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Gina Nguyen Dec 2019
ok, boomer,
you fail to recognize how lucky you were
when you were our age.
you want us to believe the scale of your success
when in reality, it was luck.
it was cheap college tuition
and a booming job market.

ok, boomer,
you ruined our economy
when your business caused our drop in ’08.
you kept up your “more and more and more” attitude
until it overflowed and broke.
where does that leave us?

ok, boomer,
you continue to neglect climate change
that has been pressing on our world for ages.
your businesses burned ***** energy
and dumped pollutants into our streams
without recognizing the consequences
we would face.

ok, boomer,
you criticize our tech savvy generation
but you know how it has changed us for the better.
you tell us we’ve been blinded by the screens
and “if we weren’t on those **** phones so much,”
maybe we’d be successful.
our level of communication across the digital world
is better than yours ever was.

ok, boomer,
you insist the “good ole days” were gold
and society will never be the same
but as we change,
we accept our differences—hell, we embrace them.
your “good ole days” are defined
by racism, sexism, homophobia, and more.
you are stuck in the past.

ok, boomer,
times are changing.
keep up.
sincerely,
generation z
Like a psychotic docent in the wilderness,
I will not speak in perfect Ciceronian cadences.
I draw my voice from a much deeper cistern,
Preferring the jittery synaptic archive,
So sublimely unfiltered, random and profane.
And though I am sequestered now,
Confined within the walls of a gated, golf-coursed,
Over-55 lunatic asylum (for Active Seniors I am told),
I remain oddly puerile,
Remarkably refreshed and unfettered.  
My institutionalization self-imposed,
Purposed for my own serenity, and also the safety of others.
Yet I abide, surprisingly emancipated and frisky.
I may not have found the peace I seek,
But the quiet has mercifully come at last.

The nexus of inner and outer space is context for my story.
I was born either in Brooklyn, New York or Shungopavi, Arizona,
More of intervention divine than census data.
Shungopavi: a designated place for tribal statistical purposes.
Shungopavi: an ovine abbatoir and shaman’s cloister.
The Hopi: my mother’s people, a state of mind and grace,
Deftly landlocked, so cunningly circumscribed,
By both interior and outer Navajo boundaries.
The Navajo: a coyote trickster people; a nation of sheep thieves,
Hornswoggled and landlocked themselves,
Subsumed within three of the so-called Four Corners:
A 3/4ths compromise and covenant,
Pickled in firewater, swaddled in fine print,
A veritable swindle concocted back when the USA
Had Manifest Destiny & mayhem on its mind.

The United States: once a pubescent synthesis of blood and thunder,
A bold caboodle of trooper spit and polish, unwashed brawlers, Scouts and      
Pathfinders, mountain men, numb-nut ne'er-do-wells,
Buffalo Bills & big-balled individualists, infected, insane with greed.
According to the Gospel of His Holiness Saint Zinn,
A People’s’ History of the United States: essentially state-sponsored terrorism,
A LAND RUSH grabocracy, orchestrated, blessed and anointed,
By a succession of Potomac sharks, Great White Fascist Fathers,
Far-Away-on-the Bay, the Bay we call The Chesapeake.
All demented national patriarchs craving lebensraum for God and country.
The USA: a 50-state Leviathan today, a nation jury-rigged,
Out of railroad ties, steel rails and baling wire,
Forged by a litany of lies, rapaciousness and ******,
And jaw-torn chunks of terra firma,
Bites both large and small out of our well-****** Native American ***.

Or culo, as in va’a fare in culo (literally "go do it in the ***")
Which Italian Americans pronounce as fongool.
The language center of my brain,
My sub-cortical Broca’s region,
So fraught with such semantic misfires,
And autonomic linguistic seizures,
Compel acknowledgement of a father’s contribution,
To both the gene pool and the genocide.
Columbus Day:  a conspicuously absent holiday out here in Indian Country.
No festivals or Fifth Avenue parades.
No excuse for ethnic hoopla. No guinea feast. No cannoli. No tarantella.
No excuse to not get drunk and not **** your sister-in-law.
Emphatically a day for prayer and contemplation,
A day of infamy like Pearl Harbor and 9/11,
October 12, 1492: not a discovery; an invasion.

Growing up in Brooklyn, things were always different for me,
Different in some sort of redskin/****/****--
Choose Your Favorite Ethnic Slur-sort of way.
The American Way: dehumanization for fun and profit.
Melting *** anonymity and denial of complicity with evil.
But this is no time to bring up America’s sordid past,
Or, a personal pet peeve: Indian Sovereignty.
For Uncle Sam and his minions, an ever-widening, conveniently flexible concept,
Not a commandment or law,
Not really a treaty or a compact,
Or even a business deal.  Let’s get real:
It was not even much in the way of a guideline.
Just some kind of an advisory, a bulletin or newsletter,
Could it merely have been a free-floating suggestion?
Yes, that’s it exactly: a suggestion.

Over and under halcyon American skies,
Over and around those majestic purple mountain peaks,
Those trapped in poetic amber waves of wheat and oats,
Corn and barley, wheat shredded and puffed,
Corn flaked and milled, Wheat Chex and Wheaties, oats that are little Os;
Kix and Trix, Fiber One, and Kashi-Go-Lean, Lucky Charms and matso *****,
Kreplach and kishka,
Polenta and risotto.
Our cantaloupe and squash patch,
Our fruited prairie plain, our delicate ecological Eden,
In balance and harmony with nature, as Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce instructs:
“These white devils are not going to,
Stop ****** and killing, cheating and eating us,
Until they have the whole ******* enchilada.
I’m talking about ‘from sea to shining sea.’”

“I fight no more forever,” Babaloo.
So I must steer this clunky keelboat of discovery,
Back to the main channel of my sad and starry demented river.
My warpath is personal but not historical.
It is my brain’s own convoluted cognitive process I cannot saavy.
Whatever biochemical or—as I suspect more each day—
Whatever bio-mechanical protocols govern my identity,
My weltanschauung: my world-view, as sprechen by proto-Nazis;
Putz philosophers of the 17th, 18th & 19th century.
The German intelligentsia: what a cavalcade of maniacal *******!
Why is this Jew unsurprised these Zarathustra-fueled Übermenschen . . .
Be it the Kaiser--Caesar in Deutsch--Bismarck, ******, or,
Even that Euro-*****,  Angela Merkel . . . Why am I not surprised these Huns,
Get global grab-*** on the sauerbraten cabeza every few generations?
To be, or not to be the ***** bullgoose loony: GOTT.

Biomechanical protocols govern my identity and are implanted while I sleep.
My brain--my weak and weary CPU--is replenished, my discs defragmented.
A suite of magnetic and optical white rooms, cleansed free of contaminants,
Gun mounts & lifeboat stations manned and ready,
Standing at attention and saluting British snap-style,
Snap-to and heel click, ramrod straight and cheerful: “Ready for duty, Sir.”
My mind is ravenous, lusting for something, anything to process.
Any memory or image, lyric or construct,
Be they short-term dailies or deeply imprinted.
Fixations archived one and all in deep storage time and space.
Memories, some subconscious, most vaporous;
Others--the scary ones—eidetic: frighteningly detailed and extraordinarily vivid.
Precise cognitive transcripts; recollected so richly rife and fresh.
Visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, and olfactory reloads:
Queued up and increasingly re-experienced.

The bio-data of six decades: it’s all there.
People, countless, places and things cataloged.
Every event, joy and trauma enveloped from within or,
Accessed externally from biomechanical storage devices.
The random access memory of a lifetime,
Read and recollected from cerebral repositories and vaults,
All the while the entire greedy process overseen,
Over-driven by that all-subservient British bat-man,
Rummaging through the data in batches small and large,
Internal and external drives working in seamless syncopation,
Self-referential, at times paradoxical or infinitely looped.
“Cogito ergo sum."
Descartes stripped it down to the basics but there’s more to the story:
Thinking about thinking.
A curse and minefield for the cerebral:  metacognition.

No, it is not the fact that thought exists,
Or even the thoughts themselves.
But the information technology of thought that baffles me,
As adaptive and profound as any evolution posited by Darwin,
Beyond the wetware in my skull, an entirely new operating system.
My mental and cultural landscape are becoming one.
Machines are connecting the two.
It’s what I am and what I am becoming.
Once more for emphasis:
It is the information technology of who I am.
It is the operating system of my mental and cultural landscape.
It is the machinery connecting the two.
This is the central point of this narrative:
Metacognition--your superego’s yenta Cassandra,
Screaming, screaming in your psychic ear, your good ear:

“LISTEN:  The machines are taking over, taking you over.
Your identity and train of thought are repeatedly hijacked,
Switched off the main line onto spurs and tangents,
Only marginally connected or not at all.
(Incoming TEXT from my editor: “Lighten Up, Giuseppi!”)
Reminding me again that most in my audience,
Rarely get past the comic page. All righty then: think Calvin & Hobbes.
John Calvin, a precocious and adventurous six-year old boy,
Subject to flights of 16th Century French theological fancy.
Thomas Hobbes, a sardonic anthropomorphic tiger from 17th Century England,
Mumbling about life being “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”
Taken together--their antics and shenanigans--their relationship to each other,
Remind us of our dual nature; explore for us broad issues like public education;
The economy, environmentalism & the Global ****** Thermometer;
Not to mention the numerous flaws of opinion polls.



And again my editor TEXTS me, reminds me again: “LIGHTEN UP!”
Consoling me:  “Even Shakespeare had to play to the groundlings.”
The groundlings, AKA: The Rabble.
Yes. Even the ******* Bard, even Willie the Shake,
Had to contend with a decidedly lowbrow copse of carrion.
Oh yes, the groundlings, a carrion herd, a flying flock of carrion seagulls,
Carrion crow, carrion-feeders one and all,
And let’s throw Sheryl Crow into the mix while we’re at it:
“Hit it! This ain't no disco. And it ain't no country club either, this is L.A.”  

                  Send "All I Wanna Do" Ringtone to your Cell              

Once more, I digress.
The Rabble:  an amorphous, gelatinous Jabba the Hutt of commonality.
The Rabble: drunk, debauched & lawless.
Too *****-delicious to stop Bill & Hilary from thinking about tomorrow;
Too Paul McCartney My Love Does it Good to think twice.

The Roman Saturnalia: a weeklong **** fest.
The Saturnalia: originally a pagan kink-fest in honor of the deity Saturn.
Dovetailing nicely with the advent of the Christian era,
With a project started by Il Capo di Tutti Capi,
One of the early popes, co-opting the Roman calendar between 17 and 25 December,
Putting the finishing touches on the Jesus myth.
For Brooklyn Hopi-***-Jew baby boomers like me,
Saturnalia manifested itself as Disco Fever,
Unpleasant years of electrolysis, scrunched ***** in tight polyester
For Roman plebeians, for the great unwashed citizenry of Rome,
Saturnalia was just a great big Italian wedding:
A true family blowout and once-in-a-lifetime ego-trip for Dad,
The father of the bride, Vito Corleone, Don for A Day:
“Some think the world is made for fun and frolic,
And so do I! Funicula, Funiculi!”

America: love it or leave it; my country right or wrong.
Sure, we were citizens of Rome,
But any Joe Josephus spending the night under a Tiber bridge,
Or sleeping off a three day drunk some afternoon,
Up in the Coliseum bleachers, the cheap seats, out beyond the monuments,
The original three monuments in the old stadium,
Standing out in fair territory out in center field,
Those three stone slabs honoring Gehrig, Huggins, and Babe.
Yes, in the house that Ruth built--Home of the Bronx Bombers--***?
Any Joe Josephus knows:  Roman citizenship doesn’t do too much for you,
Except get you paxed, taxed & drafted into the Legion.
For us the Roman lifestyle was HIND-*** humble.
We plebeians drew our grandeur by association with Empire.
Very few Romans and certainly only those of the patrician class lived high,
High on the hog, enjoying a worldly extravaganza, like—whom do we both know?

Okay, let’s say Laurence Olivier as Crassus in Spartacus.
Come on, you saw Spartacus fifteen ******* times.
Remember Crassus?
Crassus: that ***** twisted **** trying to get his freak on with,
Tony Curtis in a sunken marble tub?
We plebes led lives of quiet *****-scratching desperation,
A bunch of would-be legionnaires, diseased half the time,
Paid in salt tablets or baccala, salted codfish soaked yellow in olive oil.
Stiffs we used to call them on New Year’s Eve in Brooklyn.
Let’s face it: we were hyenas eating someone else’s ****,
Stage-door jackals, Juvenal-come-late-lies, a mob of moronic mook boneheads
Bought off with bread & circuses and Reality TV.
Each night, dished up a wide variety of lowbrow Elizabethan-era entertainments.  
We contemplate an evening on the town, downtown—
(cue Petula Clark/Send "Downtown" Ringtone to your Cell)

On any given London night, to wit:  mummers, jugglers, bear & bull baiters.
How about dog & **** fighters, quoits & skittles, alehouses & brothels?
In short, somewhere, anywhere else,
Anywhere other than down along the Thames,
At Bankside in Southwark, down in the Globe Theater mosh pit,
Slugging it out with the groundlings whose only interest,
In the performance is the choreography of swordplay and stale ****** puns.
Meanwhile, Hugh Fennyman--probably a fellow Jew,
An English Renaissance Bugsy Siegel or Mickey Cohen—
Meanwhile Fennyman, the local mob boss is getting his ya-yas,
Roasting the feet of my text-messaging editor, Philip Henslowe.
Poor and pathetic Henslowe, works on commission, always scrounging,
But a true patron of my craft, a gentleman of infinite jest and patience,
Spiritual subsistence, and every now and then a good meal at some,
Sawdust joint with oyster shells, and a Prufrockian silk purse of T.S. Eliot gold.

Poor, pathetic Henslowe, trussed up by Fennyman,
His editorial feet in what looks like a Japanese hibachi.
Henslowe’s feet to the fire--feet to the fire—get it?
A catchy phrase whose derivation conjures up,
A grotesque yet vivid image of torture,
An exquisite insight into how such phrases ingress the idiom,
Not to mention a scene once witnessed at a secret Romanian CIA prison,
I’d been ordered to Bucharest not long after 9/11,
Handling the rendition and torture of Habib Ghazzawy,

An entirely innocent falafel maker from Steinway Street, Astoria, Queens.
Shock the Monkey: it’s what we do. GOTO:
Peter Gabriel - Shock the Monkey/
(HQ music video) - YouTube//
www.youtube.com/
Poor, pathetic, ******-on Henslowe.


Fennyman :  (his avarice is whet by something Philly screams out about a new script)  "A play takes time. Find actors; Rehearsals. Let's say open in three weeks. That's--what--five hundred groundlings at tuppence each, in addition four hundred groundlings tuppence each, in addition four hundred backsides at three pence--a penny extra for a cushion, call it two hundred cushions, say two performances for safety how much is that Mr. Frees?"
Jacobean Tweet, John (1580-1684) Webster:  “I saw him kissing her bubbies.”

It’s Geoffrey Rush, channeling Henslowe again,
My editor, a singed smoking madman now,
Feet in an ice bucket, instructing me once more:
“Lighten things up, you know . . .
Comedy, love and a bit with a dog.”
I digress again and return to Hopi Land, back to my shaman-monastic abattoir,
That Zen Center in downtown Shungopavi.
At the Tribal Enrolment Office I make my case for a Certificate of Indian Blood,
Called a CIB by the Natives and the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The BIA:  representing gold & uranium miners, cattle and sheep ranchers,
Sodbusters & homesteaders; railroaders and dam builders since 1824.
Just in time for Andrew Jackson, another false friend of Native America,
Just before Old Hickory, one of many Democratic Party hypocrites and scoundrels,
Gives the FONGOOL, up the CULO go ahead.
Hey Andy, I’ve got your Jacksonian democracy: Hanging!
The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) mission is to:   "… enhance the quality of life, to promote economic opportunity, and to carry out the responsibility to protect and improve the trust assets of American Indians, Indian tribes, and Alaska Natives. What’s that in the fine print?  Uncle Sammy holds “the trust assets of American Indians.”

Here’s a ******* tip, Geronimo: if he trusted you,
It would ALL belong to you.
To you and The People.
But it’s all fork-tongued white *******.
If true, Indian sovereignty would cease to be a sick one-liner,
Cease to be a blunt force punch line, more of,
King Leopold’s 19th Century stand-up comedy schtick,
Leo Presents: The **** of the Congo.
La Belgique mission civilisatrice—
That’s what French speakers called Uncle Leo’s imperial public policy,
Bringing the gift of civilization to central Africa.
Like Manifest Destiny in America, it had a nice colonial ring to it.
“Our manifest destiny [is] to overspread the continent,
Allotted by Providence for the free development,
Of our yearly multiplying millions.”  John L. O'Sullivan, 1845

Our civilizing mission or manifest destiny:
Either/or, a catchy turn of phrase;
Not unlike another ironic euphemism and semantic subterfuge:
The Pacification of the West; Pacification?
Hardly: decidedly not too peaceful for Cochise & Tonto.
Meanwhile, Madonna is cash rich but disrespected Evita poor,
To wit: A ****** on the Rocks (throwing in a byte or 2 of Da Vinci Code).
Meanwhile, Miss Ciccone denied her golden totem *****.
They snubbed that little guinea ****, didn’t they?
Snubbed her, robbed her rotten.
Evita, her magnum opus, right up there with . . .
Her SNL Wayne’s World skit:
“Get a load of the unit on that guy.”
Or, that infamous MTV Music Video Awards stunt,
That classic ***** Lip-Lock with Britney Spears.

