This is another disasterpiece

I didn’t know you were so old

I mean so close to my age

When I was still in Seattle

I would have paid you more attention

I did flirt with you

even when you were living with that beau

whatever his name was

I am a long ways away now

And you are too

having adventures in faraway lands

I wonder if I’ll ever see you again

And if I do

Will you have a drink with me?

---William James

Purple Words: Her Damn Body

Karin thinks there should be

some image of reconciliation.

I say, well, I’ll put it in if one occurs to me.

These matters of characterization can be

difficult if the characters don’t agree.

He had accused her of Adultery,

Incest, Betrayal, Whoredom, Deceit,

Lesbianism, Husband-Hatred, Frigidity,

Lying and Callousness as well

as the usual things.

However, she was equally

fine and fierce that day,

explaining just who her damn body

belonged to anyway.

He had finished and feigned,

and what a face, alluring and presuming

to nourish and disdain the masculine.

Not so the feminine, which should be

kept just so: immaculate and revered.

Three things have followed me

and shape my memory: one black horse,

two black cats and all black crows

haunt and torment me as though

all of Poe’s creatures have sought me

out to darken the days of my existence.

---by Purple Mark 052612

Purple Prompts:                                                                         

1. “Karin thinks there should be some image of reconciliation. I say, well, if one occurs to me I’ll put it in.” Hanif Kureshi. London Kills Me. (Penguin Books, 1997), Page 151.
2. “He’d railed at Jamila and accused her of adultery, incest. betrayal, whoredom, deceit, lesbianism, husband-hatred, frigidity, lying and callousness, as well as the usual things. Jamila was equally fine and fierce that day, explaining just who her damn body belonged to.” Hanif Kureshi. The Buddha of Suburbia. (Penguin Books, 1997), Page 134.
3. “he had finished and feigned, and what a face, alluring and presuming to nourish and disdain the masculine,...” Luigi Ballerini translated by Jeremy Parzen. The Cadence of a Neighboring Tribe. (Sun & Moon Press, 1997), Page 55.
4. “Three Things: Three black things follow me, shape a memory. One black horse, two black cats, and all black crows.” Joan Byers Grayston. The Creek With No Name and Other Poems. (Frayn Printing Co., 1979). Page 20.

Wildwood Signs -- 1

Dead End

The Hill Dogs

Killers

Children at play

Be quiet

Stop, look, listen

Blink lights

Injury

Crossing

Railroad

Seeds

Another way

---William James

Friday's Children by Afzal Moolla

Mute. Deaf. Blind.

Blinded by the cacophony,

with tongues and ears left by the wayside,

dulled senses rotting away,

while all traces of empathy,

swirl into the gutter.

Willingly mute,

gleefully blind,

embracing the soundlessness of a billion cries.

Blind.

Mute.

Deaf,

consciences left to rot,

heartless and mindless,

as the promises turn into rust,

with all traces of empathy,

swirling into the endless gutters,

while the flag of freedom limply flutters,

in the impotent breeze.

Mute. Deaf. Blind.

Copyright © 2012 by Afzal Moolla

Tribute to the Thornbirds...

A young girl folds bridal garments

and piles them into the drawer.

Her gaze shifts

a thousand miles away to a photo

on top of the bureau.

Its unframed edges have yellowed

and cracked like the nicotine that stains lips.

She wonders what her life would have been like

if only her friend had asked.

An old woman she looks after wears a lacy hat.

The young girl laughs at the old man’s reaction.

“What was it like the first time you kissed him,” she asks the old lady?

“It was like sitting under a tropical waterfall and discovering

a secret cavern behind the rock wall,” the old man smiles.

“What was it like for you.” The old lady asked?

“When my tongue met his, it was like sticking it into a

bucket of roses and getting torn up by the thorns,” the young girl responded.

“What is it with you,” the old man pries?

“I’ll never have anything that I want,” the young girl cries.

A life of discontent continues

the day after the honeymoon.

---William James

Found in a Journal

---William James

Writing with Ahmed On 03192012

Homophone

“Tell it, tell it, tell it like it is, tell it…”

Droned the electric piano

She whined more than sang sympathetic notes

The melody was a deluge of anthropic images

That transcended the structure of the jazz

Her mouth closed in around the microphone in affection

The electric piano drummed out the rhythm

“Tell it, tell it, tell it like it is, tell it…”

in Jazzy sortes

Sympathetic to the moaning feedback circling through the audience

Affecting, pushing the musicians’ to greater heights of

Anthropic life in another dimension

I may have written this or Ahmed Teleb may have written it. It probably is my work. The bj microphone image is something that I would've tried and work into a poem. I am juvenile that way. Ahmed's writing is much more syllabic and sound orientated than mine is. So, yes, I think this is my poem. But the word Homophone is a word he used as a prompt.

