I speak of fear, sheer limbic,
Reptilian fear, and there’s the rub:
Obliterate thought and all that’s left is fear,
And fear’s known associates & cronies:
Hunger, Thirst, *** & everything else
Triggering our amygdale nether brains,
Each synapse a single primal scream,
Rich Reichian fodder and sacrificial yawp,
Whitman’s bleating syllable, straight bedrock,
Down low on the Hierarchy of Human Needs.
Abraham Maslow: another shrewd Jew from
Brooklyn, New York. Atta boy Abe:
Adrenaline pure and simple,
An instinct for survival.
I suppose my only regret in life,
Was that I was not old enough to be
A victim of the Holocaust.
I mean nothing facetious or disrespectful by this.
(Like Jesus, I was born a Jew.)
All I mean is that a stint at Auschwitz or
Bergen-Belsen, might have done wonders for me,
Saving me much time, given the number of books
I’ve read on the subject, just trying to get my heart &
Mind around the throat of evil.
My story is truth, not science fiction.
Yet, I confess to having some difficulty
Discerning the difference lately.
Perhaps this is why my mind wanders.
That’s probably what I love best about Stanley Kubrick—
Another insightful New York Jew.
His vision of space, namely the shrewd perception,
That after 5,000 years of recorded human history,
It was going to be difficult.
It would be a challenging enterprise,
Noodging the human race to choose,
A more cerebral path;
A state of mind & brilliant grace,
Embrace a kinder, fearless self and future.
Kubrick understood he must first take us to Odulvai,
Our primal anthropological killing fields,
Then he could transport us to outer space.
Only then, could we evolve,
Adapt to cooperation and tolerance,
Shift our future focus,
Our natural and spiritual resources,
Our potential.
Collaboration not competition.
2001: A Space Odyssey: released
A year before the Apollo program
Put a man on the moon, five years
Before the space station Skylab.
Kubrick’s gift to mankind was a clear new perspective:
Man in space looking back at a very small holistic Earth,
And an infant self, both diminished,
Made insignificant in a vast cosmic context.
Other forces were at work, of course,
Lying in wait as always, global forces
Co-opting the vision, drowning it in an old
Unabashedly mercantile reality.
That Darwinian old world order,
Again, reducing human existence
To an economic absurdity.
Globalism: the scariest Bond villain yet.

I have this neighbor.
Her name is Michelle.
All I want is for her
To come over some night &
Lick Cool Whip off my *****.
Is that so bad?
Is that so wrong?

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")

When a woman says: she likes
The man to take the initiative;
What she is really saying is:
“Yes, I will *******, just ask.”
As I write these words,
I rent The Eugene O’Neill Theater,
Located between Broadway &
8th Ave, on West 49th Street,
No shabby venue, I might add.
Then I stage & cast the play,
Choosing for the role of me,
Myself:  Queequeg.
Ishmael’s Crypto-Gay,
New Bedford, Mass bedmate,
A large, well-toned, muscled
Man of much ink & few words,
Just short pigeon-English phrases,
Utterances such as: “I likee.”
That’s right, playing me is
Melville’s freaky, tattooed,
Polynesian harpooner,
Right out of Moby ****.
And should the ****** imagery &
Metaphor of me—yours truly—
Packing a harpoon in my trousers,
Prove a trifle too scrumptiously
Potent for you, consider please the
****** potential of a three-way with
*Chingachgook.

The fog crept in on giant monster claws,
Surely no itty-bitty feline foots, I pray:
“Feets don’t fail me now,”
A line that will live in infamy,
Way back in a vaudeville when,
A minstrel Chitlin Circuit then,
Was an actor known as the
"Laziest man in the world,"
A character designed to stick to a
Collective white consciousness,
Stick like Tar-Baby, that negative
Image of African-American men--
I speak of The Brothers--
Who for over a century, have been
Struggling to live down a pernicious,
Most persistently demeaning,
Hollywood trope.
Tribute is due to the black actor born:
Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry.
Oh, Mr. Perry, & yes, you were the
First black actor to receive
Screen credit in a film.
Well, I guess that puts you right up there,
With Jackie Robinson & Sidney Poitier,
Carver or Tubman, or any of those
Countless northern abolitionists--
With no personal stake in slavery,
Or emancipation, but fervent nonetheless--
Color-barrier breakers &
Household saints a-coming &
A-marching in, in that number . . .
You paid a big price, Mr. Perry:
The indignity & débauche,
By abject surrender to the Boss Man,
Tribute, recognition is due for
Feats of humility & self-abasement,
Entailing total superhuman surrender,
Capitulation to the dismal, prevailing
State of American race relations at the time.
Stepin Fetchit: a name & a persona,
Not just painfully racist, but
Downright subversive.

"One thing good I can say about the hotel,
There were plenty of skanky crack ******
Strolling the boulevard.”
So began my Expedia travel review.
As usual, I got less than I’d paid for.
My review title:
“Next Time, Sans the Engineering
& Construction Inquietude.”
Pulling into the parking lot
One immediately recognized the scene,
A modern version of Cecil B. DeMille.
The 10 Commandments.
Pyramids of Egypt
Reconstructed, Escher-like
As a 21st Century construction site.
Oh, yes,
Everything Habib had in mind
When he subcontracted
The entire task to Hershel--
Hersh from Kanersh--
The famed,
But cursed
Jewish architect.
I digress, yes, but only partly.

Noise-induced stress, anyone?
The electrified multi-frequency drone,
Saturates like a post-war Levittown
Sea of Cape Cods . . . cods?
Bacala: stiff, salted, yellow & oily.
Cacophony:  a Festivus for the rest of us.
Oh yeah, Mr. Costanza.
Post-war?
Hardly, the mahogany wax
Still faintly, freshly sober,
New cards shuffled.
New cards dealt.
At that mahogany conference table
We weep at stacked decks,
Aces & Kings for the privileged few
Deuces & treys for the hoi polloi.
That hinky Bretton Woods poker game,
Convened while the war went on,
WWII still raging, guns still firing,
Tanks still rolling & rolling along.
There sat the Ruling Elite,
The 1%--as they are calling us these days--
We didn’t even offer
Our Gold Star mothers,
A moment to
Hold their breath.
Not one decent interval of silence.
Nein, nein, nein.
It was let’s get back to business.
Capital resuming its
Uncivil War on Labor.
First, add decades of slow boa squeeze.
Inflation, insidiously mocking Calvin--
Your ethos of work
In smithereens--
(Smithereens.
[From Irish Gaelic smidir n,
Diminutive of smiodar,
Small fragment.] ...)
A recipe for Sisyphus,
Your down-the-ladder warped reflection
Stares back at you as your
Up-the-ladder false hopes
Go escalator bye-bye; and by,
Staring at you,
Pinning you to a wall
With Econ 101 clarity,
As taught by Karl,
Another wily Jew:
It is a treadmill, after all,
Noting again the clever juxtaposition
Of a Jew and a handful of Christians,
Devotees of random Protestant sects.
The following link is a gift to some struggling writer @wattpad.
(Who Cares ON HOLD INDEFINITELY Chapter Twenty - Page 1 ...
www.wattpad.com/4225578-who-cares-on-hold-indefinitely-chapte­r-twe...‎
Apr 22, 2012 - Leanna was totally stunned by this and immediately halted in her tracks and began to scream at such a high decibel, Opia could hear her ears...) That’s right, another commercial in the middle of a ******* poem. The proceeding link was a gift to some struggling writer @wattpad.@*******.
Expedia Review:
The Windemere.
Its last syllable from Old English 'mere',
Meaning 'lake' or 'pool'.
A magical name
Reeking, swirling through your mind,
Lavender & English lakes
With steam ferries.
Ne c'est pas?

I arrived at the front desk?
The computers are down,
Having earlier that day
Been hacked into.
No restaurant.
No bar.
Nowhere.
Scaffolding & drop cloths,
Everywhere.
Construction materiel,
Everywhere.
When you finally get your swipe card,
You Notice that the “Buy One, Get One”
Pizza promo, laminated on one side,
Expired about 5 months ago.
The drive to the room
Is wry recognition that
The Windemere Hotel
& Conference Center*
Is actually a ****** motel.
Backhoes & cranes,
Everywhere.
Multiple, out-door spaces
Sectioned off with police
Yellow crime-scene tape.
Everywhere.
Railings on balconies
Appear to be seconds away
From giving way.
Odor, anyone?
You can count on it,
The moment that electronically-challenged keybox
Gives up its flashing green dot ghost.

