The little black book I keep next to my journals sits on a bookshelf I made from recycled wood. A fresh coat of paint may hide a splintered past unknown to me, but that is of zero importance when refurbished trees that died for a purpose hold books containing paper collected from a different tree that is now dignified in service.

One that expands as more hot air is blown, and shrinks when cold shouldered. The little black book holds numbers without faces, but the pocket in the back holds a face that could never be confused as paint by number.
It maps out the girl I've been searching for that never deserved a page in this book of lust, only the pocket in the back that will one day accept my trust.

And the reason this little black book is kept on the recycled bookcase is because the paper is also recycled, the same as the trash that litters the pages.

The 20th century a new philosophy was introduced: Existentialism.

Existentialism is pertaining to human existence, and finding our ideal self, along with the meaning of life through free will. This German philosophy must have been confusing, because not long after the beginning of the next century, free will showed us that eradication and apathy can be achieved by "following orders" and not questioning the ideals of your country's ideology.

The idea of this philosophy is that humans are searching for who they are and what they will become by the choices they make based on their experiences without the complications of laws, traditions, or ethnic rules. Now, the ivory and ebony pieces that lay atop the granite chess board are one of a handful of acceptable, yet objective black and white cohabitations that can't function one without the other.

Strategically sound is the sycophant. Then in reference to people, how easy is it to spot a Parasite when trying your hardest not to be stereotypical? That is why it's easier to hate a person because the color of their skin rather than their theology and ancestry.

This idea of free will is sometimes misconstrued as a hindering factor in reference to the education system. Our foundation is put in place at an early age; this is our fundamental axis, and this reasoning is acceptable because
of our commitment and trust in conditioning ourselves.

And when you need to teach youth about hate and pass it off as love, you must regulate the educational systems, and propaganda needs to be subtle yet exposed in mass media and entertainment, along with chalkboards and textbooks.

Considering the learning differential, people who use a different side of their brain than a peer have a chance of excelling in their studies of specific subjects; however, this does not apply in all cases. See science and language as objective, and abhorrence as once subjective with an edit and an asterisk.

One factor is assumptions made regarding social structure. And this is what happens when something is driven by an economic imperative. But statistics are heavily confusing and easily manipulated when some groups of people are thrown figuratively and literally into ghettos.

This has made people a taxable commodity, but not one for a universal vantage. The reason for that has to do with the socioeconomic status of certain communities. Then again, when a country is at war with itself, being drafted will provide an individual with the necessary rations, and when you're wearing a uniform, bank statements do not matter.

From this point on we can put people into two classes: academic and non-academic.

None of which matters when you're staring at the barrel of a gun: automatic or semi-automatic.

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January
        17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go **** yourself with your atom bomb.
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I
        need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not
        the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back
        it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical
        joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday
        somebody goes on trial for ******.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid
        I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses
        in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle
        Max after he came over from Russia.

I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by
        Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner
        candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Business-
        men are serious. Movie producers are serious.
        Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of
        marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable
        private literature that goes 1400 miles an hour
        and twenty-five-thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of
        underprivileged who live in my flowerpots
        under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers
        is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that
        I'm a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly
        mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as
        individual as his automobiles more so they're
        all different sexes.
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500
        down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Com-
        munist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a
        handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
        speeches were free everybody was angelic and
        sentimental about the workers it was all so sin-
        cere you have no idea what a good thing the
        party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand
        old man a real mensch Mother Bloor made me
        cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody
        must have been a spy.
America you don't really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen.
        And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power
        mad. She wants to take our cars from out our
        garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Readers'
        Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia.
        Him big bureaucracy running our fillingsta-
        tions.
That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read.
        Him need ******* *******. Hah. Her make us
        all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in
        the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes
        in precision parts factories, I'm nearsighted and
        psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

                                Berkeley, January 17, 1956

I wrote this in the dark.
Because the last poem stripped
from the book binding and ripped
from my chest was not valued at
the utility company's worth; a two-hundred dollar bill is not easily disbursed when each
poem nets zero cents per word.

A candlestick will
dematerialize faster than
a wax seal on parchment -
one that establishes the epoch of
Civil Rights -
this is a correlated falsehood
of fixed rents in a gentrified neighborhood.

The plus-side of *******
the poor to cater to the wealthy
is that when the new occupants
move in, and the stainless steel
refrigerator is moved in, the empty
box is placed at the curb, and with
the right imagination it can easily
become a home for two.

If I had known that I was going to
be the last man inside you, not long
before your last breath left your lungs
and escaped your body along with
your tortured soul, I would have saved
us both the time and trouble.
Let love be!
Oh naive me!
Of course we both knew the troubles
your mind conjured, and maybe my
lack of intimacy was torturous, however, not all of the sweating and
moaning could be forsaken,
as foreplay was eased into,
which was wrongly confused as
a careless flick of the wrist.
But I suppose you knew your body better, and could take yourself
places that no one else ever could
without having their arms
pulled behind the back
and secured tightly, because
when you flicked your
own wrist and became
wet and flush,
the only moaning you did was accompanied with wincing
eyes and curled toes.

Now I'm reading the newspaper,
and your name sticks out, screaming
at me, exclaiming riddles that you can
never answer. And the one that leaves
me the most unnerved is the one right
before me, becoming moistened by
misunderstood teardrops.

What is black and white
and red all over?

I ask you,
but I know now
that you can never again
answer my call.

So I'm left with only one of
two options, both of which
feel like a handful. I can delicately
place a flower atop your new
home among the rest, or
I can palm dirt as you are
slowly lowered down and
covered with the mound
that lay beside the congregation
that finishes their final goodbyes.

"Because cowboys and snakes are my kin"*

Because I feel volcanoes in my skin
Because I've sinned
Because I want to get in
Because I've already grown...

Nature replicates in sets of eight
Deviating ends of the weak and the great
Chemical stew makes memory fail
Chemical brew makes brain inhale
Do the push, take the plunge
Absorb the agony like a sponge
Can't map the contradictions
(Is there truth in fiction?)
Give up the blood and give up the ghost
Reaching out to them that hate you most
Couldn't even reach level two
Divy up the army between red and blue

Pieces slowly fitting
But puzzle never solved
Reaching out to nothing
Only one resolve
Listened to a hero's song
'Bout a thousand times
But wisdom never sank in
Too much focus on the rhyme
(Prayed for the night, for the very first time
But night never came
And the rain falls on everyone but me
Cause nature's got a few tricks up her sleeve)

Imperfect circles, always imperfect circles
(Autumn angel gets their wings)

What if you're the addict that has accepted the first step a long time ago, while lines tallied up against years, and once familiar folk have given up hope long after patience; there's you first squatting in the corner of a house you barely know, with people you just met, and you shoot water in your veins, now on bent knees, praying this water is holy enough to ease the pain. The immaculate fix.

Arms outstretched, facing east and west, needles as big as nails delicately caressing the flesh and resting on sweaty palms, emaciating by way of lust and fear. No Will. No Power of Attorney. No Will Power.

They say Adam walked with Eve in the garden, and it was Eve that bit the apple. But you never hear the part about Adam killing Eve with silence. Adam was the snake. And of course above, and beyond, omnipotence comes with the added responsibility of design. "Would you consider yourself a Type A personality or a Type B personality?" The doctor asked.

One suicide and one admission to the psych ward should always be coincidental, but in case it's not and silence becomes deadly you must keep a straight face. Let the guilt mentally choke you, like a murderer choking the life from their victim. You look around the ward to find that there are no staircases. But empathy and keeping that straight face will lead to discharge, and programs, and twelve steps.
And you know when you get to that final step, it takes only one more
to push off and fall away.