i dreamed a rattlesnake was loose in the closet i heard it rattling i was afraid to open the door



a man suffering a toothache goes to see his dentist the dentist administers laughing gas when the man comes to his numb tongue swooshes around his mouth he asks how long was i under the dentist answers hours i needed to pull them all out



he imagines when he grows old there will be a pencil grown into one hand and a paintbrush grown into the other they will look like extra fingers grown out from the palms extensions of his personal evolution little children will be horrified when they see mommy mommy look at that man’s hands!



what if we are each presented with a complete picture of a puzzle from the very start then as our lives proceed the pieces begin showing up out of context sometimes recognizable other times a mystery some people are smarter more intuitive than others and are able to piece together the bigger picture some people never figure it out



i wasn’t thinking i didn’t know to think nobody taught me to think maybe my teachers tried but i didn’t get it i wasn’t thinking i was running reacting doing whatever i needed to survive when you’re trying to survive you move fast by instinct you don’t think you just act



many children are relieved when their parents die then they no longer need to explain prove themselves live up to their parent’s expectations yet all children need parents to approve foster mentor teach love



she was missing especially when her children needed her most she was busy lunching with girlfriends dinner dates beauty shop manicure masseuse appointments shopping seamstress fittings constant telephone gossiping criticizing she was too busy to notice she was missing more than anything she wanted to party show off her beauty to be the adored one the hostess with the mostest



i dreamed i was condemned to die by guillotine the executioner wore black and wielded an axe just in case the device failed in the dream the guillotine sliced shallow then the executioner went to work but he kept chopping unsuccessfully severing my head this went on for a long time



1954 Max Schwartzpilgrim sits at table in coffee shop on 5th floor of Maller’s Building elevated train loudly passes as he glances out window it is typical gloomy gray Chicago day he worries how he will find the money to pay off all his mounting debts he is over his head in debit thinks about taking out a hefty life insurance policy then cleverly killing himself but he cherishes his lovely wife Jenny his young children and social life sitting across table Ernie Cohen cracks crass joke Max laughs politely yet is in no mood to encourage his fingers work nervously mutely drumming on Formica table then stubbing out cigarette in glass ashtray lighting another with gold Dunhill lighter bitter tastes of coffee and cigarettes turns his stomach sour he raises his hand calling over Millie the waitress he flirtatiously smiles orders bowl of matzo ball soup with extra matzo ball Ernie says you can’t have enough big ***** for this world Max thinks about his son Odysseus



when Odysseus is very young Dad occasionally brings him to Schwartzpilgrim’s Jewelers Store on Saturday mornings Dad shows off his firstborn son like a prize possession lifting Odysseus in the air Dad takes him to golf range golf is not an interest for Odysseus Dad pushes him to learn proper swing Odysseus fumbles golf club and ***** he loves going anyway because he appreciates spending time with Dad once Dad and Odysseus take shower together Dad is so life-size muscular hairy Odysseus is so little Dad reaches touches Odysseus’s ******* feeling lone ******* Dad says we’ll correct that make it right Odysseus does not understand what Dad is talking about at finish Dad turns up cold water and shields Odysseus with his body he watches Dad dressing in mornings Dad is persnickety to last details of French cuff links silk handkerchief in breast pocket even Dad’s fingernails toenails are manicured buffed shiny clear



Odysseus’s left ******* does not descend into his ******* the adults in extended family routinely want to inspect the abnormality Mom shows them sometimes Dad grows agitated and leaves room it is embarrassing for Odysseus Daddy Lou’s brother Uncle Maury wants to check it out too often like he thinks he is a doctor Uncle Maury is an optometrist the pediatrician theorizes the tangled ******* is possibly the result of a hormone fertility drug Mom took to get pregnant the doctor injects Odysseus with a hormone shot then prescribes several medications to induce the ****** to drop nothing works eventually an inguinal hernia is diagnosed around the age of 9 Odysseus is operated on for a hernia and the ******* surgically moved down into his ******* the doctor says ******* is dead warning of propensity to cancer later in life his left ball is smaller than his right but it is more sensitive and needy he does not understand what the doctor means by “dead” Odysseus fears he will be made fun of he is self-conscious in locker room he does not comprehend for the rest of his life he will carry a diminutive *****



spokin alloud by readar in caulkknee axescent ello we’re Biggie an Smally tha 2 testicles whoooh liv in tha ******* of this felloh Odys Biggie is the soyze of a elthy chicken aegg and Smally is the size of a modest Bing cheery



one breast ****** points northeast the other smaller breast ****** points southwest she is frightened to reveal them to any man frightened to be exposed in woman’s locker room she is the most beautiful girl/woman he will ever know



Bayli Moutray is French/Irish 5’8” lean elongated with bowed legs knobby knees runner’s calves slim hips boy’s shoulders sleepy blue eyes light brown hair a barely discernable freckled birthmark on back of neck and small unequal ******* with puffy ******* pointing in different directions Laura an ex-girlfriend of Odysseus’s describes Bayli’s appearance as “a gangly bird screeching to be fed” Laura can be mean Odysseus thinks Bayli is the coolest girl in the world he is genuinely in love with her they have been sleeping together for nearly a year it is March 11 1974 Bayli’s birthday she turns 22 today Bayli is away with her family in Southeast Asia Odysseus understands what a great opportunity this is for her to learn about another culture he knows Bayli plans to meet up again with him in late summer or autumn in Chicago Dad wants Odysseus to follow in his footsteps and become a successful jewelry salesman he offers Odysseus a well-paying job driving leased Camaro across the Midwest servicing Dad’s established costume jewelry accounts Odysseus reasons it is a chance to squirrel away some cash until Bayli returns it is lonely on the road and awkward adjustment to be back in Chicago Odysseus made other plans after graduating from Hartford Art School he is going to be an important painter after numerous months and many Midwestern cities he begins to feel depressed he questions how Bayli can stay away for so long when he needs her so bad the Moutray’s send Mom and Dad a gift of elegant pewter candleholders made in Indonesia Mom accustomed to silver and gold excludes pewter to be put on display she instructs Teresa to place the candleholders away in a cabinet Mom also neglects to write a thank you note which is quite out of character for Mom Bayli’s father is a Navy Captain in the Pacific he is summoned to Norfolk Naval Station in Virginia the Moutray’s flight has a stopover in Chicago Bayli writes her parents want to meet Odysseus and his family Odysseus asks Dad to arrange his traveling itinerary around the Moutray’s visit Dad schedules Odysseus to service the Detroit and Michigan territory against Odysseus’s pleas Odysseus is living with his sister Penelope on Briar Street it is the only address Bayli’s parents know Odysseus has no way to reach them when the Moutray’s arrive at the door Penelope does not know what to tell them Mom and Dad are not interested in meeting Bayli’s parents it is not the first sign of dissatisfaction or disinterest Mom and Dad convey regarding Bayli Odysseus does not understand why his parents do not like her is it because Bayli is not Jewish is that the sole reason Mom and Dad do not approve of her Odysseus believes he needs his parent’s support he knows he is not like them and will likely never adopt their standards yet he values their consent they are his parents and he honors Mom and Dad let’s take a step back for a moment to get a different perspective a more serious matter is Odysseus’s financial dependency on his parents does a commitment to Bayli threaten the sheltered world his parent’s provide him is it merely money binding him to them why else is he so powerless to his parent’s control outwardly he appears a wild child yet inwardly he is somewhat timid is he cowardly is he unsure of Bayli’s strength and sustainability is that why he let’s Bayli go whatever the reason Dad’s and Mom’s pressure and influence are strong enough to sway his judgment he goes along with their authority losing Bayli is the greatest mistake of Odysseus’s life



he dreams Bayli and he are at a Bob Dylan concert they are hidden in the back of the theater in a dark hall they can hear the band playing Dylan’s voice singing and the echoes of the mesmerized audience Odysseus is ******* Bayli’s body against a wall she is quietly moaning his hand is inside her jeans feeling her wetness rubbing fingers between her legs after the show they hang around an empty lot filled with broken bottles loose bricks they run into Dylan all 3 are laughing and dancing down the sidewalk Dylan is incredibly playful and engaging he says he needs to run an errand not wanting to leave his company Odysseus and Bayli follow along they arrive at an old hospital building it is dark and dingy inside there is a large room filled with medical beds and water tanks housing unspeakably disfigured people swarming intravenous tubes attach the patients to oxygen equipment feed bags and monitoring machines Dylan moves between each victim like a compassionate ambassador Odysseus is freaking out the infirmary is too horrible to imagine he shields his eyes wanders away losing Bayli searching running frantically for a way out he wakes shivering and sweating the pillow is wet sheets twisted he gets up from the bed stares out window into the dark night he wonders where he lost Bayli



these winds of change let them come sailor home from sea hunter home from hill he who can create the worst terror is the greatest warrior

there no doubt about it - with each day there's always a falsetto poem, always at the end of a binge - the mind goes blank, words lose meaning, every day is like a simulation of old age - there's a method to this madness - i'm not afraid of critique concerning such poems: true virtue is unafraid of critique - for one, i can just as well criticise myself - so after each binge i end up with mediocre poems - conceding this point, words lose meaning, associations of meanings disperse - pollination in full swing - i end up writing noises - perhaps because my own silence is so chilling i have to resort to oscillation around the onomatopoeia, and all respective quasi or pseudos or pseudonyms of all required ventures - but the rewarding aspect of such writing is best summarised by a jazz drummer and a jazz teacher combined into one: the crescendo must go on - the movie? whiplash - the moment, the moment, the moment is too sudden and too short - it's essentially everything and nothing at all - always a heart-out-of-beat, at least a feeling of having a heart without the unconscious rhythmic pistons with whatever scientific explanation there is to match - they always come, the trail offs.