Most times you get less
Than you pay for.
$47.00 a night?
Please ask,
Next time,
What's the catch?
“WHAT DID YOU LIKE ABOUT YOUR STAY?”
Again, Numb-nuts,
You think it’s a poem.
But it’s actually my
Fakokta Expedia Review.
WHAT DID I LIKE?
This one I had to think about,
Coming up, quickly . . .
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Coming quickly with Dwight David Eisenhower,
The man we liked & called IKE.
When asked if his VP Nixon--
Running for President himself,
In a tight race with JFK—
Had distinguished himself in any way
In his 8 years as his Vice-President?”
IKE replied:
"Give me a minute and
I'm sure I can think of something."
Not a ringing endorsement.
IKE knew something
The rest of us had to wait for 1973,
Reserving a room at the The Watergate,
Close to Foggy Bottom & Georgetown:
THE WATERGATE HOTEL
& CONFERENCE CENTER,
Just like The Windemere,
Another ****** motel.
**** me! What was I thinking?

Not to mention lack of privacy,
Be it acoustic or visual and,
In one case a veritable DEA bust.
Crack ***** in residence next door,
Cranes her neck around the balcony wall,
A would-be nurse, perhaps,
Offering home hospice &
Concern for your raspy,
***-smoking cough.
Her pox face bursting in on
The long anticipated
Marijuana Miller Time.
On the veranda, early evening,
Lighting up your first joint of the day,
Desperately in need
Of some herbal peace of mind.
Ne c'est pas?
Her big crack-***** head
Giraffes like crazy around the wall,
Invading your balcony space.
*******? Who was that?
Let’s lock the doors.
Let's hunker down for the night,
Taking turns keeping watch,
Like a couple of shitless scared
Grunts of the DMZ.
(Urban Dictionary: scared shitless www.urbandictionary.com/define. Ph?term=scared%20shitlessIt's when you scare someone to such an extent, you scare the **** out of them, at times causing them to excrement all over the vicinity . . .)
The Expedia Review goes on:
Anything interesting about the surrounding area?
Oh, yes, as previously mentioned:
Plenty of crack ******
Strolling the boulevard.

Hey, Windemere Hotel,
*** am I doing in Mesa, Arizona,
Two days shy of the summer solstice,
And 119 degrees?
That's another story.
But for now,
Hey Windemere,
Here’s a tip:
Next time it's total facility makeover time,
Shut the **** hotel, please.

Let’s face it: we’re not all George Clooney.
Most of us need a little help scoring with chicks.
Our *****—the archetypal genital signal—
Are hidden from sight, &
****** wagging
Will get you arrested.
Perhaps, pheromones may be the answer.

Dr. Winifred Cutler’s Bio:
(As read by Don Pardo, postmortem).
“Biologist and behavioral endocrinologist Dr. Winifred Cutler was the first to establish the presence of human pheromones in 1986 when her team removed sweat from human underarms and found that only the odorless materials that contained pheromones remained.”

Blessed are the
Underarm Sweat Removers,
A Labor cohort
Soon to be SEIU smorganized . . .
Organized, smorganized. | Karen Koedding, Productivity ...
https://www.linkedin.com/.../organized-smorganized-karen-koe...LinkedIn Organized, smorganized. Jan 7, 2015. 209Views; 11Likes; 3Comments. Share on LinkedIn; Share on Facebook; Share on Google Plus; Share on Twitter.
Ka-Ching.
Ka-Ching.

And Andy Stern’s suggestion,
Probably the best for anyone
Searching for a new mate, or
Wanting to move up,
Move up to a new relationship plateau,
Move up to a higher class of ******?
Open your nostrils.
Take a deep breath.

Bio continues:
“Dr. Winifred Cutler
Founded the Athena Institute in 1986,
Selected that name
Signifying the mission;
Helping women increase
Wisdom and skill,
Relative to
Their Bodies,
Their Health,
Their Wellbeing.”

Why not a Nobel for Dr. Cutler?
Testimony follows:
“Pheromones magnify my mojo.
I wear the love potion that makes
The most gorgeous gal in the bar--
That kind of gorgeous gal,
Usually out of my league—
Makes her look my way.
Welcome, my fingers
Touch her siren shoulder.
She turns,
‘What do you want?’ she asks coyly.
‘Um, want to dance?’ I manage.
She grins, looks me
Up and down—
Mostly down—
And says, “Not really.”

The verdict?
Apparently, the scent of pheromones is
Still overpowered by nerves.
Let’s face it:
Women can smell fear.

“Mistakes were made.”
I quote at least three recent former U.S. Presidents,
Who wrote or spoke infamously in the passive voice.
Here’s a bit of history:
The words spoken by automated phone systems,
Were code written by computer programmers.
Computer geeks, revered for their cold logic and impartiality;
Like scientists taught to maintain objectivity,
When studying fascinating subjects like Base-2 Binary Codes,
Disk partitioning and hard drive defragmentation.
Impersonal, the passive voice avoids sentiment,
Steers clear of pesky opinions unfounded on certainty or proof.
Unsurprisingly, the passive voice seeped quickly,
Into the language of politicians,
Our beloved rogues and rapscallions,
Hiding truth, avoiding accountability and culpability.
Practitioners of political science,
They bob and weave and spin.
Yes, mistakes were made.

A smooth jazz blast from the musical past:
The confused ethnomusicology,
The pleasantly discordant riffs and
Jingles of "Hiroshima"—
The band not the bomb site—
Whose fusion sound
Evokes an insane sextet
Granting membership, inexplicably to
Schroeder-- the Peanuts loony tune—
Hitting only the black keys of his piano,
His miniature keyboard
Sour, melodious & pure.

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.

How about that Polish guy:
Karol Jozef Wojtyla!
AKA Pope John Paul II,
Previously, a Cardinal,
The Archbishop of Krakow . . .
A tough cookie; in 1941
His mother, father, and brother
All died, leaving him the family's
Sole survivor.
Worked in a quarry,
Later a chemical factory,
Enrolled at a university,
Closed by the Nazis during WWII.
Ordained as a priest in 1946.
Holding 2 doctorates, Professor of
Moral Theology & Social ethics;
A powerful preacher,
A great intellect with vast charisma,
Working as a Catholic priest in
Communist Eastern Europe,
He was often asked
If he feared retribution from
Communist leaders? He replied:
“I’m not afraid of them.
They are afraid of me.”

Sounds like a scary guy?
Pope John Paul II,
The name he chose--
Tipping his yarmulke
To Lennon & McCartney,
For “Hey Jude,” no doubt,
Patron Saint of lost causes &
Desperate cases--
History’s most well traveled pope,
With that signature bit,
Coming off trans-oceanic airplanes,
Cutely kissing the ground.
First non-Italian Pope
Since the 16th century.
A strong stoneworker’s body, &
Knowledge of chemistry,
When Pope John Paul I--
Another Beatles fan—died in 1978,
After only a 34-day reign,
Few suspected Wojtyla.
White smoke (fumata bianca)
Announcing a new pope,
Chosen on the 7th round of balloting,
The first-ever Slavic pope,
The youngest pope in 132 years,
Yet conservative, a Papacy marked by
Firm, unwavering opposition to
Communism & war,
Abortion & contraception,
Capital punishment, & homosexual ***,
Coming out later against
Euthanasia.
Human cloning, &
Stem-cell research.
But, hey, you had to love him.
Took a bullet, famously in St. Peter’s Square,
By would-be assassin &
Double ***-*******,
Turkish political extremist named
Mehmet Ali Acqa,
A Muslim, later a Catholic-convert,
An early skirmish in 21st Century
Anti-Islamic Crusades.

Our Polish Pope John Paul II,
Died, succeeded in 2005 by
Our German Pope, Herr Ratzinger,
Calling himself Benedict XVI,
After The King of Pop,
Michael Jackson’s favorite rat,
Benny began the beguine—
Beatifying John Paul II,
During his first year on the job.
Later, acting as if
The Papacy was actually, just a job,
Does the unheard of:  RESIGNS,
Rather than die in office.
Rather like Nixon,
*N'est–ce pas?

