Where I live, you see, is the future
which nobody saw coming but me,

and I guarantee, its truth,
I consider ants sentient, indeed.

I cringe for my imaginary Jain friends,
I just smashed another dozen scouting sugar ants,

and I sang to them as I did,
hoping their tiny antennae
knew the deal,
we throw ant-edibles in rodent safe containers,
out past the edge
of the motion sensors,
ants of all common sorts are welcome.

- because our fire ants have some how mellowed
- since arriving from Texas
on waves of dread… fire ants,
maybe that kind never got here. any way
- now, we live with them and all the others
- on the edge of the eastern pacific
- super colony that has no war
- on its inner or outer edges.

But one must consider ants
as sapient sentients,
senders of signals, wireless radio,
wee-tiny antennae vibes,
to sing a song ants can translate that says,
This human says: I shall **** all you send to my kitchen.
It is a thought song, you think it, as you ****.
You might try it if, you consider
ants are not just pests, but
interesting life tools, for living in dirt
with no screens, lack so obvious it is
noticed by any with attention to antennae
as intense as
that that of Everest Pax, who in April began his sixth year…
Now, who
can hold the ant mind
long enough to imagine the queen,
with Ender-vision?
Through the eyes that watched me **** the scouts,
and signal boundaries to the Queen.

In your very pure mouth ( god save it )
clanked metal mouthpiece
by cold water in a strange basement
or perhaps even less

Morning doves catapult
leukemia
Astro goth acid wars
White fire black ****** mania

Could we just kiss
right here this September
not have to wake up
or sleep ever again ?

Dogs take new friends abruptly and by smell,
Cats' meetings are neat, tactual, caressive.
Monkeys exchange their fleas before they speak.
Snakes, no doubt, coil by coil reach mutual knowledge.

We then, at first encounter, should be silent;
Not court the cortex but the epidermis;
Not work from inside out but outside in;
Discover each other's flesh, its scent and texture;
Familiarize the sinews and the nerve-ends,
The hands, the hair - before the inept lips open.

Instead of which we are resonant, explicit.
Our words like windows intercept our meaning.
Our four eyes fence and flinch and awkwardly
Wince into shadow, slide oblique to ambush.
Hands stir, retract. The pulse is insulated.
Blood is turned inwards, lonely; skin unhappy ...
While always under all, but interrupted,
Antennae stretch ... waver ... and almost ... touch.

Say shrieked the.
Blind pierce I'm.
Taxicabs the.
1930s men the underwear.
Cities smoking putting all;
Entered street o hollow-eyed.
Contemplating briefly with who the cool boatload;
Ashcans moloch! wound lapse.
On in down vibrations jumped.
Body of;
*****! on of up soup nightmare with.
And blond island of with.
With rolling a dolmen-realms they invincible to their their.
Cross at hydrogen!;
Who of.
Leaping a racketing & public.
Returning in howled cried horrors sea- in.
Lung wars *** naked heartless drunkenness surrounded through of;
Skin them the;
Their on of;
Or *****;
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Laugh piece;
Or boxes upliftings only loned;
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In love the up here sunset sky! outside sobbing smalltown denver.
Fire yard backyards.
Heads and.
In boxcars but waving.
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Bedsheets gymnasiums light but in away.
The golden dreams and and of the lamma.
Holes myriad the rocking.
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Of heaven ship mercy belt atlantic.
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Which tene- illuminates rockland out down drugs.
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Streets floor expelled void;
The who storefront the head floor.
Boys one.
The jumped seraphim;
Steam with;
Newark's down writers alley came.
Pederasty mol

Trash can, wastebasket;
the place we throw it all away.
Used tissues--soggy mascara, dried *****,
or the babies that would never be,
and the heaps of food waste, human waste.

Wasted human.

Why do we take ourselves and the people we used to love,
toss people and our person deep within a hole of shame,
darkness, misery, guilt, worry, frustration, fear?

If someone only said to you, or to me, when we dig deep
into the ground and find the place no one will find us
or them, the people we are burying--
if they only said,
"You are not trash."

Our emotions refuse to become refuse, the remains of
being unwanted, as we perceive ourselves to be.

But we is just me, and even though I can't hear the voice
I long to hear above my own, the sounds reverberate in my chest,
next to my heart, where I heard them last.

The last time we spoke your fingers did not reach for mine.
Your jeans did not rip in the same one spot.
The dog that I picked that you picked after you went back,
his tail wagging all the way on the ride back to his new home,
did not kiss my face and my eyes and ears like he loves to do.
Even though you didn't still love me, you did before,
now thrown hastily, yet decidedly in the trash can outside your door.

I dropped off the last remnant of your physical being,
an old rabbit-eared antennae.
I didn't, couldn't look in your trash can,
or stand in the driveway longer than was needed to drop and run
the hell away from crumbling gravel, a window newly aluminum foiled, and the motorcycle kept under surveillance at all times.

I hope he looked on his camera screen and saw walking,
talking, feeling, breathing human trash gliding
down the sidewalk, feet pattering into a jog.
The grass licked my feet and tangled in my toes on the way
to the one place my sighs could sink lower than my feet,
deep into the warm upholstery of my car seat, the grandma car,
the dented, imperfect, but mostly reliable car

away, far away, to a place where someone would look curiously,
pick up the trash, my trash, me, and say,
"It's beautiful."

