Threat Poem Quotes

She is unpredictable, and unpredictable is another word for 'threat' when a woman wears it well.

If you ever try to change my memories again, I will slap you into next spring.” I took a breath, knees shaking as I felt small beside him, my white dress brushing against his black trousers. Some women get flowers or poems from their suitors. I get insults and threats.

And round her house she set Such a barricade of barb and check Against mutinous weather As no mere insurgent man could hope to break With curse, fist, threat Or love, either

imagine the desert mothers, with hair tangled tighter than their theology and breasts that flowed milk and mystic wisdom. they knew how to draw the singing sigils in the sand, how to dig rough and bitten fingers into desiccated dirt for water to wet the lips of their young. women of hips and heft, who learned how to burn beneath the wild and searing sun, who made loud love against the star-flecked threat of night, who knew that strength is not always a matter of muscle. imagine your ancestresses, the prophetesses of the arid lands, before these starched traditions and pews too hard to pray from, who bled true ritual and birthed their own fierce souls at creation's crowning --

You tried to eradicate me using your might, But I am going to live on ... out of spite. Will wait in the shadows ever so slight, And ... when the time is right, Ruin your whole life, like a pestering blight.

HOME no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark you only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well your neighbors running faster than you breath bloody in their throats the boy you went to school with who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory is holding a gun bigger than his body you only leave home when home won’t let you stay. no one leaves home unless home chases you fire under feet hot blood in your belly it’s not something you ever thought of doing until the blade burnt threats into your neck and even then you carried the anthem under your breath only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets sobbing as each mouthful of paper made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back. you have to understand, that no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land no one burns their palms under trains beneath carriages no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled means something more than journey. no one crawls under fences no one wants to be beaten pitied no one chooses refugee camps or strip searches where your body is left aching or prison, because prison is safer than a city of fire and one prison guard in the night is better than a truckload of men who look like your father no one could take it no one could stomach it no one skin would be tough enough the go home blacks refugees dirty immigrants asylum seekers sucking our country dry niggers with their hands out they smell strange savage messed up their country and now they want to mess ours up how do the words the dirty looks roll off your backs maybe because the blow is softer than a limb torn off or the words are more tender than fourteen men between your legs or the insults are easier to swallow than rubble than bone than your child body in pieces. i want to go home, but home is the mouth of a shark home is the barrel of the gun and no one would leave home unless home chased you to the shore unless home told you to quicken your legs leave your clothes behind crawl through the desert wade through the oceans drown save be hunger beg forget pride your survival is more important no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear saying- leave, run away from me now i dont know what i’ve become but i know that anywhere is safer than here

Dear Sir, I reply, I never had any. Bad sex, that is. It was never the sex, it was the other things, the absence of flowers, the death threats, the eating habits at breakfast. I notice I’m using the past tense.

Depths of Friendship ...under fathoms deep of dark and bitter cold an eerie oscillation reverberated brash and bold...

I can't stand THE DEPRESSED. It's like a job, it's the only thing they work hard at. Oh good my depression is very well today. Oh good today I have another mysterious symptom and I will have another one tomorrow. The DEPRESSED are full of hate and bile and when they are not having panic attacks they are writing poems. What do they want their poems to DO? Their depression is the most VITAL thing about them. Their poems are threats. ALWAYS threats. There is no sensation that is keener or more active than their pain. They give nothing back except their depression. It's just another utility. Like electricity and water and gas and democracy. They could not survive without it.

I can't stand THE DEPRESSED. It's like a job. It's the only thing they work hard at. Oh good my depression is very well today. Oh good today I have another mysterious symptom and I will have another one tomorrow. The DEPRESSED are full of hate and bile and when they are not having panic attacks they are writing poems. What do they want their poems to DO? Their depression in the most VITAL thing about them. Their poems are threats. ALWAYS threats. There is no sensation keener or more active than their pain. They give nothing back except their depression. It's just another utility. Like electricity and water and gas and democracy. They could not survive without it.

