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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.
Left Foot Poet Nov 2014
upon request,
first coffee served
in China teacup,
chocolate chip
biscuit
snuggling tween
saucer and cup,
probing warming proof that,

Philosophia Sensibus Demonstrata,
(philosophy demonstrated by the senses),

achievable, realizable, and
civilizing,
my left foot now smiling,
my divas singing me
to places where the headlines
disappear...
Neville Johnson Aug 2018
13
Confident sassy and brave
All of 13, on her way
Chasing a boy she thought she could love
She’s coyly flirting
Civilizing him
As only the fairer *** can do

They’re innocents
Pulled by that mysterious force
It usually starts around this age
Of course, there are missteps
Guffaws along the way

Romance at any age
Exciting, enticing
So inviting
Young emotions
Are volatile, fragile
Compelling
Dangerous
Wholesome
Sometimes puppy love
Turns into real love
Filmore Townsend Feb 2013
out-seeking the world in
crave of ascertation. to
crave realization of know-
ledge, of others’ wisdom.
seeking experience via lack
of self-preservation, but
the sun rises for this land
of the Old Settlers.
[/thesis]
force settled the young to
drybed rivers. all with killer
statement epitaphs, that is,
words to remember as
darkness follow’d rifle blast –
white shame’s legacy.
images of barbarism as
a means of civilizing, of settling,
pioneering. and cowboy is
racist to the non-farmers of
Texas.       (are farmers a race?)
doesn't matter when
they write the epitaphs.
Zainab Attari Apr 2014
Centuries far ago
In the African state of Congo
Trespassed by the heartless whites
Civilizing the blacks, against their rights

They invaded them under a false pretence
They shattered humanism’s true essence
Several men decayed, as malnourished
For being skinned in charcoal colour they were punished

The invaders sowed the seeds to racism
It grew larger using euphemism
It all spread like a malicious talk
Darkness bowed when the white flesh would walk

Subjugated with iron chains the slaves marched
With empty stomachs and throats parched
Killed unmercifully if they refused a task
After all, the devil resided behind the white mask
They looted several nations
Leaving behind schools and railway stations
But who would benefit from development of this kind?
In the darkness, hearts had turned blind

Oh, one day back then it all changed
Hearts pumped louder through the ribs that were caged
Unleashing those iron chains they chased;
Till those heartless masters felt disgraced

The dark cloak of slavery burnt to dust
While freedom of sunshine sparkled on all the rust
Each enslaved human fought for what is right
No one could dare to break their might

Blood was shed on both sides
But they didn’t cease their stride
Back then they made them flee
But those racist seeds flew across seas

The darkness never prevails
From one land to another it sails
Only the goodness in one’s soul,
Can take the darkness for a toll!


-Zainab Attari
Inspired by Joseph Conrad’s novella  Heart of Darkness.
I have posted all my poems on my blog as well :)
Link : zainabattari14.wordpress.com
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2017
<•>

blustery company/unexpected costs

rain-all-day, with a heavy creme topping of
blustery wind window rattling, par excellence,
making the houses's insides rumble so much,
the trees fringes bang-pleading to please be allowed in
so loud that you suspect some are already hiding within,
probably, more likely, those leprechaun Elusives,
up to their usual no goofy good

the poet's fellow summer travelers visit, Canadian geese,
clustering by the Adirondacks thrones four,  
who add another weathering to their grayed, somber,
thoughtful demeanor this day,
all in the Poet's Nook, which though forlorn,
surrounded sounded by sixteen! chubby flyers, admirers,
(their ranks expanded from fourteen of yesteryear),
asking where is the poet-boy, and the chairs explain that his
standing in the rain days are now past his prime,
inspiring modalities, so rest easy in the knowing geese lore that,

he,

through those famous civilizing lace curtains,
see-through visors, of  embroidered, embedded flowers,
the poet boy is watching your brood, not being rude,
just dry inside, contemplating their admirable
weather resistance, and writing of them with loyal affection,
his gaggle of friends, **** avians, favorite weekend guests,
not requiring feeding, cleaning up after, or their laundry done

delighted, they edge closer to him, where he, residing/semi-hiding,
in the sunroom where he writes and contemplates the
unexpected costs of human life
that he tries to pays forward so others may never have such a chore

coming ever closer, now nibbling next to the empty
tree swing, used by neighboring kids and in secret,
their parents,
and the wet freshly cut, delivered green grass,
a feast for them, beneath the oak tree

do they have unexpected costs as well, or do they know
all their predators and threats, that may yet diminish the happy sojourning, the tourney of flying south, and its trials/tribulations?


