(Critique number 1: of social norms in the 21st century)

To the point that our American social fabric has been stained by the original sin of slavery was a point President Abraham Lincoln hoped would be dealt with by the winning and reconciliation of those states who fought to secede during the Civil War; to that end, the Union was saved but equality was not to be had by all man, regardless of color, as well as woman, and progress would arrive in fits and starts.

Our founding fathers declared that "All men are created equal" yet many held salves which meant as they wrote of equality they held of the standards of disenfranchised persons; it took almost 100 years after the Civil War for the next great leap of civil discourse in equality leading to a series of legislative passages throughout the civil rights era to bring what appeared as true and final equality, and though none can doubt great leaps were made, the original sin of our nation - that of espousing that all men our created equal while looking the other way as these very men of principle held slaves to tend there homesteads - is a wonder of true blind-sight.

In 2007-2008 the nation held a hard fought race for the presidency, and swept in with great hope was Barack Hussein Obama, the nation's first African American president; and so it seemed the arch of History at last had bent straight and right; yet even as the nation and world celebrated, The Republican Party behind closed doors decided their mission was to make President Obama a one term president and to start a system of blatantly obstructing any measures President Obama put forth; thus the nation was divided into a rift not seen since and through the era of reconstruction immediately following the Civil War.

Through 2016-2017, the The nation had become more divided than ever and had grown weary of having dynastic leaders in the seat of the presidency specifically either a family member of the bushes or that of the Clintons and so they chose an outsider who had no respect or rule of thumb or moral compass which our founding fathers envisioned the president to have; in fact the role of the president was the least important position as far as they were concerned and his was to be a roll of functionary executive duty and no more yet through the 20th century Congress gave way and gave powers to the president which our founding fathers never intended, thus leaving us at the whims of a president who swims are sweet as easy as wheat in a breeze and with the Wii Congress not hook up holding its duty as a check against the executive branch we find ourselves in a position that the country is even more divided and the two leading parties which were never intended to exist in the first place now in charge of the fate of the nation.

If for no other reason that the executive currently in power is leading a wedge between our nation it is time we as a people stand up and demand that he the executive in charge on this the year 2017 be held up for impeachment on any number of charges of illegal improprieties he has already trampled upon and as laid out in the constitution; let this not be our new normal - a nation divided into a two party system our founding fathers warned against and never intended to take route - but just a blip in our continues march forward, to build a more perfect union, on the right side of history.

ROOM. 148
(Benjamin.)

This morning,
as I showered.
I saw the face of
Genghis Khan
appear,
just fleetingly
in the suds,
as the swirled at the drainpipe
he brandished,  a grinning leer
and then was gone.

This morning,
in my coffee,
institution brewed.
There he was Van Gogh,
Vincent,  from when,
he still had an ear.
Today, blue paint,
smudged his nose.

In the carpet, after
the cleaning lady had
come.
Amy Whitehouse
visited n'said,
"Rehab might have been
useful afterall."

They the faces, concerned,
and attached to bodies,
encumbered by white cloth.
Tell me, this is non-classic
pariedolia, a symptom of a larger syndrome.

And  if I wanted, to improve
my state of well being,  
that I should not
have any further....hmm
conversations...huhuh,
with the people.

I see in,
the woodgrain of the  
dining  table,
or the man in the
light's moonlike  cover,
or the chap in the door,
of the communal bathroom's
stall wall.

Yet I won't listen,
I don't trust them.

And besides, my buddy Freud
who pops up with the toast.
Told me today,  
"They don't know,
what they are,
talking about.
Not at all, not at all."
In any case,
my muses pariedoliac,
are far better
conversationalists.

With them, I have a ball!!!


ROOM 212
(Gwendolin.)

Today, I am good!

But some days.

My mind, is a battlefield
and I the maniac,
with the finger.
Hovering over the big red button.
So wanting to:
slam my hand down and end it, all.