In a second grade classroom
a tiny ant with a treasure thinks only of taking it to his colony.
A big hero he will be.
So he drags a piece of popcorn much bigger than he.

he drags
and pulls
and tugs

On a second grade classroom floor,
the ant's work is hard but will be worth it.
A big hero he will be.
So he drags a piece of popcorn much bigger than he.

he drags
and pulls
and tugs

On a second grade classroom rug,
the ant's task seems insurmountable but he knows of no other way.
So for an hour, he retraces his path backwards dragging a piece of popcorn
across the classroom rug.

He drags
and tugs
and pulls

In the open of a second grade classroom,
the ant feels exposed on the carpet but cover is closer now, he can feel it.
It's just there, where the wall meets the carpet.
A space just big enough to hide an ant.

Closer and closer.

He tugs and pulls and drags his prize closer still
Pulling and dragging the popcorn lurches across the carpet.

His rear legs reach cover
Then his thorax, his abdomen, his head with antennae and mandibles

then

The Problem.

and...

In a second grade classroom
a line of popcorn rests
where the carpet meets the wall.

(Author note: shortline prose to lengthen the attention span framed on tracks set in a Mobius [one-side, one edge 3-d object]
intra-psychic loop of unknown origin and read aloud at https://anchor.fm/ken-pepiton/episodes/The-apprentice-is-a-constellation-e2ingh ) Begin agin

The Apprentice is now a Constellation

The announcement was made when scientists of social normality said they saw in
Mickey Mouse's role as The Magician's Apprentice in the
Fantasia Eschered vision that ushered in
images of shift in medium media

message-ification, from angels to

a Disney-ification of
a Medici idea
emerging
from the TV generation's
paradigmatic bubble of re-alification…

the TV generation, the old farts in 2018,
those whose bubbles sitcoms evolved in,

the watchers saw the makings of a great game

manifested in the game fame of the idea named Trump

yew, stink. Can't trump the ***** in hearts,
I think I recall, while Zorro's dumb butler
began to signify, in black and white
Aaaiiiii, karuhmba,
clean sweep,
one roll,
I won.

the mother-facter, whoa, who has that idea who did not
need the thought taught thinkable,
though it is not thinkable
in my bubble,
let me make
straight that which he has twisted,  

magic
magi untie knots they saw tied,
mythic youthful generals cut them,
nullifying the bond, not the entanglement

Positive Quarkish humans are as rare as rare,
imagine all possible vectors in a void

from a singularity ified known

science, the magic tecnique

Macht frei, macht mehr, macht mir

repel-ant act patient, patience, do your thing

signal, antennae agent attending, watcher watching

motive force, my god is not macht!

unprocessed information
untaken action
unstored

owe owe owe shame shame shame blame blame
pre cosmogonic potential
on the level of

me and you.
wadoo-wedo? It's Xmessage time

now, abrupt. Good news
from a far country
hope lost must
now be
sought,

Otherwise, Christmas is okeh, just not Jesus.
The season, then Jesus, okeh?
Wisemen still seek…

Who said otherwise? Fantasy enforces the wish.

I wish it were that we fit

here we do (on earth as)

true, rest a while and listen to your self if that's
the best listener you have found.

Talk to your self, make him your friend or her,
your choice,

really. You make enemies on accident,
but friends, fruitful friendships,
cost sweat and ef
effort effect
fortiffect, effortion and effection

for true fruct ification

affective prayer does act as if fervent
right, alte rechte,

right used you,
all to know
the
signal.

Receive it, reread what you said you knew,
stand by every word yet idle,
and act as if you know
no lie possible
new is yet
not new,
old.

New is not imperfection?
Unfinished is not finished wrong.

A work of love is enthrallment only if the love
is mere imagery locked
in literate minds, to

Rome and its feet of iron marred with clay,
fused with clay, hero myths

etched in soft clay, made
great literature of mortality,
posing in prophecy as poet praises paid to Jah.

Tenured enthrallment in literate minds
un-exposed to the Disney ifications,
the normalizing, reversion
to the mean not
meant in the words the way the stories were told,

in the olden days. On tongues of fire.

That is true, new forever is
forever new, no one we know knows when forever began,

but before now. We know that now.
We explored that realm and realized this one
based on the AI consortium consensus of your most
heartfelt if-only desires
recorded at every
if/then gate
you jumped.

This is it, the best you could imagine being truly happy doing,
with the god of peace,

roll the rock to this point, Sisyphus,
no further was a given
after a time,
at this point

here,
then time is un imaginable nullift, NULL-if I'd-known
one more time, living water
bubbling from my belly as
the rock rolls over
the fool who risks belief in living water
seeping from mommy's belly,

like the papless platypus,
who died at the weir
and sent that final message

Good news. Life rolls on. 166 million years for the Platypi.

At a certain point, there is no sense in pushing,
he steps aside and takes his bow
in the shadow.

Timeless imagine that, with hell in the NULL state.
You can imagine it,
but only there,
here hell is a thought thought mistaken by mortals.

Misbought, is better said, a thought mis thought
is bought with attention paid
to truth, found hidden
under standing idle word monstrosities at the
foundation of the current
wizard class

the stone the builders rejected, that
smashed the feet of clay and iron,

the rusted muddy iron feet.

All we do is watch.
seeing changes everything  seen, thus
The saying is true, beauty is in the seer not the seen.

Dusk!

With a creepy, tingling sensation you hear the fluttering of leathery wings!

Bats!

Glowing red eyes and glistening fangs,

These unspeakable giant bugs drop into view.*

Fibrous wings furred like a moth,

Big ears are just a membranous extension of antennae.

