I.

One night at the Troubadour I spotted this extraordinary girl.

So I asked who she was.

‘A professional,’

That was my introduction that on a scale of one to ten

there were women who were fifteens—beautiful, bright, witty, and

oh, by the way, they worked.

Once I became aware,

I saw these women everywhere.

And I came to learn that most of them were connected to Alex



II.

She had a printer engrave a calling card

that featured a bird of paradise

borrowed from a Tiffany silver pattern

and,
under it,

Alex’s Aviary,

Beautiful and Exotic birds.



A few were women you’d see lunching at Le Dôme:

pampered arm pieces with expensive tastes

and a hint of a delicious but remote sexuality.

Many more were fresh-faced, athletic, tanned, freckled

the quintessential California girl

That you’d take for sorority queens or future BMW owners.





III.

The mechanism of Alex’s sudden notoriety is byzantine,

as these things always are.

One of her girls took up with a rotter,

the couple had a fight,

he went to the police,

the police had an undercover detective visit

(who just happened to be an attractive woman)

and ask to work for her,

she all but embraced her

—and by April of 1988 the district attorney had enough evidence

to charge her with two counts of pandering

and one of pimping.

For Alex, who is fifty-six

and has a heart condition and diabetes,

the stakes may be high.

A conviction carries the guarantee of incarceration.

For the forces of law and order,

the stakes may be higher.

Alex has let it be known that she will subpoena

every cop she’s ever met to testify at her trial.

And the revelations this might produce

—perhaps that Alex compromised policemen

by making girls available to them,

—perhaps that Alex had a deal with the police to provide information

in exchange for their blind eye to her activities

—could be hugely embarrassing to the police and the district attorney.

For Alex’s socially correct clients and friends,

for the socially correct wives of her clients and friends

and for a handful of movie and television executives

who have no idea they are dating or

married to former Alex girls,

the stakes are highest of all.



IV.

Alex’s black book is said to be a catalogue of
Le Tout Los Angeles.

In her head are the ****** secrets

of many of the city’s most important men,

to say nothing of visiting businessmen and Arab princes.

If she decides to warble,

either at her trial or in a book,

her song will shatter more than glass.





V.

A decade ago, I went to lunch at Ma Maison,

There were supposed to have been ten people there,

but only four came.

One of them was a short woman

who called me a few days later and invited me to lunch.

When I arrived, the table was set for two.

I didn’t know who Alex was or what she did,

but she knew the important facts of my situation:

I was getting divorced from a very wealthy man

and doing the legal work myself

to avail lawyers who wanted to get a big settlement for me.


Occasionally, she said, I get a call for a tall, dark-haired,

slender, flat-chested woman

—and I don’t have any.

It wouldn’t be a frequent thing.

There’d be weekends away, sometimes in Palm Springs,

sometimes in Europe.

The men will be elegant,

you’ll have your own room

—there would be no outward signs of impropriety.

And you’d get $10,000 to $20,000 for a weekend.





VI.

The tall, slender, flat-chested brunette

didn’t think it was right for her.

Alex handed her a business card

and suggested that she think about it.

To her surprise, she did

—for an entire week.

This was 1978, and $20,000 then

was like $40,000 now,

I knew it was hooking,

but Alex had never mentioned ***.



Our whole conversation seemed to be about something else.



VII.

I was born in Manila

to a Spanish-Filipina mother and German father,

and when I was twelve

a Japanese soldier came into our house

with his bayonet pointed at us,

ready to do us in.

He locked us in and set the house on fire.

I haven’t been scared by much since that.



My mother always struck me as goofy,

so I jumped on a bus and ran away,

I got off in Oakland,

saw a help-wanted sign on a parish house,

and went in.

I got $200 a month for taking care of four priests.

I spent all the money on pastries for the parish house.

But I didn’t care.

It felt safe.

And the priests sparked my interest in the domestic arts

—in linen, in crystal.



A new priest arrived.

He was unpleasant,

so on a vacation in Los Angeles I took a pedestrian job,

still a teenager,

married a scientist.

We separated eight years later,

he took our two sons to another state

threatened to keep them if I didn’t agree to a divorce.

Keep them I said and hung up.

It’s not that I don’t have a maternal instinct

—though I don’t,

I just hate to be manipulated.



My second husband,

an alcoholic,

had Frank Sinatra blue eyes, and possibly

—I never knew for sure—

had a big career in the underworld

as a contract killer.

Years before we got serious,

he was going out with a famous L.A. ******,

She and her friends were so elegant

that I started spending time with them in beauty salons.

They were so fancy,

so smart

—and they knew incredible people,

like the millionaire who sat in his suite all day

just writing $5,000 checks to girls.



VIII.

I was a florist.

We got to talking.

She was a madam from England

who wanted to sell her book and go home.

I bought it for $5,000.

My husband thought it was cute.

Now you’re getting your feet wet.

Three months later,

he died.

After eleven years of marriage,

just like that.

And of the names in the book

it turned out

that half of the men were also dead.

When I began the men were old and the women were ugly.



IX.

It was like a lunch party you or I would give,

Great food Alex had cooked herself.

Major giggles with old pals.

And then,

instead of chocolate After Eight,

she served three women After Three



This man has seen a bit of life

beyond Los Angeles,

so I asked him how Alex’s stable

compared with that of Madam Claude,

the legendary Parisian procuress.

Oh, these aren’t at all like Claude’s girls,

A Claude girl was perfectly dressed and multilingual

—you could take her to the opera

and she’d understand it.





He told me that when she was 40

she looked at herself in the mirror

and said

Disgusting.

People over 40

should not have ***.

But She Was Clear That She Never Liked It

even when she was young.

Besides, she saw all the street business

go to the tall,

beautiful girls.

She thought that she never had a chance

competing against them.

Instead,

she would take their money by managing them.





X.

Going to a ****** was not looked down upon then.

It was before the pill;

Girls weren’t giving it away.

Claude specialized in

failed models and actresses,

ones who just missed the cut.

But just because they failed

in those impossible professions

didn’t mean they weren’t beautiful,

fabulous.



Like Avis

in those days,

those girls tried harder.

Her place was off the Champs,

just above a branch of the Rothschild bank, where I had an account.

Once I met her,

I was constantly making withdrawals and heading upstairs.





XI.

We took the lift

and Claude greeted us at the door.

My impression was that of the director

of an haute couture house,

very subdued,

beige and gray, very little makeup.

She took us into a lounge and made us drinks,

Whiskey,

Cognac.

There was no maid.

We made small talk for 15 minutes.

How was the weekend?

What’s the weather like in Deauville?

Then she made the segue. ‘I understand you’d like to see some jeunes filles?’

She always used ‘jeunes filles.’

This was Claude’s polite way of saying 18 to 25.

She left and soon returned

with two very tall

jeunes filles,

One was blonde.

This is Eva from Austria.

She’s here studying painting.

And a brunette,

very different,

but also very fine.

This is Claudia from Germany.

She’s a dancer.

She took the girls back into the apartment and returned by herself.

I gave my English guest first choice.

He picked the blonde.

And wasn’t disappointed.

Each bedroom had its own bidet.

There was some nice

polite conversation, and then



It was slightly formal,

but it was high-quality.

He paid Claude

200 francs,

not to the girls

In 1965, 200 francs was about $40.

Pretty girls on Rue Saint-Denis

could be had for 40 francs

so you can see the premium.

Still, it wasn’t out of reach for mere mortals.

You didn’t have to be J. Paul Getty.





XII.

A lot of them

were models at

Christian Dior

or other couture houses.

She liked Scandinavians.

That was the look then

—cold, tall, perfect.

It was cheap for the quality.

They all used her.

The best people wanted

the best women.

Elementary supply and demand.



XIII.

She had a camp number tattooed on her wrist. I saw it.

She showed it to me and Rubi.

She was proud she had survived.

We talked about the camp for hours.

It was even more fascinating than the girls.



She was Jewish

I’m certain of that.

She was horrified at the Jewish collaborators

at the camp who herded

their fellow Jews

into the gas chambers.

That was the greatest betrayal in her life.



XIV.

She was this sad,

lonely little woman.

Later, Patrick told me who she was.

I was bowled over.

It was like meeting Al Capone.

I met two of the girls

who worked for her.

One was what you would expect

Tall

Blonde

Model.

But the other looked like a Rat

Then one night

she came out

all dressed up,

I didn’t even recognize her.

She was even better than the first girl.

Claude liked to transform women like that.

That was her art.

It was very odd,

my cousin told me.

There was not much furniture

and an awful lot of telephones.

“Allô oui,”



XV.

I had so many lunches

with Claude at Ma Maison

She was vicious.

One day,

Margaux Hemingway,

at the height of her beauty, walked by.

Une bonne

—the French for maid

was how Claude cut her dead.

She reduced

the entire world

to rich men wanting *** and

poor women wanting money.

She’d love to page through Vogue and see someone

and say,

When I met her

she was called

Marlene

and she had a hideous nose

and now she’s a princess.

Or she’d see someone and say

Let’s see if she kisses me or not.

It was like

I made her,

and I can destroy her.

She was obsessed

with “fixing” people

—with Saint Laurent clothes,

with Cartier watches,

with Winston jewels,

with Vuitton luggage,

with plastic surgeons.



XVI.

Her prison number was

888

which was good luck in China

but not in California.

‘Ocho ocho ocho,’ she liked to repeat

Even in jail, she was always working,

always recruiting stunning women.

She had a beautiful Mexican cellmate

and gave her Robert Evans’s number

as the first person she should call

when she was released.



XVII.

Never have *** on the first date.



XVIII.

There will always be prostitution,

The prostitution of misery.

And the prostitution of bourgeois luxury.

They will both go on forever.



“Allô oui,”



It was so exciting to hear a millionaire

or a head of state ask,

in a little boy’s voice,

for the one thing

that only you could provide

It's not how beautiful you are, it's how you relate

--it's mostly dialogue.



She was tiny, blond, perfectly coiffed and Chanel-clad.

The French Woman: The Arab Prince, the Japanese Diplomat, the Greek Tycoon, the C.I.A. Bureau Chief — She Possessed Them All!



XIX.

She was like a slave driver in the American South

Once she took a *******,

the makeover put the girl in debt,

because Claude paid all the bills to

Dior,

Vuitton,

to the hairdressers,

to the doctors,

and the girls had to work to pay them off.

It was ****** indentured servitude.



My Swans.



It reached the point

where if you walked into a room

in London

or Rome

as much as Paris

because the girls were transportable,

and saw a girl who was

better-dressed,

better-looking,

and more distinguished than the others

you presumed

it was a girl from Claude.

It was, without doubt,

the finest *** operation ever run in the history of mankind.



**.

The girl had to be

exactly what was needed

so I had to teach her everything she didn’t know.

I played a little the role of Pygmalion.

There were basic things that absolutely had to be done.

It consisted

at the start

of the physical aspect

“surgical intervention”

to give this way of being

that was different from other girls.

Often they had to be transformed

into dream creatures

because at the start

they were not at all



Often I had to teach them how to dress.

Often they needed help

to repair

what nature had given them

which was not so beautiful.

At first they had to be tall,

with pretty gestures,

good manners.

I had lots of noses done,

chins,

teeth,

*******.

There was a lot to do.



Eight times out of ten

I had to teach them how to behave in society.

There were official dinners, suppers, weekends,

and they needed to have conversation.

I insisted they learn to speak English,

read

certain books.

I interrogated them on what they read.

It wasn’t easy.

Each time something wasn’t working,

I was obliged to say so.



You were very demanding?

I was ferocious.



It’s difficult

to teach a girl how to walk into Maxim’s

without looking

ill at ease

when they’ve never been there,

to go into an airport,

to go to the Ritz,

or the Crillon

or the Dorchester.

To find yourself

in front of a king,

three princes,

four ministers,

and five ambassadors at an official dinner.

There were the wives of those people!

Day after day

one had to explain,

explain again,

start again.

It took about two years.

There would always be a man

who would then say of her,

‘But she’s absolutely exceptional. What is that girl doing here?’ ”





XXI.

A New York publisher who visited

the Palace Hotel

in Saint Moritz

in the early seventies told me,

I met a whole bunch of them there.

They were lovely.

The johns wanted everyone to know who they were.

I remember it being said

Giovanni’s Madame Claude girl is going to be there.

You asked them where they came from and they all said

Neuilly.

Claude liked girls from good families.

More to the point she had invented their backgrounds.



I have known,

because of what I did,

some exceptional and fascinating men.

I’ve known some exceptional women too,

but that was less interesting

because I made them myself.



Ah, this question of the handbag.

You would be amazed by how much dust accumulates.

Or how often women’s shoe heels are scuffed.





XXII.

She would examine their teeth and finally she would make them undress.



That was a difficult moment

When they arrived they were very shy,

a bit frightened.

At the beginning when I take a look,

it’s a question of seeing if the silhouette

and the gestures are pretty.

Then there was a disagreeable moment.

I said,

I’m sorry about this unpleasantness,

but I have to ask you to get undressed,

because I can’t talk about you unless I see you.

Believe me, I was embarrassed,

just as they were,

but it had to be done,

not out of voyeurism, not at all

—I don’t like les dames horizontales.



It was very funny

because there were always two reactions.

A young girl,

very sure of herself,

very beautiful,

très bien,

would say

Yes,

Get up, and get undressed.

There was nothing to hide, everything was perfect.



There were those who

would start timidly

to take off their dress

and I would say

I knew already.

The rest is not sadism, but nearly.

I knew what I was going to find.

I would say,

Maybe you should take off your bra,

and I knew it wasn’t going to be

beautiful.

Because otherwise she would have taken it off easily.

No problem.

There were damages that could be mended.

There were some ******* that could be redone,

some not

Sometimes it can be deceptive,

you know,

you see a pretty girl,

a pretty face,

all elegant and slim,

well dressed,

and when you see her naked

it is a catastrophe.



I could judge their physical qualities,

I could judge if she was pretty, intelligent, and cultivated,

but I didn’t know how she was in bed.

So I had some boys,

good friends,

who told me exactly.

I would ring them up and say,

There’s a new one.

And afterwards they’d ring back and say,

Not bad,

Could be better, or

Nulle.



Or,

on the contrary,

She’s perfect.

And I would sometimes have to tell the girls

what they didn’t know.

A pleasant assignment?

No.

They paid.



XXIII.

Often at the beginning

they had an ami de coeur

in other words,

oh,

a journalist, a photographer, a type like that,

someone in the cinema,

an actor, not very well known.

As time went by

It became difficult

because they didn’t have a lot of time for him.

The fact of physically changing,

becoming prettier,

changing mentally to live with millionaires,

produced a certain imbalance

between them

and the little boyfriend

who had not evolved

and had stayed in his milieu.

At the end of a certain time

she would say,

I’m so much better than him. Why am I with this boy?

And they would break up by themselves.



Remember,

this was instant elevation.

For most of them it was a dream existence,

provided they liked the ***,

and those that didn’t never lasted long.

A lot of the clients were young,

and didn’t treat them like tarts but like someone from their own class.

They would buy you presents,

take you on trips.



