Oops, I crapped my pants, again!
Good thing I wear Pampers at work.
That's shift life at the chicken processing plant.
Next time you scarf down McNuggets,
Think of me.

“Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room.   Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America—not on the battlefields of Vietnam.”                              Marshall McLuhan

You understand where I'm coming from,
Reader Rabbit, you twisted ****? Maybe not;
While you and your boy/girlfriend, later your wife/husband,
Were ******* backpacks around Europe,
I was of a less fortunate, less frivolous cohort,
Like the poor, who always miss the fun stuff.
So I stayed home and waited, dreading time,
Treading water in Queens,
Doing the graveyard shift at the Wonder Bread Bakery in Jamaica,
(No, not that Jamaica, mun.)
Building bodies 12 ways, and sweating out the inevitable,
Praying to my lesser god not to hear from my local draft board.
And who was I to disturb the universe?
“It ain’t me, it ain't me, I ain't no senator's son;
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate one, lawd naw.”
(Send  "Fortunate Son" Ringtone to your Cell)  
I was just another cynical working-class hero,
Unlike you, numb nuts, and the rest of your silver surfer friends.
I knew I’d wind up without my teddy bear,
Convinced I’d end up sans security blanket,
With no ****-vacant musical chair,
To plop my sorry non-exempt, 1A **** cheeks
Down into when the music stopped,
When the music’s over, turn out the light--Jim Morrison,
Lizard King--turn out the light.
My horse, my horse . . . no wait . . . **** the horse . . .
My kingdom, my kingdom for a 2-S college deferment!
What kingdom?  
What was it Jesus said?
Not of this earth, anyway.
Colonial Indochina: rich man's war, poor man's fight;
It was such an efficient way to rid trash from poor neighborhoods.

Needless to say, I’ve been having a little trouble adjusting ever since,
Since I got back from that Kafkaesque Disneyland Jungle Cruise,
My personal Cold War thriller,
My Tecumseh Sherman “War is All Hell” war,
My war: 45 years ago next week.
These things take time:
So says the recorded message on the VA’s PTSD Hotline.
45 years ago I packed up my duffle,
Packed for what I thought was going to be my last time in uniform,
Grabbed my Army discharge papers, and
Limp-dicked out the side door of,
The Veterans Hospital in St. Albans, County of Queens.
I’d like to say I never looked back. But I’d be lying.

(cue PSA: VA Reaches Out to Veterans:
The Department of Veterans Affairs will begin,
Contacting nearly 570,000 recent combat veterans May 1,
To ensure they know about VA's medical services and other benefits.)

Today and every day is 11-11, Veterans Day—
What gets me now is that all my time since The Nam,
Is on average two lifetimes,
For all those sent home, bagged and tagged.
Is it survivor’s guilt? I doubt it.

You may not understand this, but I miss that freaky jungle.
I felt safe there.
How quickly I learned to expect the unexpected,
And that meant to expect the worse,
Finding my comfort zone the more uncomfortable, the worse it got.
I miss the wet weight of the air,
The cloying heat and humidity.
Humidity: a plain and simple meteorological miracle,
When you have plenty of time to really think about it,
Which I did: 365 days and a wake-up.
You know that whole gorgeous hydrologic cycle thing?
I miss the rain, the sound of falling rain.
I miss the other sounds, every buzz and click,
All the arcane and dismal things that go screech in the night.
And that relentless insect hum,
The jungle vibrating and intense,
The colors vibrating too, especially that electric green,
A green so vivid, every leaf and vine,
"The world's richest repository of terrestrial biodiversity,” I read in some nature magazine,
Lying naked in bed while my therapist ****** me off the other day.
All those freaky creatures great and small,
Every miraculous living thing that’s really alive and thriving.
And this is why--I think,
Getting obnoxiously philosophical for the moment,
This explains why it got to be so easy to waste what was alive and thriving over there, including and especially our selves.

Death never seemed that permanent, that final over there.
And besides, you couldn’t **** anything for that long,
The critters all looking their wet and slimy same.  
Two minutes in The **** and you were
Killing every ******* gnat and bug,
Every leech and snake, anything &
Anyone that just looked at you sideways.

And the flora? Did I mention the flora?
Soupy Sales: (Smack! Bam!)  “I told you not to mention that.”
The flora:  the plants grew back and they grew back quick.
You chop a path on recon and the next day it’s not there anymore,
So you chop the whole way back to the L-Z.  
Chop, chop, Hop Sing!
You were one smart ****, Hop Sing,
Safe and sound in Lake Tahoe, Nevada-side,
Cooking up Ponderosa pork bellies for,
The Cartwright Clan: Ben, Adam, Hoss & Little Joe.
Meanwhile, I’m not earning any frequent flyer miles,
Aboard a chartered TWA, coffee-tea-or-me,
Royal **** airplane to Saigon,
A place called ** Chi Minh City today.
I remember looking around at the faces on that airplane,
As we landed at Tan Son Nhut,
Those forlorn godforsaken faces,
Black and Chicano and poor white trash boys.
Scared shitless, of course,
But we really were jolly green giants over there,
American conquistadors, Cortez and the Boys,
Seeking gold and glory and, of course,
*******, (www.urbandictionary.com):
That sweet wet hole we all crave,
Can't go for too long without,
Center of our life's desire,
What gives women the upper hand in almost every situation,
Except when you pay in South Vietnamese piastres,
Your basic exchange rate $3.00 *******.

Yes, we were American conquistadors,
But traveling light this trip,
Our black-robed Jesuit fathers having missed the flight.
That’s right, for us no Ad majorem Dei gloriam this time,
Our mission so simple and so clear:
SEARCH & DESTROY.
But mostly, Destroy.

