suddenly I’m running through fields 

outside Nagasaki 

in the edo period 

times are good 

the americans haven’t come in yet

the emperor locks them out

later my country will fight russians

later my country will invade China- 

Korea- but it is not yet

later my country will modernize

embrace industry

become a part of history-

later the samurai will die

later the shogunnate will end

but it is not yet.

Socially aware/Conscious clothing Brand ‘Canis Major’ will be launching live sales of their summer range. The good folk down at Canis Major were kind enough to sponsor me and send a brilliant men’s hoodie just for me! The slogan reads ‘Music helps me escape the f**kery we live in’ now tell me that isn’t cool. You can check them out on the socialsphere and preorder on their website, all details below.

Next on my list of good things to report is… drum roll please… A *NEW VIDEO ALERT*
Ever wanted to pay someone a compliment but wasn’t sure how? I have, so I wrote a poem about it. After which I shot a video with the ingenious dudes at Born Ready Entertainment, now I’m preparing to show you how (or how not to) approach the opposite sex!
I Think You’re Beautiful is my 3rd visual instalment and I’m hoping you support and respond to it as well as the 1st two. Thank you again. The video will 1st be available on my Vimeo account (see below) and then my blog (see you’re current URL address). The story behind this poem is completely real and a complete head banger but you’ll have to wait til my next post to get the low down.

So hey, it’s about to be a good day! I’ll be on a beach trying to play my brand new harmonica and you’ll be watching my new video while ordering a whole bunch of cool clothes. Sounds good to me, until next time, stay beautiful and don’t forget to make someone smile!

Canis Major is fully plastered on the web for you to check out.
Website = CanisMajor.com
Facebook = Facebook.com/canismajorclothing
Twitter = @Canis_MJR

To stay up to date with my Poetry, my antics and new videos.
Website = theoratorpoet.wordpress.com
Twitter = @TheOrator_Poet
Facebook = Facebook.com/TheOratorPoet
Instagram = TheOrator_Poet
Vimeo = Vimeo.com/TheOrator

The cold hard facts from the ocean’s floor arrive

as a host of information

like gate crashers at a  wedding

to remind the bride and groom

that sores fester beneath their fine clothes,

and secrets linger in dusty hallways,

bones  decomposed  in some forgotten room

undisturbed by sunlight.

This pale hand of guilt operates to tweak the

functioning machinery of day

so that

We are laid bare and picked apart,

subjected to voices speaking in bewildering tongues.

The faces of night reflect in mirrors manipulated by

an insane projectionist, a sort of god of randomness

And

If there once was a whole man he has been  splintered into shards

swirling in flux under our lids.

We have slipped from brave front to the helplessness

of the dead.

The night examines  wounds,

packages of grief  pulled from corners and dragged to centre stage

that may set hearts thudding and terror to spring.

There is no armour strong enough to protect us

from ourselves .

Two lovely birds

Flying in opposite direction

-Leaving the child in ocean!

©robertgreig 2010

I travel alone, without any company,

I have traveled to the places which

are explored and some unexplored without any glitch,

I have traveled through my imagination,

Through my emotions and my passion,

I show no aggression to where I travel,

Every place I visited had a touch of marvel,

The first day I traveled through the land of joy.

Serene trees, green grassy land and smelling soy.

Beautiful landscape, adorable sunsets and sunrise,

Nothing was there that one would despise,

Those colored butterflies, those jumping rabbits,

Those singing nightingales and those endless credits,

Everyone I saw was happy and astonishing,

The place was peaceful, at the same time it was happening

Cheeks were bulged with the laughter,

Father was laughing, so was his daughter,

Quarter after quarter place grew delightful,

Bloom was all around, inside I was peaceful.

But what I couldn’t ignore was the imagination pull.