XXIV.

For me, *** was something very accessoire

I think after a certain age

there are certain spectacles one should not give to others

Now I have a penchant for solitude.

Love, it’s a complete destroyer,

It’s impossible,

a horror,

l’angoisse.

It’s the only time in my life I was jealous.

I’m not a jealous person, but I was épouvantable.

He was jealous too.

We broke plates over each other’s heads;

we became jealous about each other’s pasts.

I said one day

It’s finished.

Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and say:

Break my legs,

give me scarlet fever,

an attack of TB, but never that.

Not that.



XXV.

I called her into my office

Let us not exaggerate,

I sent her away.

She came back looking for employment,

but was fired again, this time for drugs.

She made menacing phone calls.

Then she arrived at the Rue de Boulainvilliers with a gun.

She shot three bullets

I was dressed in the fashion of Courrèges at this moment

He did very padded things.

I had a padded dress with a little jacket on top.

The bullet

—merci, Monsieur Courrèges

—stuck in the padding.

I was thrown forward onto the telephone.

I had one thought which went through my head:

I will die like Kennedy.

I turned round and put my hand up in a reflex.

The second bullet went through my hand.

I have two dead fingers.

It’s most useful for removing bottle tops.

In the corridor I was saved from the third bullet

because she was very tall

and I am quite petite, so it passed over my head.



XXVI.

There were men

who could decapitate,

****, and bomb their rivals

who would be frightened of me.

I would ask them how was the girl,

and they’d say

Not bad

and then

But I’m not complaining.

I was a little sadistic to them sometimes.

Some women have known powerful men because they’re their lover.

But I’ve known them all.

I had them all

here.



She will take many state secrets with her.



XXVI.

I don’t like ugly people

probably because when I was young

I wasn’t beautiful at all.

I was ugly and I suffered for it,

although not to the point of obsession.

Now that I’m an old woman,

I’m not so bad.

And that’s why

I’ve always been surrounded by people

Who

were

beautiful.

And the best way to have beautiful people around me

was to make them.

I made them very pretty.





XXVII.

I wouldn’t call what Alex gives you

‘advice,’

She spares you Nothing.

She makes a list of what she wants done,

and she really gets into it

I mean, she wants you to get your arms waxed.

She gives you names of people who do good facials.

She tells you what to buy at Neiman Marcus.

She’s put off by anything flashy,

and if you don’t dress conservatively, she’s got no problem telling you,

in front of an audience,

You look like a cheap *****!

I used to wear what I wanted when I went out

then change in the car into a frumpy sweater

when I went to give her the money she’d always go,

Oh, you look beautiful!



Marry your boyfriend,

It’s better than going to prison.

When you go out with her,

she’ll buy you a present; she’s incredibly generous that way.

And she’ll always tell you to save money and get out.

It’s frustrating to her when girls call at the end of the month

and say they need rent money.

She wants to see you do well.





We had a schedule, with cards that indicated a client’s name,

what he liked,

the names of the girls he’d seen,

and how long he’d been with them.

And I only hired girls who had another career

—if my clients had a choice between drop-dead-gorgeous

and beautiful-and-interesting,

they’d tend to take beautiful-and-interesting.

These men wanted to talk.

If they spent two hours with a girl,

they usually spent only five or ten minutes in bed.



I get the feeling that in Los Angeles, men are more concerned with looks.



XXVIII.

That was my big idea

Not to expand the book by aggressive marketing

but to make sure that nobody

mistook my girls for run-of-the-mill hookers.

And I kept my roster fresh.

This was not a business where you peddle your ***,

get exploited,

and then are cast off.

I screen clients. I’ve never sent girls to weirdos.

I let the men know:

no violence,

no costumes,

no fudge-packing.

And I talked to my girls. I’d tell them:

Two and a half years and you’re burned out.

Save your money.

This is like a hangar

—you come in, refuel, and take off.

It’s not a vacation, it’s not a goof.

This buys the singing lessons,

the dancing lessons,

the glossies.

This is to help you pay for what your parents couldn’t provide.

It’s an honorable way station—a lot of stars did this.



XXIX.

To say someone was a Claude girl is an honour, not a slur.



Une femme terrible.

She despised men and women alike.

Men were wallets. Women were holes.



By the 80s,

if you were a brunette,

the sky was the limit.

The Saudis

They’d call for half a dozen of Alex’s finest,

ignore them all evening while they

chatted,

ate,

and played cards,

and then, around midnight,

take the women inside for a fast few minutes of ***.



They’d order women up like pizza.



Since my second husband died,

I only met one man who was right for me,

He was a sheikh.

I visited him in Europe

twenty-eight times

in the five years I knew him

and I never slept with him.

He’d say

I think you fly all the way here just to tease me,

but he introduced me

by phone

to all his powerful friends.

When I was in Los Angeles, he called me twice a day.

That’s why I never went out

he would have been disappointed.



***.

Listen to me

This is a woman’s business.

When a woman does it, it’s fun

there’s a giggle in it

when a man’s involved,

he’s ******,

he’s a ****.

He may know how to keep girls in line,

and he may make money,

but he doesn’t know what I do.

I tell guys: You’re getting a nice girl.

She’s young,

She’s pleasant,

She can do things

she can certainly make love.

She’s not a rocket scientist, but she’s everything else.



The world’s richest and most powerful men, the announcer teased.

An income “in the millions,” said the arresting officer.

Pina Colapinto

A petite call girl,

who once slid between the sheets of royalty,

a green-eyed blonde helped the police get the indictment.

They really dolled her up

She looks great.

Never!

What I told her was: ‘Wash that ******.’





XXXI.

Madam Alex died at 7 p.m.

Saturday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center,

where she had been in intensive care after recent open heart surgery

We all held her hand when they took her off the life support

This was the passing of a legend.

Because she was the mother superior of prostitution.

She was one of the richest women on earth.

The world came to her.

She never had to leave the house.

She was like Hugh Hefner in that way.


It's like losing a friend

In all the years we played cat and mouse,

she never once tried to corrupt me.

We had a lot of fun.


To those who knew her

she was as constant

as she was colorful

always ready with a good tidbit of gossip

and a gourmet lunch for two.

She entertained, even after her conviction on pandering charges,

from the comfy depths of her blue four-poster bed at her home near Doheny Drive,

surrounded by knickknacks and meowing cats,

which she fed fresh shrimp from blue china plates.



XXXII.

She stole my business,

my books,

my girls,

my guys.

I had a good run.

My creatures.

Make Mommy happy

Oh! He is the most enchanting cat that I have ever known.



She was, how can I say it,

classy.

When she first hired me

she thought I was too young to take her case.

I was 43.

I'm going to give you some gray hairs by the time this is over.

She was right.





XXXIII.

I was fond of Heidi

But she has a streak that is so vindictive.



If there is pure evil, it is Madame Alex.





XXXIV.

I was born and raised in L.A.

My dad was a famous pediatrician.

When he died, they donated a bench to him at the Griffith Park Observatory.



I think that Heidi wanted to try her wings

pretty early,

and I think that she met some people

who sort of took all her potential

and gave it a sharp turn



She knew nothing.

She was like a little parrot who repeated what she was supposed to say.



Alex and I had a very intense relationship;

I was kind of like the daughter she loved and hated,

so she was abusive and loving at the same time.



Look, I know Madam Alex was great at what she did

but it's like this:

What took her years to build,

I built in one.

The high end is the high end,

and no one has a higher end than me.

In this business, no one steals clients.

There's just better service.



XXXV.

You were not allowed to have long hair

You were not allowed to be too pretty

You were not allowed to wear too much makeup or be too glamorous

Because someone would fall in love with you and take you away.

And then she loses the business



XXXVI.

I was pursued because

come on

in our lifetime,

we will never see another girl of my age

who lived the way I did,

who did what I did so quickly,

I made so many enemies.

Some people had been in this line of business

for their whole lives, 30 or 40 years,

and I came in and cornered the market.

Men don't like that.

Women don't like that.

No one liked it.



I had this spiritual awakening watching an Oprah Winfrey video.

I was doing this 500-hour drug class

and one day the teacher showed us this video,

called something like Make It Happen.

Usually in class I would bring a notebook

and write a letter to my brother or my journal,

but all of a sudden this grabbed my attention

and I understood everything she said.

It hit me and it changed me a lot.

It made me feel,

Accept yourself for who you are.

I saw a deeper meaning in it

but who knows, I might have just been getting my period that day!



XXXVII.

Hello, Gina!

You movie star!

Yes you are!

Gina G!

Hello my friend,

Hello my friend,

Hello my movie star,

Ruby! Ruby Boobie!

Braaawk!

Except so many women say,

Come on, Heidi

you gotta do the brothel for us; don't let us down.

It would be kind of fun opening up an exclusive resort,

and I'll make it really nice,

like the Beverly Hills Hotel

It'll feel private; you'll have your own bungalow.

The only problem out here is the climate—it's so brutal.

Charles Manson was captured a half hour from Pahrump.



I said, Joe! What are you doing?

You gotta get, like,

a garter belt and encase it in something

and write,

This belonged to Suzette Whatever,

who entertained the Flying Tigers during World War II.

Get, like, some weird tools and write,

These were the first abortion tools in the brothel,

you know what I mean?

Just make some **** up!

So I came out here to do some research

And then I realized,

What am I doing?

I'm Heidi Fleiss. I don't need anyone.

I can do this.

When I was doing my research, in three months

I saw land go from 30 thousand an acre

to 50 thousand an acre,

and then it was going for 70K!

It's urban sprawl

—we're only one hour from Las Vegas.

Out here the casinos are only going to get bigger,

prostitution is legal, it's only getting better.





XXXVIII.

The truth is

deep down inside,

I just can't do business with him

He's the type of guy who buys Cup o' Noodles soup for three cents

and makes his hookers buy it back from him for $5.

It's not my style at all.

Who wants to be 75 and facing federal charges?

It was different at my age when I

at least...come on, I lived really well.

I was 22,

25 at the time?

It was fun then, but now I wouldn't want

to deal with all that *******

—the girls and blah blah blah.

But the money was really good.



I would've told someone they were out of their ******* mind

if they'd said in five years I'd be living with all these animals like this.

It's hard-core; how I live;

It's totally a nonfunctional atmosphere for me

It's hard to get anything done because

It’s so time-consuming.

I feel like they're good luck though....

I do feel that if I ever get rid of them,

I will be jinxed and cursed the rest of my life

and nothing I do will ever work again.



Guys kind of are a hindrance to me

Certainly I have no problem getting laid or anything.

But a man is not a priority in my life.

I mean, it's crazy, but I really have fun with my parrots.



XXXIX.

I started a babysitting circle when I wasn't much older than 9

And soon all the parents in the neighborhood

wanted me to watch over their children.

Even then I had an innate business sense.

I started farming out my friends

to meet the demand.

My mother showered me with love and my father,

a pediatrician,

would ask me at the dinner table,

What did you learn today?

I ran my neighborhood.

I just pick up a hustle really easily,

I was a waitress and I met an older guy who looked like Santa Claus.



Alex was a 5' 3" bald-headed Filipina

in a transparent muu muu.

We hit it off.

I didn't know at the time that I was there to pay off the guy's gambling debt.

It's in and out,

over and out.

Do you think some big-time producer

or actor is going to go to the clubs and hustle?



Columbia Pictures executive says:

I haven’t done anything that should cause any concern.

Jeez, it's like the Nixon enemies list.

I hope I'm on it.

If I'm not, it means I must not be big enough

for people to gossip about me.



That's right ladies and gentlemen.

I am an alleged madam and that is a $25 *****!

If you live out here,

you've got to hate people.

You've got to be pretty antisocial

How you gonna come out here with only 86 people?

That's Fred.

He's digging to China.

You look good.

Yeah, you too.

It's coming along here.

Yeah, it is.

I wanted to buy that lot there, but I guess it's gone?

That's mine, man! That's all me.

Really?

I thought there was a lot between us.

No. We're neighbors.



He's a cute guy

He's entertaining.

See, I kind of did do something shady to him.

I thought my property went all the way back

and butted up against his.

But there was one lot between us right there.

He said he was buying it,

but I saw the 'For Sale' sign still up there,

So I went and called the broker and said,

I'm an all-cash buyer.

So I really bought it out from under him.

But he's got plenty of room, and I need the space for my parrots.

Pahrump will always be Pahrump, but Crystal is going to be nice

All you need are four or five fancy houses and it'll flush everyone out

and it'll be a nice area.

They're all kind of weird here, but these people will go.

Like this guy here,

someone needs to **** him.

I was just saying to my dad that these parrots are born to a really ******-up world

He goes, Heidi, no, no; the world is a beautiful garden.

It's just, people are destroying it.

I’m looking into green building options

I don't want anything polluting,

I want a huge auditorium,

but it'll be like a jungle where my birds can really fly!

Where they can really do what they're supposed to do.

There were over 300 birds in there!

That lady,

She ran the exotic-birds department for the Tropicana Hotel,

which is a huge job.

She called me once at 3:30 in the morning

Come over here and help me feed this baby!

Some baby parrot.

And I ran over there in my pajamas

—I knew there was something else wrong

and she was like

Get me my oxygen!

Get me this, get me that.

I called my dad; he was like,

I don't know, honey, you better call the paramedics.

They ended up getting a helicopter.

And they were taking her away

in the wind with her IV and blood and everything

and she goes, Heidi, you take care of my birds.

And she dies the next day.

She was just a super-duper person.



XL.

I relate to the lifestyle she had before,

Now, I'm just a citizen.

I'm clean,

I'm sober,

I'm married,

I work at Wal-Mart.

I'm proud to say I know her. I look into her eyes

and we relate.





I got out in 2000,

so I've been sending her money for seven years

She was…whatever.

Girlfriend?

Yeah, maybe.

But ***, I tried like two times,

and I'm just not gay.

She gets out in about eight or nine months

and I told her I would get her a house.

But nowhere near me.

I didn't touch her,

but I'd be, like...

a funny story:

I told her,

Don't you ever ******* think

about contacting me in the real world.

I'm not a lesbian.

Then about two years ago, I got an e-mail from her,

or she called me and said, 'Google my name.'

So I Googled her name,

and she has this huge company.

Huge!

She won, like, Woman of the Year awards.

So I called her and I go,

Not bad.

She goes, 'Well, I did all that because you called me a loser.'

I go, '****, I should've called you more names

you probably would've found the cure for cancer by now.



XLI.

No person shall be employed by the licensee

who has ever been convicted of

a felony involving moral turpitude

But I qualify,

I mean, big deal, so I'm a convicted felon.

Being in the *** industry, you can't be so squeaky-clean.

You've got to be hustling.

Nighttime is really enchanting here

It's like a whole 'nother world out here, it really is

I’m so far removed from my social life and old surroundings.

Who was it, Oscar Wilde, I think, who said

people can adjust to anything.

I was perfectly adjusted in the penitentiary,

and I was perfectly adjusted to living in a château in France.



We had done those drug addiction shows together

Dr. Drew.

Afterward we were friendly

and he'd call me every now and then.

He'd act like he had his stuff together.