And pretty soon you worked your way up the evolutionary ladder,
From bugs, to fish, to frogs and snakes,
Small varmints and reptiles, birds and rodents;
And by the time you taxonomy out to the runway,
You’re pretty much whacking anything that moves,
Anything you feel like, pretty much any time,
All the time, sometimes just to pass the time,
Just to break up the ******* monotony of it all.
So making the anti-personnel leap got sort of easy:
They all looked the same, didn’t they?
They all wore the same pajamas,
And it was never conducive to grunt longevity,
To nitpick the civilians from the soldiers,
Never a good idea to waste time distinguishing friend from foe.

Good Morning, Vietnam:
We really were nerve-gassed-Adrian Cronauers over there,
G-2 Army oxymoronic intelligence stiffs,
Having a little difficulty finding the enemy,
Having one hell of a time finding a Vietnamese man named "Charlie."
They're all named Nguyen, or Tran, or Thanh or Trong or Bao or Phuc . . .
Oh, ****, I get it now.
I grok the how and why,
Of all the names we’ve used for centuries to dehumanize the enemy:
***** and Nips, Chinks and Slopes,
Huns and Krauts, Redskins and Ivans,
Redcoats and Rebs, Zulus and Mau Maus, *****, Ragheads and Sand ******* . . .
To dehumanize is to be dehumanized.
Nominal dehumanization; linguistic trickery.
It made it easy . . .
Well, easier . . .
To **** you.

What was it Pope Innocent III’s legate advised?
“**** Them All.  Let God sort ‘em out.”

Is it smell of burning flesh that makes me so digress?

Yes, I miss that freaky jungle, my friend.
I miss knowing what to expect and what was to be expected.
And most of all I miss that absolute confidence,
My self-liberating soporific certainty,
That I did not give a **** whether I lived or died,
And no one else did either.
I miss the peaceful place to go,
Coping with fear by letting go,
By writing off my life,
My future "in-country,"
My 12-month tour of duty,
My 365 T.S. Eliot Ash Wednesdays,
Learning to care and not to care,
Cultivating indifference as to,
Whether or not I ever made it Wee, Wee, Wee,
All the way home again.
The answers were right there,
Always there, all the time,
In nursery rhymes, and counting songs,
In psalms and arias, and every blues and rock lyric,
Right there, so right ******* there,
In Kris Kristofferson/Janice Joplin parlance of the times:
“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

And life for me since then--
ONE BIG, FAT-TITTED INCOMPREHENSIBILITY!

What was that Walter Sobjak in The Big Lebowski said?

“This is not 'Nam.
This is bowling.
There are rules.”

You start out carefully
Pouring into a shot glass,
Then the shot glass is
Sloshing over into the
Coffee mug: it's an
Irish Coffee Mug, "Top of the
Clan McGregor Morning, to you."
By 10 AM you're pouring
Right from the bottle,
Into an assortment of
Jelly-juice glasses:
Mimosas Are Us.
You skip brunch & lunch &
By 1:30 PM you're swigging
Directly from the liter bottle,
Wielded like a meat cleaver
In more ways than one.

“Look at Mother Nature on the run in the 1970s.”**      Neil Young

The earth battles back,
Katrina, Loma Prieta and Sandy destroy our complacency,
Hurricanes and earthquake chase us from our homes.
Our flood-ravaged farms fail us.
The bees go out on strike,
Refusing the work that sustains us.
Drought destroys germination,
Our food at war with our metabolism,
Energizing while poisoning our bodies.
Dioxin & mercury cross our epidermis,
Infect us; **** us in revenge.
The air itself in rebellion,
Hot, fetid, over-carbonated;
Unbreathable.
The atmosphere itself,
Voting us off the planet.
The non-human and the inorganic conspire against us,
Plot extinction of our species,
Condemn us for crimes against the earth.

Sitting on that Bowery curb,
Jackie Coogan,
Years shy of Uncle Festus and
The Addams Family,
Clasping his hands on one knee,
Wearing blue denim overalls &
A raggedy, red
Turtleneck sweater,
Jackie: the kid in "The Kid."
And Charlie’s inimitable face,
Inhaling his ****** moustache.
Nobody squeezed more out of a
****** expression than Charlie,
Back in the day when
Actors told their stories physically.
The Silent Era:
A Marcel Marceau world back then,
Economical when it came to words.

Yes.
And we all know how to
Make poetry pay.
We all know what it is
That makes Sammy run,
Run Sammy Run.
But I take it to its
Absurd conclusion:
Ads right in the middle of
The ******* poem!
“That was,”
If I do say so myself,
“A stroke of pecuniary brilliance."
Pecuniary adjective pe·cu·ni·ary \pi-ˈkyü-nē-ˌer-ē\
: Relating to or in the form of money
Full Definition of PECUNIARY
1:  consisting of or measured in money 2: of or relating to money
— pe·cu·ni·ar·i·ly   -ˌkyü-nē-ˈer-ə-lē\ adverb http://www.thesaurus.com
Would not this be an excellent conceit?
Villainy of a close & potent kind?
Put the cart before the horse
(So to speak):
POETS AS SWEAT EQUITY.
That’s right!
Make us pay for our sins,
Financing our sins.
(So to speak).
What a concept!
Why not run the Merriam-Webster logo here . . .
Would this not be the appropriate time?
(logo)
Advertising right smack
Dab in the middle of
The ******* poem!

My third world soul
Having a difficult time
Navigating this Toddlin' Town
Allow me to show you around, town.

