face to face, but most are an online presence that holds my virtual hand or shares a laugh and a smile across the internet.
You internet friends have encouraged me, inspired me, consoled me and given me hope and added confidence.
It is amazing > this community of big-hearted, like-minded individuals who share a passion not only for fashion but for uplifting one another.
V – hang in there girl. It doesn't get better and will never be the same but it will get a teensy bit easier each day…
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V, only you could manage to take a difficult moment in your life and turn it into something positive regarding social media.
I shared my condolences via Facebook, but will repeat it here again. I am so sorry for your loss, and have been keeping you and your family in my thoughts and prayers every day since I learned of your Uncle's passing and will continue to do so.
I agree with your sentiments on the internet and the friends we make wholeheartedly – I think I am a bit more open about my personal life than you may be, but I tend to just offer hints of what may be going on. Even so, there have been more than a few moments where a kind word from the circle of friends I have developed here, including you, have made all the difference. This community is about so much more than fashion and blogging – its about relationships.
Please know you are in our thoughts, and take as much time as you need! We'll be here when you get back. *hugs*
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RT @BeautifullyInv: A beautiful post from a beautiful woman. RT @gritandglamour: On the Unexpected Beauty of Social Media http://bit.ly/hRWk6f
Hi V,
I hope you and your family are ok. I know it is tough to lose a person who means the world or care about deeply, but know that you are not alone and it's ok to vent because many of us can relate. It saddens me that you are hurting, but know that everyone around you including your blogger friends are here for you. We are your blogger family and if you need anything please don't hesitate to ask.
Celebrate the life and great memories you shared with your uncle, and let it out. Sometimes crying makes me feel better.
I will keep you and your family in my thoughts and prayers.
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So sorry to hear about your uncle! My thoughts are with you… glad that you're getting so much lovely support during such a difficult, painful time.
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Dearest V,
This is a beautiful post. True connectedness is what matters and I am so happy to know you, through blogging. I'm so sorry for your lost & I am wishing you love & light during this time even in the darkest hour.. Prayers & blessings to you sweetie!
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When my father passed away suddenly in October of 2009, I didn't want to say anything to anyone. But a couple of my social media friends let others know, and the support came pouring in. I posted on FB and Twitter once and was floored by the show of kindness and love that came my way. Not only was it a comfort to me, but a comfort to my step-mom and sisters. They knew that when I had to go back to Austin (they are in San Antonio) I would be surrounded by love both in real life and online. My deepest sympathies on the loss of your uncle. I'm so happy that your online family could offer you so much love in your time of need.
I feel so horrible for you:( I know that loss….and it stings:(
I couldn't agree with this entire post more…..we each have our own definition of "family"…..and its not always found around the dinner table.
Ill keep you and yours close to my heart…..hang in there hunnie……
V, I had absolutely no idea.. never saw your tweet/facebook! and was wondering why you had disappeared for a few days. So sorry to hear of your loss; will keep you and your family in my thoughts and prayers!
Oh, V! I've been out of the loop this past week due to a show at work. I had no idea. I'm so sorry, honey.
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I'm so, so sorry for your loss, V. I keep my blog clear of the personal bits but in one post I made a brief mention of how losing my father left me feeling forever irreperable and the responses were so loving. It's rare to experience so much kindness from strangers in the day-to-day "real world", which saddens me.
I once called you "the Fairy Godmother of the blogosphere", you're so much more than that. The fact that you mean so much to virtual strangers says a lot oabout the beauty of your soul.
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RT @BeautifullyInv: A beautiful post from a beautiful woman. RT @gritandglamour: On the Unexpected Beauty of Social Media http://bit.ly/hRWk6f
RT @gritandglamour: On the Unexpected Beauty of Social Media http://bit.ly/hRWk6f V you bring tears to my eyes bless you!
V, you bring tears to my eyes, we are the lucky ones, thank you!!!
♥ Noemi
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I never intended for any of my personal life to creep into my blog, but it does and its always surprising how supportive people I don't even "know" can be. I'm so sorry for your loss but glad you've had an outpouring of love and support you certainly need right now.
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Dear V,
This is my first or second time stopping by your blog and I must say that this post thoroughly moved me. But firstly, I'm so sorry to hear about what had happened. It's really saddening to hear of such news, especially when the person who has left, is one who is/was very dear to you. Much heartfelt condolences.
Being a blogger has taught me many things as well, and while we're always wanting to only share the positivity and love in life, when life gets hard on us, we try to not let it out (especially through one's blog). But it is amazing (in the end, after sharing), the support and love one reaps from one's readers – I echo all that you've said so beautifully. When the day gets hard, it's always nice and comforting to retreat to the blog it's always exciting and uplifting to read comments from your readers. I mean, who doesn't appreciate and does a little happy jump when they receive lovely comments from wonderful readers. This blogging world is definitely a strong virtual support to each blogger. And I'm more than glad to know that you found the support you needed from here.
Take good care, and don't be too hard on yourself. The sun always shines after the rain. x
V, this post was truly touching and so very true. We as bloggers are all so fortunate to have found a "virtual" family to support us when life presents us with pain and challenges. I am truly sorry for your loss and will keep you in my thoughts and prayers through this difficult time. Lots of love xoxo
I am so sorry for your loss. It is amazing though that in a loss like this you actually gain (love, support, understanding, perspective….)—- that is a testament to your uncle.
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A must read post!!…. so beautiful. Made me cry ;( RT @gritandglamour: On the Unexpected Beauty of Social Media http://bit.ly/hRWk6f #LOVE
wonderfully, eloquently put. xoxo RT: @gritandglamour On the Unexpected Beauty of Social Media http://bit.ly/hRWk6f
Beautifully written V; thank you for sharing! "@gritandglamour: On the Unexpected Beauty of Social Media http://t.co/jqh50C1"
I've not been on twitter much this week so I must have missed when you posted that. Really sorry to hear about your loss V x
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RT @BeautifullyInv: A beautiful post from a beautiful woman. RT @gritandglamour: On the Unexpected Beauty of Social Media http://bit.ly/hRWk6f
A beautiful post from a beautiful woman. RT @gritandglamour: On the Unexpected Beauty of Social Media http://bit.ly/hRWk6f
Dearest V,
I can totally understand the mess of a family, but know that your blogging "family" is always here for you! I seriously am overwhelmed by all the love you're receiving from all over the social media world and blogosphere. Meeting you this year was one of my fondest memories! And you must know that if you were to ever need ANYTHING – I'm here on stand by.
I hope and pray that you are able to find peace in your uncle's passing and that he rests somewhere in peace as well.
Love you, V!
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You are such a strong woman! RT @gritandglamour On the Unexpected Beauty of Social Media http://bit.ly/hRWk6f
Vahni, my darling Vahni. I am in tears reading your post, I feel so very moved. Thank you for sharing with us, thank you for allowing us to show our enormous love and support and care for you. We are your family, you are my Greek sister via the wonders of the net. I am saying prayers for your uncle, you and your family every day. I flew today, and thought of him intensely, being closer to heaven. I hope you don`t mind. I am sorry to hear that not all of your relatives have come through for you. I am grateful that you allow us to see YOU, not just the fashionista or the blogwiz, but beautiful, voulnerable, strong, graceful you. I love you. Anything you need from me is a click away, just let me know. Yours, Anika xxxxx
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I haven't been on twitter lately due to work so missed all this. Very sorry to hear about your loss and my sympathies to you and your family. Hope amongst the sadness and process of grieving for him you can also find comfort in the memories of your uncle. xxx
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Sorry for your loss V. I know that it is a difficult time but your uncle is in a much better place and trust that he feels and knows the amazing love that you have for him. I hope that you take as much time as you need to simply regroup and remember all of the great times you had with him.
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I am so sorry!! I didn't hear about it (somehow) until days later, I think. I have been praying for you and your family.
You are so right that there is a family among all of us. And you have so beautifully and eloquently put it into words in your post. It almost had me tearing up!! I am so glad you feel the sincere love and concern. I have felt it too, at times when I have chosen to share more personal things. It's a pretty amazing thing to *know* that when you speak from your heart "around here" you *will* be supported, isn't it?
Much love to you,
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Oh V! Tears…You are such a beautiful person. Your support of other bloggers is second to none and the amount of support you are receiving is directly related to your generous, kind and giving presence in all of our lives. I am so touched you would share this with us and I am moved that despite your grief you can make these really extraordinary remarks.
Again, I am so sorry for your loss. I know it can be hard especially when not all family is loving and generous with their words. But my mom told me re: our own very checkered family "you can't make a rock bleed," you can't make someone be or do something they're just not and we as people just have to not let that effect us and just recognize and value of the good in people and be our most selves.
You are so good Miss V, take as much time as you need and my thoughts are with you and your family.
I am so sorry for your loss. 🙁 It is never easy to handle losing somebody so close to you and so important in your life.
In December, I lost my grandfather. He was the treasure of my heart and one of my favorite people in the world. I sat in the hospital next to him and watched him pass. I sent several notices on my blog, alerting people as to why I was not posting regularly. The outpouring of support was incredible. I never expected anything like it. My blogger friends gave me more support and kinder messages than people I know personally.
I understand what you mean when you say that you don't have to be genetically related in order to be family or have to know somebody in person to be considered a friend. My blogger friends are my best friends. I love each and every one of them.
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Oh, V! I'm so sorry for your loss and all that you must be going through right now. I obviously missed your tweet or I would have sent my condolences earlier. I wish there was more I could say, but I know time is the only thing that will make it easier. I'm glad you're finding some solace is this little community of ours. I know we will all be thinking of you and sending you our love.
RT @gritandglamour: On the Unexpected Beauty of Social Media http://bit.ly/hRWk6f V you bring tears to my eyes bless you!
