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I shouldn’t be drinking coffee.
I shouldn’t be reading the news.
It makes me anxious, and it’s not only the chemical interaction.
Somehow, I associate it with “adulthood”—reading the news,
Drinking coffee—I can’t tell you how many days of the last few
Years have been spent entirely in this fashion. The coffee
Growing cold and the news colder still. I don’t even taste the
black, fluid drops. I don’t hear the screams of people I read
about. I just want to hold on to something—so I raise the glass
to my lips. I can’t say

the shocking words when my mouth’s full; I can’t tell

about my experience, my privilege, when I’m drinking it.


The production of the commodity

creates a line from some equatorial region
to central America, and my mouth.
I think about the Autumn I worked in a corn-seed
sorting facility. What a short experience—
and yet,
something that weighs heavy on my imagination.
I was a temp worker.
I chose to work there out of shame and guilt for having
missed the deadline for college enrollment.
I could have done anything else; but there were people
there who wanted nothing more than a job. They needed
to be
there.
And I think of the people involved in producing coffee beans

in much the same way.
Removed
from the thing they’re making, as the raw materials are shipped
to places you pay workers more.
Why shouldn’t I swallow with difficulty when faced with the pro-
spect of a person supporting their entire family with the type
of work
I did
reflexively, as a choice?

Now I sit here, reading about North African riots,
a region, where coffee is produced—
ARABICA COFFEE— and I think about what’s sitting
in my cup, how I have
spent more money than they make in a day
to buy
one container

and sit here
for an afternoon
doing nothing but reading about their families’ misery.

I am a human parasite.

And like the bedbugs that have crawled meticulously
between my mattress and bedframe, hiding in a safe spot
until they can come out, undetected, and **** my potency.

I sit here, in the comfort of an apartment furnished
and paid for by my father who grows corn in a highly-
mechanized, agricultural society. I take more and more,
festering to the size of a blistering, red dot
blinking in the dark, in the form of the record light on
my voice recorder.
I expect so much more from myself, simply because of
this position of luxury.

But I don’t take time to think about my reaction to these
stories or how I am involved in them, in shaping their plots.
I’m even eating more now
as I’ve nearly lost my concern with avoiding certain super-
markets.
I smile at the greeters, make small talk with the cashiers
whom I am openly exploiting. But it’s ok, because
I worked for a month at a cornseed manufacturing
facility
and I read Marxist Ideology,
and I know about the Arab Spring
and I was against American intervention in Libya
and I disdain the air strikes from robotic planes
(unauthorized by congress)
and I disdain congress
and I support gay marriage
(I stopped eating chicken).
I don’t drive to the suburbs of my city.
I walk and ride my bicycle as much as I feel like.
I use public transportation at times.
I try to get to know women.
I practiced safe ***, once.
I write poetry.
I tell my mom I love her.
I bought my nieces birthday presents.
I’m not overly nice to people of different
ethnicities.
I voted for Obama.
I’m trying.
All these things make it seem less bad
to smile at the cashier.
But then I think about my black studies Professor
who used a walker to come to class
because she fell
and spelled the word Amendment “Admendment”
on the board when talking about Reconstruction.
I think about the war in Syria.
I think of people dying from cholera in Haiti, in 2012
A.D.
I think about fracking and oil spills and …
irrevocable damage to Indian reservations.
I think about football coaches molesting children
and people eating fried butter.
I read about people
upset
with a movie
who protest in the streets for days.

It makes me realize I shouldn’t smile at anyone.
I shouldn’t be drinking coffee.
I shouldn’t be reading the news.
N E Waters  May 2013
Spect(ated)
N E Waters May 2013
This earthly body is incomprehensible. Piles of cells which make muscle, bone and nerv(ous)es. This earthly body too heavy for a spirit--too light to touch the ground. I beg you not to weigh me down.

Please

don't weigh me down. I try in earnest to touch your face, to feel for only a moment sweet flickers of skin on skin, but I grasp right through you.*

I felt about a ghost town,
ghosted around; marveled
upon shivers of what I knew
was dead. I walked
so insolently as the living
through fields that whisper
passage and rivers calling out
on moments gripped in sun.

