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.

We Haven't Found an Anchor Yet (But This'll Have to Do)



...

Tear the clock off the wall
We'll say we invented
A world where time passes
The way it was meant to


We'll build it out of bottlecaps
Or cadences of songs
That were sung a long long time ago
And will be sung long after
We're all gone

It was good to sing along

Or build it out of unmade beds
Or scratches on the walls
Or the things we said before
We went to bed and
All the parts we can't recall

I know I loved it all


Our hearts are still red
And the walls are still white
And we haven't got a map
But we've got all night

The sky may turn black
But the ocean's still blue
We haven't found an anchor yet
But this'll have to do


Tear the clock off the wall
We'll say we invented
A world where time passes
The way it was meant to

Throw yourself to the wind
Let it take us wherever it will
We've hours and pages
and glasses to fill



Art for Aeroplanes



It was something, it had to be
something about the sound
The wind chimes made
That reminded me

Below flickering shapes
of the last silhouettes of the leaves
in trees in autumn yards we
made our way through

The melody was
Aimless and the
Cadence never came
So much different than the
Saddest thing
A symphony could play

Like the sounds from our childhood
Resolved into a wordless hum
We understood


It was something, perhaps
A particular way that the light
Hit the street
That reminded me

Connecting the dots
On those stumbling walks between
Softer parts of mid December's
Muddy sting

It had rained and made those
multi coloured
columns on the ground
We went walking down the middle
there was
No one else around

I think I felt the way we did
In all our favorite hiding spots
When we were kids


It was gone in an instant
It was gone in an instant
And so were we
We had places to be


Afternoon's grid
Of jet trails overhead
Looked nothing like the lines we would've left
Had we spilled paint behind us
Everywhere we threw ourselves
When that high sun had set

Not sure what we're looking for
If anything at all

Something that we've seen before?
Something that we lost?

Or maybe this is it, for all we know

The light was bright, we turned away
And the bits of it that stayed
Looked something like the softly focused
Half remembered shape of things
From sun baked roads so long ago
On rainy days

Not sure what we're looking for
If anything at all

Something that we've seen before?
Something that we lost?

Maybe this is it, all I know is
If our faces showed a little of the lights inside our heads
We put on quite a show

And so
One more for the road



One Thousand Little Rooms



We've left our shoes
By the doors of a thousand places
Much like this one
Before

I've seen those colours
In the eyes of a thousand faces
Much like yours
And yours and yours and yours

Marilee is pounding the keys of
A piano all covered in ash
Below bottles in a row on a windowsill
With paint stains on the glass
Paint stains on the glass


I think we're made up of
Sparsely scattered instances
In places
In time

Like shapes of cities at night
Are but a million filaments
Of incandescent light

Marilee still pounding the keys of
A piano all covered in ash
Below bottles in a row on a windowsill
With paint stains on the glass

And our conversation fell
And our conversation rose
And our conversation fell
And our conversation rose
And all the things we had to say
Overlapped the notes to make a space
Your restless island souls could call a coast


One thousand little rooms
Where we light our little fires at night
Are like the places in our lives and inside our minds
The way the shape of the city is a million lights
From little rooms where we light our little fires at night
Are like the places in our lives and inside our minds
The way the shape of the city is a million lights
From little rooms where we light our little fires at night
Are like the places in our lives and inside our minds
The way the shape of the city is a million lights
The little rooms where we light our little fires

Are what we call our home tonight
Are what we call our home tonight
Are what we call our home tonight
Are what we call our home tonight



Farewell Fires & Flying Machines



That night you brought a camera
That night your hands shook, but
It was the closest that you ever came, I'd say
To how it really looked

That night you wore a sweater
You left it lying on the floor
The folds I traced with tired eyes like some old map with lines that led to
Places we'd forgotten things before

So throw your paint on every wall
Illustrate the cadences of our favorite songs
Give them a shape
They're prone to fade away

We still had lights behind our eyelids
Long after we'd all gone to bed
I'd love to save them but I've never been a painter
And so I write it down instead

And I'll fill one thousand pages
I'll write whatever comes to mind
And on the day I find myself one thousand miles away
Perhaps a part of me will still exist behind

So throw your paint on every wall
Illustrate the cadences of our favorite songs
While I'm describing fleeting dreams
Of faces, streets, and wine
We'll make them real

Oh, but what colour was that fire anyways, my dear?


When I leave I'm going very far away
When I leave I'm going very far away

When I leave I'm going very far away
I don't want to see your colours fade
When I leave I'm going very far away
I don't want to see your colours fade

I don't want to see you
Looking like those grey remains
Of last night's farewell fires
Waiting to be swept away

So throw your paint on every wall
Illustrate the cadence of our favorite song
Each and every brightly coloured, tired eye
We'll leave a mark at all
The highest spots we rise

There are things which have no shape



While We're All Still Here**



We hid away in places
No one else would ever think to look
Imagined that the things we said
Were inked and set in pages
Of some great book

Well in a way they were
I think
Although we'll never know
Quite how the whole thing ends

When the sun begins to rise
When all our lines are said
When, someday this moment's passed us by
The way we seem to pass our shadows
As we're passed by cars at night

Will we see pages?
Looking like familiar flags
Will we see them through Old Eyes?

It was hand on heart
It was heart on sleeve
Impossible to miss, but
It was hard to believe
It was staring at the sun
It was stumbling blind
It was a place
It was a time
It was hard to define
It was the sum of all our footprints
And the paint we may have spilled
It was a little like a blueprint
Of a thing we'd planned to build
It was the times we had to whisper
And the things we had to shout
It was the candle that we lit
To see the last one burning out
It was hazy
It was aimless
It was staying the course
It was a weighty affair
With direction and force
It was a world that we built
Out of bits of thin air
It was bent light in a parting glass we've yet to share

We're all still here


There will come a day
When the sky goes dark with
Aeroplanes, angels, and black clouds

But we're still here
For now

There will come a day
When the sky goes dark with
Aeroplanes, angels, and black clouds

But we're still here
For now

...

O Sovereign power of love! O grief! O balm!
All records, saving thine, come cool, and calm,
And shadowy, through the mist of passed years:
For others, good or bad, hatred and tears
Have become indolent; but touching thine,
One sigh doth echo, one poor sob doth pine,
One kiss brings honey-dew from buried days.
The woes of Troy, towers smothering o'er their blaze,
Stiff-holden shields, far-piercing spears, keen blades,
Struggling, and blood, and shrieks--all dimly fades
Into some backward corner of the brain;
Yet, in our very souls, we feel amain
The close of Troilus and Cressid sweet.
Hence, pageant history! hence, gilded cheat!
Swart planet in the universe of deeds!
Wide sea, that one continuous murmur breeds
Along the pebbled shore of memory!
Many old rotten-timber'd boats there be
Upon thy vaporous *****, magnified
To goodly vessels; many a sail of pride,
And golden keel'd, is left unlaunch'd and dry.
But wherefore this? What care, though owl did fly
About the great Athenian admiral's mast?
What care, though striding Alexander past
The Indus with his Macedonian numbers?
Though old Ulysses tortured from his slumbers
The glutted Cyclops, what care?--Juliet leaning
Amid her window-flowers,--sighing,--weaning
Tenderly her fancy from its maiden snow,
Doth more avail than these: the silver flow
Of Hero's tears, the swoon of Imogen,
Fair Pastorella in the bandit's den,
Are things to brood on with more ardency
Than the death-day of empires. Fearfully
Must such conviction come upon his head,
Who, thus far, discontent, has dared to tread,
Without one muse's smile, or kind behest,
The path of love and poesy. But rest,
In chaffing restlessness, is yet more drear
Than to be crush'd, in striving to uprear
Love's standard on the battlements of song.
So once more days and nights aid me along,
Like legion'd soldiers.

