Quote Me A Piece Of Writing That You Really, Really Love :)

panic in paradise · Aug 3, 2012

It is stated in the Vedas that those who commit suicide become ghosts. For a certain period of time they have to suffer in their subtle bodies - consisting of the mind, intelligence, and false ego - without any means to alleviate their pains.

You cannot escape your mind. You may escape your physical body, but your psychic body follows you to the other side. Unless you learn to control the mind you will always be haunted by it, a victim of uncontrollable desires, which burns like a fire, and which can never be satiated. Eventually you will get another gross body and again you can engage in the illusory and useless pursuit of trying to become satisfied by sensual pleasure. This whole material world is aimed at teaching you the futility of trying to satisfy your body.

Krishna says in the Bhagavad-gita that the mind can either be our best friend or our worst enemy. An uncontrolled mind becomes our enemy, a controlled mind becomes our friend. In any case everyone is suffering or enjoying in this world according to his own activities.

But in fact you are eternal, and you are full of knowledge and bliss, but due to forgetfulness of your real nature, you are now instead identifying with your body and mind, and therefore identifying with the pains and pleasures of the body and mind. The solution is to purify the mind by the bhakti-yoga process and become reinstated in your original position as the eternal servant of God. In stead of being absorbed in how you can serve your senses you should become absorbed in how you can serve God.

Only this will bring you real lasting happiness. It is very simple to serve God in this age. Simply by chanting the Hare Krishna mantra you will no doubt become yourself again and experience the nectar for which you are always hankering. Try it! What have you got to lose?

You simply repeat the following mantra every day for, say, 20 minutes, and you are guaranteed to become free from anxiety and angst.

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna
Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama
Rama Rama Hare Hare

http://www.veda.harekrsna.cz/bhaktiyoga/issues.htm

I didnt use this mantra out of fear of suicide, but at another instantaneous traumatic moment where it seemed played out for me. Krishna, Christ, the Yoga Sutras, BKS Ivenger all grabbed me by the balls and gently eventually let me go.

It took only so many minutes or repetitions before i realized:

"How else, and when?"

and at that moment, im not sure how to describe it, an epiphany, a realization that ushered acceptance and forgiveness of myself and others. The darkness I chose to see rather then what was there, the light shown the same upon, but the colors, textures, and infinite constant driving subtleties that always did and do exist, existed finally, for me it seemed because I was the only one there, and everything I saw was accepted starting an orchestra

to for every sense in a way that never was possible, and it was by allowing my senses to be free, my Ego went and died instead of me.

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
The Threads of Union
Translation by BonGiovanni

Before beginning any spiritual text it is customary to clear the mind of all distracting thoughts, to calm the breath and to purify the heart.

1.1 Now, instruction in Union.

1.2. Union is restraining the thought-streams natural to the mind.

1.3. Then the seer dwells in his own nature.

1.4. Otherwise he is of the same form as the thought-streams.

1.5. The thought-streams are five-fold, painful and not painful.

NSFW:

what i did was began to define what each line meant to me, and, it was good to say the most pathetic least.

Interested in other research studies? Find more drug studies.

Thou · Aug 4, 2012

panic in paradise said:
It is stated in the Vedas that those who commit suicide become ghosts. For a certain period of time they have to suffer in their subtle bodies - consisting of the mind, intelligence, and false ego - without any means to alleviate their pains.

You cannot escape your mind. You may escape your physical body, but your psychic body follows you to the other side. Unless you learn to control the mind you will always be haunted by it, a victim of uncontrollable desires, which burns like a fire, and which can never be satiated. Eventually you will get another gross body and again you can engage in the illusory and useless pursuit of trying to become satisfied by sensual pleasure. This whole material world is aimed at teaching you the futility of trying to satisfy your body.

Krishna says in the Bhagavad-gita that the mind can either be our best friend or our worst enemy. An uncontrolled mind becomes our enemy, a controlled mind becomes our friend. In any case everyone is suffering or enjoying in this world according to his own activities.

But in fact you are eternal, and you are full of knowledge and bliss, but due to forgetfulness of your real nature, you are now instead identifying with your body and mind, and therefore identifying with the pains and pleasures of the body and mind. The solution is to purify the mind by the bhakti-yoga process and become reinstated in your original position as the eternal servant of God. In stead of being absorbed in how you can serve your senses you should become absorbed in how you can serve God.

