Like a psychotic docent in the wilderness,
I will not speak in perfect Ciceronian cadences.
I draw my voice from a much deeper cistern,
Preferring the jittery synaptic archive,
So sublimely unfiltered, random and profane.
And though I am sequestered now,
Confined within the walls of a gated, golf-coursed,
Over-55 lunatic asylum (for Active Seniors I am told),
I remain oddly puerile,
Remarkably refreshed and unfettered.  
My institutionalization self-imposed,
Purposed for my own serenity, and also the safety of others.
Yet I abide, surprisingly emancipated and frisky.
I may not have found the peace I seek,
But the quiet has mercifully come at last.

The nexus of inner and outer space is context for my story.
I was born either in Brooklyn, New York or Shungopavi, Arizona,
More of intervention divine than census data.
Shungopavi: a designated place for tribal statistical purposes.
Shungopavi: an ovine abbatoir and shaman’s cloister.
The Hopi: my mother’s people, a state of mind and grace,
Deftly landlocked, so cunningly circumscribed,
By both interior and outer Navajo boundaries.
The Navajo: a coyote trickster people; a nation of sheep thieves,
Hornswoggled and landlocked themselves,
Subsumed within three of the so-called Four Corners:
A 3/4ths compromise and covenant,
Pickled in firewater, swaddled in fine print,
A veritable swindle concocted back when the USA
Had Manifest Destiny & mayhem on its mind.

The United States: once a pubescent synthesis of blood and thunder,
A bold caboodle of trooper spit and polish, unwashed brawlers, Scouts and      
Pathfinders, mountain men, numb-nut ne'er-do-wells,
Buffalo Bills & big-balled individualists, infected, insane with greed.
According to the Gospel of His Holiness Saint Zinn,
A People’s’ History of the United States: essentially state-sponsored terrorism,
A LAND RUSH grabocracy, orchestrated, blessed and anointed,
By a succession of Potomac sharks, Great White Fascist Fathers,
Far-Away-on-the Bay, the Bay we call The Chesapeake.
All demented national patriarchs craving lebensraum for God and country.
The USA: a 50-state Leviathan today, a nation jury-rigged,
Out of railroad ties, steel rails and baling wire,
Forged by a litany of lies, rapaciousness and ******,
And jaw-torn chunks of terra firma,
Bites both large and small out of our well-****** Native American ***.

Or culo, as in va’a fare in culo (literally "go do it in the ***")
Which Italian Americans pronounce as fongool.
The language center of my brain,
My sub-cortical Broca’s region,
So fraught with such semantic misfires,
And autonomic linguistic seizures,
Compel acknowledgement of a father’s contribution,
To both the gene pool and the genocide.
Columbus Day:  a conspicuously absent holiday out here in Indian Country.
No festivals or Fifth Avenue parades.
No excuse for ethnic hoopla. No guinea feast. No cannoli. No tarantella.
No excuse to not get drunk and not **** your sister-in-law.
Emphatically a day for prayer and contemplation,
A day of infamy like Pearl Harbor and 9/11,
October 12, 1492: not a discovery; an invasion.

Growing up in Brooklyn, things were always different for me,
Different in some sort of redskin/****/****--
Choose Your Favorite Ethnic Slur-sort of way.
The American Way: dehumanization for fun and profit.
Melting *** anonymity and denial of complicity with evil.
But this is no time to bring up America’s sordid past,
Or, a personal pet peeve: Indian Sovereignty.
For Uncle Sam and his minions, an ever-widening, conveniently flexible concept,
Not a commandment or law,
Not really a treaty or a compact,
Or even a business deal.  Let’s get real:
It was not even much in the way of a guideline.
Just some kind of an advisory, a bulletin or newsletter,
Could it merely have been a free-floating suggestion?
Yes, that’s it exactly: a suggestion.

Over and under halcyon American skies,
Over and around those majestic purple mountain peaks,
Those trapped in poetic amber waves of wheat and oats,
Corn and barley, wheat shredded and puffed,
Corn flaked and milled, Wheat Chex and Wheaties, oats that are little Os;
Kix and Trix, Fiber One, and Kashi-Go-Lean, Lucky Charms and matso *****,
Kreplach and kishka,
Polenta and risotto.
Our cantaloupe and squash patch,
Our fruited prairie plain, our delicate ecological Eden,
In balance and harmony with nature, as Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce instructs:
“These white devils are not going to,
Stop ****** and killing, cheating and eating us,
Until they have the whole ******* enchilada.
I’m talking about ‘from sea to shining sea.’”

“I fight no more forever,” Babaloo.
So I must steer this clunky keelboat of discovery,
Back to the main channel of my sad and starry demented river.
My warpath is personal but not historical.
It is my brain’s own convoluted cognitive process I cannot saavy.
Whatever biochemical or—as I suspect more each day—
Whatever bio-mechanical protocols govern my identity,
My weltanschauung: my world-view, as sprechen by proto-Nazis;
Putz philosophers of the 17th, 18th & 19th century.
The German intelligentsia: what a cavalcade of maniacal *******!
Why is this Jew unsurprised these Zarathustra-fueled Übermenschen . . .
Be it the Kaiser--Caesar in Deutsch--Bismarck, ******, or,
Even that Euro-*****,  Angela Merkel . . . Why am I not surprised these Huns,
Get global grab-*** on the sauerbraten cabeza every few generations?
To be, or not to be the ***** bullgoose loony: GOTT.

Biomechanical protocols govern my identity and are implanted while I sleep.
My brain--my weak and weary CPU--is replenished, my discs defragmented.
A suite of magnetic and optical white rooms, cleansed free of contaminants,
Gun mounts & lifeboat stations manned and ready,
Standing at attention and saluting British snap-style,
Snap-to and heel click, ramrod straight and cheerful: “Ready for duty, Sir.”
My mind is ravenous, lusting for something, anything to process.
Any memory or image, lyric or construct,
Be they short-term dailies or deeply imprinted.
Fixations archived one and all in deep storage time and space.
Memories, some subconscious, most vaporous;
Others--the scary ones—eidetic: frighteningly detailed and extraordinarily vivid.
Precise cognitive transcripts; recollected so richly rife and fresh.
Visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, and olfactory reloads:
Queued up and increasingly re-experienced.

The bio-data of six decades: it’s all there.
People, countless, places and things cataloged.
Every event, joy and trauma enveloped from within or,
Accessed externally from biomechanical storage devices.
The random access memory of a lifetime,
Read and recollected from cerebral repositories and vaults,
All the while the entire greedy process overseen,
Over-driven by that all-subservient British bat-man,
Rummaging through the data in batches small and large,
Internal and external drives working in seamless syncopation,
Self-referential, at times paradoxical or infinitely looped.
“Cogito ergo sum."
Descartes stripped it down to the basics but there’s more to the story:
Thinking about thinking.
A curse and minefield for the cerebral:  metacognition.

No, it is not the fact that thought exists,
Or even the thoughts themselves.
But the information technology of thought that baffles me,
As adaptive and profound as any evolution posited by Darwin,
Beyond the wetware in my skull, an entirely new operating system.
My mental and cultural landscape are becoming one.
Machines are connecting the two.
It’s what I am and what I am becoming.
Once more for emphasis:
It is the information technology of who I am.
It is the operating system of my mental and cultural landscape.
It is the machinery connecting the two.
This is the central point of this narrative:
Metacognition--your superego’s yenta Cassandra,
Screaming, screaming in your psychic ear, your good ear:

“LISTEN:  The machines are taking over, taking you over.
Your identity and train of thought are repeatedly hijacked,
Switched off the main line onto spurs and tangents,
Only marginally connected or not at all.
(Incoming TEXT from my editor: “Lighten Up, Giuseppi!”)
Reminding me again that most in my audience,
Rarely get past the comic page. All righty then: think Calvin & Hobbes.
John Calvin, a precocious and adventurous six-year old boy,
Subject to flights of 16th Century French theological fancy.
Thomas Hobbes, a sardonic anthropomorphic tiger from 17th Century England,
Mumbling about life being “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”
Taken together--their antics and shenanigans--their relationship to each other,
Remind us of our dual nature; explore for us broad issues like public education;
The economy, environmentalism & the Global ****** Thermometer;
Not to mention the numerous flaws of opinion polls.



