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.

Winnie the Pooh is trying to think
As are Plato and Socrates
While The Little Rascals get rambunctious
And The Marx Brothers cause calamities
Jim Jones stirs the Kool-Aid
And Georgie Porgie makes his move
Bo Peep and Miss Muffett start to blush
Red Ridding hood just swoons
The Muffin Man does a deal
With Johnny Apple seed
These beings and people our real
In our Surreal Reality

******* lets the paint splatter
And Moses parts the sea
Belushi buys an eight-ball
Bruce is on trial for obscenity
Rorschach is on the case
Right behind Sherlock Holmes
John the baptist goes for a swim
Along with Brian Jones
Jack and Jill meet Hansel and Gretel
They're hungry, they're thirsty
These figments of imagination do exist
In our Surreal Reality

Rasputin was so evil
As bad as Captain Hook
Now was it ** Chi Minh or Nixon
Who said "I am not a crook?"
Mao Zedong looked at Stalin
With a shared murderous grin
Booth stormed the Ford theater
And shot President Lincoln
Kennedy and King we're both casualties
Of the process of the deciphering
Of our Surreal  Reality

Zeus said to Aphrodite
"Wow, you look real good tonight"
And Handel says "Hallelujah!"
As the Wright Brothers take flight
Baby Face Nelson
Teams up with Dillinger
Moe, Larry and Curly
Mengele, Mussolini and Adolf ******
Three bears, three little pigs
Along with three blind mice
Sit together, while Maurice Sendack
Cooks them chicken soup with rice
Charlie Bucket had a buy out
Wonka gave up his factory
Fiction or nonfiction it's all a apart
Of our Surreal Reality

Chicken Little tried his best
To warm The Little Red Hen
Of the sly trickster
They call Rumpelstiltskin
Rimbaud applauds Leonidas
And his 300's final stand
Da vinci  paved the way
For both Newton and Edison
Folklore and war heroes
And those with intellectual mentality
Are all just pieces
Of our Surreal Reality

Wee Willie Winkie's scream
Wakes up Rip Van Winkle
But not Sleeping Beauty who's been asleep for thirty years
But has no acquired a single wrinkle
Caligula has lost his mind
And Nero's lost his fiddle
What does Beethoven's hearing aid
Have to do the March Hare's riddle?
Abbie Hoffman fights for civil rights
Thomas Jefferson for democracy
Products of the conceptual
In our Surreal Reality

Berryman writes an ode
To Washington's wooden teeth
Manson speaks of Helter Skelter
Neruda damns the fruit company
Charles Schultz frames the story
And Seuss gives it rhyme
Some where far, far away
Taking place once upon a time
And the villagers all had omelettes
Thanks to clumsy Humpty Dumpty
It's all food for thought
In our Surreal Reality

Santa brings us presents
And Cupid bring us love
But we can never get back
The members of the 27 Club
Warhol makes his movies
And Buddha meditates
Joseph Smith reads the golden plates
Mohammed and Jesus save
Theses figures bring people hope
In life's dualities
Trusting faith
And our Surreal Reality


Han Solo is in carbon freeze
Don Juan's preoccupied
Sinbad sets his sails
Simple Simon didn't get his pie
Caesar looked at Brutus
Brutus looked at Saddam Hussein
Hussein looked at L. Ron Hubbard
Who prayed to Eloheim  
Dionysus can out drink us all
We cringe at Achilles fatality  
As Ra soars through the skies
Of our Surreal Reality

Aristotle says to Shakespeare
"Well Billy you old bard"
Frodo trades the ring of power
To Fidel Castro for a Babe Ruth Baseball card
Biggie and Tupac write their lyrics on paper
Ted Bundy is put in jail
They're making another skyscraper
For King Kong to scale
Hemingway is too far gone
Kant's take on morality
Einstein says it's all relative
In our Surreal Reality

Churchill said victory
John Lennon said peace
Judas gave back the silver
Then hung himself in a tree
Tojo and Kim Jong-il
Wanna be as cool as Brando and Dean
George Carlin warned us all
Now Hermes leaves the scene
So do the butcher, the baker and the candle stick maker
Followed by Old King Cole and his Fiddlers Three
As they make their way to find
A sense or Surreal Reality

Odysseus pines for Ithaca
Paul Bunyan chops the trees
The Jersey Devil has not been found
Noah herds the animals by twos not threes
Anubis wraps the mummies
And Augustus leads Rome
Bugs Bunny laughs with Pryor
All at the expense of Job
So what can we all make of this
Is this all actuality?
Symbolism or nonsense?
Realistic Surrealism or Surreal Realty?

Mrs Dillinger undressed
in the hotel room
a different room
from the time before

shouldn’t we
close the curtains first?
you asked
there’s an office block

across the road
and there maybe people
who might see in
she paused

in releasing her bra
who the **** cares?
the nets will dim
or fuzz what they may see

she said
and carried on
as before
her fingers fumbling

from behind her back
I like the other room best
you said
it seemed more private

she dropped her bra
on to a chair by the bed
and unzipped her skirt
you worry too much

what people think Kid
undress and lets to action
you scanned the room
the white walls

the one picture
of some seaside scene
second rate furniture
and a double bed

someone was playing music
from a room along the hall
undressed she slipped
into bed and waited

her eyes all over you
come on Kid
you’re wasting time
you unzipped

your jeans
and let them fall
and kicked them
across the floor

then bit by bit
you took off
the rest of your clothes
and carefully put them

on the chair
even the jeans
by the door
passions can dilute

you know
she said
ok
you said

just coming
well don’t come too soon
she said
and laughed

and you climbed into bed
and the springs groaned
and you lay beside her
seeing the hair

beneath her arms
oh that
she said
that’s just part

of my charms
and she touched
your pecker
and kissed your lips

and set to work
and out of the corner
of your eye
you looked across

to the window
wondering if people
could see
what she was doing

to you
wondering if the nets
kept it blurred
or invisible

or maybe
they couldn’t careless
what you were doing
to each to each

across the road
and out of reach.