Only this will bring you real lasting happiness. It is very simple to serve God in this age. Simply by chanting the Hare Krishna mantra you will no doubt become yourself again and experience the nectar for which you are always hankering. Try it! What have you got to lose?

You simply repeat the following mantra every day for, say, 20 minutes, and you are guaranteed to become free from anxiety and angst.

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna
Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama
Rama Rama Hare Hare

http://www.veda.harekrsna.cz/bhaktiyoga/issues.htm

I didnt use this mantra out of fear of suicide, but at another instantaneous traumatic moment where it seemed played out for me. Krishna, Christ, the Yoga Sutras, BKS Ivenger all grabbed me by the balls and gently eventually let me go.

It took only so many minutes or repetitions before i realized:

"How else, and when?"

and at that moment, im not sure how to describe it, an epiphany, a realization that ushered acceptance and forgiveness of myself and others. The darkness I chose to see rather then what was there, the light shown the same upon, but the colors, textures, and infinite constant driving subtleties that always did and do exist, existed finally, for me it seemed because I was the only one there, and everything I saw was accepted starting an orchestra to for every sense in a way that never was possible, and it was by allowing my senses to be free, my Ego went and died instead of me.

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
The Threads of Union
Translation by BonGiovanni

Before beginning any spiritual text it is customary to clear the mind of all distracting thoughts, to calm the breath and to purify the heart.

1.1 Now, instruction in Union.

1.2. Union is restraining the thought-streams natural to the mind.

1.3. Then the seer dwells in his own nature.

1.4. Otherwise he is of the same form as the thought-streams.

1.5. The thought-streams are five-fold, painful and not painful.

NSFW:

1.6. Right knowledge, wrong knowledge, fancy, sleep and memory.

1.7. Right knowledge is inference, tradition and genuine cognition.

1.8. Wrong knowledge is false, illusory, erroneous beliefs or notions.

1.9. Fancy is following after word-knowledge empty of substance.

1.10. Deep sleep is the modification of the mind which has for its substratum nothingness.

1.11. Memory is not allowing mental impressions to escape.

1.12. These thought-streams are controlled by practice and non-attachment.

1.13. Practice is the effort to secure steadiness.

1.14. This practice becomes well-grounded when continued with reverent devotion and without interruption over a long period of time.

1.15. Desirelessness towards the seen and the unseen gives the consciousness of mastery.

1.16. This is signified by an indifference to the three attributes, due to knowledge of the Indweller.

1.17. Cognitive meditation is accompanied by reasoning, discrimination, bliss and the sense of 'I am.'

1.18. There is another meditation which is attained by the practice of alert mental suspension until only subtle impressions remain.

1.19. For those beings who are formless and for those beings who are merged in unitive consciousness, the world is the cause.

1.20. For others, clarity is preceded by faith, energy, memory and equalminded contemplation.

1.21. Equalminded contemplation is nearest to those whose desire is most ardent.

1.22. There is further distinction on account of the mild, moderate or intense means employed.

1.23. Or by surrender to God.

1.24. God is a particular yet universal indweller, untouched by afflictions, actions, impressions and their results.

1.25. In God, the seed of omniscience is unsurpassed.

1.26. Not being conditioned by time, God is the teacher of even the ancients.

1.27. God's voice is Om.

1.28. The repetition of Om should be made with an understanding of its meaning.

1.29. From that is gained introspection and also the disappearance of obstacles.

1.30. Disease, inertia, doubt, lack of enthusiasm, laziness, sensuality, mind-wandering, missing the point, instability- these distractions of the mind are the obstacles.

1.31. Pain, despair, nervousness, and disordered inspiration and expiration are co-existent with these obstacles.

1.32. For the prevention of the obstacles, one truth should be practiced constantly.

1.33. By cultivating friendliness towards happiness and compassion towards misery, gladness towards virtue and indifference towards vice, the mind becomes pure.