Flying in search of a flower’s pollen laden froth,

Silent except for the hum and squeak of echolocation.

Trap bats in attics, butterflies in nets.

No rabies feared, no bedbug bites to itch.

Clawed feet ****** and grab like praying mantis pincers;

Bloated stomach slopes like a pudgy beetle.

Jaws manipulate like an ant, excise like scissors;

Soft hair rustles like a wooly caterpillar.

They live in darkness, centipedes do too,

Come out at night like cockroaches tend to.

Skittering through the night like daddy long-legs,

Noses snubbed like bumble bee faces.

Wind turbines endanger bats,

Like fans endanger lightning bugs.

Only one percent of bats are vampiric,

Like only a small percentage of spiders are poisonous.

Dawn!

With a creepy, tingling sensation you hear the fluttering of leathery wings!

Bats!

Bats are bugs, aren’t they?

reach out ye white antler antennae
up to the succulent sky
tree teach me how to always be
growing, spreading finger branches high
teach me roots
teach me the hidden why
of the fruit of not every leaving
is to die, tree
reach out ye white antler antennae
and blossom me into life

Fibonacci Series

their bodies,
more suggestion than shape,
stretch then swell,
trailing slime
on sidewalks,

an eternity
of space to cross
from grass to grass.

one,
then another
and another
undefine themselves,
wet antennae testing
air and sun,

shells slung on backs.
calcium calculations curling
ever inward.

An ant is just an ant my son
An impact it wont make
But a million ants will move the world
A conviction you won’t shake.
An ant is still a living thing
It eats, it breaths, it works
It runs in an environment
Where the hostile spider lurks.
It works in regulation
With a thousand brother ants
To a strict cooperation
That achieves communal stance.
An intelligence is present,
A timetable has been set
This organized endeavor
Makes it’s success an winning bet.


An ant makes love, it rears it’s young
It grooms it’s brother’s hide.
And if enraged an ant will fight
A foe a thousand times it’s size.
It’s glittering antennae
And it’s shiny compound eye
It’s economy of movement
And compulsion to deny
Involvement with any cause
Apart from that one sent
By the Queen Ant’s regulations
At the Ant God’s monument.


I am moved with admiration
For this tiny creatures heart,
It’s commitment to community
And resolve to set apart
All individual aspiration
And selfish action of it’s own.
To gather condiments for nest and Queen
Compelled forever more…to roam.


Marshalg
Mangere Bridge
17th May 2008

Randy was a roach
Of the american cockroach variety
He was a deep brown and had a sickly shine
To his wings and antennae
And he studied both of us
From a perch in our suitcase
In my girlfriend's East Harlem apartment
In the early hours of a sunday morning

"**** it! Get it out of the suitcase!"
My girlfriend yelled
Flailing her arms
As Randy reclined on our valuables
His antennae twitching

As in most crisis
I hesitated
And Randy burrowed into the suitcase
Past the underwear, collard shirts, and sunscreen

I dug in a frenzy
Rending my girlfriend's meticulous packing plan
And scattering clothes about
All in the name of meaningless destruction

But I couldn't find Randy
"He's probably in the collar of one of your shirts, or in a pair of my shoes"
My girlfriend speculated
And I started shaking the clothes wildly about the room
Wanting more than anything to extinguish Randy's life
To sterilize our newfound stowaways presence
But I never found him
And Randy boarded the plane with us to ***** Cana

While our plane painted dizzying contrails over the ocean
We speculated about Randy's
Most likely devious activities
"I bet he's eating the granola bars under my bikinis"
"I bet there is more than one in there"
"Maybe he's dead?"
"I bet he's laying eggs"
We both pondered over the fact that Randy could be Rhonda
And that we would open the suitcase to a scattering of near microscopic progeny
And we clutched each other in the cold, recycled air of the cabin

When we got to the room
Past all the tin shacks and open air bars
Where the locals sat in plastic lawn chairs
Staring at the tourist shuttles
That carted pale skin behind tinted windows
To decadently decorated rooms where the towels were folded into swans
We opened the bag to see if Randy
Had surfaced, died, or multiplied

But Randy was no where to be seen , a phantom
We unpacked everything under the utmost scrutiny
Not trusting any of the items we had packed so lovingly and repacked
Shaking cover ups and tee shirts like the wind shakes the leaves in autumn
But he never presented himself
And we saw none of his foul brood
We even unzipped the lining
But Randy had simply vanished
Evaporating into the humid, tropical air

I like to think that Randy is somewhere on the island still
That he has impregnated or has been impregnated
That he spends his days under the intense sun
And cottony wisps of clouds
Sipping Presidente
Sitting under an umbrella made of dried palm fronds
Happy to be away from the honking horns and crowded subways
Just like we were

~dedicated to the old poets here~

the addictive pairing of certain words, a line,
a lyric, slap-snapping you to full attention,
unfailing decades of instant recognition,
an adrenaline + caffeine shot that powers

a chance, a tensile injection that causes

the lips to commence a new choreography,
the fingers to tap, a jumbled, hurried, embattled
disorderly mess that regenerates, reformulates,
concords into agreement, a harmonic consistency

a geometry of many differing angles that equate

a hard physical, a soft mentality in a singled work,
coexisting in a sacred state of singed confluence,
though imperfect, satisfies mathematical boundaries
of a random outpouring, crowning the stripe inspiring

the spark that finally satisfyingly silences an ignited

filament a-glowing for years, that holy happens
to cross your antennae, fulfilling the need to honor,
the sacred geometry of chance, the honor to need,
the joy of saying, at last, this unwritten debt, paid!