I'm so sorry for your loss. I hope you find strength and support in the community around you – as you say, your virtual friends. Sending my thoughts of comfort.
Hug from Madeline
OH V, I'm so very sorry about your loss! I have been taking care of my little boy who has had a cold, so I have been a little out of commission myself, but I just checked blogs today and saw this post.
You are right about this great blogging community and your friends and readers in the blogosphere creating an extended family. You and your family are in my thoughts and prayers and you should take time to care for yourself and your needs. I did the same when my father died 8 years ago.
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Oh, V. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, we really do love you honey and we really do feel your loss. I have met some of my closest friends (and my husband) through social media so I know all too well the strength of the bonds we make via our social networks. You truly are my friend! I only hope to one day meet you in person and give you a big hug! But even if we never meet, I will still consider you to be a friend. Even without being overly personal on your blog, I still feel like I know you, and it doesn't take a 300 page biography to know that you are a GREAT person with a GREAT heart.
You and your family are in my prayers during this difficult time. Hang in there, V.
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I can definitely relate to this post. The outpouring of support from the blogging community when one experiences tragedy is overwhelmingly great. I experienced this similar reaction when writing about my brother, here: http://prettyshinysparkly.com/the-year-without-my-brother/
Indeed, I still get comments on it every now and then, and just last week I got an email from The Pioneer Woman (of thepioneerwoman.com & @thepioneerwoman) who was in tears after reading that very same post. We can all touch one another so deeply, with words.
Though I would never wish tragedy on anyone, it is comforting to know that in our little digital community we take care of our own.
xoxo, K
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I am deeply sadden to hear about your loss. It is never easy to deal with a death of a loved one,especially someone so close to your heart. You and your family are in my prayers. Yet the beautiful side of this situation is for every one person you have connected with they have given you love back and are supporting you through this time. Wishing you and your family the best.
This post is beautiful and brings a tear to my eye because I totally agree. I never expected to find so many kind people through blogging and it is so amazing to have so much support, whether it's with blogging or something personal. My heart and prayers remain with you….
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Am so moved reading Vahnis post.I love you V.RT @gritandglamour: On the Unexpected Beauty of Social Media http://bit.ly/hRWk6f #FTFCommunity
I'm so moved that I really can't quite figure out how to make my words work (for once in my life I might be speechless?) but I know there are times when it comes to be less about how one uses their words and more about what those words mean. Sorrow, compassion and support are more powerful than the letters that make them up.
I think when I started The Girl Who Stole the Eiffel Tower I felt the same way; that it would just be me and my thoughts fiddling about in a little corner of the world wide web. I still remember when I came across your blog last summer, it was through that I Heart Blogs event on StylishKidsInRiot.com. From that point on I experienced what real community is and blogging for me has never been the same. I've been so affected by the compassion and just the depth of connection in this community (as you well know, because you've been such a huge part of both) and I consider myself so fortunate to have been on the receiving end of all that love. It really does become a family, because it's such a piece of our lives that we're all so passionate about. Regardless of our many differences, we connect so genuinely through fashion and blogging. It's silly, but I can't help think of that line from Sex and the City. "Sometimes it's the family you're born into and sometimes it's the one you make for yourself."
Again, I'm so sorry that you're going through this difficult time, V. You'll be in my thoughts and I'm wishing you all the hope and comfort in the world.
THE most beautiful post on blogging EVER. Tear. <3's to V. RT @gritandglamour: On the Unexpected Beauty of Social Media http://bit.ly/hRWk6f
Deepest condolences to you and your family. Cherish his memory. My Boyfriend's mom died from cancer recently and I know how heartbreaking it is to watch some one slip away over time. Stay strong and remember the good times…
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i'm so sorry V.. 🙁
It's times like these that you don't have the words to say to console but just be there. I'm going through that right now with best friend of mine who lost his best friend. it's so tough, so hard to try and imagine what you are going through but to just rethink of my experiences.. it's obvious that you two were so close and it makes it that much harder to think on a positive note…but the one way that helped me cope when i've lost someone special is just to remember all the wonderful times.. because there would be moments i got angry, wanted to scream, yell, be mad at why i had to lose that person… but i decided to WRITE in a journal of all the memories i had with this person, all the great stories we shared, the great moments we encountered and that got me through my days… i don't know if that's something that would help but it certainly did for me. you are such a strong and bright woman, constantly positive and always looking for the best in everyone. your love is widely known amongst this blog community so we send it back out to you.
in my thoughts V<3
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Oh Vahni, I'm so glad we were all there for you! It is a great little community isn't it?
I really am sorry for the loss of your Uncle. He sounds like a very special person. It's great to have close and loving family members, but we all, I mean we ALL have some lemons in the family mix. Let me tell you, you are not the only one with family issues. I literally do not know anyone who doesn't have some.
It's only been recently that I've begun to really understand the phrase: You can choose your friends but not you family. It's so true.
Anyway, I think you can tell we all love you. You and your Uncle will be in my prayers tonight!
Much love,
this is the first i'm hearing about this, i'm so sorry! but i'm so glad that you've been able to find support online from all you're readers and friends. hang in there.
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I am so sorry to hear about your loss Vahni, my heart goes out to you and your family during this tough time. I can tell you are very strong <3
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dearest sweetest vahni!! this has me on the verge of tears! both sweet and sad ones. my heart goes out to you and your loss. and at the same time, i am completely overwhelmed by the beautiful support & caring bloggers show each other. it's downright magical.
and being that you are a particularly connected, loving and supportive blogger, i think the outpour was even stronger. we get what we give in this world, and you give so much, so consistently. and though life may have its hard moments, i think you'll always have people ready to give back that love whenever you need it most.
<3 <3 <3 love to you always.
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a very beautiful & touching post. this will tug at your heart strings. it is a must-read. http://bit.ly/fQn8vH @gritandglamour
Hi V! It's very likely you've never heard of me. I read your blog but I don't think I've ever commented on it, not for lack of will but because life is usually crazy.
I'm really sorry for your loss, I can only imagine how you must be feeling. I'm sending you my thoughts of support, love and positivity. You will get through this and you're truly blessed that u had the opportunity to meet and love someone as brilliant as your uncle.
About 'family', I can't stress enough how much I agree with you: what defines a family is LOVE and nothing else, not even blood ties. My family history is also difficult/unusual and I know that as we grow and learn about life, we also learn that many times the true support and encouragement we need comes from the most unexpected places. I've also been blown away by the unconditional friendship of people whom I've never met in person, only through social networks (my blog, Facebook, Twitter…). It's a blessing of our times that we can find friends in distant places, who will always be there for us, and with whom we share so much.
Thanks for having such a beautiful, intelligent blog and for sharing your feelings with us.
Best wishes!
xoxoxo Bere
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RT @kristyelena: a very beautiful & touching post. this will tug at your heart strings. it is a must-read. http://bit.ly/fQn8vH @gritandglamour
I guess I think back to the comment you made on my Lipstick&Lumber blog long ago when I was ranting on about my job loss and being home with my parents and you said, "Enjoy them. The time you have with them is finite." That always stuck with me. And between the strong relationships that you foster and carry with your fellow friends (bloggers) and what you describe as the deep relationship you had with your Uncle, it's apparent that you enjoyed him much during his time here. That's the most we can do, and that alone should give you much comfort amidst your grief.
I'm sorry for your loss, and you take all the time you need dear! You always hung around for me. It's no question that I will be here for you 🙂
Take care V!!
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a very beautiful & touching post. this will tug at your heart strings. it is a must-read. http://bit.ly/fQn8vH @gritandglamour
RT @kristyelena: a very beautiful & touching post. this will tug at your heart strings. it is a must-read. http://bit.ly/fQn8vH @gritand …
I am so very sorry for your loss! What a beautiful and heartbreaking post. I personally know how hard it is to lose a family member that you are so close to. I lost my Mom 4 years ago and have never been the same. I am so happy that you are finding comfort in the large community around you that supports and loves you. May you also find comfort in the memories of your dear uncle. He sounds like a very special man. My thoughts and prayers are with you now and in the coming months. Sending lots of love your way!
Margaret | Style Nook's latest post: I Can Sea Clearly Now
Oh V…. Hugs. I read this post yesterday and returned today and read it again. It's beautiful- and so true- I've seen the sense of community in the blogging world and it is AMAZING. It's touching to see so many caring people all in the same place. Best wishes to your family hun, I know it's tough to lose somebody you love.
Elle's latest post: Reasons to Move to Your Own Domain
RT @kristyelena: a very beautiful & touching post. this will tug at your heart strings. it is a must-read. http://bit.ly/fQn8vH @gritandglamour
Dearest Vahni, my words fall to the curb when it comes to trying to convey any sort of comfort for you- I am sorry for your loss. Knowing how big your heart is, just from our virtual correspondence, I know this loss of your near and dear cuts keenly against it- there is no fast recovery from losing a loved one who truly loved you. My prayers are with you and your family, and my thoughts go to your dear uncle who loved you so. May he rest in peace.
Your post, this time in a personal vein, hits close to home, and I am glad that me, in league with a host of others who know you via G&G can give you some solace in this time of your suffering. You are magnificent, dear one. I love you.
Bella Q's latest post: Igloo You
I am sorry for your loss, Vahni. May you find warm peace soon, through many fond memories of your uncle, through your continuing interest in your Greek heritage, and in the deep thoughts and new understandings you reach as you navigate your grief. Like what you've shared with us already in this entry.
Cloud of Secrets's latest post: Secrets Staycation
Vahni, never before has a blog entry brought me to such an emotional level. I'm in tears, nose running.
