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.

It's my lifeboat
that floats
center stage in the
opaque green, mucky lake.

It glistens and gleams

As its diamond eyes
stare into mine
and ****** me;
further manipulating my senses.

The lake speaks in sonnets,
admitting truths of love and desire.

It cannot live without me,
for I have always managed to make its life more "hectic in the best way possible"

-a forbidden love.

"One day we will find a way to be together", it says.

"One day you and I may become one."

I need the lake, for it has always managed to find me peace.

     Sincerely yours,
                              
                                 Curtis

An Ontario man and his two children have turned up safe after getting lost in the woods on their way to an Alberta wedding.

RCMP Const. Jason Curtis says David Hill, 33, along with daughter Sierra Hill, 10, and son Riley, 8, set off from Edmonton International Airport on Saturday morning.

They were destined for a family wedding in Hinton, a couple hours drive west of the city, that was scheduled for 11 a.m.

Family members got a call Saturday afternoon from one of the children in the car that they apparently got off the highway and were lost in a wooded area.

The phone then cut out and Curtis says the family spent the night in their rental car before finding someone Sunday morning who directed them back to the highway.

He says he doesn't know why the Hills left the highway.

And exactly where were they?

"I don't know if they're entirely sure of that,'' Curtis said.

RCMP said a ping from the cell phone placed them in the area of Obed, Alberta, which is between Edson and Hinton.

Police said they launched a full search for the family out of concern for the ages of the children and for the fact that some of the group suffered from medical conditions.

Curtis said that after getting directions out, the family notified their relatives and police.

"It couldn't be a better outcome. Everyone's safe and sound. And we're just very happy,'' Curtis said.

"The people are moving onto their family event, though they might have missed the wedding.''

read more:www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses

www.marieaustralia.com/bridesmaid-dresses

we sang along to Joy Division
and listened to Ian Curtis' voice
spell out the truths of love and life
too afraid to listen
so we smoked a bit more

we got high
very high
we couldn't walk in straight lines
you said your legs were like lava
so we hid away in each others' embrace

he said love will tear us apart
he was right
but I never expected it to be
as blissful as this

He broke his neck thirty years ago
I break mine more with each
promise of keeping you in my life
but Ian Curtis is on my mind a lot,
grieving for souls I will never know.

Some of his songs are so sad,
like hearing the premature
snap of his bones

Cannot help but resent
how clever society is
to glamorize the unglamorous,
even I am aware
the flowers upon graves are not just for
aesthetics, but we are still always trying
to cover terrible tragedies
with beautiful things.

Am I just as guilty?

I cheat on you with him.
His spirit through my headphones,
hoped if I listen intently
the narrative changes.

purple marks on your neck
just that weekend you
taught me what a hickey was
and how they felt good

yours’ declare ownership,
not declarations of love.

You walk into art class,
purple painted across your throat.

If love could save Ian,
had I lived in the mid-seventies
he may very well have lived forever
and his throat painted by love,
rather than the bruises of a noose.

The letters I wrote you were in vain,
my mistake quoting those Smiths’
songs:
Morrissey is an *******
and so are you.

I still
am too scared to
wonder how far I am willing
to go
to reap the benefits of sorrow.

"New Dawn Fades"
tears into my heartstrings
feeling responsible in
the prevention of another
suicide

I grapple onto
what a savior complex was,
your dead father
the tracks on your arms made me cry
but I thought it was stupid.
It made me hate myself more
why could I not learn to undo
my drive to save anyone,
but myself

The phone call
where I broke up with
you and you
pretend to
overdose on the speaker

One of us had to grow up,
had to make it out alive
And I love you again,
every time Ian's ghost
sings Isolation.

And I leave you there,
sure, to end the album
after the final song.

Meeting a renowned Pinoy designer, Michael Cinco, was the highlight of my nth trip to Dubai last month. He is so unassuming that I almost forgot how famous he is. Some of his A-list Hollywood clientele include Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, Jennifer Lopez, Kylie Minogue, Mila Kunis, Paris Hilton, Tyra Banks, Rihanna, Toni Braxton, Fergie, Nicole Scherzinger and Christina Aguilera.

Michael’s regular clients are Anne Curtis, Marian Rivera-Dantes, Kathryn

Bernardo, Liza Soberano, Ruffa Gutierrez and Bea Alonzo.

Miriam Quiambao and I immensely enjoyed bonding with Michael. He treated us to an authentic Lebanese dinner at the resto below his plush condominium right across the world’s tallest building, Burj Khalifa. Kudos to Michael for being the only Filipino designer who was invited to present his collection at the Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week’s “Couturissimo,” held last July 3.

He’s world-class yet down-to-earth. That makes him all the more remarkable. Pinoy Pride is something Michael wears so well. CincOoh la la! (Visit michaelcinco.com.)

Here’s my chat (via Facebook) with Michael:

What was the Paris Fashion week experience like?

About 15 years ago I was strolling along the beautiful Jardin des Tuileries. I was so in love with the place that I had a vision and a dream… I said to myself, one of these days I’ll have my show in this stunning garden. So when Asian Couture Federation approached me to have a show in Paris, I immediately begged to hold it in Jardin des Tuileries. Showing my collection in Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week has always been my ultimate dream. Seeing your collection on the runway of your dream garden is one of the greatest achievements in my life.

