Fly, Dragonfly, fly!
Spread your wings and flex your tail
take off to the skies, follow the blowing winds!
Leave behind the Wicked Men of Hollowing Trail
and escape the poisons of their worded sins
Fly, Dragonfly, fly!

Race, Dragonfly, race!
Sweep your wings back against the windy skies
Let your heart propel your spirited sprint faster! Faster!
Escape from the Forest of Unnerving Lies
and the creatures of the Lost Souled *******
Race, Dragonfly, race!

Hunt, Dragonfly, hunt!
Beat your wings to the sounds of the butterflies
Feed your hunger for protecting the meek
with the haunting taste of Honey-Soaked Flies
and the sting of Sugar-Coated Bees
Hunt, Dragonfly, hunt!

Rest, Dragonfly, rest!
Allow the venom to still your beatful wings
Let the swift death claim a Hero's life
Beckon the Raven of Heaven to blissfully sing
to the tune of the Stalking Sparrow's whistling knife
Rest, Dragonfly, rest!

I was born a sickly, screeching baby, two months earlier than expected. The doctor and midwife did everything they could to keep my little limbs moving and to keep my tiny heart beating, fluttering like the wings of butterfly.
“Is it a boy?” my mother whispered through her pale lips, as they bathed my naked body in hot water.
“No, ma’am, it’s a girl” The midwife struggled to add on something that would make the wailing creature seem more desirable. “With exquisitely shaped feet, so perfectly miniature”
She let out a croak of conflicting emotions: the joy and pride of a newly-founded motherly love, the fear of presenting a girl as a first-born, the relief that the hours of agony in childbirth were over and the dread of facing her husband once he found out about me.

My mother was not healthy after my birth for a long time; and when I was only one and two months old she fell dangerously ill, and the house whispered footsteps running to her room late at night and muffled voices of different doctors. Mercifully, she survived but was left barren and forever unfertile.
I can not imagine my father’s fury. He believed in having sons to carry on his old last name of thirty-one generations; it was his religion and had I been a son, I would have been worshipped as a god. I can imagine how my mother prayed and thanked her ancestors that her dowry was of a large one.

He could barely tolerate being in the same room as me during my toddler years. Every time he entered a room I was playing in, nurse would sweep me to our garden out side; answering to my startled queries, “Be an obedient daughter, don’t bother your father and don’t ask questions”
My body had been born frail, but my natural spirit was as healthy as could be, full of inquiries, wonders of the world around me and everyday I would learn something new just wandering around the neighborhood observing things, with my nurse trailing with a worried eye behind me muttering, “Girls are not supposed to be exposed to this” she spoke the words as if they were sour, “you should be sitting at home and accompanying your mother.”

Every day at dinner, the two females of the house, me and my mother, were silent while my father ranted on and on. My appetite being very delicate, I often just sat there as still as I possibly could and listened to my father talking about politics, jobs, money. Things he called ‘men business’. I longed to ask questions about these ‘men business’, especially ‘university’ for I had an inquisitive sort-of nature but was refrained with a sharp, piercing look from my mother every time I opened my mouth and sometimes, she pinched me under the table leaving purple splotches which flashed, “Don’t question your father”
Sometimes, he would talk about the future he had decided for me, “You will marry off, sixteen at the latest, to some one rich and beneficial to our family. You will do as I say till I marry you off, and then you will do as your husband tells you.”
“Yes father, for I should repay everything you have done for me” I replied as sweetly as I could.
“Yes, you’re a good daughter. Bear lots of sons for him and your house will be one of happiness.”
I was proud that he had given me a compliment. “Yes father, for it will make you joyful as I always wish to make you so”
My childish heart did not understand why my mother turned her head down while her left eyebrow twitched, and why that night, as she tucked me into bed, I thought I saw a tear roll down her cheek and why as she kissed me that night she whispered, “Do not love me so; love your father. The men in your life are your gods.”

My physical health would constantly limit the desires of my free spirit. I could not to do what others who were as free of spirit as I was could do, and couldn’t socialize with them and the rest of the children in my neighborhood had their siblings to mingle with, causing me to become the pitiful outcast.
I saw children around my age, around seven or eight, climbing trees and wanted to do so as well, but my white feet did not have grip enough to grasp onto the fat branches.
Father caught me once trying to propel myself up a tree and his expression was both of a resigned anger and sadness before he turned him and his face away and back into the house without a word.
That night, mother told me not to climb trees ever again. I noticed a faint bruise on her cheek bone that had been covered with white powder.