1.34. Optionally, mental equanimity may be gained by the even expulsion and retention of energy.

1.35. Or activity of the higher senses causes mental steadiness.

1.36. Or the state of sorrowless Light.

1.37. Or the mind taking as an object of concentration those who are freed of compulsion.

1.38. Or depending on the knowledge of dreams and sleep.

1.39. Or by meditation as desired.

1.40. The mastery of one in Union extends from the finest atomic particle to the greatest infinity.

1.41. When the agitations of the mind are under control, the mind becomes like a transparent crystal and has the power of becoming whatever form is presented. knower, act of knowing, or what is known.

1.42. The argumentative condition is the confused mixing of the word, its right meaning, and knowledge.

1.43. When the memory is purified and the mind shines forth as the object alone, it is called non-argumentative.

1.44. In this way the meditative and the ultra-meditative having the subtle for their objects are also described.

1.45. The province of the subtle terminates with pure matter that has no pattern or distinguishing mark.

1.46. These constitute seeded contemplations.

1.47. On attaining the purity of the ultra-meditative state there is the pure flow of spiritual consciousness.

1.48. Therein is the faculty of supreme wisdom.

1.49. The wisdom obtained in the higher states of consciousness is different from that obtained by inference and testimony as it refers to particulars.

1.50. The habitual pattern of thought stands in the way of other impressions.

1.51. With the suppression of even that through the suspension of all modifications of the mind, contemplation without seed is attained.

End Part One.

what i did was began to define what each line meant to me, and, it was good to say the most pathetic least.

Magnificence!

panic in paradise · Aug 4, 2012

Part Two
on Spiritual Disciplines

2.1 Austerity, the study of sacred texts, and the dedication of action to God constitute the discipline of Mystic Union.

2.2 This discipline is practised for the purpose of acquiring fixity of mind on the Lord, free from all impurities and agitations, or on One's Own Reality, and for attenuating the afflictions.

2.3 The five afflictions are ignorance, egoism, attachment, aversion, and the desire to cling to life.

2.4 Ignorance is the breeding place for all the others whether they are dormant or attenuated, partially overcome or fully operative.

2.5 Ignorance is taking the non-eternal for the eternal, the impure for the pure, evil for good and non-self as self.

2.6 Egoism is the identification of the power that knows with the instruments of knowing.

NSFW:

All is misery to the wise because of the pains of change, anxiety, and purificatory acts.

The grief which has not yet come may be avoided.

The cause of the avoidable is the superimposition of the external world onto the unseen world.

The experienced world consists of the elements and the senses in play.

The indweller is pure consciousness only, which though pure, sees through the mind and is identified by ego as being only the mind.

Ashley · Aug 4, 2012

I hope it's okay to post lyrics in here, I just really love it as a piece of writing. It's a song called 'One Crowded Hour' by 'Augie March'.

Now should you expect to see something that you hadn't seen
In somebody you'd known since you were sixteen;
if love is a bolt from the blue, then what is that bolt but a glorified screw?
and that doesn't hold nothing together
Far from these nonsense bars and their nowhere music it's making me sick
And I know it's making you sick
There's nothing there, it's like eating air
It's like drinking gin with nothing else in
And that doesn't hold me together.

But for one crowded hour, you were the only one in the room
And I sailed around all those bumps in the night to your beacon in the gloom
I thought I had found my golden September in the middle of that purple June
But one crowded hour would lead to my wreck and ruin

And I know you like your boys to take their medicine
From the bowl with a silver spoon
Who run away with the dish and scale the fish by the silvery light of the moon
Who were taught from the womb to believe till the tomb
That as far as their bleeding eyes see
Is a pleasure pen, meant for them, builded and rent for them
Not for the likes of me
Not for the like of you and me

And for one crowded hour, you were the only one in the room
And I sailed around all those bumps in the night to your beacon in the gloom
I thought I had found my golden September in the middle of that purple June
But one crowded hour would lead to my wreck and ruin

Oh but the green-eyed harpy of the salt land
She takes into hers my hand
She says, "Boy I know you're lying
Oh but then, so am I,"
And to this I said "Oh well."