After moving from Michigan to California, most of my family and friends don't keep in touch with me. I've tried to keep in contact with them, but I can only do so much on my end. People that I've known for five or ten years, or my entire life, haven't been around. And then, there's people that I've never even met, that I've only known on-line, who have been there for me through this past year, one of the hardest of my life.
Your uncle's suffering is over. Now he can rest.
We're here for you. We're here for each other.
THE-LOUDMOUTH's latest post: BOOBS! Okay- now that Ive got your attention
Dearest V,
I am so sorry to hear of your loss lovely. I can't imagine how you're feeling right now, I know it's difficult, and the pain kinda blows you away, but the pain will go away and it does get easier with time. Keep thinking your happiest memories of your uncle to keep the spirit alive, I know he would have wanted you see you happy (or smiling).
I know what you mean about friends that you've made via social media/networking/blogging, we're precious little things and i'm also someone who is grateful for that.
Am also with you on your comment about giving and receiving, I think that applies to everything in life.
I hope you get to enjoy Easter lovely.
Sending your family love, big fat Greek squeezy hugs and all the sweet stuff from Greece!
p.s loved your photos and that amazing dress from the Foley + Carina! you looked incredible!!!
Oh Vahni, I was so sad to hear about the loss of someone so dear to you. All of the tweets, comments and words of support are a true testament to the truly amazing woman that you are. You have been a mentor to me and a constant source of encouragement and inspiration. I place your strength and eloquence on a pedestal. My world has been enriched by your presence and it comes as no surprise to me that the blogging community would jump into action and try to give back the same support to you that you so open-heartedly give to all of us. Family is truly who you make it to be. I'm so happy to part of your modern family. Sending lots of love to you. xoxo
brookemeagan's latest post: Fabulously Vegetarian and Unfaithfully Vegan
V – I've been praying and thinking of you and your family this whole week, but am only now getting the chance to express my condolences. I'm glad you've found a ray of light through the friendships that exist in the blogging community. We miss your presence but have you very much in mind during this hard time. Sending your love and 'air support'! – Katy
Katy's latest post: Friend Friday- Inspiration
I'm so sorry about the loss of your uncle. I'm glad you've received so much love through social media. You are such a big part of the community, I'm glad you are getting back in affection what you put out there in encouragement and inspiration.
I'm so sorry for your loss. My thoughts and prayers are with you and your family! Clearly all the support that's come your way is indicative of what an important part of our community you are. I'm sorry I didn't hear about this sooner, so I could send a big bloggy hug! xoxo
So sorry for your loss. I've been so busy at work that I haven't been on Twitter much. To have a wonderful, supportive person in your life is a gift. I had an uncle like that too so I can sympathise with you. Stay strong and we'll all be here for you when you come back.
So sorry to hear of your loss V… I know you prefer not to blog about personal things but I think having the support of your readers seems to be a very positive outcome considering the sad situation.
Thank you again for your fabulous blog and for reminding us why the blog world is such a great place.
Jasmine's latest post: three and a half
I'm putting the tears I'm shedding as I'm reading this down to the fact that I'm obviously pre-menstrual or the fact that it's my last day here in Plymouth with all my wonderful friends and family. I am so blessed on both counts as my family is truly amazing and the friends I have are most definitely as close to me as family are. We've all been through so much together over the years but have always been there to support and offer unconditional love. The blogging world has definitely opened up another door to friendships and for that I am also truly grateful for. I'm so glad you found support in a dark time and hope our best wishes carry you through what ever dark times may lie ahead.. XXX
GawgusThings's latest post: Final Days
What a touching post. I'm honestly tearing up right now thinking about what a wonderful community this is. I'm continually surprised & warmed at the outpouring of love & support for each other. Sometimes I even surprised myself when I find myself wondering about a particular blogger's struggle…did she get the job? has her Mom's cancer progressed? It's truly a testament to humanity, to care so much without ever having met. I wish you strength in this time and know that you're in my thoughts.
And today I learn we have something else in common V.
May you always have an angel on your shoulder and love in your heart.
Easter Blessings,
xo Mish
Mish Dish's latest post: Retro Hair- Finger Waves
We're thinking of you. Take care of yourself. Yes, I find this community supportive. I guess it's because I just like making friends and I help out with any queries I get, without expecting anyrthing back. Any tone of arrogance will not get you anywhere. Thanks for being an inspiring writer.
Joy's latest post: Soleful Monday
My heart goes out to you. Keep going, and we'll be here for you. Hugs, Xxxc
So sorry to hear of your loss Vahni.
You will always have the love and support of your followers.
http://www.blahblahbecky.co.uk's latest post: a countryside stroll
Gah, I've been struggling to keep up with my Google reader recently, so I'm only just reading this… I'm so sorry to hear about your unclue, Vahni, it sounds like you had a really special bond with him: I could cry for you right now.
As you know, I've had some problems of my own recently (although nothing like this, of course), and I also found the support from my social media and blogger friends to be absolutely amazing – it really blew me away, and went a long way to restoring my faith in humanity. I'm really glad it's been of some comfort to you right now, and I hope you're doing as well as can be expected.
I am truly sorry to hear of your loss. My aunt was just very recently diagnosed with ALS and I was so very upset. I now will appreciate even more every second that I get to spend with her.
My heart goes out to you.
So sorry for your loss, V. Hope to see you back soon. xx Sarah
My Republic of Fashion's latest post: White
Oh no I had no idea, I've been completely off the internet for a while now. I hope you and your family are okay<33
You have the most amazing followers so I know you'll be very much supported in this part of your life and your hubby sounds amazing so I'm sure he is doing a stand-up job that end!
Lots of love & hugs
Meg's latest post: Get The Look- Gucci Spring 2011
First, I am so sorry to hear about your loss. It takes courage to share that with others and I applaud you for it. I often have a hard time balancing what to share vs what not to share with my personal blog and this post inspired me in many ways. I am so thankful every day for the positive and fabulous community I have found through blogging. I have a family of blogger friends now. You are so right, family is not defined by DNA but by love. I learned that first with my adopted Greek in-laws and family (the warmest most giving people I have ever encountered) and most recently with the blogging community. Thanks for sharing and communicating in such an eloquent way.
noelani's latest post: Which is the New Cupcake- Results!
What a beautiful message to your readers!
I am sorry. I had no idea! I have been absent on blogs…so I am sorry. 🙁
Death is hard to deal with esp. if it is someone close to you. I am sure he would be happy to know you are thinking of him.
annie's latest post: Colors for Spring!
Thank you for sharing such a beautiful sentiment during such a difficult time. I'm with you, both in the sense that I can relate to what you're saying and also, "I'm with you", as in I'm here, we're all here. Those of us who've engaged with you, who've connected with you through you words, we collectively form an energy of support.
There is no antidote to loss, there are no words that take the pain away. I'm sorry for yours, your uncle must have been a very, very special man.
xo, f
The House in the Clouds
Fabienne Jach's latest post: April showers
Hi V, I am late in commenting but wanted to say sorry and send warm thoughts and lots of hope your way.
UN-Stitched's latest post: Towards Creating Amazing Outfit Posts- how and why
Thinking of you, sending lots of virtual love and sympathies xx
Just checking in and saying hello. Hope you are doing OK xxx
Bree @ The Blog Stylist's latest post: Style Bloggers' News- 15 must-click links issue 6
Some bad news can never be made good but seeing the positive out of a situation as grave as the one you have experienced is brave and to share that with us, your readers, is even braver.
Mulika x
Mulika's latest post: Fascinators- Heiresses and Penthouses
So true, I connected with followers/friends I made online on twitter and if I'm having a bad week they are always there to help. Thinking of you and I hope you had a lovely Easter x
Gem's latest post: April
beautiful post, full of love. I'm really sorry about your loss and about the events that have hurt you so much. It is true that family is not defined by DNA, not at all. I've had the greatest gestures of love from people that share no bloodlinks with me. Thanks for sharing this tremendous amount of love with your readers xxx
Fashion Limbo's latest post: AllSaints in need of reinvention
So sorry to hear of your loss. The Internet is a strange place at these times, both a burden and a source of comfort. I hope you find comfort in your blog posts and online friends.
Jon's latest post: A Guide to Losing Belly Fat with Diet and Exercise


text:
Arrowheaded biped wedge, missile waiting launch, flint sighted on stars.
Doubled fatty humps. Split projected globes. Apples forbidden offered.
Ventricle of stasis. Hard soft alternation. Opening that cuts.
Heel stamped on ancestral lava, angel of the pitched vowel, of dee's.
Upended gate. Outcast from the dark burials, from toothed chambers of breath.
Fusion's fricative, of fission, of split flakes, come together apart.
Quiver of the struck chord, its resonance, wave above below its line.
Barred stile, arch of triumph surmounted, slow sounding air-cushion deflated.
Absolute exclamation, unconditional trim subjective pole.
Bent hook ego, first person angling, john-common palliative of junk.
Greek remnant or trademark. On southern palates a softened northern sound.
Right angle of torment, cramped canal of slick liquids silver flow, glide.
Orthodontic bridge. Three-piered crossing over vague hazing vocal streams.
Twisted lightning strike, penultimate vowel's ultimate consonant.
Mass amassed within a round, the mouth's weight-print vibrated on sand.
Scribe-mark on accompted bone, a half-moon kited from earth horizon.
Swift slicing edge, royal head of identity as who, what and why?
Belly walking, pregnant engine, dim snarling in its mouth deep red cave.
Hissed curse. Rope of curves in assassins' hands. Escape like steam, like smoke.
Crossbow bolted, pick raised to strike, impact angle, hangman's junction tree.
Means you. Bay of promise. Inlet of incoming. Horse print on tide mud.
