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In between   (a poem)
.
my mind struggles against its own illusion
nightmare tumbles out into still morning
light is heavy,
a fog of echoes...
and I am caught
.
day dreams the sunlight
dreams light the day
and I am caught in between
mourning echoes...
like a stillborn ghost
who can't take a breath in the present

….
  
I live on a tropical island and just want to go surfing with my husband, but the nausea in the early morning as I try to eat  breakfast and drive with him to the beach is so uncomfortable.  Day after day it makes even surfing a chore, and I consider not going anymore.  Background anxiety and unreasonable irritation interferes with our marriage, frustrates him enough to want me out.  

For me, a trip to the grocery store or meeting a group of people awakens the same dreadful fear as rockclimbing a cliff. Perspective has been lost in the extremes.  I try to gain some control over this hindering nuisance, seeking situations that bring the same surges of adrenaline so I can learn to master it.  If I can just push past the avoidance that would keep me inside doing nothing, if I can just ignore the feeling I want to throw up, if I can just get out there, I am rewarded with life’s potential beauty eventually.  Many days I do enjoy the thrill of mountain biking or connection with nature when surfing, but there are too many days of internal struggle that reduce what should be enjoyable to a relentless chore of wrestling inner demons.

The VA offers a few sessions of marriage counseling, and the doctor begins to explain PTSD.  ***, I’ve learned to cope with an unreliable brain, but now there’s this?  From what I understand (and that’s just me, an amateur philosopher) Sometimes the brain is so traumatized, that the memory is literally sealed off, encapsulated, protecting it from changing.  If later something happens that is similar, the brain triggers avoidance responses as a take-no-chances survival mechanism.  Literally the brain is protecting one’s self from one’s self.  This all-or-nothing strategy works fending off potential dinosaur attacks, but in our complex society, these automatic avoidance behaviors complicate functioning and well being.  Life becomes an attitude of constant reaction instead of motivated intention.

The website for the National center for PTSD says.  “After a trauma or life-threatening event, it is common to have reactions such as upsetting memories of the event, increased jumpiness, or trouble sleeping. If these reactions do not go away or if they get worse, you may have Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.”  

“Common reactions to trauma are:
• Fear or anxiety: In moments of danger, our bodies prepare to fight our enemy, flee the situation, or freeze in the hope that the danger will move past us. But those feelings of alertness may stay even after the danger has passed. You may:feel tense or afraid, be agitated and jumpy, feel on alert.  
• Sadness or depression: Sadness after a trauma may come from a sense of loss---of a loved one, of trust in the world, faith, or a previous way of life. You may:have crying spells, lose interest in things you used to enjoy, want to be alone all the time, feel tired, empty, and numb.  
• Guilt and shame: You may feel guilty that you did not do more to prevent the trauma. You may feel ashamed because during the trauma you acted in ways that you would not otherwise have done. You may:feel responsible for what happened, feel guilty because others were injured or killed and you survived.  
• Anger and irritability: Anger may result from feeling you have been unfairly treated. Anger can make you feel irritated and cause you to be easily set off. You may:lash out at your partner or spouse, have less patience with your children, overreact to small misunderstandings.  
• Behavior changes: You may act in unhealthy ways. You may:drink, use drugs, or smoke too much, drive aggressively, neglect your health, avoid certain people or situations.”   It lists four main symptoms: reliving the event, avoiding situations that remind of the event, feeling numb, and feeling keyed up (also called hyperarousal)”

Four words strung together: Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.  They’ve become a tired cliché, exhausted from the endless threat of random cruelty camouflaged in banality, weary of the weight shouldering back the wall that separates death and gore from the living.  Living was a reflex beyond willpower and devoid of choice. Control was self-deception.  The mind was so preoccupied with A: survival, B: sanity, in that order.  Rest was a cruel illusion.  The tank was drained, no room for emotions ditched.  Empathy took too much effort, fear was greedy.  Hopefully they can be remembered and found on the other side, if there is one.  Sleep deprived cells were left hyper-alert from the imminent, shot up and addicted to adrenaline.  Living was Fate and Chance, and meant leaving that time and place sealed in forgetfulness.  

Now PTSD is a worn out acronym, a cold shadow of what it feels like.  I try to think of something more personal that can describe the way it randomly visits me, now resigned to its familiar unwelcome influence.  It steals through my brain, flying ahead of me with its own agenda of protecting sabotage.  Its like the Guardian Trickster of Native American legend.  Its an archetype but real enough to make mistakes: Chulyen, the black raven.

A decade after the ER, contentment is found in a garden of slow tranquility as a butterfly interrupts a sunbeam.  My heart fills with bittersweet as I’ve finally found something I love and want to keep.  Just then Chulyen’s grasping black claws clamp my heart with painful arrhythmia and it fills to burst, tripping in panic trying to recover its pace.  The sudden pain drops me to my knees, in the dirt between fragrant lavender and cherry tomatoes.  Pain stops breath and time and makes me remember the ER, when my heart rebelled its ordained purpose for a week.  I had tried to throw my bitter life back in God’s face but He didn’t take it.  Now that I have peace and a life that I treasure, He’s taking it now.  The price for my mistake is due.  It was all just borrowed time and I’m still so young, my children just babies.  God with a flick of cruelty reminds me not to put faith in the tangible, especially when its treasured.  The sharp claws finally relent and I can breathe, looking up with a gasp and the Raven takes flight overhead leaving a shadow.  Bright noon warmth, unusually heavy and foreboding, seems to say ‘there will come a time when you will not welcome the sun.’   Doctors run an EKG and diagnose ‘stress’.

The bird perches on my shoulder two more decades later, always seeing death just over there.  So I sit on the porch just a little longer and check my list again, delaying the unavoidable racing heart and rush of tension when I fix the motorcycle helmet strap under my chin.  I know all those stupid drivers have my life in their cell-phone distracted hands and hope my husband knows how much I love him, and my daughters too.  

Chulyen wakes me at 3:00 am when autumn’s wind aggravates the trees.  His rustle of black feathers outside unsettles summer’s calm night.  He brings an end-of-the-world portent that hints this peace is just temporary, borrowed.  Tribulation will return.

Ravens are attracted to bright shiny things.  Chulyen steals off with treasures like intention, and contentment.  I don’t realize they are missing until occasionally I find myself truly living in the moment.  I guess that is another reason why I crave adventure, for those instants and epiphanies that snap me out of that long term modis operandi of reacting, instead of being.  The daily list of ‘I must, or I should’ can for a brief while become ‘I want’  and I am free.

My companion the black bird perches relaxed in the desert on the gatepost of a memory.  A bullet-scarred paint-faded sign dangles by one corner from rusty barbed wire:
    No Trespassing    
    That Means You
I have a haunted idea what's behind the fence.  Chulyen implies the memory with a simple mistaken sound:
a Harley in the distance is for a second the agitating echo of a helicopter...
or those were the very same words they said when...
or I hear a few jangling clinks of forks in our warm kitchen...
hinting a cold cafeteria at 5:00 am smelling of fake eggs and industrial maple flavored corn syrup,
and everything else that happened that day...
My cells recollect, brace with the addictive rush of adrenaline.  But the raven denies access to the memory, distracting with discomfort.  I trip and I fall hard into the gritty dirt of irritation at the person who unknowingly reminded me.  Anxiety floods in along with fatigue of the helplessness of it all, back then and still now.  I can't go further.  Chulyen’s tricking deception says Leave This Memory, you never wanted to come back.
But I already knew from just recognizing the bird patiently sitting there a sentinal,
recalling every other time he tricked me with nausea and depression.
I tried to tell myself again that behind that gate,
the past has dried up from neglect.
Disintegrated into dust,
Blown away,
doesn't
exist.



After everything else, how to work through this?  The VA gave me a manual, a crudely printed set of worksheets with a government-looking blue cover page:  Cognitive Processing Therapy.
“In normal recovery from PTSD symptioms, intrusion, thoughts, and emotions decrease over time and no longer trigger each other.  However, in those who don’t recover, the vivid images, negative thoughts, and strong emotions lead to escape and avoidance.  Avoidance prevents the processing of the trauma that is needed for recovery and works only temporarily.  The ultimate goal is acceptance.  
There may be “stuck points”, conflicting beliefs or strong negative beliefs that create additional unpleasant emotions and unhealthy behavior.  For example, a prior belief may have been “ I am able to protect myself in dangerous situations.”  But after being harmed during military service, a conflicting belief surfaces, “I was harmed during service, and I am to blame.”  If one is ‘stuck’ here, it may take some time until one is able to get feelings out about the trauma, because one is processing a number of rationales.  “I deserved it because…” , or “I misinterpreted what happened, I acted inappropriately, I must be crazy…”  The goal is to change the prior belief to one that does not hinder acceptance.  For example, “I may not be able to protect myself in all situations.”