Well put me in a cage full of lions, I learned to speak lion
In fact I know the language well
I picked it up while I was versing myself in the languages they speak in hell
That night, the silence gave birth to a baby
They took it away to her silent dismay
And they raised it to be a lady
Now she can't keep her mouth shut

And for one crowded hour, you were the only one in the room
And I sailed around all those bumps in the night to your beacon in the gloom
I thought I had found my golden September in the middle of that purple June
But one crowded hour would lead to my wreck and ruin

For one crowded hour, you were the only one in the room
Well I played a few songs for those bumps in the night
In fact I played this very tune
You said, "What is this six-stringed instrument but an adolescent loom?"
And one crowded hour would lead to my wreck and ruin.

Ash.

panic in paradise · Aug 4, 2012

Part Three
on Divine Powers

3.1 One-pointedness is steadfastness of the mind.

3.2 Unbroken continuation of that mental ability is meditation.

3.3 That same meditation when there is only consciousness of the object of meditation and not of the mind is realization.

3.4 The three appearing together are self-control.

3.5 By mastery comes wisdom.

3.6 The application of mastery is by stages.

3.7 The three are more efficacious than the restraints.

3.8 Even that is external to the seedless realization.

NSFW:

There is knowledge of everything from intuition

By self-control over the maintenance of breath, one may radiate light.

By self-control on the relation of the ear to the ether one gains distant hearing.

By self-control over the relation of the body to the ether, and maintaining at the same time the thought of the lightness of cotton, one is able to pass through space.

panic in paradise · Aug 5, 2012

Part Four
on Realizations

4.1 Psychic powers arise by birth, drugs, incantations, purificatory acts or concentrated insight.

4.2 Transformation into another state is by the directed flow of creative nature.

4.3 Creative nature is not moved into action by any incidental cause, but by the removal of obstacles, as in the case of a farmer clearing his field of stones for irrigation.

4.4 Created minds arise from egoism alone.

4.5 There being difference of interest, one mind is the director of many minds.

4.6 Of these, the mind born of concentrated insight is free from the impressions.

4.7 The impressions of unitive cognition are neither good nor bad. In the case of the others, there are three kinds of impressions.

4.8 From them proceed the development of the tendencies which bring about the fruition of actions.

NSFW:

End Part Four
The end of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjalii

pk. · Aug 5, 2012

The Moon and the Yew Tree

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs at my feet as if I were God,
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility.
Fumy spiritious mists inhabit this place
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky -
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection.
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.

The yew tree points up. It has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness -
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.

I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars.
Inside the church, the saints will be all blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness - blackness and silence

-Sylvia Plath

xxxyyy · Aug 5, 2012

preface to james ellroy's white jazz, one of my absolute favorite books:

All I have is the will to remember. Time revoked/fever dreams—I wake up reaching, afraid I'll forget. Pictures keep the woman young.
L.A., fall 1958.
Newsprint: link the dots. Names, events—so brutal they beg to be connected. Years down—the story stays dispersed. The names are dead or too guilty to tell.
I'm old, afraid I'll forget:
I killed innocent men.
I betrayed sacred oaths.
I reaped profit from horror.
Fever—that time burning. I want to go with the music—spin, fall with it

pk. · Aug 8, 2012

When the Parents Went

When my parents,
Who separated
When I was four,

Died roughly
Within a year of each other
Last year

—She on one coast of America,
He on the other (Boxers
To their corners!)—

I felt lightened
And folded
Towards myself, quietly,

Where someone laughed loudly,
As I’d heard sometimes happens
To sons and daughters

At funerals.
I think my half-brother, step-
Brother, and step-sister expected me

To cry at the memorial ceremony
For my mother, but I didn’t.
I felt solicitous

Of other people’s mourning, but otherwise
I felt wonderfully, maturely
Brutal—in full throttle, really.

That side of my family
Spent a night together
Before I left, a night

With the photograph album,
And when we came to
The picture of Mom’s first marriage

To my father, whom no one else
In the room really knew, everyone
In the room was duly amazed

By how miserable Mom looked
In the photo. It had been a shotgun
Wedding, occasioned by me,

There already
In Mom’s belly, six months
Before, unwanted, I came to be.

Now she was gone
They were both gone, and there
Seemed no way in hell

They could ever again reach me
In the same way, which seemed
So good to me. It was over.

The long arc of unwant was over,
And all we all did trying to come to terms
With unwant—an impossibility—

Was ended
With their going,
Which was more

Than I ever dared
Hope for. That time
Of the three of us worrying

That bone—that DNA, that inherit,
That mistake made back
In the 1940s—that time

Was blessedly over, and only I
Was left over to make
Whatever could be made of that folly.

