Introduction About the Poetry
There seems to be some confusion between the partially anglicized names and the German derived names for ‘wine garden’ used as a common surname.
One is a Rose and one is the name of a Devil in a Roman à Clef, or Une sorcière avec un bâton magique mangeant toutes les carottes*. The sorcière cast a spell on the Centers for Discomfort Control (CDC) and became the de facto head of the CDC sub-bureau, Child School Expulsion and Quarantine (CSEQ).
*A witch with a magic wand eating all the carrots.
As they say:
“Sie war trunken vor Macht in der tat in der Weingarten.”
She was indeed drunk with power in the vineyard.
She is also famous for taking on the role of Rosina Leckermaul in the fairy-tale opera (Märchenoper) “Hänsel und Gretel” by composer Engelbert Humperdinck.
It is said by contemporaries that she froze the children out of school to stay at home where some became severely depressed. Some died at their own hand or from drugs. Some ran off with a Pied Piper, never to be seen again. There are some unconfirmed rumors that some were turned into gingerbread cookies.
In the realm of names, there are also many confusions with the various historical persons with the name “Randi.” This can be male or female, magical or not. This is not to be confused with the Scottish derived “Randy”.
Neo-Aesopian Grapes for der Weingarten
Many tales and poems have been written while relaxing in a vineyard. Grapes are versitile: they can be eaten plain, or ferment, or be wrath or not. There is a power to the intoxication of ideas and protest. Children can be manipulated or destroyed.
A Randy Wine Garden of Science
by Douglas Gilbert
It was the year of plagues,
the year of science.
Fairy tales for children.
Dense withered science,
weathered propaganda
in spirit false, twisted.
Some weathered the year,
some did not: a tear in a
pedagogy climate of fear.
An affront to data, dithers
in logic: twisted science.
Remote Learning,
a few kid suicides, rare
like rain in the desert, but
a science dessert for the
insipid statistical sips
of statistical fruit
Death is usually not literal
in a year of pedagogic abuse, but
withering glance blows slapped the day
with many seizures in a plague year.
It was a year when
the snide videos
proved the teachers
hated the parents
It was a year of ominous noise,
a year of doom dust and ash,
a smell of sulfur when crows
pecked at eggs and left them
Natural became supernatural.
Evil forces prevailed.
Coming from the ground, far under,
were odd humming and rumbling sounds
those evil sounds were underground like
a swarm of crashing freight trains deep below
like gigantic humming birds as big
flapping their wings like manic dinosaurs
and like angry moose fighting with the Devil
It was a year of strangeness
and a year of hope.
But there were two omens. One was
the cicadas came twice in one year —
once in Spring and once in Fall
the other was that
the rare biting incidents in pre-school
became numerous in the upper grades.
Well actually, more than two omens.
And the mayor was perturbed by
the rumors of
real werewolves, zombies
and Devil worshipers
after the theater re-opened.
Maybe those were not omens
but hysteria or tension.
The snide videos
proved the teachers
hated the parents, and
especially me. Disturbed,
board meetings were
pointless and strange.
When
I caught Mary’s teacher
berating my child
in a zoom style thing,
I began my research
on a curse. Nothing
was off the table
My child was an odd goldenrod
and the teachers hated her flowering
even after her death.
When the UFOs came again
and abducted a crazy teacher
we, parents, were not offended.
Picking off the teachers
of the Wine Garden club
was a deserved drubbing
‘cause the aliens had a
purpose for them: needed
them for a scientific study.
The parents were glad, and
there were more important things
than the hopelessly pedantic.
It was a strange year
seared in weird, but cold.
School resumed in the fall
five days-a-week
full time, but appalling
and it was too late
for golden Mary
Mary had had a little lamb.
It was a strange year
seared in weird; disturbing
without a noble shepherd
In the fall
I visited Mary
in the cemetery, but
her grave was disturbed
When Mrs. Marxwagon,
Mary’s dreaded teacher, said
she would sue me in court
for placing a curse on her face
(not a known legal charge),
I laughed as if the Devil courted her.
I told her
if the lamb bothers you,
eat it.
The Center for Propaganda Control (CPC)
said the outbreak looked like rabies.
I don’t know why
I wished Mary would be alive —
I thought it was a harmless thought
and the visions were delusional from grief.
The nightmare was so real, and
and I woke up hearing myself scream —
I saw Mary walking to school, and
she said, Mommy, I failed the test.