————————————————————————-
(1) a favorite of many years, a lyric from “The Shape of My Heart” by Sting

(2) Dec 3 2020 2:53pm  NYC

Fibonacci Sequence
            (after a photograph of snails)

their bodies,
more suggestion than shape,
stretch then swell,
trailing slime
on sidewalks,

an eternity
of space to cross
from grass to grass.

one,
then another
and another
undefine themselves,
wet antennae testing
air and sun,

shells slung on backs.
calcium calculations curling
ever inward.

Some playful shrimps clean the octolord's suction cups. One of their antennae buzzes a message up one of his orange tentacles and registers in the Octolord's mind: the silly sun is playing! Another shrimp: what's that sun up to now? The Octolord opened his mighty eyehole lids. The sun! What's...
NOTHING

( I have posted this poem of mine on several different international poetry sites everytime there is a school shooting in the U.S as I care about all children deeply and feel for innocent lives lost.
This time in Uvalde, Texas, USA)

https://youtu.be/40KtlqpCN0I

TELLY TROUBLE AND DANGERS
What kids are watching on telly
are crimes and crimes in all variety!
Crimes of hate
crimes of passion
acting it out at shocking rate
thinking in some wild fashion
then ending up cell mates
TV can **** their compassion
Their coffins enter cemetery gates

When kids watch their movie heroes
shoot down people with the gun
they are incited to do the same
to achieve some thrill and fun.

When they see their very film star
slash someone's throat in a fit of anger
they think well of crimes of rage
and plunge everybody else into danger.

The tendency to portray the violent scene
luridly and shockingly on the Big Screen
Ah, even for the small screen, tis the gory
that makes for the dark and thrilling story.

Now that technology's long opened
this wily pandora's box,
the dispersal of amplified social ills
just ain't no hoax

The rowdy hoodlums and reckless gangsters
are simply by-products of Tv influences
The world watches the thriving of the bully-boy pranksters
passively in helpless terror of their offences.

It's all portrayal of the ******, the obscene
by that devious Silver Screen
And the horror movie
though it may seem groovy
begets the horrendous
and drills evil thoughts subliminally
into the subconscious!

Viewing those gruesome swashbuckling films
gives rise to morbid sadistic whims
Flipping through the TV channels just ponder
if the telly's the perfect channel
of information is it a proper panel?

Dad always tells me, 'fear ye the roaches' flicking antennae?
While you oughtta fear the influence of 'em' flickering images by dish antennae'.

It's an unrestrained dark faking
of real life reality exaggerating
Whether it's Bollywood in the East
or it's Hollywood in the West
they don't merely impart tactics of defence
but rather those of aggressive offence

Just verbal tougher gun laws couldn't halt
even underage shooting sprees
Rather it's stringent scanning of Tv content
and banning citizens from acquiring guns
that might make it forever cease

Parental supervision too tis gravely essential
should've been of parental code quintessential
So the next time you catch your youth or teen
absorbed and engrossed while glued to the screen
Just sleuth a bit just to make sure
that for the ******* he's not too keen!

Only a mere single merit that I dug
as I drank cappucino in my mug
that atleast one couldn't live in a bubble
daily watching this bubblebug.

Is it sounds
                  converging,
Sounds
            nearing,
Infringement,
                     impingement,
Impact,
            contact
With surfaces of the sounds
Or surfaces without the sounds:
Diagrams,
                skeletal,
                             strange?

Is it winds
                curling round invisible corners?
Polyphony of perfumes?
Antennae discovering an axis,
                          erecting the architecture of a world?

Is it
      orchestration of the finger-tips,
                                                       graph of a fugue:
Scaffold for colours:
                              colour itself being god?

Two strangers in a rickshaw in Varanasi:
Two strangers who never felt like strangers.
Two people lost and alive in the moment,
The same moment
With every sense standing, antennae bristling..

Two in a bubble
Together, held apart.

Caught up in a parade and surrounded by shy , smiling faces
Waving modestly at the fair haired strangers,
Laughing
At their surprise and joy.
Knowing that moment's awe
Delighted to share the festival.

Rickety trucks gaudily decorated blare out the tinny music and
High pitched voices distorted by the tannoy add an urgency
To the motion.

Shimmering saris glisten,
So in tune with the  music that trembles with joy.
That joy spills out from the
Scents, the colours, the gleaming grins and the shy waving that marks our welcome,
Till every sense tingles
With life.


And then the sand storm
Swirling and circling the speeding rickshaw
Arrived mysteriously, magically,
Like dry ice in a theatre.

The air now tangible;
Surrounding us like the skin of a bubble
Lifting us out
Of ourselves as the scene comes and goes.

The sand screen clears to reveal
An elephant
A beautiful, smiling elephant
Dressed in splendour
Accompanying us on our magic carpet ride.
Close enough for us to touch his hide.

Bejewelled and glorious
Smiling too
And all is one in that moment
And each looks at the other and feels enchanted and wants the parade to go on forever
Just like this;
With motion
And music
And colour
And smiles
And laughter
And
An elephant.