How could I not see that Oscar snubola as prime evidence?
It was just another stunning case of American anti-Italian racial animus.
Anyone familiar with Noam Chomsky would see it,
Must view it in the same context as the Sacco & Vanzetti case,
Or, that arbitrary lynching of 9 Italian-Americans in New Orleans in 1891,
To cite just two instances of anti-Italian judicial reach & mob violence,
Much like what happened to my cousin Dominic,
Gang-***** by the Harlem Globetrotters, in their locker room during halftime,
While he working for Abe Saperstein back in 1952.
Dom was doing advance for Abe, supporting creation of The Washington Generals:
A permanent stable of hoop dream patsies and foils,
Named for the ever freewheeling, glad-handing, backslapping,
Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force (SCAEF), himself,
Namely General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the man they liked,
And called IKE: quite possibly a crypto Jew from Abilene.

Of course, Harry Truman was my first Great White Fascist Father,
Back in 1946, when I first opened my eyes, hung up there,
High above, looking down from the adobe wall.
Surveying the entire circular kiva,
I had the best seat in the house.
Don’t let it be said my Spider Grandmother or Hopi Corn Mother,
Did not want me looking around at things,
Discovering what made me special.
Didn’t divine intervention play a significant part of my creation?
Knowing Mamma Mia and Nonna were Deities,
Gave me an edge later on the streets of Brooklyn.
The Cradleboard: was there ever a more divinely inspired gift to human curiosity? The Cradleboard: a perfect vantage point, an infant’s early grasp,
Of life harmonious, suspended between Mother Earth and Father Sky.
Simply put: the Hopi should be running our ******* public schools.

But it was IKE with whom I first associated,
Associated with the concept 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
I liked IKE. Who didn’t?
What was not to like?
He won the ******* war, didn’t he?
And he wasn’t one of those crazy **** John Birchers,
Way out there, on the far right lunatic Republican fringe,
Was he? (It seems odd and nearly impossible to believe in 2013,
That there was once a time in our Boomer lives,
When the extreme right wing of the Republican Party
Was viewed by the FBI as an actual threat to American democracy.)
Understand: it was at a time when The FBI,
Had little ideological baggage,
But a great appetite for secrets,
The insuppressible Jay Edgar doing his thang.

IKE: of whom we grew so, oh-so Fifties fond.
Good old reliable, Nathan Shaking IKE:
He’d been fixed, hadn’t he? Had had the psychic snip.
Snipped as a West Point cadet & parade ground martinet.
Which made IKE a good man to have in a pinch,
Especially when crucial policy direction was way above his pay grade.
Cousin Dom was Saperstein’s bagman, bribing out the opposition,
Which came mainly from religious and patriotic organizations,
Viewing the bogus white sports franchise as obscene.
The Washington Generals, Saperstein’s new team would have but one opponent,
And one sole mission: to serve as the **** of endless jokes and sight gags for—
Negroes.  To play the chronic fools of--
Negroes.  To be chronically humiliated and insulted by—
Negroes.  To run up and down the boards all night, being outran by—
Negroes.  Not to mention having to wear baggy silk shorts.



Meadowlark Lemon:  “Yeah, Charlie, we ***** that grease-ball Dominic; we shagged his guinea mouth and culo rotten.”  

(interviewed in his Scottsdale, AZ winter residence in 2003 by former ESPN commentator Charlie Steiner, Malverne High School, Class of ’67.)
                                                        
  ­                                                                 ­                 
IKE, briefed on the issue by higher-ups, quickly got behind the idea.
The Harlem Globetrotters were to exist, and continue to exist,
Are sustained financially by Illuminati sponsors,
For one reason and one reason only:
To serve elite interests that the ***** be kept down and subservient,
That the minstrel show be perpetuated,
A policy surviving the elaborate window dressing of the civil rights movement, Affirmative action, and our first Uncle Tom president.
Case in point:  Charles Barkley, Dennis Rodman & Metta World Peace Artest.
Cha-cha-cha changing again:  I am Robert Allen Zimmermann,
A whiny, skinny Jew, ****** and rolling in from Minnesota,
Arrested, obviously a vagrant, caught strolling around his tony Jersey enclave,
Having moved on up the list, the A-list, a special invitation-only,
Yom Kippur Passover Seder:  Next Year in Jerusalem, Babaloo!

I take ownership of all my autonomic and conditioned reflexes;
Each personal neural arc and pathway,
All shenanigans & shellackings,
Or blunt force cognitive traumas.
It’s all percolating nicely now, thank you,
In kitchen counter earthen crockery:
Random access memory: a slow-cook crockpot,
Bubbling through my psychic sieve.
My memories seem only remotely familiar,
Distant and vague, at times unreal:
An alien hybrid databank accessed accidently on purpose;
Flaky science sustains and monitors my nervous system.
And leads us to an overwhelming question:
Is it true that John Dillinger’s ******* is in the Smithsonian Museum?
Enquiring minds want to know, Kemosabe!

“Any last words, *******?” TWEETS Adam Smith.
Postmortem cyber-graffiti, an epitaph carved in space;
Last words, so singular and simple,
Across the universal great divide,
Frisbee-d, like a Pleistocene Kubrick bone,
Tossed randomly into space,
Morphing into a gyroscopic space station.
Mr. Smith, a calypso capitalist, and me,
Me, the Poet Laureate of the United States and Adam;
Who, I didn’t know from Adam.
But we tripped the light fantastic,
We boogied the Protestant Work Ethic,
To the tune of that old Scotch-Presbyterian favorite,
Variations of a 5-point Calvinist theme: Total Depravity; Election; Particular Redemption; Irresistible Grace; & Perseverance of the Saints.

Mr. Smith, the author of An Inquiry into the Nature
& Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776),
One of the best-known, intellectual rationales for:
Free trade, capitalism, and libertarianism,
The latter term a euphemism for Social Darwinism.
Prior to 1764, Calvinists in France were called Huguenots,
A persecuted religious majority . . . is that possible?
A persecuted majority of Edict of Nantes repute.
Adam Smith, likely of French Huguenot Jewish ancestry himself,
Reminds me that it is my principal plus interest giving me my daily gluten.
And don’t think the irony escapes me now,
A realization that it has taken me nearly all my life to see again,
What I once saw so vividly as a child, way back when.
Before I put away childish things, including the following sentiment:
“All I need is the air that I breathe.”

  Send "The Air That I Breathe" Ringtone to your Cell  

The Hippies were right, of course.
The Hollies had it all figured out.
With the answer, as usual, right there in the lyrics.
But you were lucky if you were listening.
There was a time before I embraced,
The other “legendary” economists:
The inexorable Marx,
The savage society of Veblen,
The heresies we know so well of Keynes.
I was a child.
And when I was a child, I spake as a child—
Grazie mille, King James—
I understood as a child; I thought as a child.
But when I became a man I jumped on the bus with the band,
Hopped on the irresistible bandwagon of Adam Smith.

Smith:  “Any last words, *******?”
Okay, you were right: man is rationally self-interested.
Grazie tanto, Scotch Enlightenment,
An intellectual movement driven by,
An alliance of Calvinists and Illuminati,
Freemasons and Johnny Walker Black.
Talk about an irresistible bandwagon:
Smith, the gloomy Malthus, and David Ricardo,
Another Jew boy born in London, England,
Third of 17 children of a Sephardic family of Portuguese origin,
Who had recently relocated from the Dutch Republic.
******* Jews!
Like everything shrewd, sane and practical in this world,
WE also invented the concept:  FOLLOW THE MONEY.

The lyrics: if you were really listening, you’d get it:
Respiration keeps one sufficiently busy,
Just breathing free can be a full-time job,
Especially when--borrowing a phrase from British cricketers—,
One contemplates the sorry state of the wicket.
Now that I am gainfully superannuated,
Pensioned off the employment radar screen.
Oft I go there into the wild ebon yonder,
Wandering the brain cloud at will.
My journey indulges curiosity, creativity and deceit.
I free range the sticky wicket,
I have no particular place to go.
Snagging some random fact or factoid,
A stop & go rural postal route,
Jumping on and off the brain cloud.

Just sampling really,
But every now and then, gorging myself,
At some information super smorgasbord,
At a Good Samaritan Rest Stop,
I ponder my own frazzled neurology,
When I was a child—
Before I learned the grim economic facts of life and Judaism,
Before I learned Hebrew,
Before my laissez-faire Bar Mitzvah lessons,
Under the rabbinical tutelage of Rebbe Kahane--
I knew what every clever child knows about life:
The surfing itself is the destination.
Accessing RAM--random access memory—
On a strictly need to know basis.
RAM:  a pretty good name for consciousness these days.

If I were an Asimov or Sir Arthur (Sri Lankabhimanya) Clarke,
I’d get freaky now, riffing on Terminators, Time Travel and Cyborgs.
But this is truth not science fiction.
Nevertheless, someone had better,
Come up with another name for cyborg.
Some other name for a critter,
Composed of both biological and artificial parts?
Parts-is-parts--be they electronic, mechanical or robotic.
But after a lifetime of science fiction media,
After a steady media diet, rife with dystopian technology nightmares,
Is anyone likely to admit to being a cyborg?
Since I always give credit where credit is due,
I acknowledge that cyborg was a term coined in 1960,
By Manfred Clynes & Nathan S. Kline and,
Used to identify a self-regulating human-machine system in outer space.

Five years later D. S. Halacy's: Cyborg: Evolution of the Superman,
Featured an introduction, which spoke of:  “… a new frontier, that was not,
Merely space, but more profoundly, the relationship between inner space,
And outer space; a bridge, i.e., between mind and matter.”
So, by definition, a cyborg defined is an organism with,
Technology-enhanced abilities: an antenna array,
Replacing what was once sentient and human.
My glands, once in control of metabolism and emotions,
Have been replaced by several servomechanisms.
I am biomechanical and gluttonous.
Soaking up and breathing out the atmosphere,
My Baby Boom experience of six decades,
Homogenized and homespun, feedback looped,
Endlessly networked through predigested mass media,
Culture as demographically targeted content.

This must have something to do with my own metamorphosis.
I think of Gregor Samsa, a Kafkaesque character if there ever was one.
And though we share common traits,
My evolutionary progress surpasses and transcends his.
Samsa--Phylum and Class--was, after all, an insect.
Nonetheless, I remain a changeling.
Have I not seen many stages of growth?
Each a painful metamorphic cycle,
From exquisite first egg,
Through caterpillar’s appetite & squirm.
To phlegmatic bliss and pupa quietude,
I unfold my wings in a rush of Van Gogh palette,
Color, texture, movement and grace, lift off, flapping in flight.
My eyes have witnessed wondrous transformations,
My experience, nouveau riche and distinctly self-referential;
For the most part unspecific & longitudinally pedestrian.

Yes, something has happened to me along the way.
I am no longer certain of my identity as a human being.
Time and technology has altered my basic wiring diagram.
I suspect the sophisticated gadgets and tools,
I’ve been using to shape & make sense of my environment,
Have reared up and turned around on me.
My tools have reshaped my brain & central nervous system.
Remaking me as something simultaneously more and less human.
The electronic toys and tools I once so lovingly embraced,
Have turned unpredictable and rabid,
Their bite penetrating my skin and septic now, a cluster of implanted sensors,
Content: currency made increasingly more valuable as time passes,
Served up by and serving the interests of a pervasively predatory 1%.
And the rest of us: the so-called 99%?
No longer human; simply put by both Howards--Beale & Zinn--

Humanoid.
Us hippies and straights
from the baby boomer generation
grew up with two great television myths
which determined how
we turned out
and they are
"The Wizard Of Oz"
and
"Peter Pan"
and every year
as we grew up
they were the TV events
on Sunday night
so as we got older
we went to Oz
like on LSD and stuff
and realized
that we wanted to go back
to Kansas
but like Peter Pan
we didn't want to grow up
so we didn't
so here am I,
an old baby boomer,
back at his childhood home
in Kansas, Michigan
and I still refuse to grow up.
I wish I could fly.
Katie Smith Jul 2014
I’m sick of hearing my life’s a haiku.
I’m into magic, love, and other sorts of things that are typically voodoo.
I’m half ***** from a half assed absent African baby boomer brat.
I’m half white trash.
Here’s a well formed of dried tears turned into something to sooth my canine teeth.
It tastes like Moonshine.
I can’t swim anymore, so I’m here drowning in a concrete pool.
Always, I look for the hell in you.

I sharpen my boot knife for ****** assault protection.
The first swipes for the plus 200,000 in counting.
The seconds for the 66 percent underreported.
The lasts for me,
the 29 percent victims aged 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, and 12.

We have a higher rate of risking everything.
For depression x3.
For committing suicide x4.
For post traumatic stress disorder x6.
For alcohol abuse x13.
For drug abuse x26.

You all think I’m crazy,
I’m not.

I sometimes get called
stupid, ugly, *****, and thot.

I’m in pain, in sorrow.
I can’t help it.
He did it.
No one can undo it.
What do we do about it?

I wont scream, I won't cry.

I’ll ask how he’s doing with glitter and tears in the corner of my eye.
And after he's done molesting me,
"Want to go grab some coffee or tea?"
Personally, I like the cafe down the street.
They sell good brunch with amazing croissants.

And after this is over,
I’d ask him how it was while he turned me over.
Baby boomer that is me..
I was born in the shade, of a tree..

On a little farm as cute as can be..
This was my first home for my litter mates and me.

4 brothers and sisters plus me equals 9.
I'm lucky to have this, family of mine.

Mom and dad are beagle dogs too..
Being on the farm, was like living at a zoo..

Shouts the rooster.. **** a doodle dooo.
Waking the farm before the early morning dew

As the morning sun begins to rise..
Clouds of many shapes fill the skies...

One little two little three little goats
On the little pond the duck family floats..

4 little 5 little 6 little pigs..
They watch their momma as she digs..

My sisters and brothers we get to roll and play...
Mom will teach us, the safest way...

We nibble each other's neck, and nose.
Sometimes we bite our tails, and toes..
Children's poems.. Based on Boomer the Beagle
At the mailbox, again:
“Who loves me, baby?”
Well, let’s see: there’s a flyer from Mercury Insurance,
Reminding me that most middle-income customers
Save an average of $4 million smackaroons when they switch too.
The Penny Saver USA.com is here,
Thank God, almighty!
So now I know that Thomas Roofing & Paving
Is having a special on 20-year leak-free flat roofs;
"All work guaranteed & insured.
No job too big or small.
Free estimates/Emergency services/License # I8U-69."
And thank you, Jesus,
For another $4.99 Farmer Boys 3-Egg Breakfast
Combo with Coffee coupon, and that
Little Caesars Hot-N-Ready, $5.00 cheese or pepperoni,
Mae-West-“why-don’t-you-come up and see me sometime?”—mailer. And, of course, another technology Siren’s song:
Verizon FiOS delivers entertainment this big,
Dish me up some dish NETWORK, $19.99 a month . . .
Are you ******* me?
For 12 ******* months?
AT&T;: whack me off on 120 channels.
DIRECTV.com - DIRECTV® Official Site‎
Worry-free 99.9%  . . . cue Joe E. Brown,
"Some Like It Hot“ Osgood:
"Well, nobody’s perfect!"
Time Warner/Sprint/T-Mobile;
And ******* Leather, Polk Street, San Francisco.
******* leather?
Must be for my neighbor: that ***** ****!
And here’s the weekly 8-page color fold-out from Stater Bros:
Lowering prices every day, large cantaloupes
(Jessica Lange, are you back?)
10 for $10.00, 32 oz. Gatorade
Or 24 oz Propel in 30 assorted varieties @ 79 cents
+ CRV: California Redemption Value?
Nice euphemistic cover-up for a TAX.
Nice, nice, very nice, CA elected state officials;
Nicely done, Sacramento.
Everywhere else in the country you get real money—
A fixed number of pennies, nickels, or dimes—
For your plastic bottles and aluminum cans.
But in California, the licensed recyclers
Get to pull the market price out of their *** each morning.
California Redemption Value?
What ******* genius government kleptocrat thought that one up? Conspiracy Alert: who gets all that CRV money?
And what are they doing with it?
Feeling plain, Jane?
Marinello Schools of Beauty, want you,
Offer you hands-on training in cosmetology,
Skin care esthetics, manicuring and vaginal deodorizing—
Just kidding, Babaloo.
Food tip for the Third World:
Never try to write poetry on an empty stomach.
Sizzler 6 oz juicy & succulent.
RENEGADE DEAL:
El Pollo Loco guacamole chicken sandwich,
Coupon free, small drink and small chips,
When you purchase a guacamole or jalapeno sandwich,
includes pepper jack cheese and a southwest sauce.
Gardenas sandia con semilla, 7 lbs 99 cents.
GARDENAS: “en precios, servicio y calidad, nadie nos iguaia.”
Bud Gordon’s Quality NISSAN:
One at this price after a $1500 factory rebate.
TERMINIX: get them before they get you!
The Kingdom Animalia, Phylum Arthropoda, Class Insecta
Bug up my *** again.
And a form letter from the VA
Asking me to please update my whereabouts.
And a form letter from the VA asking me
To please update my whereabouts.
And miles to go before I sleep.
Bite me, Mr. Frost!