I walked
right through
you. Ghosted around.

Scoffed at fading memories empty
pitying passages long since written down:
I read you like fiction,
ghost town: fancied myself
so solid among your intangible willows.
Ghosting around. Now
come to find seeking skin on mine I
breeze right through you.
I try a second time, a third and
come  to find it's I
who's too light for living.

It is I who passes through the solid walls
and wails in caves; it's I
who fade into night irepperable by light.
I who watched the world so arrogantly
as the living
like it would pass before MY eyes. But
here I waver unbreakable in the shaking
shining of many tiny lights.

Ghost am I.
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2013
My Night With Paul Simon

On the night train, the red eye plane,
Flying home to NYCeeeeeeeeeeeee,
From the city of Los Angeleeeeeeez

Feeling flush, dropped some cash,
Got me a seat in extra large first class

Seat 2C, plenty of room for my toes,
To wiggle  to dance,
lay down some poetry tracks,
pretending I'm a **** jive,
bad *** from the
make-believe west coast

A short guy, with fedora down low,
An older man,
looking about nine years older
than somebody I might know,
hiding his eyes @ 9pm
neath some excellent Raybans,
slip slides into 2D,
gives me a smile,
And says Hi, I'm Paul

I look once at his face and say,
Listen Rhymin' Simon,
I'd know you any place,
No worries, your secret,
with me is safe,
Cause dudes in row 2,
gottta stick together, be cool,
We're riding first class,
over the land of the free

What ya do for a living he asks,
A little of this and a little of that,
All of which, ain't no **** good at!
So I spend my cold, hard time
laying down cold hard verse,
Can't stop, cause it's my daddy's dying curse

He said that's cool,
I like to do that too.
Guitars on planes
drive passengers insane,
They take up too much
overhead compartment space,
I just scribble me some rhymes and
Let the music come
when I got two feet
on the ground in the city
we both come from.

Paul:  You got any stuff writ
on that yellow sheet,
or just pretty blue lines,
a big pad of nothing?

Dude: Man you may got diamonds
on the soles of your shoes,
But pay me some 'spect,  
you talking to the man who penned
Sad Eyed Teenagers of the Lowland
on Hello Poetry, gad ****!

Paul smiled and said
you can call me Al,
And if you feel like blowing some lines together,
We got five hours till we can see
the house that Ruth built.

Dude: Hit me with your best shot,
I'll show you what I got

Paul: And she said honey take me dancing
But they ended up by sleeping
In a doorway
By the bodegas and the lights on
Upper Broadway
Wearing diamonds on the soles of their shoes

Dude: Just cause the union of the  monkeys
in the Bronx Zoo done gone on strike,
Don't mean the lion ain't
still king of the hill
inside this New York city jail

Paul: And the sign said,
"The words of the prophets are written
on the subway walls
And tenement halls"
And whispered
in the sounds of silence

Dude: A home-grown poet.
I am, Soul enslaved to words.
The alphabet - My oxygen molecules,
I am both, Addict and dealer
A ****** poet ******

Paul: You don't need to be coy, Roy
Just listen to me
Hop on the bus, Gus
You don't need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And get yourself free

Dude: Contact with the atmosphere
makes self pity die,
my blue blood turn red,
the TNT tightness in my chest exploded
I got no place  to store these words,
the cops think I'm some kind of Terrorist

On and on thru the night,
Riffing, rapping, rambling, and spitting,
Ditties and darts, couplets and barbs,
Single words and elegies,
Free verse and a lot of fking curse words,
It was a moment, a time
that deserved
to be preserved,
and so this poem got writ

*You may think this story apocryphal
Which is another way of saying untrue,
But I got his boarding pass and it is signed,
To this crazy poetry dude, long may you rasp,
And it is signed by Mr. P. Simon, a big fan,
And it has never since that day,
Left my grasp
Eileen Prunster Jul 2012
oh jesus!
i've stumbled on his poems
and fallen in love
Ken Pepiton Oct 2018
Information Required Order 38582 Moonshine Makin's

I intend to use this order to test
the viability of an herbal extracting service for local gardeners.
If there is interest
and our trials prove commercial, the methods
will be posted publicly, methodic.