And again my editor TEXTS me, reminds me again: “LIGHTEN UP!”
Consoling me:  “Even Shakespeare had to play to the groundlings.”
The groundlings, AKA: The Rabble.
Yes. Even the ******* Bard, even Willie the Shake,
Had to contend with a decidedly lowbrow copse of carrion.
Oh yes, the groundlings, a carrion herd, a flying flock of carrion seagulls,
Carrion crow, carrion-feeders one and all,
And let’s throw Sheryl Crow into the mix while we’re at it:
“Hit it! This ain't no disco. And it ain't no country club either, this is L.A.”  

                  Send "All I Wanna Do" Ringtone to your Cell              

Once more, I digress.
The Rabble:  an amorphous, gelatinous Jabba the Hutt of commonality.
The Rabble: drunk, debauched & lawless.
Too *****-delicious to stop Bill & Hilary from thinking about tomorrow;
Too Paul McCartney My Love Does it Good to think twice.

The Roman Saturnalia: a weeklong **** fest.
The Saturnalia: originally a pagan kink-fest in honor of the deity Saturn.
Dovetailing nicely with the advent of the Christian era,
With a project started by Il Capo di Tutti Capi,
One of the early popes, co-opting the Roman calendar between 17 and 25 December,
Putting the finishing touches on the Jesus myth.
For Brooklyn Hopi-***-Jew baby boomers like me,
Saturnalia manifested itself as Disco Fever,
Unpleasant years of electrolysis, scrunched ***** in tight polyester
For Roman plebeians, for the great unwashed citizenry of Rome,
Saturnalia was just a great big Italian wedding:
A true family blowout and once-in-a-lifetime ego-trip for Dad,
The father of the bride, Vito Corleone, Don for A Day:
“Some think the world is made for fun and frolic,
And so do I! Funicula, Funiculi!”

America: love it or leave it; my country right or wrong.
Sure, we were citizens of Rome,
But any Joe Josephus spending the night under a Tiber bridge,
Or sleeping off a three day drunk some afternoon,
Up in the Coliseum bleachers, the cheap seats, out beyond the monuments,
The original three monuments in the old stadium,
Standing out in fair territory out in center field,
Those three stone slabs honoring Gehrig, Huggins, and Babe.
Yes, in the house that Ruth built--Home of the Bronx Bombers--***?
Any Joe Josephus knows:  Roman citizenship doesn’t do too much for you,
Except get you paxed, taxed & drafted into the Legion.
For us the Roman lifestyle was HIND-*** humble.
We plebeians drew our grandeur by association with Empire.
Very few Romans and certainly only those of the patrician class lived high,
High on the hog, enjoying a worldly extravaganza, like—whom do we both know?

Okay, let’s say Laurence Olivier as Crassus in Spartacus.
Come on, you saw Spartacus fifteen ******* times.
Remember Crassus?
Crassus: that ***** twisted **** trying to get his freak on with,
Tony Curtis in a sunken marble tub?
We plebes led lives of quiet *****-scratching desperation,
A bunch of would-be legionnaires, diseased half the time,
Paid in salt tablets or baccala, salted codfish soaked yellow in olive oil.
Stiffs we used to call them on New Year’s Eve in Brooklyn.
Let’s face it: we were hyenas eating someone else’s ****,
Stage-door jackals, Juvenal-come-late-lies, a mob of moronic mook boneheads
Bought off with bread & circuses and Reality TV.
Each night, dished up a wide variety of lowbrow Elizabethan-era entertainments.  
We contemplate an evening on the town, downtown—
(cue Petula Clark/Send "Downtown" Ringtone to your Cell)

On any given London night, to wit:  mummers, jugglers, bear & bull baiters.
How about dog & **** fighters, quoits & skittles, alehouses & brothels?
In short, somewhere, anywhere else,
Anywhere other than down along the Thames,
At Bankside in Southwark, down in the Globe Theater mosh pit,
Slugging it out with the groundlings whose only interest,
In the performance is the choreography of swordplay and stale ****** puns.
Meanwhile, Hugh Fennyman--probably a fellow Jew,
An English Renaissance Bugsy Siegel or Mickey Cohen—
Meanwhile Fennyman, the local mob boss is getting his ya-yas,
Roasting the feet of my text-messaging editor, Philip Henslowe.
Poor and pathetic Henslowe, works on commission, always scrounging,
But a true patron of my craft, a gentleman of infinite jest and patience,
Spiritual subsistence, and every now and then a good meal at some,
Sawdust joint with oyster shells, and a Prufrockian silk purse of T.S. Eliot gold.

Poor, pathetic Henslowe, trussed up by Fennyman,
His editorial feet in what looks like a Japanese hibachi.
Henslowe’s feet to the fire--feet to the fire—get it?
A catchy phrase whose derivation conjures up,
A grotesque yet vivid image of torture,
An exquisite insight into how such phrases ingress the idiom,
Not to mention a scene once witnessed at a secret Romanian CIA prison,
I’d been ordered to Bucharest not long after 9/11,
Handling the rendition and torture of Habib Ghazzawy,

An entirely innocent falafel maker from Steinway Street, Astoria, Queens.
Shock the Monkey: it’s what we do. GOTO:
Peter Gabriel - Shock the Monkey/
(HQ music video) - YouTube//
www.youtube.com/
Poor, pathetic, ******-on Henslowe.


Fennyman :  (his avarice is whet by something Philly screams out about a new script)  "A play takes time. Find actors; Rehearsals. Let's say open in three weeks. That's--what--five hundred groundlings at tuppence each, in addition four hundred groundlings tuppence each, in addition four hundred backsides at three pence--a penny extra for a cushion, call it two hundred cushions, say two performances for safety how much is that Mr. Frees?"
Jacobean Tweet, John (1580-1684) Webster:  “I saw him kissing her bubbies.”

It’s Geoffrey Rush, channeling Henslowe again,
My editor, a singed smoking madman now,
Feet in an ice bucket, instructing me once more:
“Lighten things up, you know . . .
Comedy, love and a bit with a dog.”
I digress again and return to Hopi Land, back to my shaman-monastic abattoir,
That Zen Center in downtown Shungopavi.
At the Tribal Enrolment Office I make my case for a Certificate of Indian Blood,
Called a CIB by the Natives and the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The BIA:  representing gold & uranium miners, cattle and sheep ranchers,
Sodbusters & homesteaders; railroaders and dam builders since 1824.
Just in time for Andrew Jackson, another false friend of Native America,
Just before Old Hickory, one of many Democratic Party hypocrites and scoundrels,
Gives the FONGOOL, up the CULO go ahead.
Hey Andy, I’ve got your Jacksonian democracy: Hanging!
The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) mission is to:   "… enhance the quality of life, to promote economic opportunity, and to carry out the responsibility to protect and improve the trust assets of American Indians, Indian tribes, and Alaska Natives. What’s that in the fine print?  Uncle Sammy holds “the trust assets of American Indians.”

Here’s a ******* tip, Geronimo: if he trusted you,
It would ALL belong to you.
To you and The People.
But it’s all fork-tongued white *******.
If true, Indian sovereignty would cease to be a sick one-liner,
Cease to be a blunt force punch line, more of,
King Leopold’s 19th Century stand-up comedy schtick,
Leo Presents: The **** of the Congo.
La Belgique mission civilisatrice—
That’s what French speakers called Uncle Leo’s imperial public policy,
Bringing the gift of civilization to central Africa.
Like Manifest Destiny in America, it had a nice colonial ring to it.
“Our manifest destiny [is] to overspread the continent,
Allotted by Providence for the free development,
Of our yearly multiplying millions.”  John L. O'Sullivan, 1845

Our civilizing mission or manifest destiny:
Either/or, a catchy turn of phrase;
Not unlike another ironic euphemism and semantic subterfuge:
The Pacification of the West; Pacification?
Hardly: decidedly not too peaceful for Cochise & Tonto.
Meanwhile, Madonna is cash rich but disrespected Evita poor,
To wit: A ****** on the Rocks (throwing in a byte or 2 of Da Vinci Code).
Meanwhile, Miss Ciccone denied her golden totem *****.
They snubbed that little guinea ****, didn’t they?
Snubbed her, robbed her rotten.
Evita, her magnum opus, right up there with . . .
Her SNL Wayne’s World skit:
“Get a load of the unit on that guy.”
Or, that infamous MTV Music Video Awards stunt,
That classic ***** Lip-Lock with Britney Spears.