Is the barb that returns; the slit pudenda; swallow's vanishing flight.
Airiness sharpened on twin forks, on wide melded waters merges its wave.
Twice slashed cross, firesticks rubbing sudden suns. Faces meeting, nose to nose.
Snake of divination, flickering, its always unanswered question.
Bisected risen angle, saved paired parallels racing round the globe.
Silverbirch on Canalside
(off Fazeley St)
For company, a Flanders poppy
and a brooding pair
of breeding swans. This sidearm's
blocked off. Your torso's cracked
like old plaster. On your bending flesh
cling barnacles of wart
as on a greywhale unzipped
from the hiding sea. The all else
is breathless, a too fast
running past. Your roots swim down
into slow currents, diving
into the world's skin. You are the guardian
of your own image, unknowing,
on a scummed and lily-padded channel,
where an oiled city (gerra move on)
slides and wheezes by.
Meanwhile my Lord Byron
(a tickling of atoms, dust in a peasant's nose)
writes on:
the moon threw down her silver raiment
of little wit scattered, and princelings gathered
under massed grey cloudbanks
(where there is here, here there)
like an English sky
(as ill-defined a mind as mist)
a raincoat and letter from Mr Auden,
the badleg tap of a stick
and a hollow-towered castle of looming
o'er gloaming.
It's eight bells. Ta-ring. Ta-ring, taringaring.
Etcetera. Somewhere
peasant sneezes.
In between times, laired, Spectare probes a comparison kit for his beloved
her beloved words. His. Like
an exercise in figurative constipation some rogue suggests (oh no!, unept/INAPT!)
or a dog (him) bound, G-strung, on the leash that is of gravity (t-too much)
or a lost soul (whole) happenstanced into rescue from forlornity (Sa-LUSH)
or an x-squared or cubed of other worried down tools
a warm and very personal
intimately fitting pronoun .....
beyond, unover, there
in the deep space where words fail
abort mission thwart
in difference and in likeness
in her own time, paired,
undiscovered to gross astronomers
his companion star
trawls on another year
about their weightless unity
and substanceless of focus.
Each night I paw at The Book of Odes
like a sad-eyed creature stumbled out
of an endless forest
looking at a camp-site clearing
I dreamt I had made perfect
my rough technique
on the bamboo flute.
That my mind's web quivered
to the pauses between raindrops
or the air's troubled turns.
To the heartbeat of stars.
A woman is shouting at her own locked door.
I have counted the khaki on the Great North Road.
A quartet crashes
through the silence of my wall.
There are shirts they are struggling
as the wind brawls.
Bow low, kowtow, you caution, the Emperor's men 're marching.
While the dancers of darkness stumbled towards the castle,
silence settled for a rest: Elsinore was watching the news.
A surly beast best left in its cage,
the poet squats on the edge of rage.
For the first three seasons of an arid year, grande passion
beat in my breast; come winter cooled ardour
for she slept in my socks.
On an Awayday to Grimsby I noted this fact:
as fishermen shrink their stories grow taller.
Oh the mournful songs of generation, the sad moons of loss.
Such prompted the moment I first peeped at it all
through the curtains of parting rain.
As my washing combusted in the critical sun, Lo, I beheld it:
My Bonfire, My Vanities.
For my father
Flemish bond, English bond, slap the trowel, plumb the line.
Six o'clock, on the dot, up and out, work's about:
It's seven quid a week and a ten bob note.
Billycan, in the hand, white outside, black within.
Morning come, frozen bone; night and home, frozen bone.
It's seven quid a week and a ten bob note.
Dawn and dusk: English bond: seven pound: frozen bound.
With the phlap, phlap, phlap of a butterfly's wings
on my last late noon of love in the fortress of Wendsbry
she confronted the professor with: rustic songs
on my last afternoon of love with a world of wrongs
as a storm broke through a mind collapsed in Ledbry
to the flap, flap, flap of a butterfly's wings
a storm broke a mind with its senseless things
a narrative sank in a subjective mire: 's hisstry
she confronted her professor with it: rustic songs
a narrative drowns while drunk Muses sing
I cry for the end of it a creature like me
with the phlap, phlap, phlap of a butterfly's wings
I cried for the end of it the living broken things
for a burden of being on backstreets of Wendsbry
she confronted a collector with her rustic songs
for a burden of being the telephone rings
with a message fron no-one a desperate plea....
to the flap, flap, flap of a butterfly's wings
she confronted her professor with it: rustic song
It began with the bearded and abstinent,
in terraced Wesleyan chapel meetings,
and rigid stitched leather, booted
in walloped looped punts for the hard nuts
and rough possession of the shoulder charge.
Half-day Saturdays, and with a few bob loose,
young tykes and old blokes, from cotton mills
and brickyards, dye-houses and Bessemer steels,
to rented fields and showgrounds, on unshed stands,
packed and swayed to savage tribes of rhythm.
A pie, a pint, a match. Captains and brewers
of industrial virtue, overseers
of public works and leisure, teamed
the scrambled ball of village brawls
to pass and save and tackle back.
Goal, the crowd cried, and from backyard tussles
to United the Rovers the Blues, balanced
like neat ledger in numbered leagues,
production's figures bawled and wheezed
the flat chant for victory, for their dreams
splashed in shirt colours on running teams.
I had just set out to write
about the long look
of a poverty that ate
through the hushed plaster
and whitewashed walls,
mapping a melted empire,
when with particular, steel-tipped
steps, like a cane walking,
as if exacting coin,
my education came:
Your papers please
(a reconstruction)
The secret of (Prometheus), son of Titan Iapetus, (lies)
not in the (sacred) fire snatched from the jealous (Zeus
Soter) but in that (other) fire (of pain) in the liver (each
dawn) renews: Prometheus (drinks). Nightly, in his
wine-dark (of despair), so as not to remember the (mono-
tonous) rock of (consequence), the flat recitals of (Epi-
metheus), his (remorse retailing) brother, nor the red
dreams that rise (like birds) cawing, shrieking, of fields
of (cindered) crops, flame swallowed huts and a flesh stink
with screams (numberless) as stars. This is the eternal
(cirrhosis) of a (demi-god).
As his light failed
the old man turned into paint
blackfallen folds, unwindowed drapes,
clinging to the waist of a woman,
his once
and almost wife.
Whose skin still bathed in li....
Abominations upon the green-hatted kind
as in a rain of frogs on time-kept Cortinas.
May the murrain rot the matrons of Uruk
but not the estimable overseers of the new malls at Shrewsbury.
To the Righteous the true, the pure ineffable light
and to the Wicked the blinding of eternal night.
Their testes shall shrivel like wizened peas
their wombs shall be blocked
like the drain-pipes of tenements
as happened unto the credit-cards of the Elamites.
So that the Lord's poor ascend
even to the throne's right hand
and the innocent be folded from furthest night
in Love's heaven-wide and open tent ....
So that the Kingdom come
and the Bride-Bed be saved
but not the Pshtites, the Ebonhim, the Tasman,
nor the masticators of first-born lamb, the wearers
of hand-woven astrakhan, those who spit in a north wind,
Pharisees and Sadducees and staff of Newholme Library,
the keepers of matchbox labels, usurers and practitioners
of tupperware parties, Mrs Ethel Jones of Ystryddgwyn,
those who deal in used assegai and blackbarrelled carbines,
nor the seventh-month's High Priest on the Late Late Show,
the tea-room dancers and Abomonites of Cush, those whose
shadows defile the west wall at late noon, the blue-rinsed
anthropophagi all covetous of cream tea, the pity-frozen
killers ....
So that our souls might bathe
in Jordan pure
and everlasting light.
The Madness of King David
The servants no longer purred but barked.
The Queen Consort was plotting with France.
Slowly he picked the feathers from his skin.
That was for Wednesdays. Other days,
unlike the people in the lifts, he stayed
all the time awake, knowing that by his consciousness
the world might hold together. Not fall
apart. Not fall ....
until Thursdays, for instance, which were a particular kind of problem,
as the skies were never the right colour
nor the noises outside his palace
(for they had the hue of small burrowing mammals)
(And his puzzlement was presented with certain shots of Kim Novak
in The Great Bank Robbery, wriggling her bum
with a rather conspicuous tail-flounce perched on her dress
reminiscent of Great Ape females on heat. Disturbingly. See zoo. See cinema.)
Nor the verse forms which came to hand
for their exoticism bethought him of trade wars.
But there were other days again, not named on the calendar,
when he revisited his telescope
(the world's first, many times since upgraded and restored)
a gift, the Chancellor told him, of Johannes Kepler,
where, in his own perspective, the firmanent hung
studded with the running signatures
of those he thought of as friends.
It is a tired, it is a long way of days to go. Spectare sniffs the seductions
of Van Hougeworts coffee, imports its tropic turning, primal steam.
Humanized, aroused, with appetite he paperknifes the most delicate parts
of a boldfaced envelope: D.Spectare's Potential Million. Selected you
why have we? Believe we you deserve it because. True. And
no-one else owns the 7 Spectare prize seals, the unique computer-generated
Spectare number, the Specatre certificate is yours & yours & yours
alone he dreams into hot water on dark grounds, with lissom alacrity shrinks
into a small form lung-torn beneath a black sea: unconsciousness.
Morning is it night?
.....life-flash, Cheese!, voice of the dull on high:
Act now, Spectare, ex Ottho Heldingstraat 666, the automaton translator extols
among thr powdering cigars and dockside warehouse bonds
as a dead tone levels
like the real plateaux
of work and sleep and work and sle
It was the ending of sound
and the light closed
with a black door's heaviness.
History faded
on the eye's wide lens.
The long ages of ice
came back
to the lowlands of flesh.
