Just in case you haven’t
Figured it out by now:
I hate women.
If they don’t die on you,
They stop loving you and/or
Abort your babies.
They stop ******* you.
They abandon you and
Leave you lonely.
They make you drink and do drugs.
They **** your trust.
They crush your confidence and
Destroy your faith.
They take from you
Your wealth & your health, and
Hijack that most precious resource of all:
YOUR TIME.
They steal your time by wasting it.
I learned very young in life,
That only a fool gives a woman everything,
Only a certified fool surrenders
His sacred heart of Jesus to a woman—
Which is probably why I like
Country western music,
Why I like it so much.
How could you dislike a musical genre
That distinguishes the fool,
From the fool with certification?

My father: all he wanted was a little,
Just a little, peace & quiet.
The War, that so-called "Good War,"
Had given him neither. And afterwards,
The peace & quiet he sought
Was mainly for his own turbulent, disquiet mind.
He spent his post-war years in the building trades,
Employed by The Brothers Levitt—
Shrewd, Semitic Kings of Suburbia--
Leading the single-family housing boom.
He earned our daily bread
Hammering nails & sawing two-by-fours,
No longer blowing up bridges, or killing Nazis,
The Construction Site: far from quiet dawn to dusk,
Creating daily new acoustic trauma,
Canceling out all hope of either peace or quiet.
Given the cutthroat competition for jobs,
He learned a new kind of stress, as more &
More vets--soldiers & survivors like him--
Coming home, anxious to get on with the
Business of life, scrambled for paychecks.
He also learned sarcasm, his cynicism
Masking a failure to cope with Cold War hysteria.
And then out of nowhere came labor saving,
Electric tools, like the Skill saw, LORD OF CACOPHONY.
Decibels: whining, screeching & shrill.
No Quiet. No Peace.

Bio-mechanical 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 & optical white rooms,
Cleansed free of contaminants,
Gun mounts & lifeboat stations
Manned and ready,
Standing at attention, 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,
Extraordinarily vivid.
Precise cognitive transcripts;
Recollected so richly, rife and fresh.
Visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, & olfactory reloads:
Queued up and increasingly re-experienced.
The bio-data of six decades: it’s all there.
People, countless places & things cataloged.
Every event, joy and trauma
Enveloped from within or,
Accessed externally from cloudy 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 servile 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 and infinitely looped.
“Cogito ergo sum."
Descartes stripped it down to the basics but
There’s more to the story:
Thinking about thinking.
The curse & minefield for the cerebral:
Metacognition.

No, it is not the fact that thought exists,
Or even the thoughts themselves.
It is the information technology of thought
That baffles me, adaptive & profound
As any evolution posited by Darwin.
Beyond the wetware in my skull
Dwells an entirely new operating system.
My mental & cultural landscape are now one,
Machines 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 connected at all.
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,
Turned around on me.
My tools have reshaped my brain,
Remaking my central nervous system.
Turning me into 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, septic now,
A cluster of implanted sensors.
Content: currency made increasingly
More valuable as time passes,
Served up by & 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

(Excerpt from "Confessions of a Hopi *** Israelite")

I get off the Belt Parkway at Rockaway Boulevard and
Jet aloft from Idyllwild.
(I know, now called J.F. ******* K!)
Aboard a TWA 747 to what was then British East Africa,
Then overland by train to Baroness Blixen’s Nairobi farm . . .
You know the one at the foot of the Ngong Hills.
I lease space in Karen’s African dreams,
Caressing her long white giraffe nape,
That exquisite Streep jugular.
I am a ghost in Meryl’s evil petting zoo:
I haunt the hand that feeds me.