Among local celebs, who are the five best-dressed on your list?

Marian Rivera, Anne Curtis, Cherie Gil, Kathryn Bernardo and Liza Soberano. They all wore my couture dresses and they all looked amazing.

Any memorable moment with the celebs?

To be honest, I never met any of them. I dressed up some of the most beautiful Filipino Celebrities and Hollywood celebrities wore my clothes on the red carpet and in their music videos. When the producers of the movie “Jupiter Ascending” asked me to go to London to meet Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum, I declined because I was too shy to meet them. The stylist of Jennifer Lopez asked me to meet her backstage. Also, the manager of Kylie Minogue asked me to go to her room for fitting but I just sent my assistant because I was scared and shy.

Who is the easiest celeb to dress up?

Most of them are easy to dress up because they all look fabulous in my couture dresses.

What are your three fashion do’s and don’t’s?

Do’s: Be yourself; create your own style; wear something that will make you feel confident.

Don’t’s: Don’t wear a dress two sizes smaller than your body; don’t follow someone else’s style; don’t try to achieve what you see in glossy magazines—they are all photoshopped!

If you were asked to design an outfit for President Duterte, what would it be like?

A bullet-proof couture barong.

What’s your advice to aspiring designers?

Young designers of today should realize that fashion is not all about glamour. The fashion world is very cruel. You will be judged, criticized and rejected.

It takes hard work, patience and strong determination to achieve your goals. Create clothes that people will wear. If you want to create art on clothes, make sure they will sell.

Lastly, be humble and never give up. Believe that anything in this world is possible. Believe in your dreams and if you have faith and confidence in God, all of your impalpable dreams will come true.Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/bridesmaid-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/long-formal-dresses

The lake is drying up, and I no longer know what to do. They have taken my lifeboat.

They told me that it'd be okay- that they would make sure I turned out alright.

Yesterday they gave me an ultimatum: them or this, my life as it stands.

As I expressed my immense confusion, they only seemed to grow equally so and angrier than I had ever seen them.

The lake is my dearest love.

However,  I cannot promise myself to it, as I fear that that would be my worst and biggest mistake.

           Sincerely yours,
                                     Curtis

My leaky red lifeboat.

It's sinking; slowly sinking.

Soon, the lake will have taken it for itself and we will "finally be able to be together.", as it had once said.

Although, as much as I love the lake, and as much peace as it has brought me, I am very hesitant to accept this.

As my lifeboat fades into oblivion, taking me with it, I wonder.

-'So this is how it's going to end, huh? ..really?'

    Sincerely yours,
                              
                                C­urtis

well... feminism has had its three waves
of revisionism -

    and there i'm sitting on
the windowsill,
   smoking out of my window -

watching the moon sloth the sky like
an demonic snail -

in the misty haze of a large patch
of cumulonimbus -
    right up there at around 50,000 feet...

thinking to myself?
   why are there two orbs of varying
light concentration
penetrating the sky
   and embedding the moon
in an eerie aura?

never mind -
   i still don't know what the chemical
formula for timber is,
or what sort of material is on
the moon that allows it to reflect
light from the other side
of the Greenwich Mean Time...

last time i heard: can a rock surface
reflect light?

          well then... ah... never mind...

but feminism has had its three waves
of instigation and two subsequent
waves of revisionism -

so it made me think:
   why not a second wave of fascism?
a revisionist wave...
    well... as far as i am concerned
the Italians were much paler -
   in their intentions than the Germans...

fascism 2.0 -
and the sort of fascism that would allow
me to be men...
    drunks, foul mouthed, you name it...
athletic, not-giving-a-**** losers of
sorts, among the glam of whatever else
it is that a man is...

working on the idea,
i had to think of a list -

   hmm...

          who then?
ah!

      Stanley Kowalski
   (from a streetcar named desire)...
John Wayne
  (notably from true grit)
    Charlton Heston
(from the planet of the apes)
   Tony Curtis...
              Hemingway,
Bukowski,
               Ezra Pound...
     Clark Gable
    Gregory Peck
                   the list is seemingly
endless -
   at least in the portrayal of
said characters...
ah... ****!
   Kevin Spacey as
Lester Burnham to boot!
            ah... double ****:
Denzel Washington as
Troy Maxson...
    because apparently "being"
a "poet" is little more than
the lesser stature
of a garbage man...
             unless of course:
you fiddle into a cosmopolitan
fixture.

    oh... and certainly an appreciation
for a traditional Turkish barber
shop...

something very much akin / borrowed
from America circa 1950s...
   and an unabashed sensibility
concerning good tailoring -
   but then also the prophetic
vagabond look from time to time...

just a vague idea -
    but something along these lines -
but then again, what a silly idea -
what is racial purity in
21st century England?
   some sort of vague notion
       of an even vaguer dream?

but i guess the notion of
individualistic purity:
   the purity of the individual is related
more to: who can and who won't
be swayed by alien opinions -
2nd or 3rd party -

        which includes this opinion...

i'd subscribe to put the idea on
the following zenith:

              grammatical cleanliness -
linguistic order -
            a literary tact -
   something along these lines -

after all: the 20th century is not the end
of a theory -
given 20th century communism this,
while 21st century socialism that...
ideas prevail...
   evolve - or devolve - regress
or make alternative progress -

               also given:
    there already is a fascist movement
elsewhere, other than in England -
where: it would be completely
impractical -
                  
                       prime tenet would also
be, what it already shows:
   non-expansionism of a culture
or a people -
                           more akin to
American isolationism under
                                                  F.D.R.:
i­ have a strange sentiment
for that president.