But it was all a lie.

Everything is a lie.

I brought him to a Humane Society event at Paramount Studios last year.

He was just such a mess.

So out of it.

He stole money from my purse.

He's such a drug addict because he's so afraid of being fat.

He liked horse ****, though. He did like horse ****.

This one woman that would have *** with a horse on the internet,

He told me that’s his favorite actress.

Better than Meryl Streep.



XLII.

The cops could see

why these women were taking over trade.

Girls with these looks charged upwards of $500 an hour.

The Russians had undercut them with a bargain rate of $150 an hour.

One thing they are not is lazy.

In the USSR

they grew up with no religion, no morality.

Prostitution is not considered a bad thing.

In fact, it’s considered a great way to make money.

That’s why it’s exploding here.

What we saw was just a tip of the iceberg.

These girls didn’t come over here expecting to be nannies.

They knew exactly what they wanted and what they were getting into.

The madam who organized this raid

was making $4 million a year,

laundered through Russian-owned banks in New York City

These are brutal people.

They are all backstabbers.

They’re entrepreneurs.

They’re looking at $10,000 a month for turning tricks.

For them, that’s the American dream.



XLIII.

If you’re not into something,

don’t be into it

But,

if you want to take some whipped cream,

put it between your toes,

have your dog licking it up and,

at the same time,

have your girlfriend poke you in the eye,

then that’s fine.

That’s a little weird but we shouldn’t judge.



She was my best friend then

and I consider her one of my best friends now,

because when I was going through Riker’s

and everyone abandoned me,

including my boyfriend,

I was hysterical,

crying,

and she was the one that was there.

And, when somebody needed to step up to the plate,

that’s who did, and I have an immense amount of

loyalty, respect, and love for her.

And if she’s going to prison for eight years

—that’s what she’s sentenced for

—I’ll go there,

and I’ll go there every week,

for eight years.

That’s the type of person I am.

precursor - title correlation
body -

mind of:

C                oh

    oh                      Ri

n'ah.   (half an hour fiddling with a 502 bad
gateway; traffic these days! jeez!)

I.

it don't know what's more frustrating for the reasons that it's so good... i can't choose... it's a close call... either listening to Red Hot Chilli Peppers' B-sides from By The Way... ugh! why didn't they release that as a double album! Stadium Arcadium was not that good as a double-album... all the prior albums are MAGIC... literally... for ****'s sake: GOLDMINE is literally just that... there's that... i can't concentrate on making my own translation of Ovid... i'm yet to scribble down the translation i have... i can't even drink my whiskey properly... the other frustrating focus? watching Armand Duplantis break his own world record of 6.21metres... the ****** has still at least 10cm in him! a record that will have to stand-still for the next 20+ years... i'll be dead before this record is broken... Сергій Бубка best be sleeping... i'm listening to the music, reliving the end of the World Athletics and trying to heel-myself-in-the-buttocks: better get a move on boy... hmm! "trying"... i'm actually heeling myself in the buttocks: no time to wait... one can wait for a bus... one cannot for one's own incentive... ol' Lizzy is coming up the mountain... she's coming with the proper closure of the 20th century... however many popes she outlived... however many prime ministers and american presidents... come on Lizzie... just one more year... i'm actually dying to spend money with whittle Charlie printed on the notes... my fingers are itching... but **** me... music so good By The Way should have been a double-album... no! Stadium Arcadium was not the salvagable double-album worth session... i'm getting "schizophrenic" vibes... i know that poetry is not an entertaining medium: it's a complacent self-congratulatory, thereupeutic load of *******... it's obnixious when staged: the exasperated art of speaking with speed... today i realised that i much prefer drinking to having ***... i like the preservation of my brain with a hard-on of itchy fingers than any actual ******* hard-ons... the knife opening oysters or plucking out the eyes of deer... best the eyes be gauged out... than having deer stare into car lights... hybrid confusions of static, motivated to move... frozen in a make-shift imitation of root and clay and copper: bam! one more statue down...

II.

it's no wonder why i'm not looking for a girlfriend, it's no longer bewildering why i'm not looking for a wife, at best i'm looking out for that ancient custom of Roman emperors: to become a foster father, a surrogate - i'm yet to find a match-up... i almost did, but she undermined my chances by undermining her own seriousness in such affairs... but clarity does come... as much as i might be a surrogate father to her son or daughter: i wouldn't be faithful to her... i would steal the night and run away into a brothel... but there's something else... the whole dynamic of publishing has changed... the whole idea of a library has also changed... i own more valuable books in my private collection than the public library of Romford... which is me peering at the dire straits of what the public is fed... i know why i don't aspire for pair-bonding... perhaps man so levelled aspired toward the imitation of birds a long time ago... perhaps swans are truly noble creatures: for one hears of widow and widower swans... perhaps parrots: born from those monstrous beasts that were the dinosaurs can imitate our talk... all that's this reality within the confines of "perhaps": nonetheless, it's all true... but perhaps being the mammal that i am... i moved from a community of chimpanzees into a solo-ride of imitation-bear... perhaps i only entertain the opposite *** on the encounter of ***... i couldn't land a conversation with a woman outside the constrictive-framework of work, so much so: i would abhor the mindset of men that go on dates with women: buy them food and then EXPECT... i leave that ******* out in my interactions... pay-up-front for what you're about to receive otherwise don't play cat while the woman plays mouse... or rather... a rat in cat's clothing: the woman therefore becoming a rat-trap... mind you: i can't think of a more terrible idea than the modern version of: eat first, **** later... at the old ****** proverb states: a hungry ****** is angry... a filled ****** is lazy... god forbid i ever become tempted by those dating sites... i'm currently looking for the original Latin text of Ovid's the Amores book 2 poem 6... why? what i have in my hand... and what i'm finding... it's like what Robert Pinsky remarked about once: TRANSLATIONS differ so much from one translator to another...

they have done it... UEFA are mad... just to get my
accreditation for the women's Euros final
at Wembley they're asking me to bring my passport
with me... so is Wembley the JFK of Florida
          space-shuttle launch? Houston? am i leaving
the country?
                but the girls have done it...
funny: some other people are still complaining:
IT'S TOO WHITE!
   there's not enough diversity in the team...
          that's me also planning to go and live
in Kenya and become a model for toilet paper...
i'm sure i could replace that known Koala bear /
golden retriever or perhaps i could go there
and model for soap adverts...
it just so happened that racial tensions (only football
could create them) rose up for a little:
just one night the day England lost to Italy
on penalty shootouts... because... 3 black guys
were playing a rigged roulette...
            then again? me? and the African heat?
fat chance...

find me the original Elegy VI: the death of Corinna's
pet parrot...
oh man... and her name was Polly...
i sat up late last night trying to find something
interest on the television...
bam! thank you ma'am...
                       kurt cobain: montage of heck...
sort of reminded me of...
                           a SCANNER DARKLY...
                           mind you: i sometimes do enjoy
a one-man show... or at least two...
there was this brilliant show in the West End...
Stones in his Pockets...
       two actors... sharing the roles of...
                  about 15 people each...
but it was back in circa 2001...
so... maybe it was Louis Dempsey
                                                        & Sean Sloan...
mind you... i'd still love to see Samuel Beckett's
             NOT I...

Jack Trades says: i'm about to a heap
of hay of hate...
                                i'm everywhere sometimes...
if it's not music, then its visual arts,
then it's philosophy, then fine literature...
then something "oriental" in thinking...
then its coupling my fetish for Deutsche as:
father to the English zunge...
then it's back east to rummage in some Katakana...

i know why i'm single, Roger Moore remained
a bachelor until his death...
  courteous: as ever as forever always...
i'd be a terrible match-up... i've given pair-bonding
a chance: i can't bemoan why X is not Y...
the sort of men that pair-bond are claustrophilic...
they love the company of a mate...
each time i was ever in a "relationship" i already
had one foot dangling: tapping an imaginary
drum set...
recently i discovered the B-side of the Red Hot Chilli
Peppers... so for me it's a version
of keeping the 20th century alive with
the "dichotomy" of the Rolling Stones vs.
the Beatles... i'm more... R.H.C.P.'s A-sides
of R.H.C.P.'s B-sides?
                                        i'm busy...
                i'm always busy... i don't want to relax...
i want a Turkish barber to suggest that
i need  hot-towel and an arm massage after
my beard is trimmed and... i'm still going to state:
getting a Turk to trim my beard is a close
contender to oral *** from a Turkish *******...

but try finding me that original Latin of Ovid's...
ah! found it! let's see if i can compete with
my own translation... the one i originally read
and the one i found finding the original Latin
were so disparaging...

**** yes! well... there was Ted Hughes writing
about the Crow... poor ******...
should have killed himself: might have competed
with his terribly-wonderful wife of a poet...
i give her that: what noose?
best head in an oven...
and you want a shovel with that?
but this is Ovid... "complaining" about
the death of his lover's parrot...
immediately i jumped to conclusions:
not enough crackers...

(A) the Original:

Psittacus, Eois imitatrix ales ab Indis,
    occidit—exequias ite frequenter, aves!
ite, piae volucres, et plangite pectora pinnis
    et rigido teneras ungue notate genas;
horrida pro maestis lanietur pluma capillis,
    pro longa resonent carmina vestra tuba!
quod scelus Ismarii quereris, Philomela, tyranni,
    expleta est annis ista querela suis;
alitis in rarae miserum devertere funus—
    magna, sed antiqua est causa doloris Itys.
Omnes, quae liquido libratis in aere cursus,
    tu tamen ante alios, turtur amice, dole!
plena fuit vobis omni concordia vita,
    et stetit ad finem longa tenaxque fides.
quod fuit Argolico iuvenis Phoceus Orestae,
    hoc tibi, dum licuit, psittace, turtur erat.
Quid tamen ista fides, quid rari forma coloris,
    quid vox mutandis ingeniosa sonis,
quid iuvat, ut datus es, nostrae placuisse puellae?—
    infelix, avium gloria, nempe iaces!
tu poteras fragiles pinnis hebetare zmaragdos
    tincta gerens rubro Punica rostra croco.
non fuit in terris vocum simulantior ales—
    reddebas blaeso tam bene verba sono!
Raptus es invidia—non tu fera bella movebas;
    garrulus et placidae pacis amator eras.
ecce, coturnices inter sua proelia vivunt;
    forsitan et fiunt inde frequenter ****.
plenus eras minimo, nec prae sermonis amore
    in multos poteras ora vacare cibos.
nux erat esca tibi, causaeque papavera somni,
    pellebatque sitim simplicis umor aquae.
vivit edax vultur ducensque per aera gyros
    miluus et pluviae graculus auctor aquae;
vivit et armiferae cornix invisa Minervae—
    illa quidem saeclis vix moritura novem;
occidit illa loquax humanae vocis imago,
    psittacus, extremo munus ab orbe datum!
optima prima fere manibus rapiuntur avaris;
    inplentur numeris deteriora suis.
tristia Phylacidae Thersites funera vidit,
    iamque cinis vivis fratribus Hector erat.
Quid referam timidae pro te pia vota puellae—
    vota procelloso per mare rapta Noto?
septima lux venit non exhibitura sequentem,
    et stabat vacuo iam tibi Parca colo.
nec tamen ignavo stupuerunt verba palato;
    clamavit moriens lingua: 'Corinna, vale!'
Colle sub Elysio nigra nemus ilice frondet,
    udaque perpetuo gramine terra viret.
siqua fides dubiis, volucrum locus ille piarum
    dicitur, obscenae quo prohibentur aves.
illic innocui late pascuntur olores
    et vivax phoenix, unica semper avis;
explicat ipsa suas ales Iunonia pinnas,
    oscula dat cupido blanda columba mari.
psittacus has inter nemorali sede receptus
    convertit volucres in sua verba pias.
Ossa tegit tumulus—tumulus pro corpore magnus—
    quo lapis exiguus par sibi carmen habet:
"colligor ex ipso dominae placuisse sepulcro;
    ora fuere mihi plus ave docta loqui".

mein gott... in English it reads so smoothly reading
it while listening to Red Hot Chilli Peppers'
B-sides... quixoticelixer...
teatra jam (short)... and then thinking about it...
through to and through Going Li coupled
with trouble in the pub (instrumental version)...

i will never own a car...
              mind you: i already secretely own a house...
if i keep appeasing my mother and my father:
when reality kicks in and they're dead and i'm
project solo... it's not like i'm waiting for the day...
they are hoarders of shoes and screws...
literally... no metaphor...
  on my own: i will have to recycle so much ****
before i will put the house on the market...
and? i never pledged any allegiance to Essex...
England... i have: pledged an allegiance
to the English tongue...
                 but if not the Shetland Islands...
north... "god" send me north! even as far as
Greenland!
                i'm not willing to die in a place where
villages are flaring up in a July heat...

i can't bemoan what i honestly couldn't keep...
i sometimes get mad at my father for being
so submissive to my mother...
i sometimes get so mad at my mother for only
being able to talk about her chronic pains:
i'm alligned with my grandmother
who once said: she's just like your paternal
great-grandmother... every itch and scratch...
it's like writing with chalk on a blackboard...
hey presto! ruptures of the Grand Canyon...
that ******* bollocking of: ooh! ah!
           me? i don't understand people with tattoos...
me? i collect scars...
these two fading ones on my face are a disappointment...
i thought something more pronounced
could be kept from that bicycle-crach Francis Bacon
esque imitation of painting:
   the sort of painting where you can still revel
in brush-strokes being visible...
   because it's not rigid: Renaissance form painting...

now: i can sort of imagine what men couple up...
those who fear being alone...
those not interested in art...
those mostly interested in sport... but not all sport...
just some sports...
sports that they support "passing their lineage"
with according to the cult of football teams...
not all-sports... i.e. not an interest in fencing...
swimming... certainly guys who thought:
wow! tennis is great to watch!
   but squash is so much more fun to play!
cycling... well... if you love cycling per se:
watching other people cycle is a bit: BOO-RING...
what sort of other men get married?
probably those not interested in risque ***
with prostitutes...
ones interested in making money for a woman
to spend...
me? i'm not interested in money...
                       in terms of money:
i'm more likely to spend £30 on a book than
think about a dinner date...
                      
is that...   ??? i'm not even going to ask myself
that question that begins with a buzz-word
and the letters Mmmm... miso...
                             well... what is a boy to do...
figure out what to do with his spare time...
               i don't mind cleaning the house:
who ever said that it's the duty of a woman to keep
the house clean? i like living in a household in order...
i love cooking: it's like chemistry 2.0...
                      give me a bag of Indian spices and i'll
cook up a perfect storm of a curry...
but then again: i'm not work-shy when it comes
to using heavy-duty tools akin to the KANGO...
which... i later found out was a Japanese word for
Chinese in general... or the other way round...
i'd hate to be one of those Phil Collins types of
forgetting how many hands i have
by changing gloves like i might be an octopus...

and when it comes to children?
eh... it's enough for a boy in a buggy in a supermarket
pointing his finger at me as i walk past
making that chimpanzee face of OOH at me...
or a fist-bump with some teenagers at the London
Stadium... that's enough... i'm happy to play
the "secret uncle" role...
while women remain women: as fickle as the wind...
i've learned to live with that reality...
i scratch my beard and pretend that i'm playing
a violin...

plus, i'm a terrible drinker... i'm a loving-drunk...
i'm drunk right now...
if a litre of whiskey per night satisfies
my libido shortages i'm happy:
it implies i can write... i stop drinking and start
*******: alles goot...
                           today i was visited by a wasp...
i was visited by a bee before...
oh man... it was heart-breaking...
he was dying... i had to help him...
   i poured some honey onto the pave-,
and moved him towards the puddle...
he stuck his mighty Gene Simmons sucker out
and started to perform an OD on sugar...
i was glad... watching him die from a sugar-overdose...
it was: rather pleasant to watch...