-Liam Rector

pk. · Aug 8, 2012

I have only just recently discovered Richard Brautigan, I quite like his style; here are a few...

15%

she tries to get things
out of men
that she can't get
because she's not
15% prettier

----------------------------------------------

December 30

At 1:30 in the morning a fart
smells like a marriage between
an avocado and a fish head.

I have to get out of bed
to write this down without
my glasses on.

----------------------------------------------

Color As Beginning

Forget love
I want to die
in your yellow hair

Ashley · Aug 8, 2012

pk., When The Parents Went is such a beautiful piece of art.

Ash.

Thou · Aug 8, 2012

Dinosaurs

I think the political and social chaos we are seeing on every side reflects an underlying biologic crisis. End of the human line.

All species are doomed from conception like all individuals. Evolution did not come to a reverent halt with homo sapiens.

We have the technologies to recreate the flawed artifacts and to produce improved and variegated models for designed for space conditions. Perhaps there is still time.

Is this being done or even considered? Back to the church the home and the family. Back to the simple American virtues that made this country great and can make this country great again. If I may be allowed a flight of whimsy involving articulate Dinosaurs:

"Fellow reptiles, I do not hesitate to tell you that we face grave problems.

I do not hesitate to tell you that we have the answer.

Size is the answer! Increased size!

There are those who say that size is not the answer, there are those even propose that we pollute our reptilian strain with mammalian amalgamations and cross breading.

And I say to you, if the only way I could survive was by mating with egg eating rats, then I would choose not to survive.

But we will survive. We will increase both in size and in numbers and we will continue to dominate this planet as we have done for 300 MILLION YEARS! Bigger is better and biggest is best!"

Armored models thump their tails in earth shaking applause. Herbiferous Dins wallow and splash in swamp bogs. Carnivores bare their huge fangs dripping streamers of saliva in uproar. But a wise old Dine turns sadly from the TV and addresses his offspring:

"Son, it's the end of the line. We are ugly, idiot, bellowing beasts. Some of us are sixty feet long with a brain the size of a walnut. Where can this end? In a natural history museum our bones gawked at by pimply adolescents--"Say, I wonder how big his prick was?' Their turn will come."

Back to the home and the family back to simple American virtues biologically speaking the one direction you can go is back. It's the law.

Dolphins lived on land at one time we know that because they have air breathing lungs. Now that they have returned to the sea it might be handy to reclaim their lost gills.

An evolutionary step that involves biological alterations is irretrievable we must now make such a step if we are to survive at all. And it had better be good.

I have predicted the transition from time into space will involve biologic alterations. Such alterations are already manifest. Astronauts stand to lose their bones and teeth in the thervice. If you don't use it you lose it A skeleton has no function in a weightless state.

So what does the end result look like? Well...rather like an octupus or a jellyfish. Beau Bremel the restoration dandy spent hours every morning putting exactly the right crease into his cravats by lowering his chin just so. Often his valet would carry out armfuls of crumpled dennies, all failures.

So we can imagine the cosmic butler carrying out bundles of unworkable monstrosities, our failures."

W.S.Burroughs

xxxyyy · Aug 8, 2012

^ i absolutely adore burroughs, here's some more goodness. one of my favorite burroughs pieces, i apologize for the length but it has to be read in its entirety

edit: “Despite disparate aims and personnel of its constituent members, the underground is agreed on basic objectives. We intend to march on the police machine everywhere. We intend to destroy the police machine and all its records. We intend to destroy all dogmatic verbal systems… To put it country simple, we have heard enough bullshit.” absolutely golden quote. here's the link to the whole text: My Mother and I Would Like to Know

