collecting the mail

 

collecting the mail

after being gone two weeks in europe

and my mind is sullied

 

i don’t know what it is

 

maybe being gone for so long

i expected something different coming back

 

but it’s the same ugly faces

doing the same ugly things

 

and nothing will change any of us

 

the woman behind me

in the postal line is angry

 

about her kids running around

or no longer being young and beautiful

 

about it being a saturday

and she’s stuck in a post office line

with ugly people

living dull and ugly lives

 

she keeps ringing the service buzzer

even though the clerk is off getting my mail

 

presses and presses the bell

like its personally offended her

 

i turn and say, look, lady…

but she’s not having any of me today

 

so we stand there

and she rings the buzzer

 

ring!

ring!

ring!

 

and i think about how europe is over-rated

 

the postal clerk comes back

with my mail

 

she throws it at me

because she thinks i’m the one

whose been making all of the noise with the buzzer

 

explaining myself isn’t worth the words

 

so i take the bundle

off to sift through

 

while the lady behind me

begins to yell at the postal clerk

about a lost package

or the fact that there is no god

 

there is nothing in my mail of any value

 

just fliers for politicians i won’t vote for

ads for plays and symphonies i won’t see

 

a package of worthless coupons

a wedding announcement for someone i don’t even know

 

and a book by a young, hip poet

that i’ll take home and toss with the others

never to read

 

unless i find

i’m bored out of my mind one day

 

and thinking about the king of england

just ain’t doing it

 

for me.





the politicians at the street festival

 

sit

in booths

 

between fried oreo stands

bounce houses

and people selling plastic figurines

 

they sit and smile

and are impervious to sun and rain

 

to the ten bands on the street

all playing shitty beatles covers at once

 

they look like

they’re made of wax

 

dumb smiles all around

 

that one is pro-choice

that one is pro-life

 

this one has a banner

that says love is love is love

 

but doesn’t really say anything at all

 

they sit there

at their cluttered tables

with flags and stacks of papers before them

 

the politicians at the street festival

 

papers full of all of the items

they stand for or are against

 

more trees have died for their nonsense

than one could hazard to count

 

and they would be

the biggest idiots here

 

if it weren’t for all of the people walking around

 

eating hot dogs

and fried dough

 

all of the clueless citizens who voted

these grinning hucksters into office

 

in the first

goddamned place.





capitalism will kill us all

 

we burn teachers in effigy

while revering false populists and rapist athletes

as golden gods on the mount

 

burn ourselves out into oblivion

for someone else’s wealthy stake

 

as the kids marching to school in death masks

breathing in the infected air

are tasked with repeating the cycle

 

past the honking cars

of the tired and angry peasants

who came before them

 

simple fools

with angry mouths and quaking chins

 

trapped inside a madness

that we were all born into

 

left with nothing

but tv shows and a timely death

 

as our only escape.





talk to the plants

 

the brunch faces

have me down

 

i can’t understand

the way they can smile and hiss

over orange juice and champagne

 

i am hungover and hungry

 

i have walked these blocks

longer than some of them

have been alive

 

and have nothing to show for it

 

but piles of paper

full of silly words

 

i tried to become some thing

but something always held me back

 

or the gods just said

kid, we simply don’t need you

 

to perfect the art of nothing

is to perfect the art of man

 

or some bullshit like that

 

but the brunch faces

they don’t understand

 

they laugh and laugh

and eat their runny eggs

 

order more orange juice and champagne

 

as if the world doesn’t

have them clamped down too

 

i can’t stand them

i’ve written enough about them

 

and there is nothing left to do now

but get off of these streets

 

go home

stare at the wall

 

as the sun fades on another stupid

wasted day

 

that desires me to talk to no one

in this world

 

but the plants.





making art during the fall of democracy

 

dead in the water nation

seventy-seven-degree morning

 

up before five a.m.

 

collecting the gnats

that have gathered

in the dirt ring in the shower

 

as the wars rage on

as women lose their rights

 

as government comes for the queer community

 

these theocratic proto-fascist

christian taliban zombies

slobbering on their social media bully pulpits

 

as the supreme court

scorches the earth

 

while the geriatric president stands there

scratching his senile balls

 

talking about nothing but the economy

 

as gas prices burn suburbia

into budding fascism

 

and the plague plays on and on and on

 

as july shows its ugly face

and every true blood

sticks an american flag up their tight asses

 

calling it democracy

 

i stare at another massacre of words

on the computer screen

 

thinking this is good

or not nearly good enough

 

i guess.         

