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.

Every day is the same; they wake up in the same bed, at the same ungodly hour, to the same monotonous ringing from the alarm clock.

They grumble their ‘good morning’s; whether they believe it is or not, rolling out of opposite sides of the duvet.

They dance around each other in the bathroom, the heat of the shower creating a fog through which neither of them can see; causing him to stub his toe on the toilet or the counter, and steaming up the mirror so she can’t apply her make-up.

They continue their ritual into the kitchen; flicking on the kettle, popping in the bread, pouring the orange juice; stirring the tea, catching the toast and spreading the butter and jam. Crunching and slurping together at the table, mumbling about what their days have in store; tapping texts on their phones, crinkling newspaper in their hands.

They peck each other a kiss goodbye and mutter a ‘see you later’ before going their separate ways.

But then Monday comes...

Mondays are different.

He knows she doesn’t like Monday mornings. It’s the very beginning of a new, long, tiring week. She never looks forward to Mondays.

So he changes that.

He sets the alarm on his watch a little earlier than other days; shutting it off before it can wake her.

He slips silently out of bed and tiptoes quietly into the bathroom to shower; leaving her smiley faces and love messages on the steamy mirrors.

He creates her favourite tea and makes her toast with raspberry jam; just the way she likes it. Picking a flower from the garden; whichever one looks the happiest and brightest, he places it all on a tray and pads back up to the bedroom to wake her.

She no longer sets her alarm on Mondays. She knows he’ll not let her oversleep.

He places the flower in her hair and drops delicate kisses; full of his love and affection for her, to the corner of her mouth, until she stirs gently.

She smiles on Monday mornings.

They eat breakfast in bed, covering the sheets in crumbs and giggling contentedly as the cat licks them up.

She hums in the bathroom while he clears away crockery, and always re-emerges with the flower tucked behind her ear.

It remains there ‘til night fall.

They never once look at their phones or the paper, far too focused on each other to pay anything else mind.

Their kiss as they part reminds them of their love for each other and of the good things in life; like strolls along the shore, strawberries dipped in dark chocolate, smiling sunflowers that open to a beautiful summer’s day, and of course, Monday mornings.

I planted a mango seed,
Hoping?
Not sure what...

But the mango grew
Out of its context,
Poked shiny green leaves
Looking for sun and surf,
But found itself awakened
In a land of snow and cold.

Seven leaves into its
Exponential Mango growth,
The newest leaf
Yellowed...
Shriveled...
Died.

The Minnesota Mango
Meditates now...
Watered, but waiting....
Slumbering?
Planning a spring break?
Meditating?
Waiting for summer sun?
Perhaps....

Today
I heard about
A neighbor boy
Who smuggled in
A baby alligator
From the Bayou,
South and warm.

At least my Mango
Stays inside its
Crockery planter,
And an alligator jail break
Will leave him
Freezing in his tracks...

We'll see what happens
In the summer.

My phone clamped to my ear,
Listening to you think.

We were punning.

(We would combine categories like ‘The Royal Mail’ and ‘Sea Life’,
And come up with things like Octo-post and
Cod-espondence.)

That night it was ‘Crockery’ and ‘Celebrities’.
You thought of Plate Moss
And
Camilla Parker Bowl.

Like my life, all my kitchen crockery
is used, worn and chipped,
Maybe I could buy replacements,
but sadly, they do not make them
like that anymore. Or me either.

Aging and time are unavoidable.

I
They went to sea in a Sieve, they did,
  In a Sieve they went to sea:
In spite of all their friends could say,
On a winter's morn, on a stormy day,
  In a Sieve they went to sea!
And when the Sieve turned round and round,
And every one cried, "You'll all be drowned!"
They called aloud, "Our Sieve ain't big,
But we don't care a button! we don't care a fig!
  In a Sieve we'll go to sea!"
    Far and few, far and few,
      Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
    Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
      And they went to sea in a Sieve.

II
They sailed away in a Sieve, they did,
  In a Sieve they sailed so fast,
With only a beautiful pea-green veil
Tied with a riband by way of a sail,
  To a small tobacco-pipe mast;
And every one said, who saw them go,
"O won't they be soon upset, you know!
For the sky is dark, and the voyage is long,
And happen what may, it's extremely wrong
  In a Sieve to sail so fast!"
    Far and few, far and few,
      Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
    Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
      And they went to sea in a Sieve.

III
The water it soon came in, it did,
  The water it soon came in;
So to keep them dry, they wrapped their feet
In a pinky paper all folded neat,
  And they fastened it down with a pin.
And they passed the night in a crockery-jar,
And each of them said, "How wise we are!
Though the sky be dark, and the voyage be long,
Yet we never can think we were rash or wrong,
While round in our Sieve we spin!"
    Far and few, far and few,
      Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
    Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
      And they went to sea in a Sieve.

