I’ve been listening to a lot of Willie Nelson lately,
A bootleg copy Outlaw Willie’s “Greatest Hits,”
Permanently inserted into the CD-player of my Honda:
An automobile preference,
An immediate dead giveaway,
A tag better than a license plate,
Useful for identification purposes,
Distinguishing friend from foe,
In this case a rolling, conspicuous enemy of
Detroit & rust belt environs.
Like other zombie-American consumers,
I **** the livelihood of my countrymen,
Once again, selling out friends & neighbors,
Doing my bit for Capitalism,
Exporting another job overseas.
I do my bit to help the 1%
Pay Labor back for the
Capitulations of the 1930s:
Unions winning concessions
In the street, pickets & strikes,
Boycotts & violence,
Largely mobbed-up violence.
Willie does a nice cover of “Heartbreak Hotel,”
Different, yet raw like Elvis,
And rocking.
But I digress.

So I’m thinking about the HOA Board,
(HOA: Home Owners' Association)
Local Thanes of Cawdor,
As if people over-55,
Living in gated lunacy,
Actually needed a 4th level of government.
The HOA Board turned down my landscape modification again.
Of course, they are just busting my *****.
They know I’m a hothead,
A deeply anti-authority type,
Forged in childhood in the street,
Through ringalevio & stickball,
“Your Mother” taunts,
******* contests,
Belly bumps,
Bones of contention,
In short: Brooklyn 101.
Retired now & for awhile I think
My problem with authority retired with me.
Just when I'm thinking
My lessons are finally done,
I realize there’s one more report card.
And Citizenship is a Grade:
“Plays Well With Others”
As it was for boys,
The measure of a man,
“It’s a community we have here,”
The HOA Doge & Ministerial Cohorts,
Conspiring to provoke
The sociopath in me, a fit description
For any would-be antagonist,
For anyone challenging
The Restrictions & Covenants,
Openly arrived at, in secret.
My neighbor,
Good Citizen Bernie
Reminds me that a community is
Entitled to know whom it’s dealing with.
The price of real estate not always
Effective for screening out
Potential psychopaths.
A determined caste-climber &
Boat rocker slips through now & then.
Insecure & angry because of it,
The schoolyard **** gone grey,
Yet hasn’t figured out the object of life is
To win friends & influence people.
Retirement: a Carnegie Deli &
Serenity Smorgasbord,
“Plays Well With Others.”
The HOA leadership has the right,
Has a duty to distinguish
The merely eccentric
From the clearly a present danger.
So they bust ***** about rules broken,
Code infractions, sordid violations,
Community norms transgressed.
Better you flip your wig
Under close observation & preparedness,
Than go off spontaneously.
One more massacre;
Another random bloodbath.

Let’s start with a reminder:
President Harding,
President Woodrow Wilson,
President McKinley,
President Calvin Coolidge
& President Harry S. Truman--
Harry giving them hell in my lifetime,
In my time—
An ever so proximate reminder--
These were all Presidents of the U.S. of A.
Also, KKK Members.
Warren G. Harding, for Christ’s sake,
Was actually sworn into the Ku Klux ****,
At a **** ceremony
Astonishingly conducted,
Inside the White House,
Presided over by Wizard Imperial of the Day,
The Honorable Colonel Simmons.
And I may as well throw in
Justice Hugo of the Supreme Court
Hugo Black in white robes,
While we’re on the subject of cultural memory,
To wit: the one Branch where Fairness
Is supposed to go with the territory.

You want to talk about race?
Hey, don’t get me started.

I continue to be amused &
Captivated by Gabriel García Márquez,
His Love in the Time of Cholera,
Captivating me still.
His simple use of the name
“Bolívar,” por ejemplo.
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There is something uniquely Latin
About life in Latin America,
Once again, stating the obvious
For all the media-slain retards
Hovering around me.
Their never-ending enthrallment
With Strong Men,
Particularly when strength is
A measure of one’s honor,
Hizzoner,
Your honor,
To wit: Honor Killings.
In practice, a sober demonstration
Of the theory as it is practiced.
Americans—with swarthy exceptions—
Do unfavorably view most of us who
Can trace our ancestry to Southern Europe.
“Southern European,”
Itself a vicious racial slur,
And remains so north of Eboli,
No surprise that Christ stopped there,
According to Carlo Levi, writing off the
Il Mezzogiorno, beyond redemption.
Southern European:
Smug words you make them eat,
Throwing Greco-Roman Civilization
Up into their faces.
Athens & Rome--
Epitomes of culture and class--
Patricians, of course, yet
Skifoso bragging rights for all those
***** scratched plebeians of the mob.
But I digress.

