Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Josh Dec 2012
Friends, acquaintances, strangers, I bid thee, which of two takes precedence?
Be it a nobler aim to obstruct thy door and remain in thy domicile until the end of time?
Or be it nobler to venture into the unknown, unprotected and on pain of possible demise?
'Tis the question at heart.
'Tis a question of the security of the citizenry.

When death's dark emissary cometh with haste, in what manner shall he find thee?
Shall thee be secured in thy possessions, apart from danger, and unharmed all these years bygone?
Or shall the emissary find thee in a different state, perhaps one of felicity?
'Tis the question of the security of the citizenry.

Yea, there are those few proud that are the makes of heroic tales profound.
They forewent the promise of security for the mere taste of an ascended delicacy, for a mere sampling of the honey that floweth from the tree of liberty.

And when the great father bids of me, "Which of these were you, enslaved or free?"
My retort shall be simple.
In this grand question concerning the security of the citizenry, I forewent my security in favor of the great gift that is liberty.

In the matter of the state and her subjects, and in times of great turmoil, the liberties of the people are oft lain to the side, so that they may live another day free of death's eternal sleep.
Yea, what is the value of life if its experience is cheap?
To what extent are we thinkers free if our place in the flock is that of sheep?

Thy liberties are a priceless commodity.
'Tis a question of the security of the citizenry.
Like a psychotic docent in the wilderness,
I will not speak in perfect Ciceronian cadences.
I draw my voice from a much deeper cistern,
Preferring the jittery synaptic archive,
So sublimely unfiltered, random and profane.
And though I am sequestered now,
Confined within the walls of a gated, golf-coursed,
Over-55 lunatic asylum (for Active Seniors I am told),
I remain oddly puerile,
Remarkably refreshed and unfettered.  
My institutionalization self-imposed,
Purposed for my own serenity, and also the safety of others.
Yet I abide, surprisingly emancipated and frisky.
I may not have found the peace I seek,
But the quiet has mercifully come at last.

The nexus of inner and outer space is context for my story.
I was born either in Brooklyn, New York or Shungopavi, Arizona,
More of intervention divine than census data.
Shungopavi: a designated place for tribal statistical purposes.
Shungopavi: an ovine abbatoir and shaman’s cloister.
The Hopi: my mother’s people, a state of mind and grace,
Deftly landlocked, so cunningly circumscribed,
By both interior and outer Navajo boundaries.
The Navajo: a coyote trickster people; a nation of sheep thieves,
Hornswoggled and landlocked themselves,
Subsumed within three of the so-called Four Corners:
A 3/4ths compromise and covenant,
Pickled in firewater, swaddled in fine print,
A veritable swindle concocted back when the USA
Had Manifest Destiny & mayhem on its mind.

The United States: once a pubescent synthesis of blood and thunder,
A bold caboodle of trooper spit and polish, unwashed brawlers, Scouts and      
Pathfinders, mountain men, numb-nut ne'er-do-wells,
Buffalo Bills & big-balled individualists, infected, insane with greed.
According to the Gospel of His Holiness Saint Zinn,
A People’s’ History of the United States: essentially state-sponsored terrorism,
A LAND RUSH grabocracy, orchestrated, blessed and anointed,
By a succession of Potomac sharks, Great White Fascist Fathers,
Far-Away-on-the Bay, the Bay we call The Chesapeake.
All demented national patriarchs craving lebensraum for God and country.
The USA: a 50-state Leviathan today, a nation jury-rigged,
Out of railroad ties, steel rails and baling wire,
Forged by a litany of lies, rapaciousness and ******,
And jaw-torn chunks of terra firma,
Bites both large and small out of our well-****** Native American ***.

Or culo, as in va’a fare in culo (literally "go do it in the ***")
Which Italian Americans pronounce as fongool.
The language center of my brain,
My sub-cortical Broca’s region,
So fraught with such semantic misfires,
And autonomic linguistic seizures,
Compel acknowledgement of a father’s contribution,
To both the gene pool and the genocide.
Columbus Day:  a conspicuously absent holiday out here in Indian Country.
No festivals or Fifth Avenue parades.
No excuse for ethnic hoopla. No guinea feast. No cannoli. No tarantella.
No excuse to not get drunk and not **** your sister-in-law.
Emphatically a day for prayer and contemplation,
A day of infamy like Pearl Harbor and 9/11,
October 12, 1492: not a discovery; an invasion.

Growing up in Brooklyn, things were always different for me,
Different in some sort of redskin/****/****--
Choose Your Favorite Ethnic Slur-sort of way.
The American Way: dehumanization for fun and profit.
Melting *** anonymity and denial of complicity with evil.
But this is no time to bring up America’s sordid past,
Or, a personal pet peeve: Indian Sovereignty.
For Uncle Sam and his minions, an ever-widening, conveniently flexible concept,
Not a commandment or law,
Not really a treaty or a compact,
Or even a business deal.  Let’s get real:
It was not even much in the way of a guideline.
Just some kind of an advisory, a bulletin or newsletter,
Could it merely have been a free-floating suggestion?
Yes, that’s it exactly: a suggestion.

Over and under halcyon American skies,
Over and around those majestic purple mountain peaks,
Those trapped in poetic amber waves of wheat and oats,
Corn and barley, wheat shredded and puffed,
Corn flaked and milled, Wheat Chex and Wheaties, oats that are little Os;
Kix and Trix, Fiber One, and Kashi-Go-Lean, Lucky Charms and matso *****,
Kreplach and kishka,
Polenta and risotto.
Our cantaloupe and squash patch,
Our fruited prairie plain, our delicate ecological Eden,
In balance and harmony with nature, as Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce instructs:
“These white devils are not going to,
Stop ****** and killing, cheating and eating us,
Until they have the whole ******* enchilada.
I’m talking about ‘from sea to shining sea.’”

“I fight no more forever,” Babaloo.
So I must steer this clunky keelboat of discovery,
Back to the main channel of my sad and starry demented river.
My warpath is personal but not historical.
It is my brain’s own convoluted cognitive process I cannot saavy.
Whatever biochemical or—as I suspect more each day—
Whatever bio-mechanical protocols govern my identity,
My weltanschauung: my world-view, as sprechen by proto-Nazis;
Putz philosophers of the 17th, 18th & 19th century.
The German intelligentsia: what a cavalcade of maniacal *******!
Why is this Jew unsurprised these Zarathustra-fueled Übermenschen . . .
Be it the Kaiser--Caesar in Deutsch--Bismarck, ******, or,
Even that Euro-*****,  Angela Merkel . . . Why am I not surprised these Huns,
Get global grab-*** on the sauerbraten cabeza every few generations?
To be, or not to be the ***** bullgoose loony: GOTT.