i didn't finish the Cantos just in order to remind myself
how i miss the time when it all began with
the second Odysseus of the 20th century -
both this disguised Odysseus of the Cantos,
and the blatant portal of time-warp beginning and ending
in Dublin - Homer's resurrection and reinvention -
perhaps all this Grecian nostalgia is what fuelled
the 20th century altogether - but how anaemic
do the Roman poets seem in comparison -
i could never write along this root toward that
tree near the Parthenon - but taking root in
the Roman tradition has only been accepted for
historical relevance only once since - without
Virgil there would have been no Dante - but still
Dante uses more accuracy of mathematics than
of spontaneity - a clarity of mind is necessary -
trinity rhymes - all clearly presented, cut up -
but no one damns him for the theological impetus -
happily prancing alongside them in hell -
through to the seemingly pointless purgatory
and then elsewhere into what can only be seen as
humanity's limit of imagination: subatomic particles
and a realm were visible to the naked eye we float
in and out of conscious states - well - if what i'm attempting
is an attempt in good faith - then my guide is no one
else than Horace - and already the style between Greek
and Roman is staggering - the selfishness of Roman poets -
the must include item: i. no Trojan horse, but a wooden
barrel of wine - no heroes, only leeches and poking fun at
them like Spartans at a drunk given undiluted Burgundy -
Roman selfishness, self-loathing and all jokes on me -
the 20th century's nostalgia for all things Greek isn't here
anymore - you will not find such legislators of a second
fancy at Ancient Helen - this century has no great conflict
of gathering - and therefore no great victory to parade with -
it's a silly century from what looks like an even sillier 80 or
so years to come - and is there a nostalgia for the Roman
past? there was a nostalgia - it's too practical to think about
it - esp. with the writing kept, even if they crucified an
important, the wrath of the supposed father was not as great
as it was with the Egyptians and the Babylonians -
Sanskrit is just as old and it survived - those two phonetic
encoding systems haven't - you can't say they were
inefficient - civilisations surrounded them - but the wrath
was too great - and they became instinct -
but perhaps the wrath for his phonetic encoding is the digital
age? a ****-stain on human interaction - or a smear
of fondue chocolate? i think the latter - imagine me running
around the publishing world like Asterix in the *twelve tasks
of - the place that sends you mad - including Hercules -
who did, managed to **** his children when his muscles weren't
up to speed with bureaucracy - oh hell, bench-press a cow -
but run with a little leaflet between offices... bonkers.
i really do miss the Cantos - the feel of them - the obscurity of
some of the references i'm not ashamed to admit -
or just the sheer ease on the eyes as is the case with any poem -
(a poem a day keeps both the psychiatrist and the optometrist
away) - so yeah, plenty of apples - and poetry, supreme democracy -
i could reread them, but i'm of a democratic cult -
i have to allow someone else to borrow me their shoes -
tom verlaine's album around - a rare gem, doesn't get listened
to a lot, but unlike other music, it's not something you'd
listen to in a gym, something that's a pleasant but mundane
distraction of pop metal pop rock or pop pop - the o of adore -
as suggested by a Scottish music shop assistant / owner in
Edinburgh - that magic city of where the 21st century's heart
of the literary scene resides - forget Paris, it's too much of
a little Casablanca - the Algiers of the North (Edinburgh being
Athens of the north) - i admit it'll be hard not to be nostalgic
about the 20th century let alone Ancient Helen -
but as the monkey said: got to push on and meet Darwin -
silly hands, silly feet, silly tail... and i'm not wearing Gucci
without Brazilian wax job all over, except for appropriate
places - sure - we'll just wait for the Apache hairdresser -
we only to scalping. however, there is a subversive thing
i want to mention (never mind that i already wanted to stick
in Thesaurus Rex on the matter): Kant (yawn) -
started analysing English aged 8 -
started synthesising English also aged 8 (a few weeks
if not months, from nothing, to gut sprechen -
piuma'h not pooma'h (Puma) -
but it took me 20 odd years of unconditional surrender
to the language, 20 years of synthesising it - blind -
to come across another chance to analyse it -
the difference being it became analytical a posteriori -
that's the thing with philosophers, they have spaghetti
for brains, tangles, they over-complicate things, but sometimes
they get it right, and you read them and then end up
using their labyrinths to find secret passages at places
like Versailles that Louis XIV used between visits to his
concubines - that was the trick, the upper-hand on the Arabian
practice - amuse yourself by not owning them -
but technically owning them - concubine power - the sixth
Spice Girl - dirrrty spice - but yeah, 20 years to get a second
stab at the analysis of the English language -
20 years of synthesis will do that to you, like any chemist
might feel, aged 20 does an analytical study, something
new and never done before, then he lands a job at a
pharmaceutical company and has to synthesise and synthesise
and synthesise the same thing over and over again -
20 years pass, aged 40 he gets another chance to analyse something
that it's just quality control - i know there are puritans out
there who'd lash out at what i'm using here -
but i want the practical side of philosophy, nothing overloaded
with words, theories, knowledge whatever that means -
i know crude, but necessary - a priori (from the earlier):
well, i wasn't a mute aged 8, proof?
an etymological void about to be filled: w środe poszłem do
lasu (on wednesday i went to the woods) - etymology here,
i'm sure of it - etymology or the resemblance of
a Thesaurus Rex roar - a piquant case of synonyms -
środa (wednesday), originally? derived from środek:
the centre - oh look... friday thursday ś tuesday monday -
the days off don't count, we all know that.
etymological spontaneity then, i wouldn't force myself
to practice a detailed inquiry using it - spare of the moment
thing... more pleasant that way;
but as you can see i am at the point of analytical a posteriori:
clearly shown by what i've already noticed in nuances
of the English language - i won't go through what i've
noticed - but having crossed the threshold of
analysing English after having automated synthesising it
for so long, i would naturally end up writing poetry -
the 21st century kind - look ahead! said Columbus,
but please have a sacred respect for your memory as
your own citizen with Friday on Bermuda -
treat memory like a potent hallucinogenic drug -
after all... the state doesn't respect your memory, at school
they cram in all those pointless things you have to
memorise - arithmetic, spelling (well both are kinda useful),
but so much else you will not care to remember -
it's not about how important you think you are when
you're not given there's 8 billion of us - don't get
fooled by this self-importance gimmick - look at what
the education system of the state is eroding... yes... your
memory - so you forget yourself at the happiest of times...
memory is more sacred than thinking and can be
more potent than an Amazonian or a Swiss hallucinogenic.

ich wollen ein iranischherz herauf Nörden.

or simply Njørden - often the j is a softening pronunciation -
i want an Iranian heart up north -
that's what is says - imagine why he lashed out
with the words *sheisse ausländer -
miniature form of Dostoyevsky -
at 18 he was confused - his father probably
heard the words... hearing that he lashed out...
this is the proof of the power of commandments -
take one to extreme, and all the others seems
permitted - honour your parents -
he didn't shout out allah'u akbar - he did
a little maxim veto - as said unto me one,
may these bullets turn into revisited tongues -
the west has no concern for poetry -
i wouldn't make Iran an enemy,
after all... they're the ones that appreciate poetry...
mm ha ha! so given Iran's flavour for poetics
i can only applaud at their sensibility -
i too was once duped into thinking that watching
a movie i might lie to a girl and ****** her -
poetry is dead in the west... i don't write
for the west, i write from the west, which doesn't
mean i respect the west -
thanks to feminism we're cruising into
an affair of what feminists don't anticipate:
the impracticality of old age creeping, creeping,
creeping... with large families there are at least
chances of a benevolent child who might care for
his parents - in the west with surrogate foetal-things
it's hardly a bouquet of flowers sitting pretty on
a table - the problem are already waiting...
thank **** if you're rich... if you're poor?
well... hmm what a Disneyland awaits you -
**** stained and **** smeared dying for your idea
like any Communist might; well, i'm not going to
help you... ask Oxfam while the money you donated
ensured that only a penny reached the poor poor
Africans and why 99 pence reached the bureaucracy
of keeping a charity afloat - i know where
i can find fresh water... you have to cross a barbwire
fence, feed 10 horses 20 sugar cubes and you're
at a little stream of clarity... then you do the vegan
diet and sorta'h waiting for a heart-attack...
or you take a Russian Empire banknote with Tsar
Nicholas II to Switzerland and buy yourself out
with euthanasia... either way, win win.
every ****** time i go back home there's the Krähewolke -
i'm starting to imagine myself as the boy instructed by
Barbarossa to watch for the crows and a second life -
it's a small town, used to be industrious,
life here, there, everywhere, now a town of pensioners -
a European squabbling with a European but ignoring
the massive signs MADE IN CHINA, MADE IN CHINA...
MADE IN CHINA... why you blaming me for what's
going to happen to you too? you think this is the steam-engine
days of industrial revolution? do you have an Instagram
account? no. well... if you aren't going to be a third party
advert unit you're worth jackshit -
but still that Krähewolke of summer, thousands of them
swarm the sky - i'm not saying because i'm there,
i'm saying i'm there dwarfed by such a sight...
krähe die messerschmitt - so poetry is written by
*****-whipped English teachers, or it's the medium of
the weak, it has many voices but it doesn't have a voice,
it needs to be pretty, it needs to be neat, it needs to
have a prosthetic metaphor stashed in a pile of **** flare -
some say it even has to be as coherent as an Ikea
manual for putting a table together, people all of a sudden
trash the calculator and attempt mental arithmetic in
terms of reading... what... a... load... of... crock-****...
hyphen... mm... the Germans knew the immigrant Saxons
would speak less and less German and even of lesser
quality than the Turks... the Germans invented chemistry -
the Anglo-Saxons invented hyphenation... but it's so
******* weird that the Englandish outlandish will
hyphenate a word like overt-usage but never include the
hyphen in chemical nouns, like: Hydrochloric acid...
dihydrogen monoxide (yes, the d'uh hoax),
phosphorus pentachloride - what remains of Vater Schwaben
in English is bound to chemistry's language,
where the standard use of hyphen is disallowed -
the German original took on a different optometrist -
the English revision took on yet another (different) optometrist -
the eyes of the English starring at a German word
began to dizzy-up-whirl looking through a kaleidoscope -
the Germans just saw: schieße schrapnell!
achtung! achtung! die wort ist die fondant...
mm... gobble gobble gobble - pristine smile of sharpened
teeth in a smile! klebrigzähne sprechen sehr kleine-eine-miner.
well... if you're going to write a Monty Pi Ten you might
as well desecrate a foreign language with the grammar of
the one acquired - very much interested in how grammar
is reflected by Arabic left-to-right, English right-to-left
German right-to-left,but Latin left-to-right - all the genus
names - **** sapiens: rational man - or the up-kept
(******* ***** -φρεν - alt.  hi-yo in Beijing) desire for:
the instilled continuance of the rationalising man...
rationalise this! knuckle dusters down the East End -
gotta be a **** before you can be a Cockney Wiseguy -
say ooh la la say soo - bud weiss err - say ooh la la say soo -
amphetamine George says: ethanol Scottish Gaelic means:
twins sedative and un-inhibitor - talk of Enzymes -
south and shoo, north and nothing, east and extra territory,
west and **** / Vancouver - van coup verily ******
voulez-vous volleyball aha! write poetry like a dictionary
entry - spandex, annex, fly-flex - it can really become
a tennis match after a while:
   roses are   red
                   violets are blue
             i'm so in love with everything that's dead
    that i decided to call the past the necessary glue.
an article by Bryan Applied concerning poetry -
and why all poetic hearts are bound for Iran -
karaoke the current trend in the west for one -
living at a time when cooking books sell,
and plagiarism is celebrated more than any awkward
originality, but everyone still owns microwaves
and opts for ready-meals -
the rewards of old age aren't there because families
have become atomic based on individuals -
oh right? the article, it's long, ****** me off -
"we turn to poetry in times of need, but can it really
help? and why doesn't it sell more copies?"
ah the selling questions, i forgot a capitalist thinks
of poems like hamburgers...
i'll put in a bracketed word pending in the title and give
you a brief overview of the article...