.
                                J o h n
                              Dillinger
                       ­    "P retty Boy"
                           F l oyd "Baby
                          Face"    Nelson
                 ­          Al   "Scarface"
                           Capone  "Ma
                           c h i ne   Gun"
                           Kelly  Charles
                          "Lucky" Lucia
                           no     B u g s y
                           Siegel    Carlo
                           Gambino Jack
                           Diamond Tom
                           Devaney Jame
                           s Coonan  D a
          wood Ibrahcan       Kray  Brothers
        Demetrius Flenory  Joaquin Guzman
          James  Burke           Meyer Lansky
             Bonnie                         Clyde

Dice the dead mans diligence like a Dillinger or Challenger,

He gained a Dodge Wrangler like a sad handler of emotions;

Perhaps all of this is more potent than potions or consumer hand lotions plus alcoholic haphazard;

Yet I consider the price of anything to be lice on everything,

Like a fat woman’s sullen song,

The sounds still ring in the lingering enclave of my eardrums,

Which breath waves like air into my lungs.

It’s sundown,

And therefore, I’ll see you soon;

Yes, I’ll see you soon, moon.

So very soon.

God struck me down
He did it to me because I was playing with him
That teaches me a lesson not to do it again

Electric eel
Electric eel
Electric eel
Electric eel

John Dillinger got killed in 1930
He was assassinated for trying to rob a bank
He was carrying a gun

Electric eel
Electric eel
Electric eel
Electric eel

John Pole got mad at me, and hit me with a tire iron
He was so ******* at me
He pulled out his tack, and gave me the shock of my life

Electric eel
Electric eel
Electric eel
Electric eel

Mitsubishi, the word is getting around

The Edge of Darkness and BeyondBlack Heart Black Door Black Future
I have spoke about chains of darkness The Kingston Trio had a song the reverend MR Black it is special
To me it was what God used to start me back to church at seventeen after the loss of that blessed life as
A child I was standing in the bedroom at Wafford’s house right next to the small record player on the
Dresser and the song was playing the reverend MR Black was holding a meeting this giant of a lumber
Jack walked up to the reverend with a great hand he slapped the reverend the reverend didn’t say a
Thing you realize this is three part harmony and the reverend cut him down when he said you got walk
That lonesome valley you got to walk it all by yourself as the record spun around a spear flew off that
Turntable and went right into my heart I have been walking with God ever since not always continuously
But still walking the song ended and the Reverend MR Black is my old man well this tells another story of
My dad he had a call to preach he could tell a story you missed out when he used to tell about Dillinger
And the boys but as related before he listened to the siren call of a stag that was made like not unlike
Other brews made in Milwaukie finally this apatite and following it gave him this title from me at least
You have to salvage what you can he went from the king of kings to being the king of the drunks his
Name was Otis James the James from I was told was for Jessie and Frank James in some parts he
Honored there family name not this time I’m sitting here holding an old butcher knife that survived
Through the years back when most people struggled together the blade is dark with spots it was an item
I kept after my mother passed away but this opens a window in real time and shows how far you slide
When you leave the sure footing of God’s house I was still the magic five out at my mom’s mothers
House her sister and brother and law comes in come on we have to go up town and see your mother
Now the black door were already in the black heart for the life of me I will never understand why they
put me in this crucible setting pana jail down stairs they called the it bull pit the biggest blackest scary
steel door scary but not as scary as what was on the other side I heard a wild animal’s scream then drop
to a plaintive whimper then more screams and loud crying then they opened the door the horror was
complete with hair filled with weeds torn dress this creature set convulsing before my eyes my mother it
seems this former loving husband and man of God pulled out a butcher knife just like this one down the
road past the turkey farm a new spirit not the holy spirit would have killed my mother but she broke and
ran saving her life but that was all that was saved fast forward to twelve the housing Christmas eve
Another drunken beating in the bedroom I picked up a ball bat to go to my mothers aid the fact that dad
Use to throw and stick these same kinds of butcher knives in the door with accuracy didn’t stop me all
The bad drunken times and all that happened he would stop and tell my sister and me that he loved us I couldn’t
Raise my hand if he had only beaten me he would have been dead or close to it I just set down and
Listened to our sounds of Christmas this isn’t for everyone I know maybe someone had similar
Circumstances that it will help if you’re walking with Jesus God bless you if not know the one that rules the
World works these dead and broken lives you can’t win alone first you need a true mirror of the spirit
That will show imperfection and dangers Satan is the great illusionist if you think everything is alright
and your not ready to meet God very few use to throw caution to the wind and not check for trains at
railroad crossings the big long black train has us on its schedule don’t meet it with out Jesus.

Oafie lingers before his mirror
Pointing at the slinger Dillinger,
In his black suit,
******* his loot,
He won't go in there.

Then Oafie puts an old coat on,
Posing before his cheval,
Sharing jokes with Robert Duvall,
Who lights a smoke for Lauren Bacall,
Who say his coat fits well.

I know this seems humorous,
But Oafie isn't left too much;
His acuity is out of touch.
But he played guitar like a harp,
Which sadly isn't that far off.

For now the famous visit often.
He shuffled stepts to classic Sinatra,
With Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
I'll visit Oafie one last time,
And slip a mirror in his coffin.

A while back, Nick and I sat
side by side
in split-back forest lawn chairs.
Huff and huff
the porch's coat of scarlet stain,
talking like
existential cab drivers.
Legs on legs
crossed like war trenches or
window blinds
or a cold zipper's cold teeth.
Life or death.
More life on rye, Swiss cheese.
Holey talk of Jesus Christ.
Cross the cross
and hope to die; I know we will.
For now, though,
skip small to get to big talk.
Cursive hand
separates notes and throws out
the *******,
but everything at that age was *******.
Challenger
never blew up, Dillinger
never robbed,
we never dissected life
to see its
uncertain pancreas.
We're kids but can't act like it.
Qualms with calm,
and clever wordplay plays footsies
with my thoughts.
My stale bread secrets take up
too much space.

Give them no ribbons. My dear friend who was following orders in Vietnam
was blown to bits when he tripped a wire. Give him no ribbons. Ribbons and medals will not bring him back to his wife who is now in her mid-70s, whose two sons and one daughter each have families of their own, but have no Grandpa whose knee to sit on and play games with and just have fun and laugh with. Michael Dillinger went to Iraq to fight because W told him to. Unfortunately, his amored truck hit a road mine and killed Michael instantly.
Ribbons? They gave ribbons to Michael's mother before they buried Michael in Arlington? Ribbons, for God's sake! Did those ribbons and medals really help console Michael's mother? Did Cheney ever call her to see how she was doing? No, he was in charge of creating what he called "enhanced interrogation," a gross euphemism for unspeakable torture and terror that went on at countless, secret camps in the countries of our allies, and still goes on at Guantanamo even today. Give them no ribbons. Take all the ribbons and medals you can find that were given to those soldiers who gave their very lives for lies, for all those soldiers now lying in all the VA hospitals throughout our country, their bodies permanently disfigured, their minds completely lost, and dump that pile of ribbons and medals in the front yard of wherever W lives in the suburbs of Dallas.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

or multiples
got the Mother Teresa one
the little "rosebud" I call her,
appalled by hunger , she stores in
her thighs the fat
of good deeds

the other so opposite
I call John Dillinger
and he fancies himself Robin Hood,
he bemoans the lack of morals
in the brothels, all slack tongued ,
he calls them.