Fifteen years ago, the cultural critic Greil Marcus wrote of Jimi's performance of our national anthem as "his great NO to the war, to racism, to whatever you or he might think of and want gone. But then that discord shattered, and for more than four and a half long, complex minutes Hendrix pursued each invisible crack in a vessel that had once been whole, feeling out and exploring and testing himself and his music against anguish, rage, fear, hate, love offered, and love refused. When he finished, he had created an anthem that could never be summed up and that would never come to rest. In the end it was a great YES, both a threat and a beckoning, an invitation to America to match its danger, glamour, and freedom." ... In late 1969, Jimi Hendrix wrote a poem celebrating Woodstock, saying with words what his music had in August: "500,000 halos outshined the mud and history. We washed and drank in God's tears of joy. And for once, and for everyone, the truth was not still a mystery.

Blackmail threats are e-mails from madmen.

And round her house she set Such a barricade of barb and check Against mutinous weather As no mere insurgent man could hope to break With curse, fist, threat Or love, either.

the constant threat of new Taylor Swift songs

How could I sleight you? How threaten to leave you? not in the spirit of a Threat to you -- no -- but in the spirit of Wretchedness in myself.

Understand I need these fragments. To tell it once is not enough. I have a hundred holy objects, everything looked upon, to break. Time will pass, time will pass me, attaching mile-marker threats to every causeway.

The wild is an integral part of who we are as children. Without pausing to consider what or where or how, we gather herbs and flowers, old apples and rose hips, shiny pebbles and dead spiders, poems, tears and raindrops, putting each treasured thing into the cauldron of our souls. We stir our bucket of mud as if it were, every one, a bucket of chocolate cake to be mixed for the baking. Little witches, hag children, we dance our wildness, not afraid of not knowing. But there comes a time when the kiss of acceptance is delayed until the mud is washed from our knees, the chocolate from our faces. Putting down our wooden spoon with a new uncertainty, setting aside our magical wand, we learn another system of values based on familiarity, on avoiding threat and rejection. We are told it is all in the nature of growing up. But it isn't so. Walking forward and facing the shadows, stumbling on fears like litter in the alleyways of our minds, we can find the confidence again. We can let go of the clutter of our creative stagnation, abandoning the chaos of misplaced and outdated assumptions that have been our protection. Then beyond the half light and shadows, we can slip into the dark and find ourselves in a world where horizons stretch forever. Once more we can acknowledge a reality that is unlimited finding our true self, a wild spirit, free and eager to explore the extent of our potential, free to dance like fireflies, free to be the drum, free to love absolutely with every cell of our being, or lie in the grass watching stars and bats and dreams wander by. We can live inspired, stirring the darkness of the cauldron within our souls, the source, the womb temple of our true creativity, brilliant, untamed

There's folly in her stride that's the rumor justified by lies I've seen her up close beneath the sheets and sometime during the summer she was mine for a few sweet months in the fall and parts of December ((( To get to the heart of this unsolvable equation, one must first become familiar with the physical, emotional, and immaterial makeup as to what constitutes both war and peace. ))) I found her looking through a window the same window I'd been looking through She smiled and her eyes never faltered this folly was a crime ((( The very essence of war is destructive, though throughout the years utilized as a means of creating peace, such an equation might seem paradoxical to the untrained eye. Some might say using evil to defeat evil is counterproductive, and gives more meaning to the word “futile”. Others, like Edmund Burke, would argue that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men and women to do nothing.” ))) She had an identity I could identify with something my fingertips could caress in the night ((( There is such a limitless landscape within the mind, no two minds are alike. And this is why as a race we will forever be at war with each other. What constitutes peace is in the mind of the beholder. ))) Have you heard the argument? This displacement of men and women and women and men the minds we all have the beliefs we all share Slipping inside of us thoughts and religions and bodies all bare ((( “Without darkness, there can be no light,” he once said. To demonstrate this theory, during one of his seminars he held a piece of white chalk and drew a line down the center of a blackboard. Explaining that without the blackness of the board, the white line would be invisible. ))) When she left she kissed with eyes open I knew this because I'd done the same Sometimes we saw eye to eye like that Very briefly, she considered an apotheosis a synthesis a rendering of her folly into solidarity ((( To believe that a world-wide lay down of arms is possible, however, is the delusion of the pacifist; the dream of the optimist; and the joke of the realist. Diplomacy only goes so far, and in spite of our efforts to fight with words- there are times when drawing swords of a very different nature are surely called for. ))) Experiencing the subsequent sunrise inhaling and drinking breaking mirrors and regurgitating just to start again all in all I was just another gash in the bark ((( Plato once said: “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” Perhaps the death of us all is called for in this time of emotional desperation. War is a product of the mind; only with the death of such will come the end of the bloodshed. Though this may be a fairly realistic view of such an issue, perhaps there is an optimistic outlook on the horizon. Not every sword is double edged, but every coin is double sided. ))) Leaving town and throwing shit out the window drinking boroughs and borrowing spare change I glimpsed the rear view mirror stole a glimpse really I've believed in looking back for a while it helps to have one last view a reminder in case one ever decides to rebel in the event the self regresses and makes the declaration of devastation once more ((( Thus, if we wish to eliminate the threat of war today- complete human annihilation may be called for. )))