The door to your heart is a horrifying puzzle
Your Jigsaw pattern I can't put together
The pieces I hold don't correspond
So I take parts from you
Which is making me Leatherface
And giving you a flatter taste
And the ****** chain I saw placed
Was pressed to your door with haste

You're a killer doll like Chucky
How could I have been so unlucky?
I can't even cut through your curtains
I become a cold corpse before the movie can start
Like a careless Jamie Lee Curtis
How long can such a curted courtship last?
Before I contrive the courage to crush
The Killer Croc in your rib cage
But the corrosive corrections officer
That is your puzzle piece door
Impedes all progress to your horror heart
Because the improper placement of pieces
Will make me think you're The Witch
When you tell me Don't Breathe

As my theater's lights dim
I scramble for an exit
But my only escape from the cinema is through your door
I grow cynically situated to the pitch black pictures
How could I expect to solve the riddle
Now that I need to?
Doors that can't be opened are walls
Speaking softly turns to brawls
As your pieces scattered like change
Your door completely wrapped in chains
I feel stupid and ashamed
Your puzzled movie's to blame

Preface

When the broad mind has opened, to gaze the stars that shinning in the unfathomable skies and the glittering Nature, its flowers’ fragrances given to taste the wealthy realms of her, as well as Earth's mysteries—that I ever think of to feel and by my thoughts that spread so deep to try to work with things that sounds of ‛creative’. Here I the ‛moody soul’ started his first journey, leaving his home  a few years ago and his up-start was through Literature, Science and Arts and Fiction. Writings and paintings here I believed to be most powerful and that those more often need to convey by the Artist’s conscience and the intensity that gains moral knowledge and appreciation. Here the book has the pictorial paths of Quest and the wanderings, all by imagination’s boat, sails from the western Ideas and its enthusiastic flow. Some finds hope along and also hopelessness, God and Love vagabonding among these ink-stained pages.
Dreamt in the wandering world where no chains shall bind, from the dark veiled lands to the daring spark, no atoms that obscure the force calling light, to aim the glad precious moments of life, to embrace me with a silence and its whispering magic, where gate of hope’s always open to bliss, thundering words are always from roam, the nocturnal pleasure that I only know, and when all will run away as time—why I alone in the upward steps of solitude that caressing wild only wings?
If I met Life as a strange stage of different senses—and I only say you to enjoy the aggressive fruits of my invention. Here it is for all of you can read and evaluate.*


Nithin Purple


Acknowledgement
                                      
­*This book is dedicated to my parents of Love and support,
from where I got the powers to be inspired—to write and prove.

Special Thanks to Parisian Author and poet Roman Payne of
‛cultural book’ for supporting me as a writer of varying tastes.  Also Writer, Wilson B Sanchez of New York, who first gave suggestions  
and his valuable sparkling comments of self-improvable topics, which I always bother. Belated friend, poet and writer, Curtis Plaskon from France for his valuable support. Also Poet Timothy & Hilda from Virginia, to them I had good writing memories. And for all the Indians, this book is an open heart to read.

My friend Gerard, (who is alive), looks like an Arabian slave-boy, though swarthier and longer of hair than Tony Curtis; an olive –skinned Mowgli, ape boy of Kipling’s  “Jungle Book”, although I have never seen Gerard swinging through any trees, nor eating any insects, nor even kissing a sultan’s foot. But looks can be deceiving, or receiving, with the proper pen, the zen pen of a poet, this proper poet who lives upstairs with his multitude of books piled on the floors, walking on Whitman, sitting on Shakespeare; tripping over Ginsberg, sleeping on Sartre; not a single shelf for this Jung man.
“A place for everything, and for everything it’s place”, he stands and stares out of a window overlooking the jungle of five-foot high weeds that serves as our backyard and wonders aloud “whither Oregon?”; questions our alleged enlightened sense of awareness, his disposition toward liberalness in a world gone madder than usual. Have I convinced him yet, my naïve, trusting neighbor? Yes, he realizes with a sigh that it is so, now that he has finally succumbed and bought a thirteen inch, black & white television of his own, now he can see with his own brown eyes in his own living room, far off wars, instant coffee & instant karma, depersonalized tragedies, faceless fatalities, insidious soap operas and humorless sitcoms, adverse advertisements, Howard Stern; “whither sanity?” we both cry and laugh out loud at this mediocre media, the global sewage, the Marshall McClueless, me and Gerard Rizza, my friend who is alive.

