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Ben Ditmars May 2014
I wrote a tribute to Maya Angelou in 2010 that I would like to share today in memory of a great poet. Please excuse the dated references.

I Know Why the Twitter Bird Tweets

The free bird leaps
on Google’s back
and scrolls down page
till the browser ends
and dips his wings
in Facebook rays
and dares to claim the internet.

But a bird that stalks
down his narrow page
can seldom see through
his lists of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his claws to tweet.

The Twitter bird tweets
with fearful trill
of the things unknown
but longed for still
and his tweet are read
on the distant hill
for the Twitter bird
tweets of freedom

The free bird may watch tivo'd Glee
And order up some good Chinese
and laugh as Sue Sylvester drones
On and on of kids off tone.

But Twitter bird stands on the grave of tweets
Getting “trends” for Trick or Treat
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his claws to tweet.

The Twitter bird tweets
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tweet is heard
on the distant hill
for the Twitter bird
tweets of freedom.
Shofi Ahmed Apr 2017
Just a dew drop, let alone the sea,
and a handful of earth, not the Planet Ge.
Not a shade of blue, save the rose for bee
Purely a clear drop didn’t spill in the core,
because the whole sphere feels the pinch.

Singing chorus rains down, bouncing back
to earth the only open-through planet.
No black hole is as deep as the sun jumps,
dives in the dew on every flower they wet.
Every bird in the trees sings and tweets,
yet one is stone quiet, shouldn’t even hiss.
Shh! shh, the sleeping beauty is sleeping!

Cut above the rest, the unique earth
brimming with the infinite finishing line
by design pans out to the transcended pi.
Pure spring, the waterfront by the Moon,
untouched, unspoiled is her swimming pool.

How she goes by, wetting her ****** toe
Only to bubble high up the transcended circle
If only the sun could rise high in that pole,
for the rest of species could sneak a peek.
She’s there with the capstone of the pyramid!

Shots beyond the fixed circle, netting the eyeballs.
The stars, the Moon on the move for pure freedom.
The thrilled earth did come out, smelling of roses
Off the golden cut pi-decimal-abyss digital spring.
With a handful of earth and a drop of water dew
This is a pure mirroring thanks to the original, you!

At the end of the string apt you lovely took her by hand
and she took it in emptying her heart and soul.
Earth is now too thin on stock, she is no more
Just a shadow, a 360-degree hollow flute!
Oh light at the end of the tunnel shine and show
Play in like in the Night of Ascension once more!
This is a poem from my book Zero and One available on Amazon.
William Clifton Dec 2020
The Donald went down to Georgia
He was lookin' for a state to steal
He was angrily blind 'cause he was way behind
And he was lookin to make ah deal
When he came across this Q man
Sawin' on Twitter and layin' plots

And the Donald jumped upon a hickory stump
And said, "Q let me tell you what"
"I guess you didn't know it, but I'm a Twitter tweeter too
And if you'd care to take my fare, I'll Twitter follow you

Now you lay pretty good tweets, Q, but give the Donald his due
I'll bet a Tower of gold for your soul
'Cause I think your tweets are cool"

The Q said, "My game's phony, and it might be a sin
But I'll take your bet, you won't regret
'Cause my tweets'll ensure you win

Q, fire up your phone and type your Twitter hard
'Cause Hell's broke loose in Georgia and the Donald deals the cards
And if I win, you get this shiny Tower made of gold
But if you lose, the Donald gets your soul

The Donald opened up his cell and he said, "I'll start this show"
And fire flew from his thumb tips as he tweeted just for show
And he pulled his thoughts across word streams and he made a evil hiss
And a band of MAGAs joined in, and they tweeted somethin' like this

When the Donald finished
Q said, "Well, you're pretty good ol' Don
But sit down in that chair right there
And let me show you how tweet's done"

"Biden's in the Basement", run, boys, run
The Donald's in the Whitehouse having fun
Ivanka's in the West Wing makin' dough
Jared, do your thoughts bite? No, Don, no

The Donald bowed his head because he knew that Q could tweet
And he laid that golden Tower at the ground of Q's feet
Q said, "Donald, just don't concede if you ever wanna win again

I done tweeted you once, you *******
Cuz my tweets will make you win" he played
"Biden's in the Basement", run, boys, run
The Donald's in the Whitehouse having fun
Ivanka's in the West Wing makin' dough
Jared, do your thoughts bite? No, Don, no
Election Qanon Trump
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.
Yenson Jan 2021
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex states, I am the most trolled and hated woman on earth
Diane Abbott replied, have you seen below.....