The roof was moist,
As I lay there in a wet pool,
(A curse on thee, ye olde
Inventor of the New Mexico
Pueblo-style flat roof)
I was talking with angels,
Bouncing ideas off the firmament,
When she stepped through clouds,
Piercing the ebony solstice sky.
Stargazing is a full-time occupation;
The Navajo Nation sure is quiet tonight.

We’ve been in this place before.
A winter day in the Inland Empire,
So why not give it the respect
It earned in the annals & anals
Of American Land Scams,
Right up there, with
Arizona and Florida,
Desert & underwater “premium” lots,
“Premium” leads for CLOSERS,
Like Glengarry Glen Ross;
Hard telephone salesmen,
Cold-calling in its infancy.
Riverside and San Bernardino:
“A Development Too Far”
For many speculators
Since the 1970s,
But we may be on the brink,
Of another California Gold Rush,
Should many more of us over-55s
In search of lost community
And Cold War nostalgia
Come out here.

Yes, it’s déjà vu.
Here I am, all over again
Locked-down in my
Gated, golf-coursed
Lunatic Asylum,
Located in Hemet,
Riverside County,
Southern California,
A place I affectionately
Call Hemetucky.
The sun shines bright on
My Old Hemetucky Home—
Written by Stephen Foster,
An early American genius—
Stephen Foster - Wikipedia, the  free  encyclopediaen.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Stephen Foster‎ Stephen Collins Foster (July 4, 1826–January 13, 1864), known as the "father of American music", was an American songwriter primarily known for his parlor . . .

But I digress.
Here I am once more
Comfy in easy chair leather,
Enjoying another bottle from Temecula’s Doffo Winery,
Listening again to Pretenders—
The Isle of View,
Grooving to the sultry,
Come-hither,
***** voice of
Chrissie Hynde!
Amazon.com: The Pretenders - The Isle of View: The Pretenders ...
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(That’s right, Grasshopper!
This is how you finally
Make poetry $pay:
Sell ad space right in the
Middle of a ******* poem!)

Oh, Chrissie!
Take this for
What it’s worth, Babaloo:
For What it's Worth-Buffalo Springfield - YouTube
► 2:37► 2:37
Ka-CHING! Ka-CHING!
Oh, Chrissie!
I’d eat your ****, Babe,
Just for old time’s sake,
“But there's a woman
With a gun over there,
A tellin' me, I got to beware.”
Have you met my girl friend?

It’s February, 2015, a Saturday and here I ‘yam.
Back in sunny California again:
The sun shining brightly again
On My Old Hemetucky Home,
Another mutant Stephen Foster tune.
Hemet: Riverside County,
Southern California,
The so-called Inland Empire,
According to the hyperbolic parlance,
Of sharkskin-suited land speculators,
Truly, the last of the
Patent medicine, liniments &
Snake oil hucksters.
Hemet: little oversight & lax policing
Yield a thriving, local
Medical-marijuana industry.
You are comfortably tucked . . .  
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(THAT’S RIGHT, *******: A ******* COMMERCIAL RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ******* POEM!  GIUSEPPI MARTINO BUONAIUTO--SURELY NOBODY”S FOOL—FINALLY FIGURING OUT HOW TO MAKE POETRY PAY, THEREFORE AVOIDING THE DIED-IN-THE-GUTTER BIT.)
You are safely tucked behind the impenetrable
(www.tucks.com)
Wackenhut G4S Security-
(www.wackenhut.com)
Policed & Patrolled walls,
Of your typical over-55 gated lunatic asylum.
“For Active Adults,” reads the sign,
Whatever that means.
I’ve been thinking about the adventurous young.
What is it these bright,
Wander-lusting whippersnappers
Fixate and obsess about.
Like dropping out & coasting for a while.
Dropping out & coasting:
Not as easy to pull off for 20-somethings these days,
As it was in the late sixties/early seventies,
Flush times for Guns & Butter.
Where is it cheap to live?
Where on . . .
“This blessed plot, this earth,
This realm, this England . . .”
Where on this ozone-depleted,
Global fondue fungus ***,
Can I go to just sit still?
To think:  to make sense of it all?
It’s leisure, Kemosabe.
Leisure cultivates philosophy.
LEISURE:
The very stuff of curiosity and
REACH—
As in: “One’s grasp should exceed one’s reach”—
Idleness leads us,
Gifts us with understanding &
Self-awareness.
You are 21 again, and restless.
You are unwilling to just settle in.
So, where do you go?
Where can you live on savings?
To not work,
But not go hungry?
To just sit still,
Contemplating the state of the wicket,
Be it wicked or sticky.
Today it’s Prague and Berlin—
Or, for the truly decadent: Bangkok.
For us it was Florence or Paris—
Or, for the truly frugal,
Driving our cars to Mecca: Montreal,
"La Métropole du Québec"
Sanctified are the places we’ve chilled.
Shrines & vortexes; each holy latitude,
As Han Solo drolly reminds us:
“It’s not the years; it’s the miles.”
The amount of ground covered,
A blessing devoutly to be wished in Old Age:
But I digress.
Just the thought of hanging out
Some place really cool,
Yet relatively inexpensive--
In a parlance acquired
Over the years and the miles,
Tactfulness learned,
Manipulating the language
For fun & profit.
Common sense is aged in the barrel
And the bottle, rephrased.
Vernacular Viniculture.
Which proves my point:
If you live long enough &
Read enough of the right stuff,
Eventually you’ll discover
A precise, more exact vocabulary,
Appropriate for Old Age inner monolog.
Would Old Age be tedious?
Boring, for those who
Never went anywhere?
Both physically & spiritually speaking.
Are memories our only revenge on Old Age?
And for those hiding behind the barriers,
Safe. Ignorant. Jolly. Dull.
A fast track toward senility &
Evanescence.
Does Alzheimer’s seek out & destroy the
Most cloistered among us?
While those bold & beautiful,
Experienced, still spinning,
Still weaving a tapestry in 3-D Technicolor.
Remembrances of things past . . .
(Get back in your hole, Marcel . . .)
And as the AARP crowd knows so well:
We Baby Boomers really had it pretty soft.
Boom economics,
Conspicuous consumption,
Coonskin hats, Betsy Wetsies & Hula Hoops!
By and large:
FUN TIMES!
No Great Depression,
No chocolate rationing.
A jungle war pretty much optional,
For most of us of the
American bourgeoisie.
We’ve got a lot to remember.
We’ve much to be grateful for.
Electronic media changed everything for us.
Television and movie theaters gave us
Alternative dimensions,
Parallel lives,
Multiple identities.
Experience so real that
To see it on the screen
Was to live it, oneself.
Perhaps those video downloads
Might prove useful one day.
Comforts out on Golden Pond.
Will you still need me?
Will you still feed me?
When I'm sixty-four?
Grazie, Sir Paulie.

Like a speed limit,
Age 55 is a reminder,
A geriatric mnemonic,
Telling you to take it slowly.
Safe to say,
Most of us Baby-Boom geezers
Walk around half the time
Wondering how one gets laid,
“Hooks up”—
As our grandchildren say--
Gets laid behind & inside this
Asylum sanctuary?
Manning the ramparts,
Those Wackenhut stiffs
Are there for a reason.
Overt, direct ****** overtures
Strictly verboten (ver•bo•ten).
Yet, the silver-haired sireens
Crave company,
As in “keeping company,”
An ancient idiom for
“Let’s Hide the Pepperoni!”
But you’ve got to take it slow at
Del Webb Over-55 America,
A multi-state lunatic asylum,
Where a preponderance of
Single silver-tress foxes,
Having “lost their husband,”
Somewhere, at some point,
Some recent but forgotten,
Alzheimer’s moment along the trail,
They comb the daily obits,
Hunting prey, newly widowed men,
Fresh casserole recipients &
Crypto-pepperoni buddies.

Donald J. Trump:
Say what you will, but
He’s the only guy out there
Asking the obvious questions,
Common sense questions like
“Why don’t Japan, South Korea &
The House of Saud, pay the USA for
Defending them militarily?”
We sustain their political status quo,
We put boots on their ground, &
We provide them gold-plated munitions of
Mass Devastation
(like Mass Destruction only worse.)
What do we get? Bupkis, as in
“Bupkis Mit Kaduchas"
באָבקעס מיט קדחת
Translating roughly to
“Shivering **** *****.”