How could I not see that Oscar snubola as prime evidence?
It was just another stunning case of American anti-Italian racial animus.
Anyone familiar with Noam Chomsky would see it,
Must view it in the same context as the Sacco & Vanzetti case,
Or, that arbitrary lynching of 9 Italian-Americans in New Orleans in 1891,
To cite just two instances of anti-Italian judicial reach & mob violence,
Much like what happened to my cousin Dominic,
Gang-***** by the Harlem Globetrotters, in their locker room during halftime,
While he working for Abe Saperstein back in 1952.
Dom was doing advance for Abe, supporting creation of The Washington Generals:
A permanent stable of hoop dream patsies and foils,
Named for the ever freewheeling, glad-handing, backslapping,
Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force (SCAEF), himself,
Namely General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the man they liked,
And called IKE: quite possibly a crypto Jew from Abilene.

Of course, Harry Truman was my first Great White Fascist Father,
Back in 1946, when I first opened my eyes, hung up there,
High above, looking down from the adobe wall.
Surveying the entire circular kiva,
I had the best seat in the house.
Don’t let it be said my Spider Grandmother or Hopi Corn Mother,
Did not want me looking around at things,
Discovering what made me special.
Didn’t divine intervention play a significant part of my creation?
Knowing Mamma Mia and Nonna were Deities,
Gave me an edge later on the streets of Brooklyn.
The Cradleboard: was there ever a more divinely inspired gift to human curiosity? The Cradleboard: a perfect vantage point, an infant’s early grasp,
Of life harmonious, suspended between Mother Earth and Father Sky.
Simply put: the Hopi should be running our ******* public schools.

But it was IKE with whom I first associated,
Associated with the concept 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
I liked IKE. Who didn’t?
What was not to like?
He won the ******* war, didn’t he?
And he wasn’t one of those crazy **** John Birchers,
Way out there, on the far right lunatic Republican fringe,
Was he? (It seems odd and nearly impossible to believe in 2013,
That there was once a time in our Boomer lives,
When the extreme right wing of the Republican Party
Was viewed by the FBI as an actual threat to American democracy.)
Understand: it was at a time when The FBI,
Had little ideological baggage,
But a great appetite for secrets,
The insuppressible Jay Edgar doing his thang.

IKE: of whom we grew so, oh-so Fifties fond.
Good old reliable, Nathan Shaking IKE:
He’d been fixed, hadn’t he? Had had the psychic snip.
Snipped as a West Point cadet & parade ground martinet.
Which made IKE a good man to have in a pinch,
Especially when crucial policy direction was way above his pay grade.
Cousin Dom was Saperstein’s bagman, bribing out the opposition,
Which came mainly from religious and patriotic organizations,
Viewing the bogus white sports franchise as obscene.
The Washington Generals, Saperstein’s new team would have but one opponent,
And one sole mission: to serve as the **** of endless jokes and sight gags for—
Negroes.  To play the chronic fools of--
Negroes.  To be chronically humiliated and insulted by—
Negroes.  To run up and down the boards all night, being outran by—
Negroes.  Not to mention having to wear baggy silk shorts.



Meadowlark Lemon:  “Yeah, Charlie, we ***** that grease-ball Dominic; we shagged his guinea mouth and culo rotten.”  

(interviewed in his Scottsdale, AZ winter residence in 2003 by former ESPN commentator Charlie Steiner, Malverne High School, Class of ’67.)
                                                        
  ­                                                                 ­                 
IKE, briefed on the issue by higher-ups, quickly got behind the idea.
The Harlem Globetrotters were to exist, and continue to exist,
Are sustained financially by Illuminati sponsors,
For one reason and one reason only:
To serve elite interests that the ***** be kept down and subservient,
That the minstrel show be perpetuated,
A policy surviving the elaborate window dressing of the civil rights movement, Affirmative action, and our first Uncle Tom president.
Case in point:  Charles Barkley, Dennis Rodman & Metta World Peace Artest.
Cha-cha-cha changing again:  I am Robert Allen Zimmermann,
A whiny, skinny Jew, ****** and rolling in from Minnesota,
Arrested, obviously a vagrant, caught strolling around his tony Jersey enclave,
Having moved on up the list, the A-list, a special invitation-only,
Yom Kippur Passover Seder:  Next Year in Jerusalem, Babaloo!

I take ownership of all my autonomic and conditioned reflexes;
Each personal neural arc and pathway,
All shenanigans & shellackings,
Or blunt force cognitive traumas.
It’s all percolating nicely now, thank you,
In kitchen counter earthen crockery:
Random access memory: a slow-cook crockpot,
Bubbling through my psychic sieve.
My memories seem only remotely familiar,
Distant and vague, at times unreal:
An alien hybrid databank accessed accidently on purpose;
Flaky science sustains and monitors my nervous system.
And leads us to an overwhelming question:
Is it true that John Dillinger’s ******* is in the Smithsonian Museum?
Enquiring minds want to know, Kemosabe!

“Any last words, *******?” TWEETS Adam Smith.
Postmortem cyber-graffiti, an epitaph carved in space;
Last words, so singular and simple,
Across the universal great divide,
Frisbee-d, like a Pleistocene Kubrick bone,
Tossed randomly into space,
Morphing into a gyroscopic space station.
Mr. Smith, a calypso capitalist, and me,
Me, the Poet Laureate of the United States and Adam;
Who, I didn’t know from Adam.
But we tripped the light fantastic,
We boogied the Protestant Work Ethic,
To the tune of that old Scotch-Presbyterian favorite,
Variations of a 5-point Calvinist theme: Total Depravity; Election; Particular Redemption; Irresistible Grace; & Perseverance of the Saints.

Mr. Smith, the author of An Inquiry into the Nature
& Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776),
One of the best-known, intellectual rationales for:
Free trade, capitalism, and libertarianism,
The latter term a euphemism for Social Darwinism.
Prior to 1764, Calvinists in France were called Huguenots,
A persecuted religious majority . . . is that possible?
A persecuted majority of Edict of Nantes repute.
Adam Smith, likely of French Huguenot Jewish ancestry himself,
Reminds me that it is my principal plus interest giving me my daily gluten.
And don’t think the irony escapes me now,
A realization that it has taken me nearly all my life to see again,
What I once saw so vividly as a child, way back when.
Before I put away childish things, including the following sentiment:
“All I need is the air that I breathe.”

  Send "The Air That I Breathe" Ringtone to your Cell  

The Hippies were right, of course.
The Hollies had it all figured out.
With the answer, as usual, right there in the lyrics.
But you were lucky if you were listening.
There was a time before I embraced,
The other “legendary” economists:
The inexorable Marx,
The savage society of Veblen,
The heresies we know so well of Keynes.
I was a child.
And when I was a child, I spake as a child—
Grazie mille, King James—
I understood as a child; I thought as a child.
But when I became a man I jumped on the bus with the band,
Hopped on the irresistible bandwagon of Adam Smith.

Smith:  “Any last words, *******?”
Okay, you were right: man is rationally self-interested.
Grazie tanto, Scotch Enlightenment,
An intellectual movement driven by,
An alliance of Calvinists and Illuminati,
Freemasons and Johnny Walker Black.
Talk about an irresistible bandwagon:
Smith, the gloomy Malthus, and David Ricardo,
Another Jew boy born in London, England,
Third of 17 children of a Sephardic family of Portuguese origin,
Who had recently relocated from the Dutch Republic.
******* Jews!
Like everything shrewd, sane and practical in this world,
WE also invented the concept:  FOLLOW THE MONEY.