And the last, who has made him her self known so far,
is part artist and magician. Writing is his mission when he is here, and then just as quickly as he appeared vanishes into thin air.

The way Mrs Dillinger had
of making it
seem so simple

even that time
she said
come round
one afternoon

and we can discuss
your writing or politics
or whatever you like

but she didn't mention
that her husband
was out
or that she

was after your body
and wanted to hear
you read your work

only after
a good session
in her bed
but your pecker

wouldn't perform
wouldn't act
like some circus horse

and so of course
the politics
didn't get discussed
or your writing craft

maybe next time
she said
in any case

my husband
maybe back soon
and I don't want him
getting in

on the act
of discussing politics
or your art and craft

and so
you went away
your art
and craft intact

and your politics
undiscussed
and your pecker

breathing a sigh
of relief
well this time around
at least

you thought
the wilful
bashful beast.

Oafie lingers before his mirror
Pointing at the slinger Dillinger,
In his black suit,
******* his loot,
He won't go in there.

Then Oafie puts an old coat on,
Posing before his cheval,
Sharing jokes with Robert Duvall,
Who lights a smoke for Lauren Bacall,
Who say his coat fits well.

I know this seems humorous,
But Oafie isn't left too much;
His acuity is out of touch.
But he played guitar like a harp,
Which sadly isn't that far off.

For now the famous visit often.
He shuffled steps to classic Sinatra,
With Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
I'll visit Oafie one last time,
And slip a mirror in his coffin.

I collect the death masks
of everyone I see,
many ready with their
mouths turned to  the earth,
eyes closed tight in hellish denial.

Except for L’Inconnue de la Siene
pulled from the river in utter peace,
lovely as Ophelia floating in the reeds,
the resuci Anne of two centuries
of death and resurrected respirations.

Her I grant the heaven she envisioned,
rescue her from the sterile pummel
of kisses and mechanical resurrections
for the body forever remembers its debt
to the devil’s dance of an aspiring life.

I am an exiled poet like Dante
finishing the Paradisio and Inferno
before the malarial last vision
and stone cold gasp reveals
the world and God as just a trick.

I witness the world pleading mercy
to the executioner before the beheading.
“No, no Madam you must die.  You must die”,
is the death mask maker’s answer before
the axe man takes his three swings.

I wonder, like Keats, before the wax
embalms his consumptive face
“How long is this posthumous
existence of mine to go on?”
The answer coming one year later.

I know the world will die, like John Dillinger
in a hale of bullets under a movie marquee,
its death mask ceremoniously displayed
next to its ***** pickled member
and the Sheep Child bleating for love.




Notes:
L’Inconnue de la Siene is a famous death mask created from a Parisian suicide.  Her death mask was a popular morbid collectible found in many French households of the late 1800’s and early 1900s. The Death Mask was also used as the face of a  popular CPR teaching mannequin known as resuci Anne.

The Sheep Child is a reference to the James Dickey poem about a creature that was the off spring of *******.

John Dillingers pickled ***** is rumored to be a part of the Smithsonian museum’s  hidden collection of oddities.

i’ve tried so many
times to throw away the key,  
but my heart pulled a Dillinger,
and it now hides out
in every single *******
thing you’ve ever wrote to me.

I was there
the day they died;
don’t think K's mama
had time to cry.
You don’t know
the things I’ve seen;
You’d be surprised
to know I still dream

of Sarasota
and fists that gleam,
blue fifties queen
still waiting to glow.
John Dillinger,
my one true King,
and then there’s you,
my Savior.

cold corridor,
*** treasure trove;
where you are
is where I wanna go.
hold me close,
Daddy, don’t let go.
I’m terrified,
my time is close.

Heaven is
on Earth with you.
the ocean shimmers
nostalgic blue.
Jesus pleads with me,
"slow down the car,"
but I am God now
and my mind is far.

kaleidoscopes
glitter in my eyes.
Daddy don’t you fret
over my starry sighs.
bruised from your love,
so nectar sweet I could cry;
I swear I’ve been dead
until now.

She came through a dimensional portal
A fictional Character
My Bonnie was flashed to her "Clyde"
In a world in which she did not belong
We are both mortal
We shall stand together and fight until our deaths.
To remain, true to our bonds of love and honor.
Although she was once "unreal.
she is "real" now
Even if those skeptic wonder , "how?"
The other popped through the same flashed gate
The "Dillinger" that was the policewoman named "Kim"
tried to end a "great thing" on a whim.
We drew out our swords
we fought the "law"
we kicked her in the "jaw."
She ran back to an area, safe, away from us.
The Two of us "Bonnie and Clyde"
Jumped a bus
We find another  area to live free and start a family
Free of this "law" that almost ended the two of us.
A freshly written start of a new eternity.
A family name
Full of Electricity.

Striped to the nines
these cats carry pig stickers
animal kingdom death comes quicker
shoeshine, no sunshine, grease ain’t slicker
chalked out in lines
lead bellies line mines
outlaws make laws, break jaws
drop jaws, buy cars, bank rob
live like all-stars, a full-time job
all-grime, an all-crime job
a romantic era of terror
splashy ink does injustice
while they sidle Fords with Thompsons
every John a Dillinger, every Romeo a Clyde
everybody comes to terms with hunger and iron
everybody comes to town either starry or steely eyed
they leave or stay forever, never rich enough to justify why these are the streets they had to die on
it ain’t pretty
black eyed beauties and black tied beaus
lies as easy as blood when the liquor flows
guns and love and money, everybody knows
it’s all business, question contracts and the details get gritty
you can get in clean
but you have to get your hands ***** in this city.