*** and whiskey interlude

i don't write poetry... what i do do is **** poetry;
why do fellow artists hate poetry?
poetry in the hands of the old and young
thinks itself ******-like, the one art form that
says no to violence, no to intolerance,
no to drastic actions of revision -
keeping the Shakespearean sonnet won't do the art
any favours, it's the art too easily accessible,
because anyone can apparently write it
as long as they get a clue than a rhyme is necessary -
alternating rhymes are not that important,
i asked for a steak tartar, instead i got
plated a shepherds' pie - i asked for raw,
all i got for nanny picked and donning diapers -
poetry is best suited for that dynamo of reaction
known to internet trolls - trolls should overpower
writing poetry, they're intelligent enough, and
democratic too - cold-stone-heartless *******
should pick up these floral arrangements and
do an iron maiden make-over with them...
poems should be torture instruments,
they should never be treated as floral arrangements...
i don't like weakness, neither does nature -
when i walk into the museum of poetry
i don't want to see avant-garde art, i want to see torture,
they really did underestimate the vis poetica -
when i read poetry i want torture, i don't need
safety pins, straitjackets and other torturous
instruments of conformity - but from what i'm seeing
that's all i'm getting - ask any man why the construction
industry is ******* - women on site, women in the
army - feminism has infiltrated sacred sites of
manly brotherhood... you don't see a man stroll into
the fashion industry... well... unless he's a ****** -
a Grimm Brother's tale: once upon a time...
you could listen to a radio on a building site...
then women came in... we only heard symphonies of
hammer and drill... that alone made us deaf...
sure... we worked dangerously, we died more often...
BUT THE THRILL! **** *** bye bye... go on, wave at it...
it's like Titanic's maiden voyage... it's not coming back!
feminism's ugly head should have shoved itself once
more under a horse's galloping hoofs - a few times -
it played with the brotherhood of man - we're no longer
men, we're insurance policies, safety nets,
no wonder the Jihadis are fighting for our libidos -
cos i honestly think they are... they want us to feel the Mojo
once more from the frivolous spirit of the 1960s liberation
that only became slavery of the fake sinner -
**** it... applause gentlemen! applause! thank **** for
me donning *******, i'd be a real loser if i had to hand it
to myself without it... these days it's called the ******* -
the monk's sheaf of chastity - reduce a man to a *****
and you reduce a father to alimony cheques.
what?! ain't that true? i told you, **** poetry, don't
bother writing it, **** that pacified ***** into obedience -
you own it... without you you'd still be crying about
what shame it is that a nation that produced Shakespeare
undermines poets while keeping this old **** ticking
all the boxes of worthwhile inspection... i wish i was
the 20th century example of when poetry had some respect...
at any other time more so in the 20th century -
but we missed that train... shame for us to have inherited
such a past and the internet - so if not so keen on poetry
why Shakespeare the celebratory idol? twilight Sir
****-a-lot is coming - or so i hope.
so this article, citations:
a. Wordsworth 'thoughts that do often lie too deep for
     tears',
b. poetry is the language of crisis,
c. poetry as peak experience constructed from
    the shabby, battered bricks of verbiage
    (otherwise known as talk with a mouthful
      of spaghetti),
d. TS Eliot: 'purifying the dialect of the tribe'
     (too many dialects to make up a tribe, to be honest),
e. funerals in particular are what's called
    poetic crashing the scene, every subject,
    every opportunity, you'd never call a poet a
    polymath,
f. the healing power of poetry... the healing power?
    i never signed up to take a Hippocratic oath!
g. a permanent record of failure... or the allure of a permanent
     record of ridicule by others, so the minor success was
     there too - as in a boy buys a kettle
     is a success story, but a boy writes a poem is a failure -
     is that vocabulary as commodity without
     a handkerchief?
h.
              a sense of abandonment looms...
              the obnoxiousness of this article is all too apparent,
      i rather be headbanging to some ***** M: Ra Ra Rhas Putin -
(even surds deserve a bit of love) -
i might finish the citation of the article... but then again
i might as well cut it short - inc. in the Culture Section
of the Sunday Times, Bryan Appleyard -
people resent poetry for stealing what comes naturally -
really? so i'm a thief? a lot of people don't invest in
vocabulary - they convene to invest in flimsy investments
of slang - after graduation from being teenagers the investment
in **** suddenly disappears - grown-up vocabulary takes
over, comprehensive English, not slang English...
people don't acquire naturally (i.e. easily without discomfort),
if i were to complain to the people for treating me
as a thief rather than a poet i'd ask them to teach me to
do crosswords... a pain-in-the-***... i can't do them!
so i guess that if you're able to do crosswords you can't
write poetry, or give poetry a freedom away from all those
dusty technicalities / identifiers as such -
for poetry doesn't make anything happen
(WH Auden), it probably doesn't, but if you choose a boring
life, a lot happens... 11/15 is the feminist ratio of poetry's
Forward prizes in the genre - k k, a fraction - 11:15 -
new testament? or the old's citation? yeah... why do they
cite the bible like making bets at the bookies?
Gospel of St. Luke 15 to 1? they're betting on the 4 Henchmen
of the Apocalypse - gambling even in the testaments.
performance poetry seldom stands up on the page -
yeah, wheelchair bound, or in pop culture lyricism -
that competition between R.E.M.'s man on the moon
(yeah yeah yeah yeah), and Nirvana's smells like teen spirit,
hello hello hello 'ola! (later the yeah yeah hitchhiker's story);
did i tell you i got barred from a pub in Collier Row for
speaking poetically? a ****-hole of a pub anyway,
walked in with a pair of dolphin flippers and a shark
fin, spoke some words, made a few friends over grapefruit
ale - then a few days later got barred, because i apparently
"threw a pint glass across the room"; that's me booked
for the Cheltenham Book festival for sure... right next to
the cookbook aisle where people will be expecting to make
humble pie and cider squint tarts.

For a baby, I am unkempt,
But for an adult, I am very unkempt.
People can tell me my age just by looking,
So when I bashfully admit I am 21,
I actually have no bash left,
Because I used all of it on my ***** sneakers and chipping nail polish,
and hangnails and tangled split ends in a scrunchie,
and leftover acne from the homecoming dance when I tried to erase it away with my mother’s makeup, two shades too light, two left feet as I had not grown fully into my limbs.
And they can see how aware I was of my pointy chin when I was thirteen years of self-conscious, repeating all the better responses to conversations, like my life was some laugh track sitcom,
just like I do right now,
many days, still,
in notebooks, to plants, to the bank machine, to the mirror at the optometrist, to the grocer when I run errands,
because even though now I run errands and have checks to cash,
I still have baby hair to bash,
and I laugh the same laugh,
with my eyes that turn into little moons,
thinking in the same cartoons,
under good eyebrows, though unkempt,
above the toil of braces and 21 years of chapped lips.

Use canned spaghetti as thread to stitch together the frayed edge of your t-shirt. Use your t-shirt to show how you’re the coolest most-hippest, most up with the kids kid there is. Where’d you get that shirt? Online.

Bop your head to the music so they know you know this song. Harder or they won’t see you. That’s not hard enough. Neck snap! Yeah, right there. Hold still while I take a photo. Do you mind if I make this my cover photo?

Take a selfie of you crying in the bathroom and hashtag it. Snapchat it to your local MP so they know how you feel - be sure to use an emoji. #studentdebt Tears streaming down your face. (If it’s a hashtag it’s easier to emotionally process.) #policebrutality #throwbackthursday #massincaceration It’s a good thing there’s emojis for black people now. Look at how far we’ve come!

#nomakeup #vegan #crueltyfree #childslavelabour #iwokeuplikethis #campusrape #notallmen #yesallwomen #freethenipple #2k16 #mentalhealthcuts #stopkillingtranswomen #waterislife #standwithstandingrock

Have you followed Human Rights on Facebook? It’s the only way to get them. Have you seen the Ted Talk about it? In just 20 minutes you’ll know everything there is know about it.

Sorry. You don’t seem like you’re focused. You’re thirsty? Let me make you a smoothie.
I’ll put the chocolate bar in the blender whole, leave the wrapper on. Taste the tinfoil and the plastic. Eat the barcode, become the product. That’s modern life.

Don’t take out the hair or the fingernail or the Band-Aid. Don’t hide from the human components of the production line that made this Kit-Kat possible for you, kid. That’s modern life.

Go to the voting booth, refuse to choose between the diversity of 50 versions of the same smiling white man. Scrawl: **** these ******! (have no faith in none of them) That’s modern life.

With jittering teeth and goosebumps, put your toaster in the sink. Overflow it with water. You will only need a fork to get warm. Electrocution is the most economical form of heating. Be Energywise. That’s modern life.

Puff marijuana smoke through the bars into the brown faces of those who were incarcerated for doing what you freely do now. That’s modern life.

Burn your eyes on the screen. But before you do, memorise the 0800 number for the optometrist.

Post your suicide note on YikYak to save paper. No-one likes reading hard copies these days anyways. #papercuts #selfharm

Search for motivation on EBay. If you’re lucky it’ll have free shipping and arrive in 1-5 business days.

Snapchat your friend’s words of encouragement, God knows they’ve seen enough dickpics.

Take a chicken to KFC and tell them you’re sorry.

Get in the cars of the men who yell “Hey baby!”. They’ll be so surprised they wont know what to do next.

Swap your woman-chest with a man-chest and see if your ******* are still illegal.

Drive through town throwing dirt with one hand and seeds in the other. Maybe, if you do it long enough this claustrophobic concrete will be gone.

Bleed on every seat until the government pays for menstrual products.

Train seagulls to throw YOU chips.

**** a woman and a man simultaneously, so that you can be sure everyone knows you’re bisexual.

Blockade inaccessible buildings with piles of wheelchairs.

Grab time by the fabric and rip it, cuz we all know rips look really punk, and all you really are is just some young punk.

selfless self sabotage
intertwined tight ropeless
walking
down America street
where the best activists
actively left the broken dialogue
actively left
the broken blood stained culture
actively went to sleep
some from violence
some for money
make a living
because in America
the art of killing
obviously open
abierto!
activist activity process of whiteness
on its fall from white-centricity
desperate
many pay to see
many feast their eyes
on screens galore
life is not as exciting anymore
entertained by activists
instead of acting out
out of white-centricity
not like out from the heart
but like out of a self sustained hell
that wouldn’t ask for its son
to be soaked in bleach and implanted violently
with blue eyes
a white-centric optometrist surgeon general
for other innocent children
to drool over with lust
someday wanton to be
a fake white Jesus
desperately inactivist
getting a lot more business
than those many valiant men
women
and children
who fought white-centricity
for our freedom
so we could love a new language
like a universal galactic super hero
whiteness in children yearns for
to be human again and allowed to be also
allowed to be human while also being human
not selfless sabotage

There it is
a peace of the future sky
in my eye
fuzzy floating, now unresolved;
a blue and white someday
on hills and trees
I squint into.
When I am seeing this blurriness,
I see red and yellows,
blacks and whites,
all melding into one grayness.

Oh , my imagery, I see beautifully.
hazy , but, one day....
I will visit the optometrist...
right after my
psychiatrist.

Can someone please trade me eyes?