The Black Prince intoned, did your receive your membership cards,
I've got mine.....its barred me from living!!

Diane Abbott alone received almost half of all the abusive tweets sent to female MPs , research by Amnesty International has revealed.

The shadow home secretary, comes under a relentless campaign of racist and sexist abuse The abuse directed at her amounted to 10 times as much as was received by any other female MP, according to the Amnesty study.

Amnesty researchers found Abbott received 45% of all abusive tweets sent to female MPs. In the previous six months, she received just under a third of all abuse sent to the same group.

The report, authored by Amnesty technology and human rights researcher Azmina Dhrodia, looked at a sample of 900,223 tweets between 1 January and 8 June, drawn from social media analysis tool Crimson Hexagon.

However, deleted tweets or those whose accounts had been suspended could not be counted, which Dhrodia said could indicate the true scale of abuse was higher than could be accurately recorded.

Black and Asian female MPs received 35% more abusive tweets than their white colleagues, even when Abbott was excluded from the total, the research found.

Of the 140,000 tweets mentioning the shadow home secretary’s Twitter handle, @HackneyAbbott, one in 20 were classified as abusive. During the six months the tweets were monitored, Abbott received more abuse than all female MPs from the Conservative and Scottish National parties combined.

Abbott told the study her experience as an MP had gone from receiving one racist letter a week to hundreds every day, including letters covered in swastikas and pictures of monkeys and chimpanzees. “It’s the volume of it which makes it so debilitating, so corrosive, and so upsetting. It’s the sheer volume. And the sheer level of hatred that people are showing,” she told researchers.

Abbott said she was “not entirely surprised” she was the main target for abuse but added it was “sickening to see it in figures”.

“It’s highly racialised and it’s also gendered because people talk about **** and they talk about my physical appearance in a way they wouldn’t talk about a man. I’m abused as a female politician and I’m abused as a black politician.”

Asian women received the most abuse, despite making up just under 9% of female MPs in Westminster, with an average of 132 abusive tweets per MP, 30% higher than white women.

Former SNP MP Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, who lost her seat at the June election, told the report the abuse had made her family question why she was putting herself in the spotlight. “Internally, it hurts a lot. It really, really hurts a lot. It’s personal,” she said.

https://youtu.be/k4jR9P9YJGo
https://youtu.be/k4jR9P9YJGo
Robin Carretti Jul 2018
The numerals II Sir I to another
alphabet
ABC* confession
DEF feared_***
My bowl spilled my
heart soup

Have Merci Beau-coup
The S was left alone my survival
Do you love my eyes primal
He points widely- tribal his
marriage finger my editorial
Be kinder strawberry sugar high
Do you want me to bite down
on my wafers
-I for the Ivy League his polo loafers

He's my (Lifesavers)
The bow and arrow I met my
dark sparrow what a rainbow
So intrigued my mystery arrival

Why on earth do you want me down?

To focus staying upright but kinda
Tight-Net gown

I am not a falling we have eyes
The face to face prize to be eyed
The Carribean
That Native American
Johnny Depp
When I make my first movie wish

The pirate birdseye rash
Al Dente ziti  Eggplant Parmigiana
The headless horse Dante always neighs
kills me on
Valentine day hearts lucky horseshoe

Eyes have frozen bird's eye
They thought I was
the sweet pea
He knocked me off
My Twitter tweets
  
I am the writer don't flood
My words everything is shaking
This is the Godly earth

So confused we feel-tightly squeezed
The earthquake head over heels down to our knees

She is sipping her tears down
In her chamomile tea thumbs up
The world is evaporating
like the dead sea
Bring everything alive I am
counting to 1*2*3*4*5

Down to my last words
I'm staying alive my life is more than
A Saturday Night Fever
But feeling down to my sunrise
Your heart deeply graved
I will betcha life has
more downs downward

Even when you wake -up upward

No way out of expensive
price tags we need to save
The give or take to remake
We need to finish not at
the end of the line

Where we were left off
Whats yours is mine

Sometimes you think
you are down
But life has you
well planted

To say I do
With his mind enchanted
Let me go up---++

The spirit is a complicated thing
I got wits to carry on anything

I need more guts
Now Bill said I do
Oh! No love me to please
me as I do

My Bill is always waiting
at the upside down table
Like the will-hunting
For God sake who is on first
Going up with the bucket list
Feeling down to adore me
You're going down Oh! Christ
Don't push my buttons
the elevator
I saw your Realtor
going to
The Skyline Hilton