Various ambitions to complete the poem, to see it in print, to enjoy the gratification of someone's comment about it—serve in some measure as incentives to the writer's work. Though each of these is reasonable, each is a threat to the other ambition of the poet, which is to write as well as Keats, Yeats, or Williams—or whoever it was who scribbled onto a page a few lines whose force the reader once felt and has never forgotten. Every poet's ambition should be to write as well. Anything else is only a flirtation.

I know I am restless, and make others so; I know my words are weapons, full of danger, full of death; (Indeed I am myself the real soldier; It is not he, there, with his bayonet, and not the red-striped artilleryman;) For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to unsettle them; I am more resolute because all have denied me than I could ever have been had all accepted me; I heed not, and have never heeded, either experience, cautions, majorities, nor ridicule; And the threat of what is called hell is little or nothing to me; And the lure of what is called heaven is little or nothing to me.

When you think about it, the cause-effect begins to resemble some mad logic-loop by the data artist Carolus or perhaps a print by Escher: the Shrike had come into existence because of the incantatory powers of my poem but the poem could not have existed without the threat/presence of the Shrike as muse. Perhaps I was a bit mad in those days. In

You're a mountain searching for it's echo! Whenever you hurt, you say, Lord God! The answer lives in that which bends you low and makes you cry out. Pain and the threat of death, for instance, do this. They make you clear. When they're gone, you lose purpose. You wonder what to do, where to go. This is because you're uneven in your opening: sometimes closed and unreachable, sometimes, with your shirt torn with longing. Your discursive intellect dominates for a time; then the universal, beyond-time intelligence comes. Sell your questioning talents, my son; buy bewildering surrender. Live simply and helpfully in that. Don't worry about the University of Bukhara with its prestigious curriculum.

The erotic functions for me in several ways, and the first is in providing the power which comes from sharing deeply any pursuit with another person. The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference. Another important way in which the erotic connection functions is the open and fearless underlining of my capacity for joy, in the way my body stretches to music and opens into response, harkening to its deepest rhythms so every level upon which I sense also opens to the erotically satisfying experience whether it is dancing, building a bookcase, writing a poem, or examining an idea. That self-connection shared is a measure of the joy which I know myself to be capable of feeling, a reminder of my capacity for feeling. And that deep and irreplaceable knowledge of my capacity for joy comes to demand from all of my life that it be lived within the knowledge that such satisfaction is possible, and does not have to be called marriage, nor god, nor an afterlife.