Safely back in Denmark, I receive treatment
For my third bout with syphilis at Copenhagen General.
Cured at last, I return to Kenya and Karen.
In my solitude or sleep, I go with her,
One hundred miles north of the Equator,
Arriving at Julia Child’s marijuana herb garden–
Originally Kikuyu Land, of course—
But mine now by imperial design &
California voter referendum.
(Voiceover) "I had a farm in Africa
At the foot of the Ngong Hills."
My farm lies high above the sea at 6,000 feet.
By daybreak I feel oh, oh so high up,
Near to the sun on early mornings.
Evenings so limpid and restful;
Nights oh, so cold.
Mille Grazie a lei, Signore *******!
Andiamo, Sydney, amico mio.
Let it flow like the water that lives in Mombasa.
Let it flow like Kurt Luedtke’s liquid crystal script.
We zoom in. We go close in. Going close up,
On the face of Isak Dinesen’s household
Servant and general factotum. (Full camera ******)
Karen Blixen’s devoted Muslim manservant,
Farah: “God is happy, msabu. He plays with us…”
He plays with me.  And who shall I be today?
How about Tony Manero for starters?
Good choice. Nicely done!
Geezer Manero:  old and bitter now,
Still working at the hardware store,
Twice-divorced, a chain-smoker,
Severely diabetic, a drunk on dialysis 3 times a week.
Bite me, Pop:  I never thought I was John Travolta.
But, hey, I had my shot:  “I coulda been a contenda.”
Once more, by association only,
I am a great artist again, quickly made
Near great by a simple second look.
Why, oh God? I am kvetching again.
I celebrate myself and sing the
L-on-forehead loser’s lament:
Why implant the desire and then
Withhold from me the talent?
“I wrote 30 ******* operas,”
I hear Salieri’s demented cackle.
“I will speak for you, Wolfie Babaloo;
I speak for all mediocrities.
I am their champion, their patron saint.”

Must I wind up in the same
Viennese loony bin with Antonio?
Note to self:  GTF out of Austria post-haste!
I’ve been called on the Emperor’s carpet again,
My head, my decapitated Prufrock noodle,
Grown slightly bald, brought in upon a platter.
Are peaches in season?
Do I dare eat one?
I am Amadeus, ******, infantile,
An irresistible iconoclast and clown.
Wolfie:   “I am called on the imperial carpet again.
The Emperor may have no clothes but he’s got a
Shitload of ******* carpets."
Hello Girls: ‘Disco Tampons!
Staying inside, staying inside!
Wolfie: "Why have I chosen a ****** farce for my libretto?
Surely there are more elevated themes . . . NO!
I am fed to the teeth with elevated themes,
People so lofty they **** marble!"
Confutatis maledictis,
Flammis acribus addictis.

So, I mix paint in the hardware store by day.
I dance all night, near-great again by locomotion.
Join me in at least one of my verifiable nine lives.
Go with me across the Narrows,
Back to Lenape with the wild red men of Canarsee,
To Vlacke Bos, Boswijk & Nieuw Utrecht,
To Dutch treat Breuckelen, Red Hook & Bensonhurst,
To Bay Ridge and the Sheepshead.
Come with me to Coney Island’s Steeplechase & Luna Park, &
Dreamland (aka Brownsville) East New York, County of Kings.
If I’m lying, I’m dying.
And while we’re on the subject now,
Bwana Finch Hatton (pronounced FINCH HATTON),
Why not turn your focus to the rival for Karen’s heart,
To the guy who nursed her through the syphilis,
That old taciturn ******, Guru Farah?
Righto and Cheerio, Mr. Finch Hatton,
Denys George of that surname—
Why not visualize Imam Farah?
Farah: a Twisted Sister Mary Ignatius,
Explaining it all to your likes-the-dark-meat
Friend and ivory-trading business partner,
Berkeley (pronounced BARK-LEE) Cole.
Can you dig it, Travolta?
I knew that you could!

Oh yeah, Tony Manero, the Bee Gees & me,
A marriage made in Brooklyn.
The Gibbs providing the sound track while
I took care of the local action.
I got more *** than a toilet seat, a Don Juan rep &
THE CLAP on more than one occasion.
Probably from a toilet seat.
Even my big brother–the failed priest,
Celibate too long and desperate now–
Even my defrocked, blue-balled brother,
Frankie, cashing in his chips at the Archdiocese,
Taking soave lessons from yours truly,
Taking notes, copying my slick moves with chicks.
It was the usual story with the usual suspects &
The usual character tests. All of which I flunk.
I choose Fitzgerald's “vast, ****** meretricious beauty,”
My jumpstart to the middle class.
I spurn the neighborhood puttana,
Mary Catherine Delvecchio: the community ****
With the proverbial heart of gold &
A backpack full of self-esteem deficits.
I opt out.  I’m hungry and leaping.
I morph again, grab *** the golden girl.
Now I’m Gatsby in a white suit,
Stalking Daisy Buchanan in East Egg,
Daisy: her voice full of money;
My green light flashing on the disco dance floor.
I, a fool for love; she, my faithless uptown girl,
Golden and delicious like the apple,
Capricious like a blue Persian cat.
My “orgiastic future” eluded me then.
It eludes me still. Time to go home again to the place
****-ant Prufrocks ponder their pathetic dying embers.
Time to assume the position:
Gazing out from some trapezoidal patch of green
At the foot of Roebling’s bridge,
Contemplating an alternative reality for myself,
A new life across the East River,
In the city that never sleeps.
I crave. I lust. I am a guinzo Eva Duarte.
I too must be a part of B.A., Buenos Aires:
THE BIG APPLE.
But I am ashamed of my luggage,
Not to mention my baggage.
It’s like that last thing Holden Caulfield said to me,
Just before he crossed over the Brooklyn Bridge,
Crossed over to Manhattan without me,
Leaving me alone again, searching for our kid sister,
Phoebe, the only one on earth we can relate to:
“It’s really hard to be roommates with people
If your suitcases are much better than theirs.”
Ow! That stung; that was a stinger.
I am smithereened by a self-guided drone,
A smart bomb full of snide antigravity,
Transformational and caustic.
My meager allotment of self-esteem
Metastasizes into something base,
Something heavy and vile.
I drop to earth like lead mozzarella.

