Ayanda Billie, nihilistic bees and the albatross keeper

 You’re fog. You’re a psychoanalyst. You’re a cell,
 a wilderness that knows to formulate the razor sharp
 reckoning of night feeding, swimming in the abyss of
 the lake with your tongue of grief and I look to your
 future and the steps you have taken with tokenism, with
 certainty. I find this stressful. I have taken to write
 in detail about the snakes that meditate in the sun. Let
 us wait, demonstrate a force for good. The day must
 need repair. You navigate the game world. I consult the
 gravitas of the day, the utility of humans, the function
 of wildflowers. What do you know of the arithmetic? Of Jung
 and the leaves of rubbish stumbling before you? Can
 you fix that muck? Poet, I want to make the world better,
 set you a task, reconfigure the aims of the world in
 front of me. The phoenix burns us. I don’t want to think
 of mindless conjecturing. All I see are problems worthy of
 investigation. I want choice. Poet, what is pain, the subject
 matter found in the atlas and the voiceless rabbit, the
 rusty nail at the bottom of a bucket, the concept of suffering
 branching out in seismic overdraft. The light has gone cold, chased
 out. Random driftwood is found at the end of the sea.
 I am waiting for the monster to eat me in the darkness.
 The birds shriek in the backyard in need of the moonlight
 that tours around the world. The shroud is inspired
 where it meets the horizon. The sun bends in its despair
 and I put it back together. Its strange continuity. Its
 neurology is not working right. We must kill it. The rough
 spark. Do you know what the appropriate response is?
 To meet the braver hypothetical. Look at the miserable
 sharks. See how they ably count sheep in this hard life.
 I admire the albatross keeper. I take the windswept eagle
 sham, my common humanity, Adler’s school of thought,
 the potential for power, the positioning of the elk’s turning
 point, the function of nihilism lecturing to the milk-fed
 vision of the universe within me. Tell the truth in your ignorance,
 the poet tells me from his university extracting laws, order
 from energetic chaos. I am religious. I obtain functionality from
 nature’s plant sap, unfurling the tragedy from the finite road
 that knows its determining limits. I don’t know if you
 have nerves, the capacity for bliss or joy, the character
 that makes up the abstract me is something that is undefined.
 To care for egoic self. Achebe, Soyinka are champions.
 We push ourselves out against the world informed by the
 unknown code in genes. I search for footprints in the river.


 Mzi Mahola, spiritual warriors and poetic choice

 I am alone. I stand alone. I achieved it. I am excellent.
 But poets, what do you believe in? There are days when
 I am not myself. When I speak terrible Czech. Mouthing,
 ‘I need you’. The trajectory shifts. I find arrows in
 my right hand. My sister is not here. I testify my heart out
 but nothing clicks. I adjust the turning point of my behaviour
 accordingly. The day is bitter. I wish to gather branch
 to me, to find ample loyalty in Christian fellowship and
 do you still have faith, poet? You see teeth, I am not
 young anymore. People have left me. I am undone. Radical
 achievement is a mountain, but I am standing in the
 strategy of the valley not caring about my pain. Milan
 Kundera is bemused; I am the outsider frightened of
 my future. I need help. Feel around. Find the words.
 but the poets here are social animals. Spiritual warriors
 with a key in their left hand that will unlock creativity.
 The party has left. I am a dying poet, but you are alive.
 You are the exit out of this planet. I have been betrayed
 by non-meaning. The goal tangles. Look for the specific
 yonder. Life is an imperfect funk sprawled across the
 landscape of wilful ingenuity calculating potential. Thrive!
 But only if you dare to find the truth. Cowardly deceit is
 staring at me, communicating its progress but the apt
 rubbish, its captain, the morality of the community’s aims,
 responsible sharks in a flock of suits can be found there.
 There is a coral bead in my mouth, grief in my head, tragic
 basics that keep me up at night, but I keep walking
 ahead of time, mall rats, crowds of people carrying birds.
 You are not me. I don’t write as you do. I am critic.
 You are wise. I am undergraduate and apprentice. You are
 masterful. I am green shoot, Canadian prairie, rural and
 jungle, Alberta, the mighty river fixed up with stars. My light
 is growing dim and I no longer have the capacity to speak
 happy. I want nothing to do with gravity. I can’t get a
 firm grip of it. Into the river. Into the narrative glut. I am
 fish. You are genius. Nihilism corrupts me. I know of
 malevolence, brutal natures, and the clouds are ignorant
 of bliss. Look at where I am standing solitude. I am a
 school of bright volunteers making headway. I know what
 torments female poets. We want meaning, calling. Poet you
 feel the joy, you pursue deeds, tidings manifest beneath
 your pen while I cut away sustenance with unformed
 loneliness. It doesn’t matter what I believe, there’s choice.
 I am severely depressed, in pain but understand the aim
 of life, making stupid plans, implementing fixed success.
 There’s a poetic choice in ceremonial life, in modal suffering.