THE PERFECT SERVANT

John J Hudson, known as Basic J to his many friends, is making a difficult decision in the Pentagon. Word has just come through from B&C . . . complete, precise and permanent programming of thought feeling and sensory data demonstrated in experimental preparations after single exposure to Virus Rover this information conveyed in a three word inter office memo . . . rover is ready.
No further need to explain excuse produce any arguments or facts in support of departmental directives. It will soon be neurologically impossible to oppose or even to question. The virus is hereditary of course a permanent chromatic formula circuits of protest closed forever. Rover will see to that. Basic J has the responsibility of releasing rover in the United States of America. He looks up at Old Glory hanging over his desk. American programming of course . . . he will see to that. He gets up and paces around the room.
"Gotta stay ahead of the Commies . . . if they get there first with their programming . . . everybody's kids will speak Chinese at birth." This he decides grimly must be made unthinkable . . . "The President is right. The President is always right. The laws are right. America is right. America is always right. The American way of life is the right way of life is the best way of life is the only way of life” from here to eternity.
His duty is clear. He salutes Old Glory. His throat is dry. He rings for Bently the perfect servant a faithful old dog of that he is absolutely sure. The psyche department checked him out and he checked so clear they used some of his bone marrow in the rover cultures. Bently stands in the door.
"Yes sir?"
"A glass of ice water please Bently.
"Yes sir.”
With the speed of a conjurer Bently places a glass of ice water on a brocade napkin. "Good old Bently always knows what I need."
The perfect servant he draws the curtains. "Anything else sir?"
"No nothing else. Good night Bently.”
"Good night Mr Hudson. Good bye Mr Hudson.”
"What was that Bently?" Hudson put down the half empty glass.
"Good bye Mr Hudson." For a moment Bently looks at him with something like emotion. He bows and leaves the room.
Hudson drains his glass. He sits for some time in silent thought.
Suddenly he knows what to do. Reverently he spreads Old Glory on the desk. He picks up a pen right to hand somehow and ready by a piece of parchment paper. He writes.

Dear Mary
I am taking the only way out. Please forgive me.
Basic J Hudson

Spring drawer cold .45 . . . "It's the right thing to do it's the best thing to do it's the only thing to do . . . good old Bently . . . he knew somehow . . ."
"I was on the way back to my room sir when I heard the shot sir. I found him like that sir." He nods to the desk. The side of Hudson's face is stuck to Old Glory in a paste of dry blood and seared brains. "I saw at once he was dead sir."
You can say that again" said the agent.
"It was a terrible shock for me sir."
There are two agents in the room two very special agents. They both turn and, look at Bently in a very special way.
"You expect us to swallow this crap?"
Bently draws himself up. "I have told you the truth sir exactly as it happened sir."
"And I say it's crap. Do we have to bake it out of you Bently?" Bently takes a deep breath. A button pops from his waistcoat and explodes against the agent's grey flannel suit.
"Will that be all sir?”
"Yes Bently. You may go.”
"Thank you sir." Bently bows and leaves the room.
(Long pause)
"Well that puts him in the clear . . . Good old Bently.”
"You can say that again. Old Bently has all the answers. Old Bently has all the right answers. If anybody says or even thinks different I'll gun the bastard down if he's my best buddy."
"I was on the way back to my room sir when I heard the shots sir. I found the two gentlemen like that sir." He nods to the floor. "I saw at once they were dead sir. Blood and internals all over the room sir. A smell of blood and excrement sir. If you'll pardon the expression sir. Quite overwhelming sir.
"You may go Bently."
"Thank you sir. I'll be in my room if you need me sir. "
"Better check that guy out."
"You can say that again. Hey here's something." He picks up the pen with forceps and reads
For James Bently in recognition of ten years faithful service to John J Hudson
He removes the cap from the pen. There is a slight explosion followed by a long reverent silence.
"If J thought that much of him he must be all right," the agent bursts out in a voice hoarse with emotion. He turns away to hide the tears in his eyes. Another agent chokes and buries his face in a curtain wracked with sobs.
"Oh what the Hell" screams the CIA man "it’s nothing to be ashamed -of. Let Is cry our decent American hearts out and for the Christ sake let's all get fried.” He rushes the liquor cabinet and tosses bottles out to his colleagues.
"I was on the way back to my room sir when I heard the noise sir. Quite indescribable sir. I felt it my duty to return sir. I found them reeling about sir. Screaming 'good old Bently’ sir. That gentleman" he points to the CIA man who is slumped in a chair between two guards sobbing out "Auld Lang Syne" "threw himself on me in a most offensive way sir. If you'll pardon the expression sir and said nearly as I can recall sir would I be his 'crying cousin' sir. Old southern custom he said it was sir. I could see he’d been drinking sir."
"Bently doesn't it strike you a bit odd that thirty of the most trusted and responsible officials in this country should with one accord and for no discernible reason become maudlin drunk over a period of two minutes?"
"That is not for me to say sir.
"You have testified that the men were quite normal when you left the room."
"Yes sir. Whatever happened sir happened after I had left the room sir. "
"Things always seem to happen after you leave rooms Bently. "
"Not always sir."
The new department head looks at Bently and his jaw drops.
"Why the man is smiling or snarling rather in a strange animal way. What the Hell?”
"ACHOO ACHOO ACHOOOOOOOO”
"BLESS YOU BENTLY BLESS YOU BLESS YOU”
"ACHOO ACHOO ACHOOOOOOOO
"BLESS YOU SIR BLESS YOU BLESS YOU"
"Let's all go ACHOO ACHOO out into the BLESS YOU BLESS YOU beautiful American ACHOO ACHOO streets and BLESS YOU BLESS YOU bless all our fellow ACHOO ACHOO Americans BLESS YOU ACHOOOOOOOO”
Sneezing and blessing they rushed into the street. Alone in the room Bently wipes off the grey features of a perfect servant to reveal himself as the Insidious Doctor Fu Manchu. He steps to the window.
"ACHOO ACHOO" The cities and towns of America echo back
"BLESS YOU BLESS YOU”
"ACHOO ACHOO" back from the farms crossroads and lonely sidings of "BLESS YOU BLESS YOU”
"ACHOO ACHOO" on the winds of Panhandle idiot honky tonks yodel back "BLESS YOU BLESS YOU ALLAYIHOO”
From car and plane "ACHOO ACHOO " Hell's Angels roaring back "BLESS YOU BLESS YOU"
America America "ACHOO ACHOO ACH00” from purple mountain's majesty "BLESS YOU BLESS YOU BLESS YOU”
The doctor stands at the window waiting.
"Achoo achoo” with wind and dust "bless you bless you”
"Achoo achoo” a hoarse whisper echoes back “bless you bless you”
"Achoo achoo” spitting blood "bless you bless you”
Old record running down " achoo achoo achoo"
Dying dying dying "bless you bless you bless you"
The doctor's silent blessing falls on silent cities from sea to shining sea.

