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Walter Alter Aug 2023
this will be good and slippery
in a whistling fall from grace
feel free to edit in a picture of your choice
the more grotesque the more accurate
while glancing at your wrist watch
over and over when you knew
your 30 seconds was up centuries ago
we agree to be controlled
he said speaking in archetypes
here then is my plan for world conquest
say Bob that was some intro
abssolutely right you are Nick
and just what the tired evacuated
non combatants at home needed
you know Bob our audience should be issued guns
right you are Nick the results would be immediate
h-h-h-howdy there f-f-fans
g-g-glad to see you all  p-p-packin'
ha ha ha ha ha good one Bobs
who does your thinking for you by the way
OK you've been briefed
if I wrote as few words as possible
the page would be blank
and useless as a postmodern hit man
speculating on the utility of spectacles
driven by a fear of the ordinary
in an off the shelf ideological trance
at this point it could go either way
even reality is an approximation of reality
but there is no question of stopping
onward he plunged sarcastically
into a semiotic twilight of the gods
everything red shifted in a bar stool curse
too many crevasses on this ice berg
blinded by white phosphorous
receptors wide open overt and undeniable
incorrect labeling why is it a necessity
would you know your number
if your number was up
he stood before his firing squad
snickering and giggling and rolling his eyes
got a last cigarette
I have to smoke I'm a witch
the squad broke up with laughter
****** their pants
and shot the lieutenant
if I'm in this much trouble now
God help me tomorrow

From "Pageant of Naked Mischief" available on Amazon
Walter Alter Aug 2023
dialog with myself invariably involves others
we are all perceivers nobody escapes
no really and truly trust me on this
no manufacturing of childish evasions
maybe it is best to be born into a family
able to generate family values
ablaze with comfort and sanitation
lost in a forest of memories
amusingly arrayed for shoppers
exactly like the TV version
fortunately I was in touch
with my inner juvenile delinquent
unlettered by any known normalcy
nor crazed by the expectation of gold
or even gold paint from a rattle can
our default addiction to pleasure
is no random Darwinian accident
we really do learn to act from movies
no really and truly trust me on this
our tune is a complicated little number
bassooned in several keys at once
upon your mother's pedestal is one of them
between cognition and reflex is another
in the clue farm keyhole universe
I may need an ax to free my thoughts
just so I can play dumb
in a trail blazing effort to avoid
media suppression by the CIA
the Clairvoyant Intelligence Agency
chronically in for interrogation
OK let's play who's more paranoid
if this poem is minus the above line
then it has been tampered with
a million hand sewn Humpty Dumpty
vital nerve connections later
sutured like Frankenstein's test dummy
a bungee cord full of existential tension
I seem to be strapped to a microscope
behavior can also be modified
by better info if you let it
how's that for mind warfare
pretty propaganda pretty pretty
for the young and the innocent
left screaming in a gas station toilet
wrapped in today's newspaper
comics section puzzle page
how long can the charade continue
when autonomous is still an illegal word
this is an audience participation piece
from the Federal Pencil Council
and for the terminally nostalgic
the night arched quietly above

From "Pageant of Naked Mischief" available on Amazon
Walter Alter Aug 2023
you have such a good mind
why waste it on the next ten minutes
in the grand tradition of spiritual vagrancy
OK then another merry Sterno Christmas
wedged under any freeway overpass
the drunker you get the better I look
some of my best friends are antonyms
granted my thoughts have been poisoned
but by my own semi-hinged family
the stars are bright out here
you can hold them in your palms
they can make you howl like a lobo
loping across the radio tracks
on the outskirts of Zenith Arizona
both ambidextrous and symmetrical
a well recognized dangerous combo
there were silver bullet gunshots that night
and he lay in a pool of moral stupor
wondering what could be better to desire
what might make us more intelligent
could only be answered adequately with
try to carry the weak until they are strong
and shape your clay to get us to the next step
on the desert paradise lecture circuit
ready to sermonize you purple
be sure to bring your snakebite knife
a lot of reptile men out there
and six inch long insects
never mind give me subway crime
it's not the ****** banality of evil
it's the functioning persistence of evil
being a ******* survival attribute
pressing in from all sides
rest your ******* easy lad
teach yourself sanity nobody else will
but at least he could divide
the ground from the sky
connect a few of the zillion dots
knew that death was inconceivable
cursed the day he was initiated
into prehensile Neanderthal wonderment
next I'll probably be hearing from
the Neanderthal Liberation Front
Godzilla stamped out 17 cities
before they invented the Z-Ray
turns every molecule in your body
into hypochondria and pop therapeutics
it was as deep as he got
into a most case scenario