IV
And all night long they sailed away;
  And when the sun went down,
They whistled and warbled a moony song
To the echoing sound of a coppery gong,
  In the shade of the mountains brown.
  "O Timballo! How happy we are,
When we live in a sieve and a crockery-jar,
And all night long in the moonlight pale,
We sail away with a pea-green sail,
  In the shade of the mountains brown!"
    Far and few, far and few,
      Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
    Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
      And they went to sea in a Sieve.

V
They sailed to the Western Sea, they did,
  To a land all covered with trees,
And they bought an Owl, and a useful Cart,
And a pound of Rice, and a Cranberry ****,
  And a hive of silvery Bees.
And they bought a Pig, and some green Jack-daws,
And a lovely Monkey with lollipop paws,
And forty bottles of Ring-Bo-Ree,
  And no end of Stilton Cheese.
    Far and few, far and few,
      Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
    Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
      And they went to sea in a Sieve.

VI
And in twenty years they all came back,
  In twenty years or more,
And every one said, "How tall they've grown!
For they've been to the Lakes, and the Torrible Zone,
  And the hills of the Chankly Bore!"
And they drank their health, and gave them a feast
Of dumplings made of beautiful yeast;
And every one said, "If we only live,
We too will go to sea in a Sieve,?
  To the hills of the Chankly Bore!"
    Far and few, far and few,
      Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
    Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
      And they went to sea in a Sieve.

(1)

This is the sea, then, this great abeyance.
How the sun's poultice draws on my inflammation.

Electrifyingly-colored sherbets, scooped from the freeze
By pale girls, travel the air in scorched hands.

Why is it so quiet, what are they hiding?
I have two legs, and I move smilingly..

A sandy damper kills the vibrations;
It stretches for miles, the shrunk voices

Waving and crutchless, half their old size.
The lines of the eye, scalded by these bald surfaces,

Boomerang like anchored elastics, hurting the owner.
Is it any wonder he puts on dark glasses?

Is it any wonder he affects a black cassock?
Here he comes now, among the mackerel gatherers

Who wall up their backs against him.
They are handling the black and green lozenges like the parts of a body.

The sea, that crystallized these,
Creeps away, many-snaked, with a long hiss of distress.

                (2)

This black boot has no mercy for anybody.
Why should it, it is the hearse of a dad foot,

The high, dead, toeless foot of this priest
Who plumbs the well of his book,

The bent print bulging before him like scenery.
Obscene bikinis hid in the dunes,

******* and hips a confectioner's sugar
Of little crystals, titillating the light,

While a green pool opens its eye,
Sick with what it has swallowed----

Limbs, images, shrieks.  Behind the concrete bunkers
Two lovers unstick themselves.

O white sea-crockery,
What cupped sighs, what salt in the throat....

And the onlooker, trembling,
Drawn like a long material

Through a still virulence,
And a ****, hairy as privates.

                (3)

On the balconies of the hotel, things are glittering.
Things, things----

Tubular steel wheelchairs, aluminum crutches.
Such salt-sweetness.  Why should I walk

Beyond the breakwater, spotty with barnacles?
I am not a nurse, white and attendant,

I am not a smile.
These children are after something, with hooks and cries,

And my heart too small to bandage their terrible faults.
This is the side of a man:  his red ribs,

The nerves bursting like trees, and this is the surgeon:
One mirrory eye----

A facet of knowledge.
On a striped mattress in one room

An old man is vanishing.
There is no help in his weeping wife.

Where are the eye-stones, yellow and valuable,
And the tongue, sapphire of ash.

                (4)

A wedding-cake face in a paper frill.
How superior he is now.

It is like possessing a saint.
The nurses in their wing-caps are no longer so beautiful;

They are browning, like touched gardenias.
The bed is rolled from the wall.

This is what it is to be complete.  It is horrible.
Is he wearing pajamas or an evening suit

Under the glued sheet from which his powdery beak
Rises so whitely unbuffeted?

They propped his jaw with a book until it stiffened
And folded his hands, that were shaking:  goodbye, goodbye.

Now the washed sheets fly in the sun,
The pillow cases are sweetening.

It is a blessing, it is a blessing:
The long coffin of soap-colored oak,

The curious bearers and the raw date
Engraving itself in silver with marvelous calm.