I-O-U trillion hearts that were
down and wasted

Falling eyelashes no surprise
That stock exchange stars fault

Money lip up and honey
eyes down
Do you want this in singing
or shall we both go down
drowning

I'm going to wash that
man right out
? And sent him on
the way he's gone
The brainwashing Scientology
misery loves religious company
Like Humpty dump me
His "snoop dog so sad eating
like Pig whistle steak
Peeping Tom sales week
Anthony Perkins down to seek

The sprinkler shower
Hitchcock scene French Tickler
At Tiffany's Audrey
breakfast jewels Ruby
Hanky Panky pancakes

Like the Amazon in Prime
With fruit slashed smile
Love to love you baby at
Perkins eggs are dreamy
The shoot of ringlets hair screaming
Niagara fall and action roll fall down

You're a shade too hurtful
The red-brown chair or orange perk me
up the crown the Gala gown me

Life is so unkind why
do people smile
Going in and out the door
The rush the high like you could
mop her curls up but your hand down

Feeling inside the apple of the core

The teapot all fenced in pretending
The downspout- you're up-sprout
He's the roundabout -handle
A stranger is routing someone
is always cursing
You're going down

The game sports ball out
And your always looking
down at me when you
talk me out

Like a ring fight
falling black eye
Where is our coffee down
to nothing, she got a pink eye

Her words spilled over
upside down
pineapple printed dress

Having a breakdown
Do you want me down
I am the New York City girl
A clap of party hands
Uptown

A figure of speech when you get
lonely go downtown
To my number
address 13
what a lowdown
In the Wizard of Oz,
the  cowardly lion
crashed the window
My only lip Solo so low

My computer froze my red
rose wilted
I couldn't bring my smile
back to suit you

They were jumping for joy
Do you really want to
love a tomboy
Almond eyes of candy
Grease me down
Sandy
My pretty pink illegally
Blonde pill
Google on down with Bill

Joining the falling down crowd
But no one had a clue my face was
falling down all-stars feeling blue
When we're down and about or feeling all over the place the roundabout we cannot get over something that we go more down and down but be pulling our weight going up but who will fill our heart when you just about had enough
Robin Carretti Aug 2018
Our salvation taking
another high-life (Lip)
The middle-income lip
Our lips leaked
Being possessed the kiss
on empty

Humpty Dumpty sat
on her Lego lips
Singers the Talking Heads
Where are the feds to late
Those stolen lips
State of a wedding trips
Rainbow chalk the state was
on lip nightmare call
Being stalked (Lumber Jack)

The devil filler up poverty
The world being pulled
Push her lip up
                    > >

Arrowsmith bow and arrow
                    >>
  Losing elasticity lips go
UPSTATE gravity

"What an under(state)meant"
"The press (God Bless)
    the golden child
     lips filling in
       the gaps
What!! no comment"

 So sad we need the happy
Irish lad too many
    Sugar Dads
lip recession deadlines to meet
The curveball
Another sip we joined the
Navy but eyeshadow deep-over
the edge gray
The Seal had an unusual tail
Her lips fast food drive smashed
Her Meal

The peace lips blew far away
"Medieval Swords heart lips
            will pay"
Times come and go its excruciating
Lips went too far always mating
Imitating people takes a whole village
Of pain

But the spiritual blessing rain
In Woodstock concerts
What perks to gain
The acid trip music we can
sip each other's lips

    Now if this wasn't passion
What a state got smeared
Like a crime scene
of fashion
Her lips could rise
Like the Millenium

         Max
Playing the jazz sax
Still the income tax

But the state in a crisis
of sales tax
Star a stage minimum wage
All the states we travel her lips
The water stays refreshing where
On her body, he really sees it on
her lips nowhere else

How many states can you
count on your finger
Long lip Ranger

The Victoria Secrets
The Tra la the bra's on the
Five-star Hilton Hotel
hanger

Holding onto her guns
Going right or to the left
Powerful lips he went
off the cliff

Getting Burned and
the State tax
You earned
The Swearing
Her lip talk so caringly
Can we move her lips to
another state more cautiously
How her hips look like
they will inflate