TERROR! mix JAINISM with TAOISM
and fuse that in an European mind...
               but i'll still eat meat...
                        it's a parody of what's to be expected:
i prefer life with the possibilities of change...
with... curiosities of: extensive ulterior
possibilities that run counter to estblished norms
of expectations of a RIGID MIND...
i water: i flow...
      i fire: i dance...
i air: i whirl...
i earth: i rumble...
i lightning: i blink...
hey presto! the five elements!

in another language close to my heart:
since i was born with it...
the pronoun disappears:
ja woda: płyne
ja ogien: tańcze...
   ja powietrze: kręce się (odd)
ja ziemia: trzęse się (also "odd")
ja grzmot: mrygam

there are languages in existence where pronouns
hide... to be honest...
in ******? the pronouns are rarely used...
oh mein gott... when they're used in a sentence:
esp. the I... it's like... wow! i just found
a "nugget of gold"!
seriously... that how my mother-tongue
is structured: on English is the current
prounoun-circus available to watch...
i'm siding with the Somali pirates having
a giggle... playing blackjack with either Greeks
or some other Africans...

there are languages in English that cannot: will not,
succumb to the current Marxist onslight
happening in this tongue...
not because these languages will not:
they CANNOT...
mind you... it's such an intellectual low-bar
of achievement... but since it's piggy-pop...
it must be slaughtered on an individual level
before this DISEASE is allowed to spread...
thank heavens that English is only my second
language... how that allows me to bypass
buying into any sort of propaganda...
   my lingua Ingelese... my tongue for spreading
ideas...
    oh: and thank **** i' expressing in a medium
desecrated by the same people pushing these
sordid ideas... post-humous fame! 'ere i come!
obviously! who's in it for the "real" and immediate
if one isn't... fabricating a pickling of a shark
in plastic.... who? who?! woof!
   a-woooooo"

            my heart has shrunk and hardened to
the size and hardness of a pebble...
    i wish i could entertain cosy nights with a woman
watching some pointless movie about
the stereotypes of love... then again: no...
i'd rather not...
drinking alone: who the hell said i was alone?
i sometimes "hallucinate" someone crying:
of late... i'm like: this isn't Aud Lang Syne...
this isn't Shakespear...
then again i love the idea that my true readers
are yet to be born...
i'm happy, happy-bear-alone...
                       a Maine **** is sleeping in my
bed... i'll join him come the right hour...
but he's not looking at me... he's looking above me...
only yesterday i started to paparazzi
a wasp that flew into my bedroom...
          what the **** do i have above me?
please say letters... i will not do alright with a halo...
i'm not going to join that
archangel one minute... saint the next...
clip my ******* wings for a get-through-easy
card: no!
          
it became finalized today... i'm literally tired
of ***... i'm tired of *** when it's equivalent to not...
being tired of eating food... drinking water...
it's unnecessarily-necessary... *** as golf...
per say...
                2 months of delay in payment...
i'm thinking about rekindling my affair with that mountain
bike... i have to forget the streets...
i need the woods again... but for that i need new tires...
oh... hell... i no longer have anything
to prove in the brothel... blah blah whatever...
threesomes look great: LOOk...
like a block of cheddar looks great...
when shredded...
and then melting...
perhaps in pornographic flicks...
but in reality? the changing of condoms
from one mouth to another...
from one ****** to another...
                          
what?! peiple are having unprotected ***?
vermin ****?!
   **** me... well... at least i'm obnoxiously savvy
in that regard...
no no... it's too disappointing...
you have to split your attention up...
there's nothing good about a *******...
why? because, usually... of the two girls...
there's one you really want to be a screwdriver to...
while the other is just being a, *******...
a ******* bandwagon... leftovers...
a pair of **** you get to imitate ****** with...
it's a bit like:
coupling an elephant with a giraffe...
but i want to ride the elephant!
but i want to stroke the giraffe's neck!
but  i want to pretend the elephants's tusk...
no! not tusk! TRUNK....
that rectangular bit of ******* you shovel
your clothes in when travelling...
TRUNK... or a TRAMPOLINE!
no... not the bouncy layer...
TRUNK... sneeze! trambone! jazz! ******* Miles Daisies!
Davis!  trumpet *******!
no... don't get me started on the sax...

then again: i want a rhino's horn! ram-jam...
Black Betty Bam B'eh Lam!

- oh no... i moved along... R.H.C.P.'s: thanks for the t-shirt...
Big Bukowski style:
i hate the eagles... run through the jungle...
run Forrest! whun!
WHUN!
  and that's me... hardly a LAMNTIA of the Beatniks
tripping... me? enough whiskey
and the right song... and i'm grooving beside
an imaginary drum-kit...
in that: once upon a time...
when men grew their hair long...
they were the barbarians knocking
on the gates of Rome... rather than being
the implosion of Rome within with
all of Rome's degeneracy of transgender gimmicks...

mind you: i've given it some thought...
i broke it down toward the following schematic:

anonymous audience, commenting,
video making blah blah...
****** "schematic": if you can call it that...
mind you: the VAR in WIETNAM
had the best soundtrack...
just saying: hey! her?! hey! don't shoot
the messanger!
i'd rather work the Fulham opening night
with the new stand: Thames-side being opened
than attend Wembley for a Westwood...
Westworld... Westlife concert,
i'm all up for handling those Scousers:
northern monkeys?
southern fairies...
let's just call them for what they are...
northern TOURISTS...

but the dynamic of publishing has changed:
i already know the criterium first...
women and children first...
THIRST beccause water matters...
i'm thirsty too... one litre of whiskey and
i'm still typing like a machine...
i'll box my liver and kidneys
as long as i keep my brain and eyes happy...

but it's just a different dynamic...
the internet experience...
i know a lot of people miss it...
i can't force people to read my bollocking-riddles...
ergo? i don't stagnate into celebrating it
or therefore advertising it...
i'm either read or i'm STAUB...
   dust...
                
i can't! i'm only making something available...
i can't force people out of their democratic "wedlock"...
you like it? great! you don't? great!
but the psychology of those video creators that
mind how many views they receive and
how many comments they: likewise receive...
"false hits" with the number of hits of viewership?

me? i'm not bothered... i've been watching
the female Euro finals...
i was almost scared... what if the female England team
don't make it to the finals?!
me? i'm gearing up...
any rowdy hooligans up to speed?!
as much as i hate women not trying toi compete
in sports that are sexually-exclusive...
there's this... THIS... i watch the games because
the Colleseum is burning...
i'm only watching the fire...
    and i'm watching the women i'd love to ****...
this never would have happened if watching
tennis...

    the crisp biting attache of a sharpshooter
WONG sort of mixer-mix-up with a whiskey
and a pepssi...
me... reaching for a second glass
with one already filled like: *******... RAINMAN...

keep your horses!
i'm gearing up to a translation!
wait, the, ****, up! keep it cool in Doob-Lyn!
oh no... you don't get to tell me
i use too many vowels without me showing
you... you mishandled the vowel-to-consonant
dynamic... Doob-Lyn is Dublin: tow me...
no: not to me? tow me... now you're dragging me
along the snail-trail...

the disparaging translations:

(B) the A. S. Kline translation

Parrot, the mimic, the winged one from India’s Orient,
is dead – Go, birds, in a flock and follow him to the grave!
Go, pious feathered ones, beat your ******* with your wings
and mark your delicate cheeks with hard talons:
tear out your shaggy plumage, instead of hair, n mourning:
sound out your songs with long piping!
Philomela , mourning the crime of the Thracian tyrant,
the years of your mourning are complete:
divert your lament to the death of a rare bird –
Itys is a great but ancient reason for grief.
All who balance in flight in the flowing air,
and you, above others, his friend the turtle-dove, grieve!
All your lives you were in perfect concord,
and held firm in your faithfulness to the end.
What the youth from Phocis was to Orestes of Argos,
while she could be, Parrot, turtle-dove was to you.
What worth now your loyalty, your rare form and colour,
the clever way you altered the sound of your voice,
what joy in the pleasure given you by our mistress? –
Unhappy one, glory of birds, you’re certainly dead!
You could dim emeralds matched to your fragile feathers,
wearing a beak dyed scarlet spotted with saffron.
No bird on earth could better copy a voice –
or reply so well with words in a lisping tone!
You were snatched by Envy – you who never made war:
you were garrulous and a lover of gentle peace.
Behold, quails live fighting amongst themselves:
perhaps that’s why they frequently reach old age.
Your food was little, compared with your love of talking
you could never free your beak much for eating.
Nuts were his diet, and poppy-seed made him sleep,
and he drove away thirst with simple draughts of water.
Gluttonous vultures may live and kites, tracing spirals
in air, and jackdaws, informants of rain to come:
and the raven detested by armed Minerva lives too –
he whose strength can last out nine generations:
but that loquacious mimic of the human voice,
Parrot, the gift from the end of the earth, is dead
The best are always taken first by greedy hands:
the worse make up a full span of years.
Thersites saw Protesilaus’s sad funeral,
and Hector was ashes while his brothers lived.
Why recall the pious prayers of my frightened girl for you –
prayers that a stormy south wind blew out to sea?
The seventh dawn came with nothing there beyond,
and Fate held an empty spool of thread for you.
Yet still the words from his listless beak astonished:
dying his tongue cried: ‘Corinna, farewell!’
A grove of dark holm oaks leafs beneath an Elysian *****,
the damp earth green with everlasting grass.
If you can believe it, they say there’s a place there
for pious birds, from which ominous ones are barred.
There innocuous swans browse far and wide
and the phoenix lives there, unique immortal bird:
There Juno’s peacock displays his tail-feathers,
and the dove lovingly bills and coos.
Parrot gaining a place among those trees
translates the pious birds in his own words.
A tumulus holds his bones – a tumulus fitting his size –
whose little stone carries lines appropriate for him:
‘His grave holds one who pleased his mistress:
his speech to me was cleverer than other birds’.

(C) the  P. Green translation

parrot, that feathered mimic from India's dawlands,
is dead. come flocking, birds, to his funeral:
come, all you godfearing airborne creatures,
beat ******* with wings,
   mourn, claw your polls, tear out soft feathers
(your hair), and pipe high your sad lament.
Philomela, nightingale, the ancient crimes of Tereus
which you lament is long past -
    divert your grief to the obsequies of a rare and modern
bird: poor Itylus' case was tragic, but antique.
all wind-borne voyagers through the clear empyrean
lament now, and above all his friend the turtle-dove
they lived in complete agreement,
    their bond of faith held firm to the end.
what Pylades was to Orestes or Argos, that Parrot,
turtle-dove was to you - while fate allowed.
yet of no avail your devotion, your rare and beautiful
plumage,
your adaptable mimic's voice;
    not even the care that my darling lavished on you -
poor Polly, paragon of birdhood, is dead.
so gree his feathers, they dimmed the cut emerald;
scarlet his beak, with saffron spots.
no bird on earth could copy a voice more closely
or sound so articulate.
fate, jealous, removed him - that unaggressive creature,
that talktative devotee of peace,
with his tiny appetite , whose love of conversation
left him little leisure for food,
who lived on a diet of nuts, used poppy-seed to encourage
sound sleep: kept his thirst at bay with nothing but water.
quails spend their whole life fighting -
maybe that's how they reach a ripe old age.
carnivorous vultures, kites gyring high in the heavens,
weather-wise jackdaws, prophets of rain to come,
are all long-lived - while Minerva's bête noire, the raven,
can outlast nine generations. yet Parrot is dead,
that loquacious parody of human utterance,, that bonanza
from the eastern edge of the world,
greedy death almost always pickss off the best ones early -
it's the third-raters who reach a ripe old age.
Thersites attended the funeral of Protesilaus;
Hector was ashes while his brothers still lived.
what point is recalling the desperate prayers my sweetheart
uttered?
some stormy sirocco blew them out to sea.
six days he survived, and then, at dawn on the seventh,
his thread of destiny ran out.
yet somehow, though dying, he could still find utterance,
and the last words he ever spoke were: 'Corinna, farewell!'
beneath a hill in Elyium, where dark ilex clussters
and the moist earth is for ever green,
there exists - or so i have heard - the pious fowls' heaven
(all ill-omened predators barred).
harmless swaans roam after foot there, there dwells
the phoenix, that long-lived, ever-solitary bird;
there Juno's peacock spreads out his splendid fantail
amid the billing and cooing of amorous doves;
and there, in this woodland haven, the feathered faithful
welcome Parrot, flock round to hear him talk.
his bones lie buried under a parrot-sized tumulus
with a tiny headstone bearing these words:
r.i.p. Polly: this tribute from his loving mistress:
articulate beyond a common bird

the thought of LEMONS or perhaps
the IDEA of lemon...
then again: i can't refrain from
ORANGES and LIMES...
and the shy-sunlight of autumn
and the blooming of apples...
and operas...
             "someone"...
                              what pretty pies of
unfuckable wonders await...

divert your grief to the obsequeies of a rare and modern
bird: poor Itylus' case was tragic, but antique
(antiquated?).
all wind-borne voyagers through tge clear empyrean
lament nowm abd above all
his friend the turtle-dove, they lived in complete
agreement
   their bond of faith held firm to the end.
what Pylades was to Orestes of Argos, that, Parrot,
turtle-dove was to you - while Fate allowed,

i'm not even going to bother with a "bananna C"...
i woke up wild-awake with ideas...
brimming with Tao...
"non-doing" id est: point PROVEN
or rather point SERVED?!