                (5)

The gray sky lowers, the hills like a green sea
Run fold upon fold far off, concealing their hollows,

The hollows in which rock the thoughts of the wife----
Blunt, practical boats

Full of dresses and hats and china and married daughters.
In the parlor of the stone house

One curtain is flickering from the open window,
Flickering and pouring, a pitiful candle.

This is the tongue of the dead man:  remember, remember.
How far he is now, his actions

Around him like living room furniture, like a décor.
As the pallors gather----

The pallors of hands and neighborly faces,
The elate pallors of flying iris.

They are flying off into nothing:  remember us.
The empty benches of memory look over stones,

Marble facades with blue veins, and jelly-glassfuls of daffodils.
It is so beautiful up here:  it is a stopping place.

                (6)

The natural fatness of these lime leaves!----
Pollarded green *****, the trees march to church.

The voice of the priest, in thin air,
Meets the corpse at the gate,

Addressing it, while the hills roll the notes of the dead bell;
A glittler of wheat and crude earth.

What is the name of that color?----
Old blood of caked walls the sun heals,

Old blood of limb stumps, burnt hearts.
The widow with her black pocketbook and three daughters,

Necessary among the flowers,
Enfolds her lace like fine linen,

Not to be spread again.
While a sky, wormy with put-by smiles,

Passes cloud after cloud.
And the bride flowers expend a freshness,

And the soul is a bride
In a still place, and the groom is red and forgetful, he is featureless.

                (7)

Behind the glass of this car
The world purrs, shut-off and gentle.

And I am dark-suited and still, a member of the party,
Gliding up in low gear behind the cart.

And the priest is a vessel,
A tarred fabric, sorry and dull,

Following the coffin on its flowery cart like a beautiful woman,
A crest of *******, eyelids and lips

Storming the hilltop.
Then, from the barred yard, the children

Smell the melt of shoe-blacking,
Their faces turning, wordless and slow,

Their eyes opening
On a wonderful thing----

Six round black hats in the grass and a lozenge of wood,
And a naked mouth, red and awkward.

For a minute the sky pours into the hole like plasma.
There is no hope, it is given up.

Can someone tell the folks upstairs
That their floor is my ceiling.

They stomp about,
Scream and shout.
In a fleet,
They drag their feet.

They tap dance in their hall,
And cause my crockery to fall.
While they boisterously shake,
I'm forced to stay awake.

They slam their doors,
and I settle scores,
By returning a 'thud',
Which goes unheard.

And finally when they clamber to bed,
I thank my stars and think in my head,
Those noisy wrecks,
Are a pain in our necks,

I would have loved them more,
Had they lived on another floor.

How to write an English poem

Well this is what I do,

I listen to my dear friend "Jon"

Then I go about copying him.

He says  Good-marrow My to Thy lady

I laugh & reply back Hath thee fared well,

Like I'm in  Shakespeare's  Macbeth.

I love how

He uses "thou" different then myself

I say thou in sense of  "even though"

translations are must

to understanding my friend!

He speaks in

Cockney- crockery riddles

Yet some how I understand.

I doth not speak to make

fun of him

for I love his English gib,

I listen while learning

to write a sonnet since.

How to write an English poem.

I listen to Sir "Jon's"

witty sense of humor  

His cloaked sarcastic'ness

as he talks in general,

Saying such this as

Aroin't thee & Blimey ole chap

as if I know'th what he means.

How to write an English poem

Well frankly it's a pickle of a thing,

I say I doth rightly know lets ask'th

Sir"Jon & see!

He say'ith to me

"change your "****** dialect"....

And

when he's spitting made

He yells

O' God Save the queen.

He also talks of frippery

& ask if I'd like a spot of tea

when asking me questions

he laughs & quotes

such things like ;

" cheeky" little beggar or monkey

as "IF" I

know what he means.

Funny thing is though

Sir "Jon'

never really

******* told me

How to write an English poem

(so answers to every-ones question- I'd say walk around & say top of the morning,
ole chap & blimey, Even things like Bristol Cities & things likes this don't forget your "TH" s  
addressing your selves  a lot & put emphasis on every other syllable  & thing!)