Ageless Love 
 
The two teens were walking home along a forested country road.  She looked at him and said “Duke, your fly is open.’ 
 
After looking around and not seeing anyone, he zipped up. 
 
“Sandra, you’ve got pine needles on your skirt butt.  I’d be pleased to wipe them off.” 
 
They had made a slight detour on their way home to a place in the woods which they thought of as their spot. 
 
As they approached her place she asked “Do you suppose your parents know?” 
 
“They either expect or know, but I’m pretty sure they don’t mind.  My mother made sure that I respected girls and very pointedly insisted I carry condoms after she heard some of my end of our phone calls.  I don’t know what I said that clued her in – mothers are mysterious.  My father saw us together once and said ‘That Sandra is a fine girl.  You couldn’t do any better.’  What do your parents think?” 
 
“My mother gave me the talk too.  I mentioned that you had been walking me home.  She gave me a look, but didn’t get nosey.” 
 
As Duke dropped Sandra off at her place, the parents made a big deal of inviting him in for a coke.  Despite the seeming innocence of the treat, he felt like he was under a microscope. 
 
An old man woke up in his sickbed from a beautiful dream mumbling “you are my sunshine, my only sunshine” and first looked over at the picture of a young couple on the headboard at the opposite side of the double bed, then at the medicines lined up on his end table. 
 
“Sandra, I had another one of those dreams.  This time we were in high school a few years before we got married.  People thought we were too young, but we raised two fine children and stayed together until death did us part.  I should have been the one who parted, I miss you so much.  It isn’t the only dream.  Sometimes I dream about us watching one of Jeff’s baseball games, or Betty’s dance recital.  I give you most of the credit for how they turned out.  We must have been good models; they now have fine families of their own.  The grandchildren don’t mind hanging out with granddad, or if they do they hide it well.” 
 
“Some of the dreams aren’t as good, but I always wake up from ones in which you start to show symptoms.  That was hard enough to take the first time around.” 
 
“The kids try to fix me up with someone from time to time.  I know they thought they were being kind to a lonely old man, but the memory of you is better than any woman.  When I did go out a few times, the dates were driven off by my talking about you.” 
 
“The dreams have helped me survive.  I took up painting and have gone to community college classes.  I volunteer in the local park, run a wheel chair at the hospital and teach a class on writing so I don’t feel completely useless.” 
 
“The hospice people say we won’t be separated much longer.  Expect me to join you in about a week.” 

Title: Significance of Life
Adapted from a book by Chimezie Ihekuna (Mr. Ben)
Screenwriter: Robert Sacchi

Genre: Drama/Family

For reviews, production consideration and other publicity, please contact us through the email addresses below:

– mrbenisreal@gmail.com

– rsacchi@rsacchi.20m.com

Synopsis/Details: 

It looks at the various happenings in the world as mirrored in
politics, relationship and family. As Muriel Rukeyser said: “Our
universe is made up of stories, not atoms”, The World We Live In tells the experiences of people and how their stories explore
politics, family, friendship, and love.