And lest we forget:
Our first poets were religious crazies,
With diction gilding Version, King James.
"My Schtick,"
As Mel Brooks might say.
Mel's History of the World
(Part 2, i.e.),
Retells the Essence of Story Telling,
The Misnah Pentateuch,
Told again with the usual **** genius.
Scene:  Moses stumbles on Sinai,
One of three burdensome
Stone tablets is dropped,
Shatters on a rock.
What could possibly have been proscribed
In those 5 lost commandments?
What freaky human pleasure,
Could possibly have been lost to humanity?
It is pointless to speculate.

'Tis better to think about this,
Dear Poetry Publisher Query *****:
Ads right in the middle of the ******* poem.

Listening to Dave Grusin,
"Mountain Dance," vintage 1979.
The thought strikes:
"Why is it that only the
Early Jazz Giants are deified?
Of course, we need Chet Baker and
Miles Davis in our pantheon, &
Gerry Mulligan & Charlie Parker
Not to mention (cue Soupy Sales:
"Smack. I told you not to mention that!")
Coltrane or Stan Getz.
And yet, we're all getting long teeth and
there's a lot more Smooth Jazz to come,
Post-1950s, take Grusin, for example, or
George Benson or Herbie Hancock, and
What about Earl Klugh & Larry Carlton?
Let's not forget Spyro Gira &
The Daves: Benoit and Koz.
And we would be remiss
To miss Chris, young Chris,
Chris - "The Whippersnapper" - Botti.
But I digress.

"Women & cats
Will do as they please;
Men & dogs should relax &
Get used to the idea."

Cue Etta James: “At laaaaaaaaaaast . . .”
I’ve racked up over 50 followers,
50+ www.hellopoetry.com fans,
Fifty shades from cyberspace,
Dedicated disciples,
Devotees of my work,
An apostolic cadre of
LIKE button true believers.
Time, I think, to start a cult.
Enslave the men.
Fleece their bank accounts & IRAs.
Polygamize their women.
***** their mothers, wives & daughters.
Mix up a little Kool Aid.

Up on a tight rope, tonight,
Are we, Leon?”
I am out there with you, Brother.
I am in the weeds with you, Babaloo.
So, where did you find them?
Those Shaka Zulu
Warrior Women?
“Nola sue tanga,
Soo galla galla bee.
Nala secala
Na saka saka secala,”
It’s real trance music, Old Timer!
You really straddled the generations,
Didn’t you?
From “Alley Oop” to
“Stranger in a Strange Land.”
Leon, you are one cool dude.

Jack: as so many of us yearned to know him,
Still knocking down 90% approval ratings,
50+ years dead: we still approve.
Dallas recognizing the event . . .
Cue Etta James: At laaaaaaaaaaaaast . . .
The City of Big D,
Dallas in the Sixties,
Still wide open,
Still Wild-Wild West Wild,
Still string ties & Stetsons.
Hizzoner/Da Mayer–Now,
Recognizing the venue, at last.
Finally, it was time
To take ownership of the crime scene.
Non-stop memorial coverage,
On CNN and MSN, of course.
Fox, meanwhile,
Doing agribusiness updates;
This year’s Carolina turkey crop &
Wuzzup in the cranberry bogs?

Literary allusions: the curse of
Those who overdo—or, as some say--
Overdid the reading thing.
I speak of close associates,
Imaginary friends you’ve not met,
Let alone read (pronounced "RED") about.
Like this guy down at Moe’s Tavern,
An 8th Avenue writer’s bar I frequent.
Let's call him Paulie Muldoon,
A fat Irish slob who claims to be
Poetry Editor, "The New Yorker."
Paulie likes to give me tips on
HOW TO GET PUBLISHED!
Like me, he’s never
Been in print anywhere,
Other than his ***-encrusted laptop, &
A letter he once wrote to the editors of
"The National Kreplach Review,"
A radical Zionist quarterly
Funded by The Mel Brooks Foundation,
Harvey Weinstein & Condé Nast.
Nevertheless, Paulie seems to know
A lot about the publishing business,
Particularly after six stiff Jack & Cokes.
He says the thing is this:  
The best of the Ivy-League’s
English majors wind up in Manhattan,
Slaving away in cubicles,
Working for peanuts—literally,
The publishing industry has some sort of
Barter agreement with Planters.
(www.planterspeanuts.com)                                       ­            
They sit around on their ***** all day,
Getting their kishkes in a twist,
Eating peanuts, perusing manuscripts,
Like chimp Zoo valedictorians.
The manuscripts submitted by the hopeful
And--for the most part--delusional.
According to Paulie, these Yalie, Princeton,
Harvard, Columbiana WORDMEISTERS
Are more likely. . .
(Urban Dictionary: word-meister (www.urbandictionary.com/define.php? 1. Something yelled in place of a cuss word. 2. a rare species of humpback whales. 3. small children whose mother's name is Debbie.)
. . . More apt to be impressed with your scree
If you lay siege their psychic CPUs,
Pushing a few obscure,
Mnemonic function keys, remembrances
Of past Proustian peregrinations.
That's right, you get a much
Better shot at sidestepping that
First smug obstacle of arrogance,
If you slather them; go right
Ahead & flatter them with
Lotions, potions & emoluments,
Arcane passwords,
Vain secret satisfactions,
Tidbits of titillation,
Things that only some mook
That actually had read "The Crucible."
Or "The Scarlet Letter,"
Could possibly know,
Let alone, remember.
For a publisher’s water-boy,
A synaptic switch is keyed,
Tripping off an avalanche of
Marginally relevant,
Yet ultra-literate,
Cognitive highlights.
And, while we're on the subject,
Has anyone actually read Melville's "OMOO?"

