“…in a sunless parlour where an old clock ticked in the shadows and a cat slept by the empty grate.” (Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited)

*tidings*
Recently, Jocelyn Lindenridge-Blanche began to write his first prose, fantasy fiction about Prince Carpathian. As I’ve said more than once, I hate fantasy fiction. But I love Jocelyn and cannot have anything against his latest undertaking. This is his poem on the theme:

What there is beyond the infinite?
What does remain above the clouds?
What does melt in the bottom of your eyes
or in the cry of useless words?
You play your fate so lightly.
Your laughter is so clear. Is it possible
that your starry eyes knows so little evil?
Is it impossible to return you?
Your hand clenches white roseleaves.
Don’t bite your lips so desperately!
Where your blood dropped,
one will be always singing on farewell.
Where your laughter rang,
yet better gardens will bloom.
Don’t cry, Prince Carpathian,
you depart but we’ll be together…
What does remain above the clouds?
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*virtual life*
I asked my friend: “Do you believe in cyber sex relationship? Do you like the virtual life?”
And he replied: “Cyber sex has maybe something erotic, but for sure nothing romantic. A screen is not eyes, a keyboard is not skin. For my part, as you asked me, I prefer real life, real contacts, real sex. Nothing is better than to feel someone's skin under my hands, under my lips. Life, like sex, is the best in real.”
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*prose poem*
Rhyme is a good mask, if it’s well-adjusted.
Myths are an oral caress upon hot entrails.
The roots spread wide stretching deep.
Your thirst is a cyclic fairy tale.
Your kiss grows sad in the corner of my lips.
My love shows red on the tips of your fangs.
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*reading detective stories*
About mafia I know only two things:
mafia is Family first of all,
and
mafia kills only its own people.
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Отрывок из нового романа:
«Ты опоздал, фээсбэшное быдо. Всю секретную информацию я уже успел передать за границу».

(a few warm words to my possible Russian watcher.)
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*historical fiction*
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“A desert labyrinth, a timeless forest,
a wide abyss across the gothic soul,
old oak and calf-bound books to decorate the hall;
Egyptian gods and Latin mighty shyness.” (Anthony Blanche)

Did you read the novel THE EMPEROR by Georg Ebers? Personally I never read it; I only looked the book through, and found three passages there, which I liked. I won’t advert the link of the book here, on the blog, because the author’s interpretation of the story of Hadrian and Antinous is contrary to my own view.
Three excerpts from the book:
I.
“Look, he is speaking now to his favorite--Antonius I think they call the pretty boy."
"Antinous, not Antonius. He picked him up in Bithynia, they say."
"He is a beautiful youth."
"Incomparably beautiful! What a figure and what a face! Still, I cannot wish that he were my son."
"The Emperor's favorite!"
"For that very reason. Why, he looks already as if he had tried every pleasure, and could never know any farther enjoyment."
II.
[…] From time to time he raised his eyelids--long, finely wrinkled, and blue-veined--turning his eyes up to heaven or rolling them to one side and then downwards towards the middle of the tent. There, on the skin of a huge bear trimmed with blue cloth, lay Hadrian's favorite Antinous. His beautiful head rested on that of the beast, which had been slain by his sovereign, and its skull and skin skillfully preserved, his right leg, supported on his left knee, he flourished freely in the air, and his hands were caressing the Emperor's bloodhound, which had laid its sage-looking head on the boy's broad, bare breast, and now and then tried to lick his soft lips to show its affection. But this the youth would not allow; he playfully held the beast's muzzle close with his hands or wrapped its head in the end of his mantle, which had slipped back from his shoulders.
The dog seemed to enjoy the game, but once when Antinous had drawn the cloak more tightly round its head and it strove in vain to be free from the cloth that impeded its breathing, it set up a loud howl, and this doleful cry made the Emperor change his attitude and cast a glance of displeasure at the boy lying on the bear-skin, but only a glance, not a word of blame. And soon the expression, even of his eyes, changed, and he fixed them on the lad’s figure with a gaze of loving contemplation, as though it were some noble work of art that he could never tire of admiring. And truly the Immortals had moulded this child of man to such a type; every muscle of that throat, that chest, those arms and legs was a marvel of softness and of power; no human countenance could be more regularly chiselled. Antinous observing that his master's attention had been attracted to his play with the dog, let the animal go and turned his large, but not very brilliant, eyes on the Emperor […]
III.
"Is that your son?" asked Doris.
"No, dame, he is only my pupil; but I feel as if he were my son."
"He is a beautiful lad!"
"Why, the old lady still looks after the young men!"
"We do not give that up till we are a hundred or till the Parcae cut the thread of life."
"What a confession!"
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