The 2016 election truly highlights
A profound social shift taking shape,
A demographic division, similar to what
The 1960s called the Generation Gap.
Trump is anathema to most of our
Over-indulged, Millennial offspring;
Our privileged kids, a cohort of Americans children
Reared by blue-collar but college-educated parents,
Those of us who busted *** for our
Bourgeois lifestyle & discrete charm.
We were the Flower Children of the 60s.
We left Yasgur’s farm on a
Hallucinogenic carpet high but rudely
Crash-landed, a consequence of
Altamont Speedway,
Gasoline queues & shortages, &
Years of bipolar economics,
Replete with spinning gerbil wheel of
Double-digit inflation.
We went to work.
We got our **** together.
We settled down.
We gentrified.

Our kids?
They tell their friends they are house sitting,
But the place is the house they grew up in &
Their parents still live there.

During fermentation,
Yeast organisms
Consume sugars &
Produce alcohol, i.e.,
Yeast eats sugar &
***** alcohol.
Makes you want to go
Right out and get drunk,
Don’t it?
Donut?
Doh!

So if you want to know upfront,
Then, you should know
That a reasoned selection process was used,
The music was cherry-picked,
Three perfect compact discs,
Hanging there from the branch,
(Actually CD stack storage)
And me, with a sativa buzz,
Working nicely, grazie mille.
I sit down to write another one of my “fakakta” poems.
The music?
Three crystal gems
Liquid pearls, all of great price.
To wit: (1) “The Best of Joe Cocker,”
(Joe died last year, and
Don’t we/Shouldn’t we
Consider him a close associate,
A kid we grew up with?)
(2) “A Twist of Marley,”
A “Verve Music” product,
Brilliant conception!
Montego Bay gone South Chicago,
A sweet instrumental miscegenation--
A potent, wicked fusion of reggae & jazz--
Manifested by Dave Grusin,
Gerald Albright, Lee Ritenour, & Others.
And last, but not even close to being least,
(3) “MILES DAVIS Kind of Blue.”
Lest we forget Norman Jewison’s
Homage to Mambo Brooklyn Italiano
Cher & her wacky greaseball family:
The Castorinis.
The Cammareri.
The Cappomaggios.
Did I hear someone say “*** Stereotype?”
Bam! A double “Moonstruck” slap,
Just to remind you:
“I’m talkin’ here.”

Lest we forget:
Coltrane blew tenor sax
Both March & April 1959 sessions,
Columbia 30th Street Studio,
New York City.
And if you've heard
"Freddie Freeloader," a
Sizzler solid 9 minutes & 49 seconds,
I think it’s probably a good time
To go check to see if you
Left the garden hose on.
BAM!
Now do I have your attention?

We pensive Boomers--
We take stock.
We ponder the clock, a
Vexatious tick-tock
Arctic soundtrack,
Music in the key of winter of
Our discontent/content.
YOU MUST CHOOSE ONE!
Time to script your buggering off,
Time to settle in
On an exit strategy.
“Yes, hurry up, it's time.” screams T.S. Eliot,
From an English major’s
Vast wasteland archive.
The scoreboard reads 4th Quarter now.
We ruminant Boomers,
Facing up to it at last, are we?
To be or not: a serene letting go, or
“Rage against the dying of the light?”
Dylan chimes in:
Thomas, meet Thomas.
Oprah, Uma.

So you should know upfront,
I got a great buzz on.
The music is groovy.
This poem ends here.

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.

(Her name was Geraldine Cohen.
She lived in Miami Beach.
I was 21. She was 35.
I will always love her.)*

Yellow fizzies in the lime cabana,
Bronze banana at five-fifteen,
Downing dizzies in a timely manner,
Getting foxy with you, Geraldine.

Underground with the worms?
It's another fine moist
You've gotten me in, Stanley.
N'est-ce pas?
"The night was moist," wrote Billy Crystal,
As the writers blocked scrivener in
"Throw Mama from the Train."
You run into many old friends, here.
Here in the slime is where I'm at.
Let me show you where it's at.
And that's a fact, Jack.
My ROM brain is prewired,
Yet subvocal mnemonics filter thru,
A RAM cache, stored for future amusement,
But crossing over now, randomly.

She was that kind of girl,
You know the type:
Stunningly beautiful,
With a very naughty mind.
Take the Trump women, e.g.
You just know they're thinking--
At least Ivanka & Melania, anyway--
You know'll they're thinking about
Jumping up on the table,
Sitting right down, spreading their legs,
Exposing a *****-less ******,
Going commando as usual.
Let's face it: they're East European foxes.
Their Bond chicks shaken and stirred,
Sultry, exotic, dangerous, divine.
Ivanka speaks: "Lick it. I know you wanna."
That's the kind of girl she was.

“Better than working in a factory.”
Truer words were never spoken while
Smoking a big fat *doobie.
For Doug Clifford & John Fogerty
It was a motto; an anthem.
Creedence always respected &
Loved the workingman.
Working stiffs know--
They know in their bellies--
That Republicans are good for the
Proles, here in Oceania,
Good in particular for the building trades.
I recall a distant mob of
Swarthy plumbers & carpenters,
Electricians & masons,
A toolshed parliament & all-purpose
Construction industry trade show;
So many, many Italian family
Weddings & funerals attended . . .
Sometimes my residual blue-collar instincts
Show up during the most inappropriate,
White-collar times. But I digress.

Which brings us down memory lane
This evening, as in “Good-DEEVE-ning,”
Welcome aboard the Hitchcock Railroad.
(Stage whisper: If I have to explain it,
You’re outside my demographic age cohort,
And a member of a pointless throng of green,
Still-wet-behind-the-ears,
Presumptuous whippersnappers.)

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And now that I have your attention:
Consider the current national stage:
A media circus, a minstrel & medicine show,
H.L. Mencken’s last *******,
Give us our daily bread.
It’s August 27th, 2016.
We’ve survived back-to-back
Republican-Democrat Political Party
U.S. Presidential nominating conventions.
I’ve caught you smack yabba-doo-dabba
In the middle of this Trump-Clinton
Full-press, traveling Reality Show Cavalcade.
In short, I’ve caught you at a good time,
Perhaps receptive, somewhat, for a:
Nixon Retrospective.*

I submit that without doubt,
The most stunningly democratic gesture
Of our generation to wit: replacing the
College deferment loophole with a
Blind, dumb-luck Vietnam Draft Lottery.
You can thank Richard Nixon,
Milhous of that name,
Our much maligned 37th President.
The only RESIGNEE in history,
Run outta town on a rail,
Convicted without bail.
Set adrift without sail.
(How you wish I’d **** this
Wretched rhyme scheme.)

Yes, you can thank Tricky **** for
Sticking it to the Bush Family
And their inherited-wealth neighbors--
Riparian souls one & all--along the quaint
Long Island Sound, New England seashore.
Surely my Brooklyn working class roots,
Demand I salute and snap to, attention.
Hail to the Chief, Babaloo!
Mr. Nixon still has my vote.
He tackled big problems: nuclear arms,
Diplomacy with China, Vietnam,
The Economy (can you frickin’ believe a
Republican got away with
Wage Freeze & Price Controls?)
Not to mention The Environment:
Slap! BAM! Soupy Sales:
“I told you not to mention *THAT!
But you knee-jerking libs out there,
Must remind yourselves that
President Nixon created the EPA &
Signed the Clean Air Act.
Think about it next time your
Nixon-Watergate gag reflex kicks in.

