My deeepest dearest darling Jeffrey.

First, let me say, i do love you as a fellow human being, as i love all wo/men.

I am only having a larf mate coz really, poetry, yer know, it's all shite
innit? I mean of course it's incredibly important and vital and really,
really serious - nay, a vital and central componenet and concern of our
existence. However, as something that will fill the tank with gas, put
clothes on the kids backs and help us navigate the seven hour slog down the
M5 to Newquay, it isn't centre stage.

You see, my thing, has always been the bards, since the days with Bob S in
Edge Hill when the lore of the filidh was not even a skeleton, merely a mass
of gloop and funny looking names like Conchobar, Cúchulainn, Partholón,
Nemed, Fir Bolg and the Tuatha Dé Danann. I was learning of American
modernist poetry on the official course and had this other learning funning
extra-curricular, doing 12 hours a day and more, all through love of learning.

And do you know, not unlike yourself, no one is interested in the bardic
lore now in any serious way, even though they link to the druids and not
Ezrastotle pooh ah nadz who loved the linguistic invention. This is an
annonymous bard from 12-14C

Filled with sharp dart-like pens
Limber tipped and firm, newly trimmed
Paper cushioned under my hand
Percolating upon the smooth slope
The leaf a fine and uniform script
A book of verse in ennobling Goidelic. 
I learnt the roots of each tale, branch
Of valour and the fair knowledge,
That I may recite in learned lays
Of clear kindred stock and each person's
Family tree, exploits of wonder
Travel and musical branch
Soft voiced, sweet and slumberous
A lullaby to the heart. 
Grant me the gladsome gyre, loud
Brilliant, passionate and polished
Rushing in swift frenzy, like a blue-
Edged, bright, sharp-pointed spear
In a sheath tightly corded;
The cause itself worthy to contain. 

S/he *learnt the roots of each tale*

You see Jeff (if you're still awake reading this dreck) my dream when with
Sheppard, (it's ok, it took me tears to get it right and i was with him
twice a week) was to be a *real* poet, and wanting to know I to go about
becoming one.

I thought, what is the way to do it, to set about it in such a way, no one
can poo poo me. A doctor of poetry say, who didn't like me but who would
dress it up into dismissal via gobble dee gook.

And it struck me as obvious. There was I the child of irish parents, it was
staring me in the kisser. If I could learn what the bards did - *really*
did, then that was me a real poet, in the purely stricest sense of the word
as that hand, is unbeatable, innit? I mean, if you wanna chat poetry proper,
Poetry the big one, what have we got for proof?

Poundie? Well Ez was a tip top mental basket with a one man religion who
ended writing his best stuff in a cage, and he had all the new fangled
theories, like Megles and the eugenics crowd had perfectly lovely and
logical theories. But no history, no tradition apart from, well, coz *I* say
innit? To arrogate that Jeff, to say, no all you are wrong, I am right coz,
well coz I say so - this is laughable.

Being a bard, learning what they did, when I first started no one knew,
because the course was lost on the pages time (almost) forgot. Douglas Hyde
had the most comprehensive guide, but the nits and bolts, the pieces had to
be retrieved, and luckily, online, now is the first time in history it's
possible. And that's what i've been doing since day one. Me, the idiot, the
lunatic, the thick one.

And amidst all this, there is a document I found four year back, first
translated in 1983, a 7C old irish text attributed to Amergin, the Merlin
and Taliesin of ireland.

It purports to explain from the pov of a 7C bard, what Poetry is and how it
works, and is fascinating reading. However it takes a bit of background info
to fully understand, which amounts to learning the basics of Irish myth,
which took a bard about 7 years before they had the skeleton working. So you
might see it as rubbish, say, worthless because it has all this stuff you
think has no poetic value. However, this text, is the most important text of
the bardic enterprise and was handed out on day one to the focloc beginner
at bard school on Samhain, and do you know, not one person from the poetry
community has engaged with me on this, even though it clearly is the most
exciting and important text in poetry.

~

Forgive me, I am rambling. I haven't been taking the tablets for my sex
addiction and have three Brazillian rent boys here waiting to service me.
The camera is pointed at me, Monica is rubbing coconut oil into my shoulders
and I am getting rather excited thinking of how I will respond to the call
for total nuclear disarmament.

I do love you Jeffrey, very much and just hope you get your good humour
back. If i have upset you or anyone else reading in any way, i can only
apologise and plead stupidity. I was born a thicko, and spat as a child,
dreaming of top trumps and playing out with the other louts in my area ofr
Ormskirk dearest darling Jeff. Also, i am part way through a transgendering
process and suffer heavy pmt. Basically Jeff, I am a waste of space and hope
any unpleasantness, discomfiture and whatnot my writing occassioned within
your mind, heals and we can go on being fwends.

and litle man Tim Allen Jeff, can you get it, do you see it yet. 

Tim it m - Allen litle man, a word game mate, same as Desmond's words.

Swords is my mothers maiden name. Being a transgendered ex-male, mama is the
most important woman in one's life and I thought up this nom de guerre
wheeze in Bob's class, and it was only after I got published in a student
rag adn they left the S of swords, Desmond Words, that i became conscious my
name is also desmond's words.

This was one of those *moments of satisfaction* H speaks of, a sign the Muse
is on our side. Poetry you see, is not an exact science, but make believe
and magic, as you well know my mate.

good luck, at least we are gassing, and as the man said, in the grand scale
of eternity, this really is nothing. That is why i can say I love you
jeffrey side, and freely, laughing, because there are a lot worse things ion
the world than two bores tussling over poetry.