The intended customer base is the home canning and preserving enthusiast, ****** societies, 'n'such.

Now, the pod cast, statement of use. Right, of course.
Right use is to be made of all the time we wish, and we wish to share the method we use.
With youse.
Here's my idea, at the moment

nothin,

then I hear this guy who got famous in the seventies,
in such a way that I would have known.
Had I been on the same planet
during the Seventies
and half the eighties.

Terrence McKenna, right. If I had survived 1970,
and things had been well positioned for that to have happened,
had I not...

What did we do, my strange friends, or was I the only one who does remember my last sane thought? Actually,

I don't. And then, I do. Quasar-ic-ish-ly.

An edit or two could change every thing,
imagine this Terrence
McKenna taught "Authentic Being" a sort, or class, of being,
very high and good.

We teach being authentic.

Being a being's been being a while,

upon multiple instants of
a time, best'n'worse, full'n'empty, war'n'peace

(i'sgottabeat)

yet never is hope absensed. Any time I tell a story,
hope springs eternal, soon

soon the old fool will see No one is listening, and wink.

No one and the fool have friended
upon such times as these,
No two, as well, (seedawink)
to a far lesser degree, ye may see.
Secret secret secret knowledge, gnosis, donchaknow,

is same as sacred, yes, yes, it is, sacred made, made sacred, samesame that's the game... secret

I am in me,me ni ma I
Magic Ab-io-alchemical Hermitical Heretic, am I. Spirit. Muse?

Are we lost? No. We are wiser than we were.
By any measure.

A statement of use for that we wish to take, once it is granted. What's the use? We stuck not knowin, right?

Wait, I have a chit
"All things pertaining to life and godliness have been given thee." Got that at VBS, by God.

Really, we are treading on Bunyan's tale? We escape the Giant Despond on a promise of a promise?

Yes,
seems so. So little is different. The road, seen rocky three decades ago, or so, now, it's

bricks, silicon bricks, I recon they been doped, ye ken?
Some ol loswoids crosswise need gold ducts to flow
past the reflective edge, where we saw that Mckenna

outright lie.
He did. Damright. Said Paradise was opened by the door that shut Eden, but he said that

Like it was a bad thing.
Jesus Christ, if he missed the whole reason there is a Bible and a Jesus in it, who is gone gowon his testified
psyc-hellic oppositio cunjunct-ifitis trip?

So, I missed the seventies,
as if I were flying from LA at forty k and I go on by, to land in 1985, after fifteen years enculturated to believe a not-so-complex,
on the surface, lie.

Truth has a strange mercurial 'spect,
all the light that can be reflected is reflected in mercury, see,
the edge twixt yinanyang, dang,

as far as we can see, tho'

we can't really even see HD, but
it seems better.

Reflecting on an idea is blissfull, but that's not the reason.
Reflecting on old age and catching people telling lies regarding what can be learned in a deep examined life. Then, it's harvest time, and afriend called, thinks the podcast is a good tool, how we gone use it?
JoJo Nguyen  Feb 2013
Hare Bugs
JoJo Nguyen Feb 2013
There's a Tale of hare
named Bugs, wisecracking
Brooklyn speedster
who raced against
a Tortoise green.

Mercedes grey speeding
along, distancing
a schlepping spect,
a North Face jacket
on fruitcake's trek.

4000 fast
and sleek.
8 slow
and green.

Neither racers strangely
notice that child
born on dented stripes,
warning bumps
by side road way.

Is life a sacred race?
Marriage sacrament
a finishing face?
Dying memories trace
a cove and net
lacing U and who?

What's up Doc?
Eating healthy,
eating carrots?
I hear your voice
who's love does bare.

False Saffron leiter  
extort and retorts weiter!
Komisch verwaltung
Schwartz holzteer
baiting babies to finish fear.