too long, too long I know, the poem,
but to the devil with you
inexperienced, impatient multi-taskers, this, a poem~moment
that would be dishonored by the breech,
needs lengthy fulfillment for the unexpected costs,  
the randomness of events that can't be guarded against,
demand never ending vigilance, and endless imagining

and the geese, saddened by his absence and his travailing
thought patterns, explain, that this is why we geese,
we gaggle travel, why our long necks swoon and swivel,
ever wary of the unexpected surprise dangers,
why we post guards forward and aft,
not to be taken unawares by foxes or men

the human's gaggle is their random, undisciplined,
by their solitary nature,
travailing thoughts
which they they foolish believe they can master,
but cannot, which then, is why, we geese,
we will always annual come to covenant, co-tenant,
visit the poet-boy in his nook, and rest him briefly, from the
terror of unexpected costs, be his inspiration,
for the poets nook, now, by custom,
our refuge, and his, as well, and better together...
Saturday
August 5, 2017
noon

other poems referenced can be found by searching on HP
In the poet's nook, The Elusves, and In the Sunroom
Azalea Fields Apr 2013
paranoid automatons
surveying themselves
within
de-civilizing panopticons;
a missing guard
in a rich light tower
watching you
watch yourself
Damaré M Feb 2015
We live in a society where lawyers defend guilty people, judges dictate someone's freedom and get paid in large amounts while earning the upmost respects by the greater population. We have teachers civilizing the young and innocent, but rewarded much less. Do you see the cycle?
OpenWorldView May 2019
soft power of love
civilizing the wild man
harlot of culture
Inspired by "The Epic of Gilgamesh"
jeffrey robin Nov 2015
'




A

Song on the breeze


A child of the

Meadowlands


Where the


Wild flowers

Breathe



"  •• "
~~


Oh soul ( dear mother ! )

:/:

I am

A poor gentle man

::

Why am I afraid

Of the police ?


)(


Gentle girl


Born into a world


Of impure fanatacism

Called religion

//

come

Walk and talk to me

""
• """

I turned on the tee vee

Screaming
Yelling

Was it the Terrorism !

No


Just the political debates

(A form of religion )

••

Then I watched

ULTIMATE FIGHTING

for awhile

then (?)

Hours of ******* !

//

Such a civilizing day !!