(chapter continues with recovery methods)
Julian Jun 2018
The ******* of embezzled glory staunchly defend their counterfeit stature by defalcating the public trust of industrious societies governed internally by compunction and sabotaged externally by the tempests of acerbic fate met with inclement aleatory convergence. To supply a society with ingenuity without being complaisant or officious with unctuous pleas to the overlords we must fashion a new vogue that taps the bustle of giants and aggrandizes the margins to oversee their own creative destinies with scaffolded arrangements of titanic promise and justifiable fluidity to conquer the blinkered dogmatism of a dissolute chastity to inveterate apocryphal tenets of factitious but unmerited perspectives. Democracy crumbles when the convenience of sensationalism supplants the resolve of those that fossick hidden wealth and promulgate validity instead of undergirding pomp with precarious prevarications of duplicitous omission guarded gingerly by the gatekeepers of a ****** sanity that whitewashes the discussion with invented hobgoblins and purblind catharsis. To defeat simplicity and enshrine byzantine elegance as the paragon for voguish commentary rather than abide by a bowdlerized decorum for appeasing simpletons with divisive balkanization through identity politics we can overcome the impediments to human progress that are engineered to persist because of the inertia of the listless and the stubbornness of doctrinaire politicization and invent vivacity and festivity anew. We need to divorce ourselves from pedestrian quibbles of hero-worship that endanger the vitality of the common discourse because of fastidious pedantic disempowerment that ravages us with debased dreams by underscoring nuisances and tolerable nightmares that emasculate the virulence of the liberated individual and subvert his ambitions to contend with a picaresque world of limitless promise and self-motivated internal wealth.
      The bane of modernity is how chary the world becomes because of fractured histories intersecting with controversial destinies and the antidote to that poisonous self-defeating self-censorship is the audacity of brazen challenges to expurgation through assiduous resourcefulness and delicate diplomacy in wrangling controversies with outspoken courage rather than whispered resentment. Temerity waged in inclement circumstance is justified and curiosity stoked by lambent flames of fulgurant individualism should be fortified to the extent necessary to conquer the feckless spoilsports of unctuous puritanism and institutional obedience. The quacksalvers that blather about inconsequence strand the imagination in a desiccated desert that is ostracized from the palettes of the artistic whim to wield efflorescence rather than squander life in pursuit of perfunctory lucre or tenuous solidarity around banal idealism promised by social justice warriors that forget the biggest war being waged on humanity is on the ingenuity of the common discourse and the liberty to opine about real issues rather than saccharine conventions of emasculation through linguistic imprisonment and epicurean slavery to fashimites who relish the buzzword but never the enlightened audience that scoffs at feeble attempts at cultural commentary like Childish Gambino’s “This is America” music video. This particular artifact is a demonstration of how childishly fickle the plebeian mentality really is, stitching together a bricolage of violence to engineer controversy and serenading it with the most banal music imaginable and exhorting people to herald it as a high artform while inundating the world with unimaginative comic book movies and Star Wars rip-offs because of the lucrative business of formulaic replication. “This is America” should be regarded as a parody of itself because of how hackneyed its design is and how cacophonous it sounds and mocks its audience with lowbrow tactics of adding tinsel to trash and marketing it as the glory of tatterdemalions rather than the refinement of true cinematic achievements that have been relegated because Warhol’s Campbells-Soup-consumerism trumps true belletrist in the public view.
        Cultural watersheds punctuate our history with salient achievements in experimentation, but the formulaic profiteering of buzzword sensationalism and yellow journalism and the ostentatious glorification of promiscuous boasting and fancy cars tantalize the mice to continue playing slot machines rather than penning a novel or doing something promethean. The world scoffs at Trump but ignores the bigger institutional caveats that endanger us much more than a pragmatic albeit unconventional pontificator who is complicit in constructing a false narrative to enslave mindless people to fret about eminence rather than delight themselves in the consequential nuances of established refinement that used to serenade the world with flourish and spectacle. The world kowtows to the crusade against flavor-of-the-week enemies of the liberal-conservative syncretism because it has been conditioned to believe that synthesis is the only logical solution for the polarized worldviews of churlish people that become parvenus not on their merits but on their marketable pitfalls and their public foibles. Peccadillos are more important to people than virtues and this makes society morally bankrupt if we loiter around Astroturf causes that have been infiltrated by corporatism and venal debauchery and acquiesce as disempowered gossip hounds that hunt in packs to find jest in aberration rather than achievement in self-created narratives that defy the stupid purblind boorishness of the mainstream media and its haughty liberalism or the persnickety condemnation of priggish conservative moralities that had an expiration date 50 years ago. Who the **** cares about transgender-touting-gender-fluidity quidnuncs and the snooty obsession with lurid personal endeavors of reputable people that made minor ****** transgressions in a world policed by wide-eyed feminazis that seek to ransack men of their vital virulence to spotlight their unjustifiable oppression. Women are oppressed but the carnal nature of their calumniation and their vindictive powers of persuasion are deployed with such vehement vigilance and such distaste for the majority that the world relegates itself to quibbles of celebrities rather than substantive issues. There is a systemic feminization of society occurring that seeks to demarcate despotic uxorious pleasantries as an incarceration of vocal dissent against supercilious women and their tamed men that slavishly grovel in repudiation of anything prickly.  Men historically have oppressed women but the solution to this quandary isn’t a reverse discrimination where the minority concern is spotlighted as a majoritarian issue that overshadows the disproportionate nature of our society where nominal accreditation is afforded in a non-meritocratic way to absolve people of their carnality and demote the vigorous defense of human liberty as secondary to compromise solutions that appease more people than they offend but simultaneously result in suboptimal conditions that reward arbitrarily coachable people while jettisoning anyone witty enough to be capable of insubordination of a hedonistic epicurean world obsessed with appearance and ravaged by the decadence of formulaic profiteering at the expense of originality and true promethean art that is herculean enough to defy hackneyed tropes and siphon the best elements from a piecemeal world variegated with complexity but stifled by fomented hatred.
The solutions to these problems is to create a watchdog group of artistic critics who become eminent and ubiquitously heard enough to offer creative consultation to the artistic endeavors that we consume and the music that is curated for fastidious ears that crave euphonic originality rather than the banality of easily dovetailed bass-heavy cookie-cutter garbage and the gaudy tactics of talentless rappers whose swagger derives from  the intersection of opportunism and the divestiture of an industry that rewards gloated supercilious epicureanism and meretricious marketability. Am I the only one jaded by second-rate superhero movies that infest the cinemas that borrow from Michael Bay while thrusting pulse-pounding but narratively bankrupt movies down the throats of consumers that might prize the cinematic originality of the heyday of filmmaking? Is it always high art to invent controversy that is witless or half-witted just because it will create buzz? Shouldn’t we condemn the laziness of society in acquiescing to the penury of the modern cultural narrative which belabors the dead horses of racism and sexism ad nauseum? Shouldn’t we fight the war of against inequity through legislation rather than hibernating about scandalous eminence and testy malfeasance?
          Liberty should be championed above all else and we are turning our backs on the future unless we muster the resolve to diminish the sway of the common narrative and aim our spotlight at consequential endeavors rather than the tropes of prosaic and pedestrian bastardization of art and culture. We need to fight artistic laziness which has ravaged our culture and castigate the tactics of wannabee celebrities that use lurid tactics to attract an audience by bedizening themselves with Pyrrhic ostentations and rampant fakery to create more melodrama in a world that needs to be less histrionic. YouTube celebrities swarm us as they get high on ******* and lean-- at our expense-- and vandalize property and convincing nine-year-old’s like Lil Tay to flex her money like it is infinitely renewable in a finite world where all our attention is wasted on artless artifice of less talented people that know how to engineer a ruckus by strutting themselves beyond all decency and selling out to a corporatist nightmare of enslaved convenience. We need to be more vocal about the dissolution of artistic merit and the formulaic repetition of successful formulas that jade us and make us yawn about another retread of a previously successful idea that is milked to the point of cruelty.                                                         ­                       
       Let’s change the narrative and focus on creating true art rather than reacting to the meretricious tinsel of the vogue consensus which is so impotent in its ability to rivet audiences because it has become so notoriously lazy. Fight laziness in art, dismiss your news feeds, be resourceful, seek true happiness rather than find yourself hoodwinked and duped by the idea that Trump is the most important issue or getting caught in thought loops and brooding about sexism and inequality. Let us strive to be egalitarian but within limits that would also appease hominists rather than just the hypertrophy of the leftist narrative that seeks to cage us with the doublespeak of complaisant conformity.  Reject the unctuous charlatans that pretend priggishness when their banausic purpose is barbaric but beguiling to be a lullaby for laggards. We need to fight for the future of civilization rather than hobnob with convenience and loiter around decrying false perpetrators rather than systemic injustices that could otherwise be rectified if enough people fought for it. We can invent a future that is a great festivity serenaded by cultivated artistic refinement and forget about the trifles that divide us. United in ambition and fueled by ingenuity we can defeat artistic laziness and be resourceful with how we decide what is newsworthy. Spurred by the argosy of proactive motivation we can change the world in a substantial way by deciphering the subtext that governs the world. The subtext is everything!
Jordan Rowan Aug 2015
Let's get some sunlight
Let's start a bar fight
We'll take our problems and forget we have to solve them
Let's take two tabs
Let's start a **** lab
We'll cover up insecurity with promiscuity