When I was eleven or twelve, and was allowed to wander further out into the neighborhood with my nurse I saw the boys fishing in the nearby pond and wanted to do so as well. Starting that day, every week I pocketed the three coins mother gave me until I could buy the best fishing rod in the little store and ran as fast as my skinny, weak legs could carry me to the pond. I mimicked the way the boys flung the fishing rod out over the water but the metal pole was too heavy for my pale, shaking arms. I tried over and over again as my nurse watched, biting her lip in anxiety. I held the fishing rod with trembling sore arms till  I felt a bite; I pumped my small arms to reel it in, but they were so tired and I was far too slow, losing the fish I had spent half the day trying to catch. “Ah, just bad luck, don’t worry! It was a smart fish, I tell you!” nurse exclaimed, though her eyes flashed a look of pity and I knew she knew it wasn’t just bad luck or a smart fish.
In anger, I sold the fishing rod to one of the boys for two-thirds of the price I had bought it for. He was delighted with the bargain and I watched with a lump in my throat as he caught three fish with the tug of his healthy, muscular arm within fifteen minutes. “This is a beautiful rod, and the pond is just filled with fish today, Little Sister!”
Wanting to spend the money jingling inside my pocket, money that to me was just a reminder of a painful memory, I headed off to the collection of little shops close to my house where I was guaranteed distraction. Nurse, sweating and complaining of the heat, followed me.
An ageing man with a bunch of filthy hair working away on a piece of thick, rough paper with wondrous colors inside a shop caught my eye as I peered inside the window. He turned the picture upside down and continued blending in the dark colors of the shape to create a shadow along the curve of it. I entered the shop. “What is that?” I asked of him.
“A face” he replied back absentmindedly.
“Doesn’t look like one to me” I confessed with my honesty.
He looked up at me, “No, it does not to you, and maybe, neither will it at the end. To me, it looks like an angle of a faded face. But slowly, with time, it will become clearer and clearer, yet only to me, and as it does, I will be able to choose more colors to make it yet more beautiful. The outcome of this painting is entirely up to me.”
I felt my challenging self rising up. “But what if you imagined a certain color in your head but couldn’t find it or be able to mix it to your mind’s perfection?”
“Then I would create my own paint color.”
“You know how?”
“No, but if I could not find the paint color already made I would make it myself, and no matter what, would learn how to. So far I have always been able to compromise and mix different colors to please me.”
“You do an awful lot of shadowing light colors with dark colors”
“Why do you think I do so?” he questioned me this time, with bright eyes.
I pondered for a moment to give as good an answer as he had given me and then told him my answer.
He nodded with impress, “Yes, yes, absolutely right. I never thought I’d hear that from a child” and looked at me with his head cocked in curiosity.
“What would you like to buy from here, Little Sister?”
Still deeply interested in our conversation I pulled out the coins I had in my pocket. “How much stuff can I buy with all this money? I’d like those crayons, I’ve tried them once before and they are so creamy and smooth.”
“Oil pastels?” he asked, a little confusedly.
Feeling ashamed of my ignorance, I nodded. The tutor father hired evidently bent to father’s strict rules of what should be taught and what would not be taught. Father disapproved of women painting, and would’ve dismissed nurse had he known that instead of taking me out for a little walk to smell the blooming daffodils, she in fact let me explore the environment around me to the best of my ability even in disgruntle.
The man gave my red-patched cheeks and undeveloped translucent frame a sympathetic look and when he spoke, his voice was gentle. “Little Sister, I’ve a whole basket of oil paints that I’ve used but rarely and so are still in perfect condition. Would you like to carry the whole basket home for all the money you have in your pockets?”
I handed him all my golden coins, “But first I must see if I like it.”
“You won’t be disappointed” he chuckled and walked with an imbalanced limp to the back of the store. I noticed a wooden stump protruding from the bottom of his long, black pants. My heart throbbed achingly; he was ****** limited too. I turned to his painting and smiled from deep inside, a smile I rarely wore.
He came back tugging a huge brown basket filled to the brim with sticks of oil pastels, some longer or thicker than others. He lifted an orange one up and showed the tip of it to me, which was stained with a black mark. “Sometimes when you blend colors this will happen, but it’s easy to rid off. Just softly, and patiently rub it off on a cloth until it disappears.” He demonstrated upon his black pants.
“Thank you. It’s kind of you. But...I can’t carry this home myself. It’s heavy.”
I turned to nurse and smiled my best pleading smile.

The basket was toiled up as nurse undressed me from my shower and father and mother were otherwise occupied. That night, with my precious basket safely under my bed, I cleaned all the multi-colored oil pastels on an old shirt, and as soon as the house was ringing with silence, I locked my door and flicked on the lamp light, and started pressing the smooth colors into the paper to blend and make a picture of kissing colors on a relatively large piece of white paper. A thrill ran from my finger tips and along my arm, and made my palms tingle as I held the colorful sticks in my hand to the paper. I hid it underneath my bed just as a rosy sun was rising.
*
I was sixteen, and I was thought beautiful: for now, at this age, it was considered beautiful to be so pale of skin, so small of feet and hands, graceful to have tiny limbs and charming to have little strength for it was now considered ‘feminine’.
It was three weeks after I had turned sixteen and for dinner, father had brought over an ugly man with a bulging waist and shiny bald head who continually made ****** jokes at the dinner table while he believed I did not understand them. He was infamous for the two wives he had had (before they died from sickness), and how he not only hit them but kept other lovers too. Yet he was desirable for his vast richness. He leered at me obnoxiously, in an attempt to smile.
Father caught him looking at me, “She’s incredibly silent, never says a word of defiance and will be a most dutiful wife.”
“Yes, she is beautiful”
My heart froze and my brain was stimulated to work twice as fast. Him?! Him?! The man who’s wives were killed through an illness called ‘abuse, neglect and disloyalty?!’
I cast my eyelashes down in order to appear a calm, modest young lady while my heart hammered in fury, disgust and a rising hysterical panic. I shot a look at my mother whose left eyebrow was twitching as she stared down at her dinner plate, and I knew she was having the same thoughts as I.
“I would be glad to have you as my son-in-law. You would have no trouble with her, and would be embraced with open arms into our family.”
They continued this path of talk through dinner while he eyeballed me in a way that made me cringe. I felt his foot nudge mine under the table and in haste tucked it under the chair with a little gasp. His eyes glittered at my gasp and I was furious with myself for letting him feel a rotten triumph. Though I had always felt an extremely strong dislike towards him from what I knew of him and sometimes saw of him with an immoral lady, something pushed in the pit of my tummy, and I knew it was pure hatred.
When mother tucked me in she was being strange. On closing my door she whispered, “I love you… so I wish you to know… don’t ever contradict men”