Biomechanical 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 and optical white rooms, cleansed free of contaminants,
Gun mounts & lifeboat stations manned and ready,
Standing at attention and 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 and extraordinarily vivid.
Precise cognitive transcripts; recollected so richly rife and fresh.
Visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, and olfactory reloads:
Queued up and increasingly re-experienced.

The bio-data of six decades: it’s all there.
People, countless, places and things cataloged.
Every event, joy and trauma enveloped from within or,
Accessed externally from biomechanical 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 all-subservient 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 or infinitely looped.
“Cogito ergo sum."
Descartes stripped it down to the basics but there’s more to the story:
Thinking about thinking.
A curse and minefield for the cerebral:  metacognition.

No, it is not the fact that thought exists,
Or even the thoughts themselves.
But the information technology of thought that baffles me,
As adaptive and profound as any evolution posited by Darwin,
Beyond the wetware in my skull, an entirely new operating system.
My mental and cultural landscape are becoming one.
Machines are 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 at all.
(Incoming TEXT from my editor: “Lighten Up, Giuseppi!”)
Reminding me again that most in my audience,
Rarely get past the comic page. All righty then: think Calvin & Hobbes.
John Calvin, a precocious and adventurous six-year old boy,
Subject to flights of 16th Century French theological fancy.
Thomas Hobbes, a sardonic anthropomorphic tiger from 17th Century England,
Mumbling about life being “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”
Taken together--their antics and shenanigans--their relationship to each other,
Remind us of our dual nature; explore for us broad issues like public education;
The economy, environmentalism & the Global ****** Thermometer;
Not to mention the numerous flaws of opinion polls.



And again my editor TEXTS me, reminds me again: “LIGHTEN UP!”
Consoling me:  “Even Shakespeare had to play to the groundlings.”
The groundlings, AKA: The Rabble.
Yes. Even the ******* Bard, even Willie the Shake,
Had to contend with a decidedly lowbrow copse of carrion.
Oh yes, the groundlings, a carrion herd, a flying flock of carrion seagulls,
Carrion crow, carrion-feeders one and all,
And let’s throw Sheryl Crow into the mix while we’re at it:
“Hit it! This ain't no disco. And it ain't no country club either, this is L.A.”  

                  Send "All I Wanna Do" Ringtone to your Cell              

Once more, I digress.
The Rabble:  an amorphous, gelatinous Jabba the Hutt of commonality.
The Rabble: drunk, debauched & lawless.
Too *****-delicious to stop Bill & Hilary from thinking about tomorrow;
Too Paul McCartney My Love Does it Good to think twice.

The Roman Saturnalia: a weeklong **** fest.
The Saturnalia: originally a pagan kink-fest in honor of the deity Saturn.
Dovetailing nicely with the advent of the Christian era,
With a project started by Il Capo di Tutti Capi,
One of the early popes, co-opting the Roman calendar between 17 and 25 December,
Putting the finishing touches on the Jesus myth.
For Brooklyn Hopi-***-Jew baby boomers like me,
Saturnalia manifested itself as Disco Fever,
Unpleasant years of electrolysis, scrunched ***** in tight polyester
For Roman plebeians, for the great unwashed citizenry of Rome,
Saturnalia was just a great big Italian wedding:
A true family blowout and once-in-a-lifetime ego-trip for Dad,
The father of the bride, Vito Corleone, Don for A Day:
“Some think the world is made for fun and frolic,
And so do I! Funicula, Funiculi!”

America: love it or leave it; my country right or wrong.
Sure, we were citizens of Rome,
But any Joe Josephus spending the night under a Tiber bridge,
Or sleeping off a three day drunk some afternoon,
Up in the Coliseum bleachers, the cheap seats, out beyond the monuments,
The original three monuments in the old stadium,
Standing out in fair territory out in center field,
Those three stone slabs honoring Gehrig, Huggins, and Babe.
Yes, in the house that Ruth built--Home of the Bronx Bombers--***?
Any Joe Josephus knows:  Roman citizenship doesn’t do too much for you,
Except get you paxed, taxed & drafted into the Legion.
For us the Roman lifestyle was HIND-*** humble.
We plebeians drew our grandeur by association with Empire.
Very few Romans and certainly only those of the patrician class lived high,
High on the hog, enjoying a worldly extravaganza, like—whom do we both know?

Okay, let’s say Laurence Olivier as Crassus in Spartacus.
Come on, you saw Spartacus fifteen ******* times.
Remember Crassus?
Crassus: that ***** twisted **** trying to get his freak on with,
Tony Curtis in a sunken marble tub?
We plebes led lives of quiet *****-scratching desperation,
A bunch of would-be legionnaires, diseased half the time,
Paid in salt tablets or baccala, salted codfish soaked yellow in olive oil.
Stiffs we used to call them on New Year’s Eve in Brooklyn.
Let’s face it: we were hyenas eating someone else’s ****,
Stage-door jackals, Juvenal-come-late-lies, a mob of moronic mook boneheads
Bought off with bread & circuses and Reality TV.
Each night, dished up a wide variety of lowbrow Elizabethan-era entertainments.  
We contemplate an evening on the town, downtown—
(cue Petula Clark/Send "Downtown" Ringtone to your Cell)

On any given London night, to wit:  mummers, jugglers, bear & bull baiters.
How about dog & **** fighters, quoits & skittles, alehouses & brothels?
In short, somewhere, anywhere else,
Anywhere other than down along the Thames,
At Bankside in Southwark, down in the Globe Theater mosh pit,
Slugging it out with the groundlings whose only interest,
In the performance is the choreography of swordplay and stale ****** puns.
Meanwhile, Hugh Fennyman--probably a fellow Jew,
An English Renaissance Bugsy Siegel or Mickey Cohen—
Meanwhile Fennyman, the local mob boss is getting his ya-yas,
Roasting the feet of my text-messaging editor, Philip Henslowe.
Poor and pathetic Henslowe, works on commission, always scrounging,
But a true patron of my craft, a gentleman of infinite jest and patience,
Spiritual subsistence, and every now and then a good meal at some,
Sawdust joint with oyster shells, and a Prufrockian silk purse of T.S. Eliot gold.

Poor, pathetic Henslowe, trussed up by Fennyman,
His editorial feet in what looks like a Japanese hibachi.
Henslowe’s feet to the fire--feet to the fire—get it?
A catchy phrase whose derivation conjures up,
A grotesque yet vivid image of torture,
An exquisite insight into how such phrases ingress the idiom,
Not to mention a scene once witnessed at a secret Romanian CIA prison,
I’d been ordered to Bucharest not long after 9/11,
Handling the rendition and torture of Habib Ghazzawy,

An entirely innocent falafel maker from Steinway Street, Astoria, Queens.
Shock the Monkey: it’s what we do. GOTO:
Peter Gabriel - Shock the Monkey/
(HQ music video) - YouTube//
www.youtube.com/
Poor, pathetic, ******-on Henslowe.