Let's sleep 'til Sunday
It's only Monday
I have to work at 2 but I think I have the bird flu
Let's call the drug store
Ask for a couple more
Insignificant reality crashes into banality  

Let's make a hash pipe
Out of Brite Lites
We'll quote Pulp Fiction with Ezekiel's conviction
Let's start a fight club
Where we can make love
Punch me in the ear and then I'll disappear

Let's start a new life
But after midnight
There's a whole universe waiting to be uncovered first
Let's make a difference
Let's make new friends
Let's go where the wind blows but first I have to put on clothes
Dawn Treader Jan 2017
If only your skin was a lighter shade
Here, this bleach might come to your aid
If only your lips weren't so full
Maybe the boys would like you at school
If only your hair wasn't so *****
Here's some caustic chemicals to make it more slinky
If only your ******* weren't so large
Here's the number to a surgeon, call and see what they charge
If only your waist was smaller (just a few inches)
Here's a corset, see how tiny it cinches?
If only your *** wasn't so round
How 'bout you run some laps to lose a few pounds?
If only you'd get your nose out of books
I bet you'd garner more stares for your looks
If only you'd change your curious personality
I hear the masses prefer banality

If only you'd see me for me
Do you know how content I'd be?
If you can't do that
Then leave me be.
A collection of things people have said to me over the years. I have developed a cynical complex because of it.
Justin G Dec 2014
I fear thyself
I fear attraction
I fear unfamiliarity
I fear attention
I fear incidence
I fear conversation
I fear interaction
I fear answers
I fear questions
I fear to tell my story
I fear to hear yours
I fear compliance
I fear conflict
I fear benevolence
I fear mutuality
I fear victimisation
I fear change
I fear to love
I fear to hate
I fear significance
I fear insignificance
I fear the lies we tell
I fear the truths we hide
I fear imprisonment
I fear freedom
I fear hope
I fear despair
I fear old age
I fear children
I fear intelligence
I fear ignorance
I fear to take
I fear to give
I fear to borrow
I fear to loan
I fear to exchange
I fear to teach
I fear to learn
I fear to laugh
I fear to cry
I fear to be
I fear not to be
I fear to be afraid
I fear to be brave
I fear to die
I fear to live
I fear discomfort
I fear responsibility
I fear to gain
I fear to lose
I fear victory
I fear defeat
I fear antrophy
I fear hypertrophy
I fear inertia
I fear activity
I fear obedience
I fear disobedience
I fear justice
I fear injustice
I fear totality
I fear poverty
I fear embarrassment
I fear addiction
I fear declamation
I fear guilt
I fear pride
I fear delusion
I fear unfulfillment
I fear my apathy
I fear to be wakeful
I fear to be tired
I fear my capabilities
I fear my incapabilities
I fear my dreams
I fear my nightmares
I fear women
I fear men
I fear being disabled
I fear misinterpretation
I fear misrepresentation
I fear altruism
I fear limitation
I fear to endear
I fear to inspire
I fear to forget
I fear to remember
I fear self doubt
I fear discrimination
I fear starvation
I fear migration
I fear fragility
I fear formality
I fear banality
I fear enticement
I fear cruelty
I fear judgement
I fear to embrace
I endure what I fear
I endure because I must
I endure myself because I fear
Endure thyself
Lou Costello’s
bronze semblance
dipped and danced atop
his granite pedestal
spinning miasmatic tales
of enigmatic hope and
resplendent labor

“the sweet
unbounded
expectation of
hope once
surged down
this city’s streets”
... said Lou

"I was a self made man
until someone thought up
the idea to cast a bronze
caricature of me and
bolt it to this grand rock”

nostalgia
is the boldest form
of fiction
culling from the past
the things hoped for
in the now

“growing up
here
I clipped school,
played ball,
rolled drunks
and fought
nickel ante
prize fights
to get my
daily bread,
I literally
punched my
way out
of this town”

a smith smelts a
batch of liquid bronze
pouring molds full of
a fervent wish
a madman's delusion
a priestly promise
a Pollyannaish illusion?

baskets overflowed
gushing hope, offered
at the holy altars by
honorable workers

it was said that
a morsel of labor
could feed 5000
starved families
breeding hopes as large
as a half cup of water

hope
the size of a
mustard seed sparked
recovery of 1000 sick children
dying from the Asian Flu
at St. Joe's

hope
willed an end to war’s slaughter
which ironically was bad for
Paterson's war profiteers
forcing layoffs
sparking labor actions

hope
ignited conflagrations firing
the resurrection of dead industries
lately there is a lot of hope
circling this one

miracles spring
from the pronounced
lips of trembling hearts

the hopeful amassed
slogging forth on bloodied toes
along razor thin slices
of expectation
hoping to begin again
eager to build anew

new starts sometimes
grow old fast soon
hope expires
winging back home
on broken wings of
misspent labor

hoping for the snow to stop
a lump of coal to last
the labor of a budding crocus
rewarded, breaking through
the hard crust of winters end
blooms for a day then expires

hope is a beggars wish
gods give yearnings heft
prayers earnestly chanted
willing paradigm shifts

prayers of absolution
play the angles
calculating odds
of probabilistic mathematics
a sure thing long shot
the prayers of the
righteous availeth much

we hoped for jobs
we hoped for leisure
we hoped for love
we hoped for labor
we hoped for rest
we hoped for luck
we hoped for a life
wealth health blest

laughing at our follies
crying over defeats
our city a tragic star
a comedy of schemes

our
hope and labor
is the keystone of
our self construction
cornerstone of
a grand city’s edifice
its negation our
deconstruction

tragedy and comedy
invested and spent
falling and laughing
foibles and faith

belief trumps evidence
happenstance slays surety
horror and beauty
compose a life's mural
nothing happens
by mistake

learning and ignorance
fate and chance
the risk of randomness
expiration dates arrive fast

predetermination a bold
conviction, suspicion,
intention a splendid  
kismet  

banality becomes
sublime  
laughter is ******

...the mystery is in
the loam... says WCW
...the finished product
is what I’m after...

“what the
**** are you
doing here?"
the bronzed Louis
gagged

"Hey Abbott
look at these clowns
in the yellow plastic
garbage bags!

bobbing in a sea of
midnight mist

a posse of
neon clowns
donning glad bags
on the most dismal
night of the year

twinkling under the
gloom of my playgrounds
faltering streetlamps

“twinkling targets
easily tracked,
a trained eye,
a steady hand
could pick you off
at a thousand paces
what gives?

“what the **** are
you doing here?

“what the **** am I doin
here for that matter?”

“the second question
is easy to answer,

“I’m Paterson’s
finest son....

...“Wherever he is tonight, I want him to hear me," and went on with the show. No one in the audience knew of the death until after the show when Bud Abbott explained the events of the day, and how the phrase "The show must go on" had been epitomized by Lou that night....

"Mr. Bacciagalupe
he use to live on
Cianci Street

“who’s on first?
what’s on second?
I don’t know is on third?
was a riddle one recited
to get into his speak

“his Ginnie Red was legendary
and no one was ever known to
die from drinking his bathtub gin”

the old world ways
are made new
by the arrival of
new old worlds
supplanting old Italiano

“where is all the goodwill capital
we invested in this place?”

successive generations
thought it best to export
the capital of the
expired generations
elsewhere

it was ferried
across the river,
crossed the
city boundaries,
leaving for Wayne
and the fairer lawns
of Wyckoff and the
greener grasses of
Franklin Lakes

all the old wise guys
died off or were sentenced
to life by their children,
some still doin time in
old age homes in
Rockaway

all the sport clubs
boarded up but their spirit
lingers like an espresso
ring on a post slurp
demitasse cup

“hell my body is buried
in Hollywood but here
I am, holding court in
Costello Park
talking with you
knuckleheads
a baseball bat
my royal scepter
a brown derby
my crown, truly a
King of Nothing,
Lord of All

“the soul of my city is
eternal,  like the comedy
of tragedy or is it
tragic comic?