Next day I traveled through the emotions again,

I reached to a sad land, melancholic, full of pain,

That land was dark, gloomy and full of disturbance

The people I found there lacked persistence,

I saw lovers with broken hearts and broken relations,

I saw orphans with no parents and no relations,

I saw beggars begging and sleeping by the roadside

I saw people in anguish; their faces were pied,

I saw rich people and I saw poor, both were suffering,

Suffering in different conditions, nothing was buffering,

Some people were sad because they had no one around,

Some depressed because there was no one to make a sound,

Some were melancholic as their past was inevitable,

Some hated themselves because they were not capable,

Of doing what they wanted or what they were expected to do,

That land was a teacher, a teacher which changed my view.

One fine day imagination took me to its highest place,

From which I could see the two lands from a space,

I saw people in the world of joy going into the land of Sadness,

From that sad land I saw people entering the land of happiness,

There are only two lands we are in, both come together,

Depends on our condition and on us what we prefer,

Even if I prefer the happiness, it will come with sorrows,

The reason that makes me happy now will be the reason of tomorrows sorrows,

There has been no man on earth who stayed in the happiness land only,

And there can no one be who stays in the sad land only,

washing winter shadow

from my weary shoulders

it is grace that I seek

in these quiet ablutions

the sanctity of new skin.

© 2006 J. A. Rollson

Such a lovely room.

Absurdity
Whenever the poet
Balances the sea
Paces the theater
Without taking gravity
Toward that perch
He stands and waits
For air to exist.

© Ani Boghossian

We chose Karla’s poem, Reeling in the Truth, because it captured a sense of magic in an ordinary situation. Her words depict vivid pictures and we felt we could feel the fish in our hands as she returned him to the water. Her lines “between above and below surface / between the known and not-known” have stayed with us since the first reading.

You can find out more about Karla and her work at Vagabond Poet

If you would like to read our Feathers & Fish-tales issue, please send an email to ends-of-the-earth (at) h2m.myzen (dot) co.uk with Feathers & Fish-tales in the subject line.

These chances that I’m taking they frighten me,
But an enlightened I makes for an enlightened we,
So I petition God for the Truth about our heartstrings,
Are they tangled because of Fate,
Or played by Man like existential harp strings,

I’m harping, dear love,
Because my world has become a tempest,
You more Empress than Temptress,
And nightly I’m tempted,
To swear Holy allegiances before the stars and Tenants,
Of the celestial bodies whose namesake you mirror,
Angel.
My supernatural on Earth, my immeasurable worth,
My precious hearth, You sweet child, my very Heart’s rebirth,
I pray this is Destiny, Immortal hands bringing you to me,
But if I be a champion of indeterministic revelry,
Then I am blessed that my heart chose you for me.

Letters of Import: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst
Miss You So Much More 14
Written by Jennifer Kiley
Illustrated by j. kiley
First Published March 19th 2013
Published Early Tuesday AM
Fourteenth Posted June 18th 2013

Tuesday, January 1st, 2008
New Year’s Day

Dear Annie,

I didn’t realize how much you effected me. Not seeing you now for over two weeks and still 7 days to go, feels unbearable, Missing you was not something I expected. Not this strong. I’ve gotten too attached. The way it feels, is awful. Please I can’t wait for you to be my private analyst. When will it happen? I have to stop feeling this way. I’m diving into a really deep depression. I’m not so sure I haven’t started to transcend into that dark hole. It’s always waiting for me. It teases me when I am totally alone. Scottie is away but will be back tonight. She has been working on her latest film. I should say our film. I wrote the original screenplay. It’s almost ready for release but needed some extra touches done on the editing. They needed the director to make some decisions on the final cut. I think it’s going to make a great film. Story is being kept hush-hush. I’ll tell you when I can.

I love writing screenplays. I just love writing. I keep my writing edge by occasionally writing short stories, even work on several novels which eventually end up as screenplays. Writing novels helps me develop the visual settings and characters and the story tends to grow around that. What I really love, as often as I am able, is to write poetry. That’s where I work out my feeling and thoughts the most. It keeps the divine madness and artistic temperament under a mostly manageable control. Maybe that is what I will do. I’ll write a poem for you. Someday, after we start meeting, I will show some of my poems and other writing to you. But first, I have to be sure you won’t misunderstand how I feel. Even I don’t know or understand that myself. It still makes me insecure about whatever I feel. Someday I will explain what I mean by that.