Fennyman :  (his avarice is whet by something Philly screams out about a new script)  "A play takes time. Find actors; Rehearsals. Let's say open in three weeks. That's--what--five hundred groundlings at tuppence each, in addition four hundred groundlings tuppence each, in addition four hundred backsides at three pence--a penny extra for a cushion, call it two hundred cushions, say two performances for safety how much is that Mr. Frees?"
Jacobean Tweet, John (1580-1684) Webster:  “I saw him kissing her bubbies.”

It’s Geoffrey Rush, channeling Henslowe again,
My editor, a singed smoking madman now,
Feet in an ice bucket, instructing me once more:
“Lighten things up, you know . . .
Comedy, love and a bit with a dog.”
I digress again and return to Hopi Land, back to my shaman-monastic abattoir,
That Zen Center in downtown Shungopavi.
At the Tribal Enrolment Office I make my case for a Certificate of Indian Blood,
Called a CIB by the Natives and the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The BIA:  representing gold & uranium miners, cattle and sheep ranchers,
Sodbusters & homesteaders; railroaders and dam builders since 1824.
Just in time for Andrew Jackson, another false friend of Native America,
Just before Old Hickory, one of many Democratic Party hypocrites and scoundrels,
Gives the FONGOOL, up the CULO go ahead.
Hey Andy, I’ve got your Jacksonian democracy: Hanging!
The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) mission is to:   "… enhance the quality of life, to promote economic opportunity, and to carry out the responsibility to protect and improve the trust assets of American Indians, Indian tribes, and Alaska Natives. What’s that in the fine print?  Uncle Sammy holds “the trust assets of American Indians.”

Here’s a ******* tip, Geronimo: if he trusted you,
It would ALL belong to you.
To you and The People.
But it’s all fork-tongued white *******.
If true, Indian sovereignty would cease to be a sick one-liner,
Cease to be a blunt force punch line, more of,
King Leopold’s 19th Century stand-up comedy schtick,
Leo Presents: The **** of the Congo.
La Belgique mission civilisatrice—
That’s what French speakers called Uncle Leo’s imperial public policy,
Bringing the gift of civilization to central Africa.
Like Manifest Destiny in America, it had a nice colonial ring to it.
“Our manifest destiny [is] to overspread the continent,
Allotted by Providence for the free development,
Of our yearly multiplying millions.”  John L. O'Sullivan, 1845

Our civilizing mission or manifest destiny:
Either/or, a catchy turn of phrase;
Not unlike another ironic euphemism and semantic subterfuge:
The Pacification of the West; Pacification?
Hardly: decidedly not too peaceful for Cochise & Tonto.
Meanwhile, Madonna is cash rich but disrespected Evita poor,
To wit: A ****** on the Rocks (throwing in a byte or 2 of Da Vinci Code).
Meanwhile, Miss Ciccone denied her golden totem *****.
They snubbed that little guinea ****, didn’t they?
Snubbed her, robbed her rotten.
Evita, her magnum opus, right up there with . . .
Her SNL Wayne’s World skit:
“Get a load of the unit on that guy.”
Or, that infamous MTV Music Video Awards stunt,
That classic ***** Lip-Lock with Britney Spears.

How could I not see that Oscar snubola as prime evidence?
It was just another stunning case of American anti-Italian racial animus.
Anyone familiar with Noam Chomsky would see it,
Must view it in the same context as the Sacco & Vanzetti case,
Or, that arbitrary lynching of 9 Italian-Americans in New Orleans in 1891,
To cite just two instances of anti-Italian judicial reach & mob violence,
Much like what happened to my cousin Dominic,
Gang-***** by the Harlem Globetrotters, in their locker room during halftime,
While he working for Abe Saperstein back in 1952.
Dom was doing advance for Abe, supporting creation of The Washington Generals:
A permanent stable of hoop dream patsies and foils,
Named for the ever freewheeling, glad-handing, backslapping,
Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force (SCAEF), himself,
Namely General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the man they liked,
And called IKE: quite possibly a crypto Jew from Abilene.

Of course, Harry Truman was my first Great White Fascist Father,
Back in 1946, when I first opened my eyes, hung up there,
High above, looking down from the adobe wall.
Surveying the entire circular kiva,
I had the best seat in the house.
Don’t let it be said my Spider Grandmother or Hopi Corn Mother,
Did not want me looking around at things,
Discovering what made me special.
Didn’t divine intervention play a significant part of my creation?
Knowing Mamma Mia and Nonna were Deities,
Gave me an edge later on the streets of Brooklyn.
The Cradleboard: was there ever a more divinely inspired gift to human curiosity? The Cradleboard: a perfect vantage point, an infant’s early grasp,
Of life harmonious, suspended between Mother Earth and Father Sky.
Simply put: the Hopi should be running our ******* public schools.

But it was IKE with whom I first associated,
Associated with the concept 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
I liked IKE. Who didn’t?
What was not to like?
He won the ******* war, didn’t he?
And he wasn’t one of those crazy **** John Birchers,
Way out there, on the far right lunatic Republican fringe,
Was he? (It seems odd and nearly impossible to believe in 2013,
That there was once a time in our Boomer lives,
When the extreme right wing of the Republican Party
Was viewed by the FBI as an actual threat to American democracy.)
Understand: it was at a time when The FBI,
Had little ideological baggage,
But a great appetite for secrets,
The insuppressible Jay Edgar doing his thang.

IKE: of whom we grew so, oh-so Fifties fond.
Good old reliable, Nathan Shaking IKE:
He’d been fixed, hadn’t he? Had had the psychic snip.
Snipped as a West Point cadet & parade ground martinet.
Which made IKE a good man to have in a pinch,
Especially when crucial policy direction was way above his pay grade.
Cousin Dom was Saperstein’s bagman, bribing out the opposition,
Which came mainly from religious and patriotic organizations,
Viewing the bogus white sports franchise as obscene.
The Washington Generals, Saperstein’s new team would have but one opponent,
And one sole mission: to serve as the **** of endless jokes and sight gags for—
Negroes.  To play the chronic fools of--
Negroes.  To be chronically humiliated and insulted by—
Negroes.  To run up and down the boards all night, being outran by—
Negroes.  Not to mention having to wear baggy silk shorts.



Meadowlark Lemon:  “Yeah, Charlie, we ***** that grease-ball Dominic; we shagged his guinea mouth and culo rotten.”  

(interviewed in his Scottsdale, AZ winter residence in 2003 by former ESPN commentator Charlie Steiner, Malverne High School, Class of ’67.)
                                                        
  ­                                                                 ­                 
IKE, briefed on the issue by higher-ups, quickly got behind the idea.
The Harlem Globetrotters were to exist, and continue to exist,
Are sustained financially by Illuminati sponsors,
For one reason and one reason only:
To serve elite interests that the ***** be kept down and subservient,
That the minstrel show be perpetuated,
A policy surviving the elaborate window dressing of the civil rights movement, Affirmative action, and our first Uncle Tom president.
Case in point:  Charles Barkley, Dennis Rodman & Metta World Peace Artest.
Cha-cha-cha changing again:  I am Robert Allen Zimmermann,
A whiny, skinny Jew, ****** and rolling in from Minnesota,
Arrested, obviously a vagrant, caught strolling around his tony Jersey enclave,
Having moved on up the list, the A-list, a special invitation-only,
Yom Kippur Passover Seder:  Next Year in Jerusalem, Babaloo!