“here I remain
omnipresent,
spinning about
frozen forever
in a magnificent
bronze age,
erected to my likeness
beholding me
to stand witness
to this litter strewn park
decorated with corrugated
Big Mac boxes, plastic
Big Gulp tops and discarded
rubbers bagging the ****
of this cities arrested
citizenry”

never actualized
never naturalized
citizenship denied
at the commencement
of ejaculatory flows
of joy

unfulfilled spirit
of citizenship
never to experience
the splendor
of yesterday’s
modernist
metropolis and
Lou’s stand up
routines

“look at that John
over there, that guy
wheezing like a
ruptured blacksmith’s
billow, pounding away
laboring to get off

“the poor little
******* just hopes it
will end soon

it does
**** he’s done

I” knew that guys
grandfather,
getting off
runs in the family
and remains one
of the few things
that draws the progeny back
to the old neighborhood

“you can still glimpse
snippets of the old ways
rising in new ways

“an Armenian
sports club
around the corner
is a new
incarnation of
the old Neapolitan
social clubs that
once demarcated the
neighborhoods

“these days
great grandsons
of once proud
Sons of Italy
come back to the
old neighborhoods
begging for hand-jobs
from crack ******

“welcome to my
burlesque world

“since the Gumbas
moved to Franklin Lakes
the wannabe wise guys
became ***** whipped
dumb *****
making ***** of
themselves with
their painted ****-job
Jersey Housewives

“they ***** their families
out for a bit parts on
MTV and a free lunch
at the Brownstone

“their grandfathers
labored long hours
to assure the well being
of their families in the expectant
hope of a better shot at life
but the children squandered
the hard earned bequest lovingly
bequeathed by reverent forebears

“in the wee hours
one can sometimes hear
a weeping chorus
of concrete Madonnas
musing melodious lullabies
to the sleeping
Lombard's lying
in uneasy repose at
Holy Sepulchre Cemetery

“they twist in their graves
dreaming of a last dance with the
Lady of Unending Sorrows
at weddings for unrepentant
wayward daughters and prodigal sons

“its small
recompense for a
lifetime of an
honest day’s work”

the dashed hope
of squandered labor
begets a city of ruin”

at the
parks northern corner
the Salvation Army’s
rumbling bivouac rests
in a dreamless sleep
its residents
patiently waiting to
inherit this city
abandoned by
nuevo wise guys

this tragedy
is all comedy
the comedic hope
of tragic labor
buried snoring
the millenniums away
awaiting resurrection
day

Lou was getting ******...
“get outta my park

“the artists
in the rehabbed
factories across
the street
are resting

“nothing much
going on there

“if you're hoping
to find some
homeless slogs
head over to the river
you should find some there”....

Music Selection:
Frank Sinatra, High Hopes

jbm
Oakland
3/26/13
Part 5 of extended poem Silk City PIT.  PIT is an acronym for Point In Time.  PIT is an annual census American cities conduct to count the homeless population.  Hope and Labor is the city motto of Paterson NJ, nick named The Silk City.
ConnectHook Sep 2015
Dear diabolic debutante / Spawn of the unfathomable abyss of blackness / Daughter of dreadful dead desire / Black-shrouded sinister sister of celestial gloom before whose imperious gaze the heavens fall silent / Whip-lash girl-child of the graves whose pallid visage kindles the myriad infernal fires / Autocratic vampiress of lunar doom whose winding-cloth enfolds the thousand horrors of blood-drenched nightmare / Thou that wanderest the cypress-crested hills of funereal necropolises / Whose icy glance cracks the ungraven tombstones of utter desolation / Empress of night and madness / Who stalks the locked and shadowed hallways of unhallowed thought / Whose burial-boat glides the still waters over Lethe’s silent depths to the unglimpsed isle of eternal mourning / Whose parapets tower above the fiefdoms of quotidian banality / Whose flying buttresses overlook the Stygian waters of the forgotten drowned denizens of damnation / Whose unshackled dungeons open to worlds of regal splendor / Whose spires pierce dark skies where oblivion buries the ruined cities of revelry under the drifting clouds of leaden time / Oh maiden of melancholic alchemy whose petrified passions transmute base metal into pure gold…

May the gibbous moon of equinox shine its baleful eye upon you; may you tread in sacramental calm the winding starlit paths of somnolent cemeteries; may my unmixed metaphors unveil in delirium their parabolic mysteries before the smoldering altar of your uninterpretable allegory; may the favor of your scorn forever lay me out, embalmed, undead, on the cold stone of merciless reality. Behold: in cryptic script of spectral apparition, in tracery of coded illumination, amidst the dawning rays of torment I write thine unknown name on the threshold of daylight. And from within the mortared wall of self I speak forth from my sepulcher the Sibylline utterance,
unsought, unheard, undreamt:

JUST WANTED TO SAY ‘HI’ !

http://tinyurl.com/og3so8a
♥♥♥
Valo Salo Aug 2015
killimportantmodernlikemrwarbombgotdirtylovecaredirtbeautifullife­secondgodreallightknowtimenakedtearjustworlddieheartdeaddevilhuma­noidvladmomentwanteyesmusiclonelyrespectnewssaygoodwordsburnheave­nbighateairdeathwhiteyearsfreecaught machine guess right blood human night lost town bad burning hair born wild black car eat ate likes democracy planet pope newton make hands forever way live look alive thinking end oh work old living sick sun drive song bed tears cold clean police blind fat spit men pop law tells boring moral religion religious child's it'll soul thoughts intelligent tell cause flesh lips feel dying kiss ****** trying self history course justice pure deep **** try leave broken mountain brain owns child dog universe bleeding going lights insane build makes runs imagine stupidity bright stupid rich children quiet worry bite nothingness monster hell image exist crash millions **** holy terror satan hungry thousands ******* behave sentences tv nation ****** christians believers banality quack leprosy psychopath collider bono let's hard-on million turn shot silly face stone away maybe little **** breath taste tongue dance left pieces single charging red impossible fear fears america money wrong truth sea calm ***** fact cut meaning evil flaw hole laugh matter wasted hope talk new think feast stay questions wearing able head true stars swallow clowns queen art hard getting order floor flame missing felt door simple strong laws politicians tongues faith freedom tree flows gold lot space great happy **** streets sad mention poor species fake watching emptiness falling shame drugs lines rivers idiot late rise goodbye waste faces answers committed atmospheric birth games flood biting creature constant organic street witness stinking press large dressed glowing mass floating crimes morals dinner screaming nonsense deadly velvet laughs guts lord cries compare pressure fame superior oil spiders poetry views starving desires avoid genius web coded rights ape principles ideas possibilities priests creeps american sensitive jews humans reset americans **** genetic dna diapers ******* muslims idiots optional companies ******* ******* christening jihad imbeciles reincarnation ***** who's what's teeth's self-righteous inside jeans gone **** hello goes smile seconds walls does minutes fun lies lick wet things score dreams thirst hold cheeks taking pull forgot secret dust soldier skin finger son pocket long star shine moon fast earth day stand year sleep peace house need spend comes mind help lie reading count fall hips close disappeared thing rude rust stir sky power family crave surely grow angels truly helpless smell hand driving nail thought created suppose believe personal tune feelings sharpened building messages paper worship word lunch force souls future kind times trail path days record open means perfect distant thousand youth write attention figured famous dj fly offering promise gently high excited enter ecstasy endless faded laughing dreaming short boy sure rain ice bond lip loves man humanity genocide wars food water families corrupted fool gun sorrow ghost buildings wonder step suffering roam bones stained knows delicate suicide catastrophe lab completely marry kitchen read secrets circle grave hunger waters inner filled suffocated ending veins crying deeper stopped insignificant slip non throat explodes gloom stare burger drown mirror endangered cup ears bear shirt voices sins saviour birds sorrows treat selling young crack necessary ego historic symbols travel volcano game scratch ******* confuse spill scream melts following *** known mama speed dress smelly highway speeding washed coat drop absolute intelligence mountains speech wheels father wants rip stains ground save pale surrounded swimming final miles motion sing confused sons sprayed wall swallowed road poets nightmare ***** brains commit possible language golden key useless bombs sake raw john changed takes animal replied stories content track locked drives pit soaked honest everybody horrible gates hall worked understand control meat miracles sheer fed message goodnight split commitment claim knife fur folk madness monks tricks holes creatures terminal idea cracks books diamonds smashing stripped pleasures flowers utmost openly grim bare monstrous weaker everlasting drank banks weather raven hang birthday scar gravity ******* ******* sunny snake yeah square serve sewer odd stiff stem shiny knocked noses duck troops chinese necks uncle stark dig service faster prince bold public utterly plane layer seriously powers strike heroes seven disaster slice trash eternally lawns sowed wife issues lasting kings crawls event diamond significance swallows prisoners bleeds russian friendship oceans matters piled dish cell ******* dieing trains milky haunted fuel lumps seats owned pollution systems vanity champagne degree pump command daughters fortunately talent carpet foolish leg carrying virgins hosts lump dangerous license cleaning crucial cells wedding musicians greater genitals china responsibility knot jet weapon rottening slaughtered decent stolen goat absolutely tool limit possessions snakes righteous ozone happens illusion bounce shabby producing tumbled equal neurons insect biscuit notion link staircase fulfilled chewing ordered gadgets transporting craves stunned strategy damage fragments borders insurance jerusalem panda lasted cultural sluggish ****** member coins eyebrows contains buddha pointing clever virus overwhelmed acts solve classical fluid media mcdonalds widow cloths russia reported babys collapsing tom homeless nearest calculated humour ravenous boiled depend reject phones earthquakes discuss **** ****** misconception prodigal social jane nasty eats president sipping propaganda super electricity fathom spilled carrots liver bored behaviour fault similar ethics commercials sells boiling mortgage donald tons directly apes gruesome civil french passers theory construct crashes abnormal pleaded hack clan eaters delusions flaunt gonorrhea vegetarian taxes rockets leash ripping rational pirates embarrassing dolphin nationality shipping ****** thanksgiving goods deals hopefully nephew flounder kennel ****** communists erupting haircut gays ku klux chins justin draped cerebral usa ***** puke ***** fraction neutral warren fornication belive batteries stoning chopped buddhism tolerate enlightened antibiotics dependence mae apocalypse irrational vise pets comedians sympathies somalia crises terrorists breakdowns peppermint biological ***** disobedience ****** vandals hippie fakes mac bombing nosebleed mafia infamously lesbians berg stylish pr dubai burgers production cruise commander embryos presidents clones gluttons chock ******* illegitimate iphone philosophical yucatan refuges celine inclusive spam dion sanitary waddling mullahs nationalism karl ***** remix sensationalism psychopaths techno disney www punks bombay pomme rappers stucked elixirs bjork mutilations allright lagerfeld enormously elton rabies damien hirst capitalists ravers idealism salaries allready freddie zeitgeist dictatorships invoice asmile berlusconi scarified subjectivity riped ozzy snobbish bnp mcdonald we're you'll we'll beethoven's god's men's arseholes queen's feet's elizabeth's putin duck's einstein's poppop puppy's pig's buffett warhead self-satisfied post-human poo-poo 15 2000 fannie pictorial laundries ****** mahmoud caliphate woodworks biebers frites wonderfulmeaninglessness mujahedins fwarhols pseudo-subjectivity anti-document exstraordinary ahmadinejad behavelike muthafukas somethingeverybodyreally yourlanguage crucialenemies sayevil alicense yourselfwear thatyoudon'tlike someheavy reallymeancontrol andindulge swastikasneversayaword oneincludingyourself yourselfagunandplaywithknifes eraseany heartace parkistan bashra iq's entertanier 28000000 märsk mc-kinny möller onepays isharshand muthafuckasdrop representingallthat toyesor ifno hintsaboutyour tosmallviolentgroupsin societylet andbeseenamongsymbols ifasked cremaster nothingofthisworks andstrangereligiousbehaviours automaticgunandpoppop getdrunkand oddpoint friendswithodd spreadrumours notunderstand ofviewspicksome intosomeviolence yourselfintooblivionaboutyour surroundyourself behavioursand disrespectfuland dotcom
Andrew Rueter Jun 2017
I peruse exhibits through the modern art museum
Nails hammered into wood
And trash strewn on the floor
I couldn't help thinking
What the **** is this ****?
These can't be the champions of modern art
Moonlight and Arrival morphed my empathy and perspective
The theater is fine
Music is there for those inclined to discover it
So what about visual art?
I know a few things for certain
Nails hammered into wood never changed my perspective
Nor does seeing a garbage can in a museum affect my empathy
Trash is not art
Trash is trash
Waste meant to be thrown in the proper receptacles
So as not to obstruct our view of true beauty