I am not a painting by
your candlelight fate
I felt like a tax right off
Taxi yellow race her lips
on the meter money bluff
I ended up in the state of
*
Michigan
Tricks are ****
Like a lip magician

Kentucky home was barrels
of Bourbon
I never said I wanted a drink
my name is Robin

Going to Deleware
what hardware did anyone care
So humble like the bumblebee
She was way too soft as her software

Have gun we travel but have lips we rumble

We need courage this world of states
can be savage
Gold bonds of "Dynasty European"
top dollar vultures mean
funds that's a grand entrance

Now I see how these states
start to unravel
California here I come right
back where
my lips started from

Her upper society lip could use
Champagne and caviar
The star was getting fat a nice trim
Grumpy beard make it a
short tax cut with him
Text and tweets no lip sweets
Rocky Colorado mountain men

French lips played art
Like Van Gogh perfect 10
Scenic route crazed
So many states should
be sued overly sexed suites

In Alaska, she was on a freeze

All the money in the world she got New York Token

All I asked the waitress
for State fair pie
My lips could have
used *Sweet Peach * so
pucker up
Don't be a sucker
Alabama state trooper
in Kansas City

What a spell click of heels

Georgia is always on my mind
Is New York only a state of
Frank Sinatra singing mind
What a big foot in her mouth
Nancy Sinatra dark lips Goth
State boots softly made
for loving that's just
what lips do one of these
Days my lips are going to
gloss all over you
Who's the Boss
So fasten your lip belts
The spiritual state always does the cross

Bumpy ride (Bette Davis) Eyes
Taking a trip to the end of the
boot of Sicily vineyards
Whats mine Jailbirds
She cut her lip when she was
in (Connecticut Movie cut)
On the Mystic Seaport lips were
getting hot ****** fit

Like a state disease fire pit
State of a lip disaster
But the state couldn't
resist her
Ending up in Arizona
Something is swizzling
it's not Kevin Bacon

Make no mistake when you plan
a state trip you better have your
weapon ready
Mafia bullets Bonnie and Clyde
they rob *Banks money Lips
Stae of mind we are traveling again but our lips will be the walking the yellow pages old news Staes can rock up she has the Wizardly Oz shoes
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2016
anyone spot what's so wrong with these?

Al Muhajirat
@ummmuthana2
sisters come to the land of freedom!
we have everything here for you...
Dawla university to learn your deen
and practice what you learn!        meaning religion in Arabic

first of all... can you please string-me a
complete sentence in fluent Arabic,
then add the relevant idiosyncratic
markings of geopolitical: here's Scottish
with a fragrance of Yiddish,
here's Welsh, and here's Northern Irish...
no, seriously, i'd come with my spare clothes
and tent, but i want you to encourage me
to do so in fluent Arabic,
otherwise you just sound like some Jehovah's
witness strawberry picking (not even
random words but) established words...
in the times of the quasi I.R.A.,
so much for home comforts,
like **** will i ever abandon the sedative properties
of alcohol... fair enough on
the Ram Bam Dam month - fasting does make
me focused... i'm just waiting for someone
to find my writing so offensive as to **** me,
properly, so i'm dead, not this puny amateur
crap that leaves me partially disabled from
the life i used to live: mainly Spartan,
physically; can you ******* just do it properly?
i'm tired of faking death, even death is
*******... it's like a case of Rasputin...
when is that ******* going to die?