Only a feeling
a vague smoke
like a detached ghost
turned on the tuneless air
twisted by gravity
grey on black
like a question-mark's curl
or beckoning finger.
By tacky bonk tumps
I cum upon a swopson
Backin off in trashers
-Ya grate arseboard flap -
I sed - Yer buffle-saggy
Wiv camplin/ all gaumed-up
-Ya rapatag bobowler -
Mullygrubed shay slommockt
A collywesson wobbla
Slobsy fullockt
I left er craichy chunneren
Chopsing tah erself
Ov bearns an elven nyarlen
On pit bonk delf
It was good to throw you away
like the folded map
of our once walked Cadiz
or the stub
of a ticket to our broken
temple at Didym.
Since you've been gone
Since you've been gone
Since you've been gone a long time
And it made me
lighter not to travel
to morrows
without my incubalia
asquat athwart a ghost
parrot, memory,
day after day
clawing ma shoulder.
Since you've been gone
Since you've been gone
Since you've been gone a long time
An it worn't because of you,
honest, that I got
a wholelong weekend
stewed, slewed, till I almost
Since you've been
(guess it) spewed
Since you've been gone
out these dog and open-ended
(what are they good for?)
brittle words.
Since you've been gone
so long time
Deadwood. Low noon. Pigment evacuates the suburbs and cheeks
of a tired form worn on a board sign
posed by a bar. Empty. Amid bare
walls of the tedious, pinned by the four-square
metaphysic-cramp, Spectare be-
weeps abandoned a lot
soul alone
in the unfilled presence of silicon. Glass. Clear.
To the god straight through.
I alone am clouded.
as the sun empties over there (its living streams) and the dream
fever of a film (cut)
merges in the obscurity of his mind
direction shifts
off a trance paralyzed dance
severed on a tumbler's edge
to a face familiar his fades
on a still sign aloft
Action Cut Actio Cu Ac Tut
a print a mud trace (a hundred and eighty
(ahead back there (and into the mirror I sidled:
(tell me I mouthed tell (the higher animals came
(touch, touch, the guide implored (and I saw the stars
in their clouded nurseries (rah-too, the bird called,
rah-teh (then the stones began to fable (could
I but tell (how there when where not there
at the first molecule twitch (Broca's patch (see icy
I sea a seed) broken down) like unlabelled cans
on grocery shelves) how where when there not when)
could I but) one by one one)
then smokily it faded from sight) and a wind-
ruffled corner where a bus never came) and vanished,
that's history) two by two by two by) and
found myself my questioner) ah, hello, echo, hello, ha)
where there began) degrees turning) the steps of breath
.... only insight I .... incomplete we .... live to that aching lack, that betrays, collapses .... into the longings of a novelette,
for a blue helmet, maybe, or the firmness of an oak, or an army's thousand-headed roar, anything, to make us feel more....
the marmoset or the oil-bellied snake
lives to itself, untouched by our ache
of all things I can hate.... the bloodlessness of adverbs - curiously, rarely, marvellously, richly, exhume-ed-defecated-murderous-solipsistic-anti-social-lah-curmudgeonly I stamp on them - & the rickety joints
of that's & of's & which meets because....
Our Early Fathers, without the mapping muzzle of the Neanderthal, nor the big cats' silent articulation, nor the
pheromone-disciplined many-one-ness of the sweet-tasting termite, nor the dreamt-of reach of the tiny-brained feathered kind...
like a fungoid growing in the skull
.... weak-sighted, scent-unclued, softbellied; to a dog, to a cat, something almost deaf ....
but possessed with a need, with a having-not, driven thus to extend, to add-on, to incorporate:
my house is a mansion of warring tenants, of decayed mantic systems like astrology or the Changes of Chou, neo-Marxist materialism
and derelict Matthean Christology, its nights punctuated by sudden, lyric cries; or the barked commands of wine-damaged anger,
its ohs & ahs & its bastards & fuck yous
personal space - guarantee-me for my own narrative, anchor me in that ancient swaying metaphor, athwart the emporium,
the confectionery box of the five senses, on the alpha rhythms of the sleeping pool, home-harbour-heart's-port
a lean and empty belly, wolf
to the fat lands of the mind
.... take away speech, the ultimate deprivation of sense .... without articulation, in the (interview) chair, strapped (for words)
rigid, hands stilted, still, no shaping the air for your maps, led by the boss-words, the imperatives of contra/control, resolve you into: em, er, um, I
on the shit-house wall reading about the Great Bowel Shift, when the Englisc language couldn't tell the difference between
what was coming out of its mouth and what was coming out of its ....
information = power = food supply control
the fed pride sleeps on the sun-glutted plain,
while forest shadows watch, a gain a gain
Where old lozzucks neversweat
And werrit wimmen trash about;
Puddled lane of scrimp and save,
Grued-in gennel of cunnyfogle.
Cuther-yard of miskin chelpen,
Delf-rag hung and splother-thrutcht;
Billywhifflers cobbed-up pigcot,
Rickling-scrawm for podger-orts.
When Hawa looked up from the last call
and asked David,
can you answer me a personal
question?, and smiled,
I said, Go on,
and she
hesitated on the cross she'd seen
hanging from a gold loop
piercing my ear.
Are you a Christian?, Hawa ended.
I scratched my ear.
No, I told her, nodding.
Which means yes.
Roast Lamb and Mint Sauce
It is a quiet afternoon at Heaven's Gate.
There is a bald man with a belly paunch
and dry eyes covered (like the dead's)
with the day's news. For it is God's
day off on a South Coast beach where
no-one now it seems is thinking
(in someplace you couldn't finger)
of a child being necklaced in a church
(on the mind's map, say, Rwanda)
or other unlikeliness of things that lash
your eyes like a smart sharp wind
on the glimpsed news. For God dreams
and as a few fumble at their worn
pieces of prayer, where a spilled sense
of incense swells like the smoke
of bitter rubber, and while a sparrow
expires from an infarct, and the beer
curdles in plastic beakers in the sun's
heat that simmered five billion years
to overflow on this, and a piebald
painted omnibus discombobulates
the beachfront with its bright load
of ice-cream hunters and trailing
responsible adults,
anxious as deer, so too, outside
watery pastels wisped with cloud,
these walls of summer, a shovel
disintegrates a buried chest
(a skullcase abandoned, a worked
out mine) and finds its Eldorado
abolished, digging for variations
on a theme, and a last motet
collapses unfinished as the universe
ends for a still forgotten composer.
As does this after-dinner dream
of an old man sleeping, a mottled
old man like God, unconscious
throughout, whose hazed unfocused
thoughts swim slow through the still
air I wake from with a startle
of lost keys, an unlearnt language,
knocking on a front door, naked.
Apostrophise, but then not,
Spectare's thinking, summoning, a twentieth century as, prostrate under nouns, an Age of Mass,
Masses' Production, of cars, their blank faces, and the gew-gaw brights of this season's trinkets,
of its darke weddynge, the confetti falling like newspaper cuttings, golden-eared the wheat
upbending under prairie winds, of speech on thrombosis-spotted celluloid, hoarse from a lifetime
of smoke, Bogart, of speech on fist-clenching balconies and torchlit bandstands, Nuremberg, the
top-hats burning like books, of speech on little black handsets, dull-eyed with grey, of rebuilt ages
like harpsichords, of peanuts, peasants and ring-roaded estates, of the astronauts that went down
on the Titanic, of human living flesh stepping out per second of that one woman in the Middle Kingdom,
Chin-hua, of guitar chords on barbed wire and that stranger's kindness and white-walled maternity
wards raucous as barns jostling with white (barred) White Christmas turkeys. Gobblers. Of death. And death
and death and death and death yet again yet life ....
li ....
And he thinks too
of echo-effects
on a five-stringed cello
tuned by Sebastian Bach
and a damp late night
on an April Thursday
in Caerlyr Year 2000 Leicester
of the Meeting House silence last firstday how his words that broke
of his eggs fried, his beans, his oven-heated chips
of how Ms K -
(of slim waist and mood-turns and pert bum and sharp tongue
and jet-black secrecy her hair swings moon-eyed dependency)
did, didn't
was, wasn't
whatever it was he last thought her. Of how next minute's
(a spider feels along its trembling line)
as Poland is invading his head and San Francisco is buckling his carpet in c minor on
the Richter scale and a buttock-bare Pope lands mitrefirst in a formaldehyde condom,
et homo factus est, and Colonel Aberdeen T-bone Angus eyes a hot franchise on Io
for truly now God is found in silence
will look up
from the punctured space
of the holed white
on his first page:
Office Hours
So, the question was this:
was it a mack outside
or a cardboard box?
A wet slap of fashion
or a mobile home
dropped out
of a property slump?
A corrugated coat flat broke
lying in a pool
of piss and surveys,
having drunk too many
catalogues of style?
It had the nature
of an irreducible
untouchable fact
geostationary in orbit
outside language
and a Cape Canaveral
of launch pads
for each new, doomed
bid of metaphor.
It was an eruption
of nothing happening,
boiling like oxygen
beyond the dark ridge
and window walls
of nothing happening:
our office hours.
Clouds of Unknowing
for that
you carried me
on my back I carry you
in a blue torn
like a papoose-child
hauled on across the Plains
to the Great Lakes
grey over greyblue
and as the ashfall ran
racing the weir
he noticed as one notices a fly
the greywhite powder,
its absurd talc, or sweat salt,
wind blown back,
spattering his black, his boots
like the far-flung fallout from a volcano
exploding within:
the daily enormity of death
now your friends are late autumn swans
and bandy-legged moorhens, the lily-padded
nestsites and the small lives
darting among reeds. Now you are grown
into dark nebulae, your shadow in the swirl.