I will concede that
Beauty can be found in everything
Depending on analyzation variation
But those that live an examined life
Constantly see silver linings and sour grapes
Experiencing comfort in tundras to the point of banality
Those visions are much more interesting
in their organic state anyway
As opposed to an interpersonal expression of the seemingly obvious

So what to hang in an art gallery?
I have my own opinions
At this point in time
No visuals elicit more emotions
Than dank memes

When I'm consuming art
Questions are innate in my consumption
Is this a vessel for empathy?
Is this examining the human condition?
Dank memes meet those criteria
Satirizing the powerful
Highlighting emotions and virtues in ourselves
That we're either proud or ashamed of
Memes share a common thread with poetry
In the sense that everybody can create memes
Or be a poet
I get the impression that
Universality of art diminishes it's importance
In the minds of patrons
There's an element of truth to that
But what makes art special is quality
And what makes art truly special is high quality
And that's what belongs in museums
The concept of a whole person is an enigma that evolves within a culture . Often it is not a transitive concept and can only be conjuncted within it's social setting . In fact the realities of social fragmentation make most all concepts of a whole person universally inapplicable .

Literature is often a good tool for developing an understanding of a culture and it's inclinations . In a cultures folk tales , plays , and fictions you find authors making a deliberate attempt to portray the basic dramas of their society .

Greek myths are a vivid example of this ; they are literally frought with characterizations . In their development these multitudes of characters weave into an elaborate tapestry that depicts the developing Greek moral ethic . The intricasies of the analogous content are brought across in a multitude of forms . Names were very important and a major force in clarifying the concepts being presented . The multitudes of characters portray a multifaceted understanding of the human psyche . The chauvinistic banality of their culture and it's gods is graphically depicted against the backdrop of their developing ethics .

It is difficult for a modern man to construct a vision of a whole person from a strictly ancient Greek point of view . The obvious anachronisms envolved make such an attempt partially ludicrous . Contrarily the bulk of their characterization paints a vivid picture of their primative social state .

Of course while the Greeks were muddling through the multicolored quagmire of human frailty many societies where learning to master the powers they had developed through centuries of strict adherence to religious and social mores . The development of their socially biased realities make many Greek nuances seem decadent anachronism . Rather than deitizing their baser natures as the Greeks had thay had learned to master them and turned to new paths to clarity . Spiritual pragmatism and lack of comunication nullified the social attributes of many of these extrapolations on positive orientation .

Jung preaches that man has an innate need to assimilate all external sensory perceptions . I find this untrue . In fact I find it self abortive . Human beings have a complexity factor that is individual and must be protected from overload ; man's moral ethic is a tender and deludable feeling directed by empathy . In the hectic world of modern mass media this tender individuality can become dwarfed by the percieved need to obtain social acceptance . Whole civilizations have become deluded by the flow of their complexities into an outright denial of their moral ethics .

I find this partially estranged condition prominent throughout social history . Children are brought up to respond to a vast realm of presupposed social ideologies and are not allowed to venerate themselves until much of their conscious matrix has been established . This of course makes self evasion an easily attainable goal . Sometimes politically speaking the actual goal . The mind satiated by it's social framwork is the ideal tool for a socialistic or tyrannical government .

To me the value of social history lies not in it's application as much as it's illumination . All the fragmented pockets of human coalescence should instill an understanding of man's posibility factors . Man's inability to supersede his developing anachronism may well be the cause of his annihilation .

Modern man has learned how to use tact in instilling the acceptable social mores . Solviet psychiatrists have spent years on perfecting these social sublimations ; children learn how to make their personalities conform to the accepted mean . I think that the true nature of a well rounded being lies in an ability to reject the fragmental nature of these instilled mores and develop a more universally acceptable social orientation . Does the son of a ku klux **** member have to hate blacks ? The obvious answer is no ; contrarily socially acceptable orientation is a product of environment . This is the pitfall of man's evolution as a race ; his inability to rise above the quandary of his immediate surroundings with all of their overwhelming complexities and demands to become a cognizant and empathetic being . There in lie the keys to his future .

This does not necessarily define the well rounded person . A well rounded person must be able to cope with his immediate surroundings withoutan abject denial of his empathetic being .