An outing, at last.
I am going for a walk around the inside of my gates.
I live in one of those gated over-55 lunatic asylums.
There are gates. It is gated. Get it?
GATED! We feel safe here.
Probably a good thing at our age:
Self-imposed institutionalization,
Putting oneself in an asylum to ferment and die.
The fact that so many of us
Need it so bad at only 55
Says something itself about the current state of
Baby Boomer metal-fatigue.
I am now standing at the far end of the golf course.
I wait at the far end of the 18th Hole.
A ball bounces past my head and
Rolls off past the green into the far rough.
The 18th Hole is perched atop a small plateau,
Out of sight, far above the horizon for anyone teeing off.
I am Puck, invisible and impish.
I pluck the ball up.
I scamper to the green.
I pop the ball into the hole.
Which is better than popping a hole in the ball,
Surely, kind of a drag,
As we were once fond of saying.
Deflated Ball.
Deflator Maus.
OPERA can be ****.
Bodice-ripping corsets, whorehouses and naked ******!
Hardly what you might expect from
A night with the Welsh National Opera,
But they found their way into this production of "Die Fledermaus."
Ripe language, contemporary jokes and
Toilet humor thrown in, adding immensely
To the pleasures of Strauss’s operetta.
"Die Fledermaus," or The Bat’s Revenge,
Is all about drunkenness and adultery.
Despite being written in the 1870s,
It remains equally pertinent to today’s pub culture of excess.
Daring; Colorful; ****: PGA golf.
I steal a golf ball on the far end of the 18th Hole.
I pick up the Titleist and stick it in the hole
(Steady Jessica, not yours.
I hide behind your bush.
(Cue up PSA, First Lady Bird Johnson’s 1960s
Nationwide Beautification Campaign:
“I want everyone in America to plant a tree,
A sherrrr-rub, or a booosh.”)
The golfer now searching frantically:
Why is the cup always the last place they look?
Then, wham, bam, he looks:
A legend is born.
A hole in one,
His name forever immortalized
On a plaque over the bar, the proverbial 19th Hole.

As you know, I speak for all mediocrities,
Safe in my 55+ gated-community.
I go next to the Club House,
"The Lodge" as it’s called.
Each afternoon, the usual suspects
Claiming first come/first serve tiered mini-theater seats
Where Netflix matinee gems are screened.
It is two minutes to DVD show time.
I walk to the front of the room.
I stare at my audience.
I count the house slowly,
Making meaningful eye contact with each wrinkled face.
I cup my hands behind my back and speak:
“I assume you are all here for my lecture on Kierkegaard.”
No one reacts.
I turn to leave but do a double-take and smile.
One old woman in the top right corner of the amphitheater laughs, Perhaps the one other human being within the gates
Who has also smoked a joint today.
For an instant, I am overwhelmed with paranoia,
Perhaps I’ve gone too far over the line:
No longer “oh-he’s-a-character;”
I am now “that creep is ******* nuts.”
Is it time for someone to approach my family,
My next of kin, my “who-to-contact-in-event-of-emergency” number? Who will make the call on behalf of the HOA—
The Homeowner’s Association—
The Tsars, the Duma, the Supreme Soviet in these parts?
They are the power inside the gates;
Those who determine the state’s enemies,
Who govern its community norms.
Power within the gates.
Law within the asylum.
Little Hitlers one and all.
Hopefully they reach my sister first.
She’s been briefed.
KEY POINT IN THE NARRATIVE:
The new narrative is non-linear.
We can no longer sustain a narrative understanding of ourselves;
We are each an individual stream of consciousness,
All of us random, non-linear and disconnected.
We grow more and more disconnected from others.
We may be neighbors in space and time,
But we remain deprived of any significant human contact;
Any spiritually significant human contact.
Our social circle narrows to what can fit in The Telescreen;
We become more intimate with a legion . . .
Did someone say a legion? SPQR:
Am I having some sort of genetic-linguistic seizure here?
Am I channeling Benito Mussolini again?
Il Duce speaks to me from the grave,
Still blowing smoke up my Hopi-Jew-*** ***,
Filling in my insecurities,
Plugging the holes in my character
With delusions of classical Roman grandeur, glory and empire. Hmmmm? Quite an appetizing pitch for the average *****,
A message so completely, so ethnocentrically slick,
Olive oily, and so seductive.
A non-Italian would have thought
American Legion or Legionnaire’s disease,
Or The Foreign Legion, The French Foreign Legion.
The French: a virulent, promiscuous people.
Do you want fries with that, Simone?
No, I don’t get out much.
Only an occasional brisk walk around the asylum,
In and around the golf course, around but inside the gates. (LINKS) Bill Gates. Daryl Gates. Billy Bathgate’s Gates? Ghiberti’s Gates? The Hot Gates? Thermopylae? 300 Spartans/700 Thespians:
“The noun causing idiots to think of
Two girls sloppily eating each other’s mighty vaginas,
When they hear mention of someone being an actor.” http://www.urbandictionary.com
Not even close.
No, I rarely venture out.
This is Hemetucky.
There are methamphetamine-stoked
Teenage zombies at the gate.
Note to costume control:
Perhaps camouflage clothing is the safe choice?
No loud red Hawaiian.
No garish Indonesian batik.
Fleet of feet are these Hemet tweakers,
These cranked up Riverside County teenage barbarians,
These Huns & Visigoths,
These amped up, ravenous jackals.
And why stop there?
These Vandals & Vandellas.
A Motown flashback:
“Nowhere to run, baby, nowhere to hide.”
With or without Martha—
They remain dangerously lethal.
Yes, let it be camo clothes for me.
Those **** heads may be young.
They may be fast.
They may be able to run me down
On a dry grass dog-legged fairway savannah,
Tearing the meat from my carcass.
But the sons-a-******* have to see me first.
Besides, we know who are real friends are.
Hooray for our media peeps!
We become more intimate with a legion
Of television personalities on 125 different channels.
Most of these we know by name and context.
We know their families, their friends,
Their histories, their tragedies,
Their favored hyperbole and manner of speech.
Sometimes we establish intimacy with celebrities
Strictly on the basis of universal body language.
At times–in the absence of any other
Empathetic facility of identification–
We connect on instinct alone.
Instinct: perhaps animal at its core,
An animal kingdom affinity group,
Connecting on a bio-linguistic level,
Particularly when the Korean, or Spanish,
Mandarin, or Arabic,
Japanese, or even Hebrew language version is broadcast.
All languages cryptically alien,
A dense boundary, a barrio border wall,
Undecipherable, impenetrable concrete.
But we’ve never spoken to our neighbors,
Nor do we know their names.
Celebrities are the neighbors we know best;
Although the intimacy is an illusion,
Permission to invade their privacy presumed,
Tacit in the relationship between celebrities and their fans.
I am an independent contractor now,
An outside consultant to the NSA.
Try as I might I cannot crack the enigma,
Kim Kardashian remains far beyond my code-breaking prowess.
I repeat myself:
We can no longer sustain a narrative understanding of ourselves;
We are each an individual stream of consciousness,
All of us random, non-linear and disconnected.
We are more and more disconnected from others.
We may be neighbors in space and time,
But we remain deprived of any significant human contact;
Any spiritually significant human contact.
Our social circle narrows to what can fit in The Telescreen; we become more intimate with a legion . . .
Back to you, David Ulin:
“Sometime late last year—I don’t remember when, exactly—I noticed I was having trouble sitting down to read. That’s a problem if you do what I do, but it’s an even bigger problem if you’re the kind of person I am. Since I discovered reading, I have always been surrounded by stacks of books. I read my way through camp, school, nights, and weekends; when my girlfriend and I backpacked through Europe after college graduation, I had to buy a suitcase to accommodate the books I picked up along the way.”
Thank you, David L. Ulin.
I cannot help myself.
I grow more eccentric each day.
My eyeballs glued to that flat screen!

Cosmo Kramer: "The bus is outta control.
So I grab him by the collar, I take him out of the seat,
I get behind the wheel, and now I’m driving the bus."
Jerry: "Wow!"
George Costanza: "You’re Batman."
Cosmo Kramer: "Yeah, yeah, I am Batman.
Then the mugger, he comes to and he starts choking me.
So I’m fighting him off with one hand,
And I kept driving the bus with the other, ya know.
Then I managed to open up the door,
And I kicked him out the door, ya know,
With my foot, ya know, at the next stop."
Jerry: "You kept making all the stops?"
Cosmo Kramer: "Well, people kept ringing the bell!"
(Share this moment with a stranger.)

I speak for all mediocrities.
I am their champion, their patron saint.
Boom Chaka Laka. Boom Chaka Laka.
Boom Chaka Laka. BOOM!
Isn’t it time Salieri tempted Constanze–
Frau Mozart–with a plateful of Capezzoli di Venere:
“******* of Venus.”
You had me at hello, Kidman.
I know you too well, Nicole.
I knew you from before,
Way before Tom’s Oprah couch freak show.
Listen to me, Nicole:
We are face to face
With the most profound question in American literature:
"What is the grass?
The flag of my surrender?
The flag of my disposition?"
I resort to Socratic maxims: Know yourself;
The un-****** life is not worth living.
Is it stress? Is it lack of conviction?
Everything Jeff Lebowski neither wants nor needs in his life?
I watched you *** in "Eyes Wide Shut," Nicole.
Now I know you with my eyes and your legs wide open.
Thank you, Sidney Pollack.
Sidney knew.
Sidney dealt us cards
From his Hollywood Tarot deck.
We are intimate, Nicole.
I watched you squat.
My technology nightmare
Leaves me euphoric this morning.
Addicted, like drug trials,
I knew the risks going in,
Got hooked in The Cloud &
Now it always seems easier,
With diminished psychic chafing
Whenever I go with the flow, as the
Hipsters are saying again.
Yes, the hipsters:
Finally, some kids I can relate to.
At least on some level, their music e.g.
The first thing I did this morning,
Waiting for my laptop to boot,
Was put a CD on the stereo:
Matrix Reloaded: The Album.
I set the shuffle function,
Looping back between
Linkin Park’s Session &
Team Sleep’s Passportal.
You can tell a lot about
What kind of day it will be
By the soundtrack you choose,
Your infinite play list,
Don’t ever say these kids have no culture,
Or nothing to share with us old farts.
Old Farts: an apt, Baby Boomer term in 2015.
Kids’ music, some of it quite good,
Quite 60s-worthy if you catch my drift,
As we used to say while grazing in the grass with
Hugh Masekela & his Naai Mongoe-Swazi red,
Surfrikan homeboys & band mates, & that
ANC Kwa-Guqa Township posse,
Shadowing him since Sharpeville.
That’s right, Babaloo,
Go with the flow.
Don’t fight it. You’ve been spared the unintended
Consequences of government shenanigans &
Free market meltdowns.
Consider this a CEASE & DESIST NOTICE:
Cease swimming upstream Mr. Phelps.
Desist fighting tide & current, Michael.
A mariner’s distinction, yet serviceable &
Purposed for this narrative.
“And away we go,” croons a Gleason levitation;
Aloft we go into the wild blue yonder.
The Cloud: an exalted playground.
You are atop the slide,
Kindergarten lord of all you survey,
Sultan, Chinese Emperor & Venetian Doge,
A 90-caliber Duke of Earl,
You are euphoric, Mike.

The descent into the humanoid condition
(See Paddy Chayefsky’s Howard Beale),
Is slick and precipitous.
It begins when you first finger ****
A pocket calculator or touchtone phone,
Or use a Xerox machine.
From there it’s a quick slide down
The technology ****-shoot: video games,
Spreadsheets & word processors,
Emails, texts & tweets,
Laser projection keyboards,
Wi-Fi amplifiers,
GPS navigators, &
Apps for No-Strings *** . . .
By “****-shoot” I editorialize, of course,
In a state of future shock,
Resenting planned obsolescence,
Contemptuous of shrewd **** kids,
Wharton School sharpies,
Scoping out price curves & flowcharts,
Colluding at industry trade shows,
Powwows & confabs,
Releasing newer, more versatile
Models & spinoffs, according to a
Scheme planned three years in advance.

I salt the inevitable wounds of technology,
Taking my fight to the streets, realizing too late
My sole means of alerting the flash mob
Is by so-called smart phone,
*******!
Even the revolution has gone digital.
Poor Gil Scott Heron, dead last year at 62,
Poor Scott Heron, channeled into the
Harlem Renaissance by that loyal Chicago Defender,
Subscriber & reader, to wit: his Grandma,
A “Rainbow Conspiracy” co-conspirator,
Cooking ham hocks & collard greens for that
Mythical coalition of Young Lords,
Black Panthers & SDS.
Heron’s prognostication was wrong:
“The Revolution Will (In Fact) Be Televised!”
We’ve witnessed quite a bit of it,
Lately, prime time lately,
Live by satellite from once exotic places,
Places like Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria & Ferguson, MO.
I say “once exotic” because it’s hard to be
Visually intoxicated by images of screaming brown men
Sporting New York Yankee ball caps,
“Vote for Pedro” T-shirts and
$200.00 Air Jordan footwear.
Admittedly, the production values of
Revolutionary journalism have improved,
Action reported Hollywood-style,
Narrative arcs, scripted episodes,
Drive-by Potemkin villages & battle scenes,
30 or 60 or 90 day shooting schedules.
Spontaneous proletarian uprisings as Reality TV,
Riveting dramas,
High Nielsen ratings & $500K
Per minute corporate sponsors.
Let’s view the new fall line-up:
(1) “Mustafa Behaving Badly!”
(2) “Tunisian Tear Gas Talent!”
(3) “Gaddafi Gets Sodomized!”
Jon York Jun 2010
The years, they have come and gone so
fast, nothing seemed to last, like the loves
that have come and gone and when
we are young and wish the time didn't
pass so slow, as we get older, we wish
things didn't move so fast, and that the
nice things would last just a little longer.

In  65  I was seventeen, somewhere
between mean and lean and I didn't
know much, but most don't when they
are only a teen and my first love, dear
Anne  was so young
and sweet,and she never missed
a beat, so soft and tender, a real
credit to her gender, and one day
she just disappeared and I can't
remember if I even got to say goodbye.

In 69, I was twenty-one and made my
living with a gun, in a no - win situation
called Vietnam and life was no fun.

Surviving 13 months of daily combat
I give thanks that I was trained by the
best -  the ( Marine Corp ) but the battles
in my head would never  let me rest when
I returned home.

The decorations they came, but I would
never be the same. coming home to a very
mean and angry Country that was fighting
an unpopular War and didn't seem to care
any more about their returning warriors
and just closed the door.

In  77   I was twenty - nine, aging like a
fine wine but waking up in a Hospital room
in Joplin one day from an automobile
accident not knowing what to say,except
"what happened to me ? ","where am I, and
"who am I ?"

"You can't walk" the nurse said and the
pain so great, I felt that I would be better
off dead and I was discarded as a crippled
by my wife and I was forced to begin a
new life which would be filled with strife.

Learning everything again that I already
knew like walking, talking and being a
human being was no fun at 29 but it had
to be done, because I had no where to run.

In 1980 I was recovered and strong
after rebuilding my body and I was
on my way to embark on a new way
of  life and I had something to prove to
myself and not to anybody else.

In 1990, moving to another State,
with the idea that it was not too late
for a new start, and this time I would
have a new part to play.

I learned what the War had done to me,
and that our  freedom never comes free,
and that I needed help in my head,
or I would end up up dead.

In 2010 I am  sixty - one  and wonder
what I have done with my life. Where
did the years go, gone like a vapor
in the air and all you can do is simply
stare in the mirror asking yourself
"is that really me ?"

Then this Angel came out of nowhere,
this beautiful lady who needed me I
thought as much as I needed her.

It took 61 years to find her and we
were together for two years in a union
that I thought would last forever, but
for her the truth was never.

She lied to me for two years about her
past and her intentions so she could use
me and keep herself amused.

I couldn't see what she was doing
because my love for her was so strong
and she just wasn't equipped to handle
so much love and it didn't take her long
to find someone else that could keep
her amused.

When I found her,I thought that real
love was unstoppable and that it would
always find you and that you could not hide.

Instead I got taken for one big ride by this
Kansas Queen who also turned out to be
very mean and who thought that she could
get away with it clean.