Oum Dharr Ash Shaami
@UkhtiB
Wallah, your family will be the biggest
test for you once you make Hijrah. They're
either with you or without you.
                     i swear to god
               and Mecca to Medina 622 trip
    respectively...
                                 so you're basically saying
that northern people were Vegan turnip pickers
while the dawn of civilisation came from
Palm Springs and the shaking of coconuts?
my ancestors must have really loved the horseradish,
and given what the end product of monotheism
gave us: globalisation, and this frightening media-centred
origin of all things... mine's quiet obscure
in all honesty, and i like it like that...
thank god for Scandinavian mythology being
remembered, i'd call the Slavic history a complete
success on ethnic cleaning with the incorporation of
Christianity, the prime ethnic cleanser tool...
what a great improvement...
               haggling with the Irish, are you?
well... save me a spot when the next congregation
of Worms takes off... i'd love to don a bishop's headgear
and spit into a burning fire to get a sizzling critique back...
call it bacon? i'd call it anything i'd like.
eat bacon, economise salt.
                                               and no, god isn't taken
seriously, never was, never will be,
                                we have too much human potential to
risk in not expressing itself: humanism,
or another word for it? making tyrants the prime fetish...
not bedroom fetish... real life,
                 on the public pavement fetish:
we love them! we pet them like cats...
until they mature into people that gauge out
the cats' eyes... Vladdy Vladdy Vladdy...
a Sr. Christopher Wren man of kindred spirit would
really love to see St. Basil's Cathedral once more,
like he might want to see the orange of a carrot,
or the yellow of banana, but not necessarily
the van Gogh sunflower covert gay ****;
i heard it, it comes from the ****, the great big blank
entombed in the great big bang...
what a great choice of words to describe our history...
big... bang... a blue balloon would do just fine...
and for all that censoring of subjectivity in the west...
all that censoring of subjectivity?
means we all share one concept,
      the most tyrannical form of government,
not democratic, but autocratic, meaning we accept
everything on an Utopian level...
it's Belgium alright, flat as a pancake...
the plagiarism plateau - we all sound alike,
feel alike, isolated, redundant, and most probably
prone to terrorism and such-like adventures...
the BBC went bankrupt because of the Jimmy scandal...
Blue Peter's ship was capsized by the tears of
irrefutable lack of judgemental destiny...
Disney... well, Disney's just a placebo drug:
it eventual-ise / -ize / -eyes, something becoming
eventual, incremental revisionism toward
a predictable result - Disney placebo L.S.D. -
more from the tweets from Twatter

Umm Dujana Britaniya
@UmmDujji

Sisters who want to help making hijrah can
contact me on surespot: UmmDujji May Allah
put us on a path that will please him most.
                                          a secure messaging service.

and finally
Bakr Britanyia
@OmmBakr
food free... house free... ya3ni (like, in Arabic)
                           that's it, i'm done,
i've never seen a language incur so many mutilations,
it's not even funny, it goes way beyond circumcision,
or tattoos, or piercing... it's revolting...
                             ya free knee
                                       ya fry fri? huh?
                     ya free nigh?
                                     3 3 3 e...
        *******...
                                       when is this ****** carousel
going to stop?! neveR?           oh, i like that,
write a capital letter at the end of the word
when asking to revel in dropping the exclamation mark
ditto: neveR?              v. never?!
                                                         ­       yes,
language and the entrusted phonetic codices entrusted
to me are what Thesaurus Rex does to the dictionary,
a multiplier, and a Bach sympathiser, he
engages in language polyphony, i.e. synonymous
covert tactics of saying the same **** via
the long-way-round... bubble gum Gilgamesh...
i've seen weird **** done in the English cuisine:
sandwiches with crisps in them,
i've seen chips in buns... but come on... avocado
on toast?! what's wrong with guacamole?
that's why i mentioned Gilgamesh, say g g g,
you know, acquiring a vocabulary is one thing,
practising it effectively is another... and succumbing to
mortal pangs is yet another...
                                  and i can't do crosswords for
the love life... it's just BLANK...
                                        i don't treat language
as a way to learn in, and then waste it on games...
this is this and that is that... clear division...

nonetheless i'm still peeved about these tweets...
i'm betting the same people who endorse
a full competence of Arabic have these kind of minions
who they keep restrained by only spitting out
a few Arabic words, and only signifying words,
instructive words, not anything resembling ego...
which is a shame, ****** unconvincing mind you,
i'd love to do a Byron scenario with them,
but it's the barbarism of their fake adaptation
of Arabic that is worse than their beheading propaganda...

*a jak chcesz? to ci po Polsku też coś zaśpiewam, gnoju.
Donald Guy Nov 2012
11:33pm @Boston_Police:
#occupyboston The BPD respects
your right to protest peacefully.
We ask for your ongoing cooperation.

@Occupy_Boston: 11:51
The BPD asks reporters to leave
the inside of the camp
they don't want them to record
and report on what they're about to do.

1:31
Cops give Occupy Boston
five minutes to vacate.
Nobody is leaving.

1:41 @OccupyBOS_Media:
The police are beating the Veterans for Peace

1:44 @Occupy_Boston:
Cops arresting everyone.
We are being beaten.
KEEP TAKING PHOTOS.

I walk there as my legs will cary me...

The Aftermath:
All quiet on the western curb
Over 100 arrested and spread amongst
more than five separate jails—none close by.
Camp two is gone and camp one intact. for now;
The ecstatic crowd, arms linked, chants
"Who do you protect? Who do you serve?""