••


••


terrorism

••

••

••

Gentle girl


Oh yes


So very gentle



.
Mark Lecuona Feb 2015
Can a nation forgive?
Or must everyone die?
Which generation
Will walk a grudge by?
Did the Jews forgive?
Did Nagasaki forget?
How can the heart become
What the mind won’t let?
Did Jesus speak to you
Or to a nation?
Did he command the soul
Or write a Constitution?
Where exceptionalism is assumed
With a mandate from God
A people destroy the ground
Where holiness did trod
It is written
An eye for an eye
But is this for Caesar
Or for you and I?
It is written
Turn the other cheek
But is this for a superpower
Or only for the weak?
Why do we cheer
The death of a man
When God’s own son
Gave us a plan?
Or did he?
Can no man believe
That which his brother
Failed to conceive?
You abdicate your wishes
Behind a closed curtain
Believing in the good
Your vote always certain
The republic gathers its sons
And its daughters
But the outcome is decided
They’ve parted the waters
The collective never yields
The individual a myth
Ancient documents pretend
What rights do you walk with?
As the national interest swells
Our destiny is manifest
The chosen many
March East and West
Civilizing savages
Extracting resources
Stealing fruit from peasants
Mitigating encumbrances
The walls pushed further out
As we play in the yard
We pray before commerce
While someone stands guard
I call for our memory
Of a man in untouchable clothing
And for the son of slaves
To bring peaceful reckoning
Beaten down over and over
Suffering the indignities of a lifetime
Laying down before charging horses
To show us power’s crime
What is the seed of change?
An atomic bomb?
A protest march?
Or a Psalm?
What have you been told?
What have you witnessed?
A miracle has occurred
And yet you are calloused
I speak to you now
As you show me your smile
Will each eye seeks its mate?
Or will you walk the first mile?
And then the next
As it was spoken
But not for Caesar
For he will never be broken
Will you walk
And accept your mandate?
Will you give another man your coat
Or will you hesitate?
Can a nation forgive?
Can you or I?
Can a newborn baby?
Or will you teach it an eye for an eye?
If it appears I am judging you it is only because your eyes have become the mirror upon which I gaze...
Some diadochi came escaping from the Vóreios of Zefian, the ships of Boeotia married the dynastic of the new progenies of their infants, who prepared them for the fourth Bestiary, which in turn also escaped from the third Bestiary of the bear that tore apart everything that presented itself, within its claws and its jaws. The third imperialist beast of the bestiary was Hellenistic; It had bear claws and crushed the fish of the Aegean Sea with its fangs, this, in turn, tried to grab the dragon's back with its snout with the bear's paws and the feline's steel claws to stretch them over its lion's jaws, unleashing the inter-bestiary that severed the parallelism of the Amphictyony and the Apocalypse, summoning Alexander the Great to revive him from his larnax in the highest Prophet Ilias, this will entail the ablution of his soul and appropriation of his new empire of the Seventh Heaven to atone for all the atrocities of his empire of Blood and Corruption. Alexander the Great was aware of the existential drama of eternity for him, in order to aspire to be anointed as a Converted King and dispense with the root of the inter-bestiary in the claws of the bear with the claws of steel of the lion of the fourth bestiary. They all sailed by one major mast starting from the Delphic prophecy of Herophile, which transfigured the Trojan chronology by more island resources into dramatic new deity cultures with over twelve deities which had to include one more of the demi-god Vernarth totally dissuaded from the plague of Aristaeus in great dishonor due to the taxonomic Animalia that was in its vanguard, re-leveling the nuanced skies, also the oceans that were erected mostly on the level of Hisarlik with thirty-three meters above sea level, plus as many from the cavern to 269, and under the Prophet Ilias of 798 as a consequence of parallel parapsychology with Troy. The theological transcendental civilizing mission trembled to the Tempe valley, Thessaly specifically in the small valley in the Agia Paraskevi church, for altars that will return the ancestral domains of the locality to their voices near the Arethusa fountain. From here they will triangulate the libertarian magnificence of the animality of the bees of Gethsemane for the reciprocal of the source of Castalia, up to the Source of life on Patmos as the second coming of Jesus. From where Eurydice will always flee as she once was away from Aristaeus, so as not to be bitten by the serpent. All this transcription of the double consequence of immortal Eurydice brought gifts for each component of the Hexagonal Primogeniture, making sure that Aristeo's bees did not die, being saved by Vernarth's bees, who redoubled submythology, hanging on it as a parallel classical narrative in the construction of the Duoverse under the Áullos Kósmos. The three sources were unified with Vóreios, becoming the patrimony of the Moshaic gods for the good of an outstanding Mythological virtue with sub-mythological parallelism, with gods conditioned in the rabbinic divinity. They undertook the glamorous descent with the vapors of Delphi with their ethanol, alleviating Alikantus towards the pilgrim resulting from his connotation of a taurine steed close to a ram, but of Delphic psychic magnetism saving potential victims with the repeal of the beekeeping world of Aristaeus.

The gods of Faith went hand in hand, in some cases, they did not recognize their gender or status, but rather the divine and ineffable condition of the unrepentant Seventh Heaven, ad libitum of Titania as a mental abstraction of pro-Olympic labyrinths, which have not born under the eaves of it. Spring and winter came arrogating themselves in all the rapes and abductions of the flowers that would not germinate, and that would go away due to the promiscuous twilight that was made of dawn in some flowers that did germinate on the defenseless edge. The converted Alexander the Great caressed the tunic that he looked at more than the one used by the maiden, he looked towards his own chlamys that did not make him helpless from his gaze in the ability to transform into a Converted King, almost like a beautiful celestial lion after leaving the libidinous gestures of Astarte as a foreign goddess and mother of the lift that made her doubt the rain that was refined as a gregarious hostess in celibate women who tried in outbursts of Alexander the Great by removing Astarte's veil of darkness, in cases of lost loves of the transcript Forest of Hylates, or in the awakening of the Apennines when it was the trophy of a felid winged tetra in the rooms of the runaway Bayard of Charlemagne.