It's unknown how they still have sight 
Every since I was 6 the sense have witnessed gruesome events 
Now my eyelids flicker past them very seldom 
My lacrimal glands have trouble producing saline 
I find it nearly impossible for beatitude to gleam from my eyes
And I cannot search for something that my eyes feel sorrow for 

Let me at least borrow yours? 
Please 
So I can see how it feel to grieve 
So that tears of joy can travel down my cheeks 
I want humor to cause me to wink 
I want my reflexes to cause me to blink 

Pleeeeeeaaassseeee?
I stand there in the face of danger 
When I should be aware 
Instead I just stare 
...
No glare 
Just dispirited 
The statical behavior that my eyes inherited 
Suppress me from all charity 

I'm begging you 
No one looks me in my face and feels warmth and comfortability 
All that they see is two white igneous rocks
When I wish that they can see marshmallows 

That's why I need your help 
The optometrist said there's nothing that he can do 

That's why I'm coming to you 
I just wanna be inspired by life 
Can you show me how the world look again just for one day?

ι'μ σεεινγ
                         αν ωπτωμετριστ,
           ανδ ναι, α γρεεκ;
i had a cyrillic (
   с-у-р-у-л-ьи-ч?
    celery... celeriac kayak?!)
           optometrist
once, but it didn't work
                              out;
back to celeriac kayak canoe...
    the explosion                  
                                of acronyms
and emoticons [        :)    :(    ;)     :'(       ]         
                        in the english
language sparked         the frustrating
                                chaos          
                      of optic carousels.

only today i learned ø denotes
        an encoding of diameter,
and it's Scandinavian,
                     or how the globe is
past the equator,
         and the lob-sided earth,
winters in Australia in the Summer months
in Europe.

    high philosophy begins with Beijing
dialectical highs,
    but take the route of lower philosophy
and encounter diacritics rather than dialectics,
because that matters, too,
        θought, a moral ought,
   and φilosoφy - and missing ought -
          and the two being irreversibly twins
in said... or θought an immoral ought,
                 sure, tubes, mistook ø74 for something
akin to φ...
    high philosophy never acquires a diacritical
dilemma...
                  or why local don't do anything
but actuate automatic application
   and those immigrant, or bilingual troops question...
    ø = diameter, not to be confused with the θ;
             higher philosophy begins with dialectical
beginnings,
               "lower" philosophy also begins with
dialectics, but it ends with diacritical application,
rather than utopian: nowhere from nothing.

what am i going to say next? *machado de assis's
philosopher or dog? introduction.

          ........................................­..................................
..............................­......................................................
..........­.................................................................­.........
.......................................................­.............................
...................................­.................................................
...............­.................................................................­....
............................................................­...........
(or a paragraph on the pleasure of drinking,
    or how to save you an optometrist appointment,
or how to take an interlude,
   to do the opposite of the Andy Warhol stipend
for making enough buggers hearing your
opinion, unchallenged,
                    but never having a diacritic concern).
hence the pending, or what everyone seems to
desire these days, circa 100 years later,
     how to provoke an interlude, how to hunger
for interludes rather than fame,
           i also drew a sketch before starting,
       shat -
                  and hey presto!
           ****!
                   yuck in orange in florescent.
yellow (florescent), F, pretty pretty pretty,
          in pink the bit about diameters and phi,
           again in yuck orange: swigs and the wiggle...
a paged concern for graffiti.
                  again, pending, yet to be hottie
and poster boy of a poem,
        again the impromptu break worth of fame that
actually isn't fame, but a chance to compare
                   how much whiskey makes up for the
Niagara continuum.
        again, (pending):
............................................... (how the hell do you
write pending ~15 minutes later?!)

the concept of Monday is greatly undermined
by Darwinism,
    as is Tuesday through to Sunday,
generally the function-able week desists the idea
of an Iron Age, as does the pantomime
of all that's worth celebrating -
generally speaking Darwinism is anti-history,
theology has nothing to ask of Darwinism
to argue against,
                             theology isn't a history,
but Darwinism is the purest variation
of history, variance of how we define logic
and its applicability, whether it's
i + think            /             1 + 1
    and have the moral attraction toward a 2
         or variate a moral action into a 3:
cos Radiohead simply sang 2 + 2 = 5 in a song:
cheat! matchstick principle regarding counting!
machado de assis? Darwinism is peppered with
overt imagery than salted with:
you get to sneeze a lot...
             a writer's voice: irony, mockery,
         consolidating the lessened counter-productiveness...
Flaubert, Dickens, Zola, Balzac, etc.,
                    homie, rap that **** out, condense it,
i thought Brazil was half the way America should have
endeared you? i had problems with Prussia
Austria and Russia... guess i was wrong how thuggish
i had to be with the Orpheus *******...
       cos the lyre was dumbo blunt deaf and therefore
cacka...
     higher philosophy begins with dialectics,
"lower" philosophy begins with diacritics -
     a return to the source, a debate with Ivory scales
concerning the Rosetta - a neo-formatting of
what's quiete
                           right: Sophia: hence anew: Rosetta.
and all for the pear that's woman and whether Satan
chose the fruit prudently according to Milton.
or the progress of a drunk:
centipedes and Fitzgeralds, Hemingways,
lust and last said...
                           the cf. of every apparent transitory
made to provoke the quasi and quack,
              ducking the Donald and the *****,
in agreement,
                     a happiness toward the tiresome
encrusting of what's worth being stated,
and then the deviatory,
                              as marketed a deviation
from a Louis Napoleon -
                                    because no Belarus was
to be chequered by an impeding force...
                      hence the cha cha cha...
                                    and hence the stanzas of
Argentinian tango...
              juicy and later the cruelty choking
of what some might make of Macbeath's habitual thinking
                                       worthy of a classroom
                audience; and that too is
exposable in return for being disposable.
higher philosophy is regarded as such with
dialectics,
                        but "lower" philosophy is
yet to be regarded as such with diacritics -
     not a case of what's to be said, and thus bedded,
but a case of how's something said,
                                and thus given a freedom
of: bedded, wedded, pimped, or whimpered into
                                     surviving writing a poem about;
also achieved by Humphrey and that chuckle of
revising Casablanca for an unnecessary quote dynamic /
diatribe when Hiroshima said
                 much more than the above certified:
boom! 1 million ******* dead.
       that's an overt-quote that gropes the many
amens among the citations of Marilyn, and still gets away
with                     a memory of J.F.K.,
           because that ****-honing masterpiece
was needing my memory rather
                                   than a b. b. q.    scewing.
          i find people rather forgetting:
jeopardy battered boundless gym orientational
                     thoughtless two shots of tequilas
            and three paraphrases of sours in biting a lemon
to upkeep a trough of a suntan with the H-He:
boom boom, higher tier laughter,
             ingesting that inflation of prop
                    boom boom, v bomber,
                     squeeze...
                    lob-side lo & behold,
                                       'n'        - squiggly extra thus born.

Fly you fool
People only get older
And poetry doesn't always need to rhyme
Life hands you lemons
But my tequila requires limes

What's the recipe for ice?
Can't see with 20/20 vision eyes
Fighting for a far off cause
And Santa Clause

Whatchamacallits
And compost heaps
Michigan to Denver
Face down in the mud
The baker helps me up
He's up at 2 AM
To hand out yesterdays left overs to the hobos and bums

Elliot Ness and Pat Garrett are on the trail
But The Iceman is watching patiently in his quiet suburb to emerge and bathe himself in their agony and his compensation

Hush puppies and truffle fries
Go-carts zooming through the race riots

Stomp
Tap
Snap
Clap
And sing along around the wishing well
Across the universe
Along the watchtower
With the brooding troubadour

The truth is ugly
Unless it sugarcoats itself with a false foundation and misleading mascara  

The burning bush spits out orders like ticker tape

I reckon its witchcraft
Either that
Or vertigo and dream piercing alarm clocks
Snooze

I AM VICE PRESIDENT AGNEW
Take it all away

The air is polluted with "love"
Or self-satisfaction disguised as love

More often than not
Almost always
I want you
Just you

I use geometry to calculate all these feelings
In summation, I'm insane but not as insane as you for loving me

Fractured my scaphoid
Now I'm paranoid of curbs and confrontation

I board the drunken ship
And circle Pangaea

We don't need a meteorologist to tell us the wind is with us, on our side
As we float on to the next one

My optometrist from Minnesota calls me and tells me my state of the art x-ray specs are in

I pulled something in my back, slipped a disk

Gentlemen, I take my leave  

I've been the liar
The actor
The martyr
The scribe
The one under the microscope hating every second
The one on the wanted poster

I can take your boos
I can guzzle your *****
Then clog your toilet
And walk away clean

Satan checks my blood pressure
Gives me ten milligrams of ****** and unleashes me upon the world

I burn the corks and crack the plates
I litter the empty bottles to leave them for the rest of you to recycle

Can you handle change?
Can you hold your own during the transformation?
This erratic evolution of the soul and person?

You've been in the honor society
Have you been inmate 107501?
Then what do you know?

You've been converted by the prizes in cereal boxes
Save the box tops and mail them in for an all expense paid trip to Crimea

Take this box cutter and do your worst

Your tongue licks away this candy shell of doubt that surrounds me
Until you reach the chewy center and free the surreal pleasure of sweetness

Just when there seems nothing more could be said . . .*
 
a texture on your cheek appears,
a smudge of gold, brown, gold
catching a yellow fleck in the left eye,
your flower of an eye
that opens like an optometrist’s dream:
a restful knowing eye.
 
A distinct touch moves
on my forearm’s hair,
- tints of gold, freckled brown -
Up and down.
Up and down.
A warm wind
sways the barley field,
the sun setting.
 
I let just-audible words
stroke and calm,
stroke and calm
your tired, unsettled mind
wrestling with thoughts of those
who know you as someone
you may no longer be.
 
In my arms you remake
this newly-discovered self,
your self with an intent to be
who you know you are.
You gather strength.
You gather resolve.
 
We sit on the shadowed grass
and make love with kisses
so eloquent our tongues
construct words,
a whole lexicon beyond
any passion our bodies
could invent.
 