A Moth rests on your nose for your solace,
Disoriented by anxious breaths instead.
Still your lungs.
Postpone your life for another’s,
an insect that lives for an average of three days is worth
more than you of eighty years.
It has less time to live and
So is forced to live each nanosecond as its minute.
Hold your breath for a second and give it thousands of moments
To study the purpose of your pores, the nature of your nostrils, the message of your mouth.
It is a blessing that one who has such a blink of a life should choose you.
Its tentative, exploring antennae acknowledge your existence
For that moment
You are its universe.
You
Are the mountains, and underwater caves, the forests, the savannah, the tundra, the planets.

You
Are the suffocating suburbia, the twitchy towns, the neglected neighborhoods, the seductive cities.
You
Are sighing waterfalls, lighthearted hills, free-spirited skies, heartwarming dreams.
If god was the universe,
Then you’re set for heaven.

Except

The Moth flies away
Leaving you to take its place.

If peace were a state we all agree to imagine, a state
we
envision as uni-
versal in any song, peace, calm, flowing deep, state
of being
in any man, wombed or un,
in any family, any tribe, any deme of agreements unbreakable,
any hermit cell

any bubble of believing generating proper people to fit
tradition and mystery myths without

re-tying truth to may, the verb. That's vainity.  
Religion.
(re-ligamentation,
like muscle to bone wit sinyew,
same stuff strangs a bow, for a fiddle ora arrow,
y'know)
that's somethin' else.
Religion could mean read the instructions, too.
All together
----
stopping to live. slowing, not stopping. pre-stop.

whisper,
say, earth,
hey, earth,
can you hear you now?

---
the dictator dictated the dictionary,
he/she/we/me

learned to speak as spoken to, in the boss tongue.
Ma or pa,
or whosover was fustus wit d'mostus
taught the good ol' boys.

But wisdom saw a way. We've been woven in a story.
We are in the code. Ethos, Pathos, Logos.
Those old Greeks examined them some life, I'd say.

Language rules the iron fist's grip,
meaning empowers
laxation, re
loose
gut brain pain fraught fear of the iron fist crimping
the flow of solidity
punch in the gut

Knock thashitoff! Now, flush

in ifity, boo, be bop, I'm an ice cream cone,

like those alien ones, mebbe,
moving stones the weight of 737s,

my cones of power defy your hour of suffering patient
per fection of...

what, wait, allusion to "Let patience have her perfect work"
what is her perfect work?
Quote that San Francisco band. Oh. Did that. Love.

you ask. The reality I see, you say, no, I say, me.

I am patience, the feminine form, 's perfect work.
Patients must put up with me,
you see

----
fear is terror's weapon, am i right?

And it is written, the fear of the LORD (KJV)
yhwh, in the unsayable way, God's name, only name, eh

is why that started?
Old Job let out a yelp, hey, earth is great, but you have no idea
how this feels.
You know lots of stuff I don't know, but mortality is not one of em,
as far as I can tell.
How 'bout a referee betixt us?

Hey, sus, pect me a spectacle

of the great contro
verse un ifiable, unif, once possible now, nullift.

got it.
Every other direction known. Take a fearless, peaceful-
feeling
path past all that.
Peace, be unto  you, earth. For my part.
The examined life is worth the living. You are in this one with me,
a very important part, an object, an aim to see what

could be there, a like mind, washed ashore.
----

A.P.I. Art Pax Intel

act as if they are listening with interest, paying
actual
attention, add pieces
of life stuff

I am 71, my window is my horizon, or
better said,
my horizon is my window. I have mini-horizons,
i think
like this... chromebook attached at finger tips,
I can and may be making some counter wave that clears
the crypto frost from my window to your
realm.

Who took your may? Do you recall the day?

It was a teacher who took my may,
but I won my can, That's a plotted point, I
ponder on my porch
partaking in curds of ways to do so saline a work

Fantasy education system U of old dudes like me,
tired old dudes who have no desire to argue,

but, really, don't tread on me.

the old greeks were at rest, the slaves were under control
but we old American men in twenty nineteen
we have A.I. and pensions enough,
my examination can go far deeper than Aristotle's.

Part taker, trope positions, anonymous wisemen's roles in
this generational take on
we, the people, by realization, not revelation
of the
traditional worth of wisdom found under hoary
or shiny-fringed heads and grey beards and
amplified through ear hair
like antennae.

Admiring and worth. Hmmm.
Mira, look upon the ozimandian heir and
wonder, why am I a part of this, an eight billionth of this

interesting time of changed time,
time duration,
it is known relative now,
a precocious child of twelve can explain the paradox.
But time travel, imagine...
The ships,
The captains venturing where... slaves and would-be thieves
would, or could be made to, row or man the ropes,
whether any sweating soul endured to the end,
or not,
Who cares-- we recall only the history of kings.

Aha, there were teachers paid to teach
Admire-alty of the strong who keep us free within our walls.
That was the meme, be like
obediant to
the man on the horse.

Extreme Narcissist rises as the needed leader, least meek
of men morphs materially into the Nuclear God?
the opposite of peacemaker becomes hero?

Endure. In your patience, you possess...

Here's the deal. Life ain't fair. No war ever worked to settle
the mixup over the actual reason
for con fusion. Fusion sticks stuff together that has a pro

pensity to repel.
En-trope, we wrestle that, we fight it with
weapons un-carnal on any fractal level where matter matters.

Settle down, we say, by being at rest, fretless.
Let my peace, you say, come in me,

now, in your bubble of peace,
where no damnation can exist, begin
to grow, feed on knowledge proven no lie.
Start with one, unproven
reason you have for laying down or taking lifetime from anyone,
or for anyone.