Together I thought that we faced the World
with our hearts in each others hands and I
thought that we knew that the others love
was true.

But upon discovering her lies she only
made me blue because her lies were so cool
and so very cruel it made me think I should
go back to school.

With her lies she professed her love for me
and I smiled because she made me happy
and she let me know if I made her mad or
made her sad.

But she appeared much to my surprise
to be glad when I opened the door for her
to leave and I was even more surprised
at how fast that she hit the door running.

Was it to another man who was waiting and
knew she was coming but that's all right
because it really doesn't matter because I was
glad and fortunate to see her scatter.

So we must be prepared for changes that
come at us so fast often leaving you to wonder,
"how long can I last?" and leaving you
wondering "how did I last this long," when
so many times you thought you were gone.

She told me everyday for two years
that she loved me and that that she
would never leave me saying to me that
I was the "one" that had been sent to her
by Jesus, and in the end I was just numb
and must have looked pretty dumb
because I believed all of her lies which
resulted in so many cries.

Life will blindside you when you least
expect it so we have to learn to expect the
unexpected and learn to love and not hate.

In the beginning she showed me that I
could love, taking away my hate but in
the end she took away that love
and brought back so much hate.

Because of her lies I will never be the
same because it was all just her game
that I lost but I will never play that
way again and I will never lose like
that again.

I will survive and live to see another day
and another love will come my way. 

Just do what you have to do to survive
while you are on this crazy ride................                  
Jon York        wrote 2010,    edited 2012
aviisevil Jun 2018
Gandalf: a character ( wizard) from the legend that is lord of the rings
...

chapter - 0:



he was walking past the useless lake on a breezy autumn day when the gust of wind brought with it the scent of a thousand abandoned garage bags littering the corner of this semi unorganised semi-civilised halli part of a mega city.

his home was about three thousand kilometres away and a dozen hundred dialects removed from where he chose to pursue his 'higher' education.

a term he took literally and to heart.

he was almost always high, if that's what you call being semi awake and always clawing somewhere deep, both mentally and sometimes even physically.


but as soon as the cacophony of a thousand different bad smells hit his soul, he knew the trip was over.

he jolted back to existence from an escalating thought process leading him to the discovery of a new and a better universe.

he took a deep breath and immediately regretted his decision, almost screaming in horror.

and while he was battling a lost battle trying to defeat an invisible and impossible to contain force of population and pollution,

his smoked eyes latched onto a figure emerging from the corner of his smoked eyes.

he suddenly realised where he was. and it wasn't where he thought he was about two seconds ago.

leaf-less and life-less trees stood where he could swear was just an empty slightly orange and red sky a few milli moments ago  

the lake had turned from blue to a shade of green or was it still blue ?
he wasn't interested at all, so he just gave up reasoning in mid-process..

what difference does it make ?

but suddenly his mellowed mind  realised the threat, and his attitude changed from i-don't-really-give-a-**** to oh-****.

there was something else there too, and he, like a ******* cat- turned around just in time to see what it was,

and the time stood still. he couldn't believe his eyes.

it was    gandalf.

**** it. he was sure. ******* gandalf.
with a ******* stick, his beard and that grey whatever. gandalf.

he took a deep breath again. it didn't hurt as bad as before. maybe it was growing on him. he took another breath just to make sure it wasn't. it wasn't.


and as gandalf started becoming bigger and bigger, he could see his mighty white beard dancing in the wind more clearly. he could sense his aura radiating a wonderful positive force that was almost impossible to describe with a naked eye and with an F  in communication skills.

gandalf was finally a stone throw away from the boy. he could throw a stone at him. he could but he wouldn't. no, he thought about it but no. it wouldn't make sense. it was too insane of an idea too. he wasn't yet ready to accept his true human nature that enjoyed the absurdity of violence.

though he was a hard-core stoner.  ah irony and puns.


instead he took the more scenic route and almost mumbled " gandalf?! what?!?! "


it took the old white man a second to register but he managed a sudden " gand elf, what?!? "

it wasn't awkward yet. but it was india. so it kinda' was.

the boy almost trained in apologising professionally and profoundly, mumbled " oh, no.. I'm sorry.. I just.. you know.. there's this .. dude.. people do cosplays now.. and I was a little high... ahem.. I mean I was thinking.. I mean I saw.. you.. I mean, I swear you're looking like a ******* gandalf.. I mean gandalf ?!?! "


another gust of wind and they both frowned.

gandalf responded " who .. what the **** is gand elf ?!?!"


the boy " he was supposed to be a dwarf like something.. but he become a wizard and tall, you know .. fought a dragon.. and rode giant birds.. ?!?! "


not gandalf " what the **** are you talking about, what is wrong with you, you're not making any ******* sense and I, I'm .. hey, you see.. just saying, I'm very good at making sense, that all "


the boy " so, are you like a ******* teacher or a .. scientist?!? "


not gandalf? "ummm.. well you can say that.. something like that "


the boy " what do you mean, for all I know you could be a perverted ******* who also happens to wander the woods doing weird cosplays and killing people. "

not gandalf " the ****, kid ?! jeez.. simmer down.. that TV is insane, you guys ******* love it.. **** man.. I should have stopped that from happening... and video games! god, they ****.. I should have just killed the lot of you.. " and on went a rant the strange man


the boy " wo.. wo.. whoa.. wait, you're talking like you are better than the rest of us...are you on crack ? what are you even saying you ***... you're more like someone who pulls on broken strings on a hand down guitar on some shady corner of an immaculate subway... you're just a boomer, are you not, mister ? "


strange man not gandalf " well, in a way I am.. I am.. well, I am everything and everyone" he whispered..    a satisfying smile almost breaking out


the boy " the ******* mean ******* ?!? "

this was too much for the old man who was just having a walk and minding his own business

he whispered more angrily his time " oh you punk, you little punk I'll tell you! I'm ******* god, you **** .. yeah, **** it.. I'm not even kidding.. I'm ******* god, yeah!... **** it *****!. "


he took his hand and pointed to the sky and the clouds parted.


the boy couldn't believe his eyes, and almost suddenly the clouds began to form a shape.

he couldn't make it out at first, all he could see was that the old man who claimed to be a god, drawing something in the air.

he looked up and finally realised what it was.

God was drawing a giant duck in the sky.

and as he was staring up in a mixture of disbelief and horror,  the old man spoke loudly " that's you.. you sick ****.. it's your little duck. "


old-man-now-god-went on "... I mean it looks like a big duck 'cause you couldn't see it otherwise.. but drawing to ratio... it's your little duck.. and the whole world can see it now.. and they know it's small.. and not as big as it appears because it had to be big enough for everybody to see.. "


the boy was now going insane. anybody would. people just don't turn up, part clouds and draw ducks in the sky.. that doesn't even happen in movies.



the boy went on- a little horrified of what he had just witnessed " what kind of a god are you, I mean... what in the god's name was that ? how did you do it. ?"


God responded with squinty eyes " which part of i-am-a-*******-God did you not understand.. you.. you stupid mortal. "

from the depths of darkness a flicker of light emerged in the boy's mind, and he realised something very important..


the boy " hey, you can't be god, god won't ******* curse! he's god. " screaming cautiously at the stranger...


God had heard petty arguments and had gone through all that phase of  people taking some time to turn around and warm up to the idea of the literal god in front of them, he'd been over that all his life.

but this was the single dumbest thing he had ever heard since he made the decision to create the universe in a hurry.

God thought to himself " I should have paid more attention. meh. "

one more thing- the boy went on " why are you a he ? not a she ? I mean if you're a god why be ... I mean an old man with a stupid beard. why not somebody hot, and cool... and with a nice body and a face... slightly better... or maybe much better..  you get the point, right ? I mean.. you're god, right ? "

God just stood there and soaked in his own filth.

the boy went on hysterically " oh my... did you hear my answer even before I said it ? did you ? I mean can you ?... and did you ? or was it you that gave the answer.. 'cuz if you made the universe.. you made me too, right ?. "


God was annoyed. like really annoyed at this point and he blurted out " you think I made you ? you think one fine day I woke up and I thought to myself.. oh! I've created this beautiful but empty place full of darkness and the cold, spectacle of fire dancing in nothingness- breathing life in ***** of all kinds circling around the stars and what not.. and you think I was like 'what am I missing ?'... oh yes, right! I'm missing one ungrateful ******* snake with a little duck. "


the boy stunned " God ?!.. No, **** no! "

god almost curios " why would you say that. why did you even speak , why! "


the boy " my duck .. you know.. ain't that ... small. "



God almost smirking " shut up, *****. "


the boy " oh, yeah.. right you... really know how to abuse your own species. jeez. "


God " I didn't make you ... I ******* dropped my dope in the ocean once and you ******* things came out of it. "

he went on " I thought you'd die on your own but nah.. life's too nasty.. ugly and ... you know... it's.. admittedly... quite beautiful. "

time stood still as soon as he said that.

and it was a beautiful moment. both god and the boy trying not to turn red or cry.



" but the sad part is.. " God whispered with the love of a thousand cuddling pandas " you guys found me, I mean... oh my God! that brain thing really worked ... extraordinary! my subordinates tell me ... very expensive.. err... I mean to design... "


the boy " people work for you ? what ?! that's like.. you have a staff ?!.. weird. "


God " *****, i'm ******* god.. I don't have a staff.. I ******* make the staff. and no that's not even an iota of weird.. but you know what's weird ...truly weird, a fact so crazy that it'll blow your mind and give you enough wisdom to tear through the fabric of the world I've made and undiscover all its secrets, science and gossip?!  "


the boy was now as curious as a teenage boy in teenage, he replied " what?! tell me.. is it here on earth ?!"



God " yes, it is my child.. indeed it is! such joy!... and it is also right here where we stand. "


the boy's mind went into an overdrive.. maybe this was all his design.. the almighty has come to show him the path.. out of these woods he's lost in.... and also a path of divinity and happiness.. and also he had watched Bruce almighty a dozen times or so... he was ready.


almost in a poetic voice filled with a general sense of elation.. the boy asked god " tell me.. please what is it pleaseeee ? "


the god smiled, in a way only a father smiles to her new born daughter.. knowing she's going to be paid less, has to go through the cycle of being temporary insane every month ( or that's what female's had been telling him .. it doesn't matter.. you a guy.. you see a woman in pain.. you *******... that's 10 hours of her ******* the life out of you. and you still wouldn't be a good listener or attentive according to her even if you give up in the 9th hour.

the boys repeated desperately " what is it! I'd be a good boy but please tell me pleaseeee! "

and the god smiled. he smiled and pointed to him. " that there , that is it.. that ugly ******* little duck of yours. "


and immediately burst into a laughter more grandeur than any sound in the world. I mean right after radiohead but whatever.


the boy saw his finger and tried to trace it's path. and almost in a moment.. it was over.


he had lost it- he screamed at the creator " you think you can make fun of me 'cuz you a big guy ? you think you can make fun of me because you're the most powerful thing there is and can literally turn me into 50 hands and no ducks... just living life in pure agony.. " he trailed off looking a bit distant towards the ending..

God " jeez. kid. you don't have to be so dark and imaginative unnecessarily.. see, okay I'm sorry... I hurt your little heart...which by the way I have made and do own the materials to.. and that's why you're alive... basically all of you and everything.. now to think of it.. it does make me a big guy... or more than that... but that's not the point. "

he went on " the point is i should've known better... because you know I made it all.  even the concept of being better..  booom! blows your mind ain't it.. chuck it.. and the point is.. I should've known better, so I'm  sorry!.. you can tell people I said sorry but they're not 'gonna believe someone like you "


the boy " **** do you mean someone like me?! " back in his form


god " oh you know... someone with a small...... ******* duck !"

and the god fell down laughing hysterically and immediately as soon he said the words..

rolling all over the soft grass and the boy's face.


the boy had enough- he screamed " **** like you can spend two minutes being a human... who's to tell you didn't have a small duck and then just made yourself one big enough " his voice trailing in the wind


god hadn't been spoken like this since the invention of languages.. oh how much he despised languages..a ******* constant annoying noise in his head specially the bengali.. **** them.

God spoke back " oh, so you think being a snake is better than being the almighty ?! "


the boy " I'm not a snake.. I'm a human.. what school did you got to ? "

God " you can be a ******* rock for all I care ... just be nothing.. you know.. instead of being everything.. the idea of it... it's is rather.. you know... so beautiful. "


and at that moment the boy realised that even god wasn't immune to something that he didn't know.


the god " I'll do you a deal, you be two seconds in my place and I'll be two seconds in your place... and then we'll know.. I'll know the fear of being nothing and you can know the escatsy of being everything. deal dawg ?"


the boy " but.. like two seconds .. awful less of a time to enjoy any kind of escatsy "

God " running late, mate. "


the boy " okay okay.. let's do it "



God smiled a bit and immediately a giant light came down from the sky roaring with a thousand thunderstorms...

wind was growing stronger by the second and it was almost impossible to hear anything... or analyse anything for that matter...

God screamed at the boy " it's going to go in your *** and out of your mouth.. and your soul will be passed to mine.. "

the boy screamed back in oh-my-god-that-face horror barely making any coherent sense.


God rolling on the floor laughing
" jeez. I'm kidding you punk.... that face tho.. so woke.. so woke..."

it took some time but he picked himself back up and screamed at the boy " it's going to happen... three..two.. one.. " and boom


the boy felt what can only be described as the best ****** anybody has ever had.


the god felt like what can only be described as the hardest kick to the nuts in the history of universe.

two seconds after... bam! everything stood still.. like nothing had happened.


both stared at each other for a while..
God went first " so, ... ?! "


the boy " yeah. "


God " pretty tense...yeah.. *******.. I mean.. God!.. you guys are awful to be.. it *****.. I gotta' change that thing... you know... about people taking their own life... and going to hell... I get it... I mean..  yeah.. you know... like whatever."

God went on " how was yours. "

the boy " yea.. pretty chill.. ... "

God " that it, boy ?! "

the boy " yeah. .. mostly "


God " hmm.. woke.. woke... so were you clever enough to do something for yourself ? "

the boy " oh..yeah..pretty much.. nice cars and girls.. stuff.. " his voice cracking with a very refined i-don't-give-a-**** attitude


the wind was still now. butterflies were flying between the blooming flowers and singing AC/DC for some reason. it was pleasant.


god snapped his finger once and said " so.. yeah i should go now... apparently somebody's supposed to take a picture of me in the sky.. gotta flex up.. chow~ "


God snapped his finger a second time and lo behold!  like that he was gone ****!...


the boy stood still for a moment longer. he smiled and walked away.




(4 days later...)



god was in the alps...looking out of the large window wondering how dreadful it is to be human..  

and as he was crawling in and out of different dimensions he smelt something. something interesting.


it was alcohol. ( he's god so it's very easy for him to figure out such little things.)

so he went over the fancy bar and poured himself some *****.. " ah potatoes.. at least they turned out to be just right.." he thought out loud.

and then he proceeded to drink himself to death.. countless times. 'cuz he could do that. he was god.


over and over again. glass being neither full or half or even ******* empty.

drink after drink. and soon late enough he went into a deep slumber because of course god loves a good sleep. who doesn't ?


he slept through the entire life span of many insects and until the breaking dawn.

the first rays of the sun hit the mighty alps as well as the face of this almighty being on a white bed in a red hotel by a blue lake who had forgotten you do your own curtains in the human world.

his first thought was to destroy the sun- it took a lot to not lift his finger.

slowly but surely he regained his infinitum consciousness, and got in touch with the multi dimensional universes sprawling all over every  second in past and future simultaneously... but **** that 'cuz the head ache oh! so painful.. almost made him forgot he could just not want it and it won't happen.

God did not enjoy most human banalities.. but he did enjoy a rather a peculiar one...even more than drinking and kissing death. the one of peeing.

and he had to ***. bad.


God, with a hint of a smile lifted his finger and boom he was right by- where the deed is done in a civilised community. he imagined what would people think if they came to know why he's always more often than not a 'he' than a 'she'.

he was in his stark boxers, standing almost naked with a smile on his face enjoying the rush.

pink floyd started playing out of the thin air. an autumn's calm spread through the veins of this sudden universe. I kid you not, shahrukh khan was there with his arms wide open.

slowly the god began the almost holy ritual.

pull down the garment. admire. take it out. admire. do the deed, keep admiring. put it back. sigh. very well organised and neat.

so god took a deep breath, looked at the alps one more time, looked down with a smile on his face, and slowly pulled down the garment... his consciousness in a rush.

and then god screamed. there was a duck.
I don't think it's your average run of the mill tale. there should be more than what's meeting the eye usually.
Mike Essig Aug 2015
Words, words, words, but powerful,
they dig deep into a boy's mind
and become the standard he comes
to measure himself by, who he is,
who he must be, must live up to.