The more I know the human being, the more I cling to animal nature. Mention poem 2013 Since its beginnings, the human being has been a complex and enigmatic being, capable of great achievements and feats, and at the same time, of the most cruel and vile acts. There is no doubt that our species is one of the most evolved and sophisticated of the planet, but at what cost? What is behind our apparent superiority? When we observe human behavior, we can see that it hides a mixture of animal instincts and rational thoughts. Although human beings take pride in our ability for critical thinking and reflection, We are also emotional, impulsive and visceral beings. And it is precisely this duality that makes us so different from animals. that cohabit this planet with us. It is often difficult for us to understand the nature of animals, because we cannot access their internal world. However, what we can say is that animals are transparent beings, His actions are always a consequence of his instincts, not from premeditated thoughts or complex emotions. For animals, living is following their instinct, something that allows them to act quickly and effectively in situations of danger or threat. Animals are beings in balance with their environment, They don't feel the need to constantly change, nor to think beyond the here and now. On the other hand, we have human beings, beings capable of conceiving abstract thoughts, create works of art, invent technologies and, at the same time, of destroying the environment, oppressing other human beings and commit acts of extreme cruelty. The human being is a complex, contradictory being, capable of loving and hating, forgiving and punishing, healing and destroying. We are creatures of light and darkness, in a constant search for balance between both parties. But what is behind our duality as human beings? Why are we capable of the worst acts of destruction and cruelty? If we look back at the history of humanity, we can see that our genetic patterns are impregnated of violence, war and resentment. History has been a constant parade of wars and conflicts, each one more brutal than the last. This being the only way in which many cultures they have found to impose their ideas or consolidate power. It is precisely here that the idea is born that the creators of humanity They have intoxicated us with the yoke of evil. Who are these forgers? They are the same societies, cultures, religions, policies, which have used violence, war and resentment as a tool to impose their desires and ideals on others. This is the curse that we have dragged like chains since long ago, that of a genetic pattern that drags us towards violence and war. It is true that, as human beings, we can choose our own paths, our own decisions, and not fall into the trap of cruelty and evil. However, it is also true that we carry within us an ancestral burden that is difficult to overcome. What will the most advanced civilizations in the universe think of us? Will we be violent and hateful beings for them? Or will we be beings like animals, in balance with our environment? The answer is not easy, since it remains an unknown. if we are able to overcome our animal instincts and embrace only the best of our humanity. The key to this lies in becoming aware of our own duality, to recognize that we carry both light and darkness within us, and make a real effort to choose the best of ourselves, instead of letting ourselves be carried away by our internal evil.

It is a story, as the first word of the original Greek tells us about "a man" (andras). He is not "the" man, but one of many men-- albeit a man of extraordinary cognitive, psychological, and military power, one who can win any competition, outwit any opponent, and manage, against all odds, to survive. The poem tells us how he makes his circuitous way back home across stormy seas after many years at war. We may expect the hero of an "epic" narrative to confront evil forces, perform a superhuman task, and rescue vast numbers of people from an extraordinary kind of threat. Failing that, we might hope at least for a great quest unexpectedly achieved, despite perils all around; an action that saves the world, or at least changes it in some momentous way-- like Jason claiming the Golden Fleece, Launcelot glimpsing the Holy Grail, Aeanas beginning the foundation of Rome. In 'The Odyssey', we find instead the story of a man whose grand adventure is simply to go back to his own home, where he tries to turn everything back to the way it was before he went away. For this hero, mere survival is the most amazing feat of all.

Ma’am, I’m afraid the idea that a woman is a person, whether married or not, is so inherently radical no matter which way I present it I shall be considered a nuisance.” More than a nuisance. An outright challenge, a threat. For if a woman was a person in her own right, one could conclude she was also in possession of a mind and a heart of her own, and thus had needs of her own. But the unwearyingly self-sacrificing good mother and wife must not have needs, or, as Patmore’s perseveringly popular poem put it: Man must be pleased; but him to please / Is woman’s pleasure . .

Do our possessions mourn us? Do electric sheep dream of Roy Batter? Will my coat, riddled with holes, remember the rich hours of our companionship? Asleep on buses from Vienna to Prague, nights at the opera, walks by the sea, the grave of Swinburne in the Isle of Wight, the arcades of Paris, the caverns of Luray, the cafés of Buenos Aires. Human experience bound in its threats. How many poems bleeding from its ragged sleeves? I averted my eyes just for a moment, drawn by another coat that was warmer and softer, but that I did not love. Why is it that we lose the things we love, and things cavalier cling to us and will be the measure of our worth after we're gone?