Well dear Sir "Jon"
I am not  a British Bolk  
Just A YANKEE- New Englander
oh & a NuYorican
Ta Boot

So next when  I see You
****** Friend  tell me-  
How to write an English poem !?!
Always Me Ayeshah

a lifetime of anticipation,
I waited for the Great Feast
a lifetime of discipline,
to spare my appetite
not to spoil it
On mere junk food

As the big day came
The Menu was discussed
In exquisite detail
I was told,
About all the dishes
Their tastes and flavours

Hungry as a roaring lion
I patiently waited at the door
Inside the hallowed hall
My feast was being set
Pure white linen
****** crockery
And golden cutlery awaited
At my seat of honour

With tremendous pomp
The doors swung open
The majestic hall
in candle lit beauty
beckoned and welcomed
my every step

The servants showed my throne
Where I sat down.
Gleaming lids covered my feast
With
Candle light dancing on the polished gold

Hors d ouvres first,
destroyed I was when I saw
That someone else
was here before

My wonderful roast
Already carved,
Huge chunks eaten
And dry bones left

Fresh green peas
Were rudely dug in
By filthy fingers
No manners for a spoon

Desert was half eaten
Ice cream left to melt
And of after dinner mints
Only a handful left

Thus then violated,
My beautiful feast!
Others snuck in
And ravaged my table

They left some crumbs
spoilt leftovers
As the Locusts went on
Without a care!

Now I sit hungry
Alone and forgotten
Staring in disbelief
At my desolate table

How I wish I had known,
Before I came in
That the menu was a lie
And someone else had been

Elsewhere I'd have gone and eaten
Or at least not starved myself
In anticipation for a feast
That the Locusts have eaten

Daylight revealed my majestic hall,
merely an old shed
Where the Locusts were WELCOMED!

Far from being the guest of honour
I am instead the lowly servant
No rights or privilege
Left to clean the Locusts' mess

A live cockroach, if I can catch
Sustains me, barely
I fill my chipped cup
With tears of sadness

It leaves you, no active power, no direction,
Listless, unable to program, build,- a mockery.
Worst, the low depairing. embarassing shrouds.
Without that centre; a discrete despair - please don't mention.
Hopelessness remains - just so much broken crockery.
Contempt rises from old mates. Passed fluffed up clouds!

Ol' Mr Rilash
the authority on panache
and once chef of Ben-Ash,
had neglected to trim his tash.
It itched and made him scratch;
Unhappy on upper lip.
A plan, a plan it hatched.

...then one time in the kitchen
on a snoozing Mr Rilash.
His tash did something brazen,
or silly or quite brash.
It pulled away and dashed
crawling through plates of mash
and hopping over paprikash
it made it to the window ledge
via the crockery left stashed.

Was it brave or was it rash,
the escaping captive tash.
Leaping and waiting for the splash,
It saw it's trajectory down below;
and landed squarely in the trash.

yesterday's afternoon tea party was a hit
there were some rather tasty tid bits
cream cakes chocolate slice and ginger biscuits
they were well received in my stomach's pit

my tea was served in a large crockery mug
in which a little sugar cube did sit so snug
I sipped on it slowly with a grin rather smug
twas such a delight partaking of an Earl Gray slug

afternoon tea parties are my cup of tea
and I so enjoy their wonderful spree
I'm planning another one with much glee
for my cousin Fay and her friend Mrs Bentley

There's a hole in my wall which the wind whistles through
And the wallpaper's mouldy and calamine blue
The carpet besmirched with a decade of grime
And the pattern is lost to a happier time
The journals and books where my memories stay
Have mixed and submerged in a fearful array
The curtains hang tattered in woeful neglect
Where the mildew and fungus and beetles collect

There's a hole in the floor where the mice have a nest
Where the walls creak and groan like a cancerous chest
And a puddle emerges from under the door
Like a serpent, it winds on the laminate floor
Underfoot, fragments of crockery crunch
Still stained with the leavings of long ago lunch
There's a rattle and scratching of verminous claws
The spoon never stirs so the *** never pours

There's a crack in the window that lets in the rain
Where it runs in a rivulet right down the pane
The mattress is rotten and rusted inside
Bacteria thrive and amoeba divide
The ceiling is sagging from waterlogged beams
And catches the sunlight with putrefied gleams
Like powder, the plaster is fast in retreat
With it's choking secretions, the air is replete

There's a trace of a life that was never fulfilled
Like a drink only sipped and then carelessly spilled
There's hope of a future and trinkets amassed
But frittered away and consigned to the past
The wires are old but the bulbs are still new
And pictures of vigor are hanging askew
As if from existence, vitality blinked
A carcass remaining though life is extinct

(Mary was talking to Clara about Surah and her curse.)

I have no courage to act anymore, and for nothing the time I spend.

Having no hope, I decided to follow the path of the fate almost to the end.'

'You know that beyond it, there's oblivion and death. Thus, you have to fight!'

'I can't change Surah into what I would like her to be, but you're right.'


'My dear Mary, I have an unbeatable plan, because the time is short.

On her birthday, when Frederick will come back with his wedding escort,

You will go to the castle to ask Jezebel to come here one day to stay.