                        Brain-sick shepherd-prince,
What promise hast thou faithful guarded since
The day of sacrifice? Or, have new sorrows
Come with the constant dawn upon thy morrows?
Alas! 'tis his old grief. For many days,
Has he been wandering in uncertain ways:
Through wilderness, and woods of mossed oaks;
Counting his woe-worn minutes, by the strokes
Of the lone woodcutter; and listening still,
Hour after hour, to each lush-leav'd rill.
Now he is sitting by a shady spring,
And elbow-deep with feverous *******
Stems the upbursting cold: a wild rose tree
Pavilions him in bloom, and he doth see
A bud which snares his fancy: lo! but now
He plucks it, dips its stalk in the water: how!
It swells, it buds, it flowers beneath his sight;
And, in the middle, there is softly pight
A golden butterfly; upon whose wings
There must be surely character'd strange things,
For with wide eye he wonders, and smiles oft.

  Lightly this little herald flew aloft,
Follow'd by glad Endymion's clasped hands:
Onward it flies. From languor's sullen bands
His limbs are loos'd, and eager, on he hies
Dazzled to trace it in the sunny skies.
It seem'd he flew, the way so easy was;
And like a new-born spirit did he pass
Through the green evening quiet in the sun,
O'er many a heath, through many a woodland dun,
Through buried paths, where sleepy twilight dreams
The summer time away. One track unseams
A wooded cleft, and, far away, the blue
Of ocean fades upon him; then, anew,
He sinks adown a solitary glen,
Where there was never sound of mortal men,
Saving, perhaps, some snow-light cadences
Melting to silence, when upon the breeze
Some holy bark let forth an anthem sweet,
To cheer itself to Delphi. Still his feet
Went swift beneath the merry-winged guide,
Until it reached a splashing fountain's side
That, near a cavern's mouth, for ever pour'd
Unto the temperate air: then high it soar'd,
And, downward, suddenly began to dip,
As if, athirst with so much toil, 'twould sip
The crystal spout-head: so it did, with touch
Most delicate, as though afraid to smutch
Even with mealy gold the waters clear.
But, at that very touch, to disappear
So fairy-quick, was strange! Bewildered,
Endymion sought around, and shook each bed
Of covert flowers in vain; and then he flung
Himself along the grass. What gentle tongue,
What whisperer disturb'd his gloomy rest?
It was a nymph uprisen to the breast
In the fountain's pebbly margin, and she stood
'**** lilies, like the youngest of the brood.
To him her dripping hand she softly kist,
And anxiously began to plait and twist
Her ringlets round her fingers, saying: "Youth!
Too long, alas, hast thou starv'd on the ruth,
The bitterness of love: too long indeed,
Seeing thou art so gentle. Could I ****
Thy soul of care, by heavens, I would offer
All the bright riches of my crystal coffer
To Amphitrite; all my clear-eyed fish,
Golden, or rainbow-sided, or purplish,
Vermilion-tail'd, or finn'd with silvery gauze;
Yea, or my veined pebble-floor, that draws
A ****** light to the deep; my grotto-sands
Tawny and gold, ooz'd slowly from far lands
By my diligent springs; my level lilies, shells,
My charming rod, my potent river spells;
Yes, every thing, even to the pearly cup
Meander gave me,--for I bubbled up
To fainting creatures in a desert wild.
But woe is me, I am but as a child
To gladden thee; and all I dare to say,
Is, that I pity thee; that on this day
I've been thy guide; that thou must wander far
In other regions, past the scanty bar
To mortal steps, before thou cans't be ta'en
From every wasting sigh, from every pain,
Into the gentle ***** of thy love.
Why it is thus, one knows in heaven above:
But, a poor Naiad, I guess not. Farewel!
I have a ditty for my hollow cell."

  Hereat, she vanished from Endymion's gaze,
Who brooded o'er the water in amaze:
The dashing fount pour'd on, and where its pool
Lay, half asleep, in grass and rushes cool,
Quick waterflies and gnats were sporting still,
And fish were dimpling, as if good nor ill
Had fallen out that hour. The wanderer,
Holding his forehead, to keep off the burr
Of smothering fancies, patiently sat down;
And, while beneath the evening's sleepy frown
Glow-worms began to trim their starry lamps,
Thus breath'd he to himself: "Whoso encamps
To take a fancied city of delight,
O what a wretch is he! and when 'tis his,
After long toil and travelling, to miss
The kernel of his hopes, how more than vile:
Yet, for him there's refreshment even in toil;
Another city doth he set about,
Free from the smallest pebble-bead of doubt
That he will seize on trickling honey-combs:
Alas, he finds them dry; and then he foams,
And onward to another city speeds.
But this is human life: the war, the deeds,
The disappointment, the anxiety,
Imagination's struggles, far and nigh,
All human; bearing in themselves this good,
That they are sill the air, the subtle food,
To make us feel existence, and to shew
How quiet death is. Where soil is men grow,
Whether to weeds or flowers; but for me,
There is no depth to strike in: I can see
Nought earthly worth my compassing; so stand
Upon a misty, jutting head of land--
Alone? No, no; and by the Orphean lute,
When mad Eurydice is listening to 't;
I'd rather stand upon this misty peak,
With not a thing to sigh for, or to seek,
But the soft shadow of my thrice-seen love,
Than be--I care not what. O meekest dove
Of heaven! O Cynthia, ten-times bright and fair!
From thy blue throne, now filling all the air,
Glance but one little beam of temper'd light
Into my *****, that the dreadful might
And tyranny of love be somewhat scar'd!
Yet do not so, sweet queen; one torment spar'd,
Would give a pang to jealous misery,
Worse than the torment's self: but rather tie
Large wings upon my shoulders, and point out
My love's far dwelling. Though the playful rout
Of Cupids shun thee, too divine art thou,
Too keen in beauty, for thy silver prow
Not to have dipp'd in love's most gentle stream.
O be propitious, nor severely deem
My madness impious; for, by all the stars
That tend thy bidding, I do think the bars
That kept my spirit in are burst--that I
Am sailing with thee through the dizzy sky!
How beautiful thou art! The world how deep!
How tremulous-dazzlingly the wheels sweep
Around their axle! Then these gleaming reins,
How lithe! When this thy chariot attains
Is airy goal, haply some bower veils
Those twilight eyes? Those eyes!--my spirit fails--
Dear goddess, help! or the wide-gaping air
Will gulph me--help!"--At this with madden'd stare,
And lifted hands, and trembling lips he stood;
Like old Deucalion mountain'd o'er the flood,
Or blind Orion hungry for the morn.
And, but from the deep cavern there was borne
A voice, he had been froze to senseless stone;
Nor sigh of his, nor plaint, nor passion'd moan
Had more been heard. Thus swell'd it forth: "Descend,
Young mountaineer! descend where alleys bend
Into the sparry hollows of the world!
Oft hast thou seen bolts of the thunder hurl'd
As from thy threshold, day by day hast been
A little lower than the chilly sheen
Of icy pinnacles, and dipp'dst thine arms
Into the deadening ether that still charms
Their marble being: now, as deep profound
As those are high, descend! He ne'er is crown'd
With immortality, who fears to follow
Where airy voices lead: so through the hollow,
The silent mysteries of earth, descend!"

  He heard but the last words, nor could contend
One moment in reflection: for he fled
Into the fearful deep, to hide his head
From the clear moon, the trees, and coming madness.

