Death beckoned her with outstretched hand
And whispered softly of an unknown land,
But she was not afraid to go
For though the path she did not know
She took death's hand without a fear
For God who safely brought her here
Had promised He would lead the way
Into eternity's bright day.

For none of us need go alone
Into the valley that is unknown,
But, guided by our Father's hand
We journey to the promised land.

She was your special loving Mother
You shared your lives with one another,
And you'll find comfort for your grief
In knowing her death brought sweet relief.
For, now she is free from all suffering and pain
And your great loss became her gain...

You know that her love is with you still
For she loved you in life and always will.
Love like hers can never end
Because it is the perfect blend
Of joy and sorrows, smiles and tears,
That just grew stronger with the years.
Love like hers can never die
For she's taken it with her to the sky...

So think of Mum as living above
No farther away than your undying love,
For now she is happy and free once more
And she's waiting for you at Heaven's door.

Helen Steiner Rice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

                  Send "All I Wanna Do" Ringtone to your Cell              

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Humanoid.

She said, ‘You are funny, the way you set yourself up the moment we arrive. You look into every room to see if it’s suitable as a place to work. Is there a table? Where are the plugs? Is there a good chair at the right height? If there isn’t, are there cushions to make it so? You are funny.’
 
He countered this, but his excuse didn’t sound very convincing. He knew exactly what she meant, but it hurt him a little that she should think it ‘funny’. There’s nothing funny about trying to compose music, he thought. It’s not ‘radio in the head’ you know – this was a favourite expression he’d once heard an American composer use. You don’t just turn a switch and the music’s playing, waiting for you to write it down. You have to find it – though he believed it was usually there, somewhere, waiting to be found. But it’s elusive. You have to work hard to detect what might be there, there in the silence of your imagination.
 
Later over their first meal in this large cottage she said, ‘How do you stop hearing all those settings of the Mass that you must have heard or sung since childhood?’ She’d been rehearsing Verdi’s Requiem recently and was full of snippets of this stirring piece. He was a) writing a Mass to celebrate a cathedral’s reordering after a year as a building site, and b) he’d been a boy chorister and the form and order of the Mass was deeply engrained in his aural memory. He only had to hear the plainsong introduction Gloria in Excelsis Deo to be back in the Queen’s chapel singing Palestrina, or Byrd or Poulenc.
 
His ‘found’ corner was in the living room. The table wasn’t a table but a long cabinet she’d kindly covered with a tablecloth. You couldn’t get your feet under the thing, but with his little portable drawing board there was space to sit properly because the board jutted out beyond the cabinet’s top. It was the right length and its depth was OK, enough space for the board and, next to it, his laptop computer. On the floor beside his chair he placed a few of his reference scores and a box of necessary ‘bits’.
 
The room had two large sofas, an equally large television, some unexplainable and instantly dismissible items of decoration, a standard lamp, and a wood burning stove. The stove was wonderful, and on their second evening in the cottage, when clear skies and a stiff breeze promised a cold night, she’d lit it and, as the evening progressed, they basked in its warmth, she filling envelopes with her cards, he struggling with sleep over a book.
 
Despite and because this was a new, though temporary, location he had got up at 5.0am. This is a usual time for composers who need their daily fix of absolute quiet. And here, in this cottage set amidst autumn fields, within sight of a river estuary, under vast, panoramic uninterrupted skies, there was the distinct possibility of silence – all day. The double-glazing made doubly sure of that.
 
He had sat with a mug of tea at 5.10 and contemplated the silence, or rather what infiltrated the stillness of the cottage as sound. In the kitchen the clock ticked, the refrigerator seemed to need a period of machine noise once its door had been opened. At 6.0am the central heating fired up for a while. Outside, the small fruit trees in the garden moved vigorously in the wind, but he couldn’t hear either the wind or a rustle of leaves.  A car droned past on the nearby road. The clear sky began to lighten promising a fine day. This would certainly do for silence.
 
His thoughts returned to her question of the previous evening, and his answer. He was about to face up to his explanation. ‘I empty myself of all musical sound’, he’d said, ‘I imagine an empty space into which I might bring a single note, a long held drone of a note, a ‘d’ above middle ‘c’ on a chamber ***** (seeing it’s a Mass I’m writing).  Harrison Birtwistle always starts on an ‘e’. A ‘d’ to me seems older and kinder. An ‘e’ is too modern and progressive, slightly brash and noisy.’
 
He can see she is quizzical with this anecdotal stuff. Is he having me on? But no, he is not having her on. Such choices are important. Without them progress would be difficult when the thinking and planning has to stop and the composing has to begin. His notebook, sitting on his drawing board with some first sketches, plays testament to that. In this book glimpses of music appear in rhythmic abstracts, though rarely any pitches, and there are pages of written description. He likes to imagine what a new work is, and what it is not. This he writes down. Composer Paul Hindemith reckoned you had first to address the ‘conditions of performance’. That meant thinking about the performers, the location, above all the context. A Mass can be, for a composer, so many things. There were certainly requirements and constraints. The commission had to fulfil a number of criteria, some imposed by circumstance, some self-imposed by desire. All this goes into the melting ***, or rather the notebook. And after the notebook, he takes a large piece of A3 paper and clarifies this thinking and planning onto (if possible) a single sheet.
 
And so, to the task in hand. His objective, he had decided, is to focus on the whole rather than the particular. Don’t think about the Kyrie on its own, but consider how it lies with the Gloria. And so with the Sanctus & Benedictus. How do they connect to the Agnus Dei. He begins on the A3 sheet of plain paper ‘making a map of connections’. Kyrie to Gloria, Gloria to Credo and so on. Then what about Agnus Dei and the Gloria? Is there going to be any commonality – in rhythm, pace and tempo (we’ll leave melody and harmony for now)? Steady, he finds himself saying, aren’t we going back over old ground? His notebook has pages of attempts at rhythmizing the text. There are just so many ways to do this. Each rhythmic solution begets a different slant of meaning.
 
This is to be a congregational Mass, but one that has a role for a 4-part choir and ***** and a ‘jazz instrument’. Impatient to see notes on paper, he composes a new introduction to a Kyrie as a rhythmic sketch, then, experimentally, adds pitches. He scores it fully, just 10 bars or so, but it is barely finished before his critical inner voice says, ‘What’s this for? Do you all need this? This is showing off.’ So the filled-out sketch drops to the floor and he examines this element of ‘beginning’ the incipit.
 
He remembers how a meditation on that word inhabits the opening chapter of George Steiner’s great book Grammars of Creation. He sees in his mind’s eye the complex, colourful and ornate letter that begins the Lindesfarne Gospels. His beginnings for each movement, he decides, might be two chords, one overlaying the other: two ‘simple’ diatonic chords when sounded separately, but complex and with a measure of mystery when played together. The Mass is often described as a mystery. It is that ritual of a meal undertaken by a community of people who in the breaking of bread and wine wish to bring God’s presence amongst them. So it is a mystery. And so, he tells himself, his music will aim to hold something of mystery. It should not be a comment on that mystery, but be a mystery itself. It should not be homely and comfortable; it should be as minimal and sparing of musical commentary as possible.
 
When, as a teenager, he first began to set words to music he quickly experienced the need (it seemed) to fashion accompaniments that were commentaries on the text the voice was singing. These accompaniments did not underpin the words so much as add a commentary upon them. What lay beneath the words was his reaction, indeed imaginative extension of the words. He eschewed then both melisma and repetition. He sought an extreme independence between word and music, even though the word became the scenario of the music. Any musical setting was derived from the composition of the vocal line.  It was all about finding the ‘key’ to a song, what unlocked the door to the room of life it occupied. The music was the room where the poem’s utterance lived.
 
With a Mass you were in trouble for the outset. There was a poetry of sorts, but poetry that, in the countless versions of the vernacular, had lost (perhaps had never had) the resonance of the Latin. He thought suddenly of the supposed words of William Byrd, ‘He who sings prays twice’. Yes, such commonplace words are intercessional, but when sung become more than they are. But he knew he had to be careful here.
 