As I was secretly drawing a picture as I did every night till dawn, I heard my father’s voice roar in the dead of the night. In a sudden, I shoved my portrait under the bed and threw all my oil pastels into the basket, hid it, and switched the light off. I heard his voice roar again, accompanied by a thud. I was wild with fear as I crept to my door and pressed my ear against it, barely even shocked at my own daringness as my instinct, love, took over- my instinct of must knowing what was happening to my mother.
“How dare you say I’m wrong!?” there was another thud, and this time I heard a soft whimper. “She is worthless to me, not a son. And I will marry her off to a rich man who can actually benefit this family.” He roared.
There was a whisper which I strained to hear, “He will **** her”
“From the moment she was born she wasn’t made to live!” he yelled.
A hiss escaped my tongue and I coiled like a serpent, flinching as a thud was heard yet again and an immediate cry of pain escaped from both my lips and my mothers’.
A fire awoke inside me, burning my temples and my whole body and my eyes stung with hot tears; tears that burned my face as they splashed down. My whole body was shaking and my tightly squeezed eyes were going through spasms. I was no longer wild with fear, but with anger.
I turned my light back on and tugged my basket of oil pastels out. I yanked my portrait off from a thick of pile of different pictures I had drawn.
My breath was coming in quick short breaths as I finished my portrait to the utmost perfection, using every oil pastel in the basket. Every time I heard a thud, I colored with more fiery… shadowing my jaw line with the fat black oil pastel, in the crook of my ear, the corner of my mouth… where the light shone upon my fore head, how it reflected in the color of my eye and glowed on my cheeks.
When I was finished, the house was deadly quiet again and dawn was breaking. I looked down upon it and realized something that changed my life.
In frenzy I swatted out all the things I had ever drawn and stared at them in an awakening.
The colors on them were the events of my life, the things that characterized it, the decisions. They were beautiful for they had been chosen and controlled by me … I had chosen the colors I wanted and thought best for my pictures; and spent thought over how to blend different colors to the color I wanted.
And everyday, as I worked into the drawings with time, they became clearer and clearer on what was the right thing to do, and how it should possibly look like in the next stage.
I leaned over and kissed the thin lips of my portrait that didn’t look exactly like me for not even the most skilled artists have complete control over what they draw.

Then I remembered what I had told the one-legged man in the shop a few years go:
“Lights not only illuminate, they also cast shadows. The contrast makes you able to appreciate the power of both.”
Now it was time to truly let the light illuminate my life, and let the shadows let me appreciate the light that shines upon me; I color my own life, and choose my own colors.

To pull out the colors underneath the darkness of my bed…
And spill it to the world outside.

The warmth of the sun settles, hugging the lake.
The dragonfly flies low, hovering above the tranquil water
the light seeping through the paper thin skin,
it hums across the lake, refracting light off its wings,
An array of colors make patterns on the wings,
wearing it like a cloak, a rainbow embedded within.
The colors tilt and shift as the dragonfly gracefully cruises through life,
laying close to the water but letting the air propel it forward,
floating between two different worlds,
it is like a dream where our thoughts are separated from reality,
and are scattered like refracted light for us to assemble.  

Through a screen of our dreams, a world can be seen.
A world of hopes and desires that is dormant within
The light of life just soaks us bare,
our skin turns frail,
under the scorching glare,
the glare of eyes that want you to be,
someone that is accepted by society.


the dragonfly bathes itself in the sun,
the iridescent colors shine on its skin,
flying and floating, he’s determined to win
a predator, determined to get what it wants
nothing blocking its way or paving its path
making the most out of life and never holding back

spread your wings like the dragonfly
that hums its way through life,
dipping its wings in the sun to shine,
breaking free a life of colors,
that we leave locked and forgotten,
behind a reality made of black and white,
the black ink seeping through our minds,
injecting us with ideas of the 'ideal life'
where money and fortune, and status define.
Bathe your mind in the wonders of the world,
soak your heart in life's warmth and glow,
and pave your own path,
with the dreams you sow.

Where did the innocence go?
Doves turned to ravens,
Juicesboxes turned to bottles,
Toxic beverages leaving poisoned bodies to roam these streets,
Possessing personalities of *******,
Suckers turned to joints,
The high replaced the feeling of love,
Which could propel you to places beyond any hallucination,
Virgins mimicked, giggled at,
Wide eyed stares penetrate their skin as they stroll on streets,
Whispers fill rooms as their sealed bodies strut,
Jealous viewers stand, shattered,
With no purity to share with their loved ones.
Thinking their assets can be displayed for the public to adjudicate,
Maybe we're to young to know about love,
We're young, yes we are.
But what good is a young nation,
With poisoned , broken youth.
What good is a nation with no future leaders.
So I'm asking, where did the innocence go?
Tell me so I can know.
So I can replace the demons that lurk in these infants,
With the innocence that should gleam,
From their flesh.

Cradle my emotions in the gentlest of whispers
Lace my heart with sultriest of ribbons
Fill full my sail with the worthiest of winds
Engulf my being in the sweetest of notions

Colour me beautiful with the most vibrant of rainbows
Propel my universe into the farthest reaches
Soothe my aches with the most abundant love
Carry my vessel to the sandiest of beaches

Embed my thoughts within the fluffiest clouds
Let soar my dreams on the bravest of kites
Set my destination in the furthest horizons
Present me with life's buffet with the tastiest of bites