Remember, there is no hunger, when in the deep forest there is no prey.'


'But, my dear Clara, Anne is so scared, she will never accept in that day

To keep Jezebel far away from her, though she will feel safe here staying to pray.'

'The curse has effect all day long, only that day, so we can be home at night.'

'The next day, they will marry. In the darkness, with demons I will be able to fight.'
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
(­Surah was searching some poisoning and medicinal herbs on the wild slopes of the mountain. Clayton was walking around.)


Surah stopped to rest on a crest, and she felt something as a raindrop.

She smelled a cool air emerging from the crevice of a rocky outcrop.

She realized that a great cave could be existent in that natural wonder.

She heard a rumbling sound, and she thought that it was a thunder.


She saw the waterfall, which was hiding behind it the entrance of a cave.

The cave was too low for her to enter, and to do this she wasn't so brave.

She asked Clayton to crawl inside, but he noticed that the entire entrance

Was blocked with rocks and vegetation, and to enter they had no chance.


'No person ventured here to remove the underbrush and the *******.

I heard that a wild beast lives in this zone having the teeth very pinkish.'

Returning the next day with ten village people, they entered as spelunkers.

With the aid of lights, they slowly became the beast legend's debunkers.


They renewed their visits daily, proceeding a little farther each time.

They unlocked the entrance, and entered a little room, which was sublime.

It was followed by a narrow passage, which was leading to a secret chamber.

'I'm tired', said Surah,' because reaching this crest was a real clamber'.


They started to break an amount of rock off by using tools before

They penetrated the distance to enter the passage. They heard a boar.

'We are inside', said Clayton. 'After a half of an hour, we will need a pause.'

The passage was interrupted by a chamber. There, they saw some jaws.


It was a king chamber having white walls and a height of forty feet.

'I'm exhausted enough', said Surah.' I'm thirsty, and I have nowhere to sit.'

‘The walls have white travertine deposits of flagstone and brimstone.'

Surah slipped and fell down on the floor. She let out a long, deep moan.


Fossils of sea lilies, shell fish and snails could be seen in the limestones;

The slightly acidic groundwater slowly dissolved the bedrock to make cones.

Along joints, fractures and bedding planes forming passages and rooms,

They walked on a floor sounding as broken crockery, and creating booms.

Will relationship bring noise??
On my first date
she handled crockery  and
cutlery very gently...
Now
she tossing everything
into my wash basin..

Before her the open laptop stares
At settled coffee shop young lady
smart appearance nice hair.
Phone close, to hand for just maybe.
nowhere in particular she looks here and there,
as she shares short glances between
coffee shop phone and screen,
An image created of controlled serenity,
around her the tidal increase of customers ebb and flow.
Laptop screen, a document shines out, I'm here.
Momentarily her phone blinks me too
then returns to outward inactivity.
An embryo smile flickers, perhaps a thought
of the fleeting communication, perhaps not,
voices sway back and forth then, spike of a laugh
quickly swallowed by the ambience to give way
to hisses, gurgles of music coffee machines  play.
Young men perch and slouch in fervent conversation
They leave, talking, passing Dad with daughters so pleased
when discovering window side seats, wait in anticipation,
where delivers Dad , then into newspaper immerses.
Girls silently survey the scene, hot chocolate cupped
shortly paper closes, a look, chocolate speedily drunk
to join dads exit swift, wordless and abrupt  
past headphoned staff in crockery recovery.
Incessantly tables change coffee treats enjoyed again,  
The coffee shop laptop lady alone but not lonely
chooses to be, just maybe, happy in her own skin.

scorsby

MICHAEL C CROWDER         1st January 2019

It would be much too dangerous to talk about
Or remember at all
That night

A piercing scream from behind
A clatter of fallen crockery on the floor
Crimson fills the apron she wore
I do not yet think to ask how or why
My heart beats a silent cry
I kneel beside to feel her warmth
All I feel are empty eyes slice into my soul

My eyes look over the pool of red
Gathered by the drops her body shed
But for the blood, she can be lost in dreams
I think, as I imagine her pale in peace
Grabbing a mop
I cleanse her of the damaging dye
Her body now remains uncoloured, untainted
Of that which still inflames her quintessence
She's been marked, I realise
In an irreparable scarlet
All action, all words- scattered on the tiles
Lying broken and futile

On some days,
My sadness is small ;
As small as a teardrop rolling down my cheek.
And on the others,
It's too huge to fit into my hands.
It stretches, it expands
And becomes a giant monster.
It visits me on lonely nights
With lilies and chocolates.
It slits my skin
And pulls out my veins
Like guitar strings
And plays a strange rhythm.
It sings gloomy songs to me
And makes me eat bitter memories for dinner.
On some days,
It hides inside my pocket like a baby bird;
And on others,
It holds my hand
Like my lover
And we go out for a walk.
It makes love to me every night
We blend into each other;
So perfectly that
We become indistinguishable.
But when I try to leave,
It screams,
Groans,
Cries,
Howls like a wolf.
It throws the crockery at me
And cuts my skin with a knife.
It bites me
And strangles me until I'm out of breath.