Gerard, (who is healthy), is gay, yet straighter than most men, and has been complaining quite a bit about the ferry service lately; contemplating a move off of Staten Island, and leaving his sporadic substitute teaching gig at a nearby high school, a mere six block walk from our house atop Winter Hill, where he is trying to convince me, a wide-eyed cynic, that a blank, white, unused canvas, surrounded by a wooden picture frame hung upon his wall is indeed a work of art; the job is very convenient, but again the ******* about the ferry, not the boat ride per se, but the incongruities of the ****** schedule, which anybody who has ever just missed a three a.m. boat and had to wait for an hour in the Hierynomous Bosch triptych known as the Whitehall Ferry terminal ,will definitely attest to; and Gerard has this thing about Staten Islanders, like the homophobes at a recent anti-peace rally in New Dorp, supporting the carpet bombing of an oil rich yet still poor third-world country, throwing beer cans at him and his companions while shouting “we know where you live, *******!”. Rizz came home that evening, visibly shaken and pale, (not his usual olive-skinned self), knocked on my door and pleaded “whither ******?”. I went upstairs, sat on his couch and rolled a joint. Gerard puts on the new 10,000 Maniacs tape and tries, once again, to bait me in a conversation about his “work of art”, my work of naught; he speaks of the horrific details of his day. “Isn’t this picture of Doc Gooden on my refrigerator door proof enough of my manhood, my patriotic intent, for those *******? The ******’ Mets, fuh chrissakes!” We sit out on his porch, watching the sun set over our backyard jungle as Natalie sings wireless Verdi cries, and I pass the burning joint to Gerard, my friend who is still healthy.

My friend Gerard, who is *** positive, was quite possibly a cat in a former life, probably a Siamese, thin, dark and aloof; yes, I can see ol’ Rizz now, sprawled out on an old tapestry rug, getting his belly scratched by his owner, perhaps Emily Dickinson or Georgia O’Keefe, Rizz purring like the engine of an old bi-winged barnstormer; abruptly rolls over, gets on all fours, tail waving *****, slinks over to lap water out of a bowl marked “Gerard”. He’d sleep all day on books and original manuscripts, and play all night amongst oil & acrylic, knocking over an occasional blank canvas, which he, in a future incarnation, will try to convince me, in his feline manner, is art. Sitting and staring from his usual spot on the windowsill, his cat eyes blink slowly as he wonders, “whither dinner?”; and begins to clean himself with tongue and paw, this cat who might be Gerard, my friend who is *** positive.

Gerard, who is sick, recently moved to Manhattan, Chelsea, to be precise, in with his best friend; and has stopped ******* about the Staten Island ferry, having far more pressing matters to ***** about, i.e. the ever-rising cost of homeopathic medicine and the lack of coverage for holistic and alternative care; any number of political and social concerns (Gerard was never the silent type); the lateness of his first published book of poems, entitled “Regard for Junction”; his rapidly deteriorating health, etc., etc.; and is now a true city dweller, a zen denizen, a proper poet with high regard for junction. That’s all that remains when it’s all over anyway, this junction, that junction, petticoat junction, petticoat junction – “I always wanted to **** the brunette sister”, I’d once told him; “I prefer uncle Joe!”, he laughingly replied; dejection, rejection, reclamation, defamation, cremation, conjecture, conjunction, all junctions happening at the same time, at now, a single place, a single moment, this forever junction with Gerard, my friend who is dying.

My friend Gerard, who is dead, officially passed from this life on a Saturday morning in early April, a mere two weeks before his junction with publication, although Gerard my friend passed away much earlier, leaving a sick and emaciated body behind to play host to his bedside guests, to help bear the pain of his family and friends; so doped-up on morphine, no longer able to remember any names, he called me “*****” when I entered the hospital room, where this barely physical manifestation of what had once been Gerard Rizza was being kept alive like the barest glimmer of hope, and displayed like some recently fallen leader, lying in state;  “whither Gerard withers” I thought, saying goodbye to this Rizza impersonator, this imposter, this visitor from a shadow world, an abstraction of a friend, whom the nurses told us, his disbelieving visitors, was our friend Gerard, who though technically still alive, was already dead.

My friend Gerard, who is laughing
My friend Gerard, who is singing
My friend Gerard, who is coughing
My friend Gerard, who is sleeping
My friend Gerard, who is holy
My friend Gerard, who is missed.

When you see so much injustice going against you.
Just fight on.
Strive to be the best within your own heart.
Just fight on.
God see all injustice that's wrong.

No one upon this earth can say they righteous.
Even when we mixed within them in a crowd.
So fight on-for the less fortunate
Yes, fight on-like Mayfield's keep on pushing song.

You might get tired.
But advocated do.
You might face threats from all sides coming after you.
Just remember to fight on.

Curtis Mayfield, would say, fight on.