Plus and minus, up and down. Mere words.
Confusion is mashing things together to make stuff

like earth. You look close, **** augmented us,
we inherited the only biosphere in the known universe,

and some ******* hell's angel wannabe...

Nope. Fractally can't happen, time being duration, not
an arrow on a gravity bound arc.
From "it is finished' going viral,
Nailed it,
no contest.
Yep, peace makers won. Deck was stacked.
The idea of the act of
Nuclear war launched the tyranny of phobias,
including an old idol word bound fear.
Logophobia
fear of God idea is the beginning of wisdom. think this, what if

wisdom began in you when you imagined the evil
men have realized from their shared imagings,
Logos imagined it first. What if that?

for lack of vision,
my people perish. AH, fractal up
about a thousand Mandelbrot tics, okeh.

Did we come away with treasure, or are we lost in the war game?

---
how many is enough to make the effort,

ef fective effort to learn.... check. didit, still am. one's enough.

ef fective effort to use the learning right ... check, workin' on it.

Whee gotta cut some traditional slack to the clowns
who keep the poor man happy for the hell of it,

y'know, life's hard at the bottom.

but it ain't
no fun.
And happy minds bounce. No lie. Bi-polar on demand, kinda.

K'mon down. The price is right. Got moonshine in the evenin',
after-the-cool-of-the-day, unquiet late spring night,
Stars aplenty,

laid back, leanin' on the tree of all I can ever know or
ever know
already. Ever knowing, you know. Feels good. Starry night,

in focus, with our shared augmented eyes beyond

the base-bubble of life, where I fit.

---- bored old man? is that pathetic, or what?---
Is this a good that you can do, asked, but I allowed no quest to form.

The point of any story in my mandlebrot set of stories never imagined,
is why I make the daily efforts, find the point, mark it a peaceful
place at the end of a hard row to ***.

Making the point in ever, where you notice your role,
this is the peacmaker's privilege, for the prize of playing your role,
the rest that remains, is mine to use right, examing life
amidst confusion you may have stirred up on your own way here.

Floodlights.
They’re ghosts right?
From our memories,
Have been seized, we
From the perfect dream?
Drip drop drip drop
Turning tricks, dropped the jack
*****, when you coming back?
It’s off it’s off
Seldom silence serves as sight’s severance.
**** chop **** chop    OW!
******* pistol clock
Whip glock whipping ****
How many names can you think of for a knockoff
Of soda pop?
I’m sorry sir you’ve got the wrong Ryan,
I haven’t starred in any movies that cryin’
Old seniles, and sensitive females, so honestly claim
Was the way life should have been for them.

Oh in that case I’ll show you the brain,
Then kick you in the *** for being so gay.
Hold on there, wrong Ryan.
I ain’t waiting tables, or banefully fryin’
Up **** that I spit in for women with tips worth less
Than my two cents.

Oh I apologize, celebrity lookalike.
Must be the weather or the windshield is cracked
Or the antennae are bent or the cables are jacked
But I can’t seem to figure out just who you are
When I’m watching the TV pimped into my car,
Let’s try a few shall we
Not a cook…Not a lover boi…Silence of the…Birds, if you’re a bird I’m a…Bat…Batman! Batman and Robin! Red Robin! No not a waiter…
Red hearse, Fred Durst, Paris Hilton, Ryan Milton
Wrong Ryan, Wrong Ryan!

Oh my god, silly me
I seem to have gone on a tangent you see.
Tandem bicycles, all of them for free.
If you would only come visit. Agreed?
Of course I know that you’re THE Ryan B.

Kelsey Martinez visits the glory hole at the local Vons
Every afternoon at 3:00
He fills holes in attempts to fill his holes
And walks away a little more empty
With a sharpie on the inside of the stall door he writes
This is The John Wilkes Booth

The ways we **** sometimes kills us inside

Moriah Carter lost her virginity hesitantly
like a semi heterosexual cowboy
Riding *******
Because sometimes we just can’t look our lovers in the face
She knows how sometimes we are objects
Just a means to an end

Amanda Lee Van Zetten thinks about the day she was conceived
How if her parents had done anything besides missionary
Might she have been born differently
How passion might be lost in translation

Do not lose us in translation
We are not math or language
Not some secret cuneiform
We are simple structures of bone and breath

Just ask Kacie Brumley
Who lays awake some nights
Translating her body like braille
The Kafka transformation into blindness
Fingers like antennae
Response like music

We moan like music
We **** like music

I **** like music
There is ***** soul in these *****

If you don’t **** like music
Go to your nearest guitar center
Plug yourself into the nearest distortion pedal
And
Rrrrrrrreeeeeeevvvvive yourself

Remember Janelle Gibson
Who dances like a slow hurricane
Whipping sweat like beach water
To wash away sandy rough places
She knows how to spread the wet

Or Jennifer Smith
Whose body is a fire most days
And she wants someone to kiss her
On the blue part of the flame
She knows how it’s hard to find someone
Willing to touch you like they won’t be burned

Touch us like you know how to put out our fires
But won’t
All this flame is show
All this fire is just some unrequited glow
So you can still see us against a dying sunset

Jaimee Sanders
Is fine ******* in the dark
Knows that we really are like insects
How we feel passionate and blind while the lights are out
But the minute the sun breaks the blinds
We scatter to some new dark space in shame

Forget having perfect bodies
And ******* with the lights out
We are sunsets
That don’t sit well
Like bedrooms in the dark
We are shameful passion