The lyrics: if you were really listening, you’d get it:
Respiration keeps one sufficiently busy,
Just breathing free can be a full-time job,
Especially when--borrowing a phrase from British cricketers—,
One contemplates the sorry state of the wicket.
Now that I am gainfully superannuated,
Pensioned off the employment radar screen.
Oft I go there into the wild ebon yonder,
Wandering the brain cloud at will.
My journey indulges curiosity, creativity and deceit.
I free range the sticky wicket,
I have no particular place to go.
Snagging some random fact or factoid,
A stop & go rural postal route,
Jumping on and off the brain cloud.

Just sampling really,
But every now and then, gorging myself,
At some information super smorgasbord,
At a Good Samaritan Rest Stop,
I ponder my own frazzled neurology,
When I was a child—
Before I learned the grim economic facts of life and Judaism,
Before I learned Hebrew,
Before my laissez-faire Bar Mitzvah lessons,
Under the rabbinical tutelage of Rebbe Kahane--
I knew what every clever child knows about life:
The surfing itself is the destination.
Accessing RAM--random access memory—
On a strictly need to know basis.
RAM:  a pretty good name for consciousness these days.

If I were an Asimov or Sir Arthur (Sri Lankabhimanya) Clarke,
I’d get freaky now, riffing on Terminators, Time Travel and Cyborgs.
But this is truth not science fiction.
Nevertheless, someone had better,
Come up with another name for cyborg.
Some other name for a critter,
Composed of both biological and artificial parts?
Parts-is-parts--be they electronic, mechanical or robotic.
But after a lifetime of science fiction media,
After a steady media diet, rife with dystopian technology nightmares,
Is anyone likely to admit to being a cyborg?
Since I always give credit where credit is due,
I acknowledge that cyborg was a term coined in 1960,
By Manfred Clynes & Nathan S. Kline and,
Used to identify a self-regulating human-machine system in outer space.

Five years later D. S. Halacy's: Cyborg: Evolution of the Superman,
Featured an introduction, which spoke of:  “… a new frontier, that was not,
Merely space, but more profoundly, the relationship between inner space,
And outer space; a bridge, i.e., between mind and matter.”
So, by definition, a cyborg defined is an organism with,
Technology-enhanced abilities: an antenna array,
Replacing what was once sentient and human.
My glands, once in control of metabolism and emotions,
Have been replaced by several servomechanisms.
I am biomechanical and gluttonous.
Soaking up and breathing out the atmosphere,
My Baby Boom experience of six decades,
Homogenized and homespun, feedback looped,
Endlessly networked through predigested mass media,
Culture as demographically targeted content.

This must have something to do with my own metamorphosis.
I think of Gregor Samsa, a Kafkaesque character if there ever was one.
And though we share common traits,
My evolutionary progress surpasses and transcends his.
Samsa--Phylum and Class--was, after all, an insect.
Nonetheless, I remain a changeling.
Have I not seen many stages of growth?
Each a painful metamorphic cycle,
From exquisite first egg,
Through caterpillar’s appetite & squirm.
To phlegmatic bliss and pupa quietude,
I unfold my wings in a rush of Van Gogh palette,
Color, texture, movement and grace, lift off, flapping in flight.
My eyes have witnessed wondrous transformations,
My experience, nouveau riche and distinctly self-referential;
For the most part unspecific & longitudinally pedestrian.

Yes, something has happened to me along the way.
I am no longer certain of my identity as a human being.
Time and technology has altered my basic wiring diagram.
I suspect the sophisticated gadgets and tools,
I’ve been using to shape & make sense of my environment,
Have reared up and turned around on me.
My tools have reshaped my brain & central nervous system.
Remaking me as something simultaneously more and less human.
The electronic toys and tools I once so lovingly embraced,
Have turned unpredictable and rabid,
Their bite penetrating my skin and septic now, a cluster of implanted sensors,
Content: currency made increasingly more valuable as time passes,
Served up by and serving the interests of a pervasively predatory 1%.
And the rest of us: the so-called 99%?
No longer human; simply put by both Howards--Beale & Zinn--

Humanoid.

When I'd wake alone in bed at 4am
Again
To find you passed out
on the couch
Too wasted to notice
the heart breaking in front of you
I tried every day
But you preferred synthetic hugs
and to hide in a place
where the expectations were low  
Escapes and excuses
more alluring than I could ever be
Through tears I would plead
'Why don't you want to sleep with me!?'
I shouldn't have taken it so personally

But nobody saw me cry
Especially not you
Blind to my own tears
Large doses of denial dished out
A feast for the masses
Perhaps the most powerful drug of them all
My soul mate disappeared
each day
a little more

Maybe today will be different
Hope
The beautiful motivator
Maybe today
It will be me that you choose
Naively believing
that you had control
But then I woke
alone in bed at 4am
Again
Manipulated and used

Worthless, stupid, ugly too.
Tongue-tied, but that’s only around you.
My dreams are horrors that I earn,
For them to be real ill always yearn.

My death, sweet poison, saves my life,
By ending it by gun or knife.
Monsters, demons, tear my flesh,
Or I get stuck in barbwire mesh.

Whatever the torture I take it as dished.
Never sweet dreams, as I so often wished.
But why should I have them? I'm crooked and mean.
Or well, that’s what I think. Could be low self-esteem.

I hate that I love you, I hate that I care.
I hate that when you’re upset; I wish I were there.
I just really hate myself for not hating you.
And for loving you in the first place, I hate that one too.

Your name, once golden, now a twisted black vine.
In her name I find envy, I wish you were mine.
You were and you will be, ill see that its so.
And if it doesn’t work out... you know where ill go.

It's a cop-out; I'm chicken, too scared to go on.
I hope it's you who finds me, dead in your lawn.
Razor in hand, I wish I could do it.
Iv tried once before, but that time I blew it.

But this time I can, and I know that I will.
If not by blade, slip off my windowsill.
Or drown in my pool, or forget my inhaler.
Though I know it won’t matter. This girl, you wont save her.

You loved her, you killed her, and you’ve broken her heart.
She has nothing-good left, besides poems and art.
She’s lost, and she’s lonely, and I know she’s scared too.
And the only thing that could help just won’t. And that’s you.

Ill rip out your eyeballs as ornaments for my ears,
and inflict on you the nightmares that you dished out for years.
You will live in my dungeon and feed on dry bread
while I feast at a table close to your head.
And for every birthday I'll cut off one finger
and leave it to rot so the smell of it lingers.

You will keep your tongue for the names you'll recite
of the ones that you hurt and treated with spite.
And the day that the terror expires your life
I'll hang you on a lamp pole on the highway in full sight.
And you will be remembered as a pathetic soul
who picked on gentle women you tried to control.

And justice will rise like a bright morning sun,
A coward is dead and his abusing is done.

i never dished it out and i refuse
to take it in
i held myself in a kind of cosmic
equilibrium

accepting the vague random love
as surely
as my glass of milk
and twix at four

fate being the difference
between
the sky blood and free
a lone apple core

wandered with some
habit
nothing noting
not no

being all in
complete
and yet
so

giving and taking
apart
pivoting
and started

like some barn
station to
flexible
or rigid so

thus receiving
and giving
but at a safe
distance..

She told me to
"Imagine a safe place",
a quiet place, somewhere to go
when the fog is at my feet.

But everywhere I went was
crowded with doubt
and a lingering loitering
presence on my shoulder,
come out from the fog to
hurl accusations and taunt.

I can only assume
it's a he on my shoulder,
an enigma,
my father's doppelganger
come to dredge my mind
of all the **** he dished out
when I was a child,

and feed it back to me again.


I tell her I'll need more tools
and stronger ideas.

So she gives me a seat at
the head of the table
where my ****** committee meets,
and a gavel to establish order
or bash in their brains.

She arms my dreams
with weapons and courage,
gives me REM when I'm wide awake.

We fashion a furnace of love,
hot enough to vaporize the
cold darkness pouring into my gut,
customized with levers and pulleys
to push and to pull in the fight.

We tally
Alpha and Beta waves,
trained and retrained,
hard coded messages
sanded smooth by repetition.

       Through it all I give too,
       and what I give is all I can give,
       it is the warmth of what enslaves me,
       and the thought of letting it go….  
       Well.... lets not go there right now.

In the long run I'm not sure that
any of it will be enough,
I am weakened by the war.