.i did write about rooney mara once, didn't i? porcelain beauty... eh... not mandible beauty, the sort of beauty parallel to the Mona Lisa... the sort of beauty that's not mandible like the beauty of a fat *******'s beauty of stretch marks and extra flab... ******* a beached whale... you know... a mechanic's type of fetish for a broken down car engine... rooney mara? ms. porcelain doll beauty? that **** you just paint, you don't **** it... thinking to yourself: if i **** it, will it break?!

                       is... is...
this guy known as
yungblud...
singing the song
california...
dyslexic or something?
no, wait, wait...
he's hiding a lisp?
**** it... i'll just do
the camp *******
of reading the sunday times
style supplement
magazine, interviewing
cheryl tweedy...
****!
who the hell put on
van morrison's
brown eyed girl on?!
   yum-yum-sloppy-seconds
thank-you-very much...
like... a face that allows
you decentralize your
phallus from orientating
it around cow Martian
testicles and...
those floral patterns
in a ******...
   kinda like... joey fisher...
see... i'm under the
polygraph of a liter of
ms. amber...
     who the ****... ha ha...
lies when drunk / drinking?
she's about a liter tall...
(insert snigger)...
and she has a Havana ***
girth...
all that's missing is
pickled onions...
and some raw cherry
tomatoes...
ah ha ha ha!
god... i love reading these
articles...
i love women in general...
not unlike those glory days
when women found
*** easy...
with the likes of...
oh **** me... there's a list,
which implies a colon:
tony curtis...
   shhhhh... it...
  i can only think of tony curtis...
charlton heston doesn't
really fill the bill...
ooh ooh!
  **** jagger!
**** it... let's leave it at two...
in the meantime,
the bite of reality:
        
*****... what you gonna do
when your favorite
sugar-grandpa is kicking
the bucket?
   fix it up with the types
of losers of my generation...
lament of the first world war...
the missing men...
or the Haj route to the Kaaba
of a Saudi Sheik's harem?
me?
   i'm a father every time i ****
off...
   daddy in a tissue...
both father... and genocidal
maniac... i killed more "people"
than ******...
hey...   appetites are appetites...
but it's not as bad as if i was
given the incentive of
a circumcision...
   now... you have your dress of genitals...
and i have my *******'s worth
of tux, white **** and bow-tie...
we're even...

and to even think...
when we were leaving high-school,
i wrote down my ambitions
in the leaving book my two prime
ambitions...
either living a bohemian lifestyle
of an artist in some European
capital (Paris... god, please, Paris),
or becoming a priest...
   well... i'm doing both...
a covert monk...
          there's the god's **** of beer,
there's ms. amber,
the marquees de bourbon...
               and...
                usually a newspaper and
a blank space in pixel paper...

poor boy gotta laugh...
poor girl gotta fish, tame or hunt...
rich boy gotta party...
rich girl gotta dream about
a fling -
some variant of an indie
romantic comedy.

Part I

One of my God's
non-eternal enemies
whom i refer to as "little b"
(i try not to lend it the dignity
of having its name spoken by my lips
when i write
i will not grace
its improper noun with the
upper casing of its first letter)

Translated into English it becomes
"the lord of the flies"
this bi-dimensional vermin
expands its influence by keeping
its existence as hidden as possible
from its unsuspecting hosts

The uni-dimensional plague that
"little b" took its name from
the common fly
is fond of the open wounds in
the hides of animals
it lays its eggs in the wound
which soon hatch and begin to feed
on the surrounding rotted flesh
"little b" and its gang
act in a similar way
but they are not satisfied
with rotted flesh . . . .
they thrive on the growth of fear
the expansion of hatred and distrust.
they grow fat in the putrid pus
of pride and discrimination

beelzebub

Part II

When a lie
any manner of falsehood
is accepted as Truth
and allowed to reside
unopposed in the mind
its presence begins to radiate
emanations of itself
throughout the whole system

The lie soils everything it touches
and being "sin"
left in place long enough
it produces the "fruit" of death

The entrance of sin into a human life
provides a beacon for "little b"
it rushes in to lay its eggs
in the midst of the pain
created by the emotional or psychological wound

Once hatched, "little b" maggots
frolic through the host searching out new areas
of anguish, bitterness, fear and pain to feed on

As the parasites continue feeding
they multiply
driving the host to
deeper depths of depression
anger confusion and sorrow
which in turn
create even larger areas for
the invaders to occupy

If this activity is left unchecked
Eventually all that is left of the host
is a dried and useless husk
ready to be dumped
into a hole in the ground
and seemingly
forgotten about

for awhile

Curtis Delk Rose 2/13-2/22/98

Part III

The Fruit Of bitterness
(another aspect of “little-b”)

'bitterness' does not arrive all at once
like a rogue-refugee relative
with its cluttered baggage and sickly children
barging around, breaking rare ornaments
and willfully refusing to learn the new tongue

It arrives slowly
almost too slowly to notice
seeping into the brain's house
a thin vapor trickling down into unprotected crevices
coating chair legs, vinyl floors and other hard surfaces

Sometimes you notice
what appears to be a stain of some kind
and you occasionally make a half-hearted attempt to wipe it off
But what the heck
you so seldom have company here
and the body's house needs so much attention.

The preacher in the new stone church yells from the pulpit
"And if you're gonna drive that rattle-trap truck to church
at least you could park it in the back
where every Tom, **** and Harry that drives by can't see it."

