I like immigrants, immigration. Legal immigration,
Jane passionately corrects. Actually my goal is a borderless world.
That's a new idea to her.
Gathering the neighborhood like family.
The men discuss sterilizing welfare mothers. I say You're working
      around the edges,
humanity has exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet,
even those with jobs. And spouses. And houses.
Yet it's an idyll of an early summer evening, new cut grass,
two baseball teams of children playing in it. Safe from Pakistan.
News photos of Muslim refugees, women in blue robes, biblically
carrying children away from holocaust. The fundamentalist army
not far behind, beheading sinners, sure in its righteousness
as the Holy Roman Empire.

Somehow Joel Osteen the evangelist comes up
while talking about how the Catholic Church is irrelevant in North
      America,
even Latin America and Africa are going evangelical.
Izzi likes Osteen, awesome extemporaneous speaker, no teleprompter,
up from bootstraps message. My wife says he's probably Jewish.
No one wants to go there.
Fortunately no one claims the Holocaust never happened or slavery
      was voluntary.
What is the carrying capacity of the planet? Two children
have replacement value. In China is it each couple or each adult that gets
one offspring? As life expectancy and standards rise,
family size diminishes. We draw together into greener, tighter cities
surrounded by farms surrounded by forests.
The children of three monotheistic religions, atheists and agnostics
play in city streets, work farm fields, explore forests, deserts,
      grasslands, space.

Two ancient female poets: Enheduanna and Sappho
are a revelation. The clarity of their complaints:
lost lover, lost city.

Skin.
Skin by definition is a thin layer of tissue forming a natural outer covering of the body.
Skin is for people to tan, to clothe, apply make up to... to touch.

Itch, bleed, scab, repeat.

Mosquito bites.
Mosquito bites by definition are the itchy bumps that appear after mosquitoes use their proboscis to puncture your skin and feed on your blood.
Mosquito bites are for people to feel, to itch, to bleed, to scab and repeat. The entire cycle.

Itch, bleed, scab, repeat.

Summer.
Summer by definition is the warmest season of the year.
Summer is for t-shirts, shorts, exposure, swimming, tanning, skin, skin, skin, skin, skin.
"It's Summer, put on some shorts."
"It's Summer, why aren't you wearing a t-shirt?"
"It's Summer, let's go swimming!"
Summer is a time for these questions, these statements, these words to fester, to breed like muosquitos, to sting like the bite of a bug.

Itch, bleed, scab, repeat.
Itch, bleed, scab, repeat.

Dermatologist.
A Dermatologist by definition is a doctor that treats diseases, in the widest sense, and some cosmetic problems of the skin, skin, skin, skin, skin.
The Dermatologist tells me to use this and to use that. Lotions and potions, as my mother would say. Slather, rub, treat, swallow.

Itch, bleed, scab, repeat.
Itch, bleed, scab, repeat.

Skin care.
Skin care by definition is the range of practices that support skin integrity, enhance its appearance and relieve skin conditions.
Get up, shower, sterilizing soap, body oil, steroid cream, medicated lotion, drink water and repeat the process before bed. My daily cycle.

Itch, bleed, scab, repeat.
Itch, bleed, scab, repeat.

Seesaw.
A Seesaw by definition is to change rapidly and repeatedly from one position, situation, or condition to another and back again.
Seesaw, to push off the ground, into the air with a sense of victory and joy, only to fall hard to the ground with stinging ankles and sore calf's.
This isn't a playground anymore.
The Dermatologist says that if I don't get better, they'll have to put me on the pill.

Itch, bleed, scab, repeat.
Itch, bleed, scab, repeat.

The Pill.
The Pill is an oral treatment for my condition. My eczema.
One pill every morning at seven AM with food and an entire glass of water.
The risk associated with the pill- Osteoporosis,  Muscle weakness, Mood and Behavioral changes, Increase in chance of developing cataracts,  Stomach Ulcers and Liver Failure.
One pill every morning at seven AM with food and an entire glass of water. The daily cycle.

Itch, bleed, scab, repeat.
Itch, bleed, scab, repeat.
Itch, bleed, scab.... **** it.

I would rather my liver fail and my bones go brittle then to be stared at on the street!
"What is that?"
"Are you okay?"
"What's wrong with her?"
"Is it contagious?"
"Don't touch me!"
I itch, my nails dragging over my scarred skin and pulling at wounds. I bleed, the welts that crack and leak drops from the red river that flows silently beneath my skin. I scab, leaving horrible lumps of ugly, hardened flesh to coat the once smooth area. I repeat....

Well, I don't want to repeat! I want to be able wear the clothes I want, to walk the streets with out the judging and questioning eyes of the passersby on me, to be held and touched by a significant other without the fear that their fingers will fall upon my skin and recoil in disgust!

Without looking in the mirror and wondering when I can finally begin to love myself.

I decided that today is the day! No more Itching! No more Bleeding! No more Scabs! It's time to break this ******* cycle.