I am unworthy, unworthy in the maximum mendicant,
Roman Catholic mea culpa sense of the word.
I am now Umberto Eco’s penitenziagite.
I am Salvatore, a demented hunchback
(Played flawlessly as a demented hunchback by Ron Perlman),
Spewing linguistic gibberish in a variety of vernaculars:
“Lord, I am not worthy to live anywhere west of the Gowanus Canal.”
By East River waters I weep bitter tears,
The promise of a promised land denied.
I am a garlic-eating Chuck Yeager,
Auguring in, burnt beyond recognition,
An ethnic trope, a defiant Private Maggio
From here and for eternity,
Forever a swarthy ethnic stereotype
Trying to escape thru a small but significant
Hole in the ozone layer above South Ozone Park,
New York, zip code 11420.
That’s right, Ozone Park.
If you don’t believe me, look it up.
GO ******* GOOGLE IT!

And I just don’t know when to quit.
So why quit there?
Work with me, fratello mio, mon lecteur.
Like you, I took the LSAT so long ago.
Why am I not a distinguished American jurist
Asking the one question that seems to be on
Everyone’s eugenic lips today:
“Aren’t three generations of imbeciles enough?”
I am Charly from Flowers for Algernon,
A slow learner with a push broom, swept up in
Some dust from Leonard Cohen’s cuff.
Lenny: a grey-beard loon himself now, singing
“Hallelujah” for fish & chips in London’s O2 Arena.
“Suzanne takes you down, Babaloo!”
At last, I am Jesus Quintana—
John Turturro stealing the movie as usual--
This time in a hair net and a jumpsuit,
"Made of a comfortable 65% polyester/35%
Cotton poplin, you can even add your own
Ribbon leg trim and monogramming
For just the right look to be one of
The Big Lebowski’s favorite characters.
Mouse-over the thumbnail below to see our actual style
(Color must be purple). Style #: 98P, Price: $55.95. On sale: $50.36.www.myjumpsuit.com."
Fortunately, I am a savvy marketeer:
I understand the artistic potential, the venal
Possibilities of product placement. Go with me
To that undiscovered country.
The humanities uncorrupted till now by
Crass gimcrack television ads. That’s right:
******* commercials smack dab in the
Middle of a ******* poem. Why not?
Great literature has always been about
Selling something, even if only an idea.
Hey, **** me, Herman Melville!
We both know the publication costs of
Moby **** were underwritten by the tattoo artists &
Harpoon manufacturers of New Bedford,
Matched by a small research grant from some
Proto-Greenpeace, Poseidon adventure in some
Great white whale-watching swinging soiree.
Murray the ******* K, pendejo!
At last, I am The Jesus, a pervert & pederast,
According to Walter Sobjak—another post-traumatic
Post Toasty, like me, still out there in the jungle,
Still in love with the smell of ****** in the morning.
My bowling buddy, Walter, comfortably far to the right of
The Dude, and Attila the *** for that matter,
But who gives a **** if Lenin was The Walrus?
(“Shut the **** up, Buscemi!”)
“Once you hang a right at Hubert Humphrey,”
Said the streets of 1968 Chicago,
"It’s all ******* fascism anyway.”
That creep could roll, though, and as we know so well:
“Nobody ***** with The Jesus.”
Can you dig it, Travolta?
I knew that you could!