The rain bathed millennia that traveled from the boreal of Vóreios to the insane Argive spaces in the Peloponnese where the first maiden hangs her braids sixteen times to forty times more, before all the brides who stay awake in the hours that have not sworn eternal misogyny. Spring served winter mead with sweet late-harvest wine from the valley of the Sharon plain, they embraced by the chamsin, squabbling in the sand that Zefian had hoarded before enchanted by the interval of Delphi. The north and south forks dried up the cobblestones of the dusty ground, where the chamsin reverberated suffering for more than forty-six weeks, making light prey on the song of the three sources of Life, the Castalia and the source of Arethusa. A solemn red stain could be seen on the little sky that blinded the chairs that held the intramurals of the wind tunnel, breathing on the chamsin turning it into murals of dust forced to channel it and always be levitating in the gushes that shelled drops of rain, and sand in the disturbed electrical animations that made him possessed in the spiers at the mere tone of liquid marble in which they already spoke of Hellenic modernity of barbarism of the Ruah Qadím, banishing the spire from the east wind for fifty days. The lights and festivities could be seen illuminating from the feared height when descending from the diminished light of the amplified candle; everything resembled a dwelling where everyone was seated at a long table that had no end in the center of seven candlesticks, seven bread baskets, with a chalice, everyone gossiping along with the bees of Gethsemane that did everything in their glosses and nectars that they celebrated in the mansions gleaming with the transit of the muffins of San Juan and its Hexagonal. Raeder clung to the red and blue Gerakis with gold seams that talked of dining and their oblate.

They began to sit away from the cruel gods of those gods who deny their children who were engendered by the cruelest and most chaste reconversion by staying on Olympus as guests, as opposed to sitting at this free table of the very well-valued elixir with the deities invited Phrygian women, who only laughed and favored the secrecy of the bread of eternity, and well-being that was subject to the conscious tolerance of who await a lavish banquet on a table in these conditions with mood and prolonged perspective and tablecloths of penance and cross in exotic chores. They drank the hanging sheep on the branches of the fruits that hung from the cornucopia, and the baking that altered the enzymes of some harsh dispute against Asia, which Leiak concocted with benevolent sorcery by giving it sip water from the drinking sea of Asia Minor. in front of illuminated Troy. The table is made of seven bread baskets, seven mistletoes that escorted the gluten bread that was sprinkled by Persephone's strong winds as she fell hastily and longing to meet Demeter; she is picking it up from the gale with her feet pulverizing the soft grains of Hapalos Artos, with goat's milk and olives that she would anoint on the very nails of her daughter Persephone of hers when cleaning them with white leaves of the dough fluffy It used to be called Cappadocia yeast until it reached the edges of the noble bread that were installed on the table as Lakhma bread as a metaphysic of the Eucharist that took place on the white tablecloth that shrank every time it was taken as domestic bread when rolled in the angry parts of the Mataki tablecloth, for healings that continue from the protective actions of those who take advantage of a good alliance of water, and the bread on the table with bad thoughts that anger the battered thick curtains of abundance and prosperity of the ill had. The Iaspis or Jaspers resembled supra scalded as of natural belonging and shimmering authenticity in the rarity that did nothing more than make buffoons from Southeast Asia and not from Asia Minor. The greenish flashes spoke of life at full strength to fit followed by a wisp of flash deposited by Zefian coming and gliding in the seasonal, holding on to some veins of the Alikantus sapphire eyes that were adapted to sipping from the dense spring that floated through the waves. The atmosphere of the Mataki, to later pour it into the chalices absorbed by Leiak's sorcery, speaking of superior lapses of any known numeral but the seventieth preceding the current one. This martyrdom of the Mataki made Leiak's esophagus secrete with the desire of a sommelier who sips the distilled water from the ravines over the chalices that lessened the badly criminal cruelty of those who do not taste the food for another dinner, congratulations if there was a failure of the Caucasus, where elixirs of mixed and sanctified muscatel wine are brought out under the table of San Juan. Everything was of ascending ambition for any liver who coveted this table of Mataki for whom he cordoned off the mountains and made those of the valleys embrace each other, for the uniqueness of the Dodecanese islands. All of those who let go of their shyness and did not allow them to refer to drinking or eating deposed by paying sacred attention to Zefian when he arrived on Patmos as a physical, and not spiritual taste, becoming effective in those who toast with muscatel for all the star maidens who followed him above, violating the seals that held them prisoner, then just then the eye of the Iaspis was made of the karats for its recalculation, subjecting them to the safeguard to signify and meet at this time between seven polyélaios, and seven discopotira immediately to the bag of the phasmatemporos or Enchanted Paneros to taste Self-corrections were approaching with the necromancies of Leiak, they took the seven candlesticks or Polyélaios, and the seven chalices or Diskopótira immediately to the bags of the Fasmatemporos or bread basket, the crimes were archaically repositioned in this Mataki tablecloth enchanted by Leiak, the sin was self-corrected in the parallel line of slip doubly marked as a sin of omission, and concessional violation of the desert's desire to self-correct fully empty having hands with wax from the candelabrum of Kerós' spell or wax made by the bees of Aristaeus to please the avatars present at this inaugural banquet, for libations that spilled part of the lipoids of the bees of Gethsemane, along with those of Aristeo to clean the ground mixed with parasitic spiders that ****** the milk that fell from their rituals. By nightfall of the third dream, the Mataki was wrinkled by thousands of leg joints from mating arachnids from the spider's trochanter drenched in milk and Corinthian wine.