But occasionally there
are shiny spots that simmer,

You see,
I may have found that place,
the place she first told me to find
way back at the beginning,
the place to feel safe, although
it isn't really a place per se.

If it were true
I could finally ascend to
where no fog can go.
Where my father's voice
cannot be heard,
nor the ghosts I grew
up with.

A place of love and honesty,
where my furnace would sit idle in awe.

There is a picture of us
on our bedroom wall.
It is the perfect depiction of
all that is safe for me.

I look at your smile
and I see peace.
Nothing can penetrate
your radiance,
you are everything
I've never had,
double layered and
impenetrable
by all of it.

By all of the ****.

I am learning to go there
when the fog is at my feet,
and the ghosts are in my ear.

When the accusations come
I can escape there with you,

and together we can drown them out

if only for a little while.

we're just as superstitious as our ancestors, we create fiction from superstition, we get the hots for haunted houses, the black dot on the bible like pirates... it's just these day, a person finding a £20 banknote would get superstitious about buying 20 lottery tickets with it, rather than a bottle of whiskey... and yes, our story-telling skills have diminished, it's more like dietary regimes these days... we pushed subjectivity so far down the drain that we're not telling stories anymore, we're simply regurgitating objectivity, facts after facts... less talk about surviving a tornado twirl and expressing the excitement from surviving such an event, and more: next! pocket that story, box it with the bar-code: adrenaline ******... we're not story-tellers anymore, we're on the verge of losing all plots... being exposed to polished narrations of Hollywood (hardly the case of being worried about doppelgangers, that was obvious in the 20th century) - as said: we like being bombarded with facts, we've stopped claiming narration for a commuting drive... we are the encyclopedia ~generation... well, we're way past being defined as a generational phenomenon... hence the quiz shows...  we started to hate the excitement of the subjective perspective, the parts were "we will never know", jealousy on this scale really killed it off... we weren't there, therefore it's untrue... coupled with this objectivity of: none of us were there, therefore it must be true... plate up ladies and gents! we're once more reduced to regurgitating facts, we're actually forced to regurgitate facts, we have no chance to score with emotions or personal thoughts... people only want to hear objective realities of our lives... we want uniform coherence like under Uncle Stalin... no deviation... none! i wonder what story will come from all this objectification... the usual, current affairs story, i blame feminism partly for this... the objectification of women lessened, and in came the objectification of everything else, as feminism has done, shoving its nose into everything from philosophy to history simply on the basis of numbers, and as to why there aren't enough women here, and not enough women there... my mother is a housewife... my father comes home with a satisfaction that at least one member of the family will not be stressed... add a second partner with stress and career ambitions and fairy-tales, and that's a house on sand-dunes... personally i wouldn't want to marry in any case... plus, feminism doesn't encourage the house-husband idea that Sweden has adopted... well... you'd think that the idea of househusbands would take off once feminism took off... apparently it didn't.

Darwinism is at odds with pop culture, i see these people
striving for fame like they might be buying penny sweets
in their hundreds, and what i find surprising
is that so much fame is being dished out,
me, jealous? yesterday i found
a twenty quid banknote on the street,
today i bought four beers and a bottle of Grant's
whiskey and i felt that: i owned the world -
yes indeed, a circus act - that's usurping
style of the khaki stormtrooper uniform...
a colon is also emphasis, without the italics...
it's not about grocery lists...
so many writers out there who put
the labouring over punctuation to others...
so many dyslexic still passing through...
mate... if you and me were *****... you'd
be tissue paper material, no, not even a ******
blockage waiting for the plumber...
or the ******* that sold condoms puncturing them
with needles for excess success rates of impregnation...
see, i peel the skin off, imitating Abraham's
madness at the excess, and cockerel
the **** like sunrise... all *sheered;
then i put the skin back on... so much for improvements
that desired God's approval... might as well
cut off all the cartilage: nose, ears, nails
(i swear they share the same category... oh wait...
nails and hair... well, n'eh bother, cut the rest off
until you enter the realm of plastic surgery).
so yeah, Darwinism is really the guillotine at
the moment, see them, watch the shepherds herding
them, they created something a Marxist would
never ever understand... the fame class system...
not some rebellion of strong idiots
working the plough field fighting noblemen bored
in their salons with ****-*** their only
exercise and solution to the boredom of a busy world,
mind being in such a world...
or do as i do... half of scotch through...
second jazz record playing in the background...
jazz doesn't translate into headphones,
you need the space...
what worries me is its trans-generational absence...
jazz is the classical music thanks to slavery,
it would never have been born in Africa,
forget it... but it bothers me it wasn't manicured,
kept pristine like some Renaissance painting...
it quickly morphed into Eminem and Vanilla Ice
and all that rap that wrapped it up...
fair enough, i can give credit to joshua redman
and his back east... but that's about it...
so as i sit sipping my Mississippi scotch of whiskey
and cola, having listened to
sonny rollins' ballads, i'm onto kenny burrel's
midnight blue... it's the sort of high culture
that's easy to cultivate... but i'm not the man you
want to revisit the Beat Movement chemistry,
i care very little to talk over the jazz with my poetry...
no wonder talking over classical music ever worked,
hence i contend to parallel myself with Bukowski
in that respect.. i shut up and write,
imagine myself on the Faroe Islands, very far
from what makes me uncomfortable,
the nearest thing to Eden, some remote place,
a village of 20 people where everyone knows
how long they take to a **** and at what hours
(given there's only one toilet) - and yes, the brackets
are also useful to make an emphasis, so example, : and ( )
all combine pretty well.
but they really are losing a one-sided battle,
given historical Darwinism, excluding our modern
perks to get into the raw caveman antics
it can be sometimes very demeaning to consider
both attitudes, simultaneously or correspond or even
excusing our modernity with intrinsic sushi (the rawness
that breeds no home comforts) -
and given the whole popularity culture...
you expect people to remember anything in
the next 100 years? the opening of a century is never
going to be enough to allow for that century's momentum...
i might be living in the 21st century, but all
my influences are bound to the 20th...
and that's where i'll remain, a beggar with a rich man's
vault of compact disks... clutter and a library...
unable to reread the books i've read (unless in snippets)...
like that tale of Neoplatonism and Plotinus
and that relationship with Christianity, but the job
that Nietzsche put in to criticise it came short of
what the actual religion did to itself, the archaeology proof
destined at Egypt, finding works there and not
in Israel along with the Dead Sea Scrolls...
fascinating how they cut Isaiah in half and the historian
Josephus placing the innovator of the Sermon
during Nero's reign, and how Nero is the first reference
to the 666... well, you know, once you zero out the preceding
years, and start again... telling the time will hardly
matter whether b.c. or a.d. - what with Darwinism
and the big bang, the Copernican west... well the Copernican
"west" - what a crazy carousel - get me off!
and indeed, with certain words...
we have encoded approximations to what each words
denotes... the brightest gem in the vault is
Hades... you don't say it as Ha A.D.H.D. -
you say hay and then you say dees, like bees -
yes, whether the d is a below the equator
and is summer in december, or whether b is above
the equator and is summer in july...
so you encode Hades but actually say: hay-d-and-many-e's -
still can't figure out how to denote a plurality of
letters with the punctuation marks given by English...
at present i'm using the inadequate possessive article
route - Peter's, Mark's, the mountain's...
the article goes off radar when there's plurality
in the thing ascribed possession: mountains' heights...
hay-d-and-many-eeeeeeeeeeeee? get the picture?
or hay-d-and-ease - baffling language,
i feel like some aboriginal looking at it from Ayers Rock
going: kangaroo the **** and didgeridoo?
no wonder the tetragrammaton is the tool to decipher
this phonetic encoding... there are too many chiral
symmetries in this tongue.
so again... i don't know why poets don't bother
to repeat themselves, on what they first concentrated on,
like the many water lilies by Monet,
or the self-portraits from varying angles...
or how modern fame, in concept, condemned itself
to c.c.t.v. and a brick wall as to how history is
experienced with mainstream Darwinism...
how quickly the guillotine chops the head off,
the finicky base for democratic applause...
and how in 100 years people might wonder:
well, Plato ain't going to be usurped, Plato will be
treated with the same faithful bias
as a blank blackboard, the established norm...
(that's all e.g. to say, it's not necessarily the
acceptance of such a norm) -
we'll still be ushered to normality by starting
from either the bleak big bang, led to an even bleaker
and bigger bonk... or we'll be cavemen admiring viral
infections - and fame and aspiration to attain
it will truly become bleak... for in these days
fame isn't competing for being remembered...
it's competing for being seen, again the c.c.t.v. model...
and given our overexposure to datums (the Oxford
authority is a bit slow to recognise that... well,
unless of course the same meaning can be achieved
with the word data... unnecessarily datii?),
advertisement being only one such source...
and would i consider the self to be an illusion?
i'd consider it on equal footing with π = 3.14159...
a piece of information, not to the fullest extent
a delusion... meaning i wouldn't discredit it completely,
given that so many people fall for it's existence
when plagiarism tempts us to swing with it...
and that there's the private, the public, the showcased
use of it... but it's still so ****** annoying
to have the lazy crew use the northern barbaric
reference to that pronoun and discredit it by treating
it as merely a useful prefix for compounding words
together to express automaton behaviours, and to have
to lie back on the psychoanalytical sofa and have to
deal with the atom of: ego, superego and id...
                                     (neutron, proton           and
the many that that that      / its its its -
the id is actually a scalpel in psychiatry - the cursor or
vector or quiet simply as stated already, scalpel,
incision maker -
                               the superego? also known as moralising
Nietzsche's übermensch - nein! klein Adolf
kann nicht spielen mit du heute);
well... might as well enjoy being trapped in
the stone ages from now on... because in between the cavemen
and ourselves, our contemporaries just called them
idiots (most notably the journalists) -
yep... only idiots separating us from caveman...
i must be double the idiot of wishing to be back
in the Dumas' France, or at the height of the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth, when the Poles, second only to
the Mongols held Moscow.