This five-chapter short story collection contains the following
stories “Daniela Has Changed!” “Dad Loves Me”, “The Order of the Day” and “See Life In Your Own Way.” Chapter One explains how Daniela was on her way to being a troubled teenage girl, but a heart-to-heart talk with her parents made her turn over a new leaf for the better. They used their stories to change her completely.

Chapter Two tells the story of six-year-old Jack, whose father, Mr.
Phelps, divorced his mom, Jane, on grounds of infidelity. Because of
not being able to see his mom, Jack poured out his displeasure by beating and bullying his classmates. Mr. Phelps made a sensitive
subtle decision based on the reports of Jack’s behavior from the
proprietress, Miss Dean, to make Jack a good boy. He succeeded by
doing the unusual…

Chapter Three narrates the plight of Carlos Alberto at the University
of Nassau in the Bahamas. Popularly called ‘The Conspiracy Theorist’, his ideologies caused a lot of attention but the school authorities took a drastic measure to halt the activities of his group. Carlos was arrested and after a while, he was released on grounds of good behavior but only to discover that he was rehabilitated. He returned to his native Bolivia to go through a life-changing situation…

Chapter Four recounts the story of a young man, Micah, whose
frustration got the better of him. But with ‘stern’ encouragement Floyd, his friend, he wrote an award-wining rap song, ‘See Life
In Your Own Way’ for rapper P.R.O who went on to win The African Lyricist of the Year award.

Chapter Five unveils the literary experiences of a young Australian,
Martins. Through determination, persistence and his belief in his own success, despite countless manuscript rejections and discouragement from his friend, Charles, he went on to become the
first literary ambassador to the rest of the world. Martins’ undying
quest to become a successful literary icon was motivated by the
success of a certain author he read about on the internet…

Only Fragments Found 

I wonder how can I tell my child that we are humans? 

Everyone is pointing and shouting at 
The blacks, the Asians, and the Arabs. 
I don't understand who is inferior or superior. 

Am I lazy to remain silent? 
Like a warrior widow. 
Maybe I am insane to resist the awful travesty? 
Bush promised me that he is going to establish equal opportunity and peace for my country. 

Since the war started only fragments found 

Everyday is another kind of tragedy  
Nobody dreams of being a comedy  
Although, most of the soldiers are crazy. 
I learn about peace and not preferable race  

Undesirable faces must be wiped off the earth  
We are not corpses yet, we must record our existence
The sadness and massacres must be in history books. 

If our stories are miserable then you can laugh at me  
If our memories are from the past then slaughter my life  

Those bullets holes on the wall of my grandparent's room, They will not be erased, 
hold my hand and let me breathe fresh air. 

10/12/2021 Bleeding Heart Poet 

  
 The Orange-bellied Himalayan Squirrel
  
 How charming - it makes the world spell-bound
 O Himalayan Squirrel, Red-bellied Squirrel
 How you do all the things charming 
 How you do all the things shining to the eyes
 How you do all the things, sitting on the branches of the silk cotton tree
 How you bring out the cotton from the cotton fruit 
 How you gather all in a certain place
 How your brain acts on how to beautify the other side
 I know you don't, all meanings of the cause, but you do
 How your brain is fixed on how to make the nest warm
 How all together the cotton matches the long line catkins of the land
 How it shines with its red belly in the morning sun
 On the branches the sunny morning opens the door
 The heart that never felt such a wonder
 The love and beauty, no greed for power and pelf
 A resort to live forever
 What the eyes experience here, will ever come to an end?
 O sacred Orange- bellied Squirrel 
 I see you and the heart always dances
 The heart throbs for the new passion something for love and sex
 We need the figure of the belly as red as the sign 'Love'.
   
 Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
 05/12//2020
  
 The Pheasant-tailed Jacana
  
 The doves, the kingfishers and so many colorful birds 
 Flying and calling over head in the silent resilient place
 Charms the hilly atmosphere around the lake
 Smile over the breeze, wiggling the lotus petals and leafs
 As though I am going to rise from a deep deadly sleep 
 Drinking the water of Lethe in Hades  
 How the world of love made by the two  
 The male and the female pheasant jacana
 How they live on in this watery leaves
 How they come close to each other 
 How the female lays the eggs and fly to the other  
 Leaving her mate behind she must have her desire fulfilled  
 Infatuated by again builds her love palace with
 Lays her eggs as before in every case 
 How the male hatches the eggs and breeds the chicks!
 Of hatching and fostering the chicks 
 What a wonder a sense of love and faith to each other!
 And responsibly set from above!
 To every each other - father, mother, sister, brother, lover and beloved
 From one corner of the world to the other we always wander for something new
 A doorway to the novelty of thought and light 
 O breeding male pheasant Jacana, 
 What you leave behind for us?  
 I think and observe the responsibility for the new generation.
  
 Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
 06/12//2020
  
 Sculpture Fight
  
 Now the whole world is threatened in fear of corona
 A rush of flame burnt all over
 What's going on outside?
 Indulging on or falsifying the commons 
 The party against the government 
 An excitement among the audience in Jalsa (Gathering at night for Islamic speech before the audience)) 
 Not that people like to hear but nothing to do without listening 
 As they are sitting before the speaker  
 The argument against establishing the sculptor the speaker breaks the silence of the night
 Shouts as loud as he can for not to establish any more in the country
 The great man for whom our heads bow down in respect and honor
 That person people recognize him as 'The father of Nation'
 He is our great leader Bangabandhu Shiekh Mujibur Rahman    
 Violating the rules of maintaining the social distance
 A group of people come out with a procession 
 Without knowing what the sculptor meant for
 A seduction for holding the country instable
 Some miscreants broke one of the Bangabandhu's sculptors in Kusthia 
 While people are dying and being affected daily
 In every second corona swings around
 Can't shake our hands; kiss on face, advance for lips into lips 
 Love flows on heart to heart only spiritually
 Doctors and nurses have no time for rest
 Day and night on duty for cares and treatment
 Creates a remorseful condition of earth
 Some are counting their profit
 Some are repenting on loss 
 O heart, O diversified heart here you cry and cry
 There you rejoice on falsifying or forging fortification  
 Dying in one side line after line
 The fight we see head to head, hand to hand on the other. 
  
 Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
 07/12//2020
  
  
 Playing Hide and Seek
  
 You play hide and seek
 In the world -Love and Trick
 I know the intrigue, a wonderful battle field
 My journey over the mountains and hills
 Through the oceans and the trees
 You play hide and seek
 I know but dive so deep
 No cause why you play this game
 No claim why I die and feel sick
 I know I love to die
 A touch of pain and joy
 I like to rest on it, my sweet retention
 O my sweet dear, my loving sky
 On the ground in the starry lit I lie down
 You cuddle and fondle on
 I feel like maddened in excitement
 Feel fresh as morning light 
 You play this hide and seek 
 Overflowing joy the whole night - kissing and missing in plight. 
  
 Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
 08/12//2020
  
  
 In the Abyss of Forgetfulness
  
 Light turns into darkness
 Darkness is now more lovable than anything else
 Light appears to be dark cloud
 We fall into this play of light and dark
 Nothing comes out of this ghostly dangerous but heavenly saint
 O lament, hidden in the light
 Charming in darkness
 Love regenerates in the abyss of forgetfulness
 People humble and fumble
 O danger lies in the bushes, the poisonous snakes.
  
 Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
 08/12//2020 

 
 
 
ODE TO MULES, CATBIRDS, INSECTS, AND GOD
  
  
 Interspecies friendships?
  
 They’re great, aren’t they?
  
 A bonding of pure affection
 sometimes unequaled in human civilization.
  
 A mule wearing a snorkel and goggles enters
 the high school convocation flopping rubber 
 flippers against the smooth terracotta tiles.
  
 You gotta love that!
  
 [Yeah]
  
                           *……*
  
 A catbird screeched high above a tulip poplar
 near the local middle school earlier today,  
 then warbled hieroglyphs before entering 
 our forsythia hedge and vaporizing  
 inside its prickly branches.
  
                     *……*……*
  
 I wonder if we pay enough attention to insects?
 We mostly complain about them, but they’re 
 preoccupied day in day out with whatever’s 
 required to evolve their DNA.
  