The precautionary did not wake them from the third sleep when they had just broken the bread and made the libation for the first time with alcuzas that shone superimposed on the icons of the Attic vases, here is the lavish clothing of the entomological world under thousands of overloaded spiders in the Mataki, and it is overloaded on the oak inn that supported it towards the entirety of the Tagmati in the formation of a model of hoplite spiders that would transform into specialized units formed by the deprecation of the bees of Aristeo by balancing the unevenness of the tables by attaching them with the figured beards in the icons of the vases, where they saw these images of the future and past with the Tagmati with Byzantine expressions of Constantine V, and with Philip II dispensing financing for the new military uniform of the hoplites completely financed by the Greek coffers, naming him hegemon of the Amphictyony after Philip entered central Greece and won the battle from Chaeronea (338 BC) to the Thebans and Athenian allies, here seven thousand of the fallen Athenian and Theban allies graced the figure of Demosthenes, for new vessels encrypted with Philip's iconic images "Lover of Steeds" where a spear crosses hearts in the offspring of his horses in his heart too, wronged by the page Pausanias of Oréstide as royal guard. Gradually the table was made with more guests represented in the numismatics that ran through the drag of the cornucopia, and in the majolicas that classified the blood represented right there on free floors to self-correct for all the ****** campaign carried out by Philip and his corrupt but unifying mission to dissuade providential enemies unworthy of sitting at the historical table of the Amphictyony remembered in these vessels, on top of the Mataki that absorbed liters and liters per second of the blood that was drained by the description made of the hoplite representatives, who for the first time They once sat next to the close track record of a hegemon. The Sibyls arrived commanded by the Herophile Delphic, they were served wine of conjectured blood reverted from the Mataki but from the ground preceded the greatest libation on spring propination equipment that made amnesty bonds where everything reigned for self-correction of the brutality of the symposiums, where nothing made to have Bearing in mind what would happen to Vernarth's stipend, he was still delighted to see more guests come up from the wind tunnel of the Profitis Ilias that expelled them.

The ashamed gods hid behind the candlesticks that shone with the ****** waxes of Aristaeus, and the polis that harvested the Sponde, sipping the effluvia of Persephone in the meeting of the canticles with her mother, pouring out the earthly gynaeceum that awaits the ceremonial, before only those who observe and correct themselves. Spray water fell from tidal waves from the Aegean with throats plagued by a ravenous and invasive rain of flavonoid metabolites; of the plants that poured down the gorge that Demeter burst upon, flat and monumental goblets for all who arrived with skillful fists to give rise to the mixed consumption of libation with essences of the sleet turned into the blood for the chalices on the table next to the Mataki, which began to replenish pure essence of necromancy to start with the suppressions of evil eyes on the hoplites that began to pierce them and protect them from a certain visual intoxication.
Vóreios
Michael Marchese Sep 2023
In bastions
Of Athens
In bathos
Unmentioned
We learned of my most
Civilizing
Pretension…
But miasma in the streets
The prices spike for gas and eats
And aisles full of the deserted
Still put ***** in the seats
Armada fleets
Exacting trade
By any force
Of commerce mightier
Than people it extorts
And it aborts its own last rites
To feed the richest
Their reports
And still under my aegis
My supremacy elitist
Representing staunch
And solely
No conviction
More egregious
Than my appetite
For sleight of hand
Subliminal starvation
My addiction to
The revenue’s
Casino reservation
To the totem
Status hierarchy
Token virtue’s
Price,
So tag the flag
Like body bags
And watch me wage a war
On rights

— The End —