I ignored the humming sound
and I got into my car, but
the lightning was so angry, and
the rain was intense, the cicadas
rose from the ground and the birds
ate as many as they could, and there
was the stench of death and decay
in the eerie fear invading my soul;
in panic I drove to school to see
if Mary was there and desperately
I loved her still, and thought perhaps
like a miracle she was alive, and
passing her tests like
a good little girl
so precious and pure
The authorities were busy
in the front of the school
surrounding the UFOs
I climbed a tree and
jumped onto
the roof of the school.
The cicadas were
crawling all over, and
the birds were swarming.
I came down the stairs.
I saw Mary.
She and the other
dead children
were eating their teachers.
It was a good day.
The authorities
stormed the building.
The aliens vaporized them all.
I suppose they’re friendly, because
they follow the pedantic science.
The Depravity of a Union Teacher
by Douglas Gilbert
Depravity
would be seen
as unforseen
consequences:
a union of travesty
gravity
and dirt
The botanist had had a child in school.
Had sad time off; there’d be time too
for the funeral soon. There would be
blood in the kitchen, a kind of
spilled wine in the garden for
teachers of the vineyard who demanded
more whine privilege than little
giggling girls like her Randi
used to be, but the Union
had demanded masked smiles until doom,
more rules for tiny children in a classroom.
The botanist had
more time off from work for the funeral.
Walking in a hellish haze
the botanist felt nauseous
along the way from the smell
of her daughter’s favorite flowers
far afield she wandered
drifting in a fog, in a
random eternal pattern
to reach the ceremony
of the grave; had a thought
(Randi’s vision
made her cry)
She was startled by a reporter. Blurted:
“yes, I am certain that
the teacher is an idiot.
“You want to know? You know…
My little Randi darling flower spirit
was precocious ‘once upon a time’
before a teacher tore her petals off”
This Mom was a little nauseous
smelling her daughter’s favorite flowers
as she walked in a daze remembering
far afield she wandered in a trance
yet jolted by the voice persisting;
replied:
“Yes, I’m sure
it was suicide.
You want to know? You know…
my child vomited in her mask,
and the teacher wouldn’t… (you know)
she came home; said school was fine —
the usual kid denial, and the
counselor said don’t worry
“Yes, you know the story —
report it.”
Far afield she wandered in a trance
yet jolted by the voice persisting; replied
“the nurse said it was nothing”
she smelled the flowers
The reporter fell backwards
when she vomited on him, and
she enabled his fall over
the unmasked cliff
with prejudice.
Startled, she turned around to
walk home, so as to smell
the corpse flower, and to
join her daughter with a plunge of
a kitchen knife into her own heart.
Princess Beast
by Douglas Gilbert
[Oh My Cron (7)]
by Alice
In fat assignments
I explain death or not.
Oh hell, because
this muddy muddled mind puddle
is like a dark pudding, I cry out in
my lugubrious night where I
fatten up with empty words, but
I have my vocabulary list to learn
and my last will to write.
A girl in her ugliness
can be a beast, and
I have been condemned
to a plague of loneliness
by an evil milieu
It is an elite rule:
the beautiful witches and warlocks
possess the favors and powers
But from their palaces
in holly woods and
from party districts
come many sycophants
to mandate loneliness
in loco parentis
I am a beast girl
in a shanty castle
without magic powers
I write this letter for Stacey
because I smashed my keyboard:
Why a death chord? Because…
there had been mocking awes
in every voiced pshaw
smirking behind a mask;
I could hear their snide smile
rubbing against the cloth
It’s not just that I’m fat and ugly.
Oh My Cron, I’m beastly
OMC Stacey, I got banned
for the humanized mice comment…
Mu, Nu, Xi
OMC! Burn my Prom Dress
Zoom zone me out.
Yeah, I’m a dissident variant, but
it’s not only just, OMG, ha, my
muumuu dress dance with ukulele
got banned from Me-meTube; it’s
not just an Aloha
Got banned from Spacey Bookie too
and from the Ticks
of skewed life. Failed school.
School is a place of hurt
anyway. Shouldn’t be
anymore children born
like me, fat Alice abysmal.
I am a beast without magic.
Burn my Prom Dress ’cause
I have never danced, though
even I was at THE party, but
they hated me, and I
eyed a pill on the floor,
and saw it on the news
so I knew its deadly ruse
when I saved it.