  'Twas far too strange, and wonderful for sadness;
Sharpening, by degrees, his appetite
To dive into the deepest. Dark, nor light,
The region; nor bright, nor sombre wholly,
But mingled up; a gleaming melancholy;
A dusky empire and its diadems;
One faint eternal eventide of gems.
Aye, millions sparkled on a vein of gold,
Along whose track the prince quick footsteps told,
With all its lines abrupt and angular:
Out-shooting sometimes, like a meteor-star,
Through a vast antre; then the metal woof,
Like Vulcan's rainbow, with some monstrous roof
Curves hugely: now, far in the deep abyss,
It seems an angry lightning, and doth hiss
Fancy into belief: anon it leads
Through winding passages, where sameness breeds
Vexing conceptions of some sudden change;
Whether to silver grots, or giant range
Of sapphire columns, or fantastic bridge
Athwart a flood of crystal. On a ridge
Now fareth he, that o'er the vast beneath
Towers like an ocean-cliff, and whence he seeth
A hundred waterfalls, whose voices come
But as the murmuring surge. Chilly and numb
His ***** grew, when first he, far away,
Descried an orbed diamond, set to fray
Old darkness from his throne: 'twas like the sun
Uprisen o'er chaos: and with such a stun
Came the amazement, that, absorb'd in it,
He saw not fiercer wonders--past the wit
Of any spirit to tell, but one of those
Who, when this planet's sphering time doth close,
Will be its high remembrancers: who they?
The mighty ones who have made eternal day
For Greece and England. While astonishment
With deep-drawn sighs was quieting, he went
Into a marble gallery, passing through
A mimic temple, so complete and true
In sacred custom, that he well nigh fear'd
To search it inwards, whence far off appear'd,
Through a long pillar'd vista, a fair shrine,
And, just beyond, on light tiptoe divine,
A quiver'd Dian. Stepping awfully,
The youth approach'd; oft turning his veil'd eye
Down sidelong aisles, and into niches old.
And when, more near against the marble cold
He had touch'd his forehead, he began to thread
All courts and passages, where silence dead
Rous'd by his whispering footsteps murmured faint:
And long he travers'd to and fro, to acquaint
Himself with every mystery, and awe;
Till, weary, he sat down before the maw
Of a wide outlet, fathomless and dim
To wild uncertainty and shadows grim.
There, when new wonders ceas'd to float before,
And thoughts of self came on, how crude and sore
The journey homeward to habitual self!
A mad-pursuing of the fog-born elf,
Whose flitting lantern, through rude nettle-briar,
Cheats us into a swamp, into a fire,
Into the ***** of a hated thing.

  What misery most drowningly doth sing
In lone Endymion's ear, now he has caught
The goal of consciousness? Ah, 'tis the thought,
The deadly feel of solitude: for lo!
He cannot see the heavens, nor the flow
Of rivers, nor hill-flowers running wild
In pink and purple chequer, nor, up-pil'd,
The cloudy rack slow journeying in the west,
Like herded elephants; nor felt, nor prest
Cool grass, nor tasted the fresh slumberous air;
But far from such companionship to wear
An unknown time, surcharg'd with grief, away,
Was now his lot. And must he patient stay,
Tracing fantastic figures with his spear?
"No!" exclaimed he, "why should I tarry here?"
No! loudly echoed times innumerable.
At which he straightway started, and 'gan tell
His paces back into the temple's chief;
Warming and glowing strong in the belief
Of help from Dian: so that when again
He caught her airy form, thus did he plain,
Moving more near the while. "O Haunter chaste
Of river sides, and woods, and heathy waste,
Where with thy silver bow and arrows keen
Art thou now forested? O woodland Queen,
What smoothest air thy smoother forehead woos?
Where dost thou listen to the wide halloos
Of thy disparted nymphs? Through what dark tree
Glimmers thy crescent? Wheresoe'er it be,
'Tis in the breath of heaven: thou dost taste
Freedom as none can taste it, nor dost waste
Thy loveliness in dismal elements;
But, finding in our green earth sweet contents,
There livest blissfully. Ah, if to thee
It feels Elysian, how rich to me,
An exil'd mortal, sounds its pleasant name!
Within my breast there lives a choking flame--
O let me cool it among the zephyr-boughs!
A homeward fever parches up my tongue--
O let me slake it at the running springs!
Upon my ear a noisy nothing rings--
O let me once more hear the linnet's note!
Before mine eyes thick films and shadows float--
O let me 'noint them with the heaven's light!
Dost thou now lave thy feet and ankles white?
O think how sweet to me the freshening sluice!
Dost thou now please thy thirst with berry-juice?
O think how this dry palate would rejoice!
If in soft slumber thou dost hear my voice,
Oh think how I should love a bed of flowers!--
Young goddess! let me see my native bowers!
Deliver me from this rapacious deep!"

  Thus ending loudly, as he would o'erleap
His destiny, alert he stood: but when
Obstinate silence came heavily again,
Feeling about for its old couch of space
And airy cradle, lowly bow'd his face
Desponding, o'er the marble floor's cold thrill.
But 'twas not long; for, sweeter than the rill
To its old channel, or a swollen tide
To margin sallows, were the leaves he spied,
And flowers, and wreaths, and ready myrtle crowns
Up heaping through the slab: refreshment drowns
Itself, and strives its own delights to hide--
Nor in one spot alone; the floral pride
In a long whispering birth enchanted grew
Before his footsteps; as when heav'd anew
Old ocean rolls a lengthened wave to the shore,
Down whose green back the short-liv'd foam, all ****,
Bursts gradual, with a wayward indolence.

  Increasing still in heart, and pleasant sense,
Upon his fairy journey on he hastes;
So anxious for the end, he scarcely wastes
One moment with his hand among the sweets:
Onward he goes--he stops--his ***** beats
As plainly in his ear, as the faint charm
Of which the throbs were born. This still alarm,
This sleepy music, forc'd him walk tiptoe:
For it came more softly than the east could blow
Arion's magic to the Atlantic isles;
Or than the west, made jealous by the smiles
Of thron'd Apollo, could breathe back the lyre
To seas Ionian and Tyrian.

  O did he ever live, that lonely man,
Who lov'd--and music slew not? 'Tis the pest
Of love, that fairest joys give most unrest;
That things of delicate and tenderest worth
Are swallow'd all, and made a seared dearth,
By one consuming flame: it doth immerse
And suffocate true blessings in a curse.
Half-happy, by comparison of bliss,
Is miserable. 'Twas even so with this
Dew-dropping melody, in the Carian's ear;
First heaven, then hell, and then forgotten clear,
Vanish'd in elemental passion.

  And down some swart abysm he had gone,
Had not a heavenly guide benignant led
To where thick myrt

From the BBC today,


Excerpt

Why does Taylor Swift write so many one-note melodies?

"It's easy to get distracted by her celebrity, but Taylor Swift is a once-in-a-generation songwriter. From the very beginning, she's displayed a knack for melody and storytelling that most artists never master.

Take, for example, her first US number one, OUR SONG

Written for a high school talent show, it's a fairly typical tale of teenage romance until the final lines: "I grabbed a pen / And an old napkin / And I wrote down our song."

That's smart, self-assured songwriting for someone who wasn't old enough to vote. Notably, the lyrics insert the musician directly into the narrative - something she developed into a tried and tested trope.

But Our Song also establishes another of Taylor's trademarks: The one-note melody.

Excerpt

Repetitive melodies that centre around a single note are part of that appeal. They emphasise her relatability by mimicking the cadence of speech.

"They emphasise her relatability by mimicking the cadence of speech."

"They emphasise her relatability by mimicking the cadence of speech."

"They emphasise her relatability by mimicking the cadence of speech."

Rebuttal

Rhyme sells because the people you are selling too can remember your lyrics. They can relate to your song but if they cannot sing it themselves putting themselves in the 'first-person perspective narrative' they cannot feel as-if they have BECOME the artist and are living that moment as they remember it. Taylor Swift sings about teenage love and angst something EVERYONE ON EARTH understands.

ALL POETRY BEGAN AS RHYME IN SONG.

Cadences are singing statements that confer a discipline and unity.

Song acts as a catharsis. The artist shares their pain in a way that is universally understood. If you want to sell a rock, literally a pebble, you will not sell it if it doesn't look like a rock. If it doesn't do what rocks do. If it is not what people remember a rock to be like. Nor will it sell if it is just like every other rock they have ever seen. It cannot convey an emotion unless it elicits emotion.

One cannot even begin to feel emotional if one cannot remember easily the past and that includes lyrics one has heard that evoked said emotional state.

It is horrifying to see HOW BADLY EVERYONE INSISTS that rhyme be obliterated in exchange for an intellectual or individual perspective NOT SHARED BY THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE.

If you want to sell and make money you better start thinking about the 99% of people who are not geniuses.

If your sole goal in life is to attract a genius to give you a great job because of how, "smart," they perceive you to be then fine.

You are not an artist.

You are an employee.



"Rhyme sells because the people you are selling too can remember your lyrics."

"Rhyme sells because the people you are selling too can remember your lyrics."

"Rhyme sells because the people you are selling too can remember your lyrics."