At the mailbox, again:
“Who loves me, baby?”
Well, let’s see: there’s a flyer from Mercury Insurance,
Reminding me that most middle-income customers
Save an average of $4 million smackaroons when they switch too.
The Penny Saver USA.com is here,
Thank God, almighty!
So now I know that Thomas Roofing & Paving
Is having a special on 20-year leak-free flat roofs;
"All work guaranteed & insured.
No job too big or small.
Free estimates/Emergency services/License # I8U-69."
And thank you, Jesus,
For another $4.99 Farmer Boys 3-Egg Breakfast
Combo with Coffee coupon, and that
Little Caesars Hot-N-Ready, $5.00 cheese or pepperoni,
Mae-West-“why-don’t-you-come up and see me sometime?”—mailer. And, of course, another technology Siren’s song:
Verizon FiOS delivers entertainment this big,
Dish me up some dish NETWORK, $19.99 a month . . .
Are you ******* me?
For 12 ******* months?
AT&T;: whack me off on 120 channels.
DIRECTV.com - DIRECTV® Official Site‎
Worry-free 99.9%  . . . cue Joe E. Brown,
"Some Like It Hot“ Osgood:
"Well, nobody’s perfect!"
Time Warner/Sprint/T-Mobile;
And ******* Leather, Polk Street, San Francisco.
******* leather?
Must be for my neighbor: that ***** ****!
And here’s the weekly 8-page color fold-out from Stater Bros:
Lowering prices every day, large cantaloupes
(Jessica Lange, are you back?)
10 for $10.00, 32 oz. Gatorade
Or 24 oz Propel in 30 assorted varieties @ 79 cents
+ CRV: California Redemption Value?
Nice euphemistic cover-up for a TAX.
Nice, nice, very nice, CA elected state officials;
Nicely done, Sacramento.
Everywhere else in the country you get real money—
A fixed number of pennies, nickels, or dimes—
For your plastic bottles and aluminum cans.
But in California, the licensed recyclers
Get to pull the market price out of their *** each morning.
California Redemption Value?
What ******* genius government kleptocrat thought that one up? Conspiracy Alert: who gets all that CRV money?
And what are they doing with it?
Feeling plain, Jane?
Marinello Schools of Beauty, want you,
Offer you hands-on training in cosmetology,
Skin care esthetics, manicuring and vaginal deodorizing—
Just kidding, Babaloo.
Food tip for the Third World:
Never try to write poetry on an empty stomach.
Sizzler 6 oz juicy & succulent.
RENEGADE DEAL:
El Pollo Loco guacamole chicken sandwich,
Coupon free, small drink and small chips,
When you purchase a guacamole or jalapeno sandwich,
includes pepper jack cheese and a southwest sauce.
Gardenas sandia con semilla, 7 lbs 99 cents.
GARDENAS: “en precios, servicio y calidad, nadie nos iguaia.”
Bud Gordon’s Quality NISSAN:
One at this price after a $1500 factory rebate.
TERMINIX: get them before they get you!
The Kingdom Animalia, Phylum Arthropoda, Class Insecta
Bug up my *** again.
And a form letter from the VA
Asking me to please update my whereabouts.
And a form letter from the VA asking me
To please update my whereabouts.
And miles to go before I sleep.
Bite me, Mr. Frost!

An outing, at last.
I am going for a walk around the inside of my gates.
I live in one of those gated over-55 lunatic asylums.
There are gates. It is gated. Get it?
GATED! We feel safe here.
Probably a good thing at our age:
Self-imposed institutionalization,
Putting oneself in an asylum to ferment and die.
The fact that so many of us
Need it so bad at only 55
Says something itself about the current state of
Baby Boomer metal-fatigue.
I am now standing at the far end of the golf course.
I wait at the far end of the 18th Hole.
A ball bounces past my head and
Rolls off past the green into the far rough.
The 18th Hole is perched atop a small plateau,
Out of sight, far above the horizon for anyone teeing off.
I am Puck, invisible and impish.
I pluck the ball up.
I scamper to the green.
I pop the ball into the hole.
Which is better than popping a hole in the ball,
Surely, kind of a drag,
As we were once fond of saying.
Deflated Ball.
Deflator Maus.
OPERA can be ****.
Bodice-ripping corsets, whorehouses and naked ******!
Hardly what you might expect from
A night with the Welsh National Opera,
But they found their way into this production of "Die Fledermaus."
Ripe language, contemporary jokes and
Toilet humor thrown in, adding immensely
To the pleasures of Strauss’s operetta.
"Die Fledermaus," or The Bat’s Revenge,
Is all about drunkenness and adultery.
Despite being written in the 1870s,
It remains equally pertinent to today’s pub culture of excess.
Daring; Colorful; ****: PGA golf.
I steal a golf ball on the far end of the 18th Hole.
I pick up the Titleist and stick it in the hole
(Steady Jessica, not yours.
I hide behind your bush.
(Cue up PSA, First Lady Bird Johnson’s 1960s
Nationwide Beautification Campaign:
“I want everyone in America to plant a tree,
A sherrrr-rub, or a booosh.”)
The golfer now searching frantically:
Why is the cup always the last place they look?
Then, wham, bam, he looks:
A legend is born.
A hole in one,
His name forever immortalized
On a plaque over the bar, the proverbial 19th Hole.