Why do we sing the words of the Mass he asks himself? Do we need to sing these words of the Mass? Are they the words that Christ spoke as he broke bread and poured wine to his friends and disciples at his last supper? The answer is no. Certainly these words of the Mass we usually sing surround the most intimate words of that final meal, words only the priest in Christ’s name may articulate.
 
Write out the words of the Mass that represent its collective worship and what do you have? Rather non-descript poetry? A kind of formula for collective incantation during worship? Can we read these words and not hear a surrounding music? He thinks for a moment of being asked to put new music to words of The Beatles. All you need is love. Yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away. Oh bla dee oh bla da life goes on. Now, now this is silliness, his Critical Voice complains. And yet it’s not. When you compose a popular song the gap between some words scribbled on the back of an envelope and the hook of chords and melody developed in an accidental moment (that becomes a way of clothing such words) is often minimal. Apart, words and music seem like orphans in a storm. Together they are home and dry.
 
He realises, and not for the first time, that he is seeking a total musical solution to the whole of the setting of those words collectively given voice to by those participating in the Mass.
 
And so: to the task in hand. His objective: to focus on the whole rather than the particular.  Where had he heard that thought before? - when he had sat down at his drawing board an hour and half previously. He’d gone in a circle of thought, and with his sketch on the floor at his feet, nothing to show for all that effort.
 
Meanwhile the sun had risen. He could hear her moving about in the bathroom. He went to the kitchen and laid out what they would need to breakfast together. As he poured milk into a jug, primed the toaster, filled the kettle, the business of what might constitute a whole solution to this setting of the Mass followed him around the kitchen and breakfast room like a demanding child. He knew all about demanding children. How often had he come home from his studio to prepare breakfast and see small people to school? - more often than he cared to remember. And when he remembered he became sad that it was no more.  His children had so often provided a welcome buffer from sessions of intense thought and activity. He loved the walk to school, the first quarter of a mile through the park, a long avenue of chestnut trees. It was always the end of April and pink and white blossoms were appearing, or it was September and there were conkers everywhere. It was under these trees his daughter would skip and even his sons would hold hands with him; he would feel their warmth, their livingness.
 
But now, preparing breakfast, his Critical Voice was that demanding child and he realised when she appeared in the kitchen he spoke to her with a voice of an artist in conversation with his critics, not the voice of the man who had the previous night lost himself to joy in her dear embrace. And he was ashamed it was so.
 
How he loved her gentle manner as she negotiated his ‘coming too’ after those two hours of concentration and inner dialogue. Gradually, by the second cup of coffee he felt a right person, and the hours ahead did not seem too impossible.
 
When she’d gone off to her work, silence reasserted itself. He played his viola for half an hour, just scales and exercises and a few folk songs he was learning by heart. This gathering habit was, he would say if asked, to reassert his musicianship, the link between his body and making sound musically. That the viola seemed to resonate throughout his whole body gave him pleasure. He liked the ****** movement required to produce a flowing sequence of bow strokes. The trick at the end of this daily practice was to put the instrument in its case and move immediately to his desk. No pause to check email – that blight on a morning’s work. No pause to look at today’s list. Back to the work in hand: the Mass.
 
But instead his mind and intention seemed to slip sideways and almost unconsciously he found himself sketching (on the few remaining staves of a vocal experiment) what appeared to be a piano piece. The rhythmic flow of it seemed to dance across the page to be halted only when the few empty staves were filled. He knew this was one of those pieces that addressed the pianist, not the listener. He sat back in his chair and imagined a scenario of a pianist opening this music and after a few minutes’ reflection and reading through allowing her hands to move very slowly and silently a few millimetres over the keys.  Such imagining led him to hear possible harmonic simultaneities, dynamics and articulations, though he knew such things would probably be lost or reinvented on a second imagined ‘performance’. No matter. Now his make-believe pianist sounded the first bar out. It had a depth and a richness that surprised him – it was a fine piano. He was touched by its affect. He felt the possibilities of extending what he’d written. So he did. And for the next half an hour lived in the pastures of good continuation, those rich luxuriant meadows reached by a rickerty rackerty bridge and guarded by a troll who today was nowhere to be seen.
 
It was a curious piece. It came to a halt on an enigmatic, go-nowhere / go-anywhere chord after what seemed a short declamatory coda (he later added the marking deliberamente). Then, after a few minutes reflection he wrote a rising arpeggio, a broken chord in which the consonant elements gradually acquired a rising sequence of dissonance pitches until halted by a repetition. As he wrote this ending he realised that the repeated note, an ‘a’ flat, was a kind of fulcrum around which the whole of the music moved. It held an enigmatic presence in the harmony, being sometimes a g# sometimes an ‘a’ flat, and its function often different. It made the music take on a wistful quality.
 
At that point he thought of her little artists’ book series she had titled Tide Marks. Many of these were made of a concertina of folded pages revealing - as your eyes moved through its pages - something akin to the tide’s longitudinal mark. This centred on the page and spread away both upwards and downwards, just like those mirror images of coloured glass seen in a child’s kaleidoscope. No moment of view was ever quite the same, but there were commonalities born of the conditions of a certain day and time.  His ‘Tide Mark’ was just like that. He’d followed a mark made in his imagination from one point to another point a little distant. The musical working out also had a reflection mechanism: what started in one hand became mirrored in the other. He had unexpectedly supplied an ending, this arpegiated gesture of finality that wasn’t properly final but faded away. When he thought further about the role of the ending, he added a few more notes to the arpeggio, but notes that were not be sounded but ghosted, the player miming a press of the keys.
 
He looked at the clock. Nearly five o’clock. The afternoon had all but disappeared. Time had retreated into glorious silence . There had been three whole hours of it. How wonderful that was after months of battling with the incessant and draining turbulence of sound that was ever present in his city life. To be here in this quiet cottage he could now get thoroughly lost – in silence. Even when she was here he could be a few rooms apart, and find silence.
 
A week more of this, a fortnight even . . . but he knew he might only manage a few days before visitors arrived and his long day would be squeezed into the early morning hours and occasional uncertain periods when people were out and about.
 
When she returned, very soon now, she would make tea and cut cake, and they’d sit (like old people they wer

Mom is such
A special word
The loveliest
I've ever heard.

A toast to you
Above all the rest
Mom, you're
So special
You are simply
the best!

እማ

‹እማ› ልዩ ቃል ነው
በጣም ተወዳጅ
ሠምቼ ከማውቀው!

ብርጭቆአችንን እናንሳልሽ፣
ከሁሉም በላይ ከፍብለሽ፣
‹እማ› አንቺኮ ልዩ ነሽ
በቃ በትንሹ አቻም የለሽ!
(በሔለን ስቲነር ራይስ)