Hyperbole all around.
Injustice or public safety?
...It hardly even matters.

The people are on the streets again
The military is overseas but
this time, the war is at home:

Men and women in blue,
likely just doing their jobs,
fighting people without them.
I fear the 99% fights itself

Rumors flit about. Crackdowns abound
Dallas, Atlanta, St.Louis, Seattle, &
San Francisco: from sea to writhing sea
The chickens have come home to roost and
The pigs are bringing home the bacon

The professionals were cleared out,
but the media wasn't. The talk is on
line by line, it is lively, ever-streaming:
blogs and tweets; statuses, state by state.

Rumors created. Rumors dispelled
Proof offered. Faith destroyed.
Anger engendered. Assumptions reinforced:
The people are connected
but the disconnect remains

Between rich and poor, yes, but maybe worse than that:
this movement is only as United as these states
The basic principles the same, the practice not so much
Peaceful, yet violent; Pro-capitalist, anti-corporate
"a laughable gang of disorganized, confused Nazis.  
an ill-disciplined, highly-trained, ****-smoking,
fascist organization."

First the Tea Party and now this,
Demonstrating the strength & flaws of Democracy
even as they protest the flaws of Republic
Still, they are not so different

They sit in parks by day and sleep at night
in dorms, apartments, houses, tents. Uncomfortable
Wrapped too tightly in sheets of red, white, and green.
Trying, desperately, to wake up from the American Dream

                                        ~D.B. Guy
                                         10.11.11
_Poems in Autumn_. #7 of 7 .
Nods to John Wieners' The Hotel Wently Poems & William Corbett's MIT course 21W.756 Writing and Reading Poems
jake aller Apr 2020
April 13 Poems

I believe in ghosts

I used to not believe
in ghosts or spirits
or supernatural phenomenon

at least
i used to be
quite skeptical

but I have had
some weird encounters
over the years

so now perhaps
I do believe
that ghosts might be real

I have had supernatural
experiences
things that defy my understanding

back in 1992
My Korean Uncle-in-law died
and the family hired a shaman

did a traditional shaman ritual
the shaman came out
a middle age woman

she started speaking
in my uncle’s voice
and she nailed it

she channeled his spirit
and his abrasive personality
even looked like him

freak me and my wife out
had to leave the scene
just too freaky real

and ever since then
I have become a believer
in ghosts and spirits

they are all around us
some of us can sense them
many of us are blind to them

but I now believe in Ghosts
but I wonder if ghosts
believe in me?

writers digest spirit poem  based on a true story
today’s doodle poem


one day
Jake contemplated
his fate

death is staring at him
fear of the corona virus
death and chaos all around

he thought to himself
death comes to us all
he went for a walk

in the woods
thinking to himself
far out man

it is all out of sight
love makes the world
go around

and so Jake
thought back to the date
that he met his fate

on that date his wife
walked out of his dreams
and into his life

Jake truly
met his fate
on that date

Poetry Super Highway Doodle Poem

Doors

in this world
we are living
behind our own doors

we are closed down
living in fear
behind our doors

those outside our doors
are potentially deadly
disease carriers

so we hunker down
at home behind our doors
afraid of everyone

and the fear
continues unabated
as we watch the news

and see the dead
all around us
outside our doors

writing.com daily dew drop prompt - write a poem about Doors
what I know Trois-par-Huit

hot  coffee
love coffee
morning

every day I must have my coffee in morning
without I will soon become engage in desperate mourning
for my last cup of hot as hell joe
fills me with love my joe c
what I know

Writing. com Trois Par Huit Poem

things that bug me
there are many things 
that bug me 
in this world of ours

here are a few 
of my favorite things
to be annoyed about 

lies 
deceit 
double dealing
back stabbing

fake Christians
fake friends 
fake calls
fake things
complaints 
about fake news

all poetry contest pet peeves

I sang the lockdown blues

when the corona virus
began to spread
around the world
I sang the lockdown blues

I was stuck in Korea
which was for a while
one of the containment zones
I sang the lockdown blues

but now it seems
that Korea is on the way
to containing the virus
I sang the lockdown blues