~ Dishita Kaushik

as he sat soft beside me.
“Sure,” I said, with ill feeling.
My instinct was not to cross my friend,
I had too few left.

I nodded to the Ape behind the bar and he obliged
with one lemon & ginger and one green tea.
He knows his regulars well
and we know we’d need to wait til later for anything stronger.

“Look,” he said, and I turned to see
a gap and I counted the two teeth that were missing -
no, not missing - he opened his hand
and there they were, both accounted for,
safe and secure in his grey leathery palm.

“Look,” he repeated, (a little slurred this time)
and turned his fist so I could see
the missing skin and the bruises
that gave testimony to his amateur status.  

His ****** grin and wet laughter
shook the silverback back into action
and we got a plate of malted milks.
Like I say, he knows his regulars well
and he’d listened when I told him
where he could get a regular supply,
direct from Staffordshire, in the UK.

“Lo-ok,” he said (more hesitant this time)
and lifted his shirt a little to reveal the knife wound,
replete with knife, buried to the hilt.

“Loo-,“ he started to say, as he slid off the bar stool
taking his tea with him, the porcelain shattering on the stone floor.

I winced – the cups had been a gift
to the Ape from my mother.
‘Why should the chimps get all the best crockery?’ she’d explained.

“I’ll pay for the breakage,” I said
and the Ape nodded his furrowed brow
as he swung round to grab the dustpan and mop.

I drank my tea,
counting off the friends that remained.

Think piece. Jot, quick clog. Up the drain, sink ship in slime. Thyme and rhyme. Soaked up in the roots of the crock, the juices on which we dine. Sipping sustenance, sour; sweet. Fueling erosion. At the boarder of the mouth protective boulders crash down. Uneven ridges grinding, pounding. Whale ******* sea of spit. Belly-up. Maniacal pupils wide, about the circumference of crockery laid out and on and on ahead of ye. Into the distance it never ends. Cut cook chew cut cook chew cut cook chew look at you. Being stopped and squeezed and pushed. Always controlled, each little segment. You little bolus travelling. Sphincter sphere choked of air. Melting in the eyes of identity.

as if anything could ring true to a fanciful melody
with chain-mail and crockery,
but not in the symphony of snoring harps
and whistling trombones as much as:
falling asleep as quickly as the tailing off of the song
looking through a woman (christopher young,
hellraiser ii, hellbound soundtrack)
and entering the realm of dream with something to think about...
and in dream, to stand outside one’s own body,
and peering through the window
to see a lightning bolt strike the ground... and instead
of disappearing due to crap wi-fi
begin to dance... moving with heavy crackling sounds
as if a man walking on autumn leaves or crisps
thump, thump thump an electric heartbeat with a sort of
freezing of water glow that expands to diamond diadems of ice,
surely no better compliment to the poem picasso behind the window...
no critical comment, no lovely jubbly one pound fish sing-along in east ham,
no... none of that... the best compliment... a furthered meaning
away from the act from the night... not so much
picasso behind the window... but a bolt of lightning, dancing
a dance of icy luminescent silver in ultra-violet x-ray.

Every fire hazard sign points the arrow at 'extreme'.

                      The drought has lasted several months now, clouds form and the world is left encased in midday shadow, but they just watch, never speaking up, never expelling.

                                   Industrial sprinklers produce short burst waves in spinning circles, the grass a crop circle of pale embryonic green within it's radius; brittle fragments of bleached hay and dry dirt outside.

/
          The fly the waiter gases lands on a half deflated bag causing it to buzz incredibly loudly as it chokes, making everyone uncomfortable
         /

---------------------------------------------------------------­--

        #@000000000000091   The town is French themed, a pastiche for the tourists. it's imprinted on the crockery, see. The restaurants are all le Chinese takeaways selling Classic London Style Fish and Chips. Which i mean there's nothing wrong with i guess but it's just kinda funny in the loosely jarring kinda sense, the we-are-all-thrown-into-history,-into-ablative-cultural-efficacy-b­ut-it's-never-quite-something-graspable-or-fixed;-never-quite-s­omething-that-orientates-itself sense,  is all i'm saying.   i
                 mean it's a port town it makes sense they sell fish, but as all the tourists pass by and the Harbour mouth surrounding the 12 million year old magma plug breaths out the ocean ebbs up onto the rugby parks into the downtown area and breaths through all the cobblestone shop windows, It inhales, and the cars slowly waltz away from their anchorage and into the middle of the lake, which is fine because all the pedestrians have floated into the sky, hardly noticing with the sombre and tired paper-deep excitement that the tourist and holiday workers mirror at each other.