Thrice Times Great. ⁻ᴴᵉʳᵐᵉˢ



                                           BECOME
                              EVERYONE ON EARTH
               ALL POETRY BEGAN AS RHYME IN SONG
                      HOW BADLY EVERYONE INSISTS
            NOT SHARED BY THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE
                                         HOW BAD
                    
                 artist?
or employee?

In the divet between mountains
Resides a wooden cabin – ostensibly an amalgamation of the scape
Adroitly - I - quondam female warrior flit
Down massive (ancient) hand-laid, hand-cut carved stone steps
Bounding from contingent step onto the dense pad of turned soil
Tacit compliance between gravity and soil holds footprints bound
A compressed deflating crescendo as pace ignites with bounds

Cadences of protuberant wildflowers and grasses erupt from swollen terra
A winsome chromatic menagerie, dispersed in ecstatic fistfuls
A venerably ancient ritual

My nascent clandestine vocation
Personally meted out - a beatification for my provisional sanctuary

Along glacier-fed stream
Lissome fingers shadow inert stalks –plucking dormant beginnings from their desiccated ligaments

I am austere and unadorned save for a festoon of pyrite flecks trailing my semblance
Residual gilding from my ante-meridian swim taken after requisite gathering of wild blackberries, goose berries, and rhubarb along oft-tamped path

The sun, nestling into its requisite apex endorsed my completion
I reclined into the hassock of soil, feeling the elements settle about with an embossment of my form
Imposing verdure arched subtly as compressed soil beckoned hyperbolic flux

As I lay within the basilica of opulent living columns replete with comestible bounty
Lingering dew honed inflections of sacrosanct petrichor in unison with piquant clover
Wild purple clover buds saccharinely tinted and inundated nestled nerves in mine cribriform plate

Birds pitched and galloped through the frond tips and beyond in the lapis expanse
Frequently snatching damselfly’s and assemblages of midges from their ephemeral drift

Auspicious rays transcended stippled diaphanous gravid clouds
Light inundated ether entered humbly into the cathedral oculus
Pyrite speckled terrain beneath, and my bare gilded form above
Cast a refracted aura about my sanctuary

Precipitously the elusive vaporous embankment distended further
Ashen atmospheric correspondence inaugurated liquescent sustenance to my mountain abode

And I -
Lingered beneath the descending gobbets, curls furled in a puddle
Fresh topsoil cupping my corporal topographic contours
Pressing blackberries into my mouth between smiles

[Greek: Mellonta  sauta’]

These things are in the future.

Sophocles—’Antig.’

‘Una.’

“Born again?”

‘Monos.’

Yes, fairest and best beloved Una, “born again.” These were
the words upon whose mystical meaning I had so long
pondered, rejecting the explanations of the priesthood,
until Death itself resolved for me the secret.

‘Una.’

Death!

‘Monos.’

How strangely, sweet Una, you echo my words! I
observe, too, a vacillation in your step, a joyous
inquietude in your eyes. You are confused and oppressed by
the majestic novelty of the Life Eternal. Yes, it was of
Death I spoke. And here how singularly sounds that word
which of old was wont to bring terror to all hearts,
throwing a mildew upon all pleasures!

‘Una.’

Ah, Death, the spectre which sate at all feasts! How often,
Monos, did we lose ourselves in speculations upon its
nature! How mysteriously did it act as a check to human
bliss, saying unto it, “thus far, and no farther!” That
earnest mutual love, my own Monos, which burned within our
bosoms, how vainly did we flatter ourselves, feeling happy
in its first upspringing that our happiness would strengthen
with its strength! Alas, as it grew, so grew in our hearts
the dread of that evil hour which was hurrying to separate
us forever! Thus in time it became painful to love. Hate
would have been mercy then.

‘Monos’.

Speak not here of these griefs, dear Una—mine, mine
forever now!

‘Una’.

But the memory of past sorrow, is it not present joy? I have
much to say yet of the things which have been. Above all, I
burn to know the incidents of your own passage through the
dark Valley and Shadow.

‘Monos’.

And when did the radiant Una ask anything of her Monos in
vain? I will be minute in relating all, but at what point
shall the weird narrative begin?

‘Una’.

At what point?

‘Monos’.

You have said.

‘Una’.

Monos, I comprehend you. In Death we have both learned the
propensity of man to define the indefinable. I will not say,
then, commence with the moment of life’s cessation—but
commence with that sad, sad instant when, the fever having
abandoned you, you sank into a breathless and motionless
torpor, and I pressed down your pallid eyelids with the
passionate fingers of love.

‘Monos’.

One word first, my Una, in regard to man’s general condition
at this epoch. You will remember that one or two of the wise
among our forefathers—wise in fact, although not in
the world’s esteem—had ventured to doubt the propriety
of the term “improvement,” as applied to the progress of our
civilization. There were periods in each of the five or six
centuries immediately preceding our dissolution when arose
some vigorous intellect, boldly contending for those
principles whose truth appears now, to our disenfranchised
reason, so utterly obvious —principles which should
have taught our race to submit to the guidance of the
natural laws rather than attempt their control. At long
intervals some master-minds appeared, looking upon each
advance in practical science as a retrogradation in the true
utility. Occasionally the poetic intellect—that
intellect which we now feel to have been the most exalted of
all—since those truths which to us were of the most
enduring importance could only be reached by that analogy
which speaks in proof-tones to the imagination alone,
and to the unaided reason bears no weight—occasionally
did this poetic intellect proceed a step farther in the
evolving of the vague idea of the philosophic, and find in
the mystic parable that tells of the tree of knowledge, and
of its forbidden fruit, death-producing, a distinct
intimation that knowledge was not meet for man in the infant
condition of his soul. And these men—the poets—
living and perishing amid the scorn of the
“utilitarians”—of rough pedants, who arrogated to
themselves a title which could have been properly applied
only to the scorned—these men, the poets, pondered
piningly, yet not unwisely, upon the ancient days when our
wants were not more simple than our enjoyments were
keen—days when mirth was a word unknown, so
solemnly deep-toned was happiness—holy, august, and
blissful days, blue rivers ran undammed, between hills
unhewn, into far forest solitudes, primeval, odorous, and
unexplored. Yet these noble exceptions from the general
misrule served but to strengthen it by opposition. Alas! we
had fallen upon the most evil of all our evil days. The
great “movement”—that was the cant term—went on:
a diseased commotion, moral and physical. Art—the
Arts—arose supreme, and once enthroned, cast chains
upon the intellect which had elevated them to power. Man,
because he could not but acknowledge the majesty of Nature,
fell into childish exultation at his acquired and still-
increasing dominion over her elements. Even while he stalked
a God in his own fancy, an infantine imbecility came over
him. As might be supposed from the origin of his disorder,
he grew infected with system, and with abstraction. He
enwrapped himself in generalities. Among other odd ideas,
that of universal equality gained ground; and in the face of
analogy and of God—in despite of the loud warning
voice of the laws of gradation so visibly pervading
all things in Earth and Heaven—wild attempts at an
omniprevalent Democracy were made. Yet this evil sprang
necessarily from the leading evil, Knowledge. Man could not
both know and succumb. Meantime huge smoking cities arose,
innumerable. Green leaves shrank before the hot breath of
furnaces. The fair face of Nature was deformed as with the
ravages of some loathsome disease. And methinks, sweet Una,
even our slumbering sense of the forced and of the far-
fetched might have arrested us here. But now it appears that
we had worked out our own destruction in the ******* of
our taste, or rather in the blind neglect of its
culture in the schools. For, in truth, it was at this crisis
that taste alone—that faculty which, holding a middle
position between the pure intellect and the moral sense,
could never safely have been disregarded—it was now
that taste alone could have led us gently back to Beauty, to
Nature, and to Life. But alas for the pure contemplative
spirit and majestic intuition of Plato! Alas for the [Greek:
mousichae]  which he justly regarded as an all-sufficient
education for the soul! Alas for him and for it!—since
both were most desperately needed, when both were most
entirely forgotten or despised. Pascal, a philosopher whom
we both love, has said, how truly!—”Que tout notre
raisonnement se reduit a ceder au sentiment;” and it is
not impossible that the sentiment of the natural, had time
permitted it, would have regained its old ascendency over
the harsh mathematical reason of the schools. But this thing
was not to be. Prematurely induced by intemperance of
knowledge, the old age of the world drew near. This the mass
of mankind saw not, or, living lustily although unhappily,
affected not to see. But, for myself, the Earth’s records
had taught me to look for widest ruin as the price of
highest civilization. I had imbibed a prescience of our Fate
from comparison of China the simple and enduring, with
Assyria the architect, with Egypt the astrologer, with
Nubia, more crafty than either, the turbulent mother of all
Arts. In the history of these regions I met with a ray from
the Future. The individual artificialities of the three
latter were local diseases of the Earth, and in their
individual overthrows we had seen local remedies applied;
but for the infected world at large I could anticipate no
regeneration save in death. That man, as a race, should not
become extinct, I saw that he must be “born again.”