Friday's Children by Afzal Moolla

Remember us when you pass this way.

       Dedicated to the countless South Africans who gave their lives for freedom and democracy

Remember us when you pass this way.

We who fell,

Who bled,

Remember us when you pass this way,

We who fell so that countless others may stand,

We who bore the brunt of the oppressor's hand.

Remember us when you pass this way,

Leave a flower or two as you pass along,

Sing! Sing for us a joyous & spirited song.

Remember us when you pass this way,

We who fell,

Who bled,

Remember us when you pass this way.

Remember us in your tomorrows,

As you remember us today.

Copyright © 2012 by Afzal Moolla

An Imagined Room... by Purple Mark

In a room packed and fraught with history complete with books,

knick-knacks, furniture and little altars everywhere

which payed homage to seemingly everything;

The Hermit sat in his throne-like chair.

His eyes burned and his mind grew troubled.

Misshaped monsters flew past him in herds

and all went round in his head in a dizzying swirl.

His imagination was getting the better of him again.

Still, it wasn’t enough and he hurriedly scattered about him

exotic perfumes, exhausted his vaporizers,

concentrated his strongest essences, gave rein to all his balms.

Lo! the stifling closeness of the room was filled with an atmosphere,

maddening and sublime, breathing powerful influences

which soothed briefly the pressing weight of accumulated History,

his needy searches of long lapsed times for a purpose vague:

a reason to see again the beauty of the moment Present.

The vapors reminded him of his youthful travels

when he was freer of mind to see the world with his own eyes

and a body that had done what he had asked of it, not like this

when with every day came yet another kind of pain.

Now, his world was reduced to only these rabid imaginings

which Age had bequeathed him as he sat in this chair,

self-sequestered king of detritus and dust within these four sets

of walls which were only his solidified dreams.

---Purple Mark, 05/12/12

Purple Prompts:                                                                         

1. “His eyes burned: his mind grew troubled.... Misshaped monsters flew past him in herds.... All went round in his head,” (from St. John’s Eve). Nikolai Gogol. The Penguin Book Of Witches And Warlocks. (Penguin Classics, 1989) Page 102.
2. “When he had sufficiently savored the sight, he hurriedly scattered about exotic perfumes, exhausted his vaporizers, concentrated his strongest essences, gave the rein to all his balms and Lo! the stifling closeness of the room was filled with an atmosphere, maddening and sublime, breathing powerful influences....” J.K. Huysmans. Against The Grain: (A Rebours). (Dover Books, 1969) Page 112.

Understanding Somebody, Maybe

My father threw a cup

across the room

It narrowly missed my mother

standing ground

by the stove

When I gaze into that window

I see thousands of faces screaming

The sands of reality shift

in the evening breeze

to reveal a mirage

The portal of my mind

was fractured

a long ugly scar broke

the window in the kitchen

---07/21/2012

If you haven't already, check out Penhead Press's first publication: Randomly Accessed Poetics, Issue 1: The Texture of Words.

Color the World... by William James

   

Help        Help    Layers of help        Obstruct sleep              Obstruct dreams       Color the world        untreated    Be prepared to    transcend    your end

Perfection    builds blocks    True colors layer    blend    transition    into new worlds    Experience    the simple bliss of    the linen of that last          wild landscape

---William James, 05/03/2012

The Blackest Nights, Lightless... by Purple Mark

Within the blackest of nights,

the lightless and fireless peoples

are well-trained to see in the dark.

The illumination of what is there

allows them to see into the deepest

shadows and into the human heart.

All deities reside in the human breast

writes william blake and after Seeing

tigers burning brightly in the night,

One can’t help but wonder what else

he envisioned that he didn’t transcribe

which angles of infinity are right?

Many who walk this world are unaware

of the beauty which is there before their

eyes if they would just deign to notice.

As if london had thrown off its opera

houses and art galleries, its vestiges

of civilization lay like a discarded cloak.

While in Moscow, noble ladies, the wives

of officers on duty far away, actresses

and women of lower classes sought out

The rough caresses of the moujik, making

love to the mad monk with his dirty beard

and filthy hands was a new and thrilling thing.