A slave, Marcus Cato said, should be working when he is not sleeping. It does not matter whether his work in itself is good in itself—for slaves, at least. This sentiment still survives, and it has piled up mountains of useless drudgery. I believe that this instinct to perpetuate useless work is, at bottom, simply fear of the mob. The mob (the thought runs) are such low animals that they would be dangerous if they had leisure; it is safer to keep them too busy to think. A rich man who happens to be intellectually honest, if he is questioned about the improvement of working conditions, usually says something like this: "We know that poverty is unpleasant; in fact, since it is so remote, we rather enjoy harrowing ourselves with the thought of its unpleasantness. But don’t expect us to do anything about it. We are sorry fort you lower classes, just as we are sorry for a cat with the mange, of your condition. We feel that you are much safer as you are. The present state of affairs suits us, and we are not going to take the risk of setting you free, even by an extra hour a day. So, dear brothers, since evidently you must sweat to pay for our trips to Italy, sweat and be damned to you.” This is particularly the attitude of intelligent, cultivated people; one can read the substance if it in a hundred essays. Very few cultivated people have less than (say) four hundred pounds a year, and naturally they side with the rich, because they imagine that any liberty conceded to the poor is a threat to their own liberty. foreseeing some dismal Marxian Utopia as the alternative, the educated man prefers to keep things as they are. Possibly he does not like his fellow-rich very much, but he supposes that even the vulgarest of them are less inimical to his pleasures, more his kind of people, than the poor, and that he had better stand by them. It is this fear of a supposedly dangerous mob that makes nearly all intelligent people conservative in their opinions. Fear of the mob is a superstitious fear. It is based on the idea that there is some mysterious, fundamental difference between rich and poor, as though they were two different races, like negroes and white men. But in reality there is no such difference. The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothings else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit. Change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Everyone who has mixed on equal terms with the poor knows this quite well. But the trouble is that intelligent, cultivated people, the very people who might be expected to have liberal opinions, never do mix with the poor. For what do the majority of educated people know about poverty? In my copy of Villon’s poems the editor has actually thought it necessary to explain the line “Ne pain ne voyent qu'aux fenestres” by a footnote; so remote is even hunger from the educated man’s experience. From this ignorance a superstitious fear of the mob results quite naturally. The educated man pictures a horde of submen, wanting only a day’s liberty to loot his house, burn his books, and set him to work minding a machine or sweeping out a lavatory. “Anything,” he thinks, “any injustice, sooner than let that mob loose.

It hovers, creeps in, comes close, withdraws, turns on tiptoe and, if I reach out my hand, disappears: a Word. I can only make out its proud crest: Cri. Cricket, Cripple, Crime, Crimea, Critic, Crisis, Criterion? A canoe sails from my forehead carrying a man armed with a spear. The light, fragile boat nimbly cuts the black waves, the swells of black blood in my temples. It moves further inward. The hunter-fisherman studies the shaded, cloudy mass of a horizon full of threats; he sinks his keen eyes into the rancorous foam, he perks his head and listens, he sniffs. At times a bright flash crosses the darkness, a green and scaly flutter. It is Cri, who leaps for a second into the air, breathes, and submerges again in the depths. The hunter blows the horn he carries strapped to his chest, but its mournful bellow is lost in the desert of water. There is no one on the great salt lake. And the rocky beach is far off, far from the faint lights from the huts of his companions. From time to time Cri reappears, shows his fatal fin, and sinks again. The oarsman, fascinated, follows him inward, each time further inward.