pk. · Aug 8, 2012

Ashley said:
pk., When The Parents Went is such a beautiful piece of art.

Ash.

I'm glad you enjoyed it. It's from The Executive Director of the Fallen World, Liam Rector's final collection of work before killing himself. Out of all the books in my possession it would have to be my favourite. I can't count how many times I've read it.

pk. · Aug 8, 2012

"Sometimes your shallowness is so thorough, it's almost like depth." - Daria Morgendorffer

Thou · Aug 8, 2012

Good finds, guys. Everything on this page I've admired and been entertained by.

My favorite poem (I typically don't care for poems, mind you.)

Annabel Lee

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
Edgar Allan Poe

_

I faintly remember the distasteful remarks of my fellow 8th grade classmates at the suggestion of the short-sighted teachers interpretation of the poem, one of necrophilia. I believe her confusion fell in the "lie down by the side" of her in her sepulchre down by the sea which is sheer nonsense. This is not macabre or gothic writing, it's simple despair and lonely love poetry for his lost maiden in their 'perfect love' which I believe embodies the 'kingdom down by the sea.'

English teachers sometimes suck, or have bad taste in humor.

I remember being daunted by such a dumb assessment, and she may have been joking.

I do remember it was a certain pnuemonia which was alluded to "the wind came out of the cloudy night." Obviously inspired by the death of his beloved Virginia Clemm, to TB.

xxxyyy · Aug 8, 2012

^ poe is a fucking classic.
have you read exterminator, thou?

pk. · Aug 10, 2012

I was reading American Prodigal and felt the need to share this particular poem. (It isn't on the internet, so had to type it up but I think that it is worth it).

Our Own Ones

I will be coming up the hill from school in an hour....

Lana stretches to the clothesline as Carl
Is coming back over from the barn....
Between them the field dips deep and the field

Slopes long and half the day, already, is done.
She pushes a wooden pin onto a cotton skirt
And the wind competes for dominance here.

