Letter to a Departing City Official

January 27, 2022

I read in the weekly paper today
that you will be leaving at the end of next week,
moving from our inner-ring suburb,
only a handful of employees under you,
to take a job in the big city
where you will oversee hundreds of employees
and tens of thousands more housing units,
offering you the opportunity
for illegal and unnecessary demolition
on a much greater scale

Legalities be damned!
Environmentalism be damned!
Homelessness be damned!
Keloization forever!

Congratulations to you
Condolences to the tens of thousands
of your future victims



A Speech

And in conclusion,
                            once more
                                             from our leaders:

"We've polished up the American dream"
"the legal right of the millionaire to his millions"
"Sure, I'm one of the fat cats"
"I'm the fattest cat"
"What kind of society isn't structured on greed?
"Forget loyalty"
                        "an oft-invoked ideal
that applies to fewer and fewer people"
"Liquidate labor,
                        liquidate stocks,
                                                 liquidate farmers"
"our scheme does not ask any initiative in a man
We do not care for his initiative"
"How come when I want a pair of hands
I get a human being as well?"
"This isn't rocket science"
"It's the economy, stupid"
"it is an existing evil"
"and we must endure it
and give it such protection
as is guaranteed by the constitution"
"Greed is even more contagious than fever"
"Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess"
"I have,
            I fear,
confused power with greatness"
"Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac"
"do not let so great an achievement
suffer from any taint of legality"
"A man always has two reasons for what he does---
a good one and the real one"
"If I am to speak for ten minutes,
I need a week for preparation;
if fifteen minutes, three days;
if an hour, I am ready now"
"a virtually limitless supply of bullshit"
"God ordained that I should be
the next President of the United States"

Thank you, 
and good night


Affliction

Though not yet named,
and with no diagnostic criteria, or treatment,
it is the most common mental defect in America:
thinking everyone else is as stupid as you are


Too Close to Home?

The editor said he enjoyed reading the poet's poems, but he wanted more personal work for his journal.

So the poet sent a piece about his misadventures with a different editor.  And the editor, perhaps thinking the poet was referring to him, never bothered to respond to the submission.

Michael Ceraolo is a 65-year-old retired firefighter/paramedic and active poet who has had two full-length books (Euclid Creek, from Deep Cleveland Press; 500 Cleveland Haiku, from Writing Knights Press) published, and has two more in the publication pipeline.” 

Loneliness
By Abigail George


I am cooking loneliness in a pot. I am making a broth with it. I add garlic and ginger, leaf masala and meaty bones to the pot and more boiling water. I throw salt in to taste. 

I think of the neverending invasion of war ingredients in daily life. I think too much. I overthink. Stop. Ants tripping, crawling with life. The world is filled with people who don’t care about me or who love me. There were billions of them at last count. I am a tree and then I grow into a branch, arch my back into a stretch. Small and red is my heart now. Just a curious ribbon tied to my hair. I remember when the man climbed me, climbed into me. The bliss I felt at this feeling, this encouraging emotion filled me with hope. I climb into the boat made of wildflowers and somehow land on the moonlight. I make a cave out of the night air.

I have experienced love for the last time. This is the last wound I will ever experience. I think of the Dutch English poet, Joop Bersee, and our friendship. The call I answered was to write poetry. The sum of being a poet is solid inside of me but as temporary as conceit. The man is still visible to me but he is walking in the direction of a church. He wants to pray me away and put me inside a box, confine me to that box. I want to honor him in some way. Of course he wants me to forget all about him. In the same way he has forgotten about me. All I remember about the relationship is this. That I was helpless in his arms. When we kissed, my hurts turned to stone and his kisses turned into a killing machine of the hardness that surrounded that stone. I pulled him into me and he became a siren and the ink in my pen. I gently stroked his face and he turned into a secret. 

You are despair and beauty. You are my beauty and despair. Gil, who are you because I am a mess without you. I have become a virgin again. I remember your pale hands, the strength in your hands. I brought you steaming mugs of black coffee and tea. I brought you roasted chicken and rice to nourish your soul. I no longer have a man. The man who was my man turned into a waterfall in my bathwater. I think of him and my heart goes doom, doom, doom. I don’t have room to dream anymore about him. Politicians have that kind of time.

Air is singing to the solitary world I frequent. To me, to all of me the peas are dazzling green glitter. Burnt mixed vegetables. Coffee is getting cold on the kitchen table. Lukewarm water in an Energade bottle. Mother makes ice tea. Ice tea with tea bags bought from Woolworths. Pale sister with Slavic cheekbones. Middle sister, Middle East, middle of nowhere. So many middles. What is beautiful, what is the prize for being beautiful, give me a horse that could ride to the stars or to Mars. Dazed naartjies spilling over onto the countertop. 

The beautiful one with red lips. Her high heels in a box. Her red shoes flattered her ankles. Father reads the paper. He cuts out articles. The plate is yellow with turmeric powder. The rice is spicy. I put whole chillies in the pot. My father didn’t notice. The fruit is warm. Sweet. Dishes piled high in the kitchen sink. Memories of Collegiate. I was a bullied Model C schoolgirl. Bullied at home by a domineering mother. Bullied at school by teachers. My sister’s hair is straight. My hair is curly. Wild. I can’t tame its galaxies. The yellow of the egg could’ve been a fetus-chick. I live with no resistance from a man. All my life I have carried these war ingredients with me.