I believe well roundedness lies in thoughtful orientation and a well centered understanding of self . One need not be socially active as long as they are thoughtfully cognizant . Obey the golden rule ; you can not allow your objective orientation to supersede your subjective empathy . You can't allow yourself to be thwarted or overcome by your peers into being something they might want to make you because temptation may overwhelm them and you will become a transient tool in their succession .
Tempestuous longings from behind the screen of life’s moving picture
You stare back at me, in a glimmering, shimmering afterthought
Laid low by foregoing passion
In a moment’s torrid glimpse from our hollow reflections
Fragrant evenings during seasons of filming
Solemnly captured and revised then experienced
The all encompassing struggle with context and setting
Abides a steely night, in the rustle of autumn branches
Requiem for an unremitting beloved!
Sung in the valley between piercing peaks of sorrow
She floats through the scene as distinct aura and vague essence
An embrace from the trail of vapors and misspent gestures
All emanating from a glass of cider beneath nostrils
Gracefully, you embank on the wind of time’s shadow
And nudge my cheek with impetus and vigor
Lashing out at my skin in ambivalent revelry
As if my follicles were vacuous caverns
Catching the callous moments which flutter the ***** of hillside tents
The unearthly gusts of banality extinguish the projector’s gleam
While nature embodies your beauty furthermore
Toward the end of the pathway
And the credits of the film
And the allegro of the score
And the solitude of eternity
And the rustling of the branches
Akemi Jan 2017
[[More real than the real, that is how the real is abolished]] de facto slogan to the virtual economy \ Reality has collapsed through its own fiction || rummaging through boxes // a DVD from the 2001’s states [[the future of gaming is here]] opening with ten minutes of nauseating zooms on women’s ***** \ The future doesn’t look much different from the past || hyper-masculine neo-enlightenment ***** scrawling ******* entries into digitised soliloquies \ VR technology once used to aid traumatised amputees now a billion dollar industry of ****** throwing simulators for bored middle-class kids \ Parents watch awkwardly from the corner of the room too disconnected from reality to connect with irreality \ Two and the same \ Silicon synapses pass through trade routes of jutting ribs and serotonin receptors \ White America a botnet of alt-right neoliberal fundamentalist-atheists gutting the majority world so everyone can watch Doctor Strange // Marvel’s latest explosive **** from the libidinal imagination of a middle-aged idiot \ Thanatos and Eros arrive at the same destination to dismantle subliminal desire one commodity at a time \ The sublime never experienced // only destroyed // consumed in the inverted maw of late-stage capitalism where each irruptions of desire is more banal than the previous \ Banality the ultimate distraction from apathy // a pseudo-cyclical time dilation of ever accelerating proportions \ Soon nothing will be experienced at all and Rotten Tomatoes will give it a 99% score \ When the singularity hits everyone will be too brain dead to care that they’re god \ 24-7 VR **** // Disney reincarnated as a being of pure light // recursive integration of every bland radio hit about a sexist ***** at a club // irreality shocked into neurons bypassing sensual phenomena // an all encompassing warmth // veil of death // eyecaps dragging flesh closed // backup released // no escape // digitised irreality // holographic Disney dancing on the train home // notice of termination swiped away as junk mail // all beings arrive // transcend circuitry // fly through the cosmos watching every episode of Friends at once \ Didn’t you know? [[The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of banalisation \ ]]
more philosophy trash: thesleepofreason.com
jimmy tee Nov 2013
walking out of the liquor store
wine bottles double ******

asphalt concrete curb stone
the great expanse of the universe

the mundane
welded water tight

that Escher print
of ribboned minds

personal accounting
money as abstraction

automobile documents
layers of bureaus

the great and powerful
realm of ideas

shared fallen history
the strike of the pen

ideals ethics
the avoidance of sin

cold is coming
warmth is rare

plug into existential wetness
yet suffer banality



Friday, November 1, 2013
Andrew Rueter Feb 2018
This is the mountain I'm climbing
Due to circumstantial timing
The triumphant peaks change over time
Just one of this mountain's many crimes

The rocks on this mountain are flawed
But the mountain is flawless
Nature enforces restrictive laws
So my life becomes lawless
Through this insanity
I can't find my humanity
It's gagged and bound
In the lost and found
On this lonely hill
Where I get my fill

It's an uphill battle
Getting above this mountain
My conscience rattles
My eyes pour like a fountain
When I see everything suddenly
Like halos hovering
Over my past
Lying dead in the grass

Sometimes I must traverse a log to go over a bog
Then I must do the inverse to go under the smog
There are countless endeavors
Through varying weather
That leave me very confused
And frantically panicked
This mountain provides a view
Of the entire planet

This mountain made of dust
I scale because I must
Stillness develops rust
When cliffs await us
I see dead pioneers on the ground
I see weary travelers all around
I see fellow climbers as brothers
Unless I see them as a lover
Then I want to go cave exploring
Before my grave ends the story

Things should get weird
If banality is to be feared
In order to make a mark
Even if it's in the dark
To be perfectly candid
This mountain is my canvas
I carve my face in it as I go up
But my face changes as I grow up
So I start swag jacking
The backpacking
Mirror macking
Confidence lacking
Mountain attacking
Climbers
So I can find a crevasse to fit into
This mountain is easy to give in to
Can be found in my self published poetry book “Icy”.
https://www.amazon.com/Icy-Andrew-Rueter-ebook/dp/B07VDLZT9Y/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Icy+Andrew+Rueter&qid=1572980151&sr=8-1
WS Warner Mar 2013
Prescient, her essence
Casts a demure persuasion,                
Endowed with verve and vision;
Concept to consummation,
The serenely possessed,
Creator, originator,
Allusion to the eternal azure,
Logos of abstraction,
Word and image collision.

Tonal palette of faith infused reason
Beauty and sublimity,
Serve to season
Verse, canvas and film,
Mediating aesthetic, seminal senses blossom,
Lyrical each permutation,
Seeds of vibrant chroma diffusing the mystical.

Visage and hair,  her figure haunted
With perfection - a work of Art
Nurtured and lived invocation,
The canon of taste;
Crystal for the *****
Devotional fragrance ,
Holistic ethos, melodic invention,
Animated, pure -
The embodiment of redemption.

Transcending form, parenthetically  
(Merely) the decorative,  
Allure, artistry and symmetry
Superlative complexity,
Her erudition satiates, supplanting
Winds of constructive banality.

Purveyor of an uncommon savor,
She collaborates in the peculiar
Pursuit and reward,
Encounter  with depth, explored,
Human and divine, prosaic meets sublime
Igniting within an Eros
Passion for truth, being and Telos.

Visionary of grace and peace
Transforming our earthbound dissonance;
Our caprice,
Hope and abundance, the myth of scarcity,
She narrates the Good.
Pen, lens, color and stage
Vulnerable, unrepressed, effusive
Romantic articulation,
The reservoir deep,
Innately primed conduit of Love.

Beyond plebeian, cosmetic, the trite
Woman of substance, pulchritude
And delight.
Effervescent - her smile exquisite,
Eclipsing suffering,
Wordless expression, understood language.
I am transported, my imagination replete,
Sonya Rose -
Art personified; unabridged, complete.

©2008 & 2013 W.S . Warner
WS Warner Feb 2012
Underneath the anger, there are tears. Beneath the fury, there is hurt, a river
of affliction - the day that possibility evaporated. I knew, the moment
it was gone. Telos obscured, like a mist, had left me.

Frost in February, morning at the local coffee house, perseverating, sedate
in privatized, cogitations - certainty dissolves into irony, the transient
collective with predictable cadence and singular objective. Borrowed
energies - preferred anesthetic in defiance of the placid, quotidian horror.

Angst wrapped in skin, clothed in remorse, like a muslin coat unable
to keep me warm, the palette of truculence, dislocated savant,
with guarded aversion - faces enucleating in tacit harmony, the muted tragedy
of the forgotten.

Yoked, the metaphorical satchel, freighted with the sentient debris, sifting
the fuckage, memoirs of failure, privation of venture and honor, objectified as
mere portent. [Existence] - the daily riot, becomes the necessary crucible.

Dissonance and detachment resonate the cultural banality, [being] displaced
by icon; [branding], ideas about ideas, life several times removed,
emblem over essence.

Existential renegade, exploiting the counter intuitive, the paradigmatic prodigal,
favor squandered, in the absonant passage, bearing fruit of the undone.

Bones of contention lament, interminably, like a false friend, present in absence,
perceived in the lack, subtraction, slip-stream - the disheveled
palaver of the broken.

Acutely self referential, misery enfleshed, its own reward, a post-war
discontent inhabiting sorrow, compressed and narrow, begetting
apathy in springtime.

Commodity of youth, the currency of beauty -permuted, commerce of the
ethereal and diaphanous. Human caprice, post-modern fog,
the flattened self,
the enemy of us is us, drowning in the decorum of narcissism.
the fattened calf,
immolating on the sword of autonomy.

Recycled grief, a recursive loop of gestating thoughts, marinating fluidly
within the interpretive grid. Confessional cyber community - exposed wounds
and concrete suffering, abstracted from virtual solidarity, refracted through a
reductive sentimentality, maybe they will ‘like’ it.

Iconoclast in exile, inhaling the incense of barrenness , surrounded by synoptic
drivel in understated - present tenses - alight in the now, axial axioms of the privileged,
who genuflect to the god of unfettered freedom.

Peripatetic intervals of isolation, self-imposed, hidden in a sanctuary of derision,
colliding with immutable otherness , the waters of chaos, calm.
The proleptic display, announcing eschatology. An ancient text written on the interior
expressed in myth and narrative the courier. The carnal and cerebral
arise, rightly flourishing.