He swooshes down the mountain
Carving a series of humongous S letters,
Gracefully, brilliantly,
Gliding down the pure white *****.
Admittedly, the snow is hallucinogenic, an
Alphabet soup & smorgasbord;
A diabolic concoction I find irresistible.
He snaps to a dead halt before me, with
Flair & flourish like an Argentine tango dancer.
He is wearing a bright red Mad Bomber Hat . . .
(Mad Bomber Hat...$39.95  ‎Adwww.llbeanbusiness.com/‎1-855-371- 2754. Outerwear & Fleece-Top Gifts & Incentives - 20% Off Volume Discounts)
Forgive the poet, a simple refusnik, refusing to die in the gutter. Forgive me for making poetry pay, for once. $Ka-ching! $Ka-ching!
One had to have a shitload of
Self-confidence to wear a hat like that, my
Va-jay-jay getting creamy,
His smile fluttering my clitoral funny bone.
Confidence & humor: for me always a
Lethal combination.
Back in Providence they call me a
Rhode Island Pizza Queen; a
Certified cat litter-box for cads & scoundrels.
The Mad Bomber squats:
He is 50% Rhett Butler, 30% Joey Gallo,
& the other 40%, Cosmo Kramer, (duh?)
Adding up to a deadly duo that gets me every time:
Confidence & Humor snags my guinea ***.
First it’s coffee & Sambuca at the Lodge.
Two hours later I blow him in the shower
At The Green Mountain Inn.
The next morning, we say goodbye in the parking lot.
He promises to call me from Boston, but
Of course, I never hear from him again.
That sums up my MO with men,
Explains how I **** up when picking men.
Every time, again & again, like a
Third generation imbecile, deranged & demented,
Doing the same thing over & over, yet
Expecting a different outcome.
Woe is ******* me!
Another neurotic, myopic, ganglia misfire;
A behaviorist might point out there must be some kind of
Reinforcement going on, seeing I keep
Coming back, going back for more,
Like a lab rat still pushing the lever
Long after the food pellets are gone.
Oh yes! Call me Angie the
Out of control downhill racer.
It’s bipolar moguls & roller coasters,
Another Six Flags ski weekend,
A Stowe, Vermont Coney Island of the Mind for
Angelina Delvecchio, shimmy,
Shimmy Cocoa Pops.

Is it just imagination, or
Is Wal-Mart running out of
**** to put on their shelves?
I swear.
(And I intend on cee-ceeing
Elizabeth Warren with this.)
So, you want to do something
About inequality in America?
So, you want to give the working stiffs,
A Fighting Chance,
Is that the name of
Your book, Senator Liz?
I’ve heard it all before:
It’s Hope & Change Redux, Babaloo!
(And don’t get me started on Osama Obama.)
Here’s my plan:
You go aisle to aisle in any Superstore
With a little notepad and pencil.
Every time you see some
Large plastic *******,
Realizing they sell
15 million of  ‘em every year,
All made by some ****-***** in China.
QUESTION: So, what do you do, Mr. Policy Wonk?
ANSWER: Federally-subsidize the
Building & Operation of a plant
Manufacturing that **** right here in Detroit.
Or Atlanta, or Hartford,
Cleveland or Fitchburg,
Or even Oakland,
Where San Francisco poor continue to squeeze.
(Don’t get me started on Urban Gentrification.)
Trust me on this:
AMERICAN JOBS
Will deodorize everything that
Stinks about The Economy.
“Capital Flight Gone Global:
Invest where Labor comes cheap.
Export those American jobs again & again.”
QUESTION: What’s the difference
Between a middle-class person
And a poor person in America?
A middle-class job,
*******!
But I digress.
I was sharing an observation:
Wal-Mart’s shelves are
Not as luscious, as they once were.
Gaps left for
PINEAPPLE CHUNKS,
With only CRUSHED PINEAPPLE
Cans in stock, e.g.
So much for that On-line,
Real-time,
Instant supply-chain,
Super-duper
Inventory system, Mr. Walton.
Arkansas wasn’t such a good idea, after all.
Was it Mr. Sam?

CRV: California Redemption Value?
Nice euphemistic cover-up for a TAX.
Nice, nice, very nice, CA elected state officials;
Nicely done, Sacramento.
Everywhere else in the country you get real money—
A fixed number of pennies, nickels, or dimes—
For your plastic bottles and aluminum cans.
But in California, the licensed recyclers
Get to pull the market price out of their *** each morning.
California Redemption Value?
What ******* genius
Government kleptocrat thought that one up?
Conspiracy Alert: who gets all that CRV money?
And what are they doing with it?

This poem is for Baby Boomers,
Most of us collecting Social Security
By now, many of us already retired in
Some shape or form, blessed by
Blessed Be, those defined benefit
Schemes we indentured ourselves,
Shackled to for so many years.
Now it's money every month for life,
A pension adjusted to the cost of living,
Inflation-proof as they say.
But who's to judge
When quality of life has its own
Net present value?

But we remain comfortable as they say,
With Social Security and VA benefits,
And the Roth-IRA,
The muni bonds and annuities, quite comfortable,
Thank you very much.
But just how comfortable?
Admittedly, much of my
Wellbeing, drug and/or alcohol-induced.
Prozac in the morning,
Xanax, as needed later,
Medical cannabis--preposterously legal in California,
And that reliable trio: beer, wine & hard liquor--
Scotch & Soda, my oblivion, my River Lethe--
And Ambien,
GENERIC NAME: ZOLPIDEM,
To sleep, perchance to dream.

Yes, of course, I am medicated.
Yes, without doubt,
I am mighty high.
And yes, I feel mighty good.
I deserve to.
I earned it.
Do I dare disturb my universe?
Try ******, just to see
What all the fuss was all about?
65: perhaps a suitable age for
The LSD trip I dared not take at 20.
No, a lifetime of bourgeois caution,
Years of playing it safe,
Mock me, even as they
Serve me in retirement;
Serve me well for the
Miles ahead before I sleep.
Serve me well for the
Miles ahead before I sleep.
Bite me, Robert Frost!
Do you ******* stutter?
Of course, I experience some difficulty
Coming up with a good reason for
Getting out of bed in the morning.
But who doesn’t at my age?

My Hemet porch:  so
Serene this time of year.
I require no western sunset,
No cool Pacific Ocean breeze or
Shoreline vista to soothe me now.
I’ve sailed the seven seas.
I've crossed the lines.
I am a square-knot sailor.
Initiated by Neptune himself,
I am Bluenose & Golden Shellback,
And sundry other salty achievements,
Crisscrossed on Mercator’s grid.
I've been wowed by spectral majesty,
Moonrise at sea, stars streaking,
I’ve rolled toward Tahitian beaches on
Sultry tides and currents,
To Polynesia in late austral summer.
I’ve sailed with Coleridge.
"Eftsoons," I ate the bird that flipped the bird.
Upon a painted sailing ship; upon a
Paint-by-number ocean.
Southward I fled, to
Fire and ice, and finally,
Atonement.
I am forgiven now, for
Having flipped my wig, at the
Bird that brought the
Fog and mist, and all the
Rest pulled from ***, of
Meshuggener, greybeard loon;
Crazy mariner's rhyme,
Perchance, to rime?
I flipped the bird, again.

I have no complaints.
Life owes me nothing.
Of course, I have trouble
Coming up with new excuses for
Getting off my bed each day.
But who doesn't at our age?

About an hour later she slipped
Yuri Andropov into the conversation:
“I have to drop off a blouse at the dry cleaners.”
Suddenly it was May Day &
I’m back in Red Square,
Dwarfed beneath larger than life
Lenin, Engels & Marx mug shots.
Inter-continental ballistic lorry loads
Roll past the reviewing stand, while
Geezer Reds in Ushanka fur hats,
****** on Stoli, reeking of borscht,
Chain-smoke cheap Soviet Belomors.
I share these thoughts, handing
Mrs. Khrushchev the car keys.
Having cowered herself in terror,
Having ducked & covered many
Burial promises & shoe-pound threats,
She gives me a tired babushka smirk.
We are conjugal Cold Warriors,
Both weary now, creeping up on 70,
Skirmishes & brinksmanship behind us.
Tolerant of each other at last;
Lukewarm détente between us.

It’s the Shiite Protestants we fear the most.
It’s the neo-**** Christians
Scaring the **** out of us now.
It’s those John Birch Catholics
Making us fill our boots with ***,
As in shaking, quaking in our boots,
Complete loss of bladder control
(BLAD-CON MED AD HERE.
I invite Pfizer, Merck and GlaxoSmithKline
To get in on this poem:
The poet continuing to reject the
Dying in the gutter-artist track,
Making poetry pay at last, that’s right:
A commercial right in the
Middle of a ******* poem.
Hey Big Pharma:
What are you selling?
What you got for incontinence, Babaloo?)
But I digress.
I was making a point about
Far-right Christian evangelicals,
A significant demographic within the
American electorate.
Jesus was an Aryan, they believe.
Degenerate Art, Literature, Music & Jews must go!
It’s time to purify the race again.
Time for the Huns &
Other Teutonic tribes to
Broadcast insidious seed.
Anti-Semitism rebooted.
Jew-bashing in America 8.0.
Need I remind the Tea Party that
Haym Solomon-- a Philadelphia Jew--
Financed the Revolution.
What about Bernie Madoff?
When a smart Jew goes to jail in America,
Anything could happen.