Strongman Latino-Americano.
Some Bolívar, some José Martí.
Why not some Fidel?
¿Por Que No?
Tu compadre, Gabo--
Tu Generalissimo Cubano.
How could you miss, Gabo?
Castro lobbying for you, twisting the
Surreal & squirrely qualms
Of Nobel Prize Nabobs.
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You owe that bearded strong man, Gabo.
Fidel Castro: Maximum Leader to be sure--
Like Omar Torrijos & Noriega--
Panamanian Reds,
Tasmanian Devils!
And Sonny Barger –
Dubbed Maximum Leader,
By Hunter S. Thompson's Hell's Angels:
(The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs RetroBites: Hunter S. Thompson & Hell's Angels (1967) - YouTube ► 6:21► 6:21 www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccyu44rsaZo‎ Jul 7, 2010 - Uploaded by CBCtv Hunter S.Thompson defends his book against an irate Hell's Angels biker.)
Come Perón, come Hugo Chávez.
But, Hark-a-lark,
Let’s wait a sec
Lest we forget
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner,
One tough, Argentine *****,
Illustrating again for all men
The root of all machismo:
La Mujer!
The ***** that bore him;
Nurtured & nursed him.
****** & ****** him.
La Mujer!
(La mujer sin cabeza (2008) - IMDb www.imdb.com/title/ tt1221141/‎ Rating: 6.4/10 - ‎1,815 votes Directed by Lucrecia Martel. With María Onetto, Claudia Cantero, César Bordón, Daniel Genoud. After running into something with her car, Vero experiences a... I get 7 cents for each link, each hit, making poetry pay for once, the savvy poet, a marketer finally figuring out how to avoid death in the gutter, a death penniless, diseased, babbling and insane.)
Yes, the woman,
The woman, who loved him,
That widow who buried him.
The woman—at any particular
Time of life, in his life—
The woman who just happened to be there;
Was just hanging around
During that brief, emphatic,
Conversation lull.
Genesis got it wrong:
Adam was a stiff rib of Eve,
Made from sterner stuff,
A creation conceived in torture,
Reared in disequilibrium.

Women create the men they touch.
Strong women.

Do dust bunnies have consciousness?
Does instinct guide them?
Instructing their best chance of survival
Is to hunker down,
Go out of sight,
Hide under a piece of furniture?
Will they survive & thrive in Dust Land,
Dust Land Planet Earth
Where cat hair is
“A sizeable constituency,”
So would say some latter day Machiavel’.
When spring comes, at last,
Will the minority Party
The Politburo in absentia,
Pick up on,
Comprehend the fact?
The red-red boffin
Goes beaucoup mnemonic, again.
“Wake up, wake up you sleepy head!
Get up, get out o' bed!
Cheer up! Cheer up!
The sun is red.
Live, love, laugh and be happy!”
The red-red-Redbird comes
Hammer & Sickle cell, again.

He was taken into custody on Friday
After he got off a bus in Marseille
That had come from Amsterdam
By way of Brussels,
According to police.
The manhunt began
After he opened fire
At the Jewish Museum
In the center of Brussels,
Killing at least 3 people,
Obviously: an anti-Semitic attack.
He was taken into custody
“As soon as he set foot in France,”
According to François Hollande,
Congratulating himself
For an efficient round up of
The usual suspects, all Jihadi
Round trippers from Syria.
He was taken into custody in a mere 6 days--
A magnifique display of French efficiency,
A sublime achievement by
Our furry friends in
Police-Protective Services.
The swarthy perp was carrying a Kalashnikov--
That’s AK-47 for you NRA gun nuts--
A handgun, ammunition, a baseball cap,
A small video recording device, and a
Copy of The Koran,
All items matching
Descriptions of the gunman,
And, even if not, a known-terrorist
Named Mahdi bin Laden,
Carrying an assault rifle
Would have been enough
To fit the profile,
Justify the profiling,
Sufficient to stop anyone
Passing through Customs,
Except, of course
The French Corps Diplomatique,
Wreaking most of the havoc in the EU these days.
There was once a time when any Thom, Dieter or Heine
Could get outta town on a ratline,
Blessed by the Pope,
Assisted by the OSS.
A white linen suit and a Panama hat:
Was all it took any Schutzstaffel
To pull off another Argentine makeover,
Melt into the landscape,
Speaking Spanish with a thick German brogue.
It’s nice to know
Jew persecution is criminal,
Socially frowned on these days.