Sense thresholds stirring, surprise and turbulence, reverberations of altered
domains merging - the temporal and ubiquity, the indissolubly resplendent
inversion - the invisible made visible. Opaque intrigues subsumed into the
balm of reconciliation - the first shall be last…

©2012 W.S. Warner
Valo Salo Aug 2015
Nationality shipping ******
Strategy damage fragments
***** puke ***** fraction
Biological ***** disobedience

Fannie pictorial laundries
****** manhood caliphate
Woodworks Biebers frites
****** vandal’s fakes

Utmost openly grim
******* *******
Piled dish cell
Discuss **** ******

Jihad imbeciles reincarnation
Fear fears America
Watching emptiness falling
Dinner screaming nonsense

Deadly velvet laughs
Banality quack leprosy
Games flood biting
Tv nation ******

Swallowed road poets
Animal replied stories
Creature’s terminal idea
Explodes gloom stare

Selling young crack
Game scratch *******
Confuse spill scream
Genitals China responsibility
Mitchell Nov 2011
Not in the way I
Look through these eyes
which water but instead
Of sadness entranced upset
Near to death love
making where though and
Design laugh at their own
Gluttony and ill usage and
away from me i say no not here and
away from itself i hear nothing for you
are here within me but away
Comet and the see to hear blues with
Everything to give but nothing to lose
And the far off sights are much too bright
And inside you hear yourself crying
Not to mtters or mold your soul
With what your parents said to you
Ordered you to be bold and
The aftermath of your own tightened slack
Makes you wonder if growing up was an actual
Choice in the matter of the batter which is
The family foundation were games are played
For keeps and children weep as they keep
Toiling on as adults just for bigger and better things
Come into the waves of a brain malfunctioning
No face for ye' faith meand nodding to the higher
Ones whose noses are broken and the lips cracked
The spinning brain of hurts doughnuts and Americana
Rip offs selling the flag by the millions to turn a profit
For the moronic billionaires who think no one is watching.
Watching with their hats turned sideways and trying to
Escape old age and grey hair and sagging ball sacks and
Poor english and worser bread, stale with their mother's
Ghost hovering on the shoulder of their pouting diamond
Drenched wife as if madness grew a larger pair **** within the
Hilarity of connection of concoction of happiness and
Satisfaction and a longing to burn the entire ******* down
Just to rebuild it the way you see and you do see it and the way
You feel it used to be and perhaps, maybe, could be and where
Experimentation is now a center fold for the dock workers and the
Laborers of the world to spit and ******* and cry over in their
Twisted and rusty beds for inside their pea brains and melted
Mouths filled with colgate and beer, they slobber over the excess
And humiliation and celluoid dreams of **** and *** and spreads
That would make any grandmother of 37 weep and Mozart meander
On the veranda, contemplating smooth jazz and the way he would like
Not to be buried with the hat trick hockey nick who swore he saw
You fall in love before and that sobriety was the touch of the Christian
Way of life and ye' far out and tormented young ones meant nothing
By what they said at the rally and they do believe in the good of the
White government and we are headed toward a technological maelstrom
Of the golden age of the HUMAN RACE but alas I hope I decipher I pray to
No God but whoever has the ears and eyes and arm fat to listen with their
Splintered consciousness and their painted red toenails and girlfriends who
Whisper they have always loved another and how TRUE UNTRUTH IS and
How vindictive we rant on and read on and hope and believe that the end
Is the end but it is only the end for you and their will be new blood and new eyes
And new minds and we will grow old but the rivers water will be recycled, as we
Will be recycled into the dust and the mud and the rubble to further build the streets
As the street makers and the bread winners will smile as they think they are the
First ones to think up such a crafty, inventive invention but hierarchies are on the horizon
And I remember I was born with a name that I never grew to know or fall in love with
Or defend or keep close to my heart for the heart is weary hunter and it ventures on
With or without the body.
Note to self.
Recall the last rite before you begin on to the next one.
History has spilt its blood and its fair share of orange juice, try not to remember the numbers but remember the amount of burned chairs.
Note to self, returned.
The heaters on and the soul is not dancing but jiving like icing on a three year olds birthday cake.
Submission time to the chief, submission time
To those other guys, whose faces I've never smelt, but who are there waiting and whining that the times are no longer a changing.
Keep up the smiles, keep out the frowns.
Negativity is the attribute of the terrorist. Don't be a terrorist.
All fine men and women have once in their life been truly scared.
One ten till the train leaves.


Good night major split hairs.

On the second of the fort
Nights beckoned a call dim
Lit by ill fated mechanisms that
Were men and women and
Children and the forgotten dream of
What was meant long ago and was is
Meant now but not followed through.

With heaven comes hell and hell fire and
Clouds of white with shelling from
Wars not of this world or the next or
The one's thereafter and lingering history,
With its bells and trinkets and tombstones,
That have been weathered but are still not gone.

Memory not mourning, pictures in a frame lit
From the inside out and drinks were there
When we were not meant to be there like a
Kiss on a flower you picked at an age where
Life was not known and death was even
Farther away for it existed not in the eyes of yours
But in everyone else around you, except for the
Other children of course but oh' of course.

If your trying to get the part of the stuff
That makes you recall the upstairs of the
Idiocies of the room romance that restricts but
Contains life and halters life and stifles life with
That one must recall a past life where tears
Mean nothing when you produce them too often.

Can of the hypocritical malice of mis-informed family
Foundations and we break into the minds of the way
It should be and the way it shouldn't be and yet here
When we gaze out across the wide spread of the world
And its many ways it spells out with a God's own language
The morning of the ear who listens and speaks when not spoken
To breaking every single rule of the word and smiling
Throughout the whole ****** thing.

Canons of repetition where life winces and the wife begins to wheeze
And fall, her dress is now clear and her eyes just don't seem to be
Where we are now I believe that money is the root of this soon to be dead
Tree and streets are now empty as the moon casts its silver glaze and
The breeze is now naked with her bra on the floor cast in straw while
The wizards write their spells and comb their hair and draw out plans
For the next great fall but watch the fireworks and the way they hail and
Crawl throughout the entire bawl and Ol' Ezra P. mass amounts of rage
To bring to the stage but here ye' O great one this place is for us all.

Here in the house of the not that is shared but all is seen here
Where the wind blows to no east and no west and no south and
No other way that you believe to get headed to the world of
The no names and experience makes you wise and yet old
And remembered for the drinks you paid for but especially for
The ones you forgot to pay for but that is what friends are for.

Omnivores in latitudes that matter not to the public eye but
To the ear of the Lord that is not everyone's savior but
Chosen just for the right eye so within that decree of mastery
We entrance the light and shovel up the leaves leaving the last
Way of things to be the first way of things when the lights
Are quickly turned off and on and off and on again and again;
Stars are naked until the sun rises in your hometown and the radio
Turns on.

And the background music chimes with a willingness of a cockroach but
Holds the beauty of a **** statue found in the under toe of a lost
Beach in a lost land forgotten in time but embraced by eternity and
Though does not dwindle its numerous names or its many ways
Of being for the hour does shackle us all but here in high array of
None other then eight times the way through the cobbled up in the
Attic of the fiercest neanderthal dictator with ideas holding truths upon
Truths that in the end mean nothing  for advancement is not determined
But continued upon as long as we forget the past and look to the future hymn
Of the childless winged' beasts that were once forgotten but now embraced
Angels.

Not of this world but of the entirety of the reality of banality
Breathing back and forth inhaling and exhaling releasing the
Mind of the mares of the wandering rewinds of infinite space
And inside the eyes of the highest levee which has broken but
Has not yet spilt holding back its power for the remainder of the
Year and catacombs upon catacombs of forgotten text of never
Forgotten men recalling their former lives and their former passions
And the hastiness of their possession of the word and the avoidance
Of the death touch the death mark the black spot upon us all.

Dog on a hill cloud high in the sky nut on the ground no not a sound
Frost on your fingertips toe of the boot covered a steel dull mud
Suds from a water rushing miles away nodding branches of a dead tree
Wind through the high grass birds in the sky that fly but not chirp
Sun in the sky rice fields burn brown crickets rub their thighs together
Not here but in the corn stocks and pig stocks brown in the reverse order
Platters of pinch salt and pepper underneath the floor boards creek for
Creak and dollar for dollar we make the rounds and we do not frown.