I recently agreed to leave my body to science
In return for free cremation & disposal services.
But I insisted on one small qualifier,
A precise stipulation that
The first-year medical student, to which
My cadaver is assigned,
Be female & lovely,
Brilliant & curious,
Fevered & insane,
Seeking a miracle cure for broken hearts.
The damaged among us,
Yearn for a magic elixir,
Some long lost potion,
Arcane & miraculous,
Insightful & perfect in simplicity.
A man who truly loved women,
My last woman dissects me,
I, a species of man she would master.
Cuts out my heart and weighs it,
Divines my psychology from slice of spleen.
Or liver, toxic, cirrhotic,
Surely, random entrails hold some key to me.
I--in all my incandescent incongruity--
Must render up some gender-specific clue,
As to what it is men really want;
Proving, again, the simplest answer is best.

Isn’t it strange that the same bloodlust
Which feeds the *** drive, drives
Deep into one’s Egyptian appetite,
Feeds deep, deep around the campfire at night,
Flames of carnal desire: and by carnal, I mean
Literally a yearning for rib-eye steaks,
Pork sirloin & Horse Meat.
Horse meatballs.
Horse sausage.
Horse stew.
Hi-** Silver & Trigger,
Fury & My Friend Flicka, &
Lest we forget:  The Famous Mr. Ed.
Oh Wilbur, I'm talking about Horse Cuisine!
(God Bless the French!)
Dartagnan & Brigitte, typical post war
Parisians with slim pickens
(No relation to the actor)
Survivors with little to choose from
Whatever scroungy edibles offered on the pushcart.
The one good thing about those years, you might ask?
It was a jubilee time, a precursor to
Lean Cuisine & Weight Watchers
Jenny Craig & Nutrisystem, & the lovely
Marie Osmond looking especially edible lately
Having dropped a dumb-bell 50 pounds, yet
Still crammed tightly in Spanx.
“Hey Marie, it’s good to be the King!”
I am Mel Brooks ******* you,
From behind, History of the World: Part I.
Marie is looking  tasty, n'est–ce pas?
France after WWI and WWII: a starving time,
Yet ironically a meat-eater's ****.
The French Cavalry, no longer needed,
It meant liquidation of the local Lipizzaners,
War-weary, would-be Man o’ Wars,
Secretariats, Seattle Slews, & California Chromes,
Shot twice in the head,
Carcasses hung & butchered.
But I digress. Or do I?
MEAT: gives the same ecstatic rush as ***,
Carnival Season, a pre-Lenten animal s’morgasm,
Identical, as nourishing as, perhaps as
A horse of a different color: ***?
SEE ME/FEEL ME: ****** cheeks, dripping jowls;
Shredded flesh betwixt my teeth—oh yes!
I confess that among my forebears,
(Not to be confused with The Three Bears,
Which would, of course, be a whole 'nother story)
Somewhere ‘long the spiral helix
Was a seriously carnivorous naked ape,
Some troglodyte Alley Oop, evolving over Time,
Into a reptilian, puffed-up, junior broker,
Impressing some ***** 21 year-old
In some Chichi Manhattan bistro, trumping
The waiter's or waitress’s shopworn query with:
******!
A fresh ****:
****** & still warm.

Another starlit Hemetucky night,
Finds me listening to one of my many,
Many Bonnie Raitt CDs.
Metaphorically speaking,
We must lick her ****.
Give her the recognition
She indubitably deserves.
10 GRAMMYs?
Listed as number 50 in
Rolling Stone Magazine's
100 Greatest Singers of All Time;
Number 89 on their list of the
100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time!
Lists? We humans love lists.
The HUAC loved lists also.
And while we’re on the subject of lists,
What list has your name been added to?
A statistical anomaly worthy of further
Investigation by our Big Brother in Bluff, UT,
Those guys tracking anyone goo-goo,
Googling my name, my poetry,
The poetry of Giuseppi Martino Buonaiuto,
My UNpublished poetry, i.e.,
By definition, nothing in print,
Nothing between book covers,
Nothing you can get your hands on.
Merely cyber-effervescence,
An Off World ether,
An ether although vaporous,
A digital fingerprint, nonetheless:
Quickly identifiable,
Easily reducible,
An entirely redacted,
Boiled down, cooked down roux.
A roux you’ll rue? Perhaps.
Not to mention the kanga roo,
ROO as in secret, offshore
Kangaroo courtrooms.

So know, know you’re on a list.
One of numerous Watch Lists
Watched by the Watchers who
Watch people like us.
So, if you’re reading this online,
Don’t say I didn’t frickin warn you.

BONNIE RAITT:
Of particular interest is her brilliant cover of –
Her complete musical reupholstering of--
Del Shannon’s neonatal 60s-era classic:
“Runaway.”
That twang slide-bass intro.
That harmonica squeal hovering above;
Those long, pulsing instrumentals
Punctuating her grit.  Her heart.
Her dark & lonely childhood
That drew her to true roots music.
Like me, born in 1949--
Unlike me: in Burbank, California.
Daughter of Broadway Musical Star
John Raitt: a true Roadie,
If ever there was one
Bonnie sent to private Quaker schools,
Banished to pricey summer camps.
Routine experience for any child of
Successful entertainers on the road,
Again. (Sing it, Willie!)
Bonnie: denied nothing but
Parental time invested.
Consumed by a drive to
Get the man’s attention,
Daddy’s little girl,
Addicted to ******. Fade out:
“I wah-wah-wah-wah wonder.
If you will stay, my run, run, run
My little runaway,
Come back baby,
My runaway.”

So I'm drinking the red wine
I had those cut-up peaches
Soaking, fermenting in for 3 days.
A nice summer evening buzz,
Just back from my evening walk
Within the gates of my over-55
Lunatic Asylum.
On my rear porch in Hemetucky,
I chaise lounge the hours,
Listening to the mourning dove
Nesting in the bottlebrush bush.
I know she's there, having
Fired thru my duck blind,
My latest weapon of choice,
My new-fangled Flex Hose,
It expands when turned on.
Which got me thinking that the
Flex Hose inventor guy must have
Whacked off a lot as a teenager.
An Alex Portnoy protege, perhaps,
If familiar with Roth's book.
Portnoy's Complaint:
Most of us read it;
Some of us lived it.
It is pointless to speculate.
12 ft. Flexible Water Hose with
Nozzle-flxh-25 (4-00268...Home Depot
www.homedepot.com/p/12-ft-Flexible...
Hose-with.../204818892/The Home Depot
Rating: 1.8 - ‎14 reviews - ‎$19.97 - ‎In stock
"The Flexible hose automatically expands with water flow and contracts back to its original shape for storage. Lightweight and durable. The Flexible Hose will ..."
(That's right, a commercial right in the
Middle of the ******* poem.
This Poet refusing to die in the gutter,
Having finally figured out how to
MAKE POETRY PAY.)
But I digress.

And leave it to Turturro
To steal the movie again,
A tour-de-force in a single character,
Repeatedly, consistently . . .
Except maybe one time.
"Raging Bull" 1980:
Turturro was "Man at Table,"
Uncredited, of course,
A man of no words,
A role difficult, constraining for any
Would-be Richard Burton,
Some shrew-taming Petruchio,
Over the top & out of a job,
Again.
Ask any director who
Directed in the 1950s and 60s?
"Difficult to handle," says Unanimous,
Auteurs & Schlock Filmmakers,
Alike.
Turturro too, needs special handling,
Or Jesus Quintana will chew up the scenery,
Emilio Lopez will be sneaky-sneaky-sneaky,
Materializing without warning over & over
Again.
Turturro: veteran of 60+ films,
Barton Fink, Miller's Crossing,
Fading ******, The Color of Money,
Do the Right Thing,
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Turturro TV: Frazier, Monk & Miami Vice.
And others.

Turturro: a Brooklyn boy, Italian,
Roman-Catholic, the son of Katherine,
An amateur jazz singer who worked in a
Navy yard during World War II, &
Nicholas Turturro, a carpenter &
Construction worker who fought as a
Navy sailor on D-Day.
Turturro: attended the State University of
New York at New Paltz, completed his
MFA at the Yale School of Drama.
A life most worthy, capped off with
Amedeo & Diego, his two sons.

So, I'd like to thank The Academy,
In advance yet decades overdue:
A Lifetime Achievement Award, Johnny.
Recognition over the long haul.