As you know, I speak for all mediocrities,
Safe in my 55+ gated-community.
I go next to the Club House,
"The Lodge" as it’s called.
Each afternoon, the usual suspects
Claiming first come/first serve tiered mini-theater seats
Where Netflix matinee gems are screened.
It is two minutes to DVD show time.
I walk to the front of the room.
I stare at my audience.
I count the house slowly,
Making meaningful eye contact with each wrinkled face.
I cup my hands behind my back and speak:
“I assume you are all here for my lecture on Kierkegaard.”
No one reacts.
I turn to leave but do a double-take and smile.
One old woman in the top right corner of the amphitheater laughs, Perhaps the one other human being within the gates
Who has also smoked a joint today.
For an instant, I am overwhelmed with paranoia,
Perhaps I’ve gone too far over the line:
No longer “oh-he’s-a-character;”
I am now “that creep is ******* nuts.”
Is it time for someone to approach my family,
My next of kin, my “who-to-contact-in-event-of-emergency” number? Who will make the call on behalf of the HOA—
The Homeowner’s Association—
The Tsars, the Duma, the Supreme Soviet in these parts?
They are the power inside the gates;
Those who determine the state’s enemies,
Who govern its community norms.
Power within the gates.
Law within the asylum.
Little Hitlers one and all.
Hopefully they reach my sister first.
She’s been briefed.
KEY POINT IN THE NARRATIVE:
The new narrative is non-linear.
We can no longer sustain a narrative understanding of ourselves;
We are each an individual stream of consciousness,
All of us random, non-linear and disconnected.
We grow more and more disconnected from others.
We may be neighbors in space and time,
But we remain deprived of any significant human contact;
Any spiritually significant human contact.
Our social circle narrows to what can fit in The Telescreen;
We become more intimate with a legion . . .
Did someone say a legion? SPQR:
Am I having some sort of genetic-linguistic seizure here?
Am I channeling Benito Mussolini again?
Il Duce speaks to me from the grave,
Still blowing smoke up my Hopi-Jew-*** ***,
Filling in my insecurities,
Plugging the holes in my character
With delusions of classical Roman grandeur, glory and empire. Hmmmm? Quite an appetizing pitch for the average *****,
A message so completely, so ethnocentrically slick,
Olive oily, and so seductive.
A non-Italian would have thought
American Legion or Legionnaire’s disease,
Or The Foreign Legion, The French Foreign Legion.
The French: a virulent, promiscuous people.
Do you want fries with that, Simone?
No, I don’t get out much.
Only an occasional brisk walk around the asylum,
In and around the golf course, around but inside the gates. (LINKS) Bill Gates. Daryl Gates. Billy Bathgate’s Gates? Ghiberti’s Gates? The Hot Gates? Thermopylae? 300 Spartans/700 Thespians:
“The noun causing idiots to think of
Two girls sloppily eating each other’s mighty vaginas,
When they hear mention of someone being an actor.” http://www.urbandictionary.com
Not even close.
No, I rarely venture out.
This is Hemetucky.
There are methamphetamine-stoked
Teenage zombies at the gate.
Note to costume control:
Perhaps camouflage clothing is the safe choice?
No loud red Hawaiian.
No garish Indonesian batik.
Fleet of feet are these Hemet tweakers,
These cranked up Riverside County teenage barbarians,
These Huns & Visigoths,
These amped up, ravenous jackals.
And why stop there?
These Vandals & Vandellas.
A Motown flashback:
“Nowhere to run, baby, nowhere to hide.”
With or without Martha—
They remain dangerously lethal.
Yes, let it be camo clothes for me.
Those **** heads may be young.
They may be fast.
They may be able to run me down
On a dry grass dog-legged fairway savannah,
Tearing the meat from my carcass.
But the sons-a-******* have to see me first.
Besides, we know who are real friends are.
Hooray for our media peeps!
We become more intimate with a legion
Of television personalities on 125 different channels.
Most of these we know by name and context.
We know their families, their friends,
Their histories, their tragedies,
Their favored hyperbole and manner of speech.
Sometimes we establish intimacy with celebrities
Strictly on the basis of universal body language.
At times–in the absence of any other
Empathetic facility of identification–
We connect on instinct alone.
Instinct: perhaps animal at its core,
An animal kingdom affinity group,
Connecting on a bio-linguistic level,
Particularly when the Korean, or Spanish,
Mandarin, or Arabic,
Japanese, or even Hebrew language version is broadcast.
All languages cryptically alien,
A dense boundary, a barrio border wall,
Undecipherable, impenetrable concrete.
But we’ve never spoken to our neighbors,
Nor do we know their names.
Celebrities are the neighbors we know best;
Although the intimacy is an illusion,
Permission to invade their privacy presumed,
Tacit in the relationship between celebrities and their fans.
I am an independent contractor now,
An outside consultant to the NSA.
Try as I might I cannot crack the enigma,
Kim Kardashian remains far beyond my code-breaking prowess.
I repeat myself:
We can no longer sustain a narrative understanding of ourselves;
We are each an individual stream of consciousness,
All of us random, non-linear and disconnected.
We are more and more disconnected from others.
We may be neighbors in space and time,
But we remain deprived of any significant human contact;
Any spiritually significant human contact.
Our social circle narrows to what can fit in The Telescreen; we become more intimate with a legion . . .
Back to you, David Ulin:
“Sometime late last year—I don’t remember when, exactly—I noticed I was having trouble sitting down to read. That’s a problem if you do what I do, but it’s an even bigger problem if you’re the kind of person I am. Since I discovered reading, I have always been surrounded by stacks of books. I read my way through camp, school, nights, and weekends; when my girlfriend and I backpacked through Europe after college graduation, I had to buy a suitcase to accommodate the books I picked up along the way.”
Thank you, David L. Ulin.
I cannot help myself.
I grow more eccentric each day.
My eyeballs glued to that flat screen!

Cosmo Kramer: "The bus is outta control.
So I grab him by the collar, I take him out of the seat,
I get behind the wheel, and now I’m driving the bus."
Jerry: "Wow!"
George Costanza: "You’re Batman."
Cosmo Kramer: "Yeah, yeah, I am Batman.
Then the mugger, he comes to and he starts choking me.
So I’m fighting him off with one hand,
And I kept driving the bus with the other, ya know.
Then I managed to open up the door,
And I kicked him out the door, ya know,
With my foot, ya know, at the next stop."
Jerry: "You kept making all the stops?"
Cosmo Kramer: "Well, people kept ringing the bell!"
(Share this moment with a stranger.)

I speak for all mediocrities.
I am their champion, their patron saint.
Boom Chaka Laka. Boom Chaka Laka.
Boom Chaka Laka. BOOM!
Isn’t it time Salieri tempted Constanze–
Frau Mozart–with a plateful of Capezzoli di Venere:
“******* of Venus.”
You had me at hello, Kidman.
I know you too well, Nicole.
I knew you from before,
Way before Tom’s Oprah couch freak show.
Listen to me, Nicole:
We are face to face
With the most profound question in American literature:
"What is the grass?
The flag of my surrender?
The flag of my disposition?"
I resort to Socratic maxims: Know yourself;
The un-****** life is not worth living.
Is it stress? Is it lack of conviction?
Everything Jeff Lebowski neither wants nor needs in his life?
I watched you *** in "Eyes Wide Shut," Nicole.
Now I know you with my eyes and your legs wide open.
Thank you, Sidney Pollack.
Sidney knew.
Sidney dealt us cards
From his Hollywood Tarot deck.
We are intimate, Nicole.
I watched you squat.