Looking back, I think I knew she wasn’t going to wake up that night. Maybe I thought she wouldn’t wake up ever.
CHAPTER 1: ENDLESS SLEEP
It seemed to me that the fact that movies and stories make it appear as if sad things can only and will only occur during rain and thunder was just stupid. The weather has no affect on the events, right? But I was wrong. On Tuesday, April 18th, I began to realize this apparently idiotic movie ploy might have an inkling of truth buried in it.
That day, the kids had teased me again, but to be totally honest, I didn’t mind it then and I don’t mind it now. It had begun to rain when I was halfway down 17th street. I had immediately removed my shoes and socks, and stuffed them into my bag, which was already overflowing with scraps of paper and books. Most of the books had been for free time reading, and are currently lying in a heap in my room at Dad's, where they will remain unread until I decide to forget that awful, horrible, tragic day.
I ran all the way to our apartment, but went the long way and danced and twirled as my un-zippered jacked flapped uselessly behind me. My lungs burned white-hot, but my body was freezing, a feeling I still to this day enjoy. By the time I had reached the alleyway behind the crumbling yet comforting building, I was soaked through, and I loved it. I decided to go around back so Martin would have no excuse to yell at me in that foul, ill-tempered way that made the skin underneath his chin jiggle. I had started towards the rusted door when I saw her. Of course, it hadn't been her. She had been inside, where she alway waited for me to get home. But I had felt on that day as protective of her as she always insisted upon being with me.
I grasped the icy handle and slipped inside, the warmth of the building suffocating rather than comforting me. To this day, I prefer being cold, because it clears the mind, and warmth clouds it, like the foul demon that lures you into the endless sleep that tried to take my mother that day. I climbed the steps; the sudden noise of my feet on the stairs was like a rock sliding under the water, breaking the calm.
I remember how the climb up the stairs that day had seemed especially long. But mostly, I remember how the apartment smelled when I finally reached the top and slid the key into the lock, turning it noisily. I remember the smell, and how the instant it hit my nose I knew that I wasn’t to expect the warm, gentle mother I came to expect most days, but that I was going to get the harsh, drunken version, when she had been smoking and on drugs.
Resignedly, I called, “MOM! I'm home from school!” only then I hadn't known that I would never get an answer. I dumped my soaking bag unceremoniously in the hall, and it hit the floor with a wet thump, splattering mud on the tiles. When she didn't respond, I had frowned; a face Andrew tells me makes me look somehow more mysterious.
The trip I had then taken to her room revealed only that she had passed out on the bed, and that she smelt of sadness. But at that time, sadness wasn't uncommon. I don't remember how long I stood there, but I know that when I finally awoke from my thoughts, I showered and got into my softest pajamas. I settled down to do my homework, but I hadn't been trying hard, so when the time had come to make dinner, I had only made the smallest of dents.
Simply because I had been tired and hadn't been up to making anything more complicated, I made tomato soup. Mom always used to make my soup with milk rather than water, so that was how I made it too. I poured the soup into mugs, because we always liked to drink it rather than eat it. I remember sipping from my mug, and I remember how the warmth burned the roof of my mouth. The heat of it brought tears to my eyes, which were every bit as salty as the soup. I walked to her room, and knocked on the door, the sound echoing through the apartment. She hadn’t answered though, so I entered with the intention of waking her up.
“Mom!” I had said. “Wake up, I made dinner!” and I set the mugs down on her bedside table. With my freed hands, I had shaken her shoulder softly. She didn't wake though, which had surprised me, for she always woke instantly as if her dreams were frail and easy to shatter.
“Mom!” I had raised my voice, and I shook her more vigorously. “MOM!” I think it was on the third time that I finally began to realize, but I still shook her.
On the fifth try I had begun to cry, and on the sixth the calm part of me told the hysterical part: *She is fine. She will wake in the morning, I promise. She will wake. That was the first time I ever lied to myself.
I remember pulling the covers on the bed over her, and then gingerly lying down next to her. Mom. I kept thinking to myself, as if my mere thoughts might wake her. But I had known she wasn't gone, for I felt her breath next to me, soft, shallow, and hardly discernible from my own, yet still breathing. I had drunk the rest of my soup, but left hers, telling myself she would drink it when she woke. Now, looking back, I realize how stupid it was of me to have thought that she would wake up.
I don't even remember falling asleep that night, but I must have, for in the morning when I woke I looked quickly over at her, hoping, wishing that she might have risen. I remember shaking her again, pleading, “Mom, it's the morning, and you missed dinner but it's okay, I will make you more if you please wake up, please momma. Please,” But she didn't heed me. I remember sitting in bed with her all morning, watching the clock. I didn't get ready for school. My mom was more important, I told myself. When the clock had ticked from 8:29 to 8:30, I knew the bell had rung, and I was late. I guess to me that had been a signal: The rest of the world has continued without us. I remember standing up and padding to the kitchen, and grabbing the wireless phone. I remember how icy cold it had felt, as opposed to the warmth and comfort of the bed in Mom's room. For once I simply craved the innocent warmth from my mother's inert body. I walked back in and sat on the edge of the bed. I dialed 9-1-1 and hit the 'call' button.
“This is 9-1-1 what is your emergency?” a rough male voice had said.
“I-” I had to clear my throat from lack of use. “My mom was passed out last night when I got home from school. I thought she would wake up, like she always does, but she hasn't. She is still breathing. Please come,” I had said all that with a flat voice, refusing the awful feeling in my throat that warned of tears.
“What is your location?” he asked, his voice softer now.
“913 Alvarado,” I whisper. “Fourth floor, number 413. My name is Sierra Banks.”
“Paramedics are on their way, ok?”
“Ok,” I recall how loud the click was when he hung up, and I felt the cold, empty silence press down and around me until I couldn't stand it anymore. I wanted to talk to someone, anyone, except the police officers who sounded way too casual. My mom's life might be on the line, and all they do is talk in monotone. Like they don’t care about all those lives. I knew then that I was being unfair, and that they were simply used to losing lives, but...
I looked up at the soup mugs on the table and next to them...her cell. The last person she talked to. I scooped it up, went to last calls, and hit redial.
Ring...Ring...Ring... “Hello, Clemens residence.”
“Dad.” The pain of hearing his voice then was the same as when I hear it every day now. Regret had instatly clouded my heart with the cold wall I built four years ago. Tears began to pour down my cheeks, but I can't recall now if they were hot and scalding, or cold.
“Sierra?” his voice too had become thick, and I hated him for crying. He left us.
“Yes,” I had been unable to force any other meaningless words at him. I hadn't seen him in four years, when we visited him, his beautiful new wife, and worst of all, his new baby girl. He replaced me! My throat burns to think of it. I hadn't thought of Lila, my step sister, and my replacement since she was born. Fury built up inside me. Why did mom call them last? Why does she still hold his number in her phone even after he left? And most importantly, what did they talk about? I still haven't forgotten these questions, but I most certainly haven't got any answers.
“Dad, mom is in trouble. She hasn't woken up since yesterday. I thought she would wake up but she hasn't. The ambulance is on its way,” Instantaneously, I hated myself for telling him, pouring out how scared I was. He didn't deserve to know, to pretend to feel sorry.
“Oh Sierra. Oh my beautiful daug-” he began, but I had already ended the call. How dare he call me beautiful? He hadn't seen me in so many years. He didn't deserve to pretend he care. Maybe I loved him once, but not anymore. I didn’t, and still don’t, want his sympathy, his false words, dripping in I-told-you-so. But most importantly, I didn’t want him to hear me cry.
Now I find myself having to live with him, and have to be constantly aware of him walking in on me. Like the other day when he walked into my room to see how I was doing with homework and found me rocking and bawling on the bed. Gasps had escaped from me in rapid succession; my sobs had shaken the bed so that it creaked softly. My lips curled apart from my teeth as I convulsed. I sniffed loudly and, gradually, my sobs had died down. Eventually too, my ears had regained their sense, and their voices had drifted to me from outside my bubble of silence.
Most days I had control enough to save my tears for the night or not cry at all. A week ago my English teacher had made us write letters to our parents. I had asked if I could write mine to someone else, because I was still furious at my dad, and mom left me. I know that she was in a coma, and she can't help it now, but I remember all the times that I was strong through her rampages. It didn't matter anyways, because Mr. Steiner blatantly refused. I decided to write it to mom, since I refused those days to even to acknowledge that I had a father.
And to this day I remember every word, for I read that letter a hundred times that day, until I had it committed to memory, so that I could have it with me, where ever I might be.
The ambulance arrived about five minutes after I hung up on Richard. The memory of crying, and rocking endlessly in pitch blackness made me refuse even to call him my father. What I kind of father, I asked myself, leaves his daughter crying, without comforting her, when the only person who ever loved her, is a million miles away? 'Mine,' I had answered myself, bitterly.

