Allan Morley

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Original text in yellow, anagram in pink.

A quatrain by Nostradamus, supposedly predicting September 11.

Cinq & quarante degrez ciel bruslera
Feu approcher de la grand cite neuue
Instant grand flamme esparse sautera
Quand on voudra des Normans faire preuue.

A tense, unseen quarrel of Asia shall come up:
Dual quarters are ruptured, razed in fire;
Abundant fear & deceased men prompt
A crusader avenging, conquering.

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From the Irish
by Ian Duhig

According to Dineen, a Gael unsurpassed
in lexicographical enterprise, the Irish
for moon means 'the white circle in a slice
of half-boiled potato or turnip'. A star
is the mark on the forehead of a beast
and the sun is the bottom of a lake, or well.

Well, if I say to you your face
is like a slice of half-boiled turnip,
your hair is the colour of a lake's bottom
and at the centre of each of your eyes
is the mark of the beast, it is because
I want to love you properly, according to Dineen.

Beware the Too Literal!
by Idi Hagun

It is weird: according to the fat dictionary
in the office, 'seeing stars' occurs
if you are clobbered on the head, a 'moon'
is a boorish pair of exposed buttocks and 'sun'
is a coarse tropical fiber similar to hemp.

Therefore, my little one, when I crooned that your hair
is like a heap of the cheap stuff they used
for manufacturing rope, to look into your eyes
is reminiscent of a blow to the skull
and you have a face like an arse,
all I meant... oh all right, I'll sleep on the sofa.

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A poem by Dorothy Parker.

Résumé

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

Our age's unnerving -
Fair world's now a slum;
A city's polluted;
Monday's glum.
A mugger pilfers;
Worms cause disease;
Survival's crazy -
Euthanasia please.

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Hickory dickory dock.
The mouse ran up the clock.
The clock struck one,
The mouse ran down.
Hickory dickory dock.

Kinky cockroach skulked up chronometer.
So why did kinky cockroach scuttle?
Theory: chronometer did cuckoo!

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A poem by Stephen Dunn.

TO A TERRORIST

For the historical ache, the ache passed down
which finds its circumstance and becomes
the present ache, I offer this poem

without hope, knowing there's nothing,
not even revenge, which alleviates
a life like yours. I offer it as one

might offer his father's ashes
to the wind, a gesture
when there's nothing else to do.

Still, I must say to you:
I hate your good reasons.
I hate the hatefulness that makes you fall

in love with death, your own included.
Perhaps you're hating me now,
I who own my own house

and live in a country so muscular,
so smug, it thinks its terror is meant
only to mean well, and to protect.

Christ turned his singular cheek,
one man's holiness another's absurdity.
Like you, the rest of us obey the sting,

the surge. I'm just speaking out loud
to cancel my silence. Consider it an old impulse,
doomed to become mere words.

The first poet probably spoke to thunder
and, for a while, believed
thunder had an ear and a choice.

FROM A TERRORIST

Impudent American serpent, how dare you assume you understand! How dare you put me and our whole religion here on a psychiatrist's couch, den of viperish scum! These childish observations are literally worthless, corrupted by your immoral, infidel mind -- you cannot know, CANNOT know.

No, ask instead about the ceaseless heresies of the world's self-styled mightiest nation. Ask instead about the desecration of these brave people's holiest of divine holies -- what with the inhuman oppression, the endless interference, the harsh meddling, the downright cruel butchery... and all for a thing as crude as oil. Ask instead what overwhelming, monumental atrocity it took *to unhinge a whole community's sense of right and wrong*: THIS is the crime. The genie is out of the bottle.

Though at least you confess the guilt of the wretched US. I like this, so I choose to spare you. Keep away from Chicago on the seventeenth of June.

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Updated: May 10, 2016


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