Give out my other letters.
Tell my Mom it was an accident.
Burn my Prom Dress, but my death
wasn’t an accident, it was Science
and Chemistry by the evil, though
they did me a favor.
Remember two years ago?
Yeah, actually, I liked
math and pi and pie, ’cause
my math and science teachers’ chats
were so cool and hot like STEM trends,
hot trends for girls in space, yeah, and
bio lab rats and stuff like that.
Everyone had always known
I was fat and ugly, but
they lie like science lies. It’s a
lie world. It’s
about dead lab rats and mice
and re-education camps
and slave labor and death.
It is a world of tyrants,
of dark pudding witches
and princely warlocks
Didn’t think I’d fail science, just because
the teachers were afraid to teach or something
and they were under an evil spell.
I would have learned it as my own blend
if I were brilliant and didn’t need a teacher
didn’t need a boyfriend, didn’t need a friend.
I would need a magic wand and a frog Prince
I failed science alone because
I had been fat and ugly and too stupid
to have figured out the truth on my own. Yeah, and
Brandon got myocarditis from a booster.
I’m sorry I told you Brandon
was a good guy. He was shy,
nice to me, didn’t know you’d bleed
when he joined the rapeseed club. Didn’t
know it wasn’t about Botany, and I think
Science is evil now without good seeds.
All those humanized mice and puppies, and
I think I was ‘barking up the wrong tree’.
The RNA has jumped from tree to tree,
and the dogs are lost.
So Science is a political sport not for girls
(or me anyway), renamed fats and oil
in unctuous lies and taunts, and so
Even after another lab leak,
they’re hiding the therapeutics…
My favorite cousins were teased on Spacey Bookie:
labeled obese beasts
and they died without the virus pill.
No therapeutic cry and I miss them.
I could have done a crash diet, but
I swallowed the pill from the floor.
I’m sorry. Give out the other letters.
I’m sorry to leave you behind
to suffer through the Armageddon.
I hope you got the abortion.
All I want is chocolate pudding,
and a masterpiece.
The Schools are corrupted as the Apocalypse Approaches. The Piper is unpaid. The Children’s Crusade to the North Pole begins after R.W. et.al. make the schools decadent and evil (Book of Revelations; Psalm 91). A 13-year-old child leads the children to the holy land.
The Four Nuppets of the Apocalypse
by Douglas Gilbert
Behold, the feathers of truth descend:
the four Nuppets of the Apocalypse
have arrived as foretold and
Huge Bird walks among us, but
know ye the schools are defiled,
the files are closed in haste. Leave
as the leaves have fallen.
Leave ye from the branches
though the ground is noisome
and you fear the reign of feathers
Leave from pestilence
to join our march
I say to you in earnest:
Give your leave
to walk with me
to our secret place
Do not be afraid;
Huge Bird can see
‘the snares of the fowler’*
Let us gather in common cause:
I pray you follow me here to
sing with me for wanderlust but
should you not be present here,
be at the Ward Hunt Island retreat
I’m thirteen but so what: God has
given me the powers of prophesy, and
I will lead you to the Jerusalemma
at the North Pole throne fortress
Do not be afraid; we have
Mr. Smith our science teacher,
a captive for our just cause.
We have lured that devil away with
the best black market vaccine, and
we agree to release his mistress
and say yea verily to the sky,
she shall sin no more though
she is stoned on pot and high
Mr. Smith is now in a cage
and we can engage him double
along the way to Jerusalemma.
Glaciers are melting, he informs us
ergo, we apprehend it will be warm.
But hey kids, God will strike him down
if he fails to well teach us the way.
But the signs will be clear —
and when we are near the North pole, dears
a polar bear will growl with hunger
but even deer shall have no fear, for we will
summon Mr. Smith to leave his cage and he,
not faithful enough to trample a dragon,
will bear witness to sacrifice and suffer for us
as the science says bears will eat.
The bear will be most grateful and
share seven seals from his snacks.
These seals will become many and
we will not be hungry.
Come ye all to Ward Hunt Island
but fear not expanse of ice or snow,
for carbon’s ghost will warm us
I tell you now my vision:
with ash and fire from the sky,
the ice will turn into stone, and
we shall walk to the North Pole.
Join our crusade, and
bring a teacher in a cage.
Let us pray
for the promised land
of milk and windmills
Science says
do this.
*Psalm 91
Poet Laureate of the Primitive Planets 