Russia and China are clashing...
or rather sparring...
they're having their civilization-state
agenda being put in place...
while there's a "culture-war" in the "west"...
right... James Bond...
so we're refrrering to nation-stattes
as post-nationhood...
  "states"...
                    precursors to the globalist agenda
of fake space exploration via the ******* telescope...
if Russia and China are civivilasation-states...
then... whatever culture "war" is investing in:
or rather: digressing into... impliies
the FSA (federal states of america)
             is a culture-state...
                                                ­                 no?

personally? i don't like the current h'American culture...
it's absolute *******...
no! i'm not going to translate any more of Ovid...
i already read the better translation...
i found out only two minites ago that
i prefer drinking to having ***...
and keeping an eye on cats is just as rewarding
as rearing children: if you allow yourself
to give them a personality...

           so Russia is a civilisation-state...
while America is a culture-state...
                    well... no wonder...
                                            America is the zenith
that could be: but doesn't have to be
preserved...
the culture-state-of-the-sand-*******...
i wish: the Arabs clocked in lucky...
sitting on so much raw ill of oil...
bounce bounce libido bounce bounce...

hmm... "inner monologue"... i had that "thing"
once... i kost it... turning psychotic...
then again: within the confines of having
an internal monologue? i was passive...
       i was a passive agent...
                         upon losing it: having my soul
evaporate: becoming an "N.P.C."...
i became an active agent...
i opened my eyes a second time...

           i think my inner monolpogue became blocked
by:
został wyciszony... bo zaczoł być cykliczny,
tzn. nie po prostej:
       wymarł według koncepcji
sprawiedliwości...

even i know: the gods uttered the words:
shut the **** up! we know you're right!
but we're playing roulette!
shut the ******! we're playing cards!
shut up!
wait! wait your turn!
**** me, given the prowess at attaing
a concept of the differential of space comparing
time... i.e. speed... i'll be karma-happy
once i die...

i'm not translating the rest of that Ovid...
a girl's parraot died... great!
now i'm thinking about:
a bicyckle is a terrible idea... to ride...
on the roads towards St. Paul's... i think i might
require a horse!
i need a horse! bring me a hood, a hoof,
an apple and a toothbrush!
the last place i'm thinking about moving
to is California...
   and thank no god for that...
just the people who already live there.

III.

i sooner discovered the rare B-sides of Red Hot Chilli
Peppers than having realised... oh right...
they release two albums after By the Way...
i completely forgot about those two...
               guess i'm not as big a fan as i thought i was...
Go Robot... it's not oh so wo terrible now, or anymore...
oh woah woe... what a whale to ride into the night...

sometimes it just happens, a sort of blend of an Ezrra Pound
and a Charles Olson moment, poem, moment-poem...
it stretches for three days and you just don't want
to finish it... you kept repeating yourself writing seemingly
aimlessly with no focus...
at this point writing becomes theraputic...
by the simple act of writing: not theraputic regarding
what you're writing about: memories of frustration and
complications having finished Thomas Mann's Dr. Faustus...
unlike those joyous frustrations with Samuel Beckett's
Watt...
                  and on the third day "he" finished painting
four metal chairs a new colour of copperhead...
a copperneck painting chairs copperhead...
to me the colour of copper is more appealing than
that of gold...

if i still had that inner-monologue people speak of
i wouldn't be writing this,
that inner-monologue fantasy i once was a proud owner
of: i.e. the closest "thing" to the idea of soul
was also filled with so many doubts...
i simply don't care what the supposed benefits
of it were... that whole no-inner-monologue ergo
one's an NPC (non-playable character)...
    i remember that that when my first psychotic episode
slammed me on a rampage i started to see DIFFERENTLY...
it was as if a veil was lifted from my eyes...
if i didn't write terrible poetry back then...
i most certainly wrote very little...
             the inner-monologue doubts... a plethora of them...
no? psychosis = the osmosis of soul...
   the body has remained... the devils said:
but these idle hands and this idle intellect have to stay...
we'll pass on the message with your soul
as it leaves your body...
call it whatever you want:
   res vanus or the silence of the "mind"...
that's how you become more of an active agent...
it might be called writing but i call it digging...
a tunnel toward some variaton of: marrying Hades
with Tartarus...
                after all... Venus is the daughter of titans...
and she's the only Titan among the Olympian gods:
such is her perfection... almost on par with
   the patron of philosophers that's Sacred Sophia:
who entertains the foolishness of elder men
without being able to tell them apart from boys...

IV. if i were to translate Amores II. XI

would i be willing to add a D in the translation sequence?
i don't think so
there's no need... i like comparing the two i already
made available...
i just wanted to stress how unbelievable Latin is...
compared to the modern tongue, for example English...
how compact it is!
- and course, i prefer the second translation...
     it... exfoliates!
                     this is the point for me where i truly appreciate
Ovid to be on par with Horace...

side by side walking through the zenith-nadir of
man...

   i'm finally come across a sequence of events that
make me unwilling to stop typing: perhaps if i get
drunk enough and stumble on my first typo
perhaps a series of typos would end my ambition...

do i think men in the west are living
in a land of libido-insomnia? i think they are...
whoever said that watching one type of pornogrphy
soon spirals out of control and men start
scouting for more extreme *******:
hello outlier A! hello outlier B!
where's outlier C? oh... he's coming...
at a time when women are supposed to be these
sexually liberated creatures while men
are either STAGS with harems or limp biscuit *****...
thank god i managed to catch the train
of having the ***** of walking into a newsagent
and buying a pornographic magazine to ******* to...
stashed about six in a folder behind
the radiator in the bathroom at 21B Beehive Lane,
Gants Hill...
                         mind you: i started prematurely...
8?
     i switch off with western ****** antics:
people are either having too much ***: ergo the kinks
or not enough of it...
outlier in the middle: when it's too hot
i leave the insects to do their lineage pride...
cooler temperatures: *** like rubbing sand-paper
on a ****** paint-job...

                         makeshift boney **** of the hand...
well: at least ******* makes me more interested in
the **** than **** ***...
but i did the opposite... i need to keep a sack-of-sanity
atop my head...
beside adoring the Katakana...
i very much adore Japanese tamed sexuality...
     グラビア アイドル (gurabia aidoru)...
back in the day when the English tabloid newspaper
the Sun had a page 3 girl...
back to basics... a show of *******...
    a show of cleavage... perhaps even the breast
like the eye... the sclera of the rounded breast...
the darkened skin at the iris and then the pupil
as the ******...
  floral patterns of the *******...
                  back to basics...
                           a photograph of a naked woman
and all the imagination at work: what wouldn't
i want to do with her?

well... if you begin pleasing yourself while concentrating
on the kiss between Venus and Cupid
in one of Bronzino's beauties of paint-strokes...
you're hardly going to go down a rabbit-hole
of "hide and hide": wihtout seeking it out...
people and thier kinks...
while a minority: dodo-project sexuality of
homosexuality is celebrated: garnerded unto the guise
of "pride": i can't stomach shame...
but hey: look at me! i'm about to parade my sexuality
like and ******* latex-clad gimp readied
for being given ***-favour-orders...

outlandish! god-forgiving god-fearing...
  hardly every god-loving...
           a settling in of a blue that's not the sky
but a melancholy... i'm finally willing to end this
"diatribe"... to start afresh... again and again...
like mixing: Dreams of a Samurai with
Hans Zimmer's spectres in the fog...

                      my ***: going back to figuring out
the premature adventures into ***...
one boy passing on the secrets of *******
to another while sharing a bath:
the cruel curiosity of the circumcision:
in a secular environment: without the kippah
or the niqab: the submission of the women...
i will not give up the "sheath" to my "sword"...
i will keep my teeth with my twirling tongue...
if ever an improvement on the aesthetics?
clipping the ears of Dobberman dogs...
banning clipping the clipping of their tails...
but still: the preserved atrocity of male circumcision...
i could agree...
once a woman is devoted to her man...
a circumcision like putting on a wedding ring...
noble swans... oh noble swans...

a melancholy that's sort of azure...
amass enough water and you will see blue...
amass "too little": freeze it...
a paleness somewhat grey...
but then the icebergs roaming that are
the Cistercians...
            all i need right now is for some lonely
dog to start barking into the night...
or the cackling "laughter" of a fox...
    
    but all those sexless lives...
            "lucky" me for taming my consumption down...
where would i be without it?
i didn't ask for a *******...
i wa offered it... i will never forget how she clamoured
for the opportunity...
she couldn't stomach being rejected twice...
she just had to clamour like a crab in a crab bucket...
even if she thought she thought she succeeded:
she was the spare wheel...
what i've learned... i prefer one-on-one interactions...
but i gave in...
   it would have never worked out:
not like it "works out" in pornographic flicks...
the sharing of saliva and other juices...
we're responsible adults...
unlike in the pornographic flicks...
          two women: one man...
the changing of condoms...
                           i had to think quick:
there's only one way i will not be undermined...
snuggling up to the one i really wanted
to spend an hour with...
                       kissing neck and cheek...
while she did a hand-job...
   the other just sat there sort of idle...
                          until i figured out... those *******
could be of some use...

- i couldn't pull off a Jesus look...
long hair and a beard is not my "thing"...
even with a sly undercut...
i chose the better option.... short hair, a beard, yes,
but a "fu manchu": an elongated love-spot...
competing with the length of the beard...
i really "don't understand" why i have no memory
of my chin and neck...
it's like there was never the idea of using
water as a mirror... perhaps poor Xerxes lashed
at the Aegean for hiding his reflection
when he had one of those Narcisstic moments
of anguish: he forgot how he looked like...
but then the sides of the moustasche also drooping:
elongated... that work much better than
a beard and long hair...
it's so unfashionable these days...
i don't get why men think beards and long hair
"work"....

then again i never figured out why Khadira
wanted to have unprotected ***...
  how she insisted that it was just plain o.k.
for me to ******* into her...
how i snapped and dived in into her pandamonium
of multiples springs of irritated ****...
all slobbering with oyster-tongue
and knose...
                               all that informed me...

companionship? what a rare commodity...
it's enough to have a mother to know
how a woman's company can quickly sour
the already sweet grapes...
one word: tell a man he's LAZY...
while he's just tired of being pushed and shoved...
if a mother can do that to a son?
what could a wife do?
                          and i'm come across curiosities of
men who waged wars with their mothers...
at the Tyson Fury boxing match...
i was trying to calm the **** down a guy
who was having a panic attack after being
"abandoned" by his mother...
who bought the tickets... and drinks...
i squeezed him hard... told him: but i'm here for free!
nay! i'm here and getting paid for it!
blah blah...
               i hate seeing panic attacks in men...
it makes me either feel like
more than a man or less of a man...
it makes me think of the men prior
with shell-shocks... or women exploiting
the challenges of p.t.s.d.

                                    i've seen so many people fake
a mental illness... i've spoken at length
to them... how easily open up to their own struggles...
while i'm left alone with whatever ones
i have...
                   maybe because my "mental health issues"
have morphed into philosophical caviats
implies that i'm immune to outright sharing
the details... and boring people to death...
so i listen...
        i listen...
                            in one ear out the other...

i remember days in high school when we would love
to change the subject, create a game:
SLAP-BALL... imitation of Tsar Peter III prior
to tennis... an imitation court... with a fence between us...
or just playing BLACKJACK...
cards... that was big... we understood that ignoring
women was best done with / by playing cards...
at one point: i remember it to this day...
Samuel Richards grabbed Ian Goodman's neck
and pinned him to the floor...
we tried to intervene...
i don't know whether it was about the actual
game of cards or whether it was about
Sam bailing out... he was about to move to France...
and ****** off from pur in-group...
started playing basketball with the black-boys...
forgot he was supposedly the "PUNK" in the school...
i remember skateboarding with him...
he actually stole his mother's credit card and bought
a skateboard for me...
but his ******* MOHICAN was ****...
it didn't entertain the entire length of his skull
meeting his spine...
but we did walk back from Romford
toward Ilford this one night...
underage drinking... singing Backstreet Boys songs...

ha ha...
         time is a museum of melancholy...
while space is a museum of furthering whatever is left
of leftover potential...

i'm so despondent about this life having to end...
today i cycled up to the traffic lights
on my ******... ******?! £125 viking road bike... say the word
****** one more time... what was i facing?
a solitary man in an Aston Martin...
behind him? some solitary guy in a Porsche...
right... "alphas"...
i'm on my bicycle... but these two guys
in those choicest of motor-examples?
that's the thing with "competing" in life rather than
sport...
     i like my bicycle... i love my bicycle...
i am yet to wash away the blood from my head
from the crash...
i don't have a broken leg: i just have an outgrowth of bone
on my shin where my bone should have cracked:
i love milk...

competing with these men... **** me...
i was thinking about the Porsche guy...
nice game... but it's not playing cards...
i taart myself up: compete...
what do i get? i get a Porsche...
     but then ahead of me there's this guy
in an Aston Martin: mate! i'm ******!
oh blue blue Hue... the Aston Martin looked like
the bomb that is already was...
the Porsche? the Porsche looked like
a ******* Ford Mondeo by comparison...
Civic Extra... if that's even a car...
i was sort of happy to by cycling...
i figured... well: i'm not using my legs...
to walk... i'm peddling...

ever heard the expression "push-bike"?
i heard that only recently... what a werid coupling
of words... a motorcycle is distinguished from
a a bicycle by the term: "push-bike"
this half-brain-dead coworker...
what the **** am i pushing?!
it's just as weird as calling it a peddling-bicycle, no?
eh?
but what am i pushing? a bicycle is a bicycle
a turtle is a turtle... i still have to figure out
what's being pushed...
what comes first? the donkey, the carrot, or the stick?!

mawn the lawn: sieve the sand...
mawn the lawn: sieve the sand...
keep nurturing the spacing between numbers
but also keep lost track of the alphebticaal
queue...
never the type to rehash a refurbishment
of SPAWN...

           i simply don't want this day-dream to end...
around me people cowering into sleep...
i'm left in limbo...
            between consetllations and the scythe
of the moon... dearest: moooooon...
i'm itching to break the silence with a howl...
but first: the thirst of a dog barking...
i hear a dog barking i'll start to howl!

aren't we simply becoming the same
tired people of old?
              more impetus...
more gravity! more fire! more tides!
more the quaking of the earth!
more whirlwinds! more! more!
one Pompeii is not enough!

                       almost one litre of whiskey
into the session and i'm sober-tense...
i'm starting to think that entertaining
hell is not a bad "gimmick"...
                  there's the imaginary hell-crowd
and there' some also doubly-imaginary
crowd of people that yet to be bound to imitation-migration
focus...
           next time you ask me:
i'd rather be eating ice: crunching on
ice than drinking water...
i want to burn my tongue...
licking ice...l i want to burn my tongue
licking ice: but first i want to be dipping
it in coridnader-cumin-chilli-turmeric mix-up
of spiders...

i want to first bruise my knees before
i lick them clean...
i want the strict juices of: not tomatoes?
red is red: ergo blood is blood...
vulture ****...
there's an open window:
there's an evaporating night too...

best refrain: 6 by 6s refrain on 9s...
since? there's plenty of 0s / oopses...
by this "flesh and blood"...
i heave this sand and timer
like: i was sadly woken up with
an inheritance of salt...
boiling blue bloods and boiling gravy...
a smile that reads: clenched teeth...
a smile so awkward that
it make^ a parrot think twice about
imitating human speech.