I take ownership of all my autonomic and conditioned reflexes;
Each personal neural arc and pathway,
All shenanigans & shellackings,
Or blunt force cognitive traumas.
It’s all percolating nicely now, thank you,
In kitchen counter earthen crockery:
Random access memory: a slow-cook crockpot,
Bubbling through my psychic sieve.
My memories seem only remotely familiar,
Distant and vague, at times unreal:
An alien hybrid databank accessed accidently on purpose;
Flaky science sustains and monitors my nervous system.
And leads us to an overwhelming question:
Is it true that John Dillinger’s ******* is in the Smithsonian Museum?
Enquiring minds want to know, Kemosabe!

“Any last words, *******?” TWEETS Adam Smith.
Postmortem cyber-graffiti, an epitaph carved in space;
Last words, so singular and simple,
Across the universal great divide,
Frisbee-d, like a Pleistocene Kubrick bone,
Tossed randomly into space,
Morphing into a gyroscopic space station.
Mr. Smith, a calypso capitalist, and me,
Me, the Poet Laureate of the United States and Adam;
Who, I didn’t know from Adam.
But we tripped the light fantastic,
We boogied the Protestant Work Ethic,
To the tune of that old Scotch-Presbyterian favorite,
Variations of a 5-point Calvinist theme: Total Depravity; Election; Particular Redemption; Irresistible Grace; & Perseverance of the Saints.

Mr. Smith, the author of An Inquiry into the Nature
& Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776),
One of the best-known, intellectual rationales for:
Free trade, capitalism, and libertarianism,
The latter term a euphemism for Social Darwinism.
Prior to 1764, Calvinists in France were called Huguenots,
A persecuted religious majority . . . is that possible?
A persecuted majority of Edict of Nantes repute.
Adam Smith, likely of French Huguenot Jewish ancestry himself,
Reminds me that it is my principal plus interest giving me my daily gluten.
And don’t think the irony escapes me now,
A realization that it has taken me nearly all my life to see again,
What I once saw so vividly as a child, way back when.
Before I put away childish things, including the following sentiment:
“All I need is the air that I breathe.”

  Send "The Air That I Breathe" Ringtone to your Cell  

The Hippies were right, of course.
The Hollies had it all figured out.
With the answer, as usual, right there in the lyrics.
But you were lucky if you were listening.
There was a time before I embraced,
The other “legendary” economists:
The inexorable Marx,
The savage society of Veblen,
The heresies we know so well of Keynes.
I was a child.
And when I was a child, I spake as a child—
Grazie mille, King James—
I understood as a child; I thought as a child.
But when I became a man I jumped on the bus with the band,
Hopped on the irresistible bandwagon of Adam Smith.

Smith:  “Any last words, *******?”
Okay, you were right: man is rationally self-interested.
Grazie tanto, Scotch Enlightenment,
An intellectual movement driven by,
An alliance of Calvinists and Illuminati,
Freemasons and Johnny Walker Black.
Talk about an irresistible bandwagon:
Smith, the gloomy Malthus, and David Ricardo,
Another Jew boy born in London, England,
Third of 17 children of a Sephardic family of Portuguese origin,
Who had recently relocated from the Dutch Republic.
******* Jews!
Like everything shrewd, sane and practical in this world,
WE also invented the concept:  FOLLOW THE MONEY.

The lyrics: if you were really listening, you’d get it:
Respiration keeps one sufficiently busy,
Just breathing free can be a full-time job,
Especially when--borrowing a phrase from British cricketers—,
One contemplates the sorry state of the wicket.
Now that I am gainfully superannuated,
Pensioned off the employment radar screen.
Oft I go there into the wild ebon yonder,
Wandering the brain cloud at will.
My journey indulges curiosity, creativity and deceit.
I free range the sticky wicket,
I have no particular place to go.
Snagging some random fact or factoid,
A stop & go rural postal route,
Jumping on and off the brain cloud.

Just sampling really,
But every now and then, gorging myself,
At some information super smorgasbord,
At a Good Samaritan Rest Stop,
I ponder my own frazzled neurology,
When I was a child—
Before I learned the grim economic facts of life and Judaism,
Before I learned Hebrew,
Before my laissez-faire Bar Mitzvah lessons,
Under the rabbinical tutelage of Rebbe Kahane--
I knew what every clever child knows about life:
The surfing itself is the destination.
Accessing RAM--random access memory—
On a strictly need to know basis.
RAM:  a pretty good name for consciousness these days.

If I were an Asimov or Sir Arthur (Sri Lankabhimanya) Clarke,
I’d get freaky now, riffing on Terminators, Time Travel and Cyborgs.
But this is truth not science fiction.
Nevertheless, someone had better,
Come up with another name for cyborg.
Some other name for a critter,
Composed of both biological and artificial parts?
Parts-is-parts--be they electronic, mechanical or robotic.
But after a lifetime of science fiction media,
After a steady media diet, rife with dystopian technology nightmares,
Is anyone likely to admit to being a cyborg?
Since I always give credit where credit is due,
I acknowledge that cyborg was a term coined in 1960,
By Manfred Clynes & Nathan S. Kline and,
Used to identify a self-regulating human-machine system in outer space.

Five years later D. S. Halacy's: Cyborg: Evolution of the Superman,
Featured an introduction, which spoke of:  “… a new frontier, that was not,
Merely space, but more profoundly, the relationship between inner space,
And outer space; a bridge, i.e., between mind and matter.”
So, by definition, a cyborg defined is an organism with,
Technology-enhanced abilities: an antenna array,
Replacing what was once sentient and human.
My glands, once in control of metabolism and emotions,
Have been replaced by several servomechanisms.
I am biomechanical and gluttonous.
Soaking up and breathing out the atmosphere,
My Baby Boom experience of six decades,
Homogenized and homespun, feedback looped,
Endlessly networked through predigested mass media,
Culture as demographically targeted content.

This must have something to do with my own metamorphosis.
I think of Gregor Samsa, a Kafkaesque character if there ever was one.
And though we share common traits,
My evolutionary progress surpasses and transcends his.
Samsa--Phylum and Class--was, after all, an insect.
Nonetheless, I remain a changeling.
Have I not seen many stages of growth?
Each a painful metamorphic cycle,
From exquisite first egg,
Through caterpillar’s appetite & squirm.
To phlegmatic bliss and pupa quietude,
I unfold my wings in a rush of Van Gogh palette,
Color, texture, movement and grace, lift off, flapping in flight.
My eyes have witnessed wondrous transformations,
My experience, nouveau riche and distinctly self-referential;
For the most part unspecific & longitudinally pedestrian.