Our tongues curl and dance.
Our tongues curl and dance,
touching lips.
Touching lips.

write with the ambition: no one is going to write a book about me... i might as well write a book about myself - Hollywood vanity, the ones who can't write out the mundane with ferocious appetite to excite have hardly put a chunk of meat in their mouths, anaemic vegetarians, mantra chanters - well, anaemic vegans - the great debate about abortions, women's rights and the clinics condensed into an egg: is it a chicken? is it a chicken chow mein? no! it's a runny yum yoke boiled in 5 minutes! it's a completely different entity! what with the half-formed fetus that hasn't been ***** trained and hasn't developed **** or bladder muscles - is awake but is practically asleep - consciousness develops after the two precursor developments, it's not walking, it's still finding it easier to suggest onomatopoeia from words: it sounds like the great equation of putting an algorithmic-like interchange of vowels and consonants is creeping, but when it's there, there's nothing, a blank, no concepts stemming from the second other-worldly impregnation from the so called "imaginary" being, how long does a fully mature fetus spend time in the dark? 3 weeks? 2? the cut-off point from full maturity to: get me the **** out of here! i'm not an aquatic creature, i'm part amφiβiaν part cross-dressed monkey - or something like that.

i could be an entertainer after i stop being a monkish
poet, recluse and a father of the black wood
(since i don't have the desert like St. Augustine
the Penitent-Self-Reformist - a bit like Edward the Confessor, me),
the sober me doesn't like the idea of forgetting my
role as a poet-optometrist, still drilling out
the slightest differentiation into memory
between ν and υ - from now on - just so i don't stand
a 1950s style trial due to McCarthyism - i'll be
writing it as: θυκ - but wait... take the northern monkey's
perspective, a southern fairy picked it up with
upsilon - it's more like app Saigon - well, a salon -
so the alt. variation would be the northern θωκ -
but still the three letter aesthetic problem -
the missing c - **** you Byzantium! i haven't read enough
Greek to find an aesthetic pair where one acts as a surd
in pronunciation but not in the optics -
there's no equivalent kappa double to add - and i just
can't put in υω - but i guess i'll have to - what is
the de-digital format of contemplating such a feat?
handwriting - how easily could you write
microsoft equivalent typography of *mistral θυωκ?
i guess quiet easily - much of "ancient" orthography
(20th century) has changed, letters (due to the digital
adventure) have come akin to numbers, we can write
large sums of them because of the lost art of handwriting,
it's lost, i mean you can still practice some sort of
fancy typography, but i guess you wouldn't write
a book with a style like mistral, more like Coca Cola
or: beware of the dog. what is this leading to?
i admire, oddly enough, writers like J. D. Salinger
and Harper Lee, i wouldn't exactly call them constipated
writers like Bukowski would, or A. Dumas,
i just don't get the idea about how they treated writing
without any addictive tendencies, i have two worlds:
one things, indian spices, televisions, sun, moon,
clouds (which i kinda find as beautiful as a pile of ****)
and a world of encryption - symbols - silence and symbols,
the roots of all thinking being spared a constant daily
narrative, a moment to take something back, much
akin to programming, although, given the status of language
as the earliest way of making children see and recollect
and respond on a gravity-prone-pivot of balance
(modus primo - anti-Cartesian res absorbuit, a sponge
like thing, not a fully mature res cogitans / thinking thing) -
with those authors, i can't see how they could write
a book like that, and not even tread a mediocre path
of writing, i can't spend a day without looking at these
symbols... oh, and by the way, if Arabic will not punctuate
in a digital format its users will not find peace, mandarin
and hebrew are already cut up - the Latin users already
did away with the "painful" act of cutting up letters and
losing handwriting, Arabic should do likewise,
otherwise all they'll post online are jihadi beheading videos
as proof of their so called Islamic civilisation -
and for that part of inventing numbers? look,
the only thing akin to punctuation comes with the dizzy
heights of 1,000,000 (that's a billion), otherwise you
have the spiral π - and i am being condescending and sarcastic,
given the Koranic ref. to Jews: children of Israel...
well... kindergarten of Saudi Arabia.

The room around me is filled air that feels too tight like ***** hose when I’m on the very edge of going up a size.  You’re sprawled on the bed with the duvet scrunched under your face and between your knees.  Glasses rest by your alarm clock and I’ve woken up before it.  The hands are unreadable and I make another note to go to the optometrist sometime soon.  

I sit up and stare at you, the worry lines relaxed.  Twenties are when wrinkles start and sometimes I can see yours growing on me.  I see the sunlight drift over the planes of your face, touching your stubble and the patchwork skin you’ve worried on your lower lip; for a moment, I’m reminded of the last time my teeth caught on the slickness of your bottom lip and I smile.  The plywood box spring creeks under me and your eyelids flutter and I about face.  Somehow, sleeping with someone, being in love with someone, namely you, doesn’t give me the permission to drink in the naivety present in your morning rest.  Your arms around me in all the nights before didn’t excuse me from invading your space in the first moments of this day.

I stare out the window at a train passing by.  It’s better to stare at graffiti-clad cars I’ve seen a thousand times before in this railroad town than for you to see me watching.  You watch my frame fake interest in the engine outside and I feel the corners of your smile grasp the edges of my matching pajama set I picked out specifically for nights spent next to you.  I hear you call me cute and tell me good morning and I feel the blood rise to my cheeks as I realise you’ve been awake this entire time.

The philosophers's ****** reading brief facts about the philosophers stone

Optional optimal before eyeing the optometrist 

A visual learner molded a adolescent mute

Can't be too well off like the conspiracy of college 

Vicious violent vows of the silent

Prevent negativity using Mudras signals

Breaking every law resembling the commandments 

Mandatory reading for mental calmness

Savior behavior when we are the creators

They can not keep track of our strawman so please fill out a virtual postman

Hyperventilating through hypnosis snap out of it like a toaster

A regular tale is not my version of hell

My first name is Michael from Hebrew origins

Far from poetry more like emotions technical difficulties

Actions are profitable when words are free to acknowledge

as said by Octavian, may my tongue waggle
from the east to the west, whereby also
north unison with the time as in the southern realm -
Cerberus fed three portions of raw meat -
einklang sprechen - no laurel leaves for the
poets to sit on with pretence for idolatry of laziness -
let me don them on my cranium for proof
of authority - as prime citizen, solo utopia,
solo urbanity, let me become the butcher, the carpenter,
the baker, the street cleaner, all composition of one,
self-sufficient - but nothing of a puppeteer's worth
of fiddling the knitting of the fabric of an Empire;
poor Octavian, never quiet self-sufficient -
always the dependency, the donations of blood -
as with one review of a book: the only reason
we moved from drawing long or short shafts of wheat
as the Athenian prescription for satisfactory democracy
(oh sure, we need prescriptions in politics too) -
the reason we moved away from sortition is because
we ventured into constant entertainment -
the magician and the hat, Mr. Roger Rabbit as p.m. -
it's all about image, Core Bone Light has an image problem -
they really want election to look pretty, sortition
meaning: a Mr. Sputnik will have to be minister of
finance, and a Mrs. Paraphrase will have to be education
minister, both will loath their jobs, just like the everyday man,
hate their jobs, and in hating their jobs become more
efficient - no care for image representation having
that mint comic book quality - they'll wear
perfume akin to the stench of old books - and they'll finally
shut the **** up - these days it's excess rhetoric,
making a dialectic puncture is like finding a needle
in a haystack... you'll sooner open up a ****** girl's ****
than find that needle... no number of big bad wolves will
blow that haystack and wrap it into a tumbleweed -
no number of big bad wolves. join the shrimp colony,
or the sardine swarm of clouds beneath the sea -
make arithmetic snap click nod ye ha! lasso that bull in!
i agree with applying the magic trick or lottery to
democracy, they loved the ones that looked pretty,
modern democracy's motto? something from
a Louis XIV assertion of seeing himself in mirrors...
look pretty, people will trust you... power in appearances...
airs... isn't that how aristocracy functions, simply on airs?
imagine the king on his throne minor... out pops
Napoleon's head - the crown is heavy, but the throne is
lite / mm pop of a Pepsi, **** ahoy! plop... shiver me timbers,
yarrr or yarn in the weeding pool of gimme gimme a
**** in the morning before all the major affairs of human
interactions take formal tones - overtones? eyeliner.
my curriculum vitae - i think i studied once, i must have,
but i'm not sure if i learned anything -
i know i started self-education myself and learned
Faustian secrets along the way, became an optometrist,
i swear i was taught by other people prior,
i learned how to tie my shoes, make a hangman from
a tie and put it round my neck, shoeshined a pretty smile...
did i mention i drank to excess and held a V of index
and middle against the wind on the way?
did i mention i faked madness in order to be free to
slander with truth? they can't lock me up now...
i'm a "vulnerable" citizen - plus closing those mental
institutions means that society has to vacate them -
in turn becoming a madhouse - which England is,
as we speak, the virus spread to the blonde comb-over
brigade across the "pond" - this Anglo-Americon
relationship seems too friendly... if you get my cockerel
quiff minding the matter -
and never was language so rigid as to say it only dampened
the tongue to slur words in clear division of fiction
or otherwise - the time has come for my eyes to burn,
or turn into complete whitey of the sclera -
or, what was that? oh yes! now i remember, reducing
theology to what pronoun is adequate... god-he or god-she
or Alanis Morissette? team America accented Damon -
m'eh... we have squatters and priests in this domain,
call them parasites if you like, but theology is more than
what pronoun is adequate... let's just call the transgender
movement as if calling Stephen King's It -
acronym for: infatuation technology - i.e. what a lovely
butterfly, what a lovely pear, what a lovely sunny day -
aaaah mm, a naturalist's common thread;
oh right, so this ~arithmetic and politics -
quick agreement / disagreement followed up by a quick
validation of the point (dialectics is reserved for old
people, that being said, when Potato Plato turned 70
he discouraged young Aristotle, unlike his mentor
Socrates, Potato Plato never reached Socratic maturity
when he turned old... dialectics remains the art-form
of only one individual... nothing was learned, as the populace
proves every-single-time... we're quick to state opinion
than to dispute it... minus points for encountering /
encouraging bullies to make opinions physical, an iron tonne
of gravity with knuckles). language and gymnastics -
most people write like they're ******* pedestrians,
stiff coffins of vocabulary, never the verbiage fern phantoms -
oi! i need the shade! there they are, dreaming of
astronaut eyes doing the Olympics' triple-jump on
the moon? hey! lack of gravity! it's not the fault of doping!
they want the physical experience, never the mental
labyrinth - they write their curriculum vitae like they live
it - based on a lie - they never really turn rōnin
against their first oppressor - grammar;
always the ******* never the **** - shame really,
it's this naive Newtonian acceptance of gravity,
words like apples fall into their laps and they slurp rigidity -
now that's really a stance refreshing Heraclitus -
tenet? obscurity - or in revision: ah forget what is written
as being obscure, let's test them using punctuation -
that will really **** 'em up - after all punctuation is
literary architecture - Cinderella's glass shoe of the soul...
if it fits... it fits - if it doesn't then slice the van Gogh heel
or the Everest climber's toe; or let us say
the arithmetic asthma of punctuation, catch a breath...
release; shame i never learned to read music,
played the recorder and the xylophone in primary school,
i guess this is my revenge - to have written something
in complete silence, punctuated as i have done,
and never revealed the way it ought to be said...
i learned to read music scores by punctuating as it goes...
well... never learning either, sorta automating an ode
to the symbols of music with the symbols of poetic
musicology - p u n c t u a t i o n markings - the Pharaoh's curse.

Thomas said "Seeing is Believing"
But an optometrist knows that our eyes are like a sieve
Everything the light touches, Simba
Has been filtered by us before it reaches our brain
Unlike what we smell, unlike the sounds which beat into our
Tympanic membrane.

Why is it so hard to believe in what we cannot see?
If we know all perceptible colors, sounds, smells are not all that can be?
When we know that the lenses we wear over our retinas
Bend light to bring our vision into focus
And clearly see Mirages are not Water, but a Reflection of the Sky
It's hocus pocus to believe only what we can perCEIVE with our senses
When we hardly receive the world as it is.