For those among us who lived by the rules,
Lived frugal lives of *****-scratching desperation;
For those who sustained a zombie-like state for 30 or 40 years,
For these few, our lucky few—
We bequeath an interactive Life-Alert emergency dogtag,
Or a dog, a colossal beast of a pet,
A humongus Harlequin Dane dog to feed,
For that matter, why not buy a few new cars before you die?
Your home mortgage is dead and buried.
We gave you senior-citizen rates for water, gas & electricity—
“The Big 3,” as they are known in certain Gasoline Alley-retro
Neighborhoods among us,
Our parishes.
Our boroughs.
All this and more, had you lived small,
Had you played by the rules for Smurfs & Serfs.

We leave you the chance to treat your grandkids
Like Santa’s A-List clientele,
“Good ‘ol Grampa,” they’ll recollect fondly,
“Sweet Grammy Strunzo,” they will sigh.
What more could you want in retirement?
You’ve enabled another generation of deadbeat grandparents,
And now you’re next in line for the ice floe,
To be taken away while still alive,
Still hunched over and wheezing,
On a midnight sleigh ride,
Your son, pulling the proverbial Eskimo sled,
Down to some random Arctic shore,
Placing you gently on the ice floe.
Your son; your boy--
A true chip off the igloo, so to speak.

(Published in Miami Herald on May 26, 2014 Brigitte Jacobs Arnold
Obituary Guest Book View Sign ARNOLD, BRIGITTE JACOBS, 78, MIAMI. Services will be held at 7:00 pm and a viewing from 12:00 pm to 8:00pm at Maspons Funeral Home located at 3500 SW 8th Street, Miami Florida 33135 Wednesday May 28th.)


Don’t ask me why but
I went online this afternoon.
Read the Miami-Herald obituaries.
And not just the Biggies:
Maya Angelou at 86 and
A one hundred year old Herb Jeffries.
Of course we knew Maya,
Her caged bird singing
Softly in our souls,
But may not be aware of Herb Jeffries.
A former singer in the Ellington band,
Herb was known as the Bronze Buckaroo,
In a series of all-black 1930s Westerns--
His nickname evoking
His racial identity,
Quite muddled, flexible.

Although both sad passages to be sure,
It was neither Maya nor Herb
Triggering my tender tears.
But the obituary of:
ARNOLD, BRIGITTE JACOBS, 78, MIAMI,
Known as Oma, Mutti and Mama.
Well, not exactly the Brigitte obit,
My tears for her long-lived mother,
Brigitte’s mother, durable & abiding,
Still breathing at 97:
Hildegard Wolle.
Reading Brigitte’s bio—
German born, Berlin student,
Singer-fashionista &
Proud, naturalized
American citizen—
I can’t stop thinking about Hildegard.
As if the woman didn’t already
Have more than her share of trouble
On this planet nearly a century,
Having already lost her
Grandson Roland, and now,
Her daughter.
Something wacky is going on here.
Some long-distance life lesson
Being applied here.
Poor Hildegard: ungifted with Alzheimer’s,
Suffers crystal distant memories,
Some really bad karma
Stored up in past lives.

She was an old Mid-western woman.
She was a distinct type.
A stock-staple character,
Sort of half Beverly Hillbillies Granny,
Throw in a skosh Betty White,
Mixed in with a lot of that old lady
In Driving Miss Daisy.
Southern Indiana:
The Confederacy’s best kept secret.
But I digress.

She was my neighbor in Buckeye, Arizona,
A quaint agrarian township, way out
At the west end of Maricopa County, which is
An hour from the Phoenix airport, the so-called
Sky Harbor International Airport,
Which surely must be near the list’s top:
All-time most pretentious,
Hyperbolic Chamber of Commerce,
Municipal Boosterisms.

Wikipedia English - The Free Encyclopedia
Boosterism:  the act of "boosting" (or promoting) a town, city, or organization, with the goal of improving public perception of it. Boosting can be as simple as "talking up" the entity at a party or as elaborate as establishing a visitors' bureau. It has been somewhat associated with American small towns. Boosting is also done in political settings, especially in regard to disputed policies or controversial events.