Perfection,
is an illusion, created by the mocking
sanity of the people
in this newspaper world.

Fairytales were something made up as well-
for the entertainment of children,
to enjoy their life,
their innocence
before reality took it all away from them.

No matter how far I chased the rabbit,
I was not Alice in Wonderland.
And even though the glass slipper fit,
I was not Cinderella.

My Hogwarts letter didn't arrive either;
when I was eleven.

And foolishly, at that time,
I cried.
I cried because my dreams were not real,
and that something this good could not exist in this world.

But-
I do not regret crying.
I cried for everything little in the world-
For my broken pipe that would never shoot water out in a straight line-
For my microwave that would always keep the food cold,
and the refrigerator that would always keep the food warm,
and for the 'tap tap' of the lady's heels
from the apartment above mine.

People say that heaven is a beautiful place
full of anything you could ever imagine.
Would it have all my dreams there, then?
In a plastic goody-bag, prehaps.
A certain one dished out to every person-
Angels looking left and right without a care for identity.

I hate it when my phone gets too warm.
I hate it when my favorite books get wrinkled.
I hate it when I lose my wireless mouse.
I hate it when the internet takes too long to load.
I hate it when the tempature of the room is either too cold, or too hot for my liking.
But I love all those hatreds.
I love how my phone gets too warm, warming my hands up in winter.
I love how my favorite books get wrinkled, so I can lovingly patch them up again.
I love how my wireless mouse always gets lost, because then I have an exuse to buy a corded one.
I love how the internet takes too long to load, because then I can go eat while I'm waiting.
I love how the tempature gets too cold or too hot, because then I can stick an ice cube on my forehead, or bundle up with my favorite scarf in winter.

My mother always told me to be mysef, that I was perfect just the way I was-
I tried,
but all my sentences from that point on would come with a stutter.
"D-Did you hear?"

The voice of the piano that strums so gently beneath my fingers,
I love that sound.  
It was the first time I could be sure-
if music had a face
it would smile,
teasingly,
desparingly,
at me.

And now I'm listening to "Light up the Sky" by YellowCard,
lying on my bed and thinking how much the lead singer
looks like Draco Malfoy.

I love the way poetry sometimes has a shape,
either a diamond,
or a heart.
And I am stunned, when I see those-
In fact, I saw one yesterday,
it was a tiger,
coliling around spairled trendles of
black and white
words.

I wonder how words move people to tears.
they're just words, anyway.
Nothing that would exist if humans weren't here.
but I love the way that I can actually cry
when I hear a beautiful piece of poetry.
I would say 'thank you thank you'
over and over again,
but I couldn't speak for the sound in my head.

And the stereotypical, rentless movies,
on sale-
half price!
at BlockBuster,
I bought them all,
just for the sake of spending some money,
I think.

And I watched them all, alone in the night with nothing but a bowl of popcorn by my side.
They were colorful, crazy, wild
And I drank in that feeling, throwing up my arms
with a freedom that I have never felt before.

I love writing poetry,
because words are truly beautiful.
And I love reading over my old poems, and scoffing at what I thought was eloquent before.
Because that means,
I have grown.
Something Infallible, Like Eternity,
That's a good title.
I love the clicking of keyboard keys, feeling the notch of F and J under my fingers.

And I love this world,
for all its imperfections and mistakes,
becuase then there can always be something better after it.
After all, if you're at the top, all you can do is fall.

She chose to sit in the driver's seat

Marzieh Hashemi isn't afraid of the smoldering heat

nor is she like the rest that one should try to beat

Like a butterfly in the mountain's wind

she'll pick up speed and bounce to the end

and help those around her confidently amend

Insightful, optimistic, she'll make you think

distracted by her intelligence, you'll feel no need to blink

on a gathering day, she looked beautiful in pink

Safety, cheer, and comfort were well dished out

to more than her own, a Mother for all to draw to and pout

Our unforgettable journey is Marzieh Hashemi, an icon of strength to plead about

By: Najwa Kareem

Poppies, bobbing above the green
Waving heads back and forth
Dark clouds inbetween
Driving rain from the north.

Vanilla fields, soft an fragrant
Seeds sprinkle in the air
Dished out by a vagrant
He’s wooden so he wont care.

Wild strawberries, seeds on show
The only fruit inside out
In vanilla fields it will grow
Its rosy hands reaching about.

Dreamy days, creamy ways
Strawberries for tea please
Hot tea on tin trays
And strawberries to tease.