W.H.O has poisoned the vaccine
against fertility of African girl
African boy mother and father
it his now hovering around
the third world geographies
using its satellite mouths and arms,
ringing alarms over the coming tetanus
only to trap the ignorant one
into its infernal of injections
for nothing but permanent sterility,

WHO has no sympathy
for the folks in the poor world,
Nicaragua, Mexico and Kenya
being already depopulated
by ills in history
it still goes ahead
to inject sterility
into their bodies
while pretending
to be in war on tetanus,

wars, slavery and deliberate castration
of the captured slaves
for fitness to royal gladiator
has already made Latin America
and her sister Africa
to suffer fate of the times
in the curse of underpopulation
then still WHO is insidious
in her racist moves
to depopulate the poor world
through her imperial arsenals
in the name of vaccinations
against imagined tetanus
is a sly ploy in single,

W.H.O is sterilizing daughters
of Africa and the poor world
in the age width of 15 to 50
a sure bracket for fecundity
for no other reason
but global Afro-phobia
or universal racism,
or who knows the whole deal
other than the orchestrator
of the anti-human orchestra,

Ebola is already foot loose
on its deadly mission
to wipe out the Negroes
as the imperial powers that be
are armed to the teeth
to confine it in Africa
the way they have already done
to confine cancer and impish ***
in poor Africa,

W.H.O leave Africa alone
to sire and sire,
to fill their land
for a half of Africa
is under dearth of emptiness,
five million square miles of Mauritania
has less than ten million people
a thousand square miles of Turkana
has a hundred thousand turkanas,
Sahara desert is sparsely populated
Namibia and Botswana are cursed
with the spell of humanilessness,

the ***** has no other work
but to plant the human seed
the womb has no other work
but receive the human seed
while the ******
has a royal duty
to germinate the human seed
and these are Godly duties
as the breast of a woman
feeds the seedling
at no cost,

W.H.O leave us alone
to be lame and crippled
late us be wounded
with gangrenous wounds
Like the ****** ulcers
that opportune on ***,
for Tetanus you are fearing
is not terrible as ***,
we better have wounds
and children
other than being barren
in danger of foreign reign,

W.H.O you are in arms
with your fellow bigots
to legalize and empower
Homosexuality in Africa
this being a strategy enough
to jab the ribs of African humanity
a deadly sucker punch
off the right pedastle
of tyranny of numbers,

W.H.O have you ever seen
an African burial of the barren?
listen I tell you, I am aware
you know not,
burying of the barren and the sterile
is the most black ritual
most pale in the world,

give birth Africa! give birth
give birth to twins
in the prime of your childhood
before you go to cities
give birth, and give birth,
children and only children
are the glory of our poverty,
children pulled China out of poverty
they are pulling India out of poverty
as France is stranded on which way out
as it gambles and gambols in stupidity
with free money for the second child,

W.H.O! I know you are foolish as a stone
but I will leave you with pearls of wisdom
from the Bukusu people of Kenya,
that; even if you are foolish
Foolish and stubborn like a stone
but I am as hungry as a hyena
i am sure you have heard.

"This s.o.b. has got Tourette's.
Who knows what he might say? We'd better
Get him under before he rises.
Sterilize something fast!"

I'm awake for the time being. When sleep comes
I shall play the perfect display of my bacillus. Reposing
On the white table like a necrotic pieta. Off to my
Left I can hear those touchstones spinning in fine sockets,
Sterilizing my hands by binding my feet. Soon I will be
A paragon of grunting celluloid, clutched at by
Heated hearts to wrinkle and shear.
I can already taste the cleanser.

Rubber foam, steel clamp and tongue depressor.
Excise the black portions with a serrated life,
You might as well. Because it doesn't matter
How much morphine sits in the delirium drip.
I'm still alive: the crush and blink in Boris Karloff eyes.

When I gather up my self in the morning.
I will be instructed to take all Ten a day
And check in regularly. Despite the cold,
Despite the heat, the embryo has quite failed.

A stiff in the corner
A stiff in a pew
Watch the parade
Formality on cue

A choreographed dance
From station to station
First to the church
Then dirt's destination

Like hospital corners
Clean little lines
Sanitized process
Dressed to the nines

Death can rub off
As every ghost knows
A sickness to catch
It seeps in your clothes

Orderly duty
Sterilizing the end
Except for our thoughts
Would never offend

The cliquing and pooling
People masking their eyes
The family alone
Will look to the cries

A lifetime of sharing
With nothing to say
Thoughts sprint to the bar
To silently pray

Bagpipes have started
It’s time to decide
Pay some respects
Or silently hide

Weak at the wall
Will flies to the door
Avoids every handshake
Just looks at the floor          

Dotting the “i”
Think neat tidy passing
A check box is ticked
Life’s not very lasting

A stiff well-dressed drink
A stiff well-dressed friend
Worth more than a nod
On cowards choice wend


© 2019 MJL

I suffocate my brain with gin.
Again.
I'm seashores and tin.
I bend.

Proximity alert.
The priest becomes megaphone. Spilling my guts when the circuit breaks.

Privacy. Harmony.

Quickly decode the differences.

Hollow bones.

Betsow a vision.
I ask to receive.
I feel the answers.
Too light to break this Earth's atmosphere.
Too late.
Behold,my vision.

The infant sleep of Mother Earth.
A great extinction.
A man is born with grey in his heart.
His thoughts unformed.

A ridge of her leaking core.
A beach with sterilizing water.
Meeting and leaving.
A pool of molten glass.
A lake of cold translucent glass.

A rock to fracture the truth.
A crack forms.
A club is pulled from there.

Echo. Echo. Echo.

paranoia of farming
they are watching
they know
the way you grow
is different
connected to human growth
attached
unbroken from the past
fastened to nativity
proof of how we evolved
scary
intimidating
like aliens
not trusting sustainability
to the machine of hyper-distraction
they call technology
paranoid and worried
when they realize
the fresh variety the garden has
when they realize agriculture
is burning them alive
sterilizing culture
paranoid anticipation
a native alien
immersed in plentitude