And now it was, fairest and dearest, that we wrapped our
spirits, daily, in dreams. Now it was that, in twilight, we
discoursed of the days to come, when the Art-scarred surface
of the Earth, having undergone that purification which alone
could efface its rectangular obscenities, should clothe
itself anew in the verdure and the mountain-slopes and the
smiling waters of Paradise, and be rendered at length a fit
dwelling-place for man:—for man the
Death-purged—for man to whose now exalted intellect
there should be poison in knowledge no more—for the
redeemed, regenerated, blissful, and now immortal, but still
for the material, man.

‘Una’.

Well do I remember these conversations, dear Monos; but the
epoch of the fiery overthrow was not so near at hand as we
believed, and as the corruption you indicate did surely
warrant us in believing. Men lived; and died individually.
You yourself sickened, and passed into the grave; and
thither your constant Una speedily followed you. And though
the century which has since elapsed, and whose conclusion
brings up together once more, tortured our slumbering senses
with no impatience of duration, yet my Monos, it was a
century still.

‘Monos’.

Say, rather, a point in the vague infinity. Unquestionably,
it was in the Earth’s dotage that I died. Wearied at heart
with anxieties which had their origin in the general turmoil
and decay, I succumbed to the fierce fever. After some few
days of pain, and many of dreamy delirium replete with
ecstasy, the manifestations of which you mistook for pain,
while I longed but was impotent to undeceive you—after
some days there came upon me, as you have said, a breathless
and motionless torpor; and this was termed Death by
those who stood around me.

Words are vague things. My condition did not deprive me of
sentience. It appeared to me not greatly dissimilar to the
extreme quiescence of him, who, having slumbered long and
profoundly, lying motionless and fully prostrate in a mid-
summer noon, begins to steal slowly back into consciousness,
through the mere sufficiency of his sleep, and without being
awakened by external disturbances.

I breathed no longer. The pulses were still. The heart had
ceased to beat. Volition had not departed, but was
powerless. The senses were unusually active, although
eccentrically so—assuming often each other’s functions
at random. The taste and the smell were inextricably
confounded, and became one sentiment, abnormal and intense.
The rose-water with which your tenderness had moistened my
lips to the last, affected me with sweet fancies of
flowers—fantastic flowers, far more lovely than any of
the old Earth, but whose prototypes we have here blooming
around us. The eye-lids, transparent and bloodless, offered
no complete impediment to vision. As volition was in
abeyance, the ***** could not roll in their sockets—
but all objects within the range of the visual hemisphere
were seen with more or less distinctness; the rays which
fell upon the external retina, or into the corner of the
eye, producing a more vivid effect than those which struck
the front or interior surface. Yet, in the former instance,
this effect was so far anomalous that I appreciated it only
as sound—sound sweet or discordant as the
matters presenting themselves at my side were light or dark
in shade—curved or angular in outline. The hearing, at
the same time, although excited in degree, was not irregular
in action—estimating real sounds with an extravagance
of precision, not less than of sensibility. Touch had
undergone a modification more peculiar. Its impressions were
tardily received, but pertinaciously retained, and resulted
always in the highest physical pleasure. Thus the pressure
of your sweet fingers upon my eyelids, at first only
recognized through vision, at length, long after their
removal, filled my whole being with a sensual delight
immeasurable. I say with a sensual delight. All my
perceptions were purely sensual. The materials furnished the
passive brain by the senses were not in the least degree
wrought into shape by the deceased understanding. Of pain
there was some little; of pleasure there was much; but of
moral pain or pleasure none at all. Thus your wild sobs
floated into my ear with all their mournful cadences, and
were appreciated in their every variation of sad tone; but
they were soft musical sounds and no more; they conveyed to
the extinct reason no intimation of the sorrows which gave
them birth; while large and constant tears which fell upon
my face, telling the bystanders of a heart which broke,
thrilled every fibre of my frame with ecstasy alone. And
this was in truth the Death of which these bystanders
spoke reverently, in low whispers—you, sweet Una,
gaspingly, with loud cries.

They attired me for the coffin—three or four dark
figures which flitted busily to and fro. As these crossed
the direct line of my vision they affected me as forms;
but upon passing to my side their images impressed me
with the idea of shrieks, groans, and, other dismal
expressions of terror, of horror, or of woe. You alone,
habited in a white robe, passed in all directions musically
about.

The day waned; and, as its light faded away, I became
possessed by a vague uneasiness—an anxiety such as the
sleeper feels when sad real sounds fall continuously within
his ear—low distant bell-tones, solemn, at long but
equal intervals, and commingling with melancholy dreams.
Night arrived; and with its shadows a heavy discomfort. It
oppressed my limbs with the oppression of some dull weight,
and was palpable. There was also a moaning sound, not unlike
the distant reverberation of surf, but more continuous,
which, beginning with the first twilight, had grown in
strength with the darkness. Suddenly lights were brought
into the rooms, and this reverberation became forthwith
interrupted into frequent unequal bursts of the same sound,
but less dreary and less distinct. The ponderous oppression
was in a great measure relieved; and, issuing from the flame
of each lamp (for there were many), there flowed unbrokenly
into my ears a strain of melodious monotone. And when now,
dear Una, approaching the bed upon which I lay outstretched,
you sat gently by my side, breathing odor from your sweet
lips, and pressing them upon my brow, there arose
tremulously within my *****, and mingling with the merely
physical sensations which circumstances had called forth, a
something akin to sentiment itself—a feeling that,
half appreciating, half responded to your earnest love and
sorrow; but this feeling took no root in the pulseless
heart, and seemed indeed rather a shadow than a reality, and
faded quickly away, first into extreme quiescence, and then
into a purely sensual pleasure as before.

And now, from the wreck and the chaos of the usual senses,
there appeared to have arisen within me a sixth, all
perfect. In its exercise I found a wild delight—yet a
delight still physical, inasmuch as the understanding had in
it no part. Motion in the animal frame had fully ceased. No
muscle quivered; no nerve thrilled; no artery throbbed. But
there seemed to have sprung up in the brain that of
which no words could convey to the merely human intelligence
even an indistinct conception. Let me term it a mental
pendulous pulsation. It was the moral embodiment of man’s
abstract idea of Time. By the absolute equalization
of this movement—or of such as this—had the
cycles of the firmamental orbs themselves been adjusted. By
its aid I measured the irregularities of the clock upon the
mantel, and of the watches of the attendants. Their tickings
came sonorously to my ears. The slightest deviations from
the true proportion—and these deviations were
omniprevalent—affected me just as violations of
abstract truth were wont on earth to affect the moral sense.
Although no two of the timepieces in the chamber struck the
individual seconds accurately together, yet I had no
difficulty in holding steadily in mind the tones, and the
respective momentary errors of each. And this—this
keen, perfect self-existing sentiment of
duration—this sentiment existing (as man could
not possibly have conceived it to exist) independently of
any succession of events—this idea—this sixth
sense, upspringing from the ashes of the rest, was the first
obvious and certain step of the intemporal soul upon the
threshold of the temporal eternity.

It was midnight; and you still sat by my side. All others
had departed from the chamber of Death. They had deposited
me in the coffin. The lamps burned flickeringly; for this I
knew by the tremulousness of the monotonous strains. But
suddenly these strains diminished in distinctness and in
volume. Finally they ceased. The perfume in my nostrils died
aw

Yea! though I walk through the valley of the
  Shadow.