It happened one day at the year’s white end,
Two neighbors called on an old-time friend
And they found his shop so meager and mean,
Made gay with a thousand boughs of green,
And Conrad was sitting with face a-shine
When he suddenly stopped as he stitched a twine
And said, “Old friends, at dawn today,
When the **** was crowing the night away,
The Lord appeared in a dream to me
And said, ‘I am coming your guest to be’.
So I’ve been busy with feet astir,
Strewing my shop with branches of fir,
The table is spread and the kettle is shined
And over the rafters the holly is twined, t
And now I will wait for my Lord to appear
And listen closely so I will hear animated bullet
His step as He nears my humble place,
And I open the door and look in His face. . .”
So his friends went home and left Conrad alone,
For this was the happiest day he had known,
For, long since, his family had passed away
And Conrad has spent a sad Christmas Day.
But he knew with the Lord as his Christmas guest
This Christmas would be the dearest and best,
And he listened with only joy in his heart.
And with every sound he would rise with a start
And look for the Lord to be standing there
In answer to his earnest prayer
So he ran to the window after hearing a sound,
But all that he saw on the snow-covered ground
Was a shabby beggar whose shoes were torn
And all of his clothes were ragged and worn.
So Conrad was touched and went to the door
And he said, “Your feet must be frozen and sore,
And I have some shoes in my shop for you
And a coat that will keep you warmer, too.”
So with grateful heart the man went away,
But as Conrad noticed the time of day
He wondered what made the dear Lord so late
And how much longer he’d have to wait,
When he heard a knock and ran to the door,
But it was only a stranger once more,
A bent, old crone with a shawl of black,
A bundle of ******* piled on her back.
She asked for only a place to rest,
But that was reserved for Conrad’s Great Guest.
But her voice seemed to plead,
“Don’t send me away Let me rest awhile on Christ-
mas day.”
So Conrad brewed her a steaming cup
And told her to sit at the table and sip.
But after she left he was filled with dismay
For he saw that the hours were passing away.
And the Lord had not come as He said He would,
And Conrad felt sure he had misunderstood.
When out of the stillness he heard a cry,
“Please help me and tell me where am I.”
So again he opened his friendly door
And stood disappointed as twice before,
It was only a child who had wandered away
And was lost from her family on Christmas Day. .
Again Conrad’s heart was heavy and sad,
But he knew he should make this little child glad,
So he called her in and wiped her tears
And quieted her childish fears. animated bullet
Then he led her back to her home once more
But as he entered his own darkened door,
He knew that the Lord was not coming today
For the hours of Christmas had passed away.
So he went to his room and knelt down to pray
And he said, “Dear Lord, why did you delay,
What kept You from coming to call on me,
For I wanted so much Your face to see. . .”
When soft in the silence a voice he heard,
“Lift up your head for I kept My word–
Three times My shadow crossed your floor–
Three times I came to your lonely door–
For I was the beggar with bruised, cold feet,
I was the woman you gave to eat,
And I was the child on the homeless street.”/////


by Helen Steiner Rice
~ Scripture ~
“Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come,
you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheri-
tance, the kingdom prepared for you since the cre-
ation of the world.
For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat,
I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I
was a stranger and you invited me in,
I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and
you looked after me, I was in prison and you came
to visit me.’
“Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did
we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give
you something to drink?
When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or
needing clothes and clothe you?
When did we see you sick or in prison and go to
visit you?’
“The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you
did for one of the least of these brothers of mine,
you did for me.’
By Helen Stiner Rice)

የ ገና እንግዳ


የሆነ ቀን ነው ነገሩ የተከሰተው፣
ዓመቱ ተገባዶ ሲሰናበት፣
ደርቦ ካባ ፀዓዳ ወተት!
ሊጎበኙት መጡ ሁለት ጎረቤቶች፣
የኮናርድ አብሮአደጎች፣
ወና ሆኖ ተዳክሞ አገኙት ሱቁን፣
ገርጥቶ ተቆራምዶ እሱን!
ተወት አድርጎ የሚሰፋውን፣
ፈልጎ እንዲሰሙ የሚለውን፣
“ባንጀሮቼ አድምጡኝ፣
ዛሬ በማለዳ
አውራ ዶሮ ሌሊቱን
በጩከት ሲሸኝ፣
ጌታ በሕልሜ ተገልፆ
ይህን አለኝ
‘እመጣለሁ ቤትህ፣ ልጎበኝህ!’
ይኸው አለሁ
ያለፋታ ቤቴ ውስጥ እንዲሁ ስመላለስ፣
የፅድ ዝንጣፊ ስቆርጥ ስነሰንስ፣
ጠረጴዛውን ስዘረጋ - ስጎትት ሳስጠጋ፣
የሻይ ጀበናውን ስፍቅ - እስኪያብረቀርቅ!
በመለጠቅ አድርጊያለሁ ደማቅ፣
ባለቀይ ኳስ ገመድ፣
በሸሪራዎቹ ቁልቁል ተንጠላጥሎ፣
በየአቅጣጫው እንዲወርድ!
እናም እስኪገለጥልኝ ጌታ፣
እየተጠባበቅኩ ነው የእግሩን ኮሽታ፣
ሲገለጽ በሬን ከፍቼ፣
ፊቱን ለማየት ጓጉቼ፣
ትንሽ ተጠግቼ!”
ባልንጀሮቹ የሚለውን ሰምተውት፣
ሄዱ ቤታቸው ብቻውን ትተውት!
እሱ እንደው፣
በጣም የተደሰተበት ወቅት ነው፡፡
ከዚያ ጊዜ ጀምሮ ቤተሰቦቹ
ተራ በተራ ሞተዋል፣
ኮናርድም ብዙ ብቸኛ ቀዝቃዛ
ገናዎች አሳልፏል!
ሆኖም ነበረው ትልቅ እምነት፣
በእንግድነት ስለሚገኝለት፣
ጌታ ያቺን ቀን፣ ቤቱን እንደሚያደምቅለት!
ነበር ተደስቶ፣
የሚያደምጥ ጆሮውን አንቅቶ!
ድምፅ ሰምቶ ቀጥ አለ በቅፅበት፣
መጥቶ እንደው ጌታ ድንገት፣
ለብርቱ ፀሎቱ ምላሽ ለመስጠት!
ወደ መስኮቱ ሮጦ ሲጠጋ
በዚያ በረዶ የሸፈነው፣
አስፋልት ላይ ያየው፣
ብትቶ የለበሰ ለማኝን ነው -
ምስኪን፣ አፍንጫው የተገነጠለ፣
ጫማ፣ የተጫማ!
“ደንዝዞ ቆስሎ ይሆናል እግርህ፣
ጫማ አለ ሱቄ በልክህ፣
ግባ ልስጥህ-
ኮትም የሚያሞቅህ!”
ለማኙ የሚፈልገውን አግኝቶ፣
ወጥቶ ሄደ ረክቶ!
ኮናርድ ግን
በመገረም ጌታ ለምን እንደቆየ፣
ሰዓቱን አየ፡፡
ከዚያም ቆመ ግራ በመጋባት፣
መቆየት እንዳለበት፣
ምን ያህል ተጨማሪ ሰዓት?
ግን ድንገት፣
ኳኳ የሚል ድምጽ ሰምቶ፣
በሩን ከፈተ ወደዚያ አምርቶ፡፡
ግን እንደገና አየ ሌላ እንግዳ፣
የፈለገች ለመዝለቅ ከጓዳ፣
አረጋዊት የጎበጠች፣
ቲውቢት የደረበች፣
ትንሽ ጭራሮ ከጀርባዋ የሸከፈች፣
እናም እረፍት የማድረጊያ ቦታ ጠየቀች፡፡
ለታላቁ እንግዳ በቀር፣
ሌላ ስፍራ አልነበር!
ጥያቄዋ የመማፀን ድምፀት፣
ነበር የተጫነበት፣
ኮናርድ ‘ቤት ለእንግዳ’ ብሏት፣
ሻይ አፍልቶላት
ከጠረጴዛው እንድታርፍ ጋብዟት፣
እነሆ ጠጪ አላት፡፡
ግን እሷን እንደሸኘ አዘነ፣
ሰዓቱ እያለፈ ስለሆነ!
ደሞም ጌታን ሲጠብቀው ስለቀረ፣
መልክቱን በደንብ ማድመጡን ተጠራጠረ!
ሀዘን ገብቶት ሲያቅማማ፣
ሌላ ድምፅ ሰማ!
“እባክህ እርዳኝ
የት ነው ያለሁት?”
ዳግም የደግነት በሩን ሲከፍት፣
ለሶስተኛ ጊዜ አለው ክፍት!
መንገድ የጠፋት ልጅ ነበረች፣
ሳታስበው በገና ቀን
ከቤተሰቧ ተለይታ የሄደች!
የኮናርድ ልብን ሀዘን ገባው፣
ቢሆንም ልጅቷን ማፅናናት እንዳለበት ተሰማው!
“ግቢ ልጄ” ብሏት እንባዋን አበሰላት፣
እንዳትረበሽ አረጋጋት፣
ቤቷም ድረስ ሸኛት!
ተመልሶ ሲገባ፣
ወደ ክፍሉ ሞገስ አልባ
“በቃ አለቀ ደቀቀ
ቀኑም ተጠናቀቀ!” ብሎ ተሳቀቀ፡፡
ያም ሆኖ
ስሜቱ እንደቀዘቀዘ፣
መፀለይ ያዘ!
“ጌታ ለምን ዘገየህ፣
ቤቴ እንዳትመጣ ምን ያዘህ?”
እያለ ቅሬታ ሲያሰማ
እንግዳ ድምፅ ሰማ
‘ጭንቅላትህን ወደ ላይ አንሳ፣
እኔ እንደው ቃሌን አረሳ!
በደጅህ በምድራኳ፣
በጥላዬ ተጠግቼ በርህን ላንኳኳ፣
ሶስቴ ጎብኝቼሀለሁ ዛሬእንኳ!
እኔ ለማኙ ነበርኩ፣
የቀረብኩህ ብትቶ እንደደረብኩ!
ደሞም ከድካሟ የታደግካት፣ ባልቴት፣
በመጠለያ አልባው ውርጫማው መንገድ፣
ለሆንካትም ልጅ ዘመድ’
(በሔለን ስቲነር ራይስ)