A blues musician blew through the nightclubs with his sound
the rhythm of struggle, poetry and soul come alive
one with his voice, his guitar, singing of how he strived
to make it to the bright lights, he thought it was a miracle he survived
songs of Southland and heartache, the sounds of a segregated culture thriving above ground
what scratch he could collect
he would make if he had to play until he broke his guitar’s neck
wise enough to only accept cash up front, no checks
he was not ashamed of a spotlight
a bluesman can’t be afraid
he tore down the house six nights
and on Sunday he prayed
when he heard his music on the radio, riffs and lyrics ripped and splayed
the mournful soul, howling moon, woeful pontifications and rhythms all butchered onto a premier
a darker, sadder set of eyes than he had ever seen fell back on him from his own rearview mirror
outside of a studio, champagne bottles broken on his back for white rock and roll
at some hour when the sun was too far to imagine rising
he found himself peering over the edge of a darkness in his soul
and the liberating relief was frightening, he wanted to force it to feel surprising
a brown neck and a half ago he traded his first guitar, offered to sign it, too
pawnbroker bought it off him for a bill or two, said “Why, who are you?”
He swapped for a pistol under-the-counter and the bullets
bought a couple bottles of liquid encouragement to help him think it through
he drove out to the record label where the thief was lauded on the air
sitting is his car with his last guitar, barrel scratching his head, parting his hair
he was half-awake, about to leave when he saw four people walking out of there
a quick release, trigger, clutch and gas, the conspirators who stole his soul collapsed,
he drove into town to sell it back one piece at a time just as fast.


Putty in palms
men melt in her gaze
Medusa couldn’t ****** a man as easily
Penny flies with fancy and never stays
she was the high school sweetheart, girl next door,
to the star quarterback, to the class president, who fought viciously over her
who were sidetracked brawling while she was romanced by promises of city life
which swept her off the suburban sidewalk, and deposited her in a diner
where a man would come to blows over her, promising to make her his wife
she led men to collide with one another, they called her the Lucky Penny
she loved the attention, flirtatious eye-batting and men being reduced to fools
it was nothing shy of flattery, her chest felt empty without superficial value
and what is a better showing of what you’re worth than what someone else is willing to do to someone else to keep you?
She never really cared beyond the surface for any of them at all,
until, of course, she was ensnared herself by becoming a moll
Penny would only go steady with someone as beautiful as she was,
this invited trouble to her diner, because
a pretty-boy gangster oversaw collections in the area, just as handsome, just as clean
every bit as petty as Penny, twice as angry, twice as spiteful, and twice as mean
he carried a switchblade knife, a jackboot blade, he would love an excuse to cut ribbons out of skin
he had the sharps in spades, sharp wits, looks, angles, and cuts, when they met Penny was already done in
pretty boy promised her the moon, gave her a pad, he made sure she stayed living in the lap of luxury as long as it was his lap, and she’d never step out of line after the first time he got mad
she was number three in a marriage, in over her head and scared for her life
Penny, the apple of every man’s eye, a prisoner, mistress, and second to a mafia wife.

Ruthless killers aren’t these snarling giants
they’re scrawny, little, barbed wire, white men
capable of extreme and unconscionable acts of violence
you never see them until it’s too late for status quo, still water silence
deeper though, you never know, a gun is just bamboo, a ball and black powder, light it
your next-door neighbor could be the next news-maker, a headline teenager
used to be you’d never know somebody got shot if they popped 911 on your personal pager
the world isn’t spinning any faster, but these gray matters will age ya,
I say, going postal isn’t even a clever turn of phrase yeah?

Sunup in the city, Chicago typewriters were dogearing a page in history
like firecrackers going off just before dawn, you could see them from a sky penthouse
the locations of every execution, it wasn’t a mystery
a plan went off without a hitch, an overtaking in the criminal industry
you can say it, business is booming
body-bags went out by the half dozen to a dozen spots, by noon sirens were still zooming
out of precincts, hearses and coroners, ambulances and firetrucks, police too
it wasn’t a warzone, it was a crime scene, every block everywhere, put tape around the whole county
you could bring every citizen in as a witness, they’d probably all have a statement, it was anarchy,
an entire organization was weeded out and killed, with efficient brutality, and get this, no payment offered up for a revenge bounty
nobody retaliated, they were emasculated, eviscerated, devastated and decapitated, nobody knew who held the keys to the city, but we knew to revere the new monarchy
and for months there was humidity so thick it made me sweat through my collar, an air of anxiety
terror is what you don’t know, can’t understand, aren’t able to feel, hear, or even see…


So, I’ll put a bomb in the mail, watch his face turn pale, stand outside the window
make his wife a widow, I’m not settling for the ironic justice he doled out
my life wasn’t nothing, but now it’s always something, ever since I sold my route
a job in this town is a weapon in the wrong hands, if you work for good folks, you’ll be met with injust demands
I delivered payroll for a law firm, took an armored van and stuck to plans
making sure paralegals and secretaries and partners see their paychecks, private sector, shotgun overhead on the rack, nine-millimeter on my side, and rifle in the back
same three to a car, I always drive, if you’re gonna hit us in broad daylight, it’s gotta be on Monday when we’re fully loaded, as we cross this bridge and you better promise we all stay alive
I get my cut, a quarter million, a Judas’ fee to guarantee the financial security of my family and we’ll be packing live rounds if you think of double crossing me, for our own safety
that day hits, we come across the bridge to a traffic stop
I was sweating bullets, my partner rolled down the window to talk to the cop
an accident ahead, then a sudden, deafening pop
now I feel the adrenaline flood, my face is covered with my friend’s blood
I’m kicking at the door, a ricochet bites my ear, I think my head is gone
but even if I’m dead I’m still running for dear life, I’m going on
I hear screaming, automatic gunfire, he’s shooting, taking them out with him,
he’s dying, I’m ripping my uniform off and ducking out, half-blind, the lights get dim
it’s days later, I’m contemplating the darkest things I’ve ever thought, outside a ***** cop’s residence
I’ve barely eaten, I’ve barely thought of anything except tracking this heist crew down, and now I’m showing hesitance
I’ve followed them since that day, I know this is it, they’re all inside, four bad men got rich and two good men died
one coward allowed it to happen, I’m gripping my sidearm, they won’t strip me of my pride, I don’t need any evidence
He kicks the door in, gun drawn on four men, their families just outside, seconds tick away, sweat drips, feet sway, chairs slide and casings clatter, he serves up an equalizer on a platter, that day it’s not a blue matter, it’s a blood splatter, eight dead, four thieves and three collateral, with a lone gunman at the heart of it all.