Real men never cry. Real men never cry.
Never, ever hit a girl no matter what.
Bullies are all ****** little cowards.
Never back down. Never back down.
Always demand the most of yourself.
Never blame anyone else if you fail.
Never back down. Never back down.
Play fair but play to win.
Show no mercy, take no prisoners,
have no regrets, never complain.
Never back down. Never back down.
Be a man. Be a man. Be a man. Be a man.
Real men never cry. Real men never cry.
Pain makes you stronger. Life's not fair.
Don't be a baby. Stop acting like a girl.
Be a man. Be a man. Be a man. Be a man.
**** it up. It doesn't hurt. Be tough.
Nice guys finish last. Shed no tears.
A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.
Be a man. Be a man. Be a man. Be a man.
Real men never cry. Real men never cry.

We believed deeply in all this ****
and when the time came, took it to war.
Very little made it back to the world.

  ~mce
Growing up in the 50s and early 60s. A very different world.
Boomer started his day
In his cute puppy way..
On his leash he would go for a walk.
He would sniff the grass
As the cars would pass
And bark as if he were trying to talk..

He would greet his new friends,
Before his walk even ends,
With a wig and a wag of his tail..
They would go to the park,
Run around and bark,
Then quench their thirst from a pail...

He would fetch his ball,
Step on his ears and fall,
And it was very funny to see..
Though he was a little pup,
He would still get up,
And then hide behind a tree...

On his back on the grass,  
Watching the clouds pass
He would see many different shapes...
He sees a kitten, and a bunny,
And some looked quite funny,
And some, like big hairy apes...

Laying by a log,
Was one happy little dog,
He felt he had it made...
After a play in the park,
Hearing his friends bark,
As he rests in the shade...
betterdays Mar 2014
Ethel echidna
had a date wid Pike,
a fiiine!
young hedgehog
who be doin' the backpack

she got n' egg
ya see bout a rave
up in the mountains
in a black cathederic cave
doof doof in the dandenongs

d' message said
up dee track
where the ding dongs
don't dare follow
round d' hollow n'
up the back

Ethel she preened
and she polished
the dreds down her back,
clickety, click, clack.
painted her claws
a fetching shade
of orange neon
all watched on by
Pike the backpack peon

then to the doof
dey departed
at a fast shuffel
leaving behin
barely a ruffle
in the burrowed air
they followed
d'directions to
d' right section
dis dey knew
by d' sound of
d' massive party
goin down

on payin d' dosh n'
getten d' mark
off dey went
inta the fray
***** boy mumbled
"woyhoy gotcha!"
when he saw who
was providin
the goodmuse vibing
up ona stage
Jagger the emu
was a struttin'
with Ringo the dingo
on drums an bongos
while Hendrix
the numbat riffed d' strat
an  Entwhistle
d'frogmouthed owl
grooved on his gibson
wid ***** left stage staring

Ethel got bizzy
check'n out the dancefloor
lookin for bling or moves wid a sting
perhaps a little ******* headbangin

well down
at the southdoor
trouble was brewin'
foul words
was spewin between
d magpie n seagull crews
till the bouncers,
kanga & roo
hustled dem
all outside for a brew

up near the stacks
Pheobe the lizard
was flashin
a matchin
frill n grill ensemble
while Stan, her man
was fillin his bill
at the buffet table
as only a pelican can
at the grub bar
sat the kookaburra trio
Max,Tom, Deccy
havin a speccy
at tha lady
cockatoos n' galahs,
givina chuckle
at the bruhaha
they had created
comin flyin from
near n' far to this
surberb n spectacular
festival of fauna
"tho hot as a sauna
best dis year sofah"

jus inside
d' recovery corner sat
Horn a blue tongue lizard
feelin a bit pukey n' flat
den dere was
Kayla n' Jac
a pair o koalas
who now be zonin
from d eucalyptus
dey been a chewen
alldayz

outaback time it's awastin
with dis watchin n waitin

Ethel hit the floor
wherever
she booggied,
grooved or h-banged
she got a big crowd,
given her ground
to shake
her dreds around
cause dat girl
is dangerous
wid her dredlocks man,
to which Zach
the one eyed wombat
can well attest

Now not bein a dancer
***** got lonely
so looked upa chat
with the rest
of d' backpackin crowd
he swapped recipes
for green brownies wit
Boomer the orangatang,
harvest spots wit
Goth the friutbat,
Hamish de otter,
quiet de globetrotter,
did giv ***** some tips
about surfin rips
furder down de coast.

so dey shimmyed
an dey shammyed,
dey talked
an dey squawked
till d' old sun
came out to play
den dey wandered
and dey wended
back down
d' track to d' town
to sleep d' day away.

as to our Ethel
and *****,
well
dey crawled
gingerly
inta their bed,
they cuddled
an dey clicked,
dey kissed
an dey snicked
and dey
blew dey
selfs away
Ken Pepiton May 2019
to me? Real with a certified S.King filtered -ly mod,
by god,
as the oh myers say. On Writing sans Shining.
Needful fiction,
Liars prosper. Okeh. Thus,
the poor we have with us, always.

Truth t' tell.

Entshallah allathat, OMG samesame
good mastah willin' creeks don't rise

Do the work. Come Sunday, someday,
we, all us, say.

You ever finish your own work one day and jest

sit back lax - lacks a daisy, taken easy,
laxative action,
gut synapse
synch-up, cinch that saddle on my wildest
old Nightmare, beat my plow
back to a oil drum,

set some feats t'dancin' in some ol'lady minds.

old man's angels seen t'be jiggin' on
the head o' some pen
in the hand

worth two in the bush.

Who know what ever mean, okeh.

period. point made signal.
that was said and it's writ.

set it aside, let it dry

crumble to dust and be scattered to the five great gyres
to settle
as sands
ifiable quant, to mortal mind, weighable
any worth assigned as
sought or ought,
a grain,
a mote,
as seen with five gee augmented
lenses
prestandards beeing raised in the buzz
from Utah

as an erranded boy's sail bike lifts into if
from the saline shore.
Bike tires adhered to passive-ly

by molecular
memories of being
in truth, as if
once and ever,
salt of the earth, see in the distance,
Lot's wife

as tiny as can be

Na and CL, for ever,
deja wuwuish it were possible… dream… or die…

no don't. There is a reason. I for get it can not right now but these
keys can be

used right by the sober one in the batch.
God, I love this process. This is the work. Living.
You can do it as long as you can pay attention…

selah

then it, the algorithm, I'll go rhythm, pauses,
Spelchkovian spells masters seem sorry we ever agreed she'd
leave me leavened as dust
lying around
on white linen
in the streets of Laredo, as cold as the clay,

back in the day,
we sang that song in school. We sang
in movie theaters, along with a
bouncing ball and other people,

big bio jump here. My step-brother was murdered,
and it never seemed relative…

my father married a wombed man with one leg,
whose family sang along with Mitch,

and played Spit in the Ocean.

Such experiences ificate possibilities few knew
some survive.
There could be a contributory flow…

This ever lasting book of life.
See, a shore, sand bar
snag a thought rainbowing true to you

hang-ups from way back

Any boomer bubble popped too soon. Manifest at will.
P-pickup from scratch and
make a point
to infect the next pun unknoticing kid,

old -time slow hand-eye coordination special ed, Big Ern,
kicking chalk dust in far right field, noticing
patterns
in the leftmost vector straight home--

grand children, for the joy of knowing they happened,
caused,
to all outward appearance,
by my survival of several unbelievable

periences ex nihilo only
if "It don't mean nothing".

link link link something has broken, what do we con tribute tributary flow
too dammed salty, got to puddle around

waiting. waiting. waiting for one point
to be made
edged on all angles, to each mea culpa assured
quantifiability of reason,

inquizical sequence surpast
glistering

whetted and furbished for ever,

the keenness
the cut, precision decision

and how swiftly forms the scab,
a touch,

capillary seals, the grain, at HD,
one pixelish crystallin charge

change that,
by taking thought. It does nothing to your stature,

think allusive butterflies of lifenshit

it gets tiresome. A body wants some rest from ever
meaning ever and never was known
or heard
a dis cora zone age word, like

troglodyte or luddite Denisovan bracelet breaker,
ropemaker union with certain silky
threads
to which a little leaven always sticks
as would caterpillar spit.

Meandering, right, it's the play. My role.
I manifest the dance
as seen on the surface, from Jim's POV,

then my own POV,
then my own rivers of no return,
tribute

'ary a day goes by I don't re call that feeling,

flow is moving paster and paster the walls are
higher
shade deeper
colder'n'hell fersher, rapids.
Ah,

Kern River, I remember this.
Almond trees, Columbus clouds…
Hey, readerman, paperbackwriter wannabe,

we survived. What'sa-hell, right's right.

clap. there is a - an  STD joke there.
But those aren't funny

right,
standup guy says right's right, does a
Johnny Unitas stiff arm
and gets a case of
clap from the left, worse than meaningless

neo **** non clapping on the right.
Repent or perish.
****** if it don't feel good to say that.
It's true, once you know,

Gertrude Stein, I got it from her. Lesbian Jewish leaven
in passover brownies dipped in Mogen David,
she made me stand and say a rosary.

By any other name,

a rose is a rose and so on
it's like when the universe sends little blue men in cheesehead hats with...
clues from the fat guy on the subway in Heroes... "Do the Work. make war not art... life is a sequel we already got paid for. Maybe." I just learned hp stars out *** not if spelt o*m*g
Don't just don't stand too close,
what do you figure man!

Don't you know there is a pandemic!

I guess as far as you are concerned Big Government
will help you, don't you know, they will or will not.

Banking the house for winter
so the pipes don't freeze.

North, North America is o so cold
come winter... and the slush and the salt
ruining your car and your clothes.

I'd like a formidable climate,
a place to hang my hat.
Some place so awesome
you just want to plant your roots.
Nat Lipstadt Sep 2013
December 25 - 28, 2010


Stuck in Miami, Florida, because of bad weather in NYC.
Composed after reading the poetry of Campbell McGrath, who lives in Miami.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
­
electric pinpricks of
unfamiliar red and green lights,
bedroom traffic guidance
courtesy of a stranger's
tv and cable box,
an emblematic totem tonight,
of my physical dislocation,
reminders that I'm enslaved
by weather machinations.

I lay, resting uneasy,
in a strange bed,
one night too many,
snow storming in my head
snow storming up north aplenty,
a blizzard of ruminations are
my white coverlet,
while stuck in Miami.

faraway drifts have
force fed and freed
an imprisoned restlessness,
a multipurposed, slashing.

Miami midnight incision has
let out the bad humors,
let in an unfamiliar odor -
lechón asado,
which texts my Pharisee nostrils
in Cubano,
words muy ironico,
a single waking thought,
"who ya kidding?"

Everglades rain
imported from California,
recycles on rooftops,
thrumming a heart beating,
syncopated, watery refrain,
a regifted heavenly present.

the sound waves mark
as a barely undulating wave,
inside this super soaked brain,
that transforms wine into water
and scan lines into these letters,
"who ya kidding?"

all this exponential signage
of this NYC boy grousing, are his
defrocked muses annoying,
with a serenading blizzard
of one trick pony repetitions,
coronets trumpet his unmasking,
this essay, a revelation,
a product of their
harmonious discordancy.

a single note crowns his head
as he weeps whole food
organic, non-recyclable tears,
products of his new inquistional,
a self-inflicted interogatorial,
"who ya kidding?"

compiler of an
occasional talented catch phrase,
strung'em together like
cheap pearls,
pretensions of literary acumen
once populated his Id,
articles of spilled word *****,
but Florida rain has cleansed
his Northern haughty pretensions,
with an injection of truth serum,
a pharmaceutical wonder of
a local poison labeled,
"who ya kidding?"

A day laborer, nothing more,
rise up at five, brown bagged,
a client of Mammon's *****,
soul sagged, life hagged,
a sum of cultural cliches,
a cell phoned baby boomer,
a would be millennial,
constructed of paper mache,
who on occasion,
has been known to say,
"Let's play poetry today."

the poseur chokes
on this new poison,
delivered by unhappy stance
by the arrows of his
current misfortune
for he now suffers from
the deadly disease of
"compare and contrast."

a slim book of poems
of Campbell McGrath's
(his phraseology,
a veritable theology)
shoos the blues traveler,
over to a funhouse
where an honest magic mirror
cuts him down to size.

his poetic aspirations,
a residue of self-infatuation,
are summarily dismissed by
the truly gritty, quick justice
of a master poet's
"who ya kidding?"

so watch how a would-be
poet disappears,
in a barrage of bullets marked,
nevermore,
his dignity, more than hobbled,
his cheek, gone, gobbled,
his juice, a currency unaccepted,
his holiday present,
a ceasefire of conjugation,
a cornucopia of declinations

dare I ever write again?
who indeed, am I kidding,
other than myself?

I am an addict, not a poet.
Jedd Ong Mar 2015
Dad
Muelle de Binondo Street,
Barangay San Nicolas,
Old Manila.

My dad's fate
Will always be muddled
With nostalgia:

The mid-afternoon
Traffic of fruit vendors,

The toothless strains
Of my grandfather's voice,
Bouncing off
The warehouse walls
Like folding cardboard,

The ceramic gallops of horse-
Drawn kalesas taking him
From school to
My grandfather's offices,
Every day and back,

Up and down
The cardboard box river
To Tondo. There, he hurriedly
Buys ten
Asado buns
From a stall across the
Street from their
School - a voracious
Schoolboy
Forever late for class, forever

Putting on basketball jerseys
Too wide for him,
Basketball shorts too
Short; body
Always too gangly,
Too long-limbed, wide eyed
And fleet footed
For his dreams to catch.

He once could dunk.

He is still a baby boomer -
Scared of firecrackers,
Weird penchant
For popped collar shirts,
Pointed shoes, and
Sequins - he, was an avid

Lover of stars - his old
Dust-strewn bed posts
Giving way, I imagine,
To iron bars caging
The luminous starry night,
Floating high above
The sewage
And the freight trucks
That weigh him so.

They sang to him.

In the tune of
My mother's voice -
The only album
He ever possessed.

Song set from
His favorite band.

"Apo Hiking Society."

His favorite word,
Was "leap."

A disciple
Of MJ, Dr. J,
And Magic,
Samboy, and Jawo,

Icarus on hardwood
And leaping
From the free throw line.

"Son," he once told me,
"You gotta leap
"If you wanna live."

He was always afraid of heights.

It wasn't until 41 that
We made him ride a roller-coaster,
That he had even seen a roller-coaster.

"You gotta leap
"If you wanna live."

I think my favorite
Memory of my dad
Is still him wringing my fingers
At Space Mountain with
Eyes so tightly shut
That we forgot
Our fears,
And screamed instead:

So.

This,
Is how the stars look like
When unbolted
By folding cardboard,
And iron bars.
Amy Perry Aug 2016
We are a generation,
Indeed, a nation,
Raised upon foreign warring.
Scapegoat aggravation.
Bushes and *****
Clamoring for horror and hoarding.

Conspiring against a population,
I watch through youthful aging.
With my childlike eyes, I see
The target they're blaming:
Afghan families having more
in common with me,
Working class American,
Than those transparent heirs
With the world's wealth and arrogance,
Ordering for the villagers' obliteration
Through boys from our nation.

We are a generation raised
On media sensation
Of militarized devastation;
Animal exploitation;
Technological manifestations
Providing privacy infiltration.
Material attainments;
Mental frustrations;
Fiat debt enslavement;
A nation entranced by
Senseless parading.

Tempting decadence and
Announcements with no evidence.
The September bounty of edifice
That fell with no hesitance
Still echo its unfounded,
Preemptive pretenses.

This murderous reign;
this senseless parade;
Advertisement cyclical
in their game of charades;
Dog on a chain;
Famine causing no pain.
Permissible opinions
To be solely maintained.

The damage, the waste,
The heinous race and class chase.
Oppression remains thoughtlessly dangerous,
As moral responsibility brings no attainments.
Chowing down on maimed millions
Bellowing from enslavement.

Fortunately, elder,
Rothschild, Rockefeller, or
Those above them whom
Remain blackened, faceless:
Resistance shall come
From all places, all ages.
Such as this generation of mine
Inheriting increasing complications,
With the type of America
You wish to keep in rotation.

I'll carry the flag containing
Your mistakes as a symbol,
To remind those behind me
What not to rekindle.

To the Boomer who stews
In your white collar suit,
Still refusing to shake
Your destructive pursuit,
Still asking me to lick
Off authority's boot:

Growing up in this nation,
With childhood innocence,
I grew increasingly aware
Of the land of such ignorance.
I had such thoughts since
Early adolescence,
I was not blind to larger lessons.
Only since supported by
Actual, factual supported confessions.