The birds can see the infrared and ultraviolet
Snakes can taste temperature, and a map of your warm footprints
Dogs can hear ultrasound, like young children and deer pick
Up high-pitched frequencies whereas adults can no longer
See Santa Claus or Jesus or "Imaginary" Friends

Something about being human
Or maybe its just getting older,
Makes us too cynical and blind
To recognize rainbows and dark matter.

Ask the Giver to give me back my sight and feeling
Because I am reeling with the realization that I live
In a mere sliver of the Entire Spectrum
And can only contemplate it with a tenth of my mind.

I've felt stress
Daily.
But the load has never this bad, baby
My head is pounding
My stomach is twisting and burning
I want to wake up in your arms
I want to be reminded every morning that you're there to save me
From myself
But I can't save the world in bed with you

I'm getting everything I want
But I can't have it all together
My head is cloudy
Worries flying to the forefront of my consciousness
Each stressor fighting for my attention
My shoulders aren't broad enough to carry the load
It's spilling from my eyes
And landing on the corners of your perfect mouth
I try to localize the pain within my arms' reach
So nobody else gets hurt
But you've stepped into my arms
And I'm letting you taste it from my lips

What do I want?
Without the factors?
I want to come home to you every day
Starting right now
But I can't...without changing your well-established life
And I don’t expect you to follow me
But I pray to God that you wait for me
As I pack my schedule
Work tens of states away
Study with hundreds of miles in between us
I hate feeling like I'm choosing this over you
Truth is, I want to stay with you more than any of this.
When I’m with you
There’s no way to fail and nobody to disappoint
You’re safe and I WANT TO STAY HERE
My heart is telling my head, stomach--every part of me
That I want you this summer and always
But I'm working and studying for more than myself and even for you—my favorite part of life
In Maine I truly feel like I'm contributing to science, toward a cure for glaucoma
As an optometrist, I'll be able to help thousands of patients see the world
I can't possibly be in this for the money, either
I'm taking so many hits in the process of trying to make the biggest impact I can on this world
I’m a bundle of insecurities with a bizarre responsibility to use what little I have to make lives after mine better
It’s why I pick so many battles
Care so much about politics
Organize all of these committees
Kiss babies and stare off into their futures
Decide to uncomfortably go out and softly tell my truths
It’s why I chose to be a scientist and a doctor.
But it’s costing us—and it kills me that it’s costing you, too.
You’re a main character in this crazy, transitional chapter of my life
And I hope you’ll stay for the rest of my book.

if ted berrigan's
sonnet xv
   isn't a testimony to me
venturing to say:
keep the paragraph
custard away from us...
if ted berrigan isn't
an optometrist...
     then i'm vague,
blind... my eyes aren't
playing hands
  in a pub throwing darts...
because i have to say:
fiction is wholly linear........................................................
..­.................................................................­..........................
......................................­.......................................................
now i really appreciate what you're
doing... as every smart-*** does
laughing: thanks for the *****!
but... no.
          i've been prescribed
a celibacy where i yank and call
for Beelzebub!
    veal in a veil of sodden trademarks....
and once it was all about
making poetry jazz, but they
made it too obvious by reciting
their poems to jazz... only one
improv gets away... and lives
in this town...
and ol' teddy was in on it...
but i'd like to return to the tornado,
the crazy-eyes of reading poetry,
up
down
up
down
right
left
backwards
forwards
it's total freedom man...
a bee flies past
my neighbour's dog
walk in the garden looking
for the bark and the night...
i'm getting ******
and i'm thinking about
getting ****** with
the Jim Morrison tourists
who come to his grave
at père lachaise - funnily enough
i was there, once...
and once will do it for me:
i need the vampirism of
distortion, tackling imagination
with memory...
but seriously, why are all the competent
men of our age, lodging
thought into the brain?
that the brain somehow emulates
thinking...
there's also another gym opening,
turning brain (fat) into bicep (muscle)
by doing crosswords religiously
and all other mensa crap-a-*******-too
on the didgeridoo... qua quan quank...
for some reason i hear a didgeridoo
i only hear q... and testicles in a
wrench...
             but it really is optometry with
ted berrigan... in his sonnet vx...
up
down
up
down
              i.e. in joe brainard's college its white arrow
does not point to william carlos william.
   he is not in it, the hungry head doctor.
   what is in it is sixteen ripped pictures
of marilyn monroe, her white teeth white-
washed...
  so it has to either be optometry or gymnastics...
because i swear i just did a cartwheel there...
up
down
up
down
             and it's done with such force...
like a pigeon talking cuckoo...
    and then the hope that the dust does settle
down, and our modern narcissist
  steers away from looking into the darwinistic
mirror and incorporates other animalistic
traits into defining his sole possession...
     i'd like to see man imitating man,
rather than create this chasm of:
    like jacob unto god, so god unto jacob,
but given we're dealing with realism:
like man unto ant, so ant unto man...
           and you really can't say you'll turn
myopic reading poetry...
   painting, in words, not mere graffiti...
if like me: you get tired of colour
  and feel no need to experiment with
colour emphasis high on l.s.d.
   well: you're coming to the party of miserable
sods, with Dante at the fore.
      and if i really did mind the Geneva convention
on punctuation, i wouldn't full stop
and refresh with an
and...                               conjunctions don't
belong at the fore, nor at the back...
    but here's to heresy in the secular realm!
but seriously: why say thought resides in the brain?
and that we need more brain-power?
      brain-strain, ice-cream stashed as quickly
as a turkey might say girball in between that
cocky-glug-glug while being forcefed / stuffed...
  and would you believe it: it still won't
sit on a dusty mantle-piece... but glittering like
oil and gold... on something as intrinsic
         as an impermanent table of pilgrims.
male turkeys yes: where once there was a larynx
there now hangs a angry-red *******.
but you really can't say that poetry
can strain your eyes, you can't say
the writing is claustrophobic,
   that it really does strain the eyes in
paragraph litany...
       then it's at least that...
written like advert 1 and advert 2 by the side
of the road, two miles apart, on
giant billboards... albeit without
the fancy writing or the fancy colour...
but it's there alright.

The Fernet-Branca,
sipped slowly,
seems to go well
with the pack of yellow American Spirits,
though I usually go with
the light blue pack.
Yellow does the trick tonight.

From the 14th floor
the city lights of Denver
are blurry.
So are the morning emails,
the slot for quarters
on the laundry machine,
the cars that pass on 8th
headed to wherever,
and you.

I'm sorry. Mr. Gazer, your life is being played with,
You've gathered the sweetest memories you've ever tasted;
Now you think you're going to hold onto them forever?
Clearly you don't have a ******* brain because you're mistaken,
Everything you forsook and have ******* forsaken,
I'm telling you, I'm taking it all back.
Look around Mr. Gazer, you're ******* hated;
you're a disappointment to your family, but I won't mention friends,
**** if I did mention friends, I don't think this will ever end.
Mr. Gazer. Mr. Gazer, why don't you sing well at all?
Is it cause you drink yourself silly even way before the bar's last call;
is it because you have one ******* and no ******* *****?
Mr. Gazer. Mr. Gazer, how would you like to challenge the world,
watch how you can make all the people's arm hair curls;
as they cheering you on, from start to end?
Oh Mr. Gazer, you're too ******* gullible.
This isn't a message out of hatred you ******* *******,
this is a word of wisdom from your new best friend : LIFE.
I don't know when this sentence ends
but welcome to Life my new best friend.

Mr. Life, I've tried and tried,
I've been to the optometrist,
they said nothing was wrong with my lenses
but when it pours rain, nothing feels cleansed;
everything become blurry.
Mr. Life, You don't need to end your sentence,
I've done that many times for you;
I've done that almost every day...
After all, what are friends for?
...
So here's how it should end,
Goodbye my new best-friend.

She was everything I ever wanted,
Petite, with a shock of hair,
A dimpled cheek, and a smile so sweet
And my favourite name of Claire.
I’d watched her grow to adulthood
And thought that I’d made my mark,
Until the day that my world turned grey
When I saw her walk in the park.

For she wasn’t alone by the cedars,
She wasn’t alone by the pool,
For Edward Eyre had his arm round her,
A fellow I’d known at school,
He wasn’t exactly a heartthrob,
His eyes were too big for his nose,
His hair was like a rats nest in there
And he seemed too small for his clothes.

I couldn’t believe I was seeing
Her laughing and smiling with him,
At school we’d called him the village fool
An idiot under his skin,
But here he was with my darling,
The vision was somehow grotesque,
As I recalled how he once had crawled
Under the teacher’s desk.

It wasn’t as if he could smell too good
With the egg stains over his chest,
A shirt would have been an improvement,
But he wore a ***** old vest.
What on God’s earth could she see in him
I made up my mind to see,
To question Claire, what went on in there,
And what did she think of me?

Her words were a revelation,
To her he was handsome and tall,
But she was barely just five foot three
And he only five foot small.
She spoke of his wit and his humour,
She said he made her heart full,
Then what of me, and she said, ‘Let’s see,
I think you’re remarkably dull.’

I said she should see a psychiatrist
Perhaps an optometrist too,
‘For what you see is a travesty
That nobody sees but you.’
She said they were going to be married,
To tie them together for life,
‘But once you see what the others see,
You’ll make him a terrible wife.’

I went to their wedding reception,
And hung in the passageway hall,
Got Claire to see his reflection
In the mirror that hung on the wall,
She blanched, and gasped at his image,
She’d not seen him like that before,
She’d seen but dreams, and she grimaced,
Threw up on the passageway floor.

There are those who see what they want to see
And Claire had been one of those,
They dress their dreams in a web it seems
Made up of the Emperor’s clothes.
We’ve been together a year or so
And try to hang on to our youth,
Whenever reality strikes a pose
We look in the mirror of truth.

David Lewis Paget

B-side

things have changed since the days of progressive rock,
the whole idea of the concept album...
i once owned this copy of a music magazine: MOJO...
when magazines were still in print...
that's the thing with me -

three passions in my life, three great loves in my life...
cycling, music and philosophy:
if i said that i loved poetry i'd be lying...
since i imagine myself as writing it -
with this little beast there's a love-hate relationship -
it's hardly a love: it's a medium where my three loves come together...

but a lot has changed since the progressive rock days of the concept album...
what album topped the MOJO top 50 albums from
the progressive rock genre?
Pink Floyd's dark side of the moon...
who was second? ah...
YES' close to the edge:
personally i preferred the yes album...
Jethro Tull's Aqualung was way down the list...
Radiohead's OK computer wasn't unsurprisingly high...

but i would have topped the list with
King Crimson's in the court of the crimson king...
never mind...
i'd love to start a petition for all
the Red Hot Chilli Pepper albums to be released...
only upon hearing some of the B-sides from By the Way...

then moving to the B-sides of Blood, Sugar, ***, Magik...
i'm not sieving through the B-sides of Californication...
i'd want to start a petition for
all the Red Hot Chilli Pepper albums to be released
like Stadium Arcadium was released...
as a double-album... ****'s sake...
the artistry of this band is inexhaustible!