I look on as you turn, a current-forced swarm
of God's children, plankton
and a cloud swims downriver
and a river drinks a cloud
and a child I whimper ai, ai, ai
and a man I growl no, no, no
Discurse Alpha Lyrae Remold
The man of the lyreways,
Orpheus, after-being
torn apart by a song
and a woman's hands,
was at a loose end
and discoalescent, an almost
converstation in a not quite
clowd and occasions,
disparts, a happenings
to me. I mean biography, write.
I mean ice. I mean a dark mater.
I mean cosmocrator loiter.
He had a loud
visions in the mud reeds, flesh,
old stills on star-plates,
life to remind him of his skin,
aways from here, the rite strain caught,
almost late, mirrors
that nuzzled
like warm pronouns
to look in from the veerside
of yes he remembered his head.
But, like
parachute jumps off the day's brink
(that is a passport
backwards to the Shire)
the things stayed metaphor
almosts, quoits
no more. No more
than that he was that, met her
more each selving
wrapped now
on a pressure hold of light
a gravity beat song print
an inplose whirl'd
a waltz to a starberth
a Glowball warming
a quickfire slow
Lucia Asylum with Die
Poetry of the scraped bodywork, of a metal taste in the mouth, its outside inspect, its heavy andsir colds kin.
Fuck off Morris Minor, fuck off
descriptorville, plod-in-the-box, fuck off competition lyric. Poetry of the dead repeat, its cabbage machines
palmgrease, its indifference fields. The red lode
unburies urth, to my hard feet, all the miles clare
out of Northamptonshire, hire there fair
saved mechanick
A rhythmia and after
Privately I think in Chinese
calendars, characters
(jerk) at a Flaming Friday
Colossus prance baby
throat-music, Ziggy-O and out
poetry is the beating art
of language, plucked
myself to myself
on that nineday tree
the blood running down from it
the ledgefall of a SheepGoat
no sync hope Ingas nation
I cannot tell me a part
to a hex a fused to a spark
Maya tray a coming
calendrical cylind
the hot intimacy of years
the day soaked blood
the blood soaked grey
The Collected Poems of Joshua Nene
Walk Dead Still
You modulate a Court, with all its summoned.
Who's in, who's out, who has the King's ear.
Who the judgement. Behindbacks, snipes,
En attendant Gagool. Good Laud, I refuse
your forensic, your sting-pull,
your herd-manage talk.
Every so often I go mad, and climb a tree with squirrels.
It is an English tree. Its fruit pucker from the skin
like gargoyles on a Goth. Look, there's a Blake face,
or here a Smart. Clare? It is a moral tree:
in a breeze it shakes so, its periwig its peruke, dusty,
as if an insect judgement woke. Once
we thought it a Liberty tree, sang of it, too.
Still, it gives me fresh perspective. Arrested,
still. See?
The Possibilities of Rhyme
Ashbery has 'Orpheus, a bluish cloud
with white contours'. A voice
from the speaking crowd, too,
a noise among the heard. I saw
a man once in a rhetoric cloud,
punneling his escape. He went
anon and anon until
he disappeared in the daze.
Optional Ending Extra
Ys. Aitch.
The Threat of Solipsism at Arecibo
Slowly, like a huge house of a crevassed shell,
on hot grains, the wiry latticery wheeled,
a passenger of a mobile lofted, windy,
on a chandelier of all directions,
feeling for a feather in the sky.
It was a distant aviary
and moving, so that once a turtle
turned, an upstart figure,
each speck of a bristling, angry crowd
was too darned smart, or squawked
in an alien manner, utterly other feathers,
like a missed apostle, or spoke
in a concealed language, tocharian like eggs,
that the turtle had forgotten
in the tale that it had hatched from, long ago,
on a smoky afternoon of old men,
grizzled, seven years too long from the sea,
labouring on harsh dunes,
eyes drilling through the silence,
under constant
populations, their flecked, spitting pointillism
of distance, the perpetual
bellows of the suns, all green canopies withheld
of other, imaginable worlds.
like a stranger's dreams on a statue's eyes
last night
(my head drowning)
after so long why
(greycloud pillow)
did you come back here
(blackwater stone)
tears tearing at me
(airless harbour)
for your betrayal
(no's echosound)
that night?
Giving Pronouns Head
Yip, whip, I'se a zho glee
scrabblers, my
pro nomina sunt CAP
ital I'zd agen. Dough
a police Man dis stapf
watch stop ME on
the screed out
side today to say
Why is it that you are carrying
those Corinthians on your back?
7 ich wz trick
ee butan sed
hits just the wait of traditionsir O cifer
al right / then / carry on /
but dont / let it / hap pen / again
said well thought really
liberation law
domercy fee
o lo gy
There is a bright invisible light
helpless on my forehead
like a fly that has navigated galaxies
with the burden of its own amber.
It is my compassion, beloved.
It wants to drift across the face of all there is
like the one thought of Buddha.
But it is small, but it is a fly,
though transparent as amber.
Your reflection drifts
across its powerless voltage,
its trapped arc
and other shades it permits
to feed it their dark solids
but it is clouded, but it is clear,
and the cloudy reach
of the world turning turns
and dips away
like a lover's shoulder
that wants only sleep.
I wanna spreckle carbon to ya, babe elle, nat silicon.
Not logick-shoppers straits, thir thin spikes brittle, thir art-stab transmit, cold chisels, faceless rackets facing dead moons
and if or bits, the cutters, production liner strimmers, sattelite lung deafs, last scream tearing at slashed ends breath. Be
neuro to ya. I wanna be sticky, fur, bristling like an ear in a forest, a rough round ball rotate, purple your peephole
cloud fizz an ice-cream saxpense. Traces, lynxs, let her in, sparks. Let us ladders let us letters to the thrown. I wanna
feel my way around the globe, my time-zones switching, a bee navigator antenna round a yell head honey. Foam, froth,
bubbles in the heard. A head walking in a park. Walking its voices the dark.
My soot, zooter, my finger tracing paper all the ley lines down your spine. Ridge, hillfort, eyrie the lookouts his stories beware.
Walk, digit, move, to a flashfold, the wrap. Feel it beat, the pump art so bloody. Let me clothesly, neueranyeera. Let me
drop, like a little planetisimal let, on an insect's wings, cellophanic, on a moment in the frail, into your great storm eye
mutter protector here th'orb the urb erupt her sun sing burns obit orbit.
Violence is a cold word and marble.
And Michelangelo.
Princes must needs status, statutes,
Forms for their laws.
Born, I drew a statue's name David.
Michelangelo is marble, and a man's
Hand on the cold
Stone turned to the curve of warm.
I touch the bow
Of the huge pectorals, draw down
Thorax, abdomen, navel, then find
Submission below.
As did Michelangelo. To touch our
Prince at tender,
What price? To hold a man's strength,
Bow low,
Let your hands flow.
The body being it, its beast this burden:
Violence frozen.
'O Desdemon! Desdemon .. O!'
A naturalistic cage is made for life.
A measured pain supports the smother pillow.
Your obsolescence builds towards the speed of light.
She cries - a poem chokes - the style is gripping.
A measured pain's beneath all smothering pillows.
Old maps of hell unfold as narrative shrinks.
She cries - this poem's murder - but song goes on.
As engines wheel so the skin markets deal.
Old maps of Hell, infold! The room is shrinking.
What's left to us is speechless, unsigned light.
As engines wheel thus flesh monologues rotate.
'But who wast thou?' the thick curtain ended.
What's left to us is speechless - a howl of light.
A solid dream's substantial, ah! good real estate.
'And wast who thou?' a slurred certain ended.
Empirical ground's a thing to tread. Development!
A solid dream weighs - she cries - poems choke
in obsolescence built towards the speed of light.
Empirical ground supports the measured pain.
A naturalistic cage is made for life.
It's a
Star-burnie, baby
Grosseteste, estate manager. Acts Publick indecent enclosure. From The Underlings Review.
Him coming to me pour Yorick's-here all pushy his doings on it. In full view! Disgustlichen, that's the dispirit.
So's why the peep-show-squeaks speaks from vices in a crowed. Alloneing. Revile the Humperator's Close,
Dumpty. Dum-tee-tiddle-i-toe.
And thus Anon:
Go walk wildwiseside and leftways wide. To yer K'un. Yer Onlie 'Un. Soft earth fall, receiver, a Rift Valley
footprint, shape of an 'O' vibrating in the sand. Call down a stage lightning, a bolt from yer Ch'ien, the big thrust
racket boaster, the alpha-thump and diving head. Make K'un up, Ch'ien down.
Raise her, lower him.
Ah, that's better. Peace, T'ai. Says he under, her above.
Galaxies, milkways, rope us t'above. Good bjorn-in-t'y'all.
Pleas t'meetcha, Head-Inspectre.
This one was a bee, honey.
She fertilised me! Rhymestress.
I have my own pollen now,
hoard, heard,
I shall nurse it, motherly,
and spoon out its sugars
a ladle at a time,
cup on cup-
kissycup. That you may taste it,
sweet, slow, milk,
mixed among dark fruit
a cake
speaking on tongues.
Orphic Roulette
He wanted to push
so far inside her he would
fit like an axle
or a rich man, a winner, flush.
Still as he was driven.
Stock Exchange
After we hauled him out of his dreams,
which were entirely sexual,
and held as fiercely as pillows
like money, smothering gushes,
rushes of flesh to drown in,
the poet spoke of an Ice Age hunter
watching like a bed post
the dear fly by.
Electro's map
Everything was moving to a hurt point
like tenderness. The north lode
of night was an axling stake
driven down from a star. A rigger's
drill on the slow clock face.