We walk down Steiner street after we eat. The food was decent. Not worth the price, but good enough where we didn't have to talk about it afterward. Olivia was nice to look at. I liked the way her upper thighs rubbed together as she walked. That was something I noticed but said nothing of to him. Her silhouette in the window was shaped like a fresh picked pear. And that smile. I could sit there and drink water with lemon and order nothing all day and just look at that smile. I would have to go back. She was beautiful and I wish I'd never met her the way I did. Not that it wasn't a romantic kind of way, but to order from someone you admire is a kind of awkward thing. It puts one in an uncomfortable position. You want to take that person out of their place and put them into someplace better. Who am I to judge? Maybe she enjoys it there. He didn't seem to show any signs of care or wear.
We continued to walk down Steiner until we passed over Lombard street. The traffic was already thick with cars and their horns. A hummer, lazy and rolling, has a driver inside with thick black sunglasses and all the windows down. It's not even very hot yet. The music inside is loud and is a mix of rap and mariachis. After we cross the street, I notice a pizza place standing on the corner and a long line is coming out of it. It looked very busy for being so early in the morning. It is only 11:15. He looks at the line too, but says nothing. He's been very quiet and moves with very light footsteps. I hope nothing is wrong.
"Jesus," I say, "Look at that place." I point at the pizza joint.
He nods, "Who needs pizza at a time like this? It's so early."
"It is Saturday," I shrug, "All bets are off."
"They'll be in bed by 1, guaranteed."
We cross chestnut street, which is bustling with people already. A few joggers **** by us as we pass a pair of miniature pugs. Their tongues are both out, dangling like a worm on a hook. In front of us, two women walk in their skin tight yoga pants and I force myself to look away. Too tempting. I can see every curve. He sees them to and steals a few glances, pretending he's looking at a parking sign or the details of a lime green Prius parked next to a fire hydrant. There are many people out and I wonder where they all came from and why they are all up so early. I wonder the same of myself and shut up.
I stop. "You ever eaten there?" I ask, pointing to a hole in the wall taco stand. It's closed, but we can both see the chefs and front of house people moving around inside getting ready for the lunch rush. "Their best is the fish taco with freshly picked cilantro, some kind of spicy, thousand island, grilled red onions, and lime on the side. Very good."
"I'll have to go there the next time I'm in the city," he says.
"Definitely," I say, "The next time you're in, we'll go there."
I ask myself what I'm really doing here in my head. Not out loud. I don't hear an answer, so I try again. You want to talk to him about the phone call. Why? Because she called you and he knows that she called you and you two haven't once spoken about it since. Can't it just be one of those unspoken things where we both know what happened and never talk about it? Sure, it could be. You could leave it in the dirt and let it rot there like a dead rat, molding and boiling in the sun for another little rat to come along and eat it. That's graphic and grotesque. Well, it's what I see. You see a lot of things. Yes I do. Well, that is a very graphic thing to see that perhaps is not really even that big of a deal. It sounded like a big deal to her when she called you. I don't want to get involved. That's fine. They have their own problems just like I have my own problems. I can respect that, but it wouldn't hurt to say something. What will he do? Get offended or something that you picked up her phone call? You didn't have any choice after you picked up the phone. She started weeping and bawling hysterically. What would it look like if you just hung up on her?Yeah, you are right. That would've looked pretty bad. Very bad. Alright, I'll say something. Thanks. Thank me later. When then? Later.
At the ocean front, we sit on a bench and look out at the water. The waves rise, peak, froth, and fall reflecting the sunlight in their marble surface. A gull passes over us and squeals. It startles me, the little ******. I look up and catch a glance into its blank, black eyes. Their brains are the size of peas. Did you know that? He doesn't notice me jump. He is looking out at the water, silent. There's something powerful in not feeling the need to say anything and wading in true silence. It takes a certain amount of vulnerability, humility, and ***** to sit with another and admit that sometimes there just isn't a **** thing to say.
"She called me two weeks ago," I say.
"I know," he says, like there's no more words that need to be said.
"I called you also, but you didn't pick and didn't return my call."
"I know," he says again.
A female jogger passes by us in those skin tight, jet black yoga pants and we both steal a glance. Her **** is so firm it barely bounces as she runs.
"I don't see you guys that often," I tell him, "I don't need to get involved."
"She called you," he sighs, looking at me, "So she got you involved and I really wished she hadn't."
"I see that," I nod, "I don't like people getting in my **** either."
He turns his head side to side, stretching his neck, trying to crack it. I can tell he's getting nervous. I can sense it. Something gets released into the air when someone starts feeling like that. Some people call it tension or anxiety or some fancy name, but there isn't one. It's a feeling and he was feeling it everywhere.
"We're fine," he says, "We're actually doing better than we were."
"I don't need to know what's going on with you guys. She called me and just didn't know where you were. Naturally, I got worried about where you were because you're my friend."
He turns his hands face up. They are resting on his thighs. He opens and closes them, staring into his own palms. His breathing is short, silent and his eyes very soft, yet focused. There has always been something array with him and he knows and I know, really everyone knows it, but what this it is is mysterious, unnamed, uncategorized. There are labels that people give other people and he never had one. Not really. None that stuck and stuck. He was always changing. He was too quick.
I get up and walk to the edge of the waterfront. I look down and see the clear, jade blue water lap against the concrete. It slaps lightly against the wall, breaking the reflection of the sun into a million diamonds when it hits. There's no fish I can see, just some driftwood and scattered trash. He comes up beside me, but says nothing. There's no need to say anything. Silence rests in between our shoulders like a birds nest. I don't want to move for fear of dropping the eggs inside. We stand like that for a while.
"You can do whatever the hell you want," I tell him, "I'm just your friend and I would hate to see something happen to you."
"I know," he nods, tightening and relaxing his jaw.
"You have friends in town, not just me. If you need anything though, same with her, I'm always there. I'm always around."
"I appreciate that," he says. He turns to look at me, "I really do."
"It's true. I've known you a long time."
"Same here," he smiles, "I've known you as long as you've known me."
"That's true. That is very true."
"Where to from here?" he asks. He turns away from the water and slides his sunglasses up onto his forehead.
"I don't know the area that well. Let's walk back up and see what we can get into."
He puts out his hand, stopping me, "Thanks Roger."
I take his hand, "You don't have to thank me, but you're welcome."
"It's hard to a find a friend you can truly rely on. Everybody's got their own agendas nowadays."
"Well," I say, "Its part of my agenda for my friends to not do anything ******* stupid. Don't know why, but that's just the way it is."
"That's good," he chuckles, letting go of my hand. We start to walk up the hill and he's still laughing a little to himself, "That's real good."
"Let's get a drink?" I ask.
"Let's get a drink," he says.