Fisticuffs always calls up a type of fighter, former priors
agents looking at delinquency like juvenile homes are boxing regency
adopt a son, own a slave, train him to fight for his home and do it all legally
coattail riding, meal ticket punching, a prizefighter raised from adolescence
to do one thing as soon as he enters a ring, turn lights out, win a money bout, leave opponent with no recollections
a colored boxer, killing competition in a record winning Olympic position
never shies away from trouble he tucks his chin and takes it double
always looking on the uppercuts, combinations break safes, open faces and break up guts
a contender for a spot, he’s dreamt of this, he’d give everything he has now away for this shot
it’s a chance at a chance, the only one he’s got
he loves his foster father and his foster mother and it feels like they’ve worked to give him a lot
sitting front row in reserved seats, while ten rounds pass,
his brain rattles in his skull, while they eat popcorn and sit on their ***
hands trembling in his gloves, slumped in the corner, cut the swelling eyes to let him see
he is dying ninety seconds at a time, how long can he last?
His masters don’t stand unless he falls, their love is slavery
these gloves that keep his hands in fists are new cuffs, they contain him, set him free!
He spits blood on the mouthguard, leaves his teeth on the mat, presses off on his knuckles and clears the ten count with the referee
eyes like a monster, he finally snapped, and wore the leather out
he proved his love was stronger than anyone and anything,
by beating his opponent into a fatal coma, in twelve rounds, blood pooled at silent spectator’s feet, as he continued to swing
it was an undercard they never forgot when he went back to prison and left it all in the ring.

Terror is what you don’t know, can’t understand, aren’t able to feel, hear, or even see
and for months I dreamt of what I saw that day with no lucidity
I was locked down in the tragic relivings of a marred, scarred up, firebomb charred memory
they look for the truth in their ink, why does that burden fall on me?
All I am is all I could ever be!
Dogged, **** tired, I put a cigarette out on my arm to see if I’m awake sometimes
sometimes I do it to see if I’m alive, after bearing witness to fresh hell, in some crimes
investigative journalism, my life’s work, it’s all dirt
digging for one breathtaking coffin, until my lungs hurt
it’s misery in a city of misgivings on loop for eternity
they know no one can stomach the bottom; even the bottom falls out
and the bowels and the guts spit up their disgust, the bile discussed their vile supremacy in doubt
but the duty still lands in my lap and I carry it readily if wearily
a good deed is unheard of, which is why the death of all factions
all fractions of crime, all at one time, all one action done on a dime, is killing me
I know there’s something more behind it all, that kind of slaughter would take an army
where does it begin, who’s covering up, lying and playing pretend, where does one thread stop when another one ends?
Am I standing in a web or a noose?
Am I cutting through a conspiracy or am I cutting myself loose?
I feel as if I’m suspended by my own suspicion!
I am lost and I’ve been more directly involved, more focused on a mission!
There are laughs in the walls of motels where I stay,
when I take my pills and check out for the night they giggle “Have a nice day!”
I’m sure of nothing, why do I know there must be foul play!
The streetsweepers must have an agenda, they must profit in some way
but they don’t come out of the woodwork to claim any coercion or pay
any heroics or fame, if any figurehead stood behind them, that person stands at bay
while I wait with bated breath, knowing one thing of murderers who achieve a getaway
that they either are assured of success enough to retire, or to attempt a grander feat of death…

Once an aging prima donna fell upon a spotlight
with all the natural talent of the charismatic, valorous and gallant, a comet in the starlight
she could sing and act and dance and grant wishes with magic if directed so
so, she was a child when she graced stages with her presence every night
crushing the pressure of performances that sink politicians by the sheer size
she could captivate and entertain, dazzle, razzle, sizzle, and shock a crowd
ahead of her time and curb and curtain, her cast and calling, producers she seemed to hypnotize
evoking the ire of every other actress, singer, dancer and magic woman living loud
she burst with color onto silver screens and took the world that was hers by any means, the masses she could mesmerize
even in black in white they fell in love with the gaze of her baby blue eyes
and the only thing to slow or stop this comet’s meteoric rise
was time, she was too old for the parts they wanted every woman for,
tapdancing and vaudeville, lounge singing and musicals, from the ivory tower to the first floor,
an aging prima donna, who would never want to play a bit role or a fill a hole well, she was a goner
she wanted to trailblaze, turn these old ways into new days
and she only needed new opportunities, a chance to shine in her advanced age
for the elderly actress desired to perfect an archetype in drama, beginning with one screenplay page
she wrote herself a major part, around the central cast, so the young talent could shine in the brighter lights, while she would create a legacy to outlast
and they look for her today in her films and wonder what changed to make it so,
that the energetic and happy woman lost all her glow, to go and wither into shadows where she would play the crone and cantankerous, conniving, lonely gypsy or old widow.

In a new era, a new form, the prizefighter came back, weathered the case
five to ten
years off the prime of his career
militant Islamic conversion in the joint, scowl permanently on his face
disowned his adopted home, disemboweled his circle to scorch earth for some personal space
and worked harder to prove he deserved to earn the boxing commission’s good grace
got his boots back on, never out of shape, kept them laced
older and slower, but stronger than ever, a lifestyle change is a new pace
he met a new agent, a man with his true interests at heart, cross it and hope
he’s representing the same faith, referral by a cellmate, representing the same race
he’s educated and well-dressed, his lawyers got lawyers who all send money upriver
so why would he ever sell a fighter downstream? He’s all about one color, one power
the power is cash and the color is green! He’s selling prizefighting like a butcher sells liver
looking at his prime killer like he’s working by the hour, like the man has never been here
he’s lost speed, gained mass, sore in the bones from time’s past and passed in the joint, he’s one night away from an official anoint-
meant, appointment with the king, a racial salesman who takes advantage of the divide to provide a talking point with his melanin
when he doesn’t care, he doesn’t even see people before him as more than cattle or less than human
and with every victory he’s seeing clear, the field he’s standing in is tall grass
he’s struggling to see the path he walked in on, but he’s got to keep burning through the gas
promotion, fight, rounds of blood and sweat, hand held high, interview gab, it’s not over yet
locker room politics, agents and deals, brands and lawyers and contracts, contacts, pagers and producers, politicians and televisions and business meals
he’s got a clear role on only one side of things, that’s why he lets the bird out of the cage because money talks and sometimes ******* sings
but when it comes down to trimming the fat, he earns his living in training and between the ropes in how he lives and how he wins when he swings
and he goes out with a record of sixty fights with eight losses and no contest, one of the most controversial champs to duke it out in those rings.