  ‘Psalm of David’.

Ye who read are still among the living; but I who write
shall have long since gone my way into the region of
shadows. For indeed strange things shall happen, and secret
things be known, and many centuries shall pass away, ere
these memorials be seen of men. And, when seen, there will
be some to disbelieve and some to doubt, and yet a few who
will find much to ponder upon in the characters here graven
with a stylus of iron.

The year had been a year of terror, and of feeling more
intense than terror for which there is no name upon the
earth. For many prodigies and signs had taken place, and far
and wide, over sea and land, the black wings of the
Pestilence were spread abroad. To those, nevertheless,
cunning in the stars, it was not unknown that the heavens
wore an aspect of ill; and to me, the Greek Oinos, among
others, it was evident that now had arrived the alternation
of that seven hundred and ninety-fourth year when, at the
entrance of Aries, the planet Jupiter is enjoined with the
red ring of the terrible Saturnus. The peculiar spirit of
the skies, if I mistake not greatly, made itself manifest,
not only in the physical orb of the earth, but in the souls,
imaginations, and meditations of mankind.

Over some flasks of the red Chian wine, within the walls of
a noble hall, in a dim city called Ptolemais, we sat, at
night, a company of seven. And to our chamber there was no
entrance save by a lofty door of brass: and the door was
fashioned by the artisan Corinnos, and, being of rare
workmanship, was fastened from within. Black draperies,
likewise in the gloomy room, shut out from our view the
moon, the lurid stars, and the peopleless streets—but
the boding and the memory of Evil, they would not be so
excluded. There were things around us and about of which I
can render no distinct account—things material and
spiritual— heaviness in the atmosphere—a sense
of suffocation—anxiety—and, above all, that
terrible state of existence which the nervous experience
when the senses are keenly living and awake, and meanwhile
the powers of thought lie dormant. A dead weight hung upon
us. It hung upon our limbs—upon the household
furniture—upon the goblets from which we drank; and
all things were depressed, and borne down thereby—all
things save only the flames of the seven iron lamps which
illumined our revel. Uprearing themselves in tall slender
lines of light, they thus remained burning all pallid and
motionless; and in the mirror which their lustre formed upon
the round table of ebony at which we sat each of us there
assembled beheld the pallor of his own countenance, and the
unquiet glare in the downcast eyes of his companions. Yet we
laughed and were merry in our proper way—which was
hysterical; and sang the songs of Anacreon—which are
madness; and drank deeply—although the purple wine
reminded us of blood. For there was yet another tenant of
our chamber in the person of young Zoilus. Dead and at full
length he lay, enshrouded;—the genius and the demon of
the scene. Alas! he bore no portion in our mirth, save that
his countenance, distorted with the plague, and his eyes in
which Death had but half extinguished the fire of the
pestilence, seemed to take such an interest in our merriment
as the dead may haply take in the merriment of those who are
to die. But although I, Oinos, felt that the eyes of the
departed were upon me, still I forced myself not to perceive
the bitterness of their expression, and gazing down steadily
into the depths of the ebony mirror, sang with a loud and
sonorous voice the songs of the son of Teos. But gradually
my songs they ceased, and their echoes, rolling afar off
among the sable draperies of the chamber, became weak, and
undistinguishable, and so faded away. And lo! from among
those sable draperies, where the sounds of the song
departed, there came forth a dark and undefiled
shadow—a shadow such as the moon, when low in heaven,
might fashion from the figure of a man: but it was the
shadow neither of man nor of God, nor of any familiar thing.
And quivering awhile among the draperies of the room it at
length rested in full view upon the surface of the door of
brass. But the shadow was vague, and formless, and
indefinite, and was the shadow neither of man nor God—
neither God of Greece, nor God of Chaldaea, nor any Egyptian
God. And the shadow rested upon the brazen doorway, and
under the arch of the entablature of the door and moved not,
nor spoke any word, but there became stationary and
remained. And the door whereupon the shadow rested was, if I
remember aright, over against the feet of the young Zoilus
enshrouded. But we, the seven there assembled, having seen
the shadow as it came out from among the draperies, dared
not steadily behold it, but cast down our eyes, and gazed
continually into the depths of the mirror of ebony. And at
length I, Oinos, speaking some low words, demanded of the
shadow its dwelling and its appellation. And the shadow
answered, “I am SHADOW, and my dwelling is near to the
Catacombs of Ptolemais, and hard by those dim plains of
Helusion which border upon the foul Charonian canal.” And
then did we, the seven, start from our seats in horror, and
stand trembling, and shuddering, and aghast: for the tones
in the voice of the shadow were not the tones of any one
being, but of a multitude of beings, and varying in their
cadences from syllable to syllable, fell duskily upon our
ears in the well remembered and familiar accents of many
thousand departed friends.

I turn to you in my joy,
and say, I love you.
The excitement seeps from my pores
as I almost fly to your side
up the aisle.

Our children dressed to the nines
and our families smiling.
My stomach twisting in knots

What is that feeling? Angry butterflies...
They are excited and so very scared.

I am ready to take your hand
and you are already packed for Basic Training.
You are going to 'seek your fortune' to provide for us
Twisting through the endless spiral cases in my mind
a song drifts up from the depths of my memory
a Cadence that we once sang as we cleaned the house.
I picture you running and running, and working for us
in this heated despair I cry.. They see it as tears of joy.
How relieved am I that they can not see,
that you can not see
the ringing of bells an cadences inside of me.

Hedons liken to sound.
The hungry cadences wielding that satisfying resolution.
The resolution we seek in between memories
and the spirit of the staircase.
Are we intricate bodies
or are we intricate worlds,
full of all you have ever known.
What is that sound?
I may be defined by my actions
but my actions are defined entanglement.
Some soft note
huddled under a hard and heavy chord.
Then victory comes in the 42nd measure
and is defeated in the next.

All of us can make noise
but nobody can be heard.

Even the altruist is selfish to an ideal,
I want then only to make music.

The night becomes you -
hair coiffed in fashion
illuminated eyes reveal attraction,
the scent of body oil
pervasive,
ambient music evolves
persuasive
savory rhetoric,
cabernet erodes my inhibition
no contrition, turn the ignition.

The night becomes you -
you wear it well  
an amalgam,
ardor and insouciance -
redefining glamour,
ephemeral moments
dial down the sunlight,
I am slain - voice and accent
weave their spell;
black dust coat, white hat,
a pair of posh boots
they live to tell.

The night becomes you
rhyme scheme -  lyrical poetry
sophisticated venue, table for two
ensconced, the
leather lounge,
similitude within difference;
undulation - cadences of
counterpoint -
poise and peril of duality
we inhabit the floor.
Postprandial, conversation extempore;
machinations of intoxicating discourse,
I could drink your words -
artistic milieu- beguiling imagery,
sonant susurrations
penetrate my being.

The night becomes you -
theoretical locutions
phrasing depth and humor,
undiluted amour, tensions resolve
frame by frame,
solidify the affair
and validate the rumor
subsumed in sequence, pulsating,
igniting the sapid interior flame
silver screen ending,
effusive reviews
two hearts collide and form one;
the cherub's arrow finds its aim.

©2008 & 2011 W.S. Warner

the cadence
of the heartbeat in my chest
asks me when i'll see you next.
i bow my head.
when did i become so lifeless?