Every time that searing dart
passes through your mind
the soul cries out
"Oh! Why did he say that?!"

So softly you think it is you speaking to yourself
the ugly gray shadow of 'bitterness' whispers
"Because you are too stupid to afford a new car
You'll always be too stupid to get ahead
Look at who you married, stupid!
A loser who can't even get a job where he works indoors in the winter time
No wonder god killed your baby!
You're too stupid to be a mother!"

This goes on for years
'bitterness' grows more and more at home
it leaves the lights on all over the house
every night, all night
and plays the hateful reruns so loud you can't sleep
You wonder why your digestion is getting worse and worse
"Arthur Itis"* moves in and sets up his angry shop
Unaccountable pains squeeze from one place to another
and finally
your fingers are as stiff and useless
as all the money you sank into that big stone pit

When the old preacher finally died and
left the big stone church as an inheritance
to his skirt-chasing, cigar-smoking son
'bitterness' thought it was time for
it to try the recliner for the first time
it picked up the remote and
began playing one painful rerun after another

My daddy should never have done that to me!"
(But he is years dead now and who would ever believe you?)

"But it still hurts!"      

("And remember the time at the beach when
Henry wondered out loud if maybe it was your fault that Chucky died?")

"How could he do that?"

And . . .    And . . .    And . . .

Years pass
the old heart and lungs are approaching the point
where they can't handle the pressure anymore

'little b' leans back
in the brain's broken, worn-out recliner
puts its hands behind its head and
daydreams
about trying your granddaughter on for size


Curtis Delk Rose

81101 & 112515 & 12818

Many Thanks to Brad Watson for the time he mentioned that the
archaic word "beelzebub" translates into the “lord of the flies”

**arthritis

****** Nora
Tony Curtis is dead
I loved that man
and the things he said

I wanted to be called Tony
as a kid
I'd love to call him father
for all that he did

One cool man
now happy in heaven
a smile of beauty
that I would live in

By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris

Its closing in.
I'm still moving inside.
Closed off
With clothes on
Top of clothes
On top of me.
I've outgrown
Control.
But I'm getting closer
To the
Closer.

his touch
is the only thing
ever known
to be able to
calm this storm
buried deep
inside me

I remember my old street. (North Overlook)
The people there never changed, like a television with the **** broken off.

I remember my boxer, Brutus. I would let him lick the inside of my mouth to freak out the other kids.

I remember eating honey suckles in the back yard. I also ate a whole bottle of Tums in the medicine cabinet. (I thought it was candy)
I once drank a whole bottle of nail polish remover, but I puked it back up.

I remember having a jungle gym and a swimming pool. My sister and I swam naked in it once.

I remember when we touched each other’s private parts in a fort we built in the closet. She made me smell my fingers afterwards. My nose crinkled upward and I thought it was gross.

I remember when my mother came home crying one day because the hair stylist cut her hair too short and she looked like a “****.”

I remember spending mornings at grandma’s house. I would watch The Price Is Right and Days of Our Lives. She would fall asleep and I would clean the wax out from her ears with a paintbrush. I remember enjoying it.

I remember my first ****** nose (I used a whole roll of toilet paper). I could taste the blood running down the back of my throat.

I remember all the other ****** noses and calling mom from the nurse’s office

I remember Mr. Iles (3rd grade) screaming at his class for being idiots. He drove a motorcycle to school everyday.

I remember doing times tables in his class. I was always terrible at math and thought I was stupid. We watched the twin towers fall on television. I didn’t know what was happening so I continued to doodle on my times tables.

I remember in middle school being the only one at my lunch table wearing yellow.  My friends became gothic. I didn’t know what that was, but I knew I was different.

I remember my first art class in high school, thinking I was better than everyone, and I was.

I remember the first time I masturbated. I don’t remember how many times I did it that day but my **** hurt for a while and I walked funny.

I remember my mother trying to teach me about God. I never told her that I didn’t believe in him. I’ve always felt guilty.

I remember my first girlfriend. We dated for 7 months. My friends hated her, and I stopped talking to them. I remember hating them for it.

I remember the first time we had *** it was **** ***. I didn’t use a ****** and my **** was covered in ****.
She was great at *******. She once ****** me off in the backseat of her grandma’s car while her grandma drove. I forgot about the time she threw up on me.

I remember she loved Disney and nicknamed my ***** “Captain Hook” because it curves to the left.

I remember the day she found out she had ******, she told me over the phone. I cried because it was my fault. In high school health class, they didn’t teach us that if you have a cold sore and eat a girl out, they could get ******.

I remember when she broke up with me and went back to her ugly ex-boyfriend (now ex-ex-boyfriend). I cried again. Her friends stopped talking to me.

I remember it was on my birthday. (Friday the 13th)

I remember the threats over texts to leave her alone. I told everyone at school she had ******.

I remember eating lunch alone. (A lot)

I remember shutting myself in my room and not eating.

I remember when I tried to **** myself with a steak knife in the kitchen. I didn’t do it right. My mother asked me what happed, so I lied and told her it was an accident. I don’t think she believed me. We still don’t talk about it but I still have the scar.