ALL RED HOT CHILLI PEPPERS' ALBUMS SHOULD BE RELEASED AS DOUBLE-ALBUMS...
that would be ****** innovative:
a natural progression from progressive rock...
all other mentions of progression the spheres of politics and

sociology blah blah ought to begin with... this...
i'm just surprised "they" only figured it out with Stadium Arcadium...

i mean: this B-side of the band is like:
i remember the days when bands would have
INSTRUMENTAL tracks, most notably Iron Maiden and
Metallica... take for example the Teatro Jam...

vocals brought to a bare minimum or nothing at all...
yes... i feel privileged to get a sneak peek into
the potential for the "concept" of the double album...
oh... sly technicalities...

i'm seriously not the type of a Matthew Arnold type...
crying myself to sleep after seeing Liszt play and swoon
the ladies...

i stopped caring about the "lady department" of my life...
that's how the story goes...
Matthew Arnold went to a Liszt concert
and he went back home and cried about how Liszt:
the virtuoso managed to swoon the ladies...
it helped that i was working those two gigs
and i wasn't just a fan...
because watching the women watching
these guys on stage helped with
the required attire of the security services...

perhaps i wasn't jumping up and down...
but i was "secretly" tapping my feet...
i chose the wrong instrument:
like any boy does when he has no band mates...
tried my chances on the guitar...
i should have been a drummer...
envy of the world could not topple what i'm interested
in / with anyway...

my solitary existence is enough
for whatever is not enough for others...
beside the double-album fixation,
i have a more potent "fixation": it's an analogy...
the Matthew Arnold vs.
                 Matthew Conrad (that's me) analogy...

poor M. Arnold went home weeping
at his inadequacies, poets are never favoured by women...
poor sod... how could he cushion himself against
the onslaught of Liszt? he couldn't...
back in the day you went to see a composer play...
you just bought a ticket... even today...
you go to an opera... what can you scavenge?
merely the ******* programme... but moi?
i was working... sure...
but i was probably the only person working
that double shift who ended his shift buying
a T-shirt of the band... that's a nice cushion to have...

it sort of distanced me from envy...
from utter despair... i didn't want to be on the stage...
i didn't want to be those guys...
i was just happy buying the band's T-shirt...
i switched off in that moment...
moments prior i was worried about crowd
safety intrusions into my psyche...
the next... after all was said and sang...
i emerged like i just went and saw my
"new" favorite band for "free": well...
i got paid to see them... that's also crucial...
i was paid to see them overseeing the crowd seeing them...

maybe that's why... my focus was split...
splintered in half...
i was of a conscious akin
to a lightning bolt splitting a tree in half...
i forgot despair... i thought about seeing
them live back in circa 2004 when
the London Arena in the Docklands was still viable...
with Chad Smith pre-warming before the gig...
walking in the crowd seemingly unnoticed
in a cowboy hat... hell...
i was almost an optometrist
when Frank Bruno brushed shoulders
with me coming back from ring-side
at that Tyson fury match-up... patient little me...

i've landed the perfect job...
i remember the days when my former school-friends
would joke about me not having a job...
being misdiagnosed as a "schizophrenic"...
what the **** did they do? oh... right...
one worked in a pub... another worked in Homebase...
this general DIY wholesaler...
i was cycling past where he worked...
it's getting torn down...
i only laugh at things that other people
don't find funny: most notably my own thoughts:
or thereby a lack of them... and to think...

all it took: to be in the position
i'm in now was being "nice" to my next-door neighbour...
the same "******" story: it's not what you know...
it's who you know... no...
i couldn't possibly be the next Matthew Arnold
bemoaning whatever successes Liszt had with women...
i got a Red Hot Chilli Pepper T-shirt...

there is healthy consumerism and
there's unhealthy consumerism...
the healthy type of consumerism is akin to:
             buying a memento...
some sort of memorabilia...
i love that sort of consumerism...
since i was working i couldn't take pictures of the events...
but it has become apparent...
the T-shirt saved me from the agony
akin to Matthew Arnold's agony...
i rather think i know what i'm doing...
it's not exactly ontologically based with a bias...
it's what i've acquired...
of course i'm seeking fame...
but it's not fame associated with being alive...
it's more a fame centered with: when i am gone...

when i satiate all that's mortal about me...
that's why i reject the motives for employing
the tactics of: fake it until you make it i.e. CREDIT...
i work on a debit allowance...
i spend what i earn rather than borrow in order to spend...
sure... i'll miss out on... wait... wait...
what am i going to be missing out on?
i love the company of my coworkers...
sure... i'm not a brain surgeon...
my mother is currently watching this ****** show:

the good doctor... no! that's why doctors are not walking encyclopedias...

that's why they specialize...
no chance in hell is there a "god" in the medical profession... PLATE OF BROWN... sweet instrumental...
progressive instrumental...
bourbon is the sweeter version of whiskey...
probably the greatest "thing" to come out of H'america...
prior to the blues and jazz...
and i get told: white man bad... slavery bad...
sure...

until the original slavery emerged as introducing
the black man to musical instruments that gave
the poor white boy prune an escape from classical music...
i don't see what the "*******" problem is...
talentless people drowning gripping to razor blades...
sure... i'm sort of jealous... but i'm not envious...
i allocated myself a company of Ovid and Horace...
Milton is not going to be replicated...
i want to write something:
i will write something that's properly
resembling the sort of life worth living
at the turn of the 21st century... oh ****...
i forgot to mention my 4th love...

drinking... i mean...
whether it's bourbon or whether it's whiskey...
you can't really love something unless you bring it
to the altar of excesses... and i do just that...
perhaps i have room for a fifth... but?
seeing how my father behaves around my mother?
i hardly "think" that's a viable choice for me... ergo...
i can spare myself the unnecessary details
and go straight after the prostitutes:
i don't mind sharing... after all...
i'm not sharing alimony guilt / no guilt...
i figured out a way to avoid making "profile-contact":
eye-contact i can stomach...
but all this a priori modulations of man...
no wonder dates are so boring: dating...

i don't want to know anything about
another person: PRIOR...
i want to find out... gain knowledge...
but if i'm about to be served something on a:
precursor basis? that's... ******* boring...
no wonder i'm not interested... and never will be...
it like... you either get given a fish...
or you're given a fishing rod... and some maggots...
people have their fiddly bits...
but if people expose their fiddly bits...
the stereotype is that man is the "hunter"...
what the **** am i hunting?

i don't like hunting: i like scouting...
that's the entire problem
with Darwinism mingling with "humanism":
too much is borrowed from the natural world....
and when that happens?
imposing the natural world
on the technical world of man rarely helps anyone...

          by proxy or default... or perhaps by simply
the spiral in control of ad hoc...
i write... after all writing is an extension of thinking...
it's not an invitation to speak...
people complain about their internet access...
leverages of the comment section...
maybe i just figured a way to bypass unwarranted
"attention".... writing that's not to be sung...
lyricism: as much as i love it
i abhor it...
           because i'm not even close to singing it...
i'm also not even close to speaking
it... best left in the vaults of thought...
after all: i'm measuring my steps for a posthumous
fame...

           i couldn't rob an entertainer from his
today: our daily bread...
and there's always one member in the band
that's going to be grounded in:
a focus of creativiy:
grounded in not allowing all the caveats of fame
that come with it (fame):
the crab bucket principle...
me? i was lucky to watch both of their shows
in London...
                  while actually watching the crowd...
Matthew Arnold would have felt so much
better if he managed to get a Liszt T-shirt...
a consumer statement akin to:
i was there...
       i saw them live... look how happy i am
to be alive... i got the mother-******* T-shirt...
who gives a rat's *** about their private lives...
i too have a private life... i write scribbles that do not rhyme
and i'm juggling the idea of counter to
Nietzsche and poet-philosopher... philosophy is in
the background... but it's more a case of poet-journalist...
and i like the forest in the winter at night...
and i adore aloneness... which is a quality of being
that's un-reflective / restrictive of the expressions:
being alone or being lonely...
it's dissociative... not associative...

and i adore writing as a way to create constrains...
constraints...
                           because if i were to jump the fame
bandwagon of: "fame ruined my mortality"...
i'd be making videos... exposing myself to the world
of bad people with even more bad ideas...
**** me: filter in place...
all are welcome who seek to be served...
the rest can snuggle in a crab-bucket elsewhere...
by just consolation:
"being there" will pass me by...
i will have no concern for the world...
instead: the world will have concern for me
having past through it... that's how Heidegger's
idea is inverted:
   i have no concern for the world... for "being there":
i'm already "here"...
           for me the world is: there's being...
i can't pnpoint a "there" and couple it to "being"
to create Heidegger's bad grammar...
there's being: der welt... the world...
but there's also the self-being: selbst-sein...
                as much as there's the selbst-sein-im-der-welt...
there's also the selbst-sein-im-die-sein...
contrast: selbst-sein-im-die-selbst...

ha ha... me and a "girlfriend"? captain complications
"autistic"? no wonder i spend most of my time
around animals... this one time in the supermarket
a boy in a buggy started pointing at me...
see! that's the problem! the creatures that least understand
the complications of language: man can arrive at...
understand me best... we communicate on the focus
of onomatopoeias... syllables... vowels-alone...
finger-pointing: ooh! ooh! beard! tall man! beard!      

mein gott!
the idea of me being married is a bit like thinking
either Nietzsche or Kierkegaard being married...
or for that matter Kant...
i just kept focusing on the voyeurism presented
by pigeons... how many times they get rejected:
Darwinism is a fake:
it's not about the survival of the fittest...
it's about the survival of those who are subdue
about making the most mistakes...
i opted out... i like my comforts...
i'm not a social animal... i'm not a political animal...
ego: non animal-sociale...
   non animal-politica...
       ego-ergo: creatura-ex-solatium!
i'm a creature of comfort...
          
         i don't need complications
of womens' exfoliations...
"expectastions"...
                       bye bye... wave goodbye
the would be sinking Titanic...
       ice is a new hello!
         "women and children first"...
sink the ship... count the *****...
no... because this "****" doesn't end... unless it ends
with the DRILL FABRIC OF A MARCH...

not since it was so easy for the Islamic
Conquistadors to be made so easy
and for us "remainers" to have it made to "hard"...
then again... eh?! keep what?!
leap over what burp of a frog?!
            i'm pretty sure the Slavic world
imploded when they heard about the antics
of the "west"... i'm pretty sure the Russians were
like: before... we reach that summit of insanity...
i... a Russian... will sooner ****-fiddle an Ukrainian
with war... before the cancer spreads...
and so it happened...
                         west: my ungovernable wet ***!
"west"...
                       i might speak the language:
but churning through the outliers i'm ANTI...

  any deficiency in the orthodoxy use of language is:
HERESY...
           i have LIMITS...
**** it... i'm siding with the Russians...
i don't care...
              **** Ukraine: for Chernobyl!
we might as well find our nearest sacrifice...