INCOMING!
I just heard from an old girlfriend who is miles away,
Teaching school in Navajo Land.
The Big Rez:  a long day’s interstate katzenjammer,
A Route 66 nightmare by car, but by email,
Just down the block and round the corner.
I had previously closed an email to her with a frivolous
“Say hello to my stinky friend.”
It was a total non-sequitur, an iconic-moronic,
Ace Ventura-mutant line from Scarface,
Which may have meant–in my herbal lunch delirium—
That she should say hi to some mutual acquaintance
We mutually loathe, Or, perhaps an acknowledgement that she–
My surrogate Cameron Diaz–has a new **** buddy,
Of whom I am insanely jealous.
Or maybe it was a simple Seinfeld “about nothing.”
Who knows what goes on in that twisted *****’s head?
She spends the next two hours in a flood of funk,
A deluge of insecurity.
A veritable Katrina ****** of self-consciousness,
Interpreting my inane nonsense in terms of vaginal health.

Hey, you want to ruin a woman’s day?
Tell her, her **** smells.

Just think how perfect it all seems.
Examine, if you will, Plants.
If you won’t, “****-You.”
I am not your Cabaret floorshow.
Shall we begin again?
Examine the Plant Kingdom.
And let’s focus on Water—H2O for
You of the Walking/Talking Chemistry Set—
Water: a precise, covalent compound.
And what does it take?
A ***** molecule of hydrogen,
Pulling a 3-way with some pathetic,
Starved for affection,
Me-so-lonely
Me-so-***** atom of
Oxygen.
The rest—as they say--is History.
(CUE my readers—
My sweet, effervescent readers—
They come chiming in,
Avenging my Line 3 *******:
“No, Joe, the rest is actually Chemistry.”)
Although I may lack respect for my readers,
I am certainly not dealing with idiots.
This is Interactive Poetry, Kemosabe:
Life lyrics for the Chorus,
Of thee I sing.
Of thee I am one.
But I digress.

The subject was Water.
Water gets ****** up—&
That has got to feel really good—
Into a vast & elaborate network,
Dispensing itself, climbing to
Leaf-height by mid-morning,
Given that big, white-hot bocce ball in the sky
First warming, then igniting a thousand-million
Stoma/Stomata: Choose One.

Difference Between Stoma & Stomata: Stoma and stomata are similar words, so it's easy to get the two confused. The difference between them is easy to remember, however, as stomata is  just the plural for stoma. A plant uses its stomata to take in and release gases, according to EOEarth.org.... More »

Verdant Stomata?
Sounds like an Italian Pizza Queen,
As defined by Rhode Islanders,
According to Ronnie Conheim,
A crony of my early 20s,
Who has dis-appeared off the
****-cheeks of our planet.
Again, I digress.

LEAVES: the passion pit of our
Randy **** atmosphere.
Manufacturing oxygen for those
On the CO2 side of the equation,
Whatever that means.
Leaves: a reciprocal source & target.
For those of us in these parts who
Exhale carbon dioxide.
And just so we get this straight:
We are the Plant Kingdom’s archenemy,
Their bête noire, their Lex Luther incarnate,
Anathema, slugging & wheezing its way,
Through an eternally ebonic Worm Hole.

Plants & Animals:
These two would **** us both off.
So an ecological truce gets hammered out,
“The Paris Agreement on Climate Change,”
They are calling it, perhaps the most profound
Meeting of the Earth’s collected minds.
EV-VAH, in History or Chemistry . . .
(CUE BRANDO, Sky Masterson,
Guys & Dolls: “YEAH, CHEMISTRY!”
A shrewdly negotiated fairy tale,
With fine print out the yin-yang,
Explaining why only 144 of the 197
Parties to the convention have
Ratified (what rats do when organized?)
Ratified a document fatter than Manhattan’s
White page telephone book:
Behold BTW a species of literature,
Beginning to resemble a dead carcass,
Nearly an anachronism for a once
Vast & potent paper publishing industry.

Plant & Animals: these two
Will **** each other.
The Peace: a fragile trip wire.
The Accord?
A case of hyped ecological stagecraft,
The threshold celebration
Staged in--of all places—
Marrakech, Morocco:
The Hashish Capital of the Eastern Hemisphere.

Marrakesh Express - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marrakesh_Express“Marrakesh Express” is a song written by Graham Nash and Performed by the band Crosby, Stills and Nash (CSN). It was first released in May of 1969 on the...

C.S.N Marrakech Express-YouTube/www.youtube.com/watch?
v=0AkYLtegF1MDec 14, 2009 ... Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – Marrakesh Express (Live at Farm Aid 2000) - Duration: 3:56. Farm Aid 36,976 views · 3:56. CSN - Crosby, Stills...
(www.ads-right-in-******* poem.com)

That’s right! The poet finally figuring out
What it takes to avoid dying diseased &
Psychotic in the gutter.)
THAT’S RIGHT: $$$$ SELL ADS $$$$
RIGHT IN THE $KA-CHING$
MIDDLE OF THE ******* POEM!)