On other days,
I barely have the energy within,
to lift my head from the
grey, black sludge,
I am drowning in.
On those days,
breathing is sisyphean task and the world is a *******
ball.
Balanced precariously,
on a weary and depressed Atlean hand,
as he drops defeated to the sand.

Then, there are the days I am so up and bright and bubbly
I am appalled and I exhuast myself with my happiness.


But truly, the worst days are,
when,
I am all this and more.
Those are the days,
that my mind becomes,
a feudal state.
Where I am foresaken
to the rage of mutiple realities, engaged in battles for prime position.
I struggle valiantly,
to hold, the bastion of sanity,  painstakenly created and found, in the smallest corner,
of my brainspace,
But they rage and rant
and roil and take,
my precious sanity,
and soil it,
in their mindless games.

And at the end,
of those days.
I am left to pick up
what is left of me
All the tattered pieces
and start all over again.

But the medication helps
smooth me out a lot, it does.

ROOM 179
(Bob.)

"Hello, do you have
a word for me?"

"Blatherskite, oh
you beautiful thing"

"Wordscore 21"

We can begin now,
I know I am not normal.
That I think differently to most.
My mind, is a mendicant,
beggarly thing.
Sitting in library corners.
It's arms held up in supplication, palms outstretched
begging alms, of dictation.
And slathering like a dog,
at a feasting table
snatching at syllables
and sentences.

I sit for hours engrossed
in thesuari
and would gleefully
stab your back multiple times
if you  carried a rare dictionare.

I am a wordaholic
words they are my
sorrowing addiction.

My scrabble tiles,
runic of my affliction.

When stressed the
smoothness
of a spelling bee
is my only solace.

I want to be very clear
I do not see my
addiction
as a affliction
adversely
affecting,
autonomy
but, the
surgeons
of the
psyche
differ,
in their
extrapolation,
of my
lexigraghical
pre occupation
apropos,
vis a vi,
my life
and functionary
state, therewith.
So my tiles and I,
stationarilary
codepend
in this spatial
reality,
until my
mind can find
a state
of equilibrium.

And to be brutally honest
with you.
I don't think that will be
soon,sooner, soonest.

Maybe the Prisoner was Already Dead

     “...he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path.”

                               -George Orwell, “A Hanging”

Evening. Maybe he was already dead
Dead long before the State boys strapped him down
And a functionary started an I.V. drip
Left arm? Or right? In a cinder-block room

Fluorescent lights

With windowed faces posted on both sides
Testaments to the protocols of death
The liturgy of falling away because
He and the lads murdered a helpless man

Fluorescent lights

He breathed. And then he didn’t. His bowels let go
And did they put a Band-Aid on the wound?

Fluorescent lights

But now

Let’s go outside and feel the wind

                                                           ­      We live

Little ant, who art thou
that you run helterskelter
all day long, day after day,
forty-five feet for one small
piece of leaf,
three miles if I were to walk it.

Why?
Is it to assure the community
that you belong?
Is it to know you had a
part in building the pyramid of stones
you call home
that took generations of your
forebears to construct?
Or are you just a part of a great machine,
a mindless functionary
on an assembly line?

As I wonder who you are
I wonder who am I.

She noted, grimly cognizant of though unamused by the irony,
That her likeness, or something akin to that,
Appeared on the poster—a gray-clad strong and vibrant woman
Reaching, in concert with her comrades
(One woman in a white coat, a man in overalls and requisite cap,
Still another androgynous figure in a futuristic ensemble
Resembling some cross of a Western science fiction movie
And some cheap Petrograd-made tin foil)
Toward a hammer-and-sickle adorned moon
Soon to be conquered by a similarly festooned rocket ship.
She is no scientific apparatchik, no technically gifted party functionary;
It is her job to feed the canine occupant of this mission to the cosmos
(Two mutts from the Moscow streets, she confides to Ilysa,
One of the few co-workers who can be trusted with such a statement.)
The dog, she notes without any trace of rancor, eats quite well,
Better than she does in truth,
But it is a series of last meals for the condemned,
For there is no secret as to the dog’s eventual fate
(Poor cur, he has no idea he is doomed,
One of the scientists clucks sadly,
Though she simply shrugs in reply,
Knowing a test or a trap when she sees it,
Though she thinks to herself He is far from alone)
And, after she has cleaned up the remnants of the dog’s dinner,
She heads back to her one-room flat on the Yaseneavaya Boulevard,
Noting ruefully, as she ascends the crumbling, unsteady steps
Leading to her blocky, faceless building,
That the omnipresent klieg lighting of the street lamps
Serves to obscure any trace of the heavens in the night sky.