That they either are assured of success enough to retire, or to attempt a grander feat of death
I swear to ******* God I’m being followed ever since I left the last spot, it’s like the city knows I’ve been holding my breath
it started choking me, hands wrapped around my neck, I’m cut off from my office I can’t even cash a field check, I left my kids in the separation, this story is it, I don’t have nothing left
I’m chasing lights where there’s only flickering projectors, looking for the big picture at the point of origin
it’s never going to reveal itself to me, I hear the voices of professors trampling my voice again
the streets don’t just open up and take every killer, thief and ****** back, every assault charge and corrupt landlord, cop, lawyer and councilman
all the big fish swam away after the attack, like rats on a sinking barge, it’s their word full stop, against the everyman
but if the system breaks down at the point of their cogs, the people who do their ***** work, and witnesses all suddenly outnumber them with righteous indignation, armed and willing to catch a case then…
Who’s going to be left to clean up after that?
Three days, five days, eight, fully awake with the full realization, a health hazard with walls where I sat
the story of the century in my lap, I looked like warm crap, like something the buildings and streets formed teeth to chew up in their maw and back out they spat
figures not even the bones of this old gal would like the flavor of an emissary to the truth
I rattled my fist to the ceiling on the ninth day, kicked a rat of my mattress, pulled the story off my typewriter, and muttered “Let’s see how they like that!”
for the first time I saw daylight, I saw a kid standing outside waiting to rob me, hand in his pocket, he cocked a hammer and told me to drop it,
I stood frozen, sure everything was true if they were waiting to stop it going through the presses, I was ready to die when an old man came by, chased him off with a cane and yelled “Stop it!”
this boy dropped two rocks he clicked together to make a gun noise in his coat and ran, I was stunned and I just studied the face and thanked God for the old man
I interviewed him, a source for my civilian militia, and next week I was in a real bed in my apartment when they ran the issue.

Many months ago, something crazy happened, our family had a tight net over the whole city then it snapped and
lieutenants, enforcers, soldiers all turned on each other on the orders of opposing captains
we turned to our cops, sergeants and detectives, turns out their own were capped before then
cops were ******* with corruption and a lone gunman who hit their families and crossfire killed three kids, four men, rich thieves died poor men,
every single lawyer and city politician at that time was locked up with all eyes on the boxing commission and a homicide spree tied to a ******’ blues musician
it was like all the focus left and they let clowns just step in, meanwhile we were undermined by our own kind, greedy backstabbers and
they cost us the whole operation, cannibal rats, growing fat off our own hind end
in the confusion every two-bit hood and crook, every able-bodied gun and ******, every veteran and rookie, all the way from the bottom to the Consigliere got took,
I found the underboss hanging on to evidence that shut the Don out of the state from a firebombed butcher’s shop in the back by a meat hook, bullet riddled legs limp and falling off, a dozen dead thugs by a card game in the back, plates with cold steak and scrambled eggs
papers ran facts on the carnage, questioned the anarchy, only one washout journalist tried to explain
he must have racked his brain, put himself through so much pain,
in a blind spot there was just another crime, on a scale that looked insane
he said good people were out there, outnumbering the bad
that no matter the hard times, those breed helping hands from survivors who know what they’re like, because they see you having the same day they’ve had
his words were in print, but I felt them reaching out and the fingertips fell short of the grasp
he was a man drowning in senseless slaughter, coming up for air and that was what he saw in a gasp
I know they need hope, but they don’t know it like I do, it’s the environment that breeds the opportunity, otherwise we would never get away with what we do
people don’t make the city clean
you know what I mean
there’s a system, they operate it, a monolithic, twisted, broken glass jaw of a weaker species that spits spiteful and sick ****, it’s full of hatred, eyes red, bureaucrats that ******* cats to see them land on their backs, it only speaks the language of violent acts so it only understands you if you attack, everything in the string-pullers is the least of actual humanity, it’s forsaken because they are the most of what a person lacks, and we answer to their highest calling it’s brass tacks, it’s a blood tax, it’s a wish come true light the candle at both ends and wait until there’s no more wax,
the city isn’t *****, it was built by us, it wasn’t perfect when we got here, but we **** sure broke her trust, you either live the life you want or you die how you must.

I am but the hostage to
natural wastage
postage unpaid.

The committee
takes pity and
loans me the time,
ten days to pay
or double the fine,

nothing comes free.

I'd wager that Dillinger
didn't see it that way.

Al and Salvatore
big
back in the day
I bet they didn't see
it that way either.

J. Dillinger & Bonnie & Clyde
were heroes for robbing banks;
people cheering them on, after
so long of banks robbing them

by now i know i'm not really
adding much to the narrative -
nothing to: quench the zeitgeist
thrill or: pneumonia...

i cannot offer either an escape
plan or some comforting
trickle of wisdom -
       all the better:
    there's no blatant sentiment
on my part for an escapism -
as there's no fixation
on transcendence -

           same old two variations...
but when i smoke
a cigarette...
and listen to purple people eater -
cockfight...
and there's some bourbon
too...
    well... i bring gravity
to entertain the function
of feet: one minute perched
on a windowsill (clenched
buttocks sitting on a folded
foot... the other dangling) -

with an interlude:
i guess that's how i dance
with gravity -
a centipede on nicotine:
quasi-numbing arithmetic
of: pairs... infinite pairs
of legs...

then sitting in a chair:
crouched like a crow like a priest...
no... not really...
nothing more from me
to sustain this narrative:
elsewhere...
    dasein doesn't even work
on me:
    oh sure... big concern for
big h'america...
         the soviets never made
it: somehow the chinese
played the long-game and
that shitaki hallucinogenic
was brought in on the sly
with a very subtle broth...

       that's all i have... running
dry on prospects for concern...
out of sight: out of mind...

i very much like the idea (and
experience) of being the last
person in the house to deserve
a bed and find sleep...

i am also very thankful that
i am not old...
             and young enough
to not feed into a vanity:
     but when someone might
suggest: this is only a
"word salad"...
           such friendships...
       i guess we were both
competing... ahem... "competing"
"artists"...
   if he could only have said
something more...
last time i checked though...
there was no constructive
criticism...
   nor did he mention any
famous poets...
              we apparently wrote
poetry...
how i might have wanted
to talk to him about some verse...

a fwendship that ended
with: you should title your work...
that psychiatric put-down
the toothless Doug...
             thank god this friendship
didn't end because of money...
or a woman...
instead over a disputed
informality - tact -
          something this trivial:
making the friendship trivial
to begin with...