Title: Where am I headed 
Genre: Pop (Spoken word)

Verse 1

I was lost in myself; I hardly could figure out why
But when I tried asking ‘’why?’’
It became very blurry the answer
Could it be what I thought I knew
Or what is happening around me?
I looked at the completeness of my world
Only to realize how vague it has become
My perception , I thought, would guide me
But the contradiction, compared to what I’m encountering, is something else
Am I just becoming ignorant or in a conundrum?
Then, I’d say, ‘’time would tell’’
However, time, I realized, was my foe
So, I have to really figure out where am I headed?

Verse 2

Come to think of it, I was educated
Educated?! Okay, I was taught in school what’s right from what’s wrong
On second thought, recognizing the anomalies in my life and the world as a whole
I’m observing that everything is so wrong that what’s left isn’t right!
What I was taught was ‘’the good’’ seem to be the bad
And vice-versa
Can this really be?
Hmmm…Trying to think through
But wait, can provide an answer to what I don’t know?
Well, perhaps, the wrong answer!
To the issue at hand, did I learn the right thing?
Can I change the situation around me?
I believed in the world of possibility
But my perception is fighting against what is around me!
Oh yea! Something isn’t right
So, It’s time I looked at the mirror and ask
Where am I headed?

Verse 3

Can anything worth learning ever be taught?
A question I was forced to ask myself
I have to re-evaluate what my thoughts are about everything
A friend really challenged when she asked
‘’what if all you knew about everything and what you are being told and taught about everything were all false, what you goinna do?’’
Till this day, i have no concrete answer
Yet, I’m poised to challenge myself and move in this light
‘’How?’’ I asked, looking to the heavens for answers
After lengthy years of thinking and asking people questions,
I came to the realization:
Unlearn the inconsistent to relearn what ought to be ingrained in mindset of my formative years for a proper learning
That, I  knew, would help me change what I encountered
‘’Afterall, a change in my thought-process, better yet, my perception, would change my circumstances, my world, that is.’’, I thought. ‘’And  make the world at large a better place’’
‘’How do you want to go about it?’’ someone asked me, as I talked to him about my situation
It’s going to be a long path to illumination
Then, I would know where I am headed

In The Rape Of The Lock the metamorphosis of the epic gains full poetic freedom.
Discuss.

In the vein of the statement, ‘If Pope be not a poet, where is poetry to be found?” wherein, Dr. Johnson’s putting forth of rhetorical question might further be justification in the vindictiveness in sublimity and elevation of the loftiness and grandiosity revealed by the five cantos. Thus, exclaiming the marvels of gifted poet Alexander Pope, Dr. Johnson’s critical appreciation ought to be quote worthy regarding Pope’s work, ”The most airy, the most ingenious and the most delightful of all his compositions.”

The Rape of The Lock is a mock heroic epic by the Restoration epoch literary lion Alexander Pope attempting to ameliorate rivalrous relationship between Fermors and Petres Libertinism and profligacy of the monarchical sovereignty of Queen Anne (1701-14) has been satirised in the mock epic. .

No other poetic other than Shakespearean composition reaped heroic couplets and in as much the narrator of the poem soars and sinks, magnifies and diminishes his characters, condescending towering climaxes and descending towards abysmal depths. In so far
poetic effect such as high seriousness and low comedy, optimism, gloom, mirth and despair and a host of other atmospheres or poetic states have been painted in the sustained heroic couplet. Professor William Frost is right when he says that in the Rape of the Lock, “Every poetic and logical energy is brought into focus, no syllable giving the effect of having been placed or selected at random.” “Sound and Sense” are wedded, so too, are the relation of “rhyme and reason”.