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 and turned around on me.
My tools have reshaped my brain & central nervous system.
Remaking me as 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 and septic now, a cluster of implanted sensors,
Content: currency made increasingly more valuable as time passes,
Served up by and 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.
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2018
.so... just because he's copper skinned, and doesn't speak the English language with a continental accent but some brash, canopy of urban slang, he's the superior authority of the dialectical drag of opinion? oh! really?! so we're talking to diacritical aesthetic snobs?! wow! i thought i was bad at that, which i am... but i'm first generation, and i know the courtesy of remaining the voice tracking, a minority... that somehow has enough oil in the cogs of cognition, to leave these isles... i'll stay... blend in... only the more obnoxious english people are bothered by my "accent"... like that one comic in Edinburgh said... you might wonder about my accent... it's educated... my one flaw... i live in Essex but don't fit the Essex boy stereotype... some i'm primarily foreign... not educated.

that's nice, no really...
  back in 1997
   i was an illegal immigrant -
deported from England
with my parents...
aged...
  1986... aged... 11...
about to start
secondary school...
Canon Palmer,
7 kings...
i remember the whole encounter,
happened on Sunday -
the Home Office officers came
plain clothes... knocked
on the door...
my father started running...
jumped a few garden fences...
was caught...
my grandfather was visiting,
kept blaming himself
for the incident....
the day before?
   we were out doing the usual
family stuff -
won a massive red dog doll
for my mother rolling
***** into holes with
camels racing across the
canvas...
   what was that place...
can't remember...
   but sure as hell i remember
the ride...
   started off circular horizontal,
ended up circular vertical...
    but turns out i remember
that Sunday better...
         one of the home office officers
walked into my bedroom with
me sobbing...
   and only said:
you have a nice computer...
i gave him the death stare...
   well... second time round
my parents figured out all the legal
issues of applying for citizenry -
  and managed to get it...
did i sing the national anthem
at the integration ceremony?
like **** it did...
           i speak an english
that transcends national anthem *******,
plus i'm waiting for Charlie...
   who probably going to
become George VIII or something...
    but i know the backbone of
illegal migration,
i was one, aged 11...
seeing my parents get arrested
i started a fist-fight with a wall
that i knew i was going to lose...
      point being...
  whenever some, ******* Somali migrant...
some African migrant in his teens
gets away with illegal migration?
look...
i know what illegal migration
looks like...
   don't tell me no person is illegal
because you're copper-skinned
and bronze when tanned...
and that's your sole excuse!
        ****** me off...
****... didn't you hear that
Bukowski already said?
  the poor are not good unto their fellows
and the rich are likewise...
so why expect economic migrants
to not think less of refugees?
economic migrants at least do
not smuggle in tears and homeland
literary worth regrets...
no-nonsense migration...
  competent roofers -
   competent plumbers...
   but i... kinda love how the middle class
english "lass" will prefer Afro-****
over an unblocked toilet...
            and their children,
Bahamas beauties, all of them...
pretty mongrels outliving pedigrees...
  there is a concept of illegal
immigration,
i was an illegal immigrant...
    but, hey... a white among whites
means i don't have the copper skin
argument to call it: "racism"...
   can people actually file for
a de- citizenship?
               there are still parts of Europe,
that do not have a post-colonial
  present...
  where the Somali, Nigerian argument...
will not, work...
it, will, not, work...
             it's days like these where
i'm like: whatever the U.S.S.R. was,
and what it became...
   i'm about to snuggle up to the current
shadow...
          no... illegal immigration
exists...
             unless you're *******
color blind...
                   hell...
at least i spent 1998 being home schooled -
and watching the World Cup with
my great-grandmother...
   and discovering Metallica...
but no... when some ******* sub-Saharan
tells me about the citizenry of
the world...
          look... head over to Kiev...
  see how happy the Ukrainians will be...
head over to the Warsaw...
   where the signs are in both Polish
and Ukrainian...
                please! please! i implore you!
try assuming that everyone
over those parts is bilingual speaking
English...
i'm waiting to see the Islamic takeover...
on the local and primordial level
of a "peasantry" -
                      but like shaggy said -
wazzin' me...
    i didn't castrate the English...
      to me their testicles are still dangling...
or at least i like to think they are...
    but as an economic migrant...
i abhor what others somehow find
emotional cupcakes of sugary ooze for
in terms of sympathy...
             guess the first line of chess -
collateral - pawns -
       is necessary beside the bishop -
   like what the Palestinians do with their
civilians, according to the Israeli
army...
                     so why bother making
psychedelics legal...
  when you trip on moral relativism?!
SURETICE TONGUE Jun 2018
Conversation opened. 1 read message.

Skip to content
Using Gmail with screen readers
in:sent
Click here to enable desktop notifications for Gmail.   Learn more  Hide

1 of 184

QUIVER ALL-MAXIMIZING

SAMUEL DAVID <believingvirtue@gmail.com>
3:38 AM (56 minutes ago)
to Daniel
SOAR OWNERSHIP

/ UTTERANCES OUTLABOURED  PILGRIMS/

By the creditor at cyprus  and on other grounds:

The counter-cedar Venice much unparalleled ever pursuant  kindly indigenous street streams far above strange beneath  the string ...' Dream castle before the 'Requiring much quill 'Peanut lieutenant great  ones of the machinery  citation /  Worth  pillow following purposes invasion with a rainfall bombardment epistle the pearl earning era:   Closet  by sessions pursue arithmetician diaries ' anchor calculus cumulative arrows propellant / Squadron in the field-refueling ' division visions ...' Upswing within the meaning axle conversion processes proofs /  ' Electron icons ' Creation wireless reticence circles:  Moon ship's  amnesty crest reckon  'flaskbone SpurZebra...'  Preferment goes by relieves and affectionate 'Oil The Self-graduation  Outpouring  / Vagrant above ant strides : Rodrigo peculiar ends demonstration/ Forego  the-Outward acclimation :   Upon all civility citizenry civil-rises other low less  losses below yonder / Phrase of prose -possessions  cuss ion syn chronicutensils  'asylum  systems  beyond stems : Preeminence blown 'being ht-thence quarries  hijack travels  history/Wherein of plant  hours ' spicily spoke *****:  Pilgrimage dilutes noble companies  'ago-maximize promptly  alacrity;  Exhibition the underrating  besought levels- of quarry / burden oxidation immune  slaughter


Cheap Hill Chips

EMAIL: believingvirtue@gmail.com

+2348131914240





Click here to Reply or Forward
0.04 GB (0%) of 15 GB used
Manage
Terms - Privacy
Last account activity: 49 minutes ago
Details
TREACHERY  BOW '*****-HARVESTER'' CARDINAL GALE ALIVE TROOPS...' GENIUS RELATIVE RATES  PEARL WONDROUS  HEIGHTS...'