                 such that be the current
wrath that feeds a speeding up
the death of nostalgia...
          there can be no nostalgia
in rewriting of history:

grandiosity of blistering words...
otherwise it wouldn't be neu-history
would it: something done
by way of arbitrary:
            from the atheist collective
tsunami back to sq. 1 of
the resurgence of the individual:

like, somehow...
the mind is an exclusivity of
genius imposing the rule of thumb...
sometimes though:
it's not even a genius...
   at best it's a veneer masquerade...
teasing tautology...

a beast at the froth...
               base insignia: it's hardly
a black-*******...
it's hardly a glimmering
hammer & sickle...
   it's a greyish stone and scythe...
but it's otherwise: the RED...
primer... and guard...
there was once talk
of the white russians and
the red russians...

       i guess the french will
be forever bleu...
  the cardinals are red...
the bishops don ***** purple...
how for all the meticulous
additions to... "understood"?
we revert back to...
poet of amber poet of red
poet of green...

     ha! amber: reconsider!
waver!
red! full-stop!
    green: which is not blue:
green is also envy...
blue is high values...
   but you'd never... associate
blue with: keep going...
don't stop... even though...
the river is blue: blue as
water in a glass is "blue"...
well... or that the sea is blue...
enough area and depth
and enough of the sun...
the sky is blue...
   the earth is tinged with
green outlets...
otherwise...
cinnamon lives matter?
arabs don't matter...
test of "conscience"...
        
             the flag of estonia...
blue black and white...
the flag of lithuania: yellow,
green and red...
   that prominent arab
countries borrowed
the white red and black
borrowed from the empire prior
to weimar republicanism...

otherwise the ordeal of man-made
laws: one year the vogue -
the next a limping outcast:
a ***** colony starts from
a whipping of jurisprudence...
some said: a new normal...

edward the confessor,
the normans and the anglo-saxon
antithesis horde counter
to: how i find underage girls
unappealing...
how you can only tell:
a girl is not procrastinating
her media influenced ***
when... walking next to her...
is a boy... and he's gaff...
or he's riddling a concept
of a bicycle...
                  but you sort of have
to pair them up...

if i were my old 21 year old self...
and the hormonal fog had
my mind in an iron maiden...
and i was dating locally...
without a plethora of geographical
locations: one girlfriend from
russia... one from australia...
one from france...
some spanish one-night-stand...
a whole bunch of romanian / bulgarian
advert friendly *****...

       colt bite the buck and bucket...
to think of *** like a swan:
settling down... giving her a brand
new kitchen...
a pair of cats to pet...
a very unreasonable son to try to
shake off like a fizz in a drink:
to open a can of coca-cola...
if only later to drink some acid
trip of stale: same partie...

     couldn't the fate of yugoslavia
come face to face with america?
couldn't there be a sedation of states...
if the polish lithuanian commonwealth
could be nibbled out of existence...
by 1, 2, tic-tac-toe partitioning...
if mr gorbachev could fathom:
peacefully: (a) ukraine...
estonia... lithuania... the kazakh bazar...

couldn't... the great american
juggernaut leave room for interpretation
as to how there might have to
be sedition states?
solo texas...
the north east coast could
write a constitution of the states
of sedation...
it's not like america could ever
become: wholesome... rye glamours...
and remain intact: that it could!
it could! for the desires of
nostalgic posterity...
   unlike the grinding blunder...
some minor concept of:
"nation"-        or    -"state"...

    past the calorie mark...
ingesting the liquidrice like maple like
crude moon-shim-shimminy-sheen:
glued teeth together and:
breaks the bone...
having to crease the pain...
and differentiate...
otherwise:
a flamboyant: tibia...
walked a dog on a leash
that was also (once) a hangman's noose...
and he barked and jazzed a rhapsody
of barking like there's no analogy for
tomorrow!

no clue in on the game of:
statutes... law...
      or synonyms...
           discretion of proofs -
             cold core concept of...
that there was an idea of
sniffing *******:
when in fact... Kiev youths
boast of sniffing glue...
              
        because i couldn't possibly...
leverage an act...
if i were 34 and she was 21...
and... oh... right...
the fetish of the forbidden is missing...
esp. in the digital medium:
because when flesh is imposed
upon flesh: and there's no...
hormonal aurora...
           the kids keep their bias...
jokes work best...
              some fake some russian
trucker...
and some parents who sought
justice: **** and club of metal over
the head...
               thus?! pristine and
spaghetti retro-flex...
spinning and spasms extra...

          that man achieved poetry
and nuance of language:
that some words don't aid... vectors...
that the ego is no ******* compass...
copernican "west"?
in the geocentric dimension...
which is still somehow needed...
otherwise? dream-big!
heliocentrism and science-fiction!

- to sort of tinker with a layer of man's
laws... and there's gravity...
and then to ***** oneself with
a constellation:
because the united could
never be as united as the yugoslav
project: post-scriptum
of the ottoman barber shop...

   spooked bosnians: best beloved
little europe avenue
gashing with pauper blood
of aristocrats of burgundy...
the biggest shame came...
when the blood was gushing
from the guillotine:
no one held an adventure into
the jesus christ metaphor...
no one sparked a drunkard ****
of wine gurgling...

to read the law:
somehow to read the thesaurus...
balance bonkers of the synonym nuance...

or that other myopic extreme:
some john dillinger,
some greater extremity of new yorker
blues:
new york is like anything
beside this standard of new amsterdam...

shooting dogs that aimed
at skipping: three legged...
unless that debilitating quote from
mary shelley...
and how the monster:
proteus or caliban...
          in name alone...
was to cite...
                           tectonic urges...
that there was a mr. caliban
and a mrs. caliban...
          but that there's also
a neuter lobster: ****-frenzy...

           right now: to want to live in
america... to want the custard...
the fudge and marshmallow...
to rewrite new york
like: a bunch of people who
love to eat in: who can cook...
and the restaurant is...
    an overcooked platter of veggies...

the edible gurgling of
post ad hoc lawyers...
               postmodernism of:
that / this disused hammer without
layers and tiers of nails born
toward tables and stables...

no new bogus prospect:
twisting original narratives:
some cite dementia prone
quid pro quo(tas)...
                      this ordeal of...
heaping together limbo:
EISENHOWER:
            no ad lib. / verbatim:
        we will not churn out
tea-leaves made into chewing gum...
then we will!
find! the lost avenue!
of! digest-able chewy-chow-some!