A cartoon film
skipping and tear
telling a child's tale
reel ending here.
Ken Pepiton Aug 2019
and they began t' sing
marching single file

from the west

no masqued men were these,
these were
Kachina whitemen only saw in curio stories,
now,
approaching the old
prosper-specter

sitting full-lotus in his Barco-lounger, curbside-score,
from the land of too much good stuff

still, it's America, best effort men have made,

up to now.
The whole world has known since the International Geophysical Year,
1957, when the Symbolized Face of the Hungarian Freedom Fighter,

graced
the cover of Time, as Man of the Year before, when they lost
their war
and nobody cared, because
every body knew Disneyland is the Happiest Place on Earth,
where wishes can come true, and

that place is in America as sure as

blue fairy, you'real wish, Urielistical wish-grant,
Asrael and the others
singing backup
reload
when you wish
side-really… and a subtle shift in per
spect capacity
let be, just so,

and haps sub tile into layers of complexity re

because we, the people born to mature in the environs of Dublin
writ large, we
seers endowed with tele-vison, from birth.
The elders who watched the roll-out.
Aye, we watched
us evolve
to now

our future bright they say, a bright white light, then what

now,
we can say. The seals have been broken.
Nothing hidden now stays that way in ever,

and ever, as you know it, began

sometime
agone afore in some direction beyond your
ken, as it were when kenning the way of a knack was
as common as dowsers in the desert of my childhood.

What's in any name but what the namer seems?
Hey, yah way, tha'swhat I say,
tell me
what I say
Hey
Dancing shuffle footed single file
pass the white shirt black tie messenger from
the telestial king down Sonora way,
via
Yahoo, feel that tickle fo' a nickle, Hiram say come see
come feel
a boinin' in d' boosum through

the very crystal lenses

portal-ible model
through which Joseph of the name
Smith,
-- link back to Cain, through Tubal, via Na'amah--
-- set a breadcrumb, landmark, tag- say good old way
-- sign out don't break the story

through which Joseph of the name
Smith, came sayin an angel of light came with another gospel,

maybe the same guy the Galatians were warned to ignor,
re-legate-- re-read- start at the top
or all meaning is
like a song sung by Kansas, when we aren't there,
any more, than those wee
merest kachina jingle bells listing in the winds

but the Kansas chorus is stuck asif dust is all a simple

higgs-ified mind can manage to
regulate

without reading any ancient landmarks on maps of meaning
tattoo'd to the face in your mirror

in the darkest memory you hold
dear,
dearest,
your precious, in your Gollum-purpose state you know so well
protect it for all its worth,
with only your
strength
to lift
being the measure of worth-ship.

Ex-tol the worth of no bher-don born while in my state,
poor
un-gifted.  I remain a mortal soul linked mitochondrially to thee,
for whom the bell
told. You heard, but you were tolled don't ask.

Listen, the same hunch that said, It don't mean nuthin',

when you say you know that,
you bet you do.

I slew this dragon, not you. I say what the map says.

The dragon died of natural causes, so now,
all its true-sures
is yers…
Crown o'glory moon shine

plumb pert-nigh perfect fiture
imagined happy place to a T, crossed
and I dotted

Bleibe Doch! This is where all the Faustian Losers left their marks.

This is not where I aimed t'be said the elder bro,

as the wastrel was welcome t'Dada arms,
the crucial critics rave
Sheiszkunst, who Rah!
isis throws
a party for the prodigal madrigal has returned
from the pig's sty

packing each redeemed pearl, his brother once
fed to swine.

bent low 'neath his pearl-loaded ****-pack, he lifts his head,
waves his
crown, Fini,

come see, he says.
where I live, nowadays.

This is that treasure, on another level
as you may imagine,
free, if

you accept charity.

