tell me what god wants

i'm reprogramming

i wasn't designed for this

no animal was

im going

to the wild

gods rules

gods plan

Feel wet young

water in me
Floating  Fish

dissolving

scott R

late rome vers. 21.09k

mobs knew it should end

couldn't figure

how it had gone so far
   fate of trick  ?

 to believe

people who knew

governorabbibankersheriff

oiled fat tragedy

dental dream

grinning in jewels

fitting like children

clothes too big

yet a size too small

crime like art

intent specific

villon in flight

microscopic eyes

robbing the Host

cutting the collar

hanging soon

singing

sure of nothing but what is uncertain

find nothing obscure but the obvious

doubt nothing but the certainties

knowledge is  mere  accident

for long
long enough

my tears were rain about the root,

and though the fruit be harsh thereof,

i scarcely looked for better

better would the soil be unsown

than bear such growth

love instead

will plant no tree

but this alone

1463

Church News

Midnight in the Dark

Formosus was probably a native of Rome, and must have been born about 816. The name Formosus means "good looking".

In Rome at the beginning of 897, Formosus had already been dead for about nine months when he was disinterred to  be judged by his lifetime enemy and  successor pope,  Stephen VI.     The trial issue was whether Formosus had been unworthy of the pontificate  since he was bishop of another  see.  At the trial, Stephen VI sat in the  chair as judge and opposite him sat Formosus clad in papal vestments seated on a throne. Close by stood a teenage deacon to answer for him.

Working himself into a hysterical frenzy, Stephen VI screamed and ranted against his opponent, mocking and insulting Formosus.  Occasionally he caught his breath and offered the deacon a chance for rebuttal.

Formosus was found guilty of all charges and  stripped of his papal robes.  His three right fingers used to bless people were cut off.   He was then dragged through the streets and thrown in a common grave.  After the adequate number of days he was dug up and thrown in the Tiber.

Stephen VI was strangled later that year and the new pope,  Theodore II had a monk draw  Formosus from the Tiber and after a solemn procession with honors buried him in St. Peters.

Sergius III in 904, according to some historians had Formosus exhumed for a fourth time, put to trial, found guilty and "beheaded".

Rome  1626

by Mark Twain

The Capuchin Crypt displays the bones of over 4,000 Capuchin friars collected between the years of 1528 and 1870 and fashioned into decorative displays in the Baroque and Rococo style.

Here was a spectacle for sensitive nerves! Evidently the old masters had been at work in this place. There were six divisions in the apartment, and each division was ornamented with a style of decoration peculiar to itself -- and these decorations were in every instance formed of human bones! There were shapely arches, built wholly of thigh bones; there were startling pyramids, built wholly of grinning skulls; there were quaint architectural structures of various kinds, built of shin bones and the bones of the arm; on the wall were elaborate frescoes, whose curving vines were made of knotted human vertebræ; whose delicate tendrils were made of sinews and tendons; whose flowers were formed of knee-caps and toe-nails. Every lasting portion of the human frame was represented in these intricate designs (they were by Michael Angelo, I think,) and there was a careful finish about the work, and an attention to details that betrayed the artist's love of his labors as well as his schooled ability.

"Who were these people?"

"We -- up stairs -- Monks of the Capuchin order -- my brethren."

"How many departed monks were required to upholster these six parlors?"

"These are the bones of four thousand."

"It took a long time to get enough?"

"Many, many centuries."

"Their different parts are well separated -- skulls in one room, legs in another, ribs in another -- there would be stirring times here for a while if the last trumpet  should blow. Some of the brethren might get hold of the wrong leg, in the confusion, and the wrong skull, and find themselves limping, and looking through eyes that were wider apart or closer together than they were used to.

You can not tell any of these parties apart, I suppose?"

"Oh, yes, I know many of them."

"This was Brother Alexander -- dead two hundred and eighty years.

The  monk put his finger on a skull. "This was Brother Anselmo -- dead three  hundred years

This was Brother Carlo -- dead about as long."

The reflection that one must some day be taken apart like an engine or a clock, or like a house whose owner is gone, and worked up into arches and pyramids and hideous frescoes, did not distress this monk in the least. I thought he even looked as if he were thinking, with complacent vanity, that his own skull would look well on top of the heap and his own ribs add a charm to the frescoes which possibly they lacked at present. 
 

What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you shall be

yellow shine

ages

china center

clean hair

the heights

here and there

in the valley

If no-one ever marries me--
And I don't see why they should,
For nurse says I am not pretty
And I'm seldom very good--


If no one ever marries me
I shan't mind very much;
I shall buy a squirrel in a cage,
And a little rabbit-hutch;


I shall have a cottage near a wood,
And a pony all my own,
And a little lamb, quite clean and tame,
That I can take to town;


And when I'm getting really old,
At twenty-eight or nine--
I shall buy a little orphan girl
And bring her up as mine.

                     laurence (1897)

rigorous riddles I have struggled with over decades

did he know what he would become after his death

I think he did

he lived life with the idea

we would all know

or he tried to

and fucked it all up

66

each unit

nerve centered

information clusters

strange instinct

to be superior

over the amsterdamned

indians were not

human enough

blacks suffered ignorance
three hundred years 

pity the alien we meet

no need to discuss mirror identity

too ugly

pink and gooey

sports celebrate body despite race

people cheer like animals

permit body control

we are just swells of a sea

growing about this world

but we can jump

all  beyond  precarious

high above

yet not know our body

is a brain

anything to mask

to never see a jelly body

a culture of distraction
commercial for the physique

sports dance fashion

body theatrics

drawings in cinema skulls

body murder

thinking is not all

body knows

older modes instincts

still taking over

 spider with a net
smaller brain

sleeping in the mud

Never let a computer take a part

it is magnet not material

melting minutinity
the mental product of billions 
 

legged pests swirled around his ankles

headache of six pills

white haspel suit reflection

thinking  sharply of a girl

the sand burning his feet

and the day ahead

money

he stopped thinking

The maserati was scratched

caked leather

sure he felt a part of everything

sure he was grateful to his parents

he blamed them less than god

or creation

whatever left him with these mistakes

Escaping by  liquid exit

into not nonfiction

not knowing enough

what others know not

Leafs on haydn

B fifth

in the bombing
a cheery anthem

for the islanders

or war in peace

by skip spence

ahhh

‘Death, the old captain’ is often helping to weigh anchor