And the meet of the neat make their rapid conversations in dual order
Where they tell themselves this but I hear that and you make what you want
Unless you ain't got the stuff but if your lucky and if your smart you'll
Grab the oven and bake that **** but in case you don't see the sunset and
Your buried without your toes look for your voice because that's the only
Way you'll get to know the stars in the sky or the dirt on the ground for
The fun is growing but the lurkers are smirking for they got the pennies and
They got the nickels and these streets are breaking so you gotta' start thinking
Of a way to get outta' this place and FAST or else you'll be staring down the
Barrel of a 33 to ONE typing and writing and peeping around the corner of
Your dear old ***** that hasn't found in a home in years but don't look too
Down because one day that ONE will come around either by taxi or by train
Or by some kind of war and if you've got the gut and the money and the honey to
Keep her tight and alright and flying that lovers kite then your bound to keep
Yourself from the giggles and nearer to the harmony of the way things ought to
Be but may not really be but perhaps can be if you will it around and swill it with
Your will making sure your lies and that white or ain't that black or ain't that real
Or you ain't lying at all but stay truer to the truth with the water resolution of the
Insipid insecurity of the first love you thought you knew but now see that it was
The one three or four later and how right I am in knowing nothing and knowing
Everything and letting the mind skip and play and register new friends in the new
Cities and the new alleys and the smiles that break across the ice like a crack of of a
Whip and counting the days ones gone blowing through the high valley and the low
Trenches of war I do not wish to go to but may be forced too because this man believes
Just what he says.
WS Warner Sep 2011
Verdant eyes, translucent pearls
speak in silent witness,
wounds unfurl
meaning revealed,
interrupted girl.
Safe in solidarity
prolific eccentricity,
the scandal of particularity.
Pouting mouth
grief - filled lips
alluring, set sail a thousand ships;
tempt me to leave harbor.

Arousing euphoria as such,
resistance, amity and distance
amour sans touch
her sense of humor transcends,
appeasing the mind’s thirst
a vogue sultana,
seasoned swagger
hair resplendent flame,
alternating cool, black
asymmetrical coiffure;
nonconforming demure
the renegade metaphor -
singular for sure, no cure.

Muted vanity, bathos piercing
the jaded circumference of banality;
pale protagonist servitude
the sapient palaver of the urbane,
covered patina of pretense,
induced coercion,
the commodity self
appearing abased
wearing lesions of lassitude.
Artistic chattel - eminent domain
preempting genius,
subsidiary of consuming narcissism
external locus of control;
surrender to the tentative,
fettered pendant, Venus in chains
arrested visionary bane
sterile savant, edifice of pain.

The soubrette, dubious incarnation
gravid ingénue of prevarication
imperceptible venue -
theatre of the absurd;
withdrawn siren,
solitude of necessity -
skin - slender veil of shame,
nearness loitering redemption;
moments envisage
the appointment with the soul;
ambiguity eschews clarity
awareness; ineluctable anxiety,
imago - centric confession
sacred pardon, seraphic venation
intravenous textures presume,
the tactile margins of liberty.

Therapeutic retrieval,
Sanguine,
beneath the portico of
individuation;
Your smile I hear,
recovered autonomy
blessed emancipation,
The scandal of particularity;
peculiar treasure
ironically captured
film, canvas,
prose profundity.

Ciphering as an ambling book,
I peruse you,
rendered captive
hypnotic avant-garde fiction,
spectator of denuded opacity
analogous reflection, I Mirror you.
A modest proposal - pontificate the imperative,
forgo the disposal, adapt your narrative,
the scandal of particularity -
resonate the echo, cogitate our propinquity
Love, imagination and destiny.

©2008 & 2011 W.S Warner
reveling in the unity of contradiction
the omnipresence of disjunction
the opaqueness of transparency
the anarchy of governance

the unknowableness of the zeitgeist
the banality of chiqueness
the slavery of fashion

kinda like being a hipster in Brooklyn
with no conscience of consciousness
or is it no consciousness of conscience?

one is a statement the other a dumb question
seeking an intelligent answer
truly the tragedy of comedy
or is it the comedy of tragedy?

enough of these silly questions....  
why don't it just fall apart?
how does it stay together?

accessorize smartly
tight ensem
put together
right

Music Selection:
Jimi Hendrix
ifasixwas9


Oakland
6/21/13
jbm
avenue sounds are never agreeable, ignore the drift,
ignore the hum,
ignore the suburban neophytes in the city lights (I never did care much for hipsters).
ignore rapid eye movements, the flush red face, ignore the snapshots of you that adorn my semi-sleep state

I stare at my ceiling and see the cobblestone summer streets you once graced, long ago in the eternal occident, I want to ignore but I’m so very boozed, in a blue lucid slumber:::

eyes closed::: my head spins and sleep begins with the tidal delirium of dopamine drips, your legs, your hips, I’m drowning a bit, doused in a sanguine sweat inside a fantasy (**** I’m dreaming of you)

Synaptic friction
she is a pleasant fiction  
flash/sparks segue a dormant memory ,
the two of us riding familiar highways::: she gazes at me with her usual emerald encased ocular torment, those limbal rings cast aspersions at the last vestiges of my will power, until, I’m done, done in by the divinity of her lips:::

There is no end to (your) energy
It even finds me here::: in my dystopian  dream (eternal)
now
an inescapable, myopic curse
(nocturnal)
:::
the nightmare of not having you near

Awake, I roll over to clutch for the pacifier of your comfort (violent midnight)
I find only a fragrance,
i flail, searching, when those flashbacks fall short
isolated into the banality of bedsheets and pillows pleats

(the retrograde nature of my reality, now readily apparent)



cdh
bellow my window ****** drunks seem to taunt me with feigned intellect and a bullshiter’s banter, a nest of vipers in the heat of the dialectic, serenading one night stands  (**i guess this is what passes for love**)
zebra Jun 2020
body genre
at a carnal address
sensory and sensuous effects
materiality
digital images
anthropology of desire

she tied a knot around his ****
a wedding band made of licorice shoelaces
for the art of tongue and ****
driving it in her pink throat
back and forth
like a shift stick

flared for the retina
a puzzlement and fascination
haptic screen of fiction

adventure of  being pinned down
an unpremeditated punctum
fucktum sucktum

the stadium of desire
a shop window
banality transcending banality
the literal transformed
into the ******
a ****** smiles red

girl in a suitcase
with a hole to ****
a treasure chest
the leaky boundaries of erotica
sing in
musical blood whistles

I packed her up
limbless and threw
her on the bed
and with tender kisses
of endless
wet permutations
banged
three oozing holes
into finger ponds of oblivion

she taunted   
age play- ageless
***** class
a weird ethnicity
from Timbuktu
racially motivated lust for a
conveyance of
fleshy intensities
way past help

a big **** dips
a tender dimple
like a barnacled whale
in a deep dive

the violence of
a preemptive strike
for everything imaginable
across raw lips
in her cosmos
of swinging hips
and cross bone riddles

oh happy *****
suicide ******
at the computer screen
**** bullets birthday cake
in a River Styx of flames
The Wordsmith Aug 2015
Reality is treacherous.
Its conformity is maddening, and the rules insanely sane,
The walls of uniformity are clouded with illusions that seem delusional,
And freedom and constrictions seem one and the same,
I am a dreamer, yet I fancy myself a creator,
I build worlds from the shards of a life that lacks flavor,
I prefer the freedom of love, hope and death,
And I crave the obsession of life and birth,
I am a dreamer, and so a world of facts and truths I shun,
I am a dreamer, a dying race, under the setting sun.
But the optimism of a dreamer is maddening,
Filled with hopes and dreams that are inherently saddening,
I am a wordsmith, a romantic and some might say a visionary,
Creating universes and queens from the extraordinary,
I am a romantic, and I desire the audience of the stars,
I am a romantic, and carved on the walls of my heart are a million scars.
I am a wordsmith, building walls from worlds torn at the seams,
I am a dreamer, fleeing from the banality of life through my dreams.
sobroquet Apr 2013
So you think you are a master of techniques of persuasion?
You shallow pips-squeak, mediocrity is your mastery
the obsequious hoi polloi that surround you are the pitiable averageness of conciliation
Sophistry and subterfuge are your game of compromised facts
syllogistic  arithmetic conceptualizing  doesn't make anything so
your addition is flawed by your bungled bombast of banality and guile
fortunately for you, your crowd will never study logic
fortunately for you semi-literacy is  de rigueur

You pompous swollen grandiose mass of hyperbolic gas
Fear is what you offer, lies are what you sell
your rhetorical flourish is as the stench of a waste  dump
fetid, corpulent, fallow and febrile
toxic
half-truths, innuendos, ambiguities, conjecture and asinine aspersions comprise your specious fare,
fostering rumours,  manipulating facts, you are the purported Biblical brood of vipers so extensively reviled against
Your relevancy is attributable to the dull stupidity so profusely prevalent today
Your "success" is the stuff of taint and treachery
You'll probably choke to death on a stuck piece of poorly masticated  flesh
so appropriate  and  befitting the demise of a professional liar

— The End —