See their beauties, see their prizes, see their dead march. The hereafter calling. Plants harvesting seeds that will not grow. I grow older, colder, infirm, weak at the knees until I am winter. I have become just like those depraved wildflowers. Needy and slim. I am a warehouse and in this warehouse I store blackened images that turn into shrouds and these shrouds have veils. Too many of them. I am grateful for the negatives. Grateful for these copies. I make copies of heartbreak and write poems about them. I take them to the flea market and exchange them for books that I read in my spare time. I am happiest in these moments, for when I am alone, I am with God. In the hours I meditate and pray my thoughts convert themselves to only do good. Good deeds. Good things. I pick up a jar of olives in brine that I found at the back of a kitchen cupboard. 

My galaxies for your galaxies. Are you alright? Are you okay? And the voice came again (louder this time) are you alright? Are you okay and then it went away when I swallowed my pills with water. Until I heard the music of angels. I felt safe then and I remember my mother’s face when she wasn’t tired or stressed. I remembered the beauty of her face. I remembered a time when I didn’t feel tragic, when I felt brave and galaxies were in reach and war ingredients were not in reach or kept in safekeeping or treasured or cherished. The man keeps telling me that soldiers are angels too. And heroes and fallen comrades, stalwarts but I am tired. I am tired of shame and being tragic. So I don’t listen and because I stopped listening, he turns and walks away. I only notice when I turn into a bird and feel hungry and the wind picks up and begins to carry me to a distant land on the continent that I love so much. That I call God and church. And the only sound that comes out of my mouth is chatter and birdsong. I don’t like people who are dishonest.

“Open your legs,” he instructed me. I sat up. My back very straight. Watching him as he fumbled with his pants.

It has been three years since I have seen the man. I don’t know where he is or what he is doing. When he picks up the phone he pretends he is someone else. I am in denial. I am in love with a ghost. I have nowhere to go but meet these lines on this page. The female protagonist is waiting for me on the page. The good citizen is made of light. The good citizens are made of heat. The good citizen is a witness. The good citizen needs space. I need space too, to be creative, to be a thinker. The man is a business insider. I am waiting for my man to appear in the doorway of the restaurant. In the meantime, my spirit tells my soul a story about a Native American chieftain who went to war and never returned home again to his wife and children. I am staring at a jar of olives in brine remembering the brown eyes of the man. My brown eyes meeting his. Debussy’s Clair de Lune is playing in the background. I stare at the boneless loveliness of the wildflowers. The trees are unhappy. They are just as unhappy as the woman in the picture hanging against the wall is. The woman is unhappy because the man has left her and returned to his wife. There is a hunger within me now that cannot be sated. The woman is as I am  at war with silence. Her face is as holy as the river phoenix. Wasps blame the sunlight. The lull of the day hovers. The woman’s brother is a drug addict. He has been to three rehab centres. The woman thought the man would save her but he didn’t. I thought the man would save me. 

The woman and I are in the same boat. When the man told the woman that he loved her, she believed him. The house was hurt. The walls and ceiling were wounded. The floors were carpeted. I am not a good girl. Recovery is possible. The doctors tell me that they think sobriety is possible. There were pages turned. I can’t face this light and heat, this chare=ge of energy, the flow of the velocity of interpersonal relationships. Did he love me, did the man in the picture love the woman? I want to ask the woman in the painting, why is she crying? You see, I know why I am crying. I am crying because I will never be loved again in my life and no one will ever be kind to me the way the man was kind to me. The man told me to take my pills in a caring voice. 

It’s been years since I have seen the man. I don’t know where he is. I lay on a towel in the garden sunbathing. I felt sick but still I lay there, not getting up, tolerating the heat. I remembered a man from my twenties. He walked past me, turning his head and meeting my gaze. I remember the heat in my face. He wore a leather jacket in a photograph in a magazine. He was a producer of films. Handsome and clever. He was thin and the colour of his skin was dark. I was not asked to see my brother’s child when his daughter was born in the hospital. I remember when his son was born he would ask me not to kiss his son. I was allowed to hold the child but not kiss him. I remember how the mother slept for a few hours in the morning and how instead of looking after the baby, he gave the child to me to hold. It is afternoon. I am sitting in the lounge writing. I am writing largely for myself I suppose. To amuse myself. To distract myself from the war and war ingredients.

I am Greta Garbo and Pablo Neruda. I am Fiona Apple, Grace Kelly, Vivienne Leigh and Jean Rhys. I have made a temple out of an alien spaceship. Are you paying attention? I am in need of emotional support. I am depressed. I cry the tears of an orphan. I have no one in my life to call family. On my own again I am flying solo. I make a tuna fish salad. I think of the sea and pollution. I think of the blue sky and climate change. I think of the genius of this fish, and eating if eating the genius of this tuna would turn me into one. I make a dressing with black pepper, sugar and vinegar.. I butter bread, sit down at the kitchen table and eat happily. I don’t have the man in my life anymore but I have food.

When the man kissed me, I wanted him to extinguish me. These  days I practice doing good. When I do good, I feel good. I have hours, days, and silence ahead of me. I am as strong and peppery as a jalapeno and disciplined. I turn books into old friends and call it natural progression. I don’t know what to do about the anger inside of me. Please tell me what to do about the anger inside of me.

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