Though he killed no person, Rasputin brought

down an empire, the Darth Vader of the times

so that when the mood of the people changed,

The Tsar and the Romanov family lost their lives

and though he saved their hemophiliac son for a time

not Rasputin nor they survived their blackest nights.

---Purple Mark, 05/05/2012

Purple Prompts:                                                                         

1. “Noble ladies, wives of officers on duty far away, actresses and women of lower classes sought the rough, humiliating caresses of the Moujik. Making love to the unwashed peasant with his dirty beard and filthy hands was a new and thrilling sensation.” Robert K. Massie. Nicholas And Alexandra. (Dell Books, 1967) Page 207.
2. “Know you not that all fireless peoples can see in the dark? Having no lamps we are forced to train ourselves to travel through the blackest night, lightless.” Hugh Lofting. The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle. (Dell Books, 1967) Page 203.
3. “All deities reside in the human breast —William Blake.” June Singer. Androgyny: Toward A New Theory Of Sexuality. (Anchor Books, 1977) Page 233.
4. “It was as if London had thrown off its opera houses and art galleries, its vestiges of civilization, like a discarded cloak.” Alice Thompson. Justine. (Counterpoint, 1996) Page 119.

Their Mysterious Thrill... By Purple Mark

Chiming, ringing, peeling, bonging, The vibrations set up by Bells have always made them Objects of Awe. When their sound was analyzed in the Late Nineteenth Century, it was discovered to indeed be peculiar: Three notes in Octave, One, a perfect Fifth and the other note the one that gives Bells their mysterious thrill, a minor Third above the Middle Octave.

In Ancient China, certain Bells of State or Temple would require a requisite Soul to perish and so be part of the casting of the Bronze Bells so that it would ring with a human voice into the gulfs of Eternity. Those in charge of ringing the Bells would do so at certain times and thus the Watches became associated with the wearable Time-Keeping devices whose time has mostly come and gone,

Much like the Comers and Goers of the park today of which I was but one of a number of its colorful Characters: there was the group of brightly colored and costumed Anima or Manga-inspired youths doing a Photo Shoot. When they saw my Pinkness one girl shouted out “You’re the most Masculine Man ever!” I laughed because it was true though not in the way she may’ve thought.

Pink used to be the Male color after the redness of the men who worked outside and were reddened by the rays of Ra during the days and Blue was the Female color after the pallor which caused their veins to give their skin a bluish tinge from being kept inside all day. Then somewhere in there, the inversion happened in different places, at different times. During the downfall of the French Aristocracy Blue became the color of the Common Man and thus babies swapped their traditional palettes.

Here in America, it changed over around the time of the Civil War, but there were holdouts up until the Forties and Fifties. After that time Pink had become associated with being less than desirable and has suffered an increasingly downgraded status as the color of little girls and Gay men. Then comes the Scientific evidence that Pink doesn’t exist as we see it. Instead it is a color that the mind makes up in order to fill-in a perceived gap in the Color Wheel.

Thus I was the most Masculine Man ever by both wearing very bright shades of Pink, traditionally a girl’s color and asserting my Masculinity by my comfort in doing so, something that some confuse with being Gay. For me it is simply the love of Color, Pink being one of many colors that I wear like the previous week when I had been Yellow which a man on a bike had to show me on his phone of my saffron self behind a Pink flowering bush.

Then there was the little brown dog who came by and left his urinary message to the other Park dogs on the near corner of the cement curve where I sat at North of the Volcano while trying to write out my poem. Carla came by then and got settled into selecting her prompts. My next interruption was an inebriated man with a bottle of wine in each hand who came by and sat down full of talk of the Hunger Games, though due to his description of it I would avoid at all costs and his confused talk of his band and Arrowsmith.

At last he left and I made yet another attempt, but I had simply had too many interruptions and I gave up trying to construct my poem whose threads had gone astray. The relative warmth of the Spring day had brought out all manner of Characters to be activated by the lack of rain, the occasional moments of sunshine and a breeze which brought the random droplets of water from the Volcano flying, as well the beacon of my Pinkness which brought these Characters wending our way to deal with as we tried to put thought to page.

---Purple Mark, 04/28/2012

Purple Prompts:                                                                         

1. “The vibration set up by bells has always made them objects of awe.... In the late Nineteenth Century the sound was analysed (sic) and discovered indeed to be peculiar,... There are five principal partial tones to a bell’s ring: three notes in octave, one a perfect fifth and the the other )the one that gives bells their mysterious thrill) a minor third above the middle octave.” Margaret Visser. The Way we Are: Bells. (Faber & Faber 1994), Page 109.