I remember making art. (A lot)
I did nothing but art (That’s all I had.)

I remember making friends in my art class and how my teacher would dress like a Jedi.

I remember meeting Bobby, and Brandon, and Tyler.

I remember thinking that art had saved my life.

I remember the first time I smoked ****. It was in the parking lot of a Best Buy with Brendan and Kristiana. I didn’t feel “high” and we ate cupcakes after that.

I remember drinking a beer for the first time and hating the taste.

I remember, “It’s an acquired taste.”

I remember, “Drink it, *****!”

I remember the first time I got drunk. It was at my brother’s house and I almost fell asleep with my head on the toilet. He carried me to the couch, emptied a bowl of pretzels and set in under my face. The smell had me dry heaving all night.

I don’t remember the first party I went to.

I remember my mother worrying if I would make it home those nights.

I remember making friends with people from Sayler Park They were in a band with my brother, but liked me more. I felt bad for him, but I was drunk. I went to other parties they had. There were always sweaty teenagers and *****.

I remember the guy who ****** on everyone in the mosh pit. The support beam broke under us that night and the floor almost caved in.

I remember ******* in the front yard. It rained so we were mud sliding in puddles.

I remember the two girls making out in the bathtub naked. Bobby took a video of them on his phone.

I remember when he tried to get this girl to sleep with me. Her name was Lauren Luckey and it was her birthday. She found out I went to art school and had me draw smiley faces on her and her friends’ *******. She started kissing me over the sink (her hair got caught in the garbage disposal.) She bit my neck and broke skin. It was 6 in the morning.

I remember she took me up to the bathroom and we had ***. I remember her taking off my boxers with her teeth. Bobby tossed me a ****** but I lost it. Curtis (he owned the house) came in and ****** anyways. He told me I had a cute ***. When he was done, he left the bathroom door open. There was a line waiting to come in that watched the two of us **** on the eggshell colored floor.

I remember waking up the next day and finding out she was engaged.

I remember the first time I had a pizza from Dewey’s and fell in love.

I remember when I started smoking. My mother gave me **** for it. I always complained when she smoked (I used to break her cigarettes.)

I remember the summer my grandmother died.

I remember staying the night at her house the day before.

I remember when my mother called everyone into the room. I remember, “It’s almost time.”
My family crowded around her.
One of my uncles fainting while the other vomited in the corner.

I remember my mother crying. I remember crying.

I remember “Amazing Grace”

I remember when time froze.
July 11th, 2013, at 1:26 p.m.

I remember my uncle walking over to her, pressing his hand against her mouth trying to feel her breathe. His brain wouldn’t let him accept that she died. I remember him looking up at me like a lost boy, looking for an answer. (I didn’t have one.)

I remember my mother told me she was with God now.

I remember.

BUCKLEY BOY


Caressing half-sounds
Stumbling your stories
Under star-snake glories
Round the flickered embers


Did silence shake you
And tear you apart
As desperate loss
Tracked endless plains?


Dying in your dreams
When the cord tightens
Did your execution
Proceed as seemed it must?


How many atrocities
Were buried in the sand
And laid aside
Then brought to hand?


Years without kindred
Did you lose control
Find communion dead
And cease expression


Traversing the empty spaces
In dark companion?
Did you long for traces
Of what was told?



In the waste and fever
Did regret ride high
Chaffing the leaver
Chiding the loser why


So many roads were tried
Through trackless wastes
Where stream beds lied
And haste led back?


Walking on the edge
Of no escape
Left on hillsides
By your last mistake


When the dark broke in
Was an icy flaw
The token endpoint
Holding a wider line?

another midnight I've seen this week:
bed times have gone from books and milk
and slightly ajar doors,
to long slogs far into the early morning hours-

-did I, did I try too hard to hold your hand?
If so I didn't mean to,
maybe the excitement of being held again
made my squeeze a little too much.

-

another morning afternoon I've seen this week:
primary education routines of get dressed
and ready for school have been lost to
fading light showers and foaming shampoos-

-did I, did I not follow the Curtis rules?
Should I run a bookshop? Be late time and time again?
Runaway to the continent and write a novel no one wants?
Lose a wife and fall for a model?

if so, I'm sorry I'm not that.

The ringing starts with the flick
Of the light switch at midnight

Too literal are the swiveling office
Chairs and blaring telephones we
Are brought into at birth

There was a freedom once that
Tasted like fresh honey milk and
Felt like the first tremors of a
Love you thought would never be

The truth
In that place is
As sacred as the mountain,
The river, the wind, the Earth -
All of space we cannot see

Closing my eyes I
See the future of human kind
And mourn the fact
That I will not be here to
See all the changes to come

Everyman
Everywoman
Is once
Expected to die

And hoped to
Have lived

Our expectations of
Greatness is met
And we must continue to
Meet those expectations
Or else left in the dust
From whence

We came

The media blew you off as a tortured soul,
When your wife found you hanging, like a flag,
Tied to the kitchen pole.

People romanticized you as some sort of saint
And all meaning of yourself was lost.
People went to your gigs to see you dance and shake,
And to see you be carried off.
You were a child, once,
But then you made the wrong decisions, grew up
And now the cynics call you a dunce.
You had a daughter, but you never held her,
Was it because you didn't feel worthy to?
I wonder now, if she wants you to hold her, even though she's much elder.