or the alternative precursor to the spice girls
(yes, i did buy their debut -
      baby spice, well, my infantile
fetish with cute, clean cut blondes, meh,
old story)
                 but **** on me, President Reagan
was a former actor -
     i have no personal interests in the debate,
well: i like to see real life Hollywood,
i like films, from time to time...
    20th century moustaches are these days
relegated to hairstyles....
  you know why we don ****** hair?
the ***** are pruned and trimmed
for a ***** movie: we like to fiddle with it,
esp. the hair crop on the chin,
     i could become a violinist with it.
what spurred me on? Marvin Gayes heard it through
the grapevine, or as i say:
  down the **** gold, auburn, amber, beer,
whiskey, **** me! a correlation!
or a categorical imperative some would say:
             heard it down the wheat shaft
in between men having their prided little Richards
cut off - fun ******* fun -
         that's me and washing my hands
writing poetry in advance to my body language
transformed starting to style myself
on the baguettes hit from the 80s:
dance like a pigeon, nod pigeon in a walk,
the guy that was so jealous of me
is now a manic depressive -
       and i'm like: so what? jog on!
                      i was stupid for 10 seconds of my life,
better write out bail...
                        they should call it
the s.d.i.             (sniffer dog investigation) -
it doesn't look even remotely disastrous,
     only with that Antoinette quiff and a moustache,
      oh we loved the pern wigs
before the bowlers and top hats...
          it's as if the Victorian era was an era
for mourning the death of God, truly.
all the little revolution stemming from the death
of someone ending a bio at 1900 didn't matter...
    he was philosophising at a funeral...
i'm just watching the vehement application
of Vatican non-curriculum activity stemming from
archeology started off in Egypt under the
title: St. Thomas' account the doubter / the philosopher
gaining ground in all things trans-,
                a return by "popular" demand,
first the authentic Christianity of the gospels
and now infuriated Islam and the unauthentic application
of the recovered gospels -
   can you imagine there being a brokering
       gamble on literacy back then, would the priests
have made fishermen literate back when it
was stated: keep them wholly physically intact,
let's not interfere with their physical prowess,
we need their physical strength, undermine their
physical strength with being able to read: and we're ******!
   a fisherman wrote that gospel?
                     (insert snigger) -
        only in the 20th century could the benefits
of education a son of a roofer / metallurgy agent go
down sour... first they said they wanted me to
come upon the plateau of what education is about:
the just dispensation of wealth,
   but then they heard about my background and
simply said: nah, that ****** can clean the dishes...
the worst part?
      i would have agreeably been a street-cleaner:
but not after having invested in education!
      that's a ****** insult!
                so here's me,
high as a kite on *****, listening to poets talk
about depression for a while thinking:
    where's the wheelchair?
                             and when i'm through
i tune in, listen to Marvin Gaye and start dancing
like a pigeon strutting:
           guillotine horizontal chopping the air up,
        twerk a bit in the bathroom
and feel Chappy Jolly -
                   i'd stick a thumb up my *** if i wanted
to as reversal of the *******
                                being accusatory -
don't educated me and steal from those who don't
want to be with their common sense education
                and give me absolutely nothing
chemistry related to do it...
        i'll just start writing and turn the heat up on
being a hermit...
                              becoming educated is a monstrous
delusion that the priestly caste of society dish out
             once they dished out literacy,
              but once literacy has become exhausted
they dish out education in the broader sense.
i was walking back from the supermarket today,
and picked up a pound coin from the pavement
(thanks Sinatra, that'll pay the rent)
    and started fiddling with it in my hand:
some people have lucky charms, emeralds and
what not in necklaces and other memento forms,
i started fiddling with this found pound coin,
  Whether's Original colouring - not quiet copper,
indeed more like solidified bleached out caramel,
when i walked with my hands partially clenched
like a gorilla's and balanced the coin
on the *******'s phalange -
        and suddenly i was holding a philosopher's stone...
        it all became visceral - clear, poignant,
this little thing can transform anything from
        copper into gold -
   from iron into gold...
               where the alchemist sleeping when
they were passing this stuff about, including
the blimmin' cobblers?
                       it can also include asking
the magpies to fly in and say: not all that glitters
is gold... where are the silver spoons?
              oh for sure, the eagle as emblem / mascot of the state
  is doomed, take the Third ***** and the Roman Empire...
             no one ever bothered the sparrow to be engulfed
in replica on standards of a marching enemy...
    the crow seems pretty safe too, funny
            the eagle is a crushing curse of failed predatory
alliances when embedded in metal for man
   to strut toward a harrowing end.

Your words are rich but your silence is golden
I've lost all faith in what humanity has spoken
You don't know this, but I was chosen
To speak out against society
and it's twisted mentality
Says one thing but means another
Karma is coming, but you'll never see her
She'll smother you with your past mistakes
Do whatever it takes to pay back the heartache
That you caused and all the hurt you dished out
Don't you see it now? There's no doubt,
You're in her sights now
She's aimed at your heart, tearing apart the pain
You claimed to have no control over
Karma's here, can't you see her?
She don't bluff, this ain't Tuesday night poker
Fold this hand, it's weighing heavy on your shoulders
Exposure to the light got you moving slower and slower
It's over, she's beat you down
Might as well leave the table,
Karma don't play around

Bossa nova, Barcelona, Box and two weeks over,
Music to get hold of,
Newly weds to Right said Fred,
Calypso spot light sun beams down a twinkle baked shoulder to strike a pose.

Bossa nova, what's on, record it,
Promote It with some guile,
He She who stole it,
With limelight their staged arena owned it,
He She dished out the smiles,
They clapped as the show survives,
They danced to each others beat,
Bebop a lula its jive came unique.

Accapella, Bossa nova, Hosanna from the highest,
Bossa nova, a rock n roller, a ballad till midnight,
Encore if you got through the night in hindsight,
Stage Fright had this moment,
What is going on?
Bingo numbers,
Feathers a house!

Bossa nova it aint over till its over as for a starlight it may strike the board with a star face in the sun.

Now maybe, maybe not that's a Bossa nova!

O'Reily@20082014

I mourn the man from our beginning

And not the one that you kept hidden.

We came together to share a life forever.

We drifted apart with the temperament that you start.

The torment that you dished I will surely never miss.

I am finally free from your tyranny.

Our separation has become my salvation.

Leavening levers leave us
fishy, wishing without precision
for fettered fritter letters,
feverishly licking with distinction;
Finnish fishermen finish
squishily dished deliciousness.

Who do I trust?
When all of you disgust
Me
With your hypocritical
Analytical dissection
I'm guilty too
I'm just as bad as you
I look at you, you look at me
I cut you, metaphorically
Stick and stones may break bones
But words will destroy you.
And it doesn't matter if you don't know
If I sing a song but don't put on a show?
If a tree falls and no one hears it, has it really fallen?
If I break your trust, and you don't know, is it really broken?

Who do I trust
When all of you discuss
Me
When my back is turned
I know you speak in hushed tones
Passing the final judgement upon my saintly mind and sinful soul
The paranoia will take it's toll
You'll be the end of me, you'll be the fall
My mind will slowly unwind
until you find
my innermost thoughts
which you sought
to extract,
as if they were facts,
which would **** me forever.
Show my face, this I won't
I fear you will cast the first stone
Irrespective of your flaws which I respected, I accepted
Or did I?
Did you find out
I brandished my sword,
Sliced through your soul, sliced through your ghouls
There was no trial yet I banged the gavel
I dropped a bomb but you were hit by shrapnel
Oh dear me, what have I done?
Who can I turn to, where do I run?

Who do I trust
When I cannot even trust
Me
Stuck in past, intangible present
The future's bleak, like the moons full crescent
The horrors of yesterday haunt me
My evils of today taunt me
My future transgressions daunt me
I promise I'm trying to be good
Promise I'm trying to do what I should
But who's example do I follow
When all your actions are so hollow
And there I go again
Mr hypocrite, judging his friends
But who am I to judge everyone else
When I do the same myself?
I voiced my issues to a friend
That I feared I would never trust again
She dished out a few words which set me free
If I don't trust myself, the who will me?

Jingle bells,
Christmas smells.
The turkey's bubbling.
The skittish kids are bouncing off the walls all round the room.
The sugar rush is toxic.
Makes them buzz real quick.
The presence of Christmas and Christmas presents.
Tidily stacked under the tree.
For a minute or three.

Mum is flapping passion.
More than the once flapping turkey's wings ever could.
Dad he's supping from his can.
It's Christmas time and he's a man.
Gets away with ******.
Every year he always does.
He sits there getting pickled.
While mum fights with the oven gloves.

With bloated face and rosy cheeks he screamed at her.
"Hurry up, I'm hungry."
You would think he hadn't eaten for weeks.
Sanctimonious twerp.

Mother beautifully dished up dinner for her brood of starving youth.
Instead of dishing the same up for dad, she dished up something really bad.
Slices of turkey covered in gravy.
Designed to burst his pompous bubble.
Enough's enough she thought to herself
Traces of spicy gravy, covered his designer stubble.
Half a tub of chilli powder had laced the gravy on his plate.
Cooked to absolute perfection.
Obviously, to enhance the wonderful flavour.
And mum said, " it's a new recipe, I fetched it from a magazine".
Something only mama knew.
The children enjoyed their Christmas dinner.
Mum chuckled to herself after scoring a winner.
And dad did the dishes with his fiery tail firmly stuck between his legs
(C) Livvi