^a notable typo, i think i might require an editor
(insert a snigger); two alternatives:
1. it might make a parrot think twice,
2. a smile so awkward that it makes a parrot think twince...
all depending on the tense.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The barber asked "what would you like?
Quiff?
          bun?
           Mohawk?
slicked back?
           side parting?
                    centre parting?
                                            greased?            
                                      permed?                  
                           straightened?
                   skin head?
               bald head?
        spiky?
        A comb over?
pony tail?
        pig tails?
                    curly?
                            frizzy?
                      dyed?
                               mop top?
                         French crop?
                 blue rinse?
           purple rinse?
                             step?
                                    undercut?
                                              shaggy?      
                                     dreadlocks?"
"No thanks" I replied
"I'll have a short back and sides and make it messy on top please"

the hills were beginning to grow
the grass greening on the approach
to Blue Earth, and how
in summer
Minnesota shed her old coat
to shy guilty into brief silty lakes
like the
joy of a little kid, sneaking a forbidden dip.

remarking, casually, about
white warm flowers hung low from
planned oaks, and the impossible way the town
pulled local hills close, to coat
in dandelions. and cultivate
all under an ambitious midwestern sun.


          rolling through the stop sign, hand on mine
          you told me if you’re moving at all

          you should keep it in second gear.


and we had so far to go, but in the light that
broke through westbound clouds,
we became less so.
contented to spread toes out in earth we
dug into Minnesota, the middle coast:
a land we could like to get to know.



and you:
looking down at the salt, the sand, the scars of
the grand american plantation:
the last coast.
knowing that by the next coast, we
you and me.
we'd be through.

          saying, ‘how could anybody die?’

          saying,
          ‘how could anybody tell you anything true?’



undercut by the honest waves of the little lake,
the hum that drummed in my gas tank.
trying, for once, at a little piece of truth:

          when I leave this place I leave
          a part of me behind.

          and that part of me
          will be you.



saying there’s only so much sweetness in the soil,
only so long after the thaw,
and grief is rich and dark and made for sowing:
must be, for maintaining verdant local hills, must be
for to keep corn sweet. must be for to put
grief
on the table. must be for to
keep with us.

          for to keep a little bit to eat.

saying, we bleed but together we make a hole
to bury both our bodies in.
saying there’s a west out west but too late it’s
already hemmed us in.

          saying now I am only a fragile assimilation of this weak
          and fractured purpose that drives me, and you are

          beautiful enough I would lie to let you love me.


even I would scorch this soil if only things wouldn’t grow I would
saying Blue Earth is still in the trucker's atlas is
only an excuse for sunshine. a point,
where freeways go.
saying,
“with earth, so green, that here they call it 'Blue'.”


          saying
          “I could learn to love a leopard.”

          saying
          “how dare you.”

Brian Molko was already doing the current wannabe-trend of trans-sexuality long before trans-sexuality was a common "thing"... tracing back some ulterior taboo settings... today on my way to work i spotted my first trans-******: wow! obviously he had manly hands... large... he was tall... he had large feet... but slender legs... and a face, with all that necessary make-up of eyeliner... hair? not very long... shoulder length... yes... a deep voice... but then again my godmother has a husky voice from all the smoking and drinking... but i fancied him... the dynamic on the tube was magnifying... three women sat beside him while he was talking to his geeky (maybe, probably) boyfriend, a plump chap with eyeglasses... i couldn't stop thinking: ah... the solidarity of men... when in shortage of supply of women, men will find alternative avenues to compensate for women, men will find women in men... the idea that i might be a transphobe never occurred to me: but it did occur to me that women: for all their supposed glorification of acceptance would never allow men to be attracted to men who are: beyond merely the thespian gay-lord, *******... ally... this... "freak"... i fancied this man... i could omit all the stressed "imperfections"... but such a feminine-feline face... it really suited him... i wanted to kiss him... i was thinking... i'll tend to the "oysters" and all the tender bits and bites of being with him... andd do the butcher's work with a *******... problem solved... this skin-head middle-aged (i'm coming to middle age, or life expectancy, not the lottery of mortality, mind you) sat next to me and was sort of nudging me with a shadow missing in the full-glare of the lights of the tube... you fancy him? insinuations via body-language: yeah... i do... is it wrong? nope! check the women sitting next to him... do you fancy them? nope... me too... of the three or four women sitting next to this trans-****** specimen... none had a lovelier face... mutations just... "happen"... the eureka-oops moments... i could seriously forget about the shared dimensions of large hands twice as big as that of a geisha, same with the feet... i could forget the baritone voice... i really fancied this boy... in a way that gay-lords just make it difficult having mingled with actors too much and not retaining an aura of: suspense and: something in me is frigid, alien... i shouldn't but... hell... i really should! i will! benevolent London that is... he was prettier than all the women i saw that day... like my grandfather once said: there are no ugly women... there are only abandoned... if not abandoned then neglected women... to think that women could ever be neglected: says as much about neglected men... men will find alternative avenues to women when the women self-exfoliate in their "privilege" of: first-come-first-served-and-thus-the-only-served menu... **** that! but what was special about this trans-****** specimen? it reminded me of the time i fancied Brian Molko, still do... in a non-gay sort of way... in a Plato the Plumber there's a blocked toilet of reincarnation afloat... it was actually, sort-of, actually-sort-of-funny watching the women on the same carriage trying to read my reaction... for once a man was more attractive than a woman to me! wow! being accused of trans-phobia... in London? well... only if you can't pull it off! it's like saying: coulrophobia! fear of clowns! with the clowns being without make-up? conflating the Apex Twin gargoyle from Window-Licker?! yeah... scary ****! the grin that's the length of the equator... i couldn't be attracted to a standard homosexual... Thespian leeching or intellectually pleasing akin to a Douglas Murray... or body-building blah blah... but this trans-****** specimen? that's an affront to a woman... all women... a man can have a prettier face to a woman's if... a man deems the exampled woman to be nothing more than akin to a lineage of... never arrived at cosmopolitanism... beetroot countryside proud... all red and irritated... i fancied this one... i was one step away from askig him: can i have your number? again, to reiterate: i didn't mind the deep voice... i didn't mind the size of hands that could match mine or the size of feet that could match mine... i was... infatuated with the magic dust of PIXIES! maybe that's what i learned from going to the brothel... but if you're going to play the trans-****** game... can you please avoid the mishandling of the Hippocratic oath... so little is actually necessary to accomplish a ****-heterosexual confusion-attraction that leaves women feeling inadequate: you, wouldn't even want to begin to believe! i'm now currently thinking of that film: the Odd Couple... Walter Matthau as Oscar Madison and Jack Lemmon as Felix Unger... Felix being the male-feminine counterpart of the feminine-man slob child pampered to: or however this quadratic works... i wouldn't be doing the cleaning and the cooking out of a feminine dignity to avoid doing the hard work of society's demands... no... i'd be perfecting my cooking to match up to the sort of food available upon heading out to a restaurant, i.e. not eating out... i've seen some car-crashes of trans-****** attempts... but this one stuck out for me because i started to think along the lines of: who needs women if men can appear prettier than women?! i'll just close my eyes when hand meets hand... it's a sickly sweet sensation but i could stomach it: if the conversation was kept to a satisfying lubrication: and it wouldn't be even remotely associated to the feminist-gay "commonwealth"... alliance... i don't need homosexuals to tell me XY&Z... i'm actually grooving this trans-****** trend: if spotting the exacting specimen to curtail all the wannabes... if there's an authentic Brian Molko specimen walking around... wow! reimagining being *** starved on the Western Front... a few guys with more artistic inclinations... rather than the rough sea-faring roughage of **** on the spot job done become involved... prettier faces than those of women... i could: no! i would succumb! it's just the terror in the eyes and on the faces of women... hey presto! a stick has two ends! freeze eggs... follow a career... demand a car a mortgage blah blah... my my... what a curiosity this trans-****** worked up to a perfection specimen of disphoria awoke in me... good enough cushioning blanket of sleeping with enough prostitutes... now i really want to sleep with a man... which is not gay... i'm bored of prostitutes... they're like any other woman: you pay them... yet they still complain as if you haven't paid them when not getting a hard-on because of (x) tiredness, (**) distraction, (***) life... per se... whatever... but those female faces... i pretended to be snoozing... they knew i knew... i kept an itch of a blink at this specimen... woman: ANGRY... no... actually... not angry... woman... what the **** is going on? of the times i went to a gay club and didn't pick up a Francis Bacon i wondered: did i drink enough? homosexual lust and all that same-for-same feminine-pro erotica of the jealous stone-rub-stone-offensive... the trans-****** "confusion" is a bright light... if done properly... done... naturally... i'm mesmerised... without... obviously... without... people succumbing to the breaking of the Hippocratic-oath... obviously... i despise the gay-pride movement... at least the authentic trans-sexuality movement is subtle... it's philosophically laden with a curiosity of more lips and less **** stressing fist-*******... this morphing of the pareidolia toward: seeing a female in a man's face... or seeing a man in a woman's face... hardly gender dysphoria... *****-utopia and... just as children look alike, regardless of ***... so do old people... also regardless of ***... but to achieve a heterosexual attraction in the realm of trans-genderism? it can't be forced... it has to happen ha-ha-naturally! i'm laughing at myself... only briefly... i'm more inclined to see the female in a man without seeing the homosexual... because homosexuality is like that quote from... no... not Human Traffic... about being gay and eating *****... how... eating ***** is not for real men... while ******* **** is all All Spice Alles Mensch... whatever... the gays are too proud might as well look out for the shy, proper, proper shy... trans-sexuals without any anti-Hippocratic-Oath mishandling(s)... the women become jittery thus...

i should have come home and reflected on spending
the past several hours on a shift
in Bishop's Park, overlooking Putney Bridge
watching the tide of Thames' recede back into the great
mouth before mingling with the salty waters
of the North Sea...
     all loved-up with the cold the dark and the wind
putting on some Woljiech Kilar soundtrack music
from Dracula - love remembered...
well... i was in the mood for something like that:
i put the track on... nope... can't feel it...
i'm tired, i'm cold i need to put on something to groove
to... we ain't going out like that - Cypress Hill...
tiredness swells the imitation pigeon-strut
in my head... bouncy-Billy will also ask for a chance
to express himself...
    the joke ran with Martin's team (Chelsea)
losing for the first time since 2006 to Fulham...
         the police officers were in a good number...
they even brought their horses...
two stood across from us when the final whistle was
blown... one of them started "laughing": if that's
what horses do, i.e. laugh...
no onomatopoeia here: hey Martin! even the horses
are laughing that Fulham beat Chelsea in the most
local derby of London...
    Craven Cottage is what? a mile at max two from
Stamford Bridge...
          one can only love the ever infuriated Martin...
but still the Thames receding...
   at first glace i might have stretched across
the balustrade and probably touched the surface of
the water... by the end of the shift when the river-bed
started to be exposed i started to wonder:
all that volume and now apparent air where once
there was water...
  no river in the world akin to the Thames...
tide in and tide out... at Westminster it's a river
that rid itself of the kettle and is nonetheless standstill
and boiling - during the day...
while eating a chicken wrap of torsos and tortillas
talking to a Norwegian who came over to watch
the football for the week...
last time he was here in the 1980s... have things changed?
the oyster one-touch travel card...
sure... it has just become a little bit more expensive:
but nothing has changed that much...
but during the night, and if its windy... well: clearly
there's a flow... a tide in or a tide out...
by the time i got to Goodmayes i walked past the brothel:
thank god i have nothing more to prove
thank god i have satiated my base needs and that's that...
what am i looking for? a compliment to a pharma-knock-out
of generic painkillers in the form of a bottle
of whiskey...
    too tired to **** not tired enough to think:
maybe i could fall in love again...
   fall in love... fall in love: but... ugh...
               fall in love and not pamper a woman's needs
with all those basic "tattoos" of courtship...
i might as well ask any future father-in-law:
so... where's my cow, my wedding dowry?
                     where's the pick-me-up to work with?
well if manna from heaven will not drop into my lap...
i hardly think... who the hell needs a car in London?
given the oncoming ULEZ restrictions?
bicycle, underground and the trains, plenty of buses...

today i was sent the most odd message from a coworker
who i am supposed to do a shift at the ice rink
on Sunday...
i was rather surprised - a "box" i never thought i would
unbox (as it were)...
i'll be honest... she's damaged - seriously damaged:
i'm on the "top" of the pile of damaged goods...
a mythological schizoid - ageing - each year turns
out easier as the madness spreads around me:
madness or the crushing mundaneness -
mundaneness or mediocrity -
    in a democracy it's all and the same: in the grey yolk
of bureaucracy -
         pushing letters through keyholes that leave
no door open: unless playing the "system" like
a criminal or a mummy with five different shades
of children from five different fathers...

                       the trouble with Russian girls is that...
they don't like a boy who appreciates music by Placebo...
huge disagreement... her take on Nancy Boy was
rigid and could never be biding: no appreciation of the music
for you... well... that be that...

this girl is hurt... i am hurt: everyone's hurt...
but i still find reasons to find silly happiness in cooking
cleaning, general groundwork labour of changing
the garden - some carpentry: cycling...
keeping up appearances of a well-kept diet
and perfumery of all sorts... at least dressing like
my idol Karl Lagerfeld... like an animal wears its fur...

she even changed her name to Frankie -
Frankie... i.e. is that Franklin, Frank?
no... it's actually Francesca...
the running joke with another girl i work with
runs along the line:
wouldn't that be something, to put on your CV
if you managed to convert her?
convert? or reconvert?
after all she has managed to produce offspring...
god knows why she's not in contact with her daughter...
but it's not like she was always a lesbian...
forced lesbian... it's not something a priori:
it's a posteriori...
after the facts that include: her biological father
beating her biological mum...
her biological mum abandoning her and her siblings
to escape with her dear life...
    how her step-father is like her biological father
but then the problem arises: the mother is unhinged
and now her step-father is facing splitting up with her
mother... of all the siblings she's the only one
keeping contact with her mother...
the other siblings, at least one... is ******* up to
her biological father who was: the greatest intersexual
boxer of the domestic environment to have ever lived
(in her eyes at least, i bet Tina Turner could compensate
such allowances of vanity)...

she used to be a man's woman once...
but now she switched... ******* without all
the Hippocratic misdeeds of the modern, current, narrative,
cutting off ******* and other genitals,
hormonal treatments... it's almost as if Joseph Mengele
died in body but his spirit lived on...
it's like a never-ending Auschwitz or at least
encryptions of mad-scientists for thirst of knowledge
have continued on a side-note of eugenics...
but at least with the closure of the 20th century
there was safe ******* experiments undertaken
by individuals without any authority of government:
the boys would grow their hair long and put
on eyeliner...
    perhaps even use girly perfumes or wear
dresses, nail-polish... hell... even sniff ******* or wear
them... but not with medical authority creating
irreversible ****** changes...
the girls would put on more weight or work out
and pretend to be East Germany's Olympians...
cut their hair short... who came the Pixie girls...
get tattoos wear signets: those bulky rings worth not
a gram of gold but their own worth of bulk...
    and like Francesca get an undercut with a Mohawk...
change their tone of voice... defence defence defence...
and become suddenly less and less agreeable...
still retaining a feminine smile and the odd feminine giggle
that could be unearthed...
or like with her text...
'hey... i want to go ice-skating after our shift...
do you think you'd be up for it?'
sure... although i only ice-skated twice in my life...
a long time ago, 13? i fell every single time...
i looked like someone who escaped from having
suffered from Polio...
i'll still look like someone who suffered from childhood
Polio akin to Israel Vibration's
Wiss", "Apple Gabriel", "Skelly"
      or Ian "Lane" Drury...
                                    instead i sent her a text replying:
sure... but i'll look like a spider equipped with
roller blades... i'll need to bring a casual set of trousers
just in case i fall and rip my work trousers...
'ha ha ha ha(insert crying with laughter emoticons)...'