According to folk belief that is reflected in the stories and poems, a being who is petrified man and he can revive. In fairy tales, the blind destructiveness of demonic beings can, through humanization psychological demons, transformed into affection and love of the water and freeing petrified beings. In the fairy tale " The Three Sisters " Mezei de-stone petrified people when the hero , which she liked it , obtain them free . In the second story , the hero finding fairy , be petrified to the knee , but since Fairy wish to marry him , she kissed him and freed . When entering a demonic time and space hero can be saved if it behaves in a manner that protects it from the effects of demonic forces . And the tales of fortune Council hero to not turn around and near the terrifying challenges that will find him in the demon area . These recommendations can be tracked ancient prohibited acts in magical behavior . In one short story Penina ( evil mother in law ) , an old man , with demonic qualities , sheds , first of two brothers and their sister who then asks them , iron Balot the place where it should be zero as chorus, which sings wood and green water . When the ball hits the ground resulting clamor and tumult of a thousand voices, but no one sees - the brothers turned , despite warnings that it should not , and was petrified . The old man has contradictory properties assistants and demons . Warning of an old man in a related one variant is more developed - the old man tells the hero to be the place where the ball falls to the reputation of stones and hear thousands of voices around him to cry Get him, go kill him, swang with his sword , stick go ! . The young man did not listen to warnings that reveals the danger : the body does not stones , during the site heroes - like you, and was petrified . The initiation rite in which the suffering of a binding part of the ritual of testing allows the understanding of the magical essence of the prohibition looking back . MAGICAL logic respectful direction of movement is particularly strong in relation to the conduct of the world of demons and the dead . From hero - boys are required to be deaf to the daunting threats of death and temporarily overcome evil by not allowing him to touch his terrible content . The temptation in the case of the two brothers shows failed , while the third attempt brothers usually releases the youngest brother or sister . In fairy tales elements of a rite of passage blended with elements of Remembrance lapot . Silence is one way of preventing the evil demon in a series of ritual acts , thoughts Penina Mezei . Violation of the prohibition of speech allows the communication of man with a demon , and abolishes protection from him . In fairy tales , this ritual obligations lost connection with specific rituals and turned into a motive of testing . The duration of the ban is extended in the spirit of poetic genre in years . Dvanadestorica brothers , to twelve for saving haunted girls , silent for almost seven years, but eleven does not take an oath and petrified ; twelfth brother died three times , defeat the dragon , throw an egg at a crystal mountain , and save the brothers ( Penina Mezei : 115 ) . Petrify in fairy tales is not necessarily caused by fear , or impatience uneducated hero . Self-sacrificing hero resolves accident of his friend's seemingly irrational moves, but he knows that he will be petrified if it is to warn them in advance , he avoids talking . As his friend persuaded him to explain his actions , he is petrified ( Penina Mezei : 129 ) . Petrified friends can save only the blood of a child , and his " borrower " Strikes sacrifice their own child and revives his rescuers . A child is a sacrificial object that provides its innocence and purity of the sacrificial gift of power that allows the return of the forces of life.

Norway’s first Christian king was Hákon Aðalsteinsfostri. He grew up and was baptized in England and remained a Christian after he became king of his native pagan country c. 935. According to the scalds, he did not destroy sanctuaries, but he brought priests from England and churches were built in the coastal area of western Norway. Further north and in Tröndelag Christianity did not take root. When Hákon was killed c. 960 he was interred in a mound in traditional pagan fashion; the scald Eyvind described his last great battle, his death and his reception in Valhalla in the poem Hákonarmál. Ironically, this poem about a Christian king gives some of the best information about Odin’s realm of the dead. Olaf Tryggvason became the next Christian king of Norway when he returned home c. 995 with much silver after many years abroad. He had also been baptized in England and brought clerics back with him. A systematic and ruthless process of conversion was initiated in conjunction with efforts to unify the realm. The greatest success was in western and southern Norway and around the year 1000 Olaf was responsible for the conversion of Iceland, probably under threat of reprisals. Shortly after this he was killed in the battle of Svöld. The conversion of Norway was completed during the reign of Olaf Haraldsson. He had also become a Christian on expeditions abroad and his baptism is said to have taken place in Rouen in Normandy. On his return to Norway in 1015 clerics were again in the royal retinue, among them the bishop Grimkel, who helped Olaf mercilessly impose Christianity on the people.