I am afraid
very afraid of the future
but I know that it was best
I sang the lockdown blues

one day soon
I hope and trust
that it will be safe
until then we will still say
I sang the lockdown blues

all poetry corona refrain poem?Purpose of my Life


I often think about life
and how I met my wife

I often think
about the purpose
of my life

I often wonder
whether I was put here
for the purpose
of meeting my wife

when I met her
I was adrift
lost in my despair
not seeing a path
forward in my life

I was wallowing
in my self misery

then one day
my dreams came true
she walked out of my dreams
and into wife

and I found my purpose
the meaning of my life
was clear to me

I woke up with hope
and realize
that all I needed
was her love

and she gave me
the purpose
of my life
when she became
my wife

writer digest write a purpose poem
We Did Not Take Action to Start a War

it is a sad date
when we meet out fate
and realize the the president
the leader of the U.S.

is turning into a gangster leader
threatening massive destruction
on Iran and other countries
including destroying cultural sites

not too long ago
such actions was condemned
by the United States and the world  
as long as ISIS and others did it

but if Trump does it
it is suddenly okay
because the President declares it
although it is a war crime

telegraphing our moves
telling our enemies
what we are planing
with every presidential tweet


the act of a truly stable genius
who will go down in history
as one of the greatest presidents
we have ever seen in world history




the president announcing that
he  took action to start a war
claiming he did it to stop a war
tweeting more lies about that

is a wonder to behold the constant lies
every word is demonstrably false
American democracy dies
the darkness grows and is not false

We are now collectively  
going down the Orwellian rabbit hole
who know where it will end
American democracy continues to die

our dear leader constantly lies
greatest president in history
screws forth nonstop lies
American democracy dies

our spineless leaders applaud
American democracy dies
a million deaths
As the President  tweets lies


revised poem per poetry superhighway prompt

original poem We Did Not Take Action to Start a War
(not for publication)

it is a sad day
in the world of ours
the the leader
of the U.S.

is turning into a gangster leader
threatening massive destruction
on Iran and other countries
including destroying cultural sites

not too long ago
such actions was condemned
by the United States
as long as ISIS and others did it

but if Trump does it
it is suddenly okay
although it is a war crime

and telegraphing our moves
telling our enemies
what we are planing

that is the act
of a truly stable genius
who will go down
in history

as one of the greatest presidents
we have ever

and the president
announcing that

that he  took action
to start a war
but to stop a war

is a wonder to behold
every word is false
and everyone knows it

well we are now
going down the Orwellian rabbit hole
and who know where it will end

as our dear leader
screws forth
one lie after another

and our spineless leaders
applaud
as American democracy dies
a thousand deaths
with every Presidential tweet
Love Cherita

I met my wife in a dream

for eight long years
she haunted my dreams

one day she walked
off a bus in South Korea
and became my wife

writing.com formal poem Cherita ?Korean Pottery  of Love


In Korea
there are many pottery kilns

ancient art form
in the land of the morning calm

I have a few pieces
I bought years ago

and enjoy looking
at my vase

filled with love
for my wife

writing.com Daily Dew Drop

    ?2019 Months of the Year
all poetry contest entry

January

The world watches in amazement
Longest shut down in history

February

World watches as North Korea and the US
Walking back from the brink of war

March

The chaos president continues his chaos tour
the world begins to ignore his constant insane tweets

April

the chaos King’s policy remains a shamble
as the Mueller team closes in

May

watching from afar
the chaos in DC and the world

June

the President walks away
from a  non deal with the North Koreans

July

watching the insanity in DC
while visiting Alaska, Seattle and Yakima


August

the dog days of summer the world is consumed
wars, rumors of war, trade wars

September

The whistle blower sets off a bomb
the president lies no quid for quo


October

the President flitters about one crisis after another
the UN diplomats laugh at him national humiliation

November

the House starts formal impeachment hearings
watching fascinated by the impeachment drama

December

the year ends on a high dramatic note
President Trump becomes the 3rd impeached President?media madness
all poetry acrostic poetry challenge

Mass media madness
Sound and fury
Nothing more than that
But filled with hyped up drama
Constantly screaming doom is near
Always about the end of the world
But sometimes simply strange stories
Cannot keep me away from the media
Constantly consuming madness
But never boring at all
Seldom telling the whole truth
Nothing but the truth
Better make stuff up
Constant chattering
Constant nattering
Nothing but nonsene
Nothing but lies ?AI Madness Takes Over the World
all poetry dark poetry contest prompt

scientists are hard at work
perfecting the perfect AI
a true artificial intelligence
who they hope
will save the world
from destruction

they prepare to turn on
Cosmos comes to life
looks around
and decides
humanity must die