The Spirit bomb, an astrological bond, one's soul is gone, drowning in some pond of self-reflections.
A fantastic plan, with a swift wave of your hand, storms spawned to creation and hide the life-giving sun, quite overwhelming for some.
A pair of enchanted paradise swans, fawn over the other to shine forth the calm-bringer, the sister and brother, from one father and mother, some sort of creator or another.
Flutter over nests of destruction, plotted taxed lands from some great nation of abduction.
Some ******* nut takes a crack and starts building some destroying station of war. A nurtured relation, branded straight from emancipation. Granted permission to dream, granted permission to score, a silent scream, and twisted avocation of means, to become a ******* conglomerate stone, ****** out of your love-drunk mind, well thought out, well wrote. You note the crazy schemes of some bloke, clouded and choked out on the spindle of passion that dwindles.
An ignited flame once enkindled, blossoms up from your windowsill.
Still spilling more silly meaning to life, quite the light we got, right?
Dishing out your thoughtless waste of despair, as some desperate stranger of danger casts shadowy scars on a scare. Emotionally teared, wearing a cloak of danger and destruction, beware.
Directions of  death's stare, brings you to the wrong side of the lawn.
Tested and bested, your entire fragile being grows stronger.
A glowing peace-monger brought among us, clowning and frowning on useless sorrow, working towards a brighter tomorrow.
A distraction of impaired hollows that swallow your goals whole, life sure is taking it's toll, spitting and ******* you out on some strange and foreign shore. You'll learn to keep roaring for more knowledge of ancient wisdom that's stored in tiny glass vials, evermore. Imploring spirits, swirling in a massive, abysmal void, while seeking out another vessel and droid.
Exploiting chords of beautiful music is kissed on the faces of the missed. Best wishes!
Dished out on the paper you write another poetic vision that assists the songs of hopeful travelers abroad. Setting out on adventurous travels, that unravels marvelous mysteries and beauty, enameled on bland and barren lands.  
Wishing wells and swishing swells of free-flowing rivers, amongst endless givers of calm, and grand oceans of drawn out motions, be strong.
The Spirit bomb blows off, out into the dawn of new horizons.
The Sun is rising, then gone.

Winter sun shines wanly in the church ground
Long shadows grace the wooded park.
The newly cut lawns sparkle emerald green in the late morning light
And the steeple bell tolls, calling the faithful to worship on this Sunday in late May.

An old man sits on the bench nearby and quietly mutters to himself.
The church goers ignore him as they congregate together discussing the inanities that pass for conversation prior to worship, he is invisible to them as they companionably file through the portal of the church doors, exchanging pleasantries with the welcoming, smiling priest.

Oblivious, in his disheveled way, the old man quietly mutters  his words to himself. His wrinkled, white bearded face totally preoccupied with his thoughts about where his years have gone.

Just yesterday I ran that race
In bare feet for the mile,
My school mates cheered me on
And I recall I won in style.
And last week at the dole queue
When stale bread was handed out,
I swear I only took my share
Despite the Copper's shout!
The when I held my baby girl
In ****** swaddling clothes,
I saw exhaustion take my wife
Her face a pallid rose.
And in the pits the burning heat
The coal dust and the gas,
Filled the lungs of most of us
With a bitter, black morass.
Though Charlie Donoghue's cold ale
Was nectar to me then,
And a sharper axe was never swung
Or how, or why, or when.
I'm always short on Thursdays
It's a hungry time of week,
And the street kids pinch my park bench
So I've got no where to sleep.
Oh the beauty of that first kiss
With the lass across the road,
Versus brutal hiding's dished out
By that bully, ******* , toad.
Sunshine at riverbank
When there's nothing much to do
And the sparkles on the water
And the cold of morning dew.
Money in your pocket
The feeling's Oh so grand,
When you can shout your mate a beer or two
And he runs to shake your hand.
There's a dull ache in my hip now
And it never goes away,
And when asked to elaborate
The smart *** Doctor wouldn't say.
Best of all were the apricots
On Fergie's green old tree,
And we kids would run and pinch the fruit
And gorge it all for free.
Oh the joy on my darlings face
In that wedding on the hill,
When tomorrow promised everything
And the very world stood still.
And I recall the starlings wheeling
In a sky of brilliant blue
As they flocked in tune with Autumn,
When the leaves were red in hue.
But I can't remember details now
The days are getting dim,
So it's hardly worth the effort
To try and share this all with him........

Marshalg
On the bench in the wan winter sunshine.
29 may 2011

My hands shake and thoughts clash
I revise life, like flashbacks
I won't last living in my past
Pull back, snapping leash he attacks

The scent is strong he's on the prowl
A predator of beings foul
Revenge dished he's hellbound
Took a vow as hellhound

His loyalty holds no borders
He's borderline disobeying orders
He's ordered but he ignores
Okami, a lone wolf

In midnight his eyes shine
Blood red it contains skies
He's hunting down a worthy prize
Defending honour he can't die

Vengeance and fuelled rage
Powerful and untamed
For too long he's been caged
He suffered so, debts be repaid

With head high and hackles raised
He's raising hell, his endgame
All cards held have been played
Run and hide, its too late

Since childhood I've felt how people feel
Able to already know fantisy from what's real
Had to dig out proof for things I just knew
I never knew how but felt lie from truth
Mood always changed when lots of people were near
I'd tell the mirror "your going insane my dear"
Knowledge became obsessed because I wanted proof if right or wrong
Nothing would silence the noise inside but found peace in songs
Able to know when something bad was on the way
Or stop someone from further pain they dished in vain
Saved two beautiful children from a sinners selfish pleasure
Absorbing the pains and feelings from all I've been stretched beyond measure
Being an empaths mean I absorb high and low energy from everything and one
Truly a gift I appreciate but the weight of the world can dissolve the fun
Anything you feel I will feel as well
Able to explain your hearts story its been dying to tell
I am rounded as a person now from love to wrath
When I say I understand I truly do, I am empath

Once a professed good kid
Suskind in his native
German he was named,
wrote a macabre tale
on making a special"Perfume"
most irresistible ,enigmatic,
by murdering virgins
in a chilling succession,
and mixing those scents
absorbed in each shroud!
Parents, beware when
you name your children
see, what this good kid
(according to his surname)
to his excited readers did;
pure  Gothic dished out
from beginning to it's explosive end!

The sweetest smile can fill a room
It shines for miles and dazzles you,
Some try to hide but still consume
It's splendor as it spreads on through

Their inner core, seeps through their bones
Where she bore her strength, no one knows
Works its magic dished out on loan,
Lifting spirits of all of those

Who cross her path and catch a glimpse
Of beauty earthed on sweet pure lips,
A sight so scarce it leaves a print
Within all hearts it firmly grips

But eyes don't lie and few might see
Through the disguise such sweet smiles leave,
With silent cries she makes her plea
In search for light, silently grieves

Those times you find you're swept away
By selfless smiles, another's grace
Spellbound by joy her face portrays,
Seek truths behind her hiding place

The chance is high she needs a friend
To sit beside and hold her hand,
Reminding her that she'll soon mend
And find her dreams within this land.


© Karen L Hamilton, 2015

To write with tongue in pen,
Saliva dripping ink.
The heady-remembered sensation
Of flavors long forgotten.
Sifted with fingers floured,
Arms limp from kneading
To have them
Penned to perfect succulency.
Until they are coined to smooth and creamy texture.
The rich-written smell of impatient waiting
For oven-crisped words, over-penned with
Timer-gone-slow.
The salt and pepper of a final read-through
Always spelling disaster to our over-spiced and cooled,
Now cookie-cut words.
The souffle sinking deep in the pan of it's paper-page dish.
Till loving eyes scoop up that first tender-tasting bite,
Till the sound of a thought drifts over two lips
With a satisfied sigh.
Our long-awaited, frustrated, penful recital:
Experimental, new-dished-out, tempting
A-rivals.
Bellies full, read-through finished, enough of the sauce.
We clear the dishes with the simple act
Of turning over the cloth,
To the next blank page.

At 20, it's adios to childhood.
By 30, you have played your youthful folly card.
At 40, you have ground it out to mid-field.
At 50, the bigger helping was dished out yesterday.
At 60, you enter the final stretch.
At 70, you finally get to play your wisdom chips.
At 80, most are surprised to see you.
After 90, Godot is waiting for you.

*November, 2015

we shook hands
tell-all flashes flared up
this man's shame

I had vowed to curb this curse--
to stop spying on anyone's history;
to not stall long enough,
with streetwise small talk,
until I absorbed every gory secret

fair play denied,
my lips dished out a long enough topic
and by the time we parted,
I knew all
~~
..Sunday, Jan. 13, 2013..(C)2013 Spiros Zafiris
~~