                                   -----------------------------------------------------------------­-


-   //
 #AAC00000121.  A local restaurant and hotel owner laments to the newspaper that it's been a slow valentine day season   "it's like   people have forgotten what this is supposed to mean to them."
//   -

....

a faint line remains marking where the magma reached up the cliff faces each time it drowned everything every few thousand millennia, everyone murmurs that it's jolly interesting, but
    make indignant mewling sounds as the bubbling lava dissolves their bones.



                                  |||   |||
                              /  ///

.
  .
     . . . . .


[...ANywqay, yeah sorry. so what i was getting at was this. yeah yeah no i was! a punchline and everything! yeah! yep, ]
                   so
there's this one art museum a few blocks down from the main street,
  that focuses on cups and mugs; beautiful antique drinking vessels uniting every place and class and history.
         they change the theme occasionally, but really most of the itinerary remains the same so there's only so much they can do. currently it's

            "the sublime
                            as manifest
                                               in the functional and inconsequential"

these simple, life supporting tools, at once represent mans departure from nature, whilst functionally reaffirming our dependence on simple essentials. The drive to turn even these basic utensils into a reflective aesthetic process, showcases -even in primitive societies,- this emergent human drive for the sublime. This gallery hosts in equal regard the exquisite geometry of the gemmed goblets of patron kings, alongside the hand-wrought asymmetric terracotta mugs of artisan peasants. In each is the baseness of re-hydration, in each, the transcendental act of creation.



the coffee at the gift shop cafe was served in bleached polyethylene

She lived in a tiny cottage
On top of a sea-bound bluff,
Looked down on the cold blue waters
In fair weather, and in rough,
The smoke that curled from her chimney piece
Was snatched away by the wind
So couldn’t obscure the window where
She stood, and her eyes were pinned.

She saw the gaggle of soldiers
Rise up, and out of the marsh,
And remembered a past encounter,
Their treatment of her was harsh,
She snipped the lock on the window, then
She hurried to bar the door,
Raised the trap to the cellar, and
Slid down to the cellar floor.

She lay in hopes they would pass on by,
Would ignore her humble home,
Would think that there was a man nearby
Not a woman there, alone,
She knew of the fate of others who
Had invited the soldiers in,
For many a soldier’s bairn was born
The result of a soldier’s sin.

She heard them muttering round the house
And tapping the window pane,
Beating a tattoo on the door
Till she thought she’d go insane,
They’d seen the smoke from her chimney piece
And they called, ‘Hey you inside,
We need to shelter the night at least,
It’s wintry here outside.’

But still she lay on the cellar floor
As quiet as any mouse,
She wasn’t going to let them in
To her tiny little house,
She heard the crash as the timber gave
Away on her cottage door,
And heard the thump of their feet above
As they stomped across her floor.

She heard the sound of their puzzlement
When they found the cottage bare,
‘Somebody must have lit the fire,
But now, they’re just not there.’
She heard them smashing her crockery
And drinking beer from her ***,
She never had enough food to spare
But she knew they’d eat the lot.

Down below was a musket that
She’d kept well oiled and cleaned,
Along with a horn of powder that
She’d felt worthwhile redeemed,
She found the shot and she rammed it home
There was nothing left to chance,
The first to open that trapdoor would
Begin his final dance.

The night came on and they settled down,
Above, she could hear them snore,
She wondered whether they’d go away
When the sun came up, once more,
But then, sometime in the early hours
She heard the trapdoor creak,
And a pair of eyes were hypnotised
As they saw the musket speak.

There once was a tiny cottage
On top of a sea-bound bluff,
It’s now burnt out, just a shell without
A roof or a door, it’s rough,
While down in the cold blue waters
Lies a woman, drowned and dead,
And up on the bluff, a soldier’s grave,
Buried, without a head.