The Big Picture?
Plants & Animals:
These two will **** us all off.
And we'll watch the whole thing on Reality TV.

(The Greater Prairie Chicken: a grouse of open grassland, is known for its mating dance. Males display together in a communal lek, where they raise ear-like feathers above their heads, inflate orange sacs on the sides of their throats, and stutter-step around while making a deep hooting moan.)

So how you gonna keep ‘em
Down on the farm after they’d seen Paree?
After “displaying together” in
Their own private lek--
Communal though it was.
It’s May in Hemetucky.
I just got back from my
Twilight constitutional,
As Truman called it.
Harry—since I was born in 1949—
Tribute for my first Commander-in-Chief.
The moon was misted,
More than half full,
Myself half in the bag,
As they say.

As you know by know,
I live in one of those gated,
Golf-coursed, over-55
Lunatic Asylums,
A communal lek, as they say.
I’m stutter schlepping around the block
In my pajamas remembering that big sign,
So full of promise--ACTIVE SENIORS—
A veritable sexually promiscuous
Welcome Mat.
I made an assumption, you see,
That children of the 60s grown old
Would relish a life of legal **** in a
Gated sanctuary with hours upon hours of
“Let’s Hide the Pepperoni.”

I knew I missed those years,
That era of bra-burning &
Birth Control.
“*******,”
Wonton ******* & *******,
A bowl of Won-Ton carnality:
Wild abandon, mature ladies,
Their ******* in a ***,
At the bottom of their purse,
(Thank you, Joan Osborne)


Joan Osborne - Right Hand Man Lyrics | MetroLyrics
http://www.metrolyrics.com/right-hand-man-lyrics-joan-osborne.htmlLyrics to 'Right Hand Man' by Joan Osborne. Let me use your toothbrush / Have you got a clean shirt? / My ******* in a *** /at the bottom of my purse / I walk. (www.advertise/right-in-the-middle-of-*******-poem.com)

Yet, I languish here
Here in the now,
Having shown my cards too often.
After 10 years here no woman
Takes me seriously,
Given my unserious reputation,
Not to be taken seriously.
Which explains why I spend
So much of my time in Italy
Lately.

Listening to “The Chieftains” again,
Their Long Black Veil CD: a gift to
Marijuana smokers. N'est-ce pas?
**** Jagger singing the title track,
A sweet, lugubrious ode to black widows.
Could there be such creatures?
Women you would **** for,
Offing your best friend for?
She had better be as good as it gets.
Could such women exist?
Beautiful & toxic;
Duplicitous, cunning,
*******-worthy.

******* | *** Risk and Prevention | ***/AIDS | CDC
https://www.cdc.gov/***/risk/oralsex.html has a low *** risk, but it is not zero. Learn ... Involves using the mouth to stimulate the ****** (*******). (www.ads/right/in/the/middle/of/*******/poem.com) $$Ka-Ching! Ka-Ching$$

**** would have licked her **** as
They led him up the scaffold steps,
She was a woman worth dying for, to be sure.

And Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor?
Isn’t it time we forgave her?
So she shaved her head.
So she shredded the Pope’s photo on SNL.
He was, after all, the Polish Pope,
The one that kissed the ground
Whenever he got off an airplane.
How could you not love the guy?
Shot while riding in his Pope Mobile,
He later visited Mehmet Ali Ağca in prison,
Forgiving his would-be assassin face-to-face,
Exonerating the Bulgarian kreplach, for all
Special Victims Unit “especially heinous offenses” &
Proto-Islamic terror.
Surely, he could forgive the little Irish ****?

Can’t we? Leading by example?
I don’t know what you’d call it.
In any language: powerful.
Oh, Sinead, my sweet Sinead,
We miss your sweet sad dulcet tones.
Consider yourself exonerated.
Consider yourself free to be loved again.

And let’s not forget Tom Jones,
Come on ladies: you threw your sopping
Wet ******* to the stage for him.
His “Tennessee Waltz” breaking my heart,
Losing my wife to my best friend.
No wonder I shot the Sheriff.
Surprised I did not also shoot the Deputy.
And “The Chieftains” themselves,
Transporting us to the Coast of Malabar.
We are all Irish sailors
Infatuated, hopelessly enchanted by a
Swarthy Dravidian shiksa.