studied dispassion,
go about
the roundabout
of practiced ordinary living,
fully aware,
there are no open exits
currently available,
leading back to when,
all exits
led only bright forward

consensual distance
spaces tween
registered vehicles
but no longer
registering bodies,
legally maintained,
by all
outward appearances,
minor kisses
in a habitual habitat,
perfunctory
of the functionary,
"I love you's"
traded before
shutting off the
permanence of the
finale of the
now dimmed bedroom light

diminution
by the minute,
covertly clarifying
the ex-mission critical,
cutthroat ended
by consensual distances,
silent no speaking
empty spaces that
cannot be closed,
or
dispossessed disposed,
the sensual, desensitized

been down this
slow mo lazy path,
to slow ruin
before
the quick road to
The End

the questions
air hung but
unasked,
the words
unspoken,
they,
the ultimate
****** weapons
inevitably found,
getting at long last
a final hearing,
judgement reached
at the
reenacted scene
the finale resting place,
the grave of spaces,
consensual spaces,
the gulf of no love,
the pre-partum dénouement

We have the full complement of the requisite barriers:
Barbed wire, barren landscape, unpleasant canines,
Stark metallic towers with vaguely menacing turrets and gunsights
(Though they are remote, poorly lighted,
Perched high enough that I suspect they may be occupied
By mannequins or scarecrows),
And what cannot be attained physically
Is augmented by other means,
Breakfasts at mid-day, bits of bread in the blackest part of night,
Light as dark, dark as light.
We tell our company this and that of the news of the world:
Half–and-quarter-truths, innuendos of some plausibility,
Outright truths as well, but told with the most outrageous leers,
Put forth in a tone which suggest that such things could never be,
(I have come to appreciate Pilate’s question,
For truth is a singular thing,
Valid within the limits of one’s mind,
No more than a lower-case notion
When butting up against those of others),
And I tell myself that this is all something that needs to be done,
That perhaps there is no greater good
Than a certain regularity,a certain order of things,
But I am unsettled by the memory of an episode
Some three days past, where one of this assemblage
(I suspect the person in question was female,
But we keep our band well-shorn, and they are costumed
In rather shapeless and gray tunics
Which, given the lapse of time
And the long intervals between our own re-supply,
Look suspiciously like our own garments)
Look in my direction with what fervor she could muster,
All but barking You! You will be forgiven none of this!
And I was left perplexed by her admonition,
Which, as I began to readying myself for dinner
(Scrubbing my neck, my face, my hands,
Trying to rid myself of the damnable dust
Which is omnipresent, unavoidable, beyond eradication)
Lingered, as I could not for the life of me
Comprehend the calculus which would mark me,
A relative speck, a cog, a mere functionary,
As the one to be singled out.

i.

