The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not
                  want him for long.

Little bones,
covered by the tissue paper white skin,
is going to hospice,
is going home.

He is thirteen, with the body of an old man
and a frail voice that is beginning to
float away,
and no one can stop it from happening.

i hope someday i can love you enough that you forget the names of all the girls before me

where do i put this un-used love?
i ran out of reasons to call you, i fought against it for years,
and now you know.
where do i put all of these tender touches?
my pockets aren't deep, my hands are full.

I was thinking maybe, just maybe,
That we could have a baby,
Or be forever 21 and die together in 2080.
See I've been thinking about that lately
I guess you could say it's crazy,
But I've got responsibilities,
That bring me to my knees,
And somehow I've got to look out for me.
Living isn't cheap,
especially at my university,
And I'm only 19,
And I'm only getting stronger,
So if I'm not man enough yet, you better watch out now.

my
intestines tighten
the patient begging
parts
the tears
how I do
grow wet
leavening

I’ve been hearin a lot of bad mouthin about socialism ever since the president tried to provide affordable healthcare to the working poor… I also hear some carping when someone suggested that the minimum wage paid to workers should allow them to buy the necessities of life… I don't hear too much bad things about medicare and social security…. I guess thats not really socialism…. I don't hear too much about the big bailouts of the bankers with government money after they put us in a recession… privatized gain and socialized risk must also be a strain of a special kind of entitlement...

We’ll I think this whole socialism business needs some clarity about what its all about…. so I made a list of socialist heroes so my fellow American’s can get a better feel for what going on with this red menace...

Heres a list of socialist heroes….

Jesus Christ of Nazareth...I just can't get past the Beatitudes thing. Since all the po folks of the earth get to inherit all the good stuff when they pass on.... I figure heaven gotta be some kinda socialist paradise....Some don’t buy the idea that Jesus is building a Mar-A-Largo estate for Donald Trump... while having the rest of us live in our cramped apartments…. Jesus did say he’s building many rooms but the po folks get first dibs on everything… For all the doubting Thomas’s and Thomasina’s get Sean Hannity’s fastidious fact checkers to read the good news in the Gospel of Matthew.

Jack London... To think he’s been spreading the Red Menace in the mind of America’s innocent children for near a century now…. When Michelle Bachmann finds out about this she'll introduce a bill to change the title of The Call of the Wild to the Call of the Commies... I don't think it will affect Sarahcuda because she don’t read at a sixth grade level yet. Alaska is safe for now....And all comrade citizens are doing just fine thank you.... spending their annual royalty checks they get from the state for all the North ***** oil drilling...  Hell during Sarah's half term governorship... she did what every self respecting socialist despot would do... she paid out a special $1,200.00 Permanent Fund royalty dividend to all comrade "North to the Future" citizens.....

Carl Sandburg... The People Yes? Sang the songs of the People Yes! Celebrated a broad shouldered, hog butchering America who wrote a biography with love and affection for our country’s greatest Republican President....  Whats that about?...And his treatment of Billy Sunday...a back in the day,.. aw shucks,... from the backwoods holler... Kenneth Copeland like... Believer's Voice of Victory preacher of his day... who hurled fire and brimstone at cowering congregants so when he passed the plate they filled it up with hoards of heavenly manna to fatten his bank account overstuffed with moth eaten earthly treasure… I'm sure even Pat Robertson believes Sandburg’s soul lies beyond the sweet redemption of Jesus...

George Orwell… Unlike **** Cheney... who said he had better things to do when his country called on him to serve during the Vietnam War... Orwell’s fervor for democracy was so great he left his native land to lay his life on the line to fight against the fascist menace in Spain... When he got into a battle he came across an enemy combatant taking a ****. He later said, “I let him go. How do you shoot a guy with his pants down?”... A deep respect for the humanity of others is clear evidence of a socialist's fatal flaw and why the righteous laissez faire American’s hate it so....Unfortunately Orwell and his comrades lost this one to Franco and his sugar daddies Il Duce and Mein Fuhrer… but we’ll keep up the good fight…..

Dorothy Day… This saint of the proletariat kept the soup kettle brewin to feed the working poor during the Great Depression... She spent her own money to build shelters to house catholic workers and didn't make a **** dime off the vulnerability of their screaming want... A squandered opportunity maybe…. definitely a coocoo loon according to the weltentstehung of Ayn Rand… so popular around these parts these days...but Dorothy laid up some serious dosh in heaven for her labors here on earth…. for where your treasure is…. there you will find your heart also… Anyone who knew her said Dorothy's heart was always in the right place….

Albert Einstein…. this guy was no dope….he knew enough to make make moral distinctions of exploitation and greed… and the self condemnation of conspicuous consumption...the destructive capacity of unfettered power….and worked hard to figure out equations to end the wastefulness of war... he did teach at Princeton though… more proof of the red infestation of the universities…. greed is good…. knowledge is bad….

Eugene V. Debs…. went to prison for his beliefs… got a million votes from jail… thats how devious these reds are.... even from prison they run for president and fool the working people into participating in the democratic process…. he believed everyone should vote… and would probably be imprisoned today for violating all the laws being passed that take voting rights away… gotta watch the reds…. next thing you know they'll close the electoral college and force politicians to pay a 100% poll tax on all the money they take from their corporate sponsors….