And I was crushed, and black
as oil. Under timefold
strata, the weight beneath the sea
bearing down on us, shocked
as a compass by it, love.
from a Monday Horn-Book
the corporate the body-managed image
massage parle at Pearls
a musica stoled from my speech
into dance that falls apart
on bottlefights on fridaynights
da Vinci's man's a spunkspot
on a slow spit in no-cloud Oort
the tattered banners of a score loft
a Chinese rebellion a Boxer opera
smoke of a BSA your cellshot honey
I am a diagram drained
but wet west of Newton fen
a nerve-patter a-ganglia
a something wurming
a just about to touch
His breast had a burr
like scored leather,
a wallet's brown
roughened skin.
When I let my fingers
ease and trickle
down in channels
to the moist land
waiting, I could
feel a running
undulate fur
like static, all
the root down
to the shock of his
charge, prickling.
The English are tense, present. Chideings, birthings of the Ing.
There is a stream, yawning in the obvious. It's time.
A meltwater. A valley an ankle hoarse left behind.
Right now, I am cooking a chocolate eagle. Yum.
As you read this, it is dining ~ out with your eyes.
Noone ordered the sequence. Noone wrote the menu. Neither.
there's an answer to it all, I know, just at the back of your head.
Last week it was Thursdays I loved, their mammal way of sliding
I hear voices too. And keep seeing things. Off the brains teem mama.
People go out looking for poetry. While everyone's always saying
Just under the overtones, the pianist is mumbling. Humming.
Eee-haw. Eeyore. The sound of a Saxon horse. Its wet straw, honky.
While she worked in Big Giorgio's aquarium, I kept on teasing.
'So what language do fish speak?', I smirked. 'Fin(n)ish', she said.
First Chinese Poem
O Hate Err Aches Zho
O Hale Way Cuss Sigh
O Ian Jest Inn Hit
O Nay Corps Twu He
O Shun Her Lang Tay
Be cause
at five three
defies she
little dronkard's
a tom
buoyed blonde thar
she goes
blowse a float
out a pout
blow diskis
n sum onspout
on a sithan
tall her
all most fall
her over a
kate a quake
obit hobbit
bone shake
pink fluffy handcuffs
shak ur hate!
For the Kit-kat Boys
a Diction
It being not a discrete occasion. It being its large and overflow, shaggy-dog and story, its fur walking slum.
That is hot breath, fetid, a yellowed tongue fur licking, on waiting a feather douche a pa palpledge a kiss.
Which is too close. It being
a speechstream, baby, and sun of Anon. It being mal a diction, nat grey plumage pluckt by feddirs taught.
It being what wood, honey, its wodwo horny, what trees seal, babel, its home way out and, trailing, root.
That's the dark containment, port, babe, the hug-it clothes in the leave tangle. Foot
stand me up, reddy to abort, and now some one out walking his head herd to remake this rheum's outside drawing
Charm, strangeness, natter
Its bird, its burden,
creaks its wings, leather, horny
froth, flakes, falls, yer nall
storeRR yer knot whorl
that the bodytalk investiture
berthstalk, its cloudy exhale rReyes
a diagramma body hitself
azimage lay doubt
on dissecs
tatation map aintimate, fur
investeRrr, gater
its reptile, its bloodsnub shrivel
corp her hate nirvend
sharecrop divisors
stop, holder
with kate sudden longher
under normal gravities,
birdfold, 5' 3"
t'all as me
with 'Swear it. Forever.' Dupli
green eyes rising like impossible suns
cater nower kate
luff's hlafterfalling dottir
quake her, shakesimage ~
While Raskolnikov sleeps, fevered
(for A)
Razumikhin is drunk, and the room blurs
with too much vodka, strasny mir, as God
slips out through a door that isn't there.
Sonya would plead with him, or Avdotya,
if only for the neighbours, but Reason
is shouting at a bodyheap of bedclothes,
Wake you, wake. I'm mad with everyone,
bar you, it's an argument with my skin.
Dostoevsky's ill today, gone like God,
though still I feel his anxious fingers
tapping in my ears. Like a typist's drums.
Razumikhin's quiescent now, pissing
in a potplant. Plastic. The office light's
too harsh here, like an Emden hausfrau
who scalds their ears for rent, coming
from a book elsewhere on guttural steps
as if a Poland wedged in her throat.
I think she will die from her cancer.
Russian scholars should wash more,
neglect steams from hot damp linen.
This sure is some party not to crash.
Here in a coffin-let between a stale
of uncertain divinity, and an anger
black as an overcoat, a torn student's.
Catacomb Markspiel
Not pow her plaice this
nor no loiter art to pleas is
my own fisc in howse mee
(fixion of convenience - locate, this gust)
bee push metaphor
bee touch about
be ware of them frighten hers thaim
outsize messuage restore rent in
(there is a grebe flake
I can touch in the sky
a chest-feather a warm playse
a beating art re
cover am bush to high'd two
a pen too write
Chinese 'tattoo')
'ttoo' - who being onlie shee
only who while this night when
said 'tomorrow take body cover'
did hold mee mammal quiet
on heart rhythm
art point
sumwhile for still against
the bad thing the life ~
two be warm fur
"there is no more desperate tender
place of mammal secure
than in those wordless
moments of another
arms when we fore
figure final inevitable
moment of together
art before
death tear us apart"
Wants Happen Amulet
The moon is heavy with the full. Broken cloud,
copper, smoky, aches across it. A smell
of burnt powder, waste, and the loosening stones
of an ancient pile, grey, its pale turretwork
of embattlements, stand inviolate bar
the crackle of a leaf turning, air's yearning,
the remote invisible sentry's tramp
and about, and a concentration
amounting to a mind. That is to say the air's
mind, the not-yet, the nuclear constellations
being born behind the eyes. The time,
delicate as a girl's waist, or a boy's,
sidles by the watch like a breath walking,
in this almost apotheosis of the dark.
An owl hatched out of a storybook
hoots at identity, fur scent blood, and a yew
creaks as if a thought's mass alighted.
Something's about, turns, and a black imprint,
a negative, a prince of all shadows, forms,
all behind scenes, childers to be seen,
of a crowd's heads, a gaggle agog a heard
of eyes. It is time to descend, prince,
you have risen to come down, speak, ghost,
from your high abstracted precipice,
your speech-plinth. Focus, prince, grasp.
While the black feathers of the raven ruffle,
ready to ply inly, and the night-tree
winces at your weight, your firstwords landing:
A list stone
Whoose. Dont. Say wear. Oooos. Things I sort , thoughter. Hand, scene before a finger dip on'd down
long swan neck feed her extend her thumb swim her up predate her oppose a threat throat, note, angler,
bend, hand, hold on in, a pen belay her pin, tight
like, tight, like, it were short where shore hit way up top tree high thought, hight, hiya, hire
arch like it was short, breath, breather, deeper 's write hit
in the bodyfall investigater
right, deeper draw a breath hand hearse and other, something smoking in it, drawer, noises where there
out no in know no back there a head noise us noyes's run her down the arms stair swell lust look a lock
out hera thur a front daw her bird that's open
look hand now see slower steady me, something trembling stalk, beater, sum beating here it inhere thing
its pounder knocking on my door draw hera breath boy breathe
open outer legs head arms crotch pit stomach plexus head hands legs hand stalk
tremble on an air float tremor petal pedal point her sky plucked globe turn two ur sun thought
turning over on its bed, stream
No claim terrain
I justlike hanging out
in the wrong time zones talking
to any listen, night, day
wandering. Slowly
at a thousand miles per hour
an almost circle's peer unpeels
itself its ever now disclosure.
Clouds, precipitates, ice: moods
of its always turnings,
that's nice. I love her.
A distant woman, close. I
liked her. She was fine. Fine
weather and stormy.
In her eyes
a gull speck hurled,
a nerve whirled walking,
a vortex skirts, a gather
up days, the haze.
Education Acts
In exposed dreams one looked for idylls and kings. He examined pedigrees
of Legends of Ingoldsby. He repeated rhyme times tables
of love sonnets and rondeaux.
He maundered at warbling rills, and, though the mill-sirens climbed
high as the sooted hills, his faire harte
by brookside espied.
The Young Lady to her Would-Be Lover
Yesterday, at the town's Free Library, I saw a cloth-capped mechanic,
holding Poems of 1820 and Browning's Ring,
uncertain as a young scullion
nervous of the plate she might break. Ah, Literature, I thought
to be bound in such common board
coarse as the thick slice
wolfed by brute appetite.
What can you write about
a quarter-mile square
of blind courtyards
and cellar-to-attic flats
dividing like protozoa
or an accountant's dreams
in a sour maze
of redbrick scarface
and cold blue slate
the abandoned Victoriana
of black-buttoned bankers
and sallow lawyers
where Kevin and duff John
or Leroi and O'Malley
watch out
nightly with white base
ball bats or silver gutting
or tent knives
for anyone or no-one that's someone
like you? How can you
edge out a line to trace studious
failed church gothick
and stucco wrapped concertium
with a street crammed with foodie halls
and hookers at a score?
What's your point your place in this
as you prowl about
turnings you barely know
imagined self floating free
like a white shirt
blown off a line
of the darkness gathering
on this white page?
I am the cold blue eye of distance
and the all-light that animates your saints.
I am unheard thunder, an ungraspable gassy gong
sounding the bounds of do and do not belong.
I am iron, nickel, carbon,
the undecipherable script racing to your bones.
I bend down to the feet of each unbidden guest.
I am death to all who return my kiss.
I am the pillar of the skies, flying,
that cannot stay where shadows siren,
the end and begin of dust.
Among the Breaking-Down Abominati persist the corpse-cooking double-headed ghouls
of Urethh. These afflicted ones, like the Masmoreean boobies, are twice-brained but self-estranged.