Sailing in a dhow at sunset after snorkeling off Mafia island, Tanzania.
'
SPILLAGE
The tree’s don’t sleep at night
they photosynthesize , by moonlight.
Leaves drink in the cool wise light
And give off dreams of softly fading starlight

Whispers of secrets , monthly unfurl
A single blossom falls at new moon
Hurtling to the ground, awake before noon
Ever noticed? The very word has the circle
Curled up in the centre , twice to make sure we remember , two full cups , not one.

Geko’s slip off old skins
And the croaking frog adds to the din
As thunder rolls in
Triggering the dogs bark
Guardian of the stark naked couple
Asleep in their parallel worlds
Together under the umbrella of ambient lighting
Not the natural kind either
But a shameless copy of pure sunlight
That emenates when their bodies collide
On the material plane.

Astral visions lead the way to headquarters
The address? Fax? Phone number?
I’m afraid you’ll have to dial again ,
Unless you’ve meditated on the vibration of emancipation
Then you would already know, you are already there
Doors are open , for those who care to try
No lock on this baby ,
Ain’t no safe to play safe
We bask in our humble glory
Under the shores on undulating tides
Rhythmic pulsations
no where to hide
The emanations come from within,
Without , a shadow of a doubt

There is a war coming , infact we’ve already been fighting for decades
Just like the change of winds, nature knows her stuff
Tip the seeds too soon and you’ll end up with a field full of fluff
But just in time and a harvest with enough to reduce every super market shelf to dust
Even though they already stock that kinda stuff
Clean up on Aisle 4, Aisle 3 , Aisle 2 , Aisle 1
Return the purchase , we’ve discovered the ****
In the cake
And we found the frog in the salad,
At least their habitat is intact
Or did you think I was still talking about the shops?

Ok , I’ll change tact
Change of pace.
No , no I will not join the Human Race
Running to where? Why all the running?
From what? To where? From whom , to whom it seems like we run straight to our tombs, without a second glance at perhaps the chance that legs can walk…
Wanna know where I’d rather be?

I want to be on a motorbike heading 70 miles an hour down empty roads
An island paradise , holding the hips of my dearest
To arrive at another home ,
where our friends relax to the forlorne strums of the blues
Tripping on love we depart ,
not without slightly heavy hearts
Peace , friends we’ll see you anon.

Pull into the golden arches , I tell myself ‘I can’t kiss those lips now they’ve touched that burger’
then I remember you’ve been working all day
before you came out to play , I wasn’t up for a dance I was too entranced in my own madness
But. Always the **** , walk up those stairs for me, softly you moan.
I agree in a semi tone. Secrets are meant to be shared,
we quietly told each other of love in the parking lot at 4 am. The pain in your eyes still wakes me up in the middle of thunderstorms.

Awoken to sorrows from the motherland, monsters creep to the door,
peep in the keyhole.
Oh,
I forget,
your door is activated by credit card numbers that spiral from lips of z-list celebrities.
So we’ll waste away the morning in each other arms,
you watch me as I dress. No underwear no less. Put on your bra properly, suddenly you get kinda frosty.
Not far from where we sat to have a Japanese lunch , pretty close to where I walked to meet you for tea , where you held my feet and handed me a phone I left in your brothers car.
Well that’s where we have breakfast coffee and papaya whilst tourists ogle at the dog guard.
Deaf to our calls , luxuriously taking his time. He didn’t find the secret beach either.
Although the sea was good for a float, and to hear the space journey’s musical manifestation
at every crash of every wave, the magnetic pull playing her crooked beat as she bypasses our feet.
Then, there are two nights with two Amsterdam gals , one smoked lucky strikes and had scars across her wrists , the other photographed trees for a living.
Both blonde , both fair , both with their own flair.

Expect the unexpected , beach raves full of people I don’t really want to be with , so we get tequila shots instead
and stand outside a shop selling knock off clothes when the bar needs to shut.

She took a break to the bathroom , we finally let out the kisses we’d been holding in all night,  
until she got back.

Who said we couldn’t control ourselves? Although to be fair, I could feel you reaching for me wayyy back.

Why should we be selfish? Why shouldn’t we? I still went home with you that night, there really was no two ways about it.
I had *** with you, slightly drunken ***, that was by no means gentle, by no means candle lit , by no means rose petals laid out on the bed, infact , if my memory holds true, there were no flowers apart from the ones on my dress.
I’d say you were lucky , but then I cried at home.
So much pent up emotion in that one act.
Enough to propel us in into another night and untold eons beyond, I’m skipping ahead now,
Where we drank red wine on the shoreline , I used the staff bathroom and noticed all the things that could be improved – seemed like work was wearing off on me.
Still, the best part was yet to come, yeah the *** was fun but nothing compared to the games we played. Dress up and salsa ,
mysterious temples
natures tickles leading to giggles at the foolish endevours of two ***** humans., smoke a spliff , enough to unwind the mind to a new point of time. A flash of something I’ve never seen before, nor have yet to be graced with again.
I guess that was divine. Well, wouldn’t you say….
It was about time.

So , am I still talking about the shops?
Or who wore what with kate moss?
No disrespect
she’s adept at her art but i don’t wanna read about boring old farts
Lets hear about the underground collective of conscious minds who are rewinding the clock , who won’t stop ,
warriors.