“Won't do no good
To call the police.
Always come late,
If they come at all.”*

Thank you, Tracy.
Thank you for shining a light,
Drawing the world’s attention to the gulf
The gross variance in policing,
As it is practiced as we move from
One area of the city to another,
From one part of town,
Across the tracks to the
Wrong side of town,
Not the neighborhood where
Cops get out of the squad car after dark,
Ring your doorbell & politely remind you
Your garage door is open.
I refer, of course, to the same
Neighborhood with the best schools,
Libraries, public parks, and other
Fine & dandy amenities
Enjoyed by some its municipal citizens.

I send greetings from reality &
Say “Thank you, Tracy”again.
Now I’m hip to an area of town where
People have to shoot it out for themselves,
Where people contend with a
Quotidian Death Camp or Gulag,
A daily killing-field of extreme
Predatory desperation.
We’re taking a quintessential peek
Through a Social Psychologist’s lens,
Namely Abraham Maslow’s
“Hierarchy of Human Needs;”
Categorically speaking:
The ladder’s bottom-rung.
We’re talking basic human survival, here.
BTW I actually learned a lot in college, & besides:
*******! I’m a Harvard graduate.

One last time I say
“Thank you, Tracy.”
I actually learned & continue to learn a lot,
From getting high & listening to music.
Life at the bottom of the barrel?
Sloshing it up with the
So-called *“Dregs of Society,”
Which, by the way,
Would be a great name for a band.
Cue omniscient narrator:
Google "I want to Be a Pornstar.”
But I digress.
We were talking about a frightening alien planet,
A no-where place to be for
An intelligent young black girl,
Hoping for a fast car out of there.

I had a friend, a botanist by training,
A florist by design, who purchased
Two & a half relatively fertile,
Well-water irrigated acres in
Southern California.
(That’s about a hectare for you
Metric freaks.)
The land, Katie Scarlett:
Moreno Valley, Incorporated,
Part of the hilariously misnamed
“INLAND EMPIRE,” to wit:
Riverside and San Bernardino,
The latter county already this year’s
****** Capital of North America.
Last year’s too and the year before that.
ZAP! I am neuro-linguistically
(Thank you, Noam!)
Pre-coded to check the numbers:
The IRAs and bank accounts;
The living trusts; the Gary U.S. bonds.
My safe-deposit box, and right on time,
With a puff of smoke, a drum & cymbal smash,
The Confiscatory Duke appears.
The Duke-Duke-Duke of Earl,
The eternal, the infernal—
Internal Revenue Service:
THE I.R.S. hurdy-gurdy 1040 Man--in this
Case Men--stiffs in dark overcoats & fedoras,
Official 1040 Men, thank you very much,
With a tip of their green eyeshades,
Polite debt-collecting blokes,
No “Break-a yah face” guidos,
Just subtle government lawyers
Garnishing what’s left of your future.
Whoever came up with: “In this world,
Nothing can be said to be certain,
Except death and taxes.”
(Probably Benny C-Note
Go Fly a Kite himself,
Benjamin Franklin, one of
The so-called Founding Fathers—
Need I remind you all, who gave
Alexander Hamilton--an out-of-wedlock
West Indies *******--- Poor Richard’s blessing
To create the U.S. Department of the Treasury,
Which oversees the Revenue Bureau.)
Yeah, Death & Taxes--
Benny sure hit the nail’s head.

But I digress . . .
My friend Louie, the Botanist
Plants two & a half acres,
A hectare of flowers,
Broadcasting, strewing
Like alfalfa grass, many thousand
Bird of Paradise seeds,
Sal’s bird—if you catch my drift—
The Bird of Paradise,
Strange plant, N’est-ce-pas?
Looks like a punk rock
Woody the Woodpecker,
Day-Glo orange plumage,
A strangulation collar,
A ring around the collar of
****** blue hickeys, those freaky rings,
A veritable Sprezzatura!
Louie’s field of simple joy:
Mother Earth at her best.

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

We all miss you, Mae.
We miss your finesse,
Balancing the *****,
You were consistently naughty,
But no crack ***** *****.
Thank you for all those bold solicitations,
Invitations UP,
To see you some time.
Adoring your rhythms
So lyrical & sublime:
“I used to be snow white,
But I drifted.”
We miss you, Mae.
We miss your libidinous subtlety.

Mae West: an articulate woman in her day.
Not Lisa Lampanelli crude,
Yet still fun.
Far from--in any sense—
A *****.

There's something brutally honest about
A dog in heat ******* your leg.
I'd like to explore this theme with you,
But I can't right now.
I just got home from my
Nightly walk inside the gates
Of my over-55 lunatic asylum,
And I gotta get this down on paper,
VERBATIM.

I'm wearing sandals tonight, unlike
This morning's power walk in Skechers.
I'm strolling around the turn
At the corner of Don January & Lee Trevino,
And look clearly into a curtain-less,
Shade-free living room. BAM!
Poleaxed, gobsmacked, am I.
She's sitting in a Barcalounger,
Spotlighted by a pole lamp.
Naked, her legs spread &
******* herself.
Stunned dead in my tracks, am I.
By this time she's standing in her
Open doorway, calling to me:
"Hello Dere!"
She is a silver-haired sireen,
A granny Marty Allen.
"Take me," she demands.
Sometimes I'm a little slow on the uptake,
But there was no mistaking that invitation.
"Wait right here," I say.
"I want to go home, shower &
Brush my teeth."
"No , you idiot," she answers.
"Take me now."
"I want to be ravished by a brute,
***** by a savage,
A mountain man from Boulder."
I assume she means Boulder, Colorado.

Now, I can't promise that this is a
Daily occurrence at Del Webb Alegria,
"For Active Adults"
But it happened to me.