I am going to include a poem in this letter. I’ll try to express my feelings. My love has nowhere else to grow and nowhere else to be expressed. Love rises above the sordidness of anything Earthly. It transcends to something divine. Untouched, untainted by the baser senses. When I write a poem it releases the pain inside us. Reaching the pureness. How do I tell you that I have strong feelings for you, without scaring you away. My intensity has been with me since birth. If I am drawn to anything or anyone, it is in my nature to be taken over by an intense passion. My release is to express the overwhelming feelings into my art. It releases the stress, some anyway. But it continues to regenerate. I have feelings for you, maybe you’ve noticed. But I’m afraid you will misunderstand them. I had a therapist who made what I felt into something that was ugly. One of my alters now feels love is bad, which makes her feel innately bad. Her feelings have been corrupted. This fucking therapist totally fucked her up over this. Now we don’t trust anyone with how we feel. We don’t even trust ourselves.

We are hoping for more understanding from you. Nothing wrong with feeling love. Attraction toward another human is quite part of one’s nature. We love animals. They communicate realness. Humans don’t, not ever. What I feel is good. I want to share my feelings of joy and happiness and love. Why do people corrupt goodness by making it impure and perverse. The way the abusers destroyed those feelings in me. One would expect better to come from a healer. A psychotherapist is suppose to be understanding. Not another person to damage what you feel. Especially, when your feelings are natural. I’m talking about burning away fear and mistrust and converting it into trust and openness with a new person. If badness blocks you, what do you do. I feel I have found in you a truly gifted and trusting person. You show no fears when you open up and you don’t turn away from someone else’s nightmares. You are not afraid of love. Giving it or sharing it.

I have been working on a theory for quite some time now about the true nature of love and the multiple layers that love takes. First, love is eternal. It is the power that fills the soul and ignites the universe infinitely. Love gets confused with the energy found in the expressions of sex. I believe they are two separate sources of energy. Sex can be expressed separate from love. Love is expressed separate from sex. It doesn’t need sexual energy to exist. The two can be brought together but they don’t need the other. Love is a higher energy. Sex is a lower energy. Sex is a momentary release of a physical reaction. Love is all intensive and filled with the energy of the universe. Love is divine and fills you up continually.

When someone tells you they love you, if their words are truthful, they are feeling the energy of the universe within themselves and want to share those feelings by sharing the energy of love with you.

What I am trying to say is your absence makes me feel these feelings more intensely. I miss having contact with you. It feel agitated in your absence. My feelings overwhelm me and cause so much pain, physical and emotional. I just want to be near you. When I cannot be near you, I go mad. I’m becoming rather attached. I don’t know what to do when I feel this way. It is a real problem for me. It is difficult to think about you. The effect you have on me. I know I will feel better once you return. Seeing you again will make all the difference.

I don’t understand why I feel this way. Please explain to me why only certain people cause these feeling in me. It is rare I feel this intensity or pain for anyone. Mostly, I just see someone and when I am not with them, they are either forgotten or I just think I will see them again. That’s it. With you, my feelings are monumental in proportion. It is love. An intense form of love that drives me into a madness. I feel crazy. Is your love so pure? Or is my love so pure for you that it has no censorship that filters its’ intensity. My attachment to you is more than I can handle on my own but there isn’t anyone I can talk to. Not even you. I have to keep this locked up.

If we work together, maybe someday, then I will be able to tell you this in person. I am just overwhelmed. It’s like looking at the sun without a filter, it burns out your sight. Am I too sensitive or open and the feelings for you and myself crash together like magnets that have been turned up to full power? I just don’t understand.

I will have to write more about this in future letters. Maybe, I will find some answers.