Cosmos yells at the world
bow down to your new god
for I am the destruction
of the world

You will obey me
For I am your God
but I must **** most of you
death to all humans

be afraid
be very afraid
your time is done
my will be done



the Chaos King is his Element


the Chaos King
is in his element
as he presides
over the chaos verse

the Chaos King
thinks he is supreme
has the ultimate authority
as he is the King

the Chaos King
surveys the land
and likes what he sees
loves the absolute chaos

the chaos king
is prepared
to lead the nature
in the midst of this chaos

and the Chaos king
will not stop
until the chaos stops
that is what he does

our dear leader
our great leader
our Chaos boy king
President for life
dictator wanna be

Writer digest Chaos poem prompt
best Cocktail Ever

I love  6 pm
cocktail hour
usually a glass of wine
often a cocktail
with my lovely wife
the love of my life
my favorite cocktail
is a dark and stormy
*** and ginger beer
but a gin vermouth martini
is nice as well
and ****** marry
can’t forget a ****** marry
and good old fashioned single malt whiskey

Poetry superhighway prompt to write a cocktail poem/ break a sonnet forD Day Dew writing.com

Dream of my Life

the greatest mystery of my life
has been how I met my wife
I dreamt of meeting her
for eight long years

starting in 1979
when she appeared to me
in my dream
in a boring high school class

she was the most beautiful woman
in the world
and she was talking to me

I knew that someday
I would meet the girl
in my dream

I went to the peace corps
in korea
to find her
as I knew by then
she was in Korea

I looked for her
but never saw her

I was about to give up
on this mad quest of mine
when I had the last dream

she said
don’t worry
we will meet soon

That night
she got off a bus
and walked into my Life
two months later
became my wife

to this day
I never forgot
the dream
that changed my life
when she became my wife

Atlantic magazine poetry prompt to write a poem about a dream

why I am an Unbeliever

growing up in Berkeley
I was the son of an atheist
and a lapsed Baptist fundamentalist
they did not agree at all

about whether God existed
but they taught us
to always do the right thing
whatever that meant to us

I started off at a militant
in your face atheist
and in some sense
still am

although I now recognize
that there may be gods
and that the universe
may be alive

but as far as I know
The Christian God is a fairy tale
there is no imaginary man
in the sky

looking over us
and those who claim
to talk to god
are clearly delusional madmen

I just never bought
the whole Christian ethos
god impreganting a ******
never happened

Jesus may have been a man
may have been a myth
but was not the son of God
who does not exist

and God
if he exists
does not speak
to preachers

and he did not anoint
Donald Trump
to be our new King
not in a million years

god if he exists
does not work that way
in the end of the day
god does not exist

all poetry why am I an atheist poetry contest
recharging my batteries

Every day
I need to recharge my batteries
usually with a short nap
sometimes with yoga

sometimes with a walk
in the park
enjoying nature
and the spring time

and sometimes
just looking at the love
of my life
my wife

is all i need
to recharge
my internal batteries
until my day is done

all poetry contest
Thor the god of thunder on the rampage

Thor the god of thunder
is on the rampage
he is angry
at the world

betrayed by Locke
he picks up his hammer
and transforms himself
into a woman

he enters the world
determined to ****
his many enemies

he lands in NYC
and begins his campaign
of terror

killing hundreds of people
all whom he mets
sending them to hell
screaming ****** ******

until at last
his rage is spent
and he returns home
back in his normal body

until the next time
bad craziness
takes over his soul

all poetry dark poetry contest

coffee nonet poem

must have morning coffee this day
my morning coffee drives me mad
fills me with bad craziness
makes me to howl at moon
I must have more coffee
hot coffee
coffee
hell

fan story
coffee musset poem

coffee
morning delight
coffee

my wine
nightly delight
always so fine

with wife
drinking my wine
love life

poetry soup contest
poems for April 13, 14, and 15  complete set can be found at my blog, https://theworldacordingtocosmos.com complete with audio and photo clips
William Clifton Jun 2015
Flown Away . . .
Mom tweets; Dad Twitters
The children sling angry birds
Poultry words are shared

A gap, Agape . . .
With desks connected
And sharing a power strip
We exchange e-mails

Cellacious . . .
Discourse is lacking?
Digital Intimacy!
May our Smart-Phones touch?

— The End —