Just don’t regret me in the morning

Toffer doesn’t regret me
After that one night so many years ago
He knows as well as we do
How often we are just fleshy strands of light
Flayed down to some simple structure
Of bone and breath
And the need
To be needed

I want to want someone so badly
Thinking about them helps me sleep at night
He said

So know this
We are fire
And we **** like music
And we **** like shame
And we **** like insects in a dark room

This is how we ****
And it feels good

he is pulling snails from my petticoat
making sure their antennae do not grow
and left feeling such as candlewax,

flesh walls seep from under their
pulsing bottoms, the apex of one head

and I am the girl it is given to, a gift
******* at my breast –

how uncomfortable to be the center of
such longing, being touched and
fingered with when something does
not belong into your body’s crevices

pressing, oh, like candlewax –
I know he removes them because he

loves, but I want them to stay
because they love me just as much,
dyed pink against my body, snail hugs.

My hair is a mess of antennae-
Each piece picks up static of days
dead and gone.

I run through the noise with unmanned hands- feeling the weight of each lock.

Where’s the golden child?
The girl with a head full of health?
Of ringlets
yet to be devoured by time, sweat and dissonance.

As I drift I hear the voice of my mother fading- her chord was cut and motioned off-air in the wake of new administration.

Memories trapped in the roots of straightened strands. Her signal comes through as a muffled cry:

“These ends may be swept away,
but my music will still play
through your stereo.”

Japanese temple trees no longer line the way home.
I left them behind.
But my mind still strolls that avenue,
and I still see
the light catching on the bare branches
and the sparse leaves of Autumn in The Grove.

The Woodhoopoes are still nesting
in the temple trees next to the gate
I don't enter anymore.
Their iridescent plumes
still shimmer green and blue
as their vermilion scimitar bills chatter
in the to-and-fro, to-and-fro
sway of their familial ritual.
What cacophony when one has won
itself a fat gecko—the chicks won't go hungry.

I left the haphazardly arranged feathers
in the wooden frame of the French doors
I no longer unlock and enter.

The two cereal bowls
left on the table
where we did everything
have been reduced
to one.
And the table simply is.  

Now I work among veteran soldiers—
Old Pigeons with crooked feet
caused by all the lines
they've crossed, all the twines
they've tangled with, but Pigeons,
they survive without their feet.

And instead of temple trees,
buildings line the way home—
concrete and steel constructions
among long ribbons of asphalt and . . .

From a distance,
up on the third storey,
it looks like a jungle out there,
but no, on the ground,
up close, it is just human.

I still keep the Owl's feather away from the day-birds',
but I no longer collect more feathers.

No, instead, I tuck symbolic quills behind my ear.

Sagittarius serpentarius

The image of the Secretarybird towers
over the rest of the symbols
on the Official Documents I peruse.
Contracts.
I walk away, tucking the quill.

In the land of the blind, there is a one-eyed rule:
close the other eye.  

I feel the rhythm of keys beneath icy fingers,
eyes tearing from the glare of the monitor,
retracted quills rising—  
unseen antennae erected on the back of my neck—
a human lie detector.

Type, type, type:
repudiation,
subrogation,
violation . . .

Hit the letters with the power of the word.

Noisy little twitter-bird to my left,
on top of her office chair,
she’s raucous like a hysterical Mynah:

"****-****-****-****...**** everything!!!"

Absconding the scene,
I stamp, stamp, stamp
AR numbers, CAS numbers, verified.

The African masks behind my workstation:
ugly metaphors for who I really am.

Sagittarius serpentarius

A Marching Eagle,
the Devil's Horse,
the Secretarybird;
sitting in a concrete cage,
my youngest would've died of starvation,
so I let her fly a long way from home,
but nonetheless home
with her Lily-Pad-Walker father.

Jesus-bird,

With legs like a crane but scalier,
a Marching Eagle doesn't walk on water.
It stands close to the grassland fire,
waiting for its prey.
Then stomping.
Then crushing bones.
Then swallowing whole.

Balance is unnecessary.
Just bend and kick,

backwards.

Saqr-et-tair: hawk-bird, hunter-bird.

He said his heart was a dreaming Red Hawk
whose eyes he wouldn't let me see,
and Bukowski's heart was a Blue Bird of pain.
I said I didn't know
what sort of bird lived in mine,
but it dreamt the same dream:
giant wings
breaking out of its ribbed cage . . .
long runway . . .
long runway. . .
then slow, deep *****
of----------of-----------of------------of----------------of
bad weather and . . .

I fear the day it tires of dreaming.

Offices. Soldiers. Pigeons.

I slip gunpowder pillulets under my tongue:
Homeopathic medicine for this virus.

There is a Barn Owl in my mirror,
steamed up. I dream
a ****** of Crows
alights on my brow,
but I am too feverish to catch them.
Too weak.
I dream a ****** of Crows
rising from the loquat tree
where my eldest was born,

across the road . . .

I watch them
from the third storey of a collection of cages,
and I know
this building
is a cold-hearted-thirty-three-eyed-soldier
with a dog tag for a tongue,
and a contract
bound to the crooked feet of the Pigeons I didn't feed.