From "Pageant of Naked Mischief" available on Amazon
Walter Alter Aug 2023
to say that rumor has it
is to say that the World Trade Center
collapsed silently and cleanly like
oppositely sexed Siamese twins
who discovered they could mate
I had all channels going full bore
aiming at involuntary insemination
with the aid of a two-handled clam rake
now there's an archetype of malevolence
just how many categories are there anyhow
an infinity an eternity you decide
rumor has it on very good authority
There may be more than one infinity
however eternity is but an extrapolation
of the next easy 10 minutes
who would want to spend it only there
a money robot trapped in labor
dead in a puddle of break time ****
insert your domain name here
a world gone heavily annotated
yearning for the dagger of love
whine your last you holy landlords
at a time when rent is the anomaly
where anomalies are just signals
this isn't a broken-hearted paperback
or a lightning burn to the head
the big eye on the horizon says
he's trying to mathematically figure out
how far to take the next extinction
but is unsure whether to come to us again
as a mystic sophist or a yodeling yokel
we've come out of the dark place
into the frozen lips dimness
looking for aids to navigation
having discovered the secret entrance
clues were left everywhere
let's hope it ends with clean sheets
because I just found out my guardian angel
is a rottweiler with a missing leg
and just as many teeth
one eye is a ball bearing
the other a shotgun barrel
loaded with pillow mints
he rides a mean skateboard
propelled across a landscape
of food and *** smells
no wonder I'm on the run
from my very own mother

From "Pageant of Naked Mischief" available on Amazon
Walter Alter Aug 2023
not in the heart again
for chrissakes it's like Swiss cheese already
he was off his medication as usual
far too much work for a dead end
saw his only ally in the embalmers needle
left his innards spilled in a compost bucket
several dueling scars graced his genitals
history in its entirety mocked his comprehension
had the nation in tears and then nauseous
if our perceptions already lie why shouldn't we
with that as a pathway to relaxation I had to laugh
even after a thousand years of AI research
the electronic government was helpless
resembling nothing so much as a delusion factory
alternatives to logic 101 with Prof. Spike
my latest version Microsoft forehead radiator
absolutely charmingly couldn't get any focus
but the Royal Society of Blind Philosophers
helped me with my little problem
because our endorphin soup is a bit thin
the quicksilver cooks ate first and fell asleep
having thrown their brains into the broth
during the air raid sirens of postmodernity
in the field kitchen of the gods
can there ever be too little truth
for an army of blood diamond wholesalers
now a bit more about paraelectrics
if only I were at liberty to discuss it
yes imprecision can carry signal
but the place is crawling with dilettantes
justifiably taken for a pack of fools
glibly wearing their secret **** plugs
it's a guessing game as you can see
petitioning for a visual diagram idiom
a devilish seesaw but let us restart
then the sun went down
and never came up again
as he stepped into the stone circle
chanting evidence is preferable
to the leaning moonlit tombstones
signal drifting drifting drifting
to all minds great and small
and smaller and smaller
the Internet is the yearned for Messiah
there it's done and out and not to be unseen
you wrestle with it while I proceed
dashing among startled commuters
their dictatorship of x-ray leeches
tossed him out of several monasteries
never met his production quotas
in a kaleidoscope of normalcy
howdy do nail in my shoe