As these forlorn cadences await- unfold
To compose a disbanded vow
Yielding unto harrows of gates untold
Charms death to disdainful plow

Death is plowed to a forgiving halt
While silver moonlight and whiskey dances remain
Glittering gold in this crimson vault-
Feeble souls conjure grace as graceless minds abstain

Counterfeit conceits ravish this open cellar
As the night’s last dance ceases to a disgraceful plea
The dweller’s disdain is akin to my killer
And heaven yields blood to salt the earth for thee

Come away now with your anguishing defeats
Seek not a jagged spike as the heaven’s conspire and wake
Glory and gold may turn us black as deceit
But deception admonishes the dancers in their quake

Spellbound nuances of this reality await at every turn
Mourning and fighting the finality of this grave
Orchestrated knives are rosined like honey, beckoning our blood to burn
At last, a burning reckoning comes to ravage the brave

But refrain, oh killer- host of this crimson vault
Enlist a memoir for our sins
Recalling the pieties of our gracious faults,
Enough to make this blood go thin.

in a tea house
a jasmine girl
plays a piano
shimmering a
song of soft keys
to a lotus blush
of fine infusing leaves.

morning, the jewels
of dawn’s filigree nets
a summer storm
in a wintry sky
coaxed out of
a melody of
incense, trembling
to the infinite
blossom of
tranquil, arching
skies.

your poetry, the
cadences of the sun
unwrapped,
the light of the
ocean
breathed
in,
beautiful moons
that weep for
life’s joys,
wild summer
in our hearts.

There was a fog that seemed to hover thickly
over the perceived salience of his musings
  
It was as if there were a veiled mystique
that left hopeful understanding ,
                   ambiguously obscured ...

His soul's cadences fell beyond the pale ,
like a reverberant iron bell’s clamor ,
                   drowning acumen ;

albeit , unmistakabe crystal clear allusions ,
scanning inwardly, rhapsody in his mind's eye

                    Illusive accord ,
                    beclouded by seeming stigmas
                    borne of the flesh ;
                    delicately sensitive nuances ,
                    misunderstood imperfections ,
                    bespoken utterance weighed heavy upon heart ...

In the hush of pensive repose ,
flow of soul streamed forth from its retreat within ;
bequeathed as if darkness
was magnetically drawn towards light ,
purging muted understanding ...

                    Assuredly seeking all questions with verve ,
                    accepting , that all answers sought
                    are not meant to be understood

A realization of those who wish to speak yet abide unspoken ;
the unseen mark of those that wished they had been loved ,
befallen the music of a thundering heartbeat ,
understanding a circle is vulnerable ,
only makes it stronger ―

                    hence ,..
                    it had been written
                    in countless misunderstood ways ...

Knowing he resists an inner-voice to endure silently
for a fear of that which remains indelibly writ ,
tattooed on introspective walls
far removed from the afterglow of light ,
where depth of soul yearns to be freed ;

                    heart speak hushed , deft words avowed
                    in enigmatic tongues ― Vayu doth whisper

                    soul's prevailing tides ebb and flow
                    from unseen depths , permeating
                    deeply within inner realms

The spirit of soul once steeped his heart’s intone :

               "Spell words that bind together passing strangers  
                 Coalesce  thoughts to inspirit those whom often walk alone
                 Append the goodwill of poetry, aspiring to bond individual
                 hearts and minds with words of love and light.  
                 Conjure written  spells to bespeak sincerely ,
                 a faith in unabated love"

and yet ,   he will write it again and again ,.. searching beyond words

…words grasped from emerging thoughts
                   drawn in to the light
                   searching for other adept words
                   to recite yet another way ,
                   sketch another word-scape ,
                   written with the relentless inexhaustibleness
                   of an unstoppable awakening ...  

Another winter dawn imbues a new day come to light

                   he will write it again and again ,

                                          ... finding another way to be set free ...



                                                          ­       Harlon Rivers

Got lost and stopped by the grotto
struck deals with villains,
and though I'm in my feelings
kneeling and *******
I payed to be ripped off
cadences dip, lost the lotto

Watery graves appealing strange
the solution is lame
the parade's an insane path to follow
Radical urchin burden
grifting the current
mechanisms infected
luring fevers to wallow in, ad absurdum
fathom futility in survival
famine imbibes a stifled echo of revival
in my head

I'm just playing dead for my recital

better informed to the abhorrence I'm entitled

feathered in form alluring sword alarm from Michael

clever to wars imparted forcible and vital, to the era

but staring in awe before the cycle

Bearing a maw beneath the throes along the final.

Bury me after my heart
and guard informal notions of the lauded
if calluses lift the filthy and applaud it

whittle the simply to the too intense or lawless
for a history glistening through a rose of sickly fondness
I won't ask if you were listening to all this
but I must admit
I don't think I can trust you

to be honest...

now don't get me wrong
i love wordsmiths
semiotic story-tellers
rhapsodists rhythmically reciting
love languages from memory
connecting disparate lines
between discordant thoughts like
gods breathing life into dust

for these steel swords we've
conjured up do not rust
nor do they cut flesh

with mouths like ink fountains
we espouse words at the whims
of pens that often seem possessed
of their own volition and
we are their mere harbingers

they slice to the quick
past bone and marrow to
the human spirit and
tap into sentience through
sophisticated sentence structure
measured meter catalyzing cadences
of consonance in confidence

so by all means
spit rhymes and chime in
on current events
i love the rally cries
that seek to stymy injustice
ridicule bigotry and
foment dissent

but don't preach at me
your words of salvation
fall on deaf ears
you cannot save me
because i'm already divine
one-of-a-kind
just like you

i don't fancy myself above
satirizing fictitious and megalomaniacal
depictions of godhood
i've found that humor
helps us navigate the
half-truths and veiled threats
that inundate our daily existence
regardless of whether
they originate from
preachers politicians pundits
or poets

****-shaming and victim-blaming
are pathetic attempts to cull dull minds
no thanks mine's full to the bursting
you think you're clever for slapping
together a couple of words brewed
for maximum effect but you haven't
got the faintest clue do you no

you're nothing but a bully with a pulpit
fearmongering and shouting damnation
mixing Church and State and business
in a trifecta of tyranny
an orgastic oligarchy
of eternal enmity

when we die we pass
into the black abyss of nothingness
each of us a blip on the spectrum of
life under constant duress
before we ultimately perish
a meaningless speck of dust on
an endless shore of who was
who is and who will come to be

this is not a nihilistic proclamation
nor an atheistic defamation of
human beings but a rational
refutation of misanthropy
masquerading as community

your love looks a lot like hatred

i seek to offer an alternative
to the endless cycles of
condemnation that sprout from
the pages of holy books
like gnarled trees bequeathed
unto us by the seeds
of false prophecies

let's face the music
we will all die alone
and there is nothing
and no one
waiting for us
no white light or
loved ones on
the other side
no arbiter of fate
waiting at the gate
to permit us entrance
to a heavenly place

if we could only muster the courage
to divorce ourselves from fatalistic
fantasies of the afterlife
that keep us bent-kneed
we might find within us the strength
to seize the day and
live life so brilliantly that

we'd create a heaven on earth
if merely we departed from the
hellish impulses that divide us
into despondent collections of
self-righteous hypocrites and
simply admit the only thing we
know for certain is that we
know nothing for certain at all

perhaps then we could salvage
a modicum of freedom from
the wreckage of shattered
egos and emaciated lies
that plague this planet
with circumstantial evidence
while relegating our liberty
and inhibiting conscience

in the spirit of free inquiry
then let us question
everyone and everything
starting with yours truly

After all this time, the rain has come again
soybeans bursting in the pod, dry brown fields.
The lake as low as it has ever been
clouds pass, thin wisps, withholding all they wield.

We too have dried, mere husks, once plangent
await cadences, intimacy's desires.
A chair rests on a deck, first child's salient
artifact of family life once resonant.

Not first love, but founded in maturity
enough, perhaps, to defy time's ravages.
Embarked with proclaimed mutual surety
to weather all a life's uncertain passages.

But, for now, we tender loves rebuff
and find the rain must prove to be enough.

Light seeps through the
Window cadences of rhythm
Like a heartbeat
Of true intentions
Misconceptions dodge the soul
Dust particles pass my face
Proving I’m still alive
Somewhere inside
This shell

At night my astrolabe
Can not contain the measures
Of uneasiness and skepticism arising
In this government induced anxiety

V

Turning away from the temptation of town to walk in twilight viewing the warm lights from the ancient buildings those enclosures of chapel library refectory student rooms fellows’ chambers offices guarded by men in bowler hats whose occupants cross courtyard and cloister purposefully sometimes gowned (for the tourists perhaps) those cobbled passages the tall chimneys the gates and railings suddenly back in the busy streets bicycles everywhere tea necessary tea I catch the fatigue in your face time for apple strudel and jasmine infusion with a view of the chapel it took a hundred years and three Henrys to build.