Written in epic manner with allegorical characters, the work jestfully satirizes Belinda with Great Britain, the Baron as the Earl of Oxford, who at the time of the poetry headed Queen Anne’s government, Clarissa with Lady Mesham and Thalestris with the Duchess
of Marlborough (both Lady Mesham and Duchess of Marlborough had political influence because of the Queen’s attachment to them, and were rivals for her favour). The burlesque mockery of supposedly pernicious aspects of high society is never altogether in
the stroke of seriousness evoking Hazlitt in dilemma of “whether to laugh or weep”. In the words of Hazlitt : “No pairs are spared, no profusion of ornament, no splendour of the poetic diction to set off the meanest things. The balance between the concealed irony and
the assumed gravity is as nicely trimmed as the balance of power in Europe. The little is made great, and the great little. You hardly know whether to laugh or weep. It is the triumph of insignificance, the apotheosis of foppery and folly. It is the perfection of the mock heroic.” Incarnation of Miltonic character of Raphael paralleling as the Ariel by Pope is intending the lofty exploit of employing a sylphlike supernatural and celestial machinery in order to advise and warn the Baron of thievery in unlocking Belinda’s lock.

Examine the disposition of the heroine figure in the Rape of The Lock by the literary lion of the Augustan epoch Alexander Pope.


The ambiguity of the romantic affection and moral censure on the narrators part is deliberate and derives from the mood of lighthearted geniality and in part from the imagery of a glamorous world of coquettes and sylphs. Love, admiration and regret are ingeniously woven into the fabric of the poem to a much greater degree than that of the mock heroic satire. Miss Arabella Fermor is the main feminine disposition casting heroine figure in the mock heroic couplet The Rape of The Lock. Alexander Pope’s dedicatory poetic verses were intended to revere and venerate Miss Arabella’s fallen tresses. Pope satirized mildly and genially the restrained and refined manners of
the upper classes aristocracy in the light of Belinda’s personae. For this whim of satirical exploits, Pope throws Belinda in the Hampton Court wherein, ministers of the State, “sometimes counsel take- and sometimes tea”.

“This Lock, the Muse shall consecrate to Fame,
And midst the stars inscribe Belinda’s name.”

Belinda at her dressing table is the heiress of a whole race of previous lady charmers from the playhouse girl in Restoration Comedy to the old coquette in fashionable London society.
Although Belinda supernaturally divined to be a goddess deity, but her envisioning of a fairland of jewels, china, lapdog and snuff boxes epitome of a Narcissist as put forth by Alexander Pope.

By virtue of poetic satire, Belinda’s elevated elegance and charming sublimity “Belinda smiled and all the world was gay.”… “new glory to the shining sphere!”.. Belinda’s visionary sightedness epitomizes the metaphor for iridescent blaze glowing in the brightness of solar
luminosity as poetically graced in naturalistic impressions. To Pope, Belinda’s metaphysical and symbolist manifestations of being a priestess and the deity herself upon the toilette-the dressing
table scene alluding to wondrous face and lightning eyes. Furthermore, her glory of the adventurous conquest of baron knights over a game of cards and finally to the emerging victor in
the epic encounter of Beaux and Beauty justified the serendipity of her heroic spectacle and marvelous feat in more than mere flimsy and bawdiness.

Belinda with her sparkling manner of -being -feminine divinity contrasts Clarissa with true Englishness of- being -a -governess by Freudian psychology and cultural anthropology. On the contrary, Clarissa is moral and heroic in the most pedestrian manner with grayed tresses whether curled or uncurled and faded lock whether painted or unpainted. Despite a minor character with subsidiary role, Clarissa is no less important. She is one of those not mystical but of elusive Characters in poetry whose words and actions might be baffling us with paradoxical inferences.

Her keen sense of priorities reinforces Alexander Pope’s own attitude to the bright world of ‘Sol’ and she also serves as a foil to the poem’s glittering ‘toyshop’. To Belinda, on the other hand, Pope promises immortality of divinity; Belinda triumphs with christening celestial graces of beauty.

Spinsterhood must be the worst of all evils for a lady. Examine the significance of these lines by Leslie Stephen in the context of the locks.
Examine the objectification of women and discrimination towards the feminine gender with textual references and critical evidence.

Belinda’s locks are a wrecking havoc in the Rape Of the Lock. Even supernatural and celestial machineries such as the fantasy characters’ sylphs were clipped into halves by shears in their endeavours to transmogrify cabbage into roses for Belinda’s sake. Locks whether grayed or grayed, neither coloured nor uncoloured and either curled or uncurled should be regarded as mortal tresses in ephemeral space-time subject to state of mortification.