TERRITORIES YOKE GOVERNING RETURNS: THE GRASPING-OF-GIFTING RAVENHILLS/ VAL VOLINE TRUMPETS....''BUMPER GRAPPLING BOLT VASTS,,,''
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Two fine films: The Lost City and Blood Diamond.
I joined Blood Diamond during a village massacre
and said to my wife A gun in every home.
Those devils would think twice
before razing the village and seizing the boys.

A well-regulated militia.
The local militia the most interesting moment
in a strong film with motive (economic, emotional), action (chases,
      fights) and a ****, sexless love story.
Use of violence by the local militia for a limited purpose: protect the
      community, the young
from the janjaweed. The crop from the ****.
Limited scope and defensive posture
but armed and coordinated, cooperative, the men (and the women)
      side by side.
Warriors at the gate, you will not run, you will not bargain.
Just violence = limited scope, defensive posture.

Great music. Cuba, Africa.
The Lost City, when the communists tell the club owner under threat
      of violence
No saxophones in the band. The saxophone!
Invented by a Belgian--Look what the Belgians are doing in the
      Congo!
When the state's violence is turned against the citizenry
for non-violent acts.

This quiet neighborhood, July,
undergirded by violence, force. That's a given--
any farmer, custodian, EMT will tell you that.
Without just violence
Gandhi's scope, and King's, might be vanishingly limited,
negligible (but not non-existent)?
                                                  ­     Regarding King
the matter is simple -- he was non-violent but dependent upon
federal force to counter the South's violence.
No doubt without the larger force, the non-violent would be
      overwhelmed by southern violence.
Here, non-violence was a tactic, not an ethic.
Gandhi, however, had no violent partner to protect him from the
      British. Or did he?
1. There was the potential violence of the population, which Gandhi
    restrained but could release which the British feared, and
2. It was the restrained (limited scope) violence of the British that
    allowed Gandhi to exist rather than be extinguished--this restraint
    was a (British) cultural imperative (limited scope) as well as
    emanating from Britain's view of India as a protectorate and
    valued citizen of the United Kingdom (defensive posture).

What about violence or threat of violence to compel compliance with
      community
as in mortgage foreclosure, driving without license, drug possession.
Perhaps it is necessary violence to maintain orderly commerce, the
      common space, and preempt bad behaviors associated with
      otherwise neutral, private acts.
The defensive posture is the common good; the limited scope is
      forgoing deadly force.
But the citizen, too, must maintain a disciplined, armed non-violence,
in case the state (the janjaweed) engages in an unjust, autoimmune
      violence.
Hence, a gun in every home.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
Lou Costello’s
bronze semblance
dipped and danced atop
his granite pedestal
spinning miasmatic tales
of enigmatic hope and
resplendent labor

“the sweet
unbounded
expectation of
hope once
surged down
this city’s streets”
... said Lou

"I was a self made man
until someone thought up
the idea to cast a bronze
caricature of me and
bolt it to this grand rock”

nostalgia
is the boldest form
of fiction
culling from the past
the things hoped for
in the now

“growing up
here
I clipped school,
played ball,
rolled drunks
and fought
nickel ante
prize fights
to get my
daily bread,
I literally
punched my
way out
of this town”

a smith smelts a
batch of liquid bronze
pouring molds full of
a fervent wish
a madman's delusion
a priestly promise
a Pollyannaish illusion?

baskets overflowed
gushing hope, offered
at the holy altars by
honorable workers

it was said that
a morsel of labor
could feed 5000
starved families
breeding hopes as large
as a half cup of water

hope
the size of a
mustard seed sparked
recovery of 1000 sick children
dying from the Asian Flu
at St. Joe's

hope
willed an end to war’s slaughter
which ironically was bad for
Paterson's war profiteers
forcing layoffs
sparking labor actions

hope
ignited conflagrations firing
the resurrection of dead industries
lately there is a lot of hope
circling this one

miracles spring
from the pronounced
lips of trembling hearts

the hopeful amassed
slogging forth on bloodied toes
along razor thin slices
of expectation
hoping to begin again
eager to build anew

new starts sometimes
grow old fast soon
hope expires
winging back home
on broken wings of
misspent labor

hoping for the snow to stop
a lump of coal to last
the labor of a budding crocus
rewarded, breaking through
the hard crust of winters end
blooms for a day then expires

hope is a beggars wish
gods give yearnings heft
prayers earnestly chanted
willing paradigm shifts

prayers of absolution
play the angles
calculating odds
of probabilistic mathematics
a sure thing long shot
the prayers of the
righteous availeth much

we hoped for jobs
we hoped for leisure
we hoped for love
we hoped for labor
we hoped for rest
we hoped for luck
we hoped for a life
wealth health blest

laughing at our follies
crying over defeats
our city a tragic star
a comedy of schemes

our
hope and labor
is the keystone of
our self construction
cornerstone of
a grand city’s edifice
its negation our
deconstruction

tragedy and comedy
invested and spent
falling and laughing
foibles and faith

belief trumps evidence
happenstance slays surety
horror and beauty
compose a life's mural
nothing happens
by mistake

learning and ignorance
fate and chance
the risk of randomness
expiration dates arrive fast

predetermination a bold
conviction, suspicion,
intention a splendid  
kismet  

banality becomes
sublime  
laughter is ******

...the mystery is in
the loam... says WCW
...the finished product
is what I’m after...

“what the
**** are you
doing here?"
the bronzed Louis
gagged

"Hey Abbott
look at these clowns
in the yellow plastic
garbage bags!

bobbing in a sea of
midnight mist

a posse of
neon clowns
donning glad bags
on the most dismal
night of the year

twinkling under the
gloom of my playgrounds
faltering streetlamps

“twinkling targets
easily tracked,
a trained eye,
a steady hand
could pick you off
at a thousand paces
what gives?

“what the **** are
you doing here?

“what the **** am I doin
here for that matter?”

“the second question
is easy to answer,

“I’m Paterson’s
finest son....

...“Wherever he is tonight, I want him to hear me," and went on with the show. No one in the audience knew of the death until after the show when Bud Abbott explained the events of the day, and how the phrase "The show must go on" had been epitomized by Lou that night....