Well quite frankly

How long have we sat , year after year to be told the same **** and bull story.. my ears, my ears! MY EARS!!! They yearn for the sweet serenade of the truth

behind the crumbling arcade of rigged lottery tickets and games of black jack where the house always wins.
Fortunately we’ve been coming since we were five , we know the cards without seeing the faces, we hold all the jacks and aces, we’ve got time on our side

So…that’s why they are running , finding places to hide.

We’d only be stealing from the house to give to the houseless…
With the tools the house gifted to us…doesn’t it seem ironic?

I laughed until I cried the day I discovered the universe had a sense of humor. A dark , ironic , sarcastic tone that involves  a major chord. Maybe a G or a D.

I propel the mallet through the air
To land bluntly on my hand
But still I feel no freeing pain
And I continue to be ******
To a world of expired meaning
And a body where I cannot feel
So I search for my forgotten drive
By drawing blood and skipping meals

At times it becomes too much to bear
The weight of bearing nothing
So I shield myself from expecting hearts
And turn to the one thing loving
A silver knife with a glistening grin
“I’m always here if you need me”
And once again I propel the blade
And finally find feeling

Its in these waters, when I was merely a Parr
Or as you might refer to me as a fry,
This wise but young Brook Trout cruised the slow water with my kinfolk fry.

Moving to and fro hiding among the biome vegetation
The sunlight supported my living space and warmed my growth rings.
I dart in and out of the oxygenated seams which help me flourish.

Some days, I had to use stealth to outwit the pine marten and warblers,
I shadowed the cattail and watched them fill their bellies with those around me.
But I felt fate had a purpose for me to be something special.

And When the time was right, I'd propel myself above the water into the night air.
The large circle of orange light filled my eyes and the night sky was filled with luminary.
I imagined what it must be like to live outside this riffle domain.

This morning, through my refractory vision I spot some floating objects,
And through an inherited sensory recall I can see these are hatching green Drakes.
I immediately shoot to the surface and fill my stomach, then swim back to the undercut for cover.

As the years pass by and maturity abounds,  I find my self settling in behind a large boulder
Right at the tail out of the back eddy, providing me with an ample food supply.
And it's here I prefer to live my life in the slow current, content and peaceful.

And one day as I swam into the current seam, I spotted what appeared to be,
A different looking bug with yellow belly,  so I make my move.
He's not moving much so I decide to raise my head above the water line and sip.

As I grab the hopper I start to slide back behind the boulder,
When I feel a pinch, as if someone try's to pull me towards the surface
I fight with all my might but this force proves to be stronger than I.

It's now I realize a human reels me towards the shore line, and I'm fearful.
This one called a human, grabs my tail and places his hand on my under belly.
Pulling me from my home, he dislodges the hook from my mouth. I gasp for oxygen.

He looks me over from nose to tail, smiles and says how beautiful I am.
He looks me in the eye And says " This was a wonderful fight my friend, enjoy the rest of your life,
He places me back in water, gently reviving me and finally lets me swim away.

I dare to turn and look back at him for a moment and as he continues to watch me,
I hear him say " I fish, knowing everyday on this stream is a gift."

He was born defeated.
For eight months he sat at the delta to the world,
stargazing in amniotic fluid.
Sharing oxygen with another passing,
it back and forth like a gas mask in a chemical war.
how familiar he would become with the chemical war.
he did not propel into life the way everyone expected,
like the first, iron soldier to  dive
from a helicopter into the bush; all displaced rage
and camo flags waving behind him.
he was made to wait. made to drown just a little bit.
made to appear to the world a little blue.
no gas mask this time. just some weak lungs
and a bald head. not raven-dark and tumultuous like his six-minute predecessor,
but quiet, sullen and sentenced to a week in an incubator;
teaching him how to be alive.
maybe that was the first time he got mad. he more or less stayed mad for 17 years.
Found comfort in Peter Pan, a boy with no future- no past,
and juiced up men performing soap operas for a living;
sweating on their audience and quick to blow
a folding chair in to the enemies face.
The same pit-stomach drop of a terrible math grade,
And of realizing an idea if terrible halfway through completion-
Dazed at on knees at3am, half of the bedroom carpet ripped out
With a carving knife.
He beat up his other, left her trembling behind doors that didn't lock for years.
Full weight pressed against cheap wood, hoping this time it wouldn't open,
and leaving in the wake a girl-child, of 20 years-
terrified of testosterone and emotions.
There was the comfort in war movies; men with purpose, and the quirky
anime of a culture not his own.
Darker pagan books dotted pubescence. They sat like coffee mugs
filled with sludgy water, a place to dip paintbrushes in when it was time to start over.
Drugs come in folds. dealt like cards over the years- grappling for anything.
Their names ring out first like a memoir, then like a psych ward.
He would probably snort dirt if an escape from hardwood floored, leave spun
world in which he lived.
the place where dead batteries rolled around in for years in drawers and
tape never came off of wallpaper.
and the other one- the one who cut him off and turned
him blue at the very beginning; she's frozen too.
she stumbles through cities and ghettos and ancient worlds,
hoping to find something, anything that gives her a purpose.
Back to strong wind on 6th Avenue between classes,
Eyes sting and water against it but comforted by the smell of snow and
Bus exhaust. In that moment doing a good job. Being a trooper.
Swiping IDs that show a real, accounted for person underneath
The Goodwill feather-down coat and expensive Arabic textbook,
But in the quiet hours still grasping at straws,
at braids that don't quite work and flowers tangled
in hair that won't quite stay in place.
Singing with a voice a little too novice,
too rough. Looking dumb in sunglasses and boots.
She starts and quits things a lot.
gets exhausted. predisposed for enormous depression.
greek-tragady like.
****-yourself-to-spare-the-gods-your-being like.
finds glimpses of life in things, mainly when submerged in a daze of not-getting carded and  incense. Hair falls over pages of books, hanging one handed on an R to Queens,
or collecting cigarette butts from the side of the road
in the prairies of Dakota-land, helping kids collect enough tobacco
for their drunk fathers and zombie mothers to roll and smoke for the night.
She’s turning around in circles in grocery stores
Picking up food-stamp broccoli and sliced cheese in Harlem,
Going everywhere with sleep in her eyes and
wondering how others manage to exist.
but who is a killer from the start supposed to be?