Locks should be greyed and faded by the essence of time and thus, it would be a disaster to retain Belinda’s locks forever, notwithstanding owing to Clarissa’s statements “Since painted, or not painted, all shall fade …And she, who scorns a man must die a maid:”

Marilyn Francus commentary of Alexander Pope’s condescending mock epic towards women’s vanity pointed out, “The negative inscription of the female reflects both the tendency to revise in favour of the male and the oppositional relationship between the sexes; what constitutes the strength in the female weakens the male.”

Notes and Further Reading

Introduction G.S. Rousseau Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Rape Of The
Lock pages: 1-14

Introductory J.S. Cunningham Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Rape Of
The Lock pages:

Pope and Gender Valerie Rumbold, Pat Rogers Editorship of Cambridge
Companion To Alexander Pope, pages: 222-26

The Case of Miss Arabella Fermor Cleanth Brooks Twentieth Century
Interpretations Of The Rape Of The Lock pages: 29-45

        A non-exclusive Release of 
         Heartfelt that Matters

    My Rest comforts 
                   Time's Engine 

 The staggering rhythm 
        that rests  in  Awe
        of   LOVES Rising 

            •          •          •

           Daylight upon 
       Soothed that knows
    That knows in the Quiet 

 Appreciate a gift 
poured from the Timeless 
      Oceans 
                 of
                    LOVE 



 by John Edward Culp 
      March 11, 2023

Brian Michael Barbeito is a Canadian writer and photographer. Recent work appears at The Notre Dame Review. 

Spirit of a Place, Spirit of a Thing (Artist Statement)

In an off handed remark during an interview, U.G. Krishnamurti, called by some an anti-guru, and by himself, ‘Something like a philosopher,’ said that he once thought he could sense the spirit of a place. But then he brushed it off through words and body language. It didn’t fit in with his philosophy and message. But I resonated with his statement anyhow, because I had always felt that I could feel the spirit of a place and also a thing. Old town, lake still and wide. City street, carnival game vendor and prizes. Bee. Spider. Flower. Vine. Ridge. Summit. Stone. Petal. Stream. Sun. Cloud. Bird and dusk, horizon and dawn. Lock, denoting love, affixed to lonesome bridge alone in the rain. Artifacts. Areas. Some saturnine and some sanguine. Hundreds of places and things, their spirit, against reason and logic, somehow speaking out, not with language of course, but calling out nevertheless. Semantics and nomenclature could argue what spirit means. Is it the atmosphere, the daemon, the angel, the area, the vibration, the feeling? Is it physical, metaphysical, true and there, or purely imaginary and projected? Difficult to know conclusively. But there is something I think in all that mise- en-scene, and so on the rural footpaths and metropolitan worlds also, I try and photograph it and also write about it, this spirit of a place.

               Who I Am

I’ve been wearing this person

All these years, have become

Used to him, his shape and his

Size, learned to put up with his

Manners and voice. I’ve watched

Him age, watched him lose a step,

Fall back a bit, begin to lose his

Place, sometimes forgetting even

Simple things, his wallet, his keys.

I’ve listened to him try to explain

Himself to others, himself to what’s

Left of himself. I’ve learned to be

Him, fell into the role, assumed his

Identity, even answer to his name

If I hear it in the midst of the day

He builds around us.


                         Identity

Each I.D. we carry says something else

About us. This one says I can be here

And this one says I can drive if I want

To, though right now I don’t have any-

Thing to drive, just me walking through

A line, a line called security check as if

This group were a threat. It’s hard to

Imagine their jobs, asking people in line

To establish their right to be here. How

Often do they catch someone, someone

Dangerous, dangerous like we have learned

To expect from watching the news. Imagine

The headlines: senior citizen with no i.d.

Tried to breach security but failed was then

Jailed. What we carry tells them who we

Are and what we might do, do if we don’t

Have the proper identification to show them.

 
                In The End

Our obits will have us going peacefully

Surrounded by family, after a brief, or

Was it a lengthy illness, an illness they

Rarely name, and there we go off into

Whatever comes next. But what about

Those of us who will die violently, along

A highway, decapitated, disemboweled

Or in an emergency room, surrounded

By personnel who don’t know us from

Adam or Eve. But obits tend to miss

Those details. Like undertakers they’ll

Dress us up and put us in ideal situations –  

With immediate or extended family, our


Loving folks gathered to watch us on our

Way to a next life that we all hope will be

There, waiting for us.