They say you were brilliant,
The ones who viewed you through a microscope.
Of course there were the cruel ones,
Who said that your heart was cold,
But maybe, maybe, you could have grown old.

You'd wake up with a kiss from your wife,
Who'd lumber her aged body out of bed,
Or maybe, you'd have a different life.
One, far far away on your own,
But you'd have developed,
You would have grown.

Now, only indie teenagers visit your grave,
Put Joy Division and New Order records by your tombstone.
Write you messages, which rant and rave,
With conditional love for you.

You weren't some heroic legend,
With a poisoned inner core.
You had your struggles,
That had haunted you long before.

So maybe one day I will be an indie teenager, and I will visit your grave.
But I will not give your death,
Such romanticizing the others gave.
Under all the messages that read "LEGEND", for your suicide,
I will write: "MAN".
Because that is what you are.

I can never  seem to warm up
these days.
Its freezing all day
my feet like popsicles
pale, white, and frozen.
Winter is really
hitting Arizona
Its
wet
gray
painful
Ian Curtis and Hank Williams weeping in the black clouds above
walking to the bus stop
my freshly shaved bald head
numb from the cold.
The pomp
the greasy combed hair
gone.
Since my pin-up girlfriend
the Marilyn to my Elvis
packed up and left.
The week before Christmas.
I can't say I really blame her
I can't say she didn't try
She stuck it out a good while there
She left because I cant hold down
a job
and because
I caught her going behind my back
with another man
that combed his hair too.
Secret conversations
with a guy that had what I didn’t
Vintage wool suits
An apartment in New York City
And exotic antiques.
No matter how handsome a ***
eventually
he doesn’t stand a chance.
She used to joke about it even
“Ya know, you’re lucky you’re so handsome.”
when we both knew most woman would be leaving.
I forgot to tell her
good looks only get you so far
and they don’t last very long.
But I got a job
actually
started it the day she left for Tucson.
It’s a place that represents small business office suppliers
paper, ink toner, pens, pencils.
They get small offices to ditch the corporate
staples office max kinkos office depot
and go with small business suppliers instead
stimulate the local economy they say.
It’s a cool gig
pays high commissions and is a real quiet place.
It sits in a business district that’s right next to
an artificial lake
a big winding one
going around medium sized lakeside houses
with tiny docks and tiny boats.
It’s so close
Its just right there
out the backdoor
next to the radio blaring AC/DC
outside it’s like an entire other world
not Arizona.
green waters
thick green grass
little green *****
from the green headed
mallard ducks.
There’s pairings of them all over
a lady said they mate for life.
Those mallards
they give all that fake stuff life
they make it real.
On our smoke breaks we all go out there
most everybody just stands
and smokes on a little back porch area.
laughing, joking, telling stories
putting the cigarette butts neatly in a coffee can.
sometimes I’ll walk away from the group
and stand at the green/blue water’s edge
staring at the concrete shelf of the fake lake
just beneath the water
the real dirt
concealed beneath the murky blue/green mixture.
And everyday
I miss her
a little bit
less
and a little bit
less
with every
fake wave
that rolls in.
I just gotta warm up
winter has really hit Arizona.

I  speak to you and perceive your presence
in gentle breeze that caresses.
I Feel you hug me when I breath deep inside sigh.
I hear you shout your love inside song of birds.  
I know you shelter me from rain.
My dear I love you and always will
as I dance in my life with you as my dancing guide.

StarBG © 2017

How to make nonsense out of bitter citrus fruits
Leave them be, already a font of nonsensical egg yolks
You do this for yourself, your own self, and no other self
Endure another fortnight daliance, you dance forthrightly

Absorb information like paranoia
The facts are lying in bed with an orange banana
How to make something lasting in a world cursed with impermanence
It cannot be done. It simply cannot be done.

The length of a breadbasket will often determine
the size of the loaf
The ratio of meat to potatoes makes nonsensical lemonade
The worst kind...worse than the worst

This document is not intended for distribution
during the lifetime of the author
Only with his passing disseminate expecting sympathy for
the old poet's story, how rarely it truly changes

The ingredients for the above mentioned nonsense
have been properly proportortioned and mixed per instruction
Take a wiff, you can smell the sweet aroma of their baking vapor
As a child I ate spoonfuls of baking powder

The aroma certainly saturates the proceedings
Almost intoxicating how it smacks your heart with nostalgia
The stupid cartoons, the National Lampoon stolen from the convenience store you hung out in
Out in, Out in, Out in, Out in, Out in, Out in, Out in, Out in, Out in

That, my friend, is the beginning from the end
That, my foe, is the bleedin' end of the road
I'm in Ian Curtis' voice, deadening repetion
Day in Day out, Day in Day out, Day in Day out, Day in Day out, Day in Day out

Ding, Ding, the timer in the kitchen chimes it's melancholy ring
The nonsense is at this present moment complete
Ready to serve, ready to eat
and please don't choke on my words, I'm half asleep