- then we bring in the saxons-anglicised...
and treat them to some disney...
we'll subsequently huddle
imitating hebrews:
like the briton mongrels
we are... we probably are a people
of polyglots and polymaths...
but under the present guise of
history:
we are celts and we are britons...
there was the saxon invasion...
there were the viking raids...
there was the norman revision...

            we the people...
of the afghanistan of the north: minding
arthur and "king"...
we're not celts... unless having lived
in scotland:
one might tell the difference
when someone accents the Gaelic theta:
as a surd H... **** a t'ought...
    apostrophe (') = surd...

         edinburgh nicknamed
athens of the north...
st. petersburg / amsterdam are both...
venice of the north...
of the former: seat of learning...
i never like david hume's black swans...
and if nietzsche is
to make critique of kant:
i.e. kant being the "philosopher"
of bureocrats....

how does: the will to power end up?
despotic bus drivers...
POWER! with a missing will...
yes... the most ordained with
a silent mind are currently served up
teases of tension...
POWER!
  the bus driver is currently being
served up a placebo amphetamine
cocktail...
he or she... can gesticulate
at a heaven: deus est persona non grata...

the facemask "riddle":
power to the cogs...
leaving the sigma of the machinery
in tatters...
otherwise... a slowing-down mechanism...
POWER!
       nietzsche is more
a power-broker... a philosopher
of daydreams and the overt-exercise
of futility than Kant would ever become...

the bus driver... oh how i wished
to heave a career of... winding clocks...
daydreaming in automaton mode...
but now... POWER!
however futile...
however that's ambitious in
continental thought...
on these shores it has to receive
a new baptism of that...
*******... pragmatism!

           niqab star of david attache...
the surgical face mask:
the will to: what was forever available:
petty power...
limiting hierarchies:
unit... power...
power disguise... power of the drone
chant...
           chatter...
power towing limbo!

  otherwise... kept guilty secret...
50ml of bourbon with some variant "contra"
of butter scotch biscuits...

  but there are the POWER brokers...
what belittling POWER gains...
and oh! god and the devil's
******* and pair of *******...
                                how power can
be exercised by bus drivers
when... commuters are exacted
with face masks...
to stipend them with...
   a nuanced basis for discrimination...

trigger-happy devoid or...
what's the difference
between a bunch of autists...
and sociopaths / psychopaths?

what's the difference
between an autist and a sociopath?
a schizophrenic
sitting in between...

that i am? or merely: bilingual?
america is bilingual ready!
y'um hum hummatie y'ah!

napoleon and the grief of height:
when the dating market evaluation is
strictly: poisoning a borrowing
of feuds: borrowing a friend of a friend of
a friend... and that:
stitching of a cow -
having excavated the stomach
for the ergonomics of a hot-air balloon...

because i had to be the bilingual
the only child freak-oh...
         in the currency of the cited "times"...
this is not a time: this is a space...
a space is congested with such
a people...
but a time... a time would be congested
with: the Pre-Raphaelites...
a time could be congested with such...
but we're talking about a space congestion...
a ****** riddle of a rubber without
skin...
             because there's... science fiction
and... SPACE...
as there's the "will" to POWER...
and there will always be...
the busdriver who doesn't enjoy
driving a bus... because...
there's the forever new rubric of:
keeping up with a best
forgotten attention & span...

         ode to lionel nation -
unlike speaking to my grandfather
strapped to a dementia
riddle cinema of memory:
that there is a cinema of memory...
that there's a concept of:
lukewarm drunk...

that there's a basic of:
yes... i know the best of my life...
memories borrowed from
aeons ago should the collective present
hindering my selfish pursuit
demand as too bourgeoisie:

******* anti-****
primo leisuring...
some old variant some
pseudo Yorick...
         m'ah neu adventure to
somehow tow Fwýday...
that the Vandals never came:
bilingual...

              extensive research
into the communist doctrine
of the: ******-rite of passage:
the omni-
nerve-ending focus of attention
15 minutes to a span....
          
borrowed themes...
the same sort of agriculture...
in the back of my mind:
worship Warsaw...
pursue a sacrificial "lamb":
tease the paedo-dodo project...
of man and king john and...
whatever is a best nuance...

      WE HAVE SUCH FORMAL
TONGUE RIDDLES
TO CHOKE ON...
BSM YOUR WORTH
A LEATHERY-SNIPPET...
i hold sway on "leather"
that's... cow intestines...
trollop...
            a beheaded gorgon
of slippery "details"..
    
   i want to catch the posture
of when english becomes
mongol...
Ukrainian riddled...
           this tongue requires
of itself to be... loaned!
completely!
                 my humble Kiev...
my Ukrainians
born drunk
at the Warsaw West... junction...

looks like the intelligence
of the western world:
can't sell words of Orestes...
implying one might have just read
a nibble...
bo boast!
the dot dot... and farming new!
nuanced: punctuation markers!

the thrill...
of having to ascend...
the morning...
knowing too well...
how the air is scented...
when prior the air was
ravaged by rain...
the details are left in the abstract:
whatever reality is yours!
it's yours...
it your new dead-red
project of... excating Beijing...

bewildering...
how i never settled on
sedating the English
with a blues: Somalian;
   n'est ce pas?

it never rains nor does it shine...
it's never culprit:
it's never simply canadian:
post-nationalistic in europe:
albeit a post-nationalism
of the state-collected...
"europe":
how... the greeks are...
some variations of turkish...

i'm not here: the hagia sophia
is also a...
what is it?
byzantine constipation /
                  leveraging pride
gimmick...
                         esque special
some variant of conundrum...
           mein auch!

                 i'd like to stroke a horse's mane...
like i might...
yet still find "unfathomable"
to leave comparisons with...
a violin detail.

Everybody's looking like Dillinger,
Dylan,
god willing I ain't.

shoot at me with your anarchy
and
the bullets echo inside of me,
does he look like Capone?

Dr. Higley,
hailed from
Smith County,
wrote
'My Western Home'
on the range,
are you singing it now?

I'd throw myself off a cliff,
but the bodies are already stacked so high
that I'd only fall four feet,
why does everybody want to die?

Times are really not that bad
you've had it worse
it will get better
unlike this verse.

We should be happy
no more clapping
no backslapping
plenty of room on the streets
because everyone's krappng
just to get rid of the toilet tissue,

haha told you that you've had it worse
more verse?

don't shoot the messenger
or Kissinger,
not sure about Dillinger,
I quite like him though.