VI

Choristers have a special way of walking in their robes swish they go as they make that 90 degree turn to enter the Choir the layclerks play this down but will forget themselves and swish the gown flies out Decani and Cantores go their separate ways to stand by their candles bow towards the altar the introit Oh Lord, I Lift My Heart to Thee by Orlando Gibbons a choir man in this very place 1596-8 knowing the echo well wrote accordingly hard not to tremble as the music floats to the stone vaulting a 170 feet above our heads

VII

Famous as a thespian kindergarten plays abound and tonight there’s six to see We enter an L shaped room with the stage at the right angle a sitting room with a green sofa a door to a bathroom a knitting basket on the coffee table four characters (and a bump) with two penguins (one disguised as another – real - hiding in the bathroom) there was even a piece of Battenberg cake on our seat to eat make of that what you will we did and laughed though not without the occasional poignant lump in the throat a tear in the eye

VIII

You sit with your back to a mirror so I practice smiling aware of the pleasure your bright face brings me constantly this warmth of your company the tilt of your head your cheeks’ glow the sweet cadences of your voice though tired food and wine revive It won’t be too late after the brisk walk back through the brightly lit streets forever letting our hands come apart then re-engage to manage the pavements and throngs of Friday evening so much today so much to take to bed my love your beauty nightdressed in white to my surprise and pleasure

Waking in darkness to brainstorming moments
Warm under covers on this freezing morn,
Recalling the instants of yesterday’s sequences,
How they developed and how they were born……

“Moving with grace in a form fitting garment,
Curves in the shadow light tauntingly near,
Beautiful lines in a moment of weakness
Titillate senses erotically clear.”

“Watching the mouth of the bigoted warbler,
Watching him spout his idolatry spiels,
Rhetoric of mind bending, **** licking garbage
Image of self is the place that he kneels.”

“Urgency now with insurances deadline
Making provision for payments now due,
Juggle the baksheesh for paying the piper
Or the cruelty of bankers will cauterise you!”

“Laughter arouses the happiest moments
Merriment opens the faces so well,
Emotively gracious the giving of laughter
Contagiously, wonderfully ringing the bell.”

"Uncomfortably caught in the midst of an untruth
Unconscionably really, can’t call it a lie,
Got caught in momentum of tale in the telling
Upsetting me now to the point where I cry.”

"Can’t recall why, but I know there’s a matter,
Ripping my britches to try to recall….
Something importantly, now to be dealt with
Frustratingly lost in the fog of it all.”

"Harmonies rise like a mist in the temple
Delicate cadences rise and they fall,
I wonder why God allows this unbeliever
To sing with the Angels in his Holy hall?”

“Running my fingertips over her curvature
Feeling the ***** line plummet to fall
Knowing the thrill of elicit collusion
Anticipate promise of wanting it all.”

Sudden alarm in the midst of a waking
Urgency calls at the dawn of the day,
Heaving my soul into frost waiting fingers
Leaving my dreams in the warmth where they lay.

Marshalg
“Pukehana Paradise”
Auckland NZ.
22 June 2013

Am I intended to be jealous?
Should I have such contradicting emotions?
You confuse me, dear love.
“I love you”, is your claim,
But I am tangled, twisted, feeling tiny-
Like a bump on a twig, grown out of a branch
Among all the branches of your large tree called concerns.
It is not pleasant;
It is not right to be this way.
You are hurtful, my love.
Why are you not the happy thing they say you should be?

I have longed to find in us what I believe is joy.
So I try my best.
But your actions cut my confidence;
Your words burn my hope.
And still I stay close,
As though on a chain.
It’s a leash you’ve created with your manipulation,
Your way of leaving me without self esteem
And your false cadences of affection.
So this is how you wound me.

And now I resist.
I hold my shaking hand up and finally declare,
“You can not make me feel this way.”
Did God give you this right?
Did He entitle you to my heart,
And along with it present to you authority to do as you will?
I dare say no;
I dare say he gave to me that place.
So at last, I will not let you do as you have any longer.
I refuse to be so small.
I end this.
And I dare say I am allowed to find real happiness now.

I ache

smiles glow like mobile little campfires
warming the room
comfy, cozy. home.
you are home in this place, because they're here.

arms wrap around shoulders and hug
them tight
comforting, together.
you belong here, because they're here.

eyes closed in laughter one minute
sparkling with care the next
depth, affection.
you are loved here more than anywhere, because they're here.

you breathe the air and taste the
sweetness of familiar voices,
snuggle into the cadences and timbres
instantly recognizable as
belonging.

this is a special place,
this place where you belong.
this place where you're together.

like an old favorite blanket
you have given the memory to me
of belonging with you
to wrap around my shoulders and
hug close when I am touched
by the chilling fingers
of sadness.

I ache
because I miss it, yes
but mainly because
it is such a beautiful thing
it hurts.

The heart sounds cadences 24 - 7
    whether we choose to march or where,
rhythm section to our several songs,
    no drum line like a blood line.
It's all business for this noble instrument
     never laying out for a chorus
for survival is its singular tune.

Aristotle thought our hearts were made
    to air condition our brains
but evidently not enough my friends
    for that pesky mythic heart,
right sized for greeting cards
    and hopeful men on bended knees
also drives our swords and powder
    to quell our brothers' singing souls.

Brothers and sisters, is not the hour at hand
    to tune our hearts to superior anthems
composed for us in celestial harmony?

We speak carefully
without naming body parts.  
As if the utterance of a word
could evoke touch – which would mean
hearts racing off in jolty cadences, sweat and
altogether too much skin.

We move with hyperawareness of our limbs.
The air ripples and reaches with each gesture
in phantoms of feeling.
I sense the edges of your fingers,
I cannot ignore the millimeters of
space between our knees.

Your mouth curves down at the edges,
when your gummy smile splits
at the things I say. I remember your lips.
I cannot put them away
in a part of me that locks.
Your mouth opening against mine –

your tongue slipping in.
Put it away.
Your mouth on the pulse below my chin.
Turning back in your doorway,
the dawn light white on your skin.
Put it away.

This wanting is something I can keep
like a mantra - a bed with you
won’t again be a bed for me.
Now we drink as strangers or friends
who once pressed their bodies against each other’s –
but heavy snow covers only blur the edges,

nothing disappears entirely.
We speak carefully

to hide the pump of blood and memory.

There is much music in language
Words resonate, full like a gong
Meaning canters like a runaway train
And cadences lilt like calypso song
When poets open their minds to heaven
It pours its musings down from the rift
When their ears have heard the musical word
Their sombre souls uplift

It pretends to be one of us, but it’s not quite human.

It masquerades as a person, wearing skin that
mimics our flesh, with joints designed to rotate and
glide like ours. It listens to the changing cadences
and tones of our voices, measures our temperatures
and respiration and blinking rates, and then reacts.
And when it behaves, it does so on accumulated
data, learned and converted into best practices.

But it does not have fantasies. It fills its shoes
with synthetic muscle and steel but never wears
another’s. It does not look at birds and wishes
to fly, nor looks to the moon in hopes of someday
making the lengthy trek to wander the gray crust.

It pretends to be one of us, but it’s not quite human.

Not yet.


-
by Aleksander Mielnikow | Alek the Poet

Sea stars, urchins and anemones
     ride the tidal waters at Rialto Beach
           swirling into shallow pools -
      clad in shades of blue, emerald and violet.

Gnarls of ancient driftwood line the beach
     up to the rainforest’s edge just beyond the rise.
           Pulsing waves dash and roar against the sea stacks
       where the Pacific adjoins the California shore.

Legions of seagulls circle above
       piercing the misted air with their cries
           and the tide, beckoned by the Sky Queen,
       begins to ebb and regain the open sea.

As the sun sinks into the western sky –
       the towers of Split Rock and Hole in the Wall
            are silhouetted against the horizon
       pasteled in gold, orange and burgundy hues.

Gray whales and dolphins breach the surface
       before plunging into the sacred depths
           where the ocean beats pulse on and on -
sounding resonant cadences
       through timeless hallows of infinity.