Kiss Across Time," she read. Well, that fit with the lyrics and Domhnall words. Domhnall lived through years of threat from enemies., the invasion of his country and the loss of his culture. His stories and epic poems were all full of death, glory, love, battles, dying and more... or would be, if she had ever been able to catch more than a glimpse of him from the corner of her eye, in research terms.

There are two kinds of friends: Those who would risk everything to further your dreams. And those who grudgingly show support because they take you for a rival and a threat.

Are you not the color of this country's current threat Advisory?

He is deaf, and keen to accept, any economical operation, that will correct his situation. He visited the doctor best, and started talking on subject, like the after-effects, and if any threats. The doctor medically checked, and asked him what he expects? He expressed, he wants to be addressed- in words, and not in signs. And how keen he is, to have his ears listening. He wants to listen the echo of, sun-set over that crimson dawn. He is keen to know, the sound of, a blooming rose. He wants to know what it sounds like, when a seedling grows. But Doctor- if you say: You are incapable, then I better get away, for then there is- nothing worth to be heard, in your seemingly wordy world.

Hollow (2020) Written in response to the toppling of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol on Sunday 7th June 2020. You came down easy in the end the righteous wrench of two ropes in a grand plie briefly, you flew corkscrewed, then met the ground with the clang of toy guns, loose change chains a rain of cheers. Standing ovation on the platform of your neck punk ballet. Act 1. there is more to come. And who carved you? They took such care with that stately pose and propped chin. Wise and virtuous the plaque assured us. Victors wish history odourless and static but history is a sneaky mistress moves like smoke, Colston, like saliva in a hungry mouth. This is your rightful home here, in the pit of chaos with the rest of us. Take your twisted glory and feed it to the tadpoles. Kids will write raps to that syncopated splash. I think of you lying in that harbour with the horrors you hosted. There is no poem more succinct than that. But still you are permanent. You who perfected the ratio. Blood to sugar to money to bricks. Each bougie building we flaunt haunted by bones. Children learn and titans sing under the stubborn rust of your name. But the air is gently throbbing with newness. Can you feel it? Colston, I can’t get the sound of you from my head. Countless times I passed that plinth its heavy threat of metal and marble. But as you landed a piece of you fell off broke away and inside nothing but air. This whole time You were hollow.

The message of this ode to wariness, delivered with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, is that the world is not safe. People trust strangers at their own peril. Trump used the poem during the campaign to warn of the pitfalls of admitting Syrian refugees, and after his election, he deployed it to sound similar warnings about Mexican immigrants. To listeners with a fixed worldview, this is the kind of commonsense thinking that liberals seem blind to. You can never let down your guard; you can never be too careful. Anyone who disagrees is a threat to the country’s security.

Along with its unforgettable description of the eerie space this woman inhabits, the poem also locates her very precisely in time, offering two almost unique words which transport the reader into the exact moment of her sorrow. First is uhtcearu, a compound which means ‘sorrow before dawn’ or ‘grief at early morning’. In Old English uht is the name for the last part of the night, the empty chilly hours just before the dawn, an especially painful time for grief and loneliness (as well as other kinds of threat: the dragon in Beowulf is called an uhtfloga, a creature who flies before dawn). The word suggests the sting of waking to the memory of sorrow, or the anxiety of lying awake in the early morning, worrying over what the day will bring.