"Mr. Bacciagalupe
he use to live on
Cianci Street

“who’s on first?
what’s on second?
I don’t know is on third?
was a riddle one recited
to get into his speak

“his Ginnie Red was legendary
and no one was ever known to
die from drinking his bathtub gin”

the old world ways
are made new
by the arrival of
new old worlds
supplanting old Italiano

“where is all the goodwill capital
we invested in this place?”

successive generations
thought it best to export
the capital of the
expired generations
elsewhere

it was ferried
across the river,
crossed the
city boundaries,
leaving for Wayne
and the fairer lawns
of Wyckoff and the
greener grasses of
Franklin Lakes

all the old wise guys
died off or were sentenced
to life by their children,
some still doin time in
old age homes in
Rockaway

all the sport clubs
boarded up but their spirit
lingers like an espresso
ring on a post slurp
demitasse cup

“hell my body is buried
in Hollywood but here
I am, holding court in
Costello Park
talking with you
knuckleheads
a baseball bat
my royal scepter
a brown derby
my crown, truly a
King of Nothing,
Lord of All

“the soul of my city is
eternal,  like the comedy
of tragedy or is it
tragic comic?

“here I remain
omnipresent,
spinning about
frozen forever
in a magnificent
bronze age,
erected to my likeness
beholding me
to stand witness
to this litter strewn park
decorated with corrugated
Big Mac boxes, plastic
Big Gulp tops and discarded
rubbers bagging the ****
of this cities arrested
citizenry”

never actualized
never naturalized
citizenship denied
at the commencement
of ejaculatory flows
of joy

unfulfilled spirit
of citizenship
never to experience
the splendor
of yesterday’s
modernist
metropolis and
Lou’s stand up
routines

“look at that John
over there, that guy
wheezing like a
ruptured blacksmith’s
billow, pounding away
laboring to get off

“the poor little
******* just hopes it
will end soon

it does
**** he’s done

I” knew that guys
grandfather,
getting off
runs in the family
and remains one
of the few things
that draws the progeny back
to the old neighborhood

“you can still glimpse
snippets of the old ways
rising in new ways

“an Armenian
sports club
around the corner
is a new
incarnation of
the old Neapolitan
social clubs that
once demarcated the
neighborhoods

“these days
great grandsons
of once proud
Sons of Italy
come back to the
old neighborhoods
begging for hand-jobs
from crack ******

“welcome to my
burlesque world

“since the Gumbas
moved to Franklin Lakes
the wannabe wise guys
became ***** whipped
dumb *****
making ***** of
themselves with
their painted ****-job
Jersey Housewives

“they ***** their families
out for a bit parts on
MTV and a free lunch
at the Brownstone

“their grandfathers
labored long hours
to assure the well being
of their families in the expectant
hope of a better shot at life
but the children squandered
the hard earned bequest lovingly
bequeathed by reverent forebears

“in the wee hours
one can sometimes hear
a weeping chorus
of concrete Madonnas
musing melodious lullabies
to the sleeping
Lombard's lying
in uneasy repose at
Holy Sepulchre Cemetery

“they twist in their graves
dreaming of a last dance with the
Lady of Unending Sorrows
at weddings for unrepentant
wayward daughters and prodigal sons

“its small
recompense for a
lifetime of an
honest day’s work”

the dashed hope
of squandered labor
begets a city of ruin”

at the
parks northern corner
the Salvation Army’s
rumbling bivouac rests
in a dreamless sleep
its residents
patiently waiting to
inherit this city
abandoned by
nuevo wise guys

this tragedy
is all comedy
the comedic hope
of tragic labor
buried snoring
the millenniums away
awaiting resurrection
day

Lou was getting ******...
“get outta my park

“the artists
in the rehabbed
factories across
the street
are resting

“nothing much
going on there

“if you're hoping
to find some
homeless slogs
head over to the river
you should find some there”....

Music Selection:
Frank Sinatra, High Hopes

jbm
Oakland
3/26/13
Part 5 of extended poem Silk City PIT.  PIT is an acronym for Point In Time.  PIT is an annual census American cities conduct to count the homeless population.  Hope and Labor is the city motto of Paterson NJ, nick named The Silk City.
“every man wants to be a tyrant when he fornicates"— marquis de sade (philosophy in the boudoir)
in murky region of my mind flickers shanty town of wickedness and all who burn betray me are tortured murdered buried on outskirts of this moot province not entirely devoted to revenge shadows dart lascivious exchanges shadow economy back alley shenanigans soundproof rooms filled with hunger for beautiful women sole source of my arousal female lust japanese silk braided ropes bowls hoses drop-clothes vibrating toys anticipating mischievous acts town’s folk love esteem me applaud my fiercest turpitude fathers offer their daughters mothers perfume girls with wild flowers in their hair whispering accommodating instructions ultimately i decline their generous offerings opting instead for steadfast soul confidante accomplice closer in age she knows how to mommy my genitals get me off and i the same for her churning simmering caldron of desires dazzling aromas through center of town runs sacred blue river constantly replenishing innocence upon dust filth criminality also many enchanting bridges connecting dark side to bright side in elegant rundown art museum hang several of my paintings next to jackson ******* ad reinhardt anselm kiefer gerhard richter albert pinkham ryder francisco goya susan rothenberg and public library shelves brim with volumes of my writings next to james joyce william faulkner sophocles sylvia plath rainer maria rilke milan kundera franz kafka gabriel garcia marquez thomas bernhard patrick suskind  pablo neruda oriana fallaci annie proulx lydia davis during mornings everyone busies themselves making things practicing yoga swimming cooking friends gather for lunch munch comically gossip about previous night’s dramas in afternoon go back to their interests at sunset all citizenry come together look to west watch fiery orange globe sink beyond purple mountains wonder reflect sniff their fingers as night falls on little village each goes about deciding what to wear then meet for cocktails in local taverns and commotion begins
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2018
that's what ****** me off about western journalism,
there is a satirical newspaper in Poland,
there is a counter-culture,
but you obviously don't see it...
NIE is a decent newspaper,
    because it is satirical, but also serious,
at the same time...

  and there is anti-Catholic sentiment among
the people...
   i should know, my grandfather
was a communist party member,
   a strictly atheistic, humanistic,
secular upbringing -
              
   but when did nationalism die
in the western nations?
         16th century? 17th century?
you know... before nationalism morphed
into imperialism?
  obviously these post-nationalistic states
are looking at states that regained
their nation-state status like
**** sapiens looking at a bunch of
******* retards... sorry... neanderthals...

well... d'uh...
it's because the western states do not
understand the concept of a healthy nationalism,
oh a collective citizenry,
  of solidarity...
                   these days, anything right
of the center is... FAR RIGHT...
   there are fringe groups everywhere...
but you're talking about nations
that don't have the privilege of
   the imperialistic interlude...
instead: subjugation by other powers,
in the case of Poland... 3!
      
          maybe the western states just
don't know how to express a healthy
nationalism,
           maybe imperialism really
****** them up....
                    what?
   in H'america don't they call nationalism,
patriotism?
   last time i heard,
   i've been the subject of H'american
nationalism since an early age...
      cultural exports...
             more cultural exportation from
H'america than anywhere else...