To the Boomer tied to his convictions,
Now will you see-
That isn't going to work
For us or for me.
I'll bring to this world
Whatever I please.
Which so happens to be
Truth, justice, and peace.
Sincerely, the Millenials
John F McCullagh Oct 2014
There is ***** for sale and wombs for rent
For same *** couples it’s cash well spent.
While heterosexuals breed their own
Gay couples, as yet, cannot clone.
A lesbian couple who had the itch
is suing their ***** bank for “bait and switch”.
They wanted a Caucasian baby
and had requested ***** from vial “380”.
The donor of that ***** was white,
Handsome, smart, just “not their type”
They were given another’s ***** instead
And an interracial child was bred.
It seems they were given vial “330”
The vials, it seems, were marked unclearly.
An honest mistake by a nearsighted boomer?-
or one with a twisted sense of humor?
A civil suit will go to trial
seeking damages for a mixed race child.
If their motion to dismiss should meet denial
The “bank” will suffer premature withdrawal.
In which event bankruptcy looms
For the bank that supplies the ***** for wombs.
This is about the case in the news concerning a Lesbian couple who are unhappy with the results of artificial insemination.   Poem title was changed to avoid unnecessary offense
Ken Pepiton Apr 2019
What are you conserving, I asked my unread conservative friend.
The American Way

he said.
Like
in the songs, like back when Superman
was black and white, but

we knew,
his kryptonic heart
was read pure white and blue

and we still know,
green greed and
black time and chance, if those were never re-
al-ified, he could be,
he could be but,
for that militarial industrial mental complex
which made
Daddy Warbucks
money-ify Kryptonite,

other wise Superman would save us, so
we conserve the idea of America, as a spirit,
Drums and fifes and shots fired round the world

we stand, for the American way. Superman would.
--------

With what deeds are you judged liberal,

I asked my friend whose hero was Fidel,
when he was ten.

My friend, swift to answer, ready, with a bullhorn:

my writing and my speaking and my teaching are liberal.

Those lable you? what is deemed liberality for which
ye are judged?

Oh, I am not judged, I am in the adminstrative side,
I administer social justice by allowing critical
appreciation of the sense under lying
dadaistic community
gardens. which produce liberal reasons for
deeming faith a very low class
exercise in sapient sapience.

Whom teach ye?
Those who are sent to be taught by selection committees,
who sort tests, based on statiscal
weights and measures pre
dicted apriori for the best
social cultural
outcome.

Who pays you? Each of you.
con-server, liberal,
Who weighed your worth
in this fifty-fifty polictic project,

organical and all,

who runs the show? Is it spiracy?

Are elections pre ordained?

Was W. called by Oil and Trump oracled by Konami?
Was Barack Husein simply gas?
A UFO illusion?

Some thing the gut biome of the nation
burped or expelled from other orficees?

How did the assets of the fed expand
4.5 times since 2008,

when all I had conserved melted
with deflation of

the noise, zeitgeistiical,
humm, hear it? Do you?
Brainless axiomatic synaptic static?

Manifest destiny? Google it.

No. I checked. Not preordained. Things change.

This is the way.

Good went, thataway... and william tell
was told that apple held meaning...

cue the overture...
butadump butadump butadumpdumpdump
boomer audio meme keys
the
dream, with wikipedia and etymonline links.

aha, meaning...
the arrow never held, the message vibrated in the oak
at a point
in time. Okay, dress rehearse, masks on.

The point of the story is, good news.
it is finished.  Spaceship earth, nothing broken, nothing missing,

We have crews seeking survivors.

one day at a time. Share the road, share the load,
pay the piper, rule your realm,

make peace the leisure you worked for,
call enough enough

Remind them of the flight they all recall,
ask them if they ever dream
unknown
realisms in the realms of reasons re
cognized
in poetseerprophessor metaphors, in which

no warrior could act

as a liberal conserver re
pairing wind blown circuits.

Our peacemade hero inquisitor
of truth,

the wise king, retires on the dragon's hoard and
laughs at how easy it all became,

after imagining how Poke' mon really works,
in an open state of mind.

"A republic, if you can keep it." that was the dream.
The dream Plato imagined could work,

if we could get past that
neccessary fiction war insisted was traditional.
Intended for the verbatim bookstore open mic, 4-8-2019
Miles Cottingham Aug 2016
Turncoat faith in work, in the old world
What value in your toils
Futile swear-words and broken shards of glass
Caught in your eye, put ‘em there yourself
But you knew no better

The world was an ugly, dismal place
But it was all okay for you
so charged to task and back
Every single day
Like any of it meant anything

But rise up the old world did
Intrepid race to innovate your
Father’s and father’s flaws
At once
All worth a ****
“It’s all worth a ****!”
Voices ringing in your cradles
Grandad Uncle Sam
a suit-coat conviction urging
GO
Wield for us the changing tides
Gotta believe in something anyway
Why not yourselves?

Adventist gene pool satire
Odd sciences in, only the ones
that God ordained to be
Capitalized
Identical regretful mug
You all wear it
John F McCullagh Nov 2011
For every aging boomer
there are one or two they've known:
Heroes of the battlefield
Who never made it home.

Some classmate who was butchered
in a fire fight in “Nam.
A sibling who had perished
in the standoff at Khe Sanh.

Perhaps the Tet offensive
left some friend's blood spilled and spent.
Politicians speak of glory-
It’s the grunts who pay the rent

From the walls of Hue to Can Ranh Bay
from Tonkin to Saigon.
there is a wall in Washington
with their names inscribed thereon.

The lucky ones who did come home
recall the name and face
of some heroic eighteen year old
who perished in their place.
The Traveling Wall. The mobile version of the Vietnam memorial came to our town back when I wrote this poem. It is a companion piece to my Poem "The Butterfly"
Robert Ippaso Dec 2019
A badge of great honor
We wear it with pride,
They say it’s an insult
But we’ll let that one slide.

A boomer’s a doer
A person with Pep,
Marching alone
To their own special step.

The children of Giants
Who lived through a war
Instilling in us
The passion to soar.

They call us great bores
Whose opinions don’t count,
Incongruous has-beens
Our words they discount.

Little they know
It’s a wheel that does turn,
With each generation
Another to spurn.

Suffice it to add
We’re fine in our skin,
Whatever is said
They’ll still be our kin.

Millennials are brash
They message and tweet,
But most just innocuous,
In-fact rather sweet.

They look at their parents
The way we did ours,
With fresh consternation
Like brief summer showers.

When all’s said and done
For boomers like us,
There’s nothing more pleasing
Than life without fuss.
Nigdaw Dec 2021
post war baby boomer
born of Blitz lottery survivors
sixties influenced music head
mixed bad taste seventies
girly long hair and dress sense
brought new life into space age
travellers seeking new worlds
while trying to rescue the one
we messed up in the first place
John F McCullagh May 2013
For every aging boomer
There are one or two they've known:
Heroes of the battlefield
Who never made it home.

Some classmate who was butchered
in a fire fight in “Nam.
A sibling who had perished
in the standoff at Khe Sanh.

Perhaps the Tet offensive
left some friend's blood spilled and spent.
Politicians speak of glory-
It’s the grunts who pay the rent


From the walls of Hue to Cam ranh Bay
from Tonkin to Saigon.
there is a wall in Washington
with their names inscribed thereon.

The lucky ones who did come home
Recall the name and face
of some heroic eighteen year old
who perished in their place.
For marine Corporal Frank Evangelista Jr. and some 58000 other members of my generation who never made it to Woodstock.
My name is Boomer and I'm a Beagle
Sometimes I'm clumsy, sometimes I'm regal...

I like to run, sniff, eat, and play.
I have lots of energy to do this all day..

We have great sniffers because we are hounds.
We also can make a few different sounds...

Pointed to the sky is our tail.
Hoisted straight up just like a sail..

The white on the end, is called a flag.
When not standing up, its going to wag...
Boomerthebeagle.com
1

Asia generic guy gastronomy (and how gourmet foods eat destructively clearly beyond any) excess enthusiasm. the necessity to feed and clothe this corporeal essence christened Matthew Scott Harris revels more so within the medium of writing.

Aspirations toward fame nor fortune less significant then the mere pleasure to concoct a visually savory appetizing epistle. Food for thought moreso then to fill the void, where growling heard across the world wide web, thus, no anterior, interior, or ulterior motive asper begging for money underlies this exercise. yet...if perchance a voluntary choice arises to dole out a smidgen of legal tender a name and address linkedin to this faux popinjay person, who tries to convey decency, humility, levity...qualities that wield zest.

Connoisseur Of Ethnic Cuisine

Theme seems apropos during Holiday FancyFeasts despite the plethora of – in my opinion witching hunting - reputable male personalities suddenly accused of ****** harassment after substantial time. Yes granted so the unexpected name dropping felt like a bomb shell towards chaps, this baby boomer mwm would never suspect, point the finger, or accuse, especially one former Norwegian bachelor farmer from Lake Woebegone.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Though anonymous and hardly
a substantially sized mwm baby boomer
(which dual disadvantages partly explains
lack of ubiquity among claque of cooks, yet hoop full
to get attention from some well fed dame

many popular rotund gourmands l'chaim tame
their hungry beast – wa hood put me to shame
vis a vis consuming in their one meal,
what yours truly eats in a lifetime,
none of those celery buddies,

whom this non television watcher can name
seen on any selective cable channel,
I still revel in writing while
on the hunt
   (during Red October) for a meme

poetry and prose, and decided
to introduce myself quite lame
with NON GMO marginal uptick
in any sudden fortune or fame,
yet t'would be pleasantly syrup prized

if interest
from potential mistress didst exclaim
2

desire to enjoy a repast, though
said hypothetical gal need
not be a high society dame,
and if perchance such just desserts

came via the kitchen maiden kitty,
versus kit chin middens
no boastful claim
would be uttered by me,
her intellectual company satisfactory aim.

First and foremost on the agenda,
would be to locate an affordable,
casual and favorable eatery
tubby agreeable to our taste
indubitable choice without
(any formal dresscode),
nor further haste.

Strait away to the great weigh
(or if vegetarian – whey)
station of delectable food
where the exquisite, expertise, and exotic

high steak king a claim on Michelin Guide,
Gayot Guide/Gault Millau, American
Automobile Association, Forbes
Travel Guide reputation good.

Testimony to legendary praise
explaining why patrons travel
for countless days
transforming him/her
into steady state,

where he/she shuffles along
in a dishabille quotidian famished daze
far and wide culinary craze
out of this world wide web, the wispy Lyft
wafts trace steamy filament up braise
our noses,

whereat heads nod affirmation i.e. ayes.
Even before making a glad entrance
(into Restaurant) complete
a host of fresh, enticing,

4

and delicious aromas serve as a treat.
Delicate, foreign, hefty indescribable
ole factory stimulants delight
infiltrating thru swinging kitchen doors
holding us smell bound,
though thin filaments invisibly light.

Thus upon a strategic seat we hoped for,
or politely sought from manager of the house
ah, our luck to be situated in close proximity,
where impossibility to stave gaming hunger,
though neither myself nor honorable guest grouse.

Now decision time to select one delicacy equally
as appealing as the next on expansive menu list
the resultant penultimate
decision method resorted to twist
then flick (with eyes closed) the wrist.

This once difficult task complete
twas now the responsibility of the maitre'de
to store within his/her memory,
which tummy appeared like an amazing

sumptuous (promising scrumptious) feat.
Minutes ticked away
as our stomachs growled louder
patiently awaiting the grateful moment
to dine starting with clam chowder
poetry soup compiled
within me taste testing router.

Next in line from smorgasbord feast
hors d'oeuvres
   ample enough to satiate thine palate
to whet from deep fried delicacies greased
and self restraint practiced
so the main course diminished least.

We fell upon butterfly jumbo shrimp
and marinated mushrooms when brought
an atavistic motion that memory wrought.

The Matzo ball soup with Jewish rye bread
went to the gullet with a dollop of butter thinly spread.
A vegetable, venerable, veritable, and spinach pie
herbivorous delight, apple of my eye.
4

Parmgians, pasta and poultry
(albeit free ranging
NON GMO and gluten free) dishes galore
kept off figurative lid

(no matter stuffed to gills
ready to be mounted) to eat more
quite aware that mine waist
bulged whereby belt way buckle tore.

Last (but not least)
at the FINIS of this well stocked meal
comprises selection of dessert,
which samples visible
from a glass enclosed wheel
tickling that reserved “off limits” hot pocket

hashtagged for just such a sugary treat
thus summoning forth
within an engorged abdomen,
   nonetheless, an audible zeal.

That reserved allotted sweet
baked, fried, or whipped parfait
or countless other grandiose
mouth watering delicacy.

Ah...juiced enough wiggle room
for one decadent byte, perchance small
enough to roll around in the mouth,
like a Chocolat Mousse, or a honey ball.

Despite that ready to explode
simply eyeing a food tray
no longer in an ala mode vis a vis
clamoring for consumption

well aware by the morrow or sooner
this bloated dirigible fulfilled human
would dearly caloric wise pay.
Suzanne Penn Jun 2014
Quietly...
a new future
races past my attention.
As thin as,
a liberals funding
chased by an old
and toothless past.

Slipping changes by...
in bite sized pieces
now so regularly
that some pass ...
barely tasted....
almost inhaled.

Tides of modern history
are beating
rhythmically
on ugly
worn out barriers
affecting all,
both near and far
As bright and untouchable
as the new moon.

The looming certainty of...
what now seems
inevitable.
Lingers...
not quite accepting
it's progression
and now is both...
dragging it's feet...
and  clumsily
rushing over
what's left of
ancient weights...
that lay so heavy...
so long....'

Equality and Justice
are hummed to
and called forth...
to not simply usher in
a few changes...
but navigate the floodgates
of what our world
now dare to dream of...
The last of the Boomer's
are having their say
and the idealistic. psychedelic,
poets and builders
dream through a "stoney" mist
and contemplate
next season's crops
and the affect they may have
on moral turpitude.
Finally.
Beryl Starkovic Sep 2015
broken men fill their cracks with memories,
and forests of fitful dreams, only scenery.
Their temperament changed by the montage of time,
amid the accumulation of real and imagined crime.
finding pieces of their lives in old movies,
old cars.
hidden dreams in crown royal bags and
miracle whip jars.
old men have family taking, forever naps,
never forgotten...
and secrets buried deep within groom lake.

We sleep, but can never really find rest...
Groom lake.
Owen Phillips Mar 2013
Going crazy in the normalest way
So jealous, so alone
The world doesn't open up to me
Because I press my face against glass doors
The windshields are fogging as I focus in on my disgusting and shameful acts of mutual *******
Waiting till life comes knocking at the window with a flashlight
Asking me to touch my nose,
Walk a straight line

You make me wanna **** myself
But I don't wanna die
I've just run out of ways to make you
Look into my eyes
I'm standing at a crossroads with nothing on all sides
No matter where I walk the future's always past the sunrise

I get up late each morning
Forget what I was dreaming
The memory of my eternal self
Floating through infinite kaleidoscopic
Worlds of pure imagination
Fades as easily as the lurid detail
Of the *** dreams I wake from in paranoid self-delusion

The church marquees say the skies open soon
But they lie
How could the answer to my woes be shining at me on the roadside
Between home and community college?
Everything is everywhere
But thus far NOTHING is here
There's an invisible dome over our heads
And none crane their necks to see beyond
The social order needs tending to
The community garden can wait
We'll always be able to survive on
Just-in-time produce deliveries
To our nearest grocery store
We have more important concerns
Like the meaningless jobs devised
By an unthinking static regime
To grow the economy and keep us from every questioning this way of life
The American way, the baby boomer's dream
Hidden within a shaded alcove
Of the barren wasteland we decided would suit the planet better
Than an unlimited, self-regulating biosphere
Powered by solar energy and God's will

We really did eat the fruit of the tree
But we didn't let it **** our egos
We didn't break on through
Adam and Eve didn't know the machine elves
And if they did the Vatican will have no mention of it
We must no longer be individuated consciousness
But we fail to see that we are ALREADY ONE
With each other
And everything
Even I cannot see it
When I spite my own flesh and blood
For a little bit of sensual grokking
Drinking in green eyes and pink lips

No jealousy!
I am you!
We are me!
Where does this jealousy come from?
The inability to SEE
OPEN YOUR EYES
OPEN MY EYES
Alone within my emotional wilderness