WEB DuBois… the souls of an oppressed people is the soul of a nation...ain’t it written that a nation is judged on how it treats its most vulnerable?.... Mr. DuBois fought to bring justice to all those lacking the means and rights in a nation teeming with diverse groups with needs and wants… it ain’t just about afro american jazz… its about the blues sung by all people on the outside looking in… he believed it unjust that only a small portion of American’s held the keys to the doors of prosperity… everyone should have a key to unlock the doors of opportunity… everyone…. that includes workers, immigrants, women, gay folks, religious minorities, disabled and the poor and lots other people I haven’t thought of yet…. but what about the real Americans...whose gonna stand up for them??????????

Woody Guthrie…. this country belongs to us… next time a frackin jacker comes to tear up your land and dump poison in your well… next time a strung out strip miner wants to plow away the top of your mountain and dump arsenic in your river…. next time a GMO attorney says the crops you planted don’t belong to you because they are contractually patented to him…. next time a big oil company says that they got a right to pollute the oceans and **** the fish so they can pump out a passel of fossil fuel… next time a bankster comes knocking at the door to take your house away… next time a tea slappin Teabagger starts screaming that the Koch Brothers should be allowed to own the national parks so they can cut the trees down for firewood…. tell em...you heard it on good authority…. that this land is your land…. not theirs….. if thats socialism…. I’m liken it….

American Socialists

Woody Guthrie: This Land is Your Land

Oakland
10/21/13
jbm

There in the road lay a free-minded crustacean.
Turned out to be no more than a wayward piece of insulation.

.
.
.

“Please allow me to introduce myself; I’m a man of wealth and taste”
Turned out to be no more than a man cleaning up basic waste

.
.
.

Good morning fool…
I said to myself.
Reaching for the uniform on the bottom shelf.
Spent a few minutes putting it on,
Insuring the curtains weren’t fully drawn.
Stood a minute posing before the glass…
A man bellow presented himself as a colossal ***
So I dropped a loogie just over the edge
Poor aim left it hanging from my window’s ledge
                              
                            ­  .
                              .
                             ­ .

The streets were swarmed with the innocently vain,
Looking for regal alleyways to make a social gain.
Marching through the “Slickers” campus,
Watching the bobbing of books holding tidbits on the hippocampus.
.
A new year comes.
The freshman student runs.
Princeton ushers in a new breed;
Teaching that blue is the only blood to bleed.

                                                         ­   .
                                                            ­.
                                                            .

­As I stumble towards the school,
Can’t help but feel I’ve been made to feel the fool.
Snickers jab at my waning pride.
Preppy children always seem so snide.
Overhear a remark mocking my attire,
Said by an ascot wearing boy filled with mire.
Left the path for ivy coated building.
An hour later, the day’s dwindling.

                                                     ­                                 .
                              ­                                                        .
       ­                                                                 ­              .


A teacher stands at the front of a classroom.
A man at the back sweeps with his broom.
The professor,
Proceeds with his lecture.
Spreading misconceptions on malformed events.
The man at the back cleans the covers on the vents.
There, a question is put toward the crowd.
The janitor in the back answers aloud.

                              .
                         ­     .
                              .

I shouldn’t have opened my ******* mouth!
Who cares if bigotry’s still relevant in the south?
People glare in mocking jest.
Blankness sits on the faces of the rest.
I’m only here to pick up the trash,
A job I use to make some extra cash.
They all have money for a proper education.
There’s no time for me, and my financial situation.

.
.
;

Do you remember?
remember the sound
The million cicadas humming so loud
That we didn't remember they were there
Until we left Princeton  and could hear the silence again.
Those cicadas  were 17 years old.
Ten years older then us.
Just discovering life.
Just like us
Remember the day we carved the four faced Jack o' Lantern
Our artists mothers let us be messy
Paper mâché bodies never grow up

Can you count the times we jumped from the oak tree? On to the trampoline.
Your brothers were mean

The times we plotted against them.
The times we went on adventures to the woods
The time we tried to dig to china using spoons in my front yard.
The time i fought over you with another girl
The time you liked me back but never said
The time you got sick and couldn't play
The time the doctors took you away
And you came back with a scar on the back of your head
Stitches and bruises and blood on the bed
The day we didn't play as much anymore.
The day when we sold our house on palmer lane
The day your mom's fiancé left and never came back
The day we spent by the river
And the day after when your mom brought roses
And sprinkled them on the road
As we drove south with the big yellow moving van
Remember forgetting the time we remembered
do you remember?

Bach's "little fugue"
            played while figure eights
whistled in my head,
               along with mathematics
to an un-equilibrium point
           where self-confidence
meets self-doubt.

So, in
illusions created by the exact same demons
that saw the bottom from the top
and the   pope as part of a conspiracy,
I created a theory, and ended in a padded room.

I painted spots on walls not assimilating
anyone others works,
became my own victim,
committed to rationality
while acting eccentrically.

Visions came to me, I sought refuge in them,
things I saw the real world calls bug-brained.

There I envisioned the cosmos as a limit imposed
on one's relation to self. I saw the dynamics of  human conflict
as interludes of forced sanity.

I went as quick as I came.

forced into what I don't want to do
I enjoyed the chorus arranged in my head.
Like a game between people I don't understand.

I sneak into Princeton and proved the existence of God. in red sneakers unaware my theory was economic realism.

Then I rejected voices.

And won the Nobel Prize.