/ interlude:

new additions to the jukebox
(and no, i haven't listened to these tracks
so even i don't know whether
i'm going to like them):

kokoroko - abusey junction
quantic - time is the enemy
lafayette afro rock band - hihache
gramatik - just jammin'
anthony brancati - neo-funk
savages - you're my chocolate
funky destination - the inside man
       (soopasoul remix)
kiasmos - looped
thurisaz - endless
LTJ - i don't want this groove to ever ends
low - lullaby
blonde redhesd - for the damaged coda

o.k. i knew this one already -
cymande - dove                               /

yeah... concerning
this:
the curious case of suzanna berlinsky

i can understand being blocked
for, incivility...
      but the Mongols really did sack
Moscow...
   and they had to traverse Siberia...
so...
             well **** me...
if i get blocked by someone for writing
such a comment,
as i wrote...
       just a **** shame...
   have to block them back...
    if anyone is available...
please tell suzanna berlinsky
   that's she an outstanding poet...
                  i would have liked to read all
of her works (yes, she is on this site).
T2m  Aug 2014
The Cleaning
T2m Aug 2014
National treasury, the room
Government, the broom
Its citizenry the mop.
Brent Kincaid May 2015
I used to live in a country
That was based on liberty
And where just anybody
Could achieve prosperity
That with assured equality
And working diligently
One could expect definitely
To succeed economically
If you saved all the money
Left over from your salary
To save to bring your family
A step closer to solvency.

Not an impossible proposition,
It was based on the condition
Of a grand national institution
Which promised that stabilization
By taxing us and corporations
With an equitable correlation
Between folks of humble station
And the larger organizations
Working in happy syncopation.
A welcome feeling of elation
Would descend upon our nation
And keep us from stagnation
Or going into nationwide deflation,
Or just as scary, a huge inflation.

Now I look upon our history
And see decades of misery
Laid upon us by calumny
By those meant to fortify
And build up our security.
The constant forces of calamity
If we accept less than probity
From those who have no honesty
Choosing leaders based on beauty
A national cult of personality
Then permit political chicanery
By people with no dignity
Only a greedy criminality
That pretends to propriety
And a devout base of spirituality
When what we have is actually
A kangaroo court of dishonesty
Without a care for the citizenry.
Spenser Bennett Jun 2016
"I am what I believe"
Cried the crestfallen philosophy
"You are what we tell you to be"
Stated the looming bureaucracy
"But what of free speech, life, and liberty?"
Asked the outraged citizenry
"All fictitious. Now back to Benghazi."

And the world turned on
While our minds turned off
Victims to the Great Entertainment
That silences our voice of dissent

"What a marvelous movie"
"It could have been better"
"That Trump is a no-bullshitter"
"Yeah but he's  the same color as my melted smoothie"

Meanwhile the old wait to die
And prisoners don't have the hope to riot
And the T.V. tells us about Kim's new hair
I see these things and I despair

"Hey man, lemme get a eighth"
"Man, what the ******* gotta celebrate"
"I just got fired on Saturday, tryin' to forget this place"
"Man, you just gotta have a little faith"

But ain't no God in heaven and no savior in the saints
One prayer and all will be forgiven at least that's what they say
But my eyes don't divine a reason to believe 'em
My words are my crimes and I won't deceive 'em

Step back and give your heart your full attention
Listen to the voices of the ones I forgot to mention
Are we really so different
Are we slipping into indifference

If you believe in humanity
If you believe in nature
If you believe in morality
Maybe you'll become someone's savior
We pass the
walled incline
of Barbour Park

during the day
a foreboding
patch…an open
air market for
the slave merchants
hustling crack and
**** drippin ****
that's been stepped
on so many times
its a wonder the cut
can still chide a high
out of a wrangled soul

the park’s
modest elevation
is an advantageous
lookout for
runners dealing
dimes while
petty ante
gangstas
daydream
gun blazing glories
of their next big job

not long ago
the park was
refurbed with
an industrial
strength plastic
Jungle Jim,
soon after
the park was
condemned
as a no go
zone for kids,
the litter of
hypodermic
needles and
mounds of
lead spiked
soil, deemed
a public health
risk for youth...
quickly
repurposed
as a crib
for ballers…

back in the
day, the shady
pocket park
lifted Paterson’s
citizenry off
the heated
pavements of
a bustling
thoroughfare

a respite from
the pulsing
tensions of urbanity,
a secular sanctuary,
balancing the urgent
industry of commerce
with the propriety of
residential life

compacting a
brief escape
from the clanging
metronome with
a viewing stand
offering elevation...
a heightened
perspective on
life’s parade
marching
up and down
Broadway…

this urban
oasis planted
at the center
of Silk City’s
grandiloquent
boulevard,
occupies
the most
democratic
equidistant
transit point
between opulent
Eastside mansions
of livin large tycoons
at one end….
and the
industrial district of
The Great Falls,
rising at Broadway’s
western terminus,
assiduously
manufacturing
dollars for the darlings
of fortune and
subsistence for
workers yearning to taste
the crumbs of
prosperity that may fall
from the tables of
opportunity

the park once a
pleasant face of
the landlocked
4th Ward filled
with homage to
a nation's greatest
citizens, Hamilton,
Rosa Parks,
Lafayette,
Madison, Fulton,
Montgomery and
Franklin has
denounced the
virtuous pursuit of
their aspirational
yearnings

now playas
feast on
the mead
of sustenance
harvested from
emaciated streets

commerce has taken
up full residency...
the wards cottage industry
cannibalizing
homes, hoods and
homeboys

as the
4th Ward
grows ugly,
the healthy
matrix of
bustling
street life
breaks down
the peeps
weakened
lay prostate
offer veins
to blood *******
predators
roaming
distressed
going south
neighborhoods

wise guy
knuckleheads,
get busy
gaming
the system
short changing
themselves and
hustling game
to get by
in the sweet bye
and buy of life

at night
a back lit
Barbour Park
floods with the
yellow haze of
blinking Fair St.
lamp posts
and the pulsing
halations
crowning the
Baptist's
of St. Luke's

sentient figures
shift between
park benches
flitting among the
black torsos
of skeletal trees
blending into
the faded
complexion
of abandoned
swing sets

I swear I see
Hurricane Carter
shadow boxing
dancing
around a gangling
Elm, jabbing
away, lifting
a sweet uppercut
working combos
of left hooks
and right crosses
hoping to drop an
intractable
presence
banging away
at a body politic
forming the walls
of taunting
inequities

Hurricane stays
busy delivering
body blows
to burst
through the
prison bars
surrounding
Barbour Park

Music selection:
Bob Dylan, Hurricane

Paterson
01/30/13
jbm

A fragment from extended poem Silk City PIT.  
Published today to honor the death of Rubin Hurricane Carter.
May he find the freedom in eternal rest that eluded him during his lifetime.
A fragment from extended poem Silk City PIT.  (Part 4: Funky Broadway)
Published today to honor the death of Rubin Hurricane Carter.
May he find the freedom in eternal rest that eluded him during his lifetime.

— The End —