I smile, sometimes, thinking of how I liked the old Byrds tunes
Back in my seminary days, for I have come to know
(Mostly by these cucumbers, hostas, and ****** dandelions)
That there is very much a season for all things,
For our run in this plane is strictly proscribed,
And having the end date somewhat fixed
A blessing from God, in fact,
For it makes one focus on those things
That are truly meaningful,
To appreciate when there is need to make fine gradations
(For if you plant the peas and parsley just a couple of days,
Indeed mere hours too early, an unexpectedly still and cold night
May steal all of your labors, leaving you with tiny, lifeless shoots
Slumped over the lip of a clay ***)
And when not to waste sound and fury, as it were,
Over the most trifling of things;
For, when the final ascertainment is made, it will not be as an audit,
(Saint Peter himself staring over his glasses
As he punches the calculator,
Clucking as he reviews the number of bottoms in the pews,
The weight of the collection plate,
The state of the cement or flagstone
Leading to the stairs of the cathedral),
But an over-long movie, the seemingly most insignificant of scenes
Screened several times (if it please God) for your viewing pleasure.

ii.

For I have sinned, yes, most exceedingly,
Dear Saints and My Lord,
In lack of thought and foresight, in the expedient holding
Of my tongue, in the unthinking failure to act.
Mea culpa
Mea culpa
Mea maxima culpa.
Blessed ******, I cannot,
In the self-serving pride of my guilt,
Ask you to pray for my soul,
But I would pray that, perhaps,
I will have had the briefest of moments
Where I was not totally unworthy.

iii.

I was, at one time, a different lifetime to me now
Part of the Bishop’s diocesan staff in Boston,
Great city of pristine churches
Surrounded by blooms of all the colors He could bring
And shanty Irish rough as the day the boat landed
(One size Fitz all, the joke was back in those days)  
I was more functionary than rising star in the hierarchy,
Nicknamed “The Bishop’s Travel Agent”,
My function was to find a place for those priests
Who had become , in the vernacular, “troublesome”,
Sending priests whose comforting
Of the younger females among his flock
Strayed over the line of purely spiritual
To some remote Aroostook village
Or, if such problems ran more to altar boys,
Some convent in the Berkshires.
We were, so I told myself, being judicious,
And all in the best interests of the Church.
One time we were wrong, horribly wrong;
There was a suicide, whispers,
Letters which should have been burned.
Many of my colleagues complained, bitterly,
That I had been made
An unworthy scapegoat for the Bishop,
But I knew in my soul such an assertion
Was merely halfway correct.

iv.

Yet perhaps I will—no, indeed, I must—be saved,
For our Lord is good, and Christ shall have mercy,
And exchange this long walk through foolishness and vanity
With life everlasting, even for those of us
Who have stumbled along clumsily,
Unthinkingly, unheedingly upon Your creation.
Kyrie, eleison;
Christe, eleison;
Kyrie, eleison.

v.


It is good, then; the days have been dry
And unusually warm, the nights cool
Yet without the danger of frost.
The beans and tomatoes should thrive,
And the sunflowers should grow
Well… like sunflowers, one would surmise.
As for myself, the good days
Are examples of His grace,
The bad ones no more than I can bear,
And the doctors (mere men, after all)
Minister to me as well as men can.
I have, blessedly, no trepidation
As relates to the close of my small one-act play
On this patch of earth.  
Indeed, I am often cheered
That I have seen small green shoots
Rising from the years of fallen leaves
Which I have raked up and dumped upon the brush lot
Between the church itself
And the old graveyard at the rear of the property.

I must **** trees, miss fleas, kiss cheese & hiss bees like nervously-
nervous nut cases with a neurotic, nerve-racking, miss-ease disease
I will **** trees, miss fleas, hiss bees & kiss cheeses like nervously-
nervous nut jobs with neurotical, nerve-racking, miss-ease diseases
Half way up from the bottom down, left of center, tilted backwards,
is the contorted stance that cripples contortionists lunging forwards
Charles Puffy's jumbled diphtherial litter & rot got him caught cold
& brought to higher authorities who knew old Puffy needn't be shot

My Caesar and my Empire have I served,
A diplomatic functionary, true
To distant duties, and never unnerved
By greedy Greek or perfidious Jew

Outside the arca archa have I thought,
Festooned my desk and office with awards;
My Caesar’s honour only have I sought
While sparing for myself but few rewards

I built with focused care my resume’
And filed each memorandum, note, and scrip;
I justly ruled (no matter what they say),
And seldom sent men to the cross or whip

But, oh! That thing about an open vault –
I never got it.  And why was that my fault?