Walking home I see a crowd.
Some neighbors admiring the
Asian couple's landscaping prowess.
For weeks they've been pulling off a
Green grass to drought-tolerant
Xeriscape switcheroo.
"Bravo!" I yell. "Nicely done!"
Finally, I am home.
Exhausted, I flop down in
My over-stuffed leather armchair.
Pen in hand. Notebook open.
From across the room,
My dog sidles over
A glazed look in his eyes.

Love always has two angles
Whenever two people are involved.
From one perspective,
He/she is here out of kindness,
One of many old lovers & confidants
Who know how far down the other can go,
Whenever in-between relationships.
Each knows, has learned
Through many silent ghosted months,
That the other will always,
Will eventually need them again.
He loves me, she loves me not,
Either one, just freaking terrified.
Never giving one's self completely,
Just one more lobster for the steamer,
"Scuttling across the floors of silent seas,"
One more sacrificial lamb,
First to the shearing house,
Ultimately, the abattoir.
One more cavalier mariner,
Crossing oceans of time,
Carefree swashbucklers are we,
Boffing whomever, at times
Dismal enough to fall in love.
And vice versa, of course,
Thinking about putting down
Shallow roots again.

(Ghosted: A term used to describe when a man (or woman) you've been seeing for a while stops taking your calls and answering your texts. These actions are usually preceded by many a broken promise to "hang out" "have a drink or two" or "catch up" on the part of the Ghoster. The Ghostee is left wondering whether the person just beside them two weeks ago is now alive or dead. Neither can be definitively proven.  "I had been sleeping with Vicky/Jack for about a year and a half before he Ghosted me. Even a "*******" would have been better.")

So I was reading a Paul Krugman review of
Capital in the 21st Century, that French guy’s
Thesis on economic inequality that seems to be
Getting so much play in intellectual circles these days.
The word rentier came up in Krugman’s text.
I realized by its context that I’d better consult
My Webster’s--an archaic, print-era device,
A volume I keep close to the couch,
The couch where I do most of my reading these days,
Particularly my NY Review of Books
And The New Yorker,
Obbligato for us holdouts,
We 21st Century pseudo-intellectuals.

Rentier: (from the Old French,
Noun rente, circa 1847),
A person who lives on income
From property or securities.
A status far cry from Renter:
A schmuck who pays the landlord
For the leaky roof above his head.
Rentier & Renter:
It’s words like these—
Essentially polar opposites—
That make understanding our world so difficult.
What chance does the uneducated person have?
What chance to grasp the importance of Piketty’s book,
Let alone be spurred on,
Driven to the barricades once more?
The great tragedy is this:
Piketty's book will reach the audience
Least likely to support the kind of
Progressive tax policy change,
Change that anyone left with
A mere skosh of 1960’s heart,
Would demand in terms of simple fairness.
Capital in the 21st Century
Will only be understood
By those with little or no inclination—
Be it intellectual of moral—
To deviate from the status quo.

Paid one hundred francs
Sweet luscious, bargain kisses
Ill-gotten rapture.

Elusive, but far from intrusive, if
You asked me to describe him.
When you had his attention,
You were his sole focus.
“Attention must be & was being paid,”
Mr. Miller’s words immortal,
Arthur’s epitaph for Willie,
Little Man Willie Loman,
Wee Willie, Willie Loman,
The punch line you expected:
“Exact, demanding & deserved.”
But, ah . . .
Elusive flake flits on,
Leaving you speechless,
Verklempt, inhabiting a
Dry and drooping,
Dark and dreary
State of ****** . . .
(If you dig, my Edgar.)
In short, he is sorely missed.

Marvin Gaye - I'll Be Doggone Lyrics | MetroLyrics
www.metrolyrics.com/ill-be-doggone-lyrics-marvin-gaye.html MetroLyrics/ Blowing my money all over this town. Then I wouldn't be doggone. Hey, hey, I'd be long gone. Then I wouldn't be doggone. I'd be long gone. Now hey, hey, hey . . .  (Thank you, Louie--my agent who sells ad space in my poems. The poet, for once, rejecting the die in the gutter, art for art’s sake career track, making poetry pay for a change.)

Simply put:
He’s no longer here or there,
“He wouldn’t be gone long.
He’d be long gone.”
Not just emptiness.
Absence.

Who does it hurt?
Domestically,
North Dakota, the worst,
But New Mexico also,
Just to bring it home to me,
Here on the high mesa
That is Northern New Mexico,
At one time The Northern Viceroy,
Empire Americana,
His Majesty Philip I,
King of Spain’s
Duke of Earl Moment--
Felipe’s 16th Century
That was Europe.
But I digress.

Dropping oil prices have to,
Must impact the Arab Oil-
Producing World in a most
Un-delightful way.
Perhaps it’s time to
Put the screws to our
Islamic brethren?
The Powers that be—
Our pals at the World Economic Forum,
The Nabobs of WEF,
Getting together again at Davos or
Some other insanely affluent playground,
This time deciding
These barbaric decapitations
Have gone quite far enough.

I am drawn to the human subject.
It is people & their stories that interest me.
The explorer more than geography;
The ichthyologist.
Not his fish.
The ******-clod washed away.
Not the sea.
I am involved in mankind.
It is people who envelope me.
Who ring my bell, so to speak,
Tolls for me.

Niagara Falls . . .
"Slowly I turned,
Step by step,
Inch by inch . . ."
I am Lou Costello
Stuck in a jail cell
With some ****** lunatic.
Getting the **** beat out of me.
Every time.

Now that it’s finally safe,
Now that Breaking Bad
Has wrapped for good,
And Albuquerque is
Safely free of Mr. White’s crystal ****,
That chemical perfection,
That awesome Blue Cook—
As it was known,
Known far & wide,
In the drug trade.
But I digress.