 Sounds a lot like us, eh?
  
 And what about lusty zebra mosquitos
 who just want to our be blood brothers?
  
 We shouldn’t overlook such things.
  
                    ◄   ◄…..►   ►
  
 What’s the last thing that goes
 through an existentialist’s mind

 when he smacks the windshield 
 at 90 miles an hour?
  
 That’s right, God.
  
  
  
  
  
  
   

 

 THE NIGHT JOE WATSON & I DOUBLE-
 DATED TWO BEAUTIES FROM THE 
 THRIFTWAY SUPERMARKET
  
  
 I told Joe, pick whomever, but I prefer 
 the Italian in a canary one-piece 
 with poppy white collar.
  
 So, he picked Meg.
  
 I liked Meg.
  
 I liked Meg a lot with her tamarind
 arms, bronze legs, & eyelashes like 
 dragonflies haunting my dreams, 
 but, alas, I was mesmerized 
 by the Italian Aphrodite broiled
 to perfection in a canary one-piece 
 with poppy white collar. 
  
 So, off the four of us cruised, two
 of us ending up below the spidery
 legs of the Lake Worth pier.
  
 That night kisses like wild bruises 
 migrated from lips to necks 
 to shoulders in the casual blink 
 of a full moon’s penumbra 
 tattooing hair, flesh, 
 monkey blood, & bones. 
  
 I told Joe, pick whomever, but I prefer 
 the Italian in a canary one-piece 
 with poppy white collar.
  
  
  
  

Alan Britt has been nominated for the 2021 International Janus Pannonius Prize awarded by the Hungarian Centre of PEN International for excellence in poetry from any part of the world. Previous nominated recipients include Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Charles Bernstein and Yves Bonnefoy. Alan was interviewed at The Library of Congress for The Poet and the Poem. He has published 20 books of poetry and served as Art Agent for Andy Warhol Superstar, the late great Ultra Violet, while often reading poetry at her Chelsea, New York studio. A graduate of the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University he currently teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University.

Discussion of the success behind the authenticity of the novel

“Perseverance for knowledge and passion for dreams” engender the issues explored in David Copperfield to be interweaved in Great Expectations. Fact and fancy, reality and imagination or private and public encapsulating life sketches of memoirs: memorial, monument or testimony chronicles a spiritual autobiography. The world of the biographer’s existence has been socially, morally and imaginatively much more complex, compromising and more essentially ambiguous than one David inhabits as interpreted in the parenthetical thesis of Anna Foley foreshadowed within bibliography.        

 Enslavement by a heartless society, destructions of war, mass genocide and totalitarianism engrosses modern critics such as Chesterton’s shrewd criticism apprising and appreciating Dickensian character Tobb as the vitality of real humanity or humility, those who have nothing but life. Furthermore, George Orwell, the satirist of political and moral allegorical fable quintessentially denotes in his essay on Dickens always, “respond emotionally to the idea of human brotherhood.” 

Differentiating Advantages and Disadvantages of Reading The Autobiographical Narrative Fiction Great Expectations

Psychoanalysis Freudian theories and gender studies by modern critics today, question the integrity of memorable characters, boisterous humours, intrigued plot twists, precipitous cliffhangers or suspenseful ending and universal themes. Bread and butter (graveyard scene) were connoting alleged erection employed by Pip to hide and cover adolescence. Victorian ideals abhorred and despised the tendency of incestuous relationships, masturbation, lascivious or carnal desires, adultery and so on. Magwitch and Herbert’s guidance or guardianship excessive handling of Pip is a striking matter of moral degradation in modern criticism by shrewdest psychoanalysts or gender studies theorists.      

 Mr. Pumblechook appearance of that of a Sheriff and the reticent patronage of Compeyson disdains readers or critics detesting demonic characteristics in Mr. Pumblechook’s personae. Another striking fact in debate is the emotional setting of prison infirmary. Incidentally, Pip reconciles in salvaged spirit to acquire redemption for the penitent sins encountered after demonizing feelings about Magwitch. Withdrawal of snobbery from the redemptive minds of Estella and Pip ending doesn’t disseminate justification in absurd ending despite smugness shattered by the discovery of great expectations. 