{There's the rub, say professional older bro, I know, charity;
'taint fair,
s'foul some, some ne'er-do-well finds a
pearl in some pigsty,

I PUT THAT PEARL THERE FOR THE FUTURE
not now.
I worked
for them ****** pearls, I sweated, brow-sweat, lo and hi.
I hid them well,

only a fool would ever believe a treasure
could be found in such ****,

but some fairy pulled a fast one, 'put a bean in little bro's ear,
so when the pigshit hit it began to grow,
sent a tendril to tickle a special spot,
just above the left ear,
right
there,

let's see diamonds, no
pearls,

any where we wish.
Let's say okeh, mark this spot, let us move on,

this is life. Let us see that more abundantly, while the poor
are safe and sound,
free as me to pursue haps past the frozen

disnified happy-ever-after WW2,
in the wake of Camus and ****** Wolves

---
splashes as the speeders pass, powered-row-row-rowing,

merrily mere ly wrong, not evil. Live on, next
is as you wish it were
someday, but in its diapers,

still. A we thinker thought awaiting effectual function,
as this trigger is pulled, in your space in time,

and another bubble appears,
portalish as mine-craft if ever there were

a subtle shifter of perception conspiring
A.I. see
a conspiracy with Lex Fridman infected by
Lynning Skyward
though a wave of old Radioman vibes,
played with plastic spoons
a famous peace march by
Kenurchka Klumpen, Sera-serah-selah-sinnade in B-Natural

and the last to leave broke the right arm from the doll,
sealed the dirt box one measure by one measure
deep and wide,

That seal was broken, 1957, approxi apriori right
arm dis
allowing
the left to change this next to come, sym-bolische
ified in the one-armed bandits left behind,

the bet. The die cast. Foccinaucipilinihili or holy

happy hunting ground, imagined in the land of too much good stuff.
Bits and pieces of the underlying tale. Note: The one armed effigy left in a 12 inch bt 12 inch adobe sealed hole in the floor of a pit-hose that may have been a kiva/ Vernon AZ
Nat Lipstadt Feb 2015
My Night With Paul Simon
(Posted originally on June 5, 2013)

On the night train, the red eye plane,
Flying home to NYCeeeeeeeeeeeee,
From the city of Los Angeleeeeeeez

Feeling flush, dropped some cash,
Got me a seat in extra large first class

Seat 2C, plenty of room for my toes,
To wiggle  to dance, lay down some poetry tracks,
pretending I'm a **** jive,
bad *** from the
make-believe west coast

A short guy, with fedora down low,
An older man,
looking about nine years older
than somebody I might know,
hiding his eyes @ 9pm
neath some excellent Raybans,
slip slides into 2D,
gives me a smile,
And says Hi, I'm Paul

I look once at his face and say,
Listen Rhymin' Simon,
I'd know you any place,
No worries, your secret,
with me is safe,
Cause dudes in row 2,
gottta stick together, be cool,
We're riding first class,
over the land of the free

What ya do for a living he asks,
A little of this and a little of that,
All of which, ain't no **** good at!
So I spend my cold, hard time
laying down cold hard verse,
Can't stop, cause it's my daddy's dying curse

He said that's cool,
I like to do that too.
Guitars on planes
drive passengers insane,
They take up too much
overhead compartment space,
I just scribble me some rhymes and
Let the music come
when I got two feet
on the ground in the city
we both come from.

Paul:  You got any stuff writ
on that yellow sheet,
or just pretty blue lines,
a big pad of nothing?

Dude: Man you may got diamonds
on the soles of your shoes,
But pay me some 'spect,  
you talking to the man who penned
Sad Eyed Teenagers of the Lowland
on Hello Poetry, gad ****!

Paul smiled and said
you can call me Al,
And if you feel like blowing some lines together,
We got five hours till we can see
the house that Ruth built.

Dude: Hit me with your best shot,
I'll show you what I got

Paul: And she said honey take me dancing
But they ended up by sleeping
In a doorway
By the bodegas and the lights on
Upper Broadway
Wearing diamonds on the soles of their shoes

Dude: Just cause the union of the  monkeys
in the Bronx Zoo done gone on strike,
Don't mean the lion ain't
still king of the hill
inside this New York city jail

Paul: And the sign said,
"The words of the prophets are written
on the subway walls
And tenement halls"
And whispered
in the sounds of silence

Dude: A home-grown poet.
I am
Soul enslaved to words.
The alphabet - My oxygen molecules,
I am both,
Addict and dealer
A ****** poet
******