Villicus Vadum: Soldier Of Fortune by Stewart Stafford I am the ghost of lupine Romulus, Founder of Rome, hear my tale, Of Villicus Vadum - young, driven, Steward to Senator Lucius Flavius. Villicus wanted Flavia, the senator’s daughter, But she was betrothed to Marcus Brutus; A consul of noble and virtuous stock, Villicus conspired to take Flavia's hand. Treachery and deception were his tools, Knavish peacock of Rome's epic stage, Sought to take Flavia from Marcus Brutus, To snatch and cage his treasured gem. Bribed a false soothsayer to trap her, Believing her beloved began with V, Flavia agreed to elope with him to Gaul, With Brutus vowing deadly vengeance. Fleeing to the bosom of Rome's enemy - Vercingetorix, at war with Julius Caesar, Villicus offered to spy on the Senate, While plotting to seize Gaul's throne. Queen Verica also caught his eye, Villicus was captured by Mark Antony, Taken to Caesar's camp as a traitor; Brutus challenged him to a duel. Brutus slashed him but spared his life, They dragged Villicus to Rome in chains, To try him for his now infamous crimes; Cicero in defence, Cato as prosecutor. Cicero argued Villicus acted out of love, And that his ambition merited mercy, Cato wanted death for his wicked threat, Julius Caesar pondered a final verdict. Villicus - pardoned but banished from Rome, Immediate death if he returned to Flavia, Villicus kissed the emperor's foot for naught, Flavia refused to join him in fallen exile. Now learn from this outcast's example, friends, That I, Romulus, warn you to avoid at your peril, Villicus Vadum, the wrath of the gods upon him, Until time ceases, sole spectre of night's edge. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

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Emboldened by the new atmosphere of hostility to occult practices, the Kentish magistrate Reginald Scot published his avowedly sceptical Discoverie of Witchcraft in 1584, which took aim at Leicester and, without naming him, at Dee as well.174 However, the change in atmosphere meant that not only the overt practice of magic but also the ‘prophetic politics’ beloved of Dee and sustained by astrology came under attack.175 Even the use of occult imagery in Elizabeth’s cult of personality met with a frosty reception. In 1590, Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, a wide-ranging mythological epic poem directed at Elizabeth and suffused with alchemical, Neoplatonic and Hermetic symbolism, gained the poet little favour. It has been suggested that the poem’s heady mix of patriotic imagery and prophetic enthusiasm may have been linked to Dee’s Arthurian theories about the ‘British empire’,176 but publication came at the wrong time. In England in the 1590s ‘the spirit of reaction’ prevailed against ‘the daring spiritual adventures of the Renaissance’.177 Nevertheless, in spite of official hostility to magic, Elizabeth remained fascinated by alchemy and continued to hope for the Philosophers’ Stone, employing Dee in alchemical experiments from July 1590. Elizabeth also began her own personal correspondence with Edward Kelley, promising him incentives to return to England as her personal alchemist.178 However, by May 1591 Burghley had lost patience with Kelley’s claims. Meanwhile, the alchemist was imprisoned in Bohemia by Rudolf II for killing another man in a duel.179 Dee may have temporarily won his way back into Elizabeth’s favour in June by claiming occult knowledge of a Spanish invasion,180 but the subsequent discovery of threats to the queen’s life that summer by William Hacket and other messianic Protestant sectaries did not shed a very flattering light on Dee’s style of political prophecy.181

In the shadows of the night, A hare with crown of thorns in sight, With eyes that gleam with wicked might, And fur as black as darkest night. Its presence brings a hush of fear, For in its wake, destruction's near, Its very breath, a threat severe, A harbinger of doom and fear. Oh, how it revels in its power, This beast that comes in darkest hour, With every step, it makes us cower, As we succumb to its demonic power. Its crown of thorns, a symbol of pain, A sign of suffering, of loss and gain, A testament to its unholy reign, A ruler of darkness, a leader of the insane. We bow before this wicked hare, As it leads us into a world of despair, A world where evil reigns supreme, And nothing is as it seems. So let us revel in this darkness, And embrace the hare's demonic starkness, For in its wake, we find our bliss, And all that's good is swallowed by the abyss.

On Guard I know how to build fences. I've built my border for years. Routinely, I repair attempted entries into my space. Everyone is suspect, gray-haired women, a child's hand reaching in, people disguised as rocks, all possible invasions. Don't be deceived: I savor my isolation, my dark interior. Silence, please. Your opinions are unwelcome. Your jabber, your many tongues bore me but will never bore into my well-guarded space. All the un-me is alien. I take pride in being on guard. I'm willing to share my strategies– threats, barks, explosions– for remaining untouched –in here– by the world's garbage.