I return at last to New Mexico.
The so-called Land of Entrapment.
I slink back, decisively
To that island of Diversity,
Mutual Respect & Mañana.
I return to the scene of so many crimes.
Not to mention, misdemeanors.
“SMACK,” he’s back.
It’s that crazy **** himself:
The undeniably indomitable,
The late, great Soupy Sales.
Reminding us still,
Telling us, again, specifically,
Not to mention.

I am sitting in a brand new house
In Bernalillo, New Mexico,
Only 15 miles from downtown
ALBUQUERQUE.
Another Over 55,
Gated, golf-coursed
Lunatic asylums
(FOR ACTIVE ADULTS).
I am starting to repeat myself,
An early Alzheimer warning sign,
What do I expect to find here?
Life secluded,
Quiet days,
Getting quieter every day,
As strangers friends & neighbors
Pass on to what Hamlet called
“ . . . the dread of something after death,
The undiscovere'd country,
From whose bourn
No traveller returns . . .”
To a mind-set,
Decidedly focused on the children
I will soon leave behind:
“$15 thousand bucks
To stick his crusty ***
Into a dusty,
Musky box of knotty pine?
(Muskie? The Senator from Maine
Who broke down & cried.)
No way, Giuseppi.
Cremate the crazy SOB!
Cook him.
Nuke him,
Titanium implants & all.  Let
Infrared rays do their work,
Arc lighting a late February
Coronado golden New Mexico evening sky.”
Here I sit.
I am listening to
“Sentimental Sinatra.”
Vintage 40s stuff:
Bobbysoxers & WWII.
Once again, I strain for understanding.
Mom & Dad:
Perhaps their music, like ours,
Is a perceptual doorway?
Perhaps my children will someday
Take the time for careful scrutiny
Of why their father was the way he was.
My 65-year old, pensioned-off ***
Behind the gates,
Locked within the asylum.
Our parents;
Our children:
Be they ever inscrutable.

Fu a Pietrelcina che i miei occhi si trasformarono in ragni e tessevano una rete per catturare la gentilezza sulle ali.



It was at Pietrelcina that my eyes turned into spiders and wove a web to catch kindness on the wing.

In time,
Her blue eyes turned to amber,
Gaining serenity at the expense of dazzle,
She was, in short:
Diminished?
You know, the proverbial red,
Red rose misplacing its hue?
Over time, becoming the times that
Try men’s souls--as they say—
Particularly in times like ours.
Life at the Vicarage: an in-depth,
Stunningly frank & brutal TRIP 4-2.
Surely, the falcon & falconer
Out of range of each other, at last.
Share drowned innocence,
Sans conviction, intense & passionate,
An in-depth study--if you will—
If you won’t, *******!
A close encounter of mutual
Self-loathing & contempt.
Soon the blood-dimmed tide,
Mere anarchy loose as a goose.
I speak of a time without pretense:
Armed-black-militants
Killing-white-cops?
Are you ******* me?
Who has time to investigate
A simple case of what could or
Could not be spousal homicide.
But I digress.
Blood in the streets?
We haven’t seen that ****
Since Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver
& Huey P Newton stalked the earth.
“Lord, Oh God!” we wonder.
“Deliver us a savior.
Rescue Us.
Rescue Me."

I read with passing interest
The death of the
Field Marshal’s son--
Manfred Rommel--
Gone at 84.
His father—The Field Marshal,
Had been given a choice:
Commit suicide or
Face a rigged trial
Charged with conspiring to ****
******.
If he chose the trial, they said,
They could not promise
That his family would be
SAFE.
The father,
Der Feldmarschall,
Bit into a cyanide pill
And died quickly.
It was Oct. 14, 1944.

Thanks to the sacrifice,
Manfred got to grow up to be
A three-term mayor of Stuttgart,
Where Daimler-Benz makes cars.
Manfred Rommel:
A postwar liberal Deutschland voice,
Supporting immigrants and Jews.
At 84,
Deader than
A dreadnaught.

Makes you wonder?
A fate worst--wurst--
Something worse than
Death?
Really the moment of truth
For any honorable man,
Self-defined by nature,
Molded by nurture.
Family:
The fountain & source
The tribe you belong to.
Family:  everything you are
When you get right down to
Where one’s loyalties
Supposedly lie.

Of course, you opt for suicide.
Wouldn’t anyone?
We are born into a net.
We must bravely defend the network.
Facing insurmountable odds,
Our duty is to hold on
Without hope, without rescue,
Like that Roman centurion
Whose bones,
Later excavated at that front door in Pompeii,
Steadfast & true,
That Roman soldier--
Vesuvius exploding,
A hard rain falling down upon him--
Died at his post because
They forgot to relieve him.
That is duty.
That is greatness.
That is thoroughbred pedigree.
An honorable end:
The one thing that
Cannot be taken from a man.
Unless, of course,
The times they are Orwellian,
And once again,
This time with feeling:
*“Do it to Julia.
Do it to Julia!”

She was the type of girl who
Knew how to demand a man’s attention.
The smart ones gave her the best
They had, a full-service menu,
If you catch my drift?
They knew she’d reciprocate later,
Alligator, with the sweetest B.J.
This Side of Paradise,
(Forgive me, F. Scott)
Can you dig it, Mister?
We’re talking Mohammedan
Fantasy & Paradise here, Babaloo.
That’s the kind of girl she was, always
Screaming: “Attention Must Be Paid,”
Co-opting Mr. Loman, of course,
But unlike Willie, Ms. Hynde has a
Trevi Fountain full of Self-Esteem.
Going into the home stretch now,
Determined her last Act will be
Focused solely on Self-Actualization.
That’s the type she is.