From "Pageant of Naked Mischief" available on Amazon
Walter Alter Aug 2023
He was a cowboy problem child
rescued by a mendicant sage brush sorcerer
resulting in his remembering everything
flawlessly insolently permanently
birth death life things in space have a beer
owner of his own head at last
thanks to whiskey tainted improvisations
and the use of springs and levers
in order to bring the Almighty down to earth
for a patch job on his many severed reveries
he slept on a bed of maguey spines
combed his tumbleweed hair over the burn spots
and tattooed his many and fecund scars into
the outlines of zippers and pockets
Tex Lester was a lariat twirling minstrel
and undefeated Popsicle stick swordsman
subject to a chronic howling for *******
Tex took me under his leathery wing
together we praised the pop up toaster
and often spoke of mechanics and luck
taught me to look at girls all anew
in the little red school house by the cactus patch
Miss Lobowski beat off my attempts
at ******* her leg during her class in ethics
as if a description of total damnation
could repair the broken mosaic of attention
Tex would implore with the tact of a scorpion
madam cover your eyes in the name of decency
what could I do but wake the dead
and digress distressingly in the dirt
a heartfelt rain making non-sequitir
well kids are full of surprises
uninhibited by mystery and murderous rage
completed by a delightfully unsubtle curiosity
but the more Miss Lobowski's convex mariachis
bucked and danced under her wet serape
the more it popped into Tex's ten gallon head
to teach her an old cowboy rope trick
round and round went his cowboy lariat
the desire to repeat pleasure unfortunately
is the desire to repeat it exactly endlessly
and that's the problem the big problem
at the museum of horrible deaths
you grab their ears and whisper
rest your head on a cloud angel
and hope they don't end up on top
of a truckload of flattened automobiles
Tex went mockingbird on her sensoria
let loose his Gila Monster on her panting ****
and together they began robbing banks
this is going to cost me my diploma
Walter Alter Aug 2023
I need to sell this Caddy to the Cardinal
and get my lifelong harbinger mood swing
out from the wilderness of oblique directives
written with the strident ***** of Satan
shaking money from my pockets again
like they do in Burmese shadow theater
where the container is the contained
trying to let it miss your attention won't fly
because we obstinately index the cornucopia
in a total lack of continuity all at once
with a pigeon tongue spoken in barter
fit only for bouncy news anchor banter
pancake makeup a bit too aflame
like the Great Blazing Spiral in the Sky
his mind a bordello of interpretation
memes eating his soul like red worms
only my degree from the School for the Sickly
standing tolerably vigilant between me
and the dervish nuns of St. Manacle
doing their Plantation Branding Iron Dance
for chopped liver epicures at the Bank of Winter
conniving with the demented to create a better world
living dead men's dreams like a second skin
he hated coercion like he hated licorice
his collective unconscious operation manual
tossed on the burn pile half a life ago
going from syntactically correct to uncooked
in infinitesimal quantities with a Nefertiti smile
perpetually enthused by the mystery of tomorrow
just don't try to tell me how to move my eyelids
barely able to walk after the derision of linguists
lobbed horseshoes across my barricades
on a search and destroy mission
and that's space for you
beginning with  the rank elements
God is not dead he is passe etc.
nature is unquestionably to be leashed etc.
a raised by wolves feral non-conformist
everything orbits everything else
which will bend yer crank kid
tried quoting Lenin but it was too easy
the proletariat is people in a pickle
the dueling cucumbers of class warfare
it was a kosher Pentecost event
now I'm on a dozen watch lists
followed by Diana's paparazzi
to this claustrophobic cinemaplex
and its temporal artery of light
at 3 o:clock in the afternoon
a good cheap remedy
following a bad diagnosis

From "Pageant of Naked Mischief" available on Amazon
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