He'll live until his sixties; Lena into her nineties....
The fields will reside when they're gone
And the farm, as farms do when the property is not

Owned, will change hands, change families.
I will make a living somewhere else
Making lines I remember from life

I saw here, using forms from what held us
While in the hold of this place, but for now
I will be coming up the hill from school in an hour....

My mother got caught and put
In the penitentiary. My father
Could not afford me or did not

Want me (both struck me
As true) so I sent out
To the country while he worked

A failing business in the city.
In the 1950s, after the war,
People from the country,

Along with people from other
Countries, made their way to
The American cities. The food

Was still grown in the country
(Where else could it be grown--
On roofs in the cities?),

But the real hurl of action turned
Towards the marketing of things
In the major American cities.

Suburbs, full of people
Who did not know how to live
In them, soon formed

Around the cities, and I swore
I would do something
About this, someday, but the day

My mother was sent up I got
A break from this mess for a moment--
I was sent out to live with them,

With Lena and Carl in the country.

Carl moves towards the lunch of pork which Lena
Has left on the table. He will eat, crap, sit while
He's able, and be back over to the barn in an hour.

Lena will come in, feed herself, phone on the party line
The women down the hill, and they will wade
Through their loneliness as late afternoon goes over.

I will be coming up the hill from school in an hour.

Built cheap, built to sell quickly, thrown up
To house men from the killing, women
Going back to home from the factories

Where they had worked to support The War Effort,
And children about to be born and form the single
Largest generation in American time, the boomers,

The suburbs in the post-war era were built around
The car: carports, forts isolating each family,
Each adolescence for the children spent without

Any real place to gather other than the mall,
The market, or the woods (and adolescence is
Nothing if not a strenuous effort to come in

Out of the woods), and meanwhile in the cities
The old houses torn down to put up housing
'Projects' for the poor: hanging schizophrenia

In mid-air, bad buildings, wrong turnings,
And much of it dynamited down by the 1980s...
Just before those my age took the helm in the 1990s.

They were kind to me. They were glad to have me.
At first they thought they were too old, really,
To tend to me, but I tried to be a good boy for them

--I spent much of my time alone in the woods anyway--
And soon they were glad to have me. I would fetch
Things for them and unlike their other ones, gone

To the city, I was enchanted by the country;
I didn't yet have to make any money.
I was their grandson come to live with them then

Late in their lives with their children raised
And the love all but gone from their marriage.
They took me in and they loved me then

And without them there would have been no rudder....
I got older, they died, the farm got sold out from under
Everyone, and again I took on the fate of the cities.

With Carl and Lena gone that was pretty much the end
Of any of us getting together as an extended family.
The American family changed, and though many tried to

Will the old family back (such will is cruel;
Such cruelty expressed itself politically),
Most took up forming the different family.

I now have a daughter, I'm divorced, and I make a living
As an architect in Cincinnati--forming windows, arcs, lanes....
And though I know there's no going back I try to bring back

Something of the nineteenth century town to the American city.

--Liam Rector

Ashley · Aug 11, 2012

I'm definitely checking out more of Liam Rector's work. I really dig his poems, thanks pk.

Ash.

pk. · Aug 13, 2012

Nice :D

This was written by an Australian poet, perhaps my favourite Australian poet, Bruce Dawe.

The City: Midnight

Out of the sighs and breath of each small citizen
Clasped in his neutral bed with eye-lids locked
On the frail Pandora's box of consciousness,

Out of the blind susurrus of limbs
Moving like weeds within sleep's rhythmic waters,
Marked by the metronome of clock and moon,
Out of the shadowy cubes stacked carelessly
On night's blue nursery floor by infant men,
Rises the vast and tremulous O of dreams...

The knitting spider watches from her shelf,
The vague and changing shapes of furniture wait;
Now slippered ghosts grope down familiar stairs,

While from mysterious doorways, very soon,
The starlit insomniacs toddle, arms extending
Headless golliwog, frayed teddy, broken drum.

Down the long streets they go; they will not wake;
They will walk miles before they turn back, weary
Clutching dolls they could not give away.

Morning again will prise their fingers loose,
And all their playthings crumble into light.

--Bruce Dawe

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