As Thomas Wolfe said to Walt Whitman,
Crossing Brooklyn Bridge one early autumn
Sunday afternoon: "I greet thee on the
Brink of a brilliant literary career."
But I may have mixed up my facts.

My mind, a theater,
My words, an intense inner monolog
Directed to an imaginary audience.
The ASIDE: a useful theater prop
Adapted seamlessly from script to screen.
The new medium divulging what I really think,
My avatar--a floating bubble head--
Visible off-stage only,
A new version of reality,
A giant leap for mankind:
Humans outsourcing the bulk of experience.

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

As if anyone could distinguish
Between the Great &
The near Great.
Which is why I always plant
Rosmarinus officinalis,
In and of the genus Rosmarinus,
If you want to taxonomy out to the runway,
Again.
Whenever I get to this point—
This sacred time to cultivate my garden—
Whenever my soul just can’t,
Couldn't take one more botanical tragedy,
Another senseless loss of green soul matter,
Entrusted to me in a serendipitous plan,
Romero will never disappoint you,
If playing God is your aspiration,
Children to care for, to love,
Nurture and cultivate.
Especially in this high desert,
Where any scarce
Pasture is a Holy Shrine,
Some Fatima,
Or Lourdes.
A Chimayo.

If you need a place to pick your nose,
Eat contraband &/or beat your meat,
God bless the child that's got his own,
That's got his own bedroom,
His personal Reichstag bunker,
His private Junker Bauhaus,
If you get my drift?
If you don’t, “Get Bent!”
I am not here to entertain you.

So I am coming in from garden hosing--
Not lederhosen, you Aryan punks!--&
I'm on my rear patio thinking to myself
I couldn’t get any higher,
Even with Jackie singing:
Search Results Jackie Wilson - (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher And Higher (Best ... Aug 11, 2011 - Uploaded by jakebucknall 123 Jackie Wilson - (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher And Higher (Best Quality). The Staple Singers -I https://www.youtube.com/watchv=mzDVaKRApcg.
But I digress.

A spot of hose magic,
Watching my garden grow.
Keeping things moist & fertile,
Leonard Cohen (RIP) on the airwaves,
A fat blunt betwixt my lips,
"Curling up like smoke above my shoulder."
“Don’t get me started,” I said,
Paying tribute to beloved Joan Rivers (RIP)
Lost so senselessly, so humorlessly,
To some whack-job-wonder boy,
Who just happened to score perfect 800s
On his high school SAT exams, &
Later worming his way into Med School,
Which rather begs the obvious question:
Those 11-year old Frankensteins,
Why did their Bubbes give them a
Chemistry sets for Chanukah?
Later earning state Medical licenses,
Licenses to practice,
Licenses to **** & just say
*“OOPS, I did it again!”

A shout out to Raphael Lemkin,
Explicitly moved by
Armenian annihilation
To coin the word: GENOCIDE,
Back in 1943, or was it 1944?
You’d think he’d be sure,
Something that important,
The naming of things, after all,
Much more than an encoding;
A digital construct of the mind,
Wedding thought to language,
Marrying idea to its name.
GENOCIDE.
Which came first, word or deed?
Way to go, Raphael--
“Systematic and premeditated
Exterminations, within legal parameters,”--
You coined it.
You named it.
Giving voice to something
Better left un-said,
Better off un-thought of.

Robert Frost: a mediocre poet.
Robert Frost: a mediocre poet.
That’s the truth, plain, simple and plain.
And I know I just said plain twice,
But repeating things for spooky effect is an affliction,
Suffered by almost all living boomer-generation American writers,
Who’ve read “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
And while we’re on the subject:
Look, I think Robert Frost is an okay poet–
Nice, but just okay–not great and certainly not
Poet Laureate of the United States of America caliber.
That poem “Stopping …” is nowhere near great,
Despite millions of scholarly words
Written about it by college English professors.
To me, it’s just an okay riff,
Written by an okay mellow guy,
Who is just out in his okay, ordinary buggy,
Smoking an okay ordinary joint,
Just going for an okay trip around the block.
And as far as that queer horse goes . . .
Well, I’m not going there.

Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
Too skeevy for prime time.

Getting loaded at 9 AM,
Is getting to be a habit with me.
Free & easy on a barstool,
Just like a Lost Generation loser.
Should be smoking ****, I suppose,
Everybody knows what a drag ***** is.
But I guess mind expansion is the last thing on my mind.
Just want to get stupid for a while,
With a smile smeared ‘cross my face,
Like a Salv’dor Dali clock.
And for every maharishi ,
Telling me how sweet it’s gonna be,
There’s ten thousand-thousand Nelson Algrens,
******* up my mind.
Getting loaded at 9 AM,
Is getting to be a habit with me.

Huck: a perfect example
Of the effect bio-mechanical
Protocols have on the human mind,
Saludos, amigo!
“Hats Off to Larry!”

DEL SHANNON- " HATS OFF TO LARRY " (W/LYRICS ...
▶ 2:03 www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXpJVmxHXc8 Nov 7, 2009 - Uploaded by rwells47 LYRICS: “Once I had a pretty girl, Her name it doesn't matter; She went away with another guy-- Now he won't...”