Like Winston Smith,
I think it’s time to start a diary.
Follow me now:  it’s April in Oceania,
The cruelest month,
The silly season, printemps,
A regular I see London, I see France.
I see Winston’s Underpants.
If you catch my drift?
La Primavera: Vivaldi’s rocking the
Juke box and the vote, Botticelli’s painting,
A mural on Jerusalem's wailing wall.
My diary will be hard evidence of thought crime.
Thought crime: one of the more severe varieties of
Religious experience & the most psychotic form of mental illness,
In a category known as antisocial personality disorders.
Thought crime means never getting into any serious trouble,
Until you’re caught, can we at least agree on that?
So, we'd better add the DSM to our stack of essential literary classics.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,
Published by the American Psychiatric Association,
Providing a common language,
A shrink’s Esperanto.
DSM-IV codes classify mental disorders.
The DSM: a Frommer’s travel guide &
User’s manual for life on planet Earth.
So, like Orwell's Winston, I start a diary of my own; but
Unlike Mr. Smith, I address my message to the here &
What’s happening now, not the future, not the past but
N-a-zayer, N-a-zither NOW.
That's right, I write for the present:
“If thought was ever free, it is not free now."
If truth exists it is a closely guarded secret,
Although McLuhan’s observations hide in plain sight:
“The new electronic interdependence, recreates
The world in the image of a global village.”
Which makes us all global village idiots.
We are no longer different from one another;
The age of groupthink is here.
I write to you from an age of security & surveillance,
Warrantless search and predator drones,
An age where no man is ever truly alone.
From an age of standardization, replaceable parts,
Whirling dervishes, dabblers in spin control,
Newspeak and doublespeak,
Atlas shrugged, drugged and fugged,
The new world order:
All but the faint of heart need apply, …
*"I send greetings.”

We cross our bridges
When we come to them.
We burn our bridges behind us.
Why don't we just
Burn our **** bridges
When we get there?
Saves & lot of wear & tear,
*Non c'est pas?

Am I worth using one?
Your diminishing stock of
Off-the market means of
Birth control?
How shall I love thee?
Let me digitize the ways.
Let me linguistically persuade.
******-the-Woman:
A sport I came late to.
Or early, such as it was so often.
Early, not late & soon, if you
Want your Wordsworth.
Why weren’t there courses?
Why didn’t we learn?
Why weren’t we taught?
Those junior high school
Curriculum directors sure
Missed the boat.

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.

It’s getting to be that
I gotta get ****** just to go
Super market shopping these days.
Medication de rigueur,
Just to brave the dazed & demolished
Faces of forlorn fiends,
Those 400 SAT score & scoured souls
Stuck all this time in the
Lower middle classes.
Down for the count,
A toothpaste tube-squeezing cohort,
Squishing out the last dollop
Of Colgate Optic White
From their menial, un-redemptive misery;
Caught on a crumbling ledge,
Soon to fall even lower--
Darwin’s social Ziggurat
Still happily-ever-crazy,
After-all-these-years.
Meanwhile, the rich,
The few, that lucky few,
Get ever more clever, ever more rich,
Devising sinister tricks & subterfuges,
To wit: exterminate inflation
While simultaneously jacking prices,
Higher prices weekly.
Double-digit inflation:
The Obama Administration’s
Best kept Official Secret.
Meanwhile the poor know better,
Grow more bitter each day.
It's not even subtle anymore.
Everything costs more.
Everything is expensive
When you have no money to buy.
Roaming the grocery aisles,
Predator packs,
Reminiscing the good old days,
When a job seemed a birthright,
Apple pie:  no longer as American as . . .
Dazed and ragged like Zombies,
They roam the cornucopia,
Carnal grins on ravenous lips,
“Clean-up on Aisle 5,”
Screams the cashier.

When I was young & poor,
I ate a lot of cold spaghetti.
I don't think I learned
Anything from such a diet,
Such as it was.

Care to elaborate?
There are so many.
Colin Kaepernick, e.g.,
Trying so hard to work the
African-American community--
A useful constituency--to wit:
Barack Obama, no stranger to *******.
Then there's Donald Trump:
Like Andy Dufresne who "crawled
Through a river of ****," he expects to
Come out "Clean on the other side."
And lest we forget: Hilary.
Mrs. Clinton uses ******* like magic.
She's Cruella Deville disguised as
Glinda the Good Witch in Oz.
Just ask Bill.

Hey, it’s ten o’clock,
Time for another snort,
The Elixir: Clan MacGregor
“Blended Scotch Whisky,”
Spelled without the e,
“Imported from Scotland,
Distilled, aged, blended &
Shipped, by Alexander MacGregor & CO.,”
Our boys in Glasgow
“Mixing up the medicine
I'm on the pavement
Thinking about the government.”
(Read more: www.bobdylan.com/  us/songs/subterranean-homesick-blues#ixzz3aKTl­eIUb http://www.bobdylan.com/  us/songs/subterranean-homesick-blues#ix­zz3aKTleIUb)
To quote my pal, Rabbi Zimm,
Which is what we called Dylan
Back home in Minnesota.
No wonder he left town.
He’s been heard to blame the winters,
But I know it was the rabid,
Anti-Semitism, driving
Robert Allen Zimmerman
(Hebrew name שבתאי זיסל בן אברהם
[Shabtai Zisl ben Avraham]),
Driving his escape outta town.
It was virulent Jew hatred
Driving him away,
Exiling him from Duluth.
But, I digress.

I have written this morning’s poem
Many times before, giving it the title
“BUKOWSKI MORNINGS” last time.
I get my Clan MacGregor at
Wal-Mart, $16.97, 1.75 liter,
40% ALC./VOL. (80 PROOF).
Another astonishing value &
Habit I can afford.
One more shining example of
Walton Family benevolence,
Give us our daily bread,
Give to us,
Us the many,
The many shamed 99%.
The Walton crystal ball,
Anticipating the future way back when.
Going even so far as to
Sponsor a beloved family TV show,
1972 – 2010?
Is a run like that, fecking possible?
Still broadcast today,
Hallmark Channel.
The Waltons:  John Boy, Olivia
Grandma Esther &
Grandpa Zebulon,
Played by, his Reverence,
The cherished Will Geer.
How could you not esteem The Waltons?
The Walton Family: shrewd grocers of
Bentonville, Arkansas?
Lovable Sam—the one with the Club—
The association, not the clubfoot
Nor, the giant troglodyte club,
Wielded by Old Sam--
Mr. Walton, truly a swinging-****
In his day, intergalactic, a Mega-chain
Retailer of “a vast selection of Food, Apparel,
Home Goods & Electronics, not to mention
Garden shrubs & Patio Furniture.”
Again, I digress.

Clan MacGregor: no single malt liquor;
No Glenfiddich “Robert the Bruce Flagon,” $300 bottle;
No Balvenie “21 Year Old Port Wood Finish,” $200.00.  
No Laphroaig, no Glenlivet.
No Highland, no Lowland,
No Islay, nor Speyside . . . for me.
Not one drop of single-malted
Mist of the moors shall pass my lips.
Maybe I don’t know any better?
More likely, I can’t afford to,
Scotch snorting snobs be-******,
Clan MacGregor does the job nicely,
Nicely, thank you very much.

Of course human blood is sweet!
How else could they get us to eat meat?
We are carnivorous by design, &
Any feeble gesture of Vegan defiance,
Is seen as a threat to the species.
Vegetarians are mocked, marginalized,
Or made vestigial.

Of course human blood is salty!
Oozing red, warm and syrupy.
I am lion-hearted Mufasa,
Swaggering ‘cross the savannah,
Licking savory hemoglobin off my jowls,
My *****, swinging in the breeze.

Sitting on my back porch,
Hemet in April once again,
My garden abloom:
Bright reds and orange,
Purple, blues & white, &
Of course, green everywhere.
Last night in her loving arms,
A tune still fresh this morning—
Background music in my mind.
(The Pointer Sisters - Slow Hand - YouTube Artist: The Pointer Sisters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnVOt2LK2Gg  Album: Black & White Released: 1981 Full lyrics on GooglePlay Nominations: Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals)
($Ka-Ching! Ka-Ching!$
The poet finally figuring out
How To Make Poetry Pay:
Sell ad space right in the middle
Of the ******* poem!$)

Lyrics: “I want a man with a slow hand/
I want a lover with an easy touch/
I want somebody who will spend some time/
Not come and go in a heated rush…”

Did Anita Pointer ever ******* nail it?
An instructional instruction manual for men,
What women really want,
Never so explicably explained:    
“It’s the ****, Stupid!”
McLuhan: the massage is the message,
Literally, cliterally,
The Pause That refreshes.