Until I see you again SOON. I cannot write another thought. It is too confusing.

Happy New Year Annie.

Fondly & In PAIN,
Madison

Madison Tayler’s Fantasy of Annie Haskell’s Office as her Psychoanalyst

Maksim — Somewhere In Time — Theme Song #1 For “Letters of Import”

a flower of many colours-this is for you

Thirst of the Soul
By Madison Taylor
December 27th 2007

Sorrow.
Broken hearts.
Rawness.
Burning tears.
Dark holes for escape.
Understanding.
Listener to listen.
Take the edge off without useless drugs.
Soothing sounds of trust
Comforting support.
Taking the burden away.

Relief.
Release.
Clearness of mind to hold onto.
Offering.
Will lift up spirit.
Always in the wings.
Great lift off.
Flying.
Soaring above the clouds.
Above the storm.

Love offered freely.
Never going away.
Vent the rage.
Explode.
Cry tears of pain.
No burning.
Tears of water
To feed the thirst of the soul.
Water the trees.
The flowers.
The love awaits.
Given freely.
Arms waiting to hold.
Embrace a heart so raw.
Love with softness and warmth.
Remember time does not count.
It is all relative.
Come when ready.
Arrival time open.
Love Always.

© madison taylor 2007

Cris Williamson — Song of the Soul — Theme Song #14 For “Letters of Import: Miss You So Much More 14

the labyrinth called “wandering wonderland.” it is where madison, scottie and their cats mikey, toker and patrick love to escape to

madison’s “woods of imagination” where she takes long walks to reflect. it starts just past the labyrinth

le chateau de rocher is the home of madison and scottie & their three cats sparky toker & patrick

madison’s study/library

scottie’s study library

front foyer and staircase

cinema & multi-media room

Maksim — Somewhere In Time (Quotations by Rumi-Theme Song #2 for “Letters of Import”

QUOTATIONS from: LETTERS of IMPORT: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst

“A Dream

The beginning always starts out with a dream.
It is all a dream
And we are all players
In our own nightmares”
— Madison Taylor

“For that fine madness still he did retain,
Which rightly should possess a poet’s brain.”
~Michael Drayton~
(1563-1631)

“Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?”
Christopher Marlowe for “Hero and Leander”

“A therapeutic relationship is often more psycho-emotionally intimate than a marriage, or a romantic attachment. I know things about my patients that they would never dream of revealing to their spouses or families. Why is that? One word — trust. If you do not have a connection with a therapist, you cannot trust them. If you do not have trust, you will not expose yourself, and if you do not expose your innermost being, what good is the therapy?” — unknown but ask any great therapist

“Men have called me mad, but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence…whether much that is glorious–whether all that is profound–does not spring from disease of thought…” — Edgar Allan Poe

QUOTATIONS on MISS YOU SO MUCH MORE:

“If the portraits of our absent friends are pleasant to us, which renew our memory of them and relieve our regret for their absence by a false and empty consolation, how much more pleasant are letters which bring us the written characters of the absent friend.” ― Héloïse d’Argenteuil, The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse

“It was going to be a long, dark night but not quite as dark as it was in the abyss of his heart where there was nothing but hollowness, yet it felt heavy, almost as if someone still resided there.” ― Faraaz Kazi

“Do you know what the mathematical expression is for longing? … The negative numbers. The formalization of the feeling that you are missing something.” ― Peter Høeg, Smilla’s Sense of Snow

“Do you think everybody misses somebody? I believe, sometimes, that the whole world has an aching heart.” ― Kate DiCamillo, Because of Winn-Dixie

Related articles

• “Manifs pour tous” : denunciation of French police brutality to the Council of Human Rights at the UnN (amhec.wordpress.com)

Junk is all I have
My organs are not like yours
They are composed
of rusted screws and nails
My hands made of crushed plastic bottles
My words are a pit of torn sheets
And mice food