So, without thinking,
Walking down the driveway
To pick up the morning paper,
I let it slip:
“How are you?”
She’s leaning over the hedge,
As I bend down,
Picking up the local Pravda.
35 minutes later she sums up:
“I had to go to the doctor last night.
Gave me some cream for my pud.”
A twinkle in her eye—
She, my lascivious,
Old lady neighbor
In Buckeye, Arizona.
She had that sweet Mid-western thing
Working for her, her regional mojo.
And I’m right there on her wavelength:
The apple not falling far from my tree,
Or something like that . . .
I am losing my train of thought, here.
Last poem of the day, I guess.

She also underwent breast reduction surgery in 1992, and has said on the subject:

"I really love my body and the way it is right now. There's something very awkward about women and their ******* because men look at them so much. When they're huge, you become very self-conscious. Your back hurts. You find that whatever you wear, you look heavy in. It's uncomfortable. I've learned something, though, about ******* through my years of pondering and pontificating, and that is:

Men love them, and I love that."

Let me tell you about Drew Barrymore:
First of all, she got an early start on self-awareness,
To wit:  her breakout role as Gertie in
Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,
And quickly became one of Hollywood's
Most recognized child actresses,
Going on to establish her self to this freaking day.
From wit: Yeah, sure, she got an early start,
She literally grew up inside her movies.
And if we had ever had a
Shirley Temple of our own generation,
Drew is it.
Simply put:

Drew is sweetness personified.

N'est-ce pas?
But Habitat Hollywood needed more,
Must dwell on the Barrymore name,
Pounding that angle,
Sledging the dynastic anvil,
Forging consensus:
It’s in her genes.
It’s that sangue royale,
It’s in her blood.
All those Fairbanks & Randolphs,
Harrisons & Blyths,
Palazzoli & Giofredi . . . ***?
That’s where you get your looks,
You little guinea ****!
That olive oil & garlic,
Enhancing that gilded
Barrymore Blood!
It must have been an
Early pink thrill for you, Drew,
Seeing all those
Doors spread wide open--
Widespread like a *****’s legs--
Career barrier walls,
Inhibitions crumbling.
What a pleasant realization!
“I am a member of a
Multi-Generation
Theatrical Dynasty.”
And going even further back than
John, Ethel & Lionel, Babaloo.
We’re talking the British Stage here,
We’re talking Legitimate Theater,
As in: Tread those boards, GB Shaw!
Which brings me to my point:
Drew’s had a long time to get over
That Diva
(Louie Prima) Donna thing.
She knows who she is.
She’s comfortable out here,
Way out here in the
So-called real world.
Out a monk’s her environment at-large.
Query: heredity or environment?
Always.
To wit: It was always
Her habitat doing the molding--
From Wit: *******!
It’s in her ****** DNA.
In her freaking genes:
Which is precisely
Where I’d like to be right now,
My cherished,
My sweet Drew:
In your freaking jeans.

A tranquil & serene sunny afternoon
Lying on the couch,
Watching the sun go down.
My black cat kneading,
Rhythmically pawing the
Front of my pants.
What’s going on here?
Some-sort of Animal Kingdom *** signal?
Some zoological parallel to ponder
Whenever one tries to
Make sense out of one’s own
Polymorphous perversity?
But I digress.

I listen to the M/C
Music Choice Channel
Which Comcast.com - Comcast®
Gives out free, from the Basic Tier on up.
Jazz, not Smooth Jazz,
And certainly not The Blues:
“I think I’ll give up livin’
I think I’ll go shopping instead.
Think I’ll give up livin’
Think I’ll go shopping instead.
Gonna buy myself a tombstone
And pronounce myself dead.”
Again, I digress.

Another sunny afternoon in Bernalillo;
Bernalillo, New Mexico:
Where Coronado bivouacked,
Prior to saddling up again
On his fabled quest, his search for
The 7 Golden Cities of Cibola.
It’s nice to be back.
Got in last Thursday evening,
After an 11-hour Honda Civic trip--
The coupe packed to the gills
With household items—
And 2 cats sharing a
1-cat cat-carrier.
(Sarcastic) Please.
Did somebody say, “Meow?”
Digress, I doodle-lee-do.

Kelly came over Friday night.
What a treat!
I cooked Italian.
Saturday night to the Tamaya Resort,
Specifically, The Corn Maiden,
Certainly new and un-starred as-yet,
By sane suave critics who decide
Such things;
Sautéed asparagus on
Sunday morning, and
Off she goes again to
Canyon de Chelly
(pronounced:  DA-SHAY)
Arizona: one of the more
Cosmopolitan cities on the
Vast high mesa that is the
Navajo Reservation.
So what’s my point?