Reading an anthology of
Classic poems
On quiet a night
With wings of
Enlightenment and delight
My soul took flight
To far-off lands bright
Rife with musical poems
Some brain racking,
While some savory but light.

When I saw celebrated poets
From my dream plane
I decided to alight
So that the messages
Encoded on their poems,
To me they further explain.
Cognizant that
Hearing things from
The horse’s mouth
Like Antarctica
Will not make things
As far south.

I saw Helen Steiner Rice
Reading whose works
Like  ‘Christmas Guest’
Is nice.
When she me behold
This to me she told
“Till your corporeal being’s
Turn come to be a sod
Never desist to
Put your hope in God,
Who foresees and shapes
That will unfold.
Always dwell
In the vineyard of
The Lord. ”
Drew close James Stephens
With Helen
You are right nod.
“Chap, if you look around
You will behold
On everything
The hallmark of
Creation stamped by God!
Also excellent, from
The ordinary extra,
Your will hear
Nature’s God praising
Orchestra! ”
Willian Henery Davis
Courteously came by
To say <<Hi!>>.
“Be content with
What you have
You will be happy
When that you learn to love.
See you not why
The example set
By the butterfly,
On a rough rock
That sleeps content
Without a blanket! ”

Soon I met
Enda St. Vincent Millay
Whose fame
Surfing the tide of time
To date that does resonate.
“As the saying goes
‘The world is lovely
And the loveliest is enough!’
To be happy
Try to nurture the culture
Of admiring nature.
Waste not time
Go to the mountain
The secret of happiness
To you it will explain.”

After seconds walk
William Ernest Henely
Approached me for a hard talk
“When beset by challenges
Never give in
That is a great sin!
As for me, whenever
I fall
Soon I get up as the
Captain of my soul.
Though in the darkness
God seems far,
For the downhearted
He is a lodestar.”
I saw Elenor Frajeon
By a roadside
With a book in her hand.
“Love to books
Is a launching pad
To a wonderland,
Where readers meet authors
Of different brand
Hence, a window to their
Soul they will stand.
Also read my poem
That draws attention
To mother-to-child affection
That defies description.”

I met anon
Austin Dobson
“A rose
To itself
A question
Opted to pose.
‘I wonder why
This hoary-headed
Gardner refuses to die?’
But soon
A wind blew up
Its sun-withered
Petals to the sky.
The analogy teach
On the timeline
Brief, beauty to a grind
Will screech.

Patted me on the back
My son,
Ben Johnson
“Like a Lele
Being short and brief
Could render life
Ease and relief! ”

Sat on a rock
Samuel  Taylor Coleridge
To me a secret he broke.
With bitter smile
Waving his
Pen as a tool,
“Those who think
A poet is a fool
They will realize
Who is rather the fool
If they think with
A head cool!”
I saw Walter De la Mare
Exactly the way towards
Old Susan he used to stare.
“Susan taken away by
A romantic fiction
Past midnight
Sat on chair
Engrossed in a monologue
‘Breeching
Culture rules
Is not fair! ’
After
One’s age
Did advance
Reading fiction
One stands
For reliving
The past
A chance.  ”

Soon, came William Blake
Me to the graveyard
To take
Pointing to
A headstone
“Now, my enemy,
Object of my anger,
Is dead.
Subject to a
Conscious pang
It is divested of a soft pillow
I go to bed!
You must not yourself find
An axe to grind
Otherwise, to a reason
You will become blind.”
For supper
Volunteered to be
My host
Robert Frost.
He stressed
“To settle
Punitive price
As lethal
As fire is ice!”
Came an invited guest
Edmund Spencer
To tell us
The mystery
That put
His phlegmatic dream object
And he, her
Ardent lover, asunder.
“When fire and ice
Are locked in a love’s dorm
Out of the norm,
One may not change
The other’s form! ”
Via the window,
I saw a graveyard
Past the meadow.
When my eye caught sight
Of Julia Caroline
I took steps
To sit by her side
The meaning of eternal love
To understand.

“A kiss on the lips
From a lover
Is a keepsake stamp
That transcends
An earthly map.”

There in the graveyard
I met Sara Teasdale
“Like a low hanging ripe fruit
In the gray time
When a lass
Is off guard
To ****** her
A chance a lad
May stand.
Also from affection
For conjugal felicity
Many a lass
Could give added attention.”
I posed
Why should you show bent
To profanity?
“My friend
A *** could not be taken naughty
For expressing man’s sexuality!
For the answer try to meet
                Anne Bradstreet.”

Before I asked
Her why she
Committed a suicide
She got clear
From my side.

Anne Bradstreet
I met
“It is tragic
To have at home
A child with
A down syndrome!

What lurks
In the subconscious
Of an author or a poet
Through his/her pen
S/he may seek an outlet
So to date,
Regretting
“Why did I
Write this a taboo-seen
Thing!”
Seems some author’s fate.


I saw Thomas Hood
Amidst his harvest
That fares good
He told me
“From a perfumed
And well attired lady
Who belongs
To the top brass,
It is by far better
To tie a knot
With a provincial lass,
In her hair
With a fresh flower
Plucked out of the grass
She shines bright
Bathed by sunlight!”

Out on the street again
I met Lithuanian Salomejia Neris
I became happy
As I never wanted her to miss.

I asked her
About the heard-renting fate
She, her father, her mother, siblings
Neighbors and her age mate
Underwent.
“During the  World War II
Children, who
Otherwise were
Considered
Unfit for themselves
To fend,
Were forced
The brutal ****
To defend!”
Soon I met
Richard Lovelace
And John Scott
Locked in an argument hot.
The former
“I want to head to the front
It is a source of pride
To fight on
Nation’s side.”
The latter
“Paying a price grand
I cannot understand!”

Edwin Arlington Robison came
To tell me the story
About Richard Cory
“Measure not
Your life by
The success of your object
Of admiration,
The one a role- model
You hold or held,
I am afraid
Off guard
He can lodge
A bullet in
His head.”


I saw William Butler Yeats
, an Irish poet
Who raised an issue hot.
“How an
Angel helped out
A tired priest
A snap who
Could not resist
While a laity
In his parish
Was Ceasing to exist.”
Robert Herrick approached
Me this to speak
“I am smote
By grief,
To see a Daffodil,
Like human beings ,is brief.”

Said Emily Dickinson
“It is when you ere to hit
A target heart felt
You’ll understand
The meaning of
Having something desired
Under your belt.”
At last
I saw
Edgar Allan Poe
To make this to me
He made haste.
Though a pauper
“From my soul mate
No earthly or heavenly power
Is capable to asunder me
Top date.
After reading this much
I realized why
Poets never die”//////

Though monetary wise,
It doesn't promise to pay
I craft poems everyday,
For instance say

'Why my dream object,
To affections mine
Is adamant to reciprocate!'

The other way round,
Though to acquaintances
Absurd, it may sound,
Some, I have to spend
My poems to newspapers
Magazines and
Websites to send!

For love of the labour,
I will never
Letup the endeavour!

There is a
Great deal of satisfaction
From sitting hours,
To put words into action,
Racking brain
And stretching imagination,
From the earth's core and crust
To the sky and firmament!

At night, when all is quiet,
Till I hit the nail
Right on the head,
I will not repair to bed!

Reading poems
Has satisfaction
No less, for it affords,
Handshakes,with poets
Of all ages,
Poets with poems
Of all colour shades.

Probably the works
Of Shakespeare
That we hold dear!
What is more,Tagore.
In my duties
I will be remiss,
If I forget  mention
Savo,Anna Akmatova,
Sara Teasdale
And Salomeja Neris.

Till getting a cherished corner
www.Allpoetry.com
www.poetrypoems.com
www.poemhunters.com
­www.hellopoetry.com
www.writeoutloud.com
www.novelcollective.com
­Ecstatic I was never!
Now I peruse the websites
Of contemporary poets,
Displaying poetical prowess!

I want to add of course
An east African voice!

Out, a poem to digest
One could make a descent
Into wisdom's pit,
So poem virgins
Why don't you go for it?