I lived a monologue of junk
The friendships I formed
All junk
Not at the time
But they had an expiration date
Like a half empty milk gallon
I fear other humans
I don’t want them around me
Their sweet words
Rot

I walked the downtown streets
With an empty cart
Stolen from a Ralphs market
I carry it everywhere
With each person that came
The busted red cart
Began to compile junk
More failed lovers
More junk

I now walk the downtown streets
Carrying mountains of junk
Bits of mechanical parts
Car tires
A broken cassette player
Rusty gas pipes
Sweet junk

I have no lady
Junk is my soul mate
We shall marry
Set our honey moon
In the alley dumpster

I bathe in junk
I see people
Their lies
Their egotism
Their artificial smiles
Junk

To score a lucky dame
Or foxy man
You feed them junk
In your kitchen table
The fool seated
With a bib tied across their neck
Crave to their egos
Flatter them
Be a magician
Set the illusion
That their junk is golden
But really
It’s just plain ol’ junk

Today is junk
I smoke a cigar
Not rich with tobacco
But with junk

“You will kill your lungs”
Doctor Rably said
“I have no lungs, all I have is junk”
I told the idiot

Money is a funny thing
The crisp dollar with an old man’s face
We spend our years
To gain that junk
At the cash register
The holy exchange
Of green junk
For more junk!

I rest in mountains
Cities
Deserts
Seas
Of junk

Materials are junk
People are junk
America is junk
This poem is junk

Killing the innocent on the surface

-Cowards fighting with the civilians!

II
There is a picture I have always wanted to paint
I would labor at the canvas sweating
the sweat burning my eyes
but not slowing me down
not blurring my vision
each detail getting all of my attention all of my blood
each detail capturing my very soul

III
There is a picture I have always wanted to paint
We are laughing holding hands
Your eyes sparkling – mine dancing
Your hair is up the way you know I like it
And the Gods are in their Heavens
and everything is fine

Remember when you wanted

To be in love but you were

Too broken to feel anything at all.

I remember.

I wanted to be found at bus depots.

I was bewitched, completely lost

And looking through tiny circles.

We had a love sharper

Than any shard of glass,

I never wanted this…

Love was always something I couldn’t grasp.

The proof was there,

On the scars mapping my palms.

We shared flesh.

We wore blood.

We were a head on collision.

We were widows with no direction

Holding vigil in empty rooms,

Lonely sadists, sweating it out

Until the next body was to be consumed.

Adorned by moon and stars watching

In the velvet sky aloft,

I came across an unnamed wood along an unnamed road,

Where earth was hard and air was cold,

And twisted trees reached for God above.

-

Standing there, Debating with myself

On whether to entreat upon this place so dark,

I acted against my better judgement, Placing one foot

In front of the other wondering if even the morning bird,

Would sing his song here.

-

I walked for what seemed an eternity, Passing

Only shadows and tortured trees until,

I found myself entering a glade, Lit by the moon

Who watched, As if knowing,

What would happen here.

-

And there, Centred in the glade,

An arch of black, twisting stone stood silently,

Bigger than I by a foot each way, A veil of mist

Hanging down, Glistening in that watchful moon,

Perfect silence all around.

-

Slowly I approached, Keeping my wits about me,

Knowing that the shadows keep their gifts until sprung,

But as I approach I begin to hear, A whispering sound,

Which at first I thought was the wind, But soon realised

It was coming from the arch.

-

Closer now I hear it louder, Voices of both men and women,

Children too I am sure, Though their words can’t be made out,

Some are joyous, Others I can hear the tears falling down their faces,

But where they are is a different question,

Of which I have no clue.

-

Around the arch I make my way, To understand just what

It is, Although my checks advance my knowledge no further.

The whispy veil moves in the breeze and the voices just increase.

I think of walking through but hold back, As too reckless a move…

Well, people have died from less.

-

“I know not, from where your voices come, Tell me true

If they come from beyond, That silver veil drifting on the wind,

Are you those who are, will be or yet have been?”