(That’s right, another commercial ad right in the middle of a freaking poem. $Ka-ching, Ka-ching!$)

Or, “That's Some Bad Hat Harry.”
“Ever notice at the end of shows there are those cards that fill the screen with names of bizarre production companies, sometimes animated and sometimes with sound (“That’s some bad hat, Harry.”)? Those are called vanity cards. When writer/creators form their own production company (and they all do) they’re entitled to a vanity card.”
Case in point?
Forgive my self-promotion but
The sheer freaking brilliance of
The character that is HUCK,
Simply overwhelms me
Now, there’s a secretive dude.
It took us 5 freaking seasons to
Get his real freaking name.
Diego Muñoz:
What else don’t we
Know about you, Huck?
Huck, you perfectly twisted,
Psychotic, psychopath
I’ve grown so fond of.
Of course, you have always
Been acting a part,
Playing a role,
To wit: Guillermo Diaz.
You’ve come a long way,
A very long way, from Jersey,
Memo.

She’s like Cameron Diaz.
She so wants to be
More than just my **** Buddy.
She swallowed my ***
And thinks she’s so unique.
I’ve got news for you, Babaloo:
They all swallowed my ***;
Liters & gallons
Barrels & tank loads.
There is nothing worse
Than a woman who thinks
You owe her something.

Listening to Sting’s best:
Ten Summoner’s Tales.
Sting: there’s a lesson in arrogance.
Leaves his band, The Police,
Throws the blokes—
The blokes who carried him,
Put him on the map,
Made him rich--
Throws those same blokes
Off the back of the boat,
Jetsam & flotsam in his wake.
Then starts hallucinating that he's
Geoffrey Chaucer reborn, &
Self-finances a Broadway musical,
Itself a saccharine homage to
Newcastle upon Tyne, land of the
Genetic zygote he once was.
Needless to say: “The Last Ship”
Sank shortly after leaving dry dock.
Hey, Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner:
Who was your financial advisor?
*Bernie Madoff?

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

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

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

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


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

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

He's started collecting
Empty, green, plastic
Clan MacGregor
Blended whiskey bottles,
Lining them up on the rear patio,
Where he smokes his dope.
He drinks in the house &
Smokes outside.
A house that does not
Smell of ****:
His one concession to the neighbors;
Meanwhile, wafting, waffling wisps of
Medical marijuana smoke,
Burning, drifting over block walls,
Optional Gaza Strips in this
Del Webb, Over-55, Gated
Community of active seniors,
Which meant for him, in his mind,
When he bought there,
A communal desire to get laid.

The real question is?
Is it time to intervene?
Where out of his ***
Did he pull “Why not drink my
Self to death, like my father?”
Especially after years
Playing it strait,
For so many years,
Doing un-neighborly
Things to his nation’s
International neighbors.

10   A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 20
20   START STEP TWO ANGER KUBLER-ROSS INFINITE LOOP
30   GOTO 10
10   A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 20
20   START STEP TWO ANGER KUBLER-ROSS INFINITE LOOP
30  GOTO 10
10   A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 20
20   START STEP TWO ANGER KUBLER-ROSS INFINITE LOOP
30 A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 30
30  GOTO 10 Ad infinitum

How could it not happen?
Olivia the Fixer.
Mellie, poor perpetually crapped-on Mellie,
Married to that ***** boy president, Fitz.
Fitzgerald Grant:  like his Dad
Having trouble keeping it in his pants,
Bent on a spectacular exit strategy
An escapade so outrageous that
Even the liberal media can't spin it.
And potential musical numbers?
Huck singing: "Happiness Is a Cordless Drill."
VP Sally: "My **** Husband."
Eli Pope: "It's Above Your Pay Grade, Babaloo!"
Jake: "I'll Take a Bullet & Your Mistress."
Abby: "Season Three Dark-Eyed *****"
David: "****** Again?"
Mellie: "First Lady, Last in Line."
Fitz: "I Dig Colored Chicks."
Olivia: "Making Jam in Vermont."
And lest we forget,
The real star of the show,
Cyrus: "**** Me, Lick Me, I'm the Chief of Staph."

Time:
We can never truly,
Never fully
Grasp the subject.
We can measure Time,
But we really don’t know.
What is Time?
The tick tock clock
Gives just inkling.
We hear. We see.
We are aware.
Sequence—
An essential piece of definition—
Yet, a bare fraction,
Sliced off with a
Bare bodkin,
Scraping Shakespeare’s
Lyric-perfect bare bottom
For inspiration, I suppose.

But I digress.
Time: longitudinal?
The model--of course—for all
Correlational research.
Repetitive observations
Of the same variables
Over long periods of time,
Often many decades--
‎Our lives:
“Just one **** thing after another.”
Quantum mechanics, be ******.

"Call me James," he said.
Neither Jim, nor Jimmy; &
Certainly not:  Jimbo.
Simply James, like King James,
The English Bible James,
James who authorized the translation,
James the First, himself;
Not that other James--
The James of Raoul Dahl--,
The James who got involved with a
Gigantic peach.

So I was texting with her.
How she doth linger
In my mind after all these years.
So, one might ask:
"How many Kaplan University
Spams does it take?"
Get the message:
Get smarter.
Go to college.
Even if it is some post office box
Diploma Mill, right off the
Matchbook cover.
Or read enough books, and
You, too, can be like me.
A good word, like woman to woman?
Delivering the line succinctly, just like
George Burns, wryly,
With a smile.
"I went to my doctor," she said.
"Gave me some cream for my Pud."
Simply put:
I fancy her.

I wouldn’t say he had a
Low opinion of women;
Let’s just say he once
Left for work the day
After the wedding, saying to
His wife: *“Hey Doll,
The money’s on the dresser.“

“The force that drives the green fuse,”*
Whiskey-induced, almost a limerick,
When you consider the source:
Just another Gaelic wino,
Who liked to hear himself talk.
Dylan: blessed & cursed with
The gift of lyrical gab,
Exalting the English Language.
With bar stool eloquence,
A regular, ****** Yeats,
I’m sure he thought he was.
Just another skeevy Bukowski,
Crude, muddled,
Psychologically askew.