(The Pause That Refreshes - More Than A Minute morethanaminute.com/ the-pause-that-refreshes. Coca Cola first introduced this marketing slogan more than 80 years ago. If you ask me, they were way ahead of their time. More & ...”

$Ka-Ching, Babaloo!$

12/10/2012:
A very mellow day,
A day that makes one’s golden years actually golden.
Happy in retirement?
There’s a joke:
You slave like Spartacus in the Libyan salt mines for 30 or 40 or even 50
years, and now you’re supposed to re-calibrate the machine, re-gauge
one’s anatomy and metabolism for a habitat so far and away grindstone
gone.
The muckrakers Studs Terkel and Barbara Ehrenreich remind us:
Work is the only thing we can do for 8 hours, other than sleep.
Perchance even to dream out that Roman **** or Bacchanal.
No, alas, 4 hours is the legal limit for an ******* lasting that long,
During all our joy-juiced carnal desires,
Be they under the elms or elsewhere.
Cialis! ******!
Names already living it up in infamy.

A simple truth about Retirement:

Stop working and die.
A most intense public service announcement,
A vast digital image out of Yeats,
A very special Spiritus Mundi P-S-A.
Targeting Baby Boomers, especially:
“You better find yourself something,
Or someone to occupy your mind.”
Brought to you by the good people at
OCCUPY BRAIN STREET,
First a national, then a veritable global movement,
However so short-lived;
Like all the others.
Oh, Boomers, your attention span is down to 8 minutes.
Your mnemonic links are frayed and tattered,
Your hard drive noodle fragmented,

Yet still whirring white noise jazz.
A New Orleans Dixieland funeral,
And Al-Zheim trumpet blast to go out on.

Well, I don’t know about the rest of you,
But I am relatively well adjusted in retirement.
And today—previously mentioned as a mellow day--
Today is one reason why.
As is medical marijuana and the sultry voice of Chrissie Hynde,
With or without her band of Pretenders.
And let’s throw in a lovely bottle of Temecula red wine--
Doffo, if you’re going to get fussy on me,
Another blithe distraction cultivated and custom-made for old age.
Indeed, a very mellow day.

That scene at the end of “Gorky Park.”
Arkady lets the sables run free,
A Tchaikovsky soundtrack and
Irina’s voiceover: “One day . . . one day.”

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?

A smooth jazz blast from the musical past:
The confused ethnomusicology,
The pleasantly discordant riffs and
Jingles of "Hiroshima"—
The band not the bomb site—
Whose fusion sound
Evokes an insane sextet
Granting membership, inexplicably to
Schroeder-- the Peanuts loony tune—
Hitting only the black keys of his piano,
His miniature keyboard
Sour, melodious & pure.
I am reading Ayn Rand’s
"Introduction to the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition"
Of The Fountainhead, 1993;
An important 20th Century novel, I am told,
A book first copyrighted—
That’s copyrighted spelled without a W—
First copyrighted in 1943,
A copyright renewed in 1971,
By Ayn herself;
An important book--
Whether you’ve bought into her
Man-worshiping atheism—
Or not.
I write these words on the back of a business envelope,
The only paper to be found in this house,
Not ironic, while pondering
A wireless laptop charging,
Plugged in far away on a kitchen countertop.
Lying on a couch in northern New Mexico,
It is an Ides of March 2014 mid-afternoon.
I am 64 years old.
Old enough to know better;
Growing more conservative each day,
With Ayn, I celebrate he who never gives up,
“By spitting in one’s own face,
And damning existence.”
The Fountainhead:
She called the book a “GUIDEPOST,”
A reminder of man’s noble vision,
Proclaiming man in noble glory.
A Sartre you were not, Ayn.
How interesting to think of
The two of you, co-temporaries,
Aspirating the same Earth atmosphere.
This fact itself, an astonishing example of
"Weltanschaung" polarity.
No wonder the world is so ****** up.

His name was Father Harrigan.
He was so poor at the seminary . . .
Ireland’s flagship seminary,
Erin’s last remaining seminary,
Maynooth College near Dublin,
Once a network of theological schools
Exporting priests worldwide,
Struggling today to
Produce enough priests for
The shrinking next generation of
Irish Catholics . . .
He was so poor upon
Sacrament of Holy Orders,
He accepted a first post to Argentina,
Where he met a young Pope Francis,
“The Talking Mule,” as he was
Mocked back then, back in
The student lounge,
Universidad del Salvador,
A Jesuit institution,
Buenos Aires.
But I digress.

Father Harrigan made friends easily.
It wasn’t too long before
He had his choice assignment—
His coveted next assignment--
North America--specifically the
Boston Archdiocese,
For any ***** Irishman
A land of carnal opportunity &
Never Ending Corn Beef
& Cabbage Bowl®,
($Ka-Ching! Finally making poetry pay!$)
The Olive Garden.

Southie was where it all got
Started in 5th Grade, Elementary,
Our Lady of Tipperary, the
Spring talent show.
His mother convinced him to sing
One of George M. Cohan’s tune, i.e.
A tune by His Eminence
“Yankee Doodle Dandy,”
A song called "Harrigan."

“H, A, Double-R-I, G-A-N spells Harrigan,
Proud of all the Irish blood that's in me . . .”

What better way to ingratiate
Himself to his parish,
Or his parish priest to his family?
Father Seamus Harrigan:
Built like John Candy, RIP.
A fat Irish slob,
A captive of his appetites,
Including one for boys.
That guy should be given
Kennedy Center Honors, for
Giving the gift that keeps on giving:
That first exquisite blow-job,
Which in subsequent years
Defined my taste for women
Capable of perfection.

We WOPs respect criminality,
Particularly when it’s organized,
Which explains why any of us
Concerned with the purity of our bloodline
Have such a difficult time
Navigating the river of respectability.
To wit: JOEY GALLO.
WEB-BIO: (According to Bob Dylan)
“Born in Red Hook, Brooklyn in the year of who knows when,
Opened up his eyes to the tune of accordion.”

    “Joey” Lyrics/Send "Joey" Ringtone to your Cell

Joseph Gallo was a celebrated New York City gangster,
A made member of the Profaci crime family,
Later known as the Colombo crime family,
Also known as "Joe the Blond."
That’s right, CRAZY JOE!
One time toward the end of a 10-year stretch,
At three different state prisons,
Including Attica Correctional Facility in Attica, New York,
Joey was interviewed in his prison cell
By a famous NY Daily News reporter named Joe McGinnis.
The first thing the reporter sees?
One complete wall of the cell is lined with books, a
Green leather bound wall of Harvard Classics.
After a few hours mainly listening to Joey
Wax eloquently about his life,
A narrative spiced up with elegant summaries,
Of classic Greek theory, Roman history,
Nietzsche and other 19th Century German philosophers,
McGinnis is completely blown away by Inmate Gallo,
Both Joey’s erudition and the power of his intellect,
The reporter asks a question right outta
The Discrete Charm of the Bourgeoisie:
“Mr. Gallo, I must say,
The power of your erudition and intellect
Is simply overwhelming.
You are a brilliant man.
You could have been anything,
Your heart or ambition desired:
A doctor, a lawyer, an architect . . .
Yet you became a criminal. Why?”

Joey Gallo: (turning his head sideways like Peter Falk or Vincent Donofrio, with a look on his face like Go Back to Nebraska, You ******* Momo!)
“Understand something, Sonny:
Those kids who grew up to be,
Doctors and lawyers and architects . . .
They couldn’t make it on the street.”

Gallo later initiated one of the bloodiest mob conflicts,
Since the 1931 Castellammare War,
And was murdered as a result of it,
While quietly enjoying,
A plate of linguini with clam sauce,
At a table, normally a serene table
At Umberto’s Clam House.
Italian Restaurant Little Italy - Umbertos Clam House (www.umbertosclamhouse.com) In Little Italy New York City 132 Mulberry Street, New York City | 212-431-7545.
Whose current manager --in response to all restaurant critics--
Has this to say:
*“They keep coming back, don’t they?
The joint is a holy shrine, for chrissakes!
I never claimed it was the food or the service.
Gimme a ******* break, you momo!
I should ask my paisan, Joe Pesci
To put your ******* head in a vise.”