Can't we use public **** houses based on genitalia? Where are my eye bags? They're under my eyes. Is this the miserable hell that is MY VIOLENT LIFE? There are 7 diseases lymphatical that thoroughly waste a Swedish functionary. I get it, I think. Of course I do! Heave-**, big love for Christmas has yet to budge a ****** sexier than Allard Kenneth Lowenstein (or make less blind Jorge Luis Borges). Songs that promote a geriatrical standard that's epidemiological reminds us of various things cultural & cultured like butter-milk because old Paul McCartney proves that bold jowl pigs aren't knees. I recognize 223 signs of ratty liver seizure when my fried liver & onions clog with rat droppings. Oh well Orwell, other than torture, O'Brien's a swell guy, not some big, terrible ******...

Can't we use public **** houses based on genitalia? Where are my eye bags? They're under my eyes. Is this the miserable hell that is MY VIOLENT LIFE? There are 7 diseases lymphatical that thoroughly waste a Swedish functionary. I get it, I think. Of course I do! Heave-**, big love for Christmas has yet to budge a ****** sexier than Allard Kenneth Lowenstein (or make less blind Jorge Luis Borges). Songs that promote a geriatrical standard that's epidemiological reminds us of various things cultural & cultured like butter-milk because old Paul McCartney proves that bold jowl pigs aren't knees. I recognize 223 signs of ratty liver seizure when my fried liver & onions clog with rat droppings. Oh well Orwell, other than torture, O'Brien's a swell guy, not some big, terrible ******...

There are 7 diseases lymphatical that thoroughly waste a Swedish functionary. I get it, I think. Of course I do! Heave-**, big love for Christmas has yet to budge a ****** sexier than Allard Kenneth Lowenstein (or make less blind Jorge Luis Borges). Songs that promote a geriatrical standard that's epidemiological reminds us of various things cultural & cultured like butter-milk because old Paul McCartney proves that bold jowl pigs aren't knees. I recognize 223 signs of ratty liver seizure when my fried liver & onions clog with rat droppings. Oh well Orwell, other than torture, O'Brien's a swell guy, not some big, terrible ******...

Can't we use public **** houses based on genitalia? Where are my eye bags? They're under my eyes. Is this the miserable hell that is MY VIOLENT LIFE? There are 7 diseases lymphatical that thoroughly waste a Swedish functionary. I get it, I think. Of course I do! Heave-**, big love for Christmas has yet to budge a ****** sexier than Allard Kenneth Lowenstein (or make less blind Jorge Luis Borges). Songs that promote a geriatrical standard that's epidemiological reminds us of various things cultural & cultured like butter-milk because old Paul McCartney proves that bold jowl pigs aren't knees. I recognize 223 signs of ratty liver seizure when my fried liver & onions clog with rat droppings. Oh well Orwell, other than torture, O'Brien's a swell guy, not some big, terrible ******...

Can't we use public **** houses based on genitalia? Where are my eye bags? They're under my eyes. Is this the miserable hell that is MY VIOLENT LIFE? There are 7 diseases lymphatical that thoroughly waste a Swedish functionary. I get it, I think. Of course I do! Heave-**, big love for Christmas has yet to budge a ****** sexier than Allard Kenneth Lowenstein (or make less blind Jorge Luis Borges). Songs that promote a geriatrical standard that's epidemiological reminds us of various things cultural & cultured like butter-milk because old Paul McCartney proves that bold jowl pigs aren't knees. I recognize 223 signs of ratty liver seizure when my fried liver & onions clog with rat droppings. Oh well Orwell, other than torture, *O'Brien's a swell guy, not some big, terrible ******...