BUT I KNOW THAT I'M ALREADY DEAD!
i'm just waiting for the "PAUSE" buttonz...

yeah... like that joke...
an Olaf... a Lothar and a Conrad walk into
a bar...
    only Conrad walks out...
why? because he didn't make any Hebrew jokes...
and he drank more whiskey than both
Olaf and Lothar...
i know i'm not funny...
i'm not supposed to be: ******* funny!
i'm supposed to be imitation-cannibal!

A-side

i'm truly lucky to be alive...
at least in my generation...
i was 13 when Californication came out,
i spent one afternoon
with my now estranged uncle
listening to the record while
he was working on his Porsche
eating take-away Kentucky fried
chicken...
                     talking about music and life
and *** and what not...
mostly girls...
            
my sympathy for Ukraine? none...
maybe Ukraine was part of the Soviet
Union maybe not (obviously)
but: yeah... thanks for Chernobyl...
my mother's premature chronic pain...
i might be the last drinker in the family
lineage who takes drinking
seriously: as a way to progress intellectually
but my mother's on opiates...
i was born with a "mark of Cain"...
whatever the hell it was...

it was a ******* nuclear REACTOR...
it wasn't a nuclear BOMB...
a bomb EXPLODES... a reactor IMPLODES...
who know what the ****** difference
is... but give it enough time
and you'll find out...

well... it must be bad... since how many *******
tests did the Americans the Russians
and the French carry out with bombs?
Godzilla blah blah...
       but it only took ONE bad reactor to make
people look all-crazy-at-each-other...
******* KARMA... oh yeah...
it wasn't enough to do both Hiroshima
and Nagasaki... more tests required!

and all those cases of freakish premature
cancers in eastern Europe... hell... elsewhere too...
last time i heard an imploding nuclear
reactor is like detonating 400 Hiroshima type
bombs...
and the effects were immediately apparent
in the botanical kingdom...
effects which even reached the region
where i was born...
   it was a case of Spring-Autumn...
     oh yeah... you had streaks of trees that
were autumn like: perhaps even past autumn...
sort of dead-ish... and streaks of trees
that were: spring-esque...

by then, no one knew...
                             the crescendo of the collapse
of the Soviet union...
a bit like the crescendo of the end of the second
world war and the all great h'american hard-on:

but let's face it... no other culture was so
good as the late 20th century American culture...
the Beatniks,
Charles Olson - the only post-modernist i have
any respect for... if i can call him that...
then again... i'm jumping hoops and conclusions
that that non-verbatim...

and you have to admit...
    no no... it wasn't because i was working both
the shifts for the Red Hot Chilli Peppers gig at
the London stadium: but let me tell you what...
i would have been completely ****** (OFF)
if i didn't buy tickets for both days...

day 1: opened with CAN'T STOP
day 2: opened with ALL AROUND THE WORLD
day 1: played UNDER THE BRIDGE for the encore
day 2: didn't play UNDER THE BRIDGE for the encore...

proper old-school...
that other shift i did where Weezer, Fall Out Boy
and Green Day played...
even the guys i was working with were like:
they (i.e. Green Day) 'these guys don't know when to
shut up'... i was like... oh... right, this song?
they'll finish on that one:
   it's one of those sentimental closure songs...
one of the girls sang that song
in an assembly when we were leaving school:
(have the) time of your life...

i was sure of it... oops... a ******* Dawid Bovie cover!
sure... people are at a gig... we're too,
but we also want to: ******* go home...
and we can't until all these ******* leave first!
ugh!

- thank god (casually expressed, eat dog doog...
yes - intentional, FELA'S **** is the *******
groove party - food)
i'm not one of those people forming a cliche
opinion about whether i'm a fan of the Beatles
or whether the Rolling Stones...
ask me again... James Brown yes...
and Red Hot Chilli Peppers' A-sides
or Red Hot Chilli Peppers' B-sides...

now... that's a tough one...

mind you: what gave birth to the Communist project?
pan-Slavism...
there were plenty of Hebrews living in Russia
and in Poland... i guess those people were
like... sure... let's try...
if we **** up: we'll **** up SPECTACULARILY...
and "we" did... but... the current reiteration
of "communism" in the VEST?
hmm... all this post-grammatical-mystique...
oh look! adjective, verbs, nouns,
the indefinite article and a definite article
are being neglected by the hyper-focus on pronouns...

it's like a second imaginary Chernobyl imploded
and fried people's intellectual capacity
for formal / casual conversation talking
about the weather and buses being late...

i'm only saying that Red Hot Chilli Peppers is
a band of / for my generation because...
i've already come across younglings
that haven't heard of them...
YES!                             and the band too...
but finally! i've reached the cut-off point
where i'm part of a zeitgeist that is reaching its
zenith-nadir...
                       the equilibrium akin to the Olympic
passing of the torch... although:
there's not much of a fire left...
       just an unlit torch... instead of fire: ambers
of a once fire...

but that's what happens... i understand the paranoid
Russians all too well...
back in 2007 they were such welcoming people:
i still don't understand why the western media
narrative about McDonald's being shut down
in Russia suddenly turned into a new fast food
chain under a different name serving the same food...
when i was in Russia: i swear to god...
i didn't see a single McDonald's... so... twinkle toes...
hum hum hmm...

were "my" people paid reparations
for the **** invasions? i know the Hebrews were...
oh yeah: we had that glorious task of being
invaded and then told to stack 'em bricks
for the crematorium CHIMNEYS...
well... it could have been worse...
we could have been told to ***** the NECROPHILIC
architecture of ancient Egypt in the guise
of the pyramids...

and because being under the Soviet yoke
of influence... and then... oh god! they gave "us" a
******* first non-Italian POPE!
one hand washes the other
but neither hand knows what the other hand
is doing... from ultra-atheism to ultra-catholic
conservatism...
"our" capital shouldn't be called Warsaw...
(no jokes about that, unlike Bangkok)
                                it should be called Seesaw...

backwards and forwards... as Norman Davis pointed
out: god's playground...
which it is... mind you: i'm sort of bad tempered
when it comes to being a Siamese-twin with
my Deutsche neighbours...
lucky that some of those Schwabs or Saxons
migrated... settled on some ****** weather island
and mingled with the Velsh and the Picts and
whatever other Celtic remains were left
in Europe...

oh but yesterday... that old man made me lose my
cool... i was already sweating it out for over
an hour and he exclaims in the street like
those manic street Apocalypse preachers:
where are you lights!
if i stopped i would have properly explained
than merely pointing at my rear-light glowing
red and telling to *******...
BUT YOU WOULDN'T SAY JUST AS MUCH
IF IT WAS ONE OF THOSE INDIAN
DELIVEROO ELECTRIC BICYCLE GUYS?!
would you, old man?
mind you: old man... you give a rat's *******
about one cyclist... then tell me...
who does your council employ... shouldn't
the street lights already be switched on?!
    hmm.. already be...
shouldn't the street lights be already switched on?
that sounds... eerie...

shouldn't the street lights already be switched on
shouldn't the street lights be already switched on...
i honestly can't decide upon the correct
grammar... let's be trans-grammatical about that one...
after all... it's all trans-biology anyway...
a bit like Plato telling Sisyphus that the gods
forgot about him and that he can stop his pointless
toiling... or what Plato mentioned about
being punished and being reincarnated
as a woman if one begins as a man...
well: to hell with reincarnation: time's up for
theology now that science speeds things up...

scary world... even scarier people...
THIS DOOR NEEDS HINGES!
bring in the unhinged experts in not-doors!
yesss... we need a house with enough of
BREEZE!
me? i'm just complementing their insanity with
my own special strain that prostitutes call:
GOOD-CRAZY.

What's happening to me, now that I'm getting old?  Sometimes I find myself hot, and again I am cold.
Is this what I have to look forward to, a body of constant pain?  May something be done right away, I don't want to end up insane?
Being that I'm getting old, my body is no longer aligned. There seem to be shooting pain, up and down my spine.
Now that I'm getting old, my eyes are going dim.  I must see an optometrist, to take good care of them.
Now that I'm getting old, I must try to keep a sound mind.  I must remember to get plenty of rest, so I can awake on time.
By, Author & Poet, Sandra Juanita Nailing

T** The way he makes me laugh and howl till my stomach aches and my face is red.
H He took me to my favorite museum on my birthday.
E Every time we’re together, the energy is so alive I swear you can see the electrons flying between us.
P Perhaps one day we’ll finally save enough money to go on that camping trip we always talk about.
H He got promoted so we bought the expensive wine that night, our regular box brand is tastes better.
O Outside it rained and we made dinner together, laughing about the past and my day at work.
T Today when he came home he wouldn’t talk to me.
O Our days have stretched into a 24 hour year, maybe a guy’s night will help.
G Getting used to this new routine of not saying goodbye when he leaves helps him I guess.
R “Rebecca,” he said in his sleep last night when I grabbed more of the blanket.
A Alison, my mom thought it was a good name, but I’ve always hated it.
P Partly cloudy with a chance of dinner plans being cancelled again.
H “How long have I been blind?” I asked the optometrist

When i was a little boy
and my booties could fit within
a small couplet of square metal
to which I had been given

I did not question, I did not complain
I existed the sights and smells of simple place

I licked the mist that watered plants
Crushed coffee beans in the employee
lounge
for they laughed at such a little boy.

It was 2002
and America was still somewhat free
When movie theaters had plastic seats
Empty exits
Then I sat the edge on watching Pokemon

Living in an electronic simulation
Taming, Creating monsters in my spare time
Travelling the tri-valley
Commute of a thousand years

Today,

It only takes minutes
And my soul drips strange when I see the house
Devoid of lavender,
Cut of oak tree

The park that once held the promise of a century
Diminished into brief obscurity
As new developments
Shaped like matchbox
destroy the grass
And raise land prices
To end the american dream

Paved roads that sang of free
take their toll
now I cannot see why this could be

What interest could there be
To paint our chided memory
Out of mind, out of sight?

Now the place I bought grilled cheese
Dipped in sharp tang of pickle juice

Bought and sold to an optometrist
To continue questioning the vision
of our adults

to some, i am a person worthy of righteous protection,
the blind spot beneath the tree where
dandelions sometimes get trampled.
i am never enough yet always too much—the
drive-by friend you can wait to see.
on the inside lies a multiverse of
goods and bads, talents and failures.
sometimes i’m pretty, sometimes i’m not,
but i am always something to behold.

and to you?
the one who changes the focus like an optometrist,
“one…or two?”
until my multiverse unites.
a good writer, a good singer, a good friend;
the little things others don’t find funny that always make you laugh;
the validation i’ve been searching for,
an honesty that lets me trust myself a little more.

to you i hope to be an eternity,
a couple of shambling girls united against a world
that doesn’t always have space for people like us.

Santa is getting ready,

I've been good but just in case,
will Santa accept an I O U?

An optimist and a polygamist
bump into an optometrist,
I wonder if that's a joke.

Hey
it's Monday
what did you expect?

well, I guess
Michelangelo on Chapel Radio
wasn't available,

Whaddaya mean that's not what you mean?

I know what I mean
and I mean it's Monday
what did you expect?