David Lewis Paget

.
At first the world, seems on hire,
Threads chill through leaves on fire,

Black ponds grow still under sun,
In opens, slowest silence begun,

Smokey clouds in sweep overlook,
Clime of frosts branched under foot,

Cold winds come and with heaves,
Shattered froze crockery of leaves,

In icy banks bare rivers run out,
Snap as they steam into a knout

And in tawnys of soggy marshes,
Colours grow grey, wet and harsher,

In blisters to come winter shores,
A creatures huddle to frozen floors,

Above are trailings of birds who flee,
Below are underlings rooted in tree,

In sheets of white a graveyard blows,
Black stones piercing the first snows.

Traveled a storyteller from afar
It was a chance meeting with him
Was at the bistro so desolate
Could hear the fork and knives speak
Tried striking up a conversation
With the lonely lad
But he wasn't interested much
Just finished supper in solitude
Ordered a steaming cup of coffee
Suddenly the weather turned grim
I could hear the clouds roar
In mood to add to the dreariness  
Flashes of lightning lit up the street
I could see a faint silhouette
Walking towards the bistro
The man at the counter busy
Cleaning the crockery and plates
Faint music playing in the vinyl  
Dark and dim added to the slowness
As if time stood still
A weary traveler enters the bistro
Not even a glance towards anyone
Walked up straight to the counter
He carried a strange backpack
A man of about late sixty
Tall and strong built
Ruffled hair and heavy boots
Faded clothes and cigar smokes
The whole place now smelled of him
He placed the order and sat down quiet
His face hid from the cigar smoke
He was almost in a meditative mode
I watched him for sometime
Then, went towards his table
He was courteous but spoke few
I asked him, “Where are you from?”
He said, “I am from distant land.”
He named not the place
But he was a storyteller
He carried the burden so heavy
Stories he had to carry for years
He didn't know how to write
But he had a marvelous memory
He remembered each and every detail
And he was a raconteur famed
First time he visited this town
He picked up stories from various lands
Which he narrated on demand
He ate slowly and chatted with me
Wasn't aware of the heavy downpour
The man had a magnetic effect
I didn't realize, we spoke for long
A tell tale sign he was the master narrator
I, for long was mesmerized
We spoke through the night
Listening to his various tales
Transfixed, I listened like a child
At the break of dawn
I realized how long it has been
We had morning coffee together
And could see his face clearly
His eyes looked through me
Rested on some distant place
Which he left behind
I asked, “How long you have been traveling?”
He said, “Since the time I was a young man.”
Some unsaid grief his eyes spoke
Which were not there in the tales
He finished his coffee
And thanked me for the company
I asked, “Where do you intend to travel?”
He said, “I do not know.”
He has been on the road for long
And he bade me goodbye
With a faint smile
He walked away

Whisper,
on the surface of the crockery
the fairy porcelain
and Satie's piano.
Rinse
unconfessed wishes
and, among the cutlery,
I say goodbye
to Gymnopédie.
There is always an air of water
in the words that tell me
when the morning ends
and in the brightness of the dishes,
the same colour
of sorrow.

The dark man then shouted, “If it’s pork that you wish,
then have it you will,” and hurled the whole dish
at the Maximum Leader who was hit in the beard
and his nose and his cheeks and his uniform smeared
with pork and with beans and chili sauce seasoning
which ran down his face and stained all his clothing.
The Latin cook then grabbed a cleaver immense
in order to protect and come to the defense
of the Maximum Leader, who support did not lack,
as all of his aides jumped into the attack.
A melee broke out with punching and fighting,
shouting and cursing and kicking and biting,
tables knocked over and crockery broken,
this was for George a tricky situation.
But, quick-witted, as usual, he knew what to do.
On the stove there was boiling a large *** of stew,
picking up a cup, and the other cooks too,
they filled them with hot broth which they then threw
at the combatants all, who, burned, ceased their brawling
and fled for their lives to avoid further scalding

from The Adventures of George
©Blair Gowrie (Roderick Macdonald)

I wrote my soul on a tea towel,
one I’d dried up with earlier,
the words smudged into the fabric,
absorbing my insides into the folds

Earlier it had met me, like a minder,
drying the crockery of my tears
as they ran the race of their lives,
soaking the top I’d carefully chosen

only earlier that day when a smile had
gathered pace and filled the emptiness,
completed the gaps of the worn out
in block capitals, hoping I’d notice

Who are you in the given shadows,
so unrecognisable in your black gown,
you placed the shawl over your head,
your neck gathering the undulating folds…..

This town scares me
the Power, the Glory
at seven-fourteen AM
behind the door.

This town shows me
irresistible pity, love
ragged and conspicuous
cockerels fight.

Last night
You confessed your plans
I thought
"this might be fun to watch"
but I sat and shook like crockery in a hot yard.

Lets stay here
let the blind teach us
as the sun does to a child.