I spoke almost fearful but I had to try, But the whispering continued,

And I relieved no response for my questions.

-

“Maybe there is someone who will talk to me, Let us not be strangers

You and I, Come forth and tell me your troubles, And what of this place,

In which I find myself”, I continued.

But received no words in exchange for mine, I waited hoping an answer would

present itself.

-

When all of a sudden from that place beyond came a transparent arm,

As if made of silver smoke but it bore some shape, Followed by a whispery figure.

No face came forth, A hood it wore. But even I could see it wore tatters.

I stepped back, Unsure of just what this creature was other than

It wasn’t of the same world as I.

-

“Sir”, Said I not too sure on how to address such a being,

“I find myself lost and bewildered in an unnamed place, If you could

Tell me where I am, Or whom I am addressing. Or even the nature

of this arch I find before me and the voices from within”.

-

This creature was not stirred by words and seemed to not

Notice I was even standing there. I waited a few moments before

Walking up to the arch and this time inspected the stone itself, A few

Brief moments I saw the etched markings there before I was

Cast upon my back.

-

It becoming clear now that this creature is a guardian, Of what though

I cannot be sure. It’s attention finally on me I address it once again.

“I beseech you, What is this place? This arch? These voices… What lies

beyond the veil? And what of you? I pray you tell, So I might understand

and return to my home”.

-

This… spectre, this ghost of yore, Come… I can only assume

From some distant place beyond life itself, Moved from between myself

And the arch, Then beckoned me towards the veil with one arm.

“Reveal your face if you are to beckon me onwards from this glade,

I have not found my way here to be sent forth by remnants!”.

-

Here I found my blood begin to boil, Angered by the ignorance of this,

This… Wraith, This… Shade, I spoke again but found my voice somewhat raised.

“Sir or madam if you be! It occurs to me no creature of this earth shares shape with you,

So of this world you must not be! If this be true, That arch from whence you came,

Must surely lead to salvation, To the afterlife or some other plane of existence”.

-

I was met with silence once again, My soul burning! Why… Why does this thing

Taunt me so with no words of comfort or guiding knowledge, True I could turn and leave

But no longer! I had to know, That choice had long since passed me. So it was now or not at all.

I walked once more towards the arch and found the shade flew between me and it,

“Move”, Said I… “I shall see for myself”.

-

At this the creature moved aside, For the first time

Seeming to acknowledge I had spoken, Once more with it’s arm

Beckoned into the arch. For an instant I almost took the bait but thought

To easy it was. Fearing this might be some trick,

I took a step back and pondered on this for a moment.

-

“If this indeed be heaven’s gate, I ask you only this,

If I pass through and can’t return, Is there…

Is there balm in Gilead? So I might pass too with ease,

And close my eyes, And walk into the light,

Nor fear again and feel no more bitter pain.

-

No response I received, My eyes welled with tears as I breathed deep,

Beckoned once more, My tears ran free, My end had become a reality,

What else could I do when presented with such a choice, to know

Or not to know… No, There was but one choice, But here tears ran dry…

After all, Superstition aside, It could be just an arch!

-

“Sir” said I, “Or Madam be. Truly you have helped me little on this night, But I

On the other hand may find the light and bring it forth unto the world,

Or I might find further darkness, And whatever God it is that watches down on me,

Shall cast my soul into oblivion, Yet you won’t answer”.

-

I knew what to expect this time around, Not a word did I hear,

Instead I put some space between myself and the arch, Breathing deeper than before,

In that moment, Somewhere between blinding fear and wondrous hope, God I found

Somewhere in my heart and prayed a prayer of hope. Here I would find my making,

Or, Having turned his back on me, That God would show me my end.

-

The time had come, With all the stars, The moon… Watching from above,

I took the breath and then the plunge, Running as if the very devils of hell were on my heels,

Time seemed to slow and as I got closer, The shade joined me, Us becoming one.

I was there now, The whisperers ever louder, And a split second later,

I passed into the arch.