Further drawbacks of the novel discusses the issues of being the idealized gentleman in the ironical witty commentaries of Dickens to satirize being gentleman to table manners, style of dressing, body language, speech, wealthy fortunes and so forth. Interestingly, the irony here talks of Victorian tradition of mass graveyard shameful, embarrassing, defame or guilty conscience because bereavement of working class or middle class bourgeois should be preserved in sepulchers and epitaphic tombstones inscripted. Farm labourers, coal miners or domestic servants weren’t exempted from the case study. Socio economically youngsters were passionate about being marines or veterans and clergymen whilst the legacy was endowed to the elders. Daughters inherit dowries or petty estate unless the male relations remain obscure. Dickens employed the character of Drummle from Somerset as neither aristocrat nor Shropshire gentry which provokes the issue of class distinction and classification of a gentleman. Romantic delusions implored Pip to board the accommodation Boars Hotel with the illusion that Miss Havisham [fairy godmother]’s Estella, the ward would be his fiancée.              

 “Poisonous” and “pernicious”, “infamous” and “shameful” the novelist epitaphic phrases paraphrase poor living conditions in prison. “From head to foot there was convict in the very grain of the man” demarcate English, French or Convicts curtailed from European civilization  “a savage air that no dress could tame.”  In reality Dickens shrewd criticism allegorizes the Victorian prison reformation. Gospel of improvement or progress brightening or heightening metropolis with passing of traits in the transformed sub urban hypnotizes colonial enterprise. Dickens forgets to narrate the vanishing or exclusion of Abel Magwitch symbolizing injustice. These extremism of characters resonate unrealism oscillating in the novel. In the novel, Estella, the heroine marries the doctor from Shropshire after Drummle’s death. Pip understands that she has developed maturity through suffering –irony of resolutions. Superficiality of the gentleman sways away as soon as the hero, Pip’s inferences and conscience awaken. What really matters in life is being honest, true, loyal and kind. Great Expectations is nothing but a work of genius by modern critics. It is also very widely read by ordinary people except those who dislike fiction. Dickensian vocabulary, complex and lengthy sentences and verbal irony are obstacles in interpreting modern Dickens.       

When snarling, Orlick, the tangible flesh and blood presence denounces Pip as “young wolf” and remonstrates Mrs. Joes, “You’re a foul shrew, Mother Gargery”. Dickens contrasted this to the boarding school educated counterfeit money con artist bcause he could copy handwritings that appeared behind the scenes- elusive and shadowy. Compeyson blights the lives of Miss Havisham, her ambiguous half weak brother and of Magwitch on the one hand. And on the other, the deal of treachery trial’s betrayal stimulated white terror vengeance of the open book of crime and punishment-the symbolic of ripest exploitation. Magwitch “marries” Molly “over the broomstick” unlike his counterparts Orlick and Compeyson [Compeyson breaks Miss Havisham’s heart]. Why brevity and humour? The barbarity of the justice system sentences mass and Dickens mocks the judge’s verdict in ordering a special censure for Magwitch. [“My Lord I have received my sentence of death from the Almighty, but I bow to yours”]

Orlick’s indulgence of vengeance after being dismissed from the forge and Miss Havisham’s caretaking, tempted him as Compeyson’s dupe luring Pip into lime-kiln [*lime kiln- kiln or furnace of reducing limestone shells to lime through burning or incineration]. Orlick was sentenced to imprisonment in the final part of the novel through a commit of blundered heist: the robbery of Mr. Pumblechook-the ostentatious caricature. Dickens’ laughter and humour reflection in Pip’s  appraisal that the villainy of Orlick showed atonement is subtly the question of moral integrity. [Pip acknowledged Orlicks’ temperate behavior of stuffing the nose of Mr. Pumblechook with flower annals]. However, critics like Andrew Moore, disparaged shrewd glimpses of analogous to a loose ending of the plot.