From my experience,
For uplifting poems
'Start with Helen Steiner Rice!'
It is my advice.

'It is by the brow of one's sweat
One could paint
The future with
A rosy pink,
Don't you think?

Sitting idle,
Dreaming a rose-bed
Is quite absurd!'

Reversing such mind set
Go for targets set!

Into our fun house of mirror neurons,
a favorite Fellini character strides
distorted perhaps,
but reflected clearly enough,
none the lesser for our wear.

Who is it? Which one?
It’s truly hard to decide.

It could be that brute Zampanò,
his chain unpopped,
and as ever demanding our attention...

Or the cypher, Steiner,
teetering on edge
to tell us his secrets...

Or a voluptuous
la Saraghina,
reveling in our riveted eyes...

Or gentle Giulietta,
chasing her voices,
their whispers that echo ours.

It doesn’t matter who, in the end.
Better yet, let’s take them all,
and crowd them close in.

What matters is,
we ask they try
a seeming simple task—
touching tongue to nose,
or elbow to chin—
and we watch
their attempts, together.

Strive and fail.
Strive and fail.
Strive and fail.

These are the Sisyphean rhythms
we’ll need to learn.

We have our limits,
but empathy is endless.

Though monetary wise,
It doesn't promise to pay
I craft poems everyday,
For instance say

'Why my dream object,
To affections mine
Is adamant to reciprocate!'

The other way round,
Though to acquaintances
Absurd, it may sound,
Some, I have to spend
My poems to newspapers
Magazines and
Websites to send!

For love of the labor,
I will never
Letup the endeavor!

There is a
Great deal of satisfaction
From sitting hours,
To put words into action,
Racking brain
And stretching imagination,
From the earth's core and crust
To the sky and firmament!

At night, when all is quiet,
Till I hit the nail
Right on the head,
I will not repair to bed!

Reading poems
Has satisfaction
No less, for it affords,
Handshakes,with poets
Of all ages,
Poets with poems
Of all color shades.

Probably the works
Of Shakespeare
That we hold dear!
What is more,Tagore.
In my duties
I will be remiss,
If I forget  mention
Savo,Anna Akmatova,
Sara Teasdale
And Salomeja Neris.

Till getting a cherished corner
www.hellopoetry.com
www.allpoery.com
www.writeoutloud.com
­www.novelcollective.com
www.poemhunter.com
www.poetrypoems.com
Ec­static I was never!
Now I peruse the websites
Of contemporary poets,
Displaying poetical prowess!

I want to add of course
An east African voice!

Out, a poem to digest
One could make a descent
Into wisdom's pit,
So poem virgins
Why don't you go for it?

From my experience,
For uplifting poems
'Start with Helen Steiner Rice!'
It is my advice.

Fathers are wonderful people
Too little understood,
And we do not sing their praises
As often as we should...

For, somehow, Father seems to be
The man who pays the bills,
While Mother binds up little hurts
And nurses all our ills...

And Father struggles daily
To live up to 'his image'
As protector and provider
And 'hero of the scrimmage'...

And perhaps that is the reason
We sometimes get the notion,
That Fathers are not subject
To the thing we call emotion,

But if you look inside Dad's heart,
Where no one else can see
You'll find he's sentimental
And as 'soft' as he can be...

But he's so busy every day
In the gruelling race of life,
He leaves the sentimental stuff
To his partner and his wife...

But Fathers are just wonderful
In a million different ways,
And they merit loving compliments
And accolades of praise,

For the only reason Dad aspires
To fortune and success
Is to make the family proud of him
And to bring them happiness...

And like Our Heavenly Father,
He's a guardian and a guide,
Someone that we can count on
To be always on our side.
(Helen Steiner Rice)

አባቶች ግሩም ሰዎች ናቸው

አባቶች ግሩም ሰዎች ናቸው ፣
ምንም እንኳ ባይታደሉም በደንብ የሚረዳቸው
የሚገባቸውን ምስጋና፣
በስፋት አልዘመርንም ገና!

ምክንያቱም አባታችን
የወጪያችን ሽፋን ሆኖ
ስለሚሳል በእይታችን፣
በአንፃሩ እናታችን
ሐኪም የቁስላችን
ለሷ ህመማችን ነው የጋራችን፡፡

ቆፍጣና፣ የተንከባካቢነት፣ የአስተዳዳሪነት
ብሎም የችግር ፍቺነት ተግባር
ለማስጠበቅ የሚጥር ዘወትር
ለዚህ ይሆን ምናልባት
አባቶች ተገዢ የማይመስሉን ለስሜት
ግን የአባባን ልብ ብታዩት
ባትታደሉም ያን ለማየት
ታስተውሉ ነበር በውነት
ያቺን ቡብነት የሚያምሳትን
የልቡን ስሱነት!

በሥራ ከመጠመድ ነው
በዚህ አታካቹ ሩጫ የህይወት
ጉዳዮችን የስሜታዊነት
ለውሀ አጣጩ ለሚስቱ የሚተውላት!

ግን አባቶች በጣም ግሩሞች ናቸው
በሚሊዮን መንገድ
የፍቅር ምላሽ ምስጋና የሚገባቸው
ብቸኛው ምክንያት፣ አባባ ሁሌ የሚሯሯጠው
ቤተሰቡን ለማስደሰት ለማኩራት ነው  
ልክ እንደሰማዩ አባታችን
ሁሌ ያለ ከጎናችን
ነው መከታችን

በሄለን ስቲነር  ትርጉም  ዓለም ኃይሉ

When we observe the waves which course through us—
The inner lives that continue to go on—
Unfolding the scroll of hidden lives
Becomes the distant past.

We feed the bodies of churning water
Which span the breadth of time.
Waters which flow in close proximity
To wandering, wavering lines.

Only then,
Near the edge of setting Sun—
Abound with wavering lines—
Will the doors of binding light unlock
And reveal the shores of on and on.

SF. or known as the bay.

it's 3:11 am and i am hopelessly reminiscing over the cold mist
constantly over the Golden Gate.
maybe they're just like the rest of us,
trying to cross the bridge
off to somewhere else.
as all of those who had jumped off.
off to somewhere better.

i miss the secret breakfast or dulche de leche
exclusively available at humphry slocombe
nestled between the hoods of the spanish speaking
¿hablas espanol?
roll the tips of your tongue like you mean it
as you feel the bourbon melt off the tip of it
just like any human body would.
and i had always secretly hoped
that the sandy blond hair and green eyed
regular over the counter
would scoop me up just like that ice cream out of the tub.

i miss lee and steiner
who basically are my ride or die's
over the last summer.
who swear to love me
over my insecurities
with theirs.
those 2 am giggling and yelling over spiders or a boy's text.
12 pm groggily teeth and hair brushing or blush and mascara applying.

the struggle remains between shorts tights or jeans,
a thin cardigan will suffice
but you know you're going to regret it
as you shiver so hard
on the side of the open muni station at 6pm when the sky darkens at the blink of an eye
with that hobo next to you bracing it everyday business
tomorrow.
I AM NOT RISKING IT TOMORROW AND HELL YEAH I'M BRINGING MY PARKA.
come tomorrow
vanity always wins in the end
as you decide nobody will see your #ootd underneath those layers.

pride parade had always been a big thing.
as you squeeze through the crowd to the end of the tenderloin
you decide that sometimes,
penises are just not your thing out in the open.
but hey those tutu's and rainbows
and ******* plastered with heart shaped stickers were at least worthwhile.
you do support LGBT after all.
more even when there's a scenery.

not to mention
that occupied corner
always ready to slip a slice of *** over when you need it
fearless of the SFPD.
eyeing the whole trade happening.
viva la vida.
is that stash lasting long enough for you to write the next pop hits?

sipping on the peets you got over at mission
you always wondered why is starbucks always so crowded with writers and chatters alike.
but constantly in the rush
you wished you had the time for that urban outfitters at union square
if and only if,
you'll just probably end up at the ones over at fillmore.
should you give in and just stumble into the mess of the forever 21 instead.
ah decisions.

i will never forget that night where we got back from sf and got stranded in the towns of santa rosa.
waiting for a ride.
journey to remember,
always.