Paul: You don't need to be coy, Roy
Just listen to me
Hop on the bus, Gus
You don't need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And get yourself free

Dude: Contact with the atmosphere
makes self pity die,
blue blood turn red,
the TNT tightness in my chest exploded
I got no place
to store these words,
the cops think I'm
some kind of
Terrorist

On and on thru the night,
Riffing, rapping, rambling, and spitting,
Ditties and darts, couplets and barbs,
Single words and elegies,
Free verse and a lot of fking curse words,
It was a moment, a time
that deserved
to be preserved,
and so this poem got writ

You may think this story apocryphal
Which is another way of saying untrue,
But I got his boarding pass and it is signed,
To this crazy poetry dude, long may you rasp,
And it is signed by Mr. P. Simon, a big fan,
And it has never since that day,
Left my grasp
why some call me

stillcrazynafteralltheseyears,
SNL provoked me to repost it
ArturVRivunov Oct 2011
I saw a gentle face looking through my eyes, and they said to me don't think about it twice. . .
Just look back into my eyes and I'll show you a deeper place. . .The life is not a silly place, for in my time I lived within my place. . .Now I'll show you that deep embrace your eyes long for.
Then that gentle face took me to a place where life's but in pace without digrunted haste. Senses guided this gentle face, showed me how to fight it, and I took it willingly, my new strength betrothed from her gentle brace. My gentle face I became to embrace as only fresh breath of air.
I became to know it so, when I glance back what in my time I felt but such a waste, when all it was were just few silly moments, when my heart sank and I couldn't show this feeling with about a face in blanc. But then came a reason for what in life could be my please on, for I was missing this gentle face present in mine. Until funny as to how long ago I wrote this, to only finish in this moment when I have run into this gentle face. Pondering her embrace in this life I feel without her a waste, but I know and feel her daily smile, her tiring heart at times like mine when I feel the world is falling apart.
Her gentle face overrides the feeling grief, for if I was to feel sad, it is always brief.
I only long so much a day for when the time comes, we together, get to play.
Darling, your gentle face in front of me sways me in ways I have only imagined. To say so now how I felt this moment and now this moment I had found it. Your gentle face I saw in time when mine was less profound, it give me a feeling joy so far from how I imagined, for your gentle face I feel it to never wonder from it, into oblivion because from how far I saw it to now how much I love it.
I believe in love and it's how I lived it, but never seeing that there would be another. I never felt to loose my sight for I have felt you, from afar glowing within the night. Adults and others feel lost to love, feeling time in age, to be only put down by something they don't feel in life they can't anymore engage. How could we lovers loose sight of life adventure, ceised by today's life on its venture. Today's affections all but tend to misperfections and everyone seized in mind to love themselves creating such perfections, to only show but never feel.
Oh! How I look into your gentle face and feel for it in every place. To even look into another, it's pointless within my pace. For there is no such face I could find within your embrace. I am your face, for how much I feel we fit in place.
To yours mine always ventures, through clouds of clamour where life is but lost in glamour. No one see's a subtle moment, where time passes between the two, because their always distracted away from two, to always wonder about around them, whome is who, what looks upon our face embraces. And in most cases, they loose their loving laces, that tie together of what you and I do share.
For when I looked into a gentle face, your trully in spirit, since now my heart can clearly hear it. Since our first embrace, together in one place, my heart explode it, this sound so melodious. Yours trully listened and mine just glistened, the sound of perfect. This melody, all I could and only hear, to it to only add in new sound you in me but steer.
The soothing melody of you and me sitting beside each other on our first walk where all the chatter around us but was talk. While I felt in your wonder moment, swamped by your mesmirizing glow.
There was no other place I felt to go but to your heart. The funny thing you told me in moment of rediculous it didn't mean to me a thing of any sort particulous. I only felt to hold your hand and feel your lips with such lovely words. Sitting on that busy metro, my life changed with in large retro, a spect in life I felt to wonder when all for me would be a calm no matter where I felt I stood in warmth, your love swarmed over me by strength, if so this train had hit a wall I would have gathered in my strength to break your fall. . . . .. . .

— The End —