A reverie along memory lane when, this lviii sea sunned
row man (stills paddles in oarlocks and serenely quizzically,
lackadaisically, and harmoniously drifts) along the slip
stream of time. Awash on his figurative manual navigated
opportunistic prideful quintessential schooner reflects,
regales, and revisits ebbing lapsed instances (fast receding
into the past time, when psychological instability grounded
fragile my self esteem (generated venting, steaming, and
piping hot brickbats). As a newly minted harrumphing,
grubbing, and floundering dada enmeshment (analogous
to a fish caught in a net, hence quickly ricocheting, rabidly
splashing, and sloppily thrashing) predicated my foray
into das fatherhood. Aye experienced nearest approximation
Bing battered, rammed, and torpedoed from glomming
(par for the course riot ting heaps) necessarily imposed
adult responsibility. Such metaphorical motoring across
avast Battle Creek with no landfall in sight, this then nada
so Grand Turk (key in the straw) Otto man continually
snapped, cracked and popped. This human ping-pong
fitbit part player papa felt akin to subjection re: thralldom).
At this juncture in me cross currents of existence I can
harken back to those most exhausting, fatiguing, and
grueling endeavors. Hindsight offers this aging baby
boomer the luxury to cast astern. Retrospective leisurely
trawls along the shoals throes of fatherhood allow,
enable and provide and opportunity to scrutinize per
chance, where arises this on account of the empty nest
syndrome. Ordinarily the wife (i.e. missus to appear
more formal), would caw out my name nonstop….
”Matt”…”Matt”…”Matt”…, but she opted to organize
the cluster of assorted household items at the apart
ment (located in Crum Lynne – Ridley Township),
we hope to move within a fortnight. Thy spouse
volunteered her own mini reprieve by setting order
to the miscellaneous fixings gradually amassed,
appropriated, and gifted thru out the twenty plus
years of marriage, which hodgepodge of personal
possessions downsized whence circumstance dictates
evaluating goods having keepsake meaning versus
anomaly of belongings to be unloaded, repurposed
for someone else, or ordained as unworthy to schlep.
Alone asper like a very brief sabbatical from marriage
finds stillness amidst the white noise of the whirring
fan. Thus, I sit here ruminating how to dredge up
some idea for a poem,  (non) fiction or essay. This
husband became acclimated, conditioned, and em
bossed with a mate a tete for two plus decades,
whereby both thee dos delightful daughters on
Track 742 heading west. Honest to dog, I miss
the role of fatherhood when either off spring
(with an age difference of approximately twenty
five plus months) romped, scampered, and trotted
as toddlers, and upon childhood, thy little girls
found exultant excitement dashing higgledy-
piggledy, hither and yon, to and fro across the
playground as most glorious human indulgence.
Despite the plaintive wail vis a vis Juliet saying
goodnight to Romeo (…parting is such sweet
sorrow) haint pleasurable atoll. Hitherto un
known that during the most vexing, trying,
and quaking bouts when both kin of thy ****
fought like angry cats would there transpire
the occasion of sincere tearfulness ululating
vain warbling. Now a pang of nostalgia arises
when I drive past their happy go lucky stomp
ping turf, or reflect on answering the trumpet
call to chauffer one or thee other to amusement
park, play date, mall, favorite toy store such as
Fivebelow, birthday party, et cetera. Even
certain tunes recalled to mind and/or heard
being broadcast across the audio logical spec
trum a cause for moistened tear ducts. Wince
with sadness also mixed with sigh lent bundled
expostulations of joy. Both progeny metamorphosed
into able bodied, minded and spirited lasses,
whose attainment far exceeded any projections
internally forecast. Initial onset of parent role
found me all thumbs. Prior to begetting two
darling dames, this chap spent disproportionate
number of hours sequestered within some hide
away, which frequently happened to be the
designated bedroom at 324 Level Road, College
Ville, Pennsylvania, 19010. Never did thee major
rit tee days of mine life point to babysitting or
working with that chronological demographics
comprising the adoring blessed innocence,
murmuring newborn obliviousness, that bespoke
penultimate unsullied, utmost virtue necessitating
interaction with tender infants beckoning being
cradled, endearingly fondled, demonstrably easing
fondness gripping heartstrings issue jetblue kinks.
Aye felt pitched headlong into this foreign territory,
and initially experienced utmost awkwardness when
attending, pampering and pulling (albeit gently)
upsy daisy, the nascent hint of autonomy. Remembrance
and recollection of élan, joie de vivire, and yea those
ear splitting threshold of pain screaming tantrums
all boxed into tidy wholesome Zen announcing
nuggets of greater meaningfulness and absolute
value. The above long winded reverie intended and
meant tubby a semi biography, but leave hit up to
his hie n hiss, he went way overboard, and will give
a one line summarization to describe his i.e. yours truly
life sentence fate decreed. He (this Anglophile chipper
chap lived under duress of extreme anxiety, obsessive/
compulsive behavior, panic attacks and essentially
schizoid personality disorder for the greater part
of his life and hard times, which raw bits would
warrant fleshing out to extrapolate how these psychic
pitfalls represented critical factors at various and
sundry turning points in his life.
Atypnoc Feb 2015
Hard to believe but I cannot deny
what you give, you'll receive
all your friends are a lie.
danielle barroso Dec 2011
3
you say It’s not all the same
and i’m paralyzed
What.  I want to fix it"
but there is no kicking
because broken things don’t
move so easily.  anymore.
circular arguments
(not to be confused with
logic) wrap fishing line around
my fetal knees and
What* is your bullet/
flaccid arrow/
boomer-anger.
and either I’m diabetic or
your insecurity ankle bracelet
tightens.
and the key
The key.
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2022
ve bu benim kanım, akşam yemeğim gelenlere ne mutlu.

i really tried my best in learning some Turkish
before our next meeting...
   and here is my blood,
                 happy are those who come to my supper...

well... i already wasted one bottle of wine on Jemminah:
i still have one left, probably the finest of the batch,
so i texted her at 3am in the morning:
i knew she would be up...
   the sun was teasing the sky by just about
raising a desert storm of colour below the ink blue
hue of night when she replied
to my text: are you available tomorrow?
i have a present for you, maybe you do, maybe you don't
but i'm bringing some of my homemade wine
over...

yep... she is... right... time to get ready...
i'm not leaving that brothel without having *******...

strange two days... for all the **** i've been
through since the age of 21 through to about 30...
life... oh it's come back: or rather... i've come back
to life...
    i'm already holding this ram by the horns
and wrestling with it...

    oh right... i came home at 2am... stayed up
until about 5am, woke up at around 11am...
where was i last night?

the times Wednesday June 1, 2022,
is this UK's final glimpse of Messi?
james gheerbrant -
in march 1960, evlis presley stopped over
at the US airbase in Prestwick and spent a
couple of hours mingling with the Ayrshire
locals, in what turned out to be the only
occasion he set foot on British soil.
when Lionel Messi captains Argentina
in the Finalissima against Italy at Wembley
tonight, it will be his 25th game in this
country, yet his appearances still have
the same sense of visiting royalty,
      a brush with something luminous,
a story for the grand-children, laced with
the possibility that this might be the last time...

oh right... that's where i was...
   **** me... by the end of it even through it
i started yawning...

not out of any disrespect for the genius that is Messi,
but... see... i've never seen Argentinian women
before... i probably have but you never truly know
unless they're wearing an Argentina football shirt...
and something hit me...
like it hit me when i was grooming my female
cat and she stuck her *** in my face from pleasure
and something grotesque was woken up
and had to be be immediately translated onto
a woman... or rather: hidden inside a woman...

took me about a whole night trying to find a new
brothel around London... i did... but the price
was too steep... and everything about Stratford
is shady... a whole night cycling towards central
London and back... in between shady places...
second night i was losing my libido
and went to the one i knew by heart near
Goodmayes train station...
     that's when i met Khedra... after a disappointing
hour spent with this timid little Romanian number...
who... no... she shouldn't be into prostitution...
for the love of god i tried to get a hard-on...
i blamed it on myself: maybe i drank too much?
but... i'm already on my second libido-booster:
the first i've already "ingested" - exercise...
cycling toward Upminster and back and around
Upminster towards Rainham...
exercise is an aphrodisiac... mix that with fresh
air... sunlight and nature...
boom... get the blood flowing...
                                the second aphrodisiac?
white wine... not rose, not red... white wine...

so i thought, maybe i drank too much?
   no... she was just a timid creature that...
    had zero skills... and she was "supposedly" a *******...
obviously younger than me...
so... i just lay there with her in my arms
and we exchanged words for body parts
in three languages...
   just leaving Khedra came in... boom!
thank god it's no longer something stupid as:
"love at first sight"... thank god it has become:
lust at thirst-sight
                       because: it's true... it's exactly that...
once you pass your 30s you get this
spectacular... hmm... "magic" of being able to
find compatibility in the right sort of place...
what better place than in a brothel?
    i mean... ha ha: are we there to talk about
Walter Sickert? are we here to talk about...
  geo-politics?! feminism?!
                we're at a butcher's shop and we're getting
some meat... and we're talking to the butcher...
ergo?

mind you: while cycling i really thought about it...
you can't really employ the ad hominem argument
against Marquis de Sade...
   i did read through his biography...
                   he really wasn't such bad of a man as
history lends itself for us to believe...
personally? i think he had some pretty ****** ideas...
but as a person, sure... his imagination was wicked...
but he was imprisoned for... what?
asking a ******* to use a crucifix as a *****?
and these days if you skim through some...
soft-core *******... you'll find what?
well... it's not exactly a crucifix... but Saint Sebastian of
Cucumberia is pretty popular with the nuns
of modern secularism...

     he was imprisoned more of the time than
he could have had the time to fulfill all those whims
of 120 days of *****...
among other works...
                        ****** is a different matter...
that's a stand-alone work that's his pinnacle...
it's a good thing i read him when
my own hormones were pulsating in my teens...
that kind of subdued matters, youthful frustrations...
if anything: his uncle was the real rascal!
because the argument that Slayer or any other
music for that matter incentives anger and
violence is BULL-*****...
                                it subdues it... if anything...
it reduces it to a fantasy land whim-whipped-day-dream

like marquis de sade and the idea of
regular ***...
    eh... turns out it's better to take decent breaks...
sort of live the life of a Konrad von Wallenrode...
after all... the Teutonic Knights
did have a brothel with the walls of their citadel
capital of Ordensburg Marienburg...
    so... let's not pretend what is... and what isn't
happening...
  
thank for that! for what? i just keep hearing these
nightmare stories on the internet...
Tinder this: swipe swipe left left left left...
Tinder that: swipe swipe right right right right...
once i met this guy who laughed about
people who joined Facebook... that got on me...
i was fooled! back in the day?
when Facebook was exclusively for university
students?! yeah... it made sense...
obvious blah blah some years later and it's
a boomer gimmick like e-harmony etc.,
                     but me?
   oh no... not another social media bullshitter
going to **** me in... my use of the internet?
i'm in... i'm out...
    i come here to gush out my thoughts slit the veins
of my imagination, drink... listen to music...
read someone else's suicide notes and *******
to bed...

i don't think i have ever commented on anything
that i otherwise must comment on to get a pass
for something... because...
yeah, right... you buy a book...
and you then what? scribble your opinion on the last
page of the inside of the cover and expect what?
a response?

and this whole, modern, fixation on dating apps?
hook-up apps? it was never my thing,
the whole dating "revolution" passed me by,
shoom! gone! bye bye...
            nothing is ever good when it's easy...
losing 20+kg was never going to be easy...
being falsely diagnosed as a schizophrenic was
never going to be easy...
but... i wriggled out of both of these "percularities"
(yes, i do you mingle the technique of
misnomerism with metaphors)
hence the air-quotes... ambiguity...
   everything for the imagination to unravel: revel in...

in alba vino volo (in white wine: desire)...

i even cut down on my smoking to get a better /
prolonged *******...
obviously i had to check...
   check over... jerking off to almost ****** and then...
o.k., everything's in working order...
now to write something, take a shower,
pamper myself and ******* with that bottle
of wine of mine to **** Khedra...

**** me... if i had to go through all the clumsy
dating advice, even clumsier dates...
eating food... ugh... who the hell wants to **** someone
on a full stomach?
mind you there also that: MAYBE...
because there's no guarantee...
**** first, talk later...

                            easy? easy? what's easy?
first you have to sit through the ante-chamber
interrogation room of about 12 prostitutes...
and they have eyes like the beak of the eagle
that's bound to eating Prometheus' liver, for ****'s sake!

sure... yesterday was fun... i had a chance
to perhaps see Lionel Messi for the last time in England...
but i also managed to see all those
Argentinian women... that was a breaking point
for me... south American women... mmm hmm...
yummy doesn't even cover it...

today? it had to be: i had to go all out...
i had to start the day off by eating two soft-boiled
eggs...
and then? ****** off to my Turkish barber to
get me beard trimmed...
i once remarked it (getting a beard trim)
was better than getting a blow-job...
i'd like to retract that statement:
a beard trim and a hair-cut done by the same barber
feels: just as good...
eh... a beard trim is a beard trim...
my mustache was overgrowing my lips:
drink and random food and snot was getting
stuck in it... how am i going to kiss her?

oh when Cedilla met Caron...
that's
                    when Çedilla
  (soft, although it ought to be hard)
                                 Čaron (there's no "soft" caron -
it's most certainly re-laid as
the Greek Xaron - Kharon - even though...
  chasing chiseled chalk and cheese)...

ah... the enthralling sensation of meeting someone
for some carnal debauchery...
one bottle of white done - check
visit to the barber shop - check
exercise prior - check
a decent amount of protein ingested - check
press-ups - check
pandering... ****... i need to trim my nails scrub
away all the dead skin off the soles of my feet,
wash myself thoroughly... use all the necessary
chemistry to give off whiffs of freshness...
   have i trimmed my "other" beard?
yes, yes i have...
    well then...

    eski kuzgunsaçlar (old raven-hair)...
   here i come!
French toast this morning with an old friend . Blackberry topping , cranberry smoothie , cappuccino , morning music ! We go way back together , elementary school , tenth grade , the birth of my daughters ,when Dad was laid to rest ! You appear every morning at six , in the back of my mind at Noon , sometimes everyday for two weeks straight ! Changing well rehearsed plans at the last minute , gazing out of windows into downtown , coaching myself back from sheer misery , watching calls diverted to voice mail ! Shadows are visible beneath the door ,voices in the hallway , making rash decisions , steering the vessel without me . Trapped in a cube , encircled with wire , receiving wi-fi messages via the mind . A plastic tree in the corner , we're brothers of the charade , appearing perfect , vigorous and dominant when we're actually cheap facades ! Dropped down to my knees , put my face against the air register , cool wind chills my skin , taking me back to another place . Dressed for Winter , braced for frigid weather at the bus stop . Red and blue mittens , silver snow boots , black scarf . Frosted bus windows , people struggling to make it to their cars , laughter on the bus increases , call me zero divisible by one , not water but rain , sent to great heights only to be cast down hard upon the Earth again ! Not steam at street level but a thunderstorm , cloudburst with imminent straight line winds , headfirst into the ground !
Copyright October 31 , 2015 by Randolph L Wilson * All Rights Reserved
Ken Pepiton Nov 2023
Now, what we were thinking
we could do together, for fun…
we can't
with this tech, too soon- we tried
Audio recording started: 1:12 PM Wednesday, November 8, 2023
Ifery is, this is a magic pen and can contain audio,
I'll have you know, I imagined this,
I'll have you know, so farther down you know it gets back
to the time when Amazon Web Services read all the small print
and the metadata associated, socially servicing aching needs
Information wants to be free
Little Shoppe Feed Me, we few old fools recall the vegemental
protest at the time,
we could feel dead trees in our hands,
how wrong I was is a crime. In reality, I did my time, on the line,

and I'm still on the line, and life ain't been no opioid dream,
soft hmmm
seems drunker, this
repositioning for interesting clause, riddles are blessings, not lies.

So this is a twist to tighten, widdershins loosens,
guilden rule. Righty, tighty.
Who said that?
Right
mechanical me mind, hear-sed
By whose authority do you make crys
for peace, where no crys were?
Smoke Fire
Is something wrong old man?
Is there something of yourself you see,
afar, as seen
on TV, No Country, Pretty Horses, Road
weary
been there, in that novel state of mind,
new to mankind, only a few centuries old,
the art of lying to make an unthinkable, thought.

A meme, make a meme, flash a fict, a second thought
Per haps make up a mind, and let it form in mindspace
time to time,

we catch a novel experience unfolding compacted
scrolls of gnosis knots blown to cover our tracks,

through the highest parts of the dust of the Earth,
embedded capital classificators exist, many signs
mean almost any thing that stands to prove patience

works.
Wait and see.

I waited until I was certain someone among everyone
loves the idea that dying is not to be feared, never was,

it is part of life, and, I dare say, done right, it is the best.

Alone and lonely are not the same feel,
see a said word as a said word, is a thought.

First, principle principle, pal. First ever eternal pre-time
instant wisdom pops up in the mind of Christ, allatime, man.
Magi
School, we live,
we learn, we linger, listen, did you wish you
had done more good, did you think you earn
rank
play the role you audition for, or go home, old man.
Serpentine wisdom bent left on a bet, my point.
?
Okeh, I got a back up, in case we disagree and bring down
the conceptual internet with wizardly gamey loungeers, seek
-erefteaaaaaaaaahhush

lurkers averse to flame wars.
Does the name Barry Rudd mean anything to you?
Does the word Hiroshima evoke images for you?

When the Spaceshuttles were built in Palmdale,
the assembly hangar was so voluminous a bubble
as to create a micro weather system, in the building.

What the Arpanet imitation game intended to use it for,
was as secret as any cold war secrets are, timelocks slip.

When AT&T was as real as any evolved ideal communication
of private information on a secure as money can make it,
network, hyphenate at will, the economy, stupid,
one that can survive mutually assured destruction, 1954.
Contract for the concrete, stamped 1954
Let time slip, be the boomer kid, like on TV in the commercials,
real every day as Silver Dollar Billy Baxter, totally typical, Jungian

Ranking higher, trending below Freudian slips in eugeniusisity
Your Holiness,
no, I
insist, stand for nothing less, a title,
for a soul, so, easy, you imagine, no, it was not so easy.