solid congealed masses of fat sit
balloons filling within joints
stagnant extremities feel as if they are solidifying
the man becoming a statue; a watcher
here lies a perfect specimen of 21st (and in the latter half to a third) a  20th century man seated before the primary means of oral, aural and visual communication.  Oral pertaining to the man's ability to only speak of it and the programmes displayed on it . . . .  .
as still as the brain is telling them to be
as still as the brain wants them to be
it doesn't want to be left out you see, feels secluded when dormant
alongside a healthy, active set of limbs and torso
so it persuades them ever so gently to become as lazy as he
so he feels more at home in his body; the brain he lords over the body tyrannically and purposefully.


Extraneous effort can be avoided, in all manners of life; whilst sitting, whilst working, whilst running.  Being properly lazy has to do with how little you can do without doing something else.  It is possible to run at a speed that does not cease to be running but it is not walking.  You can sit only so still before you are asleep.  Being properly lazy is being able to sit precariously on this line so perfectly you don't slip backwards or forwards into a useful action or being in the top percentile of the new lesser action which you are in essence, lording over physically.  An extremely intelligent man can be extremely lazy in an activity that would take a long concentrated effort from another less intelligent man, but in essence, he is really just avoiding falling asleep.

Laziness can be misappropriated; attributed to men who are not lazy at all.  A man at the enth of any discipline could not be considered lazy; the same could be said about a man at the enth of his ability.  We speak of course in terms of natural ability.  Actions achieved in ones current capability; carried out without carrying on other efforts to cavort himself into a higher category of actions (a laziness compared to ability graph could be constructed/plotted and then correlated if one could be bothered).  Of course, it goes without saying that the achievance of these goals necessary to propel or descend a man into the new upper or lower segment of before described laziness are in turn harder or easier to achieve depending on the man's predetermined stature; position in life even, considering we are talking of afflictions that affect a man and not a boy, and therefore we are assuming that the formative years are not thus (formative) and are but a compulsory precursor, a cross that every man must bear; not a development that pertains to the quantity of laziness he possesses.

with a sea of unachieved tasks/goals laid out before him he resides to sit patiently waiting for something to happen in front of him, sometimes clicking a mouse, sometimes a remote
sometimes he is angry that he is boring
sometimes he calls a friend to be angry at the boxes with him
sometimes he feels sick that he is a *******
sometimes he laughs at people on the boxes who are pieces of ****
but most of the time he is a ******* happily, content that he is at least part of a healthy digestive system, whether he is the result/byproduct of, or the action that produced the **** in the first place.

Rose Tyler, Bad Wolf, blonde bombshell.
Through time with the Doctor she did propel.
She loved the Doctor and he loved her too.
If it's my last chance to say it,
Rose Tyler, I--

Jack Harkness, the flirt, the man of men.
He pops up at the Doctor now and again.
They met with a lie,
Now he can't die
Forever here now and then.

Martha Jones, the doctor, the woman that heals.
Her time in the TARDIS caused all kinds of feels.
She pointed a gun to save the Doctor's skin
Yet in the end, her and Mickey did win.
All kinds of fun and all kinds of sass.
Martha Jones, one badass.

Donna Noble, ah, how does one describe thee?
Married a creeper and set the Oods free.
Through the Daleks and Rose, it seemed to end the world
Until the Doctor's DNA and her's accidentally swirled.
Of all the companions, she was a supreme member
Most important woman in the universe,
Too bad she won't remember.

Of all the companions, no one remembers Ms. Astrid Peth.
Her one and only appearance ended in death.
She stowed away on the flying Titanic
With passengers, aliens, and angels that were satanic.
Astrid wanted to travel and see the stars.
Her death seemed to add to the Doctor's scars.
He wasn't able to bring her back in the flesh
For the Doctor was the cause of her final, last breath.

Finally we come to little Amelia Pond.
Waited twelve years for the Doctor's bond.
She sat on her suitcase, face raised to the stars
Thinking of Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars.
He came back when she was supposed to marry Rory
But she still snogged the Doctor, being predatory.
It was Amy and Rory Pond in the ends
Even when the stone angels did descend.
Some mainstream Whovians say Ms. Pond's overrated,
But after all, she was the girl who waited.

Melody Pond, also known as River Song
She was fair, cunning, and strong.
Amy's daughter, but looked years older.
Amy wouldn't believe her no matter what River told her.
River Song, a time lord herself.
But even her story went to the shelf.
She was put in jail for killing a good man.
But even then, with the Doctor she ran.
The Doctor and River, hands fastened tight.
She still didn't want to let go with all of her might.
Dr. Song and the Doctor were on different tracks in time.
Hopefully, she'll be back, witty, fierce, and sublime.

The mystery. All the loose ends come to Clara Oswald.
The latest companion to be installed.
She once was a woman, mind in a machine
But now she's in the flesh, cruising the scene.
Oswin Oswald was a governess and a barmaid
Until she came back, unashamed to be afraid.
Even though she is a mystery to be solved,
Here's to our angst, Ms. Oswin Oswald.

But one day all the companions will be gone
And the Doctor will be alone again.
He will think of all the lives he's withdrawn
Hoping for a lifelong friend.
Though his intelligence, sexiness, and brilliant mind
There are no other like him, he's the last of his kind.
The man who travels around kissing strangers;
The impossible doctor meeting some painters.
Many wonder how long he can cheat the clocks
But until then, he's just a madman with a box.