Thus do two heads prove worse than one. This fissure in cosmic justice widens like an unbearable pain,
for while one head jabbers throughout its waking day, its other, its companion, is all but dumb,
like an unseen stranger sensed on the shoulder.
But it is dumbhead that sees, feels, touches, plays
that old tune on the piano, while talking head plans, orders,
thinks and sings (the words to a tune it doesn't hear)
So corpse-cooker spends its days, never knowing quite
why the mirrors always crack, nor where the tune came from,
nor what the night-stars are flying to, flying from,
nor who did this to all the furniture.
Looking rather like a locked filing-cabinet, and grey, and exuding airs of disconsolate obsolesence,
AutoPoet stood vacant in inattention in an attic corner. Verseless. Themeless. Wingless. Sparse,
an allowance of light crept through a slit of window. Time had crumbled like an acid-paper calendar.
The ghost of Robert the Bruce had given up the spiders. Omnipresent dust roved, like the fetch of a lunar sea.
Suddenly, without authorial preparation, and in a spirit of narrative intrusion, a yellow-beak poked out
like a neighbour's nose in mid-air. Ancient circuits stirred within AutoPoet; agéd, forgotten crystals blinked
into life; encyclopaedias hurriedly consulted themselves and upended verse-forms were righted by anxious,
heaving scansions.
"T-tell me", croaked AutoPoet, his voice hoarse and rusty with disuse and an unoiled larynx. "T-t-tell"
the mechanical bard implored.
The yellow-beak was joined by two black-button eyes. It did not blink. It did not speak. It but hung there,
resting upon an impossibility, in a conjuror's thin air. Then the author prodded. The bird squawked:
"Write 14 sonnets upon the theme of 13 lines. Kree. Boil down a ten book epic into a chain of 7 haiku.
Sqwaa. Recite all known villanelles backwards. Compose a happy ending for Samson Agonistes. Annotate
Hansard in Common (Skwaagh) Measure. Fashion a libretto from The Shepheardes Calendar.
Expropriate the means of capital. Kree, sKree. Inveigle yourself into the underfelts of the mighty. Skwaah.
Resist all beans, resist all beans, resist all ..... phuut."
Yellow-beak blinked out, like an unreliable light-bulb (25p each at Mumtaz Stores, Chaucer St).
Slowly, disappointedly, AutoPoet pondered: Ode to Rust.
Evidence of Decay
or the Great Tradition's Dismay
AutoPoet lay in partial ruin on a disused factory's floor. Sadly, sourly, he studied his steelgrey disarray:
this missing here, that missing there. With a nod at Don Quixote, and a rueful countenance, but restored
to the possiblity of smiling, he raised himself to upright re-assemblance and, recalling the notion of retrieval,
he trundled down a chill and torn-paper strewn floor.
'What', he thought, 'has happened to the promises of my birth. What has happened to the glories of inheritance?'
As if in answer, or as if in mocking, bales of distorted quotations awoke from the litter: the Ancient Mariner
swaggered with his pet albatross; Hamlet bored everyone with wedding snaps of Ophelia; Homer declaimed
peace on earth and deep interest in vegetarianism and was this California circa 1969?; Jane Austen started
shouting; Virgil cocked a snook at Augustus; The Light Brigade charged Tennyson; Marcel Proust incinerated
his sickbed; Great Expectations won the National Lottery; Tolstoy shaved his beard and turned into an arms
dealer; Dante cut down a forest while Alexander Pope said nice things about people and the soul of William
Shakespeare gave money away to all.
AutoPoet slowed, froze, stopped. He said (to himself), lowly, surreptitiously, as if afraid of being overheard:
'I'm getting too old for all this'.
By Way of an Unreliable Postscript
It was a dour and louring night in the English
Midlands when I went to interview the alleged poet
Bircumshaw. He was half-asleep on a collapsed
settee and I asked him, after delivering several
proddings to wakefulness, through the fog of
cigarette exhalations, about his personal provenance.
"I had many grandfathers" he said "as many as two.
And I grew up in somewhere despised, for
good reason, also known as Birmingham. In my
early youth I came to the realisation that I knew
nothing and have conducted my life on that principle
ever since."
I departed, with an uncertain feeling, rather as if I
had received an unwanted gift. I trudged home,
under the gathering skies, and thought to myself
"Why do I bother ?"
being more fulsomely the formerly printed "Painting Without Numbers" (ISBN: 0-9541966-0-0)
Copyright: David Bircumshaw 2001, 2007
Click below to visit the earliest manifestation of A CHIDE'S ALPHABET

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Missoula standoff suspect pleads not guilty
POSTED: 9:43 AM Dec 24 2013 UPDATED: 10:02 PM Oct 17 2013
The Missoula man arrested after a 20-hour standoff with Missoula police entered a not guilty plea in court this week.
Jason Kirchner was arrested after holding police at bay and reportedly firing at them in late September.
The stand-off happened in a north Missoula and prosecutors accused Kirchner of firing several rounds at officers.
He remains in jail on $100,000 bond.


text:
The Roommate
|Release Date: February 04, 2011
|Running Time: 91 mins.
|MPAA Rating: PG 13
|Box Office: $37,300,107.00
|Genre: Thriller
Leighton Meester
Minka Kelly
Cam Gigandet
Aly Michalka
All Cast & Crew >>
Summary:When college freshman Sara arrives at school, she finds new romance with Stephen and forms a fast friendship with her roommate Rebecca. What begins as camaraderie soon turns creepy, and Sara comes face-to-face with the terrifying realization that her new best friend is obsessive, unbalanced...and maybe even a killer.
Event Photos:


text:
IWealth Investments Complaints & Reviews
Iwealthinvestments.com SnapShot
Last Updated On: November 1, 2015
IWealth Investments Corporate Contact
Business Name: IWealth Investments, LLC | Pin Point Marketing
Corporate Address:
7227 N 16th St #265
Phoenix, Arizona 85020 USA
Customer Service ContactsCorp Phone Number: 602-452-5559
Corp Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
- Manager
Corp Website: iwealthinvestments.com
Customer Ratings and Reports for IWealth Investments
Customer RatingsAverage Rating: 1.00 out of 5
Based On: 3 Reviews
Number Of Comments: 7
Consumer Loss ReportsReported Losses: $14,950.00
Average Reported Losses: $4,983.33
Latest IWealth Investments Complaint
Is IWealth Investments a Rip Off, Fraud or Have They Scammed You? WARN OTHER CONSUMERS By SharingCategory: Investments & Investor Services Directory ListingIWealth Investments, LLC | Pin Point Marketing Listing
Phoenix Arizona Scam company
iWealth Investments Phoenix Arizona Scam company
I joined the company and was told that a web site would be generated and would bring in high commissions in the neighborhood of $7,000 per month. I decided to purchase the Web site and one day later I wanted to cancel and join later in the month due to lack of funds would cause me to bounce checks that have not cleared. I was promised that I would be seeing revenue coming in very soon in next few days and this would be deposited into my account and the existing checks would be covered. It has been over 21 days and there has been zero earnings.
I have called everyday and continually get a run around. Now I strongly feel I am being pushed back so time goes by and I will find myself passed a time to late to do anything. I paid $ 5,000 for services.
I complained to the BBB and then received a call again a few months later from a person called Sean T telling me that he need to do some marketing changes and start generating money for the back to school and holiday season. i described my problems and he suggested i tell iWealth that i am going to call the Attorney General and just saying that would spur some activity. i looked up iwealth and discovered that there is a similar Attorney general complaint out of Maryland.
Later that afternoon, an individual representing iWealth named James Stewart told me that if i place a complaint with the attorney general, i would not get any money back since the company has filed for bankruptcy and there is not funds left for me if the attorney general gets involved.
IWealth Investments, LLC – 2432 West Peoria Avenue Suite 1326 Phoenix Arizona
Most Recent IWealth Investments Complaints
IWealth Investments Review #1: Scam company
Complaint Filed By: Jerry
On: August 19, 2013
Rating: 1 out of 5
Reported Losses of $6,500.00
I joined the company and was told that a web site would be generated and would bring in high commissions...
IWealth Investments Review #2: IWealth Investments – If It's Sounds Too Good To Be True…leave It Alone!
Complaint Filed By: Anita Baker
On: June 6, 2013
Rating: 1 out of 5
Reported Losses of $8,450.00
I put a query out on-line for a at- home online business to supplement my SS and help me retire....
- Click Here To Search For More IWealth Investments Complaints
More About IWealth Investments
Alternate Address for iWeath Investments LLC: 2432 West Peoria Avenue Suite 1326, Phoenix, AZ 85029


text:
Consumer Protection Law
Consumer Protection Law Questions? Ask a Lawyer Now.
The company name isXXXXX in Pheonix an branch of BBS Merchant Group Llc out Las Vegas. GG International out of Las Vegas looks like the parent company. I checked and Ebiz is in good standing.
I mentioned to the company that they have an F rating with the BBB and they're reply was they do not want to pay the $12,000 to get a rating. The statements they made to me are not on the contract. They did supply me with a letter that states they will buy me more leads with on they're dime if they don't make a 3% conversion in 180 days.
I contacted my credit cards companies a few days after I signed the contract told them what they told me and the said that I could dispute the charges, one for 90 days, another for 180 days and another 6 months. Would it be wise to call them again? Is there any way to print out this conversation?
I noticed on the FTC website that I can ask for a Earnings Claim Statement and by law they need to give it to me. Does that apply here.
Would it be wise to get an attorney to help me out?
Last question, I have heard that you can get free legal aid in my state Pa. is that an option?
Thank you Marsha
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