oh sure... it's not a date... i'm not just going on a date...
we're not going for dinner...
i'm going ice-skating with a lesbian...
a butch-lesbian a hiding woman...
tattoos six-pack and muscle...
no wonder: only hours prior i was admiring
a would-be Brian Molko on the tube...
        
she followed up with a text of yet more defence:
but i'm skint - it will cost £10.50 for an hour
and a bit...
      we'll see i reply... as if she was implying:
if we can't get in for free... would you be willing
to pay?
i didn't reply with agreement to paying for...
then again: i'm not thinking about ***,
or homosexual conversion therapy...
i just don't remember when a girl last asked me to
go on a date with her... after all:
isn't a girl asking a boy to go ice skating with her
sort of asking a boy to go on a date?
she said she was quiet adapted to ice skating:
she owns a pair (of ice skates)... and i'll be the hilarious
polio walker / spider strapped with roller blades
trying to swim in quicksand...
mind you... i'm trying to rid myself of the past two
interactions in the brothel... terrible ***...
that one with the madam where i was limp...
the fate of the Sabine men gripped me...
i won't deny it...
second time... she calls herself my favourite:
she isn't... she's deluded... to the amazement of the other
girls i like to **** in the brothel...
i only extended my per usual 30min stay
by clocking up an extra 30min because i was so close
to climaxing from a *******: knock knock on the door...
time's up... no... not this time...
i'm going to finish... ergo...
but even she has paved her way onto a path of too much
physical augmentation...
if the **** don't come first... then the duck quack lips
reveal themselves first... she's an aging *******
and she has never done anything in terms of work
prior... no laundry no till service...
pregnant aged 14 and in the profession aged 16...
this is the murk and the sully of the gallows
of everyone: once, former, youthful idealism of love...
trotting a horse with broken legs like
waking up into birth by a man sitting in akimbo
for too long... standing up with numbed legs...
moving awkwardly...

obviously i was going to be robbed of Khadra and Mona...
Mona became stupid for getting pregnant
with a customer... hmm... i wonder who...
last time i saw her i teased her without a ******
and this massive fright gripped her face
because i was only teasing and she thought i was
a premature ejaculator... clearly a ****** was subsequently
used and the deposit in it: **** knows...
she should know... i haven't seen her since...

i think i'll text Francesca (Frankie) and tell her...
bring your skates girl... if we can't get in for free i'll
pay for the two of us...
only two shifts prior she was insinuating about
going for a pint: i just replied: i would...
but i had to help my father write the fortnightly
invoice and send it in...
like tomorrow... tomorrow i'll have to help my mother
with the taxes and VAT...
they're getting a new accountant and she lied
about doing her taxes on a spreadsheet...
**** me... i probably used Microsoft Excel twice...
twice, properly... but since i only used it twice...
i'm a bit rusty... so much worth of secondary school
education or the university...
   they taught us the bare minimum of real-world
life-long tools of the onslaught of technology -
   hammer and scythe i can use to count heads...
oh well: there's bound to be some crash-course for dummies
on the internet...

i waited until 9pm for the three of us to sit down to
eat some fajitas...
i overdid it using Kashmiri chilly powder
and three fresh chillies in making the pineapple salsa...
but the hotness neutralised itself with the addition
of the tomato salsa i made... and the guacamole...
the sour cream and obviously cheese, esp. cheddar
neutralises all possible excess spices...
we ate, chatted... one big ******* family,
me, father and mother and my "brother" and "sister"...
well... at least the cats meow and don't bark...
oddly enough: i'm happy... mediocre sort of:
that scene from Hellraiser: Inferno...
were the protagonist - a corrupt police officer -
is forced into a nightmare of having to relive his
eternity in his childhood's bedroom...
living with his parents...
shouldn't the horror be... your parents getting divorced?
i don't know why mine are still together...
they must be freaks... i must be a mutant:
well... born only two weeks after Chernobyl:
no riddles, only clues...
     i keep the conversation going...
i help around the house...
  
                        Frankie dealt me two nuggets of hashish
in the past 4 months... once i was desperate
when the hashish ran out so she gave me the number
of a marijuana dealer: great green all the way from
America... i only used the service once...
maybe that's me being bulletproof...
i'm cutting down on drinking and i will never return
to smoking marijuana to achieve a Buddha-esque glow
meditating while high and hungry...
weighing in at 78kg... it's a bit of a yoyo with me these
days... from 99kg through to 103kg...
but then... i pinch myself: i summon the ***** to pinch
back... hmm! no man-****... so i could try out for
some amateur rugby matches...

a butch lesbian asking a boy for a date to go
ice skating... i feel... truly terrible for all the conventional women...
i would have offered a cinema date...
she beat me to the better sort of entertainment...
she said: let's go ice skating...
i would have retorted: i do own two bicycles...
how about we go cycling in the night...
round and round Raphael's Park...
round and round... and if we're lucky...
and if the winter air aligns itself with some idiot
setting off fireworks... we can get snippets of whiffs
of imitation autumn... as if the leaves of the trees
have fallen in the dry crisp air and someone
set them alight and there's no rot and knee-deep
digging of plush-decay exfoliating a sickness
in the air... how's that?

i'll send her the text... hell... i'll pay for her...
i'm not interested in ***...
she might be a butch-lesbian trying to hide her
femininity... but she still smiles like a woman...

oh sure... i remember the last conventional:
heterosexual date i was on...
we met in a sweaty night-club... if we kissed we kissed:
i don't remember... she gave me her phone-number
i gave her mine... i was in the company of
about 3 girls who i met elsewhere, otherwise:
also randomly...
at least one made something of her life...
she ****** off to Norway - totally off-the-grid...
by now probably breeding huskies for sleighs...

the next time we met... i bought two bottles of wine...
the "date"? a job interview... we talked...
subsequently we went to a pub while i had a pint...
she was feeling claustrophobic...
i was the alcoholic and she became the **** of boredom...
she excused herself: some prior engagement
with her girlfriends... i guess she thought she got away...
i way happy to get away by same mechanisation
of oppositional psychology...
all this talk within the confines of carpe diem that
centred upon: what do you / what's you living
should i think about life insurance - will we live to be 70
years old?
well... that's the cherry on top with Francesca...
you want to go ice-skating? sure...
you want to go cycling with me in the night?
sure... life insurance / what do you for a living?
how much do you earn?
             can we live a little outside a prison within a prison?!

so much for Dawid Bovie's idea of the androgynous man:
if i'm to be surrounded by "butch" lesbian
and prostitutes: that's my lot then...
i'm not going to succumb to the CV-project-veritas
in-vitro infanticide females with CHOICE
like... my spunking into a bucket and calling it:
falling asleep with the sound of rain
trickling trickling on a metallic roof...
in the night when the horrors come and horrors
claim all the little details of frailty
of mortality...

                  for every tear-jerking sympathy for
a Romeo there's the mantis of
   a Judith kissing the decapitated head of
                                                             Holofernes:
**** it... the prostitutes i truly loved ******* are either:
pregnant or on "holiday"...
i passed the brothel only two nights ago...
i spotted a man walking out from the door...
he froze like a doe in the headlights and didn't move
until i turned my head and kept walking...
i was about to blast out with wind and voice:
no shame in having to share women
we will never impregnate!
start thinking like a woman, dear man...
think on ground of evolutionary bias...
for every women there's this boast of:
50% of men reproduced successfully...
while all the whole lot of them the 100% of train-wrecks
and Piccadilly butcher's antics with the flab
have... their greatest success story to ever live...
i could be worse off... than right now...
i could have married an ugly woman:
by definition: if a most feminine man
grows his hair long and applies some slapstick
makeover creases of eyeliner...
i can forgive him his match-for-match size
of hands... height... size of shoe...
but never an ugly woman... UGLY...
that goes beyond mere the physical-glass...
i'm talking: character... there's no prime-ego
LEGO building block... no architect's corner stone...
there's nothing to work with...
just everything to work around...
to avoid...
                    
    if: for ****'s sake... i'm not planning: i'm providing
the revenue... i want to go ice-skating!
she doesn't have any money? i have "too much"...
i don't: but for the worth of life in life that's only
to supposed to span a month's worth of living it...
hell: i have no better idea to pass the time...

at one point i found out that Francesca has some Irish
roots... you're Aye-Reesh?!
              really? never would have conjured up
a sharing of ******* on a leprechaun...
**** it for good luck... like circumcision:
that's apparently Hebrew for: good luck...
with the addition of: ensuring your bride to be
be donning a niqab and all those "other"...
culturally sensitive, exclusive terms of
cultural-dis-appropriation: or whatever the **** is
coming out of H'America...
             once upon a time when that cultural export
was relevant: these days: nothing new to be
found... except the abandoned moon...

well... i sent the text... sure... i'll pay for the ice-skating...
but you have to promise me to go cycling
with me during the warmer months
with me... don't worry about having a bicycle...
you can have my mountain-bicycle
i use for the winter months
while i'll get on my summer month
road-bicycle...
we'll head toward Thurrock...
and elsewhere that's Essex friendly
and far away from London outer-suburbia...
fresh... fresh...
Jean Claude van Dame...
                       Fresh: that's her idea of working out
before the shift... and then going ice-skating...
FooR x Majestic x Dread MC...

                oh well... life in Loon-downs...
or is that: no apples... i'm sure there are no apples...
if she takes the bait...
i.e. i pay for both of us going ice-skating tomorrow...
she better go cycling with me during the
summer months...
she says no to ice-skating tomorrow
i'll become Trojan in my own defense...
if she wants to be all ******* lesbian defensive...
i can be defensive too...
i'll arm myself with enough brothel visits to erase:
first... comes... oh my grandmother disappointed
me... i could have been there for my
grandfather stabbing himself in the leg
while entering the state of AGONIA...

                    i could have been there: she? trying to protect
me against the advent of mortality?
or her... biting my grandfather's alcoholism she
induced by being a terrible woman?
his last pleasures?
crossword puzzles... cycling, fishing,
rekindling with the day-tripper postcard sender
vouch! you're the simulation tourist with
his... grand... chill... no... not -dren...
his... sole and only grand-child... i.e. me...
him buying me the books i read over the summer holidays...

women are so ape so cruel...
i stopped believing in what's idealistic and rare before
me: which i can't replicate...
i'm happy being freed from:
i don't earn the sort of money that the state
demands taxing me... weird? no!
i don't earn enough to be taxed!
weird... i'm sort of pretending to be a jellyfish
afloat... simulating gravity:
gravity is always a simulation in the medium
of water...
                by air contra vacuum:
the mountain breathes in winter a cascade of
frigid snow slides down...
a Michael Schumacher goes skiing...
****** races cars at 200kmh... one loose turn and twist:
cranium like an opening of a watermelon...
jellyfish fighting for life dead-locked style
in a sick-bed while people nearest to him
think about magic-spells: how best to live without
him: how best to milk the cow with *****
instead of milk... hmm hmm hmm...

if she wants to go on a date with me to go ice-skating...
and i'm supposed to be paying for it...
she better be readied to go cycling with me
during the summer months...
if that's not going to happen:
she shouldn't have suggested
going ice-skating in the first place, for ****'s sake...
like: anything by Bricktop in ****** is
Shakespeare to me... perhaps even more...
living with the times...

                                oh well some well: Samuel!
Samuel: you're not Samantha... learn to become
a transvestite first... before we employ the ****
Hippocrates to mutilate you, o.k. darling?
    learn to grow your hair long...
learn to put on make-up... learn to wear dresses...
learn to sniff female underwear...
Samuel! Samuel! you're not Samantha (yet)!
we will not give you up to the Joseph "Hip-replacing-******"
Mengele: shy away from everything American
in the realm of: worth being culturally exported
and influencing foreign cultures: esp.
in the basin of the origins of the English ZZZUNGE...
that's England...
                  
HIPS FOR KNEES!
                    America: beacon, former: beacon of the world
to come... came one Cain for every second cannibal
no Satan was spawned: at least that's Iranian paranoia
covered: converted, shut the doors on Tehran...
bigger whoops happened when...
Garry Glitter became pop once more
with the release of the Joker movie
and that mad dance scene...
on the 132 steps where Shakespeare Avenue
meets Anderson Avenue...

    i will never, ever... visit... anything... remotely...
resembling... or being curated as being:
North America... i've had too much north american
cultural anemia...
             prior to words not being so much politcal
as agent orange doing all the "talking"...
                                  
  tam tam tam dam dam dam... ditto... do no more than
the necessary "evil": just, bass: on the base
on insinuation;
hell... if the afro-cosmopolitan is the new "cool",
the new "groove"...
let's just keep it... marred: in murk: in murky.

Chapter 1
It was cold. Freezing. The first day of the winter chill had started in northern Washington. The sun now hid behind the thick ceiling of clouds as they began their annual snowdrop and the mountains began to howl as the winter winds bared their fangs. Near the mountains was a town with a population of one hundred thousand. The town was officially established in 1840, though a now extinct native tribe settled there long before. Life here was normal for most.
A jog and a stone's throw away was a semi-secluded high school that lay deep in the woods, holding some fifteen hundred students. The gray bricks were reminiscent of a prison, juxtaposed against the walls of towering trees all around it. As snow began to blanket the ground, a single pair of footprints led to the school.

Professor Thompson, a younger teacher, was yelling again, "If I see another one of you punks rolling in here halfway through class, I swear I'm going to make sure you end up living in detention!" Alexei grinned, whispering the exact same phrase in unison with the teacher. The younger members of his "pack" snickered behind him. His group of eight was split between boys and girls appearing between seventeen and twenty. They were a small part of the senior class and had the reputation of being stubborn, loyal, and dangerous at times.

They embraced the reputaion, knowing how true it was. They were Lycans. Shapeshifters. Werewolves. They all meant the same thing. They were descendants of the "extinct" tribe that once lived in the area, though their numbers now were far greater and much more widespread.
When each Lycan turned fifteen, they would have their first shift. They would turn into Dire Wolves, about twice as large as a normal gray wolf.  During their first transformation, instinct would guide them to an alpha who would help them transition to the new life, teaching them how to shift at will and how to survive. Each pack was structured by rank, Alpha, Beta, and Delta.
There were only two Alpha's per pack, one male, one female. They made decisions and guided the newly transformed Lycans. Once a Lycan proved themaelves, they were given the rank of Delta. Their duty was to learn and follow any order to the best of their ability. A Delta could be chosen to become a Beta, either by trial or by challenge.

In this case, Alexei was the alpha and this was his territory.
Alexei stood at exactly six feet tall, was light skinned and was built like an animal, lean and muscular. His straight hair was jet black and ended in a flurry of blood red tips that lay hidden under a heavy black jacket and a hood lined with white fur. His yellow eyes glowed faintly under his hood.