It was never imagined easy, now it is.

That makes it easier, believe me.
- he cops watch out
Oy, feel the old rage,
at Ed Childs's child's nursing home,
Al'heimering mindtimespace adrift, ifery
wasery, we can remember laughing at knowing

Ed Childs was a quiet man, for real,
and he went into real estate, when Hamner and Limonite
was in the sticks.

I can ruminate on wealth and worth, healing and measuring
worth of the scar to prove the contestant worthy,

boomer bunch panting
Queen For A Day, golden Cadillac, drool
old school applause-ometer….

I can take it from here,
but who's listening, 'm seemingly directional point concept
precept point widdershins introducing true cause chirality,
is up or down turned sideways,
a property of asymmetry,
you see, we work inside a set of six cardinal, pivotal points,
each of us, and all of us,
can make sense of most anything at once
we think ourselves sane, all at once, or once and for all,
go bigtime Alzheim extremist POV, being, happy
with the package.

A joint for a retired K-9 cop in Anaheim, a boomer,
never dropped out, nor tuned in, went with the game,
got good enough to know when to quit, and then he gets

Alzheimer's. Just so happens, thoughts, wishes or prayers,
chants, incense, any thing you think might help, does help.

It's a very ancient kind of love,
a love that laughs at fearing death, as we laugh today,
at children dressing in roles from mystery religious oathes.

Jesus, says in his own time and voice, I told you so.
We both laugh; secret oath wink.

-------------------
From the sign on the bridge saying
life is worth living, no 1-800 rukidding
- any body could but it was William James
- madjathinkit
Yeah, novel events grow stale if they sit,
mistaking thinking and doing, as mirrored
in the realm where prayers are answered
and made up minds are tested for repurposing.

Perhaps a variety of a general irreligious fine mind.
---------
That's a thing, back to the Hangar, now, you know
where you go when you link through the poet facet.

Here, below the western highside of the great basin,
we dug-in, we hired The Boring Company,
all telepathically, to investigate the likelihood
of any mortal good ever eliminating the evil nature

nurtured in warring cultures time immemorial,
-seditselah
eliminating cost of living, leaving being all we do.

matrix, make up your own mind, live with pain

and that's just not right,
and we twist the entire story out the window
and into thin air we know is there, because,
cause being aitia and I agree we be causing

so much silliness of the original intentional sort,
as to make old men wish,

the world were not so reassuring, until

we all selah and listen holygnosishitsreal, side reality,

minds intwined in mysterious old stories, when gay
was only happy, and buttoned up, as secret Edwardians
would that it were forever so,

oh, ** **, ye'll deal with a devil for a tale, you tell me,
let me test yer mettle, curse god, and die.
Iyobe
Did you think that and continue, such faith,
commends ye to the circle that eats, what the bull eats.

We intend to think our God's thoughts, right after,
hot, steaming prophetic gnosishit, not gnosisnot, that's
strange
very
strange, did I catch a meme from Sunshine Superman,
should 2525 arrive.
Just in case.
This was all worth it, this time.
AIII this was such a trip, I'll ask you to share it every where in time. In fact, looking back, the day after posting this I had a heart attack, that peace,
made that next day, remains proven, practically permanent, shareable.
Joy to the world.
Ken Pepiton Oct 2023
National mindsets self interested suffer
forms of dementia as the order all confessed,
demands of each a concentration of self worth,
you bet your soul, but only in the spirit,
step into the fray, say, let me lead you,
say let me take elected office,
democratic to the edges, being your voice
in a popularity contest, not an intellectual joust.
Tutelary deontology 101.
Governing is managing the labor. Ask the king.
Any flock in the system, governs itself.
Business is business.
Some arrangements are always secret. All
grown ups are in the business of war supplies.
Let your children's minds be at ease.
Trust the checks and balances history proves,
have never worked on balance, for the poor.
Get rich quick as one can imagine, on a bet.
War meets Peace, like it is the storm
that left Greenland, a legend until now.

Easily intreated innocense, who could know.
Prosaic first morning pizz to prime the pump.

How deep is the generational debt due to war?
How many bonds have been sold to pay interest?
How many times has the national debt ceiling failed?
You know.
Every time.
"Each major conflict in U.S. history
has been accompanied
by a sharp rise
in debt as the government raises funds
to pay for the fighting."

But laws do exist…
"Without a declaration of war
to put the country on a wartime economy,
Congress paid for Vietnam
by increasing the national debt.
Over the course of the conflict,
America's debt nearly doubled, growing
from approximately $317 billion in 1965
to $620 billion in 1976."

Now the debt is rising
on interest alone. No need for another war.

And America's trade balance is hinged,
on the point of war.
The ideal centermost irritant, war's hate pump,
pain expanded by generational trespass acts
likened unto the pea
under the stack of feathered beds,
or the bit of grit forcing oyster stress
that has made the misshapen pearl sold
to sovreign entities, those colors on the map,
these mental aggregations called nations,
by nationalist mind frame riveters,
foundational eye beams, remove before demoting,
ah, slow, riveted beams spanning ferro-concrete tech- think.
Building a reasoning trap, children,
ask your fathers to whom we owe our national debt.
Ask also who sells the weapons to the world at war.
Semper fi,
no offence, but… holy hate is as crazy as hungry hate.

A voice from a song, from nowhere,
you just could rethink, or did, that first time think
a bridge over troubled waters being a truly old good idea,
come to rescue you,

in the early days of Boomer parenthood… being grown ups,
we never missed a Disney Movie, though by then,
they were losing the gnostalgia, old knowns to be like so,
were no longer even imaginably so.
Old Yeller,
Childhood's end, the separation
from hearth felt comfort,
to the class rooms and hallways
of massive cold concrete schools… where on day one,
the child pledges with its cohort of coeducatables,
the ancient bond of aliegiance...
I pledged mine first in 1954, the year "under God" was added.

In the just now settling down towns along the great freeways,
there has been no peace on earth in my generation,
at the level of military minds in conflict caused by stories,
boys bred with old hates just waiting for a sigh-psignal
sci-revealed to those willing to become Jason Bourne,
to the best of your abilities, ring the bell, any time.  

Welcome to the front. Sanity is on the line.
There is no conspiracy, we sell our souls for what money
can be demonstratively proven to allow and even augment.

War is all we sell. There is another game, it's a liar's game.
Many famous authorities have filled the space at the table.

Take your hat off, Bartholowmew, she does not understand you.

------------
Daily communication with myself,
one person, with no power to use
save the early cultural confidence;
sworn to tell the whole truth,
so help me, God. Yes, your honor.

Except we reactivate the curious why,
functionally suppressed during the standard
test taking by the proximate others
diligently filling in the blanks,
with graphite rounded just right, one swipe.

Except we see that hanging senselessly realized.
Each problem, one answer, not one option.
Only select correct answer.
Tell the child learning the pledge,
God is on our side, emphasize
how exceptional those who know so are,
extremely discriminatingly,
arranging the economy around
the great decussation at the air gap,
at the back of our national neck.

In this time,
thoughts and prayers, we hear
spoken of as easily done,
almost without thoughts, who
responds?, who, has ever responded
to the said to be going out constantly
thoughts and prayers, asking truth
to intervene and call the liars liars?

God is not angry, nor without resources,
according to the cultures now at war--
¿
Whose mortgage was not paid with earnings
from war readiness industrial complexes?

Whose talent was left with the userers,
because the Bible says y'sposed to earn interest?

Whose 401K deflated to oops?

Business begins with informed agreements.
Let's make a deal.
No killing, stealing nor needless destruction.

Minds join eye to eye, one mindwise agreed,
we become an entity, a being essential
to the parts, a mind in harmony, rank and file.

Greedy men with no agreement. Hmm, who loses?

Line up, not by rank, single file, fall in,
first and following, get in on the end,
and wait for the circle to close,
re done dances, life going wild as
we celebrate our circle, we sing of it
being unbroken in the sweet by and by…

The land of those who talk back to El,
yes, yes, we do, to honor Iyobe,
who first called for the Daysman,
who first
told reality, with all it's evil potential,
you cannot not be true, you know, in form
as spirit and truth containable in words, logos,
logos of all o-logies,
so powerful as to allow, in fact, cause, new mindforms,
species of thoughts that function as a system to make
sense, discernible, bits of valuation determinable in agreement.
--------------
Contractual obligations religiously adhered to
just between us, we take advantage for the nation's sake.
Madrassahs and aliegiance pledges set habits hard to break.

Set the cost of goods, lower than replacement cost of the price.
What does it cost a state to rear a warrior class individual
that self replenishes?

What does it cost me to scatter confusion in profuse create-ifity?
So, add a proper tip,
and pay the cost to ride this line to the next re-entering angle.
Middle east,
cauldron of all the holy empires thus far into the age
of entertainment so vast,
wise men can imagine, some day
there will be a war, and no parents will have
offered children to the infantry or made
righteous indignation acceptable national pride to k-ill for.

There Hamas, holy brainwashed haters of hatefulness.
Repents and perishes the very thought of peace.
Repay in kind, here, swear undying obediance,
fear not death, this is Allah's Promise, die killing Jews,
turns on the monstrous virgins awaiting you…
in post mortal walled places,
where the oldest civilizations occurred,
as God's great idea, I'll
empty the center of me, and seep
back in through fractured rationality
along trade routes between Africa and
the forested north above the desert.

Me, there, in mental efforting, thinking
thoughts, not prayers, but wishes, hopes,
thoughts that prayers attach to, as evidence.

"Ask and ye shall receive."
Love those who call you enemy, can you?

Face me, Mr. Nobody, the essence of other,
I declare peace, where none is, and you laugh.

No ritual, no enchantments with promise,
no sacred making of secular deaths, just
just just adjust the justice aspect, blame
the holy haters whose God dispenses vengeance,
at the behest of warriors fitted with military minds.

As when holy Americans gather to offer military aid,
blessed by the congregations alerted to intercede,
on the side that denies Jesus was God,--- ah, both sides,
in this case…
whither turn we, do we face Mecca, or Jerusalem,
or Petra or … Sol or Luna, all our enculturated faith,

blinks, a lense clarifying effort, rub the crust
of sleep fallen into while mourning, unsealing eyes
to see again, a war between two national identities,
both with warrior glory emulation traditions,
one with money as first de-fence, the other with hate,
nothing less than pure hatred, Cain to Able, sorry bro.

Old mean spirits.
If the hate can live in any man, wombed or un, it will.

Willingness to hate enough to k-ill a stranger, will
manifest as holy terror… enough to make Jesus weep.

--- and those were a few of the local thoughts made prayer,
seemingly automatically, as mysterious as most final secrets.

Part three, deeper, faster, harder… or not

Doings in the dark, are done by feel.
One, you or I, or some other sapien
augmented with the messiah's mind, feels the need for the deed.
Take the message from Garcia.

Mystic experience in story realms,
holding all the visions taken raw,
as revealed… as when a curtained
entry way is opened for inspection,

are we ideas in bodies?
are all ideas spirit in form?

Inhale an intuited absence of evil,
breathe the air of answered prayer.

Imagine that, let fly the idea of you,
beloved individuated potential saint.

Here is your sentimental inner edge,
your gnosis pressed flat as you see in.

The edge of this bubble, is distant
only to the holy cloaked in asceticism,
twisting wicks
for someday light in someday night,
circulate one way then the other,
rethinking perfected emptiness,
there are no others, up or down,
to and fro, vectors tie targeted states,
spider kites form single ray classic webbing,
slim banner, a flag unraveled long since.

Follow me, I say to me, follow me,
I say to you, saying back, I am not you.

My option.
Turn on, sit back and watch,
evolving cave wall interesting hooks,

look around, nothing intersting, eh?
Television as imagined by petrified apes,
during the peak preserved in history,
when men like Franklin and Voltaire,
met to share secret meanings of things.

Previous to any whole story that remains, as when any mind mistakes
tzimtzum inside as first occurrence,

total emptiness, pre space, one time
this instant accepted as audience

in true gaseous we form, auto informing
the vegetable phaze passed eons ago, life
tells tales too esoteric for novices
to notice, in the ideal state, active
imagining, as with a child's mind, yours
since ever was, so far as you may wish
to remember,
a time when the state was deemed
comforting and beauty filled, chaotic
process of floating lipids, in form of air,
light has not dawned on us, we are
night scene setters of settings, nodes
of potential anything you can imagine,

level with me, even, straight, right… yes it
is the optional meandering mind engine,
an idol, or a daimon, madness of sorted
degrees, a little bit off the charts, sorted
out.
Not in, the bubble being becomes,
when one emerges in a self…

subtle is good, right, we agree?
Jesus, before Christianity, as a kid,
instructed with his cousin John,
likely by his temple servant uncle.

That can be imagined, projected
on the outerwall of this bubble we be in. At the moment, on an Earth wired

for sound, elephants agreeing to meet,
to follow the pilgrimage, pilgrim beings
activated by stark necessity successful
to this degree…

by the reader's time's at tension, pull
release
snap back, at what ifery, at once, push

most bottom centered point once sitting
in raw time thought processing, in
and out, efforting
- slightly off, not fully on
uncomfortable impression of holy
you better get better or else. Holy

blank slate, bubble pop, soft wow

Now, we're in the swirl, in the spin
toward, froward lips sealed, golden
silence,
subtler than any beast, creature,
living thing in the ruliad, am I? No.

BUT, you know, those penance prayers,
given you as a child, enchantments,
as with all your renouncements of evil
and pledges under God, in your child mind.

Look. To your own self, be true.
You still have private interpretation access
to your child mind.

If you put your worried mind to work
on some thought too deep to ponder then,

The idea of punishment by the Creator
of all that is not God, but was deemed good,
by God, because I said so, said the father,
in the child mind.

To know good and evil knowledge,
that talent, initial mark on our blank slate,
to know, not what you know, but ask
your child mind, how does it feel,

flat on your back gasping as others laugh,
and your child mind blooms an entire eon
- just to catch a breath takes for ever
and there were others, the whole family
of mankind of your kind, to your child mind,
stood laughing at your attempt to perform

a first flight, from an edged bet with an
I think I can virus perpetuated in ever after,

since mind made time make sense in chaos.
Instantly, things start to take shapes, in mind.
Non sense. Since. Processing time. Go.
Instants out of mind, in atari.
Fog of unknowns. I used to play the game.
Not really, only, one off thought forms,
cloudlike in symmetry, no clear tongue
and groove, fitting our pro-posed… pose

supposed, to listen and while listening,
learn the use of any knowing, can be
taken as granted possibility by your self.
- distant sound of light sabers actuation
Your blame and shame catcher, out front,
as we steam ahead across the gap,
thoughts made prayers must leap.

Keep your eyes on the prize, three
walnuts and a split pea with a hair, fine
infant hair, see it there, your old minds eye.

The unveiling of an artifice, an angle
greater than straight, from this point…
a re-entrant angle, like a point, banked shot.

in
Thanks, I needed you to ready become... said the little blue man... whatsoever we agree... indeed. Let us see...
kategoldman Oct 2013
Petri dish children run with punctured neon green veins
Raised in focus groups with the touch of a hungry CEO
Who will sell your youth for another car to drive
Built from the dust of a baby boomer cabbage patch
Poked and prodded by the media of a society flamed with consumerism
Where your loosely draped skeleton frame has no more weight than the quarters you tuck in your pockets at weigh ins
Sunken eyes and sideways grins
Little girls are growing up to kiss the bad boys
Tequila soaked, beautiful kisses
Where your idol is a crack ***** beauty queen
Where your every fatal flaw has a rememdy and a price tag
A generation sick with drinks
Plagued by impulse and energy pulsing in tides
With ****** laughs and magnetic orbits
What ever happened to the petri dish children
Built for beauty and style, but left broken and stunning
David Nelson Apr 2010
Those Lips

I was sitting in a booth at Boomer's coffee shop,
it was two a.m. And I was ready to drop,
working my *** off, Just trying to get ahead,
but going in circles, it's going to my head

sitting here sipping a cup of Cafe' LaWut,
pulling drags off a stale cigarette ****,
in walks this redhead, long legs and all,
set me straight up, hit my head on the wall

long red hair all the way down her back,
near 6 foot tall, with quite a stack,
legs from the bottom, all the way to the top,
could feel my bottom jaw start to drop

looking like a dork couldn't help but stare,
think to myself, she's not wearing underwear.
bright green eyes that sparkled like stars,
and here I am looking, like a creature from Mars

but she looked my way, gave a wink and a smile,
she must be crazy, or been drinking a while,
her cute pug nose fit her face just right,
I could look at her for the rest of the night

the thing I noticed most out of all this charm,
long hair, long legs, a smile so warm,  
killer eyes, perfect teeth and shapely hips  
I really had this urge to kiss those lips.

Gomer LePoet...

— The End —