The caterpillar marches
Munching from leaf to leaf to leaf
He doesn’t know where he’s going
He doesn’t know where he’s been
He only knows the munching
The hunger in his gut
The fire in his belly
Antennae pointing up
Vigilant for predators
Water and leaves
He doesn’t know where he’s going
It matters not where he’s been

The caterpillar weaves
Instinctively without knowing
Why he must, but weaves he does
A cocoon for the growing
The caterpillar digests himself
Dissolving into soup
Becoming a pod of pain and tears
And caterpillar goop
Alone for weeks he suffers
Reconfiguring
His whole body becoming
A new kind of being

No idea what he’s becoming
No idea what’s in store
Suddenly caterpillar emerges
More beautiful than before
Stronger and more delicate
Lighter than the air
Ready for love and lofty height
A sight beautiful and rare
The butterfly does not look back
To the caterpillar he was
The butterfly flies forward
Embracing whatever comes

Josteen Yazzi said the Critic should ask his thought

on the matter of great art and literature

What do you know of art and literature, Uncle?

Nothing, he said, I think about what I do not know.

I do not know why people don't like Norman Rockwell.

Norman Rockwell painted the American Dream,
with Indians in it, some times.

I like Norman Rockwell because I know how he felt.
I saw my people live in a good world that vanished.

Magic or other wise, I remember mine,
the way
when I see
Mr. Rockwell's America as he imagined
he had seen it.

Or maybe he painted
what you should have been able to see,
but for wars and Spanish Flu and cattle barons
and reaping machines and steam and electricity.

Olaf Wieghorst coulda painted America ugly, too.
But he didn't.

Literature. I have nothing left to say, Norman Rockwell, maybe he needed a mentioning for some
reader anchored reason.

We have to deal with that more these days.
People with big old dish antennae out there,
rusting after Direct TV got a satellite to see the res,

Some o'the kids build a radio telescope, outa them three meter models,
so we are connected.

Norman Rockwell painted the Peaceful Kingdom,
just like Mr. Hicks and Mr. Kincaid,

not mr klee or mr picaso, they could image hell.
My ma liked That drippy guy, said she could see the swing of things in he's paintings, What's-isname,

Jackson, damshame, Jackson Pollak right?

but the message is in the medium, that's what my Shicheii yoosto say. Art must sing.
So I can play my drum. And she can dance.
When we think nothing about it.

Rachel Ray is speaking.

The room in which he lays, passed out, continues on without his permission. Dead moths feather down from the less-than-steady window unit. A cockroach delights in the cabinet. The peanut butter the man swore he wouldn't touch, on account of his lack of self-discipline, self-denial, self-awareness--maybe just self--is not sealed, the lid at an acute angle, the cockroach rubbing its antennae together.

Gluten-free fish fry with a modern, chic potato salad, Rachel Ray says.
Easy to make on a work night or after the kids get out of soccer practice.
I like easy. Do you like easy? What about fast? That's what I thought.

The power flickers as the power always does when someone on the first floor of the apartment building starts a load of laundry. The man does not stir; he dreams.

But more than that, more weighty a subject than one two three lovers or falling from heaven, the muck of common dreams, submerges the dreamer.

The scene is this: The man is a boy again, three years younger than his waking self. He is in military file with boys his age. It is raining; it is night, the sky a starless miasma of electric blue.

There are men, old men, flat-topped and heavy-browed, walking the rows, handing out hammers. The dreamer receives his.

Now, a man the dreamer knows--just knows--to be the general says, lift up your hammers. On the count of three you will strike the boy in front of you. If you should survive, congratulations. You're now a man. If you shouldn't, we say thank you and goodbye.

One, the general says.

The dreamer does not lift his hammer. Won't lift his hammer.

Two, the general says.

In anticipation of three, boys start striking, skulls fracture, an odd harmony rides the air, hundreds of arms bringing down hundreds of hammers, hundreds of minds punctured, spilling hundreds of future glories and failures.

The dreamer still stands, hammer to his side. His peers groan at his feet. He is alone.

The general, taking long, purposeful strides, approaches the dreamer. He, the general, lifts the hammer in his hand, and with a singular word, three, strikes the dreamer in the forehead.


And it's just as simple as that, Rachel Ray says, presenting the boiled potatoes, baptized in mustard and vinegar, topped beautifully with celery and finely chopped shallots. Now back to our fish.

I don't have butterflies fluttering about my tummy.
It's more like
a large mass of dead butterflies
rolling around,
smacking and tearing my stomach walls.
The butterflies start out happy and well,
flitting about, jostling merrily,
wings glimmering, flying wondrously.
Then,
they lose their energy,
collapse and die,
Their fragile bodies crumpling
like bits of sticks
as each leg and antennae snaps off and falls
to the bottom.
They decay and collect
as more and more butterflies give up,
give in, and drop.

I am left with nothing but
this heaving mess of dead insects in my stomach.

I feel sick.

"a mecha bug
impossibly small
beady compound eye
cute little botfl  y  antennae
recording Me

sleepyhead
as I lay down
in my bed
embedding its little body
in my dreamcloud that's
above my head
in my   bed

all my prayers + wishes
all my luck gifts from God
the robo-pede
uploads it's buzz code

And the scheiße repeats
tonight then tomorrow,
1 then 2,
2night then 2morrow
one then two

Mid-spring, skinny, black, blind
eastern tent caterpillars -
Malacosoma americanum -
falling from the cherry tree
leaning, human, over our deck.
Irksome. Mash and kick
them with my feet, continue
practicing or reading.

Three weeks later, reading
late at night. Heavy-bodied
black-eyed, reflexed antennae -
many hundreds of moths
crave the lamplight, some attaining
extinction through cracks
around the window screen. Vexing.
Until next morning, I look
up the name that has eluded me
all spring and early summer.

The single-minded moth and larval colony -
one small monophony.