Fathers are wonderful people
Too little understood,
And we do not sing their praises
As often as we should...

For, somehow, Father seems to be
The man who pays the bills,
While Mother binds up little hurts
And nurses all our ills...

And Father struggles daily
To live up to 'his image'
As protector and provider
And 'hero of the scrimmage'...

And perhaps that is the reason
We sometimes get the notion,
That Fathers are not subject
To the thing we call emotion,

But if you look inside Dad's heart,
Where no one else can see
You'll find he's sentimental
And as 'soft' as he can be...

But he's so busy every day
In the gruelling race of life,
He leaves the sentimental stuff
To his partner and his wife...

But Fathers are just wonderful
In a million different ways,
And they merit loving compliments
And accolades of praise,

For the only reason Dad aspires
To fortune and success
Is to make the family proud of him
And to bring them happiness...

And like Our Heavenly Father,
He's a guardian and a guide,
Someone that we can count on
To be always on our side.
(Helen Steiner Rice)

አባቶች ግሩም ሰዎች ናቸው

አባቶች ግሩም ሰዎች ናቸው ፣
ምንም እንኳ ባይታደሉም በደንብ የሚረዳቸው
የሚገባቸውን ምስጋና፣
በስፋት አልዘመርንም ገና!

ምክንያቱም አባታችን
የወጪያችን ሽፋን ሆኖ
ስለሚሳል በእይታችን፣
በአንፃሩ እናታችን
ሐኪም የቁስላችን
ለሷ ህመማችን ነው የጋራችን፡፡

ቆፍጣና፣ የተንከባካቢነት፣ የአስተዳዳሪነት
ብሎም የችግር ፍቺነት ተግባር
ለማስጠበቅ የሚጥር ዘወትር
ለዚህ ይሆን ምናልባት
አባቶች ተገዢ የማይመስሉን ለስሜት?

ግን የአባባን ልብ ብታዩት
ባትታደሉም ያን ለማየት
ታስተውሉ ነበር በውነት
ያቺን ቡብነት የሚያምሳትን
የልቡን ስሱነት!

በሥራ ከመጠመድ ነው
በዚህ አታካቹ ሩጫ የህይወት
ጉዳዮችን የስሜታዊነት
ለውሀ አጣጩ ለሚስቱ የሚተውላት!

ግን አባቶች በጣም ግሩሞች ናቸው
በሚሊዮን መንገድ
የፍቅር ምላሽ ምስጋና የሚገባቸው
ብቸኛው ምክንያት፣ አባባ ሁሌ የሚሯሯጠው
ቤተሰቡን ለማስደሰት ለማኩራት ነው
ልክ እንደሰማዩ አባታችንሁሌ ያለ ከጎናችን
ነው መከታችን

በሄለን ስቲነር ትርጉም ዓለም ኃይሉ

(20 minute poetry)

The postprandial
an occasional
after dinner.

I walk with Steiner
a one time hard liner
his time's past.

and then we pass away an
hour or two
over a game of chess
the way
that old men do

the wireless set
lights up with
a music show
but the tube needs
replacing  

a bit like us.
H

Waiting is Nostalgic

I've seen the collage pinned to your arms
thighs stomach and wrists
Pictures you sent to yourself so you

could see what you'd carved with little
paper clips. This is how its always been,
pretty tainted with blood and I'm stuck in-

between sounding romantic about the ugly
lines drifting into our caged minds because
I've been the one wishing, pastel green

rumpled and staring at the column of
warnings disappointed death wasn't one
of them. I'm waiting to get that call, you

know the one. I daydream about how I'd
respond and I still don't hate myself  
more than you hate yourself.

Slivers of glass from my phone screen
stuck in my big toe, bruised knees, sore
throat. I got a noise complaint from my

neighbor upstairs and isn't it ironic?
I'm allowed to swear and in the eulogy
I said **** at least 27 times and 27 was

our number. Was. You're still here.
But how many minutes will tick by?
The first time you counted out 62 pills

and downed them with kale ***** you
snuck from your parents stash in the
unfinished room they always said they'd

fix up someday. The second time: black
ice down the hill by the nature center, chevy
truck flipped, roof crunching down over—


concussion, sprained arm, bruises, health
conditions (heart), too many ambulance
rides and not enough $1000 bills. Specifics?

January 3rd 2018. Swing.
September 20th 2018. Pills spill.
December 7th, my phone is on,

Doctor Who theme song, David Tennant era.
I’m suppressing my anxiety around you,
can’t even whisper. Banter ‘bout death,

back and forth and back is the dot dot dot
at the end of each joke. I strummed 17
melodies we’d written together, you

struck the lyrics and I, the tune and we
named it Chocolate Blue after the candy
colored eyes of a boy I liked in tenth grade.

In The Book Thief, Liesel sees Rudy Steiner
die, I cried at 3am, characters evoke tears
more than real people because twelve

years ago I could only show anger, they
let me stay safe when reality crumpled,
crinkled eyes aren’t only for smiles. 584

pages blamed my personality according to him.
You revealed the abuse I hadn’t considered,
but you don’t see the abuse in that *******

of a house. ******* doesn’t cover the half
of it, but your favorite insult was from a book,
‘****-gurgling fuckbuckets’. Beep. Beep. Beep.

December 8th, 2019. No sound but a flatline.
It’s how I imagined it. A call at 16:57pm. And
isn’t it peace? At least to you it is and maybe

I shouldn’t have fabricated reality. Maybe.
8121900 was your passcode, a collage I
chewed my lips to—delete, delete, save.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

      “Anglo-Saxon Students Would Not Like to Be Taught by a Jew”

                                                      cited in
                   -Stanley Kunitz Lyrics, Songs, and Albums | Genius

To the Privileged Youth of Columbia University:

As a child of situational poverty
I am so grateful for all my Jewish teachers

Including

Moses
Joshua
Jeremiah
Samuel
David
Solomon
J­esus, Mary, and Joseph
Saint Peter and the others in The Twelve
Saint Paul
Elie Weisel

Chaim Potok
Herman Wouk
Leon Uris
Franz Kafka
Leonard Cohen
Anne Frank
Bernard Malamud
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Philip Roth
Osip Mandelstam

Saul Bellow
Isaac Asimov
Woody Allen
Mel Brooks
Edna Ferber
Yip Harburg
George Cukor
Mel Brooks
Oscar Hammerstein
Alan Lerner

Carl Reiner
Rod Serling
Franz Werfel
Alan Arkin
Claire Bloom
Leonard Nimoy
Chaim Topol
Ed Asner
Mel Brooks
Peter Falk
Werner Klemperer

Jack Klugman
Walter Matthau
Tony Randall
Mel Torme
John Banner
Kirk Douglas
Lorne Greene
Eli Wallach
Sam Wanamaker
Morey Amsterdam

Leo Genn
Otto Preminger
Jack Benny
Leslie Howard
Ernst Lubitsch
Cecil B. DeMille
Mortimer Adler
Allen Bloom
Harold Bloom
Irving Berlin

Boris Pasternak
Emil Ludwig
Eric Wolfgang Korngold
Elmer Bernstein
Max Steiner
George Gershwin
Dimitri Tiomkin
Samuel Fuller
Alexander Korda
Zoltan Korda

Emeric Pressburger
Erich von Stroheim
Billy Wilder
William Wyler
Fred Zinnemann
J. J. Abrams
Peter Bogdanovich
Michael Curtiz
Stanley Donen
Stanley Kramer

Howard Caine
Leon Askin
Robert Clary
Dinah Shore
Stephen Sondheim
Volodymyr Zelinsky
Simon Schama
Louise Gluck
Siegfried Sassoon
Isaac Rosenberg

Joseph Brodsky
Rob Morrow
Vasily Grossman
Stanley Kubrick
Viktor Frankl

And more, so many more, a cloud of witnesses
Whose names are written in gold on a scroll in Heaven

But somehow, in this world of beauty and truth
And humanity’s aspirations to the good
All you have found are bullhorns, trash fires, chants
Clinched fists, obscenities, lies, and shrieking hate