Alexei turned his head slightly to the left, where Hunter sat, or rather slept. Alexei heard his pack mate wake up in a daze and groan, "What? I'm still in class? Man this *****."
Alexei grinned, flashing his long canines and the rest of the Pack laughed quietly amongst themselves. "Alexei... would you mind keeping your cronies under control, please?" His eyes locked onto the professor, their golden glow piercing the darkness of the hood like slivers of fire. The pack immediately went silent.
"Why of course, professor. We wouldn't want to disturb the lecture now would we?" His powerful voice dripped with acidic sarcasm, laced with a deadly seriousness. "Right guys?" The question hung dead in the air for a few heartbeats.
When no response came, he turned his head sharply, his gaze cutting into each of his bretheren. A collection of nervous, 'yes sir, yes alpha' rang out quietly. He closed his eyes and said, "All yours, professor."
Alexei drew a breath and let his consciousness flow towards the group. He felt each of their minds twitch in surprise as he spoke directly to them.
Just bear with it guys, its the last class of the day.
He heard another person's voice flutter into the pool of thoughts. but, alpha, it was Leiks, one of the betas.its snowing... we want to go out.
He growled slightly, just low enough for the Lycans to hear  And you think I don't? You know how this works, Leiks. We have to abide by the Sapiens rules.
Alexei heard her whimper slightly in submission, backing out of his thoughts. Leiks fidgeted in her seat on the back row, looking out the freezing window at the puffy white flakes cascading down around the school. Her blonde hair ended in vibrant purple curls that bounced around her chest. She was the youngest Beta at eighteen years old. Leiks was one of the three betas in Alexei's pack. The longest serving Beta was a male named Chance. He was Alexei's right hand, commanding all of the strength and loyalty as his Alpha. He had the figure of a sprinter, and was the fastest Lycan other than Alexei. His eyes were a very rare violet, further accenting his undercut blonde hair.
The other Beta was a red haired female named Krista. She was one of the oldest of the pack, at nineteen years old. She acted as the peacekeeper of the pack, settling the disputes when Alexei was away on business.

The other four were all deltas, each of them still looking to prove themselves.
Alexei caught a hint of something in the air; it smelled like a sweet musk mixed with crisp apples. The smell sent an icy tingle up and down his spine for an eternity before settling at the base of his neck, making his hair stand on end. He growled softly in his throat, grinning.
Smell something, alpha?, it was Leiks.
Yeah... maybe...
He grinned and felt warm all over. He felt the urge to go wild, to wolf out. Alexei bit his tongue in an effort to calm his instincts. He cleared his mind and closed his eyes, taking one long breath after another before the waves of longing subsided.
Professor Thompson continued with his lecture on mythology, talking about the classic horror creatures like vampires and werewolves. He focused awfully ******* the latter, going on and on about lycanthropy. The professor then began to compare the natures of both species, concluding with a comment on their painful existence.

Alexei bared his fangs in a silent growl, gripping the edge of his desk hard enough to make it creak in dismay. 
He thought to himself, we shouldn't be giving the Sapiens our whole history, even if they don't pay attention, much less believe in us.
Alexei's mind wandered as he pored over the history of his people. He stared down at his hands and he began to think about all of the Lycans that had been part of his pack.
An image flashed before his eyes of a bloodied white wolf lying before him, whimpering helplessly as its crimson blood steamed against the snow. The cries of pain echoed as clear as crystal in his mind. Alexei's own blood boiled as the memory took over his thoughts. He could see blood on his hands, staining the desk. He could see the life leaving the white wolf's blue eyes. He heard the all to familiar laugh echo in the forest. Alexei's heart beat filled his ears, deafening him. He felt nothing but rage as he searched for the killer's face.

His anger lasted only a second before a hand tenderly gripped his shoulder. His eyes flashed open and he bared his fangs slightly. He snapped his gaze over his shoulder at the pack, their eyes wide and locked on him, emanating dread. The hand belonged to Flora, the youngest member of the pack at sixteen. Her eyes were full of innocent fear as she looked at her enraged Alpha. Alexei realized he had partially transformed, his teeth had all turned to sharp incisors, ready to rend flesh from bone. He forced his body to revert back, feeling the fangs retreat. Alexei nodded and Flora let go of his shoulder. Alexei turned and shut his eyes again, his good mood soured for now. He took a deep breath and sighed, wishing for that scent again. Five more minutes...
Those five minutes drug on like a glacier, the professor's words trailing off into the distance as he switched topics. Can he go any slower?
Don't jinx us, alpha, sir. came Flora's response.
You don't have to call me sir, Flora. We're a family.
The wolves stayed silent for the rest of the class, listening halfheartedly to the professor. "As you all know, this is the last day of school until January. I hope you all have some plans, some family to go see." 
He paused for a moment as if to say something else. The professor was looking directly at Alexei, who could feel the teacher's eyes boring into his soul. The bell finally rang, and Alexei was the first one out of his seat, ready to bolt for the door, but a stern voice called his name.
"One moment, Alex. I need to have a word with you." The professor looked directly at Alexei with an iron stare. They stood there for a moment as the others left the room, chattering amongst themselves. All but one. Flora remained defiantly beside Alexei, looking up at him. He looked down at her, his eyes opening with a soft yellow glow.
"Go on, I'll be fine." Flora looked at him quizzically but obeyed.
Alexei waited for the door to close, looking at the professor only after the latch had clicked into place. Alexei smirked and said, "What's up, doc?"
Professor Thompson raked his hand through his hair and removed his glasses. Laying them gently on the table. "I really wish you'd stop doing that. It's unbecoming of a wolf of your stature."
Alexei looked at him and shrugged. "You have to keep up with the times, Tom."
The professor laughed, "What times? The forties?" He walked around the desk and leaned against its front. He sighed and his tone changed, "We may have a problem on our hands, Alex. It's a vampire attack."
Alexei scowled. "I thought you had tabs on all the vampires in the area. As the resident Vampire Lord, it's your job to control them." The professor looked impatiently at the Lycan, waiting for him to finish. "Besides I thought you had them all drinking blood from the hospital?"
Thompson clenched a fist against the table and said through gritted teeth, "My people... Didn't attack anyone. They were attacked. By a Lycan."
Alexei sat on the edge of one of the desks and was silent for a moment. Then, "Please tell me it was just an unhappy accident?"
Thompson sighed and shook his head, "Lycan blood was found at the scene. A trail led to the outskirts of town where we found the unidentifiable body of a half transformed Lycan. Female. We cleaned it up as best we could but you have to understand, my people are going to find out one way or another." He looked intently at Alex, "I'm not accusing you or your pack of anything. But we're going to have a serious situation on our hands soon once the High Courts hear of it."
Alexei sighed and pondered the facts. He tapped a finger against the table repeatedly as he thought. "We had reports of a lone wolf wandering around the countryside. Nothing unusual, other than nobody had seem this particular wolf in nearly ten years. Then all of a sudden she vanished. We tacked it up to misinformation." Alexei tilted his head back. "Last we knew she was outside of my territory, closer to Steelhead's." He paused, "This makes the first death since the interspecies pacts."
The professor nodded, "And that's why we both have to be on our best behavior. All of the Underworld will be watching us now."
Alexei nodded and stood up. "Thanks for letting me know. I'll be in touch." He touched ******* to his lips in farewell and the professor did the same.


As Alexei opened the door, he saw the pack waiting in the hallway just out of earshot. He approached them and they swarmed around him, each of them with a question on their lips. Alexei silenced them with a short gesture and they continued on their way outside. The pack wound through hallways and double doors until they felt the tingle of cold touch their skin. They trailed along behind their leader and burst out the doors, welcoming the frigid air and the soft snowfall they had waited all year for. They hooted and howled giddily, their faces covered in goofy grins and awestruck eyes as they pushed past Alexei and dove into the snow with the other students. Alexei stood there, looking for what he had smelled earlier, for him it was more important than the snow. He scanned the horizon, eyes open wide and searching relentlessly. After a moment, he saw his target, leaning against a tree on the far end of the schoolyard, her fiery hair waving gracefully in the wind. "Jenna."
She winked at him and gestured to her right, where an open forest lay uninhabited. He nodded slightly and made his way down the steps, his heart pounding harder and harder in his chest.
I'll be back soon... Leiks you're in charge.
You okay, alpha, sir? Flora always worried for her alpha.
Yeah, I just need a walk is all.
But... Leiks put a hand on Flora's shoulder and shook her head.
Alexei walked to the edge of the schoolyard and saw that Jenna was already in the woods. Glancing back at the pack, he grinned like a Cheshire cat and chased after her.
They wound through the trees, picking up speed and tossing their heavy jackets away.
Come catch me, big boy. she taunted.

He watched her every graceful move, following relentlessly until he had her. He wrapped his arms around her in a tackle and they rolled, laughing all the while until they came to a halt. Alexei was on top of Jenna, straddling her legs and breathing heavily with her. She closed her eyes and grinned wide, her chest heaving. The air was freezing cold but they couldn't feel it as he leaned in and kissed her, entwining his fingers into her hair. She kissed back and pulled away, biting his neck in the way she knew would make him go weak. Alexei stifled a moan and Jenna felt his muscles quiver. She took the opportunity to push him onto his back and claim dominance over him by straddling him. The heat from Alexei's body made the snow melt and steam below them. He buried his face in her neck, kissing just below her ear. She smelled amazing, the musk of her animal side mixed with her perfume drove Alexei crazy.
He slid his hand under her shirt and felt the curves of her slender body press against him and she growled. Jenna pulled away from the kiss, a grin on her face, "Not yet, darling. There's time for that later."
"I've missed you, kitten."
She growled softly, "you best stop that while you're ahead." She grinned wider and kneaded her claws into his chest. Alexei called her 'kitten' because of her fondness towards cats, specifically kittens.
"Are the others here too?" He pushed her up off of him and stood up himself, closing his eyes in the process. He was referring to Jenna's friends who had left with her a year ago.
"They got here shortly before I did. They're already at the hideout."
Alexei nodded, "We'll be there shortly. Do you want to come with us for the time being?" They began walking back to the schoolyard, grabbing their jackets on the way.
She giggled, "I suppose I should, so they can get used to having two alphas around." Her eyes twinkled as she said it.
Alexei grinned, "I thought it wasn't for another year! Congratulations!"
There was a glimmer of pride in her eyes. "I couldn't have done it without you, darling. They made an exception for me since you had already trained me so well." Jenna had gone to a Lycan Academy farther north, in Canada. There, wolves would be trained to become better leaders or soldiers, depending on their rank. Jenna had shown great promise immediately and was put into higher groups and classes.
The schoolyard soon came into view, and Alexei's pack was still playing in the snow, throwing snowballs and just rolling around in the stuff like children. He whistled a little tune and each of the pack members looked directly at him, going wide eyed when they saw Jenna. They rushed over as fast as they could and tackled her with hugs. "You're back!"
Jenna struggled to get up as a dog pile ensued. Alexei's wild laugh mixed with the cacophony of greetings as Jenna squirmed out. Flora stood behind Alexei, this new person's presence terrifying to her. As the pack got untangled from each other, Jenna walked up to Alexei and Flora, who hid behind him like a cowering pup. Jenna looked at her, "Hey. I'm Jenna, me and Alexei are old friends."
Flora whimpered quietly but peeked out enough so she could get a good look at Jenna. Alexei turned to the pack, saying, "We're going back to the hideout. There's some old friends waiting there for us."

Chapter 2
The pack carried on as usual, sa

a crooked ugly man walked up
and said "all hope is spent
i'll build a wall and save you all
and be your president

believe me, i can cure all ills
and make all merkins proud
if you'll just take this oil of snake
i sell to every crowd

for any lie becomes the truth
if you but scream it thrice
so plant the seed then others bleed
and you don't pay the price

come spend your vote to buy my line
of prejudice and hate
ignore the churl of all the world
we'll make our nation great"

a machinating woman comes
the way her husband went
"i've done no crime i'm next in line
to be your president

you see how he goes off the rails
and nothing said is true
i can't shoot straight, i fabricate
but never lie to you

lost last time when set to win
this time did what i can
and worked my scut to undercut
an inconvenient man

we're dealing from the bottom, folks
the country's gone to ***
i may not be the best there is
but i'm the best you've got"

so laugh about it, shout about it,
when you've got to choose
your **** is hoist on Hobson's choice
the poison or the noose

He wore a wide brim hat

That and his other clothes dated him a character was crisscrossing our land was he human or angelic he
Seemed to be changeless it easy to trust someone who remains steady no matter what he will still say
The same thing it is called truth he even wrote it down in his travels he carries a flat leather case he
Hangs it down with a long ******* his side I was honored to read some of what he wrote the title on the
Page it said                                                       I Shall Not Want

He chose here to shift time and place but with the greatest regard and respect he wanted to speak to all
Americans and within the frame work of a people they could identify with and respect in the time of
John Wesley and George Whitfield there were a certain group of people here they are called miners
There they called them colliers of necessity John and George starting preaching in the open fields out in
The country side as George started preaching to a group that was gathered his booming voice carried
Undoubtedly close enough to the open holes that it was easily carried to those laboring below well it
Wasn’t long until the field was full of these blacked faced men and as this firebrand for God poured out
His soul revival fire leapt on all present but this was the sight hard working God fearing men stood
Before this preacher and as he expounded the love of the lamb butchered at Calvary rivulets of tears
made their way down those black faces and made the heart break to see the white tracks left as these
Honorable men found more than just back breaking work and toil with small rewards they found a love
That gave them equality peace a sense of being of unfathomable worth it all so was the greatest need
Of England she was coming apart at the seams because of the curse of Gin it had made its way into the
Church with the priest found lying drunk within its walls the scourge reached this level of contemptible
Behavior a young mother slays her child throws it in a ditch and then went and sold the clothes for Gin
What did righteous loving God do he sent his love into this cesspool it was heavy with his tears it was
Capable because of His awesome power it saved a nation tottering on the brink well what does that
Have to do with America we are not lost in that manner of madness he answers this way drugs alcohol
Deviant behavior in all of our history there hasn’t been such violence against women and children no one
Seems able to stem this tide and then we are financial slaves to a debt that staggers the mind this was in
The near political past but that can be like a soap opera stop watching for weeks and it’s still just the
Next Day and one time when politicians were baring their souls for the better of the country they said it
Takes a spiritual answer the intangibles these powerful entities will laugh and destroy as they were in
England it would have been a reordered world if it weren’t for God’s move in that country we need him
We have dirt and grime on our faces honest hard work but we find ourselves undercut by so much that
Is a travesty to decency it’s not slowing down it only picking up speed read history Rome fell and so many
Other powerful nations as well they perished from immoralities rot our soldiers and military wins
Because of a rear guard of praying people you want a future worth living for your selves your children
And your grand children this nation’s history has been built and succeeded on this bedrock and no other
Family altars at home and in the local church a man or a woman can attain no higher beauty than to
Bow in surrender to majestic love that makes them free and in turn it will free this nation from every
Chain that now has it bound the greatest power is love and you are its radiant recipient go in love and
Be victories the rest of this man’s journal will be decided by you individually that’s what America is
All about anyway what a privilege we have exorcise it!